Triple Click - Triple Play: Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Kirk, Jason, and Maddy put on their finest Tarnished gear and get ready for a trip to the Shadow Realm. How does Elden Ring's big expansion compare to the base game? What's it like to revisit the game in 2024? And is it really too difficult?One More Thing:Kirk: Hit Man (2024, Netflix)Maddy: Butterfly In The Sky (Reading Rainbow documentary)Jason: Babel (R.F. Kuang)LINKS:Kirk’s Dragon Age Explainer: https://kotaku.com/a-beginners-guide-to-all-things-dragon-age-1658487212Preorder Jason’s Book! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason-schreier/play-nice/9781538725429/Support 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

The call of long-lost grace speaks to us all, the ever-brillient Kirk, Sir Jason the all-knowing, Maddie Chieftain of the Badlands, and one other. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we talk about Eldon Ring, Shadow of the Urd Tree, a big D.L.C. That seems like it's just more Elden Ring. And it is, but it has its own mysteries. We're still solving. I'm Maddie Myers.

I'm Jason Schreier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello. Hello. Welcome back. my friends to the lance between. Yay, I'm so excited for us to talk about Eldon Ring again. But it's pretty exciting. I got to just give a little quick shout out to the listeners before we get to that

because they're listening right now and also some of them, a select few, very special tarnished, have become Maximum Fun members. And what is that? You may very well ask. Well, all you have to do is go to maximumfund.org slash join and the answers will be revealed to you at that URL. But really what it is is that you can support Max Fun, which is our podcast network. And by supporting us, you get bonus episodes from all the shows on the network, even if you're not supporting them. Even if you only click the tiki box next to triple click,

you get access to every bonus episode if you want. But you definitely get our bonus episodes. And we just recorded one about Psych Odyssey, which is a massive YouTube document. about double fine creating psychonauts too and it's fascinating and everybody should watch it and we talked about it with full spoilers on our feed or bonus feed so if you want that and every other bonus episode we've ever recorded which we do one a month of then go to maximum fund dot org slash join become a member and there you have it there you have it so kirk i already spoiled what we're talking about today but take it away yeah we're going to talk about shadow of the erd tree At long last, there's more Eldon Ring.

And we've all been playing early review copies that we got, though, of course, it is now out. We're recording this a little bit early. And it's pretty good. I don't know. What are the two of you think? Jason, you go first. How much have you played and what do you think of it? It's pretty good.

Yeah, it's more Eldon Ring, and you can't really complain about more Eldon Ring. I think that it's interesting. I think when you first start and get into the first big area, you're, you're a lot. kind of like, oh, okay, this is very familiar. It feels it has kind of notes of Limbgrave. The first big legacy dungeon is very similar to the first big legacy dungeon in Vanilla Eldon Ring. But then as you go on and you get much further into the game, you start to see some of the, I don't know, unique, if not unique mechanics, although there are unique mechanics, at least unique ideas that bring a little bit of new spices to the stew. It's still the same stew, but maybe now there's a little, a little bit of a note of cumin that was in there before.

A little poprica you can taste that. What is this, triple cook? Yeah. It wasn't in there before. Yeah, I mean, I'm hungry. It's dinner time. And yeah, I really like it. I played a bunch.

There's some really cool stuff in there. There's this one. So the second kind of big legacy dungeon is called Shadowkeep. And that one, I think, is really where things get really interesting because that is probably bigger than any of the ones in the main game. and has so many cool, like, secrets and intricacies and hidden passages and side quests or mini side quests. It's really, really cool. So I played a lot.

I'm really into it. I don't know if I have the stamina to finish the whole thing. I have spent so many hours with Alderman Ring at this point. I don't know if I can really do it, do it, like, do another, like, I don't know, however many hundreds more this is going to take. I've already run into some bosses that are real, real walls in progress. But yeah, I love it. I think it's awesome.

I can see why it took two years plus for this to come out, as opposed to previous from software DLCs, which are like a few months after the game. Maddie, how much have you played and what do you think of it? I have played a bunch of it. I guess we should maybe say around what levels we started the game to or started the DLC because I think that affects things a little bit. I saw a couple people saying like as we're recording this,

at least the review embargoes up so people are talking about it. And I saw some people saying that, you know, level 150 is like around where you need to be to feel like it's okay. And I didn't know that going in, but I started at 147. And I think that was a really good spot for me personally. That would be with my final main character. and the first time I ever played Eldon Ring, who I just left her at Roundtable Holds and just figured I'd go back to her whenever the DLC came out. And that is more or less what I did,

although I did start a new character to try to remember what the heck even happens in the game. I didn't catch that one up fast enough. So I ended up going back to my level 147 girl. And I'm really glad I did because it meant that the beginning of the DLC wasn't too hard for me. And I like got through the first couple bosses and was like, I'm challenged, but I'm having a great time. And now I'm like, oh, this game's really, really hard. And there's no way this is going to take me like 30 to 40 hours, which is the guesstimate that I've seen some people say for this DLC. But unlike Jason, I'm really loving it. And I think I will get to the end. I'm not sure how long that's going to take me, but I'm having a great time. And I like the story too. I like

learning about Michaela. I barely understand the story, but I like the characters that I've met so far and the idea of these followers of Michaela who are hiding in this weird shadow realm that's like parallel to the realm that we know in the lands between and we mesmers this other sort of entity that's attacking them and we are probably the bad guy at all of this. I don't know why, but it's a Fromsoft game, so I'm sure I'm a bad guy. And I'm just wreaking havoc in this weird world that I don't fully understand. And I always kind of like that feeling of being in a world that's way bigger than me and mysterious and strange. And that's what Eldon Ring gives me. So I'm really digging that. Nice. I really like it. I actually was having a hard time getting momentum. Sure. In the early goings of this,

because I think the first part is just so similar. And I was playing my same build that I'd been playing for a little while. And then it was when I got to Shadow Keep that I started to feel like I was seeing more of the interesting new layers of this DLC. And I became much more interesting. in, you know, seeing even more in going deeper. Bing! Kirk here as I'm editing the episode. Like I mentioned earlier, we recorded this episode about a week ago, and as a result, I've had a lot more time to play Shadow of the Erd Tree in the time between when we recorded this

and right now the day before it publishes as I am finishing up the edit. So I just wanted to add a couple more thoughts here to my, you know, earlier thoughts that I recorded last week. Just to say, I really think that this DLC is amazing. I know a lot of people have complained about the difficulty, but I have found that by exploring and finding all of those scadu tree fragments, I'm actually doing pretty well. They also just hot-fixed the game so that the early fragments that you find

make you a little bit more powerful, which is good to hear because it makes the learning curve a little less steep. You might not get stomped quite so hard by scrubby enemies at the beginning of this DLC. Though if you roll in here and you don't pick up any fragments and think you're just going to go fight bosses because you're high level. The game will be very happy to remind you of the fact that that is not a good plan. Anyways, I just wanted to say I've had a lot more time to experiment with some of the new weapon

types that are introduced in this DLC. I've really been into the light great sword, though the great katana, I think it's called, is also really cool. I've been using Malady, which is a light great sword that featured in a lot of trailers. You can get it pretty early on, and it has this really graceful. and very cool moveset. It also pairs very well with an ashivore that you find that's called wing stance that lets you kind of hold your sword out to the side,

and then you get this medallion that if you hold a stance for a while before attacking, it kind of synergizes with that to give you an attack boost. And the whole thing is just really fun. I think there are so many other cool combat styles that are available now. It really just feels like the game has opened up in a lot of cool ways. And I'm amazed by how big this DLC is as well. I think that none of the three of us really realize. the sheer scope of Shadow of the Irritory back when we recorded this conversation, but the more

you play, the more you realize that, like, wow, it's super big. Like Miyazaki described it as being the size of Limgrave, and he was trolling. It's absolutely gigantic. So anyways, I just wanted to add a couple of those thoughts here while I'm giving my impressions from about a week ago when we recorded this. The rest of this conversation totally holds up. This is a great DLC, and it's really fun in the early hours, just like it is in the kind of later mid-hours where I am now.

So anyways, pretend that Jason and Maddie were listening to me, say all of that, and I'm going to just kick it back to my past self to take back over. Bing! I'm level, I think I was like level 176 or something. Oh, wow. Okay. It was my save game from right before the New Game Plus. So I'm, you know, pretty mighty. I've got a pretty crazy build.

It's like a Dex Faith build with also like high arcane and bleed. So there's a, I have a ton of points to work with. And might re-spec at some point to work one of these new sword classes because there are new types of weapons. And what's it called? It's like the light great sword. It's kind of somewhere in between a long sword and a great sword. It seems really fun and kind of right in the kind of gameplay that I like. So there are a ton of new weapons and abilities in this that I really would like to explore because I kind of had a good time with Elton Ring getting into builds and going beyond my basic strength, you know, strength-faith build that I beat the game with and getting in.

into a Dex Bleed build with a Bloodhound step kind of zooming around the battlefield and causing bleed and doing all this damage and that became very fun. So at first playing the expansion, yeah, I was kind of like, all right, it's more Eldon Ring. That's cool. That's great. But there was a lot of Eldon Ring to begin with. And I don't know if I really needed more or if I quite have the, like you said, Jason, the stamina. But then, yeah, as I've gotten further into it, I've started to discover what it is that makes this, like how the DLC actually works. And once you start to come to it on its own terms, I think that it becomes a more special experience and a pretty interesting one. Like it really is, it's kind of Eldon Ring and Microcosm, but it does have

its own ideas and has its own rhythms. I think a big thing is the way that upgrades work. Can one of the two of you maybe explain upgrades? Yeah, I was going to say before, Maddie, I don't think the level matters quite as much as you're concerned it does, because throughout the the, um, the, the DLC, you get these special, um, upgrade, uh, items. Um, uh, the names are escaping. Scatut tree fragments. Yeah. And there's another one. Yes, sure, sure. Um, basically you upgrade your power, your overall power and you upgrade your ashes, your spirits power. Um, and clearly this game, just like Eldon Ring, it felt like the spirit of ashes, the spirit of ashes were always kind of overpowered, but clearly it wants you to be using them. And so I think as long as your

finding those upgrades. And I think if you get stuck on a boss, the idea is you should go through another path until you find more upgrades. And all of these upgrades, or at least many of them, can be found near where these big landmarks called McKella's crosses are. And those are parts where McKella and the lore of the CLC has left his parts of his body. And so you end up following those as you go. And the story is kind of like you're going alongside these other adventurers or pilgrims or whatever, who are also trying to walk the path of McKella and go along those. And so that's all tied into the story. But what you can do is you also find these maps as you go that will show you where they're based. So what you can do is if you run into a wall of a boss,

instead of going and farming souls, you want to look at your maps and look for new crosses because they'll give you those upgrades and that'll help you defeat things a lot more easily than I think just some random stat points well. So that I think is a unique system. Also important to note that those upgrades do not work in the rest of Eldon Ring only in the CLC area. So they're very clearly meant to be like, this is how you get past these ultra-hard challenges within this DLC.

I think that's just, so that system is worth talking about a little bit more because I think it's really clever and it works really well. And it does dramatically change the way the game feels to play. So it's clever because of, what you just said, like that it delineates everything in the DLC as its own, you know, its own whole self-contained ecosystem. And as a result, they don't have the leveling problem that some other FromSoft expansions have, where you're still tied to the souls and collecting them and leveling up, so your level matters. But it's, it's kind of complicated because of

how much damage, you know, enemies do. So it's kind of just hard to balance the whole thing out. Like this feels much more carefully created to be this distinct experience that you just have from start to finish. And then, yeah, the way that it rewards you for exploring. That's true that you can go and find those crosses and you'll typically find a schedule tree upgrade piece there or the Ashes upgrade. You'll also find them in the legacy dungeons. But also sometimes they're just hidden around. I made my way up kind of north through the shadow keep to this one area that I could only reach by going through this crazy hidden path in the shadow keep. Yep. Which area? The Masi Ruin area or different?

Oh, I can't remember the name. It was kind of beyond, I don't know, it was around and down. And eventually I was in a very dark area. And to the north of the map, there's a lot of really cool stuff going on with light. I think the art direction in this expansion is pretty incredible overall. But there's a lot of neat stuff going on where you'll be in shadow and it's really, really dark. And then you'll ride out into the light of the sun. And suddenly you'll be in the light and then you'll be back in the shadow. So I'm down in this watery, very dark area, and I follow some notes that were left by players saying, oh, there's a really good item up here. And I kind of run through this weird dark cave. And I found a statue tree upgrade that's like a really great thing to find and was rewarded for exploring with something that really felt like a reward. Where a lot of times in Eldon Ring, you'd find, you know, like a spell that you can't use because of, you know, because you're not playing a spellcast. Yeah, or another spirit ash that you don't want.

Yeah. Yeah. Man, I found a catacomb that is. all dark and you can use a lantern which will navigate it but also you find light switches throughout that like turn on the lights for different sections of it so yes this game definitely the stillsie definitely plays with light and shadow in an interesting way as befitting of its name

I've really been using my old lantern a lot which is like an elder engine mechanic that I hadn't really thought about in a while but now I'm constantly having my lantern on and trying to light my way and figure out where I'm even am because it keeps being really freaking dark Yeah, there's a lot of aesthetically, yeah, absolutely. It is stunning looking. Again, I think some people, I worry that some people will bounce off at the beginning,

because at the beginning it's just like, oh, this looks like more of the same. But then as you get through, I mean, the shadow keep, as we've described, it's just full of interesting. There's like one room that's like centered on this big, it's called the specimen laboratory or something like that. And there's one giant beast that is stuffed or something that is kind of like a weird dragon. Yeah, it's really interesting. looking and there are shelves and libraries built around it.

There's another section of the Shadow Keep where it's all submerged roofs and you have to jump on top of them and kind of do some platforming to get around. There's this one area that I alluded to earlier that's just mossy ruins and it's really, really interesting looking and full of kind of jungle-ish enemies that is unlike anything in the main, in the main Eldon Ring. So, yeah, aesthetically, they really knocked it out of the park. Yeah, it looks so cool. There's that other part that's just like,

On the map, it just looks like this huge black swirl. And then when you get there, it's just like a bunch of weird grooves in the ground. I don't even know what that is. I mean, that's part of the thing about Eldon Ring that I like where you just go somewhere and you're like, well, this looks really weird on the map. I wonder what it's going to be like when I get there. And you're like, oh, it's super freaking weird. It's just a really weird landmass.

And I don't know why it is this way. And there may or may not be an NPC, whoever tells me why it is this way. And there's creepy unique enemies that explore this strange, strange place. I don't know. It rules. I mean, we talked a lot about the map in Eldon Ring back when we were first playing it. And I'm really reminded of that of like seeing kind of the topography of the map and kind of thinking, I know what it's going to indicate and being like, oh, it looks like there's like a little ledge there. And then I'll go to wherever it is and it'll be completely different than what I actually thought, but there'll be something else there that I can do or like a cave is hidden.

And that whole aspect of the game is something that other games, at least not in my experience, can't quite do with the map because it's not necessarily topographical. It's more just stylized or has icons or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, there's no other games with the map quite like Eldon Ring, in part because Eldon Ring is just so good in instilling that sense of discovery and making it feel like it's worth it every time you go. Yeah, this game also plays around with verticality.

This DLC plays around with verticality in a way that the first game only kind of teased at in some sections of its map. In this game, it feels like, and I keep saying in this game, in this DLC, this expansion, it feels like every section of the map has layers to it and you can't always tell from the map whether you're going to have to like climb up a bunch of floating tombstones to get to where you need to go or climb down them to get to where you're kind of looking at and trying to get to you. Or if that kind of that landmark that you see is actually 100 feet above you and you can't get to it until you come back later through a totally different route. It's a really different way of navigating and kind of gives you a different rhythm rather than the classic Eldron Ring style of like, oh, okay, I'm going to go find that map marker and put it on my map and then just ride the horse straight to it and then go from there. This is a little bit more, they're more Byzantine paths, I would say. It's a little bit more, it's a little bit harder to circumnavigate the entire map. Yeah, for sure.

Something interesting about this DLC is that the stakes are pretty different because getting killed and losing your souls or whatever they're called in this game, your roons is not that big of a deal because, you know, I mean, at the point that I'm at in the game, I can just go to that

cliff in front of Mug's Palace and equip that endgame sword that just drops that massive light. I can't remember what it's called. Yeah, the like destroying light beam. Sacred relic sword? Yes. Yeah, sacred relic sword. Yeah, and you can get whatever it is, 50,000 ruins in two seconds.

So I can just get hundreds of thousands of runes and essentially level up infinitely if I want to and get to all the soft caps. So it's just losing 20,000 ruins or 100,000 ruins even, is just totally not a big deal. And that kind of makes sense with what Eldon Ring is anyways, because even in the base game, a lot of that tension was removed or at least reduced because you could fast travel, you could get around so easily. it just, there wasn't quite as much of that feeling of like, oh, I'm in a really dangerous new area and I'm holding on to all these souls and I really need to get to a shortcut because I don't have a lot of health left and I'm out of Estes Flasks. That feeling that you get, especially in demon souls and in dark souls, it just wasn't that common in Eldon Ring to begin with.

And now in the DLC, it's essentially gone. Like, it's a just totally different experience exploring. There's still risk because you might get killed. And sometimes getting killed means you lose progress, like in some of the dungeons. But it's, it's, the stakes are just very different. And I find myself, I don't really mind that. I think it's, I think it's fine, but it is different. Yeah, the only annoying part is that you'll have to, like, go back and potentially

fight some tough monsters that you thought you had already done away with. But that leads to the other brilliant thing about this, which I think is the case in a lot of Souls games, which is, Kirk, when we were in L.A. in the car, you were talking about how fond you are of that meme with the skeleton just being like, just hit the bricks. just get out of there. My favorite meme. You can leave. Real winners quit.

That is such a good poll for this scenario. I think about that all the time as I'm playing Eldon Ring. I'm running face-to-face with like a tough monster and I'm like, oh, God. Like I just beat this. I don't want to do it again. Wait a minute. I can just leave. Hit the bricks.

And I just, you just run right past it and it works almost every single time, unless it's a boss or something. But almost every single time works. Even then. Hey, there's a giant torch monster in your way. Hit the bruce. Just leave. Just leave. Yeah. I mean, even if it's a boss, usually there's something else you can do. I mean, we talk about this all the time with this type of game.

But because it's a surprisingly big DLC, there is actually a lot of other stuff you can do, especially when you get to the Shadow Keep because there's so many different paths to explore. And there are a lot of little optional bosses, some of which are really freaking hard, but you can tell they're optional. So that's useful too because you're like, okay, I kind of get that if I'm, I want to go back and face that guy at some point, get a bunch of runes, even if I don't need them. Fine. I can do that.

But also, I can just explore a little mausoleum or just go check out a pathway I hadn't been down yet. Or try to find another map fragment. Yes, I'm still trying to find map fragments. I have not collected them all yet. And that is useful. It's something that's comforting and not, again, not like other games and something that I really like about this style of game is that I never feel like, oh, there's nothing I can do. I'm just stuck here.

And every time I boot up this game, I have to just keep facing this exact same obstacle until I beat it, which can be demoralizing. Another thing that I like about this expansion is just how it fleshes out the entirety of Eldon Ring. So PVP is something that I think the three of us don't really mess around with too much, but is a big part of Eldon Ring and something that some people really like. And I looked at some breakdown of how many items and ashes and like new fighting style. and like there's like a whole unarmed fighting style on this game that you can unlock. Yeah, there's like martial arts that you can unlock. I haven't even found this yet, but I'm really looking forward to it. So I'm sure that stuff will get factored into the main game.

Like if you're speed running or you really quick run into the DLC area just to get whatever, some sort that winds up being a really great sword for some kind of build. And so it expands the game in ways that I think the three of us can't even begin to imagine because we haven't seen everything in the DLC. And we haven't, like, played the game in its entirety just because I think everybody playing the DLC is going to be coming to it with a save game that they left behind a couple of years ago, or at least a lot of people. And over time, it's just going to, the experience will just become, this is Eldon Ring. It includes this huge area that you can go reach once you beat these two bosses that has whatever 40 new weapon types in it or whatever it is and, like, expands the game so hugely. And you can just kind of run in there before you even go and fight, you know, any.

of the later bosses in the main story. It's really cool to imagine somebody playing Eldon Ring for the first time a year from now and just already having this and being like, oh, sick, I'm going to like outfit my whole guy with Wolverine Claws and like fight Malenia that way. I'm like, I don't even

know what that fight would look like with the completely other weapons that are introduced in this DLC. But like now we're going to be seeing videos of people doing some classic boss fights in completely different ways, which is really fun, like just because there's so many different things in the game now. half the fun of Eldon Ring for me is just watching other people play it because I don't I'm not

as familiar with every build and it's really fun to see how other people end up playing the game and what they discover. It's funny because when we all finished Eldon Ring, we were all kind of like, hmm, that was a little bit too, too much, a little bit too bloated there. Yeah. Especially some of the stuff in the North and the Giants Territory. Yeah. It's even bigger. Although, I mean, I don't know. I think that as we play, playing more, we might, our opinions may change, but at least right now I'm feeling like this stuff is, is high quality enough, it's dense enough, it's interesting enough, that it's making me feel like it's not too much. It's not, it's not like the giant, the mountaintops of the

giants where it just felt a little too barren and a little too uninteresting to be throwing that much new stuff at you at that point. This feels a little bit higher quality. Then again, that could be because I haven't played Delden Ring in two years and four months. It could be. I think you're right. I think you're onto something. Because in the original game, there are so many repeated bosses.

A lot of what you end up doing is going into a jail and then fighting the story boss that you just fought. There was a lot more of that feeling of repetition that I personally didn't mind because it was all pretty fun. But, you know, I think some people did and were right to call it out. In the DLC, at least from what I've played, it has a much denser and richer feeling to it. And it is like, like you described it,

Mattie has a 40-hour experience. That's what I've seen in reviews as well. And that is, like, significantly smaller than Eldon Ring. And I think just leads to, it leads me to think, like, maybe this length is kind of, is a good length for this kind of a game. And Eldon Ring, I mean, I played 160 hours or something, totally bananas. And definitely was feeling kind of exhausted by the end, just because who wouldn't feel exhausted at the end of 160 hours of anything?

Yeah, well, so I think even from the beginning, you find some things in this that don't, kind of succumb to that repetition that the, that Eldon Ring, the original did. So, for example, you find a jail underneath the big castle in the first map screen of Shadow of the Earth Tree. And instead of just looking like some of the other jails that we saw in Eldon Ring, it is this kind of frozen cavern that is built around a big pit with lots of jars hanging down. And then you start to see jars. And then you start to see the things that are inside of the jars and people getting threatened to be thrown into jars. And, It's a whole little jar subplot up in there.

Let's a good jars in this deal. I haven't seen that yet, actually. I haven't found it. There's a jar lore. There's a lot of jar lore. But this is a jail. What I'm discovering. There's a lot of jar lore in the base game.

There is. There's more. This is a jail that's underneath Bellerat castle, which is the first castle that you, that you run into. Oh, I've been trying to figure out how to get to the bottom of it, because I can see there's stuff down there, but I haven't figured that out yet. I kind of go back there. So the entrance to the jail is outside of the,

castle. You have to go in a different direction. But that's what I was talking about earlier with verticality. There's a lot of that sort of thing in this game where you see something below you. In Eldon Ring in the first Eldon Ring, there were a lot of instances where you'd see something on the horizon and you'd know to go look out for that or you'd see it on your map and you know to go find that landmark. In this game, there's a lot of that too, but there's also a lot more verticality. So like you might see something, you might be in one area of the map and not even realize how high up you are and how much lower the stuff beneath you is. On the first area, you can actually see if you kind of walk up to some of the edges of the cliff

in different parts of that first map, you'll see hints at how much bigger the world really is. And in fact, it does the Eldon Ring trick where the world map looks really small at first, but then just keeps expanding as you discover more stuff and you're to the, it gets to the point where you're like, holy crap, this game is, this DLC is humongous. This is probably the biggest DLC ever made, certainly the biggest from software, you'll see that they've done. Definitely feels like a whole new game that they've just tacked on to Eldon Ring. Yeah, it really does.

It does. I am remembering how hard some of the platforming is, though. I feel like we are talking about the verticality a lot. And insofar as I have a complaint, I think it is that sometimes that does start to grate on me a bit. Like trying to gauge distances when I'm riding Torrent around and being like, okay, I'm pretty sure I can make this jump. Okay, I can't. And then I'll see a jump where I'm like, that's too far. And it turns out I could have made it actually.

I think that if you have a whole lot of verticality in a game like this, it's actually pretty difficult to include landmarks that make it clear, especially if you're just like also wanting to have totally unfamiliar monsters and totally unfamiliar landmasses and ruins, that the player isn't going to know how big they are until they're next to them. But if you're also trying to get that person to jump in some places and not others, while also maintaining the FromSoft tradition of trolling you slightly and having you think maybe you can do things that you can't do.

It's a little tricky at various points. For me, at least, that's where bloodstains have been very helpful. A lot of times I'll get to a cliff and I'll look over and think, I really want to get down to that trail down there. And then I look around and there's nothing but blood stains here. I'm like, I am not the only one. Even in this pre-release period, I'm not the only one to have this. Shout out to all the pre-release, not only the bloodstains,

but also the note makers. Some great notes. I know. It's extremely funny to play this game knowing that only reviewers and maybe like from software testers are playing it, but still seeing the same sort of jokes. Like, of course, there's a turtle and next to it a note saying dog. Yes. Or like a note saying secret passage ahead and then a note behind it's saying liar ahead. Yeah.

Or like a closed door that says, oh, you don't have the right. Yeah, you don't have the right. Shout out to all of the Polygon employees who are leaving these notes. Yes, everybody knows the shared language at this point. I'll admit, I've been leaving some notes. I have definitely, like, hit upon some things. I mean, especially, like, when I first got the code and I was like, oh, there's some places here where it's like, I did find a secret or like it does turn out that there's an item ahead. I've certainly been leaving notes.

And the ones that I always up vote are the ones where it's like be wary of right. And there's like a guy hiding there. Those are always the ones where I circle back and I give it a little up vote because I'm like, yeah, this person helped me. Pre-release is the best time to write notes. because if you can get a couple good notes placed when there aren't that many people playing, then when the game goes public and everyone is playing, you'll get a bunch of votes.

I think it was in the base game. I had a couple of notes that just constantly got votes. And I would get health, right? Every time. Yeah. Your flask got refil. I think it's your health. I can't remember.

That's nice, but it's kind of easy mode. It's giving you a big... Yeah, it's helpful, but then you start to overly rely on it. And then, you know, like, eventually you'll either write over it if you want to leave more notes or a... or you know delete it. Yeah, I think back to the verticality thing, I think the verticality is really effective in dungeons.

I mean, it really works for the world map as well because it's cool to realize that you're under somewhere that you did before. Yes, yes. It's something that the base game did well in the Capitol and in that first castle. It was showing you that like, oh, weird, there's an elevator here. Yeah. But I don't know where that goes. And then that just makes you realize there must be a basement to this castle.

And then the Capitol was like an incredible, an incredible feat of level design, the main capital of the base game. And I feel like that kind of design is taken to a whole new level in the Shadow Keep. Like it's the same kind of idea, but even more elaborate and then more varied just because the Keep itself

is kind of mysterious and has a whole lot more variety inside of it where the Capitol was just kind of this city that, you know, had had a, whatever, dragon attack and fallen apart. And so it had sewers and it had, you know, some buildings that you could move through

in rooftops that you can go across, but it was just a city. So it is very cool to see them experimenting with that. And another reason that that's cool is that it's closer to how Dark Souls works. I mean, that's when people talk about Dark Souls level design and why the original Dark Souls is such a great game, it's because that game is this amazingly designed vertical stack where everywhere that you go is like just one elevator right away from the complete opposite end of the world in terms of biome and difficulty and experience. So the fact that they are able to kind of bring that back in all these surprising ways in Alden Ring is really cool. I guess my question for the two of you is, we're playing this game.

It's making Eldon Ring even bigger. Eldon Ring feels in so many ways like the Err-R-R-Rum game. What do they do after this? Like, what comes next? Like, is there going to be an Eldon Ring, too? I feel like I saw somewhere maybe they said there wasn't going to be one. No. Miyazaki, most recently, he actually said that he wants to continue making the same sort of like non-linear. experience and he wants to take a lot from Eldon Ring.

I also just saw some headline about him talking about how he's still trying to make his ideal RPG and Eldon Ring is close but it's not quite there yet. Yeah, well, so they take Eldon Ring and then they add a mechanic that lets you combine items that you see to make vehicles and then you can fly around. Yeah, exactly. Ultra-hand and then you make a really long bridge, et cetera, et cetera. Exactly, exactly. No, yeah, I mean, they could go in a number of different directions. I don't know. They're from software. They're genuses. They'll figure it out. Maybe they'll switch gears a little bit and help Georgia R. Martin write wins of winter and finally get that out there. Who could use the help. Yeah, maybe they could lie to him and tell him it's for a really cool video game, but he actually just needs to finish writing in order to complete it. Yeah, I don't know.

I agree, actually, Jason. I think they will do something completely different because I feel like Sekaro was kind of that way and Bloodborn is kind of that way. Like, yeah, there's some core similarities that we talked about. We did an episode about Souls games and what makes a Souls game and the idea of collecting souls and so on. And I do feel like those games are pretty substantially different in how they feel to play, though, and aesthetically.

So I feel like it would be another one of those where I couldn't predict what it would be, but it would still be something that had Souls in it. it. It's just that everything else about it would be completely different, which is also a little sad, because like I said, I actually really like the specific aesthetic and story that I don't understand of Eldon Ring. Yeah, I would be shocked if they didn't do a sequel. And by the way, I just want to follow up on something you said earlier, Kirk, where you were talking about the verticality of the dungeons. I think what kind of strikes me in playing Shadow of the Oratory is actually more the verticality of the open world stuff, which I think is something we

hadn't seen in the base game at all and that I don't remember from previous Souls games at all either where you get to, so I mentioned earlier in the Massey Ruins area. That one really struck me because you get to that and it is way, way up in the sky and you look down and you can see, maybe you see the church that you visited a few hours earlier and you noted on your map and it's like clouds and you can't really see shit because it's clouds below you, that part. Well, but also, but you can see areas where like you have to find a way to traverse. down and maybe the map fragment is like down and you don't know how far down it is and there's different elevators within the ruins that then take you inside of the ruins and as you're going

through the ruins you also get like different portions that are outside and you can see how far down you've gone and you're trying to keep getting down further or maybe you're going the opposite direction and you're trying to get up further and it plays around with that verticality in a way that also is in the open world that is not something that I had seen because that I think really adds a new element to it because you're on your horse and you can do the double jumping. And it really feels, it has a different feel than anything in the base game or anything in the soul's game that I played before. Because a lot of times you're seeing something you can't get to, but you're having to figure it out on your own. I mean, we're also playing this without guides.

I mean, we have to because we've been playing it ahead of time. But that can be a really fun way to play from soft game because you have to purely rely on the map, spatial awareness, and just trying stuff and just walking around and being like, okay, I know I'm kind of trying to go down because I did exactly what you're describing Jason. I was like looking down and being like, okay, well, I know where the map fragment is. It's really freaking far away. It's down below the cloud cover. I don't know how I'm going to get there. So I'm just going to keep exploring the shadow keep and trying all the different pathways that I can see and just trying to get down, down, down as much as I can and fighting different guys of various difficulties as I go.

And that is, it's a really hard, cool puzzle that almost doesn't have anything to do with combat or like classic environmental puzzle design where it's like, oh, I need to find a key or something. It's just looking around and trying to recognize where you are and not get lost. And like that is the puzzle. It's simply trying to keep your spatial awareness intact, especially if you're not, you're You don't have a map fragment. So you have nothing but your own memory of a place you were.

Yeah. So the thing, I mean, to get back to what you were asking, Kirk, I think the thing that I would love to see from a sequel is something that goes a little bit beyond medieval fantasy. Because that's the thing where I'm like, all right, I don't need to see another castle. I don't need to see another village. Well, there's armored core, right? That's true. Well, Armored Corps is a totally different beast.

I mean, like an Eldon Ring 2 that goes maybe a little bit into some other genre, plays around with some other genre. Obviously, Bloodborn is beloved, and that is full-on, Gothic, horror, steampunk, and a Bloodborn. Yeah, well, but I was going to say, an open world style, blood-borne game, I think would be pretty killer.

But they could also play around another genre do you, maybe make it the Little Mermaid and just send it under the sea. That would actually be really cool, like an undersea. Totally. Yeah. Did you play another crab's treasure? There is an undersea.

Souls Lake that just came out. I mean like fucked out monsters undersea, not like a fun little crap. Yeah, sure, I'm just saying. It's just funny that a game like that actually recently came out. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I'm very curious what they'll do next. I think since Dark Souls

3 there's been this feeling that where you're playing one of their games and thinking, okay, this just feels like an erot text for every from soft game before it. Dark Souls 3 certainly felt like every Dark Souls game and brought back all these bosses from earlier games. And Eldon Ring feels like, I mean, it's its own world.

It's not the world of souls, but it's pretty similar aesthetically. And a lot of the monsters are pretty similar. And yeah, playing this DLC, it's like, okay, wow, they added even more. Now there's a big knight that has two swords. And actually, that's a pretty different kind of a boss. And like, they can kind of go on infinitely with this. It's two stories this time. Yeah, instead of one sword, you see.

They're kind of, but I mean, then that winds up making a big enough difference. It does. keep finding in this DLC that like these minor changes wind up actually feeling pretty substantial. And yeah, maybe they could just do that forever. But even the amount that I've played does make me want to go back and maybe replay Sekiro or something, like just play something really different that still has that from juice. That's still obviously a game made by them that has that energy, but is a really different experience. Yeah, well, Sekiro is all about parrying, whereas Eldon Ring, at least the way a lot of people

play it, is all about dodging and strafing and circling around. enemies, which is just an incredibly, like a way different rhythm. Yeah. I mean, the level design in Sekiro is also just super different. And the overall progression design, like everything about that game is different. And it's been a long time since I played it. And I never finished it. And everyone says that a lot of people still say it's the greatest one.

I replayed it relatively recently. I was talking about it on the show a couple years ago as I was replaying it on my PC. And yeah, I think I got up to the last boss and then just stopped for some reason. But yeah, phenomenal. For some reason. Oh, so you did get all the way up to the last boss? I did. I got to the part where you're like, all the sort of samurai have attacked the place where you were before

and you have to creep around them and they're really, really hard to fight. I feel like that's maybe two-thirds of the way through the game or something. That's where I stopped. Sounds about right. I might try to restart it and get a little bit further past that. But I don't know. There's a lot of other stuff to play. Yeah, it's a fun game.

It takes a, it's really the Genichiro fight is really a road. block and once you get the hang of that one and you have really learned how it works and then you can kind of make your way through the rest. But yeah, man, there's some tough, tough fights in that game that friggin, I was stuck on that ape that throws feces at you for a really long time. Oh, right. Where are you killing him and then he comes back? And then he comes back. Oh, man. Yeah, I wonder if there are any of, I haven't fought any boss fights that feel like quite as much of a wall in, uh, in this Alden Ring DLC, even though it's very hard and I've run into ads like just regular guys out in the wild that are hard.

So have you guys thought... Well, part of that is because I can summon and I can use the mimic tier. And, like, you know, there are a lot of ways that you can mitigate the difficulty of a given fight. Have you guys fought that Armored Knight Gaius, I think, is his name? He's on a horse. He charges at you. The back gate of Shadow Keep. Okay, well, good luck.

He's tough. Great. Can't wait. That is a fucker. Can't wait for a guy on a horse. There's always a guy on a horse in an Elton ring that's like weirdly harder than every other boss. I remember running into some horse battles. Yeah, I'll be curious to see when we can learn a little bit more from people who've played through the entire thing.

If there are any bosses that are, you know, just some optional boss that's the hardest thing that's ever happened. That's like even harder than Melania in the base game. I've heard some of that from my coworkers, but I've kind of skimmed over it because I don't really want to totally spoil my myself, but I do know that there will be some. And that's great for people who want to do that. I make no promises about bothering with any of those. But I want to see the story through at least. So my one big gripe in this game, so I've been using Bloodhound's Fing, which is the most powerful in the game. But my one gripe is that your respects are super limited because the larval eggs that you use to respec are, they're only limited number of them. They don't, you can't get an

infinite number. And so if you played around with a bunch, like in the base game before the DLC even hit, you might only have a couple left or maybe you don't have any left. And if you want to play around with the new weapons and try different builds to see if you like one of those weapons, it can be a real pain to like have to figure out how to respec it or know that you can only re-spec one more time or whatever. That's really annoying. And then on top of that, you also, if you really want to get a feel for the power of these new weapons, you have to upgrade them fully and their limited number of spithing stones and especially the more powerful upgrade weapons you can upgrade items you can use to upgrade them so it's it's you're kind of your you're not really

as encouraged to experiment with builds as I wish you could be so um that's one takeaway that I hope they have for future games is to make some of this stuff a little less limited so just so you can or at least give you a tool like some sandbox where you can experiment with builds um without having to commit to them fully because that part is a little bit of drag. Yeah, that was something the Liza P did where they patched the game to make it easier to get to respec faster and to get to the respect more quickly and make it easier to do. Because, yeah, I mean, I have a lot of those larval tears, is that what they're called? I have a lot of those, but I think I just collected a lot and I only respect once.

I wonder if there are more hidden somewhere in the DLC because that would be one way they could fix it. Because I definitely have found, to the smithingstone point, like, I am finding lots of smithing stones. Same. I was just thinking that. Yeah, low-level ones. Yeah, but that's for upgrading early. I found, like, an ancient dragon smithing stone, and I found a couple that let you maxed items out.

But they do keep those fairly limited. That's true. Yeah, I haven't found any larval tears yet. Yeah. And I know if you get the bell bearings, you can, like, buy a certain number of smithing stones. Like, if you did that, Jason, in the base game, you can then purchase them. No, it's the ancient. The ancient dragon ones, yeah, those are the ones you really need.

Those are the ones that you need. And they're scarce. Yeah. But yeah, I haven't found any larval tears. Hopefully there's some hidden throughout. But yeah, it would be a little nice if there was some way to respect without. Yeah, especially for the DLC. If they just kind of opened it up and let you respect whenever you wanted to.

It doesn't have to be that limited. Yeah. That would be nice. It doesn't really benefit the game at all. Like, what if it was only allowed in the shadow realm or land of shadow or whatever? That would be fine. And then it would go back when you left. I don't know.

Just let me try out all the new different. swords without having to commit. Yeah, that's really, honestly, I really, I don't even see any downside to just making it easy for people to respect whenever they want to. I don't either. I don't feel like it makes the game that much easier, to be honest. Like, it's still really hard because you still have to know what you would want it to be in the first place, which is half the difficulty is even kind of looking at what you have

and being like, okay, this is like a high decks weapon, but I really want to try it and I kind of know how it works. So I'm going to rebuild everything according to that. I mean, that's already kind of a risk. then you might try the weapon be like, well, that sucked. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, they should make it free. That's our only request.

Yeah, I would say something that Liza P. demonstrated is that giving players a lot of flexibility with their builds is just kind of makes the game more fun and doesn't really take anything away from it. It does. So you hear that from your game sucks. Better fix it. It's not too difficult except in this one very specific way that we would like you to change. The rest is fine.

Keep it as it is. Yeah, it's great. Shadow the Retrie is cool. We're going to keep playing it. certainly going to play more of it, and I hope everyone out there is liking it. Let's take a break for now and come back with one more thing. Hey, this is Mike Cablon. If you are out of way. And Sierra Cato. The hosts of TV Chef Fantasy League, where we apply fantasy sports rules to cooking competition shows. We're not professional chefs or fantasy sports bros. Just three comedians who love

cooking shows and winning. We'll cover Top Chef, Master Chef, Great British Bake Off, whatever's in season, really. Ooh, you know chefs love cooking whatever's in season. season. We draft a team of chefs at the top of every series. And every week, we recap the episode and assigned points based on how our chefs did. And at the end of the season, we crown a winner. You can even play along at home if you want. Or you can just listen to us like a regular podcast about cooking shows. That's cool too. Subscribe to TV Chef Fantasy League on maximum fun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome everyone. Step right up. We're going to heal you. We are the healers, Ross and Carrie. Yes, yes. You there. You look like you're upset. Come up here.

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We show up so you don't have to. Find us on maximum fun.org. We won't actually heal you. All right, and we're back with one more thing. Jason, why don't you go first? My one more thing is the book Babel by the other art. F. Kwong, who also wrote the Poppy War trilogy, which I talked

about a couple of years ago on the show. And Babel is a very different kind of book, but has a very similar conceit and structure to the Poppy War. So Babel is set in an alternate history, an alternate fiction version of the 1850s,

England, and it is set in a world where people have figured out how to use silver in magical ways to kind of create magic. And the way you do that is by taking this rod, this silver rod, and inscribing two different words on it in two different languages. And the rod will conjure some sort of magical power based on the differences or the commonalities between those two words

or what is kind of trapped in the ether. And it is a really interesting book. It's a book about translation and languages and linguistics and what that means. And it's also a book about colonialism. So the book's main character is this boy who is taken from his home in China at four years old by this professor, this British professor, who takes him and saves him from a plague and brings him back to London and raises him and then sends him off to this university where he will become one of the translators who works on these silver rods. And to create these same. silver rods and to use them properly, you have to have fluency with both of the languages involved. So they look for people like this guy, this kid, who are born in other countries and then can

use their languages combined with English to make all sorts of interesting words. And then they study a bunch of other languages. And the book, as it unfolds, tells the story of this kid and his kind of his traversals through the University of Oxford and the people he meets there and his fellow students and fellow people at this tower of Babel, which is where they all study and learn how to make these silver rods. And the book explores all sorts of themes. It explores English colonization and the British Empire. And like I mentioned before, linguistics, it has a ton of interesting kind of dense stuff about different languages and the way they interact and the words in different languages and where words come from. There's a lot of interesting kind of

diversions throughout the text on that. But the main story is about this kid, and so as he grows older, he is approached by someone who looks just like him and turns out to be his brother, who tells him to come join this resistance and secretly sabotage the Tower of Babel, because it really only exists to make the British Empire richer by selling these silver rods and kind of continuing the project of empire to just conquer. more colonies and land and make British people just the victors of the world of capitalism. And it's really interesting. I have not yet finished it, but I am a good chunk of the way through and I'm really enjoying what I'm reading of it. I am very curious how it kind of, what it's trying,

what it ends up saying other than colonialism is bad, because that has hit pretty heavy-handed throughout the book. I think the main characters are pretty much all subjugated minorities, people who were taken from other countries and brought to England and brought up by British families for the purposes of this project.

And pretty much every person who's like a British white person in this book turns out to be evil in some way or another. So it's pretty heavy handed with that message. But the linguistic stuff I find really fascinating. And I think it's an interesting book, even for the purposes of just finding out where some words or slogans or phrases come from.

It's, like, really interesting from that sense. And the author, R.F. Kwong, is herself, like, really linguistics, like, academic and is really into linguistics and knows a lot of, clearly knows her shit because some of the language that it plays around with gets really esoteric and interesting. So I'm really enjoying it from that perspective at the very least. And yeah, the story is really interesting. And it's a cool book. I am enjoying it. Once again, that's Babel by R.F. Kwong. Cool. Nice. Sounds good. Maddie, what is your one more thing? Mine is the Reading Rainbow Documentary that's on Netflix right now, which is called Butterfly in the

sky. And first of all, yes, there is a 10-minute chunk where they just interview the guy who wrote that song, and he plays all the synthesizers for you, and he sets up exactly how he made it sound that good, which is a really important part of Reading Rainbow, as we all know. But mostly, it's just a really cool documentary about the people who made a neat television show that Dina and I grew up watching and that was on for a really long time. Like, I didn't realize it was on all the way until, I want to say, 2003. And Lavaar Burton kept doing it, even though he got cast in Star Trek and he, like, thought he was going to leave. But then he was like, actually, this is great. And I want to make time to keep doing this show. It's obviously.

obviously really heartwarming documentary that will just maybe put tears in your eyes if you watch Reading Rainbow as a kid and you're like, man, this is such a great show and the people who made it really cared about all these things. I'm glad it's not like quiet on the set, like revealing like dark truth behind the rainbow. I can imagine if it was like LeVar was such a diva. Everybody hated it. No, it's like every person who made the show. The dark side of the rainbow.

Yeah, yeah. The clouds behind the rainbow. Yeah, no, it's not like that at all. Instead, it's like, we were working really. hard on this thing that we cared about a lot. And the other unexpected cool thing about the documentary, I didn't remember this part of the show, but they used to have little nine-year-olds do book reports on the show. And they like went back and found all these kids who are adults now and like interviewed them about their time on Reading Rainbow, which was like also surprisingly cool to

hear their memories of it and how important it was for them to be just like a regular child who got to like write their own report. Like they wrote their own life. lines when they were like doing these little book reports. It wasn't like some adult was writing for them. Like what did you think of the book? They would like get to write their own little eight or nine or 10 year old version of what they thought. And that was really cool to hear about and like they talk about what that process was like. So yeah, I really recommend it if you grew up watching Reading Rainbow. It's a really fun and heartwarming watch about the people who made the show. And it's called butterfly in the sky, obviously. It's on Netflix. Obviously. Yeah. That sounds great. We'll definitely watch that.

Yeah, it's good. We're big. We're big. big Levar fans in our house. Do you, have you listened to his podcast? Lavaugh-Burton reads. I should. Oh, man. He has a podcast called LaVar Burton Reads where he reads a short story each episode. Amazing. And then talks about it afterward. And it's like reading Rainbow for adults. Like it's him telling you a story every episode with his wonderful voice. Yeah, he refers to it in the documentary by just being like, yeah, apparently a bunch of people just want to hear me read books to them or whatever. And it's like, yeah, that is all we want. And it's a great, it's a great concept for a podcast. I really, I think it's wonderful. I don't.

I don't listen to every episode, but I've listened to it some, and Emily really loves it, so we're big fans of his. I didn't know about this documentary. I'm totally going to watch it. It's very, very good. Awesome. Well, my one more thing is also a Netflix film. It is the movie Hit Man, which Emily and I watched over the weekend and is really great. And I think it's gotten pretty rave reviews.

I'm sure people who pay attention to movies are aware that it's good, but I just wanted to say that I watched it and did really love it. And, yeah, I think Glenn Powell is a very interesting. kind of new movie star. Also not a unique take, but he's a really interesting actor. So this movie is directed by Richard Linklatter. I don't know, the director of Dazin Confused, and my fave school of rock, and everybody wants some and a slacker and a bunch of other stuff. And he's always kind of got a philosophical bent to his movies.

A lot of his movies involve people just having conversations. Of course, before sunset and before sunrise are two really famous ones where the whole movie is kind of just a conversation between two people. And there's a fair amount of that in Hitman, even though it's also kind of got this high concept, dark rom-com storyline. So the story of this is based on a true story, I think very loosely based on a true story,

a 2001 story from Texas that was about a guy who moonlighted as a four-hire fake hitman for the police department. In the film, it takes place in New Orleans. So the main character is a guy named Gary, who is played by Glenn Powell, who, of course, Glenn Powell being this super tall, buff, extremely handsome movie star-looking guy,

does a very good job of playing a kind of nerdy philosophy professor at the University of New Orleans, who then he's doing tech for their sting operations, where they'll basically field a call from someone who wants to hire a hitman, and then they'll set up a sting where the person gives them money and says, I want you to kill my husband or whatever, and then they arrest that person. So he's doing tech, and then the cop who was supposed to be in the field, He, like, got filmed beating up some teenagers, basically, and has now been kind of removed from the public eye because he's a piece of shit. And so they need somebody to step in.

And so Gary is kind of there, and they're like, you go do it, you got to do it. So he steps in, and it turns out he's amazing at it. So a lot of the movie is just watching this guy slowly figure out these different versions of himself. And that's really fun. And then it winds up being a really fun romance where he meets a woman. She's played by Andrea Arjona, who I didn't know, who is beautiful, and the two of them are like really, really hot together. They have like incredible chemistry.

And honestly, it's like a remarkable thing about the movie because it's been a long time since I watched a romant, like a rom-com where the two leads were like really like searingly hot together and it's just fun to watch them like flirt, make out and whatever. Like it just kind of is a fun part of the movie. But he meets her, whatever, they fall in love. But what's really cool about the movie is that it's this kind of philosophical exploration of like yourself and of remaking yourself. And they do that link Latarian thing where I don't know, he has this conversation with his ex-wife where they're talking about who he used to be and who he

might be and it really feels like before sunrise for a little while. And each of his lessons that he's teaching in class is about different philosophers and what they say about whether you can or can't change and what it means to take on a different persona. And of course, that's playing out in the story too. Well, you can change, but you need enough larval tears to do it. Right. He does kind of re-spec himself into Ron an upgraded class toward the end of the movie. Anyways, it's just a really fun

sexy good time. It's very funny. It has a couple of really show-stoppingly great scenes between the two of them and just a super fun movie. So I highly recommend it. Had a great time watching it. And, you know, a great way to spend a Saturday night.

So that's Hitman. It's on Netflix. Was Hitman in theaters or it's only in Netflix? I think it had a limited theatrical run, which I saw some lamenting about because I think this would have been really fun. see in theaters, mostly just because you don't see movies like this anymore. Like, you'll finish

it and just that, that was my main, one of my main takeaways was just they don't make R-rated, like, sexy, romantic movies with like high concepts that are kind of dark. There's definitely like murder and hits and stuff in this movie. It's surprising. It's not just a kind of fluffy whatever Netflix rom-com. It has some heft to it. It's got some things to say. And it's got a really great central performance from Glenn Powell. So yeah, great movie. Cool. Awesome. And that's it. And that's That's another episode of Triple Click in the bag, ladies and jents. Did it again. Until the DLC comes out and we add 40 more hours to...

That's true. It'll be like a version of Triple Click that's a little more focused, a little more difficult to get through. A lot more verticality. A lot more where you can jump to. Kirk is the only one for verticality. Maddie and I have to have to bail because Kirk is significantly taller than it. That's true.

That's a good point. Yeah. Well, until that comes out, I suppose I will see you for our next episode. 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 maximum fun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network

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