Triple Click - What's The Deal With: Dragon Age?

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

For the first time in ten years, a new Dragon Age is out this week. Maddy and Jason give some quick impressions on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, then get into overall series discussion with Kirk. The three of them talk about the long shadow of Origins, how the series has evolved over the years, and why people love Dragon Age characters so much.One More Thing:Kirk: The Legend of Vox Machina (Prime Video)Maddy: Scream (1996)Jason: We Solve Murders (Richard Osman)LINKS:Kirk’s 2014 Dragon Age lore explainer: https://kotaku.com/a-beginners-guide-to-all-things-dragon-age-1658487212Support 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

The Dragon Age gets all the attention, but before that age came the Blessed Age, the Storm Age, the Steel Age, the Exalted Age, and the Towers Age? Welcome to Triple Click, and why don't they make a game about the Tower's Age? It's got a nice ring to it. This week we are, of course, talking about Dragon Age, a storied RPG series with a new entry out this week. How does the Veil Guard stack up to the series legacy? I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shrier. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello, my friends. Maddie is wearing a compete shirt.

I am. RIP.I.P. Dearly departed e-sports website. It's slowly falling apart. It's so funny that there was a time when we thought that not only was e-sports survival business, it justified like an entire vertical website covering it. You know, it was fun while it lasted. And I feel like the beginning of the end happened before the pandemic. And then that was really just the nail in the coffin. although I did really enjoy reading those chapters on Overwatch League and Play Nice, a book by Jason Trier.

I was excited to get to that. I was like, I hope Jason doesn't skip over that shit show. And you didn't. You didn't. And it was thrilling to relive at all. I was talking to my colleague, Cecilia, the other day I went into the office and I was talking to her about how Overwatch is just not enjoyable to watch. Which she kind of disagrees with me on that. But I feel like most people.

People who love it always do. And yet it's really hard to follow. It just is. Sure is. You may not be able to read Maddie's e-sports coverage. It compete any longer, but you can hear her talk

occasionally about Overwatch and its watchability and other esports topics here on triple click because of our listener's support. We are very happy to be a totally listener-supported show. If you want to support the creation of this show,

you can go to maximum fun.org slash join. You can become a member and you can get access to our monthly bonus episodes, there are so many. One for every month that we've existed, which is quite a few months. And at the moment, we are in the middle of a very fun adventure, something new that we've never done called Triple Quest, which is a three-part Dungeons and Dragons campaign that the three of us work through with our guest DM, Matthew Mercer of Critical Role. Episode two,

or Act 2, I should say, is now live in the bonus feed for members. That is the continuation of our daring heist. And actually in the main feed earlier this week, everybody got access to our session zero planning episode as well as Act 1. So everyone will get Act 2 at the end of this coming month at the end of November. But if you want to hear Act 2 right now, you can become a member. Maximumfund.org slash join. You can see what happens. Act 2 is pretty spicy.

A lot happens. A lot happens. Be pretty, have a good time with it. I certainly had a good time coming up with some weird sound effects for it. So it was a lot of fun. Yeah, Kirk made music and sound effects for TripleQuest. You always don't mention that part, but it's something really cool about it. Yeah.

I am out. Yeah, there's a lot of music in there. I've learned a lot. It has been part of listening to Triple Quest is also getting to hear me learn in real time how to do the music for something like this. I'm getting better and better at it as we go. It's kind of a fun skill to develop. I feel like the problem is you're going to be like, after we finish this thing,

you're going to be like, now we should just do it a whole play, like live play, role played podcast. Now that I've learned these skills. I think that's fine. My God. Yeah. I quit our jobs and play D&D all day. It's enough work that I don't know that I could replicate it on a regular basis.

But that's what we do for our listeners and for our members who support us. So yeah, maximum fund.org slash join. Become a member. Support triple click. One more quick thing before we start. Last week, we asked you all to send in burning advice questions. And we got enough. I think I've been scrolling through.

We got enough that we're going to do an episode on advice, kind of like a burning question, except just for like life, advice, career advice, romantic advice, etc. Gaming advice. But I wanted to put out, yeah, gaming advice. Yeah, I wanted to put out another call for advice-related questions. So if you have any advice-related questions, you want our advice on something.

Email us, triple-click and maximum fun.org. I think we're going to do that episode in a few weeks, so stay tuned for that. Yay. Nice. Good. All right. So this week, we are talking about another massive RPG that is just coming out today as people are listening to this. Though Jason and Maddie have both had this game for a couple of weeks, I did not get an early code because I am a supporter of apostate mages.

And that just does not go over well with the chantry. So I'm on their shit list and they would not give me a review code. Just kidding. I don't know why they didn't give me a code. But you two have been playing quite a bit. And of course, that game is Dragon Age, the Veil Guard. So we'll be talking about this game more in depth in a couple of weeks once I've had a chance to play some. But for now, we just wanted to talk about Dragon Age in general and a little bit about that game as well, just because it's this pretty storied RPG series at this point. And I at least am a huge fan of the series, and it's been really interesting to watch it sort of grow and shift and evolve over the past. Geez, like 15 years.

So anyways, let's start just by talking some about the veil guard, since you two have both been playing, and I am very curious to know what you both think. Maddie, how about you go first? How much have you played and what do you think of Dragon Age the Veil Guard? Sure. I'm not very far. Jason's a little further than I am. I have gotten up to the companion Lucanus, who I think is my favorite so far. I would say I've liked it more, the more I've played. It's got another slow. start, which I'm certainly not alone in voicing. Our review at Polygon notes this. So I just kind of went in being like, okay, the companions are going to get more interesting. The conflicts are going to get kind of nice at first and then more interesting as time goes on. So I'm excited for more conflict. But Lucanus, I really enjoy. And I'm really just here for the story. I'm playing as a warrior. The combat, I think, is more action-oriented than other Dragon Ages have been. You can really

feel the god of war influence, especially if you pick warrior. There's three classes. It's rogue, mage and warrior. And predictably, I have an axe and a shield. No surprise there for me. But I started to really like it after a while. I didn't like the combat at first, but now I'm really enjoying it. I'm enjoying dodge rolling around and fighting weird demons and ghosts and goolies. At the very beginning of the game is like a confrontation with Solis, who people probably remember is one of the antagonists of this game from Dragon Age 2. He has kind of a heel turn situation. He was a companion. Now he's maybe not on our side anymore and he's causing all sorts of magical shenanigans that we have to fight against. But of course, it's far more complicated than it seems.

But yeah, I'm having a good time so far. I feel like I'm too early to have some grand proclamation, but I'm also in Slack with a lot of other Dragon Age diehards who are further than I am and are really liking it. So I've also been spoiled on a few things as happens when you work at Polygon.com. So I'm also kind of curious to get to some of the plot points that I know are happening later in the game and just kind of see how they play out. But really, I'm, I just want to see what happens in the story. And I'm, I'm taking it so far. But Jason, what do you think? Yeah, Jason. I am having a hard time with this game for a few reasons.

One is that the combat just bores me. There isn't a ton of variety. It's very repetitive. The enemies have like an unusually high amount of health. They all just feel like they take five seconds longer than they each should to kill, which is very annoying. It feels it's kind of like a watered down version of God of War, but with way less enemy variety and less fun playing around with. combos and stuff. There's nothing about the story that is gripping me. My understanding is that the interesting stuff happens much later, and it's a really, really slow burn, but like, I don't know

how much longer I can bring myself to keep playing. The writing is really, feels like it's, it's gone a little bit down in quality from previous iterations of the franchise. It feels very Marvel. It feels very rah-rah. We're all having a good time together and has less of that kind of grittiness that previous Dragon Age games have had. I actually, I went on YouTube and was watching some footage from Inquisition and also from Origins and

the tonal difference is really stark. Even at the beginning of the game, like the beginning of the game is meant to feel really dark, I suppose, and like it starts off with this kind of fake out where you think is dead and oh, actually he's not.

And that's kind of the tone for the rest of the game where like even at the, they can't even bring themselves to kill someone even after making you think that they did. And then the other thing, the other thing that is really just probably the biggest turnoff for me is that like the level design and the way it's all put together is just so straightforward and just lacking and interesting decisions, which is such a contrast from most RPGs, including previous Dragon Age games. And I'll give you an example, which is that like you get to,

in an early mission, you get to this warehouse and the door is locked. And it's like, okay, the prompt pops up. It is like, find another way into the warehouse. And then next door, you see this little thing. And it's a note and you pick it up. And it says, like something like fellow Venetori, Venetori, or the cult that you're fighting against. Please stop leaving the roof open.

It is letting in drafts. And then one of your party members says, ah, it lets in both drafts and people, yes? Sure. And it's shades. smashing down your throat. It's like the kind of the silliest thing. And there isn't even another way to get in. It's not like you can make a decision of like,

are we going to barge in? Are we going to like choose a combat route or a stealth route? You just jump down the roof and then you fight more dudes. There's never any options to like talk your way out of combat or make decisions. In fact, there's a part of the beginning of the game. The very first thing you do in the game is you wind up in this bar and you have this option. Do you want to fight these dudes or do you want to like talk your way out of it? and it's almost, it feels very deceptive that that is the first choice in the game because

like I haven't made a single other choice like that. Like there are no other choices. The levels are just kind of straightforward linear action levels where there's only one way to go and along the way you're kind of solving these really basic boring puzzles that just don't like involve moving one block to another or like rotating statues or something in this very rudimentary way and then just going more on this action path like this linear straightforward action path where you're like, you might go down a few gliders to get to different areas of the city, but there's no decisions to be made. And that fundamentally is the reason that I'm probably not going to play much more of this game,

is that you're not making decisions. You're not making decisions about what gear might be optimal, because every time you pick up a new piece of gear, it just shows you whether the arrow is green going up or the arrow is down going red, and you choose to equip it based on that. You're not making decisions about what your party member should do because you only control your main character, and like your party members, you can control their abilities through this radial menu,

but it's not like done in a strategic way because they're each, they're all on cool down. So like you can just kind of pick, okay, I want Harding to shoot at this enemy. And then all of her abilities will be on cool down. So you're just kind of, it's just kind of balancing meters the way you would in any action game. And you're not making any decisions about anything else. Like Mass Effect, right? Isn't that kind of what Mass Effect is? Yeah, it is mass effect.

Yeah, it is very similar to Mass Effect. and it's just you're not just not making interesting decisions and the characters in the story are not compelling enough for me to just kind of look past that stuff so yeah I'm I've been having a hard time with this game and I say this as someone who is a big fan of the Dragon Age games especially Origins which really still stands out to me as a really good game and then this obviously is coming out in the shadow of Baldur's Gate 3 which I think really revolutionized and set up a new bar for what we might think of as like just the capability of choice in RPGs. And that kind of makes this feel even more underwhelming for me.

But yeah, I'm really having a hard time of that. Yeah. I mean, I don't disagree about the linearity of the levels. I think I probably am a little more endeared to the characters than you are and willing to stick it out just for them and to see what more people get introduced and what happens with them. And I know there are big choices, story choices later. but I can't disagree.

Like, it's not great to have the first 10 hours of, I'm hearing 40 hours if you just mainline it. Like, that's not great to have that first chunk to be pretty slow, but I'm willing to give it a longer try. And we'll check back in later once we've all played more. Yeah, can I? I want to zoom out for a second. I'm bringing it back to the whole series just for a second.

Yeah, go for it. Because this feels to me like Dragon Age has been on this kind of, like this really interesting evolution where the first game was one type of game, more of kind of in the mold of the first two Balders Gates and Neverwinter Knights and BioWare's earliest games. And it was more of a strategy-heavy kind of tactical RPG where like to beat, when you, when you entered combat, if you didn't choose your powers correctly and like position your characters correctly, you would probably have a hard time. And gradually through Dragon Age 2 and then Inquisition and now this, it's just become way more of a straightforward button-mashing

action game. And this is really the pinnacle of that. And I find that just really disappointing. But even when it was doing that, like even into an Inquisition, you still had enough kind of minor choices or kind of minutes-to-minute choices that it still felt like you were engaging in an interesting way. And I remember in Inquisition having a good time juggling party members playing around with Iron Bull and others in the crew, Solis, of course. And just like having them interact with like fight enemies in ways that were a little bit different than the party could. And also just having more options and more kind of interesting choices as you went.

But this to me, it just feels like it's kind of this, the pinnacle of where the series has been heading since Origins. Like Origins, if you look back at it, was a very different game than the three games that followed it. It's sort of like, I don't know, like Rambo or something where the first entry is very, very different. And maybe the one that people remember fondly and the other is just kind of didn't quite hit that mark. Yeah, the origins has an interesting thing going on with combat where it's real time, but you pause it all the time, which is not really a style of combat that I see very often in anything.

It just seems like that's kind of gone by the wayside. I actually prefer straight turn-based combat. Like I loved the combat in Baldur's Gate, just like I love Divinity Original Sin too, just like I prefer JRP's with turn-based systems to like active time battle, like Final Fantasy. I think it's like I prefer all or nothing, either just full turn-based, it's totally tactical. I'm like looking down on everybody and like really taking my time to maximize my turns, or it's just an action game and I'm like learning enemy attack patterns and dodging in like, you know, like mixing it up like God of War or something.

and then anything in between can be kind of frustrating. You could do it all turn-based. Like in really the first three Dragon Age games, all three of them, you could play those entirely turn-based if you wanted to. Just it would go a little more slowly than it did. Remind me how the turns worked, though? Like how were turns to market? So the origin of this is those old isometric infinity engine games like Baldersgate 1

and Belder's Gate 2 and Icewindale and so on and so forth. And the idea was that like common unfolds in real time, but you're pausing constantly to make your, characters like engage in actions and in those games like you had to you were pausing and unpausing constantly because like to unpausing would actually make the actions unfold it was a smart system for its time and the reason it worked better than just like straight up turnbases because it was faster the reason that the only turn base works in a game like palterscape three is because there are no real kind of menial encounters like every encounter has some weight to it whereas in the

dragon age games there's a lot of just kind of mundane Like, yeah, mobs, random encounters that you fight that are just kind of waste of time. And so you want to go through those a little bit faster. And that's where the kind of real time with pause enter the factor to allow you to speed it up. So yeah, the distinction I'm drawing is like that I just don't think of that as turn-based. Like I find myself with like abilities stacking and weird timings. It's not really possible to like have my guys go and have their turn be done and then consider the next turn. There's always like I'm like trying to work it that way.

But then someone's being attacked or someone has a status effect that I. I need to go deal with and then someone needs healing, but I have to like front load the healing and then unpause it long enough for them to heal. But in that time, someone else is like taking a bunch of damage. And I always find it kind of frustrating and hard to handle. And actually that difference you lay out in the way that the encounters are designed is a big reason that I prefer Baldur's Gate and like really kind of wind up bouncing off of a lot of games, not Dragon Age Origins. Baldur's Gate 3. Let's be specific with this. To be specific, Baldur's Gate 3. Well, in general, the design

ethos of having every encounter be meaningful, I think is most players prefer that. Most players prefer not having encounters be a waste of time. Yeah, it is uncommon. Yeah, I mean, it's Thalarian style, right? Divinity Original Sin of this as well. But yeah, so I don't love that. So if you're going to have like just trash mobs that are kind of fun to blow through, at least give me like action combat where I can just sort of fight my way through them. If it's a little more like an MMO where you just press a button and your party auto fights, kind of less my thing. That said, I really liked Dragon Age origins. Like I've loved. I love loved that game, and it was totally on the strength of the narrative. The combat was really

never that satisfying or fun to me. I wonder if the two of you had a similar relationship with it. Yeah. Oh, I did not like the combat in origins at all. Yeah. Which is part of why, heading into Vailgard, I was like, you could not pay me to replay all the Dragon Age games. You're more happy about the action trajectory. I'm having, I think, a better time in part, because in this game I'm playing as a warrior, yeah, it's pretty bog standard warrior combat, but I don't mind fighting these mobs. I'm out here. I'm swinging an axe. Like, that does feel different to me in a good way. It's not like it's life-changing combat or anything, but some of those finicky aspects of older buyerware games, and I include Mass Effect in this, that's my least favorite part of

revisiting them, replaying them. I think back on it, all the UI screens. I mean, these are the kinds of things I complain about on this show. And like, God knows, I was a person that Baldur's Gate 3 was a real challenge for me. I was like, this is so finicky. This is just finicky up the wazoo. And I was in it for the story. But the combat for me was like my least favorite part. And it became the thing that I grew used to, grew to tolerate in order to get through a story that I thought was really excellent and worth it. So for me, Vailgard, I'm like, hey, I just, I just hit these mobs with a with a hammer over and over and just get to the part of the story that people say is good. And I'll be fine. But yeah. Right. And it'll still come down to whether this story is any good, which really was the thing.

And I think is kind of the defining, the defining thing of Dragon Age is the story. Like, as much as the change toward action combat has been like one of the narratives of this series. To me, anyways, it's always come down to how good is the story, how good are the characters, like, what happens, how exciting are the twists and turns, how impactful are the choices.

And that for me was, I mean, that's what made Dragon Age origins so remarkable. It was this really, like, striking. world that started out seeming kind of similar to other fantasy worlds, but very quickly revealed a lot of interesting wrinkles and then led you to just have to make some really serious decisions, especially by the end. Yeah, and you were constantly making those decisions. I mean, Dragon Age Origins, it starts out with this, like, ritual where things go awry and, like, you have to watch your mentor Duncan, like, murder some dudes, and it's all very, very bleak. And then it's compartmental, like, the game is divided into these different areas where you're, like,

going around and trying to get different people to help you, the elves and the mages, and such. And you have to make a really tough decision in each of those sections. Very different than this new game. Also, I mean, I want to talk about the combat for one more sections because I think the characters really tie into that. I think part of the appeal for me, I mean, I've been played origins since it came out. So, what, 15 years? So I can't really speak to whether the combat has aged well. But I do remember that one of the highlights was building a party. And one of the highlights of building a party is that, like, you kind of, I think, at least for me, I grow more fond of characters when they play a role in the gameplay.

And so, like, I was like, oh, okay, Morgan, she's got quite an attitude on her, but she's a very useful mage. And so she's probably going to grow on me over the course of this game. Oh, Leliana, she's a little bit annoying. But, oh, wait, she's a useful healer here. Oh, maybe she'll grow on me too. And they did, in part because of their gameplay mechanic, like, their use in that party structure. In this new game, there is no party composition. you just kind of like, you don't really need a healer or whatever.

It doesn't quite work like that, which I think also kind of detracts. Well, you do if you're playing as a warrior. I really like having a healer around personally. But like people just have random healing about, like Harding as a random healing ability or like Neff as a random healing. It's not like healers and mages. It's not like a party build quite the way that like origins is. That's true, I guess.

But there are also skill trees and you can like select whether you want them to like max out healing or different things. There's a little nuance there, but I agree with you. It's less strategic. They're kind of just there like, you know, Elizabeth and Biococicinfinite or something. Like they're just there to like throw potions at you and they can't get hurt in battle seemingly either. They're just kind of like your buddies in that same way that Elizabeth was where the things

that they do to endure themselves to you are just kind of throwing just sticks and stones and potions. and that doesn't feel like, oh, I'm selecting my fighter, I'm selecting my mage, I'm selecting my specific lineup of people for this very specific fight that needs like these elemental attacks, that kind of thing. Yeah. But yeah, the characters are always a highlight. And I think Origins and even two has, even though that game was much more aligned because

it was developed in less than a year and a half. And so it was only taking place in one city. And I'll never forget, like, picking up random, like, accessories. and instead of having names, it was just like, ring, ring, ring, amulet, amulet, amulet, and they all had different abilities. Or like going to the same warehouse for the 17th time. Yeah. To fight those waves of enemies. But even that game with Anders had some incredible character development and progression. Andrews was a really interesting storyline. Yeah, there's Avaline and Verrick was introduced in Dragon Age 2. Dragon Age 2 had a lot of great writing. Inverick, yep, the introduction of Eric. Yep, yeah, and a lot of interesting stuff

happened over time. And yeah, and Inquisition also, um, Remember that poker game and some of the really just real, real special moments, I think, getting together in the Inquisitions. I mean, Inquisition had the part where everybody started singing and they found their hope again by singing a song together. That was like one of the greatest moments of any video game because I'm a huge cheeseball. I love that stuff. I don't know. And that again, actually, an Inquisition doesn't happen for a good 10 hours or something. Sort of an RPG eternal truism that the games always get better after a while.

It starts slow. I mean, you need some of that, right? Like, you do need some of that because you can't know the characters and you can't appreciate the impact of an emotional moment without having some time to it. But I think you can have a slow story that is kind of mitigated by other things. And an Inquisition, so Inquisition, the pacing of that game was really weird. And a lot of people wound up just kind of endlessly doing filler quests in the first area,

the hinterlands to the point where I could. Taka, we had to do a big story that was like, PSA, leave the hinterlands because everyone felt compelled to do everything. But once you got out of the hinterlands and started doing other regions, there was a lot of cool stuff in there. There was a lot of stuff that it made you feel like you were making good progression. There was a power system where you would unlock new regions and new quests based on like this inquisition power that you would add to by doing other quests and other kind of side activities. And it all, I thought, made for an interesting gameplay loop that also tied into the characters, because as you were doing these quests and stuff,

you might build up, you may make small decisions that impress your characters in some way or built your relationship with the characters in some way. Yeah, Inquisition was a classic big table game where your party gets around a big table and then you look down at the map of the world and like unlock new areas and go do stuff. There is a big table in there.

It's really like a staple in a certain type of RPG and action RPG. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, to talk about the characters a little bit more and the ways that you interact with characters in these games, being out in the field with your favorite party members is a big part of the Dragon Age experience. It's also the Mass Effect experience. It's like the BioWare experience,

and really all of these RPGs do this, but I really have fond memories of the banter between party members in various Dragon Age games. And that was something that Inquisition allowed for a lot of space for it because it was much more of an open-world game, certainly than two, but also then origins. And I don't actually know how open, the Valeguard is, but like a big part of Dragon Age is walking around with your faves, especially

as you get to know them better. Like everybody winds up with a group of, I guess it's usually four people. Maybe, is it a smaller party in Valegard? It's three. Yeah. So, yeah, it really is more like Mass Effect. Yeah. Yeah, so having that sort of group of people, it was really fun because the characters bounce off

of one another in really interesting ways. And that's always been a staple of this series. And I think it's also of Mass Effect. Like the moments when you're sitting around the table, maybe. the big table and people are kind of fighting like they have different views of where things should go and part of what you're doing when you're making decisions in the story it isn't just okay what's going to befall these people whose village we just saved do we sacrifice them to the wolves or do we help them plant crops like sometimes it's like well this character really wants the wolves to

feed tonight and this person is really into this town having crops and so you're also kind of like playing alliances of characters against one another and that's something I've always found really compelling about this series, like really cool about the way they write characters and sort of fit them into the story. That's something I'm really looking forward to also in Vailgard, but isn't quite happening yet. But I totally agree. And like to kind of speak to what Jason was referring to before, I almost feel like the point of designing your party for different Vildegard quests or really any quest in a Dragon Age game is, well, who's fighting right now? Which two characters are going to bounce off of each other in an interesting way? Or say, funny quips to each other.

Like, ideally you get that sweet, sweet conflict. And again, at the beginning of the game, because they don't, they have kind of a group of characters who all get along. I do think that's a mistake to start off a Dragon Age game that way, because I have come to think of Dragon Age. And to a lesser extent, Mass Effect, but really Dragon Age is a game where the characters don't get along. And they have core ideological and sometimes religious conflicts with one another.

And some of the characters are like kind of bigoted against certain. fantasy races. There's some fantasy races I'm involved in this series. And like that's part of the storytelling is like, okay, how is this going to unfold? What is it like when these characters are forced into this diverse group of people? How are they going to deal with this? There's like stories about the character's

sexuality. Like Dorian's story is a favorite of mine. I think it's really fascinating. And like to have the characters have those opportunities to like bounce off each other because of the nature of their identities, I think is part of what makes building a party so successful in those games and so cool because

it's like, it's not just that it's like, oh, plot beats are unfolding. It's like, no, there's like almost these little secret dialogue choices that you, that feel like a special present because you don't know what you're not seeing. You're like, oh, imagine what the conversations would be if I'd chosen two or three different characters here. And like, that illusion is part of what makes the series seem so much more powerful. Yeah. Something that was remarkable about Dragon Age Origins when it first came out was the fact that there is no explicit morality. assigned to decisions that you make, which was a design decision by the narrative team, and stood in contrast to Mass Effect, which had just come out, what, I guess, a couple of

years earlier, and has the very famous of this point, Paragon and Renegade system where you're, and it's interesting because Paragon and Renegade aren't exactly good and bad, like they kind of are, but in Mass Effect, you're always shepherd, like, you're always kind of trying to save the world and eventually make one of those three decisions at the end of Mass Effect three. But, like, you can just kind of be a dick about it, or you can be like a really nice person. But you're always kind of moving in the same direction. In Dragon Age, there are much more consequential

choices that you can make, but it doesn't ascribe anything color-coded or even really just any morality at all to any decisions that you make, which is pretty cool. It doesn't, but it kind of dies. So something that, another thing that has kind of changed pretty drastically from origins is that in origins,

you'd have a dialogue tree that was kind of like old school Balders Gate Game, or even like Balders Gate 3, where it was like 5 or 6, different options just kind of presented one after another one, two, three, four, five. And then starting in Dragon Age 2 and then into Inquisition and now into Vailguard, that was replaced with this radial system where it was more like a little prompt, and then your character would say something that was loosely related to the prompt,

kind of like Fallout 3 going into Fallout 4. And so starting with Dragon H2 and then Inquisition and then Vailguard, that prompt also came with a little icon in the center of the radial wheel that shows you what kind of choice you're making. So it'll be like a thumbs up for the good choice or like a like a guy like with his arms crossed in heavy armor for like the evil choice or like the tough choice or whatever. Wasn't it? Yeah, it was kind of stoic, good and goofy. Yeah. And sort of and now there's more than that too. And it's like. So I was going to get into that that this is one way that the series has changed. Has changed. Yeah. Origins and what was remarkable about origins. And actually

I think that one of the reasons that that game's legacy is what it is. Like, I do feel that Dragon Age Origins, at least until now, I haven't played Veilgard, but I wouldn't be surprised if even after Veilgard looms large over this series forever. It's always the one that the true fans are like, that was the best one. Why don't they just do that again? I think that that kind of thing is actually at the heart of it. It's not like about like combat design exactly or character writing exactly. It's a kind of combination of all these little choices.

And a really big one is that you're just sort of roll-up. playing. Like you're free to just role play and you can just be like, well, I don't know. What decision do I want to make here? How do I want to respond without the game prompting you and having all these UI prompts, which right then began to change in Dragon Age 2 and then also in Inquisition

and it sounds like it's also the case in Veilgard that they're just more like, they're kind of laying it on thicker with what it is you're doing and the kinds of choices that you're making. Yeah. Dragon Age Origins was a fascinating game for so many reasons. One is that it was EA's, it was the Bywors, I believe first game

after getting acquired by EA. It went through like a turbulent development at the time. Like at the time, it seemed incredible. It was in development for something like five or six years, which was unusual in 2009 when it was released. It was rebooted a few times. It had a lot of issues. And one of the reasons for that, I believe, is how ambitious it was.

It was called Dragon Age origins because at the beginning of the game, you could pick from six different origins that was each like an hour or two of a prolog. And they were all so different. And they were all. drastically different. Each one has like a really tough choice in it. They all really flesh out like the different races of the world. And it was crazy.

It was the type of thing that it would be impossible for a game to get away with today because like all that development time and money would be spent on things that like most players would not see because most players would only choose one of six. I mean you say that if Alders Gate 3 did that. Well, that's the thing. Well, that's one of the reasons that Balders Gay 3 is so special. But at the time, I mean, those were incredible and really started things off with a bang. especially if you went with one of the best ones,

like the Dwarven Noble, which was incredible. Yeah, of course. Now everyone knows. Of course, nobody did, I feel like nobody did that to start with. And then it kind of got around. I did.

I like happened to pick you as my first one. You're the person who started it and told everybody else. Yeah. You had to tell everyone else that it's the good one. Yeah. Well, I was like, Dwarven politics. It sounds sick.

It is. It is sick. That game, I think more so than later games was really a direct descendant of those old-school RPGs that people really love, because Byword started to change a lot after EA's acquisition and after all that happened. I mean, the doctors who started the company, Re Muzica and Greg Messchuk, they left shortly after that. I think it was like they left four years after EA took over, something like that, or five years, after the typical golden handcuff thing. And some other people who were just kind of like integral parts of Dragon Age and BioWare and the old

Bauerst stuff, Baldur's Gate and Cotaur and such, um, left, started to leave after that, which is one of the reasons that you started to see the series evolve, um, in different ways for better and or for worse, um, after that. The timeline is interesting, just because of how weird it is, that it starts in 2009 with origins, which, yeah, by all accounts was many years in development and was just kind of this massive project that they finally got done. And then really quickly after that, in 2011 we get Dragon Age 2 which now infamously

had this whatever it was 16 month turnaround or something crazy and then Dragon Age Inquisition which was you know okay now we're going to take our time with this one we're going to give people what they want lots and lots of content maybe too much content we're going to give them everything but that comes out in 2014 yeah that's still pretty soon after

it feels like a really fast turnaround in today's standards yeah 10 years and now it's been 10 years and like and in the 10 years years since Inquisition came out, BioWare has just like gone through this totally wild upheaval. Their whole reputation has been tarnished.

Anthem came out and was a disaster. Mass Effect Andromeda came out and was like very widely disliked. Like there's just this sense that Bioware is over. This everything is riding on the veil guard and they really need to, you know, show that they still got it. It must be very stressful for them. It's just been a wild 10 year period. Yeah, to watch.

Let me give a little context here for people who haven't like read every single article that I've written about all this or like kept up on every single detail which is that like... But first of all, shame on you. Yeah, shame on your. Yeah, what are you doing? This is all under the, under the thumb of EA

just kind of having its a few year period, maybe decade long period of insisting that everything would be multiplayer. At first it was like EA, all their like season past stuff because they didn't, because use games were a big problem for them and they were trying to counter that in every way. They had those like codes that you had to get inside the game. games and registered those.

Before GameStop was a meme stock, it was actually a place where people bought use games. Yeah, and that was considered a huge problem. The media industry used to see it as a big problem. And then they went into multiplayer, Dragon Age Inquisition at this multiplayer mode. Basically everything had to have multiplayer for a while. And there was also a huge contingent of people including Casey Hudson, who was the studio had a buyer who wanted multiplayer, and they started working on Anthem. But what happened was, so Inquisition came out in 2014.

They had multiplayer. team. Yeah, that's what I was saying. And then the Dragon Age team started working on this new project, co-named Joplin that was under Mike Laidlaw. He was a creative director of Inquisition and a bunch of those folks. And the idea was it would go to Teventor and it would be like a spy heist type of game. And for various reasons that got rebooted in 2017. Essentially it got canceled. And it was like, we're going to do something totally different for a Dragon Age. Essentially, we want to add more multiplayer to this thing, among other things. At the same time, Mass Effect Endromeda had just come out and that was causing problems for the

the whole company because it was widely panned. I think it sold decently, but it was pretty, it became a meme because of all the facial animations at the time. People really didn't like it. And then two years later, Anthem came out and that was the biggest disaster by where it could have had. It was this kind of mediocre live service shooter game that was just flawed in many, many ways. Remember how, uh,

how you had to do all those frigging tombs to, uh, to like those grinding tombs. Oh my God. Anyway. And then at the same time, like this new version of Dragon Age that was totally multiplayer, or not totally, but that was largely multiplayer, was under development until another year and a half after that when Biware finally, essentially Casey Hudson left Byerware, Gary McKay, this new studio had took over.

And as part of that whole process, EA gave them permission to make it single player only. So the current iteration of Dragon Age 4, the one that we are getting today, has basically been in development for four years. maybe add a little bit to that. And that was because EA essentially shifted gears again and was like, oh, Jedi Fall on Order sold really well. Maybe we don't have to do multiplayer. Oh, Anthem was a disaster. Maybe we don't have to make Dragon Age 4 Anthem with Dragons.

You just picture there's some cliched, evil, suited executive being like, you know what I think you guys should do is a heist in the Tventor Imperium. Yeah, right? It'll be great. The sickest idea ever. Yeah. But along the way, with all this turmoil, in addition to all the other problems that they face and like the hardships and the turbulent trouble development and crunch and all the other bad stuff, they lost a lot of people along the way. So like if you compare the credits, I've not done this, maybe I will, but if you compare the credits of Vail Guard to like Inquisition even, let alone origins, it is almost certainly, almost entirely different people.

There are a few people who have been there since early days. John Epler, one of the directors, has been there since at least Dragon Age origins, I believe. I'll have to fact check this one. But he's been there for a long time. Definitely worked on Inquisition. But like most people have not been there this whole time. So it is a very different crew of people that just happens to be working at a company called Byore. Yeah.

Yeah. That's so weird. Yeah, they got rid of a lot of the writing stuff, I know, which concerned me anyways, since the writing has always been so strong in Dragon Age. Man, I went back, I periodically go back to check this, usually when I'm getting ready to talk about Dragon Age. I wrote this article for Kotaku in, I guess it must have been in 2014 for Inquisition. It was a lore explainer, a beginner's guide to everything, Dragon Age. And it's a fun article. It's when we were writing explainers in the style of like the boldface questioner, like your interlocutor kind of asks you stuff.

But then sometimes they're funny and they like, they kind of derail the conversation and you got to kind of have a conversation with yourself. Anyways, it was when that style of explainer was really big. And it was like explaining all the lore. And I went back and reread it because I'd forgotten half of it. And it just reminded me how rich the world is and how cool it is. Considering that Thetas, the setting, stands for the Dragon Age setting. I know. I can't believe. You would think that would be the most generic fantasy ever.

And even if you look at it, I mean, it's called Dragon Age. There's just a big dragon and like a warrior on the cover. It's got dwarves. Yeah, there's like a hot sorceress and she doesn't wear much. You could imagine that it's going to be a big cliche, and then you get into the particulars, and the particulars are almost always interesting. They are. So the fact that they lost so many writers over the years and so many of the people who were responsible for shaping that world, that is a big loss because that's not easy to do to take those kinds of fantasy tropes, dragons and mages and, you know, whatever, elves and dwarves and the rest, and turn it into something that feels distinct, even though it still has all of the hallmarks of Tolkien and Tolkienism. whatever you want to call it.

Yeah, most notably David Gator, who is the lead writer on Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age Inquisition and then left the studio a few years after that. But yeah, but there are a bunch of people as well who are just no longer at the studio. So, yeah, I mean, again, just worth keeping in mind as you watch the kind of evolution of this series. Kirk, I did read that explainer before I started playing Thalgard and it was very, very helpful. Yeah, I feel like I need to still. to this. And I wrote that explainer having played through Inquisition, so I like knew what people would need to know. But it's good to know that that information is still helpful for going into

this game. I do remember even in Inquisition, they're just immediately like Orlays this, the chantry that, you know, and Brasde this. And you're like, whoa. They, the proper nouns are common. And like, a lot of it is coming back to me. But there have definitely been somewhere. I'm like, I don't remember who that is or where that is. I appreciate that. They don't throw it out. they make you remember that stuff. The stuff is interesting. Like they might as well, you know, if they're not committed to remembering everything in their world, like, why should we be? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Although I keep thinking about something that Maddie that you said a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about metaphor about how unique that world felt and how this is just kind of fantasy, Europe, kind of a lot of those tropes. And Dragon Age's lore, I don't want to sell it short because it's got a lot of cool ideas. And this idea of this conflict, especially between the mages and the Templar and how. like neither side is really evil or neither side is really good. Yeah, I like that conflict. It's really interesting.

And there's a lot of nuance to the characters and the lore in general. But still, coming off of metaphor, which just kind of feels so different and so unique, it's a little bit of an overshadowing. But really, beyond that, I mean, if I'm comparing traditional, because that's kind of comparing, I don't know, apples and hammers. But like, if you're looking at traditional fantasy, Baldersgate 3 really hangs over this game for me in terms of lore and characters and decisions. And that's the thing.

I was worried about that, just knowing how incredible that game was and the sheer scale of the decisions that you can make. And also knowing how this game went through this turbulent development cycle and how it wound up going more towards the action Godavory type of gameplay. I was worried that Baldur's Gate 3 would hang over it. And unfortunately, for me, it has. You know, I've been thinking about Baldur's Gate 3.

and something that it does that none of these BioWare games do is it really embraces its tabletop roots because, well, in a lot of different ways, but in a big way, because there's a narrator. There's basically a dungeon master narrating what's going on and sort of describing your character and the different things they're doing

and painting a picture for you that goes beyond what you're seeing on the screen. And that's such a big part of role-playing, like playing Dungeons and Dragons, as we all learn. Like, it's something that Matt brought to our, you know, to Triple Quest, to evocatively paint a picture and just his amazing voice, the way that he is so good at sort of casting this spell.

Like, that's such a big part of fantasy, of having an adventure like that. And it's something that all of those older BioWare games really up through origins kind of did well as well. I don't know which ones had narrators or not. But they kind of kept that tabletop, something like the core of that tabletop experience was always kind of there. And origins moved away from it somewhat, but it still kind of felt tether. to that, and then this series has been gradually moving away from that and toward a more like

Hollywood style, cinematic style of storytelling. And I feel like Baldersgate 3 was just a reminder of how powerful that is. Like they just brought it all back and were like, never mind. What if none of that other stuff happened? We have a totally fresh slate and we can just do this like you're playing a D&D campaign. And as it turns out, at least for a game, that works really well. I don't know, better or worse, they're very, very different. But like, it really does work to go back to the tabletop thing.

I just want to say real quick, since I've been so down on Valeguard, I'm not necessarily against the series moving into action or moving away from or evolving in different ways. Like I'm open-minded when it comes to that stuff. It's just that in this case, the evolution just doesn't work for me. And Final Fantasy 16 is another, I think, good comparison because that also is just heavy on the action. And in that game, I mean, I had issues with the story, especially in the last third of that game and some of the other design choices like sidequist that game made. but the combat for that game is just so much better than the combat in this game. It just feels so much better and doesn't feel like you're just mashing buttons against enemies endlessly. So a lot of it really for me and a lot of my negativity towards fail guard just comes towards the actual kind of feel of the game rather than it evolving in a way that I don't like.

I'm not necessarily a traditionalist when it comes to gameplay evolutions. It just doesn't feel good in this case. Right. You want them to evolve in a more fun direction. Yeah. Is that so much to ask? You're going to evolve. Evolve in a good way.

Evolve to be better. Evolve good. Okay? That's all we ask. Isn't that what Darwin? Darwin wants that? Yeah, I think so. You heard of Darwin?

Well, I'm really looking forward to playing this game and forming my own thoughts. We'll be talking about it. I'm so curious what you're going to think. It'll be fun. Yeah, me too. We'll be talking about it again in a couple of weeks once I've had a chance to play. And everyone in the world has played some, so we'll be able to talk a little more freely like we won't have to worry about spoiling stuff and whatever. So that'll be fun. Until then,

let's take a break and then we will come back with one more thing. Hello, sleepyheads. Sleeping with celebrities is your podcast Pillow Pal. We talk to remarkable people about unremarkable topics, all to help you slow down your brain and drift off to sleep. For instance, the remarkable actor Alan Tudik. You hand somebody a yardstick after they've shopped at your general store. The store's name is constantly in your heart because yardsticks become part of the family. Sleeping with celebrities hosted by me, John Moe, on Maximumfund.org or wherever you get your podcasts, night night. What's up, people of the world? It's Mark and Hal when we got this with Mark and Howe. The show that settles those pointless arguments that you and your friends have. Should you

put ketchup on a hot dog or liquid foam or bar soap? And our 500th episode of we got this with Mark and Hal is available. Now it is supersized and a ton of fun. Yeah, we've got guests coming back from the entire 500 episode run of our show. Some of your favorite Max Fun stars, some of your favorite regular out in other places in the world stars too, some really fun surprises and every single one of them had a topic for us to cover. You can listen to it right now on maximum fun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, and we are back with one more thing. I'm actually going to go first because it's sort of in line with what we were just talking about. My one more thing is a show that I've been watching called The Legend of Vox Machina,

which I'm sure a lot of our listeners know features a friend of the show and one-time dungeon master, Matthew Mercer, who as it happens, you know, he's also got this little thing called Critical Role that he's a dungeon master for. Heard of it. And they made, they did an actual play show that was so popular that they made it into an animated series that's now on Amazon Prime. So I knew about this. I've seen headlines about it, especially recently because there's a new season. So there are headlines all over the place being like, the new season is devastating, emotional, like kind of overheated stuff. And I'm like, man, is that show really good?

Like the adaptation of their D&D campaign? So Emily and I decided to give it a shot. And I do have to say the first couple of episodes didn't totally grab me. It's like to capture the tone. So this is an adaptation, I believe, of one of the seasons of Critical Roald. role. I haven't like listened all the way through critical role, but I believe this is like a loose adaptation with like some changes to make it work as a TV show. And it's an animated show. It's very much an adult animated show. So there's a lot of swearing. There's some really hardcore violence that's

actually pretty awesome. Like if you're into like pretty creative and exciting fights and like some really like gnarly stuff happening. It's got a lot of that. But it's also like it's got a lot of blue humor and a lot of sort of dick jokes and sex jokes and at least at first, especially, what's his name? The Bard Scanlan is his name. And he's kind of their bard character. He's a halfling. He's like the singer. And so he's always singing songs.

He was not doing it for me. And I think anytime you've got a character where like everyone is always talking about how annoying that character is and telling him to shut up, there comes a point where like you will. I'm going to say a Meg Griffin, if you will. Yeah. there comes a point well yeah I don't know about with Meg

but Deadpool is a good comparison there comes a point where you should maybe consider rewriting the character which they are doing over time but that was like a little bit tough for me but I will say stick it out I don't know if this is because I think this was originally a short that they made that may have just been the first two episodes

where they like fight a dragon but that those the first two episodes is like a kind of a standalone like a one shot where they go and there's a dragon and they get hired by this kingdom and they have to go deal with it And you get to know all the members of Vox Machina, which is the name of the party. So it's, you know, the barbarian and the cleric and the elven magic user and the twin half elves who are like rogues. And it's kind of pretty standard adventure RPG characters.

So you get to know them and they do a quest and then that ends. And then the actual storyline begins of the season, which is about like this vampire couple who've taken over the hometown of like one of the members of the party, Percy. And that's like a really good story. Like once that gets cooking, which is in episode three, I was like, oh, well, now I really want to know what happens next. And we wound up just watching the whole thing. And it's really great. It's really fun. It's got killer voice talent, you know, because so does critical role.

It's like Laura Bailey and Ashley Johnson, of course, is in it. And of course, Matthew Mercer is in it. And it's very fun because I've been spending so much time editing his voice because I've been editing all these Triple Quest episodes. He's not any one character. he's like all the NPCs because he was the dungeon master. So just over and over again, some guy will be like a guard, I'll be like, hey, what was that? And I'm like, ah, it's Matthew.

And then he also plays kind of the big bad, like one of the villains. So then you get to really hear him doing lines. And just every time it's sort of fun to hear him because I've been working with his audio files so much. But really, it is very good. It's very fun. It's like kind of a mix of silly, modern humor with like some really incredibly great action sequences. It doesn't look amazing. It's not, for example, Delicious in Dungeon, the show I talked about

a couple of weeks ago, the studio Trigger show. That show is like an artistic smorgas board. It's like amazing visual art, like so much creativity. It's like amazing to look at. This show is not amazing to look at. It looks just kind of like, I don't know, any of those Netflix animated shows from when they were green lighting anyone with a pitch for an animated show for like four years, so they're like 70 of them, where they're all kind of a little cheap looking like people, people know the art style I'm talking about. It's pretty straightforward. But what they lack in that kind of visual art and actually the music doesn't do a lot for me either. Like all of the aesthetic qualities are a little lacking. They make up for that stuff with like really

inventive action scenes and like really bone crunching action and some really awesome stuff. Like it's like very inventive, the actual ideas that are happening. And it's great. I really recommend it. So I think we are we started season two and you know totally watch up to the new season. If the friggin' headlines can stop spoiling stuff, that would be nice. But yeah, I'm really enjoying it. It's a pretty easy watch. And if anyone out there is thinking about it and hasn't given it a shot, give it a shot, and get up through episode three. Because that's where the real plot of the first season kicks into gear, and that's the good stuff. So yeah, Legend of Vox Machina. It is on Prime Video. Jason, what's your one more thing?

What you said about Matt Mercer reminds me of Sunderfolk, which was my one more thing last week, the game from Dreamhaven. So that game has the voice actor Anjali Bimani, who plays Simetra, plays the dungeon master in that game, and she voices every character in the game in like funny movies. Oh, yeah, yeah, I saw that about that game.

But it's like done in a way that like a DM would be doing funny voices. It's very clever. So cool. Yeah. Really cool idea. I love it. I want that trend to just become a trend again. It's good.

My one more thing is a new book called We Solve Murders by Richard Oswin. Richard Oswin being the British kind of TV personality who is also known for writing the phenomenal book series, the Thursday Murder Club, is that the name of it? Right. Yes. It's about a group of retirees of elderly folks who saw murder.

Pensioners in his language. Yes. And We Sell Murders is a brand new kind of series, and it's set up as the first entry in what will be a franchise and what will be a series. and it is just as brilliant. I might even like it more than his previous one. He is a phenomenal talent. He's gotten better as he's gone.

Yeah, oh yeah. Well, I mean, that's what happens. You write these murder mysteries and you get really good at. I haven't finished. I think I just read the second or third book. No, I just read two of the third as they murder. I haven't read the third or fourth yet, but I will. They're good.

We saw murders is really cool. Just to give you a quick plot description, it's basically there's this lady named Amy, who is this kind of rough and time. tough bodyguard for hire and her father-in-law, who is this retired cop slash investigator and the two of them team up to solve a series of murders and shenanigans ensue. When the book starts off, Amy is like working for this like billionaire, billionaire author on a private island protecting her. And yeah, the plot just carries on from there. And it is a lot of of fun. Influencers get murdered and old people gang up and have great relationships and work

together to solve crimes and there's hijinks taking you from Ireland to Dubai to private islands and it's just a ton of fun. I love this book. It's called We Solved Murders, which is just a phenomenal title and yeah, really, really enjoyed it. Richard Osmond, man, dude can write and he can craft a fantastic super compelling mystery. That is for sure. He's funny. Yeah. He's a funny writer and he's really got his finger on the pulse of the people. We want to watch old people get together and solve murders and we want to watch influencers get killed. It's true. And so this book, what the people want. This book has a little bit more. So the problem the Thursday Murder Club runs into is that like you can't go on globe traversing escapades with your main characters.

Well, at least the first couple of books haven't. I don't know if the third or fourth book have them traveling around the world. But they're not really. They keep pretty close to their retirement. Yeah, because they're in a retirement community. They're like, they're not capable necessarily of like getting involved in heavy duty action sequences. And he does have other characters like younger cops and stuff like that have more action stuff. But in this, the main character can get involved in a lot more actiony hijinks and there's a lot more traversal and globe trotting excopades. And that adds to the intrigue and the overall sense of, uh, uh, action and mystery and stakes, high stakes.

So just really enjoyable book. Whistle Murders, Richard Osmond, check it out. I'll definitely read it. I've read all of his books. Awesome. Yeah, he cranks him out too. I admire his work ethic. Oh, my God.

Yeah, so prolific. Maddie, what is your one more thing? So it is Halloween as we put out this episode. And that means that for movie night, we watched a horror movie, and it was one that my beautiful wife had never seen, which is the movie Scream from 1996. And if you've never seen this movie before, you must watch it. It's incredible.

It is an all-timer. I saw it for the first time myself last year. And somehow the identity of the killer was never told to me. And if that's you, if you're listening to this and you're like, I don't know who ghost face is. I don't know who the slasher is and scream from 1996. You should watch this movie because it's also an extremely fun mystery. It's very well told. And Dina loves to guess who the killer is and everything we ever watch together.

We watch a lot of mysteries together. And at the beginning, I was like, so I know who it is and I'm going to reveal nothing as we go along, which was very fun. And I also said, if you guess it, I will be very impressed. And Dina guesses things very easily. And she did not, she did not guess this. And I will also say the other good review, usually at some point over the course of a film, my wife will pick up her phone. and check her text messages did not happen scream 1986 incredible film it really moves it really freaking moves and if you're like i know everything i've seen i've seen it i've seen the opening scene

with drew barrymore on the phone i'm in your house like you think you know it you don't you don't know it it's so good it's just like a 10 out of 10 movie this is like when i recommended the movie jaws and i was like have you guys heard of this movie jaws but you know what people should still watch these movies they're so good i mean west craven is a good friggin' director. Dude knows how to make a movie. He's not just like a fluke success. Also, like every actor in it is so incredible. Like Courtney Cox as Gail Weathers is incredible. Iconic performance. Neff Campbell, Matthew Lillard, really rocked. He's incredible. It's great. I guess I won't spoil it, but it's funny because I watched this movie not that long ago,

though I saw this when it first came out. I think I saw it in theaters. And I was like, is this going to be too scary for me during the first 30 minutes? It's more funny than scary. The first, but the opening sequence with Drew River is like truly a horror movie. And everything after that is, I was like, okay, this is fine. I can hang. But at the time, I thought it might be too scary. It's funny, I think that I won't spoil it, but that the motivation of the killers is the most

1990s end of history-ass motivation for a killer ever. It's very of its time, but in a perfect way. Are you guys going to watch all the other screen movies? You know, I guess. There's a lot of them. There's a lot and they're not all good. And after we watched this one, she was like, we should watch a lot. all of them, but so, to be continued, I guess I'm not sure how far we're going to make it.

If you do, let me know how it goes. Man, growing up in the 90s, those scream masks were everywhere. I know. It was impossible to get away from them. I know. Ghostface. Yeah, that first ghost face appearance, genuinely scary. It becomes a little less scary.

Well, and then scary movie with the like stone ghost faced mask. Like, ghost face has been diluted over the years. I'm kind of sad that I saw a ghost face, or I'm kind of sad that I saw a scary movie as a kid. never saw scream because then when I saw scream I was like oh scary movie is just like a worse version of this like it's just like a kind of like more debauched riffing on it yeah I mean there were also like 40 scary movie movies yeah I know and then there was not another teen movie it was a whole yeah it was a weird time don't be a menace that was kind of the era god the 90s and 2000s were weird for movies yeah we loved parody the snake was eating its own tail Austin powers like what even

was that it was a time Well, I guess it's kind of the parallel here is Deadpool and Wolverine. Yeah, that's what we do now. Yeah, pretty similar. Yeah, it's all superhero movies. No, it's funny that Scream, a movie that is explicitly about horror movies that kind of broke the fourth wall in this certain way was also the movie that re-invigorated horror movies. Because horror movies were just DOA in like 1994. There was like nothing.

And then at least it kind of jump started horror movies and made everyone remember, oh, these are fun. And I don't know. It feels like now like horror, man. We could just do a bonus episode on horror sometimes. I guess maybe not. Anyways, horror movies are really interesting. There are so many kinds of horror movies now. Yeah, I feel like in some ways Jordan Peel is here now.

Like we have other kinds of horror movies now and more experimental horror. Yeah, it's like a really diverse and interesting feel. There's like endless all kinds of them. They're just everywhere. It's pretty cool to see. Yeah. But the classics, they're still worth revisiting. Yeah, that makes me want to rewatch Scream.

All right. Well, that has been our spooky Halloween episode. We hope you all have a safe and candy-filled Halloween out there. Go listen to Triple Quest. If you haven't, we hope you enjoy it. And become a member to Hear Act 2. It's live in the feed right now. All right, Maddie and Jason, I will see both of you next week. See ya.

Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun podcast network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximum fun.org slash join.

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