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Jack Reacher in Space (Halo: The Empty Throne - Part 2)
9 Plays6 months ago
In this episode we realize that one of the characters is basically Jack Reacher, but in space. Space Reacher. But he prefers just going by Reacher. You know how it is.
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Synopsis2559. It has been a year since the rogue artificial intelligence Cortana seized control of the Domain, an otherworldly dimension housing a vast information network. With an array of Forerunner weapons at her disposal, Cortana set out to enforce an authoritarian peace on the civilizations of the galaxy. But as the United Nations Space Command flagship Infinity prepares to strike against Cortana at Zeta Halo, another plan has also been set in motion.
An ancient access point hidden on a seemingly insignificant human colony has become the focus of a parallel effort to claim the Domain and its immeasurable capabilities. The UNSC, however, needs a key: a living, forsaken product of an old war. As a new generation of heroes rise to meet this challenge and Cortana's pursuit of control reaches a desperate and sudden crescendo, a cunning, ruthless warrior emerges from the shadows of the Banished, who has vowed to fill the new power vacuum by any means necessary...
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Transcript
Introduction and Influences Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
So it's kind of a clockwork orange style way of getting you.
00:00:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:06
Speaker
I'm good.
00:00:08
Speaker
You don't want to be listening to too much Beethoven while you're doing this.
00:00:11
Speaker
It just makes you like it less.
00:00:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:15
Speaker
And the only thing that the only thing the medication does is slow down your digestion.
00:00:19
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.
00:00:29
Speaker
Um, these things were they to sit in your digestive system for too long, they would make you feel ill.
00:00:37
Speaker
Right.
00:00:38
Speaker
Right.
00:00:39
Speaker
Like it's just, it's what it would do normally if your, if your metabolism was that slow, I guess.
00:00:45
Speaker
Right.
00:00:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:46
Speaker
Interesting.
00:00:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:47
Speaker
That's so crazy.
Podcast Introduction and 'Halo, the Empty Throne' Overview
00:00:49
Speaker
It is crazy.
00:00:51
Speaker
Um, wild.
00:00:52
Speaker
You know what else is a digestive system?
00:00:55
Speaker
What's that?
00:00:56
Speaker
Hey there, everybody.
00:00:57
Speaker
Welcome back to Pixlet.
00:00:57
Speaker
My name is Kevin.
00:00:58
Speaker
With me, as always, is Phil on today's show.
00:01:00
Speaker
We are diving into part two of Halo, the Empty Throne.
00:01:05
Speaker
That's right.
00:01:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:07
Speaker
I'm excited to get into it.
00:01:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:10
Speaker
We now have...
00:01:11
Speaker
by the end of this section, we will understand the people on the cover.
00:01:17
Speaker
We know who we can identify the people on the cover.
00:01:19
Speaker
Finally, we'll be halfway through the book and we'll identify.
00:01:23
Speaker
We'll know who the people on the cover are.
00:01:28
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.
00:01:37
Speaker
where you could give us money.
00:01:40
Speaker
And then maybe someday we'll put you on the cover of a book.
00:01:42
Speaker
I don't promise that.
00:01:43
Speaker
But maybe, you know, things have happened.
Patreon Promotion and Membership Benefits
00:01:47
Speaker
Lots of stuff can happen between now and then.
00:01:49
Speaker
Lots of stuff can happen between now and then.
00:01:52
Speaker
We have three tiers.
00:01:54
Speaker
$1, $5, $10.
00:01:54
Speaker
$5 gets you access to the bonus episodes.
00:01:56
Speaker
$10 gets your name shouted out in the episode.
00:01:59
Speaker
To that end, I want to shout out Jesus loves you, Kyle.
00:02:01
Speaker
Seaman, Ruthless, Mudder, Middle Things, Sigma South.
00:02:03
Speaker
Check.
00:02:04
Speaker
Beaks Demethic Langlier and friendly friend.
00:02:08
Speaker
Thank you for being a friend.
00:02:12
Speaker
We really appreciate you.
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:13
Speaker
And you can you can also follow there for free.
00:02:16
Speaker
It's you could just do that.
00:02:18
Speaker
Go for free.
00:02:19
Speaker
There's a link to our discord right in the on the Patreon page.
00:02:22
Speaker
You don't need to pay anything to get that
Broadway Play Discussions and Reflections
00:02:24
Speaker
link to the discord.
00:02:24
Speaker
So, you know, come and hop on in.
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:29
Speaker
So that being said, Phil, you done good?
00:02:32
Speaker
You great?
00:02:35
Speaker
I got about 125 pages of this thing.
00:02:38
Speaker
That was the most Bill Burr you've ever said anything.
00:02:42
Speaker
I'm good.
00:02:42
Speaker
I'm good.
00:02:43
Speaker
I'm good.
00:02:44
Speaker
It's good.
00:02:45
Speaker
All right.
00:02:46
Speaker
Let's talk about Halo.
00:02:47
Speaker
Who the fuck is this guy?
00:02:54
Speaker
Now I have to work on that.
00:02:55
Speaker
So I have.
00:02:56
Speaker
Now you have to.
00:02:57
Speaker
Now you have a goal is let's let's work on some Bill Burr impressions.
00:03:03
Speaker
That's a worthwhile thing.
00:03:05
Speaker
I think that's a worthwhile thing.
00:03:06
Speaker
He's got a distinctive enough voice, you know, to that.
00:03:11
Speaker
I think
Judging High School Plays and Ticket Challenges
00:03:12
Speaker
you can find that.
00:03:12
Speaker
Oh, Billy bitch tits.
00:03:15
Speaker
He's he's going to be in Glen, Gary Glen Ross on Broadway.
00:03:21
Speaker
I heard about that.
00:03:22
Speaker
And what's his face?
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I feel bad.
00:03:27
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He's a comedy legend.
00:03:29
Speaker
Um, Bob Odenkirk.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, Bob Odenkirk.
00:03:33
Speaker
Uh, and, and the fact that Bill Burr is playing the character I played when I was in Glen Gary.
00:03:38
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing.
00:03:39
Speaker
Character is that is that Moss?
00:03:41
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It's Ed Harris's character.
00:03:42
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Ed Harris's character.
00:03:44
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Yeah.
00:03:44
Speaker
Got it.
00:03:45
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Come on.
00:03:46
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Like, that's perfect.
00:03:47
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That's that's perfect.
00:03:48
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So I wish I hope there's a taping of it.
00:03:53
Speaker
That would be excellent because I'm right now like seriously like how would we work that out?
00:03:58
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Like, oh, I kind of want to go get up to New York and see.
00:04:04
Speaker
Finally, Emily and I finally finished Succession.
00:04:07
Speaker
And so like you're in Culkin.
00:04:09
Speaker
That's a draw.
00:04:11
Speaker
And Bill Burr is in there and Bob Odenkirk.
00:04:16
Speaker
Who's Bob Odenkirk playing?
00:04:19
Speaker
He's playing the Jack Lemmon character.
00:04:21
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:22
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Leslie.
00:04:23
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And Kieran Culkin's playing Ricky Roma, the Al Pacino character.
00:04:27
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Got it.
00:04:28
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So it's going to be a very, very interesting production.
00:04:32
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I think the casting is fantastic.
00:04:34
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Yeah.
00:04:36
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It's going to be very interesting.
00:04:37
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Oh, and Michael McKean.
00:04:40
Speaker
Oh, shit.
00:04:40
Speaker
I didn't know that.
00:04:41
Speaker
Kieran Colton, Bob Odenkirk, Michael McKeon, and Bill Burr.
00:04:46
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Wow.
00:04:47
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Wow.
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Wow.
00:04:50
Speaker
Hey.
00:04:55
Speaker
And I wonder who's playing the, what's it?
In-depth 'Halo, the Empty Throne' Plot Analysis
00:05:02
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
00:05:26
Speaker
fucking what's his name um the the the guy the you can't handle the truth guy
00:05:33
Speaker
Oh, oh, sure, sure.
00:05:34
Speaker
You know how to talk about.
00:05:38
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Jack Nicholson.
00:05:40
Speaker
Is that Aaron Sorkin?
00:05:41
Speaker
Oh, oh, Aaron Sorkin.
00:05:43
Speaker
That was Aaron.
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah, I see what you mean.
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, Aaron Sorkin.
00:05:45
Speaker
Jesus Christ.
00:05:46
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Because after, because he took that speech from, like, he rewrote the speech and the character from the movie into revivals of the play.
00:05:59
Speaker
Right.
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:00
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Yeah.
00:06:01
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For A Few Good Men.
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There we go.
00:06:05
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Why could I not think that?
00:06:07
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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.
00:06:19
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.
00:06:35
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And they'd give you like,
00:06:36
Speaker
100 bucks in a sandwich.
00:06:38
Speaker
And yeah, yeah, that sounds great.
00:06:40
Speaker
I'd love a sandwich.
00:06:41
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And one of the weirdest things I ever saw was a high school production of a few good men and they were good.
00:06:49
Speaker
It's yes.
00:06:50
Speaker
It was so jarring to see these 16 year olds.
00:06:55
Speaker
And I was like, that would never fly like like that's that's that's that
00:07:24
Speaker
It's you're not military ain't going to let you.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:28
Speaker
And he was like, I can't find my tie.
00:07:31
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I was like, oh, OK.
00:07:32
Speaker
All right.
00:07:32
Speaker
That's fine.
00:07:35
Speaker
Theater.
00:07:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:37
Speaker
It's a beautiful thing.
00:07:38
Speaker
So it's going it's going to run through the end of June.
00:07:44
Speaker
Looks like.
00:07:45
Speaker
June 28th.
00:07:46
Speaker
Tickets are stupid expensive.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:51
Speaker
That's it.
00:07:52
Speaker
And also, even if you're, if you're looking now, so the show starts, what, April?
00:07:59
Speaker
Like this week or something like that.
00:08:01
Speaker
I think it's this week.
00:08:02
Speaker
April 1st.
00:08:03
Speaker
Tomorrow.
00:08:03
Speaker
I think it's tomorrow.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:05
Speaker
So the show starts that it starts tomorrow, ends at the end of the June.
00:08:09
Speaker
Even if you go to the end of June looking for tickets, it's going to be really hard finding seats together.
00:08:18
Speaker
Well, yeah, seats together and seats that are less than $350.
00:08:20
Speaker
Yes.
00:08:20
Speaker
Over here.
00:08:21
Speaker
Holy shit.
00:08:24
Speaker
It is.
00:08:25
Speaker
It is tough.
00:08:27
Speaker
So this has been the Broadway report.
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:32
Speaker
I know you guys are excited.
00:08:34
Speaker
I know you, you love following us on our ADHD adult, uh, micro, uh, obsessions.
00:08:41
Speaker
Uh, so please, please look for it next week.
00:08:44
Speaker
It'll be physics.
00:08:45
Speaker
Um, I don't know why.
00:08:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:48
Speaker
So yeah, yeah.
00:08:49
Speaker
Uh, it, it, it apparently it, I mean, almost every Broadway show is, is recorded.
00:08:57
Speaker
They just almost never released them.
00:09:00
Speaker
You can you can.
00:09:01
Speaker
I remember when I was a intern in New York City, there was
00:09:06
Speaker
It was the I think it was the New York Public Library has all of them.
00:09:10
Speaker
And all you need to do, you could just go and what you had.
00:09:13
Speaker
You just had to watch it there.
00:09:14
Speaker
You have to watch it there.
00:09:15
Speaker
That makes so they.
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:16
Speaker
So they had every Broadway show that ever existed in there.
00:09:21
Speaker
It's a really great.
00:09:23
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.
00:09:35
Speaker
Or just somebody who just loves to absorb the theater.
00:09:38
Speaker
It's a place all there like New York.
00:09:42
Speaker
Oh, no, that.
00:09:43
Speaker
Oh, no, that stuff.
00:09:46
Speaker
So, yeah, let's put the body in the marsh.
00:09:51
Speaker
We can we can we don't need to keep talking about this.
00:09:54
Speaker
Marship.
00:09:55
Speaker
Marship.
00:09:56
Speaker
When I tell you to
Character Missions and Complex Politics
00:09:58
Speaker
dump a body in the marsh, you dump them in.
00:10:03
Speaker
All right, we're starting at chapter nine.
00:10:07
Speaker
It's seven years earlier than when we last left off.
00:10:10
Speaker
And James 005, a Spartan 2, we're following him and we get the events of the fall of Reach.
00:10:18
Speaker
Basically, they're trying to intercept some navigation data on gamma...
00:10:28
Speaker
What is it?
00:10:28
Speaker
What is it?
00:10:28
Speaker
It's like the station gamma station or something like that.
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:32
Speaker
It's fall of reach era.
00:10:33
Speaker
They're trying to get this shit taken care of and all that.
00:10:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:37
Speaker
And this is and this is.
00:10:40
Speaker
Actually, really interesting.
00:10:41
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.
00:11:04
Speaker
Because Spartans don't die.
00:11:07
Speaker
Even if you watched his head get blown off, you just report this MIA to create this illusion that they're immortal.
00:11:16
Speaker
It's very Persian of them.
00:11:17
Speaker
Very cool.
00:11:17
Speaker
Yes.
00:11:18
Speaker
And I think if I recall correctly, because it's basically a it's basically it's almost like this book does.
00:11:25
Speaker
And it's kind of neat.
00:11:26
Speaker
It does remakes of previous movies.
00:11:29
Speaker
like stories within it.
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:32
Speaker
Like this is the second time it's done it.
00:11:34
Speaker
Right.
00:11:35
Speaker
And this is, this is an, this is basically a remake of an excerpt from fall of reach.
00:11:42
Speaker
Right.
00:11:42
Speaker
When, when he dies.
00:11:44
Speaker
But in fall of reach, I believe he, he's more, they more clearly assume he's dead.
00:11:50
Speaker
You know?
00:11:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:51
Speaker
He's cast out into space.
00:11:53
Speaker
He gets shot by a needler and cast out into space.
00:11:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:57
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.
00:12:05
Speaker
A year later.
00:12:07
Speaker
A year later.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:08
Speaker
Is some severe Warhammer 40K space marine shit.
00:12:11
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:12
Speaker
That's it's some xenomorph shit.
00:12:14
Speaker
Like it's like.
00:12:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:15
Speaker
find the alien queen floating around in space and try to harvest her anyway.
00:12:20
Speaker
It's nuts.
00:12:21
Speaker
But this is when we find out that these two people are one and the same.
00:12:24
Speaker
And this is actually the tying up of kind of a character.
00:12:29
Speaker
God, it's been around for a long time.
00:12:31
Speaker
This is...
00:12:34
Speaker
A deep cut is what this is.
00:12:37
Speaker
So we cut forward to James.
00:12:39
Speaker
He has been basically working as a mercenary for Oni since then.
00:12:45
Speaker
I don't know if people say Oni.
00:12:46
Speaker
I'm just going to.
00:12:47
Speaker
It's where my head goes.
00:12:49
Speaker
I can't say Oni.
00:12:51
Speaker
He is currently orbiting his base of operations, this kind of backwater planet where he hangs out.
00:12:57
Speaker
And it's basically so he's like hermiting up.
00:13:01
Speaker
Basically, it's like it's it's this it kept making me think of like the little bumfuck towns in Alaska.
00:13:08
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.
00:13:15
Speaker
But you're pretty sure it ain't good.
00:13:17
Speaker
It's that kind of thing.
00:13:19
Speaker
So we learn a little more about his background from the Spartan program to the mercenary level.
00:13:26
Speaker
And basically, we learn that he's like he daydreams about retiring, but not really.
00:13:32
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.
00:13:41
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.
00:13:50
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,
00:14:01
Speaker
someone will say, well, we're doing this until there's no more war.
00:14:05
Speaker
And, and, and they're like, what am I going to become a farmer?
00:14:07
Speaker
What, what are you, there's no end to war.
00:14:11
Speaker
Right.
00:14:11
Speaker
Like that's just, this is just what this is.
00:14:13
Speaker
Uh, we're just doing this forever.
00:14:14
Speaker
Some of them assumed that from the very beginning.
00:14:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:17
Speaker
Um, anyway, uh, so we cut to chapter 10.
00:14:21
Speaker
Uh, we are back with, uh, tool Jaron, um, after the fight that took out, uh, uh, Kato Dean, uh,
00:14:29
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.
00:14:43
Speaker
And she barely survived.
00:14:45
Speaker
She gets back to the the group.
00:14:49
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.
00:15:02
Speaker
The idea of teaming up with the humans after just a generation of war with them is insane to her.
00:15:10
Speaker
So she meets with the shipmaster who we get a little information on him.
00:15:15
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.
00:15:24
Speaker
She meets another female shipmastress that she only knows from reputation.
00:15:28
Speaker
It's a very big deal because women aren't exactly encouraged to be in these positions.
00:15:32
Speaker
So having two is crazy.
00:15:34
Speaker
I thought that was kind of interesting where, uh, like she, she meets this female.
00:15:40
Speaker
She's like, Oh yeah, that's cool.
00:15:41
Speaker
You know, it's, it's somebody else.
00:15:44
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,
00:15:53
Speaker
she's kind of annoying with how like, ah, fuck the humans.
00:15:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:58
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?
00:16:06
Speaker
You got, you got, you got real true believer.
00:16:11
Speaker
You're just kind of currently pissed off at the banished for being fake or whatever.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:17
Speaker
So I don't know.
00:16:20
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.
00:16:36
Speaker
You've got the true believers.
00:16:37
Speaker
You've got you've got everything in between.
00:16:40
Speaker
Everyone's got their reason and they've all kind of united under this banner.
00:16:43
Speaker
And it's a very uneasy alliance for that reason, with a lot of people fucking each other over in the process.
00:16:48
Speaker
Right.
00:16:50
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.
00:17:06
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.
00:17:14
Speaker
Right.
00:17:15
Speaker
So everyone's, everyone's it's, this is just Halos.
00:17:18
Speaker
It's a mad, mad, mad world.
00:17:20
Speaker
Like that's just all this is.
00:17:23
Speaker
It's just a crazy cavalcade of characters.
00:17:26
Speaker
Everybody's going for it.
00:17:28
Speaker
You got Dom DeLuise.
00:17:30
Speaker
Was he in a mad, mad, mad world?
00:17:34
Speaker
He better have been.
00:17:35
Speaker
I haven't seen that in years.
00:17:40
Speaker
It's a, it feels like a guy.
00:17:43
Speaker
Look at this.
00:17:44
Speaker
Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Phil Silver, Zethel Merman, Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters.
00:17:51
Speaker
Sure.
00:17:51
Speaker
Maybe not.
00:17:53
Speaker
All right.
00:17:56
Speaker
Good cast.
00:17:56
Speaker
Buster Keaton.
00:17:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:58
Speaker
Buster.
00:17:58
Speaker
Wow.
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:00
Speaker
Look at this.
00:18:01
Speaker
Just a great.
00:18:02
Speaker
It's a bunch of wacky characters.
00:18:05
Speaker
And that's and that's what we're dealing with here.
00:18:06
Speaker
Essentially, it's just all these people all going after the same MacGuffin.
00:18:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:12
Speaker
So.
00:18:14
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.
00:18:26
Speaker
The idea that we're going to ask the humans permission for anything is disgusting.
00:18:30
Speaker
And she basically calls them their version of the N word.
00:18:33
Speaker
That's the impression I got.
00:18:35
Speaker
She like she she says some human slur and her boss just kind of goes.
00:18:41
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
00:19:03
Speaker
And you got chills.
00:19:05
Speaker
It was like, mom, oh my God.
00:19:08
Speaker
You're terrifying.
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:09
Speaker
This is not for saying the N word though.
00:19:11
Speaker
This is not.
00:19:12
Speaker
No, for the record, this is just because I am who I am.
00:19:16
Speaker
A guy who doesn't say the N word.
00:19:18
Speaker
So there we go.
00:19:22
Speaker
So he chews her out.
00:19:25
Speaker
She apologizes and is told like, hey, look, you're probably going to be fighting alongside humans.
00:19:32
Speaker
So you better you better get to liken it or at least keep your ignorant slurs in your skull.
James' Mission and Strategic Battles
00:19:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:40
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:42
Speaker
Have you ever do you like human stories?
00:19:46
Speaker
Talgeron because you're in one.
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:51
Speaker
That's it.
00:19:53
Speaker
This is look, I realize that the majority of the characters in here are Zenos, still human story.
00:19:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:59
Speaker
Break it to you.
00:19:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:00
Speaker
These have a hard human bias.
00:20:04
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.
00:20:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:12
Speaker
Cut to Chapter 11, Abigail Cole.
00:20:15
Speaker
She's on Nyssa, which is the secret base, a secret base of humans and Spartans training.
00:20:21
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.
00:20:33
Speaker
And they're doing this in front of the Sangelli, the alien allies, these new allies.
00:20:38
Speaker
They really don't want to lose face.
00:20:41
Speaker
You know, this is this is about.
00:20:43
Speaker
trying to show them we know what we're doing.
00:20:45
Speaker
We're, you know, everyone's trying to impress everybody else at this point.
00:20:48
Speaker
Right.
00:20:49
Speaker
And our friends from the previous chapter are observing.
00:20:52
Speaker
So that's, we, we, we do have the humans and the Sengeli together.
00:20:55
Speaker
Right.
00:20:57
Speaker
Their quarry, Doc Nesto is on a planet called Venesia.
00:21:03
Speaker
And they're going to, and they discuss the idea that the humans and the aliens are going to work out a, a,
00:21:11
Speaker
an attack, basically.
00:21:12
Speaker
Right.
00:21:13
Speaker
And Doc Nesto has information about this lithos thing.
00:21:17
Speaker
So we're going to work together to take him alive and find out what we can about this thing.
00:21:23
Speaker
We need him alive.
00:21:25
Speaker
They repeat again and again.
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah, they're very emphatic on this.
00:21:29
Speaker
Very emphatic.
00:21:31
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.
00:21:41
Speaker
And that's Halsey's clone, Chloe.
00:21:44
Speaker
Black Box is resuscitated long enough to locate this clone.
00:21:49
Speaker
And and so we have our two steps.
00:21:53
Speaker
We've got our Rick Moranis.
00:21:54
Speaker
We got our Sigourney Weaver.
00:21:56
Speaker
They fucked in the first movie, right?
00:21:58
Speaker
Like they sure did.
00:21:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:22:00
Speaker
That was, they, they do.
00:22:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:02
Speaker
We watched that the other day and I was like, I was like,
00:22:05
Speaker
They fucked like, yeah, right.
00:22:06
Speaker
Like that's pretty clear.
00:22:07
Speaker
So that's they they make love on top of a little stone bed.
00:22:15
Speaker
That is what opens the gate and out steps goes through the goes area.
00:22:23
Speaker
Right.
00:22:23
Speaker
Right.
00:22:24
Speaker
One time I turned into a dog and they helped me.
00:22:26
Speaker
And they helped me.
00:22:31
Speaker
That's what, in a nutshell, it's a mad, mad, mad world.
00:22:35
Speaker
Ghostbusters.
00:22:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:37
Speaker
And Warhammer 40K.
00:22:39
Speaker
That's what we're doing.
00:22:40
Speaker
Those are the Gozerian.
00:22:41
Speaker
Good evening.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:43
Speaker
As a duly designated representative of the county city and state of New York.
00:22:46
Speaker
Thank you, Ray.
00:22:48
Speaker
That'll do it.
00:22:49
Speaker
Thank you, Ray.
00:22:49
Speaker
That'll do it.
00:22:51
Speaker
All right.
00:22:52
Speaker
Chapter 12.
00:22:52
Speaker
We're back with Severan.
00:22:55
Speaker
He is on Stath, which is kind of like this neutral planet.
00:23:00
Speaker
You know, he's it's unnerving because you've got this weary kind of peace between everybody.
00:23:08
Speaker
You're not allowed to fight here.
00:23:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:11
Speaker
He's looking for his Daskalo, which is kind of a mentor figure for his race.
00:23:16
Speaker
And the Skala turns out to be Dovinesto.
00:23:20
Speaker
And he's kind of trying to sneak around.
00:23:23
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.
00:23:29
Speaker
He finds him in a gigantic decommissioned human spacecraft that he's basically using as an apartment.
00:23:37
Speaker
Right.
00:23:37
Speaker
It's pretty cool, actually.
00:23:40
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.
00:23:54
Speaker
Yes.
00:23:55
Speaker
He's like that.
00:23:55
Speaker
He's he's like the guy.
00:23:57
Speaker
He was like base.
00:23:58
Speaker
They kind of hint that he was basically the main dude, even though there wasn't supposed to be one above the other.
00:24:04
Speaker
He's he's more or less the guy.
00:24:06
Speaker
Right.
00:24:07
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.
00:24:18
Speaker
It's heavily implied that they are almost extinct.
00:24:21
Speaker
And he's also thousands of years old.
00:24:23
Speaker
Like he has kept up rejuvenation procedures to like replace his body.
00:24:28
Speaker
These guys look like the, they look like the Kaminoans from Star Wars, the clone, the people.
00:24:40
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:24:42
Speaker
The next.
00:24:43
Speaker
They're kind of very long and whatever.
00:24:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:48
Speaker
I didn't know that's what they were called.
00:24:49
Speaker
The Kaminoans.
00:24:49
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:52
Speaker
So.
00:24:54
Speaker
So Dova tells him that he, uh, cause he's explaining, I've got a, I got a good news dad.
00:25:01
Speaker
Cause that's who he is to him.
00:25:02
Speaker
Uh, boss gave me control of almost his entire fleet and he wants me to smack earth around.
00:25:09
Speaker
Uh, uh, and Dova says, don't stop at earth.
00:25:13
Speaker
You should continue and try to get this lithos, uh, item.
00:25:17
Speaker
Um, and, uh, and let the humans get the clone girl and we'll get her, uh,
00:25:24
Speaker
And we'll find and we'll find a way to get her from them.
00:25:26
Speaker
Let them do the hard work on that.
00:25:29
Speaker
It's basically it's like it's a very Indiana Jones.
00:25:32
Speaker
There's nothing you can possess that I cannot take away kind of situation.
00:25:35
Speaker
We're just going to slowly follow you.
00:25:37
Speaker
We're going to wait for you to come out of the temple and then take the thing.
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:41
Speaker
That's their plan.
00:25:42
Speaker
I got to say, in terms of efficiency, Belloc was really good at his.
00:25:49
Speaker
He let me just tell you this.
00:25:52
Speaker
Watch Raiders of the Lost Ark.
00:25:54
Speaker
Belloc thoroughly just like wipes the floor with Indiana at every turn.
00:25:59
Speaker
He only loses because of the literal wrath of God.
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:04
Speaker
Hubris, literal hubris, the definition of the word hubris.
00:26:09
Speaker
And that's what kills him.
00:26:12
Speaker
It's he's yeah, he's he's the he is the Nazi equivalent of work smart, don't work hard.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's what he is.
00:26:23
Speaker
Oh, and this chapter ends with the colon.
00:26:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:31
Speaker
The human Sengelly strike force, boom, breaches the building.
00:26:35
Speaker
We're about to get our video game.
00:26:37
Speaker
We got Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six going on right now.
00:26:40
Speaker
Exactly.
00:26:41
Speaker
We got smashing in through the windows on the jump cord like it's all happening.
00:26:48
Speaker
But for now, we cut to chapter 13 where James is drinking his sorrows away in his shitty Alaskan hut somewhere.
00:26:56
Speaker
He's in a tiny little bar.
00:26:59
Speaker
He ends up getting confronted by Octavio Morales, who we haven't basically since the very beginning of the book.
00:27:06
Speaker
Right.
00:27:06
Speaker
Who's the head of Oni and who has been basically his boss all this time.
00:27:12
Speaker
And he offers him a job that is going to end Cortana.
00:27:18
Speaker
And after a bunch of and he's like, well, you're too late because I was going to quit.
00:27:22
Speaker
And they go back and forth
Reflection on Storyline and Character Praise
00:27:24
Speaker
and back and forth.
00:27:24
Speaker
And finally, Morales says, look, after this is over, I don't want you to be on our team.
00:27:31
Speaker
I want you to retire.
00:27:32
Speaker
I want you gone after this.
00:27:34
Speaker
So this is it.
00:27:36
Speaker
Promises that this is going to be the last one.
00:27:39
Speaker
This is an interesting moment.
00:27:41
Speaker
We get a theodicy moment or what some people call the problem with God.
00:27:47
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.
00:28:03
Speaker
Uh, and only two of those can be true at the same time.
00:28:06
Speaker
So, but we, we cut it down to two for this, where basically he realized that Cortana either has all of this, uh,
00:28:13
Speaker
It's basically invincible or, you know, doesn't care.
00:28:18
Speaker
Like, it's it's it's a really interesting thing.
00:28:22
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.
00:28:30
Speaker
You know, right.
00:28:31
Speaker
There's basically two only two outcomes.
00:28:33
Speaker
Right.
00:28:34
Speaker
And that's and that's just it.
00:28:35
Speaker
So so I thought that was an interesting thing they threw in there.
Current Gaming Experiences Discussion
00:28:39
Speaker
And then and then speaking of Cortana, three of her arbiters show up and accost them.
00:28:46
Speaker
And James just fucking kills them immediately.
00:28:48
Speaker
He just stabs.
00:28:50
Speaker
He he is.
00:28:51
Speaker
James is the way I imagine James is.
00:28:55
Speaker
Do you remember the beginning of the first X-Men movie with Logan is at the is like at the bar?
00:29:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:29:05
Speaker
I, I, I know exactly what you're talking about.
00:29:08
Speaker
And I refuse to believe that that was not some sort of inspiration.
00:29:11
Speaker
It's very, that it's very, that, and we got another scene later.
00:29:14
Speaker
That's also very that.
00:29:16
Speaker
So yeah, yeah.
00:29:19
Speaker
It's a very eighties commando moment.
00:29:22
Speaker
Like he just kills them all and then looks over at Morales is like, I'll take the job.
00:29:25
Speaker
It's that kind of thing.
00:29:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:27
Speaker
So we get that.
00:29:28
Speaker
He's also in my head.
00:29:30
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?
00:29:39
Speaker
No, no, I've never watched Reacher.
00:29:40
Speaker
So it's it's it's fun.
00:29:43
Speaker
It's a it's a fun show.
00:29:44
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.
00:29:58
Speaker
Which is absurd because in the books, Jack Reacher is a gigantic man.
00:30:03
Speaker
He is six foot four, 300 pounds of pure muscle.
00:30:07
Speaker
Alan Richson is that.
00:30:09
Speaker
He's six foot four, 300 pounds.
00:30:10
Speaker
Dude's a big side of beef.
00:30:12
Speaker
Yeah, that guy's a big fucking dude.
00:30:14
Speaker
the entire premise of the show is he is bigger than you.
00:30:18
Speaker
And if he is not bigger than you, then he is smarter than you.
00:30:22
Speaker
Um, is, is, is, is his entire shtick.
00:30:25
Speaker
Right.
00:30:26
Speaker
So I, at this point, I would just imagine James as, as Reacher where it's just like, yeah,
00:30:31
Speaker
He's just a big old side of beef.
00:30:33
Speaker
You know, he's a Spartan.
00:30:35
Speaker
He's one of those old school Spartan two sides of beef.
00:30:38
Speaker
You know, they don't make them like that anymore.
00:30:40
Speaker
Right.
00:30:40
Speaker
Right.
00:30:41
Speaker
You know, he was slow cooked since he was six years old.
00:30:44
Speaker
That's literally.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:45
Speaker
He's just, he's devastating in combat.
00:30:48
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.
00:30:55
Speaker
It turns out the armagers, the armagers, which in a previous book basically did a, uh,
00:31:01
Speaker
Did a racial profiling moment on the Arbiter in his car, remember?
00:31:10
Speaker
That's right.
00:31:11
Speaker
That was such a great opening.
00:31:13
Speaker
I remember that.
00:31:14
Speaker
I remember.
00:31:15
Speaker
I don't always remember.
00:31:17
Speaker
I don't remember most things from the books we read.
00:31:20
Speaker
Right.
00:31:21
Speaker
I remember that opening.
00:31:22
Speaker
I remember being like, what is this, 24?
00:31:24
Speaker
Holy shit.
00:31:25
Speaker
Like it was just.
00:31:28
Speaker
That kind of tense.
00:31:30
Speaker
But in this context, James kills these armatures in like one fluid motion.
00:31:37
Speaker
It's just like knife.
00:31:41
Speaker
And it is like, I'll take the job.
00:31:45
Speaker
Octavia is like, great, because we got to leave right now because there's going to be more of those things.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's not it.
00:31:52
Speaker
I think you I think we all know that's not it.
00:31:55
Speaker
So that's their plan.
00:31:57
Speaker
Cut to chapter 14.
00:31:59
Speaker
Tool Jaron is attacking Dovo Nesto's human spaceship home with the Spartan Grey team.
00:32:09
Speaker
They are faced with a huge force like everyone come.
00:32:14
Speaker
It is again, like I said, it's actually large.
00:32:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's like five people versus an army.
00:32:20
Speaker
It's clear that they were expected and we get a really well done battle chapter.
00:32:27
Speaker
Like Halo is really good about that.
00:32:30
Speaker
Good moments with Tulgeron, like witnessing how nuts the Spartans are.
00:32:38
Speaker
How
Podcast Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:32:39
Speaker
like to her, they look suicidal, like they have an actual tactic where all they do is just run towards the enemy.
00:32:45
Speaker
It's like they're getting shot and they run.
00:32:47
Speaker
It's pure space marine stuff.
00:32:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's true.
00:32:50
Speaker
It's true.
00:32:52
Speaker
You know, the tactics are for the soldiers.
00:32:55
Speaker
The ramming is for the space marine.
00:32:57
Speaker
Right.
00:32:57
Speaker
Right.
00:32:58
Speaker
Right.
00:32:59
Speaker
We're not going to, these aren't going to do anything to us.
00:33:01
Speaker
We've got shields.
00:33:01
Speaker
It's fine.
00:33:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:03
Speaker
It's, it's a great chapter for the good, you know, you get a lot of setup stuff with halo.
00:33:08
Speaker
Halo is very for, for, you know, for a first person shooter style game.
00:33:13
Speaker
It's a very smart one.
00:33:15
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.
00:33:22
Speaker
And then, and then you'll get,
00:33:24
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.
00:33:34
Speaker
It's terrific.
00:33:35
Speaker
It's really, really good stuff.
00:33:37
Speaker
So unfortunately, though, Dover and the company escape, but not before they kill one of Severin's captains.
00:33:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:46
Speaker
One of his guys.
00:33:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:48
Speaker
One of those big dudes.
00:33:49
Speaker
They're fighting.
00:33:49
Speaker
They're fighting their way up the ramp to the escape craft.
00:33:53
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.
00:34:07
Speaker
Right.
00:34:08
Speaker
Right.
00:34:08
Speaker
Guns that are meant to shoot at battleships like that.
00:34:11
Speaker
Exactly.
00:34:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:13
Speaker
So they do escape, but the Spartans managed to capture one of the Sankele alive.
00:34:21
Speaker
So they've got at least someone to torture slash interrogate.
00:34:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:27
Speaker
Amidst a as as Tal Duran notices amidst a pile of dead bodies that a Spartan is standing on.
00:34:36
Speaker
He's like, I got this one alive.
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, this guy's alive.
00:34:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:43
Speaker
And he's lucky.
00:34:45
Speaker
He's very lucky.
00:34:47
Speaker
Chapter 15, we've got Abigail Cole.
00:34:49
Speaker
We cut to her in the sky tracking the escaping vessel.
00:34:55
Speaker
And we get bad implications from the fact that the vessel they're in is a banished vessel.
00:35:02
Speaker
They didn't know that this guy was allied with the Banished.
00:35:08
Speaker
And that means that the Banished know about the Lithos.
00:35:11
Speaker
And that is, they did not bargain for that.
00:35:15
Speaker
They did not count on that.
00:35:17
Speaker
Because if it's just ex-covenant fanatics or something like that, pirates, we can handle all that shit.
00:35:23
Speaker
But the Banished is a honest to God thing.
00:35:26
Speaker
army fighting force.
00:35:28
Speaker
And that's that's that's going to complicate things.
00:35:30
Speaker
It's a fly in the ointment.
00:35:32
Speaker
They cannot blow up Dovo ship because they seem to be the only people who don't know where the damn Lithos is.
00:35:38
Speaker
So they've got to they got to get him alive.
00:35:41
Speaker
So they're in a predicament with that.
00:35:43
Speaker
They're being chased by everyone and their mother, including a new banished vessel that nobody nobody recognizes.
00:35:51
Speaker
This is not on our registry.
00:35:53
Speaker
This is not our thing.
00:35:55
Speaker
It's described as like a jagged arrowhead.
00:35:58
Speaker
I was like, fucking tight, man.
00:36:00
Speaker
That's cool.
00:36:00
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:36:01
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.
00:36:12
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:36:12
Speaker
Darth Vader, Star Destroyer.
00:36:14
Speaker
That thing was so cool.
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:19
Speaker
So we get a giant battleship fight, which I didn't know I missed.
00:36:23
Speaker
I remember the first three that we read, the old school ones, had a lot of really good naval space battles.
00:36:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:31
Speaker
And I'm not really – I don't – never something I craved.
00:36:34
Speaker
And this reminded me how much fun those are.
00:36:37
Speaker
So good.
00:36:37
Speaker
So well written.
00:36:38
Speaker
Like I, yeah, something about the idea of you have this captain, Captain Cole, just basically in, in her element.
00:36:48
Speaker
And she's just giving the orders and there, it's not like there are people, you know,
00:36:52
Speaker
people aren't like shouting and yelling at each other.
00:36:55
Speaker
She's just like, you know, like keep charging the Mac cannons, fire at will, like all this, all this stuff.
00:37:01
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?
00:37:08
Speaker
And, uh, and, and it's, it's, it's great.
00:37:11
Speaker
It's really good stuff.
00:37:12
Speaker
Um,
00:37:13
Speaker
We do get a moment where we see some ex-covenant ships kind of show up out of nowhere.
00:37:19
Speaker
They're not doing anything.
00:37:20
Speaker
They're just kind of floating there.
00:37:21
Speaker
And they're like, oh, great.
00:37:23
Speaker
Ex-covenant 2.
00:37:24
Speaker
All right.
00:37:25
Speaker
This is not good.
00:37:26
Speaker
This is too many people.
00:37:27
Speaker
We are already fucked.
00:37:28
Speaker
They managed, miracle of miracles, they managed to take out like four of the attacking dreadnoughts.
00:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, of Severin's dreadnoughts.
00:37:40
Speaker
They're able to kill a bunch with the Mac cannons.
00:37:43
Speaker
Yeah, they take a bunch of it.
00:37:44
Speaker
And so they're they're kind of at a make or break moment.
00:37:49
Speaker
And they get a transmission from Severin, who is just pissed.
00:37:54
Speaker
And he tells him, you know, I was going to come and I was going to I'm heading over to guess what?
00:38:01
Speaker
Blow up Earth.
00:38:02
Speaker
I'm going to fucking kill you guys.
00:38:03
Speaker
You killed a bunch of my people.
00:38:06
Speaker
Your computer game killed my planet.
00:38:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:10
Speaker
And you guys couldn't keep control of her.
00:38:13
Speaker
And now my fucking planet is gone.
00:38:15
Speaker
My home planet is gone.
00:38:17
Speaker
My home planet is gone.
00:38:18
Speaker
It's toast.
00:38:19
Speaker
I'm coming for my pound of flesh.
00:38:21
Speaker
Right.
00:38:22
Speaker
Right.
00:38:22
Speaker
And I hold you guys responsible.
00:38:24
Speaker
So not only will blowing up Earth be my duty, it will be a pleasure.
00:38:30
Speaker
And just cuts the note.
00:38:32
Speaker
That's just, I just wanted you to know.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:34
Speaker
Just wanted you to know.
00:38:35
Speaker
And, and Cole's like, okay, we got to get the fuck out of here.
00:38:40
Speaker
We got to go deal with, go ahead and go get earth ready for this.
00:38:43
Speaker
Got to go deal with that.
00:38:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:46
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.
00:38:57
Speaker
And there ain't more coming.
00:38:59
Speaker
There ain't more coming.
00:38:59
Speaker
The planet's gone.
00:39:01
Speaker
This is where he's clearly our bad guy.
00:39:04
Speaker
But holy shit, do I get.
00:39:07
Speaker
Where he's coming from.
00:39:08
Speaker
He is pissed.
00:39:10
Speaker
And it's like, yeah, sure.
00:39:12
Speaker
I'm on his side, but I'm on his side, you know?
00:39:16
Speaker
But I understand.
00:39:17
Speaker
And I get it.
00:39:18
Speaker
I get him blaming Earth and the UNSC for Cortana's actions.
00:39:24
Speaker
Like, you guys let this AI run rampant past its...
00:39:31
Speaker
It's like, this is on, this was your thing.
00:39:34
Speaker
And it is now destroying planets just to make points, you know?
00:39:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:39:40
Speaker
And, and they, and the, and the humans we do later get the humans going, Oh fuck.
00:39:44
Speaker
Like they're kind of right.
00:39:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:46
Speaker
That's crazy.
00:39:48
Speaker
So he,
00:39:49
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
00:40:09
Speaker
So he needs to keep for now and needs to keep this under wraps.
00:40:12
Speaker
He's got to be very careful with this.
00:40:14
Speaker
The only thing that his mentor kept was a stone tablet that he's analyzing.
00:40:22
Speaker
The we do find out he tells him that the ex covenant ships that popped up were actually allies.
00:40:27
Speaker
He said, yeah, I'm working with them.
00:40:28
Speaker
I'm working with the ex covenant.
00:40:30
Speaker
Dover was saying this.
00:40:31
Speaker
I the moment we got out, I.
00:40:34
Speaker
I told him just to stand by, you know, to keep an eye out just in case.
00:40:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:39
Speaker
And it's led by Sally Nyon, who is another covenant fanatic.
00:40:45
Speaker
Severin has got some serious doubts.
00:40:48
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.
00:40:58
Speaker
But to try and ally the banished with the remnants of the covenant,
00:41:05
Speaker
who, you know, that's not great.
00:41:07
Speaker
And they want him dead, too, on top of everything else because of his father.
00:41:12
Speaker
So he is not thrilled about this whole thing.
00:41:16
Speaker
Dovo translates the tablet to show him what their plan is to go into the domain.
00:41:22
Speaker
And part of the plan is that he's going to sacrifice his...
00:41:27
Speaker
Physical body to enter the domain, which we saw in the last book we read.
00:41:35
Speaker
We learned about like spirit entering the domain.
00:41:40
Speaker
And he says, he says, so you're going to die.
00:41:42
Speaker
And it was actually I'm going to be more alive than I've ever been.
00:41:45
Speaker
Yeah, I will have a wealth of power.
00:41:47
Speaker
And it makes me wonder about the main character of the last book we read, the didact.
00:41:55
Speaker
That's the didact, right?
00:41:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:58
Speaker
He kind of, at the end of that, he was like in a pretty good spot within the domain.
00:42:07
Speaker
So I guess we're just kind of like...
00:42:09
Speaker
I guess nobody else really knows that.
00:42:11
Speaker
I guess we're not like they're like everybody is kind of looking at the domain.
00:42:15
Speaker
I'm like, this is how we get to Cortana.
00:42:17
Speaker
And I'm like, well, I think there's other things going on the domain that you're not totally aware.
00:42:24
Speaker
And I and I think you're absolutely right.
00:42:26
Speaker
I think I think.
00:42:27
Speaker
Because we have been reading this new series of books and it's kind of perfect.
00:42:32
Speaker
The first, the second, the third one, and this leading all up to this.
00:42:36
Speaker
Right.
00:42:37
Speaker
They've all set little bricks in play here.
00:42:41
Speaker
So it's I think you're right.
00:42:43
Speaker
I think I think we're not done with the didact.
00:42:45
Speaker
I think we're going to see a little of him.
00:42:47
Speaker
Right.
00:42:48
Speaker
So let's see.
00:42:50
Speaker
Where was I?
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah, he tells him about that.
00:42:54
Speaker
And Severn's not thrilled about that.
00:42:56
Speaker
He's like, OK, great, but you'll be dead.
00:42:59
Speaker
I'm not happy about that.
00:43:02
Speaker
So he knows where the lithos is and the tablet is his tool for being able to find him.
00:43:09
Speaker
And he says that humans are going to bring the clone to them.
00:43:13
Speaker
This is also a moment where...
00:43:15
Speaker
He's like showing him on the tablet.
00:43:17
Speaker
He goes, do you see this passage?
00:43:20
Speaker
And he goes, I don't I don't speak the language of the gods.
00:43:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:24
Speaker
Well, it says this.
00:43:25
Speaker
And it's like that could say anything.
00:43:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:28
Speaker
I don't like like I'm reading this and I was like, oh, Dova is he is a grifter.
00:43:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:35
Speaker
He is.
00:43:35
Speaker
I was like McGee.
00:43:36
Speaker
Just he is like I was like, I doubt he believed ever believed in anything.
00:43:41
Speaker
You know, right?
00:43:42
Speaker
Oh yeah, absolutely.
00:43:43
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.
00:43:50
Speaker
Like, it basically just says this guy's copper is not very good.
00:43:55
Speaker
Right.
00:43:55
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:43:56
Speaker
Exactly.
00:43:57
Speaker
It's it's that was that Babylonians that Sumerian is one of those.
00:44:02
Speaker
The copper copper.
00:44:04
Speaker
This is like the second time I've referenced it in like a couple of months.
00:44:10
Speaker
It's a, it was like the first review.
00:44:13
Speaker
It was, it was Acadian.
00:44:14
Speaker
Acadian.
00:44:15
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:16
Speaker
Oldest customer complaints from 1750 BCE.
00:44:21
Speaker
I love it.
00:44:22
Speaker
I love it.
00:44:22
Speaker
Nothing changes.
00:44:23
Speaker
Nothing changes.
00:44:26
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:44:27
Speaker
All right.
00:44:29
Speaker
Finally, we get to Chapter 17.
00:44:30
Speaker
We are back with James, who is such a kick ass character.
00:44:36
Speaker
It's just a lot of any time we're back to James, I'm stoked.
00:44:40
Speaker
So he's on Cascade looking for Chloe.
00:44:43
Speaker
His lead, the only lead he could find for her was she's mentioned as a dependent on some tax forms.
00:44:50
Speaker
And so he's got a gist of where she is.
00:44:54
Speaker
He goes into a bar that he finds out is like basically the wealthiest, most popular bar in the area.
00:45:01
Speaker
Everyone goes there and he goes all Rorschach on everyone's asses.
00:45:05
Speaker
He just like...
00:45:07
Speaker
He's just like breaking fingers and killing a lot of people.
00:45:10
Speaker
Really?
00:45:10
Speaker
It's like because he goes to the bartender and he's like, what do you know?
00:45:14
Speaker
And the bartenders like tells the other guys like, get him.
00:45:18
Speaker
And so, you know, he kills three of them or something.
00:45:21
Speaker
I don't know.
00:45:22
Speaker
It's like five of them.
00:45:23
Speaker
And he kills.
00:45:23
Speaker
He's like, I think I killed three of them.
00:45:25
Speaker
Something like that.
00:45:25
Speaker
And it's like, Jesus Christ.
00:45:27
Speaker
It's pretty brutal.
00:45:28
Speaker
The bartender's like, fine.
00:45:30
Speaker
They're down the street.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:31
Speaker
They're this place called Mikko's wheel.
00:45:34
Speaker
So he beats up the bouncer.
00:45:36
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.
00:45:45
Speaker
No problem.
00:45:46
Speaker
Kills them.
00:45:47
Speaker
Like it ain't no thing.
00:45:48
Speaker
Finds Miko who I forget the name of the alien, but it's like an avian kind of alien.
00:45:53
Speaker
It's, it's, uh, he's one of the jackals.
00:45:57
Speaker
Yes, yes, yes.
00:45:58
Speaker
Um, uh, and just, yes, that's it.
00:46:02
Speaker
And there, and it's kind of hilarious because, uh,
00:46:05
Speaker
This is another great reminder of who we're dealing with here because there's all these legends about Mikos.
00:46:11
Speaker
No one's ever seen Mikos.
00:46:13
Speaker
No one knows who Mikos is.
00:46:14
Speaker
And within five minutes, Mikos is cowering on the floor and being thrown out a window, by the way.
00:46:20
Speaker
Yeah, I...
00:46:21
Speaker
But what I love is the lead up to Miko's.
00:46:24
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.
00:46:41
Speaker
Shredded.
00:46:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:46:43
Speaker
because it's in there with like a 7.62 millimeter machine gun.
00:46:49
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.
00:46:58
Speaker
This is totally a scene in a mobster movie, by the way.
00:47:00
Speaker
Like this is like the guy goes into the bar, the speakeasy and it all goes to hell.
00:47:06
Speaker
That's totally what this is.
00:47:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:08
Speaker
Um,
00:47:09
Speaker
So when he takes him out, he, he, he.
00:47:11
Speaker
Give it 10 seconds.
00:47:13
Speaker
Pump your guts.
00:47:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly it.
00:47:16
Speaker
One, two, 10, 10.
00:47:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:19
Speaker
And he, he, he beats him up a little bit, tells him to swear to him and, uh, and me.
00:47:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:26
Speaker
And he's like, fine, she's over.
00:47:28
Speaker
She tells her where she is.
00:47:30
Speaker
And he he he finds like a curtain and they get some shade thrown at the 21st century, by the way.
00:47:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:37
Speaker
He says he's got these old curtains.
00:47:39
Speaker
They're ugly as hell, probably from the 21st century.
00:47:43
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:44
Speaker
Suddenly I get real defensive of my curtains.
00:47:46
Speaker
James.
00:47:46
Speaker
You know?
00:47:48
Speaker
Come on.
00:47:49
Speaker
And he kind of ties him up in it and tosses him out the three-story window.
00:47:53
Speaker
And he's just hanging there.
00:47:54
Speaker
It basically is a distraction.
00:47:55
Speaker
Everyone's going to focus on this guy.
00:47:56
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.
00:48:05
Speaker
Yeah, maybe not actually.
00:48:06
Speaker
It's fine.
00:48:06
Speaker
Now that I think of it.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:08
Speaker
It's a win-win situation.
00:48:11
Speaker
Uh, yeah.
00:48:12
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.
00:48:20
Speaker
She's a little kid and she's scared to death and he drugs her.
00:48:24
Speaker
Uh, unfortunately he, he, he hates himself for doing it, but he kind of gasses her and she passes out.
00:48:29
Speaker
Um, he wraps her up.
00:48:32
Speaker
She only has one way.
00:48:37
Speaker
She only has the one leg.
00:48:38
Speaker
Yes.
00:48:38
Speaker
Yes.
00:48:39
Speaker
And that is the person that you see on the back cover.
00:48:42
Speaker
There's there she is.
00:48:45
Speaker
There she is.
00:48:46
Speaker
I think it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's, yeah.
00:48:49
Speaker
So we, but that's, that's who she, he wonders, like, did somebody do that to her?
00:48:53
Speaker
And they're like, no, it's probably congenital.
00:48:55
Speaker
It's probably what she was born with.
00:48:56
Speaker
Right.
00:48:58
Speaker
So, and by the way, she is, she is supposed to be doing this gangster's money.
00:49:03
Speaker
Like his, his numbers.
00:49:05
Speaker
Like she apparently is.
00:49:06
Speaker
Because she's a clone of Halsey.
00:49:08
Speaker
Right.
00:49:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:09
Speaker
So she's like.
00:49:10
Speaker
She's whiz with numbers.
00:49:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:12
Speaker
Super smart.
00:49:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:15
Speaker
And so he had drugs or jumps out another window, calls his motorcycle.
00:49:21
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.
00:49:33
Speaker
All the criminals.
00:49:35
Speaker
This is a town full of criminals have called the cops.
00:49:39
Speaker
So the cops are now chasing him on their motorbikes.
00:49:44
Speaker
We get we get, you know, we get a great motorcycle chase.
00:49:48
Speaker
James is a cab and loses them one by one and escapes to his ship.
00:49:55
Speaker
You know, he really does say fuck the cops.
00:49:57
Speaker
And when he when he gets there.
00:50:00
Speaker
He does.
00:50:00
Speaker
He's like, yeah, they're shitty cops.
00:50:02
Speaker
They're bad cops.
00:50:03
Speaker
Got it.
00:50:04
Speaker
And and which I think is them covering their ass in case people got mad about it.
00:50:08
Speaker
It's like, no, these are bad cops.
00:50:10
Speaker
So it's fine.
00:50:11
Speaker
You can do whatever you want to.
00:50:14
Speaker
So but when he gets on the ship with Chloe, he has the usual thoughts of
00:50:20
Speaker
How did this girl get here?
00:50:22
Speaker
Why is she the key?
00:50:24
Speaker
And is this was that the hard part?
00:50:27
Speaker
Because, you know, his his A.I.
00:50:29
Speaker
is like, well, that's probably the hard part done.
00:50:33
Speaker
And we all know it is not.
00:50:35
Speaker
It is not.
00:50:35
Speaker
But that's the end of Chapter 17.
00:50:37
Speaker
And that's the that's the end of where we are today.
00:50:40
Speaker
So, Kevin, what do you think so far?
00:50:44
Speaker
I really like it so far.
00:50:45
Speaker
I think it's a fun story.
00:50:49
Speaker
I think I'm in love with James' chapters.
00:50:53
Speaker
There are a lot of rogue cop action figure stuff that...
00:51:01
Speaker
You could tell Jeremy was having a lot of fun writing this stuff because it was a blast.
00:51:11
Speaker
It's a blast to read that stuff.
00:51:13
Speaker
But also then it's like mixed in with, you know, Cole and the other characters with the naval combat.
00:51:19
Speaker
That's a lot of fun.
00:51:21
Speaker
I think so far the Talgeron is like my least favorite point of view.
00:51:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:27
Speaker
It's a tough one.
00:51:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:28
Speaker
Kind of a kind of wet blanket compared to the other stuff that's happening.
00:51:34
Speaker
But yeah, I like it so far.
00:51:36
Speaker
Halfway through, I'm really excited to see where it's going.
00:51:39
Speaker
What do you think?
00:51:41
Speaker
Same.
00:51:42
Speaker
I think it's really well written.
00:51:43
Speaker
It's really well done.
00:51:44
Speaker
I am.
00:51:45
Speaker
loving, uh, uh, the alien point of view.
00:51:50
Speaker
Uh, it is, it's one thing to have excellent enemies.
00:51:53
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.
00:52:02
Speaker
And, um,
00:52:04
Speaker
So this is all this is all very well done.
00:52:06
Speaker
It's very it's like got inspiration from war correspondence to 80s cop movies.
00:52:14
Speaker
Like you said, it's it's a lot of good shit in here.
00:52:17
Speaker
A lot of nerdy shit.
00:52:18
Speaker
A lot of action filled shit.
00:52:20
Speaker
It's it's a solid, solid piece of shit.
00:52:23
Speaker
Very good stuff.
00:52:24
Speaker
So, yeah, really enjoying it.
00:52:26
Speaker
All right, Kevin.
00:52:27
Speaker
Well, now that that's over, I have a single question to ask you.
00:52:32
Speaker
What are you playing?
00:52:34
Speaker
Oh, I didn't know that you were going to... I know.
00:52:37
Speaker
It's always a surprise when you ask me.
00:52:40
Speaker
It's a little firecracker thrown your way just to keep you on your toes.
00:52:43
Speaker
Just to keep me on my toes.
00:52:44
Speaker
What have I been playing?
00:52:46
Speaker
I'm still trying to finish Eldorand, which is that...
00:52:54
Speaker
side scroller metroidvania with some clear it's got some blasphemous vibes.
00:53:02
Speaker
There was actually an enemy that was like pure blasphemous.
00:53:05
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.
00:53:15
Speaker
So he was like he was like strung up
00:53:18
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.
00:53:31
Speaker
It's, it's really gross.
00:53:32
Speaker
That's fun.
00:53:33
Speaker
I like that.
00:53:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:35
Speaker
Uh, I saw some like corrupted noble enemies where it was like a noble sitting on a, on a, uh,
00:53:43
Speaker
What's the thing where the people are holding it?
00:53:49
Speaker
It's like you sit on the thing and then like servants are like holding the... Oh, fuck, a litter.
00:53:57
Speaker
A litter, yeah.
00:53:58
Speaker
So like Corrupted Noble is like sitting on a litter.
00:54:01
Speaker
And I was like, that is a literal enemy from Blasphemous.
00:54:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's true.
00:54:07
Speaker
That's true.
00:54:08
Speaker
But yeah, I am really enjoying it.
00:54:12
Speaker
I am hoping to finish it up soon.
00:54:14
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.
00:54:33
Speaker
And so that I've been playing that.
00:54:35
Speaker
I've also been playing Atomfall, which is a it's
00:54:44
Speaker
It's a Fallout-like game.
00:54:48
Speaker
You are in an area of Britain where you wake up in the middle of a bunker.
00:54:59
Speaker
And it's the 1950s, and it's after this nuclear accident.
00:55:03
Speaker
And the entire area has been quarantined away from the rest of Britain.
00:55:10
Speaker
And you don't remember anything.
00:55:11
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.
00:55:22
Speaker
That's basically the only thing he tells you.
00:55:24
Speaker
And then he gives you a card and he dies and you just are out into it, thrown out into the world.
00:55:30
Speaker
And
00:55:32
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.
00:55:43
Speaker
That's the vibe I'm getting.
00:55:43
Speaker
It's a very British Fallout.
00:55:46
Speaker
It doesn't have any real RPG elements.
00:55:48
Speaker
You don't like level up.
00:55:50
Speaker
You can learn skills, but you never... You don't level up.
00:55:55
Speaker
Um...
00:55:56
Speaker
There was a quote in an article I read for it where I think it was GC Vasquez wrote it.
00:56:09
Speaker
Yes, he did.
00:56:12
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.
00:56:25
Speaker
So it's one of those games where it's like, you're gonna be squishy the entire game.
00:56:30
Speaker
If an enemy with a gun,
00:56:33
Speaker
headshots you, that's game over.
00:56:35
Speaker
Like the entire time you got to be smart and sneaking around and all this stuff.
00:56:41
Speaker
The thing I really love about the game, though, is the quest structure.
00:56:45
Speaker
You aren't given explicit quests.
00:56:48
Speaker
you're given the one thing at the beginning is get to the interchange.
00:56:54
Speaker
Other than that, when you get out into the world, you find leads and rumors and things like that.
00:57:02
Speaker
It's not like a quest to go do this for somebody.
00:57:06
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.
00:57:15
Speaker
You can tackle it in any number of ways.
00:57:18
Speaker
Um, it's, it's more like you're trying to unravel the mystery while also staying alive.
00:57:24
Speaker
Um, so it's, it's, it's really fascinating.
00:57:29
Speaker
Uh, the other thing that I, I find that's kind of neat is, is, um, you,
00:57:37
Speaker
There's there's like crafting in it, but it's not like survival crafting.
00:57:40
Speaker
You don't have to eat or anything like that.
00:57:42
Speaker
There's no hunger meter, but you know, you can you can buy.
00:57:48
Speaker
You can trade for blueprints and craft certain things.
00:57:52
Speaker
The other thing that's really cool about the barter system is that there is no money in the game.
00:57:57
Speaker
There's there's there's no money available in the game.
00:58:00
Speaker
Everything has to you have to trade something that you have to someone else to get something from them.
00:58:07
Speaker
And different people will have different wants.
00:58:10
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.
00:58:25
Speaker
They're a little bit fashy, right?
00:58:26
Speaker
Sure.
00:58:27
Speaker
There's like there's like the outlaws on one side.
00:58:31
Speaker
There's the the military dudes on the other.
00:58:34
Speaker
And then there's like regular people in between.
00:58:37
Speaker
So there's this one military dude who you can barter with.
00:58:41
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.
00:58:48
Speaker
I have all the grenades I could ever want.
00:58:51
Speaker
So it doesn't move the needle on on the on the barter system.
00:58:57
Speaker
But yeah, it's it's a very British fallout.
00:58:59
Speaker
That's cool.
00:59:00
Speaker
All right.
00:59:01
Speaker
It's and it's worth checking out.
00:59:03
Speaker
Atomfall.
00:59:04
Speaker
That sounds really interesting and it's gorgeous.
00:59:07
Speaker
I really love the art direction here.
00:59:09
Speaker
It's gorgeous.
00:59:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's got some good art direction made by a developer named Rebellion.
00:59:17
Speaker
And oh, that makes a whole lot more sense as to...
00:59:22
Speaker
who made it.
00:59:23
Speaker
So Atomfall is, I was like, I was sitting there as I was playing it and like, you know what this feels like?
00:59:30
Speaker
The maps feel like, the maps feel like Sniper Elite.
00:59:35
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.
00:59:42
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:44
Speaker
It makes a lot of sense.
00:59:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:45
Speaker
So it's their like their, their, their, their idea of doing a, a fallout like sort of game.
00:59:56
Speaker
Um, they were always good at level design, so that makes a lot of sense.
00:59:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:00:01
Speaker
Sniper Elite is fun stuff.
01:00:04
Speaker
So, yeah, Rebellion is the name of the company that made it.
01:00:07
Speaker
Very cool.
01:00:10
Speaker
So it's worth checking out.
01:00:12
Speaker
It's worth checking out.
01:00:14
Speaker
But that's what I've been playing.
01:00:15
Speaker
Nice.
01:00:16
Speaker
Phil Woody Blair.
01:00:19
Speaker
Oh, well, I finished the first half of her trees are dead.
01:00:24
Speaker
Basically, basically where you are.
01:00:26
Speaker
I got through the stuff that was already on and now the new material I have to get into.
01:00:32
Speaker
I'm at a stopping point, so I'm going to give it a minute.
01:00:34
Speaker
But holy shit, that was fun.
01:00:36
Speaker
Just a good story.
01:00:38
Speaker
Good mystery.
01:00:39
Speaker
I was impressed.
01:00:40
Speaker
I really enjoyed that.
01:00:42
Speaker
Um, I'm still playing the shit out of Foundation.
01:00:45
Speaker
I am.
01:00:46
Speaker
I have put more hours in.
01:00:47
Speaker
Let me see if I if I can say this is true.
01:00:51
Speaker
I have put in more hours into Foundation that I have in SID 7.
01:00:56
Speaker
Oh, wow.
01:00:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:58
Speaker
I'm and it's and Sif seven I'm enjoying more and more as I go.
01:01:02
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.
01:01:09
Speaker
And foundation is really hitting me in all the good places.
01:01:12
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.
01:01:19
Speaker
It's a gentler, kinder banished.
01:01:22
Speaker
Yeah, but it has a similar vibe.
01:01:25
Speaker
or at least similar goals.
01:01:26
Speaker
It's not as brutal.
01:01:28
Speaker
But anyway, I'm really enjoying that.
01:01:30
Speaker
But I think the game that I played this week that was the most interesting was the Children of Clay.
01:01:36
Speaker
This is something about that name.
01:01:38
Speaker
Just I don't know.
01:01:39
Speaker
But get it.
01:01:40
Speaker
It's upsetting.
01:01:41
Speaker
It's upsetting.
01:01:42
Speaker
It is.
01:01:43
Speaker
It's a it's a 15 minute free game.
01:01:46
Speaker
It took takes me out 15 minutes to play.
01:01:49
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.
01:01:58
Speaker
You have an artifact in front of you.
01:02:00
Speaker
The artifact is horrifying.
01:02:03
Speaker
And you have got to figure out the mystery of this artifact by looking for clues, looking stuff up in your history books.
01:02:12
Speaker
It's cosmic horror, Lovecraftian.
01:02:15
Speaker
It is stop motion animation, which you don't notice that much.
01:02:21
Speaker
But it's enough that it gives the motion a herky-jerky kind of feeling, which is very atmospheric.
01:02:32
Speaker
I really enjoyed it.
01:02:33
Speaker
I would.
01:02:34
Speaker
This is a one person team.
01:02:37
Speaker
I think he's from Hungary and it's it is.
01:02:43
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.
01:02:53
Speaker
An archaeology mystery game like this with Lovecraftian vibes and searching through the darkness for mysteries that man isn't supposed to know.
01:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's fun.
01:03:07
Speaker
That's that's that's good stuff, right?
01:03:09
Speaker
It's super good stuff.
01:03:10
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.
01:03:21
Speaker
And the idea of you being an archaeologist investigating this paleolithic
01:03:27
Speaker
thing.
01:03:28
Speaker
I can't believe this is first time scenes like this.
01:03:31
Speaker
This is in retrospect.
01:03:34
Speaker
It seems like duh.
01:03:35
Speaker
Like this is this.
01:03:35
Speaker
This is obvious.
01:03:38
Speaker
It's again, it's free.
01:03:39
Speaker
It took me 15 minutes to beat.
01:03:42
Speaker
It's very atmospheric.
01:03:43
Speaker
It doesn't have jump scares, which thank you for that.
01:03:48
Speaker
But but it left me very unsettled.
01:03:51
Speaker
Great game.
01:03:54
Speaker
I mean it.
01:03:55
Speaker
If you are listening to this and you have 15 minutes, download the Children of Clay and play it.
01:04:00
Speaker
It is that easy and it is it is really very engaging.
01:04:05
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.
01:04:10
Speaker
in that kind of like creepy, atmospheric world building sort of indie horror sort of thing.
01:04:18
Speaker
And that is- So you're saying that Markiplier is going to make a movie out of it?
01:04:22
Speaker
Probably, probably at this rate.
01:04:24
Speaker
I hope he does.
01:04:25
Speaker
I hope he does.
01:04:26
Speaker
This developer,
01:04:27
Speaker
got to the overwhelmingly positive rating on Steam has got like hundreds of views.
01:04:34
Speaker
I hope this developer gets some attention because he's earned it.
01:04:38
Speaker
This is very, very cool stuff.
01:04:40
Speaker
I'd love to see more of this.
01:04:41
Speaker
So, yeah, so that's a really fun one.
01:04:44
Speaker
You have no excuse.
01:04:46
Speaker
Play it.
01:04:46
Speaker
Really good stuff.
01:04:47
Speaker
So but that's me.
01:04:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:50
Speaker
Awesome.
01:04:51
Speaker
Awesome.
01:04:53
Speaker
So that'll do it for tonight's episode.
01:04:55
Speaker
Thank you all for listening and watching or however you ingest it.
01:04:59
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.
01:05:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:13
Speaker
A deconstructed podcast.
01:05:14
Speaker
That's what it's called.
01:05:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:15
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:05:16
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.
01:05:29
Speaker
You go home educated and hungry.
01:05:31
Speaker
Educated, erudited, irradiated.
01:05:38
Speaker
It's basically getting a master of science in evening.
01:05:42
Speaker
And isn't that worth it?
01:05:43
Speaker
Isn't that worth it?
01:05:45
Speaker
That's totally worth it.
01:05:46
Speaker
I'd say it was.
01:05:47
Speaker
So yeah, follow us on Blue Sky.
01:05:50
Speaker
And, you know, that would be great if you could.
01:05:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:54
Speaker
If you could follow us on Blue Sky.
01:05:57
Speaker
Now, Phil, I do have a question you might be able to help me with.
01:06:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:03
Speaker
Based on some of your fiction work, a hell mouth has opened at the intersection near my house.
01:06:13
Speaker
What do I got to do to close that bad boy up?
01:06:14
Speaker
All right, Kevin, I've told you this like five times.
01:06:17
Speaker
Like this keeps, I'm not blaming you, but all right.
01:06:20
Speaker
All right.
01:06:20
Speaker
Just one last time.
01:06:22
Speaker
You've got to remember...