Transcript
Speaker: No, no, that much is absolutely, I mean, I don't know if that's ever been the case, but that is definitely true.
Speaker: But it's beautiful.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know who is living in reality?
Speaker: Who's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixelette.
Speaker: My name is Kevin with me, as always, as Phil and on today's show.
Speaker: We're doing Dishonored, the Corroded Man.
Speaker: We are really hitting a whole lot of new franchises this year.
Speaker: Have you noticed that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Tapping into some new shit lately.
Speaker: And I love it.
Speaker: I absolutely love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: So Dishonored, The Corroded Man.
Speaker: It's based on the Dishonored series, which is an all time favorite of mine.
Speaker: It takes place after Dishonored.
Speaker: a year before dishonored 2 so it's it's exactly and there's a few things like they they are pretty specific about the dates in the book they mention they like they say the author adam christopher uh puts a date in front of everything so the dishonored franchise uh first scheme uh
Speaker: simply called Dishonored, was made by Arcane, by the now shuttered Arcane, I believe is Arcane Austin made, or, well, it was just Arcane at the time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When they made it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Arcane Studios.
Speaker: There was no, it wasn't, uh,
Speaker: Yeah, I think Arcane Austin made it.
Speaker: And now there's just, I mean, there's Arcane Lyon, but the Austin branch was shut down.
Speaker: So Arcane Studios is published by Bethesda.
Speaker: It's a first-person stealth action game with...
Speaker: a lot of M-Sim elements.
Speaker: There's a lot of emergent gameplay.
Speaker: And it also was really cool that it had like this kind of chaos system built into it where there's kind of two ways you could play.
Speaker: If you were very stealthy and you were non-lethal for most of the time, it would keep low chaos and you would have it's harder to do.
Speaker: It's harder to
Speaker: to be stealthier and non-lethal, but it made some things easier for you because you didn't leave a trail of bodies in your wake.
Speaker: There's this thing called the rat plague that's happening in the city of Dunwall at the time.
Speaker: They reference it.
Speaker: We're going to talk about it.
Speaker: They reference it a bunch in the book.
Speaker: That we're reading.
Speaker: So there's this rat plague.
Speaker: And if you don't kill people, well, there's nothing for the rats to feed on and multiply within.
Speaker: Because that was kind of the thing is they were like eating bodies and going inside the bodies and then the bodies would explode and there would be more rats.
Speaker: Got pretty graphic.
Speaker: Pretty graphic there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so the basic story of the first game is you play as Corvo Tano, who is the Lord Protector of the Empress.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She is killed in a sneak attack by a man named Dowd, and it was orchestrated by a few of the higher-ups in the Dunwall government.
Speaker: And then...
Speaker: The daughter, the Empress's daughter, Emily is kidnapped and this one guy installs himself as the Lord Regent of Dunwall and you, Corvo Tano are thrown in jail and the game begins basically with you escaping from jail on the day that you are to be executed for your high treason because obviously they have pinned the murder of the Empress on you.
Speaker: It's so clear you did this.
Speaker: It's so clear you did this.
Speaker: So you fight your way through Dunwall and other areas trying to get to the heart of the bad guys who did this.
Speaker: And along the way, you meet someone called the outsider, who is basically like a
Speaker: It's like a spectral god-like figure who grants his power to people and no one is really sure the rhyme or reason as to when or why he does it necessarily?
Speaker: Question mark?
Speaker: So he grants the powers to Corvo and these things let him do things like teleport from one spot to another, go invisible, I believe.
Speaker: There's a whole list of things that you can do with these powers that you gain from the outsider.
Speaker: So, yeah, that was Dishonored.
Speaker: One of my favorite games, I actually started playing it again this evening right before we got on just because I realized I had never played it on Steam.
Speaker: I guess I played it on PS5 or something like that.
Speaker: or PS4 rather, because I was like, oh, zero hours played.
Speaker: I've played through Dishonored before.
Speaker: I'm going to have to change that.
Speaker: I'm going to have to fix that.
Speaker: I cannot have my Steam.
Speaker: I cannot have one of my favorite games sitting in my Steam account with the shame of zero minutes played.
Speaker: So that's the game that this is all based on.
Speaker: Phil, who is, do you know who Adam Christopher is?
Speaker: This dude with a real big chin, it looks like.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: He's half man, half chin, as far as we can tell.
Speaker: Kiwi comes out of New Zealand.
Speaker: Yeah, that's those famous Kiwi chins.
Speaker: He, he, he,
Speaker: He is actually very interesting to me because like a lot of our writers for hire, he started out with one original kind of book and then just got picked up from there.
Speaker: as a writer for hire, but it kind of makes sense when you consider that both of his pieces of fiction, original fiction, were published by Angry Robot.
Speaker: So it's already built into the entertainment industry in terms of movies and TV and what have you.
Speaker: And Angry Robot, they do video games too, I think.
Speaker: They're all over the damn place.
Speaker: JJ Abrams cannot be sated with media.
Speaker: Wait, I thought JJ Abrams was bad robot.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: See, it's not an episode of Pixel Rit.
Speaker: If I don't prove that I am a hack and a fraud and don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, you're absolutely right.
Speaker: This happened to me when I was talking about, um, I forget, I think it was Senua's Sacrifice in a, in a video years and years back.
Speaker: Uh, and I, and I said, it was funny that, uh, this was a Ninja theory game, uh, because it didn't make me think of like Ninja Gaiden, uh, and their remake of it.
Speaker: And, and someone had to pop in there and be like, that's different.
Speaker: That's, that's different.
Speaker: That's not the same.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It's, oh, fuck.
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: Not Ninja Theory, but Ninja... Ninja something.
Speaker: Something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Team Ninja did Ninja Gaiden.
Speaker: Ninja Theory did Senua Sekiro.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: I got them mixed up, and someone kindly pointed this out, and I had it coming.
Speaker: There's no one to blame but myself.
Speaker: He had it coming.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: He had it coming.
Speaker: So forgive me for my my my ignorance on this one.
Speaker: All the same, he started out with a couple of novels and was picked up almost immediately to do some work for hire.
Speaker: However, the work for hire was being done by Angry Robot and it involved Empire State, which is not a series that I am terribly familiar with.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But from there, he got he got into this is another one.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Ray Electromatic Mysteries.
Speaker: So that's a whole thing.
Speaker: He the Spider Wars, which again, that's a new one.
Speaker: And then you get into some some franchises that I'm more familiar with Dishonored.
Speaker: He wrote a trilogy of this, and this is the first one, obviously.
Speaker: From there, he's also done a Stranger Things.
Speaker: Novel, which I did not know existed.
Speaker: He did some elementary novels.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That's like a Sherlock Holmes kind of thing, right?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Elementary was a present day Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker: It was on CBS.
Speaker: It was most notably known for being a thousand percent better than the BBC Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Which starred Benedict Cumberbatch.
Speaker: Uh, elementary starred, uh, Lucy Liu and, oh, what's his name?
Speaker: Uh, you know this guy.
Speaker: Look, uh, fuck.
Speaker: He's one, he's one of those guys.
Speaker: Uh, lead actor.
Speaker: Johnny Lee Miller?
Speaker: Johnny Lee Miller!
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Sick boy?
Speaker: There he is.
Speaker: Johnny Lee Miller.
Speaker: He plays, he plays Sherlock.
Speaker: Lucy Liu plays Watson.
Speaker: Dr. Watson.
Speaker: Oh, that's funny.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: It's a lot and it's a lot better than, uh, the Benedict Cumberbatch one that is overwrought and, you know,
Speaker: All that stuff.
Speaker: Too much.
Speaker: It's too much.
Speaker: It's too much.
Speaker: Too much.
Speaker: He did some Star Wars stuff.
Speaker: But one of the more interesting things I found is that he actually helped write a few episodes of The Shield, which has nothing to do with the old TV show, for a comic book with Chuck Windig, who is a really kick-ass horror writer and game designer.
Speaker: uh out there who's who has done a fair amount of star wars writing himself uh it's probably how they met each other yeah chuck chuck wendig uh i mean i've read his stuff but also uh wasn't he the one that was really shitty about the internet archive was he i i don't know i'm not familiar i'm not familiar with that okay i'm just trying to remember um
Speaker: He basically drummed up a lot of...
Speaker: support for suing the Internet Archive during COVID because it was loaning out too many books.
Speaker: Oh, for Pete's sake.
Speaker: He wasn't involved in the lawsuit, and he's written several things where it says, no, I don't have anything to do with the Internet Archive, and he's saying, no, I didn't do anything, and I do not support the lawsuit and all that, but he...
Speaker: He says several years later after he did this Twitter thread where he was like, it's just, it's piracy.
Speaker: He wrote a thing on his blog saying it.
Speaker: I regret saying all those things, but, you know, at least he pulled back on it.
Speaker: It was kind of like a check.
Speaker: I don't think this is the thing.
Speaker: This is not the hell to die on, buddy.
Speaker: This is not it.
Speaker: And it's a shame because he does a ton of, um,
Speaker: really well-regarded tie-in stuff, but actually his standalone stuff is really well-regarded in itself.
Speaker: Black River Orchard came out last year and made, I remember, I haven't read that one, but I know a lot of people really enjoyed it.
Speaker: But the Book of Accidents came out in 2021, and my wife and I both read that one.
Speaker: It might be the first example in our relationship of a time that she read a horror novel before I did.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She, she picked up that one and read it and said, you really gotta, you really gotta read this thing.
Speaker: And, and yeah, it was pretty good.
Speaker: Not bad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not bad stuff.
Speaker: So, but enough about Chuck Wendig.
Speaker: We're not talking about, we're not talking about him.
Speaker: We're not talking about, we're, we're talking about patreon.com slash pixel pod.
Speaker: That's what we're talking about right now.
Speaker: Right into it.
Speaker: Patreon.com slash Pixelipod.
Speaker: It's such a great website.
Speaker: Don't you think?
Speaker: Don't you all think?
Speaker: It's the best.
Speaker: It's a tremendous website.
Speaker: People tell me all the time.
Speaker: People tell me all the time.
Speaker: It's beautiful.
Speaker: They come to me, tears in their eyes.
Speaker: You know you're doing a, it's funny, you can do a Trump impression without actually doing the voice.
Speaker: You just start...
Speaker: Doing a little rambliness with the words tremendous and people tell me.
Speaker: And immediately people know what you're doing.
Speaker: People know what you're doing.
Speaker: It's a good, that's a good, that's good for the kids at home.
Speaker: Like, you don't have to do a perfect impression, my friends.
Speaker: Just find the things that they do and follow it.
Speaker: Find the things they do and kind of repeat them in a way that makes sense.
Speaker: And then you got it.
Speaker: Try to keep the vomit down.
Speaker: That's really all you can hope for.
Speaker: I try to keep the vomit down and when you do go follow us for free on patreon.com slash pixelit pod.
Speaker: You can follow us for free.
Speaker: Doing that gets you early access to the episodes if I'm able to get them up before Wednesday and this week I did.
Speaker: Paying us $1 a month gets you access to Phil's blog in which he writes in little reviews on the books that he's reading.
Speaker: $5 a month gets you the ad-free episode and a bonus from before the show, even before that we record before the show.
Speaker: And $10 a month gets your name shouted out every episode.
Speaker: So that and Kyle Seam and Jesus loves you.
Speaker: Ruthless Miter and friendly friend.
Speaker: Thank you all for being friends of the pod.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: That's the end of the show.
Speaker: And we're going to go put a body in the marsh.
Speaker: Oh, let's go put the body on the marsh.
Speaker: Let's put the body on the marsh.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Yes, sir.
Speaker: So we're talking, we're talking the crowded man, and we're opening with a prologue and God damn it, if this is not a beefy prologue, this is the, I was surprised when I saw chapter one after I got to the end of the prologue, it was like, oh, I thought I was already in chapter one.
Speaker: It does set the tone, doesn't it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This book is dense.
Speaker: This is a beefy boy.
Speaker: This is a beefy boy.
Speaker: Lord.
Speaker: It might be the longest book we've read by the time we get to the end of it.
Speaker: So the prologue opens with a note about the prisons of Tivia, wherein prisoners are free to leave at any time because of just how dangerous it is to leave.
Speaker: And it's kind of an interesting thing that this guy, this character, the prisoner gets into where you're sentenced to be free at this prison.
Speaker: So you can do whatever you want.
Speaker: There's nothing stopping you from leaving except the harsh tundra that surrounds the prison.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: I mean, that's all.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: So the book starts with a point of view of a man just called the prisoner, and he's crossing the tundra of Tivia with a few guards that he has taken captive from the prisoner, from the prison.
Speaker: He had three.
Speaker: He killed the first one for his clothing, and he says the second of the three guards is going to be used for food, not for him, but for the wolves.
Speaker: Because by the way, there are a ton of wolves out there.
Speaker: There are wolves out there.
Speaker: You got to pay the wolf tax.
Speaker: You got to pay the wolf tax as you're going along the tundra.
Speaker: As they continue, they find just him and the living guard find just bodies of frozen guys who tried to escape.
Speaker: Just so many.
Speaker: And it's revealed that the third prisoner has been brought along for his bones.
Speaker: He needs him for his bones.
Speaker: The prisoner leads living bones from living men to make the right type of magic so he's able to return to the world.
Speaker: And the prisoner is going to have his revenge on everyone that was responsible for putting him there.
Speaker: He kills the last guard and the blood spills all over the snow.
Speaker: And we cut to it's the seventh day, month of rain in 1851.
Speaker: And we get a small quote from Hiram Burroughs, who was one of the bad guys from the first one, about Lady Emily as a kid and her training with Corvo Atano.
Speaker: We get a scene of Emily Caldwell doing some night parkour practice along the rooftops.
Speaker: She is the Empress of Dunwall, and she is trying to keep her activities at night secret.
Speaker: Her father is Corvo Otano, the royal protector.
Speaker: Spoilers for Dishonored One.
Speaker: You find out that Corvo Otano, who is the royal protector to the Empress, was also the Empress's lover and fathered the child, Lady Emily, who eventually would become the Empress.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Her father, Corvo Otano, the royal protector, has trained her over the course of her life.
Speaker: And we get some backstory that's basically a dishonored one backstory.
Speaker: How her mother was murdered on the orders of the Lord Regent, who took control of the empire and took Emily hostage while Corvo had to work to save her.
Speaker: And we also get a lot of internal dialogue about her father and her relationship with him, as well as how she likes to climb buildings and loves being able to see her city at night.
Speaker: And that's she's training to be Batman.
Speaker: Like she's training to be Batman.
Speaker: She's training to be Batman.
Speaker: That's what this is.
Speaker: This is Batman father, Catwoman, Catwoman daughter.
Speaker: Bingo.
Speaker: Right there.
Speaker: That's that's exactly what it is.
Speaker: Part one.
Speaker: Yeah, this fucker has parts.
Speaker: And then chapters within them.
Speaker: Part one, chapter one, first day, month of darkness, 1851.
Speaker: We're introduced to a new character called Gallia Fleet, who is a bodyguard at the bathhouse called the Golden Cat.
Speaker: We're introduced to her as she is kicking the shit out of an aristocrat who got a little too handsy with the talent at the Golden Cat.
Speaker: She is 35 years old and was a whaler in the past, which is a group of assassins led by a man named Dowd.
Speaker: Other members include Billy Lurk, who later appears in Dishonored 2 spinoff game.
Speaker: She's in Dishonored 2, and she's the main character of Death of the Outsider.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: As well as a guy named Ronaldo.
Speaker: The Wailers fell apart after the events of Dishonored One in which Dowd killed the Empress and then he was run off into, he was hiding by Corvo Otano.
Speaker: Over the years, she's gotten drunker and drunker.
Speaker: Uh, and at some point she recruits one of her old whaler buddies, Ronaldo, to help with security at the golden cat.
Speaker: Uh, one evening, a man in a mask shows up.
Speaker: Ronaldo and, uh, Gallia engage in a fight with him.
Speaker: And it's, it seems like he's bad news.
Speaker: He basically hands them their asses.
Speaker: He is just like appearing and disappearing and reappearing.
Speaker: He seemingly teleports from reflection to reflection.
Speaker: While she's near him, Galia has a vision while fighting him as with her as leader of the whalers.
Speaker: And then the man, the man tells her that he's not there to fight her.
Speaker: He's there to rescue her.
Speaker: Oh, well, that's much better.
Speaker: That's way better than having to fight somebody.
Speaker: That's much better.
Speaker: Chapter two.
Speaker: We're in the eighth day of the month of darkness in 1851.
Speaker: So it's a week later.
Speaker: And Emily is out and about on the rooftops and is venturing into parts of the city that she doesn't know as well in an effort to get to know the layout of the land better.
Speaker: And we get a lot of story about how Dunwall has been expanding.
Speaker: It's been pushing out the city wall.
Speaker: And there's like a lot of towns and villages that used to sit just outside of the city wall that are now basically just being absorbed into Dunwall proper.
Speaker: And she's not totally familiar with all these locations.
Speaker: And she heads towards one, which was a village that was mostly there was like rich, well-to-do merchants that live there, but they live just outside of Dunwall.
Speaker: but it was abandoned since the rat plague.
Speaker: People died and all that stuff.
Speaker: And she notices that the square in the center of this town is not just like a park, but it's a cemetery.
Speaker: And I was like, that is some Savannah ass bullshit right there.
Speaker: That's exactly where my head went.
Speaker: I was like, oh, because initially I was just like, I was like, well, yeah, sure.
Speaker: Why am I so blasé about that?
Speaker: Oh, because I'm from Savannah.
Speaker: Yeah, we spent a lot of time in Savannah, Georgia, and Savannah, Georgia, it's like, hey, there's a fucking cemetery.
Speaker: Or, hey, there's dead bodies buried here, but it's not a cemetery.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just so you know.
Speaker: Just so you know.
Speaker: Someone died where you're standing right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you take another stat.
Speaker: And it wasn't great.
Speaker: It wasn't great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There was like a yellow fever thing.
Speaker: It was a yellow fever thing.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: The yellow fever was big.
Speaker: Killed a bunch of people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Didn't they just build the town up a layer?
Speaker: all intents and purposes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, like, that's the thing.
Speaker: They're just like, you've got bodies underneath every block.
Speaker: Uh, uh, and everyone's going to go up and everyone's drunk and trying to fuck each other.
Speaker: It's a crazy city.
Speaker: I, I miss it.
Speaker: I love that place.
Speaker: You miss it so much.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she ends up in this area.
Speaker: She sees that it's a cemetery.
Speaker: And then she notices that there's grave robbers.
Speaker: There's dudes digging up graves and taking the caskets out and putting them onto a truck.
Speaker: And she's like, listen, I'm pretty well trained.
Speaker: I'm basically Batman at this point.
Speaker: I can handle these guys.
Speaker: So she's like practicing her attack vectors when she notices there's a dude on a balcony of one of the houses that
Speaker: acting as a lookout and she's like all right well I can handle this guy but then she notices the guy is looking at her so she ducks down and she tries to cool cool off and she was like you know what
Speaker: this is not a good idea right now.
Speaker: So she's like, I'm going to, well, I'll deal with it tomorrow as under the faculties of being the empress of, of this country rather than, you know, a mass vigilante at night.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: This is not the last time this happens, by the way.
Speaker: She often goes in and goes, you know what?
Speaker: I'm going to, I'm going to back off.
Speaker: I mean, I need to reassess the situation.
Speaker: I'm going to back off.
Speaker: I have greater resources during my day job.
Speaker: Which is, which is honestly not a bad way of doing things.
Speaker: Not a bad way of doing things.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: So chapter three is that is continuation of that scene.
Speaker: It was not a lookout.
Speaker: It was her father, Corvo Atano, who has been well aware of her daughter's nighttime parkour roof running sessions.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: He knows, he knows all of it.
Speaker: It's just like, it's just, what a dad move, by the way.
Speaker: Isn't that just such a dad move where it's just like, you know, you know, your dad knew when you were out there sneaking a cigarette, he knew all that shit.
Speaker: He knew all that shit.
Speaker: He kept it to himself.
Speaker: You think you're being sneaky.
Speaker: Let him think he's get away with it.
Speaker: Corvo is like, ah, look at you kid.
Speaker: You made the right call.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, but it's like, he's like, well, she probably could have taken them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's even like, he's like, you could have done it, but you know what?
Speaker: Chip off the old block.
Speaker: All, all, all things considered.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He has this nagging feeling though, and that he's not ready to let her do it.
Speaker: Not as a dad, but as the Royal protector, like his, the thing that is that about, about him is like the, his ingrained job of being the Royal protector is like, you shouldn't let the Empress try to fight some goons.
Speaker: I mean, that's that is that is that is probably first and foremost, even beyond.
Speaker: I think if it were any other situation, I'd be like, come on, it's because you're a dad.
Speaker: But in that one, it's like, no, he's like, as a dad, he's pretty confident in how well he's trained her.
Speaker: But as the royal protector, he's like, I probably shouldn't.
Speaker: This is probably, yeah, I'm going to go, yeah, discourage that if I get the opportunity.
Speaker: Probably not doing a good job at my job if I'm doing that.
Speaker: If I just let that happen.
Speaker: It's problematic to what I'm doing right now anyway, so...
Speaker: Corvo is about to do his little void jump shadow walk thing that he can do when he noticed that one of the grave robbers is wearing a whaler uniform, which understandably spins him out a little bit.
Speaker: He's like, it's a whaler.
Speaker: It's a whaler uniform.
Speaker: That's a whaler.
Speaker: And because the whalers killed his lover.
Speaker: The prior empress.
Speaker: He's not a big fan of them is what you're saying.
Speaker: He's not a big fan of them, no.
Speaker: The whaler has seen him though and Corvo and the whaler begin and get into a bit of a scuffle as well as like a teleportation battle across and around the courtyard.
Speaker: And Corvo loses the whaler, but he's out of energy and he doesn't have any Adermeyer solution on hand to get his energy back.
Speaker: Which in Dishonored 2, Adermire's Solution is basically like, it's just like a blue Gatorade thing that you have to drink in order to continually do like the magic stuff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's a mana potion, really.
Speaker: It's a mana potion.
Speaker: He doesn't have one on him and he's wiped out.
Speaker: Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker: So he needs to fall back.
Speaker: Chapter four, same night.
Speaker: So chapters two, three, and four, it's like one continuous scene from three different points of view.
Speaker: We find out that Gallia was the wailer in the uniform.
Speaker: And she's out of breath from the encounter.
Speaker: She like takes off the mask that she's wearing because the whalers wear these like heavy cloaks with a rubber mask and a like a ventilator thing on it, I guess, to look like the whalers from when the they harvested.
Speaker: whale oil in this universe.
Speaker: They're a Batman criminal gang.
Speaker: It's the Batman criminal gang.
Speaker: They got to keep the theme going.
Speaker: They got to keep the theme going.
Speaker: Death before betraying the theme, you know, always in character.
Speaker: The Batman theme continues.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The Batman theme continues.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That's basically, uh, uh, what is it?
Speaker: Gas lamp?
Speaker: Uh, yes.
Speaker: Is the name of the genre.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They, they did a whole series with that.
Speaker: Uh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Batman gas lamp something or other.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Now I have to look it up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because it's like it's it's you know, it's a really gaslight Gotham by gaslight.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's a very it's like a very specific type of setting.
Speaker: And there is a ton of fantasy novels set in this type of.
Speaker: It's like a fantasy science fiction blend where it is a 1850s to 1880s right on the cusp of whatever the world's industrial revolution is.
Speaker: It's like a really advanced... It's like, all right, take whatever, Game of Thrones, but now advance that world...
Speaker: You know, 500 years.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Half a millennia.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And now you're you're got like you're getting closer to what this is, where it's like there's science and there's magic and there's science that uses magic to make it work.
Speaker: Don't question it.
Speaker: Just go with it.
Speaker: Just go with it.
Speaker: So Galia, her and the goons that are working for her bring the coffins back to Slaughterhouse-Five, where they are operating out of.
Speaker: Is that intentional, I guess?
Speaker: It has to have been.
Speaker: Like, nobody can pretend to ignore that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Like if I was writing and I wrote a slaughterhouse five on accident, I'd be like, oh, and I would change the number because.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Or I call it an abattoir or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anything else.
Speaker: But yeah, no, I'm not just going to leave that unless unless I'm doing it on a purpose.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Uh, Rinaldo talks to her for a bit, mentioning that the boss, the man that fought them earlier, hasn't moved since they left.
Speaker: She tells him, uh, that no one has to interrupt them while they're talking and goes into his office.
Speaker: And Galia walks into the office and she dumps her mask on a nearby console.
Speaker: And we get some lore about the whale oil business while she muses about what she's going to actually say to him.
Speaker: And the boss is just kind of sitting there staring out of a window.
Speaker: Like, he never moves.
Speaker: He's really creepy.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: as she decides to be very direct and what follows is this really tense back and forth where Gallia gets madder and madder and the boss gives not one shit about the fact that she's angry or that they were seen and he's also like he's just one man and can do nothing and I'm like listen this is Corvo Tano he was the star of a video game called Dishonored perhaps you've heard of it
Speaker: Perhaps you heard of it.
Speaker: He's the man who beat her old boss.
Speaker: So I don't know what your...
Speaker: thinking of what you're thinking you're doing here.
Speaker: And then they have another, the back and forth continues where the boss talks about the powers he's promised to Gallia.
Speaker: And then Gallia is like in, and then she's out, and then she's in, and then she just picks a fight with him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She like goes for him.
Speaker: It's like, what are you doing?
Speaker: This is where I am like,
Speaker: I like the book mostly except for Galia is just the weirdest goddamn character I've ever read because I don't understand her motivation from beat.
Speaker: She goes back and forth a lot.
Speaker: Doesn't she?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't get it where it's like, why is she so angry?
Speaker: Hasn't she been working for him for a bit?
Speaker: Like what does it, what is, what is, why is she getting this angry?
Speaker: I don't understand.
Speaker: So anyway,
Speaker: The boss easily wins, like takes her down without even like laying a finger on her, basically.
Speaker: Humiliates her, basically.
Speaker: He humiliates her, just bounces back and forth between reflections.
Speaker: And she just like takes herself out with punches.
Speaker: And then he's like, well, I'll finally give you some more answers.
Speaker: The guy's name is Zukov.
Speaker: And he takes off his glove to show his hands.
Speaker: And it's like, it looks, it's like skeletal, but you can see that it has the mark of the outsider on it.
Speaker: And it's like skeletal and like flaking away.
Speaker: Um, and it's just so gross.
Speaker: Um, he, anyway, uh, he's here to save the world is, is his, uh, his thing.
Speaker: And that was the impression I got when I first, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So
Speaker: Chapter five, still the eighth day, month of darkness.
Speaker: Corvo enters the throne room.
Speaker: So it's basically the morning now for a meeting with the Empress.
Speaker: High Overseer Yul Kulan, Jameson Kerr now the captain of the City Watch and also and he's also Corvo's chief spy.
Speaker: They discuss the grave robbing situation, plans to mitigate it, as well as where to focus the overseers in the City Watch to keep an eye on other grave sites.
Speaker: As they're leaving, Wyman, who is Lady Emily's boyfriend.
Speaker: Boyfriend.
Speaker: That's exactly the attitude they treat it with.
Speaker: That is the vibe of this.
Speaker: He's a boyfriend.
Speaker: Emily likes boys.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: But I kind of appreciate the fact that it's like, yeah, she has a boyfriend.
Speaker: He's not an important character at all.
Speaker: But she just has a boyfriend.
Speaker: It's a nice addition.
Speaker: I joke, but they don't make that big of a deal of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just a boyfriend.
Speaker: And Corvo's happy about it, too.
Speaker: It's nice.
Speaker: It's nice.
Speaker: Someone like her can find love and all that.
Speaker: So Corvo is like, hey, high overseer, I need to meet with you for a second in your office.
Speaker: And then Corvo on the way to the high overseer's office is like, it stops a lieutenant in the city watch and is like, hey, buddy, I need a guard detail on Lady Emily.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just, you know, never let her out of your sight.
Speaker: Ever.
Speaker: Ever.
Speaker: And he's like, that should fuck up her nightly trips.
Speaker: LAUGHTER
Speaker: That'll keep her nice and not pregnant.
Speaker: That'll keep her nice and not slipping off of a rooftop and into.
Speaker: Oh, see, you were at nighttime events.
Speaker: I was thinking that you.
Speaker: Yeah, you were thinking with.
Speaker: She's Batman.
Speaker: She's Batman.
Speaker: I keep forgetting.
Speaker: She's Batman.
Speaker: Yeah, she's Batman.
Speaker: So when Corvo and the high overseer are in a private, Corvo asks him to break out any music boxes that they might have.
Speaker: And the high overseer is like, oh, why do you need the music boxes?
Speaker: And Corvo is like, well, there might be some like dark black magic underfoot.
Speaker: And the high overseer is like, oh, yeah.
Speaker: we might not have music boxes left.
Speaker: So the music boxes are a device that basically it's like, they like neutralize the, the use of magic.
Speaker: So he's like, find whatever you have, have an inventory dust, you know, dust them off, fix them up, see what we can do.
Speaker: And the overseer is like, all right, I'll do what I can.
Speaker: Chapter six, same day.
Speaker: Zukav fills in some backstory on himself.
Speaker: He was the hero of Tivia.
Speaker: And then suddenly he was of no use to the government of Tivia anymore.
Speaker: So they sent him to a prison camp.
Speaker: He talks about how the work at the camp is lethal, but he used it to keep himself strong.
Speaker: And then he had a dream about something called the Great Burning, which Gallia seems to know something about.
Speaker: I don't
Speaker: Recall if that's a specific reference to something.
Speaker: Galia is very impatient, though, with the whole why are we stealing bodies thing and demands more answers.
Speaker: Yeah, which is a valid question, by the way.
Speaker: Yeah, I get it.
Speaker: You know, why are we digging up graves?
Speaker: So Zukov's like, fine, I'm going to show you.
Speaker: Also, he explains why he's corroding, why he is the corroded man is basically his teleport ability allows him to teleport from reflection to reflection.
Speaker: Well, he did that on the glacier surface, but because the imperfections on the glacier surface, every time he teleported it like broke him a little bit.
Speaker: He's like leaving little pieces of himself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And now he is corroding and his blood is fire.
Speaker: It's just like, he is all sorts of fucked up.
Speaker: That's why he wears this heavy cloak at all times.
Speaker: I didn't, I forgot to describe him.
Speaker: He wears a hat, like a rubber mask with gigantic red, like I things, and,
Speaker: and, and a heavy, he's like the moth man, but wearing like a heavy wool cloak.
Speaker: It's absolutely moth man esque, isn't it?
Speaker: It's just the big red eyes and the big red eyes and a, and a heavy, heavy jacket.
Speaker: Um, and you know, rubber gloves and all that stuff.
Speaker: It's like the moth man meets judge doom.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I hadn't thought about that.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Galia.
Speaker: OK, Zukov's going to show her.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Ronaldo has been listening to the exchange the entire time and is like, what the actual fuck?
Speaker: And he's like, well, I'm going to keep spying on these two because I want to know exactly what Galia has signed us up for.
Speaker: Zoukov takes Galia to a storeroom with just a mangled mess of dead bodies that he's been playing with in there.
Speaker: And Galia is trying not to throw up because of the way he has been experimenting on the dead bodies.
Speaker: Zoukov says he wants revenge and not just on the high judges, but to everyone in Tivia.
Speaker: He wants to genocide his home country.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I think we've all been there.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Zhukov promises that if she continues to help him reach his goals, he'll give Galia enough power to turn the Wailers into an army that could take Dunwall.
Speaker: And his next mission for them is he needs something at Brigmore Manor, which was a seat of magic in Dunwall.
Speaker: He wants the Wailers to break into the Manor Crypt and steal the bones of the witches that lived there.
Speaker: Chapter 7 takes place over days 9th through 11th of the Month of Darkness, and Emily is really annoyed at the guard detail.
Speaker: She's able to slip out one evening, but the next day the guard detail is expanded from one person to two people, so she can't get out anymore.
Speaker: She turns her attention to diplomatic issues such as the upcoming visit from Duca Luca Abel of Circonos in the next year or so.
Speaker: Why was that called out specifically?
Speaker: Because that is the inciting incident in Dishonored 2.
Speaker: Ah, okay, okay.
Speaker: That's pretty cool.
Speaker: That's what sets this about a year before Dishonored 2, because the beginning of that is...
Speaker: receiving this guy, Duke Luca, a bell, um, and shit happens.
Speaker: Um, the grave robbing story drifts out of the newspapers in a matter of days because there's, you know, no news about it.
Speaker: Uh, while at breakfast one morning, Lady Emily gets correspondence.
Speaker: It's an invite to the boil masquerade, which is the social event of the year.
Speaker: The first invite always goes to the emperor and empress, uh,
Speaker: But traditionally, then, the emperor or empress has to decline it.
Speaker: Emily hates this tradition.
Speaker: She never got to go to the Boyle Masquerade because she was made the empress at age 11.
Speaker: She never got the fun aspect of it.
Speaker: She never got the fun aspect.
Speaker: If it was like she could spend her 20s, you know, doing like partying or whatever before she became Empress, she could have.
Speaker: Yeah, but that didn't happen.
Speaker: There were three Boyle sisters.
Speaker: Only one is left in Dunwall.
Speaker: Lady Esma Boyle.
Speaker: One is dead and the other is a fugitive on the run in another country.
Speaker: Emily walks around Dunwall Tower after breakfast and she talks to a portrait of one of her predecessors and makes fun of her dad a little bit because her dad was like, don't worry about the ball.
Speaker: It's not fun.
Speaker: I went once.
Speaker: It wasn't a big deal.
Speaker: It wasn't a big deal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: she walks through the great hall where their station set up for like dressmaking and fabric and other accoutrements that's coming up for the boil masquerade.
Speaker: And she sees some masks and she's like, wait a minute.
Speaker: It's masquerade.
Speaker: Why can't I go?
Speaker: She's like, I'm going to ask Papa if he can accompany me.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: In chapter eight.
Speaker: I'm going to Batman all over this masquerade.
Speaker: This is perfect.
Speaker: Chapter eight, Ronaldo is sneaking around the area that Zhukov showed Gallia and is suitably grossed out at the dismembered and dissected bodies that are laying about.
Speaker: Arms sliced open and held open with the skin is held up with pins and there's like bones removed and bones.
Speaker: There's like turned into sculptures and things like that.
Speaker: And Ronaldo is like, I need to have a chat with Galia about what this is.
Speaker: What the fuck is going on?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: This is not great.
Speaker: And he takes one of the bone charms that he sees with him and leaves the basement, closing the door behind him.
Speaker: That was chapter eight.
Speaker: It's I mean, it's a short one.
Speaker: There's not much else that goes on.
Speaker: Chapter nine, we're in the 11th month, 11th day of the month of darkness.
Speaker: Emily goes to her father's office to chat with him about her plan to go to the masquerade, but he isn't there.
Speaker: The coast is clear, though, and she decides to just use her skeleton key and unlock his door anyway because she doesn't want to go all around Dunwall Tower looking for him.
Speaker: So she's like, I'm just going to let myself in and see what his calendar says.
Speaker: But as she's rifling through his desk, she sees a highly detailed map of Dunwall on the table with markers on top of it.
Speaker: And she's like, what the fuck is this?
Speaker: And then she sees like there's all these markers.
Speaker: She's like, OK, so those this marker represents the city watch and this marker represents the overseers.
Speaker: And this marker probably is the royal spies.
Speaker: She's like, OK, what?
Speaker: I was not made aware of any of this.
Speaker: And then she finds an audio log and it's from Jameson Kernow, the captain of the City Watch, reporting on watching Brigmore Manor.
Speaker: And he's relaying his report that there's something going down at the manor in a few days from his sources.
Speaker: And she's like, Emily at this point is like, what the fuck?
Speaker: Why have they not told me about any of this?
Speaker: They've been lying to my face over the last several days saying that there's been no new leads about anything.
Speaker: And meanwhile, Corvo and Jameson and all that are just doing the whole planning without her.
Speaker: So she hates that all this has been kept from her, and she notices that one of the locations that was marked as important is Greaves Auxiliary Slaughterhouse-Five, and that's where she's going.
Speaker: That's your ass.
Speaker: Later that night on the 12th day of the month of darkness, chapter 10, Emily parkours across the city to Slaughterhouse-Rowe.
Speaker: And we get some backstory about how whale oil was harvested, which is just didn't like that.
Speaker: That was pretty awful.
Speaker: It's pretty uniquely awful where they would bring the whales in and then they would slice them open while they're still alive.
Speaker: trying to get the hot whale oil into these canisters.
Speaker: And she's like, thank God that we're like going away from whale oil.
Speaker: We still use a lot of it, but we're getting there.
Speaker: We're getting there.
Speaker: But that's why Slaughterhouse-Rowe is like mostly abandoned now because the whale whale consumption is so low at this point.
Speaker: So she goes and she starts spying.
Speaker: She gets to Slaughterhouse-Five and she enters from the roof and she's like looking down and spying on these two dunces who are like arguing back and forth about who took the last sip of water from, they're like standing over there like a boiling cauldron or whatever.
Speaker: And they're like arguing about who's took the last sip of water.
Speaker: It was like, ah, you took the last sip of water.
Speaker: You go fill it up.
Speaker: So one of the guys grabs the container and he's like, all right, I'm gonna go fill it up in the rain thing outside.
Speaker: So while he's going out there, Emily drops down and chokes him out.
Speaker: And she's like, all right, I'm going to put his clothes on.
Speaker: And she like puts him down and she realizes, much like Corvo in an earlier chapter, Emily sees the clothes he's wearing like, this is a whaler uniform.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she spins out a little seeing that.
Speaker: So she puts the guy's clothes on and leaves him somewhere.
Speaker: And she goes back to the other guy.
Speaker: He's like, hey, did you get the thing filled up with the water?
Speaker: And she just shakes his head, shakes her head.
Speaker: He's like, well, what are you doing?
Speaker: And then she chokes him out and hides his body.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she starts like looking around, going up the stairs, and then suddenly another whaler who is clearly Gallia calls out to her and says, hey, come up here.
Speaker: There's a meeting upstairs.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: Emily is in like full whaler gear, so her face is hidden behind the mask.
Speaker: That's why you can't tell who she is.
Speaker: So she goes upstairs with Gallia and her and the other whalers meet the boss, Zukav.
Speaker: He's in the room and he begins outlining the plan.
Speaker: But while he's doing this, she starts having visions while she's near him.
Speaker: And the visions are like a Dunwall on fire and her and her father ruling as tyrants.
Speaker: And that's the end of chapter 10.
Speaker: And in between parts one and two, we get a brief interlude, which is set several years prior, featuring Zhukov and his friend Milosh heading down into a mine under the ice.
Speaker: Milosh wants to show him something he found, an altar to the outsider.
Speaker: And Milosh is like, hey, listen, this is a...
Speaker: If this altar is here, that means that there is like ways out of the prison.
Speaker: But Zukav is hearing the call of the outsider at this point and picks up a ceremonial knife off the altar and he stabs Melosh to death and kills the shit out of him.
Speaker: Just yeah, just murders the shit out of him.
Speaker: Is anyone actually surprised?
Speaker: Like this is.
Speaker: Clearly where that was going.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That is the end of part one, which is a lot of stuff happening.
Speaker: That's almost 170 pages.
Speaker: That is a long ass part one.
Speaker: And I didn't even get into everything I could have in that.
Speaker: Like, there is just a lot of lore packed in there as well.
Speaker: I tried to keep it as much to the story beats as possible, but there were pages of like,
Speaker: You know, George R.R.
Speaker: Martin levels of like, you know, tangents on like world building, which I think is like if you are a huge Dishonored fan and I'm a pretty big Dishonored fan, it's it's neat, but I don't think it's anything that you don't get out of the game itself.
Speaker: Because the game also has a lot of world building in it with the audio logs and the things you read and stuff like that.
Speaker: So, but still, you know, it's, I'm verging on good so far with just, I'm the Gallia character.
Speaker: I don't understand at all.
Speaker: I just don't get it.
Speaker: I don't know what he's trying to go for with her.
Speaker: She seems to just change her mood on a whim.
Speaker: at certain points.
Speaker: So she, she's an odd character.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: So what do you think so far?
Speaker: Well, I mean, I think partially it's because I, I, I, I'm, I told myself I was going to start playing the first one and I haven't yet.
Speaker: I I'm of two minds of it too.
Speaker: On one hand, God, it's dense.
Speaker: There's so much shit that gets talked about and rehashed and everything.
Speaker: But on the other hand, he's a very good writer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I don't mind so much.
Speaker: It's actually, it's well, it's dense, but kind of well written at the same, not kind of, definitely well written at the same time.
Speaker: So as much as it makes me go, Jesus Christ, man, I think part of it is that I'm reading it on a deadline because of the show.
Speaker: And if I was just reading this, like right now, for example, I'm reading outside of the book here, I'm reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck.
Speaker: And that's a very big, epic kind of book.
Speaker: And it's taking me forever, but it's just so well written that I do not mind in the slightest because it's just, it's all about the journey that he's taking you on.
Speaker: And I think maybe I would be even more in favor of this if I,
Speaker: was reading it just like for myself and not for the show or something like that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's hard to say.
Speaker: And you made an interesting point saying that there's a lot of this stuff that's in the game already.
Speaker: So maybe if I had played the game, there would be aspects of this that might even come off as a little tedious where it's like, yeah, we know.
Speaker: I know that.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah, there's stuff that is just rehashing what happened in the game.
Speaker: So I guess it's like there for the... Okay, because this was written...
Speaker: I think this came out not long before Dishonored 2 came out or after Dishonored 2 came out.
Speaker: Either way, it would have been a little bit before you played, like between playing Dishonored 1 and reading this, there would have been a little bit of time.
Speaker: So it gets you up to speed a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah, it gets you up to speed a little bit.
Speaker: Which is kind of a rope, a tight rope that you have to walk.
Speaker: This would have come out the same year that Dishonored 2 came out.
Speaker: Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And it's one of three Dishonored books, I believe.
Speaker: And the next one came out in the next two both came out in 2018.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So that which does that coincide with the third one?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: With death of the outsider. 2017.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right after that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right after that.
Speaker: And it's, um, yeah.
Speaker: So September 14th, 2017.
Speaker: And it's more about the, uh, because it's, it, that one is about Dowd and, uh, uh, Billy, um, what's her name?
Speaker: Uh, Billy, uh, there's a great name.
Speaker: Uh, is it Billy lurk?
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: It was like, yeah, Billy, Billy lurk.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a great thief name, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's played by Rosario Dawson, I think, in the game.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So with that all being said, Phil.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I'm so glad you asked because I'm still playing through just the challenges and stuff of Jurassic World Evolution 2.
Speaker: That's a delightful little romp that I'm having fun slowly peeling away.
Speaker: Um, I, I had taken a little break from Paper Mario, Thousand Year Door, and I picked that up again.
Speaker: And this week just, just slammed through, uh, one of the chapters still love it, still having a blast with it.
Speaker: Uh, I can absolutely see why this is such a classic.
Speaker: Uh, it's so funny and, and charming.
Speaker: And I just, I'm, I'm grinning like an idiot the entire time I'm playing it.
Speaker: So it's, it's, it's lovely.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But more to the point of new stuff, I played the demo for a game called Conscript.
Speaker: This is pretty cool.
Speaker: It's a pixelated survival horror game that takes place in the trenches of World War I. At first, it has the vibe of...
Speaker: of one of our games of the year last year.
Speaker: One eternity later.
Speaker: Is it amnesia?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: What's going on with my brain?
Speaker: I feel like I should put like the the the SpongeBob 12 hours later.
Speaker: That's exactly what you should do.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At first, I thought we were going for that because they make a point of saying, like, this is survival horror, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: I played through the demo.
Speaker: And as far as I can tell, as far as I played through it, the horror, there's no monster.
Speaker: This is not a supernatural horror.
Speaker: The horror is just goddamn World War One.
Speaker: It's World War One, which, yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you're this French conscript and you're in the trenches.
Speaker: And they make a point of saying, like, look, the trenches, it goes back and forth and back and forth.
Speaker: And we take over territory that we lost and then they take it back.
Speaker: Well, that makes sense because one of the most affecting horror short stories that I read in...
Speaker: in the set in the warhammer in the 40k universe was the one that was just about uh a planet where it was it was a uh what's it what's the guy that has to like keep morale up or whatever um you're talking about the commissar the commissar the commissar and it's just a trench warfare planet
Speaker: And it's just like and the mud is so hot that like the bodies just get boiled as they fall to the ground.
Speaker: And there's nothing supernatural going on.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's just war.
Speaker: It's just war.
Speaker: War as hell.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's it's it's that and it's it's got on the other it, but it does have a Resident Evil feel to it.
Speaker: There's a lot of covering the map and finding the key to go over here and to do this, choosing whether or not it's worth your bullets to take out the German soldier who's chasing you around, that sort of thing.
Speaker: And it's very tense.
Speaker: The sound design on it is crazy good.
Speaker: I recommend playing it with headphones for anyone who's listening.
Speaker: It's just because it's just the ambient noise of the war around you is fucking intense.
Speaker: I think it's a beautiful game.
Speaker: And what's funny is if you look it up on Steam, it's actually on Nintendo Switch, too.
Speaker: And I think that's where I'm going to buy the full game.
Speaker: I think I'm going to do it for my Switch.
Speaker: When you pull it up, the art for the game is kind of, it just, maybe this is just me, but it makes me think a little of just like, you know, cons, what do you call it?
Speaker: Just kind of a cheaper version of what it actually is.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: It's not, it's just- Oh yeah, the official, like the game art on Steam versus like what, yeah, it needs a better poster.
Speaker: It needs a better poster and and it's just a much better game than all that.
Speaker: The demo is wonderful.
Speaker: It's I this one came out of absolutely nowhere for me.
Speaker: I've just been digging through demos just for the fun of it, just to see what else is out there.
Speaker: This one.
Speaker: This is why you do that.
Speaker: Like this took me completely off guard and I freaking love it.
Speaker: I highly, highly recommend at least downloading the demo and giving it a try.
Speaker: It's it's fascinating stuff.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Kevin, Kevin, what are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: So I've been playing.
Speaker: I mean, I'm still on Shadow of the Archery.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Almost done.
Speaker: I said that last week, but I sang it again this week.
Speaker: Almost done.
Speaker: Well, I mean, almost done when it comes to Elden Ring, I imagine is like a month long process.
Speaker: Well, yeah.
Speaker: What's funny is like I'll be like almost done and then I'll just go off the beaten path and be like, oh, what's this?
Speaker: And then it's like, oh, there's a dungeon here.
Speaker: I'm going to go do that.
Speaker: And we're going to check this out.
Speaker: I'm going to check this out.
Speaker: Yeah, basically, I'm at the point where I could probably go towards like the final boss area if I wanted to, but I'm just like, I'm going through and I'm tying up all loose ends because I want to like, I think this is the first time I might jump into a new game, like new game plus situation.
Speaker: Oh,
Speaker: I usually don't.
Speaker: I'm not a new game plus guy, but I might actually do it.
Speaker: But before I do jump into new game plus, I want to make sure that I'm actually I'm collecting everything I can now with the whole map unlocked because it carries over when you start the new game.
Speaker: So, yeah, I just want to make sure that I got it.
Speaker: I got everything I need.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Strangely enough, today it was dropped.
Speaker: The Doom 1, Doom 2 update was dropped on Steam.
Speaker: I was just looking at that.
Speaker: I started playing it again.
Speaker: So I'm playing Doom again.
Speaker: Not the new Doom, not Doom 2016, not Doom Eternal.
Speaker: No, no, no, no.
Speaker: Doom.
Speaker: Doom, Doom.
Speaker: Doom from 1993.
Speaker: And, you know, I got, there's, it's got achievements in it now.
Speaker: I got, I got a achievement called Groovy, which is three multi kills with a shotgun.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Groovy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I, it's fun.
Speaker: It's Doom.
Speaker: It's Doom.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you see.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But that's the thing, though.
Speaker: It's not just Doom and Doom 2.
Speaker: It's a bunch of other stuff, too.
Speaker: It's got a bunch of other level packs.
Speaker: It's Plutonia Experiment.
Speaker: It's got that sigil.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: Sigil, which is by the John Romero level packs called Sigil in there.
Speaker: Legacy of Rust.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Legacy of Rust.
Speaker: Master levels.
Speaker: So it's like Doom 1, Doom 2, and then like six more Doom games.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Fucking cool.
Speaker: It is like the best thing to have and hold.
Speaker: And you all should get it because it's Doom.
Speaker: Hey, if you've never played Doom, you should play Doom.
Speaker: If you've never played Doom, you should play Doom.
Speaker: You will be stunned with how goddamn fast the game is.
Speaker: There are, you know, retro shooters, the boomer shooters that kind of emulate it a bit, but you're still shocked when you get to Doom from 1993 and it's like, oh my God.
Speaker: You're like the guy on the commercial, is an RCA commercial where he puts on the saw and he gets like blown back in his chair.
Speaker: That is a old fucking reference.
Speaker: And I'm gonna say- It's an old fucking game.
Speaker: Willow and Josh of our listeners are gonna understand that reference.
Speaker: The 40 year olds.
Speaker: We'll pick up on that one.
Speaker: So, yeah, I've been playing Doom and Doom 2.
Speaker: And also, as I said earlier, I started fired up the Sonderd 1 again because, as I mentioned, I guess I never beat it on my Steam version of it.
Speaker: So I got to do that.
Speaker: I mean, that's out of your hands.
Speaker: I mean, what am I have?
Speaker: Yeah, I am not kidding.
Speaker: I get a little weird when I see that I have a game in Steam, but I've beaten it on another platform.
Speaker: But on the Steam version, I've never played it.
Speaker: And I'm like, well,
Speaker: No, I know exactly what you, I've got a folder, because the naive notion that I will ever dig through my backlog with any level of significance.
Speaker: I have a folder just called finished, and I just put the games in it that I've finished in there.
Speaker: And every now and then I have to go through my just full games list just to throw some in that maybe I forgot about.
Speaker: And it takes everything in me
Speaker: to put in a version of a game that I've beaten on another system on a console or something like that, but it's got zero gameplay on Steam.
Speaker: It actually, it takes effort for me to actually do that.
Speaker: And to actually market.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause I have a, I have a similar thing, a similar category, a folder on steam with that's just beaten with an exclamation point.
Speaker: Um, so I can see, you know, I can just look at that, that grouping and, uh, you know, there it is, but, uh, I, I have trouble otherwise.
Speaker: It's a lot.
Speaker: It's a lot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a lot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What is my where's what's where's being beaten?
Speaker: So 60 I have 63 games labeled with that on Steam.
Speaker: There's probably more that I can I can say vampire survivors is beaten.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For me, with finished, it also has to do with a game that's like, look, I have may not have beaten it, but I'm finished with it.
Speaker: I'm done.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, there's more I can add in there.
Speaker: I have LA Noire on Steam now.
Speaker: I beat it back when it first came out.
Speaker: I might be playing it again because I have it now on Steam.
Speaker: I think of that game every now and then that game pops into my head.
Speaker: I'm like, do I want to sit down and play through that game again?
Speaker: God, I just love.
Speaker: Same as Bully.
Speaker: Bully does that for me too.
Speaker: And I've beaten Bully twice.
Speaker: And I still every now and then think about it.
Speaker: I have a little bit of a thing for 1940s, 1950s Los Angeles.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: Stories.
Speaker: They're like catnip for me.
Speaker: So L.A.
Speaker: Noir is like...
Speaker: I need another one.
Speaker: I know they're never gonna make another one.
Speaker: They're like, they're never gonna do it.
Speaker: We're lucky they made the one that they did.
Speaker: But I need something like it because it's catnip.
Speaker: It's a great era.
Speaker: It's really cool.
Speaker: You just have that lonely trumpet playing.
Speaker: 90% of the scenes take place at night.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: But you know what?
Speaker: That'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
Speaker: If you can follow us on Twitter, Blue Sky, Instagram, follow us for free on Patreon.
Speaker: It's free.
Speaker: And actually, if you can, if you listen to us regularly on a podcast app, go ahead and
Speaker: subscribe to us on YouTube as well because we're trying to make that push towards monetization on YouTube.
Speaker: I'd love to get it done by the end of this year.
Speaker: We're at 286 subscribers on YouTube.
Speaker: We need 500, 500 in order to get that monetization on YouTube.
Speaker: So please go ahead, hit that, hit that subscribe button, hit that like button, hit the bell, bell me bro.
Speaker: And you know,
Speaker: That'll be great.
Speaker: That'll be awesome.
Speaker: That will be the end of the episode.
Speaker: End of the episode.
Speaker: End of the episode.
