Fire Emblem, Wolverine, and Control Resonant (with Lucy James)

0:00The Fire Hose is on, and we are drinking up as many video games as we can. Delicious! Welcome to TripleClick, where we bring the games to you. For our first glass, we have a nice Fire Emblem forchins weave to be followed by and Sonny Axe Wolverine, and then a little spoonful of control resonant. Three games, three of us, but not quite the usual three. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Lucy James. Hey! Hey! Hi, Jason Schreiner. I know, but it's Lucy James. We have Lucy James with us today, because Jason is still in Japan, and Lucy, in case you didn't know, is the founder of the looking for .game newsletter, which is wonderful, and people should definitely check that out. Very helpful news. Also, the co-host of the Friends Per Second podcast. Very fun. Listen, Lucy, thank you so much for coming on the show today and being a . . .

1:03Thank you for having me. So is the play. A summary. I am thrilled to have you. And can I just say as the first member of FPS to come on the show, or that I've ever talked to you, I think that's such a good name for a podcast. It's so good. Thank you so much. I'm a real stickler about podcast names. FPS Friends Per Second is just a fantastic podcast name. I was joking. So we had a big Google Dark and I said, I'm sure that one is a joke. Oh, it was your pick. Oh, nice. It was mine. It was mine. And then the boys would just like, oh, that's it. That's it. I thought we would keep it. So thank you. Sometimes you just know. Yeah, we're picking about names here. So it's high praise coming from us. And if you know, then you also know that every week we talk about the fact that we are part of the maximum fun network, our podcast network that we love very much. And if you got a maximum fun, dot org slash join triple click, you can get our monthly bonus episodes. Most recently, we released a super double wide episode that was us talking about sopranos

2:07seasons four and five. I've been seeing sopranos for the first time. Jason and Kirk are seeing it before. It's been a really fun journey. So the bonus. It really has been. It's been a long time. It has a ton of sopranos content, but it also has us talking about video games and other TV shows and movies and our personal lives and all kinds of other wonderful things. Also our upcoming bonus episode for this month, which we have decided to call triple kiss is us soliciting dating advice questions for us. Giving dating advice. Giving dating advice. Can we give it or should we be soliciting it ourselves? Maybe we've decided we can give it. But I will say we've actually gotten a ton of questions at this point. So no need unless it's an emergency. I feel like I have to include that. Like if you're listening to this right now and you're like, but Maddie, I'm only now hearing about triple kiss. And I'll just I won't know what to do if you and Jason Kirk don't answer my question. But truly, we have plenty of questions at this point.

3:09I'm really excited to record that and get into that. That'll be a first for us. And since we have so many questions, maybe maybe we'll do it again. Who knows? Obviously triple click at maximum fund.org is our email. But hey, you don't even need to email us triple kiss emails. You can just email us regular listener mails if you want. And once again, to become a member and support our show, our wonderful listener supported show, you would go to maximum fund.org slash join triple click, get access to the bonus app, support us, all that good stuff. Okay. Enough free, Amber. Okay. Let's talk about video games. Shall we? Let's do. Yeah. So we're going to talk about a couple of video games today. We're fitting multiple games into one episode. And the first one we're going to talk about is Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave, which all of us have been playing. This is a switch to exclusive that came out very recently.

4:10And I, speaking for myself, I have been a three houses fan and not so much a player of other Fire Emblem games. So I did play and gauge and I thought that the combat was pretty fun to play in handheld mode in front of the television set. So I was really like, Fortune's Weave could go either which way for me. And I'm still only a few hours in. I think it's somewhere between those two games and my estimation. But Kirk, I really want to hear from you because I know that you were really excited for this game and I want to know how far you are and what you think about it so far. I am pretty far. I guess I'm like five or six hours in or something like that. It ate more of my weekend than I was planning on. I started playing it with a Coden Nintendo scent but it was at launch. So I've only been playing it the same time as everybody else. And I'm playing Kai's storyline. There are four different kind of protagonists that you pick pretty early in the game. And then you play through their storylines. You can play through all four of them. They're all very different in tone and design and kind of it really is like it's like

5:15the three branches and three houses only you can do them all if you choose to in the same playthrough. So I've played that much of Kai. I think on chapter eight of Kai's story if that helps orient anyone who is playing it. The game is really cool, especially the story stuff and the missions. I am much less enamored of the amount of busy work and I'm surprised if I myself a little more mixed on like the mercenary recruitment and just the kind of opacity of some of its systems and the way that I feel a little bit like I'm so overwhelmed at all times by information and the tools that the game gives me to sort that information are not quite up to the task. So I've found that a little challenging. I've had a good time in our discord actually just talking to people who've played a lot harder than me and getting advice from them on just like, okay, what do I need to be focusing on here and what can I exercise because I'm just cutting, cutting, cutting as much as I can so I can get those good story missions and kind of get that.

6:16But man, I am very curious Lucy what you think. So I would love to know and also your history with the series. Yeah, same. I had a great history with Fire Emblem. I had one that was on the 3DS and I forget which one that was. Might have been awakening. That was the first one I got into. Yeah, that was a great game. That sounds familiar. I really enjoyed that and then I kind of never went and played other Fire Emblems. I did get into three houses in a big way. Golden Deer for life. Golden Deer for work. I skipped and I skipped engaged. Decent choice. Yeah. I'm also doing ties. So I, me too, by the way. I really wanted to do that. Listat Griffith looking Alicard man. And this full on Alicard. Because you know, a girl's got a type. It feels like you should start with Kai though. Because Kai's on the far left. Yes. And once I started Kai, it feels like the game wanted me to start with Kai. So I guess I did the right thing with the beginner. Yeah. Sorry, left to right. Kai has such, it has such like Sora energy

7:20and from Kingdom Hearts and, well, I guess, more like Roxas energy and Kingdom Hearts 2 where it's like the two pals who just kind of tag along. And I'm really enjoying it. I totally understand what you mean about the busy work. I'm not as far in as you cook. But even the dungeon crawling stuff is very strange to me because I'd rather just be I'd rather be moving on my grid. I'd rather just give me the grid. Yeah. Can you explain what that means like the dungeon crawling? Because I agree with you. Thanks for listeners who haven't played the game. What do you mean by dungeon crawling versus other types of gameplay? So it's actually kind of strange that zero company, Zekom did this a little bit too. It pulling characters back into third person and you walk around in a dungeon and you come up against enemies and they're called clashes. So you're not on the grid moving things turn by turn. It is real time and you basically your entire party has a pool of health. The enemies have a pool of health and it's just whatever you chip down first. They are phenomenally easy.

8:21You can I never take more than six to eight damage in an entire dungeon. And there's also a way to just auto battle for you. And so I've basically just been doing that and sort of skipping to the end. I'm five thousand to the game but I'm already doing that. So it's a great way of getting XP. Yeah, but it just does feel a bit superfluous. Is that what it's for? Do we think like it is it is strange that that aspect is there. And that's also what I've been using in force so far. It is weird. Like why would you put a put a different type of combat into your game that you then make skippable, which is somewhat of an acknowledgement that this is an essential. It feels a little like you know, kind of mobile tie-in game or something like it just Yeah, I'm not really feeling it. I guess that's I was about to say that sounds harsh, but I don't mean it that way. But I kind of do. Like it's not when you then play a story mission, especially and playing as Kai, it's very

9:25easy for the first five chapters. But then the difficulty starts to ramp up and I'm only on normal. I'm a little baby about fire. But my do play with permadeath, but I play on normal difficulty. And it's gotten a lot harder. And man, each one of these challenges in the kind of Colosseum is really fascinating and engaging and difficult. There's all kinds of new strategies with every single one. Like I'm really, really into them and into the story. So then when I'm kind of doing this 3D kind of weird dungeon, it just doesn't feel that great. It's not that great to explore. The combat system is just totally watered down thing. I'm like, why am I doing this when the other part of this game also exists? Yeah, it's really strange because like if you think I was kind of thinking in my mind, it's sort of comparing it to maybe Final Fantasy XII. But the joy in the combat system with XII is that you've set all the gambits up and you are basically sort of masterminding watching your plan unfold. Whereas with this, there's no tactical element to it.

10:25It's just these are my guys. These are your guys. My guys are going to win, unfortunately. It sucks to be used. Sorry, sorry you ran into us. Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me a little, though feel of the dungeons reminds me a little of the dungeons in metaphor, Rifen Tazia. I thought about too because you have to run up to people and hit them face. Right, which is that persona thing as well. There's this little bit of kind of twitch. It's not really very twitchy, but you do want to attack first while you're in the dungeon. And just the feel of the world, it has a kind of insubstantial floaty feel to it that reminded me of metaphor. And I didn't love that part of metaphor, even though in metaphor, when you do get into a battle, then you're in the full metaphor combat system, which is very delightful and cool and well designed. So it kind of makes up for it with that. The thing is that that is like one part of the game that I don't like, right? And there's a lot of busy work too, which I've mentioned. And I kind of want to explain it, but also we're giving early impressions of this game. And I don't want to like just spend too long focusing on those parts. I don't like because so much of this game is really hitting for me.

11:29And I think it's really cool. It actually feels to me like a game that I could play for the next six months to a year. And almost like it was designed to be that. Like if you play through all four of the main storylines in Act One, then I think they all come together for Act Two. And then there's an Act Three, you know, I think this is like 150 hour game or something. And I could see myself burning out on it if I'm just like, all right, I'm going to finish this entire thing as fast as possible. But I really like the characters, the character designs, the music, of course, is killer. Fire Emblem music is always killer. And like I was saying, those like story combat encounters are I think just phenomenal. So far, anyways, I've found them so cool. Yeah, I've really enjoyed the story so far as well. And similarly, those big, you're in the grid, you're doing turn-based battling. It's Fire Emblem. That's the part that I'm really enjoying. And I totally agree with you, Kirk, like the kind of busy work of, there's like a recruiting mercenary system that just has me opening up a guide on my phone and being like, what's

12:30the best gift to give to each of these mercenaries? I truly don't want to deal with this system at all. I'm literally just- I have a Google sheet pre-saved of someone's already made. Just trying to get through this busy work so that I can get to the part of the game that I find enjoyable. And luckily, that's speedy enough, although it does provoke the question in me of like, well, why have a system like that if it can so easily be mastered through a spreadsheet. But hey, maybe that's part of the fun. Sometimes spreadsheets are fun. But I do look at football and man it. Look at the success of football and just- There are whole games that are nothing but this. That's true. Yeah. And it's all kind of building up to the parts of the game that I really do enjoy, which are those big, callousy and battles as you refer to them, Kirk, which is an apt framing because that's really what Kai is doing in his storyline. I don't know what it'll be like for the other three when we get to them, but Kai is basically battling to get this wish granted. If he wins this fighting competition and his father's been imprisoned for sort of archaic

13:35reasons and he's going to be executed and that's like the premise of his storyline. And he's pretty chill about it. So, yeah, my dad's going to die. Kai and his dad are both going to be chill. They're all kind of chill. Which is funny. And there is at least like a moment after the conversation has had where like his dad's being taken away by their prison guards and then Kai kind of like admits to his friends where he's like, I guess I'm not really feeling anything about this. That's right. Like he has a line where he sort of lampshades the fact that he's having no reaction to his father being dragged away. But it's all react and different grief is different. It's different. Yes, we do. It's true. Everyone deals with hardship in there. I was going to say that when that bit happened, I was sort of, there was a sort of knock plot, but it was like, you know, there was a person there who could have really overturned everything if you think about it. Right. There's a lot of that. I wish I thought it was just. There's a third character that maybe could have stepped in in theory and still come. Yes, maybe. I'm just going to get back and fight.

14:38That kind of big picture stuff, especially that I think that is something very jarring. We're not the only ones to point this scene out where it's a child's father says to him, you're never going to see me again and everyone's being weirdly chill about it. Like there is some writing that's a little off tonally. But also, I will say a lot of the dialogue is very funny and clever. There's a lot of really great writing in this game, or I suppose localization, where they've done a really good job of just including lots of fun turns of phrase and jokes. There's a lot of good sarcasm. Each character kind of has their own voice. So a lot of the writing is really working for me. And I'm very curious to see the other sort of, for the other three, I suppose, storylines, because they're all really different. That's what I gather. So these four characters to explain to listeners, Kai, who all three of us are playing as, is like a kid. And it's kind of the first sort of shown in kids' adventure story that I've seen in a Fire Emblem game. Fire Emblem games are actually kind of adult in their storytelling, at least. It's usually like war and people dying.

15:39And a lot of just sort of, I don't know, there's not a lot of kids' adventure vibes in Fire Emblem as much as it's kind of animated and feels a little bit like a cartoon. Then there's Dietrich, who is the Allocard character we're talking about. I gather his storyline is like really intense. And there's a lot of fighting. I think it's harder like difficulty-wise. There's like more intense battles. Then there's Lida, who is a very cool character, the musician. She's like a bard on a quest for revenge. I gather that her tone is very dark and very different from Kai, like that those two storylines are incredibly different just tonally. And then there's Theodora. I know Jason is playing as Theodora. And we're going to talk about this game again next week. So Jason will be able to speak to Theodora. Theodora is like the Amazon mega-babe punch you into the ground, like mommy, character of his. I'm glad that's a trope now, by the way. We deserved this. It should have been a trope for a whole lives, but at least now she's here. What I think is cool and what I've seen of the story so far is that the frame of this narrative, and this is set up at the very beginning, is that your character is actually

16:41none of those four people. It is a, they are like this other kind of spiritual figure who exists in the future where the world has been overrun by undead monsters. And then we're doing a terminator where like we want to travel back in time and then change our fate so that we can, you know, subtly shift these four characters' fate so that they can then come together to fight the big bad. So you've kind of, that's why you're able to jump between these different timelines. And your character is always kind of present in shifting things, which I think is a neat idea for a framing and also allows for these different tones and lets you play all four storylines without having to restart the game and play it four times, which I like just never had time for in three houses as much as I wanted to. And it's cool because playing as Kai, like as far as I've gotten, you're in these, it's like during this Olympic kind of, you know, heroic, this invetational, Colosseum competition where like all the greatest warriors in the land and from lands afar have like come so that everyone can fight. And you fight against D-Trick and Lida and Theodora or alongside them.

17:45And so you meet them, the first time you meet them, you fight alongside them, but then presumably I'm going to have to, I know actually I'm going to have to take them on in the Colosseum. I don't think I'm killing them if I beat them, but like it's going to mean that I think there are going to be like different alternate histories almost eventually. I can't really imagine how it works because I would have to think that each of these characters will win the heroic games in their timeline. And I think that's all really kind of, it's mind bending in a cool way, at least I'm into it. Yeah, I didn't really think about whether the characters were going to win in their timelines. That does seem like it also provokes a question of how that could work, but hey, we're revealing a bit of it. If it just gets like, just like five hours. Right. Yeah, maybe they all just survive or at the end something happens. I wonder if, I guess even thinking of Forchins Weave, the title, I could kind of imagine, even though there's so much metaphysical time, magic nonsense going on, that they come to the act one break when you've played everyone and it's like, okay, and now you're all in slightly different places where we're going to like weave you all together into one

18:47big army to fight the back guy or something that kind of feels like where it's going. That's not based on me knowing anything. That's just kind of like, my God. Yeah, I mean, again, we're all really early in the game. Yes. I love that. I love that prediction. I think that makes a lot of sense. That feels like as good of a place as any to transition the conversation to a different video game that I've completed playing and is not as fun to play according to me as Fire Emblem Forchins Weave. It is called Marvel's Wolverine. It is a game by Insomniac, the team, the studio, best known for making the Spider-Man games, which we've talked about on the show. A ton. I believe we even have a bonus spoiler cast about Spider-Man 2 that people can go back and listen to if they want to. Big open world Spider-Man games are swinging around New York. This Wolverine game, very, very different from that. It is a linear story that I completed in about 11 hours.

19:49It is a melee action game and it is very story forward. I am really curious what you think Lucy because I listened to the French for a second episode about this and that was before you had silently. You were like referee. I think you did a great job actually of sort of refereeing this conversation between a bunch of different people who had finished it and reduced it. Which is great conversation by the way. Really enjoyed it. Very interesting. We'll link that in the show notes. But we first, we forced Lucy to play it for us. So Lucy, what did you do at this video game? I was travelling and I had a laptop with me but I didn't have a Playstation. And so I couldn't have played enough to take in that conversation. But a good few hours in now. I think it is just fine to say that this game isn't for me. I have all the Marvel properties that X-Men are my favourite. I would not say that Wolverine is my favourite. But you know, just in terms of him playing as a playable character, it is always going

20:50to be that guy. He's recognisable, he's iconic. He is more in the zeitgeist because of Deadpool vs Wolverine or whatever that. I don't mind my own, my own, I can't bring myself to do it. And so this game is really interesting to me because I think it looks really good. Early on at least, I don't know about the ending or kind of where it goes from the middle onwards. But there are some story stuff that I like that it's doing. There are some moments between Logan and Jean Grey that I really like and feel like really cute and it just feels like a little lawyer looking in on something that I shouldn't be. But then when it comes to the combat, it's just very, very repetitive. And I've been bouncing between Blood of Dawn Walker, Control Resonant and this. And so it feels, I mean, I think the most damning thing I can say about Marvel's Wolverine's combat is that I was answering a bunch of text messages. I think I was even emailing you both with one hand and I was completing.

21:52Perry, Perry, Perry, Perry, Kill. I'm about to kill. With one hand. Uh-huh. Just squarcer, squarcer, triangle to jump. And then there are these sort of, this game would have killed. It came out in 2010. This would have been the bastion. This would have been the game that we held every tie into. I mean, between this and sort of like, even Arkham is really good to go back to now. Maybe not the boss fight, but Arkham Asylum and City, especially, like they are so great to go back to. I know lineage of Arkham is here and I feel like it's casting a pretty long shadow over this game. Sturved the test of time. Whereas this, it's kind of pulling in a lot of AAA design tropes that I'm not a fan of and that is the excessive hand holding. I know the, the fart gas as it's unfortunately that legacy on this game. It has been dialed down in a recent patch. But just in case the listeners don't know, Lucy's referring to the Wolverine's heightened senses, which allow him to sniff where different characters are going.

22:54So if he wants to trail somebody, there's like a glowing gas on the ground that he follows around. Obnoxious blue trail. Yeah. Which I believe Jean Park dubbed fart gas. Quite memorable. Yeah, I think Jean Park came up with that. Jean, yeah. Which is a very evocative turn of phrase to describe the linearity of the game and the kind of like this games version of yellow paint, I guess, is if you want to. And there's also white paint though. They have that. They have got that too. But the thing is, it's just, it just, the trend that I hate in AAA is that they, they desperately don't want you to lose attention for even a second. You can't get lost. They can be no friction. And there is no friction for me in Marvel's Wolverine. There are some nice moments I can just fully accept it's not a game for me. Kirk, where's your head at on it? You ended up beating it possibly because I said I was going to complete it and maybe that socially encouraged you to complete it because you knew I was not exactly. So I played a lot of it and I made this my one more thing last week.

23:55And then I just decided, well, I might as well finish it. I do kind of want to know what is going to happen. And I want to be able to talk about it with you, Maddie. So I went ahead and finished it over the weekend. So people have already kind of heard my broad thoughts on the game. It's kind of a mess. I really like Liam McIntyre's performance as Wolverine. I think some of the writing is great. There are things that I like. But I think the game is just really clearly shows to me that it was rebooted midway through development, which I suppose is something Jason has taught us happens to every single game. So that's not necessarily a sign of trouble. But it seems much more evident in this game than in some more successful games. It seems as though they were working on a more open world thing. Or are these big open world maps that somebody made that you do linear story missions through? It just has all the hallmarks of a game that had that happen. Jason was basically like, yeah, man, like that is what happened. Like I can't speak for him. But he was essentially saying that is the case. And we know that the creative team, the creative director changed midway through that I think more of the Miles Morales people, at least the director of Spider-Man Miles Morales

24:59was working on this to begin with. Again, that I quite liked Maddie. I think you also did. I did like, yeah. Lucy, were you a Miles Morales fan? I liked Miles Morales. Yeah, I thought quite a bit of that. I liked the smaller scope and was actually reminding myself of Spider-Man too. I was going back because I'm like, yeah, that was a cool game. But it was very like, for whatever reason, I've memory hold it. And then I was remembering things that happened in the game. So it was so hot. It was a nasty. Spider-Man one is the one, narratively at least. Where I'm like, that was a very strong story. And a good game. The two is kind of pretty messy. Anyhow. The thing out is that Miles Morales as a game is very focused and tight. Yes, right. And that can have a lot of benefits, actually. And is not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to this type of game. Right. And while I can't speak to the particulars of development, I could imagine in more of the Miles Morales folks at Insomniac coming up with a game that is once again a kind of limited open world game in the same way Miles was. And then it's not working. They're struggling. For whatever reason, they brought in a new creative director.

26:00These are the people from, I think it's two people from rationing clank, a rift in time. A rift apart. And that is not the name. It's a rift apart. A rift apart, sorry. These names are all the same. I can never find a straight. From the most recent rationing clank, which is like not my favorite Insomniac game. It's more of the console video gamey thing. And so they, I would, I get the sense rebooted it, turned it from an open world game into this linear game. And it just has all the hallmarks of a game where they're like, we built all this stuff. We have this story. We have all these pieces. We just got to put them together into something that plays from start to finish that looks like a complete video game. And now that I've finished it, yeah, it kind of feels like that. Like it's, it's pretty messy. And I set a lot about the comment before. And when, I think we'll talk some with spoilers right now because I just think that would be kind of interesting. I mean, not right now, but in this episode. Yeah, we'll give it a few minutes. But I do want to take a break and spoil the game for Lucy who has admitted to us ahead of time that she's fine with being spoiled. Yeah, I'm, I'm not going to finish it. But listeners don't worry, we'll warn you. We're not there yet.

27:01Kirk, go ahead. Yeah. So it's just like that narrative stuff, like it's, especially the relationship between Logan and Jean is really interesting. Maddie, you're an ex man expert. And I would love to hear a little unspoilery, like what you thought when you finished it, because I think that stuff is just interesting because it's totally new. A lot of what they're doing. And that's cool that they were trying to do that, even if narratively it's quite convoluted. And I found myself having to just go like, look up what the hell happened at the very end to really understand it. Yeah, this game was really strange to play as somebody who's familiar with X-Men comic books, but I would argue it should be strange to play for anyone who has even a passing familiarity with X-Men from, say, the live-action movies. Or the cartoon. Or the cartoon. The cartoon growing up because this canon in the game is very divergent from any of those previous ones. Specifically for Wolverine, which is like, this is a story that has been retold in those three formats.

28:02And many, many other formats, there's a bunch of different adaptations of Wolverine. There's even a Wolverine anime. It's really bad. No one needs to watch it. But like, I really have engaged with all of these things. And like, his storyline is usually, he's many hundreds of years old. At some point, he gets kidnapped by the United States government for a program called Weapon X. And fuse Atomantium into his bones. He has a healing factor. We all know that. They brainwash him and use him as a weapon. And that's why he can't remember who he is or what his past is. By the time he eventually meets Professor X and all of the X-Men. And meanwhile, of those X-Men, one Jean Grey would have been converted into an X-Men at a very young teenage age by Professor X. That's pretty much always her story as well. She meets her childhood sweetheart Scott Summers at that age, grows up already in love with him before Logan even shows up in her world. I didn't know that actually.

29:02I didn't know that they were childhood sweetheart. Igniting the love triangle, the love triangle for the ages. These are kind of like the basic plot beats that we're all familiar with. Every single thing I just said is not the case in this video game. Weapon X. It's not there. And that's obvious from frame one of the game. This isn't me spoiling the game. This is like the opening of the game makes this clear by having this character Nathaniel Essex, which is a name that comic book fans will know, but I think maybe other people will not, which is fine, is kind of the Professor X character seemingly at the outset of this game. And he recruits Logan to be part of Team X. It's not the Weapon X version of Team X. It's a different version of it. And this team is also going on Black Ups missions together. But the reason why Logan's memories are different seemingly doesn't have to do with brainwashing in the same way. And like that mystery sort of unfolds throughout the course of the game. It is explained by the end, but it's a different explanation than the one we know.

30:05And meanwhile, Jean, the Jean that we meet in this game, she's not a member of the X-Men because there are no X-Men. And that is a fascinating choice as well because this Jean, this version of Jean, is like she's a 40-something character. She's a fully adult woman. She's played by 40-something actors, which I think is really cool, by the way, that they cast older characters in this. But it also means that I'm like, as I'm playing this as a person familiar with these characters, I'm just kind of like, this is kind of a cool story, but I don't know these guys. That's fine. I'm clear, that kind of kept me going through it all because I was just like, this is like a what if comic? Or it's like, okay, what if Scott Summers never existed and Pressurex didn't exist and all the other original 5 X-Men didn't exist? And like, who would Jean be in that world? And what if Weapon X didn't exist? And who would Logan be in that world? And like, let's imagine, let's cast these characters into a world where those things didn't happen. And they fall in love organically with no other love triangle standing in their way.

31:08What would that look like? And it's interesting, but I also find it really strange that Insane made that choice because I'm like, these are such well-known stories. Like why you're taking away things that people know really well. And like as an X-Men fan, I actually like kind of backed my way into enjoying it just because it was so strange because I was like, this is such wacky choices. Like what are they going to do next? And like that kind of kept me going to the end of the game where they continue make choices that I'm like, all right, that's literally never happened in a comic book. We can describe in a second. But like, that was fascinating to me. However, another non-spoiler thing that we can get into, I just never revived with this game comp, games combat. I don't know how you two felt about it. I thought I'd quickly go over that before we break. I know some people like it. I went back and read some reviews now that I've beaten the game and was kind of surprised to see some reviewers actually really enjoyed it and were like, oh, I love the combos.

32:09I played it on hard and like really enjoyed the challenge. I just, I thought almost every enemy is a humanoid enemy. They're almost all the same height. Like it just, I mean, they're almost all the same. They're almost all the exact same guy. They're all the same guy. They're like, they're going to attack by three of the same guy. Yeah. Sometimes there's a bigger guy. Sometimes there's a bigger guy. Sometimes there's a bigger guy. Every now and then there's a guy who's like a couple of feet taller than you. And then like one time you have to fight a really big Sentinel. Well, a couple times, but like there's only one kind of like official. At the low point of the game, that Sentinel boss fight. Sentinel boss fight. So like that was, that was tough for me and really was part of why I have trouble recommending this game to anyone who isn't in my position personally of being like, I want to see what happens in this story because it's so strange and reads like a what if comic. And I just want to know what this Logan slash gene fanfic writer designed in a world of Scott's server says it exists. Yeah, I mean, I think I've seen a lot of people start it and be like, dang, this is pretty

33:12good. And I remember saying that as well, I started it and I was like, all right, this is pretty cool. And then over time, that's when the kind of repetitiveness, the skill tree is just, it doesn't have any branches. You just go straight up it. Yeah. Well, no, no, no. I go to a stage where it was, they were like, oh, you have unspent technique points, but they weren't unlocked in the skill tree. So I wasn't allowed to spend them. I was like, well, there's a lot of that. Like speaking of the messiness, that's just kind of got that. Okay, nobody like did a whole blow out of this skill tree at the beginning and then designed the game around it. It feels more like we had to make something that worked. So whatever, fuck it, we're just going to do like a linear skill tree basically. And the abilities you unlock are okay, but they're not that exciting. One gripe I have that's, I haven't seen anyone else make. I think that the, there's a very specific complaint I have about the cool downs of your special abilities. A lot of times when I'm fighting, I want to do the cool special abilities where you do unlock these kind of hit the trigger, press a face button and you do a kind of whirlie,

34:13you know, whirlie bird attack that kills a bunch of dudes or whatever. The thing is they have very long cool downs. I have to imagine that's because in Spider-Man 2, especially, I remember in that game, just only using special abilities because the cool downs were so fast and the special abilities were so good, it would be like, you know, the robot spider which shoot everybody with lightning or whatever. And I was like miles would electrocute like six people at once or whatever. So like, my thumb is tired from punching guys. So I'm just going to like bring in my robot spider to defeat everybody. So I can see why they slowed them down, but I constantly in this game found myself being like, all right, here's a fight. Oh, man, everything's on cool down. And then just kind of pressing the two buttons and my very specific tech piv is that many times, at least in the version of the game that I played, you would, Wolverine would do a big fight and always in the fight, you burn all your special abilities. So I would use all of those. They're all on cool down and I'd beat the final guy. And then it ends and there's a cutscene and Wolverine and Jean talk and they like go

35:13back to a place with their friend and have a drink and then they go to another place and then there may be another country or something and then they're getting ready and then another fight breaks out and I'm like, here we go. Let's fight. And then all my cool downs haven't budged. They're all still completely blanked out and I can't use the abilities. And I was like, wait a minute. Like, come on. At least reset these long cool. Yeah, he's an old man now. So that's my very specific complaint. I think it's a very fair complaint. I also think there is, I'm not going to like get into the ludon narrative, distance of it all, but I do think there is like an inherent trouble with adapting a character who literally cannot die into a video game where you can die. And like I do understand, like I understand that Logan has to be able to not be quite so powerful to be in this video game, but it is something that I found myself chuckling at from time to time. Also anytime another character like threatens to kill Logan. I'm like, do you know, do you even know who this guy is? Like this is one of the things they did.

36:15Man can't die. I wish I could remember because I've listened to a couple of different podcasts talk about this, but someone made the observation. It might have been a next lander that it feels as though everyone in a fight knows their role and is just doing it. Like because you can't imagine why any of these guys would be fighting Wolverine because like they're just going to die. Like how do they get the reavers to keep doing this? And they pointed out like there's an ability you can unlock where when you do a really gory, gnarly kill, it makes everyone like recoil. And so they kind of push back from you, but then they just keep fighting. They don't say like, wait a minute, you know, man, there's a moment in, I don't know if either of you remember this in Iron Man 3, the Shane Black Iron Man movie. There's a very funny scene in that movie where Tony Stark is like infiltrating the compound and he like takes out a bunch of dudes and he's like being the super effective fighter in the reximal and the last guy is there with a gun and he drops his gun. You know what? Honestly, like this was just a gig for me. Like I'm at any just leaves and like I feel like everybody in this game would do that.

37:18And right? Yeah. To tie on to that. That kind of Wolverine kills 10 million people in this game, like probably 10,000. So many. And yet it's this like little character. I think it's really interesting that Walt Williams is the lead writer or creative narrative director of course. He's credited. I mean, I think he at least. That's true. I just also want to know if there's a ton of other writers listed on the game and I was really curious about that process. Yes. He didn't soul lead right. Well, and the reason I mentioned that is so what Williams known as the lead writer of Spec Ops, the line, he's talked about that actually in his book. He wrote a book called Significant Zero that's his like kind of kind of reflecting on his life and his creative work and also on that game because that game was such a big deal to a lot of people. Spec Ops, the line of course is a third person shooter that does a lot of really daring and kind of crazy narrative stuff to implicate you, the player and the violence that your soldier players are like perpetrating. It's a really, it's an interesting game, a very flawed game. It has a lot of interesting ideas.

38:19And he has said as much about that game that like a lot of the stuff in that game was just a result of like the chaos of development and them doing the best that they could. And it was like a really challenging game to make. I get the sense that this also was a very challenging game to make and it like didn't break the same way where you don't end it thinking, wow, they really like said something interesting about violence in this game. No, it's pretty messy and that kind of just comes off in the writing. So I would imagine that so many of the narrative issues are just like all of these other issues are like born out of the what was clearly I think a pretty tumultuous development. I think for me the pacing of the game, this is actually a criticism I have around broader Marvel is that when everything is exciting, when everything is the end of the world, nothing is exciting and nothing is the end of the world. There's a bit early on in the game where you are, what are you doing? Like you're chasing down a group of rogue mutants that a gene is involved with and it's

39:20just fight, fight, fight, enormous set piece in a dock. Then an enormous set piece on a highway and you're on a bike. And the whole time I was just thinking there is nothing in here because there hasn't been enough downtime for me to properly enjoy anything and everything has been so samey. But then it got to the point where I think you're what was he doing? He was like jumping on and pulling a gun off a thing or doing something and it was all cut scene and I was like, this is the coolest thing he's done and you are not letting me the player do it. I'm watching it. Is this my reward? I don't understand that because that to me feels like a cop out. Honestly, I'm not going to say like, oh, I mean, I know it's going to be expensive and time consuming to do from the development side. But that's my kind of overarching thing is that everything just feels dampened because I'm doing so much of it. It's just, it's lost the excitement factor even going into, yeah, I'm going to bring up Arkham, but you know, there was downtime, there was investigations and you can see where

40:21Wolverine tries to do that, where it tries to have these quiet moments, but it is again too afraid to let you like exist in those moments of quiet because it wants you to keep going on and doing the next thing. So in Batman, every time you came up against, you know, a predator room or, you know, you are gliding around Gothamie, just see a bunch of thugs, you're like, okay, I'm going to go do that. Wolverine just throws it all at you all the time and it's, it is the Zac Branigan, I'll send waves after waves of my own men at them approach to game design that I am just not a fan of. Yeah, that early sequence where Wolverine is like chasing the mutants, I feel like that was also a press like that was shown at some big press. Yeah, there was a preview. I can sense that from games like this now where I'm in the first act and it's because it's the first act they can, they want to put it in the first act because narratively they don't want to be giving away story beats from the end of the game. There's this kind of like, it doesn't match up like in terms of the pacing of a story

41:22where there's this incredibly expensive looking like bananas, multi-tier set piece like action chase sequence that feels like the, what should be the end and instead is like happening kind of early on. I'm like, I feel like this was a press demo and then, and I think that that, I think that that one was. And yeah, oh man, we're going to get into spoilers and I guess before something to set that up maybe or a preface it is, I'm a huge defender of Arkham Knight actually, the third Batman Arkham game. I'm also an, I'm an Arkham Knight. Okay, I, I re-reviewed that for Kataku when I was writing there and did Stephen Arboss give me a ton of time to just like really play the hell out of the game and do this like super comprehensive re-review, which I did and I wound up thinking, God, this is an ambitious and remarkably successful storytelling experiment. Like it, I think what they're doing in that game where the, the Joker is in Batman's mind and a big part of the story is like understanding how that's working, like almost the mechanics of the Joker taking over Batman and the whole finale, you have to understand

42:24that like there are two people inside of Batman and the fear gas is like at this point, it's hitting Batman and at this point, it's hitting Joker and then Joker's actually, we're in Joker's nightmare here and Batman's nightmare. It's like really complicated like inception, Christopher Nolan stuff. And the first time I played the game, I was like, whatever, that was kind of a mess who knows. And then I went back and I truly understood it and was like, oh, that was actually really ambitious and they kind of pulled it off. That was really cool. With this game, I had the same feeling at the end, like I was saying to you, Maddie, I like went and looked stuff up and watched the secret ending and stuff because I was like, what the hell is going on with Logan and Jean? Like, what is this? And I do kind of just think it's a mess and I don't think I'm going to go back if I ever re-flated and be like, oh, they kind of really nailed this. I don't really think so. Yeah, maybe we should go ahead and bark for spoilers here so we can totally see about it. Like, this game goes. Please do. Yeah, okay. I'll do the thing where I will remember to say the timestamp. Okay, the timestamp to skip to for one more thing to avoid the Wolverine spoilers is one hour, three minutes, and 39 seconds.

43:26That's one hour, three minutes, and 39 seconds. Okay, Maddie, let's get into spoilers. Okay. I'm ready. This game is a true romanticie story in the end. Yeah, I really, it's really a real man's story. It goes full romanticie. Yeah, and it creates, again, this is like holy original. Like this is- No, you're right, it is romanticie story, Maddie. I'm just realizing what you're saying and it's very true. Yeah, so like, it's, you know, how in romanticie stories, like it's like the women teams, the beast, like, it was kind of going to Twilight with it by the end of this game in some ways that I was just like, okay, like I, again, this really feels like a Logan Jean Shipper wrote this game. I don't know if that literally happened, but there's some big fan fiction vibes that like kind of came out of nowhere at the end of this game. So I think most people know Jean from like the many times the Phoenix saga has been adapted. Usually, pretty cool.

44:27No, they don't really know. So in this version, Jean just kind of like has reincarnation powers and that's never really explained. And so much- It is the Phoenix Force, right? It's like taking her- Yeah, that's me. That's my head, Hannah Kirk, but I wouldn't say that's the game's explanation. Okay. It's at least alluded to where they're like, she's a real Phoenix that one or whatever. Yeah, they kind of like, Logan's kind of version of himself in his head that does remember Jean from past lifetimes because it turns out they've known each other from many lifetimes ago. Right. He kind of like talks to himself as mine during the sort of like astral plane memory sequence near the end of the game where Logan finally starts putting some pieces together. And if you've been doing these just absolutely odious nightmare door sequences in the game that we didn't even talk about, but they're like deeply unfun little like puzzle rooms. I can't even call them puzzle rooms. Placed in the middle of like a chase sequence. Yeah. Why would Logan be leaving in the middle of like a really breakneck fight to like go

45:28do a memory memory door? They're like, look, we made these and we had to put them somewhere. He's working on himself. Okay. He literally is like that guy who shows an old, he's the only time my therapist could do. I gotta go do a nightmare. Right. Anyway, so he goes through these nightmare doors and at the end of each one he'll like recall a memory and like sometimes those memories will like involve him pursuing a red head. He'll be doing it in like 1932 or something and like I'm playing this and I'm like Logan's pretty into red heads. Like there's definitely some past red heads of Logan of your like, you know, sure, maybe this is like a Heather Hudson or whatever. Like Rosa Herra like, okay, like we can throw in some other red heads from like Logan's many 200 years on this planet. I don't know. No, it turns out all of those red heads are reincarnations of Jean and that she also kind of existed in past versions over the course of the 200 years. It's unfortunate that listeners can't see Lucy's face right now. I know. Lucy's just twisting. Selling a whole story. A face into like squinting. Like really?

46:29Okay. The fries squinting meme of just like, what are you telling me right now? And so Jean has also somehow forgotten that she is this reincarnateable being, which again in my mind, I'm just like, okay, let's just say it's the Phoenix Force and every time the Phoenix Force becomes somebody in this past, it just happens to become a beautiful redhead that looks like Jean Grey. Fine. Okay. And in all of these versions of reality, Logan and the Phoenix Force find each other have some type of love story and usually Jean kind of like, tames the beast inside him. And like in this canon, like I said, there's no weapon X. And I would say the implication is that like apocalypse, who's also kind of like this eternal villainous figure in X-Men canon. That's generally true. Kind of recruits Logan as the horseman of death. It's some unspecified point in time in the past. And that's how Logan gets his power up, which is plausible. And like happens in the comic book storyline later on after Logan like loses that on

47:30a man. It doesn't matter who cares. They stick that in in like the past. And they're like, that's how Logan got his out of man. I mean, he's kind of like haunted by this time when apocalypse like made him become this death figure and like that time in the past is also when the hand worshiped him as this death god. And that's why the hand is obsessed with Logan in the present day because they like have memories of him. So that's why he was reflecting on being a death god. He doesn't care about being a death god, which he essentially is. I guess it's like why in the hand chapters, they keep talking about this guy who looks like Logan and they're kind of worship him or they used to worship him. And it's because it was him because of apocalypse made him the god of death, which is kind of from the comics. It's totally cool. Yeah. I mean, it's like it's sort of time displaced. But like, yeah, again, apocalypse has had Logan in his in his clutches before. So it's not like totally unheard of. And I'm saying God of death, but he's like a horseman of the apocalypse. Yeah, but he's a horseman of death. He is death the horseman of the apocalypse. But in the hands estimation, he's a god of death.

48:32And like so that kind of like God of death meets the Phoenix force in this sort of tortured romanticist storyline that plays out. He's 100 years and they'll always find each other. And that's kind of how it ends is that there's like this big culminating fight with Nathaniel Essex, who of course, with Essex is Mr. Seneser. And I was kind of curious how this comes across for like maybe you Kirk wouldn't have necessarily known that Nathaniel Essex was going to turn out to be a bad guy. Was that like a twist for you? Because as soon as I heard his name, I was like, oh, okay, yes. It wasn't for me because I he was just so evidently evil to me anyways. Like he has read his eyes are like dark purple red and he when he does his power moves, like the music is like, oh, yeah, exactly. And just he seems like clearly this and then over the course of the story, it's like, oh, everything this guy is doing is the kind of thing that Super villain in X-Men does. And also Troy, Troy was giving it the English accent.

49:34Yeah, she knows. That's how you know. He was so evil. He was so bad when they're an English gentleman from Victorian times. I get the sense Troy Baker has enjoyed playing villains lately. And it just I was like, this guy is going to turn evil like this just has to be how this goes. And then at some point very early on, I think I saw actually what's his name from from married story and from girls what Adam driver was like cast as Mr. Seneser. Oh, yeah, he's playing Mr. Seneser in the live action upcoming. Yeah. And so I saw that and I was like, oh, that's the same guy. That's kind of wild that this game has that's he's like the villain in the upcoming episode. Yeah. And I was kind of curious about that too, given that Jean in this version of the story is sort of like this vigilante who works with characters led by Kylisto who in the comics are referred to as the Morlocks, but in this they never actually use that word. But that's who all those characters are. They're like in X-Men comics, they're known as the Morlocks because they're all mutants that can't pass for human. That's like what binds them all together. And they like live in the sewers much like Morlocks in the time machine do.

50:37And that's kind of held here in this game as well except that Jean is a part of that group even though she can definitely pass for human. And that's like kind of the closest the game has to an X-Men storyline, I think. And at the end of the game it's like sort of implied that maybe Jean will become a leader of some future group. Anyway, I kind of enjoyed the Mr. Seneser stuff even though it was really campy. I thought that was like fun. And obviously it was right. And like I enjoyed it. I saw some people saying they felt like it was rushed and that's fair. To me it wasn't. To me it was like super dragged out because I was like, we got to know Mr. Senesers. Because the combat's so annoying that there just came a point where I was like, I just want to know what happens. I'm so sick of fighting the Sentinels and whatever. Like I just don't want to do this anymore. But the other complaint people had that I saw that I think is a little more fair is that at the end of the game in order to save Logan from ever being like haunted again by this apocalypse death drive that he has that's embedded in his psyche. He asks Jean to completely wipe all of his memories, like including that stuff.

51:41And so she gives him like a fresh reset at the end of the game, which means he doesn't remember her and their long and tortured romance arc that they've had over many hundreds of years and it's sad. All those night memories gone to the end of the game. All the quote unquote therapy that he was doing is gone. And so he leaves at the end of the game and is like, I don't know you, bitch, and just walks away. And he's like, he's kind of like he kind of backs baby. I don't know who you are. Bye. Like it's strange. Yeah. So I think that story, like I'm actually kind of a sucker for like lovers across time who keep finding each other. I don't know. I love that shit. And I have always liked that. Like when I was a kid, I just have very strong. Like this is my first love triangle memories of watching the animated show and being like, oh, but he really likes her. Why is she with Cyclops? He's a dork. Well, Wolverine's dork chart and like he's real man.

52:41He's brutal. So I like that as a story. I don't, I'm not sure like where that came up. Like it just has the feeling of something that was sort of super imposed onto an action video game where like there could be a comic run even like an alternate history comic run or something that told a story like this that could be really cool if that was the real centerpiece of it. And I do think that those two actors and their scenes together are great. There are some really nice romantic scenes where they go to the casino or whatever and they're like dancing together and you're spying and like, yeah, I love that scene. I don't know. They have chemistry and there's it's really it's cute and it's just fun to see them actually get to be a couple in the way that they so rarely are. So I like that in theory. It's just that like putting that into this game is a little odd and also I guess I came away from it thinking as wild as all this stuff is especially for an X-Men fan like it's just totally out of left field. It's also it feels to me like this could all just be a setup for the X-Men to come together

53:41because presumably in some way I can still making an X-Men game and that just at the end of this. So one thing that happens at the end that you didn't mention that he that is pretty minor but like saber tooth goes and finds apocalypse or whatever. Yes. And then the dialogue makes it sound as though he is now going to be war. So he's going to be the worst minute of the apocalypse that is war and he's going to be the new big bad which also side note saber tooth rocks in this game like he's actually amazing. I'm enjoying saber tooth. Honestly, the saber tooth Logan dynamic is the same in the comics like this is one of the things that they keep and I'm like that's kind of cool that like some of these characters are like have the same dynamic. Now they don't have the same backstory there so there's like no explanation for why they have this dynamic because like weapon X didn't exist and they didn't come up together in it. And so instead it's like well how did they get this way but I was kind of fine with it at a certain point. There's a scene there's a scene Lucy that you probably haven't gotten to were Wolverine and and saber tooth like attack this facility together and and like it's so much fun because it's like them finally working together and they're terrifying.

54:44They're just like ripping this place apart and saber he just keeps being like you love in this aren't you man and like there's a lot of like dudes rock kind of like they it's it's great and like the two actors have so much chemistry it's like really popping that whole part was popping so much for me. So anyways all that is to say saber tooth a highlight of this game honestly and when Wolverine does kill him it's very funny because he like falls off a cliff or something. Another moment where I'm like he's not dead when we you got a quick you got a quick couple tap in this universe. I that was another moment that I was just like are we supposed to pretend like cut his face on. I don't understand like the emotional arc of this scene is not landing for me and then like later mystique is like mad at him for pushing saber tooth off a cliff and I'm like I don't know why he's probably also he's a huge dick like just anyone actually really like him other than me as an audience member. I you know I don't know I did feel for him there's like this one pivotal moment where saber tooth like kind of turns to Logan is like you didn't ask me to come with you and I was like it's great a great a great moment there are these moments and you can see

55:48the the game that you know if they hadn't had all these troubles. Yeah like they have that's the thing that's the thing that was something in there was there's occasional scenes that I think are really great and like some of mystique scenes I thought were really great to her I felt like she was like really herself quote unquote in like how tortured she is as a person and she's like I never really am anyone and like I thought that writing for her was pretty on par with her comic book persona in a way that I enjoyed even though they very randomly have her married to this character tiger who's like an extremely minor comics character that she's like never even mad in the comics and it's like okay like I don't I don't know it's fine I again I'm just like everything I say I'm like I don't know how we got here but it's like a potluck and just reaching in and going okay tiger tiger is married to like having some macaroni and cheese and then we're having like some scrambled eggs with it and then we're having like a steak and it was like what is going on what is this meal

56:50there's no vegetables in it I don't know yeah I liked mystique I mean I like mystique a lot as a character just because there's so much you can do and what's cool about the X-Men it's that it's like that old buffy thing right where like each power is a metaphor for something that people struggle with you know just we didn't literally embaste buffy on x-Men really I actually didn't know that but it totally makes sense like like buffy is like a direct kitty pride allegory I mean there's a reason why they have some more vibes yeah it's a good thing I would say it's one of the stronger choices you make oh yeah it totally makes sense and like when you have like rogue you know rogue can't touch anyone and so it's like oh like I you know there's that's there's so much broom for pathos there and with mystique it's like who am I really you know that is the question it's like I know she's a walking identity crisis and that makes her an interesting character and I wanted more of her and it is like also yeah tiger tiger I'm not familiar with her wife like they own a bar together in madrepoor I guess this isn't from anything so there's not gonna be a friend and then kind of a bummer that tiger tiger is just sort of her like bummed out spouse who's just like like what are you even doing like they seem to be disagreeing a lot in this story in ways

57:55that I was like I don't really get this like one then you leave us to they were not hungry some night medals gonna be opening up for them they can couples couples night medals yeah you going together and you fight waves of enemies and then your marriage is stronger when you do you do wonder about the the mystique game or certainly the gene gray game I mean one of the things that happens throughout this game is like gene gray seemingly could just like annihilate everybody and any of the fights that I'm in instantly she's so powerful which is true of gene gray right like yes she is an incredibly powerful mutant yeah she's an omega level mutant it's true so and then the way the game ends with gene like walking toward the camera I'm like oh are we gonna get a gene gray game next or is that just gonna be our way in to like her finding professor acts and cyclops and gambit or whoever or maybe becoming the professor I mean was she originally playable I had read like rumor that she was supposed to be playable at some point there was just be like switching

58:56back and forth she's in so much of the game that that would not surprise me it would have made it seems like they could have built a lot of her powers you know into it but again it's like if if a character is too powerful then it's not interesting it's time I think that's an inherent problem with these characters but that's part of why I'm like the fun part of this game if if there is any fun to be found is in this story that just doesn't always fully succeed like we've kind of listed off some of the things that I think are really fun about it but like every other scene I'd be like this just isn't landing and I feel like I don't totally understand the character's motivations in this moment and then like the next scene I'd be like okay I can kind of map this on to who I think these characters are based on what I know about them and I can like bring my own emotional baggage I guess to the table and like let that carry me through in some form but that's almost unfair because it's like well the things I like about the game or the times where I'm like they kind of remind me of my guys and I like those guys and like that's fun but it's

59:56it's inconsistent it's it's tough it's kind of left me not knowing how I feel about the game honestly like more so than usual I don't know if I really hated this because it did have some moments that I thought were really interesting I think I don't hate it who wasn't playing it I'm just like I'm just like going jump up here and jump up here it's very hard to look at you to be very good looking well acted AAA game that is remarkably frictionless but that's not a bad thing like it sounds it sounds like a back kind of compliment but honestly it's just can it's a vibe it is a vibe yeah and I mean it seems to be selling well like it seems to be like you know which is kind of it's nice just in this day and age honestly even while I have a lot of critiques of the game like the worst thing that could happen is it comes out it was clearly a mess and difficult to make and then it doesn't do well and then insomniac suffers for that I'm like but insomniac make another game by all means like make another over a game like keep doing this you know keep this cast around keep keep in this direction like this had a lot of cool narrative

1:01:00ideas and it seems like those ideas were just necessarily suborned to the chaos and the reboot and the fact that they they had to fit stuff wherever they could to make this kind of shambolic game that they could ship that was fun enough to work and that's kind of what they did and like sometimes it seems in game development that's what you got to do and yeah I definitely you know it was a pretty messy game for me in a lot of ways despite the moments that that did really work yeah yeah I'm really curious where they're gonna go from here though because it does seem like this is such a different world from the one that I know that I'm just genuinely curious I'm like I want to see them make another game in this world because I'm gonna have no clue where it's going and no way to predict it and that can be kind of fun too like that that's really daring for them to make that decision and I think the changes could end up continuing to be really interesting because I definitely didn't hate all of them and found some of them to be really creative and cool so uh that's that's Marvel's Wolverine so weird game that I like to dislike at different points in time

1:02:03while playing it and with that let's take a break and then come back for one more thing yeah friends it's your captains Janet Varnie and John Hodgman as we come in for a landing on season three we want you to know at all episodes of this season the V-Clubis model are available now be ready to binge hours devoted to the yellow hammers of Alabama a tree octopi or octopuses of Washington or Washington and motto is official unofficial Latin and otherwise from states like Nebraska here we are again all e-Clubis model episodes are available now on maximumfund.org or wherever you get your podcasts we hope you've enjoyed your journey with us and we look forward to traveling with you again soon please stay seated until the podcast comes to a complete stop hey like this hey hello what animal has the most teeth I would guess a shark a snail no snails don't

1:03:06have teeth they have thousands and they are freaky looking no I don't want that to be true okay did you know that the hippocampus in your brain is named after the half horse half fish see creature found in Greek mythology I didn't know that but we're making animal trivia and hippocampus isn't a real animal well that doesn't matter on comfort creatures you're right it doesn't matter at all comfort creatures as a cozy show for lovers of animals of all shapes and sizes real and unreal if that sounds like your cup of tea then join us every Thursday a new episode on maximumfund.org and we are back it's time for one more thing Kirk why don't you take it away sure I will take it away with a new video game that I believe is out today the day that you will be listening to this which is control resonant the new one from remedy entertainment and a game that I've been playing over the weekend Lucy I gather you have also been playing it over the weekend yes so I'm like three or four hours and so this is really like early impressions kind of similar to us talking about Fire Emblem

1:04:07where we're going to do a dedicated triple play of this game in a couple weeks just like we will with Fire Emblem and I'll have played a lot more of it by then so I just kind of want to share some early impressions because it's out and I feel like some people will be curious what I think especially as our shows I'd say most rabid remedy fan the one who likes all their games and even likes the things that some people don't like about their games so I I have been playing this game with great interest so control resonant man where to start with this game I didn't know anything about this when I started playing Lucy did you know like that it was open world and it was in the city and stuff like yeah I did a preview like they had a couple of digital previews for it and then I did I played it at summer game first oh god okay they had they had a like a two hour I think hands on bit so I played from the very beginning and then a later mission uh the sinkhole if you if you if you're you're there yet a sinkhole mission hmm uh I think I am oh yeah I know what you're talking

1:05:10about yes I've played past that so yeah I've played like through a few areas and beaten a few bosses and definitely have some thoughts so I guess to really quickly nutshell it this is a direct sequel to control which I believe is a 2019 game I might remember in that right I'm going off the dome here I didn't take good notes and you play as Dylan Faden right Dylan who is Jesse Faden's brother Dylan was kind of the antagonist or at least the Mcuffin of the first control and in the first control Jesse entered the federal bureau of control a secret government organization dedicated to basically the back rooms like to what we now think of as like back rooms aesthetic like uh I don't know what's the like SCP foundation SCP inspired thank you SCP foundation like government like a bunch of creepy crawler's and yeah bureaucracy horror how are you tillitarian yes brutalist architecture and lots of like possessed items that go to other dimensions so she broke into this building looking for her brother who had gone missing because the two of them discovered a slide projector that was like possessed by an entity from another dimension and then that led

1:06:14to a really wild and incredibly cool story I thought opened a whole new like a rift into this extra dimensional world that remedy was building with all kinds of cool stuff and in particular a villain called the hiss that is basically a nefarious frequency which I just think is very cool that it's like it's just a sound almost that just travels like it's it's not a consciousness except that it is very cool idea for a villain and these games are filled with that kind of thing so anyways that game was very cool we've talked about it we did a beanscast in the bonus feed like years ago about control one then came Alan wake 2 which actually tied to control in a lot of ways the federal bureau of control turns up in Alan wake 2 so remedy is kind of expanding their cinematic universe and connecting things and here we are with control resident where you get to take control of Dylan who has now been cured of the hiss possession in the first game and has become he has become like forced warrior on behalf of the fbc he has like a chip on the back of his head that'll kill him but he has a lot of powerful psychic abilities and is very useful in the battle

1:07:19that is ensuing which is happening because the hiss is escaped from the federal bureau of control and gone into Manhattan which is very bad because it's possessing people and turning them into monsters but also there's something else going on there's like some kind of a like resonance frequency cascade event that has caused New York to completely lose the thread with physics and reality it's essentially become the version of New York in the deep subconscious of inception where like sometimes the walls the roads are going up and sometimes they're on the ceiling and everything is like is folded around onto itself into a big series of weird cubes and things are cascading and mirroring and copying all over the place and then the game itself is actually kind of reminds me of an infamous game here like a it's a third person open world superhero game more or less where you can fly a ish and jump and and there's a bunch of encounters all around and little puzzles and then you can solve the little puzzles or you can chase down story missions and fight bosses and I don't know I've seen some slightly mixed reviews on it I guess for my part I think this game

1:08:21rocks I think it's so cool just because it's so visually amazing at every turn there are things that happen in this game like it's playing with three-dimensional space in a way that a game like gravity rush did I think of gravity rush when I'm playing this where the world is so like inverted and complex and beautiful and these really striking and disorienting ways and I just find myself repeatedly just like laughing and be like man this is so cool like look at this how are they even doing this and then that's on top of the lore which is cool you know the feeling of you know discovery or being these little hints of kind of weird devices and strange occurrences that happen and then really fun little puzzles where you'll see like a lot of times there are stores that you can go into because you're just on the street in Manhattan and it'll be like a you know a laundromat and you go in and there's actually a little puzzle where the cash register has something funny written on it and there's a note by the door and you realize like oh there's a puzzle and if I actually enter the right number on the cash register a secret door will open in the back and then that leads you into

1:09:24this very back rooms kind of you know space where it's like the FBC has all these depots or whatever and just a feeling of like constant mystery hidden all around us and even underneath the layer of reality that we're looking at that there I think so fabulous at exploring in these games that they conjure with such consistency and such beautiful artistry that like the combat is like it's fine it's kind of repetitive like the bosses are like okay but it's not on a moosh on a moosh or whatever like it's it's not like top tier combat but the it's so enchanting and engrossing that I just seem like I just want to keep playing this because the vibes are so cool so that's my early impression at least I haven't played enough to maybe get sick of the repetitive parts I haven't gotten to the end to maybe find the story disappointing but so far I'm finding a lot like the things that I wanted from it are really really there and I'm enjoying it more than I even thought I would especially when I learned oh it's an open world superhero game oh maybe I'm like is that a good fit for control for this world it's working for me so far but Lucy I'm curious what you think from what you've played

1:10:26I'm also a huge remedy fan I have the nightless night posted oh you do you do I go like the Alan Wake thermos and everything it's not known it's for now noticing all those Easter eggs throughout the call that we're leading up to this moment a very specific thermos the way my my shelves and my oh my god I will not do that but no and so I play oh I really enjoyed what I played a bit and I think the thing with remedy games that is all just about everything in it feels so purposeful and striking that even though they're not handing out all of the answers about what the hell the FBC has been doing or the heirs or anything it's like I don't want those answers because just being submerged in that world is interesting enough in terms of the combat I'll take a step back not in terms of the combat but in terms of getting around the world navigation talking to people reading notes and everything control resonant is sort of like the kind of opposite to Wolverine where with Wolverine there is little to no friction whereas in control

1:11:30you have to read signs the map is not good that is a picture of remedy games like the map is not good and it's very disorienting like the world right is so disorienting yeah and until so sometimes you will be walking on walls or you know like in different planes that you're used to and so it's a game that demands attention and then rewards you by just absolutely being like this absolute feast for the eyes and ears I also really love the sound design I think like you said like with the hiss being this entity that can take over by just you hearing it and then they've just done really incredible things with sound work both in the open world and when you are up against enemies it's just it's sumptuous it would be the word I would just square and then and then also it's just like you know there are those Jesse who was the main character of the original control the director of the federal bureau of control has gone missing the last thing she did was take this

1:12:31spear sword thing and just put it into her brother's chest and that woke him up and now that is his weapon and there's also just like even the little the little things about that weapon the abrid you know he's sort of tossing it to the side after he strikes it you know like discarding these he's sort of like how maple does it an overwatch it's just like just throwing stuff to the side it transforms it changes form and so yeah and then so it's all about Dylan and from what we knew of Dylan in the original control he was he was not the brother that Jesse grew up with he was taken over by the his he was just kind of annoying yeah just speaking with him weirdo yeah weird little freak and now he is this very you know he's this quite boyish charm to him he is this character who is just you know he's reckoning with the fact the fact that he did something terrible years ago we're not necessarily under his own control but he was responsible for the deaths of a lot of people and is now trying to make amends trying to find his sister and then you have resistance within the

1:13:34bureau itself where they are screwed by an hat and his screwed they need every help they can get but a lot of them a lot of the characters you can come up against will have lost people because of Dylan and so there's this great little push and pull there where they're kind of reluctant to accept his help but they know they desperately need it and I really enjoy that you know the relationship that Dylan has with Zoe a new character for resident who is his handler and she is this very gotta get the job done gotta get the job done but she's kind of warming up for him in certain ways she loves music and they're doing a cool thing with you know if you do certain story beats you unlock another track on her her mix tape that she always has I'm I'm really enjoying it I'm not as far as I would like to be the one thing I will say is that I think tuning of the difficulty is maybe a little off the original control was difficult this one I'm finding it more difficult but I would say that is because I have repetitive strain injury and so I can't be doing yeah playing Wolverine this and Dawn Walker has kind of been a bit of a nightmare but credit words do the assist

1:14:36and accessibility things that they have put in control resident are incredible I tweaked my damage output just a bit and I increased my like the stagger and that has made it much more manageable for me and I'm not getting penalized for it it is more comfortable experience for me and I'm just really glad that that is all in there from day one that's amazing because control one did not have all of that stuff from day one and I know it was added later yeah but I remember what is it that tamasee fight in controls like notorious yeah that's like the stopgap for a lot of people and I still I don't know it's a tough one this yeah I'll totally coastline that I reduce like the damage that I take to like 80% because I was just absolute on health constantly in fights and maybe I'm just bad I don't know I but I just wasn't having that much fun I was like oh another group of guys and they weren't even a story fight it was just sort of some enemies in the world and like here we go and then I'm just kind of really up against the wall and that some people will like

1:15:38that for me it really helps it just make that one small change and it is it is something they added to control and I heard from a few people about that because when I played control that wasn't in the game and I kind of just work my way through it but then they added these like amazingly granular controls you know and you can make the game harder for yourself too so you can take more damage or do more damage or you know increased dagger etc and this is something that has come up many times Lucy on our show talking about I started with silk song because I wound up playing around with some mods for silk song that were very similar to this where it like increased hornets damage output by something like 10% it was a tiny amount but it just had enough of an impact that it made the game more enjoyable and I was like it I came away from it thinking this should be a norm and I think that it is gradually becoming a norm I think we're seeing more and more games give these options and then when we were talking about me and the hollower earlier this year that's again that almost gave too many options for some people and people felt a little overwhelmed by it or not sure how to optimize their playthrough but I think it's really cool that more and more

1:16:41developers are playing with this and I applaud remedy for sticking with it and like putting all those options right there in the menu and like not shaming you for using it they tell you very clearly there is an intended way to play this and that's with assist mode off so like if you want what we intended play that like they don't you know they're clear that that's what they intended but then go ahead like play with it if you want and it's totally made the game like more fun for me because I'm here for the vibes and the story for the exploration I like the fights they should feel a little challenging which they still do I just don't need it to quite push me that hard and yeah I have I think that's a great feature that I'm really glad is in the game yeah I'm really relieved to hear it I haven't started this game yet and I'm excited to start and I remember just like strong arming my way through some of those early control fights and like yeah I beat the game the hard way but like it there were definitely moments where I wish it had just been tuned slightly differently and it's it's that thing too where like at the beginning you just don't have as many abilities and powers and Dylan is just super underpowered and by the end I'm sure he's going to be like a god on earth you know and and by then I might just kick the difficulty

1:17:44that's what's great about control once right which is more consulted right so I can imagine changing it as well but anyways yeah we'll talk much more about it in a couple weeks when we do a full episode on it but I I'm very positive on it so far I gotta say it's a very cool game the movement too yeah feels good to be around it runs great I'm like an NPC and it runs really well I'm like I don't have a super powerful PC but I am continually impressed with remedy with just how gorgeous and well made their game seem to be like that engine they use whatever it's called it's like no flight yes that's right North light some very impressive technology cool all right I'll go next so I've been reading this ongoing manga that because it's a manga it has a very long title and the title is going to tell you exactly what happens in the manga and I'm going to read it to you now it is titled the guy she was interested in wasn't a guy at all which is a hilarious title what's it about Maddie let's say um so this is gonna have this is a

1:18:46manga written by Sumika R.I. and it's it's very cute I got it's about two Japanese school girls and of course they discover that they are both queer over the course of this story and I I'm 40 years old I don't really make a habit of reading queer coming of age stories at this point my personal journey like I feel I if anything I'm like one of those old queer people that's like there should be more stories about 40 year olds and like you know I was shouting out Wolverine earlier for having not even though those aren't queer characters except in my own fan fictions but regardless part of why I recommend this manga although I kind of like started reading it just sort of like as a as a joke because I'm like oh it's such a funny title for a manga like what what is gonna happen um but the like full premise of the manga is that these two teenage girls who live in Japan and have always lived there are obsessed with western and specifically American rock and roll

1:19:46music from the like 80s and 90s and so the premise of like how they get together is that one of the works at a record store that's like owned by her gen X uncle who's like very into like nirvana and all that stuff and she wears like a full K and 95 face mask and like puts her like super goth hoodie over her hair when she's at work which is why she doesn't look feminine and so the other girl comes in and keeps like buying all these nirvana records and like all of this like rock and roll music that the girl at the counter is like I can't believe she's interested in this and so that's how they come to like form this relationship is over this shared love of music and some of the music references in this are like very comical to me and the way that I think you two can probably relate to if you've ever heard like a rock station that we hear now where they'll play like you know dismiss and then they'll play huba sank and then they'll play you know like red

1:20:51hot chili peppers and then they'll play like fun period and you're like okay yeah I guess technically all of these are pop rock songs but they're all from like super different time periods and they'll have like really different cultural contexts and like for the first few issues of this man guy was like running into that a lot where I was like these two girls are listening to songs that are so random and have like and are like completely divorced from the time in which they were created but I also think that's part of what ends up being so charming about it because it is about and is written by someone who has their own associations with these songs that are totally different from ours and like these two characters like come to them organically and like have their own love of them that is divorced from time and space and is divorced from like all the cultural contexts that like we have or at least I have about Nirvana and like what we know about it and like I'm gonna look up this quote so like on the Wikipedia which I was reading because I was like I

1:21:54I would like want to know like what how how this story came to be and like it's just kind of enjoyable to like read it actually started as like a joke like the artist like she put it up on Twitter as like one panel or like a series of panels just as like a bit and people loved it so much that she like wrote out the whole story and like that's very cute to read about but also on the Wikipedia there's this quote from Dave Grohl who is in the food fighters now but was obviously the former drummer of Nirvana and he has read it and likes it and was like Kurt Cobain would love this story and that just like shook me because I was like oh that's so sweet it like makes me tear up to think about because Kurt Cobain was such a like advocate for queer people when he was alive and I just like wow okay that's like really cool so anyway that was something else about the mega that I thought was neat and it's gonna be an anime soon and I will watch it and so if people want to read it it's like corny but it's really adorable and I ended up being very one over by it in the end so yeah it's called the guy she was interested in wasn't a guy at all it's actually

1:22:58about music and it's pretty adorable that sounds awesome Dave Grohl approved that's a very deep role thing to do also it's to read him I'm gonna like that it is and like they've also like approved like the song breed for the anime and like I'm so excited about like what other songs are gonna be in the anime now because I'm like oh like they have so many great tracks like the girls put together all these mix tapes for each other and like that'll be really cool if they can like get all those songs in the show so because obviously reading it is fun but like watching it I feel like will be even better so yeah I'm psyched Lucy what's your one more thing? but well I mean hey in that musical theme my one more thing is the new back album ride lonesa yeah I am an enormous spec fan have been for very long time I'd say hyperspace didn't really hit

1:24:05for me but my favorites of his are unfortunately for him the sad ones and the kind of the ones that he always does have to big breakups so sea change obviously being sort of the the go-to sad break up album after his relationship with Lee Lim and Lee Limon and now ride lonesome is if it's been a couple years now since his his divorce from marissa ribbonsy do you have any ribbies yeah yeah back's had a storied life of romantic relationships and someone on a ride yeah yeah I mean funny to write songs about I'm sure and so for me it's it's quite funny listening to ride lonesome the album because there are these

1:25:08sort of like motifs I guess if you want to call them that but certain chord progressions that he would use in sea change there's one like very specific one from things like the golden age which he kind of echoes in ride lonesome and then in the middle of these two albums if these two stardalboms the book ends the one in the middle is morning phase from 2014 which Grammy album of the year an amazing record for anyone who hasn't listened to it a beautiful beautiful album and I was originally little skeptical of morning phase because it was sort of positioned as this concept album about waking up and I was like oh no as he's gone too up his own ass but no it's stunning album and a couple years ago I saw him he did he did it to a performing with local orchestras and he performed with the Berkeley Philharmonic and he played I mean he opened with golden age and I just burst into tears and I've never really had that experience at a concert before so I'm going to see him on Friday here in San Francisco and I can't wait this album is his back is that I mean the joke from

1:26:13future armors that he transcends genres even as he reinvents them which is unfortunately the only thing I can ever think of when it comes to trying to explain the music is very well but he's dabbled in so many different genres and I think when it is just him and the guitar and the beautiful string compositions that he I think they've done by his father like David Hansen he has just it's like an ethereal otherworldly quality to the music and it is just feels like a warm bath that you can kind of just let wash over you and so ride loan some has that you know quiet acoustic but also it's just like elements of country and just I'm really enjoying it I think he is just absolute all-time-er of an artist that I feel like doesn't get as much credit as he should like the people who get back really get him and then other people you kind of say oh back and they go oh the loser guy right he's so he's so much more than I mean please he's my copy of mutations

1:27:15go listen to it yeah man I've had a I've had a long tortured relationship with Becker no I've had a long and winding relationship with him he's made some interesting choices he has so my background when I was like in high school I was a jazard and I was a big jazz musician that was my whole thing not like now yes I am still a jazz musician in addition to other things and a lot and I was a big snob like I was a big snob about harmony and complexity and technical ability and that was my whole thing and I would listen to like Odalay and I just thought this guy sucks like that when when I was 17 and didn't know anything I barely listened to it I didn't give the time of day I didn't know what was cool I didn't know what vision sounded like I did not understand that record at all and I heard it was like this sucks and totally skipped mutations and it was it wasn't until like after music school that I heard midnight vultures yeah and I was like oh this is sick and then I looked at the personnel and realized like this guy is playing with like some of the top mother fuckers like in the whole country and his bands are always that way like on this new

1:28:16record on ride loansome he's got Jason Faulkner playing guitar Blake Mills is on a track we're like Blake Mills made notes with attachments like one of my favorite records so he's got these amazing musicians that he's collaborating with and then I started realizing like oh all his records were good he was always good like mutations is like one of the best mixed and sounding albums I've ever heard that album is so cool I still just put it on like in a in the studio or like when I'm trying out new speakers just because it's so gorgeous sounding and I've really come like I've come all the way around on him and like I think I totally agree with you and I'm really digging this record all that is to say I've only listened to it a couple times through beautiful sounding so much beautiful guitar playing the songwriting is great there's a lot in there it's it's really great so to co-sign that really good record it's unfortunate that the sad the sadder he is we don't want him to wish for bad things I don't want him to be sad and yeah but he's also he's also like a great shoman I've heard of him a few I've seen him a few times and he's just really good and engaging and

1:29:23funny you know sometimes he'll go see artists and they are just you know I'm just going to play the song play the hits and that's kind of it Beck digs into the back catalog a lot he has there's a there's an infamous fan site called whiskey clone dot net I'm not sure if it's still around but they had a list of every single song that Beck had ever ever made and in a intersection called I think it was paper tiger every every section of the website was named after a back song and one of them was paper tiger forget what that was I'm it's here I'm looking at it oh man it's just a freaking blog it's gross yeah it's totally still here yeah it's the best kind of internet yeah just looking at how deep his archives go and how much music he has created it's I mean I think it's gonna get what show I saw him do but he pulled out you know stuff from dairy patics soul manure and like something that he had on golden feelings that was later on mellow gold and even some stuff that he never really recorded the one the my one holy grail song that I actually did see him perform

1:30:25live a ship in a bottle which is a Japanese exclusive from sea change wow it was only available on the Japanese release of sea change the deep cuts I was like I'm gonna lose it so I'm so excited right that's so cool oh I hope it's a great show I love to see him live sometime I've heard it's great yeah I should go yeah you can just starting this week yeah they had to cut they didn't move the couple of fair shows because of some production issues so it was originally supposed to be in Portland and somewhere else and they've moved that the later on in the town well I'm in Portland so that means you can go in November okay that's when they moved it to all right I'll I'll maybe I'll go this is inspiring yeah I should go see back all right that's awesome I'm gonna check out this album I I had heard about it heard it was coming out didn't realize it was actually out so this is this is good I saw Lucy at it and I was like oh cool that new veck all them's out and obviously I'm thinking a lot about Gen X music lately because I believe this manga so why not why not embrace it and make make a mex shape and just baffle my wife by

1:31:28making her a mex shape of things that came out before she was born anyway thanks Lucy for coming on the show thank you Lucy do you have anything you want to shout out before you go once again friends per second really cool really cool podcast but Lucy's on yeah we're recording that one to most yeah friends per second on the skill up channel or everywhere you find your podcast and then my newsletter is looking forward to our game wherever we send out video game indie recommendations always with a demo so you can try it yourself at home you don't have to take my word for it um and yeah we've cultivated a really cool community uh over there of folks who just do just love games which is all that matters really everyone's having a good time yeah it's awesome it's really joyful uh it's a great it's a great concept and I'm I'm curating games is no small feat so I'm I have a lot of admiration for people who just really devote themselves to that specifically and it boxes a nightmare but my steam shows are so organized I love that for you let Lucy do it for you all right um and with that uh for we're we've did it we did an episode

1:32:34yeah we did another triple click episode for you this week and now it comes to a close and ornally I would say I'll see you both next week but Lucy it was a pleasure and Maddie yeah we'll see you next week yeah that's right thanks again Lucy and Kirk I'll see you next week thanks bye you 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 email us at triple click at maximumfund.org and find links to our merch store and our discord server in the show notes thanks for listening see you next time

1:33:36you artist own shows supported directly by you