Transcript
Speaker: You know what's not amazing?
Speaker: And this is not the lead-in.
Speaker: What is?
Speaker: What isn't?
Speaker: I would say this book.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It's a pretty disappointing book on the whole.
Speaker: I didn't think it was that bad.
Speaker: But yeah, I even even even with I will say I will give them credit.
Speaker: I'll give the author credit.
Speaker: He he didn't he didn't do many flashbacks in part three.
Speaker: But he didn't do many flashbacks.
Speaker: Still maybe too many.
Speaker: Too many flashbacks.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Too many flashbacks.
Speaker: Too many flashbacks.
Speaker: You know what's not too many flashbacks?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixlet.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil.
Speaker: And today on the show, we're wrapping up Alien Isolation by Keith R.A.
Speaker: DeCandido.
Speaker: Bip, bip, bip.
Speaker: Yeah, so we're on part three.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's redemption.
Speaker: We've been isolated and we're getting redeemed.
Speaker: We were getting redeemed now.
Speaker: And let's just jump right into it.
Speaker: You know, let's do it.
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: Part two is mostly flashbacks.
Speaker: Let's be honest.
Speaker: Part two is mostly flashbacks.
Speaker: We're being honest with ourselves.
Speaker: Part two is mostly flashbacks.
Speaker: We're in chapter 23.
Speaker: Last we left off, the Gemini Lab got shot out of Sevastopol Station like a bat out of hell.
Speaker: And apologies to Meatloaf.
Speaker: Rest in power, King.
Speaker: Rest in power, you thick king.
Speaker: COVID denying chump.
Speaker: Was he a COVID denier at the end there?
Speaker: He was.
Speaker: Oh, I love Meatloaf, but he was a real right-wing shithead in the latter half of his life.
Speaker: And I think he'd been a big COVID denier.
Speaker: And the rumor going around mostly is because there isn't a lot of clear information on how he died.
Speaker: And I think a lot of people just kind of accepted COVID.
Speaker: It was complicated.
Speaker: He denied COVID until it came for him.
Speaker: Until it denied him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: From life.
Speaker: No, says the man in Washington.
Speaker: No, says the virus.
Speaker: No, says the virus in your bloodstream.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I would do anything for love, but I won't wear masks.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: You stupid, stupid son of a bitch.
Speaker: I loved you.
Speaker: I loved you.
Speaker: Who's the guy that Tim's always talking about?
Speaker: The guy who wrote Meat Loaf songs?
Speaker: Well, Jim Steinman.
Speaker: Jim Steinman.
Speaker: Jim Steinman.
Speaker: Yes, and he died shortly before Meat.
Speaker: So, and, and good, good, good.
Speaker: Jim's Diamond did not have to see Meatloaf go down in a flurry of COVID denial.
Speaker: Or maybe he did.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It was, it was very close.
Speaker: It's kind of like that story you hear of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson dying on the same day.
Speaker: Like John Adams' final words are Jefferson still remains and literally Jefferson dies like an hour later.
Speaker: It's like that.
Speaker: It's Diamond's like.
Speaker: That's.
Speaker: Meatloaf still remains.
Speaker: Meatloaf still remains.
Speaker: Notice that I was one sentence into my notes and we're already off.
Speaker: Back in form, my friend.
Speaker: Back in form.
Speaker: That old fighting spirit.
Speaker: Season one pixel is shit here.
Speaker: Season one pixel.
Speaker: We're back.
Speaker: We're back in 2021, boy.
Speaker: Goddamn right.
Speaker: Goddamn right.
Speaker: So Amanda escapes the Gemini lab.
Speaker: She ducks, dodges, dives, and dodges.
Speaker: both wrenches and an alien, um, out of the Gemini lab.
Speaker: She uses a flamethrower to, to scare the alien off, gets in an, in an Eva Evo suit.
Speaker: I put, uh, an evac Eva.
Speaker: Is it Evo?
Speaker: Is it Eva?
Speaker: Eva, right?
Speaker: Eva is.
Speaker: And, and, and then I just think of Evangelion when I, when I, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, inevitably that song starts playing in your head.
Speaker: Um, uh, so, uh,
Speaker: She gets off of the Gemini lab and just kind of jets herself back towards Sevastopol Station.
Speaker: And she gets on the station and Tom Waits is waiting for her.
Speaker: And he's like, well, I didn't think you would be alive.
Speaker: Xenomorphs coming for you.
Speaker: Xenomorphs coming for you.
Speaker: Xenomorphs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she gets told that the Workin' Joes are behaving more strangely now.
Speaker: They're in areas that they were never supposed to be in.
Speaker: She witnesses a few of Seekson security people just get absolutely destroyed by the Workin' Joes.
Speaker: And then she hears over the comms that Waits and his compatriots are all being attacked by the androids.
Speaker: They're all dead.
Speaker: And she's getting there and everyone's dead except Ricardo.
Speaker: Ricardo is a OK.
Speaker: Marlo and Taylor are unaccounted for.
Speaker: She does not find their bodies.
Speaker: So that's that's chapter 23.
Speaker: I'm sure they're fine.
Speaker: So she's like, I'm going to go find Samuels.
Speaker: So in chapter four, she finds Samuels and Samuels is absolutely wrecking the shit out of like a bunch of working Joes because he is a superior synthetic.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The synthetic.
Speaker: You're synthetic.
Speaker: He is Weyland-Yutani precision engineering android and he will run your blades, motherfucker.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, he's none of this, none of this fucking uncanny valley bullshit.
Speaker: He is, he's the whole valley.
Speaker: He has the entire valley.
Speaker: He's the hidden valley.
Speaker: The hidden valley.
Speaker: So Samuels is like, all right, I'm going to try to connect with Apollo, but I got to go into this reformatting chamber and I jury rigged some electrical things and just, you know, you're going to have to shut it down if anything goes wrong.
Speaker: So it gets in there and things go wrong and she has to shut down all the generators.
Speaker: So she shuts down the generator.
Speaker: Who'd have thunk it?
Speaker: She sucks down all the generators.
Speaker: And basically, Samuels is dying.
Speaker: And he's, you know, Samuels is bummed out about dying.
Speaker: And Ripley is also bummed out about Samuels dying because he was actually the only nice person, consistently good person she's met in her entire life.
Speaker: Synthetic.
Speaker: Not just like, not just in this story, but as we're finding out through the flashbacks,
Speaker: Her entire life.
Speaker: It's like the only nice ever is Samuels.
Speaker: It's really sad.
Speaker: It is sad.
Speaker: But he says, I got you access.
Speaker: You can go down to the computer core.
Speaker: You can you can get right in there with Apollo.
Speaker: You can do the command line interface if you want.
Speaker: And then he dies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she talks to Ricardo and he's like, Ricardo's like, yeah, he was nice, very synthetic.
Speaker: And she's like, he was good for a person.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Bastard.
Speaker: Bastard.
Speaker: Chapter 25, she gets down to the computer core.
Speaker: She finds out she can't shut anything down because there's a Weyloon-Yutani directive in the computer core.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Basically, she finds out that there is that Weyland-Yutani has purchased the station and they purchased the station two days after after her and the crew left Earth to go to Sevastopol.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the directive is to contain the alien life form and all other everything else is secondary, including murdering everybody else on the station.
Speaker: Yeah, basically the first alien movie.
Speaker: Yeah, basically the first alien movie on a large scale.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The generator, she tells the computer, okay, there's no more alien life form.
Speaker: Computer's like, oh, well, we got to do a scan of the core to make sure that that's true.
Speaker: I think you might be lying, Ripley.
Speaker: And she's like, all right, scan the core.
Speaker: And the computer's like, well, we can't because the scanners are broken.
Speaker: And she's like, fuck you, computer.
Speaker: And the computer's like, I can't do that, Ripley.
Speaker: Try as I might, Ripley.
Speaker: So she's like, all right, fine.
Speaker: I'm going down the reactor core.
Speaker: She takes a lift down to the reactor core.
Speaker: Wouldn't you know it?
Speaker: There is an entire farm of xenomorphs down in the reactor core where it's nice and warm.
Speaker: This is such a frustrating moment in the book.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Because it's like two pages?
Speaker: It's one of the best parts of the game.
Speaker: It is one of the most nerve-wracking, frustrating, scary moments in the game.
Speaker: And it is glossed over.
Speaker: It is such a bummer.
Speaker: It is so disappointing.
Speaker: Hey, you know what?
Speaker: I mean, I wish I could tell you that it's because they were hurting for space.
Speaker: I know, exactly.
Speaker: In this book.
Speaker: But you know what's coming up immediately after this moment?
Speaker: By the way, she sets the generator to overload and she gets out and the five aliens escape.
Speaker: But this all happens in two pages.
Speaker: Two pages.
Speaker: It's like two pages of storytelling.
Speaker: What's coming up?
Speaker: What's coming up in chapter 26?
Speaker: A flash forward, right?
Speaker: I think you got the direction wrong there, pal.
Speaker: No, but that can't be right, Kevin, because we've had so many so far that you think they'd want to change it up and flash forward, you know, move along, right?
Speaker: My friend, my friend, I think you got the direction there wrong.
Speaker: I think it's going to be a flashback, and I think it's going to be the longest chapter in part three.
Speaker: It's going to be the longest chapter in part three, buddy.
Speaker: And it's a flashback.
Speaker: I'm just so tired.
Speaker: I feel like there's so many people that are letting me down lately, Kevin.
Speaker: I don't know if I can be betrayed like this again.
Speaker: I had a feeling that this was going to happen when she suddenly started talking about the Brodsky incident.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: We start getting a random reference to something that has not come up yet.
Speaker: And you're like, what are we?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Brodsky was not even referenced.
Speaker: Am I like...
Speaker: Mandela affecting the rest of the book.
Speaker: Brodsky was not referenced until part three.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I don't remember that.
Speaker: No, I don't.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So now we're talking about the briefly mentioned in the first half of part three, the Brodsky incident.
Speaker: Let's get into it.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: We're in a flashback.
Speaker: We're on Luna.
Speaker: Amanda is teaching Zula her.
Speaker: She's just friends with.
Speaker: At this point, by the way, you know, you mentioned in part one, you're like, are we?
Speaker: Are they queer beating a little bit?
Speaker: This is, I mean, they take that completely away.
Speaker: Like they, they are literally just friends in chapter 26.
Speaker: Whereas other before the way it's written, it's like, it feels like they could, could be.
Speaker: Oh, I still, I still, I still feel like they were, they were aiming towards that.
Speaker: I still feel like they were.
Speaker: And then chapter 26 was like, Oh no, they're literally just friends.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so yeah,
Speaker: Amanda is showing Zula the ropes on how to like, you know, fix an engine or whatever.
Speaker: And she has to go help this other this engineer named Brodsky.
Speaker: Basically, there's some people trapped in an airlock and they're just kind of hanging out there because the door won't open, even though the airlock has been pressurized.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Amanda goes up into the crawl space and she's like, all right.
Speaker: Brodsky, don't press the button until I tell you to after I clean the circuit board.
Speaker: And Brodsky goes, press the button.
Speaker: Press the button.
Speaker: And he presses the button and he opens up the airlock, nearly killing the five people inside.
Speaker: Amanda's quick thinking saves them.
Speaker: And then there's a tribunal with Weyland Yutani.
Speaker: And they're like, well, who do we believe?
Speaker: This certified engineer who's been always good or Amanda, whose stepdad is a drunk.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then her so not her girlfriend stands up and says, excuse me, I'm a colonial marine.
Speaker: And I was there.
Speaker: And it went down exactly like Ripley said.
Speaker: And an eagle flew in and wept on the American flag.
Speaker: And that man's name was Albert Einstein.
Speaker: It's exactly what it is.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: This scene.
Speaker: My only note other than that is another bad chapter.
Speaker: So go off game.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Done.
Speaker: This is like the third story like this in flashback form of her getting fucked over and needing to scrape out from.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: You know, everyone's had that friend who like tells you you're just, you know, you're just hanging out and they and they just tell you this story about what an asshole this old boss they had was.
Speaker: And you go, wow, that really sucks.
Speaker: What a dickweed.
Speaker: Yeah, he's terrible, terrible guy.
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He was a jerk.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: And then like a month later, they tell you a story about a different boss they had.
Speaker: And they're like, oh, yeah, and he's totally fucked me over.
Speaker: And you're like, huh?
Speaker: Yeah, that's that's.
Speaker: But by the third time, a different boss has screwed them over over some other outlandish thing.
Speaker: You're like, I think you're lying.
Speaker: I think maybe there's more to this than there's.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This feels like this.
Speaker: If Ripley came up to me, it was like telling me it was like, yeah.
Speaker: And then there's one guy and then I had to go have a whole tribunal and this happened or that happened.
Speaker: I'm like, I think you might be in the wrong on some level here.
Speaker: I'm not saying bosses aren't assholes.
Speaker: I'm saying that maybe you're not exactly the pinnacle.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The only common denominator is you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It just it feels so dumb.
Speaker: And it's like, yeah,
Speaker: It just starts to feel like the sainted Ripley clan, you know, this like this, like we can, we can establish, um, hard luck people without constant flashbacks to different moments that people were incompetent and I saved the day.
Speaker: That's when the whole Mary Sue thing gets thrown around by morons a whole lot, but that, uh,
Speaker: We are getting into that a little bit where it's just like where it's just like it's not fully, but it smacks of that a little bit where it's just this like it's like, thank God I was there with my quick thinking all those times.
Speaker: And not not in a hero saves the day kind of way.
Speaker: Just like everyone's incompetent, but Ripley, you know.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One example of this, maybe even two, would have been like, okay, yeah, she's cool and collected.
Speaker: It starts to get a little, you know, Doth protests too much-y.
Speaker: It's like, okay, we get it.
Speaker: She's really great.
Speaker: Can we get back to the Xenomorph?
Speaker: More Xenomorph, please.
Speaker: Oh, and by the way, sorry, one more thing.
Speaker: Can we talk a little bit about how much Xenomorph
Speaker: Out of nowhere, we talk about the races of the characters in this chapter.
Speaker: Oh, did you notice that?
Speaker: Out of nowhere.
Speaker: Out of nowhere.
Speaker: First time in the entire book where we are like, she's an Asian woman and that's a black guy and that's an old white guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Out of nowhere, and it's like, it didn't matter.
Speaker: You just give them different names.
Speaker: It's like, there are a lot of characters, sure, but just give them different names.
Speaker: Tell it's like, the defense attorney said this.
Speaker: It's like, so-and-so, who was an Asian person, you know, and it's like, the dark-skinned so-and-so.
Speaker: And it's like, that has never happened before in this book.
Speaker: It's such a random insertion.
Speaker: It's not, nothing inappropriate happens.
Speaker: It's not like she starts running around on a rice paddy hat or something like that.
Speaker: It's just a weird choice.
Speaker: It's just so odd.
Speaker: Yeah, it's all very weird.
Speaker: And it kind of takes the sails, the wind.
Speaker: No, it takes the entire sails.
Speaker: It doesn't just take the wind.
Speaker: It takes the whole sail off the boat.
Speaker: I'm leaning into the malpropism.
Speaker: It takes the sails off the boat.
Speaker: Over the horizon they go, this thing's now a torpedo.
Speaker: Full steam ahead.
Speaker: Yeah, it's and you're right.
Speaker: I think I was when I was reading that chapter because you're absolutely right.
Speaker: It's the longest chapter in the whole thing.
Speaker: And I think I must have gone into some self-preservation mode when I was reading that chapter because I was just like, great courtroom drama.
Speaker: in a in an alien book that's let's yeah let's like it's almost like keith keith was like he's like i'm tired you know who is awake he like sends a little text to to john grisham in the middle of the night says you awake hey you up you up
Speaker: And then he goes and then Grisham's like, uh, uh, why, um, uh, what's up?
Speaker: And then Keith's like, you want to, you want to write a courtroom drama in the middle of my alien book?
Speaker: And John Grisham's like, yes.
Speaker: And Grisham's like, wow, you guys, you must not have had a lot of source material to work with if, uh,
Speaker: If you feel the need to include this.
Speaker: And he's like, no, that's not the problem at all.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it's not the problem at all.
Speaker: I have a 25 hour video game.
Speaker: I've cut so much out.
Speaker: So many scenes.
Speaker: There's even a moment where they were later where or before this, I forgot.
Speaker: I just remember reading it in this section where she's like, oh, I've only used my the tool once.
Speaker: In this entire, like, it's like, okay.
Speaker: It's the most important thing in the entire game.
Speaker: You're never without it or you're dead, but I only used it once.
Speaker: And other times, I used it a few times to knock some working Joes around, but I've only opened a thing once.
Speaker: And I was like, you open like a hundred of those things in the game.
Speaker: That is a constant companion to you.
Speaker: Constant thing.
Speaker: Not saying that you need to recreate all 100 of those, but it almost feels weird to include the statement that you've only used it once.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's just such a strange choice in a book filled with strange choices.
Speaker: This is the first book I think we've read where –
Speaker: they didn't use enough of the source material.
Speaker: Uh, if there was, there was plenty of good stuff to be had and it was ignored or glossed over.
Speaker: And it's like, like, again, the, the, the reactor scene with like, that's just been overrun with xenomorphs and everything like that.
Speaker: It's got a fucking bow on it.
Speaker: Like that is like, that is a, that's at least a chapter right there.
Speaker: Like you just, that's, that's, that's like,
Speaker: 20, 30 pages right there.
Speaker: And it's the back half of a chapter.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I'm gobsmacked because here's the thing.
Speaker: This is just what we're going to get into in the end.
Speaker: But I just he's not a bad writer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like he's a good writer.
Speaker: Like, like, like it is very good work.
Speaker: It is good writing, but it's good writing that kind of misses the point of the whole thing.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like delicious seasoning on nothing.
Speaker: This is the forest for the trees.
Speaker: It's absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what I forgot to say before we got into it?
Speaker: But the body is already halfway into the mosh.
Speaker: Oh, the body is in the mosh.
Speaker: Oh, see, this is why we need we need audio clips to interrupt and throw it in there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So let's finish putting this body in the mosh and then walk away from it forever.
Speaker: Actually walk away from it probably into a new playthrough of alien isolation.
Speaker: I can't stop thinking about it.
Speaker: I just can't.
Speaker: So chapter 27, shortest chapter in the book.
Speaker: Ricardo sends Amanda to medical to take an ambulance shuttle to the Anisodora.
Speaker: It's all that happens.
Speaker: It's a it's like a page long.
Speaker: Chapter 28.
Speaker: Ripley flies out to the Anisodora power.
Speaker: It's all powered down.
Speaker: She powers things back up.
Speaker: And then Marlo comes on the intercom and he starts monologuing about how he's going to blow up the station using an overloaded reactor from the Anisodora.
Speaker: And then he gives Ripley a clip of her mother talking about what happened on the Nostromo because...
Speaker: Wouldn't you know it?
Speaker: The the the flight recorder was not empty.
Speaker: The the people from Marlowe's ship just took the data and kept it on the Anisodora because they're assholes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Dicks.
Speaker: Just a bag of dicks.
Speaker: So basically she's like, Ellen is like, oh yeah, you know, some really terrible shit happened, Amanda.
Speaker: I hope you find me.
Speaker: And Amanda's like, oh, I'm going to find mommy.
Speaker: Once again, talking to her
Speaker: Because she's talking to an 11-year-old, for all she knows.
Speaker: And it's like, I was waiting for her to be like, so some bad things happened, and I'm okay.
Speaker: But it's just like, bad things happened.
Speaker: A fucking alien killed everyone, kid!
Speaker: They killed everyone!
Speaker: Like, just...
Speaker: Just about lost my cool there.
Speaker: Like, good Lord.
Speaker: I don't know if that's a detail the kid needs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But and then what she really should have said, but like, yeah, it was pretty bad, but I got a kitty.
Speaker: Say hello to Jonesy.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I almost forgot that that's where Jonesy's name comes from.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I was, I was telling, uh, uh, uh, me and Emily were having a dinner tonight and she said, uh, she said, what book are you guys reading?
Speaker: And, uh, I said, alien isolation.
Speaker: She goes, I haven't asked you about, cause she usually is, you know, she, she's,
Speaker: She's not a gamer or anything, but she takes an interest and she'll ask me about what we're reading and what we think and everything.
Speaker: And she goes, I haven't hardly asked you anything at all about this one.
Speaker: How's it going?
Speaker: And I said, it's kind of surreal because we keep saying Ripley this and Ripley that.
Speaker: And I just picture the cat in my head.
Speaker: uh ripley is no longer sigourney weaver or even this character it's your cat it's my cat and so jonesy it's the same thing like they're like jonesy the cat on you know the nostromo and i'm like oh right that is because that's the thing you forget i also forget and i live with the damn thing so yeah it's it's sweet sweet kittens sweet sweet kittens those xenomorph babies i
Speaker: Xenomorph babies.
Speaker: So she opens the door over the intercom.
Speaker: She hears a scuffle happening and she arrives upon the scene.
Speaker: Taylor has killed Marlo and Ripley and Taylor try to work together to stop the overload from happening.
Speaker: Whoops, that doesn't work out when
Speaker: Taylor gets killed by errant explosion from the generator, throws her against the glass, killing her.
Speaker: Ripley runs to the cockpit of the Anisodora.
Speaker: The explosion happens, but it doesn't really do a whole lot.
Speaker: It just throws the Anisodora into Sevastopol Station, basically.
Speaker: So Marlow was a dumb-dumb.
Speaker: He didn't even realize that the reactor blowing up
Speaker: wouldn't do anything except push the Anisodora into Sevastopol, which is all that, which is what happens.
Speaker: So she crashes into the, the, the loading dock or the docking bay with the Anisodora.
Speaker: Ripley and Ricardo determines she needs to align the comms dishes to talk to Verlaine.
Speaker: This is like straight out of the game stuff too.
Speaker: Straight out of the game stuff.
Speaker: More than anything.
Speaker: Also, kind of, isn't this the moment where she's like on the outside of Sevastopol Station?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And there's the xenomorphs are like climbing up for her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that doesn't happen in the book at all.
Speaker: We could have, we could have had, it's again, a moment with a bow on it to throw some more xenomorphs at us.
Speaker: And that's-
Speaker: Nothing.
Speaker: She successfully aligns the comms dishes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She does it.
Speaker: Good job.
Speaker: And she talks to Verlaine.
Speaker: She does her job competently and without incident.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: No incident report here.
Speaker: I know writers who like to have conflict in their books and they're all cowards.
Speaker: almost broke a sweat in, you know, thinking about the things that had to happen.
Speaker: Jesus, good Lord.
Speaker: Why even, why even have that complication?
Speaker: Why even have the complication of having to get the antennas aligned or whatever?
Speaker: Why, why even have that?
Speaker: If, if all it's going to amount to is I went down the hallway and it went click, what's the point of even putting it in?
Speaker: Um, because ethics in game novelization.
Speaker: You bite your tongue.
Speaker: You don't bring that evil into this podcast.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: So she tells Verlaine what happened, but not really.
Speaker: And we're going to they're like, we're going to meet up at the towing platform.
Speaker: Do it.
Speaker: They go down to she goes down to get Ricardo.
Speaker: Whoops.
Speaker: He was killed by one of the head crabs.
Speaker: Moving on.
Speaker: She fights her way to the towing station.
Speaker: She gets down there, gets a suit on.
Speaker: She's on the connection between the Anisodora.
Speaker: Or sorry, not the Anisodora anymore.
Speaker: We're on the Torrens.
Speaker: She's on the connection between the Torrens and the station.
Speaker: She has to use some C4 or whatever to blow the two things apart because of the connection.
Speaker: The aliens are climbing on and she blows away like two of them with the C4 and there's like a third one unaccounted for.
Speaker: She gets onto the Torrens, the Danny Torrens, and the voice comes on.
Speaker: There aren't enough xenomorphs in this novel, Mrs. Torrens.
Speaker: He is not here on the Torrens.
Speaker: So anyway, yeah, Verlaine's not there anymore.
Speaker: And then Amanda is attacked by a xenomorph.
Speaker: She ends up back in the airlock and she blows the airlock.
Speaker: So the xenomorph and herself out the airlock.
Speaker: That is where the game ends.
Speaker: The book continues on for a little bit longer where she's like, I am going to live.
Speaker: And then she she she's able to get over to like an emergency beacon.
Speaker: Just imagine a buoy floating out in the ocean.
Speaker: That's what I imagined this thing to be.
Speaker: And she begins broadcasting message that she's here.
Speaker: Please someone please pick me up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, that's the end.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: I mean, I'm sorry.
Speaker: I ran through the entire thing in like 20 minutes, but that's how much it actually deserves in terms of like summary, because goddamn, did they skip so many set pieces and,
Speaker: So much stuff.
Speaker: Keith DeCandido skipped so many set pieces in the second half of the game to just kind of blitz to the ending.
Speaker: It feels like...
Speaker: like he was trying to do himself no favors.
Speaker: Cause like I said, there's so many wonderful moments in that game that could be adapted effectively and, and not, you can, you can write them well and offer something new.
Speaker: There is an amazing moment.
Speaker: Not that's referenced in one of the interstitials.
Speaker: about the showroom that is just skipped over where Amanda has to go into one of the guys.
Speaker: Cause there's this other guy.
Speaker: It was at ransom or something like that or some other dude on the station.
Speaker: And she had to get into his office and his office is behind the showroom where the all there's all these working Joes that are just like standing there silently and
Speaker: And you're like, when are they going to activate?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's a great scene.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: It's a great moment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That could have been written so well, like the tension of her having to like, like just have all these working Joes looking over her shoulder.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As she's like hacking through something.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: I remember playing that and like stopping and look like just, you're just ready for it.
Speaker: And when it does inevitably happen, you're still not ready for it.
Speaker: It's so well designed and it's just skipped.
Speaker: We didn't even really have, um,
Speaker: We've spent a lot of time on this show complaining about adaptations where it's just a rote, you know, resequencing of what happens in the game.
Speaker: He goes into this room, he grabs that thing.
Speaker: I'm not suggesting that's what this needed to be, but we didn't even have like a scene of like hiding under a bed from the thing, hiding in a closet, you know, like the tension of the stealth in a stealth game.
Speaker: is barely talked about at all.
Speaker: Like we get, she gets to see some robots do some things in the distance, but like the tension of being hunted by the alien, like there's a brief moment in this part in part three where like she hears it, like describes the clamoring of the sound of the alien and the ducks or something like that.
Speaker: And it was like, Oh,
Speaker: Oh, are we going to reference one of the greatest parts of this game?
Speaker: Like one of the greatest sound designs ever made in a modern video game?
Speaker: We're finally here.
Speaker: Oh, good.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: You deigned to do that.
Speaker: It's, it's, yeah, it's, it's so strange.
Speaker: It's there's so little meat in this burger.
Speaker: It's, it's bizarre.
Speaker: It's bizarre.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a bummer, so to speak, that this is where the novelization of Alien.
Speaker: The book, I don't know why.
Speaker: Rippling, Amanda never really feels like she's in any specific danger ever.
Speaker: Not really.
Speaker: Not really.
Speaker: There's so few instances of her being directly engaged by things in a way that feels dangerous.
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She feels like she's on the peripheries.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's more instances of her reacting to things happening to other people rather than her feeling like she is in any particular danger.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which is funny because we get a ton of inner monologue from her.
Speaker: so much inner monologue.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Talking about, and her inner monologue is,
Speaker: you could have the inner monologue or you could have the flashbacks.
Speaker: You can't have both.
Speaker: You can't have both.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You cannot like, and you can have inner monologue.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Every character can have inner monologue, but it's like, there is so much for a book that is written from the third person.
Speaker: The third person.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: There is so much inner monologue.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've read first person books that had less inner monologue.
Speaker: It's it's no, you're absolutely right.
Speaker: It's so strange.
Speaker: I think I have a suspicion.
Speaker: I think,
Speaker: I mentioned in the first episode of this that the task of getting to write canon background information on Ellen Ripley and her daughter and their background and everything like that must be so enticing, so exciting to be able to do that.
Speaker: And I think either our author...
Speaker: was like so excited at the prospect of being able to do that, uh, or, or nervous at the prospect of being able to do that, that he overdid that aspect of it, this background stuff in favor and forgot to make an alien novel.
Speaker: Uh, and it, it, it, it's, I mean,
Speaker: I don't know what I would do in that position as a writer.
Speaker: No, I don't.
Speaker: I don't either.
Speaker: I think the moment it's almost like sometimes the moment is too big, you know, and like looked at from if you look at this story from a thousand feet up, you're like, ah, this feels like a competent story on its own.
Speaker: You know, it feels fine when you get closer to it and then also closer to the source material.
Speaker: The cracks really start to show there's some foundational issues that are.
Speaker: There is so much in the game.
Speaker: The game is such a... For a game, for a stealth horror game, it is very dense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To its detriment in some people's opinions.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A lot of that is not communicated in this book.
Speaker: I think this book should have been longer.
Speaker: I think this book probably needed to be a bit longer longer.
Speaker: with less longer, but also fewer flashbacks.
Speaker: Well, I was going to say, if you're going to include all of the flashbacks, then you had to add more.
Speaker: Then you had to add more.
Speaker: Then you had to add more.
Speaker: I think it even, I think it needed to be even longer with maybe at least one of the flashbacks completely eliminated and another one streamlined into something else.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause it, it takes up so much of the mental real estate.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: I can tell you more about what happened in these flashbacks than I can tell you about what happened in the primary story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, the primary story kind of slides past you and you go, oh, wait, what the fuck just happened?
Speaker: You know, they really hammer home the flashback stuff like the domestic drama stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is great to have on a certain level.
Speaker: Having fully fleshed out, realized characters that you care about when they're, that is super important when they're in danger.
Speaker: That's what we bitched about with FNAF.
Speaker: You had very two-dimensional characters.
Speaker: It didn't matter who gave you shit.
Speaker: This overdid it and then gave us very little.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: drama in the end.
Speaker: This is like four-dimensional characters, but the danger just doesn't ever feel like it's real.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's what I was saying before.
Speaker: I think he's a really good writer.
Speaker: That's the irony.
Speaker: I think there's a lot of...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's like, the characters really well, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They're very real.
Speaker: Everything's very well fleshed out.
Speaker: Um, it just misses the point entirely there.
Speaker: And I think this is, this is interesting because I think we can go through a, uh,
Speaker: As we go through this podcast, one of the things that we have found out is a number of different ways that a book can fail in doing what it sets out to do.
Speaker: So in this case, it's...
Speaker: it's overwrought in terms of character development.
Speaker: The character characters are almost overdeveloped in certain instances.
Speaker: And the plot is not, there's not enough attention given to the plot.
Speaker: It's so little that the,
Speaker: Any elements of danger feel underwritten and played off just as a another thing to get past, to get more to get back into the character development.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it would be one thing.
Speaker: It still wouldn't be great, but it would be one thing if all of these flashbacks were teaching us something new every single time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We're learning more new shit.
Speaker: But it's the same.
Speaker: It's the same note we're hitting.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's hammering the same points home over and over again.
Speaker: She is competent.
Speaker: Everyone else an idiot.
Speaker: You know, it's like it's like that whole thing.
Speaker: Like she she's gotten out of tricky situations.
Speaker: Everyone's trying to fuck her over.
Speaker: Like we don't need that much of that.
Speaker: We already got it.
Speaker: We've got it covered.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: I would like to be scared of a penis-headed alien now, please.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Would you mind?
Speaker: It's like Ian Malcolm tapping on the camera.
Speaker: He's like, are there going to be dinosaurs in your dinosaur tour?
Speaker: Hello?
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: There might be trouble of a hand.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just, it's, it misses the point.
Speaker: It's, it's like, it's like getting a novelization of, you know, the departed and an entire, you know, a hundred pages is dedicated to saying the, you know, a fucking, you know, a convenience store clerk, you know, it's like, and it's really interesting and you learn all about his family and it's super engaging and interesting and stuff.
Speaker: And you're like,
Speaker: That's not what the department's about, though.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's like we're going to spend the next 100 pages dedicated to just like the the hierarchy and structure of the Boston State State Police Department.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're really getting into the details here.
Speaker: That's like Tom Clancy level of, of, of detail on the Stades.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're going to, we're going to spend 120 pages talking about Richard Dreyfuss's character in Jaws and his doctoral dissertation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just the dissertation, a transcript of his, of the dissertation and his defense.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, and, but there's like five pages of the shark.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, it's like just it's not that it's badly written.
Speaker: Quite the opposite.
Speaker: It's just missing the fucking point.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's it's the writing is good.
Speaker: This story is poorly told.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Is basically the way the criticism.
Speaker: And those are two.
Speaker: I want to say those are two discrete elements.
Speaker: You can have a like a story with mediocre writing, but the story could be.
Speaker: fucking banger in terms of how it's told you know somebody i i i think that's that's totally possible we've all we've all read books and seen movies where the story is as simple as boy meets girl or something like that and you know and it just and it fucking rules the way it's done and and the girl uh likes boy boy is killed by xenomorph
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Great story.
Speaker: Great story.
Speaker: Great story.
Speaker: Tom Skerritt, you know.
Speaker: Tom Skerritt.
Speaker: R.I.P.
Speaker: Captain Dallas.
Speaker: You handsome son of a bitch.
Speaker: So, yes.
Speaker: But, yeah, that's the main thoughts on alien isolation.
Speaker: I think a good example of somebody who might not be as strong as,
Speaker: might not necessarily have the strength in the writing, but is a better storyteller, is the author that we are going to be talking about next.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Who has also written alien books.
Speaker: Yes, this is true.
Speaker: We're going to be talking about, we're going to be reading our third S.D.
Speaker: Perry novel.
Speaker: S.D.
Speaker: Perry.
Speaker: Next.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: And she's never really disappointed us.
Speaker: I mean, it's not, she doesn't, she's just like consistent, you know?
Speaker: She is.
Speaker: She's a good pulp writer.
Speaker: Yeah, a very good pulp writer.
Speaker: So I'm looking forward to, we're going to be reading the prequel book to the Marvel Midnight Suns video game.
Speaker: So rising.
Speaker: So, yep.
Speaker: Friend of the pod, S.D.
Speaker: Perry.
Speaker: Friend of the pod, S.D.
Speaker: Perry.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We're going to actually, it's kind of true.
Speaker: We're going to get those Q&A questions over to her one of these days.
Speaker: We need to do that.
Speaker: We absolutely need to do that.
Speaker: So if that's all we're going to say, do you have any other thoughts about alien isolation or...
Speaker: I just want to I guess if there's one thing that the book accomplished that maybe the designers and the publisher wanted it to is it just desperately made me want to play the game again.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: So I want to go back to the game.
Speaker: I do want to fire up the game again, which is just an amazing game.
Speaker: It's one of my favorite games of all time.
Speaker: It's so damn good.
Speaker: So, so damn good.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, in that case, what are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I finished Stray first and foremost.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Finished Stray, had a nice little cry.
Speaker: You evil bastards.
Speaker: For anyone who's, who's, who, uh,
Speaker: is worried.
Speaker: The cat does not die outside of all the times my own incompetence caused the cat to die.
Speaker: That's that, but no one to blame, but myself on that one.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But it does have a, has a bit of a tear jerker ending.
Speaker: Really enjoyed it.
Speaker: I thought it was just long enough.
Speaker: I think the story was fun.
Speaker: I think the world was really cool.
Speaker: I loved the design of the world.
Speaker: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: It took me longer to beat than I thought it would just because of my own ADHD and coming and going with it.
Speaker: And as we discussed before, it is...
Speaker: It's a game that's hard to pick back up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that was tough, but it was a great play.
Speaker: I highly recommend it.
Speaker: So I liked that one.
Speaker: I've been playing more against the storm.
Speaker: I'm just burning through achievements and...
Speaker: Shit like that at this point.
Speaker: It's just I love it.
Speaker: I love this game.
Speaker: But I've gone on about that one.
Speaker: I did finally get started on Marvel Midnight Suns.
Speaker: Ooh.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I am one of the people, unfortunately, who's being affected by a recent patch update that is just causing it to...
Speaker: freak out a little bit on my computer.
Speaker: So I haven't gotten very far, but what I've played, I've really enjoyed.
Speaker: I think you're right in the sense that it's, you mentioned before that your initial thoughts are just that this is, this is, this is a XCOM with Marvel characters.
Speaker: And there is an element of that that,
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it's also very different at the same time.
Speaker: It plays very different and it gives you a different feel in a way, because whereas XCOM was about...
Speaker: everybody's your baby, your character, your creation.
Speaker: And let's, you know, create the story around them as you go.
Speaker: This, you know, you do feel like a superhero.
Speaker: You do feel, and you're entrusted with these cool superheroes.
Speaker: And that's fun.
Speaker: Hunter is kind of a dullard, but surprises me from time to time.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I'm surprised at how much, how funny it is.
Speaker: I think Iron Man refers to Doctor Strange as Doctor Spooky, just to be a dick.
Speaker: And Hunter believes that his name says, lead the way, Doctor Spooky.
Speaker: And you're like, okay, that's pretty funny.
Speaker: That's pretty funny.
Speaker: Hunter is very literal in the way they take things.
Speaker: And Hunter could be either...
Speaker: There's no non-binary option, unfortunately, but Hunter could be either male or female in the game.
Speaker: But the, yeah, it's a, the writing is the thing that when I first started playing it, I was like, ah, it's going to be kind of silly and dumb.
Speaker: The more I play it, I was like, oh, there's actually a lot of really good writing in this.
Speaker: There's some really good moments.
Speaker: My favorite bit
Speaker: One of my favorite bits is right at the beginning where Doctor Strange and Iron Man are trying to recruit Johnny Blaze, Ghost Rider.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: And Ghost Rider does not, Johnny Blaze does not want anything to do with what they're doing.
Speaker: Um, so, and, uh, and says something like, you know, whoever you are to, to, to, to Tony.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Tony's like, you don't know who I am.
Speaker: And then later in the conversation refers to him as Robo man, Robo man, and rides off on his motorcycle.
Speaker: And, uh, it cuts to every character gets like a title card when they're first introduced.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But instead of like, uh,
Speaker: His actual title, it says Roboman, and the subtitle is, he's famous, seriously.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's what I mean.
Speaker: It's like, it's surprisingly funny.
Speaker: It has a lot of, it really, and don't get me wrong, Marvel's stuff is generally pretty funny, but that's a Deadpool level of almost wall-breaking kind of stuff.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Knee slapper shit.
Speaker: So that's surprising.
Speaker: There's some more bits with the title card.
Speaker: Like they'll be they'll play it straight for a bit and for a while.
Speaker: And then randomly there will be a there will be somebody introduced and there will be like a joke, like kind of layered into their title card or what have you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So there's there's some there's some good stuff in there.
Speaker: And so I'm really looking forward to hopefully you get that you get your patch stuff sorted out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I do, too.
Speaker: I would I would I would I'd like to get a little more of this in.
Speaker: It's probably going to be the last game I get a chance to play before we at this point.
Speaker: It's the future.
Speaker: It's 2023.
Speaker: But right now we're at the tail end.
Speaker: It's pre.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We have not recorded our game of the year episode, which you have will have listened to before this episode comes out.
Speaker: So did I include Midnight Suns?
Speaker: Did I not?
Speaker: You know more than I do.
Speaker: Time is a flat circle.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So watch that season again.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, but I did that.
Speaker: I did download the I did purchase the Vampire Survivors DLC.
Speaker: There's DLC for Vampire Survivors.
Speaker: They just released it like yesterday, I want to say.
Speaker: And it's $2 and it includes, let's see.
Speaker: 17 new achievements and a bunch of new characters and new items and all that good shit.
Speaker: And that was the easiest $2 I ever spent.
Speaker: Probably the easiest couple of bucks I spent since I bought vampire survivors.
Speaker: Sweet Christmas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that happened.
Speaker: Um, but I've also got my eye on, I think, I think the next game I'm going to play after that is signal.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I definitely, I recommend signals.
Speaker: I have not finished it yet, but, um, I, I need to get back to it, but I gotta look into this one.
Speaker: That one, this one looks very intriguing.
Speaker: I like, uh, I'm getting a lot of, um,
Speaker: Like you mentioned Metal Gear vibes.
Speaker: I'm also getting some Resident Evil vibes.
Speaker: It's definitely like, yeah, it feels like a cross between the point of view of Metal Gear Solid 1 and when it had top-down segments and Resident Evil pre-Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Well, that's, that's my, that's basically my favorite era of Resident Evil.
Speaker: So that I'm all about that.
Speaker: Sounds great.
Speaker: So yeah, that's where I'm at.
Speaker: What about you, Kevin?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: So the episode I will have talked about this already on bullet time.
Speaker: It will be coming out.
Speaker: The bullet time Christmas special episode came out on December or something or other.
Speaker: Anyway, Die Hard Vendetta.
Speaker: I just finished it the other day to talk about it with with James and to Snickerer on the bullet time podcast.
Speaker: But to recap my thoughts, Die Hard Vendetta is a game that you actually come back around on by the time you're finished playing it.
Speaker: It was the lowest rated game that we have played for bullet time.
Speaker: And the focus of bullet time are shooters that missed their mark.
Speaker: Yeah, but you're talking like mediocre stuff.
Speaker: Mediocre.
Speaker: Like garbage.
Speaker: Die Hard Vendetta was rated was has like a 52 on Metacritic.
Speaker: Oh, people hated it.
Speaker: But if if you're if you're looking at it now with the ability to look at the individual elements that it was trying to introduce and all these these cool little things that it did and
Speaker: It actually isn't that bad.
Speaker: It has a lot of moments.
Speaker: It has a lot of weird puzzle solving moments, which is actually kind of cool for a diehard game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The puzzles aren't necessarily like, you know, throw the switches.
Speaker: It's like figuring out how to kill somebody properly without all the hostages getting killed.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: There's a it's got the graphics are terrible.
Speaker: The controls the controls are pretty dog shit.
Speaker: But if you get beyond those two, if you're able to get past that, you're actually in for a pretty interesting experience.
Speaker: Also, the checkpoints are bullshit.
Speaker: It's like it gives you like it's one of those game old games where it's like one or two checkpoints per level.
Speaker: And there's like you lose like 20 minutes of progress every time you die.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: One of those.
Speaker: But if you're able to for it, will yourself beyond all of that,
Speaker: Not bad.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So, yeah, Die Hard Vendetta.
Speaker: And actually, that got us talking about how would you make a Die Hard game?
Speaker: And we ended up talking about Alien Isolation is actually a Die Hard.
Speaker: It's a Die Hard.
Speaker: It makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: I mean, with vent crawling and stuff like that, that makes perfect sense.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Because you would have to create a game in which you...
Speaker: And you escalate, you take conflict and you escalate it to a point where you need to avoid it at all costs rather than just engaging directly.
Speaker: And a lot of action games have a problem with that.
Speaker: Alien Isolation, at least for the first two thirds of it, is
Speaker: Direct contact with anything, Working Joes, other humans, or alien is not recommended.
Speaker: You can't do that.
Speaker: So, yeah, basically, using the template for alien isolation, you actually could make a game that
Speaker: You could take that out of horror and put it into kind of like a high stakes action thriller environment type of game.
Speaker: And I think it would be an absolute banger.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: So that's kind of where we because we're trying to figure out what would what would make a good a really, really good diehard game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And we broaden the definition of diehard to like we're not just talking about licensed diehard.
Speaker: We're talking about the diehard scenario because like speed is diehard on a bus like diehard diehard on a X is a thing now.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So a diehard game is just shorthand for us diehard like scenario where it's, you know, there's only a few enemies really that you have to deal with, but stealth and cunning is your way, way around it.
Speaker: So that was that was a lot of what I was playing last week trying to finish it up for the podcast.
Speaker: Otherwise, Marvel Midnight Suns, baby, I finally got to part two.
Speaker: I got to part two, which opened up the second location on on the map.
Speaker: I'm no longer just in New York City.
Speaker: I have the American Southwest, which makes me think that I'm going to be getting some Johnny Blaze action.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker: Which would be cool to have both.
Speaker: It would be cool to have both because Robbie Reyes is on The Midnight Suns.
Speaker: It would be cool to have two Ghost Riders.
Speaker: Two Ghost Riders would be pretty kick-ass, yeah.
Speaker: That'd be OP as fuck.
Speaker: That'd be excellent.
Speaker: That would be so much fun.
Speaker: But yeah, that's about it.
Speaker: This is going to be a little bit of a short episode this week, but don't blame us.
Speaker: Blame Keith DeCandido for- They earned it.
Speaker: The audience earned it.
Speaker: They earned it.
Speaker: Sticking with us.
Speaker: Keith just sprinted to the end of the book, so there's not much we can really do about that.
Speaker: Nothing we can do.
Speaker: We didn't do this.
Speaker: Keith did.
Speaker: But so next couple next episodes will be about Marvel Midnight Suns.
Speaker: I hope you guys enjoyed the first series of 2023.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is our third year doing this.
Speaker: well yeah it's we're third calendar year right that's what i mean like like yeah yeah yeah we'll be going into our second anniversary in june um and our hundredth episode is coming up in a couple months yes it is so we've got a special plan for that
Speaker: Look out for all that.
Speaker: So Twitter seems to be circling the toilet bowl as of this recording.
Speaker: I know we've been saying that a lot, but it seems to be circling faster.
Speaker: It somehow just keeps getting worse.
Speaker: It is just a turd that is just not flushing properly.
Speaker: I don't understand.
Speaker: It keeps getting worse.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know how it's getting so... As of now, at this point in the recording... In December 18th.
Speaker: Yes, December 18th.
Speaker: As of December 18th, Elon just said that you can't link out to other platforms and then reversed that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Based on his stupid Vox Populi Vox Day.
Speaker: And then he did a fucking poll saying, should I...
Speaker: should I quit as CEO and claims at this point that he will go with whatever, whatever people say, which to me feels like a, like kind of like a boy had to like, he wants out, he wants out.
Speaker: He doesn't want to do this anymore.
Speaker: And this, this lets him save some face and still get to bitch about, well, if I had stayed, it would have been different.
Speaker: You know, this is the thing.
Speaker: This is the thing is that Elon, uh,
Speaker: He bought Twitter and he's so arrogant.
Speaker: Elon Musk is a piece of shit.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We are no friends of Elon Musk.
Speaker: We're no friends of these right wing fuck boys that just prop him up.
Speaker: And the other billionaire class like Peter Thiel and whatever.
Speaker: If you don't like it, whatever.
Speaker: I'm ranting here.
Speaker: But these fuckers like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and all of them.
Speaker: All of them.
Speaker: Jack.
Speaker: Fuck Jack.
Speaker: Jack is there's no good billionaires.
Speaker: Jack is like Jack Dorsey is like, what are you doing, Elon?
Speaker: In like half of these every time something is announced, he's like, what is going on?
Speaker: Like, Jack, this is your fault, too, man.
Speaker: And people are like, oh, go on, Jack.
Speaker: And it's like, no, fuck Jack, too.
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: How about fuck him?
Speaker: Fuck him too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he's so arrogant.
Speaker: This is why we cannot put these people on pedestals.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Is Elon believed his own hype.
Speaker: People would call him like the real life Iron Man.
Speaker: He never did anything to earn these things.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: So he you put him up on a pedestal.
Speaker: He's like, OK, I could buy Twitter and I can fix it.
Speaker: And every single fucking thing he's he's done.
Speaker: He's like he does something dumb.
Speaker: And then he's like, well, no, we're going to reverse that.
Speaker: Like, no, we're going to reverse the reversal.
Speaker: No, we're going to do something different.
Speaker: Because what he doesn't realize is that a lot of the decisions that Twitter and social media, these social media corporations make is they just they're flying by the seat of their pants in an effort to stay solvent and happy for advertisers.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Elon gets their advertisers start dropping off because the shit he's doing is not the thing that they like.
Speaker: Twitter was already doing the thing that they like, which was just being just good enough on some social issues.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Not even the bare minimum, just like just under the bare minimum to keep the advertisers happy.
Speaker: And meanwhile, he's like, nah, free speech absolutism, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: I don't understand philosophy.
Speaker: I don't read books.
Speaker: I don't read books.
Speaker: So he does all these things.
Speaker: He lets people like Andrew fucking Tate back onto the platform.
Speaker: Andrew Tate, who is literally one of the worst, like, well-known people out there.
Speaker: I mean, you know, somebody's going to be like, well, what about so-and-so?
Speaker: He killed people.
Speaker: Like, yeah, okay, well, Andrew Tate's a fucker.
Speaker: Just go read some stuff about Andrew Tate.
Speaker: He's a piece of shit.
Speaker: He's a piece of shit.
Speaker: So, and Andrew Tate was one of the original people banned on Twitter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He was banned from Twitter before it was a big deal to be banned on Twitter because of how bad he is.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like, Twitter was first, and then he finally got banned from other social media platforms, like, five years later when it all caught up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, Twitter was ahead of the curve on Andrew Tate.
Speaker: Anyway, so...
Speaker: Elon has no idea what he's doing.
Speaker: He fired everybody who actually knew what he was doing.
Speaker: He's done these Twitter file drops that are meaningless and they don't show what they think that they're showing.
Speaker: He's got these reporter, these right friendly reporters who,
Speaker: He's blocked all of the journalists who he doesn't care for.
Speaker: He's blocking and unblocking journalists.
Speaker: He's letting douches like Matt Taibbi and Barry Weiss and Glenn Greenwald and all these fuckers who haven't seen... They've...
Speaker: They have not done a both sides argument that they didn't like.
Speaker: You know, they love a both sides-ism.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's terrible.
Speaker: And this is the end of the road.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: This is why the billionaires...
Speaker: are actually not great people because they're so insulated from meaningful decision making that they just think that whatever they do is genius and it's not.
Speaker: So fuck Elon Musk.
Speaker: Midnight Suns Infernal Rising next time, people.
Speaker: Midnight Suns Infernal Rising.
Speaker: Go to PixletPod.com and sign up for the newsletter.
Speaker: Good night.
Speaker: Good night.
