Transcript
Speaker: We have to we're going to have to like be popular enough that people just send us their copies one day.
Speaker: Yeah, because I would love to have to have something like that.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: That's like, yeah, that's that's I love those kinds of things.
Speaker: I love out of print books and shit like that.
Speaker: It's so wonderful.
Speaker: You know what else I love?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome to Pixlet.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil.
Speaker: And today is part two of our read-through of Alien Isolation by Keith R.A.
Speaker: DiCandido.
Speaker: DiCandido.
Speaker: I think there's no other way you can actually say it.
Speaker: No, you got to say the whole thing.
Speaker: What's the R.A.
Speaker: stand for?
Speaker: I have to wonder if he like highlighted the RA because he's not always doing that.
Speaker: I wonder if he highlighted it to like draw comparisons to RA Salfator or something like that.
Speaker: That's, you know what?
Speaker: I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I think I think of when I think of RA, I think my brain is like, there's a there's another famous RA, isn't there?
Speaker: It must be this guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, R.A.
Speaker: Salvatore, R.A.
Speaker: DeCandido.
Speaker: What's the difference?
Speaker: No, none.
Speaker: None whatsoever.
Speaker: Both equal, equal artists to the task.
Speaker: That's all there is to it.
Speaker: That's all there is to it.
Speaker: So what did we do in the first episode?
Speaker: What happened there?
Speaker: Well, in the first episode, we were covering the first part and the prologue of Alien Isolation.
Speaker: Basically, we get led up to the world of... We kind of like... It basically bridges the gap between Alien and Alien Isolation.
Speaker: And we start out with our group on the Isadora finding...
Speaker: the egg.
Speaker: We get the don't stand over the egg.
Speaker: For God's sakes, what are you doing?
Speaker: Please stop standing over the egg.
Speaker: And the inevitable happens.
Speaker: We meet our friend Ellen Ripley's daughter, Amanda Ripley.
Speaker: And we get a little bit of background and kind of never before seen looks at what Ellen Ripley was like as a mother to her actual progeny and not her adopted daughters, as we've seen over the course of several movies.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And she basically volunteers for a mission to go out to this space station, which has gone radio silent, essentially, and find, you know, help them out and you help us, we'll help you.
Speaker: And they end up on the Sevastopol, which is a massive like space colony.
Speaker: Essentially, it's like a city in space.
Speaker: Big old station.
Speaker: Big old station.
Speaker: Shit has gone completely sideways.
Speaker: She ends up stranded on that ship when they're trying to do a spacewalk to get on board.
Speaker: And there's like just a random explosion, which knocks everything out of whack.
Speaker: They managed to get inside, but there isn't much in terms of getting out at this point.
Speaker: And she finds the whole place completely closed.
Speaker: Chaos, just filled with chaos.
Speaker: The people who live there are fighting amongst themselves, kind of tribing up, so to speak.
Speaker: And wouldn't you know it, there's a horrifying dickheaded monster wandering around killing people.
Speaker: And when we finally get to the end of part one, Amanda finds the black box from the Nostroma, her her MacGuffin.
Speaker: She arrives at it.
Speaker: And wouldn't you know it?
Speaker: There's no data on it.
Speaker: There's nothing on there.
Speaker: Nothing on it.
Speaker: So we have sad Amanda.
Speaker: Sad Amanda Ripley.
Speaker: Sad Ripley.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So as a side note, I didn't and you can yell at me for the for my geography knowledge.
Speaker: All you want people.
Speaker: I didn't realize that the name Sevastopol is actually the largest city in
Speaker: in Crimea, which is the area that Russia annexed from Ukraine back in 2014.
Speaker: Basically, when the precursor of our current Ukrainian, I mean, there's always been...
Speaker: There's always been stuff, you know, with Ukraine and Russia.
Speaker: But the current thing, I mean, the annexation of Crimea is really the thing that lit the long fuse.
Speaker: Yeah, one of the more modern catalysts, if you will.
Speaker: So, yes, Sevastopol.
Speaker: It is one of the largest cities in Ukraine, and it's the largest city in Crimea.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: It's a really interesting choice because I thought about that.
Speaker: I did know.
Speaker: Yeah, well, whatever, man.
Speaker: Some of us didn't play Carmen Sandiego enough.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have all of my sim games to blame for this particular one.
Speaker: But it is an interesting choice because you're right.
Speaker: It's this region in Eastern Europe.
Speaker: And I think that's, you know, it kind of for a Western audience, for a Western European and American audience, which is what this game was aimed primarily at, I think it does a good job of kind of setting this tone of like...
Speaker: You know, they might as well have called it, you know, the space station Transylvania.
Speaker: You know, it's it's it evokes that same kind of like castle on the mountain kind of.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Kind of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's a cool choice.
Speaker: And I really do.
Speaker: It is that one and the Isadora, both the name of the ship that we mentioned.
Speaker: Every time they mention that, I like just those are words I like rolling around in my mouth.
Speaker: That just, Sevastopol.
Speaker: There's something really cool about that.
Speaker: There's a lot of good names.
Speaker: A lot of good Chewie names.
Speaker: Very much so, yes.
Speaker: So, all right.
Speaker: Now, we're going to, and I promise that this is what
Speaker: We're going to call it from now on in the last episode.
Speaker: We're going to put the body in the mash.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Let's put the body in the mash.
Speaker: Let's put the body in the mash.
Speaker: Part two, subtitled Isolation, begins with chapter 12, and we're flashing back.
Speaker: We're flashing back in time to Amanda's days at the Delage Technical Institute,
Speaker: where she was training to just be a technician.
Speaker: Even though she is so good and should be an engineer, she can't afford it.
Speaker: And she's obviously, she does not want to take the money from Weyland-Yutani to do anything more.
Speaker: Yeah, she doesn't want their dirty money.
Speaker: She doesn't want their money.
Speaker: Which is good.
Speaker: I mean, you know, basically anybody who wants to stick it to Weyland-Yutani in the shared Blade Runner alien predator multiverse.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They all share one.
Speaker: Yeah, they do, don't they?
Speaker: Yeah, that's been confirmed, right?
Speaker: I think that's been confirmed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is wild.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyone who wants to stick it to Weyland-Yutani is, in fact, good.
Speaker: Good people.
Speaker: Good people.
Speaker: So she's talking to the principal of the Delage Technical Institute because she is nearly failing a class.
Speaker: because she repaired all of the engines in a class rather than just doing a build schedule for one.
Speaker: This is like this is this is the this is the like moment that in a more ordinary movie, she'd be like playing chess with somebody like playing chess with five people at once and just going to checkmate, checkmate, checkmate.
Speaker: Like this is just their moment to show us like she's above all of this.
Speaker: She's better than all this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You see, you, you saw that, uh, that chess movie with what's her name?
Speaker: Anya Taylor joy.
Speaker: I never did.
Speaker: I didn't or the miniseries rather.
Speaker: Um, anyway, she plays a chess prodigy.
Speaker: That's basically Amanda Ripley with, with machines.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's the beginning of kind of, and they hinted at it in the first part, but I think it really comes into focus here.
Speaker: The, the idea that the women of the family Ripley are nothing less than saints.
Speaker: They're not to be trifled with.
Speaker: They are perfectly perfect in every way.
Speaker: They are amazing.
Speaker: They, they are, um,
Speaker: Yeah, they're a cut above everybody else.
Speaker: They are.
Speaker: They are indeed.
Speaker: It was to a point that I was like, okay, we get it.
Speaker: We get it.
Speaker: She's amazing.
Speaker: She's amazing.
Speaker: She's the best.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: So, yeah, the principal is like, yeah, you should be an engineering school, not a technical school.
Speaker: And Amanda is like, okay, well,
Speaker: I can't afford it.
Speaker: So thanks.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: It's been a great talk.
Speaker: But the principal manages to get it so that Amanda is no longer failing that class.
Speaker: So Amanda afterwards goes to a cafe that she normally haunts on a given day.
Speaker: And she goes and she chats with an acquaintance.
Speaker: named Okiki.
Speaker: I just say acquaintance because she doesn't really know much about him.
Speaker: He's just kind of like there at the cafe and they exchange words occasionally.
Speaker: And Okiki's like, wait a minute.
Speaker: By the way, I am a DD, which is a data driver.
Speaker: We got it.
Speaker: We got it.
Speaker: Wait, what?
Speaker: What is he?
Speaker: He's a darling dandy.
Speaker: Darling dandy.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: He walks around with a top hat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, suspenders.
Speaker: Spats.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's ready to go.
Speaker: He's wearing his Florsheim shoes.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: He looks good.
Speaker: He's looking good and feeling good.
Speaker: No, he's a data dealer and he's like, you know what?
Speaker: I know a guy who has information about your mother.
Speaker: And Amanda's like, what?
Speaker: And Okiki shows Amanda all this information he can pull up on Ellen Ripley.
Speaker: And it's stuff that Amanda never even knew.
Speaker: And he's like, okay, well, if you can pay...
Speaker: for the information, we'll give it to you.
Speaker: But otherwise, he's going to sell it to somebody else.
Speaker: So Amanda goes back home.
Speaker: They're in chapter 13 now.
Speaker: Amanda goes back home and she goes into her dad's bank account and steals 150, whatever the currency is, dollary dues.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: New yen or whatever.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: New yen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is that's Shadowrun, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's Shadowrun.
Speaker: So she she goes and she steals the the money from Paul, who is asleep or something, and he sends it over to she sends it over to a Kiki.
Speaker: And then the next day she goes back to the coffee shop as planned.
Speaker: She goes there.
Speaker: She gets herself a nice breakfast, bacon, eggs, coffee, you know, but she's she's ready to go.
Speaker: And a Kiki never shows up.
Speaker: And an hour passes, two hours pass.
Speaker: She goes outside to make a call to Okiki.
Speaker: And the phone, that number that he gave her, is no longer in service.
Speaker: And one of the other people who hangs out at the cafe is like, oh, well, you're not going to school today.
Speaker: And she's like, have you.
Speaker: And Amanda's like, have you seen Okiki?
Speaker: She's like, oh, yeah, I passed him earlier.
Speaker: He was getting on the bullet train.
Speaker: And Amanda's like to here.
Speaker: And she's like, no, to California.
Speaker: To the sun.
Speaker: And this is just the first of many people that scams Amanda out of something.
Speaker: Time, money, what have you.
Speaker: Yeah, we get a long line of people who just are fucking her over one person after the other.
Speaker: So Okiki basically steals.
Speaker: It was like all for a matter of a hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker: This is like the equivalent of Back to the Future Part 3 where.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: What's his name?
Speaker: Doc on Doc's tombstone.
Speaker: It's you shot over a matter of like $80.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Amanda then goes back home.
Speaker: She helps Paul.
Speaker: Paul has this hearing to go to.
Speaker: And Paul thinks he's due for a big fat settlement because he got injured at work.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: They owe me money.
Speaker: And they get there.
Speaker: And they're like, well, you were drunk.
Speaker: So you're not getting anything.
Speaker: Also, you're fired.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I just...
Speaker: But the good news is you're fired.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But the good news is you're also fired.
Speaker: And we're like, but we'll give you your paychecks through the end of the month.
Speaker: So now she can't even go to the Delage.
Speaker: She can't even afford that.
Speaker: That's over with.
Speaker: because Paul can't afford it, clearly.
Speaker: So that's the end of that.
Speaker: And he's real casual about it, too.
Speaker: He's like, well, you can't afford that.
Speaker: I'll call it.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: I'll call and cancel your classes.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: I got it for you.
Speaker: I got this.
Speaker: Daddy's here.
Speaker: Daddy is here.
Speaker: World's worst, dad.
Speaker: World's worst.
Speaker: Chapter 14.
Speaker: Amanda is, we cut back to the present, and Amanda has basically just been remembering all the other wild goose chases she's been on, and she is just P.O.ed, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she then just is like, all right, fine, whatever.
Speaker: And she starts searching through the room to find some other stuff.
Speaker: She finds some water and she continues on.
Speaker: And she runs into a working Joe and the working Joe randomly tells her, by the way, your registration has been completed.
Speaker: Amanda's like,
Speaker: I don't know what that means, but I'm going to carry that.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: I didn't register for shit.
Speaker: It's like, oh, but you did.
Speaker: And then the xenomorph shows up.
Speaker: The xenomorph, she hides around a corner and just waits till it clears out.
Speaker: And it kills a few more people.
Speaker: in the background while she's chilling.
Speaker: Which is my favorite part of Alien Isolation, by the way.
Speaker: When you'll end up in a room and stuff like that and you'll see these, you're hiding from people and then all of a sudden like a noise.
Speaker: Yeah, you see it and people go, oh fuck!
Speaker: And just getting torn to shreds.
Speaker: Glad I'm not that guy, I guess.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: So she goes on an elevator and she goes up to the next level and she's kind of walking.
Speaker: Now in the game, it's written differently in the book than it is in the game.
Speaker: I remember this scene in particular.
Speaker: She witnesses a working Joe kill a man named Hughes bashing his head into the ground.
Speaker: Now, in the game, you are actually climbing through a vent when you witness this.
Speaker: Yeah, you're working your way through the vent system.
Speaker: In the book, she kind of like sees this happening from around a corner or something like that.
Speaker: There's no climbing through the vent.
Speaker: No moments, which which is a fine change.
Speaker: You know, it's like we talked about this before.
Speaker: We'll get into more of the details.
Speaker: But, you know, you pointed out when we were talking earlier today that this is one of those books that like we were still getting the moments of like going through the game, you know, but yeah.
Speaker: But it's done well and it's changed enough that it's not clunky and, you know, it doesn't feel like.
Speaker: And then she ran into this room and she found three credits and, you know, and a snack.
Speaker: And she went to this room and there were this guy.
Speaker: She found the schematic for the noisemaker.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It required three pieces of scrap.
Speaker: It's just.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And a blasting cap.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's adapted.
Speaker: It truly is adapted.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: She continues on.
Speaker: Hughes, before he died, was saying he was trying to reestablish the long distance communications.
Speaker: So Amanda finds the terminal where that would happen.
Speaker: And she can hear Verlaine's broadcast, but then it's shortly cut off by Apollo.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Right after that, half of a working Joe grabs her leg in which she violently just, you know, she really works out some anger issues on this working.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Which, you know what?
Speaker: If you played the game, the working Joes, I was amazed at how when I first played this, like, yeah.
Speaker: I remember being disappointed at first.
Speaker: I'm like, what?
Speaker: I'm hiding from shitty robots in this game.
Speaker: I only care about the xenomorph.
Speaker: And it's like, oh, no, the working Joes are fucking terrifying.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, so if you're running from these things.
Speaker: You look like you require assistance.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Awful.
Speaker: So, you know, if you're in that position and you get a chance to just grind a fucking working Jo to powder, you take it.
Speaker: You take it.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: By the way, the thing I love, the interstitial between some of these chapters and parts of the book, they have emails from Siegson executives.
Speaker: And at one point, I don't have it marked off, at one point there's an email about how...
Speaker: The the the Weyland-Yutani is so much further ahead of them in creating synthetics.
Speaker: And in the game, there's an explanation that seeks and tries to give that the working Joes look like that for your sake.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's not that they can't figure out how to make them look better.
Speaker: It's for you.
Speaker: So you're more comfortable.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you're more comfortable.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: It's like you could have a robot that looks just like another human being and that kind of thing.
Speaker: Or you could have it look like Judge Doom at the very end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Speaker: constantly melting itself down and just howling like it just got dipped.
Speaker: That's better, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's not better.
Speaker: It's not.
Speaker: It's not better.
Speaker: You could have one that looks like a human and for all intents and purposes is a human.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or you could have one dreams of electric sheep, we'll say.
Speaker: And the other one dreams of of feeling your blood between its fingers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You want to you want to know what Philip K. Dick sees when he falls asleep, vaguely drunk and afraid?
Speaker: It's it's a working Joe.
Speaker: Working Joe's fucking terrible.
Speaker: Fucking terrible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Awful.
Speaker: So chapter 15.
Speaker: Through one of the terminals, Samuels contacts Ripley and they recap what's happened so far.
Speaker: They're like, ah, things.
Speaker: There's a killer.
Speaker: Yeah, killer.
Speaker: I just imagine like Ripley.
Speaker: What are three other things about him?
Speaker: Never mind.
Speaker: I just imagine Ripley like doing a full, like acting out everything Axel said.
Speaker: And then like to Samuels is like, okay, Samuels, if I told you there's a killer on the station, what would you think?
Speaker: And he would have been like, well, I don't know, Ripley.
Speaker: I believe he would be somebody with a gun or a knife.
Speaker: Or a knife, yeah.
Speaker: No, that's what I would think.
Speaker: But it's actually a monster.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: like a monster monster.
Speaker: Well, I think it's confusing that they chose killer instead of monster.
Speaker: See, you get it.
Speaker: You, you, you, you replicant bastard.
Speaker: You non-human you, you, you understand.
Speaker: You are a synth and you get it.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: What's up?
Speaker: And he's and then he's like, Taylor's dying.
Speaker: You're like, oh, you could have told me that earlier.
Speaker: We could have.
Speaker: Why didn't we start with that?
Speaker: I feel like we could have got right off the bat into Taylor being dying.
Speaker: So Taylor is die is badly hurt.
Speaker: She needs treatment.
Speaker: Samuels, they're actually not far from the medical wing, but Samuels didn't want to leave her behind because he's trying to keep her awake.
Speaker: Ripley's like, I got you, fam.
Speaker: She's going to go into the medical wing.
Speaker: And in there, she finds a doctor with a messed up leg.
Speaker: But he's there and he's willing to help.
Speaker: He's willing to help.
Speaker: If Ripley could just go ahead and help him unlock something.
Speaker: His name's Coleman.
Speaker: And he's like, here, go to this guy's office and get this key.
Speaker: And but first, could you use your little doohickey on this door, this elevator door?
Speaker: I got to use it.
Speaker: But it won't work without the card key.
Speaker: So don't worry.
Speaker: I'm not going to leave you.
Speaker: Just use yellow.
Speaker: And she's like, fine.
Speaker: And she does the thing.
Speaker: And he's like, great.
Speaker: So here's a motion detector.
Speaker: You can use this.
Speaker: And I in my notes, I put Coleman gives Ripley the motion detector Zelda noises.
Speaker: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: The motion detector in the game is the thing that you probably have on screen the most.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Constantly.
Speaker: In fact, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, sometimes you have to put it away because it makes a sound.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You got to balance things out.
Speaker: But yeah, that thing is important.
Speaker: So important because it'll let you see, okay, there's just like working Joes or people.
Speaker: And then if the dot is just moving all over the place, like, like a popcorn kernel that refuses to pop.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's an alien.
Speaker: It's an alien.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Good news.
Speaker: So Ripley does her, her, it's a sneaking mission.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Amanda.
Speaker: Amanda, it's a sneaking mission.
Speaker: Oh, Colonel.
Speaker: Amanda's dummy thick.
Speaker: Colonel, this alien is dummy thick.
Speaker: Oh, Jesus.
Speaker: You guys remember the internet in 2006?
Speaker: Was that when that was?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It was later than that.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: Colonel.
Speaker: It's not important.
Speaker: It's got a penis head.
Speaker: Keeps alerting the guards.
Speaker: Ripley finds the key.
Speaker: The dummy thick alien shows up.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: When she finds it and she runs back dodging the alien and she finds Coleman is trying to like leave her behind.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's like, oh, you know, this is awkward.
Speaker: I was just I just needed the thing that you did.
Speaker: I had the key card.
Speaker: I just didn't want to bring you along with me.
Speaker: And she's like, you son of a. And before she like finishes the alien, literally rips out his heart.
Speaker: It appears in the elevator and just like eviscerates him.
Speaker: This is slightly different than the way it plays out in the game.
Speaker: If I recall correctly, I don't know if Coleman was trying, was like leaving you.
Speaker: I don't remember.
Speaker: I think this whole section was a lot more involved.
Speaker: Yeah, with Coleman, because it wraps up in a in a few quick pages, basically, in the book.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think and I think that's yeah, I think it's probably and it's probably for the best because in the game, I just remember this whole thing being like you have to go back and forth around the medical wing a bunch of times.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: In order to make it in order to make it work.
Speaker: So he's murdered by the Xenomorph.
Speaker: Perfect time for another flashback, chapter 16, where Amanda remembers talking to this guy named Vanini, who regales- Who is just the sexy Italian man of the alien universe.
Speaker: He is the most interesting man in the world.
Speaker: He truly is.
Speaker: And his, you know why he's the most interesting man?
Speaker: He met Ellen Ripley once.
Speaker: Once.
Speaker: He's pretty open about that, too.
Speaker: She's like, you knew my mom.
Speaker: And he's like, I met her one time.
Speaker: I met her once.
Speaker: She has these real misplaced, like this real misplaced anger towards Vanini, who constantly tells her, I don't know your mom that well.
Speaker: I met her once, but here's what I know.
Speaker: And she's in present day.
Speaker: There's like a line where she's like fucking Vanini.
Speaker: And I was like, I know.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: She does that.
Speaker: She does that to her mom at one point too.
Speaker: Like she's, she has, I think that's, it's, it's actually not that I like it that she has this weird, like she's a lot of misplaced anger for people.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, and, and you get it and you get it at the same time.
Speaker: But at the same time, there's a part of it that's like your mom disappeared into space.
Speaker: I don't think she did this.
Speaker: I don't think at any point your mom is like, good.
Speaker: I don't have to deal with my fucking daughter anymore.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I get it.
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: You know, I get it.
Speaker: She was a she was hurt.
Speaker: She lost her mom when she was 10.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like, you know, it's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: She so she's really mad about Vanini.
Speaker: I think it's also she just associates Vanini with what else happened that night, which is after her dinner with Vanini, she goes home.
Speaker: She goes to her apartment and it's blocked off because it's a crime scene now because Paul has been arrested for stupidest shit possible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Picking a fight with the Royal Mounted Canadian police.
Speaker: With the Mounties.
Speaker: With the Mounties who fun facts do not like being called Mounties to their face.
Speaker: Apparently.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, I bring this up several times.
Speaker: It's mentioned a few times.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Don't call them.
Speaker: Cause I kind of forgot that she's Canadian.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: They're in Vancouver.
Speaker: All these flashbacks take place in Vancouver.
Speaker: In British Columbia.
Speaker: So it's a lovely city if you ever get a chance to get a chance to visit.
Speaker: I'm sure they're, do they have wine up there?
Speaker: In Vancouver?
Speaker: I don't think they have in Vancouver.
Speaker: It's too cold, right?
Speaker: It's too cold.
Speaker: I mean, Canada makes wine.
Speaker: They make good wine, but I don't know if in Vancouver it's a thing.
Speaker: They make good wine.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They make really good ice wine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There are a lot of regions, especially further west in Canada, that make some really good wine.
Speaker: Ice wine Dale.
Speaker: I mean, yeah.
Speaker: It's not exactly the longest growing season, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's like two weeks in summer.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: He's like, we got grapes, mash them.
Speaker: Mash them.
Speaker: Do it.
Speaker: Do it now.
Speaker: I see the clouds rolling in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Get in there.
Speaker: Do it.
Speaker: I do not have time.
Speaker: So Amanda decides to leave.
Speaker: She's just like, you know what?
Speaker: I'm 18.
Speaker: I'm done.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She literally turns 18 at midnight that night.
Speaker: So she walks.
Speaker: She's like, I can leave.
Speaker: So she leaves Paul, the apartment and Daniel, her stuffed tiger behind Daniel.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was like, is it supposed to be a reference to Daniel tiger?
Speaker: Daniel Tiger was a Mr. Rogers thing, right?
Speaker: Mr. Rogers, yeah.
Speaker: And then there was an animated Daniel Tiger series as well.
Speaker: That would have to be a pretty funny coincidence, wouldn't it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Or it has to be a reference to like Daniel Tiger.
Speaker: It's got to be it's got to be some sort of you don't just name a tiger Daniel without all of that baggage coming along with it.
Speaker: You know, all of Mr. Rogers's Vietnam kills and all that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm not spreading any misinformation.
Speaker: He didn't actually he was not a sniper in Vietnam.
Speaker: He was not.
Speaker: No, that was Bob Ross.
Speaker: That was Bob Ross.
Speaker: Bob Ross was in the military, but he... He was a horndog who fucked around on his wife, and that you can take to the bank.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You want to get bummed out?
Speaker: Watch the documentary Netflix has about Bob Ross.
Speaker: Not just because it like Bob Ross is.
Speaker: He wasn't a scumbag per se.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But that one's a depressing one.
Speaker: That'll make you sad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, Bob Ross.
Speaker: Great guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The best.
Speaker: The best.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Where was I?
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: She leaves Daniel Tiger behind.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Goodbye, Daniel.
Speaker: Goodbye, Daniel Tiger.
Speaker: We're in Chapter 17 and Amanda is wandering around the medical area for things that can be used to help Taylor.
Speaker: She comes across a video entry of a doctor talking about what happened to Foster from the Anisodora.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And then she finds Foster's body in one of the surgical suites.
Speaker: So that's a good image.
Speaker: That's perfect.
Speaker: And while she's in, so she's like, this is gross.
Speaker: And then while she's in the surgical suite, she grabs all the medicines that she can find that can help Taylor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And while she's on her way back with an arm full of medicines, she walks through a room that is just absolutely filled to the brim with yellow barrels.
Speaker: And suddenly the xenomorph appears.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she's trying to wouldn't you know it?
Speaker: She's trying to crawl away from the xenomorph.
Speaker: And then she's looking around and she sees the yellow barrels and she knows that all these there's all these wires connecting the yellow barrels.
Speaker: She's like, they look like primer cords.
Speaker: I wonder what that is going to do.
Speaker: And then in between chapters, there's an explosion.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Off camera explosion.
Speaker: Off camera explosion.
Speaker: Amanda, clearly concussed, thinks that she's back on Luna base and thinks that it's like, oh, there's been another fire at Luna base and then some EMT has saved me.
Speaker: And like, nope, I'm in a nightmare at Sevastopol station.
Speaker: So much fun.
Speaker: And she also makes the connection that fire seems to put the creature off.
Speaker: The creature does not like dealing with fire.
Speaker: So she makes her way into one of the events, one of the events, and she overhears a conversation with a few survivors who are trying to fix an elevator.
Speaker: And she hears one of them talk about weights as the one who is setting us up the bomb.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's been setting up bombs to try and
Speaker: Kill the Xenomorph, basically.
Speaker: Yeah, and they're like, that crazy Waits, and then Tom Waits is on the other side of the- No, listen, there's just, it's a Xenomorph, and you need fire.
Speaker: It's a Xenomorph.
Speaker: It's a Xenomorph.
Speaker: We're going to take out the alien.
Speaker: We're going to take out the Xenomorph.
Speaker: Oh!
Speaker: Oh!
Speaker: Oh, I ruined my throat.
Speaker: Jesus, gonna come and take the seat of the world.
Speaker: Wait, that's the devil.
Speaker: That's every Tom White song ever written.
Speaker: I love the man dearly.
Speaker: But that is his entire oeuvre past the 80s.
Speaker: It's not a good guy.
Speaker: It's a bad guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's got a pen knife in one hand and my friend's head in the other.
Speaker: It's Tom Waits.
Speaker: Just slam it on that key.
Speaker: Yeah, just hammering the shit out of that piano.
Speaker: I don't think I've ever heard him play a note lightly.
Speaker: Man has heavy hands.
Speaker: Subtlety is not one of his tricks.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: So they hear these people talking.
Speaker: One of them, they also, I think the name Maloney is referenced here.
Speaker: Yes, you're right.
Speaker: It's Maloney from Police Academy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That is what they're... We're just all over the place with references.
Speaker: There's no...
Speaker: There's no liet motif on the references tonight.
Speaker: They're just real scattershot.
Speaker: Yeah, we're shotgunning this bitch.
Speaker: Like, this is just.
Speaker: Tom Waits to Police Academy?
Speaker: Yeah, that was a jump.
Speaker: Like, I guess you can get there through Bobcat Goldwaith.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, just for voice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's more shrieky.
Speaker: I love that man so much.
Speaker: I've never even seen one of his movies, but I just love that Bobcat is out there just doing whatever the fuck he wants these days.
Speaker: It makes me happy.
Speaker: Doesn't he also do a lot of stand-up directing?
Speaker: Does he?
Speaker: Yeah, I think he does.
Speaker: I think he did Mark Maron's past couple specials.
Speaker: Oh, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, Mark, you got it.
Speaker: Mark, you got it.
Speaker: That's Tim Allen.
Speaker: It's an evolution of sorts.
Speaker: It's an evolution of grunts, so to speak.
Speaker: So she jumps down into the room and grabs a map, and now she overhears Waits and Samuels talking, and Waits is telling Samuels that it's your shipmate's fault.
Speaker: And Amanda's like, I'm here.
Speaker: I'm fine.
Speaker: I'm alive.
Speaker: And Waits is like, who are you?
Speaker: And she's like...
Speaker: And she's like, the person you were just talking about.
Speaker: It really is a ridiculous scene.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause she's got her whole dramatic entrance thing going and like, they're talking shit about her.
Speaker: And she's like, she's like, who are we talking about bitch?
Speaker: And then the audience goes, you know, and she, you know, kind of trots and he kind of throws the whole thing into the meat grinder by pointing a gun at her.
Speaker: Uh, he really does not.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And no, exactly.
Speaker: He just, it's like, dude, we're okay.
Speaker: This is why Waits has never led into the groundlings.
Speaker: It just wasn't going to work out.
Speaker: So basically, they have a little bit of a back and forth.
Speaker: Waits is crotchety, to say the least.
Speaker: And he says, since she's an engineer, they could use her help with something while they take Samuels.
Speaker: They're like, they'll take Samuels and tell her back to the headquarters if she can get the tram running again.
Speaker: So Amanda, we're in chapter 19 now.
Speaker: Amanda is right.
Speaker: She's out.
Speaker: She's doing her technical thing with the, with getting the transit system back online.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Uh, at this point, go to that place and go to that place.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: She's, she's doing a little fetch quest.
Speaker: Uh, there's an Android, one of the working Joe's in one of the rooms.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: There's this guy, Mahoney, that was referenced earlier from Police Academy.
Speaker: The same.
Speaker: The same.
Speaker: And he's like, ah, come out.
Speaker: I'll make it quick if you come out.
Speaker: And she's like, why would I?
Speaker: That's not a great.
Speaker: Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker: That's not.
Speaker: So she like presses a button and she lets the working Joe out and the working Joe goes and like starts choking Mahoney.
Speaker: And while, while that's happening, she like hits the working Joe and they both fall over the railing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Two for one.
Speaker: Very well done.
Speaker: Two for one.
Speaker: Like.
Speaker: That's gotta be, that's an achievement, right?
Speaker: Like.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like there's a little achievement popped up in the corner.
Speaker: Kill a human being and a working Joe at the same time.
Speaker: Achievement unlocked.
Speaker: That was a named character.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: um you just killed a quest giver oh fuck ah god damn it you gotta start a new run yeah game auto saves you can't you can't undo that um no uh by the way alien isolation does not auto save so oh fyi if you're looking to play it after listening to us talk about it yeah get on top of that yeah
Speaker: So she makes her way.
Speaker: She's like, yeah, you guys go.
Speaker: She tells Waits and them to get going.
Speaker: And she walks her way over to the Waits headquarters and Waits is in there and he's like and she finds out that he has Marlo, the captain of the Anisodora in lockup.
Speaker: And she's like, can I talk to him?
Speaker: And he's like, yeah, sure.
Speaker: You can talk to him.
Speaker: And if you can't, if you're while you're in there, try to get the access codes to the Anisodora so that we can dock it with the station and get the F out of here.
Speaker: And she's like, OK.
Speaker: And she like walks in there with his guns, with her guns.
Speaker: And she's like, this would be against regulation normally.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he's like, yeah, but I don't care.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No one cares.
Speaker: No one cares.
Speaker: No one cares.
Speaker: Shit's happening.
Speaker: Her and Marlo begin to chat and we get treated to another flashback to our time on Luna, which is, this is an interesting chapter in which two chapters here.
Speaker: So she's working for a woman named Flora Mendez who wants to promote Amanda, but she can't because she's a tech school dropout.
Speaker: But Mendez school kids, you got to stay in school kids.
Speaker: But Mendez offered Ripley to help her find the Nostromo flight recorder.
Speaker: And wouldn't you know it?
Speaker: This only came up after Mendez did a background check on Amanda Ripley and found out that her mom was on the Nostromo.
Speaker: Just a wacky coincidence.
Speaker: You know, wild, right?
Speaker: Just wild.
Speaker: Um, so she's like, I have a contact that knows where it was.
Speaker: I'll give you, uh, another flight recorder that he provided me.
Speaker: And, uh, you can, you can, this is just a show of, this is another flight recorder that for a flight that she was on.
Speaker: So Amanda takes it and she goes home and she watches the files on the flight recorder and gives context.
Speaker: It's about a mutiny.
Speaker: Her mom helping deal with a mutiny on one of the ships.
Speaker: This is where the KK and go situation that was referenced way earlier in the book.
Speaker: where it was a whole KK and go situation that she said offhanded to right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Amanda.
Speaker: Were you wondering what was happening with KK?
Speaker: Were you wondering?
Speaker: Well, this is where we're back.
Speaker: We're explaining that now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: KK and go.
Speaker: We're a couple of engineers that decided to try to take over the ship and they did not.
Speaker: And they did not.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: uh ellen uh goes they lock themselves in a room uh ellen ripley space walks out onto the outside of the ship and uses a drill to drill through into the room that they're in through the holes so that the air leaks out and they lose consciousness yeah
Speaker: It's pretty great.
Speaker: Oh, Ellen Ripley, just a badass.
Speaker: Just a badass.
Speaker: Just again, again, a saint, basically.
Speaker: A saint.
Speaker: A saint for our times.
Speaker: Saint Ellen Ripley.
Speaker: Saint Lieutenant Ellen Ripley.
Speaker: Can you add that to your cat's name?
Speaker: Saint at the beginning?
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's also recently been made royalty to boot.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Her official title is Princess Fluffy Butt.
Speaker: Princess Fluffy.
Speaker: Is that of the Sussex Fluffy Butts?
Speaker: Yes, yes, the Sussex Fluffy Butts.
Speaker: She's a very, very particular breed.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's because her butt's so fluffy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it needs pets.
Speaker: It needs lots of little tap, tap, tap, tap.
Speaker: Trades are crazy.
Speaker: Like slap my butt.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: It's not a very long name.
Speaker: And then there's Jonesy.
Speaker: Jonesy, the horrible muffin.
Speaker: Yeah, there's Jonesy and then there's Princess Fluffy Butt, Lieutenant Ellen Ripley.
Speaker: Saint Princess Fluffy Butt, Saint Lieutenant Ellen Ripley, Jennifer Garner.
Speaker: Yeah, I always forget the Jennifer Garner.
Speaker: Jennifer Garner, Stockton Keeling.
Speaker: Yeah, there we go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's beautiful.
Speaker: It's beautiful.
Speaker: It just it just rolls off the tongue.
Speaker: It's such.
Speaker: So they they she keeps watching and she's like, you know what?
Speaker: I agree to your terms.
Speaker: Mendez is like, you know what?
Speaker: I'm going to promote you anyway.
Speaker: And it'll only take a month of me garnishing your paycheck at this higher level.
Speaker: for you to get the money.
Speaker: So a month later, a month goes by, and she's like, well, I have the money.
Speaker: Do you have the thing?
Speaker: And she's like, yeah, I have it at my house.
Speaker: I'll bring it to you tomorrow.
Speaker: And she's like, so I will pay you the money and you will give me the thing.
Speaker: Testing one, two, three.
Speaker: And Mendez is like, says the thing, and then the cops break in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's so ridiculous.
Speaker: The cops break in and Mendez is like, what's going on?
Speaker: And Ripley's like, I'm not a co-op.
Speaker: It's so stupid.
Speaker: This is the dumbest part of the book.
Speaker: Gotcha, bitch.
Speaker: Like it really is.
Speaker: So she gets Mendez arrested on a sting because she knew she realized that the stuff that she gave her as a taste was publicly available.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Information that she could have gotten if she knew where to look.
Speaker: And so she accepted the offer and then went down to the cops and.
Speaker: She went undercover and she had to say she was not a cop.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And now she's got to find a job because everyone knows that she's going to.
Speaker: She'll turn your boss's ass in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She'll rat on your boss.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Listen, Flora, I ain't no fucking cop.
Speaker: This is probably going to go great.
Speaker: And it's just, but it's, I mean, it is, it is purely out of like, she's just sick of being treated this way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's just sick of people trying to fuck her over for, you know, you know, because they know that that weakness exists and, and she's just absolutely sick of it.
Speaker: So I, I, I sympathize.
Speaker: I do, but it is such a silly moment.
Speaker: Such a silly moment.
Speaker: Um, so.
Speaker: We come back to chapter 22 with Marlo basically saying, yeah, I'm not fucking giving you the code unless you can promise that everybody all get off the ship with you guys.
Speaker: And Amanda's like, well, I can't promise that.
Speaker: And we're like, what are we holding back on these promises for?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For who?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What is the point of this?
Speaker: Explain to me.
Speaker: So they start working on a new plan to get the alien.
Speaker: And part of it is Samuels is going to go down and try to talk to Apollo, you know, synthetic to artificial intelligence, I guess.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: Try to get it to stop being so weird and stop having the working Joes kill people.
Speaker: Being a jerk.
Speaker: Being a jerk.
Speaker: And Ripley is going to try to, they're going to, Ripley's going to jettison the alien from one of the detachable portions of the ship.
Speaker: And so it's it's tense and she's she's running around and she get the aliens in the thing.
Speaker: And she she was able to enter in all the codes for the for the thing to get detached.
Speaker: And then she transfers the control over to is it Ricardo?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, it's Waits' deputy, basically.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: She, like, transfers the, and then he, yeah, and then suddenly the doors close and the thing detaches with her in it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's the end of part two.
Speaker: With her and the xenomorph.
Speaker: With her and the xenomorph in the... Here's the thing.
Speaker: I would have liked more detail on that moment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And less detail on the sting operation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is where... This is kind of where the book, I think, falls short is like...
Speaker: We needed a little bit more.
Speaker: The weight of that moment is felt so hard in the game and felt like nothing in the book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, you start out with these, uh,
Speaker: expansions on Amanda Ripley's background, Ellen Ripley's background.
Speaker: And at first, I'm just there for it.
Speaker: First off, it's always well-written.
Speaker: The guy writes really well.
Speaker: It's not that it's not well-written.
Speaker: But by this part, by the end of the second third of this book, you can't help but wonder, like,
Speaker: Can we please focus on the fucking xenomorph?
Speaker: Like how much of this is present day at this point?
Speaker: So much of it is flashback.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it becomes, at this point, it's becoming distracting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I would have thought part two could have no flashbacks at all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I think I think we could have focused more on that on the situation at hand.
Speaker: We've got we've got enough of the motivation.
Speaker: You know, we've we've gotten her motivation good and strong.
Speaker: And I admire, you know, everything they do with the background with her her mom and, you know, and stepdad and all that stuff.
Speaker: I think that's really cool.
Speaker: And then we start flashing back again.
Speaker: I'm like, I don't know if we need this.
Speaker: Like, unless we're going to make this to be a much, much longer book, which we are not.
Speaker: We're not.
Speaker: We're actually cutting out parts of the game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: At this point.
Speaker: In favor of a sting operation and, you know, like a sting operation.
Speaker: Yeah, it doesn't have anything to do.
Speaker: The book's called Alien Isolation.
Speaker: We really should be focused on the alien.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And secondly, the isolation, you know?
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're not all that isolated in most of this book.
Speaker: Keith Rahul Albanez DeCandido.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm just taking a wild guess.
Speaker: Sure, sure.
Speaker: Of the Venezuelan de Candidos.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I could look it up, but I won't.
Speaker: But I'm not going to.
Speaker: But I'm not going to.
Speaker: He's a really good writer, and I like a lot of the stuff in the book.
Speaker: There's just some weird pacing issues so far with the flashbacks.
Speaker: You know who could have written and, you know, I drop his name so often and we've only read literally one of his books.
Speaker: You know, could have written written isolation really well.
Speaker: Who?
Speaker: Urban weight.
Speaker: Urban weight.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because, because he knew how to be pretty sparse with certain aspects of it would have been.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that would have been interesting.
Speaker: Descriptions are so good.
Speaker: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I think I would, I would read, I would read a, a, an alien book written by urban way.
Speaker: That would be cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cormac McCarthy alien.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That would be fucking excellent.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The Xenomorph on the frontier.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: Stood before her, eight feet tall, black as the void, slime dripping off of every inch.
Speaker: She was dead.
Speaker: She was dead.
Speaker: She didn't realize it yet, though.
Speaker: A clap of thunder rolled in from over the mountain.
Speaker: It was the season in which thunder was...
Speaker: You know, on second thought, we might be talking our way out of this one.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe not.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: No, but yeah, it's still good.
Speaker: But yeah, there is an aspect of like
Speaker: Why aren't we, shouldn't we be?
Speaker: Yeah, it, it, it, it feels like more focus on the present rather than the, that was one of the critiques that I had read, I had read before, uh, of this book when I was, I was looking, I was thinking of buying a physical copy.
Speaker: Um, and I was scrolling around one of the top reviews was like, it just, the headline just said too many flashbacks.
Speaker: I was like, I
Speaker: I don't know about, we'll see.
Speaker: And now two thirds of the way, I'm like, yeah, there's, there has been too many flashbacks, two thirds.
Speaker: Like, even if there are no flashbacks for the rest of the way, it won't change my opinion that there were too many in the book.
Speaker: By now, there are too many.
Speaker: And it would be one thing if it was, it still wouldn't be great, but if they were padding what is otherwise a pretty short game or something like that, that'd be one thing.
Speaker: But as you point out, we skip a lot of shit in the game here.
Speaker: There are moments that are not brought up that could be interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's a shame because the in-game stuff is not half bad.
Speaker: As you pointed out earlier, she's going on fetch quests, and I find them to be pretty well disguised as fetch quests.
Speaker: It's very casual.
Speaker: It's like, you've got to go get the three MacGuffins or something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And instead of like saying she went down the hallway for the first one and did this, she went to, he just went, she did it.
Speaker: And, and like, you know, it's cool.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: And focuses on like what's important.
Speaker: So the moments in game are pretty well written.
Speaker: It's kind of ironic.
Speaker: Usually we're like the end game moments are kind of meh, but the, the stuff that's not in the game is pretty great.
Speaker: This is kind of the opposite.
Speaker: Like, this is well-written in-game novelization stuff.
Speaker: And I do like a lot of the flashbacks, but it's getting so hung up on details that I'm not entirely sure matter at this point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I agree.
Speaker: I don't think necessarily-
Speaker: A canon Ripley story and just went a little too far, which I'd probably do the same thing.
Speaker: Cannot blame him, to be honest.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Cannot blame, you know, getting a little too excited, needed to change his underwear.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I would have done the same thing.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: He dedicates the book to Sigourney Weaver, for Christ's sake.
Speaker: Well...
Speaker: goddamn right he does yeah if you're writing listen if you're writing a fucking alien book and you don't dedicate it to sigourney weaver i don't care if your favorite grandmother is dying and her last wish is that you dedicate your next book to her and your next book is an alien book sorry grandma yeah you're not sigourney weaver
Speaker: I'm not writing an alien book and I'm probably still going to dedicate it to Sigourney Weaver.
Speaker: So, you know.
Speaker: You know.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: I believe it.
Speaker: That's why Sigourney Weaver was mentioned in your wedding vows, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was the specific reason.
Speaker: We did invite her and I didn't appreciate her lawyer's tone, let's just say.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: So with that all, with the body successfully putting the mosh for this episode, we move on to a completely different segment we like to call, What Are You Playing?
Speaker: So, Phil, what are you playing?
Speaker: Ah, I am playing.
Speaker: I played very little this week, actually.
Speaker: I, uh, the main thing.
Speaker: Against the storm.
Speaker: You played a lot of against the storm.
Speaker: We are up to, uh, 45 hours of against the storm.
Speaker: It's really good.
Speaker: Still playing it.
Speaker: I'm enjoying the updates they're making.
Speaker: I've never been this excited, but I haven't been this excited about an early access game since the last early access game that I played this week, which was vampire survivors, actually.
Speaker: Oh yeah, they added new achievements, the bastards.
Speaker: And you know I had to keep my high score, so I hopped in and got my tiny bridge and my seal achievement taken care of.
Speaker: And that's mostly been it.
Speaker: I played some Stray.
Speaker: I haven't.
Speaker: I've been enjoying Stray, but...
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I think my ADHD is fucking with me on it.
Speaker: Like, yeah, when I get into it, I'm really enjoying it.
Speaker: But I have to kind of it's not so mind bendingly good that I'm like jumping into it at my first time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's you know what I mean?
Speaker: There's an issue I had with Stray where it's like if you put it down.
Speaker: There's like a warm up.
Speaker: You have to warm up into it.
Speaker: You can't just like it's not like a pick up and play game.
Speaker: No, where you're just you're like, what was I doing?
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And it's not the easiest.
Speaker: And to find out is not the easiest thing in the world.
Speaker: You know, you've got to remember the buttons and everything.
Speaker: I'm still really enjoying it.
Speaker: And I think the designs are great.
Speaker: And I love the horror aspects of it.
Speaker: I did not realize it was going to be as creepy of a game.
Speaker: Oh, it's got a lot of creepiness.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It is a very spooky game.
Speaker: And I really like that.
Speaker: I think that's great.
Speaker: So I'll probably have that done next week.
Speaker: But I picked up a few games.
Speaker: After your 19th text to me about Midnight Suns, I went ahead and bought Midnight Suns.
Speaker: I've got that.
Speaker: I saw that Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order was five bucks on sale.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: It's like, it looks a little too much like a soul like that, but, but for five bucks, I'll give it a shot.
Speaker: It's very much a souls.
Speaker: Like I have not, I've not played it.
Speaker: I've played a little bit of it and I like it.
Speaker: It's and it, it, it feels like a souls like in terms of the, like from level design and stamina meter and all that stuff.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For five bucks.
Speaker: But for five bucks, take a flyer on it, you know?
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: And the fact that it's a Star Wars universe thing for me is enough of it.
Speaker: Like, you know, like the soul's
Speaker: universe as we have talked about before is fascinating to me and I find it really cool but it's not enough to like force me through it to deal with the punishment right but if they made but but but a Star Wars souls like or if they made like for example a Warhammer souls like Warhammer souls like I you're like all right well I'm gonna buy it I guess all right God you people are assholes so boy
Speaker: And by the way, I probably will end up pre-ordering the stupid collector's edition of Space Marine 2 because of that statue.
Speaker: By the way, isn't Dark Tide supposed to be really good too?
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: I don't know if I have any room in my heart for any more PVE games though.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: I just, I don't, it looks, it looks like it could be fun.
Speaker: And I don't know.
Speaker: Are any of our Brit friends playing it?
Speaker: I know they tend to be on top of Vermintide and stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, they tend to be on top of the...
Speaker: the blank tide.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For hammer games.
Speaker: Vermintide was the last one I played or Vermintide two.
Speaker: I want to say it was the last one that I played and I played it with them.
Speaker: A lot of fun, but yeah,
Speaker: Usually, unless you have a gang of people that you're normally playing with, it's like it's hard to keep up with.
Speaker: That's just it.
Speaker: I'm not much of an online multiplayer gamer, so that makes it tough for me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But what are you playing, Kevin?
Speaker: What are you up to?
Speaker: I am playing Marvel's Midnight Suns developed by Firaxis Games.
Speaker: I've talked about it before.
Speaker: It's still great.
Speaker: And actually, there was just a patch.
Speaker: I think the game was patched and I think there was a driver update to my I was having some like frame rate issues during the there's two layers to the game.
Speaker: It's a Firaxis game.
Speaker: So, of course, there's multiple, you know, gameplay layers.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of their thing.
Speaker: There's like your hub area, which is the Abbey, which is where you can do your interaction with all the characters.
Speaker: And that section has more of like a persona like element to it where you're, you're building friendships with all the characters.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And, you know, doing like you'll have to see a question mark above Blade's head and Blade Blade will it'll just be like, hey, Hunter.
Speaker: And then like a little prompt will come up and be like, what do you think is better being more aggressive during a fight or being more defensive?
Speaker: And it's just like the way it's phrased and each answer will give different bonuses.
Speaker: So it's like basically the other heroes are asking you these, your opinion on things that they're thinking about.
Speaker: And you actually kind of can push their slightly push their builds in a, in a certain direction that you want them to go in.
Speaker: So like Iron Man, Tony Stark just asked me, um,
Speaker: something about offense or defense and I said more defense and that just ends because I said more defense his HP went up like his total HP just went up a little bit if I had said offense is like attack power would have gone up right
Speaker: So that's like the that's kind of the neat way that it works.
Speaker: But and then there's all these other side quest missions like there's mysteries around the Abbey to solve with Agatha Harkness.
Speaker: And it's it's so cute and so fun.
Speaker: And then there's just a badass tactical game on top of it that's based on.
Speaker: I'm looking for it based on card battling.
Speaker: And so far I've recruited.
Speaker: I have nine people recruited.
Speaker: I don't know how many more there are to get.
Speaker: I think I know Wolverine is in there.
Speaker: Some like I've had Wolverine join in on a fight.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And Wolverine's on the cover art.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But he's not.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But he's not officially like recruited yet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But they're so fun to play with.
Speaker: Like everybody's abilities are very different and they're so fun to play with.
Speaker: Like Captain America is more of a tank.
Speaker: So he can, Captain America is neat because he can generate block.
Speaker: He can, so like, which is just like temporary defense where he won't take any damage.
Speaker: All of his cards can do these things where they generate block and they also generate taunt.
Speaker: which is people will attack him instead of anybody else.
Speaker: So, you know, he can do that fun stuff like that.
Speaker: And he also is voiced by the same guy who voices BJ Blazkowicz in the Machine Games Wolfenstein series.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And his face looks exactly like BJ Blazkowicz in the Machine Games.
Speaker: Well, Wolfenstein series.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, I mean, that was a pretty Captain America face.
Speaker: Yeah, that was.
Speaker: Let's be honest.
Speaker: BJ looks a lot like Captain America.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: He's still getting around that.
Speaker: Um, so, um, yeah, so I've been playing that.
Speaker: I've been playing diehard vendetta, which is a 2002 game cube game playing the PS2 version.
Speaker: Is this for a certain podcast that you're cheating on me with?
Speaker: Yeah, I am.
Speaker: Um, yes, uh, you are the other podcast.
Speaker: So you admit it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're doing the whore.
Speaker: Whores in this case, it's both, uh,
Speaker: Hot cider end to snaker on this episode.
Speaker: Don't push me, Earhart.
Speaker: Yeah, we're going to be recording the Christmas episode of bullet time coming up.
Speaker: It'll actually have been out before this episode airs.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: But yeah, because James Hot Sider said, because people call Die Hard a Christmas movie, we're going to do Die Hard Vendetta as a Christmas episode for bullet time.
Speaker: That's pretty smart.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: I got to get on a certain game that I volunteered to play for that show.
Speaker: Yes, you do.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Die Hard Vendetta is weird.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Very, very weird.
Speaker: 2002?
Speaker: Yeah, I want to say 2002.
Speaker: Yeah, GameCube.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Very weird game.
Speaker: Has a lot of neat ideas.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Execution is, you know, about as good as you expect for 2002 console game.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But yeah, it's neat.
Speaker: But yeah, that's pretty much what I've been playing.
Speaker: Oh, and I bought Dwarf Fortress.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: This has got to be a problem, isn't it?
Speaker: I haven't touched it recently, which is fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: But I'll probably get back to it once I finish Die Hard Vendetta.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Well, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening.
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Speaker: Anyway, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Good night.
Speaker: Bye.
