Triple Click - Triple Play: Halo Infinite

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

It's Halo time! Maddy, Kirk, and Jason dive into Halo Infinite, the new game from Microsoft and 343 Industries. They talk about the story (bleh) and the grappling hook (yesssss) then get into the game's rocky development, the very fun open world, and the truth behind Cortana. Plus: Succession season 3 talk!One More Thing: Kirk: The Matrix AwakensMaddy: SuccessionJason: The Game AwardsLinks:Digital Foundry on what makes The Matrix Awakens technologically remarkable: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2021-inside-the-matrix-awakens-previewing-the-future-of-gaming-graphicsEmily VanDerwerff (Vox) on Succession: https://www.vox.com/culture/22831645/succession-finale-season-3-recap-review-all-the-bells-say-kendall-roman-shiv-tom...and Tom Ley (Defector): https://defector.com/logan-roy-is-an-american/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

Remember those walls, Chief Built? Well, baby, they're tumbling down. They didn't even put up a fight standing in the light of your Halo. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're talking about Chief Cortana Atriox Echo and a tremonious, all-stars of Halo Infinite and exciting new game about a love affair between a soldier and his grappling hook. Grab your ward hogs and let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shire. Hello. Those are our names. We set our names successfully. We're off to a great start. All of us set our names. You know, it's really amazing.

We're up to episode 84. We've all said our names at least 84 times. That's pretty impressive. At least. We've had to redo the intro a few times. No one knows that. We're probably creeping on 100, really. Yeah, right.

If you actually count every single time we've done it, well, congrats to us. Congrats to us on 84 episodes. And thank you so much to everybody who's supporting. It's Triple Click and the creation of those 84 episodes. Yeah, otherwise we wouldn't be able to afford to say our names. It's true. It would never be allowed to.

We'd be way too hard-pressed doing other things. Those listeners own our names in a way. They own the times we say our names on certain special episodes that Kirk will explain shortly. Yes, maximum fun members. They own the likeness rights to all three of us. That's how it works. That's not how it works. But you do own the positive feeling of supporting listeners-supported media like Triple-Click

and all the other shows on Maximum Fun. And we really appreciate members who support us. If you want to become a member, go to Maximumfund.org slash join. And if you do that, you get that good feeling that I already mentioned. And you also get a bunch of bonus episodes. You get a whole feed of bonus episodes from all kinds of maximum fun shows, including Triple Click. We do them every month.

We've done recent ones on Outer Wilds. We've done one on Battles Royale. We've done movies. We've done TV shows. We've done a lot of video games. And we've just done bonus episodes about whatever random topics we want to talk about. Those are always fun. Can we announce this year, this month?

Yeah, this month is going to be kind of a best of, kind of a many more thing, one more thing. Look at the year. So we're each going to kind of kind of pick. Yeah, it's called One's More Thing. We're going to each kind of pick our favorite other media of the year, movies, TV shows, books, music, that sort of thing. And we're going to talk about that stuff. So that'll be at the end of December. be a beautiful accompaniment to our games of the year episode.

It will be. And that'll kind of be an extra episode for December, which just a programming note we're going to be taking next week off over the holiday week there. And then we'll be back for kind of Game of the Year stuff at the end of the month for one more episode. So just to let you all know. But anyways, thanks all for being members.

If you are a member. And if you're not, that's fine too. Just thanks for listening. If you'd like to become a member, go to maximum fund.org slash join. That's where you do it. Okay. Pitch over. Let's talk about a video game.

Let's talk about a video game called Halo. Oh, man. Pugh, pew, pew. Yeah, we all need to go into the locker room together and sing the Gregorian champ together. Which HALA? Dun, dun. We're talking about Halo Infinite. No, we're talking about every single Halo game.

All the HALO. Halo Wars? Zeta HALO. D.S. The canceled game for D.S. Jason is showing. off by listing all the Halo games that I didn't put on this reference sheet for us here, which is funny because Jason hasn't played any of those Halo games. I think Jason said this was his first

ever Halo game. But before we even talk about that, I want to explain this game. So Halo Infinite came out on December 8th. I had been playing it via a code from 343 Industries and Microsoft for like a week and a half before that. So I talked about it as one of my One More Things last week. I have no sense of time. I think that's when I talked about it. We recorded it so long ago that it would be easy to forget that it was last week, but yes, it was last week's episode. I don't know. I talked about it. And since then, I've beaten it. So I know the whole story. I know all about baby Cortana and the other Cortana. There's two Cortanas in this one. Who's Cortana? Well, she is the Tinkerbell like AI who hangs out with the coolest video game guy to ever be cool,

master chief, the original video game cool guy who first appeared in Halo Kombat Evolved in 2001, hasn't changed to Jot since then, still out here with like a low, gravelly voice and a big helmet and space armor, not revealing his face to anyone and just being the coolest. You shoot aliens, you stand around on a really big halo that has the power to destroy all life as we know it, and there's a bunch of lore and different alien names. and guns that have been pretty much the same exact guns over the course of every Halo game ever, and they're back again in this Halo, except that this Halo game was made by three-for-three industries,

unlike the first few halos, which were made by Bungee, before Bungee went their own way and made Destiny. That has been my monologue about Halo. I was going to say this. I'm cracking up imagining what you just said as like the intro on Wikipedia. yeah, that includes like... It kind of did. I really...

I zoomed out, I zoomed in. I whirled around the entire solar system. I didn't include all of the details about the flood and the banished and the endless and all the other alien races. But that's fine. We don't need to know what any of those are. I have really been enjoying Halo Infinite. People probably remember that from me talking about it on the last episode. But I want to hear what you two thought about it.

So, Kirk, why don't you go first? What's your situation with Halo in general and Infinite in particular? I've played a lot of Halo games, and I really like Infinite a lot. And we should be clear that we're talking about the single player mostly on this episode. Although I've played some multiplayer as well, and we can get into that a bit. But for today, I think we're mostly talking about the campaign. Yes, and that's most of my time has been spent playing the campaign. And that's usually, like, I've played a lot of competitive Halo split screen with my college roommates back when we had an Xbox and the original Halo combat evolved.

And I guess it was 2002, but maybe it was the year it came out in 2001. But that was 20 years ago, which is kind of crazy. And since then I have played every Halo game made by Bungy. And then I played some of four, didn't really like it. It was kind of weird, didn't feel right. Kind of skipped five. I think I maybe had a code because I was still like Kotaku, and we had codes. And I played a little, but I heard it wasn't that good.

And it was sort of like, oh, I think I don't really like Halo anymore. then heard very good things about this game from you and others and started playing it. And I'm really, really, really, really liking it. I just think I'm totally here for the, I believe as Jason described it in a DM, the grapple, grapple, grapple, pew, pew, which is, that's the whole game to me, is just flying around with the grappling hook and shooting at enemies. Yeah, there's a grappling hook now. It's so much fun.

Yes. That's a bullet point on my list. But before we talk about the grappling hook for six hours, Jason. Is this your first Halo game? Was I correct in characterizing it as such? No, because I played a bunch of, I don't even remember which one, one of the first three, also in a buddy's basement during high school. Like, that was my real Halo experience. I must have been the first one. It was either one or two, but I remember because two would have come out during my senior year of high school. So I definitely played both. But yeah, I played a ton of the multiplayer of both of those just with buddies, like split screen.

like we'd set up a big TV. One time one of my friends set up like multiple TVs in his house. Yep. And it was just like you had eight people all playing together. That was a blast. You could network the Xbox. So yes, it's just that I haven't played any Halo single player campaigns until now. Although really I played so much destiny that I feel like that kind of counts or at least

has the vibe of a lot of like the Halo stuff. If only the lore of destiny somehow helped you understand what the heck was happening. with the banished in Halo Infinite. But it won't really. The thing is I don't really care that much about the lore. Like, I'm playing this game and I'm enjoying it, but I'm just like barely paying attention to the story stuff. I'm getting a kick out of the one thing that I didn't expect

is like the little grunts making jokes all the time and how, like, how unsurious the game is. Because for some reason I expected a Halo campaign to be more serious. I will say also that I've, I haven't played a ton of Halo Wars, but I've watched a lot of YouTube videos of it because I wrote a chapter about it in my first book, Blood Southern Pixel. So I know that game pretty well. But other than that, yeah, I haven't spent a ton of time with all these games. And I'm enjoying Halo Infinite, although I'm not very far. So I just got to the open world and started messing around in it. So like I just did a couple outposts, killed an invisible warrior dude and took his sword. And that's about it. But you met the little baby Cortana, and you probably are thinking of yourself, who's the other Cortana? Why is she dead?

Why did all of that happen off screen before this game even started? See, Maddie, I'm not thinking about that because I just don't care. Like, that's what's funny. It's like, I really just cannot care less about the Halo story. So, as someone who's played a lot of Halo games, I feel the same way. And I kind of, I've kind of felt this way about every single one of these games. I always have this feeling when I start. a Halo game eat, from the first one through to today, where it starts, and it's like,

here's a bunch of stuff that's going on, a bunch of proper nouns, you're kind of dropped in the middle of the story. That's sort of their style, is a bit of an immedious res thing. This game certainly does it. Oh, yeah. This game feels like it's missing a whole first act, and I gather that, like, Atriox and all that stuff with the banish is carrying over from Halo Wars 2, which I didn't play. But it's the same as every other game where I'm like, okay, I don't know.

I get that there's sort of some motivation. I remember the stuff with Cortana, so I do understand that relationship. It's probably enough. And then, man, this game is such an example of, I mean, gameplay over story, I guess is the way to say it. Like, I'm loving this game. It's the most fun I've had with the game in a really long time purely because it's just so fun to play. And when the story is happening, I'm like, all right, whatever, don't really care. All right, back to the game.

Yeah, me too. And I kind of like some of the story elements. I was talking to you guys about how it's like a little bit funny, which. which Jason alluded to with his mention of the grunt dialogue. And I would say it is a little bit funnier than past Halos. Halo's never been too serious in the way that like a call of duty might be, even like one of the more sci-fi call call of duties. Or a destiny.

Well, Destiny. The whole thing about Destiny instead of tickets off away, just seriously at first. It really does. I mean, destiny's pretty goofy if you're like playing with friends on voice chat and making fun of it. And in my view, it's a very goofy game. But I imagine there are people who don't feel that way about it. Halo, I don't know what Bungy felt about it. I guess if I went back in time and talked to them in the early 2000s,

they might say that Halo is not a goofy game. I would say it always was and that this current tone. Did they always have the grunts like making jokes every time they died? Well, they weren't as funny. They weren't as funny. They always were a little silly in the way that grunts in like any science fiction property are, like little minion type characters who are like silly and have higher voices and run around and wine, but they weren't as quippy as they are in this game where, I mean, they really

are hamming it up. There's like a podcast you can listen to in like the outposts that like the evil aliens are broadcasting and there's like one-liners about, you know, which humans you can can't eat and like, I don't know. It's, it's a, it's a, the aliens are funny in this one. They sound like borderlands characters. That's what they remind me of. Yeah, I think Aaron Lind, who worked on borderlands worked on this game. Has it all fallen into place for you now? Yeah, I saw him tweeting about it, and I was like, Aaron Lind, it all makes sense now.

Worked on the first Borderlands, I want to say. Maybe some of the other ones. I don't know. I don't have his Wikipedia open, but yeah, that's the humor. So there's definitely a hammier vibe to this game than, say, the very first game, because there was no, like, grand villain in the first game. This game has got all these scenery chewing goofballs,

like appearing and monologuing at you. The names are all terrible except for trimony. Which is the name of the first guy that you fight, and I loved that name. I was like, are they all going to have awesome names, like, Tremonius? And then all the rest of the names are in thick. No, the other ones are like Isherom. Yeah, Escheron, I think, is the main bad guy. And, like, Atriacs just could be...

There has to be, like, ten video game bad guys named Atrex. But Tremonious, I'm a fan. But the fact, like, the whole guy appearing and, like, being like, oh, you are nothing, I will destroy you. And then you, like, totally kill him. He's, like, constantly calling Master Chief on the phone, too. Like, aliens are constantly calling Master Chief. to be like, hey, I still hate you and I'm going to get you and I'm sending a bunch of guys

after you. It's going to be crazy and you're going to hate it. Master Chief's just standing there in complete silence waiting for the Zoom call to end so that he can shoot more guys. It's video games, man. That chatiness, though, like that tone is pretty different than the first Halo where you're just exploring this weird ring world and Cortana's kind of talking a lot and she'll occasionally make quips, but there isn't just this whole kind of heightened. goofy quality and you can sometimes hear

what the little grunts are saying in the first Halo, but it isn't like I'm thinking I got killed by, I get killed a lot in this game actually I'm finding it to be refreshingly difficult on normal difficulty and I get sometimes get killed by a grunt and the way they get so happy when they kill you, he was like, I did it, I did it! And he's like running around and it made me laugh because I guess I'm, I've never taken the story that seriously so I'm not put off by silliness like that. But that is significantly sillier than Halo used to be, though I do agree that Halo was never not somewhat silly. Yeah, I also feel like the weapons and just the overall visual design of it is part of what makes it feel silly to me.

Like, Halo is very neon and sparkly in a way that Destiny also is, and that's something I also really like about Destiny is all the glowing orbs that you get to throw at everybody. But in Halo, like, my definitive pick for this is the Needler, which is like this sparkly pink, weapon that shoots pink needles at people, like these pink laser needles. And it's just such a flashy, gaudy weapon. That and like the energy sword, which, Jason, I don't know if you're far enough yet that you've gotten to wield one of those yourself, but. Yeah, I just said I killed the invisible dude and took a start. They're just a delight. Like, it's just this huge sword that you just get to poke dudes with, like, yeah, well, I remember that from the original game. Yeah. Well, that's true. You played the multiplayer. You're right. So you do remember.

remember it. Yeah, I just, I don't know, there's something really ostentatious about the weapons in Halo that makes it feel goofy, but not in a bad way, like in a fun way. Yeah, although I find myself wishing, and this is more of a personal preference thing than a game design critique, but I find myself wishing that I could keep these weapons and like switch through a whole inventory of them instead of having to decide, like which two I'm going to carry it at any given time, especially. That's so funny. I feel completely differently, but go ahead. Especially because, because sometimes I'll run out of ammo in one and switch to the other and then want to quickly pick up a new weapon, but because I'm carrying the other one, I will accidentally swap that one

out instead of the one that has no ammo, and it's a whole annoying thing. But this is very much a personal preference thing, and this is, again, coming from someone who spent hundreds and hundreds of hours playing Destiny, but very few hours playing HALA Sable. So I think that that comparison is there's so much interesting to be gained in comparing Destiny and Halo Infinite specifically, because Destiny to me really felt like a next step forward for the people who made Halo. So Bungee made Halo and then they made Destiny and Destiny felt like what would happen if you took Halo and sort of modernized it. So it had a sprint. It had way enhanced mobility. It had all of these special abilities with cool downs and it introduced some things that...

Double jump, which Halo Infinite does not have, sadly. No, though it has a mega jump. Like, Master Chief can jump like 30 feet into the air, so it sort of makes up for it. I would love a double jump, too. Yeah, you do get the kind of boost ability if you can equip that a little bit later in the game, but it's not the same. So the grappling hook goes a long way, actually, toward bringing Halo closer to Destiny for me, where in the past I could never really get back into Halo after playing Destiny, mostly because of the mobility stuff.

And just because the shooting in Destiny feels so good. and jumping around and fighting feels so good. And I would say like the combat encounter design is pretty similar. Like a lot of destiny fights involve like little guys and big guys and the big guys are tougher and they push you and the little guys are sort of there. But they don't quite have the aggressiveness or like the fluidity of a halo fight. And I'm finding that this game really still has it. Like that still captures that feeling of you're kind of always getting flanked and surrounded and they're coming at you from ways that you don't expect we're in destiny. it's a little bit more just like there's a wall of guys

and you're kind of taking cover and jumping out and shooting them? Yeah, it feels like smarter AI. It feels like AI design has advanced a lot since Destiny originally came out. Though the Halo AI has always been good. That was always something that was remarkable about the series and they still kind of have it.

So anyways, I'm really enjoying the addition of a sprint, the addition of the grappling hook, which is just huge. I mean, that thing rules. Maddie, you were not exaggerating. I've now upgraded it to the point where I shoot a guy with it and he gets electrified and then I hold down the melee button

and it like zooms out for this like super power punch that you do and I never will get sick of it. It's so much fun. It's like right up there with dishonored blink and I don't know other like incredible game changing mechanics where this one thing makes the game so much more fun. Yeah, it's so great. But to circle back to the guns thing that you mentioned, Jason,

I don't play the game the way you just said As soon as I run out of ammo in any weapon, I pick up the nearest next weapon and I'm just constantly doing that. And I would recommend that you do that. It's a very fun way to play. And also, I think that might be how the game expects you to play. Rather than assuming that you'll get ammo for whatever you're currently holding or getting really attached to certain guns. Like always be changing your guns. No, Maddie, that's what I wanted to do. What I did was, what happens is run out of money. run out of ammo with gun A

and then start shooting with gun B and then see something I want to pick up and then pick it up but it stops out gun B instead of subbing out gun A like there's no I have to kind of mentally switch my brain to switch weapons before I pick up the new weapon so I replace someone that's out of ammo

I thought you were saying you wanted to have an inventory where you could just like always have guns because that is a notable difference with destiny it is and just the way that destiny you're like kind of always using these same aim weapons where it's really like grenades are the same thing in this where you're always picking up stuff and having to kind of scrap and scrape it's a really different energy and I actually really enjoy that well what I miss about destiny is the ownership that you get over like once you found a

really cool gun and you're like oh man like this is mine now and it doesn't feel as ephemeral which which is also something I just didn't like about playing modern warfare when we played that earlier was it this year last year last year probably um when we played that last year like I just did not enjoy the fact that like you're always like you're never attached to one weapon which I always like about games. The thing about persistence though and this is something I've been thinking about as I play Halo Infinite

is that persistence opens the door for all of this like leveling, grinding RPG loot stuff that is not present in this game and that I really am finding refreshing about this game because it is nice to get the cool gun and destiny

and to feel really attached to it but it's fun in this game that I don't have that feeling and I'm just kind of running around blowing shit up and grabbing whatever I can and occasionally being like, whoa, look at this weird thing I picked up. It's like totally blowing up everything. Oh, now I'm out of ammo. Better get something else.

That feeling, it just is more like I'm playing a video game rather than investing in an experience. And I am enjoying that. Right. Yeah. Well, it's just funny because it's called Halo Infinite, so it clearly wants you to be like attached to the service. Well, except they didn't design it that way.

Yeah, they didn't. And I think that that lends an interesting quality to the open world over time that can make it feel kind of samey. So I'll be curious if you two keep playing it, if you start to feel that way, because the more outposts you play, I definitely was getting a little tired of that by the end of it

and just being like, I'm good on this. Because there's only so much you can do. I mean, there's only so many different weapons and there's only so many different corridors with an alien in them. Although they do do a pretty good job of making it as exciting as possible in infinite as compared to when I was planning,

playing the Master Chief Collection, and I talked about that on the show a little bit, where I was like, wow, these are old games. And some of these encounters are not interesting and are very samey. And I just have rose-color glasses for how exciting they felt to me at the time. But playing infinite feels at its best as exciting as how I remember it felt to play the original halos. Of course, now there's a grappling hook. It's not a one-to-one comparison. But like, you know, you're running through a hallway and it's collapsing. or like, oh, there's a bunch of weird columns, and I didn't see those guys behind those columns, and now suddenly they're here and I need to, like, figure out what I'm going to do. Those feelings remind me of the original Halo, but they're much more bombastic and exciting here. However, just the fact that there's an open world

and outposts to clear is very weird. Like, it is not Halo, and I never quite got used to the fact that that's a part of this game. I've always felt a little like Halo wanted to be this kind of, kind of game. Like, I'd always felt to me playing the original Halo. You know, when you first get in the ward hog and you're driving around on the halo, it's kind of this feeling of like, wow, this is kind of opened up. Maybe there's some optional stuff I could go explore, and there kind of is, but there isn't really, because it's not really an open game. This level of openness,

I think, works. I feel like, is the game around 15 hours long? Is that what you said, Maddie? It can be, but it can be, like, 20 or over 20 if you want to do every single thing. And, like, it also depends on, you know, some of the encounters get quite difficult. the end. The bosses and stuff. Some of the, like, the feeling of size, the fact that Jason, you're reporting on this indicates that they ripped out a whole ton of stuff and really, really scaled it down. It is, I can see how it becomes repetitive.

I could also see how that length is like long enough for this game to be and it doesn't need to be any longer and that it actually kind of benefited from having so much stripped out of it. So a couple of things. So first of all, it's funny you say that, Kirk, because Joe Staten, when I spoke to him two weeks ago with my colleague Dina Bass for our Bloomberg article. He was like, I played it for the first time. And I was like, this is what Halo always, I always want to be.

And granted, I'm sure he's hamming it up a little bit for a press interview. But still, he seemed like he was generally saying, like, this is what they envision in the first place. It's like Halo is this open world, which 100%. Yeah, it makes sense. It feels logical, like a logical carry-on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have a bunch of insight on like the design stuff and how that has changed. including some stuff I haven't reported because it didn't fit in the article that I can share here.

Exclusive information for triple-click listeners. But yeah, so originally, I mean, a lot of the reason that it took so long to get this out is because there was a lot of floundering on what the design would be and a lot of just unclear ideas of like what the open world would look like. And I think they went through a lot of different iterations over the years. originally in like 2017 they all play Breath of the Wild and we're like this is amazing we want to do this and I think some of the original structure of it was very much like okay you can you go out into the world and you can just like do a bunch of things in different orders you can go around and become more powerful or you could just run to the main boss and I feel like you can kind of see you can see

the bones of that a little bit you can imagine it being like he's taunting you and you can see his big fortress in the distance and you could go out and get him, or you can go kill his lieutenants first and become more powerful, like Breath of the Wild essentially. So that was one original idea. And then that changed over time. At some point, there was this idea that like the outposts that exists now would be part of like bigger fortresses and stuff. And it would be like take out these small outposts to weaken the bigger outpost. And then you go in and you crush the bigger outpost. So there was a lot of that kind of rhythm. And then over time, it became more of of, in game design, it's called the Golden Path, which is like that main quest line,

essentially, what you need to finish the game. That became more of like a linear thing where you actually need to go through like all these required missions to get to the final boss. And so there was just a lot of, and along the way, there was a ton of just like rescoping and cutting things, cutting down the size of the world. The size of the world was massively, massively rescoped, massively cut. So what happened was it was around the summer of 2019 was when they started doing. There were multiple rescopes. It wasn't just one, as often it happens. There were multiple rescopes, but there was one huge one where it was like, we are chopping out two-thirds of this entire game. And that was around the time that their initial creative

director, Tim Longo, who was a great podcast that we've shown up before. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. It was Tim. With Brad Teville, Tim, who runs the Dev Game Club podcast. So shout out to Dev Game Club. But anyway, so he left. And that was around the time they did the whole risk opening. And then this guy Chris Lee, who had been there for a long time, essentially took over creative direction in the game. He would then be gone a year later when Joe Staten came in and took over. So a lot of kind of creative direction, just upheaval on this project. But yeah, around the summer of 2019, that's when they started doing a lot of cuts

because it became clear that like, oh, man, like we're not going to be able to delay this game any longer. We have to ship to release alongside the new Xbox. And obviously that did not happen. And I actually think that like COVID became a useful excuse for them to get away with delaying it. I think they probably would have delayed regardless after that demo and how kind of disastrous it was. But even as early as like late 2019, early 2020, I was hearing from people over there like there's no way in hell we're going to make it out this fall. It's just not going to happen. And I think if they had made it out that fall, it would have been disastrous.

Like super unpolished. I want to watch that demo again now that I'm. I've played the game because it is, I mean, sure, I guess this didn't come out when the Xbox came out, and I guess that's a problem. But it's got to be great for them that it came out when it did. It seems like it's been a big hit. People really seem to like it. Almost everyone I know who's played it likes it. And the multiplayer seems to be doing really well. And that's like this free thing that they released and made everyone so happy. It really seems like this has been a great, just a great game for Microsoft. In addition to just being a fun game, I mean,

this is the most fun I've had playing Halo ever. I mean, really, really. Like I've always kind of, because I was like a PC gamer. I played like Unreal Tournament and stuff. I wanted games to be faster even when the first game came out. And I remember always being like, this is fun to play with my friends. But in the single player, it just never quite felt right. It was never as fast as I wanted it to be. And this is fast enough.

Like this really is so fun. Yeah. I'm curious about the other stuff that they cut because it does feel like the grappling hook is such a key part of how the game. works that the other abilities, which I mentioned last week, feel like such an afterthought. And Jason, when I described it to you, you thought that maybe that was going to be one of the things that the developers ended up cutting because you had talked to them about the multiple abilities. And I'm not a game designer, but like in playing the game, I'll just say I don't use the other

abilities very often. What are the other abilities? Can you describe them on a way? There's like a thruster mechanic that Kirk mentioned. So if you really want to like kind of do a dodge move like in Hades, if you want to dodge around, you can. Got it. There's a shield. So like, like Ryan Hard and Overwatch.

You can like throw down a shield, like sort of a semi-transparent shield. I actually like that one. I do use the shield from time to time. There's like a sea invisible enemies or teleporting enemies. Like I don't remember what that's called. Something better than see invisible enemies. It's called like, you know, villain tracker. or whatever.

So I'm not 100% sure about this, but I believe the grappling hook was, I believe one person told me that the grappling hook was designed for multiplayer originally. And then it just became this part of Master Chief's arsenal. Does not surprise me. And so something interesting that happens over the course of Halo Infinite's development

is that 343 is very, I've heard it described by more than a few people as a dysfunctional place to work. in some ways, certainly good in other ways. Dysfunctional in the sense that it's very much a company broken into factions and broken into like little fiefdoms and there's a lot of politics going on. And this is common to marry many large companies and especially at Microsoft. Like this is part of Microsoft's blood going back 40 years is one of the most like political

like backstabby companies on the planet and always has been. But at three for three, so you'd have these situations where like, all these teams are working on their own things and not really communicating very well. So you have the sandbox team over here doing this and the campaign team doing this and a multiplayer team doing this and one of them changes something and it messes with all the others. But in this case, I think it was a happy accident, I suppose, where the multiplayer team, I believe, and don't quote me on this because I only heard it from one person, but I believe the multiplayer team came up with a grappling hook and then it was therefore consequently applied

to the other teams. But again, not 100% sure that that's exactly how it went down. I've only heard from one person, but that's the way it was conveyed. You can definitely, you can just feel that thing that I've heard from other video games and other development stories where someone introduced a game mechanic and then people started messing with it. And they were like, this is fun. And then they were like, this is really fun.

Like, what if we, wait a minute. And it kind of became more and more of the thing because it is just such a triumph like when you're playing it. It's funny you say that because there's some game teams out there. that believe that, like, one approach to game design is to do that first and have your build your game from there. There's, like, the, like, two kind of diametrically opposed, um, approaches to game development are like, one is the top down approach where it's like, we want to make this game and you have to be master chief and it has to have the power fantasy and kind of like high level

pillars. And then the other approach is like, we're going to start by like getting a bunch of engineers and designers in a room and just prototyping a bunch of cool stuff and then work up from there and like come up with the rest of the game from there and you can you can tell when that happens i mean like portal is a perfect example of like a bottom up approach uh i think there are other like respawn i think is is a is a studio that really adopts that approach of like building the mechanics and prototyping first and then just like working expanding from there so um yeah you can tell the two different very very different ways to doing things i'm enjoying picturing someone at a whiteboard and it says power fantasy and then it says grappling hook and there's just

like an arrow going from the one to the other and then from the other back to the one. I bet you that's been done somewhere. Yeah, I mean, in this case, I'm not quite sure the grappling hook fits with how Master Chief is normally portrayed. I mean, not that it matters, but... Right, charging forward. Do super soldiers normally have a grappling hook? That doesn't quite fit.

But whatever, it's fine. He's like a thousand pounds and eight feet tall and he has a grappling hook and he's very agile actually. But yeah, I do feel like this game, I don't have any insight information about whether the script was rewritten a bunch of times. But I will say having played it, it feels like it was. It feels like it was. And it feels like the infinite part of the title suggested that perhaps there were going to be more scenes shown that are not shown. Like I made a joke at the beginning of this about Cortana getting killed off screen. It sounds like I'm spoiling the game. I'm not. You find out almost instantaneously that Cortana is already dead when the game starts. And you are like, oh, I thought I was going to have to like be dealing with evil Cortana this whole time. But then you find out you are told by a small holographic woman played by Jen Taylor.

So it's like, is Cortana dead? It looks exactly like Cortana. Yeah, like a very happy Cortana. And she's like, by the way, in order to kill Cortana. It's like in, uh, Super Troopers when the dude dies and then his twin comes in and acts out. It is actually quite a bit like that. It really is because, I mean, because Cortana is an AI in order to defeat Cortana, who became evil as all AIs in the Halo universe become, because they can.

gain too much knowledge and this actually makes perfect sense to me as a sci-fi trope is the more knowledge you gain the more you decide that maybe everyone should just die. I feel like I can relate to this energy. I don't know. So anyway, that happened to Cortana. She learned too much.

Maddie or we can have to take you out or we can have to replace you with the new Maddie Myers. Cortana learned too much and she was like I think maybe the universe should just end at this point which is I guess evil. So anyway, that all happens. That is eye roll, I guess. So in order to take out Cortana, they copy her programming, but like an original version of it,

and they create little baby Cortana, which is who you meet at the beginning of the game. And she calls herself the weapon. And she's like, I was just made to boob Cortana out of existence. And then I would be killed after that. But I'm still alive. Why is that? Oh, it's because I'm going to be your adorable AI companion. So just the fact that there is a replacement Cortana and that this game keeps a losing.

to battles that have happened off screen. Like you see the Atriox fight at the very beginning. I didn't play Halo Wars 2. People are going to write in and tell me that all of this is in Halo Wars 2. I'm sorry I didn't play it. But it does feel like there's all this exciting stuff in this game that just isn't actually in the game. I don't want to spoil anything else that happens. But I'll just sort of leave it there and say that sensation keeps happening where I feel like some of the things that got left on the cutting room floor are evident here.

if that makes sense. Kirk, I don't know if you've played long enough that you are also having that feeling, but... I've played like, so I played like 10 hours and I'm pretty far in. And yeah, there's just, it feels like there's a first act that was missing, which I'm kind of okay with, because I don't mind just being thrown right into it and just start shooting stuff. And like I said, I don't care that much about the story. But as other antagonists show up and characters show up and they keep referencing all the other, the precursors and the forerunners. And it's just there's, it feels like a game that was a little more. more complete feeling narratively would explain itself just a little bit more. And I think that does, it does leave me feeling like there's just a couple things that were cut or like, or aren't there. And yeah, it's, it's definitely noticeable. But it's not a huge problem because the actual game feels so good to play. And it does also feel like this game is struggling against something that games that have been around for 20 years often struggle against, which is just its own the machinations of the original Halo are that this adorable little boobelicious AI lady follows

you around everywhere and she's your best friend and you, the player, are Master Chief and you're extremely cool. And like that is just the most reductive possible video game framework. It is, you know, Gears of Word does the same thing with Anya Stroud in your ear in the first game and like you're a super cool video game cool man. Like it's the cute lady in your ear while you are a super muscular badass guy is a video game thing. But they're trying in 2020. Is there supposed to be something sexual between them? Are they in love?

I don't know. No. I would not even know. Because you, the player, are supposed to be into Cortana, but Master Chief is not. Right. He's too cool. He's too cool. He's too cool.

And also, he's been like chemically castrated according to the books or something. Like all the Spartans have been rendered sexless because that would distract them from battle. I don't know if that's the real reason, but it's in the books. It's a little like she completes him, you know, like he's kind of this broken soldier guy, and then she offers him, like, more to his personality in between the two of them, because they kind of synthesize in a way. So it's not romantic.

Like he doesn't have a personality, so she does. It's romantic, but not sexual. I was chemically castrated once. Do not go to Vegas. But I would say it's not, it's not Alex Vance, Gordon, Freeman, where I would say that is supposed to be romantic, whereas Master Chief Cortana, like she talks the whole time. He doesn't really talk that much, but it's not necessarily. I think of it as romantic, but not sexual, but in the like, it's a romantic notion, right?

Like, I don't mean romance in that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know what you mean. Different types of romance are, but like, it's like a romantic notion. The, like, big shutdown soldier who meets this other person and they awaken one another and become this partnership and, like, sort of meld in this way. And then she dies and he loses her. And that's kind of what he's going through in this game. Like, it's all pretty buried and hard to follow.

But I do appreciate that that's the primary interaction. I mean, there's not quite as much like other Marines talking about how awesome you are. And everybody's sort of reacting to like, oh, God, you're the master chief. Plus there's this guy Echo who like doesn't even want to be in the game and is freaking out for the whole first half of it. And it's like, go away. Oh my God. Like, I just want to get back to my family. You're going to get me killed.

So it's a little more focused on Master Chief and the weapon and sort of his feelings about Cortana. And obviously I haven't finished and it sounds like it doesn't go anywhere that satisfying. And I feel like that's part of why I'm okay with it. And it feels almost as though the game is attempting to, I don't want to say apologize, but reckon with the Master Chief is a super cool badass of it all of the past video games and kind of take him down a peg by having this Echo, character who's constantly annoyed by Master Chief's shenanigans, and then also the weapon who doesn't have the emotional baggage that Cortana does with Chief, and is, she likes Chief,

seemingly, but she and Chief don't necessarily trust each other in the same way. So, like, basically it's like a version of Master Chief who has to deal with people who don't already put up with all of his shit all the time. And that's interesting. And I like the choice. I just not sure it quite lands as firmly as I would have wanted it to. but that again could be because this game was rewritten a whole bunch of times. Definitely. To me it feels like it's like the elements are kind of there, but they aren't fully baked just because they had to pull the thing out of the oven because like, you know, Paul and Prue were coming around and like the hosts were counting down the timer and they just had to get something up there to present. Yeah, it came out all right. I would still recommend it. Oh, Jason, would you recommend this game as someone who doesn't understand the Halo story and maybe is just here for the grappling hook? What do you think?

I don't know yet too for me. I just haven't played enough. That's valid. That's valid. Well, Kirk and I would. Yes. Oh, absolutely. I'm having a blast with this.

Any other final final one liners, final cool one liners before we take a break? Hmm. My cool one liner is Halo Infinite is a really good game and it's way better than I was expecting it to be. Is that a cool enough one liner? It's pretty cool. Master Chief reminds me of Geralds. That's what I'll say.

He's got a little bit of Gerold to him. When he goes to the weapon and he's like, where's Cortana? It just reminded me of Gerold looking for Siri. Yep. Very, very similar. Very similar. All right. Well, we're going to take a break and we'll be back in just a bit with one more thing.

Hey there, beautiful people. I'm Trevelle Anderson. And I'm Jared Hill. We are the hosts of Fantai, the show where we have complex and complicated conversations about the gray areas in our lives. The things that we really, really love sometimes, but also have some problematic feelings about. Yes, we get into it all.

You want to know our thoughts about Nikki Minaj and all her foolishness? We got you. You want to know our thoughts about gentrification, perhaps some positive question mark? Uh-oh. Aspects of gentrification, we get into that too. Every single Thursday, you can check us out at maximum fun.org. Listen, you know you want it, honey, so come on and get it.

Period. Are you riddled with guilt over your TBR pile? Are you filled a shame about a book that you just can't seem to finish? Are you having regrets because grad school killed your love of reading? We're reading glasses and we're here to help. I'm Mallory and I'm Briette. Let us absolve you of all your reading guilt. Stuck on a book you don't like?

We'll help you dump it. Can't figure out what to read next. We'll recommend something in your wheelhouse. Can't decide where to buy your books from. We'll point you in the right direction. No matter what you read or how you read it. We'll help you do it better. Reading glasses every Thursday on next.

We are back with one more thing. Jason, why don't you go first? You actually went to a location. I did. I'll be quick because I want to get to hear one more thing, Maddie, and get into that. But yeah, I went to the game words last week in Los Angeles. And we talked a little bit about this on Twitter Spaces on Friday, which was fun. It was fun when Kirk showed up.

But it was fun overall. That's right. Yeah, Kurt was like. I had things to do, okay? I was enjoying my coffee. And I just want to talk about it real quick. I mean, it was invigorating, like, being out and, like, talking to people and seeing old people that I knew, like old friends and colleagues and stuff, and also meeting new ones. It was just such a blast.

The show itself kind of sucked. It was grueling and boring and excruciate. Well, not boring. It was sensory overload. And, like, I was sitting there with our old buddy, Tina and Meaney. And we were both just like, oh, my God, when can we get out of here? Like, our butts are killing us on these seats. But afterwards, everyone goes out, like, in the vicinity to a bar nearby.

And it was just so much fun, like, getting. seeing people like every two, I walk two steps and like someone is like, oh, Jason, and it's like someone I haven't seen in a while. Just so much fun. You're like, we went to dinner after the show at Katsuya, which is the sushi place next to us. And it's me and Tina and some of her IGN buddies.

And then one table in front of us is Phil Spencer and the Xbox contingent. The other table behind us is Doug Bowser and the Nintendo contingent. And it's like wild being there. Like you're going around and you're seeing all these people like. Did like they start snapping and then like stand up and face off? And, um, and it's like, And yeah, it was just so much fun. I just saw so many people that I hadn't seen in a long time.

And it was just a blast. Shout out to everyone who I ran into over there. And, yeah, Game Awards. Worth going, not for it. Maybe next time I'll just skip the award show and just go to the back afterwards. Just hang out at the bar. That's it. All right.

Well, I know we all can participate in my one more thing. So I will wait and ask Kirk, what is your one more thing. Nice. I wanted to shout out a thing that was actually announced at the Game Awards called the Matrix Awakens, which is, I think the full name is. The Matrix Awakens an Unreal Engine 5 experience. Did either of you play this? That sounds right.

Yeah, I didn't play it, but I was excited by the trailer. You should play it. Everybody should because it's free and easy to play. I'll be brief just because it kind of speaks for itself, but it's pretty incredible. So it's an Unreal Engine 5 demo like Epic usually does with these Unreal Demos where they show, they did a Star Wars one, I think, for UE5. In the past they've done, they always show these.

it used to be the game developers conference. They would do these closed-door sessions where they would show you this just like outrageously high-fi thing of their newest engine, doing all this unbelievable stuff. But in this case, this is a Matrix tie-in that's promoting the upcoming Matrix movie that they made with Lana Wachowski, like, wrote it,

and they have all the, you know, the music, and Carrie-Anne Moss and Keanu Reeves are in it. And so it's like a Matrix tie-in, and it was released on consoles. So if you have a PlayStation 5 or a Series X, you can download this thing and just play it. So it is not like, you know, sometimes you watch those, you're like, okay, they say this is running on a PS5, but is it, you know,

or is it running on a PC that's sort of like a PS5, but is its own thing? This is just running on my PlayStation 5 is what I played it on. And it is unbelievable on a technological level. It's the kind of thing where I started it. And for starters, it starts with footage that looks like a movie and isn't. So it starts messing with you. It's kind of in three phases. There's a phase that looks like the actors talking to you.

And they're kind of going back and forth between footage of the movie and footage of them recreated using this like metahuman technology that Epic has come up with. And that's crazy because you're like, are they fucking with me? Like there are just points where you're like, wait a minute. And you start to realize that you're looking at a game engine and not reality. There's sometimes where you can tell. Then there's this kind of chase sequence that just looks like an interactive movie. And you think, okay, well, this isn't that much more impressive than Uncharted 4 or something. And then it goes to an open world that you can walk around.

And then at first you're kind of looking around. And then you can fly around the world and, like, adjust the day night, you know, the sun setting and stuff. And it's like, okay, well, this looks kind of like Spider-Man maybe, like, you know, on PS5. But then I kind of slowed down and went a little closer in detail and started getting down to street level and really looking at things and moving the sun and looking at the way the shadows worked and realizing what was really going on. And it's crazy what's going on. It's like nothing like those games. It's a whole huge leap in technology beyond anything I've ever seen, certainly played in a video game. And I've been watching, you know, like Digital Foundry did all these breakdowns.

But like the stuff they're doing, which I won't detail here, is just totally bananas in terms of like open world design. But anyways, it's really cool. It's free. It's fun. If you do play it, my one recommendation is turn off the matrix filter, which kind of makes the whole world look kind of green the way that the Matrix says. When you turn that off, it just looks photo realistic. And it's like you're walking around in this photo realistic city. and it's really, really cool, and it's free, and you can just download it.

So, Download it's The Matrix Awakens. The Matrix Filter should make everything look like pieces of code because that's how it's supposed to look. You can turn on an overlay that shows their like different layers of the engine and like what it's actually rendering behind the visuals and stuff, which is pretty cool. That's cool. I hope it's neon green and black. Anyway, I watched Succession, Season 3 all of it all the way up to a stunning finale. Oh, man. We all three did. And I loved it. This is my favorite Succession season that they've done so far. I feel like I finally get Succession and why people are obsessed with it. And I loved it. I don't know. I don't even know where to start. Should we not spoil it? What do we want to do here? We're not going to spoil it. Spoilers. Spoilers until the end for Succession. You can just peace out if you haven't watched.

Yeah, you can peace out. I mean, there are certainly people who don't even like Succession. Don't want. listen. So bye. I am obsessed with Tom's arc on this season and I want to watch the entire season again. Right on the show in general. Because I wasn't necessarily sympathetic to Tom. I actually in a lot of ways feel like this was Roman season because he got so much character development and I feel like Kieran Culkin has just done an incredible job at making him into this just awful man-child who feels like such a real human being.

And the final episode where he's looking at his father and just tearing up, I was like really haunted by it, but just amazed by him. So really my favorite actor. Yeah, first season was Kendall. Last season was Shiv. The season's Roman. Next season will be all about Tom, my bet. Probably, yeah.

Or Connor. Connor season. Yeah, forget Connor. But I've been so impressed with Kieran Culkin. And I feel like because throughout the season I've been so impressed with his acting and with Roman's plot line where I'm like, is he actually going to end up succeeding in some way? Like I wasn't really paying a ton of attention to Tom. And Tom kind of came from behind and shanked me like he will not have to do in prison because he's not going to prison. Yeah, I don't know.

What did you two think? Kirk, what are your thoughts on the season three of succession? I loved it. I also loved it. Have really, really come to love this show and do. I started rewatching season one and then season three came out, so I kind of stopped, but I'm going to go back and rewatch it. And there's really an arc for Tom through the whole thing.

I read Emily Vanderwerf's recap at Vox, which is wonderful. She's been doing great writing about this show and journal. I mean, this show becomes so much richer for me in like listening to podcasts and reading recaps because people just catch, it's so rich and layered. But her take was kind of like, you remember that Tom, he gives Logan a watch in like the very first episode? Yeah. And it's like, it's like the quintuble.

essential dumb gift that you give to a rich person. He doesn't want it. And they wind up using it to like hush to like quiet down the family that Roman screws over with that bet with the kid over the home run. Anyways, basically this whole time Tom has been trying to find a gift that he can give to Logan. And then in season three, he found it twice. And it was when he offered to go to prison. And then at the end when he like betrayed Shiv and told Logan how to stop the kids, that arc, like viewing that as a three-season long arc for Tom is so cool. And yeah, it makes me very excited for next season. Just because I think Matthew McFadden is, like, unbelievably great.

I didn't even realize it was him until, like, season two or something, because I love the, you know, the pride and prejudice that he's in as Mr. Darcy. I feel like I didn't fully realize it was him until all the pride and prejudice memes that people have been making about him and Greg in the past, like, few weeks because now they're, like, the character could not be more different. It's, he's such an amazing actor. and I can't wait for more. I just think he's been wonderful.

I mean, everyone on the show is so good. It's just a show about characters, starring amazing actors. It's such a good show. Yeah, there was a theory floating around that Tom was wearing a wire and was like stinching to the FBI. Nah, it's not that kind of show. Nah. That's what I'm going to say is that this conclusion makes so much more sense.

It's so much better. It was so like, it was a perfect twist because it was surprising yet inevitable, which is the best kind of twist is when you feel like, oh, well, this was shocking, but there was no other thing that could have possibly happened here. Like, it had to happen. And you just, you were just waiting for Tom to explode. And you almost felt like, like, the way that the show really subverted that relationship between him and Shiv, you almost felt like, Shiv was going to be the one. Like, he would never leave her. He would never betray her. And she was going to be the one to realize that she was too good for him and just, like, move on. But, like, this was just the perfect. Like,

he was just seizing it. He was just waiting for his opportunity. He was like, you know, Kendall, I've seen you get fucked a lot and I've never seen Logan get fucked. Of course, he executed on that. I mean, he like made that happen, but yeah, it's just, it was perfect. This season was incredible. The whole show is just incredible.

It is. And also just, it is true that he's screwing over shift, but he's doing it in a passive Tom way, like in the way that only Tom would do by having already previously done it without the viewer ever getting to see how that played out. And you just realize it after

the fact. Like, it's not as though there is some explosive conversation with Shiv where he's like, I'm leaving you. Like, that isn't what Tom would do. And it's succession. So I'm also like, is he got a lever? Like, I feel like people hating each other and staying together in some sort of tortured cycle is what this show always is. Because things never actually change. Right. I think that he totally betrayed her in a way where they could stay together. It just kind of flips the power dynamic in their relationship in one certain way, not even in every way. No, they'll never. break up. They can. They're too like nothing ever happens on the show even though everything

happens right. Like right. Even just the three kids coming together against their father finally like they lost but they kind of won. It was so it was so good. It's such a good show. Okay so there's this fantastic article on Defector by Tom Lay. Tomlay yeah I love that one. About how

it's really interesting how this entire show Logan Roy's entire point was like I'm never losing this company This company is never getting taken away for me. And victory will be me at the end of the day, holding all the cards, holding the company and deciding what I want to do with it. And then at season three, somehow at the end of this whole thing, victory for Logan Roy is selling the company in a position of weakness.

And he still gets to declare victory. And Tom's article is great. And we'll link it in the show notes. But the point that Tom makes is that this is America where rich people just get to declare things. And they don't get to, like it doesn't matter. what they just are changing the terms all the time and it's all completely irrelevant what victory actually means or what it is because this is the reality of the American oligarchy. Yeah, and like he can

decide what victory means to him minute by minute and other people don't actually have a say in what that victory is and he can still be right at the end of the day even though his new version of victory is completely different than what it was the previous day. And that's maddening. Like it's why succession is maddening but is also weirdly cathartic because it's just a depiction of reality. Right. It's true. It's, it's, it's, it's, yeah, I wouldn't even say it's nihilistic. I feel like it's just very true. And I don't really think the point that, like, I don't think the show is making some sort of, like, defeatist point about these people. It's just saying that these people are awful and this is reality, this is the reality of American oligarchy is that a bunch of rich, rich people,

one, one rich media mogul gets to pick the next. President of the United States. Yeah, and it's saying so much, it's a character show, right? I mean, you can't look at that scene with Kendall on the ground, like that unbelievable scene. And I mean, that was just a scene about a guy breaking apart and, like, exposing his humanity finally to his siblings and actually connecting with them. I mean, that wasn't even about the oligarchy and the awfulness of Logan Roy. That was just about three characters, like finding this really unexpected and weirdly like ugly beautiful way of connecting. And that was just like an amazing scene of acting and television and staging and directing

and camera work and everything. I mean, that was just like, I can't believe that I'm seeing this. So the show, it contains multitudes. Yeah. I mean, it's also just about, fundamentally, it's a show about how just money fucks people up. And that just feels so true to me. Like in my own life, the people that I know who are like very, very rich come from very, very rich families or like have some sort of very very rich background are just completely fucked in

some way or another just have completely fucked of lives and the show is very very true to that yeah definitely has a lot of a lot of understanding about wealth it is I don't I feel like it manages to depict an abusive family in that context without it being like a poor little rich boy slash girl situation where they're like oh definitely feel so sorry for for Roman for being abused by his father or whatever it's not that it's like a very human no it just shows the cycle of them than abusing people too. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then just also the recognition of that, like, oh, people are like this. Like, I recognize the human element of these extremely rich characters and they remind me of people I know. But then the horrifying part is that they're

incredibly rich and powerful and that when they get into a stupid little fight, it affects like billions of people. Right. It causes the president to decide not to run for reelection again. It's wild. I don't know. I like Succession now. I feel like after whatever the pandemic, I don't know. I've like entered the headspace of being able to laugh at Succession, which definitely wasn't true for me for the first two seasons. But now I think it's a funny show. So I don't know what's going on with my brain. But that's why I'm at. I'll be very curious if you rewatch it. Maybe at some point, obviously, we don't have a lot to say about this show. I think it's funny now if I rewatch it. It might be fun to do some bonus thing about it because, yes, I found rewatching it that I was laughing my ass off way more. than I did the first time that I watched season one. I was like, oh, I'm now, like, it's a mix of comedy and tragedy the first time, but it's much more of a comedy the second time.

Yeah, I mostly took it as, like, tragedy with, like, just occasional laughs the first time around, but, like, much more tragedy, whereas now I feel like just the absurdity of it all, I'll be able to tap into much more easily, and I'll probably dig it a lot. So, yeah, Succession, pretty cool show. This has been an episode of our podcast. We've done it again, folks. We won't see you next week. No, we'll see you long in two weeks.

Consider becoming a Maxxon member if you can. That's true. But otherwise, we'll see you in two weeks. And yeah, I'll see you both someday. All right. We'll be playing Halo. See you at the end of December. See you at the end of December.

Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org.

Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at Maximumfun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Audience Supported.