Triple Click - What's The Deal With: The Legend of Zelda?

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

With Skyward Sword coming to Nintendo Switch, the Triple Click gang asks the question you've all been asking: What's the deal with Zelda? Kirk, Jason, and Maddy talk about the origins of the series, how it's evolved over the years, the stagnant Zelda formula, the delights of exploration, the unexpected creativity in limitations, and much, much more.One More Thing: Kirk: Inside (The Songs)Maddy: Hollow KnightJason: Joyland (Stephen King)Links:“The problem with Bo Burnham’s Inside” by Lili Loofbourow for Slate: https://slate.com/culture/2021/06/problem-with-bo-burnham-inside.htmlSupport 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

I started learning how to play the Akrona, and it's been a lot of fun. First, we learn major scales, then minor scales, and then how to magically transform Knight into day. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we're talking Zelda, going back to the series' routes, and trying to figure out how a series so unafraid of radical change still somehow feels like it's steeped in tradition. It's not actually that dangerous to go alone, but all the same. Why don't we all go together?

I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Schreier. And hello. Hello, my friends. my video game discourse engaging in friends. It's nice to see both of you. Likewise.

Is that what our names are in your cell phone? Yes, that's the little, that's the group. Video game discourse engaging in friend Myers. Yes, yes. That's the Google group. That's what I've named. It rolls off your tongue almost as much as Nintendo Switch O-L-E-D version. Yes, yes.

There's a parenthetical in there as well. That's a very important part of the branding. Well, welcome to all of our listeners, well, thanks for listening to our show and to everybody out there who is a maximum fun member and directly supports us making this show extra special thanks to all of you. And if you'd like to become a member, you can do so at maximum fun.org slash join. And doing so, gets you access to all kinds of bonus content from all kinds of maximum fun shows, including a little show called Triple Click, where we release monthly episodes. Usually,

well, there are all kinds of things. A lot of them are beans casts where we spill the beans on games and movies. But sometimes there are other things. Sometimes they're just random topics we want to talk about. And in that regard, we are going to be doing one of those random topics we want to talk about. This is going to be a beans talk. So random. It's pretty random. We're going to talk about, well, it's really up to you what we're going to talk about.

So we're requesting emails. You can email us at triple click at maximum fun.org. And we're looking for questions about deep thoughts on things, deep subjects, just things you wonder about, conundrums, things like that. But not video game questions. like personal life questions. No, yeah. Like, yeah, kind of deeper stuff. And we're just going to kind of talk.

Life and philosophy and the pursuit of answer your questions about life, the universe, and everything. It's going to be a lot of fun. So that is triple click at maximum fun.org with your deep thoughts questions. And if you'd like to become a member and hear that at the end of the month, go to maximum fun. org slash join. All right, Jason, what are we talking about this week? Well, first of all, I keep glancing on my window because there's like the start, the beginnings of this giant storm coming right around my house and I'm like looking at my outdoor like my patio furniture

hoping the umbrella doesn't get blown away or like my kids my kids toys that are outside should have brought it in man Jason the weather is so boring no one wants to hear about the weather everybody you're always talking about the weather and I'm always like it's so boring don't talk about the weather Kirk it sounds like a wise man is this a bad time to say there's also a storm coming here or I was going to say that right after today we are talking about about the Legend of Zelda, who in at least one game, Link can actually control the weather, so this is relevant. It's possible that Link is creating the storm that's currently outside of my house. So, hey, you never know.

Song of Storms, great song. We could put that out. That's true. So next week, the Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword HD comes to switch. And I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who have not plated, who are wondering what the deal is with it, and who are wondering what the deal is with the Legend of Zelda in general. So that is what we were talking about today. What's the deal with Zelda? Carick Maddie, what is the deal with Zelda? Nobody knows. What's the legend? I mean, we're going to figure it out. I keep trying to figure it out. I've been excavating a lot and I can't find anything. It's a game about a boy named Zelda who goes off and has to collect fairies and fight Gannendorf. I thought the owl was named Zelda when I was a kid.

Anyway, I'm skipping ahead. We'll talk about it later. The legend of Zelda debuted in 1986. It is 35 years old. as as Craig pointed out the other day a silly anniversary, but it is 35. It's created by Shigero Miyamoto and Takashi Tizuka. It was inspired by Miyamoto's adventures through the forests and woods and wilderness outside of his house in Japan,

at least according to Miyamoto folklore, he was kind of exploring and wanted to make a game where you could explore. And that's basically the genesis Zelda, and that's basically a good way to define Wood Zelday is it's a game about exploring and finding secrets. So the original Zelda, of course, came out for the NES. It's changed a lot since then.

And we'll talk a little bit about the history of the Zelda, 3D versus 2D Zeldas, etc, etc. But first of all, I want to hear kind of let's talk a little bit about our personal history with Zelda. Maddie, why don't you start and give us a little bit about your personal Zelda history? Sure. So the first Zelda game I played was Link's Awakening for the Game Boy. This was back when if you bought a video game, you didn't know what it was. necessarily. And I have a really strong memory of my mom and I and like the Toys R.S. aisle reading the back of the box. And there was a little boy on there and an owl on there. And she was like,

maybe the owl's name Zelda. And that is why I thought the owl was named Zelda because Zelda's not in Link's Awakening. And I guess it's called Legend of Zelda because of, it's still technically part of the legend of Link Zelda and Gannendorf. But those two other characters aren't in there. It's just link. And I thought that was a cool game. And Marin, his Zelda replacement. Yes, Marin, Marin, who is not Malin, notably different from Malin. And I didn't have an N64 growing up, but I had some friends who did.

So that's how I saw Ocreen of Time and Matured's Mask, et cetera, got a GameCube later in life, played Win Waker. I could go on and on. But that was my starting place with Zelda. Also, Princess Zelda was one of the first serious cosplays I sewed. Not the first cosplay ever did, but it was the one where I was like, I'm going to really sew a Zelda dress. Nice. So I did that in college. That was pretty fun. Nice. So are you, would you say Zelda, you're a pretty big fan of the Zelda series in general?

I mean, yeah, I guess. It's not like top tier for me. I haven't played every single Zelda game. But I've played a lot of them and I think they're cool. I feel like where I started to fade on them is what we've mentioned many times on this show, which is the fact that you never get to play a Zelda in these games. And that's just kind of sad to me. I always wanted more for her in these games. but she's a damsel in distress, damn it. And she's never going to change. It is what it is.

It's her fate. And that's it for her, I guess. Too bad. Kirk, what about you? I played the very first Legend of Zelda. My neighbor had an NES and he had the Top Gun video game and he had Zelda. And I remember playing it. And I want to mention a third name in addition to the two creators and that is composer

Kochi Kondo. Because I think that he is just as essential to the identity of Zelda and his music, which has still played in modern Zelda games. You know, through all of these games, his original themes still carry on. And then a lot of the themes that he wrote, especially for Ocarina of Time. But even in that first Zelda, that Zelda theme, I remember hearing it and thinking, this game is good because of this music. Like, I wasn't even playing the game, I don't think.

It was just, this feels like I'm going on a grand adventure. That is why I'm excited about video games, this cool thing that my neighbor has plugged into his TV and this music is channeling that for me. So I always will think of the music. Did you know in 1986 when you were five years old, did you know you were going to be a musician growing up? Were you one of those kids? I don't know if I knew I was going to be a musician, but I knew I loved music and I knew I liked that music. Yeah, I mean, did you know, like, you listen to music and you're like, oh, wait a minute, I listen to music differently than other kids do. I don't know. I don't know if I did or not. I can't really remember

it's a long time ago. I definitely was always taken with good music, though. And I was taken with the music of this game. So I liked that. I never had a Nintendo, so I never really got to play the game. And I do remember being kind of disappointed playing it, since it was pretty hard and weird. Like, I'd get the controller finally, and I would be like, oh, I don't know what I'm doing.

And then I'd just sort of die to some crappy enemy and couldn't ever figure it out. I mean, yeah, all NES games were kind of like that. Right, but it was that promise of what the series eventually became. And I really do think it was a promise that it didn't fully achieve until 2017, where, this adventure that you really just can go on in this world that you can live inside of, and that was present even in that game all that time ago.

And then I sort of didn't have consoles and didn't play a lot of the games very substantively. Like I remember playing a roommate's copy of Wind Waker and getting kind of far in it, maybe playing a roommate's copy of Ocarina of Time and getting a little ways into it, but never really making any progress. And then sort of returning to these games in the 2010s when I was a journalist. And then it was really, Breath of the Wild was the one where that was so just the kind of game that I love. And it was so the promise of Zelda realized that that was where I really fell in love with Zelda as a series. It's funny what you just said made me think that a really good name for a game would be a legend of Zelda, a roommate's copy.

It has a nice ring to it. Yeah, so I am probably the most hardcore Zelda fan among the three of us, because I've played, pretty much every single game in the franchise, except for like those weird ZDI ones that were like those graphical adventures that, that no, Nintendo doesn't want to think about it or remember today. And I remember the first one that I really spent a ton of time with, I played the first of the original, but I spent more time with the Adventure of Link, which was the second game. And I remember I had it on this gold NES cartridge, and I thought that was the coolest thing in the world because all the other NES cartridges were gray.

and they made gold ones for this. And I would pop it in all the time, and it was super, super hard. I can never get past, like, the first dungeon or whatever. But I still loved it. And then it was kind of, it was linked to the past that really made me fall in love with the series because that was a game that was like,

like elevated it and kind of established the Zelda formula. As we know it today, which, I mean, for better and for worse, but at least at the time, that was kind of the innovation that I brought to the table. And just to anybody who was listening to this and maybe new to the show, we did a whole episode about a link to the past last year. It's true. We all played it. It did.

A hell of a game. We all played it and it really holds up to an amazing extent. It is a hell of a game. Yeah, I'd almost forgotten about that. But yeah, that is such an interesting game as a blueprint for what Zelda would become because it really, like, it's very different than the first Zelda where you can walk to any part of the entire world map and just kind of do things and explore and going to caves and stuff. And you might get killed and you might not have what you need at any given point.

But like, you can explore anywhere. Whereas the link to the past gives you a very limited world and then branches it out over time. Because it's a big map, and you can walk in a lot of places. You still feel like it's a big world, but you're actually very constrained at first. And then you pick up things and it does the whole Metroidvania thing of like showing you rocks and stuff that you can then go back and blow up later. So that kind of like set the tone for Aquino Time and Windmaker and all the other future Zelda games. I was playing every single one of these games, like, as they came out. I remember it was so funny.

There was a string of years where, like, Zelda games would come out every year or every two years. And then there was just this excruciating weight from Wind Waker to Twilight Princess. It's sort of like a parallel trajectory to the Game of Thrones books where the first three were just like one year after the other. And then as it became more and more successful, it would be like, oh, now here's a four-year weight. Here's a seven-year wait.

Here's an infinite weight. Zelda was very similar. where it's like, oh yeah, Windmaker, awesome, 2002. Oh, my God, like, we're waiting five more years for Twilight Princess. So it was pretty funny. Pretty funny day. To make this fully work, I guess the technology for writing books would have to grow significantly more complicated over the period of time. No, the analogy isn't perfect, but it's a funny trajectory.

Well, the technology of how many plots there are in Game of Thrones books has gotten significantly more complicated. That is true. That's true. Yeah, that is true. The architecture of the books itself has grown quite a bit more complicated. And pretty much there aren't a lot of like bad Zelda games. One of the things that I think really make Zelda stand out is that it's just consistently great with a couple exceptions that we can get to.

But what's been interesting just as a Zelda fan watching it all over these years is the way that like people react and people just kind of whiplash for every time a new game is announced and every time something interesting happens in the series. So for example, when Winemaker was announced, I don't know if you guys know this or remember this, but people freaked out. because here was this series that like everybody loved for O'Carrina of Time, which was the most successful game by far. And everyone thought it was of it as like dark and gritty and like realistic-ish graphics.

And suddenly it's a cartoon. And all these like teenagers in the early 2000s are like, what the heck? What is this game? What is this Windmaker game? And then people played it and it was amazing. And then Nintendo kind of like, when the other direction for Twilight Princess and everyone was like, ah, realistic graphics, Twilight Princess and Twilight Princess, then there was controversy over that because it was

like released both on the GameCube and the Wii and there's a whole big thing of like them holding onto it potentially to be like a console launch game and like would it run better on the Wii. You have to go buy a Wii just to play this game. It was a whole thing. And you could see like beginnings of some of the same exact conversations that we have today. But yeah, I remember playing all these games and just there was nothing quite like getting a new Zelda game. There are very few game franchises. Like oftentimes you grow up, you look at games in the store like you did Maddie and you find a new game and you're like, I don't know what this is. Oh, cool. But like Zelda games always felt a little bit different in that you took one home and like you knew

you were just about to experience something totally great. Yeah, I think it's kind of similar to Final Fantasy in the sense that you don't always know what you're going to get. Like I guess it's, they're all more similar because there are a lot of the same plot beats that happen usually, although there are are of course exceptions. But I also remember there was some controversy about Twilight Princess because he spent a lot of time as a wolf in that game and that was weird to people. And I thought Midna was the coolest ever, but I don't know that everybody thought Midna was the coolest ever. It's like just because Twilight Princess had something different than what is considered the Er Zelda game, which I guess is O'Reena of Time. Like anything that isn't

identical to Ocaryan of time, people are like, well, this is, what is this? Which is, which is so strange because there are so many different kinds of Zelda games that there shouldn't really be one specific definition for what a Zelda game is. But I mean, you're more embedded in the fandom than I am Jason. I'm sort of adjacent to these arguments. Well, so that's what's funny is that like one of the things that as just a Zelda fan who was playing them as they came out every, every few years, one of the things that you kind of like had to kind of suck up and deal with is the fact that so one of the most exciting things to me in the new Zelda game was going into a dungeon like seeing all the little piece of little hints at like what

that dungeon's big special item would be and then realizing okay I'm going to get that item it's going to be awesome and it's going to be super creative and innovative and cool and then I'm going to do cool things with it like magnet gloves or like a cane that summons bricks and stuff like that but because Zelda so strictly followed certain tropes and certain recipes It was always like, okay, before I get to all that cool stuff, I have to go through the three dungeons that'll give me the bombs and the bow and arrows and the hookshot because those are always like the Zelda necessities got to have that. And so, Maddie, to your point, I think they actually like, despite there was always like on an aesthetic level, it was like, oh my God, what is this? It's not Zelda anymore. It's all cell shaded.

Or like, what is this? Link's a wolf. This isn't Zelda anymore. But at the same time, they were sticking so close to tradition with the actual game play. in the meat of the games, that they really didn't do themselves many favors in that, like, the series started to feel stale after a while.

And I think that's one of the reasons, obviously, Breath of the Wild really stood out to so many people is because it broke with all those traditions. It's funny that there are these sort of codified traditions in the, you know, in the Zelda lineage, despite the fact that the consistent thing across all of these games is that each one is unafraid to change dramatically. Like, when you look at them a little zoomed out,

like we're kind of look, I'm looking at this list that you made of all of the games. The minute they went from Ocarina of Time, which was this huge hit, I mean, like a revolutionary game that everyone was super into and just it was exactly like, that felt,

I think at the time to people like Breath of the Wild also felt like, oh my God, the first time Link rode on his horse across the title screen. It was this feeling of just, this is it, this is the magic,

the thing that was always hinted at by that theme song, we're seeing it. And the reality of the game is maybe not that, but it's a wonderful game. And then they followed that up with Majora's Mask. And the fact that that happened, and there was totally a backlash to Majora's Max, that game is totally wild compared to Aquarena of Time.

And that's just the template. I mean, it's always been this way. This like pendulum swings between, you know, wildly different design ideas, even though, I guess because of the things you're talking about, Jason, the bombs, the order in which you do things, the way that, you know, they teach you things, the way the tutorials work. Because of that, people felt like there was this established, identity that was being deviated from, even though looking at this list, I just see a huge list

of all very interesting, all good, all very different games. Yeah, I mean, I would argue that even Majors masks like hues to the traditions of Zelda in a lot of ways. Like it feels very much like one of those traditional Zelda. Yeah, I think when it came back out on 3DS, people played it and it, it was remarkable how interesting it is as a game just in terms of game design, but also how it totally feels of a piece with the rest of the Zelda collection. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. It's like from a, from an aesthetic point of view, these games are changing drastically. And even like a little bit beyond that, like from a, um, a thematic or even structural point of view, these games are changing drastic. I mean structural with Majora's Mask. That's a really dramatic shift.

But also, but fundamentally Majora's Mask is a game about like fighting monsters and going into dungeons and collecting items. I mean, they're called, they're, they're a little bit different than standard items, but you're still using those items to solve puzzles and, um, doing side quests for villagers and like a lot of the same stuff you were doing in ocarina and link to the past a lot of these games just like like are really skew like sticking to very traditional formulas and so like we get to skyward sword which i want to talk a little bit about because that's the game we're all going to get to replay next week and and the three of us are definitely going to play it and do a triple play and get specifically into it but um that game is like the really the pinnacle of like

games the the Zelda games that a have like a 40-hour tutorial before you can actually play them And B, like, throw so many just traditional Zeldaisms at you before they get to the good parts. Like, I believe, this is, I'm speaking off the cuff here, so I don't remember if this is exactly right. But I believe the first dungeon in the game is, like, you've got a boomerang, like, just like the first dungeon in so many other Zelda games. And it's not for six, seven, eight dungeons before you're getting, like, really cool, interesting items. Like, there's a double hook shot in Skyward Sword, which is wild and a lot of fun to play with. But like, it takes a while before you get to the real meat of the stuff. And I think that's really interesting.

That's a series that is like in some ways known for being so innovative and wild is also so traditional in so many ways. Yeah. I feel like that's maybe part of why Skyward Sword has become more of a cult favorite than not. I mean, like there are many things about it that people hate it. The motion controls. People complain about the excessive tutorializing people complain about. But there's also this vocal contention of people. who are sort of like Star Wars prequels people who are super into the lore of Skyward Sword and are like,

well, it's slightly different. The villain isn't Gannon Dorf. He's like Gannon adjacent. And like there are all these other plot reveals in Skyward Sword that are cool. So like because it feels so like handholdy and also buy the books and like you're going to get the boomerang, you're going to get all these same items. Like Zelda's still wearing a dress. Like everything looks like a Zelda game if you cross your eyes that people will then seize upon any new information in it and be like, this is why this is the Zelda game for me. This is the special Zelda that I'm going to hold up, which I guess I could say is true of all of these other ones, where if you meet somebody who's like super into Majora's mask or whatever, it's because it's different.

Like the things they're into are the things about it that make it different from every other Zelda game or whatever. Wind Waker people are into the cell shaded stuff and the specific look of that game or the sailing. And that's just, I don't know. I'm curious to actually play Skyward Sword and give it a chance because I'm like, do those people have a point? Is there actually something cool buried in that game that I just never got to because I got bored by it? But I don't know.

I don't know. I guess I'm going to find out. Did you beat it, Jason? You must have. I did. Yeah. And there's definitely some cool stuff towards the end. And Skyward Sword is a prequel to most or if not all of the other Zelda games.

So there's some stuff that's like setting up the legend of Zelda. I won't spoil it. And then there's some also like Skyward Sword. One of the cool things Skyward Sword does is, and you can see the lineage of this in Breath of the Wild, is that it sets up like very futuristic technology stuff within the medieval fantasy world of Zelda. And I'll leave it at that because I want people to discover it for themselves.

It's worth noting, by the way, that what they're doing for this HD release, in addition to like upgrading the graphics, making it HD and making it so you can play without motion controls, they're adding all these quality of life improvements. So like in the original game, Fee, who is the name of the spirit

who lives in your sword in the game, would just pop out and constantly pester you with like tutorials and messages and stuff. And they're making that stuff optional. And they're making it so like you don't get a pop-up message every single time you pick up an item because it has to tell you that a rupee is worth 20 rupee, like a red rupees or 10 rubies or whatever it is.

I remember that being a major issue with that game. Yes. That was a super major issue of that game. And so they are doing some things that'll make it feel less tedious, which I think will make it more accessible to folks. But, it's funny you say Cole Classic because the game sold to Brazilian copies and was beloved and critically acclaimed. All these games are. Yeah, but it doesn't have that reputation, though.

You know what I mean? Right. That's the thing. Well, so Skyward Sword is kind of perceived as the game that was like, that made people look around and be like, all right, enough of the Zelda formula already. Even though it was critically acclaimed, people were just like, all right, we're kind of sick of And Skyward Sword led to two years later, Aegean Anuma and the Zelda team released a link between worlds for the 3DS, which really was kind of like an oar, Breath of the Wild in a lot of ways. Because while it was a direct sequel to link to the link to the past and like set in that same world, what it did was instead of making you do dungeons in a linear order, it gave you a big shop and you could buy items and take it.

And you just needed one per dungeon and you could take them on in any order. And so that really just broke the rules in a way that allowed Breath of the Wild to be created in the first place. And this is all as a result, I think, of Skyward Sword, like Anuma and Crew looking around and saying, all right, we want to do something completely different with this series now. Yeah, I could understand looking at Skyward Sword in retrospect, despite the fact that it was definitely a game that was just sort of made to review well. It was a new 3D Zelda. It looked great. It sounded great.

It had amazing music. You know, it was a very charming game. And then in hindsight, especially if you were someone who made Zelda games, I could see looking at it and saying, you know, all those people who have complained about bloat and the way that these games have just,

this game is just kind of feels too big by 30% and probably a lot of people didn't finish it. I could see them looking at it and thinking, okay, I think maybe it really is time to shake this up. And then, I mean, the link between worlds had to be a really creatively fulfilling project for the people who worked on it. I just have to imagine.

And there's just a spark in that game. I love A Link Between Worlds. It's one of my favorite games. It's one of my favorite games. And there's just so much, they're having so much fun with the way that it was designed. Not like putting aside the whole dungeon design, like being able to buy upgrades, which is actually not something I cared about or even noticed. I mean, I noticed that I could tell it was different.

But it was just a delightful game. Like the gimmick of it, the 2D thing where you go into the wall and you can sneak around. That was so clever and so cool. so much cooler than anything in Skyward Sword. That was kind of the thing to me about Skyward Sword, and obviously, we'll talk about this more in a couple of weeks, but it struck me as a game that didn't actually have a big new idea the way that some Zelda games, not all Zelda games,

but some Zelda games do. The motion controls and the sword fighting were touted as this big deal, but in practice, are they really, I don't know, I remember playing that and not being that impressed. It didn't really work. I mean, I remember Twilight Princess tried to do motion controls, which like you can do a little bit of the sword fighting in Twilight Princess, but it didn't quite work,

maybe just because it was a launch title and it was also launching simultaneously on the GameCube. But I do remember in that era, motion controls were such a huge deal that I like tried to, I gave it the old college try with Twilight Princess and like tried to kind of do some sword fighting. And it really didn't work. And Skyward Sword, like I'm pretty sure like the E3 booth or whatever had like a big picture of like the motion controls on the wall. Like I have a memory of that image. And like that was how they sold it.

And I'm, I'm just. guessing that at the time that idea of doing sword fighting motion controls but doing them well was the promise internally that they were trying to keep just building on Twilight Princess, which of course didn't work and now we've all accepted that motion controls for swords are bad. Well, hold on. So it actually does work pretty well. So what happened with Skyward Sword was Skyward was Skyward's required an accessory called the Wii Motion Plus that basically improved the sensitivity of your Wii remote in a way that, so there was technology there that wasn't even possible

with Twilight Princess. And there are like some fascinating boss fights where you have to be like mastering like the diagonal swings and the horizontal swings. And it's really interesting. I think you guys will be actually kind of surprised at how much the motion controls play into it when you play the HD version

because now you're going to use the joystick instead if you're playing on the switch like in handel mode or whatever. And yeah, I mean, I'm very curious to see how the comes off. But actually, the motion controls, from what I remember playing it when it came out, um, uh, were like the, the most interesting thing in that game. I'll be curious. I don't think that that's wrong. I think that maybe they were the most interesting thing in the game and that that's maybe the issue with the game's legacy. Because I don't really think of them when I think of the game. I just think you're, uh, you're cruising around the world, you're going to dungeons, you're doing the,

the Legend of Zelda thing. And that's kind of all there is. It's just, it looks this certain way, it sounds a certain way, but there's kind of nothing remarkable about it, where when I then think about a link between worlds, you know, there's this whole new mechanic that's really remarkable and, like, really factors into boss fights and puzzles and all kinds of things. They've built the whole game around it in a way that just sticks in my memory a lot more strongly than the motion controls did. Yeah.

Well, one of the interesting things about the Zelda franchise in general is that so much of it has been built to serve hardware, starting with, I mean, I guess you could go all the way back to the NDS if you wanted to, but like Twilight Princess or the Wii, the DS games, Phantom Air Glass and Spirit Tracks, which are not my favorites, but those use touch controls and only touch controls. You can't use any buttons. You have to use your siloes, which is why they're not my favorite. Was Phantom Hourglass the one where you had to breathe into your 3DS as well?

I remember that. Yeah, you had to use the mic to blow on stuff. Blow out candles maybe? I think they both do it. With Spirit Tracks, with Spirit Tracks, there was a whistle. You could blow by like blowing into them. Right, right. It's a little much.

And you would draw like train tracks on the thing. Yeah, I mean, both of them were very gimmicky. And then Skyward started obviously with the motion plus. And then link between worlds. Kirk, the mechanic you mentioned about like going into walls, going from 2D to 3D is because it's the 3DS. Yeah. And they wanted to take advantage of the 3D.

And then the next game, which might be the only real bad Zelda game, is TriForce Heroes, which is a multiplayer game that is like legitimately bad, like poorly designed in a lot of ways. But that game was created to play around with 3DS multiplayer because 3DS was like the first really, I mean, I guess you could do multiplayer online games on the Wii U, but they weren't great. It was really the 3DS. It was the first like game that you were, it was just a Nintendo system where you were actually playing like online in any sort of substantial way with people. And so they wanted to mess around with that. Try four zeros. Yeah, I didn't play this. It's funny to even imagine that given how bad Nintendo seems to be at multiplayer, I guess was the idea that you would be playing

with people in real life a little bit more than you'd be playing with them on the internet? Maybe. I don't know. I feel like... So that was kind of the 3DS thing, right? Like with SpotPass and you can be like playing Mario Kart together at a convention. Yeah, maybe, but there was also like, there's no, there was no chat. Part of the idea was that you should solve puzzles collaboratively without talking and so you could only do like these emotes and gestures and stuff. It was very, very strange, very bad game in a lot of ways. Did you ever play it with people, IRL? I would be curious. How was that? Yeah, I put it in the office of the people and it sucks. When it worked, a lot of the times it just didn't work. But anyway, I guess that was necessary to bring us to the greatest game

of all time, or at least one of them, Breath of the Wild. That, I'm sure every listener who's listening to the show right now knows about Breath of Wild and how much of a masterpiece it is. But yeah, Breath of the Wild feels very much like the culmination of Zelda. And part of me feels like that's why it's taken so long to do a sequel because it's like, how do you suppress Breath of the Wild? How do you make something that's like greater than Breath of Wild or as good as Breath of the Wild even? But yes, Breath of the Wild is very much, to your point, Kirk, like Zelda One sets the template, sets the blueprint, Occurine of Time is like, okay, cool, we got.

got a little house here. Breath of the Wild is, all right, here's your fucking mansion. We are delivering on the idea and then some. You can literally go anywhere. The game says yes to you at every possible turn. I think it's interesting that Breath of the Wild was not tied to hardware in any meaningful way. It was, and then it was changed. So it was tied to the Wii U when it was going to be a Wii only game.

And you would use the tablet for your map and stuff like that. And then they pivoted around like 2015 or 2016, basically when, and the developers said this, I remember at a GDC talk I went to with the developers of Zelda, they said basically they got an email from Onuma being like, so we're going to be on the NX too. And they're all like, uh, what? And so they just scrap all those features. But yeah, finish what you're saying? Yeah, didn't hurt the game. I mean, the one thing with the switch that was switch specific was that it was very cool to be playing a game of that scope and that grandeur and then just be able to pop it in your bag and take it with you to GDC actually where I think we saw that talk. like that same year. And that was cool, but that wasn't an essential part of the game. It was just a really good open world, you know, simulation adventure game. And that's kind of, that was plenty, or at least it was plenty for me.

Yeah. Yeah. And it feels like it had to go on the journey. Zelda had to go on the journey it has to get to that point. Yeah, it's also interesting what changed in that game. I mean, obviously it's an open world, but also the fact that there aren't really dungeons per se. there's like these little series of puzzle-e dungeon-like areas that are just just little temples where you can hop in and do something and then leave and that being totally different it's more you know checking off tick boxes on the map dots on the map as we always say and that's a very different vibe for Zelda game but then also like Zelda's wearing pants she's a lot more hands-on she really engages story-wise with the fact that she has a specific role that she's cast in the characters are sort of looking directly at that idea that's new

Also, Lincoln Cook. I don't know. I didn't have a third item on this list. But that's new. That's all new. Link can cook. That's a huge deal. I just, I feel like those, oh, breakable weapons.

That was another huge deal for people at the time. Like a very Skyrim vibe in terms of just how the game looks and feels. And I also know that there are people out there who don't like Breath of the Wild because of those differences. Just it's not a Zelda game to them. I mean, yeah. Well, that's the thing. Not a Zelda game.

That's such an interesting concept. people were saying that in 2002 about Wind waker because it's like hey this is cartoons this is anime like this is in a Zelda game um but yeah i mean it's hard to describe what is a Zelda game it feels like as long as it has link and music and a sense of adventure and exploration it's a Zelda game but um yeah but breath of the wild breaks with tradition so drastically and is like so unlike any of the kind of link to the past lineage games that it's hard to know what to make of it other than being like, wow, this is phenomenal. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's good in so many ways.

That is true about Zelda, Maddie. I feel like Zelda is kind of the protagonist of Breath of the Wild. She has an arc anyways, where it doesn't really feel like Link really does. I mean, he kind of does. An arc in the past, she's kind of asleep the whole time. No, I know, but the story, well, the whole story is told in the past. Like, I mean, Link's arc in the present is he gets a bunch of stuff and gets more hearts and then, like, fights the boss.

Yeah, you're always getting more hearts. I feel like she also is a pretty prominent character in auction. green of time. So like that similarity, at least for people who like the stories of these games, is like, oh, this is a character who has an arc and, like, motivations and it's kind of doing their own specific thing in this game again. And then you're still the cipher character. Like, the fact that Link is the quote-unquote main character is sort of irrelevant. It's more like he's just the guy who presses buttons and walks around and pokes things. I mean, yes, he's the main character, but he's not talking. So I think that one interesting, like, uh, vector

on which I consider Zelda or have always thought of it is in terms of Zelda clones, as they're called. I think you can learn a lot about any game by the derivative games that are made. And I'm always paying attention to the games that are made in the Zelda mold because it kind of tells you what other game designers think a Zelda game is.

And Dark Siders comes to mind and Okami comes to mind. I feel like Okami at the time, that came out in 2006, and it was kind of the... It was like the answer to Twilight Princess, like people who weren't happy about Twilight Princess's art style or the game in general, because you also play a wolf in Okami.

And it's very Zelda. The design is like totally Zelda. Like the blueprint is really taken. And it's a great game. It manages to be a really good game. Yeah. Yeah. There are some great ones.

There's some great 2D ones, indie 2D ones that I played over the years. Yeah. Lots of Zelda clones that don't quite get at the essence of what Zelda is or just kind of copy a few things and not others. Haven't seen any Breath of the Wild clones, really interesting. Except for Immortals Phoenix Rising. Is it absolutely Breath of the Wild clone? But it's not. It's different. It has

different goals and is a different thing. Of course it's different, but I mean, it is though. I mean, I would say that that is definitely the closest thing we have to a Breath of the Wild club. Yeah, and I feel like the art style for Breath of the Wild is mainly what people have copied as opposed to like, oh, there are these three beings and the tribe. Right. Like that sort of medieval

fantasy trappings. But Not so much, but the look of it. Sorry, sorry to interrupt you, Maddie. But Kirk, I just have this thought like, Mortals Phoenix Rising is like a copy of Breath of the Wild in such an aesthetic way, but like there's no physics simulation or systems in Immortals that work the same way that Breath of the Wild does.

There absolutely is. You're not like cutting down trees and using them to turn into logs and getting struck by lightning and then like turning them into, like there's none of that stuff. Yeah, you're doing all these physics puzzles. and they feel like the shrines that you go into solve puzzles and feel just like the shrines. No, but that's different.

That's different than like, okay, I'm on this, like, in this icy area. Don't agree, but I don't know. I mean, all right, whatever. I think that, I think there's one other thing that I do just want to mention because we've talked about these games so much on this podcast is that I think there's also a direct line from Zelda to the Souls games and that it's interesting that Dark Siders, which began as a straight-up Zelda clone, and then it kind of transitioned, and I think it's Dark Siders 3 is a dark,

Dark Souls clone instead. And there was a feeling, especially in like 2010, 2011, when Dark Souls, like when Souls games were kind of picking up the torch for Zelda, and they were delivering on that promise that the original game had of like, you can go anywhere, but it's kind of dangerous, and you actually kind of can't go anywhere, and you need to learn what to do, and there's this kind of foreboding quality to the world, that then Breath of the Wild kind of picked back up. And there's definitely, while there's like a Skyrim influence in Breath of the Wild, it also also has a soul's influence, and you can feel that in some aspects of that game.

I think that's pretty interesting, too. It's an interesting kind of outside of the series sort of arc to follow. Yeah, I mean, when Link winds up sitting at a bonfire and then resets the whole world and winds up in this weird, dream world. But you start at a bonfire. I remember there's like a bonfire and a guy in a cloak sitting there, a mysterious guy talking to you. There are certainly things in that game that feel like Dark Souls. Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, I think the other similarity that's really obvious, but I'm going to say anyway is just the idea of Japanese developers doing their own twist on these Western fantasy tropes, like whatever Western fantasy means. And like that sort of redistribution of those tropes into that aesthetic is really cool to see. Like that's part of why I think Dark Souls is interesting and also Zelda's interesting is because a lot of these games are about, they're just, they have different cultural mores. Like they're often about like teamwork as opposed to like individualism like so many American games are. And. like that's definitely what dark souls is about with like calling people in to help you and so on and

like you know link is calling on zelda to help him and stuff and i just i like that idea of like what if we take these certain fantasy tropes from one area and then put them in something else and reinterpret them that is a similarity that kind of that i can kind of see there yeah that's true i think it's fair to say that elden ring will be the breath of the wild copy that we're all looking for i hope so interesting you think Sure. Yeah, sure, why not? Yeah, I mean, I think it's been interesting to watch this kind of weird evolution of the series.

To the point that I was making earlier, by the way, I think that, like, one of the things that has always stood out to me about these games is the dungeon design and the way that there's like these intricately crafted puzzle boxes and they get more and more complicated because over the game, you're, over the course of a Zalda game, you're getting more and more tools and the game will expect you to have those tools and use those tools. and combine them in interesting ways. Like in Link's Awakening, for example, you get the Pegasus boots, and then you also get like a, or not, this is actually an Oracle. Oracle puzzle. Yeah, or the Rocks feather, yeah,

and you have to run while using the Rocks feather. In the Oracle games, it's a seed that lets you jump. And like knowing that you have to run and, or no, sorry, in the Oracle games, it's a seed that lets you run. So knowing you have to run and jump at the same time to, like, pass a giant gap is like one of those interesting,

like Zelda puzzle combination things. And then so for link between, World's a big problem in that game was that since each dungeon would only require you to have one item, it couldn't make you combine items in interesting ways. And you knew going into like the bomb dungeon that every single puzzle would be a bomb puzzle. And then you move on to Breath of the Wild. And Breath of the Wild solves that kind of dilemma in such a fascinating way, which is that instead of it lets you go in anywhere in any order, but instead of giving you like one tool per dungeon, it just gives you a bunch of tools right up front and then expects you to have them all.

all throughout the game, which I think is a brilliant way to solve that problem. And the concept of the plateau at the beginning of Zelda is just brilliant, just the setting up the rest of the game, because it gives you this tiny slice of the world to explore, set you up with everything you need, and then you just glide off, and it's like, oh, my God, now I can literally go anywhere and do whatever I want. Yeah, that's well put.

That's really true. That's kind of the biggest difference with Breath of the Wild is that it truly is a game about freedom, where none of the other ones feel all that free. It's always a series of constrained challenges within these very strictly established parameters that you're solving. That was actually kind of why I was never as drawn to them back in the 2000s or whenever the 90s.

Just because I liked, you know, I would play like Elder Scrolls games on PC, like the old ones, and I really liked those games where you could just walk around and do anything. And always felt kind of, like, it was kind of how I thought of console games in general because I didn't really have a console and think of. I always felt like, oh, they're kind of really rigid.

You can only do certain things. You don't have the freedom that you had at the same time in some PC games. So playing a Zelda game where they really just remove that structure, just the way that you described, was really cool. And that is, I think, at the heart of why I like just like playing Breath of the Wild. Yeah, but you do lose something because I feel like there is something to be said. There is some value to like having that dungeon where developer knows where you are and like you have this tight, tight structure.

And I'm very curious to see what Breath of the Wild too does. of course, Breath of the Wild 2, which we will see in forever. So do you hope, can I ask both of you, do you hope that Breath of the Wild 2 is initially seen as disappointing and weird because it changes so much from Breath of the Wild? That's a good question. Kind of, yeah. I mean, is Breath of the Wild 2 the only example of a direct sequel

that is theoretically within the same exact world as a previous? Yeah, okay, fair enough, fair enough. It's a long time after it, though. And Majores Mask is also a direct sequel to Ocarina. So they're a couple. Yes. Although Majores is so different. Which, I mean, what if Breath of the Wild too is as different?

Right. That's kind of insane. That would be wild. Yeah, it could be. I mean, what we've seen so far suggests that like they're still in Hyrol, except there's like a land above Hyrule that we're going to explore this time. And also there's a lot of, well, we were assuming after E3, we did an episode and we were all kind of assuming that it was link, but there's been some.

some good speculation out there that it might not be link or maybe it's past link people think it might begin and dwarf well because his hair looks different it's like longer hair so yeah it's like like time skip avengers style five years later when i think about the game i totally feel that it's the moment right now this moment i'm feeling the feeling that people have felt at every major turning point in this franchise that we've talked about which is the feeling of i want to have the feeling again that I had playing Breath of the Wild, this wonderful feeling I'll never forget the two weeks where I was playing that game. And I was just lost inside it and it was so cool. I just wanted again, I'm always replaying that game and it's never quite there just because

I've played it now. And I want that again. But I would love to be challenged by a game too and I really don't know how I feel. Like I would be disappointed if it came out and it was just kind of really different. And I had to learn to appreciate this sort of different flavor on the thing that I liked. But I don't, I really, I'm really torn. I really don't. know what I want. Well, hey, let's tie it all back together. I am very curious to hear what you two, and really me also, like, I'm very curious to see what all of us think of Skyward Sword when we play it next week. For sure. After Breath of the Wild, it'll be so interesting to go back to, like, the game that really, like, took tradition a little too far and, like, made everyone kind of

sick of the Zelda formula. After so many years of, like, not getting a game like this, will we all be, like, find it refreshing to go back to Skyward Sword? It'll be very interesting to I'm very excited to do those dungeons again. I remember some really cool moments and like set pieces and dungeons. There's some really good dungeon. Sure, there's like that desert time dungeon that I'm remembering is really cool. Something to do with a time puzzle in a Zelda game? That's crazy.

I don't know what that is. Never been done before. So, yeah, so we will be back in a few weeks to go in depth on Skyward Sword HD. In the meantime, let's take a break, and then we will be back with one more thing. Shmanners. noun definition rules of etiquette designed not to judge others but rather to guide ourselves through everyday social situations hello internet i'm your husband host travis mackleroy and i'm your wife host teresa mackleroy every week on schmanors we take a look at a topic that has to do with

society or manners we talk about the history of it we take a look at how it applies to everyday life and we take some of your questions and sometimes we do a biography about a really cool person that had an impact on how we view etiquette. So join us every Friday and listen to Schmanters on maximum fun.org or wherever podcasts are found. Manner Schmanors. Get it. I'm Biz. And I'm Teresa.

And we're the hosts of One Bad Mother, a podcast about parenting. Parenting is hard. And we have no advice, but we do see you doing it. Hulk, if you like to do it. What was? Didn't we have a bumper sticker a while back that was like, Honk if you did it. That's what it was.

I think it was honk if you're doing it. Why did we not ever make them? We did make them. I think they're still in the Max Fun store. Honk, honk, you're doing it. Thanks, Biz. So are you. Each week we'll be here to remind you that you're doing a good job.

You can find us on maximum fun.org. Hong Kong, toot, tutu. And we are back. Kirk, Maddie. let's do one more thing. One's more thing. The plural is one's more thing. That's very correct.

Kirk, what is your one more thing? So I want to talk a little bit more about Bo Burnham's inside because I finally watched it. And I really want to talk about the music, I think, mainly because I was really, really into the music. I generally liked it overall. And I went into it having talked with you, Maddie, about it on the show and some of your sort of conflicted feelings. about the way that he's presenting this room that he lives in, even though it's not the room that

he lives in, he lives in a house with his partner. He is like a wealthy, successful person who does have mental health and anxiety problems, but also doesn't actually live in this tiny room, and lots of people did live in the tiny room. And I think that it was really helpful for me going in with that in my head. And also, I want to link this article. We'll put it in the show notes and just shout it out as an article by Lily Loofborough at Slate called The Problem with Bow Burnham's inside. And it's a great article. I think I almost wanted to make the article my one more thing because it's so good. It's a type of criticism that I really like where she points out and very eloquently articulates the thing that you're describing, Maddie, and sort of talks about

how comedy has always sort of exaggerated things. Like when a stand-up comedian says, oh, you know, last week I was on the street and saw this guy, you know that maybe it didn't really happen last week and you're supposed to, you know, sort of accept that. But when it's, you know, done in this way that makes you think, you know, makes you look at this person and worry about them living in this horrible condition that so many people actually do live in. Like, is that as effective? And it wasn't for her. But she ends by acknowledging how meaningful the film was to so many people. And like, using that as a way to sort of just try to look at what it's doing and whether it's more successful than it was for her or that she, than she felt. She ends by saying,

maybe the spiritual malaise he captured mattered more than the metaphor it came in. Maybe that's a measure of something Burnham understands about truth on the internet that I still don't. If I wake up in a house that's full of smoke, I'll panic. So call me up and tell me a joke when I'm fully irrelevant, totally broken, damn it. Call me up and tell me a joke. Oh shit. You're really joking at a time like this. And that's kind of where I came down on it, that a lot of it was about truth.

and the way that we present ourselves and his super-conflicted feelings about how he always is the center of attention and he presents this certain version of himself and then we all do, it's so about the internet. I mean, the reason he's so wealthy is because he's brilliant at capturing that malaise and having it resonate with so many people.

And he clearly feels extremely conflicted about that for a number of reasons that he talks about. So I thought it was good. There were some songs they could have cut. It was maybe a little bit long. But musically, I thought it was just really great. I'm so impressed by him. Holy shit.

Like, I had never really heard his stand-up stuff, but like the number of disciplines. He's written a lot of other songs you might like, just as an aside. But go on. For sure. Yeah, I've listened to some of it, but I wasn't familiar before watching this. And just, I mean, the music is great. He's a great singer. He just writes really good songs.

But he's just like the lighting, the cinematography, the editing, the whole thing. I was just blown away by the chops on display. And I'm always kind of a sucker for that kind of thing. So I really liked it. I think his voice, the way he uses his voice, is incredible. He used autotunes so well to get that certain sound. Be scared, don't be shy. Come on in the water's fire.

You say the ocean's rising like I give a shit. You say the whole world's end. They can't eat it already then. You're not going to slow if heaven knows you try. God it could not get inside. We're going to go where everybody. Or he'll do the Twitch streamer voice. He sounds like a Twitch streamer perfectly doing it.

I enjoyed that part. Yeah. That looks pretty good graphics-wise. I mean, I know it's a cinematic, but... Yeah, so we're going to be trying to do live plays every day this week, so tune in for that. I would be gifting 30 subs at the end of the week. Day 15.2.50. All right, so this dude's been in here for a while.

So is this like an escape the room? Or... Okay. so I can cry. So he's not happy about being in this room. I like the music. The music is actually nice on this. And then the like influencer,

brand influencer voice, and he's like, changes his voice. He really modulates very carefully. And it's just, I was really impressed by that. And the song I want to shout out is the Jeff Bezos song because it's probably the best song

in the whole soundtrack, because I've been listening to the soundtrack. There are two Jeff Bezos one and Bezos two. Which, when taken together, it's probably the funniest Jeff Bezos joke I've ever heard. The whole song is like, it's like, what if we were all just cheering for Jeff Bezos? Because we're all on this horrible competition together, this capitalist death, you know, death march. And this one guy is like going to win. And we're all like, how, Jeffrey, you can do it.

Look at where you came from, look at you now. Zuckerberg and Gates and Buffett amateurs can fucking suck it. Fuck their wives. Drink their blood. Come on, Jeff. It's so ridiculous and perfect, and that was probably the hardest I laughed in the entire thing. So I really liked it. I also really liked that angle of appreciating it and criticizing it and just thought it was cool.

So if people haven't watched it yet, I guess everybody probably has now. But I thought I would just say that I thought the music was really good. It is good. Good stuff. Maddie, what's your one more thing? Okay. So you two might remember that I never beat Hollow Night, even though we talk about Hollow Night. I do remember.

I'd say every other day of our lives. So we talk about Holliday? But I never actually beat it. And I was playing it on the Switch. And I actually played in a handheld mode a lot when I was playing it on the Switch. I would just play it during breaks at work or whatever, going around town. Remember going around town? I do.

I used to do that. And that, I don't think, is the ideal way to play it. And I never beat it. It's really hard. And I started feeling like if I was going to take Hollow Night seriously, I would need to dock my Switch and really, like, actually give a shit about it. And I just never did that. But time has passed. I have since gotten a new monitor, which I talked about ages and ages ago.

It's not really new anymore. It's still new to me. And I have decided that I'm going to play Hollow Night on PC. So I've started doing that with my 144 hertz monitors, frame rates high, baby. It looks crisp as hell. I'm playing it on a controller on my new monitor. It's so much easier. It's so much easier now.

And I'm loving it. And I don't know if I'm going to beat it this time, but I'm really enjoying it. And part of why I started playing it is because I was also playing this other Switch game, Ender Lilies, which we'll maybe talk about next week. And that is sort of a Metroidvania. It has a similar, like, look to Hall & Night. That's kind of a weird thing to say. No, it does, though, I think.

It has a different, it's like an anime style. You're playing a little girl in a dark world, but you're still like a white figure in a dark world. And I kept playing that on my Switch and being like, I just really want to play Hollenay night, right? now so then I did. And it's been awesome. So I made it to, I'm not very far. I made it to Green Path. I think that's what is called Green Path. Yeah. And yeah, I'll see how far I get. And I, you know, I'll probably just go back to playing Dark Souls again. But yeah, maybe I'll beat it. Yeah. I'm very curious. Because like part for me of these, one of the big appeals that came for me was that you could pick it up anywhere. So I'm curious to see if you stick with it. Certainly an appeal.

Yes. But that frame rate though. Yeah. I'm with you. So I played it on Switch, but almost in I remember I modded my switch pro controller with tape to make the Dpad actually work in a way that it needed to. And that really helped. But I've played it a little on PC and it's, I prefer, I think it's much easier on a big screen, so I totally agree. And I will say that get the upgrade at the Mantis Village. Because I recently replayed it. If people remember, I like got all the way through the whole game. And that's really the moment. It's like Green Path and then right after that, you'll kind of go through fungal waste and like Mantis. This isn't spoilers. There's like two upgrades you get after that. And that's really the moment. And that's really. really where if it's going to click, that's where it clicks. Like where you're like, oh, you get some traversal stuff that lets you do some cool shit. And I hope you get there because I just want everyone to play hollow-nette. Yeah, how far did you get the first time, Maddie? I don't remember. And even replaying it now, I'm like, I don't remember any of this.

So it's like, who knows? Oh, man, you're going to really dig it like that. I thought I got past Hornet before. But Greenpath doesn't look familiar to me at all. So my brain doesn't work and I have no memory. So don't take that as a sign that I didn't get past Hornet the first time. I probably did. It's just that I have no memory of anything I've ever done.

But regardless, I mean, if you didn't get that far, you're really in for a treat if you stick with it. So hopefully you do. And I bet you'll really dig it if you do. Yeah. But if you follow Kirk's advice. Because Kirk is right. Like there's certain points where you got like traversal mechanics and it's like,

it really unlocks for you. Yeah. It's also like the game doesn't have to be that hard if you don't want it to be because it does the Dark Souls thing where you can just kind of like keep getting more health and, you know, tricking out your build with, they're not called relics. They're called relics and ender lilies. I, charms, they're called charms in Hollow Night.

You can just get certain charms that make it easier for you. So I don't know, it's not so bad, you know? I like that. I wish you luck. I hope you stick with it. Cool. So my one more thing, I really think I should just read every single Stephen King book because I've never picked up a Stephen King book that I have not enjoyed.

And then listen to Just King Things. To Just King Things. The podcast I was telling you about. They're doing Kooja right now. I'm listening to their Kooja episode. It's a great. Nice. I read a lot of them, but not, I mean, obviously, I don't think anyone could

possibly read every single scene. I mean, those guys are going to. Well, yeah, I guess that's true. Cameron and Michael are going to on their podcast, just King Things. They didn't pay us for this. Over the weekend, I just read Joy Land, which is an excellent short book, kind of in the same style as that other book, his newest book later, which I mentioned a few weeks ago is my one more thing.

And it's really good. It's like about a kid who like winds up working at this amusement park and like immersing himself in the Kearney lifestyle and then there's some interesting stuff and a really bad breakup and some supernatural stuff of course and some murder because it's Stephen King and it's just a really really great story. And I just want to give a shout out to, I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but did you know that in your city right now there is a building where you could go and it's full of books and you can just take them for free and all you have to do is give them back after a few weeks, but you can just take them.

You know what's really wild? There's also just a website that that building runs where I can go, and they'll just give me Kindle books for free. I know. Or audiobooks. Also, they'll give you audio books. Yeah, if you read digitally, I'm a physical reader. I got to say, I prefer physical copies,

but if you're a Kindle reader, then, yeah, you can just get them without even thinking about it. Or an audiobook listener. Your library will give you audiobooks. That's true, they will. But yeah, libraries are amazing. I didn't even realize, because, So my wife and I, I mentioned this before, but a while back, we moved to the suburbs, and so join the library around here.

And I didn't even realize that nowadays they let you take out like up to 50, 5-0 books at once, which is very helpful when you have a toddler and you're taking out a bunch of children's books. So we could snag like 30 kids' books at once, which is amazing because my toddler is obsessed with books and like all she wants to do all day is read. Though I will say, speaking of Stephen King and libraries, you want to return those books on time because otherwise they'll send the library policeman. after you. Is that a Stephen King?

Yeah, it's a short story. You're like a novella. It's kind of a weird one actually. Yes. But anyway, I took out with Joyland for the Library. Really enjoyed it. I just want to go. I might spend a couple months just going on a big Stephen King binge where I just

like maybe over the summer I'll just be like, I want to just get through all of his books. Yeah, I did that a couple years ago. I love every single book like Under the Jome 1122, 63. Like so many of his bigger books I've just loved to death that. I just want to go through the ending of Under the Dome? Whatever, no spoilers.

That book didn't know how to end, but that's a common Stephen King thing. Stephen King and endings. Stephen King, not knowing how to end it. Imagine that. No, I mean, after I read Carrie, I felt the same way, Jason. I just wanted to read them all. Joyland is a good ending. Okay.

And, Kirk, I know that you are very big into the Dark Tower, which maybe I will finally start reading. Read the first four books. I don't know, read the whole thing, I guess. Isn't there like a director's cut of the Dark Tower? hour that's like also hotly debated. I feel like that's a thing. Am I crazy? Yeah. I don't know. Like didn't it get re-released or is that a different Stephen King book that got re-released? The stand got re-released for the director's. Yeah, the stand has like it's like a bigger

version with like edited scenes like put in and stuff like the uncut one that came out with the TV miniseries. Anyway, just a big I just want to shout out because like I feel like there are people out there who don't know the library exists or like don't even think about it as like a potential resource. but libraries are awesome. They're amazing. You just go get books for free. It's amazing. I love our books podcast.

It's so great. I love it. It is. Brought to you by your library. Okay, cool. So that is it for this week's episode. Kirk, Maddie. I'll see you both next week.

Yeah, 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 Maximumfund.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org.

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