Triple Click - Video Game Maps!

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

The Triple Click gang puts on their cartography monocles and mulls over the eternal question of what makes for a video game map? They talk about what they like and don't like in the maps of games like Resident Evil 2 and Elden Ring, what maps say about our relationship with games, and the joy of exploring!One More Thing:Kirk: Steamworld Heist II Maddy: Dream Scenario (2023)Jason: Red Dead's History (Tore C. Olsson)LINKS:Preorder 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

Maps in video games, they can be many things. Helpful, unhelpful, annoying, interesting, but whatever they tell you, they don't love you like we love you. Welcome to Triple Quick, where we bring the maps to you. This week we're talking about video game cartography and what in-game maps can tell us about the world, the game, and even ourselves. Grab your quills and compass and let's chart a course for knowledge. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Trier. Hello. Hello, it's us. Hello, my friends. Hello, buddies. We found our way back here. We did.

We found our air holes. We found our way. We used all the maps that were at our disposal. Yeah, that was where I was going with it because I figured the listener sees the title of the app. I'm just previewing some maps content for them. That's true. And if you really want to find your way to supporting quality listeners supported podcasting, well, then you can use a map to navigate to maximum fun.org slash join.

And you can become a member and you can support Triple Click and many other very cool podcasts on the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. That is how we make money from the show. It's what lets us keep doing it. It's why we don't have to sell ads on the show. We just run little promos for other fun, maximum fun shows. And we are really grateful to all of you for supporting us. And as a way of demonstrating that gratefulness, we make bonus episodes every month that are for members only, the most recent of which was a very fun one about tenant and...

an inception and just about Christopher Nolan and how he makes movies and what we think of them and how they're designed and how they use that design to tell interesting characters stories or kind of ignore the characters in their stories depending on which movie. It was really fun. It was a very fun episode. And then, of course, there are loads and loads, literally dozens and dozens, I would say, of beans casts and bonus episodes and, I don't know, movies and games and spoilers and all kinds of things that we've done over the months that you can go and listen.

too. Oh, can I chime in here real quick, Kirk? So we did a bonus episode on the psychodicy documentary, the making of psychonauts to you a couple months ago. And since then, they've released that epilogue that is episode 33 that kind of recaps the whole thing. We should find a time to discuss it. Maybe we'll stick it into an episode at some point where we can just talk about it a little bit, because yeah, it's pretty cool. I haven't watched it yet. I haven't watched it yet, but I'd like to. I'm psych to see it. More cool bonus content is listening to us talk about that. I think that you even mentioned in that episode that we did about psychotasy. You were like, you know, I hear they're going to release an epilogue.

And we were kind of excited for it even at the time. So, yeah, that'd be worth following up. Anyways, yeah, that's a really good recent bonus episode. All kinds of bonus stuff, maximum fun. Dot org slash join. Go become a member, support our show and get extra stuff. All right, Maddie. What are we talking about today?

Today we are talking about maps in video games. And the reason for this is that I've been thinking a lot about how much I've, like the map in Resident Evil 2 remake and also the things that I don't like about it and the things that I do and don't like about maps in games generally. So just to review the Resident Evil 2 map, that has some pretty classic video gamey elements. It's blanket first. You're filling out the map as you explore the world. And something I realized in it as I went along was that if your character sees an item on the ground or on a windowsill, it will notate it on the map, even if I the player didn't see that little ammo parcel or whatever it may be.

And I realized slowly, I was like, oh, is this map just going to auto-populate with every item in the game? That's a little too easy. But no, it just means that Claire Redfield happened to see it as she was walking by. And I didn't see it yet. So it tells me to go back to that place and get the ammo. But it really just means that you've got to really thoroughly walk around every single room to fill out the map.

And rooms change colors after you've collected everything in a given area. It's really user-friendly. But then, when we talked about this a little bit on our Resident Evil 2 episode, it made me think a lot about just the idea that the game pauses when you open the map. And I realized that I don't want it to do that. Even though I took advantage of it constantly, as we said on the app, every time Mr. X would show up, I would look at the map and I would plan out my entire route of running away from him and what I was going to do.

But I actually think it would have been a lot more effective if the game had just kept going every time I opened the map. And if I had to frantically be looking at it and picturing Claire Redfield, like, looking at a crappy scrawled out police station map in her hand that she's drawn and, like, running around trying to remember where everything was, that felt like it would fit the video game Uvra a lot better. And so it kind of just generally got me thinking about the idea of maps and games and the fact that I typically imagine the protagonist of a game drawing out the map themselves as they

explore. And that's something I did as a kid, too. And I would often draw out the map as I explored, much as I imagined Claire Redfield doing. So because of that, I wanted to ask you both, have you ever drawn a video game map when you were a child? Kirk, let's start with you. Did you ever draw video game maps when you were a child? No, I don't think that I did. I've definitely drawn out puzzles.

Like, I think the most elaborate thing that I drew was a, it was kind of a map. It was a logic map of that logic puzzle in Dishonored 2. And I'll usually, I'll write things out when I need a map for that kind of a thing. I'm trying to think if there are actual rooms or, you know, areas that I've had to map out. And I'm not sure that I ever had to just because, you know, when I was younger and I would play games that didn't have a built-in map and that were hard to navigate, I would just play them in such a kid kind of way where I'm just obsessively playing over and over and over until I've just, you know, kind of run this loop into my head. And I can just remember, oh, yeah, you go through three identical rooms. And then in the third identical room, you double back and go up and over. And that's how you get to that save point.

Like, it's a kind of logic that I just don't really have space in my brain or time for anymore. But I just memorized things when I was a kid. So I didn't really draw maps then. Though, of course, I have a million thoughts on video game maps, and I found them endlessly fascinating. Yeah. They are amazing. I used to play a lot of those interactive fiction games, the Zork games and the like. And with those, you kind of need.

It was very hard to memorize. memorize because it's all text. I probably did some maps to Zork. Yeah, if you played Zork, I mean, Zork is like the classic, like pull up the old graph paper. That's what I used to do. I used to play with my mother a little bit and we used to make maps on graph paper back when I was a really little kid. And so we would have these notebooks full of like, here is where the white mailbox is and here is where you go from there, all the different branching paths. It's also easy with a game like Zork because it's just kind of basic cardinal directions and so you can see where everything is as you draw the map.

Have you guys, if we're going to talk about maps, have you guys ever played the Etri and Odyssey games? No. No, those are those dungeon crawlers, right? I played the persona game that I believe is closely modeled on them. So I think I drew maps with a stylist playing that game, right? So, Maddie, so this game, I don't know if you'll ever play it or want to, but this game is a kind of, it's a dungeon crawler,

kind of like wizardry, where you're descending through these various labyrinths and all sorts of things happen along the way. You build a party and town based on classes and there's term-based combat as you go. But the big gimmick is that they were all on the DS or 3DS and you use the bottom screen to draw a map with the stylus as you go. And it's really, really cool because you kind of feel like you're charting the course in this really cool adventure,

dungeon explorer type of way. And so that game was really good at just kind of creating this map for you. And then you had all these icons. You could also use, in addition to drawing, the grid, you could stick in like, okay, there's a point of interest here, there's a treasure here, there's a boss fight here, I'll come back to this later. It was a really cool series. I think they just released a compilation of them for the Switch. So it is, you can play them. Modern, although I guess I don't, there isn't a second screen to be drawing the map on.

So maybe you have to do it kind of using, I'm not sure, I'm not sure how they do it. But those games are really cool. Yeah, I didn't play them. But I did really enjoy drawing a map of links when I was a child. This was my answer to this. Ah, that's another good one because it's great. Anything on a grid is, it's easier to do map-telling. Yeah, and there's so much wandering around because I didn't have, I didn't know what I was doing. So I didn't have a player's guide.

So I would just be like, well, what have I already done? What can I check off the list? What is the next possible way that I could get an item or where even are the dungeons located? All of that felt very magical to me. Like, oh, they could be anywhere. I could do anything. and there could be a secret around any possible corner. So I would just be like, well, where have I been before?

And, like, let me kind of check things off the list in that kind of way. Links Awakening did have a world map in the game. It did. Yeah. It did have a world map. So you just felt like you needed one on top of that, like, because it wasn't specific enough? Yeah, just for fun. I also had a friend who listens to the show, and he and I would play it together and, like, have phone calls where we would, like, talk about where we were. And so in that way, I feel like I would be just taking notes for.

for the phone call that I would have with my friend, where I would be like, okay, so here's where I was, and here's the stuff I was seeing in the game, and like, how far did you get and what worked for you? I mean, I feel like it just speaks to like a very analog time period in games, especially because I didn't have the internet at that point, and didn't have strategy guides or access to that kind of thing.

So it was just purely like, just trying to figure it out on my own, which is like a very childlike experience this is very different from my experience as an adult, like, playing the original Metroid, and it doesn't have a map. But at no point was I like, oh, I need to draw out the map for the original Metroid, which I think is actually a significant drawback, is that it doesn't have a map. I would just Google the map, and that makes that game a heck of a lot easier.

I would say even playable at all is by having a map, whereas something like Links Awakening is just fun to draw the Zelda characters and, like, have an excuse. to draw something you're enjoying as a kid and just like it's kind of like more fan art that like a utility map you know what i mean yeah sure i've mentioned this on the show before that since i didn't have many game consoles growing up i would read strategy guides yeah as a way to vicariously play games and i would totally read the maps that were included in the strategy guides for i think i remember there's the ninja turtles game was a one that's just lodged in my memory and yeah i mean i was kind of experienced the game just by reading a strategy guide map i don't know if that game had an in-game

but it definitely didn't look like the one in Nintendo Power or whatever it was, just because that was like, you know, drawn out from screenshots sort of, but it let me feel my way through the game just in my imagination. Yeah, I mean, a map kind of is a game in and of itself, like especially for something that's top-down, like a Zelda game, if you think about it, the entire game is just navigating a map. Maybe I'm getting too meta here, but it is like, by exploring the map, you're exploring the game.

Yeah, it's more clearly that way in a two-dimensional game where you can really just look at it and the game looks like a map because maps are flat you know cloth objects that you've placed flat on a surface and look at and so they're two-dimensional where if you take a game like a three even a 3d Zelda but definitely a 3d game like a souls game where there is no map in the souls game and that's kind of by design and i've actually never mapped a from soft game even though i've just never felt the need to because they're not really designed to be mapped like it's really cool when i see someone has done a 3D render, especially of the Dark Souls map since it's so vertical. But for me, the game is

kind of designed around the fact that I'm going to have to memorize it. And so they give you a lot of good waypoints and like they confuse you when they want you to be confused. They give you clarity and markers when you need them. And so like the game is kind of designed to be navigable without a map. So I never felt the need to make one. I think there's something kind of inherently human about making maps. I feel like humanity, sure, from its inception has always been like explorers. Like we as people are, people are

explorers by nature and there's always, I mean, there's always been something romantic about, I don't know, exploring the globe and making maps, and that's a big part of history, is people sending out to do this and questions of like, which maps are legitimate and maps Eurocentricism and so on and so forth. And in games,

I feel like games are good at capturing that feeling, and there's also something really satisfying about crafting a map in a game, whether you're kind of seeing little crevices on your map that you have just explored and like kind of 100%ing the map, seeing the entirety of the game, knowing you've seen the glow because it's all unfolding on your map. Or in the case of Eldon Ring, a game whose map, I think all three of us enjoy and really loved, you have a map that starts off small based on your known kind of limitations of what the world is, and it just gradually gets bigger and bigger.

It's you realize the world is that much bigger. There's something I've found really cool about maps and games in general because of that. Yeah, same. Yeah, there's something romantic about cartography, and it's sort of separated from, like, conquest, right? It's like an intellectual conquest, I guess, but for some reason we're able to differentiate between the two, and so we see a mapmaker as a kind of noble pursuit.

someone who just wants to understand and catalog what's there. And then a lot of great characters in games are mapmakers. Of course, there's, I'm forgetting his name, but in Hollow Night, the mapmaker that you find in each new area, he's always humming his little song and sort of joyfully drawing his little maps, even though he's in the middle of some, you know, horror show surrounded by spiders. But that's what he's mapping. And you find him, and you're very happy when you find him.

And then the map mechanic in that game is also really cool because when, well, first off, when that Knight looks down at his map, he actually looks at it. So that's a game that doesn't pause when you look at the map and you're kind of walking around. So you're like active within the map, which is very helpful. I think Diablo does that. There are a few other games that you pop the map up basically and can keep moving around and that's what he does. So I think he can't jump because he's looking down at the map. But there's just a very cute little animation.

But also a cool thing is you'll find the map maker. You'll buy the map from him. And then that allows you to begin filling it in. But it doesn't just give you the map of the whole area the way that, I don't know, I can't actually remember how it is in Resident Evil because when I played it this most recent time, I'd already beaten it, so I had all the maps unlocked. But unlike, I guess, in a different game. It does.

The way it works at Resident Evil is it gives you the outline of everything in the area. And you find this right. And you get kind of a rough idea sometimes in Hollow Night, but mostly it just is where you've been. Yeah. So then if you go really deep into a new area, then once you get to a bench, you sit down and you get that nice little, it's like a little map drawing, Chiron that appears in the corner of the screen. and then you can go and finally look at everywhere you've been and then a few areas in that game

because you go a really long distance into a weird dark hole before you finally get to a save point. It's this really amazing moment of discovery and then reflection upon the journey you just went on and being like, oh, cool, wow. I went through all those tunnels and also, oh, look, there are all of those unexplored avenues

off of the path that I just took. So it's also very enticing. Kirk, to your point, I think the reason that we kind of we put so much, I don't know, romanticism, why we romanticize or put so nobility to the art of cartography, as opposed to Conquest, I guess the reason they're kind of two fundamentally different things is because Conquest is about taking control of what you find, whereas cartography is about trying to understand what you find, and I think the latter is a much more noble pursuit for obvious reasons.

And scientific, right? Right. It's curiosity, it's knowledge. I mean, like, what is, I don't know, any kind of science, but drawing a map of some element of our world, right? Even if it's not a map of a space. It's a map of whatever, the periodic table of elements or of mathematical equations. It's all kind of maps. And it's also like communicating about safety and being like, there's like a river here or

like there's a cliff. Here there be dragons. I went here and these were all the things I discovered and these are some places you might want to go that have berries and these are some places that might kill you. I mean, there's like kind of a community-minded benefit to make. making a map also, although it is a very solo experience in a lot of the games that we're talking about. And that kind of plays into that very solo romantic notion of, like, for example, Animal Well, or even the recent Prince of Persia, Metrovina we talked about, where you can make a lot of notes

on your map, which is like a very, at least for me, emotionally fulfilling sensation of being, like, I'm taking pictures of everywhere I go and I'm going to come back to this. And I'm, like, drawing little notes for myself, like in Animal Well, you can actually, like, draw things and circle stuff and underline whatever you want, which is very tactile feeling. And that makes you feel like you're making the world understandable, at least to yourself. And that just, I don't know, it's a very comforting way of engaging with something that is a previously hostile world, a world that's specifically designed to be hostile to you. And you're like, no, it's fine.

I got this. So what I think is cool about maps and games is that it's not just that cartography that makes them feel cool and special and interesting. Like you don't, a map doesn't have to, a game doesn't have to be effective at creating maps to make it so you just are seeing or you are limited to what you can see and you kind of, you draw it out as you go. I think it can also be super effective when a game is like, here is the world map. Now you can see what you will be exploring over the course of this game in like an RPG or something. Like, I don't know, Final Fantasy 7 is kind of the quintessence. example of like you get out into the world and you see this world map and you're like, holy crap, look how much bigger this world is than just Vidgar.

I think that can be really romantic too because it's kind of like you are given access to this knowledge, maybe that other people have granted you because they've mapped out the world. And now you get to see what you will get to go and explore. I think both ways can be effective. And to get back to Resident Evil too, I think it can also be really cool to see like an outline of here's what this floor looks like. you are going to be going to these places now, try to figure out what's in them, try to see them, try to find them all.

Yep. And try to figure out how to even get to them is like part of the challenge and the fun of it is just being like, okay, I kind of know where I'm going, but I don't know how I'm going to get there. And even a world map technically is that sensation. And a lot of times when I'm looking at a world map, I am feeling that excitement that you're describing. But I'm also like, am I really going to get to go to all those places? And then that sense of mystery is part of what's-

you're questioning the game. You think the game's gaslighting you. What am I going to do? Like, that's, but that's part of games. You're going to get an airship, man. How big it really is.

And that can also be like a sense of dread. Like I remember way back when we were playing Eldon Ring for the first time talking about like, oh, and then the map was even bigger. And then it turned out that I had like this whole other part of the game I had to get to. And I thought I was almost done. Like there can be parts of unlocking a map that feel bad because you're just like,

I don't, I don't care anymore. I mean, but that can also? be a clever mechanic. So Final Fantasy 4, another Final Fantasy game is it shows you, you see the world map and you see where you're going and you get to a point where you're like, wait, I've kind of seen everything here, but it doesn't really feel like the game is done. And then you get to another map and it's like, oh, there's an entire underground section. Oh, there's a third map on the moon.

Oh, this game is not even close to done yet. I think that can be a cool, exciting feeling if the game hasn't worn out, it's welcome yet. Of course. The way that I think Eldon Ring did for some people, by the time you got to the mountaintop of the giants, and they're like, oh, come on. Like, I've already played on 100 hours. Yeah, it's a really different approach that Eldon Ring took, especially base Eldon Ring. It's actually a different approach that base Eldon Ring took

compared to Shadow of the Earth Tree, which does a little bit more of that misdirection where you're suddenly underground under an area and finding a whole new area, and you're like, oh my gosh, there's a whole area under here. I was kind of going by the logic of base Eldon Ring map where I pretty much would, what you see is what you get and not realizing this.

But it is a really different approach. to unveil the map the way that Eldon Ring did versus something like, I'm actually thinking of Skyrim, which has a really, really cool world map and a notoriously terrible dungeon map, if you remember how the maps work in that game. Where the world map is really cool, it's this kind of freestanding graphical, like it looks like it's 3D graphics, so you can see the mountains, you can kind of see everything drawn out, but I don't think it's actually in-engine. It isn't like the camera zooms out, because I don't think that that engine can do that.

I think it's its own thing. It's just the topography of the world. Yeah, it's the topography. But it is in kind of 3D and it moves in a kind of interesting way. And it gives you a sense of sort of where each major biome is on that map. And you see it pretty early if memory serves. It's like kind of just there for you. And then you realize like, oh, cool, the forest is over there.

I'm going to go over there. The planes are over there. Oh, there's like the frozen north up there. And there's that city up there. And a couple of cities are marked, but other ones aren't. Compared to Eldon Ring, which just shows you like full-sized map of the tiny little area of limb gravery's start, which then I think most people had that experience, especially when it first came out, of being like, oh, okay, cool, I've got a handle on how big

this game is. And then the first time you unlock something, and then especially like Learnia, that second big area, the just point of view zooms out and the whole context changes and you realize like, oh, God. So we could just keep zooming out 10 more times and this map could get way bigger, which is a really different feeling of discovery and exploration. At the time, it was really exciting. But it's a very different feeling than just seeing the whole map like you would in a Final Fantasy or in Skyrim and knowing like, okay, there's a lot of cool stuff there. I can kind of see where the areas are, but I'm not totally sure where everything is yet. So there also, I think, and Maddie, to your point earlier, about like not knowing where to go or something. I think

of a lot of JRP world maps. A lot of times the world is separated into continents and maybe you've spent most of the entire game so far on one continent. And there's kind of a hint that you'll get to the next continent at some point. And then you kind of have to wonder how am I going to get there? Am I going to be teleported there? Will there be a boat? Will there be an airship? Will there be a flying balloon?

It's a cool feeling to know like, all right, games. Things are really going to hit the fan when I get to that next continent. Yeah, that's something the Monkey Island games do really well, where at least especially the first one I'm most familiar with, but actually they do it in the sequel as well, where you start on one island and you spend a long time messing around on that island and then you shift to a new map and then a new map and you're kind of always being introduced to these new areas and it's very enticing because you're like oh cool that means there can always be a new place like it could always wind up in a new place with a new map so monkey island that actually brings

us to an interesting point about maps which is that maps can also be used for gameplay and so monkey island is a go around the curse of monkey island the third game you actually you get to a point where you are sailing and you kind of see this boat on what looks like kind of a metaphorical map it's like a literal map and they're like little hereby monsters notes in the corners and stuff like that. But you're sailing Guy Brush and then you see these little ships that can come at you as you're going and then it gets into combat and so you can either avoid them or run into them while you're on the map. There are a lot of games that play around with mechanics while you're exploring and use a map as the battleground or the platform for which you would be using these mechanics, whether it's

fights or, I don't know, different kind of platforming or traversal mechanics as you go. Another just kind of fun way to play around with maps. Video games have been exploring maps in all sorts of interesting ways over the years. Yeah. It's also made me realize how much maps contribute to my own sense of anticipation about a game in discussing this because obviously the world map in an Eldonring or in an RPG, it's excitement is what they're trying to evoke. Ideally, you're not tired of the game.

won't be anytime soon. So just seeing more and more areas to explore, you're like, oh my God, it's even, the world is so big. I had no idea how big it was going to be. And you're just feeling excited as opposed to how effective they can be in a more horror setting or even I would put Metroid games in this category because a lot of them have kind of a horror element since they're inspired by Alien, where the fact that the map is mostly dark, or in the case of Metroid, it is dark until you explore it. And in Hollow Night, it's very similar, where it's kind of spooky where you're like, I literally do not know what is around this corner until I discover it. And I might be discovering something really bad. Like, you don't know you're going to enter

the sewers in Resident Evil 2 until suddenly you do. And then you're like, great, there's a freaking map here. Like, now I have to be here. Like, this is going to be a place I'm in. Like, that can be like a way of building dread or surprising the player in the way that a horror game can like jump scare you by being like, surprise, this is the place you're in now. That just like is a fun storytelling maneuver that can be played out in the form of a map, which is neat. Yeah, I think that there are ways that the map can be used in gameplay, like you're talking about Jason, where you actually are engaging in gameplay in the map.

And I'm sure there are some games that we're either not thinking of or not mentioning that some listeners are like, they really need to talk about this game that does a really clever thing where there's actually like hidden gameplay within the map and suddenly the map becomes the backdrop. Like I could just see that being a thing that that sounds cool. You know, I don't know like a Yoko Taro

would mess with. That would be like an in year game or something. There's a game called Legend of Manah where you like construct dungeons and cities and villages by placing landmarks on a map and like gameplay changes depending where you place it. A lot of cool stuff like that over the years.

Yeah. Yeah. So there are also like, yeah, like you're kind of getting at many. There are all these different ways that the map interacts with games. and changes the experience. Last week we talked about alien isolation versus Resident Evil 2 and how the map in Resident

Evil 2 is so empowering and so dramatically changes the experience of the game. Like we've talked about it, pauses the game when you bring it up, which means that you can just totally chill out. If Mr. X just burst through the door into the room with you, Claire just pulls up your map and he's like, all right, I'll wait. She just holds a finger up. He's like, all right. She gets his phone out and checks the news.

And she's like, okay, I'm going to figure out the exact. the exact best path to escape from you, I'd go around you after it kiting you. And I carefully fold up the map, put in my pocket. Did it break your immersion? No, no, it's just, it actually I really like it, because like I said, when we were talking about that game, I find

the pleasure in Resident Evil, too, in kind of taking control over it, and exerting control and feeling in control, because the game makes you so scared, it's so, like, the audiovisual experience of it is disempowering and frightening when I feel like I've totally bent it to my will, I feel really good,

and I find that satisfying. And the map totally does that both because you can pause and chart your course, but also that item pickup, color coding thing that they do in, I think in all Resident Evil games, certainly I think all the ones that I've played, where you're in a room and there's like a red backdrop. And then you just keep, I mean, I just obsessively check it until I finally pick up the last item and the red backdrop goes away and I can move on with my life. And that is very empowering. Like it gives me the ability to feel that I completely got every single item.

But I'm not sure that I love it. I think that it leads me to play in a sort of obsessive way that actually does mess with the flow of the experience for me a little bit. Where I think one thing that might actually help it would just be if a little sound played when you picked up the last item, rather than you have to check the map over and over. Because once I'm in like the Star Wars office, I don't actually need to be looking at the map to know where to go in the room. It's a small room. So instead I'm just like, okay, here's a flash grenade. and then look at the map to see if I got everything. Nope, didn't get everything yet.

Let's just push up against every wall and like, oh, there's a green herb. Okay, I got it. And then I checked the map again. And like, if it just was like, ding, or there was just a little flash or some gentle thing that just told me, okay, you did it. You got all the items. You can move on with your life. I think I would find that better. And I, so there's like a little bit of implementation in that map idea that I think just, it causes me to check the map a little too often.

Or maybe, Kirk, the game is implicitly telling you not to be such a completionist and to just move on with your life. without having to complete, like, collect every single item. I think it's pushing you toward the completion. I think it encourages it. And, yeah. But do you feel that way in other games, too, that are sort of map-based and have, like, some indicator that you have or haven't fully explored an area? Because Justin and Evil 2 isn't the only game that has a map of that kind.

Like, some maps have, like, a percentage on certain sections that are, like, you know, percentage explored. Right. And that means you haven't collected all the treasure chests. Right. I think that when they give me it a little bit more obligeable, that I actually don't care as much. Interesting.

When the map isn't like specifically telling me this room is not complete, there's something in that, because I don't normally play games that way, but there's something just in that thing that makes me feel that. What about did you collect everything in Psychonauts too? Like did you have to collect every single one of those figurines? No, oh no, like all of those figments and whatever? No, no, no, definitely not.

It's partly a survival horror thing, I think. That in Resident Evil 2, I'm always thinking like, well, I'm going to need every bullet I can get them and need everything. Right. Because the game does kind of force you to really want to conserve resources. So then you're kind of incentivized to really find everything. But no, I think in other games I don't really. And I mean, so in a game like Alien isolation or even a game like Far Cry 2,

which is the first game I ever played where there was a map that my character held up and didn't pause the game. And so I'd be like hiding from a Jeep full of dudes who were trying to kill me. And I'd have to look at my map to sort of figure out where I'm trying to go. Like I found that to be really exciting. And it also really kept me in the flow of the game. It was a super different experience than what I'm describing with Resident Evil 2, where I was like, okay, I'm just going to really quick look at my map, just know where I got to go. I don't care if I don't get everything here. Like, I just need to move because there's no way for me to stop things and, like, take my time and gather my wits.

I'm a big fan of diagetic maps like that. I remember the Far Cry 2-1 being one of my favorites and also doesn't Dead Space do that as well. I know so much of that game is diagetic. And I think they try to have so many indicators on the floor and just other ways for you. to tell where you're supposed to go? So the way that Dead Space works is there's no map, but Isaac's suit has a waypoint marker. So you'll press a button and he fires off a waypoint that then snakes ahead of you and shows where you're supposed to go.

It's a really cool idea. And there might be like occasionally times where you see a map, like maybe on the wall or something. But as far as I can remember, I'm pretty sure about this. You're not carrying a map around or projecting one up and looking at it. So can we talk about what's on maps? because I feel like what is on a map can make the difference between me enjoying a game and hating it, or at least enjoying, or just thinking a game is okay and a game is great. Games that have maps full of markers are often so uninteresting to me or at least discourage me from going and exploring, because if a game is telling you where every point of interest is and what they are, then you have no reason to go around and explore, whereas a game, something like Eldon Ring, where it's a little more.

more diagetic in the sense that it's a recreation of like, it's kind of, the best way to describe it as like a hand-drawn version of like everything that you're seeing. So hand-drawn castles and hand-drawn villages and mountains and rivers and stuff. And if you see a castle there, if it doesn't have a question marker or anything, it's just kind of like, oh, here's a little castle or here's a little thing that looks unusual. I'm so much more inclined to go explore it than if it's like, here is a marker of a side quest that you will go find or here is a marker of a shop that you can go find. I think that kind of that difference between something that feels like it's, I don't know, enticing you

versus telling you can make such a humongous difference in how I approach these games. Yeah, totally agree. When Kirk was talking before about his completionist tendencies in R.E.2, I was thinking of the way that certain Assassin's Creed's in the open world era have also made me feel that way and I dislike that feeling and it's entirely because of the way that the map is set up and I have I've even I hate to use the phrase break immersion

because who cares about how immersed I am, it doesn't matter but I do find it inherently silly for thanks Jason, thanks for your support. I do find it inherently silly to like look at a map in Assassin's Creed Origins for example and have it say to me there's two treasure chests in this bandit camp

I'm like how does Bayek know that? He hasn't gone in there yet. How does he know there's two treasure chests in there. Like, what is... So this is kind of a game design thing since I'm not sure about origins, but recent Assassin's Creed games have had a compass and not a map.

It's just that when you're in an area, it is still imparting map information to you in the HUD by saying there are two treasure chests here. Right, of course. You've killed one high-value target and you kind of get into that UBSF checklist mindset. Yeah, and I guess you have a magical hawk who's flying around and maybe they know where the treasure chest is.

Well, and the hawk, it's a little like a map. when you look down from the hawk. Well, you do. Well, that's the gameplay. Yeah. I'm talking more, when I talk about the icons annoying me, I'm talking more about, like, I get to a new continent and it immediately. Or, you know, it's a good example is like Horizon where you get to an area and maybe you

unlock the tower. Then you just see icons everywhere. And you're kind of like, there's no point. Right. There's no point with me exploring a ton because I kind of know where everything's going to be. And so I just kind of use the map and barrel my way towards. towards everything. And I think games that use the map to encourage you to just kind of go off the beaten path without knowing what you're going to find there a lot more interesting, even if it's

very clearly signposted that there's going to be something over there. That to me makes a big difference than having a question mark on your map or worse having like the icon showing you exactly what type of thing you're going to find there. Yeah, I think that's something that Zelda games, the recent open world Zelda games have done very well, especially if you change. change the heads-up display. Because something we haven't talked about is mini-maps. And that's something that I, of course, wrote a lot about at Kotaku and was constantly chewing on.

Your arch-nemesis mini-maps. Yeah, well, I at least was very critical of them. And I think I made a pretty good argument over the years. I think so. One of the first things I wrote for Kataku was about Grand Theft Auto 4 and how I had discovered before I was even working at Katakku or writing about games, just playing for fun. I found that a really fun way to play that game was to turn off. all of the heads-up display in the mini-map

and then just like take a shot at a cop and then see what happens and I would make rules like you can't get in any cars so it would just be a foot chase through Manhattan and it was really fun in that game to do that because it was so, it was really intense like you kind of just had to run you were in the city I didn't really know my way around

but I kind of knew where I was and so I figured I knew which way I was going more or less like northeast west and then I would just run and have to adapt and improvise It was a very immersive and really fun way to play. And then I found that by playing the game, like the actual story missions, with all of that stuff turned off, occasionally it was awkward. Like it wasn't quite designed to support that style of play. But at other times, it would be really surprising and interesting.

One that a specific example that comes to mind is there are navigation systems in the higher end cars that you can steal in Grand Theft Auto 4. And they're functional. So if you don't have the mini map up, you can. can still call up the map by pausing it and you can set a waypoint or if you have a mission active, it'll just become your waypoint. And then the navigation system in the car will automatically know that. And it'll tell you, especially if you drive slowly. Like I never noticed this when I was playing with the mini map because I would jump in the car and just hit the gas, you know, go skidding through every intersection, driving way too fast, just looking down at the corner of the screen, barely looking

where I'm going and like following the little line on the mini map. But when you don't have that anymore, And if you slow down, it gives the navigation system time to register where you are. And it'll really do it. It'll be like, at the next intersection, take a right. And then you can follow it. And it'll get you where you're going. And it's just like a totally different speed and frequency at which to play that game. And I found it to be really cool.

That was kind of a start of that. And then from there, I just would find in a lot of games, I think Deas X I played this way, like Human Revolution, then later in Breath of the Wild, that it was really fun to turn off the minimap. and find other ways of navigating the world, especially when the game kind of met you halfway and showed you how to get around and showed you where you needed to go and didn't make it so that it was a kind of frustrating,

you know, confusing experience to play without it. And over the time, like over the years, that kind of wound up getting simplified and boiled down to like Kirk Hamilton hates mini maps. Well, because you do and you say it every single morning when you wake up. It was Clepick, man, Patrick Clefick has talked about this recently. I was listening to Remap and he was like, wasn't it Kirk Hamilton who was like,

ah, don't be a wimp, turn it? off the mini-math or something like that. And he was kidding. He was being glipped. What you yelled at Patrick Kleppick constantly every time you see him. And I don't know why you're denying it. I saw him in L.A. And I gave him shit for this.

But I mean, he was kidding, I think. But it was pretty funny hearing that. I mean, to be fair, you did write an article called on Katakki called video game minimaps might finally be going away. And also that is like talked all about the celebration of this recent trend of This is the supportive environment. I largely agree with you. No, I'm not saying you're wrong.

No, I'm not wrong. I'm definitely right. Headlines, if you're playing Zelda, turn off the minimap headline Kirk Gallatin. So some of that was like, I mean, my headline for the GTA article, which I did not write, was you're playing Grand Theft Auto for wrong, which is like, who wrote that headline. I don't know, people who do you write that. I think that was Joel Johnson head. Naming names. Joel knew how to write an attention guy.

It is a pretty clicky headline, but it is. Might be overstating the case. That's a terrible headline. Clearly explain where I'm coming from here, though. Like, saying that they're finally going away was me saying, video game designers are finally learning how to make a game world navigable without meeting you to be looking at a little circle in the corner of the screen. Yeah.

And that is a very important distinction that I do think is worth making that I've had to make many times when people will say to me, like, I don't find games playable if you do what you're saying and play in a weird, hardcore, unintended way of turning off the minimap. And I'm like, yeah, of course, that's fine. Like, that totally makes sense. The game wasn't really designed to be played this way. The Witcher 3 is a great example of a game where I have to install mods to play it without the mini map. You can install mods that give you like on-screen waypoints.

And they're great because they get your eyes up onto the screen. But if you don't have those mods and you just make the mini map go away, like if you're playing on console, that game world is really hard to navigate without a mini map. It's just like you have to get to the top of a hill, but it's actually kind of weirdly, not clear how to get there because there are only certain paths that go there. So that's a good example of a game that is just not really designed to be played without the mini-map, which is too bad because the world is beautiful. And if you do mod it, it's like, I think a much better way to play without sacrificing anything.

But I think that, yeah, what I'm going for is like more and more open world, especially game designers, are figuring out ways to get your eyes up out of the corner of the screen. Because I think a lot of people making games did identify that as a problem. Like, they don't want people to be essentially walking around a brand. New City looking down at Google Maps on your phone. They want you to be able to look up around you and take in the beautiful art direction and the cool open world that they designed and, you know, let you see that fight going on over there that you might want to go join and like get your eyes up. And I know I've been talking about this a lot, but to close out and bring it back to what I started

with, that is something I think that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom both do very, very well. From the start to the end is they always are showing you in the game world cool, interesting things that you might go check out. Yeah. And the key. you mentioned this with Witcher 3 with the mods is waypoints. Waypoints are a really helpful way to, and Zelda, both Zelda games allow you to do that. If you're able to set a waypoint and be like, okay, I saw something interesting over there, I'm going to come back to that later, or I'm going to mark where it is, and it's shown very clear for you. Maybe it's immersion breaking to have big red, like, metaphorical lights on your screen, big red and blue and purple towers of light everywhere. But I think it works really

well because it allows you... Well, the nice thing about Zelda is you only see those through the handheld thing. You don't see them all the time. You have to look through the scope. Well, and you see them on your compass and stuff. But yeah, it's, I think those having that as just kind of like

being able to signposts and kind of set your own destination and allow you to explore the world a lot better, especially with these big open world games where like nobody's really going to remember exactly where everything is in relation to another So you do need some sort of guiding light.

But yes, it's good that it's, yeah, man, it's such a waste when you're just staring at the mini-math the whole time and just missing out on all these beautiful artistic, like, creations and you're not really paying attention. It is kind of like when you're just looking at your phone the whole time while doing something else because you're missing out on the experience by just focusing on that big X on the bottom right of your screen or whatever. I think I get really worried that I'm going to get lost in a game. And then I have to remind myself that it actually doesn't matter that much.

And that I can look at the map if I need to, but that turning off the mini map forces me to not rely on it and also realize that there are way more indicators than I might think that would help me, especially in something like a new Zelda game, both Breath of the Wild and Cheers of the Kingdom are amazing examples. I mean, we didn't even get into this. But like the experience of entering the depths and having like the depths map is like another amazing moment of surprise

that kind of reflects back some of the things we were talking about where it's like, I don't know, you don't want to have that moment ruined by having a little mini map in the corner. You want that screen to be full of darkness while Link is plummeting into the depths. It's freaking epic.

I mean, it just makes the game look really beautiful and forces you to really live in the moment and be your own photographer. Yeah. Worth noting, by the way, that when we talk about mini maps, we're talking about a very specific type of game and there's some games where a mini map is essential,

for example, Starcraft 2, part of the experience is, if you're playing StarCraft 2, you need to be constantly looking at your minimap for like, oh my God, their enemies approaching and so on and so forth. Well, and even in Tears of the Kingdom, I played a lot of that game with the mini map turned on, just because I found the information that it gave to be useful. And yeah, I mean, it's something I always have to reiterate, but it really depends,

and it can even be something where at different parts of the game, you want that information or you don't, depending on how you're playing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, this has really made me think. I love that we talked about maps for so long. This was really fun. And, you know, maybe Patrick Kleppick said all that stuff because he named something

Waypoint and he just was taking it personally. And we should. And remap. Remap. He's big on maps. I mean, I think that's more about him than you, Kirk. And I just, you know, it's important to reflect. Well, to be fair, it's not re-minimap.

It's remap. That's true. They're just talking about the big screen map, not the mini-map. Re-minimap is going to be the sister site that they launched later. The smaller podcast. The one that Kirk goes to war against. Yeah, reminimap is a vertical where they just analyze Kirk takes. It's a cross between MinMax and Remap is MinMap, and that's Kirk's mortal enemy.

All right. And with that, completely comprehensible conclusion to our map discussion, why don't we take a break and be back with one more thing? I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest in Rome.

All that and more on the next Bullseye from maximum fun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, the JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace, because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcast. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And we are back with One More Thing. Kirk,

why don't you go first? Sure, my One More Thing is a new game that I've been playing a little bit early. I guess. I think it's out this week. It's called SteamWorld Heist 2. And it is the sequel to the Steam World Heist, which is a game I didn't play, but it's sort of set in the Steam World Universe, which I think a lot of listeners have probably played games from this universe. I played SteamWorld Dig 2. That was the one that I think kind of broke through. It was like a Metroidvania kind of game.

And it is really fun. This one is a kind of turn-based tactics game, a 2D turn-based tactics game. And it's set in this world of where you're like robots. In this case, you're kind of robot pirates. Well, you're not exactly pirates. You're in a submarine, but you're going around to kind of a piracy world,

and you're sort of gradually built. up your crew and then going into battle and getting more resources to upgrade your ship and upgrade the guys in your party and, you know, be able to do more missions and get more upgrades. That's essentially, that's the gist. It's that kind of a game. Not dissimilar from Shadow Tactics. Or what's the pirate version of Shadow Tactics called? Oh, it's familiar to me.

Shadow Gambit. Shadow Gambit, of course. People are always saying that game is good. It's on my two-to-list. It was one of my games of the year. I guess last year. So it's similar to Shadow Gambit, which is, of course, a stealth game, so different in the mechanics, but the same idea where you have a ship and you have a crew and you kind of, each person has a

specialty, and you sail around and gradually upgrade them. This game is really great. I've played just a few hours of it. I haven't gotten super deep into it. It's kind of a hot time for indie turn-based strategy games, because we've got tactical breach wizards, which I talked about a little while ago, is coming out soon, and also Demon School, which looks really cool. A kind of a persona riff is coming out soon,

and that's also another kind of tactical combat game. Those games both had demos during Next Fest. So this is another turn-based tactics game, and I'm feeling a little like I'm going to have to be choosing between these three games, and it'll be interesting which one I wind up playing. But I really like what I've played of Heist so far. It's just a very, very well-designed game.

Like all of these are, they're made by Thunderful Development, which is part of Thunderful Group. It's a Swedish game development kind of conglomerate. And it's a little unclear to me like who makes which of these Steamworld games. I think they have different teams on different ones.

And there are a bunch of other Steamworld games that I haven't played. I know Dig and Heist are kind of the most... Well, they're the two genres of game that I play, but there are other ones as well. But yeah, I really like Heist. I don't have a ton of specific criticism on it yet because I haven't played that much.

But I've definitely... I've played enough to know that it's like very, very well made. Every mission that I've done It has just been extremely well-balanced. It's always challenging. I've actually lost a few missions in the early goings and had to kind of restart or start from checkpoint and figure stuff out. It really handles sort of positioning, cover, and aiming in a really clever and intuitive way. All the classes that I've upgraded are cool.

And it's really customizable. So you level up. It actually has like a job system, kind of like some JRPs, where you'll have a character who's a sniper and a character who's, I can't remember what they're called. that's basically an up-close, you know, combat player. Mele. Yeah, they have like, they're like a machine gun. So they don't like aim with precision, but they do shoot, but it's more like a kind of up-close grenadier or whatever.

And you level up and you get better perks for that class, but then you can switch jobs and you keep all of the perks that you had. So you can, like, cross-class and make, like, all kinds of really cool builds, which is good because you're limited in how many bots you can sort of send out on a given mission. And each bot can only do one mission a day. So there's kind of this whole like time frame thing. It's a little almost like XCOM, where you'll dispatch and you go and there's like a mission you can do and you'll need to send, you know, a group of your soldiers to go do it. And then if they're successful, they're done for the day.

But if you have a bigger crew, the day isn't over yet. So you could take other people that you've, you know, that have different skills and go do another mission with them. That's a cool way of designing things because it kind of forces you to use all of your dudes, which is just cool because otherwise you wind up in the XCOM situation where you're kind of like, You have your main group and you're just doing, you're using them until someone gets killed, and then you have to train someone up, and it's kind of frustrating. So there's a lot of little ideas like that that just seems sort of, they seem like not that big of a deal when you look at them. And then as you play more of the game, or at least as I play more of the game,

I find they're having a cool impact on the way that I play and encouraging me to just try different things. And kind of, it feels very permissive, which I really like. It also has a really great difficulty setting, like a custom difficulty where you can like just make it so that enemies do less damage and everything else is the same. Love that. Yeah, we've been talking about that. I feel like that's becoming more and more of a trend. Yeah, it's so great.

And I just want to shout it out because I think it's, yeah, I think it's an awesome trend. Like, I wish every game did this just because sometimes you're like, that's just like a little frustrating. I don't want to make it easy though. I just want to take, like, I want them to just kill my dudes a little, right? Kill them a little more slowly. Lots of difficulty settings and no mini maps.

The Kirkland is. Yeah, that's it. Then I'm a happy camper. Those are the two things you've got to give me. Yeah, so it's great. I've been playing on Steam Deck. I think it's probably on pretty much everything. Really cool game.

Steam World Heist 2. It's out. If not, the day you're hearing this, I think it might be out on Friday, so it's out really soon. And yeah, it definitely gets a recommendation from me. Steam World Day 2. It's worth noting benefited a lot because it was one of those first-year switch games. And I think that's why both of us played it. Both you and I played at Kirk is because it came out September 2017.

on the switch, which is when people had switches and wanted lots of stuff to play on it. So a lot of indie games that came out around that time really benefited. It was fantastic also. I do remember playing a little bit of it and be like, okay, this is cool. And then getting deeper into it and be like, this is great. Like, who made this game? A lot of cool abilities. And it really did.

Yeah. Yeah. I totally missed it. Well, I'll go next. So we watched a movie this week that I thought was really, really cool and that I had never heard anybody talk about before for some reason. It's called Dream Scenario, and it stars Nick Cage, and it's an A24 Productions film. And for some people, that might just be all the information that you need in order to know that you would want to check it out.

And that's kind of true of me. Like, we watched part of the trailer, and I was like, this looks really weird and good. And I'm in. I'm ready to watch Nick Cage be really strange for two hours of my life. But I'll say the premise anyway. So Nick Cage plays basically, like, the most boring man in the universe. just like a totally ineffectual college professor. He like wears this huge winter coat everywhere he goes.

He's like much like me in middle school, like as though I was trying to like not be noticed by any other person in the world because I just was like, why do I even exist? Like he's just exuding that energy all the time. But this is a sci-fi kind of like magic movie. And so the premise of it is that other people in his life and just other random people in the world start seeing him in their dreams. but he's not doing anything in the dream.

Like, they'll be having some wild experience or, like, somebody will be trying to kill them or, like, something exciting will be happening to them, and he'll just be standing there doing absolutely nothing or actively not helping and being ineffectual. And so this sort of science fiction thing happens where, like, people in the world realize that they're seeing this guy in their dreams,

and he goes viral, and he gets kind of famous, but he starts being kind of driven a little bad by it, and he's like, why am I so ineffectual in people's dreams? And then that sort of kicks off more and more science fiction premises where just like the gap between real life and dream life is increasingly blurred. It's also, it's a comedy. It is described as comedy horror, but I would say it's like 95% comedy, maybe 5% horror. So if you're a little scared of horror movies, it's not even close to a scary as Mr. X. Everybody who listens to this show knows I have like pretty, you know, I get pretty scared of things even though I really enjoy horror.

This movie is not that scary. It's more like a psychological kind of a horror where you're like, if I was suddenly appearing in everyone's dreams and everyone knew who I was, but also had bad opinions of me, that would be very weird and uncanny and would like affect the way I exist in the world. So it makes you think about that. But it's really funny. Like there's a lot of just really weird things that happen in the movie. Like at one point, Michael Sarah plays a guy who becomes like Nick Cage's character's agent because he is becoming that famous. And Michael Sarah's impression of, like that kind of slimy agent is so funny and made me be like, I'm sure Michael Sarah's met like 2,000 of these guys. And it's just relishing the opportunity to play this specific kind of slimy guy. And I don't know, it's a really weird movie. And we loved it. So I recommend it. It's called Dream Scenario. If you like a Nick Cage comedy, you should check it out. All right, Jason. It's all you. All right. My one more thing is a book called Red Dead's History by Tori C. Olson. And this is an interesting book. It comes out this week. I got an early copy from Tori and the publisher. And it's a book that kind of explores U.S. history using Red Dead 2 as a

springboard to be like, hey, here's this scenario in Red Dead 2, here's what's accurate, here's what's not, we're going to get into this a little bit. Which is a really interesting way to approach history. Yeah. So he'll go through various topics. And so, like, there are a lot of really kind of multifaceted ways that Redda to Explores History, for example, he'll get into, hey, Arthur sees this KKK rally over here. Would this have actually happened in the Western United States in 1890 when the game is set? And so on and so forth. And he, I learned a lot from reading it.

For example, there's a point when he gets into a, a lot of, like, he writes a lot about Jim Crow laws and when they started coming up and how the timing of that isn't quite right in the game and how, like, actually a lot of people believe, like, are kind of under the mistaken impression that, um, uh, civil rights against black people started being trampled upon right after the Civil War and response to slavery going away. And that's not exactly what happened. It was really, it really came up like Jim Crow laws in the South came about later because, right?

Like post-reconstruction. Yeah, post-reconstruction. Yeah, because there was this worry about worker class black people and white people banding together, and therefore race was used to stoke divisions and kind of some interesting history repeats itself there. But I think that there's a lot of interesting stuff in here. Another thing, there was a lot of exploration in the book about this statue that is in the game's version of New Orleans. What's the city called again? DeLameen or something. Numeret, I think.

something that's the New Orleans essentially. Numeray is infamous. Sorry. Go ahead. St. Denis. And there's this statue and it's this like old looking Confederate hero statue. And Olson writes in the book about how like there might have been, they might have erected a Confederate statue at this point, but it wouldn't have been old because they only started people. They started kind of creating this heroism, this heroic, heroic depiction of Confederate leaders later on. And he gets into a lot of really interesting stuff like that. And I found it really interesting.

It's also a pretty short book, so it's an easy read. It's only like 200 pages or so. And yeah, I mean, I can't imagine that anyone will want to read it if they haven't played Red Dead 2 because the book very much is like, here's what happens in the game and here's the depiction of that. But still, it's a really interesting way to explore history and get into like what gangs were actually like in the Wild West. and like what historical, the actual history and how it's translated in Red Dead. And by the way, the ultimate conclusion

is that Red Dead 2 does a pretty good job and not a perfect job of capturing a lot of this historical stuff. And also, the author finds it really interesting that Red Dead 2 does a really good job of depicting a lot of multiculturalism and issues of, like, there are a lot of black and native people who are depicted in the game and sympathetic,

ways and the author is impressed by a lot of that stuff. Women's suffrage also is a big issue in the game that is depicted in the book. And yeah, it's really interesting. So yeah, if you're curious about this, it's called Red Dead's History, again, by Tori C. Olson, and I think it's worth the read. Worth checking out. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. It's like a book version of those Assassin's Creed interactive museum modes for those games. Yeah, I love those. sort of learn about what really happened and the various things depicted in the game. Yeah, that's such a good poll. That's really neat.

I want to read this. It looks great. I'm looking at the Amazon page. It looks awesome. They have an endorsement from Roger Clark, the actor who played Arthur Morgan. Well, so Roger Clark, he does the audio narration. Oh, man. That's so cool.

I might listen to it then. He has such a great voice. That's awesome. Nice. Good recommendation. All right. Good one more things all around. And we did it again, folks.

We did another episode. We found our wedding. to the end of the episode. Yeah, we charted our way. Yeah, we charted it. It was dangerous. It's fully mapped now. Yep. This was a classically mapped triple click episode. And there will be another one of these next week. It's like there always is. And we'll see you then. We'll see you both then. See ya. 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 D.J.

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

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