Chrono Trigger and Kierkegaard, read with the same care.
Bookwarm Games puts Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger playthroughs in the same feed as group readings of Byron, Mozart's Don Giovanni and Kierkegaard. The talk runs from which class to level in Final Fantasy Tactics to why a silent hero's death plays as tragedy.
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Bookwarm Games treats a Final Fantasy playthrough and a Kierkegaard reading as the same kind of work: something to read closely and argue over in company. The feed carries several series at once, and the episode titles name which is which. Side Quests is the games strand. An unnamed voice plays alongside Wes, greeted as a 'constant companion and perennial party member', and the episodes here cover Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade and Chrono Trigger, with Expedition 33 mentioned along the way. Sometimes the talk is purely tactical. On Tactics, the advice is to pour time into the monk class and to respect the squire's stone-throwing, which does little damage but earns experience every time it connects. The same series also does criticism. The Final Fantasy VII Remake conversation weighs Barret recast as something close to a street-corner preacher, Shinra's manipulation of information shown directly through its security systems, and the pile of mini-games stacked on top of all that added story. Wes's frustration with that extra gameplay becomes part of the discussion. In the Chrono Trigger episode, guest Patrick Holleman, introduced as an author and now full-time game developer, joins a conversation that reads Chrono's death as tragedy: a silent hero whose only trait is being the hero, undone by the very act of standing up to try again. Night School carries those habits over to literature and music. Al Schmidt, Daniel Babcock and Wesley Shantz link Byron's Don Juan, Mozart's Don Giovanni and Kierkegaard's Either/Or, following one figure across poem, opera and philosophy. A line credited to Flaubert, naming Hamlet, Don Giovanni and the sea as three perfect things, is deliberately misquoted so Babcock can deliver it properly. The non serviam motif, and the way Joyce turns it around, is set beside Giovanni's refusal to repent. Kierkegaard, one of them concedes, is hard to pin down, because he nests his ideas inside personae. A third strand has Wesley reading Philip Pullman's La Belle Sauvage for a Book of Dust series. He notes where the U.S. and U.K. editions title a chapter differently, pauses to rethink an earlier take he now suspects was too negative, and follows Alice's growing importance as the division between Malcolm's family and the people who work for them starts to break down. His closing thought, that stories can carry truths about the world as well as feeling, also describes what the feed does with Chrono Trigger. Tangents are part of the texture: Easter greetings in Latin and Greek, a disappointing Super Mario Galaxy movie, a promise of gossip saved for after the recording stops. For a first listen, 'Side Quests Chrono Trigger: Conversation with Patrick Holleman (ep 10)' shows how far the games talk reaches, while 'Night School: Mozart, Don Giovanni' shows the books-and-music side.
Made for: Suits a listener who plays Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger and also reads Byron, Kierkegaard or Pullman, and who wants both argued over with equal seriousness and plenty of room for tangents.
What sets it apart: Games and literature share one feed and one method. Wes plays Final Fantasy VII Remake on Side Quests and also turns up at Night School for Don Giovanni, and the games talk borrows literary tools, reading Chrono Trigger's hero through the logic of tragedy.
Bookwarm Games plays on the connection between games, books, and life:O, she's warm!If this be magic, let it be an artLawful as eating.- The Winter's TaleYou're back! Don't bother yourself with talking now, you look too tired. Mothers understand these things. Eat some [favorite food] and scoot up to bed. - EarthBound Deep dives into video games and books, including a trove of audio for the Video Game Academy, co-hosted with Ben Kozlowski. Get involved at https://www.patreon.com/ProfessorKozlowski
Chrono dies, and your next question is whether heroism itself was the tragic flaw.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A close reading of Pullman's fantasy, its political echoes, and the strange knowledge stories can carry.
The episode reads chapters 10 and 11 of La Belle Sauvage as a study of how stories pick up political pressure without losing their emotional charge. It connects the League of St.
Kierkegaard's Don Giovanni analysis becomes a lively test of what reading can reveal and obscure.
Knight School 2026 treats Kierkegaard's Either/Or as a live argument about Mozart, Don Giovanni, and the place Don Giovanni can hold beside Hamlet and Faust as a modern figure.
A thoughtful tactics conversation where stone throwing, class focus, and war-story exploration all feed the same design argument.
SideQuest approaches Final Fantasy Tactics as both a tactical puzzle and a story about what those tactics cost. The episode works through the discoveries that make the game click: narrowing attention to one or two classes, putting early trust in monk, and realizing that the…
Mozart's Don Giovanni becomes a focused argument about refusal, projected emotion, and the damage one character leaves behind.
Don Giovanni is framed as a study in refusal, beginning with Mozart's 1787 opera and moving toward the way one figure gathers appetite, avarice, and manic feeling into himself while leaving vengeance, grief, and anger for everyone around him to bear.
A Chrono Trigger replay turns Chrono's death into a clear argument about the expectations games teach players to trust.
SideQuest X's Chrono Trigger Episode 10 frames the game around a sharp reading of its silent hero: Chrono's role as the player-shaped figure becomes the very thing that makes his death land as tragedy.
A focused remake debate about whether mechanics can carry the same thematic weight as story.
SideQuest's FF7RI conversation is strongest when it treats Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade as a collision between busy systems and sharpened political stakes.
Game Informer's editors review new releases and debrief hands-on previews from events like Summer Game Fest.
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Knight School 2026 reads Kierkegaard's Either/Or on Mozart's Don Giovanni and uses it to ask why Don Juan matters for modernity.
Bookwarm Games uses Side Quests FF Tactics: Exploring Ivalice and its Systems (ep 1) to place Final Fantasy Tactics between Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII, then explains why that 1997 release made fans “throw people for a loop.” The speakers focus on Ramza, Delita, and Ovelia, using Ivalice's highborn-versus-lowborn tension and the chronicle-style narrator to frame the story as recovered history.
Bookwarm Games' 'Night School: Mozart, Don Giovanni' opens with Flaubert's claim that 'Hamlet, Don Giovanni, and the sea' are 'three perfect things God has made.' Daniel Babcock, a Jesuit educator, and Wesley Shantz, a podcaster and public school teacher, compare Mozart's 1787 Don Giovanni with Byron's Don Juan and the 2001 Zurich production starring Rodney Gilfry, Laszlo Polgar, Cecilia Bartoli, Isabelle Rey, and Roberto Sacca.
Patrick Holleman says Reverse Design began in 2010 as a long-form response to crowded video-game blogging, and his Chrono Trigger article came from counting encounters and treasure chests.
Bookwarm Games examines SideQuest’s discussion of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade through Wes Schantz’s roughly 10-hour playthrough, which has reached mid-Chapter 9.
Bookwarm Games’ Night School examines Lord Byron’s Don Juan, Cantos 13 through the unfinished 17th, where Don Juan returns to England and spends six cantos amid dinners, fox hunts, jokes, and aristocratic leisure.
Bookwarm Games’ Side Quests Chrono Trigger: Lavos and the Entity examines Lavos’s final forms, the Black Omen, and the game’s unresolved questions about DNA, time, and identity.
Bookwarm Games examines Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade’s expanded Train Graveyard with Otto Leto and Wes Chance.
Bookwarm Games examines Lord Byron’s Don Juan, Cantos 9–12, with Daniel Babcock and Wes Schatz focusing on the poem’s move from Russia into England and its increasingly reflective narrator.
Wesley interviews David Nixon about his background in law and religion, and his interest in Philip Pullman's work.
An academic discussion about Final Fantasy VII Remake with a philosopher guest, exploring the game's themes and personal connections.
Dr.