Transcript
Speaker: You're listening to Pixel It, because the only thing better than playing a video game is reading about one.
Speaker: On today's episode, we will be discussing up through Chapter 8 of Resident Evil The Umbrella Conspiracy.
Speaker: As a general content warning, there will be spoilers and discussions of depictions of gore.
Speaker: And now, on with the show.
Speaker: So, hey, welcome back to Pixel Lit, everybody.
Speaker: My name's Kevin and with me as always is my good friend, Phil.
Speaker: We're here to talk about books that are like video games.
Speaker: You know, keep your expectations low and always be delighted.
Speaker: So anyway, we're in chapter five-ish of this book, Resident Evil, the Umbrella Conspiracy, right?
Speaker: Conspiracy, that's the title.
Speaker: Yeah, the umbrella conspiracy by SD Perry, who, Phil, I believe you've been in contact with now.
Speaker: Yes, because it's not enough to read an old book and get all excited about it and junk.
Speaker: I had to go ahead and reach out to the author and see if she wanted to.
Speaker: join us at some point on the show.
Speaker: She admitted that she's terrified of podcasts themselves.
Speaker: I don't know what that means, but with that kind of fear, you don't want to pry.
Speaker: But she said that she'd love to answer any questions we might have.
Speaker: So I'm going to be collecting these questions because obviously
Speaker: we've been kind of musing out loud on certain aspects of this.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so it'll, I think we'll, we'll have to put together a bonus episode, something like that so that we can, we'll see if we'll read her answers.
Speaker: We'll, we'll throw some questions to her and read her answers on a, on a bonus episode.
Speaker: Look forward to that in the future with some of our questions being answered.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So let's let's jump back into it with chapter five of Resident Evil, the Umbrella Conspiracy.
Speaker: And I believe we were just about at the scene change in chapter five where it changes perspectives back to to Jill and Barry and Wesker who are waiting for Chris to come back from his little scouting report.
Speaker: They're hearing gunfire off in the distance, which alarms them.
Speaker: Rightfully so, I would say.
Speaker: And so Barry and Jill actually end up going after Chris to rescue him or at least see what's going on.
Speaker: And Wesker insists on staying behind and, you know, holding down the fort there.
Speaker: Wesker, super brave.
Speaker: Just you go.
Speaker: I'll stay.
Speaker: He's a hero.
Speaker: wide open space that seems pretty safe right now.
Speaker: I think if there's one thing that we can take away from this book, it's that Wesker is a hero who will never at any point in the storyline betray us.
Speaker: He's never going to betray us.
Speaker: No, I have complete and utter faith in a man of his caliber.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: He's the captain of the stars alpha team for that very reason.
Speaker: He's not a beta.
Speaker: He's an alpha.
Speaker: And it's two episodes in.
Speaker: And I don't think we're going to.
Speaker: I feel like we got another few more episodes of that joke to.
Speaker: I'm not.
Speaker: I don't know if we're shaking it, man.
Speaker: I really don't.
Speaker: All I know is that Wesker's no cuck.
Speaker: That's all I know.
Speaker: All I all the only thing I can truly rely on in this world is the steadfast knowledge that Wesker is a real alpha male based on wolf science that doesn't make sense.
Speaker: Based on 100 percent.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The only thing the only thing that I'm more certain about than Wesker being a non-cuck hero is that that science makes perfect sense.
Speaker: There are no leaps in logic, and there certainly has not been a rescinding of that scientific information from the actual scientist who brought it up.
Speaker: Certainly not.
Speaker: And there's there's that.
Speaker: So, yes, we're on the same page.
Speaker: There's a such thing as betas, alphas.
Speaker: And I believe I believe there's a new one.
Speaker: It's like an Omega male.
Speaker: It's like it's like Sigma.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So anyway, Wesker.
Speaker: None of that is in any way a waste of time.
Speaker: So anyway, Wesker, the alpha non-cuck is waiting in the waiting in the lobby and Barry and Jill go to help Chris.
Speaker: Because there's there's Zambos loose.
Speaker: Well, they don't know that.
Speaker: There's Zambos afoot.
Speaker: Barry and Jill don't know that yet.
Speaker: They don't know that there are Zambos afoot.
Speaker: They just know that there are skinless dogs running around.
Speaker: But Chris is very well aware of the Zomboys skittering about the mansion at this point.
Speaker: He is dealing with them in a very physical way at this point.
Speaker: They talk about how Joseph is dead and they refer to Vickers as Chicken Heart again.
Speaker: It almost plays out like the opening of the game.
Speaker: That was actually what I wanted to ask at some point, because I, as I said, I have, I never played the originals.
Speaker: This, I believe if you play the game as Jill, it starts the game after that opening cinematic.
Speaker: It starts in the lobby with Jill, Barry and Wesker.
Speaker: And you hear gunshots off in the distance and you Jill and Barry go check it out.
Speaker: And that's where the line comes in.
Speaker: There's a famous line read from Barry where he finds a puddle of blood in the dining room.
Speaker: And it's it's something like what blood?
Speaker: I hope this isn't Chris's blood.
Speaker: What was the story behind that with the actors they chose?
Speaker: So, yeah, not to get off on too much of a tangent, but, you know, we're here.
Speaker: We're here.
Speaker: It's that time.
Speaker: It's that time.
Speaker: And I swear, ladies and gentlemen and ladies and gentledoms, we are going to we're going to get past a few more chapters tonight.
Speaker: Don't you worry, but we're not.
Speaker: We're not.
Speaker: This is as far as we go.
Speaker: I'm going to go off on a little tangent here.
Speaker: The voice actors in the original episode,
Speaker: Resident Evil, they actually were not necessarily bad voice actors.
Speaker: So what happens was these English speaking voice actors were hired to read lines in the voiceover booth and they were provided the lines with zero context.
Speaker: So it was basically like just a spreadsheet that was printed out and handed to them.
Speaker: And they just sat there and they read all the lines and they did a bunch of different takes with a bunch of different inflections for each line.
Speaker: And then it went to Capcom.
Speaker: an audio and audio engineer that works for Capcom started editing the lines together.
Speaker: The thing is, the audio engineer didn't speak English.
Speaker: So what he did is he started editing the lines together, how it sounded to his ear.
Speaker: So he was trying to like make the coolest sounding read of the line.
Speaker: So he would take multiple different takes and splice them together.
Speaker: So that's why you have these these sentences.
Speaker: with these really weird inflections.
Speaker: So you would have blood.
Speaker: I hope this isn't Chris's blood.
Speaker: And that was the story behind the voice actors in Resident Evil, because the guy who was the voice actor for Wesker was actually a voice actor who worked in the gaming industry after that for some years later.
Speaker: And I believe it was either the second or third voice actor for Wesker was was actually talking about that at a panel once.
Speaker: And that's where I got kind of a lot of this information was there was a panel that
Speaker: where this question was asked about, hey, what was the deal with the voice acting in Resident Evil 1?
Speaker: And finally, the curtain was lifted a little bit that it wasn't just some really obscenely terrible voice actors that stumbled into the booth and forgot how to speak like normal human beings.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And fortunately, we don't really have that issue here.
Speaker: But I do think it's funny because I do, you know, you don't have to have played through all the video games.
Speaker: You just have to have a working knowledge of video game culture to know those references, the bad voice acting, all that stuff.
Speaker: And it's still a little jarring when you're reading these characters, you know, in a novel.
Speaker: And it's it's.
Speaker: not not played up for the camp that you're kind of knowing is coming in the in the first video game.
Speaker: And just as another aside, Resident Evil, the first one, there hadn't been a ton of games that had voice acting in them up until that point.
Speaker: So this was 1996.
Speaker: I would say voice acting really came in in the previous maybe three or four years, and it wasn't super common yet.
Speaker: So that it was it was it was an early voice acted game.
Speaker: There were a bunch of other games, adventure games that were had amazing, phenomenal voice acting.
Speaker: But most of those were American companies and.
Speaker: with English speaking audio engineers listening to English speaking actors and English speaking voice voiceover directors.
Speaker: And they were all on the same page.
Speaker: There wasn't kind of that cross lingual issue that you had with Resident Evil.
Speaker: They had full access to all the context of what the hell was going on.
Speaker: All the context was was provided.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And that's why you didn't have those kind of reads in Monkey Island or Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, you know, all voice acted.
Speaker: And, you know, I had to mention any number of FMV games.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Which which were corny and cheap, but for different reasons, completely different reasons.
Speaker: So anyway, that brings us back.
Speaker: To our heroes.
Speaker: They end up in the corridor looking for Chris.
Speaker: They don't find Chris.
Speaker: What they do find is the dead body of the stars.
Speaker: Bravo team member who Chris had caught getting chomped on Kenneth.
Speaker: Not being the actual zombie, as I seem to recall.
Speaker: I thought it was.
Speaker: Yes, because my reading comprehension skills are badass.
Speaker: Oh, geez.
Speaker: It's Ken Kenneth.
Speaker: Oh, geez.
Speaker: It's Ken.
Speaker: One of the best field scouts Barry had ever known and a hell of a nice guy.
Speaker: There was a gaping, ragged wound in his chest.
Speaker: Chunks of partly eaten tissue and gut strewn about the bloody hole.
Speaker: So we get like we get some nice like, oh, yeah, he was one of the best.
Speaker: He was a nice guy.
Speaker: He had a whole favorite characters.
Speaker: He's.
Speaker: He was the best.
Speaker: He is the favorite character of the characters that are alive.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're really going to miss him and you're going to have to take their word for it.
Speaker: His left hand was missing and there was no weapon nearby.
Speaker: So he's he got his hand completely ripped off.
Speaker: It's never really described like obviously they mentioned earlier there earlier in the book.
Speaker: His hand was found, I believe, in the game.
Speaker: This that might have been the opening FMV.
Speaker: It was them finding his hand.
Speaker: I'm just wondering logistically, how did he make it that far into the mansion by himself anyway?
Speaker: Like, why isn't... Well, you know, these STARS agents, they're built tough.
Speaker: They're built tough.
Speaker: They're built to go solo.
Speaker: But why was Kenneth, the one missing a hand, not with anybody else?
Speaker: Not with his hand.
Speaker: Why was he, A, not with his hand, but B, why wasn't... I don't know.
Speaker: Is there a medical expert on the team?
Speaker: Well, I don't know.
Speaker: We'll find out later.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, fine.
Speaker: I'm sure they'll let us know.
Speaker: The young man, he was a chemist.
Speaker: Poor Ken.
Speaker: I like this part.
Speaker: Ken had been a quiet, decent sort, did a lot of work in chemistry.
Speaker: He had a teenage son who lived with his ex in California.
Speaker: And I think...
Speaker: They're planting the seeds for a sequel here.
Speaker: I think his teenage son's going to come back for vengeance.
Speaker: That would have been a good Resident Evil 2 is so-and-so Sullivan coming back for revenge, revengeance on the Umbrella Corporation.
Speaker: I will say, I will say, to be fair, the whole point here, Barry's thinking, he ends up thinking about the guy and his daughters at home and he's a father and all that stuff.
Speaker: And that's, that is more for Barry than anything else.
Speaker: It's setting up the fact that he himself is a family member.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's it's a nice little transition to it's an exposition transition.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The best kind.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And they find the what they they're still thinking of as a cannibal killer.
Speaker: It's corpse in the same area.
Speaker: And they realize that that must be.
Speaker: They figure that's probably Chris's handiwork, but Chris isn't there.
Speaker: I was actually a little... In this particular scene, I think I kind of lost track of which room Chris was supposed to be in.
Speaker: For most scenes, I could actually keep a good mind's eye as to where each character was in the mansion based on the fact that I've played the first Resident Evil game so many times.
Speaker: But in that sequence, I feel like I just lost track of
Speaker: where Chris ended up.
Speaker: This is a running theme with me in this book, because what happens a lot, you see this pattern of like one person goes into a room, checks it out, does something in the room and then leaves.
Speaker: And then another person eventually will come into that same room.
Speaker: see the change or recognize something that the person from before may have done and go, oh, and make kind of an observation and keep going, which is which is an interesting idea.
Speaker: But I lose track of where the heck everybody is a lot in this book.
Speaker: What this book presupposes is maybe he didn't.
Speaker: Sorry, just had to work a Royal Tenenbaums reference in there.
Speaker: What this book presupposes is that you played the game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that becomes clear as it goes along.
Speaker: I'll tell you who isn't in the room you're expecting at this point.
Speaker: That would be Wesker.
Speaker: They go back to the fancy ass atrium of the estate and Wesker is gone.
Speaker: And a loud chord plays.
Speaker: This is just a reminder for later.
Speaker: Future Kevin, make sure you cut it out.
Speaker: Insert a loud MIDI chord being played.
Speaker: Thanks, man.
Speaker: You're the best.
Speaker: future kevin you're you are you are you're doing god's work my friend yeah he's he's a really great guy and he's 100 for sure going to cut all this back and forth about the midi chords out chapter six
Speaker: Chapter six, which starts off like it's it's them.
Speaker: You know, it just picks up right where we left off, obviously, with the same characters, Barry here and Jill.
Speaker: They're looking for the guy.
Speaker: They're worried, especially now that they've seen
Speaker: you know, a bunch of, uh, they've seen a, you know, zombie.
Speaker: And it leads to one of my more perplexed that I think one of the more perplexing quotes in this book, they're, they're kind of trying to figure out, uh,
Speaker: how to deal with what's happening.
Speaker: And they and they're they're, you know, in disbelief that zombies are what they're dealing with.
Speaker: And Jill thinks to herself after a lifetime of reading trashy novels about serial killers is a cannibal zombie so hard to swallow, to which I respond.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That is a perfectly reasonable stance to take, Jill.
Speaker: You can always draw the line at zombies.
Speaker: Oh, by all means.
Speaker: By all means.
Speaker: Draw it far before.
Speaker: We know that serial killers are real.
Speaker: We've caught them.
Speaker: The FBI has a whole division dedicated to them.
Speaker: We've got pictures of them and everything.
Speaker: We've got pictures of them.
Speaker: Several of them have been executed by the federal government.
Speaker: We're not going to get into whether the federal government has right to do that on this podcast.
Speaker: We know they're there.
Speaker: We know they're around.
Speaker: We know they're around.
Speaker: They're not Bigfoot.
Speaker: Zombies are more like Bigfoot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Actually, probably even less plausible than Bigfoot because we have photos of Bigfoot.
Speaker: And also less friendly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, like Bigfoot, like if I found out Bigfoot was real tomorrow, I'd be kind of pumped.
Speaker: If I found out zombies were real tomorrow, I wouldn't feel good.
Speaker: I'm not feeling good thinking about it right now.
Speaker: There's the line, and it was that creature, the last thing Becky and Pris saw.
Speaker: And I think that was, it was like a nice little tie, nice little callback.
Speaker: It's really bold to say, like,
Speaker: Oh, these little kids, these little girls that she knew went missing and then like tie it back to like the gore of, of zombies and all that stuff.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was grim.
Speaker: Like that's actually a really grim moment.
Speaker: It's a really grim moment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, and that's the thing with these books, you know, I think we all, any of us, I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know if this is how it works for kids nowadays, but back in these days, uh,
Speaker: If you if you have the kind of parent who wasn't going to let you play violent video games and you didn't have any friends who had it or something like that, there was probably a pretty good chance that you could at least find a comic book or novel that it was based on or something and get kind of a similar sort of thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, like I was reading the Aliens versus Predator comic books long before I was able to sneak away and watch either of those films.
Speaker: There was a lot of kind of using different forms of media to sneak around the parental consent.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's kind of what this book is in a way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, if this if this is, you know, I don't think that's its main purpose, but that's certainly how people, you know, who were 13, 14, 12, whatever, you know, when they found the book, that's how they would have used it, probably, if not just to supplement their own addiction to this franchise they liked.
Speaker: Um, I don't know if kids do that nowadays.
Speaker: It feels like maybe, I don't know if you can keep anything from kids nowadays.
Speaker: Uh, but yeah, I think it's, I think it's a little bit easier nowadays.
Speaker: I mean, I, I had, um, I had a, I had a group of friends, these, these four brothers, I would always go over to their house and, uh,
Speaker: You know, we would walk, walk the mile over to the local video store and just grab a, you know, grab the goriest horror movie we could find.
Speaker: And it was, it was relatively like, you know, their parents didn't want them watching it, but their parents also weren't necessarily on top of them.
Speaker: Like attention to what we were watching upstairs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Everyone had the one friend who either the parent was a little too cool or the parents just weren't really paying that close of attention.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I got to play Wolfenstein 3D with my friend because his parents that I'll never forget this.
Speaker: He got to play it and there was no issue.
Speaker: I wasn't allowed to play it.
Speaker: And and and his dad, I remember saying, well, we trust him to know the difference between a video game and and real life, which is a pretty forward thinking way of going about that.
Speaker: But we were like in fifth grade.
Speaker: So I don't know, man.
Speaker: yeah yeah i mean right around that time you had people calling wolfenstein 3d and doom and the like uh murder simulators um right but that's that's probably for another day when we that's that's that's definitely when we die we can we can talk about moral panics on a bonus episode or something like we and and let's face facts we probably will yes uh
Speaker: And now at this point, Barry gives Jill this.
Speaker: This is and here's a reference to the video game that I knew no matter what.
Speaker: He gives her an old set of lock picks that I presumably she lent to him at some point, like he had he had expressed an interest in learning how to pick locks.
Speaker: And obviously she's the daughter of this well-known gentleman thief.
Speaker: I don't know if they ever use that term, but stuck in my head now.
Speaker: Headcanon is now a gentleman thief.
Speaker: Yes, he's got a badass mustache.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: A monocle.
Speaker: I'm just going to say it.
Speaker: He's got a monocle.
Speaker: He wears he has a monocle.
Speaker: He has a little bowler hat.
Speaker: He he wears all black, but it's a nice refined knit black turtleneck.
Speaker: So he he's he's got these lockpicks on him.
Speaker: She doesn't have any, I suppose.
Speaker: But he he lends them to her because guess what?
Speaker: They're going to split up because that's what stars do.
Speaker: Stars, they they're they're on their own, by the way.
Speaker: But he doesn't say the line, which is take this, Jill.
Speaker: It's a lockpick.
Speaker: You should use it because you are the master of unlocking.
Speaker: And it's deep.
Speaker: I'll tell you what I got to tell you, this is another last episode.
Speaker: We talked a little bit about the difference between just like how this book just screams like nineties action kind of thing to me.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: That is ironically enough, that is not the time when they would have made a reference to that in an adaptation.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because they want to be cool.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If if this was written nowadays, you bet your ass they would have given her like some two paragraph thing.
Speaker: Like back in the old days, they used to call her the mask.
Speaker: Like, just go totally.
Speaker: Let's justify her being called the master of unlocking for 30 minutes.
Speaker: And it might have been tongue in cheek or it might have been deadly serious, but they absolutely would have done it.
Speaker: We cannot resist ourselves nowadays.
Speaker: We've got to explain every detail and put every Easter egg on prominent display for all to see.
Speaker: So that's I don't even.
Speaker: And that's the thing.
Speaker: I bring it up not because I think it's a missed opportunity, but I kind of appreciate the fact that it was there.
Speaker: kind of okay with it.
Speaker: You know what I, you know, we really are missing out on the, is what is a, is a David Foster Wallace adaptation of the first Resi evil game.
Speaker: I think it's like, and it's like a four, four page long footnote explaining, Oh,
Speaker: the master of unlocking i think i think we need that we also need maybe a james joyce uh version of the book where up through the mansion up through uh arriving at the mansion is one sentence yeah i think that makes sense just like this you know stream of consciousness
Speaker: Insane, you know, and I'm just the man to write it.
Speaker: I think I think I think you could actually channel your inner James Joyce and and make it work.
Speaker: We've seen a lot of weird slash fiction over the years and a lot of mashups and that kind of thing.
Speaker: But we have never seen Joyce.
Speaker: and Resident Evil.
Speaker: Joyce fiction.
Speaker: Joyce fiction, I think, is a new, I think that should be a new growing niche of the fan fiction market.
Speaker: It's going to make it happen.
Speaker: Let's take a story about Mega Man and how would James Joyce tell this.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: The James Joyce version of Shadow of Colossus is really the thing I'm looking the most for.
Speaker: Yeah, actually, I feel like that wouldn't be that bad.
Speaker: Actually, you know what?
Speaker: You say it out loud.
Speaker: You're like, well, you know, you know,
Speaker: might not, I don't know, I'd probably give that a go.
Speaker: So they do what you're supposed to do in every good horror story and they split up.
Speaker: Jill takes out the little mini computer that Mystery Man Trent and you know what's hilarious about the mini computer is now that once she gets to looking at the map of it, it's literally describing how the map looks in game in Wrestling People.
Speaker: yeah and i was like yes she got the typewriter in there she got she got the lockpick in there and she got the uh she justified having the mini map from resident evil or the pause menu map from resident evil actually in the book and really my hats off to to sd perry on that because that is impressive that is top-notch fan service right there
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: There's the word for it.
Speaker: Fan service.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: And it leads to, by the way, like this message, this that is the most resonant evil thing in the entire book so far.
Speaker: We're about we're almost 75 pages into the book.
Speaker: And she finds this.
Speaker: She she turns on the little mini computer and the quarters beneath it was a single line, a message as enigmatic as she could have expected from Mr. Trent.
Speaker: Night Keys, Tiger Eyes, Four Crests, Gate of New Life, East Eagle, West Wolf.
Speaker: And I was just like, holy crap, that is about as Resident Evil as it gets.
Speaker: That is as Resident Evil as it gets.
Speaker: And what I love, and in an upcoming chapter, we're actually going to get a little bit of self-reflection on
Speaker: on some of these things.
Speaker: We'll get to it in a moment.
Speaker: But I do like that she took the moment, like the author speaking through a character, to kind of call out how silly and contrived a lot of this stuff was.
Speaker: And for anyone who's listening who by chance never played Resident Evil or anything like that, and you don't know what... One of the whole major conceits of Resident Evil, there are basically two.
Speaker: The first one is zombies.
Speaker: I think you've picked that up by now.
Speaker: The second one is weird Alice in Wonderland style puzzles, you know, keys with symbols that match up with with key holes with the same symbol.
Speaker: It's like basically taking if you ever played an old 8-bit video game and you had to find the star key to open the star door or something along those lines.
Speaker: That's what Resident Evil did.
Speaker: But it's in the midst of this horrifying zombie disease breakout.
Speaker: And it's such a strange conceit.
Speaker: But it's really addictive at the same time.
Speaker: It's wonderful.
Speaker: It takes some of the, I would say, moon logic of Sierra Online and Lucasfilm Games, adventure games, point-and-click adventure games, and then mixes them together.
Speaker: mixes that with an action shooter set in a horror environment.
Speaker: And oh, by the way, there's also, and this is strictly in the game, there's also inventory management, which is a whole separate thing.
Speaker: But yeah, it's like basically three different genres kind of jammed together.
Speaker: And they're zombies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's that that that bit of text is super Resident Evil.
Speaker: If we were rating things on a scale of of 10 of zero to 10 and 10 being the most the platonic ideal of Resident Evil, like Plato would look at it and say that is as Resident Evil as something can be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And why am I still alive?
Speaker: And why am I still alive?
Speaker: And the answer would be zombies, T-virus.
Speaker: Zombies.
Speaker: It's exactly.
Speaker: Checkmate.
Speaker: Everything gets explained.
Speaker: Checkmate atheists.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And the section of the chapter here ends with Jill basically recognizing that the terror that the city is going through, it absolutely is coming from the Spencer estate, that this is this is this is the mystery to be solved, that they are in the right place.
Speaker: and uh boy howdy have they got a ways to go they do have a ways to go and then we slam cut to chris back to chris in chris in media res um he's in the middle of the action shooting a zombie in the gut a couple times and uh on the following page there's there's just this wonder a wonderful description festering necrotic wet
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: So, uh, so I, there's always at least, there's always like multiple descriptors.
Speaker: So he felt it's hot fetid breath against its fate against his face.
Speaker: I, I love all that.
Speaker: I, I, I eat all that up.
Speaker: I mean, if you're the only thing that you're not going to really get from the video game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like we talked about before.
Speaker: You're not going to smell the rotting corpses.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I really, and if you're, and if anyone's out there developing that, uh,
Speaker: Please stop.
Speaker: Please do not do that.
Speaker: Please stop.
Speaker: Do not do.
Speaker: No, no, thank you.
Speaker: No, no, no, no.
Speaker: We're not.
Speaker: We're not asking for that.
Speaker: And boom.
Speaker: Finally, after his his hallway and Zambo encounter up and down, we get a brand new character.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Can you tell me a little bit about Rebecca Chambers?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The first thing they tell you about Rebecca Chambers, by the way, the very first sentence tells you that she is 18 years old.
Speaker: They really made it.
Speaker: There's a really strong bullet point put on that one.
Speaker: is Rebecca Chambers, is that, is that canon?
Speaker: Is she 18 years old in the game?
Speaker: I mean, like she is.
Speaker: So it really is up in the air as to what is or is not canon.
Speaker: I don't, I'm not sure that that is specifically said anywhere in the game, but where it is said.
Speaker: And so might as well be canon is in the instruction manual.
Speaker: And let me take a moment to talk about instruction manuals in the 1990s.
Speaker: Beautiful.
Speaker: Instruction manuals back in the day.
Speaker: I mean, games nowadays do not have instruction manuals.
Speaker: Usually those the contents of what would have been an instruction manual is found within the program itself.
Speaker: And that's fine.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Instruction manuals, though, were useful for for several things.
Speaker: First and foremost, they were useful to read on the car ride home after renting the game at Blockbuster.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: So you get yourself nice and pumped up.
Speaker: You get you get some of the instructions.
Speaker: You figure it out.
Speaker: You know, you knew those controls before you even turn the game on.
Speaker: The other thing is they would also provide instruction manuals to provide story context.
Speaker: So, for example, in The Legend of Zelda.
Speaker: the very first Zelda game, there was a little bit more story context and there was a whole bunch of artwork in the instruction manual that is it's it's not seen anywhere else.
Speaker: I'm sure.
Speaker: I mean, I'm 100 percent sure that it's been collected into Zelda art books nowadays.
Speaker: But back in the day, that was like that was your view into what the world of Hyrule really looked like beyond the eight bit limitations that you were, you know, the facsimile that you were playing in the game itself.
Speaker: This was an artist's rendition of the world of Hyrule, and it could really spark the imagination, provide a little bit more context.
Speaker: So for Resident Evil, one of the things that the instruction manual had was it had several pages of like a little dossier of each of the characters in each of the stars in the game.
Speaker: And one of them is Rebecca Chambers listed at 18 years old as the youngest of the stars.
Speaker: Now, keep in mind, all the other stars are.
Speaker: are ridiculously young too, except for Barry.
Speaker: So I believe Chris is only like 22 years old.
Speaker: Who is just infirmed old.
Speaker: Just the ripe old age of Phil's age.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Just disgusting, incontinent, 19 great, great grandbabies.
Speaker: What the hell is he doing out there?
Speaker: He should be dead.
Speaker: He should be dead, at least retired.
Speaker: Yeah, he's just he's using up resources.
Speaker: He is definitely too old for this shit.
Speaker: This is ridiculous.
Speaker: So anyway, yes, instruction manuals.
Speaker: They were great back in the 90s and they provided a lot of additional context.
Speaker: And for if you wanted to, you could definitely consider them as part of the canon experience alongside the video game because it was this supplementary material.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: I mean, plenty of people reference that stuff these days.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Rebecca Chambers, she is 18 years old.
Speaker: She's hiding, you know, and she's she's she's got herself a big old can of bug spray, which is actually exactly how Chris meets her in the game.
Speaker: Oh, that's OK.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: That's good to know.
Speaker: You go into the room and you get sprayed in the face with bug spray by Rebecca Chambers.
Speaker: And I and it leads to it leads to another great quote here.
Speaker: She she sprays him in the face with this with this stuff and she realizes immediately her mistake.
Speaker: And then.
Speaker: In the book, it says the alpha dropped his hands, face red, and she finally recognized him.
Speaker: It was Chris Redfield, only the most attractive guy in the stars, not to mention her superior.
Speaker: And I think this is one of the most important moments in the book because it informs us that Chris Redfield is a dreamboat.
Speaker: He's just adorable.
Speaker: You want to put them in your pocket or marry them.
Speaker: Get your fan fictions ready.
Speaker: I mean, honestly, there's already been.
Speaker: I mean, there's already plenty of fan fictions about.
Speaker: We had a we had a quick moment with Jill.
Speaker: Now we've got Rebecca swarming all over him.
Speaker: He's breaking hearts.
Speaker: He's killing zombies and breaking hearts.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He's not just breaking hearts.
Speaker: He's stomping on them.
Speaker: Literally.
Speaker: He's stomping on them.
Speaker: Yeah, he's taking them out, man.
Speaker: Like he's just that is what he is here to do.
Speaker: She's just happy that she can't he can't see the blush on her face.
Speaker: She found she's found a key with a sword engraved on it.
Speaker: Ah, and we just found a sword door.
Speaker: I wonder if these two things are interconnected.
Speaker: And that brings us to our first random ass Resident Evil puzzle piece.
Speaker: It's going to be a theme.
Speaker: We're not going to ever.
Speaker: I don't think we ever see.
Speaker: someone actually solve the puzzle because people there are so many moving parts in this book.
Speaker: So many people coming and going.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That inevitably someone arrives upon a puzzle that was that was basically it's inferred that it was solved by one of somebody elsewhere in the house.
Speaker: And the book exactly actually does a decent job.
Speaker: S.T.
Speaker: Perry did a decent job kind of setting the reader up for we're going to cut we're going to cut to these characters in the middle of stuff.
Speaker: And it kind of gives that it's fine.
Speaker: It gives that that appearance of while you're reading following Jill's point of view, Chris is still doing stuff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it makes sense.
Speaker: It keeps it clipping along.
Speaker: No one actually we don't actually need to see someone take the key, put it into the lock and turn the key like it's fine.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: We can we can trust in on that one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And by the way, she's she's she's in this file room and there's this huge open trunk.
Speaker: There's full of stacks upon stacks of papers.
Speaker: And she explains she's she's that they're
Speaker: mostly chemistry, brain chemistry stuff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And lets us know that this 18 year old secret agent is also a a has a background in biochemistry.
Speaker: She has just recently graduated and stars was her first job.
Speaker: She is a she's a wunderkind, so to speak.
Speaker: So she's she graduated college at 18, I believe.
Speaker: And leads to another quote that just baffled me.
Speaker: So she's just talking about her background.
Speaker: It's internal monologue about her background, getting a little information on her.
Speaker: And so she went through basic training, got some field experience.
Speaker: No one else had shown much interest in hiring a whiz kid.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: I mean, I'm not saying that there aren't 18 year olds out there with massive backgrounds in biochemistry.
Speaker: That stuff does happen.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Most of them are on the tick tock.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is the oldest thing I've ever said.
Speaker: But there are a few of them.
Speaker: There are a few of them out there that that that really do get their shit done, but they tend to get picked up.
Speaker: You know, don't get me wrong.
Speaker: They do tend to get picked up by evil corporations.
Speaker: Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker: There's actually a real easy way to jump to like, why didn't Umbrella hire her?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: No, this this this crazy evil corporation that wants as many people to help them with their bioweapons.
Speaker: They wouldn't want a loser kid like me.
Speaker: Yes, they would.
Speaker: Yes, they would.
Speaker: They've specifically shown interest in, you know, later in later games in the series.
Speaker: They have all sorts of like.
Speaker: teenagers and whatnot doing things.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: And you're 18.
Speaker: They wouldn't have to pay you as much.
Speaker: And we know that they're into that.
Speaker: They're, they're in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They are.
Speaker: Oh, they are.
Speaker: They are cheap.
Speaker: They're as cheap as they are evil.
Speaker: And why do you think stuff keeps happening?
Speaker: And it's not because they put a ton of money into security and resources.
Speaker: At some point they realized that the cleanup was cheaper than just securing it properly in the first place.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Umbrella Corporation, forgiveness is better than permission.
Speaker: You know, that's just they're all over it, man.
Speaker: I think that's going to I think that that line is going to start the episode.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: So, yeah, she says brain.
Speaker: She gets into the brain chemistry stuff and she says brain chemistry.
Speaker: But these numbers are all screwed up.
Speaker: The serotonin and norepinephrine are too low, but look here, the dopamine is off the chart.
Speaker: And this is where it's like kind of cringy 90s because you can't say this anymore.
Speaker: We're talking big time schizo.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I'm just reading what's in the text.
Speaker: I do not condone.
Speaker: Using the term schizo, it is a it's kind of insulting way to it's it's terrible.
Speaker: It's don't don't.
Speaker: And it's and it's and it's of its time.
Speaker: It's of its time.
Speaker: In the 90s, calling somebody who you didn't like and who might have acted irrationally.
Speaker: It's schizo was very common.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There are other words that I am not going to repeat properly.
Speaker: that were often used to mock people's intelligence.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is just kind of jarring to hear it from someone who's like a professional biochemist, no matter what way you slice it.
Speaker: She's an 18 year old biochemist.
Speaker: So it felt a little, it felt a little weird, but it also is like, just remember, this is 1990.
Speaker: This is supposed to be like 1996.
Speaker: It makes me think of like I went to the doctor once and it was one of the first times I'd ever worked with this doctor and he was a younger guy and I was much younger than I that I am now.
Speaker: And I think he wanted to, like, put me at ease or something like that.
Speaker: And I was concerned about I don't even remember where it was, but I was concerned about something that he said.
Speaker: And he said something like, so do your balls hurt?
Speaker: And I think it was like I was I was worried that I don't think it was anything as dramatic as like finding a lump or anything.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I'd run that.
Speaker: I'd remember.
Speaker: But he was like checking symptoms for something.
Speaker: And it's, you know, I would expect a doctor, even a young one to go.
Speaker: So was there discomfort in your testicles or something?
Speaker: He's looking at me, your balls hurt.
Speaker: And I'm like, you don't please don't do that.
Speaker: Please don't.
Speaker: Don't try to relate to me on that level.
Speaker: Just right.
Speaker: Please be the professional that I am.
Speaker: I am paying you way too much money to be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like I'm I'm the idiot here.
Speaker: Please, please be as square as you possibly can in this moment.
Speaker: I'm begging you.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That that is a jarring thing to hear, whether it's 2021 or
Speaker: Or the fact that she is a biochemist, say that is a little odd.
Speaker: The chapter does end in a funny way where it's like he's found her in this little room and she sprayed him in the face and then he goes, okay, I'm going to go ahead and use this key you gave me and leave you here.
Speaker: Good luck.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Hope it all works out.
Speaker: He was 100% the cool jock just giving the brush off to the nerdy freshman.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We're cooking now.
Speaker: We're on chapter seven.
Speaker: We have made so much progress.
Speaker: So much progress.
Speaker: I think we're going slower tonight than we even did on the other episode.
Speaker: We 100% are, yes.
Speaker: if you've played Resident Evil and you know, um, you, you're going down, I believe it's East, uh, East wing of the building.
Speaker: There's this hallway that kind of hooks to the left.
Speaker: Um, it's a very famous scene.
Speaker: You're just walking, uh, walking down the hallway and bam, right through the window comes the dogs.
Speaker: It's one of the earliest jump scares in the entire game.
Speaker: Um, and it's very, very iconic.
Speaker: Um, um,
Speaker: So, uh, crash the window behind her explodes inward, a lithe sinewy form lunging into the hall, growling and snapping.
Speaker: Um, love it.
Speaker: And, uh, we get it.
Speaker: We get a doge, a mutant doge that jumps in and, um, you know, it dies after she wastes a ton of ammo on it.
Speaker: A lot of ammo.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, yeah, the Resident Evil player in me was like, oh, oh, oh, just run, just run.
Speaker: But she does.
Speaker: But she does get rid of it.
Speaker: She takes care of it.
Speaker: And she actually gets to kind of get a closer look at it because this is the first time that she's been dealing with a dog where she didn't have to also be running from it at top speed.
Speaker: And, you know, I like the quote here.
Speaker: Her initial impression wasn't changed.
Speaker: It looked like a skinned dog.
Speaker: It's like, OK, good.
Speaker: Glad we got that.
Speaker: Confirm the field experiment there on the dogs.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: She finds our first riddle door here, and it has, when the sun sets in the west and the moon rises in the east, stars will begin to appear in the sky and wind will blow toward the ground.
Speaker: Then the gate of new life will be opened.
Speaker: And she remembers the list from Trent's computer.
Speaker: So that's another 10 out of 10.
Speaker: The Resident Evil scale.
Speaker: Oh, big time, big time.
Speaker: You know, platonic just like, what the hell?
Speaker: Yes, that is that is about as Resident Evil as a kid.
Speaker: It's like a riddle that's not really a riddle.
Speaker: It's like, like no one had to sit down and really parse this one out.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It was like, Oh, right there.
Speaker: Chris, I got to find them and put them in the right order.
Speaker: That's the thing is like, it's like, it, is there a word for that?
Speaker: Like a riddle?
Speaker: It's like something that seems like, is there a German word for that?
Speaker: Something that seems like a riddle has to be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A riddle, not a riddle, but a great impression of a riddle.
Speaker: It's great impression.
Speaker: It's, it's literally just a four piece puzzle.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker: And if you could find the four pieces, you're probably fine.
Speaker: That's the key.
Speaker: It's not the poem slash riddle isn't the isn't the tricky part.
Speaker: It's going all over this damn house and finding the four different crests and popping them into place.
Speaker: That's that's the key.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Literally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she's she's kind of.
Speaker: taking that all in and then starts hearing the howl of dogs in the distance and and realizes that, you know, she's she's wasted a lot of ammo.
Speaker: They've got more of those things coming and she's just going to have to because this is the exit out the back of the house.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And as much as she wants to use it to get the heck out of there, she can't do it until they found the crests, put them in place, and then she can
Speaker: runoff.
Speaker: Uh, but in the meantime, they are trapped in the meantime, they are trapped and we are going to cut back to Chris and he is, uh, he is making his way back towards that door that, uh, he got the key for.
Speaker: Um, and I, I, I, um,
Speaker: I highlighted a little thing here.
Speaker: As I mentioned earlier, apparently headshots were the best way to kill a zombie, just like in the movies.
Speaker: And he just claps himself on the back over this.
Speaker: Every time, every time he is, he makes something that is, he makes a connection to zombie movies.
Speaker: He's immensely proud of it.
Speaker: So he gets the sword door, the key works.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: He is in my favorite room of all time.
Speaker: He is in the room of Itchy Tasty.
Speaker: Itchy Tasty.
Speaker: I love Itchy Tasty Room.
Speaker: Itchy Tasty.
Speaker: Jim Sterling, James Stephanie Sterling, they had an entire segment on their show years ago called Itchy Tasty, and it is a reference to this exact moment.
Speaker: And I love, love, love, love that S.D.
Speaker: Perry...
Speaker: Put in the exact word for word diary pages that you find in this page.
Speaker: It's actually one of the blame or really.
Speaker: It's really, it's really one of the best found like diaries ever in a game because of the way it kind of, the writing of it kind of disintegrates over time.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Um, so it's, it's really good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it starts out with like normally, um, um,
Speaker: We're not going to read the whole thing, but it basically starts out normally with a guy recapping his like poker night and just talking about the new experiments.
Speaker: There's a little bit of foreshadowing with the new experiment that looks like a skinned gorilla.
Speaker: And and we haven't we haven't seen those yet, but they are going to they're going to eventually show up.
Speaker: But they're coming.
Speaker: They're coming.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, they're coming.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, and that's, and at May 11th, basically shit hits the fan and the T-virus gets out.
Speaker: They have to put on their suits and everything, but it's too late.
Speaker: It seems like they're infected.
Speaker: The guy starts talking in detail about how his skin feels, how it's swollen and itchy.
Speaker: At one point he talks about how just like a lump of his skin fell off.
Speaker: It is, it gets into really grotesque detail, but also the guy's
Speaker: brain starts to deteriorate his mind starts to deteriorate and so the penultimate entry is on May 19th and after a lapse of three days
Speaker: And the guy wrote fever gone, but itchy, hungry and eat doggy food.
Speaker: Itchy, itchy.
Speaker: Scott came ugly face.
Speaker: So killed him.
Speaker: Tasty.
Speaker: And then there's one more entry undated that just says itchy, tasty.
Speaker: It's it's so good.
Speaker: It's so it's so good.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: How often does that how often do you actually get?
Speaker: the zombie thing from the perspective of the person turning into the zombie.
Speaker: It's it's usually such an outward thing, you know, right?
Speaker: It's our horror reacting to someone.
Speaker: So that I think that's a great touch.
Speaker: We're in chapter eight and... Chapter eight's a quick chapter, but an important one.
Speaker: Jill and Barry went their separate ways and we really get into the mind of Mr. Albert Wesker.
Speaker: We find out how misogynist he is.
Speaker: He's a really silly person all the way around.
Speaker: It's just a huge piece of shit.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: And I, for one, was deeply shocked to find that out.
Speaker: I did not see that coming.
Speaker: I'm still shocked.
Speaker: I'm still not sure they aren't setting us up for a double double cross here.
Speaker: because he was just so clearly the hero.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He's clearly, I mean, he was, he was, he was Iceman.
Speaker: He was Val Comer and what now he's the villain.
Speaker: I mean, we can still eventually we'll be able to ride his tail anytime.
Speaker: But for now, for now, no, he's really.
Speaker: We have to think he's the bad.
Speaker: He has talked himself out of the shirtless volleyball game.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He is no Valcomer, sir.
Speaker: But basically, this chapter is we're revealing Wesker's truth.
Speaker: He's known since the beginning.
Speaker: He's known since the beginning.
Speaker: And this is actually I misspoke.
Speaker: This is not the Wesker chapter with the misogyny.
Speaker: This is just the general shittiness.
Speaker: The misogyny has yet to come.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He has a lot of moments.
Speaker: He has a lot of moments.
Speaker: And it's like, it's almost jarring because there's like, he just seems like this even keel, like, you know, he's, he's got his high and tight haircut and he's got his, his, his, his aviator glasses on.
Speaker: And he, he just seems like he just seems normal.
Speaker: He just seems like a, an officer.
Speaker: And the moment you get inside his head,
Speaker: He it is mask off the shittiest person in the building.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The moment you're in his internal monologue, it's just he is the most nakedly evil bad guy.
Speaker: Like he might as well be twirling his mustache.
Speaker: It's absurd.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so in this chapter, he comes up with the plan of blackmailing Barry in order to get Barry to help him with his plan.
Speaker: Now, he hasn't actually enacted this yet.
Speaker: He's just talking about Barry, though.
Speaker: Barry Burton was a family man, and both Jill and Chris trusted him.
Speaker: And then the final line of the chapter is...
Speaker: this might actually turn out to be fun.
Speaker: Jesus Christ, man.
Speaker: And it's just it's like he's it's interesting because he is he's decided he he knows the important thing is you find out that he knows all about this place.
Speaker: He knows about the conspiracy.
Speaker: He's here to cover up the incident that led to Raccoon City getting, you know, doused with zombie making gas.
Speaker: And he's here to help cover that up by himself in front of a team, apparently.
Speaker: And he decides he's going to blackmail Barry and he's just going to use everyone because he knows about all the puzzles that are coming up in the weird carnival ride that this house is.
Speaker: And rather than do it all himself, he's basically just going to kind of quietly follow everyone around.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is, you know, take advantage.
Speaker: I think this is this is really the opportunity that that the author S.D.
Speaker: Perry takes the she takes this opportunity to kind of comment on the house through Wesker where I don't know.
Speaker: I'm finding finding the line.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Spencer was bats no two ways about it and he had had the house built with all kinds of tricky little mechanisms a lot of that spilly silly spy crap that had been so popular in the late 60s spy crap that's gonna make this job twice as hard as it needs to be hidden keys secret tunnels it's like I'm trapped in an espionage thriller complete with mad scientists and a ticking clock so like oh
Speaker: It's like Wesker, you speak for us.
Speaker: It's like acknowledgement that like, yeah, no, this house is weird that it was it was designed like this.
Speaker: This is not this is not a common thing, except when it becomes a common thing in later Resident Evil games.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: When it's just the world we live in.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thoughts on the first eight chapters so far?
Speaker: I think that the cool thing about the book so far is that it shows you both the advantages and the disadvantages of writing this out as a book as opposed to a video game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like, you get those cool moments, you know, that...
Speaker: The itchy, tasty moment, for example, it's in the video game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you can really take your time with that.
Speaker: But I guarantee you that most people who played the game don't don't necessarily remember that because they were just trying to get they weren't necessarily picking up all the puzzle, you know, reading all the journal entries and all that stuff.
Speaker: So if you're willing to sit down and read a book on it, well, then that's a totally different experience and you're going to be able to better appreciate something that maybe you didn't notice in the game.
Speaker: Yeah, you can jump into the little details, the little lore building nuggets that are left around in the game, but a lot of players are just going to flip through and move on.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And you get things like we talked about before, smells and experiences that you're not going to get in the video game.
Speaker: On the other hand, the puzzles.
Speaker: Puzzles are already already.
Speaker: And we barely.
Speaker: And that's the thing.
Speaker: At this point, 100 pages in, we really haven't done a lot of puzzle stuff just yet.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And it's like the entirety of the Resident Evil experience is puzzles.
Speaker: And the puzzles are the best part of the game as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker: And just impossible to write around.
Speaker: You know, it's like how do you write something thrilling about somebody solving what
Speaker: Outside of the context of a game is extremely contrived.
Speaker: Especially when it's these styles of puzzles, like we said, it's not a riddle, you know, it's like, say what you want about, for example, the Da Vinci code, you know, say what you want about the writing of that or anything, but it had actual puzzles in it.
Speaker: that they would explain to you and you'd work your way through.
Speaker: And it was like a mystery in that sense.
Speaker: And well, it was a mystery, but you know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and so poor SD Perry based on the source material, uh,
Speaker: She's got it feels like she's still got to use the source material, the the armor key, the sword key, the the the crests, all that crap.
Speaker: She's still got to use it.
Speaker: And those aren't really thrilling to read about.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And what's amazing is that and we'll get to it soon, but she does a decent enough job kind of fast forwarding through some of them.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And we are definitely going to talk about that because it is, you know, I'm as a writer, it is one of those things that I will look at it and go, good choice.
Speaker: Good choice.
Speaker: There were some good choices made here.
Speaker: There were some solid edits to the source material here.
Speaker: And so that that that about does it.
Speaker: My my final thought on the first eight chapters is that it would have been really neat if this if they had given her the opportunity to turn this into a choose your own adventure book rather than.
Speaker: Oh, now that would be fun.
Speaker: Wouldn't that be fun?
Speaker: That would be far.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: I'm going to look that up.
Speaker: I refuse to believe.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Choose your own adventure.
Speaker: Why did I say it that way?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Now there is one.
Speaker: Apparently there is one.
Speaker: Can you escape Resident Evil's choose your own adventure Halloween dungeon?
Speaker: I guess it was like a social media thing that you could play in the
Speaker: in a browser or something.
Speaker: So not quite.
Speaker: It wasn't a book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Lame, but, but I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker: The same era a little earlier than this, but like classic choose your own adventure novels within the resident evil franchise.
Speaker: I had a, I had a super Mario brothers book from probably five years, four years before this, that was a choose your own adventure book.
Speaker: And it feels like it's like,
Speaker: That would be a great way to translate a game to prose format.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Because it still has the gamification aspect of it.
Speaker: but you can still, what you're reading, so you can get a little more of that literary oomph out of it.
Speaker: That's really interesting.
Speaker: I wonder if that ever got pitched or anything like that.
Speaker: I guess by this time, Choose Your Own Adventure books were kind of on their way out if they weren't completely out by then.
Speaker: I think they might be making a comeback.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: I think... Oh, they are now.
Speaker: Like, nowadays, people are kind of...
Speaker: like getting in that nostalgic mode.
Speaker: And so I'm buying I've been every now and then I get really drunk and I will drunk eBay like you do.
Speaker: And lately, one of the drunk eBay things that I'm constantly looking at is finding the old Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker: Choose your own adventure.
Speaker: That sounds I had a bunch of those when I was young.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they're out there, man.
Speaker: You just kind of you can find them if you can find them at a reasonable price.
Speaker: They're out there.
Speaker: But yeah, that would be I love that they're coming back.
Speaker: It's it's really well, if anybody should pitch it.
Speaker: I think it's you and I, my friends.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And that's what this podcast is really all about, guys.
Speaker: We're just we're announcing our Resident Evil Choose Your Own Adventure book coming to coming to an Amazon, you know, world contingent near you.
Speaker: Find booksellers near you.
Speaker: And that'll do it for the episode.
Speaker: Good night, day or wherever you are, everybody.
Speaker: Good night.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to episode two of Pixel It.
Speaker: If you haven't already, subscribe and leave a five-star rating.
Speaker: We'll be back in two weeks with episode three of our dive into Resident Evil, the Umbrella Conspiracy.
Speaker: Until then, follow us on Twitter at Pixel It Pod for updates.
Speaker: Or bookmark our website, PixelItPod.com.
Speaker: Take care.
