Triple Click - Yep, That Was a Weird E3

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

NEW METROID!!! And also other things. But first, NEW METROID!!! After Maddy's done hyperventilating, the gang talks about everything we saw at this year's bizarre, online-only E3. From Elden Ring to Avatar to Breath of the Wild 2, let's go through it all.One More Thing: Kirk: Ratchet & Clank: Rift ApartMaddy: Bo BurnhamJason: The House in Fata Morgana Links:MItchell Saltzman’s interview with Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki: https://www.ign.com/articles/elden-ring-miyazaki-hidetaka-full-interview-summer-of-gamingNathan Grayson’s article on the terrible Twitch chats of E3: https://kotaku.com/e3-twitch-chat-has-been-miserable-1847092627Support 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

Each year in June, the video game industry comes together in a massive joint effort to help three podcasters get very excited about a niche Japanese visual novel. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. On this episode, it's time for E3, which stands for everybody's extremely excited that Dangan Rampa is finally coming to Switch. Some of their stuff happened to, maybe there was a new Metroid game or something. I don't know, it's hard to remember. Anyway, let's discuss. I'm Kirk Hamilton. I'm Maddie Myers.

And I'm Jason Shire, and I just got a PR email titled, uh, achieve the ultimate fantasy by reading. Which I agree with. That's actually kind of on brand for this podcast. It is a... Yeah, well, welcome to a triple-click. Yeah, welcome to our books podcast. Where we like to read.

Where we click on a book in our Kindle. I don't know. I guess you can click on a book these days. I started that joke and then realized it was possible. That happens very often to me where I like start a joke about some futuristic thing and then realize that it is now possible. So that's actually very relatable. Maddie, I'm amazed that you are able to talk as calmly.

as you're talking right now. Speaking of all possibilities being possible, there's going to be a new Metroid game. Yeah, I was going to say, before Kirk geared in a totally different direction, I was going to say, Maddie, I'm amazed that you're able to speak as calmly as you are because a metric game was just announced,

but we will get to that. Yeah, I was, I mean, I was segueing to the thing where we say that we're listeners supported, but people know that. Go to maximum fun.org slash join. If you want to become a member, we appreciate it. There's not time for that. There's a new Metroid game

that we have to talk about, E3 just happens, so let's get going. Well, we should say that the beans cast for Final Fantasy 6 is hitting at the end of this month, and you can only listen to that if you're a max phone member. Yeah, yeah, people know that. Metroid. Everybody knows that. Everybody already knows that.

All right, we are recording this on Tuesday night. Nintendo's E3 showcase just happened. Maddie, we have to ask you first. You have to start us off because as a resident Metroid fan girl, how excited are you to see the first new Metroid game in what, 10 years, 11 years? I'm very excited. It's also the first new story entry in the series because it's an actual new Metroid game with Yoshio Sakamoto, who has written a lot of Metroid games, sort of a controversial figure because he's also written other em. And I personally don't really care about Sammas's story at all. I just want her to be completely silent and I want to explore a planet and fight some alien species.

And you fight robots in this game too. That's cool. Sounds great. and I'm really pumped about it. I'm going to backtrack. I'm going to collect upgrades. I'm going to fight stuff with my blaster arm, my arm cannon. They said they were doing a tree house live afterwards, and they very specifically were like, oh, yeah, you see this thing and you have to come back to it.

Once you gain the thing, they let you do it. And it's like, oh, man, Maddie's in fantasy world right now. Love to see something I can't do right away, but then later I get something. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that door I couldn't open, now I can open it. All right. So Metro decide. E3 is over. E3 2021. We said last week we thought it was going to be a weird one. Turns out it was a really weird one. Virtual E3, it had its moments. It had its hits. It had its misses. It had a whole lot of stuff. Let's give some overall impressions on E3 itself this year before we start getting into the specifics. Kirk, you want to go first? What were your thoughts? And how much of E3 did you actually watch? I watched a fair amount of it. I watched maybe. you know, a few of the big press conferences, but not all of them.

So I watched, like, UB and Microsoft. I skipped Square Enix, but caught stuff later, and watch Nintendo just this morning. We're recording this on Tuesday. It was fun. I mean, I thought that I probably had the most fun watching the Microsoft show just because there was a lot of new stuff, even though Nintendo also had some cool announcements.

I wasn't as excited about all the Nintendo announcements, but I mostly had fun. And I will just say shout out to everybody in the Triple Click Discord, who was just in our live watching channel. It was really fun to just get in there and sort of, you know, joke around with people while watching the streams. It was kind of like the kind of thing I would have done on Twitter, but it was more fun to have a sort of smaller room with people where you can actually hear what everybody's saying and everyone's chiming in. That was really cool. You're not just talking at people.

Yeah, Kirk, it's funny. I think you are the ideal E3 experience because you didn't watch any of the stuff between the big conferences, especially the stuff on Monday. And to give my overall impressions, it's like if you just watched the big ones, then you probably go. a decent experience. I mean, obviously not as many massive announcements as like your average E3 because of COVID, as we were saying. Everything leaked pretty much. So there were almost no surprises. That's true. Yeah, most of the stuff leaked.

But like, the stuff in between all that was just miserable. And it was like, all props to the people who, like, there was some cool, smart people doing segments and media segments and interview segments and blah, blah, blah. But like, it was very much like E3 decided we got to appeal to the, well,

Actually, two things. I mean, a large part of it was E3 designing. We got to appeal to the teenage demographics. We got to bring on all the influencers to talk about, like, who they most want to have dinner with in the video game industry and stuff like that. So that was one giant chunk of it. The other chunk was, like, these scheduled events from game companies that were clearly not prepared to do E3 events.

So, like, Capcom, for example, they just showed some games that, like, everybody knows that it was coming out in the next two months. And everyone was just miserable. Some companies got to have advertising. Like Verizon had an hour-long segment that was just an advertisement for Verizon. It was really ridiculous. And a lot of this stuff was just such a waste of time. I really felt like I felt obligated to watch it because of work because I was covering it.

And I just felt like it had no respect for my time whatsoever. Yeah, me too. I watched a lot of it because of work. And there were a lot of streams, like the Take 2 interactive stream is another example where it was like entirely about corporate responsibility and there was this sort of panel with a bunch of diversity and inclusion experts, which sounds pretty cool. But like if you're expecting- By panel, you mean Zoom call to be specific. It really felt like you were watching an office Zoom call. It was an office Zoom call, but it was also like you can't really go deep at all on that topic in like a 40-minute officially sanctioned

E3 stream. But also people were clearly expecting news about Take 2 games and that's absolutely not what they were getting from this. So just the chat was really mad. And it was just like, if you guys didn't have anything to prepare here, then that's fine, but maybe just signposts that that's what you're doing. Like, don't make it seem as though this is going to be a panel about who knows what and then trick people into watching a Zoom call of just like a bunch of corporate people. And it's such a missed opportunity because usually when you're watching E3, you are watching, like if you're at home, I mean, we're usually at E3, at least me and Maddie. But when you're watching from home, you're watching the GameSpot stream or the IGN stream and they're just bringing on

developers constantly to be talking about stuff. And that's so much. much more interesting than what we got from this year's E3 where like there was a great opportunity there to bring on even if the developers are just there to hype the games it's just so much more watchable and interesting than the nonsense we actually got kirk you were saying something before oh yeah i read uh nathan grason's article i could talk to you about how twitch chat was just a disaster on every single stream because no one seems prepared to moderate which i haven't been watching and it's funny it's like the opposite of the experience of being in the triple to click discord with you know whatever number of people, but a manageable number of people where everybody's being cool. That was so cool.

It is a shame that you couldn't just go watch on some stream and have at least a sort of similar experience to that. I did get the sense that there were some indie game streams or some indie games announced. Did you guys catch any of that stuff? A little bit. There was stuff outside of E3. Well, yes, that's true too. There was like the guerrilla collective and the wholesome games and neither of those were actually on E3. If he had an indie showcase, it was pathetic. It was 15 minutes long And it was like, five games. Let's be exactly here. Okay.

Maddie, you got it. And then obviously the Xbox showcase had a bunch of cool indies, which we'll get into a little bit later. And the Devaldor Showcase had some. And the Devalver Show was really good. That was, yeah, that was really impressive. And Keely's show had a few indie's as well, but that was not part of E-3. Yeah, like a little indie game called Eldon Ring that I had never heard before.

It was really cool to see that. Let's talk about that. So that opened off the show. Thursday was Keely's big thing. His big announcements were the tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Borderland spin-off, which leaked, and Eldon Ring, which there had been rumors of that showing up at Kulis thing before the show. So a lot of us expected it, I think. But it was still pretty cool to see. The trailer was awesome.

I thought January release date, we'll see if they can hit that, but that to me is very clearly delayed a few times to January, and now we're confident in this January release date. And then even more exciting with the trailer, there were interviews with Miyazaki, the director, afterwards, where... he said some really cool stuff. There was one on IGN that I read that is worth checking out. Did you guys watch the Keeley thing? Any thoughts or impressions of the Keeley show? Yeah, I did watch the Keeley show.

I remember almost none of it other than Elden Ring. Even though I helped cover it for work and edited multiple stories about it, including probably a highlight post. I'm not sure what that says about Keeley's show. But I do remember watching the Eldon Ring trailer and then watching it multiple times afterward because I thought it was really cool.

I know some of the early reactions to it or people who were kind of disappointed that it just looks like Dark Souls, which I think for the people who were expecting something really different, I don't know why they were expecting that, but I guess if you were expecting something really different from Dark Souls, then you would be disappointed by that. I was expecting Dark Souls with some George R. Martin frosting on top of it, and that looks like it's exactly what Eldon Ring is going to be. And then also you can jump in the game and there's a horse that you ride. And those are presumably the things that George R. Martin quickly added during a cell phone call with Miyazaki at some point. in the process. He was like, there should be a horse in there. And that's how that got in. So I'm excited. A couple of things. And then Kirk, I'll let you chat. I just wanted to add a couple of things that were actually announced. Death Stranding PS5. Metal Slug Tactics, a tactics, a taxic game in the Middleslug franchise. A Salton Sacrifice, which is a sequel to Salt and Sanctuary, that old game by Scott Studios. I thought this is hilarious. In the middle of it, there was a trailer for Tales of a Rise, which is a game that's coming in September, a new JRP. And I

I was like, hmm, I wonder if Namco only agreed to do Eldon Ring if they st-if, if Keeley agreed to put a Tales of a Rise trailer in there too. But yeah, it was a pretty uneventful show other than Eldon-Ring at the end. Kirk, any, what were you going to say? So I did not really watch this stream. I basically turned it on right before Eldon Ring, which seems like it was a good way to go. I do have to say that I really appreciate Kili's enthusiasm when he's a host. He really gets into it and he was so excited to debut Eldon Ring and it was just cool.

like how stoked he was. He was like tweeting all night. He was like, guys, it's coming. He was like doing a countdown as though he himself thought it was the most interesting thing in his show. And I was like, well, I guess we're all on the same page here. Yeah. So I liked that. I liked the Eldon Ring trailer personally. The theme appears to arms. I think that the design theme is arms. So arms on everything, put more arms on things, which is cool. It's actually a sequel to Nintendo's arms. Right. They're going to have some boxing matches. I noticed that the there was not a single shield in sight on any of the playable characters. Like there were people with double-do-ended swords, but it really looked like a much more sort of aggressive, Dodge-centric kind of a game, which I'm into, given how great the combat system in Sekiro is, despite it being maybe a little, like a little bit hyper-focused.

They could kind of relax a little. I wonder what that combat system is going to be like. There is stamina. They've confirmed. Yeah, that's what I'm going to mention. In the IGN interview, which I think is the only big interview with Miyazaki that I've seen.

I think I've just seen everybody sourcing that. He mentioned that there would be stamina, but that it would be like play a diminished role and that they're going to have kind of skills that you unlock across weapons, which is also Sekiro style. So I'm interested. I do get, I think when people say it looks like Dark Souls,

they mean like the art style just really looks like Dark Souls, which like Frumsoft definitely has a consistent art style across all of their games. That's just sort of the way the rags look, the way the hair looks, the way the wind blows through things, it just looks a certain way. But it does, you know, dark fantasy, like dark souls.

Like I can kind of see why, given that they have occasionally branched out with Bloodbourne and Secura, people might be like, oh, well. But then again, right, what did you expect? It's like they're... Yeah, well, also, some of the enemies seem pretty Bloodborn-ish to me in that trailer. There's some Eldritch horror enemies. Yeah, these things tend to get cosmic the farther you get into them, and there's so much to see clearly.

But, yeah, I mean, I'm going to play the hell out of that game, and I can't wait for it to come out. Yeah, I'm excited. I think I'm going to go through all the Souls games beforehand. All right, let's get into E3. So E3 showcases the big ones. We'll just skip the take two and try as much as I know people out there want to hear us like delve into the Verizon conference and the Capcom. Although Capcom did show the Great Ace Attorney, which is the game one most excited about this year. So hey, a lot of visual novel representation in this E3. All right, Ubisoft, not a lot to show from them. They made it pretty clear.

and I think I mentioned on last week's show that they didn't have a lot to show. Far Cry 6 was a big one, which I will certainly play. Gus Frang, I'll play anything he's in. Rainbow 6 Extraction was another big one. Co-op, alien, zombie shooter thing. Mario and Rabbits 2, which leaked Nintendo actually leaked that themselves that morning by putting up the e-shop listing early, if yours early. So Mario Rabbits 2, which is cool.

And then their big, one more thing moment was a look at the Avatar game, which is like a reminder to everybody that Avatar. exists. I never forgot. I never forgot. Do you guys remember last week we were talking because I was talking about some of the Ubisots games and I was like the avatar game,

they're not allowed to show until like they're ready to start talking about the movie and stuff. So I assume this means that the movie is actually like done in production or like well into production and they feel confident about it coming out next year because otherwise they wouldn't be able to talk about the avatar game. Which I mean which makes sense with this. Because like they're I know that their schedule for that

is like very tied to James Cameron and like James Cameron gives permission and overall things avatar and that sort of thing. So yeah, so what did you guys make of the Ubisoft show? Mattie, you want to start? Sure. I mean, it seemed fun. Mario and Rabbids, I'll play that.

That seems cool. Rainbow Six looked really samey to me, but I feel like I've seen a lot of alien games where a lady is covered in goo and then you have to fight her and she has tentacles. But that doesn't mean that it won't come out and I'll find out that it's actually really cool and fun and then I'll play it a bunch of my friends.

That's always a possibility. Maybe this is the Far Cry that I finally play. I do like Giancarlo Esposito, but I feel like every Far Cry game is like really cool box art, and then the actual game is another Far Cry game. An avatar, I'm not Kirkk's giving you a death stare right now. I'm not going to play Avatar. There's some myth that I like think Far Cry is the pinnacle of game design, but that is not true. Well, you think Far Cry 2 is a pinnacle of game.

No, no, no. Okay, when I say Kirk is going to play it, I don't even mean he'll enjoy it. I just mean he's going to play it. That's all. I'm merely stating a fact, which is that Kirk will play Far Cry 6. don't know why. No, right. I was more reacting to Jason saying that I was giving you a death stare for saying that you

would like it. Like, that's fine. I haven't loved a far cry game in a pretty long time actually. Fair enough. You're just, you know, married to the series for some reason. I just liked far cry too. Yeah, I kind of, Maddie, to your point, I kind of feel like it's a waste of like a studio as talented as massive to be working on a friggin' avatar game.

I know a lot of those people are going to go on to work on Star Wars. And that's a lot more exciting to me than like friggin' avatar. But hey, I mean, maybe they think it'll make a bunch of money. because the first Avatar movie made a bunch of money. Kirk, what were your thoughts on the Ubisoft conference in general? Yeah, I wonder how Ubisoft's first Avatar game did when it came out lining up with the movie. Like, there is this weird thing with Avatar where there's a, there are people who like really, really want to live in that world and to like embody it.

And it, because the movie is about the promise of taking on this new incredible body that you can then explore this new incredible world in and like leave your old life behind. Like, that's all video game shit. Like, it's all very video games. So it lends itself to a video game in a cool way. Even, yeah, I just don't know. I wonder what that game will be like. Overall, I don't know.

Far Cry 6 doesn't have me very excited. Like, I kind of got sick of Far Cry 5. I played a little bit of that, what was it called? The, like, post-apocalyptic one that came out after that. That was cool. But I was just like, oh, my God. Like, if I unlock one more, you know, upgrade point by clearing out a compound of dudes, I was just like, I just don't care anymore.

Like, this stopped being super interesting so long ago. So, I don't know. I actually kind of thought that the intro was a little weird. Like, there was just some Uncanny Valley stuff with Giancarlo. It just didn't, I don't know. And it's like that same thing. It's the exact same intro as Far Cry 4. I saw someone saying Far Cry 4, the best Far Cry.

I think I've kind of maybe come around on that in some ways as much as I love Far Cry 2. Far Cry 4 is a pretty good game. I really like 3. Man. 3 doesn't hold up, though. Like, it's, 4 is a same. superior game in a lot of ways. Anyways, whatever.

Well, just because what's his name? Voss is an amazing villain. By the way, fun fact, now the villains of Farcar 3 and 6 are both major characters in Better Calls All. And, oh, that's true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, there's some good actors have worked on these games.

And then Rainbow 6 Extraction, totally a game that could be really good only because Rainbow 6's current iteration has really sick mechanical stuff and a lot of really cool variety and it's way more like tactical and positional and smart and I could kind of see a like zombie defense game where you're really quickly setting up like perimeter defenses as you move around using that game's mechanics being super cool so that one actually I watched that I was like okay like it is another game we're just shooting there were a lot of games where you're shooting aliens or zombies with a team but I was like I could see this having a distinct spin so I guess we'll we'll see well so this feels like it's co-op stealth which I think is interesting I don't think uh which is rainbow

Sixes style. Right. Is that usually, is there usually a lot of stealth in Rainbow Six games? I don't know. I've never played. Yeah, Rainbow Six is, so it's like in the Tom Clancy universe. Like Splinter Cell is the pure stealth game where you're a guy who sneaks around. Ghost Recon is like outdoor stealth where you're like a army team that sneaks around in the woods.

Rainbow Six is like a SWAT team kind of stealth. So it's like. Got it. Well, it used to be like making a plan and then breaching a room and trying to like minimize casualties and stuff. it's become a little more action-based than that and they kind of lost their way. Remember like Rainbow Six Patriots, the one where they had that big trailer

with the bomb on the bridge that then never became a game. It kept getting delayed. I went to like a huge press event for this in San Francisco. It was so weird. Well, I remember it getting canceled. Yeah.

I think it became siege in some way. It did. I don't remember the specific. So they've kind of lost a single player threat on that and now they're like, and let's make it a zombie or alien game. And it's like, okay. So that's kind of where we're at now.

Which is also like inspired by a specific part of siege, like a gameplay mode that people really liked, is what was spun off into extraction, which, sure, why not? Well, what's interesting, this game is an interesting dev history because it's like the team that was originally working on that game Pioneer that was teased in Watch Dogs 2 and then got canceled. And so there's a whole lot of history behind this game that you steal from Ubisoft in San Francisco in Watch Dogs 2.

Yep, yep, yep, yep. And they were teasing that and then it turned out to not actually become a thing, which is, I love how Ubisoft puts their own games and they're going to. like how you'll read an email thread and Assassin's Creed and it'll have like concept art from some of the Ubisoft game. The Ubisoft universe, the Ubiverse, the grand Ubiverse. Let's move on. Microsoft had a big show.

I thought they had a pretty good show on Sunday. They started off the Starfield. As we talked about last week, they had that specific release date that I think was further than people expected from the rumors November 11th, 2012. They had Stalker 2, lots of GamePass stuff. Halo Infinite showed up, although there was barely anything from the campaign. I think there was like a 10 second shot of a cinematic from the campaign. It says a lot about that game's development.

Still no release date either, which is supposedly coming out this year. Isn't it? It's funny that Halo Infinite they won't commit to a holiday release date. And Starfield, they will commit to a holiday real estate for the next holiday, which I think says a lot about game development. It's like Halo Infinite. Maybe it says a lot more about Halo Infinite. Yeah.

Outer Worlds too got announced as one of the best cinematic trailers we've ever seen that kind of parody of cinematic trailers. tons of cool-looking indies that for me was the highlight of this show atomic hearts looks really good 12 minutes looks so cool and that's coming out in august we will definitely be playing that and talking about in this show replaced got announced and that game looks gorgeous that is like this cyberpunky 2d sort of just incredible looking game and then they ended the show with redfall which is the new game from arcane austin makers of prey um and it's a big vampire co-op game coming out next summer what did you guys make? Kirk, I'll start with you. What did you make of the Microsoft conference?

I, you know, will play star field when it comes out. It really bothered me. I think we all will. It really bothered me that the sandwich was just sitting there on the counter with a single bite taken out of that. We've discussed this a bit, but it's really gross. If you're going to fly in a spaceship, you need to clean up your food before you do. There's just going to be like mayonnaise all over the equipment. Hey, Kirk. Hey, Kirk, you see that sandwich? You can eat it. You can go to that sandwich and then you can eat it. The magic. of next-gen game development. Outer World strikes me as a series that could like nail the tone better on the sequel,

so I'm excited for that. I hope so. Yeah, I think we were all a little down on the first one. It was, but we also, I think, it was a common sentiment that I at least felt was like, this seems like, has a lot of promise and they just didn't quite get the, like, the mix right on this one. So hopefully that'll be cool. I've 12 minutes has been in the ether forever. I remember like Stephen Totillo doing a preview of that.

This is this like top-down time loop game. where like there's a murder and you're trying to figure it out. I think Willem Defoe is, they have this like killer voice cast. And Daisy Ridley. Right, in Daisy Ridley. Yeah. And James McAvoy, right? And James McAvoy.

Killer. So that looks just really cool. It's just the three of them. It's like three-hander. It's very like theatrical seeming. Right. It's like a play. Yeah, it's all in one room. It's a time loop play.

Yeah, kind of. Yeah. It looks cool. And it's also on Game Pass. I mean, that was what was so exciting for me about this was how many of these games are just going to be on Game Pass. But anyway, I'll let you keep going. Oh, and then Red Fall looks cool.

I think it's funny, I keep talking to people who get their Arcane Studios mixed up, where, like, Arcane Leon is the Arcane that makes dishonor and is making Death Loop, and Arcane Austin is the Arcane that made prey and is now making Redfall. So it's like they're, you know, the same studio, but they're different studios, the same brand, different studios. So that's, like, worth keeping in mind. This is just different people than are making Death Loop. And it looks cool.

That trailer also, it reminded me of Left for Dead, and that it was the cinematic trailer that showed what were clearly a bunch of discrete game mechanics in action, that very first Left for Dead trailer that basically showed the entirety of Left for Dead in a five-minute cinematic trailer I always thought was really cool. And this reminded me of that. So it was fun trying to tease out what the game will be like. But then again, you know, they didn't show the game or it's not really clear like what it's going to be. So I'm curious about it.

Yeah. Yeah, you can see the kind of remnants of Xenamax deciding a few years ago, hey, we need more games as a service. and what's interesting is that now they're part of Microsoft. So we're seeing right now the games that were decided on three or four years ago. Now they're part of Microsoft. Now suddenly it's all about GamePass. Microsoft does not give a shit about games as a service as much as they care about getting cool stuff on GamePass.

Seems like a way better incentive to me. Yeah. Well, so it'll be interesting to see like Bethesda moving forward. Like what if the Arcane Austin guys want to make Dishonored 3 after this or want to want to make Pray 2? And Microsoft's like, sure, like the first game might not have sold a while, but we don't care. we just want this to sell GamePass. So it's really exciting. I would love it if they made Pray 2.

That would be fantastic. Well, that's what's really exciting to me. Mostly people look at the Beth-Betheza acquisition in two lenses. One, consolidation, which we've talked about, which sucks. The second is the console wars, which I could not care less about. But the third thing, I think, is the creative vision aspect of it, and how under Xenamex, they were a lot more, I don't want to say cash strap, because XenMex was a very rich company, but like they had to follow the whims of the market in a way that I don't think they have to do as much now.

Yeah. And so maybe they will have the freedom to make games that they weren't able to make under Zemort. So I'm very curious to see how Redfall is and then also what they do moving forward. It's really the dream of anyone creative is to be bought by someone with so much money that you can just do whatever you want finally. Yeah, because the problem is. The problem is when that happens, it's like it's great for like four years. Yeah. And then suddenly they have a shift in like their corporate middle management and suddenly someone's looking at you and saying, wait a minute.

Why are you paying for these people again? And then you're like, wait a minute. Why did I sell the thing that I had control over? Fuck. What have I done? Yeah. Anyways. Unless you're sold to private equity and then come in and fuck things up immediately.

I thought you were going to say, and then it's fine. Yeah. That everything turns out great. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of co-op vampires, private equity companies. Oh, hey.

Bada bang. Maddie, what did you think of the Microsoft conference? I thought it was really fun. I feel kind of sorry for Halo Infinite, but it's fine. They'll be fine. Maybe they should cancel it. I don't know. I know who can say.

The multiplayer looks good. I'm sure the multiplayer will be great. I will end the thought there. Starfield, I will also play it. I'll eat the sandwich. That'll be great. Very excited about Game Pass for all of these games just in general. I feel like 12 minutes is the epitome of an indie game that would be kind of a tough sell for

the average person because I'm sure it'll cost like 50. $15 or something like that and people would be like, really, should I pay for this few hour game? Yeah, and it's only 12 minutes long. Yeah. And but if it's already on Game Pass, like that's the kind of low risk startup for a game that just, I think, really helps. It's like, oh, it's already here. I can just click install and play it. And I think that's really neat.

And then also Redfall, I just thought the trailer was freaking awesome. I have no idea that game's actually going to be. We already, we had like expected to be a battle royale because that was what all the rumors were about it. and that was what we had pre-written. And I remember us frantically, we were moving all references to that when we, like, had to write out our news post about Redfall. And the art style had a little bit of Fortnite energy,

which I, like, wasn't wild about, like, the art was a little bit too. I feel like at one point in development, it may have been that. And, like, we had heard that at some point. And, like, I'm really curious about what the development was for that game. And I'm sure we'll find out eventually. But, yeah, it's tough because I'll get really excited about cinematic trailers, like Starfield or Redfall. And then it'd be like, that's not the video game.

Like, none of that is showing anything. and that was made by people who don't work at the studio most of the time. Like usually they're outsourcing that and being like, can you just make something cool that looks kind of like this? And we'll show you some concept art. And it's like, well, it's... Yeah, you call up Blur. You say, hey, Blur.

Yeah. So, yeah, it looked great. Starfield, it's worth noting Starfield's trailer they said was in engine. Oh, fair enough. Which doesn't mean that's what the game is going to look like. No, no, it does not. Capturing it in their real-time engine. Yep.

Did you see that interview where somebody, like, mentioned that you can climb a ladder in the trailer to Todd Howard and he like immediately backtracked and was like, I'm not confirming that you can actually climb a ladder in the game. It was like, nothing in this trailer is real. It's all smoking. There was also someone asked him about Tom Cruise being in it because apparently there was this rumor

floating around that Tom Cruise is going to start star people. I saw that too. I didn't even hear that rumor. Which is funny to see people being like, don't worry, he's not in it. It doesn't seem like Tom Cruise's next big step. It's funny because the Bethesda Game Studio games always have some celebrity, whether it's like Ron Perlman, or Patrick Stewart in Oblivion.

Or who was it in Skyrim? Liam Neeson was it in Skyrim? And they always like show up at the beginning and then die or something like that. Right, right. Yeah, or Patrick Stewart. I think Starfield, the rumors for that game really got out of control. Yeah. People were saying there was one rumor that I saw that kind of was what triggered me to start reporting on this was it's been done and they've just been sitting for this year.

That was a rumor I saw that. It's just going to come right out. People actually believe this shit. Yeah, this game we're sitting. We're sitting on this game. Well, people believe things they want to believe, and that would be really cool if that was true. I think that's it. It's interesting.

We do live in a world where a 2D Metroid was basically done and being sat on for a really long time. I mean, sometimes. Starfield is too high of a scope for that to happen. But like every now and then there will be a game that's like, and you're going to get to play it today or like in a few months. And that's really exciting. Yeah, but Dung is, is a different. That 2D metric game is not done. It is being polished.

No, it's more just like understanding the thinking that could lead someone to believe that or to want to believe that enough to just believe it. That's the thing. It's all wishful thinking. Well, that's what's exciting about E3. E3 is all about wishful thinking. And people, it's more exciting.

Pre-E-3 is way more exciting than during or post-E3. Because pre-E3, it exists in your head. It's like, oh, my God, Nintendo could announce anything tomorrow. But yeah, let's move on. Speaking of things that are more exciting before they actually happen, Squy Nex did their, show. Yeah.

And their big thing was Guardians of the Galaxy, which I'm sure, I mean, I thought it looked good. A lot of people didn't. I guess reactions were kind of mixed. Yeah. That was their big show.

I like that it's starring Adam Conover as Starlord. Yeah. I thought Adam did a great job. I thought it was, well, the credit actually said a Ryan Seacrest. A Ryan Seacrest type. That's good.

Amazing. Yeah. Yeah, Guardians of the Galaxy. I thought it looked pretty cool. And I'm happy that it's like a single player action movie style game. I don't think it's going to be like game of the year or anything, but I bet it's going to be fun. Sure. The day of sex people, like they make good games.

I don't know how many of those people are actually still left, but hey. And then the Final Fantasy collection that we were talking about a little bit last week turns up to not be a collection. It's individual remasters of each game. We don't really know anything about it because their announcement of it was after. So Guardians of the Galaxy in this showcase was like 20 minutes long. And then they gave about 20 seconds to this Final Fantasy remaster collection. And then it was over without even showing anything. scrolling through the titles, like, as though they're on fire and they have to get away from them.

I was like, what? What is happening? And then they just moved on. It was so funny. It was so funny. Yeah. That's it. No console.

So I think it's safe to say, let's call this educated speculation, that it's coming to switch and consoles at some point. I don't know why they just announced it for mobile and steam. Just to bother people? Because people were so angry at that announcement. like the fact that it was so short and deemphasized and only Steam and Mobile like I saw a lot of reactions. Maybe the timing is like they're only first releasing it on Steam and mobile and then they're going to release it on consoles and switch and stuff later. I thought my theory at first is that they were going to announce the Switch version of the Nintendo Direct, but they didn't do that.

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe we'll find out. Maybe it'll make sense later. I don't know. It's just a very Squarianix thing. Like Squyanax does things that just made no sense. Yeah, I just don't know. I just have no idea. And then they announced Final Fantasy origin, which had been rumored, the sole neo people making a Final Fantasy game. And I think the rumors got people really hyped up. And then the trailer was just like, oh my God. Well, and not the Neo people, right? This is a separate team at Team Ninja. Right. Okay.

Team Ninja, a different team, not the Neo team. Well, that was part of what the rumors were, right? Yeah. People thought it was going to be the Neo team working on it and then it was just this other team. Yeah. The rumors, it's worth saying. rumors were a little bit off base, which I think was a really bad thing. Like, usually I'm all for rumors. Rumors are great. But in this case, it was pretty bad because the rumors got that

part wrong and also got wrong that it was a PlayStation exclusive and some other stuff wasn't quite right from the reporting that was out there. But yeah, we saw it. The trailer was really disappointing. I will say, first of all, they released a demo after the show. The demo was broken. You can actually download it. You downloaded it and said it was corrupted for like 24 hours. But when I finally got to play the demo on Tuesday morning, it's actually pretty good. The combat's pretty good. Kirk, it's very much up your alley. I think it's like very much like elaborate action combat. It feels there's some soul stuff to it and that there are bonfires and like limited potions and stuff like that and it's got a good level of difficulty. But the action

feels more almost devil may cryish. There's a lot of elaborate combos and stuff you can do. So I'm actually pretty optimistic about the game despite the ridiculous tone and shouting chaos and stuff like that, which is just also very devil may cry actually. Like I was watching that trailer. I was like this has a lot of Devil May Cry vibes. It does. The weird outfits that are kind of like normal clothes, but like with something off about them. And everybody was, you know,

dragging the outfits for being like too casual for Final Fantasy and so on and so forth. Well, what's funny is that you actually equip armor in the game and it shows. So it's not like you're just wearing a t-shirt the whole time, like the trailer show. Yeah, you don't have to. The game itself is more impressive than the trailer. I got to say.

I was way more optimistic about the game after playing the demo. It's nice to have that be the case when so often it's the opposite. True. Yeah. But yeah, I'm excited for Guardians of the Galaxy. I'm excited for Final Fantasy Origin. Overall, like, I didn't think that Square are the best show. We've talked about last week how we didn't expect to see Final Fantasy 16 there.

I think it's pretty safe to say that Sony has got that shit on lock and that Sony will do something at some point. Like, I have no idea when, but they'll show Final Fantasy 16 because I don't think that game, like, we're going to see that game again this year for sure. I don't think it's that far away. Like, I would, I would be shocked if that wasn't a 22, 22. 22 game. Maybe it'll be latter half of 2022. I don't know. But I would be shocked if 16 didn't come out next year just based on what I had heard about it. And yeah, I don't know, kind of just a filler conference. And now we get to the big one. Nintendo. Folks, Nintendo really had a lot to show. I was, I was impressed by Nintendo's showcase. They said they came into it saying they were going to show

2021 games and that they did other than Breath of the Wild 2, which got a trailer that we can talk about in a sec they showed Metroid Dred, Warrior Wear, a new Mario Party. They showed Dangan Rampa coming to Switch, which I was like, thank God for that because I just downloaded those games to replay. And now I'm like, oh, great. Now I can wait until they come to switch and I'll replay it. I'm so much better on the Switch. I wish I had played that first one not on Vita.

I feel like I said that when I talked to you guys about it. I was playing it on VATI, but now you have two full games to explore. Oh, man. I'm so excited. We're going to become a dangan Ramba podcast for, few weeks there. We were not too long ago. Can I just say on the, on the Dangan Rhaba tip that I always love it when I'm watching an E3 press conference and the weird niche game that a lot of people don't know comes on. That's the one that I give a shit about. Because so often, you know, it'll be

the trailer for like, Slice Hearts 5, shattered dimension and it's some anime shit. Project Triangle Strategy. Yeah, sure. Hey. And you're like, that's fine. Sure. Why not? Project Triangle Strategy is awesome. It's going to be great, but it's not for you. Yeah. I'm just, yeah, I'm watching it and I'm being like, this is somebody's shit. I just don't know what this is. So then I like go get a cup of coffee. And it's fun when Dangan Rapa comes on and I'm looking at it. And I was just, I had a moment watching the trailer where I was like, it's funny that I know that some people are watching this being like,

this is somebody's shit, but not mine. And in this case, it is my shit. It is all of our shit, really. So that was exciting. There were a lot of moments like that in here. Like, I feel like the Advance Wars and like cruising gets another game. I was going to say, advance wars, that came out of nowhere. There were rumors, at least that I,

had heard. There were rumors about Metroid and Wariot where, but Advancewords I had not heard about. So that was a fun surprise. Advancewords, I believe it's the first two games as a remake. Reboot camp. And then the series Cruzen is getting a game on the Switch this fall, which like if you like the Racing Games Cruzen, which apparently a lot

of people on my Twitter timeline do because I saw a lot of tweets of people being excited for Cruzen. Shinemami 5 got a release date, which is like really cool for us, MT fans. I mean, these are all fandoms. Yeah, that leaked beforehand. So yeah. Fatal frame also? respectfully at them. Yeah, Fatal Frame. Yeah, new Fatal Frame. That was

another out of another one. I think that might be the Wii U Fatal Frame actually. I believe I saw that somewhere where I thought it was new when I was watching it, but I didn't play the Wii U once, so it's new to me. Yeah. And then we have to talk, of course, about Breath of the Wild too. So one thing that happened that I was disappointed in was

Aegean Numba, the producer of Zelda, coming out and saying, this is it for the 30th anniversary of Zelda and just doing like Skyward Sword trailer and then a game and watch for Zelda, which looks cool. That thing could be cool. Yeah, you didn't like the game of watch. I feel like that was a special.

I was really disappointed. There had been so many rumors floating around. And this is not stuff that I had personally corroborated and reported, but there had been so many rumors floating around about Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, HD. And I really was hoping to play those this fall. I don't know if they still exist and I'll come later. But like the lack of them was disappointing to me. But then there was Breath of the Wild too.

We got another small glimpse at Breath of the Wild too, which it's worth noting Nintendo says they are aiming to release in 2020. They use that wording in the press release. Make it that way you will. Hopefully they're using the motion control aiming because aiming with this joycon is not easy. Yeah, not ideal, yeah. Oh, boy. I was, I mean, I think just after hearing so many rumors of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, you know,

expecting to hear them, but now that I think about it, it totally makes sense that they weren't there, only because there's like another Zelda remaster coming out really soon. Right. And there's a long time, presumably, until Breath of the Wild, too. So they could, those could come. If they were doing those, they could come out at any point. The thought that it was the 35th anniversary. But maybe Nintendo said, hey, 35, who cares about our 35th anniversary?

They were like, Kirk made a tier chart. Well, they did decide to celebrate one of the two 35th anniversaries on the docket in just, you know, it was just only, no, I'm talking about Metroid. I thought, well, but Mario had a huge 35th anniversary celebration. You're right. You're right. But yes, Metroid. It's worth noting, by the way, we didn't mention before, but they said Metroid Prime 4 development was proceeding, which I think means that game is still many years away. Don't count on that game for a long time. I agree. And I feel like I could see it being in development hell forever because I don't know. I have very, I have basically no expectations for

Prime 4. I have very neutral stance on that. The Prime games are strange. Not every Metroid fan likes them. I like them, but I know that's not a popular opinion. So I actually feel like announcing another 2D Metroid game from Mercury's team, which people really like Samus Returns, including me. So they're sort of a trusted 2D Metroid maker at this point. So I feel like it was a pretty big win for them to announce something like that. Yeah, agreed. So they have these robots in this game that are this kind of new mechanic, this idea of this thing that hunts you down. They're stalking you.

Yeah. Like alien isolation style. Yeah. I mean, I saw someone comparing it to that. Not as scary. As someone who played all of alien isolation, no. It's not like alien isolation because you aren't like, you know, peeing your pants with stress for whatever, 20 hours or however long. And you can beat a boss and get an invisibility suit and then they just can't see you anymore.

Right. Because you're Sam is freaking Aaron and you're like going to be okay. But it is cool to introduce, I mean, anytime someone introduces a new idea to a series that's so established, just because I think of Metroid, I mean, I haven't played all of them, but it's usually kind of pretty similar. or they don't introduce big X-factor new things, like an enemy that you can't kill that's hunting you down, that you have to kind of puzzle solve your way around and it's this sort of active antagonist.

That's a cool idea, and that makes me think, okay, like the way you were talking about how this is an actual new Metroid game with like new Metroid story stuff, it's got new ideas too, and that's exciting. I know. And the rumors had been like, okay, another 2D Metroid, but nobody had even dared speculate that it would be something like Metroid Dread,

which had been on and off the table for like 15 years or something, like supposedly this fusion, sequel was going to happen, but like it never did. And a lot of people were speculating it would just be a Metroid 1 remake that would like maybe also be by the Sammas Returns developers, which would be perfectly fine. Like that game deserves a remake. Zero mission's already kind of a remake of it, but whatever. It's 2021. You can remake it again. So having it be a totally new game and also the like mythologized Metroid dread finally happening is very cool. It's just a cool thing for Metroid vets. Yeah. Before we break, we have to talk about Breath of Loyal, too,

of course. Didn't see a ton of that. It was like a 60 second long trailer. They talked about, they showed a few new mechanics. It was made very clear, first of all, that you were playing as Link, Link with long hair, so there's some sort of time jump or some sort of alternate dimension type thing going on. But it is like you were not playing a Zelda. Zelda, in fact, fell down a pit in the trailer, which is depressing to see. Link has some cool new abilities. At one point he's shooting fire out of his hand. He has a hand that is like all gnarly and like restored by some power or another. So clearly he's using that for cool stuff. At one point, he teleports up through like a floor, which is awesome. A lot of sky stuff, it feels like very much.

They said that there's an entire world in the sky above Hyrule. So that's going to be a major theme. I guess that's why they're re-reasing Skyward sword to set us up for Skyward Breath of the wild. And yeah, I mean, certainly looks like more Breath of the Wild. Would you guys make of that, that new teaser we got? I thought it looked really pretty. It was a pretty short, teaser. I guess I was expecting it to be a little longer and more detailed about what the story was going to be and like a little more explanation about the world and it was mostly mechanical, but that's fine. But that's an E3 2020 thing, I think, is their blowout, like the equivalent of what they did in 2016 for Breath of Loud 1 next year, since this is definitely not an early 22 games.

Clearly not. Fall at the earliest of next year. This is like E3 next year, blow it out, like show us the first half hour. or whatever, sort of like what they did with the first one. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not drawing any conclusions from that teaser. I mean, who knows what the hell we were even seeing in that or like when that happened. It clearly got time travel in it so anything goes. So yeah, I'm just, I'm going to play that game and I'm excited. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I just hope they do some sort of twist on Zelda and she's not just like fucking needs to be rescuing it. You know, we've talked about it a lot about how this is a sort of once-bitten, fool me once, whatever the aphorism you want to go for us. Once bitten, fool me once. No, you know, like, one-bed-twosy. There's all these aphorisms for this sort of thing where, like, you know, Lucy and the football, where it's always like, oh, this is going to be the one, their first trailer should. And when they showed that first, whenever that was, the first trailer with Zelda, with her haircut,

and it's like, oh, we're going to get a play as her. And I was like, okay, they're really going to do it this time. But now, you know, it's like the same arc where you're like, oh, maybe they're not. And then it just keeps me anything. And then, of course, you don't. So I'm just letting go of that. And I'll just see what happens. I've let go of it for so long at this point that I no longer even expected to happen.

I mean, like, the people who work on those games have said so many disappointing things over the years about how, like, they don't see Zelda that way. And, like, I've read so many interviews where they're just like, we're not interested in doing that at this time that I've just become completely jaded about the prospect of ever playing as Zelda in anything other than spin-off games like, you know, Super Smash and Hyrule Warriors, etc., etc. Like, of course, in like the games where everybody gets to fight, you get to be Zelda. but not the mainline Zelda games.

That's just link time. But his hair looks great. He looks great. His hair does look great. And it's moving around. It's flowing. Speaking of Avatar, it looks like those floating mountains. That was cool.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Why don't we take a break? And then we will be back with one more thing. Does our podcast deep dive into the weirdest Wikipedia pages we can find? Yes. Do we learn about scam artists, remote islands, horrible mascots,

beautiful diseases, and mythical moms? Yes, yes, yes, absolutely, and yes. Do we retain any of this knowledge? Eh, probably not. I'm Emily Heller. I'm Lisa Hannah-Walt. We make art and comedy and TV shows, and also the podcast Baby Geniuses. For the past eight years, we've been trying to learn new things about the world and each other every episode. But let's be honest, this podcast is mostly about two friends hanging out, shooting the breeze, and making each other laugh. We're horny, we like gardening and horses, and we get real stupid on here. But like, in a smart way. Yeah, join us. other week on Maximum Fun.

Baby geniuses tell us something we don't know. Mr. Rubble, man, what are you doing? I'm just taking one last look at my coworkers. Every journey comes to an end. Remember, PLEC, the space will be with you, always. Sorry, who are you again? There's Mr. Kiara on there? Oh, right, right, right, sorry.

Just calling in. Friendships will be tested. Do you have to do it. You have to shoot flick. Okay. You shot him so fast. Destinies will be fulfilled. I've become a complete bird.

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Mission to Zix, the final season on maximum fun. And we are back, Kirk Maddie, in his time for one more thing. Uno more thing. Kirk, why don't you start us off? Sure, one day you're going to really learn how to say one more thing in Spanish. It'll be a momentous day. I am playing a video game that just came out called Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart. It's a PlayStation 5.

exclusive. Do you think that Rift Apart is supposed to be a pun on like Ripped a Fart? Probably. Because Ratchet and Clank games, yeah, the type subtitles are always like silly jokes. I mean, a crack in time? Yeah. Crack in time. Like Crackin is an adjective that modifies time. A crack in time. Oh. I never thought about that before. This is me learning that it's a pun. I don't think that it's supposed to be ripped apart because he's not, he's not saying that. It's Rift Apart. Also, the game is like very serious and sad, right? And it's like about found family and not ripping farts.

No, the game is not serious and sad. It's not serious and sad. Let me rewind here. So this is a... Is it about like ratchet fighting his family or whatever? I mean, so far it's been like a, it's like a DreamWorks movie. Like, I mean, yeah, it's like about friendship and stuff, but it's not like a sad game. It's like a kids game.

Fair enough. So let me rewind. This is a PlayStation 5 exclusive. I'm playing a copy that was sent to me by. Sony. I don't have a ton of familiar with this series. I played a crack in time, which was a crack in time and also featured a crack in time. But it's amazing looking. That's the thing about this game. It's really, really fun. I really like it. I am playing it primarily because it's one of the best-looking video games I've ever seen in my life. It's so incredible looking. There's

three different options for playing this game on PlayStation 5, the one that everyone should go with, I would imagine, is called performance ray tracing, where they turn on ray tracing and have like dynamic resolution. And like, holy crap, it looks so good. But it's still 60 frames a second, as opposed to 4K, which is 30 frames. Right. I would just never want to play this game at 30. So this is a character action game. Ratchet and Clank is a long-running series. You run around. It looks, it's kind of old-fashioned in that way. You run through pretty limited environments. You have really goofy fights with lots of enemies. In Ratchel and Clank, you get all kinds of wild guns. There's like a gun that's a sprinkler that turns everyone into plants and freezes.

them in space and then they're like you summon a, I don't know, like toadstool that fights alongside you and like shoot lightning and you're just constantly switching to super crazy guns that get crazier as they level up. It's a big part of the appeal. In this one, it's all about dimensional rifts. So you play as ratchet and you also play as a new character named Rivet, who is a girl Lombax, which is the sort of what Ratchet is, the type of animal, alien creature that he is. He's always been the last Lombax. That's kind of the running thing. But now he goes to this parallel dimension where Rivot, is the last longbacks, the two of them kind of cross over and they're like equivalence of one

another. So they play the exact same. She just looks different. But they have the same skills. So it's not like you're totally switching between two different characters. Rivet is of course Jennifer Hale. Proceeding from there. So I was going to say, I was playing the game and like thinking, man, this voice actor really sounds like Jennifer Hale. But it's actually a real testament to Jennifer Hale's range. She's a great, she's I think, one of the Powerpuff girls. She has a great anime voice and she does a good kid voice, like a much higher kind of totally up in her mask,

little bouncy thing that she can do that she's kind of doing for Rivet. I have been playing a lot of Mass Effect, which of course features Jennifer Hale doing a very different voice. That's more of her Jennifer Hale voice, her kind of lady protagonist voice, where she, I think it was Tom Bessel, who described her as pouring some cement into her voice

when she needs to get a little bit harder, which I thought was a nice way of describing it. And just hearing her range in these two games is really cool. Anyways, it's an amazing-looking game. They do a lot of stuff that shows off what the PS5 hard drive can do. That's kind of one of the things they're selling it on with this technology. That they load you between split dimensions super quickly. And there are these mostly set piece sequences where you're flying through rifts.

And in the blink of an eye, you know, there's like a very brief moment in between. Suddenly you're just in a totally different place with like a whole environment loaded in. And then you fall through another rift and you're in a totally different place again with a whole new, you know, environment loaded in. It's like the sequence and Guardians of the Galaxy, I think in two, where they like warp through all of those places super fast and they're all like, it's kind of that sort of a vibe.

And it's really just a fun game. In terms of gameplay, it's pretty in line with the series. Like it's not doing anything super wild and they haven't at least yet, I'm like three or four hours in. They haven't given me the ability to like switch rift, like to go from dimension to dimension

on command the way that you get that ability in like Titanfall 2 or what, dishonored to, like, games that lets you do that. They haven't done that yet. I would imagine that may happen at some point, but it hasn't yet. So it's not, like, transformative, but it's really cool. And like I said, it's just totally wild to see a game look this good. Like, the stylized art style just really lets them make it perform so well,

and they just fill everything. The way the light hits things, it's really made me realize this and actually playing Minecraft with ray tracing, just why graphics and art people are so excited about ray tracing. That seems like the thing that is just going to continue to get better and better and better as processing power increases. And it really tricks your eye. It's just that subtle thing where the way that light hits something is it's moving past it,

you're just like, whoa. It just kind of makes you do a double take. So it's a really delightful game. I'm really enjoying it. Yeah. I think it's fun. I played through the intro. It's cool.

Yeah. I wish that my kid was old enough to play it because I was. totally play with her. It seems very, very kid-friendly. Maddie, what's see your one more thing? Okay, so my one more thing is Bo Burnham, director, comedian, and I watched two different Bo Burnham projects last week before E3, which feels like a thousand years ago. And they were the movie eighth grade and also his Netflix comedy special, which just came out and it's called Inside. And people have probably seen a lot of memes about it. Is it a comedy special? I don't know about comedy. It certainly got funny moments. Yes, it does. It's more of a bleak. I'm not

sure how else I would describe it. Did you watch it, Jason? I did. I thought it was a little much for me. Yeah. I don't disagree with you. So like I watched eighth grade first and I wish I had just stopped there because I really loved it. So eighth grade is a movie. So yeah, I guess you saw it, Kirk. I was going to ask you to if you saw it. I really recommend it. It's definitely dark as is all of Bo Burnham's work and comedy. He's clearly like into rotating around a black hole mental health wise and just staring into it from time to time, and that's like just what his work is about. So you kind of have to be on board for that. It's just like there's a sort of sticker with content warning suicide on like everything he produces all the time, and you just kind of know that going in. But eighth grade is all about a girl who's

in eighth grade and her life. And Bo Burnham is not in it. And in creating the movie, like, he allowed the eighth graders or the kids, kid actors who were in the movie to improvise a lot and like have a lot of takes on how the movie proceeded. And it just feels super real and fresh. And And I think, especially after watching Inside, that he actually seems a lot more comfortable making strong statements when they're not coming directly from him. Because so much of Inside is nominally about his own mental health and like his struggles with suicide ideation during the pandemic and isolation. And he writes songs about these things that are sort of funny, but like sort of not funny and you're sort of worried about him. But it seems almost as though looking directly at that stuff from his own perspective is just not. He seems glib at times, I would say.

Because it's like you can never forget, or at least I can never forget, that he's a millionaire and that he actually also has a wife who's off screen and he's never really all that isolated. I was going to ask you about that. So inside is like the whole premise is that he's stuck in this little shitty like one bedroom apartment or studio apartment that's like you can see the sink and the bed and he sleeps in it and stuff. But like he is a millionaire and clearly has a much bigger house than that. Like is this all just a charade this for the sake of the art? Or did he like lock himself in this thing?

I don't know, but I assume it's a charade for the sake of the art, and I don't see that as a bad thing. Like, charade has sort of a negative connotation, but I feel like it's more just a piece of art about the idea of being locked inside and being only connected to other people through the internet. But then at the very end, in the credits, he dedicates the movie to his wife. I don't know if you noticed that. They've been married since 2013. Seems like a healthy relationship, at least from the outside. So, like, I just kept thinking about that. And I was like, I don't think it means, I don't think that if you're a millionaire, doesn't mean you don't still have.

you know, suicide ideation or depression. Like, it's not like those things just go away because you have access to mental health services and like connection and other, other means that people don't have. Especially during a pandemic. Right. No matter how big your house is, you still have to stay inside. That's true. But it's also like Bo Burnham's experience of the pandemic was actually pretty different

than a whole lot of people's. And that comparison doesn't really benefit him. But also, the only person he could make art with kind of was himself during the pandemic. And he clearly made this so that he wouldn't totally lose it. He needed to do something. But I still felt like watching it was kind of weird and bad. And I was like, I don't know if this worked, especially after watching eighth grade, which I thought was so well done.

So I really recommend it. It's on Hulu. Inside is on Netflix. But eighth grade of the two, I think, really showed me that Bo Burnham could direct something really interesting about the internet and online culture and kids and how they perceive it. And inside, like, has its moments, but I don't know. It's kind of glib. That's my thought.

Nice. Cool. Good stuff. Okay, cool. So my one more thing is a video game. So a couple of months ago, I saw a thread on the Messerbred Reset era saying that this game is now, resettara, yes. That this game is now the top rated game of all time on Metacritic. It has 100. It beats out the legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, and Grand Theftado and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, too, which is also up there, is called The House in Feta Morgana. And it was just released on the Switch in April.

It had 100 on Metacritic, with only seven reviews, granted, but it's still at 100 on Metacritic. Now, since then, it's gone to 98. So anyway, since then, that game has been on my radar. I was like, iffy going back and forth, should I buy this? It's 40 bucks. So I was like, man, for an indie game, that's a little steep. Then finally decided to pull the trigger when I saw a colleague of my Natalie Flores talking about how amazing it was.

So this game, House and Feta Morgana is a visual novel, and that is in the strictest sense of it. It is only a book. There's, I think I've made maybe like two choices over the course of the like five, six hours playing it. So it's mostly just reading. And it is quite a ride, my friends. It is epic so far. I can see why it's so highly rated because it is quite the story. I won't get into super detailed because I have not finished it yet and I will probably talk about this again down the road. But essentially it is it is about this giant mansion that is

supposedly cursed. And you're, you kind of, you play as this guy who has no recollection of who he is, but is apparently the master of this mansion. And you meet this maid who tells you these stories about other people in the mansion. And so, so far I've seen three of these stories. And they're all like epic and heartbreaking and incredible. And they're like stories that jump around in time. One of them is like in the 1800s. Another of them is in the 1600s. And they tell these stories of like these people who have these horrible fates as a result of being part of the mansion and they're about like love and loss and betrayal and it's really really good you guys it's something maddie especially you would really really like um the art like i kind of bounced off

the art at first but have grown to really appreciate it the the characters kind of look have kind of a strange look but i've grown to really dig it and yeah man i will talk more about this once i've finished it once i played a lot more because i imagine there's a lot of like twists and turns and awesome stuff to come but i am really into it so far it's called the house in Feta Morgana. It's been out on PC for a while. Just came to Switch in April. So pretty recent release on Switch. And yeah, like I said, currently is a 98 on Metacritic. Nice. It's as as Good as Aquaritan. Number four, all time. Slaveishly, it's all we care about is Metacritic scores. So that's, that matters. But for real, though, it sounds cool. Yeah, I will say,

though, I mean, the top 10 on Metacritic are pretty heavy hitters. It's like GCA4, Super Mario Galaxy, Red Dead 2. Just a list of horrible games. Everybody hates. Anyway, all right, that is it for this week's episode. Kirk, Maddie. See you both next time. See you both next time.

Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us

by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned, audience supported.