Transcript
Speaker: You want to get back to eco.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: You know, so we'll get into that.
Speaker: Little baby boy with the horns.
Speaker: With his horns.
Speaker: With his adorable horns.
Speaker: With his horns.
Speaker: Who doesn't love horns?
Speaker: I love horns.
Speaker: Who doesn't love horns?
Speaker: Who doesn't love horns?
Speaker: You know who else loves horns?
Speaker: Who's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: Alongside with me is Phil.
Speaker: I heard the pause in your voice.
Speaker: And we were like, am I going to do it here?
Speaker: Am I going to do it here?
Speaker: And then I did it.
Speaker: And then you did it.
Speaker: I was seeing how pregnant I can make that pause.
Speaker: It was a pretty pregnant pause.
Speaker: If it was more pregnant, the GOP would be trying to control it.
Speaker: Let's get started, baby.
Speaker: Let's get right into it.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Let's do this.
Speaker: We're in.
Speaker: We're into it.
Speaker: Wasting no time.
Speaker: Wasting no time at all.
Speaker: We're back, baby.
Speaker: And we're talking about.
Speaker: We're talking about eco, the castle in the mist.
Speaker: And yeah, look at that.
Speaker: You get a nice, nice little copy there.
Speaker: It's found it used.
Speaker: It's a really good shape.
Speaker: And yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker: I love me a nice paperback.
Speaker: I do like a good paperback.
Speaker: I did not try to buy it used because it's out of print, right?
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: Which is unfortunate.
Speaker: Which I will say is extremely unfortunate for this book.
Speaker: That there is no current print runs of it.
Speaker: It is a shame.
Speaker: But, you know, what can you do?
Speaker: I have I have it here on my my little Kindle device with accounts.
Speaker: My ad supported Kindle device, which feeds me some sort of romance novel every time I was about to say, what was what was the weird advertisement that it opened up to this time?
Speaker: You know, I'm going to lock it and just see what it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's nothing special.
Speaker: It's just a it's just a notification that there's e-books are on sale.
Speaker: Oh, baby.
Speaker: Like 80% off on e-books right now.
Speaker: Tap into those savings, Kevin.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Come on, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: I think you're missing out on the real message here.
Speaker: Savings are extraordinary.
Speaker: Savings right now are extraordinary.
Speaker: You know what else is extraordinary is what happened last episode and what happened in Ego in episode one?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: What do we do?
Speaker: In Eco, we started out, we learned, wow, we learned a lot, actually.
Speaker: It's a dense book.
Speaker: It's a pretty dense book.
Speaker: I mean to say the mythology world building and everything like that here is maybe some of the densest we've dealt with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So right off the bat, we are introduced to the town elder, a little town in the middle of this mythical fantasy world that we live in.
Speaker: We learn about the sacrifice and how in this area every now and then a little boy, is it always a little boy?
Speaker: Do they specify that?
Speaker: I think it could be a boy or a girl.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It doesn't really specify a gender on the sacrifice.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, a child will every now and then be born with horns and the child will grow up faster and smarter and stronger than all the other kids.
Speaker: And it is the elder's job to raise the child as his own.
Speaker: And to, at the right time, take the child to the castle in the mist, this vague, spooky castle in the distance that's filled with quiet, whispering meaning.
Speaker: And they leave the child there, as far as they're concerned, to basically become one of the blocks of
Speaker: in the castle.
Speaker: And they call the child a sacrifice, but you get the impression that they don't really think the kid gets killed or anything like that.
Speaker: The kid's just kind of reabsorbed.
Speaker: And it basically appeases the castle.
Speaker: They worry about the darkness, the god of darkness and everything like that and making...
Speaker: That God unhappy in this.
Speaker: This keeps everything on an even keel.
Speaker: We learn about the elder, his wife and her weird brother.
Speaker: And we meet Toto, Iko's friend.
Speaker: Iko at this point is being kept in a cave while they prepare to take him to be sacrificed.
Speaker: And and his buddy Toto decides we're going to go together, runs off.
Speaker: Oops.
Speaker: The place is filled with people who have been turned to stone.
Speaker: He meets a terrifying lady face that is not a giant face, giant face, giant face floating above the city.
Speaker: Terrifying.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the face turns his horse to stone.
Speaker: He manages to escape with the help slash just with this tome, this relic of a book.
Speaker: The only thing in the area that wasn't also turned to stone.
Speaker: He brings it back to the elder who takes it from him, thus allowing the boy to be turned into stone.
Speaker: Good job, elder.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: Really winning.
Speaker: Really winning hearts and minds.
Speaker: Elder takes the book and be like, well, nobody else saw that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No one else was there.
Speaker: So whatever.
Speaker: He's fine.
Speaker: And he finds that it's a book of the Lord of Light, the God of Light, this tome, this ancient relic.
Speaker: And he's flipping through it and realizes that this sacrifice is going to be different.
Speaker: That this time, it might be the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.
Speaker: And he shuts down his wife, who has been making the mark, which is kind of a poncho the kids all wear that has a holy symbol on it.
Speaker: And he says, now make this one instead.
Speaker: And it's basically the same, but kind of different.
Speaker: Same, but different.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And he starts ordering everyone in the town around.
Speaker: He's like, post a guard, you know, kids dance and sing in the streets.
Speaker: He literally says, we need all the children to be dancing and singing.
Speaker: This place is very North Korea.
Speaker: Let me put it that way.
Speaker: You, you, over there, dance and sing.
Speaker: You, make funny faces into the fountain.
Speaker: You.
Speaker: You light some fires.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's that kind of situation.
Speaker: And then the priest from the city, like the nearby urban area, comes with a couple of guards and takes Iko and...
Speaker: Basically, we get the opening cut scene to the video game Ico, and this is after like a hundred pages of backstory and everything like that.
Speaker: And Ico, long story short, is plopped into the castle and left alone.
Speaker: He makes some friends, kind of some friends with one of the guards who's nice to him.
Speaker: And in the castle, he finds a mysterious woman or girl who is super beautiful.
Speaker: And he frees her from a birdcage, basically, that she's hiding in.
Speaker: We get a lot of little visions of different things.
Speaker: Like he has a vision of the birdcage and it's filled with darkness before.
Speaker: But when he gets there, it's actually just this young lady.
Speaker: And he busts her out and then saves her several times from dark spirits that are costing them.
Speaker: Bad communication between Ico and the girl.
Speaker: He can't understand her.
Speaker: She kind of vaguely understands him.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: And we get little weird incidents like we see figures and specters in the castle.
Speaker: And there's a lot of suggestion that these dark specters are basically the ghosts of the old sacrifices.
Speaker: And they're kind of offended that he fights them off when he does.
Speaker: They expect him to be nice.
Speaker: You almost kind of feel sorry for them.
Speaker: They're just like, dude, why are you being mean to us?
Speaker: Like they literally say that at one point, like, why are you being a jerk?
Speaker: Yeah, that's actually where we pick it up.
Speaker: The specters or the shades, as they're eventually called, begin talking to them.
Speaker: And they're like, basically like, hey, what's the deal here?
Speaker: You're supposed to be on our side.
Speaker: You're one of us.
Speaker: Just let us take the girl.
Speaker: Just let us take the girl and, you know, everything will be fine.
Speaker: And while he's fighting them, and this is just one of the myriad of rooms that they've been going through.
Speaker: This is chapter 2.6.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: While he's fighting them, he has- Good method.
Speaker: Good method.
Speaker: 2.6, yeah.
Speaker: He has another vision of what happens if-
Speaker: The girl is taken through the hole and basically a ring of light will shoot out.
Speaker: It will disperse the shades, but it will also turn eco to stone.
Speaker: So he now has a survival reason to not let her get pulled down because it will probably kill him if something happens.
Speaker: If he didn't need any motivation in the past, he's definitely got some now.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And then we're in 2.7.
Speaker: And he pulls her out.
Speaker: He's fighting these creatures.
Speaker: And they continue on.
Speaker: And they find a trolley.
Speaker: And the trolley is an interesting little thing because it's like a...
Speaker: It's almost like an amusement park ride, like insertion.
Speaker: And we get more backstory on why the trolley is there to begin with later in the book.
Speaker: But he finds this trolley.
Speaker: He's like, all right, well, you know, if any of these shades come up on me while we're riding on the trolley, they're going to get a whacking because I'm moving fast.
Speaker: I'm moving fast.
Speaker: I'm going to clothesline some ghosts.
Speaker: Get ready.
Speaker: So he starts the trolley and the girl takes his hand and he has another vision and it's it.
Speaker: He sees the girl as like a little child, as like a six year old.
Speaker: And she starts talking.
Speaker: She's like talking on and on about, you know, how fun this is with her father.
Speaker: She's looking at him and she's like, oh, daddy, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: You know, it's this is the best, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: Like, so.
Speaker: Every time he he gets a vision from her, it seems like it's a memory.
Speaker: He's he's he's pulling back some sort of memory of from her.
Speaker: So they the trolley ends in another room with a giant chandelier.
Speaker: And there is this is actually a really cool scene.
Speaker: So there's this wooden bridge across the room and there but there's and he can see down through the floor that there is another floor at the bottom, but there's actually no way to get down there without like jumping or what have you.
Speaker: So he's trying to figure things out.
Speaker: He's pulling the girl along and the girl eventually kind of like points up at the chandelier.
Speaker: And he's like, all right, fine, I'll check the chandelier out.
Speaker: And he goes up and he gets on top of the railing of the chandelier and he starts having another vision.
Speaker: And he sees people floating in the air.
Speaker: And then he realizes that they're not floating, that it's like dozens of people who have been hung and killed from the, it is like, it's like almost like a jump scare within the book where he realizes he's seeing.
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's exactly what I was thinking.
Speaker: It is,
Speaker: Really unnervingly spooky and it comes out of fucking nowhere.
Speaker: He sees all these bodies hanging and the blood is like dripping off of them.
Speaker: And like this is in place of the candles that would be.
Speaker: He's seeing bodies and people just like hanging there.
Speaker: And then at one point he sees the knight that he saw the statue of earlier walking across the room.
Speaker: The one with the horns like him.
Speaker: And he calls out to the knight, but the knight doesn't respond to him.
Speaker: And then suddenly he's like flashed back to reality.
Speaker: You know, he's like, okay, it was another vision.
Speaker: But he kind of loses his balance and he falls on top of the chandelier.
Speaker: And the chandelier, right before this, he had noticed that a lot of the
Speaker: A lot of the fittings on the ceiling had been kind of rusted and warped and whatever.
Speaker: So him falling onto the chandelier was just enough of a nudge to cause the chandelier to basically break free from the ceiling, fall down.
Speaker: It hits the wooden bridge in the center of the room and kind of causes the bridge to become a ramp down to the next floor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Very convenient.
Speaker: Very convenient.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a good moment, but I really love the moment of them seeing the bodies hanging from the roof.
Speaker: I mean, she didn't, but yeah, he did.
Speaker: So yeah, they...
Speaker: During this, right before the scene, he had kind of had an interaction with her where he was like kind of accusing.
Speaker: He was like talking to her where he wanted to figure out who she was, you know, because every time he was.
Speaker: taking her hand or what have you, like he was having a vision.
Speaker: So he has this moment where he has like a little bit of a freak out on her, like, who are you?
Speaker: What's going on here?
Speaker: And of course, she doesn't answer because she doesn't know, you know, how to do that.
Speaker: They continue on.
Speaker: They're down.
Speaker: They can go down the ramp now and they are able to basically kind of get out of the interior and onto the lawn, so to speak.
Speaker: And we're in 2.8 now.
Speaker: So they're running through the courtyard and they see Eco sees the the gate, the gate to leave.
Speaker: And he's like, we're going to do it.
Speaker: Yes, this is it.
Speaker: And then the girl drops to her knees and starts screaming.
Speaker: And it looks like she is being attacked by something invisible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was another really unnerving moment.
Speaker: It was because she's just clawing at her face and screaming and you don't see anything.
Speaker: Eventually what happens is there's these like black wisps start to form and eventually they take the shape.
Speaker: of a woman dressed in black.
Speaker: And the way she's described really reminded me of like Angelina Jolie as Maleficent.
Speaker: Totally, totally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That kind of like...
Speaker: Dark fairy grandiose kind of.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Like very gaunt with the high cheekbones and all that stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Very severe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's kind of the where I was where my head was with that.
Speaker: So this is the villain, so to speak, of the story as far as we know.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So far.
Speaker: Um, she's the queen.
Speaker: She's the queen, the master of the castle.
Speaker: And, uh, she is the girl Yorta.
Speaker: Uh, she's, uh, Yorta's mother.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, basically eco is like, no, you know, I'm going to get her out of here.
Speaker: Uh, the queen response to this by just ragdolling eco around the courtyard, like just absolutely demolishing.
Speaker: him several times in a row.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just wrecking this kid's shit.
Speaker: Just fucking this kid's shit up.
Speaker: I think three times she throws him across the courtyard and he is pretty messed up.
Speaker: And then the queen leaves and she's like...
Speaker: you can leave, Iko.
Speaker: You can get the hell out of here, but Yorta has to stay.
Speaker: And at that point, Iko's like, no, I'm going to get her out.
Speaker: The queen disappears.
Speaker: Iko's like, nah, I'm not going to listen to her.
Speaker: And then he starts like...
Speaker: The mark starts glowing.
Speaker: He starts healing.
Speaker: And that's like, this is the end of chapter two.
Speaker: And chapter three basically jumps to a dramatic shift in point of view in the story.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: we're now looking at everything from Yorda's point of view.
Speaker: And chapter 3, 3.1, does a lot of interesting stuff with talking about Yorda and the passage of time and how she is, that time has stopped for her and for the castle.
Speaker: And not only has time stopped, her ability to mark and understand the passage of time has also stopped.
Speaker: So she has a lot of... She has trouble understanding when things are real and when things are dreams.
Speaker: And there's a moment early on in Chapter 3 where she's like...
Speaker: I, uh, she thinks that she sees a, one of the sacrifices and then the sacrifice gets killed.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's like, it's like another sacrifice, probably the same, you know, did the same thing as eco got out of the sarcophagus for, or whatever.
Speaker: And like started walking up to her, but then it got, it got killed.
Speaker: Um, and then she's like, I,
Speaker: But then there was another boy and he kept coming up up the stairway.
Speaker: And it's like, is he the same as before?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: but he's coming and he's talking to me.
Speaker: Is this a dream?
Speaker: You know, she's like, she can't really tell what's real and what's not.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's very, it's a very disorienting moment in the book for a lot of reasons.
Speaker: First off, just the, the, the sudden shift in character and tone and everything like that.
Speaker: And then the fact that she is also every bit as disoriented as, as we probably are.
Speaker: As the reader is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we get kind of a recap.
Speaker: Basically, everything that happened in Chapter two, we get a brief accelerated recap of it from Yorta's point of view, where she's like the boy.
Speaker: Sometimes he touches my hand and then stares off into the distance and then suddenly he's present again.
Speaker: So that's like every time he's having a vision or whatever, she's just like staring at it.
Speaker: It made me think of Scrubs.
Speaker: The main character in Scrubs is it's famous for him having these weird little fantasies.
Speaker: And in later seasons, they actually address it that when he's having his weird little fantasy about something somebody said, everyone can watch him just like...
Speaker: stare off into space as in real time.
Speaker: He has this strange fantasy about being like a cop or a lawyer or something like that, or quail man, you know, and just like, it made me think of that immediately.
Speaker: It's like, huh, huh, you there?
Speaker: You there?
Speaker: You there, buddy?
Speaker: You there, buddy?
Speaker: Come on, bud.
Speaker: So, but yeah, she is pretty sure that her, the rescue though, is a dream.
Speaker: It's something that has,
Speaker: she is manifesting out of her own hope of some time getting out of the cage at some point.
Speaker: She also makes notice that like as they are going through the castle and things are starting to fall apart a little bit, that that's because she has left the cage and that things like time is starting to move again in the castle.
Speaker: Bridges are starting to fall.
Speaker: Walls are starting to crumble, etc., etc.
Speaker: So she's like making these little connections.
Speaker: And this is the only time she's ever been able to leave the cage.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In her recent existence.
Speaker: So we get up to in 3.2, we get through everything up to the interaction with her mother.
Speaker: And it's at that point her memories basically her mother addressing her by her name like everything starts to come flooding back for her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Her of her like entire life starts to come back into focus.
Speaker: And one of my favorite lines at the beginning of 3.3 is time lurches forward.
Speaker: Suddenly it's like things are starting to move again.
Speaker: And this is the beginning of a part of the book.
Speaker: And you were saying before the show that you were like the momentum, you were a little worried about the momentum of the book.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I, I, I, you know, I have really been enjoying this book as our last episode would make very clear.
Speaker: I think this was this section of the book was where I started to get a little nervous.
Speaker: Simply because this entire chapter, which amounts to like 150 pages, it's not a, you know, these chapters are very long, follows Yorba and her background.
Speaker: It's basically a heavily extended flashback to Yorba and her, you know, youth and her mother and her father and all that stuff you get in.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: I, you know, the thing is, is that it's all very, very interesting.
Speaker: It's all very cool.
Speaker: And we're going to get into that, obviously.
Speaker: And it's well written because Miyuki Miyabe and Alexander Smith are, they work brilliantly together to the point that I've noticed that he's translated other stuff of hers.
Speaker: And it's like, well, I might want to check that out because they do a wonderful job together.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: I've been so invested in Iko and his story and everything that brought him to the Castle in the Mist that an entire hundred and...
Speaker: 40, 50 pages or so of an extended flashback.
Speaker: It, it, it really, uh, it kind of bummed me out, uh, not to put too much points on it.
Speaker: I was like, sure.
Speaker: It's very good.
Speaker: I just, I was like, I want more eco.
Speaker: It's going to be a minute till we get, uh, back to eco.
Speaker: Yeah, we're going to, we're going to get, we're not going to get back to him.
Speaker: Like that was actually literally his last appearance.
Speaker: We're not talking about him for the rest of the episode.
Speaker: Uh, of, of, of this episode.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: The titular main character is on pause for a little bit.
Speaker: For a good amount of time.
Speaker: If you're here simply for eco and that is all.
Speaker: For our best boy with horns.
Speaker: We'll see you next week.
Speaker: We'll see you next week.
Speaker: Because we're not going to talk about him for a little while.
Speaker: We're going to get some other cool shit, but it ain't going to be eco.
Speaker: And I came around to it ultimately, but it was jarring.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: It was jarring.
Speaker: So, all right, we're in 3.3 and we are, we're about to basically do kind of a two, I think it's appropriate to say this is two layers of a flashback.
Speaker: All right, so we start 3.3 with,
Speaker: quote unquote, let's just call it for Yorda's storyline, for her storyline, it's present day.
Speaker: We start, it is the beginning of the tournament.
Speaker: Of this tournament where basically all these warriors from all over the world come and they fight in a tournament at the Castle in the Mist.
Speaker: The castle is full of people now.
Speaker: It is back in the day.
Speaker: This is, and that's the thing is,
Speaker: The sacrifice has been going on for a long ass time.
Speaker: So it's interesting to think that we're now in a flashback with Yorda.
Speaker: She's 16 in the main storyline.
Speaker: We're now in a distant memory of hers.
Speaker: She's still 16 because time froze for her.
Speaker: But this is like got to be at least a thousand years prior or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, it's the atmosphere shifts in a big, big damn way where it's like suddenly it's, you know, yeah, it does feel like.
Speaker: We're not talking about like a few years back, you know, because this is this abandoned place.
Speaker: And based on the lore we've learned in the first couple of parts of the book, it's been that way for a long time.
Speaker: So the notion of it being filled with cheering people and, you know, warriors from all over the world.
Speaker: Yeah, this is this is another time.
Speaker: Huge.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's another time, another place.
Speaker: And it's a foreign time.
Speaker: It would be... It is a time that has been forgotten by the characters in present day.
Speaker: Like, they don't even... That's the thing.
Speaker: That's the wild thing, is that they don't... There is no...
Speaker: talk of the castle in the mist being the center of a, of a powerful nation at any point or who the master of the castle, like all this stuff about the castle, other than it's terrifying.
Speaker: That's the only lasting knowledge.
Speaker: It's terrifying and demand sacrifice.
Speaker: Those are the only two lasting bits of knowledge left over from the castle in the mist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: It's really cool because it's one of those things that, you know, if you go to Europe or, you know, countries that have, you know, those levels of relics everywhere and that sort of thing, you know, you just see them as this almost kind of a part of the...
Speaker: part of the backdrop.
Speaker: It's just part of the countryside in a way.
Speaker: And it's real easy.
Speaker: It could be spooky.
Speaker: It could be majestic.
Speaker: It could be a lot of things, but it's, but it's almost never, your instinct is almost never, Oh, that used to be a thriving, bustling place where people lived and worked and loved.
Speaker: And, you know, and, and this, this illustrates, you know, that sort of thing really well.
Speaker: It's very, very cool.
Speaker: The, this castle just very much comes alive.
Speaker: It's cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So basically Yorta is is watching the the people, these warriors arrive and she's thinking she's really bummed out about it.
Speaker: And we get the the background on why that is.
Speaker: And it jumps back another 10 days.
Speaker: So it's like a couple of weeks earlier from that point of view.
Speaker: Yorta had made this whole plan with her handmaiden to just like escape the castle and go down to the city and just be just be out and in the world.
Speaker: And because she in her entire life has never left the castle.
Speaker: So her handmaidens like, listen, and I love the fact that they keep calling the handmaidens like it's it's her lover.
Speaker: The handmaidens lover is.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I love the fact that the word lover was used.
Speaker: It's such a it's such an old world term.
Speaker: It's so.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The handmaiden and her lover.
Speaker: Her lover.
Speaker: You take a lover.
Speaker: So the handmaiden and her lover, they they help Yorta like kind of escape out into the main like courtyard of the castle without being seen.
Speaker: And she's walking out onto the bridge of the castle.
Speaker: And she's like, yeah, I got this.
Speaker: And then suddenly her mom starts like telepathically talking to her.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: While she's on the bridge and she is like, you're to come back now.
Speaker: And she's like, but I just want to go.
Speaker: And her mom's like, you don't understand.
Speaker: If you don't come back now, I'm going to collapse the bridge and literally kill everybody that's on the bridge.
Speaker: It's so fucking...
Speaker: It is so fucked up.
Speaker: It is monumentally fucked up.
Speaker: So Yorta comes back and her handmaiden is taken away and the guard is taken away and Yorta basically has to just sit in her room stewing and she doesn't know what's going to happen to her.
Speaker: She's going to get talking to her by her mom or whatever.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You get, and this is the thing, you get a foreboding feeling, but it isn't much worse than like your standard, oh, my mom's going to be mad at me kind of thing.
Speaker: You know, it doesn't.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It certainly doesn't feel like there's a ton of gravity behind it.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Until the chief handmaiden arrives to take Yorda.
Speaker: So we're in 3.4.
Speaker: The chief handmaiden is like, all right, get dressed.
Speaker: We got to go.
Speaker: And Yorda's like, where are you taking me?
Speaker: And we get a little background as they're approaching about the graveyard in Yorda.
Speaker: There's like a graveyard set behind the castle where it's like, you know, family members, but also people who worked at the castle their entire lives and were really, you know, important and integral to the running of the castle would get the honors of being buried there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Yorta is like trying to poke the handmaiden for like, hey, so what's going on?
Speaker: What do you know?
Speaker: What's going to happen?
Speaker: Anything?
Speaker: Anything?
Speaker: And the handmaiden doesn't give an inch.
Speaker: And the handmaiden is like, all right.
Speaker: Drops her off like outside of like this, this walkway area.
Speaker: And she's like, all right, go ahead.
Speaker: Go, go, go to your mother.
Speaker: She's in the graveyard, which is spooky and all that stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a weird, it's a weird thing to say.
Speaker: And the handmaiden and she, Yorta's like, well, I don't like walking in the dark.
Speaker: Can you accompany me?
Speaker: And the handmaiden just repeats the same thing over again and will not like budge or at all, which leaves it.
Speaker: There is a lot of hints and it happens a bunch in the upcoming segments where like she thinks about the handmaiden as someone who probably knows more than she ever lets on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The chief handmaid.
Speaker: So Yorta goes and finds, um,
Speaker: Uh, finds her mother and her mother does the, uh, basically the, the legend of Zelda trick.
Speaker: And she pushes, pushes one of the tombstones back.
Speaker: She says a prayer and one of the tombstones kind of like slides back, revealing a set of stairs.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Real ones know what I'm talking about.
Speaker: The old gamers out there, you know what I mean.
Speaker: You know what I mean.
Speaker: Put on that power bracelet, bitch.
Speaker: Hey, gamers, you know what I mean, right?
Speaker: Gamers, trademark.
Speaker: gamers, parentheses, derogatory.
Speaker: It always has been and it always will be.
Speaker: So Yorda's not happy about any of this.
Speaker: She's like, this is weird.
Speaker: And her mother just goes down the staircase that's revealed.
Speaker: And Yorda starts following her.
Speaker: And then the gravestone goes
Speaker: Closes the staircase back up and Yorta tries to like leave.
Speaker: But she can't.
Speaker: And she turns around again and she sees that the stairs, they're not like normal.
Speaker: It's like a... She calls it like a ribbon of white stairs going all the way down.
Speaker: And the queen says something interesting where it's like, you're in no danger here.
Speaker: This is all just...
Speaker: Is it an illusion or is it just like... How does she put it?
Speaker: She puts it a very specific way where it's like, even if you fall, you're not going to get hurt, which makes me think that she's like making... It's like just like a storage closet and she's making an illusion to make it seem like it's bigger on the inside.
Speaker: Right, right, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Yorta continues down the stairs and kind of like ends up in this.
Speaker: I guess it's it would be appropriate to call it a showroom because it's filled with statues.
Speaker: And these are probably the the most detailed statues anyone has ever carved of anybody.
Speaker: You know, they look pristine.
Speaker: They're perfect.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so she starts like walking around, looking at the details of the statues.
Speaker: And the mother's like, you know,
Speaker: The mother's monologuing the entire time.
Speaker: Which only good people do, right?
Speaker: Only good people monologue.
Speaker: Only good people monologue from spooky statues.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: It's time for the ASMR segment of the show.
Speaker: What do we got?
Speaker: We are drinking Trader Joe's sparkling blueberry lemonade water.
Speaker: Ooh, that sounds good.
Speaker: This is from Trader Joe's.
Speaker: I'm enjoying a little bit of water that I took out of my refrigerator.
Speaker: And the water has a sticker on it that says, be soft but ready.
Speaker: And it's a little kitten holding a gun.
Speaker: It's a kitten with a gun.
Speaker: It's basically Ripley.
Speaker: This ASMR segment has been brought to you by loud noises.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Yorta finds her handmaiden.
Speaker: down there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I wonder, is she hanging out?
Speaker: She's having, she's having a scotch or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, they're just hanging out.
Speaker: Everything's fine then.
Speaker: Scotch.
Speaker: No, but they are on the rocks.
Speaker: Oh, it just gets better.
Speaker: Just like scotch.
Speaker: Better with age, bitch.
Speaker: No, the mom had turned them into statues.
Speaker: She used her super magic ghoul power to, and while she's like monologuing and explaining this, Yorta just passes the fuck out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She just...
Speaker: She's just like... She waifs all over this bitch.
Speaker: She just, yeah.
Speaker: She's like, the queen is like, you see?
Speaker: And Yorta falls.
Speaker: Yorta's down.
Speaker: And it cuts to the queen, and she's got like a stack of like nine index cards with her whole monologue written out.
Speaker: Well, this was just a complete waste of time, wasn't it?
Speaker: Thanks, Yorta.
Speaker: You fucking...
Speaker: You've got an eight in constitution.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: Just failing constitution rules all the time.
Speaker: This is a really kick-ass speech.
Speaker: Now I got to give it to the statues again.
Speaker: So in 3.5, basically the queen finishes her speech.
Speaker: Yorta wakes up in her bedroom and her mom is sitting next to her.
Speaker: And it gets really hot and heavy on the world building and the background building in this segment.
Speaker: I'm not necessarily going to repeat all of it, but to sum it up,
Speaker: Let's sum it up.
Speaker: Let's sum up what the sitch is with you as mom.
Speaker: She is a being of pure evil who was born during an eclipse and she bargained with the dark creator, the dark god, the god of darkness, for her powers, which makes her a warlock, correct?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's got a patron.
Speaker: She's got a patron.
Speaker: And basically her job is she has enough power to end the world.
Speaker: She doesn't yet because it's not the time.
Speaker: There's like a specific time she's waiting for.
Speaker: I think this has something to do.
Speaker: One of the things I forgot to mention earlier is that when she was ragdolling Eco around the courtyard,
Speaker: the queen kept saying to Yorta that like, you are me.
Speaker: I am you.
Speaker: You are my vessel, which makes me think like the queen is going to steal Yorta's body at some point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: When the time is right to be, to have like a fresh, fresh set of, you know, meat skin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It feels like the relationship is much more extra life than mother daughter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's just keeping Yorta around just to slide into that skin suit when she's ready.
Speaker: Which would be pretty cool, actually, if you could do that.
Speaker: That would be pretty neat.
Speaker: It's pretty metal, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just having kids and you just keep them in the basement and, you know, every now and then you respawn.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I guess that's what you could call it.
Speaker: I mean, spawn like having children.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Nailed it.
Speaker: Yeah, you nailed it.
Speaker: You nailed it.
Speaker: Thanks, man.
Speaker: That's, that's, I'll, I'll let Emily know.
Speaker: Yeah, please.
Speaker: She needs to know.
Speaker: I think she, she needs to know.
Speaker: For, for so many reasons.
Speaker: For so many reasons, she should know.
Speaker: Nailed it.
Speaker: So, yeah, so her end game is to destroy the world and let the dark creator, the dark god, recreate the world in his image as opposed to the light god because the dark god is better.
Speaker: And he would be, he looks better on the side of Vance.
Speaker: Because, because good is dumb.
Speaker: Because good is dumb.
Speaker: Basically her motivation.
Speaker: Um, so she is like, she has absolute power and absolute power corrupts.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Clearly.
Speaker: Um, she talks a lot about how like there's, you know, the neighboring countries, you know, never really, you know, she one time nuked an entire barbarian, uh, group just because, you know, they were getting a little too close.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: So I think, yeah, she's she's bad and we shouldn't really worry too much morally about the queen.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Like how we interact with the queen.
Speaker: She's.
Speaker: No, no, probably not.
Speaker: She is.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: I don't mind the occasional the occasional villain who is not morally gray.
Speaker: Yeah, no, we we have gotten into like, don't get me wrong, fleshed out characters, always a good thing.
Speaker: But we are we are getting to a point where you're not you're just not allowed to have a bad guy for bad guy's sake.
Speaker: You know, like that's why that's why I always will appreciate things like the recent remake of it.
Speaker: You know, it's like, what is Pennywise the dancing clown?
Speaker: He is a embodiment of pure evil.
Speaker: The end.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: He was.
Speaker: I mean, what they don't pay any attention to the weird looking guy behind the curtain trying to tell you about turtles and space entities.
Speaker: Don't don't.
Speaker: It's just he's bad.
Speaker: Just evil clown.
Speaker: Evil clown.
Speaker: He's an evil clown.
Speaker: Evil clown.
Speaker: Stephen King.
Speaker: Shut up.
Speaker: Shut up, Stephen.
Speaker: Shut up, Stephen.
Speaker: It's extra ironic when you consider that in the book of it, there's an entire section based on the character who's a writer.
Speaker: And he goes off on tangents about being in creative writing classes in college and how everything has to mean something else.
Speaker: And he wishes he was just allowed to tell a good story.
Speaker: And you're like, I sympathize with this.
Speaker: Please just do that instead of-
Speaker: Turning this whole thing into a mythos.
Speaker: I've never actually read it.
Speaker: That actually happens in the book.
Speaker: Absolutely it does, yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I know, I know.
Speaker: You know, I am a big Stephen King defender and appreciator.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: But also, the man has no ability to pump the brakes.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Even we, we thought it was all that blow he was doing in the eighties and look, that helped, but no, he's clean and sober now.
Speaker: And he's still that motherfucker.
Speaker: Like that's still him.
Speaker: The, the blow just made him write more books.
Speaker: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker: It didn't change the content of the books.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It accelerated the rate at which he could write the books.
Speaker: It didn't shift the books at all.
Speaker: Not in the slightest.
Speaker: Not in the slightest.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: By the way, now that we're talking, we're slightly off topic.
Speaker: Thank God.
Speaker: There was a... Thank God.
Speaker: Thank God you thought we were going to talk about a book this entire episode.
Speaker: Fuck that.
Speaker: I saw randomly I had a recommendation from Brandon Sanderson's channel of him saying, and it's from like nine months ago or whatever.
Speaker: And it's like him saying, I'm sorry, I've been lying to you is the title of it.
Speaker: And I was like, fine, click bait, you win.
Speaker: I never played Infinity Blade.
Speaker: God damn it, Sanderson.
Speaker: And I watch him and he's sitting there at the table and he's like, you know, the pandemic's affected us all very differently.
Speaker: And he's like doing this whole thing as if he's going to build up to an apology.
Speaker: He's like, I'm sorry I have been lying to you.
Speaker: I messed up.
Speaker: You know, I said I wasn't, I was going to cut back or whatever.
Speaker: And then suddenly he paused and he like takes, he like slams a manuscript out down onto the table.
Speaker: He's like, I accidentally wrote another book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Damn it, man.
Speaker: Motherfuckers.
Speaker: I think the rest of us look like I'm spending all of NaNoWriMo just to get like a hundred page novella written.
Speaker: And this motherfucker is like, I just shout out a book.
Speaker: It's full of clever twists and turns and it's going to be a bestseller.
Speaker: It was easy.
Speaker: Why doesn't everyone do this?
Speaker: Like, I'm going to kill myself.
Speaker: I swear to God.
Speaker: Hey, you've had like a bunch of books published this year.
Speaker: Tories published or bought this year.
Speaker: Which is great.
Speaker: I mean, they're going to be in books.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Some of them.
Speaker: That is true.
Speaker: I'm just saying.
Speaker: And I'm thrilled and I know how lucky I am.
Speaker: But some people, some writers –
Speaker: It's like sitting down to just like they have an extra long.
Speaker: It's like just sitting down on the toilet after a bowl of fiber one.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: And it just shoots out their ass like a shotgun blast.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I'm going to call Comcast.
Speaker: I'm going to be on hold for about half an hour.
Speaker: Think I'll write a book.
Speaker: And it's so frustrating.
Speaker: Just do do do do.
Speaker: The Comcast book.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: I guess I'll read it.
Speaker: The book of Comcast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The sword of Castcom.
Speaker: Yeah, Castcom.
Speaker: There.
Speaker: No one will catch me.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Better buy the trademark just in case.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: 3.6.
Speaker: Yorta is walking around the castle and she goes to visit the Tower of Wind.
Speaker: And she's just, you know, thinking about this random building that's in the back of the castle and how her mother doesn't like it.
Speaker: And she continues.
Speaker: She starts.
Speaker: walking back across the bridge from the tower and she sees a man and she's a little bit worried.
Speaker: You know, it's this man in a black cloak.
Speaker: He's walking towards her and they finally meet.
Speaker: And wouldn't you know it, it's the man that we were described earlier as the statue.
Speaker: and his name is ozuma and uh he he she's like oh he has horns on his helmet and then he takes his helmet off and she's like oh he has horns he just has horns the end and he talks about uh to her about how like you know it's this the horns are what we have you know the
Speaker: There's a bunch of people with horns back where I'm from.
Speaker: I'm from, you know, the East and my people are itinerant and they, we just go out in the world and we try to do good.
Speaker: So then they're kind of interrupted because she thinks she sees something moving around the tower.
Speaker: And they're like, okay, well, we're going to, we're going to call it quits for now.
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: Well, let's meet tomorrow.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Let's meet tomorrow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that night, Yorta at the banquet is basically just trying to listen.
Speaker: And she finds out that Ozuma had won his match that day.
Speaker: And he's going on to the fourth round the following day.
Speaker: So the following day, we get a little bit of backstory about how she never goes to the tournament.
Speaker: Since it was three years prior, she saw a guy get absolutely eviscerated at the tournament.
Speaker: And ever since then, she was like, nope, not going to do it.
Speaker: Not my cup of tea, thanks.
Speaker: Not my cup of tea.
Speaker: But now she wants to go see Ozuma fight.
Speaker: And I'm not...
Speaker: 100% clear on the relationship between the two of them.
Speaker: I don't know how old Azuma is supposed to be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She said she says she reminds her of her father.
Speaker: Yeah, they kind of say, don't they imply that he's like 40 or something like that, like a veteran?
Speaker: Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker: Yeah, so he's older.
Speaker: And I definitely get, I never got, I was very nervous when they started talking about it.
Speaker: Yeah, no, me too.
Speaker: I was like, I don't know where this is going.
Speaker: Yeah, and so far, at least, there's no like...
Speaker: Robin, the cradle father.
Speaker: It's like more of a father figure.
Speaker: It really does feel that way.
Speaker: And they do enough comparison of him to her dad that you feel like this is probably how it's going to stay.
Speaker: Yeah, it's probably fine.
Speaker: It's probably fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, she is worried about him, though, because like, I guess that like the the idea is that if whoever wins this big tournament is going to be turned into stone by her mom.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And I skipped a part.
Speaker: I was reading my notes wrong.
Speaker: The next day, she meets Ozuma again on the bridge.
Speaker: And they do a whole breakdown of like...
Speaker: basically he reveals to her that the entire like everyone knows everyone knows about her mom you know it's it's not a super well kept secret like right it's it's not everyone knows but enough people know that something something's up with with her and the tournament
Speaker: And now that Yorta knows the truth, her eye is open or something like that.
Speaker: So she's going to start to see weird stuff.
Speaker: And that explains why when they were at the Tower of Wind, she thought she saw something moving in the tower.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this time when they look at the tower, there's like, oh, there's all these shades like looking out the windows and stuff like that.
Speaker: These like dark shadows.
Speaker: Garth Marenghi.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is it Dark Shadows or was that the old soap?
Speaker: Yeah, Dark Shadows is the old soap, right?
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, they're looking at the tower.
Speaker: They see the shades moving around and he gives this whole big expo dump about...
Speaker: The Holy Zagrin Sol Empire, which is a neighboring country, which is basically like, you know, I would not be a fan of this country otherwise.
Speaker: It's like a religious thing.
Speaker: fascio religious type of place where the king declared himself the priest king of the holy empire.
Speaker: And he's very big on the light god and all that stuff.
Speaker: But, um...
Speaker: Ozuma is working for him as kind of like an agent to go out and figure out what's going on.
Speaker: There's a dark, sinister person out there.
Speaker: And one of the maneuvers that the king of the empire did was he sent out an invitation to all the other kings.
Speaker: in the area, including her mother, like, hey, I think there is an agent of the dark God, you know, working.
Speaker: Like, let's all get together and figure that out.
Speaker: And like, her mother was the only one to like, not respond.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is, as you know, a very innocent thing to do.
Speaker: The other thing is like,
Speaker: I think it's hilarious that the way this is written, because Ozuma is like, listen, these guys are always people are always winning the tournament and then disappearing, which is a callback to earlier in the chapter when Yorta goes to her mom.
Speaker: Like, wouldn't it doesn't it get suspicious that the people who win the tournament are always disappearing?
Speaker: And her mom is like, oh,
Speaker: so arrogant about it.
Speaker: She's like, no, these people probably don't have families.
Speaker: No one cares about them.
Speaker: Cut forward to Ozuma later being like, no, people noticed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I made the comparison before, but like, it's a very North Korea kind of thing.
Speaker: Like, it's this...
Speaker: Isolation is like, and she started and the, and, and, and Yorta starts being like, Oh my God, like everyone seems happy here though.
Speaker: But like, is he right?
Speaker: Are we, are we the assholes?
Speaker: She has a real, are we the baddies moment?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Azuba's like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Everyone knows your mom's basically evil.
Speaker: Like, we all know.
Speaker: Like, she keeps firing missiles over the Pacific.
Speaker: And, like, we're all.
Speaker: Look, we all know what she's doing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's that's kind of where where that conversation wraps up.
Speaker: But I think it's hilarious that it's a that the the evil villain is who is super powerful, but also she's not like she's not super bright in terms of like strategy.
Speaker: Like I love she's she's like way too obvious in all the shit she does.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I love I love having a villain who is scary and a genuine threat, but is also at the same time.
Speaker: You're like, oh, you're not really all that bright.
Speaker: Like, I can see that you will eventually get taken down by a couple of fucking teenagers.
Speaker: That's probably exactly you're going to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A couple teenagers are going to Scooby-Doo your ass.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So now Yorta goes and she attends the tournament because she wants to see Ozuma.
Speaker: Ozuna.
Speaker: Is it Ozuma?
Speaker: I think it's Ozuma.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: My hand.
Speaker: I was like questioning my handwriting for a second.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She wants to see Ozuma fight.
Speaker: You know, she wants to make sure that he's fighting, he's winning and all that stuff.
Speaker: And he goes in and is going to fight a man named Jadim, who is terrifying.
Speaker: He is a big, burly, muscular man with a gigantic axe.
Speaker: My favorite.
Speaker: The minister leans over and tells your to have like, yes, last year he cut off to a man, two of a man's arms.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because because the only way that the fight ends is somebody yielding.
Speaker: If someone yields and the guy wouldn't let go of his spear.
Speaker: So he cut his arms off in that hilarious.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: It's fucking awesome.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: But Azuma is really good.
Speaker: And he is able to, it's a really good fight sequence.
Speaker: Just in case you were wondering, our author is very good at writing literally every type of interaction.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a really good fight.
Speaker: See, it doesn't go on for too long.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's good action.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: Like, yeah, it's at one point.
Speaker: So the, the guy who is basically kind of like a barbarian build is wearing a circlet, right?
Speaker: He's wearing a circlet instead of a helmet.
Speaker: And Ozuma just like brings his sword down on the guy's head at one point.
Speaker: And the circlet stops it.
Speaker: But like the sword like cuts into his forehead, like head and forehead a little bit.
Speaker: And there's like blood like trickling down.
Speaker: And it was like, it was like, that is such a like...
Speaker: Spine tingling detail.
Speaker: It's a great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she describes how like, you know, it gets into his right eye.
Speaker: So he's squinting his right eye.
Speaker: And it just little, simple little details.
Speaker: It's a totally great scene.
Speaker: It's a great fight scene.
Speaker: So Azuma wins.
Speaker: He wins the fight.
Speaker: The guy eventually yields.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Later that night, Yorta is unable to sleep.
Speaker: She's fidgety from the day's events.
Speaker: And she gets she gets full on visited by a ghost of the ghost of her father visits her.
Speaker: We're.
Speaker: Yeah, he and the ghost of her dad basically confirms everything like.
Speaker: oh yeah i was trying to work to stop your mother um you know please don't let's not linger too too long here but i am trapped in the uh tower of of winds um that you visited like my spirit is my soul is trapped is bound to the castle yeah um but now that you know the truth and your eye has been opened
Speaker: you can see me.
Speaker: You're going to start to be able to see the weird stuff that happens at the castle.
Speaker: So I thought that was like an interesting little touch that her dad, he's like, no, I've always been here.
Speaker: Like, I've always been with you.
Speaker: You just have not been able to see me until now.
Speaker: And I'm like, that's neat.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's really sad and
Speaker: It's terrific.
Speaker: It's terrific.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So in the next section, our last section for the evening, she goes to the library and she wants to find more information about...
Speaker: her dad that she doesn't know because she really didn't have a lot of time with his ghost the previous evening.
Speaker: So she goes to the library for a meeting with the Master Sahul, the guy who is responsible for teaching her and all that stuff.
Speaker: And she's like, I wanna learn more about my father.
Speaker: Like, what was his deal?
Speaker: You know, he was young when I died.
Speaker: And Sahul's like, oh, well, you know, the books haven't been written yet about your father's reign.
Speaker: In fact, we're like behind by a king.
Speaker: We're like a king behind.
Speaker: We're going to be done this year.
Speaker: We're going to be done the previous king's biography.
Speaker: The king before your dad, and then we'll get started on your dad.
Speaker: We're going to get it started on your dad, but if you want to read that, we're going to have that at the end of the year if you're interested.
Speaker: We have these other books if you want to read them.
Speaker: Click here to pre-order.
Speaker: If you want a pre-order, we guarantee day of delivery.
Speaker: It'll be great.
Speaker: Day of delivery.
Speaker: You know, it's a really good deal.
Speaker: You get a signed book plate.
Speaker: You get a signed book plate.
Speaker: Sometimes it's on a loose leaf paper and it slides out.
Speaker: So just be careful.
Speaker: Yeah, just make sure you don't throw the envelope away.
Speaker: It might have been stuck in there.
Speaker: I love this because she basically says like, I want to write about my dad and he goes into all of this like- He's like, no, there's all these other books.
Speaker: You don't have to do that.
Speaker: And she was like, no, no, I just want to like write about how I remember him.
Speaker: Like she's basically saying like, I want to write memoirs of my father.
Speaker: I want to write a memoir of my dad.
Speaker: And he's like, oh, well, you know, we have books on the reign of kings, but it doesn't have him in it yet.
Speaker: It's so funny.
Speaker: Like it's just, it's such a smart guy thing.
Speaker: Where, like, she's like, yeah, I just want to write this thing, you know, and he, like, takes it way too far, and he's like, well, we can get this research, and blah, blah, blah, it's like missing the mark entirely, and she's like, no, no, I just wanted to write about my dad, man, like, it's just...
Speaker: He's like, well, we got to find you an agent.
Speaker: No, I do.
Speaker: Like, all right, well, I want you to write a one page synopsis.
Speaker: Can you write a treatment for me?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Get me the pitch and get me the pitch and we'll we'll we'll take it from there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I got some friends at Netflix.
Speaker: I can get you.
Speaker: I can get you in the door at Netflix if you want to you want to do a an animated series about your dad as a kid.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're going to get, yeah, we're going to get Timothy Oliphant to voice your dad.
Speaker: And you know what they say about Timothy Oliphant?
Speaker: He's Oliphantastic.
Speaker: I'm just so tired.
Speaker: So she's like pressing Sahul for information and the guy, and then she's like, I don't even know how he died.
Speaker: And Sahul's like, no.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: He's been so subservient and kind of lapdoggish to her that she's like, well, how did he die?
Speaker: I don't even know what he died of.
Speaker: And he's like, shut the fuck up.
Speaker: He loses his mind.
Speaker: We don't ask about how fucking fathers die in this country.
Speaker: We bury that trauma.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You put it into your heart so you die of heart disease later.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The same way that he died of heart disease because of his father.
Speaker: Oh, I've said too much.
Speaker: said too much god damn it too much generational trauma no we gotta preserve it here we used to be a proper country yeah yeah that's what men were men so she's he's he's like you're you're you're a princess and you're not supposed to be touched by death you're not supposed to be and she's like okay fine yeah
Speaker: She's just so over it.
Speaker: She's so over it.
Speaker: Shut up.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: She ends up leaving and then walking through another part of the library and she finds another another master teacher like the librarian dude because she comes by a bunch of these locked boxes and she sees a looking glass in a container and she's like, oh, what's that looking glass?
Speaker: And the guy's like, oh, it's broken.
Speaker: It's broken.
Speaker: You know, we can't we can't use it.
Speaker: Spyglass.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's it's.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's broken.
Speaker: And she's like thinking to herself is like, is it broken or is it just because everybody's enchanted and nobody wants to leave the country?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he's like, yeah, you know,
Speaker: Broken.
Speaker: We keep it because we want to study it.
Speaker: And she's like, could I study it?
Speaker: And he's like, do you have a library card?
Speaker: And she's like, yes.
Speaker: And go down to your local library, kids.
Speaker: Sometimes they have a spyglass.
Speaker: Sometimes they'll have movies.
Speaker: Sometimes they'll have movies.
Speaker: It's fun.
Speaker: VHS.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You ever want to watch Speed 2?
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Not even the good one.
Speaker: They're on a boat.
Speaker: Sandra Bullock's still in it.
Speaker: She can still use the money at that time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, Keanu said no.
Speaker: He had a hard pass on that one.
Speaker: He moved on with his life like everyone should have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Nineties were not great for sequels.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Anyway, the guy, the librarian's like, yeah, sure.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: So he gives her the spyglass and she takes it and she takes it, hides it in her dress and she takes it back to her room where she has three windows north.
Speaker: It's like north, east and west or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she looks out one of the windows towards the ocean and she sees that there was a boat like a merchant ship just kind of half sunk and turned to stone.
Speaker: And you can she could see like the sail peeking up out of the water and she could see the people on the deck.
Speaker: um of like they had been like worn away and all that it's such a horrifying detail it's it's a horrifying little detail and then she's like they've been there a long time they've been there a long time and then she goes and she looks in out another window uh to a field and like oh there is like an army's worth of people statues and they've been there even longer
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's no details on them.
Speaker: They're just worn out.
Speaker: They're just the general shape of people.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's no face or anything like that.
Speaker: They're just basically silhouettes.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: It's not good.
Speaker: The enchantment has been broken.
Speaker: So, basically, the enchantment has been broken on Yorta.
Speaker: That's why she's allowed to use his spyglass.
Speaker: She's red-pilled as fuck.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's based.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, some little fucked up moments and that's where we're leaving it for tonight.
Speaker: But yeah, that's the thing is like I get I understand where you're coming from where it's like it kind of halts the momentum of the current storyline because we had not up until this point changed time periods.
Speaker: Everything was kind of forward looking.
Speaker: But at the same time, I really like...
Speaker: I like Yorta getting some action.
Speaker: Without question.
Speaker: Because in the game, she's just like the princess that you save and she's led around by her hand, basically.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's the thing.
Speaker: I really appreciate Yorta.
Speaker: Not just the effort of doing that, but the writing.
Speaker: God, this woman can write.
Speaker: The characters are very real and very fleshed out.
Speaker: The situations are fun.
Speaker: The fights are cool.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: I just feel like instead of getting this 150-page chapter all to itself...
Speaker: Right in the middle of all of it.
Speaker: I feel like we should have zippered this.
Speaker: Like we should have had like, you know, some eco moments and then some flashback moments and let it unwind itself so that not everything gets... Everything.
Speaker: It was not like just one big old chunk of...
Speaker: Here's a whole hunk of beef.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's like the Game of Thrones books where like suddenly like we're in Westeros, we're in Westeros, we're in Westeros.
Speaker: And all of a sudden, like one of the books starts like, oh, it's all over there in this new place.
Speaker: It might as if we got a couple of the same characters, but it's like all new shit.
Speaker: And it just throws you a lot.
Speaker: Like, oh, yeah.
Speaker: Westeros shit.
Speaker: And be like, ah, fucking Essos chapter.
Speaker: Right, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And that's just it.
Speaker: It's really good.
Speaker: The momentum kind of got fucked with a little there.
Speaker: And I find that a little disappointing.
Speaker: But it doesn't stop it from being still a damn fine book so far.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm really, really curious about...
Speaker: about the final third here.
Speaker: I'm still very interested.
Speaker: Here's the wild thing is that even at this book's weakest or maybe not weakest is the, but even this book's missteps are better than a lot of the other books that we've read.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And it's, and I think it's because we're not objecting to the content.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's just, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a pacing issue.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: She hasn't put anything in here.
Speaker: And I did watch, I realized I was like, I should probably at very least watch a playthrough of Eco.
Speaker: And, and I've watched most of one.
Speaker: And, and despite the fact that as she points out in the beginning, this is a very different kind of experience, obviously.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At no point do I think that she is – do I suspect that this was just a book she was going to write anyway and she just slapped some specific things.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: It seems tailored to this world.
Speaker: She actually is trying to expand –
Speaker: on a pre-existing piece.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It is very grounded in the game's feel, the tone and feeling of the game.
Speaker: Even when, as you point out, like we, you know, Ico very much like Shadow of the Colossus, which I did play and love.
Speaker: They're very lonely games.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And even when we have this whole section that suddenly-
Speaker: Boom, the whole – it's kind of like that scene in the Addams Family, in the first Addams Family movie where they're like in this – the ballroom where they're going to have this party.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And they pull the curtains back and suddenly, boom, you're in the party.
Speaker: It was very much like that.
Speaker: It was like that, yes.
Speaker: And it's a shock to the system, but it doesn't feel less like –
Speaker: No, that's right.
Speaker: In terms of the world, you're like, oh, this is different, but it still feels appropriate.
Speaker: If chapter three is the pullback of the curtain for the ball in Adam's Family 1, is the fight between Ozuma and Jadam, is that the babushka?
Speaker: Yeah, the babushka.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And the guy getting his head cut open and blood in his eye is specifically when Uncle Fester catches the knife in his mouth.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: That's how these moments map.
Speaker: That's very clear.
Speaker: I'm pretty sure we could map any book to like, you know what?
Speaker: Fuck the hero's journey.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, man.
Speaker: Joseph Campbell, honestly, piece of shit.
Speaker: Anyway, fuck them.
Speaker: Adam's family.
Speaker: The Addams Family Journey.
Speaker: That's where it's at right now.
Speaker: That's all you need.
Speaker: That's all you need.
Speaker: It's positive spookiness.
Speaker: Positive spookiness.
Speaker: We do need more of that.
Speaker: By the way, I think Wednesday is supposed to be coming out soon.
Speaker: I didn't realize that was going to be a series.
Speaker: I thought it was just a movie.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a series.
Speaker: I'll watch it.
Speaker: I'm intrigued.
Speaker: I'm intrigued.
Speaker: You know, why not?
Speaker: Yeah, why not?
Speaker: It should be coming out.
Speaker: It'll have been out by now, by the time this episode comes out.
Speaker: Will it be?
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: It was like the end of November when it's supposed to premiere.
Speaker: End of November it's supposed to premiere?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, it should be.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, I think that leads us to a very important question.
Speaker: Okay, what's that?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I am, appropriately enough, I did just finish the Rose's Story DLC for Resident Evil Village.
Speaker: I loved it, and you were right.
Speaker: As in the source material, the spooky haunted house is the scariest goddamn part of it.
Speaker: I didn't need mannequins chasing me around.
Speaker: I did not either.
Speaker: And yeah, it's like Killer Angel Doctor Who rules where you have to keep your eye on it and it has glowing eyes and it walks like a terrifying cricket given some semblance of bipedal motion.
Speaker: I didn't need that in my life.
Speaker: And yet...
Speaker: And yet, here I am, having played that and having dealt with that.
Speaker: But it was good.
Speaker: It was really good.
Speaker: And I thought the final fight was pretty cool.
Speaker: And I didn't think it overstayed its welcome.
Speaker: And I even played some of the...
Speaker: Oh, what is it?
Speaker: What's the fighty mode?
Speaker: Mercenaries.
Speaker: Yeah, which I kind of skipped over.
Speaker: Yeah, I played it.
Speaker: I realized going back, I realized I played it quite a bit with Ethan because I was like, oh, I have a bunch of like grades already with Ethan and Mercenaries.
Speaker: No, I might keep playing that.
Speaker: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: Yeah, the DLC, I remember,
Speaker: Getting to that segment with the mannequins and God.
Speaker: When they started like the footsteps.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: The little.
Speaker: Well, like when you, when they were just like around the corner and they, they come to the, and they like peek around the corner.
Speaker: I was like, it is so upsetting.
Speaker: It is so upsetting.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: And it was just, it was very solid.
Speaker: And once again, and it's kind of funny because when you leak, because they just like in the, in the original game, they, they take your guns away.
Speaker: You got no weapons.
Speaker: And, and just like in that, in the original, when I left and I realized I had guns again, I was like,
Speaker: I was almost disappointed.
Speaker: I was like, oh, okay.
Speaker: I guess my favorite kind of horror is that alien isolation, you know, asylum amnesia.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So like the first half of alien isolation before you get armed to the teeth.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: I really enjoy that shit the most.
Speaker: Because it's like that I love Alien Isolation, but I think it is basically Alien Isolation is two modes.
Speaker: The first half of the game is alien and the second half of the game is aliens.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: A little bit.
Speaker: A little bit.
Speaker: A little bit.
Speaker: You actually end up killing Xenomorphs in the second half of the game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Man, I love that game.
Speaker: It's a fucking great game.
Speaker: We're going to be talking...
Speaker: We're going to be talking about that very soon.
Speaker: Very soon.
Speaker: I'm excited.
Speaker: I'm excited about that one too.
Speaker: Oh, and you remember last week we were talking about, you were talking about finding a nice relaxing game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And just chill and really absorb and everything like that.
Speaker: I did not find that game, but I did find Against the Storm.
Speaker: Oh, that sounds, that sounds chill.
Speaker: It kind of looks like it's going to be chill.
Speaker: It's one of my city builders.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Casey Explosion recommended this one.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And it looked right up my alley.
Speaker: And it's a city builder.
Speaker: You're in this-
Speaker: world filled with like you've got at first you've got three races to choose from you got humans you got like beavers and lizards and they're all you know bipedal and everything like that and that's the second time I've used that word bipedal bipedal
Speaker: But you're building these settlements.
Speaker: You've got the main castle with this mysterious queen there, and you're building settlements in her name.
Speaker: And it's got kind of a roguelike element to it where you go and...
Speaker: you have to fulfill certain missions and they're randomized as you go along.
Speaker: And so you have to kind of decide what you're going to build and what you're going to do with that settlement based on, um,
Speaker: some randomized events and that sort of thing.
Speaker: And then when you finish that, you go back and you have to build another settlement at a different place.
Speaker: And after a certain amount of time has ended, the world gets wiped clean, basically.
Speaker: And by building these settlements, you have absorbed certain powers and upgrades and that kind of thing.
Speaker: So it's got kind of a roguelike vibe to it.
Speaker: It's dark.
Speaker: It's got some real darkness to it.
Speaker: The world is constantly raining and you have to keep this flame alive at all times.
Speaker: And so it's got this kind of bummer aesthetic.
Speaker: But I was playing it on Friday night and having a glass of wine.
Speaker: The soundtrack is very soothing and it's raining constantly.
Speaker: So it's like this white noise machine.
Speaker: Did you fall asleep playing?
Speaker: I was very relaxed and therefore did not do very well because it actually has way more to do.
Speaker: It's way closer to Banished than it is to say SimCity or something like that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Because you don't have all the time in the world.
Speaker: You have to balance not stretching yourself too thin while also...
Speaker: not laying around because the queen gets impatient with you the longer you go.
Speaker: And if you can't get everything taken care of in a certain amount of time, she'll just pull you back and say, you failed, come back and try again.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's very, very interesting.
Speaker: And it's an early access.
Speaker: And I'm,
Speaker: crazy impressed with the game that you've got right now.
Speaker: Yeah, it was released November 1st into early access.
Speaker: I'm looking at the graphics right now and you know what's funny is like what you described as I was like picturing it in my head was totally different because then when I pulled it up I was like, oh, it's got these very colorful, chunky like World of Warcraft
Speaker: Very World of Warcraft.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And it is very colorful and bright and the world's very outlandish and strange and stuff.
Speaker: It's not enough that you do a lot of exploring and a lot of foraging.
Speaker: You can farm, but only in very specific instances.
Speaker: And it's not enough that you go out and you're like, okay, we rustled up some rabbits.
Speaker: No, there are the, like, you've got all kinds of strange fauna and stuff like that.
Speaker: So it's like, I don't know what the fuck that is, but it's meat.
Speaker: So we'll go ahead and kill a bunch of those and forage for meat.
Speaker: And like, it's, it's, it's very, um,
Speaker: It's got its own thing.
Speaker: And in video game terms, anything with fantasy, anything that goes beyond the usual elves, dwarves, you know, kind of thing, you know, is good in my book.
Speaker: And the world they're building is very cool.
Speaker: Like I've invested like 10 hours into it.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I might pick it up if it's, I'll check to see if it, it seems like it might be a decent enough Steam Deck game if it's working.
Speaker: Oh, I bet it would be good for Steam Deck.
Speaker: If it's working on the Steam Deck, I'll take a look.
Speaker: It's very chill and at times it's very chill.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Because you do have to keep an eye on it.
Speaker: But I have found that usually with these games, I turn up the speed quite a bit so we can... Yeah, let's move it along.
Speaker: Yeah, get it along at a reasonable clip.
Speaker: This game, I actually, not only for my own sake as a beginner, because, you know, like most of these kinds of strategy games, you're going to have to play and fail several times just to go...
Speaker: Just to actually understand what's going on.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: But just playing it at the normal speed will help you in that sense.
Speaker: But it also actually helps me kind of just soak it up and really enjoy it on the same level that I'll enjoy Civ or Banished or something like that.
Speaker: So I highly recommend it.
Speaker: I'm loving it so far.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker: What are you playing there, Kevin?
Speaker: Well, I finished God of War Ragnarok.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have thoughts.
Speaker: You have thoughts.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Tell me more.
Speaker: So the game is... I was... I love the God of War reboot in 20... I want to say 2018 or something like that.
Speaker: So I was pretty reasonably excited for Ragnarok.
Speaker: The one thing I would say is that it...
Speaker: about the game is that the... It uses the same camera trick as the first one.
Speaker: So if you played that God Wars, it had a...
Speaker: It had a single shot, basically single shot camera that never cuts, never, never, never cuts.
Speaker: It's a it's kind of like there's movies that have that have done this.
Speaker: They'll do long takes that are like 10 minutes or something where they're with no cuts or whatever.
Speaker: And I appreciate the technical work that goes into it, but I think the game at this point is a little hamstrung by it in terms of some of the storytelling decisions.
Speaker: That being said, the storytelling is the by far and away the best part of the game.
Speaker: So I don't find the combat all that intriguing in this game.
Speaker: In 2018, it was fine.
Speaker: And then this game, it's more of the same and it doesn't really, there's no real juice to it, I don't feel.
Speaker: Like, I think one of the things is that
Speaker: Kratos is like struggling.
Speaker: You end up struggling a lot with like, you know, enemies that are at your level.
Speaker: It just takes a while to to kill them.
Speaker: And I feel like to me in my head, it would feel more like God of Worry if, you know, you're mowing down.
Speaker: It's more volume rather than.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: They feel a little, well, not quite the right term, but bullet spongy.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And I played on the middle difficulty.
Speaker: There's five difficulty options.
Speaker: There's five difficulty options and a ton of accessibility options.
Speaker: So that's great.
Speaker: You know, that's a great thing.
Speaker: One of the things, and a lot of people have mentioned this, is that the characters sometimes just need to shut the fuck up.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So anytime you come upon a puzzle, your companion at the time, and I've got to wear Ragnarok spoilers.
Speaker: I'm going to probably spoil it.
Speaker: Your companion at the time, most of the time that's Atreus, will start pointing out things like,
Speaker: oh, you can hit that thing over and knock it down or whatever.
Speaker: And it's almost immediate.
Speaker: Wasn't, who was it?
Speaker: One of our friends, one of our pixel a day was talking about that on Twitter.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I think she mentioned that, yeah.
Speaker: Where it's just like, come on, just give me a second.
Speaker: Let me try.
Speaker: Let me try to figure out the puzzle.
Speaker: And there's a lot of puzzles in the game.
Speaker: But
Speaker: Some of them are like, OK, well, your companion started talking immediately.
Speaker: The other ones are like they they are just frustrating enough where there's these chests that you get your upgrades from your like health and stuff.
Speaker: health upgrades where it's like you have to hit the three things, hit three things and it'll unlock the chest and you can grab the thing.
Speaker: Well, like there will be half of them.
Speaker: I just kept, I was like, no, I'm not doing that.
Speaker: Cause I would hit, I would find, I would find two of them and then it would take me like five minutes of just like looking around and be like,
Speaker: okay, I'm bored.
Speaker: You know, I'm moving on.
Speaker: I'll deal with the fact that I have a little less health than I could have had, you know?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So there's that.
Speaker: So, yeah, overall opinions, I do not rate the game nearly as high personally as the total view of, you know, like, if we're comparing, like,
Speaker: It's apples and oranges, in my opinion.
Speaker: But if we're comparing the two games that are vying for game of the year this year, which is going to be between God of War and Elden Ring.
Speaker: To me, it's like Elden Ring in terms of gameplay.
Speaker: It's like so much.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, no, no sweat.
Speaker: It's Elden Ring.
Speaker: You know what's funny is I died more in God of War Ragnarok because the camera is here's the thing is like an Elden Ring.
Speaker: It gives you you have a nice it's a third person camera with
Speaker: a good wide shot of what you're doing.
Speaker: In God of War, it's like right up on Kratos' ass.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Over the shoulder kind of thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Some of that is mitigated by Mimir, like calling things out.
Speaker: Mimir is on your belt because he's just ahead.
Speaker: saying in his Scottish accent, behind you, brother.
Speaker: And like, okay, well, I got to dodge.
Speaker: And like, there's like, there's audio cues and there's these visual cues of like arrows of where the attacks are coming from.
Speaker: And I've found that to be more frustrating and confusing than any moment of Elden Ring, because in Elden Ring, there would be no UI telling me where the attacks are coming from.
Speaker: I could just figure that out by looking at the screen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You can either give me like all of these signals, audio and visual signals and stuff, or you could just give me a higher, you know, plane of view.
Speaker: Give me a wider.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Give me a, an FOV slider or something.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's yeah.
Speaker: I can see where that would be frustrating.
Speaker: So anyway, God of War Ragnarok, I hit credits.
Speaker: Apparently there's more to do after the credits where and then you hit like the true credits or whatever.
Speaker: I don't know if I'll bother doing it.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I got credits.
Speaker: That's good enough for me.
Speaker: I was really in the, let's, let's just say I was really in it for like the first six hours.
Speaker: And then the last, you know, 15 hours, 15 to 20 hours were just like,
Speaker: all right can we just move it along here right like i was skipping side quests i was doing all that stuff because i was just kind of like i was like i just want to know what happens to the characters at this point i don't really um and in the writing and the acting and all that stuff outstanding i just wish all of that was paired with um something that was just a little bit more fun to play
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So that's, that's my God of war Ragnarok take.
Speaker: And if you have a disagreement, you can say, send it to Kevin is wrong about God of war Ragnarok at, I don't care.com.
Speaker: Is it.com?
Speaker: I thought it was gov.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Oh, oh, dot gov.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Dot gov.
Speaker: Dot gov.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Got to send it to the right place.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Got to send it to the right place, but you know what?
Speaker: I don't know for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
Speaker: We really appreciate it.
Speaker: If you can, go ahead and follow us.
Speaker: Twitter is still running.
Speaker: As of now.
Speaker: As of right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: 944 p.m.
Speaker: on November 20th as we're recording this episode.
Speaker: It's still running.
Speaker: If you're listening to this, you're from the future.
Speaker: Tell us how everything went to shit.
Speaker: So follow us on Twitter at PixletPod or on Instagram, which will probably stay up.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, he didn't put his hands on that one.
Speaker: PixletPod there as well.
Speaker: Best, best, best place to go and get information about stuff that we're doing is the website.
Speaker: Go to PixletPod.com.
Speaker: From there, you can join our Discord.
Speaker: You can sign up for our newsletter.
Speaker: The newsletter is a great way to just never miss an episode.
Speaker: You can also join our Steam group where we post reviews for all of the What Are You Playing segments.
Speaker: So go ahead, check it out.
Speaker: Really, really the website, the Discord, the newsletter, those are going to be the best ways going forward to really keep in touch.
Speaker: If you want, I have a Mastodon thing, I guess.
Speaker: I guess I'll look into that.
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: Just to be sure.
Speaker: So, you know, that's that.
Speaker: Please rate us five stars on the podcast platform of your choice.
Speaker: And that'll do it.
Speaker: So have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Bye!
