Transcript
Speaker: He only he only apparently needs to wheeze and the rest of the body is going away from a long, long range sensors.
Speaker: Shut them down right now.
Speaker: Going silent here.
Speaker: Going silent.
Speaker: Just pass out.
Speaker: You know what is never silent?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: I interrupted Phil's wine sip, but welcome to Pixel It.
Speaker: But that might be the most accurate one you've ever done.
Speaker: You know what's never silent?
Speaker: Pixel it.
Speaker: Pixel it.
Speaker: It's never silent.
Speaker: We never shut the fuck up.
Speaker: It's never silent.
Speaker: If you are looking for an hour to an hour and a half of two middle-aged geeks talking constantly, you've come to the right show.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: And today we are talking about Ass Creed, Assassin's Creed Bloodstone.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a graphic novel.
Speaker: It's based on the Ubisoft creation of the same name.
Speaker: So yeah, you know what?
Speaker: Here's the thing.
Speaker: If you haven't heard of Assassin's Creed, first of all,
Speaker: I don't understand how you found us.
Speaker: How did you get here?
Speaker: How did you get here?
Speaker: It's it's like the it's the Madden of open world games.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Kevin over here dropping goddamn truth bombs.
Speaker: That is poignant.
Speaker: They got one that comes out like, I don't know, every year or every other year at this point.
Speaker: It's a series developed by Ubisoft.
Speaker: It was created initially because they were making a Prince of Persia series, and then they wanted to make it...
Speaker: open worlds.
Speaker: So they had the Sands of Time Prince of Persia game.
Speaker: They're like, all right, I think and I think Sands of Time was the one that they turned into that movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
Speaker: Yeah, that is the one.
Speaker: That is the one.
Speaker: So, you know, Ubisoft and dodgy adaptations.
Speaker: Who knew?
Speaker: Who would have thunk it, right?
Speaker: Who would have thunk it?
Speaker: Didn't see that coming.
Speaker: Didn't see that coming.
Speaker: So, yeah, they they turned they they took a
Speaker: 3D adaptation of Prince of Persia and they wanted to make a open world style game.
Speaker: So instead of Prince of Persia, it became its own thing.
Speaker: And hence we have Assassin's Creed.
Speaker: And the first one was released in 2007.
Speaker: It was set in the Middle East, I believe.
Speaker: That was the first one.
Speaker: But the series really did not pick up until 2009 when Assassin's Creed 2 comes out.
Speaker: And you have the my favorite main character.
Speaker: In fact, my only assassin that I truly loved.
Speaker: Ezio Auditore.
Speaker: There he is.
Speaker: There he is.
Speaker: Assassin.
Speaker: He is is just, you know, just the best.
Speaker: And it was set in Renaissance Italy.
Speaker: But since then, there have been assassins creeds from pirates to colonial stuff to Native Americans.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I wanted that.
Speaker: That was three.
Speaker: I wanted that one to be very good so badly.
Speaker: I've played more Assassin's Creed might be the franchise that I have hated the most and played the most of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For a long time, I kept giving them chances because it seemed like something I should like, and I never liked it.
Speaker: And then Black Flag came out, and that one was great for the most part.
Speaker: And I kept giving them options and I wanted three to be good because I thought that was cool, Native Americans and colonial stuff and all that, and it was not.
Speaker: I think the last one I played was the Egyptian one that came out a few years back.
Speaker: Yeah, I think the two most recent ones have actually had pretty good reception overall.
Speaker: And that is Odyssey and Valhalla.
Speaker: And I played a bit of Valhalla.
Speaker: You know, what's funny is I kind of like what they're going for in Valhalla.
Speaker: I played, you know, five, seven hours of it.
Speaker: Problem is the beginning is super duper slow.
Speaker: It takes a real long time to really get out of the tutorialized area because they're throwing a bunch of things in there that
Speaker: It feels like it's like, OK, you're you're calling it Assassin's Creed because it is you're just you're just trying to use a name brand at this point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It could be literally its own game.
Speaker: Yeah, when they came out with the last three, those are all classical age settings.
Speaker: Origins.
Speaker: The last three were Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla.
Speaker: Yeah, and those were all ancient world things, which is a little different from the other ones, which were still
Speaker: you know, not too far in the past.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they basically, yeah, they basically shifted up the, uh, the dynamics of it, didn't they?
Speaker: Like the gameplay was really different.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Valhalla, like you have, you have, you can control, you have like groups of Vikings that you control.
Speaker: There's like the ships and all that stuff.
Speaker: You're, um, they might've done some of that in the previous one where you're a Greek, uh, soldier.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was Odyssey.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Odyssey.
Speaker: But yeah, Valhalla is is the most recent one.
Speaker: And since then, Ubisoft has been mired in a poop ton of misconduct allegations.
Speaker: Ubisoft is just garbage fire and so continue to be.
Speaker: I feel like they did something dumb recently and I can't remember specifically.
Speaker: Well, that's the thing.
Speaker: Between them and Activision Blizzard and, like, another big one, they're just constantly being swamped with all of this...
Speaker: boys club bullshit that they refuse to properly handle.
Speaker: And so the news kind of blends together.
Speaker: You just know generally that all of them are kind of full of themselves on this one.
Speaker: And yeah, it's disappointing.
Speaker: Yeah, they they got into blockchain at the end of last year.
Speaker: I don't think they've backed off on that one yet.
Speaker: You know who did?
Speaker: Who?
Speaker: Tesla.
Speaker: Oh, yes, they sure did.
Speaker: As of today, they sold 75% of their cryptocurrency investments because they were taking the pot.
Speaker: hype on that shit.
Speaker: That is.
Speaker: And then Minecraft basically said, hey, guess what?
Speaker: No NFT shit in Minecraft.
Speaker: That's against the concept of Minecraft.
Speaker: And there was.
Speaker: It is distinctly against the concept of Minecraft.
Speaker: There was an NFT overlay called like NFT World or something like that.
Speaker: That was people used with Minecraft that just.
Speaker: It got it got banned and its value went from having value to not having value pretty much overnight.
Speaker: I mean, Kevin, let's be clear.
Speaker: It never had value.
Speaker: It never had value.
Speaker: It's all fake.
Speaker: The points don't matter.
Speaker: It's it's like, come on, guys, don't.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: You're imaginary.
Speaker: You're just investing imaginary money into more imaginary money.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Money's not real.
Speaker: And you expect me to believe in NFTs?
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: I don't believe it.
Speaker: So that's pretty much the Assassin's Creed series.
Speaker: It's had its ups.
Speaker: It's been mostly down.
Speaker: Well, I've just got to write this down.
Speaker: Political rant.
Speaker: Check.
Speaker: All right, we're good.
Speaker: We covered our quota.
Speaker: Covered our quota.
Speaker: We'll go over quota.
Speaker: I think we'll probably have something else to say.
Speaker: We're givers.
Speaker: We're givers.
Speaker: We want people to have more than they bargained for.
Speaker: We'd like to give our unfiltered, unasked for, nobody asked us, but we're going to give it to you.
Speaker: We're giving it to you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pixelit gonna give it to you.
Speaker: And by it, I mean just tireless leftist rants.
Speaker: That's just where we go.
Speaker: We're just gonna get ranty at some point during the episode.
Speaker: Forever.
Speaker: Forever.
Speaker: Those of you who- And we can't even blame drink because Kevin doesn't drink.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I just say it.
Speaker: He's just naturally passionate.
Speaker: Very passionate.
Speaker: You people don't know who you're messing with here.
Speaker: It's too much passion.
Speaker: Kevin will fuck you up in the realm of ideas.
Speaker: Me and my Summit Diet Cola.
Speaker: Oh, Summit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is a new one.
Speaker: What's Summit?
Speaker: It's Aldi brand.
Speaker: Oh, I like Aldi.
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: Aldi's a nice, it's a fine store.
Speaker: I like Aldi.
Speaker: I appreciate a store that gives no fucks about merchandising.
Speaker: Yeah, I appreciate a store.
Speaker: Just throws the product right on the ground.
Speaker: And they let their cashiers sit because they're like, oh, you're a human being.
Speaker: And if you call the store, no one's going to answer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, fuck it.
Speaker: There's like one phone and no one's going to answer.
Speaker: But you know what?
Speaker: You're going to get all of your week's groceries for $60.
Speaker: So just do it, man.
Speaker: Just do it.
Speaker: It's awesome.
Speaker: Aldi, please sponsor us.
Speaker: And perhaps some other nonsense if you walk down the aisle of shame.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: pool noodles, pool noodles that you don't need, a beach chair, you know, a radio like a clock radio, a waterproof clock radio that you hang in your shower.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: It's $7.99.
Speaker: So $7.99.
Speaker: It's not Bluetooth.
Speaker: No, it's literally just a clock radio waterproof that hangs in your shower.
Speaker: All AM AM AM AM.
Speaker: So it's a lot of right wing talk radio.
Speaker: But you know what?
Speaker: $7.99 can't beat it.
Speaker: It's fun to shampoo yourself while listening to Rush Limbaugh's ghost.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, man, that guy is so fucking dead, isn't he?
Speaker: He's dead.
Speaker: He's dead.
Speaker: Thank God.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Don't pour one out for Russian law.
Speaker: Drink it down.
Speaker: Drink it down.
Speaker: In celebration, cheers to yourself.
Speaker: Cheers.
Speaker: Sláinte.
Speaker: Anyway, Phil, can you tell us a little bit about the...
Speaker: The authors.
Speaker: I'd be happy to.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: This is a two issue comic run and it is written by Guillerme Guillerme.
Speaker: I'm thinking Guillerme.
Speaker: Please.
Speaker: It's Guillaume.
Speaker: Guillaume.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: See, it's kind of going in a weird Spanish, Italian direction.
Speaker: Guillaume Dorson, who is a French writer who mostly does actually mostly work for hire stuff.
Speaker: This guy has done plenty of video game adaptation stuff.
Speaker: A lot more Assassin's Creed.
Speaker: But we've also got Devil May Cry.
Speaker: And Lost Planet, of all things.
Speaker: Do you remember Lost Planet?
Speaker: It sounds familiar.
Speaker: I think it was a flagship 360 franchise.
Speaker: It's like a shooter based in Antarctica.
Speaker: Well, not Antarctica, but like a frozen planet with giant, crazy alien monsters.
Speaker: Oh, you know what?
Speaker: It looks like the Aldi brand's version of Dead Space.
Speaker: Yeah, very much so.
Speaker: Very much so.
Speaker: Less horror, more action.
Speaker: Yeah, very much so.
Speaker: I remember playing it, enjoying it, but it wasn't anything to write home about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm just kind of amazed they adapted it to anything.
Speaker: He also did adaptations of The Little Prince, which I believe, if you're a French comic book writer, is required by law.
Speaker: Yeah, everybody has to.
Speaker: You're not allowed to leave secondary school without.
Speaker: Yeah, you've got no choice when it comes to that sort of thing.
Speaker: It was illustrated by Ennio Bouffi.
Speaker: who I know even less about.
Speaker: He's an artist from Turin in Italy.
Speaker: Of the Shroud.
Speaker: Of the Shroud, the famous Shroud.
Speaker: He's actually worked with, this isn't his first time working with a French writer.
Speaker: He's well known for working with the French script writer Richard Marrazzano on a series called Clandestino.
Speaker: But other than that, hey, clandestino clandestino.
Speaker: It's a it's a spicy clandestino.
Speaker: I'm sorry to the Italians listening, but that's I am not.
Speaker: And and that's about all I could find about our artist.
Speaker: And then our colorist is Andrea Maloney.
Speaker: Picture not found.
Speaker: He did not show up to picture day.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: An Italian colorist.
Speaker: So it is a French writer working with Italian artists on a Quebecois based video game.
Speaker: It is just the most insufferable accent you've ever heard in your life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Comic books and Europeans who drink a lot of wine and hate Americans.
Speaker: So we're in for a lot of fun.
Speaker: We're in for a lot of fun, I think.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But we weren't.
Speaker: But we weren't.
Speaker: Narrator.
Speaker: But they weren't.
Speaker: But they weren't.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So quick summary, because we're not going to do a beat for beat for this one because it's got-
Speaker: This might not be the longest episode we ever do, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker: This is probably going to be a relatively short episode compared to some of our recent ones just because, oh, God, I can't tell you what happens.
Speaker: I was reading this and I was so concerned that I missed something every page.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So basically, there's a guy.
Speaker: His name is...
Speaker: Oh, fuck.
Speaker: I forgot his name.
Speaker: Tomo.
Speaker: Tomo.
Speaker: OK, Tomo.
Speaker: Tomo.
Speaker: He was basically he was in an assassin hideaway camp when he was little and some rogue assassins came and killed his mother and his mother's boyfriend Hajime basically takes Tomo and raises him as his own son, sort of, I guess.
Speaker: And
Speaker: It doesn't really flash forward 16 years because who the fuck cares about establishing their relationship at all?
Speaker: And Tomo has been spending his whole life up until this point searching for the guy whose name is Gorm.
Speaker: Gorm.
Speaker: Gorm.
Speaker: What did you first off your name is Gorm.
Speaker: So, OK, right there.
Speaker: More power to you.
Speaker: Gorm.
Speaker: Gorm, the Gormless assassin.
Speaker: Gormless a word.
Speaker: Lacking intelligence.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Kind of dull.
Speaker: Dull.
Speaker: So gorm is supposed to be smart.
Speaker: I guess so.
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: I feel like it's one of those words that no matter what form you put it, like flammable, inflammable.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, Gorm full, also fucking stupid.
Speaker: Also fucking stupid, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he spent his life hunting for this guy named Gorm, and this is where the plot gets so convoluted.
Speaker: The plot thickens, and by thickens, we mean it gets dumber.
Speaker: It gets dumber.
Speaker: Oh, there's way too much flour in the soup.
Speaker: You're overthickening it.
Speaker: Oh, this is not a soup anymore.
Speaker: It's a roux.
Speaker: What are you doing?
Speaker: But a roux would be delicious and tasty.
Speaker: But a roux would be delicious and tasty.
Speaker: Oh, no, it's burning.
Speaker: It's getting chunky.
Speaker: How did it become the worst biscuit ever?
Speaker: It's turning into a biscuit in the pot.
Speaker: Oh, you're never going to get that out of your cast iron skillet.
Speaker: No, just throw it away, kids.
Speaker: Just throw it away.
Speaker: Go to Aldi and pick up a new.
Speaker: a new pan aldi uh remember the good times we were talking about aldi anyway he was awesome she he figures out that there's a doctor and she's mind wiping people using the thing that the abstergo whatever machine that they use in all the dumb assassins creed games which is all of them because it's a dumb plot device they should
Speaker: Yeah, can we put a pin in that so I can come back and go off our rant there?
Speaker: There's a quick rant here.
Speaker: The modern day stuff in Assassin's Creed is the most pointless bullshit ever.
Speaker: It's the worst.
Speaker: It's so- Every Assassin's Creed game would be made better if they just got rid of it.
Speaker: And it was just- Doing a story about this guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's all you need.
Speaker: It's just an anthology series.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: It's a hat on a hat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You don't need the mon- Oh, okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The- The film might be having a stroke.
Speaker: I'm going to lose my shit.
Speaker: There is actually a video.
Speaker: I will have to find it and send it to you, Kevin, so that you can cut in audio of me doing a Let's Play.
Speaker: Back when I still did Let's Plays, I did a Let's Play of Black Flag, Assassin's Creed 4.
Speaker: Like seven years ago.
Speaker: This is- Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, no, no, it was three.
Speaker: It was Assassin's Creed three.
Speaker: And when you get to the last episode, it's like the last episode was an hour and a half and the last hour is just me going off on a rant on how pointless the Abstergo shit is about how every time you start to feel like you're building up some momentum and having fun in this world, you're like, you know what?
Speaker: controls are kind of sloppy and and and this is kind of weird and and that feels a little padded.
Speaker: But you know what?
Speaker: This is fun.
Speaker: Actually, it is kind of neat and I'm having fun doing the jumps and stuff.
Speaker: And just when you're starting to get into that mode, they're like, you're in the real world again and you just have to start over.
Speaker: It's like every time you're about to climax, your dog comes in and punches you in the face.
Speaker: It just
Speaker: And for whatever reason, you're convinced I've got to finish it.
Speaker: So you've got to work yourself back up again while the dog's just over there wrapping his knuckles and going, I'm coming for you, motherfucker.
Speaker: That's Assassin's Creed.
Speaker: It's so frustrating.
Speaker: Assassin's Creed is your dog not doing anything dog-like, but punching you in the face.
Speaker: I may not be a dog owner.
Speaker: I may misunderstand what dogs are capable of.
Speaker: I mean, it's fine.
Speaker: I know cats throw punches.
Speaker: I know cats will throw hands.
Speaker: Like a cat, but with more weight.
Speaker: That's what I was going for.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: A golden retriever walks in and just punches the shit out of you.
Speaker: Just decks you.
Speaker: Just decks you.
Speaker: Just decks you.
Speaker: Right in the face.
Speaker: Right in the face.
Speaker: And you're not sure what happened.
Speaker: And you think maybe it was just a mistake and you continue on the second time.
Speaker: I mean, fool me twice.
Speaker: Shame on me.
Speaker: You know, right.
Speaker: This is kind of my fault.
Speaker: Assassin's Creed in general is, you know, you play one of them and you're like, OK, OK.
Speaker: And it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: That's shame on you.
Speaker: And then you play another one and it's like really shame on me.
Speaker: And then you keep playing them and just shame on me forever.
Speaker: Just forever.
Speaker: Just forever.
Speaker: Just a sadness bowl of a game.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just yeah.
Speaker: And you just you it's and it's pretty enough and just interesting enough to keep you going to the next little, you know,
Speaker: checkpoint, essentially, and it just keeps going and you feel drained by the end of it.
Speaker: I don't know how they do it, but it's fucked up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Anyway, so the story continues with Tomo going undercover for the doctor who's doing the thing.
Speaker: And we get the twist that the doctor is also an assassino or an assassin.
Speaker: And she's part of the Brotherhood and she is doing it for some reason.
Speaker: The reasons are unclear.
Speaker: And then Tomo starts using the machine.
Speaker: She starts having Tomo use the machine to go back and find out what happened to this other assassin rogue assassin who was he has a Russian name.
Speaker: Who cares?
Speaker: Doesn't matter.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Trust me.
Speaker: Trust.
Speaker: Trust us.
Speaker: It does not matter.
Speaker: Who cares?
Speaker: Because he was he was a guy and they're trying to figure out what happened to this guy named Pash and.
Speaker: There's moments in set in Vietnam and there's like hints that maybe it has something to do with Gulf of Tonkin.
Speaker: And the there's a scene where one of the dudes assassinates JFK.
Speaker: And all the while.
Speaker: We are the art.
Speaker: There is not one character that I can differentiate from another character.
Speaker: None.
Speaker: None.
Speaker: Do you remember that episode?
Speaker: I think it was like the third to last episode of Game of Thrones, the battle, and it was like so dark and you couldn't see.
Speaker: This is that in comic book form.
Speaker: You do not understand what's going on.
Speaker: You're aware that things are happening.
Speaker: The names are coming so fast and so furious and there's no Vin Diesel in sight.
Speaker: None.
Speaker: Just brown-haired men.
Speaker: Just brown-haired men.
Speaker: No family.
Speaker: There's no family here.
Speaker: This is not an olive garden.
Speaker: And we're just brown-haired men talking to each other about killing other brown-haired men.
Speaker: Except there's a blonde woman.
Speaker: And she's also pregnant.
Speaker: So she's clearly the most...
Speaker: Clearly the person.
Speaker: Anyway, some fucking shit happens.
Speaker: There's some twists, some turns and everybody dies by the end.
Speaker: Everybody dies.
Speaker: Everybody dies except Tomo and a girl.
Speaker: Who isn't really a full assassin.
Speaker: Who wasn't really a full assassin.
Speaker: He was just remembering how to be an assassin because he- Well, I think he was like an administrator of the assassin.
Speaker: Yeah, he knew how to hack some computers.
Speaker: That's about it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He could do some research.
Speaker: It was like Burn After Reading where the guy works in the CIA.
Speaker: He was an analyst.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know how in Clear and Present Danger, Jack Ryan was not the guy that they put out in the fields?
Speaker: It's like in recent Jack Ryan movies, they've made Jack Ryan like a badass.
Speaker: And that was actually the thing about the character.
Speaker: Pin in it.
Speaker: OK, here we go.
Speaker: Here we go.
Speaker: We are pinning things to the wall, my friends, because we're not talking too much about this book.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: The thing that everybody misses about Jack Ryan stories since Harrison Ford left the role is that Jack Ryan is not a badass.
Speaker: He doesn't he's not the guy with the gun.
Speaker: He doesn't he's not the field experience guy.
Speaker: He talks his way out of situations and he gets the upper hand just by knowing things, not by by a shootout.
Speaker: And that was that was how he was portrayed when Harrison Ford played him.
Speaker: That's how Alec Baldwin played him.
Speaker: He's an analyst.
Speaker: Alec Baldwin played him.
Speaker: Yeah, Alec Baldwin played him.
Speaker: He's an analyst.
Speaker: He's an author.
Speaker: He writes books.
Speaker: That's that's what he does.
Speaker: That's what the character does.
Speaker: And then since then, he's become a little too action hero-y.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Inexplicably.
Speaker: And they cast John Krasinski to play him, I guess, maybe to throw us off the trail of what they were trying to do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, like, we're going to take, like, kind of a geeky hero and we want to action star him up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How can we do this in such a way that will be more subtle and the audience will turn on us?
Speaker: Let's cast the smirking guy from The Office and that'll be fine.
Speaker: That'll make a difference.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As if we wouldn't notice, but he still grew a beard.
Speaker: Still grew a beard.
Speaker: Still grew a beard.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Unacceptable.
Speaker: Unacceptable.
Speaker: It was they went Ben Affleck, Chris Pine, and then John Krasinski.
Speaker: The last last just going in the wrong direction.
Speaker: And I like John Krasinski, but what the fuck is he doing playing that kind of character?
Speaker: I'm ambivalent on John Krasinski.
Speaker: He feels like he feels like a like a secret libertarian.
Speaker: Like secret Nazi type thing.
Speaker: You know, secret libertarian.
Speaker: No, I can't shake that.
Speaker: I didn't think that before, but now I can't shake it.
Speaker: God damn it, Kevin.
Speaker: Fuck.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: I got to put in a Google alert for John Krasinski, libertarian.
Speaker: How do you spell libertarian?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Anyway, where were we?
Speaker: Pinned.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Tomo gets away at the end because instead of giving the villain woman the access code, he gives her a Trojan horse code that causes the...
Speaker: the big, bad, evil thing that she's going to unleash on the world, which will wipe everybody's memories and have them remember something else or evolve humans.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Her what she wanted to do was really unclear.
Speaker: Anyway, it causes the thing to explode instead of doing that.
Speaker: And they get away in a helicopter.
Speaker: And that's the end of our story.
Speaker: This is automatically bottom of the bottom of the list for me.
Speaker: This this this is this was worse than the Bloodborne series.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Blood.
Speaker: Well, Bloodborne wanted to great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Three.
Speaker: Three looked better after reading four.
Speaker: Four was terrible.
Speaker: Four was terrible.
Speaker: Four was terrible.
Speaker: You think this was worse than Dead Space?
Speaker: Oh, Dead Space.
Speaker: I could at least laugh.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Dead Space.
Speaker: I could follow.
Speaker: yes yes that is absolutely true this was basically incoherent in storytelling it would jump around like there's one scene where it's like uh tomo wakes up and out of the abstergo machine or whatever and but he's it's the old dude the russian guy is in his head and it's he's not tomo and he kills all the other assassins bleed of the
Speaker: care of the person that he's in the thoughts of that comes back.
Speaker: There's two panels where there's Hajime, his adoptive father, who's like, I'm sorry, Tomo, I have to do this.
Speaker: The next panel, Hajime is dead.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: No, some, yeah, he says, I have to do this.
Speaker: He's lurching towards him with the cool wrist knife thing.
Speaker: And then an inexplicable panel where you can't tell what's happening happens.
Speaker: And then he's dead.
Speaker: There's no conflict.
Speaker: There's no battle.
Speaker: It just skips right over that.
Speaker: In favor of dialogue.
Speaker: I'm so glad you brought that up because that was a real, like, look, I was already like, I was like, this is confusing and kind of convoluted and dumb, but whatever.
Speaker: And then that happened.
Speaker: It was like halfway through.
Speaker: And then I was like, what the fuck is going on?
Speaker: Nothing good.
Speaker: The storytelling is so fucked in this book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, God, it jumps around way too much.
Speaker: There is way too much reliance on dialogue for a visual medium.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Way too much.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: I'm fine with talky comic books.
Speaker: Goddamn.
Speaker: I've read I've read Stan Lee's work.
Speaker: The motherfucker could just like write.
Speaker: We'll just fill pages with with words.
Speaker: Alan Moore.
Speaker: Alan Moore.
Speaker: I mean, come on.
Speaker: Who's more talky than Alan Moore?
Speaker: It's fine if you're good at it.
Speaker: Well, yeah, that is the key, isn't it?
Speaker: Here's the problem is that when you're good at it, you can understand the difference in the way the dialogue is written between your characters.
Speaker: But when you have nearly unidentifiable characters because the art you're you have trouble like keeping track of who is saying what.
Speaker: And then the dialogue is is so mid it's so hack.
Speaker: It's that there is no it's just dialogue.
Speaker: There's nothing in there that that it just yeah, it just feels it feels like it's filling the page, filling the page.
Speaker: This could have been really cool if it was if you just slimmed it down to a revenge story.
Speaker: Yeah, I just have one character doing a revenge story.
Speaker: I'll give you a great example.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Our podcast isn't going to be able to see us.
Speaker: But if you're listening on the podcast, do us a favor.
Speaker: Google Assassin's Creed Bloodstone, the complete collection, so you can see the cover because I want to analyze the cover.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So look at that.
Speaker: That's a pretty badass cover, if I do say so myself.
Speaker: As far as cover art, these are the two covers for the separate issues.
Speaker: The two issues that comprise it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And as far as cover art's concerned, pretty cool.
Speaker: And it actually was to the point
Speaker: that as we discussed before, you know, it's like Assassin's Creed in Vietnam, which I was like, oh, fuck, how are they going to handle this?
Speaker: This could be this could be messed up or it could be really, really good.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: This has and it seems to be setting up this idea of assassin, an assassin on the American side and an assassin on the Vietnamese side, some sort of mix up.
Speaker: They think the other one's a Templar and it's just this
Speaker: Two issue story of these two badasses in the jungle hunting each other.
Speaker: And that could have been amazing.
Speaker: That could have been so much fun.
Speaker: And like a total aliens versus predator kind of like whoever wins, we lose kind of thing.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And Vietnam has almost nothing to do.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is completely incidental to the story.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: You need to even be there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they pay lip service to, like you mentioned before, they talk about the Kennedy assassination and the Bay of Tonkin kind of thing.
Speaker: And then they pay lip service to the Assassin's Creed tradition, basically, of rewriting history a little bit so that actual historical figures are involved, which honestly is sometimes done pretty well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, and that's pretty cool.
Speaker: This is it's just a throwaway.
Speaker: It's just this little throwaway kind of thing that doesn't have it doesn't mean anything.
Speaker: It means nothing.
Speaker: And if it does, it's lifeless.
Speaker: Then it needed to be better written.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For context, I finished
Speaker: House of Leaves yesterday, the same day that I finished this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For anyone who doesn't know what House of Leaves is, it's a 700 page book within a book, within a book where the whole point of it is.
Speaker: is you've got to read footnotes and they take you to appendices in the back of the book.
Speaker: So I'm on page 16 and then it says, for more information, go to appendix three.
Speaker: Now I've got to read 20 pages out of the back of the book and then go back.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If an adventure game was a book, it would be House of Leaves.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It is twine the book.
Speaker: That's what it is.
Speaker: And it's very convoluted and very difficult to read.
Speaker: And it took me a month and a half to finish it, which I'm a pretty quick reader.
Speaker: That's a long time for me to spend reading a book.
Speaker: And some people spend their entire lives reading and analyzing it and going over.
Speaker: Not for me.
Speaker: But Assassin's Creed Bloodstone?
Speaker: still made less sense and was more convoluted than House of Leaves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I don't mean that in a good way.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: So in all the bad ways.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Also, by the way, this badass lady at the bottom on the cover, if you've looked up the cover and I'm holding it up on the YouTube version,
Speaker: who kind of gives you like X-23 vibes, like Logan's daughter type vibes.
Speaker: She's barely in it.
Speaker: So don't get too excited.
Speaker: Barely in it.
Speaker: Barely in it.
Speaker: And for the record, there is a final showdown between the two of them.
Speaker: They do actually get to fight each other.
Speaker: It lasts a panel and then it's over.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She kills him, right?
Speaker: They kill each other.
Speaker: They kill each other.
Speaker: It's literally that kind of, you know, ninja Gaiden, you know, two ninjas that are my two action figures together.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then they both die.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like that's yeah, that's literally what happens.
Speaker: It's meaningless.
Speaker: I do not recommend Assassin's Creed Bloodstone.
Speaker: Bloodstone.
Speaker: Blood gem.
Speaker: Bloodstone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: So anyway, it was bad.
Speaker: It was bad.
Speaker: It was very bad.
Speaker: It was very bad.
Speaker: Oh, and by the way, Guillaume Dorison is the founder of Game Fan Magazine.
Speaker: Huh.
Speaker: And the more I look into his background here, there isn't much, but the more I'm seeing this guy has worked within the video game sphere in kind of a literary way.
Speaker: And so I'm assuming that's how Ubisoft came to him and was like, hey, do you want to write us some comic books and stuff like that?
Speaker: Come to us instead.
Speaker: For God's sake.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm not going to pretend that Kevin and I are like the greatest writers to ever, you know, grace the page.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: But as long as you're hiring people who aren't famous.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Give us a take a flyer on us.
Speaker: You know, we aren't free, but we can be bought.
Speaker: We can be bought.
Speaker: Easily.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So easily.
Speaker: So easily.
Speaker: So I think that we're not going to beat too much of a dead horse for this one.
Speaker: I think that's enough.
Speaker: Wouldn't you say?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So so on to on to more fun things.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I started, I'm still, I finally quit Dead Space 3.
Speaker: Oh, good.
Speaker: I did the right thing.
Speaker: You did the right thing.
Speaker: I reached, it's been buggy at times, which I don't, you know, things, that shit happens, especially with a game that's a little older.
Speaker: But I reached a point in the game where I kept auto dying and I couldn't figure out why.
Speaker: And I started like pulling up
Speaker: um let's plays of it to see what i was doing wrong i wasn't doing anything wrong there was just in my version of the game i was auto dying and i restarted it tried it again and there was just i basically would have had to start all over and that wasn't going to be worth it yeah no uh so i i i uh i took part in the definition of self-care
Speaker: And I just went ahead and uninstalled Dead Space 3.
Speaker: You didn't even stop playing.
Speaker: You didn't just stop playing.
Speaker: You just quit.
Speaker: I erased it from the face of the earth as far as my computer is concerned.
Speaker: That is tremendous.
Speaker: I'm very proud of you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: It feels good.
Speaker: I finished it when I played it, but no, I understand.
Speaker: It's not worth it.
Speaker: But you, Albie, you're a far superior gamer to me, so it makes sense.
Speaker: The juice is not worth that proverbial squeeze.
Speaker: No, it is not.
Speaker: But you're a man who knows how to deal with punishment.
Speaker: You're a you're a souls guy.
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: I play the Dark Souls series.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I put, you know, like way too many hours into Elden Ring.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Several hundred, by the way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And for those of you who recall our bonus episode with Pixel a Day where we talked about Bloodborne.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: You quit.
Speaker: I am not good at that shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I was done.
Speaker: I was done.
Speaker: I considered continuing my fabulous horror game streak.
Speaker: which has gone on for the better part of the year, and instead decided to finally go ahead and boot up Leisure Suit Larry, Wet Dreams Don't Dry, Part 2.
Speaker: Oh!
Speaker: Which is, if you don't know Phil personally, if Phil were a video game,
Speaker: It would be Leisure Suit Larry.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe not like present day Phil, but you know.
Speaker: Back in the day.
Speaker: Like three years ago.
Speaker: There was a little.
Speaker: Shut up.
Speaker: There was a little Larry in me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I always loved that franchise.
Speaker: I still am entertaining the idea of writing a short history of Leisure Suit Larry as a book.
Speaker: Yeah, that would be fun.
Speaker: Maybe for boss fight books if they'll accept my pitch, you know, that kind of thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I did interview Al Lowe and, you know, I've got and I actually I think
Speaker: I interviewed the voice of Leisure Suit Larry too.
Speaker: So, yeah, I've got material to work with.
Speaker: And now this particular game, it's part of sort of a reboot of the series that started, I want to say, three, four years ago with Wet Dreams Don't Dry.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's a German development company that picked it back up again.
Speaker: Because Leader Suit Larry was an old adventure game way back in the 80s and 90s.
Speaker: The point and click kind of, it wasn't, was it LucasArts?
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: It was Sierra.
Speaker: Sierra.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It was Sierra.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it got...
Speaker: kind of developed in the modern age with varying levels of success, varying, not high levels of success.
Speaker: And a few years back, a German development studio picked it up and tried to create this kind of impossible task of creating a non-PC, and by that I mean politically correct, video game franchise for the modern age.
Speaker: And I actually think that with that first one, Wet Dreams Don't Dry,
Speaker: They did a great job, actually.
Speaker: It is still stupid, sexy dad humor with just dumb, dirty jokes.
Speaker: He's an idiot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But he's also not a dirtbag, like not entirely a dirtbag.
Speaker: It's far more friendly to gay folks and transgender folks.
Speaker: It doesn't punch down.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The way that the old franchise did, which it was more acceptable in the 80s and 90s.
Speaker: That was just part of it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they did a really good job with it.
Speaker: And so I've started playing the second one.
Speaker: And so far, so good.
Speaker: It's the same thing.
Speaker: Same vibe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Same vibe.
Speaker: It's a dumb sense of humor, which I like.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah, it is your standard, you know, nine verb style kind of adventure and, you know, picking up everything and trying to combine things.
Speaker: And maybe this will help you, you know, get through.
Speaker: Maybe it won't.
Speaker: But I'm very early into it.
Speaker: But so far, I'm really enjoying it.
Speaker: So that's what I've been playing.
Speaker: What about you, Kevin?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: I have gone back to two of my bullshits.
Speaker: I am back on my bullshit two times over.
Speaker: First, XCOM 2 is.
Speaker: Oh, I saw you playing that the other day.
Speaker: You saw that.
Speaker: I was proud and terrified for you.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's I fired that back up.
Speaker: Oh,
Speaker: And that's going fine.
Speaker: I have been stuck on one mission that I keep save scumming over and over again.
Speaker: It's, yeah, it's standard.
Speaker: So I'm playing the War of the Chosen, which is the XCOM 2, the second version of XCOM 2.
Speaker: Sort of like how the first one was Enemy Unknown, and then there's a second version, Enemy Within.
Speaker: There's two versions of XCOM 2.
Speaker: There's the vanilla, and then there's XCOM 2 War of the Chosen.
Speaker: The War of the Chosen introduces these overpowered three chosen enemies.
Speaker: And they can appear when you're operating in their sphere of influence.
Speaker: They can appear just basically in any of the missions.
Speaker: So this one mission, which already was structured really difficult,
Speaker: It's a city area where you have to grab a bunch of supply crates, tag a bunch of supply crates.
Speaker: But there's a bunch of lost in the area.
Speaker: So you can't use explosives because every time you use an explosive, it attracts another lost swarm.
Speaker: And then the Chosen shows up, the Assassin Chosen.
Speaker: So it's...
Speaker: full of advent, full of lost, full of chosen.
Speaker: And there's a ticking clock to get the supply crates.
Speaker: And I have a feeling that I'm just going to hunker down and not worry about the supply crate part of it, because the only real thing I got to do is eliminate all hostiles.
Speaker: So I'm just going to ignore the supply crates next time I take a crack at it.
Speaker: I think that's the best thing for you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm back in the XCOM 2, like micro-analyzing one specific mission that I just get hung on for, you know, hours type of playthrough.
Speaker: Well, I think that makes a lot of sense with those lost episodes because, or issues, episodes, issues, levels.
Speaker: Levels, yeah.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: Because...
Speaker: Those can be so fun because headshotting them and getting the free attack after that.
Speaker: Gets you a free roll, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you start to feel confident, overconfident, and then Chosen come in and you just get fucked.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It makes sense.
Speaker: The other thing I've been playing is Returnal.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: So I beat Returnal.
Speaker: I want to say at the end of last year or beginning of this year.
Speaker: So I've beaten the base game of Returnal, but Housemarque released a 3.0 update to the game, which introduced co-op.
Speaker: and a new endless mode, like basically a new biome called the Tower of Sisyphus, where there are story elements that happen in it, but it's basically it's just a biome where you can just keep as long as you are alive, you can keep going up into different rooms and fighting your way up.
Speaker: But there's no top of the tower.
Speaker: It's it's like the story of Sisyphus.
Speaker: You know, you're the boulder will eventually roll back downhill.
Speaker: But it's really fun.
Speaker: I'm having a blast with with the Tower of Sisyphus in in Returnal.
Speaker: I remember you saying how much you liked that.
Speaker: I love Returnal going when I went back to it.
Speaker: The reason I started going back to it is because I was on YouTube and.
Speaker: Jesse Cox over on his his Twitch clips channel Cox Clips.
Speaker: He he's been playing Returnal recently.
Speaker: He started doing it first.
Speaker: He dipped his toe in the water with co-op and then he's been going through the game on his own.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, I got to go check out the new updates and all that stuff.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: I'm playing it and it's my jam.
Speaker: It's a lot of fun.
Speaker: And I might go ahead because I've been really limiting my purchases of new games.
Speaker: I might go ahead and try to have Platinum Returnal while I'm at it.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: And I did buy, though, and I haven't touched it yet, Stray.
Speaker: And I need to know all about looking forward to to playing stray.
Speaker: I've heard so many people talking about it, but no one's actually saying whether they like it or not.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's driving me crazy.
Speaker: I think I'm going to I'll tell you whether it's whether it's whether it's it would be a feel game or not.
Speaker: It's got a right now.
Speaker: It's got a cat in it, so it's got looks like Joe and he looks like your cat looks like my buddy, like Jonesy.
Speaker: It's so he does.
Speaker: It's so sweet.
Speaker: It's so sweet.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker: Yeah, that looks like it'll be a lot of fun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's what I've been playing and that's that'll do it for today's episode.
Speaker: Yeah, I'd say that's a full episode.
Speaker: It's a full episode.
Speaker: It's a little shorter than normal, but we don't want to beat a dead horse, beat a dead assassin and or a Templar.
Speaker: Yeah, both.
Speaker: Both, yeah, both.
Speaker: Both.
Speaker: So next week, we should be starting on we'll have a guest for a couple of episodes.
Speaker: If schedules work out, I think they will.
Speaker: And that should be a lot of fun.
Speaker: And we're just winding through this year.
Speaker: Before you know it, it's going to be spooky season with some spooky books coming up.
Speaker: It's going to be a blast.
Speaker: We have a lot of fun stuff planned for the second half of the year.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: If you want to give us a hand, please follow us on Twitter and Instagram at PixelitPod.
Speaker: And also, if you can... Oh, there we go.
Speaker: Your audio cut out for a second there.
Speaker: I was like...
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It was something started to I muted myself.
Speaker: Things got weird.
Speaker: If you want to give us a hand, please follow us on Twitter at Pixlet Pod and on Instagram at the same handle Pixlet Pod.
Speaker: If you want to check out our website, Pixlet Pod dot com, it has all of our episodes posted with transcriptions of each episode and also links to our discord and to our steam curator page.
Speaker: Another big help would be rating us five stars on Apple, rating us five stars on Spotify, and now we are on GoodPods.
Speaker: So if you want to, you can rate us five stars per episode on GoodPods.
Speaker: So that, yeah, each episode gets its own rating.
Speaker: Yeah, and comments and all that.
Speaker: If you're going to comment, don't make it weird or make it really weird.
Speaker: Either go big or fuck off.
Speaker: If you're going to make it weird, you better make it weird.
Speaker: Make it really, really weird.
Speaker: Uncomfortably weird.
Speaker: Anyway, have a good night, everyone.
Speaker: Good night.
