Triple Click - What's The Deal With: Assassin's Creed?

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

What's an Assassin's Creed? Who's an Assassin's Creed? Allow the Triple Click gang to explain. Kirk, Jason, and Maddy dive into Ubisoft's action-adventure-RPG franchise, talking about how the series has evolved over the past decade, their favorite games, and just what the heck is up with all those aliens.One More Thing:Kirk: Hollow KnightMaddy: Learning to parry in Dark SoulsJason: Loop HeroLinks:Kirk’s Hollow Knight arrangement: https://youtu.be/eIVtGlcpZS0Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin 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

Congratulations. Your genetic profile is the perfect match with a long, prestigious line of gamers. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we talk about Assassin's Creed, a series that blends sci-fi and historical fiction. These games are about inhabiting a character who's inhabiting someone else, a real gamers game. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Dreyer. And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And hello. Hello to both of you. Hello. I remember my name this. time. You got it. I did it. Good job. All three of us remembered our names. We did. That's impressive at our age. I think we should get some accolades. I think we should win a podcast award for being able to remember. Honestly, I am older than the two of you, and that is not that far off. I forget

literally everything. You have only more forgetfulness to look forward to over the next seven years. I'm so excited. Well, the three of us, we have conversations that we just repeat the same things because none of us have any short-term memory anymore. And so we all just say the same things I'm sure it's documented in the history of the show, all of us telling the same stories. People can write in to us like at maximumfund.org and tell us if they've noticed any greatest hits. But you know what else people could do? They could go. I've forgotten. So I'm going to need you to tell me, Maddie. I know. I know. Luckily we do this every single week. And also it's in our run sheet. So that's how I'm remembering this. People could support the show by becoming

maximum fun members by joining the community and supporting us with their heart earn cash at maximum fun.org slash join and if you were to do that you would get access to our monthly bonus episodes which are usually beans cast where we spill the beans about various video games and movies and shows but sometimes we just talk about ourselves just a little extra bit of triple click once a month it's pretty cool it is pretty cool so um kirk take us away all right so i have two things that i need to tell both of you the first one it's that nothing is true true. And the second thing I'm going to tell you is that everything is permitted. Did you know that nothing is true and everything is permitted? Wow. I've heard it before. Can't put my finger on

where. It's a kind of a maxim, a motto, if you will. You could even call it a creed, maybe even the Assassin's Creed, which is the game series that we're going to be talking about on this episode. We're going to be answering the question, what's the deal with Assassin's Creed? What's the deal with Assassin's Creed? Which is a big question to try to answer, considering what this series has become based on where it started. So, Assassin's Creed started in 2007 as a stealth action series, and it has metamorphosized over the past 13 years,

and I'm going to say 14 main game entries to become pretty much the Ur Game, like a game that is everything, a game that is an action, adventure RPG, puzzle-solving, platforming, just endless amount of content, open-world experience that sort of transcends genre. So there's a lot to talk about here. We're going to talk about, man, so much. I've played almost every single Assassin's Creed game. I know the two of you probably haven't played as many as I have. But I do want to start with a question, and that question is, what is your favorite Assassin's Creed game? So Maddie Myers, what is your favorite Assassin's Creed game? You already know the answer because I talked about it on our triple click picks episode way back when it's Assassin's Creed Origins, which is also the first Assassin's Creed that I really devoted time to and beat and played for a long time.

Because before that point, I wasn't that into stealth games. I played some of the other Assassin's Creed's, but I just, it wasn't my style of game. So I don't think I gave him a fair shake. but Origins, I taught myself how to enjoy stealth games and I also happened to really like the story of origins. And that was part of why that was the one that I tried to get into because I played it, I think, a year or two after it came out. I knew it was a good one.

So I was like, if I'm going to give an Assassin's Creed game a chance, it should be Origins, I should get all the DLC, etc. And I loved it. I love that game. And every other Assassin's Creed has paled in comparison, perhaps because of some type of first-timer, bias that I had with that one where it was like the one that I fell in love with and then all the other ones I'd just compare perhaps unfairly unfavorably to origins but I think that's kind of common with Assassin's Creed games well are you also a big Egypt fan yeah no I'm super into Egypt like as a middle schooler I was way into Cleopatra and all that stuff so I mean that's the biggest that's the other big part of it as well yeah the setting winds up kind of being the appealing thing about these games yes Jason what is your favorite Assassin's Creed game I don't know I saw this in your your run notes you're your run sheet notes and

I was trying to think of my answer because I don't I think I'm torn between two and that is the two after Maddies which are Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Odyssey for me is like a really really special game I love that game so much because of Cassandra

because of the setting because I grew up just like Maddie you were obsessed with Egypt I was obsessed with Greek mythology like that was my thing growing up and and still super into like Greek mythology I got a kick out of the fact that my name was Greek and named after like Jason the Argonauts like the the Greek myth. But but Assassin Creek Valhalla is also so good and like I think is a better game than

Odyssey in a lot of ways. Like it really nails that sense of mystery and like the core gameplay loop of like going around and finding the little dots and instead of feeling like you're that sounds more it sounds less fun than it actually is. It's all about finding those dots. I mean that's not what Assassin's Creed was always about which I'm sure Kirk is going to get into. That's true. That's true. But so with Odyssey, it's very much like you're picking sidequests on a checklist and like going through objectives.

With Valhalla, it's very much like Breath of the Wild style, just pick a direction and start exploring. And then every side quest you find is like kind of self-contained and all solvable within that little space or within a small radius. So you don't really have to do the whole like checklist thing. But the main character and. like setting of Odyssey, I like a lot better. So really, I think it's a tie for me. Like, I love both games equally. Origins is cool too, but for me, not as high on the list. So my answer, I guess,

I'm sort of torn as well. I really like Assassin's Creed Syndicate. And I'm a bit of a weird Assassin's Creed fan in that way. I always see people kind of saying that they don't like syndicate as much. It's like too modern. The story they don't like. I really like it. The story is okay. There's a real antagonist, which I like about it, even though he's not an amazing character. I love Evie Frye as a character, and her relationship with Jacob is cool, the DLC is really good, the setting of London is cool, and it has good stealth, which all these games do not have good stealth. But of the kind of pre-this most recent trilogy of the games, I do like that Syndicate has good stealth, it has a cool grappling hook. But I'm actually going to say that

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is my favorite Assassin's Creed game, which was the third Assassin's Creed and was kind of in the middle of the Etsio trilogy, which I'm about to run down the timeline of Assassin's Creed for probably, I'm guessing, a significant number of listeners who haven't played all of these games and maybe don't know the whole story. But Brotherhood was the one where they introduced the idea of the Brotherhood, and it was back when they were kind of introducing all these new ideas, each game kind of brought something new. And it was sort of surprising that Brotherhood was going to have the same protagonist as Assassin's Creed too. Etzio Adetore de Forenze, the wonderful Etsio, who started his own trilogy, the series had moved

from a different protagonist at the time. So it was like, oh, is this just DLC? Is this really a full game? And then it came out, and it was a full game. And it's set in Rome, and it's super good. And you build up this brotherhood of assassins. And then you can do this thing, which our former boss Stephen Totillo also loves about this game where you have all these recruits, these assassins recruits, and you can just be looking down on someone.

and then you just press a button and an assassin will just jump out and kill them. And you don't even have to do it yourself because you're such a boss. And that's like what the brotherhood is all about. So you can be fighting and then you call on your guys and they all jump out of the bushes and like start fighting the guys with you. And I always thought that was really cool. And it's just a very good game. That whole trilogy is good. All right.

So I'm just going to go quickly through the timeline. And this is kind of how I think of it is there's this, there are kind of three trilogies and three, they line up with three different eras in these games developed. that kind of reflect the three types of games that Assassin's Creed was. There are a couple of little tangents along the way, but it's kind of just three trilogies, the Etzio trilogy, the Kenway trilogy, and what I call kind of the ancient trilogy. I don't know if these are canon names, but that's how I think of them. That makes sense to me so far.

So Assassin's Creed begins in 2007. It is the story of an assassin named Altayere in the Holy Land in 1191 during the Crusades. It is also the story of a bartender named Desmond Miles, who, starts hanging out with Kristen Bell and then gets recruited into Abstergo, this weird company where they're going to do experiments on him using advanced virtual reality technology called the animus that allows him to go back into his ancestors' DNA memories and re-experience the crusades because he isn't a descendant of Al-Tayr, the other protagonist of Assassin's Creed. And that is the whole framework of every Assassin's Creed game since then, is that you're

always a modern-day person, you're always going into the animus and going into ancient times. Bing! Future Kirk here, as I edit the episode, I realized that in a total amateur hour oversight on my part, I neglected to mention the central conflict of the Assassin's Creed series, and because I'm a big nerd for this series, and I know that some people listening to this really maybe don't know that much about Assassin's Creed, I do want to mention it, and that is, there's a conflict between two groups, the Assassins and the Templars. The Assassins aren't just people who kill people. I know that's what the word assassin means, but the Assassins are this organization.

They're kind of the good guys, though later in the later games. Sometimes you play as a Templar, and the Templars are kind of complicated, too. But the Templars basically want order, and the assassins want freedom for everybody. And the distinction between the two gets kind of nebulous at points. I mean, and then eventually you have characters who are like assassins who are the descendants of Templars, and are we really so different? But that's where the Assassin's Creed, nothing is true, everything is permitted comes from. If you ask me to really explain to you what that creed means, I probably couldn't,

and I've played like a billion hours of Assassin's Creed games. so, you know, take that for what it's worth. Anyways, I didn't want to not mention the Assassins and Templars in my explainer for what Assassin's Creed is, because that would be pretty embarrassing. Okay, anyways, I was just wrapping up talking about the very first game from 2007. Take it away, past Kirk. Bing! That game's kind of on its own.

The ETSO trilogy comes after that, starts with Assassin's Creed 2, and then Brotherhood and then Revelations. Those three games all center around ETSO. Auditori de Forenze, an Italian badass, who is a descendant of Altayere. Desmond is still the guy in the future, so he's still like Etzio's descendant. And there's a whole parallel storyline going on there that keeps going to the Kenway trilogy, which begins with Assassin's Creed 3. So anyways, the Kenway trilogy is this family of Connor, Hatham, and Edward Kenway. They were all protagonists of different games.

Hatham and then Connor are the protagonists of Assassin's Creed 3. Edward is the pirate who is the star of Assassin's Creed 4, Black Flag. That was a major departure point for the series, because they were. introduced these ships that were kind of an Assassin's Creed 3, but AC4 is like Wind Waker style like pirate adventure. It's almost not an Assassin's Creed game. It's also the first time the protagonist is like super not into being an assassin. He's like, I'm a pirate. I just want to do pirate stuff and hang out with Blackbeard. And like that's what he does. And it's a really, it's a great game. It's just not as assassin-centric. So then from there you get like

Freedom Cry. That was a really cool. DL.C. Liberation is also an AC3. DL.C. kind of through this whole period. This is all set in the mid-1700s. Assassin's Creed Rogue is the one that I haven't finished, much to Stephen Totilla's chagrin. That's also kind of telling the story of Kenways, and you get a lot of nice closure from that whole trilogy. There's kind of a little tangent here,

where there's then these European games. Assassin's Creed Unity and Syndicate. Unity is during the French Revolution. Syndicate is even later in the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution in London. Those games are kind of on their own. Unity also a game. buggy that it launched a million memes and kind of reverse the course, change the course

of the whole series, forced them to skip a year. It was fixed later on, but nobody thinks about that anymore, right? Didn't it get notably fixed? Yeah, it's still not a great game. Like, it's not as buggy, but it's, I don't like it. It's one of my least favorite Assassin's Creed games. It's just not that fun. It was designed for multiplayer.

It's like kind of weird. So then there's the ancient trilogy, which is Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, 2017, 18, and 20. Those games are very different. when it becomes much more like the Witcher, especially when by the time they get to Odyssey, you've got multiple protagonists, you've got dialogue trees and Odyssey and Valhalla, a branching narrative and all kinds of stuff

that was never in the series before. Levels, equipment, yeah, all the RPG mechanics. Dating some stuff. Yeah, the romance. Okay. That was a lot. That was a lot of games. I've played all of those games. All of them? Well, except for Rogue,

which you haven't beaten, but you've played every single other one of these. Yes, and I have completed all of them. I hope the listener is applauding these efforts. This is a huge... I'm a real fan of this series. It's... I really...

I mean, I've always liked stealth games, even though I never liked the stealth in Assassin's Creed, and I still kind of don't. Like, they're just... They're not good stealth games in the way that, like, a Splinter Cell, or to use the Ubisoft series is. They just never have been. It's always been kind of weird,

because the whole crowd thing. That was always the promise, and that's kind of weird. Right. So when... So you keep calling it a stealth game, but I don't even think of those earlier, or Assassin's Creed games as cell games. I think them it was like escort and like sneak around and follow people games.

That was always a shortcoming of the early games is there were these tailing missions where you'd have to follow somebody and then you couldn't get outside of the like cone of the conversation or you'd fail the mission. They did away with those. There's been a long, if you're into game design and just like how it works and the ways that like a big game like this can change over the years, Assassin's Creed has been a really interesting series to be into because they're always tweaking stuff.

Each game will introduce some new idea that's controversial while keeping around old ones that people didn't like, but then they'll finally start getting rid of them. There was a period in there, and I don't remember where it is, where they finally got rid of those tailing missions, which are just the worst, where you're on the roof trying to follow a guy, and he always turns around

at various points, and it's just that thing that then got adopted in a million other games. I remember doing that in, like, infamous. So you can both watch as Assassin's Creed games, establish trends that other studios follow, sometimes in a bad way, but then also as they change them over time and introduce new ideas and tweak them, where if you're a big Assassin's Creed nerd, you can kind of really get into those specific design things and see how they change. Yeah, Black Flag I remember specifically, because that came out, that was the first cross-gen

game for PS4 and then like PS3, both eras, and obviously Xbox 1 and Xbox 360. and I remember playing that on my PS4 at launch and I remember getting so frustrated by those escort missions that I was like, nope, like I'm not even going to stick with this game. I'd rather just like put the PS4 aside than play more of this. And I think that's why, because I played that and Assassin's Creed 2, which I actually enjoyed a lot more. Yeah, that's great.

And those games, I mean, they didn't like stick with me or make me want to play them every year the way that the current incarnations of the series do, the way that the RPG versions of Assassin's Creed do. And yeah, I'm not sure exactly why that is. There's just something about the new formula that really clicks for me and something about the design of it all and the structure of it all and the RPG of it all that has just really worked for me

with the latest three games. Yeah, same. I also played AC2 and then basically didn't beat it, didn't play almost any of the other ones listed in between and then played origins. and that was the game that I felt like I could just lose hours of my life to because of that loop of like seeing something on the map, you run towards it by the time you've completed that thing,

there's a bunch of other stuff on the map and you're already here and there's all this design showing you just the mystical panoply of little artifacts and objects you can click on or people you can talk to. I mean, they really have that down in origins and that is the story of our lives in Odyssey and Valhalla as well as just really refining that, infinite addiction world.

I don't know how else to describe the loop of those games, but you're just supposed to live in them. And that's terrifying. Even when they're super buggy and janky, they're still like incredibly fun to like do some of those basic things. But AC2 is nothing like that. So it's like I have none of the dots on the graph in between those two states. So it's like funny to me to look at something like my memories of AC2

and then origins and think about how they're technically in the same franchise. So I would say that AC2 is a little bit like that. Assassin's Creed one is a friggin' weird game. That game is worth going back and playing because that one is very strange. And I remember it was marketed as like the new generation of gaming. And this was on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. But the idea was, look, we can do these crowds and these cities to the point where hiding in a crowd and being in this like flowing urban environment can be a real gameplay thing, which it never really worked that way in the game. But the game doesn't have, it has these like weird, repeatable, like things in the world, but it's not like Assassin's Creed 2 onward, which Assassin's Creed 2 was really a lot like Grand Theft Auto. And that was kind of the shift that happened from Assassin's Creed 1 to 2 was it went from this weird thing where there were just, here's an event like some guards hiding, you know, guarding an object that you can try to grab if you want to get leveled up. But mostly you just kind of went through and there were assassin targets and you just tried to assassinate them. And then in Assassin's Creed 2, you

it was like, oh, you can like chase down these feathers, and these are just like repeating events that are strewn about the city. And your map had all these little icons on it that you would select and go do. And they would lead to these little side stories that ETSEO would get to know members of his family and stuff. And that was kind of introduced to that game, all this extra scaffolding to the experience that they then built on and built on until when Origins and Then Odyssey came out, they're like, and now there's like stories and branching dialogue and all this other stuff that's closer to an RPG, like The Witcher. So that's been kind of a long time coming, especially, it's a far distance for the series to go when you go back to the very beginning. It's kind of worth, if you can find a really cheap copy of the first Assassin's Creed, just playing like an hour or two of it, because the series has become this totally different thing now all this time later. There's also the settings of these games, I think, are a really important part of what make them appealing.

And I think maybe a part of what make these most recent ones really appealing to people, in particular, I think, origins and Odyssey because ancient Egypt and ancient Greece are so cool and so distinct, where a lot of the Kenway trilogy, like you're kind of just on a ship, on the ocean, like you're in the Caribbean or you're in America, and like Revolutionary War, America, okay, like it wasn't that cool to me anyways because I've kind of seen it a lot. And also even the ETSO trilogy, there are times, like when you're in Rome, that's really cool, but there are also times, I believe Revelations is in Constantinople, and it's like, okay, this is a cool city, but I'm not very familiar with it. It wasn't quite as exciting in some ways.

Like some settings aren't as exciting as others, I guess. And I think the settings wind up being an important part of the series. And I think they've kind of figured that out at this point. Yeah, I think it was less the cities with those games and more the eras. Because it was all, like, what was it, 12th century, 11th century, like around there, which we've seen in a bazillion pieces of media before, as opposed to ancient Egypt and ancient Greece, which is not only are those cool settings inherently, but also, like, it's like entering a foreign world.

and like obviously it's nothing like what actual ancient Greece was, but it's cool to pretend that you are like exploring and getting to this grand tour of like human history. That to me is incredibly cool. And like one of those things that video games can do that other forms of media can. And that's the reason they've added actual tourist modes to those games and are like using them for historical purposes. Like you can play those games without any combat in tourist mode, which is super cool also. Yeah. And I also think there's something incredibly funny about the idea of Leonardo da Vinci,

a character in Assassin's Creed. And I, Kirk, you know better than I do if there are more characters between Leonardo da Vinci and then the AC Origins, of course, has Cleopatra, and then ADC Odyssey as Socrates, like, to have these, like, extremely well-known historical figures be someone that you can meet who has funny dialogue. All the games have that. Like, I'm sure they must, I'm just not familiar. But it's that being a part-

Jack the Ripper. Oh, God. Okay. Perennial video game character, Jack the Ripper. Yeah. There's also all the Revolutionary War figures who are in Assassin Street 3, which is also very interesting because Assassin's Creed 3 is about a half Native American protagonist. And a lot of the narrative then is him kind of ultimately being screwed over by these like Englishmen that he's sort of allied with. And semi, you know, his lineage sort of ties him to in this way.

So yeah, there is always some of that. You're hanging out with George Washington, you know, or Ben Franklin, all these different characters. Which is like inherently memeable and shareable in the current. day and probably was even back then, like the idea of playing a game that has all these supernatural elements, but then also has, in theory, educational historical stuff in there is part of the appeal of Assassin's Creed. Some of the, like, less broad stuff, like the more obscure references wind up being cooler to me, the more I play these games only because I'm not a huge history buff, but when I do then learn something, I'll be like, oh, it's like

that character from Assassin's Creed. And I think that's kind of cool. I'm playing, as I got back to playing Valhalla. I'm sort of in the right mind space for it now for whatever reason and I'm just doing all of the little side events that you can just go around and do so I'll just play for half an hour and go do a couple of those. And what's cool about that game is that because it's set in

Dark Ages England there's actually not a lot of, you know, there isn't really a Leonardo da Vinci character. I mean, you know, Ragnar, Lothbrook. There's King Alfred. King Alfred is the big one, yeah. Yeah, sure, but it's like not really the same. He is well known to the average person. No. Well, so it's called the Dark Ages because we have such little historical record of that time.

Sure. But what's cool is it winds up having all these literary references. I've been fighting the daughters of King Lear, basically, who are these like bosses that are around this one part of the world. And there's a lot of stuff like that. Also, the Black Shuck. The Baywolf, CLC. Yeah. Yeah, there's a, um, Black Shuck is a song by that rock band, The Darkness. And I don't, I didn't know what the Black Shuck was, but I think it's like a mythological dog. And in the song, he's like, that dog don't give a fuck.

Like, that's like what the song is. black shuck and then he I was fighting the dog I was like oh fuck I'm fighting the black shuck and I was like singing the song and like fighting this dog and it was so I kind of like those more subtle those more subtle references and definitely the most metal of all the Assassin's Creek oh yeah I mean I remember even saying that was one of the things I enjoyed about Valhalla was stopping the game to Google different things in the game and then go on a little Wikipedia deep dive or history website deep dive about various aspects because I'm like oh I don't really actually know that much about Vikings and their invasions. What really happened here? And

I don't know how historically accurate every Assassin's Creed game is, but it is cool to look up something in Valhalla and be like, oh, this is also based on real life. And so is this other thing and so forth. So on the flip side of the Assassin's Creed narrative coin from all the cool historical stuff is the modern day stuff and the kind of meta storyline, there's, I would say that there's a modern day storyline and there's also a meta storyline. I almost think of them as separate storylines. They're related, so I guess you can just call

them the modern day stuff. Which part are you putting the aliens into? So, yeah, the Isu, the precursor race, they're kind of the meta storyline because they factor into the whole thing, which the modern day stuff does too. But there's just a feeling increasingly with these games, as you're

playing, that there are now mythological figures turning up in monsters and beasts from our actual mythology that are really just like manifestations of ESU technology. And so that feels more directly related to the past stuff than it just does to the modern day stuff. That's why I kind of think of it almost as a third axis. It's even more pronounced in Valhalla.

Yeah, well, I mean, it was pretty friggin pronounced in Odyssey. But yeah, so what's going on here is, like I said, you're in the modern day, you're playing as basically you started as Desmond Miles for like four or five games. then for a long run of times, they really, Ubisoft just kind of backed off the modern day stuff. And they were like, okay, we know some people like this, but most people don't care. So it became very, very backgrounded. Where in like Assassin's Creed 4, you're a game tester at Obstirgo Labs, which is basically Ubisoft Montreal. And you're, you know, you're doing stuff.

And Sean and Rebecca are turning up these characters that you met during the earlier games. But it's really in the background. And then they've kind of brought it back to the foreground because there's a named character. Laila Hassan, who is the modern-day protagonist of the three most recent games. So I guess what are the two of you think, Maddie, what do you think of the modern-day stuff? I don't understand it at all. And I try to pay attention and I'll read all of Lela's emails or whatever and I'll delude myself into thinking I understand what's going on, but I have never at any point understood any of it.

And I don't, I have no further comments. I really can't even expound on it. It is all, it is Greek to me sometimes literally. in the case of Casey, honestly. Jason, what about you? Yeah, so I don't want to spoil Valhalla for you guys. Yeah, please don't. I know there's a lot of big stuff that happens.

Yeah, well, so I wasn't, I didn't care about it at all until Valhalla. And then the end of Valhalla, the end of Valhalla, which takes a very long time to reach. Like, many, many hours, this game is incredibly padded. As we talked about a little bit last year, at the end of Valhalla, I was actually hooked by the modern stuff and, like, very curious to see what will happen. next in whatever DLC they do or whatever future Assassin's Creek games they do, because they leave some very tantalizing modern day plot threads at the end of this one. And I say this is someone who's not like super familiar with any of the previous modern day stuff. But yeah, no, but now I'm kind of more invested in that in a way that I didn't think

I would be until I'd be. Do you feel like I would understand it, Jason, if I got it? Like it's simple enough that I would get it? Yeah, well, so the modern stuff I'm talking about, is like directly the result of stuff that happens in Valhalla. So a lot of it's like... There's also stuff that ties in the previous games that is like you might have to look up. And I definitely did. I definitely had to look up some things for them to make sense. But like the overall story arc of Valhalla, which like is involves a modern stuff,

is like really interesting to me. And that's all self-contained. Yeah. I think like when Layla meets William Miles, Desmond Miles's father, you have to look up who that is. if you haven't played the games and know why he's an important character, that kind of thing. I think they're getting better at the modern day stuff. Like, Layla is a cool character, and I think you do need to have a speaking character connecting you to that stuff.

And Desmond did that as well, though it was like, he was a very generic character. He was voiced by Nolan North at the time, like, peak Nolan North, like, ubiquity. And he was just kind of this boring, whatever dude. And so he was never that interesting. They made him much more interesting. He was no Desmond to Hume from Lost. Sure. But I remember thinking, oh, I think it was in whatever the last one was or one of the last

ones, Revelations. Oh, Nolan North is a really good actor. And of course, now I know he's a great actor. But at the time, I only thought of him as, like, the protagonist guy. And they gave him more to do as they developed the character. They do some cool stuff, I think, in the more recent games that makes me more invested, though I've actually never really been narratively invested in that stuff. Because, like you've said, Maddie, it's so hard to follow.

It really is ultra-confusing, like, Metal Gear level, the Patriots and the whatever, like, the Lala, Lle-Loe. Like, it has that same feeling when someone's monologuing at you in a Metal Gear game, and I'm like, fuck, I don't have, like, my huge, like, data wall open to... Yeah, it's funny you say that because the person I think of who likes the modern storyline the most is our former colleague Heather Alexander, who's also, like, a huge Metal Gear stand. And she is the person who was always telling to me and still does long Twitter threads. about like, oh, I love the modern day lore from Assassin's Creed. So it's like if you are a person who can absorb all those proper nouns and remember all this sci-fi lore and keep it in your brain as Heather can, you'll love this. But for me, I'm just like, I just want to get back to the part where I swing an axe at a guy.

Like, I don't know what's happening here. Two axes in this one. Yeah, sometimes two axes. I think they're doing a good job more recently also of connecting everything. Like there's a really amazing moment at the end. end of Odyssey where they kind of connect the storylines in a way that I actually found like moving. I was like, whoa, I'm really into this. It was a story. It was like a just a Valhalla does too. Yeah, you'll, you'll enjoy Valhalla's. Nice. And I think that that's cool. Like, I think

they need to be not necessarily do more future storyline or modern day storytelling where like you're pulled out of the animus all the time. I think everyone kind of hates that when you have to go do something in the real world. But smarter storytelling where they're giving you a reason to give a shit about both things and like connecting the protagonists that you're playing in both timelines because there is this whole idea of like animus bleed and the character like bleeds off on you and if you're Leila and you're playing as Avor

you're getting to know Avor and like becoming kind of one with Avor in this way that connects you to this character that can be really cool like you can explore a lot of really cool character stuff messing with like you know personality transference and stuff so I like that they're starting to do more of that even though they're also, I guess they're kind of beholden to all of the lore that they've come up with until this point. So there's always just some references to a bunch of ESU shit where I'm like, I don't know, man.

It's fine that there's just a minotaur in the game. You don't have to give me too much of an explanation. I feel like ancient aliens has become so much less interesting to me, and part because I've read so many criticisms of it as being like sort of crypto-racist. like why do we have to assume that ancient aliens built the pyramids? Like humans did that and like why wouldn't why wouldn't we just assume that? And it's, I mean, I don't know. There's plenty of great historical academic writing about that and how ancient aliens is like not a great line of thinking.

But that is exactly what Assassin's Creed is already beholden to. So since they're stuck with that lore, they have to keep it. Kirk, do you feel like over time they've gotten more interested in that part of the lore or less so? I think that that part of the lore has made its way more directly into the game in really playful ways, that I think they're actually taking it a little less seriously, but that allows them to have more fun. Like in the original Assassin's Creed, the idea is you're all going after this Apple of Eden, which is actually an ESU artifact that's this super powerful sphere basically that lets you rewrite reality. It's an infinity stone.

It's whatever. It's basically an infinity stone. And then when you get it, stuff gets really weird. toward the end of the game and all the animus is melting and whatever. But it's all kind of po-faced and very serious and like the fate of the world and I shall control this, whatever. And like, that's fine. It starts getting more fun over the series. There's a really cool point at the end of one of the Etseo games where he finds an Isu temple.

I think it's, I can't remember which one it is. It might be Brotherhood. And he finds this temple and there's like an Isu woman appears as this like hologram. And she's talking and he's like, you know, she's talking to him, and he's like, who are you? What the hell is going on? And then suddenly she looks over his shoulder at you, like out at the screen, and she's like, I'm not talking to you.

I'm talking to you. And it's like, she's talking to you, the player. And you're like, okay, this is cool. Like, that kind of stuff is fun. Now they're kind of just like, there's a Medusa in the game. And it's really just, you know, an Esu, like, whatever, artifact or something in the animus. And I think that. Kirk, you have to finish Valhalla.

That's more. No, I know. I know there's other cool stuff in Valhalla. Believe me. I mean, I've already been playing Valhalla and you become Odin. Like, there's plenty of cool mythological stuff in that game. I enjoy that they're allowing for a broader exploration of the mythology in addition to the real world culture, using this sort of ESU thing as a way in rather than just making it like a kind of a magical backdrop

to then throw in as the end game object or the infinity stone or something. Yeah, and it's probably easier to do that with religions and mythologies that we don't, that aren't present. day that people aren't currently thinking about. Like, I feel like that's the other problem that Assassin's Creed would run into. If, for example, they suddenly needed to depict biblical times, like, it just seems like that would be a road they cannot go down. This has been my thing about God of War, where I want God, I want Kratos to go, like, fight the, like, Judeo-Christian pantheon.

Cretus versus Jesus. Maddie, you didn't finish AC2, but AC2 ends the Pope, like you punching the Pope. Yeah, there's plenty of that stuff. I mean, they don't get that much into Christianity as a mythology. They don't say whether or not Jesus was an issue. I just feel like they need to confirm or deny that. They might actually somewhere that we're going to get an email being like, actually, in an email in the game.

I hope so. It's in an Assassin's Creed wiki somewhere, I'm sure. A few months ago, someone asked us, like, what are our dream Assassin's Creed games? And I don't know if you guys remember. Mine was the biblical times. I really want that game. I think we probably had this. exact conversation at the time as well. People can also write in and say if this is the greatest

hits of triple click is us talking about how Jesus should be an assassin's. Why isn't he in there? He'll just be a quest giver. He'll be like a carpenter. He'll be like making you a carpenter. He'll be like making you weapons. It'll be really unexpected and he'll be like only use this on the shopkeepers in the temple. Okay? That's the only people you're allowed to use weapons on. It'll be one use. Violence is only justified at this one time. Yeah. Only an anti-capitalist circumstances. Oh, man. So that should be a T-shirt. We should print that on a T-shirt. Jesus should be in Assassin's Creed. AC-G. Jesus, man. Put Jesus in Assassin's Creed, you cowards. So I'm curious what the two of you think the future might hold for Assassin's Creed. We're kind of, well, I wonder. It feels like these things tend to co-in trilogies, and I don't know how this Valhalla ends. I will know fairly soon. But they're going to to carry on that storyline, I'm sure, in some ways, but I kind of wonder. It seems like

these games are very successful for them, these most recent ones. People do seem to really like them. They fit in a nice little place. They're kind of these ambient games that you can play all year because they're always expanding them with the L.C. So yeah, I don't know, Jason, do you think Assassin's Creed just keeps being what it is right now, or is it going to go undergo another dramatic change? How do I answer this? I can't really answer this. question because I kind of know what Assassin's Creed is doing in

at least in the next one but I guess my what I can let me answer what I want rather than spilling the beans at least for now on future Assassin's Queen's I mean you could spill the beans by all means you could tell our listeners what's coming for Assassin's Creed maybe down the maybe down the road I'm certainly curious but what I

want to see like an evolution about like I know there are a lot of there's like this big split and like factions between hardcore Assassin's Creed, old school fans and hardcore Assassin's and newer fans. That's always been true. Yeah, count me very much among the people who are like, I love the newer iterations. I will play every single RPG Assassin's Creed. I want more of this stuff.

And especially after Valhalla and seeing what they did with the mystery system and the side quests, like I mentioned before, is just so smart. And I really want them to keep, like, iterating on that stuff. I also really want them to not even bother, like, trying to release every single year. they should take two, three years between each of them because these games, I mean, clearly Valhalla was affected by COVID and their bug testing capabilities were affected by COVID, and it's like a miracle that they managed to ship the game. But like Valhalla was super buggy, like, unacceptably buggy, I would say for a game that you have to pay full price for. And I think that like if there's a way,

they can give these games more time to avoid that in the future, that would be ideal. I don't expect any game with like this level of complexity to be completely bug-free. But like Valhalla was really bad. I had some game crashing bugs on that one. I couldn't finish the Odin's stuff because I got locked out of a quest. Right, that's really interesting. I remember you telling me that. Yeah, I feel like playing it when I'm playing it now,

like a few months after it came out is a good time, especially because it'll probably be getting more and more expansions. Like I loaded it up and there's new stuff in my skill tree. There's like a new quest line that I can do like river raids. And I was like, oh, cool. I have all this new stuff I can go do. Yeah, I don't think it'll be a shock to say that like, yeah, they very much have like dlc plan for this game and like there's definitely like going to be a lot of new stuff which i'm excited for i'm totally ready to revisit yeah i always think that and then i start playing

it like an odyssey and then i'm like oh this is too much i already played it yeah too much yeah i feel that too mattie what do you what do you expect to see or hope to see in the assassin's greed in the future i well i'll say what i hope to see first i hope that the games will get smaller again i think ac origins is a great length and i think that it's a big game too it's very big it's actually quite big, but I think like, you know, 30 to 40, 50 hours, pretty good for a huge open world game. You still get some cool side quest. You still feel like you're wandering off the path, but you're getting these bespoke little storylines that you can follow and this one character who grows and changes in the story. Origins has all that stuff. Odyssey is much bigger in terms of

every aspect of its scope. And then so is Valhalla even bigger. And Jason, you've described it as padded. I haven't beaten it. I'm sure if I ever do, I will agree with you. And I just, I know, there are people out there who don't agree with us on this, but I just, I don't like it when a game is padded. I don't like feeling as though my time is being wasted. And what I liked so much about origins was anytime I did do a side quest, it really felt like it mattered. And like I was being rewarded for seeking out that side quest and playing it. And like I was actually getting something out of it that wasn't just a piece of loot. That game is also too long. Yeah. Like, it's, you know what I mean, though? Like, I want to feel like it's as long as I choose to make it. And I'm, the game is

rewarding my time and investment. And so, yeah, I don't think the games are going to get smaller. I think they will probably continue to be the big galloping games that they are. And if anything, they will probably focus even less on having a guided linear story and more on the Grand Theft Auto of it all where you're just exploring a world and assassinating around. But that's too bad. I hope that isn't what happens.

I hope I'm wrong about my prediction there. Yeah, I think they're kind of still finding a balance. between, like with the quality of the kind of content that you're getting, I'm finding as I'm playing Valhalla this time, I'm really just walking around with no fast travel and just doing all of the little mysteries in the world. And a lot of them are really cool. And those are the kinds of content that I'm actually, I would be fine playing dozens of hours of because sometimes it's just like a big boss fight. And, you know, and it's just kind of a fight. That's fun. That's fine. But then sometimes they're just weird. I had to like, I burn this guy's house down because he told me to. Or there's the little kid whose father like stinks of shit. And so their whole house. smells. And they're just funny and they happen really fast. And I think that that is a great addition. And I'm always excited to see what they come up with next as like a little addition like that. Even if by the 60th time you're like rating a base in the game, you're like, oh my God, okay, I just want to know what happens at the end of this base rate. I've done this so many times. And that stuff starts to feel kind of repetitive. So yeah, I think I do, it does seem like

this is kind of what the series is now, though it's changed so many times in the past that that it could change again. I hope they make another movie. Get Fast Bend it back. I didn't even see it first. I take that back. We should watch it. I still think we should watch it.

That would be fun. Maybe for a beans cast one day. All right, well, I'm going to definitely play more of Al-Hala. I'm going to get to the end of that. I'm going to see all these exciting things that people keep telling me here in that game.

But yeah, so let's take a break, and then we'll be back with one more thing. Hey, I'm Janet Farney, host of the JV Club podcast. Oh, high school. Was it a time of adventure, romance, and discovery? Class of 95, we...

Or a time of angst, disappointment, and confusion. We're all tied together by four years of trauma at this place, but enjoy adulthood, I guess. The truth is, it was both. So join me on the JV Club podcast where I invite some great friends like Kristen Bell, Angela Kinsey, Oscar Nunez, Neil Patrick Harris, and Kegu and Michael Key, to talk about high school, The good, the bad, and everything in between. My teenage mood swings are getting harder to manage. The JV Club.

Find it on Maximum Fun. Well, hello, I'm Renee Colvert. Hi, I'm Alexis Preston, and we are the host of Can I Put Your Dog? And we got breaking news, we got an expisay, all the beans have been spilled via an Apple podcast review that said, this show isn't well-researched. Well, yeah, no, duh. Of course, it's not.

Not since the day we started as it been well-researched, Guessing and anthropomorphizing dogs is what we do. The Can I Pet Your Dog promise is that we will never do more than 10 seconds of research before telling you excitedly about any dog we see. I'm going to come at you with top 10 enthusiasm, minimal facts. We're here for a good time, not an educated time. So if you love dogs and you don't love research, well, you know what, come on in to Can I Pet Your Dog podcast every Tuesday on Maximum Fun Network. And we're back for one more thing. I'm going to go first.

and I'm going to talk about a little game, the two of you may have heard of, called Hollow Night. Cool. It's a very good game. Very on brand. It has very good music as well. So part of the reason I'm talking about this is for some blatant self-promotion. I just finished a big multi-instrumental arrangement that I did of one of my favorite pieces from Hollow Night that I spent quite a while on it. It was a couple weeks worth of work, and I posted a video of it on YouTube.

And it's probably playing right now behind me. I played a bunch of different instruments. Played the wine glasses. It's got an epic sax solo. 18 different instruments, I think I played. It's amazing. It's great. It's fantastic. Thanks. It was very fun to make. People should give it a view on their internet device. Give me a view. Give it a like and a share.

A YouTube click. Gotta get those YouTube views. Please, please. Yeah, those things are fun to make. That game's music really lends itself to reinterpretation. It's composed by a game named Christopher Larkin, who is incredible. He also did all the sound effects for the game by himself. I remember this game was made by basically two guys with the third guy helping on programming. And then this one dude did all the music and the sound effects.

So a lot of times the way they talk, the bugs all say these little words, there's this one horrible creature that's like whenever it gets mad. And it's just him. It's just this piano playing composer guy who made these sounds, which I love. Oh, where's Silk Song? I know. So if people are feeling the hangaring for Silk Song, I started playing this game again because I kind of wanted to capture some footage to use in the video I was making

and also just to kind of hear how the Green Path music sounds in the Green Path zone. And I might wind up replaying all of Hollow Night because I've played a lot actually. Like I just, I've been playing on Switch. It's so good on Switch. It's just, you can just pick it up and play for a while. And I've gotten so good at it because I've played a trillion hours of it and like, you know, 100% of the game or whatever. It's really great.

The soundtrack layers in a way that it was just cool to revisit, where if you listen to it on the soundtrack, it starts and then there's this one figure that plays, and then it just kind of layers on top of itself until it reaches a kind of a climax and then it goes down. But in the game, it's very different. It's like he's got all these stems is what they're called, which is like individual music tracks that all play simultaneously,

and then he layers them at a differing density, depending on how close to the heart of the area you are. And then sometimes when you get into a fight, like you'll walk into a room and the doors will slam shut and you'll have to fight a sub-boss. It'll kick up to the most intense version, and the drums will come in. But then when you get really near the...

outskirts of the area. It's like just one little stem, like just the piano part kind of echoing. So the way that the music is implemented in the game is really cool, too. Anyway, I could talk about Hollow Night for a million years. I think it's so good. It's so fun replaying this game because I've developed so much muscle

memory and skill, and I remember the map and where things are. So it's just like a delight. If you want a real fun time, try playing with Permadeth on see how far you can. Fuck that, no. I'm not playing. Whatever that is. Steal Soul mode. No, no, no. I already died. I died a few times. I didn't die for a long time and then Hornet killed me. I was like, ah, like I was about

to meet her and then she got me and I was like, what kind of a scrubbed. She's like, ah, you wanted silk song while here you go. Exactly. She's like, can't she just not wait to play as me and kill other people? And I'm like, I can't. It's true Hornet. I can't wait. All right, Maddie, what is your one more thing? Well, I'm playing Dark Souls again. It's going great. I could have played Final Fantasy Six this week. I didn't. I just played Dark Souls. I am up to the Capra demon, which I think you described as hard, Jason. I think that I described it as hard. No, I described the caper demon as super easy. I beat him on like my second try or something like that. The caper demon, you just have to get past him immediately and then he's easy. You have to kill the

dogs. I haven't done very many attempts against him yet, so I have no take on him yet. I've only just gotten to him. But before that, I had to beat this guy Havel, who's at the bottom of this tower. And then once you beat him, you unlock a whole bunch of other shortcuts that at least I hadn't unlocked yet. And then eventually, if you're me, you find the capra demon and you're like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to do to advance in this. I had a very similar experience. Dark Souls is an open world game and no one will tell you that, but it is. You can kind of play it in any order and just throw yourself against various obstacles. And eventually you beat one and you're like, oh, it turns out this helped me. And then you find another part of the world.

So in order to defeat Havel, I taught myself how to parry. I've been very lazy about learning how to parry well. Every character that you fight against has a different time that you're supposed to parry in. You just have to kind of pay attention to when they swing their weapon and memorize the timing. Havel is different as well. The way that I learned to parry, there's no real tip, I guess. I looked at some tutorial YouTube videos on how to parry because I was like, I don't understand when I need to press the button and I'm clearly getting it wrong. So I'm just going to watch some YouTube videos of other people doing this so that I know. that helped a lot.

We've talked a little bit about the fandom for Dark Souls, and I just want to say, the YouTube comments on Dark So's tutorial videos are horrible. They're so bad. They all that. They are all people telling you, if you don't already know how to parry in Dark Souls, you're terrible at the game.

What are you even doing? If you haven't already learned how to parry before you get to Havel, who even are you? And if you don't learn how to parry, you will never beat the game. Like it's just the most extreme. Like it is what people describe as boxing them out of Dark Souls. And it's so stupid.

And I was reading these comments and I was just like, this is so demoralizing. Like I don't know how to do this. And I did get myself in a weird headspace of being like, can I not learn how to do this? And of course I did eventually. And then by the time I actually beat Havel, I will brag and say that I attained no damage against him in the fight where I beat him. He did not hit me a single time. every single hit against him that I had was the result of a parry. I did seven parries.

Perfect parries in a row against him in my final time because by that point, I got how to parry. And once I got it, the next time that I went back to him, I could just perfectly beat him. And then I was like, well, that was actually quite easy. It just took me three hours to learn how to do that. And that's how everything in Dark Souls is. And it's part of why I feel like these YouTube comments are so stupid because it's just, I don't know. I just feel really weird and sad about the way that people talk about Dark Souls because it's like, also, I think I could have beaten him if I hadn't learned to parry. It would have been fine.

I did, I beat him without parrying, so whatever. Like, I never parry in Dark Souls. That's fine. I don't know. Why, why do people talk about this? Yeah, you can, I think you can beat all of the games without parrying. Like, you don't have to. Yeah, I just roll, man. Right. You can roll. You can just block regular style if you want, or you can just walk around people. You can just strafe around people and backstab them. You can kick them to interrupt their enemy. These are all my favorite, favorite moves to do. Those are all the things you can do. I mean, with Havel, it's kind of fun to parry because he has a specific animation that he does when you parry him where he, like, falls to his knees very dramatically and then you get to hit him and it looks really cool.

So I recommend it for that reason. But like, you also don't need to learn how to parry. And I don't know. I'm just hoping I'm encouraging more people to believe that Dark Souls isn't actually that intimidating and that if you set your mind to it, you can memorize an attack animation and learn that it's not very difficult to do. Nice. That's a good sentiment. So I, after beating Demon Souls, went back to Dark Souls because I was like, oh, man, I have such a hangaring for Souls games. The problem I'm having now is that my game is way far in, but I don't remember when I played because it was like two years ago. And so I have, I mean, playing with the Scyth, which I know I did some crazy run to go get.

And it's a really good deck scaling weapon. And I've been playing a decks build, which I don't normally do. So it's like not, I got so good with the Claymore in Demon Souls. And I'm like, I miss the Claymore. I just want to play a strength build with a big. big sword, but I kind of can't because I committed to this decks build. And also, I was just lost down in the depths in what you might call it, the like cursed crappy village. And so I was like, I'm going to go back and try to get back to Firelink Shrine. I don't remember how to get there,

but I'm just going to find it somehow. Yeah. It was so lost. I was going through the depths trying to reverse engineer how I got there. And then I did the thing where I fell in the hole and all the frogs were there, the frogs that freaking curse you. Jason, weren't you talking about this? And I got cursed. And then I like died. And I have half my health. And I have to go fine. And I was like, oh, I just want to start a new game. Just start over, man. I might just start over.

Well, that's the thing. So these games are great and all, but like there's no way you can take any sort of extended break and then jump back in. You have to serve from scratch every single time. I might just start from the beginning. Yeah. It was definitely a learning experience. I need to just beat it as well.

I mean, it's kind of nice that the other game I'm playing is Final Fantasy 6, which has nothing to do with Dark Souls. Like, it's not as though I'm losing my skill at Dark Souls by playing FF6. They're completely different games. So, like, if these are the only two games I'm playing, I'm fine. But I do feel like this isn't a great time for me to start playing Hollow Night again. Like, it's not, like, that would just confuse the heck out of me. Those two games are pretty, they occupy a pretty similar headspace.

Even though it is never really a bad time to start Halloween again. It's not, except if you're in the middle of trying to beat Dark Souls for the first time. I'm just kidding because I can't resist because I love that game. Jason, what is your one more thing? Oh, I know what your one more thing is. It's a game that I also played. Yeah, well, so to all of you listeners out there who are like, like, oh man, can't wait for one more thing.

I want to hear about some cool new stuff and heard about Hollow Night and Dark Souls. Hey, whatever. I think way more people were like, oh, one more thing, I can't wait to hear more about Dark Souls. It's great. No, it's very on brand for our show. I love it.

But I want to talk about something completely new, and in fact, something unlike anything I've played before. I've been playing a game called Loop Hero. And this game, it's on PC. It's very low-fi. It's an indie game, published by Devolver Digital, which is a publisher that has just been like knocking it out of the park. year after year, I should say.

And so this game is, the concept is you play as this hero who has lost all of his memories, like many JRP heroes. And he is sent into this world where he's like trying to figure out what's going on. And to do so, he has to kind of like walk on this path, which is a loop and rebuild the environment around him. And you're essentially like conjuring up what he, his memories are. So the game is separated into the two phases. There's a town building phase and an expedition phase.

Town building phase is basically like you have a village and you can put their residence there and you can build up things that like help you get better for your expedition phase. The expedition is the main gameplay. The expedition is a dungeon crawler except you don't actually do any of the dungeon crawling. So your guy walks around on this loop and he automatically attacks and fights enemies. And so you don't control any of the combat or anything like that. What you can control is A, his equipment and like what gear, he's getting, which you get gear after every battle, and B, the kind of layout of the map and

what the loop, what actually goes on the loop. So you wind up getting all these cards that are like these building cards that you can place across the map to like generate new enemies so your guy can level up some more or like raise your guys' health or summon a helpful treasure chest or a village that can send you on quests and stuff like that. So your job is kind of, it's like a game, a strategy game. You're like managing everything surrounding your guy as he's walking in this loop. And so your job is to survive. And there are different ways you can survive. And then as you get more advanced, like you learn that different cards and different tiles on the map kind of interact with the others in different ways. And there's some creative combos you can play around with. And as you go,

you're getting resources that you can then take back to the village if you want. So you can kind of like retreat from, the loop to take those resources back. Otherwise, you might lose some of them if you die. So it's this very compelling, like, gameplay loop, so to speak, in Loop Hero. And it's really fun. It's like you wouldn't think that it would be as enjoyable as it is because you're not actually controlling your guy fighting monsters. But it's really fun to, like, play around with it and watch the numbers go up and, like, experiment with the different tile combinations and see what you can do there. There's a lot of choices, the interesting choices that you can make as you go. there are a lot of different kind of builds you can create out of your character because

you're constantly getting new equipment and you can look at all the different stats on it. Like one piece of equipment might be really, might give you great like counter percentage and so you can make your guy a superpowered counter ability. And then on top of that, you can get like another skill that lets you heal every time you counter. So you combine those two and you're like, oh, cool, I built this really cool character. And it's really, really good. I really like it.

It definitely gets repetitive as any game like this would. Any game that's like literally a loop would. But it's really creative and fun, and I highly recommend it. Definitely one of the more enjoyable games I played this year. It's sort of like one good way to think of it as like a reverse tower defense. I've heard of the same. Yeah, I saw that description and it felt accurate. I played an hour or two of this game.

It's really addictive. It would be great as a phone or tablet game, I would think, like a way that you could just kind of, because it's really low-key in a certain way because it auto-plays itself. And you can pause it. anytime it has that kind of just really quick, oh, I'm going to pause and just figure out what I want to do. You're kind of just arranging things in a nice way and then seeing what happens. Placing tiles, yep.

That energy, like that rhythm is really pleasing. Like, it's just a very, like, nice flow kind of the game. Is there a way to beat it? Does it end? Do you know? Yeah, yeah. So as, so the loops each, after, like, you go around, you're building up this bar that is, like, that gets a little more full every time you place a tile.

on the map. And when it hits the end, there's a boss. And so then you beat, it's like called Act 1 and then you go into Act 2 and then Act 3 and then Act 4. But you can replay them any time as many times as many times as you want, each of them. And then you get new character classes and there's a lot of new stuff that you're getting over time. And then you can fill up your village with more stuff and more people. And that's how you eventually win is by like... And like the memories come back. There's a story of these people sort of remembering the world that they've completely forgotten. Yeah, there's a story attached to it. So there's like some interesting dialogue. Yeah. It's neat.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, it's really interesting. And it's different. It really is. It's very different. It's very different. Like, just playing it, it's like, oh, this is like a totally different thing. Like, then, you know, it's not a Souls game.

Right. It's very, yeah. Well, then, I'm not interested. Get it off this list. What? I think that's what makes it so appealing to me is that it's like very, I mean, I like the strategy element, but also it's very unlike anything I've played before. And that to me is really cool.

And it's like, hey, it's 20-21 and there's still games coming out that, like, are doing totally new things. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's a sweet game. Loop Hero, check it out. I recommend it. I'm sure a lot of people out there are going to be waiting for like the phone version or the switch version, which totally understood. But it's a good one to play like while watching TV or listening to a podcast or something. Yeah, it's maybe listening to Triple Click. Yes. All right. Well, nothing is true. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. I'll see you both next week. That sounds like it should be a logo for like a food, a cooking show. Or a terrible newspaper. Nothing is true. Everything is true. Everything is permitted. Well, anyway, 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 clickpods and 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. All right. I'm Maddie Myers. Sorry, sorry, hold on. I'm not ready. Just trying to figure out what your name is.

It's stressful. You know, it's really... I've forgotten. Wait. I'm Kirk. I'm like, no, I'm Jason. We have to remember our names at the beginning of every single show. I was scrolling up on the run sheet because I wanted to see the actual thing.

Okay, I'm ready. Here we go.