Triple Click - Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Six Years Later

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is just three weeks away, which means it's a good time to revisit The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild! Kirk, Maddy, and Jason talk about how 2017's Zelda shook up the series, what pros (and cons) it has over other Zelda games, and how it feels to play in 2023.One More Thing: Kirk: Shadow and Bone Season 2Maddy: ChessJason: Unlock! Exotic AdventuresLinks: Triple Click LIVE IN BROOKLYN, May 18th: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/triple-click-live-tickets-513213584647Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin 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

Courage need not be remembered, for it is never forgotten, especially if you reinstall it. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we talk about the legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, because we're all replaying it. Tears of the Kingdom is a few weeks away, and this is all we want to talk about. Welcome back to Hyrule. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shrier, and I'm Kirk Hamilton. Hello.

Hello, it's us. Hey, it's so nice to see you both. We're back. are you both. Doing pretty good. We're back on our normal non-advance recording schedule. Yes, we're just recording this. We're really up to date now.

We don't have to warn anybody. We know exactly what's happening. I guess I should. Famous last words. Actually, that's not true because there's a Nintendo Indies event between our recording and the episode going live. So, Silksong could be like surprise job. Don't even say that.

Maddie, the fact that you just said that means that something crazy is going to happen. I've cursed. I've cursed us. But, you know, speaking of planning ahead, I do think our listeners should plan ahead a little bit. Yes. Because the three of us are doing a live show, a live triple-click show on May 18th at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York. And we are almost sold out for that in-person live show, not almost sold out for the live stream. I think we can sell infinite tickets to that. So if people want to spam the chat with emojis and so on, they can get a live stream ticket. But if you want to be there in person, you should get a ticket.

And I guess we'll have a link in the show description. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. It'll be somewhere. You just go to triple quick podcast.com. It's somewhere. It's always in the show.

It'll be there forever. Even after the show, we're going to leave it in there. Just for memories. Just looking back on it. And while you're going to URLs, you can just open up another tab in your browser and you could go to tippy, tippy, tippy, tippy, tippy, tippy, tippy, tippy, Maximumfund.org slash join. You're going to go there because what if you're not a member yet? I mean, if you're already a member, I guess you don't need to do that. But if you're not a member, you're probably like, Maddie, why would I go to that URL? Well, let me tell you. Because Maximum Fun is the podcast network we're on. And if you become a member, five bucks a month.

month, you get bonus episodes from us once a month and bonus episodes from all the other podcasts on our network. And that's true, even if you don't choose to support those shows, you can click us when you become a member and support us, or you can support all the other shows that you like on Max Fun. And either way, you get access to the bonus feed. There's actually multiple feeds now. You can get just our episodes if you want. And this month, we're going to record a bonus episode about Persona 5 Royal, a video game. A video game that Kirk is about to finally finish. And which I am watching an anime form on YouTube,

which is another way to complete Persona 5 Royal. It is, a really valid way. Totally valid. Not dissimilar from playing it. Having experienced both, I'm going to go ahead and say, not dissimilar. So that's going to be our bonus up this month. But we have a whole bunch of others in the backlog.

So maximum fun daughter X slash join. Become a member. But that's enough of that. Kirk, you have a special announcement. I do have a special announcement. So as we mentioned with last week's episode that we recorded it early. We said, well, we're recording this really early. The reason for that is that I was traveling this past week.

And the reason that I was traveling is that I traveled to the island of Maui and I got married. Maui? Did you say it? Did you make that joke while you were in Hawaii that you got married? In fact, the wonderful gentleman who was our officiant gave us a wood-carved, very funny little heart that says just maweed on it. And I think that was the only person who made that joke. But yeah, we decided to just go do the thing ourselves to do a kind of low-key thing. We are very close with our families and weren't eloping or anything like that, really.

But we're going to do multiple celebrations after the fact. And that was the way we chose to do it. And so far we've been really happy with that. But I just kind of wanted to share that news because I'm very excited. I'm very happy to be married. And it's an exciting, an exciting time. So, yeah. Congratulations.

Thanks. Maui is also amazing. I had never been to the island of Maui or actually to any of the islands of Hawaii. Holy crap. It's a really beautiful place. Yeah, I would like to go someday. I haven't been to any part of the Pacific, but maybe someday. Yeah.

I hope you can go because like I said, yeah, I'd never been. And it was absolutely a magical experience. So anyways, good times. Just a little life update to share with listeners. And actually while we were in Maui, we were staying at a lovely hotel. And somebody spotted me wearing my strong songs t-shirt. That's my other podcast, my music show. And he stops me and he's like, hey, is that a strong-song shirt? I was like, yeah, you listen to Strong Songs? He's like, yeah, I love that show. I'm like, yeah, I make that show. And he's like, wait, you're Kirk. And so we met. And then it turned out, his name is Ben. He's a really, really nice guy. Shout out to Ben. He's probably listening because he's also a triple-click listener. A really cool guy got to hang out a little bit with him and his family just because we kind of ran into each other and we're staying at the same hotel. And yeah, shout out to Ben. He's really cool. It was a reminder of how many interesting and nice listeners we have, just running into someone in the world, just because I happen to be wearing a shirt because I don't think most people would recognize me, you know, because they only hear us talk. But it was a really cool, a cool little reminder of just how many

nice people there are out there who listen to our shows. So, hey, Ben, thanks for listening, man. You're a cool dude. Kirk, that's kind of like when we were sitting in the park at GDC and we saw someone across the way reading my book, my second book, but only read like the first page and then closed in and walked away. It's kind of like that.

That's not kind of like that. That's like the opposite version of that story. I was going to go into like a little dovetail thing on how everybody should buy merch because this is how you find other cool listeners. It's true. That is true. Then Jason made it all tragic. Don't only read the first page of Jason's book also.

Read the rest of it. That's my other note. And buy a T-shirt. No, the way to find cool listeners is to come hang out in Brooklyn at the Bell House. That's true. Also a good approach. All right.

Let's get on with the show. Today, we're talking about a video game called, well, I guess a video game franchise called The Legend of Zelda. I think that, in anticipation of Tears of the Kingdom, which comes out in like three weeks. We really, all three of us have kind of separately decided to start replaying Breath of the Wild. All three of us and the rest of the world. It seems like Zelda mania has swept the globe.

Who can say? Really, there's so much to talk about. I mean, just like a few days ago, last week, by the time people are listening to this, it'll be about a week ago, Nintendo put out the newest trailer for Tears of the Kingdom. and that was the trailer, kind of their equivalent, their like mic drop moment of like, oh, yeah, you want tears of the kingdom? Here's some friggin tears of the kingdom.

And that was the trailer that was just like, oh, man, okay, this is going to be a full-on Zelda game and not just Breath of the Wild D.L.C. But let's talk about the franchise in general and kind of like our feelings on it, what it's been like revisiting Breath of the Wild after all these years, what we're looking forward to

and what we want to see out of, the new tiers of the Minecraft game. We can get into lots of stuff here. But first, Maddie, you've been playing a lot of Breath of the Wild. Recently, tell me about that experience. What's it like revisiting it after, what, six years? It's so great. I feel like I'm having a way better time the second time around.

Just sort of unexpected, but some of that is just where I was at when the game first came out. I was still covering e-sports a lot back then. So I was just kind of fitting in Breath of the Wild in between other competitive games I was playing. And I was really like work hard, play hard. So my experience of Breath of Wild was very like only crafting, only vibes, no challenges, just exploring eternally and like cooking a bunch of recipes and like truly treating it like a life sim kind of a game. And this time around I'm like, I'm really going to go ham on the combat. I'd never actually beat it the first time, which I'm still kind of sad about, and I probably still will not beat Gannon in time to have to beat Gannon again in Tears of the Kingdom.

Or become Gannon, who knows. Or become him. Or step into Gannador's shoes or Zelda's shoes. It's funny how everybody just wants to play any character but Link, but we'll get to that in a second. So I'm just really enjoying it this time around and also enjoying it because I have no reason to be playing it. I mean, we talk a lot about playing games for work and how different that feels. feels and like playing something right when it first comes out and just the push and pull of like, oh, I need to write something about this. I just installed this purely for fun, for no reason

at all, just out of the joy of watching the trailer and being like, I got to, I got to get back in there. I got to get into that high rule mode. And that is just, I don't know, it's corny as hell, but it's like, why we do this? It's like, what's cool about video games? Got to get used to those controls. Yeah, that's the other. reason. I got to get back on the control horse. Got to get good at doing that little strafe hop that Link does and all the other weird combat mechanics in it. But yeah, it's just been a joy. So Maddie, you can, if you want, like you can play all the way up until May 11th and then

just go take on Gannon. Like, you don't have to beat all the divine beasts to fight Gannon. It's true. I could go to Gannon right now, technically. I'd be very underprepared if I were to. Yeah, it might take you a while. keeping in mind, though, if Tears of the Kingdom comes out, your Breath of while will be deleted from your switch. So you can no longer fight Ganon after May. Yeah, I think the game just updates and then I get transported into a different time. Right.

Well, no, what happens is Link uses his new fusibility to attach your Breath of the Wild to Tears of the Kingdom and then it creates that. That's how the game is created. Right, right, right. That's like part of the multiple time lines in Zelda Canon. Yeah, everyone knows this already. I don't even know why we're bothering to explain all that. Yeah.

Kirk, how has it been for you replaying the game? You played, the three of us played on stream a few weeks ago. I think that was part of what inspired us to do this too. Yeah, it's true. It was fun to watch and just kind of chill watching Kirk playing the game. Yeah, that was a very fun stream. And that was the bulk of my playing was leading up to that and playing during that stream. And then afterward, yeah, I found myself just not wanting to play the other things I had installed.

it felt so refreshing and exciting to go back to Breath of the Wild, because this is a game that I love very much that I played a whole bunch of when it came out, and then it's always kind of been there in the background, but I never really did an extended play, or second play, I suppose. And yeah, I mean, going back to it is really cool. It puts it in a slightly different perspective, because it's a very known quantity at this point. I've watched a lot of speed run videos.

I know a lot more about the possible. possibility space of the different, you know, the physics engine, the simulation of the stealth, the enemy AI, all of that. And so I feel like I know the game better. And yet I find myself surprised by it still when I go back to play it. And I found that to be true during our stream as well. The way I've been playing and the way I played on stream was I really just kind of wander around and do whatever's in front of me. And that's the thing about this game, I think, that I really like about it. And that makes it very different

from other Zelda games, and I think still is the reason that a lot of people don't like it. Though I know weapon degradation is also something people talk about. But the kind of undirected and yet always entertaining nature of the game is the thing that has really stuck out to me playing it

now. And that's because I'm playing in a particularly undirected way. But I'm not even trying to unblur the map. So you climb these towers, you go to the top of the tower, and then you kind of unfog the map and you can see a little bit more. I'm not even trying to do that. I'm just straight up looking at the horizon and walking towards something.

And because I'm fluent enough in the language of the game, I see all the different things that are on my way to whatever point I was walking toward much more clearly than I did the first time I played it, where it all felt a lot more mysterious. Like now I'm like, okay, there's something like a corrox seat over there, and there's probably one over there. That's going to be a hidden chest I can try to get to. There's two shrines over here.

So you kind of, you just start spotting things. And then whichever strikes your fancy, you kind of go do it. And I'm finding that to be just a really relaxing and fun way to play a game. And nothing else I really have feels that way. Like feels so constantly rewarding and also engaging, but also kind of low key. Like I'm never committing to anything really intense. So yeah, I'm really enjoying that experience. So, okay.

So on a win last night, I opened up a new game and got, the whole gray plateau and dived off of it before I went to sleep. And I'm thinking about like how much of this game am I going to play ahead of Cheers of the Kingdom? What's that going to look like? And I actually was thinking about doing it in a slightly different but similar way to you, Kirk. So a little bit of backstory here is that Maddie, while you were playing it not so much for

work when you first got it, Kirk and I were both playing early copies before it came out. And in fact, I was reviewing the game for launch at Katakaku. which was March 2017. So I actually finished the game and beat Gannon before anyone got to play it. What a process that must have been. I can't believe we did that. Interesting experience. Well, so I played a lot.

I mean, this is before I had kids. So I could really like sit down and just kind of like binge, binge, binge. And I was like, no life it, as they say. This is why Link doesn't have kids. Yeah. Exactly. This is why, yeah, well, that's also he's, it turns out he's infertile. But that's another part.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone already knows this. Why do we keep getting into things? Well, the Tears of the Kingdom is kind of about that, but we'll get into that later. No. So, yeah, so I had kind of, like, I wouldn't say I was rushed playing it because I did take the time to explore a lot. But I also had that kind of the ticking talk of like the number of days left till the game comes out till I have to write my review till we have to hit embargo, yada, yada, yada. And so it was kind of like, especially towards the last, the third and fourth divine beast.

It was kind of like, right, got to get a move on. And so, and then for whatever reason, I just never really went back to it after beating Gannon. So, yeah, I'm very tempted to, like, I was just, just before we recorded, I was Googling, like, best side quests in Breath of the Wild. And it turns out I hadn't, like, really done a lot of them. I did, I did, what's it called, Even Tide Island and, like, a couple other random things, finding dragons and stuff. And reviewers who were playing the game at the time with just, like, a message one or other being like, you guys. to check this thing out. But there's a lot of stuff I haven't found. And so I'm kind of excited to dive in and just like go explore and do more quests than I had done before. So maybe a little bit more

structured than the way Kirk is playing, because I do want to go and do some side quests. But I'm also a little bit worried on this playing through the game again on this replay of Breath of the Wild that I'm going to burn myself out too much for tears of the kingdom. Have you guys given that any thought? Like too much, especially if Tears of the Kingdom winds up feeling a lot like Breath of the Wild just with like added features and stuff. Hmm. No, I don't think I'll burn out on this, probably because of the way that I'm playing the game.

Mm-hmm. And it's impossible because it's so good and it's like asking you to get burned out on like, it's coffee or chocolate or something. It is a good game. It's just an absurd thing to say. It is a good game. Yeah, I mean, the other thing that I keep thinking about as I'm playing, playing is how many interesting, like the wild ways in which this game changed the Zelda series

and how much of the Zelda series. I mean, I think the way that I would put it is like the Zelda games until Breath of the Wild felt a little bit like paint by numbers. And this feels like it's giving you a blank canvas. Like instead of telling you how to go and giving you a linear path in which to follow in salt puzzles and fight monsters, this game is really just letting you. throw anything, giving you a bunch of tools and letting you use them to solve everything in any possible way you want.

Which, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's, I think it's really interesting and obviously works super well for this game, but it also, I think is really interesting in how it kind of challenges you to be creative. And I imagine Tours of the Kingdom with all of its contraptions and airplanes and stuff will make you have to do something similar, if not like you have to do something similar. if not like you have to do it even more like of finding your own creative solutions for everything. And yeah, that's part of what makes me think burnout because as a player having to constantly come up with creative solutions for things is a little bit worried about that. But I don't know. I'm not not that worried.

No, it sounds hard. I know what you're talking about. Like even playing Breath of the Wild, I'm like, oh, right, solving shrines requires me to remember every single tool I have at my disposal and to talk. try them before I give up or look up a walkthrough, which I personally find fun. But even just looking at the Tears of the Kingdom trailers, I haven't gotten a chance to play it or anything like that yet. For listeners reference, I'm only going off the trailers here, folks. Pure speculation. It does look like there's a ton of additional systems on top of the tools we're used to, which require more lateral thinking and more spatial awareness and more creativity with each of those tools in a way that makes me feel like a freaking genius when I figure something out,

but could also make me feel incredibly frustrated if I'm like, I know I have all the tools at my disposal, but I can't figure out how to like get this rocket I built onto the sky island that it needs to go to or whatever the heck the puzzles are going to be, you know? Yeah, that's an interesting, that will be an interesting point of comparison because with our current sort of frame of knowledge, right, a frame of references, Breath of the Wild versus traditional Zelda like you were talking about, Jason. That already is a pretty different like puzzle-solving possibility space that you're confronted with, but at the same time, it's restrained enough that you can usually figure it out.

Returning to the game really puts this into relief, and anyone who's listening who's done that has probably had the same experience where one of the first things that you do is you press whatever it is up on the D-pad, and you open up your Shika slate and all those different possibilities. And you kind of look at them and you start to remember how each one works

and then also how to read the environment to see when there's a magnetic object. You start to remember what those look like and then you're like, okay, right, I need to turn on the magnesium ability, which then highlights all of those magnetic ability. Okay, right, this chest is down in the water. Okay, so that kind of thing.

And so on and so forth with the stasis ability in particular. This is something I'm sure people watching the stream were frustrated with as I was remembering how stasis works while in one of the shrines and trying it is. Yeah, I've had many moments like that too in playing it and then being like, oh, duh, I'm supposed to be using cryomas here or whatever. It's so obvious now. Yeah.

Right. So that way of solving puzzles is more expansive than, you know, I don't know, a link to the past or something, where the traditional Zelda dungeon approach where you're in the boomerang dungeon, you pretty much know you're going to need to use the boomerang to solve this puzzle. That dungeon is going to be conquered. Right. And then as things get more complicated, you do have to start kind of thinking through your whole tool set. But there's a little bit more of a restricted possibility for any given puzzle. Where in Breath of the Wild, there's four different things you could use at any given time. Because once you're off the plateau, the game knows that you have each of those tools. And then controversially, the dungeons aren't designed around any one of them.

So you're not doing that kind of graduated puzzle, like, complexity. You're kind of just, you can solve anything. but you have a fairly limited tool set. And then thinking about Tears of the Kingdom, this will be something interesting about that game, is because there's a new type of ability that creates many other abilities, the example they showed in that demo

that made me lose my mind and start screaming to no one in my office, was when he attaches a key's eyeball to an arrow. And then that turns the arrow into a homing arrow because the arrow can now see because it has an eye. So if depending on how fleshed out. Yes, this is called the fuse ability. Depending on how fleshed out that is, that dramatically increases at least the theoretical possibility for solving puzzles. And that could be overwhelming in the way that the two of you were talking about.

My sense is there will still probably be a fairly limited number of solutions for mainline puzzles and then some really kind of out there stuff that you can figure out how to do with that more advanced stuff, which will then let you engage with that stuff as much as you want. that's kind of my hope because I feel like Breath of the Wild is really a sweet spot for me in terms of having to be creative, but also like having a fairly restrained, you know, set of possibilities in front of me unless I really want to get weird and creative, but the game is never requiring me to do that. Yeah, and it's worth noting, I mean, Breath of the Wild as Innu and has played it, also, in addition to some puzzles giving you kind of like unlimited possibilities, especially the environmental stuff, there are also shrines or maybe like this wall, you can't climb, this thing, you can't use some, given ability on. And so there are a little,

there are some restrictions and I imagine Cheers of the Kingdom will follow suit and we'll see how that is implemented and I think that's a smart way to go about it. Yeah, I, it's funny, I was thinking about Kirk how you, as you were playing Breath of the Wild, when we were streaming it, you were

like, does anyone else just use nothing but bombs to throw an enemies and like do nothing but kill enemies with bombs? And I was thinking about that and thinking about how I just swing my sword at enemies a lot of the time and how this game seems to want you to just like be experimenting and things all the time. But after a couple hours, most people I imagine just kind of default to whatever they feel like is the most powerful or the quickest way to get through

encounters rather than continually thinking of creative ways because there's so many random little encounters on the map that you run into all the time. And I think that is something that can be a potential hindrance in a game like this is that like so many different possibilities and I'm just focusing on this one and it's an interesting game design challenge to make the player feel like they want to be constantly experimenting even when the game is 100 hours long and it can feel a little monotonous to get to that point or I guess monotonous would be if you're using this day but it can feel a little bit drained really you're drained at that point and you don't really want to be creative, not monotonous.

So that's a really good point. And I both want to explain a little about the bomb thing because I think that it sort of is a good example of the game systems pushing you in a certain direction and then also tell a story about my nieces. So the bomb, the reason I use bombs, and this is primarily for, what do they call it, the blobs, the little blobs that turn up, and also the skeletons that just randomly attack you. Thanks. Choo-choo-ch-ch-s.

So the reason I use bombs is because of weapon degradation, a very controversial feature in this game, where if you hit something a bunch of times with a sword, then it breaks. With skeletons, I just find they're very easy to kill with bombs because three of them will pop up and come at you. You can just throw your bomb at them. It blows them up and then their skulls go flying everywhere. But then because of the area of effect of the bomb, you can blow up the skulls. And the skulls have one hit point. So my sense is that hitting those with a sword is the same as hitting something with a lot of hit points for the damage on your sword, like for the degradation of the sword.

So it's actually pretty inefficient to use your sword to kill skeletons. So you're in maxing over here. I'm kind of in maxing. Right. And so that's my way of playing and my way of thinking of it. Of course, I am also someone who is constantly overloaded with weapons and can never pick things up because I save them for something in the future and then never use them. Right.

Or a hoarder. I'm kind of a hoarder. I am interested in how fusing weapons will encourage people to just use their weapons up because it's actually, it's a weird side effect of weapon degradation that the issue for me isn't that I run out of weapons. It's that I never use them. I come up with creative ways not to use them. You're just like, oh, they're going to degrade.

I guess I'll just never use them. That's a classic problem. I mean, every RPG player knows about like getting into the last battle and you have a bazillion elixir. Yes, yes. I never do that. As I controversially sell all of my items in FromSoft games, I also use all my elixirs and I constantly am cycling through weapons that degrade in Breath of the Wild.

And I will do it in Tears of the Kingdom too. I am always. experimenting with new weapons for that reason. I guess I'm playing it as it's intended for that reason, too. I think that's a great way to play. I'm going to really try to play both to play Breath of the Wild more that way. Maybe I'll stop my bomb approach and also to play Tears of the Kingdom that way. Well, it's like a life lesson for me.

I don't know if you can change because I'm also like I'll eat the piece of cake. Like I'm this way in all things in life. But we should all eat the piece of cake is what I'm saying. That's what I think too. I don't save things for a special occasion. I don't believe in that. So I watched my. two nieces play this game. They only recently discovered it, and this is when I was down in the Bay Area

about a month ago, they are nine and 12, and they've been playing it together. They kind of trade off and just watch this the other one plays. Great way to play this game. Man, it was amazing watching them play. For starters, they've played a lot. They know the game better than I do. They know the game in that way that you get to know a game if you're, you know, 12 and playing with your little sister, and the two of you have just totally... Only had this one game. Yeah, and played the heck out of it and really fallen in love with it. It really reinforced for me how much this game rewards a kind of childlike approach, for lack of a better way of putting it, of just messing around and not really caring.

And, like, they're so carefree. They're not really thinking about, like, well, I don't want to use my eros. I watched Claire, my older niece. Just like, at one point, just, maybe it was Zoe. Maybe it was the younger niece. She was just shelling, like, an outpost of Bacoblins. with electric arrows. And just she had, I don't know,

28 electric arrows and she's just like absolutely bombarding them with electric arrows, which is causing these huge shock effects and they're all freaking out and they're really far away so they're not even charging her.

She's too far. They're all getting shocked, but she's like going through all of her electric arrows, which is, I would save those personally because you can, there are so many more efficient ways. Explode them all.

Exactly. And watching her just be like, I don't know, I'm going to do it this way. I don't like fighting them so I'm just going to shoot them from afar. They constantly play that, way. And then they're engaged with so many of the like DLC systems, for example, the monster thing. There's this

like monster vendor that you go to that they added. I'm pretty sure this was DLC where you spend your monster parts to get mon this currency that you can then buy masks. And then the masks of each monster, which I had forgotten this, if you put on the monster's mask, it thinks you're a monster and it won't attack you. That's right. So it's a whole way of manipulating the AI, which is so cool. They've learned all that stuff because they've played the game so thoroughly. And, And it really, it made me want to play more like them and be more just like, whatever, throw everything at the wall. Who cares?

There's always going to be more stuff. It's more about just like not worrying about min-maxing and resource management and just like experimenting and seeing what happens. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. I'm looking forward to playing not on a timeline for that reason. Not having a ticking clock of like, although it kind of, there kind of is a time like pressure

in that there are other games coming out that we're going to want to play. It's not just this one game. Right? I can't think of any other things happening in any of our lives. But yeah, but it's interesting. It'll be an interesting kind of mentality shift, at least for me. And yeah, I mean, to your point, Kirk, I wonder if you can kind of like enter that childlike sense of wonder a little bit more when you're not covering this game for work and you don't have to be playing it for content. Yeah, unless your nieces are planning on blogging about their experiences. No, not yet. Hopefully we can save them from that life. Save them from the blogging life.

Yeah, one of the things, I mean, I, like I said before, I've been, like, Googling all these side quests, and there's so much stuff that I just, like, had no idea it was even in the game. Like, either I just wasn't really paying too much attention to, like, when one of the, when there was a quest giver in the town or something like that, or I just never didn't take enough time to, like, really slow down and find all of this stuff. But, like, I, one of, like, the, the quests that is considered one of the best in the game, Tari Town, I had never actually done. I was going to ask if you had done that. Or, like, even knew it existed or anything like that. Like, again, I'm playing this game before there are guides on the internet, before there's polygogam.com's, like, shrine walkthroughs and stuff.

Yep. And so I just had no idea about some of this stuff. And it's going to be really interesting. And I'll keep you guys updated in the next couple of weeks as to how much I play it. I'm not sure how much time I'll actually have to play a ton. But yeah, I am very curious to like dive in and see some of those quests that I missed the first time around. Yeah, yeah. I really, let's talk a little bit about how different the Zelda game is from other Zelda games.

Because I feel like for me, all I ever notice is the similarities to other Zelda games. And it's almost difficult for me to think about it in that way. Like, Kirk, when you were describing how your nieces play, like that's, how I remember playing Link's Awakening as a kid. And of course, the game doesn't allow me to do that. But I would just walk around in Link's Awakening and like talk to the townspeople over and over and over again and like imagine that they would say something different or imagine that I was in an open world that could actually be interacted with in some way. But that game's actually pretty linear and you kind of have to do the dungeons in order. I just wanted it to be more of an open world. And like,

so playing Breath of the Wild, I always felt like this is what Zelda was supposed to be. which I know is a controversial statement because everybody in their head has this idea of what a Zelda game is. I feel like this happens with Final Fantasy too, although I'm less familiar with those fandom wars as compared to Jason maybe. But like everybody in their head has this idea of like, oh, this is the perfect Zelda game. For me, it's probably Ocarina of Time. But Breath of the Wild is pretty far up there. Like the idea of exploring and doing everything and interacting with the townspeople, but also always having this quest. on top of that that you're trying to fulfill, but still kind of being like an everyman character

and having a world that is endlessly interactable. You can ride your little pony everywhere. Like those things just all feel like different pieces of every Zelda game. And this is like the epitome or like what's the word that's like the best possible version of the platonic ideal of a Zelda game? Like to me that's what it is. Yeah. I mean, many, I don't think that's controversial. I think the take a lot of people had when Breath of the Wild came out was, well, Zelda, the original Zelda from 1987 was kind of a metaphor for what this game actually delivers it. And Ocarina of Time, it was kind of you can watch the progression of that game, which is totally nonlinear. You can really go in any order to Ocarina. And really, the link to the past model is what kind of set the tone for Ocarina.

And then a lot of the subsequent Zelda games, which is a little bit more of like it's an open world, but it's a little bit it more of a kind of prescribed path because there's so many obstacles in your way as you go that can only be opened by objects or items or tools that you get later as you progress. So more of the quote-unquote, Metroidvania approach. Which is also great. Aquarina of Time was really cool in that it like created this 3D world where for the first time you could see these giant mountains and forests. And you could see something over there and like potentially go to it.

But you couldn't really go to it. And it was still more of a metaphor. and Breath of the Wild was the first game to really fully realize that metaphor and turned it into reality where you literally can see anything and go to it and just climb everywhere you want. So I don't think it's super controversial to say, wow, this is the kind of the quintessential Zelda, so to speak. And it's also worth thinking about the people who loved the metaphor more than they love the actualization of the metaphor. because that also, I mean, there's been so much discussion of Zelda lately and of Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild. And I see a lot of people, like it is really a common refrain, at least in the triple-click discord or on reset era or the various message boards I read.

Those are kind of the two main places of people who are like, no, legit, I didn't like this game. I'm not really going to play Tears of the Kingdom. I'm not into this. And while it's not, I don't think, that fruitful to spend too much time imagining how some person who wrote a forum post somewhere feels or why, it does make sense to me at least to imagine that feeling, the feeling of really falling in love with the series as it perfected something that, as you described, I think very well, Jason, was ultimately a metaphor for what it then became

because Breath of the Wild is a very, very different game than a link to the past or even an Aquarina of Time. And I could see how if you really like the one, you could actually think that you don't want it to, to fully transform into the other. Or there are also people who are holding out hope that Tears of the Kingdom will be finally the ultimate thing that they really want,

which is whatever, you know, pick your thing that was missing in Breath of the Wild. Maybe it's dungeons is a really big one. Which totally understandable. Like there are some amazing dungeons. It's for all of Skyward's swords faults, at least for me, as someone who really likes open-ended games that aren't super restrictive.

Skyward Sword has some really incredible dungeons that are just these amazing sort of bespoke environments that you have to make your way through with really cool puzzles. I understand the people who feel like well, Breath of the Wild had some cool stuff but I was left feeling kind of empty because there wasn't any of that.

Those big design dungeons. Maybe if Tears of the Kingdom can do the same thing but also add those, then it would be my ultimate game. I think there are a lot of people who are hoping for that. Or there are other, more puzzle, more focus on puzzles, whatever. Less degrading weapons. I guess we know that's

happening. Well, do you think it's partially because of the puzzle design, though? Like, a lot of the dungeons that we're describing in the old style can only be solved in one way and are designed to be. And what we're imagining Tears of the Kingdom is like, and what Breath of the Wild is already like at times are, there's multiple solutions and some of them are kind of weird and not like the one you're supposed to use. So what you're getting at here is something a little bit different, which is that the puzzles in Breath of the Wild by giving you as many possibilities. answers as they do, sacrifice a little bit of the depth and the intricacy and complexity involved in puzzle solving. So when you get to, when you enter a dungeon, let's say you're

late game in Winwaker, and you're in a dungeon, and you're in a room and you look around and you're trying to assess the situation and figure out how to solve some big, intricate puzzle. You might open your inventory and be like, okay, I have this, this, and this, Which of these can I use? And you have to go through this thought process that is very different than the Breath of the Wild thought process, which is, okay, I can use all of these things. Which one do I want to do this time? Do I want to find some way to, like, put up an ice pillar here and then use magnesium to do this and this? And there's never really a situation where something can be solved in only one specific way.

As far as I remember, I mean, I could be wrong there. Maybe there are a couple. But in general, it's more about giving you the tool set. and I think some people, myself included to an extent, prefer the kind of designer-driven, like, I want to figure out how to solve this puzzle that the game is setting out for me, as opposed to the player-driven, I want to build some crazy contraption and see if I can solve the puzzle that way, and it's one of a million possible solutions. And I do think, I think that I can relate actually a lot to those people

and would love to see a game that is as kind of as yes-friendly, as Breath of the Wild, as possibility exploring as best of the Breath of the Wild, that does have more intricate puzzles and gives you more of those kind of like designer. Here's a challenge from the designer. Can you solve it? Which I think is possible, although maybe not given that we're talking about a game that is going to let you build crazy contraptions. So before we have to wrap up, I do want to talk about Tears of the Kingdom for a second

because I want to hear what everybody wants to see from the next Zelda game, if not just that, what you just mentioned. But just real quick, so Fuse, you mentioned, Kirk, that's one of the new abilities. There's four new abilities that Onuma, the producer of Zelda, like, showed off in a presentation a couple weeks ago. Fuse is one of them. Another one is recall, which lets you rewind an object back in time. So, like, an enemy's throwing a boulder at you, and you can send it back at them instead. another one is ascend basically you go up in the air and ascend up somewhere and then the fourth one

is ultra hand and this is probably going to be the most uh the wild one the craziest one because ultrahan lets you combine objects that you find in the world to create like vehicles and stuff and maybe robots based on what we saw in the most recent trailer um so that's the new stuff that we've seen so far i'm sure there's lots of other new stuff but that's what we've gathered so far. What do you guys want to see from this game based on what we've seen so far? Man. I have one. Okay. I mean, there's so many things. I don't know. I want to see whatever this game has to offer. There's one thing that comes to mind that I'll just pick to pick a thing for our show. I think the rewind ability, one way that he demonstrated that was there are

blocks of earth falling from the elevated platforms. The sky islands. Up above the world, the Sky Islands, thank you, the Hallelujah Mountains. And as those fall, you can hit them with this rewind, you can jump on one, hit it with the rewind, and go back up. So that, to me, opens up a type of puzzle that is really cool. It reminds me of one of the best dungeons actually in Skyward Sword. When I was talking about Skyward Sword Dungeons, I was imagining this. Time Travel Dungeon. Yeah, where you're manipulating time. And I think Zelda has, I mean, these games have always done cool things with the idea of time and of being in a place that was once a different place and the sort of progression and regression of time. There are so many cool puzzles that they could design using that mechanic.

And I just hope that they see that to its full, you know, potential. I think it's a great new addition to the tools that we have. And I could see, especially if they start doing more elaborate dungeons. And like we've talked about slightly more graduated things where you're doing one version of a puzzle and then more elaborate than more elaborate than combining it. If they're doing that kind of controlled puzzle design, adding time as an element to those puzzles, man, I mean, there are brilliant people making this game. So I have a feeling this is going to be in it. I'm very excited to see what they do with that. Yeah, I agree.

Maddie, any thoughts? What's your Tears of the Kingdom dream, your fantasy for Cheers of the Kingdom? I also have so many fantasies, but I'll just mention one that we haven't talked about a lot yet, which is just story and new characters. Like in that trailer, there were a lot of new mysterious characters like this. Elf princess who's not Zelda and just, I mean, we could pause it every three seconds and see a new character and be like, who is that? Who is that? And like learning more about the past and future civilizations of Hyrule is always really cool to me. And since this game seems like it's going to be playing with time, maybe also time travel, I tend to enjoy those kinds of stories in Zelda. So I'm

I'm really hopeful that the story will also be really cool because much as I'm excited to play with all these systems, the thing that really motivates me to finish a game like this and keep wanting to explore is just the fun dialogue and just getting really attached to these characters. And there's so many goofballs in Breath of the Wild and playing that and just remembering like the tone of that world has been really fun. And I'm excited to get to interact with that more to just in addition to the soup of the Minecraft of it all. Yeah, especially given that a lot of the narrative of Breath of the Wild,

Like some of it was taking place in real time, but a lot of the story took place in these cutscenes that were just memories as Link recovered as memory. Presumably, they're not going to reuse that mechanic, which worked okay for breath of the while, but like wasn't the most exciting narrative device in the world. And the idea of having a real time story and then actual time travel where you're moving back in time to other points in the story or in the timeline and interactively spending time there and like seeing. There's a lot they could do. I agree that that could be really, really neat. Yeah, it's not clear, I guess, where Tears of the Kingdom fits in terms of the story of the wild. Yeah, I mean, it could be a prequel.

I don't, I mean, it could be both a prequel and a sequel. I mean, given the time, timey-wyminess of it. The only thing we know from what we've seen in the trailers is that like something happens to Link's arm. Yeah. And then. Maybe you got a Gannondorf arm. Yeah.

Well, ultra-hand, the new ability, ultra-hand seems to like use in the in the trailers. Anyway, my one thing is. I want to see more linear crafted spaces. And it could be dungeons, could be other stuff, could be something more like even Tiled Island, even Tide Island, or like that part in one of my favorite parts in Breath of the Wild is when you're doing,

when you're in the Garudo section and you have to like navigate that banana, that banana maze. Or the labyrinths are a good example, actually, of like, freestanding things. Those could be a little more involved than they were in Breath of the Wild. Yeah. things that kind of, I mean, I'm all for the exploration and systems and finding ways to like, I don't know, jump into, get to the sky and get to sky islands and stuff like that.

But what I really want more of is the kind of the, oh man, this was crafted by a game designer to create this amazing experience for me. And I want more of those within the context of this bigger world that you can explore and do cool systems stuff too. All right, cool. Well, we'll have much more to say about Zeldon. in a few weeks. We sure will. But for now, let's take a break and we'll be back

with one more thing. Hey, there, beautiful people. I'm Jared Hill. And I'm Treville Anderson. And we want to know, have you ever had mixed feelings about the things that you love? Ooh, maybe about the things that you hate.

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Since we reached our highest milestone during the Max Fun Drive, we are creating a Max Fun library full of sound effects from your favorite hosts. The whole MaxFund community will be able to use it. So, what would you like it to feature? People high-fiving? Walking through mud? Chicken clucking? Jazz kazoo?

Head to Maximumfund.org slash Foley. That's Maximumfund.org slash F-O-L-E-Y and submit your ideas. We're excited to make this silly thing together and even more excited to see what you all create with it. And thank you again for a great MacMach. fun drive. And we are back. Kirk Maddie, it is time for one more thing. I am going to go first because it turns out we've got a whole sisterhood of the traveling pants situation here at triple we do. We do. Secretly. Secretly. Triple click of the traveling board game. So a few weeks ago I got a package in the mail from Maddie with a game and attached to the game was a note saying, hey, Jason,

Kirk sent me this game. So now I'm sending it to you. And it turns out that this game is just been floating around between the three of us. And this game is called Unlock, what's called Unlock, Exotic Adventures. And it is essentially an escape room game where, I guess sort of, well, no, it's not really, it's sort of escape room, escape room slash. I would describe it as escape rooms. The first one, definitely. Yeah.

Yeah, in the spirit of escape rooms is a good way to put it. You have an app and you press start on the app and then you have a timer and then you have to solve this puzzle by figuring things out and we'll solve this game by solving puzzles and figuring things out and investigating and doing all sorts of cool stuff. And each of these kind of adventures comes with a stack of cards and each of the cards has a number and they all do different things and you're picking up different numbers at any given time to kind of like to solve the puzzles and make your way out of the game. So essentially, I mean, to kind of try to actually explain this a little bit better for people. You kind of, you might start off with like, um, in the first one,

it's like there's a tutorial or there's the first game that I played was, like the boogie man and the bogey man. And so you start off in a kid's bedroom. And so you see a card with a kid's bedroom on it. And then maybe the bed is number 36. And then the blinds are number 27. And then you open up card number 36 to get under the bed and then maybe there's something. I'm making this up. This isn't actually what happens. But maybe there's something under the bed and then you open a new card. And that'll tell you what's under the bed and then maybe a monster comes out and surprises you and that changes the rules of the game so you're basically following the sequence of events and you and potentially a partner I played it all with my wife can solve these problems. I think we all played it with our partners

much easier. I played it with another another couple as well so there were four of us which was fun and a little chaos. That's interesting I think four would be too hard because it made it harder I think it's hard to communicate it's like hard to coordinate I mean even with two people some of the stuff like really can only be done by one person at a time in the same way that a lot of escape room. It's like an escape room where like two heads can be better than one. Like one person is really good at a certain type of thinking and they see the solution. Yeah. That can also be helpful.

Exactly. Exactly. I think two is probably a perfect number for games like this. Anyway, I really enjoyed it. Amanda and I really enjoyed all of them. We did too. Great date night activity. It is a very good date night.

Yes. We ordered Indian food and played through them and it was very fun. And the third one, the dinosaur one, was a little bit off. Yeah, I didn't love the design of that, where it becomes like a different type of game in a way. Yeah, it gets way more involved. Well, it becomes like a video game. It feels a little more like a video game. Like a map, yeah, you have to venture around.

Yeah, they need to stand there in a little bit. Well, also, they kind of like, we saved one of the dudes. You have to like prevent these dudes from dying. Yeah, there's like a ticking clock. And we saved one of them and we gave him water and then he died anyway. So it was like annoying. I'm not sure if we saved any of them. That one kind of worked.

Oh, we saved multiple ones. It's funny because I feel like we like the third one the best just because we just so happened to be the best at it. And like in the first couple, we like made dumb mistakes at a couple points. And we're like, oh, we should have done this and that. And like, oh, we did this out of order like misunderstood a direction on the card. But by the third one, we were like freaking geniuses.

And we like saved almost everyone. And we were like, we're great at this. Escape rooms. We can escape any room. It was very fun. So yeah. It made me want to get more of this. these because unlock is the name of the brand and there are a ton of different adventure packs and

I've been reading online like some are well better regarded than others that's for sure so I'm going to find some of the good ones and check them out. The clue game that I mentioned a few weeks ago is a very similar style by the way with the number of cards and it's it was much easier than the unlock exotic adventures but there's a lot of different competing companies who are creating escape room tabletop games that are similarly designed but have slight twists on the same formula. Well, it's funny you mention that because I actually, so Amanda and I also played Hunt the Killer at the

at the dive bar. Very different. Yeah. Which is so cool. Very different, but also way too easy. And Amanda, it got to the point where at the end of it and I were like, no, this can't be it. Like, it has to be just here. I think that's one of Hunt the Killers easier ones. Yes. Yes. It has it has a star

on it. But that's the one I, because you guys, it's the only one I've ever done to. It's the one that I had bought. And so Amanda and I were really into some of the unlocks stuff and I'm really into the challenge of it and hopefully yeah the challenge is fun. Some nice meaty, tough ones as we go. Yeah.

There's some fun stuff in there. Also, Unlock is really good at giving you hints without spoiling it. Yeah, I loved that. The app gives you a hint, which is very helpful. Maddie, as part of our sisterhood of the traveling adventure game, Maddie left some clues for her, some tips for. Oh, nice. That was like an additional note.

That's awesome. Her kind of very minimalist note, but then after Gina and I played all three games, I was like, here's what I wish I had known. Now I need to figure out, we're trying to to figure out who could, who should we give it to? Yeah, you got to figure it out. It's like the ring. It's like the videotape in the ring. Well, I think I have another game to send you to because a different couple that we know gave us an escape room that was too hard for them to solve. And so we're very excited to see if we can solve it. And if we can't, Jason, we'll just send it to you. Because apparently you wanted the challenge. Good to know. Well, yeah. Um,

Please do. Feel free. One thing I will say is that if anyone is thinking of checking this out, the most helpful tip that we got from Maddie was to put the cards in numerical order. Because that just makes your life way easier. Yes, very good tip. Okay.

Kirk, you're up next. My One More Thing is the second season of a show that was My One More Thing in its first season. So I guess it's still a One More Thing. It's one more thing. whatever anyways. It's Shadow and Bone Season 2.

I was wondering if you were watching this, okay? Yeah. Yeah, so I really liked Shadow and Bone season one. This is a Netflix show based on a fantasy series, a kind of YA fantasy series by Lee Bardugo, that are called

I don't remember what the name, it's the Grishaverse trilogy. Yeah, that's all I know it's called anyway. That tells the story of a world that is sort of like World War I era Eastern Europe, but then also like all of the world. You know, it kind of expands to other continents and other cultures, where there are some people who have a kind of airbender-like, Avatar The Last Airbender-like

ability to manipulate elements. They call it the small science, the small science, and they are the Grisha, and then, of course, there's all kinds of other complicated stuff, and there's magic, and there's real magic, and there's the small science, and there's a bunch of lore, and it's actually pretty cool lore, and the world is pretty interesting and, like, cooler than your average YA Fantasy World. So the first season of this show, I really, really like, and hadn't read any of the books, and then realized halfway through it, I told this story already, but I'll tell it again for anyone who didn't hear this episode, I realized halfway through it that actually, wait, I had read one of these books, or I had read half of it, and that's

because there's another spin-off series of books that are the Six of Crows books that Lee Bardugo wrote after the Grishaverse trilogy that are widely regarded as superior books, and I would say I share that sentiment. I think these two books, which are called Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom are really, really awesome. And I had started Six of Crows on a random recommendation. I hadn't finished it, but not because I didn't like it. I just, for whatever reason, I can't even remember why I just hadn't finished it. Then watching the show, I kept thinking, wait a minute, Kaz Brecker, wait a minute, heart render, wait

a minute, Inge, the shadow, what? I was like, I know these characters. And I finally put it together that what they had done is this very unusual move of mixing the Grishaverse trilogy, the story of Alina Starkoff and, like, her being. the great Chosen One, the Sun Summoner and all that, with these subsequent books that Bardigo wrote. So it was a really smart move in Season 1 because that main trilogy is kind of, it's cool, the world is cool, but the story is a little basic.

It's a little bit of the kind of YA chosen one. Oh, I'm actually special. Oh, all the boys like me. I have these superpowers. What am I going to do? It gets better as it goes. I've now read those books. Story of my life.

Yeah, who can't relate. I've read all those books now. and Bardugo's writing just gets stronger and the world and characters get more interesting as she goes. The third book is the strongest one. But Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom are wicked cool. Like, those are good books. I recommend those to anybody. I loved them.

And you could read them totally separate from the original trilogy. And a show based on the original trilogy, you would spend your whole time watching it being like, man, I kind of wish those other characters were in this because they're better characters. It's better stories. It's fun. They do heists. They're like cool, like criminals from this underworld city.

You know, it's a much more kind of fun framework. So the show combines both, and it kind of comes up with new stories for the crows to get involved in the main storyline of the trilogy, then weaves in some aspects of their own stories, to just kind of have a bigger cast, more of a kind of sprawling Game of Thrones kind of a feel because you're in all these different places because there's so many more characters. So, okay, that was season one. I really, really liked it a lot.

I was excited about this show. I read all the books. I was super stoked for season two. and I got to say season two is kind of a mess. It's just too much and it's still really interesting. And if you like these books... It's too much, man. That's too...

It's so funny, Jason. I've been saying that all week. This is a BoJack Horseman quote. And I was like, I need to remember to say that on Triple Click. It's too much, man. It is. Well, I've been re-watching BoJack, but yeah, I'll get to that another day. Another one more thing.

So anyways, yeah, it's just... It is now a victim of its best idea. to the point that watching it, which, man, so not only do they attempt to combine this Grishaverse trilogy and Shadow and Bone, but they actually tell books two and three in season two. So it's two books worth of Alina Starcoff's story and a bunch of new stuff that the crows are doing. So it's like, and this is an eight episodes or something, which remember when Netflix shows were too long? This one isn't, it's not too short, it's just so busy. I mean, one of the great things about TV is that a TV show can do an off-format episode and take its time where, like, I don't know, let's just go and follow some random character around and get a sense of this world or, like, really just spend time in someone's perspective.

You can do things like that. This show has no time for that. It's just plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, so fast that, like, especially because a lot of the storylines, there are romances. Some of them are really neat romances, especially for the crows. there's some really great, like, interesting character work with the dynamics and the romances between these characters that just don't quite get the time they need, even though the cast is great, the actors are really charming, you're still kind of into it, but it's just moving so fast. And then they just fly through the main trilogy material, and there just comes a point where it's

like, geez, like, I read these books, I know what's going on, but this just feels so condensed, which is a shame because a lot of the source material is so strong. and I just kept coming back to the thought that every time the crows are on screen every time these people the sort of super party of the heist the sharpshooter, the ghost, the mastermind, they're sitting around and they're like hatching a plan

and this fun music is playing and they're like, here's what we're going to do, we're going to take this guy down by doing this and that and I'm like, hell yeah, this is so great. And then it cuts back to like Alina Starkoff and it's like, well, I don't know who to trust because I have all this power,

but will it be too much power? Will I become evil? And it's kind of X-Men and it's kind of, I was just like, man, I just want to watch a show that's about the Crows. And they set up for season three, they haven't been renewed, but they set up basically the storyline of Six of Crows, which is the book that I recommend. Everyone, just read. Just read that one. Don't worry about the other stuff.

It'll tell you what you need to know about the world. It's an awesome book. They're setting up the story of that book. It's the best story of all of these books. It's an amazing, like, heist that they have to go do. It's super, super good. And it makes me hope that they kind of just minimize their role. of the remaining characters

from the original trilogy now that that storyline is basically over though of course there's potential for more stories and they really focus on the crows because now I'm really just like just get those people in front of the camera all the time

that's where the shows at its best and like remove don't add so much like just remove remove remove especially now that you don't have to add new stuff for the characters for the trilogy those are my thoughts I have a lot more but I could talk forever but whatever and I do still recommend people

go read Six of Crows just for a fun like summer read of a fantasy heist caper. It's super great and its sequel is also really, really good. Do you think the show's not going to get renewed though? Wouldn't that be a shame? I wouldn't be surprised. It would be a shame. I wouldn't be surprised if it got a lot less viewers on season two just because I think the buzz isn't as strong. And I did see somewhere that the showrunners had been talking about just doing a crow's spin-off and making them have their own show. And honestly, if they did that and they were just like a new Shadow and Bone series called Six of Crux of

pros. And they just, and they told that story from Six of Crows. And it was like, yeah, this is a spinoff of that show. Maybe bring back some of the characters sometimes, but like make it its own thing. If they could get Netflix to fund that, which granted is like a tougher road to hoe these days, because Netflix isn't, the money faucet is turned off a little bit more. But if they could do that, that could be really cool. But either way, I would totally watch it either way. And I'm glad the books exist because the books are just killer, like, and they're done and you can just go read them right now. Maddie, what's your one more thing?

Well, it's a game called chess. By it's offer? I hear it's so hot right now. It's the hot new game that all the teens are playing. So a lot of teens are playing chess right now. We have a story on Polygon that people can read if they want about how many teenagers are playing chess. And I truly just mean chess.

Right. The game chess. I'm not making some weird joke here. Is that why? So the Queen's Gambit apparently did. really drive subscription. So we talked to chess.com about it. They have an app across all platforms and you can just go to chess.com if you want to play some chess games. And there was apparently like a pretty big surge of interest around Queen's Gambit. But this most recent surge appears to be totally

unrelated to anything. And they have a pretty fun blog post on their site that's just like tons and tons of people are really into chess right now. We don't know why it's happening. But like teachers across the or banning chess in classrooms because kids are addicted to chess, which is like the most heartwarming possible outcome in life, really. So after editing this story and talking to people at work about chess, I went tochess.com, put chess on my phone, and I started playing chess. And I'm terrible at it. I used to be very good as a kid, actually.

I used to play chess with my dad a lot and really enjoyed it. It was a nice bonding experience. So I really haven't seriously played chess. since childhood. And I'm not good, but it is really fun. And I might keep playing it. I don't know.

It's nice to have chess on your phone to just play in between other things or like while you're waiting for something to finish cooking, whatever. I don't know. There's a lot of different... So you're playing against computer opponents only? For now, because I'm very bad. But there's a ton of different kinds of computer opponents in the app and like different rules and stipulations that you can.

set up and I'm hoping eventually I'll be brave enough to play against strangers. The other piece of this that I'm like, I should just do it is that apparently there's like a huge influx of people who are bad at chess because so many people are playing. So I'm like honestly that sounds really fun. Right. Everyone playing it can just all be really bad at it. The first week of a new Halo game. Right. Right. We're like in that zone but with chess and like how often does that happen? So maybe everybody should install us. Well, this is preparing you for playing StarCross. Well, I was thinking of that today. I was like, I'm really working out the old brain muscles. I'm getting, getting my tactics game on so that I can, I can prep for StarCraft 2. So yeah, I don't know.

Chess. It's still a cool, cool game. Have they come out with Chess 2? No, not yet. No, they have. Isn't Chess 2 a thing? It was like a video game or something. Yes, Chess 2. Chess 2 is on Steam. It's called Chess 2 the sequel. There is. And there's apparently a game called Really Bad Chess that gives you randomized pieces. So you might have like six queens. and like two knights and like the other person has like you know i don't know seven rooks or some shit so i'd like to play that too that looked really fun but when i was a kid i was really into battle chess did you ever oh yeah did you ever play battle chess that was fun it was basically chess except the pieces were all monsters that could eat each other and like knights and wizards and there'll be

little stop motion animations when the rook like ripped apart your night or whatever yeah like making chess fun for the kids would play this version of chess that kind of kind of chess. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Although, I think that is totally totally the game that you let the wookie win. But it wasn't a board. But yeah, that's it.

All right. Well, that is it for this week's episode. We are three weeks away from Tuesday of the Kingdom. Oh, we'll start counting it down. Lots and lots. Yeah, well, three weeks away from Tuesday of the kingdom means four weeks away from the triple click live show. So, that's exciting.

We've got synchronize our watches. That'll be the first time we will be live. Well, I guess we're going to record an episode. episode before the live show where we talk about Zelda. But still, we will also be live talking about Zelda. Anyway, that is it for this week's episode. I'll see you both next week. Yep, see you both next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can

find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member. of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod.

Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture.

Artist owned. Audience supported. So I realized when I got married that I had made a huge mistake. Getting married. No, the mistake. mistake was that I told you both that I was going to go do it because I totally could have come on and then like, guess what?

It's true. You did fuck up. Although it's Maddie's turn. It is my turn. And, you know, I am going to get married this year or am I? You know, like maybe you guys will come to my wedding and that won't be what it is. It'll just be a triple surprise. It's like an empty parking lot.

It's like, I don't know. Stephen King is there. I don't know. Well, Stephen King was there. That would be incredible. That would be an amazing surprise. I don't know. Yeah, so anyways, it would have been even more surprising because it wasn't my turn, but I realized I kind of blew that one.

You did. It's okay. I'll allow this because I would have been even more overwhelmed by the prospect of the pranks, the positive vibes only pranks that I am indebted to the show to play. Yeah. People have made so many suggestions that are all. unhinged too. I won't tell you guys what they are, but... Okay, you just give us a stick that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, put it at the end or something.

All right. Now can we stop. Okay, yeah, we can stop recording. No, that would have been really...