Transcript
Speaker: Steel Magnolias feels like a film movie, right?
Speaker: It is one of my favorite films of all time.
Speaker: I have seen it maybe more than most movies.
Speaker: I quote it all the time.
Speaker: My senior project for undergrad was directing the play in Pennsylvania, where if you do it in down south, that's kind of like, oh, great.
Speaker: Yeah, another southern production of...
Speaker: you know, Steel Magnolias, but in Western Pennsylvania, it's not quite as, as overdone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, I fucking, I love everything about that movie.
Speaker: I love it so much.
Speaker: So yes, nailed it on the head.
Speaker: That is one of my favorites.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a heck of a cast.
Speaker: It's a great cast.
Speaker: The dialogue is so sharp and funny and poignant.
Speaker: And also, I think for me personally, I know every one of those women.
Speaker: I am related to every one of those.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: One of them is my aunt.
Speaker: One of them is my grandmother.
Speaker: Like, I know these people.
Speaker: And Robert Harling did such a good job of translating that kind of Southern culture of manners and rudeness all at the same time together.
Speaker: It's just love it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, and it's got Dylan McDermott in it.
Speaker: Part of my favorite game of Dylan McDermott or Dermot McRuddy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: My wife was playing that today.
Speaker: She was watching a romantic comedy.
Speaker: She went, all right, Dylan McDermott or Dermot Mulroney.
Speaker: I went, that's Dylan.
Speaker: No, that's Dermot Mulroney.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: actually that's a thing what's funny is they don't look alike but no no they don't look alike they don't really play the same kind of characters they just they don't play the same characters but they overlap enough in the same genres yes exactly they appear in the same types of movie even though as different characters like one is the ex-boyfriend and one is the love interest yes soon to be boyfriends
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Which one is which?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I would have to actually have their pictures with their names under them to remember.
Speaker: I want to say...
Speaker: I'm down now.
Speaker: Now, which one is not fucked up?
Speaker: Which one is in Dermot?
Speaker: Dermot Mulroney.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Dylan McDermott's in Steel Magnolias.
Speaker: He is the one that is the soon to be boyfriend.
Speaker: I would say I was just going to say Dermot Mulroney is the ex.
Speaker: Dermot Mulroney is like the sarcastic ex like Dermot.
Speaker: OK, so Dermot Mulroney is a funnier actor.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Dylan McDermott is more of a smolder straight face.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He plays a lot of lawyers.
Speaker: They both do, but you know what I mean?
Speaker: You know what else is Dermot Mulrooney?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin with me as always is Phil.
Speaker: And on today's show, we are talking Dylan McDermott and Dermot Mulrooney for the next hour.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Strap in, folks.
Speaker: Listen up.
Speaker: We're going to cover some uncut ground here.
Speaker: Yeah, but is it Dylan?
Speaker: Is it Dermot?
Speaker: Is it McDermott?
Speaker: Is it Mo Rooney?
Speaker: Is it Mickey Rooney?
Speaker: Is it Mickey Rooney or Mickey Rourke?
Speaker: Shit.
Speaker: Shit.
Speaker: That's the follow-up.
Speaker: That's the follow-up.
Speaker: Mickey or Mickey?
Speaker: Both of them.
Speaker: Both of them very problematic men in their own ways.
Speaker: Very problematic men.
Speaker: You saw Mickey Rooney in, what's it?
Speaker: The fucking Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Speaker: Breakfast at Tiffany's, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: That movie would be a perfect movie if you were able to go back in time and say, listen, you don't need this part.
Speaker: We don't need this.
Speaker: We don't need this part.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And it's not.
Speaker: And I've read the novella that it's based on.
Speaker: It's not that kind of character either.
Speaker: Like, Truby Campodi didn't write this crazy racist Japanese landlord.
Speaker: It was just a character that they amped up for the film.
Speaker: They're like, you know what this movie needs is prejudice.
Speaker: It needs Mickey Rooney.
Speaker: Rooney in yellow face fucking really just gonna we're not talking about this today we're actually talking about we're talking about something else we're talking about fable over the edge over the edge of the world over the hedge exactly
Speaker: by Christy Golden.
Speaker: Christy Golden?
Speaker: No relation to Golden Books.
Speaker: None whatsoever.
Speaker: None.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: So before we get too far into going over the hedge, you know where I like to go to when I'm over the hedge is I like to go to a website called patreon.com slash pixel pod.
Speaker: Hey, now, what can you find at a website such as this?
Speaker: Oh, it's like as a pixel it patreon.com slash pixel the pod.
Speaker: The things you can owe the things you can find.
Speaker: Oh, the things you can find.
Speaker: Yes, you can find.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: You can find I'm I'm vamping until we get I get to the list of the the people that pay for our for us for the tears.
Speaker: The tears.
Speaker: There's the tears.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Anyway, yes.
Speaker: So that you can find three tiers there.
Speaker: You can find three tiers.
Speaker: It's $1, $5, $10.
Speaker: And for, if you're on the paid tier starting at $1, you get access to things like Phil's little book blog where he talks about books.
Speaker: He talks about books that he likes, books that he hates, and everything between.
Speaker: Three out of five stars, two out of five stars, five out of five stars.
Speaker: Five out of five stars, I think.
Speaker: I think, I'm not sure if he's ever rated something five out of five on that series called What Are You Readin'?
Speaker: What Are You Readin'?
Speaker: For a dollar a month, you can get access to that.
Speaker: And you can add those books to your wishlist for hold at the library because that's a good place to get recommendations.
Speaker: That is a great place to go, yes.
Speaker: But for $5, you gain access to the ad free feed.
Speaker: And for $10, you gain access to your screen name and your preferred Gnome de Online Gare.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Your online war.
Speaker: Which if you're online, it's a war.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Gnome online.
Speaker: Gnome de what would, what would be the French transliteration of the phrase if we're talking about screen name,
Speaker: Nom de screen.
Speaker: Nom de... I don't know any French, so... Nom de... Ecran?
Speaker: No, but that's like a screen, like a screen door.
Speaker: Nom de eclair.
Speaker: Yes!
Speaker: Hold on, I've got to find this out.
Speaker: Now this is going to drive me crazy.
Speaker: Computer screen.
Speaker: Ecran de ordinateur.
Speaker: Wow, that's way more words than I expected.
Speaker: It's... Ecran...
Speaker: de ordinateur nom de ekran de ordinateur
Speaker: So nom to online gear is, you get it read off.
Speaker: And so for, I would like to read off the folks that have been supporting us at the $10 a month tier, Ruthless Mudder, Kyle Seaman, Jesus loves you, and friendly friend.
Speaker: Friendly friends, we love you.
Speaker: Thank you so much for being our friends.
Speaker: uh go to patreon.com slash pixelip pod and and join today you there's uh there's a free one i forgot to say the free one yeah there's a free one you can just join for free you can just join for free you can just hang out i'll find the link to our discord and go on there it's free get get on the discord
Speaker: I found the one that I wrote a five star review for.
Speaker: Oh, what was it?
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: You want to read the review?
Speaker: You got, you got it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You can read it and you can join us and you can pay a dollar like everybody else.
Speaker: Like everybody else.
Speaker: You can't just stand there in the, in the history section of Barnes and Noble reading your, your comic books that you're brought up there out of,
Speaker: Those people are despicable.
Speaker: They are the reason that capitalism is screeching to a halt.
Speaker: Them and them alone.
Speaker: Them and them alone.
Speaker: People who read at Barnes and Noble.
Speaker: Disgusting.
Speaker: What is this?
Speaker: A library?
Speaker: Come on now.
Speaker: And libraries have comics now.
Speaker: Did you know that?
Speaker: Libraries have board games now.
Speaker: Dude, it's crazy.
Speaker: I had no idea that they were so cool now.
Speaker: So yeah, all snark aside, go support your local public library.
Speaker: You can get your local library card and then you can get access to their digital catalog.
Speaker: So if you're not a person who, let's say you're like me and you take books out and then you forget,
Speaker: that you had the book out and then your library is like, Hey, we're charging you for, to replace the book because you never brought it back.
Speaker: Or you could just use the digit.
Speaker: I know there's some shenanigans with like digital loans with libraries, not to get too political here, but the publishers really fucking suck.
Speaker: And it's Reagan's fault.
Speaker: So is, I mean, that's, that's, that's a good rule of thumb.
Speaker: Something's wrong.
Speaker: You can probably dial it back to Reagan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we're talking about Fable?
Speaker: Fable over the edge.
Speaker: Fable, the source material, if you will, comes from a series of video games, a franchise that were developed starting in 2003, I want to say.
Speaker: Yeah, hold on.
Speaker: I should have actually had that.
Speaker: 2004.
Speaker: I was very close.
Speaker: 2004.
Speaker: And they were developed...
Speaker: By Peter Molyneux and his team at Big Blue Box.
Speaker: It was Big Blue Box, Lionhead Studios, and later some other people picked it up.
Speaker: But it was a Molyneux game in the sense, I mean that in every sense of the word, in the sense that it was strange, it was fun, it was trying to push some boundaries, and he way over-promised everything.
Speaker: He over-promised everything and under-delivered on literally all of those same things.
Speaker: on everything.
Speaker: It's like, it's not even that like it and the degree to which Molyneux, if you've never played a Peter Molyneux game, the gap between over and under, it's not like a little bit.
Speaker: It's like, oh, they just quite, they just didn't, they just didn't do it.
Speaker: It's like every game he's done has been some sort like No Man's Sky, right?
Speaker: That was a clear case of over promise, under delivered, but they got there and actually they are way beyond the way they're way beyond the expectations of the original promising.
Speaker: Now they have just kept dumping content into the game for free.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But that's aside.
Speaker: Every Peter Molyneux game is a fresh, fresh No Man's Sky.
Speaker: I don't know if I'd go that far.
Speaker: Well, no, actually I would.
Speaker: I think you're right on this.
Speaker: I think that the thing that this has the most in common with No Man's Sky is that if it, the Fable games in particular, and I liked a couple of his other games, like Black and White and blanking on the other ones, but...
Speaker: I really enjoyed them and I enjoyed Fable despite the fact that, for example, he was like, one day in this game, you'll be able to plant an acorn and later you'll go back to where you planted that acorn and there'll be a tree that's grown.
Speaker: It's like, no, nothing like that.
Speaker: And the shame of it is just like the shame of the over promise on No Man's Sky is that
Speaker: when you get past all that disappointment, all three of the base Fable games are actually pretty serviceable six to seven out of ten action RPGs.
Speaker: They're good.
Speaker: They're fun.
Speaker: They're fun.
Speaker: They don't have much in the way of
Speaker: I think the universe that they're in has an interesting sense of humor and it has kind of an old English style of fairy tale kind of quality to it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But but it doesn't none of that matters.
Speaker: It's just a fun, serviceable little action RPG.
Speaker: And it's every last one of them had the same instance of him going, no, but this time you're going to be able to like the third one, which is the one that this particular book
Speaker: takes place 10 years after.
Speaker: The big thing was you're going to have a kingdom and you're going to be able to rule this kingdom and you're going to all the decisions you make are going to have huge consequences on the game.
Speaker: And it comes down to seven or eight moments in the late stage of the game where they're like, well, do you want to help this guy or do you want to help that guy?
Speaker: And if you help this guy, we'll get more soldiers.
Speaker: You help this guy.
Speaker: We'll get more.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: There's nothing that's happened in any of these games that hasn't happened before.
Speaker: So Molyneux backgrounds prior to Fable is simulation at slash God games, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you got black and white, you got Dungeon Keeper, which is one of your favorites, I think.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Populous.
Speaker: Populous was big first.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I don't want to say.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And around the time of fable, he has he also has a movie, a game, sorry, a game called The Movies.
Speaker: Yes, which I also played and which was deeply underwhelming.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've played a lot of his games.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: I've played a ton of his games.
Speaker: Way too many Peter Molyneux games to end up, you know, be like, okay, well, maybe next time, buddy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And I think the thing for Fable, and it brings us to this book, is
Speaker: is that it is a, if, if there was an action RPG form of bullet time, fables one, two, and three would all have separate episodes because it's just, just, it's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: And, and it's, it's fine.
Speaker: And it's just overshadowed by how much bullshit he promised.
Speaker: If he had just been like, yeah, we're working on a really fun RPG and it has kind of a naughty sense of humor and, and you'll be able to be a warrior or a wizard, whatever you want.
Speaker: You can be a hero.
Speaker: You can be a villain.
Speaker: Yeah, that'll be fun, won't it?
Speaker: And I'd be like, here's my 60 bucks.
Speaker: I'm in.
Speaker: That sounds great.
Speaker: And it probably would have done a lot better if he had just kept his goddamn mouth shut.
Speaker: The thing that Fable as a universe and as a franchise that it doesn't really have is a universe that begs to be expanded upon.
Speaker: The thing about Fable that is so enjoyable is it kind of harkens back to older video games where as a kid, you're meant to envision yourself in this role.
Speaker: I'm the king.
Speaker: I'm the hero.
Speaker: I'm this faceless hero.
Speaker: That's me.
Speaker: That's me.
Speaker: And Fable does that very, very well.
Speaker: That does not work when you're trying to create...
Speaker: much larger world and a lore it doesn't yeah like i i think i remember i played fable i never played fable 3. i played fable 1 and 2. um and i i remember really liking them like yeah they were really fun games and i you know i might i probably replayed them a few times because that's just kind of kind of what you did uh
Speaker: back in, oh fuck, college.
Speaker: I was in college.
Speaker: I was in college.
Speaker: I thought I was a kid.
Speaker: I wasn't a kid.
Speaker: I was in college, Phil.
Speaker: You were legally not a kid.
Speaker: I was legally not a kid.
Speaker: You were kind of a kid.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so yeah, no, I, I remember playing fable and I was like, and I think I, I really enjoyed them.
Speaker: I haven't touched them since, you know, I haven't touched them in basically.
Speaker: Neither is Peter Molyneux.
Speaker: Neither is.
Speaker: Uh, which is kind of the point, because that's the thing.
Speaker: It's like, they are not, they have not been improved upon.
Speaker: They have not been, uh, helped along.
Speaker: Hey, Munchkin.
Speaker: I'm gonna have to bring my kid in at some point.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Play some goat simulator.
Speaker: You little weirdo.
Speaker: These games are not improved on in any way, despite how much he promised.
Speaker: Like you said, No Man's Sky came back and said, yeah, you're right.
Speaker: This isn't exactly what we wanted.
Speaker: Let's keep building on it.
Speaker: Let's put our money where our mouth is.
Speaker: That is not the case.
Speaker: And a great example of that is I tried to play...
Speaker: Fable The Lost Chapters on Steam.
Speaker: It's the only one on Steam and I tried to play it, but it has no game control support.
Speaker: It is, you can only play it with Wazda and your mouse, which isn't that big of a deal, except this game is not meant to be played
Speaker: with a mouse and WASDA and and i can't quite figure out how to remap it using some of these i mean things i'm fine with playing action rpgs or action games with with WASDA and mouse like i mean that's that's fine i mean a lot of times they're better suited i feel like melee games specifically are better suited for controller
Speaker: And it's like, cause like, obviously a third person shooter, I'm fine with a mouse.
Speaker: Like even preferred for my sake, because I feel like I'm more accurate, but yeah, Fable.
Speaker: Uh, yeah, I feel like that's.
Speaker: The point is they adapted it to computers, like to the PC for Steams, uh, and didn't, it couldn't even be bothered to figure out how to map it on a controller, which is how it was originally played.
Speaker: They went out of their way.
Speaker: Like, so there is no improvement.
Speaker: made upon this.
Speaker: And all of this is to say that when I even noticed that there were fable novels, I got a rotten feeling in my stomach where I was like, why is this a thing?
Speaker: This is
Speaker: I don't think a lot of people are crying out for the fable world.
Speaker: They're just fun to play, right?
Speaker: So, and then that brought us to our author, Christy Golden, who I believe you know.
Speaker: Yeah, Christy Golden.
Speaker: This is her second book on the show.
Speaker: The first one was read by Sam.
Speaker: Sam and I read it as the first book that Phil was out for baby daddy leave.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: at the beginning of the year.
Speaker: I was almost staring into the void.
Speaker: It was a beautiful time.
Speaker: So yeah, Sam from Afterthoughts and myself, we read the one of the World of Warcraft novels that Christie Golden wrote.
Speaker: Did not like it.
Speaker: We had a lot of very strong feelings about the book.
Speaker: And I think I covered a little bit of who Christy Golden was last time, but just to kind of refresh who she is, she's done, she's been across, she's like a lot of, done a lot of genres.
Speaker: She's done a lot of work for hire, specifically in the gaming space.
Speaker: So one of the most interesting things though, is that she was the first person to write a novel in the Ravenloft setting for TSR.
Speaker: Oh, now that's interesting.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So she wrote, so TSR, uh, for those youngins out there, TSR was the original publisher of Dungeons and Dragons before it was a, uh, a WOTC slash Hasbro, uh, products, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I just, let me tell you, TSR managed it just as well as Hasbro is right now.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Don't let anyone tell you about the good old days when it came to TSR.
Speaker: It was a shit show.
Speaker: Don't let anyone tell you that Dungeons and Dragons has ever been properly managed as... Never.
Speaker: Never.
Speaker: Just always kind of throwing shit at the wall.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Sometimes they make a lot of money suddenly.
Speaker: They don't know what to do with it.
Speaker: And then Hasbro is like, fuck it, fire half the people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which they did.
Speaker: Which they did last year.
Speaker: It was one of the biggest years of Dungeons and Dragons existence.
Speaker: The game of the year was Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker: And a blockbuster film based on Dungeons and Dragons was released.
Speaker: A great movie.
Speaker: A great movie.
Speaker: It was a movie that was so good.
Speaker: If you haven't seen Dungeons and Dragons, what's the subtitle?
Speaker: Honor Among Thieves or something like that?
Speaker: Go see it.
Speaker: It's a really great.
Speaker: You don't enjoy D&D to enjoy.
Speaker: It's a fun, funny movie.
Speaker: It's terrific.
Speaker: Chris Pine is just charismatic all over the goddamn movie.
Speaker: Batman is a just, he is a heartthrob and a half.
Speaker: He is adorable.
Speaker: No, that's... Play as the bard.
Speaker: The bard, because of course he is.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: He's great.
Speaker: He's great.
Speaker: He's great.
Speaker: And what did they do that year?
Speaker: They fucked up with the open game licensing.
Speaker: They fucked up with the open game licensing.
Speaker: They ended up having to let a bunch of people go from both WotC and the D&D team.
Speaker: Anyway, Dungeons and Dragons is never improbably managed.
Speaker: Where the fuck was I?
Speaker: Christy Gould.
Speaker: Christy.
Speaker: What are we talking about?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So Christy Golden, TSR.
Speaker: She was a TSR author back in the early 90s for Ravenloft.
Speaker: And she's done a bunch of Star Trek books.
Speaker: She's done several Star Wars books, Fate of the Jedi series specifically, where the other authors were Troy Denning, who we've spoken with.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And Aaron Alston, who is like Aaron Alston, I think is probably one of the names most synonymous with Star Wars novels.
Speaker: He has since passed away, passed away in 2014.
Speaker: But yeah, Aaron Alston was was one of the if you were talking about Star Wars novels like Aaron Austin was one of the guys.
Speaker: I think he was also one of the contributors to Rogue Squadron.
Speaker: But yeah, so she's she's done a lot.
Speaker: She's written for Assassin's Creed, Ravenloft, Starcraft, World of Warcraft.
Speaker: And so it's it's wild that the first book I read of hers for somebody who is just so widely.
Speaker: Widely experienced.
Speaker: First book I read did not care for it at all.
Speaker: So far, spoilers.
Speaker: Second book we've read, not caring for it so far.
Speaker: But we'll get into that tonight as Phil is taking the lead on this book.
Speaker: Yeah, let's, what do you say, Kevin?
Speaker: You and I put the body in the marsh.
Speaker: Let's put the body in the marsh.
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: Let's put the Balvarine body in the marsh.
Speaker: See?
Speaker: Somebody walking a fucking dog in three feet a month.
Speaker: What kind of fucking size a dog is that?
Speaker: That's a big fucking dog, man.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: I want to play this game again.
Speaker: It's actually a very fun game.
Speaker: I've got a TV over here and my Xbox 360 somewhere.
Speaker: I'm going to sit down.
Speaker: Belverines are basically just werewol.
Speaker: They're like werewolverines.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That's pretty much it.
Speaker: On a full moon, they drop down to five foot nothing and call you Bub.
Speaker: And they call you Bub.
Speaker: Suddenly they have a cigar.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: We love you, Wolvie.
Speaker: Fable, Edge of the World, Chapter 1.
Speaker: So we open with The King.
Speaker: That is what he is called, The King, because this is based on the character you played in Fable 3.
Speaker: They will not be giving The King a name.
Speaker: They will not be.
Speaker: And this is this is this.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: I did not notice that he didn't have a name.
Speaker: No name.
Speaker: No, I did not pick that up.
Speaker: I think probably because you, you already read Chrissy golden.
Speaker: So you, you went into this with no hope whatsoever.
Speaker: I was still hoping.
Speaker: No, it's, he has no name.
Speaker: This to me was kind of the first red flag.
Speaker: I don't find this to be a cute decision.
Speaker: Not really.
Speaker: It just kind of tell it.
Speaker: It's my point earlier about how these games are great for envisioning yourself in the role, having a power fantasy.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: They're great for that kind of thing.
Speaker: And so the fact that this is just the king and is suddenly going to be talking and it's like, honestly, for anyone who hasn't played Fable, this is basically tantamount to if you suddenly Link starts talking.
Speaker: uh you know he's like he's got a point of view and shit and uh and and it isn't just this kind of blank what do you mean link is always is always talked you know he's always yeah he's yeah excuse me princess we even covered that show we did we have to go back to those we do
Speaker: Um, so we open with the King and, uh, Jasper, who is his, uh, Royal man servant, uh, prepping for a wedding, a wedding for the King.
Speaker: Uh, we get a huge, uh, exposition dump that tells us basically it brings you up to speed on the final events.
Speaker: of Fable 3.
Speaker: It is about nine years since those events took place.
Speaker: You have this big war that happened, a revolution that your king slash you led to overthrow his brother to help fight against this.
Speaker: At first, you think the antagonist is your brother who is a corrupt psycho or something.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And then it becomes the darkness, uh, the, the shadow thing, the night.
Speaker: And it's this, it's just this, it's a kind of a bland, big bad, you know, it's just this living darkness that you have to fight in the end.
Speaker: Um, and so, but it's been nine years since you came in and, and fought those people off and won, uh,
Speaker: So we get up to speed there.
Speaker: Your loyal dog companion, which was a big deal in Fable 3, is there.
Speaker: He is getting old, but he's still the sweet puppy.
Speaker: He's still a sweet good boy, and he's the best character in this book.
Speaker: He is easily the best character in this book.
Speaker: The most interesting, to say the very least.
Speaker: They discuss the fact that there's no sign of Reaver, who was kind of a quasi antagonist in, I think, the second game, too, but definitely the third game.
Speaker: He's like this.
Speaker: He's basically this corrupt industrial magnate, because in the first game, it was all fantasy.
Speaker: And by the second one, they started getting into this London industrial era.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, we've kind of like moved on in time periods and Reaver is like he's also got the hero blood, but he's did.
Speaker: Has that scene happened yet where the guy is just giving the whole spiel about hero blood or is that?
Speaker: Not really, but, but it's, but it's understood in the game.
Speaker: The hero, being a hero is, is something that's inherent to you.
Speaker: It's like being a mutant.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Able to, you know, you have, you have more potential, you know, it's, it's very vague.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Reaver's one of those people and he used it for bad to basically make money and enslave children and stuff like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He is a piece of shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: We get a moment where they're talking about happiness and our king suggestively says, I'll be much happier tonight.
Speaker: Gross.
Speaker: And we get our first weird sex comment, which honestly, I will give this to Golden.
Speaker: An uncomfortably juvenile sense of humor when it comes to sex is absolutely part and parcel of this franchise.
Speaker: I will say.
Speaker: Yeah, that's perfect for this.
Speaker: That's totally fine.
Speaker: We meet Ben Finn, who's the best man.
Speaker: And all the comments, by the way, are like, you know what happens on the wedding night.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's like over and over again.
Speaker: It's like everybody's eyebrows waggled up and down.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And if you've played Fable 3 and gotten through it and didn't have sex with some rando, I don't know what game you were playing.
Speaker: So the king knows.
Speaker: The king knows how to fuck.
Speaker: That's just a fact.
Speaker: Yeah, we meet Ben Finn, who's the best man, former mercenary.
Speaker: We're going to get in these next couple of chapters a lot of just like fan service.
Speaker: You kind of like here are all your friends from the last game.
Speaker: And here's what happens to the people who died and the other of the.
Speaker: We get a somber moment of missing Walter Beck, who was basically the king's father figure, former advisor, taught him how to fight since he was a little boy, that sort of thing, and was killed by the darkness, the nightmare.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: in the third act of, uh, of, uh, the last game.
Speaker: Um, and then, yeah, and we just meet all the other members of the congregation who are basically just a smattering of characters from fable three.
Speaker: Uh, some of them will be reused.
Speaker: Some of them will not suffer.
Speaker: Some of them, this is the last time you're going to see them.
Speaker: Uh, here comes the bride starts playing and Layla, uh, the future queen comes down the aisle.
Speaker: She's got the king on his knees.
Speaker: Uh, Layla.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: And Phil just clapped and clapped and I just clapped and I clapped and in a non-racist way.
Speaker: Normally clapped and is a pretty racist thing.
Speaker: Usually it's a pretty racist thing, but yeah.
Speaker: Clatten clubs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm begging darling, please.
Speaker: Layla is a Layla is an eternal bop.
Speaker: So that's just all there is to it.
Speaker: I don't care which version, by the way, I don't care if it's Derek and the dominoes are unplugged.
Speaker: They're both amazing.
Speaker: Anyway, they both met during the war with the darkness.
Speaker: She's become best friends with page, who is a character from able three.
Speaker: Who's like a former resistance fighter who helped bring down the enemy during the ceremony.
Speaker: A messenger comes for King Sabine, who is one of the guests there and leaves.
Speaker: And as soon as they're married, like the ceremony happens, you may kiss the bride and Sabine immediately demands an audience with a king.
Speaker: So Layla, our now queen, insists on, well, if I'm going to be queen, I better be a part of it.
Speaker: I'm in it.
Speaker: So you're not just coming out here with the hors d'oeuvres.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she joins them.
Speaker: Cut to chapter two in the war room.
Speaker: We get about 19 different forms of everyone saying, sorry, but you married a king.
Speaker: This is how it works to Layla.
Speaker: And she's like, I'm fine.
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: I'll give it to Layla.
Speaker: She's like, I know I'm not pissed.
Speaker: I can't like chill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: Just pouring salt in the wound here.
Speaker: I got it.
Speaker: King Sabine busts in.
Speaker: He's furious.
Speaker: He's joined by a new person that the king doesn't recognize who seems to have PTSD.
Speaker: He's very shaky.
Speaker: He's very he's got the 50 yard stare, that sort of thing.
Speaker: And the only thing we get from him at first is they are coming, which is all so vague.
Speaker: Good job.
Speaker: Facebook in 2002 would have loved you.
Speaker: Uh, so it turns out he's from Samarkand, uh, which is a, uh, land far, far.
Speaker: I don't know if it's to the East, uh, but it's like, that's where the title comes from.
Speaker: It's on the edge of the world.
Speaker: It's far away.
Speaker: Samarkand, which is very, uh, very Final Fantasy 10 coded, uh, is, is the area place in Final Fantasy 10.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Samarkand is also, it's a city.
Speaker: It's an actual real life city in Uzbekistan, which I thought was interesting.
Speaker: And I've seen it referenced before.
Speaker: I don't know what that has to do with this because it's an entire kingdom.
Speaker: But yeah, Samarkand, as this goes on, you find out it's like this exotic faraway land.
Speaker: They're really trading in.
Speaker: It's very close to, yeah, it's very close to China.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because it's like Uzbek.
Speaker: It's the far it's the eastern border of Uzbekistan.
Speaker: And then it's like Tajikistan and then China.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And they're really trading in here on that kind of old-fashioned, like distant Orient mysteries.
Speaker: Oh, from the Orient!
Speaker: Which is very old-fashioned and problematic in some way.
Speaker: But that's Fable.
Speaker: Fable is very much an old English fairy tale kind of thing.
Speaker: It's got that juice.
Speaker: You know, I just realized, did you mention the prologue?
Speaker: Oh, I don't think I mentioned the prologue.
Speaker: That's where this guy is.
Speaker: That's where this guy comes from.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I totally forgot.
Speaker: I skipped this.
Speaker: I did not read the prologue.
Speaker: Why don't you let us in on the prologue?
Speaker: I skipped this.
Speaker: Okay, so the prologue is this guy that Phil is talking about trying to get away from the darkness with, and he like watches his, like his whole family has died and his sister is the only one left and then his sister dies and then he's in like a tent and like the people on the, in the tent are like,
Speaker: oh no, you're fine.
Speaker: You were, you were just about to fall, but we caught you and they're climbing on a mountain.
Speaker: And then some darkness dudes come in and kill everybody in the tent.
Speaker: And they're like, no, but we have plans for this one.
Speaker: Cut to chapter one.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, I, I, you know how with most books you get like 14 title pages and then you get to, you know, I just, you're flipping through and you got to chapter one and you're like, yeah, they're like, yeah, fuck yeah.
Speaker: So no, the darkness has plans for this guy.
Speaker: And now he has arrived in the kingdom telling them about the darkness.
Speaker: Not feeling so good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He can't explain all of the feelings that they're making him feel.
Speaker: His heart's in overdrive and you're behind the steering wheel because it's the darkness.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: It took me a second.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: That gives me that song.
Speaker: That song gives me such, like, it triggers me because I used to work as a karaoke DJ and anyone, I saw one guy do that song that I was like, holy shit, do that again.
Speaker: That was amazing.
Speaker: That almost anybody who wants to, it's just like Journeys Don't Stop Believin'.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You really got to have control over that falsetto to do any darkness songs.
Speaker: Are you touching me?
Speaker: To quote Todd in the shadows, 98% of falsetto is bad falsetto.
Speaker: And 98% of that 2% of good falsetto is also bad falsetto.
Speaker: So it's a motherfucker of a song.
Speaker: Anyway, he believes in a thing called love.
Speaker: He believes in a thing called love, even though it's not being shown to him in this moment.
Speaker: Although they do, they send him off to rest.
Speaker: They're like, this fucking kid is on his last legs.
Speaker: Let's send him off and get some rest.
Speaker: The king asks Sabine if his borders are safe, and Sabine is a total prick about it.
Speaker: uh, uh, in a passage I would, uh, I would like to read because yeah, I know you're a young King, but Jesus Christ, man, uh, safe.
Speaker: Sabine was practically jumping up and down with everything that lad has said and more to come.
Speaker: Take the cotton out of your ears and listen, listen, they let him live to brag about themselves.
Speaker: Surely things darker than a teenage boy can cross the mountains.
Speaker: It's like, all right, all right.
Speaker: Let's not forget.
Speaker: I'm the King here.
Speaker: Like, just like,
Speaker: I'm not a fan of Kings personally, but like, I don't know, man.
Speaker: I don't know if you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A cab.
Speaker: All Kings are bastards.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: But when one King screams at another one like this, it is kind of funny.
Speaker: I will say it is kind of funny.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: They make a plan to go to Samarkand and leave the new queen, Layla, to rule the kingdom in his stead.
Speaker: So it's like, okay, cool.
Speaker: And then, and then- They're asking her to ease everybody's worried minds.
Speaker: They're begging, darling, please.
Speaker: Layla.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: Now, this is my favorite part of this chapter.
Speaker: After all this has been done, after you've got this shell-shocked kid, you've got a wedding interrupted, you've got a king yelling at another king, the potential of dead motherfuckers everywhere and abandoning your new bride in a matter of days, probably.
Speaker: Then they just go back to the wedding reception and
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, those shrimp cocktails aren't going to eat themselves.
Speaker: I mean, we got a cake to cut people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And just as they get down there and have a little fun, it's interrupted again by the boy waking again, which leads me to wonder why this was put in.
Speaker: Why didn't you just have the boy keep talking?
Speaker: You didn't have to have a moment of like, well, let him rest.
Speaker: And then I recognize that in real life.
Speaker: That's probably how it would go.
Speaker: We don't need that.
Speaker: We don't need the double beat.
Speaker: It's such an unusual choice.
Speaker: And we gain nothing from it.
Speaker: And that cuts to chapter three.
Speaker: The boy, we find his name is Sean.
Speaker: He is awake and eating chicken and seems to be doing much better after his, what?
Speaker: 12 minutes.
Speaker: It had to be like, yeah, it was a real power nap.
Speaker: It was like, just go nap.
Speaker: You know, they get down there.
Speaker: They, they, they eat some, yeah, they eat a shrimp cocktail.
Speaker: Sean wakes up, takes a bump and, uh, yeah, pretty much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: low or like, yeah, it's so yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: He's he's, but he's doing better.
Speaker: He says he doesn't want to go back, but he's happy to tell them what he knows.
Speaker: We get this, um,
Speaker: kind of meandering history of Samarkand and his life fucking story along with it, basically just going on and on basically gives them the idea that their emperor, who was a good emperor, married a mysterious masked woman and became cruel because of her.
Speaker: Because, you know, when the pussy's good, you're willing to.
Speaker: And don't don't forget that she had to wear the mask and had to hide away because.
Speaker: If you looked upon her, you were just way too horny.
Speaker: You're like, you just had to have her.
Speaker: This is the female version of the male character that every 14-year-old makes in this D&D game.
Speaker: They're like, I don't like a 25 charisma.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Roll to seduce the dragon is basically...
Speaker: Just this is a lawful evil version of that.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Although that's all kind of evil.
Speaker: So finally, the emperor dies and the empress takes over.
Speaker: And the emperor had gotten kind of cruel after he married her.
Speaker: But he makes her.
Speaker: She makes the cruel emperor look like Daddy Warbucks.
Speaker: Balverines, which we mentioned before, start hunting people at night.
Speaker: And it's said that the Empress calls to them.
Speaker: So we get the rundown.
Speaker: The adults leave to let Sean rest and presumably finish his chicken and maybe sleep more than 12 minutes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The boy asks the king to leave a candle burning.
Speaker: He's still freaked out about the darkness.
Speaker: The king remembers Sir Walter's possession by the darkness.
Speaker: That's how he died.
Speaker: It actually is a pretty awful scene in the third game.
Speaker: He just gets poured into by this living blackness, and it's pretty rough.
Speaker: And they have a big discussion here deciding whether or not they should go ahead and kill this kid.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is he possessed by the darkness?
Speaker: Is he is this just a safe thing to do?
Speaker: And they decide ultimately that they're only going to do it if it proves he proves to be possessed.
Speaker: And then the king and queen leave to fuck.
Speaker: Finally.
Speaker: Finally.
Speaker: We've had fucking jokes, you know.
Speaker: Fucking jokes.
Speaker: We got, uh, indeed we do.
Speaker: The King said, but no more work tonight.
Speaker: I can hear that the celebration is still in full swing downstairs.
Speaker: They're still partying.
Speaker: Uh, my lovely bride and I, however, will be retiring.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Ben said with a straight face, our rulers need their rest.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Said the King, a great deal of arrest, very, uh, restful rest and lots of it.
Speaker: It's like, I haven't had a blow job in nine years.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: And yeah, I think Layla is described as being really, really goddamn hot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, that's... It's a fable character.
Speaker: It's supposed to be somewhat like weirdly over-sexualized.
Speaker: Over-sexualized, but also probably demanded to wait until the wedding night.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which would have been very appropriate for that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Chapter four, the queen wakes up and immediately makes it weird.
Speaker: Just immediately starts making sex jokes.
Speaker: Back to the king.
Speaker: It's not the morning yet.
Speaker: It's still the middle of the night.
Speaker: The king wants to show her something, and it ain't his penis for once.
Speaker: He takes her to a guild seal that he finds in the family catacombs.
Speaker: The guild seal in game is basically your fast travel.
Speaker: It's a device that you use to prove that you're part of the Heroes Guild and you can use it to hop from one checkpoint to another.
Speaker: And he basically shows her how to use it as a teleportation to this secret sanctuary abode that he has.
Speaker: Which is the...
Speaker: One of the things I do know about Fable 3 is the convoluted pause menu.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Did she write in the pause menu here?
Speaker: Is this what that is?
Speaker: I didn't even think about that.
Speaker: Is this the fucking pause menu?
Speaker: If it is, then we need to give Christy Golden way more credit because that's some clever shit.
Speaker: I hadn't thought about that, and I can totally see it now.
Speaker: I can't tell you.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: We get a lot of moments in this chapter and beyond, actually, where the queen is wearing her inner monologue of basically her going, well, this is crazy.
Speaker: This is nuts.
Speaker: But she always kind of brushes it aside by saying something like, well, he's my husband.
Speaker: So, of course, it must be safe, which is a bad theory for anybody.
Speaker: Really bad, bad theory.
Speaker: It's not a great assumption, you know?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No, they, they explain fast travel a little more and then Jasper shoes them off to fuck a few more times before the sun comes up.
Speaker: The sun, the king and the boner.
Speaker: That's actually the, that was the running working title of this book for a while.
Speaker: The son, the king and the boner.
Speaker: It was, yeah, C.S.
Speaker: Lewis actually, that was found in a manuscript in his little Narnia series, The Son, the King and the Boner.
Speaker: The screw tape letters were a very different book originally, is all I'm saying.
Speaker: He was a horny son of a bitch, a horny Anglican.
Speaker: Is there any other kind?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: me that'll that'll do for our literary joke hey yeah good old cs uh he uh was not a fan of he was it cs lewis that did not like tolkien no they were friends
Speaker: Or did not like the Hobbit originally.
Speaker: No, they were friends.
Speaker: I feel like Lewis did not like the Hobbit as a book.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: My wife is currently reading through the entire series of those books, the Narnia books.
Speaker: She's reading them to our son.
Speaker: They couldn't be more different from the Hobbit.
Speaker: In terms of takes on fantasy, they are very, very different.
Speaker: Very different.
Speaker: They're both clobbered with Christianity, just absolutely gobsmacked with like Jesus.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: I will say I found it.
Speaker: I'm listening in every now and then, and it is funny.
Speaker: It has kind of a – you can tell J.K.
Speaker: Rowling probably got a lot of inspiration from these books.
Speaker: There's a lot of that.
Speaker: Yeah, J.K.
Speaker: Rowling does like to read the classics, your Lewises, your Tolkens, your Hitlers.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I mean, let's face it.
Speaker: C.S.
Speaker: Lewis probably wouldn't have been a big fan of trans folks either.
Speaker: We don't know.
Speaker: You know what, though?
Speaker: Mr. Tumnus screams envy.
Speaker: He does scream envy.
Speaker: But I don't... Yeah, just continuing in the long historical tradition of British authors being terrible.
Speaker: That's something...
Speaker: British people being terrible.
Speaker: It's part of their history.
Speaker: And I know because I'm an American, it's part of my history too.
Speaker: I'm Southern.
Speaker: I learned it from watching you, Dan.
Speaker: I'm a Southerner who was born and raised in Germany.
Speaker: I know about cultures that have iffy histories.
Speaker: I say that.
Speaker: I say that without any one big criticism.
Speaker: And I can at the very least claim that my Irish family came over because of the potato famine.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: I'm going to get re-equipped here.
Speaker: Re-equipped.
Speaker: You have got Happy Dad.
Speaker: Pineapple Happy Dad.
Speaker: Sláinte.
Speaker: Sláinte.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: We cut to chapter five.
Speaker: We meet, well, not meet, but we're dealing with Ben, who is one of the officers there, and Timmons, who is the captain of the guard.
Speaker: These are also both former Fable 3 characters.
Speaker: They have approached the town of Blackholm.
Speaker: Uh, they meet up with Russell, who is the Lord mayor who used to be this young kind of on, you know, it's, he's grown.
Speaker: Like that's the idea.
Speaker: He was this young untested buck, uh, during the game.
Speaker: And now he's grown to this great leader of men and all that.
Speaker: Um, Ben, uh, we've, you find out Ben lost his brother here.
Speaker: There was a great, uh,
Speaker: attack of half breeds, uh, that attacks city.
Speaker: It's kind of, it's, uh, it's implied.
Speaker: It's kind of Balverine ish.
Speaker: I forget.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think they're, I think it's supposed to be Balverines.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, uh, and he lost his brother here.
Speaker: So there's some, there's some, uh, sad notes there.
Speaker: Uh, they explain, explain that they're looking for recruits, uh, to take with them to go and fight the darkness over in Samarkin and eventually Russell reluctantly agrees.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Meanwhile, the king is running his own recruitment drive.
Speaker: They don't call it a draft, but it feels very draftish.
Speaker: Feels very draftish.
Speaker: I'm not going to lie.
Speaker: It was drafty.
Speaker: Sean has stayed behind to help with more information on his homeland because they really don't know jack shit about Samarkin.
Speaker: So this is, he can be very helpful in that sense to help with culture shock and whatnot.
Speaker: Um, he's basically become a fixture among the King and the court.
Speaker: Everyone likes him.
Speaker: The guards all kind of look out for him.
Speaker: Uh, everyone knows what he's been through and they're all veterans of fighting with this horrible darkness thing.
Speaker: So they all kind of feel sorry for him.
Speaker: Um, six weeks later, the fleet that they have been prepping, uh, for Samarkand is ready to sail.
Speaker: And wait, what's the time jump again?
Speaker: Six weeks.
Speaker: Six weeks.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Six weeks.
Speaker: We cut to the final dinner the night before they're going to leave.
Speaker: Everyone kind of reaffirms their dedication to the cause.
Speaker: And Sean decides ultimately, you know what?
Speaker: I'm not afraid anymore or I am afraid, but I'm going to go with you anyway, which is going to help them a lot.
Speaker: Um, we get a big procession, uh, the next day out in the streets as they leave the King and Queen and the court are all in this big parade in front of the peasantry, uh, who are, you know, throwing flowers and sharing for them and whatnot.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: which is a big part of fable.
Speaker: When you start to get famous enough, it's kind of hilarious.
Speaker: You get like famous, your reputation goes up and peasantry like will like stop and start cheering for you out of nowhere and like clapping and stuff.
Speaker: And you'll just be like trying to work on something and you'll hear, yay, clap, clap, clap, clap.
Speaker: And you
Speaker: And the turn around is this random townsperson going, yay!
Speaker: It's so strange.
Speaker: But that's basically what they're doing.
Speaker: The king's going to have to leave Rex the dog behind, which is the responsible thing to do.
Speaker: You know, that good boy has put in his time.
Speaker: And he took a bullet for him at the end of Fable 3.
Speaker: Spoilers.
Speaker: Sweet boy.
Speaker: Yeah, he's a good boy.
Speaker: So he's just going to stay behind and be at the queen's side while he's away.
Speaker: The king and the queen share a kiss and everyone around them does their best impression of a TV studio audience from 1991.
Speaker: Like literally he kisses her and Ben goes, yes.
Speaker: And you can just feel everyone going.
Speaker: Did you guys fuck?
Speaker: It's horrifying.
Speaker: It's really bad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The ship sails and the queen is left watching them go silently, hoping that her king will return.
Speaker: Chapter six, the ship is decked with constant storms.
Speaker: It's cold and miserable.
Speaker: And the king and his party below decks discuss their plans, which we got right now.
Speaker: Over here to the west is your dweller town of Mist Peak, Sean said.
Speaker: These are the Blade Mountains that I crossed.
Speaker: A shadow passed over his face for a moment, but he continued.
Speaker: The mountains embrace Samarkand on three sides, west, north, and east.
Speaker: The south is the shoreline of our country.
Speaker: We will make landfall at Fairwinds, a very wealthy port, and follow the main trade route as directly as possible to Zahadar, which is here.
Speaker: He tapped the northeast corner of the map.
Speaker: And this is...
Speaker: This is where I started thinking right now we're, we're a third of the way through the book.
Speaker: Those of you at home might recognize that not much has happened yet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We got some, we got, the King got married and it got interrupted and he had sex.
Speaker: And that's about it.
Speaker: And a lot of people have been doing a lot of talking about what's going to happen next.
Speaker: And we get even more top topographical lowdown.
Speaker: I cut that off.
Speaker: I cut that like in half.
Speaker: There was even more like and over here is this on the map and over here is that.
Speaker: And then we do this thing and then.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's like, are we going to we're not going to do all this shit, right?
Speaker: Literally, you don't you don't.
Speaker: This is not a thick book.
Speaker: We don't have a lot.
Speaker: room.
Speaker: What is this for?
Speaker: It's very weird.
Speaker: A soldier accuses Sean of being possessed by the shadows and he is reprimanded by the king.
Speaker: Meanwhile, meanwhile,
Speaker: The queen is getting a sword training from page.
Speaker: It's going as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's going as well as you could expect.
Speaker: She's, she's not very good at this page briefly mentions fighting in the arena alongside the king, which was a big, I think,
Speaker: I want to say all of the fable games had a big gladiatorial level and there were always a really fun point in the game.
Speaker: And it was just like a giant boss rush.
Speaker: And it was a lot of fun.
Speaker: And, and the third one was no different and pages with him at that point, Timmons approaches to test our new queen.
Speaker: And he's pretty intense about it.
Speaker: He's got very, very intense.
Speaker: Yeah, he's got like prepper vibes.
Speaker: He does.
Speaker: He has Clancy Brown from Starship Troopers vibes.
Speaker: Yes, like he's just he kicks her ass.
Speaker: He doesn't take it easy, Your Honor.
Speaker: She's in the dirt.
Speaker: Honestly, he would be played by Clancy Brown.
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: That would be good.
Speaker: Yeah, that would be a good choice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, he's, he's just, he just really kicks her ass and doesn't allow for anything else.
Speaker: And, and page chastises him.
Speaker: Layla goes for a bath and wonders at how bad of a fighter she is.
Speaker: And hopefully she won't have to use that.
Speaker: Basically the page chases down Tim and page, not the page page chases down Tim and choose him out, but admits that.
Speaker: that there is a lot on the line.
Speaker: And Tim and Tim and basically says, you know, make no mistake.
Speaker: I'm going to stay on top of her with this stuff because just a little mistake could cost her life.
Speaker: And, uh, the King just started fucking her and we don't want to upset him.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: He's going to really look forward to having sex with her when he comes back.
Speaker: And that's the end of that chapter.
Speaker: And that's where that's that's a third of the book.
Speaker: That is a third of the book.
Speaker: Kevin, what do you think so far?
Speaker: So far, super boring.
Speaker: Not a fan of this first third year.
Speaker: We we we're not.
Speaker: doing anything which at the risk of sounding uh repetitive that's the same thing that happened in the world of warcraft book that we wrote by her where interesting there were there was just like thing there were things happening but our protagonist was like well i wish i could do something about it
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: And then nothing.
Speaker: Big case of the Nick Carraways over here.
Speaker: Very much so.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I, yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's so strange.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: Yeah, it's boring as hell.
Speaker: It doesn't really have anything going on.
Speaker: Like, why are we?
Speaker: Why are we doing this?
Speaker: Why are we taking so long to get to this place?
Speaker: Why can't we get to it?
Speaker: Why can't we get to the shit?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Set the stakes and go buddy.
Speaker: There was a lot of shit that happened in the fable games.
Speaker: There was a lot of talking and stuff that happened, but it was always, it always clipped along.
Speaker: And so there are, there are aspects of this that feel fable.
Speaker: Like I said, like the kind of, you know, sixth grade version of, of a sex humor that feels appropriate, but it's so dull.
Speaker: And I don't, we don't even have the, the only,
Speaker: Hello, Ripley.
Speaker: The only fight.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: The only fight we've had in this entire thing has been a sparring match between the queen and during training.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, we've gotten nothing.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's... We got nothing.
Speaker: We got nothing.
Speaker: There's some more... I mean, I read ahead a little bit, and there's some stuff coming up, but it's also not like...
Speaker: It's like way too far into the book for any of the stuff that's coming up to just be happening now.
Speaker: Every single thing that happened in this whole third of the book could have been covered in a first chapter.
Speaker: That's the same length as the first chapter of this book.
Speaker: Yeah, it could have been covered very, very easily.
Speaker: This one, I get the impression based on her resume that Christie Golden is a very good writer.
Speaker: I would like to read literally anything else by her because I'm not I didn't like World of Warcraft, the World of Warcraft book at all, which was Rise of the Horde.
Speaker: I think it was.
Speaker: Not my favorite and not my tempo.
Speaker: I get the impression that this is a car payment for her.
Speaker: This was not like... Yeah.
Speaker: The other thing I'm not a huge fan of is stylistically, Christy Golden seems to really fucking love adverbs.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just really, really loves the adverb so much.
Speaker: And I don't, they, they so much that they get a little distracting in the prose.
Speaker: Like sipped greedily is something that happened a bunch of times in the world of Warcraft book.
Speaker: And I'm already at my sipped greedily quote count is up to one and it should be zero.
Speaker: It should be zero.
Speaker: It should be zero.
Speaker: choose a better verb you know it's gulps or or you know something don't sip greedily i'm not totally against adverbs just just the amount of adverbs and the way where they're being used just at a basic level uh it did suddenly it i shouldn't be thinking about them
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, there was a friend of ours in film school.
Speaker: She was a sound designer and who once told me that the point of being a good sound designer is that no one should notice that you've done anything.
Speaker: You know, and I feel like that there's a lot to that with writing and there's lots of that with any creative endeavor.
Speaker: It's making it look easy.
Speaker: And if you're being dragged out of it by adverbs, you
Speaker: Oh, that's not great.
Speaker: That's really not great.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: But I, so, you know, I, I, that all being said, I would still love to give, like read another book by, by hers.
Speaker: That's a little bit more maybe critically acclaimed or what have you, just because so far one and one third of the way into two books, I'm not having a good time.
Speaker: It feels padded and the book is 210 pages.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: It's a short book.
Speaker: It's a short book.
Speaker: That's why it felt like I was moving really quickly.
Speaker: I was like, oh.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: That's why I picked this one.
Speaker: I picked this one specifically after our last book because I was like, we need something breezy.
Speaker: Something breezy.
Speaker: Something that probably could have been handled in an afternoon at the beach.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: We need to be trained.
Speaker: It was another fable book I was going to read, and then I noticed that it was 400 pages long, and I went, no, we're not going to read that one.
Speaker: We're not going to do that.
Speaker: Let's do something.
Speaker: Now it makes me even more curious about the other one.
Speaker: Which I think is referred to... They mentioned the Balvarine stuff a bunch.
Speaker: I guess it might have something to do with that.
Speaker: I'm not sure.
Speaker: The title is something about the Balvarine.
Speaker: The Balvarine Order.
Speaker: Yes, that's it.
Speaker: So we'll have to get to that one eventually.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But now that we've done that, Kevin, I have one final question for you.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I never thought you would ever ask me that.
Speaker: Why would you?
Speaker: That would be silly and strange for you to assume I was going to ask that question.
Speaker: It makes no sense whatsoever.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So what have I been playing?
Speaker: Alone in the dark and I, I, I beat it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Alone in the dark.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, it's like a seven out of 10 resident evil game.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's definitely.
Speaker: So it's, you know, it's got some fun puzzles.
Speaker: It's more.
Speaker: You think it's going to be more Resident Evil-y than it is.
Speaker: And when I say Resident Evil, I mean like...
Speaker: In the remakes and the originals, especially in the first three, you had these big areas.
Speaker: Well, more specifically, the first two.
Speaker: Let's let's use remake two as an example.
Speaker: You have the police station and you're going back and forth through the police station.
Speaker: You're solving puzzles and you're dealing with stuff and Resident Evil remake to such a fucking good game.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: I would happily sit down and play that one again.
Speaker: So you're going around the PlayStation.
Speaker: Alone in the Dark, so this is a remake of the first Alone in the Dark game.
Speaker: And the first Alone in the Dark game is kind of what sets the template.
Speaker: That and Sweet Home are kind of the things that set the template for the Resident Evil franchise, right?
Speaker: It uses the fixed camera angles.
Speaker: It was a PC game, so it had a little bit more raw power to do the fully, like,
Speaker: like more of a fully rendered deal rather than like the the pre rendered backgrounds that Resident Evil ultimately goes with.
Speaker: But that being said, the original Alone in the Dark, you watch a play through of that.
Speaker: It's like, oh, this is very much like it feel it looks and feels like the original Resident Evil, but it's got more point and click vibes as opposed to straight, you know, like action game vibes.
Speaker: Yeah, there's much more of a adventure game quality.
Speaker: Yeah, more of an adventure game quality.
Speaker: So the remake of Alone in the Dark is it basically comes in a world now where, you know, we've had the remake of RE4 and the remake of RE2 and we are very locked into that style.
Speaker: It uses the floating over the shoulder camera of of the remakes instead of the fixed camera angles.
Speaker: It's a lot more action game focused.
Speaker: There are a lot of puzzles to solve, but it's a lot more linear than a Resident Evil than you would expect a game of that heritage to be because
Speaker: and it hides it very well.
Speaker: Like you're going back and forth between around the mansion.
Speaker: But that being said, there's then these you're using this talisman to travel to other realms.
Speaker: And then these realms are basically linear levels where you're, you know, going around and you're solving a puzzle and doing a combat thing.
Speaker: And then you get back, go back to the mansion to do the next bit to get the next talisman thing to go into the new level.
Speaker: So it's like it's linear.
Speaker: It just hides it underneath the veneer of being more of that old school, old school, alone in the dark and old school Resident Evil exploring functionality, exploring gameplay.
Speaker: That being said, it's it's you know, it's fun.
Speaker: It's a little bit buggy.
Speaker: There's a number of times I had to reload just because my character got caught on a plane that was not the floor.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Okay, sure.
Speaker: Like I hit the dodge button and somehow that accidentally put my character on top of a crate.
Speaker: And now I'm like, I'm on the crate level.
Speaker: So I could go and walk on the crates, but I can't get back down to the floor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But like saving the game and reloading it just popped your character back onto the floor.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: So at least at least it solves the problem easily enough.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The game is very Lovecraft.
Speaker: And the.
Speaker: You know, what's funny is this Lovecraftian God.
Speaker: What's funny is I don't even feel comfortable saying the God's name once I realized that it was like, oh, Lovecraft just created a God and slipped the N word right in the middle of the pronunciation.
Speaker: I think I know which one you're talking about.
Speaker: You know which one I'm talking about.
Speaker: Shog.
Speaker: And I'm like, I'm not going to say it because I know who Lovecraft was.
Speaker: And that's what he did.
Speaker: He just got goddamn put the N word in the middle of this God's name because you say it the same way.
Speaker: That's who he was.
Speaker: That's who he was.
Speaker: So I'm not doing it.
Speaker: Fuck you.
Speaker: I'm not going to play your little game.
Speaker: I'm not going to play your HP.
Speaker: Get out of here.
Speaker: But anyway, it looked cool.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: Looks cool was the one of the most annoying boss fights I've ever had in a game.
Speaker: So yeah, six and a half, seven out of 10.
Speaker: It will easily, depending on the number of 2024 releases I play, it will easily not make my top 10.
Speaker: Like it will be the game that falls off the top 10.
Speaker: Like it's on the top 10 for now, just by default.
Speaker: But that's just because it's April.
Speaker: That's just because it's April.
Speaker: So so we'll see.
Speaker: We'll see how that goes.
Speaker: And then so the other thing it does, it has a quote unquote has two campaigns, but it doesn't really.
Speaker: So there's Emily and Carnby, the detective, and they are.
Speaker: with the exception of a couple of levels, some of those like individualized levels that I talked about, it's it's almost entirely the same.
Speaker: Now, had it been like you're doing the talisman stuff with the girl and then you're doing other stuff where you're like uncovering their truth about the cult with a detective.
Speaker: more like the original Resident Evil 2, that would have been kind of cool, but it's not.
Speaker: So I started playing.
Speaker: I immediately thought of Resident Evil 2 when I started playing the detective and I was like, oh, this is a lot of the same stuff so far.
Speaker: So I'm not I'm not too into replaying at all.
Speaker: But yeah, so Alone in the Dark.
Speaker: Finish that up.
Speaker: Next on my list is I think I'm going to go with the Thaumaturge.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yeah, that looks fun.
Speaker: That looks interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, that looks like it could be interesting.
Speaker: And probably more Bellatro.
Speaker: You know,
Speaker: I know local thunk is going to be dropping a patch soon with some fun little tweaks and changes.
Speaker: A couple of the cards, a couple of jokers are getting their abilities reworked and all that fun stuff.
Speaker: So that's what I've been playing.
Speaker: Phil, what have you been playing?
Speaker: Ah, I got Bellatro.
Speaker: Obviously I've been playing more Pacific drive.
Speaker: I'm getting further into the storyline of that one.
Speaker: Uh, cause that is built to just do side quests forever if you, if you want.
Speaker: So I'm trying to make a concerted effort to, uh,
Speaker: get through those single, the single player mode, you know, there's the single player mode, but you know what I mean?
Speaker: Just the, the levels, the quests.
Speaker: Um, and it's, I think the thing that this game has going for it more than anything else is I've never been more frustrated, uh, when I, uh, fail, uh, in one of these missions because I've worked so hard to get my car up to snuff and everything like that.
Speaker: And then I fail and I barely take anything home at the end of it.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But I like take a break, probably play a couple of hands of Bellatro and I will come back and I'll give it another go.
Speaker: At no point have I actually thought to myself, I don't want to fucking do this anymore.
Speaker: It's more challenging than I expected.
Speaker: But yeah, that's still going strong.
Speaker: I did finish a game called Little Guardsmen.
Speaker: And knowing my history with games, I know what you're thinking.
Speaker: And no, this is not a junior 40K game with a name like Little Guardsman.
Speaker: It is a kind of cute twee sort of, I like to think of it as like baby's first papers, please.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You're in this vague comedy medieval world and you are a 12 year old girl, the son of a son, the daughter of a...
Speaker: guard who runs a guard tower and it's kind of weird actually there's some angeles ashy aspects to it where your dad's like you play it for fun but like your dad's clearly like got like a gambling problem and stuff goes off the ponies and you're sitting there like doing his job for him right
Speaker: it's not as tense or, uh, or Soviet for that matter as a papers, please.
Speaker: But a lot of the, uh, aspects of the, the, you know, the gameplay is the same.
Speaker: You start every day and you'll get like a low down of, uh, here's what you should watch out for.
Speaker: Here's what you should do.
Speaker: Here's what, who, here's who we want.
Speaker: And you've got all kinds of different tools you can use to determine, uh, whether you want to let somebody in or not.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I accidentally became a goblin racist because I was just trying to follow the rules.
Speaker: I was a little kid trying to keep my dad in a job.
Speaker: And so when they told me if a goblin comes in, you throw him in jail, no questions asked, no matter what, I said, okay, because I didn't want my daddy to go away.
Speaker: And I was trying to help bring some money into this family.
Speaker: And I became a goblin racist as a result.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I think we've all been there.
Speaker: We've all been there.
Speaker: We've all been there.
Speaker: It's fun.
Speaker: It's cute.
Speaker: It's got more adventure game quality to it than Papers, Please, for example.
Speaker: The interstitial moments have a lot of old point and click aspects to them.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: It's got a really good sense of humor.
Speaker: It's got a good art design.
Speaker: I wonder who it's for.
Speaker: Because when I started playing it, I immediately thought, oh, Kevin needs to play this with his kid.
Speaker: Because it starts out very warm and funny, but also kid friendly stuff.
Speaker: And then about a third of the way through, they start dropping, you know, four letter words.
Speaker: It's like, oh, okay.
Speaker: And it's not bad.
Speaker: They never do anything untoward or anything, but it's like, and I'm sure you wouldn't give a shit.
Speaker: But some people out there might start playing this game and be like, oh, this is- They might have an issue.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: this will be a fun game I can play with my kid.
Speaker: And then like halfway through, they're like, Oh, what the fuck guys?
Speaker: Um, it does a little bit of a bait and switch.
Speaker: It didn't bother me cause it was just me.
Speaker: Uh, but fair warning.
Speaker: Um, that one was released this year.
Speaker: I haven't heard anything about it and it popped up on one of my suggestions things.
Speaker: And I, I was like, this looks really cute.
Speaker: Uh, and I enjoyed it.
Speaker: I, uh, there are multiple endings.
Speaker: There are multiple ways you can finish it.
Speaker: Uh, multiple,
Speaker: You know, it's got all those kind of little customizations.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: I thought it was cute.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So little guardsman.
Speaker: I also played Buckshot Roulette.
Speaker: I saw, who did I see play this?
Speaker: This is what a lot of people have been playing.
Speaker: I saw, was it Super Eyepatch Wolf?
Speaker: I saw him play it on stream.
Speaker: This is yeah, for those of you who have never played this, this is it just came onto Steam.
Speaker: It was on itch.io for a while.
Speaker: This is one of your great one person designed games.
Speaker: PS1 style graphics, muddy.
Speaker: There's something there's something very snuff film about it.
Speaker: It's there's nothing there's nothing graphic in the game, despite that subject matter.
Speaker: Oh, Gremlin dude is something something about him.
Speaker: You feel very uncomfortable.
Speaker: You basically, you go into this back room in a club and you play Russian roulette with a shotgun against this strange, sharp-toothed little gremlin guy.
Speaker: It's got very inscription vibes in that sense.
Speaker: Yes, it does.
Speaker: That looming face.
Speaker: And you get certain items.
Speaker: You find out...
Speaker: how many blanks and how many live rounds are in the shotgun, but you don't know what order they've been loaded in.
Speaker: And so you eventually unlock certain items that can help you get an upper hand.
Speaker: And they've got a double or nothing mode, which is basically an endless mode.
Speaker: There's not much to it, but it's a $2 game.
Speaker: So who gives a shit?
Speaker: And I kind of love it.
Speaker: Uh, there's something so grim.
Speaker: And again, for a game where, I mean, it is kind of shocking.
Speaker: I will say when you choose to put, you can choose to shoot the dealer or you can shoot yourself based on what you think is in the shotgun.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: There is something very grim about playing a video game where you put a shotgun to your own head.
Speaker: Yeah, and if it's a blank, you get another turn or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, you skip the dealer's next turn.
Speaker: And if it's a shell, you get a shell in the face and you have a certain amount of health.
Speaker: They bring you back with video game magic.
Speaker: Video game magic and presumably a lot of drugs.
Speaker: I like any game where a Lucy cigarette gives you one health back.
Speaker: I appreciate the irony of that.
Speaker: It's a grim, strange little game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Again, there's not much to it.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: Like Bellatra, for example, is a simple ass game, but you can play it forever because there are so many different modes and so many things to overcome.
Speaker: And presumably, I would think this guy is going to come up with more.
Speaker: But this is a game that you can basically see the entirety of it in less than an hour.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: With a little bit of luck and that sort of thing.
Speaker: And it's two bucks and it's kind of on my game of the year list right now.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: I've just never seen a game like this before.
Speaker: It's so muddy and dark and grim.
Speaker: And I give them all the credit in the world just for the atmosphere.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When I saw it, it did feel like very much in the first level of inscription.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: In the cabin.
Speaker: You know, it had that kind of had that vibe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I applaud it.
Speaker: There's not much to it, but again, you're not paying 20 bucks for this.
Speaker: It's a couple of dollars.
Speaker: It's worth it.
Speaker: I highly recommend go pick it up.
Speaker: I'm sure most people listening to this have heard of this one because this one seems to be everywhere right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's popped up on a bunch of streamers channels.
Speaker: But you know me, I'm a real sucker for indie games with a grim atmosphere that are designed by usually one person.
Speaker: Iron Lung comes to mind, stuff like that.
Speaker: Which, by the way, I think the Iron Lung movie is going to be out.
Speaker: It's got to be out this year, I assume, right?
Speaker: Probably, right?
Speaker: Like, you told me that's a short, right?
Speaker: It's not a feature length.
Speaker: No, I'm pretty sure it's a feature length.
Speaker: How?
Speaker: How did they make a feature length?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'll watch it.
Speaker: I'll watch.
Speaker: I mean, the trailer, the first teaser trailer came out last year or the first trailer.
Speaker: I saw that.
Speaker: It's just Mark.
Speaker: It's directed by Markiplier.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And starring him.
Speaker: Starring.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's just him emerging from a pool of blood, which
Speaker: Fun fact, after he did that shoot for the where he's like completely covered in this blood, he had to go to the hospital because it like got in his eyes and like behind his eyes, like the blood stuff just like got in there.
Speaker: So his eyes were just like red for for weeks.
Speaker: It was flushed out, I'm sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I'll watch it.
Speaker: The worst thing that happened, you give the nicest guy on the internet ten bucks.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like, fine.
Speaker: We'll give you some money.
Speaker: We'll watch the movie.
Speaker: He's one of the only people on the internet I like.
Speaker: He could be better than... If it's better than the FNAF movie, then...
Speaker: It will be.
Speaker: I don't see how it could be.
Speaker: I'll give it credit for not being FNAF.
Speaker: I'll give it credit for being his first real foray.
Speaker: I mean, he's done short film stuff before, but his first foray into feature filmmaking is a one-shot Dave Zemanski game that Dave just made by himself in between doing other stuff.
Speaker: That's a worthy goal.
Speaker: That's a it's a it's worthy source material.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Very cool.
Speaker: Very cool stuff.
Speaker: Very cool.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: So that's that's what I've been playing.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: If you want to follow along, follow us.
Speaker: Go to a social media of choice and find us at Pixelit Pod.
Speaker: And that's including Patreon.
Speaker: You know, you can follow us for free on Patreon and you'll get all the relevant updates on there.
Speaker: or on our Discord, which you can find on Patreon as well.
Speaker: So yeah, type at Pixelipod into the search of your favorite social media, click on it, and it should take you to us.
Speaker: Or take us to you.
Speaker: Yeah, depending on how you look at it.
Speaker: Depending on how you look at it, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that'll do it for tonight.
Speaker: Don't fall over the edge of the world.
Speaker: Because that's it.
Speaker: See, it's the name of the book.
Speaker: That's because it's a book reading.
Speaker: I think they got it.
Speaker: I think they got it.
Speaker: Yeah, they're probably going to.
