Triple Click - What Makes Horror Games Scary?

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

BOO! To celebrate Spooky Spring, Jason, Maddy, and Kirk dive into some of their favorite horror games and talk about what makes a video game scary. How does interactivity enhance horror? What's the difference between "dread" and "panic"? And are controls sometimes meant to be terrible?One More Thing: Kirk: Persona 4 Golden/Persona 5 RoyalMaddy: Elden RingJason: Eternal ThreadsLinks:Maddy talks with Dead Space 2 director Wright Bagwell about the infamous eyeball scene: https://www.polygon.com/interviews/2020/10/4/21498961/dead-space-2-director-eye-poke-needle-scene-horror-wright-bagwell-interviewKirk’s take on horror doors: https://kotaku.com/the-horror-of-video-game-doors-1819921161Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin 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

It was a dark and stormy night. Three friends sat down around a campfire much like this one, and behind them, in the darkness, a killer video game. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we're talking about horror games and just what it is that lets video games be so uniquely scary. It's one thing to see a spooky door. It's quite another to walk through the spooky door. So let's walk through the spooky door together, yeah? I'm Kirk Hamilton.

I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Dreyer. Hello. Hello. Hello there, both of you. Guys, after two years of avoiding the stupid virus, I have picked up COVID. My entire family, really. My wife got it in the city and brought it home to me.

So it's her fault. Yeah, so we have to be really careful on this episode to stay away from you. You don't want to transfer it through Skype. Yeah, I heard that. Right, right, right, right. Really, really. I mean, I spit a lot into my microphone. So if you guys pick up some of that spittle.

I just wanted to warn anybody in case I pass out in the middle of this episode, in case I just get conked. And like, right before one more thing, I'm like, all right, We're going to take a break. Yeah, we'll wake you up in time for one way thing. Jason is in the middle of an impassioned point that he's making and then he just stops. That would be terrifying, actually. Hopefully not.

I'm glad to see you seem pretty good and that's good to see. Yeah, I mean, I'm at the very beginning of it, so hopefully it doesn't get bad, but it feels like the beginnings of a cold so far. So we'll see you. Well, we appreciate that you're here to talk with us and we know that you'll be here next. week. The first important reminder to give people is that next week we're going to be talking about Sweet Hood and Two. We're going to be playing up to you. How do you

describe it, Jason? The Luca Blight part? Well, the check point that I gave people is just Luca Blight. I'm like, you'll know it when you get there, right? You just say LucaBlight. Like, you know it when you get through it. Yes, I've gotten that far and I do know it. And that's real dedication. One of our hosts here has COVID and he's still showing up to podcast. And that's the kind

of dedication you get when you're a listener-supported podcast. Like Triple Click. And we really appreciate all of you who support our show, not just who become members of Maximum Fun, but also those who spread the word, who tell their friends about it. That's the main way that people find out about our show. I guess sometimes there are promos on Maximum Fun, but really it's word of mouth, and we appreciate everyone who spreads the word, who leaves us reviews, and all that kind of thing. And we should talk about this month's bonus episode that you only get if you're maximum.

Yeah. So if you become a member, if you go to Maximumfund.org slash join and become a member, really at any tier, you get access to the maximum fun bonus content podcast feed, which has all these bonus episodes, including monthly episodes from Triple Click. And the new one is going to be about, dun, dun, done, Dund, Eldon Ring. I suppose you already knew that because we already said that we were doing that. So maybe the timpani part there. But it's still exciting, right? I mean, it's still exciting.

People are waiting. People want to know what we think of America and Ronnie and the gang, you know. That's true. We have a lot of thoughts. I can't wait for Kirk to explain it to me because I have no idea what's. going on. It's going to be an hour of just lore explainers. It's funny because I was deeper in the lore like a month ago and now I'm trying to kind of refresh because I'm going to be driving this episode. But that'll be up toward the end of the month. It's going to be really fun. And yeah,

maximum fun.org slash join, become a member, support our show and get bonus episodes of Triple Click. All right. Let's move on. So most games podcasts, they tend to record episodes about scary stuff in October when it's kind of close to Halloween. But Triple Click is not your average games podcast to kind of celebrate that. We're going to be talking about scary games, about things and video games that scare us, just kind of as a broad topic. In honor of the scariest holiday of all, Memorial Day. Yeah, sure. I really associate that with being terrified. You're remembering the fallen and zombies, I guess. I guess war. War is pretty scary. War never changes. Hall of duties, zombies, something, something. So that's what we're going to be talking about.

talking about what makes a video game scary, how horror games work. And, yeah, there's this general topic. I put an outline here, but we're going to keep it kind of loose. We're just going to talk about it because I think there are a lot of different interesting directions that this episode could go. So to start with, I asked each of you to bring in some example of a moment from a game or a game that you played that was scary in an interesting way or that spooked you out or, I don't know, just something that you thought would be good to kick us off.

So Maddie, why don't you go first? Sure. So I'm sure we're going to talk about the experience of playing horror games with someone else. And that's what my example is. I played, I mean, I've played a lot of Resident Evil games. But the specific anecdote is about the 2008 port to the Wii of the first Resident Evil, which is a very awkward resident evil.

It's got tank controls. It's pretty hard to get Jill Valentine to go where you want her to go in that game. I would say that's part of what's scary about it actually is that you look like you're peering into this diorama, kind of like a Diablo isometric situation where it's not fully isometric, but you are peering into this mansion and you're watching, I mean, I always play this Jill,

you're watching Jill walk around and you have sort of control over what happens to her, but not as much as I would like. So I played this version of Resident Evil with my friend, Jake, and the two of us kept switching off. And I think this was the first time, in my life that I noticed how completely different it feels to be the one playing the game versus the one watching the game because the first Resident Evil is so freaking goofy.

Like there are so many YouTube videos making fun of the translation. It's very awkward. There's like the famous Jill sandwich line and meme accompanying it that people can Google if they're young and they don't know what I'm talking about. And it's just a goofy game. And when you're watching it, it just feels silly. But when you're playing it, I don't know. It's like something magical happens where you're like, well, wait, I don't want to, I don't want to open this door.

Well, anything could be in there. And if I click this button to open the door, what's going to happen? And there's just such a different physical, like I would feel my whole body tends up as soon as Jake would hand over the controller to me. And both of us were doing it. We were both like, why is this so much scarier when I'm the one controlling this? Like, what is happening here? And we got through it, but it was ridiculous. And I don't even, I don't know why.

It's just there's something about it. There's something about being the person who presses the button to do something as opposed to just sitting there making fun of it on the couch next to your friend. It's kind of a perfect encapsulation of the power of video games, right? I think that horror games more than any, maybe more than any other kind of game, like because it's so potent, right? Fear is so potent in the feeling of being afraid of what's around the next corner. Yeah.

And the feeling of actually having to go around the next corner, it's such a crucial difference between playing a video game and watching a horror game. it's a little bit like the moment I'll talk about as well. Or watching a movie or a show or anything else. Because watching a video game is essentially that same disconnected experience. And you can even laugh at the other person's moves and be like, ha, ha, I wouldn't have done that. But then as soon as they hand the control over to you, you're like, would I have done that?

Now I have to actually answer for my crimes and the jokes that I've been making all afternoon about this game. You're running up the stairs instead of running out the front door. I now have to push a wardrobe in front of a zombie. that it doesn't get out the door and kill me. Terrifying stuff. It's like going to a haunted house. It's the closest you'll get to being an actual, like actual jump scares and actual turning in corner is like controlling it as opposed to, I don't know, watching someone

going into a haunted house, watching YouTube videos, something going into a haunted house. Right. Watching, you know, the haunting of Hill House or whatever. Right. Being tested, being tested on how well you would do. That was like the ultimate joke of scream of the first scream is that these people sit around talking about horror movies for the first part and saying, oh, What does she say?

Sidney's like, oh, there's always some girl who runs up the stairs when she should be running out the front door. And then the first thing that happens is the dude comes in the door and she runs up the stairs because that's the easiest way to get away. And it's video games put you in that situation where you're like, oh, I, shit. Like, I am running up the stairs. How am I going to get out of this haunted mansion? Yeah. Here I am. Jason, what is the game that you brought in for?

Okay, so I don't really play horror games. They're not my jazz, I guess. but I really, really like thriller games. And I think there are some key distinctions. But one of which being that like a thriller game is more story driven and it's more about just kind of keeping you on the edge of your seat and just like hooked by twisted turns that are all based on the narrative as opposed to like big scary things trying to eat you. And so one of the best feelings, one of the things I'm always chasing when I play a really good

thriller game is that feeling at the end when it's like you're you're left with all these mysteries and you're finally getting into this like big metallic room and you see the pods and you see the computer terminal with all the answers on it and your heart is racing and you just like you have that like adrenaline feeling of like oh man this is it this is going to be that that twist that thrill that sensation that's really just going to turn the game upside down for me um and so uh dangan rumpa i think is a really good example of that, especially the first one when you're really just like piecing together the mystery towards the end of it. But there are a lot of games like that. A lot of visual novels are really good at capturing that feeling like the zero escape games. So that's the game that I wanted

to bring to the table and the kind of idea that I wanted to bring to the table, which is that I think there's something maybe kind of like the loose sibling of the horror is the thriller. And that's something I tend to gravitate more towards. Yeah, I think the potency of Dangan Rompah is there are horrific things happening in the story, right? I mean, when you explain what's happening in this game, which is a bunch of kids are locked in this school in this very creepy environment and forced to kill one another, and then they do kill one another. And it's all for this very sort of bleak conspiracy in the end. And the revelations are all very dark and scary. It kind of sits with you in a different way. Like it gets into your head. And you do think about that premise

as silly and outsized as that game can be. Even though there aren't moments, right, where you're being chased by a monster down the hallway, it's a different sort of fear. Yeah, I think that's another kind of key element of the thriller is that horrifying things are happening. And it is like horrifying from a more macro perspective like you mentioned with that. Or even if it's like a, I don't know, like a standard political thriller or a mystery thriller where like, oh my God, the president's been assassinated. Or the president's about to be assassinated. Only Jack Bauer can stop the assassin. But wait, now Jack Bauer is the assassin.

Dun, don't, down. And that is like, yeah, conceptually horrifying. but the moment to moment is more thrilling, I guess, than horrifying, which is more what I'm looking for when I play a game or experience anything. I really enjoy those more than horror. And they can mix together, like Stephen King's books. A lot of his books are kind of a blend of both, I would say. Did either of you play the game Soma, that sci-fi horror game? Maddie you did.

Yeah, definitely a psychological thriller about the nature of being a person or being a robot and transferring your consciousness to another. Yeah, it's a game where this makes me think of this, Jason. It's a, yeah, a game, it's like an undersea horror experience, I suppose. It's that kind of abyss sphere, kind of, you know, you're down on the bottom of the ocean. Scary stuff is happening. You're all alone. And you don't have any method for fighting back against monsters. And there are horror parts of the game where you're kind of having to sneak around these monsters.

This was made by Frictional, the same people who made amnesia, which is actually going to be the game that I brought in. But what's interesting about that game is that there are scary parts of it where you're, you know, it's scary. There's a monster and it's really creepy. It's making horrible sounds that it's following you around and you have to go press a bunch of levers and open the code for the door. And this thing is kind of following you. And if it sees you, it'll kill you because you don't have a way of killing it. And those parts are scary. But then, like you said, Maddie, this game is really concerned with the idea of consciousness and of copying yourself.

Actually, Severance. Anyone who likes severance who likes these ideas should really play. So much plays with a lot of the same ideas. Who is you? Are you still you if there is another copy of yourself? Which you do you? Whose eyes are you seeing through? And a lot of these questions that... What if you met you, et cetera?

Would that be creepy? Yes. And like, what do you owe to yourself? There's all these big philosophical questions that spiral up to this really incredible finale that is truly deeply horrifying on so many levels, just not even in the answers it gives, just in the questions that it raises. And that goes way beyond anything I ever felt when some spooky thing was following me on the hall? Yeah, whatever. Stealth sequences.

Yeah. Who cares? Having an existential crisis. Now, that's the real shit. Yes. The fear of just thinking about the things that happened. So that sounds more like a psychological thriller with like a horror atmosphere. I think horror, if you're kind of trying to define the difference between the two,

I think horror is more about putting you in a situation where, like, you are being chased or you are at, like, the atmosphere is horrific and scary. You're in this mansion. You don't know what's going to pop out at you. You're, like, on a spaceship and there's a giant alien creeping through the vents and it's trying to kill you, as opposed to the thriller where it's more about, like, question asking or kind of the story that is horrifying you and propelling you along. Right.

I think that that's a transition that games underwent. It's basically the shift from Resident Evil to Silent Hill, where Silent Hill is playing more in the realm of psychological horror, where the thing that is, scary is just thinking about some of the stuff it's raising because those are like fundamental fears, you know, death and, and, you know, being obliterated and not existing or being totally powerless and watching horrible things happen to people you care about, like things like that that aren't, you know, just a thing that chasing you down the hallway or like jumping out of unexpected.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also think with horror games specifically, one of the things that video games can do that other media can't is video games can set you back if you do the wrong thing, if you get, if you get caught by the guy. If you're playing Metro Dread and you get attacked by the Emmy and you let the Emmy catch you, then you have to go back to the checkpoint. So it can actually feel scary because I'm afraid of losing my progress. Exactly. It's annoying. It's like it really gets you. You know, I kind of think that a lot of times that kind of thing in horror games undercuts the horror. Like if you're doing something over and over again, repetition is kind of anathema to fear, at least for me.

When I've done it a few times and then I've died, I'm like, this isn't scary anymore. Yeah. Even with Mr. X, don't you love those Resident Evil games with Mr. X or like the other people who are chasing you? He's scary in the abstract. Yeah. Eventually it can become less scary because you've seen Mr. X too many times. And in the original ones, you know exactly what triggers him, whereas in the newer ones he can just show up at any time. And that's a different kind of scary. I mean, I actually would argue, as I did in my original example, even if you know exactly what's going to happen,

it can still be scary to open the door and trigger that cutscene or whatever it is because you're like, oh, this next part's going to be stressful. I'm going to have to run away from this guy. I'm going to have to really think about what I'm going to do. And you're, like, walking up to the door. And then you do have to press the button to, like, get it started. And even that sensation of, like, gearing yourself up, like, that's part of what's pleasurable about being scared. It's just being like, oh, this is about to happen.

Which is, it's like how tropes play into horror films as well, right? That you know something scary is about to happen. And then it plays with your expectations in various ways. or even if something just something scary is behind the door, it still is this kind of, it's this whole dance of anticipation as it builds it up. Yeah, so the game I was going to bring in is related to all of this is Amnesia 2,

a machine for pigs, which is a game that's okay that I reviewed for Kataku back in the day. And I wound up reviewing a few horror games, despite not being a big horror game person, at least at the time. But it led me to all of these. Wasn't one of your reviews just the word nope over and over, I guess?

That was the one of your reviews. with Nope. And that's why that led me to sort of a couple of different structures that I've got for horror games, like ways that I think of them. And the Nope moment was what I talked about there. There's this moment really early in that game where it's very early. You're walking through this house. It's not really clear what's going on in the game or even like what kind of a game this is going to be. The first amnesia was kind of a revolution in horror. It was a big moment in horror because it was right around when YouTube and streaming were kind of catching on. So a lot of like to watch people play this game.

And it had a kind of procedural ghosty, this kind of lovecraftian creature that chased you around through these pretty low detail environments. But what was scary was that it was unpredictable and that you had no means of fighting back against it. You just had to run away. And so you'd be like, oh, here I am. In this room, I've been in five different times. And oh, my God, there it is.

And like, you would get these videos of PewDie Pye screaming or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a big part of the appeal. The sequel, I was kind of assuming it would sort of be the same in it. I guess it kind of is. more scripted, it's more narrative, there's not as much horror in it, and it's actually not a very scary game on the whole. But I didn't know that. So I was playing very early, I'm walking through this house. It's a spooky house, man. It's just spooky. The music is spooky. There's a storm,

I think, outside. Everything looks weird. You're finding all this evidence of weird, like, pig experiments, and there's, like, kind of bits of blood, and, like, it's just a not a cool place to be. And then eventually, you find this stair, like a ladder leading up to an attic. and there's an attic door, and you have to go up the ladder and into the attic. And I was just sitting there for a while looking at the attic, being like, I don't want to go up there. It's just like yawning, dark attic doorway in this spooky house. Everything's telling me this is a bad idea. And I kind of like sat with that moment and explored it and it became the nope moment, which this game is full of nope moments.

And that's kind of, to me at least, the magic of horror games or scary games. It's the thing that we've already been talking about is this idea that. that you now have to open the door. You have to go in and see what's behind it. And that's why, like, I've always talked about horror game doors. The door in PT is a great example, the short horror demo for Silent Hills, where there's just this door. It starts with the door.

And the first thing you have to do is, like, walk up to this door and, like, and open it. And who knows what could be on the other side of the door. You know, doors have been, I mean, in Silent Hill, the door animation is very famous. There's always a door, always kind of a barrier between you and the unknown. and I've always thought that that was a really a beautiful encapsulation of a big part of horror games. There's this separation between two feelings. I see these two feelings as being like central to horror.

There's dread and there's panic. These are the two feelings that I think you kind of spend a lot of time in if you're playing a game. And I think the most is like... So there's Metroid dread and dokey, dokey panic. Okay. Exactly. Yes.

So there's dread and panic. And if you're... I think that an effective horror game is going to have more dread. than panic. I think that that's typically, because I think it's probably easier to make dread than it is to make panic because dread, all you got to do is make a spooky house

and then have a weird doorway that a person has to go through. Jump scares. I feel like five nights at Freddy's is like oops all panic of horror games. Well, that's why it only takes like an hour to play, right? Because you can only have that sort of panic for so long. Yeah.

It's also why I think people are able to make their own versions. I mean, there's like a huge modding community for that because it's such a simple concept. And so you can iterate on. on it a ton just being like, okay, there's going to be these scary machines, machine maddo and they're going to walk around this area. What else can they do? What are all the different ways that a jump scare?

What's the anatomy of a jump scare? Of course, there are other versions of Five Nights mods that don't just do that. But I do think that's what's inspirational about it, is that it's just, okay, how many times can I get the player to panic over the same type of thing over and over again, in different scenarios? Yeah. Yeah, I think I first started thinking about the dread panic thing. when I was reviewing alien isolation, which I would say one of the best horror games

I've ever played, it definitely has its faults, but as a just pure distillation of those two feelings, it's very good at it. This is a game for anyone who doesn't know. It's an alien game. You're on basically the Nostromo. It's not the Nostromo. It's a space station.

You're not Ellen Ripley. You're Amanda Ripley, so you're like her daughter. But whatever. It's just alien. And there's this alien, and there's only one for pretty much the whole game, and it just hunts you. And it's, again, a sort of procedural artificial intelligence.

So you never really know when it's going to show up. And there's nothing you can do about it when it shows up in the game. It just pretty much kills you if it sees you. So you spend the whole game in this state of dread where you're dealing with other stuff. There's puzzles to solve. There's other kinds of enemies. There's like Android and stuff to deal with. But most of the time just in the back of your head, you're like,

that freaking thing is going to drop through the ceiling. And then I'm going to suddenly be in this other world. And that's when the panic sets it. Is the thing drops through the ceiling, you dunk under a desk. And then you're in this situation where it's like right next to you. It doesn't see you, but if you move, it'll hear you, and you're like, you know, your adrenaline is kind of going and you're thinking, I just have to get to the save point. I just have to do this thing. I don't want to die.

And it's kind of this great balancing between those two feelings. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the scenarios where I'm just experiencing dread are also the ones that are easiest to break or laugh at, I would say, according to your distinction. Like one of my examples on my list here of things that have scared me, the Resident Evil 7. demo, which is sort of a PT alike. It was definitely influenced by PT where you're just exploring the same house over and over again. Also played this one with friends. I do that a lot because it's like the only way I can get through this kind of thing. So we were all trading the controller around

for this demo and there's this part where you go up into an attic and when you sort of explore the attic, you're walking around and then if you turn back around towards some mannequins, they will have faced you and they weren't facing you when you walked up. But when you turn around, they're facing you. And the first time I saw that, I was like, oh, I don't like that. I don't like that the mannequins turn around. That's spooky. And I want to get out of here.

And then my friend just kept being like, well, let's just see what triggers it. And just like completely broke it by like walking up and down the stairs a million times. And like seeing how close you need to get to the mannequin before they turn around. And she kept being like, is this scary, Maddie? Is this scary right now? This is really scary, right? And of course, it's like not scary at all. She's just messing with me at that point.

but like that's part of what's kind of amazing about horror games is that it's really just it's a haunted house like Jason said like it's just a thing a person made where it's like okay like the player's going to walk this distance away from the mannequin and they're going to flip around just then and it's going to be perfect when they turn around but it's like as soon as you figure out exactly what leads up to that moment it's not scary anymore but it's also still impressive like it's not as though I'm not still like oh I see what you did there it's like looking up how a magician does their trick on Wikipedia and

being like, okay, that's interesting. And now I never want to see it again because I'm good. I feel like that was in Bioshock, by the way, the original Bioshock. Oh, sure. The original Bioshock, kind of spooky. I was about to say, it was, it was Sander Cohen. Yeah, yeah. And so on the whole thing was all these mannequins that would move around.

Well, and in the Ghostbusters, was it 2016 Ghostbusters, where Leslie Jones walks in a room and there's all these creepy mannequins and she's like, nope, not going in there. Yeah. What is it about mannequins? Is that they don't have faces? I guess it's that they don't have faces. They can be scary, this idea. Yeah, and they're not supposed to move.

Faceless things are scary. It's an uncanny valley thing, I think. I think it's something that looks humanoid but doesn't have a soul. Yeah, because it reminds you of a dead body, like, and it kind of evokes death in that way. Yeah. Is it an eternal sunshine of the spotless mind when you see people without faces? I think there's a scene. Yeah, they're like blurred out.

That is a very, you're forgetting things and things are disappearing. Yeah, horrifying image. So, okay, so here's another thing that I, that Maddie, one of the very first things that she said made me think of this. And that's that I think that controls play an important role in something being scary. And on the steam deck, which has the best control. You can't play horror games on the Steam deck. Because it's too good. It's too comfortable. Too good.

Yeah. So what I really want to talk about here is the battery life on the Steam. No, no. So you mentioned Resident Evil, which like famously has pretty lousy control. The original was these tank controls where you would have to move your character relative to the camera positioning and not relative to their body. And so you had to really kind of get your head around that. And it's very confusing if you play a game with tank controls now. It's very weird.

You like turn and then move forward. It's like a tank, you know, where you're turning the treads and moving forward. And that's part of what makes it so scary when there's like two zombies coming at you down the hallway. But you're like, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. I have to carefully maneuver my character and then like turn around. Like, I just want to move the joystick away from the screen, but like, that might not necessarily be the direction the joystick should be moving in order for you to get Jill away from the zombies. It's terrible. It's horrible. Right. And if it were smoother than that, it would undercut some of the horror.

And there are, like, I suppose there are horror games that I've played that have smoother controls. But really. Like, say, every other Resident Evil in successive order after the first one, perhaps. That's true. But I would even say that, like, Resident Evil Village, the most recent one, I wouldn't. call those controls like it's not destiny, you know? It's not vanquish. Like it's not a game where you're like super fast like ADS like swinging around. You can like turn and shoot and like just totally like have total fluid control. It's still a little bit slow and weird and turning kind of takes a long time.

There's always an element of that in a game that's trying to be scary. And a lot of times as these series start to like fine tune the controls and remove that kind of thing and give you more and more fluidity, they also become less scary and more action focused. And so, I don't know. Like, I think the panic moment, part of the panic moment for me, when I think about those feelings, it's also the feeling of like, and I don't know how to deal with this because I haven't even been in this situation that many times. And I'm going to have to kill the zombie. And I don't even really remember what buttons do what. I'm not spending all my time shooting zombies.

So it's not a comfortable thing for me to do yet. So in that way, I guess, like the scarcity of the panic events also matters because it has to feel kind of ungainly or stressful for you to do it just on a mechanical. level. Intentionally bad controls. Yeah, I wonder if that, how often that happens or if that has happened that a game's developers are like, you know what, we want the controls to intentionally feel bad every time you do this. There are times when like a game might intentionally mess with you, like if you're drunk or something and it's like, oh, you press A and it doesn't do anything. But I wonder if there's times when a mechanic is actually meant to feel bad because that will evoke the correct emotional response in you. That's kind of an interesting.

an interesting notion that I hadn't really given much thought to. I think you can at least, like, the intent is harder to say, just because it's sort of hard to know what people were thinking. Though Resident Evil probably gives the clearest example, like the clearest sort of chronology of this, because even going outside of the first game, you can look at Resident Evil 4, which is a game that a lot of people see as the big transition point in that series,

where it became more action-based. And even Resident Evil 4 doesn't have great controls if you play it today. you know, you have, Leon has to stand still in order to aim. So you still wind up in this... Yeah, they fixed it for the remake for what it's worth. Like on Wii, it plays pretty well. And I think on GameCube it was a little bit better. No, actually, no.

It was just on Wii because you can use the motion controls. The motion controls. Well, and I've played it in VR, actually. The new VR version on Oculus Quest is pretty cool. And I mean, you're much more mobile in that game. You can teleport around. It really changes the way the game works. But even in like the Wii version of Resident Evil,

four, if I remember correctly, you can't move while you're aiming, right? You can't. So it's just easier to start the process of aiming. Right, and the game is more action-based. And you just have more ammo also and kind of better guns. But because you can't move when you aim, it does create this, like, very distinct Resident Evil thing where any time you bring your gun up, you're suddenly rooted to the spot and it becomes this, like, kind of pressure cooker thing as, you know, there's a bunch

of zombies in that game, so they're kind of coming toward you down an alleyway, and you shoot one, and you can't tell if you kill them, and then you see another one coming and you're like, crap, I'm going to have to bail out. And bailing out requires the whole you stop. You like hit the turnaround button. You kind of run. You hope you do that before they get to you.

Like it still has this like heaviness that forces you to really consciously make decisions compared to, say, Dead Space 2 is a good example. Maybe we'll all find out if I win our vet and we all play it. But that's a game where you're much more mobile. Isaac is, he's not like, you know, he's not bayonetta, but he's more mobile

and able to move around a little bit more. And then the enemies just have to be tuned to kind of deal with the fact that he's a more mobile guy. Right, which I think is part of why Dead Space 2 moment to moment just feels more like an action game, like a Half-Life 2, which Ravenholm was pretty scary for me, actually. But I was actually going to bring up Dead Space 2 anyway because there is a scene in that, the I poke scene where I did talk to a guy who worked on it about how they intentionally designed it to be uncomfortable to play, just like Jason said.

And people can find this at Polygon if they want. it's basically a mini game where you have to stick a needle into Isaac's eye, which sounds terrible even when I just say it. But the mini game, just the way that it's designed is also terrible. And I interviewed this guy just to be like, how did you make this feel so bad? And also, why have you done this? Like, why have you done this to gamers who play it as? I mean, it's one of the most incredible things I've ever done in the video game. I agree with it. it's terrible, but it's also incredible. Yeah. And his quotes are very funny.

He was talking about how like that was the moment where people were cringing and like couldn't look at the screen. Even just watching someone else play it, people were like, ugh, because it's like it's so intense to even think about putting a needle in your eye. But anyway, great video game. Can't wait to play when Kirkwin's the bat. But that, yeah, that is an example of something that it's not tank controls. And it is a mini game that you can perform adequately and smoothly. Like it's obvious what you're supposed to do, but the part of it that feels horrible is like what you're physically doing in that moment and how much you don't want to do it. It's such an, that's such an interesting example because it kind of stands alone.

It's really its own thing because you're not, it's not the whole like, can you open the door? Can you run away from the thing? Can you shoot the aliens? Yeah. This horrifying thing that you have to do and that Isaac is doing to himself and you just have to like manually do it. And the whole time you're thinking, what would it feel like? to do this to myself and your whole body is just recoiling. And yeah, I can't even think of that many other things in video games that I've done that.

I suppose cutting off your finger or whatever it is in Heavy Raid is kind of similar. That's that same kind of just body horror. Any sort of like self-mutilation or like something horrible happens to your character, I think, is kind of scary. I mean, that's part of why Soma's interesting because it's about you and your character at least and what happens to them. And that can be horrifying. But yeah. And prey you have to jab things in your eye a lot. That's always unpleasant.

That's true. At least it's just a little button press and you do it. But I was just replaying some prey. Yeah. And you don't have to see, you don't see the actual needle. You just see the needle. It's still kind of gross. Like it is kind of gross.

It is. And I mean, I feel like that's part of why like the Tomb Raider reboot scenes where Larcroft dies were so horrifying to people because it's like, well, that's the character I am. And like now she's being music. mutilated on screen in front of me and then all of a sudden, you know, the game snaps its fingers and she's fine again. Like, it's, there's just something very weird about seeing a horrifying thing happen to the avatar of you. And then you're like, oh, I guess, I guess I'm fine.

Yeah, that trope of having to watch someone die in increasingly brutal ways every time you get a game over. It's like, that needs to go away. I hate that. It bothered me so much in Last of Us, too. I remember a couple of years. Well, but see, Jason, I feel like Last of Us, I mean, it's like, it's like, it's like, Is that a horror game? Like that's another example of a game where both the first and the second one, I'm like,

well, it is doing some horror things. There's some pieces of it that are spooky scary. You're walking through the shadows. A lot of games take horror elements, but aren't necessarily horror games. Like most action adventure games at some point have some horror scene or horror section in them. A lot of like immersive sims or a lot of just kind of, I don't know, they're scary parts in Horizon.

There's scary parts in Eldon Ring. There's like horror and all this stuff. It's just different than like a horror game, quote, unquote. Well, oh, man. There are so many things I want to talk about. I want to talk about Tomb Raider, but I also want to talk about Eldon Ring. Let's put a pin in Eldon Ring for a second. Because uninteresting, I think that it was interesting the way that Tomb Raider

borrowed horror elements. I think to a degree that people weren't expecting. This is the Tomb Raider reboot. The first one was this? 2009. I don't remember. 2012. I'll probably, I'll pay my way out of it.

It was 23. Oh, God. Okay, we don't know what time is. Jason Bing does. The 2013 reboot. And it was really borrowing from the dissent. Have other than you seen the dissent of that movie? It's one of my favorite horror movies.

It's pretty dope. Maddie, I think you'd dig it. I'd probably like it. The dissent just very briefly is a story of a bunch of female extreme sports enthusiasts. I feel like we've talked about it before, yeah. Yeah, they go to this cave, this group of super tough women who, who like to climb cliffs and jump off them and do stuff like that. And they go to this cave that's kind of off the map.

And then, of course, they get trapped and things go extremely wrong. And it becomes a really terrifying, claustrophobic horror film. And I like it a lot. And it has a lot of really iconic imagery. Like, it's very, you know, ingrained, I think, in horror fans' subconscious, just because it's a very striking movie. And there are totally scenes in that Tomb Raider reboot where I was playing it and just being kind of shocked that they were going as far into the descent as they were.

There's a sequence in that game later on. It's when Laura has kind of fully transformed into just a murder machine. And there are some guards kind of walking on a lake. There's just this lake of blood because they're sacrificing all these people. And the guards walk over this lake of blood and they're talking. And then like Laura Croft's head just comes up out of the blood and it's just her eyes. And she's in this lake of blood. That is like shot for shadow remake of one of the most famous shots in the descent.

And when that happened, I was like, what is this game that I'm playing? This is like full on doing an homage to one of the most hardcore horror movies I've ever seen. Bing! Kirk here, and I just wanted to say that the shot in the descent that I'm talking about is really kind of an homage to Apocalypse Now. And I know how things work. And if I don't mention Apocalypse Now, then a whole bunch of people are going to be like, you know, actually, the thing from the dissent was the Apocalypse Now. But in the dissent, it was blood and it was Blood and Tomb Raiders.

So I'm going to still say that I think the Tomb Raider reference was to the dissent. Okay, anyways, just wanted to mention that. back to the show, bing! And even though some of those death animations were a lot and they were kind of too much because, like you said, you kind of see them over and over again, they're kind of horrifying. I think that in general I actually really appreciated how that game sort of embraced this gnarly horror stuff in a similar way that I actually appreciate that about The Last of Us as well. Yeah.

Can we talk about, I know you wanted to talk about Eldon Ring, but I want to talk about Until Dawn, and then maybe we can talk a little about Eldon Ring. Absolutely. Because Until Dawn is... one of the horror games I've enjoyed, one of the few horror games that I've enjoyed playing. In part because it really feels like it's one of the few games that, well, I guess in part because it's a thriller by the definitions I mentioned earlier, and that it's largely driven by plot and not by atmosphere. But also it's like, it's got such a, it's such a perfect encapsulation

of like horror tropes as an interactive story. And it really just like does, it takes the horror movie and feeds it into the video game machine and makes a game out of it in a way that no horror movie could ever do by making it sort of a choose your own adventure and it's just super fun to watch can you kind of like explain yeah um until done i mean essentially it's like this this game where a bunch of teenagers all played by or a lot of them played by famous actors um including rami malik who's in there uh that's right that's right that's right yeah future academy award winner rami know. Yeah, one of his early roles.

He's great with it. As a teen weirdo, because that's what every teen is in that game. They're all weirdness. And Hayden Panetti is in it as well. She's the final girl. Yes, Hayden Panetieri. Yes, yes, yes. And so they're these eight teenagers and they're on this mountain ski resort thing.

And suddenly things go wrong. Yeah, they're in a cabin. And it turns out there's a murderer, or at least their lives are being threatened. And as you play through the game, you kind of cut between each of the characters, and they're all very much like horror movie tropes. of the jock and the ditsy girl and they're all like having sex and doing teenage things. But you make all these decisions and you see this giant like butterfly effect type timeline where you see that your decisions actually have all these ripple effects on the rest of the story.

And like based on your decisions, characters will live or characters will die. And like you can kill everybody and not see a good ending because like you killed everybody. So there's a lot of interesting stuff there. It is the perfect game for playing with someone like of all the horror games. this one really because you're making so many choices that like your partner or whoever is sitting with you will get to make choices with alongside you. And then there's a spiritual successor that's actually coming out next month called The Quarry that I'm really really excited for. I'm excited to be very similar. So I'm stoked to play that. Yeah, it's at a summer camp,

which is a classic horror movie destination and just feels exciting to me. I'm psyched for that. Yes. Yeah, making it a straight up interactive film was such a good idea. It's actually It was after playing until dawn. I was shocked that it hadn't been done before, especially given the way that David Cage and Quantic Dream, they were making games that were very similar. I mean, until dawn is the same kind of a structure as a heavy rain or a Detroit become human.

But because it's schlocky and it's embracing, you know, horror tropes and it's not taking itself seriously, it's a crashing success in a way that all those games weren't. And just like you said, it's so fun to play. Yeah. Beyond Two Souls is the quantum dream game. Is it called Beyond Two Souls? It's called something like that.

Beyond Two Souls, that's it. That's almost horror. And I feel like it just doesn't quite land that plane. Like, it has some moments. It's about ghosts. That's not a huge spoiler. There's ghosts in that game. And there's some really creepy parts.

But it's more just another soap opera. And it's not like it's deciding to be a horror game in the way that until dawn was. To answer your question, Kirk, I just don't think it was really possible to do that until the BS4 era in terms of like the production values you would want out of a game that tries to really emulate movies. And it wasn't until 2015 when this game came out that it was really possible to cop motion capture these famous actresses faces and get them looking realistic and like really achieve the look you would want. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, it wouldn't even need to look as much like a movie. Yeah, I mean, it's also like David Cage at all just, I guess, weren't interested in telling those kind of.

of stories and we're instead of interested in doing something else. But I don't, I don't, I just think other studios should do this. And I'm psyched about the quarry for that reason. If you want to go way back in time, I mean, there are plenty of like old school games that try to emulate Maniac Mansion is a perfect example of like a bunch of teenage tropes in a haunted mansion. Right. Or like Night Trap as an example. Yeah, night trap.

I mean, there are the old FMV games. Yeah, yeah. So there is a lot of stuff that tried to do that. It's just the reason until Dawn stood out is because it was the first game that really felt like a movie and I think that's in part because it looked like a movie and it felt like a movie and it was starring movie actors. Some of the fun of Until Dawn is that butterfly effect design. The fact

that they're all horror teens so you don't really care because that's the whole thing about horror movies is you don't mind if anyone gets killed so you're not super attached to them. Even in the way I would argue that heavy rain is trying to get you invested. If you lose someone in heavy rain it feels like you've messed up and kind of screwed up your story.

The totally, I mean, the kids who go to the cabin in the woods are supposed to die one by one. So it's really just a matter of how that's going to happen. And that alone makes the game really entertaining because you can just play and not really care. Just like, well, we'll see what happens, I guess. We'll just follow our, follow our gut and maybe get everybody killed. But that's fine. We can just play again. So Eldon Ring. Let's talk a little bit about Eldon Ring. Because I do think there's something interesting in the way that FromSoft borrows some survival horror tropes. Like,

they do something distinct. It's very rarely truly scary, but it's the same kind of structure as a horror game where you look down into a room and it's a new room that you've never been in before and it's kind of a big open area and maybe there's an item all the way across the room on the other side and you're like shit you know it's that and it's that same feeling is it right like whatever is going to happen in there it's going to be bad and I'm probably going to die and then because you die so often in those games and because you so quickly start to see your deaths as sort of funny it's not scary because because you walk in and the floor falls out and you fall into a pit of acid and there's a giant crab and it eats you.

Or you walk in and someone drops a boulder onto you or whatever other horrible thing that happens. It winds up feeling like slapstick instead of horror. A lot more dread than panic, in other words. And it's almost not even dread because you're not even in a scared place to begin with because death has become so commonplace and you're so used to it. Yeah, although it can be dread if you have like 100,000 liens and you know when to give them up. That's sort of it becomes dread. That's very true. So there is kind of a gradient in those games.

There are times where it's legitimately just horrifying. You're like, I'm so far into the unknown. I don't know where I am. I have so many souls I don't want to lose them. This sucks. There's like horrible monsters everywhere. And you really start to kind of feel that fear. But I wouldn't say that's intentional of fear.

I mean, I guess it's stress. I would describe it as stress rather than a horror game scenario. Jason, were there things in Eldon Ring that you thought were outright scary? Because I don't know if I see it that way. I mean, the ants. Yeah. Okay. You know what?

I take it back. The ants are really bad. I forget everything I said. Also, when I, I mean, there was an incredible moment when I was playing co-op with our buddy Mike Rochelle. And I wound up falling into the basement somehow and getting eaten by an abductor and taking a volcano mansion. And I was like, terrified the whole time that was happening. Yeah, that was super fun. The abductor is very terrifying.

Those things are terrifying. Yeah. I guess bloodbored. has more like full on horror I think people consider Bloodborn an outright horror game. Yeah. I mean those abductors are fucking scary.

Yeah, a huge thing with a face that doesn't move that grabs you is quite scary. There's something freaky about those guys. Bloodbourne is a funny one because it's using all of these elements of Gothic horror and then Lovecraftian horror, but it's not mostly a very scary

game, except in that same way we're describing. That sort of distinct from soft stress, which is sort of its own feeling. Yeah, and I also feel like the design of those games, it sort of forces you through my friend breaking the mannequins in Resident Evil Seven's demo, where it's just, you're seeing it so many times, and you're sort of encouraged to notice the patterns of every single enemy, and to laugh at yourself and them to such a degree that it's as though it becomes slapstick almost immediately in every scenario. I mean, I still don't like those ants. I don't like those guys at all. But that's, that's,

That's more just because I don't like how big those ants are. That's less about Elton Rings to side. It's a separate thing. More just a personal opinion. Well, the hair, really, it's the hair on them that is just not cool. Yeah. It's not okay. Yeah, sometimes just a gross enemy is all you need.

Well, there's so much more that we could talk about. Oh, my God. We barely talked about PT. We could just do a whole episode on PT. Maybe we will. Maybe in October when it's closer to Halloween. But for now, I think that'll do it for this discussion of scary games. Yeah, let's take a break and then come back for one more thing.

Hi, my name is Graham Clark, and I'm one half of the podcast. Stop podcasting yourself. A show that we've recorded for many, many years. And at the moment, instead of being in person, we're recording remotely. And you wouldn't even notice. You don't even notice the lag. That's right, Graham. And the great thing about this, go ahead. No, you go ahead.

Okay. Okay, go ahead. And you can listen to us every week on maximum fun.org. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Your podcasts. Did your neighbor back into your car? Bring that case to Judge Judy. Think the mailman might be the real father?

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when your wife won't stop pretending to be a cat and knocking the clean laundry over. And we're back for one more thing. Maddie, you have to go first because I see what your one more thing is. And it can just carry on from what we were just talking about. I know. So I picked Eldon Ring. This is kind of me ringing out Eldon Ring because I know we're going to record a Beans cast this month. But I wanted to say something else about it. Since I'm basically at the end, I've reached the final, final boss. I will beat it at some point this week for the Beans. But I had to really change my builds in the last chunk of this game. mixed feelings about the fact that I did that.

I've talked a lot on this show about how I really like doing a strength build with like either an axe or like a really big sword and a shield. And I did that for almost the entirety of Eldon Ring. Love and life. Great stuff. And then somewhere around the fire giant, maybe a little before I started doing the power stance with two swords. It probably started around when I picked up the Bloodhounds Fang,

which was actually like fairly early on, which is just a really good curved great sword in that game. That's super satisfying. And it was better than every other weapon I had. And it seemed really stupid not to use it. So I just started being like, okay, well,

I'll just start using this. And like, I'll get back to my axes later. And then I just kept not getting back to them. And then eventually I found, I used it the entire game. Bloodhounds thing is really good is the thing. It's very good weapon.

And then I found another curved great sword eventually that fit pretty well with it. I don't remember which one. the onyx maybe. Morgatz, I use that with Morgots. Oh, the onyx one is good too. Yeah, the onyx one I think is what I did at first. And then I just had both of those and that was pretty great. And then around when I got to Melania, I was like really struggling because I wasn't

quite good enough level-wise for her. And then I was like, well, I could just get a friend to give me another Bloodhounds bang because there's only one in the game. So you have to get somebody else to give you one. Or play new game plus. Well, that's right. But I just kind of cut the line and had a friend of mine who isn't using it. Give me that one.

So then I had these two bloodhounds fangs. And I leveled them both up to 10. And then I just freaking slashed my way through everything that ever stood in my way. And I totally changed. I like respect. I changed to full decks build. I started wearing lighter armor. I started rolling, you guys.

I'm out here rolling. I don't know who I am anymore. I'm literally rolling. Alderring has changed you. I could play Bloodborn now, I guess, because now I'm out here rolling and just... Dex build is good practice for Bloodborn. I guess it is. I just, I feel like I've changed fundamentally and I don't know what's happened to me.

I don't think it's... I mean, it's not bad, but I also feel like I betrayed myself and that I should have just gone with the strength build for the rest of it, but I don't know. The Bloodhounds fan converted me, I guess. So now I'm a Dex Build person and I'm rolling. But what it's worth, it's a common complaint that I don't know. I'm sure we'll talk about on the meanscast that Malania requires you. Some builds just can't beat her.

You almost have to do, I mean, okay, if you are a magic build, you just have to make it work. I've heard it's very hard against her. I can't speak to that personally. But it is true that re-rolling for a decks build made that fight cake in a way that it previously was not. So I had the ability to do that with the weapon I already had. But I did feel a little weird about it. susceptible to bleed. Because I felt like I could have just stuck with my original play style and it would have

been harder, but it would have been like a fun challenge. But whatever, I had to beat it for the podcast. So that's the only reason I did this. That's why I've learned how to. But you didn't have to, because she's optional. You didn't actually have to beat her for the podcast. I did, though, for like a major reasons. She's like the iconic boss from the game.

It's true. Come on. I had to get her. I had to get her. All of the, I set up some custom art for the game in Steam, just because I'm like, a nerd. And I was just looking at the custom art and all the custom art is these awesome pictures of Melania. She's the coolest. She's on that key art that's like her and Radan fighting each other, right? Yeah. Also that. Yeah, she was in that. It's great character design. Even if she's sort

of a frustrating boss. Absolutely. All right, well, I'll go next. I've been playing two persona games, the two most recent persona games, and I played a whole bunch of persona for Golden. The two most recent mainline. There are a ton of spin-offs since then. Yes, sorry. The two of, like, actual persona games. I don't play the spin-offs. I don't do the dancing stuff. But, no, yes, persona four golden and persona five royal, which, one of which I'd played, I'd played persona four golden when it came out on the Vita in 2012, 10 years ago, which is pretty wild. But now, of course, it's on Steam. It came out on Steam in 2020, so I got that on the Steam deck to kind of relive the Vita Glory days on the

Steam deck. And I played a pretty significant chunk of it. I played up till you get Resey into your party and kind of the full gang gets together. And then, I kind of had been texting with you, Jason, about persona four and how I was really liking it, but it's just interesting going back to Golden since I had played persona five. And I'd never played Royal, which is the expanded version of Persona Five that came out in 2019. Jason, you talked about it on the show. 2020. Oh, I'm sorry, in Japan in 2019, in 2020 and worldwide.

It came out just around when COVID was starting. That's how I remember, because I spent a whole bunch of those early days of COVID playing through all of Persona 5. Yes, and right at the start of triple click, too. It's a very good thing that you talked about. Yes. And I would have had to buy, just buy the game again. Like, it's just a full $60, even if you already own Percenta 5. And I just wasn't willing to do that, even though I was curious.

But I randomly found it on sale last week for 20 bucks and was like, okay, $20 for an upgrade. Fine, I'll do it. So I started playing that as well. And then I found myself really just pivoting from the one to the other, which was interesting because I can see really clearly all of these ways that the series changed from persona 4 Golden to Persona 5 Royal. And really just, I mean, it's a huge difference

between those two games. I hadn't really fully internalized how different they are particularly mechanically different. But I'm still not sure which one that I like better. That I don't understand. I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm such a persona 5 head. But it feels like that game is so much better designed

and better crafted and everyone. way. Yes. I mean, and I think that's true. There's a sort of objective improvement across the board in persona 5. Pursona 5 is incredible. It had been so long since I'd played it. It's spectacular. You talking about it makes me want to play it all again for the third time. That's how good it is. So playing for like, playing Prisona 4 Gold and I was just like, this is such a nice game. I really like the vibe. I remember how much I like this music. The energy is really cool. And what that game has going for it that I think puts it in a, that it does a little differently than Percentify. It's a more relaxing experience in general because you're in the country, you're in this fictional town of Inaba,

which is just kind of a rural city and there's a murder mystery, but it's just got a more low-key energy. There's a lot of just it's quiet and it's raining and there's no music playing, which is something this game does so well. Normally there's all this amazing music playing, but then when it rains, you go to the world map and it's just the sound of rain. And it's got this vibe. There's a vibe when your character looks out the window and sees the rain and closes the window and goes over to the TV, these kind of repeated animations you see over and over in this game. And that vibe is really great. And then also, the characters are nice.

The way that they're friends feel, it feels like they would be friends with one another in school, like their high school kids who are friends in a way that in Persona 5, they're all these like kind of super hyper characters who are all a lot more intense. You know, like, An as a model, and Yuske is like this big artist, this genius artist, and everyone is kind of like really big and outsize. And that's kind of that game's whole deal. Well, it's city versus country. It's very much.

Right. And you're in Shibuya. You're in Tokyo. It's this much more. And you're online. The whole thing is like the internet and chat rooms and like internet discourse and all that stuff. So it's just a way more blown out experience.

So there's something about the vibe of persona four that I like. But now that I'm playing Royal, I am just, I'm so overwhelmed by the game. It's such a like decadent game. It just pulls you in and then you get going. And it's just this over, this like deluge of art and music and animation. and all this like cool stuff and just every moment of it is so just like pleasing. It's such a pleasurable game to play. I'm just sitting here kind of playing through it being like,

well, I'm probably going to play like this whole stupid thing over the next few months. Now you know how I felt two years ago, exactly how I felt two years ago. It really sucks you. It's like once you get to the end stuff, it's actually totally worth it because there's like some really good stuff at the end of the game that they've added. Yeah, I've been impressed. I've been impressed with the changes. Of course there's this new character who they're kind of fold.

into the story, but there's all these mechanical improvements, a lot of little things that make a big difference. You get the baton pass right at the beginning that totally changes combat. You have like your bullets reload after each fight so you can like, it just, there's all this little stuff that they've really like just moved the levers in various ways that introduce all these cool new ideas. And, you know, I'm not that far into the game. I'm doing the, I guess, the second major palace or? Second palace, yeah. And it's, I mean, it's just, it's cool. It's cool going back to it and playing it. And I've been playing it. I have been playing it on Steam Deck, which has been a better way to do it.

I'm using Chiaki to stream it from the PS5, which I talked about a few weeks ago. Works great. It looks perfect. It's like playing it on Vita, which I find at least a better way to play a game this long is to just chill on the couch and kind of play it, rather than having to sit at my desk or sit in front of a bigger screen. I think maybe one of the reasons I can never go back to, I don't think I'll ever replay Persema 4 or 3, and that's because of the randomized dungeons as opposed to persona 5.

It's like carefully crafted, brilliant dungeons. Every single one of them is great. Yeah, and it's kind of like momentos in Persona 5. It's like just more of a kind of mindless thing. Yeah, which is just you can do that too optionally. But like Persona 5, each dungeon and the rhythm of like having to plan out your escape route and then like come back to it another time and the music changes and you do your heist. And it's just so perfect.

That game is just spectacular. That stuff is amazing. Though I will say there is something to the simplicity of Persona 4 where it's just kind of go through a repetitive dungeon. Don't think about it too much. Get some more story. It's so much lower key. I mean, playing them back to back, it really is remarkable how Persona 5, it's like, blah!

It's so funny. Everything is happening. There's so much going on. Country versus City, man. It's really, it's wild. I will also say to Persona 4's credit, Persona 4 is a better mystery, overall mystery. And I was totally shocked by the mystery twist at the end of Percenta 4, whereas Percent 5 doesn't really have anything like that. Yeah, it's structured differently because it's a series of heist.

Anyways, I'll probably talk about it more. Maybe we'll talk about persona down the road, but it's been cool playing Royal. Jason, what's your one more thing? All right, my one more thing is a video game that I bet neither of you have heard of. It is called Eternal Threads. So this game is, it's sort of like, it's a walking simulator slash like very much like that play. Shit, I was just thinking about it and how COVID does fogg my brain and I can't think of the name. What's the name of that Shakespeare play that everyone is obsessed with that you put on your masks and hold on.

Macbeth? Oh, oh, Sleep No More. Sleep No More. That is Macbeth, I suppose. It is Shakespeare. It's sort of like Sleep No More. So the way that this game works, and it's an indie game made by a small group of developers called Cosmonaut Studios in the UK.

And so the way it works is it is set in this apartment complex. And you play as this investigator who is coming in and you've discovered that in this apartment complex, there was a fire and it killed six people, the six people who lived there. And you have to go back through time using your special like return of the Oberidin-esque device to kind of like look at the timeline of events, figure out what happened,

and figure out if you can prevent the murder or the deaths from happening. And so you follow this big old timeline that has like hundreds of scenes on it and you watch all these scenes unfold in like kind of Sleep No More style where you're like watching these, supernatural versions or like these kind of

lo-fi, like cloudy versions of the characters, interact with each other and talk to each other and have conversations and talk about whatever. They're all kids. They're all uni students, university students in the UK. And then you can, as you're going through these timelines, you can make choices for them at various points.

So like at one point there's a guy, the landlord of the apartment building is like drunk and it's the middle of the night. and his friend is telling him not to text his crazy X, and he is considering doing it, and you have to help him choose, like, which one is it going to be? And as you choose, like, it'll have ripple effects,

sort of like until dawn, as we were talking about earlier, where, like, it'll change, it'll open up different scenes or lock different scenes throughout your big timeline. And so I've only played about four hours of this so far, but I'm really interested in seeing what happens next. So far it's a little bit slow. Some of the scenes that I've been watching are a little bit, like, unnecessary. There's a lot of like character building and trying to like set up these characters,

but it is it is unfolded very slowly for me. And I don't know anything about the resolution or like how it's all like for all I know I could hate it by this time next week. If like, the story, the story just flop. Yeah, it could be a real 12 minutes situation that you're walking into. Exactly. Exactly. That's what I want to avoid. But I'm really enjoying the conceit so far. And it's a really cool type of like walking sim slash investigative game where you're just like watching a story unfold and making choices along the way. And so it also has hinted at some weird little mysteries. Like there's one scene. So to watch each scene, you actually have to go to where the scene takes place. And so you can actually collect things that help you unlock

different areas where you could find different scenes. So like you get a key to a room or you get a combination lot. And there's one scene that as I'm like progressing through this timeline, it's like this character disappeared somewhere and you don't know where he went or what the deal is. And you can't watch the scene because it's just like hidden room and you don't know how to get there. And so there's some interesting stuff being unfolded. There's like there's hints at darker stuff behind some of the characters, like darker paths or like darker secrets that people are hiding. It's really interesting.

I'm really hooked so far and I'm very curious to see how it all, how it all comes together. So again, it's called Eternal Threads. And yeah, I think this game, I'm not sure. I only found out about it because of an IGN preview. I don't know why it's gone so far under the radar. But yeah, nobody else seems to have noticed it or is talking about it. So allow Triple Click to be the show that turns you on to interesting new games. Yeah, Eternal Threads.

I'll check it out. Nice. Well, we did it. We did it again, folks. It wasn't too scary. We came out the other side. Jason survived. No, but that was why you just insert a jump scare, like an audio scream.

Oh, boy. We'll just jump out at everybody right at the very end. All right. Well, this was fun. I'll see the two of you next week. See, yeah. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton.

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

Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod. Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.