Transcript
Speaker: 10 minutes of the game.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, it's more than that.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: The first 10 minutes of the game has...
Speaker: a lot of this stuff, but it's it's like it's basically just news.
Speaker: It's very condensed.
Speaker: And yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And it's like all at a like, what do you call it?
Speaker: A briefing?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It certainly doesn't get into the I did notice in the credits that Orson Scott Card was one of the people who were.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's you know what?
Speaker: You know who else is a writing dialogue for the dig?
Speaker: Oh, who's that?
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin, with me as always is Phil.
Speaker: On today's show, we're talking about The Dig, written by Alan Dean Foster.
Speaker: It is an adaptation of the game of the same name.
Speaker: It was a LucasArts game, and it was based on a... It's funny because Steven Spielberg's name is like all over it, but it's like...
Speaker: It's like it's based on a loose idea that Steven Spielberg had once and then kind of ended up in the hands of LucasArts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: It's good stuff.
Speaker: They knew what they were doing.
Speaker: They took advantage of the situation in a way that I don't think any of us are capable of not.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So before we do that, I want to tell you about a website that you can really dig into.
Speaker: Patreon.com slash PixelitPod.
Speaker: It's a site that you can dig into.
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Speaker: One dollar, five dollars or ten dollars.
Speaker: $1 gets you in the door.
Speaker: You can read some old blog posts that Phil has up there for reviewing books.
Speaker: And, you know, I'm going to start posting stuff up there, too.
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Speaker: They both get you to the place.
Speaker: So the dig.
Speaker: The dig.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So a little bit about the game.
Speaker: It's a point and click.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Look starts point and click is, you know, they had moved past the nine verbs at this point.
Speaker: And it's a it's a game that it's funny.
Speaker: It was in development hell, but development hell in this case was only six years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To release.
Speaker: And now that's just a regular development cycle for a lot of games.
Speaker: Seems kind of sweet, doesn't it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, oh, really?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So Steven Spielberg had the idea for the story originally as an episode of Amazing Stories.
Speaker: Then it was like, no, it's a film.
Speaker: But then it was just like, no, I can't do this.
Speaker: It's too expensive.
Speaker: He pitches it.
Speaker: to George Lucas, Ron Gilbert, and Noah Falstein at Skywalker Ranch.
Speaker: The same day that that happens, it's the San Francisco earthquake, which is 1989, a meeting between Spielberg, Lucas, Gilbert, and Falstein.
Speaker: So it's an interesting group there.
Speaker: Faustine and Gilbert had at the time made the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade video game.
Speaker: And so he was a fan of that.
Speaker: So, yeah, the story ends up getting fleshed out over the years by multiple people who are in charge of the project.
Speaker: So it starts out with Noah Faulstein, Brian Moriarty, who is the guy who makes Loom, gets involved in it.
Speaker: Then it goes to Dave Grossman.
Speaker: And then from Dave Grossman, it's Sean Clark was the final project leader.
Speaker: The story is more a bunch of times gets everything gets chucked.
Speaker: Basically, when Brian Moriarty took over, gets rewritten from scratch and that's kind of the version that we have.
Speaker: is the one that started with Moriarty's work, which is why he gets a writing credit on it, I believe, even if he wasn't the final game designer.
Speaker: And one of the other writers on it was Orson Scott Card.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Frenemy of the pod.
Speaker: Frenemy of the pod, Phil...
Speaker: I know a little bit about Orson Scott Card in that he's a terrible person and wrote Ender's Game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What else should I know about him?
Speaker: Do you know?
Speaker: Is there anything else?
Speaker: I mean, he's probably one of the more like one of the most important modern science fiction writers.
Speaker: American, at least, if not just in general.
Speaker: Ender's Game and that whole series was huge.
Speaker: hugely influential on basically all science fiction going forward.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And you know, you don't have things like Ready Player One without it.
Speaker: You don't know.
Speaker: Maybe maybe this might be going the wrong way here with this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He has won like and Hugo Awards, Nebula Awards won all the awards, I think.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Let me check.
Speaker: Yeah, he is the only person to have won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award in consecutive years.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah, he's he's got all of the he's got some real pedigree and it's unfortunate that he is a really hardcore Mormon and his his outspoken
Speaker: opposition to homosexuality and all that stuff has gotten him some negative publicity.
Speaker: And it's just another this is this is he's kind of the perfect example of my problem with the purity aspect of canceling or dislike or just just not liking somebody.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: He's he's a great example of people who are like, you know, he's kind of overrated and no, he's not.
Speaker: No, he's not like he's very important.
Speaker: He's a very important writer.
Speaker: And unfortunately, he kind of sucks as human being and that and we just have to accept that that happens.
Speaker: If we're falling down a weird rabbit hole, if if everybody who ever held a bad or unpopular opinion is suddenly
Speaker: a talentless hack.
Speaker: It's not a good idea.
Speaker: It sets a really bad precedent.
Speaker: But yes, he was one of the dialogue writers on this.
Speaker: And he's and that's just like you got George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Orson Scott Card.
Speaker: That is a hell of a lineup as far as, you know, names attached to this.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm just digging into his personal views.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: He is all over the map, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's like a lot of modern.
Speaker: Well, honestly, modern conservative Christians, not even conservative Christians, but modern Christians where it's like, well, these things I have to believe them.
Speaker: They'll say things that are like kind of reasonable and you're like, OK, that's not so bad.
Speaker: And then they'll be like, but of course, we all know gay people are going to hell.
Speaker: And you're like, well, what?
Speaker: Yeah, well, this is the thing is so Orson among his political beliefs are OK.
Speaker: He is against gay marriage.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he a lot of a lot of homophobia in there on one hand.
Speaker: And then on the other hand, very liberal immigration laws is a plus for him.
Speaker: Gun control is a plus for him abolishing the death penalty.
Speaker: At one point, he believed that he said that government has a strong role to protect us from capitalism.
Speaker: So like he has these like beliefs that are like if you if if you took if he if you took away the homophobia.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If that wasn't even a thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You'd be like, oh, man, this guy's kind of based.
Speaker: But then he's not because he's a bigot.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's simultaneously.
Speaker: People contain multitudes and contain multitudes.
Speaker: And he ends up voting Republican more often than not because he is a, quote unquote, moral, moral conservative.
Speaker: Last time I checked, they didn't have any of those, but okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So anyway, that is one of the authors of this Orson Scott card, authors of the game.
Speaker: Phil, the author of the book is a friend of the pod, Alan Dean Foster.
Speaker: Friend of the pod.
Speaker: Yes, we got that.
Speaker: We had the pleasure of interviewing him.
Speaker: And what a guy.
Speaker: He's very cool.
Speaker: Alan Dean Foster, in addition to being the person who did the official novelizations of Star Wars, Alien, Aliens.
Speaker: I think he did Alien 3 and he did he did Alien Covenant.
Speaker: Like that's how recently he's been doing this shit.
Speaker: And he wrote a splinter of the mind's eye, which was meant to be the sequel to Star Wars.
Speaker: If they didn't, if it didn't do well, like it's way more down to earth and grounded and they could have done it for a lot cheaper.
Speaker: And splinter of the mind's eye is the number of things that he created in splinter of the mind's eye that actually became canon later.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or is wild, including the crystal that lightsabers are made from.
Speaker: It's so cool.
Speaker: It's like the guy.
Speaker: And on top of all of that, if you are like me and Kevin, where you're if you are of a certain age and you picture if I say to you 80s paperback science fiction fantasy novel,
Speaker: and you see that in your head and you see the crazy ass cover art and the yellowing pages, and it's just well loved and been read back and forth.
Speaker: He wrote a shit ton of those.
Speaker: Yeah, he wrote the Spellsinger series, which is a big one.
Speaker: This isn't a paperback, but he did write for the Dinotopia thing.
Speaker: He's done.
Speaker: He is like an old school.
Speaker: genre fiction guy on the level of Harlan Ellison and like Orson Scott Card, frankly.
Speaker: And Orson Scott Card, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, he is on that level.
Speaker: And he's, are we forgetting somebody?
Speaker: LRH?
Speaker: Yes, we can't forget LRH, the great.
Speaker: That rascal.
Speaker: That rascal LRH.
Speaker: The R doesn't stand for Ron.
Speaker: It stands for Rascal.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: He's just, you know, he's bad.
Speaker: That's what, you know, he's bad.
Speaker: He's bad.
Speaker: You know, he's just like, do a bunch of coke, might found a religion.
Speaker: Yeah, you know?
Speaker: does that like really?
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: He's so creative.
Speaker: But yeah, Alan, if I haven't if I haven't made it clear, he is one of my favorite people that we talk about on this show.
Speaker: Yeah, he has got a hell of a pedigree and and he's and he's actually a very solid writer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also,
Speaker: remembering we interviewed him because he wrote the first ever video game novelization, which is to me just amazing that it was so cool.
Speaker: It was so cool.
Speaker: And we got to talk to him and, you know,
Speaker: Fuck, we've talked to a lot of cool people on this show.
Speaker: Alan and Seth Godin, among others, a lot of neat folks.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's nice to look back on several years of doing this and being able to.
Speaker: Oh, he wrote the novelization of The Thing, dude.
Speaker: Yes, that's right.
Speaker: He was talking to us about that.
Speaker: Yes, I would like to actually do a special series just on on on the thing just because, you know, it's it's my favorite.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: It's my favorite.
Speaker: It's just undeniably, you know, it's so good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's it's that would I mean, honestly, we're going to have to if we get to a point where we're doing this full time, we're going to have to have like bonus shit where we have episodes about 40K and exactly the movies that we're constantly referencing on the show.
Speaker: It has to happen.
Speaker: It just does.
Speaker: And you can help us do this full time by going to Patreon dot com slash Pixelipod.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Double double shill.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: You didn't think we could do it.
Speaker: I did it.
Speaker: One thing I forgot to mention about the game is that apparently a lot of stuff was cut out of it after Jurassic Park.
Speaker: Oh, interesting.
Speaker: So Spielberg got a lot of criticism because of the blood and violence in Jurassic Park.
Speaker: People were like, oh, you know, it's Steven Spielberg adventure thing.
Speaker: It's not going to be violent.
Speaker: Well, you know, the dinosaurs eat the people.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: People are stupid.
Speaker: So he goes.
Speaker: Actually, and no, go on.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: He goes to Lucas Lucas Film Games or Lucas Arts at this point and goes, yeah, can you just like cut out anything that is like too gory or whatever?
Speaker: So like.
Speaker: any gore and violent.
Speaker: A lot of the gore and violence was taken out of the game.
Speaker: There was like apparently survival mechanics in the game originally that were taken out.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: There was a lot of stuff.
Speaker: That's nuts.
Speaker: There was a lot of stuff in the game that got it out.
Speaker: They did leave one particularly memorable violence scene, which we will eventually get to.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But I'm that that's actually really very cool to know.
Speaker: I did not know that.
Speaker: So it makes me wonder how much of that survived into the novelization.
Speaker: Yeah, this feels like a reach out to one of the guys, Dave Grossman or Sean Clark or whatever and just see what happens, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The worst they can say is no.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And the worst thing I can say is let's put the body in the marsh.
Speaker: Let's do.
Speaker: Let's let's body it.
Speaker: If we shall, if we will.
Speaker: When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh, you dump them.
Speaker: In the mind.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Stretch the neck out.
Speaker: Chapter one.
Speaker: Chapter one is a conversation between the president, Warren Lyon Frazier.
Speaker: He's a businessman.
Speaker: What a name.
Speaker: What a name.
Speaker: Right off the bat.
Speaker: He's being talked.
Speaker: His science advisor is talking to him.
Speaker: William Earl like, hey, there's a there's Earl is like there's a big old asteroid.
Speaker: It's coming for Earth.
Speaker: And it just like appeared.
Speaker: We don't know how it got here.
Speaker: And he's like, here's all the worst case scenarios.
Speaker: Here's where it could land, the kind of damage it could do.
Speaker: And it's either going to come through, depending on the makeup of the asteroid, it'll land intact and be bad, or it'll break up and be bad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Those are our options.
Speaker: Those are our options.
Speaker: And the president's like, is one better than the other?
Speaker: And Earl's response is, I don't see much of an advantage in being tagged by a shotgun as opposed to a rifle.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: yeah yeah um so basically earl is like what we have a plan it's gonna we're gonna use nuclear explosives to nudge the asteroid into a stable orbit uh now this is 1995 right yes so uh i gotta uh i gotta check uh
Speaker: Okay, no, this is three years before the double asteroid summer, Deep Impact Armageddon.
Speaker: Yeah, this is well before that.
Speaker: This predates Deep Impact Armageddon summer.
Speaker: Which I love, by the way, like once again, groundbreaker.
Speaker: Groundbreaker.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where did my head go?
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: What I love about this chapter is that the president is like, oh, man, I got to I got to talk to the Senate about this and get their approvals and all this stuff.
Speaker: And he's like, I guess if it all push comes to shove, I'll use presidential decree.
Speaker: But it's like the fact that it's like such a different era, the fact that the president is like so like he's he's he's thinking that he has to work with Congress in order to get this.
Speaker: Like, how am I going to pitch this to the Senate?
Speaker: Like, oh, bloody.
Speaker: Oh, bloody.
Speaker: Aren't you sweet?
Speaker: What a time.
Speaker: What a time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What a time.
Speaker: So they're getting the nukes from the Russians who are basically they're mining nukes that Russian Russia has been using to like melt permafrost and shit.
Speaker: Which I'm sure that will have no unintended consequences.
Speaker: I'm sure that's I'm sure that's great.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: The mining nukes will be placed on one side and nudge it to stabilize the orbit.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So chapter two, we meet retired astronaut Boston Lowe as he is just chilling out at his favorite spot overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.
Speaker: He's eating his lunch when a guy from NASA by the name of Harry Page approaches him and he's
Speaker: He's basically pages.
Speaker: Entire job is this chapter is to try to convince Boston.
Speaker: Lowe to say yes is to get to the yes.
Speaker: And I tell you, this is not Boston.
Speaker: Lowe is a fucking asshole.
Speaker: shouldn't be this hard it's buddy the earth is gonna end unless we do something we want you to do it and he's like i'm happy being retired and we're like well if you don't do it we got two more days like you're gonna be you're gonna be permanently retired how about that like what he's like i'm not scared of any of like after being in space the terrestrial stuff doesn't bother me so much it's all weightless i'm like shut the fuck up just shut up
Speaker: It's a very it's a very kind of modern attitude of somebody else will take care of it.
Speaker: Like that's that's that's his stance.
Speaker: He's like, you're going to find someone else to handle this.
Speaker: I know you will.
Speaker: So let's just let's just leave me alone and go work with that guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's yeah.
Speaker: Well, it's just he's low starts listing off the other people who could do the mission.
Speaker: And Paige is like, yeah, they want you.
Speaker: They want you.
Speaker: You're the guy because he he like saved one of the shuttle missions once by the skin of his teeth.
Speaker: He's the guy.
Speaker: He's got a very dramatic backstory kind of thing.
Speaker: And then Paige knows he's got him once Lowe's like, all right, well, who else is on this mission?
Speaker: They're like, well, we got Ken Borden as co-pilot and Cora Miles as payload specialist.
Speaker: And we got two other specialists coming along.
Speaker: And Lowe's like, all right, fine, I'll do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Those guys are pretty cool, I suppose.
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: So chapter three, they're at like a meet and greet in Florida.
Speaker: And he meets some of the other crew.
Speaker: Cora Miles, who is she's also like running for Congress.
Speaker: What an interesting detail.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's like this hopeful politician kind of character.
Speaker: What a yeah.
Speaker: What an interesting detail.
Speaker: I don't remember.
Speaker: Do they mention that she's black in the book?
Speaker: Uh, I don't remember.
Speaker: I don't remember.
Speaker: She definitely is in the game.
Speaker: She is in the game, but I can't recall if she's if if it was explicitly stated in the book.
Speaker: But yeah, she's but she's a congressional candidate.
Speaker: This is her last mission.
Speaker: Like she's she's out of the astronaut program after this.
Speaker: Two days from retirement.
Speaker: Two days from retirement.
Speaker: And then Ken Borden.
Speaker: And then so he meets geologist Ludger Brink.
Speaker: It's a German.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: We got to have one.
Speaker: We got to have because a Russian would be too on the nose.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At this point.
Speaker: Yeah, geologist Ludger Brink is the one who is there because, A, you need a geologist to look at the composition of the thing.
Speaker: And also, he happens to speak Russian and is able to read the instructions for the nuclear bombs that they're going to arm.
Speaker: He's very brilliant.
Speaker: He's also a bit weird.
Speaker: And he's just a little too enthusiastic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: About the scientific possibilities of the asteroid.
Speaker: And he's very much a product of the time where it's like as a character, there's a very Mr. Scientist attitude towards him that you had a lot with this era of just, well, you know, disrespecting science and thinking that, you know, you knew better than them.
Speaker: That was that.
Speaker: Thank God that never came to fruition.
Speaker: That never actually happened.
Speaker: There's also Maggie Robbins, who is a journalist.
Speaker: And boy, howdy, does Boston Lowe not like that she is on this mission.
Speaker: She is basically the best reporter ever, according to what we learned about her.
Speaker: She's been on location for a bunch of war zones, tense situations.
Speaker: She's always going to liken everything they do to like, this is like that.
Speaker: It's like a it's like a family guy cutaway.
Speaker: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker: this is like that time that I got, I got held at gunpoint in Panama.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was like, okay, we have, we pass enough time for the flash.
Speaker: Okay, great.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then she just stands there and Boston's like, what are you talking?
Speaker: Who are you talking to?
Speaker: Her eyes are glazed over.
Speaker: Then she suddenly just returns back to the planet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, hi.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: And and Seth MacFarlane leaves her head.
Speaker: She's also pretty and whip smart.
Speaker: But Boston is very unhappy that an untrained person is going to be on the ship, even though she like she's able to do all the stuff, like all the basic tests.
Speaker: So they're like, yeah, you can go, I guess.
Speaker: She'll be fine.
Speaker: At one point at the end of the chapter, Lowe says something about like, I wish I just had 50 kilograms of extra oxygen on the ship.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's a good bit.
Speaker: But yeah, you can tell Boston Lowe and Maggie are going to have like a little...
Speaker: They have a little bit of a spicy relationship, don't they?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's going to neg her right into a romance.
Speaker: Neg her right into a romance, baby.
Speaker: We're in chapter four and we have liftoff.
Speaker: We waste no time.
Speaker: Now we're going into space.
Speaker: The shuttle takes off and heads towards the asteroid and each of the characters have their own routines as that happens, which for Borden includes reciting some sort of limericks.
Speaker: there once was a lady from Mars or he says something like that and he goes like we never hear the end of it which we never we never hear the end of it you never notice in media like people will be like ha ha ha I'm saying the first line of a limerick and you're supposed to just like laugh because it's going to be something raunchy but I never actually tell you what the raunchiness part raunchy part is it's like Krusty the clown there once was a man named Enos laughing
Speaker: I'm
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Meanwhile, down on Earth, the president is accepting congratulations, even though they have the backup crew and shuttle ready to go.
Speaker: It's a failure.
Speaker: Everyone's just like going, OK.
Speaker: OK, well, they launched.
Speaker: They're up in the air.
Speaker: But we still got our backup crew ready to go.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just in case.
Speaker: We got a spare rocket ship just in case.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Up on the ship, the now waitlist crew begins to float around and Borden plays a prank on Maggie, warning her that she is getting too close to the eject button, which causes the whole crew to crack up.
Speaker: It's hilarious.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: Burp.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: As they approach the asteroid, Brink waxes poetically and very Germanically.
Speaker: In fact, the word, the word was Teutonic.
Speaker: It uses twice in like two or three pages.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's such an old fashioned way of putting it.
Speaker: I loved it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: About what they're about to do, setting foot on an interplanetary piece of pavement that they can learn from.
Speaker: They arrive at the asteroid.
Speaker: Finally, they see its peaks and valleys as Brink and Lowe prepare for a spacewalk.
Speaker: Chapter five.
Speaker: And this is an interesting deviation from the game itself, because at the beginning, Maggie is with them when they plant the bombs.
Speaker: And in the book, it makes more sense that it's only Brink and Lowe.
Speaker: Why the hell would she be there?
Speaker: Why would she be there?
Speaker: Brink and Lowe attach the charges to the rock surface and then they get back in and we get a little aside from Ludger talking about how he has a terrible fear of heights, stepping from an experience at the Kern Cathedral where his father forced him to enjoy the view from the top at the age of six.
Speaker: I love this detail.
Speaker: He forced me to enjoy the view.
Speaker: It's such a great line.
Speaker: It's it's such a it's such an angry kid line.
Speaker: You know, you're still years later.
Speaker: Still years later.
Speaker: He forced me to do this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Can or as for you normies out there, cologne.
Speaker: As they call it for you, not to tonics for you.
Speaker: Not toots.
Speaker: and their toots toots toots if i had a podcast about german history the fans would be called the toots sweets i think god damn it now we have to do that kevin i don't have time but but it's a moral imperative we have to do it's a moral imperative uh get me robert evans um
Speaker: They fly the shuttle.
Speaker: Let's make it happen.
Speaker: They fly the shuttle away from the rock and detonate it, which doesn't seem all that spectacular from where they are.
Speaker: And then they have to wait several orbits to make sure the math was mathing in terms of the stabilizing the orbit of the of the thing.
Speaker: In the meantime, Maggie is videotaping and asking questions about every little thing on the ship.
Speaker: Houston calls up and says the orbit has stabilized.
Speaker: And as they wait for the rock to come back around so they can investigate it, Borden tells a joke about
Speaker: about the biologists in the Black Forest who see something move and the German biologist in the Black Forest who sees something move and he says, G-Gnomes.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: What a shit joke.
Speaker: It elicited the smallest ha from this reader.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Very gentle explanation of air.
Speaker: Nobody explains it to Maggie, though.
Speaker: But you know what?
Speaker: Yeah, that's fine.
Speaker: That's fair.
Speaker: Because fuck her.
Speaker: I just decided I hate Maggie.
Speaker: Fuck her.
Speaker: Brink wants to go down and check out the asteroid, which is within the mission parameters to investigate.
Speaker: They check the radiation levels.
Speaker: They're acceptable for one EVA, one spacewalk.
Speaker: And Maggie is going with them this time to document it.
Speaker: So they help her into the space suit and then head out.
Speaker: But as they approach, the rock seems to shake and move.
Speaker: Chapter six.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: Chapter six.
Speaker: Got rid of that thing.
Speaker: The opening of chapter six is from Borden and Miles's perspective as they observe the asteroid being weird and emitting light.
Speaker: Houston calls up to them to get more information on the occurrence, but they really don't have much to add aside from it's being weird.
Speaker: Yeah, and emitting light.
Speaker: And emitting light.
Speaker: And Houston's like, we're going to need more scientific terms.
Speaker: And Borden's like, I don't have anything for you.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think they exist.
Speaker: That's...
Speaker: going to have to be.
Speaker: Don't tell the German.
Speaker: We're not waiting around for him to explain how we should put this in Latin.
Speaker: Yeah, no, fuck that.
Speaker: Lowe asks them to look at it on the spectroscope, but the light from the asteroid that emitted only moments before has disappeared.
Speaker: And then Borden, I think, makes a joke about maybe the batteries died.
Speaker: Triple Z batteries needed.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: The funny guy.
Speaker: I'm so glad he's here.
Speaker: I'm so glad he's here.
Speaker: He's a genius.
Speaker: He's a genius.
Speaker: They enter the crevice and Lowe decides that they're only going to spend 20 minutes looking around because Maggie is hyperventilating way too damn much.
Speaker: He's like, he's like, she, he listens to the way she's breathing and looks at her thing.
Speaker: And he's like, yeah, 20 minutes is fine.
Speaker: Yeah, we're getting the fuck out of here.
Speaker: This is not worth it.
Speaker: They go in and they find what looks like an alien plate, though Lowe doesn't want them calling it alien.
Speaker: And he sure as shit doesn't want Maggie doing a news report right now.
Speaker: And they end up moving the plate out of the way, revealing a shaft that leads further down.
Speaker: Um, chapter seven, as they float down the shaft, they find, uh, there's a light pull of light gravity, uh, that like guides them down and they land on the floor of some sort of chamber.
Speaker: And Maggie says that she thought artificial gravity was a mathematical impossibility.
Speaker: But Brink then says anything that can be propagated as a wave can be reproduced, which is interesting.
Speaker: Okie doke.
Speaker: Okie doke.
Speaker: I'll take your word for it, my hair.
Speaker: I will.
Speaker: Hair doctor.
Speaker: The chamber they're in has no seams or anything joining the floor together, and it's as if it was perfectly poured in one go.
Speaker: Boston wants to get back to the ship, but Brink convinces him just five more minutes.
Speaker: There's a pedestal in the center of the room with four depressions that look like it could fit the plates.
Speaker: So they go and gather the plates while Maggie videos them, grabbing each of the plates and putting them into the depressions.
Speaker: And then nothing happens.
Speaker: They're like, all right, well, it's time to leave.
Speaker: Let's take the plates.
Speaker: But when Brink tries to take one out, a bit of static electricity zaps his suit.
Speaker: They then begin moving away from the pedestal and things begin happening.
Speaker: Lights, lasers, et cetera.
Speaker: They start and they start flying away back up the their their
Speaker: Their little jet packs are just enough to break the light gravity that is in this room.
Speaker: Outside in the ship, Borden and Miles are witnessing the bright lights and try to get in touch with Lowe.
Speaker: Inside, Lowe and the other two are losing the battle against the gravity because it's like the gravity is getting denser and it's pulling them down.
Speaker: Lowe then goes to the pedestal and tries to pull one of the plates out to stop the shaking.
Speaker: But then the plate pulls itself into the pedestal.
Speaker: We cut back to the ship.
Speaker: Borden and Miles watch as the asteroid transforms into something else.
Speaker: Their entire ship, the shuttle, begins to vibrate, and there's a temporary hull breach, which Miles fixes.
Speaker: Borden can feel every cell of his body shaking, and then after a bright flash, the asteroid is gone.
Speaker: Houston, again, calls asking for details, and Borden's like, yeah, it's gone, and it sure as shit wasn't an asteroid.
Speaker: That was a very high tech asteroid.
Speaker: It was.
Speaker: That was a very high tech asteroid.
Speaker: Faster than light asteroid.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Cora is miles is like, yeah, that's either gone.
Speaker: We don't know what to, we don't know where they are.
Speaker: So, and that's the end of the first part, part of this book.
Speaker: Phil, what do you think so far?
Speaker: Well, I mean, I,
Speaker: I without giving too much away, I this weekend played and finished this game, the dig.
Speaker: And I got to say, this has got to be one of the more just genuinely.
Speaker: I don't know, good uses of adaptation.
Speaker: There's just enough stuff that isn't in the core material.
Speaker: Well, I mean, and for all we know, it was taken out with a lot of, but a lot of stuff was just the expositional stuff, the expository stuff that was, that wasn't included.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: It's really very good.
Speaker: It's well-written.
Speaker: It's smart.
Speaker: It's good, hard science, which I think was the whole point.
Speaker: They really wanted to do like a hard sci-fi kind of thing.
Speaker: And it's done very well.
Speaker: Alan Dean Foster is the guy for it.
Speaker: He writes good dialogue.
Speaker: He elaborates on the characters without...
Speaker: losing sight of who they were in the game.
Speaker: And it's worth reading this having also played the game.
Speaker: I'm getting a lot out of this that I would not have if I just played the game.
Speaker: So I think this is already it's a great example of how you can do adaptation right.
Speaker: It's very cool.
Speaker: Very, very cool.
Speaker: It expands the story of the game.
Speaker: It feels like so far, because as we're talking about earlier, it's like the first 10 minutes of the game is just like,
Speaker: telling all this and like quick news snippets and a press conference and all that stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This really expand like Cora Miles and Ken Borden are like not characters in the game.
Speaker: They're there and they're named, you know, they're the reference, they're named and all that.
Speaker: But they make their exit to sweet as.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like.
Speaker: As our fans will know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The toot sweets.
Speaker: Toot sweets.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: No, I'm digging it so far.
Speaker: It's an evil book.
Speaker: And it goes fast.
Speaker: It's a brisk book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just...
Speaker: It's fun.
Speaker: The despite, again, all the hard science in it, it clips.
Speaker: It really does.
Speaker: It moves along very quickly and it's fun.
Speaker: It's a fun read.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's frigging great.
Speaker: Really enjoying it so far.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, Phil, I have one question for you then.
Speaker: Oh, OK.
Speaker: Sounds important.
Speaker: What do you.
Speaker: Oh, oh, OK.
Speaker: Well, well, I did mention the dig.
Speaker: I that one, I got to tell you, if anyone's interested, if anyone likes these old adventure games stuff, this one is a clearly a very ambitious game.
Speaker: It was LucasArts was trying to
Speaker: fucking explode onto the world of media.
Speaker: This is this was their attempt to make video games into a serious art form, you know, the way that the way that, you know, is kind of done nowadays by many games.
Speaker: They were really going for that.
Speaker: Having said that, so it's worth playing and you can probably you can usually get it on a sale on Steam or something like that for like three bucks.
Speaker: Having said that,
Speaker: This don't I don't know your life, man, but don't don't bother doing it without a walkthrough because this game was criticized heavily for how difficult it is.
Speaker: And that's no friggin joke.
Speaker: It is it is.
Speaker: It's not just moon logic, although that's a part of it.
Speaker: It's just there's so it's huge.
Speaker: It's a very, very big adventure game in the sense of the world is right there from the get go.
Speaker: And right.
Speaker: And you just you can be paralyzed for, you know,
Speaker: wealth of choice.
Speaker: So if that's something you're interested, do it.
Speaker: Do it with a guy.
Speaker: I didn't I don't honestly think I lost out on anything by doing it that way.
Speaker: I got I got the complete story.
Speaker: It was really interesting.
Speaker: I quite enjoyed it.
Speaker: Having after that, I actually I did play I played a couple of real short games that are both really weird.
Speaker: My lovely indie games.
Speaker: The first one you may have heard of, this one's called Click Holding.
Speaker: OK, yeah, I've heard of that one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Click holding.
Speaker: This is a weird.
Speaker: Weird goddamn game.
Speaker: Yeah, I know a bit about it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's done by the same guy who did I Am Your Beast and Life Eater and all that stuff.
Speaker: It's it's it's I think it's like two bucks or three.
Speaker: It's three bucks.
Speaker: It's three bucks on Steam.
Speaker: And you the story is that you are a guy who was found on Craigslist or something by this odd pervert in a mask.
Speaker: who has given you, you know, the little number counter clickers that you see people at Costco use.
Speaker: He's given you one of those and he says it turns over at 10,000.
Speaker: And if you click all the way past 10,000, he'll give you, it's implied that you have some surgery that needs to be done or something.
Speaker: And he will give you the money for it.
Speaker: It amounts to about $14,000.
Speaker: And it's clear that he gets off on this.
Speaker: There's a very sexual, uncomfortable sexual overtone.
Speaker: The mask is this weird ass Joe Camel penis looking mask.
Speaker: There's no other way to put it with these horrible eyes.
Speaker: And you have to.
Speaker: And it's.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: A, thank God it's one of the it's a clicker that allows you just to hold down the mouse button.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Because by God, you do have to get to 10,000 to beat this.
Speaker: There's no getting around it.
Speaker: You have to get to 10,000.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: But to shake things up, occasionally you're in this hotel room with him and occasionally he'll go, all right, no, it's too hot.
Speaker: Go and turn down the heat or something like that.
Speaker: So you got to do that.
Speaker: And he'll say, this isn't working for me.
Speaker: Click in that direction.
Speaker: And you can't keep clicking until you've done that.
Speaker: But there are lots of moments that I literally this guy right here, I sat this
Speaker: glass down on my mouse button and just let it go.
Speaker: And every now and then I'd hear the little dialogue thing and I go, oh, shit.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: What do I have to do now?
Speaker: So I turn them around or something like that.
Speaker: And it's very weird.
Speaker: And I hesitate to ascribe any real meaning to it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: And that's very difficult for me, but it is just a generally you are definitely not a curtains are blue guy.
Speaker: No, I'm not.
Speaker: I'm not.
Speaker: But I will say this one just felt aesthetically.
Speaker: It was about the mood.
Speaker: It was all vibes.
Speaker: No plot, just vibes.
Speaker: And and they accomplished it.
Speaker: It is an unsettling.
Speaker: Very unique game.
Speaker: Really interesting.
Speaker: I'm glad I played it.
Speaker: Just genuinely glad I played it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Another one along the same lines.
Speaker: It's been a good week for Phil, for old Phil and indie games.
Speaker: I played the Flayed Man.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Have you heard of this at all?
Speaker: Uh, no, I am looking it up right now.
Speaker: This is free.
Speaker: This is a free game.
Speaker: It is a point and click game.
Speaker: It is deeply Clive Barker inspired.
Speaker: It's like you play this guy who's basically in hell.
Speaker: And you are flayed.
Speaker: You have no skin and you're trying to figure out who you are.
Speaker: And in order to figure out who you are, you basically have to listen to three different people confess their sins over the course of about
Speaker: 20 minutes.
Speaker: It's like, and there are, and there are very basic, you know, it's, it's, it's point and click adventure stuff.
Speaker: There are, there's a little bit of moon logic, but nothing serious.
Speaker: You can, you can get through it pretty quickly.
Speaker: And there are two different endings.
Speaker: As far as I can tell, there might be more, but I got two endings.
Speaker: I played it twice and you were trying to figure out,
Speaker: who you are and what you're doing there and that sort of thing.
Speaker: And part of that has to do with how you judge these people, if you're merciful or if you're cruel.
Speaker: And the aesthetic is nuts.
Speaker: It is absolutely bonkers.
Speaker: It is
Speaker: low fi, low poly, you know, eight bit somewhere between eight and 16 bit.
Speaker: It's you know, what's fascinating is I'm looking at the steam page and so the game is free.
Speaker: But if you want to like support the game, there is a supporter pack DLC you can buy for five dollars, which gives you the soundtrack and the art book, the PDF of the art book.
Speaker: What a what a great way of doing that.
Speaker: That's actually a really neat way to to do that.
Speaker: there.
Speaker: I didn't even know those were included.
Speaker: I just knew that they had said they're like, look, we're working on another game.
Speaker: If you liked this, this is it's because it's a quick game.
Speaker: It's free.
Speaker: And if you like it, you can buy the DLC for five bucks.
Speaker: And that five bucks goes towards us making our next thing.
Speaker: And they've got an aesthetic.
Speaker: They've got a good handle on again, the vibes.
Speaker: It's incredibly Hellraiser, very Hellbound Heart, very
Speaker: You know, we have such pain to show you like it's that kind of shit.
Speaker: Such sites to show you.
Speaker: Yes, it's it's so it's so good.
Speaker: It's it's it's not a perfect adventure game there again.
Speaker: There's some some weird little moon logic kind of things, but again, not so bad.
Speaker: But what they have is a strong hold on what they want to do and the mood they want to convey over the course of the game.
Speaker: And that's worth five bucks to help them make something a little meatier.
Speaker: I was really impressed.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And worse comes to worse.
Speaker: It is a 15 minute game.
Speaker: You are out nothing at all.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: I was I was really impressed.
Speaker: I love the character design.
Speaker: I love the mood.
Speaker: I love that there are 15 achievements and I only got seven of them.
Speaker: I got I got to go in and find out how to get these other friggin achievements.
Speaker: It's driving me crazy.
Speaker: They put a lot out.
Speaker: There's a lot of love in this.
Speaker: It isn't just something they shout out.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I'm just really impressed.
Speaker: I love finding game studios that have that kind of they're just having fun.
Speaker: They're clearly having a lot of fun.
Speaker: I like watching them.
Speaker: I like seeing where they go.
Speaker: And Snoring Dog Games is one of them.
Speaker: And I'm going to be keeping an eye on them.
Speaker: They're outstanding.
Speaker: Yeah, I already have it.
Speaker: I downloaded it while you were talking about it.
Speaker: It'll take you 15 minutes.
Speaker: Kevin, you especially, because you're an adventure guy.
Speaker: And this will take you no time at all.
Speaker: It's so weird.
Speaker: I really, I can't say enough good things about it.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So, good week for me in terms of, like, adventure weirdness.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Really solid stuff.
Speaker: Still playing no skin.
Speaker: I was right.
Speaker: I predict because I hit kind of a wall and I predicted that I would unlock something and suddenly a whole pile of shit would fall in my lap.
Speaker: And sure enough, that's what's happened.
Speaker: So I'm good.
Speaker: Continuing along with that.
Speaker: That's a that's a sleeper.
Speaker: That's a real interesting game that I think
Speaker: I think it's doing very well as far as I can tell.
Speaker: Is it going to sneak onto your list at the end of the year, you think?
Speaker: It might at this rate.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just, again, the aesthetic, the vibes of it are so creepy.
Speaker: And I hate to put it this way because of the name of it, but they get on your skin.
Speaker: Hey.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I did buy Look Outside, but I promised myself I wasn't going to play it until I finish this guy up.
Speaker: So I'm going to be finishing up No Skin and then I'm going to start playing that because I've looked at some screenshots of that and read some stuff about it, heard some people talk about it.
Speaker: And that looks like it's going to be game of the year material big time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And keeping in mind that Look Outside is RPG Maker, so it has its own set of wonkiness.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: To overcome.
Speaker: You know, I'm not afraid of wonky.
Speaker: I can see past wonky.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, awesome.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, Kevin, with that in mind, what do you plan?
Speaker: So I beat Blueprints.
Speaker: And when I say beat, I mean, I got to the credits of it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because...
Speaker: Looking at some of my friends on Steam who have played it, it's... I played it for 14 hours, maybe 12.
Speaker: It took me 12 hours maybe to get to the credits, right?
Speaker: But there's people on Steam that have like 110 hours, 50 hours, etc.
Speaker: That VZ is playing it right now.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: I be said.
Speaker: But it's like, I like it and it's probably going to be on the game of the year list and I might come back to it and just like play more because when you beat the game, it's clearly not the.
Speaker: Did you play Hades?
Speaker: No, that's what I really need to play.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Hades, there's basically when you beat Hades, when you get through its first run, and you beat a run, it's like you realize, like, okay, well, you know, now I keep going and winning or whatever.
Speaker: And that's kind of like a thing with roguelikes and roguelikes where...
Speaker: The thing isn't just beating the game that one time.
Speaker: It's now going through and trying to do more things, checking off more accomplishments and things like that.
Speaker: And that's the same is true for blueprints.
Speaker: There's when you beat it, there's like, all right, well, here's all these other things that you need to try to do.
Speaker: There's mysteries to solve and things like that.
Speaker: And so after 12 hours, I'm like,
Speaker: okay, I like it.
Speaker: Maybe I'll come back around later to kind of investigate more in terms of the stuff that is going on in the game.
Speaker: But it's a fun game.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: I think with this crowd, with us, you and me specifically, I think if there is a...
Speaker: If a game has a new new game plus and we actually play it, that is our golden seal of approval.
Speaker: If it inspires us enough to actually keep playing it because we don't have that kind of time on our hands.
Speaker: So if it actually has that, then that's
Speaker: fucking impressive.
Speaker: If it's a new game plus that I need to keep playing, then yeah, I'm down for it.
Speaker: And that's the thing is like, I miss that with Alan Wake 2.
Speaker: There's like a new game plus that actually recontextualizes a bunch of things in the game.
Speaker: So, you know, I wish I had gone back and played that, but
Speaker: You know, we'll see what happens.
Speaker: I don't know if you saw my post on Blue Sky, by the way.
Speaker: Can I just point out that I am intensely embarrassed that I only near the end realized blueprints that like that it was a play on words?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It took I was like, I was like, oh, everyone knows that but me.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I mean, I didn't realize it until I got into the game.
Speaker: I was like a blueprint.
Speaker: Yeah, so there was that.
Speaker: So yeah, beat blueprints.
Speaker: I played the demo for a game called Repose, which is a one-bit game.
Speaker: horror, first-person horror game.
Speaker: I didn't get very far in it because it had, like, a... I don't know.
Speaker: It was, like... It was, like... It was right at the beginning.
Speaker: I'm going through, and there's, like, an enemy that can shoot at you from all the way down a corridor, but you... Oh, man.
Speaker: You're pretty much on the rails.
Speaker: It's not like you can dodge or anything.
Speaker: So if you're like not thinking about, so like I died to it twice and I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker: Moving on.
Speaker: That's not fun.
Speaker: So Repose wasn't a fan of that necessarily.
Speaker: Maybe I'll try it again when I'm in a better headspace about it, but.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But something I am deeply in love with, deeply in love with and is going to be on my game of the year list for 2025 is Promise Mascot Agency.
Speaker: Oh boy, this game is a hoot and a half.
Speaker: Okay, so if you have, it is made by Kaizen Gameworks.
Speaker: Kaizen Gameworks, their previous game, it's called Paradise Killer.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Okay, yeah.
Speaker: Phil, you played Paradise Killer?
Speaker: No, I just remember you talking about how much you...
Speaker: You enjoyed that one.
Speaker: Paradise Killer is, I think, one of my all-time favorites at this point.
Speaker: It's a really fun, like, little first-person adventure detective collect-a-thon type game.
Speaker: What the fuck is this game?
Speaker: This is so weird.
Speaker: I know, but weird.
Speaker: It's weird good.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: The basic gist of it is you play a Yakuza who, in order to atone for a fuck up, has to go to a cursed town.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So basically your Yakuza family fakes your death and sends you to this cursed town to run a mascot agency.
Speaker: so that you can earn money back to pay for the fuck up.
Speaker: Uh, like the, so you, your fuck up costs 12 billion yen, 12 billion yen got stolen.
Speaker: You have to find the money.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So you go to this cursed town to run a mascot agency.
Speaker: Mascots, by the way, are not people in costumes.
Speaker: They are creatures.
Speaker: They're actual creatures that look that are just like, you know, a mask like in this world, the Philly fanatic would be it.
Speaker: It's a thing, a real thing.
Speaker: Not how many trank darts do they have to use to bring that guy down?
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: God, Nannick ain't coming down.
Speaker: He showed up because he wanted to.
Speaker: He showed up because he wanted to, and we just let him entertain the fans at Phillies games.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Best not to push him out of his element.
Speaker: No, don't fuck with it.
Speaker: But the basic gameplay loop is you drive around town with your pickup truck with your second in command, Pinky, riding in the back.
Speaker: Do you see the photos?
Speaker: Yes, I do.
Speaker: Yes, I do.
Speaker: Pinky is a mascot that looks like a severed finger.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: is makes sense because as a yakuza when you fuck up at the beginning of the game you have your finger cut off so you know thematically uh it's good writing it's just good writing it's just good writing um so your entire thing is driving around town trying to find mascots who are out of work in town uh because a lot of the mascots in town are not like
Speaker: good at anything they're not like real big city mascots that have like special powers they just like look fucking weird um my favorite one is is an eel and he is he he looks like he has his chest ripped open and you see his skeleton on the inside that's just how he looks um awesome
Speaker: But anyway, he's very against eel fishing because the Unagi have been overfished.
Speaker: Anyway, that's... Is this a pet battler, like Pokemon kind of shit?
Speaker: No, it's not.
Speaker: There are there are so many little mini game mechanics in the game.
Speaker: So you have your overworld where you're driving around trying to recruit mascots.
Speaker: You're talking to people trying to find jobs for the mascots.
Speaker: You talk to like the guy who's in charge of the store like this, the shop owners association.
Speaker: You're talking to this guy who's investigating the mayor.
Speaker: He's like a lawyer who is investigating the mayor because the mayor is corrupt as shit.
Speaker: So you're working with him on trying to like find dirt on the mayor to get the mayor out of there.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Pinky is your severed finger friend.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Who is a pinky severed.
Speaker: Yeah, you get it.
Speaker: You get it.
Speaker: is working, is trying to like hook up that guy with a teacher in town who is like a, you know, the jet program where they send English teachers to Japan.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she's like a jet teacher who is from the UK and he's trying to like make the lawyer guy and the teacher like hook up or she is trying to make the anyway fun stuff.
Speaker: It's just it's just so you send.
Speaker: the mascots out on jobs and occasionally get a notification that there's an issue at a job and you have to send a mascot support hero out to help them.
Speaker: And the mascot support heroes are cards.
Speaker: So
Speaker: would is it a deck battler?
Speaker: Yes, kind of, because you got to collect mascot support heroes as you go around the map.
Speaker: You can buy them or what have you.
Speaker: Characters that you meet become mascot support heroes.
Speaker: And each each type of trouble that the mascot could get into is like falls into one of five categories.
Speaker: It could be like a mechanical issue.
Speaker: It could be a social issue.
Speaker: It could be something like that.
Speaker: So like one of them is like,
Speaker: The first one I ever got is like, the mascot, there's this guy named Mike Miller, this mascot named Mike Miller, who is like announcing the live stream of all of these events that your mascot is doing.
Speaker: And he's like, oh no, the mascot doesn't see that the door is too small and your mascot is like walking and gets stuck in a doorway.
Speaker: And it's like the mascot's in trouble sending the mascot support heroes.
Speaker: And then you have to play the cards and like knock off the health bar of the and of the health bar of the too small door.
Speaker: Oh, Kevin, I love this.
Speaker: You only get 60 seconds to do this, right?
Speaker: It's like a second countdown.
Speaker: It was like, okay, so you got to look at your cards.
Speaker: Some cards give you like you play.
Speaker: If you play this card, you get an extra turn.
Speaker: If you play this card, you get to draw two more cards.
Speaker: And as you like go through the game, you start leveling up your cards and they'll cost more to play.
Speaker: But then they also get more bonuses as you play them.
Speaker: That's just one of the things in the game.
Speaker: This is bananas.
Speaker: Oh, this looks great.
Speaker: This looks really, really good.
Speaker: The meta overworld is like collect-a-thon stuff where you're like, you're driving around in your pickup truck, your pickup truck, which is invulnerable, by the way.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Oh, thank you.
Speaker: You guys get it.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: And the main character, Michi, says that at one point.
Speaker: He's like, yeah.
Speaker: They're like, why do you drive this beat-up pickup truck?
Speaker: And he goes, I don't know.
Speaker: It seems invulnerable.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Let's just have some fun and crash the car around.
Speaker: And you get upgrades to your pickup truck.
Speaker: So when you first start out, he has a nitrous booster in the truck.
Speaker: And then you can get a more nitrous booster and you can hit speed upgrades.
Speaker: And then eventually you get a...
Speaker: You can find a thing where glider wings stick out from the truck.
Speaker: And so you can nitrous boost off the top of a mountain because it's a mountainous Japanese town.
Speaker: You nitrous boost off the top of the mountain and stick out the glider wings.
Speaker: And now your truck is just flying.
Speaker: flying around the town so you can fly to where you need to go and then you pull the wings in and you just drop out of the sky like a rock and like land on the street like inspector gadget i love everything about this this it is so delightfully weird yeah and the thing i love about it is that there's no like
Speaker: There's no Marvel, Latter-day Star Wars bullshit commenting on how weird it is.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: The thing that's driving me most insane recently is the new Jurassic Park trailer.
Speaker: Oh, I haven't even seen that.
Speaker: Where the guy lists off a bunch of things and Scarlett Johansson's character says, none of those things you said are good.
Speaker: And it's like that kind of stuff where it's like, it's like, no, self-aware.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Stop being self-aware.
Speaker: Just, just.
Speaker: And so, so the entire game, just like you're in this world and all the characters are already bought in, already bought into this world.
Speaker: There's no audience analog character.
Speaker: Like, yeah, just buy the fuck in and go with it.
Speaker: I, we need more of that.
Speaker: That's good to hear.
Speaker: That's really genuinely good to hear.
Speaker: So, yeah, the game is weird, but in a very positive way.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: It's going to be on my game of the year list for sure.
Speaker: This is going on my to play.
Speaker: Yeah, this sounds amazing.
Speaker: It's, you know, like Paradise Killer.
Speaker: If you played Paradise Killer and, you know, liked Paradise Killer, play by Promise Mascot Agency, even if you don't like it, because Kaizen Gameworks is amazing at what they do.
Speaker: And I think they're clearly in love with what they make.
Speaker: And that's which is really weird fucking shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: only in the best way possible.
Speaker: So I we need more developers like that just doing this.
Speaker: More of that the better.
Speaker: Look, we've got the Switch 2 announcements and we're staring down the barrel of 80, 90, $100
Speaker: price tags for AAA video games.
Speaker: Guys, if you're not already touched in the head by our Lord and Savior Indie Games, now is the time.
Speaker: Now is the time.
Speaker: Time to be touched by indies.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Is $25 for Promise Mascot Agency.
Speaker: And I tell you what, you're not going to regret playing this game and doing a bunch of weird shit like
Speaker: Oh no, you know, a playful dog has interrupted.
Speaker: The things that interrupt the mascot jobs are just like hilarious.
Speaker: Like, oh no, an uneven walkway.
Speaker: Fight the uneven walkway.
Speaker: The banality of it just is, oh, that's so fun.
Speaker: The cash register is broken.
Speaker: Fight the broken cash register.
Speaker: Oh my God, I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: But also at the core of this whole of the whole thing, which I didn't touch on, is that you're investigating a mystery.
Speaker: Well, this is happening.
Speaker: Well, this is all happening.
Speaker: You're investigating a mystery about this.
Speaker: That's, I haven't even played it and it's like 10 out of 10.
Speaker: I'm really looking forward to this.
Speaker: This looks like a lot of fun.
Speaker: The only critique I have for it is it probably takes a little too long to get to the game.
Speaker: I saw anime characters and assumed that.
Speaker: It front loads a little bit with story stuff, but once it gets going, it's tremendous.
Speaker: Absolutely tremendous.
Speaker: That's and it's entirely in Japanese, by the way.
Speaker: Okay, okay.
Speaker: The dialogue box, it's translated English in the dialogue boxes, but all the voice acting is in Japanese.
Speaker: It takes place in a Japanese town.
Speaker: It's all in Japanese.
Speaker: Like there's no
Speaker: There's no ifs, ands, or buts there.
Speaker: Japanese as hell.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: That sounds great.
Speaker: So that's what I've been playing.
Speaker: Sounds like we both had a pretty good lineup this week.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm about 14 hours into it.
Speaker: I probably I don't know how far I am into the game.
Speaker: But, you know, I'm according to the achievements, I got 32 out of 50.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: OK, I'm probably in the back half of the game.
Speaker: I imagine pretty deep.
Speaker: Yeah, I would ask.
Speaker: Yeah, I would assume.
Speaker: So that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you all for listening so much.
Speaker: I think it's it's it's wonderful that you listen and, you know,
Speaker: to join our discord follow us to blue sky you know all the stuff but phil i do have to ask uh you know how i said like the mascots in that world were were real uh i'm also finding those types of real world mascots congregating uh in my pool during the day uh they don't bother us but you know it's a lot of silly things
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: It's a liability thing.
Speaker: I'm not insured for for, you know, these guys, the Florida, the Florida Panthers mascot is is right now just floating in there.
Speaker: So you got any advice for that?
Speaker: You know, the funny thing about that is it goes way back into the history of venereal disease, if you can believe that it was 1756.
