Transcript
Speaker: I'm just putting it out there.
Speaker: Chris is a moron.
Speaker: He's a dumb boulder punching moron.
Speaker: And I will not have Resident Evil.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Five spoilers.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: Chris was on steroids at the time and he punched a boulder.
Speaker: It was a bad time.
Speaker: It was a bad time.
Speaker: I'm not going to.
Speaker: It was a bad time in all of our lives, really.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Hey everybody.
Speaker: This is Kevin.
Speaker: And before we start today, I want to say thank you to everyone who has been with us on this journey so far.
Speaker: Also, I would like to give a shout out to the following podcast that I fully recommend you checking out.
Speaker: Video Gems, a podcast hosted by two video essayists who each week have a guest on to discuss YouTube videos.
Speaker: It's charming and belligerent at the same time, so worth checking out.
Speaker: Quest and Show, an actual play podcast hosted by Hot Cider, in which a new guest joins him in a one-on-one tabletop session to solve a problem in the kingdom of Trottelera.
Speaker: And last but not least, Oops All Monsters, in which two guys from wild and wacky West Virginia discuss monsters, cryptids, and more from books, TV, movies, gaming, both tabletop and video.
Speaker: All of these podcasts can be found on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasting goodness.
Speaker: Today is the last episode of the Resident Evil Umbrella Conspiracy series, and starting next week we will be going weekly with Halo The Fall of Reach.
Speaker: But enough of my blathering.
Speaker: On with the show.
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It, episode five, and the final episode, no matter what.
Speaker: No matter what.
Speaker: No matter what of Resident Evil, the Umbrella Chron... I can't remember.
Speaker: Chronicles?
Speaker: No, Conspiracy.
Speaker: The Umbrella Conspiracy.
Speaker: The Umbrella Chronotrigger.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The secret of Resident Mana...
Speaker: Here we are.
Speaker: The chrono umbrella.
Speaker: The chrono umbrella.
Speaker: So we start out with chapter 15.
Speaker: It's got a great soundtrack.
Speaker: Yeah, it's got a nice square 1990s, you know, square soft sound to it.
Speaker: Yeah, just the best.
Speaker: Just the best.
Speaker: Nice little pixel art.
Speaker: And it's warm and it's cozy.
Speaker: And it's basically what Resident Evil could have been if it was more of like a direct, directly inspired by its predecessor, Sweet Home.
Speaker: Could have been a nice, warm, cozy pixel art game with terrifying zombies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Sweet Home.
Speaker: That's something I haven't thought about in a while.
Speaker: A long time.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So Barry had been gone for too damn long.
Speaker: Anytime Barry's gone is too long, in my opinion.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Even if it's just for seconds, you start to miss his ginger beard and his face.
Speaker: His firm family man body.
Speaker: His firm dad bod.
Speaker: Dad bod, there you go.
Speaker: That's what Barry has rocking.
Speaker: Well, what else but a dad bod could could knock down a bolted door?
Speaker: Indeed.
Speaker: Indeed.
Speaker: But Barry is gone.
Speaker: He has chased after Wesker and Jill is concerned.
Speaker: She is growing concerned and she is beginning to hypothesize.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: She's like she's really she's really deep into the conspiracy thinking now.
Speaker: And she is is knows that there are there is a traitor and it's either Richard Aiken, Forrest Spayer and Albert Wesker.
Speaker: Now, somehow, I guess this is this is actually kind of neat because Jill, because of the way we have that split perspective type of thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Jill does not realize that Richard and Forrest, best characters ever, but they're very, very dead.
Speaker: Super dead, like too dead, in my opinion.
Speaker: There's just a lot of deadness with them.
Speaker: A lot of deadness.
Speaker: You know, to the reader, we know it's Albert Wesker, and we also know she doesn't even bring up Barry.
Speaker: That's the crazy thing, is she's just like, it's not Barry, of course.
Speaker: Obviously.
Speaker: Obviously.
Speaker: Of course, we know that Barry is, you know, dumb and has been duped by Albert into thinking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You freaking idiot.
Speaker: You fool.
Speaker: You had that close but no potato moment last episode.
Speaker: And anyway, so she's she's walking around now.
Speaker: Instead of like the halls, hallways that we have in the mansion, we got the corridors underground and the hallways and corridors are very similar in that there's a lot of walking around.
Speaker: Phil, what does she run into?
Speaker: She runs into, well, let's just, let's just go straight to it because our author is clearly fond of the, the, the, the nasty and I I'm, I'm here for it.
Speaker: So here we go.
Speaker: It was huge shaped like a man, but the resemblance stopped there.
Speaker: a Ken doll naked, but sexless.
Speaker: Its entire muscular body was covered with a pebbled amphibious skin shaded a dark green.
Speaker: It was hunched over so that it's impossibly long arms almost touched the floor, both its hands and feet tipped with thick, brutal claws, tiny light colored eyes peered out at her from a flat reptilian skull.
Speaker: So it's Mitch McConnell.
Speaker: Yeah, it's Mitch McConnell or I mean, I think it's Mitch and then the other ones are the rest of the the the GOP leadership.
Speaker: But this one is definitely Mitch.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So this is this is this is a this is a hunter.
Speaker: And I don't believe I think I think you kind of have to piece that together yourself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They never he he references the hunters.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wesker references them.
Speaker: And yeah, he says, oh, the hunters must be out by now or something along those lines.
Speaker: But right.
Speaker: He never says, you know, he never pops up in the corner of the screen, says that's a hunter.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Remember when I mentioned the hunters before?
Speaker: That's one of them right now.
Speaker: Don't mind my old timey accent.
Speaker: That's actually how Wesker really sounds.
Speaker: The rest of his speaking patterns is just the put on.
Speaker: He actually sounds like a vaudeville style of the old times.
Speaker: You don't want to date me, huh?
Speaker: Joke's on you, zombie date.
Speaker: I'm going to shoot you in the head now.
Speaker: Ho ho.
Speaker: And then he just said he just started singing and with his cane and top hat off stage.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just spinning it and curling his mustache.
Speaker: He really is a character that Wesker.
Speaker: So she's she's like shooting the ever loving crap out of it.
Speaker: She does not learn the lesson that so many of us learn when playing Resident Evil.
Speaker: Run, just run, just run like crazy hell.
Speaker: And she just shoots the ever loving crap out of it.
Speaker: She runs out of bullets.
Speaker: So much ammo.
Speaker: She weighs so much ammo.
Speaker: So much in this one scene.
Speaker: And, you know, she's going to need it in a few chapters.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So she finally, you know, just waste all her ammo, but kills it and rip Mitch McConnell.
Speaker: And there could be more of them.
Speaker: And she runs.
Speaker: And then she does the thing that she should have done in the first place.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: She finally gets the message.
Speaker: She kills it.
Speaker: She kills it.
Speaker: And then she runs away, which is.
Speaker: Yeah, that's not not usually how it's done.
Speaker: I'm not going to criticize because I wasn't there, but generally it's the opposite.
Speaker: So we have a scene change and I got to be honest.
Speaker: I really.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: I was I was bored with the Chris Rebecca plot plot line at this point.
Speaker: I have a lot of feelings.
Speaker: I have a lot of feelings with the whole plant 42 thing.
Speaker: Oh, it's it's just first of all, it's like a it's like they talk so much about the goddamn plant.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then they kill it up.
Speaker: They talk it up so much and then they kill it without ever going in the room.
Speaker: No, they basically they talk about like they talk about how it's there and it's dangerous as a man eating killer plant.
Speaker: They set up this military grade herbicide and then later on they're going to kill it.
Speaker: And I mean, we'll get to that.
Speaker: But yeah, this whole thing, this whole subplot with Chris and Rebecca and the plant is such a bummer.
Speaker: And I have questions and we'll get to it.
Speaker: But I just like, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because I'm glad I wasn't the only one who felt that way.
Speaker: It did.
Speaker: It did creep me out leading up to it before I realized that nothing was going to be like here.
Speaker: This is I think this is a pretty good passage here.
Speaker: It says there was a faint whispering coming from inside the room, a subtle sense of movement.
Speaker: And Chris realized that it was coming from the sickly plant matter itself.
Speaker: The walls quivering in a weird optical illusion as the draping tendrils crept and grew.
Speaker: And I liked that.
Speaker: I thought that was.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: nice and effectively creepy.
Speaker: And I think it's because I've been like heavy duty gardening lately.
Speaker: Like we've been growing a lot of stuff and there is, you know, if you're not used to, I didn't grow up growing things and we've been growing a bunch of stuff from seed.
Speaker: And when you wake up in the morning, you go check on things and you see that this plant is like doubled in size or something like that.
Speaker: It can be a little weird.
Speaker: It's, it's very cool and gratifying, but
Speaker: The whole idea of a killer plant now is creepy to me.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: Plants are, plants are extremely creepy.
Speaker: Um, and that is, that is my take on plants.
Speaker: They notify each other of, of, of, uh, predators.
Speaker: Um, yes, they do.
Speaker: Uh, and some of them kill each other.
Speaker: They have self-defense systems.
Speaker: They have self-defense systems.
Speaker: They can, they can move around if they, certain plants move around using their, their roots.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: No, sir, I don't like it.
Speaker: They really bother me.
Speaker: Like, oh, it's just a plant.
Speaker: It's a nice little plant.
Speaker: I think, what's his name?
Speaker: M. Night Shyamalan was on to something with the happening.
Speaker: He was onto something.
Speaker: It was a terrible movie and it has some of the best worst line reads you've ever heard.
Speaker: But the idea that the plans could just suddenly up and start set like making a like an allergen that makes everybody want to kill themselves.
Speaker: I was like, yo, that's pretty cool.
Speaker: That's that's pretty cool and terrifying.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, I know a lot of people gave it, you know, people gave that movie a lot of shit as they should.
Speaker: But whenever they would talk about, oh, and what the bad guys are the plants.
Speaker: That's so it was like, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: Let's not fuck with that.
Speaker: Like that actually could be great.
Speaker: That's the part of us that slaps.
Speaker: Like, right.
Speaker: It's actually Mark Wahlberg talking to the old lady that that's got no, ma'am.
Speaker: We're not.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: How is he like simultaneously one of the most terrifying men alive and one of the stupidest?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And I don't mean stupid and intelligence, although I don't think he has the highest IQ in the world.
Speaker: He really contains.
Speaker: He contains multitudes.
Speaker: Let's leave it.
Speaker: He does.
Speaker: Mark Wahlberg contains multitudes.
Speaker: You heard it here.
Speaker: My God, it's full of stars.
Speaker: So they spend a whole lot of time talking about killing the plant.
Speaker: They kill the plant.
Speaker: It's really like never a threat.
Speaker: It's just in the way, even though it's possibly the most threatening thing in the house.
Speaker: Chekhov...
Speaker: is rolling in his grave regarding this entire scene.
Speaker: Well, and that's the, and that's the thing.
Speaker: And it goes on, like it goes into the next chapter.
Speaker: And, and I think, you know, look ahead here.
Speaker: It, they know they're telling you now it does.
Speaker: They do kill the plant.
Speaker: Obviously they kill the plant.
Speaker: It takes, it takes, it takes two chapters.
Speaker: Yeah, it takes two chapters.
Speaker: They've already started it in the previous chapter, in chapter 14.
Speaker: They finally kill it in... Chapter 17, I think.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, and right now they're just talking about it.
Speaker: They're just talking about killing it.
Speaker: They're building up this plant.
Speaker: This one.
Speaker: It's such a bummer.
Speaker: This one scene in chapter 15 is like six pages long of just talking about killing the damn plant.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So finally we leave them.
Speaker: They, they haven't in real time.
Speaker: They haven't killed it yet.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And it's still around.
Speaker: It's still around.
Speaker: Barry has come back to where Jill was supposed to be waiting and finds that Jill is no longer waiting there because they're stars and they do that.
Speaker: Yeah, that's apparently part of their training, as we pointed out.
Speaker: And that's just stupid training.
Speaker: Barry has a moment to himself just mourning the loss.
Speaker: Yeah, he mourns the loss of his good buddy Enrico.
Speaker: Tie one on.
Speaker: Have a smoke.
Speaker: Relax.
Speaker: Have a smoke.
Speaker: Relax.
Speaker: You know, what do you think Barry smokes?
Speaker: Barry?
Speaker: Oh, Marlboro Lights.
Speaker: Marlboro Lights?
Speaker: Without a question in my mind.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, Barry smokes Marlboro lights.
Speaker: He used to smoke Marlboro reds, but he's under the impression that the lights are better for him because now he's got kids and stuff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he doesn't want to quit, but he's like, I better smoke these light cigarettes.
Speaker: These are better for me, even though that is not
Speaker: the case at all.
Speaker: He's like, they got the filter.
Speaker: I'm like, the filter's not really doing anything.
Speaker: I'm doing these.
Speaker: These cigarettes are all white.
Speaker: Therefore, they couldn't possibly be doing anything bad.
Speaker: They couldn't possibly be killing me.
Speaker: No, not even.
Speaker: And then he has a he has a he has a light cough apropos of nothing.
Speaker: And extinguishes it under his shoe and and carries on when Jill finally that it does.
Speaker: That doesn't happen in the book.
Speaker: Everybody, we're just we're just riffing.
Speaker: He actually is not smoking.
Speaker: This is a book aimed at teenagers in the 1990s.
Speaker: Of course, they wouldn't be smoking.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They left that to cartoon camels in those days.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: This book was checked over by Dare before it was published.
Speaker: That's also not true.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: It might have been.
Speaker: I mean, that was the age of it, wasn't it?
Speaker: It might have been.
Speaker: Except you know how you know it didn't?
Speaker: It didn't have a Dare stamp on it.
Speaker: It did not have a Dare sticker on the cover.
Speaker: They needed everyone to know where they were at all times.
Speaker: They're the opposite of the CIA.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Dare.
Speaker: We're everywhere.
Speaker: And we are everywhere.
Speaker: Entirely.
Speaker: Show you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Barry hears Jill's gunfire because she's at that time killing a hunter and he runs into a hunter himself and he manages to like pretty much take it down and like one shot or something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Far less dramatic than her one off with it.
Speaker: He has a big old cult that he just, you know, a magnum that he just carries around.
Speaker: And even though it might be impractical in literally every other situation, it is very good at putting down these hunter things.
Speaker: You're glad he brought it.
Speaker: At first, you're like, come on, you've got to be the one guy who's special with his special gun.
Speaker: They're like, oh, no, no, that's that's probably fine.
Speaker: It's probably fine that you have that.
Speaker: It's it's a OK.
Speaker: Chapter 16 and Jill questions right off the bat with this one.
Speaker: Did she Jill the way they describe me, it she appears she finds the corpse of a giant dead spider.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, has, have spiders been a thing in this?
Speaker: Did I miss that?
Speaker: Spiders had not yet been a thing.
Speaker: They had not mentioned spiders.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So she just, so this, there's just a dead spider got killed off camera, basically.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Somebody killed a spider off camera.
Speaker: Uh, and I think we're supposed to assume that it's Wesker.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, I did get that impression.
Speaker: I will say I did get that impression, but it was just kind of like, come on, man.
Speaker: Like, who was in a, you know, spiders?
Speaker: That's always, I like spiders, but that's a, that's always an effective bad guy.
Speaker: People hate hearing about spiders.
Speaker: Why, why is that off camera?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think it's, it's weird that they, they kind of just let Jill like,
Speaker: you know, like, oh, the spiders.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's almost like it's a yes.
Speaker: The spider room moving on.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Ah, right.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It's just she just basically she just looks at the camera and goes, huh?
Speaker: It's like the game.
Speaker: It's like the game.
Speaker: Moving on.
Speaker: Moving on.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And then we forget about it.
Speaker: And there's a there's a little quote, a little thing I highlighted.
Speaker: Because she is.
Speaker: Oh, and here's where we get to the the the Indiana Jones sequence.
Speaker: She says to herself, I can blow away zombies and monsters with the best of them.
Speaker: Show me a spider and I lose my freaking mind.
Speaker: And what's funny is like that kind of rings true.
Speaker: I feel like there will be people who would be able to deal deal with a zombie better than a spider.
Speaker: I feel like, yeah, I actually, I totally agree.
Speaker: I feel like there are plenty of those people in the world that like zombies show up and they're like, okay, we got to do what we got to do to take care of the zombies.
Speaker: But even after a zombie apocalypse, they see a daddy long legs and they're like spider.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Just tense up.
Speaker: It says a lot that, you know, I can name like 20 zombie movies off the top of my head, but I can only really name one horror film centered around spiders.
Speaker: Eight-legged freaks.
Speaker: Oh, that's two then.
Speaker: I was going to say arachnophobia.
Speaker: Oh, gosh, yeah.
Speaker: Arachnophobia was... I haven't seen that one in a thousand years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I just remember him shooting the spider at the end.
Speaker: That was the final moment.
Speaker: It just turns into like a pure comedy once John Goodman's character shows up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: so weird it's a weird movie it's got so many different like the way it's structured is just so odd and and if you haven't seen it basically halfway through the movie this town has become overrun with spiders that can kill people in like a single bite um halfway through the movie this exterminator played by john goodman shows up and
Speaker: basically just there's these these strange moments of comedy of him chasing down and killing spiders that are just brilliant the main character is played by Jeff Daniels as a man who is suffering from arachnophobia and he kind of has to overcome it in order to save the day so to speak but it's it's basically just like Jaws in that sense
Speaker: It's just, it's all the same level.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: It's this, it's the same movie, same quality, same everything.
Speaker: Jaws, but spiders.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So this is where Jill accidentally triggers a trap.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And basically what happens is she didn't measure the little bag of sand properly when she was stealing the idol.
Speaker: And now it's just now there's a boulder chasing her.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: It's just amazing.
Speaker: Like there's just this moment of self-realization where Jill thinks to herself, geez, it must have taken them years to set all this up.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: I'm almost impressed.
Speaker: This is great.
Speaker: A lot of money went into this.
Speaker: And there's just this great little thought to herself where, uh, won't going to make it going to die is just written all in lowercase.
Speaker: Uh, no spacing.
Speaker: And when I got to that, I had to cackle out loud because of the way it was written.
Speaker: She really has a rough go of it with traps.
Speaker: She does.
Speaker: She does more than anyone else.
Speaker: There's no question about it.
Speaker: She gets attacked by the crows.
Speaker: She gets nearly squashed by the ceiling and killed by a massive boulder.
Speaker: Back to the Chris Rebecca story.
Speaker: And they're in the basement looking for the ingredients they need for the V-jolt.
Speaker: Yeah, the basement is flooded, basically.
Speaker: The basement is flooded because there's a giant shark swimming around the basement.
Speaker: Yeah, you know.
Speaker: Like you do.
Speaker: Like you do.
Speaker: Like you have.
Speaker: This is actually where it becomes more and more like Jaws.
Speaker: Yes, it actually is more like Jaws.
Speaker: S.D.
Speaker: Perry used the descriptor, black soulless eyes set above a pointed grin.
Speaker: Like a doll's eyes.
Speaker: Like a doll's eyes.
Speaker: This is, by the way, this is the moment that I considered doing zombie shark do do do do.
Speaker: But we're a new podcast and I want us all to be friends.
Speaker: So I changed my mind.
Speaker: So Chris swims away from it.
Speaker: He manages to find some key, the keys in his vest and open the door that like a control room door after a scary moment with the shark.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Gives the shark a kick on the nose for good measure.
Speaker: His boot connecting solidly with a shark's fleshy snout, deflecting it from the opening.
Speaker: And in a flash, he was on his feet, which is weird because like I'm trying to visualize it.
Speaker: And wouldn't the room that he opened the door to have flooded when he opened the door?
Speaker: Yeah, it should be flooded, theoretically.
Speaker: Theoretically.
Speaker: Theoretically.
Speaker: He's in a control room.
Speaker: He finds a lever that says emergency drainage system.
Speaker: Right there.
Speaker: Just sitting there.
Speaker: Like a neon sign.
Speaker: And he says to himself, you've got to be kidding me.
Speaker: Why didn't anyone pull this thing the second the tank broke?
Speaker: And that's like a meta commentary.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That is a fucking solid question.
Speaker: It's not.
Speaker: He kind of explains it away himself with like, well, they're scientists and they wouldn't want to kill their specimen.
Speaker: And it's like,
Speaker: I don't know, man.
Speaker: These are real Prometheus-level scientists here.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: I'm going to stick my face over the alien egg.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For science.
Speaker: For science.
Speaker: For science.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it just never works out.
Speaker: It never works out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They could have made a pretty cool book about this and we could have seen just like these guys are just like whipping each other with towels and shit like while the sharks thrashing around.
Speaker: It would have been fun if it came with like a laugh track.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like every every time you turn the page, it's like with those birthday cards that play a song when you open them.
Speaker: There's like one of those chips in between every page and you turn the page and it's a ha ha ha ha.
Speaker: One of every now and then it's yakety sacks, you know, it's just.
Speaker: It's that kind of interactive experience.
Speaker: I think that's my best, uh, best idea ever.
Speaker: I should probably get on making that.
Speaker: You're onto something you need to at least trademark books with laugh tracks.com.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's coming.
Speaker: Remind you where it's, where it's funny.
Speaker: Term.
Speaker: My joke is always on the, on the turned page.
Speaker: So, um, he drains the tank.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And he walks back through the door, opening very carefully, and he hears the frantic wet thumps of a very big fish trying to swim through the air.
Speaker: And this is the most psychotic part of Chris in the entire book.
Speaker: Yeah, this is about as cold as he gets, really.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Chris grinned, thinking that he should probably feel pity for the helpless creature and hoping instead that it died a long, agonizing death.
Speaker: Bite me, he whispered.
Speaker: Like, first of all, Chris, first of all, what what did the shark actually do to you other than do what sharks do?
Speaker: It was being a shark, Chris.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: It wasn't even it wouldn't have even needed to have been a zombie shark.
Speaker: It was like it's like just a hungry animal.
Speaker: It's not like the dogs which are acting outside of their behavior.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Of normal behavior.
Speaker: It's just it's just literally a shark.
Speaker: And you went into the shark's water and the shark tried to bite you as sharks do.
Speaker: And then you wished upon it a slow, painful death.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's the thing.
Speaker: And that's the thing.
Speaker: There have been plenty of times that something's tried to kill him and stuff like that.
Speaker: And he's still like kind of been like, that used to be a person, you know, or he didn't have snarky remarks for the killer dogs.
Speaker: But the but the killer shark, that's where he drew the line.
Speaker: The shark who is just being a shark.
Speaker: He's like, no, fuck that thing in particular.
Speaker: Fuck him.
Speaker: Bite me, which is right up there with Arnie's classic stick around from a predator line.
Speaker: Like that's right up there.
Speaker: That's pure nineties, eighties cheese.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, I, I respect it.
Speaker: I respect it.
Speaker: You're here for it.
Speaker: So finally we get back to Wesker and he's taking pleasure in killing more people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're back.
Speaker: We're back to Wesker doing what Wesker does, which is, uh, just kind of making his way through the lab, making his way downtown.
Speaker: Um, right, right.
Speaker: He's humming that to himself as he goes, humming himself that to himself as he goes.
Speaker: Just often people left and right.
Speaker: Killing, killing people he used to know and going, oh, it's weird.
Speaker: We had tacos that night.
Speaker: Like just executing everybody.
Speaker: And he said he thinks to himself the way he'd handled Barry finding the wolf metal in the tunnels, even shooting Ellen Smith in the face had given him a momentary sense of accomplishment, a feeling that he was.
Speaker: We needed to bring up Ellen again.
Speaker: He even brings up Ellen again.
Speaker: This guy is like literally the definition of an incel.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He is looking for a good Reddit board he can work on.
Speaker: Wesker is on 4chan every night.
Speaker: He's in the green bitch.
Speaker: And you guys aren't going to believe I finally got to shoot that self-righteous bitch in the face.
Speaker: Whoa.
Speaker: Okay there, champ.
Speaker: It's like, oh, don't worry.
Speaker: She was a zombie.
Speaker: It's like, oh, well, that's fine then.
Speaker: He brings up the mesh monkeys, which was weird.
Speaker: I it's, I don't remember them.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: I, yeah, that one.
Speaker: And I just don't like the term mesh monkeys.
Speaker: That's also a very troubling term and upsetting term.
Speaker: It's very upsetting.
Speaker: It has a weird feeling in your ear when you.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: When you say it's not.
Speaker: It's not a comfortable couple of words.
Speaker: One word by itself in in either of those words by themselves.
Speaker: Perfectly fine.
Speaker: Perfectly good.
Speaker: Put them together.
Speaker: Don't feel good.
Speaker: It's like a moist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you added it that it would be an atomic bomb of a word or a phrase.
Speaker: Moist mesh monkeys.
Speaker: Moist mesh monkeys.
Speaker: The moist mesh monkeys mandibles masticated melons.
Speaker: Messily.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Nailed it.
Speaker: Now, is this now he does mention tyrant here.
Speaker: Is this the is this the first time he mentions tyrant or did I miss that from before?
Speaker: I think it's the first time he's mentioned tyrants as as, you know, just down here.
Speaker: He also his thought process ties in Ada in the future.
Speaker: John Howe had set the system up months ago using his name and the name of his girlfriend, Ada, as access keys.
Speaker: So we get an Ada Wong reference.
Speaker: I thought that was a nice little Resident Evil 2 Easter egg in here because Ada is, I believe, part of what she's doing is looking for John in Resident Evil 2.
Speaker: Not the only thing she's doing.
Speaker: Falling in love with Leon.
Speaker: Whoa.
Speaker: And that pretty much brings chapter 16 to an end.
Speaker: Yes, he just, he kind of, he kind of, yeah, he unlocks the lab doors and thinks evil thoughts.
Speaker: It's mostly an exposition dump and we're like, oh yes, evil thoughts, evil thoughts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: By the way, mesh monkeys and tyrants.
Speaker: Right, exactly.
Speaker: Enjoy this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then we get to chapter 17 and Jill has arrived in she's arrived in a separate area.
Speaker: It was like an it was like a military.
Speaker: It's like a military complex.
Speaker: It's yeah, I liked this.
Speaker: I like they made a point.
Speaker: She says that, you know, she found herself basically in what she is like more military, industrial and less gothic.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, and I think that was kind of a nice touch because honestly, you know, they hit a lot of resident evil tropes throughout this book.
Speaker: And that's one of them.
Speaker: Like, I always know that we're coming to the end of the game when we get to a lab doing military type thing.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Less, less haunted house, more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Military sciencey stuff.
Speaker: The, to borrow the phrase that SD Perry used a utilitarian's bleak paradise.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which is a nice turn of phrase.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: It's a really nice turn of phrase.
Speaker: Like, that's a good way to describe it.
Speaker: So, yeah, she begins kind of walking her way through the lab.
Speaker: And now that she is Jill is basically the first of the characters aside from Wesker to reach the quote unquote end game stage, which is right, which is always the laboratory area of every Resident Evil.
Speaker: She opened the door and her hope faded as the dry, dusty smell of long dead flesh hit her.
Speaker: She stepped out onto the cement walkway that led over a flight of descending stairs, a metal railing circling the path.
Speaker: At the top of the steps was a crumpled zombie so emaciated and shriveled that it appeared mummified.
Speaker: So, yeah, her her hope was like, oh, maybe there's no zombies.
Speaker: And then the whoops, there's zombies.
Speaker: Zombies.
Speaker: And that always goes.
Speaker: You anticipate no zombies.
Speaker: Boom.
Speaker: Zombies.
Speaker: That's how it always goes.
Speaker: The other thing.
Speaker: Every single time.
Speaker: I thought was kind of neat was the fact that she realized that there's not going to be any traps in this area.
Speaker: She is now.
Speaker: She is now outside of the zone of traps.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I found that to be really funny because it's like she finds the big red, shiny candy like button and she just goes, it won't be a trap there.
Speaker: We're past that.
Speaker: It just you just kind of.
Speaker: It just tells, tells the audience we're done with traps for now.
Speaker: I know I've gotten, I know I've been wrong before, but I know traps because I've, I've triggered all of them.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I always I'm great at triggering.
Speaker: She is.
Speaker: And this won't be won't be one of them.
Speaker: Basically, the Wile E. Coyote of the stars.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: And I have to give it to her.
Speaker: She ends up being right.
Speaker: She hits the button.
Speaker: No hesitation.
Speaker: And we just get this.
Speaker: And it's a projector, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And just a key.
Speaker: And she gets a key.
Speaker: Shows right up.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: She gets a key and there's files and she says they're too thick and ponderous to spend time sorting through, aka boring.
Speaker: They looked boring.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And she kind of, yeah, she basically sets us up for endgame here because she basically inner monologues that like this is where everyone's been heading.
Speaker: And therefore she anticipates, I'm going to find out who the traitor is.
Speaker: I'm about to find out.
Speaker: Not I'm hunting him down now, but I mean, everyone's going to be here, so I'll figure it out through process of elimination.
Speaker: I will figure it out.
Speaker: She kind of chills out in that room, and we cut to Chris and Rebecca.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: It's been like five chapters about Plant 42, and they finally fucking kill it.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Yeah, they drain.
Speaker: Because he drained the water where the shark shark was,
Speaker: It's also drained this room where like the plant bulb root is and that's it was drinking that water.
Speaker: And so they destroy it with this super herbicide.
Speaker: And and then they go into the room where the plant's meant to be.
Speaker: And it's just a puddle of goo.
Speaker: We never even get like they don't even like see through a window at this thing, you know, where it's like and its petals had
Speaker: turned and hardened into claws and terrible thorns and blah, blah.
Speaker: No, we never even have that.
Speaker: It's just now because they got the root melted into goo and it is so disappointing.
Speaker: It's like in this room is Audrey too.
Speaker: You're never going to, you're never going to see her.
Speaker: You're never going to see her.
Speaker: You're never going to hear her sing.
Speaker: You're never going to hear her sing.
Speaker: Poor plan for you.
Speaker: You don't get to you.
Speaker: No mean green mother.
Speaker: We never got it.
Speaker: It's such a bummer.
Speaker: And I have to ask because you've played this one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because is this how it goes down in the game?
Speaker: Because the way I thought about it, knowing this is based on a game, I was like, I can see where what probably would have happened is there would have been a room with a plant in it and a auto death.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Function there.
Speaker: Unless you.
Speaker: And so you've got to solve the puzzle.
Speaker: You know, and I'm trying to remember, and I believe plant 42 for the most part is basically it's more or less a trap rather than an enemy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That you have to solve.
Speaker: Basically, you have to solve the V-jolt puzzle in order to progress.
Speaker: That being said, every other trap in this book was handled in about a half a page.
Speaker: And yeah, plant 42 was it took three over the course of three chapters in order to actually simultaneously.
Speaker: It's simultaneously too much and not enough.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like they give us three or four chapters building up this plant.
Speaker: it feels like they got way ahead of everybody else and and and they had to hold them up yeah you know while everyone else kind of caught up and and then by the time we get to a part like this it's just kind of like okay well just kill it we've only got 20 pages left we got to wrap this up right you know it just it that's
Speaker: There have been a lot of weird things in this book, which I can excuse for a lot of reasons.
Speaker: This this is the part of the book that really bummed me out.
Speaker: I wanted man eating plant.
Speaker: I want to kill her plant, damn it.
Speaker: No, me too.
Speaker: And I what's hilarious is that they kill it and they realize that the plant wasn't blocking their way after all.
Speaker: It wouldn't even block it out there.
Speaker: They didn't have to do it at all.
Speaker: Like, I was like, you gotta be fucking kidding me.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But they do.
Speaker: They do.
Speaker: They find security protocol.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that basically mentioned Tyrant and they most importantly implicate Wesker as the traitor, basically.
Speaker: So they know the truth now.
Speaker: So that was what all of that was for, I guess.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, like, look, you're going to find out Wesker's the bad guy.
Speaker: Don't worry.
Speaker: You don't need.
Speaker: Yeah, you don't need to have this big of a build-up.
Speaker: Now, Jill and... Well, Jill has not found out yet, but Chris and Rebecca know.
Speaker: And Jill is going to find out soon enough.
Speaker: But yeah, it felt like... Sometimes you have to be economical with the story that you're telling, and this seemed like it was a bit of a splurge.
Speaker: Yeah, it just...
Speaker: Yeah, it didn't.
Speaker: It didn't feel this.
Speaker: This was this part was disappointing.
Speaker: Like, I don't know.
Speaker: It felt weird.
Speaker: It just it just didn't feel like it felt like she didn't have enough.
Speaker: The author didn't have enough for Chris and Rebecca to do while everyone else was doing their own thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's just it felt like a little license could have been taken.
Speaker: You know, you could have given us a fight or something, even if it doesn't exist in the game.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Really.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Even if you showed us what was going to happen, like if you show a zombie like wander into the room and and get a plant rips it to shreds.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Give us an idea of why this is something that should be scary instead of just, well, it's a giant plant.
Speaker: Maybe even a hunter accidentally gets in the room and they see the hunter.
Speaker: And because we've just seen how tough the hunters are and then it kills the hunter with ease.
Speaker: And like that would have been like, oh, shit.
Speaker: Yeah, show us exactly how much of a monster this thing is.
Speaker: Show us exactly how much of a monster instead of telling us for that long how you're going to kill it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that happened.
Speaker: Speaking of monsters, we cut to Wesker.
Speaker: He's back.
Speaker: He's back guys.
Speaker: He's got his honeydew list from out of space.
Speaker: I loved, I loved it.
Speaker: The first thing it says is his, uh, everything was done.
Speaker: Wesker stepped into the elevator that led back to level three, running through his, his checklist as he lowered the outer gate and slid the inner one glows samples collected discs erased powers, reconnected tyrant support off,
Speaker: Like, it's just, he's got this list.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: I'm doing a good job.
Speaker: Jurassic Park would not have happened if it was Wesker instead of Dennis Nedry.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: I got to say, like, Wesker is on it.
Speaker: And Nedry was a slob.
Speaker: He was.
Speaker: He did not have, he didn't, he didn't.
Speaker: He didn't have his stuff together.
Speaker: But Wesker, I feel like, would have pulled that off.
Speaker: He would have gotten the samples and gotten out of there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He, he, he does have his, for the most part, he does seem to have his shit together.
Speaker: He is effective.
Speaker: He is effective.
Speaker: He is effective.
Speaker: That's not going to stop him from spoiler warning getting killed, but right.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Um, killed.
Speaker: I say in quotation marks, um, right.
Speaker: As we all know, uh,
Speaker: So, yeah, he had said the mistake had cost umbrella millions of dollars and it killed the researchers who had created it.
Speaker: Feels like a millions is like a bit of an understatement.
Speaker: I would.
Speaker: This seems like a pricey mistake.
Speaker: This is this is a lot of big.
Speaker: This is pretty big.
Speaker: I mean, yeah.
Speaker: Like when you just when you say millions, it's like single digit million, you know, like this.
Speaker: This is this is at least one hundred million dollars worth of fuck up.
Speaker: Oh, big time.
Speaker: Probably more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You can't oversell at this point.
Speaker: You can't oversell.
Speaker: You could have dropped a billion in there and I wouldn't have blinked an eye.
Speaker: I'm like, this is a lot.
Speaker: This is, you know, there's a city under a city.
Speaker: Like, yeah, lots of lab science stuff around.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: That's a cool billion.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, it's it's easily, easily.
Speaker: Wesker's walking around and he notices that.
Speaker: Jill Valentine is still alive and he's, yes, he does.
Speaker: He realizes he had underestimated the master of unlocking.
Speaker: He had underestimated the master of unlocking, which you shouldn't do, which you shouldn't do.
Speaker: If she was that good, the MA twos might not kill her.
Speaker: And she had effectively just blocked him from triggering the system.
Speaker: This is a, this is a big complication.
Speaker: And you know, Wesker just, whenever Wesker gets frustrated, he dips right back down into the misogyny.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Big time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To quote, I am in control.
Speaker: Nothing is happening here that I can't handle.
Speaker: This is my game.
Speaker: Wink.
Speaker: My rules and I will accomplish my mission without any interference from that little thief bitch.
Speaker: Wow, Albert.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I'm not going to have my plan ruined by a girl.
Speaker: Yeah, that's that's pretty much it.
Speaker: With their dumb vaginas and tea parties.
Speaker: While he's just kind of like observing, Barry shows up as well.
Speaker: And Wesker raised his weapon coolly, ready to fire when Barry stepped into view and then lowered it thoughtfully.
Speaker: After a moment, a slow grin spread across his face.
Speaker: And it's basically like the Grinch grin where he just looks into the camera and just like...
Speaker: Curls up and around.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You had a terrible, awful idea.
Speaker: You're a mean one, Captain Wesker.
Speaker: Just, I have a terrible idea.
Speaker: I'll threaten his family again.
Speaker: Oh, that one.
Speaker: Okay, so it's the same idea.
Speaker: So it's the same idea.
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: All right, fine.
Speaker: Keep doing the same idea.
Speaker: That's fine, but.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And that brings us to chapter 18.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: What happens in chapter 18?
Speaker: Chapter 18.
Speaker: We get we get Jill in a boiler room of some kind and she's attacked by terrible, awful, clawed things.
Speaker: I got here we go.
Speaker: I like this is another one of those descriptions that I really enjoyed.
Speaker: There were two of the creatures overhead squat, terrible things with vicious curving hooks instead of hands.
Speaker: One of them dropped down suddenly hanging by clawed feet to swipe at her with a bladed arm.
Speaker: And I just I, you know, I played the crap out of out of Resident Evil 2.
Speaker: And that put me in the mind of a liquor.
Speaker: So I was really enjoying that.
Speaker: Yeah, this is, I believe this is her, the description of the, the mesh monkey.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The mesh monkeys.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So to speak.
Speaker: And, uh, just again, it doesn't get any better.
Speaker: Uh, it just,
Speaker: And now this one, she actually does have the right idea.
Speaker: She sees a bunch of them and she just starts running like hell.
Speaker: She's like, no, just absolutely not.
Speaker: And she escapes and comes across a bloodied berry.
Speaker: Uh, which is my favorite, uh, hangover drink, uh, to be fair.
Speaker: It's, uh, I know you're not a, you're not a drinker, Kevin.
Speaker: Uh, so a lot of our audience, they, they probably know what a bloody berry is, but for your benefit, a bloody berry, you take a bottle of vodka, add some V eight, a dash of Montreal steak seasoning, and then you threaten someone's family.
Speaker: Uh, of course, of course.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It just, just melts that hangover away.
Speaker: That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It all, it all holds up, you know, nothing, nothing gets a little ginger hair of the dog.
Speaker: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Nothing gets the fog out of your eyes quite like bodily harm to someone's children.
Speaker: It really does work.
Speaker: So anyway, he claims to have found the main lab and he wants to take her there.
Speaker: And based on where we saw him last, it does feel a touch suspicious.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Have to say, hmm.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: But she goes with him.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Nothing bad could happen here.
Speaker: Nothing bad.
Speaker: And then we cut to Chris and Rebecca who are trying to figure out how to kill the plant again.
Speaker: No, they're not doing that.
Speaker: They decided to collect some plant samples and are now trying to recreate the plant on a smaller scale.
Speaker: So that they can kill it a second time.
Speaker: So they can kill it a second time.
Speaker: No, just as boring.
Speaker: Honestly, yeah, the Chris and Rebecca thing really fell off the all fell off once they left the mansion.
Speaker: Just as boring.
Speaker: They're they're in the tunnels that everybody else was in like 30 minutes ago.
Speaker: And they're outside a locked door that ought to lead to a helipad.
Speaker: And Chris being Chris wants to split up.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Again.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Rebecca showing some level of intelligence is like, absolutely not.
Speaker: This sounds like a bad idea.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then we get this quote, which I adored.
Speaker: No, for all we know, Wesker already killed the other stars and is looking to finish the job.
Speaker: If we're the last ones, we can't risk both of us getting ambushed.
Speaker: Somebody has to survive and tell people about Umbrella.
Speaker: I'm sorry, but it's the only way.
Speaker: Chris.
Speaker: Strategist of the year.
Speaker: If we're separated, there will be way better of a chance that one of us won't get ambushed.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because the only way for us to be ambushed is if there are both of us together.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Come on, man.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Okay, Chris.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: I guess again by.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: So he goes off to be a man and he's a man.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: And you can tell you can tell.
Speaker: And so you forgive a lot because he's a man.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then it cuts to Barry's point of view as he basically just leads Jill as this lamb to the slaughter on her way to, you know, he's like, it's it's not even subtle.
Speaker: Like she says, is something wrong?
Speaker: And it says he pulled the gate open and raised the mesh outer door and excuse to look away.
Speaker: I yeah, something's wrong, he said quietly.
Speaker: But now is not the time.
Speaker: Let's just get this over with.
Speaker: Just like.
Speaker: Well, let's just go get you nice and killed.
Speaker: Let's just get this over with and then I'll tell it to your grave.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I'll explain it to you when you're dead.
Speaker: So, yeah, Barry just leads her right into one of those ambushes that Chris is afraid of, which is.
Speaker: Like that's thing is like, Chris, for all the dumb you wasted like 45 minutes killing a plant that wasn't protecting anything.
Speaker: And now you want to split up because you're afraid of ambushes.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Jill is doing all the work and is actually getting ambushed.
Speaker: Yeah, I can see why we followed Chris after these games continued.
Speaker: He's clearly the master leader that we need.
Speaker: Clearly the mastermind.
Speaker: Oh, God, yeah.
Speaker: It really explains why Jill only got one mainline game, and Chris was in every other fucking one for the rest of- Yeah, and Chris has popped up in basically all of them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm just putting it out there.
Speaker: Chris is a moron.
Speaker: He's a dumb boulder punching moron.
Speaker: And I will not have Resident Evil.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Five spoilers.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: Chris was on steroids at the time and he punched a boulder and it was a bad time.
Speaker: It was a bad time.
Speaker: I'm not going to.
Speaker: It was a bad time in all of our lives, really.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Wesker goes full Bond villain now.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: It gives the full explanation speech.
Speaker: Nice work, Barry.
Speaker: Take her weapons.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Caesar.
Speaker: Caesar.
Speaker: So Barry Barry leaves when Wesker tells him to leave.
Speaker: And then, you know, he just explains everything.
Speaker: And he talks about profit pie.
Speaker: The way Redfield's been running around mouthing off about conspiracies, you think Umbrella didn't notice.
Speaker: I mean, it's all great.
Speaker: He just like he just he says that it's called it's actually the tyrant virus.
Speaker: Barry basically didn't leave.
Speaker: That's the whole thing is like Barry, like just acted like he was leaving.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He just he just hides away a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then finally, he made up Wesker admits to Jill that he made up the thing about Barry's family being in danger.
Speaker: And that's all it takes for Barry to be like, oh, OK, OK.
Speaker: He just knocks Wesker the fuck out.
Speaker: Oh, I see.
Speaker: Oh, I see.
Speaker: I could have figured this out before, but I didn't.
Speaker: And then he just knocks Wesker the fuck out.
Speaker: Knocks him the fuck out.
Speaker: Finally.
Speaker: Finally.
Speaker: Wesker's been deserving this for a while, and he's finally drops him.
Speaker: Very long time, in fact.
Speaker: He drops him like a ton of bricks.
Speaker: And that brings us to chapter 19.
Speaker: 19.
Speaker: Oh, boy, we're coming in for a landing room.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Jill basically just watches Barry get taken down and then and then just kind of forgives him like immediately.
Speaker: She's like, he's like, hey, sorry.
Speaker: She's like, it's cool.
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: Your kids were in quote unquote danger.
Speaker: And he's like, okay, now that he's knocked out cold, I have this other lab to show you.
Speaker: I still don't feel good.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: She goes, well, he seems trustworthy still.
Speaker: He seems fine.
Speaker: Yeah, everything's okay.
Speaker: They talk about handcuffing Wesker, but they kind of get distracted by it.
Speaker: Before they do it.
Speaker: We gotta tie him up with something, I guess.
Speaker: He's like, we'll get back to it.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: They just leave him.
Speaker: They just leave him.
Speaker: They leave him because they're looking for something, like a cord or anything to tie him up with.
Speaker: And they just get distracted with literally everything else.
Speaker: Basically, they find tyrant.
Speaker: Yeah, in a lab, in a giant tube, they find Tyrant.
Speaker: Which here, I did make a point.
Speaker: Again, again, I love these monster descriptions, I think she does a great job with them.
Speaker: So I've got, It was tall, but proportionally correct.
Speaker: At least through the broad, muscular torso and long legs, those parts appeared human.
Speaker: One of its arms had been altered into a cluster of massive, dragging claws hanging past its knees, while the other seemed ordinary, if overly large.
Speaker: There was a thick, bloody tumor protruding from where its heart would be.
Speaker: And Jill realized, staring at the bulbous mass, that it was the thing's heart.
Speaker: It was pulsing slowly, expanding and contracting in slow, rhythmic beats.
Speaker: I think that's pretty good.
Speaker: That is pretty good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, they're just kind of observing the tyrant for now.
Speaker: There had been no sexual, there was no sexual organs.
Speaker: They had been cut away.
Speaker: She looked up, you know, we don't want them to be distracted.
Speaker: Am I right?
Speaker: Hey, gotta stay eyes on the killing prize.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: She looked up at its face and saw that parts of the flesh there had also been removed.
Speaker: The lips were gone and it seemed to grin broadly at her through the sliced red tissue of its face.
Speaker: All of its teeth exposed.
Speaker: It's good stuff.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: It is good stuff.
Speaker: And they also kind of make the connection that the tyrant was was probably a person once.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is like something that they don't really talk about a lot in other games where it's like, oh, there's this big monster thing.
Speaker: You don't actually realize that the humanoid monsters were probably they weren't they didn't just come from nowhere.
Speaker: They were probably a guy that they turned into this.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think that's like a nice that's a nice little nod.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To it attaches the humanity to it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I wish I like that.
Speaker: Don't get used to that.
Speaker: They and then they accidentally wake it up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They start talking about like, they're like, we got, we can't leave this thing.
Speaker: We can't leave this.
Speaker: Cause yeah, they, they recognize that it used to be a person and they're like, we can't just leave this thing here.
Speaker: Like, and it's not a, like, we got to kill it before it kills us.
Speaker: It's like this poor thing should not be alive.
Speaker: It should not be.
Speaker: And so they like find a series of switches that kind of implies that it will, you know,
Speaker: kill it.
Speaker: It'll turn off its life support and everything like that.
Speaker: And as if the thing was reading their mind, it just loses it and starts trying to punch its way through the two.
Speaker: Trying to kill me?
Speaker: What's hilarious is that Wesker had already turned off the life support.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And earlier, Wesker's going through his list.
Speaker: He had already done it.
Speaker: Whatever they did probably turned the life support back on.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: So then it's like, no, dude, I wanted to die.
Speaker: So then it so like so basically whatever they did, like, waked it up, woke it up.
Speaker: And now Wesker is gone.
Speaker: Yeah, of course he is.
Speaker: Of course he is.
Speaker: But not for that long, though.
Speaker: He doesn't have much left in terms of lifespan.
Speaker: So he stumbles out of the room.
Speaker: He has a concussion, like 100%, has a massive concussion.
Speaker: Oh, totally.
Speaker: Can't walk anymore.
Speaker: And he starts stumbling around.
Speaker: The MA2s are getting on him.
Speaker: And he's trying to get into the triggering system to turn on the self-destruct system.
Speaker: Because there's a self-destruct system.
Speaker: He gets a really gruesome death.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's it's it is pretty like because you get a for me, what bothered me about his death was like his inner monologue.
Speaker: Like you hear his final thoughts and that sort of thing.
Speaker: And it's because he's desperate to see he knows the tyrants there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he's desperate to see it kill.
Speaker: Like he's wanted like he expresses on more than one occasion in this book sorrow that he has to execute the tyrant because he wants to watch it work.
Speaker: You know, he's that kind of, you know, sick man.
Speaker: And he had no idea how close he was going to get.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He actually never gets to see it because it gets like, oh yeah, he's, he's, he's got blood just running down his face at this point.
Speaker: He can't see it.
Speaker: And his last thought is I control.
Speaker: Let me see the final line for Wesker picture wrap on Wesker darkness, stole his hopes away and Wesker thought no more.
Speaker: I was like,
Speaker: that's a pretty good line.
Speaker: I like that line.
Speaker: Pretty good stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pretty good.
Speaker: That's, that felt, it felt very like Poe-esque.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Nevermore.
Speaker: And nevermore.
Speaker: And Wesker was then, you know, he, he was, he was behind the wall and all he had was a cask of Amontillado.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Montressor.
Speaker: The only thing I remember about the casco Montiato off the top of my head always is Peter Lorre.
Speaker: Oh, playing.
Speaker: What's his name?
Speaker: Not Montressor, but the guy.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't even remember that much.
Speaker: And he's just just him saying in that Peter Lorre voice, Montressor.
Speaker: Montressor.
Speaker: Get my cask of a Mantiano.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Good Lord.
Speaker: So for anybody born after... Depression.
Speaker: 1960.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Peter Lorre is... I just love his voice.
Speaker: Peter Lorre was one of those actors that, like...
Speaker: our age, we only knew of him because of Looney Tunes cartoons, I want to say.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, they would always do impressions of him on Looney Tunes, and you didn't know he was, but you'd seen them do this impression of him so frequently that you couldn't help but go, oh, right, that guy.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I don't know how many people associated with a real live actor who walked and talked.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But bugs sure did a lot of impressions on continuing on with the podcast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Peter.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And so, yeah.
Speaker: And we get, we get a cut to Rebecca who's by herself again.
Speaker: Cause Chris is an idiot.
Speaker: And the radio finally cuts in and she's hearing from the chopper pilot.
Speaker: that he's trying to find them.
Speaker: The copter pilot.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: The copter pilot.
Speaker: Get to the copter.
Speaker: That famous line.
Speaker: That famous line.
Speaker: Get to the copter.
Speaker: Get to the copter.
Speaker: And then, like you do, an overhead system starts warning of imminent end times, five minutes to be precise, and she's still waiting on Chris to get his ass back to her.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, because they split up because that was a good idea.
Speaker: Because that was it was it was a very good idea.
Speaker: So we were we're in the endgame now.
Speaker: Jill and Barry have run into Chris.
Speaker: The three Musketeers have been reunited.
Speaker: They all know the same information, so they don't need to talk to each other.
Speaker: No, no one needs any explanations done.
Speaker: No one needs any explanation.
Speaker: They all know Wesker's the bad guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All there.
Speaker: They had four minutes left and they get to the helipad and then suddenly Tyrant appears.
Speaker: With three and a half minutes to spare, Tyrant shows up.
Speaker: Oh, geez.
Speaker: Tyrant.
Speaker: Does the superhero pose.
Speaker: Superhero poses.
Speaker: Like he lands the three point landing with the superhero pose and he's there and he's there to fuck up their day.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Anybody who's played any resonable game knows what happens next.
Speaker: You play the dodge shoot dodge game for a solid two and a half minutes.
Speaker: Yeah, you really just get that time eaten up.
Speaker: You shoot when you can, you try to hit the weak spot, all that good stuff.
Speaker: It's usually a pain in the ass and a little anticlimactic, if I'm being honest.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then another Resident Evil trope, the helicopter, or sorry, the copter pilot drops off a rocket launcher.
Speaker: Now, I saw this and I was wondering, I was going to go back and check, but I didn't.
Speaker: Whether they mentioned the rocket launcher in the beginning when they're talking about all the guns that are on the on the helicopter.
Speaker: I believe they do.
Speaker: OK, I believe they do.
Speaker: Because that would be the that would be the true Chekhov's gun.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Chekhov's RPG.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To be sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they bet the copter pilot.
Speaker: And this is I've seen this and this happens at a lot of Resident Evil games, like just at the very end, when you think all is lost, someone throws you a crazy huge gun of some kind and and they blow the tire into pieces with very little ceremony.
Speaker: They're like, fuck this guy.
Speaker: And they just blast him apart.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's, he's, uh, he's food for, he's, uh, he's a feast for crows now.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I know you used to be a human being, but fuck off.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, there's a real there's a real jump from feeling sorry to him to like, oh, shit, kill him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I mean, which is very human nature.
Speaker: You feel bad for that big, angry looking, sad Rottweiler at the Humane Society right up until it snaps at you and you're like, oh, God, fuck this thing.
Speaker: Never mind.
Speaker: So they the copter touches down.
Speaker: They jump into the cab and they get carried away, which leads us to Chapter 21, the shortest chapter in the entire book, which is just two paragraphs describing the Wesker estate exploding Spencer estate.
Speaker: Spencer.
Speaker: Oh, it was Wesker.
Speaker: I said the Wesker.
Speaker: Wesker estate.
Speaker: That was the, that was the real twist.
Speaker: You find out in the end that it was all owned by Wesker.
Speaker: It was Wesker all along.
Speaker: It was Wesker all along.
Speaker: In many ways.
Speaker: It blows up and it blows up.
Speaker: It's gone.
Speaker: Just like at the end of a lot of Resident Evil stories.
Speaker: There's a big ol' explosion.
Speaker: That's the one thing you gotta guarantee at the end of Resident Evil.
Speaker: There's a big fuckin' explosion.
Speaker: At least in the original games.
Speaker: They kind of backed off the promise of massive explosion in the recent ones.
Speaker: I don't think there was a
Speaker: Was there a big one in seven?
Speaker: Oh, yeah, kind of there was at the end of seven-ish.
Speaker: Sort of.
Speaker: The house wasn't standing by the end.
Speaker: Well, that's true.
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Manner of speaking.
Speaker: In a manner of speaking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was more of a flesh explosion.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It wasn't.
Speaker: Yeah, it wasn't quite the it wasn't not talking about the end of Contra here, but yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But and that brings us to the epilogue.
Speaker: And as they fly to safety, we're given the POV of Brad.
Speaker: Because why not?
Speaker: Because why not?
Speaker: Our chicken shit pilot who who feels regret about leaving them and bemoans the fact that he needs to pee really badly.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And he's also and then he reveals.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: He reveals in his monologue, not to them, he doesn't tell them, but that he received their exact coordinates from a Trent's
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: Ah, mysterious, wrote, unquote, Trent.
Speaker: Who we're not going to get conclusion on in this story.
Speaker: I'm sure he's brought up again in the other Resident Evil books by S.D.
Speaker: Perry, which are available from these fine booksellers.
Speaker: The one near your house.
Speaker: The one online.
Speaker: The one that's a little further away from your house, but you like to go there on Sunday afternoons if you're already driving in that direction.
Speaker: So, Kevin, what did you think of Resident Evil The Umbrella Conspiracy?
Speaker: It was actually... I really liked it overall as an adaptation of a game, which, as much as I love Resident Evil, it's super silly and dumb in all the right ways.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: It really does its best to ground some of the more absurd story elements of Resident Evil, like the traps and the puzzles and all that stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which works for this specific book.
Speaker: It doesn't necessarily explain why those things exist for the rest of the series.
Speaker: But the thing is...
Speaker: this book series was written this was written basically when Resident Evil 2 had come out so like you know I think there was a lot of like oh well you know we're just going to explain it away now and not worry about the fact that Capcom is going to be making these games for another 25 years or so forever and they're all going to have the far fetched puzzle solving and and and whatnot
Speaker: And honestly, that's fine.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: You know, it is what it is.
Speaker: And, and yeah, I, I agree.
Speaker: I think this was a, you know, I think S D Perry, she had a little, a big, big task ahead of her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This was not going to be an easy thing to adapt.
Speaker: And basically she had two options.
Speaker: Well, maybe she didn't even have the two options.
Speaker: This is, we are going to ask her some questions.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: to hopefully figure out a little more about how this all worked.
Speaker: But, you know, basically, if you're left to your own devices on this one, which I doubt she was, but you basically have the option of trying to remain somewhat true to the source material and make it work in this new format.
Speaker: Or you basically just rewrite the whole damn thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like they did with the movies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She did what she could with the material.
Speaker: And I think she did an admirable job.
Speaker: I think it was pretty fun.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I think it was pretty fun.
Speaker: I think had the first Resident Evil movie kind of gone in this direction, it actually could have worked.
Speaker: She did a really nice job.
Speaker: separating out the elements of the story and being able to assign them to different main characters, which is interesting based on like the Resident Evil game.
Speaker: You experience everything as one character on each playthrough.
Speaker: Like it's there's it's not a split playthrough like Resident Evil 2.
Speaker: It's either Chris and you do it all or Jill and you do it all just in a slightly different order.
Speaker: So, yeah, that being said, I think she did an admirable job doing that.
Speaker: That's not to say that there weren't some really silly moments in the book.
Speaker: Some really silly writing.
Speaker: I mean, the way she kind of wrote Chris, honestly, he was pretty unlikable by the end.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I didn't give a shit about Chris.
Speaker: I was like, oh man, Chris could fucking die.
Speaker: I don't... Right.
Speaker: I'm done.
Speaker: What a moron.
Speaker: He's a moron.
Speaker: And he's not... He's also not doing anything for the second half of the book that's important.
Speaker: He's like... Right.
Speaker: It's like... It's really Jill's story.
Speaker: Jill is driving the plot forward with her moves and her actions.
Speaker: And Chris is just...
Speaker: He's trying to figure out how to kill a plant or whatever.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which honestly, that was, that was the one part of the whole book that just frustrated me to no end where it was.
Speaker: We've expressed that obviously in this very episode, but it was just, man, oh man.
Speaker: Otherwise I think it did a pretty good job.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: I think if you got, you know, if you got a couple of afternoons or going to the beach or some damn thing, you could do worse than, you know, I picked up, uh, I know Kevin likes his, uh, his, his e-readers, uh, for, uh, for his purposes here.
Speaker: I like my beat up,
Speaker: paperback copies.
Speaker: And I found this one on eBay for five bucks, you know, which I think is what it was selling for when it was brand new.
Speaker: So yeah, why not?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's interesting.
Speaker: I would give this maybe five out of seven stars.
Speaker: Five out of seven.
Speaker: It's a perfect score.
Speaker: Five out of seven.
Speaker: Really unorthodox rating system.
Speaker: You got there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Out of Kevin's famous seven-star review system.
Speaker: Seven-star review.
Speaker: No, it's good.
Speaker: You can still buy it.
Speaker: It's everywhere.
Speaker: I think they have new editions of it, too.
Speaker: Yeah, if you're a fan of... If you're a moderate Resident Evil fan, I think it's worth reading.
Speaker: It's not up to date.
Speaker: It's not based on the Resident Evil remake.
Speaker: It's based on the OG Resident Evil.
Speaker: So there's a bunch of plot lines that are just not there.
Speaker: But it's worth it if you're just looking for something to read.
Speaker: As you said, Phil, if you're at a beach and you just want a book and you just want a book that has kind of like a familiarity to it.
Speaker: And that's that's a thing is like wanting to just like wrap yourself in something familiar rather than, you know, start something brand new.
Speaker: I think this is a pretty decent book for for what it's doing.
Speaker: And speaking of someone who never played the first Resident Evil, like I still got a kick out of it.
Speaker: I played the other ones and just and it still gave me that familiarity you're talking about.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's great.
Speaker: This was just the first book in Resident Evil series.
Speaker: Maybe we'll come back to the other ones.
Speaker: Maybe we won't.
Speaker: We'll figure that out as we go along.
Speaker: Well, and it's an interesting note.
Speaker: The second one.
Speaker: I think it's called Caliban Cove, is actually the first all-original Resident Evil book.
Speaker: It's not based on any of the games, and then the third book in the series is based on Resident Evil 2.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: S.T.
Speaker: Perry got to write two books in this series that were completely original, Caliban Cove and Underworld, while the rest are based on our novelizations of the games.
Speaker: So eventually, I think we'll definitely want to come back
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To this, because I think it'll be really interesting to see what she did with an original story.
Speaker: Yeah, I would be interested in the Caliban Cove book for sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But that's that's going to do it for Resident Evil.
Speaker: Hell yeah.
Speaker: The Umbrella Conspiracy.
Speaker: We're going to be doing Halo, Halo, Fall of Reach next.
Speaker: That's the next book, right?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Halo, Fall of Reach.
Speaker: Now that should be very interesting because that one, every time you look up, as I have, you know, the best video game novels and stuff like that, this one tops a lot of lists.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So I'm really interested.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm excited.
Speaker: I'm excited to check it out.
Speaker: I'm not a huge Halo guy, but I'm sure it'll be fun.
Speaker: I do enjoy myself some like the military sci-fi genre, so to speak.
Speaker: Little Robert Heinlein kind of stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, that kind of whatnot.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, that'll do it.
Speaker: Thanks, everybody.
Speaker: Thanks, guys.
