Transcript
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Soft.
Speaker: It's a soft focus.
Speaker: It's a soft focus, yeah.
Speaker: You just smeared a little Vaseline on the lens.
Speaker: Just smeared a little that on the lens.
Speaker: Just give that guiding light look, you know?
Speaker: Oh, now it's in focus.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: You know what else is in focus?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixlet.
Speaker: Today, we're XCOMing it up.
Speaker: We're taking our 99% shot here.
Speaker: And it's still somehow missing.
Speaker: And it's still going to somehow missing with me as always is Phil.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: And Phil, before we get started, the book, the XCOM book might be disappointing.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But can you tell me about a specific website that is never disappointing?
Speaker: Oh, oh, I think I know the one you're talking about.
Speaker: You're talking about patreon.com slash the Pixelit Podcast, are you?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's Pixelit Pod now.
Speaker: Is it Pixelit Pod now?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, Pixelit Pod.
Speaker: Let's try that again.
Speaker: Actually, yeah, let's rewind that.
Speaker: You did not hear anything, folks.
Speaker: Nothing.
Speaker: So tell me about this page.
Speaker: What can you get on PixelitPod?
Speaker: The Patreon page.
Speaker: The Patreon page of PixelitPod offers you an opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to help us make this show with as little as $1 a month.
Speaker: where it helps us put some fundage into our bandwidth, into our equipment, all that stuff.
Speaker: It's very helpful.
Speaker: Every dollar counts.
Speaker: And in exchange, we have exclusive shows coming up.
Speaker: We have essays.
Speaker: We have all kinds of stuff.
Speaker: It's just getting to the point where I'm thinking, we should just play with this as our blog, basically.
Speaker: And just anytime we have something funny or interesting to say, we throw it up there just for the Patreons to play with and discuss with us.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: It's a really cool place, and we've already got some really wonderful people signed up for it.
Speaker: Thank you all very much.
Speaker: And we actually even revealed not too long ago the identity of one of our upcoming books, which we never do.
Speaker: We never do that.
Speaker: That's just not something we do.
Speaker: But this one's a really exclusive one that we're really excited about.
Speaker: We're going to be some of the first people to get to read it, let alone talk about it.
Speaker: And so we thought we'd throw up a cover for everyone to look at and enjoy and drool over.
Speaker: So please check out Patreon.com PixelitPod, like every other place, PixelitPod.
Speaker: And consider helping us out, throwing a shekel here and there.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: You know, it actually, I don't know why I just had a memory unlocked about how I had a real right wing crank of a history professor.
Speaker: And he was like, I'm going to say Christian fundamentalist, maybe.
Speaker: And he was talking about how like in Christendom, he's talking about iconography.
Speaker: And he's like, he had like this woodcut portrait of like...
Speaker: of Mary.
Speaker: And he's like, like iconography isn't meant to just be sit on the, on the shelf.
Speaker: It's supposed to be held and loved and adored, uh, to show your love of, of, uh,
Speaker: of God and Mary and, and, and, and I was like, I just, I just have this image of him just like squeezing this, squeezing this like woodcut carving of Mary really tightly at the front of the, uh, the classroom.
Speaker: Like, sir, this is a Wendy's.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Real Wendy's moment there.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: And I had another professor who once jumped on the desk to talk about how Silvio Berlusconi, who just passed away, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Silvio Berlusconi.
Speaker: We're just getting into international politics.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Silvio Berlusconi, former prime minister of Italy.
Speaker: once jumped on a desk to yell that he had a raging heart on.
Speaker: See kids, history doesn't have to be dull.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be dull.
Speaker: It could be fun.
Speaker: I have actually looked up since then that moment in Italian prime minister history.
Speaker: Couldn't really find any sources for it.
Speaker: So I don't know if the professor was just making it up or whatever.
Speaker: If you happen to know the incident in which Silvio Berlusconi jumped on a desk and talked about his erection, let us know.
Speaker: Yeah, bring receipts.
Speaker: Bring receipts.
Speaker: Bring receipts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Berlusconi erection gate.
Speaker: Erection.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: rest in something.
Speaker: Rest in lubrication.
Speaker: Rest in lubrication, Mr. Burlescott.
Speaker: Was he a good politician, a bad politician?
Speaker: I believe he was a... A horny politician?
Speaker: Definitely a horny politician.
Speaker: I mean, he's Italian.
Speaker: It's kind of a foregone conclusion.
Speaker: Foregone conclusion.
Speaker: I think he was a righty.
Speaker: I think he's a righty.
Speaker: I'm looking up for, I'm looking up, yeah, they're Christian.
Speaker: They're a Christian, democratic, liberal, social democratic, populist tendencies.
Speaker: I don't know what all those things blended together actually mean.
Speaker: That is a lot of words.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just shoved in a single sentence together, like words don't matter.
Speaker: That's chaos.
Speaker: That's pure chaos.
Speaker: Pure chaos.
Speaker: There's a lot going on.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: So anyway, Roliscone, he's dead.
Speaker: And I think he was relatively corrupt.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, let's put the body in the marsh.
Speaker: Let's put the body on the marsh.
Speaker: And especially, you know what?
Speaker: In honor of Silvio, we're going to put Silvio's body in the marsh.
Speaker: Let's put Silvio's body in the marsh.
Speaker: Undercover placement for the city of Boston.
Speaker: This was the scene yesterday when Delahunt's body was found in the marshes near the Fenway.
Speaker: So chapter three begins with some base building.
Speaker: There's base building happening.
Speaker: So much base building.
Speaker: So much base building.
Speaker: You ever wonder what spreadsheets looked like in a book translated to prose?
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: Did you want to?
Speaker: Bad nose.
Speaker: Did you ever want to find out what the budget report was of your particular commander when you were playing XCOM?
Speaker: Me neither.
Speaker: Me neither.
Speaker: Bradford just kind of handled those things and didn't really bring them up to me.
Speaker: And we were super appreciative.
Speaker: We really were.
Speaker: Super appreciative.
Speaker: Bradford is a real unsung hero with his handling of all the logistical stuff while we got to play with our little green army men.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And occasionally make a big decision like, you should research that laser gun, which just makes you feel so good inside.
Speaker: Ah, we're a laser gun group now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We like laser guns.
Speaker: So Janelle is spending most of her days in a fake UN office listening to the complaints of the Swiss about how they weren't consulted on the building of the UN office.
Speaker: So stupid.
Speaker: And she's like, and in a country like Switzerland, where it only takes a petition of 100,000 to turn it into a national referendum, not being consulted is a big deal.
Speaker: I'm just going to say what I said last episode.
Speaker: Someone took a vacation to Switzerland and had the full guided tour and took too many notes and said, this has got to go somewhere.
Speaker: We got to put this in something.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: We get so much like just granular information.
Speaker: Nitty gritty details.
Speaker: Tiny details.
Speaker: Like all this stuff that... And here's the thing.
Speaker: You might...
Speaker: some of you are nerds like us and you, you hear that and go, Ooh, lots of detail about, uh, this foreign land that I've never been to.
Speaker: That's at least, that sounds interesting.
Speaker: It isn't.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's very, very dull.
Speaker: Um, it, you talks about the, the, you get a lot about the, the local towns and some of their cultural, uh, there's a cow contest happening nearby.
Speaker: There's a cow fighting contest.
Speaker: And, and,
Speaker: I gotta tell you, if this was a longer book, if this was like a swirling epic that went into painstaking detail for five, six, dare I say, 700 words, those kind of details...
Speaker: would be interesting.
Speaker: And you will, they could be interesting.
Speaker: You could do them in an interesting fashion.
Speaker: This is a 240 word novel.
Speaker: This is one of our shorter novels, right?
Speaker: There's no, we don't have time for this, especially when we have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It might be the shortest novel we've done outside of the, the worlds of power stuff.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Outside of stuff that are short stories or kids' books or novellas, this actually might be our shortest novel.
Speaker: And we've gotten a grand total of one fight with aliens, and everything else is bureaucracy and the local culture.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's not even like local alien culture.
Speaker: It's the Swiss.
Speaker: It's the Swiss.
Speaker: And it is the most, it is the most Iowan Switzerland town that they could have picked.
Speaker: They're doing a cow contest for best cow.
Speaker: Blue ribbon cows all up and down.
Speaker: But there's been a lot of cow abductions and mutilations happening in the area.
Speaker: And maybe there's a relationship between the cows here versus anywhere else because Ari is like...
Speaker: Like we didn't have that many in Morocco, but there were less cows in Morocco.
Speaker: And she's like, yeah, but relative to the amount of cows in Morocco, the amount of cow mutilations per capita here in Andermatt are higher than they were down there.
Speaker: So let's go to the flow chart.
Speaker: Let's go to the flow chart.
Speaker: And she breaks out a flip chart and breaks out some expo pens.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Old school.
Speaker: Starts drawing on there.
Speaker: Real old school presentation, but super engaging presentation.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I wouldn't be surprised if she made her way to a TEDx with this presentation.
Speaker: That's inevitably where this is headed.
Speaker: That's inevitably where it goes.
Speaker: Did you know the difference between TEDx and TED Talk?
Speaker: TEDx, I just know, is kind of like a lesser version of it, isn't it?
Speaker: It's like, yeah, it has the TED branding-ish, but you don't actually have to be like...
Speaker: a real super expert.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, it's like a pay to win Ted talk type thing where you, you get yourself in there and then you can just claim that you had a, you did a Ted X presentation.
Speaker: And it was like, it, it, it, it's, it's not the best thing to have on your resume.
Speaker: It's like the difference between going to a hotel that has a Starbucks versus a hotel that, quote, proudly serves Starbucks products.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: That's the difference.
Speaker: It shouldn't it shouldn't be a big deal, but there's a lot that can go wrong here.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So Janelle is sending Ari down to the old base in Morocco to help the commander there because he is fucking shit up, it seems.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, uh, which is weird because they spoke so highly of them in the previous chapters.
Speaker: Uh, they didn't, they said he was, he was an asshole.
Speaker: Um, but an asshole he is and an asshole he is.
Speaker: She tells him not to put himself in any danger.
Speaker: And here's a big problem I have with these two characters.
Speaker: is there has not been an ounce of romantic, sexual, any sort of tension between them other than we're just told that they're in a relationship.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're told they're in a relationship.
Speaker: We're told that they care for each other very much.
Speaker: We see none of it.
Speaker: We see 0.0% of it.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's like, and this led me down a rabbit hole thinking about like, you can cut the tension in here with like a knife.
Speaker: Does that mean that it's like the thick, it's thick and you could cut it with a knife?
Speaker: And is there like a saying where if you like could like,
Speaker: scoop it watery like it's it's like watery and you could scoop it with a spoon is that like less tense just I just feel like there needs to be grades to that saying because right
Speaker: You can cut lots of things with knives, you know?
Speaker: This book is so tension-free that a knife passing through it makes no difference whatsoever in terms of cutting anything.
Speaker: No difference whatsoever.
Speaker: It's cutting nothing.
Speaker: Meanwhile, there's a terror attack in Zurich and shit's bad.
Speaker: Moving on to... I heard you're arriving in Morocco.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: We get told about a lot of shit going down.
Speaker: We don't really see a lot of shit going down, especially in this particular section.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a real brief, like, page and a half.
Speaker: Page, I'll say.
Speaker: Describing the initial terror attack.
Speaker: Then Ari arrives in Morocco.
Speaker: Ari tells DeLonghi that he stretched his forces too thin, and this terror attack was probably the capstone on that plan.
Speaker: Um, DeLonghi tells Ari that being in a friends with benefits relationship with the regional commander will not protect him.
Speaker: Uh, at this point, uh, because of the terror attack, Ari says he's going to get the remaining troops together and go deal with it.
Speaker: And then DeLonghi's like, no.
Speaker: And Ari's like, you told me she wouldn't protect me and I'm proving you right.
Speaker: And DeLonghi's like, okay.
Speaker: So everything works out is what you're saying.
Speaker: Meanwhile, back in Zurich, those aliens are happily taking in people for food and experiments.
Speaker: Kind of sounds like a date when you put it that way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like the aliens are like, things are going to plan.
Speaker: Would you like to come in for food and experiments?
Speaker: Food and experiments.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We'll get you home by 10.
Speaker: Home by 10.
Speaker: Ari and the team will arrive and they do a lot of planning talk about how and where they're going to attack and l and and be like, yeah, we're going to, we're going to go up the road and down the lake and around the river and,
Speaker: Zippity doodah down to there's the forest and we're going to use the forest and we're going to attack attack attack.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: And then it seems like the Swiss themselves are fighting back because they all have guns.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because they're their citizen soldiery kind of situation with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they start shooting at the aliens to Ari gets in the gunner seat and fires a fission bomb at the battleship, which had landed on the train station.
Speaker: And it tries getting away, but it seems like it's caught up in the steel supports of the building and like trap.
Speaker: It's like trapped and can't.
Speaker: Can't get enough air.
Speaker: And the bomb blows up the battleship.
Speaker: And Ari's ship land and they head off.
Speaker: And then chapter four.
Speaker: That's the end of chapter three.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Chapter four.
Speaker: These are long chapters, by the way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: These are long chapters, but this is all the stuff that happens.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Chapter four.
Speaker: We skip everything.
Speaker: And Janelle arrives after everything's happened.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: All that cool action and stuff.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: We took care of it.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: Janelle's going to get in the toilet.
Speaker: She's going to be told about it in a debrief by the now commander on site, Colonel Arneson.
Speaker: We get pages and pages of debrief on what happened just before she got there.
Speaker: No cool action scenes for us.
Speaker: Just bureaucratic business-like paperwork.
Speaker: Recounting.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: Arneson gives her a full play by play of the actions taken by her boy toy.
Speaker: They managed to stun some ethereals to send back to Erhil Magoon.
Speaker: And we find out that Ari was knocked out by a Psy attack from an ethereal after his mind shield went down.
Speaker: And he is still unconscious.
Speaker: At one point, Ari ordered the squads to concentrate fire on the ground.
Speaker: which caused the terror ship to fall.
Speaker: Did you understand what the point of all of this was?
Speaker: I, are you talking about the ship that got stuck in the hole under like in the street?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's not in, I reread this like three times and it is not well written.
Speaker: It's basically the idea as far as I could tell was that the ship was down and
Speaker: And like they were it was something about they knew it was going to be landing at a certain place.
Speaker: So they concentrated their fire on that place so that when the ship came down, it fell through the road.
Speaker: And and all the gunners, which were on the undercarriage of the ship, were now underground and had nothing to shoot at.
Speaker: So they're kind of helpless.
Speaker: And it reveals this notion of like the underground banks of the Swiss.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's gold.
Speaker: And like once again, like, did you know about Switzerland that did you know we don't really need it?
Speaker: It's it's so weird and so badly written and.
Speaker: Yeah, I was a little too confused.
Speaker: I was confused and like they and they had it was like and then Ari told us to post a guard because after the hole was made and we're like, why?
Speaker: And then we look down in the hole and there's all this gold.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Ari knew about this because he again, two times Ari has done something in battle that is like inexplicable.
Speaker: And that turns out to be a good call.
Speaker: And both times are tied back to vacations that him and Janelle took.
Speaker: Yeah, they went on a tour.
Speaker: They went on a tour.
Speaker: They were in France and they ran into a, did they call him a gnome?
Speaker: Yes, a gnome.
Speaker: Who is a junior banker and he was like bragging about the gold that's underneath the streets or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's so weird and pointless.
Speaker: It's not as clever of a moment as I think our author wanted it to be.
Speaker: It was supposed to be this cute, interesting moment.
Speaker: Oh, that's really badass.
Speaker: But it's like not...
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Do you know what is, though, if she thought about it, helpful just advice in the future, if she wanted something that actually is really interesting?
Speaker: It's aliens attacking the fucking Earth!
Speaker: Why don't we focus on that?
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: Oh my God!
Speaker: There's, yeah, I mean, one of the things, the un...
Speaker: explored aspects of XCOM in this book is these are terror missions.
Speaker: Can we please lean into the fact that a lot of this shit is terrifying and horrific?
Speaker: Yeah, not a lot of terror in these terror missions, is there?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: It's so weird because I just...
Speaker: There's so much.
Speaker: You asked me a couple of, a few episodes back at one point.
Speaker: You're talking about what would the novelization of Monopoly look like.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: This is it.
Speaker: This is it.
Speaker: Like, not a lot of action, a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of moving money around.
Speaker: I said last episode that the moving money and, like, having to afford this is actually a really interesting angle.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: But don't forget...
Speaker: that you're writing a war story.
Speaker: You know, it's, it's, it's, we go so deep into the weeds with details of like, well, we had to buy this and we had to buy that.
Speaker: And it's not even stuff that necessarily pops up in the game.
Speaker: It was, you know, a plot line of like, we have to get this to be able to research this new badass rail gun that'll help us take out aliens and stuff like that.
Speaker: That would be a really cool subplot.
Speaker: We could do that.
Speaker: And that's,
Speaker: Totally relevant to the game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But the level of detail that she goes into with like just the, I'm just saying the word again, the bureaucracy involved in running these things.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: That's probably how it would work, but I don't read those books because that's not entertaining.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like the, when you think of XCOM, when you really think of XCOM,
Speaker: What is it that you picture in your head?
Speaker: You picture, and I don't want to speak for everybody, but I picture the tactical squad-based stuff.
Speaker: Squad-based combat, absolutely.
Speaker: Squad-based combat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There is another layer to the game of doing all this bureaucratic management shit.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's a fascinating layer.
Speaker: And it's a fascinating layer, but it's there to support and make sure...
Speaker: that you are able to do the squad based combat correctly.
Speaker: Um, and.
Speaker: XCOM isn't SimCity.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: You know, we're not going into that level of detail with the infrastructure.
Speaker: It's just like you said, it's a supporting actor.
Speaker: It's not, it's not the main focus of the game.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But you're going to spend more time fighting things rather than just like sitting on that, uh, that screen.
Speaker: Um, so anyway,
Speaker: XCOM people feel free to sound off in the comments.
Speaker: Please do.
Speaker: Please do.
Speaker: Janelle figures out that there is a mole potentially because of how like, so the Moroccan base, like basically all of their, the reason this happened is all of their ships were out.
Speaker: There was like 15 scout ships that like flew by and
Speaker: And DeLonghi sent one like, all right, go, go, go, go.
Speaker: And then once he was totally stretched thin, that's when the terror attack happens.
Speaker: And he wasn't able to actually send anything other than the ship that Ari commandeered.
Speaker: So Janelle's like, what do you think?
Speaker: Do you think there's a mole?
Speaker: And he's like, I don't care.
Speaker: I don't have any ships.
Speaker: First things first, please.
Speaker: First things first, please.
Speaker: I need people.
Speaker: Janelle is upset at DeLonghi for a bit for letting Ari on the ship, but DeLonghi makes a good point.
Speaker: that Ari said, I'm going anyway.
Speaker: And then we find out that there is a huge Illyrium haul from the terror conflict.
Speaker: And it should be enough to replenish the stores of everything that they have lost.
Speaker: Oh, well, that tension just keeps dissipating as the novel goes on, doesn't it?
Speaker: Hey, problem resolved itself, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Janelle also tells him to send over all communication records, not transcripts, just who has been talking to who.
Speaker: And then she goes and she's going to she's going to go visit Ari in the hospital.
Speaker: And while she's doing that, while she's walking to the hospital, the medical wing, Janelle's chewing on the idea of a mole in their ranks, and she goes to visit Ari, and one of the doctors, Georgie, gives some background on what a psi attack does.
Speaker: I thought this was actually kind of interesting.
Speaker: This was very cool.
Speaker: I liked this detail, yeah.
Speaker: So when the person is hit with a psi attack,
Speaker: it hits their brain and their mind, and it makes the brain believe that it's injured.
Speaker: But there is actually no physical damage.
Speaker: So the damage done to the brain is psychosomatic.
Speaker: And I thought that was a neat little detail.
Speaker: Basically, the brain just has to figure out that it's not wounded and they'll wake up.
Speaker: And it makes most things that they could do to take care of that issue kind of pointless and useless.
Speaker: So people who got really fucking wrecked by it actually physically bounce back easily and other people who should be fine end up being vegetables.
Speaker: Right, exactly.
Speaker: Um, I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker: I thought that was a pretty cool detail.
Speaker: Uh, she, uh, she stops on the way in and talks to a squatty named Molson, who is dealing with some collarbone neck and leg injuries.
Speaker: And we get some horror movie references.
Speaker: Um, he's like, yeah, my buddy's calling me pinhead because of the, he's got the,
Speaker: He's got the halo thing where they actually like screw it into your head.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Page.
Speaker: Just yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then Janelle goes and talks to Ari and, you know, lets him know what's going on, even though he's in a coma.
Speaker: And then we get the first actual real touching moment between the two of them.
Speaker: This is like page 100 in the book.
Speaker: And we all we've been is told that they are in a relationship.
Speaker: And she says something like, be well, my lion or something.
Speaker: She calls him her lion, which which.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't like it.
Speaker: Yeah, it kind of made me uncomfortable.
Speaker: It sounds like a nickname that a person... It sounds like a nickname a writer who's never given a cute nickname to a lover would give to one of their characters.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: My lion.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: My lion.
Speaker: My lion.
Speaker: I'll take Pookie over my lion.
Speaker: Janelle says, be well, my lion to Ari, and I'm like...
Speaker: They've never farted in front of each other, have they?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I just imagined like, just be well, my lion.
Speaker: And he just flatlines.
Speaker: I thought you were going to say, be well, my lion.
Speaker: And then it just, there's just like a fart.
Speaker: And it's just.
Speaker: She goes, oh my God, I can't believe you did that.
Speaker: As soon as you wake up, I'm breaking up with you.
Speaker: Gross.
Speaker: Gross.
Speaker: It's where we are, people.
Speaker: We're fart jokes.
Speaker: Fart jokes, baby.
Speaker: We're adding them.
Speaker: We got to do what we got to do, man.
Speaker: We're adding them in here.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Good Lord.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So the next section of my notes, I just labeled spreadsheets.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, you're not wrong.
Speaker: And it's just like a lot of ship talk.
Speaker: And here's the thing.
Speaker: That note, a lot of ship talk encompasses about four pages.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like just, yeah, just a lot of...
Speaker: My new details.
Speaker: So we're going to send you.
Speaker: We're going to take these two Avenger ships from the Moroccan base and they're going to come up here.
Speaker: But then when we get our new ones in, we're going to send them back.
Speaker: But we're also not going to tell anybody.
Speaker: So nobody knows you're doing the whole switcheroo.
Speaker: And I'm like, what?
Speaker: is this to expose the mole or is it just, you're just, you're just, is this like Hollywood accounting, you know, where you can just like move things around and say, we're operating at a loss.
Speaker: We need more money.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's, and there's actually a section in here where the author refer, our commander, she refers to certain bureaucratic tasks that she's got to do as about as much fun as watching paint dry.
Speaker: She says this twice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I'm like, so you know.
Speaker: So you know we shouldn't be putting this in our science fiction war novel.
Speaker: This is not interesting information.
Speaker: And you know it.
Speaker: You know it.
Speaker: You know it.
Speaker: So why?
Speaker: You have a character acknowledging that this is boring.
Speaker: Did you leave it in because you needed to hit 50,000 words to have it called a novel?
Speaker: I wonder.
Speaker: I wonder.
Speaker: The only thing I could compare it to was when we were reading the Dead Space book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was 5,000 pages long and inexplicably had moments where they talked about trying to receive a grant and shit like that.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The minutiae.
Speaker: This is the closest we got the grant.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What did you forget what franchise you're working on?
Speaker: This is it's nuts.
Speaker: It's not this is not the worst written thing we've ever read by a long shot, but it's so dull.
Speaker: Why does this matter?
Speaker: Why does this matter?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So Janelle takes about three pages to walk to the U.N.
Speaker: office.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: We get a full description of the whole, we already talked about the whole train system where they have to go down the elevator.
Speaker: We get it again.
Speaker: We get a beat for beat description of, of what they have to do.
Speaker: But like, we've already talked about this.
Speaker: You can just, yeah, we already know this.
Speaker: We know this.
Speaker: We can skip it.
Speaker: Um, so, uh, we meet Callie, one of the squaddies who is basically assigned to just be, uh, one of the people that sits in the UN office.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And Janelle dismisses Callie like, oh, lock up.
Speaker: And then President Traeger shows up to talk to Janelle.
Speaker: He's actually, you know, his name is his title is president.
Speaker: He's actually the mayor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they make a point.
Speaker: Well, where did you think the word came from?
Speaker: It's full of rich history and culture.
Speaker: It's like more bullshit.
Speaker: Let's talk about it.
Speaker: Let's talk about that.
Speaker: I'm sure the people who are reading really want to learn more about Switzerland.
Speaker: Look, I love you, Switzerland.
Speaker: You're a really cool country, honestly.
Speaker: But what the fuck?
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: I just don't care.
Speaker: I didn't pick up like Switzerland, an introduction.
Speaker: I picked up XCOM UFO defense.
Speaker: I was like, I'm not on a Rick Steves tour here.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, why, why?
Speaker: President Traeger shows up to talk to Janelle and his cow won the contest.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Good for him.
Speaker: So she goes to a local tavern and talks with the townsfolk about cows.
Speaker: This happens in our alien book.
Speaker: She talks about cows and how some the cows are big and they're smart and they're smarter than most people give them credit for because they can actually take care of themselves.
Speaker: And are long horns better or short horns better?
Speaker: And then everybody's singing and Janelle is drunk.
Speaker: And then she starts thinking more about the cows and the aliens.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Like thinking emoji.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then she gets home and starts bugging the data center people for more for information.
Speaker: Like she's drunk dialing the people.
Speaker: at the data centers like did you get my did you get my cow numbers yet i i know you got cow numbers give me cow numbers why would you call me back i need to give any cow numbers any number of cows i need any breed of cows long horns short horns and be like yes commander and my favorite part is they they got it they're like yeah we got that of course we have that we have that of course we do
Speaker: We have so much information and you want information on fucking cows.
Speaker: Everything in this book is about minutiae.
Speaker: Why wouldn't we?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: We got your cow information.
Speaker: Are you just cows?
Speaker: You don't want to elk or anything?
Speaker: Cows.
Speaker: Just cows then.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: No other hooved mammals.
Speaker: No?
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: New contacts.
Speaker: There's a scout ship headed their way.
Speaker: And she is.
Speaker: Kevin, do you mean there might be some action?
Speaker: There might be some action.
Speaker: She's drunk.
Speaker: She's drunk and hasn't really slept.
Speaker: So the scout ship is headed their way.
Speaker: But the only person higher than a captain is her.
Speaker: So apparently the rule is like there always has to be a colonel out there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You can't just send out a team with a captain on it.
Speaker: So she's like, let's, let's gear up.
Speaker: Let's go intercept it.
Speaker: And they give chase to it.
Speaker: And there's like a, it's like a, basically a death star trench run through the mountains of them chasing the scout ship.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They shoot it down with a stingray missiles and they hit it and down it goes.
Speaker: Probably the, the funniest thing that ever happens in this book is
Speaker: Is they get off a ship and it's basically like that moment in Ghostbusters where they shoot the tray, the cart full of house cleaning supplies.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: When they get off the elevator, they do that, but to an Ibex.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: They destroy this mountain goat, like just obliterate it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's dead.
Speaker: It's dead.
Speaker: Toasted crisp toast to a crisp.
Speaker: They mutilated it.
Speaker: Like, come on.
Speaker: Like, you can't.
Speaker: It's a fucking goat.
Speaker: They get off the ship and immediately they're like, ah, and they're like, ah, they're like, oh, shit.
Speaker: We cannot afford to have the goats betray us for the for the aliens over bullshit like this.
Speaker: They're fucking it up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So then they're like, come on, let's go fight these aliens.
Speaker: Cut to we killed the aliens.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We are informed.
Speaker: We are informed that they win.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: They win.
Speaker: Let's get back to the bureaucracy.
Speaker: Yeah, I know that.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I don't want to bore you with another stupid fight.
Speaker: So let's get into what you really came here for.
Speaker: Oh, goody.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: So far, the only fight that we've gotten is the one that opens the book.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Everything else has been either like a recap.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Everything else has just been recaps.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, just that we've been informed of it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I. Yeah.
Speaker: So a Chris Lid then, though, jumps on her.
Speaker: So we get a little action.
Speaker: And apparently she's wearing a jet pack or something like that.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just got some level of armor that can help her fly, help her fly.
Speaker: So Chris, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I know it's a thing in XCOM.
Speaker: I just didn't realize that that's what she was wearing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They don't really go into it until it's convenient for them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So she's the crystal is on her and she flies up into the air and she's, she has a flashback to the time that she was in Maryland.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: Eating crabs and like, oh, you hit the crabs with the hammer and you eat the meat.
Speaker: So then she's like, well, there's a mountain right there.
Speaker: And she rams the chrysalid into the side of the mountain, which cracks it open and then drops it.
Speaker: And the rest of the squad shoots it after it falls to the ground.
Speaker: And that's the end of the chapter.
Speaker: I've got to ask, do you think Slumdog Millionaire was based on that scene?
Speaker: She had this meaningless, oh, right, things with shells crack go boom.
Speaker: Like, what?
Speaker: I just think Diane Dwayne, she's a jet setter.
Speaker: She likes traveling.
Speaker: She has an extensive vacation journal and just goes to that whenever she needs help.
Speaker: Let's say, you know, tarting up the dialogue and it's not working.
Speaker: Yeah, so if it seems like we got through this episode recap pretty fast, it's because we did.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We did.
Speaker: We did.
Speaker: Because we wanted to.
Speaker: We wanted to.
Speaker: It's the same number of pages as the first episode.
Speaker: I didn't skip too much.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I didn't.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I could get into the nitty gritty of some of these, like,
Speaker: past tense combat encounters, but yeah.
Speaker: But then we would become the same people that we accuse, uh, this author of being just like rehashing, like just mindless.
Speaker: It's just not that interesting.
Speaker: It's not, it's just not a lot of interesting stuff going on in this book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I want you guys to know, Kevin, Kevin has been focusing on the most interesting parts of this book and they're still not that interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So with all that being said, what are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I'm so glad you asked because I actually am playing some.
Speaker: I've been doing some entertaining things with my life outside of this book.
Speaker: First and foremost, I beat Amnesia the Bunker.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I fucking loved it.
Speaker: I loved it.
Speaker: I think this is my favorite Amnesia game.
Speaker: They just learned so much.
Speaker: It's kind of fascinating because I found myself comparing it to Alien Isolation a bunch.
Speaker: But I thought about it while I was playing today and I went, oh, well, Alien Isolation was really heavily based on Amnesia of the Dark Descent.
Speaker: But what's clear is that Alien Isolation learned a lot from Amnesia of the Dark Descent and improved upon it and did their own thing.
Speaker: And then I feel like Amnesia of the Bunker looked at Alien Isolation and went, oh, okay, I like what they did with our thing there.
Speaker: It went full circle.
Speaker: And it has made for a really wonderful, engaging experience that unlike Alien Isolation, it's not as smooth and polished as Alien Isolation.
Speaker: There's some serious indie game jank.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it also doesn't take 20 hours to play all the way through.
Speaker: So it scratches that itch in a fraction of the time.
Speaker: And apparently it's got some roguelike elements to it.
Speaker: They made a point of saying at the end, the items, the codes, all that stuff gets rearranged at every playthrough so you can have a different experience each one.
Speaker: And I don't know.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's enough for me to want to up the difficulty once and try it out that way.
Speaker: Because that's fascinating.
Speaker: That's really cool.
Speaker: I loved it.
Speaker: So that one is just fantastic.
Speaker: I've also been playing the Pixel remaster of the original Final Fantasy.
Speaker: on my switch.
Speaker: It's been lovely.
Speaker: I've just been like in the evenings when I'm watching a movie with my wife, I'll just sit there and grind and get my fighter and my thief and my mages levels up.
Speaker: I'm literally on the last boss and he's basically impossible.
Speaker: So I'm just going to grind for several days and get him taken care of.
Speaker: But it's been really nice.
Speaker: Yeah, Chaos, yeah.
Speaker: And it's been really nice just to revisit that.
Speaker: The music, you know, the remastered music is really good.
Speaker: It's a new coat of paint.
Speaker: They've changed some of the dialogue, so it's a little more localized.
Speaker: It's not so weird.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Super fun.
Speaker: I wondered about, they are expensive, these Pixel remasters.
Speaker: It was $12 for an old NES game.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker: That's a lot.
Speaker: But I'm not going to act like I haven't enjoyed it and put a fair amount of time into it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Definitely worth it.
Speaker: So what about you, Kevin?
Speaker: What have you been playing?
Speaker: Oh, I am so glad you asked.
Speaker: So I'm playing a bunch of things.
Speaker: As per usual, I am much closer to the end of the System Shock remake than previously thought.
Speaker: I think I'm actually in this.
Speaker: I just did the second to last thing that you do in the game.
Speaker: It's just been taking me a while because I've only had like little like like 30 minute stretches to play it recently.
Speaker: But yeah, I just did like I think it's the second to last mission, so to speak.
Speaker: in the game.
Speaker: Um, and now there's, there's one big thing left.
Speaker: Um, so system shock remake update.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Um, I have started playing, uh, Herat, uh, which is, uh, a first person shooter.
Speaker: It's spelled H R O T. Um, it's, it's set in, I want to say Soviet era, Czechoslovakia.
Speaker: Um, basically there's like a, there's a, uh, uh,
Speaker: there's like some sort of natural disaster or something and you're fighting your way through all these guards and, and, and such and, and monsters.
Speaker: It's a, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker: The developer of it basically recreated the quake engine, um, did,
Speaker: like made his own version of the Quake engine to create this game, like to be truly to have like true fidelity with that 1996, 97 level of of gameplay.
Speaker: It's really fun, very fast paced shooter.
Speaker: gives a lot of good horror vibes despite the fast paced nature of it.
Speaker: Very brown.
Speaker: It's got a lot of brown tones.
Speaker: It's a lot like Dusk in that, which is also a Quake-like boomer, quote unquote, boomer shooter.
Speaker: But that title to me is way too broad.
Speaker: Dusk and Hrad are very much in the vein of Quake.
Speaker: Whereas, for example, another game that we had talked about recently, the Warhammer shooter was, yeah, Bolt Gun was in the vein of more like Doom and the build engine games like Duke Nukem, for example.
Speaker: A lot more refined than those, but in the same, you know, vein.
Speaker: stylistically.
Speaker: So yeah, Hrat.
Speaker: And then I also started playing Octopath Traveler 2.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: It is, it's so far I put an hour into it and it's fun.
Speaker: It's like, it's perfect.
Speaker: Here's the thing is, and I know the term is no longer, I don't know,
Speaker: it's kind of gauche nowadays and Japanese developers, they've made a big point of saying that the term JRPG is like,
Speaker: is othering to them.
Speaker: They don't actually like it.
Speaker: Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There was a whole big thing about how it makes sense.
Speaker: I was like, please stop calling them that.
Speaker: And, uh, and, and somebody said a good, maybe a good replacement term is like a console RPG.
Speaker: Um, something that really is in the vein of RPGs that were created in,
Speaker: you know, in the late eighties, uh, through nineties that, that kind of hit that certain aesthetic.
Speaker: Um, um, and Octopath is a real nice, uh, I mean, I played the first one for quite a bit.
Speaker: And the second one is also a nice throwback to those like, uh, SNES pixel art, pixelated, you know, RPG games that I always liked.
Speaker: Um, so it's fun.
Speaker: It's perfect for the steam deck because, um,
Speaker: I know how involved they can get in terms of hours.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: So having it for something like the Steam Deck where I can just like put in a little time while we're watching TV before bed or something like that is perfect.
Speaker: I need to get a freaking Steam Deck.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Honestly, it's going to be the thing that really, really helps you out in terms of like,
Speaker: Just playing, you know, being able to play some things that you want to experience without having to sit in your office and play.
Speaker: Yeah, I need to get one of those.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: Is that it?
Speaker: Is that everything I've been playing?
Speaker: I was bummed out as of recording.
Speaker: I realized earlier this week that I missed out on the second beta game.
Speaker: for the finals.
Speaker: I didn't realize it was going on until like the day that it was ending.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: So I've already played the finals before the second beta just happened earlier this week as of recording, not when this episode comes out.
Speaker: And so I'm looking forward to that game finally coming out so I can talk way too much about it.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, that's totally up your alley.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Short episode, but whatever.
Speaker: We got more pages to go through next week, so.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Next week will be longer.
Speaker: You're going to love it.
Speaker: We keep them hot and fresh every week, so.
Speaker: Yeah, baby.
Speaker: Yeah, it's fine.
Speaker: We're good.
Speaker: What do you want from us?
Speaker: What do you want from us?
Speaker: Do you know what we want from you, though, is we want you to go to Instagram and Twitter and follow us on PixelitPod, at PixelitPod, and also go to our website, PixelitPod.com.
Speaker: You can sign up for the newsletter.
Speaker: If you're not into the whole Patreon thing, then at least sign up for the newsletter.
Speaker: That's a good way to keep in touch of new episodes and things like that.
Speaker: People on the newsletter get access to the new episodes earlier.
Speaker: Or if you're just able to if you just follow us on Patreon, you don't even have to be a patron to get the new episodes early.
Speaker: Just follow us on Patreon.
Speaker: Patreon.
Speaker: Be a follower of the Patreon page.
Speaker: So, yeah, PixletPod.com or at you're going to find a whole bunch of good stuff either way.
Speaker: And feel free to follow one of those pages to our discord, which is always a fun place to be.
Speaker: We do love love when fans come into the discord and start chatting with us.
Speaker: It's a it's a good old time.
Speaker: So so some of you have been coming in and informing us on on some novelizations that maybe we were not previously.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: So you're helping us to figure out what the next lineup is going to be.
Speaker: And I thank you for that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Speaking of, did you see that there is there is a new Bloodborne?
Speaker: Oh, the same comic?
Speaker: Oh, Lord.
Speaker: We're going to have to come back to that for a one-shot, aren't we?
Speaker: Different author, same artist, and colorist.
Speaker: Well, I liked the artist and colorist, so... Yeah!
Speaker: Might could work out just fine.
Speaker: Could be fine.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Wasn't the art and the color that we had an issue with.
Speaker: Wasn't the issue.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: No, sir.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: Anyway, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Have a good night, everyone.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
