Triple Click - What's The Deal With: Souls Games?

Episode Date: February 4, 2021

What makes a Souls game a Souls game? Why do we love'em so much? And how many things have we learned from Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and the rest of the gang over the years? This week, the Triple Click crew dives into From Software's classic series and tries to figure out what the deal is.One More Thing:Kirk: Playing Hitman from the beginningMaddy: Maiden (2018)Jason: The Last DanceLinks:Chris Dahlen on Dark Souls: https://kotaku.com/what-dark-souls-is-really-all-about-5874599Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Welcome to the Triple Click Stock tracker where we are tracking Triple Click Stock. It is now $200. Oh my God, it's $10. Oh my God, it's $400. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about Souls games from Demon Soul to Sekiro and everything in between. What makes them special? Let's discuss.

I'm Jason Dreyer. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. And hello. And we are back. Hey, we sure are. another episode. We're back. Hello, my friends. How are you both today? Hello, hello. Hello. This fine February week. Killing it. Loving it. I like to say hello, hello, hello. But I realize that

means I'm saying hello to Maddie and hello to Jason and then hello to myself. I'm greeting myself and welcoming myself. That's self-care. Yes. That's what that is. That's what that's called. I thought the third hello is for our listeners. You're saying hello, Maddie. Hello, Jason. Hello, listeners. Hello. Oh, yes. Are we saying hello to them? Yeah, I don't know. That's very of the people of you, Jason. By the way, that reminds me. I've been reading a lot of Good Night Moon. It's a classic. Yeah, I sit and read to myself before I go to bed. No, I've been reading it to my baby daughter because toddlers, I don't know if you guys know this, but toddlers like to hand you the same book and then you read it to them and they just hand it to you again. Yeah, you both know this. But anyway, I've been reading a lot of

good night moon. Not a very good book, I gotta say. What? Good night moon rules. I can't believe this. It doesn't really make sense. Okay. So in the middle of it, it like sets up all these objects and it's like, in this room there's some socks and some mittens. And then you say good night to them, right? You say, good night, moon, good night. But in the middle of it all, there's a line that just says, good night, nobody. And it's like, what? What is that doing here? It's like, it's it's introducing abstract concepts to your child. Sure. Sure. Yeah. It's eerie. It's just sort of an ominous... Good Night Moon is a stone classic, and I will not hear otherwise.

Anyway, if all of you out there want to hear more riveting conversations about Good Night Moon, you should become a max fun member. Help support the show. We are entirely funded by you, the listeners. If you support the show, if you become a maximum fun member, you get access to our monthly bonus episodes, which we do on all sorts of things. Last month, we did a really fun one where we all got in-depth and personal about our lives and our careers, and that was really enjoyable.

This month, I'm very excited to announce that our triple-click bonus episode is a Beans cast on The Mandalorian. Yay. Star Wars, the Mandalorian. Both seasons. I thought you were going to say Good Night Moon, which also is a benefit of the newscast. We should do a spoiler cast on that because I have a lot of questions. The big spoiler is, at the end, the child goes to sleep.

You hope? You hopes? Well, no, the big spoiler. is you zoom out from the person holding Goodnight Moon and it's the Mandalorian reading it to baby Yoda. Oh my God, yes. I'm sure that that would happen on that show.

exists. Lucasfilm is in the process of marketing that idea as soon as the words exited. Oh my gosh. And all the things they're saying Goodnight to are like Star Wars characters. Oh, like little blue cookies and stuff.

Oh my God. Good night Java. So yeah, so I'm only six episodes in but I'm enjoying it and I'm looking forward to watching the rest and we'll talk about it at the end of February, if you're a MaxFund member. If you are not a maximum member, you can join by going to maximum fund.org

slash join. And if you can't afford or don't want to do so, that's totally fine. We're happy you're listening to the show. Nonetheless. Let's get to it, shall we? Kirk, what are we talking about today? All right. We're doing a What's the Deal with on this episode?

It's a what's the deal with that we have teased quite a bit in the last few. We don't usually tease future episodes of the show. We've teased this one. I sort of forced it to happen in a way. I feel like I am responsible for this, which is not an outcome I would have expected at all. No, it is something that is helped along by the game that Maddie has been playing. And of course, that is Dark Souls and we are doing a What's the Deal with Souls games? So that's what we're going to be talking about is what's the deal with Souls games.

So a lot of listeners probably know what Souls games are, what we mean when we say that. Just to run down the series, this is a popular series of Japanese action role-playing games. games. The first one of these, probably, you could say I'm sure there's some arguments about this, is Demon Souls in 2009, which was released on the PlayStation 3. It had some elements of Kingsfield, which was also a FromSoft game, but Demon Souls is widely seen as the first Souls games. And of course, that was recently remade for the PlayStation 5 in the interim. Then came Dark Souls. 2011, arguably perfected the formula, Dark Souls 2 in 2014, and then Bloodbourne in 2015, was the first from Soft Souls game that kind of went in a different direction with

keeping some of the same elements, we'll get into it. Then Dark Souls 3 in 2016, and then Sekiro's Shadows Die Twice, came out in 2019, which is a pretty significant divergence from the main formula in some ways, which actually kind of, it's like the exception that proves the rule. It sort of demonstrated some of the things that make a Souls game, a Souls game, even while changing the formula. So that's what these games are about. You fight things, you level up, you try to fight big bosses, that's the gist.

But I want to get into the specifics very quickly here. So I think what it would be fun to do is to try to identify the things that make a Souls game Since I think that will help us answer this question Of what's the deal with Souls games And I made a list, but I did not share it with either of you And I want to go around and just try to identify one thing each We'll just hopefully go around a few times

Try to identify one aspect of these games That makes them uniquely a Souls game So Maddie you've been playing a lot of Dark Souls Why don't you go first? What is one thing that makes a Souls game? a souls game. I got to go with the most obvious answer here. I feel like I'm on the prices right right now or something. You want to guess low. You got to guess low. Got to guess really low. So I am going to go with collecting souls. You need to collect souls in order for to be a soul's game or a soul's equivalent by which I mean you kill enemies, you get something from them

and then you trade that something into achieve some type of power up. And also you can lose those souls if you die multiple times in a row, but if you just die once, you can go back in your second play-through and find where you dropped the souls and pick them up again. That entire mechanic of collecting souls from enemies that you slay and using them to your own ends is to me a pretty key part of how these games work. I'm not going to include, I feel like bonfires is a separate entry, so I won't get into how the bonfires work. For now, I'm just saying souls. Yeah, I think that that is true. And it's really about, it's like you have to collect the souls and you get XP for killing enemies, but that's true of a lot of role-playing games. And the crucial thing I think is the second part of it is that

you carry them around with you and you're not safe to use them. Yes, you can lose them. So there's like this element of risk to these games when you get really deep into them. Yeah, although Sekiro is a little bit different. How does Sekiro work remind me? You've played it most recently. So in Sekiro, in Sekiro, if you die, you have an XP bar and also gold, and if you die, you lose, I believe, half of each, half of your gold, half of your XP, but you can't go pick it up. So there's no way to collect it from enemies or anything. Right, and you have, like, the extra life. Sekaro is definitely a, is an odd one.

Sekaro is very much a departure. Yeah, but in terms of what makes it... So Sekero is in some ways not a Souls game, so maybe the rules of Sekaro won't really apply to these things that we're listing, even though it is still a from game. You know what I mean? Like, it kind of changes so many things that I would still say that the losing XP thing is quintessentially a Souls game element. Like that is definitely every other game on this list that I just listed has it and all the clones do.

Yeah. And if another game does that, people will instantly compare it to Dark Souls. I don't know if Demon Souls created that mechanic or not, but it certainly popularized it. And Souls games popularized it enough that that Soul's mechanic, I would say, is intrinsically associated with these games. And everyone would agree on that. I feel like I've been talking about video games long enough to know that nothing created anything and there's always something that came first.

It's why I'm always hedging those statements. There was something before Pong. You can't say anything invented anything. But yeah, no, I think it did popularize it. Okay, Jason, what is another thing that makes a Souls game a Souls game? Yeah, I mean, the thing that always stood out to me about these games is that they don't signpost anything. Like, they are very, very much games that don't like to tell you what to do or where to go.

And you'll just get some vague, mysterious, like, clue that's like, you must ring the bells or like go go alf hunter into the dream and they won't tell you anything and i think that is one of the main reasons that they've stuck they like really stick in people's craws so much is because um you have to learn everything yourself you will never find a map in one of these games you will always like have to like learn the layout of a level of yourself and learn where the enemies pop out and try to get you and learn um they'll tell you mechanics so like you'll find hints on the ground that are basically the tutorial where it's like press R1 to slash press R2 to heavy slash whatever but but in terms of like like everything else they will just not give you any information yeah I had that written down

as mysterious backgrounded storytelling slash a general opacity which I think they're like very opaque all of these games are opaque in many ways they don't explain there you'll have some stat that you don't even know what it is you'll get an item that is got a vague description and then of course also the narrative of the world. Right. Yeah, sometimes to a, like, too frustrating degree, or at least to a point where you really have to look things up if you want to know what's going on. The one that I always bring up is, is there's a point in bloodboring where, like, you fall into this basement and there's this creature, this dead creature that has a ton of different eyes. And to get a secret

item, you have to just use this random gesture on it, like next to it. And like, there's no way anyone would have thought to do this, unless it's just mashing random shit. There's no hint or anything. But there is a lot of, I feel like these games, when it comes to the big stuff, they pretty much show you what to do. And there's a lot of little stuff like that. It's always kind of optional. You can beat them. Yeah, you can beat them just fine. But like there's a lot of smaller stuff that reminds me. It almost reminds me of like the NES, the old old days where like there was some really esoteric shit and it was planted in there. So you would have to go by the walkthrough. Yeah. Or like have a friend who told you how to play, which also feels very NES game to me in the

sense that, I mean, there's the whole system of summoning, which we haven't even gotten to yet, but the idea that calling a friend to help you with a game is baked into the conceit of Dark Souls is, I think, helps with something like that. Like, maybe you call in somebody who knows to do that weird gesture in that moment and you watch them doing it and you're like, what, why are they doing this? I'm going to copy them and see if it does anything. And then that gets you forward. And that's how a lot of the summoning works in that game. And also just personally, playing Dark Souls right now, I've enjoyed it because I'm talking

to other people about what they did and how they play it. And it's a very communal experience. I guess I could say that that is a soul's quality. Well, that plays into the opacity. Yeah. Right. It's very much, those two are very much hand in hand. Like it wouldn't work.

That wouldn't happen. That social aspect wouldn't happen if the game wasn't so full of secrets and dense. Right. It's interesting because it isn't that they've designed such great multiplayer systems or like, of cooperating. In fact, a lot of them are terrible. But it's like, I don't know what you would call that or what a game designer would call that. It's like an inverse design concept or something, where you design something knowing that what you're really designing for is someone to compensate

for it. So they make the game really opaque and hard to read and mysterious, knowing that players will counteract that by creating community, you know, information sharing and sharing with one another, which is a really cool type of design because it leads people to like take their own initiative to create to create ways around that opacity, which is I think a really cool part of these games. Okay, here's one. I have one. And that is a stamina system and a general focus on restricting the player.

I think that that is pretty, you know, it's not uniquely souls, but the way that you can't just do whatever you want in these games is. is, especially when they first started coming out when people played Demon Souls, is a pretty significant departure from a lot of other games. Not every other game. There's stamina systems and other action games, but the real focus on stamina, at least for me, that felt new. And then that also feeds into the combat system, which is this very restrictive combat system. Like the Monster Hunter games have a kind of a similar thing, but it's mostly animation-locked combat, which is, it means that, when you begin an animation, when you press a button to swing your sword, your character does the

whole thing. They start swinging that sword and they go through the entire animation, and you can't change your mind halfway through the animation and dodge. You're in for the whole thing. Right, again, Sekiro being the exception that proves the rule. But in all these other games, you are in for it, and your enemies have the same rules. So when you're fighting a boss, initially, especially a faster boss, will seem like this overwhelming flurry of attacks that you just couldn't hope to get inside, but soon you start to kind of learn their patterns, and you realize they're no different from you. They begin an attack sequence, and they're locked in it, and you can actually kind of, like, get around behind them, and they're like, d'ur, like swinging their sword around, and they're

totally missing you, and then you can hit them. So mastery of the game involves an understanding of the kind of longer rhythms of that combat, which are so focused on restricting you, on you, not being able to just like, attack, attack, attack, because you'll run out of stamina, and then your guy will like, you know, sit there catching his breath and get totally owned. So I would say that that the kind of like restriction on combat in particular is another is another one. Yeah. I feel like it is a way that the game forces you to never button mash, which is to say that you could never beat a soul's game by just pressing the buttons as quickly as you can. And there are certainly many games where that works just fine. But in a souls game, it forces you out of that behavior so deliberately. And I mean, I compared it to fighting games many times.

But the reason why that's true is because I feel like it takes a very similar mindset where you have to approach every interaction super methodically and slowly even, as counterintuitive as that may seem. And that, at least to me, is very pleasurable. It's something I really like about the combat is because it is just that it forces you to be thinking about how long every attack takes and also how many attacks you can do within any time period. I don't know.

That stuff rules. Anyway, I guess I'll talk about bonfires. I feel like this game, okay, I'm sure it did not originate bonfires. There's no way. The idea of a bonfire being a comforting place to rest is just some base human need from caveman times and like, sure, put a bonfire in a video game and make it the place to rest. But the idea of a bonfire also being a reset point is very souls. and is a big part of strategy in a Souls game because you can farm for souls and then know that

going back to the bonfire will reset everybody you just killed and then you can farm for souls again. Or you can just have the experience of getting through something very difficult and then knowing how far away that bonfire is and being like, well, I would like to go back and get more Estes Flasks or whatever, the healing item may be. But if I go all the way back to the bonfire now so that I can progress forward, I will have to redo everything I just did. So I may as well press on and see how much further I can get. And that idea of like dying and resetting and redoing everything you just did, the bonfire mechanic plays a huge role in that entire gameplay loop. It wouldn't be possible without that resetting mechanism. I think that the bonfires are a really good sort of case study of the

sort of difficulty discussion, which we'll talk about a little bit more later. But I think when I first started playing these games, I first played Demon Souls back when it came out. I really thought of it purely as a punishing mechanic. Like I was like, oh, okay, so every time I save, the whole level resets and all the bad guys I just beat her back and oh my God, so I just have to go fight them again. That was so hard though. Which it does seem that way when you first start playing one of these games. It's like, oh my God, every time you save, it resets. But it's actually much more nuanced thing than that. And it becomes this whole rich part of the game that you learn to sort of master and manipulate. And it can be so useful in so many ways. Like you said, it can let you

grind. It can let you reset a level strategically. It builds in all this tension or lack of tension. Finding one releases tension. It's such a complex and sort of nuanced creation that is so essentially, I mean, definitely have limited save in the bonfire is totally key to this kind of game. And it's a mechanic that's been stolen by so many video games since then because it's just, it allows you to add so much more nuanced to the idea of playing a game compared to a game that just auto saves or, you know, lets you save whenever you want, which is just so, seems so uninteresting in comparison, even if it does suit the game in question. Yeah, wow, Kirk hates Hitman 3 now. This is shocking news. I did not expect this. I actually do like Hitman more when you can't save.

The tension of like, should I keep going and risk all the stuff? that I collected, or should I go back to my safe point? That's a very classic video games thing. But I think in older games, it's a very classic video games thing that hadn't been around for a while, until Souls kind of brought it back. But in older games, you would get punished by getting a game over screen,

and it would be like, oh, shit, now I have to restart my progress. Whereas Souls games, you still do make some progress. You collect all your items. You have more of like a mastery of the level itself, like mental progress. And I think that kind of helps out of balance that makes it feel less punishing, even though I know everyone associates the Souls games with punishment,

just the fact that, like, even that you collect you, that you keep your items that you picked up, or like if you talked to someone and you started a quest, that'll still carry over when you die and when you wind up back at the same bond of it. It feels very different than like a classic NES game where you die and then all your progress is wiped

since the last time you say it. You know, you're almost kind of listening one that I didn't think of, but that I do think is an essential part of, I think maybe all of these games, is that your death is authored into the game. Like, it's part of the narrative that you die every time you die and you're undead in Dark Souls

and you're always dying and coming back. And multiple people are like you and are having the same experience within the canon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And so your death, you know, happened, and you're not resetting to a time before you died. Things keep going, so the stories keep playing out

and your death doesn't actually change that. and you can actually, you can like make progress in a thing in a kind of suicidal way that you then die, but you do trigger the next phase in the thing even though you died because the story keeps going. Yeah, there's usually a canon reason. Well, so that actually brings me into the other kind of trope, soul's trope that I was going to bring up, which is that there's always an encounter, usually a boss, but there's always an encounter that kills you at the beginning of the game, like that you're supposed to die to. It's usually a boss that's like the tutorial boss and you're supposed to die.

and that immediately teaches you like, okay, it's okay to die. Like, you're meant to die a lot in this game. Sometimes it'll even be the pivot point that like unlocks stuff. Like you get to the hunter's dream and Bloodborn the first time you die. And you're supposed to do that with like against the first enemy because that's how you get your weapons. But yeah, it very much teaches you that like dying is part of the story, part of the mechanics here. Also, there's always a poison swamp. There are like the tropes of Souls games.

There's always a dragon, especially in a Souls game. is always the horrible poison area. Yeah, dragon a breathing fire on a fucking bridge. Yeah, and the poison area always sucks. You're always like, this, it just didn't need to be in the game. Why is this year? Yeah, the game is teacher. We'll talk a little bit about teaching after we sort of identify these things

because I think that, like, they are great teachers. And it goes back to the opacity thing, too, in that they sort of entice you to learn and then force you to learn because they don't tell you what to do so often. but they make you want to know what's at the top of this tower that I'm trying to get up, you know, or what is that thing that I saw a little glimpse of? And I think that that is a defining element of these games, even though it's kind of hard to pin down.

It's just there's such good teachers. One thing I'm sort of freestyling here, this isn't even on my list. One thing that I think all these games do is there's a sense of geography, the sense of connected geography to these games. I think Dark Souls was really the one that probably perfected, it, I think people could still say that Dark Souls has the best level design of any of the games that From has made, because the whole thing is a big stacked vertical, like, sort of death puzzle box. And you've seen these maps, if you haven't seen one and you're listening to

this, you should look, even if you've never played Dark Souls, you should just go look at it. Because you've probably seen screenshots of Dark Souls if you've never played it, and it looks like a person in armor standing in a kind of dark hallway or a you-died thing. But if you look at map, it makes it clear just how beautiful the game really is, just from a level design standpoint. It's this incredible stack of areas that feel so dense and so varied when you've played the game. But it's actually very small. And you'll frequently discover this playing Dark Souls as you'll be playing a whole bunch. You'll finally make it through this super wild area.

You'll have no idea where you are. And then you'll open a shortcut and it opens the door back to the starting area. And it's not a warp. It's like you really are just right next to the starting area because you went in a big circle. somehow. And there's always a feeling of geographic connectedness and sort of, it's a very rigorously designed. You'll be standing on top of one place at a very high height that you've made it up to, and you'll turn and look around, and you'll see the bonfire that you started at, you know, two miles away in the distance shrouded by fog across this way. And then you'll know that when you look the other direction

and you see some ominous mansion standing up across some bluffs and you'll think, oh, well, I'm going to go there. Because you go everywhere that you see. in any of these games. Well, this is only true in a few of the games. It's not true in all of them. The Demon Souls slash Dark Souls 3 structure is very different because that's like you're teleporting to different places and it's like different zones.

You are, though I would say that even in those games, an individual area will still have that sort of geographic cohesion where you'll get to the end and you'll see the beginning from the end. And there's always a kind of a, they give you these cool little vistas that show you what you've just worked your way through in a way that's really cool. Okay, Maddie, what's another one? Oh, boy.

Well, I guess I can't just say boss fights. I guess I'll say bosses that each have a trick to them and are themselves a puzzle box and oftentimes will force you to rethink whatever you were doing that had worked up to that point. I don't know if that's like just a soul's game thing. That might be too vague. But it is something that's a very characteristic of the series and the way that people describe beating a boss in a soul's game is very much like I figured out the trick to it, even though there are usually a few different tricks that will work according to what you like.

Although having just beaten the Moonlight Butterfly, I was watching other people's plays of it, and they were all very similar to what I ended up doing. So I was like, maybe that really is only just this one way to beat this guy if you are playing the type of way that I'm playing. So sometimes there is just one trick to beating a boss in your. You're like, well, it's what I have to do for this guy. I think there's also like an aesthetic thing to the bosses and Souls games. Just the way it's presented, the way it begins, the way that the music plays, almost always. You know, there is occasionally music in other parts of these games.

But typically, there isn't a lot of music playing when you're just walking around a level in a Souls game. It's pretty quiet and it's just this really ominous, really amazing sound design. But when the boss comes out, it's always the same sort of pomp and circumstance. You walk through a door, you usually see a cutscene, some horrible thing shambles to life off of the floor, it's the size of a building, and then a name appears at the bottom of the screen, something dramatic, and a big health bar that's the size of, you know, I don't know, an interstate. And you're like, oh God, like everything I've been fighting is much smaller than this in every way. And then some music starts playing, and a lot of the best music in these games plays during boss fights. I actually really like the Moonlight Butterfly theme music. is really cool.

Yeah. I think that that whole package kind of is definitely a sort of definitively soulsy in like from software thing that has now become almost a trope that's used by other games. Just that sort of feeling of intercountering a new boss. Okay, so I have a bunch more here and they're actually all related to multiplayer. So I would say the last thing they will say on this list is that there is this very specific suite of connectivity. like multiplayer things that are definitively from soft or definitively Solzian. One of those is the ability to summon people into your game in this kind of weird, opaque way

where you have to do a ritual in the game, and it's kind of unreliable, and they come in. But the way that you can call your friends for help is certainly, the way that it works in these games is distinct. There's also the antagonist version of that, where your game can become open to invasion on different criteria, depending on which one you're playing, where other players will then enter your world and come try to find you, and you'll have to fight them, which then has led to all kinds of really cool and nuanced PVP tournaments

and people kind of building their own systems into these games, which are built to be so opaque and weird, and frankly, they just don't work that well. But when someone comes in, you know, watching videos of people doing blood-borne duels was just something I did online for a while because it's really fun. And then also smaller things, like when you die, you leave a ghost, that other players can see, and they'll see how you died.

And so you'll walk into a room, and you'll see red blood stains on the floor everywhere. And it's this amazing way that the game is communicating you via the saved deaths of other players that you're about to enter an area of great danger, and you'll even see their ghosts as they're rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, and then they'll just get hit by something. You don't know what it is. You just know that they died. Or you'll just see ghosts, like white ghosts of a person will just run by you. Sometimes it'll give you a small heart attack because you'll be...

you know, on edge waiting for an attack and instead you see a ghost. But there's kind of this passive connection. And the last way that that is kind of manifested is you can leave messages for other players. I think that is definitely a Solzian thing. Not present in all of these games, or at least not in Sekiro, which was offline. But in most of them, you can leave little notes. And they're from preset templates. So you'll just have to say, you know, to your left or try rolling attack.

Or try rolling. People like to say that a lot. And that can then lead to a whole. whole language and like a series of jokes and, you know, body references and whatever else that people will leave all around these games and has kind of built in, it's a built-in part of the culture and the fandom of these games is sort of that type of communication. Sometimes they're great and sometimes they kill you. Sometimes it's like, walk forward and you'll walk into a pit and then sometimes it'll be like

left and it'll help you out because there's a guy on the left who's about to kill you. So let's move on to teaching a little bit because I do think these games are great at teaching. And I'm curious to know what are some things that we've learned from Souls games. The meaning of life. I'm sure I could figure out a way to make that argument. Bloodborne taught me how to love. It taught me how to love Bloodborn. Like one thing that I know.

So, okay, there are things you just know when you've played a lot of these games. Like if you walk into a new area and you're walking down a hallway and there's a glowing item at the end of the hallway, you know that you can. can't just walk right up to it and pick it up, then you're just not going to do that. It's not going to go well for you if you try to do that. It will not go well for you every time, except for the one time when it'll be fine because the game is fucking with you, because it's like, ah, you thought there was going to be an ambush, but there wasn't. So that's the kind of thing I'm talking about here. What are some, what are some things you can neither of you think of any other things that you have learned? Does it have to be a specific lesson? It can't be a grand lesson about the

human condition? Absolutely. It can be a grand lesson about the human condition. I do, I mean, I sort have said this before, but I do feel like the game teaches patience. I guess this is something about how it negotiates with difficulty and the idea of it being punishing, which I don't even know that I agree with that characterization. I think it's more just that it forces you to slow down. And I think that that lesson is really good for a lot of different kinds of video games, especially like, you know, precision-based competitive games. So if you don't already know how to do it, souls games are going to teach you how to do it or force you to learn in order for you to proceed. But then there's also the patience of just doing the same thing over and over and taking a certain comfort in that.

Either you take a comfort in it or you stop playing the game because you are very bored. And I think that is a valid reaction to souls games because they are very repetitious. But they're also comforting. So it's almost, I guess I'm saying multiple things. It's about patience and it's about taking some comfort in repetition and also in failure. All of those lessons are part of it. I think also there's something to be said for the way that the game encourages calm, which is it kind of runs in contrast to a lot of the aesthetic presentation,

especially of a boss fight. But you have to be calm. And that comes from mastery and from understanding and confidence. You become very confident in a given fight when you've done it. 10 times and you know, okay, the enemy is going to do this. Okay, oh, when he lights his sword on fire, he's going to start doing this different attack, so I've got to get ready, and he's going to transform halfway through the fight, so I need to be ready for that. And it's all about fighting your adrenaline, or for me it often is. And I think that that contrast between how exciting

what's happening on screen is the music is crashing this huge boss is like smashing walls down around you. And often, you have to be moving very calmly. And when you watch people who are really good at souls. Usually they're, you know, like not wearing any clothes. They just have a huge sword that takes 40 minutes to swing. And they're like walking around. Walking around in circles because they know right where to go. And there's so much confidence there. There's this kind of strut to how they do it. And they just walk up behind and hit the guy and it does a big chunk of damage. And then they walk away and he kind of rages and does a bunch of attacks. I think learning how to get that level of calm in the face of that kind of a challenge is a way of mastering yourself.

And I think that that is actually a really cool process. It's a way that Souls Games have kind of let me into harder games in general is that I think I get a lot out of that process, the process of sort of self-mastery of making yourself become calm and remember what you've learned and what you need to do and not panic and start pressing buttons because every time you do that, you get killed. And then the game is just reminding you, you can't do that.

You can't do that. You've got to chill out. What about you, Jason? What's the thing you've learned from Souls games? Yeah, I think, so I remember when I first played Blood, And I like got past the first two bosses and I was kind of like, okay, it is taking me a lot of effort to learn each of these levels and I don't have time for this shit. Like I don't have the mental capacity for like fitting this level in my head and like what's the point? Like I want to go play a game that tells me a story or something like that. And then the second time I played it when this podcast forced me to, I did that.

And then it kind of, I hit a point. I remember this very specific point that I hit where I was just like, oh, okay, I see the appeal of this sort of thing of gaining that mastery over something that might seem pointless. And I guess it is pointless, but I think there's a certain thrill to it that I hadn't really appreciated. Like, I've never been the type of player. Remember when we talked about our like gamer archetypes last year, a couple or a few months ago. I've never been a player who cares about achievements or like the kind of arbitrary trophies that games will throw at you. I've more cared about like I want a good story or like I want a good experience in some way or another good emotional experience or like a puzzle to solve or something like that.

But I think this game was the first that helped me appreciate the Bloodborn was the first that helped me appreciate the idea of like mastering a level and really learning everything about it and then kind of moving on from there. And I think everything about Bloodbourne like helped contribute to that, the vibe and the tone and the story and the weird ass dialogue and the and the comments. combat and everything else and the satisfying bosses and shit like that, the whole package. But yeah, I mean, I think there's something to that. It's funny to think about these games as starting in 2009, 2011. So there's this great Chris Dallin essay that I always tell people to read that he wrote on his blog so long ago and then I republished on Kutaku. We'll link it in the show notes.

Yeah, we'll link it in the show notes. It's really good. He just really playfully and very Dallinishly kind of encapsulates what makes the game good. and how it works. And one thing he talks about is he's talking about Fable 3 in the article, which just dates it right there. Like, it's just funny that he's talking about Fable 3. I know.

It's so funny that those references are there. But what he's getting at is this idea of repetition and how there were so many games, especially then, you know, 2009 that was what Uncharted 2. It was kind of like the beginning of that kind of game, the single player showpiece game with lots, or set piece game with lots of unbelievable things that are made to be played exactly once, that then just moved through, and that are very narrative and story-based that have become so popular. And the idea of repetition being this total, you know, a total opposite of that, and how you could see this level that, you know, art designers and sound designers and combat designers spent a lot of time making.

You could see it 50 times, 100 times, even more, given how many people replay Dark Souls. And you get so much out of every inch of the game that it becomes this outsized thing in your mind. you kind of, you memorize all of it and it kind of tunnels into your brain. And that's actually my favorite thing about these games. It's just the way you explore the levels and learn them, really master them and get your head around them. And it just, no other game where I'm just blasting through the story and going through, you know, cool looking areas that I kind of run through and then I'm on to the next thing. It just doesn't have the same kind of satisfaction for me. And then it's also kind of an inefficient way to create things because you're spending so much

money and time on something that, you know, only gets a tiny little bit of the player's attention. So it is, it's kind of reinforced that, I guess. And then you start to see Souls elements come out in those same AAA games. Like in God of War, I feel like God of War had a lot of Dark Souls in it, even though it was also a sort of, you know, spectacle-based set piece single-player game. It had sort of those elements of replayability in these areas that you would go into that you would go over again and again. It had the, it was, you know, this is also a Metroid thing like Souls owes a lot to Metroid and so did God of War where you had to unlock areas and then go back through areas you'd been through again, but with new abilities that you get to new things. Those souls does that

I think, I think really well. Yeah, I agree. All games should be more like Metroid. That's really right, is how similar to Metroid these games are and that's why they're really good. Is that the grand finale? I think that, yes, the last thing I have here is the Metroid question. No. So yeah, and then I had a bunch of things that I learned that are just like, talk to a person until you run out of lines of dialogue. Yes, of course. That is a good trick. Read the item descriptions. You know, like little things like that. There's always stuff hidden in the safe area.

Oh, you know, the best trick I ever learned for Souls games is that if you press the target button on someone and it doesn't click them, then they're an ally and you're safe to go. That's what I have is don't attack friendlies and write that you can use the targeting system to tell. That's especially useful in Bloodborn, because, you know, those NPCs will move through the levels, and if you accidentally attack the crows, you know, you lose that whole cool storyline. Okay, so let's wrap up talking a little bit about difficulty, because that is something that people hear.

I don't know. Are these games too hard? Is the difficulty an essential part of the game? Mattie, you're playing most recently. Oh, Jason, you have a thought going on. Yeah, go ahead, Jason. Yeah, I just wanted to say, I think the question, I think the more kind of pertinent, interesting question is about accessibility.

And, like, should someone be able to play this game, even if they don't have the many hours that it takes to master it. And like, should I be able to go into Bloodbourne and experience the story and the tone and the vibe and all that other good stuff without if I am a parent and I only have half an hour a day to play video games? And so I can't literally can't just sit there and master a level of the way that it takes to be Bloodborn. And that, I think, is more interesting question. Yeah, so I have an answer.

At least I have what I think is the answer. And I think it's still a contradictory question. Like I think it's a question that answers itself because I don't think... Yeah, I don't have thoughts on... Like, I don't have a strong answer. Yeah, no, no, I know. It's a question I've seen asked a lot and it's an interesting one, but I just don't... I don't think you can separate any of those aspects of the game from one another and experience it.

Like, I don't think you can experience Blood-Born without the difficulty, without the challenge. That is the game, right? Like, it's an essential part of the game, and it isn't just hard in the way that... games with difficulty settings can be hard where you're just taking more damage but you make it harder. It's like the difficulty is so nuanced and carefully balanced and sort of doled out in this way that feels,

it feels more like a conversation that you're having with the game where changing it too much in any one direction outside of the ways that they've already given you to change the difficulty, which there are plenty already in the game, just feels like it kind of removes a part of it and you're not really experiencing anymore.

So I don't, it's a hard question to answer because there's this contradiction in that question of, can you experience bloodborne without spending the hours that it takes to learn bloodborne? Because learning bloodborne and spending those, which does take hours, is the experience of bloodborne. Or at least that's, sure, yeah. That's kind of how I've come to think of it. Maddie, you look thoughtful. I don't know that I agree. This is sort of a controversial opinion, but I think it would actually be fine if all of these

Souls games had no combat options where literally all you did was walk around. absolutely no one attacked you and you were just looking at the world. And it wouldn't be the game. It would just be a completely different experience where you just walked around and looked at everything. And you would not have the same experience. You would be reading item descriptions. You would be seeing the story, as it were, and you wouldn't be experiencing the game in the same way. But I think that would also be fine if that type of a mode existed. However, I also think that the way that people have talked about the difficulty in these games, I think it's misleading. Now that I'm finally playing Dark Souls and I feel like I'm getting it, I think that the way that

people describe the combat as being so central to the game, I don't disagree with that at all, but I also think that that can unnecessarily intimidate people and make them think that the difficulty is intraversible for them and that like, oh, being a parent or what have you is going to make it impossible for you to play the game. And I'm not even sure if that is true. Because I am not taking that long to get through some of these Dark Souls areas. I feel like part of what my hack is is mindset. And the fact that I have practiced meditation and like done fighting games in my youth

and like know how to do the Dark Souls mindset, like the flow state of like, I'm going to not care, like head empty. Like that is the hack for me that when I, get into that flow state, the game is easy. It becomes quite easy for me. And the hard part of the game is getting to that state of full patience and full mindfulness. And then I can do anything in the game and I am a pure God. So like... Just like in real life. Yes, just like in real life where I am also a God. So really, I'm like, if you're a parent, maybe you should play Dark Souls. Like if you're extremely busy and stressed out, maybe you actually should play Dark Souls because it's going to teach you these.

tools that will help you in your life. Is this too corny? I don't know. I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. It is training you in a skill that I think actually helps your brain. And I don't know if I would describe that as difficulty or punishing. It's something entirely different than that. But also I don't think it would ruin the game if there was no fighting. But Maddie, but you're also talking about levels. You're talking about levels. I'm thinking more about bosses. With a boss, you can really be struggling, even if you're good at the game, even if you've achieved that state of mindfulness, you could struggle against the boss for a lot of hours. And then...

Well, so there is multiplayer. Yeah, there is. You can call in somebody to help you. And also you can do the opposite where you go into somebody else's game and you help them fight the boss. And you can do that over and over and over again until you've learned the boss and then go back and fight it yourself with like single player if you want to. I do think, yeah, I think that a lot of the difficulty discussion does wind up revolving a little too much around the lone Dark Souls player going up against boss because that's how it is how a lot of people

play and that's how I typically play. But it is really fun on a Bloodborne replay I did recently. I just didn't care because I'd already played the game like twice and I just summoned on every boss and it was really fun. Yeah, like, why not? And it was way easier. I mean, I like beat the Blood Star Beast on my first or second try just because when you

have two people, like one person's aggrowing the boss. Like that's the easy mode. You just break somebody else in there. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's the best way to think of it. That's the difficulty setting. It's bringing people. It is. I've seen And I've seen it put that way a lot. And I should say, I do want to say, Maddie, that I agree with what you're saying about there being a totally no combat version of the game.

That's just a completely different thing. People are so against that and I'm like, who cares? Why not do that? Right. I think that that is not, I don't feel that way at all, where people get kind of precious about it, which then turns into this. I think a lot of the language of the game is also kind of tied up in this whole, it's an exclusive club.

Yeah. If you like souls, you've got to be good at games, which then sort of... I hate that stuff. Right. It's a sort of sub-jubes. of video games are only for this type of person or that type of person. It's a kind of a gatekeeping thing. And that sucks because like whatever or like mod the game in some way to make it easier.

That's fine. Who cares? You know, there's the main experience that the designer's intended will always be there. The design question of like, can you reduce the difficulty or make it variable without affecting the experience is the one that I, it's kind of a different question. And then right, there are all these ways in the game that you can make it easier, summoning being the most obvious one. But there are other ones too. You can just over-level your character.

Yeah, you can just grind for Souls forever and become super powerful and then the game is easier by virtue of doing that. Or you can just like, I don't know, call friends like I have been and get their advice about how to do different things. And I don't know. There are a lot of ways to make the game easier for yourself if you care to. Well, I could talk about Souls games forever. We could talk about these games forever. I went back and started playing a little bit of Souls, though I'm just trying to stick to my one game at a time thing. And I'm going to talk about the game that I'm still playing during one more thing.

But I do kind of want to go and finish Dark Souls. Do you think you're going to finish it still, Maddie? Are you sticking with it? Of course. I love it. It's all I ever want to play. Oh, man. It's a good game.

Of course, I'm also playing Final Fantasy 6, a great video game. I'm also playing that. They have a lot in common. I'm sure we'll do some comparisons. All right, well, let's take a break, and then we'll be back for one more thing. Hey, I'm Jared Hill, co-host of the brand new maximum fun podcast, Fan Time. And I'm Trevelle Anderson. I'm the other more fabulous co-host,

and the reason you really should be tuning in. I feel the nausea rising. To be Fantai is to be a big fan of something, but also have some challenging or anti-feelings toward it. Kind of like Kanye. We're all fans of Kanye. He's a musical genius, but like, you know. He thinks slavery is a choice.

Or like the real housewives of Atlanta. Like, I love the drama, but do I want to see black women fighting each other on screen? Ew, to the nah, to the nah, nah, nah. We're tackling all of those complex and complicated conversations, about the people, places, and things that we love. Even though they may not love us back. Fan time, maximum fun, podcast.

I'm Jesse Thorne. On the next bullseye, we've got the one and only Ted Danson. We'll talk about his new show, Mr. Mayor, about cheers and about the secret to success in comedy. I mean, I feel like one of your signature comedic moves at this point in your career is gazing. You do a lot of interesting gazing. gazing. I also love this.

Gazing. I love that. And if I'm not, I'm going to start, because that's great. That's bullseye. Find it on maximum fun.org and PR.org and wherever you get podcasts. All right, and we are back for one more thing. Jason Shreier, what is your one more thing?

Hello, my one more thing is the last dance, a series, a documentary series. Have you guys watched this or heard of it? Uh-uh. I have heard of it, and I was getting it confused with The Last Waltz, which is a really great Martin Scorsese concert film about the band, and I would see people talking about the last waltz. And I was like, cool, that they re-released the last one's a great movie. Like, why is everyone talking about it? And no, they were talking about this instead.

No, it's not the last waltz. No. It's the last dance. It's a documentary series about Michael Jordan. Michel Jordan. It's about Michael Jordan. Popular French artists. Oh, I didn't know about this.

Of course. The 1990s slash 1980s, Chicago Bulls, and I've got to say, it is phenomenal. I've waited on this just because I didn't have time to watch it last year when it came out for one reason or another. But now it's all on, what was it? Hulu, Netflix, something. It's all on something. Maybe Future Kirk can chime in and say where it is. Maybe we'll hear a Bing right about now.

Bing, Future Kirk here, as promised, to tell you where you can watch the last dance. watchable on Netflix. And if you want to watch The Last Waltz, you really should, because it's super good. That's on Hulu. So the Last Dance is on Netflix. The Last Waltz is on Hulu. Okay, back to the show. Bing! But the Last Dance, it's phenomenal, and I highly recommend it even if you don't care about sports. If you were alive in the 90s, especially, and you have vague recollections of, like, hearing about Michael Jordan, even if you never watched an NBA game in your life, so much of this series is about the drama and the characters and the players and the players and the conflicts and the tensions and it is so phenomenal because fundamentally this is a series about um the 1997-1998 chicago bulls season which was called the last dance because for whatever reason and i won't spoil things but the owner and the gm of the bulls decided even though they and michael jordan scotty pippin dennis robin and this like had just won two championships in a row they decided okay this will be our last year together and then we're going to split everybody out up our coach is going to have one more year and then he's going to be gone and like they

basically drove everybody off the team. And so the tension there of like, should, like, this is so unfair. Like, we should get to keep, like, building a dynasty and competing for championships. But instead, we only have this one last year is, like, what really drives the series. And it is phenomenal as a result. I highly, highly recommend it. Haven't finished it or anything. But, like, just getting to know and seeing, like, it has a lot of current footage of Jordan

and it has a lot of, like, previously unshown footage of the 1997-1998 series. and it also, of course, explores everything along the lines of, like, Jordan's life and the older bulls, and it jumps around a lot in time, and fantastic, highly recommend it. Yeah, as a kid of the 90s, I was, of course, aware of Michael Jordan, and I was never a big NBA fan, but he was bigger than the NBA, you know, he was kind of... Yeah, he was, yeah, I think you would really... Anyone who was alive in the 90s and, like, has any recollection, but even people who weren't, like, I think would like this, because it's not a real...

It's not about basketball at all. It's like about drama. Like my wife is riveted by it and she couldn't give a shit about basketball. So yeah. Hi, we should check it out. Nice. The last dance. Well, I will hopefully have told people where to watch that.

And yeah, I've been meaning to watch it. I've heard it's good. And it sounds interesting. Maddie, what is your one more thing? Okay. So mine is also a documentary. It's a not a series, though. It's just a movie and it's called Maiden.

It came out in 2018. And it is about a yacht race that happened in the 1990s, the 1980s. the 1989 to 1990 around the world race, which is these yachts sail all the way around the world, and they race certain chunks and they have certain stopovers. It's completely wild that people race all the way around the world on a boat. And this particular race featured an all-female crew for the first time ever, and most of it is this movie is about Tracy Edwards,

who led the crew and her journey towards founding the crew, and how she wanted to join some of these other all-male yachts, and they would not let her join because they were like, oh, we're not going to sail with a woman. And women aren't strong enough physically to sail a yacht and actually sail around the world and perform well. And she ended up creating this all-female crew because it was her only option to sail around the world.

And it's an incredible story. I don't know anything about sailing, and I'm not a sailing person. My mom is very into sailing. And she and my dad watched this, and she was like, you have to watch it and basically told me nothing about it other than like, this is a woman and a man's world movie, Maddie. You got to check out this film. And it was incredible.

I cried at the end. People should watch this movie. I will not spoil it by like saying how they fare in the race, but it's, it's a very satisfying story. It's a good movie. Oh, man, I want to watch it. Yeah, that sounds awesome. So Jason, have you ever done any sailing, Jason? You don't strike me as a sailor.

It's a big story. I've done kayaking and, like, I've been on cruises. Does that count? I haven't done. No, it's not really a big Jew thing. It's more of like a waspy northeastern thing. The Jews are sitting on the beach while the wasps are all in the bay on their yachts. I took some sailing classes on the lakes in southern Indiana. Lake Monroe, I would take sailing lessons. So I learned how to sail and it's pretty fun. Even on the lakes, like it's not the same as taking a yacht out on the ocean.

It's like one tenths. Which is dangerous. Like people can die and get seriously injured and they're like out on the ice. This is why the Jews won't do it. They're like, are you kidding me? Like, why would I do that? It's a pretty wild thing to do. But it is fun when you really catch the wind and you're like leaning out from the boat and you're really going, man.

It's fun to watch people take those yacht out. So I really want to see this documentary. It sounds great. And it's thrilling. There's drama. There's injuries. Like you worry about people. It's a really dramatic documentary.

Maddie. Did you say it was a documentary or a recreation? Well, it's a documentary. It's got real footage. So they had this, they had this, like, ancient camera on the boat at the time, which in and of itself is wild. They have all this footage from the 1990s of these women on the boat. And, like, then they do all these interviews with the reporters. Like, there's this one super sexist guy who they got to come back.

And he's, like, in his 90s. And he's like, yeah, whatever. Like, I guess I was kind of hard on them at the time. And I was like, dude, like, wow. Thank you. They're like reading his old reports back to him and being like, you said this and he's just like laughing and it's like, fuck this guy. I'm literally going to die tomorrow.

Yeah. When you're in your 90s, you just do not give a fuck. He doesn't do his shit. Go ahead and cancel me. Do your worst. Yeah, it's incredible. They talk to everybody involved and they have all this super old footage that shows what it was really like for the people at the time.

Awesome. I'm totally going to check that out. Yeah, that sounds right. All right. Well, my one more thing, it will be brief because it's the same game we talked about last week. But I started playing Hit Van 3, or the whole Hitman trilogy from the beginning. I don't know if I'll play

all of them, but it's really fun. If you bought this game and if you haven't played the old ones, I really recommend doing it. First of all, the story does make sense. They introduce a lot of the stuff that happens in Hitman 3 at the very beginning. And it does have a story that makes sense. I just wasn't paying attention at the beginning because I was like,

oh, who cares? Because it was episodic and it was, you know, you're like, I don't know, this is never going to pay off. It does eventually pay off, and they do I mean, there's a story that basically makes sense, even though it's mostly spy nonsense. I just wanted to say, playing this game, there were a few things on our last episode that I didn't point out that I want to mention. One, we didn't say this on the episode, but there have been two hitman movies, which I think is the height of madness. Like, he is the least charismatic protagonist. He's only funny because it's funny to watch a guy with no personality do all these goofy things and dress up in a pink bunny suit and murder.

people, but they've made two live action hitman movies. Like, recently, like someone just keeps thinking, this is a hot property, this is going to, this is going to be the thing that's going to be a hit. It is never going to be a hit. They can't make a hit. Go the other way, have the developers make a bond game. That's the right way to go

with this whole flow. And that is happening. Yes, and that is happening. But Kirk, it's called hitman, not flop man. It should be, it's right there in the title. I'm sure that that was the elevator pitch. Okay. let me tell you this.

Hit man is the name of the movie. Exactly. Oh, sold. Here's $100 million. Okay, so I just thought that was funny. Two other things that I wanted to point out that I think are great. One is 47's lines of dialogue are all amazing. And it's a running joke throughout the series that every time he talks, he never lies. So he'll always say to people, he'll just be like, I find that precision is important.

Or, you know, I always get the job done. Like, he'll always be telling them that he's going to kill them, and he just tells people. And I think that that's funny. And a good running joke. And the last thing that I love is that whenever you put on a costume, everyone comments on it. So they'll go by and they're like, hey, Mr. Security Man, fucking good. Or like, oh, deck crew, all right, represent. Like in ways that no one ever would.

It makes no sense. And it's so funny. And they do it just consistently in every single level. And it's a great example of the game's sort of really grounded seriousness than just being punctured in all these very funny and bizarre ways that I just find very charming. And anyways, they're great games. It's really fun to go through and just try to get a bunch of challenges, even on levels that I know. I recommend doing it if you own all three of these, and you're like, these games are really fun. Go back to the beginning. They're all really fun. So I just wanted to put a little pin on Hitman 3.

The story thing, yeah, the story thing is hilarious because I skipped every cutscene while I's playing like Hit Mid 2. You still could and you would still have a great time. Yeah, yeah, you don't need to watch them. There is a story there, and they did kind of tell a complete thing. So, you know. All right, I think that'll do it for this week's episode. But this was fun, as always, and I will talk to both of you next week.

Goodbye. 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 Maximumfund.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture.

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