Transcript
Speaker: So it's kind of a clockwork orange style way of getting you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm good.
Speaker: You don't want to be listening to too much Beethoven while you're doing this.
Speaker: It just makes you like it less.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the only thing that the only thing the medication does is slow down your digestion.
Speaker: So it's like it's basically kind of telling you that these things that you're not supposed to be eating a lot of to begin with, like high sugar and a lot of fat.
Speaker: Um, these things were they to sit in your digestive system for too long, they would make you feel ill.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like it's just, it's what it would do normally if your, if your metabolism was that slow, I guess.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's so crazy.
Speaker: It is crazy.
Speaker: Um, wild.
Speaker: You know what else is a digestive system?
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 on today's show.
Speaker: We are diving into part two of Halo, the Empty Throne.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm excited to get into it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We now have...
Speaker: by the end of this section, we will understand the people on the cover.
Speaker: We know who we can identify the people on the cover.
Speaker: Finally, we'll be halfway through the book and we'll identify.
Speaker: We'll know who the people on the cover are.
Speaker: But if you would like to be on the cover of a book and I don't guarantee that at all, I think you should go to Patreon dot com slash PixelPod.
Speaker: where you could give us money.
Speaker: And then maybe someday we'll put you on the cover of a book.
Speaker: I don't promise that.
Speaker: But maybe, you know, things have happened.
Speaker: Lots of stuff can happen between now and then.
Speaker: Lots of stuff can happen between now and then.
Speaker: We have three tiers.
Speaker: $1, $5, $10.
Speaker: $5 gets you access to the bonus episodes.
Speaker: $10 gets your name shouted out in the episode.
Speaker: To that end, I want to shout out Jesus loves you, Kyle.
Speaker: Seaman, Ruthless, Mudder, Middle Things, Sigma South.
Speaker: Check.
Speaker: Beaks Demethic Langlier and friendly friend.
Speaker: Thank you for being a friend.
Speaker: We really appreciate you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you can you can also follow there for free.
Speaker: It's you could just do that.
Speaker: Go for free.
Speaker: There's a link to our discord right in the on the Patreon page.
Speaker: You don't need to pay anything to get that link to the discord.
Speaker: So, you know, come and hop on in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that being said, Phil, you done good?
Speaker: You great?
Speaker: I got about 125 pages of this thing.
Speaker: That was the most Bill Burr you've ever said anything.
Speaker: I'm good.
Speaker: I'm good.
Speaker: I'm good.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Let's talk about Halo.
Speaker: Who the fuck is this guy?
Speaker: Now I have to work on that.
Speaker: So I have.
Speaker: Now you have to.
Speaker: Now you have a goal is let's let's work on some Bill Burr impressions.
Speaker: That's a worthwhile thing.
Speaker: I think that's a worthwhile thing.
Speaker: He's got a distinctive enough voice, you know, to that.
Speaker: I think you can find that.
Speaker: Oh, Billy bitch tits.
Speaker: He's he's going to be in Glen, Gary Glen Ross on Broadway.
Speaker: I heard about that.
Speaker: And what's his face?
Speaker: I feel bad.
Speaker: He's a comedy legend.
Speaker: Um, Bob Odenkirk.
Speaker: Yeah, Bob Odenkirk.
Speaker: Uh, and, and the fact that Bill Burr is playing the character I played when I was in Glen Gary.
Speaker: Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker: Character is that is that Moss?
Speaker: It's Ed Harris's character.
Speaker: Ed Harris's character.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Like, that's perfect.
Speaker: That's that's perfect.
Speaker: So I wish I hope there's a taping of it.
Speaker: That would be excellent because I'm right now like seriously like how would we work that out?
Speaker: Like, oh, I kind of want to go get up to New York and see.
Speaker: Finally, Emily and I finally finished Succession.
Speaker: And so like you're in Culkin.
Speaker: That's a draw.
Speaker: And Bill Burr is in there and Bob Odenkirk.
Speaker: Who's Bob Odenkirk playing?
Speaker: He's playing the Jack Lemmon character.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Leslie.
Speaker: And Kieran Culkin's playing Ricky Roma, the Al Pacino character.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: So it's going to be a very, very interesting production.
Speaker: I think the casting is fantastic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's going to be very interesting.
Speaker: Oh, and Michael McKean.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: I didn't know that.
Speaker: Kieran Colton, Bob Odenkirk, Michael McKeon, and Bill Burr.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Hey.
Speaker: And I wonder who's playing the, what's it?
Speaker: character uh put that coffee down um oh that character's not in the play it's not in the play alec baldwin's character was written for the movie that's an i i feel like what uh uh he should have done the done what he did for is it the same oh no i'm mixing up mammoth and um
Speaker: fucking what's his name um the the the guy the you can't handle the truth guy
Speaker: Oh, oh, sure, sure.
Speaker: You know how to talk about.
Speaker: Jack Nicholson.
Speaker: Is that Aaron Sorkin?
Speaker: Oh, oh, Aaron Sorkin.
Speaker: That was Aaron.
Speaker: Yeah, I see what you mean.
Speaker: Yeah, Aaron Sorkin.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Because after, because he took that speech from, like, he rewrote the speech and the character from the movie into revivals of the play.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For A Few Good Men.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Why could I not think that?
Speaker: I'll tell you what, if you want an experiment in weirdness, go see if you can a high school production of A Few Good Men.
Speaker: Because I'll tell you, I used to be involved in theater enough when we were in Savannah that I would occasionally get asked to judge like one act play festivals and stuff like that, usually high school kids.
Speaker: And they'd give you like,
Speaker: 100 bucks in a sandwich.
Speaker: And yeah, yeah, that sounds great.
Speaker: I'd love a sandwich.
Speaker: And one of the weirdest things I ever saw was a high school production of a few good men and they were good.
Speaker: It's yes.
Speaker: It was so jarring to see these 16 year olds.
Speaker: And I was like, that would never fly like like that's that's that's that
Speaker: It's you're not military ain't going to let you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he was like, I can't find my tie.
Speaker: I was like, oh, OK.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: Theater.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker: So it's going it's going to run through the end of June.
Speaker: Looks like.
Speaker: June 28th.
Speaker: Tickets are stupid expensive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: And also, even if you're, if you're looking now, so the show starts, what, April?
Speaker: Like this week or something like that.
Speaker: I think it's this week.
Speaker: April 1st.
Speaker: Tomorrow.
Speaker: I think it's tomorrow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the show starts that it starts tomorrow, ends at the end of the June.
Speaker: Even if you go to the end of June looking for tickets, it's going to be really hard finding seats together.
Speaker: Well, yeah, seats together and seats that are less than $350.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Over here.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is tough.
Speaker: So this has been the Broadway report.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know you guys are excited.
Speaker: I know you, you love following us on our ADHD adult, uh, micro, uh, obsessions.
Speaker: Uh, so please, please look for it next week.
Speaker: It'll be physics.
Speaker: Um, I don't know why.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Uh, it, it, it apparently it, I mean, almost every Broadway show is, is recorded.
Speaker: They just almost never released them.
Speaker: You can you can.
Speaker: I remember when I was a intern in New York City, there was
Speaker: It was the I think it was the New York Public Library has all of them.
Speaker: And all you need to do, you could just go and what you had.
Speaker: You just had to watch it there.
Speaker: You have to watch it there.
Speaker: That makes so they.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they had every Broadway show that ever existed in there.
Speaker: It's a really great.
Speaker: You know, that's even it just goes to show you that even if you don't want to act or anything like that, New York might be a great place for you if you want to be like a theater nerd because playwright, critic.
Speaker: Or just somebody who just loves to absorb the theater.
Speaker: It's a place all there like New York.
Speaker: Oh, no, that.
Speaker: Oh, no, that stuff.
Speaker: So, yeah, let's put the body in the marsh.
Speaker: We can we can we don't need to keep talking about this.
Speaker: Marship.
Speaker: Marship.
Speaker: When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh, you dump them in.
Speaker: All right, we're starting at chapter nine.
Speaker: It's seven years earlier than when we last left off.
Speaker: And James 005, a Spartan 2, we're following him and we get the events of the fall of Reach.
Speaker: Basically, they're trying to intercept some navigation data on gamma...
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: It's like the station gamma station or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's fall of reach era.
Speaker: They're trying to get this shit taken care of and all that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is and this is.
Speaker: Actually, really interesting.
Speaker: We were just talking about this because this is where we find out that James Solomon, the mercenary Spartan, is James 005, who is actually the only Spartan at the time, at least I don't know of now, but in Halo history, that was genuinely MIA.
Speaker: Because Spartans don't die.
Speaker: Even if you watched his head get blown off, you just report this MIA to create this illusion that they're immortal.
Speaker: It's very Persian of them.
Speaker: Very cool.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And I think if I recall correctly, because it's basically a it's basically it's almost like this book does.
Speaker: And it's kind of neat.
Speaker: It does remakes of previous movies.
Speaker: like stories within it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like this is the second time it's done it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And this is, this is an, this is basically a remake of an excerpt from fall of reach.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: When, when he dies.
Speaker: But in fall of reach, I believe he, he's more, they more clearly assume he's dead.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's cast out into space.
Speaker: He gets shot by a needler and cast out into space.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so basically the idea is that he went into like a comatose state and Oni, O and I found him and resuscitated him.
Speaker: A year later.
Speaker: A year later.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is some severe Warhammer 40K space marine shit.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's it's some xenomorph shit.
Speaker: Like it's like.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: find the alien queen floating around in space and try to harvest her anyway.
Speaker: It's nuts.
Speaker: But this is when we find out that these two people are one and the same.
Speaker: And this is actually the tying up of kind of a character.
Speaker: God, it's been around for a long time.
Speaker: This is...
Speaker: A deep cut is what this is.
Speaker: So we cut forward to James.
Speaker: He has been basically working as a mercenary for Oni since then.
Speaker: I don't know if people say Oni.
Speaker: I'm just going to.
Speaker: It's where my head goes.
Speaker: I can't say Oni.
Speaker: He is currently orbiting his base of operations, this kind of backwater planet where he hangs out.
Speaker: And it's basically so he's like hermiting up.
Speaker: Basically, it's like it's it's this it kept making me think of like the little bumfuck towns in Alaska.
Speaker: You know, it's just got the one shitty bar and a few people and they all know each other and they all leave each other alone because you don't know why they moved to this town.
Speaker: But you're pretty sure it ain't good.
Speaker: It's that kind of thing.
Speaker: So we learn a little more about his background from the Spartan program to the mercenary level.
Speaker: And basically, we learn that he's like he daydreams about retiring, but not really.
Speaker: Like he, he wants to retire, but he knows that he's addicted to this lifestyle and he doesn't have anything without it.
Speaker: Which I think is, is great because the parallel, you said it yourself just now, the parallels between this world and like the 40 K universe is really interesting.
Speaker: And it's something that they, at least in the Horace heresy era books, they dealt with a lot with the space Marines who are bred to be warriors and, and,
Speaker: someone will say, well, we're doing this until there's no more war.
Speaker: And, and, and they're like, what am I going to become a farmer?
Speaker: What, what are you, there's no end to war.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like that's just, this is just what this is.
Speaker: Uh, we're just doing this forever.
Speaker: Some of them assumed that from the very beginning.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, anyway, uh, so we cut to chapter 10.
Speaker: Uh, we are back with, uh, tool Jaron, um, after the fight that took out, uh, uh, Kato Dean, uh,
Speaker: When we last left her, she was basically so when we last left her, she was in a destroyed war sphinx, just just about to go down with the ship, literally.
Speaker: And she barely survived.
Speaker: She gets back to the the group.
Speaker: And the arbiter that she's following is basically vying for alliance with humans, which is just disgusting to a lot of them, including her.
Speaker: The idea of teaming up with the humans after just a generation of war with them is insane to her.
Speaker: So she meets with the shipmaster who we get a little information on him.
Speaker: He was kind of a vicious warlord during the war, but now that it's been kind of peacetime, he's softening and she's not a big fan of that.
Speaker: She meets another female shipmastress that she only knows from reputation.
Speaker: It's a very big deal because women aren't exactly encouraged to be in these positions.
Speaker: So having two is crazy.
Speaker: I thought that was kind of interesting where, uh, like she, she meets this female.
Speaker: She's like, Oh yeah, that's cool.
Speaker: You know, it's, it's somebody else.
Speaker: Um, I think the funny thing about this character is like, she is, it's cool because of how bad ass she is, but also, uh,
Speaker: she's kind of annoying with how like, ah, fuck the humans.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She is, you know, it's like a little bit like I am looking at her as like, are you going to betray them to betray them to the banished or something?
Speaker: You got, you got, you got real true believer.
Speaker: You're just kind of currently pissed off at the banished for being fake or whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: No, I think you I think you hit the nail on the head because the thing I kept coming back to as as I read through this is when you're meeting these ex covenant people, it's very this organization is very MAGA because you've got the opportunists.
Speaker: You've got the true believers.
Speaker: You've got you've got everything in between.
Speaker: Everyone's got their reason and they've all kind of united under this banner.
Speaker: And it's a very uneasy alliance for that reason, with a lot of people fucking each other over in the process.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, yeah, so the deal is they're going to apprehend a leader of the order of restoration, which is, you know, kind of an old school covenant order, like a neo covenant kind of order to find lithos, which is some sort of weapon.
Speaker: And I mean, we find out basically it's the same subroutine that the humans are going after that will get them access to the domain.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So everyone's, everyone's it's, this is just Halos.
Speaker: It's a mad, mad, mad world.
Speaker: Like that's just all this is.
Speaker: It's just a crazy cavalcade of characters.
Speaker: Everybody's going for it.
Speaker: You got Dom DeLuise.
Speaker: Was he in a mad, mad, mad world?
Speaker: He better have been.
Speaker: I haven't seen that in years.
Speaker: It's a, it feels like a guy.
Speaker: Look at this.
Speaker: Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Phil Silver, Zethel Merman, Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Maybe not.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Good cast.
Speaker: Buster Keaton.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Buster.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Look at this.
Speaker: Just a great.
Speaker: It's a bunch of wacky characters.
Speaker: And that's and that's what we're dealing with here.
Speaker: Essentially, it's just all these people all going after the same MacGuffin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: They want to investigate reach to learn more about it, but they need permission from the humans, you know, which which just again is just sour to Joram.
Speaker: The idea that we're going to ask the humans permission for anything is disgusting.
Speaker: And she basically calls them their version of the N word.
Speaker: That's the impression I got.
Speaker: She like she she says some human slur and her boss just kind of goes.
Speaker: over here get over it just like pulls a mom and like grabs her by her elbow stop you're making a scene uh my sister did that to me and my brother once she and she grabbed the soft part of our arm on the other side of the elbow and just kind of yeah like just like right here like grabbed like on the other just and grabbed and pulled us in real close and went you are making
Speaker: And you got chills.
Speaker: It was like, mom, oh my God.
Speaker: You're terrifying.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is not for saying the N word though.
Speaker: This is not.
Speaker: No, for the record, this is just because I am who I am.
Speaker: A guy who doesn't say the N word.
Speaker: So there we go.
Speaker: So he chews her out.
Speaker: She apologizes and is told like, hey, look, you're probably going to be fighting alongside humans.
Speaker: So you better you better get to liken it or at least keep your ignorant slurs in your skull.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Have you ever do you like human stories?
Speaker: Talgeron because you're in one.
Speaker: Yeah, that's pretty much it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: This is look, I realize that the majority of the characters in here are Zenos, still human story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Break it to you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: These have a hard human bias.
Speaker: They always have, which actually will come up in this because there is there's there's a lot of shades of gray in this book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cut to Chapter 11, Abigail Cole.
Speaker: She's on Nyssa, which is the secret base, a secret base of humans and Spartans training.
Speaker: The techies are trying to recover Black Box, the AI, without destroying it, because as we found out last time, Black Box has passed his shelf life, basically doing this.
Speaker: And they're doing this in front of the Sangelli, the alien allies, these new allies.
Speaker: They really don't want to lose face.
Speaker: You know, this is this is about.
Speaker: trying to show them we know what we're doing.
Speaker: We're, you know, everyone's trying to impress everybody else at this point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And our friends from the previous chapter are observing.
Speaker: So that's, we, we, we do have the humans and the Sengeli together.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Their quarry, Doc Nesto is on a planet called Venesia.
Speaker: And they're going to, and they discuss the idea that the humans and the aliens are going to work out a, a,
Speaker: an attack, basically.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And Doc Nesto has information about this lithos thing.
Speaker: So we're going to work together to take him alive and find out what we can about this thing.
Speaker: We need him alive.
Speaker: They repeat again and again.
Speaker: Yeah, they're very emphatic on this.
Speaker: Very emphatic.
Speaker: The other piece of the puzzle, if this is the if that's the if that's the gatekeeper, the key master is over here on a world called Cascade.
Speaker: And that's Halsey's clone, Chloe.
Speaker: Black Box is resuscitated long enough to locate this clone.
Speaker: And and so we have our two steps.
Speaker: We've got our Rick Moranis.
Speaker: We got our Sigourney Weaver.
Speaker: They fucked in the first movie, right?
Speaker: Like they sure did.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That was, they, they do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We watched that the other day and I was like, I was like,
Speaker: They fucked like, yeah, right.
Speaker: Like that's pretty clear.
Speaker: So that's they they make love on top of a little stone bed.
Speaker: That is what opens the gate and out steps goes through the goes area.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: One time I turned into a dog and they helped me.
Speaker: And they helped me.
Speaker: That's what, in a nutshell, it's a mad, mad, mad world.
Speaker: Ghostbusters.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Warhammer 40K.
Speaker: That's what we're doing.
Speaker: Those are the Gozerian.
Speaker: Good evening.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As a duly designated representative of the county city and state of New York.
Speaker: Thank you, Ray.
Speaker: That'll do it.
Speaker: Thank you, Ray.
Speaker: That'll do it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Chapter 12.
Speaker: We're back with Severan.
Speaker: He is on Stath, which is kind of like this neutral planet.
Speaker: You know, he's it's unnerving because you've got this weary kind of peace between everybody.
Speaker: You're not allowed to fight here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's looking for his Daskalo, which is kind of a mentor figure for his race.
Speaker: And the Skala turns out to be Dovinesto.
Speaker: And he's kind of trying to sneak around.
Speaker: He sees like a bunch of Neo Covenant soldiers who's trying to avoid because they hate his ass because it was who his dad is.
Speaker: He finds him in a gigantic decommissioned human spacecraft that he's basically using as an apartment.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's pretty cool, actually.
Speaker: And the guy he is, I forget, I wrote it down somewhere, but his mentor is one of the prophet aliens, like who led the covenant in the first trilogy, basically.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He's like that.
Speaker: He's he's like the guy.
Speaker: He was like base.
Speaker: They kind of hint that he was basically the main dude, even though there wasn't supposed to be one above the other.
Speaker: He's he's more or less the guy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And and he's he's a genius and and, you know, just a prophet like the prophet and all prophets and probably one of the last of his race.
Speaker: It's heavily implied that they are almost extinct.
Speaker: And he's also thousands of years old.
Speaker: Like he has kept up rejuvenation procedures to like replace his body.
Speaker: These guys look like the, they look like the Kaminoans from Star Wars, the clone, the people.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The next.
Speaker: They're kind of very long and whatever.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I didn't know that's what they were called.
Speaker: The Kaminoans.
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: So Dova tells him that he, uh, cause he's explaining, I've got a, I got a good news dad.
Speaker: Cause that's who he is to him.
Speaker: Uh, boss gave me control of almost his entire fleet and he wants me to smack earth around.
Speaker: Uh, uh, and Dova says, don't stop at earth.
Speaker: You should continue and try to get this lithos, uh, item.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, and let the humans get the clone girl and we'll get her, uh,
Speaker: And we'll find and we'll find a way to get her from them.
Speaker: Let them do the hard work on that.
Speaker: It's basically it's like it's a very Indiana Jones.
Speaker: There's nothing you can possess that I cannot take away kind of situation.
Speaker: We're just going to slowly follow you.
Speaker: We're going to wait for you to come out of the temple and then take the thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's their plan.
Speaker: I got to say, in terms of efficiency, Belloc was really good at his.
Speaker: He let me just tell you this.
Speaker: Watch Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Speaker: Belloc thoroughly just like wipes the floor with Indiana at every turn.
Speaker: He only loses because of the literal wrath of God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Hubris, literal hubris, the definition of the word hubris.
Speaker: And that's what kills him.
Speaker: It's he's yeah, he's he's the he is the Nazi equivalent of work smart, don't work hard.
Speaker: Yeah, that's what he is.
Speaker: Oh, and this chapter ends with the colon.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The human Sengelly strike force, boom, breaches the building.
Speaker: We're about to get our video game.
Speaker: We got Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six going on right now.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: We got smashing in through the windows on the jump cord like it's all happening.
Speaker: But for now, we cut to chapter 13 where James is drinking his sorrows away in his shitty Alaskan hut somewhere.
Speaker: He's in a tiny little bar.
Speaker: He ends up getting confronted by Octavio Morales, who we haven't basically since the very beginning of the book.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Who's the head of Oni and who has been basically his boss all this time.
Speaker: And he offers him a job that is going to end Cortana.
Speaker: And after a bunch of and he's like, well, you're too late because I was going to quit.
Speaker: And they go back and forth and back and forth.
Speaker: And finally, Morales says, look, after this is over, I don't want you to be on our team.
Speaker: I want you to retire.
Speaker: I want you gone after this.
Speaker: So this is it.
Speaker: Promises that this is going to be the last one.
Speaker: This is an interesting moment.
Speaker: We get a theodicy moment or what some people call the problem with God.
Speaker: uh, uh, comparing, uh, but, but in, in relation to Cortana, uh, and the idea of, of this is, is God is either, he is either, uh, God is meant to be all powerful and all knowing, uh, all good or, and loves us.
Speaker: Uh, and only two of those can be true at the same time.
Speaker: So, but we, we cut it down to two for this, where basically he realized that Cortana either has all of this, uh,
Speaker: It's basically invincible or, you know, doesn't care.
Speaker: Like, it's it's it's a really interesting thing.
Speaker: It's like, I mean, Cortana would have known that these slavers were operating or like either she didn't know or she didn't care.
Speaker: You know, right.
Speaker: There's basically two only two outcomes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's and that's just it.
Speaker: So so I thought that was an interesting thing they threw in there.
Speaker: And then and then speaking of Cortana, three of her arbiters show up and accost them.
Speaker: And James just fucking kills them immediately.
Speaker: He just stabs.
Speaker: He he is.
Speaker: James is the way I imagine James is.
Speaker: Do you remember the beginning of the first X-Men movie with Logan is at the is like at the bar?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I, I, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker: And I refuse to believe that that was not some sort of inspiration.
Speaker: It's very, that it's very, that, and we got another scene later.
Speaker: That's also very that.
Speaker: So yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's a very eighties commando moment.
Speaker: Like he just kills them all and then looks over at Morales is like, I'll take the job.
Speaker: It's that kind of thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we get that.
Speaker: He's also in my head.
Speaker: It's that Logan at the bar in X-Men, but also if you've watched any Reacher, have you watched Reacher at all?
Speaker: No, no, I've never watched Reacher.
Speaker: So it's it's it's fun.
Speaker: It's a it's a fun show.
Speaker: Basically, the entire premise is that it's starring Alan Richson and he he plays the character of Jack Reacher, who was previously played by Tom Cruise in the movies.
Speaker: Which is absurd because in the books, Jack Reacher is a gigantic man.
Speaker: He is six foot four, 300 pounds of pure muscle.
Speaker: Alan Richson is that.
Speaker: He's six foot four, 300 pounds.
Speaker: Dude's a big side of beef.
Speaker: Yeah, that guy's a big fucking dude.
Speaker: the entire premise of the show is he is bigger than you.
Speaker: And if he is not bigger than you, then he is smarter than you.
Speaker: Um, is, is, is, is his entire shtick.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I, at this point, I would just imagine James as, as Reacher where it's just like, yeah,
Speaker: He's just a big old side of beef.
Speaker: You know, he's a Spartan.
Speaker: He's one of those old school Spartan two sides of beef.
Speaker: You know, they don't make them like that anymore.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, he was slow cooked since he was six years old.
Speaker: That's literally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's just, he's devastating in combat.
Speaker: And the moment you put your guard down because you think he's just an idiot with a, with a knife, like he's, he's, he's really good at this.
Speaker: It turns out the armagers, the armagers, which in a previous book basically did a, uh,
Speaker: Did a racial profiling moment on the Arbiter in his car, remember?
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That was such a great opening.
Speaker: I remember that.
Speaker: I remember.
Speaker: I don't always remember.
Speaker: I don't remember most things from the books we read.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I remember that opening.
Speaker: I remember being like, what is this, 24?
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: Like it was just.
Speaker: That kind of tense.
Speaker: But in this context, James kills these armatures in like one fluid motion.
Speaker: It's just like knife.
Speaker: And it is like, I'll take the job.
Speaker: Octavia is like, great, because we got to leave right now because there's going to be more of those things.
Speaker: Yeah, that's not it.
Speaker: I think you I think we all know that's not it.
Speaker: So that's their plan.
Speaker: Cut to chapter 14.
Speaker: Tool Jaron is attacking Dovo Nesto's human spaceship home with the Spartan Grey team.
Speaker: They are faced with a huge force like everyone come.
Speaker: It is again, like I said, it's actually large.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like five people versus an army.
Speaker: It's clear that they were expected and we get a really well done battle chapter.
Speaker: Like Halo is really good about that.
Speaker: Good moments with Tulgeron, like witnessing how nuts the Spartans are.
Speaker: How like to her, they look suicidal, like they have an actual tactic where all they do is just run towards the enemy.
Speaker: It's like they're getting shot and they run.
Speaker: It's pure space marine stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: You know, the tactics are for the soldiers.
Speaker: The ramming is for the space marine.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We're not going to, these aren't going to do anything to us.
Speaker: We've got shields.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's a great chapter for the good, you know, you get a lot of setup stuff with halo.
Speaker: Halo is very for, for, you know, for a first person shooter style game.
Speaker: It's a very smart one.
Speaker: And, and, and these books kind of reflect that you get a lot of moments of weapon porn and history and, and all kinds of good stuff.
Speaker: And then, and then you'll get,
Speaker: A kind of an extra this is an extra long chapter that is just full to the brim with, you know, guns and shots fired and heads blowing up and all that.
Speaker: It's terrific.
Speaker: It's really, really good stuff.
Speaker: So unfortunately, though, Dover and the company escape, but not before they kill one of Severin's captains.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One of his guys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One of those big dudes.
Speaker: They're fighting.
Speaker: They're fighting their way up the ramp to the escape craft.
Speaker: And it's like basically the only reason they escape is because Dova and Severin get in and turn the big old guns, you know, the guns that the guns that the Spartan shields aren't going to stop.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Guns that are meant to shoot at battleships like that.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they do escape, but the Spartans managed to capture one of the Sankele alive.
Speaker: So they've got at least someone to torture slash interrogate.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Amidst a as as Tal Duran notices amidst a pile of dead bodies that a Spartan is standing on.
Speaker: He's like, I got this one alive.
Speaker: Yeah, this guy's alive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he's lucky.
Speaker: He's very lucky.
Speaker: Chapter 15, we've got Abigail Cole.
Speaker: We cut to her in the sky tracking the escaping vessel.
Speaker: And we get bad implications from the fact that the vessel they're in is a banished vessel.
Speaker: They didn't know that this guy was allied with the Banished.
Speaker: And that means that the Banished know about the Lithos.
Speaker: And that is, they did not bargain for that.
Speaker: They did not count on that.
Speaker: Because if it's just ex-covenant fanatics or something like that, pirates, we can handle all that shit.
Speaker: But the Banished is a honest to God thing.
Speaker: army fighting force.
Speaker: And that's that's that's going to complicate things.
Speaker: It's a fly in the ointment.
Speaker: They cannot blow up Dovo ship because they seem to be the only people who don't know where the damn Lithos is.
Speaker: So they've got to they got to get him alive.
Speaker: So they're in a predicament with that.
Speaker: They're being chased by everyone and their mother, including a new banished vessel that nobody nobody recognizes.
Speaker: This is not on our registry.
Speaker: This is not our thing.
Speaker: It's described as like a jagged arrowhead.
Speaker: I was like, fucking tight, man.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: It makes actually made me in my first thing that popped into my head was the the executor, the the the massive Star Destroyer.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Darth Vader, Star Destroyer.
Speaker: That thing was so cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we get a giant battleship fight, which I didn't know I missed.
Speaker: I remember the first three that we read, the old school ones, had a lot of really good naval space battles.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I'm not really – I don't – never something I craved.
Speaker: And this reminded me how much fun those are.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: So well written.
Speaker: Like I, yeah, something about the idea of you have this captain, Captain Cole, just basically in, in her element.
Speaker: And she's just giving the orders and there, it's not like there are people, you know,
Speaker: people aren't like shouting and yelling at each other.
Speaker: She's just like, you know, like keep charging the Mac cannons, fire at will, like all this, all this stuff.
Speaker: She is in control and it's, and, and she's thinking back to like what her father would do and how would he handle this situation?
Speaker: And, uh, and, and it's, it's, it's great.
Speaker: It's really good stuff.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: We do get a moment where we see some ex-covenant ships kind of show up out of nowhere.
Speaker: They're not doing anything.
Speaker: They're just kind of floating there.
Speaker: And they're like, oh, great.
Speaker: Ex-covenant 2.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: This is not good.
Speaker: This is too many people.
Speaker: We are already fucked.
Speaker: They managed, miracle of miracles, they managed to take out like four of the attacking dreadnoughts.
Speaker: Yeah, of Severin's dreadnoughts.
Speaker: They're able to kill a bunch with the Mac cannons.
Speaker: Yeah, they take a bunch of it.
Speaker: And so they're they're kind of at a make or break moment.
Speaker: And they get a transmission from Severin, who is just pissed.
Speaker: And he tells him, you know, I was going to come and I was going to I'm heading over to guess what?
Speaker: Blow up Earth.
Speaker: I'm going to fucking kill you guys.
Speaker: You killed a bunch of my people.
Speaker: Your computer game killed my planet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you guys couldn't keep control of her.
Speaker: And now my fucking planet is gone.
Speaker: My home planet is gone.
Speaker: My home planet is gone.
Speaker: It's toast.
Speaker: I'm coming for my pound of flesh.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I hold you guys responsible.
Speaker: So not only will blowing up Earth be my duty, it will be a pleasure.
Speaker: And just cuts the note.
Speaker: That's just, I just wanted you to know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just wanted you to know.
Speaker: And, and Cole's like, okay, we got to get the fuck out of here.
Speaker: We got to go deal with, go ahead and go get earth ready for this.
Speaker: Got to go deal with that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Chapter 16, we get Severin, who is pissed off, lost one of his captains and several important vessels with countless members of his species on there.
Speaker: And there ain't more coming.
Speaker: There ain't more coming.
Speaker: The planet's gone.
Speaker: This is where he's clearly our bad guy.
Speaker: But holy shit, do I get.
Speaker: Where he's coming from.
Speaker: He is pissed.
Speaker: And it's like, yeah, sure.
Speaker: I'm on his side, but I'm on his side, you know?
Speaker: But I understand.
Speaker: And I get it.
Speaker: I get him blaming Earth and the UNSC for Cortana's actions.
Speaker: Like, you guys let this AI run rampant past its...
Speaker: It's like, this is on, this was your thing.
Speaker: And it is now destroying planets just to make points, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And, and they, and the, and the humans we do later get the humans going, Oh fuck.
Speaker: Like they're kind of right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: So he,
Speaker: goes to his descalo to his mentor uh one of the things we do find out is that because the descalo is a prophet because he's um one of the old covenant bosses this is not going to go over well with his bosses in the banished uh they do not have a lot of there's not a lot of love lost between them um
Speaker: So he needs to keep for now and needs to keep this under wraps.
Speaker: He's got to be very careful with this.
Speaker: The only thing that his mentor kept was a stone tablet that he's analyzing.
Speaker: The we do find out he tells him that the ex covenant ships that popped up were actually allies.
Speaker: He said, yeah, I'm working with them.
Speaker: I'm working with the ex covenant.
Speaker: Dover was saying this.
Speaker: I the moment we got out, I.
Speaker: I told him just to stand by, you know, to keep an eye out just in case.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's led by Sally Nyon, who is another covenant fanatic.
Speaker: Severin has got some serious doubts.
Speaker: This is this is a this is a this is really a tough pill for him to swallow because getting getting information from his mentor, who happens to be a former leader of the covenant is one thing.
Speaker: But to try and ally the banished with the remnants of the covenant,
Speaker: who, you know, that's not great.
Speaker: And they want him dead, too, on top of everything else because of his father.
Speaker: So he is not thrilled about this whole thing.
Speaker: Dovo translates the tablet to show him what their plan is to go into the domain.
Speaker: And part of the plan is that he's going to sacrifice his...
Speaker: Physical body to enter the domain, which we saw in the last book we read.
Speaker: We learned about like spirit entering the domain.
Speaker: And he says, he says, so you're going to die.
Speaker: And it was actually I'm going to be more alive than I've ever been.
Speaker: Yeah, I will have a wealth of power.
Speaker: And it makes me wonder about the main character of the last book we read, the didact.
Speaker: That's the didact, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He kind of, at the end of that, he was like in a pretty good spot within the domain.
Speaker: So I guess we're just kind of like...
Speaker: I guess nobody else really knows that.
Speaker: I guess we're not like they're like everybody is kind of looking at the domain.
Speaker: I'm like, this is how we get to Cortana.
Speaker: And I'm like, well, I think there's other things going on the domain that you're not totally aware.
Speaker: And I and I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker: I think I think.
Speaker: Because we have been reading this new series of books and it's kind of perfect.
Speaker: The first, the second, the third one, and this leading all up to this.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They've all set little bricks in play here.
Speaker: So it's I think you're right.
Speaker: I think I think we're not done with the didact.
Speaker: I think we're going to see a little of him.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So let's see.
Speaker: Where was I?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, he tells him about that.
Speaker: And Severn's not thrilled about that.
Speaker: He's like, OK, great, but you'll be dead.
Speaker: I'm not happy about that.
Speaker: So he knows where the lithos is and the tablet is his tool for being able to find him.
Speaker: And he says that humans are going to bring the clone to them.
Speaker: This is also a moment where...
Speaker: He's like showing him on the tablet.
Speaker: He goes, do you see this passage?
Speaker: And he goes, I don't I don't speak the language of the gods.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, it says this.
Speaker: And it's like that could say anything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't like like I'm reading this and I was like, oh, Dova is he is a grifter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: I was like McGee.
Speaker: Just he is like I was like, I doubt he believed ever believed in anything.
Speaker: You know, right?
Speaker: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: For all he knows, this is like a receipt from some Paleolithic target where he got a pair of khakis he wants to turn back in.
Speaker: Like, it basically just says this guy's copper is not very good.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's it's that was that Babylonians that Sumerian is one of those.
Speaker: The copper copper.
Speaker: This is like the second time I've referenced it in like a couple of months.
Speaker: It's a, it was like the first review.
Speaker: It was, it was Acadian.
Speaker: Acadian.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Oldest customer complaints from 1750 BCE.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Nothing changes.
Speaker: Nothing changes.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Finally, we get to Chapter 17.
Speaker: We are back with James, who is such a kick ass character.
Speaker: It's just a lot of any time we're back to James, I'm stoked.
Speaker: So he's on Cascade looking for Chloe.
Speaker: His lead, the only lead he could find for her was she's mentioned as a dependent on some tax forms.
Speaker: And so he's got a gist of where she is.
Speaker: He goes into a bar that he finds out is like basically the wealthiest, most popular bar in the area.
Speaker: Everyone goes there and he goes all Rorschach on everyone's asses.
Speaker: He just like...
Speaker: He's just like breaking fingers and killing a lot of people.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: It's like because he goes to the bartender and he's like, what do you know?
Speaker: And the bartenders like tells the other guys like, get him.
Speaker: And so, you know, he kills three of them or something.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's like five of them.
Speaker: And he kills.
Speaker: He's like, I think I killed three of them.
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: And it's like, Jesus Christ.
Speaker: It's pretty brutal.
Speaker: The bartender's like, fine.
Speaker: They're down the street.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're this place called Mikko's wheel.
Speaker: So he beats up the bouncer.
Speaker: at that place, uh, who leads him inside, uh, to a place where he clearly is meant to be ambushed by a bunch of gun toting guards, kills them.
Speaker: No problem.
Speaker: Kills them.
Speaker: Like it ain't no thing.
Speaker: Finds Miko who I forget the name of the alien, but it's like an avian kind of alien.
Speaker: It's, it's, uh, he's one of the jackals.
Speaker: Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker: Um, uh, and just, yes, that's it.
Speaker: And there, and it's kind of hilarious because, uh,
Speaker: This is another great reminder of who we're dealing with here because there's all these legends about Mikos.
Speaker: No one's ever seen Mikos.
Speaker: No one knows who Mikos is.
Speaker: And within five minutes, Mikos is cowering on the floor and being thrown out a window, by the way.
Speaker: Yeah, I...
Speaker: But what I love is the lead up to Miko's.
Speaker: So obviously James like kills all these guys and like the guy, I think the bouncer is still alive and the bouncer, he shoves the bouncer towards the door and the bouncer's like knocks on the door and he gets riddled with bullets from a machine gun.
Speaker: Shredded.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: because it's in there with like a 7.62 millimeter machine gun.
Speaker: Like he's like standing there, like a mob mobster with a Tommy gun, just firing through the door at anything that comes through.
Speaker: This is totally a scene in a mobster movie, by the way.
Speaker: Like this is like the guy goes into the bar, the speakeasy and it all goes to hell.
Speaker: That's totally what this is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So when he takes him out, he, he, he.
Speaker: Give it 10 seconds.
Speaker: Pump your guts.
Speaker: Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker: One, two, 10, 10.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he, he, he beats him up a little bit, tells him to swear to him and, uh, and me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he's like, fine, she's over.
Speaker: She tells her where she is.
Speaker: And he he he finds like a curtain and they get some shade thrown at the 21st century, by the way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He says he's got these old curtains.
Speaker: They're ugly as hell, probably from the 21st century.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Suddenly I get real defensive of my curtains.
Speaker: James.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: And he kind of ties him up in it and tosses him out the three-story window.
Speaker: And he's just hanging there.
Speaker: It basically is a distraction.
Speaker: Everyone's going to focus on this guy.
Speaker: Yeah, he throws him out the window and James is like, well, I don't know if his weight is, if the curtains are actually going to hold his weight.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe not actually.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: Now that I think of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a win-win situation.
Speaker: Uh, yeah.
Speaker: So he makes his way to, uh, the room, uh, that Chloe's in, uh, he grabs the very uncooperative Chloe who was scared to death.
Speaker: She's a little kid and she's scared to death and he drugs her.
Speaker: Uh, unfortunately he, he, he hates himself for doing it, but he kind of gasses her and she passes out.
Speaker: Um, he wraps her up.
Speaker: She only has one way.
Speaker: She only has the one leg.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And that is the person that you see on the back cover.
Speaker: There's there she is.
Speaker: There she is.
Speaker: I think it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's, yeah.
Speaker: So we, but that's, that's who she, he wonders, like, did somebody do that to her?
Speaker: And they're like, no, it's probably congenital.
Speaker: It's probably what she was born with.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, and by the way, she is, she is supposed to be doing this gangster's money.
Speaker: Like his, his numbers.
Speaker: Like she apparently is.
Speaker: Because she's a clone of Halsey.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she's like.
Speaker: She's whiz with numbers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Super smart.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so he had drugs or jumps out another window, calls his motorcycle.
Speaker: He's like tank treaded motorcycle tight and like bundles are up like in a baby Bjorn over his chest, basically, and go screaming off into the city.
Speaker: All the criminals.
Speaker: This is a town full of criminals have called the cops.
Speaker: So the cops are now chasing him on their motorbikes.
Speaker: We get we get, you know, we get a great motorcycle chase.
Speaker: James is a cab and loses them one by one and escapes to his ship.
Speaker: You know, he really does say fuck the cops.
Speaker: And when he when he gets there.
Speaker: He does.
Speaker: He's like, yeah, they're shitty cops.
Speaker: They're bad cops.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: And and which I think is them covering their ass in case people got mad about it.
Speaker: It's like, no, these are bad cops.
Speaker: So it's fine.
Speaker: You can do whatever you want to.
Speaker: So but when he gets on the ship with Chloe, he has the usual thoughts of
Speaker: How did this girl get here?
Speaker: Why is she the key?
Speaker: And is this was that the hard part?
Speaker: Because, you know, his his A.I.
Speaker: is like, well, that's probably the hard part done.
Speaker: And we all know it is not.
Speaker: It is not.
Speaker: But that's the end of Chapter 17.
Speaker: And that's the that's the end of where we are today.
Speaker: So, Kevin, what do you think so far?
Speaker: I really like it so far.
Speaker: I think it's a fun story.
Speaker: I think I'm in love with James' chapters.
Speaker: There are a lot of rogue cop action figure stuff that...
Speaker: You could tell Jeremy was having a lot of fun writing this stuff because it was a blast.
Speaker: It's a blast to read that stuff.
Speaker: But also then it's like mixed in with, you know, Cole and the other characters with the naval combat.
Speaker: That's a lot of fun.
Speaker: I think so far the Talgeron is like my least favorite point of view.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a tough one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Kind of a kind of wet blanket compared to the other stuff that's happening.
Speaker: But yeah, I like it so far.
Speaker: Halfway through, I'm really excited to see where it's going.
Speaker: What do you think?
Speaker: Same.
Speaker: I think it's really well written.
Speaker: It's really well done.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: loving, uh, uh, the alien point of view.
Speaker: Uh, it is, it's one thing to have excellent enemies.
Speaker: It's another thing to have complex shades of gray enemies and complex shades of gray situations, because that's what war is, um, for the most part anyway.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: So this is all this is all very well done.
Speaker: It's very it's like got inspiration from war correspondence to 80s cop movies.
Speaker: Like you said, it's it's a lot of good shit in here.
Speaker: A lot of nerdy shit.
Speaker: A lot of action filled shit.
Speaker: It's it's a solid, solid piece of shit.
Speaker: Very good stuff.
Speaker: So, yeah, really enjoying it.
Speaker: All right, Kevin.
Speaker: Well, now that that's over, I have a single question to ask you.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I didn't know that you were going to... I know.
Speaker: It's always a surprise when you ask me.
Speaker: It's a little firecracker thrown your way just to keep you on your toes.
Speaker: Just to keep me on my toes.
Speaker: What have I been playing?
Speaker: I'm still trying to finish Eldorand, which is that...
Speaker: side scroller metroidvania with some clear it's got some blasphemous vibes.
Speaker: There was actually an enemy that was like pure blasphemous.
Speaker: It was this guy who is like a he was he was like experimenting on creating demons or something, and they were being born out of his stomach.
Speaker: So he was like he was like strung up
Speaker: in, in, in the middle of the room and like the boss fight is, is like killing him, but he is, he's like constantly spawning new enemies like out of his stomach.
Speaker: It's, it's really gross.
Speaker: That's fun.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, I saw some like corrupted noble enemies where it was like a noble sitting on a, on a, uh,
Speaker: What's the thing where the people are holding it?
Speaker: It's like you sit on the thing and then like servants are like holding the... Oh, fuck, a litter.
Speaker: A litter, yeah.
Speaker: So like Corrupted Noble is like sitting on a litter.
Speaker: And I was like, that is a literal enemy from Blasphemous.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: But yeah, I am really enjoying it.
Speaker: I am hoping to finish it up soon.
Speaker: I think I am able to do the final boss fight now, but there's like one final area that I'm like exploring a little bit just to level up a little bit more because the final boss fight seems a little bit more punishing than the rest of the game has been so far.
Speaker: And so that I've been playing that.
Speaker: I've also been playing Atomfall, which is a it's
Speaker: It's a Fallout-like game.
Speaker: You are in an area of Britain where you wake up in the middle of a bunker.
Speaker: And it's the 1950s, and it's after this nuclear accident.
Speaker: And the entire area has been quarantined away from the rest of Britain.
Speaker: And you don't remember anything.
Speaker: You just wake up in this bunker and you scientist finds you and he's been stabbed and he's bleeding out and he's like, you got to get to this place.
Speaker: That's basically the only thing he tells you.
Speaker: And then he gives you a card and he dies and you just are out into it, thrown out into the world.
Speaker: And
Speaker: It is really fascinating and it does a lot of cool things that I think Fallout could learn from because... It looks like a very British Fallout.
Speaker: That's the vibe I'm getting.
Speaker: It's a very British Fallout.
Speaker: It doesn't have any real RPG elements.
Speaker: You don't like level up.
Speaker: You can learn skills, but you never... You don't level up.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: There was a quote in an article I read for it where I think it was GC Vasquez wrote it.
Speaker: Yes, he did.
Speaker: where it's, he wrote, you can get, as the player, you can get better at handling enemies, but your character will never be harder to kill.
Speaker: So it's one of those games where it's like, you're gonna be squishy the entire game.
Speaker: If an enemy with a gun,
Speaker: headshots you, that's game over.
Speaker: Like the entire time you got to be smart and sneaking around and all this stuff.
Speaker: The thing I really love about the game, though, is the quest structure.
Speaker: You aren't given explicit quests.
Speaker: you're given the one thing at the beginning is get to the interchange.
Speaker: Other than that, when you get out into the world, you find leads and rumors and things like that.
Speaker: It's not like a quest to go do this for somebody.
Speaker: It's like there's a there's a lead, you know, like this person might make a make a request of you, but you don't know necessarily how to tackle it.
Speaker: You can tackle it in any number of ways.
Speaker: Um, it's, it's more like you're trying to unravel the mystery while also staying alive.
Speaker: Um, so it's, it's, it's really fascinating.
Speaker: Uh, the other thing that I, I find that's kind of neat is, is, um, you,
Speaker: There's there's like crafting in it, but it's not like survival crafting.
Speaker: You don't have to eat or anything like that.
Speaker: There's no hunger meter, but you know, you can you can buy.
Speaker: You can trade for blueprints and craft certain things.
Speaker: The other thing that's really cool about the barter system is that there is no money in the game.
Speaker: There's there's there's no money available in the game.
Speaker: Everything has to you have to trade something that you have to someone else to get something from them.
Speaker: And different people will have different wants.
Speaker: So I was talking to a dude who is like a military guy because there's like a military there's basically military units that got trapped into this quarantine zone and they've they're a little bit fascist.
Speaker: They're a little bit fashy, right?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: There's like there's like the outlaws on one side.
Speaker: There's the the military dudes on the other.
Speaker: And then there's like regular people in between.
Speaker: So there's this one military dude who you can barter with.
Speaker: And if you try to give him like a grenade, for example, to to trade something, he's like, I don't want that.
Speaker: I have all the grenades I could ever want.
Speaker: So it doesn't move the needle on on the on the barter system.
Speaker: But yeah, it's it's a very British fallout.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: It's and it's worth checking out.
Speaker: Atomfall.
Speaker: That sounds really interesting and it's gorgeous.
Speaker: I really love the art direction here.
Speaker: It's gorgeous.
Speaker: Yeah, it's got some good art direction made by a developer named Rebellion.
Speaker: And oh, that makes a whole lot more sense as to...
Speaker: who made it.
Speaker: So Atomfall is, I was like, I was sitting there as I was playing it and like, you know what this feels like?
Speaker: The maps feel like, the maps feel like Sniper Elite.
Speaker: And then I clicked on the, the cup, the dev and it was like, oh, it's the company that it's, they make the Sniper Elite games.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's their like their, their, their, their idea of doing a, a fallout like sort of game.
Speaker: Um, they were always good at level design, so that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Sniper Elite is fun stuff.
Speaker: So, yeah, Rebellion is the name of the company that made it.
Speaker: Very cool.
Speaker: So it's worth checking out.
Speaker: It's worth checking out.
Speaker: But that's what I've been playing.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Phil Woody Blair.
Speaker: Oh, well, I finished the first half of her trees are dead.
Speaker: Basically, basically where you are.
Speaker: I got through the stuff that was already on and now the new material I have to get into.
Speaker: I'm at a stopping point, so I'm going to give it a minute.
Speaker: But holy shit, that was fun.
Speaker: Just a good story.
Speaker: Good mystery.
Speaker: I was impressed.
Speaker: I really enjoyed that.
Speaker: Um, I'm still playing the shit out of Foundation.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: I have put more hours in.
Speaker: Let me see if I if I can say this is true.
Speaker: I have put in more hours into Foundation that I have in SID 7.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm and it's and Sif seven I'm enjoying more and more as I go.
Speaker: It's growing on me, but it's yeah, I'm just it's it's not as engaging to me as I thought it was going to be.
Speaker: And foundation is really hitting me in all the good places.
Speaker: I think part of it's because it makes me think of Banished, which is still one of my favorite games of all time.
Speaker: It's a gentler, kinder banished.
Speaker: Yeah, but it has a similar vibe.
Speaker: or at least similar goals.
Speaker: It's not as brutal.
Speaker: But anyway, I'm really enjoying that.
Speaker: But I think the game that I played this week that was the most interesting was the Children of Clay.
Speaker: This is something about that name.
Speaker: Just I don't know.
Speaker: But get it.
Speaker: It's upsetting.
Speaker: It's upsetting.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's a it's a 15 minute free game.
Speaker: It took takes me out 15 minutes to play.
Speaker: It's it's similar to like the word trees are dead, for example, where you're looking stuff up and you have to find clues to it is an archaeology game.
Speaker: You have an artifact in front of you.
Speaker: The artifact is horrifying.
Speaker: And you have got to figure out the mystery of this artifact by looking for clues, looking stuff up in your history books.
Speaker: It's cosmic horror, Lovecraftian.
Speaker: It is stop motion animation, which you don't notice that much.
Speaker: But it's enough that it gives the motion a herky-jerky kind of feeling, which is very atmospheric.
Speaker: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: I would.
Speaker: This is a one person team.
Speaker: I think he's from Hungary and it's it is.
Speaker: And if you go into the discussions, people talking about things, a lot of people are saying what's on my mind, which is I would pay for a full version of this for something that goes beyond this.
Speaker: An archaeology mystery game like this with Lovecraftian vibes and searching through the darkness for mysteries that man isn't supposed to know.
Speaker: Yeah, that's fun.
Speaker: That's that's that's good stuff, right?
Speaker: It's super good stuff.
Speaker: And, you know, it's hard to make a Lovecraftian game and be true to Lovecraft because so much of Lovecraft is what is not happening to you or what the subtlety of what's happening.
Speaker: And the idea of you being an archaeologist investigating this paleolithic
Speaker: thing.
Speaker: I can't believe this is first time scenes like this.
Speaker: This is in retrospect.
Speaker: It seems like duh.
Speaker: Like this is this.
Speaker: This is obvious.
Speaker: It's again, it's free.
Speaker: It took me 15 minutes to beat.
Speaker: It's very atmospheric.
Speaker: It doesn't have jump scares, which thank you for that.
Speaker: But but it left me very unsettled.
Speaker: Great game.
Speaker: I mean it.
Speaker: If you are listening to this and you have 15 minutes, download the Children of Clay and play it.
Speaker: It is that easy and it is it is really very engaging.
Speaker: It made me think a lot of not not for a lot of the same reasons, but it made me think of the Iron Lung.
Speaker: in that kind of like creepy, atmospheric world building sort of indie horror sort of thing.
Speaker: And that is- So you're saying that Markiplier is going to make a movie out of it?
Speaker: Probably, probably at this rate.
Speaker: I hope he does.
Speaker: I hope he does.
Speaker: This developer,
Speaker: got to the overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam has got like hundreds of views.
Speaker: I hope this developer gets some attention because he's earned it.
Speaker: This is very, very cool stuff.
Speaker: I'd love to see more of this.
Speaker: So, yeah, so that's a really fun one.
Speaker: You have no excuse.
Speaker: Play it.
Speaker: Really good stuff.
Speaker: So but that's me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: So that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you all for listening and watching or however you ingest it.
Speaker: Some people, some people like they get the podcast served under a like a little dome and then a waiter cracks it and you you breathe the mist in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A deconstructed podcast.
Speaker: That's what it's called.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So, and then you pay $700 for it and the chef shows you the Michelin star that he has and you're a better person for it.
Speaker: You go home educated and hungry.
Speaker: Educated, erudited, irradiated.
Speaker: It's basically getting a master of science in evening.
Speaker: And isn't that worth it?
Speaker: Isn't that worth it?
Speaker: That's totally worth it.
Speaker: I'd say it was.
Speaker: So yeah, follow us on Blue Sky.
Speaker: And, you know, that would be great if you could.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you could follow us on Blue Sky.
Speaker: Now, Phil, I do have a question you might be able to help me with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Based on some of your fiction work, a hell mouth has opened at the intersection near my house.
Speaker: What do I got to do to close that bad boy up?
Speaker: All right, Kevin, I've told you this like five times.
Speaker: Like this keeps, I'm not blaming you, but all right.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Just one last time.
Speaker: You've got to remember...
