Triple Click - Triple Play: Star Wars Outlaws

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Kirk, Maddy, and Jason grab their blasters and hop on their speeder bikes for a trip to Star Wars Outlaws, the latest game in a galaxy far, far away. They talk about what they like, what they don't like, and break down the Star Wars-iness of it all.One More Thing:Kirk: StReam DeckMaddy: Love Lies Bleeding (2024)Jason: Ace Attorney Investigations CollectionLINKS:Featuring excerpts from “Star Wars” by John Williams from Star Wars and “Kay Vess, Outlaw” and “The Trailblazer”  by Wilbert Roget II from Star Wars OutlawsPreorder Jason’s Book! https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason-schreier/play-nice/9781538725429/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. Not in Star Wars Outlaws anyway. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we played a game with no Jedi in it, a galaxy controlled by an empire that's too distracted by rebels to pay attention to all our scoundrel maneuvers. It's a different slice of Star Wars. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shrier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello.

Hello. Hello. It's us again. We made it back. Once again. We did. We made it back. Three of us. Back to our microphones. All three of us.

And, you know, it's a good thing there's all three of us here. Why? Because I just wanted to just have all three of us here when I say how great I think maximum fun is. We have to change the name. Well, that's also part of it. There's a lot of pieces here. And all three of us have to connect in order for me to say that I think maximum fun is a really cool podcast network that we're all on. And also in order for me to say that you, the listener, you, yes, you listening right this very second, could go to maximum fun.org slash join.

And if you became a member, you could listen to a bonus episode that all three of us recorded recently where we did a Marvel check-in. We talked about all the recent Marvel movies and TV shows. This is our third in a trio of Marvel check-ins that we've done because we do a monthly bonus episode here at Triple Click. And this one was mostly about the movie Deadpool and Wolverine, which all of us saw, but also some other things that only one of us saw. Like, I saw Loki Season 2 for some reason. We talk about that. We talk about the multiverse.

We talk about King. What happened to that guy? We talk about how Marvel is failing because of woke. Yeah, we talk about woke and how woke ruined it. We must be about wokey. We should have called it Wokey Season 3. Yeah, Lady Deadpool now? Why is that there?

Just kidding. It's fine. What they think of next. Lady, a Deadpool in my day. A Deadpool was only a man. There's no such thing as a Lady Deadpool. Yeah, definitely not many comics going back featuring Lady Deadpool. Anyway.

By the way, subscribe to my YouTube channel where I make videos about walking. Yeah, and this is definitely not a bit that we do every single week on the show. So Maximumphoon.org slash join. You can get all of our wonderful bonus episodes, including that one. And also sometimes we do bonus ups about video games and movies. We did a Nolan one, Chris Nolan one recently. There's a bunch of good bonus ups in the queue back there. So check that out.

And without further ado, let's get right back to the games, shall we? Yes, let's get back to the games. We're talking about a new game this week, and I'm excited to get into it. I wrote a little intro for us. So without further ado, a long time ago on a video game system far, far away, Star Wars, Dark Forces, Star Wars Bounty Hunter, Star Wars Shadow of the Empire, Republic Commando, and 1313-ish. Video games have a long, if somewhat patchy history with the elusive non-Jed Star Wars game where you play some sort of normal non-force-imbued character shooting, climbing, and starfighting your way through a galaxy far, far away with nary a lightsaber or bolt of force lightning to be seen,

which brings us to Star Wars outlaws. Outlaws, Ubisoft Massives Open World Scum and Villainees Simulator is the first non-EA developed Star Wars games since Disney opened up the series license to other developers. In Outlaws, players step into the vest of Kay Vess, a scrappy bullshitter of no great renown. After a series of failed jobs and scoundrelish brushes with death, Kay finds herself with a price on her head as she and her best friend slash pet Murkal Nix gets swept up in an ambitious heist scheme. organized by a mysterious and charming man named Jalen Vrax. teamed up with the stoic commando droid ND5. K and Nix set off to cantinas all across the galaxy, recruiting a motley band of semi-trustworthy criminals to their cause.

Set just after Empire strikes back and before Return of the Jedi, around three A-B-Y to those in the know, outlaws focuses squarely on the black market nonsense happening in the spaces between the emperor's crushing grasp and the ongoing redire. rebellion against it. It presents a mix of third-person stealth, platforming, and combat that hits a distinct balance between an assassin's creed and an uncharted. With character progression tied to the story as Kay meets and recruits more experts, they give her specific challenges to overcome in exchange for helpful new abilities. She is also constantly navigating her relationship with the galaxy's

criminal syndicates, the pikes, the huts, and so on, often playing them against one another and gaining or losing reputation with them in the process. And that's the game, chatting with CD characters taking on stealth missions that often turn into combat missions, cruising in your space motorbike across large open world zones, and occasionally spicing things up with space, combat, or handmade setpiece battles. It's Star Wars Man, and we have all been playing it. So let's talk about it. Let's just go around and give some initial impressions and sort of, you know, say how much you played and what you think of it. Jason, why don't you go first? Yeah, I played a bunch. I have traveled through space and

rated imperial space stations and snuck around, oh, so many scoundrel, bandit smuggler hideouts. And yeah, I like it. I don't love it. It's good. I mean, it's a very Ubisoft experience in that, as I mentioned

last week in my one more thing, it tries to do a lot of things. It doesn't do any of them particularly well. Like, they're all just kind of base level, like, B tier. Just kind of like, like, B grade. Be grade. activities. I wish, you know, it's funny. I was thinking when I played the demo at Summer Games Fest, I was like, this feels cool. It's like uncharted-ish. It feels like a video game, very kind of

average all around. It'll live or die based on the story. And the story for so far has not done much for me. And especially the protagonist, KVS, has done absolutely nothing for me. I find that she doesn't really have a personality, her voice acting. I find very irritating and inconsistent. she has a tendency to like pause in the middle of sentences in a way that has really taken me out of it. So as an overall package, I don't really think I love it that much. That said, I think it's better than people kind of have given it credit for when you slow down and take your time and just kind of like enjoy the Star Wars of it all and engage with the systems like the upgrade system or like the food system and stuff like that. But it's not a game that I feel particularly compelled to be like, everyone should play this. I'm going to go finish this thing.

So yeah, like it, don't love it. It's fine. It's, it's okay. Nice. Maddie. How about you? Yeah, I'm about 20 hours in. And I think this is going to be a fun game for us to talk about because there are some things I like and some things I don't like. And I don't think we often get to talk about games like that on this show where it really is a lot of different kinds of things. I really like, for example, there's a reputation system in this game. And I don't think I've ever personally played another. game that operated in this way. So basically K Vess, she's kind of this, she's a scoundrel character. That's like what, she's a self-described scoundrel character. And she's dealing with all these other just outlaws around the galaxy. And there's the Pikes and the huts and the Crimson whatever's, dons, whatever they called. She's got to worry about all these different syndicates. And it's not like another video game, like a fallout, for example, where it's like you join a gang and you stick with your gang and you level up your gang armor and that's your choice for the whole game or if you're

going to switch, there's a big plot point that's related to that. This game is all about playing the syndicates off of each other intentionally. And a lot of the story insofar as there is a story has moments where you get to decide who you're going to double cross. And that's one of my favorite parts of this game is just this entire system that they've designed where you're constantly playing these syndicates off of each other. And if you're in good with one of them, you don't have to sneak around. You can just walk right in and then get to the inner circle and maybe that's the part where they don't want you to go and then you start sneaking, but you can walk right into their camp, or there might be some under syndicate that you're on bad terms with. And then you're like,

okay, how am I going to suck up to these guys? And like that whole system I'm really, really enjoying. And I think it's very systems forward in terms of a storytelling methodology. And I think that's really cool. It's very far cry too. It's something where the stories, you tell about the game are kind of about systems and like, oh, you know, I was sneaking into here and then this went wrong and then I had to do all these things to deal with it. I think that can be a really fun way for a game story to work. But I also really agree with you, Jason. I think KVS is kind of nothing as a character. I'm really hoping that she becomes more of a character over the course of the game, but I'm surprised that I've gone this long and I still feel like there's not a lot

to her. And that kind of, you know, gives me pause just in terms of like how long I I've been playing and how much I'm still kind of waiting for a character to a true emerge. I don't think her voice acting's bad, but I don't know that there's much for her to do, if that makes sense. I feel like there's just not a lot going on with her story-wise. So it's like you get to project onto her, whatever fantasies you want, I suppose, but she's a blank slate and all the good and bad that that entails. And also just sort of big picture-wise, I wish I enjoyed the combat more.

That's like my other big issue. It's kind of a stealth game, but also kind of a mess around game. Like, if you fail the stealth, sometimes you can shoot your way out of it, but also there are auto-fail stealth missions in this game from time to time, and I found those to be probably the least fun part of the game, because I think the stealth just isn't quite polished enough for my tastes personally. And so there have been like a few moments when I've just wished it was a little more of a hitman or even an Assassin's Creed, which is a Ubisoft.

series. So I am kind of like, this doesn't feel as good as some of the Assassin's Creed games that we've talked about really enjoying. So it's kind of interesting. Are there more than just the first one that are insta-fail? Because there's one that like is fail if the alarm goes off, but you have a chance to sabotage the alarm to stop soldiers from getting the alarms. In my experience, only the first one was it's a fail. But it could be that I haven't gone to another one yet. That first one I hated. And then the one that you're talking about, I liked once I realized what you're describing, which I will admit it took me a little while to figure out, was that I was like, oh, if I just shoot the right guy before he gets to the alarm, I can get out of this. But it took

me a little longer than I care to admit to figure out that that was actually a mission I could have gotten through a little more easily than I did. But mostly I think the stealth is just, it's interesting in this game. And I am kind of curious, Kirk, for your thoughts on it, because I know you're another person who likes stealth games. And this game is interesting. I actually, I'm correcting myself. I think there was another one when I got to Kijimi that was also Insta fail. There are a couple. Yeah, Kirk, what are your thoughts? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty similar to the two of you. I feel sort of mixed on it. There are things that I like and there are things that I don't like. I think that it's a really

interesting game from an open world design standpoint. I think Ubisoft Massive has been making interesting games for a little while. A lot of the people at the top levels of this game are division folks, a bunch of dudes who worked on the early division games, which for all their kind of Nancy-ish, you know, techno-fascist creepiness are really interestingly designed open-world games as well. So they've been doing this for a while. And actually last year's Avatar game also had some interesting open-world ideas with progressions. So I think this studio broadly is interesting and there's a lot of cool ideas in this game. But also, you know, the implementation of a lot of things is pretty mid.

Like it's just kind of not, like it doesn't do any one thing spectacularly well. Like you said, Jason. though I would say with the exception of the Star Wars of it all. I think that actually... I agree with you. This game does the Star Wars really well, and I really enjoy it as just Star Wars world, a series of Star Wars worlds that I can cruise around.

I think the atmosphere and the energy of it is really cool. This is a type of Star Wars, an era of Star Wars, and a sort of series of settings in Star Wars that I think are the most evocative, and at least the ones that I've found the most attractive over the course of all these Star Wars movies. It's the seedy canina with the weird blue light in the background and the band playing strange instruments

as you like try to make some underworld contact. Kirk here from the future editing the episode and I wanted to just add a little composer shout-out like I like to do sometimes. Wilbert Roge the 2nd or I suppose Wilbert Rogeet the 2nd composed the score for Star Wars Outlaws along with a couple of other musicians,

but I believe he was the principal composer. He's an interesting cat. He's worth looking up. A lot of you will have recently heard his music in Hell Divers 2. He actually wrote that incredible theme for Hell Divers 2, the Super Earth Triumphal Theme. But he's been around for a long time. He actually worked at LucasArts back in the day,

and he's worked on a lot of Star Wars games, either as a composer or music editor, somewhere on the music team. Anyways, I think he did a really good job with Star Wars Outlaws. I really dig the music to this game. It's got its own identity. even though he certainly knows how to channel that Williams' Star Wars sound, he's also found something distinct for this game that I really enjoy anyways.

I think it gives the game a lot of its positive vibes. So just wanted to shout him out, Wilbert Roche I, a great composer. Okay, back to the show. Bing! I think, like, narratively, the big picture story of this heist and of Kay, it doesn't do much for me in that I'm not like super excited to see what happens next. I agree that Kay is not the strongest character. but I've really enjoyed how often people screw you over, for example.

There's a lot of cool betrayal that happens kind of regularly in the main storyline where you'll be working to recruit someone and then they totally turn out to just suck and like turn on you and you kill them and like wind up recruiting someone else. Like that happens a few times in ways that I think are really cool. Like I think they're in line with what feels to me like a pretty coherent vision of this seedy underbelly of a lawless world in the midst of this, you know, war that's going on. This is kind of people who aren't really involved in the war are just like scrapping and screwing one another over and trying to get what they can. And I like how consistent they've been with that tone. But mostly, yeah, it's the Star Wars that's keeping me going. I think it actually really is just a nice world. It's a fun place to go around.

I've played like, yeah, probably the same amount as you, Maddie, or maybe 15 hours. I've gone to all the main planets. There's kind of four principal planets that you get at first. I've gone to all of them, done story missions on them. They all are like kind of different in ways that I appreciate. appreciate, especially tattooing, and is it called Kijiri, the Frozen Planet, which is kind of just a big city. Yeah, Kijimi.

Kijimi. That's what I mentioned earlier. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I like that. And then there's just a lot of little touches that I want to shout out at some point. I'll see if they come up. But there's a lot of little things in this game that I just like, because I just tend to like that

kind of stuff, like little clever ideas. I'll shout one out. There's a lock picking game in this game where you use your like, whatever it's called, Dizzy Hacker thing. Yeah. Right. Which I also really enjoy this touch, yeah, that Kay wears it in her bun. Yeah.

She pulls it out and sticks it into the lock. And then you get what I can only describe as a polyrhythmic, like, drum group that you have to match. I would love to know the story behind this. Like, this is the kind of thing that if I were still reporting on games, I would go find the percussionist that they hired to write these. Yeah. Because each one will be like three clicks. They're almost all like in 12 of 8 or something. It'll be like, do.

Yeah. And you have to match it. There's even like, like, I love them. an ability you unlock for doing them perfectly. I'm so into them every time and I think it's wonderful. And there's a lot of little stuff like that in this game that could have just been another boring lock picking game. And instead, it's kind of the grievous lock picking game I've ever played.

I really like that one and the hacking mini game is just Wordle. And that's great to me. Oh, yeah. Kind of is, isn't it? Yeah. Oh, did you not pick up on that? I didn't think about it. No.

Well, but it was symbols. No, it's Mastermind. Mastermind came long before Word. It is Mastermind. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. I guess that is what people said wordled was ripping off was mastermind.

I mean, inspired, but like Ripoff is a strong one. Yeah, so, okay, so this game, it feels to me like a game where some people in a boardroom got together and were like, we need this game to sell 15 million copies in order for it to justify the amount

that we're paying Disney for the license. And in order for it to sell 15 million copies, it needs to have everything, open world, speeder bunks, uh, bikes. Side quests, space combat for some reason, blaster shooting, stealth, lockpicking, hacking, like the list goes on and on, dialogue trees, shops, RPG elements, skill trees, like, all this stuff. And the developers in massive, they had some, I don't know, four years to make this game.

And I think that ultimately they had to decide, okay, okay, for like us to be able to do all of this, it's all going to have to have to be done at this level that is, like, good but not great. We have to kind of like look at what other games have done for our climbing mechanics and sliding. God, the fact that I can't eat, I didn't even mention every single possible mechanic in this game in that whole list is like, like, not to mention the spolunking through ruins and stuff. So it just feels like it's trying to do way too much. And I think if this game had been a little bit more focused, maybe a less, maybe less of the like speeder biking and space combat, which totally doesn't need to be here, and more of just kind of the hacking and subterferefirm. and self and dealing with syndicates and stuff like that. Maybe those mechanics could have been iterated upon a little bit more.

Maybe they could feel a little more unique. Maybe the reputation system, by the way, Maddie, it, like, you can see the creeks in it. Like, it starts a creek as you go. I'm sure the more I play, the more I'm going to be like, is this my favorite part of the game? Yeah, well, because it doesn't, I mean, you don't really, like, you could just keep going back and forth with, and, like, doing medial side quests to, like, build a pure reputation. And also, it doesn't really affect much other than. whether you can get in or like a slight discount at a shop and stuff like that.

But yeah, it just feels like a game that really demanded a little bit more focus, but because of financial realities had to like fill out this whole checklist of stuff. But like if the resources that had went into uncharted stuff, the uncharted ruin stuff and also the space combat had instead gone into better, stealth, better combat, sort of more pillars, more core, or fewer pillars, more of like a core focus, I think it would have been a better game. Yeah, it's really hard for me to figure out what they could have caught.

Because I actually like the starship, like the spaceflight segments. Like, I think it's really cool in that opening chapter when you fly up to an imperial base in orbit and like pull off a heist there and then fly out and land back on the planet. Like the majesty of that, I mean, punching it the first time with your warp drive and going, you know, into faster than light and like the score kicks in. And there's even a really slick like results. screen where you leave one planet to go to the next one. And as, you know, the warp, whatever it's called, the circle around the ship is kind

of flying by, this title card comes up and it's like completed the chapter and it gives you this sort of almost Star Wars text scroll like recap of what you just did. Like that stuff is really cool. And it leads to a bigness, I think, that this game has that I really appreciate. And I also appreciate actually how, you know, it feels pretty, yeah, it feels pretty. ambitious, but in a way that, like, you would almost have to be to be this kind of Star Wars game. Like, picturing it as a game where you just are in cities sneaking around, it's a very different experience. And I kind of like this much more ambitious experience that they're going for.

I mean, with the syndicates, which, by the way, I'd say that the closest comparison point is like a mercenaries game. Yep. Or a mafia game, like Mafia 3, did this kind of thing. Which I've just never played, but maybe I should. It's a cool way to do an open world game where you're kind of like different parts of the of the map are controlled by different, like it kind of matters a little bit more where you are in the map compared to something like Grand Theft Auto where you're kind of just getting from point A

to point B. Like it's sort of cool that there's territory. And it seems pretty shallow to me too. You know, like it seems like they could have fleshed that one out. And that actually maybe would have been the best place for them to put a little more attention. But it's hard because that's not really like you're, I take your point, Jason, that the issue isn't that they needed to do more because they did the most as in. in terms of the overall scope of the game. One place I appreciate that they didn't do too much is actually combat. I think it's pretty cool how this game, you only have one blaster, and then you pick up weapons

in the field, and the gunfights are these kind of scrappy fights that feel like uncharted, where in uncharted, you're kind of just hopping from place to place, picking up weapons, and then throwing them away and, like, rearming completely for the next fight. I sort of like that. I like that there's not a ton of inventory and upgrade paths with, like, my blaster and, like, my vibrero sword and my... other blaster and my like heavy gun and my rocket launcher and I'm upgrading them all and whipping them all out and have them all on hand at all times. Like I sort of actually think there's a really cool

idea that I've never really seen before. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. I don't know. I take your point about space being cool and space fighting being cool and adding to that sense of vastness, but it also just like doesn't feel necessary for a heist game to me and it feels like the heistice of it all could have been better. I mean, so, okay, so I'm in Kijimi. So when you get to Kajima, which is the snow planet and the city that you mentioned, one of your main jobs there is to steal this artifact and present it to the queen and get her to trust you and yada, yada. But when you do go and steal the artifact, you're kind of just doing the same exact thing that you were doing in the imperial base a few minutes earlier in that you can go around. You hide behind things and you send Nix to go distract guards and you use your sleeper function on your blaster and so on and so forth.

And it all feels pretty monotonous in a way that a heist game feels like it should. And I guess I'm just wondering if maybe we didn't need the space stuff or maybe we didn't need the uncharted stuff quite as much. And they could have done a little bit more to make the stealth feel a little bit stronger. I also think, I think this game is really most hurt by, it is a buggy game overall. That is for sure. It is very buggy. But I think it is most hurt by the enemy AI, which is really just kind of a joke and the way that enemies just kind of like lumber around, not even noticing that their friends die next to them. Yeah, they don't notice dead bodies.

They're fine with it. They'll just walk right past them. They notice dead bodies in the game's offense. They do sometimes notice them. They'll at least investigate the area and then they'll be like, okay, back to work. Yeah, exactly. No. I guess that's just how the empire is, though.

They'll look over and they'll say, oh, my God, he's dead, even though you just knocked him out with like a sleeper shot. And they'll be like, he's dead. And then they'll just go back to patrolling like normal without even having an alert state or anything after a few seconds. It's tough being a storm trooper. It's a stressful job. I guess what I kind of, you have these two fantasies that almost feel like they're in

contradiction with one another. The Star Wars like epic galaxy exploration fantasy and the heist fantasy. And the game is definitely trying to do both. And you rocking around on your speeder bike and seeing these vast, incredible looking vistas on like Tarkova and these other planets is, it definitely delivers on that fantasy. But it's very difficult to also have the heist fantasy and to have that actually work and feel like it's like you're sneaking around and doing that whole stealth thing and feeling like a real member of a heist team. Yeah, Danny Ocean, whatever. Yeah, because the stealth is just like not there.

It's not where it needs to be for a game like this. And there have been so many better stealth games. And that to me is just kind of disappointing. But yeah, but I mean, if you just want Star Wars and you're just like, I don't care how good each individual gameplay component is, I just want the Star Wars package. That is where this game delivers in droves. And arguably it's good enough if you want Star Wars. I wouldn't say it's just for people with no standards at all who only want Star Wars.

Like this is a fun game. Like I like it. I'm probably going to keep playing it. I think it's pretty good. Yeah, but I do think you need to like Star Wars. I don't think it's enough that like it's a fun game even if you're like kind of mid on Star Wars. I think you need to really enjoy the canteena of it all, the smoke pouring around, all the aliens and Subbocan.

games and just the vibes. Like the, I think my coworker Dusan called it cassette core, like the like weird 80s technology, like late 70s, early 80s technology of this specific era of Star Wars and like just the look of everything.

The big buttons, the CRT screens. Yeah, the huge analog buttons. Before the empire switch to like iPad style ships. Yeah. But it's so pleasing. I mean, in part because it's nostalgic for me. So like I do really enjoy seeing all of that stuff and like Kay's ship and like she's pressing all the big buttons.

I mean, like those are the parts of the game that I agree, like really, really work. And we kind of can't undersell that. But I, but I also agree with you, Jason, like one of these big mechanics needed to get voted off the island. And I think I agree that like the uncharted-esque climbing, I mean, it's fine. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just picking something that I'm like, I don't think it needs to be there. I'm okay with it if there's no environmental puzzles. in this game. I just don't, there's plenty of them, but I don't think any of them need to be there. They remind me a little bit of like the Jedi games that we've certainly talked about on this show that also have a lot of fun environmental puzzles where Calcastas is swinging around and like

leaping on boxes and moving puzzle pieces around a room. But like, I don't know, I don't need that in order for it to be a heist game. I'm fine, just shooting stuff and riding my speeder bike around. And then I can keep the blasting tie fighters out of orbit. I can keep that as long as I lose something. But then maybe some of these other elements could just be polished slightly more so that they felt a little less janky. The one idea that I really do like in this game, and the one thing that really stands out to me as a unique mechanic

that I really haven't seen before is the upgrade system. And the upgrade system, it kind of cleverly uses Ubisoft checklists to actually, like, in a way that is actually really interesting. And the way it works for people who haven't played, the game is that like you have these um different upgrade kind of advisors as we got the word experts i think the game calls them so you have like the gunsmith and the locksmith and the gun the gun the gunsmith whatever it is the cracker um all these different people have different levels of expertise and when you meet them you can you can see like the silhouettes of a bunch of different potential abilities like i don't know

a smoke grenade or like an upgrade for your health potion capacity and then you see what you have to do to lock them. And what you have to do is essentially what you would be doing as kind of menial side quests in another Ubisoft game. But because it's tied to something and because each of the abilities only requires you to do two or three of them, it's a lot more of kind of, I don't know, a digestible, a little bit more addictive, a little bit more compelling of a package. And so it'll be a whole variety of stuff. One of them might be, I don't know, use, take down five enemies that are distracted by Nix. And then another one might be go and find this rare material and it will show you where to find it or it will tell you like here's someone who might know

where to find it or whatever it is. And that I think is really cool. And I think you really, if you really want to get the most out of this game and enjoy this game the most, you should, you definitely have to engage with the upgrade system, not only because it's fun to play around with, but also because the upgrades themselves are essential if you want to enjoy the game. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree with that. I think it's something that Ubisoft games have done for a while. The older Assassin's Creed games did this really well, where you would enter a level and it would give you a series of optional objectives that weren't just fun to try to meet, but also suggested a way of playing through the level. This is actually something that Tactical Breach Wizards does really well, too.

We'll talk about that more in a few weeks, I think. But those sorts of optional objectives. In this case, they're technically optional, but right, the upgrades are really good. And it just encourages you to engage with the game's systems. I think it's really smart. Like, there is no XP in this game. There's no XP bar. You're entirely rewarded just for your actions and for the items that you go and get, which is a great way to motivate the player. I'm kind of shocked I haven't seen more of this sooner, more games, especially this kind of game, like all the Sony first party games, that they haven't just ditched XP and, you know, ability points that you just earn randomly and then assign however you want and tie it to like

encouraging you to play the game in different ways and do different things. That's really cool. I really like engaging with it a lot. Yeah, it's great. I do think it's very clever. It plays right into the natural desire of wanting to feel like your character. character is actually learning. Like if Kay is doing multiple things related to hacking, then it makes sense that then she's going to get better at hacking or if she's doing multiple activities that

are related to distracting guards or distracting baddies, then she's going to get better and better at distracting them. Like it just has a certain logic to it that definitely feels like something other designers will look at and be like, oh, this is great. And then we're just going to start seeing it everywhere, which I'll be happy with because I think it's really good. And I'm happy with it as a player. It's satisfying me. Yeah. Yeah, one final thought on the sort of Star Wars part of this, the Star Wars piece. I think this game has really reinforced for me how strong of a setting Star Wars is for this kind of story. I think Star Wars is a really neat world. Like there is something to the idea of just being somewhere that's so richly detailed and so clearly has existed for so long.

One of you mentioned like not, I think Maddie you said, well, I wouldn't recommend this to someone who doesn't like Star Wars. And that's true if you actively don't like Star Wars. But if you're not a huge Star Wars fan, I could see getting into this game and just enjoying going around a world that has so clearly got so much going on. I mean, all of the different, like, alien types of, like, weird looking dudes in this game. Like, they're all already things. A lot of them are references to other stuff, and that just makes it feel very rich.

I've actually been watching slowly watching the director's cuts for Zach Snyder's Rebel Moon, Do you the two of you know this? I am familiar with it. Yes. So Zach Snyder, of course, the director and O-Tor has made this, he made these two movies for Netflix that really just one big movie, but then they released the director's cut, which is just sort of funny because he made them for Netflix. Like, they let him make whatever he wanted.

He didn't need a director's cut. It's just because of the suicide squad thing, but like now everything has to be a director's cut. When it was Justice League was really the one with the Snyder cut of Justice. That's right, right, right. I meant to say Justice League. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's a similar thing. And, like, part one is three and a half hours long, I think.

And it's funny, it's called Rebel Moon, and it's very much like Zach Snyder's extremely R-rated take on Star Wars. It's like Star Wars, but there's tits. And that's literally how I've described it. And lots of gore. Wow, Zach Snyder did that? That's so out of character. Interesting.

Okay. So I've been sort of watching it just, like, as a thing to put on. And it's funny because it really feels like a new person's take on my own Star Wars? Like, what if Zach Snyder, who has a lot of ideas to his credit? He does. He does. You know, he's a very specific filmmaking style. He is not interested in, for example, moving things along. He likes to go very slow. He thinks movies should be longer and slower and mostly move in slow motion. Anyways, but it's very Star Warsy. And watching it, I feel like he is trying to evoke that feeling. I think that people had when they saw a new hope for the first time,

that feeling of like, wow, this is this lived in really interesting world. And he has some interesting ideas. But now playing outlaws at the same time as watching that movie, I'm just struck by how just rich and fleshed out and cool the Star Wars world really is. Like, I sometimes feel like I get sick of it, but I really do think that what I get sick of are the narrative tropes of broader Star Wars and not really of this world. I think it is actually a really cool setting and this game has reinforced that for me. You're kind of making me realize how much of a benefit it is that this game doesn't have a strong story by pointing this out because it makes the Star Wars setting be what shines. And like the things that I can get sick of in Star Wars are story beats that I don't

care for. Like there's we can all pick our own listener in your head. You can imagine what you don't like. And we have many times on this very podcast. Yeah. It's it's fine. We don't need to list them all. Maddie, but that's just bad storytelling. Well, of course. Exactly. And but that's not what's that's, I think sometimes I imagine that I'm sick of Star Wars, but like, that's not really what it is. I'm not sick of Star Wars and Star Wars is reminding me like, oh, I can actually spend quite a bit of time just tooling around being in Star Wars and just enjoying Star Warsiness without having any of the stuff I don't like. And I'll also say, I mean, this is kind of neither here nor there with the point I just made, but there's no Jedi in this game. I mean, you kind of said that in your intro, Kirk. But I do think

that's a fascinating choice. I mean, this is also part of the era. where the Jedi have all largely been killed with a few exceptions. And so they're just not around, and the empire is doing its best to quash the rumors that they ever existed. And it's working really well. Like, nobody's talking about them. And I find that really interesting. And that's like a part of the slice of life of the game that I think is really effective, too,

is that we're, like, living in this world that's, like, super oppressed by this empire, but also people are still living their lives and they're still getting by, mostly through lives of crime. Like that's sort of just a slice of Star Wars that we don't often see. And that's part of what works about it is that you get to just spend time in this really hyper-specific setting that we also haven't seen a lot of. So I'm at least not sick of it and really excited to spend time in it. Yeah, it is cool. I think that like the big contrast here is that in the movies and all the Jedi stories and the endless TV shows that we've seen for the most part,

what we see is a lot of characters who are just do-gooders and people who are just trying to, like, save the galaxy or, like, protect the baby Yoda or whatever. And so it's cool to see, I don't know if you guys remember this, but, like, way back in the day before Disney bought Lucas, George Lucas, George R. Lucas. I was like, wait, George R. Martin did something? George Lucas wanted to do an HBO show that was, like, set in the Star Wars Underworld. Oh, I remember this. And then, of course, Star Wars 1313 was also supposed to be a little bit more CD, even though it starred Boba Fett. But this is the first game, one of the first properties, really, to just dive into the, like, everybody in this game is a bad person. Like, everybody in this game is looking out for themselves above all else.

And Kay, her whole story arc for whatever it is, is all about not trusting people because she's been betrayed so many times, including within this game, as Kirk pointed out. So, yeah, it's cool to get that just kind of other seedier side of the Star Wars world. And, yeah, I mean, I think that, like, I think a better story could have actually improved that and made it feel even more. Like, in the way that Andor does. Yeah, no, you're not wrong. And that sheds a new light on the Star Wars universe in a really interesting way. But I think in this, the reason that it's so compelling as a piece of Star Wars content is because it is so different from, most of the Star Wars stuff that we see.

And I will say there are no do-goaters except for Nix who is precious little boy and we must protect you. Well, he's great. He's a perfect alien kitten. He's a do-gooder except when he steals K's food. I don't know, yeah, I don't know if he's a do-gooder per se. I mean, he's a do-gooder as much as any pet is.

Well, he's a do-goater in that he's a good boy who does good. Two things about Nix that I love. One, there are these animated sequences where you eat food, with him and I hope the two of you are doing. Yeah, he steals your food. Yeah, it's great. You split food with them. They're great.

Well, I guess neither of you are monster hunter players, but they're Monster Hunter food sequences. That's what they're doing. That is exactly the aesthetic. Okay. They're doing the cut scenes, the smash cuts and the zooms as the robot chef cuts up the food. Do you have quick time events to chew in Monster Hunter?

No, that's different. But the aesthetic is very much Monster Hunter, which is just something I'm really happy to see spreading outside of Monster Hunter and into other games. And I actually really enjoy that there are these long cutscenes where you're feeding your pet. And one last note about Nix is that Nix is voiced by D. Bradley Baker, who is a voice actor who voices like every monster and creature and everything. And among other characters, voiced Appa in the original Avatar The Last Airbender, who, of course, my dog is named after. So I will always love D. Bradley Baker. I didn't realize it was him, but saw him in the credits and was

like, oh, man, it's my boy. Yeah, very good. Yeah, very good. I mean, of course there would be a voice actor. I didn't even think about that. I mean, I will say kind of circling back to the do-gooder point, I really appreciate that this game has made me just lean into playing as somebody who is amoral or immoral at times, because I think, like, a lot of people, I really struggle to make the bad choices. Like, I was, you know, playing Paragon and Mass Effect boringly and periodically being tempted by some of the mean things Commander Shepard could be saying and being like, oh, it's too bad I have no capability to select that response because I don't want to hurt the fictional character's feelings.

But like this game, you really can't get away with that. And they really incentivize you not behaving in that way by, as I said at the very top of this show, by doing my favorite thing, which is forcing you to play people against each other all the time and actively incentivizing and encouraging you to do that because that's the way the game works. And also, it benefits Kay to behave in this way. and everyone else is doing it too. I mean, I think that's part of why I don't feel guilty about it

because it's like, well, this is a doggy dog world. Yeah, what are crimson dawn doing? Yeah, exactly. And what are they doing for me? What have they done for me lately? Usually nothing other than just be like a problem or a thorn in my side. I mean, they all are. They're all a problem for me in one way or another.

So it benefits me to just constantly be screwing people over and looking out for myself, which I have trouble doing in a lot of games. And so that's another just sort of generalized, design ethos that I think this game does really well and that I've kind of been thinking about while playing and being like, oh, this is something else that is fascinating and like really effective is that it's making me actually want to be the Han Solo-ish scoundrel who's like, I don't, I don't care about the rebels. Like, I'm literally just trying to get by. And the first rebels you meet screw you over, which is, I think, a great choice. It is great. It is great. It's perfect, actually.

It's like, well, yeah, of course, you don't want to associate with those guys. Who even are they? They've got their own agenda. They're not interested in you. They've got their own thing going on. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely some cool stuff despite some of the things that don't work. So I think we can end it there. I'll be playing a little bit more of this game, though.

Same. We'll see where it winds up. But yeah, that's Star Wars Outlaws. Let's take a break. And then we will be back for one more thing. Hey, everybody. I'm Jeremy. I'm Oscar.

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the title of the podcast. Secretly, incredibly fascinating. Find us by searching for the word secretly in your podcast app. And at maximum fun.org. And we're back for one more thing. Jason, you've got a game for your one more thing so you get to go first.

Because those are the rules. Yeah, this is a video game podcast. Sure. So I've been playing two games called Ace Attorney Investigations 1 and 2, which came out in a new package that is out this week, the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection. So this is kind of, so over the past few years, Capcom has been releasing all the Ace Attorney games for modern platforms, and this is the, these are the last ones to come out, including number two, which never actually came out in English until now.

So for a lot of people, this is going to be the first time that they get to play it, myself included. And so what's interesting about these games is that you play, is Miles Edgeworth, the prosecutor from the original game and the original trilogy. And like, you might expect that, therefore, you would be doing prosecutor gameplay, but no, you're just doing the same thing you do in every other Ace Attorney game. You're like, he almost becomes a defense attorney in this game for the sake of gameplay. Great. You are defending innocent people by pointing out contradictions and the testimonies of lying witnesses.

It's just this time there isn't a courtroom. You're doing it kind of you see yourself walking around, your sprite walking around, which you don't do in the original Phoenix. It's like at a crime scene, right? Like you're kind of investigating and questioning people that are in the same way you do. Well, you investigate crime scenes in the normal games too. It's just this time you see yourself as opposed to having the first person. It's like a sprite of miles walking around. Right. Exactly. And you maneuver them around. But that's not important. What's important is the story, of course, because these are Ace Attorney games. And so having played, I played the first one way back in the day when it came out to DS so 15 years ago. And I replayed it now and then I played the second one for the first time. First game in this series is kind of mid.

I would say it's one of the weaker Ace Attorney games. It drags on and on. Some of the cases just don't make a ton of sense. It's not the best one. But I'm glad I played it because it's good set up. It's got some good set up stuff for the second game, which might be the best game in the series. like today. What?

In the entire Ace Attorney? This is what I've heard. It is incredible. Ace Attorney Investigations too. It is a shame that it never came out here until now because it is phenomenal. The entire package, it's like it's got these five cases like any game. They all tie in together in ways that you won't expect. They're really, really good, well-paced, really great storytelling, really great themes.

I love to hear this. Yeah. By the end of it, Edgeworth, you get a lot of. of good stuff with Miles Hedrith being like, am I a prosecutor? Should I be a defense attorney? What is my role here? What am in the pursuit of truth? And he gets some good moments. The villains are phenomenal. The overall plot is like convoluted and fantastic and just a really good package. The characters are great. The villain animations are amazing, especially the final one, which just cracked me out. Everything about it is just fantastic. It's really up there with like the

original trilogy for like the best games in the series. And so that I'm glad that people can finally play it in English officially. There was a fan translation. But, but, but we've, um, it was never like, released officially. So a lot of people play the fan translation and are going to be like, wait a minute, all these names have nothing are totally different than those in the fan translation. But yeah, it's really, really good. So what I recommend if you're kind of, I think if you're a hardcore Ace attorney fan like I am, you're going to play through them both, which fine, you'll enjoy yourself. But if you're more casual,

if you're more like curious about the series, maybe you dabble here and there like you two are, I would recommend getting this. I've played every single game in that series and have played the first Ace Attorney investigation. So I am not a casual. Okay, sorry, Chris. I'm just going to object.

I object, objection. I am not offended by being described as an Ace Attorney casual. I thought you never finished Great Ace Attorney. Did you finish? I played all of Great Ace Attorney. That was like my favorite game. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

I played them all. I take it back. I'm wrong. Contradiction found. Yeah, I played like half of Ace Attorney of the first investigations and kind of lost team. I think because like you said, it's kind of slow. Okay. So, Kirk, since you are a hardcore fan, you will play them both. Okay, okay. But what about me? What should I do? Should I only play the second one? What you should do is you should probably just skip the first one because like it ties into the second one in a little bit, but it's not really that important.

And just go straight to prosecutors gambit, which is awesome and entirely self-contained as a story. Like, you don't need to know backstory for the most part for to enjoy this one. And yeah, and just start that one from the beginning. Don't try to skip ahead in the cases. Just start the first case and play through all five cases. And you will really enjoy it, I think. I think anyone who enjoys the basic gameplay or base attorney or like some of the stories will really enjoy prosecutors gamut. It's incredible.

I love it. So, yeah, highly recommend it. Awesome. everyone out there, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection. It's worth getting the collection just for Ace Attorney Investigations 2. And if you want to play through the first one, you can, you won't, like, I don't think you'll hate it or anything. It just drags a little and it isn't the best. It isn't the series at its best. But the second one is absolutely the series at its best. So, uh, enjoy it. Enjoy it. Enjoy it to know. That's very exciting. I will

totally play that and hadn't heard that at all about the second one. So that's very exciting here. Maddie, what's your one more thing? Well, so mine is a movie, which I felt was fitting to put on this episode because I have kind of mixed feelings about this movie, but I think I'm going to recommend it. So this movie's Love Lies Bleeding, which at least in my head was like, oh, great, Kristen Stewart starring in a lesbian romance. Why wouldn't Dina and I put that on on a Friday night? Definitely fun. We had a great time. It's like really silly, though, like a little sillier than I thought it was going to be.

So this is kind of like an action thriller, like almost Cohn Brothers-esque, but, you know, maybe not on that quality level. But I mean in terms of like, oh, there's murders and then things increasingly escalate. And like the character who's done it keeps getting themselves further and further in trouble. And so you like eventually are shouting at the screen and being like, really what? And like just the stakes keep escalating to increasingly absurd degrees. But I do ultimately recommend it. It's also very much like a play. Like there's only really like five characters in it.

And I tend to like movies like this where it's just like it's a tour de force for all the characters. So it's Kristen Stewart and Katie O'Brien, Jenna Maloney. And then also Ed Harris is the villain in this. And they give him this just absurd long bullet wig that just looks so bizarre on him. And it's almost worth watching it just to see Ed Harris in this crazy wig. and he just is hamming it the hell up as the villain. And so, like, maybe it's worth it for that. But it is really silly.

I just got so confused that you said Jenna Maloney, thinking of Jenna Maroni. I was like, yeah, I guess it's Malone. Is it Malone? I don't know which it's, which is it, Jenna Malone or Maloney. It's one of those pronunciations anyway, but mostly it's case too looking really hot and Katie O'Brien looking really hot for the whole freaking movie. So you can get on for that. Also, I guess we have achieved in 20,

24 having like a lesbian romance that's like super toxic and like we can make movies about that now where you're like I don't know that I'm rooting for these two. I'm like worried about everyone involved. So like you do also kind of have to get on board for something like that in this movie. And that's fine. Exactly. Finally women, queer women can be problematic. Did you see, I remember happiest season having the same thought about that movie. Do you remember that would be like this relationship is terrible. This is like that, but I mean, Happiest Season is like nominally a romance. This movie is like, again, there's murders and you're like, I don't know what's going on. It's like that kind of sensation. But if you like movies like that where like the stakes just keep getting higher and higher until they kind of explode at the end, then you'll really enjoy this one. And it certainly kept us guessing, like mystery wise in that kind of thriller way where you're like, what the fuck? So like, yeah, I recommend it from that perspective.

And K-stew's great. I mean, I love her. So yeah, love lies bleeding is what it's called. And it's a new movie. It's a 2024 movie. Cool. Nice. Yeah, I'm aware of it and have it on the list.

The list is just very long. Yeah. Cool. Well, I will go last. My one more thing is a piece of desktop hardware that I picked up after a long time thinking about it and just never really doing it. And I'm really glad that I did. I just wanted to kind of talk about it a little bit and mention it.

It is the Elgado Stream deck, not to be confused. used with the steam deck. Okay. And it is constantly, my brain is constantly sort of merging the two together. But now this is the stream deck, which is a piece of hardware made by the company Elgado who do a lot of stuff for streamers. Like they make capture boxes and cameras or microphones at least and lights and all kinds of things for people who stream video games or other content.

The stream deck is something that I'm sure a lot of our listeners have seen, at least in like, you know, pictures of their favorite streamers' desktop. Like everybody has one. It's this box with a series of buttons on it that are like basically little screens. And each button can just be assigned to do just about anything. And it's really helpful for me. And if anyone out there listening like does any kind of sort of anything multimedia, anything with video or audio or anything like that, it's really cool and worth thinking about.

Just to say a little bit about how I'm using it, this is going to be very narrowcasted. at the five listeners out there who are going to, but those five people are going to be so happy with me right now. So on my computer, which is a very elaborate recording studio like nerve center, basically, I use this software. It's a universal audio recording software. And it comes with what's called the UAD console, which is a big console that manages all the ins and outs for my recording interface. And most audio interfaces come with something like this. So it's this big thing. It's over on the screen over to my left. And it has like levels for all the different things. sends and Q sends and like you know it's a very complicated routing mess that I've sort of spent

years mastering and there are a few little things like for example um the audio coming from my Mac into my headphones is routed through a very certain route and the only way for me to do it I can't like turn up the volume on my keyboard I have to go over with my mouse and like manually turn this like in the GUI it looks like a little knob with my mouse to turn up or turn down which is sort of annoying. Kirk is it like that power puzzle in Resident Evil too where you have to like try it like. Weirdly they're all chess pieces.

So yeah, it's just like that. So it's complicated and it just takes like three or four steps to do some basic things because I have this very complicated setup. So what you can do with the stream deck is you can get this software. It's called like MIDI to UAD and it basically allows you to control the UAD's console with midi. And then you can take the stream deck and there's a MIDI plugin. So MIDI is like musical instrument digital interface.

It's like MIDI information. So basically you can create a soft mini device that bridges the stream deck with any MIDI controllable software, including this console or logic, my recording software. And there are four knobs on this stream deck that I got. So now I just have volume pots that I turn and that control like the levels on different things in my system. This is one very narrow specific use for this thing. But it's got a million other ones. It's actually really, really very cool.

And I'm stressing here, I bought this thing myself. This is not like, I'm sure a lot of people have reviewed these who have been sent them for free and are like, this thing is great. I bought it. It was, you know, a couple hundred bucks. So it's like, it's an investment. It's a good thing for work. I don't know if you would need to get it otherwise. But like just being able to have keyboard shortcuts just on a little button, especially for anything that you do a lot in whatever software you use is really nice.

You can have an emoji like menu where just a bunch of emoji come up and any emoji that you quickly you just bam hit the button and there's that emoji or i mean a million other things you there's all these plugins and it's very it's much more versatile than i even know but i just wanted to shout it out because it's very cool i kind of can't believe i waited this long to get one because it just it makes a couple of things a lot easier and i think that's it's nice anytime you can find a piece of hardware some like productivity uh software that does that so yeah it's it's really cool i'm a big fan that's great i'm happy for you i don't think i need one but i'm very happy for you Yeah, so this is really just for anyone out there who's thought maybe that would be useful.

Like, look into it. And if you can find some uses for it, you might have a good time with it and it might just, you know, make your life a little bit easier. That's pretty cool. Right on. And that, my friends, is another episode of Triple Click. We did it. Did it again. Look at us.

You know what I'm excited for? I'm excited for the game that we're playing for next week. We're going to be talking about a very good game next week. It's definitely entering busy season for video games, which is very exciting. and yeah, we'll have a really cool game for you all next week. Until then, well, I'll see the two of you in about seven days. See you next time. Bye.

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

slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod. Send email the triple click at maximum fund.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.