Triple Click - What's The Deal With: Persona

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Let's summon our shadows and take a deep dive into Persona, the wonderful series about high school students fighting their inner demons — literally. With Persona 5 coming to multiple platforms this week and Personas 3 and 4 on the way, the Triple Click gang talks about what makes the series so special, teenage drama and all. Plus: Jason discovers a surprise Game of the Year contender!One More Thing: Kirk: Star Wars: AndorMaddy: Hocus Pocus 1 + 2Jason: The Case of the Golden IdolLinks:Featuring tracks from Persona 4 and 5 by Shoji Meguro and the first three variants of the Star Wars: Andor theme by Nicholas BritellSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

You seek power, correct? Then let us form a pact. Since her name has been disgraced already, why not make a podcast and wreak havoc? Join us with a single word, persona! Welcome to Triple Click, where that just happened. This week we're talking about the persona series on the eve of Persona 5, finally coming to non-Playstation platforms. We've got class in the morning and demons to fight after school,

so let's put on our uniforms and get to it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Shrier. Hello. Hello. It's us again. Here we are.

Once again, we are back. And man, boy, am I sleep deprived. Having two children is no joke, as it turns out. Wake up, Jason, it's time for school. It's time to go to school and fight demons. This is actually a dream. You are not podcasting. Yeah.

We're having a dream about needing to sleep. Oh, man. You remember that Calvin and Hobbs where he's trying to fall asleep and he can't fall asleep. Then his mom wakes him up. Oh my God. One of the most nightmarish Calvin and Hobbs. That's like a million Calvin and Hobbs is.

Do you mean the one where he like imagines that he can't sleep? But that's actually a dream that he's having. And it's like a horrifying reveal. And it ends with him being woken up by his mother. Right. Because it's actually morning. And he's like, this is going to be a long day or something. So Jason is Calvin right now.

Well, we feel for you, man. I am, except only getting three hours at a time. It's like the feeling, the best comparison I can make is like, you know how when you go to bed, but you know that you have to get to the airport for a 4 a.m. flight the next night and you're like, okay, no, I'm going to have to make up a two. I'll try to enjoy this. It's just a little bit, but it'll be over soon. Imagine that except every single night for like, at least three months. That sounds super fun. Also super fun. Being supported by listeners. Yeah. So true. It is fun being supported by listeners. It's fun.

It's a rip-roaring time. If that was a video game, I would play it often. It would be fun. So we are a listener-supported show, as we say at the start of every episode. You probably know this, but maybe this is your first time listening to Triple Click. In which case, hey, welcome to Triple Click. We're glad you're here. And did you know that we're a listener-supported podcast?

Because we are. And if you'd like to support us making this show, you can become a member of maximum fun, which is our podcast network. And that supports us. That supports the network. and also gets you access to bonus episodes of our show and other podcasts. But we do one every month, all sorts of different things. And there's a backlog going all the way back to when this show started.

So you get a whole bunch of stuff if you become a member. So you can become a member at maximum fun.org slash join. That's the place to go to sign up. And we sincerely appreciate everyone who is a member. We don't have ads. We don't have sponsors. We totally just do this thing with your support, which lets us make exactly the show that we want to make.

And that's really cool. Also, we're going to be doing another beans cast this month on a movie. And it's a very exciting movie that everyone's been talking about, the Super Mario Brothers movie. Now you might be asking, well, wait, did the triple-click crew get an early copy of the upcoming animated Mario movie? No, in fact, we are talking about the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, which stars Dennis Hopper and John Leguizamo looks to me like some sort of drug-induced. induced fever dream, a movie that I've actually never seen and that Maddie I know likes.

Yeah, Kirk has never seen it, which is a huge reason why this is being first upon Kirk for once. Jason and I are now the ones who have seen the movie. It's true, but I haven't seen it since I was a kid, so like I have zero memory. Right. Whereas I have seen it multiple times as an adult because I kind of love it and I think it owns and is hilarious. I'm a little obsessed with how horrifying it is. Like Mario in real life as a movie, why would that happen? This movie dares to ask that and answer it. It did happen. It happened and we saw it and it came out and we're going to watch it. We're going to talk about it. So that'll be the beans cast for this month. I'm certainly excited.

And I hope that all of you are as well. So anyways, maximum fun.org slash join, become a member, get access to bonus episodes, including us talking about a horrifying Mario movie. All right. Let's get into this episode's topic. It's time to talk even more about the persona series. Yeah. So it's finally time for a whole episode. about persona.

Is it going to be 90 hours long or more like 110 hours? Depends if you try to listen to the whole episode, it's more like 110, 120 hours. But if you really min-max, you can get through an 80. You need to listen to the episode in the right order. And you might miss stuff. So just be really careful out there. You can visit polygon.com for a lot of helpful tips posts

about how to get through this podcast. The triple-click episode on what the deal is with persona. We will be publishing that guide right upon release. that's a joke. It's funny, we joke, but because I've been playing persona 5, I've been on Polygons so much because you all have those guides. There are so many that really are very useful. Anyways, let me give a little spiel here about what persona is for anybody listening

who's heard us talk about it and maybe kind of knows what it is, but would like a refresher. Persona is a series of Japanese role-playing games that dates back to the 90s, though its second, more modern act arguably began with 2006's Persona 3. There have been two mainline games since the game. men, personas four and five, and each one has seen the series profile grow a little bit more in the West and North America. They're still niche games compared to a Madden or a Call of Duty, but they're less niche with each passing year.

Each persona game of that ilk, three, four, and five, they tell a similar sort of story, at least in the broad strokes of an unlikely band of Japanese high schoolers who discover a dark, demonic world hidden beneath our own, and who go on to harness the power of their inner selves, their personas, to do battle against the men, and they're in their personas to do battle against those demonic forces. Each story plays out more or less over the course of a school year, and during that time,

the heroes battle their own personal demons, and as they resolve their inner conflicts and strengthen their bonds with one another, they grow all the more powerful in battle. Each entry in the series blends anime visual aesthetics, funky jazz fusion music, visual novel style storytelling, dating some elements and elaborate

involved turn-based combat into a 100-plus-hour saga that is both exhilarating and occasionally exhausting. The series lived for many years cordoned off as a PlayStation exclusive, though that has begun to change recently with a 2020 port of Persona 4 to PC. And finally, PC and console ports of 2017's Persona 5. And that is happening this week. Prona 5 is coming to Game Pass. It's coming to PC. It's finally going to be available for people who don't have a PlayStation platform and would like to play it somewhere else.

So it's finally time to talk about it. Here we are. We're going to talk about Persona. And I'll just say I have played Prisona 3 portable. I played Persona 4 Golden. I then played it again. I playing persona 4 Golden yet again on the Steam deck and have been playing through Persona 5 Royal after beating Persona 5 back in 2017 and reviewing it. So I have a lot of experience with that part of the series with 3, 4, and 5. But I'm curious, I guess up front,

what are the two of your experience levels with this series like? Jason, I know you've played these, so why don't you go first? Yeah, well, so first of all, I just want to say that you can always tell from a triple-click intro which one of us is no longer a professional games journalist and no longer has to write about games. day and can therefore just go off and be like I'm gonna write the time in me and Jason are like off the cuff whatever I almost just copy pasted the summary of the persona series that I wrote in my review of persona 5 because it was pretty good and I spent a while on it and I was like very nostalgic fun little tip for the fans I'm gonna write a new one I wrote an all new one just for triple flick this is the exclusive place but I yeah I just sort of say one of us one of us has one of us has the mental bandwidth to be able to write stuff about games in their spirit of play

It was pretty fun to write about video games. Interesting. It's a fun thing to write about. Pitch Polygon maybe. I think the three of us were probably going to be skewing towards the newer games in the series. So apologies to anyone out there who's hoping that we'll talk about Persona 1 and 2 because we're probably not going to go that.

Or like Shin-Megami-Tensei or whatever else. Well, I played those games. I'm sure you did. Totally different games. That should be a Magami-Tensei games. But as far as persona, my experience starts with Persona 3, which I believe Kirk, you and I discovered at the same time during my first year at Kotaku into 2012. We both started playing that game and then we both jumped into Persona 4 Golden on the Vita and we both got really into both of those games.

And then obviously I played persona 5. I played through the entire game twice, which is pretty wild. That's like a lot of hours, 150 hours of my life. Then I'll never get back. So yeah, so I spend a lot of time with these games. I never actually finished three. I finished four and then finished five,

four of course, has a particularly memorable ending because the whole game is a murder mystery and at the end you have to figure out who did it, which is a fun, a fun reveal.

And so yeah, that's my experience with the games. I've played a lot of the newer ones. Nice. How about you, Maddie? I am the least persona literate on the podcast. So, of course,

as a not liker of turn-based JRP's persona games were really hard sell for me, although I have many friends, including the two of you, who love them. So I feel like it's a TV show I haven't seen, but I know a lot of the plot beats. I specifically feel like I know a lot of the beats of persona four, because I remember that being a really big turning point, just for people I know. I'm not as familiar with three, but I remember four being when I really started to hear about this game, especially from marginalized people and, like, queer people I know, being so.

super into it, but also super uncertain how to feel about the homophobia and transphobia in the game, because it's a game that arguably has a trans character as a main character, but the game doesn't really treat them very well, but people really love the game, and there's

just so many, you know, emotionally torn Tumblr posts written to this effect, and I've read many of them and enjoyed reading about them. And all that was enough to wear me down when Persona 5 Royal came out and I played through the first, what are the temples called? Are they, the dungeons, palaces? Yeah, palaces. I played through to

the end of that, which is 10 hours. Yeah, it's a long first time. Most of which is cutscenes. Nothing wrong with that. But I did get to the end and I kind of wished it were an anime and I still kind of wish it were an anime. I think I would love that because I just, I think that the turn base combat, and we can get into it, it's great, but it is still turn based JRPG combat. So the fact that I'm saying it's great is a very high compliment from me, but it's still, it's still a hard sell. So we can get into why that is. Yeah, well, that's why it's perfect that it's now on Switch and Steam Deck, because you can play it or watching TV. Yeah, like much better. Precisely. Yeah. And it also feels more like a book in that context. So unbelievably,

I am considering buying it yet again or downloading it yet again and just playing it on the Steam deck or something or the switch, I don't care which, just so that I can maybe finally get through one persona game. And maybe this is going to be the conversation that convinces me to do that. The Royal version, Persona 5, the original had a little bit of homophobic stuff, like gross stereotype stuff. Royal tones that down a little bit. I think it's still there, if I remember correctly, but it's toned down. Yeah. I mean, there's plenty in these games that we could get into as probably. Lomatic, like the treatment of female characters across the board. Not ideal. But hey, this is that, this is not why you go to a persona game. You go for the high school drama. You go for the tropes themselves interplaying with one another and bouncing off. The Buffy, Buffy the vampires there. Kirk and I, I remember we were talking a while ago. It's funny. P persona 4 and 3 are actually what started split screen and then triple click. So without Tricona, we wouldn't have triple click because Kirk and I started this feature on Kataku in 2012 called Burning Question. familiar-sounding feature.

That was essentially an excuse of us to just put a transcript of our Slack conversation. I am conversation about persona 3. And that, like, we eventually started doing that more regularly and then eventually turned it into a podcast. And so that is eventually what became split screen. And then, of course, Maddie Myers came along and we became the powerhouse that we are today.

But yeah, persona has some important persona lore in our history. The social link was formed. It's true. I've spent the better part of this year playing through Persona 5 Royal because it had been full price on PlayStation and I just wasn't willing to pay 60 bucks or whatever to play a game I'd already played. But then I found it on sale and was like, all right, fine, I'm going to get it. And I've been playing it entirely in remote play using Chiaki, that app that lets you play PlayStation games streaming to your Steam Deck. So I've been playing the whole thing on Steam Deck.

And I'm far. I'm like 80 some hours into it. This is just chipping away at it. every couple times a week for months and months. I've just did my whole year. It's like going to the gym. You just got to do it a couple times a week

and you'll make a lot of progress over time. It's exactly like going to go to the gym. It's going to make you feel more energetic. It's going to really put a pep in your step because you're playing persona five a few times a week. Exactly. So playing through this game has a few things about the game has struck me.

And one is that it's not really about the depth of any one aspect of it, of the world, of the characters, the storytelling. it's not that it's so fleshed out. It's actually the opposite. So I really like going to brunch. I love going to brunch. And I really missed brunch during the pandemic and haven't really actually had that much time for brunch. But whenever I go to brunch, I like to get a lot of things because that's kind of the fun of brunch is you got your eggs and your toast and your hash browns and

maybe a side dish and, you know, maybe some kind of you're splitting some French toast with people at the table. Then you got your orange juice and your coffee and your water. So there's a variety of things. can kind of go from one thing to the other to the other. And that's what I really like about that meal. It's very different than just you have a sandwich and you just eat the sandwich. It's all kind of stacked on top of each other. Brunch is basically how you play video games too. You're just like, I'll take the whole sample platter. It's also how Kirk has tried not to play video games in the past. Not succeeding. Yeah, I was going to say it's a lot of times, sometimes it is. This year it has been because it's been a weird year. But a lot of times it's

actually not. I'm more of a sandwich kind of guy where I'm just like, I'm eating this whole sandwich. I'm going to finish the whole damn thing to the bit. Um, to the bit. end. And then when you finish it, you want to eat it again. So I guess the video game equivalent, it's like you throw it up. And you just go back to the restaurant, to the same sandwich place, which I do. Is this food metaphor working? How's this working? Does it make any sense? I do it. I think it's perfect. I think you go back to the same place and you get the same sandwich again because it was so good, which is certainly how I am with my local sandwich place. So anyways, that's kind of the thought I've been having as I've been playing persona five

is what kind of sandwich is persona five it's not a sandwich it's it's brunch that's what I'm saying it's an eclectic meal within the game itself it's a little of this it's a little of that it's a journey of course of course yes so that's the experience that I've had playing it is that there's not really a lot of depth to any of the characters and going back and playing through these social links again I've just I've been kind of blasting through it going pretty quickly I played it already so I really know how to minmax my character and move through it and that's not really the thing that I find appealing about the game

In fact, I really barrel through all of the social stuff, and it's kind of just the rhythm of it that I'm enjoying more than any of the specific content. The way that I've been playing, I have these power-ups that recharge my mana and my power while I'm in dungeons, which lets me just play through the whole dungeon in one whack, which I think I've mentioned this before is kind of not the most fun way to play because the dungeons are big. In Persona 5, especially, they're really involved. There's all this level design, there are stages, and there's a whole story to each dungeon. And because I don't want to waste multiple nights in the schedule, I go through the whole thing. And then it winds up just being that I spend a lot of sessions playing the game going through the dungeon. And then also that I spend a lot of time just marathoning through social stuff. And that's more fun.

I really like all of the social interactions. But each individual social link that you build up with a character, you know, each time you hang out with them, you rank up, you learn a new thing about them, your character, your relationship kind of matures or you gain some new insight into them. it's made me realize how each character is actually pretty shallow in this game, and I don't feel any real meaningful connection to any of them. Like we joke about, you know, oh, Makoto is like, she's the girl that you have to date, but like she's barely a character. I mean, she's totally this archetype of the overachieving student council, you know, character. And each one of your friends is just this archetype.

And even getting that involved in any given character for me is kind of a bit of a goof. Like I'm just sort of projecting onto the game. And the real appeal is just, that schedule. It's the structure and it's the feeling of just a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I'm going to do this. I'm going to go to Momentos for a night. I'm going to hang out with this person. I'm going to go and try to eat a big hamburger so that it'll make my stats go up. I'm going to play a video game and you just get into that rhythm of the schedule. And to me, that's definitely the most appealing thing about these games. It's funny that you're playing with those accessories

that like heal your magic points. My SP. SP, skill points. Because I feel like that kind of ruins the game. Like the whole one of the appeals of the dungeon crawling part of it is that there's a rhythm to it and that your skill points kind of, uh, because you're essentially using skills in every single battle, they almost represent your like level of exhaustion. And in some senses, it's literal. Like, yeah, I think, uh, when you get to a restroom or at some point like with voiceover, Makoto or sorry, not Makota, Margana will be like, you guys are looking tired. Maybe you should tap out. And it kind of gives you natural stopping points for, when it's time to leave the dungeon.

Well, the game is designed around those. I mean, as you play the game more and more, you can buy more SP replenishing accessories. You can get them from the doctor. You can get stuff in the rest areas heals you. So it's kind of like over the course of the game, they want to make it easier for you to go a longer distance. But I think it's a lot more fun if you don't play.

Like, the game's a lot more fun if you don't enmax it, first of all, if you just make kind of organic choices. But second of all, if you take the dungeons a little bit more leisurely. And they're also kind of forced stop. points in most of them where it's like you have to go out and defeat this other guy in mementos before you can keep making progress or whatever. Yeah, I think the way that I'm playing it the second time through is just different than the first time. That's how I played it the first time. But this time through, I'm just in more

of a min-maxing mode because the second time you play a game like this, it's like, it's just a natural thing to fall into. I really want to see the new stuff, so I want to kind of max out the old stuff. But also, I would say that even playing this the first time, I bet some people really fall prey to that. I think that's one of the challenges with this kind of game where you know that any choice that you make, there's an opportunity cost. And I explain this a bit in the preamble, but this game is on a schedule and there's a limited amount of time. And sometimes there's really like a limited amount of time to kind of, you know, cause a major story development to happen. Like you have to get a person's social link to a certain level by a certain date. And usually

those are pretty easy to do. They're not always easy. I remember Naoto, like Maxing Naoto's social link and Persona 4 was actually really hard because she was only in your party for like a month or something like that so you had to really know what you were doing and I totally failed to do it the first time through and there is that kind of niggling feel that you get

when you're playing through a persona game and then you realize that you're being closed off from opportunities and oh maybe I didn't spend my time optimally. To your point about it being a poop-a-platter I agree with that I think that's a salient point and I also think in addition to like that kind of being the joy

of it is going around a sampling meeting. It's also the vibe, the music and the rain and the coffee and the curry and all that stuff. I've talked about that in the past, but that is really what makes the game just like feel like, oh, man, I want to spend time in this world. That was something that I really liked about it. And as somebody who didn't super enjoy the dungeons, I really liked the fact that there were so many other things to do, especially because even though I agree with you, Kirk, that none of the characters are that deep. That's almost not the point because it is fulfilling the fantasy of you participating in a sort of Buffy the Vampire ensemble cast type of high school scenario.

Like you're all fighting demons and each of you has a different personality trope that shines above all your other personality tropes. And that's, you know, you're the, the beater, the, the mage, whatever your D&D classes are. And that fantasy is the best part of the game. I really wish I liked the combat more because I feel like that would have been enough to push me over and want to beat it, because everything else about the game is so great. Like, even just the fact that it is constrained to you,

you can only have meals at certain places. You can only visit certain places a certain number of times per week. That's really cool. Like, not that many games do that to you. I'm so used to games where it's like you press pause and, like, the meteor is never going to hit the planet. You can just go run around and explore infinitely. And a character will warn you at the gate.

Like, hey, if you live here, you're never coming back again. And persona is just not at all afraid to cut you off and be like, nope, you're done. Like, that's all you did today. And also the clock keeps going. Sorry. And it's kind of that. Yeah, and you can waste your time. You can like do a social league with someone and not even get close to like leveling.

Yeah. You can strike out with people as it were and make, have sort of dice rolls not on your side with people or just pick the wrong things because you don't know, which is also what I was doing when I was playing. I wasn't using a guide. I was just messing around and enjoying it. And I'm sure I missed things as a result. But it felt more like a real high school experience of not always knowing the right thing to do and just kind of messing around. There's this unstated thing underlying a lot of persona where if you choose the right thing in every conversation, you will maximize someone's friendship toward you. And it kind of systematizes relationships in a way that's actually pretty creepy when you think about it.

And it's a funny thing about this game that there's this neatness to the fact that every social relationship works according to these very clear rules. But that's not actually how the real world is. And if it were, that would be really weird because then you could like hack the game and make everybody like you, which is not how life works. So I think that that's actually an interesting aspect of this game that I wasn't super aware of the first time I played it through when I was reviewing it. That in persona five at least, when you're having a conversation with someone, usually, when you are doing one of the social link hangouts. You know, you go out to get ramen together and you're talking, and, you know, they're talking about their problem.

You know, Ryuzzi got kicked off of the track team, and so he's talking about how much that bums him out. And then you're given three options. And you can choose from among those three options. You know, you can kind of support him or you can kind of give him the hard on his truth or you can act like you don't know what he's talking about. And for a while, I was kind of role-playing in those just for fun, I'd maybe give him the hard on his truth or pretend I didn't know what I was talking about.

And then I realized what you really need to do is kind of play into someone's desires and tell them what they want to hear a lot of the time because then you get the most little notes over their head and that means that you get the most points toward the social link progressing. So when I started to look up guides and I don't use guides on this level, but there are guides for every social link that tell you exactly what thing to choose in every conversation, which really does kind of once you see that whole social matrix, it makes you realize that if you wanted to spend all, of time thinking about what this game is saying about social relationships. Like, it's kind of a weird, uncomfortable thing that it's saying. Even though I don't actually do that that much. And what I find appealing about the game is actually the way zoomed out view of it. Like you were saying, Mani, just the feeling of being in this big group and going on this big adventure. I mean, you can take that one step further because there's romances in the game.

When you max out a woman's one of your girlfriend's social links, you can turn them into your girlfriend. And that's another kind of weird aspect of this whole thing. It's like not only if you say exactly what someone wants to hear, they'll be a better friend to you. Also, if you say exactly what this girl wants to hear. Or it doesn't even matter if you say, like if you brute force it and just spend enough time with them, they will fall in love with you, no matter what.

Right. It's the classic dating sim problem. It is. I also, if you go even further than that, there is actually a lot that's being said about social dynamics in the game just because of how the palaces work and the very nature of reality that's at stake here. Like, the whole game is about the idea of unlocking other people's problems

by figuring out the demonic manifestation of them in their own brain. And it's a very gamer way to approach any type of societal problem to just be like, well, what if instead of therapy, you could go into somebody's head and then just, like, beat the shit out of, of their problems as little manifestations of little demon guys and then fight like the evil version of them. And then after you did that, you'd get back out and then they'd be great. It's like it's it's the most maxed out possible version of what we're describing in terms of

gamifying social interactions and societal issues. Right. It's and you know persona this is persona five which each game does have a slightly different conceit when it comes to the dungeons. And persona five, yeah, it's the pickeresque fiction thing where you're these bandits, you're the phantom thieves, and you break into people's hearts, and then it really borrows from inception, or it's the same kind of idea as inception where you're going deeper and deeper and deeper into their psyche until you steal the thing they want most, and that changes their heart. Persona 4 is interesting because it flips the script a little bit, and most of the dungeons you do, they're not all this way, but the early ones are actually the psyches of your soon-to-be party members.

So instead of playing through a villains dungeon or palace like you do in Persona 5, each of the palaces is based around some new target, some horrible person, some villain. In Persona 4, it's usually a hero, a friend, and they're having some sort of a, you know, personal conflict. And that winds up being interesting because you go into their psyche and then you kind of try to figure out what's wrong, and they learn to accept themselves, and that's when they kind of accept their shadow self and gain the power of the persona. In Persona 5, Futaba, the character is the closest thing to that, where she is a future ally, but you go into her palace and you have to kind of fight this version of her to help her reconcile her feelings. And that stuff is really cool.

I think that bigger picture view of how like the collective unconscious works and how all of our brains allow for these phantasmagorical spaces that we could adventure through. That stuff is really neat. And also, I like the sort of shared subconscious that's going on, especially. in Persona 5 of Mementos, where there's also this endless dungeon that's just under the city of Tokyo. And it's like everyone's just feelings all just create this huge subway system dungeon that winds up being really important to the story. Yeah, it's just too bad that narratively it's interesting. It's just too bad. Mechanically, Prona 4's dungeons are not interesting at all.

No. Prona 3 and 4, unfortunately, their dungeons are just like series of randomly generated hallways, whereas Persona 5 has like these meticulous. designed dungeons with like winding paths and shortcuts and keys and all sorts of cool stuff and scripted encounters and they feel more like proper video games. It's hard to go back to persona 3 and 4, I think, at least for me personally, because of those random dungeons. Yeah, I've been going back to persona 4. Like I said, when I first got a Steam deck, it was before I had figured out how to play

PlayStation games on it. So I wanted to play persona just because I'll always associate persona with handhelds. I played through persona 3, and specifically there's a portable version. And that's actually the version that's being ported to PC, and I think Switch is P3P. It's considered the better version, yeah. And that's the one that I played through. And actually, we should say, Persona 3 Portable is the only one of these games that we're talking about, where there is the option to play as a female protagonist, which I really want to do.

I know that persona 3 isn't going to hold up mechanically, but I never did that. I played as a male protagonist at the time that I played through it. And I think that that would be really interesting to do that again. But I always associate these games with handhelds, and so I was playing through Persona 4 on Steam Deck. It's great on Steam Deck. And there is something about that game that I still prefer to Persona 5, even though Persona 5 is so much superior in so many ways, just audio visually, in terms of how elaborate the story is, even the simulation, like the amount of options that you have on a given day are way. You just have way more to do. Everything is really blown out.

But Persona 4 is the same core. It's very clear that Persona 5. was, you know, basically P-Studio took Persona 4 and said, okay, if this one really worked, let's just basically do that again, but blow everything up to the point where even the character archetypes fit, there's like a detective and the troublemaker friend. Like, I mean, it's very, very similar. But I like the cast of Persona 4 better. And Jason, you mentioned something.

You were talking about the vibes. And you said the rain. And I think when you said that, you were talking about Persona 4, because in Persona 4, a big part of that game is the rain. It's not set in a city like Persona 5. you're not in Tokyo, you're out in the country. No, I was talking about five, but yeah, four also has this cool rain. But five, five has that specific music track that plays when it rains, and it's awesome.

Okay, but I guess the rain is an important story aspect of Persona Four, and I really associate persona rain with Persona Four because in that game, you go inside the TV because there's sort of another collective unconscious thing within the TV, and the only times when you're going to go in there, or when you can go in there, or after it rains, because the fog comes and then people get killed. kidnapped and taken to the TV. So it all ties in with the weather in a way that's really cool where you have to watch the weather forecast every day on the TV. And then when it's going to rain, that's when you know you have to finish whatever you're doing because that's going to be

the next chapter in the story. And then there are these animations. Your character will be in his little room and you can hear the rain coming down on the roof and he'll go over to the window and he pushes it open and you can see that it's kind of raining outside and it'll say, I don't remember the exact prompt, but something like, it's raining. You should check the midnight channel. And there's just something to that. Like, that energy is my favorite thing in all of persona, in all of persona, in every persona game. And it's from persona four. So playing it again, it took me back. And I, I still love it. I still love that more than any one thing in Persona Five, despite that game's many strengths. So in Persona Four, if you're only going into your friend's minds, is there ever

a villain? Like, how does that play into it? Well, so it's a murder mystery, like Jason said. And so there is a villain, but the villain is cloaked in. mystery for most of the game. It isn't like this series of big, you know, big talking villains, like in Persona Five that you have to take down. It's more, there's this ongoing threat. And so what happens at the beginning is someone turns up dead and no one knows how they've been killed. And then it turns out a person gets sucked into the TV somehow. And then they appear on this thing called the Midnight Channel that's a kind of urban legend among the kids where if it rains, then, you know, at midnight you turn on your TV and you'll see, I don't know, they say, they don't know what it is.

you're actually seeing is the TV world, this sort of collective unconscious dungeon. And whoever's been kidnapped and thrown into the TV appears there. So soon it's your friend appears there and you think, oh no, you know, Yukiko has been kidnapped. She's inside the TV. We have to go get her out. So you go into the TV and the mascot character in there, Teddy, who's just like Morgana and Persona 5, explains what's going on. And you go and there's a new sort of dungeon themed around the character Yukiko and her own, you know, inner insecurities. And you have to then fight through that until you reach the end and you rescue her and she joins you. But the big boss is basically just there's someone doing this. There's some killer and you're trying to figure out who it is. Well, and if you

don't rescue her in time, she dies, which is the whole premise of the murderer. It's like this one murderer, or so you think is this one murderer who's like doing all the kidnapping and throwing people into the TV world. Is it because they have insecurities that they are susceptible to the TV world or is that just happenstance? I can't remember. remember, I think I don't want to reveal too much for people who haven't played, because I think some of the facts of that, like, reveal the mystery. I just think that's one of the more interesting pieces of persona five to me, and would maybe also be true of four, is just the idea of the human mind being something that other people could help you through. I mean, that's the piece of it that I like, although I was sort of joking around about therapy earlier. I mean, I think that probably works better than inviting friends into your facsimile of your own mind. But I don't know. I've never tried the latter. I do like the idea of it, though, which I think is that other people can help you through your problems in a way that you can't do on your own and that you might not even be able to fully understand on your own. As far as themes go, I think that's a pretty strong one.

Isn't the equivalent of you inviting people into your mind just you telling people to play Super Metroid for a while? Yeah. Yeah. It's very similar. Yeah. That's why I do it. I just want people to understand me. I think that is the metaphorically, the strongest footing of this series. And it is metaphorical because you invite the people into your mind and then they use magic to kick the shit out of your insecurities and tell you feel better. But of course, you don't have to see it that directly, right? It's more, oh, through the power of our new friendship, we're going to support you through this. And then that's also reflected in the way that as you become better friends with people,

they become more effective in combat. And I really like that too. This is an old thing in RPGs and in JRP's, where just This happens kind of naturally in any JRP where as a character gets more powerful, they come through for me more in combat and I like them more and I just feel like I have a fleshed out relationship with them. Partly because, you know, in these games like that we've played, like Suicoden or Final Fantasy 6. Yeah, even if it isn't actually part of Sweetodon or those other games, it still feels like it is because you remember certain characters and you're like, oh, I like that guy. That guy's cool. And because you honestly spend more of your time with the characters in combat than anywhere else because there's so much combat in those games.

So the most meaningful part of your relationship is on the battlefield. And so when they're coming through for you, it's, you know, you kind of form a relationship or I form a relationship with characters anyways. And in persona, that's then taken to a kind of a more heightened level because, you know, as you level up your social rank with someone, they'll get the ability to come and slap you out of it if you get some kind of negative status effect. Or, you know, they'll take a hit for you if you're about to be killed. And this series, annoyingly, still has the thing where if your main character gets killed in combat, it's an instant game over. But that sucks. But the thing, they mitigate it by having, you know, characters take the hit for you, which then makes you think, oh, this is cool. This character I've gotten to know is now kind of more helpful to me because we trust one another a little bit more.

Yeah, the Shinemagami Tensei games, which is the kind of main series, a persona is an offshoot of have way more cheap deaths than like instant death spells that just like you'll get into a random encounter. and lose an hour of progress because some enemy douchebag cast an instant death spell on you. So yeah, it's definitely a thing, a vestige of the past in this series that should probably be eliminated. Cast instant death on instant death spells. Something I've noticed in Royal is just you can see them in real time identifying some of those frustrating things and then trying to fix them. Because I don't know if there's more of these in Royal. It seems like there are. There's definitely a lot of small mechanical changes.

And there are all these abilities that you eventually get that say something along the lines of instant death spells won't kill you. You know, like ways of mitigating this extremely annoying thing because, yeah, there are these light and dark spells that will just instantly kill you. I haven't really run into those as much in P5. In persona 4, it was constant and in persona 3 too. And it's just, it's a spell that just kills you. You can't do anything about it. And then you get a game over, which just, it seems like someone somewhere along the line a little earlier than now should have said, You know, this isn't really fair.

It's not a good feeling. Yeah. It might not be fun to anyone at all. Yeah, this might not be a good time. So Persona 5 also has more liberal use of save points. Unlike a lot of RPGs, you can't save anywhere. So if you're in a dungeon and you're between save points and you get a game over, you have to go back to the previous save points.

So there's that tension is always there. But in persona 5, it doesn't. It's not quite as probable because there's so many save points and they're very frequent. and you always have a feel for when one is coming up in the dungeon. Either someone will say something in your party or it'll be like, all right, it's been a while. I feel like one is coming up scene. Right.

Plus you could never lose that much progress if there's a lot of save points, naturally. Exactly. You can't, though I will say the other night I texted Jason an angry stream of texts because I was at fighting a boss near the end or the, not the end, I guess there's a ton left in person. Was it like a multi-stage boss? That's always the worst. And it was, I mean, and the boss,

was down to a sliver of health and then just pulled off this ridiculous, essentially unblockable thing that killed my protagonist. I had to start the whole fight over. And I was mad. And then whatever, I beat the boss. But if that happened in Dark Souls, you would be like, oh, what an amazing game now. Yeah, I'm not sure I would. I'm just kidding.

I guess maybe I would. But Dark Souls is pretty different. Right. And Dark Souls, it would have gone into your mind palace and really taught you something. There is something different, right, about having a Dark Souls boss beat you when they have a liver of health left that just feels at least to me a little bit less annoying than when it's just some out of nowhere turn-based attack that I couldn't do anything about it's because it's because in one of the games it's your fault and the other game it's the game's fault right yeah of course but it's

turn-based combat and it's just a random death spell or whatever it's there's something you can have done better whereas in dark souls it's always like well I could have dodged that that attacker I could have been less cocky going into it right it's it's kind of a difficulty spike thing in persona like the when I re fought that boss, I was more cautious, which you can be by buffing your defense a lot. Like, I just always had my defense up because I knew now that the boss was able to pull out this wombo combo that would just kill my protagonist. But, you know, there are these spikes and you shouldn't have to anticipate those, and those do still kind of exist in this series. There are some wicked spikes

in Persona 4. I remember one, God, it was like a boss with big, tall legs. All I remember is that because I saw that boss over and over and over again. It's sort of midway through the game. And just for whatever reason, it was just my bane. And persona three, certainly has that and there's way less saving in persona three, which I think maybe there will be save states or something, some way of mitigating that when they re-release it. I hope so, because that would make that game a lot more palatable to replay. Persona three, we haven't really talked about Persella three much. Yeah, I was about to ask about that. What's, what's persona three's premise? It's kind of an interesting vibe. Just like Percent

4 and 5, it's set in high school, he plays a bunch of high school students, very buffy-ish cast of archetypes and characters. The most buffyish, I would say, too, because you're explicitly fighting evil. You're this group of evil fighting teenagers. And you can be a female character. Super buffy. Well, it's a secret. You join this group called, what is it?

C's. C's. CES. S-E-S. Yeah. And it's like this secret crime fighting organization where you fight in the shadow world against these monsters and you're not supposed to tell the world about it, but you're, you're fighting evil every time. Because it's a very Giles. I think I did a Katakoucau post that was basically the.

one-to-one for every Buffy character because they kind of all match up. But there's not mind palaces in there. It doesn't sound like. You're just entering the shadow realm and there is the additional layer of, and you can change people's minds or learn more

about them. If memory serves, it's basically like momentous in Persona 5 where there's just one dungeon and you're fighting to the top of this huge paranormal tower basically. And then there are points in the story where they'll say we need to reach this floor because something's happening there and we have to keep going. So there are kind of

waypoints established, but you're really just constantly ascending and you start at the same point throughout the game and then you unlock new sort of waypoints on the elevator or whatever that you can get back up to. And then eventually you get to the top. I got all the way to the one of either the final boss or you know since it's a persona game probably the third to final boss, but really near the end. And then I just, I'd been kind of winging it through the game because I hadn't played a lot of JRPGs at the time and didn't have a great party. And then I was just getting worked by this boss because it's one of those bosses where it changes its elemental affinity every two turns. And I just didn't have the party that I needed.

And I kind of gave up and never finished it. But it'd be kind of fun to finish it. I know that that game has its fans. And I do like it. It has a slightly more serious tone, which the big change to persona four is that it's a little more playful and it's like sillier. And there's kind of this fun-loving vibe. And that game was really successful. So then persona-5 doubles down on that.

And everything is very, very silly and fun, even though it's. It's like capers and stuff, but it's not even a murder mystery. I mean, it's really pretty light where persona three is more serious. It's, you know, we're fighting these demons. We're part of this like serious group. This is scary end of the world stuff. And we're trying to save the world. And it's, that's cool.

It's got a different vibe. It's a lot more like the standard SMT games, which are a lot more serious and a lot more just like fighting demons in this strange world. And also you can actually die and the stakes are life or death. where persona five, it's not to say you can't actually die, but the villains, you're just fighting to change the mind of regular people in the world as opposed to, well, maybe there's mass murders later on and you're trying to change the minds of cannibal lecters and so on. Persona five significantly escalates, but it starts a little smaller. Yeah, it starts off with just like a gym teacher, but it gets into more powerful people.

Last thing I want to mention is Shogi Maguro in particular. There are a few developers who are associated with this game, but Shogi Maguro is, the primary composer that there are other people who've written the music. Oh, yeah. How do we not talk about the music this whole time? I've got to at least mention it. It is incredible. Really cool kind of jazz fusion with a little bit of sort of rapping and singing,

but it's got this just kind of an inimitable vibe. It's funky. It's really up tempo. And he's just a great writer. And the way the series uses music is, I think, crucial to the overall rhythm of it. Because it repeats these songs. You hear them over and over and over. and you just kind of

start to develop, you like associate them with whatever you're doing, we're hatching a plan, or someone's having an emotional breakthrough, or something sad is happening and someone's going to die, or shit is on and we're going to go beat up the bad guys. Like, whatever it is, there's some piece of music that plays whenever that happens, and because these games are dozens and dozens of hours long,

those situations replay over and over again and you always get the same music. So it's exciting in that way, and then it's also exciting when, toward the end of the game, when shit is really going down, there will be new music and this whole new song comes on. And then you realize, oh, man, this is new music.

I've heard all those other pieces so many times that this must really be important. So, yeah, the music in these games, I mean, all of it, the art is incredible as well, but the music is something special. Yeah, it's really good. And I remember feeling kind of sad that I was listening to podcasts while doing the dungeons to sort of, like, keep my brain activated because I also really liked the music. And I was like, there's no, I can't, there isn't a good way for me to deal with this problem. It just is what it is.

At least the dungeons are repetitive. But yeah, if you're going to get the music, you've got to listen to the music. It's true. It's great. All right. Well, that is our kind of brief recap of the Persona series. Of course, 100-hour games would require hundreds of hours to talk about them. But hopefully this will suffice.

Anyways, that's persona. Let's take a break. And then we'll be back with one more thing. Her Majesty served Great Britain and the Commonwealth loyally for over 70 years. And while, of course, we feel a profound sadness, we must remember she lived a long life and died in such a way that I think many of us would want for ourselves. She was at home, surrounded by her family.

And of course, she was listening to the Beef and Dairy Network podcast. The Beef and Dairy Network Podcast is a multi-award-winning comedy podcast, and you can find it at Maximum Fun. or wherever you get your podcasts. You're in a theater. The lights go down. You're about to get swept up by the characters and all their little details and interpersonal dramas. You look at them and think,

that person is so obviously in love with their best friend. Wait, am I in love with my best friend? That character's mom is so overbearing. Why doesn't she just stand up to her? Oh, God, do I need to stand up to my own mother? If you've ever recognized yourself in a movie, then join me, Jordan Cruciola, for the podcast, Feeling Seen. We've talked to author Susan Orlean on realizing her own marriage was falling apart after watching adaptation, an adaptation of her own work, and comedian Hari Kondabolu, on why Harold and Kumar was a depressingly important movie for Southeast Asians.

So join me every Thursday for the Feeling Scene podcast here on Maximum Fun. And we're back for one more thing. Jason, why don't you go first? Yeah, this is really exciting. There's nothing I love more than playing a game that nobody's talking about and discovering that it's. secretly amazing. So I'm playing a game that has skyrocketed. Well, I just finished a game that has skyrocketed to the top of my favorite games of 2020 list. It is called the Case of the Golden Idol. And it is a mystery detective game. I actually discovered this game because Lucas Pope,

who was the creator of Return of the Oberton, tweeted about it. And if so, if Lucas Pope tweets his resounding approval of a game, I will probably look into it. And this game is incredible. you guys. You guys will both fall immediately in love with it, just like I have. I have a feeling that anyone out there who was into mystery games, detective games, and especially Return of the Obertin, will be really into it. So let me explain. First of all, the art style is a little off-putting at first, but you get used to it, and I had actually really grew on me as I played along. So the concept of this game is it's broken up into chapters and then episodes within each chapter. In each episode, someone dies. And you have to figure out not just how that happened, but also a sequence of events that led up to that.

And you do that by kind of exploring this rudimentary point-and-click world where there are much of, it's these big 2D landscapes and you can move around the world and there are a bunch of people and a bunch of objects. And as you're kind of clicking through and looking into them, you will accumulate a inventory full of words. So let's say you find someone named Bob who's been killed. you might first discover the name Bob because you found a diary that he was holding and it said, my name is Bob. And then it might say,

I sure hope that Kirk doesn't come and kill me tonight. And then you'll discover the word Kirk and then you'll discover the word kill. And then the way to make progress is you kind of flip from investigate mode into think mode and it'll say it'll present this kind of scroll of like missing words, fill in the blanks,

and you have to determine what happens. So it might be like on a summer night, blank was in the study when blank came and killed him with the blank and you have to fill in all those words. And it starts off simple and then gets super complicated and elaborate and you have to do all this kind of puzzling in your head and investigating in sleuth work to figure out each sequence of events as it happened. And it's brilliant.

By the end of it, I was like, oh man, this is so cool because it's not a bunch of self-contained stories. Well, it is, but it's self-contained stories that are. all connected and add up to this like larger story and larger theme. So, um, you might find that like, uh, you're investigating this murder of someone you've never heard of only for it to pop up later that actually this person was super important for this reason. And it's very, very well crafted in that sense. Um, and tells us this incredible story about this idol with magical powers and this kind of like brotherhood of conspirators who wear masks and have crazy, crazy, uh, rituals and stuff. And it gets really,

really cool. And so much of it is just like relying on your intuition and you're just like logical thinking, which is so cool and so much fun to play. And it's just like, again, one of those games just like over Dinn where you're like, wow, we still don't even know the half of what detective stories can do with like video games can do with detectives. And it's just so cool to play another fresh game like this and just such an enjoyable experience. Again, it's called the Case of the Golden Idol. I played it on PC. It took me like six. or seven hours to finish the whole thing. Yeah, I was going to say, that's the best news.

Is it before the show you told us it was six hours, which that's like a perfect length for something like that. Easy to take down. I mean, some people, depending on your like puzzle solving skills, I guess, some people might take a little less time or a little bit more time, but that's generally it. I had to pull out the notebook for a couple of things, which is always just a thrill. Yeah, that's good news. Just like my other favorite game of the year, Eldon Ring, notebook for fire.

And yeah, man, I just love. I loved it. I think it's going to be, it's going to, I'll certainly talk about it when Game of the Year time comes around and highly recommend it, especially if you're into Obride and if you're into any sort of detective stories or mystery stories, you will really enjoy this game. And don't let the art style put you off because it really grows on you. At least it did on me. At first I was like, man, this looks like it was drawn in paint or something, but it actually really grew on me over time. Cool. Nice. I'm going to check it out. The gold medal. Oh yeah, I'm absolutely going to play it. I'm sure we will talk about it on the show. Maddie.

What's your one more thing? So I'm playing a bunch of games that are under embargo, which means I can't believe that I have to then make my one more thing, hocus, Pocus one and two. Which really, I didn't think I was going to talk about on this show, forever. But I never saw Hocus Pocus as a child. This is a somewhat famous 1993 film in which Bet Midler, Sarah, Jessica Parker, and Kathy Nogimi play three witches. And it's really goofy. It's like peak kids' movement. This is like the thing where I watched Princess Bride when I was a little too old and then I like had to wait till I was even older to even think it was good.

Like this movie is in that zone where it's so silly that like adults probably shouldn't watch it for the first time when they're 36 years old. But I did that. Dina also had never seen it before and we both were kind of like, let's just let's just see what this is, you know? So we did that and then we also watch Hocus Pocus too, which is of course the 2022 reboot, remaster, everybody's back together again. and all the characters are going to be little references to what happened in one. And it's pretty funny to watch movies like that back to back in one evening, especially if you've never seen the preliminary one. So I made a game out of it where I predicted everything that would happen in a sequel.

And I did really well. So I wanted to quickly rattle off some things. These are not spoilers because these are things that I was proven right about within the first three minutes of the second movie. The first movie, almost entirely white cast. It's pretty classic for the 90s. I immediately predicted second movie, it's going to be really diverse. Don't worry, folks. There's a whole diverse cast.

The lead character is this black girl who discovers her witchy, witchy self, her witchy fandom. Second prediction. I was like, okay, the witches are actually the best part of the first movie. And they're quite evil in the first movie. They're like out here murdering children within like the first two seconds. They eat kids. it's scary. But I was like, the problem is everybody loves the witches. So how are they going to fix that for the second one? That is the entire plot of the second one, is that everyone loves the witches. And that is the tension is whether the witches are good or bad. And my other prediction, which I can't reveal, but I'll just say the movie gets into it. And I've been thinking about this a lot because I can say I am playing Bain out of 3. And I did play, replay, in my case, Bain out of 1 and 2. The tough thing about having a witch is your heroine. is that she is doomed to hell.

She has signed a pact with the devil. The devil is real. The devil is a real guy. She's signed a pact with him and she is going to hell and that is how she got her magic powers. And that is the premise of the first Hocus Pocus and for better or worse,

it's the premise of the second one too. You really can't get around it. They introduce a funny, fallible preacher character who you're supposed to hate. You're really supposed to not like that guy. But like the witches are going to hell. And the end of Hocus Pocus too kind of finds a way

to just be like, don't worry about it. And that was incredible to me. So I was amazed. I kind of recommend watching Hocus Pocus One and Two. Maybe get not sober if that's something that you're into. I recommend that as well, if that's something you're going to do. But yeah, they're both, they're fun. They're ridiculous. And if you're playing Bayonetta, it's like not a bad thing to also watch on top of that. That's it. That's it. Companion. Companion watch. Yeah, I always get that mixed up with bed knobs and broomsticks. Yes, me too. There's a lot of witchy movies from that time period. I haven't seen bedmubs and broomsticks either. I'm out here not watching these movies. I was scared of everything as a kid. I couldn't watch these things. Too much supernatural action. Nice. All right.

Well, my one more thing is a show that I think we're going to be talking about more in the future, but I just wanted to mention on the show because I've seen some people saying that they haven't watched it yet or that they weren't sure about it. And I wanted to give it a Hardy endorsement. And that is Star Wars Andor, the new Star Wars show that's airing on Disney Plus. Which you will not stop talking about. I know. I am also watching it, in part because of Kirk's Hardy endorsement.

And I'm now caught up. And I'm very glad I'm caught up. It is very enjoyable. It's a good friggin TV show. That's what I'll say about it. So Andor is the story of Cassian Andor, who was one of the protagonists of Rogue One, one of the doomed protagonists of Rogue One. So he was on the mission that stole the Death Star plans and he died.

And this is his story. So this is how he became. Played by the gorgeous Diego Luna, the remarkable Diego Luna. Yes, he is played by Diego Luna. This series also features a lot of actors that I'm not familiar with, though some that I've seen in other things. I'm forgetting the guy's name. Like Stellan Scarsguard, for example. You've probably seen him in something else.

No, he was the only other person I had down as someone I was going to say that I recognized. But no. So the guy who played John Carrieroo in The Dropout is actually in this. And I really like that actor. I'm forgetting his name right now. But he's really good. He's also in the bear, right? Yeah, he's in the bear.

Yes, and he's also in the bear. So this is the story of Cassie and Andor, who at the beginning of this is kind of just a guy, like sort of a smuggler. And then it's the long story of how someone becomes a member of a rebellion under fascism, basically. And it's a spy story. So the whole thing is very muted. It's very low-key. It's very show-don't-tell. And it's very paranoid and intense.

And that's kind of how I'd describe it. It's not a mode I've ever seen Star Wars in. Neither. And at this point, six episodes in, it doesn't even feel right to compare it to other Star Wars stuff. Like to say things like it's the best Star Wars thing I've ever seen. Because I guess that's true, but it's so different that it just feels like watching a really, really good, beautiful-looking, well-acted, well-written, fantastical spy story that happens to be set in this kind of sci-fi world, and that's also Star Wars.

It's kind of a heist, too, by the way, which I really enjoy. The story of, like, watching how a guy became what he is today, like, it sounds like Better Call Saul. It sounds like the Star Wars version of Better Call Saul. I mean, it's not, but... It's not as funny or, like, sort of crisp or Bob Odenkirkey as Better Call Saul can only be. It's much more, I don't know, tragic. and meditative, but also has exciting action

nail-biter parts because there's the thriller heist planning aspect of it all and is the empire going to figure out what we're doing. Yeah, well, that part does for sure. Yeah. It's nothing like better call-sal, but I understand the character. I just want to talk about better call-sal. I don't care about your Star Wars nonsense.

So to address one thing that people have said, though, is do I need to have watched all these other Star Wars shows, especially like Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi? these shows that have been mediocre at best, which at least I feel that way. No, you do not. In fact, you almost don't have to have seen Star Wars at all to enjoy this show. If you get that the empire is this horrible fascist empire that's taking over everything, that's really all you need to know.

There's a couple of references. You know, there's stuff set on Corrassant. There are things that are from the movie. But this is the least Star Wars thing. Like there is this big heist. The most recent episode, episode six, was sort of a culmination. And there's a heist. And at no point in the heist does.

Does anyone look at another person and say, I have a bad feeling about this? Never happens. There's nothing like that in this series. No one has the last name, Skywalker. I haven't seen a single lightsaber so far. There haven't even been any stormtroopers yet. It's entirely just soldiers. There are very few aliens, which is actually a little sad to me.

That's probably my only thing where I'm like, I wish there was a little more of the Star Wars vibe in terms of. There was a doctor with forums who is called Dr. Quadpa. There's a couple other side characters who are aliens. Hold on. Just in the background. You're like, this is a serious show about real people. This is like... The doctor has forehands as well.

This is Dr. Quadpa. So you don't learn his name on the show, but you'll see when you watch this is he is a minor character in an extremely intense and sad scene. I know. He's just a guy with four arms. While that a doctor with four arms is like in one of the saddest moments of the show and his name is Dr. Quadpa. So for many conclusions based on that. And the canteena music is called Jizz. We don't talk about that.

I mean, what can you do? It's Star Wars. It's still kind of silly at the end of the day. But, like, this is the least silly it's ever been for better or worse. No, I mean, you've sold me. You've sold me. Kirk, you sold me. I know I've sold you.

I'm not trying to sell you. I know that you're going to watch it. I don't think this show is silly, actually. I don't think that it's kind of silly in the end. Well, that's what I said. That's what I said. I said this is the least silly it's ever been. I would say, like, it's just a fundamentally serious show about real people.

And that's the thing I keep saying to myself watching it is basically what a Star was about real people. It's just never quite felt that way. And that's not a bad thing. Like at its best, it's about these larger-than-life characters, these archetypes, you know, crashing into one another and these big, dramatic, operatic things happening. This is just not that. It's just about people. They talk like people. They act like people.

And the way that it does its work and it builds to these climaxes is amazing. It's structured in these three – so far it's been two, three-episode. series of, you know, like mini movies, kind of. So episodes one to three, which they release all at once, that's its own arc. And then episodes four through six, that's its own arc. Apparently seven is going to be a standalone thing, eight, nine, and ten, another three episode arc, and then 11 and 12 ends the thing. Then it's going to come back for 12 more episodes in season two, and that's going to be the end of it. The showrunner is Tony Gilroy, who incidentally wrote the screenplay for Michael Clayton and also directed it. That's so funny. Which is one more thing of

mine. I had no idea. Totally random. that I watched Michael Clayton. And actually, there's real Michael Clayton energy to this show as well. And the last thing I want to shout out, maybe the most important thing, won't be surprised to hear that I think this, is the music. The music for this show is composed by Nicholas Brutel. Many of you will know him as the composer of the succession theme,

among many other things, but maybe the most exciting composer in Hollywood right now. He's done a lot of amazing stuff. But this score moves completely away from John Williams. It's not even trying to sound like John Williams. And that, to me, more than anything, watching Rogue One, that was the thing that didn't work for me in Rogue One. Michael Giacino scored that one.

And it just, it has this theme. Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Like, it kind of sounds like Star Wars, that theme. The Andor theme doesn't sound like it at all. Bratel composed a ton of music for this show. There's all this experimental stuff, these beautiful, like, string textures, these builds, these dark, oh my God, I could, I'll probably on Strong Songs, we'll talk about the music for it.

But it creates this vibe. And there's just a feeling throughout this whole show that everyone's on the same page. Everyone's bringing their A game. Everyone knew they were making something special. And it's the most excited event about a TV show in a long time. So I just wanted to heartily endorse it on the show. Tell people to go watch it if you haven't watched it yet. It's so, so good.

It rules. I'm stoked. We'll talk about it more on the show. Yeah, we will talk about it more on the show. We all watch it. That will definitely happen. All right, that's enough of me ranting about Andor. It's good, though.

It's good. This has been another episode of Triple Click. Hey, we did it. Hey, we did it. We made it. We made it. It's almost November. It's almost the end of the year. Wow. It's almost Halloween. Cranking through it. What a weird year. It's really flown by.

All right. Well, we'll be back for another episode next week. Until then, I will see the two of you when I see it. See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes.

Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned, audience supported.