The Good And Bad Of The Game Awards 2025

Last week, I went to Los Angeles for the Game Awards, which was full of new reveals, Muppets, and even a couple of awards. Welcome to TripleClick, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking about last week's Keeley extravaganza. We'll get into it all from Claire Obscure sweeping to fate of the old republic. I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hi. Hey, hello. Hello, my friends. Welcome home, Jason. Can I tell you guys a funny story? Yes, always. So I was in Los Angeles last week. Very fun trip. We'll talk about that a little bit more throughout this episode. But I went out to lunch with friend of the show, Nick Weiger, of the Get Played podcast and Doughboys podcast. and uh we went to this place uh and we're sitting down and the waitress comes over and she takes our drink orders and she's talking to nick about like matcha tea or whatever and then afterwards she's like did you guys see the sky yesterday and we're like no and she's like it was so cloudy but there were these little particles inside of the clouds inside of the fog like it wasn't like it didn't seem like normal weather and we were like oh okay what does that mean and she starts going well we already know it's established that the government poisons our food so uh in this case i think that the government was trying to pollute the skies too and uh and we started asking so like what do you think it was and she's like you know i think it could be chemtrails um and she's just going on and on for five minutes and then she's like oh my god so how spicy do you like your ramen it was it was very like quite a lunch don't put in the government poisoning it's especially tricky when you can't eject from the scenario. You can't leave your table. We cannot eject. I mean, it wasn't that long, but she did pull up the picture of the fog on her phone to demonstrate that it was, in fact, chemtrails. I mean, she could be right. She had a photo, Jason. Who's to say? Yeah, she had photographic evidence. And hey, if you like chemtrails and making sure that the government continues to stick them in our sky, you should become a triple click supporter because we are entirely listener supported. We don't get any of that government chemtrail money. And so you can help us make this show possible by going to MaximumFun.org slash join and become a member. Help us make this show and also get access to bonus episodes every single month, including the most recent one where we talk about The Sopranos season one and lots of others. We talk about games and movies, all sorts of cool stuff. We're about to do one for December at the end of the month where we talk about our favorite things of the year that are not games. So as longtime listeners of the show will know, we always do our games of the year episode that will be hitting next week, Christmas week. And then we will do our other things of the year episode where we talk about our favorite movies and TV shows and books and whatnot. So stay tuned for that if you're a MaxFun member. member. All right. So before we get into this week's episode, the meat of this week's episode, we do have to go over our predictions results for the Game Awards. So a couple weeks ago, we all made predictions about who would win each category of the Video Game Awards show. And I have the results in front of me. Okay. With 10 correct picks is Kirk Hamilton. With 11 correct picks is Jason Shire with 13 correct picks is Maddie Myers by my count. Maddie is the winner. So Maddie, that means you get the tiebreaker if our standard yearly predictions bet, which we'll go over the results of in early January. If there's a tie between you and someone else, then you'll win it. And then I guess if there's a tie between me and Kirk, I will win it since I have more points. Yes. It's great that we have totally different scores. That's very helpful to breaking the tie. Otherwise, who knows what would happen? We might have to play two video games or God forbid three video games. We do hate playing video games. It's true. We absolutely can't sustain playing two or even three video games in 2026. Just the one, please. So Nick's podcast, Get Played, used to be called How Did This Get Played? And it used to be about playing bad games. So for their podcast, it really was a punishment to play games. It was. I'm glad for them that they changed it. It seemed extremely onerous in those early years, but it was funny. That's true. It's one of those bits that probably wore out its welcome. They're like, what if we just played some good games? I think the time that I guessed it, we were talking about Kojima games. And we were just talking about good games. So it had already kind of transitioned into being just a podcast about games. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I like that show a lot. And I think that they're one of the shows that I think is on a similar wavelength as us. I think we have a lot of crossover in our listenership. All right, on with the show. So this week, as we head towards the holiday lull, and before we do our games of the year, we're going to talk a little bit about the Game Awards and what happened there and some of the trends we're seeing. I can tell you guys a little bit about what it was like being there, not at the award show itself, but at least in the neighboring bars and restaurants. But first of all, we should talk about the awards. So the Game Awards, to anyone who doesn't watch this kind of annual nonsense spectacle, is a cross between an awards show and an E3 hype, here's what's coming next show. I would say that's most of it. Most of it is the kind of the trailers for what's coming next as opposed to the awards. But let's talk about the awards part first, because the awards are kind of interesting in that Claire Obscura Expedition 33 really stole the show. It won nine awards, including Game of the Year, Best RPG, Best Indie, Best Debut Indie, all four of which are basically saying this game is good. And it was interesting to see. I mean, it wasn't a big surprise that it took control of the show, but it was still interesting. What did you guys make of it? I mean, congratulations to them. Yeah, sure. Okay, sure. I do think that it was interesting to see the backlash happen almost immediately after this. And I think if I had to make my own read on it, the fact that it's in the indie category and the indie category becoming increasingly confused as to what is an indie game, I think it's really hard to define that. And it always has been. And we've talked about that on the show every year for that category. What is an indie game? but seeing a game that has a really large team i think people just don't associate that with the word indie even if you're technically an independent studio according to some definitions of that word so i think that it winning in that category in particular is what set off a lot of people being like this feels like too many awards like sure it's fine if it wins some of them but it's taking away from some of these other games like you know the hollow nights of the world if you will Yeah. Well, so to the point I made earlier, I think that like in typical award shows, each award is specific to a craft or if it's a broader like best of the year award, then it's one in which others don't really overlap. So like, for example, best comedy versus best drama, but you're not going to see like best comedy and then also best 30 minute series. And then also like best three camera sitcom, because all of those could just are just kind of subsets of the same thing. Instead, you're rewarding specific crafts because essentially when a game like Claire Obscure wins game of the year and it's also nominated for best RPG, best indie, best debut indie, then of course it should win all of those. because those are just kind of subsets of the larger game of the year category. So if you're saying it's the best in one film, I think the show could do well to get rid of these kind of silly genre categories or indie, whatever that means, and instead focus more on best art, best music, best narrative, maybe get a little more granular, best open world, best combat, best narrative design. I don't know. There's a lot of more interesting ways you could go about this. And to your point, Maddie, I think that might be one of the reasons that it felt so repetitive that Claire Obscure kept winning. And then also, yes, there's the question of what is an indie even, but like some of the games in that category, a lot of the games in that category had publishers attached, as we discussed a couple of weeks ago. So there's something kind of undefined and vague about that category in general. Yeah, I think that that specific feeling of upset about the fact that Claire Obscura is stealing, you know, something like stealing the limelight from games that are smaller and could deserve, you know, could use that win in the indie category. it kind of underlines what one thing that the indie category is trying to do, which is, you know, don't just make this award show about the biggest, most expensive games and celebrate smaller games and kind of have a more diverse slate of nominees, which is a good goal. It's just this seems as though this isn't the way to do it because of exactly what they ran into at the Game Awards, where, you know, like you said, Jason, I mean, if one game gets nominated for all these categories, why shouldn't it win? You know, like, I guess it's up against different games in different categories. Like, you could say if Blueprints won Best Indie Game, then maybe logically if Blueprints had been nominated for Game of the Year, then it should have won because it's better. But like, can you be a better indie game than you are regular game? Like, that doesn't make any sense. No, it doesn't make any sense. I'm like, what does that even mean? Right. They're going about it in a way that clearly has some problems, like some category problems. Yeah, well, that's the thing about these awards. And I haven't really given much thought to this because awards are kind of stupid in the first place. But if you're going to do them, just having so many categories that are based on the concept of overall quality, best of this category, is just such a waste. And it's kind of, it speaks to like with Claire Obscure, if they had to have someone, I think most of those categories, they didn't have people come up except for a few of the big ones. But if they won all of those and someone had to come up for it, it would just be the director or producer of the game coming up for every single one. because again, they're just overall categories. And so I guess my issue here is not that Claire Obscura won all these awards. It's just that four of those were just essentially saying the same thing, which is this game is good, as opposed to pointing to something specific. And that's the problem with having categories that are just subsets of games. Yeah, thinking through the categories, I think that best multiplayer is a good one. Like that is one that I think can stand on its own, where if a game is the best at being, you know, a multiplayer game that is just such a different kind of game that I can see though, like if there was just game of the year and that's the one overall quality award, best multiplayer seems like it could be a subcategory that would do just fine. And I guess it's possible that there would be a game that would win both, but that's okay. It just seems like it's different enough. But otherwise, yeah, like we've talked about this before, but more specific awards, best boss fight, innovation and controls. You know, there are these awards that could be really interesting and more specific to video games that would just allow for, again, that kind of feeling of diversity and excitement. You know, best boss fight would be a great category and everyone would have so many opinions about it. There could be controversial winners. You could pick like, I don't know, you know, some part of blueprints could be the best boss fight, you know, like if you kind of expanded your definition. And that could be up against like Night Rain or something. Yeah. Which would be very comical to imagine. Yeah. I would love that. Yeah. Also, like we were talking before about the mocap division and the voice actor division and and how that it seems like such an obvious necessity and makes video games really special and interesting in terms of how actors performances are reflected and I was really thinking about that this year with those multiple clear obscure actors and the fact that they didn't all do their mocap and I just feel like that's another you can have as many awards and just have them be more specific and make more sense for the art form that video games are as opposed to whatever they are now. Yeah. You know, one of the things that makes video games distinct is the, is player involvement, right? This is why something about controls, innovation and controls, that's an award that you're just not really going to give anywhere else. The Oscars aren't going to give an award for like the coolest TV interface, you know, the easiest way to turn off motion smoothing on your TV. They should give that. So that maybe does deserve an award, I guess. But yeah, and so the players, like, they are part of this, right? And I feel like the way that the Game Awards has dipped its toe into giving awards to players, like Content Creator of the Year or eSports teams, like, that's a step in the right direction. They could do more of that as well. Like, speedrunners, for example, totally seem like that. That just seems like a gimme. Like, you could have speedrun of the year or something and then just nominate all the most amazing speedrunning feats from the year. And like there's a category right there and that would be super interesting. And that's a it's a whole community and a type of like a type of a way of interacting with the art, I guess, that is unique to games and deserves to be celebrated. Yeah. Best new mechanic. Best innovative mechanic. Yeah, there are a lot of cool ways you could experiment with this. And yeah, it does feel a little bit stayed and just kind of uninspired to go with the genre categories. categories but maybe stayed and uninspired is a good way to describe this entire event i guess so you know i gotta say i mean i have to give keely credit this show has really become a pretty solid experience like it isn't everything i would want a show to be did you did you watch it all this year yeah uh i i guess very solid if you watch the first hour and a half okay okay hang on all right let me we're gonna rewind time and i'm gonna try that again okay okay i gotta hand it to keely if you only watched like 35 minutes of the show and mostly were in a discord with a bunch of funny people making jokes it was actually a really really couldn't agree more couldn't agree more so a solid way to experience the show so i didn't go to the show this year i watched it from a Netflix games viewing party nearby which they like had an open bar and they set up these big TVs where you could watch it on with closed captioning because the sound was kind of like I mean a lot of people were talking. Was it an Arkham Asylum like Batman Arkham themed Netflix gaming party? It was not but I made that joke to a lot of people I joked to old split screen guest Sean Crankle I said so are you going to make a Batman game now or what friend of the show so So yeah, so I was watching there and even there, like not being in there and being able to talk to people like I was next to our pals, Russ Freshstick and Steven Sotillo, we were all watching together. I was just talking to them, talked to a bunch of other people. Even with all that, it was still insufferable how long it was. At one point, this is very funny, at one point they started playing this anime trailer for like one of those Chinese Genshin Impact games. I forget which one. Wuthering Waves or like Arcanite. No one remembers, actually. I don't think a single person remembers. But they pay $2 million or whatever, a million dollars to be in the show. Anyway, so they started playing it, and I was like, okay, good time to go to the bathroom. And so I just kind of leisurely walked over to the bathroom. It was in a different area, so it took me a little while to get there. Did my thing, came back, and when I got there, it was still playing. But I got back. It was just like, so, no, I disagree, Kirk, that it is a solid show. In fact, I would say it is an excruciating show. It's gotten better. I would agree with that. There's fewer celebrities just kind of rambling about nonsense. But it's still just kind of like so long, so unnecessarily long, so excruciatingly long that it's hard to say it's a solid viewing experience. Yeah, I mean, that's fair. I revised myself in real time already. But yeah, of course, I can't even say I really can't even make a judgment of the show because my experience of it was so limited. very limited and it's not like award shows are ever that great to watch like if you ever try to watch the entirety of the oscars it's also pretty tough um so let's talk about the part that people actually watch for the reason that it becomes this big event every single year the big announcements so the biggest one and this was the statue that i mentioned uh to you guys the other day that i told you uh you would like uh that would be a one that we were all pretty excited about is the next game from Larian Divinity, makers of Baldur's Gate 3. This is their next big RPG. It's going back to the franchise they worked on before Baldur's Gate 3, the Divinity franchise, and it's another turn-based RPG. I spoke to Sven Vinkie, the CEO of Larian, shortly before the show, and he wasn't talking much about the game, but we talked about a whole bunch of other things. We'll link my article in the show notes. Part of it is really causing a kerfuffle as we speak about generative AI. But I don't want to get into that because this game is interesting for a lot of different reasons. What did you guys make of it? Gruesome trailer, huh? Yeah, I was going to say, can we talk about how that trailer was one of the most gory trailers I've seen in a long time? And we've watched a lot of Diablo trailers over the years. And usually I think Diablo trailers take the cake when it comes to flaying human flesh down the bone. We must not forget the Wolverine trailer. That was pretty intense. Maddie, can I tell you a funny story? So that same day at the Game Awards, I had spoke to Sven and he showed me the trailer at like 11 a.m. or something. And then my next appointment was to go talk to Blizzard. I talked to the president of Blizzard and like the director of Diablo and they showed me their trailer. And after they showed me their trailer, I was like, guys. I don't need lunch. No, I was like, guys, guys, you might be surprised to find that there's an even more grisly trailer coming in the show than this Diablo. Someone is coming for your crown, Diablo. And it is surprisingly Larian. I would not have necessarily expected that But yeah it is a trailer that depicts a man being burned alive among other other kind of gross cutaways and boy do they show it boy did they get into it just real visceral like pops yeah yeah yeah they don't mess around i mean learning games have always had quite a bit of of blood and guts in them despite having also sort of a mormon touchy feely reputation since their writing and their characters are so great like they do have a very you know there's a lot of bloody abattoirs and giant piles of guts in Baldur's Gate 3 and in the earlier Divinity games or at least in the ones that I've played Divinity Original Sin and Original Sin 2 so this is a turn-based game which is cool there have been some Divinity games that were not and it's good to know that they're sticking in that in that realm just because I think I mean it worked for them and it would it would be a little worrying to see them sort of changing course no we're gonna make an action RPG now like oh wait a minute you just sold 20 million copies of a turn-based D&D role-playing game. Like, come on. But I'm excited that they're going back to something that they know, to a world that they built, that they own. And that, you know, something Sven said to you, Jason, in your Bloomberg interview, which I guess we'll link in the show notes, is that they are excited about working with a tool set, like with a series of rules that were built for a video game, as opposed to a series of rules that were built for a tabletop game, which is certainly something that Baldur's Gate 3, for all its strengths, struggled with. I liked it. I actually liked it as a D&D trainer. Like, I also play D&D, and it kind of helped me with my D&D playing because it's so easy to experiment and to try out items in a way that in your actual tabletop campaigns, like, you don't actually get to play every character and, you know, really quickly equip magic items and then destroy them and try new ones. Like, it is a really cool D&D tutorial, but it's very complicated, and I think that was very alienating for a lot of people. So the idea of them taking what's great about their turn-based combat design and taking it back to Divinity is really exciting. Yeah, agreed. The thing that got me excited about what Sven was saying when I spoke to him is this idea that they want to push narrative branching and player agency even further. Like one of the highlights about Ersgate 3 that the three of us talked about quite a lot when it came out was how you could make, not only would you make all these permanent lasting decisions that had a real consequence on what would happen next, those consequences could also have ripple effects that would just like be, you would see them 20 hours later when a character appeared in some way, came back to haunt you, or maybe came back and helped you out because you helped them out earlier in the game. and the way that that all just kind of impacted one another, those branches. And it sounds like they want to push that even further. For this game, Sven told me the thing that he's most excited about, that he thinks, quote, RPG that has never been done in RPGs before, is some of that stuff and was telling me that he wants it. So every journalist is talking about this game and everybody has a completely different experience when they're talking about it, like totally different story. I think that stuff is pretty cool. The two things are really connected to the turn-based part and that incredibly systemic interactive part, it really is something I've come to appreciate thinking about Baldur's Gate 3 and just about their games, you know, reading your article and thinking about it as they announce a new one. Like the fact that the world can pause and that you can really get into the nitty gritty of like what everyone is going to do at a given moment in time, it allows for all that super granular, you know, just all that detail where like each item in everyone's pockets is itemized and you can pickpocket one thing and put another thing in their pocket. And then that allows them to design around, you know, all of these different things. And that, I think it's just like, it's key to like why their world is so reactive and also why the story is so reactive. Like it's all of a piece. And so, yeah, anyways, I'm very excited for whatever they're going to do next. Sam, I think it's worth highlighting how incredibly challenging that's going to be though, because what I'm thinking about is how by the time I got to the end of Baldur's Gate 3, it was running pretty slowly. And I always speculated that that was because the game was performing so many calculations under the hood as to all the previous decisions that I had made. And that's fine. I love that game. It's incredible. And I was happy to be patient with some of the staggering in those final chapters. But if there are even more decisions in Divinity that are impacting the end of the game, I am really curious how they're going to have that run smoothly all the way to the end and hopefully not stagger at all. For what it's worth, I'm not sure that is the reason for the performance so much as the fact that the city is so dense, full of characters. I think that might be my play. Yeah, that final city has a lot going on. Yeah, like when you get to Baldur's Gate, it's just so overwhelming. Am I right that they're on a new engine? Yeah, that should help. Could be, that'll improve things. Yeah, he was talking a little bit about their streaming system and how they overhauled it with this. and he told me that the city of Baldur's Gate, I think I might have left this out of the interview, but he told me that the city of Baldur's Gate, they originally wanted it to all be one giant map, but because of streaming issues and technical issues, they couldn't make that work, so they just split it into the two big areas. I said to him... Incredibly CPU-intensive memory serves. Yeah, exactly. The CPU is just having to process a ton of things at once with that dense of a simulation. Yeah, my computer was working hard as it was on that game. I joked to him that, well, Baldur's Gate 1 had Baldur's Gate in it, and it was like seven maps, so at least you beat them. Great point. The other big announcement, the other big surprise, was Star Wars Fate of the Old Republic, a new KOTOR-inspired game. Not quite KOTOR 3, but as close as we're going to get. FOTOR. Directed by FOTOR. sounds like a faux KOTOR is a faux tour. Yeah, a faux tour, right. A-U-X. Yeah, like when you get a full X or something. Yeah, you go get that down the street. Get your fake Rolex. You know Mass Effect, it's kind of just faux tour when you think about it. No, this is the real thing, though. As real as it can get. As real as it can get. This is by... They got the license. This is directed by Casey Hudson, who directed KOTOR, the original, and the Mass Effect trilogy, and Anthem. Anthem was his baby in the early years although he left in the middle of production and then came back to be studio head so he directed it for the first couple years of its development um and this is an interesting one another one of those kind of cgi teaser trailers where they said shortly afterwards that they started the studio this year um a little bit of context here is that casey hudson had started a studio called humanoid origin in 2021 and then last year so three years after that he announced that they lost funding. I believe it was from NetEase and then disappeared for a bit. And now he's back with this. And he said he started this new studio, Arkonaut Games, earlier this year, and they've been working on Votor. So I guess it's not 100% clear if he's and his team, how many people he's taken from his old studio, how much tech or how many ideas they've taken from their own studio and are able to use for this but it struck me as a game that is many many years away yeah it's an interesting it's an interesting question like what a kotor game would look like now you know i i mentioned this on the show before that i listened to a more civilized age uh amca's playthrough of the first kotor they're doing kotor 2 as well though i haven't listened to those yet i'm sure they're great and it was super interesting it was a great like trip back, you know, to my memories of playing KOTOR. And I mean, that game is just really old at this point. And I don't know, like, it's kind of just an open question of what a Star Wars role-playing game could be. And that could be anything. So this is basically just, they have the brand. But I mean, I don't even know what a modern KOTOR is. So I guess it's just like, well, some people who are probably good at making video games, Anthem notwithstanding, are making a new Star Wars role-playing game, I guess, great. Yeah, right. See you in 2035. That hopefully is a little further out than it actually will be, but you could be right. And anytime I watch one of these kinds of trailers, I just purposefully don't get my hopes up because I have seen teaser trailers like this and then had the game never come out. Now, I'm not saying that will happen here. It's just that it's very far away and a whole lot of things could happen between now and then and wonder woman no what i was thinking of wonder woman jason i didn't want to say it but i was yeah well i mean it was game awards 2021 two of the games announced there were star wars eclipse which is still in development but nowhere to be seen and wonder woman which was canceled earlier this year so it's brutal out there yeah yeah but it's also this trend of just like we're going to announce this thing through a teaser trailer even though it's many years away because we need to recruit people and that's the reason to do this in this case because they the people behind this game are hoping that by saying that's a kotor successor kotor 3 and all but name they will get a lot of excited talented people to come and apply to join their studio so that's the main reason that that anybody does this which makes sense and i'm sure it's very effective it was a cool splashy cgi trailer and i hope it works and that they maintain their funding the whole time. Other big announcement is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider, a remake of the first Tomb Raider and a brand new game called Tomb Raider Catalyst. Remake is coming out next year and Tomb Raider Catalyst is coming out in 2027. What do you guys think? They gave Lara a makeover again, gave her a new look again. 2010 Lara is out. This other Lara is in. she looks i would say different than any other previous laura and yet also unmistakably laura croft at the same time great eyeliner it was cool i thought the trailers are pretty cool yeah like good trailers and to be clear i because i i don't think i was totally clear on this even though i played the game this is a remake of the 1996 original so it's called the legacy of atlantis i'm seeing here which is the plot of the first one like you wind up going looking for atlantis so it's basically like the first one remade which has kind of already been done if memory serves like Tomb Raider Legacy already exists they've kind of been to this well so this is redesigning it again making Laura yet again look more like a you know real person like a you know not a collection of polygons but again you get to fight a dinosaur and shoot it with your pistols or whatever the part where she was fighting the dinosaur looked cool I will admit I'm sure we'll play it and talk about it I'd love to see how those puzzles translate to like a true remake only because I like Tomb Raider games like they're especially the early ones were very puzzle focused and not you know not that action forward and I think now we kind of think of Uncharted and it's easy to just sort of get this whole mix of these third person Indiana Jones inspired action adventure games in your head where like it's a lot of shooting and then occasionally you move some you know you reflect some light with some mirrors and like, you know, Sully makes some wisecracks. And then you do a lot of shooting and you, you know, you're like blowing up helicopters with rocket launchers and stuff. But, you know, before that, before Uncharted, Tomb Raider was actually a lot of just standing in a big, cool, empty space with like actually really neat, like atmospheric synth music, like kind of droning as you just try to figure out what you're supposed to do. And it's actually something that the recent Indiana Jones game kind of recaptured, though in a specifically Indiana Jones flavor. So I'm looking forward to trying a true remake of the original game. And I guess we'll see as to the new Tomb Raider game. Like that, that's a little further out. But I am, you know, I'm interested in and looking forward to the remake. Yeah, I love environmental puzzles. It's a good idea when it's been a while since a franchise had a new entry. It's a good idea to be like we're going to do a remake of the first one and then a brand new game i think it's a c metroid prime 4 yeah well that didn't work out for other reasons but you can see why they but it was the idea was sound it's just that metroid prime 4 was not the strategy was was intact um uh another thing uh megaman returned i don't know if you guys are excited about that i like megaman so i was i was stoked on that i just like hearing I like Mega Man music more than I like Mega Man gameplay. I will also say that when they showed that trailer, it was very funny. It was all this buildup of like a hallway. Everyone was like, oh my God, is this Half-Life? And then they show Mega Man pop out. And then they show gameplay footage from like a two-day Mega Man game. And we were all like, oh, cool. And then they show 2027. And everybody around me just cracked up at that. because it was just so like just seems so impossibly far away um the other thing that got announced is sulksong dlc hollow knight sulksong sea of sorrow which of course did not get announced to the game awards but instead on a random monday night at like uh like 7 or 8 p.m eastern time which is hilarious uh team cherry was just like nope sorry we don't care about the game awards we're just gonna do our own thing as always in fact when i asked them i spoke to them a few weeks ago um i asked them if they were going to the game awards and they like didn't know when it was so classic though that's so on brand yeah extremely funny yeah that's great i love that they didn't even go but i can't wait for more silk song it's the point yeah yeah no i'm i'm excited as well i'm sure it will be very easy yeah seems like probably pretty easy based on that name i think we'll just kind of blow right through it it won't really be any it's gonna be like sorrow who oh, I'm not even sad about this, except how easy it is, and I'm disappointed by that. No, Kirk, you had a good joke on tax skin. You should share it. Oh, I said basically, well, I think that the sorrow is actually that it's too easy, and so you finish it too fast, and you're all out of new stuff, so you're feeling very sorrowful because it was so easy. Love it. I think that's probably what they mean. Yeah. You know, speaking of DLC, actually, one thing I meant to mention earlier when we were talking about Claire Obscure was only in video games would you have the best picture winner basically get up and announce a shadow dropped DLC for their game in their acceptance speech. I just sort of love that. Yeah. I feel like that's happened the last few years, right? Like didn't Astro Bot, didn't they announce something? And then Baldur's Gate 3, they announced like an Xbox version at the game. Baldur's Gate did anything. Yeah. It's very funny. I mean, it's a good opportunity to do it, I guess. And it makes sense. Yeah. And I'm sure they chime their release, just crunch time around trying to make the game awards, right? Because they know they're going to have a ton of eyes. Like combining an acceptance speech with an announcement is actually like the most game awards thing you can possibly do. It's true. It's incredibly on brand for the night in question. It is. And one of my long term life predictions has always been that I think the Oscars are going to become more like the game awards than vice versa. I realize that will be very unpopular with any Academy members. but I could very easily see the Oscars including more look-ahead type stuff rather than the Game Awards ceasing to include all of the things. Well, I don't know how much money the Oscars makes, but maybe imagine that the people making the Oscars would like to make as much money as the Game Awards makes. It's funny. I actually, I'm very into the idea of announcing new things in an award show because I find award shows to be boring without that. The problem with the Game Awards, one of the problems with the team awards is that the announcements are not selected based on taste or kind of like a creative autonomy or something like that. They're selected based on who will pay Jeff Keighley to be in the show. And so that's why we have these just like insufferable, endless, intractable, like anime trailers. Yeah, I don't know though. The minute you open the show up to announcements, I think that's just how it's going to go. Like it's very hard for me to imagine a version where somehow the announcements are like curated based on taste no that's like wouldn't it just be whoever pays the most but that's just a keely thing like if you're doing an xbox presentation you're not you're not paying or getting paid there's no money changing hands it's just marketing well but i'm picturing the oscars aren't like a platform holder they're not xbox like they're the oscars so if you're a neutral third party like how do you decide who gets to go there especially if you're charging them money like presumably the minute money is involved like you're going to be giving it to the highest bidder but that's that's what i'm saying i'm saying that it would be a much better show from a viewer perspective if they there was no money involved and if it was just kind of like someone just kind of making decisions based on taste and what they thought people would be interested in instead of just paying them for slots anyway was there anything else you guys saw that was noteworthy that you liked at the show um a couple of indie games i thought looked pretty cool there was out of words which was this kind of like claymation co-op game that i thought looked really neat um there's a new game from jonathan blow the creator of the witness and braid called order of the sinking star which star of indie game the movie yes star of indie game the movie which looks really interesting and then also really interesting is that a few of the designers whose puzzles were licensed for this game which is kind of a massive stokoban style puzzle game that just combines a whole lot of mechanics those designers came out on blue sky and said hey we denounced jonathan blow and his views and kind of regret being part of this which i thought was wild i've never seen anything like that before um but the game looks really interesting and cool i actually spoke to blow um before the game awards and i'll have that interview up probably not till after the holidays but um it was really it was interesting was that before or after people denounced him did you get the chance way before no it was before the announcement too bad i i just sent them sent them an email asking about that and just got a new comment from him and his publisher about the announcements i was excited to see so many co-op games like just same like games that are designed to be two-player co-op i just thought that was cool the one you mentioned jason there were another couple ones this one beautiful i'm forgetting the name but it was this beautiful looking kind of hand-drawn animation style uh that looked just really neat and yeah i mean having loved split fiction and really liking these Hazelight games And I haven played that new Lego one but it looks really cool And I think my co buddy Dan and I are going to play through that together Like I love that we kind of returning to a world where there a regular cadence of two you know, designed co-op games that are meant to be played by two people. That's great. And seeing more of those, just, that made me happy. Coven of the Chicken Foot. Did you guys see the trailer for that? This looked awesome. That is a super cool looking game. Looks inspired by The Last Guardian. and it's you playing as this old woman witch who has a pet and it's got this stylized world and you're doing an adventure and solving puzzles and whatnot. It's by Wildflower Interactive, the studio formed by Bruce Straley, former director of The Last of Us and former Kotaku split screen guest. He came on shortly after he resigned from Naughty Dog. And yeah, a couple other cool things here and there. very interesting choice for them to end the show on a hero shooter called high guard which i mean nothing against high guard i haven't played it i don't know anything about it but it was surprising that keely ended on that this is a problem that jeff has run into before especially like where he hypes it before you see it and he gave i can't remember what it was but it's like i'm so excited I got to play this and it's so cool. Dude, it's so good. You're not even going to believe it. And the trailer starts and I'm like, all right, this is the big thing. So let's see what it is. It's like a guy and he's got a lance. And then he gets on a horse and I'm like, oh, he's on the horse. And it cuts to first person perspective on the horse. He pulls out a machine gun and starts shooting. And suddenly it just looks like whatever, Overwatch, any video game. And I was like, I started laughing in my room. I was watching this. I started laughing out loud because it was such a hilarious anticlimax. Like it was such a like trip over a rake and fall on your face. At least for me personally, I was like, wow, like that really fell off a cliff fest. Wasn't this supposedly worked on by kind of some of the people that one imagines would have made Titanfall 3? Is that maybe why? That's right. Yeah. People, maybe why Jeff put it where he did? Because Titanfall 3 is like a popular meme that people spam in the chat. I would guess he put it where he did because of money. that would be my guess but I don't know well he went and played it apparently was impressed it comes out in just a few weeks so I'm guessing that was part of his calculus to be like I think that these are the people who made Apex Legends which was successful as a shadow drop it came out of nowhere and people just played it and it was cool and so I imagine they wanted to do something similar here I don't know it's a tough sell I saw a lot of memes in reaction to this uh people just being like yeah another friggin hero shooter um that said these people are very good at just kind of like you grab a six and you feel something really good so i don't know hard to crack that market it's very true it's just it's hard to get past that on the horse pulling up yeah it was like that visual it's really burned into my brain the the character art style also just a little tough i saw a lot of comments that were just like this is the next Concord. I will try to reserve judgment until it's out. For sure. Yeah. So, man, there's a lot more to talk about. Any final thoughts on the Game Awards? Because we could also hit the Netflix Warner news real quick. Yeah. I'm curious what you think of that. Yeah. It's wild, man. And so just before I left for LA came the news that Netflix is buying or hoping to buy Warner Brothers. They've agreed to terms. There's going to be a lot more drama that comes in the weeks and months and years ahead because Paramount is trying to sweep in. I don't know if it's a hostile takeover or outbidding them or what. It's just going to get complicated and lawyers will be called. lawyers will make a lot of money off of this one um but just the thought that netflix would own warner from a tv and film perspective is pretty bonkers but from a games perspective is awesome just as bonkers for our world uh even if it seems like an afterthought to the people involved because of course warner warner brothers games is the company behind rocksteady batman uh avalanche Harry Potter, Hogwarts Legacy, the Lego games, the TT games, and several others. Mortal Kombat is in there too, NetherRealm Studios. So a lot of important franchises. It's wild to imagine them part of Netflix. That's true. I mean, the video game thing, the fact that it's less of a focus makes sense to me, in part just because a lot of the biggest video game franchises that WB owns are derivative of their film franchises. You know, like the Batman movies, I mean, they own the Dark Knight, you know? They own all the Harry Potter movies. Like, that is massive in terms of cultural impact and the fact that one company is going to own all of that and then also own HBO, which is like, I mean, not just all the HBO shows that we've watched, but the legacy of HBO documentaries, HBO Sports, HBO series since forever. That's a problem. A show I just found out about. So it's like, it is totally wild. I mean, it really is on par with Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard. And I think the reason that I think of it at least first and foremost in terms of movies and TV is because in that way, it feels very similar. When Microsoft bought Activision, it was like, holy shit, like Microsoft is now going to own World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. Like they're going to own like some of the biggest and most storied brands in video game history. Like it's the same now for Netflix. And it's almost weirder because Netflix is an even younger company. And it's just they're just Netflix. You know, they were the guys that we like ordered DVDs from a couple of decades ago. And now they're going to own. I mean, Warner Brothers. That is pretty wild. Like if it actually goes through, that is like that is the tide changing moment. Like that's the turning of the tides. It's the crossing of the Rubicon. Pick your metaphor for like Hollywood changing absolutely and forever. Wow. Yeah, you're right. I have had trouble dealing with the scope of it as well, because mostly I've just been thinking about how Netflix has tried so hard to get into games prior to now and has failed repeatedly and how those attempts have been kind of fascinating to watch just from the perspective of realizing how hard it is to just start completely from scratch and make games that are interesting. Yeah, see Amazon. Yeah, exactly. Another great example where it's like, even though you might have a lot of money and you might even be a household name, however young of a brand you might be, people know Netflix. That doesn't necessarily mean you can make good games. They tried to make games based on very, very successful TV franchises that they originated. And I've heard those Love is Blind games they make do well. But other than those, I don't think anything else has taken off. So from that perspective, I'm like, yeah, I get why they would also probably internally see it as a bit of a boon to get those Warner Brothers games, even though clearly the mainstream news articles are not focusing on the game deal. It's the first thing I thought of. I wonder if Hogwarts Legacy like makes more money than a lot of these blockbuster films you're talking about, Kirk. That's the thing that really that trips me up. Hogwarts Legacy sold. I don't remember the exact number, but it was the best selling game of 2023. three um yeah like outsold call of duty right like it was yeah it outsold call of duty that year yeah i think that that's true but then again i think that this is a type of calculus that video game fans tend to do substituting financial success for cultural importance because like it just doesn't seem to add up you're like yeah but like why do you think that it's more important this movie that you know made a couple hundred million dollars versus this video game series that has made a billion every year for the last five years. And it's like, you know, they're... Well, I'm thinking about this from a Wall Street point of view, not necessarily a cultural impact point of view. I'm thinking of this as kind of like, hey, here's this company that is buying this other company. What's it getting financially for its $72 billion? Studio executives sometimes think in terms of cultural impact first, I guess. But I mean, yeah, the Hogwarts game alone is like a massive get for them. I guess I'm thinking about why they wouldn't be like leading with that like i guess maybe yeah if they're giving like investor reports or something i guess they probably will if the if the sale goes through no they haven't that's the thing they said that games weren't kind of like a material part of their calculus for the it wasn't priced into the deal and yeah i'm surprised how much they've kind of underplayed the games part of it given how lucrative that part of the business is um and also there i mean there's theories that like oh well they sell the games business they've tried to be in triple a and never worked but that would make no sense for the same reason that Warner has never been able to sell the games business, which is that all of those game companies are so attached to Warner's IPs that any company that bought them would have to deal with it, like would get something useless. Like a game, buying a game studio without its biggest IPs attached to it is not a worth, not a valuable prospect. That is interesting then, especially given that Harry Potter is like about to have a whole resurgence whether we like it or not it's coming back and um and there's going to be a new show there's going to be a whole new cast this they're going to retell the story all over again and of course there's going to be a sequel to hogwarts legacy that's going to make a ton of money yeah it is yeah i mean it is surprising that they wouldn't at least fold that into part of their strategy since they have this multi-billion dollar ip across movies and tv and video games and books I guess there were books once there were books in there at some point who cares about books I guess WB doesn't own the Harry Potter books books are not part of this that's why they're not brought up because they're not actually part of this alright let's take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing greetings i am john hodgman co-host and co-creator of the judge john hodgman podcast along with jesse thorne here on the maximum fund network and i am here with max fund member of the month keith who's been a maximum fund member since when keith oh at least three or four years now i don't recall exactly when i fell prey to the pledge drive but it got a hold of me and i i've yet to relent. Oh, and we shall not ever let go. Now, you join us telephonically from a different country from ours, which is which? I moved to Vera, Portugal back in August of this year. I hear evening birds chirping behind you. What are the names of those birds? We do have quite a few spoonbills and quite a few flamingos as well. So what would you say to the birds around you and the people listening who are considering supporting the show? You know, it's just nice to have a little bit of investment in the things that I love. Knowing that I'm making sure that those podcasts are still being created makes me feel good. We're so pleased to have you be our Maximum Fund member of the month. Thank you very much, Keith, in Portugal. This month's Maximum Fund member of the month. Obrigado. Become a Max Fund member now at MaximumFund.org slash join. I'm Emily Fleming. I'm Jordan Morris. And I'm Matt Lieb. We are real comedy writers, Real friends. And real cheapskates. On every episode of our podcast, Free With Ads, we ask, why pay for expensive streaming services when you can get free movies from apps with weird names? Each week, we review the freest movies the internet has to offer. Classics like Pride and Prejudice. Cult classics like Point Break. And holy s***, what did I just watch? Classics like Teen Witch. Tune in every week as we take a deep dive into the internet's bargain bin. every Tuesday on MaximumFun.org or your favorite pod place. And we are back, Kirk, Maddie. It is time for one more thing. Maddie, what's this? Interesting choice. Yeah, so I'm reading a book for the first time from 2003. You're reading a book for the first time? Yeah, I've decided to read a book. Congratulations. And you know what I went with? I went with a famous video game book because I'm a gamer, see? And for my first book, I thought, why not go with something real simple? Jokes aside, I am actually for real reading, almost done reading a book called Masters of Doom by David Kushner. This is a nonfiction book that details the creation of id Software and also the life stories of John Romero and John Carmack. It's worth noting that although John Carmack is pretty happy with this book, apparently, thinks it's very accurate. John Romero is not. And he has his own book that I want to read next called Doom Guy. That is his accounting of this story. And I think most people are aware that the two of them had a falling out over the years. And this book gets into why that is and what they disagree about. And this book is, it really rockets along and it tells the story in an extremely thrill ride type of a way that's extremely accessible and fun and voicey. And it also does one of Jason Trier's original sins with books, which is that it puts dialogue into the people's mouths constantly. And I can't not think about you, Jason, on basically every page of this book, because David Kushner, this is this is writing styles, very common nonfiction book writing style. It's clear. It's very clear that the guy did a ton of interviews for this book. And he does make that clear periodically in how he writes, where he'll say, oh, this person told me this or said this. And it's made more deliberate that this is a quote from someone recounting a story. But 80% of the time, he is not writing in that voice and is instead presenting a scene where it's like, John Romero clutched his stomach, he was laughing so hard, and then picked up his ham sandwich and took one bite of it before replying, yes, let's do it. And you're like, wait, did John tell him all of those details? Like, how did he know all of this? And how much of this is some creative license? And I suppose we won't... And who remembers the events of something that kind of... Who could possibly remember all of these minute details? So I am thinking about that a lot while reading it, I will say that including that type of writing does make the book extremely entertaining. So I understand why he does it because it's painting a picture in your mind, like you can see the offices, you can picture the characters of the book, and they're really lively characters. And that makes it fun. And it's why the book is super famous, low these many years later. So I still recommend it. I think it's interesting. I think I'll probably report back after I read Doomguy because I'm really curious about what John Romero's personal perspective is on this notable time. So yeah, for now, I only have part of the story. But that's Masters of Doom, famous book, famous for a reason. Really fun, fun to read. Cool. Awesome. Kirk, what's your one more thing? My one more thing is school announcements, because this is just something that I've been thinking about lately. When the two of you were in school, did they like have a morning announcement that they did like in the morning, like they would come on the PA. And I was the anchor of it in middle school and read a lot of announcements. Yes, that's right. Oh, nice. Was it like a video show? Yes, it was a video show. It was a video show. Oh man. Did you sit behind a desk and everything? Maddie, that was your training for becoming a professional podcaster. That's right. That's why I'm so good at it. That's true. It's really, yeah, it's training the media professionals of tomorrow is doing the school announcements. I've been thinking about my nieces and where they go to school and just how much has changed with the way that school announcements work. And also thinking back on the announcement that they made at my school. I went to a kind of interesting high school and every morning they would make kind of the same announcement. You really got sick of it after a while? It went like this. Up and Atom Troops, time to rise and shine. Today is your fourth day of active service here at Last Defense Academy. Prepare to spend another day enduring the unendurable and suffering the insufferable to pave the way for humanity's greatness. Be ready to give your lives to protect our beloved school from the vile and barbaric enemy. You know, it's kind of a weird school. So the way this school worked was we actually woke up there. We didn't know how we got there. And then we were told that we had to stab ourselves in the heart and use the power of our blood to transform into superheroes and fight off invaders every so often. It was kind of a crazy experience. And incidentally, also, I have spent the last month or so mainlining the video game The Hundred Line Last Defense Academy. And I have played all the way through it and, well, not all the way through it, but a whole ton more. Is this another of your secret? This is another of your secret. I wanted to surprise Jason with it. This is good, actually. For a long time. So yes, I have played through this game. This was one of Jason's One More Things from a while back. Wait, you played through all of the endings or you played just through the main one, the first one? I have played through several endings, but not all of the endings. But I've played a ton of it and am so excited about it and have been kind of like sitting on my hands and playing and playing and playing and playing and playing because it's quite long and figured at some point that I should just not tell you that I was playing. Classic Kirk Hamilton. Classic triple click move to just not tell each other what we're doing. So this game, so that is really my one more thing, is the 100 line Last Defense Academy which as I mentioned was one of Jason one more things earlier in the year when it came out But I making it my one more thing as well And just to explain what it is to people really quickly before I talk about it a little bit more So this game is like kind of a super group kind of a situation It has two directors Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi Kodaka is the writer and director of the Danganronpa series, and Uchikoshi is the Zero Escape 999, you know, and also like AI, The Somnium Files. He's the director of those games. And going into this, I was kind of expecting a Danganronpa type game because those are the ones that I'm more familiar with. And all three of us love Danganronpa. These games, for anyone who hasn't played them, they're visual novels with a bit of like courtroom gameplay where you have to do these kind of trials where you're like proving who's lying. And they're essentially a series of murder mysteries set in a high school where a group of very colorful characters, kind of anime styled characters, are all put in a killing game together. So they're trapped in the school. And if you kill someone and get away with it, like it's a whole like kind of murder mystery slash, I don't know, post-apocalyptic like surprise at every turn sort of story. So I was expecting something like that because partly because The Hundred Line begins that way. It really feels like this is a Kodaka joint through and through. Like it's got his style of characters, his kind of like acerbic writing and pop culture references. The music is very similar. I think it's the same composer, so it's like the same kind of freaky music vibe. Bing! Kirk here editing the episode, and just to give the composer credit, since I tried to do that, it is indeed Danganronpa composer Masafumi Takada, along with Jun Fukuda, who wrote the music for Last Defense Academy. There's a lot of really cool, like, kind of chill wave stuff like this. There's also a pretty killing battle anthem. Actually, a lot of the fight music, the battle music is pretty amazing as well. So yeah, a killer soundtrack. Any visual novel needs a good soundtrack. This one definitely has one. It's kind of ugly and scary and creepy and weird and off-putting in the way that Danganronpa is. And then you keep playing it and you realize Uchikoshi's influence and see what an amazing pairing these two game directors are. Because in addition to being a cool visual novel about teens with a lot of blood, it's also this amazing branching narrative, like choose your own adventure, multiversal time travel story in the way that a lot of Uchikoshi's games, especially his later games, really lean into. And holy shit, I mean, that's where this game goes from being a cool visual novel to like something like I've never seen before. And it's so exciting. Oh, my God, Jason. So after the show, I'm going to be like DMing you a million for like a million hours about this game because I'm so excited about it. And there are so many spoilers that I don't want to, you know, I don't want to just drop spoilers. Yeah, don't spoil me because I would also like to play it. And, you know, I don't spoil the listeners, I guess. I think, yeah, I won't spoil listeners. And also you, Maddie, I won't spoil you. you definitely should play this game um i i want to it's the thing is and jason said this in his one more thing the challenge is it's a big buy-in like it's like a brandon sanderson novel or something like you've got to really kind of roll with it because you're gonna play like 20 30 maybe it was like almost 30 hours i think of just visual novel through this game before you even get to where the game actually begins well not just visual novel there's also like a whole strategy gameplay. Yeah, I'll talk about that in a second. And that is actually a really important part of why I like it so much. But it's a linear story, though. And the thing that makes it brilliant, the thing that makes it really exciting doesn't happen for 30 hours and then you start to be able to make choices. Right, it sounds crazy, but the thing is... It makes sense. You have to kind of... I'm sure it does. It's hilarious. It has to go that way. So, and I'll stay on that, I guess, and then talk about the actual gameplay part as well because there's also like a tactics strategy game that's quite good but um but in terms of the like branching narrative you have to play through a story that long because that's what makes it feel so exciting that you get to start changing it the the narrative like the way this narrative is set up is like you play through it one time and i would say that it is fairly clear as you're playing through the story that there are branches you're not seeing like even if you didn't know there was eventually going to be some sort of branching option you would just see like a character really unceremoniously die or vanish or something really mysterious happen that just feels like kind of abrupt and then dropped. And you'd think like, really, that's it? Like, surely I'm going to have a chance to see this again or like have this character in my party again. They have a whole move set and they like died immediately. Like, what the hell? So it's kind of clear from the beginning that like that kind of thing is going to come into play. But then once you make it to a certain point, you're given the opportunity to go back and start replaying stuff. And it's in lore. So it's like in the story. So at that point, you've played so much. You're so familiar with the story and the characters and the world. You have so much that you still want to know that it really feels like you're actually getting to go back to the beginning of something that you experienced and try it again and like make different choices and see what happens. And it's so exciting. Like it's so endlessly interesting. And that's especially because a new mechanic opens up. Like you can just rewind, undo a decision if you start doing one. And it just some of them just like lead to a bad ending like pretty quickly. And you can just go back to the last junction point and like try again. And there's what are there 100 endings, Jason? Is that right? There's like technically 100. So some of them are like jokes. I think some of them like aren't really major, but there are some really major storylines, too. And the more I play through this part of the game, I'm just seeing something I've never seen before. It's the feeling of a true multiversal story. We've talked about multiverses before on TripleClick and the challenges that they present to storytelling and how like a big problem with all these Marvel multiverse stories, for example, is like nothing matters because like who cares if this character died in this world? They're just going to come right back and the same actor will play them and will kind of pretend they never died. and then we also talked about i don't know a movie like everything everywhere all at once a movie that i really liked which was a multiversal story that like made the multiverse the point and kind of built its story around the idea that there are infinite copies of everyone and then told a really interesting story as a result and like that's the kind of multiversal storytelling that video games actually very rarely explore unless you count the fact that like reloading a save technically is like some sort of a multiverse, like outside of the fiction of the game. But I don't really think of it that way. Anyways, this really feels like that. You get to see these characters reacting in all these different configurations to all these different scenarios. You watch them like grow and then they don't remember things that you do remember, your protagonist does remember. And it's like constantly branching in all these different directions. It's so freaking cool. Like even now, and I mean, I have God knows how many hours left. I feel like I've gotten to know these characters in a way that I never really have in another narrative video game, just because no other video game narrative that I can think of has done something like this, where like the branches, there are a hundred branches built into this, you know, this like spiraling structure. It's incredibly cool. Like, I can't say enough about how cool it is. Yeah, I mean, I just want to give the caveat here that this game is too much. Like, there's so many routes and so many of them are so repetitive that it gets to be a little bit grueling. That said, it's still one of my 10 favorite games of the year. It's going to be on my year list. Same, same. It's like at Thanksgiving when you're just going up for thirds. and it's just like I mean this is good but by the end of it I'm gonna be bloated I'm not gonna be able to eat for another three days that's what playing this game is like I can imagine I was reading a steam review and they were like I played 400 hours and saw every ending I was like holy shit but I could kind of see it I saw every ending too yeah oh nice okay you've you've done all of them all 100 and wow good lord it so that's yes that is probably true at the same time like just seeing what it's doing and experiencing it the way that I am right now, like, it's so freaking cool. Like, even if I don't see every ending, which I may not do all 100 endings, like, I don't know. You should not. I'll probably just play until I want to stop. But like, or I might go read and like, look up what are some cool ones that are worth seeing. I will tell you. I will tell you. Nice. Okay. That would be even more fun. Yes. But like, just experiencing it the way that I'm experiencing, like seeing the way that they're telling the story is so flippin' cool. And then the last thing to mention, I know I've gone on a long time, but whatever, it's kind of a special one more thing. I think that the strategy gameplay is really fun so this is kind of a visual novel in that it's a lot of reading dialogue while like fun and like anime avatars pop up and their lips move and they all make I should say also they all make sounds they don't vocalize the way in Danganronpa they'll be like shut up you know or they say something in this game they all just go ah and all the female characters basically just make sex sounds the entire game and I don't know if you I'm guessing I had to turn off the noises. I love the music in this game. There are characters where you're talking to them and straight up, it's just a normal conversation between your character and one of the female characters and she'll just be like, ah, ah, ah, ah, because it's just her reaction sounds. But if you just listen to them without reading or following along, it's totally ludicrous. And especially because I skipped through the dialogue really fast, it's just like sex sounds really fast out of my headphones and it got totally ridiculous. Especially Nozomi, who's kind of the... Yes, Nozomi is the... Yes, she is absolutely like every one of her poor voice actors. Or her very talented voice actors. I don't know, maybe she had fun. Anyways, the gameplay is in between these sections, you'll get attacked and you have to defend the school from these attackers. And it's this turn-based, isometric view strategy game with a really fun and diverse crew of fighters. Each one is kind of scripted ahead of time, so you don't pick your team. It's just like whatever this situation calls for. A lot of them, it's like every single character. So it'll be, I don't know, like 16 fighters or something or 12 fighters on the field at once. And they all have really different and complementary abilities. And it's really well thought out and designed. And I just have a great time with that part of the game. And that's pushed this way above Danganronpa for me just because while the story is really cool and I'm liking it, the gameplay is like fun. Where in Danganronpa, it was always kind of obligatory. Like I really enjoy every fight. So, like, man, I can't say enough good enough about this game. Like, anyone out there, if you, like, feel like this kind of game, and if any of this sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend checking it out. And, like, commit yourself to that initial playthrough. It's really fun on its own. It's fun. It's, like, the music's great. The vibe is great. The writing's fun. It's funny. And the combat's good. But then it becomes something truly special, and it is, like, absolutely worth doing that. So, I'll stop there. That's enough. The 100-line Last Defense Academy. What a game. I'm so glad, Jason, that you endorsed it earlier in this year and that I decided to really stick with it. We will discuss more down the road. Maybe we'll even, Maddie, if you play some, we could even do a spoiler cast next year at some point. That could be pretty fun. Because there's a lot to unpack. Yeah, maybe Jason can tell us about the endings that we don't have to play. I totally could. These are like five-hour spoilers. It goes in so many different directions. I mean, so one thing you didn't mention, Kirk, that I'll just say real quick is that when you get to that second part of the game, this is a little bit spoilery sorry but like it's worth knowing um it almost turns in like different branches almost become different genres of story and like you wind up going i won't say what any of them are but it just feels like they just shoved a bunch of different games into this game yeah it's pretty cool when they do a little bit of that even in the main storyline and you can skip stuff you can like skip fights you've already done and like some of the like there are some of the busy work yeah it's just like do you want to skip this and i'm like yes please it's actually been patched to be even uh more skippable since i played oh nice um so you're playing a version with more quality of life so that's great nice um okay cool my one more thing is pluribus a show that we somehow still haven't mentioned on the show despite it being uh very much up all of our alleys this is the next show that's planning a beans cast well that's the thing so this is a new show from vince gilligan the creator of breaking bad and better call saul co-creator of it called Saul and um this is his next much hyped apple tv plus extravaganza it's set in new mexico stars a woman named carol circa played by ray sehorn phenomenal um and uh she is as the show says she is the the least happy person on earth and how she must save the world the most miserable person on earth she must save the world from happiness um so yeah i won't really get into this because we are going to do a spoiler cast probably at the end of January where we talk about the entire show once the first season is aired and we can really unpack it. Other than to say, I guess, two things. One is that I am really loving it and Ray Sehorne better win an Emmy this time around for all the time she was robbed. Better call Saul. They're going to deliver their screeners to the voters doors with stick it into the door with a knife. For real. For real. I mean, this feels like this show is such a... I've never seen a show, actually, that focuses on a single person for so long. And yet, well, first of all, period. And also is so captivating. I was reminded a little bit of some of Rebecca Ferguson's work on Silo, especially in the second season when she's totally alone. She has episodes where she's completely alone. And they were similarly fun to watch, just an actor figuring out how to communicate. But yeah, I mean, what Ray Sehorne is doing in this show is, like, unbelievable. The other thing I'll say is that if you thought Better Call Saul could be slow, oh my God. Like this, this might also be one of the slowest burns on television that I've ever seen or that I've ever seen. And it's still been captivated the entire time. And it's, it's really cool. I mean, I love it. It's just like sumptuous and so much fun to watch and so engaging. but uh i don't think it's gonna be for everybody because it moves so slowly and it is so willing to just spend 10 minutes on carol i don't know drinking orange juice or like going to the supermarket and and it's it's that's less mundane and boring than it sounds and um want my sprouts Yeah, you gotta get it. I love it. I think it's an amazing show. Very, very slow. Be warned if you're considering watching it. And I won't see anything else about it other than I recommend it and we will all be talking about it for real and like really getting in depth on spoilers as a bonus episode next month. two quick thoughts and I will be as circumspect as you have been as well one is that I think the premise is so killer that for me like Emily and I just talk about this show all the time my sister and I also just there's so much I just want to talk about it all the time because the premise is so killer that I don't even care if nothing happens like I I would actually I think that a lot happens but like I I have so many thoughts about every episode and well I didn't say nothing happens just to be clear it just takes a very long time for things sure I guess it doesn't feel slow to me but I think that's because I'm so engaged by the by the premise and then the fun fact that I will share is that Vince Gilligan got his start as a writer and then a director on the X-Files which I think explains some things about Pluribus and kind of feels a little more full circle and ties it it does feel like a little bit of that is in there with the Albuquerque and the Breaking Bad and the Better Call Saul yeah I didn't know that that makes a lot of sense I think if you if you watch Better Call Saul and if you remember that one episode where Mike has to find is like looking for a bug on his car and he spends like a solid 15 minutes just dismantling his entire car looking for that bug if you enjoyed that sequence then you will very much enjoy sort of it's true he really is great you know Better Call Saul and and Breaking Bad both were a big they were fond of the long quite like no dialogue set up like environmental storytelling sequence so that is that is a good point he's been exploring this kind of thing for long yeah 100 and i mean in this most recent episode that aired last friday just the the visuals were just like oh my god yeah what an episode of tv i was the whole time i was just like oh my god but it's so much different than breaking bad i don't know i don't want to i don't want to get too specific but breaking bad is very very plot heavy and that there are just like new plot reveals happening on every single episode new twists and turns and this is very much not like that. It's a very different type of show, which is really interesting to watch. And again, I love it. I thoroughly recommend it. But like my wife, for example, is not super into it just because it's moving so slowly. Alright, that is it for this week's episode. We will be back next week with our games of the year. And then just as a quick programming note, we will be off the week of New Year's and then we will come back the following week. So I believe January 8th to do our predictions, go over predictions for this year and make new predictions for 2026. Yeah, very exciting. All right. And we'll see both of you next week. See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. triple click is a proud member of the maximum fun podcast network and if you like our show we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximum fun.org slash join email us at triple click at maximum fun.org and find links to our merch store and our discord server in the show thanks for listening see you next time Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.