Triple Click - Triple Play: Monster Hunter Wilds

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

Kirk, Maddy, and Jason grab their Palicoes and pull out their dual blades for a monster hunt extraordinaire. This week, the gang is talking about Capcom's latest Monster Hunter. They talk about the appeal of the core gameplay loop, the thrill of the combat, and the approachability compared to previous entries.One More Thing:Kirk: The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells)Maddy: The Contestant (2023)Jason: Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification WarsLINKS:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Last weekend, my kids asked if we could go to the circus. So I said, all right, kids, get in the car. We're going to Congress. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week we are talking about Monster Hunter Wilds, a new action game from Capcom where you hunt monsters in the wilds. By the way, we really did go to the circus. It was quite fun.

I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. We remembered. We remembered our name. once again. For five years in a row now,

we've been remembering our names. We passed the cognitive tests for one more weekend. Every week panicking. Are we going to get this? Just never know how it's going to go. Kirk has to edit it out, but there are some weeks where it's really dicey.

It is. Yes. There was one week, there was one week where Jason's, I'm Jason Schreier, after his intro, was so dramatically different sounding than his intro that I went back to an earlier episode and I grabbed his I'm Jason Shire from that episode and now I leave it to listeners.

Is that really true? To go and try to determine which episode it was. Okay. Is this a true story? Yeah. Can you offer a prize? Because that'll take a lot of work to try to figure this up. How could anyone? It was long enough ago that I'm not sure I could find it. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Okay. Oh man. Speaking of Triple Click, we don't sell ads on this show.

So you can, we are only able to make this show happen because of listeners out there who we sell directly to. We sell this show directly to you, the listeners. Are we selling it? By that I mean, it's totally free. But you can help us make it possible. By becoming a member of our network, Maximum Fund, go to maximum fun.org slash join. And you can sign up today in addition to, again, helping making the show possible. You also get access to our massive backlog of bonus episodes, including some dozens that we've

already put out and new ones every single month, including the one we just published last week, which is about console launch lineups. And to kind of set us up for the Switch 2, we decided we would talk a little bit about recent console generations and what the games that came with them happened to be and what those lineups were like and what those generations were like. It's been a fascinating kind of evolution. And it's really striking the kind of, especially the changes that happened when we enter the PS5 generation. So go to maximum fund.org slash join and become a member today. Also a couple more housekeeping things. As we've said over the last couple of weeks, we will all be at the game

developers conference in San Francisco. In a couple of weeks, we're doing a very special bonus episode there where we record in person and we play a game called conundrums. We've already got a ton of really amazing conundrum suggestions from our listeners, but we're open to more. If you have one, send an email to Triple Pick at maximum fun.org with the headline conundrums. A conundrum being like a kind of what would you do, like a what if? Or would you rather, yeah. Would you rather, yeah, would you rather eat apples for the rest of your life? eat oranges for the rest of your life, that sort of thing. Would you rather stick a nail in your eye or get a million dollars, that sort of thing? Tough one, that one, a real conundrum.

If you could only use one game controller for the rest of your life, which one would you pick? What would it be? It could be a video game one is what I'm trying to say. Or they could all be Apple and Orange related. A lot of them are doing violence to your eyes. Yeah. Also, while we were in San Francisco, we will be hosting a kind of informal triple-click meetup in the Yerba Buena Gardens. Oh, it's informal. I was going to wear a tuxedo. Well, you can.

You can wear formal wear. It's just an informal meetup. Business casual. You don't have to use honorifics when you see us. You don't have to. Usually people come up to us and they say Maddie's son, but you don't have to do that. Right. But you don't have to do that.

You will not be announced. Well, you will. Oh, you will. Oh, okay. And we will be at the top of a really big staircase. The bell man will be announcing everyone as they come in. Anyway, we're going to meet up March 20th in the Yerba Buena Gardens. We're not sure exactly where we'll be.

We're just going to camp out somewhere. That looks cool. So come find us. Come say hi. Starting at 2 p.m. We'll probably be there for two hours or so, just hanging out. Meeting listeners, meeting buddies. It'll be a lot of fun.

So come say hi. Again, that's March 20th at 2 p.m. in the Yerba Buena Gardens. All right. That's it for housekeeping. Kirk. What are we talking about today? We're talking about a new video game called Monster Hunter Wilds, and I am very excited to talk about it.

I wrote a little intro for it. Yay. Give people the skinny on what this game is before we start talking about it. Monster Hunter Wilds is the latest in Capcom's 20-year-old Monster Hunter series, which began with 2004's PlayStation 2 game Monster Hunter. In the game, you play as a hunter heading up an expedition into unknown lands that. are teeming with weird giant monsters. And, I mean, look, you're a hunter. You're surrounded by monsters.

The name of the game is monster hunter. You know what's going to happen. Monster Fighter might actually be a little bit more accurate as the game loop revolves around catching up with the largest huge lizard or ape or spider, or octopus, or later in the game, freaking Gigacong or Godzilla or an elder dragon or whatever. You are currently hunting and engaging in a rollicking third-person boss fight with it, chasing it across the map while smacking it in the face with one of more than a dozen increasingly specific and bizarre weapons.

Wilds has been pitched as the most newcomer-friendly iteration of this famously complex and unwelcoming series, which is both technically true and somehow emotionally false. It's running on a new engine, which makes for some very pretty character models, even if it's also led to some significant performance problems on console and PC. It has a score composed by renowned composed. Lidia Tar, who I hear is a big fan of this series. Wait, hang on, sorry. I'm seeing her, it is actually by Miwako Chinone.

That's lovely music. Not by Lydia Tar, though. Not sure what she's up to these days. Anyway, yeah, I am our resident Monster Hunter Sicko. I put a couple hundred hours into 2018's Monster Hunter World across PS4 in PC. It's been a good 80 or so hours on 2021's. Monster Hunter Rise on the Switch. I have played around 40 hours of a review copy of Wilds.

I beat the story. I'm well into high-rank play. I have a lot of thoughts and opinions. But let's start with you two because you have played Lesner, a little less familiar with this series. So, yeah, let's talk about it. Maddie, how about you go first? Sure. I'm maybe like eight hours in. I feel like it took me about four to even understand how the game worked at all. So I do feel like we need to get into the idea of this being the most newcomer-friendly game. If that's the case, I dread the others. This is my first one, I guess I should say. This is my first time playing any monster hunter. And I was really struck by how confusing all of the weapon upgrade screens are. And now I understand them. And I love them because it turns out that's

most of this game. And it's pretty pleasurable. It's a real big number go up type of a game. You go, you hunt her monster, you get all of the bits from that monster's carcass, you go back to camp, and then you just watch a cutscene of a hot lady making your sword better with all of the monster parts that you've given her to do that task. And that's it. That's the game. That I was sort of like, is there something else to this? I don't think there is. I think it's really just exactly what I said. And once I kind of got that and understood that loop and also just the just really wordy AI screens, I was kind of into it.

And I just was like, all right, it's not going to be any more or less than this. I'm enjoying that. But yeah, the combat also feels kind of slow, which was something you had told us about ahead of time, Kirk. And I was glad you said that because it feels very different from like an Eldon Ring or any other kind of combat heavy game, very technical game that we might talk about on this. show. I'd kind of gone in expecting it to feel more like that. So I was glad that you mentioned how different it feels and getting a sense of the flow of combat was also how I felt like those first four hours were for me in terms of just even feeling out what weapons I liked. I think I'm there now and I'm enjoying it, but it was a journey. It was definitely a journey. So just so I can know,

what monsters are you up to or which ones did you fight? Oh boy. I'm a couple past, like there's that big sandstorm where you're fighting. I got past that and I'm a couple past that one. I don't remember all the monster names. I'm sorry. I fought several monsters and they just keep getting bigger and their cut scenes to intro them just keep getting more and more terrified. They just keep getting bigger through the whole game.

Okay, cool. So you're after that. That first kind of, it was a very promotional set piece, that lightning storm in the desert where Dosogama, the alpha dosogama turns up and there's a whole herd of them. That's a good fight. Yes, and you have to kind of navigate around the lightning strikes and maybe hopefully get the monster struck by lightning and so doing, and that's kind of fun to navigate. A lot of environmental hazards as part of a combat ritual in this game. Yeah, that's kind of the first fight that I would say feels like, okay, now you're really in it.

And then it goes from there. Okay, so Jason, what do you make of this game? Did you know that this game has sold 8 million copies in three days? I did know that. According to Capcom. I did know that. I have some other sales numbers here. Monster Hunter World sold 25 million or more copies.

Wow. RISE sold 16 million copies. And yeah, Wilds, the fastest selling game in Capcom history, 8 million copies in three days. That's crazy. So whenever a game is this popular, I always want to try to understand the appeal. But it has been a tough hang for me. Just like every single Monster game, they've all been tough hangs for me. And so before we recorded this,

I actually went on YouTube and I watched this video that was like, why people love monster hunter. And it essentially said what you've been saying for ages, Kirk, which is that like people just get addicted to the loop of like killing a monster, bringing back its parts, and making new weapons, and then using those weapons to kill more monsters. And that's just what people love about it. And I don't know, maybe I would be more into that, if not for all the bullshit, surrounding it. Because, yeah, the

opacity and the complexity of it all seems like it's going to be such a chore to try to understand and I don't, like, playing through it, I don't really, I haven't yet convinced myself that is worth taking the time to understand

it. So where am I? I'm up to the spider boss thing, spider monster thing in the forest. Lala Boreena. And, um... He has a wonderful outfit. Very great clothes from the Lala Boreena. I was about to say, worth defeating just for how good the armor looks.

That's the loop, Jason. I think maybe maybe that's one of the reasons that I've never been able to get into the series is because like, unlike the two of you, I've never once cared about an outfit in a game. That would be a tough one. This game's big on outfits. Yeah, it's just never like playing Destiny, playing Baldescape, like playing any RPG. I just never, I'm entirely about functionality and have never once cared about the aesthetics of my characters. like, it's just not something.

There's no part of my brain that is interested or cares about that at all. So maybe that's one of the reasons that I just bounce off of this series. But also, I don't know, something like the combat just felt so repetitive to me of just kind of looking for weeks, like their bloody weak spots

and then just like using the same weapon. I'm using the dual swords and then just kind of using the same buttons to attack those weak spots. When I try to like take the time to like figure out how other things work, again, it is so unwieldy and complex that I'm just like, why, like, this game has not really convinced me that it's worth taking the time to learn all these systems and learn out of trap monsters and

stuff. Like, I'd rather just be playing, I don't know, Horizon Zero Dawn, where it feels a lot better and a lot more intuitive to trap the dynos and kill them. And it's a lot more fun to knock their parts off. And it's just a lot more satisfying for me. But I don't know, man, all these millions of people can't be wrong. So maybe it's just not, I'm just not wired for these games, I suppose. There's definitely a hurdle where you're at that I experience, Jason, and that I forced myself past. But I don't know if that would change your mind. But I, I remember Lala Barina being one of the moments early on for me where I was like, what am I doing here? And I was just like spamming the same two attacks that you learn like right off over and over. And then at a certain

point I was like, I got to try some different weapons. I got to shake things up. I'm going to commit to this and make the decision to learn. But the game asks a lot of you by having that be something that you need to do, I would say, is that it's like, it's asking for your investment and for you to read all the screens. And like, we haven't even gotten into it, but there's this, what's it called, like the radial Kirk, like the thing that you customize on your screen where you can like rifle through all of the items that you have. Like, that's a fairly complicated aspect of the game. as well as just deciding what you want your shortcuts on the screen to be like what are the most meaningful things that you want to draw upon on battle are they explosives or are they health items where

are you in danger and like making those kinds of decisions i didn't feel like it was until after i'd gotten past the lala berena fight that i started even having the wherewithal to want to make those decisions but even that is like that's another layer of technicalities and you have to kind of enjoy diving into those technicalities. One more thing I just want to add is that I think maybe I would have more patience for like getting past that kind of hurdle. Like you did Maddie, if not for all the just kind of story and anime and nonsense that they pack in the middle of it and like the dialogue is just so inane and the characters are just

so like meaningless to me that I'm just kind of like it feels like I'm just wasting my time doing that whereas if it was just it was if it was a little bit quicker to get to each new monster and you didn't have to deal with all the other kind of nonsense, maybe I would be more inclined to be like, okay, I'm going to keep giving this like more and more chances until I like really, until one of these monster fights really clicks with me. Yeah, I think this game does a good job of getting to the, uh, to the monster fights a lot faster than the last two games that I played anyways. Like I got into this series with World and I appreciate that right at the start there's kind of a cutscene and then you're just in it and you fight against whatever that is, Chattacabra.

That's true. monster and you're just doing a monster fight where it was worse in earlier games you would spend a long time not so this one is the most newcomer friendly i suppose yeah well to get into that a little i suppose and then i can talk a little more about my my experience of this game because i've you know played a lot of it and i like it a lot i had a great time with it um yeah i think the newcomer friendliness is it's a little misleading even though it's true it's kind of like if you i've been trying to think of the right analogy it'd be like if you gave someone a slightly clearer map of the New York subway system

and then told them that they had to get from, you know, like, Coney Island to Queens. And then I'm just picking that at random. Maybe that's a bad example. They had to get all the way across town. And then they're like, okay, but it's still the same metro system. Like, it's still complicated. You've just given me a slightly better map.

And you say them, yeah, but imagine having that terrible map that I would have given you two years ago. Well, you don't know to take the G to the L to the... Yeah, yeah. Right. And so it's that kind of thing where like the fundamentals of the game are very complicated. There are a lot of interlocking systems. There's a ton of crufts.

And there are millions of people who have learned this literacy and who are fluent in Monster Hunter. And as a result are able to play it. And so they, instead of totally rebuilding all of that stuff, which I think would be possible, it'd be a Herculian undertaking, but would probably be possible to make it so that you could still have all the complexity, the ammo. prototypes, the status effects, the different buffs, you know, all the meal effects and all the different things with all the different weapons that can happen in this game without it being quite so cumbersome in terms of the interface, which is a big problem. And I think something that holds a lot of people back. So they've made some other changes. The biggest changes, you mentioned the radials, Maddie. So there are a variety of radial menus that you can access via controller shortcuts.

There's one radial menu that has sharpen your weapon at the top, your wet stone, which you have to do in between stages of the fight because your weapon grows gradually duller. And then on the right, there's just optimal status recovery. And on the left, there's optimal healing. And picking one of those two will just heal you with whatever type of potion you have that's most appropriate for the amount of damage you've taken. And then the status effect one will usually just use a nullberry, which is something that just undo anything like, I don't know, soaking or poisoned or I guess it might not undo poison, but it undoes a bunch of the other effects that can get you, you know, if a monster hits you with some sort of a special attack. So with those three things just at your beck and call, as a beginner, you actually only need those. And the game kind of tells you that and kind of doesn't tell you that. And I think that's sort of the place that this game is still lacking more than anything is in onboarding and in clear tutorialization.

If they just told you in the way that I told the two of you, there is this radial. You can just use that radial for the entire low rank of the game and really not worry about anything else. If it really emphasized that, then I think it would feel a little more welcoming than kind of showing it to you, but also showing you all these other radials and customizable radials and all this other stuff. And that's kind of true across the game. There is a training ground where you can practice with your weapon. The weapons tend to get very fun once you get around, once you get past the first level, where you start out you're kind of attacking with basic attacks. Then you start to figure out whatever it is, the secret thing.

There's like a special thing for each weapon. For dual blades, it's demon mode, which is actually pretty straightforward. I'm a long sword main, so there's a whole series of moves you can do to charge up the sword, and it gets to like a yellow level, and then a red level. And then at red level, you can do special attack. but that deplete it back down to the beginning. So you're constantly leveling up and down this sort of attack, you know, attack deadliness by landing more and more attacks throughout the fight, which is a fun thing to manage

in the back of your head while you're in the middle of dodging and rolling and getting up in a monster's grill. So that's the long sword. I haven't really mastered that many other ones. There's some really complicated ones. The thing is that when you go to the training ground, it shows you some basic moves, but you actually have to go into the menus and go to play guide and then go. go to your weapon, and then suddenly there's a big list of every move.

And there are some moves that aren't laid out in the training ground. So just stuff like that, where you basically have to go watch a YouTube tutorial to really figure it out. And the game has to convince you to do that. And I think that is, it sounds like Jason, you have not been convinced, and so you have not put in that time. And as a result, yeah, you're kind of standing outside of it. You're not fluent in this language. And as a result, the fights are kind of just whatever. where I will say that as someone who with Monster Hunter World decided,

okay, fine, I'm going to learn this language, I'm going to take the time. And with that game, I kind of started out one way and then really got forced into it by a very hard fight. The Diablas fight, I actually wrote about this for Kataku. It was so hard, I got just smashed and defeated a few times, and I had to go and really figure out what I was doing. And from then on, I kind of had a handhold in the game, had a toehold, and I was able to get going. And now, I mean, the thing I love about this game is not actually the upgrade loop. It's not the loop.

And it's not like making my outfits prettier and chasing whatever. It's the fighting the monsters. Like it is the gameplay. The gameplay is tremendous. It's so much fun. Every single fight is this just rollicking, exciting, wild throwdown that it engrosses me and it captures my attention and I'm on the edge of my seat. And I'm always up there. And it just feels like I'm totally in the face of this dragon, just smacking it with my sword.

And then it's nailing me and knocking me halfway across the area that we're in. And then I'm getting back in it and I'm chasing it down and I finally beat the monster. I mean, every single fight is so much fun. And because they're kind of standalone like that, each one takes like 15, 20 minutes. I can just sit down with the game, go fight a new monster and then be done. And it's a really very modular game in that way, too. So how is this different from previous games? Like is there, is it just kind of another iteration with just like a few changes here and there?

Does it feel drastically different? No, I would say emphatically that it is very much another one, particularly World. And I should also say, you know, I started with World. There have been a lot of these games. They used to be on handheld systems for a while. And I couldn't get into those. I tried one of them, maybe the 3DS one. They were aggressively segmented.

The map was, you know, you had a loading screen in between every region that you went to. So fights were just very, it was very hard to keep track of everything. End in the controls and the performance and everything. I mean, people love these games. They're huge, obviously, in Japan, but they're kind of big everywhere. People played them on 3DS, but that wasn't my thing. So when I say that it's another one of these, it's very similar to world. It has some changes.

He's using a new engine. It looks a little better in some ways, but also, you know, worse and kind of runs badly, I guess, especially for some other folks. I've actually had an okay time of it performance-wise on PC. But you too, for what it's worth. I know people are not, but... You go and you fight monsters. I mean, a lot of the same monsters are back.

You know, Oda Garon is back. My favorite, he's pretty much the same as in World. That's great. I don't really mind. So, yeah. What do you think about some of the streamlining parts of the game, which I only know from reading Polygons Review? Where, for example, you ride around, we don't call it a Chocobo,

but it sure looks like a chokobo. It's called the secret. Yeah, it's a big, cool bird horse, and you're riding that around. It's definitely a Chekoba. Yeah, it's very Chocobo-esque. And it's kind of like, it's like how an Assassin's Creed you can just tell your horse or your camel or whatever, where to go, and you just sit back and watch the landscape rolling by. You can do that in this game, too. And so you can really just watch, watch it go.

But also, you don't even have to get off your mount in order to pick up items. You can just use your little grappling hook along the way and just be like, like, I'll grab an herb here, rock there. Like, that is very automated. And I found it pretty pleasing. Like, that, to me, part of what's fun is the loop. And I do think the outfits are really, really cool. So that has been something I've enjoyed.

Even if Kirk is not, that's not his favorite, that was definitely something that helped me get in. I should be clear. It's a bonus. I love the outfits. They're very fun to chase. It's just the main attraction for me is the fights. The fights are very, very fun. Yes.

I don't think I'm good enough at the conference. combat for that yet, for that to be the attraction for me. So for me right now, I'm like all about the rewards and the loop. But that's just the mental stage I'm in at my monster hunter love story, which to be, to be, to be, to be, to be, I don't know if it's going to continue or not. I can't even say to be continued. You're still a little cuspy, it sounds like, there's, there's, yeah, we'll see. We'll see. I'm not, I'm not hating. These are like games that people play for hundreds of hours, right? Like, it really does, it gives and gives and gives them more and more you go. I will be curious if you keep going. To answer your streamlining question.

It is more streamlined. I'm fine with it. I've seen people complaining that, you know, your secret, secret, whatever, however it's pronounced, goes directly to the boss. And it turns the game into much more of a just boss, fight, beat the boss, go back, new weapons, story cutscene, new boss, fight. And there isn't anything else. At the same time, for me anyways, the other stuff in Rise and World always sort of felt, you know, like unnecessary. I want to go fight the monsters. So those games would make you go out in the world for a little while and you'd have to track down, you know, marks from the hunt.

You'd have to hunt the monsters. So you'd find like it's been clawing the trees and leaving, you know, claw marks. And there's a little bit of that in wilds, but way, way less. And so there isn't as much time where you're just walking around the world looking for, you know, trace before you find the monster. It just takes you straight to the fight. And I'm okay with that. I don't really need that extra padding. I just want to fight the monsters.

So I could understand why someone would miss that, especially if maybe they've been playing the series for a long time. They're very used to that sort of rhythm and having that extra little variety. But for me, it hasn't been a big deal. Yeah, that does sound kind of interesting to, like, incorporate more of the hunting part of monster hunter. Yeah, it's always been kind of tedious to me. Like, it's never really felt like characterful or interesting in that way. that I could imagine hunting being in a game.

If you really did slow it down and you had to do some investigation, it's a little more like you just walk around through areas until your green flies go over to a new clue and light it up and then you just go press a button on it. It doesn't have the feeling of doing an investigation. It just feels like you're kind of stuck not knowing what to do for a little while until the monster turns up on your map and then you can go, yeah, and you can go get in a big fight. And then that's the fun part. That's how it always was for me.

If someone doesn't feel that way and they like that stuff, then I could see missing it because it is pretty automated, especially with the auto drive on your chokobo. Yeah. Also, are you playing it on a higher difficulty? Because I'm not, I'm on normal. And it's plenty hard for me. But that's the other thing that I've seen people talk about, which is like, is this game too easy? And some of my coworkers have said this too, especially the ones who've played every monster hunter. And they're like, I know everything.

I know exactly what to do. I'm like clockwork in here, and I wish this game was a little more complicated. But maybe that's not how you feel. Well, I don't know about complicated. I certainly don't wish the game was more complicated. Difficult, just in terms of monsters, hitting harder and being harder to defeat.

It is easier for me than World was for sure. I never hit any walls like I did with Diablo's and World, or the Lightning Guy in Rise was also kind of a wall for me. There were some skill checks in the previous games. That said, I'm better at Monster Hunter than I've ever been because I've played 200, 300 hours of the game at this point, which I think is a common thing for people reviewing this game where they're a lifelong monster hunter sicko,

they're incredible at the game, and then this one isn't maybe quite as hard as world, which it is not as hard as world, I would say. And they can say, oh, this is too easy. So when you get knocked out in this game, you get cart, it's called getting carted because you get taken out in a cart and then you have to go back. I didn't cart a single time through all of low-bring,

rank and way into high rank. I finally got carded once. It's only happened once, and it was on this giga attack from a boss that you're supposed to get behind cover for, and then there wasn't any cover, and it got me. So I finally died. But I'm not amazing at Monster Hunter or anything. I've just found each fight to be pretty challenging. A lot of times I'll be, you know, absolute on my health, and if it hits me, I'm done. But because you can call your chokobo, your secrete over to rescue you if you get knocked down, you can get pulled out of the fray really quickly, and that is very, very helpful. So that's a big advantage that you have in this game. You didn't have in the past ones. Oh, because I love doing that. That's interesting that that wasn't previously there.

Bing! I should mention here that the Palamutes in RISE kind of could do this. I can't remember all the particulars, but there was a mount in that game. Feels kind of like a prototypical Sekri Chocobo thing. Anyways, just wanted to mention that. Bing! That's the thing. It's like, I don't mind the difficulty. I find it to be pretty fun. I mean, every fight feels. feels challenging and exciting. I'm having a great time. My heart rate is up. I'm in the mix. It's got my undivided attention. I don't know. Is it pounding me into the ground every so often? No. But I'm okay with that anyways. I don't know. It's really fun. So yeah, it's not a gripe that I have, even though I have seen that around. Yeah. I can't disagree with Jason on the story, though.

Yeah. There's just nothing to her, right? I. You don't mean you don't like the most annoying little kid in video game history, just complaining about everything? I don't. Yeah, there's like a kid who's lost. I don't know that I could summarize this story for you. It doesn't matter. Yeah, I think the story is all right. I like what they've done with The Hunter.

I might be in the minority on this, but the fact that the Hunter can talk in this game, which is a new thing. Oh, that's new. Okay. The Hunter is kind of a Commander Shepherd type. I'm playing a lady hunter. She has a very, you know, authoritative voice, and she just is kind of no nonsense. But it's nice to have your hunter say things, you know, contribute to the conversations because in previous games, they just stood there while everybody else talked. And then there are some moments because you get to see your hunter talking and engaging with the other characters.

Later on, when your hunter is doing some, you know, whatever, Dragon Ball style face off against the most insane monster you've ever seen and a slow-mo cutscene plays and your hunter draws their sword or whatever. Like those big anime moments really hit for me. They're really exciting because I'm just stoked to take on this huge monster and I felt a little more invested in the character. The story itself, yeah, who cares? I've never cared about a Monster Hunter story. I don't care this time.

One thing I do like is that the character designs are really good. Your handler, I think, and Gemma and the one lady who's like the head of your expedition. They're all really cool-looking characters. Obviously, Gemma is like a babe and is going to be a huge cosplay favorite. Yeah, she's the blacksmith. And she's a fun character too, though. And I like that those characters all come around with you. And there's a feeling of moving with your little party through the world and through the story that carries through the whole thing.

And every time you get somewhere new, each of the characters goes off and Gemma's really excited because something cool is going on and she's talking to a side character. And the handler is like conferring with other people. And there's a feeling that you're in this little moving community that I never got in the previous games. And I like that. it's just, yeah, like the writing is whatever and the story is whatever, and I don't really care about that stuff. So when you play Kirk,

do you play multiplayer at all or like have other random people come into your lobby? Because it seems like that's another big appeal of Monster Hunter for a lot of people. It's just like gang up with your buddies and playing. Yeah, the way I play the game is I typically do every fight solo the first time. So in low rank and then I'm actually,

I haven't been doing this in a high rank, but I've been getting back to solo play in high rank because I think the solo fights are very, very fun when it's just you against the monster. And I guess your palaco, your little cat buddy helps. And the palico is actually very helpful. We haven't even talked about the palico yet. Another thing that makes this game easier.

I think you can tell your palico to go away and then you can just solo the monster yourself. And that would be a lot harder because the monster would never stop being attention to you and you'd have to really be on your game. So I guess that's a way you could modify the difficulty. Oh, and you mentioned difficulty settings earlier, Maddie. I don't know that this game has variable difficulty.

I think it's just one difficulty. Oh, I guess maybe I'm wrong about that. I didn't check. But regardless, I'm playing on whatever it is. You could make it harder by not upgrading your gear. Right. But I believe there's just one difficulty. And then they tend to release like G-rank monsters.

I think that tends to come with the expansion. They have a kind of established roadmap for these games because they have a long life post-release. So the really hard stuff presumably will come later, which for anyone who thinks this game is too easy, I think that's somewhat frustrating, which I understand. Yeah, and it does seem like there's ways you could make it harder. But so how does the multiplayer work?

Because I haven't played it at all. But if I were to, what would it be like? So most of my play was a review build, and so there weren't as many people online. I tend to play multiplayer after I've soloed everything, especially if I'm trying to get a really good sword or something. It used to mean, especially in the earlier games, you had to kind of kill a monster a few times or capture a monster a few times to try to get the right parts to build the thing you want.

on, which means just repeating fights. And once I'm repeating fights, I don't really care about summoning other people in. I don't usually do the, there's like a clan system or whatever it's called where you can get in a group. I think there's a triple click one actually that I might join. I haven't been playing a lot post release. I played mostly pre-release. So if I play more post-release, I'll probably join theirs. That just kind of puts you in a matchmaking pool, I think, with other people.

I'm not totally sure how it works. It's a little, it's typically been a little bit tricky in the way that. everything in the interface in this game is a little bit, you know, more difficult to do than it should be. But I'm sure it works once you figure it out. And the way that you usually play is you can just fire an SOS flare. And if you fire an SOS flare, then anybody else who sees your SOS flare and sees what mission you're doing can just join in. And because there's so many people playing, when you fire an SOS player, almost immediately you'll just be joined by other players, which is really fun. So then there will be three other players in your hunt. And really then it just because

comes this total gang-up crazy boss fight where one player has a hunting horn is like playing this huge weird metal saxophone to buff everyone else. And another person has basically a machine gun, you know, the bow gun that's shooting. And you're in there with your sword. And another person has dual blades. And it's totally crazy. Those are rarely that difficult. You know, the monster, I think the monster scales up based on how many people are in there.

But it's still because its attention is so diverted among multiple players, I've never found those to be difficult. And actually a cool thing in Wilds that I don't remember being in the earlier games, but I'm not totally sure. I have a feeling that it might have been is that you can summon NPC hunters. And it's actually neat. Those same hunters I was talking about, the NPCs, like the characters in the story. Olivia, I know as one name's in like Raso or something. The characters who are the hunters that you see in cutscenes, they come into your game.

So you get to do a multiplayer game with computer-controlled hunters who kind of help you out. And those fights are, they're kind of mindless. It's more if you just want to put on a podcast and just get some gear and, like, do the same fight. They're never boring because Monster Hunter, to me, is never boring. But they're a lot easier and kind of, you know, you can relax a little bit just because there's four people to share the load. Yeah. Yeah, man, it's playing it, I don't want to be a downer, so I'll leave it to you to do most of the talking Kirk. But it's playing it, it kind of reminds me.

I was just thinking about this because you mentioned needing to get. parts multiple times in previous games for equipment. And I was thinking about how the first time I got parts on the first monster, I brought it back to the weapon to the blacksmith or whoever it was. And I just immediately had like 20 different options of like things, gear I could get or upgrades they could get or whatever. And I was just like the learning investment I'm going to have to make here, it kind of reminds me of SIV 7 where like I feel like there are going to be people out there who are

like really into SIV and they're going to get invested. And for them, every choice is going to be interesting because they know all of the outcomes and they know when they're making the right decisions. Whereas with, and with this, it's the same sort of thing where, like, you, the learning curve is so high, the barrier for entry is so high that you really need to spend the time to just kind of dedicate to learning it. And, yeah, I guess for me, it's just like I have other stuff to learn. I have other games to play. Right, which is fair. That's an interesting one.

It's, I think it's interesting to hear something like that, like that kind of an experience. and to think about how they could make it better. Because they've added this, Gemma can suggest gear to you, and you would think that that would make things easier. That doesn't come up right away, by the way. Oh, maybe not. That was what, I, because Jason, I had the same experience, and I don't think you're far enough in the game for Gemma to start making recommendations to you.

And once she did, it helped me so much. And I wish they had done it a little earlier. Okay, but the thing is that the recommendations aren't actually very helpful. I'm sure they're not. And then there's a specific problem, though, and it's that she starts suggesting a ton of stuff. And then pretty soon there's so many possibilities that her recommendations just aren't really very tailored

to what she want. And it isn't like you can say to her, hey, I'm going to go fight, you know, a fire-breathing monster that's weak to ice. And then it can say, oh, well, you should make this decoration and you should get this sword. It's just here's what I recommend. You're saying it needs chat GPT.

So a real thought here is that I think they should rework low-rank. this might bum out long-time players. But the thing is, this is a tutorialization issue. Hold on. They sold eight million copies in three days. They don't need to do anything. But I do think other people are probably having a similar experience to us, Jason, because I had that same experience you just described.

When my first parts came back, I was like, I'm ready to upgrade. I have no idea what to do. To be clear. To be clear, I am not saying they need to do this in order for this series to be successful. I love these games. I think they're great. And millions of people play them. And it's a great series that's doing wonderfully.

That's not my point. I mean, they should do this in order to smooth out the experience and actually make it more welcoming to new players, which they do seem invested in based on everything the game's director and all these people are saying and based on some of the decisions that they've made. So with that in mind, low rank is so meaningless in this game. Low rank is the story and you play through the story and you can upgrade your weapon in a bunch of different directions in low rank and get cool armor. But the thing is, the minute you finish the story, you go into what's called. called high rank, and then suddenly you have high rank gear and high rank armor in particular that opens up. And high rank armor looks exactly like the low rank armor, but it's just better.

So suddenly all the low rank armor that you have is just pointless, and now you just go get it again. And that's fine, I guess, because that's what this series has always done. But I don't know that they couldn't just make low rank a lot simpler in terms of the numbers and the stats of the gear. because in truth, if they just told you very clearly, here's what you should do in low rank, just put on whatever piece of armor has the highest armor number.

That's it. And don't worry about any of this other stuff, this crazy interface with all these different attributes and weaknesses and strengths and these plus minus shit. They should just show you that number. And then that's all you have to worry about. Maybe it's like you put it in newcomer mode or something. And then you're just trying to make the number go higher,

so you just scroll through the gear until you get to the gauntlets with the highest number, helmet, et cetera, boots. And then with the weapon, it's the same thing. You just make a bone weapon, which those always have the highest, like, raw attack number. You just make bone weapons all through low rank. And that's really simple then, because you're always getting bones, and you don't even need specific parts.

You can just make a bone sword or whatever from any bones from any monster. And then when you get to high rank, if you get that far, you're probably, like, more aware of different systems and different things that you might want. And then maybe the gear becomes much more complicated. and it starts to show you all these other interlocking systems and weaknesses and strengths and stuff. It just seems like low rank should be simpler and the game should make it more clear to you that not that much matters in low rank, especially because you're going to throw a lot of that stuff out anyways when you get to high rank. It's definitely something that like it still seems like something they could smooth off.

Yeah. I mean, it helped me when you told us a version of that. Like early on you were like, just sell, you're going to get rid of all of your armor pieces immediately. And like that was kind of freeing for me where I was like, okay, every single time I go back to camp, every piece I'm wearing will be different, and I'm about to change it my whole life, my whole look. You're going to look like a freak all through low rank. It doesn't matter.

Sometimes I look amazing. And then I have to not get attached, because in the next fight, I'm going to look terrible for some reason. It's a nice thing in high rank, if you do care about how you look, that any armor that you unlock can become layered armor. So you can be wearing anything,

and it's like a, what's it called? What's the word people always use for that? Transmog. It's a transmog system. You can make. yourself look like anything you want, which is, which is fun if you're into the fashion hunter of it all. Which I kind of am. But, but that, that helped me to just be like, this is meaningless, but it is true that, like, having those recommendations is helping me at the stage of the game I'm at now,

but as it gets more complicated, I can imagine that it soon won't. And that just looking at the attack numbers and, like every other modifier, I don't even know what they mean. And maybe I never will. Yeah. And I mean, I've turned off attack numbers even so that when I, land and attack, I don't even see the number anymore, which I think maybe used to be how this series was. Well, there's no health bars. They sure don't tell you what the monster's health is. And that's part of it.

You can just watch the monster and figure out, you know, through its animations and its behavior, you can figure a lot out, which is actually really fun. There are a lot of little tweaks like that. You know, the menus are all overwhelming and a little unclear in what they're describing, you know, radial type. And you're like, what does that mean? I still don't know what it means. I still don't know what it means.

Click the stick to select. something in your radio. So like there are, and then there are all these, you know, YouTube videos that do basically what I did for the two of you. I should say, I like basically wrote an article for the two of you that I put in our Discord that was, here are my tips for playing Monster Hunter. It's pretty good. Pretty useful. I read it twice. I read it before I started and then I read it a couple hours in because I was like, I don't understand anything's going on. I need to read this again. And like, I think it's too bad that the game requires that. Clearly it is not hurting them. No. You know, there are YouTube videos. It's fine for them to rely on that. At the same

time, it does seem like they could tackle the problem of solving this in-game. And I would love to see that just because getting more people across that hump would just mean more people would get to have as much fun with Monster Hunter as I do. And I really love these games. They're always just really straightforward pleasures. There's nothing very complicated about them. It's just fun to fight big monsters and I have really, you know, have really enjoyed all three of the ones that I've played. So yeah, I hope that, I hope that that happens. But in the meantime, I suppose for anyone playing this game, either they have friends who write guides for them or they can go on YouTube and, you know, look up some guides. There's no shortage of service material for a monster

hunter. Get your friends to write guides for you. That's good advice. I mean, it's not not a good way to get your friend into a video game to just write them, a specialized guide. A specialized guide. and put it in a Discord DM. It can be very effective. Not every time you get two out of, two out of one at a two, two out of three. Sure. However we want to count this. All right, nice.

Well, there are more monsters to hunt as there always are. But for now, how about we take a break? And then we come back for one more thing. In two weeks. Two weeks. Put on your gecko shorts and grab your pods. We're celebrating max fun drive. 90-style.

Support the shows you love. And get some rad, retro-themed gifts. Meetup Day, bonus content, and more. So don't miss it. On the World Wide Web, March 17th. Somewhere in an alternate universe, where Hollywood is smarter. And the Emmy nominees for Outstanding Comedy Series are Jet Pacular, Airport Marriott.

Thruple. Dear America, we've seen you naked. And allah in the family. In our stupid universe, you can't see any of these shows, but you can listen to them on Dead Pilot Society, the podcast that brings you hilarious comedy pilots that the networks and streamers bought, but never made. Journey to the alternate television universe of Dead Pilot Society on Maximum Fun.org. And we are back for one more thing. Jason, I am looking forward to hearing your one more thing. So how about you go first? I have been playing a video game.

It's called Sweet Codon 1 and 2 HD Remaster, Gate Rune, and Dunan Unification Wars. No, no, no, I think if this is our naming episode, we would be like 10 out of 10. 10 out of 10. 10 out of 10. Did it. Man, it's been a wild week for Sikotan fans. I don't know if you guys saw this, but there was a stream on Monday. Day Night where the producers at Konami, like, announced a whole bunch of Seekotan stuff, including

an anime and a stage show and a brand new game that looks like Seekotin 6 essentially, like looks like a brand new game, except it's for mobile and it's a gotcha game. Yeah, it's a good gotcha game. And also the remasters of the first two Seekotin games come out. I don't know if you guys, have you two played Seekotin 2? Nope, never, trying to remember. Never checked it out. I never have.

Just not ringing any bells. I can recall. It doesn't sound like something I would play, so I don't even know why you're asking me that. It doesn't. A couple of years ago, if people have not listened to it, go back and listen to us talking about this game, which I successfully got Kirk and Maddie to play by winning the production or tying in a predictions bet a couple of years ago. And so now Konami has remastered the first two games and released them on modern platforms. And these remasters are fascinating. They're gorgeous. They're like total remakes of the graphics. They look fantastic. The kind of the sprites are mostly the same, but the backgrounds look great. And in action, it looks phenomenal. I've been playing on Steam Deck where it runs pretty well, which I would hope it would,

since it's a remaster remake of a PlayStation 1 game. Most importantly, other than some bells and whistles, I mean, there's like a speed up button in combat. There's like, there's a toggle that lets you bypass the, so to get this one side quest, in Suikodin 2, this big Clive sidequest for one of the characters, you have to like speed run the game. And now there's a setting that lets you get that sidequest without speed running the game. The biggest change is that they completely overhauled the scripts for both games. Because as you guys might remember, the script of Suikodin 2 is pretty busted. It's full of typos.

It's full of like, not only typos, but like people saying the wrong things sometimes and like dialogue being in the wrong place. Scripting errors. scripting errors and also just like nonstop like ellipsies like there will be just like 20 dots in a row between each line. Now it reads like a normal script and it's really good. It's really well done. I was actually a little worried about this. I was worried they wouldn't put that much care into it because I've been looking at like Konami has had this secretan account tweeting a bunch and some of what they've tweeted has been broken English. So I've been a little bit worried. But no, the script is actually really good. And overall, they're fantastic remasters of these two games that I think a lot of people out there will want to revisit or play for the first time. But what to me is even more exciting is that Konami has said that they are like trying to bring back the Sukhoden series in a big way.

I actually interviewed the producer a few days ago of this like of the remaster and like this new initiative at Konami to bring back this beloved series that. has been my favorite RPG series for decades. And he was talking about, and he talked about this on the live stream as well, this like multi-step process. It seems like they're trying to, they got a lot of pre-orders for this remaster. And so they're trying to bring it back in other ways. Like I mentioned, the mobile game, the stage show, the anime. And then it sounds like in the future, he wants to make a new game, a brand new, C-Codon-6 or like remaster the other games and, like, do all this cool shit. So that's all very exciting. All of this is good news, which is like hard to believe from Konami, but it's all just like good vibes.

I guess you could say the fact that this new, a brand new game happens to be a mobile gotcha game is kind of a monkey's paw situation. But whatever, I mean, the fact that there's like new Svekoan stuff is, is wild to me in 2025. Like the last Svecoden game, not counting these like garbage spinoffs that were released, the last Svigodon game came out in 2006. So we're talking about a hell of a gap here. Yeah, 20 years almost. Are you going to watch the anime? That's my question. I don't know.

It seems unlikely that I will watch the anime. I'll watch it for you. That seems like a way I could engage with Sweet Coated. If there were an anime that Jason Shrier would watch. Yeah. I think the anime is going to be based on the one you played. It's probably a better translation and writing version of it, though. Yeah.

I actually, I regret. It's all of one of the issues I had. I regret that you guys had to play a vastly inferior version. Like there's so many changes and fixes in here. It's okay. We weren't going to wait all the way for this. You got the true experience. You play, yeah, you play the pure version. But like even, okay, so here's

a kind of a surreal moment for me. So I played Sukkoden 2 dozens of times. By the way, I checked out both games in the remaster. I'm kind of way further into Sukoden 2 because Sikodon 1 still feels a little bit clunky. It's older or Silicon 2 as even the original version,

Sukkah 2 had a lot of improvements over a second and one. But anyway, I put two probably a dozen times, if not more, over the years. And so I know it very, very well. And there's some parts of it that I'm just used to, including the

kind of the war battles, there's this glitch where the music doesn't play. And in this remaster, they fix that glitch among many other. They fix all the glitches that were big issues. And so you, enter a war battle and suddenly you hear this new music track and for me it's like mind-boggling to be like oh my god like it's like um i don't know if it's like you're playing a song that you know by heart from

muscle memory and then suddenly the notes are all off in a different way like that's what it feels like when you're playing this game that you know by heart you know so well but then something is different this bug is fixed that used to be there and now suddenly the music plays and it's this new track it's just really just a surreal experience everything about this is an extremely surreal experience The fact that Suikoden is coming back in a big way is just extremely surreal for me and I'm still processing it, I think. Yeah, that does sound really weird. But anyway, I'm sure we'll unpack this more in the future as, like, Konami continues on this quest to like bring back this franchise that I have loved for so many years, which is going to be wild. But for now, I will just say that Sucoon 1 and 2 remaster, sorry, Sweetcotein 1 and 2 HD remaster, gate ruined in Dunan, University.

Wars, 10 out of 10, A plus. It's a really good remaster. I think it's extremely well done. And it's got no gotcha mechanics whatsoever. And if you are curious about these games that I love, that you two are more Ligormon. And if you, or if you are revisiting it, you haven't played it since they came out on PS1 or something like that. Go check out this remaster because it's really good. I was looking, I was trying to remember what the glitch was that I found. It's the Matilda Glitch. Yeah, the Matilda Glash. Is that still in the game? Or did they, did they fix that? I didn't actually try that one, but I'm 99% sure that it's fixed. Because, yeah, I mean, it is like, they fix all, they fixed all of the glitches and issues.

And it's like, it feels like a proper polished game. So it's like, in addition to the graphics looking great and the quality of life features. Like, it's still, don't get me wrong. It's still an old school turn-based JRP. So, like, if you're, if you're not a fan of invisible random encounters, like, you're still going to bounce off of this game, I think, but now it feels like this is a really good entry point for the series. If you are curious about it, and you are into kind of old school term-based JRPGs. Nice. Yeah, anyone going through the Max Fun Archives listening to our triple play

who wants to finally play the game now is your time. Or if you guys are in the mood to replay it, now is your chance. Yeah. Anything can happen. I'm going to start that right after this. Yeah, never say never. Maddie, what is your one more thing? My one more thing is a documentary called The Contestant that I really recommend, although it's a wild ride. So this documentary kind of has two main characters. And one of them is this guy whose nickname is Nassaby. And I kind of remembered him from like when I was in elementary school, like news stories about a reality show that he was on in Japan in 1998,

where he lived alone in this apartment. And they take his clothes away at the beginning. by the way. So he's naked this whole time. And he has to survive entirely off of winning prizes and write in magazines. So the entire apartment is just this small room. It's got a kitchen and a bathroom, but it's a table with a bunch of postcards and a ton of modern magazines, contemporary magazines, and he's just writing and trying to win, well, food for one thing, because he doesn't have any food. And also just everything else that he needs to just to survive, but he never leaves this apartment. So it's like he's living in lockdown almost. And he's,

he's like completely isolated and like his diaries became famous because he wrote about how bizarre and upsetting and all the all the experiences that he had here. And then there is this other character who's Toshio Tutsia who is the guy who produces the show. And I'm not a medical professional. I don't want to diagnose anybody as a psychopath, but I did have that thought a lot when I was watching this documentary about this man. Just the discretion of this show. Because when Gnassi is cast on this show, he does not even know that it's being filmed

and that it's going to be turned into a show. Like he's kind of unclear on that. And that's extremely clear in this documentary. And they have the adult version of him. And like, thank God they have him because otherwise I think this documentary would be really upsetting if you didn't kind of see that he is an adult now

and he's kind of gotten through it in some form and has his own take on it. And that that is sort of contrasted with Sushia being like, yeah, I did this thing to this guy who was a really young person and did whatever I told him to do. And it is really haunting. And it is also like a kind of a parable about the rise of reality TV that's upsetting. But I will say that somehow, despite how stressful the documentary gets, and it gets very stressful. Like, I must warn everyone.

It gets really, like, there's a point in the documentary where you're like, I think everything's going to be okay. And then it gets way worse. And, like, anyone who's watched it is going to know what I'm talking about. And that really upset me. But then they do manage to end it on a high note at the end, in part because this guy who was on this show has somehow managed to, like, take away something different about humanity than you think, where he's like, I learned about how important community is because I was so isolated when I was on this show. this show. So yeah, I really recommend it. It's bizarre. Like the thing that happened to this guy and the producer who is just a fascinating character. I don't know. The contestant is what it's called. It's on Hulu. It's a Hulu original. So I think it's only on Hulu. That's where we

watched it. I recommend it. It's a really good documentary about a really specific social phenomenon. So wait, was there ever a conversation like in Japan about the ethics of this show? Yeah, that's part of the documentary as well. But contemporaneously, when the show was airing, it wasn't obvious to the viewers how unhappy Nassupi was because it was edited in such a way to make it seem like a comedic situation. And they show you that and they make it really clear that like it was a comedy show. And then for him, though, it was traumatizing.

And it's very clear that it was extremely traumatizing for him to have been on this show. But the show itself was funny. It's really weird. to see that duality play out. It looks interesting. It looks like it was an English and met film. And then it was acquired by Hulu

for American Distribution. Yeah, I've heard about this. I want to see it. Yeah, I recommend it. It's good. It's really well done.

Pretty crazy. Late 90s reality show. That was a reality TV. That was a hell of an era. Wild. All right. Well, I will go last. My one more thing is

a series of books that I've been reading, really novellas, very short books called The Murder Bot Diaries. Have any of you, have either of you ever heard this? No. Good title. I've gotten, I've seen this recommended a few different places. Some of my friends really like it. And then I think I've seen some folks on the triple click Discord talking about it. So I've been reading a lot lately. I've mostly been reading Jason's One More Things, or at least a lot of the bigger books. So like the Bright Sword, great book. I just finished Real Americans, an amazing book. So I've been reading these longer books. In between, occasionally one of these MurderBot books will just come in in the library, and I'll put it on my Kindle, and then I'll read it in usually an afternoon.

These are incredibly short, like 150-page novellas written by Martha Wells, and there are five or six of them, and then maybe more, maybe more like eight, some even shorter versions of them. And it is actually, I just found out, about to be released as a series on Apple TV starring Alexander Scarsgaard as Murder Boll. which is pretty wild. He's, of course, a great actor and would be great for this, even though I'll be very curious how it is because I have my own mental version of Murder Bot, and a big part of the charm of these stories is the narration and the ambiguity of Murder Bot themselves, or I suppose it would call it itself, but somehow that feels off. So I'm never quite sure which pronouns to use with Murder Bot.

So let me explain what these books are. So Murderbot is a security droid, a security robot in the future. It's a sci-fi setting. We are in a kind of largely corporate-driven intergalactic setting, though it's all a little bit vague and not overly defined because the entire story is told in the first-person perspective by this security bot, who calls itself MurderBot and who is keeping these journals, these diaries, as just a way of keeping track of its story. We learned at the very beginning that MurderBot has, it has overridden what's called its governor module, which is the thing that would normally make it obey humans and basically fit into its little place in the network and be obedient. It has overridden that, and it is now what would be called a rogue security unit, which is a terrifying thing to most people, because security units are very powerful.

It has, like, guns and its arms and is really dangerous. And it calls itself MurderBot. and even though it is actually like a security bot. A good way to calm people down is to be like, don't worry guys. My name is MurderBot. So MurderBot only calls MurderBot, I think almost always just to itself and its own internal monologue. So calm people down by not telling them that your name is MurderBot. Well, so here's the thing.

And so from the very beginning, from the start of the story, the very first story, MurderBot is deployed with a group of humans. MurderBot is always very frustrated by humans because it's always trying to keep them safe because that's its job. but the humans never listen, and so they go and do stupid things because that's what humans do. And so much of the charm of the narration of these stories is this robot and it's endless frustration with and fascination with human beings. In that MurderBot is always very frustrated by people and is kind of, you know, mad or like stressed out by what they're doing. But also, this murder bot is totally free to do whatever it would like. And it could just leave, but it never does. It's like, well, I got to stay and help them out because these people are.

are actually kind of nicer than clients I've had in the past, and it's sort of like them. And then, of course, over the course of the story, and now I'm on the third one, you know, MurderBot is a lovely person. MurderBot really cares about people and is actually a very thoughtful and caring individual who is just very, very different than human beings. So of course, there is a very common, and I would say purposeful reading of these books that this is really the story of a neurodivergent person who is, you know, figuring out how to coexistence. exist with neurotypical people. And that's, you know, one of MurderBot's kind of defining attributes is that MurderBot really likes to watch TV. So MurderBot has downloaded just dozens and dozens

and dozens of hours of these shows that it likes to watch Sanctuary Moon is the one that it really loves. There's like a million seasons of this show. Oh, so like fictional TV shows. And it'll get really stressed out when it has to like, you know, when humans are talking to it and expecting it to say things or when it has to pretend to have emotions. And it really stresses it out. So it's like, I just want to go like be alone and just like watch sanctuary moon for a while. And so you see these kinds of, you know, behaviors. And it really is very endearing and very relatable to this, to this, you know, security robot. And I really love these books. They're, they're so short. Each one really almost feels like an episode of TV. They have just enough character development to really win you

over. They're very, very funny. Martha Wells is just narration style, murder. sort of dry and constantly beleaguered, but also, you know, like, revealingly caring. Like, it reveals things about itself. I think that it doesn't mean to. And just the cast of characters that's developing. Each one builds on the one before it, and we're seeing, you know, that it's coming back to earlier characters and earlier storylines. So it's kind of building something bigger.

They're really great books. I mean, they're very fun as the just little tasty treat in between longer books, because they're all so short. and they just give you a nice little adventure with some action and some intrigue and some fun character reveals, and then they just end, and you move on to the next one. So I really wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone out there who thinks that that sounds fun. And I'll be very curious what this TV series is going to look like. Because like I said, MurderBot's physicality is not super defined. MurderBot does not think of itself in any way as a sexual being.

It, you know, it's just so picturing Alexander Scarsguard, who has a, who is, who is, good at doing a kind of neutral affect, and I could see as a great actor, so I could see being great at this. Even so, I don't know, it's hard. Without the narration, the constant narration of a first-person protagonist, it's going to be very, very different. So we'll see. I'm hopeful it's good. I'll definitely watch it. But in the meantime, go read the books. The books are great. And yeah, that's all I have to say about MurderBot. So go. That sounds really good. I'm going to read these. Go check them out. They're great. Yeah, you dig on my thing.

I think I would, yeah. And that is another episode of Triple Click, y'all. We did it again. Look at us go. We remembered not only our names, but also to record a whole podcast. We remembered how to make a whole podcast. Yeah, we recorded all of it. Wild stuff.

Yeah, all right. Well, for now then, I suppose that'll do it, and I will see the two of you next week. See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music, Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode

may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes.

Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. own network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.