Triple Click - What's The Deal With: Spiritual Successors?

Episode Date: November 4, 2021

Ever play a game that feels a whole lot like an older game? What's the DEAL with that? This week, Jason, Maddy, and Kirk talk about spiritual successors, from Bloodstained (Castlevania) to Mighty No. 9 (Mega Man) and oh so much more. What are the different kinds of spiritual successors? Why are they so common in games? And why is Jason so excited for Eiyuden Chronicles??One More Thing: Kirk: Inscryption Maddy: Unpacking Jason: Guardians of the GalaxyLinks:Support 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

People talk a lot about spiritual succession, and I'm like, well, if it's anything like regular succession, I'll watch it every Sunday night. It'll make me feel like I'm having an entertaining panic attack. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're talking about spiritual successors and what it means for one game to capture and recreate the spirit of another game. Also, what it's like to be followed by A-Pope, but not B-Pope. Let's get into it. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers.

And I'm Jason Schreier. And hello. Hello. It's us. It sure is. It's us. Yet again. Again, again, again.

One of the great constants in my life is seeing the two of you on Skype and talking into a microphone about video games each week. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. It's us again. Thank goodness. Thank goodness that we get to make this show. And thank goodness for all of the maximum fun members who make it possible for us to make this show. This is a totally listener-supported show.

You probably know that if you listen because we say it at the top of every episode, but that doesn't make it any less true. We are totally supported by you, maximum fun members out there. And if you would like to support us making this show, this show that we want to make, the way we want to make it with no sponsors and no corporate influence, no bullshit, just three people and the truth about video games. If you want to support that, you know, it's a... Kirk Greenwald over here. Really bringing an energy here.

You got to raise the stakes. You've got to raise the stakes when you're giving people to sell. Anyways, if you'd like to support us, we would love that. You can go to maximum fun.org slash join. Thank you so much to everybody who's been a member over whenever, however long you remember supporting us making this show. We really, really appreciate you. again, that is maximum fun.org slash join.

And shout out to this week's bonus episode, which was on the Outer Wilde. Oh, yeah, that's right. Did you almost say Outer Worlds? Is that why you paused? No, I added a V. I accidentally added a VAT to Outer Wiles. You know, I mix, I have words that I mix up all the time, but I don't think I've ever mixed up Outer Worlds and Outer Wilds, and I'm very proud of that.

Yes, we did a bonus episode that you will, you get all of the bonus episodes we've ever done if you become a member. It's true. You do. We did an episode on Outer Wild, Zekyllis of the Eye. That was a really, really. It was very fun. It was very fun.

It was very fun. Fun to just like totally. Spoiler-tastic. Spoiler-tastic. A lot of beans spilled all over the desks of each of the three of us. Good stuff. Yeah, good stuff. Still cleaning up.

Still finding beans. And then you had to figure out how those beans were spilled by carefully recreating the scene and carrying an artifact to the beans. It's true. That's true. It's a complicated. You got to put one of those gravity crystals like near the beans so that they all like actually land on the desk properly. It's supposed to just floating around your spaceship. That's true.

a real mess. That would be a mess. Anyway, people who haven't played out or wilds have no idea what we're talking about. Yes, let's talk about video games. Maddie, you're leading us on this, this, what should be a very interesting conversation. What are we talking about this week? We are doing a what's the deal, cue the bass riff, what's the deal with spiritual successors, which. Spiritual successors. It's a term that is used in video games so often that today I tried to Google spiritual successor films and TV shows, and Google kept asking me if I met video games. I don't know if that's because Google knows me or because this is a term that gamers truly use a lot. I think because games really do lend themselves to this as an art form for a lot of industry-related

reasons and also just practical and logistical reasons. It's easier to build a game on top of a previous game that somebody else already made or perhaps that you yourself made. So just from a mechanical standpoint, making a spiritual successor to a previous game, much easier. But also, in researching this episode, I found a lot of funny and tragic stories about sequels that should have been actual sequels, but ended up having to be legally distinct sequels due to IP rights issues and any number of other related shenanigans. So, Maddie, what's this rubric? I see you made a Kirkstyle taxonomy for spiritual successes. I made a Kirkstyle taxonomy. Jason, thought that Kirk made this taxonomy without reading it. If he'd read it, he would have known

it was mine. Yes, it's very clearly a maddy taxonomy once you start reading it. Written in my voice, if you will. Much, I don't know how to even describe what my voice would be. Kirk, you could write cutesy little names like this. You just, you just choose not to. You choose to do. Kirk would write, no. Well, so you wrote one of these is called the stapler. And in parentheses, it says, this is an office space reference. See, Kirk would have just written the stapler, but you would have explained this is an office space reference in your rye tone that's the maddie voice because i again i cite my sources and i just want to make sure that the reader or listener knows where something's coming from like if this were an article i would have linked to the office but anyway i explained i would

hear all four of them what are what are the four types of spiritual successor sure these are these are the four and i will say there's some overlap between these these are not discreet always a gradient. Types. This is not so much a gradient as a complex Venn diagram. A complex Venn diagram. So the first one, the first one is what I called the legally distinct sequel. And I described it as the original studio or creators lose access to the IP, the rights, and they have to go their own way.

So Fleetwood Mac style. Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age Origins is a good example here. The stapler, which is an office-based. reference. Thanks for explaining that. The character who takes the stapler with them, of course, developers quit but form a new studio that makes a game very similar to the one they made at their prior studio, such as Blizzard Veterans Making Torchlight, which we talked about on our Diablo episode, if people want to go back and listen to that. And the third category, I would say

this one has a lot of overlap with the stapler, but it's kind of its own version of the stapler that I call the solo comeback tour. And it is the original creator of a highly successful game that was canceled or underappreciated in its time returns, by which I mean the creator returns, often via crowdfund to play the hits again. So this is like a bloodstained ritual of the night, uh, was, is Castlevania, but it's not Castlevania. Mighty number nine is Magamann, but it's not, et cetera. These are games that were funded on the spirit of the people at the helm of each of the games, like Igarashi and Inifune and not being involved in those kickstaters probably wouldn't have allowed them to succeed as much as they did.

And then the fourth category is what I call the fan letter, which is a fan of a popular game creates a tribute that may or may not fix the original game in some way. Probably the best example of this is Starry Valley, which fixes Harvest Moon and is made by just one person. And my other examples are also made by just one person. I had Axiom Verge and then I had Undertale here. And I just thought it was interesting that those were all one-person operations. I don't know what that says about like the amount of fanish fervor that you need to make a game that is a commentary on or like improvement to a specific other game or I don't know if that just lends itself well to the solar creator lifestyle. But the fact that there are three examples says something. So Kirk Jason, what do you think about my rubric? Are you ready to get into it?

I like it a lot. Yeah, I like it a lot too. All of the crossovers I found. I think that it's really interesting. I think what you said in the intro is also interesting about how video games lend themselves to the idea of a spiritual successor. Because that's not really a term that I thought of that much before I kind of got back into video games back in the 2000s. Like there's totally things like Stranger Things as a spiritual successor to the Goonies, right?

Like there are totally... Or E.T. Well, sure, like that to a lot of those kinds of things. But like to that... But you call that inspiration. Right, and it's sort of a more nebulous thing. Or an homage. Right.

In our, like is Vampire Weekend, a spiritual successor to Paul Simon's Graceland? Or is it just sort of an homage? That would be so weird to say. Yeah, no one's going to describe it that way. But in games, it's used all the time. And I think it's because it's not that different than just making art that's inspired by something, but because you can take actual game mechanics and use them freely. Because they aren't patented, they aren't controlled in that way, you can really make a game

like dishonored, for example, which is the spiritual successor to thief and is just plays like a thief game and works like a thief game. And when you play it, you get the same feeling as a thief game, which just feels somehow distinct because you're actually doing it and because the thing that you're doing is something that you can like recreate over and over again without worrying about, I guess, being sued for it. And it's also completely socially acceptable to say, for the dishonored devs to say, this is inspired by thief, literally. Like we liked thief, we like the stealth mechanics and thief. And here we go. Here, here those are. which they've said in some interviews.

And that's not weird. I mean, it is a legally distinct sequel, I guess. But it's, I don't know. It's just interesting that that's socially acceptable in games to just say, like, it's not just that it's inspired by. It's like, we really liked this and we took it. Well, because games, unlike movies or books, the story isn't the only thing.

And a movie, the story is the only thing. And a book, the story is the only thing. And they're all enhanced by all the things, all the other things. The book is enhanced. The story is enhanced in a book by the, the scenes and the characters and the movie in a movie by the music and the art and stuff. But it's the story is the thing. Whereas in a game,

it's kind of a lot of different things. But also the gameplay as a thing isn't like a story in that it can be copied in some way. It's more like, I don't know, it's kind of like music in that it's iterated on constantly. And so like it's like, you can't, nobody's going to be like,

oh man, they ripped off my chord progression for this music song because everybody knows that like, well, okay, maybe that's a bad. example. No, keep going because I think this is interesting and have a thought on it. The point is that, well, so the point is that every single video game ever made is building on mechanics from previous games. Like, there's a certain verbiage to a game where like, I mean,

how many games have you picked up where the right stick controls the camera and the left stick controls you're walking, right? It's like there's a language that game designers have just developed collectively over time. And so it's less of like there isn't really any ownership over game mechanics in the way that there might be over art or story or music and and other things just because there is no way to claim ownership over over like the way the gameplay works. It just doesn't work like that. And then once in a while you've got a game clone like 2048 cloning threes or something like that, which is a different conversation.

But in terms of just like building on like I don't know like Sardu Valley, I mean he, Eric Barone, I wrote about this in my first book, he met with the creator of Harvest Moon who was like, who love the game and was like, this is awesome. So I think there's kind of a more of an appreciation and more of like people deliberately building on each other's work in gameplay than there might be in other forms of media that I think are easier to just like copy and rip off. Yeah, there's sort of a different culture for each of these art forms.

And actually, the more we talk about music, the more I'm thinking about how they're, well, there are definitely copyright disputes, right? And a lot of them are kind of like I'm not a huge fan. in general of music copyright disputes, like the ones I don't know, the Katie Perry one recently. This guy sued Katie Perry. It was sort of ridiculous.

That's a little bit more specific things that they're disputing over. No, no, I know. It's totally different. But I think that there's this, in actual, like the actual honest conversation between musicians, there's a lot of talk of like, oh, I totally stole that from so-and-so.

Oh, yeah. Like that was such and such. Like, I took this idea for this sort of groove from this and mixed it with that and took this instrumentation. Girl just said that in an interview, Dave Grohl just said like all of his nirvana drumming was like stolen from whatever. Yeah, I listened to that interview. I actually thought it was funny that people were treating that like it was a big deal when musicians talk like that all the time.

Like I steal everything. Like, just like everyone does because that's sort of like you said, that's how any art form. There's this constant conversation going on. And especially with the, that's kind of the more mechanical part of music, right? It's like you're stealing, oh, well, it was just kind of this way that the guy was hitting the symbol or the way they miced something or like a way that, like a way that, they, you know, amped the guitar. Like production techniques. Right.

Like even learning like, oh, drums, a snare sounds really interesting if you mix it backwards and then you just duplicate that a billion times. And then like that becomes really popular for a while. But like one person came up with it and who you can't own something like that. Like that's sort of like the equivalent of like hit a button to hit cover in gears of which I know gears wasn't even the first game to do that. But it popularized it. It felt really good in that game.

And then tons and tons of other games have done it since then. And it's not like anyone. can really be bad about it. It's just like, oh, yeah, that's a technique you can throw into a game and have it feel really good. So I guess, like, side chain compression is something where, like, someone did that for the first time, and now there's, like, for a while there was like side chain compression on everything, and it was just a sound, which is like, that's all more mechanical and actually more like

games than some other things. It's sort of similar to, like, you know, camera tricks that people will borrow from like Hong Kong action movies when they make movies. Yes. The technical stuff does allow itself to be borrowed a little bit more explicitly. and video games are so technical and made up of so many pieces like that, that it's a lot easier to just grab things wholesale and use them again. So the other thing about games, I think, that really makes them right for this,

for spiritual successors and us all being thrilled about spiritual successors instead of being like, hey, you copy that thing, is that games, unlike movies and music, go obsolete really quickly. And so, like, if I want to recreate the feelings that I had when I played Mega Man back in the day, playing the old one might just, I mean, I might enjoy it, but like, I, not, not that much because it feels kind of clunky today. It's okay to say that. It's a rough hang. It's okay. Yeah, so I might enjoy it for nostalgic reasons. But like, to me, it's, I kind of want a new thing. And so seeing when, and combine that with the fact that a lot of these big video game companies are just, have just totally

abandoned some of these old franchises. And you get this ravenous hunger for these spiritual successors because it's like, A, we want something that feels modern that, like, has a, that feels like it fits in by today's standards. And B, the company is not doing anything with this IP anyway. So, like, you're harming nobody by going out and being like, I'm going to make a spirit of successful to make a successor to Mega Man. Although I guess in Mighty Number 9's case, you might be harming some people when they actually pay the game and they're like, man, this sucks. But, just how to get that in there. Well, that is actually a part of the conversation, though, because there is a you can never go home again aspect to Mighty Number Nine in particular

and also like to an extent bloodstain ritual of the night and like some of these other ones where it's like well you're recapturing something here but it's not quite how I remember feeling in 1987 when I played it or who I'm I'm imagining a hypothetical person because I was one years old at that time I wasn't doing that but I do think that some of these some of the categories of like the solo comeback tour as I called it always has felt a little bittersweet to me. And when I see those big splashy crowd funds, I tend to be skeptical.

It's pretty rare to have an example of one of these where it really does scratch the edge. There are a few that worked out. Pillars of Eternity was a really good game and that was a good example of that. Yeah. Eukulee was really well-reviewed. Right.

There are some examples. But yes, you're right. Sometimes you can't recreate that magic. And sometimes I think it's just the wrong people being involved. like in the case of Mega Man. Like it wasn't necessarily that they got some of the really talented, like, designers and artists who worked on the original franchise, as opposed to someone who's really like the key director who's bringing with him, like with Sweet Godin, for example. I could talk about that forever, but that for people who aren't familiar is an old Konami RPG series.

And the director took along a bunch of, he had left Konami ages ago and the series was abandoned. But he took along a couple of key people from the old series to, work on the spiritual successor that that went big on Kickstarter. Ayudin Chronicles last year when it was announced. He took along like the art director and a writer and some of the other key figures who were involved. And I think that is really the thing to look out for. And like as as more and more of these kickstaters happened, I think the thing to look out

for was always like, who is involved here? Because that's the most important part. Yeah. The defining games of that Kickstarter era where the defining game was double fine adventure was Broken Age, which is I think a really interesting one. in the context of this conversation, partly as a contrast to Thimbleweed Park, which I also think is a sort of interesting thing to think about.

So let me see if I can explain what they were. Everybody probably does what Broken Age was, but Double Fine Adventure was the sort of Tim Schaefer and Ron Gilbert are going to come back and make the types of adventure games like Monkey Island that they made. This was the thing that sort of caused video game kickstaters to blow up, and it was totally this. It was, we're going to make a spiritual successor

to Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. And they started making the game together at some point. Gilbert actually left. He was going to go do something else. You can watch a whole documentary about this whole process. That's really fantastic. We've talked about it a bunch of times on the show called Double Fine Adventure. It's on YouTube and it's great.

What's interesting about that is that they were going to make a point-and-click adventure game to make all the people happy who hadn't had a point-and-click adventure game in 10 years or whatever. But then they wound up not kind of not being able to resist making something different, which is very double-fine. And it's very true, I think, to Tim Schaefer, the game's writer's sort of his impulses as a creator is, he's always like, well, I want to try something new. Let's do something new. And so the game is just, it's kind of an odd game. Like, it's not my favorite. And it's not really, it doesn't scratch the itch for me of like playing a point and click adventure game, even though it kind of, it is one. But it's sort of simplified in some ways. It's a way of storytelling and the art style work. It just is kind of its own thing. Well, the first act is simplified. And then they reacted to the criticism by making the second act way too tough. Right, right. There's also the difficulty. There's a lot about that game, but it's just sort of interesting that they couldn't resist going and making something different.

So then Ron Gilbert goes, teams up with Gary Winnic, and they make Thimble Weed Park. And that game is like extremely true to Maniac Mansion and all that. Though I didn't finish it, Jason, I know you have, so maybe you can speak to that better. But I played a fair chunk of it, and that really gave me the nostalgia vibes. But also playing that, I was kind of like, okay, like, I don't really want to play a pointing click adventure game anymore. So it was kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, at least with those two games. That's funny. I actually love that game until the ending, which was such a, the ending was very disappointing.

But not the first Ron Gilbert game to have an ending that I thought was. I did really like what I played. It was more, it was a kind of you can't go home again. I was just kind of like, okay, I'm a little bored. That's funny. Yeah, well, that's the thing about recreating these childhood memories. I mean, yeah, you guys are right. You can't go home again.

again, because some of it is like mechanics that just had to be in place at the time because they were the only, I mean, we talked about like how gameplay is just constantly building on itself. Back then, in the 80s, they didn't have anything to build on, right? They were pioneering this art form from the very beginning. So this concept of like an adventure game and the whole, the reason those came about is to tell stories because other games were not telling stories at the time for the most part. And the kind of the verb system was this kind of. of messy, like, kind of simple, like easy way to, uh, do things without necessarily having to

like, like, give the player. Can I interject just that I know that we have like young listeners and also people who maybe don't know what you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, what's the verb system? So, yeah, so back in the day, um, instead of like, instead of doing actions in the game, you would kind of select them from this giant like table that would be on the bottom of your screen.

Like take up a quarter of the screen. Like walk to. Yeah. Yeah, like push. Full of verbs. And so you'd see something on screen and then you would have to click one of the verbs and then click on the thing to do something with it. And that was kind of refined over time and like day of the tentacle wound up taking

that to a better direction. Full throttle. And like the verbs got simpler over time. And then eventually they turned into like coin wheels and like other other better ways of doing it. But now going back to the verbs, it just kind of feels like, oh man, like this is this feel this is not aged well. So I actually think part of the spiritual.

successor and the challenges with that is finding that balance between like recreating what fans want to see and also making a game feel like it it plays well in the modern era. I actually think Fimbleweed Park did do a good job of that. But yeah, I mean, if you're not used to like certain things, you're kind of like, man, this is boring. Same with playing like an old school JRP in 2021. It's kind of like turn-based combat just it might have its moments at times, I guess, but sometimes it can be really boring, as you guys, as you guys noted. I was curious, Jason, while you're on that topic, I found these two examples on the internet. I can't, I can't confirm or deny if these are accurate, but supposedly people see bravely default as a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy

5, and they see Octopath Traveler as a spiritual successor to all of our favorite Final Fantasy six. And there's already some speculation that the game triangle strategy, which we've talked about a couple times on this show. It's, it's not going to be out until next year, but it looks kind of cool. So, so, okay, so yeah, Triangle Strategy looks like Active Brother Traveler because it's the same people, but that's like a Final Fantasy Tactics. Yeah, that's my understanding. Yeah, that's FF Tactics. So that game, I can't wait for that game. I'm so excited for that game. But yes, that's the Final Fantasy Tactics. I mean, because Final Fantasy Tactics is the best final fantasy game, maybe. Also on my list, having been preceded by Tactics Oger, it's a couple

that's a couple of geez down. They're all here, folks. They're I think Octopath Traveler tried aesthetically to be like Final Fantasy 6, but it's really more like trying to, it's really more like Saga Frontier or like Live a Live or some other old school JRPGs. The Bravely Default chain is really interesting because that actually came from a game called Final Fantasy Four Heroes of Light that was on the DS and that was really the final fan that was kind of the beginning of the Bravely default like chain and it was all the same developers and that was very much like we are recreating final fantasy like old school final fantasy not just five but also like three has it has a lot from three really closest to three and a little bit of one as well and so that kind of

set the path of bravely default but i wouldn't even say like maybe it's spiritual successors but when it's the same company and a lot of the same people i wonder if it's almost like like just an evolution of the series that just has a different name which i guess it could be a spiritual successor like I guess what would that be? I have a whole category here for this exact thing. But it's not the legally distinct. Which I guess I should have put these JRP's underneath this. No, but it's not, but it's not the legally distinct sequel because they still had Final Fantasy.

They still own Final Fantasy. So it's more like the sequel with another name. Like that might be the best way to call. That's a legal distinction there, right? Isn't that kind of, I mean, that is legally distinct. No, but it's not for legal reasons is the point. Right. It's not like they lost access to the franchise.

Yeah. Like there are some other examples. that I have here that are in that category. Like, for example, Perfect Dark was built on top of Golden Eye, 007, wonderful games both. But Perfect Dark is much more pleasurable to play because they just fixed a lot of the things that felt finicky in Golden Eye.

And also they introduced this whole story of Joanna Dark. She's a badass. Can't wait for the reboot. Well, I assume they lost the James Bond license and that's why they did. Or they didn't want to deal with it. And sometimes it's like they might not want to deal with the license. That I don't know.

I didn't look up that story, although I looked up most of the, other ones. Like, I mentioned Dragon Age origins, and apparently the reason why this happened is because supposedly BioWare made an accounting error and lost the Baldergate's rights because of that, which seems incredibly absurd if it's true. I couldn't find a great source on that, but we can leave a link in the show notes to where one of the developers was quoted on that. I 100% believe that. There's a story in sports about a guy who, like, whose agent, like, missed the deadline for faxing in his contract and it cost him millions of dollars and like couldn't like wasn't

signed on the team because the contract came in at 12.02 instead of midnight or something like that. It's tragic. I mean now when you Google it, you find all the biore devs being like, we have no regrets about it. We're so proud of Dragon Age and like what we've built and like building our own fantasy world was great. And it's like, yeah, you kind of have to say that though because you got to be kicking yourselves. Like what the heck have? I mean, I don't know. Dragon Age is a pretty valuable franchise now. So it's nice. Maybe not right now. Well, sure. But like, I think that there's some, some value to, like, saying, hey, if we're working with someone else's IP, we want to do our own spiritual successor and make our own thing, create our own

IP. Which is absolutely what they did. Like, they were like, okay, we're going to make lemons out a lemonade. We're going to make something that is clearly inspired by and is considered by them and by fans to be a spiritual successor to Baldersgate. But it's completely their own. And they get to make up their own version. Maddie you just said make lemons out of lemonade, which is a bunch of I was actually wondering if you were being clever and reversing it on purpose. I wasn't. But let's say I was. That should be a saying, though, right?

Like, man, you really made lemons out of lemonade on that one. You had a great situation. It's like a snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Yeah, I think it's interesting to think about what would have been like if Dragon Age Origins had instead been Baldur's Gate 3, only because, yeah, I really like, I mean, I didn't really play Baldur's Gate and I really like Dragon Age. age origins. And I at least, I liked being able to get into a new world and learn the lore and learn the system and then be into this thing, which has actually been true for me a lot of times. There have

been spiritual successors that have been the game that I got into this type of game with. Stardy Valley is a great example. I never played Harvest Moon. And I played like a thousand hours of Starty Valley. And I don't know why exactly. I don't know if it was actually the changes or the improvements that Eric Barone made or what, but I love that game. And actually, I've never really played Earthbound. I keep buying it on different Nintendo systems. I own it on so many different platforms, but I've never really gotten that far. And I've played a little bit. I mean, that game hasn't aged incredible. Yeah, well, that's why. Like, I play a little and I'm like whatever, but I love Undertale and played a ton of it and kind of have a similar experience with that.

Where like, that game, like, I guess it's that if Earthbound was really like Undertail, I almost hesitated to include Undertail on this list. I like put it in its own category for a second and then I moved it back. I was like, I don't know how to describe this because that's more like a meta commentary on games themselves and also Earthbound. I think it's a super spiritual successor turbo plus. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. If I remember correctly, it started as a fan game like an Earthbound fan game.

So it is fair to call it like some sort of, it has the lineage. But I wouldn't call it a spiritual successor necessarily. Starti Valley is straight up Harvest Moon. But yeah, Starter Valley is like this is a better version of Harvest Moon, which I think is kind of the or example of this whole spiritual successor thing, right? Like your goal

making a spiritual successor is to make the definitive like a better version of what you made before or what someone else made before. I mean sometimes, sometimes it's like to pick up loose ends or explore something that you didn't have a chance to explore in the original if you worked on the original.

Sure, but either way, you're always trying to make a game that's better than what. Like anytime you do anything, you're trying to do better than what you did before. So it's not like, I think undertail is a bad game. Yeah, exactly. I don't know, maybe for maybe like the producers, people are just like intentionally sabotaging themselves.

So like for tax reasons. I think that's less likely. I'm still thinking about this. The idea of getting into a series or a type of game because of the successor, because there are some other examples that come to mind. Like, I don't know if either of you have tried to play System Shock 2, but that game is very not user-friendly.

But I think that a whole lot of people played Bioshock, and that was their first immersive sim, and it was their first game like that. And it's funny that it even has shock in the title, because now people would be like, oh, this is a Bioshock style game. Like, Bioshock has kind of supplanted system shock. I think the same thing you could say is true of Dark Souls and Demon Souls,

which that was another kind of legally related thing. From Software just wanted to make another one of those. And now that the Demon Souls remake is out, and it's like full fidelity. I mean, it looks better than any. other from Soft game because the remake is so beautiful. It's a real lemons out of lemonade situation, you might say. Yes.

It's funny that like soul, when people talk about a Souls game, I mean, I guess it's nice that you can just use that shorthand that could mean either one. But for a long time, people would talk about a game that's like Dark Souls and then there'd inevitably be the people who were like, actually, Demon Souls was the first. Actually, David Souls was first. Actually, yeah, Kingsfield. Yeah, oh my God, you beat me to do it.

I almost put that in this extremely common. complex set of notes we have here, but I was like, you know what? Even I don't care about Kingsfield. But then we brought it up on the podcast anyway. This is important. It's important to get to that. We got to get all the way back. I feel like an interesting counterpoint as like an example of something where it is a spiritual successor, but it's more just like something the developer thought was personally interesting is the Assassin's Creed story. Where like, apparently, yeah, this is on Wikipedia. I didn't like, I didn't dive super deep into this. But the Wikipedia entry about it is, is very, is very, funny. So apparently, Patrice Dalysei was like assigned to make a Prince of Persia spin off and he was like working on it for a bit. But then he went to the library to read a bunch of stuff about like, you know, Persian assassins and like history. And then yeah. And like as he was reading them, he found some books

about assassins that he just thought were really cool. And he was like, what if the Prince of Persians is an assassin? And then like he went a step further. He was like, what if there's a league of assassins? And also they're like all really cool. And they're in history. And then after that, he was like, I guess I'm not making a Prince of Persia game anymore. I guess I'm making some sort of Assassin's Creed game. And the rest, as they say, is history literally in those games. I just found it endearing. I love this story because it's so relatable, just because who hasn't had that experience of setting out to do one thing? And then you start researching it.

And you're like, actually, damn, like, the way more interesting story is this, yeah, this weird thing about like assassins. And did you know that the word assassin actually didn't always mean what we think it means? and like senior at work meetings and you're just like monologuing and everyone and they're like, I mean, you could make a game about this

I guess if you wanted to. Yeah, I feel like more than, so more than one Ubisoft new IP has come out of that because watchdogs used to be a driver game and then they were all like, what if we were hoods and what if we hacked stuff?

What if it was set in Chicago? Whoa. What if there was a cap that you wore? What if you had an iconic cap? An iconic cap. That's really the question. underlying watchdogs is what if there was an iconic cap? Yeah, I ask myself that every day. Yeah, I do feel like that's a really fun story. It's a lot more fun than Byer's accounting error story,

but and all the IP issue stories that I have noted here, like harmonics working on Guitar Hero and then making rock band later, although that one's kind of funny to me because I remember getting a version of Guitar Hero World Tour, which was like the spin-off of rock band, like the competitor to it at the time. And they mailed it to the Phoenix. And so I had like all these instruments that I like took home with me. And I was always trying to convince my friends that they wanted to play Guitar Hero World Tour. And they were like, we would like to play Rock Band. Oh my God.

Don't want to play that. I'm so with you. I had the same experience. So what was funny about this and I had totally not thought about Guitar Hero and Rock Band. So the narrative here, right, is that like the people at Harmonics had been making Guitar Hero. And that game was really catching on. Guitar Hero 2 was like the best one. And then Activision, whenever like people left, there was this schism.

And they go in a bunch of the people who were like, apparently the main talent behind guitar hero left, started harmonics, they made rock band. And rock band was like, what if there was drums? Like, what if it was the whole band? And there was a singer and it blew the whole thing up and that game was a huge hit. And then suddenly, Guitar Hero, which had been the sort of Vanguard series, was playing catch-up. And I remember there was a whole narrative for starters, which this was before I was really in games media, but I was aware of the fact that it was very much like, oh, like, these guys left to go indie and they're the cool ones. me the good game and then, you know, the other guys are like trying to copy them. And now they had to make their own version of it that was its spiritual successor that it was always meant to be.

And like guitar hero world tour, who cares, who wants it? They literally left to start a rock band. Right. No, and it has that total rock band narrative that also I think practically maybe even exists in one of the later rock band games where they started adding a story. And also, Maddie, I can just really relate to there was a period where I had more plastic instruments than real instruments in my house. And everyone wanted to play rock band. Only rock band. 2008 was a time.

Like, every party was rock band. There was like every kind of plastic instrument. It was so great. It was great. Speaking of nostalgia, do you think they're going to do like a spiritual successor to rock band? I mean, are they still making those? I guess they kind of are, I guess. The plastic instrument is such a time in our digital world who's going to go to the store to buy plastic instrument.

But everyone misses that. Yeah, you would just play a little. Ubisoft has the Rocksmith. That's like the new version. I've said this before, but like I gave Rocksmith a negative review at Kataku, and that's the review of mine that I think is the wrongest over time that I've come to disagree with the most. Wow, pitch for changing their scores. Kirk Hamilton coming forward.

It's really nice that I didn't give it a score, but I did give it a negative review because I was just like not into the idea of learning music that way. I've really come around on it. And I've even actually installed it on my PC and have played around with it some. And it's pretty cool, and it would be a pretty cool way to learn guitar. So I said that. But that's not the same as rock band. That's not, that's like a guitar teaching tool.

It, like, makes a video game out of it. But it's designed to teach you guitar. You plug a guitar into it. But rock band, I think that we could see a spiritual successor for that at some point. Like, people might get nostalgic for getting together in the living room and, like, playing together post-pandemic. I don't know. Maybe this is going to be a prediction. I see it.

I can see it. It's interesting. There are a lot of problems with it, Jason. I'm aware of the problem. Yeah. Huge startup cost. wildly impractical. It's funny. I actually, I mean, I think of when all this metaverse stuff has been coming out. I've been thinking about stuff like that where it's like

suddenly everybody's chasing this trend. It happened with rock band and guitar hero. Then THQ did those U-Draw tablets that like helped sink it. Oh shit. That's right. The U-Raw. More recently like five, six years ago was the whole trend of toys to life, which was a humongous thing for like three years. And then it just suddenly ended. All of these things just move in these cycles. And I, every time I see people, talking about the metaverse. I just keep thinking about that

and how silly it all is and how it's just going to disappear. Well, but the metaverse isn't plastic junk. I mean, I know you need to, maybe need a VR headset, but you don't even necessarily, but it's not toys and stuff you have to box.

Yes, but it's just fads. It's like how the industry just follows these fads and then everybody moves on to the next thing. That's just what I'm talking about. It's pogs. I mean, it really all comes back to pod. I'm really glad to have the opportunity

to bring up pogs on the show. I don't know. we got here, but I'm just really glad that we are here. Here's a thing. So this is kind of related to this in like wanting to have a multiplayer feeling that you had, which I do think there's, I think that there's probably some hunger for the Rockman thing. Oh, are you going to talk about Back for Blood? Yeah. The game that inspired this topic in the first place and we haven't talked about it yet. So I'm going to, that's what I'm doing. I'm steering us onto Back for Blood Boulevard.

Here we go. Here we go. So I've played a lot more of this game since I talked about it on the show. This game rocks and it's such an interesting game because in a lot of ways it's like a dressed up Xbox 360 game. Like it kind of is old-fashioned when you're playing it. It's like, okay, this is a little just, like there's nothing going on here really that feels super current gen. Like, given that Left for Dead was more than 10 years ago, like, it's kind of the same thing.

And it actually has less features. Like it has, you know, fewer multiplayer features. So it's kind of, it doesn't feel like super current, but it doesn't feel like any other multiplayer game that I can play. And I think that that is like the real appeal of it. And that's sort of, when I think about a spiritual successor, it's this question of like, what is the spirit of a game, right? Like, what does it mean, actually?

Is the spirit being succeeded or not? Right. Like, because it's a really profound and almost like ethereal, beautiful idea, right? A spiritual successor. We're taking the spirit of this game and recreating it. So what does that mean? And in this case, it really is just this specific kind of vibe, like getting with three people and then just hopping in and like immediately playing and just playing for like an hour.

And it's just sort of a thing. can kind of repeat and it's not, it's not weighted down with all the like games as a service loot shit of like destiny or Warframe or something. It's just way lower impact. Because it's from an earlier era where multiplayer gaming was just way lower impact. And I am at least much more nostalgic for that than I realized in playing this game really drives that home. Yeah, it's kind of interesting to play a game where you're collecting a bunch of doohickeys to level up your character, but you don't have to pay for any of them. And like you're you're just collecting little doohickeys. And it's, it does feel like it's from another time.

And like the idea that you just keep playing the game and that's how you get better at the game and your character gets stronger is you just keep playing the game over and over. And your friends are ideally also continuing to play the game over and over at roughly the same rate as you. And you're all just hanging out together and playing the same game for a few weeks. And then maybe you move on to some other game. It's, it's peak 2007. It's nice, right? It's really tapping in to that same four player five. Good example of a legally distinct sequel.

Right. Well, I mean, it is by the same studio. In this case, it is a legally distinct sequel. I would say yes, very much so. It is also technically the same exact people making it again. I'm sure there's some new people right too. There's probably. Yeah, no, I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. But it's still Turtle Rock Studios. But, yeah, back for blood, it's a pretty fun game. But I don't know if I'm going to keep playing it forever. I like enjoyed it for a few weeks. but it doesn't have the, well, it doesn't have the metaverse quality that Mark Zuckerberg wants to monetize. It's just, I don't want to live in there. I just want to hang out there.

But I think that that's a strength of the game, or at least that's like part of the nostalgia, is playing this. And I haven't finished. I've gotten partway into act two. And knowing that the same group of people that I played with, we could just come back and play it again in a couple months if we're all bored. And it doesn't have, it's just there isn't that destiny thing where you come back and you're like, oh, God, there's like four seasons have gone by since I last. and there's all this new stuff, and I have to like totally re-conceptualize my power level, and I don't even know. And like, one guy in our group was playing this whole time, so he's like the wrong level,

and he knows what to do, but we need him and our party. Like none of that. You can just go back to Back for Blood any time in the next, however long, as long as the servers are running, and just play it a little bit more. And it's like so low impact in that way that that, too, feels like a sort of capturing of the spirit of Left for Dead, which I should say is a game that, like, people still play as well and is still really fun. because you can just still play it because it's the same game that it was, you know, 11 years ago when it came out.

I think part of why Back for Blood both does and doesn't feel nostalgic for me is because it feels like it is both recapturing what made Left for Dead great and yet also catering to the people who've been playing Left for Dead this entire time. So it's like for me in theory, like the person who stopped playing Left for Dead in 2010 or so. But it's also kind of for the people who've just been playing Left for Dead since 2008. debtors. They're a hardcore debtors. Never left fours that they call themselves. Yeah, not left four behinds. Before we go, I feel like I want to propose a fifth, a fifth rubric here. Okay. Here we go. This kind of fits into the fan letter, but it's different. Because I think that that there should be a category for a game, like the rival where the rival would be the name of the category where a game comes out. The guitar hero world tour, if you will. No, no, no, no. A game comes out.

and it's really bad or broken or busted, and then something else comes. And everyone was like, this is the game it should have been. So like torchlight to Diablo 3 is like everyone flocked to torchlight because Torchlight 2 because it felt like what Diablo 3 should have been. Or like city skylines when that terrible SimCity. Oh, that's a great one.

That's very true. Let's go play city skylines. And I think there's a space. Or it's like almost an accident that they come out at the same time. Yeah, sometimes it's almost it's like serendipitous. Yeah. sometimes it's that, but oftentimes it's just like the narrative becomes like, oh, you don't like this? Well, come play this game. That is a lot like it, but way better.

Kind of like how the final fantasy MMO is for World of Warcraft players who are leaving, where it's like it's not a spiritual sequel, but it's an emotional sequel for the person who's looking for replacement in their life. That might be a different category. That quite switches successfully. And people, people kind of seek this, I like this category, because people sought this kind of thing out when cyberpunk was how. happening, like when that gang came out. There was a lot of, like... They really did. A lot of articles were like, this is the cyberpunk game.

You wish had been the other one. It's like people look for that narrative. Yeah, I understand it. I understand it. But yeah, I feel like my rubric is perfect, but I will accept this fifth entry. I'm putting it in italics because it's... Because it's not mine. It's like needs citation.

Sure. Yeah, definitely. Okay. Well, this was fun. This was fun to talk about. Wait, wait. You guys. triple click is a spiritual successor to katakis footscree.

No, triple click is totally its own thing. I don't even know what you're talking about. It might be a legally distinct sequel because we lost the IP, but we don't. No, no, it's the stapler. Developers quip and then form a new studio that makes a game very similar to the one that made the prior studio. Okay, okay. This is a stapler.

This is a stapler. This is a stapler. I think the important thing is that triple click is an office space reference. Exactly. And we'll be back in just a second with one. More thing. Hey, kid. Your dad tell you about the time he broke Stephen Dorff's nose at the kid's choice

awards. In Dead Pilot Society, scripts that were developed by studios and networks but were never produced are given the table reads they deserve. When I was a kid, I had to spend my Christmas break film in a PSA about Angel Dust. So yeah, being a kid sucks sometimes. Presented by Andrew Reich and Ben Blacker. Dead Pilot Society, twice a month. on maximum fun.org.

You know, the show you like, that hobo with the scarf who lives in a magic dumpster? Doctor Who? Oh, I'm Riley Smurl. I'm Sidney McElroy. And I'm Taylor Smurrell. And we host Still Buffering,

a cross-generational guide to the culture that made us. Every week, we share media that made us who we are. Things like Archie Comics. Sailor Moon. And lots of Taylor Swift. And now that Riley's an adult,

it comes with 100% more butts. And now that Riley's an adult, it comes with 100% more butts. And now, I am totally comfortable with it. So check out new episodes of still buffering every Thursday on maximum fun.org. Butz, butt, butts, butt, butt, butt, join in, Riley. Butts, butt, butt, butt, butt, butt, butt, butt, butt, and we are back with One More Thing.

Jason, why don't you go first? Because your One More Thing is what my One More Thing was last week. It's like the relay One More Thing. Yes, I have begun jumping into Guardians of the Galaxy. And unlike you, Maddie, I am actually quite delighted by this game. I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying it and how much it feels like better than the MCU movies. I really just enjoy the writing.

The writing just really pops for me. I'm up to like chapter five of this game. For people aren't familiar, this is, it's a totally new Guardians of the Galaxy take that really feels like it's, it's trying to, the characters definitely feel like they're trying to be their MCU equivalence. I say this is someone who hasn't read the comics, so it might just be everyone's trying to be the comic. but to me it feels very much like Drax is talking exactly like Drax's in the film is.

Like Will Rocket. They're all exactly much like facsimiles of their MCU versions. But for me, it really works in a way that the Avengers characters didn't. I think the performances are just way better than like the Avengers. It really is a good contrast to the Avengers game that came out last year because this feels like what I want from a new Marvel game in 2021. I really am enjoying it. And like to me, it's just, it's, yeah, it's so snappy and fun. And, like, the performances are just really good.

The writing is just like, like, the gameplay is whatever, just shooting things. And it's, it's cool, whatever to use the abilities, a lot of spheres. Yeah, a lot of QTEs, a lot of just using abilities, spamming abilities. And that's whatever. But, like, to me, the writing has been just really good. And I really want to see what's going to happen next in the story. I'm just really enjoying the banter and, like, making decisions. What I really like is just how much of it is there is.

like in every mission you're constantly being asked to make these decisions and like choose one line of dialogue or another. Yeah. I mean, it is true. They are constantly talking. Like it's like either this is the thing you love. Right. It's just it's very funny that this was the thing that Maddie was not so hot on last week. Yeah. The thing we are describing the identical qualities. Yes. Yes. The thing that you were down on, I'm very high on. I'm up to like chapter five. Just really enjoying it. Well, we'll do a triple play on this in a few weeks. So we'll get more in depth fun this game, but for now I just want to say, I played a bunch and I really like it. So if people are on the fence and they think they might be interested in, I mean, I'm, I'm

super enjoying it so far. Yeah, it'll be fun to talk about. Yeah, I have some more thoughts about all the talking, but I'll save it for the triple play. Yeah, save it. Yeah, I've played as much as you, Jason. And I'm generally enjoying it too, I'll just say. But yeah, we'll talk about it when we do a whole episode about it. Kirk, what else are you playing?

Oh, man. So I want to tell everyone about a game that I'm not going to tell them too much about because it's one of those games that's better if you don't know a lot about it. It is a game called Inscription that's out on PC and is a super, super cool game. Okay, so this game is made by Daniel Mullins, who made a game called Pony Island. I know that's really well known. Like, he's kind of known for making games like this, though I haven't played one of his games before.

And it's a card, it's like a deck-building roguelite, sort of. But it's also a mystery, and it's also an escape room, and it's also, this like meta layer mind fuck kind of a thing that is the reason that I don't want to say too much about it because the delight of this game and I am really into this game. I've played like seven or

eight hours of it. I'm pretty far. It's just in the discovery and the like finding these weird secrets and these layers to the game as it kind of peels back for you and you realize what is going on. Like this just happens constantly you'll be playing and it'll challenge you or surprise you in some

delightful weird way and you'll realize that there's this new layer to it that you didn't understand. So it's one of those. I'll say that this isn't a huge spoiler because the game begins this way, but this game starts, you load it up, it's very old-school looking. It actually looks a little like Return of the Oberid din, the visual style. It has that kind of degraded old, like Macintosh graphics look.

And it loads up with this screen where you have to click the mouse, click to start, and you can't start a new game. You can only continue. And also, you're clearly within, like in a game within a game, like you're on someone else's computer at the very beginning. And it's like, okay, we're starting the game now, and then you start the game, and then you're in the game. And then it's like, so there's layers deep from the very start. And that just continues throughout.

So you're already a little off balance at the very beginning of it. You're like, okay, what? And then the experience, the early hours of this game, are also very confusing. And there's a lot of sort of unfair game mechanics. There are things that are thrown at you that you just don't understand. And actually the card game at the heart of it, I think, is really good and really fun. as I've learned how it works, but also because the game is working in all these other weird layers, there are just times where it messes with you or where you have to think outside of the game to kind of get to make progress.

I've found it to just be so, so cool. I gather that the two of you aren't playing it, so I don't know if we're going to talk about it more on the show. I really want someone to talk to about this game. I played a bunch of it. I mean, I got to the second boss and was kind of like, all right, I don't know if this is for me, but it sounds like I need to play more. There's a lot more than that. Yeah. So that's not, I mean, but I don't want to say anymore.

Maybe I'll give it a shot. I just, I don't really like card games generally, but I do like mysteries and all the other stuff you mentioned. So maybe I could convince myself. There's a lot of card game in it. There is. But also, there's a lot of mysteries as well. And I've kind of gotten into the card game too.

Like, I don't love card games either. I guess I got really into Gwent, but like, you know, it's a fun game with cool rules, but that's not really my kind of game. But I'm so much more into the adventure of it. And at this point, I mean, I'm far enough into it that, like, it's just gotten really wild and I need to know what happens next. I keep finding myself playing this game until, like, midnight when I meant to go to bed an hour earlier, which is kind of... Always a good sign. Yeah, the best endorsement I can give of it.

So it's a really, really cool game. I just wanted to get it on anyone's radar who hasn't heard of it. And I won't say anymore. But, yeah, it's called Inscription, and it's inscription C-R-Y-P-T. So, yeah, pretty easy to find. It's a cool way of spelling inscription with a Y. Yeah, it's a neat game. All right.

Well, I'm playing a game too. So I beat this little four-hour indie game that is called Unpacking. I played it for PC, but it's also on Switch and Xbox. Not sure if it's on PlayStation. I don't think so. Maddie you have me at four hours. I know, right? I don't know if this would be you two's vibe or not.

Maybe it's just because I'm really tired of all the talking and Guardians of the Galaxy. No offense to that game. I just wanted something where that was not the vibe at all. and this game is the total opposite vibe. There's no text. There's no talking. There's no people in this game. It's like house flipper in the sense that you're just walking around a house clicking on stuff.

Are you like unpacking? You are unpacking. You are unpacking. However, and I started this game just thinking it was going to be like house flipper. It was just unpacking. I saw the way I found unpacking was because Robert Zakney was playing it on a waypoint stream. And it was like so relaxing to watch him clicking on like a little teddy bear to remove it from a box and then clicking on a pillow to put the teddy bear on the pillow.

And I was like just doing that with like a billion things in a room. And then when you're done, it's like, look at this beautiful bedroom. I was like, this looks like the greatest game. Like dopamine up the wazoo forever and ever. I can't believe you want to do this after moving this year. I like unpacking in real life because I have problems. We like moved here and I unpacked instantly. And Dina was like, I'm learning so much about you.

Like that you're insane. I like immediately unpacked everything. And she was like, is it cool if I don't unpack right away? And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's fine. I just need to do this with my stuff. I need to know where it is. I totally get it. There's something very calming about unpacking,

and especially unpacking when you just have to click on things, it doesn't even require anything of you. Way better. It's like cleaning the windows and house flipper is so soothing because you're just clicking on the dirt and it magically disappears. This is like that, but unpacking and everything's adorable. So I didn't expect there to be a story, but there actually is a story,

and it's a purely environmental storytelling. mode because there can be nothing else. And so like you have the character move in with roommates. And like the tension is like she has to figure out where to put her stuff with like all this other shit around. And then like you can like see the stages of her life. I won't spoil it. Oh, that sounds really cool. But it's actually really rad and like heartwarming and poignant at various parts. And I just, I was so into it. And it just put me in a really good brain zone for a few hours. So I really recommend it. It's called Unpacked. Unpacking. Unpacking. Unpacking. That's like, what's that style of game?

Like, House Flipper and Vissor Clean UpD? Like Sooth Corps or something. There's got to be a name for it, right? Where it's like just calming activities. Soothor. Yeah, or like the Power Washer Simulator game. Yes, Power Washer Simulator is a great example. Kirk, that's a guy.

I feel like you just invented it on the fly. Sooth Corps. That's pretty good. I bet if you Google that it already exists. I'd know nothing is new. I mean, you couldn't call the genre this, but it very much is romanticizing chores. Like, it's not what it's like to do chores in real. life. It's purely the nice thing about doing a chore where you're checking it off the list.

It's only that and none of the actual work of doing the chore. Well, Maddie, that's all video games. I know. That's why they're so good. Yes, this has been said many times that this are a cleanup detail is actually most games just in reverse, but it's the same thing. You walk into a room full of monsters and you clean out all the monsters with your shotgun. Yes, of course. Anyway, great stuff. So this has been another triple click. It has been. It has been. We did it. We made it.

Another spiritual successor. No, we're our own thing. Look out next week for our next week. Next week will be our spiritual successor to this week's episode. That is true. Yeah, I guess that is true. All right, we'll see you next week for that. All right, 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. Artists owned. Audience. Audience supported.