Transcript
Speaker: Does your shirt say, let's start a cult?
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: It's got... Oh, and it's got Kool-Aid, man.
Speaker: That's dark.
Speaker: Yeah, I like it.
Speaker: They didn't actually have Kool-Aid.
Speaker: No, they used Flavor-Aid or something.
Speaker: Flavor-Aid.
Speaker: They used Flavor-Aid.
Speaker: And what is it?
Speaker: Graveface Studios in Savannah has several of the original packets.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They got them in frames hung up on the walls.
Speaker: That's dark.
Speaker: That's really bleak.
Speaker: That's bleak.
Speaker: Man, that's a tough one to, you know.
Speaker: Because on one hand, that's horrifying.
Speaker: On the other hand, I really want to see it.
Speaker: I want to go see it.
Speaker: I want to go see that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what else I want to see?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil on today's show.
Speaker: We're talking to Troy Denning, the author of Halo Outcasts, which we read on the pod just a few... A book ago.
Speaker: A book ago.
Speaker: A book ago.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we had a nice, we had a lovely discussion with Troy Denning.
Speaker: We talked about his inspirations, how he does his process, and he gives some pretty good advice at the end of the call.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we even managed to squeeze in Baldur's Gate 3 somehow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Even managed to talk a little bit about Baldur's Gate 3, which is fine.
Speaker: I mean, listen, he's a guy who wrote Forgotten Realms books.
Speaker: He worked for TSR.
Speaker: He developed the world.
Speaker: I think we're allowed.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: We're allowed to talk to one of the Forgotten Realms daddies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The daddies of Forgotten Realms to...
Speaker: What choice do we have in a moment like that?
Speaker: What choice do we have at a moment like that other than to say, did you play the video game?
Speaker: Did he?
Speaker: Didn't he?
Speaker: You have to listen to the episode to find out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Here it is.
Speaker: Troy, thanks for coming on.
Speaker: So what are your first experiences with Halo?
Speaker: Well, my first experience with Halo was actually lore.
Speaker: I had worked with Karen Travis in Star Wars.
Speaker: And so when I saw that she'd done some Halo books, I decided to pick them up and see what she was doing and picked it up.
Speaker: I picked up the first one and I thought that was pretty good.
Speaker: And then I picked up the second one and I thought that was pretty good.
Speaker: And then I...
Speaker: and picked up, you know, a third one.
Speaker: And then I started picking up other people's books.
Speaker: And so I was, I was just enjoying becoming a reader.
Speaker: And at about that time I was in Seattle for a meeting for Wizards of the Coast and happened to bump into, of course, I worked with TSR when I was younger and I was getting together with some friends from
Speaker: from Wizards and one of them mentioned that he had been approached to write a Halo book but he couldn't because of non-compete clauses.
Speaker: And I said, oh, that's too bad, Halo.
Speaker: I'm really enjoying reading that.
Speaker: That sounds like a great, great opportunity.
Speaker: And a couple of weeks later, Ed Schlesinger gives me a call and says, Hey, do you want to write some Halo?
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: It's like the best kind of right place, right time kind of situation.
Speaker: Honestly, Troy, you're kind of in the same boat that me and Phil are.
Speaker: I mean, we're gamers, obviously, but neither of us are huge Halo players, but we have been on this podcast, been going through all of the books.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: uh yeah we're kind of in the in the same boat we we enjoy reading them more than we do playing the game oh yeah well well that's the the way i am is that of course i was um way back in 1982 um went to work for tsr as a tabletop role-playing game editor and designer
Speaker: and have been in gaming pretty much my whole life.
Speaker: But when it started to move into video games, I played a few and quickly realized that that was crack for me.
Speaker: I would sit down and start playing one, and then it would be like two days later, my wife would ask me if I was ever going to come out of my office again.
Speaker: I kind of avoided the, yeah, the video games and, and until I, um, got the chance to write for Halo.
Speaker: And then I had a good excuse to, you know, to play through the whole campaign.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's research.
Speaker: It was like, it was like five campaigns.
Speaker: Um, well, it was actually four when I started, but five quickly after that.
Speaker: Cause, because once I had, um,
Speaker: Once I had played through all the first four and then the Halo 5 came out, I had an excuse to play through them all again.
Speaker: Honey, I've got to do this.
Speaker: It's for the job.
Speaker: I've got to do what you want from me.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: That's the way it has worked for me.
Speaker: Oh, that's well, that actually leads into the next question perfectly, because one of the things we talk about on our show all the time is adaptation and the process of it.
Speaker: And so with the books that you've written for this franchise, tell us a little bit about the process of adapting them.
Speaker: Did you pitch plot ideas to them or would they come to you with the idea?
Speaker: Like we've got this idea.
Speaker: Can you write it?
Speaker: That kind of thing.
Speaker: How did how did that process work?
Speaker: Well, it works differently every time.
Speaker: And it depends a lot on what the intellectual property needs.
Speaker: Typically, they have some sort of publishing program in mind, and it has some relationship to what the main property is doing.
Speaker: But it just all depends on where you enter the program and where the program happens to be at the time.
Speaker: So with my first book, I was out in Wyoming visiting my parents, and my dad was dying of cancer at the time.
Speaker: And we had a meeting, a phone meeting at the time, and they basically said, what are you interested in writing?
Speaker: And, you know, just like an open-ended question.
Speaker: And I was, my dad had been a detective.
Speaker: for part of his time and i just said well how would you feel about a detective story and they said oh that sounds great and so we kind of went on from there and and i wrote the um you know invented the character of beta lopez because i didn't want to actually model the detective on my dad right um he was just kind of the inspiration for this story and um
Speaker: And from there, you know, it was, I think, really, you know, I was really impressed that they were able to give me the freedom to just do that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: With my first book.
Speaker: And from the get-go, I was impressed by how easy it is to work with 343 because, you know, most intellectual properties,
Speaker: have some parameters that you're not allowed to bump up against or go past.
Speaker: You know, and you, you know, it'd be like me in star Wars and, and my, I would always try to make a Gamorrean Jedi and, and they would just say, no, no Gamorreans aren't Jedi.
Speaker: You know, you gotta try though.
Speaker: You gotta try to try one of those little pig dudes waving a lightsaber.
Speaker: Everyone wants that.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: That's what I kept saying.
Speaker: And I kept forgetting that they had told me no like three or four times before.
Speaker: So I had to put one in every book that I... And pretty soon I think they thought I was joking.
Speaker: This guy's messing with us, right?
Speaker: That's what he's doing, right?
Speaker: Meanwhile, the Gamorrean Jedi... Yeah.
Speaker: But 343 was like, instead of doing that kind of thing, they would just say, well, we can't do it that way.
Speaker: How about we try it this way?
Speaker: Oh, that's great.
Speaker: Yeah, there was a lot of freedom.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: And what that does for writers is it makes you happy to push up against the boundaries.
Speaker: You feel like you have a lot of freedom and you can do what you need to do for your story.
Speaker: without worrying that you're going to end up writing, rewriting a hundred pages or something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, cause they'll find a way to make it work.
Speaker: And so far, knock on wood, they always have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So did it start out that way?
Speaker: Have they given you more rope, basically, as you've gone on, since you've written several books with them?
Speaker: Have they been a little bit more accepting?
Speaker: Because I know you said they don't really push back.
Speaker: They just kind of offer a suggestion of a redirect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: but have they let you kind of go a little bit further in the, that boundary pushing?
Speaker: Um, you know, I don't, it would be hard to actually, um, think of envision.
Speaker: I'm actually letting me go further.
Speaker: Um, because, because, you know, they've never said no, they've just said, let's do it this way or we can try it this way.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah, so, you know, which is one of the things that I really love about working with them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But what has happened as we write more books is that they're bringing me quite often closer to the main property storyline.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, for instance, you know, when I wrote Silent Storm, you know, they...
Speaker: That kind of came from them.
Speaker: I had written, I think, two Veda Lopez books at that time.
Speaker: And then the next book notice or idea I got was just a picture of the Master Chief's helmet.
Speaker: And then I called up Ed and I said,
Speaker: what does this mean?
Speaker: And he told me, yeah, he told me, well, we want you to write the master cheese.
Speaker: And then as a young, as a young warrior.
Speaker: So, and that was how silent storm and oblivion came about.
Speaker: Um, you know, so those, those, the basic core ideas of those kind of came from three, four, three, um,
Speaker: As did Shadows of Reach.
Speaker: Of course, by then we were tying pretty close into Infinite.
Speaker: And they kind of said, we want you to do this to help explain something that happens in Infinite.
Speaker: So I got to get a little bit of insight into where Infinite was going before it got there, which was kind of fun.
Speaker: Oh, that's really cool.
Speaker: Yeah, we read Rubicon Protocol last year, which Kelly Gay wrote, which was basically the...
Speaker: the entire prequel to, to infinite.
Speaker: Uh, we didn't get a chance to interview her.
Speaker: We had a scheduling conflict, but yeah, that's, that's fascinating to, to see where they kind of step in and, and guide a little bit closer.
Speaker: I guess anytime you're, you're talking about something like reach, which is basically the kind of one of the core things of the entire halo property.
Speaker: They're, they're going to be a little bit more careful.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it, and, um, you know, it's, it's funny is that sometimes one thing leads into another, you know, for instance, I just, when I wrote shadows of reach, I put in that little Easter egg about the ferrets and all of a sudden everybody just said, okay, this is, we're going back to the, you know, that was just, you know, that was just following the story where, where it led.
Speaker: Which is another thing I love about 343 is that they're obviously working to support the main property whenever they can, but they also have the ability and are quick enough on their feet to follow the stories where the stories lead.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, which has been a lot of fun.
Speaker: It's always really heartening to hear those kinds of stories about the owners of those intellectual properties and their ability to let their artists have fun with it because that's where the best stuff comes from.
Speaker: Just letting, you know, obviously keeping you in the lanes a little bit, but wanting you to have fun.
Speaker: Like you said, you're not afraid to try something.
Speaker: which, yeah, that's fantastic.
Speaker: Well, and you've worked on a ton of franchises, many of which Kevin and I are huge fans of.
Speaker: So I had to ask this question.
Speaker: What is a franchise that you'd most like to work with?
Speaker: And it can be, again, like something you'd like to go back to and revisit or for the first time or whatever, because you've worked with some of the greats.
Speaker: So are there still some on your bucket list?
Speaker: I don't know whether, you know, I tend to be a guy who steps into a franchise and lives there for a while.
Speaker: And because I feel like until you've written a couple of books in a franchise, you really don't know it well enough.
Speaker: I mean, first I would never write for a franchise that I didn't enjoy.
Speaker: You know, my agent one time told me I was kind of a hired gun.
Speaker: I'm not really, you know, I'm just a guy who enjoys writing in certain franchises because he loves them and, you know, gets interested in them.
Speaker: And, you know, I mean, I've probably got, I don't know, half a dozen books out there.
Speaker: that are unfinished of my own, that are my own intellectual properties that, you know, I started and worked on.
Speaker: And then along comes this bright, shiny bauble and they say, hey, you want to write this?
Speaker: And then at that point, you're like, okay, do I take the one where I know it's going to get published or do I keep working on the one where it might get published?
Speaker: And so you kind of end up, you know, having those golden handcuffs.
Speaker: And going off to work on the bright and shiny baubles that are coming along.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, there are some franchises that I've been talked to and offered...
Speaker: to work on that I would have loved to have worked on.
Speaker: I don't want to say what they are exactly.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: But what happens is, you know, I'm in the middle of writing something else for somebody else and schedule just doesn't work.
Speaker: And, you know, I may be scheduled at times two or three books down, down the road, which is a year and a half or two.
Speaker: And, and the way the publishing programs work, they can't really wait that long for you to, you know, to free up.
Speaker: So there have been, you know, an old, old good friend of mine from my days at Pacesetter has several times said, hey, you want to come and work for me on the franchise that he owns?
Speaker: And I'm like, oh yeah, I'd love to do that.
Speaker: And then we start talking about scheduling and it's like, you know, it's just not going to happen.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And now, you know, now I'm kind of late in my career and I'm not sure whether, when and if I'm done with Halo, which I don't really see happening soon, that I'm going to want to
Speaker: move on and invest in another new franchise.
Speaker: So I'm not sure where I'm going to go from here.
Speaker: I mean, after I'm done with Halo, I will probably just consider that I have the freedom to write for myself and
Speaker: ignore the the bright shiny baubles that come along yeah and just for one say i'm gonna work on my own bauble right yeah yeah make a bobble that other people uh get attracted to what i'm gonna write for well yeah because because i've got i don't know probably three of them that i'm just dying to write sure and um and it's just a matter of of
Speaker: saying, okay, I'm not going to get pulled away by something else now.
Speaker: I'm just going to work on that.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: So this is just an aside.
Speaker: I was just thinking about this.
Speaker: You wrote a lot of books that were set in the Forgotten Realms setting for D&D.
Speaker: It's actually been kind of a big year for the Forgotten Realms setting with a movie and probably one of the biggest video games of the year.
Speaker: coming out with the Dungeons and Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves, and Baldur's Gate 3.
Speaker: Did you get to play with, watch the movie or play with the game at all?
Speaker: No, I have not actually watched the movie.
Speaker: Although I hear that it's very good.
Speaker: It's a lot of fun.
Speaker: Every time I sat down to watch movies and propose it to my wife,
Speaker: who also worked at TSR in those early days.
Speaker: He's like, Oh, I don't know if I'm going to relive my youth again.
Speaker: So, so, so we haven't gone there yet.
Speaker: And as I said, yeah, it is.
Speaker: You know, I have to kind of respect that.
Speaker: I'll probably watch it.
Speaker: I'm not a big TV guy, so I don't watch a lot of TV when she's not around, but I will probably make a point of watching it at some point.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: When she's off, I'm doing something else.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And as I said, I'm kind of like, I know my limits when it comes to video games, so I haven't.
Speaker: picked up the Baldur's Gate series.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Given what you said.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Given what you said, it seems like it would be a bad idea because it took me, took me a hundred hours to play through it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I guarantee it would probably take me 200 and I would do them all in a row.
Speaker: I just wouldn't come out until I was done.
Speaker: It inspires that kind of thing.
Speaker: So yeah, it's, it's good to know that you've got that inside of you because it, it took me about 60 hours and I was rushing.
Speaker: Troy, who would you say, who or what would you say are your writing inspirations?
Speaker: Well, there's, there are a ton.
Speaker: I, I think there's,
Speaker: that it's fair to say that even though I write science fiction and fantasy, my, the people I model myself on, um, most closely are thriller writers, uh, you know, cause that's, I've studied their craft and, um, you know, taking apart their books, analyze them and made, you know, trying to understand what made me keep wanting to turn the page because that's what my goal is when I write a book is to keep
Speaker: the reader wanting to turn the page.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, it's people like, um, John Sanford and, and when I say inspirations, I would, I would say I study them more than inspired by them.
Speaker: We'll go to the inspiration in a minute.
Speaker: Um, yeah, but I, but you know, John Sanford, um, Michael Connolly, Robert Ludlum, um,
Speaker: One of the people who I have both studied and been inspired by is William Goldman, who wrote The Princess Bride, Marathon Man.
Speaker: The list of his hits is endless.
Speaker: And when I read him, I'm always astounded by how well he does two things.
Speaker: One, he uses voice
Speaker: and language just wonderfully.
Speaker: But he also just keeps you hooked.
Speaker: I mean, there's always something else you want to find out about what's going to happen next.
Speaker: And so I think he's pretty much my epitome of a writer in that he just, you know, he has the skill set, or he did, because I think he's no longer with us.
Speaker: He passed away a few years ago, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But, you know, he had the skill set to just communicate anything he wanted and not only to communicate it, but to make you kind of follow along and just be caught up in the narrative.
Speaker: I mean, when you take a look at some of the fight scenes in The Princess Bride,
Speaker: And the sentences just, they're like two paragraphs long.
Speaker: They just keep going on and going on and going on.
Speaker: And you can follow them and you just keep drawing along.
Speaker: And it gives you that whole feeling like you're just caught up in this big whirling combat.
Speaker: And then, you know, some of the things that like, and the marathon man, like,
Speaker: like one word, boom, and it hits you.
Speaker: And he conveys more with like a single word of action than most people do with the sentence.
Speaker: So that, he is really, truly one of my inspirations.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Michael Crichton also.
Speaker: Oh, Michael Crichton.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When you read, I mean, I always loved...
Speaker: you know, like the Andromeda strain and everything, how well Crispy was with detail and how well he understood science, but could keep you pulled into it.
Speaker: And then I was thinking, you know, he's really just a solid thriller writer writing in the science fiction area.
Speaker: And then I read Eaters of the Dead and it was like, oh my God, this guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's an underrated look.
Speaker: oh yeah, I don't think people understand how good that book is, you know, and how good the voice is.
Speaker: But what he did with that, it was like, you know, just, so every time I picked up a Michael Crichton book, it was always like, I'm just kind of learning something new, you know, about writing.
Speaker: So those are kind of my, my inspirations from how to write kind of viewpoint.
Speaker: And
Speaker: when I was growing up, my inspirations were like Asimov and, and, you know, I just read their books and loved them.
Speaker: Burroughs, um, um, Arthur C. Clark, you know, just, just the old classic science fiction guys and Tolkien fantasy guys.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I think it makes perfect sense, actually, when you say that you learn a lot and take a lot of inspiration from the thriller writers.
Speaker: I was about to say that.
Speaker: Yeah, because the opening of Outcasts, Kevin and I both agreed that that opening, basically the checkpoint of
Speaker: It was basically like a police car stop.
Speaker: And I was like, this is so tense.
Speaker: It was incredibly tense.
Speaker: We said it was like an episode of 24.
Speaker: Like you could see the clock ticking.
Speaker: And I went, holy shit, okay.
Speaker: That's
Speaker: That's a great start.
Speaker: It's not what, you know, and it tells you immediately what kind of story you're getting into where the franchise Halo is such a huge, grandiose space opera and it's getting into a more personal, skirmishy kind of story.
Speaker: So that makes perfect sense.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, with Halo, you can do, that's one of the things that I find
Speaker: so interesting about it is you can just do almost literally any kind of story without, you know, pushing outside the franchise.
Speaker: It just has room for everything.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I would love if Halo did what Games Workshop did and introduced a horror label.
Speaker: That would be fascinating.
Speaker: what's that called uh the black library the black library yeah they've got a they've got their mystery imprint they've got a horror imprint they've been playing with it a lot because i agree halo can is very a very flexible setting yeah surprisingly flexible yeah and yeah and and halo with um with horror i mean
Speaker: It could do any kind of horror.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just the potential for that there.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: I mean, Star Wars did that once with, I can't remember.
Speaker: Death Troopers.
Speaker: Red Harvest, I think it was.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or Death Troopers, yeah.
Speaker: It was kind of splat horror, and it wasn't my thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I think it kind of demonstrated...
Speaker: the difficulty of actually doing that in star Wars, because star Wars, you're kind of, I think you're thematically limited in a way that you aren't in halo.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I think no matter how serious and dark star Wars gets, there's still a level of wholesomeness to it.
Speaker: That's kind of hard to shake.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Well, and halo, I've always liked that it,
Speaker: It doesn't really, I mean, it has a lot more room for the dark undertones and the moral ambivalence.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I have a hunch on this one, and I bet Kevin does too, but we've got to ask, what was your favorite character to write for in Outcasts?
Speaker: Who did you have the most fun coming back to chapter after chapter?
Speaker: I love all of my characters equally.
Speaker: Oh, good.
Speaker: Very diplomatic.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I love all of my children equally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, uh, well, you know, but that's always a hard question to answer and I get asked it a lot.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And the answer, the answer is honestly, it's whoever I'm writing at that moment because I,
Speaker: when you're writing a character, you kind of have to love them.
Speaker: You kind of have to be in their head and on their side and living in their skin to write them well.
Speaker: You know, I mean, people talk about writing villains, and honestly, I try never to write a villain.
Speaker: I try to make each character a hero in his own head.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: you know, he, he may be willing to do things that other characters aren't and cross lines that nobody else would, but you know, he's doing it for what he considers or she to be a good reason.
Speaker: And so even when I'm writing, you know, the, the dark, the dark side of the characters, the, the ones that, that the readers are going to hate, you know, I'm still, I'm in love with them when I'm, when I'm writing them.
Speaker: And I try very hard to be that way.
Speaker: That's fantastic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, there's some of the characters.
Speaker: I mean, one of the characters I had the most fun writing in this case was Rosa Fuertes.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And she only appears in a couple of scenes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, you know, it was just the opportunity to go back to oblivion and show what happened to her and the outcasts.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That I enjoyed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Veil I enjoyed a lot because she, you know, she was, I think everybody else who's written her has written her on a little bit of a more,
Speaker: good Spartan level.
Speaker: And I kind of enjoyed, you know, getting in there and, and, and playing with who she was when she was younger.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, and having that come back and, and interfere and cause their problems now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love the fact that she can't stand that, that, uh, Keely keeps calling her by the nickname that she called her when she was, when she was a kid.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was a lot of fun to write.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The interaction between Keely and Olympia, um, that was a blast, honestly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the interaction between, um,
Speaker: the Arbiter and Petrov was fun too.
Speaker: Yeah, the tension between them was there was always just that era of like of of tension that probably my favorite scene in the entire book, though, is is it's a really short scene towards the end, and it's probably one of the darkest send offs to a character that I've read on this on this show is is when all the power is out and the world master and the other guy are just sitting in the dark.
Speaker: Um, it was, it was, it was just this, it was just the, the weight of everything that they have done, like crashing down on them, uh, at the very end was, it was, uh, uh, I, I love that chapter is, is very well written.
Speaker: Yeah, it was, um, it, it was one of those chapters that, that wasn't there originally.
Speaker: And I can't remember whether it was Ed from gallery or, or,
Speaker: somebody from 343 who suggested, I think we needed to see what happened to the two Sangheili people who were left behind.
Speaker: And, you know, and I was like, oh, yeah, you know, what happened to Nizat and Tam?
Speaker: And I was like, you know, I thought, yeah, at first I thought,
Speaker: They're right.
Speaker: I really do need to show that.
Speaker: Then when I started to think about what I was going to show, it just seemed natural.
Speaker: I mean, you know, here's two guys that have been worshiping these false gods for their whole life.
Speaker: And what is that going to mean to them now?
Speaker: And how do you show...
Speaker: how devastating that would be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it was just, it was just there then, you know, it just made sense.
Speaker: It felt very much like, and I think I might've said this at the time, felt very much like the end of the thing.
Speaker: It felt like Kurt Russell and Keith David.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just sitting in a bombed out camp, staring at each other.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That is a great moment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Troy, what?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I would agree that that's one of my favorite scenes too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, you know, it's sad.
Speaker: It's hard.
Speaker: It's sad.
Speaker: It's heartbreaking.
Speaker: It's dark.
Speaker: It's, it's got every, well, all, and it's very tight.
Speaker: It's a very short scene, but it really, really hits you in the gut.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Troy, what's your favorite?
Speaker: So if you had to pick a Halo book that you didn't read, that you didn't write, but you've read, what's your favorite one?
Speaker: Well, I haven't read it yet, but from everything I'm hearing, Epitaph is going to be the one.
Speaker: Oh, all right.
Speaker: Yeah, I just keep hearing people say great things about it, so I'm looking forward to getting my grubby little hands on a copy.
Speaker: I don't want to get into it too soon because I think it's probably not in its...
Speaker: fully polished version yet but sure pushed it back as soon as it is i'm gonna yeah pardon me i think i think it was supposed to come out this year but they pushed it back or something like that february yeah that probably had to do with my surgery because of everything getting pushed back and and um outcast got pushed back like nearly a year because of surgery so got it so yeah i don't know
Speaker: You know, I'm not sure whether they would have tried to slip it in ahead of time or not, but that may have had something to do with it.
Speaker: Or maybe there was just some other thing going on.
Speaker: But I'm looking forward to seeing that one.
Speaker: And it's being written by friend of the pod, Kelly Gay.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Like we need any more excuse to read more of her work.
Speaker: She's great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's good.
Speaker: I enjoy reading her stuff an awful lot.
Speaker: I think...
Speaker: I, you know, I, I think other than, I don't know, it's hard to say who would be my favorite other Halo writer or other favorite Halo story.
Speaker: I have to give Greg Bear credit where credit is due because the Forerunner trilogy, um, you know, that is run through several of my books and, and given them, um,
Speaker: kind of the bones that they stand on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, and obviously hate outcasts, but also retribution.
Speaker: There was a lot of the scenes in retribution that wouldn't have been what they were if I hadn't been rereading the Forerunner trilogy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense to me.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Okay, well, we're going to wrap it up here, Troy, but we do have one more question for you.
Speaker: And this is the question that is important to us because we veil it in terms of advice for up-and-coming writers, but because we're both writers, this is mostly for us.
Speaker: You got any advice for up-and-coming writers?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: We're looking to make it into the, for hire business or something like that.
Speaker: To reframe it is, do you have any advice for overweight, middle-aged writers?
Speaker: Well, you know, I guess my advice, I have, I have two categories of advice, one category for writers in general, and then another category for writers for hire.
Speaker: But I always start with the writers in general.
Speaker: And, and I think,
Speaker: that the most succinct way to put that is to never forget who you're writing for.
Speaker: And, you know, everybody thinks, because we're all, most people are trying to get past that publisher, get into a New York house, you know, getting an editor to buy their stuff or to get an agent and stuff.
Speaker: So everybody always thinks that they're writing for the agent or they're writing for the editor.
Speaker: But, you know, you're really writing for the reader.
Speaker: because that's if if you even if you make a sale you get an agent you have to make the sale you make the sale you you won't make a second one unless the readers love you so you always have to remember that it's the reader that you're trying to please and if you're not a reader yourself um then you have no business writing it's just that simple
Speaker: So really, it comes down to write for yourself.
Speaker: Write something that you would love to read and do everything you can to make that happen.
Speaker: And one of the things that I see very often because I get asked to read a lot of material by young writers and
Speaker: I will never, first of all, I categorically don't read anything that hasn't been published before, but occasionally people will ask me to read their self-published stuff or something.
Speaker: And what I've seen sometimes when I do that is that they haven't really paid their dues.
Speaker: They haven't put the time in and learned the process and learned the mechanics and developed a theory, a story.
Speaker: And
Speaker: So I think that that's something that you need to do to be successful in the long term.
Speaker: Everybody has a first book in them, you know, and most people will sit down and they can write that first book and it practically writes itself.
Speaker: I mean, it just kind of spells out because you've been thinking about it and dreaming about it your whole life.
Speaker: And if that first book hits, great, you know, then you're, you know, you're set and you're on your way.
Speaker: But if it doesn't, you're either done because nobody has that kind of enthusiasm, that kind of energy welling up inside them for their second book.
Speaker: Because it's a hard process.
Speaker: I mean, you guys know how hard it is.
Speaker: And finishing one novel alone is difficult enough.
Speaker: If you're going to finish two or three or ten,
Speaker: you have to start to develop a theory of story.
Speaker: And that just means that you have to understand what makes a story enjoyable for you so that you can write the story and have it be enjoyable for the people who read the same thing you do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's terrific advice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then for Writers for Hire...
Speaker: the thing you have to remember is that nobody is going to hire a writer who hasn't published a novel previously on a deadline for another house.
Speaker: Because when somebody invests in hiring a writer to do something for them on contract for another IP, you have to remember that they've already invested a lot of money in licensing the product
Speaker: and in preparing, you know, getting their publishing program up and running and deciding what they want to do.
Speaker: So when they hire you to do that, they're investing in you to help them with this project.
Speaker: They're not going to do that unless they have confidence that you can produce something good in a timely manner.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so being able to do that
Speaker: um, and being able to show that you can do that is the first step to, to, um, becoming a media tie in writer, which is what, what I do.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, Troy, thank you so much for, um, for spending some time with us, answering a few questions, you know, uh, it's, it's really been a blast.
Speaker: It's been fun talking with you guys too.
Speaker: I'll look forward to seeing it on the podcast and give me a heads up on my social media and I'll be sure to share it.
Speaker: We'll definitely let you know.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Thanks, Troy.
Speaker: Thank you, Troy.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Thank you guys.
Speaker: Have a good day.
Speaker: Bye-bye.
Speaker: Bye-bye.
Speaker: Well, that was an awesome interview and we're back now.
Speaker: this is after the interview before the interview, when we recorded, that was before the interview, we, that was earlier.
Speaker: We didn't record the intro after I just guessed at what he was going to say, um, about the good advice.
Speaker: I don't do retakes, so I just kind of roll with whatever comes out of my mouth.
Speaker: That's what we're doing.
Speaker: That's what happens next.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, Phil, now that we are after the interview, lovely man, Mr. Troy Denning.
Speaker: Oh, so why are all these writers so nice?
Speaker: All the writers that we have interviewed are so dang nice.
Speaker: We just want a mean writer.
Speaker: We just want our, you know, who's a, who's a, we want a Harlan Ellison to roll up on this pod.
Speaker: Put us on our plates.
Speaker: Break our spirits.
Speaker: Daddy.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: We're sick of being daddy to all of our young viewers.
Speaker: We got to have someone put us in our place.
Speaker: Put us in our place.
Speaker: Ghost of Harlan Ellison.
Speaker: That might happen.
Speaker: He's dead, right?
Speaker: He's dead.
Speaker: He's super dead.
Speaker: He's super dead.
Speaker: He probably wouldn't haunt us, though, unless we paid him, which is his right.
Speaker: No free work, baby.
Speaker: No free work.
Speaker: I'm not haunting you for free.
Speaker: Fuck you.
Speaker: Fuck you.
Speaker: That haunt is going to be 50 cents a word.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Rest in peace, you grumpy old bastard.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: So, Phil, that really only leads to one question.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, what am I playing?
Speaker: Well, I finished two games since we spoke last.
Speaker: Yes, I finished up.
Speaker: I went ahead and finished up Blasphemous 2.
Speaker: And, you know...
Speaker: My initial feelings about it stand.
Speaker: It is still a super fun game.
Speaker: That whole thing is beautifully done.
Speaker: The music rules.
Speaker: It feels good to play.
Speaker: That's all pretty cool.
Speaker: But I feel like it just doesn't have quite the spark.
Speaker: of the original.
Speaker: You were right.
Speaker: The bosses remained, for the most part, largely non-monstrous.
Speaker: The end boss had a pretty kick-ass design, I have to say.
Speaker: And there were a couple other ones in there, but it was mostly, it felt like more of a personal journey with the character.
Speaker: Less big...
Speaker: Horrible.
Speaker: You know, it just didn't.
Speaker: I don't believe in an afterlife.
Speaker: And the first Blasphemous game made me think I'm going to hell for even taking part in this.
Speaker: The first Blasphemous felt blasphemous.
Speaker: Yeah, it was intensely blasphemous.
Speaker: And this one softens it up a little bit.
Speaker: It's a little easier right up until one of the very final bosses who...
Speaker: I was about to pull my hair out.
Speaker: It was driving me crazy.
Speaker: The first penitent?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: His second phase.
Speaker: His second phase, I have... I haven't beaten the game yet because after losing to his second phase...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like I got to the point where I could no hit his first phase.
Speaker: Yeah, his first phase is a joke.
Speaker: His first phase is nothing.
Speaker: I can get through this first phase.
Speaker: Easy peasy.
Speaker: Don't use any flasks.
Speaker: I don't get hit at all.
Speaker: I get to the second phase and he just like, it's like a samurai movie.
Speaker: And suddenly he's on the other side of me and my head is falling off.
Speaker: It's, yeah, it is that.
Speaker: I will say, I don't know what your process has been, but the advice that I would give you and anyone else who hasn't beaten him yet, don't even bother trying to fight him unless you have finished the Cursed Letter quest line.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Because that gets you a spell that stops time for about three or four seconds.
Speaker: And, you know, so I hooked myself up with the altar pieces that involved getting my magic bar up faster.
Speaker: And I took out my big-ass war club.
Speaker: And I stopped time.
Speaker: Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
Speaker: And I started learning how many hits I could get in safely.
Speaker: Because he doesn't even give you time to fucking heal.
Speaker: It's absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker: So don't even bother if you guys are getting there and you just do the...
Speaker: Do the cursed letter story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that'll get you a spell that, in my opinion, is basically required to beat him.
Speaker: I still came damn close.
Speaker: So you have to beat Flashman and then Quickman.
Speaker: That's what I would recommend.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Topman then Shadowman.
Speaker: That's really your best bet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, it's a little... When it finally janks up the difficult... And then, of course, the final boss is the easiest boss in the entire fucking game.
Speaker: Which, by the way, I was fine with.
Speaker: Because after that fucking shit show, I was like... After the first penitent, it's like, yeah, I'm fine.
Speaker: I beat him on the second try.
Speaker: I was like, you better not fuck with me over this.
Speaker: I do not want to do that again.
Speaker: I will not finish this game.
Speaker: But yeah, and also, whoever...
Speaker: implemented non-skippable cut scenes before a boss, no matter how short they are, anybody, whoever's idea, especially in a game where you die a lot, can go drown, as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker: That is so unnecessary.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, they've got a lot of cool purple pros to give you, and they do shorten it after the first time, but it's still like six or seven seconds of
Speaker: I should.
Speaker: Yeah, that was my one of us really getting annoyed with the first penitent is like I should be able to just walk in and the fight starts.
Speaker: I don't need to get up and say something.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, because I don't care at that point.
Speaker: The storyline at that point, I'm just trying to kill the guy and I don't need to be reminded over.
Speaker: It was it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And excuse me, what's my motivation?
Speaker: I am the penitent one.
Speaker: My motivation is to murder these things.
Speaker: Yeah, it made me want to kill him that much faster, I will say, which fucked me up because that's my problem.
Speaker: That's why I can't play difficult button-mashy games like that because I get frustrated and I stop and I lose all sense of strategy and timing and I can't.
Speaker: I become Aaron Hansen and just like...
Speaker: start screaming, and I'm not that guy.
Speaker: But I think... You're not the boy who wins.
Speaker: I'm not the boy who wins!
Speaker: Exactly!
Speaker: And I am the video game boy.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: So I think overall there was a lot of the stuff that I loved about Blasphemous in there, but not a lot of improvements.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: And that's what you want in a sequel.
Speaker: You get more of the same, which is great, but you want to see some bumps.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: It didn't have a lot of improvements, and it did have some moments that weren't as good.
Speaker: And I feel bad, because this sounds like I'm giving it a bad review.
Speaker: There is still a better than average chance that it will be in my top 10 games.
Speaker: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: It was beautiful.
Speaker: Their style, their art direction is breathtaking.
Speaker: It's amazing.
Speaker: But I think because I loved the first one so damn much, it makes me harder on it.
Speaker: Harder to, yeah.
Speaker: I think one of the things I liked about the first one was the terror of...
Speaker: just killing something and watching it die in just an absolutely horrible way.
Speaker: Like that, I felt like that was missing a little bit from this one so far.
Speaker: It's yeah.
Speaker: It's just, it doesn't feel the same.
Speaker: What else are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I went ahead and played Danger-esque.
Speaker: Danger-esque?
Speaker: Danger-esque.
Speaker: The Strong Bad game, right?
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Strong Bad point and click.
Speaker: Danger-esque.
Speaker: I loved it.
Speaker: It took me about an hour and a half.
Speaker: It's got all of the silly, because for me, fall is Homestar time, because I discovered Homestar in college.
Speaker: That's to date myself.
Speaker: Same here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, and so watching the Halloween cartoon, that's always been Homestar for me.
Speaker: And so I was like, ooh, there are these two new point-and-click Homestar games.
Speaker: I better get that and play them.
Speaker: And Dangerous is silly.
Speaker: It's fun.
Speaker: It's got a little tiny touch of moon logic.
Speaker: It is not a challenging game for the most part.
Speaker: There are a couple of moments that you'll go, wait, how does that work?
Speaker: But I'll give it to them.
Speaker: When you figure out what you're meant to do, you do feel very proud of yourself.
Speaker: It's silly.
Speaker: It's goofy.
Speaker: Homestar Runner is probably one of the best examples of a franchise that has known what they were about and not altered it since its inception.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They haven't really.
Speaker: They're just like, no, we're just this is what we do forever now.
Speaker: 20 plus years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like we appeal to millennials and young Gen Xers who were in college and high school specifically.
Speaker: I want to say around 1997 to 2007.
Speaker: Give or take.
Speaker: Give or take.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And they do a wonderful job and they haven't fucked with the formula.
Speaker: They never fucked with it.
Speaker: I mean, they don't have to put out as much stuff as they used to.
Speaker: No, that's true.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: It's like once a year they might do a thing.
Speaker: I respect it.
Speaker: I respect it.
Speaker: They're just like, we're doing this because we actually like doing this.
Speaker: They used to do a Strong Bad email every Monday.
Speaker: Every Monday.
Speaker: That was what you looked forward to every Monday.
Speaker: You looked forward to.
Speaker: Monday was when strong bad email coming up.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: That was what you did.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Scroll button.
Speaker: And I just.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: So it was wonderful.
Speaker: Checking my email.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: And it's got little Easter eggs in there.
Speaker: And if you like Homestar Runner and Strong Bad and all that stuff, it's a no-brainer.
Speaker: It's really easy to... And then there's another one.
Speaker: I promised Emily we're going to play that one together where it's a Homestar Runner Halloween trick-or-treat costume point-and-click.
Speaker: And I was like, yeah, we're playing that together.
Speaker: That's all there is to it.
Speaker: That's...
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: And they made it.
Speaker: They made it with
Speaker: Adventure Game Maker or whatever.
Speaker: Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker: Yeah, they just... I love how scrappy these guys are.
Speaker: Since using Mario Paint to make the earliest versions, they've always been like, I guess we could do something fancy, but fuck it.
Speaker: This is easier.
Speaker: And I love it.
Speaker: I love them for it.
Speaker: The Brothers Chaps are absolutely wonderful.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So, Blasphemous 2, Dangerous.
Speaker: What about you, Kevin?
Speaker: What have you played?
Speaker: uh let's see what have i been playing uh we already talked about blasphemous too i'm still kind of i'm stuck on the pen ultimate boss i believe um and i've been playing starfield um which is certainly a game of this year that came out this year
Speaker: It is a game in the year 2023.
Speaker: Yes, I stole that joke from Co Carnage.
Speaker: Somebody on his stream asked him, is Starfield one of your games of the year?
Speaker: And he said, it's a game in the year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: Okay, how do I put it?
Speaker: Go on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: 10 hours.
Speaker: So I've been playing for just about 20 hours on the save file, okay?
Speaker: I started playing the game and I was like, this is kind of lame.
Speaker: There's like nothing going on.
Speaker: Also, it continues Bethesda's problem of just having absolutely terrible introductions.
Speaker: Just the worst.
Speaker: Like they forgot how to do it since Morrowind, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So like Morrowind was just like, you make your character and you're in the place and go do some stuff, right?
Speaker: And Fallout New Vegas was you get shot by Chandler and now you wake up and you go do the stuff.
Speaker: But Fallout New Vegas, though, was not Bethesda.
Speaker: It was it was what's it?
Speaker: Oh, fuck.
Speaker: Oh, Obsidian.
Speaker: Obsidian.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Obsidian made Fallout New Vegas, published by Bethesda.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But, yes, so...
Speaker: You know, you got Fallout 3, you spend 15 hours in the vault just growing up from being a baby before you even get out.
Speaker: Oh my God, literally.
Speaker: And then people are like, oh, you like that?
Speaker: Well, here's Oblivion and you're gonna spend like your lifetime in the prison sewers before you get out to see daylight.
Speaker: And then Todd Howard was, people seem to love this.
Speaker: Everybody's like, no, Todd.
Speaker: And somebody's saying, they're saying Boo Ernst.
Speaker: And then Todd was like, all right, for Skyrim, we're going to make an unskippable cut scene basically for the first, however fucking long that takes until the dragon shows up or Macho Man Randy Savage, depending on which mods you're playing with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you're playing the correct way.
Speaker: If you're playing the correct way, it's either Macho Man or Thomas, the tank engine.
Speaker: Oh, that's a good one too.
Speaker: I forgot about that.
Speaker: But yeah, so needless to say, the most popular mods for all these games is ones that let you just like fucking skip the opening, right?
Speaker: So right now for Starfield, circling back to Starfield, Starfield, you start in a mine and you have to learn how to mine for minerals.
Speaker: which is a thing you can do in Starfield.
Speaker: It has its own No Man's Sky elements.
Speaker: But yes, you mine for minerals and then you touch a thing and there's bright lights and you are the special.
Speaker: And now there's a guy coming down and he's like, whoa, shit, you're the special.
Speaker: You found the thing.
Speaker: take my ship and go talk to the people who are looking for more of the special.
Speaker: Oh shit.
Speaker: Pirates are attacking.
Speaker: So you got to kill the pirates.
Speaker: And then you get up on the ship and it's like, first things first, you can't go talk to the people.
Speaker: You got to go massacre more pirates because they're just going to keep following you.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Needless to say.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Obviously.
Speaker: And this is why a friend of the pod, Evelyn from the channel, I am error said, I'm,
Speaker: They make these gigantic sandbox games and you can be whoever you want to be as long as that person's a serial killer.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, spot on, Evelyn.
Speaker: That's how the game starts, because when you're attacked by the pirates, it's like up to you to kill 90% of them, even though there's like 40 people with guns shooting at them.
Speaker: And then you have to go to this pirate base and just kill all of them there.
Speaker: And then you don't get a chance to do a persuasion check until the very end.
Speaker: Oh, see.
Speaker: And you save, like, the one pirate captain, and you're like, you shouldn't do this anymore.
Speaker: And he's like, you're right.
Speaker: Oh, fuck that.
Speaker: I'm just like, look, I'm sorry.
Speaker: They didn't know what Baldur's Gate 3 was going to bring.
Speaker: But also, they've been doing the same shit over and over and over again.
Speaker: So I'm like, I hate this game.
Speaker: And then something happened.
Speaker: Where's that turn?
Speaker: Where's that turn?
Speaker: I stole something and I got like, you're you have a bounty on your head now.
Speaker: Someone saw you steal that.
Speaker: I was like, nobody saw me steal that bullshit.
Speaker: And I'm like walking around and then somebody some guard from.
Speaker: So it's like the United Constellations or.
Speaker: whatever from UC SISDEF, which is their like Navy or whatever is, comes up to me and said, you're under arrest.
Speaker: Actually, you got to come with us.
Speaker: And you're like, can I just pay the fine?
Speaker: And he's like, nah, not this time.
Speaker: And I'm like, that's weird.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So I'm under arrest and I get brought into an interrogation room.
Speaker: Instead of being taken to prison, which is the normal thing, is you can go to prison or pay a fine or whatever.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I'm brought into an interrogation room, and this commander is like, all right, well, you seem to be pretty much a nobody.
Speaker: We want you to hire you to be an undercover agent to take down, to find dirt on the...
Speaker: Crimson Fleet, which is the pirates that terrorize the stars.
Speaker: And that kicks off a 10 hour side quest where you have to be an undercover cop.
Speaker: You have to do a departed.
Speaker: There's a level where you are being an undercover cop in this pirate organization.
Speaker: And then you as a pirate, you have to break into a UC Sys Def base with the blessing of your handler from UC Sys Def.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: But nobody knows that you're that like you and they tell you you'll be disavowed if you get caught.
Speaker: And it's like, it's basically The Departed.
Speaker: And I was like, this game fucking rocks.
Speaker: And I played that.
Speaker: And it was in my head the whole time.
Speaker: I'm like, I'm not a cop.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Maybe not.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Maybe fuck yourself.
Speaker: Maybe go fuck yourself.
Speaker: Uh, so I played fair enough.
Speaker: I played through that entire quest.
Speaker: 10 hours later, finished the quest.
Speaker: We could, there's an ultimate battle space battle between Sys Def and the, and the crimson fleet.
Speaker: And I personally arrest the captain of the crimson fleet.
Speaker: And then I leave and I'm back in the main quest and I'm like, Oh, Hmm.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: It was like the highest of highs.
Speaker: And then I'm like, they're like, would you like to go find some flashing light artifacts now and mine some minerals?
Speaker: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker: It's like, you've just got done with this Errol Flynn high space opera adventure.
Speaker: They're like, well, you want to mine for carbon?
Speaker: Or?
Speaker: God damn.
Speaker: Do you know you can set up outposts that will mine for you?
Speaker: And like.
Speaker: Sounds fun.
Speaker: I just look off in the middle distance to my days as an undercover operative where danger lurked around every corner.
Speaker: You're supposed to retire now.
Speaker: That's the whole point.
Speaker: They wanted to make you feel good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it was like there were so many people on the pirate side that I kind of liked.
Speaker: And in that final battle, you end up like
Speaker: personally killing them all oh jesus christ like there's this really cool character called jasmine her name goes by jazz um and she's uh she's an engineer she's funny she's witty and and she's six one of her robots on you and you kill the robot and then you're looking for her and she's just like
Speaker: Running she's just like running away from you shooting with this tiny little like pea shooter like she doesn't have anything should have an armor on she just has like a little gun and you kill her oh my god, and you're just like jazz it's just no for that's and that's the thing it goes back to what I was talking about before you know for this for this not even
Speaker: the game itself, but for a publisher that prides itself on personal choice and hugeness and scope, you know, like like that level of like not really having many options is
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so like, that's why Baldur's Gate 3, for example, in World War Baldur's Gate 3 exists, Starfield is a little bit, you can kind of tell its age in terms of a style.
Speaker: There's just like some things that are not necessarily thought out totally.
Speaker: I would be happy with less stuff in the game and just more thought out interactions rather than look at all this stuff.
Speaker: But you have to, like, I would love to do a playthrough of Starfield where I wasn't forced to kill people.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: You know, in Baldur's Gate 3, there's obviously forced encounters, but there's a lot of stuff that you can talk your way out of instead of, or you don't even have to do a battle encounter.
Speaker: The goblin camp, you can poison the goblins, ale, instead of actually fighting them.
Speaker: Oh, the spooky doctor scene is like that.
Speaker: That's a really good one.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, you can talk him into killing himself or having his nurses kill him.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You can drink a guy to death instead of fighting him.
Speaker: I love that scene.
Speaker: Oh, so good.
Speaker: I love that whole section of the game.
Speaker: So spooky and good.
Speaker: That's an amazing section of the game.
Speaker: You can talk every one of those bosses to death.
Speaker: Pretty much, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, Bethesda is just like, they're an old ship, and they need to start turning, you know, because they're just barreling ahead with these kinds of games that are increasingly out of fashion, and they're goddammit gonna make them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, like there's like weird little, and there's weird little things.
Speaker: Like I did this whole thing with the pirates, and then like I go to a place, and there's still some Crimson Fleet pirates hanging around.
Speaker: I'm like, I thought I got the whole fucking gang.
Speaker: I thought that was the point of the mission.
Speaker: There shouldn't be any.
Speaker: They should be gone.
Speaker: I committed a genocide.
Speaker: I committed a genocide against the pirates.
Speaker: With cat-like tread no more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, that's what I've been playing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So before we go, we want to just do our shout out to our favorite patron.
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Speaker: Geek Scholar, right?
Speaker: That's what we call it.
Speaker: Yeah, Geek Scholar.
Speaker: Thank you, Geek Scholar.
Speaker: for showing us your love.
Speaker: It means the world to us.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: I pulled up like a, my new tab on Google and it's a nebula.
Speaker: And now my face is all.
Speaker: That's a good lighting setup.
Speaker: Yeah, that is a neat, that is a neat lighting setup.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But if you want to join friendly friend in these shout outs, you can go over to patrion.com slash pixel at pod, where we have three tiers available to you.
Speaker: $1, $1, $1,
Speaker: $1, $5, $5, and $10 Dolores.
Speaker: Dolores, yes.
Speaker: Dolores.
Speaker: That's Spanish, right?
Speaker: 10 sadness.
Speaker: 10 sadness.
Speaker: And in this stage of late-stage capitalism, is there anything more Dolores than money?
Speaker: Please give it to us.
Speaker: The more money you give to us is the less sad you'll be in the long run.
Speaker: The less sad you'll be, the less sad we'll be.
Speaker: No, that's too dark.
Speaker: I've got to go back to Nebula.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Yeah, Nebula.
Speaker: And Nebula, if you're listening, we'll join your platform.
Speaker: Hell yeah, we will.
Speaker: So yeah, or you can follow us for free on Patreon.
Speaker: You can also go to our website, Patreon.com, Patreon.com, Pixlet.com, PixletPod.com.
Speaker: I'll get it right.
Speaker: One of these days.
Speaker: One of these days.
Speaker: Pipsletpod.com.
Speaker: Go to our website.
Speaker: Yeah, you can join our Discord where you can actually talk to us.
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Speaker: And finally, if you're more social media inclined, go ahead and follow us on Blue Sky, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Threads,
Speaker: Are you still posting on threads?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Not really.
Speaker: No, I'm not going to.
Speaker: I think we're done with threads.
Speaker: Don't bother with threads.
Speaker: At PixelitPod on all those websites.
Speaker: Just search it and you should bring us up.
Speaker: Twitter is called X now.
Speaker: I fucking forgot about that.
Speaker: So stupid.
Speaker: It's like HBO Max trying to be Max.
Speaker: Max.
Speaker: You're always going to be HBO to me.
Speaker: You're always going to be Twitter to me.
Speaker: You're always going to be Twitter to me.
Speaker: How is a guy with so many children such a virgin?
Speaker: I just, I don't.
Speaker: X. Oh, go fuck yourself.
Speaker: He is the most divorced version dad of all time.
Speaker: Every day for MuskOx is 2003.
Speaker: Gears of War is still making all kinds of new games, and X is still going to give it to you.
Speaker: X is still going to give it to you.
Speaker: Pour one out for DMX.
Speaker: God damn, if he was alive today, he would be pissed.
Speaker: And is his right.
Speaker: As would be his right.
Speaker: That'll do it for tonight's episode, though.
Speaker: Have a good night.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: That's a good episode.
Speaker: Hell yeah.
Speaker: I'm so glad he managed to get on.
Speaker: That worked out.
Speaker: That worked out good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right, brother.
Speaker: Bye.
