Triple Click - What's The Deal With: Baldur's Gate?

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

Baldur's Gate 3 is out this week, and it's primed to be one of the year's biggest games. But why? What's the deal with this series that hasn't received a new game in more than 20 years? Why are people so excited for it? And what do we think of the new game so far?One More Thing:Kirk: The Vorkosigan Saga (Lois McMaster Bujold)Maddy: Pokemon SleepJason: BillionsLINKS:Baldur’s Gate 1&2 story recap by WolfheartFPS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L50P-lBGkMKirk’s Vorkosigan reading order: https://bookriot.com/vorkosigan-saga-reading-order/Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

There's an old saying, sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you. In Baldersgate 3, sometimes you get the bear and the bear gets you. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. Today we're talking about the Balders Gate series in honor of the pending release of Baldersgate 3. We've got some history, some D&D chat, and some early impressions of the new games. So grab your D20 and let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers.

And I'm Jason Shrier. Hello. Hello. Hope you both have your 20. 20-sided die and you're ready to roll some performance checks. It's actually right here. I could do some skill checks right now.

Can you roll one? Can you do a performance check right now? Yeah, let's get a little folly. Let's do a performance check to see if you can keep going with this podcast or if we have to stop right now. Wait, was I rolling against? Yeah, what's the... We'll tell us what you got and then we'll tell you if you pass.

I rolled a 17. So I'll say you got it. That's like a plus four. You have some additional numbers. You can stack on top of there, yeah, for sure. That's a good one. That's a good one. How about people roll to see how much they're going to subscribe to Max Fun,

like how much they're going to give to become members? Or you just check your bag and see how much gold do you have? Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to roll a persuasion check right now. And we're going to see if I can persuade you to become a member of maximum fun and support our podcast, which means we get to keep making podcasts and you get to listen to monthly bonus episodes. from our show and support our worker-owned co-op network

Maximum Fun. And look at that. I rolled a natural 20. Can you believe it? So you're all convinced. I just convinced everybody that was a natural 20. That's a critical success. Can you actually roll and see what you get? No, I know. I mean, I did roll. Sorry, Jason. I did. I got a 20. So maximum fun.org. I didn't hear any dice. That's where you're going to go. It was to the side of the mic. Anyways, next monthfund.org slash join. Go become a member because if you do, you support our show and you get bonus episodes.

We just did one on Silo and we talked some about post-apocalyptic storytelling, which was a lot of fun. And we were kind of building up a little canon of post-apocalyptic stories that we've covered in the bonus episodes. So it was a nice kind of roundup of a lot of those ideas, also a cool show and a fun one to talk about. And this month, of course, we are going to be doing a big old beans cast. where we spill the beans on The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. I haven't finished yet. Jason has. We're finally going to do it, though.

We're all going to finish. Maddie hasn't finished either. We're going to get to the end of that game. It's not for lack of trying. It's just such a good game. How can I ever want to leave, you know? I feel the same way. So we're going to finish the game.

We're going to talk about the story. We'll just talk more about that game, since there's much more to say now that we've all played a whole lot of it. So that'll be out toward the end of August. But there's a million. bonus episode that you can listen to you. Okay, not a million. There's like 38 of them, but there's a lot of them. It's kind of like a million, yeah. It's the podcast equivalent of a million. So go listen to those. And if you're a member, and if you want to become a member,

go to maximum fun.org slash join. And thanks so much to everybody who makes this podcast possible. Okay, Jason, what are we talking about this week? This week, it is time for a, what's the deal with? What's the deal with? What is the deal with? What is the deal with? What is the What's the deal with Bumperdurb. Baldur's Gate. What's the deal with Baldur's Gate? So this week is the release on PC of Balders Gate 3. Console releases are coming down the line, but for now it's on PC.

And Baldur's Gate 3 kind of against the odds has turned into one of the most hyped games of this year, even though it's kind of a crunchy, crunchy role-playing game that you wouldn't think would be that. So what we're going to do today is explain how. we got here. How did we get to this D&D nerd game becoming one of the biggest role playing games of 2023? What is Baldersgate? Who's Baldersgate? When is Baldur's Gate? What is the deal? What is the deal with this whole thing? And also, we're going to talk a little bit about some early impressions of Balders Gate 3, which I have been playing. Maddie has played a little bit, and Kirk has created a character. Which is hours. I just did. I just got back in town and I made a

character. Excellent. So we'll talk about that a little bit later, but first, we're going to zoom out and talk about Valder's Gate in general. So are we zooming out to an isometric view? Are we, are we pressing LOSTI to advance really far around the map just to see where we could go? Just to see where we can go. Yep, yep. So Baldur's Gate is kind of an interesting franchise. It's, it started, the first game was released in 1998, and it was developed by, at the time, a little known company called BioWare. It was published by Black Isle and Interplay. And some of the folks from Black Isle helped work on the game as well. And so Baldus Gate, so back in the 90s, there was kind of, there was, there was a moment in time, a few year period when everybody kind of hated RPGs.

RPGs didn't sell well. There weren't a lot of good ones. There were a lot of bad ones. D&D especially, there were a lot of games with the D&D license that were just not very good, including another one from Interplay that was released around the same time as Baldur's Gate called Descent to Under Mountain and bad video game. And so when Baldur's Gate came, nobody expected it to be much of a hit. In fact, Interplays or Black Isles boss, Fergus Erkart,

who would later go on to found Obsidian Entertainment, he said in an interview at one point that they didn't expect it to sell anything. They expected like 50,000 copies to be sold. Instead, it became this sensation. And the reason it became a sensation and ultimately wound up selling millions of copies is because it was really, really good. It was kind of this authentic role-playing game with like a big, meaty world and D&D rules,

and you could go around and you form a party, and you could talk to people and go on quests and, like, explore. And it just felt like there was this sense of mystery, the sense of wonder, the sense that you could go to any map and find just about anything. Like you could find all sorts of fascinating things. It kind of, it was really one of the earliest games to evoke the same feeling you might feel now while playing, I don't know, a Skyrim or a Zelda. And it was, it was in many ways a successor to the Ultima series, which had kind of tapered off by this point. Ultima 7, I believe, was considered like one of the last great ones.

Yes. And, yeah, Baldus Gates. So it was, I think, one of the real big revelations. and one of the reasons it was such a big success was this unique combat system it had where it was real time, but you could also pause, which was pretty revolutionary for the time. So you could pause at any time and assign your character's marching orders, or you could just watch it all unfold in real time. So it kind of had that really best of both worlds in terms of like real time and turn base,

which at the time also turn base was kind of out of fad in this era in 1998. So yeah, I mean, from there, we went to Baldersgate 2, which really took that formula and just like totally blew it up and made it into this epic experience and also gave you higher level characters, which as the indie players know, is much more fun because it opens up a lot of a lot more possibilities, a lot of higher level spells. If there was a big knock on Baldersgate 1, it was that it was super hard because you were so low-leveled and everything around you could kill you at any time. And then from there we went to Baldur's Gate to Throne of Ball, which is the expansion pack, although really it's more of a trilogy. You guys didn't play any of those games, correct? Mm-mm. No, I played Never Winter Nights and Plainscape Torment, but I did not play Balduris Gate. Though over the weekend, I finally watched a sort of story summary video on Baldurysgate 1 and 2 that we can maybe put in the show notes.

And that was really cool. It made me think I would have really liked those games, but I didn't play them at the time. Yeah, I don't know how well they've aged, especially when you're playing modern Baudersgate 3. But yeah, they were awesome at the time. I mean, I remember when I first played Baudersgate 1, it came in this thick package with like a big instruction manual with all the D&D rules. And then the sleeve that had, I believe it was either six or five CDs, which is like, oh, my God, this game is shipping on six CDs. I bet that smelled amazing. I bet if you smelled amazing.

what that sleeve smelled like, it would take you immediately back to the first moment that you open the box. Yes, I bet I still have the discs in here. It's like new car smell, but for games, new games smell. That paper. Good stuff. Plastic-y. Yeah, and, and you know, you knew you were in for a treat when you picked up a new computer game and it was six CDs. And it had that many discs? Oh, boy. These days they brag about word count and like gigabytes, but come on, put it on the CDs or we don't understand how big it is, you know? And then the game unfolded. in like map screen. So you you start off on one big map screen and the city called candle keep and then you move to new ones as you'd go. And I remember being totally like blown away when I got to

the titular city of Baldur's Gate and it was like seven map screens like all connected to each other. It was like mind-boring. I think it was two different cities just for that one city, Balders Gate. So yeah, the scope of it was mind-boggling and just like everything really worked together really nicely. It was really well-written. And of course, it would go on to lead to the entire, the BioWare RPG, as we know it. Mass Effect and Dragon Age were both kind of separate, separate kind of branches on the tree that all started with Baldur's Gate. I guess it wasn't BioWore's first game that was shattered steel, but it was the first game that really led to BioWare RPGs, as we know them. And then something interesting happened with the Balders Gate series, which is that there was a Belder's Gate 3 in development at, Black Isle and Interplay, but Interplay had kind of a meltdown, and I won't get into all the,

details here, but essentially Baldur's Gate 3 got canceled, Interplay shut down, and the series just kind of languished for a while. At a certain point, a company called Beam Dog, which was made up of a few Expirerware folks, they came out with some re-releases of Baldersgate 1 and 2, enhanced editions, they called them, which you can get on Steam, and if you're going to play the games today. Those are the versions to get because they feel a little bit more modern. For sure. They're designed for modern computers with HD graphics and stuff. And Beam Dog, as well as several other companies, tried to make a Valdersgate 3.

But for whatever reason, Wizards of the Coast, the makers of D&D, the license operator, did not want to let them do it. I think Brian Fargo tried to get the license at one point. I think if I remember correctly, Obsidian might have. point being various RPG developers wanted to do it, but nobody could. And then enter a little studio called Larian. So this is where we get into modern history. Kirk, do you want to talk a little bit about kind of Larian with Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 and how they kind of broke under the scene?

Because you played those games. You played the first game, right? Divinity Original Sin 2 or 1. Larian's kind of breakout in 2014? Yes. or, I mean, that was the game that broke out to me. There were people who liked the Divinity series. They had made Divine Divinity, Divinity 2.

There had kind of been a bunch of games set in this world that were all slightly different kinds of RPGs, if I'm remembering correctly, but I didn't play any of them. I'd sort of been aware of them. They existed in that space of PC role-playing games that look like the games you played in the 90s, that you've never really, that you're not aware of if you're just sort of following mainstream gaming

and you're not a more sort of niche RPG player. And then I saw something about Divinity Original Sin. It might have just been, I think it was maybe like a rock paper shotgun interview with Sven Vinky, is that his name? The head of the studio. I believe it was him talking about how inspired he was by Ultima 7, specifically Ultima 7, Part 2, Serpent Isle, which is a game that I poured hours into when I was in high school in the 90s and really loved. and he was talking a lot about systemic role-playing games and having every item be accounted for in the game

and I think I saw some screenshots where they had the little pop-up bag that is like your backpack that looks like a backpack but then has a grid inside of it and they were dragging it around on the screen or something and I remember thinking and you were sold you were like grid yeah I was like this is what I want

because sometimes it really is those little aesthetic markers that tell you that the game is what the game is going to be and in this case I think it really did. So I downloaded it on a total lark. I, yeah, I don't even really remember making the decision, started playing it, and immediately was just, you know, really bowled over by it. This was Divinity Original Ascent.

This was in, I guess, 2014. It might have even been in early access before the game, you know, was finally released. But it was kind of right before the full release of the game. So earlier in that year that it was released. So, yeah, I played a bunch of it and just loved the hell out of it. I almost beat it. I don't know if I finished it. It's sort of similar to what we've said about Divinity Original Sint 2, where it sort of loses steam past a certain point. But it has

that same magical feeling. It had that same magical feeling for me where it's so simulated and complex while you're playing through the story that it kind of feels magical whenever the story actually continues and responds to you. Someone appears, you get teleported to a new dimension. like real story stuff is happening, it kind of feels more like it's happening in a real world because you've spent so long moving through this dense simulation instead of just moving along what's clearly a pre-written track. So it had that kind of magic and I really liked it.

And then, of course, they released Divinity Original Sin 2, and this was sort of the, they definitely had become much more noteworthy. A lot more people were aware of them in the space between the first Divinity Original Sin and then the sequel. And then they release a director's cut of that, which is out on consoles, and you can play. They added a ton of voice acting.

Like, they've kind of just been gradually going from niche, kind of, you know, isometric old school role-playing game to more modern bio-ware style role-playing game, what you would call Bio-Ware style. And by that I mean specifically Dragon Age Origins, the Dragon Age series, a kind of more voiced, more, you know, a lot more voice acting, a lot more drama, a little less crunchy and a little more. accessible, though still pretty crunchy. Yeah, DOS 2 was pretty crunchy. Boudersgate 3 is pretty crunchy too. Yeah, I mean, the thing about these D&D is pretty crunchy, right? It is. D&D is super crunchy. I mean, the thing

about Larian's games, in contrast to the isometric, the Balders Gate, original Balders Gate trilogy that I talked about earlier is that Larian's games give you a lot more verbs. And when we talk about systemic, we're really talking about abilities to interact with the world in ways that aren't just like

moving around. and talking to people and fighting with people. And that, I think, is what really made them feel special to a lot of people. That and the combination of that and kind of choice, player choice, and getting to kind of choose different options, quests, and solve quests in different ways, which is part of that buyerware style. That blended with the systems, I think, is a really potent combination that made DOS 1, and then DOS 2 especially work really well for a lot of people.

And so, for example, I mean, you can kill pretty much anybody in the game, and the game will interact to that. You can, I don't know, you can throw a barrel of oil at the ground and then light it on fire and watch a massive fire burn. In Baldur's Gate 3, for example, I mean, I just did this little quest thing in Act 1, which is all I'm up to. So it's all early access stuff that people will have been able to play already, so don't worry too much about like, spoilers or anything, but I just did this little quest thing where, like, I got to this house and there was this raging fire inside the house. And, like, as I did stuff, the fire would continue and I would watch these fireballs explode and, like, burn furniture and, like, burn up the entire house. And so I did move quickly before that happened. So that sort of, like, interactivity with

the world is really interesting, I think. Maddie, you haven't played any of these games, right? No, Balderskate 3 is my first one. And it is a lot crunch. year than I expected it to be. And I'm having a really good time with it, but the learning curve is pretty high. I definitely was like, wow, I didn't realize how many buttons they're going to be on the screen. It was bringing back a little bit of StarCraft 2 for me, lots to read, lots to do. And also, as Jason said, lots of different verbs that you can do for everything. Like you can press, control, and decide what you want to do. You can attack a barrel. or you can search a barrel.

You can attack a guy or attack a door or lock pick a door or try to push the door or click on another person in your party and ask them to lockpick the door. It's like you can just be standing in front of a door for 20 minutes, just kind of figuring out

what you want to do with the door. I mean, that's D&D, baby. It's really taking me back to the last time I played D&D, which was a decade ago. You know, even from making my character, I've definitely already noticed that they are using a much simplified version

of D&D compared with, with Baldersgate 1 and 2, which I think was second edition and was also the version of D&D that I learned on, which was very, very complicated. And Baldersgate 3 is using fifth edition, which is the same rule set that I've been using actually in my actual real-life D&D group. That's the current version. That is the current version. And it's been great for me, partly because I've been playing that version of D&D in real life,

and that really does help. Oh, I bet. Yeah. When I started playing D&D with this group, a year and changes, ago, I had a similar feeling, Maddie, where I really felt unprepared, and a lot of them had been doing it. My friends who play had been playing already, or they did just, they do their homework more than I do. It always makes me feel unprepared. So it's taken me a long time to remember how everything works. But now that I do, it made it a lot easier actually to even just

roll a character in Baldur's Gate 3 because a lot of that is because fifth edition has been significantly streamlined compared to, you know, second edition back when they were making the first two games. Yeah, I mean, those games were talking about crunchy. It's pretty absurd. There was this concept called Thaco to hit armor class zero. It's an acronym. And basically you meant that the lower your armor number, the better it was. It was the most like a Byzantine system.

Yeah, it was so silly. No, big numbers are supposed to be good. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, this makes a D&D5E is way, way better. It makes more sense. They get rid of alignments, which makes things a lot more fun. But let's get into Balderscape 3, but first to just kind of set this scene here.

So after all of those years and years, really, like 16 years of no Balders Gate 3 from 2001 to 2017, suddenly DOS 2 comes out. Larian is really establishing itself as like one of the better RPG developers in the world. They're based in Belgium, by the way, although they have studios all over these days in six different countries. So Wizards of the Coast comes to them and says, hey, we want you to make Balderscape 3. They start working together on this idea. And they come up with the concept. It comes out in early access in 2020, October of 2020.

And then three years later, it is finally entering real release after a number of obstacles, including I just spoke to Sven last week about some of this stuff, the studio blowing up from 140 people to 450, which is talk about growing pains. I thought you were going to say the studio blowing up. And I was like, wow, that is a serious obstacle to overcome. I mean, they used to be in seven countries, and then the war in Ukraine started, and they shut down their St. Petersburg office in the first week and relocated everybody from there. So possibly closer to reality. Actually, actually reality. COVID hurt them a lot.

And the biggest change from Divinity Original Sin 2 to Baldersgate 3, other than the name and the D&D and stuff, is that in Balders Gate 3, every single conversation takes place with like full cinematic style. So you're getting close up to the characters. It's like playing Dragon Age Inquisition or whatever, Mass Effect, where you're like seeing every character's faces. So normally the game takes place through more of a zoomed-out,

isometric style, but then for every conversation, you really get in close and you see people's reactions, which is why the game took so long and why they needed so many people. So here we are. Ballard Escape 3 is out. People are very, very excited for it

because of the games, uh, pedigree and because of Larians. kind of experience in recent years and people getting really, really into Larian's games. So what do we all think about it? So, Maddie, you were finding it a little bit complicated to start? I have a question just to start. So would you two say that Baldersgate 3 is more similar to divinity original sin one and two or more akin to Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and 2.5?

Because I have no point of comparison for it. Other than it looks kind of like Diablo to me, but it's not like Diablo at all. No, it's only the camera angle. It's like, it's, it is 100% divinity original sin two with D&D mechanics. So perhaps people who didn't play those two games or three, if you, just two, yeah, it's just two. It's Baldur's Gate that has the 2.5. People who didn't play Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 and have just been chilling out waiting for Baldur's Gate might play Baldur's Gate 3 and be like, what the heck is going on? that's just an interesting experience for those people, I suppose.

Yeah, I think it'll feel familiar if you've played some of the old, the old, isometric role-playing games like Plainscape Tourman or Isendale or Baldur's Gate, any of those games, it'll feel familiar. But yes, but the idea of like systems and like seeing barrels everywhere that you can throw and they do things and interacting with acid and fire and water and electricity, all that stuff is straight out of Larian's previous games. Totally. And that stuff actually reminds me of Marvel's Middard. Night Sons, which is a game that only Kirk and I played, but other people should check out.

We did make Jason play it for a couple minutes at least, where you can interact with the environment a lot and like set up a shot. I'm really enjoying that aspect of the game so far. I'm only about three hours in, but I've already begun to understand like pushing enemies into stuff is a big part of combat, which I really liked about Marvel's Midnight Sons. It's something that made it a little bit more complex than X-Com, at least for me, and more fun is just using environmental attacks, thinking about angles and spacing on top of the abilities of each character in each position. That's something that's really fun and also kind of reminds me of

the improvisational nature of playing D&D, which is something we talked about a lot last week and how that that dream of having that improvised battle of, oh, right, there was a chest over there. Can I go grab something from there? Can I use that? Can I throw this object that I have? Like, that idea of just being able to use anything and everything. I mean, it's not perfect in any way, but I'm already starting to see that aspect, and I'm super into that so far. Yeah. It's incredibly fun to play around in the environment and to figure out how you can use different spells to different effects and how your choices kind of just act in dialogue with the world. It's incredibly fun. So let's talk about how we're approaching this. Yeah, should I say what character I made?

Yeah, we got to do that, right? So what is your, yeah, what is your main character? So I'm a half-work barbarian, shocking no one at all. She's amazing. She's just a one-to-one recreation of me, personality-wise, physical appearance-wise. As you guys know, I have this huge, huge fangs, green skin. It was very, very fun to design the visuals of the character, too. I mean, that's something that I'm sure people have already talked about elsewhere, but I was a really good character.

I can really, like, I mean, there's only a couple body types. I'll say that. But beyond that, I was like, wow, I can really be any, any shade of green or a non-green shade, but I definitely wanted to go green, or I can have a billion hair styles. I love that. I was very into making my barbarian look extremely freaking cool. And I didn't know if that would matter, but then seeing what Jason described, like all the close-ups, it's very Dragon Age, which I did play the Dragon Ages and the Mass

effects and loved them. And so having those character closeups and getting to see like my character's facial expressions to like match the dialogue I'm choosing and then feel like she's really connected to the world, even though I designed her completely. Like that's very cool to me. I like being able to design someone and then have them be just plopped into the world. And there's no friction there. She just is right there along with all these other completely bespoke NPCs that I'm buddies or friend of me with. Yeah, this is a game where it really matters what your character looks like because you're going to be seeing. them a lot. Yeah, constantly. Yeah. So Kirk, you were just the character creator. Remind me,

did you play in Early Access at all or is this your first time playing? Nope. I have totally avoided it because, I don't know, I do, I've done that a lot with Larry in games where I play Early Access and then, you know, it's always sort of a slow start. And it all gets taken away when it, when it launches again. Yeah, although this one, I will say, having played in Early Access, this one is three years later, so you do forget a lot of it. But yeah, go on. So I'm playing as a, bard, half-elf bard. Got to get those charisma bonuses. I really want to play a charismatic character this time around because I think, well, something that I found in Divinity Original Sin too is that a lot of the most interesting stuff happens in dialogue, which I suppose makes sense

that something you were getting at Jason is that they allow for a lot of choice in these games. And they're all about choice. It's about doing more than just combat and sneaking, basically, which is what a lot of role-playing games do. And I think that a lot of the most interesting things systems tend to take place in dialogue, which makes sense because dialogue is, you know, it's a written version of the same kind of talking of communication that D&D is built out of. Like, really all you need is text, and you could do a whole role-playing game. So in a game with a lot of text that's taking place, you know, it's, you're talking to people, but you're also getting prompts, and, you know, there's sort of storytelling going on in the

prompts that you're given, in the sort of things you're trying to do. you can use your different proficiencies in conversation in different ways. This is in Divinity Original Sin 2, and I'm assuming it works the same way in Baldur's Gate 3, where if you have a proficiency in intimidation or persuasion, you're going to take different paths, and I'm assuming sometimes get different outcomes based on the way you go through the conversation. So I really am in... Well, pause for a second. It's D&D, so you're rolling at nice.

You're literally rolling at D20, and you see... Yeah, yeah. Oh, I know. I've played enough to see that. Yeah. getting there, but it's that same idea. So I think that that's really cool, like, that you, that that gives the most interesting options, as opposed to just someone with a lot of cool combat abilities, because really everyone has cool combat abilities, and I know from Divinity

In The Original Sin, too, that it's all about the party anyways. I mean, like, the party that I built in that game, I customize everyone's classes, I guess, in that game, but I had, you know, it didn't really matter what class my character was. It was more about the party, and I wound up being happy that I picked, in my view, the most interesting character in that game, who is Losa, who's a bard. You can pick, you can, like, make your own backstory if you want, but there are these pre-written backstories in Divinity Original Sent 2 that I think is the same. You can kind of do something similar in Baldur's Gate.

But anyways, what was cool about Losa was that she has this evil spirit inside of her that is just terrifyingly powerful. And everyone who she goes to to try to figure out what it is, like, gets really scared. She's sort of a medium. She, like, through her whole life, she's always had spirits just turning up sometimes and they come and go, and it's like part of her life. And she's this famous entertainer who goes around singing and always has just sort of different people coming into her mind to talk to her. But then someone has turned up who is like, not that, like, who's way more powerful. And her whole story is finding out who it is and trying to figure out what she's going to do and how she's going to become free.

And it winds up being really cool. It reminds me of Disco Elysium. It's this whole story of like this other person inside of you. You have all these inner conversations. Sometimes that like expresses itself in role-playing moments where you're trying to do something to threaten that entity. And it's like stopping you. And it plays out really cool. You can have skill checks against yourself where you'll go evil and attack everybody.

So I can tell that's already going to be at play with everybody's character in Baldur's Gate because you have this like mind flare worm in your brain at the very beginning. it does seem as though they took that idea and they were like, okay, that was the coolest character in our last game. Let's just make every character have that element to themselves. Anyways, long story short, these are the reasons I'm excited for this game and why I wanted to play a very dialogue,

persuasion, charisma-heavy character, which I know is the bard just from, you know, obviously it's the bard. And so it would be fun also to, like, carry around a loot and, like, play my loot for people. That just seemed like it would be a fun thing to do. Yeah, the bard, I think, is a really good class, but I will say that in this game,

it's actually a little bit more like Disco Elysium than it is like Domeny Original Sin too because it's a little bit more like D&D in the sense that as you're going through the game and you're going through dialogue options, oftentimes there are four different checks that you could potentially go through. And so you can decide based on what your character is best at,

what you want to roll. You can also start conversations with different members of your party or start actions with different members of your party, depending on what you want to, which skill they are best at. So I've been playing, I think I've logged like 12 hours into this full release, one point or release, like whatever, the final version of the game. So far in the past couple of days since I got an early copy. We're all playing on early copies, by the way, provided by Larian.

And I am playing as a half-elf sorcerer with a subclass. you eventually get, when you hit level three, you get to like pick a subclass for whatever your class is. And my subclass is crazy cool. It lets me, it gives my character a fly, a bonus action every time I cast a spell. So I can cast a spell and then use fly to just kind of like jump up in the air and go wherever I want afterwards. And Sorcer is really fun class just because you get access to a lot of different spells and you don't have to worry about scrolls. and stuff. You can just kind of pick what spells you want. And so you can blast apart everybody with

magic missile. And I will say that after many hours, after 12 hours of the game so far, it rules. It lives up to expectation. I'm mostly, I'm in, so far I'm just in the act one of the game. So it's all content that like people could have been playing by now and some of it. I did play when I checked out the game in early

access. But yeah, I'm just super impressed so far by the degree of choice and the spider web of options. that you have. I mean, just like one quest alone might have five different possible endings. And one thing I'm doing with this game is I'm trying not to save scum. I'm just kind of letting the dice fall where they may, which I think is a fun way to experience it. Yeah, so let me throw something to the two of you that I've been thinking about a lot as I get into this, especially because I recently replayed Divinity Original Sin 2 and was doing a little bit more of a Minmax play-through. And that's,

that min-maxing versus just role-playing. And I guess it's something you were kind of getting out there, Jason, where you just let the die lie. You don't save scum and re-roll and just play it out. And yeah, I'm really going to try to commit to doing that in this play-through as well, just because partly in the spirit of Dungeons and Dragons, which I've been playing as well. And there's no saves coming there. Of course, there is the fact that the DM is forgiving and isn't going to just ruin the game for us all. Yeah. There's kind of. a fail safe, he'll always give us a way out. But all the same, I feel like, you know, I can still kind of trust the game to provide that. And I find often that saves coming as a result of me not

really trusting the game to let me have a good time, even if some of my characters get killed, even if something bad happens or I screw up a role, or, you know, I have a, I don't convince the person to let me in and have to figure out another way. And I think some of that is because of the transparency that you mentioned earlier about how you watch the dive. roll, which is a wonderful thing that I didn't know they did in this game. I figured they'd show you the skill check, but the fact that you actually roll the dice is just perfect. I mean, that is exactly, like, one of, I think half the reason that my group plays the indie is because we want to get together and roll dice on table and like hear the sound and like see it roll. I mean, the sound in the game is very satisfying too. It's great. It's got like a little sparkly chime for all of your additional points, whatever those are called. I've forgotten that that at stack on. Yeah, you're like proficiency bonuses add up and you get to see the final number. Where you're like, okay, I only rolled a 10, but oh, I got a plus four and a plus three. And then you're like, yes, made it.

Cracked the lock or whatever it might be. It just feels very, very exciting and similar to rolling a number on the table that you know is going to add up correctly the same way. So for what it's worth, there's a setting in the, in the, well, there's a toggle in the settings called carmic dice that will like rig the dice a little bit. So if you want them to be truly fair and random, you should turn off that setting. But that setting essentially exists to, like, prevent streaks of bad luck. But yeah, if you want the real transparency of the dice, you got to turn off karmic dice. That's really interesting. I didn't know about that setting, but I might leave it on because it's almost like them accounting for the fact that the DM will have mercy on you after a little while.

Yeah. And they've talked about it because it was kind of controversial. And people in the subreddit were upset and we're like, oh, I don't want this karmic dice. so I'm going to turn it off right away. And they like, I want the pure objective numbers. Yeah, probability needs to be real. And like, that's fine if that's how you want to play.

But it does only kick in if you get multiple bad roles in a row, which I feel like does account for the DM in your life. We'll be like, okay, you seriously rolled five ones today. All right, we're going to have you like comedically fall down this cliff and then stumble upon a chest full of stuff that you need because this is just getting ridiculous. And I think there's some other waiting. As I recall, even if you get a good role on the next one, do the Karmic Dice, the enemies will all be stronger, like, to kind of wait out your luck in some other way. Like, you'll have some other bad luck to counteract it.

I don't know all of the details under the hood. But I'm leaving Karmic Dice on. I'm happy to have a friendly DM on my side. Agree. So I think it's really neat aesthetically, but it puts me in a mindset like I'm playing D&D. And I think that's really important because it's going to affect how I approach the game because it's just going to feel different. And so I'm going to be more willing to just go with it.

And it's made me think more and more about just like transparency of those kinds of systems, I guess. It's something that Disco Elysium did really well too. Which I loved so much. Yeah. What your, what kind of dice roll it's doing and, you know, whether you passed or failed, like you were constantly seeing all these roles going on under the hood, which made the game feel alive. not in a like immersive red dead redemption two way where they're absolutely hiding all of that from you

and you just see this world and you don't really know what's real and what's not and so you kind of just believe that it's real or some part of your brain does it's totally the opposite it's immersive because it's showing you all of the ticking gears and you actually like i find myself really swept up in that and um more willing to like play according to that uh to sort of that setup like to just be to go with it yeah the the the kind of the flip side of that is that you just have to trust that the game is not going to be super buggy, which in my experience, I mean, I got a couple of annoying bugs, but mostly is not. I will share one fun story, which is that I was fighting in this big battle, and I'm like,

I am on a high ground and fighting it against a ton of enemies and a low ground. And suddenly, goblins began to appear next to my characters. And for a second, I was like, man, is this game bugging out? Like, what the hell is going on here? Are these goblins like teleporting without the game actually telling me? And I was worried that the game, like, again, if you're expecting transparency and the game starts bugging with you in some way, you're kind of, you lose that trust a little bit, right? And that's why it's so important for a game like this.

Like, you really have to put your faith in it that it's being fair with you and not bugging out and fucking with you. Anyway, so I was trying to figure out, trying to figure out, wound up figuring out on my second time trying that same battle that the reason goblins were appearing is because an ogre was throwing barrels at my characters and the barrels were exploding next to the characters and the goblins were in the barrels and so actually the goblins are just popping up out of barrels and I was like oh okay so that's what's going on here and realizing that was a super fun thing and and I do think to your point Kirk the game not hiding things from you except when it

should hide things from you like sort of you get into a new you get into a house and there's someone hiding around the corner. You don't, you know, the game shouldn't, should keep that from you, but maybe you, maybe it'll tell you you failed a perception check in the way that in a D&D, in D&D, a DM might ominously say something like that, like, hey, roll a D20. I'm not going to tell you why, but just do it. So there is a level of that kind of opacity required too, but once you trust the game and you trust the DMT to you be a good time, you're probably going to have a good time. Can I ask you, now that you've played as much as you have, would you recommend watching a story recap of the first two games.

I know that it stands alone on its own, but I'm guessing, like, even knowing who, you know, where Om is or, like, who Ball is, and some of this basic D&D lore stuff, would that be helpful for people before they play this game? So I can't really answer that yet, because the first act of the game has absolutely nothing to do with the first,

with the original Baldur's Gate games, but I can give kind of some broad stuff based on what I know, which is, so this game is set 100 years in the future from Baldersgate 1 and two. You definitely do not need to play Baldersgate 1 and 2. There are going to be some references,

and it's set in the same universe called the forgotten realms of D&D, which some D&D players, a lot of D&D players will know some of that stuff anyway, because a lot of D&D campaigns are set in that world. So the city of Balders Gave, for example, is a huge city in that world, and you're going to go

and visit that in the game. I also know that there are some returning characters from the first couple of games who are still alive 100 years later and pop up in the game. But I have a feeling that this game is not going to expect you to know that at all. And so, so far from what I've played, there hasn't even been like the most minor reference that I can see to the original game.

So no, I don't think it's super necessary. That said, it can't hurt to go and watch a recap just for fun. And maybe there will be stuff that pops up later that's connected. In fact, I know there will be because I haven't even met those characters that are recurring from the first few games yet, but I do not think it's necessary from what I've seen so far. I might change my opinion on that

after I played 50 hours, so we'll see, but for now. Yeah, and I mean, it's 15 minutes or whatever, so it's not a huge ask. If that sounds remotely interesting, you might as well. A thing that it did for me, in addition to just explaining the setting

and some of the basics of what happened, it just put me in the mood. It kind of gave me a sense of the types of stories that these games had, since I'd never really played one and didn't know, that it's, you know, it's a story of you, you know, you're this sort of bastard child of the god of murder.

Like, it's a very dark world and kind of full of betrayal and surprising twists their characters. I think it's in Baldry's Gate, too, who you meet and you can be an ally with who then fully betray you and become villains. And a lot of really cool stuff like that. It had really dramatic narrative turns, which is pretty exciting. exciting. The whole sort of frequency that the story is on, I think, is cool and not necessarily

what a person might think if they've only seen the video where the guy has sex with a bear. Like they might not totally have a sense of the world. And if nothing else, I do think a video like that will give you a feel for all right, what this is like. And I mean, in fairness, also the opening cinematic does the same thing. Yeah, the opening cinematic is like super gross. Should we say that? Like, I feel like mainly what I was surprised by is how gross it is. Like, you get a tadpole inserted in your eye by like an Eldritch horror. And then you got to like walk through a sphincter. Like the doors are called sphincters.

I don't know. You're like walking through an alien but hole in order to escape. I don't know why, but you're in like a hell world. Yeah, it's like gory and dark. I mean, the forgotten realms as a general setting are that way. But yeah, I enjoy. up there. These forgotten films are forgotten for a reason.

There's a lot of lightheartedness. I would say Baldur's Game 3 feels more lighthearted than the first few games did even. But yeah, I mean, it's got a kid. It's not Diablo 4 like by any stretch, even from the very beginning. That's true. It's Diablo 4 in the sense that it's very sticky and gross looking and there's a lot of like bodily fluids on the ground at least at first. But it's not Diablo 4 in the sense that it's D&D in terms of tone and lightheartedness.

and finding a rag tag group of pals to run with. And maybe those pals will betray me later and I'll take all those back. I don't know. So we will be jumping into this game in the coming days and we're going to do a triple play on Baldur's Game 3 next week when we've all had a chance to give it some proper hours and talk about some of the things we saw and checked out

and talk about our characters and our party. We can talk about the party members, lots to talk about next week. So why don't we take a break, now and then we'll be back with one more thing. I'm Laura House. And I'm Annabelle Gerwidge and sometimes it feels like the whole world is a dumpster fire. Right? There's too much to worry about. That's why we make tiny victories. It's a 15-minute podcast where we celebrate our minor

accomplishments and fleeting joys. And listeners call in like Valerie who found the perfect gift for her daughter's boyfriend and Adam who finally turned his couch cushion the right way. And little happinesses like how Bert Song helps you. brain. That's science. So join us in not freaking out for 15 minutes a week. That's Tiny Victories with Annabelle and Laura

Mondays on Maximum Fun. It's a tiny victory just to make a network promo. Honestly. Are you tired of being picked on for only wanting to talk about your cat at parties? Do you feel as though your friends don't understand the depth of love you have for your guinea bit? When you look

around a room of people, do you wonder if they know slots only have to eat one leaf a month? Have you ever dumped someone for saying? saying they're just not an animal person. Us too. She's Alexis B. Preston. She's Ella McLeod. And we host comfort creatures.

The show where you can't talk about your pets too much, animal trivia is our love language, and dragons are just as real as dinosaurs. Tune into comfort creatures every Thursday on Maximum Fun. And we are back. Kirk Maddie, it is time for one more thing. Maddie. What is your one more thing?

I'm playing a game called Pokemon Sleep. Calling it a game is perhaps January. It's a terrible game, but I have to play it every day because it's helping me a lot. And I did this is my life now, is that I just have to play Pokemon Sleep every day, I guess. Tell me more. It's improving my life and I'm not happy about it. So, Pokemon Sleep, it was announced a few weeks ago by the Pokemon Company in a really weird live stream where they didn't tell us what it was going to be. And then they were like, yeah, we're releasing a sleep tracking app where you're.

you like hang out with a snorlax and leave your phone on all night while snorlax sleeps and you sleep. And then when you wake up, a whole bunch of other little Pokemon are sleeping next to Snorlax and you study their sleep styles. And I guess if you buy some type of $50 Pokemon Go per referral, it'll also sync up with Pokemon Go and give you rewards. But I haven't paid $50 for that because I don't want to do that. I'm just using a sleep tracking app. No, it's not going to happen. I can't convince myself to do that. So as far as sleep tracking apps go, I actually really like sleep tracking apps.

I've used them for many years. I used to use one called sleep cycle before I had a Fitbit, and I have 10 years of sleep data on myself every night for over 10 years via either my Fitbit or sleep cycle, and I have charts, I have graphs, I have so much information

about how poorly I slept during GamerGate. It's crazy, and no one needs this data. It's completely useless. but I have it, and it's there for me. So I was like, all right, sure, I'll try another sleep app. As far as sleep apps go, this one's terrible. It drains your phone battery more than any other app I've tried. You have to leave your phone on all night.

Usually sleep apps will let you minimize the app and not have to have it on all the time. Like, for example, you could like tab over to a podcast. If you're listening to a podcast in the middle of the night, can't do that as Pokemon's sleep. If you tab away, it will stop recording your sleep data unless you return to the app and maximize it again. Terrible. the worst. Why is it helping me? Because every morning I have to click on the Pokemon right after I wake up and it wakes me up to click on the Pokemon. It just does because there's so much game that you have to play right first thing in the morning. Like you have to make breakfast for Snorilax because he's hungry

as you have to make him breakfast. And the Pokemon become your friends and they start collecting berries and then you have to click on the Pokemon. They give you the berries and you click on the berries and then you have to make the berries into a recipe for Snowlaks. You click on that. You make sure you eat this breakfast. And then you got to click on all your Pokemon. Make sure they're leveled up. And then you got to make sure your Pokemon are properly allotted.

Like the right berry collecting Pokemon are all in the lineup and they're ready for the next night. And by the time you've done that, it's five minutes later and you're wide awake. You're wide awake by then. And it has gotten me out of bed so much faster than anything else I've ever done. I hate to admit this. Look, normally I'm a person who turns my snooze button off. and I just roll right over. But this is not that way.

You pick up your phone. You start clicking on those little Pokemon. You're awake. You're awake before you know it. I'm glad this is working for you, but this sounds like an absolute nightmare to me. It is a nightmare. And I do kind of hate it,

but also it's so adorable that it's kind of hard to be too mad at it, you know? Like it's very, it's pleasant in the way that a Pokemon game is and it's extremely gentle. They're very cute. So by the end of it, you're like, well, I'm awake. I may as well go for a run.

And that's been me like every day. And here we are. If you don't want to hit the stews button again, try having a four-year-old come in and jump on your bed every morning. I can't. I'm not interested in that. I'd rather take care of my Pokemon, Jason. It's like a real-life Pokemon.

Then you have to feed her berries and you have to assemble her. And I have to collect the berries every day. So I'm me to do that? I don't know. So I, if you, I've heard of these alarms that people have where it's like play a game in order to turn off the alarm. this is kind of like that. Although the game, you're opting into it.

Like, the alarm is off. You don't need to play the game in order to, like, achieve anything. So I could just stop doing this at any time. But I have to admit it's working so far. So, I don't know, Pokemon Sleep. It's a really stupid app, but it's gotten me out of bed for over a week now. So maybe it's good. I don't know.

Is it? Is it? We'll see if I'm still playing it in a week. Open question. I'm nicely an ambivalent one more thing. Kirk, what's your one more thing? My One More Thing is a book series that I started reading and am on the third book of, which sounds like a lot, but isn't, because it's a really long series. It's called the Vercosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Buzold.

It's a famous sci-fi, many Nebula, etc. award-winning sci-fi series began in 1986, ran through, I think, 2018, many, many books in short stories, mostly surrounding a character named Miles Verkosgan, but also his family. and his friends. It is very much a swashbuckling, sci-fi, political, space opera. It's really good. It's really entertaining. And yeah, I wanted to at least mention that I've started reading it and to recommend the first couple of books that I've read and to sort of explain to people how I'm reading it if anybody wants to give this a shot. So these books, like I said, there's a whole lot of them, the Verkosigan story. And there's kind of a number of. of little collections, and they were published in a kind of spread out order. So people go back and forth between whether you should read them in chronological order or internal chronological order

because the books take place on a timeline, but McMaster Buzold published them, you know, in a very different order. So she recommends a sort of internal chronological order, and then I actually found a website that recommends a modified version of her internal chronological order, which I'll link in the show notes. it when you need to do homework to read a book series. Yeah, this is reminding me of those like charts of everything Terry Pratchett's ever written that people upload that are just like a spider web of like, here's the read order. Or like when you have to do Buffy and Angel but switch between the two. Yeah, well, that one's pretty easy. But yeah, I think with this kind of genre stuff, I mean, this is like

comic books. I'm surprised neither of you mentioned comics, but I mean, I've never read it. This is like when you're in that kind of genre space, people are more into keeping track of this kind of complex stuff. And I think that some authors just really like, it seems clear that McMaster Buzhouel just likes being like, I'm going to write a short story. Now I'm going to write the story of Miles's parents. And that's actually, those are the two books that I've read. Collected, they're called Cordelia's Honor. But the two names, the names of the books are Shards of Honor and Barrier, which are the story of the actual protagonist of most of the books, Miles Verkosigin, his parents, how they met. The whole story, it's like this whole complicated story of the

It's sort of politics and infighting on the world of Barriar. It's got war. It's got romance. It has a really amazing love story at the center. Wonderful protagonist Cordelia is the, his mother is the main, the sort of point of view character for the first two books. And then Miles takes over. And it's cool to read it this way because I'm kind of reading a prequel that was written

by an author who already knew what she needs to set up. Like, for example, there are a bunch of characters in these books who are babies. And there are all these babies being born. in various circumstances. And I'm like, all right, so the emperor is just a little child right now. Well, he's going to definitely be emperor by the time Miles is 18 in the first book. So he's going to be a character. And then another, like, you know, another girl baby is born.

I'm like, oh, I bet she's going to be interesting. Maybe she'll be a love interest. So you're kind of like meeting the parents of all these characters that you know are going to be really important. And it's just really cool. I haven't really gotten into Miles's story, but I know that a very crucial part of it, I've started The Warriors Apprentice, is that Miles is born with a number of really serious physical disabilities.

Like his bones don't, like they break super, super easily. He's a lot shorter than he would be. And it's because there's like an attack on his family when his mom is pregnant with him. He almost dies. And like they barely managed to save him. And on the planet of Bariar, because they have like a, there was a whole nuclear war and kind of a lot of radioactive fallout. they're really, really terrified of anyone who looks different or has what they consider to be a mutation, even though in his case it's not. It's just like there were basically medical procedures that saved his life that allowed him to be born at all.

So a lot of people are super intolerant of him, but also he's very powerful because his father is this like super powerful guy. So it's this kind of mix of privilege, but he's also looked down upon. He's a real Tyrion, Lanister type is what it sounds like. He's a real Tyrion Lanister type in a lot of ways. He's brilliant and very manipulative and persuasive. He's very good at getting people to do things for him. He has an amazing bodyguard who we've learned his whole very complicated backstory. Anyways, I believe I've seen it said that this series like really interestingly deals with disability in general.

Also with their queer romances and all kinds of different, like many different cultures that in like have relationships that work very differently. The sexual politics of each group are like really complicated. Because there's like probably aliens, right? I mean, if it's different planets. You know, there aren't, and it's kind of interesting. It's all humans? It's not clear where everything is. Everyone is humans, but they're all different cultures.

Right. And Barriar, in particular, was cut off from the rest of the other sort of civilizations, the other cultures for this period. I'm forgetting what they call it. It's like they have a name for it. And there was all this warring going on on Barrier, and they've then reconnected with everybody. And that's where most of the story takes place.

It's where R.L. Verkosig and Miles his father is a very important, like, Bariar and Count, who is, like, really tied up with the emperor and all this stuff. So, man, I mean, it's just, like, cool, interesting world-building and storytelling. It deals with a lot of really intense stuff, sexual trauma, violence, repressed memories. It's pretty intense, if you just look at what she's talking about, but she maintains a pretty light touch throughout the whole thing, and it never feels exploitative, or at least it hasn't to me yet.

granted I'm only three books in. I've been surprised at some of the subjects that she's willing to talk about, but it's all just felt like part of the world that she's building, and it really is a fascinating world full of great characters. I don't know. I've really been getting a lot out of it. I think she's a wonderful and very surprising writer. I never know what's going to happen next. And even just those first two books were an incredible setup for what I gather is now going to be a real saga about Miles, about a character who's not even really in those first two books. So anyways, I thought I'd throw that down. I know that's a lot, but there's, like, so much more to say about this.

I'm guessing neither of you two will ever read it. I really want someone to talk to about these books because Emily, my wife, recommended them. You've got to find someone before it inevitably gets adapted into, like, an HBO television show. I wonder, yeah. I wonder, yeah. It would be really good, at least from what I've read. It would be an incredibly good TV series. It definitely has a lot of, like, exciting action and romance.

and drama and sex and whatever else. Like it's very cool and like interesting cultures colliding. It seems like it would be a really good show. Game of Thrones meets Dune. I'm pitching it right now. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. And I'd say like a lighter touch than Game of Thrones. Like it's very, well, I don't know how to describe it.

So anyways, I'm only three books in. There's a million of these. It's really cool. I really like it so far. So that's the Vorkosa Gensaga. I've read Shards of Honor and Barrier. That's where I started. And now I'm on The Warrior's Apprentice.

and I'm going to keep reading them. I really like them. Cool. Okay, my one more thing, I've been secretly watching a TV show called Billigans. Did you know someone was talking about this in the Discord that actually that was on a bonus episode? It was.

And so we always allude to the fact that I secretly watched Billions, but the real reveal of that, that's for members only. Yeah, well, good reason to... You want to hear Jason shouting that Kirk is a sociopath and being legitimately... affronted for at least a couple minutes. Although we did remove the paywall for the baby reveal. That's true.

That's true. Yeah, that's true. The war has spilled out into the main feed. Anyway, I've been rewatching Billions, which is a very fun show to rewatch because... Yeah, it's a good television show. I'm at a nice sweet spot where it's been like four years since I've watched it last,

so I forgot a lot of what happens, and it's a really good show if you don't know what's going to happen. But it's also just an incredibly good, like well done show in many, many ways. But I wanted to focus specifically on one thing, which is the ice juice episode, the episode of the show that is the penultimate episode of season two, where Bobby Axelrod sabotages ice juice as an attempt to, an attempt to, I should say, by the way, I'm going to spoil this episode right here. So tune out if you don't want Billion spoilers for season two episode 11.

And honestly, this episode's worth watching, spoiler free. I'll say it. It might be the greatest episode of billions. Like, it's so good. It's definitely the high point of billions, I would say. Having marathoned that whole series, this was the peak of the whole show and it remained fun for a while. This episode is the best.

And if you are ever going to watch billions, you should not be spoiled on it. If you're ever going to watch billions, turn off the show right now and watch billions and also why haven't you watched it yet? Okay. Jason back to you. Go secretly watch Billions and surprise all your friends. So in this episode, this episode is structured. This episode is kind of, this episode is structured kind of like an Ocean's 11 heist or something like that, which is fitting because I believe the shows co-creators directed Oceans 13, I believe.

Just a little point of clarification here as I am editing the episode, Billions was created by Brian Coppelman and, David Levian, who wrote the screenplay for Oceans 13. But of course, Ocean's 13, like 12 and 11, was directed by Steven Soderberg. So just wanted to get those names in there. Okay, back to the episode. Bing! So yeah, so this episode is directed like a heist, and it's very smartly constructed. It starts off with like the Chiron, like Chiron saying like three weeks ago,

which is very confusing because you're like, a go, a go from what? And then it takes around the time from there. you find out that Bobby Excerot has this master plan to sabotage the juice chain ice juice because his rival Chuck Rhodes and Chuck Rhodes's dad have a big position, a big financial position in ice juice. And if Bobby sabotages it, they will lose a lot of money. And then as the show goes, you see Chuck Rhodes, our main character played by Paul Gianmadi. You see him losing and losing and losing and losing. And you see him kind of, you wonder what his deal is, why he doesn't seem as upset. said as maybe he should be about losing a whole lot of money. You see his best friend and his father, both losing a lot of money as a result of this. And then at the end, the grand reveal, Chuck, sitting on a bed in the Harvard Club where he is staying, sitting on a bed, his hands in his eyes, like covering his eyes. You only see the back of his head.

And you think he's sobbing in this moment. He is making these noises. It sounds like he's sobbing. And then the flashback three weeks ago. Once again, then you see his master plan unfold in which you find out that he was baiting Bobby into doing this the whole time. And it's part of his master plan to convince Bobby, to get, like, tease Bobby into doing something super illegal and leaving some loose threads behind so that Chuck and then pull them and unravel the whole scheme and send Bobby to prison, which he has him arrested at the beginning of the next episode. And then after the scheme is unveiled, Kirk, you cut to him. laughing and that's when we see that he was not in fact crying he was cracking up on his

laughing because it all worked out yes i mean i can't believe bobby is coming back to billions guys i can't believe they got him back he's coming back did you guys you guys know this you knew that i had seen it yes i kind of stopped watching that show though but uh i'm excited about it so yeah so this episode um really a masterpiece and storytelling and just so enjoyable to watch even the second time through. But yeah, billions in general, just a really fun show to watch again. So if you out there have, whether you have watched it or you haven't watched it, consider checking you have billions. But one more, one thing I will add is that our modern streaming world is incredibly annoying. So showtime as an app doesn't really exist anymore. It's like folded into

Paramount Plus. And Paramount Plus, uh, the Billions episodes, a couple of them just randomly are just super choppy. I'm like unwatchable on Paramount Plus. So I've had to go to Amazon Prime, which also has billions, to watch those episodes that are choppy on Paramount Plus, because Paramount Plus doesn't actually have a customer support. Like, pretty much nothing these days has actual customer support except for, like, Amazon. And so Paramount Plus, you can't and I Googled it. I checked Reddit. Nobody's really talking about this because, like, how many people are out there being like, I'm going to go watch season one of billions on Paramount Plus. So this thing is super choppy. I even went as far as to DM Paramount Plus on Twitter, but I guess they're

not checking it. So yeah, so it just doesn't work on certain episodes of Paramount Plus. Maybe someone out there, maybe a triple-click listener who works for Paramount can fix this problem. But anyway, streaming is a pain in the ass. Amazon Prime, at least it works okay on there. Anyway, that's my one more thing, Billions, enjoyable show. Very fun to watch. And that is it for this week's episode.

Let's go play a ton of Eldersgate 3, and then we can talk about it next week. Very excited to hear both of your thoughts and to play some more of that game. In the meantime, Kirk Marney, I'll see you both next week. Yeah, see you both next week. 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 maximum fun.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. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you. Doing the math. If there's like say there were 500 megabytes on a CD-ROM and they kind of first

came out. There's 122 gigabytes in Baldur's Game 3. So it would be 240. That's uncompressed. I guess that's not accurate. So you'd be like, Ma, this game is big. It's 200 CDs. Could you imagine? Imagine the manufacturing costs

for that game. It's one of those case logic, just books of CDs. You're installing it for a whole week before you can... Oh my God. And it's a week of active installing because you have to keep going back to your computer and... Switching it. Your insult fails on disc 157.

You're like, fuck. I'm never going to play this.