Triple Click - Triple Play: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Kirk, Jason, and Maddy do the only thing that could justify taking a break from playing Zelda: talking about playing Zelda! This week, they give their initial impressions of the impossibly big The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. They talk about how the new abilities work, what it's been like exploring the skies and depths, and how strange it is that Nintendo made a direct sequel in this way. Then they all go back to playing Zelda.One More Thing: Kirk: Ashes of the Unhewn Throne #1: The Empire’s Ruin (Brian Stavely, 2021)Maddy: Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)Jason: Guardians of the Galaxy 3Links: Triple Click LIVE IN BROOKLYN, May 18th: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/triple-click-live-tickets-513213584647Support 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

Today we're talking about the hot new game that everybody is talking about. Fuga, Melodies of Steel 2. Welcome back to Triple League, where we bring the games to you. I am, of course, just kidding. We're actually talking about that other recent release. Marvel's Midnight Sun for PS4 and Xbox One. Just kidding. We're talking about Zelda.

I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hey, hello. It's us. If you are listening to this on the day it's out, that means that you could potentially come see us live tonight. Tonight, right?

It's happening today. Just on a whim, just right now. Yeah. You could just come out. Two Eps in one day. You could have two Eps. Two Eps. That's pretty exciting.

Isn't that wild? Like, you could listen to this whole app and then that night you could go listen to a second completely different. That is a lot of Zelda talk. Yeah. Hey, we haven't recorded that yet. or this. That's true. That's true. But I can tell you in advance. It's fair to say that. A lot of Zelda talk. Yeah. A lot of Zelda talk is just going to be the show's motto for the next little while, I think. A lot of Zelda. Hey, if you want to listen to us talk about Zelda for quite some time, you can do that for free, but we are only able to offer the show for free because we are listeners supported.

We are part of a network called Maximum Fun. And if you go to maximumfund.org slash join, you can become a member. And what that means is you support the show, you make this possible, and also you get access to monthly bonus episodes, including this month, which the three of us are going to record live in person in my office at home. We are. It's very exciting. Jason's secret children napping in the next room. Yes, my 40 secret children. I collect children as if they are corak seeds. I just put them in my office.

Yeah, you got to get them all. It's, yeah. So we are going to be recording the three of us playing a game in real life. I won't say what it is just yet because we might change our minds. Are we allowed to say it's not Zelda? It is not Zelda. We will be talking about a game that we are going to play. Sitting in silence for three hours.

Just like, cool. If you're an occasional JoyCon waggle. So once again, if you want to listen to that and many, many other bonus episodes, including our future spoiler cast that we talk about Zelda on. or Zelda. Go to Maximfund.org. Join. All right.

That is, it is time for the show. Maddie, what are we talking about today? What do you think we're talking about? Sorry to rid this surprise. What are we talking about today? I don't know.

We're going to talk about the Lord of the Rings, Gollum, the most anticipated game of 2020. It's not out yet, actually, but when I close my eyes, I just see logs, like, jamming together and, like, fans on top of them.

With like neon green gorilla glue, adhesing each of those logs together to form a big chain. Of course, we are talking about the Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. The hit new immersive sim slash open world game sequel to Breath of the Wilds. All I want to do is play this video game. I mean, luckily we like it. I assume we like it. I guess I don't know. I guess I have to ask.

I'm making a lot of assumptions here, but I've played this game pretty much nonstop since I got it while editing stories. Like every hour, I'll look at Slack, I'll edit a story, and then I'll just go back to playing Zelda. That's like 24 hours a day for me right now.

I did work through the weekend, so I'm really punchy right now. I've been working a lot. I've been playing a lot of Zelda. But I want to hear what you two think about it. I can't even tell you how many hours I've played because I don't know. I don't know.

Probably probably probably. People are like, Maddie, why do you keep typing shrine names while you're trying to type in Slack while using my joycon? Before we get to this, are you editing Zelda stories, like in guidance and stuff while you play Zelda? I am. So, for example, Ana Diaz wrote a story about how people are making incredibly long bridges in Zelda using the ultrahand ability to solve every single problem. And then immediately after I edited that, I created a really long bridge. to solve a puzzle that I was stuck on. Can I tell you?

Oh, man, I solved a puzzle with an immediate, like an immense bridge, just the biggest bridge. And then like five minutes later, I saw that article on Polygon and I started laughing because I saw myself. It is, as of this recording, the most traffic article on the site above guides, which is insane to say. That is how much the people love long bridges in Zelda. This game really is a bridge building game. It is just a game about connecting a much of boards and logs and a really, really, really, really. really long line and then placing it across something and then walking across it. It's so crazy.

It's not that for me and I will explain. It doesn't have to be and it's so many other things too for me. But we'll get into all of them. It's not just a bridge simulator. Jason, why don't you tell us what the game is like for you and how long you've been playing it? Well, so since I discovered that you can make elevators by just like thinking something, throwing it up in the air, letting it come down and then using recall on it, that's all I do. instead of bridges because you can just throw stuff forward and then just like...

Oh, okay. I thought you were going to talk about something completely different, like not an immersive sim element of the game, but instead you're just talking about a different ability. No, I'm just saying that's what I use in lieu of bridges. Right. Understood. For me, it is more of an elevator game than a bridge game. Right.

Manipulating gravity by rewinding time is the sort of next level of building a really big bridge. It is. It is. If you're evolving in technology over time. I think my next next level is going to be using the Zonai wing more often. Zonai wing is very cool. Yeah, I really wasn't good at it. But then right before this call, edited a story by Chris Plant about how you can use

recall on the wing to make it take off backwards. And then you get on it and then let it take off like a plane. And also if you put a rocket on it, you can fire the rocket when you're in the air, also like a plane. Oh sure. I can actually picture that. Are we going to do this for 30 minutes? Hopefully everyone most see that says played this game. Yeah. And like can picture some of these things we're talking about.

Otherwise it's just gibberish. Yeah, Maddie, do you want to set the table a little bit? I need to back up. And then we can get into our war stories. Yeah. We'll try. We'll try to just just calm down. I'm just so excited about this video game because I'm having such a great time.

It's a very exciting game. So this is the sequel to Breath of the Wild. You still play his link so far, folks. But it's a huge game that changes a whole bunch of things about the way that Hyrule was in Breath of the Wild. So it's kind of like, as the jokes go, it's DLC for Breath of the Wilds, and that is how it was originally conceived by Nintendo. But there are so many things that are different about it and new about it, completely different abilities like Ultrahan, which we've been talking about, that lets you glue objects together and build a car. and also all these other abilities from this ancient civilization that was just kind of barely depicted in Breath of the Wild that's called the Zonai. And is a huge part of this game.

There's a zonai character who's kind of a ghost being from another timeline that is communicating with you and telling you how to use all the Zonai technology. His name is Raru. He's my goat-shaped uncle. He's perfect in every way. And I love him. He's also the first king of Hyrule, if you care about lore. he's he's an ancient king um and he so he shows you how to use all these different powers um in the beginning of the game and then you just land in hirul and it's just a huge freaking sandbox

there's still shrines there's still puzzles there's still dungeons there's still all that zelda goodness or at least zelda goodness according to us but it's also way more of a creative immersive sim that rewards experimentation is that enough i don't know i did i explain it who's saying. That's good. That's good. We'll explain it as we go. Let me, so let me give a little bit of my experience for this game. So I was also working this weekend. I had a video project I had to finish, so I was sort of, I couldn't relax and enjoy the game because I'm feeling the pressure, you know, we're heading to New York for the show. We're about to do a move. Emily and I are moving, so there's like all this stuff going on. And this is a game that you really have to relax into,

so I found it hard to play. I played through the opening tutorial area on Friday. I had kind of blocked as much of the day out as I could. But even then I had that creeping feeling of, man, I really got to work on this project. So then I would just be like, I'm not playing Zelda until I get to a certain, you know, milestone in this project. And then kind of wound up having that push pull over the weekend.

But yeah, I mean, I've played a lot. I've played probably 10 hours or something. I've played every moment that I could that has involved going to kind of the entirety of the map, which I should say we are going to talk about on this episode. So that being the sort of of three levels of the map.

Okay, so by the entirety, you don't mean every region. You mean... No, no. Sorry, I mean all three levels. Kirk's just quickly gone through the entirety of all three levels of the map. That's all he's managed to do. So I want to give people a sense, I guess, of what we are and aren't going to talk about. These are pretty early impressions, at least for me. I really don't know what I think of this game overall, other than that I'm having a great

time and I think it's really cool. But like broader critical thoughts, it's impossible. I feel like I've had a tiny little taste of this map. massive multi-course meal. But yeah, so I've been exploring through the depths. I spent a long time in the depths last night. I kind of got to the first sort of boss in the first end of a... I don't like it down there.

Jason was saying it reminds me of Crohn from Destiny, which it does kind of, it has some of those light and dark mechanics. Well, there's a quest, one of the first quests you do is following these statues, which point you to do other statues, and that was so Croesus-Zent, like straight out of Destiny's Criticism. Yeah, really cool. So I have a couple of big picture of thoughts, actually, that I've been kind of trying to crystallize thinking about what this game does. The Breath of the Wild doesn't.

And so two kind of things, thoughts that I had immediately. One is that this game is humongous. And Breath of the Wild felt humongous. This feels like it might be three times bigger. Like, Breath of the Wild was a game that was like, oh, man, you can go to that mountain over there and see what's cool over there. Oh, wait, here's something over there. This is very much the same spirit, except in addition to everything you see. There are also massive networks of underground caves and tunnels and wells and stuff that are on top of the three layers that Kirk you just described.

So it's really four layers. There's the skies, which are full of islands, full of cool stuff. There's the normal kingdom of Hyrule. Then there's all sorts of stuff under Hyrule that you'll find. I spent like an hour just going through caves under the town of Hatino. And then there's the depth. So it's really bigger than anyone could possibly fathom. And like even people, I wonder if people like even people who got it leaked a couple of weeks ago, I wonder if they've even maxed out everything, seen all there is to see. I doubt it.

Yeah, I mean, I know from looking at leaks that they found quite a bit. Yeah, they found quite a bit, but not. Who knows? But it's humongous. It's hard to comprehend. Like, I feel like I'm going to be playing this game for another year. So, and we could talk about what that means and whether it's a good thing. resonates with us, yeah, as time goes on, because I'm sure we will be talking about this game quite a bit over the coming weeks and months. But here's kind of the big picture critical thought, which is that Breath of the Wild, the delight of the whole thing was, like I mentioned before, being able to see something and go to it, being able to climb over everything, a game that just said yes to you at every possibility. And there were parts of the game that could feel, I don't know about bad, but certainly weren't quite as elating. They weren't.

quite as thrilling as that feeling of exploration. And that was the traversal for the most part and the combat. Traversal was fine. I mean, you glide around, you move around, you run around. It's cool. It's chill. It's got some moments. Combat was always just kind of like, I mean, we talked about this a couple weeks ago how Kirk just threw bombs at everybody and that was his combat experience. That might be fun, but it's not like the ideal. It's no Eldon Ring. So what this game does is it gives you this suite of new abilities that just make traversal on combat both exponentially better. Traversal thanks to ultrahand and ascend and recall and just being able to experiment with all three of those abilities in all sorts of cool different ways. And combat, and this is really where

the game just like totally blew me away. With fuse, you just feel like you're constantly able to try new things and have so much more fun in the moment to moment of combat than you could before. I mean, I'm just like constantly shooting arrows, experimenting with different items attached, shooting bomb flowers at anything I can to just like trigger explosives and stuff. Can you explain fuse and how it works and sort of the different ways that you can use it? Yeah, if you're listening to this and you haven't played the game or seen the game. So the way fuse works, fuse is one of the abilities. Maddie mentioned ultra hand earlier. I mentioned Ascend, which just lets you shoot up in the air and go through any ceiling you can find.

Recall, we mentioned rewinds time. Fuse is the fourth one. Fuse lets you essentially you can attach any, or a lot of items that you find on the ground to either your weapon, your sword, or your shield. And then also items in your inventory, you can attach to arrows,

which is the most fun because you can just kind of flick a button and start shooting. Yeah, the easiest to do for sure. Because it pauses when you do that, which makes combat way easier. And I will say, that's my only complaint about this game so far, is that fusing weapons, swords,

is significantly harder than fusing arrows to the point where I'm like, how are they not going to fix this? It's crazy slow. No, that's deliberate for sure, because otherwise it would be too easy to just fuse like your opponents' weapons in combat. And like there are times when there are times when an enemy is about to fuse something and you want to try to interrupt them. And if you could just pause during a fuse, that would totally ruin that whole experience. I suppose so. But it's like fusing arrows is so easy. But of course, the arrows are. a finite resource, but weapons are also a finite resource, which is part of why I'm like, it needs to be just a teeny, tiny bit easier. But it's fine. Continue, Jason. Well, so just to kind of

put a bow on this, this thought is just like the fact that Tears of the Kingdom is able to make combat and traversal even better in this kind of experience that was already pretty incredible, like, greatest game of all time status. I mean, it's just mind boggling to me. Like, I'm just, I've also, like you guys, I've just been breathing Zelda nonstop for the past couple of couple of days and I just can't get enough of it. I can't stop thinking about it. It's just like burrowed into my head and yeah, I'm just blown away. Yeah. So I think it's really cool to see Nintendo make an iterative sequel like this because they don't usually operate in that way and never really have for Zelda because usually with a Zelda sequel you get a very different

game. Sometimes that's controversial. Sometimes, you know, people, they introduce things that people aren't happy about, but they're always different. Majoris Vask Accept it. And then the upshot of that is that you can always go back to Wind Waker. And when you play Wind Waker, it feels like you're playing Wind Waker. It's very, very different from whatever it was Twilight Princess. Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks and... Right, which came after.

Which are normally sequels, but not as beloved. Well, and they're all different. And the point is, like, you can have a favorite and you can just go back and play your favorite and it'll be different than the other ones. That's a little less true with some of them, like Linkfell. between worlds, for example, does actually sort of feel like an iterative sequel to Link to the past, but broadly speaking, that's sort of been true. This is really interesting because you can see, it does feel like this is DLC that expanded

into a full game. BTW, I would be very curious what Silk Song is like, just because this is going to be two games, hopefully it still comes out this year, but two games this year are in this time period that were DLC to beloved massive action RPGs that then became full-blown games and theoretically refine and add new elements of those games. So kind of cool that we're getting to have that for two really amazing games like Hollow Night and Breath of the Wild. Anyways, it's really cool to see because for the downsides that people, I'm sure, have complained about. I haven't really been reading the reaction online, and I'm sure there have been people saying,

oh, this is too similar to Breath of the Wild, the music cues, the sound, the look, the feel, whatever. For me, it's really interesting because you get to see these little decisions that have really big consequences. Some of what we're talking about are a good example. of that, for example, there are no more elemental arrows. There's just arrows. Yep. And now you just combine whatever, anything you can think of with any of just like the base arrow that you carry around to create fire arrows, electrical arrows, phraison arrows, or seeking, like heat-seeking arrows, you know, all these different kinds of arrows. And that's really cool. It actually solves a problem that I hadn't really thought about or articulated when I played Breath of the

Wild, which is you have all these different kinds of arrows. You never really use them, you know? They're kind of like you save them. Like I think we talked about this on the show. I was always saving the arrows and never using them. I was using them in all the wrong ways and then still not having them. Right. And you kind of need them for certain things. Yes.

And then you're like, great, I need an elemental arrow for this stupid thing. Like I only have two. Yeah. It was a thing. So now it's just tied to this other resource that you can go and gather and these fruit, these plants that you can get. And actually, I'm hoping that I can have a garden at some point. I feel like you probably, there's going to be a garden in this game somewhere,

but I don't know if there is. where you can grow whatever you want, Monster Hunter style, and kind of return there to pick all the fire fruits and ice fruits and whatever that you need. But I really like that mechanic. Also, I think we should just talk some about the abilities, some more about them, because these abilities have replaced, you know, the magnesis and stasis and whatever from Breath of the Wild. They are really awesome. And I think there's one change, I guess, to point out one thing to start with.

Jason, you mentioned bombs. So, yeah, I used to use bombs all the time in Breath of the Wild. Anyone who watched streaming the game when I was playing has seen that, where you can use bombs as a kind of trash enemy destroyer because you have these bombs that just come back for free and you have two different ones, a square one and a circle one. So if you just cycle between them, there's not even any cool down. You just can throw bombs constantly in the game,

and it really makes it easy to deal with almost any enemy short of a boss. And they've removed that, and actually now all of the abilities don't do damage. So when a skeleton comes at you out of the ground or whatever, you have to actually fight it. And there's a lot of little stuff like that. Like, I think that's just a really smart change. It removes a power that was really useful, but maybe too useful,

and replaces it with things that just require a little bit more creativity. Well, so what's striking also about removing last game's powers, and I remember when I played Tears of the Kingdom at the preview event, I was like looking out for that. I was like, where are the powers that I had in Breath of the Wild? Is you don't really miss any of them. Maybe some people might be like,

oh, man, I wish I had cryosis or like, could freeze things. Well, but do you miss them, right? You personally, right? You're saying you don't miss them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I say that, when I say that, I haven't experienced because bombs are easily replaced with bomb flowers, which are pretty copious throughout the world. So that's not even a thing. When you have the feeling of fun of like, hey, a bomb flower, yes. Like when I find some, I'm excited to get them. Exactly. And also there's no shortage of them. Like, I never run out and I use them all the time. Magnesis is obviously replaced with Ultrachan. That's not even a thing. Stasis, I mean, stasis, you could see. There were some cool physics you could do by just.

just like launching things in the air. But recall and ultrahand replace that so well that it's not really something that I think many people will miss. Cryosis, I mean, you can freeze things in other ways. You can't make blocks come out of the water anymore, but that's okay, I think. Yeah, that's always a weird power. It was always a weird power. Definitely limited. It was definitely the black shoes.

Yeah. But so I think that like it's to this game's credit that they came up with the suite of powers that, A, complement each other better than. those games than those powers in Breath of the Wild did and B, that they just feel like these incredible tools that have completely replaced. Like, like, at least I personally have not felt like I missed anything in, in Breath of the Wild. And to your point, Kirk, I think that a lot of those things, plus all of the, like, quality of life things they've improved, the fact that when you open a chest and there's a weapon aside and you're out of space, you can just drop something automatically

instead of having to reopen the chest, the fact that there's a conversation log, the fact that, Like all these other things they've stuck in to make the game feel. Save recipes is really nice. The saving recipes is fantastic. All this stuff, plus the fact that it feels so much like Breath of the Wild almost makes it feel like Breath of the Wild is like made obsolete by this in a way that others, all the games have not been. And I imagine it would be really difficult.

In fact, I think it is very difficult because I experienced this after the preview event. I tried to revisit Breath of the Wild and I was like, where's my ultra-Anne? Like, this is tough to play. I want to be able to ascend into things. So yeah, it's interesting that they do that with the iterative sequel, but it also feels like they've made a better game, which is incredible to say after like the heights of the Wilde hit. Yeah, I kind of wonder how accessible it is to people who didn't play

Breath of the Wild, though, because just anecdotally, I have a couple co-writers where they didn't play Breath of the Wild and they're trying this one, and they're having a way harder time. That's interesting. understanding how the game works. Yeah. I mean, again, this is a pretty limited sample set. I'm talking about two people here.

So this might not be some massive trend that I'm documenting. But I can imagine how that would be the case, because Breath of the Wild also is extremely good at tutorializing its version of an open world with, you know, guard rails on. Like, there are a lot of things you can't do in Breath of the Wild, despite it feeling like you can do anything. And the recipes are introduced really well, chopping down trees is in there, etc, really all in that opening area

that I very recently replayed. So I can understand how somebody just entering the Great Sky Islands which is the opening area of this game having never done any of that stuff in Breath of the Wild cooking, using logs for anything at all. Like it's a lot to learn.

Like they're assuming you know how to do all that stuff and that you're ready to build after that. I found that this tutorial is easier to get a hold of because like it specifically highlights all these buttons for you and like reminds you of everything. I don't know. I mean, yeah, obviously I haven't have that experience. I think it's I think it's more just that on top of all the presumed knowledge of breath of the wild stuff that we all know so well that we don't even think of it. No, I'm talking about the old stuff. Like immediately like you can't do everything right away. It shows you you, you slowly get a bow

and learn how to fire a bow. It puts the zone I robot. Like if you're talking to every zone I robot in the great sky islands, you pretty much get a tutorial for even all the stuff you, you, you, you, you you learn in Breath of the Wild. I think a bigger problem is that this game and Breath of the Wild does seem similar. And when I say problem, I don't mean this is actually a negative in the game as much as a problem for new players is that you can wind up missing big things if you go off in a random path. Like you can leave and explore the world without actually getting the paraglider, which is really, which would really suck if you did that. I did do that. Yeah, well, there you go. Yeah. And also if you don't if you don't kind of follow the natural path,

to like that first stable. You don't wind up finding Impa and doing that, like starting that whole quest. You don't wind up like getting a horse. And so there's there's some things that like you'll just want to follow the main path for before just going off. But other than that, I mean, I think it's pretty well tutorialized. But yeah, I don't know. I haven't had the experience of not playing Breath of the Wild before this.

Right. Yeah. I think it'll be interesting to see in four or five years if people go back and play Breath of the Wild because I think that they will just because of how video games work. Sure. But yeah, we'll just have to see. I think it's interesting about the paraglider and about that idea that you mentioned, Jason, that you can miss things. I remember in Breath of the Wild missing some of those combat tutorial shrines, which are also in this game.

They teach you, for example, a move that I didn't know. I just did a shrine that taught me this is if you select something with the new quick select with up on the D-pad, and then if you do that while hitting the R button, like the throw button, it actually puts that object in your hand. and you can throw it. So you can, like, throw a fireflower and make it a bomb, like a little fire bomb that you can throw. That wasn't something I knew. It taught me in the shrine. I remember in Breath of the Wild going back

and playing one of those early combat shrines way later in the game just because I'd missed it. And it was giving me a combat tutorial and realizing, oh, there is a combat tutorial in this game. I just sort of missed it. So some of that is the fact that I'm playing with the pro HUD, which I played with from the start. And there are a few things that the game doesn't tell you how to do.

I actually kind of think that it should. I think this is a kind of a bit of an oversight, not a huge deal since the pro-hud is kind of meant for having... It's for ProGamers. It's for the Kirk Hamilton's of the world. It's for the Kingdom player. But I think if you're experienced with Breath of the Wild, it's a safe, it kind of feels like a safe assumption to think, well, yeah, I really don't like how busy the full HUD is. So I went to the ProHud, which removes a lot of stuff. That was how I played Breath of the Wild. I wrote a whole article. I remember on Kataku being like, definitely play this way. A lot of people switched over and were thankful because they didn't even know that was an option in that game.

And I think it's way better without a mini map. This game is pretty easy to navigate without one. So there are a few things that doesn't tell you. It doesn't tell you to wiggle the stick using Ultra Hand to disconnect something that you've attached, which it took me a while to figure out how to do that. It doesn't tell you how to accelerate when you're skydiving, that you do that with R. And, yeah, I'm gathering that it also can tell you that throw thing. So there's some stuff with the ProHUD.

The normal HUD does have its advantage. It does, but it's also got a lot of disadvantages. But anyways, whatever is your preference. It's nice that at least there's an option, even though I think this game could give you a lot more options in terms of HUD and accessibility. Yeah, God, the lack of button remapping is ridiculous. Yeah, I wish there were more HUD options, honestly.

Like, I want something between those two because I get lost very easily. Like, I'll just get turned around and be like, what direction am I going? A compass would be awesome. I don't want to have to open the map every time. So really, I'm only using the HUD for the map, and I'm not looking at anything else,

and I'm trying to learn everything granularly. But yeah, anyway, continue. So to the paraglider, I think it's actually really cool that you can just go out into the world without the paraglider this time. That is possible in Breath of the Wild if you do that whole thing where you get on a rock and use Stasis to launch yourself to the ground.

But like it's not easy to do. And while, yes, you can play through probably too much of the game not having fun and not realizing that you're supposed to have this core ability, it's actually really cool that it's possible because I've always really liked the part of Breath of the Wild that you play without the paraglider

because it forces you to be so much more conscious with the way that you traverse things and I could see that being kind of cool here too I mean it'd be hard but you'd have to skydive into water every time I'm sure people are gonna do like no paraglider run

exactly I mean okay maybe it would be possible but it would be very difficult to We know everything is possible you've seen what people do in breath of the wild it'll be possible That's true that's true but it would be very difficult to explore the sky island without a power glider.

Not impossible. Definitely possible. If you experiment the Zonai fans and rockets and stuff. Yeah, exactly. And the Zonai wing, you just use that every time instead of a paraglider if you want it to and just carry it with you everywhere. It runs out of batteries pretty quickly. Well, that's true.

So one thing that I do in Breath of the Wild that I'm also doing here is I almost never fast travel. I just think it's really fun to not fast travel to just go the long way because so much of the fun of this game is just trying to walk somewhere and then getting distracted 100 different times by fun things that you see. Very hard to get stuff done in this game. Yeah, it's almost impossible. It's distractions the game because you'll see something on the way to anything you go to. Yeah, and the one thing I learned from Breath of the Wild was just don't bother mainlining the story.

Like there will always be times where you'll kind of feel like, okay, I want to do another dungeon. I've done one story dungeon, I should say the one to the northwest. I won't say anything else about it. It was really cool. I mean, it was an amazing mission, and it was really cool. But, you know, the fun of the game is just taking your time and wandering around. I do wish that you didn't have to fast travel out of the depths. I wish you could use Ascend to get out of the depths, which I know, I think you can in a couple places,

but I wish it just when you were down there, I don't know, if you could go stand under one of the entrances to the depths, maybe. And if you just selected Ascend, it would just launch you back up to the surface. I just think that would be cool because then I wouldn't have to fast travel out. and I never like fast traveling out of the depth. It always just feels like it kind of interrupts my flow. Interesting. Can you use Ascend under one of those roots, like the fast travel points in the depths? No, no.

I thought that maybe that would do it too, but that doesn't work. I mean, you can do it, but then it just puts you up to like the top, like the side of the root. It doesn't take you out. But I really like Ascend. It's great. To give some love to ascend. It is such a cool ability. I always forget I have it, which I think will be common for people starting out.

And then you realize, oh, wait a minute. I don't have to figure out some weird roundabout way to climb this thing. I can just like go straight up. Chug six stamina potions, which I did one time early on. And then I was like, wait, why did I do this? I could have just ascended out of here. You guys realize you can go anywhere by like taking a platform, throwing it up in the air, landing it.

Again, recall. Recall. And then say, because when you recall it, it'll be in the air. And then you can ascend and go into it. Also ascend. So I don't know how many like sidequist. you guys have been doing. There are some awesome ones, super fun ones. I cleared like Hattino Village, which is, um, I haven't even gone there yet. Yeah. Me either. So don't tell me too much. I won't

tell you too much, but there's some really cool. I mean, it feels like this game has a bazillion more quests than Breath of the Wild. Like every single new stable you get to or like village you get to, just like a dozen dudes with exclamation point, the red exclamation points for quest. But Hattina Village did a ton of quests. They're all, they all revolve around this like mayoral election, which is super fun. But one quest, which I really enjoyed, involved having to use Ascend to get into some place that you wouldn't

normally be able to go. So they're playing around with it in some really fun ways, the way that they are all of the abilities. The way a scent really feels like a classic Zelda ability. It feels like something you would be able to do in like the core mechanic in like an old school 3D Zelda game.

Which by the way, I mean. Recall feels that way to me, honestly. Well, I was going to say, one of the crazy things about these abilities is that they each feel like they can be the core mechanic of a game on its own. Yeah, it could just be an ultra-hand and that would be a whole game. Yeah, at first, it's so funny. I remember seeing that Onuma video a couple of months ago when they first showed these abilities. And I was like, oh, is that it? But now the more you play with them, the more you're like, holy crap, like these are like, like revolutionary.

Yeah, that's very true. and they feel like mods in a certain way that you can kind of see the game dev tool you have at all, especially Ascend. Anu actually described that in an interview with us about how Ascend specifically was a cheat code. It's basically no-clip. Yeah, it's like a no-clip.

The devs were using it to get out of dungeons and caves that they just wanted to escape quickly, and then they were like, just put it in the game, which is pretty hilarious, honestly. So it feels like a mod in a certain way, right, where, or like a dev tool. I've been watching more psychodicy, the double-fine documentary, and just watching a lot of game developers work and play around with their tools.

So I've kind of got this fresh in my mind is the vision of a game developer sitting there with some, you know, cheat tool that they have that does something hilarious in the game and then calling people over and being like, look what happens when I do this. He goes through the floor and he gets stuck and it's like he swam through the floor and they're like, well, you know, we could do an animation for that and turn it into a, you know, into a mechanic in the game. and you can very easily see that happening. What's so cool is, you know, people have modded Breath of the Wild,

and you can watch videos of modded versions of that game. And when you mod a game like this, like a really open-world, open-ended game with lots of systems, it can be really cool, and it can open the door to all kinds of funny stuff happening. But what makes us feel different is the fact that they designed the game around it, like you're talking about in Hattano Village or whatever. Like every puzzle, every dungeon, everywhere you go is built with a,

send and with ultra hand and you know all these abilities in mind so it kind of the game comes and meets all of these awesome tools halfway and so the more i play the less it feels like modded breath of the wild and the more it feels like a really different thing uh-huh yeah i think that's the key is that these like they built everything and like you can see it everywhere i mean we haven't even talked about some of the like little things you find along the way like the guy with the signposts who gives you all the i love that i love addison is my favorite man i love addison he's very excited about He gives you good rewards. It's worth it. I always help him. I do. And they're always fun. It's always fun to help them.

Always extremely fun. And yeah, it just feels like this game is built around these abilities in just a really, really incredible way. It's also just like astounding that. I think a lot of people look at this and they're like, oh, it's just DLC for Breath of the Wild. How could this take six years? I think one of the reasons that it took six years. Who are those people? Whatever. Yeah, of course. I mean, you're always here. I feel like people did ahead of release, but that's kind of quiet. I think most people are like, all this game is fun. I mean, it's noise.

It's nonsense. But the point that I'm making is that I think one of the reasons it took so long is because they have made this like incredibly polished. Like usually when you have a physics sandbox game where you can smash things together and build vehicles and stuff, usually they're pretty jankly. Usually there's a lot of bugs. There's a lot of weird physics glitches. There's a lot of clipping through the walls and the dirt and stuff. And this game does not have that. This game is like incredibly.

polished and feels like pretty, pretty bug-free. I won't say completely bug-free, but like when you're putting things together, the fact that they work so well, it's just a testament. And then on top of that, you just have all this other, just like you described many Zelda goodness. Like it's still a full-fledged, like full of quests and funny dialogue and story and like all this other awesome stuff. There's an entire like backstory, like basically memories return from Breath of the Wild. And there's an entire massive quest line involving them. and all this other stuff, plus the depths and like, it's just, again, mind-boggling is the way that I would describe this game. Yeah, I'm really happy with the main story. And I, I don't want to get into it

too much because I know spoilers. But the spoilers, I'll say, have made me more excited, which doesn't always happen, but I feel like it can with a really cool story where you're watching things and you're like, oh, I see how this fits together. And I feel like I haven't had that since something like Ocarina of Time, which is like such a story heavy Zelda game and something I really enjoyed about it. And it's not to say that Breath of the Wild story wasn't great. I like it fine. I think Princess Zelda has a really cool arc in that game. It's kind of like about a teenager dealing with like way too much pressure, which is something that Zelda games have never really done before in terms of just how stressful it would be to fight Gannon when you're like 16 years

old and like breath of the wild kind of tried to navigate that but this game has so much more of those relationships between Zelda and link and then Gannon is like more of a character later and I just I'm so into it I'm like bring it on like I love that this is part of this like I I was worried that this whole game would just be an immersive sim and obviously we're all having fun with that and I am too like I'm building weird shit and I'm having a great time more so than I thought I would because I don't play these kind of games very often but I just wanted to say I'm really happy with the story overall so far, even though it's using the same memory system, which I think has its drawbacks. Well, it's a memory system, but it's also kind of

not because time travel is involved in this story. And I think that actually gets to something they're doing narratively that's different here that I think is like the key to kind of why the story feels more active, which is that the story itself is active and happening in real time. Right. Like you are recovering memories of Zelda because there's time shenanigans going on, but Zelda is active in a parallel storyline to Link, and she's outdoing stuff. Yeah. And, like, that's cool.

And I think that lines up also with the way that the ally, like, support characters, play out. I won't get into specifics here, but I did that first big mission up at the Rito Village. And you meet a friend there who is an actual NPC that joins you and fights alongside you. This is something that you could see in the trailers, too. If you watch the trailers, you get the sense of, oh, Link's fighting alongside people. And it's the same idea where like, you know, now that I've finished that, his spirit gives me an ability and I can call on it whenever I want. But it's a little bit different. Sort of like Breath of the Wild where the champions give you abilities.

Yes, yes. Sorry, that's what I mean. Yes. That it's the same. Only it doesn't have that kind of sad undercurrent, which was that in Breath of the Wild, they all died. And it was their spirits who were kind of joining me. Yeah, like a hundred years ago. And the whole actual story, the action happened a hundred years ago. And that was always so weird that you were just like, well, I guess the story already happened and I'm just cleaning up the mess. And like doing the final boss battle. And I'm okay with that in a way. Well, I think that game had a cool energy. Like I like the energy of this sort of ruined kingdom that's really overgrown and it's all just memories and everyone's kind of trying to live on in the rubble. That's all really cool.

But it's neat to see something different now. And it's fun to have these characters join me and actually be next to me and talking to Link and goofing around. And the one character I met, I really liked him too, is a like a like. little guy. And so I think that's cool. I think I'm assuming that the rest of the game will play out that way. And that's a notable change. So the Breath of the Wild is very like post-apocalyptic sort of story. This is very much about rebuilding and a lot of stuff has been rebuilt. Again, to mention Latino, just because it's fresh in my mind, you get there and like, they're like, we built a school here. And then there's a whole quest line from that. And it's just like cool to see that like,

oh, the residents of Hyrell have all this hope and and like spirit for rebuilding. Another good example of this is like in addition to having the NPC companions, you also can find these battles everywhere that are like enemy forces and a boss bar appears upstage and basically the boss bar drains every time you kill one of the Bacoblins or whatever you're fighting. And sometimes you can do this alongside a party full of other NPCs who like fight alongside you. It's like a straight-up army battle. Yeah, the monster hunters. I haven't found. I haven't met them yet. That's cool. and not in that it's like mechanically interesting or anything

because it's not that special it just feels like a combat battle where like their NPCs aside you but it's cool to feel like oh this isn't just my fight anymore like all of Hyrol is like banding together and working together and a lot of the story and a lot of the themes in the quest I think kind of reflect that too even the fact that you find everywhere you find these little building construction material caches with like signs that say the Hyrol reconstruction project right I mean right

The idea of rebuilding fits well with a game where your primary mechanic is this building tool that lets you combine and build things. Can we talk a little bit about aesthetics? I want to mention the saxophone on the show last week. I mentioned the sax factor. We need a sax factor. We need a sax update because now I've played the game. And there's so much saxophone in this game. It makes me so happy.

They've basically made the sort of sonic, the musical identity of the sky area is driven by the saxophone. It's all these woodwind ensembles. lots and lots of saxophone. Man, the title music, like the title card for this game, which totally rules. Yep. Super sexy. One, I think my favorite music cue in the game is,

are they called Skyview Towers? Is that what the Towers are called? So I like what they've done with the towers in general. The way that you don't have to climb them anymore. The way that they yeat link into the air. Yes, exactly. They have to like move around with binoculars space. I feel like that's so quintessentially Nintendo, though.

I know. Because aren't we all kind of sick of climbing a tower to unlock some of the map. So they're like, you don't have to climb the tower. Don't worry. We're going to make it so much cooler than that. We're going to launch Link into the air. And then you get this amazing cutscene every time where the sax plays this totally beautiful melody.

And it's amazing. Like I was laughing and just smiling and feeling so happy that whole time. I'm guessing there are some people who found that opening tutorial area. Like it took too long. They found it a little bit tiresome. I mean, that's definitely the minority. I feel like I've seen way more people who had the experience. I did, which is like.

loving it and not wanting to leave. Like, I picked the Great Sky Islands clean. Like, I was like, I want every single hot pepper. I want to explore every corner of this. I'm loving this video game. Well, and for me, it was just like, there was saxophone happening everywhere. And I was like, will the sax ever end? Like, I never want this to stop.

And when I finally went back down to the surface, you know, it's more the piano. So they reuse some music cues, but they're kind of judicious with it. There's plenty of new music as well. And I just love that they've chosen. the saxophone to be the defining instrument of the sky, of this game that's all about the sky. Like, that just makes me so happy that there's so much lovely saxophone in this game. Hell yeah. Some repeating music, the stable music is repeating from Breath of the Wild.

And a lot of the sound cues are very similar. Or if not the, if not it, Nicole. Though they have fun with it, like, when you go to the stable that's been converted into a newspaper hub, the music is similar, but a little bit different because it's been taken over and turned into something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's a newspaper. And that's really the most unrealistic thing about this game is a thriving newspaper took over. Yeah, and that she can afford to buy a stable.

This is ridiculous. It's out of work, stable. And she hires you to be a journalist? Yeah, I don't get it. Yeah, yeah, it's absurd. How come Hyrule equity partners hasn't taken over that? Oh, my goodness. I just, before we wrap this up, I mean, there's so many more things we could say,

and will say. I just wanted to mention some of the scary elements of this game, like the gloom hands and how cool they are. Like, Kirk, I don't know if you're far enough

to even know what enemy I'm talking about, but they have their own music cue that is terrifying. And also, like, the Blood Moon animation is way creepier now. It's way more hardcore than Reds of the Wild. It's like thriller. I expect the thriller music

to start playing when Zalda starts talking. Witness the blood moon's rise. When it's red glow, shines upon the land. The aimless spirits of slain monsters return to flesh. The foulest dentures in the air, the funk of 40,000 years.

Just a big in a war of all the past. Yeah, and it kind of fits with the overall main storyline, which is far more of a mystery, where it's like, where's Zelda and what's going on? And people have seen her, but they don't know why she won't talk to them. There's like sort of this ghost like Zelda that people are describing seeing. And that's creepy. It's very like Jordan Peel's us. It's like what is what's going on with this other Zelda and the depth. Not a comparison I was expecting to hear on this episode. I know. Well,

it has me thinking about it because there's some really, there's some creepy stuff in here. And that also to me is is the good Zelda stuff because it's like Ocarina of Time. It's like just the creepy stuff. I mean, Majora's Mask. Dark world. Yeah, Majora's Mask, which is Ocarina on, I don't know, LSD, I don't know. You're having a bad trip, though. Yes. Anyway, I'm just very excited to see those elements of Zelda return. And I mean, I'm excited to play more Zelda tonight.

Any other final thoughts before we try to wrap this up? No, I'm excited to play Zelda tonight. I'm excited to play on the flight to New York. I'm excited to talk about it live at our show tonight, I guess, as you're listening to this. And I'm just excited to play more. Yeah, we'll keep discussing. Yes. Okay.

We'll be back in a second with one more thing. Trans representation and media is at an all-time high, with trans entertainers gracing the screens large and small. But trans voices, especially black trans voices, are rarely centered in our own stories. That's why we bring you a new limited series called We See Each Other of the Podcast, co-hosted by me, journalists, and better half of the Max Fun Podcasts,

Fanta. Treyval Anderson. and me award-winning journalist and media personality, Sharj Marcel. All of it is based on my book. We See Each Other a Black Trans Journey through TV and film. Now listen, folks, we're having a very different kind of conversation. It's giving kitchen table talk.

We get into the discourse, honey. Tune into We See Each Other, the podcast at maximum fun.org, or wherever you get Slayworthy Audio. The Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom. Diablo 4. Final Fantasy 16. Street Fighter 6. Baldur's Game.

Starfield, Spider-Man 2, Master Detective Archives Rain Code for Nintendo Switch? No, is that just me? It's a huge time for video games. You need somebody to tell you what's good, what's not so good, and what's amazing. I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Kirk Hamilton. We're the hosts of Triple Click, a video game podcast for anyone who likes games. Find us at Maximumfund.org or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm editing the episode.

I just wanted to put that ad in there because I think it was really funny. And Jason legitimately surprised us with that ridiculous game that he picked. And it's going out network-wide. Obviously, you don't need an ad to tell you to listen to Triple Click. Thanks for listening to Triple Click. I just thought you all might enjoy that ad because I did. I think it's very funny. Okay, back to the show.

Bing! We are back with one more thing. Jason, why don't you go first? I want to hear about yours. I went to the movies last week. I went and saw Guardians of the Galaxy Part 3, the conclusion of James Gunn's Guardians trilogy, and I left the theater thinking,

wow, it's been like three years since I've seen a Marvel movie that I really liked, and now we're finally here. This is a really good movie. Yeah, it just felt like we've been getting this glut of disappointing Marvel movies, a disappointing Thor, a disappointing Black Panther to a few others that were just kind of mediocre to good at best or fine at best.

And Guardians of the Galaxy Part 3 is just very good. It's like a very fun, good, entertaining, heartwarming movie. And the main reason is that they very smartly, James Gunn, very smartly decided to focus on Rocket Raccoon and his backstory. And so the whole movie is interspersed with flashbacks about him and how he became this kind of like, I don't know, sentient raccoon, super smart, sentient raccoon. and it's a tragic backstory, of course, but it's also very good. And then there's just a ton of good action.

There's this incredible hallway fight scene where they all team up together, and it's just super, like, well choreographed and shot and interesting. And yeah, it's just a tight, solid movie all around that made me a little bit sad that James Gunn is leaving the MCU and going into the DC world. But, yeah, as you expect, I mean, They do. They do need a lighter touch. Yeah, man. Jason, you got to watch Peacemaker, man. Oh, it's so good.

You really do. It's like, it's really, really good. I can't think, you haven't seen it. The Marvel, Marvel is such a commitment. Marvel's such a commitment. What is that? You can just watch it as its own thing, though, and it's, you'll like it. I know, I know, but Marvel is such a commitment. I just haven't brought myself to watch any of the DC stuff.

It's kind of the nice thing about, like, the DC stuff, or at least gun stuff, is that it doesn't require that same kind of commitment that, Marvel does, and you could just watch Peacemaker. It doesn't. You say gun stuff, but now Gunstuff is all of DC. Anyway, Guardians Part 3, really good, which isn't a surprise, because the first two were also just very excellent movies, both of them, I thought. And, yeah, this one is also really good.

And there's also a dog who is the best, Cosmo of the Dog is just fantastic. Who is in the Guardians' game, right? Cousin Cosmo and the Guardians game. Cosmo of the Dog and appears in this one. I don't remember if he was in the first. two, or she was in the first two movies, but I think I don't think so. In this one, she is a standout, a standout performance.

And yeah, just great. The entire, that entire band of actors and characters are all just really fun to watch. Dave Batista, as Drax is a super fun. Groot, as always, just incredible. I hope Vin Diesel is making a lot of money to

say I am good. I think Vin Diesel is doing fine. Yeah, I'm so worried about him. I hope he's making enough money to say Gru. I wonder how much. much he makes to say I am Groot over and I'm right again. Probably a fair amount. Can I ask, I'm probably going to wind up seeing this one alone since I've seen a lot of

people saying there's a lot of pretty rough animal stuff in this game. How was that for you? Or sorry, in this movie, there's a lot of rough animals. Yeah, I'll avoid spoiling too much, but there's definitely some violence animals. Yeah, that's what I've heard too. Some painful animal stuff for sure. Bring some Kleenex with you basically. Yeah, I mean, it's what you would expect for like a rocket raccoon backstory.

There's going to be like animal experimentation and violence and stuff and cruelty to animals for sure. But like it's well, I don't know. Yes, it's definitely there. It didn't bother you as much. But if you were sensitive to that kind of thing, it is probably a good thing to be aware of it. Well, I came in when you start seeing those scenes, you kind of braced yourself for like, okay, there's no, I mean, something tragic is going to happen here. Like you know what's coming. Right.

Like you feel like the movie's leading you in. Well, it depends on your threshold, though, if you can't deal with any of that stuff at all, don't maybe, maybe skip it. Yes, if you can't deal with animal violence, even CGI animal violence. If you can't deal with any of that stuff, then you can't skip it.

All right, cool. I'll go next because mine's also a movie. So I watched this comedy horror movie called Bodies, Bodies, bodies, bodies, which stars Pete Davidson and a very diverse cast of other people. And I really enjoyed it. I feel like I remember this movie getting some flack at the time.

because maybe people couldn't quite get on board with the dark humor of it. There's a lot of... Isn't that sort of like all the cool kids? Isn't it kind of a cool kids movie? It is. It was sort of the coverage I saw. And it's like it's a bunch of like rich kids. And then there's this one young woman who's sort of your way in who's the girlfriend of

one of these rich kids. And she is like very quiet and you don't know a lot about her really for the whole movie. But she's a pretty good way in despite that because she's like an every woman. But also she's only been dating this girl for like six weeks. So she doesn't know. any of these kids. And then, of course, there, you know, it's a locked room murder mystery.

The murders start happening. Everybody is accusing the outsider character and even you, the viewer, like, wait, is it her? And honestly, like, I could never have guessed anything that unfolds in this movie. And I was very, very impressed by the ending. Because with each murder, I was like, okay, like, I think I'm following this. but then the final three minutes I was like I don't know how they're going to end this movie

like I feel like they can't end it like the place that we're in right now is crazy and then in the final three minutes they wrap it up and I was like what so yeah I really recommend it if you just want like a weird ride through a murder mystery where I do I think I can promise you won't guess the ending and also it's very funny

like if you think that Pete Davidson is funny I don't know I mean I do where is it's true oh God I don't know, on one of my many, many services that I pay for and I'm upset that I pay for. I don't know, but I watched it on the internet. It's on one of them. Yeah. Kirk.

Oh, it's called Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. It came out in 2022. A lot of blood in it. Definitely a horror movie, but comedy more than horror. Kirk, what is your one more thing? My One More Thing is a book that I am reading that I'm enjoying called The Empire's Ruin by Brian Stavely. So I finished this, what would you call it?

pop science book, Breath. I think I've talked to you about it, Maddie, which is pretty cool. It's like one of those, change everything you think you knew about how your mouth and your sinuses work. That was cool, that was fun, but I was kind of in the mood

for just some fiction after that. So I started reading this book, which is a new trilogy from the author of the Chronicles of the Unhidden Throne, which Jason, I know you've read. These names. Those books, yes. It is like very much, yeah.

really dense fantasy world, lots of lore, lots of complex, proper nouns. But I really liked the original trilogy. Yeah, it's really good. The Emperor's Blades, I think is the first one. They're really cool. They're very bleak and pretty hardcore, like really hardcore stuff happens in them. It's a very kind of a world where life is pretty cheap.

There's a lot of war. It's the story. The first trilogy was the story of this empire, the Anurian Empire. and the children of the empire who are scattered to different points of the globe and then have their own adventures as there's kind of this plot

to overthrow the empire and maybe destroy the world and kill everyone. And you are kind of on the side of the dominating empire for the whole books, which is complicated. And, you know, you get into kind of, just like a lot of war, a lot of people get killed. One of the coolest things in that trilogy

is the idea of the Ketrel, which are the name of this sort of strike force that work for the empire. And they fly on these huge birds. And the birds are the ketrel. And so there will be, it's called a wing, and it's basically a squad, where there's, like, a demolitions person and a leech who can, like, do kind of some magic. And there's the flyer who flies the bird and is, like, mounted up on the top of the bird.

And I don't remember the other rules. Oh, a sniper. He uses a bow and arrow. And so they, like, strap into the claws of this huge bird, and then the birds will, like, fly into battle, and they're trained to be, you know, like, super unstoppable warriors. And so the Ketrel are like the reason that the empire is so powerful in the first trilogy. And then there's a big civil war and like a whole bunch of Ketrel die over the course of the trilogy. And at the start of this new series, there are almost no birds left.

And the series picks up with some characters who were side characters in the original trilogy. This is many years later. So the dust has settled. I won't say all the specifics, but we're in a whole new world, a whole new phase of the empire. the world is actually kind of like crumbling the empires falling apart. It's the tears of the kingdom to the breath of the wild. It really is kind of the tears of the kingdom. And the main character is a woman named Gwena Sharp, who was a side character in,

she kind of rose to prominence over the course of the original trilogy. She's super cool. She's this kind of like irresponsible, hard-headed. I don't know. She never thinks of herself as a leader, but always winds up becoming a leader and is always doubting herself, but then kind of comes through in the clutch. She's like a demolitions expert Ketrel. And she is sent to this mysterious island to try to get eggs so they can get more birds because they need more birds because they're all out after the original trilogy. So it follows her on that quest, which has just started for me.

I'm in the first sort of third of the book. And then some other characters as well. And it's cool. It like really just brings me back to sort of Stavely's general worldview, which is a pretty rough kind of just like, you know, it's like a really gritty world where just people like barely survive, but then everyone in it is really tough, and they've just been really toughened by things, and they kind of, you know,

survive by the skin of their teeth. It's also just a cool magic system. They're kind of gods that walk the earth. There's a lot of mystery in terms of when what it means for someone to even be a god and what that kind of power looks like. Like the magic of this world is really neat. So I just really dig it. It's kind of

a fun, pretty readable book, but I'm really enjoying it. So I just wanted to say, I didn't know there was a new trilogy in the works. Yeah, me neither. I was going to say, and I really enjoyed the first one. So yeah, this book, The Empire's Ruin, came out in 2021. And while I'm always kind of hesitant these days after, you know, lies of Locke Lamorra, the Gentleman Bastards, and after the name of the wind and the Rathfuss books, like, so many of these books, you start them and then it's like, or I mean, hell, Game of Thrones,

Song of Ice and Fire, you start them and then it's like, oh, maybe they'll never end. So I don't know if you ever read Kirk, there was a like a side spin-off called Skull Sworn. Yeah, that was also. a good one. No, wait, I didn't read that. I remember, I liked the character. That's what I was saying. I didn't read the sides.

Yeah, it's like the skulls sworn assassins, right? She was a character in, I think, the third book. Yeah, I didn't even realize there was a new trilogy in the same world. Yeah, so it's, and basically my only, my point there is that I have faith in stavely to, like, be able to finish a trilogy because he did it once. So I feel like he can probably do it again. He did those, he banged those out like one after the other. Yeah, yeah.

Is there only one book out in this new trilogy, though? There is currently, yes. So it is a little bit of a risk. It's always a risk, because you never know. But I'd say he has a good track record, so I'm excited for the next book. I mean, I'm excited to finish this book. But I'm really digging it so far. It's really cool.

All right. Well, we've done another rep. And, hey, you listeners got to hurry. You got to hurry to the bell house. You got to put on your running shoes. You're going on in like an hour. Hurry up. Depends where you live, you might have to run really far.

Well, maybe people are listening to this on the commute. Or maybe they're buying a ticket to the live stream. That's true. In which case, we'll see you soon. Yeah, we'll see you in real life. We'll see you in the live feed. Talk more about Zelda. Yes.

Yeah. And maybe some other stuff too. Yeah, maybe. All right. Well, we'll see you then. See you next week. Yeah, see you both on stage. Bye.

Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreyer, Maddie My 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 slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod. Send email to triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Audience-supported.