Transcript
Speaker: Yeah, do like live streams of stuff like this, you know?
Speaker: Have everyone like put in their bets and shit like that.
Speaker: That would be fun.
Speaker: Yeah, that would be awesome.
Speaker: That would be awesome.
Speaker: Like a big Oscar party.
Speaker: Yeah, that would be fun.
Speaker: That'd be good times.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what else is good times?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: Happy New Year.
Speaker: It's our first series.
Speaker: It's our first series of the new year.
Speaker: And we're starting off with Alien Isolation.
Speaker: Hell yes.
Speaker: Yes, it is the first series of the new year, right?
Speaker: I didn't misspeak on that.
Speaker: We're recording this ahead of time.
Speaker: No, I think so.
Speaker: Yeah, I think you should be right.
Speaker: I'm pretty sure this is... We got... Yeah, Phil's checking the calendar just to make sure.
Speaker: I'm going to check you for accuracy, but I believe...
Speaker: That yes, this should be the first of the new year.
Speaker: You can't be a podcast host without having a guy check you for accuracy.
Speaker: You know, Joe Rogan does it.
Speaker: Joe Rogan does it.
Speaker: Obviously.
Speaker: Can we have somebody look that up, please?
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: This will be our first episode of 2023.
Speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, I remembered the calendar off the top of my head when this is supposed to go out.
Speaker: He just went brazenly into the unknown.
Speaker: Without a parachute, without a bungee cord, he just jumped.
Speaker: Without a parachute, without a net.
Speaker: I was on that tightrope.
Speaker: He was ready.
Speaker: And then we got the confirmation.
Speaker: And my chair is dropping again.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Something had to go wrong.
Speaker: The hydraulic thing on my chair has been like messed up recently.
Speaker: And so it'll be for nine hours out of 10, it'll be fine.
Speaker: And then randomly I'll be sitting in it and it'll just start going.
Speaker: It comes to the incredible shrinking Kevin.
Speaker: And I'm like, I'm like, what's going on?
Speaker: Fuck.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, it's going to.
Speaker: lift my butt up and get this chair back in the right spot.
Speaker: At some point with my desk chair, I obliterated the right armrest.
Speaker: Like there is no rest.
Speaker: It's just a bare metal skeleton with screws and shit hanging off of it.
Speaker: And, and every time Emily sees it, she's like, is it maybe time to get a new computer chair?
Speaker: And I,
Speaker: do the old man thing where I'm like, there's nothing wrong with the chair.
Speaker: I'm not putting my arms down anyway.
Speaker: If you, if you have time to put your arms down, you have time to clean.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And I hate cleaning.
Speaker: I'll be sitting, I'll be standing in the kitchen, like making pasta or something like that.
Speaker: And I'll just be like leaning against the counter.
Speaker: And my wife will come into the kitchen and say, if you have time to lean, you have time to clean.
Speaker: And I'm like, I'm like, I'm, I can't, I'm watching water boil.
Speaker: It's very important.
Speaker: It's very important that I watch this.
Speaker: Keep an eye on this water.
Speaker: Keep an eye on it.
Speaker: No, usually I'm just doom scrolling through Twitter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yes, earlier I mentioned 20 minutes ago, I mentioned that we were going to be talking about Alien Isolation.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: We're talking about the book based on the Vidya game that was released in 2014.
Speaker: It's a survival horror game.
Speaker: It was developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega.
Speaker: Sega.
Speaker: And it is it is one of my favorite games of all time.
Speaker: One of mine as well.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is an amazing game.
Speaker: It's it's you you take control.
Speaker: The character is Amanda Ripley, who is the daughter of Ellen Ripley.
Speaker: And you're investigating.
Speaker: your mother's disappearance and you're on the space station and there's an alien as by the title.
Speaker: There's aliens in there and they're hunting you.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: Isolated and you're isolated.
Speaker: You're very isolated.
Speaker: Very isolated.
Speaker: But yeah, it came out.
Speaker: Yeah, it was in 2014.
Speaker: I'm surprised that there hasn't been like a sequel or a remaster or anything of the sort because they did do a mobile game based on it.
Speaker: They did a mobile game.
Speaker: They did a mobile game.
Speaker: I played it exactly one time.
Speaker: It's very Five Nights at Freddy's.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: kind of oriented where it's just, you're in the one space and you have to, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it, uh, I guess I could see the value in such a game, but, uh, no, at the same time, no, please, please.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's that's basically the game that this book is based on.
Speaker: Phil, can you can you tell me a little bit about what's his face?
Speaker: The author.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: Keith R.A.
Speaker: something something.
Speaker: He's got a he's got a lot of going on in his name.
Speaker: R.A.
Speaker: Candido.
Speaker: Candido.
Speaker: No, Keith R.A.
Speaker: Day Candido.
Speaker: God, I love that name.
Speaker: It's a great it's a very involved name, isn't it?
Speaker: It's it's got a lot of starts and stops.
Speaker: And it's and it's funny because on the on this book, it's Keith R.A.
Speaker: D. Candido.
Speaker: But when you when you do a little research of him, it very quickly just becomes Keith D. Candido, which is still.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: you know, very, you know, it's a lyrical name.
Speaker: It goes up and down.
Speaker: It's a lyrical name.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This guy is another one of our writers for hire.
Speaker: This guy has been writing for all the franchises.
Speaker: His kind of specialty, though, seems to be Star Trek.
Speaker: He has written a ton of Star Trek novels, short stories, comics, you know, novellas, all of that stuff.
Speaker: He's done a ton of it, but he's also done stuff for Farscape.
Speaker: World of Warcraft, Starcraft Ghost, Dungeons and Dragons, Stargate, Marvel, Spider-Man.
Speaker: He's done you name a franchise.
Speaker: He's probably had some take on it.
Speaker: He's done Resident Evil.
Speaker: We'll probably eventually get to some Resident Evil stuff.
Speaker: And there's non SD Perry resident evil stuff.
Speaker: There is indeed.
Speaker: It's based on the movie.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not quite.
Speaker: We might, we might eventually get to that when we're old and gray.
Speaker: That's like, that's like a copy of a copy.
Speaker: Very much so.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a Xerox of a Xerox.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, yeah.
Speaker: He's done a ton of Farscape.
Speaker: He did Buffy the vampire slayers.
Speaker: Um, he did a, he did, uh, for their novelization, he did, uh,
Speaker: Oh, what is it?
Speaker: What's this one?
Speaker: Serenity.
Speaker: That was the one.
Speaker: That to me was one that really stood out in terms of true, pure geek cred.
Speaker: If you wrote the novelization of Serenity, I feel like that's- Yeah, I don't care if you take the sky from me.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: He had the enviable duty of writing down a few tragic-
Speaker: words in a third act for that one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, I am a leaf upon the wind and.
Speaker: Pour one out for wash.
Speaker: Everybody.
Speaker: Oh, wash.
Speaker: Wash.
Speaker: Everybody.
Speaker: Sláinte.
Speaker: You know.
Speaker: So this guy's got chops.
Speaker: There is no way in hell that this show continues that we don't cover more of his work.
Speaker: He's done
Speaker: TV novelizations, video game novelizations.
Speaker: He is all over the place.
Speaker: And of course, he's done Alien Isolation, which we're going to get into it.
Speaker: But this strikes me as actually a very important novelization because my first...
Speaker: The first thing that I wanted to bring up about this was that whereas you can play Alien Isolation, the video game and not even really know all that much about the Aliens universe and enjoy it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Not so with this book.
Speaker: We're going to get into why, but you really to fully appreciate this novelization, you're going to want to know.
Speaker: Alien, at very least Alien, the film.
Speaker: And it goes deep into some canon shit that I've read this before.
Speaker: And it startled me this time around.
Speaker: I was keeping a closer eye on these things.
Speaker: I was like, oh, if this is canon, this is kind of crazy.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't have.
Speaker: I mean, I love Alien as a franchise.
Speaker: I even love the I even kind of like the bad ones.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Like even the even the bad alien movies, I'll still watch because fuck it.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What else am I going to do with this life?
Speaker: Watch John Carpenter's The Thing again.
Speaker: You think you're better than me?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're not.
Speaker: You think you're so good for head spiders?
Speaker: You're not.
Speaker: The spiders, they're on your face anyway.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, but my familiarity with the lore and the canon and all that stuff seems to come and go in my brain.
Speaker: I got too many other bits of lore in there.
Speaker: It's fair.
Speaker: There's only so much room.
Speaker: There's only so much room for lore.
Speaker: You know, a lot of it's Dark Souls.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't, for the record, I don't, I don't know if I trust geeks that have more than like,
Speaker: Three franchises worth of like solid lore in their head.
Speaker: If you when you go beyond the third one, when you start getting into like really knowing your fourth big franchise.
Speaker: There'll be dragons.
Speaker: There'll be dragons.
Speaker: We got we're getting into a whole sketchy uncharted area here.
Speaker: I don't know what it's done to your brain.
Speaker: And I worry.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: I'm not saying you've got body parts in the attic.
Speaker: I'm saying maybe.
Speaker: You know what happens if you know more than three lores, three whole lores?
Speaker: Gamergate.
Speaker: Gamergate.
Speaker: Yeah, probably.
Speaker: That's how you get a Gamergate.
Speaker: You start harassing women on the internet.
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You start harassing women on the internet.
Speaker: So keep your lores tight, people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Stick to two, three of them at tops, you know, just.
Speaker: Or none.
Speaker: Or none.
Speaker: You don't have to know.
Speaker: None at all.
Speaker: Don't care.
Speaker: You know, it's a fun thing to read.
Speaker: American theater.
Speaker: Read that and learn about, you know, what's what's going on in your regional, you know, off Broadway.
Speaker: Go to see some theater.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Go to the museum.
Speaker: Go to the museum.
Speaker: Not everything has to be lore.
Speaker: No, there are things out there.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: There's things out there.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Anyway, alien isolation.
Speaker: Having said that, let's talk about alien lore.
Speaker: Let's talk about alien isolation.
Speaker: Let's get deep into the, let's put the body in the mosh.
Speaker: That needs to be a sticker at very least.
Speaker: Let's put that.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I'm calling it now.
Speaker: We need to, that needs to be an official part of our, of our lore.
Speaker: And when we're, when we're getting into the book, when we're getting into, we're putting the body in the body in the mosh.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: It's done.
Speaker: It's done.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: You guys need to hold us accountable for this, by the way.
Speaker: If you catch us not using this terminology.
Speaker: If you catch us not saying, put the body in the mosh, you got to respond to us saying, why are you laughing?
Speaker: This isn't reality TV.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: That's the response.
Speaker: That's the response.
Speaker: You got to call us on this shit.
Speaker: We're never going to learn if you don't hold us accountable.
Speaker: That's the next line, isn't it?
Speaker: Oh, don't laugh.
Speaker: This ain't reality TV.
Speaker: Don't laugh.
Speaker: This ain't reality TV.
Speaker: We're really working on, we got two super cuts coming up.
Speaker: One is going to be a 40K and the other one's going
Speaker: It's inevitable that in 2023 we got new things coming down the pipeline.
Speaker: We're not going to get into it now, but we've got it's going to be a cool year for us.
Speaker: And if one of those isn't just a live stream of us watching The Departed, what have we done with our lives?
Speaker: And saying the lines as you're said on the screen, there's no you're not going to get anything out of the live stream other than that.
Speaker: So Alien Isolation, let's put the body in the mosh.
Speaker: Let's put the body in the mosh.
Speaker: So we start with a prologue section and chapter one, which
Speaker: Structurally, first off, prologues to me normally, historically, are like the Roman numeral pages.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, so you skip prologues is what you're saying.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: I don't always skip prologues, but to me, they're kind of like denoted as skippable, you know?
Speaker: Skip option.
Speaker: It's a side quest for the book.
Speaker: Hold X to skip.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You don't necessarily need it.
Speaker: No, this prologue is just basically part zero of the book.
Speaker: If you are familiar with the game, this section will seem very familiar to you.
Speaker: Just it's weird where it's where it's been put is very different than from where it is in the game.
Speaker: So chapter one, we get background on the salvage vessel and Nisadora and her crew.
Speaker: We got Captain Marlow and one of his techs, Lewis, and they're discussing the discovery of the Nostromo's flight recorder.
Speaker: They then begin picking up a distress beacon from LV426, which is a very central one bit of lore.
Speaker: I do know that's a very central planet.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Kind of an important one.
Speaker: Kind of an important one.
Speaker: LV-426 was on the Nostromo's flight path, according to the flight plan they found in the flight log recorder.
Speaker: And they're like, you know what?
Speaker: We're going to go.
Speaker: We're going to make our way to that planet.
Speaker: They then figure it out that the Nostromo could not possibly be on that planet based on the information they extract from the recorder.
Speaker: And we're like, they're like, you know what?
Speaker: We're going to go down there anyway.
Speaker: We're going to check it out because Nostromo stopped there.
Speaker: We know they stopped there.
Speaker: So there must be something important down there.
Speaker: Good Lord, help these folks.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I've read a lot of alien novelizations and just alien extended universe books.
Speaker: It is one of my favorite franchises.
Speaker: And it's always the same.
Speaker: It's always the same.
Speaker: And it never stops being fun.
Speaker: It never stops being fun.
Speaker: It never does.
Speaker: So chapter two of the prologue.
Speaker: The crew is getting their stuff together.
Speaker: They land the ship.
Speaker: They exit the ship only to see that there is a big old ship out there that's crash landed.
Speaker: And it definitely is not the Nostromo.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And in chapter three, we get some descriptions of the ship.
Speaker: It's it's definitely alien.
Speaker: It's huge.
Speaker: It's huge.
Speaker: They're walking through it.
Speaker: They're investigating it.
Speaker: They get to the the iconic room from the original movie.
Speaker: They get in there.
Speaker: They have the navigator and the seat and the turret and all that stuff.
Speaker: And they're looking around.
Speaker: And then Foster, who is Marlo's wife.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Starts looking around and she's like, hey, guys, come over and take a look at this.
Speaker: I found some wet eggs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Good news, guys.
Speaker: Wet eggs.
Speaker: Wet eggs.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Keith DeCandido does not spare any words describing their wetness or sliminess or claminess.
Speaker: Or their egg-titude.
Speaker: Or their egg-titude in this section.
Speaker: He had his rhyming dictionary and his thesaurus and everything.
Speaker: He was like, yeah, all of those words.
Speaker: Put them all in.
Speaker: Wet Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.
Speaker: Dr. DeCandido.
Speaker: Dr. DeCandido.
Speaker: DeCandido, by the way, sounds like some sort of Cuban jazz that Count Basie.
Speaker: It sounds like a Cuban jazz song that Count Basie would have played in the 1940s.
Speaker: It's time for the DeCandido.
Speaker: Um, so Foster leans over the wet egg, looks directly down at the wet egg.
Speaker: In my notes, I have never leaned over a wet looking egg.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is such a rookie mistake.
Speaker: Rule number one in alien movies.
Speaker: Just the alien franchise or really any sci fi wet eggs.
Speaker: Don't look directly down over them.
Speaker: You can look at them from the side.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: 20 feet distance is always nice.
Speaker: You could get some distance and look down at it.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: We're not really sure the propulsion, the strength.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think they're spring loaded per se.
Speaker: So I don't know.
Speaker: My guts tell me, you know, 20 feet, probably 20 feet.
Speaker: 20 feet and you're safe.
Speaker: Just to be safe.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, honestly, if we're being honest here, if we're splitting hairs, 10 is probably mostly okay, but there's always an outlier, people.
Speaker: Don't be an outlier.
Speaker: You don't want to be the wet egg outlier.
Speaker: No, you don't want to be.
Speaker: You know what happens next?
Speaker: Facehugger out the egg on her face.
Speaker: They bring her back to the ship, despite one of the crew members is like, no, we got a quarantiner.
Speaker: And so, yeah, Marlis, one person with a good idea.
Speaker: Marlo is like, she's my wife.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: And, you know, that's the end of that.
Speaker: And that's that.
Speaker: We cut to part one determination.
Speaker: Now, that entire segment takes place.
Speaker: I want to say that entire segment actually takes place after.
Speaker: the, we get to the end of part one, like where part one ends in the book is actually where this segment takes place in the game when she finds the Nostromo flight recorder.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think, yeah, that's, that's happening.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: That is happening.
Speaker: Um, at the same time as our introduction to, uh,
Speaker: Ripley.
Speaker: So that's happening beforehand.
Speaker: Chronologically, this is the same sound.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: No, no, I get it.
Speaker: I just I'm just saying in the game when you play it, it's a flashback.
Speaker: Yeah, sorry.
Speaker: I was thinking of the book.
Speaker: Yeah, no, no.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That all that you basically it's honestly my favorite part of the game.
Speaker: You get this interlude.
Speaker: I want to say halfway through the game.
Speaker: It feels like it was halfway through the game.
Speaker: I haven't played it in a year or so, but
Speaker: And you find yourself on that planet, you know, and you get to relive the space jockey and all that shit.
Speaker: And then, yeah, you get the face hugger.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's, I love that part of the game.
Speaker: God, it's fun.
Speaker: Such a good game.
Speaker: So we're in part one now, which is called Determination.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And we're in chapter four.
Speaker: We are introduced to Amanda Ripley, the very cynical daughter of Ellen Ripley.
Speaker: Just cynicism abounds and with good reason.
Speaker: She's a mechanic.
Speaker: She's a mechanic.
Speaker: She lives on the moon and she works on a bunch of different types of ships and engines and whatnot.
Speaker: She's very, very good at her job.
Speaker: And when we meet her, she is a little bit bummed that her friend Zula has shipped out without giving her a heads up.
Speaker: Now question for you.
Speaker: It's written kind of like in circles is Zula, her girlfriend or just a friend because the way it's written is seems like it's like it's 2014 and we're trying to toe a line.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and, and honestly, they, they take a pretty strong stance on not coding, uh,
Speaker: Amanda Ripley in the same way that Ellen Ripley was with Ellen.
Speaker: You know, it's like she was a tough, you know, tough broad, but there was still a level of, you know, sexuality to her when it came to men and stuff like that.
Speaker: We saw that.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: You know, it's hinted at an alien.
Speaker: It's, you know, and aliens and Alien 3.
Speaker: What am I talking about?
Speaker: It's all of them.
Speaker: She likes the boys and ain't nothing wrong with that.
Speaker: We do not get a similar thing with Amanda.
Speaker: And yeah, I think you might be right.
Speaker: I think we might be.
Speaker: I think there might be some queer coding here for
Speaker: her daughter.
Speaker: Yeah, it's very, very, very faint queer coding for Amanda, but again, not really explicit in the text.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: There is one line later in the book that makes me think more so about it than this opening section, and we'll talk about it when it comes up, but yeah.
Speaker: But I was like, oh, that would be badass.
Speaker: But it seems like it's kind of a half measure here.
Speaker: Yes, and it certainly doesn't match with what we don't even get the slightest hint of that in the game.
Speaker: So it might be DeCandido trying to have some fun with it.
Speaker: Trying to put a little bit of zest into it.
Speaker: Yeah, a little queer spice.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: All of this before Samuels comes in is added material.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Because the first scene of the game is actually this scene where Samuels, Samuels interrupts her work and is like, hey, we found something that might lead to the lead to your mother.
Speaker: And she really is no interested in fucking around with Weyland-Yutani stuff.
Speaker: Samuels is like, we're going to check it out to Sevastopol Station, me and another executive.
Speaker: You're free to come along or not.
Speaker: You know, that's your choice.
Speaker: And and and Samuels, by far, if you are to me, Samuels is one of my favorite characters in in the game.
Speaker: He is a legit good dude.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So one of a few.
Speaker: One of a few.
Speaker: So he he invites her.
Speaker: She thinks about it.
Speaker: She's like, all right, fine.
Speaker: I'm doing it.
Speaker: We move on to chapter five and Amanda has been in cryosleep and she's having dreams of her mother.
Speaker: And they're like these little snippets from her childhood.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Her father, her mother and her bio dad splitting up, which I believe his name was Alex.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then her mother and her stepfather, Paul, and their relationship.
Speaker: And Paul, for all intents and purposes, was there since, you know, Amanda could really remember things.
Speaker: But their relationship is just deteriorating over time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because Paul had been in her life for so long.
Speaker: Once they do get a divorce, yeah.
Speaker: You know, like the custody does end up kind of split between Ellen Ripley and Paul.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also her mom is going on longer and longer trips to pay off their debts.
Speaker: And then she wakes up.
Speaker: And then in the kitchenette, she talks to Nina Taylor, who is the other Weyland-Yutani executive.
Speaker: She's a lawyer.
Speaker: And Amanda is talking about hypersleep.
Speaker: And Amanda's like, all right, basically, Amanda begins opening up to her.
Speaker: And in chapter six is a full flashback to Amanda's childhood.
Speaker: Basically, the moments leading up to Ellen Ripley's disappearance from her perspective.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Amanda was young and her mom comes home from one trip and says, I'm going again in a month and I'm going to be gone for two years, which...
Speaker: Whew, that's a lot to put on a kid.
Speaker: A nine-year-old, yeah.
Speaker: I'm going for two years and I'm leaving you with your alcoholic stepfather.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they do a good job of, and this is what I was, this is the stuff that I was getting at earlier when I said that this feels like an important
Speaker: novelization and just an important book in the alien lore simply because none of this is in the video game.
Speaker: None of this.
Speaker: You're just playing Ellen Ripley's kid looking for a mom, you know, for all intents and purposes, she might as well be
Speaker: just a stand in for Ellen Ripley.
Speaker: Um, and that's awesome.
Speaker: And, and, and we do get to know her character and everything, but this is a novelization of a video game that basically introduces a huge lore dump, uh, for Ellen Ripley.
Speaker: We find out about the father of her child.
Speaker: We find out about her, uh,
Speaker: you know, second husband and her daughter and the, the, the circumstances surrounding that.
Speaker: And it, it's a very big deal, uh, because they, they don't, you know, Ellen's issue with motherhood, not issue, but her, her troubles with being a mom and, and wanting to continue that feeling as this, that franchise goes on, uh,
Speaker: it doesn't, you know, they, they, it's not, those movies weren't made in the 21st century and therefore they didn't feel the need to over explain every little detail of her character, which is something we do now.
Speaker: And so this is a, to me, this section of the book is a very, very big deal because it might be the only, as far as I know, it might be the only example of background on Ellen Ripley's
Speaker: before all the shit hit the fan.
Speaker: It's really, really the fact that I don't know if I got to do that.
Speaker: in a video game novelization, I'd probably be pretty fucking excited.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're like, you get to create whole cloth.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The, the background and child, like pre alien background for Ellen Ripley.
Speaker: This iconic character.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's huge.
Speaker: That is huge.
Speaker: So very cool stuff.
Speaker: It's really, very interesting.
Speaker: And so they're there's they meet with they take her.
Speaker: Amanda, Ellen and Paul go to the station when Ellen is leaving.
Speaker: They meet Captain Dallas.
Speaker: while they're leaving and Paul is none too impressed with Captain Dallas because he's like you're fucking him aren't you and first of all Paul you guys are divorced like just simmer down settle it's not you that's not your wife anymore motherfucker chill but in his in Paul's defense Kevin who among us
Speaker: wouldn't be deeply intimidated by Tom Skerritt and his prime.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Tom Skerritt and his prime?
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: That face could cut glass.
Speaker: You can't win.
Speaker: You can't win.
Speaker: You find out your ex is with Tom Skerritt, even if she's just hanging with him?
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: He could just glare you to death.
Speaker: Those eyes?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Ugh.
Speaker: Burn a cavity right through your fucking face.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And he's charming on top of everything.
Speaker: And he's charming.
Speaker: And he's charming.
Speaker: Captain Dallas is great.
Speaker: You watch that movie, you can't tell me Captain Dallas isn't great.
Speaker: Yeah, you can't tell me that, like...
Speaker: long nights on the Nostromo in the cold dead of space that he wouldn't like put his arms around you and just make you feel so safe, you know, despite the fact that you were just eons away from humanity and life and the sun and that he could make you feel like you were one of the suns and that he was a planet rotating around you, making you just feel full of wonder and full of
Speaker: I don't feel so good.
Speaker: Might need a break.
Speaker: Might need to step away and look up some pictures of Tom Skerritt.
Speaker: I'm not Googling Tom Skerritt.
Speaker: So each message between as they're after they take off, they're sending messages to each other.
Speaker: Each message, there's a longer and longer gap between the messages as as the ship moves further away from Earth.
Speaker: And it keeps ending with the same repeated, like heartbreaking line, which is see you when I'm 11.
Speaker: Because that was the promise that Ellen gave to Amanda is that she would see her when she turned 11.
Speaker: And it's just every message has that.
Speaker: I'll see you when you're 11.
Speaker: I'll see you when I'm 11.
Speaker: And it's like, it's like, oh, yeah, God, that's yeah, it's you.
Speaker: Do you know what else I noticed, though, in this section of the video?
Speaker: Are they video messages?
Speaker: I don't remember.
Speaker: I'm not sure.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: I don't think it's clear.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Do you notice how, like, at times, Ellen Ripley kind of, like, talks to her kid like she's her personal diary?
Speaker: There's a level of, oh, no.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: The puppy's gone running.
Speaker: Puppies gone running.
Speaker: Puppies gone running.
Speaker: No, she's there are several moments in the logs where like she's talking to her nine year old daughter and being like, yeah, we're having a meeting with over this guy, but he's a pain in the ass.
Speaker: He's always a pain in the ass.
Speaker: Like she's talking to her like she's bitching with like a coworker over lunch at times.
Speaker: And her kid's like, okay, mommy, I'll see you when I'm 11.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'll see you when I'm 40 or something, I guess.
Speaker: I'll see you in several years.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, what's that?
Speaker: Oh, I'm going to I'm going to forget the name of the of the book.
Speaker: There's this one sci fi book.
Speaker: It's it's it's written by who's the guy that's kind of like the Starship Troopers guy, but not really.
Speaker: Well, not Heinlein then.
Speaker: Yeah, no, not Heinlein.
Speaker: Are you talking about the dude who wrote The Forever War?
Speaker: The forever war.
Speaker: Forever war.
Speaker: Yeah, Joe Haldeman.
Speaker: Joe Haldeman.
Speaker: So forever war, I kept thinking about the forever war, which is wild because of the time dilation stuff that is talked about in it, where like these people would go and leave on trips and then for them, like it would only have been a month.
Speaker: And when they get back to Earth, it'll have been years.
Speaker: have passed because of the faster than light travel.
Speaker: And I kept thinking about that as I was reading this section.
Speaker: It's not exactly the same, but it reminded me about that passage of time being lost.
Speaker: That's always such an interesting theme with anytime you're dealing with hyperspace and you're dealing with faster than light travel and that kind of thing.
Speaker: It's
Speaker: I remember I haven't read that book in years.
Speaker: I'm gonna have to give that one another look.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Forever War is really good except for anything to do with LGBTQ stuff.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Really, really, really fucking bad for that stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Really terrible.
Speaker: And the author,
Speaker: To his credit, Haldeman has said, oh, I would not write it that way.
Speaker: Like, I wouldn't have written it that way had I known, you know.
Speaker: Oh, that's good.
Speaker: At least there's that.
Speaker: Like, he regrets that it was... He didn't double down on it or anything like that.
Speaker: He didn't double down, no.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: He's like... That's the thing.
Speaker: I think about that all the time.
Speaker: I'm like, you know, times change and they change fast.
Speaker: Because he wrote Forever War in the 70s, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And like, who knows?
Speaker: You know, I know that there is stuff out there of things of...
Speaker: You know, we all have things that we've said or done that, you know, wouldn't travel well, let's say over time.
Speaker: And the only thing you can do in that situation is go, I fuck if I had to do it over.
Speaker: I wouldn't say that.
Speaker: That's all you need to do.
Speaker: That's all you need to know.
Speaker: It's like, like, here's here's my here's my tip for life.
Speaker: You know, a lot of people say live with no regrets.
Speaker: I say live with a lot of regrets because that shows you fucking care.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You gave a shit.
Speaker: You gave a shit.
Speaker: I have no regrets.
Speaker: Huh?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: No, you should regret some of the things you've done.
Speaker: You might.
Speaker: You should be able to.
Speaker: You should wish you could have done better and use that to inform your behavior going forward.
Speaker: Fuck.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because otherwise you're just suggesting I always had it right.
Speaker: Period.
Speaker: No regrets.
Speaker: Get the fuck out of here with no regrets.
Speaker: Get out of here with your no regrets.
Speaker: No regrets spelled with an R-A-G-R-A-T-S.
Speaker: That tattoo.
Speaker: Ragrets.
Speaker: Ragrets.
Speaker: So on the day, okay, so one night-
Speaker: After they had lost contact, a Weyland-Yutani employee comes to the house and informs Paul that they are riding off the ship.
Speaker: Like, it's as a total loss.
Speaker: And Paul's like, bad.
Speaker: She's a bitch anyway.
Speaker: Because Paul's drunk.
Speaker: It is fucked up.
Speaker: And Amanda's listening to this.
Speaker: And Paul is just being like, I've been the only one who's parenting this girl.
Speaker: She's always gone anyway.
Speaker: What difference does it make?
Speaker: It's
Speaker: Okay, Paul.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: Okay, Paul.
Speaker: On the day that Ellen was supposed to return, Amanda goes to the starport where the ship was supposed to land.
Speaker: And Paul, there's like a security guy who calls and Paul comes and picks her up.
Speaker: And Paul shows some tenderness in this moment.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He actually shows some tenderness towards Amanda.
Speaker: Like, you know, we got to go, honey.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: They do that a couple of times in this section where it's like Paul one second is very sweet in his own way and that kind of thing.
Speaker: And then he's just a fucking drunken monster.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like when he's sober, he seems like an all right dude.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then he just has this other side of being drunk and just he's not physically abusive.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: But he's very just vulgar and shitty, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just emotionally abusive.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's that's the end of Chapter six.
Speaker: We're in Chapter seven now.
Speaker: And Taylor thanks Amanda for confiding all that to her.
Speaker: And then Amanda goes to talk to Samuels, who mentions how valuable Taylor will be in negotiating a new release of the cargo, because everything is going to go perfectly.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: And we meet Verlaine.
Speaker: Verlaine is the captain of the ship.
Speaker: And while they're standing on the deck, something clearly has gone wrong.
Speaker: The the place where the the the ship is supposed to land is it.
Speaker: It's not open.
Speaker: They can't dock.
Speaker: And only static is coming from the from Sevastopol.
Speaker: They can't hear anything.
Speaker: There is a there is some sort of communication going out, but it's not clear.
Speaker: So they decided to do a spacewalk over to Sevastopol.
Speaker: And it's not that far of a spacewalk.
Speaker: You know, they can they can get there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they shoot one of those little cables over from the ship to Sevastopol station.
Speaker: And Taylor is losing her goddamn mind because she is a lawyer.
Speaker: Everybody.
Speaker: She does not know how to do a spacewalk.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Samuels has done spacewalks.
Speaker: Ripley has done spacewalks.
Speaker: Taylor.
Speaker: No spacewalks for Taylor.
Speaker: No spacewalks for Taylor.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: halfway across, this part of the station blows up.
Speaker: And we find out in chapter eight, it comes and it snaps the cable and they go flying all which way everywhere.
Speaker: They're headed.
Speaker: Chaos ensues.
Speaker: And Amanda crashes into an opening in the station, into an airlock.
Speaker: The comms, her comm system is completely busted.
Speaker: So she can't talk to Samuels or Taylor, who ended up clearly somewhere else.
Speaker: And she can't talk to the Torrens.
Speaker: And she begins walking through the station and it is a mess.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: First of all, there's nobody around when she first gets in there.
Speaker: It's and everything, you know, the electricity is going on and off.
Speaker: You know, displays are...
Speaker: you know, buzzing out of sync.
Speaker: Things are getting weird.
Speaker: And as she's walking around, she finds a dead body with a maintenance jack, which is your handy maintenance jack that you use throughout the game.
Speaker: Basically to open the vents as a weapon sometimes.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Never by choice, but desperation.
Speaker: Never by choice, but by desperation.
Speaker: And then she gets jumped by a gentleman with a gun.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: This man, this is chapter nine now, this man's name is Axel, and he is desperate to get off the station because there's a killer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This always drove me crazy.
Speaker: There's a killer out there.
Speaker: It's like, is that really the word for it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is in Keith R.A.
Speaker: DeCandido's word.
Speaker: This is how he says it in the game, where he goes to a man who's like, there's a killer out there.
Speaker: And we're like, he really downplays whatever the fuck it is.
Speaker: He just says it's a killer.
Speaker: He doesn't say it's a monster.
Speaker: He knows it's a monster.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But he just goes.
Speaker: And he knows it's a killer.
Speaker: He just calls it a killer.
Speaker: He chooses not to.
Speaker: He's just like, he leaves out penis head shit.
Speaker: Like he just, but he's just like, no, it's a killer out there.
Speaker: They put MSG in the noodles.
Speaker: We're all going to die.
Speaker: We're all going to, it's going to, it's going to hypertension.
Speaker: Is he a pirate?
Speaker: I forget what his accent is.
Speaker: I think he's cocked me.
Speaker: Yar.
Speaker: There'll be a killer here.
Speaker: Tell me something else about the killer.
Speaker: No, no, there's no time.
Speaker: There's no time to explain.
Speaker: Let's go.
Speaker: Let's find your ship and your crewmate, sir.
Speaker: So they they run into another pair of survivors and Axel immediately escalates things beyond where they need to be escalated by drawing a gun on them, which seems to be his go to move.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's got one move, basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: These two survivors were fixing an elevator.
Speaker: And after a brief encounter, they leave.
Speaker: They're like, all right, well, we're going to go on this elevator now.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We're meeting you and everything.
Speaker: They and and they come around to a group of well-armed individuals.
Speaker: Now, this is a kind of a most of the game is going to be stealth.
Speaker: You're going to be doing a lot of stealthy stuff in the game.
Speaker: In this moment, this is one of the first real stealth moments of the game to be like.
Speaker: Oh, here's how you stealth.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is that scene in the book.
Speaker: They come across a bunch of individuals.
Speaker: They're kind of hanging around this lobby area.
Speaker: And you have to.
Speaker: Amanda goes through some vents and she sneaks around and then she fucks with their generator.
Speaker: So they're like, oh, somebody fucked with generator.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then her and Axel continue on.
Speaker: And they get to like, there's like a brief puzzle room or whatever where they both have to hit a button at the same time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Axel, they hit the buttons.
Speaker: They open the door and Axel gets hit in the head with a crowbar to a guy, a guy named Jenkins.
Speaker: His name's Jenkins.
Speaker: We do hear a name.
Speaker: This is important.
Speaker: This is important because Jenkins is going to fucking die.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We want you to get to know Jenkins really well because he won't be here in one and a half pages.
Speaker: So Amanda knocks Jenkins out with her wrench.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then Axel shoots the guy in the fucking face.
Speaker: And then they get away.
Speaker: And Amanda is not too happy about Axel's decisions.
Speaker: She's shocked.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's shocked.
Speaker: She's alarmed.
Speaker: Like we didn't actually need to kill him.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And now the people see that they killed Jenkins and opened fire on them.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: So they're running, they get away, and they're arguing.
Speaker: They're arguing about what just happened here.
Speaker: You know, like, why you kill that guy?
Speaker: And Axe is like, it's, yar, it's kill or be killed.
Speaker: It's about survival.
Speaker: It's about survival.
Speaker: You ever, you ever, you ever listen to a ghost story, Amanda?
Speaker: Well, you're in one.
Speaker: I'm Jeffrey Rush.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: I really need this work, please.
Speaker: Just let me keep being in pirate movies.
Speaker: Let me be the pirate with the pirate face.
Speaker: I mean, he is.
Speaker: He was born to play that role.
Speaker: Let's face facts.
Speaker: You can't see Jeffrey Rush in the pirates movies and then see him in something else.
Speaker: Jeffrey Rush is that pirate doing in this.
Speaker: Yeah, Jeff, he has a fatal case.
Speaker: He has a fatal case of pirate face.
Speaker: He really does.
Speaker: Is he still alive?
Speaker: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I feel like I would know deep down inside.
Speaker: I didn't know he was Australian.
Speaker: Wild.
Speaker: Yeah, he's still alive.
Speaker: Still alive.
Speaker: 71.
Speaker: He is younger than I thought he was.
Speaker: I thought he was like 85.
Speaker: He is only 71.
Speaker: He is a bare minimum of a minimum a decade younger than I thought he was.
Speaker: jeffrey rush fit just too much pirate face too much you got a pirate face jeffrey you look like you've been sailing the high seas since you were 15 you done good with your career jeff but man hey you put it to good use yeah especially in uh house the uh house on haunted hill or no the haunting of hill house whichever one of the fucking movies that came out in 1998 where you play vincent price you remember that when he oh god i
Speaker: when he played a guy who was like he played the Vincent Price role from.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that was.
Speaker: And Chris Kattan was in that movie anyway.
Speaker: It's a weird time.
Speaker: It was a weird time.
Speaker: It's a weird time in movies and movie history.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, Alien fucking kills Axel while this discussion, by the way.
Speaker: Alien sees an opportunity for some poetic justice.
Speaker: I just kill.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: A tail burst through his chest.
Speaker: We don't know if it was the alien yet.
Speaker: We'll have alleged alien.
Speaker: The alleged alien.
Speaker: It's because before he dies, Axel goes, oh, it's the killer.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: I feel like there's more information you could be offering, sir.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I realized that we haven't had all the time in the world to chat, but it's been more than a few minutes.
Speaker: And as my heart beats his last blood, I have one thing to say.
Speaker: This is the killer and I regret nothing.
Speaker: This is the killer.
Speaker: Oh, no, it's the killer.
Speaker: And you're like, are you?
Speaker: Does that word mean something different up here?
Speaker: No, I don't think so.
Speaker: Up here, killers slang for a monster with a head like an eggplant and a secondary set of teeth.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: I see what happened.
Speaker: I think the disconnect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Every, cause you know, they're just texting each other.
Speaker: The, the eggplant emoji.
Speaker: And it means something different in the Sevastopol station.
Speaker: Totally different.
Speaker: Totally different.
Speaker: It's not nearly as sexy.
Speaker: Not nearly as sexy.
Speaker: Or is it?
Speaker: I mean, kind of a little, but not all, not all, not for everyone.
Speaker: Not all.
Speaker: Not for everybody.
Speaker: But,
Speaker: Don't knock it till you try it.
Speaker: That's all I'm saying.
Speaker: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker: So chapter 11.
Speaker: Actually, you know, there's this moment, and it's one of my favorite moments of the game after this happens.
Speaker: Basically, you run away from, you run down the hallway, you press the button to hit the tram, and the music's just like being really tense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you're just like standing there waiting for the tram to get there.
Speaker: And it's just taking forever.
Speaker: Takes forever.
Speaker: And I remember the first time I played it, like I was like, ah, and I ran into tram and hit the button.
Speaker: I was like, I was.
Speaker: The first time I played Alien Isolation, that whole section, I may have crept along so slow.
Speaker: It took me like an hour or something like that to get through that section.
Speaker: And then I remember playing it a second time.
Speaker: I was actually doing it on Twitch.
Speaker: And I played through it.
Speaker: And I knew what was going to happen, so I wasn't as afraid.
Speaker: And I was surprised to find that that whole section takes maybe 15 minutes.
Speaker: If you're not creeping and going as slow as possible at every given opportunity, it's really not that long of a section.
Speaker: And I think if you wait too long, you can get killed by the alien in that part.
Speaker: Oh, that's funny.
Speaker: I'm not sure.
Speaker: Or if you're like, if you wait too long to get on the tram or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she gets on the tram.
Speaker: She gets out of there and she arrives at the next spire.
Speaker: And this is the part where I was thinking about the because she has this internal monologue about regretting leaving, you know, Luna or the moon.
Speaker: And she's
Speaker: She also regrets if she regrets leaving Luna.
Speaker: She's like, I had my job there.
Speaker: I had Zula there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, maybe that's reinforcing the very slight queer coding that we have.
Speaker: But yeah, I think, I think if, if, if you walked away from that first part of it going, I don't know, that's a bit of a stretch.
Speaker: I think that second one kind of just confirms it, you know, you just,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, yeah, I don't think a lot of people do that.
Speaker: It's like I used to have my pal back there, you know, my pal.
Speaker: That's my pal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They were just roommates.
Speaker: Yeah, they were roommates.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she enters a large room and sees a woman kicking one of the bulkheads.
Speaker: And Amanda is just like, oh, another person.
Speaker: And then she makes a sound and the woman points a gun at her.
Speaker: Amanda ducks and the woman goes to find find help.
Speaker: And then Amanda's like, well, I'm going to steal her shit.
Speaker: So he steals.
Speaker: She steals the thing that the woman was using this little.
Speaker: It's it's it's something that it's the it's the hack tool that you use.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she gets away from them and she goes down a spiral staircase and she finds herself in a tech support room.
Speaker: And the flight recorder of the Nostromo is right there.
Speaker: And when she enters the code to open it up, it says it has no data.
Speaker: Dun, dun, dun.
Speaker: So everything, everything she's fought for so far is, it's been pointless.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she's, that's the end of part one.
Speaker: That's the end of part one.
Speaker: It's, it's good.
Speaker: I mean, I like it.
Speaker: It's, it's very, it's provides a, it moves through the game sections really briskly so far.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think of most of the books we've read this, this one might be right up there with, if you didn't know any better, I don't think there's any reason that you would have known that this was based on a video game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We we've read through, you know, take, um,
Speaker: uh, Halo, the flood, for example, that's a really good example where it's like, there's a good healthy mixture of non video game stuff and video game stuff, but it's pretty clear, you know, it's like, okay, background, background, and then level, level, level, level.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We're through the level now.
Speaker: Here's some original stuff and now level, level, level.
Speaker: And it's, it, it, it falls into a pattern you can kind of follow.
Speaker: Uh, right.
Speaker: Not so much with this so far.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So and the one thing I'll point out is something I didn't I guess I didn't realize when I played the game, because when the game you get to the Nostromo flight recorder and there's no data and she she's upset earlier in the prologue, there was data on the front flight recorder.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: And it's the data that points them to LV 426.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So clearly somebody has already has scrubbed the data from the flight recorder already.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: With the information on LV 426.
Speaker: We don't really know.
Speaker: Who at this point?
Speaker: Because it's the Weyland, the Weyland-Yutani staff who owns the flight recorder are going there right now to get it.
Speaker: So it's not Weyland-Yutani that has the information.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It makes maybe it's like a Seegsen person or something like that.
Speaker: I don't I don't really know.
Speaker: But yeah, so I think that was a that was an interesting wrinkle that I actually never put together before.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a clever moment.
Speaker: I really like it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, if that's all we have to say on the book so far, I have one question for you.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: I feel like I got to burp.
Speaker: Okay, burp first and then ask your question.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, well, I actually finally got started on Stray.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Kitty cat.
Speaker: I'm playing the super good boy cat who looks suspiciously like my cat Jonesy upsettingly like him, in fact.
Speaker: And it's making me play the game harder and more for keeps than any edition of XCOM I've ever played where I named to the characters after my friends and family.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And I'm really enjoying it so far.
Speaker: It's your very good boy, Jonesy.
Speaker: My very good boy, Jonesy.
Speaker: And I crumbled over how well they were.
Speaker: Oopsie Jonesy's out there.
Speaker: They heard him.
Speaker: No, every time the design of the cat and the movements and the sound effects, I got the achievement for making the cat meow a hundred times, I think about 10 minutes into playing the game.
Speaker: You found that dedicated meow button.
Speaker: I found that dedicated meow button.
Speaker: I abused it.
Speaker: I abused the privilege.
Speaker: And no, I know it's not a very long game.
Speaker: I think I'm about...
Speaker: a third of the way through it or so.
Speaker: I really like the world.
Speaker: I like the way it looks.
Speaker: I like the way the game feels and plays.
Speaker: I'm really enjoying it so far.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: I'm glad I got around to it.
Speaker: It's, it's really, really enjoyable.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: And I, and I just can't stop playing against the storm that's become, yeah, that, that I, a game hasn't gotten its hooks into me that much sense.
Speaker: Vampire survivors.
Speaker: Like this is your, this has become your everyday game, right?
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: I adore it.
Speaker: I've gotten a, this is how, you know, because you know, you have to do certain achievements basically to unlock new things.
Speaker: And so I've got my little notebook here.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: And I write down some of it.
Speaker: Like, these are the most achievable things based on where I am.
Speaker: So let's keep it here so I can cross them off the list.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I've got it handy.
Speaker: That game is going to be a game of the year for me without a shadow of doubt in my mind.
Speaker: Bear in mind, folks, we're recording this before we've recorded our game of the year.
Speaker: Game of the year.
Speaker: Yeah, we're recording this in December 2022 for January 2023.
Speaker: And our game of the year episode will have been the week before this episode comes out.
Speaker: So, you know, bear with us.
Speaker: If Against the Storm isn't on my game of the year list, then they did something.
Speaker: they hurt me somehow they hurt you somehow hurt me somehow but that's that's what i'm doing uh kevin what are you playing look first look at this tiny little dog look at that tiny dog she's so tiny you're so small how do you even function you're so small so little oh you're trying to get up on the bed and you can't i think my cats might be bigger than your dog
Speaker: Well, Brayden is 10 pounds and Bella is probably 12 pounds.
Speaker: OK, well, maybe not then.
Speaker: Maybe not.
Speaker: Just just from just from the camera angle then.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, she's small, but she's she's thick.
Speaker: Well, yeah, I can relate.
Speaker: She's a thick little chihuahua.
Speaker: Thick princess.
Speaker: Yeah, so what am I playing?
Speaker: What aren't I playing?
Speaker: I am playing Marvel Snap all the time.
Speaker: I got a deck that I'm really loving right now.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Congratulations, Bella.
Speaker: You got.
Speaker: Oh, she made it.
Speaker: Look at look at her.
Speaker: She made it.
Speaker: Look at them.
Speaker: You're such a big, strong girl.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: You made it, Bella.
Speaker: We're proud of you.
Speaker: Uncle Phil's proud of you, Bella.
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: Yeah, she doesn't like me very much.
Speaker: I'm a cat owner.
Speaker: I can relate.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Most cat owners can.
Speaker: Brighton.
Speaker: Brighton's my good boy.
Speaker: He's right up all up on me.
Speaker: But Bella's like, nah, not a fan.
Speaker: Not a fan of you.
Speaker: Not my cup of tea.
Speaker: Not a fan of you and your face.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Your face specifically bothers me.
Speaker: Your face specifically bothers me.
Speaker: But yes, I'm playing Marvel Snap.
Speaker: I have a deck that I built that I'm really, really loving so far.
Speaker: It's based around Dracula and the Infinaut.
Speaker: So basically, Dracula is a 4-0.
Speaker: And at the end of the game, you discard a card from your hands.
Speaker: And Dracula gets that power.
Speaker: Oh, and you're aiming to get the Infinonot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the, yeah, the Infinonot's a 620 and you can't play the Infinonot if you have played something the turn before.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: I get Dracula out in turn four or five or something.
Speaker: You know, I play normally and I have Dracula out.
Speaker: The other card I have in my deck is America Chavez, who shows up.
Speaker: She shows up on turn six.
Speaker: So what happens is on turn six, I play America Chavez in one lane and she's a she's a nine power and I have Dracula in the other lane.
Speaker: And if I've played my cards right,
Speaker: I only have I'm only holding the infinite.
Speaker: So the infinite gets discarded and suddenly the opponent is bamboozled by Dracula from going going from a zero power to a 20 power right at the very end of the game.
Speaker: Like the last second of the game, he goes to 20.
Speaker: That's pretty harsh.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's I love it.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: You can't you can't you can't do anything.
Speaker: Oh, great.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: The other thing I'm playing is another Marvel card game.
Speaker: Midnight Suns.
Speaker: Tell me about this game.
Speaker: Tell me about.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Made by Firaxis, right?
Speaker: Makers of XCOM.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And Civilization.
Speaker: It's Sid Meier's company.
Speaker: All that good stuff.
Speaker: Man, my guys.
Speaker: Love these guys.
Speaker: Love these guys.
Speaker: The team that worked on Midnight Signs is specifically the team in Firaxis who makes XCOM.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It is a tactics...
Speaker: based card game where you are playing Marvel superheroes and you're you're on the field, but it's not grid based.
Speaker: OK, so you have your your characters, you have your enemies and each turn you draw another card.
Speaker: So you'll have like a few cards to start with and you'll you'll draw more cards and each of the cards is an ability.
Speaker: So for some characters have
Speaker: have to have at least one of each type of ability.
Speaker: So one's an attack, one's never got the term.
Speaker: It might be like a spell or something like that.
Speaker: And one is a heroic ability, which in order to play that, you have to have charged up your hero meter.
Speaker: So playing regular cards charges up the hero meter and then the heroic ability usually does something special.
Speaker: It depletes a little bit of the hero meter, but it does something cool.
Speaker: So for like Iron Man, for example,
Speaker: If you play, there's a card that it's like it's like a strafing run or something like that.
Speaker: It uses like three hero points from the hero meter, but he attacks literally every enemy on the field.
Speaker: Like he goes up in the air and he hits everybody.
Speaker: The other thing that's really cool about it is they've created all these enemies that are just kind of like I was talking to James Hot Sider and he calls them jobbers.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: Basically, basically, these guys go down in one hit when they're hit, they're KO'd.
Speaker: So what will what will happen is there will be like two or three guys, Hydra guys on the field.
Speaker: Who have an actual health bar and all the rest of them will be jobbers.
Speaker: So sometimes you'll basically you could be like playing as Spider-Man and he'll have a chain kick where it's like two targets or it's like two targets.
Speaker: The first target has to be KO'd to hit the second one.
Speaker: So like.
Speaker: You play chain kick.
Speaker: He jumps up in the air.
Speaker: He whips his webs out there and he swings down and he hits one person and he does it again and he goes and he's it's like the animation and the movement.
Speaker: So much fun.
Speaker: The amount of detail into each of the characters.
Speaker: It's a blast.
Speaker: There's this one character called Magic.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: I know magic.
Speaker: She's like a she's like a former X-Men who is now part of the Midnight Suns and she's from Limbo or something like that.
Speaker: She basically you can do this thing where you can set her portal, her Limbo portal anywhere on the field and point it in a direction.
Speaker: And then you have her do an ability with knockback.
Speaker: And so she'll punch somebody with knockback and she punches them and a portal opens behind them and they go through the portal and then they come out the other portal.
Speaker: And if you place the other portal right, you could have them fly right into like an electrical panel and get electrocuted.
Speaker: So you play Portal with them, basically.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: With Magic, you play Portal with them.
Speaker: So, so far as I'm playing, there's the characters I have to choose from are your main character, who's just called Hunter, and that's your creative character.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then you have Iron Man.
Speaker: Doctor Strange.
Speaker: Who else?
Speaker: Robbie Reyes, Ghost Rider, who is, I think, Ghost Rider 3.
Speaker: He might be the third Ghost Rider.
Speaker: He's like the newest of the Ghost Riders.
Speaker: He doesn't use a motorcycle.
Speaker: He uses a like an El Camino.
Speaker: It's like it's something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: With like the engine block exposed.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like a hot rod type of type of situation.
Speaker: So Robbie Reyes, Magic, Nico Minoru, who was from The Runaways originally.
Speaker: And I just picked up Captain Marvel, who is a lot of fun.
Speaker: And I just picked up Spider-Man.
Speaker: And there's more people to unlock through the course of the game.
Speaker: But yeah, it's very it's very awesome.
Speaker: There's another section of the game where it's just you're in this hub and you're talking.
Speaker: You just talk to the other people on the team.
Speaker: Yeah, I've heard it's very story centered.
Speaker: You can take them out on hangouts and increase your friendship meter with them.
Speaker: And if you increase the friendship meter with other superheroes, you get the option to do team up moves with them in the combat area.
Speaker: So there's a reason to do that.
Speaker: And there's little mysteries to solve surrounding Agatha Harkness.
Speaker: And there's and when you go to do the map, like there will be a map with all the like, here's all the missions available.
Speaker: It's like this one.
Speaker: There'll be like one that's a story mission.
Speaker: And then there's like seven other missions.
Speaker: XCOM style where it's like, yeah, you could go do this one, too.
Speaker: You can go do this one if you want to get more gamma coils and you get gamma coils and you bring them.
Speaker: And Tony Stark does like research on them.
Speaker: Um, so like there's like the XCOM research and development portion of it that's done by Dr. Strange and Tony Stark.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And they're like, and then there's like the workshop portion of it, which is Peter Parker and, um,
Speaker: And Ghost Rider are like they have their garage.
Speaker: It's called the shop.
Speaker: And like you can create items and stuff like that with them.
Speaker: And like the research stuff is Doctor Strange and Tony Stark.
Speaker: So it's I'm gushing about the game, but it might be it might be a late entry into my game of the year consideration.
Speaker: OK, I really love it.
Speaker: And I feel like I feel like it's a feel game.
Speaker: I'm so intrigued by it because XCOM and Firaxis in general, I mean, that basically was the, I was waiting to hear your opinion on it because there has been some dissatisfied people surrounding it.
Speaker: And, you know, sometimes people have relevant complaints and sometimes people are bitching.
Speaker: And the stuff that I've seen is that a lot of people, it's the, it's the,
Speaker: you know, the currency mechanic and paying money within a game that you already paid for and stuff like that, which is a totally valid complaint.
Speaker: I haven't seen much reason to do that yet.
Speaker: Like you can, but that's just for...
Speaker: At the at the risk of incurring the wrath of Jim Stephanie Sterling, it is literally just cosmetics.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I've had no issue earning the currency by playing the game to buy the cosmetics.
Speaker: So that's that's go ahead and pick it up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I got paid.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: You know, one of the things that I feel like I was wary about as like, oh, it's a card battler.
Speaker: Boo.
Speaker: I wanted XCOM as with superheroes.
Speaker: And now I'm like, oh, no, they fucking like there is so much attention to detail in how this game plays and a lot of consideration into every element of the game.
Speaker: Like even when you get you.
Speaker: unlock the side questing stuff, there will be a pop up saying, OK, this is as much as you need to have played for the rest of the game.
Speaker: You don't need to actually play any more of these side quests to continue on.
Speaker: If you just want to focus on story missions, it's fine.
Speaker: The game literally tells you that like you can just focus on story missions from here on out.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But there we do have a lot of other fun stuff for you to play.
Speaker: So if you want, go and have at it.
Speaker: That's cool as shit.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I like it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: They're big.
Speaker: The DLC week for you.
Speaker: It has been a Marvel.
Speaker: It's been a marvelous week.
Speaker: Subscribe to pixel it.
Speaker: That'll do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Please follow us on Twitter and Instagram at PixelitPod.
Speaker: Go to our website, PixelitPod.com, where you can find transcripts of all of our episodes.
Speaker: You can find links to our Discord, our Steam Curator page.
Speaker: You can find links to our Goodreads account because we're on Goodreads and we post the reviews of the books that we read on Goodreads.
Speaker: So follow us on Goodreads, goddammit.
Speaker: Damn right.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: It's a beautiful place, I guess.
Speaker: And based on our Spotify rap numbers, y'all are amazing at sharing us.
Speaker: Y'all love us, but you also share us with your friends and your family based on the numbers that we've been seeing.
Speaker: And from the bottom of my heart, Phil and I truly appreciate that.
Speaker: But don't stop sharing, fuckers.
Speaker: Yeah, don't stop.
Speaker: Just because we thanked you doesn't mean you can stop.
Speaker: You can't stop now.
Speaker: We still need more of you.
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Speaker: The endorphins.
Speaker: It's never going to be enough.
Speaker: We are content creators.
Speaker: We must consume the audience.
Speaker: Content.
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Speaker: We need it all.
Speaker: But thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Jokes aside, we really love it.
Speaker: It means a lot to us.
Speaker: It means a lot to us.
Speaker: Brought a tear to my eye, genuinely, to see all the support that we've been getting there.
Speaker: And that's just from the Spotify, folks.
Speaker: If that means anything across the board, then you all are the best.
Speaker: And we couldn't really ask for a better fan base to really get this show started.
Speaker: So here's to here's to our second full year of doing Pixel It.
Speaker: We got a lot of stuff planned.
Speaker: We got our two year anniversary in June.
Speaker: We got our hundredth episode coming up soon.
Speaker: We're we're we're going on full gears, full gears of podcasting this year.
Speaker: So so buckle in, buckle up, buckle sideways and have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Good night.
