Triple Click - What's The Deal With: Final Fantasy?

Episode Date: May 21, 2020

Why do people love this whole Final Fantasy thing so much? Welcome to What's The Deal With, in which the Triple Click crew explains why something matters. This week, Jason, Maddy, and Kirk explain the history and appeal of one of the most beloved roleplaying video game series ever, from Sephiroth to Noctis and oh so much more.The Final Fantasy VII Letters (Kirk Hamilton and Leigh Alexander, Paste Magazine) Solitary Spacecraft (Dante Douglas)Five Ways Video Games Make Failure Matter (Kirk Hamilton, Kotaku)  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 a popular saying about Final Fantasy. It's not Final. It goes on and on. But hey, we like it that way. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're talking about the Final Fantasy series, which Jason has played since he exited the womb. Kirk and I have played a few of them, too.

Every single one is different, so there's a lot to get to. Let's go. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Jason Shry. Hello. Before we get started, I just wanted to say, baby screams in the background.

Before we get started, I just wanted to let you all know that you can contact us by emailing triple click at maximum fun.org. We've been hearing it from lots of you and we always enjoy it. You can also find us on Twitter, Triple Click Pod. And you can find our unofficial fan run Reddit at Reddit slash triple click. Of course. Big thanks to everybody out there has been spreading the word about the show, telling your friends.

We love it when people tell their friends about the podcast. And big thanks to everyone who's become a member and supporting us, is supporting us on Maximumfund.org, which you can do by going over there and hitting join and clicking off triple click. And thank you all so much for helping this show happen. Of course, we will be having a Final Fantasy 7 remake Beanscast that is going to go. Is that what it's called a Beanscast? That's the official name.

That's what we're doing. Yes, it's definitely called a Beanscast. Here we go. It's going to go a pretty soon. soon. I don't want to commit to an exact date because we don't know yet. Bing! Kirk here, as I edit the episode, I just wanted to note that we do know when the first triple-click Beanscast will run. It's going to run this coming Monday. May 25th, it'll run at the usual time very early. And it's going to be in the maximum fun bonus feed, which you get access to if you

become a member, even at the lowest tier. So it won't be in this feed, though two weeks after that, it will. So remember, just for this very first Beanscast, we're going to put it in the main feed on June 8th, the Monday two weeks after the 25th when at first. runs. But if you remember, you will get to listen this coming Monday. So we hope you enjoy it. We already recorded it. It was pretty fun. All right, back to the show. Bing! But it will go to live to subscribers. And then two weeks after that, we're going to put it available to everyone for free, as we have promised. But future beans casts will be subscribers only. And with all that said, anything from you guys before we get started before we start talking about some

video games? No. No. I'm excited to hear more baby crying, though. I can't wait for that. I should say I started my new job this week. I'm now officially a reporter at Bloomberg. Yes. You did. How's it going so far? It's interesting. You interface with everything using the Bloomberg terminal. And that has been, there's lots of orientation and lots of things that you have to learn. It's bizarre. Do you have to hack into the mainframe every time you find out a piece of news? Yeah, you have to hack into the, it's kind of, I mean, you're typing in these commands. Like, it's almost like Unix likes it. It feels like you're a legitimate. hacker getting into the main frame. So, yes. Hack the planet. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's funny. It's funny to me that you both are starting new jobs at this moment when nobody,

yeah, just on its own. It's just funny that you both have jobs that anyone would employ you. It's wild. No, it's funny that you're both starting new jobs at this moment when you can't go into the office to be like me people and get oriented. It's very strange. It's definitely the hardest time. Well, you would be remote anyway, Maddie. I would be remote anyway. But I definitely would have gone to New York and gone to the Polygon offices and met everyone there and actually seen them in person.

But I can't do that. So I've been doing a lot of Zoom calls. It's great. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, same. It's a very strange process, just like video orientations. I'm sure our listeners know. It's very draining.

Yeah, I mean, I guess it does its pros and cons. Speaking of so much to learn and pros and cons, Jason, what are we talking about today? Yeah. So today we are introducing yet another new segment. And this segment is called, what's the deal with? Shoutouts to Jerry Sondfeld. We are going to, whenever we do a what's the deal with, we are going to dive into a certain question or subject

and explain what the deal is with it. I guess it's kind of self-explanatory, right? Yeah, kind of explains itself right there. Today's what's the deal with, we are saying, we are asking, what's the deal with Final Fantasy? So today we're going to talk about Final Fantasy in honor of the Final Fantasy 7 remake and the Beans cast and a lot of people out there might be wondering,

what's the deal with Final Fantasy? So we're going to tell you. How many times can we say that? We could say it's so many more times than we already have if we really want to do. I know, I know. We can and we will. So let's start off with the question. We'll eventually talk about what Final Fantasy is and give kind of an overview of the series and all the different games in it.

But why don't we start? off with a question. Kirk and Maddie. Maddie, why don't we start with you? What is the first Final Fantasy game you ever played? And do you have any sort of like emotional attachment to the series as a result of that? Tell me about your Final Fantasy history. Sure. I'm glad we're starting with me because it's going to be really embarrassing just right out of the gate. So I used to be a cosplayer for a very long time in my teen years and early 20s. It's a dark part of my past when I expressed being a nerd in a different and more theatrical way. Hey, cosplay is cool.

Yeah, why is that dark? It's great. It's super cool. And it's because, I don't know, you're right. It's really cool. And everybody listening to this is thinking to themselves, Maddie's a thousand times cooler now that I know that she owns a sewing machine and has made things out of craft. I think it might be truer than you think.

I hope so. I hope so, listener, because I'm going to talk about it more. So the very first costume that I ever made was songstress Juna from Final Fantasy X2. And that is also, the very first Final Fantasy game I ever played. However, that's, that's so funny because it's also the gayest Final Fantasy. It's the gayest Final Fantasy. It is the most controversial Final Fantasy among like your hardcore male fans at least who were upset that it was all girls. Definitely not. Maybe at the time. Not for you, Jason. I know you're, you have your own opinions

which are correct about this, which is that it's great and that's fine. But there are certainly X2 haters out there and I don't care about them. No, I guess I do. If you're an X2 hater, I will still read your email and I will understand where you're coming from. I don't know. Okay, go on. Jason won't. But so I did that cosplay because I just had a lot of friends at the time who were super into the game. And we were also pretty into Kingdom Hearts at the time and Unis in that game for a hot second, but so are a whole bunch of other characters from Final Fantasy 7. And there's a lot of crossover with Final Fantasy and the Kingdom Hearts characters in those games, at least the early games. And so I was part of a bunch of cosplay groups. that did those characters. And I didn't own a PlayStation. I had a friend who had a PlayStation, and he showed me the intro to Final Fantasy X2,

and we played some of it together, and I was like, great, awesome. I'm totally on board to be part of this cosplay group and, like, do a bunch of cosplays. And then I think the second time thing I played that was kind of Final Fantasy-ish was that I played the first two Kingdom Hearts games with the girl I was dating at the time,

who was also in the cosplay group, and then that she had a PlayStation, and then that was like the entryway. to me playing more. JRPGs, just in general. So do you have an emotional connection to? I do because I just associate it with that time in my life. So I associate it with that sort of creative side that I have because before that point

I was playing a lot of really competitive games and shooters and bro-y games. Like I had an Xbox. You know, I was playing Counter Strike on PC. I was like very bro-y. And like when I started to get into cosplay and I was like dating a girl for the first time, I was sort of getting more into my feminine side in a way. And that is just an association that I have with Final Fantasy, but it's a very positive one for me.

So I don't know. It was a cool time in my life. Very cool. Kirk, what about you? What was your first? And do you have an emotional attachment to the series? I do have an emotional attachment to the series, but it is not as a result of my first Final Fantasy game.

So as listeners may or may not know, but now everyone listening to Triple Click will know. I was not allowed to own gaming consoles growing up. I had a game boy that my parents finally broke down and let me have. Me and my sister both got them. And I played games on a PC that I made when I was in high school. But I did not have game consoles. I didn't have a Nintendo, didn't have a Super Nintendo, and missed a lot of those games.

As a result, I missed a lot of Japanese games in particular because that was kind of, you could play Japanese games on consoles. You could play a lot of other games on PC, but there weren't as many Japanese games, at least when I was growing up in the 1990s. So I hadn't really played a Final Fantasy game. game. I remedied that a little bit. The first JRP that I really played was Chrono Trigger, which is not a Final Fantasy game.

But I played that on DS. On DS, yeah. Yeah, and really liked it and thought it was pretty cool, but I hadn't really played Final Fantasy. And then I was just breaking into games journalism. I was at GDC, and I met Jason Killingsworth at the time, the games editor at Paste magazine, my alma mater, and I know also Maddie's alma mater.

Well, not really. The Phoenix was my real alma mater. I guess true. One of your... Who hasn't worked at Paste magazine? Right. One of your alma mater. matters. One of your, a place that you have, I went there for grad school. Yes, your grade. Pace was the first place that ever paid me to write about video games.

So, that's great. Still one of the greats. We all have a good link to paste. So Jason at the time was editing. This was when Pace was still doing a print magazine. And he had read something of mine that was like on the internet. And it had been like, hey, I like your thing. You should pitch me a thing or write a review for me, which was kind of a big break for me at the time.

It was kind of one of the first people who said, I'll pay you money to write about video games. And I said, sure, what do you want me to review? And he said, Final Fantasy 13. Oh, God. And you had like no context for what Final Fantasy 13 is. meant? Yeah, it's so funny. So I had to review

Final Fantasy 13 for Pace, which I did, and having not really played a Final Fantasy game, which wound up being, I think I wrote a pretty good review. I kind of encapsulated the good and the bad of that game.

You don't have to have played Final Fantasy to be able to talk about how that game is kind of weird and how it's fun in some ways and also kind of a strange railroaded experience and others. But I played the whole frigging thing too,

because that's the thing is Final Fantasy games were all long as hell. And I had played long games before, but playing a series that you weren't really attached to in a style that you weren't that familiar with, that's like a 70-hour game. I mean, I just went and went and went and went with this game. Like, it never ends and had to write a review of it. So I reviewed that game and didn't love it, didn't hate it, but like didn't really like it. And I kind of kept playing games from there, but didn't really have a reason to go back until I played Final Fantasy 7 for a thing that I know I've referenced.

which is the Final Fantasy 7 letters that I wrote with Lee Alexander, also at Pace Magazine. We should link to these. This is maybe a good time to link to them in the show notes. They're cool. I'm still really proud of them. They're just a thing that the wonderful writer Lee Alexander and I did together where she is like, knew the game really, really well. I had never played it before.

And it was kind of just an idea she had. I think she had started playing it again on, was it on Vita. It was like before Vita. Maybe it was on PSP. She was playing it again. I mean, at this point it's been ported everywhere. So heck if I can remember what it used to be on. She basically had this thing.

thought of, hey, you know, you've never played it, let's do a letter series. So we did, and that game, both because it's a wonderful game and because we had a great time writing and it was just so critically engaging to be doing this letter series. Like, I love that game and have this total emotional attachment to it. And that was really my way into Final Fantasy. It was just, it was the second take after reviewing Final Fantasy 13, which was like fine, but didn't totally grab me. So that's... And a strange way in. That's me. It's so funny that you started, okay, so that's funny for a number of reasons. But the first and foremost, it's important to know that every single Final Fantasy game is a standalone video game

that has nothing to do with all the others. So the couple of exceptions, like X2 you mentioned is called X2 because it's the sequel to X. But all of the numbered mainline Final Fantasy games are totally new, brand new stories and brand new worlds that just have a bunch of recurring themes and motifs. For example, most of the games have airships. Most of them have a guy named Sid. Most of them have Chocobos. Biggs and Wedge. Biggs and Wedge. Star Wars references that were snuck in in Final Fantasy 6 and just kind of stuck around. Most of them have summon monsters.

Most of them have blue menus with like a certain distinctive sound effect that has become known as like the Final Fantasy sound effect. Well, so the victory theme. You can't forget that. The victory theme, yeah, there are different iterations on the victory theme, although it's not in all of them. There's something, I don't know. I think the only music that's in every game is the prelude.

arpeggio music, the one that's like, da-na, no, no, no, no, no, no. The iconic Final Fantasy music. Is it a pentatonic scale? I thought it was an arpeggio. Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, it's a pentatonic scale, like minus a note. Yeah, Final Fantasy, I started the series. I definitely have a bigger emotional connection to the series than either of you. Well, you played more of them than I think either of us.

I grew up. Well, I grew up with them. So my first Final Fantasy was actually Final Fantasy, the game that came out in 1987. Did you play that when you were one years old? I played it when I was, well, so my parents had an NES before I was even born. So I started playing a game when I was probably two or three. Well, they're really ready for you to become a gamer. Yeah. Yeah. I was growing up, I was brought up a gamer. I was indoctrinated very early on. So yes, that was my first game. And I always, I never finished it because I was too young to really understand how to actually beat

And also NES games were all super tough, including the original Final Fantasy. But my real emotional connection came, so a little bit of background here. So FinalMuC1 came up for the NES. It was kind of Squyri Enix was this kind of failing game company that released this game. The legend goes that this is like their last ditch effort. They were like, we're going to go bankrupt. Let's just put everything into this thing. This guy named Hironobu Saka Gucci comes out and is like Final Fantasy.

It's our Final Fantasy, although he's disputed the title legend later. Like he's been like, actually we just wanted something that was like the acronyms FF. But whatever. He comes out of the game. Sells really well. It's basically a dragon warrior ripoff with like dungeons. Dungeons and Dragons meets Dragon Warrior. Sells really well.

Performs well. So they release more games. But those games come out only in the Famicom in Japan, Final Fantasy 2 and 3 because of timing and localization issues and blah, blah, blah. So those games come out. Then Final Fantasy 4 comes out as Final Fantasy 2 in, the US and starts this whole ridiculous like this is where it gets fun this is always where it gets fun a nomenclature confusion that just like lasts forever um and has still like to this day is still

confusing to people but so that was the game that really like was my first emotional attachment to any video game because that game came out um i played it probably when i was like five or six and it was the first game that like i played that actually had a story that like have these characters that you cared about and who would come in and out of your party and die and have these tragic stories. Like, one of them died permanently. Like, you think that, uh, that the death in Final Fantasy 7 is iconic. You play Final Fantasy 4. And that guy, there's a guy in Final Fantasy 4 who sacrifices himself to, like, kill a boss and you see it happened in battle. Like the way it works is he uses more magic points than he actually has and it like kills him in real life. Like during a turn base battle

nominally? Yeah, during a turn base battle. Yeah. Final Fantasy 4. It's actually, it's like way ahead of its time. They have all these scripted battle sequences where they use the actual battle system for these plot events that look really cool and it does a lot of really incredible stuff. And so that game was like the first, even though I played the original first,

that game was the first that like really got it some emotional attachment to me. And that game I think is a lot of people's favorites. But then my real favorite and like one of my favorite games of all time is Fondomenessi 6, which came out. So 5 is another one that was only released in Japan. And so the Western localization was like,

you know what, we're just going to skip to three. So Final Fantasy 6 is called Final Fantasy 3 on the Sumer Nintendo. It's so ridiculous, right? Like, in retrospect, it's like, I mean, you know if they could go back in time and do it all again. They would not do this. But like, back then, video games were so young and like this burgeoning medium that nobody really understood and people were still trying to figure out. And it was just kind of like this slapdash. Like, if you look at the translations for some of those games, it's just like, oh my God, like, how could this be a serious professional video game industry? Like, it's, it was, it was silly, silly times.

Final Fantasy 6, this also happens to be the game that if I win my predictions in 2020, then you guys have to play this game. Yes, yes. It holds a well. You and I, that I played some of that game with you on a stream a year or so ago. Whereas I haven't played any of it. Yes. Yeah, yeah, we dug into it for a few hours. It's wonderful.

If Jason wins, we all win. It's, it's one of those games that like, yeah, the characters, they say more in like, single in like a single um hello baby they sing more in a single facial expression like a single two-d facial expression than like a lot of the 3D models and later games say by doing like crazy thing it's it works really well for in so many ways and I could go on and on about that game and how special it is to me but that was really the game but you'll do that once you win your predictions exactly exactly but all of these games all these games like sold well and appealed to like a pretty substantial audience of like hardcore RPG fans on the Nintendo, but they never really broke out

into like blockbuster numbers until Final Fantasy 7 came along. And I don't know if you guys remember, do you guys remember the original commercial for Final Fantasy 7? Because it was nine-border. Okay. So a little bit of context here. Perform it. A little bit of context here is that, I mean, really, you can make an argument that Final Fantasy 7 is responsible for the success of the PlayStation because Nintendo was going, had all the first Final Fantasy, the first, the first six Final Fantasy games all came out in Nintendo. Nintendo had this great relationship with Square. They were both Japanese companies. They worked together closely.

And Square was going to release Final Fantasy 7 on the Nintendo PlayStation, because Nintendo and PlayStation were teaming up to release this. CD, Nintendo, that was going to be their successor. But that did not work out. They split up. PlayStation decided, you know what, we're just going to take the CD and do our own thing. Nintendo stuck with cartridges. So Square is working on this big blockbuster Final Fantasy game with tons of

full motion graphic videos that can't actually fit on a cartridge. So they're like, you know what? We're going to go on this PlayStation thing. And they probably, I mean, they certainly convinced me to get a PlayStation instead of like an Nintendo 64. They probably convinced a lot of people back then. But also this game, Final Fantasy 7, it came out in like such a splashy way. They spent millions of dollars on marketing. They released TV commercials that were like the future video games, like all these crazy cinematic, like 3D graphics. Because back then they could stick these pre-rendered videos that were part of like the cutscenes on discs. And

they would look like leaps and bounds better than anything else you could play in a video game. Today they kind of look like crummy compared to even like real-time graphics or modern games. But back then they were just so impressive and they took up all this space so they needed to be on discs so you could play it. But yeah, Final Fantasy 7 comes out and it just blows everybody away. Like this game just becomes a cultural phenomenon, sells millions of copies. I believe it sold 11 million copies. I think that's a number.

and that game really was just like took final fantasy to a whole new level and then future ones came out um i don't know if have you guys played um eight nine 10 10 yes i played some of nine quite a bit of 10 um 13 obviously some of 12 yeah i played 13 as well so one of the things that's really cool about final fantasy is that as all these games came out um something that square always tried to do is um they tried to change things up with every single entry. Every single entry was innovative in some way. So like Final Fantasy 7 introduces this idea of material where you can equip spells in the forms of little crystals

and combine them to create crazy effect. And then Final Fantasy 8 introduces the draw system where you can stand in battle and steal magic from enemies and then equip it to boost your stats. And so all these crazy ideas are going into this series. It's like a complete contrast of the other big Japanese RPG series, Dragon Warrior, Dragon Quest, which is just traditional, like we're going to stick to the same thing every single time, no matter what, like, stick to our routines.

And Final Fantasy, it's like the conservative. It's like the Republicans in Dragon Quest and like the crazy liberal, hippie Democrats. Like, we're going to, the Republicans are like, we're going to do, we're going to stick to our term-based combat no matter what and no abortions. And then Final Fantasy is like, we're going to change things up, we're hippies. And choice, freedom of choice. Freedom of choice for everybody. And yeah, just over time, it's become. it's definitely had its ups and downs. Quite a lot of spinoffs and bat-shit anime,

especially surrounding Final Odyssey 7. There have been a lot of good games, a lot of not-so-good games. I think for a lot of people, it's funny that 13 was your first game, Kirk, because I think for a lot of people, that was kind of the nadier of the series. But then there are people where that's their favorite one

and love the 313 games. Yeah, I think that, well, so the subsequent one, are much better than the original 13. The original 13. I think even if it holds a special place in your heart, it's hard to argue that 13 was a good game because it just has a lot of like objective issues. One of them, for example, is that this is ridiculous.

The encyclopedia in the game actually is either bugged or like they sloppily handled because it reveals events that haven't happened to you yet. So like you'll be playing through and it'll be like, and then lightning was attacked by such and such. And that hasn't actually happened yet. Even though it's in the encyclopedia, you can access it for your menu. I'm, like, really surprised they haven't fixed that by now. But I guess it's like, who cares at this point?

The game's been out for so long. I do remember that from when I played the game being like, You remember that? What? Like, reading a thing and that didn't happen. Yeah, why is it telling me this? And then, so what I remember is, so all these games, I have a lot of fond memories of, like, going on message boards and reading as, like,

the games would be released usually a few months earlier in Japan, so people would be able to talk about them on, like, game facts and stuff. So 13, the biggest knock against it was that it was super linear. So like previous games, you could always access a world map and you can also always have multiple ways that you could explore. They kind of had linear stories. So it was all kind of an illusion, the idea. It wasn't like there were big sky around like open world games or anything. That complaint actually is someone who grew up playing like Moro Wind or whatever.

It always struck me as sort of funny only because every JRP I've played is significantly more linear than your average like actual, you know, really non-linear. your game. Yeah, but the difference, but it's a striking difference because this is literally, you're just walking in a straight line and like pressing the A button. And also, I mean, one of the... Especially the first, like, eight hours or something. The first, it's the first, like, 20 hours before it. Yeah, maybe it's more. Maybe I'm like sort of,

I'm shutting some of that down in my brain and forgetting it. It didn't have towns, like towns were a beloved part of, like, original games. Like, you couldn't talk to MPCs. It was just kind of like a nonstop, like, call a duty-ish action ride and that people didn't like that about it. Also, and this was just, this is just, this is just, this is just, just kind of like an objectively bad decision. It took, I think, 10 hours, between 8 and 10 hours before you actually unlocked all of the things you could do in combat. It was so heavily tutorialized that they would just drip feed these new mechanics and be like, now you can do this, now you can stagger,

now you can change classes, now blah, blah, blah, blah, up to, like literally 10 hours into the game, you're still unlocking the combat system. So for quite a bit of time, you're just pressing A, and that's it. Like, there's no decision making at all. So yeah, that game has. a lot of issues. Yeah, I reviewed it. I remember. Yeah, it's a problem of a game. But yeah, the sequels, um, two, 13-2 and then Lightning Returns

were much better and much, much different and, um, did some interesting things. Yeah, and the stagger mechanic is, is cool and it's part of why Final Fantasy 7 remake is so fun. It takes that part of that, the combat from those games and makes it good. Yeah, it's a little different in 7 really.

But yeah, it's, um, it is a good, it's a good mechanic, but like sometimes especially towards the beginning of 13 because you don't have any actual options. It just kind of feels like you're just going through emotions. But it's a good idea. Yes. Yeah.

And so, and then there were MMOs along the way. I don't know if you guys remember this, but actually back in the day, it's so funny. Square used to release these guys at a cadence of like one every year or one every two years, which is hilarious to look at now, now that they release one game in a decade.

But it was like, it was like 8, 9, 10, and then in the same E3 conference, they announced, I believe it was like 11, 12, and 13 all at once. And it was like 11 is an MMO, 12 is this game, and then 13 were doing a whole series of trilogy and blah, blah, blah, like a project. They called it the 13 something crystal project. So they used to just crank these games out.

11 was weird and it was kind of, it's always been kind of like the black sheep, unless you're like a huge MMO thing because that was the first MMO, and that was kind of like an attempt to, to recreate the success of other MMOs of the day, EverQuest and such. And then 14 is the other MMO, and that is super critically acclaimed. That's a game that I've tried to get into, but just haven't had the time to really see it through.

But the many hours I have played, I've loved because it's a great game. But that came also is a crazy story behind it. Kirk do you want to tell you and talk about it? Oh, they launched it and it was fucked up. And then they completely went back to the drawing board and basically really rebuilt the game, right? Or, you know, Rided everything and fixed it. Yeah, they call it a Realm Reborn. They took it

down for a year and a half, which is kind of mind-boggling in retrospect. I think that was the first example of, like, a game that went through that narrative of like, hey, it came out broken. Has that ever happened where a game is taken down? I remember people saying, like, Anthem should do this. There are times where people will get very critical of a game

with a really problematic launch and say, they should just pull a Final Fantasy 14 on it and just take it offline. People have said that about Fallout 76's Yeah, that's true. Yep, they definitely have. The difference is that 14 has a monthly subscription fee. So they pretty much had to take it down rather than asking players to keep paying while they waited, as opposed to Anthem and Fallout out, which don't cost you anything to, like,

it doesn't cost. After you buy them. Yeah. Right. I mean, to leave it up, it doesn't, you don't have to pay to keep your character online or anything. They can just keep working on it while you've already paid for it. So 14, the new, like the, it's getting expansion packs all the time.

updates and patches and stuff and it's turned into this like Final Fantasy theme park where you play through and there are raids and content based on all the old games. There's like a golden saucer in there. There's triple triad the card game from eight. There's all this all this

cool stuff. And then 15 is the most recent one. That game has a whole development saga of its own that we won't get into but I enjoy that game quite a bit. I think that like there are a couple reasons that this game holds such a special place in people's hearts. First and foremost is the music. And I think that

like without the music, these games probably would not have lasted. Like the series would probably not be going the way it is, if not for the music. Because the music takes a lot of what would otherwise be just kind of wrote stuff or boring, tedious stuff and just takes it to a new level. Like for example, I mean, the combat system in a lot of those old games can be grinding and tedious. And a lot of it is just smashing the A button while random encounters pop up. But because the music is so good, it helps you just get through it. And you're just like, oh, yeah, this battle theme is amazing. I'm going to play because I want to listen to this battle theme.

Or just like those emotional moments from like Final Fantasy 7 or 6. It's just like all the music. Yeah, Kirk, give me your thoughts because you're our music expert. I'll be brief here because I might do something a little bit more detailed on the music of Final Fantasy at some point down the road. That's exciting. But yeah, so Uwematsu, the composer for Final Fantasy 7, of course, is this very widely heralded. The first 10, he did. Game composer, yeah, he did a lot of Final Fantasy music.

And Seven definitely introduces something that I know is in the earlier games as well. But for me, it's just so that it's a thing that's very common in Japanese games where themes just repeat over and over and over again because there's a lot of repetition in the game in general. And in that game, the character themes are so strong. Ereth's theme is so strong. Cloud's theme is so strong that you hear them over. and over again and they just carry so much emotional water for the game because everything else is pretty rudimentary. The music is too. It doesn't sound like the full orchestras that we hear in modern games, but it's still, it's sophisticated musically, and the melodies are so, so good

that when you hear them over and over again, they just get to you, and that kind of gives you that connection to these weird little polygons moving around on the screen. That then all these years later, I'll hear Cloud's theme or all hear Ereth's theme. Holy crap, like an FF7 remake. And I'll be like, moved, like, emotionally just because... Welling up playing that song and you're like, oh, it's Eric.

Well, even the fact that characters have themes, like I don't think that's something that happens very often in games, especially in Western games. I think that's a very Japanese thing and it's a very fun of fantasy. It's very cinematic too, to like have a character come in and there's a certain motif that plays to accompany them. Yeah, but even more than cinema

because you're seeing them over and over again and it lasts a lot longer than two hours. That's the thing that the games have that the movies don't. Like, it's not as pronounce and right there aren't these repetitive scenes so you don't get them kind of you don't get hit over the head with them so much yeah yeah i think just having having the music there man there's a scene that i remember and anyone who's played final fantasy sex will no doubt remember this but like you're you're going they do a lot with musical changes and just like abrupt just kind of shifts and so there's a scene where it's early in the game you're in this town called south figaro and you're

going around it's the town music is great it's playing and then you go walk into this bar suddenly the music shifts and it's like like this western style, like dingy, like strange theme. And you're like, what is going on here? And then you go up to the bar and you see this character and you're like, and this character is distinct. He's wearing black clothes. He has a dog next to him.

And you're like, oh, it's this guy. This guy must be this guy's scene. This guy's causing this song apparently. And then every time he pops up in some way, like you hear that song and you're like, you associate in your head and you're like, oh, man, this is cool. So yeah, the music has just been, even in the early games that didn't have as strong stories like the original game. The original game, like you go back and listen to some of that midi, like, uh, pixelated music. Um, and it is, it is incredible. So another thing, in addition

to the music is, I think the combat systems. I think that the gameplay itself is a big thing that people like about these games. Jason, you mentioned the way that they are always innovating. I haven't played every single Final Fantasy, but I played a lot of them. I've played enough to see the ways that the system changes. It goes to like hard turn base. In fact, you haven't mentioned it, but I know that this is Jason, one of your favorite games too, is Final Fantasy Tactics, which is another one of my favorite games. And actually, Tactics A2, Grimor of the Rift, the DS game. Love that game. It has a lot of the music from Final Fantasy 12, and the music was actually what made me fall in love with that game as well. But the gameplay is so good. It's like

X-com style, really hard turn-based, tactical, you know, positional combat, which is very different than most other Final Fantasy games. There's no other actual tactics combat, right? There's some that are turn-based. FF10 is turn-based. And that I think there are, you know, I think everyone has opinions on like their favorite combat system. Maybe we can go around and say them in a second. But I think that the combat and the way that you spend so much time in this game, listening to the great combat music and fighting enemies and then fighting huge bosses that go on and on and again forever. I know Mattie, you and I were complaining a little bit about all the bosses. And now that I've finished FF7 remake, holy crap, there's a lot of bosses at the end of that game.

I told it. But, you know, I think that we spend so much. time in those combat systems that they are a big part of the game and if you don't gel with the combat system for a certain game like I didn't love the combat in FF13 that's going to be a lot of the game and it kind of winds up defining your favorite games what is what's uh jason what's your maybe you go first what's your favorite combat system in a final fantasy favorite combat system i don't even know i mean they all have their advantages i guess 12 12 has a pretty cool combat system it has got up these gambits these AI like uh basic AI for your party members um

Yeah, I just wanted to say tactics, not only is that one of my favorite games ever, it's also the game that I recommend people play first if they want to start with the final minus a game, because you can get it on your phone, and it plays amazingly on your phone, and highly recommend it to everybody out there who's curious about this. Maddie, what about you? Do you have a favorite? Oh, boy. I would have said 10-2, but it's been so long since I've played it that I'm not sure how I would feel about it now, but I do remember that a lot of it was based around, like, you change your outfit, and that changes your whole deal, and I thought that was

just a really cool concept for combat to have at the time. It's like a class system or a job system. Yeah, exactly. Which is very fun. A black mage outfit or like a sorcerer outfit or whatever. Right, right. Which is just a fun way to organize JRP combat and I haven't quite seen a game do that again. Yeah, it's great. That's a very underrated game, I would say. It is an underrated game, but I don't, I don't hate Final Fantasy 7 remakes combat. Some of those boss battles are way too long, but like just the regular work-a-day combat, I tended to really enjoy. And it was like so close. to being something I really loved because it's an action game finally and it's real time and except you can still like pause it and screw around with your spells and stuff. And I was like, this is a really good blend of the turn-based stuff that I tend to find really boring in a

JRP with an actual action combat. I just wish that rolling and dodging had made more sense and that like switching between characters didn't feel so bad. So maybe they're going to change that in the next few remakes. It's funny that you mention that only because that you don't like the turn-based combat and you do like the combat in Final Fantasy VII remake. Because it's more action-based. Yeah. Well, right. And so it grew on me over time.

Like, I like it fine. And I can see how, this is FF7 remake. I can see how the more, like, if you're playing on hard mode and replaying the game with all the material unlocked, it gets even more fun. I definitely, like, get it and agree with you. I have the same complaints that I made last week that I won't re-articulate here. I really don't like the combat in Final Fantasy 15, which is also action-based. I just think it is bad.

I just don't like it. For a lot of the same reasons, I don't like seven. And my favorite combat systems are actually, I love tactics, even though that's kind of not a mainline game. I love those kinds of games. And I really like FF10 because it's just hard turn-based combat. It is. You take a turn. The next person takes a turn.

And I really like, you know, I like games like that. I like Divinity Original Sin too. I like X-com. I like all of these like turn-based games where you can just really take your time. And it doesn't require mastering any sort of like reaction-based stuff. Because those games tend to be so kind of naughty. And I just, it takes so long to figure out what I'm going to do that the pressure of there being any time pressure takes me out of it. I really like just being able to relax and sort of focus on and plan my next move.

That's funny as like a from software fan. If it were done well, that's the thing too is that like I just don't think that the fighting in FF7 remake or 15. Yeah, like what if Final Fantasy was Bloodbourne? Like what if dodging matters as much as it does in Bloodborn? Then it would own. I mean, that would be, that would be a great game. And if it was designed as well as Bloodborn's comic, then I would. I would, oh, for sure, fine.

Totally fine. Yeah, but I think part of Final Fantasy, I mean, I think one of the other things that kind of defines Final Fantasy is that it's got this kind of weird vibe to it that is almost, it's hard to put your finger on exactly, but it's almost, the games, at least the best of them, they don't take themselves too seriously.

They're willing to have a sense of humor. In Final Fantasy 7, for example, like you have a slot fight on a cannon. They're games that are like, a lot of games are more straightforward. You're going, a lot of RPGs, especially very straightforward. You go to a sense. dungeon then to a town and at the town the mayor tells you to go find his cat in a new dungeon and you follow this rhythm this pattern that gets very familiar after a while in final fantasy games you're

just doing all sorts of crazy shit like in final fantasy seven the first few hours you wind up performing CPR on a little girl who then helps you out by letting her pet dolphin take you up to a tower that lets you climb into a city and then you put on a shinra uniform and pretend to march in a parade and you do this button mini game that lets you impress the t-tee ratings and you see like a TV director like talking about how the ratings aren't going high enough and it's just ridiculous these games and speak not to harp on 13 but one of the reasons that it kind of wasn't beloved is because it took itself way too seriously and didn't do any of the fun stuff that you want out of final fantasy games but yeah I think it's hard to I think

when you're trying to put your finger on like why people love final fantasy what what makes it feels so special to people I think one of the biggest reasons is that it's just silly Yeah, there's also this sort of, let me take your temperature on this, and I'm curious with the two of you think, there's like a kind of an emotional space in these games, and I mean that there actually is a lot of space in between the emotions, because people don't talk the way they talk, like the human beings talk. It's very childish, and that can be a knock against it. Like, a lot of these games, it does kind of feel like you're watching like something written by little kids. Like, there'll just be people really expressing emotions in this very kind of

childish way. But it's not like a bad thing, at least to me. And I think that it is part of the central appeal to the series because the more you play them, the more you kind of get attuned to their frequency and you get used to this way that people talk and it just

all starts to feel believable. The sort of constant, you know, and the sounds that people make and the wordless responses. The anime. Anime noise. It's kind of anime. You're really talking about Final Fantasy 7 remake, though. No, I'm not. I'm really talking about all of them.

I think that there is a weirdness and an awkwardness that kind of stilted nature to the emotions and the communication and the way that people talk in all of these games that is a consistent thing across all of them. I would not say that. I think you're a little out of your depth there when you're saying all of them. I think a few of them. Yeah, but like I'm thinking about FF15.

People talk more like real people in FF15 and an FF7 remake, but there's still a kind of like there's this kind of hollowness in the middle of it. Yeah, I mean, that's modern Squier Nix. anime, like, that's a lot of, it's a lot of factors in there. But the games are so different that it's hard to really say, it's hard to say anything that applies to all of them. I think that there's a consistency there. Like, I think there's a consistent thread there. And I think, and I see it as a good thing. I think that it's a defining aspect of the series that people tend to sort of relate to, or they fill up that space with their own feelings and they can kind of project into it a little bit

more than they could if everything was like super written out and super fleshed out and didn't have that quality to it. I think you might just be described. I've been Kingdom Hearts, but that's all I'll say on the matter. It's possible. It's possible. Okay, cool. Well, so yeah, that is, that is what the deal is with Final Fantasy. That's our best shot. And so I think, I think the best entry point, I'm curious to hear, let me know if you guys disagree, but I think if someone is listening to this and is like, you know what, I want to try Final Fantasy for the first time. I think tactics on the phone, like I mentioned before, and if you're not as interested in a tactical game, you want to try the real thing.

I would generally tell people to start with nine. I think that is a game that really captures captures the essence of Final Fantasy and is a good starting point. Or 10. 10 is also like a good starting point. I usually say 10. But it's because I haven't played nine. So can't recommend it. Oh man, you should.

You would like it. Okay, cool. Let's take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. Hey, Max Funsters. It's Jesse Thorne. This week on my public radio interview show, Bullseye, I'm talking with Tina Faye and Robert Carlock about creating Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, 30 Rock, and also just kind of why they're the best at everything.

There was a window of time. We just go to awards things and pick up our prizes and party with the people from Mad Men. You can find Bullseye at Maximumfund.org or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search for Bullseye with Jesse Thorne. There's nothing quite like sailing in the calm international waters on my ship, the SS biopic. A vast. It's actually pronounced biopic. No, you dingus.

It's biopic. Who the hell says that? It's biopic. It's the words of biography and pictures. All right, that is enough. Ahoy, I'm Dave Holmes. I am the host of the rebooted podcast formerly known as International Waters, designed to resolve petty but persistent arguments like this.

How? By pitting two teams of opinionated comedians against each other with trivia and improv games, of course. Winner takes home the right to be right. What podcasts be this? It's called Troubled Worm. where we disagree to disagree. And we are back.

Kirk Maddie, it is time for one more thing. Kirk, get us started. What is your one more thing this week? My one more thing is not a video game this week. It is a TV show. I know the two of you were talking about games too, which is good. But mine is not a game. It's a TV show that I've finally been watching.

This is a show that I had watched a little bit of, or watched the first season of, and very much enjoyed, and then just sort of didn't find time for it. And I know Jason loves this show, and has talked about it a lot. So my sister actually started watching it too recently on Netflix and had been telling me how great it is. So I started watching it too. And that show is Better Call Saul, which I began watching again and watched all of season two pretty quickly. So good. It's really good. That's kind of my whole one more thing. What a great show though.

There's so much to talk about it. You know what I think is interesting about it. So I won't say too many spoilers. I do think people should watch it. Maddie, you haven't watched Better Call Saul. Is that right? No. Or Breaking Bad. And no one can make me. Maybe I'll watch The Sopranos someday, but the ship has sailed for me on Breaking Bad. I don't think, I think the Sopranos is way more important for you to watch than either of those. I'm going to, I'm going to let you live your own life and watch whatever you want. I was just curious what the frame of reference for the two of you was going into this. It's fantastic. I think you could watch it without having seen Breaking Bad is very different than Breaking Bad. I would say I like it more, especially because Breaking Bad was a little bit more of a show of its time, the same way the Sopranos is, of that kind of period of early mid-2000s

peak TV. And Better Calls All feels like a second wave, second generation show. It's cool because it is a prequel to Breaking Bad. And there's plenty of, even in season two, I know I've seen the promo stuff, so I know all the characters from Breaking Bad who turn up on this show eventually, because everyone everyone who dies on Breaking Bad or leaves the show or whatever is still alive on this. a prequel. But it's not, you don't have to have seen it, and it kind of makes this show interesting in some ways. So, first of all, Bob Odenkirk plays Saul Goodman. He was this kind of sleazy lawyer

on Breaking Bad, who is mostly comic relief, but then on Better Call Saul, of course, he's the main character. It's wild to me watching season two that when the show started, people were like, oh, I don't know, can Bob Odenkirk carry a show? Like, does he have what it takes? Because he's amazing. I mean, like, he's so amazing in season two. He's a great actor. And yeah, he and what's her name, the actress she plays? Rees Seahorn. They have so much chemistry. They're so great together. And the show is really about the two of them. It's like a two main character show. And it's really fascinating. God, I'm so excited for you to watch more. Yeah, I can't wait. Maddie, what's your one more thing? Okay. So I have a friend, Dante Douglas,

who made a very small little game called Solitary Spaceship, and I played it. And I wanted to talk about it a little bit because this is a game that's about COVID-19. It's a game about a person who's in their apartment and they're just going around their apartment dealing with life. And every time you try to walk out the front door of the apartment, you just end up back in the apartment again. And it resets and another day passes every time you do that. And you can do different stuff each day. Oh, man. Wow. It's also a game that's sort of inspired by a Discord channel that Dante made that I'm in and so he like credited all of us as co-writers because when you check the computer, you can like read the Discord where we had conversations about COVID. So I guess you could say I'm a co-writer

of this game. But I thought it was really interesting to play it because it made me think about how many more games like this they're going to be and think about what those games will be like. I don't necessarily see that as a good thing. I'm really not one of those people who looks at a terrible incident and is like, oh, think of the great art that will be created because, in fact, I try to really resist that sentiment because I don't, I think great art can come from not tragedy. And like, there can be people who are perfectly happy and they make really great art. And I think that trauma as a mandatory thing for art is a pretty damaging way to look at art. So I've really tried to not think to, not think about it in those terms.

But playing this game, I was like, this is a really interesting game about a specific moment and how your apartment can feel like a spaceship, hence the title, because you can never leave. it's like you're just in this one space and there's only certain things you can do. Is there like a sense that are you actually on a spaceship or is this just very realist? You're just in an apartment. It starts out very realist. Oh, okay. Okay. How can people play it if they're curious?

Is it free? I'll include a link to it. It is free. It's on It's on itchio and I can give a link to Kirk if people want to play it. It is called solitary spaceship. But just in general, I'm really interested to see what happens with COVID and game developers and the kinds of stories that people decide they want to tell. Yeah, people said that about Trump, and then there haven't really been any stories that are like, Trumpian in games or really anywhere.

But I think it's also true that this time has influenced all of the art we make because it has to. So just no matter what that's true. You know what I mean? And it's always kind of been true. Like I was just having a conversation today with some people about how Saints Row is about how when you're famous, like nothing really affects you and how dark of a message that seems to be now in, like, like our current time. But like that game, Saints 4 came out before Trump was elected,

you know? So like it's not, it's not like that message was intentional, but it's also like these are the things about our culture that people think about no matter what and they affect the stories that we tell. So yeah, even if it doesn't seem like a direct one-to-one,

I think people are going to be making games about COVID without intending to, if that makes sense. There's also like the question of turnaround time, just that like you can make a smaller game very quickly, but it could be a game comes out by the time maybe somebody else's president, Lord willing. Well, I mean, we're about to play a game about a pandemic. So, like, it's real thing.

Also true. Yeah. Cool. So my one more thing is I wanted to talk about losing progress in video games because I have some very mixed feelings about this. So I'm playing persona 5 Royal. I am like almost at the end of the original game. So I'm so close to the new stuff.

I can taste it. But who knows when I'll actually get there now that I'm back. work again and also take care of a baby at the same time. But so there's a scene, and Kirk, you might remember this. When you are in the seventh and final palace of the game, and it is, it's the one, it's the ship one, you might remember. There's a section towards the end of it where, like, you fight a boss, a mini boss, and then you do some stuff, you fight a mini boss, there isn't really a clear indication that

the miniboss is coming, and there's no save point before it. So you're already kind of like, oh, man, like, I haven't saved in a while. If I die now, I might lose a bunch of progress. And then right after that, you're, like, escaping. And then you fight another boss. And at this point, you're like, you have this feeling in your gut that's like, oh, man, like, if I lose here, I'm going to lose, like, upwards of an hour of progress. Because this game, although in Royal, you can actually restart a battle if it's a boss battle. Some of the fights, like standard fights, you can't.

And if you die in a standard fight, you will lose progress. And then persona 5, or all the percent, all the Shimagami Tense games are super cheap in that if your protagonist dies, even if the rest of your party is alive, you'll still get a game over, which really, really sucks in a lot of ways. Especially because there are instant death spells.

It's that there are instant death spells that can just, like, come out of nowhere and cheaps out. There are spells that will kill you instantly if you fail a saving role. And so I had had this experience of the boss of Pallas 6 somehow killed me like a dozen times, and I was so pissed off of the game for so long. And it was just like the dumbest ways to die, all these cheap shots.

And I was extremely mad at the game. So I had this feeling in my gut that was just like a pit in my stomach. I was just like, oh man, like if I lose here. And I was thinking about this, I beat it and was fine. I did not lose any progress. But I was thinking about how losing progress in video games, I have such like mixed feelings about it. Because on one hand, just knowing that you can lose progress creates this tension in a game that is unlike anything else. because it just raises the stakes to the point where battles feel like just so much more high pressure

and like it can be even more satisfying to beat them because they were like, yeah, man, I got past this. Like, don't have to worry about losing my progress. Like, man, I'm so happy about this. And there are few, there aren't a lot of other ways to raise the stakes in a video game because if you don't lose progress and then you die, then like, what happens? You just start again. And you like, maybe it knocks a couple of experience points off you or something. but like without losing progress there's really no way to punish the player for dying um but uh if you and

if you don't punish the player for dying then it doesn't really matter if you die like worse comes to worse you just start again and give it another try and so it's interesting and it's like this constant battle i'm sure in game design land of like setting the stakes and do you really want to feel that but then again if you die and you lose all that progress you're going to be so pissed at the game for wasting your time. So like the exchange for that tension and the good aspects of that tension is that like I would be fucking pissed. Like my gaming time is so limited. I was already so pissed about that boss bite getting all those cheap shots and killing me. If I felt like I lost an hour and a half of progress because I died in some stupid way, I might not go back to the game. So I'm curious to hear both of your

takes on this issue and like whether losing progress should be a thing in games, like how you feel about it in general. I really don't enjoy losing progress in a game. It's not even just an age thing. I don't think I ever enjoyed it when a game did this to me even when I was a child and I had theoretically infinite time. Well, but hold on, I'm not saying nobody enjoys losing progress in it. Of course. But I'm saying that even in the circumstances where I was like, oh, I finally made it, I don't prefer that. And now as an adult, I'm so thankful that stuff like Metroid has saved states where you don't have to redo everything you just did because you died against a boss. And like you you don't have to like recollect whatever you got. You can just be like, oh, cool,

I just found an energy tank here. Let me just click the save state button and it's fine. And I don't have to go all the way back to the save point. Osamis. I don't have to worry about it. And there's so many old games that relied so much on that. And I mean, Percent of five isn't an old game, but it's still a game that relies on what I consider to be a pretty old school mechanic in games, which is like there's a certain number of places where you can save and you just have to deal with those. And in replaying Final Fantasy 7, the original, I'm dealing with that. again, because I am not using save states or anything. I'm just going to the save points and saving the game and being like, wow, yeah, this is

how this game works. At least it has a fast forward button. At least the new version is a fast forward. It does, and it has the version where you can turn off encounters. Yes, I've turned off encounters. It's true. I've done it. I'm not interested in encounters anymore.

That's smart. But yeah, I just, I don't enjoy losing progress. I don't find it to be a satisfying feeling. And I think it's really impressive. cool when a game can find other ways to raise the stakes for you that don't involve something like that either by just having a lot of complicated mechanics or interesting ones. Part of why I like Kirby games, even though death doesn't matter in Kirby games, is because usually they have a really fun mechanic and that's what keeps you playing and interested. It's just the fact that it's

fun for Kirby to turn into different stuff. And yes, death is meaningless in a Kirby game, but I still enjoy it because I'm enjoying the game. I guess I just, that's my, that's my take. What do you think? Death is meaningless when you're Kirby. Kirby has infinite power. He's fine no matter what. I agree that death is meaningless when you're Kirby. Yeah, I wrote an article about this. A week in Lincoln and show notes.

It's called Five Ways Media Games Make Failure Matter. This is back in 2018. I wrote this for Kataku. And talked about this, Jason, where I think that my least favorite is the one that you mentioned where you just lose time. That to me is just annoying. This was Gravity Rush 2 is what I mentioned

because I reviewed that game and there's a lot of questionable checkpointing in that game, just where you die and you're like, oh, it's not just the beginning of the boss fight. It's the whole huge, like, five-minute thing getting to the boss. And it doesn't feel thoughtful. It's just like they just put the checkpoint too far back. I hate that. Like, I hate when it feels like, yeah, I've lost a huge boss rush and I have to do the whole thing again.

Something I value in FF7 remake, actually, is how if you die in a boss fight that's like three phases in, it'll sometimes say to you, do you want to start the whole fight over again, or do you just want to start this phase? And that's very nice. Like, I appreciate any time again. just brings me up to where I just was. But I do like the way that Dark Souls makes you risk your XP, the way that those games are clever about saying, well, you want to go in here and try to get this thing.

You're going to drop down, and you're not going to be able to climb back out, so you'll have to fight your way out, but that's what you get for, like, trying to get the fast way to this glowie item. And they kind of punish you, but also mess with you and reward you in cool ways. That then makes you feel really exhilarated when you make it out. And if you die and lose your XP, you don't lose it forever. You do get to go get it back. there are other things like that.

I was like I'm looking through this article, Splatoon too. I'm remembering like places where you'll spend a limited amount of currency and then you only have that one shot to like make good on that currency, which can be pretty stressful. I like that sometimes, but I don't like it other times.

I think I don't like in Souls games is where I don't like it when you use your items and then each time you use an item, you're like, this better friggin work. Because if I die on this boss attempt and I use my last like whatever like fireball spell or something, like I'm not going to have it next time so it's going to make the game harder

after I fail. That stresses me out even though it's like a way of making you feel like you're risking something. You're like, I just use that firebom so better make this count and then you invariably choke and die and then you're even more mad at yourself. So that can also be a bummer. But you know I'm generally, I'm okay with games

giving you a sense of real consequences like quote real unquote but I don't like the wasted time thing either. So I'm definitely with you on that Jason. Yeah but like I don't know there's something to be said. Both of you disagree with this, but I think there's something to be said about that tension that you feel when you're playing through, like just having that, that, those stakes, like, nothing you described compares to the stakes of knowing. If I don't beat this boss, I will lose an hour of progress.

I will lose an hour in my life. I think you could even make people think that and then pleasantly surprise them if they die with the fact that they're not really going to lose an hour. Like, I think there are other ways you can create that tension without actually. Well, that's persona five Royal does that to some extent because like I mentioned on bosses, you can, now restart the battle instead of having to go back to your save point. Okay, cool. Well, so I believe that is it for this week's episode. Yeah, I think it is.

Keep an eye out if you are a subscriber for the Final Fantasy 7 remake Beanscast coming soon. And we will see you all next week. Yep, 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. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network,

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