Triple Click - Triple Play: Final Fantasy VII Remake: Episode INTERmission

Episode Date: June 24, 2021

Maddy, Kirk, and Jason jump into the ridiculously titled Final Fantasy VII Remake: Episode INTERmission, diving into Yuffie's adventures in Midgar. They talk about the combat system, the big story teases, and whether the next DLC will be called InterMISSION. Plus: what's up with the whole Hideo Kojima conspiracy?One More Thing: Kirk: GloomhavenMaddy: The Blue Box conspiracyJason: The House in Fata Morgana Links: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

Before you stands a rare trio of blooms, the yellow rose of Boston, the gold lily of Portland, and the black magic hollyhock of New York City. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we talk about the white rose of Wootie. It's Ufi, star of Final Fantasy 7 remake Intergrained episode Intermission. It takes a long time to say, but not that long to play. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Schreier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton.

And hello. Hello. Hey. We are back. for another episode. It's Final Fantasy Day. It is. It is.

It is Final Fantasy Day. It's Final Fantasy Week. Yeah. It's Final Fantasy Week for our listeners. The reason I say that is because after this episode, which is about Final Fantasy, we are going to record a bonus episode, a Beans cast after this, about Final Fantasy 6. And if someone wanted to listen to that episode, what would they do? What do you two think they should do if they wanted to listen to that episode?

like emotionally, morally. There's a few things they could try emotionally. I think they would want to get in the headspace of someone who wants to support listeners-supported podcasting. And I think that practically speaking, they would want to go to maximumfund.org slash join and become a member. Oh, I was going to say pirate it, but that's a way better answer. Right, yeah.

I mean, I guess you could also do that, but don't tell us about it if you do. Anyway, go to maximum fun.org slash join and become a member. And then you can access all of our bonus episodes. We do one every month. Usually we spill the beans about video games and other media on there. But sometimes we just shoot the shit. So yeah. It's true.

Bonus apps. Extra apps you could be getting. This is going to be a good one. We got so much Final Fantasy to talk about. But first, Jason has to talk about a video game that we forgot to mention on last week's episode. Yeah, I felt like I have to do like Sapuku. I have to like do a ritual sacrifice.

to confess your sins. Yeah, I'm very embarrassed that last week when we were talking about E3, I didn't mention Auden Chronicles, which was the game, of course, I was most excited about since it's a spiritual successor to the Codin series. And that was shown at the Xbox conference. I think I didn't mention it. Tell me if you guys are convinced by this argument. I think I've kind of blocked it out of my head

because usually when a game isn't coming out until like 2023, as this one is, I just don't even, I try not to think about it because I don't want to get super hyped over a game. that's forever away. So I didn't even think to bring it up because when I saw it, I was super stoked. But anyway, I'm in great shame for not bringing up this.

We could and successor. Yeah, people were shocked. A lot of people pointed it out. Oh, yes. It was shocking. It was terrifying. It was like, is Jason's claim that he's losing his memory true?

Everyone is wondering this. That's also part of it. Anyway, let's get to it. Today we are talking about Final Fantasy 7 remake intermission, the new Ufi DL sleeve that just came out for the PlayStation 5. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to give some overall impressions without getting into spoilers for the first few

minutes. And then we will say when we were about to get into spoiler chat and we will spoil the story and the ending because there's stuff that we have to talk about that is spoilery in this game. We will also be spoiling the Final Fantasy remake, Final Fantasy remake, which came out last year. So we'll give you all a heads up when we do that. And you can skip ahead if you want to one more thing. But let's get to it, shall we?

So Final Fantasy 7 remake intermission. So what happened was Square released a PS5 port of the game, runs nicely 60 frames a second. And with it, they included this Ufi DLC. It's like three, four hours long. And it's kind of, I mean, they call it intermission because I guess it's meant to bridge us from the first game to part two of the Final Fantasy 7 remake project.

We've all finished it. Let's get some initial impressions up in here. Kirk, you want to start us off? What do you think of the Ufi DLC? I liked it. It was a nice little return to Final Fantasy 7 remake. In general, it made me think fondly of that game. It kind of reminded me of a lot of things that I thought about that game,

which we have, of course, talked about a lot. There's a beans cast on the whole game that people can listen to. I think that's even in the made feed from last year. Does that sound right? I believe that it was. So there's a beans cast people can listen to. There's just much discussion of that game, and it still felt like it had been a long time

because it's been a really long year. So going back to that game felt a little like, sort of a time machine and it's a fun little tour through Final Fantasy 7 remake. I mean it kind of takes you through the slums areas and you do some stuff there kind of like the first parts of that game

and then you go into Shinra HQ and it's kind of like the second parts of that game and then it ends with some cool weird stuff like the end of Final Fantasy 7 remake which I know we're not spoiling. Yeah so I like that. It kind of remind me that this combat system doesn't really gel

with me. I know some people really like it but it's just not really my tempo. And I liked the combat in this somewhat. I liked that it was limited in how it worked. But it was still just a little off for some reasons we can maybe talk about. And the music was great. Extremely sax-heavy music in the first dungeon that was super sick. Yeah, I knew you would dig that.

Super jazzy music. I was thinking of you while I was playing it. Also, that part where they're in Shinra HQ and they're riding around on the scaffolding, that there's like a sick drum solo at one point in that song. It's so cool. It's like big, big band jazz. Yeah, there's some happening stuff. There's this sax part that plays that I couldn't find.

There's like a limited soundtrack out that I guess they're going to release a bigger one. Yeah, there's some people on YouTube who've uploaded the full actual soundtrack. So I've been listening to those rips. What I did is I paused the game just to capture footage of just the sax thing that plays before it layers in for the boss fight. and that's probably playing behind me right now. It's cool, though. You can hear the guy count the saxophone section in,

and it's like a five-saxe section, and they're killing it. They're really good. So anyways, whatever, that's kind of a digression. A little strong songs diversion here. Yes, the main last thing I will say is that I had no opinion of Ufi before this, despite having played all the way through Final Fantasy 7. She was not a character that made a big impression on me.

She's kind of optional, and I treated her that way when I was playing through the game. And this made me really like Ufi. So I liked that about, it. I like the narrative content quite a bit. Yeah. In the original game, she's a bit of a cipher. She's kind of all you really know is that she shows up and steals your materia and it's really annoying. And then when you go to, when you go to Wutai, her home country, she steals your material again. So yeah, she's just known as kind of like this annoying little character.

And yeah, here she is developed and certainly is more of a fleshout character than she ever was in the original game. Maddie, what do you think? I know you really liked it, right? I loved it. I guess I had forgotten that I liked the combat in FF7 remake more than you, Kirk, because for me playing this, I was like, oh, great, love this combat. So glad to be back to it. Love everything about it. I thought that Ufi's little boomerang was such an improvement. It's not to say, I don't like swinging a bust or sort around or like healing people as Aerith and stuff. That was always fun, too, in its own way. But there was no character who had the boomerang at attack in the original. And it's really fun because it can connect with all these different combos

that she can do that I found super satisfying to perform. And it is kind of too bad that you can't play as her partner, Sonan, is a new character. And this DLC has never been in any other Final Fantasy thing previously. But we can talk about him in a second. He is also there and you can sort of work together with him to get the job done. Mostly I liked just how much personality Ufi has and how fun she is to hear from. She's really, she's a child. I mean, it's weird to play the same game essentially in microcosm, as Kirk explained, but through the eyes of someone who isn't traumatized yet, because like, it's not to say nothing bad has ever happened to Ufi. Certainly she's had her struggles in life and she's a ninja, so she's experienced in combat. But

she's also so bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, optimistic in so many ways. ways and Cloud is just not at all because he's been traumatized by everything that's happened to him and he's also a cipher. And Ufi isn't a cipher yet. This is like the prequel before Ufi is the grim cipher that you meet in part two that we will see, I guess. I'll just be interested to see how they deal with that turn. We're not going to spoil anything about this here, but we get sort of a hint about her journey in this DLC, which I thought was really cool too. It's like multiple halves of who Ufi is. she's like the ganky girl and then she turns into the grim dark thief and the gangy girl part of her is still in there somewhere and they all get combined and that's who she is in kingdom hearts which is what's i'm familiar with the truth you're a great impression of you yeah so um so i also really enjoyed it um it was kind of uh it was just a blast to play through i was i found myself uh surprisingly enjoying the minigame fort condor which is this fun little uh little battle thing where you have to like pop units up on the screen and it's kind of a modern day

interpretation of the original Final Fantasy 7's Fort Condor, which was a mini game set in one location. But I'll get into that a little bit more in a second. Just overall, yeah, I also, I'm with you Maddie on really enjoying playing Ufi and I really enjoyed the way that you can do this like synergy attack with Ufi and so on. Yeah. Those are very fun. I had a moment where, A few moments where if you just hold down one button, you just make them both just leap on enemies like one after another and it looks hilarious. I clipped a video and tweeted it a couple weeks ago because it cracked me out. But yeah, I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it.

I really liked it for me. And then I think what really made it for me was the ending and the way that it tied into the rest of the story. Yes. Left me with a lot of questions, because I'm sure it will leave most people. But yeah, there's some characters who show up that are from other games in the last. final larger Final Fantasy 7 series, but we will get to that when we get into the spoilers. For Condor, so in Final Fantasy 7, the original, there's a location called Fort Condor, and it plays a fairly important role in the story. You have to go there a couple of times. Well, once it's optional,

the first time you walk by it, it's optional, and then you have to come back later to get the huge materia that is inside there. And the idea of Fort Condor is that like, it's this Condor's nest that is constantly being attacked by Shinra soldiers. And so there are these like resistance officers who are fighting them. And to stop them, you have to like participate in this little RTS game. That's like this whole elaborate mini game that you can only play when you're at Fort Condor. And it's interesting. It's just one of the many things that Final Fantasy 7 remake is going to have to deal with while trying to remake this entire game with the graphical fidelity that it has been so far in the scale that it has been so far. And I guess their interpretation of

Fort Condor was not was to get rid of the place and just turn to. it into a mini-game, which is the implication here, which is interesting because so far, what we saw, what we've seen with the Final Fantasy remake experiment is we've just seen Midgar. And in Midgar, they've expanded and fleshed out a lot, but they haven't really cut a lot. There hasn't been a lot lost yet. And so when looking ahead and thinking, okay, how are they going to remake the rest of the game, you've got to think, okay, they're going to have to stamp out some parts because there's no way they can, like, hit the same level of scale and scope and fidelity in every other town that was in the original game. And Fort Condor kind of gives you a hint at that future,

because they've turned what was once an entire location into like a little board game mini game. All that said, it's pretty fun. I enjoyed playing it. Yeah, but overall, I really liked it. I kind of, it was strange at first being like, wait a minute, Ufi isn't supposed to be in Mingar now. That makes no sense. But they kind of, they made it work as a mission as like a little side mission for her. And it was also really cool seeing moments like the Sector 7 plate collapsed from another character's perspective, which I think is always really interesting in media. And like, if there's something you know and are very familiar with, then you get to see it from another perspective. Yeah, it was cool. And it's also just fun to, even though it's silly,

it's fun to have Ufi almost run into the main characters. Like I know it's like kind of corny to have that even be a possibility and to have to have to, to have to. to introduce the idea of Ufi not interacting with them for just the contrivances of like the ways that FF7 negotiates that, like sort of separating characters when they need to not narratively interact. And I still enjoyed it though because FF7 remake is itself a commentary on the original game. And it felt like this DLC was too and was also just commenting on itself almost by being like, well, why would Ufi be in this place at this time? and inviting you to find that funny. And also up until the end, which is quite bizarre and serious, it's a very funny DLC.

Like there's a lot of comedy bits to it. And some of that is Ufi, but it's also like so not, yeah, the weird running gag of like, I guess they're hard. Yeah, they're beans. Yeah. Yeah. They're very hard. And you can't bite into them unless you're from Wutai, I guess.

Yeah. Then you just have no trouble. no trouble biting into these beans and nobody else can do it. But also just the sort of slapstick between Ufi and Sona. Like it just felt it felt like the DLC itself was like laughing at Final Fantasy 7 in a weird way that I enjoyed. Yeah, very anime. Yeah, yeah. But it was fun.

It was fun to be there. I don't understand Fort Condor at all, though. I never got good at it at any point. So that's all you, Jason. I didn't get it. You have to summon, it's like a rock paper scissors. and you have to make a deck of dudes who are like strong against your opponent's dudes and then summon them at the right time.

I wasn't very good at Gwent either, so I feel like this is maybe just... It's very Gwenty where like if this weren't in a DLC, I would have gotten into it because I did enjoy getting into Gwent and my new game plus of The Witcher because it's fun when a mini game in an RPG is structured this way where everybody like NPCs. You can go around and find the guy, what's his name, the other soldier who you fight it in Final Fantasy 7 rematch. Roush. Yeah, Roush.

She's chilling and you can just play against him. Like, everybody plays this game and is obsessed with it. And then you have to beat certain people to get certain pieces, which is very much like Gwent. And I do like that approach. I didn't get into it just because, like, it's DLC. I just didn't, if it were folded into the main game, I maybe would have a little bit more. But just as a DLC thing, I was like, I'm just going to play through this and see it. Yeah, I'm sure they'll bring it back for part two.

Yeah, they probably will. It seems pretty fleshed out. And it was plenty fun. And yeah, narratively, I like this. It's not quite the Rosencrantz and Gildenstern thing, but it's the same kind of of idea, like somebody who was there, you just didn't know they were there, who's seeing little snippets of the story as it plays out over a very compressed timeline in this Ufi DLC.

I like that a lot because, like I said, it kind of, it keeps the story fresh in my mind. It felt like a little bit of a time capsule. And given that it might be a while before part two of this FF7 remake comes out, I'm more into this idea of there being some of these intermissions, maybe this one, maybe this one Maybe there will be a second one. I have some theories about maybe a second one, what that could look like that we can talk about when we talk spoilers. But I like the idea more than I thought I would.

It doesn't feel half-baked. It doesn't feel like cut content. It feels really surprisingly confident to me. It felt like this really cool thing with this great, well-defined character that's placed very cleverly in parallel and woven through the original game that fleshed it out in some kind of interesting ways narratively. And it was cool. Like it really narrative, I found a very nice.

narratively satisfying. Yeah, I think it's worth it. Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a wonder what game developers can do when they already have the tools and like assets in place and can just kind of have fun of this thing. And so clearly it took them, I mean, clearly they just started working on this after remake came out. So last April. So it took them about a year to make this, which is, which is cool. And I'm sure it was like a little side team while the main team is working on remake part two. I do want to say that while there are like big picture rhythmic things with the combat, that I just can't quite get in sync with. I really do like Ufi's combat style.

I actually liked that they kept it just to her and had someone be purely support. I think that that keeps it nice and focused. And I liked just having to deal with learning how she works. And I think that her star, that like throwing glave weapon that she uses is sweet because it's really flexible in a way that Cloud never felt flexible because you can throw it.

Then you can do combos from range. Then you can hit triangle and go flying over to where it is. you can then hold square and bounce back away. Like it gives you a lot of mobility options that I thought were really, really fun. And then like you were saying, Jason, I totally agree that it took me a little while to get my head around how to do those synchronized, like synchronicity attacks. But then once I started doing them, those were really fun too. There's the, you know, my combat complaints are more like the way things move and the way that attacks feel like. It just, I always kind of wind up getting into weird cul-de-sacs where I'm just not really able to keep up with everything that's going.

on, especially during some of the boss fights. And it just doesn't quite, it feels too stretchy to me or something. So I've never quite jelled with it, even though when I was especially first starting out as Ufi playing some of those basic, those like basic combat sequences, and at 60 frames per second on PS5 as well, I found it really fun. And I was like, oh, am I going to finally really click with this combat system? And it was better. Like I liked playing as her more than I liked playing as cloud.

But then in the end, by the end, I was like, okay, this still, it's just not quite jelling with me, but it's probably a me problem. the game's problem. Yeah, I feel like the other thing that is a huge improvement is just aerial attacks in general. Like, anytime there was an aerial enemy in the original game, I feel like I never got good at it, and I would just always have to switch to Barrett and just shoot them until they were gone, because I just couldn't quite get the hang of it with any other character leaping in the air. But with Ufi, it's so natural for her, for whatever reason. It just feels really easy to, like, throw the glave at somebody, and then swing up there, do a bunch of combos, and then leave.

like it just felt really great in a way that the other previous characters didn't. Some of that could also just be them refining the system over time and maybe by the time part two comes out or if there's another one of these DLCs it'll keep on feeling better. It's not, I don't

even entirely disagree with you, Kirk. Like, especially one of the final boss fights has like a bunch of just sparkles on the screen and it's like very hard to tell what you're doing and that's just a design choice that I don't think is, there's nothing parsible on the screen at various points in that battle.

There's like moves happening and I'm like seeing these readouts and the title of what's happened. I'm like, I'm just going to get creamed to buy something and I can't even see what it is. Like that's kind of what I'm talking about in general. Yeah, yeah. That part, not great. Worth noting that now that we're on PS5, it's all running at 60 frames a second, which I think makes a big difference in terms of how the combat feels and in terms of how everything feels. I mean, it's way more enjoyable to play a game like this at 60 frames a second, as opposed to 30, which the original remake was. Just garbage. Just awful garbage and we couldn't stand to look at it.

Unplayable. Okay, let's get into some spoilers. So this is a warning for people. Why don't we bring in Future Kirk to tell us what timestamp to turn to when we are done with our spoilers for one more thing? Okay, so I'm going to invoke him. I'm going to summon Future Kirk. He is going to say the timestamp that you should skip to for one more thing right now. 41 minutes and 17 seconds. Okay. And he said it. I'm sure it was beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It was so weird how we could hear it too. That was like amazing.

Yeah, super crazy time travel. He just summoned him. He just appeared. It's like magic. Speaking of summoning people who shouldn't be there, how about that ending of Final Fantasy 7 intermission? So first of all, I don't know how much you guys did reading on this,

but Nero and Weiss, who show up towards the end of this, the DLC, are characters from Durge of Cerberus, which was the shooter released on PSR. too that stars Vincent Valentine, the other optional character who didn't show up,

who hasn't shown up yet in remake, because he's sleeping in a coffin right now. But, yeah, I mean, they're just weird. I mean, people can go, I won't get into all of the lore, but essentially they're like brothers and they're part of this Weiss Run, this organization called Deep Ground

that kept getting mentioned, which is like this top secret should run military organization. And it's yet another example of them bringing in just like totally outside canon into the remake and making this like the ultimate Final Fantasy 7 experience, including every little spin-off and side story. So it's interesting. It's interesting to see them. But I think what's way more interesting, and Sona had a cool send-off, and those are a fun story

and all, but I think what's way more interesting is the stuff we saw afterwards, where we got a little bit of a hint as to where the future may be going. So for those of you who have not played it yet. Essentially, we got to see a fun, a fun little sequence of our party on the road after leaving mid car, which they did at the end of the seven remake. They got to ride in the back of a truck, and they got to see calm. With Chookabobo Bill. And then we got this crazy scene where Zach, who at the end of Final Fantasy VII remake was revealed to be alive in like what appeared to be an alternate timeline. Zach shows up at the church. in the Midgar slums, and he knocks on the door, and he's like pacing back and forth if it's this

adorable scene, or he's like practicing what he's going to say to Arith when he sees her, and he knocks in the door, and he goes in, and Arith is nowhere to be found. The church is full of people crying and injured and like people after some sort of cataclysmic event. The implication there is that it's these people after the sector seven plate fell, like these are the refugees, and so they went to the church. But here's the thing. The sector seven plate didn't fall in Zach's alternate time. line where he is alive and he has just gotten back to Midgar. So it is all extremely confusing. Maddie, did you take any time to think about this or look up what people are saying or theorizing, theorizing about this one? I didn't, but I did think about it a lot because I also

had the same questions about the plate falling, I guess. And oh, no, of course, the obvious question is like, is Zach not actually in an alternate timeline at all? Is he in their timeline? And he's going to run back into cloud and cause all sorts of problems. They like, I mean, it's all about confirmed that he's in an alternate timeline because at the end of the remake, the dog stamp, the Shinruth dog was completely different in the Zach's sequence that we saw. That is true. Yeah.

So like there's no, unless they're like really just screwing with us, they're like totally inconsistent. They were essentially saying this is an alternate universe where Zach is alive. Mm-hmm. But I guess the plate could fall for a different reason in Zach's alternate universe. You look like you have a theory. Or the people could be crying for a different reason. I mean, we are assuming that they just seem sad.

They could be sad for lots of reasons. Right. I expected Arath to be there because I expected this to be the reveal that like in Zach's timeline right now, Arith is still alive. But yeah, you have to, it really breaks your brain when you think about it too much because there's like multiple realities right now. There's one that's like the original Final Fantasy 7 reality. And then one, which is the Path Cloud and Barrett and crew are on

now, which is Final Fantasy remake timeline where they killed the whispers. And so therefore, they get to change the course of the original Final Fantasy. And then I guess Zach is on a third timeline because he wasn't in the original. I had thought that Final Fantasy 7 remake, like killing the whispers also caused Zach to be alive, but then the whole stamp thing made it seem like as an altered timeline. So really my head is just broken right now. I just am totally lost on who's where and why. little bit loose on some of it, since I didn't read a big refresher on what happened at the end of remake. Sephiroth, though, seems to know everything, right? Like, he seems to maybe exist outside

of all of this. So he's maybe the thread that's sort of combining these now, I guess, three timelines, if you count the original FF7. That was how I read it, too. Yeah. Well, so in remake, well, so in remake, so in remake, Sephirav knew the future, but so did Arif. So it seemed more like they both knew. So like what happened was in remake, they were all getting flashes like you might say flashbacks or flash forwards to the events of the original Final Fantasy 7, right? And the Whispers of Fate were trying to keep them on track to make sure that they were following the course of the original Final Fantasy 7. But then at the end, they kill the Whispers of Fate. And Sephiroth is like, it seems like he wants them to, but also he doesn't want them to. Not super clear.

But at the end, they kill the Whispers of Fate. So they have officially broken the original timeline and they are. set on a course where anything can happen, which was the whole idea of the end of that game. It's like suddenly there in this unknown and like the subtitle at the end was like into the unknown future or something like that, which I thought it was amazing, like an incredible way to do a remake of a game. But then the Zach stuff totally trips everyone up because of the the ultimate reality stuff. Yeah. I mean, could definitely be playful for a different reason, a different tragedy, a fake out of some sort. I almost feel like there,

it is a total fakeout and Arith is going to appear in the church there, like next time we see Zach there. But yeah, there's really, it's really a good little teaser because it left me with some questions. Yeah. Do you think they're going to do a Zach DLC, Kirk? Is that your prediction? It isn't. Because I have seen people talk about that. I mean, maybe they will.

No, my prediction is, so here's, I'll let's give my prediction now. So I did not play Durge of Cerberus, though I do like Vincent Valen. and I'm aware of him as a character and have been sort of curious, you know, when he's going to turn up. My theory is, if they did one DLC with Ufi, the optional character from FF7, that they would do his second one with Vincent, particularly given that they've introduced Nero and Weiss, two characters from Durge's Cerberus, who are intimately involved with Vincent sort of lore-wise. And the fact that it's called intermission with the intercapitalized makes me think that they're now going to release intermission with the mission capitalized. And this is

just my little shot call that I thought of right before we recorded. Wouldn't that be cool? And then it's intermission and it's starring Vincent Valentine and we introduce him because he's kind of the last character that needs to be introduced other than I believe Sid is a playable character in FF7 who hasn't been in your party yet.

And it would kind of track for those two DLCs to play out in a sort of similar fashion, especially given that they're introducing characters from Durgis Cerberus who were involved with that ultimate materia, the proto materia and all that shit. I did read some about this because I haven't played dirge of Cerberus, but that all makes sense. And seeing Nero, I mean, I was like, oh, this is some Vincent Valentine's shit. Because Nero's like got the guns and it's kind of vampire. It's like a vampire guy. Yeah. Yeah.

But Kirk, unless it's a prequel, I mean, I guess it would have to either be a prequel or they're just totally breaking everything. But they are breaking everything. Recording a canon, like he put himself to sleep intentionally like because he was depressed over Lucretia and Hojo and all that jazz. So he is in a coma right now. He's like asleep in a coffin. Yeah, but he could come out of the coma. I mean, that's not really going to stop him. Like he could wake up under different circumstances. Sure, yeah. Well, it'd be hilarious if like, well, imagine if they had it like, oh, well, he was asleep for 200 years, except for that little break in the middle. And then he went back to or he just wakes up early, you know? I don't know. Like, yeah, they just went to you fee for some reason.

It was wild. A bunch of stuff happened. Yeah. They encounter him in a different way. I hope we don't get more DLC. I just want part two already. Like, I want to see where this. main story. You know, I don't actually agree. I would be fine with more because I really enjoyed this. I liked the little teases because the thing that I liked is, as much as I don't know the particulars and what's going on with Zach and everything, I liked how confident it was. It made me really think, these people know what they're doing, that this is part of a plan. There's a narrative, you know, it's drawn out in a spreadsheet somewhere and this is all going somewhere. Really? You really think so. It seemed very confident to me. I don't know. I mean, I agree with you

that it's very confident, confidently made, but there were some parts of this that were a little kingdom-heartsy, and I don't find that, but I know Jason eventually will. Like, I feel like there will be a break in the timeline where I continue to enjoy the remake games. And Jason, like, five years from now, will not be playing them anymore. Don't get me wrong. I'm not predicting that this is going to tie together, like, some perfect puzzle box. This is, you know, this is already uber messy if you try to actually figure out what's going on compared to there's like three timelines going or something. I don't mean that it's going to be really neat. It just seems like this isn't some half-baked thing where they're not finished and they have no idea where they're going next. It at least

seems like the next few steps have been plotted out. And that's exciting. I don't know. I have a theory that they ended the last game having no idea where they're going to go. That's kind of my hunch. But yeah, I appreciate your optimism. I think it's somewhere in the middle. I think they have the next few steps plotted out, but I also think they might be really weird and won't make internal sense, according to your theorizing Jason. Like I don't, I think it'll be like a situation where if you think about it too hard,

you will not enjoy it. Like a Christopher Nolan movie, basically. Yeah. Like you want to just be along for the visual spectacle of it all and not think about the science aspect of the science fiction. And you'll be fine. And I'm down for that. I do think maybe they could do a DLC that's just the Nibelheim flashback.

as a DLC leading it so they don't have to drag down the story with that when we got into part two because that'll be the next thing coming up in part two and that that part was always kind of a drag because it's a flashback and especially now that everyone knows what happened so maybe that'll be a DLC I don't know but I like your I like your optimism I like your your theories um yeah I mean it's the alternate timeline shenanigans are always going to blow like like yeah just like kingdom hearts it's just going to make everything messy and complicated and comeluted and and who knows but I like the idea that by defeating these whispers,

it's almost like at the end of season 5 of Lost where they set off the nuclear bomb and it split everything and it made everybody, well, I guess it was kind of a fakeout. Maybe it's not like the end of loss because those weren't actually alternate timelines. It was kind of just a fake out the whole time. But it's like what we thought the end of season 5 of Lost was where this big cataclysmic event happens

and it splits the course of time into two paths. And I like the idea of like Zach showing up and him wandering around. Maybe that would be a better deal. See him wandering around and finding this Minkard that is like totally different from what we've seen it before. And maybe totally different things are happening in there. And yeah, all sorts of shenanigans to come. Yeah, I could see that happening. It's definitely a very popular fan fiction premise that I've seen a lot in the past 20 years of reality where people imagine like what if Zach had lived and Cloud hadn't.

I mean, that's there's a lot you can do it. that promise, even though Zach is... Although Cloud was alive. It's interesting that we didn't see him in this continuation of the story, because at the end of Final Fantasy 7 remake, we saw Zach, like, with Cloud, sumbling together towards what appeared to be a different Midgar than the one we had just left.

Yeah, it makes sense for Zach to go to a different Midgar, partly because they can keep using the sweet Midgar assets that they build, which... That's true. It's economical. Some nice knowledge out of here. Also, you know, I mean, the biggest question, And then the biggest question of this whole thing is going to be, what do they do about Earth's death?

And that's the question that looms over FF7 remake. It's still the question that looms over the Ufi DLC, even though she's barely in it. It's just, it's the great unanswered question to me. And the more parallel timelines there are, the more options they have. I mean, there's a lot of escape hatches now for interesting ways that they can deal with that. Yeah, I do wonder. And I wonder if maybe I had a thought that maybe like everybody was crying in the church because Aris was dead in that timeline

and maybe Zach survived with Aris died. I want to talk a little bit about the Ufi stuff because there's some interesting stuff in there aside from the Sonon plot which is clearly self-contained and like I doubt we'll see anything of Sonon again in future stuff. Really? What? He like claimed his body. Neuro like took his body. You don't think we're going to see Sonon again at some point? Oh yeah. You think we'll be a villain. Yeah, I guess he'll be a villainic.

Yeah, I guess he's going to be like a vampire guy or whatever. And then we'll have to save him or something. Yeah, I guess that's true. Okay, fair enough. Well, I just didn't think like the whole sister's story felt like it was self-contained. Well, she'll be a vampire too. She'll be back. She'll be a vampire.

She'll be in one of those mecks. She'll be working for Shinra. It's going to be like a horrifying turnabout. In the Vincent DLC, you have to go around and shoot them all. Yeah. Yeah. But she also had some interesting stuff where she talked about her dad and like had some awful relationship with her dad and like Sonan said he trained with her dad.

And she was like talking smack about him. So there's some interesting hints at what we might see from Ufi moving forward. And I kind of expected her to run into the main cast, like at the end of it all. But no, instead we see her humming the chokobo theme and going off on her merry way, presumably to go back to the forest where you find her in the game, just kind of randomly hunting. But it made me excited to see like, oh, man, they're really going to expand Wutai between this and also continually bringing up Wutai as a part as like an overseas. enemy for Shinra and for Midgar.

It seems like they're really expanding some of the Wutai lore, which I think is really interesting. And I'm excited for some Ufi father shenanigans. Yeah, I am too, because I don't know that it ever has been fleshed out as to why she was trained as this ninja by her father

supposedly, like why is that even her life situation? Does he know that she's on this quest? Like in the Ufi DLC, Sonan seems to think that her father sent her there, but the way that Ufi talks about it makes it sound like maybe she just came there of her own accord and she's just kind of taking everybody for a ride by using her father's name. And that's all a lot more detail about her situation than we ever previously

had as far as I can remember. In the original game, you basically, you fight through a bunch of bosses in a pagoda and then you fight her dad to get her ultimate weapon. And he's like the ninja trainer guy and they have a couple of random lines. There's a whole quest in Wutte that's pretty fun. A whole optional Quest. That's fun in the original game. But yeah, the Wutai, like, Shinra stuff and like some of the political conversations about like, oh, we're not so different, but actually we're really different. It was really interesting to get into. And that stuff, I think, is, I think, credit to a lot of the writing in both this and the original Final Fantasy 7 remake, because there's a lot of stuff that's dealt with in more nuanced, subtle ways than you might expect from Final Fantasy stuff.

Yeah, from a game in which there is a character that is Scarlet and acts like Scarlet and Looks Like Scarlet, aka a game with literally no subtlety at all. I enjoyed all the stuff about Wutai. What you were saying, it's kind of building on something that they set up in the main game, which I think is interesting. Just that there is this sort of scapegoated other nation

that Shinra Corp is using as a scapegoat for everything. And also that Shinra sort of invaded them, which is just a sort of weird thing about this world, that there's a power company, a corporation that has an army, which has, of course, been the case this whole time, but that they invaded this country, and there's just like a war against this corporation waged by a nation of people.

And, yeah, I think, like, Sonan... A nation that's Asian inspired, it's worth noting, whereas Midgar is clearly very Western or Eurocentric. Wutai is full of pagodas and Eastern-style architecture. Yeah, so I think Sonan also sort of flesh that out and just made Ufi way more of a character. I mean, they alluded to Godo, is that his name? Her father is Godo, who is her trainer and this really big deal in Wutai.

And obviously, he'll continue to be a character. But did they even say his name in this DLC? I think he starts to say it and she cuts him off and is like, don't even say his name. So we don't even know who he is, but they're clearly teasing it, which means we'll learn more later, which is cool. It just means they're kind of fleshing it out in a way that I've found valuable about FF7 remake in general. By slowing down and taking more time, the world. feels more lived in despite like I said it being this totally ludicrous place filled with

outrageous characters as well they kind of managed to have their cake and eat it too in a way that I'm enjoying it. What do you mean you know Scarlet's not subtle? I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. She's fine. Yeah, I mean, what did you guys think of the whole the Sonan stuff? I mean, where you moved by him, his sister thing and him having the, did it.

It felt a little last of us to me like, oh, I'm going to replace you. I felt pretty kind of rushed and crammed. I mean, it was very predictable. I met him. I was like, well, this guy's doomed. Yeah, I know. I feel like the prediction that he was going to die was already out of the bag as soon as he was announced as a character.

And it was like, oh, someone who's never been in a final fantasy before. And yeah, he's not going to make it. Well, either he was going to turn out to be a douchebag and who would be run off. But no, when it turned out he was like a super nice guy, then yes, you knew he was going to die. I feel like the only thing that really stood out to me of that is how much the sister looked like you, which I was just like, you didn't really need to do that. Like she had such a similar haircut, and she even had like the little glave hair clip that was like the same as Ufi's little boomerang in shape.

And they kept showing it. And I was like, did you need to give her a hair clip that was exactly the same shape as Ufi's main weapon? Like, why would she even have that? That doesn't make any sense. And I just found that really silly. Like, I got it. You could have had the sister look completely different and I still would have been like, Sonen lost someone.

And now he wants to make sure he doesn't lose the next person that he fights a lot. alongside whoever they are, I could have come along with you on that plot point without making it so literal. Like even Yuvie herself yelling like, I'm not your sister. I was like, I get it, guys. I understand what you're putting in that. Yeah, I'll settle to you out the window for that one. Okay, why don't we break a little bit early? Because I want to give a little extra time for Maddie's one more thing. That'll be my teaser here. So let's take a break. And then we'll be back with some good old one more things. Hi, my name is Graham Clark and I'm one half of the podcast. Stop podcasting yourself. A show that we've recorded for many, many years. And at the moment, instead of being in person,

we're recording remotely and you wouldn't even notice. You don't even notice the lag. That's right, Graham. And the great thing about this, go ahead. No, you go ahead. Okay. And you can listen to us. Every week on maximum fun.org. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Your podcasts. Hi, I'm Allie Gertz. And I'm Julia Prescott.

And we're the hosts of Round Springfield. Round Springfield is a Simpsons-adjacent podcast where we talk to Simpsons folks about non-Simpsons things. That's right. So in the past, we've gotten to talk to legendary showrunners and writers like Al Jean, Bill Oakley, Josh Weinstein, Dana Gould, Mike Reese, and David X. Cohen. Voice actors like Maurice Lamarge, Maggie Roswell, and Yardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson herself. Hell yeah. So we've been away securing guests for our final five episodes. We won't tell you everybody, but we'll let you know that the last episode is kind of a big deal. We got Matt Greening.

Homer's Dad. Check out new episodes of Round Springfield starting June 21st. On Maximum of Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. you later. And we are back. UField, Ufi DLC is over. Let's talk about our one more things. Maddie, take us away, start us off. Let's get into it, shall we? Okay. I'm so curious to know what you think of this, Jason, because I, this is a conspiracy theory. I'm going to describe a conspiracy theory to the listeners. Jason's written an article about it. I don't know if Jason describes to this conspiracy theory or not. I guess we'll find out today. but first I'll explain what it is and the listener can decide if they ascribe to it or not.

So I would say this is called like the Blue Box conspiracy theory, although of course it's also Silent Hill conspiracy theory that has plagued Deo Kijima basically since the release of PT, which if listeners remember our episode about video game demos, PT was the demo for Silent Hill's, the ill-fated game that never emerged, but has a viral demo that people still obsess about and still think to themselves, oh, if only Hideo Kajima had been able to make a Silent Hill game. It is the dream that will never die. And it will so not die that people have pieced together a conspiracy theory that there is an indie game company that is a shell for Hideo Kajima's Silent Hill project and that this company is faked. And that this company is

fake and that the main figurehead of the company, who is named Hassan Karaman, is an actor who is pretending to be working on a horror video game for this company called Blue Box. But he's actually been hired by Hideo Okiema at all. And soon in any day now. Maddie, why do people think this? Well, I think people, well, I would say people think it because they want it to happen. so badly, at least initially, and they're looking for clues anywhere. Like, this is not the first conspiracy theory of this kind to emerge, although it is perhaps the most credible one. There's

quite a bit of evidence. I would say I saw the first evidence when Jason G-chatted it to me and Kirk in the form of a Reddit thread that had everything from sort of fairly credible evidence, like a tweet from a Blue Box account about implying that their game would start with an S and N with an L, which suggests it's going to be Silent Hill, fairly credible, especially it's a deleted tweet to more absurd examples of evidence like Hassan Karaman's initials are Hadeo Kajima's initials are also HKK, which is kind of like, well, a lot of people's initials are HK. And Karamon in Turkish translates to Hideo in Japanese. But what does that really mean? I mean, I know you put that in your article, but... It's just a crazy coincidence.

Okay, so, okay, so I think that part of it, an important part of this, two important parts of this, one of this is that Hideo Kizima has a 20-year history of fake outs. and marketing plans and ARGs and stuff like that. It is like him to do something like this and that he's done it in the past. He likes weird marketing stunts and ARGs, etc. And like tweeting cryptic things. And he's hired actors in the past to pretend that, you know, a company is something other than what it truly is.

So in that sense, it makes sense that people are looking everywhere they possibly can for Silent Hill. And thing number two is that the original game, so the game was announced, this game abandoned by Blue Box Games, news was announced on in April. And the blog post is very strange. It's got this trailer that it turns out is kind of is a bunch of pre-made unreal assets that were bought in on the Unreal marketplace and this weird voiceover, this kind of untrained actress voiceover. And then it has this blog post that is like full of these lofty promises that do not seem possible from this unknown developer. It's like ultra-realistic graphics, 4K resolution, 60 rooms a second, and then all these other kind of gameplay

mechanic promises that seemed a little too good to be true. And then you kind of start looking up the company on the internet and you find this weird history of like failed kickstaters and no actual games that anyone would really know suggesting that there's more to the story here. So it's not just that people want to believe. It's also that there are a lot of gaps that aren't filled in here. There are a lot of questions that aren't filled in here. So when I first saw this, when I first saw this all starting to emerge, which was last week when I first started reading about this, I was totally sold. And the main reason I was totally sold is because Jeff Keeley started teasing it. He posted like a DM from Hassan saying, hey, asking if he could share his image, like if he

could have doing the announcement of him. But the DM was screen capped like 20 minutes after it was sent. So it wasn't him just coming out now and being like, oh, here's the screencap of this DM he sent me. It was like he screencapped it for some reason right after it happened. And then he did the answer to all your DMs, Jason. Oh yeah, every single time. And then he did this video where he was like, where someone asked him, he did a video Q&A on Twitter and someone asked him about it about Blue Box. And he has this like big smirk on his face and he's laughing and he's saying, yeah, I think

we'll find out soon. Stay tuned to my Twitter feed. And like he essentially makes it seem like he is about to unveil this game. So that is what really pushed me over the edge. Then I started doing more research and reading up on it and like looking into Blue Box. son and it seemed way less likely to me. And then I spoke to him on Monday. He, by the way, this entire time he has been denying that this is related to Kojima. He is certainly a real person. I spoke to him for an hour on the phone. He is a real person.

He is not an actor unless he's one of the best actors that I've ever talked to. Because he struck me as someone who is like an indie game developer who's kind of been over his head and is certainly a little bit not prone to answers when it comes to certain things. So, like, I was asking him about some of his history, and he wouldn't really name people who he works with, even though he said he worked with a bunch of people. He wouldn't, he talked about how he had funding, but he couldn't say where the funding was from. And it'll all make sense later.

He talked about how he had signed a contract with Sony, and that didn't really, like, he didn't really elaborate on what they were doing for him or anything like that. He's been saying that they're revealing the game through an interactive trailer app on the PlayStation 5, which is totally confusing because nobody's ever done anything like that before. But he's saying they're releasing an app that will be a trailer you can interact with. So there are all sorts of weird questions surrounding this. And this is why it's turned into this conspiracy there. It's not just like some random ass like, hey, I'm making Baba as you.

Wait, you think I'm a Kajima game? Here's my name. here's where my money came. There are a lot of questions behind the indie developer that there aren't usually when you get an indie game announcement. Like, hey, why is this featured on the PlayStation blog? Why is PlayStation marketing this game that doesn't really seem to be a game

that PlayStation would usually market? So there are a lot of questions surrounding it. All that said, yeah, I mean, I don't really think that it's a Kozima conspiracy anymore. I haven't for a while. I did for like two hours after the Keeley thing. now I kind of just feel like Keeley was just like feeding into the hype. I feel like this is someone who has made too many promises and is now kind of scrambling,

trying to figure out what he's going to do next. I don't know. There's a whole, there's a lot of just like weirdness surrounding this whole thing. And that's why it turned into such a big thing because there's a lot of weirdness surrounding it. Yeah. It's kind of too bad if it is just some guy who's in over his head because now there's a whole lot of attention on what would otherwise just be a failed project that would peter out

maybe not be very embarrassing and like the other people who work on it could rally and get other jobs or whatever if it is a failure. If there are other people who work on it. I mean, yeah, or it's an elaborate scam. I mean, maybe it's a different kind of conspiracy. I don't want to say scam because it's not like he's asked for money from anyone. If he started asking for money, then I would feel more inclined to be like, wait a minute, hold on. But it's hard to say it's a scam. It's just is weird. I think that what's, yeah, it's kind of, I've seen a lot of sentiment that is like people feeling bad for him because he got caught up in this thing and like he's probably going to get death threats from angry gamers when it turns out that this is not a Kojima thing.

And that all certainly sucks. But I think most indie developers would also kill for the kind of attention that he's been getting like in the, with a glut of indie games. Like this game, if not for all this, this game would have been destined to just be never played by anybody if it ever comes out in the first place. Now he has like he has command of like hundreds of thousands of thousands of. thousands of eyeballs. And I think that's something that's super valuable. So I do think that like, ultimately it could work out in his favor. I don't know. I wouldn't be shocked if the game never

came out, but it could work out in his favor. Yeah. It seems like it'd be pretty hard for him to spin it into a good thing, though, unless he like had a really gifted comedian writing some ads being like, the game you thought would be made by Hideo Kajima and totally isn't. And like just use that as part of the marketing campaign to get people to actually check it out. And then if the game was any good at all. Yeah, that's the thing. Like, yes, theoretically. If the game is good, if it lives up to the

to the promises that he's made, and that's where he's in trouble. Or even if it's like kind of good, like, good enough to be a cult hit where people are already looking at it now, as you say. And like theoretically, all those eyeballs have some value if you can just get people to try your thing. But if it's not actually good

and it's just the disappointment, then it's useless. And there's no way to capitalize on that. Yeah. Kirk, any thoughts? Oh, man. I read about this and there's a lot there. I mean, you read, it's like any conspiracy theory

where you read the posts and you start to be like, oh, it is an anagram of Kojima and, you know, and seeing that stuff. And yeah, given the whole like Moby Dick Studios. No, that was the real one. Moby Dick Studios, Yoakim Nogrin. That actually was an anagram of Kjana. Right, no, it's that the guy's initials are HK.

The initials, yeah. Yeah, so like that sort of stuff just starts to add up. And then Keeley, like you said, Jason, I kind of looked at that and was like, oh, well, this seems like this is something. It'd be kind of weird for Keeley to embrace this if he knew that it was just an indie dev with nothing going on

because Keeley knows full well that doing that will kind of put this guy in a spotlight that he maybe doesn't deserve to be in or need to be in. So that's kind of an X factor here, but I really have no idea. I mean, it just goes to show like all of the sort of half

speak and double speak of video game marketing can sometimes just perpetuate something like this because there's just nothing solid because maybe there isn't even a solid game there almost can't be. And then that creates this weird situation where people fill in the gaps and create an alternate reality that hopefully they all just feel like was entertaining no matter what happens and nothing bad comes of this and it's all fine. Yeah. I don't know. That almost never happens with these sorts of things. No, no it doesn't. I don't know. I think maybe people who are fans of long-running series is whether it's like people waiting for Half-Life 3 or waiting for another Silent Hill or whatever. They should just, I don't know, make fan games. Get over it?

Like, no, I don't think that's fair. But I also think that it can lead to weird, sad behaviors that are not ideal. I don't know. Use the energy productively. Don't send death threats to people. I don't know. That's my controversial take. death. Yeah, this is all combined, by the way, with rumors that, like, Silent Hill actually is being revived. So that might still very well be true. Because there have been some credible rumors. I believe it was VGC. Andy Robinson of VGC had reported that, like, a Japanese developer is making Silent Hill.

I mean, Resident Evil is killing it. Silent Hill is a long-running, powerful brand. It's not such a stretch to think that it could come. No, not at all. Anyway, let's move on. All right, I'll go next. I'll go quick, because mine is the same as last week. The House in Fatah Morgana, which I'd started playing last year.

week. Last week I was talking about how I'd like gotten into it and was really digging it. I gotten like a couple hours in. Guys, this past weekend, I literally did nothing but play this game. I was, uh, I was, I was on Long Island with my family and literally just sitting there reading for probably 12 hours on Saturday with occasional breaks to deal with my toddler. Um, this game is incredible. It is like, it is this novel, visual novel that is unlike any other visual novel. Because instead of like, the visual novels that I, really like and that you guys really like the dangan rompahs and the zero escapes of the world are very much like kind of hacky sci-fi like with these elaborate twists and turns and murders and like very

much like pulpy um fiction this is very much literary fiction and it's really really good not only is a really good writing and art and music music is incredible kirk you would die both of you it um it's just it's all it's a really good package but also it's like it's got these fascinating themes and exploration of subjects like depression and all sorts of other stuff that I don't even want to get into because it's spoilery, including gender issues in a way that is just about as well handled as anything I've seen. Certainly the best handled. I've never seen a Japanese made game handle some of the issues that this game handles as well as it does. And I just cannot recommend it enough. The House and Fat of Magana, it's like 40 bucks on the switch, but it's totally worth

it. It's like buying a mega novel. Think of it that way. Because there are no decisions. There are a couple of decisions, and some of them lead to bad paths or whatever, but you can save any time, and it's only just like selecting text options from a screen. You're basically just reading the entire time. It's a book, essentially, more so than any other visual novel I played. And highly, highly recommend that you both check it out because both of you would love this game. Just be prepared that it's very, very long. Sometimes repetitive, like, and too lengthy, too padded, but worth it. Worth it. Really. really with it.

Okay. It's really good. 40 bucks. Okay. $40. Yeah, it's 40 books, but I do not regret spending 40 bucks on it. Because it's like an enhanced book.

It's got music and visuals and cool art and pictures. Yeah. No, it's really good and really well done. It's just to give a quick summary to anyone who missed last week's. Essentially, it's about this mansion and this curse over this mansion that or this alleged curse over this mansion that keeps bringing misfortune on anyone who lives in it. And the game starts off by what you get to witness these kind of tragic stories of like different centuries and what happened in the mansion. And as the game goes on, you find out why these stories are connected and how they're connected. And then you get to see the overall story and different perspectives of stories like we were talking about earlier, sort of like the Ufi story.

And it's just epic. It feels like reading an epic novel, an epic tavernistry of a novel and highly recommended. Go check it out. The House and Fate of Morgana. Nice. playing. Kirk, what's your one more

thing? Well, I thought I'd give everybody an update on Gloomhaven, the tabletop game that my tabletop group

has been playing since the last time I talked about it, which was way back at the very beginning of triple click if memory serves.

It was almost a year ago that we started. We've been playing it every week. This is a great game. You've been playing every single

week since then? Wow. Yeah, almost every week. Yeah, we play on Mondays. And we used to go to a bar in

Portland where people get Taylor to play tabletop games. It's kind of a place in a northeast. And we weren't able to go there all year, so we were playing on tabletop simulator. These are all things I've discussed in past one more things, but just to summarize really quick, tabletop simulator is a Steam app, and I think it might just be elsewhere too, but we play through Steam, that just simulates tabletop games. So it's just a sort of table that you then all load into, and then there's just a game there. And you can download mods, like presets for all different kinds of games, and it just has a bunch of scripts and sort of objects so you can just

create the cards and the physical items for every game. There's a very good Gloomhaven mod that is, you know, using the Gloomhaven IP without, I don't think, with permission, but we own Gloomhaven. I generally recommend if people are going to use Tabletop Simulator for a game that they should own a copy. We actually own, but in our group we have two copies. This is a huge game. Comes in a box the size of a sarcophagus totally would take hours to set up or an hour. It takes a very long time to set up and tear down. Thanks to Tabletop Simulator, it's really easy for us so we can just play for a couple hours each night. We recently got together in real life, though, because we've been getting into it.

This game is really good, really complicated. It's a sort of turn-based tactics, RPG, like kind of like Hero Quest, but really hardcore hero quest. Anybody who knows Hero Quest. just, you know, like a fantasy, you know, we have a rogue and I'm the spellcaster, and we have a tank, and similar kind of strategies on like a hex grid. And it's tough. It really requires a lot of sort of careful planning and play. And we've gotten really into it. And so we got together, because we're all vaccinated now, we could get together. And we got together for brunch a couple weekends ago. And we were like, well, what should we play? We have all these tabletop games between us, could bring one. And we're like, you know, I really just want to keep playing Galaumhaven. And, Rather than make Sean, who has our copy of it and is kind of our leader, make him set it up. Let's just all bring our laptops. So we all just brought our laptops. And then we sat around the table with laptops on tabletop simulator, like on Sean's Wi-Fi.

But it was great because it was the same experience as playing a tabletop game. It's so funny. It's like a land party. It's like an old school land party. It was exactly like that. Though with a bunch of, you know, like my gaming PC is a desktop and I just brought my crudy little Macbook that could barely run tabletop simulator. But it was really fun just because, you know, we had like pastries and we ordered pizza and we were all hanging out. And it had the energy.

You don't have to worry about the pizza like getting on the table. Very true. Yeah. One cool thing that we did do is since Sean has the game, he gave us each our deck because this game is card based. All of your abilities. Actually, everything plays out with cards, which is actually really cool. It's a very well-designed game. And so now I have the Spellweaver, the Orchid Spellweaver, which is in my character class, I have the deck of cards.

and it is actually really nice to just have my hand in real life when we're playing on Steam when I'm at home so I can look at my hand and I play my cards like they match up with what I'm doing in the game just so that I can really quick look at my cards which is nice to be able to do. So we started doing that when we were together. So it's a nice little hybrid now where we have, you know,

some of the physical objects, but then the convenience and the setup of running scripts and like beginning around and just initiative gets set in it like automatically, which is really, really nice. But it's a great game. I mean, it's a really good game. So wait, so are you playing the same campaign that you've been playing for a year?

Like this game literally takes a year to finish? Yeah, it's a like really involved, you know, multi, multi, multi mission. It's like more like a sort of legacy game in some ways. You destroy cards, you play through it. It takes forever. It's the kind of thing that I think people probably play like in really hardcore long weekends. But we're all, we only play a few hours each week. So we don't even finish one scenario in a night, which,

which you're supposed to be going through those kind of quickly. And we're a little slow because we're very old. Like min-maxi, we're very careful. So we don't rush through things. We could probably play a little faster. But yeah, we're still going on the campaign. But the main campaign of Bloomhaven, I think, is like hundreds of hours long, I would guess, depending on how you play it. So we could be playing it for a very long time.

And there's an expansion coming up. And we say video games are too long. They're not. Not compared to Gloom Haven't. Well, it's not too long. No, I would never say that this is too long. long. No, it's good. It's a very different experience playing for a few hours every week with a bunch of friends in, you know, in real life in that tabletop kind of way. But it's great, man. What if

at the end of your Gloomhaven campaign, it turns out you were playing a Hadeo-Kajima game all along? And they reveal that it was actually Silent Hill. It could happen. That would be really spooky. If we find any Easter eggs. That's the twist, by the way, and the house in Fat, Fadam, Morgana. Wow. Okay, cool. Let's call it for today. Kirk, Maddie, it was fun chatting. as always, I will see you both on Monday for the Beanscast. And then again, next Thursday. All right, Beanscast time. 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 support.

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. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned, audience supported.