The world of Star Wars has given us so many beloved characters like Princess Leia, Obi-Wan
Kenobi, Han Solo, and now…
Wait, it says Turbo?
Welcome to TripleClick, where we turtle the turtles to you!
This week we're talking about Star Wars Jedi Survivor, a very fun game with cool custom
lightsabers, fun platforming, and some unfortunate tech problems.
All that, and a little bit of turtle, coming up.
I'm Kirk Hamilton.
I'm Maddie Myers.
And I'm Jason Schreier.
Hello!
Hey there!
Hello, it's us again.
Hello friends.
It's us.
It sure is.
We are here.
Cominacio.
Yup.
Into your speakers or headsad.
Cominacio live!
No.
No.
It's not live, but there actually is a situation where it could be live.
Kirk has been off by a couple of weeks.
It's gonna be live in just a couple of weeks at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York
on stage.
TripleClick live.
It's comin' up everybody.
You all know the drill.
We're doin' it live.
We're gonna do it live.
We really are.
You're gonna see how much of this show is editing and how much is raw host talent.
You're really gonna get to find out.
Not sure it is us throwing tantrums and you're like, we'll do it live!
We'll do it.
We got all of that as normally edited out.
I'm sure you have to leave and then come back and be like, bing!
Like at the end of the show for an encore.
They'll be cheering for an encore.
Or like in the middle of something.
We'll have to do it.
He'll just be like, hold on, hold on.
And Maddie will all freeze and then Kirk will be like, you know, these are gold ideas.
We shouldn't be spoiling these.
Yeah, we need to script out an elaborate comedy setup that is totally unlike how the show
ordinarily operates.
This is just brainstorming.
The actual ideas we have for the live show are so much more exciting.
That's right.
What we're really gonna do is have one of us forget the name of somebody and then I'll
have it ready on my phone and I'll bing in and say the name of the person that we all
forgot.
We'll just somehow be ready to do that.
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Alright.
So we've got a video game to talk about this week.
We do have a video game to talk about today.
We're talking about Star War.
Jedi.
Survivor.
The war.
The war.
The wars in the stars.
They continue a universe that is a distance away.
Today we're talking about Star Wars Jedi survivor.
A new video game from Respawn Entertainment and Electronic Arts.
It is the sequel, the direct sequel to Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order.
And hilariously the actual title of the series is Star Wars Jedi.
So the next game will be Star Wars Jedi.
So this is a very straight up direct sequel.
In fact, you play as the same guy.
Calcastus five years after Jedi Fallen Order.
And he retains all of his abilities from the last game, which we'll talk about.
This is pretty much a lot like God of War Ragnarok.
Last year in that you, if you don't, it's a direct sequel to the last game.
And a lot of the emotional beats and character development and stuff is carried on from the
previous game.
So you pretty much need to have played that game to like grasp a lot of what's going on.
We've all been playing it.
We can talk about some impressions.
We will talk about, I think we'll do a little sidebar.
We'll start with our initial impressions and then do a little sidebar to talk about
the performance and bugs and issues that people are running into.
But for now let's start with some kind of broader overall thoughts on the game.
Kirk, do you want to go first?
Sure, I'll go first.
So I'm a little ways into the game.
I've played like 12, 15 hours and playing on PC.
We should say we're all playing review copies of the game that we got early.
So we were playing before launch and have still been playing after the game has come
out.
And of course we talked about it some last week and I gave my kind of early impressions
last week.
So they haven't changed too much.
I enjoy the game.
I will say I actually can't separate my impressions of the game from the technical issues because
for a while it was actually fine for me.
I was sort of stuttery.
It was doing the thing that everyone's been complaining about.
Where you load into a new area on PC and it sort of stutters and is a little annoying.
And I would occasionally have some frame rate drops, especially on a Kobo on the big open
planet.
But then it was kind of fine.
Most of the time I was playing having a good time.
And actually just recently I'm now in a big ship.
I'm like exploring this big crashed ship.
And man I'm really running into a lot of just weird jankiness and frame rate stuff to the
point that it's kind of making me want to stop until they patch it somewhere.
So that's kind of taking the wind out of my sails a little bit on what's otherwise a
really kind of propulsive fun game that is really working for me.
So I've yeah I've played like 12, 15 hours kind of through some stuff that happens on
Jetta.
I've gotten a lot of the gang back together.
The plot I suppose is thickening though the story isn't really grabbing me as much as the
first game.
And I'm thinking about that some more.
So that's kind of where I am and how I'm feeling.
Maddie what about you?
I'm about 10 hours in but I don't think I'm actually 10 hours into the game because
I've also experienced a lot of technical issues.
And I don't want to get too far into the next.
So maybe this won't be a sidebar.
Maybe this will be a part of our whole environment.
I don't think it's interesting.
Like I don't think anyone needs to hear the lengthy story about how there was an entire
evening where the game just didn't recognize my controller.
And I did like a series of absurd fixits in order to eventually get it working around
930 when it was time to maybe stop playing the game and brush my teeth.
No one cares.
The worst feeling.
What happens.
That has definitely put a damper on my ability to play the game.
But I'm really liking it which is why this is so bittersweet.
I think that the combat is a lot better feeling to me than fall in order.
We talked a little bit about the parry system last week.
I'm really enjoying it this time around.
I feel just great about it.
I like all the different lightsaber stances.
I like the traversal a lot.
It feels great.
Love that I have a double jump from the start.
Also love how the wall run feels and wall jumping.
These are kinds of things that I often complain about in a game when it feels bad.
So it's pretty cool to play a game where it just feels right.
Like it immediately.
I understood how to use all those tools after just a brief, you know, tutorial or telling
me what buttons to press.
And I immediately understood them.
Makes me feel like a Jedi.
I love that feeling.
I do not love the game repeatedly crashing.
So that's rough.
You're playing.
Are you playing on PC?
I'm on PC and it actually from what I've read people with like higher end video cards
are having more trouble which is deep irritating.
That's what Respawn said but I don't know.
I think everybody's having trouble.
Yeah, that might be true.
But they could explain why I'm having perhaps even more trouble than you Kirk.
Like I've lost progress at various points.
Again, this is an interesting.
At the very least, I think we can say that performance on PC is pretty variable but it's
variable for me like depending on the mood of my computer.
Like sometimes it's great.
It was pretty fine for the first few hours and then I started noticing it more and it
could even be that by working on trying to fix it and tweaking settings and just spending
more time thinking about it, I'm noticing it more and it's bothering me more.
Like it's a lot of, it's pretty variable which is frustrating.
Our former Kotaku colleague Luke Plunkett was talking about this recently on his Twitter
and about how talking so much about performance in a game right after it's launched becomes
increasingly irrelevant.
Like what if somebody five years from now was playing this game and wanted to check out
this episode?
They wouldn't want to hear me talk about all the PC bugs.
So I'm just feeling extremely cognizant of that right now because I'm thinking about
Luke's tweets yesterday and I think he's right.
But it is tough because this is such a huge part of my experience right now and I'd much
rather talk about the things in the game that people will probably talk about years
from now if they happen to be playing it and I do like the story so far.
There's some really fun little weird guys, some cute little aliens.
There's Turgle.
There's Turgle.
You wrote a whole article about Turgle.
I wrote about Turgle and there's the Scuba Skiv guy.
He's basically like a little guy in a Scuba suit.
I don't know.
He's got some Star Wars sass characters in it and I even like the lighthearted vibe of
the game.
Like there's all these cute little flute sound effects when you open something new and it
just reminds me of like that good feeling part of the original trilogy of Star Wars
movies and not maybe the gritty andor vibes that we all also enjoy to clarify.
But there's just something about it that I'm just like, oh damn Star Wars is really
cool.
So yeah, that's the stuff I want to talk about.
The emotional core of Star Wars.
Yeah, I mean you guys are making me glad that I got a code for PS5 and not PS3 because
I know I'm jealous of you.
Yeah, it's running fine for me.
I mean there's definitely some like frame rate stutters and playing in performance when
I'm PS5 and I got like a couple of just random bugs and crashes and stuff.
But like for the most part it's been totally fine for me.
I am Kirk.
I'm where you are pretty much.
I just got to the first save point inside that big crash Death Star looking thing which I
will be entering shortly.
And I really enjoy it.
I think it rules.
I think it begins really good.
I think the smartest decision they could have made as I said last week is retaining all
your powers including the double jump and I also just unlocked a dash that is added to
your double jump.
So you go full on Hollow Knight or you can jump and then dash or dash and then jump
and it really makes you feel like a badass.
The sequence on Jetta that Kirk and I were raving about to you, Maddie, it was just like
an incredible spectacle that just felt like unlike anything I've played in the game before
in a lot of ways and just felt like a total dimensional race.
I felt like something out of war I would say.
I'd say that God of War has some set pieces that are on that scene.
Yeah, I guess so.
It felt like a combination of God of War and that Ratchet and Clank game with the rifts
and stuff like that.
But it was pretty cool.
And yeah, I'm just really enjoying my experience of the game.
Quick thought on performance just to kind of make the conversation a little bit broader
and maybe add a little interesting kind of theory to this whole thing.
So I spoke to Stegus Musin, the director of this game last week.
I was talking to him about how they made this game in three, three and a half years, which
I think is pretty incredible given that most games these days are made in six plus years.
A lot of people, it was unfortunate timing because a lot of people joked that, well, maybe
they should have taken more time to polish the thing, which fair enough.
But I still think it's an remarkable achievement.
But one of the points that he made is that they also made it during a pandemic and they've
been remote the entire time, which got me thinking, well, a lot of the people who were
these issues are on PCs.
Now typically in the pre-remote days, you would have a QA team that all comes into the office
and when they're testing games on PCs, they might have a giant pile of video cars that
they can just swap into a PC or they might have different machines around the office and
they can all test out on different builds and swapping in different parts as need be.
I wonder if that's made more difficult when you're remote and when your QA team is remote
and you can't get the same hardware moving around and maybe it's a lot more difficult
to do the mixing and matching that you kind of need to do if you're going to test out
different CPUs and GPUs and motherboards and whatever else.
And I wonder if that is one of the reasons that we're seeing this PC or performance struggle
is because Respawn, the developers have become a remote first studio.
So they really let people work from wherever they want and a lot of people are taking advantage
of that.
I suspect that that might be one of the very few drawbacks to working remotely is that
when it comes to hardware testing, it makes things a lot more difficult.
I'm sure that it is true that the remote factor plays into QA.
There's some funky stuff with, well first there's some funky stuff with the PS5 build
as well just from like watching digital foundries, frame pacing analysis and stuff.
It might not be stuff that you notice or that a lot of people notice but it's pretty
rough in a lot of ways compared to something smoother like a Sony first party PS5 game.
And there's also just some weird stuff.
I mean, I don't know, watching the digital foundry analysis of the PC version which goes
well beyond my knowledge.
It just seems like it's not doing things that one might expect the game to do.
It doesn't precompile shaders.
There's a pause on PC where it says it's doing something.
It's like every time you start the game it says, okay we're doing something, we're getting
the game ready for you.
Optimizing game files it says for years.
Right, which you would typically think is precompiling shaders which has been this ongoing
problem.
If you know about Stutter struggle, this is the thing that PC gamers have been talking
about for a while now where the Stutter struggle is so many new games.
The Stutter struggle is real.
It is, it is real.
So many new games have this issue where no matter what hardware you're playing on, what
your settings are when you walk into a new area there's like a little hitch.
And it might not bother you.
You might not even notice it.
For example in Dead Space remake, I don't notice it but I see people complain all the
time about the PC version of that game.
It's not a huge deal to me but some people really notice the Stutter.
And that's I believe largely or often due to compiling shaders.
I believe this is more of an issue under DirectX 12 which is more recently adopted compared
to earlier versions of DirectX, like DirectX 11 which is why it's become more of an issue
recently.
Anyways, you can precompile shaders which means the system does a lot of work beforehand
so that the game cannot have to load and stream it while you're playing the game.
That's the idea anyways and apologies if you know to anyone who's like got technical
expertise listening to this being like okay that was okay Kirk but like stop all your
head.
So anyways there's stuff like that where the game doesn't seem to be precompiling shaders
and it also does it every time you load the game which is weird.
So I don't know like yes I think it probably would have been easier if they had done what
you described and had a big room just full of GPUs but given what I've seen online the
problems are pervasive enough they affect everybody they're happening like really consistently
across different builds even though they are kind of different amounts in different places.
It just makes me think like the game could have used a little bit more time for testing.
But yeah we can talk more about the game itself just because I agree with you Mattie that
like as relevant as this is to the current experience that we're all having even for
me it's basically been fine I've been having a great time playing the game.
I've played a lot of it it's mostly okay it's only recently that it started to make me
feel like maybe I should just wait a month and come back and finish it.
You know you're not playing and constantly thinking man I wish these shaders were compiled
to compile more like I you know man this stutter is really annoying which I mean it's
pretty constant like it is it does happen a lot but it's also you know you it's stutters
and then you keep playing the game and whatever you're jumping around you're swinging your
lightsaber it's fun.
Yeah let's talk about the game so you guys so we've all played through all of Jedi Fallen
Order we talked about it a few times I believe we did a spoiler cast at one point maybe on
our last podcast we did a spoiler cast and we all really liked it.
Do you guys feel like this sequel is too iterative do you feel like it's too sequely
or like too much like fallen order to like 1.5 and not innovative enough especially in
the wake of the fact that we're like that is coming out two weeks before Zelda's Cures
of the Kingdom which seems primed to be like revolutionary like mind-blowingly crazy and
different.
Do you guys have one you're playing with?
That's true but when you're playing this do you feel like it does it feel like 1.5 to you
guys and is that a bad thing necessarily?
I think it's a great thing it does feel like a continuation but in the way that I appreciate
where all the little things about fallen order that I just wanted to be slightly better I
mean we've talked about the parry a lot but I also remember some very weird difficulty
unevenness in that game not even just difficulty spikes but like something would be weirdly
easy and then super hard and then easy again and then just pacing issues haven't had any
of that in this game I've really liked all the pacing of the story introduction of characters
I've enjoyed it I don't think the story is blowing my mind or anything but it's fun and
I'm having a good time so I like that it feels like a 1.5 game and I also know it's a bigger
game I'm just I just wish I could play more of it but I'm enjoying the 1.5 feeling of
it all and it is reminding me that when games are sequels they can often be a stronger version
of what came before and perhaps even the intended version of what came before yeah I think that's
a good point it does feel like they listen to a lot of feedback this time there's no backtracking
there is a decent amount of backtracking in general order especially if you wanted to
go and like take advantage of some of the metroidvania stuff it was deliberately designed to feel
like a metroid game and you had to walk through old levels and like like find new passages and
stuff although there was some spark design in the way they went about it this time there's fast
travel you can fast travel between any bonfire or meditation point whatever it's called the
world's are a lot more open like you get to kobo and it's way bigger than anything in jedi fall
in order there's a lot more side stuff that you can do in the first game there was some side stuff
but it was more constrained the levels were a lot more linear this is more way more like these
are so open that often on the two big planets kono and jedi you get animals that you can ride
around that's how big the the terrains are and one of the biggest changes I've noticed is that it
feels like they've like gone full-on charted with everything there's a ton more climbing and
and like big set pieces and explosions and a game reviewer might call it bombastic
but it is not bombastic it is not bombastic ever called it is not not a bomb not a particularly
bombastic game but it is a game that feels a lot more um and charted it's got so much climbing so
much jumping and and things falling and like you land on something and suddenly it falls and you go
sliding in and Nathan Drake is like oh no I jumped on a ledge I fell again um which I think it's
pretty cool I'm I'm really that's one of the reasons I'm really enjoying it it's just it feels
like it's jedi fall in order taken up a notch and I really like jedi fall in order so of course I
want to really like the sequel version yeah I really like the traversal a lot um I actually
like it much more than uncharted because it doesn't do the thing that uncharted does where you're glued
to the wall and you're basically just holding the stick down yeah while caloclims around that's
actually never how the platforming works I mean maybe you're on a ledge or something but there's a
lot of double jumping and mantis cloaking I don't know what they call it in this game but the sort
of surge forward that you unlock uh that really opens things up and dashing as we've mentioned you
because you have the double jump from the beginning and because they kind of have designed the game
around the wall run in a lot of really clever ways yeah the levels themselves are just way more
vertical and way more open from the start because they don't have to worry about a low level character
coming in somewhere and not being able to do stuff because you can do stuff from the beginning
one of the coolest things you can do in this game is jump up on a wall run you start running then
you can jump off jump back and go higher and so you can use the wall run to get higher up and they
have you do this the game is designed to make you learn to do this move really early on and then
it's really cool I mean it's a flexibility that just isn't always present in a game with wall
running and because you can double jump you jump off the wall you jump back on it's really cool I
mean I guess you could always double jump in Titanfall and Titanfall and Titanfall and Titanfall 2 have
the same kind of wall running and the same types of levels there are levels in Titanfall 2 that
both fall in order and now Jedi survivor both um really emulate where there will be these big
these cranes kind of holding billboards that are just arranged so that you can kind of wall run
on one billboard and then jump over to the other one and like a lot of the level is trying to find
the controls from the crane to lower the one billboard so you can get across some chasm like
that's very Titanfall 2 but they've gotten even better at it and it's even more blown out in this
game and it works really well in third person so yeah I really I really enjoy the platforming in
this game I think it's really fun yeah something that I really enjoy is that when you're climbing
you are free to jump off and then double jump back on so you could do some maneuvering yourself
if you want to make yourself like a whole Jedi acrobat feels very forgiving right it does yeah
and it's very flexible I was thinking I've been thinking a lot while playing this game that I
wish you could like customize Cal to make him Yoda because it would be so much fun to be flipping
around as Yoda in this game like double jumping and dashing as Yoda um there is a lot of customization
in this game but sadly sadly none of that um always very disappointing yeah you can't completely
change your height and the entire make up your character yeah you can't transform into Yoda
sadly what no you would do is you would become a human sized Yoda terrifying like true
might ask a malcomation where you're like wearing a Yoda costume basically yeah why isn't that in
the game it's disappointing I will say for me to be exploring side paths and just find treasure
chests with like cosmetic nonsense for like upgrading the handle like the height of my lightsaber
it's trained me to just not even bother going through side paths in this game although there are
a few like especially some of the optional content there are a few rewards that are more
substantial skill points and health packs and stuff like that well there's also perks I mean you
can find perks currency that you then spend at various stores that get you perks that do kind
of cool stuff yeah some of the stories give perks some of them are just cosmetics from what I found
but yes right yeah so you cannot say do that um but it's always disappointing to like go through
salsa and puzzle or something and then at the end you just see one of those cosmetic chest
size just stop bothering opening them I know there's some people out there are gonna like go
on full on Barbie doll with their calcestas and customize the hell out of him which I respect
it's just not for me personally it's not for you I I mean some of the puzzles are their own reward
I like those Jedi chambers I those are cool those end with good rewards yeah yeah they do but also
just the puzzles are are cool and I'm really I mean I'm also still replaying Breath of the Wild
doing all the shrines so I'm really vibing with all the puzzles in Jedi survivor as well because
that's just where my brain already is so just I don't know there have been a few times when I've
left off something in Jedi survivor and tried to open my paraglider and it hasn't worked so that's
something that's disappointing to me it's just that I can't open a paraglider didn't think of the
Yoda thing though that also would have just obviously solved everything for me yeah it would just be
so fun to see like a little ball of like green fur just like double jumping and dashing around
yeah just be yeah I like the puzzles I mean because Calcastas he's like the wonder bread of Star Wars
for darkness like his personality can be summed up as like oh he's the guy in this game that doesn't
really bother me that much I mean I have seen people make fun of that which is totally fair he's
kind of I'd be hard pressed to describe his personality any which way with any adjective at
all he's a nice boy I would describe him as a nice boy he's a video game protagonist but the nice
kind um the good with a capital G but that's okay with me because every other character so
colorful and sometimes in a corny kids cartoon kind of a way like this the star wars game's tone
kind of skews more towards that end of things the Clone Wars cartoons end of things as opposed to
the end or end like I was saying and I like that I can get on board for that and I don't really
need the protagonist of the game to be really spicy and zingy and if anything I feel like that
would only annoy me if he was constantly quipping around or had a whole lot of opinions I'm like
no you're a Jedi you're supposed to be super chill and that is your downfall that you have
nothing going on yeah yeah I can see that um one thing about the spicy characters is that the
second that I saw bowed at the beginning of the game when he's first introduced I was like that
guy is gonna betray you and uh I don't know for sure if it happens but I would pretty much bet
my life but you're suspicious of him I would bet my life on the fact that both betrays you for
his daughter and wow then you bet your life on I would bet my I would bet this podcast on it I
would bet and everything I remember my children on it like there's no way that
does not betray you I can I can guarantee everyone out there I mean I don't know
people out there if you're listening and you've finished it you're probably nodding along and
saying yep Jason is right but betrays you if you haven't finished it well yeah I'm pretty sure
it's gonna happen I haven't gotten there yet but uh pretty confident in that one yeah the plot is
not that complicated I'll say that I'm not gonna weigh in on this boat thing and I'm gonna place any
and you know you know what happens well sure I allow myself to get spoiled on things because I
edit stories for polygon but I'm I'm not gonna spoil it for you Jason you can play it yourself
uh but regardless I just was trying to say that even of what I've played this story is very simple
the plot beats are pretty easy to guess but again that's not really what I came to Star Wars Jedi
for so I'm a fan accurate that's watching Yoda flip around on right exactly yeah I think it's
possible that boat just dies maybe he dies and he doesn't betray you but we'll see I don't know
either um I enjoyed here I will say a slight spoiler warning for just like the first act of
the the first mission of the game so anyone doesn't want to hear this just skip ahead like
a minute but I just want to say something that was funny is that in the first mission you meet
Cal's whole crew and it's all these people and there's all this great dialogue really like man
remember that time with the bantha oh man this will be just like when I saved your butt on tattooing
and I'm like these people are all going to die 30 seconds later and I thought that was funny yeah
I was a little sad they all died I'm not point there is a book called Star Wars Jedi battle scars
by Sam Mags that is I think about some of that's set between the two games that like include some
of this stuff yeah they're like we need you to come up with a bunch of characters that we can
kill for the first time in the next game so she wrote a whole book about all these
endearing ragtag resistance fighters who were all going to die yeah exactly um I really like
Grease the pilot slash cook he's just great he's played by an actor named Daniel Robuck and I
just think the vocal performance is wonderful and it's really good something I really liked about
the way this game tells its story is that he's the first character that Cal goes back to meet from
the crew of the first game he goes to Grease's cantina which then becomes the kind of home base
for the game and what I really liked is that Grease is kind of this grumpy guy or he has this
kind of grumpy New York cabbie energy but he's not um he doesn't have a grumpy vibe when Cal
meets back up with him he's immediately like really kind of paternal and caring and he's really
happy to see Cal and he just wants to like help out and take care of him and like get him food and
give him a good place to have shelter and like help him find everybody else I just really liked
that it begins with you not reconnecting with a sort of you know someone you have this intense
history with where they're kind of mad to see you and you have to they have to warm back up to you
but instead it's like this guy who's just really happy to see you like that was just a really
nice beat to start out with um and then kind of carries the story from there just every time you
see Grease it's cool because he's just such a kind of warm caring character yeah the story for me is
not really doing too much just yet I'm still um yeah I'm I told you guys where I am so I'm pretty
deep into like the quest for uh whatever it's called that that's the secret Jedi planet thing
Tannelor? Tannelor and I'm still not really sure why they're looking for Tannelor like what the deal
is there like it's not none of it is really made clear it's kind of like well Cal was working for
Sagariera for a bit but now he's not and now he's just going on this other random quest
Grease or whatever yeah well it's it's tricky it's an I agree that the story is not really grabbing
me and I think it was just a lot clearer in the first game what the context of the quest was and
what the point of the Maguffin was yeah because you were looking for this holocron that could allow
Cal to find all of the Force sensitive kids and create a new Jedi order that was the idea and then
that drove like a lot of the most interesting drama in the story of you know them kind of deciding at
the end well maybe we don't we want to protect these kids and like not let this fall into the
Empire's hands and maybe it wouldn't be a good idea anyways to train a bunch of Jedi because they
could all just turn to the dark side like it it led to a bunch of interesting and understandable
uh sort of stakes and questions for the characters this time around it's much it just is a lot less
clear it's like okay well we only want to go somewhere safe maybe we could all go hide in this
safe planet that's really hard to get to but there's this built-in you know kind of begging the question
I don't know what the logical fallacy is but it's like well if we can get to it then soak in the
Empire it's the exact same thing you were dealing with in the first game right so like this is clearly
going to be the problem even if you do eventually get to Tannelor you're not really going to be safe
there so then it's like well what's the philosophical question here you know it's kind of is it better
to fight or is it better to hide but they haven't really gotten into that yet maybe they will later
I could see them going in some interesting directions with this but yeah right now it's all a little
vague and then it's compounded for me by the fact that they're bringing back characters from the
high republic era which like doesn't do much for me both because I don't know much about that era
it feels a little more kind of uh franchise ipe because I know there's that high republic tv
show coming out there are parts in this there's a part in this game where cal says man the high
republic was so interesting I'd love to just hear stories about the high republic or something
i'd like turn to the screen and be like coming soon to Disney plus it's only there was a network
where I could get that plus right and even the way people talk about the high republic feels like
there should be a little tm next to it and like that kind of you know rubs me the wrong way so I'm
just sort of not feeling it like the fact that there's this dark Jedi from there I'm like oh
great another dark Jedi who like you know whatever like a so yeah agree the story is not that part
of the story isn't doing much for me even though like I said I do like these characters and I'm
down to follow them wherever but just wake Kirk when Bode betrays you that
I'll finally know I'm really bored yeah both both I like that dark force user I guess I don't
know if we can tell him a Sith or not because he he doesn't have a pal that I know of maybe it's
Bode who knows that yeah and and Star Wars lore if you're a Jedi but you go to the way of the
dark side you automatically become a Sith or they're like I don't think so because you need a
Sith of their own friend you need a buddy the Sith coming to you need to learn from a Sith
I think it's funny I know this point has been made a million times before by many other people but
I still think it's so funny that like Calcustus can push people off ledges with the force but
like you choke people that's a no no get you you don't least sever them with a lightsaber push
them off ledges make them kill each other use my control to make them all just blow each other
to bits turn a rocket around and midair and make it explode in their faces but choking people no no
no lightning can't shoot lightning for me no most interesting part of it though for me like jokes
aside I'm like that's why as soon as there was a dark force user I was like oh good finally we're
getting to the good stuff because again I mean I say I say it every time we talk about Star Wars
but it's still true it's fun to think about that duality and be like okay but what about the people
who are kind of in the middle the Asil Katanas of the world who are like yeah I'm not a Jedi
I'm not a Sith I'm still experiencing emotions and using the force deal with it I'm not
siding with either one of you guys like those are always the characters that I'm like all right
I want to follow those those people and here's here's me staking my claim surely Calcustus will
also be tempted to the dark side at some point in this game and I'm just waiting around for him
to think about it because there's so many opportunities here like for him to be like what the heck am
I doing like why am I trying to uphold these these neutral so-called values of these Jedi
order that that didn't even really do the right thing yeah I mean it's worth mentioning Knight
Sister Maron as well another major character in this I was about to say well there's a great
relationship between her and Cal also yeah yeah yeah she was my favorite character in Fallen Order
and of course she's back in this one too so yeah no they have some wonderful scenes together I mean
she plays a role in that amazing set piece that Jason and I were talking about which is quite a
bit of fun and yeah and she yeah I'm probably about to get to her because I only just met the
bad guy whose name I'm forgetting oh yes he's very pale you know how evil people have white
skin like paper white look he's been in bakta for like 500 years okay he hasn't seen a lot of
pretty pain even in the force flashbacks yeah he did he was fated to be a Sith Lord I think
with that face you know there's nothing he could have done about it it was just gonna happen for
him he looked evil well yeah you're gonna meet up with Maron and then she of course becomes a
major character of course yeah she's very cute with Cal she they have a kind of at first I was
sort of like this all seems a little flat and then they kind of got into their groove again I'm
like yeah I like these two yeah they had a bedding romance in the last game that's developed a little
bit more here it's always fun to see a romance in a game because it feels so rare or romance in
Star Wars yeah with the Jedi now that that is against the rules for what I know so being tempted
to the dark side by even considering it Cal well Luke did kiss the sister so yeah and that's
where is that man you catch there's even in that there's a kiss in this game where it's like was
that for luck there's they do feel the need to reference the original trilogy a little bit more
than I wish they felt the need to but yeah I think they should make a 12 minutes version of Star
Wars that's Luke and Leia kissing each other I'm just saying I've got a bad feeling about this
like in between each chance yeah that'll be really good yeah I love it what do you think
before we wrap up I want to talk about a couple more quick things about this game yeah what do
you guys think of the Metroidvania aspect of it so far because I found that there aren't it doesn't
seem like there quite as many like blocked off paths that you can like to later there are the big green
walls that you get an ability to get through at some point but there isn't a ton of that stuff
it's a little bit more open and a little bit more encouraging exploration as opposed to
encouraging backtracking and I think that's by design the same way the last game was was more
Metroidvania E and linear by design what do you guys think of the new approach to this I think it's
tough to do a Metroidvania when you have fast travel in the way that this game does I mean you can
but it just really changes it when you can go anywhere at any time really easily and you don't
need to reward backtracking the same way when you aren't forcing someone to do it and instead it's
like well you need you need to actually go to this place for a specific reason so that automatically
changes the tone but I prefer it I don't think this game ever needed to be that I think having
all the abilities from the start and not taking them away all the beginning of Metroid Prime 1 when
Samus falls down really hard like the fact that they don't feel the need to do anything like that
means the game also feels very different and that's cool I mean I think it's I think it's
working fine that that it isn't leaning into those elements yeah I think there's there are these
sort of vestigial dark souls aspects of this game that I just don't really think are necessary
they're fine but you know that you mean like enemies respawning every time you sit at a meditation
point well that's okay well because I like that because it because it adds a little bit of tension
if you're especially if you're playing on the highest difficult team mode I'm playing on the
second highest but adding a little bit of tension to like do I really want to rest here I think is
an interesting an interesting game design choice yeah no I'm referring more to the level design
aspect of it where you know sometimes you'll cut down a chord that'll lead to a shortcut back to
the save point and that feeling can be kind of cool like oh hey nice I didn't realize but I'm up way
higher now and I'm kind of dropping down and I can go back and save and now really quickly bypass
everything but just because of the map and the way that the levels are laid out it just doesn't
have that same feeling as you have when you're playing dark souls and you unlock a shortcut and
you really value it and it's this really kind of central part of the of the gameplay loop here it
just feels a little tacked on because so much of the game is you're just like moving through these
really well-designed sort of platforming exploration gated combat keep moving platform
explorer boss fight like these these sequences that are placed in a much more kind of linear
triple-a kind of way yeah and it's so good at that that I'm like well it doesn't really need to be
doing this other thing where you're doing a dark souls level exploration like that's just not really
a big part of the game anyway it's funny you mention that I think it's that and also that it's
a little bit easier than Jedi Fallen Order even on some of the higher level difficulties even on the
one I'm playing feels easier to me than Jedi Fallen Order did in part because you have all
the abilities from the geckos so you can do things and are just kind of trying to block
but also it just feels easier and I think there's an interesting tension there from a design perspective
of like having that souls the aspect and also wanting to make sure that the game is approachable
and can be played by the 30 million people they want to play it since this is a new Star Wars
game and not necessarily like an anish difficult souls game and I think that lack of tension is
really what makes it less appealing or less exciting when you find one of the shortcuts like
in souls games you find the shortcut and you're like oh man what a relief like I was hoping I
when I was like begging like like I'm low on health low on estus flasks and I really needed that I
really need to get back to this as far as I've ever come and I'll never make it here again and
then it's on the ladder and it's it's the bonfire that you guys yeah exactly and in this it's not
quite like that because it all feels a lot smoother and there isn't really there aren't really a ton
of obstacles in your way and things will be different I mean I know a new game plus well in new game
plus you can get like a thing a toggle to turn on that makes the game super super like difficult
I think there's one game one toggle that makes it realistic lightsaber so like la saber just kills
you instantly and you kill enemies instantly which makes everything a lot harder and so there could
be some interesting easier or well if you die you you have to go back to the la save point so it
makes it true but also every enemy is a one hit kill I suppose in that scenario yeah uh yeah definitely
um which is kind of true now anyway a lot of stormtroopers are one hit kills anyway that's true
um all right any final thoughts before we wrap things up we do we have to get to one more thing
but any kind of final thoughts on the game for me guys no this is a cool game I'm looking forward
to getting some patches and playing yeah it's too bad that the discourse is all around the technical
problems because it's a cool game and I wish people were discussing it more for some of the design
choices it makes and the spectacle and the traversal which I think is really cool like one of the
game one of the reasons that I think I'm enjoying this game more than I enjoyed got a war Ragnarok
last year it's just the the flightiness of it all like double jumping everywhere and dashing and
climbing it just feels really good to play yeah they're really good and fun and um yeah just
really enjoyable game to play on a moment to moment basis so hopefully they got all the technical
stuff ironed out soon all right let's take a break and we'll be back for one more thing
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one more thing i'm gonna go first because i just finished something that you guys are really
stoked about i played through the dlc case of the golden idol which is called the spider of
lanka and it adds three new cases three new episodes to the game that we all loved last year in the
case of the golden idol one of the three games that was on all of our favorite favorite games of the
year list that elton ring and monkey island so it's really cool um it's basically i mean it's
what you would expect it's three new chapters in the case of the golden idol um it's uh a prequel to
the main game so uh it it leads naturally into the first like the prologue of the main game
and yeah it's fantastic and it's just great it's like i could keep playing the new mysteries of these
like every few months and if and it seems like they're setting up to do something like that because
the way it's kind of listed in the or the way it's named in steam and in the the launcher it's like
um golden idol mystery is colon the spider of lanka which certainly implies that they're just
gonna keep doing this which is awesome um for people who aren't familiar real quick
kits of the golden idol it's a detective game where you really have to deduce things and you
are looking at this kind of tableau scene after a murder in every chapter and you have to figure
out exactly what happened by just going around and having the subnicit view of everybody um and
their inventories and all the scenery and all the the things that are happening in any given scene
so this one is set in on kind of a different like a foreign island that's away from the kind of
more euro centric themed so in in case of the golden idol most of what you're most of the
the episodes take place on this kind of uh fictional version of europe so to speak and they make
references to and their characters from uh a fictional version of more like middle east africa
inspired cultures like basically the the kind of western versus eastern cultures and of course
the euro centric countries they call them savages and stuff like that there's a lot of just easy
parallels there this game is set on the island of lanka which is that whole culture and so you get
into some of that interesting culture stuff there's one case in this uh the second case that is all
about this ritual to succeed the the raja of this uh of this one country that is very india
inspired and yeah there's just a lot of good stuff um just classic classic case of the golden idol
stuff in there uh i beat it all uh i beat all three cases over the course of a couple hours and just
really can can uh recommend it with absolutely zero reservations to anyone who enjoyed the original
game and i keep i hope they keep cranking these out uh forever and ever and ever because they're
awesome yeah the mystery solving was so so fun and i'm really excited to play those three probably
all in one go in however long it takes me to do it because i will be unable to stop yeah you gotta
do it before zalda comes out just just get it all done just just get it out of the way i'm surprised
you haven't i don't i don't think that's gonna be hard as soon as i open the file that'll be like
the next several hours of my life so i need to just be aware of that before i open it that's all it is
yep yep yep it's a good one um kirk what's your one more thing my one more thing is uh youtube
series that i've started watching that i'm actually watching with emily called double fine psychodicy
that uh i know jason you have watched some of have you watched all of it have you finished it i
watched all of it twice okay i knew i knew you were really um she watched all of it twice nanny have
you started it yet no okay so i'll explain what it is i've watched it zero times okay so jason's
watched it for both of you that's right um so no i actually don't need to watch it yeah to explain
what it is to anyone who doesn't know i know jason you need to do one more thing not that long ago but
this is a two-player productions documentary of the creation of psychonauts to the double fine game
that came out well was it last year was it was it last year was it two years ago what is time
psychonauts two came out two years ago yeah it was it was two years august 2021 august 2021 so
which uh a wonderful game so this is a like 30 part youtube documentary or 30 part documentary
that is on youtube um documenting the seven-year production of this game and it's really cool um i
have been i've watched the first couple of episodes the first maybe three um of course this is the
same production team or some of the same people who made double fine documentary or double fine
adventure i guess it was called which was the the creation of broken age and that is an amazing
documentary that we have of course raved about and recommend for anyone who wants to actually see
how video games get made this one seems like it's going to be even more complex only because i know
some of the things that happen during this seven-year period like they've replaced the director on the
game like they get purchased by microsoft and so there are these really major sort of seismic events
that happen in the midst of development of what is also like a fantastic game but surely a very
difficult one to make and a very ambitious game so just wait just wait until the covid part it's
like there's a part in it they're they're like oh this they're locking down italy it's like so
crazy yeah sure coven happens too because you you know it's coming and it's like oh my god there's
a sense of dread anyway you'll get there um i well i'm i'm looking forward to it i'm going to take
my time because it is a lot to watch but actually i've been watching this with emily which is also
really cool because um it's totally i mean anyone who wants to know more about how video games are
made would enjoy this like if you've watched mythic quest this is the real thing and while it's not
quite as dialed up for comedy a lot of them the people in the you who work at double fine are really
funny interesting engaging people i mean i think a lot of people in game development in general
are that way but double fine in particular attracts just very fun interesting people who are fun to
watch and right from the beginning i mean it's real stuff like you're seeing people kind of wrestle
with at another project being overlooked or having resources diverted away from something they're
working on or feeling stuck um and like watching this sort of different low key conflicts that
occur during any kind of collaborative creative process and that's just interesting to watch no
matter what and then it in the process you also just see so much of the nitty gritty even in the first
few episodes of just how games are made how hard it is to make everything work how prototyping works
how weird it is to make a game in vr right now they're working on the vr sikonauts sort of mid quill
so anyways um it's really cool i'm excited to watch the rest of it i feel like at some point
we'll probably all talk about it on the show like we'll all have seen it i was kidding i do want to
watch it yeah i think there will be a lot to say and so part of me mentioning it here is to just
plant the seed i'm sure there's a lot of people out there who think it sounds interesting but also
think it sounds like a lot just start watching it watch it like a tv show there's a ton of the
episodes there's like 30 episodes it's going to go on forever just pace yourself and kind of watch
it um and then maybe you'll be kind of keeping up with us as we watch it and then if we do talk
about it on the show you'll be a little more prepared but anyways yeah it's called psychotacy
it's on youtube you can just watch it and it's really good so far i'm very excited to watch more
cool oh man i'm excited for you let me know i just keep watching because i want to chat about it
maddie what's here one more thing um mine is a game that is called dredge and it is a game that's
buzzed about a little bit it is buzzed about deservedly so it's a pretty cool game so i'm playing it on
pc it is a horror fishing game which is a genre mashup that i have never experienced before and
i'm really really enjoying so you are a fisherman who ends up with a job somewhat mysteriously in
a place an island that is besieged by eldritch horrors in its waters and you're just also a
fisherman who works in that environment and people warn you about not fishing at night except
eventually people really want you to catch the fish that only come out at night and so you just
kind of have to deal with it you have to worry about like a sort of insanity meter like amnesia
style when you're fishing at night it's pretty low poly graphics like in a literal sense like very
blocky looking kind of game but very cool look so uh for a while for the first couple hours playing
i was like how could this ever really be scary i mean i was having a great time you catch weird
fish that are kind of eldritch and you're like oh this is kind of a spooky fish but like again
that's not really that's not really horror like catching a weird fish not that scary but then
eventually you start fishing at night and even in like a very low poly environment if something
sneaks up on you it's pretty scary it's really really fine though i mean i find night time ocean
dark deep ocean to be profoundly terrifying so yeah it's pretty even this could be scary and uh yeah
so i don't know i really recommend that i think the sound design of it is really cool i like the
nighttime stuff there's all these weird things that i i haven't played long enough to kind of
piece together the whole mystery i think it's only like eight hours there's a story
uh that i'm slowly piecing together from talking to villagers and stuff uh but when it's nighttime
you kind of see all these weird boats that only come out at night and they're like off in the
distance and you're like why is that with that and then they're like closer than before but then
further away i mean i i love stuff like that it's very fun sure it's got really cool horror vibes
also enjoy just the idea of a fishing game being a horror game i think that's neat and the story
being delivered piecemeal just purely through conversations that you have with people that you
meet uh on the shorelines of various other islands that you discover and that's i mean that's the
only way the story can be told it's just purely environmental and i think that's a really cool way
to tell a story also so if you like a game that's like a little bit scary but mostly narrative and
mostly chill because you are fishing right and also has some fun fishing mechanics like every kind
of fish has a different um like not a quick time event but like you know there's like a bar that
you have to hit hit a button at the correct time like like it'll turn green at certain times you
guys know what i mean uh and each fish each creature has it has a different uh system for
catching it really fun so it's like a combination of fun fishing mechanics and spooky vibes and a
cool story so yeah dredge is what it's called like you're dredging up fish from the depths great name
for a fishing game i have this installed on steam deck and have been excited to play it though i
actually go distracted by another game that i'll probably talk about next week that's also really
good that um that i'm loving but yeah i really want to play it it looks awesome i think you'll dig it
yeah awesome well that is it for this week's episode and may the force be with you yeah may the
may the you'll be listening to this on may the fourth well it's gonna be made up for it
so may not realize that i'd do it right now wow that was this is disney pangus for this episode
check out the highland public show i don't care if you're not may the fourth be with you and next
week by the way we'll be doing a mailbag episode so send us your questions at triplecliketvaximumplan.org
if you want to participate otherwise yeah we'll see you guys next week yep see you next week bye
tripleclik is produced by Jason Shrier of Maddy Myers and me Kirk Hamilton i had it mixed the
show and also wrote our theme music our show art is by tom dj some of the games and products we
talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration you can find
a link to our ethics policy in the show notes tripleclik is a proud member of the maximum fun
podcast network and if you like our show we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member
at maximum fun dot org slash join find us on twitter at tripleclik pod send email the tripleclik at
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