Triple Click - What Even Is a 'Role-Playing Game'?

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

These days, just about every video game either claims to be an RPG or has "RPG elements." But what does that mean? What is a role-playing game, exactly? And what that signify in this day and age? From Baldur's Gate 3 to Disco Elysium, let's discuss!One More Thing:Kirk: Planet of Lana (Xbox, PC)Maddy: They Cloned Tyrone (Netflix) (2023)Jason: Search Engine (with PJ Vogt)LINKS:Triple Click on Twitch: https://twitch.tv/tripleclickpod (Starcraft 2 Stream July 21 at 8PM Eastern)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

All right, it's time for some role-playing. You're the podcast listener, and I'm the podcast host. Ready? Go! Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today, we are talking about RPGs. What's an RPG? Who's an RPG?

Where's an RPG? When's an RPG? Why is it? I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hello.

It's us again. We are back. back for another episode. Clicking away. I've decided I haven't told you guys this but I've decided unilaterally that we are going to be rebranding this podcast to why.com

and so from now on we will just be known as why. As in why are we doing this? That's good. That's cool. Very musky and very topical humor. You're being a real visionary. Exactly. I am Tony Stark of the modern era. Yeah. And you were in the Iron

Iron Man movies, right? Iron Man 2. I was, all three of them. I was the guy under the, like, I was the stunt actor under the suit, uh, controlling the suit the whole time. Yeah. Oh, nice. Nice. I knew you did some stunt work, but I wasn't, I wasn't aware you were, you were done any work for Marvel, but that's well known. Well known for my physical prowess. That's, uh, that's how. Your suit wearing abilities. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Or legendary. Oh, boy. Are people still going to get this joke? Like, is he going to change the name of Twitter to something else for you're like a week? Like, I think it's moving. I truly feel like it's moving. I really like it's moving. I really something. I really something. I really something. I really something so fast, but I needed to say that this was a joke about Twitter so that like in the far future when people are like, what are they talking about? I learned about it logging into blue sky. I logged in and everyone was talking about something and I was like, oh no, what do you do this?

I don't know. I was at the verge and I was like, oh, okay. If you too would like to support our rebrands, you should know that we are, of course, a listener's supportive podcast here at Triple Click. You should become a maximum fun member, maximum

fun. You really should. You should. The network that we are part of, and you can help us make this show happen. You're at maximum fun.org slash join and sign up. In addition to making this show happen, you will also get monthly bonus episodes from us. We have a whole catalog of them. They're real good stuff. This month, we are going to be talking about the TV show Silo on Apple Plus, as well as other post-apocalyptic kind of storytelling and stories. And next month is the one that I think a lot of people are going to be excited waiting for, which is our big spoiler cast on The Legend of Zelda. Tears of the Kingdom, we will really dive deep into that game next month for bonus for subscribers. It'll be our bonus episode for August, so that'll be fun. But in the meantime, the silo episode's coming up. That's

going to be out very soon at the end of July, and that'll be really fun to, again, go to maximum fun.org slash join. You get all this good stuff plus many, many more. All right, Kirk, what are we talking about today? We are talking about role-playing games because this year, the year 2023, has been and will continue to be a banner year for role-playing games, and we're kind in a lull, or at least a brief inhale before another plunge. Just like a quick summer break before more role-playing games. Right. So we had Octopath Traveler 2, Diablo 4, Zelda, Horizon Burning Shores. There were a bunch of games that pretty fairly could be called role-playing games and a lot more that we're role-playing-ish, role-playing adjacent. And now coming up, we're going to have,

of course, Starfield, a new Bethesda Game Studios game. We're going to have an expansion for Cyberpunk 2077 from CD Project Red, which I'm actually very excited about, having gotten into cyberpunk 2077 now. And of course, most looming on the horizon is Baldersgate 3 from Larian studios, a studio that we all love and are a game that we're all very, very excited for. they're all so different is the thing can i can i just interject kirk it's not really a break if you're a jrpg fan because the legend of heroes trails into reverie uh just came out a couple of weeks ago and that game is is part of a 4,000 hour saga so right right no that's true i left that one out because i left that out because i haven't played it and um and of course i guess final fantasy 16 also right of the least role playing of the of the final fantasy games that we've played recently but nonetheless I would say is real thing. Well, and a vital part of this conversation. It depends on your definition of roleplaying, which is exactly what we're going to get into because these games are all kind of broadly called role playing games, but they're all super different.

And I just think I thought that would be kind of a fun topic, given that we're kind of in between games. And yet it's on our minds because we're playing them all to kind of look for commonalities and differences and just talk about what it even means for a game to be called a role playing game in 2023. That's totally what doesn't mean. What is an RPG? I'm kicking it off by saying it's totally meaningless. I don't really think that, but I do think it is one of those games journalism terms where there's an agreed-upon definition that we can get into.

But then if you actually talk to somebody who doesn't play a lot of games and think about genre terms, they're like, what are you talking about? Why isn't this an action game? Why isn't this a shooter? Why isn't this some other word? Why is this a role-playing game? in another game where I play a role,

not considered a role-playing game. Like, arguably we play a role in anything. Not to just immediately blow this out way too far, but aren't we playing a role in a game in any game we play? Am I? I'm not high right now, guys. No, no, I know exactly what you're saying. Like, there is an argument to be made

that if you just look at the words and what they mean, totally naked of context and history, you could just say, well, yeah, like, Hitman 3 is a role-playing game because you're walking around in the role of Agent 47. Correct. Life is Strange is a role-playing game because you're playing the role of Max and making decisions for her. And so then why is role-playing game? Why does it have these specific connotations? But then that's stripping it of history and context.

Right. Because the original role-playing games, of course, Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop games are actually about playing a role and acting and storytelling with your friends in a completely open-ended setting, and the first computer role-playing games, and then especially that kind of early 90s golden era of CRPGs, was really trying to take that tabletop thing and turn it into something that you could, like, put in a box and sell, and anyone could do it without having get their friends together. That's kind of where it started, and now it's just, it has kind of warped and bastardized and spread its tendrils through a million different things until we are where we are now,

where Diablo for Tears of the Kingdom, Baldersgate 3, and Starfield are all called role-playing games, and then other games are said to have role-playing elements. Like Eldon Rang and Dark Souls and so, okay, so that tabletop kind of tree is really where it started, right? So you have those old computer games, I mean, even pre-like the Balders Gate and Iceman Dales of them, all the D&D computer games, you had the wizardries and then Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy on consoles. And a lot of those took so many elements from D&D, like monsters and classes and kind of general themes, medieval fantasy, Eurocentric medieval fantasy stuff, that they also decided to take the genre, even if it didn't really make sense. And then also in some of those, in those early games, Wizardry, Final Fantasy, you were picking classes and kind of customizing your characters a little bit.

So you were getting to do some roleplaying, even if it didn't have the depth of like a tabletop RPG where you're, you're, you know, making choices all the time. And then I guess kind of as Final Fantasy as an example evolved, it took away a lot of those choices and you were eventually getting to the point where you're just playing through a story and you aren't making any real choices about how your characters change or evolve or anything like that, but they maintain the genre for some reason. So yeah, we have gotten to this interesting point where the genre of role-playing games, which originally started as one thing, is just kind of evolved to mean something else entirely. Kind of like the word bombastic.

Right. Role playing games are the bombastic of video game genres. Yeah, and I always try to get away from genre. I do this when I'm talking about music as well, to talk more about style and specific things, just because genre is useful in the same way that all of these labels are useful. I think for people just to categorize things in their brains, because we like to categorize things, and it's just helpful to be like, well, this is like that thing. And without having to know, oh, well, this is a FromSoft game, and it's, you know,

the guys who made this or like former from soft developers. So of course, it's a soul's like because of that. You can just be like, yeah, it's that kind of game. You know, you kind of come up with a genre name for it. And it's easier to find what you like if you at least know the names. Like sometimes it's just useful to be like, oh, that's called a life sim. Like I feel like that helped Dina when she was getting into games because I'm like, oh, you like the Sims.

You're going to like Star Doe Valley. You're going to like all these other games in that category. That's a more narrow, more helpful genre than role playing game, which is kind of meaningless. these days. Some genre names are much more useful than others. Well, so yeah, that's what's interesting about Boudersgate and Starfield specifically coming up, because those two are such specific like tabletop equivalence where it's like you are, you create your own character in both of those games. You have this huge array of options. You get to pick how things unfold. I think the latest, some of the splashy headlines coming out of Baudersgate 3, the press cycle, one of them was

that there are 17,000 possible endings because of all the choices you can make along the and other ridiculous stats like that. And 12,000 of those involve going off with a bear and getting married. But if you think about it, aren't there 17,000 possible endings to like a street fighter match? I'm sorry, I'm just having fun complicating this definition. But what I'm getting at, but what I'm getting at here is that those are very specific types of role-playing experiences where you are making constant choices about your character and how your character interacts to the world, as opposed to, I don't know, role-playing elements in God of War or Final Fantasy 16.

to pick a very recent example, which I guess you would call a role-playing game. Those two games are very similar, God of War and FF-16. They are very similar, yeah, and there are no choices whatsoever in that game other than what abilities you're using in combat. But even the item system doesn't really give you any choices in the way that kind of older RPGs in that same series might have. So, yeah, I think the more, I guess to kind of try to put a Kappa, or to give this a little bit of a definition here,

this nebulous term, I think in general, the more choices you have about how to build your character or party of characters and how they interact with the world, the more of like a role-playing game it is. And I say specifically choices involving your characters, because that's the idea of the role-playing as opposed to like civilization where you're constantly making choices, but they have nothing to do with characters or decisions about how you're interacting with the game and the systems involved. Yeah, I think that that's right. I think that that's what the term has come to mean, is it's basically come to mean choice. One thing that makes me think that

is the discussion of addition of role-playing elements to a previously action-only series. Invariably means... Someone just took out the needle and injected some RPG genes. Right. Yeah, that's what happened to Assassin's Creed. It was a stealth game,

and then they got this big needle that had a bunch of skill trees in it, and they just injected those into the game. Some gene splicing. That's a great example. Assassin's Creed is a good example. example. And right, the lightning was striking and they, you know, the close-up on the needle as it plunges in. And suddenly that series had different kinds of choice. First, the choice was, oh, well, what kind of upgrades do you want to do? What

abilities do you want to unlock? There's an ability tree now where the first one, Al-Tayr just gets a couple of abilities over the course of the game, but it's a very stripped-down, just sort of stealth game. That's really all it was. Where eventually, right, we had A.C. Valhalla, which is like the Witcher 3, basically you're a huge open world and branching storylines and romance options and all of these things. Multiple characters. You can be male or female and then kind of change what that character's design is going to be like as you play, which is a huge change, as opposed to like a bespoke guy. Like you're playing as a specific person and you've got to just go with what that person does. Right. And those are all choices like, socially. And I think that just has become kind of synonymous with role playing, which makes sense when you go back to the root of the thing. because that is what's so cool about playing Dungeons and Dragons or whatever,

is that you are, I mean, the amount of choices that you're making is bananas. You can make any choice that you want. Anything can happen because you're writing reality in real time. So it's like the ultimate version of choice. And then video games at first by necessity kind of paired that down. And now as they get more and more advanced, we're actually starting to see like similar levels of choice. And I don't want to bring up artificial intelligence, but when we talked about AI a little bit, That's the kind of thing where you can imagine a new, a whole new type of player choice becomes possible because you actually have a reactive dungeon master the way that you do when you're playing D&D.

Yeah, I mean, Balders Gate 3 feels like it's going to be the closest we've ever come to D&D. Like that's, I mean, based on how. Divinity Original Sin 2 does. Right, right. That's, yeah, the DVD Original Sin 2 is a good example. I played some of Baldur's Gate 3 in early access and it feels really like it just gives you the suite of options constantly. You're just constantly making decisions. if you are someone who suffers from choice paralysis,

it's not going to be the game for you. Is this a way to talk about how excited we are about the game? There's so many decisions to make every second. You have to make another paralyzing choice. Oh, my God. How's this going to go? No, that does kind of stress me out. You know, let's talk a little bit about Starfield and Baldur's Gate.

Or we could go back in time to games that we've played too and talk about like Skyrim versus Divinity Original Sin 2 or something. because I do think the level of choice that is offered by a Larian Studios game is kind of does make those games a little bit more niche than something like Skyrim or Starfield, even though in Starfield there are a million choices you can make. Because, I don't know, I was, I go like halfway through Divinity Original Sin 2 and definitely find myself constantly aware of just how many choices I'm making,

how many options there are, To explain to people who haven't played this game, not only are you customizing your character and your party to a really granular degree and in a way that's really important because, you know, there's spellcasters and rogues and, you know, tanks and damage dealing rogues, whatever. Like you can have all different kinds of classes and split classes and subclasses. And the game is very hard, so it really demands that you put a lot into the combat. And then you can build your party in like really wild different directions, like a whole bunch of them. So the choices really matter. And that's just in terms of like party composition and abilities that you're using and the strategy you're using in battle. But also, everything in the game is reactive narratively.

Like every character, almost every character can be killed. There are so many little hidden secrets, things that happen when you talk to someone and they go somewhere else in the world and then you find them again. And if you talk to them that first time, you get this whole secret storyline that they let you in on that eventually pays off like 40 hours later in this just delightful little. way. And the more you read guides for the game, the more, or the more I read guides for the game, the more overwhelmed I feel, where I start to feel like I'm doing it wrong, even though I try really hard not to feel that way, where I just don't really quite feel that in a game like Skyrim, or I'm guessing in a game like Starfield, even though that game is also really open-ended and offers a million little secret things and those same kinds of emergent stories. And I'm kind of,

I'm wondering why that is, or I wonder if we can try to tease that out, because I'm guessing the two of you have felt sort of similarly. Yeah, I mean, I think that in general, yeah, you compare Starfield. So the natural kind of progression here is Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starfield, and Skyrim and Fallout 4 have both been criticized a lot because it feels like some of the choices that you're making either aren't choices at all or don't lead to natural consequences or, like, don't have impact, as opposed to, I think a more natural comparison to Divinity Original Sin 2 might be.

fallout New Vegas, which does have more of those webs of like, you're making this decision, now this faction is mad at, you know, now you can't do that, this faction, if you choose to ally with them, then that'll piss up this person. And so there's a little bit more of that kind of depth to it. So I think it's less about the style of the game and more about what the developers chose to do with that game. And I think with Skyrim, that game is so ambitious and so cool in so many ways. It's so good in so many ways. But like one of the things that it seemed like they didn't have the resources or chose not to put too much depth into is like the Civil War or like some of the other kind of big overarching stories that are in the game. And so it feels a little,

it doesn't have the same sort of depth to it because it doesn't feel like like every time you, I don't know, take over an area for like the storm cloaks or whatever, it doesn't feel like it matters as opposed to a game like Divinity where it feels like a lot of what you're doing is going to have consequences down the road. So really I think it's more about the developer's decisions than it is that style because it would be easy to envision even a game like Starfield if they chose to go this route having like you do something here and then it actually matters on some planet a bazillion light years away. So I don't know. I think it's just decisions on the devs team and resources and where they choose to place them, I think. But yeah, I don't know. I'm

curious to see how they approach that game. Yeah, I also just even hearing you describe the import of choices in divinity, I'm immediately overwhelmed and I'm panicking. And I'm realizing that there is a piece of me that prefers the other version and prefers when there's a little bit more of a linear storyline. I hesitate to use the word linear because people always think that it's an insult. I know what you're saying. But I don't mean it as one. I mean it as something that can provide structure. Like I I like it when a game has a specific arc, even if it's not for my character, but for the world that they're in. And that arc is something that my character is either participating in

or sort of being dragged along by and they react to it in whatever way they might. Like I'm thinking of sort of a mass effect situation, which I know another controversial example here, didn't have as many endings at the end as people thought it might, but that was never what I was hoping for with Mass Effect 3. I liked the journey. The journey was the friends I made along the way.

That was where the depth, existed for me. And also I liked that there was a really specific story that pretty much happens to Commander Shepard, whether you play them as really snarky, really mean, or really compassionate. Like, no matter which of the three personalities you choose, you kind of get some of the same plot beats and the same big picture story from A, B, C, D, that sense of what I would call linearity in a really big RPG. I like it. I like it when that's there. Yeah. To be clear divinity has that and Baldr's Gate is going to have that too. Like there is a linear story. It's just, I think what Kirk is more getting at is the kind of the ripple effects that might happen from your decisions along the way.

So like you talk to some NPC here and he comes back 10 hours later and if you pissed him off here, then over there, he's going to be really mad and he's going to summon like some giant demons to take you out. That's the sort of thing that I think Larian is really good at doing. Yeah. And there's also, there is, I think, to what you're saying, Maddie, there's definitely something to the idea that some of these, games have a more of a focus on a central trunk of a story where it does feel like, you know, some players who aren't really interested inside stuff or branching or whatever can just kind to hold onto that trunk and go straight up it. And like Fallout 4, well, Skyrim definitely feels that way. Fall Out 4 feels that way to a point and then it kind of falls apart. Skyrim does? I thought the opposite. Skyrim feels like it has that, but it's barely anything.

Like you can finish the main story in half hour. Like most of the time you're not even paying attention to the main story of Skira. You will. I mean, I think that's kind of overstating. You can play through the main story and it'll kind of take you to most of the cities and get you some cool abilities. You'll fight some dragons. You'll climb the big mountain. You'll kind of wind up in a lot of cool places if you're the kind of person who doesn't really want to explore or even really play this kind of game compared with something like, I don't know, I do think that when I play Divinity Original Sin too, there's a narrative.

You know, you're kind of trying to find out, I don't know what the deal is. Like, there's a story, but it's not. Like, it doesn't have. have that like super grabby thing that pulls you through it. The way that's say, no, to use a different example, let's talk about say the Witcher 3. Okay. The Witcher 3 has a very strong story that's pulling you through it, despite the fact that it has many side stories and is branching

and the main story itself has lots of branches in it. It is like, it has that focus on the main story that pulls you along. If that's what you're there for, you can kind of play through the story. I'd say that's a little more relaxing to play a game like that. because you can just sort of be like, okay, what's the next thing I got to do? And there's a big, like, narratively, you can really hold on to that. And you don't have to kind of do the work or take the time to make decisions about, like, which person to talk to next because you've just entered a bandit town and there's four different factions. And you're not really sure, like, who's who or who's cool or what's going on. And there's a lot of people to talk to and a lot of information to suss out before you decide which faction you want to side with. And, you know, whatever, lead to the toppling of the government in this small. town, which can be like a really cool thing and is the kind of thing that I love, but I can imagine for some people, if it's always bandit towns, sometimes you're like, look, I just want there to be like a big castle in the distance and I can't quite get there yet. It's telling me to go there.

So yeah, that's an interesting tension. The tension between like, is this game holding your hand to the next big objective versus are you going to have to suss out like what, how you're going to get to the next objective? And that's where I think divinity and which are kind of two polar opposites. Because divinity, to be clear, as the person, I think I'm the only of the three of us who's finished the story of divinity, it does have a story and it's a strong thread through the whole thing. I mean, it kind of, it tapered, it gets a little bloated at the end, but like, for the most part, it's like, it takes you along. But, um, but like it also is a game that puts you in this town like you described Kirk and you have to decide like, okay, there are 40 different ways that I could

get past this next objective, which should I do? As opposed to, can I go talk to this person with an exclamation over their head and they'll lead me to the next big destination. And yeah, I think there is room. Obviously, both types of games are very successful and I think there's room. I think most people might be interested in both at some point or another, depending if you kind of want to, which levers you want to pull in your brain, like which parts of your brain you want to turn off or on at any given time. Sure, yeah. I mean, I'm more interested in understanding the different effect they have on us than the way they work than like which one more people want or which is better. But I think there's something to the idea of how many emergent systems are in the game and then does the narrative

allow for this kind of gameplay? Because the more, like the fewer of those there are, the more direct the narrative tends to be until you are playing Final Fantasy 16 or God of War, where you're basically just cruising through a story and there aren't really any branches. I'd count horizon in this too, actually, because as much as that looks and feels like the Witcher, there aren't really major narrative inflection points. It's not like the narrative isn't really changing. You're just sort of, it's how much of it do you want to see?

Which is like a choice, but a less impactful one. So it's kind of like if the game is designed with a lot of different systems that can react in different ways, then it's possible for them to have more branches in the first place. So in Divinity Original Sent 2, because it has this like deeply simulated world, there's a stealth system, there's a really complex dialogue

system, a charisma system, a reputation system, individual reputation for each character. Everyone remembers you. It's all like really densely interlinked. They can make it so that you can have all these choices because you can screw up and kill a guy or piss him off and kill him. And then there are still 10 different ways that you can finish this quest. And then sometimes actually in that game you can wind up just sort of dead ending a quest or like it'll there are still bugs in that game or at least when I was recently playing

it where like a quest just kind of. becomes unfinishedable because you happen to do things in the wrong order? I mean, the game is full of bugs. Hopefully, Valdescape 3 is a little cleaner. It's interesting. It'll have some bugs for sure. We're talking about role-playing games, but I feel like if you're following the tabletop lineage, the direct, like, kind of translation of tabletop games in video game form is less

role-playing games and more immersive sims, which is this concept that was coined back in the 90s. I think it was, I mean, certainly the father of the genre is Warren Spectre. I don't know who came up with the term, Immersive Sims, but started with games like Ultima Underworld and System Shock and then went to the most famous of them, of course, is DeusX. But basically games that are trying to say yes to the player and kind of Tears of the Kingdom is certainly on the tree of that particular genre.

And I think saying yes to the player is kind of the ethos that divinity has when you talk about the systems and the ways that you can interact with the world, as opposed to, I guess, what we think of as a more traditional role-playing game where even something like Skyrim that is big and open, unless you do lots of things, you can only really interact with the world in a couple of ways. Like you can slash things with your sword or you can talk to people. And I think what's interesting about immersive Sims is that they do a better job

of creating the whole feel of like role playing, so to speak, than a lot of these RPGs we've played in the past couple of decades. I think that's true. But I also was expecting you to say open world games as the next genre that you mentioned because a lot of the games we've listed here are just also open world games. Like the big difference with Assassin's Creed that happened, they were also holding a huge needle that said open world on it and had a really long to-do list inside of it with a bunch of little dots on the map.

I wouldn't necessarily say that those elements need to be there in order for Assassin's Creed to have become a role-playing game. Right. But they are also there. It also has become a franchise that is a series of. open world games that are role-playing games. And that's fascinating that those two things happen at the same time, but aren't necessarily forced to be connected. And Massifact, which I just mentioned, not an open-world game. And also, Disco Elysium is my other thought I'm having of a game

that gave me significant choice paralysis when I was first starting out, although I kind of got over it and understood the systems over time and grew to really enjoy it. But definitely not an open-world game. pure RPG right there. You don't think that's an open world game? I don't think so. It's just a small world. It's a really tiny town. It's a couple of streets.

But I mean, I don't think of open world is like it has to be a massive map. I think of open world is you can go anywhere at any time. That's what open world means to me. I think, yeah, you can make that distinction. True. Right.

You're not just in a linear level. Yeah, as opposed to Mass Effect where you are restricted. You cannot go to this planet until the game says you can. Disco Elysium, you can walk in any direction and access most of the game at any point you That's a distinction there. Right. A game like Divinity Original Sin 2 is technically open, but actually, you're moving between.

It's linear. Well, you can walk around wherever you want. Like when you're in the main sort of second area, it's a big map. You can go a lot of places, but then you do start to find the more you play that it limits you quite a bit. And you can go to maybe this area where there's an appropriate level of enemies. But if you go through here, you have to just run away from everything because you're going to get your clock clean.

So it does actually constrain your movements a lot. And then it's just very open-ended, and there's a lot of role-playing within that space, which I think mentioning Disco Elysium is, I'm really glad you mentioned that, just because that it would be insane for us to have a conversation about role-playing games and not mention the game where you probably inhabit the role that you're playing the most deeply of any game that I've ever played. And that's one, along with Divinity Original Sin 2, probably Baldur's Gate 3, those games all feel like they're doing something new and they're expanding the horizon of what's possible.

in role playing in a way that like I mentioned before, I could see like some actual technological breakthrough would be required to get even further, just because I know the incredible amount of labor that it takes to make something, to make one of those games right now, like just writing every line of dialogue by hand and allowing for all of these branches in the character and in the dialogue. It's just totally wild amount of work. So, you know, something artificial intelligence driven, something that's more generative or whatever. Or like Wildermith, not to just throw yet another game at you. but that's the other one.

No, but that's the same, right, the same kind of idea that, you know, could definitely be fleshed out by just, like, some easy way of putting more writing into it. So I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons. I'm still playing with my regular group. I've talked about this on the show before,

but we're still going strong, still in Eberon, so playing fifth edition D&D, doing a kind of, I'd call it a, like, I don't know, slightly steampunk heist, mostly character-based, storytelling-based role-playing.

So there's some combat. It's very fun whenever combat happens because we can turn off our brains and just focus on killing all the guys we're fighting. But there's a lot of sessions where we will just sit around talking about how we're going to infiltrate some building or something. And the guys I'm in the group with are all,

a couple of them are big, like, kind of handy people who like building houses and stuff. So they're really into like, how is the window work on this building? What's the code on the design of this? We wind up in restaurants a lot, talking to the service people about the specials and the menu.

Sam, our dungeon master is very good at coming up with interesting specials that we then order and eat. And so a lot of the role playing is like us just sitting around kind of like sometimes I'll get... Right, and I'll get mad. I hope Sam is an expert of building codes. He is, he is. He is like very, very.

knowledgeable guy at that kind of thing. And there are even times where my character will just start like throwing a knife into the floor because I, through my character, I'm saying, oh my God, can we please just go get in a fight with somebody to do something? Like, just leave and go somewhere and like start this thing rather than planning it anymore. But it is a great example of how open-ended things can truly get when you just have a group of people and the only limit is how much imagination you can have between you and how much time you have in the afternoon before you'll have to go home. And it, at least for me, illustrates the gulf between any kind of computer, video game,

role-playing game that I've played, and the pure experience of, like, that creativity with people, which is cool to see. It's cool to be reminded of that gulf because that means there's still a lot of room for people to make stuff that can fit somewhere in that gulf and start to continue to bridge the gap between those two things. I mean, I don't think they ever will. Although, if, I mean, I heard... Of course, of course.

just occupying spots in the Gulf, not building a full bridge and filling it in. Just like there are so many places people can go if they want. I think Baldur's Gate 3, I just heard this from Larian Studios, in order to like truly recreate the D&D experience. It's going to take you four months to organize a session and play the game. I was going to say it to get everybody together. Every time you want to log in. Every time you want to log in.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Exactly. And then, oh, the babysitters really not able to make it tonight. Yeah. There's like a snack button. You have to get all of your MPC companions.

Part of the game is you have to organize them all together. There's a button for the unhealthy snacks that you normally wouldn't eat. And so you're just eating like off-brand chitos. And you're like, I never eat these. But here I am. And every time you hit it, you feel a little sicker until you have to stop playing. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. To circle back to just my thoughts on open worlds. And Jason's point about immersive sims, I feel like both of those are attempting to answer the dream of the tabletop role-playing game in the sense that it's it's trying to answer well the player wants to be able to do everything like i remember that being how people describe gta when i was a teenager yeah of course you know in in high school the the pitch was you could do anything in this game that was the sentence that we said to each other over and over again and and in skyrim was similar i mean it's just a different setting it's not like similar to our world where you're like oh my god i can drive a car

I can't do that in real life yet, but in this game, I could drive a car and do all these things that I imagine adulthood is like, and it's providing this fantasy of quote unquote anything, being able to just like open any door or whatever it may be. And an immersive sim is supposed to offer those things too. And I feel like when I'm really on a Tears of the Kingdom High, which I am pretty much every day and probably will be up until I have to actually beat the ending so that we can record a Beanscast about it, I'm like, oh my God, you can really do anything. in this game. But also, I'm not sure I feel super comfortable with the idea of it being an RPG because I'm super just playing as Link and I don't have that many choices about what kind of guy he is. I mean, I can change his outfit and that changes his skills. But I, I'm leveling up, but I, those numbers are all completely invisible to me. Like, there is an invisible sort of mechanic that kind of tells like the Bacoblins how strong to be and all those other

elements. I think that's more present in Breath of the Wild than in Tears of the Kingdom. It's under the hood. I think it's just like how many hearts you had. I thought it was time played, but whatever. Yeah. Regardless, there are some things under the hood that are invisible to us all. And those are role playing elements, I would say, like that there's a skill tree there and getting more outfits and so on and deciding stamina versus hearts is still kind of a skill tree, albeit a very minimalist one. But the immersive elements and the open world elements are way more dominating if I were going to pin really telling genres onto Cheers of the Kingdom that would actually tell somebody what the game is above all else. Yeah, I think role-playing, and that's kind of what

I was getting at earlier, I think for something to truly be an RPG, it really needs some sort of customization that goes beyond the kind of skin deep. I'm going to put on different costumes and stuff, which is why it's kind of like, yeah, I mean, is Zelda an RPG? That's like been the forum debate for years and years and years and years. And it's not even that interesting. But I think if you're talking about what makes something role-playing or like what kind of on the spectrum of Kirk, I don't think you brought a taxonomy this time. But if you did, the extreme of role-playing.

The extreme of role-playing would be like ability to customize your character or even better your party of characters as much as possible because that's the idea of it all. But then there's all these other elements that are part of it too. and I think really they all just kind of harken back to D&D. And so if you look at like having stats and you're like, you know, if you follow the tree backwards on that, you'll get to tabletop games that were around before there even were video games. So I think some of that you can kind of, you can say it's an RPG.

It's got those RPG elements that come from all the way back then. But yeah, it's definitely not an RPG in the truest sense of the work. Yeah, there's a number of axes here that this moves along. Character customization is one of them. And I guess Disco Elysium, is probably the most extreme version of character customization that exists because, you know, it's as deep as you can get currently in a video game when it comes to defining what your character is and customizing that person's like inner monologues and the different aspects of their personality.

And it kind of like, if you imagine what that game is doing to something like a Phoenix Wright game or something, a visual novel, if you take that and then you blow it up and suddenly it goes from being a little root to being a massive tree canopy. The same thing is happening in Zelda. It's just happening with the design of the world and the gameplay, right? It's going from if you take an original sort of older Zelda game, especially the more linear ones, like you've got a pretty straightforward thing,

and then you move it to Breath of the Wild, and then Tears of the Kingdom, and you're up in the tree canopy. So it's a same kind of, it's like doing the same movement and evolving in the same ways, but it's a different axis. It's like you then have to take the two trees and turn them, so they're moving in different directions or something because it's like so that makes it kind of less role-playingish right sure well so disco

elizium also has the other kind of the wild card here is that in disco elysium you're role-playing a single character as opposed to creating your own character that you can then role-play like you're always going to play the same dude uh with his ridiculous facial hair and you can kind of choose which direction you want to play him in um so yeah I mean, I guess if you were really looking at the extreme, it would be like creating a character and also being able to role-playing them in a bunch of different ways. So maybe there are a few trees here. Well, yeah, I'll leave the trees in the forest. You should have brought in a taxonomy. I should have just draw a big tree and put that on our show. We're just lost in the wilderness

without defining each of these trees. We can't see the forest for the trees. I think that there is something to be said also for the role that limitations play in this kind of a thing, because when we imagine the whatever amazing artificial intelligence powered future where anything is possible. You kind of picture something like the oasis from Ready Player 1, right? Where it's just this amazing world where whatever you want to do, you can do. I never picture that. I try not to picture that. I'm constantly picturing it.

Every time I'm not talking to you guys, I've got a VR headset on it. I mean, I'm literally, I just think about Ready Player 1 all day. But when I think about that, when I think about a world with no limitations or anything is possible, the reason it makes me think of that is because they both seem like they would actually not be that fun. You'd have to find ways to make them fun. Right. They'd be like real life. Boy would be, or well, you have to decide what to do every day. I guess. Yeah. And like there just wouldn't be any story. There wouldn't be any structure. You wouldn't be interacting with like another person's vision or some story that someone wants to tell you. It would just be like unbridled

freedom to like make anything or you know, build anything. And that's cool. But like I don't actually really want that when it comes to entertainment. I want someone to tell me a story. I, I love the idea of being an active participant in that story. That seems fun, but I'd love it to be somebody else's story that they're kind of guiding me through. And that turns it into this delightful, collaborative thing. And that's kind of where, you know, in Disco Elysium, there's this nice limitation where, well, you're still, what's the name, Henry? Harry, you're still Harry. And you're still this guy, but there's so much freedom in how you choose to play him.

A good dungeon master reigns in their players, right? Like they don't just let everybody totally freestyle. You know, Sam is good at getting us to stop the planning session. you know, when my character starts throwing his knife into the ground and like go do something and kind of keep things moving and giving us, just coming up with clever ways to kind of cap us off in certain places and move us in certain directions. So that's always an important part of a role-playing game too. It's not just about freedom of choice. Yeah, well, so one of the reasons that I'm really excited for Balders Gate 3, and I think it could be the purest expression of that

that we've seen to date is that it does two things really well, I think, from what I've played so far in the early accesses and also from what we've seen. scene and hopefully we'll play in the coming weeks. One is that it has this cast of like predefined companions who have authored stories that the game is telling you that the writers of the game have crafted for you to get through, which is sort of like the equivalent of playing with other people who have their own stories in their heads. Right. Which divinity original can do really well. Divinity also did that. And then the other thing is that I think that when you are creating a game that has as much role-playing as possible on the character and the players part where you want to give

them all these options to be able to play however they want, you still need that narrative thread. And Maddie, to your point about the sort of thing you like, so in Baldur's Gate 3, the big narrative hook is that at the beginning of the game, you have a tadpole implanted in your head that is planted there by a mineflare, which is like a D&D enemy that can control minds and stuff. And the tadpole is going to gradually take over unless you figure out how to conquer it in some way, how to take it out, how to do whatever. And that's the ongoing story. And then that takes you along this kind of journey where you'll wound up in all these big cities and on all these other quests along the way. Is the tadpole voiced by Keanu Reeves?

It is a little cyberpunky. Although Baldesgate Early Access came out before cyberpunk for what it's worth. Fair. Fair enough. And also the idea of mind players came out before cyberpunk too, I guess. That is true. Mind players have been around for a bit. And so yeah, And so you creating your character along the way is just like you deciding how to interact with this particular story that the game wants to tell, which I think is a good kind of blend of that, like, restriction and also freedom. And I'm very curious to see how the final game pulls it off. I'm very optimistic and excited to play it because I really think it could be like one of the best expressions we've seen yet of this D&D ethos of like you are in this world and here are the rules and go role play however you want. Yeah, I'm super excited. as well, and we're going to be talking about it pretty soon, because it's out worryingly soon. I have a lot of Zelda to play before this game comes out. That's this year.

Here's the trick. Balders Gate 3 during the day, Zelda at night. Who needs a job? Who has other things to do in their life? Who needs to sleep or work? So you know how you're a lady in the streets but a freak in the sheets? So you're Baldess Gate in the streets and Zelda. Zelda in the sheets.

That's what Usher was getting at, I think. Well, we're going to be talking about the game. very soon as well as plenty more RPGs and RPG adjacent games in the near future. This is a lot of fun. Let's take a break. And we'll be back for one more thing. I'm Jordan Morris. And I'm Jesse Thorne.

On Jordan Jesse Go, we make pure, delightful nonsense. We were open awesome guests and bring them down to our level. We got stupid with Judy Greer. My friend Molly and I call it having the space weirds. Pat Nosswald. Can I get a Balrog burger and some erigorn fries? Thank you. And Camel Nangeani.

I've come back with cats. toothbrushes, which is impossible to use, come get stupider with us at maximum fun.org. Look, your podcast app's already open. Just pull it out. Give Jordan Jesse go try. Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead. Oh, Russ. Hey. Oh, I'm glad I found you in line. These clouds are really freaking me out. I hate having to stand in line. And boy, what a line. These giraffes do not smell good. No, they do not. And they have such short necks. But I'm hearing we need to get on this arc. We've got to get on the arc. It is about to rain. God is about to destroy human.

Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Are you Noah? Yeah, I know we look like humans. We're podcasters. We are podcasters. We are podcasters, so it's different. Have you heard of Ono Ross and Kerry? We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal, stuff like that.

And you have a boat and say the world's going to end, so seem like something for us to check out. We would love to be on the boat. We came two by two. What do you think? Ono Ross and Carey, available on maximum fun.org. And we're back for one more thing. Maddie, why don't you go first? Sure. I'm going to talk about a movie again. I feel like I've done that a lot lately because I've just been playing Zelda and we're going to talk about them.

Watching movies and playing Zelda. Watching movies. No, I was I was real riveted to this movie. There was no Zelda. There was no looking at our phones. We were fully ensconced. So, Dina and I watched They Clone Tyrone, which is a sci-fi comedy on Netflix. It just came out this past weekend as we're recording this. It's so good. And it's one of those movies where I'm like, you kind of don't need to know anything about. it. You could just watch it. Like, remember when people said that about Sorry to Bother You and, like, nobody wanted to tell you what really happens in that movie and you just had to go see it. They clone Tyrone is kind of the same way. But if you need a little bit more, John Boyega, Jamie Fox and Tiana Paris are the three, the Triple Bill stars of the movie. I'd say John Boyega is the main star of it. Very, exciting. Love him. Very, very good. Love to see Jamie Fox being a pimp character who is just a total goofball with like just an incredible pompadour afro situation that he wears. And Tiana

Paris plays a sex worker named Yo-Yo. She, people might know her as Monica Rambo from the MCU. I love her in that role. This is a totally different kind of comedic, high comedy slapstick type of role for her. She's hilarious in it. And John Boyega is a much more serious character. He plays a drug dealer, sort of a put-upon character. Obviously, all three, black characters in an almost entirely black neighborhood that is like very underserved, no resources, just totally just underperforming in every way and put upon in society. And also a great place for, say, a white supremacist government to perform secret, horrifying experiments on the people who live in this town, which sounds like it would just be

just a tragic story. but it's actually hilarious. Like somehow in much the same way as like, sorry to bother you tries to make just kind of the allegory for cocaine addiction and like the idea of just racism and code switching and like all of those themes and sorry to bother you to try to make that funny and make you think.

They clone Tyrone kind of takes those classic conspiracy theories that are often rooted in true events like the Tuskegee experiments and so on, like times when black people have been experimented upon or just taken advantage of or underserved by the American government. And actually kind of makes that into a real science fiction premise, but also is just super funny and weird and goofy. And I don't know, it's great. It's really, really good.

I recommend it. They clone Tyrone. It's on Netflix if you still have an account. I think it's worth signing back up just to watch this one. Nice. It's been on my radar and I definitely want to watch it. So that's good to hear that it's good. I'm glad Boyega is doing new stuff.

Yeah. I've loved him in everything he's ever been in. And, man, attack the block, which I haven't watched a classic. Really good. By the way, I watched the Barbie movie, and it was really good to agree with you. And now I think it's like open at $110 million or something, which now that I've seen it is wild. That movie is like the biggest movie in America. What the hell?

That's very cool. Kind of rules, honestly. Kind of rules. This is a little follow up to one more thing from last week. Definitely rules. People were waiting for a. an event. Very cool.

I love that the event is this movie that's all about the patriarchy. It's kind of amazing. Did not see that coming. Jason, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is a podcast, a podcast that I just started listening to that just came out actually called Search Engine by PJ Vote, who you guys might remember from Reply All, which Reply All, I believe is no more. at a kind of a messy ending back in the day, and we'll get into all the drama, but basically the short version is some people were mad at PJ for not being as supportive of their union effort as he could have been, and it all kind of blew up on Twitter and such, and people can go

read the New York Times article or whatever if they want to look into the drama. But regardless, PJ came back from that with a new show, and it's called Search Engine, and it is essentially reply all except it's just him. And so each episode is, the hook is that each episode he dives into a question that he is curious about. The first one is, why are monkeys really sad at the zoo? The second one or the first, I guess that was a teaser. The first real one, the first real one, the first real one. This is an even better one. The first real one is, what's the deal with airline coffee? Like, should you be drinking water on airlines? It's kind of like an ongoing rumor and debate

and debate over whether airline water is actually kind of gross and whether I've always been told don't have ice on airplanes because the ice is gross and stuff and so he digs into that and he approaches these episodes with the same rigor and journalistic

kind of approach that you will be familiar with if you've listened to him on Repai Al so he'll be like be like okay I talk to this person and that let me down this other rabbit hole where I went down these people and talk to these people. And so far, I'm really enjoying it. It's extremely fun to listen to, and he has clearly put a lot of, he and his team of producers and stuff, and editors have

clearly put a ton of work into each episode and the question that it asks. And I am very much looking forward to PJ calling me and being like, hey, let's do a video game episode. And I'll be like, yeah, I want to dive into a question. Why is the video game industry so exploitative? Yeah, let's do it. He's like, no, that's not the question. The question is, why can't Metroid crawl? The question is, what happens to Mario when he dies? Which is something that Triple Click promised, but never delivered to answer.

Not yet. One day. We're still exploring it. Our staff is still doing research on that one. Yes. Yes, our massive staff, thanks to maximum fun and supporters, like all of you. So yeah, it's really cool. It's called Search Engine.

Literally just started, so there isn't much of a backlog to start diving into. you, but I have a feeling that people who enjoyed reply all or enjoy kind of general investigative, just interesting questions and stuff will enjoy this one too. The most recent episode is like, why Elon Musk, why? Like, why? And he spoke to you. He spoke to Casey Newton, actually, who was just on our show a couple months ago. So yeah, so it's really cool. It's a really good show, and I am enjoying it. Search Engine with PJ Bell. Nice. All right. Yeah, I'll probably check that out. I also want to know why Elon Musk. It's a good question.

My one more thing is a video game that I started playing with my nieces when they were visiting and have kept playing since because it's really cool. And it's called Planet of Lana. And I, this one had totally gone under my radar even though it's really a kind of game that I like and I'm surprised that I hadn't heard of it. Do either of you know this game? No. Yeah, it's a Metrivenia, right?

No. No. No. No. No. It's not. It's more of a limbo alike, I would say. It's a, it's very similar to limbo, only much more colorful and beautiful, a little less of that kind of grim thing. So it's a limbovania. It doesn't do anything vainia, though. It's just a limboalike. Okay, so it's a Metroid Limboid. It's a limboid. It's a limb. A limbia. Limbionic. I don't know, limbic. Limbick. Let's go with Limboid. So I would say that gives an idea for the general framework. This is developed by a studio called Wishfully Studios. It's their first game. It's a variety of people.

They're Swedish. They're from around the industry. I was looking to try to find out if some people had worked at Play Dead who worked on this, because it really feels very similar. And just in terms of game design is similar. I didn't really see any one. But there might be some overlap there. But it does feel very inspired by Limbo and inside two games.

that I think are just absolutely brilliant and love. Same kind of deal. I gather it's the same kind of length. So it's a side-scrolling game with no spoken dialogue where the whole story happens in real time and kind of you experience it as you move through the world. It's the story of Lana, a young girl, who lives on what appears to be planet Earth at first,

but then very quickly is revealed to not be. It's a different planet where there is to swirl. Well, it is planet of Lana, not planet Earth. Well, it could mean a number of things, right? Maybe an inner planet, or an emotional planet. But no, this is an actual different planet that she lives on. And there is a kind of invasion of alien body snatchers that grab everyone in her little village.

And she's left all alone and goes out after her best friend to try to rescue her friend. And that's the narrative framework. And this all happens to you as you're playing. And then the world becomes just stranger and more surprising. And you kind of discover as you go along with her this planet that she lives on and all of these wonderful animals and bizarre and dangerous creatures. And, you know, these invading aliens or this. whoever these robots are that are grabbing everybody, and kind of unspool the story that way.

I haven't quite finished it, but it's like four or five hours long, maybe. And the big thing that it brings gameplay-wise that it adds to a game like Limbo or inside is you get this little cat who is named Mui, and it's just this cute little like shadow cat kind of, who Lana rescues pretty early on. And then you can start to use the cat as a sort of secondary protagonist. So it's a little like that, like any game that has a drone,

that you can fly around and then stop it some places to like say there's a button that causes a platform to move up. You tell the cat to go over there. The cattle then stand there and trigger the platform. So then the puzzles, each room is kind of a puzzle. They grow more and more elaborate. They're kind of designed around your ability to have a second body moving around that you can more or less direct, but that moves on its own AI and that also can't die just like you can't die because you get a game over. And it's just really great. It's beautiful looking. The music is absolutely. gorgeous. It's like this very cinematic kind of movie style, almost old-fashioned score that I really think is lovely. Kirk here, as I'm editing the episode, just a shout-out the composer.

His name is Takeshi Furukawa, and I really like what he's doing with the score. There's this one motif that plays early on that sounds like Tchaikovsky waltz of the flowers from the Nutcracker's Suite. He'll know it if you know it, and I have nowhere else that I'm ever going to be able to point this out. So I'm just going to point it out here. Listen for you. You hear it? You know what I'm talking about? Okay, okay.

Back to the show. And yeah, I found putting it on the TV and playing it while my nieces just watched was really, really fun. It's the kind of game that's just fun to watch because it's never repetitive in that way that makes video games not fun to watch. People love to watch the part where you're getting to a new area and there's a big cutscene and exciting things are happening. But then when you need to just go and pick 45 mushrooms and just kill the same enemy over and over again, they usually tune out or they go make fun. dinner. In this case, it's always interesting and engaging, and then the puzzles are, you know, they were a little hard for them, I'd say. It's, you know, it got a little advanced, but they can help out and sort of offer ideas, and it's always so visually engaging in each puzzle is unique.

So it has that same thing that Limbo and Inside have where it's just this very, it's a bespoke feeling experience. I'm not, I don't know if it's quite on the level of inside in particular, just in terms of like sheer vision and unbelievable art design. Like, it's a little more ordinary. but that's actually kind of nice about it. So I don't know. I really enjoyed it. And it was a game, like I said. That's cute.

Yeah, it flew under my radar, so I figured I'd just give it a shout out. If you like those kinds of games, it's certainly worth checking out. It's on Xbox and PC. For now, at least, it might come to other platforms in the future. But right now, Xbox and PC, it's called Planet of Lana.

Yeah, pretty good game. Always fun to have a game where you have a little companion and you send them to do things and then you have to solve puzzles. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Companion puzzle game. It's a very, it's just a nice, a nice experience.

And that's it. That's it. We did it. We solved role-playing games. We defined them once and for all. Figured them out. Hey, look at us. Solved again.

They are trees and, you can't get lost. It's two trees laid sideways and growing in different directions. Yeah, and if you don't get it, you got to just listen to the evidence. You're just going to have to go back. Yeah, you're going to have to. It's not us. We explained it perfectly. If you don't get it, then roleplay is someone who does.

Yes. Yes, maybe try on a different identity of someone who does get it. Respect. Yeah, respect your brain, your imagination. Oh, my God. Respect your brain is an intense statement. Oh, man. Is that a T-shirt?

For a different meaner podcast? Respect your brain. The bizarre mean world version of triple-click is respect your brain. That sounds like what the persona-5, like they're going around trying to respect people's hearts. Like they have to go out. Yeah. That's true. Respect your heart.

Respect your heart. We just need to resound. that world leader's heart and then he'll see that. The problem with this is that it sounds like respect. So it's like, no, you got to respect that world leader. It has to be written out. That's true. Otherwise, I'll think that it's an Aretha Franklin son.

Yeah, R-E-S-P-E-C. I hate it. Oh, I hate it. Wow. Okay. On that note, let's call it. I will see you all next week. 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 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 Tripleclickpod. 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. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.