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Our Special Place (Silent Hill 2: Part 1)
2 Plays1 month ago
We James Sunderland boys now. That's right we are diving into the Japanese novelization of Silent Hill 2 to see what motives we can glean from the man, the myth, the legend... Eddie.
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Transcript
Introduction and Silent Hill 2 Adaptation
00:00:00
Speaker
It mutated the cat and yeah, turned it into a fucking dog or something.
00:00:06
Speaker
No longer a cat.
00:00:07
Speaker
Whatever it is, it's not a cat anymore.
00:00:09
Speaker
It's not a cat anymore.
00:00:11
Speaker
You know what else isn't a cat anymore?
00:00:14
Speaker
What's that?
00:00:15
Speaker
Hey there, everybody.
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome back to Pixel It.
00:00:16
Speaker
My name is Kevin with Beasoy
Silent Hill 2: Game History and Remake
00:00:18
Speaker
is Phil.
00:00:18
Speaker
And on today's show, we are talking about the adaptation of Silent Hill 2 by by Sadamu Yamashita, translated by Emily Fitch.
00:00:33
Speaker
So it's it's it's just a straight up adaptation of Silent Hill 2.
00:00:40
Speaker
These were Japanese only books.
00:00:43
Speaker
So this is like a fan translation that we're going off of.
00:00:48
Speaker
So to that end, as with like, you know, the sacred and terrible air or what have you, honestly, there's some things that we can and cannot really critique with the original writer based on not knowing how...
Game Plot Overview and Adaptation
00:01:06
Speaker
specifically how good this uh this translation might be as we are not speakers of the japanese language um not yet not yet but yeah so silent hill 2 um before phil i assume you've looked into sademu yamashida's
00:01:26
Speaker
Indeed.
00:01:27
Speaker
Past Silent Hill 2, though, as a game, everybody knows it.
00:01:31
Speaker
Everybody loves it.
00:01:33
Speaker
It was released by Konami back in, I want to say 2000 Silent Hill 2.
00:01:40
Speaker
I had this open and I closed.
00:01:43
Speaker
I feel like it was 2001.
00:01:43
Speaker
2001.
00:01:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:47
Speaker
A few days, a few weeks after September 11th.
00:01:50
Speaker
So, you know, that explains a lot.
00:01:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:54
Speaker
It follows a man named James Sunderland as he is going to Silent Hill to find his wife, his dead wife, who has sent a letter to him.
00:02:05
Speaker
um it's probably one of the most respected old school survival horror games of all time uh probably one of the most well written i had a remake that came out last year that was by bloober team and lo and behold bloober team did not it up uh they actually made a pretty damn good remake
00:02:28
Speaker
And I would say if you haven't played Silent Hill 2, go ahead, go play it.
00:02:37
Speaker
Pause the episode and go play it.
00:02:38
Speaker
Takes about seven hours if you just do the enhanced edition version of the original.
00:02:44
Speaker
or the 15 hours if you play the remake.
00:02:47
Speaker
Go ahead, play that, and then come back
Translation Challenges and Author Speculation
00:02:49
Speaker
and listen to this.
00:02:49
Speaker
Because as we're reading the book, it's like, oh, this is pretty one-to-one with what the game is, except less of the game is in the book.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yes.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yes.
00:03:06
Speaker
It's like, I like, we got to the part, finished the part that we're reading for today, and I was like,
00:03:13
Speaker
I feel like they cut some things.
00:03:15
Speaker
Yeah, they really.
00:03:17
Speaker
And that's another thing I wanted to know about basically with the translator.
00:03:21
Speaker
This is it feels short, but I also I have no idea.
00:03:28
Speaker
I have no idea because as you pointed out for it, this is a Japanese only novel.
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:34
Speaker
So, Phil, what do you know about Mr. Yamashita?
00:03:40
Speaker
Next to nothing.
00:03:42
Speaker
As far as I can tell, Sadamu Yamashita is the author of the novelizations of Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, and Silent Hill 3.
00:03:55
Speaker
And that's it.
00:03:59
Speaker
I can't find anything else on this person.
00:04:04
Speaker
I have to assume that...
00:04:07
Speaker
There is, you know, maybe this is a pen name or something like that, or even that, frankly, if it's a world of power situation where they just got some writer for hire who didn't have much under their belt.
00:04:21
Speaker
And it's just that much harder for me to find out about that person because it's Japanese only.
00:04:27
Speaker
I looked up Emily Fitch.
00:04:29
Speaker
I almost said Edith Finch.
00:04:31
Speaker
Edith Finch.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yep.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:33
Speaker
Emily
Patreon Promotion
00:04:34
Speaker
Fitch.
00:04:34
Speaker
I looked her up.
00:04:37
Speaker
She is also similarly kind of quiet on the ground when it comes to her resume, but she is known as a fan translator that she's done a lot of Japanese fan translations and people are kind of
00:04:53
Speaker
positive on them.
00:04:54
Speaker
So that's pretty good.
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:04:59
Speaker
I dig it.
00:05:01
Speaker
Before we get into the book, I just want to
00:05:06
Speaker
Talk about a website that is really cool, really neat.
00:05:10
Speaker
It's called patreon.com slash pixelitpod.
Novelization vs. Game Differences
00:05:13
Speaker
And there you can follow us for free or you could pay us a dollar a month and get the ad-free episode or $5 a month and get the bonus episode or $10 a month and get your name shouted out in every episode.
00:05:25
Speaker
To that end, I want to thank Jesus loves you, Kyle Seaman, Ruthless Mudder, Middle of Things, Sigma Sal, Chut Beaks, Dumbad Vic,
00:05:32
Speaker
And friendly friend, thank you so much for being a friend.
00:05:37
Speaker
Patreon.com slash PixelitPod.
00:05:40
Speaker
Do it.
00:05:41
Speaker
Today.
00:05:42
Speaker
Today.
00:05:43
Speaker
So yeah, Silent Hill, Silent Hill series.
00:05:48
Speaker
By the way, the reason we skip straight to Silent Hill 2 novelization is because Silent Hill 2 is disconnected from what I understand in the Silent Hill mythology as a story.
00:06:00
Speaker
I'm not a Silent Hill guy, but I can tell you I never hear about the first Silent Hill game.
00:06:05
Speaker
No one seems to give a shit.
00:06:07
Speaker
One and three are connected.
00:06:09
Speaker
I think one and three are connected story-wise.
00:06:12
Speaker
Two is not.
00:06:14
Speaker
It's just its own thing.
00:06:17
Speaker
It just happens to also be set in Silent Hill.
00:06:21
Speaker
And it even changes some aspects as to what's going on in the town itself.
00:06:26
Speaker
It's a lot more metaphorical.
00:06:28
Speaker
There's more literal supernatural shit happening in Silent Hill 1, like culty stuff, whereas in Silent Hill 2, it's more like...
00:06:42
Speaker
What's actually happening?
00:06:45
Speaker
I don't know.
00:06:47
Speaker
Is it on your head?
00:06:49
Speaker
No.
00:06:50
Speaker
Is it?
00:06:51
Speaker
No.
00:06:52
Speaker
But is it though?
00:06:53
Speaker
Is it?
00:06:55
Speaker
No.
00:06:56
Speaker
But maybe.
Unique Story Elements and Metaphors
00:06:59
Speaker
But now that you've asked me three times, possibly yes.
00:07:03
Speaker
Possibly yes, because that's the key.
00:07:05
Speaker
But let's put the body in the marsh.
00:07:07
Speaker
Let's marsh this body.
00:07:09
Speaker
It's Marshless Body.
00:07:10
Speaker
When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh, you dump them in the marsh.
00:07:18
Speaker
the mind um silent hill 2 by sadomu yamashida is not written in chapters it is written in these like little named segments the first of which is a little vignette just titled girl uh the brief opening chapter we meet a young girl named laura as she arrives at silent hill she notes the fog layering the town looks a bit like milk
00:07:43
Speaker
that some scatterbrained God had dropped a cup and spilled his milk all over the place, which honestly is quite possibly my favorite line that we'll get in this entire entire section.
00:07:55
Speaker
It's a very evocative way of it.
00:07:57
Speaker
It was an evocative way.
00:07:58
Speaker
It's like this.
00:07:59
Speaker
That's a evocative way.
00:08:00
Speaker
That's also good for the POV of an eight year old girl.
00:08:05
Speaker
Yes.
00:08:06
Speaker
Yes.
00:08:06
Speaker
Like it's two levels.
00:08:07
Speaker
Like you can have evocative, like the character would never actually think that.
00:08:12
Speaker
But evocative and true to the character, that works.
00:08:15
Speaker
It tells you something about the character, too.
00:08:17
Speaker
It does.
00:08:18
Speaker
It does.
00:08:19
Speaker
She's skipping towards the town while her fat and thick headed friend follows along.
Early Plot Points and Novel Critique
00:08:25
Speaker
And she's going to the town to look for a person that gave her a letter.
00:08:28
Speaker
The fat and thick headed friends.
00:08:31
Speaker
If you don't have know the connection, it's it's Eddie.
00:08:36
Speaker
It's a it's a guy named Eddie.
00:08:39
Speaker
And we will meet him again later.
00:08:42
Speaker
The next section is called Beckoning Town, and we meet James Sunderland as he is staring at himself in a dirty mirror of a public bathroom.
00:08:52
Speaker
He is musing about his depressed emotional state while standing in probably the grossest bathroom in the world.
00:08:59
Speaker
He steps outside into the parking lot, which overlooks Toluca Lake and recounts the letter that brought him to town, which he assumes is from his late wife, Mary, because of the handwriting.
00:09:10
Speaker
They had spent a holiday in this town three years ago before she had passed away.
00:09:15
Speaker
James has to walk through a park to get into town as the road into town is closed from the parking lot that he stopped at.
00:09:23
Speaker
He muses more about the source of this letter, how it might be a cruel prank by his co-workers or neighbors who have been upset with how he's behaved since Mary passed.
00:09:32
Speaker
Then as James walks, he thinks about how it would be possible that Mary could be alive.
00:09:37
Speaker
Maybe she was never really dead.
00:09:39
Speaker
Maybe a gravedigger found her.
00:09:41
Speaker
Who knows?
00:09:42
Speaker
Like this whole section is kind of funny because like maybe Mary was slamming on the coffin lid and like she has brain damage from lack of oxygen in the coffin.
00:09:50
Speaker
And like it goes very it goes it takes it pretty far.
00:09:54
Speaker
But at the same time, like I think a person in that position, I don't think that that's a
00:10:00
Speaker
I think that is something I could see myself wondering about where I am at the same time.
00:10:07
Speaker
Part of me is like, I like also like the concept that of a James Sunderland who does does not even consider any of this, you know, who is just like, I'm doing it because I got the letter and I'm going and he doesn't even like he's not even thinking logistically.
00:10:27
Speaker
Right.
00:10:28
Speaker
You don't get any and you don't really get anything of James from the game itself that that prompts you to think that he's he's in the headspace to to consider these elements, you know.
00:10:41
Speaker
But anyway, yeah, he ends up in a cemetery meets a woman who later will find out her name is Angela.
00:10:49
Speaker
She is staring at a gravestone.
00:10:52
Speaker
He asks her where the town is, and she points the way, but tells him that it's best not to go because it's a dangerous place.
00:10:59
Speaker
When he tells her that he will be careful, she screams at him.
00:11:03
Speaker
I get it.
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah, I get it.
00:11:06
Speaker
He leaves her and continues walking, ending up in the town itself.
00:11:11
Speaker
He sees... And by the way, just stopping...
00:11:15
Speaker
The conversation between James and Angela in the game is fascinating because someone said to me, it's like two people who have never talked to anyone before talking to each other.
00:11:31
Speaker
That's the original version of the game, not the remake, because of how unhinged both of them sound during the course of the conversation.
00:11:42
Speaker
Um, you really only get Angela's being a little, uh, as the book says, hysterical, but James is like weird.
00:11:51
Speaker
You like something's weird, weird with James as well.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:54
Speaker
Um,
00:11:56
Speaker
So he continues on, he gets to town, he sees a large bloodstain on the road, and then he sees what looks like a person in the distance walking away.
00:12:06
Speaker
He gives chase and ends up in a small construction site where a radio is buzzing static.
00:12:11
Speaker
He hears footsteps approaching, and as they get closer, the static gets louder.
00:12:16
Speaker
He then sees what he's been chasing after, a creature with its arms merged into its body with rotting flesh.
00:12:24
Speaker
In the games, like the bestiary, so to speak, of the game, this is called a lying figure.
00:12:31
Speaker
You find them a lot like they're just like on the ground when you first run into them before they kind of like get up and start going after you.
00:12:42
Speaker
Spitting at you.
00:12:43
Speaker
It's an underrated monster design.
00:12:46
Speaker
And I mean, it says something to how fucking solid the creatures in Silent Hill 2 are, where something that horrible and pretty fucking excellent takes not even second fiddle, but third fiddle to like, you know, Pyramid Head and the nurses and just the nurses.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:10
Speaker
Iconic creatures.
00:13:13
Speaker
Everyone's favorite sexy cosplay, the the Silent Hill two nurses.
00:13:19
Speaker
If you go to a con and there isn't someone dressed up as a Silent Hill two nurse, did you actually go to a con?
00:13:26
Speaker
You did not.
00:13:28
Speaker
No, that's actually a nurse cosplay.
00:13:31
Speaker
That was actually an autocomplete.
00:13:33
Speaker
Oh, look at those.
00:13:34
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense.
00:13:38
Speaker
There's a lot of them.
00:13:40
Speaker
Anyway, what was I saying?
00:13:42
Speaker
Nurse cosplay.
00:13:44
Speaker
Nurse cosplay.
00:13:47
Speaker
So James grabs a wooden board that's nearby and beats it to death.
00:13:53
Speaker
And once it's dead, the radio falls silent.
00:13:55
Speaker
And by the way, the fact in Silent Hill 2, the first weapon you get is a wooden board.
00:14:00
Speaker
And it just reminds me of the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror.
00:14:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:05
Speaker
Where the alien's weakness is a wooden board with a nail in it.
00:14:12
Speaker
With a nail in it.
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:15
Speaker
Moe chasing him around.
00:14:16
Speaker
Moe chasing Kang and Kodos around with a wooden board with a nail on it.
00:14:21
Speaker
I love it.
00:14:21
Speaker
I fucking love it.
00:14:23
Speaker
So the radio falls silent, much like the hills, the titular hills.
00:14:29
Speaker
The radio sparks the life again, and he hears Mary's voice over the static saying something about the Woodside Apartments.
00:14:35
Speaker
And James makes his way back towards the center of town.
Iconic Moments and Novel's Shortcomings
00:14:39
Speaker
And then the book becomes a bit of a reenactment of the Californian sketch from SNL until he gets to the Woodside Apartments.
00:14:50
Speaker
You take this, turn around.
00:14:53
Speaker
You can't go that way.
00:14:56
Speaker
You got a Flynn Street and then you make a right on Baker and then you get on the PCH and then you take the five and then you're at the Woodside.
00:15:10
Speaker
We do get it.
00:15:11
Speaker
It does get a little tangled up in the directions, doesn't it?
00:15:15
Speaker
It does talk a lot about the roads that you're going through a lot.
00:15:23
Speaker
This actually skips because now he's already at the Woodside Apartments.
00:15:32
Speaker
There is a there's a moment in the game where James goes into a building and on the window like painted in blood.
00:15:44
Speaker
There's a there's something written that says there used to be a hole here where it's something like that.
00:15:55
Speaker
And it's just one of those like weird little creepy messages that you would find.
00:15:59
Speaker
But that's one of the things I'm noticing about the book right off the bat is that we're just kind of we're just kind of like skipping through.
00:16:08
Speaker
It's like it's like a joyful just like it mentions Laura was skipping to the town.
00:16:14
Speaker
The story is just kind of skipping through any semblance of the world building or weirdness in Silent Hill.
00:16:25
Speaker
It's just one step after the next.
00:16:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:28
Speaker
There's like James then killed this creepy monster and then he ran down the street and he turned a right on Baker and then he turned a left on Fairfax.
00:16:36
Speaker
And then he got a scone.
00:16:38
Speaker
It made me think while I was reading it, it was like if somebody you knew was describing the game to you, it's like, okay, so you do this and you're going to run into this monster and then you're going to do this.
00:16:49
Speaker
And without addressing like what is, yeah, like you said, the undercurrent of it.
00:16:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, there was a hole here.
00:17:01
Speaker
It's gone now.
00:17:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's that was in both both the original and the remake.
00:17:08
Speaker
So.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:14
Speaker
Anyway, he gets to the apartment and while he's outside the apartment, he is catching his breath and he decides to clean the blood off of his boots because he used his boots to like squish on a lying figure.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:30
Speaker
And he's wiping off the boots with an old newspaper and catches the headline on the paper about a man committing suicide with a spoon.
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:38
Speaker
With a spoon, a spoon, not even in a particularly creative way.
00:17:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:45
Speaker
He just stabs himself in the carotid artery with the spoon until right.
00:17:50
Speaker
I read that and was like, okay, I'm listening.
00:17:52
Speaker
And it's, oh, you just, you, you just have no knife.
00:17:55
Speaker
Therefore I am a spoon.
00:17:59
Speaker
I have no knife.
00:18:00
Speaker
Therefore, I am.
00:18:01
Speaker
I must spoon.
00:18:02
Speaker
I am is filled with hate for that.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yes.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yes.
00:18:09
Speaker
Very much so.
00:18:11
Speaker
Hatred.
00:18:14
Speaker
The man was a suspect in the murder.
00:18:16
Speaker
How would am fair in Silent Hill?
00:18:20
Speaker
Oh,
00:18:20
Speaker
Can can am be affected by the can be affected by the metaphorical, like mental purgatory of of Silent Hill?
00:18:32
Speaker
I assume so.
00:18:34
Speaker
That's that's an interesting question.
00:18:35
Speaker
Is that a power greater than am?
00:18:39
Speaker
Is the power that Silent Hill uses to send people through existential metaphorical nightmares similar to the one that Am uses to send people through existential metaphorical nightmares?
00:18:52
Speaker
Are they?
00:18:53
Speaker
Well, Am is doing is Silent Hill Am.
00:18:57
Speaker
Well, there might be some more that backs you, backs up your assertion on that one.
00:19:05
Speaker
There you go.
00:19:07
Speaker
Actually, I feel like there's an ending with a dog controlling a computer.
00:19:11
Speaker
Really?
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:15
Speaker
That's outstanding.
00:19:18
Speaker
But no, yeah, that would be.
00:19:20
Speaker
So Am is doing it physically and Silent Hill is doing metaphorically.
00:19:26
Speaker
It's like Am isn't doing is like it's not magic when Am does it, but Silent Hill is using magic.
00:19:31
Speaker
Is this like Superman where like, you know, Superman isn't weak to magic, but he can be affected by magic.
00:19:36
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:19:38
Speaker
Right.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:19:39
Speaker
It's like Zatanna casting a spell on Superman, you know, and Superman is Am in this case.
00:19:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:49
Speaker
So Silent Hill is Mr. Mixapiddleic.
00:19:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:54
Speaker
Like, man, I tell you, that could be our Freddy versus Jason.
00:19:59
Speaker
Silent Hill versus Am.
00:20:00
Speaker
That's that's what the people are craving.
00:20:02
Speaker
That's what the people want.
00:20:03
Speaker
They want it.
00:20:04
Speaker
They want it.
00:20:05
Speaker
Horror nerds crave suicide with a spoon.
00:20:10
Speaker
The man was a suspect in the murder of siblings, Billy and Miriam Locaine.
00:20:15
Speaker
And it talks about how Sullivan, the man who killed himself, was haunted by the red demon.
00:20:21
Speaker
James wonders why he feels connected to this particular article.
00:20:24
Speaker
He then continues into the apartment building calling out for Mary.
00:20:28
Speaker
All the doors that he checks are locked until he gets to room 205, which looks like a person is standing in there.
00:20:35
Speaker
But it's actually a mannequin strangely wearing clothes similar to what Mary is wearing in the photo that he carries around of her.
00:20:42
Speaker
There's a flashlight hanging off the mannequin and he grabs it so he can actually see in the apartment building, but he feels guilty taking it.
00:20:48
Speaker
He continues on and in the middle of the hallway runs into a mannequin monster and he runs away from it.
00:20:54
Speaker
And the mannequin monster is described if you've never seen it.
00:20:58
Speaker
It has legs, mannequin legs coming out the bottom.
00:21:03
Speaker
And instead of a torso, it's got more legs coming out the top.
00:21:09
Speaker
It's another another really solid design.
00:21:12
Speaker
Legs and legs.
00:21:13
Speaker
Lady legs.
00:21:15
Speaker
Legs for day.
00:21:16
Speaker
Lady legs.
00:21:17
Speaker
And I got to tell you, you'd better start clocking the fact that these are these are lady.
00:21:25
Speaker
This is a lady thing.
00:21:27
Speaker
It's going to be up because it's not in here, people.
00:21:30
Speaker
This ain't over.
00:21:32
Speaker
Zane over, but, and I feel like if you were playing the game, you might have picked up on the metaphor that you're violently killing feminine things, monstrous looking feminine things by now, but you're, it's a book and it's not a great book.
00:21:52
Speaker
So I'm just here to tell you the subtext.
00:21:55
Speaker
Sometimes, sometimes video games can do what books don't.
00:22:02
Speaker
at least these kinds of books at least these kinds of books anyway yeah he continues on runs away from it he wonders if everyone in town has already escaped when he heads to the third floor continues exploring and enters room 301 to find a gun sitting in the middle of an abandoned shopping cart
00:22:22
Speaker
He considers returning to the second floor with it, and on his way to the stairs, he notices a key on the floor beyond one of the metal gates that blocks parts of the third floor.
00:22:32
Speaker
As he reaches for it, a foot smashes down on his hand and kicks the key away.
00:22:36
Speaker
He sees a little girl running away, calling him an idiot.
00:22:39
Speaker
Ha ha ha!
00:22:40
Speaker
It's Laura from the first scene.
00:22:44
Speaker
Suddenly there's a violent screech and James starts running in the direction it comes from.
00:22:48
Speaker
At this point, I think there might be a misnumbering in the translation because it says he enters room 208 to get around the metal shutter.
00:22:56
Speaker
But we never said that he went back down to the second floor.
00:23:01
Speaker
Either way.
00:23:03
Speaker
He goes to 208, sees a grandfather clock blocking a hole in the wall.
00:23:09
Speaker
We're just going to skip that puzzle because he just moves the grandfather clock.
00:23:14
Speaker
Never mind.
00:23:15
Speaker
We don't want to get you.
00:23:17
Speaker
No, no, there's no here.
00:23:19
Speaker
I'm not doing 200 pages on this fucker.
00:23:22
Speaker
I'm not.
00:23:22
Speaker
There's no puzzles here.
00:23:23
Speaker
We're just skipping them.
00:23:25
Speaker
And I'm not skipping them.
00:23:27
Speaker
But the tag team of Sadamu Yamashita and Emily Fitch skipped them.
00:23:34
Speaker
Emily had less of a choice in the matter, but.
00:23:37
Speaker
True.
00:23:37
Speaker
You know what I'm saying?
00:23:38
Speaker
She could have she could she could have been played the hero and put her own.
00:23:42
Speaker
Play the hero and put a little twist in there.
00:23:45
Speaker
Like he had to get the the minute and second keys or whatever.
00:23:50
Speaker
I can't.
00:23:51
Speaker
That's the problem with the remake and the original is like, I know the grandfather clock is a puzzle in the remake, but I can't remember if it's also a puzzle in the original.
00:23:59
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:24:01
Speaker
He reaches room 307 and finds one of the most famous scenes in Silent Hill 2.
00:24:06
Speaker
Pyramid Head is going to town on a couple of mannequin monsters.
00:24:09
Speaker
Now, in the original version of the game, this scene, and I know the creator of the game has since come out and said it wasn't intended to be like this.
00:24:22
Speaker
but it looks like pyramid head is, uh, doing a sexual assault on the mannequin monsters.
00:24:30
Speaker
Ah, yeah.
00:24:32
Speaker
In the in the original in this scene, it's a very just look up the scene.
00:24:37
Speaker
You'll you'll see what I mean.
00:24:39
Speaker
James hides in the closet.
00:24:41
Speaker
Once pyramid head is done doing the thing with the mannequins, starts approaching him in the closet and James shoots at it with his gun.
00:24:48
Speaker
And somehow pyramid head just leaves.
00:24:53
Speaker
James leaves room 307.
00:24:54
Speaker
Okay.
00:24:56
Speaker
By the way, if you don't know what pyramid head looks like, I guess look him up, but he's a big beefy dude.
00:25:06
Speaker
Cake for days.
00:25:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:08
Speaker
Lots, lots, lots going on back there.
00:25:11
Speaker
Lots going on back there and he's wearing a giant rusted pyramid shaped helmet that like it's it's massive.
00:25:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:22
Speaker
When Kevin says giant, think about what you're thinking about now.
00:25:27
Speaker
And just enhance like to the point where it's kind of stupid and then take it back one.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:36
Speaker
You know, the main character from last miss.
00:25:42
Speaker
It's like that in terms of height and now make it also wider.
00:25:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:49
Speaker
And more angular.
00:25:51
Speaker
A helmet that makes you wonder.
00:25:53
Speaker
How?
00:25:54
Speaker
How?
00:25:54
Speaker
How's that?
00:25:54
Speaker
How is that staying on?
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:00
Speaker
And why?
00:26:01
Speaker
Right.
00:26:03
Speaker
And who?
00:26:04
Speaker
I mean, I think I think the who is a big one throughout the game for a lot of these people, though.
00:26:11
Speaker
Who is very important.
00:26:11
Speaker
Every time I take a sip of my Kirkland signature sparkling water lime, it throws my, the, the color white, the white balance of my camera just completely off.
00:26:23
Speaker
That's so funny.
00:26:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:24
Speaker
It's suddenly you're in like a no tell motel and it was like, I'm in red lighting.
00:26:30
Speaker
It's back.
00:26:31
Speaker
It is.
00:26:31
Speaker
It's back.
00:26:32
Speaker
What if I have another sparkling water here?
00:26:34
Speaker
What if I bring this one up?
00:26:35
Speaker
What happens?
00:26:36
Speaker
Well, it warmed up a little.
00:26:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:41
Speaker
What about this?
00:26:42
Speaker
Not anything compared to the other one.
00:26:46
Speaker
No.
00:26:46
Speaker
Okay.
00:26:47
Speaker
So if I this is great for the audio only listeners.
00:26:50
Speaker
They love it.
00:26:51
Speaker
They love.
00:26:51
Speaker
There it is again.
00:26:52
Speaker
It's like there it is.
00:26:53
Speaker
They're like going up.
00:26:55
Speaker
I'm in Mexico.
00:26:56
Speaker
Right.
00:26:57
Speaker
Right.
00:27:00
Speaker
Denzel's about to kick some fucking ass.
00:27:03
Speaker
Man on fire.
00:27:05
Speaker
That was set in Mexico, right?
00:27:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:27:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:09
Speaker
So what the fuck happens?
00:27:13
Speaker
James leaves room 307 and he finds the key that the girl kicked away.
00:27:17
Speaker
He goes back down to the first floor and goes to into room 101.
00:27:21
Speaker
He finds the body of a man badly beaten to death and he hears the sounds of someone vomiting in the bathroom.
00:27:28
Speaker
James goes and talks to the guy and the guy's like, I killed him.
00:27:32
Speaker
I found him like that.
00:27:33
Speaker
The guy's name is Eddie and James talks to Eddie about the monsters he's been seeing.
00:27:38
Speaker
And Eddie is like, I don't know what you're talking about.
00:27:42
Speaker
I did see a creature out there, but and that's why I ran into the apartments.
00:27:46
Speaker
So, hey, oh, yeah.
00:27:53
Speaker
Uh, James wishes him luck and decides to try to get to the apartment complex that is adjacent to the Woodside one ones by jumping through a second story window.
00:28:03
Speaker
Uh, this is not like a, this is weird because it's not like an active thought you have in the game.
00:28:08
Speaker
You do it because it's like the fucking, it's like, oh, I, there's a weird apartment comp.
00:28:13
Speaker
There's like a hole in the building next to it.
00:28:16
Speaker
So you jump across and then you, right.
00:28:18
Speaker
When you get across there, it's like hell over there.
00:28:22
Speaker
It's like, what is wrong with these this building?
00:28:26
Speaker
He does this and he kills a mannequin and goes to the first floor, goes the of the other apartment building and finds a woman that he met earlier, Angela, in room 109.
00:28:36
Speaker
They have a brief conversation.
00:28:38
Speaker
Angela is about as even tempered as ever, and James tries to get the knife that she's holding from her.
00:28:44
Speaker
He also offers Angela to come with him, but she's not into the whole being around men thing.
00:28:51
Speaker
I get it.
00:28:52
Speaker
I get it.
00:28:53
Speaker
She had a choice between a man, a bear and pyramid head.
00:28:56
Speaker
And she went like, I'll take my chances of pyramid head.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah, I really think this one out.
00:29:02
Speaker
I was going to make the same joke about the man and the bear.
00:29:06
Speaker
And I'm glad you got there first.
00:29:07
Speaker
This is this is why we have a show.
00:29:09
Speaker
This is why we have a show.
00:29:11
Speaker
This is our partnership, people.
00:29:12
Speaker
This is why it works.
00:29:14
Speaker
But Angela leaves the knife with him so she doesn't hurt herself and carries on.
00:29:18
Speaker
Before he leaves, he finds a photograph of what looks like Angela and her family with like the rest of her family scratched out.
00:29:26
Speaker
Most of the rooms in this apartment building are locked until James enters a stairwell filled with ashen gray water.
00:29:33
Speaker
He goes to leave, but SpaghettiOs pyramid head is here.
00:29:37
Speaker
Boss fight time.
00:29:39
Speaker
James empties his magazine at pyramid head and then closes his eyes thinking he's going to die via massive knife wound.
00:29:46
Speaker
But then Pyramid leaves, leaves them and goes down the steps into the water.
00:29:51
Speaker
And James falls to the ground exhausted.
00:29:53
Speaker
But then here's a kid singing through the fog.
00:29:57
Speaker
He exits the building to see the girl that stomped on his hand out in the street.
00:30:02
Speaker
He yells at her for it and she feigns ignorance.
00:30:05
Speaker
I don't know what you're talking about.
00:30:07
Speaker
He asks her what she's doing there.
00:30:10
Speaker
Wyatt looks like she has a letter in her hand and she responds, what's it to you that
00:30:14
Speaker
You never even liked Mary anyway.
00:30:19
Speaker
The girl climbs over a brick wall, leaving James shouting after her.
00:30:23
Speaker
And that's that's where we leave it for tonight.
00:30:27
Speaker
It's a good place to stop.
00:30:29
Speaker
Good place to stop.
00:30:30
Speaker
Phil, what do you think so far?
00:30:33
Speaker
And is this a satisfying book?
00:30:35
Speaker
All right.
00:30:37
Speaker
Let's just cut to the chase.
00:30:39
Speaker
No.
00:30:41
Speaker
It this is it's not a bad I will say, you know, as far as translations are concerned, I don't know what Miss Fitch had to work with here.
00:30:51
Speaker
But as far as we can tell.
00:30:54
Speaker
It's a serviceable translation.
00:30:56
Speaker
And she did it out of the goodness of her heart.
00:30:58
Speaker
Obviously, this is not a professional thing.
00:31:01
Speaker
And to her credit, I don't think this is her fault.
00:31:05
Speaker
This is very much the kind of adaptation that we've read before that makes me wonder why?
00:31:13
Speaker
Why do this?
00:31:14
Speaker
If this is the way you're going to adapt it, why do it?
00:31:19
Speaker
Who's this for?
00:31:19
Speaker
Exactly.
00:31:21
Speaker
It just hits the beats without any of the gravitas that goes behind everything that's happening.
00:31:32
Speaker
If you can make pyramid head kind of like, oh, then you fucked up.
00:31:37
Speaker
Like if that's almost impressive to be able to make someone that iconic and crazy and you just go, oh, okay.
00:31:47
Speaker
So he's wearing.
00:31:48
Speaker
Okay, got it.
00:31:49
Speaker
And that's it.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:52
Speaker
So, yeah, it's not it's not bad in the traditional sense.
00:31:58
Speaker
It's just pointless.
00:32:00
Speaker
Right.
00:32:01
Speaker
Yeah, I would.
00:32:02
Speaker
I agree.
00:32:03
Speaker
I think one of the things were I tasked with writing an adaptation of Silent Hill 2, there is something that need like some things about it are heavy handed and some things are like way too standoffish in terms of what the subject matter is.
00:32:30
Speaker
because I think there's a theme of violence against women that is in the subtext of the game Silent Hill 2 that you wouldn't necessarily notice here in this book.
00:32:53
Speaker
The other thing that I would say is that there's
00:32:59
Speaker
I feel like you should have chills reading about
00:33:05
Speaker
pyramid head.
00:33:06
Speaker
Yes.
00:33:07
Speaker
Even though I know like the language has to be wielded carefully like a like a scalpel in this in these scenes to really send the reader down a path of of I don't I don't like this one bit.
00:33:25
Speaker
And I mean, I I imagine that Emily Fitch probably just translated what was there and what was there was not a whole lot.
00:33:36
Speaker
No, no.
00:33:37
Speaker
And I will say I will also say this is clearly not a Google translation kind of situation.
00:33:43
Speaker
It's not it's not localized or anything like that, but it's someone actually did some work on this.
00:33:50
Speaker
So, yeah, I'm with you.
00:33:51
Speaker
There's she didn't do anything wrong.
00:33:54
Speaker
Right.
00:33:55
Speaker
It also cut out the first time you see Pyramid Head is not in that room.
00:33:59
Speaker
You see him through like the metal bars of one of the hallways just kind of standing there staring at you.
00:34:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:10
Speaker
So I feel like that these moments of terror that James feels, you never really get the idea that there is an inner, a full and fruitful inner monologue in James's head other than like, well, I got to go save Mary.
00:34:28
Speaker
Maybe I should run.
00:34:29
Speaker
But then I would I've already gone so far like fucker.
00:34:32
Speaker
You haven't really gone that far.
00:34:34
Speaker
You haven't not even you could you could turn around any time you want at this point.
00:34:39
Speaker
And and based on the fact that we're getting no real motivation behind it, maybe you should.
00:34:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:47
Speaker
Right.
00:34:48
Speaker
That you like you are willing to chalk up the letter to neighbors or coworkers also while you're walking into town.
00:34:56
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:34:58
Speaker
So and obviously there's things about this that, you know, we'll get to why none of that, why this is none of that is actually doable, but.
00:35:12
Speaker
I don't know.
00:35:12
Speaker
I just, it's just a little meh.
00:35:16
Speaker
It's just like if you wanted to just like live in the world of Silent Hill a little bit, you like you beat the game and now you're just like, I just want to experience it again, but I don't want to have to play the game again necessarily.
00:35:28
Speaker
And I just want to.
00:35:29
Speaker
snuggle in the blankets of Silent Hill 2 a little bit longer.
00:35:33
Speaker
Sure.
00:35:33
Speaker
I get it.
00:35:34
Speaker
But if you're looking for anything that adds anything to the story so far, not getting in this book.
00:35:45
Speaker
No, no.
00:35:47
Speaker
So it's a shame.
00:35:50
Speaker
It's a shame.
00:35:51
Speaker
It's a shame.
00:35:53
Speaker
But anyway.
00:35:55
Speaker
Hmm.
00:35:57
Speaker
Phil.
00:35:59
Speaker
I have something to ask you.
00:36:02
Speaker
Oh, please.
00:36:03
Speaker
Please do.
00:36:03
Speaker
Hold on.
00:36:04
Speaker
Hold on.
00:36:06
Speaker
Now it's not coming.
00:36:10
Speaker
What are you playing?
00:36:12
Speaker
Oh, well, aside from it, for anyone, anybody who is listening in on our early pre-
00:36:21
Speaker
uh, show banter knows, uh, I'm, I'm still playing rogue trader, uh, really, uh, clipping along now, uh, getting some really cool stuff.
00:36:33
Speaker
Uh, have killed no fewer than two of my companions going full dogmatic.
00:36:38
Speaker
Um,
00:36:40
Speaker
enjoying it, romancing both my navigator and my blood spinner, because it's honestly, you know, you remember Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever and he had Drew Barrymore on one side and, you know, Elvira's mom on the other side.
00:36:58
Speaker
It's basically that I'm basically doing, you know,
00:37:03
Speaker
I've got my nasty, murderous gal on one side, and I've got my sweet albino girl on the other side.
00:37:12
Speaker
And they're both for different occasions.
00:37:17
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:37:19
Speaker
They're accessories, is what it comes down to.
00:37:21
Speaker
Right.
00:37:24
Speaker
Chapter two is...
00:37:26
Speaker
Crazy.
00:37:27
Speaker
I actually looked looked it up to see if I was doing something wrong.
00:37:32
Speaker
And and I found out that, like, yeah, no, no.
00:37:34
Speaker
The second act is huge compared to the first and the third.
00:37:40
Speaker
And so it's OK, good.
00:37:41
Speaker
At least at least it's not just me.
00:37:43
Speaker
So I'm working my way through that still really enjoying it, killing a lot of Dracari, joined the blood spinners, basically, which fucking excellent.
00:37:55
Speaker
Yeah, really enjoying myself.
00:37:58
Speaker
Excuse me.
00:38:00
Speaker
Played a couple of demos.
00:38:02
Speaker
Big, big shocker.
00:38:04
Speaker
Played a demo for a game called I Am Jesus Christ.
00:38:09
Speaker
Ooh.
00:38:10
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:38:12
Speaker
And what basically they seem to be going for here now years ago when I was still working on my YouTube channel, I did a I did a video about the history of Christian video games and
00:38:27
Speaker
At the end of it, I suggested that some kind of a big open world video game where you play Jesus and you accumulate your powers and work your way up like that could be really, really cool and a lot of fun to actually play.
00:38:46
Speaker
And I just publicly now on our show want to say I was wrong.
00:38:51
Speaker
It's just fucking terrible.
00:38:54
Speaker
It is a mess.
00:38:55
Speaker
This game is a mess.
00:38:57
Speaker
They are, I admire what they're going for.
00:39:01
Speaker
First and foremost, it is fully sincere.
00:39:03
Speaker
I wasn't sure what we were dealing with in terms of are the makers of this game Christians or is there a twist?
00:39:13
Speaker
Is there an ironic eye rolly kind of aspect?
00:39:16
Speaker
No, super sincere.
00:39:18
Speaker
Super sincere.
00:39:20
Speaker
As you walk around different places, you will you will collect Bible verses like Assassin's Creed style.
00:39:33
Speaker
Now, and it's funny that we talked about how Silent Hill 2, the book we're reading, just hit the basic beats because that's exactly what's happening in this.
00:39:44
Speaker
When you first start playing, and I think the demo is actually just the alpha.
00:39:48
Speaker
I don't, I just ended up turning it off after a while.
00:39:51
Speaker
I don't think it's, I don't think that it's just a piece of the game.
00:39:57
Speaker
I think it might be the whole game.
00:40:00
Speaker
And you start out, you have to go find John the Baptist.
00:40:03
Speaker
So you got to go talk to your mother, Mary.
00:40:05
Speaker
You got to talk to John.
00:40:06
Speaker
You know, you got to get baptized by him.
00:40:09
Speaker
And then after you get baptized, it's like, OK, time to go to the wedding at Cana.
00:40:16
Speaker
So you go to fucking Cana and turn the water into wine.
00:40:19
Speaker
And then, OK, time to go and collect your disciples.
00:40:23
Speaker
And it's like there's no.
00:40:25
Speaker
Um, it's time for egg delivery.
00:40:28
Speaker
It says yes, yes.
00:40:31
Speaker
It's, it's constant.
00:40:32
Speaker
And I would love to say, cause I was trying to find another way to say this.
00:40:35
Speaker
Cause I would say there's no downtime, but that's actually the opposite.
00:40:39
Speaker
There's nothing but downtime because for a lot of it, you're just walking through.
00:40:46
Speaker
I think you get about 10 FPS on this thing.
00:40:48
Speaker
It's harsh.
00:40:56
Speaker
It feels like these people played open world games from the mid two thousands that people complained about where it's like, oh yeah, the world's huge, but there's nothing to do.
00:41:08
Speaker
They played a bunch of those games and they learned nothing.
00:41:11
Speaker
Nothing at all.
00:41:12
Speaker
It's, it's.
00:41:14
Speaker
Nothing at all.
00:41:14
Speaker
It's so funny.
00:41:15
Speaker
Nothing at all.
00:41:17
Speaker
I wanted very much.
00:41:19
Speaker
Sincerely.
00:41:21
Speaker
I wanted very much to enjoy this.
00:41:23
Speaker
I, I, I saw it.
00:41:24
Speaker
I saw how, um,
00:41:27
Speaker
The people who are making this clearly give a shit.
00:41:30
Speaker
They are imitating all of the kind of Skinner box style things you see in video games.
00:41:38
Speaker
The percentage of a city that you've completed, stuff like that.
00:41:42
Speaker
Stuff that me personally, I know that it's just tapping into the food pellet part of my brain, but I don't care.
00:41:48
Speaker
I enjoy that.
00:41:50
Speaker
You like the food pellets.
00:41:51
Speaker
I like the food pellet.
00:41:53
Speaker
Exactly.
00:41:54
Speaker
And I feel like I've accomplished something when I get one.
00:41:58
Speaker
But it's just, it doesn't work.
00:42:01
Speaker
It literally doesn't work at times.
00:42:03
Speaker
And it's just dull as dishwater.
00:42:06
Speaker
And I almost forgot, between...
00:42:10
Speaker
You can get your you accumulate miracles that you can cast.
00:42:15
Speaker
One of the early ones is transformation.
00:42:17
Speaker
So you transform the water into wine, that kind of thing.
00:42:20
Speaker
One of them is exorcism.
00:42:22
Speaker
And I was like, OK, OK, that should just be the whole game.
00:42:27
Speaker
Sure.
00:42:27
Speaker
That's just Jesus Christ, exorcist, exorcist.
00:42:31
Speaker
Jesus Christ, colon, exorcist.
00:42:34
Speaker
Exactly.
00:42:35
Speaker
I would play the shit out of that game.
00:42:37
Speaker
Cut to the chase.
00:42:37
Speaker
Give us what we want.
00:42:40
Speaker
It's it's it.
00:42:41
Speaker
I wanted to open with Willem Dafoe in Last Temptation of Christ saying, I used to believe in this, holding up his heart and going, now I believe in this, you know, just going out and just punching Satan in the face.
00:42:57
Speaker
That great.
00:42:58
Speaker
Fine.
00:42:58
Speaker
Do it.
00:42:59
Speaker
But instead, it's just this very milk toast.
00:43:04
Speaker
dull, drawn out kind of experience where you have to go to this person, then you go to that person.
00:43:11
Speaker
And I wondered if there was an a failure state.
00:43:17
Speaker
I was like, could you have a failure state if you're playing?
00:43:21
Speaker
How does that work?
00:43:23
Speaker
My bread maker, my bread is done.
00:43:25
Speaker
Uh, fantastic.
00:43:26
Speaker
What kind of bread?
00:43:28
Speaker
Uh, that's just, I always, I make a, I make a loaf of sandwich bread, uh, every, uh, for the week, uh, out of our, for your week of sandwiches.
00:43:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:37
Speaker
For a week of sandwiches.
00:43:38
Speaker
It's great.
00:43:38
Speaker
We haven't, we haven't purchased, uh, uh, in years at this point.
00:43:45
Speaker
it's worth it.
00:43:47
Speaker
It takes a little extra.
00:43:48
Speaker
I agree.
00:43:49
Speaker
I think homemade bread is made with love.
00:43:53
Speaker
Even machine made stuff.
00:43:55
Speaker
It's better.
00:43:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:57
Speaker
Wonder bread is made with wood.
00:43:58
Speaker
Yes, it is.
00:43:59
Speaker
Yes, it is.
00:44:00
Speaker
But what I was getting at is between getting the miracles, you have to
00:44:07
Speaker
solve a puzzle in heaven, it seems to be, because you're definitely in the clouds and there are definitely pearly gates.
00:44:15
Speaker
And the puzzle has nothing to do with what's going on.
00:44:22
Speaker
It falls back on a thing that you see with a lot of Christian video games where it's just basically trivia.
00:44:28
Speaker
So you end up at this...
00:44:31
Speaker
series of rings, seven rings in concentric circles.
00:44:36
Speaker
And each one of them is for days one through seven.
00:44:40
Speaker
And you have to pick the right thing that God did on that day.
00:44:47
Speaker
OK.
00:44:49
Speaker
which, all right, fine, but it has nothing to do with what I'm what I was doing in the moment.
00:44:54
Speaker
It doesn't tie in in any way.
00:44:57
Speaker
And it is my wife literally sat down with me with her with her Bible.
00:45:02
Speaker
It was like, OK, all right, what is it?
00:45:05
Speaker
Which ones are these?
00:45:06
Speaker
And it's so frustrating.
00:45:08
Speaker
It's such old school, and I don't say that fondly, game design where you have to literally click on the rings and turn them.
00:45:17
Speaker
And I ended up clicking the wrong one so many times because, again, 10 FPS at best.
00:45:25
Speaker
It's such a mess.
00:45:28
Speaker
I sincerely wanted to like this.
00:45:30
Speaker
I'm not a Christian.
00:45:32
Speaker
I'm not that guy.
00:45:34
Speaker
But...
00:45:36
Speaker
I know good material to work with when I see it.
00:45:40
Speaker
Oh, 100%.
00:45:41
Speaker
I mean, listen, if Gori Barlog can take God of War into the Norse mythology, then we can have a Jeebus game where he's just Jeebusin all over the town, you know?
00:45:56
Speaker
There is no reason not to.
00:45:57
Speaker
None whatsoever.
00:45:58
Speaker
People will buy that.
00:46:00
Speaker
And he is exorcist.
00:46:01
Speaker
And it's just Jesus Christ exorcist.
00:46:04
Speaker
I just want that game.
00:46:06
Speaker
I want that game.
00:46:07
Speaker
And maybe the whole thing could be like after he, it's like a whole story like this, you won't find this in your daddy's gospel.
00:46:16
Speaker
Ha!
00:46:16
Speaker
And then it's like it's like after he resurrected Lazarus, like he opened like something else came back with Lazarus.
00:46:24
Speaker
Now there's all these exorcisms that he has to perform because Lazarus was dead and and he has to Lazarus was dead.
00:46:32
Speaker
And now that Lazarus came back to life, like everything came back with him.
00:46:37
Speaker
And now like he he raised Lazarus from the dead.
00:46:41
Speaker
But Lazarus wasn't the only thing that came back.
00:46:45
Speaker
Lazarus is the only one who rose from the dead or Jesus, for that matter.
00:46:50
Speaker
Anyway, anyway, Jesus Christ, Exorcist, Jesus Christ, Exorcist.
00:46:54
Speaker
That game would fucking rule.
00:46:56
Speaker
Switch two.
00:46:57
Speaker
I love it.
00:46:58
Speaker
I love it.
00:46:59
Speaker
That's a free one, Nintendo.
00:47:01
Speaker
Make it happen.
00:47:04
Speaker
On a much, much brighter note, I also played the demo for a game called Fretless, the Wrath of Riffson.
00:47:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:13
Speaker
This is a old school turn based RPG game.
00:47:18
Speaker
It's got eight bit to 16 bit vibes.
00:47:23
Speaker
It's a very Scott Pilgrim kind of thing.
00:47:25
Speaker
You are in a world where music is like.
00:47:28
Speaker
everything and you're a guy with an acoustic guitar who wants to uh take part in this battle of the bands it's a literal battle though so like in scott pilgrim sure like it's good yeah yeah music is the weapon and it's a rhythm game uh and uh it's very basic rhythm stuff but it it's very hi-fi rush it honestly it was a cross between hi-fi rush and like secret of mana
00:47:53
Speaker
Okay.
00:47:54
Speaker
It had it had those vibes.
00:47:55
Speaker
The music is really nice.
00:47:59
Speaker
The vibe is incredibly good.
00:48:02
Speaker
It has this kind of like homey autumn kind of vibe to it.
00:48:07
Speaker
The indie rock is just right.
00:48:10
Speaker
It kind of struck a few of the chords that Keep Driving did for me.
00:48:13
Speaker
Okay.
00:48:14
Speaker
Where it just it just it's hitting me and kind of the in the old school feel goods and
00:48:22
Speaker
It brings out the guitar nerd in me.
00:48:26
Speaker
Like I used to play guitar.
00:48:29
Speaker
I never got to be heavy into that because that's kind of playing the guitar is kind of like Warhammer.
00:48:33
Speaker
You got people who do it occasionally sometimes, but it's such an expensive hobby that not as frequently.
00:48:39
Speaker
And then you got the people who are obsessed.
00:48:41
Speaker
Obsessed.
00:48:42
Speaker
obsessed.
00:48:43
Speaker
So the pedals and the.
00:48:45
Speaker
Exactly all that.
00:48:47
Speaker
And that's think you are you're defeating like mushroom monsters and rival musicians and stuff like that.
00:48:54
Speaker
And they drop things like fret oil and new pickups.
00:48:58
Speaker
And near the end of the demo, the scientist that I know makes me a bass.
00:49:03
Speaker
So now instead of my acoustic guitar, I'm slapping the bass and it has a whole other.
00:49:08
Speaker
Slapping the bass.
00:49:09
Speaker
I'm slapping the bass.
00:49:11
Speaker
It's got a whole other mechanic to it.
00:49:16
Speaker
And and it was perfect timing because at that point it was starting to feel a little samey because it was the same like three or four villains.
00:49:24
Speaker
The rhythms are
00:49:27
Speaker
nice and satisfying but it's pretty standard bump bump bump you know four four kind of tempo and uh there's nothing too complicated about it and so and then boom i got a new weapon slash instrument and i can play with that and you can customize them and and you know each get different riffs for them the riffs are different attacks or it uh there's a little uh uh slay the spire in there uh in terms of the gameplay it's it's it's
00:49:56
Speaker
Totally worth playing the demo.
00:49:59
Speaker
And I could see when you go over the Steam store, it's overwhelmingly positive over there, which good for them.
00:50:05
Speaker
This is a this is a very cool indie game project.
00:50:11
Speaker
Let's see.
00:50:11
Speaker
I don't know if they did.
00:50:12
Speaker
No, this is this is it.
00:50:13
Speaker
This is the only thing this it's Ritual Studios.
00:50:15
Speaker
This is their first game.
00:50:17
Speaker
um and i'm really impressed with it uh it it it's a lot of fun it's very self-aware and the rhythm stuff in it is a lot of fun it it's just a a really solid music-centric kind of a game i think a lot of people get something out of yeah that's cool yeah so that's fretless and uh uh uh kevin what are you playing
00:50:42
Speaker
oh okay um so uh what i have been playing first uh i beat ninja guide and rage bounds uh i don't know if i mentioned i beat it last week uh i don't think you know you mentioned you mentioned the game but yeah i beat i beat it uh it is uh it only takes like i don't know six hours to beat it all the way through once
00:51:06
Speaker
And then once you get to the end of it, it's like, okay, well, new game plus hard mode, you know, and that changes the levels a bit.
00:51:16
Speaker
Like as you go through, it's the levels are harder, enemy, the bosses are harder and all that stuff.
00:51:21
Speaker
So you can go through and, and,
00:51:24
Speaker
go try it again uh and with a with a higher difficulty it's like not an easy game to begin with it's just it's made easier by the fact that it's unlike old old school ninja gaiden nes days it has no uh there's no limit on on lives you know oh thank god so you're just because and i died so many times over the course of of playing of beating it once it was like in the 200s i was like right a number of deaths um
00:51:54
Speaker
So, you know, it's it's good.
00:51:56
Speaker
It's it's on my game of the year list.
00:51:57
Speaker
It's it's a fun, fun little game.
00:52:00
Speaker
There's actually like a there's there's two there's two endings to the game.
00:52:08
Speaker
So I might, you know, just get the other one just for the sake of of having it.
00:52:12
Speaker
But yeah, it's a fun game.
00:52:14
Speaker
I totally recommend it.
00:52:17
Speaker
What else I have been playing?
00:52:20
Speaker
I just started playing the second Bloodstained game.
00:52:25
Speaker
So they haven't, there isn't, it's not the full one, you know, the full Bloodstained, which is like Symphony of the Night.
00:52:32
Speaker
This is Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 2, which is made by Inti Creates.
00:52:38
Speaker
They did a version that is... Well, technically, the full version is also made by Inti Creates.
00:52:45
Speaker
But yes, they made the 8-bit Castlevania-style game.
00:52:54
Speaker
There was the original Bloodstained Curse of the Moon.
00:52:56
Speaker
I wasn't even aware that this game exists.
00:52:58
Speaker
I really enjoyed Bloodstained.
00:53:00
Speaker
I didn't...
00:53:01
Speaker
I don't know this is a thing.
00:53:03
Speaker
And Bloodstained, you're talking about the old PlayStation style one, right?
00:53:11
Speaker
The one that looks like Symphony of the Night.
00:53:13
Speaker
Exactly, yeah.
00:53:14
Speaker
So before Bloodstained released, they made a game called Curse of the Moon, which is just like a retro Castlevania style with characters from Bloodstained in it.
00:53:25
Speaker
Nice.
00:53:25
Speaker
And they made it as like a bonus because of their their what's it their Kickstarter when they first got started.
00:53:38
Speaker
So yeah, they've they've been doing Inti Creates has been doing a lot of neat stuff over the years.
00:53:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:47
Speaker
Top sellers.
00:53:47
Speaker
What is there?
00:53:49
Speaker
They do the Gunvolt Gal Guardians.
00:53:54
Speaker
Yeah, they've got a style, don't they?
00:53:56
Speaker
They do have a style.
00:53:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:02
Speaker
And the the let's see blood stains ritual of the night.
00:54:08
Speaker
That is that's what I'm thinking of is one of those rare Metroidvanias that I fucking devoured.
00:54:16
Speaker
I really enjoyed that.
00:54:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a good one.
00:54:21
Speaker
There is probably another I think there's a sequel to that one.
00:54:26
Speaker
The big the big the big boy version coming out at some point.
00:54:32
Speaker
Ritual of the Night.
00:54:35
Speaker
There's a bunch of DLCs for it, too, that I never got around to playing.
00:54:40
Speaker
Anyway, yes.
00:54:41
Speaker
So played that.
00:54:42
Speaker
What else have I been playing?
00:54:45
Speaker
A little game called Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader.
00:54:48
Speaker
Oh, tell me more.
00:54:53
Speaker
Yeah, I'm continuing on my...
00:54:56
Speaker
I have a problem with being an iconoclast in that my problem is that I'm no matter what I say when I start a new run, I'm like, I'm going to do dogmatic or heretic.
00:55:06
Speaker
I'm not going to be a nice guy anymore.
00:55:09
Speaker
And then, God damn it.
00:55:11
Speaker
I just can't.
00:55:12
Speaker
It's so hard.
00:55:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:13
Speaker
It's so hard.
00:55:14
Speaker
So like iconoclast in Rogue Trader is basically nice guy mode.
00:55:20
Speaker
Like everything, all the options for iconoclast.
00:55:23
Speaker
Let's save some people.
00:55:26
Speaker
Um, let's, um, it's that comic of like, we should improve society somewhat.
00:55:33
Speaker
And then the dogmatic guy popping out of well, that's exactly what it is.
00:55:38
Speaker
That's exactly what it is.
00:55:41
Speaker
It's just, it's not even like that.
00:55:43
Speaker
Iconoclast is like a kick-ass person.
00:55:45
Speaker
They're just reasonable.
00:55:47
Speaker
You know, they're just like, yeah, we shouldn't kill everyone.
00:55:50
Speaker
Right.
00:55:51
Speaker
Whereas her, her, heretic is like, let's kill everybody.
00:55:55
Speaker
But in parentheses, it's like for the chaos gods.
00:55:59
Speaker
And, and, and dogmatic is let's kill everybody in parentheses for the guy.
00:56:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:08
Speaker
I mean, that's the thing.
00:56:09
Speaker
I'm playing full dog.
00:56:11
Speaker
I say I'm playing full dogmatic, but I still have got like at least a full level in our kind of iconoclast because sometimes you just can't keep going that way.
00:56:23
Speaker
You got to.
00:56:24
Speaker
Give yourself a little break.
00:56:25
Speaker
Sometimes you gotta give somebody a pep talk instead of telling them that they're an embarrassment to the God Emperor when they're sad.
00:56:33
Speaker
If I gotta kill one more person without thinking about it, I'm gonna snap and therefore I'm going to give this person a pep talk.
00:56:41
Speaker
Dogmatic, kill them.
00:56:43
Speaker
Heretical, kill them but smile about it.
00:56:46
Speaker
Right.
00:56:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:47
Speaker
It's it's the Republican and Democratic Party.
00:56:50
Speaker
Yes, sir.
00:56:50
Speaker
Republican and Democratic Party.
00:56:52
Speaker
Dogmatic and heretical are Republicans and Democrats.
00:56:55
Speaker
Kill them.
00:56:55
Speaker
Which one?
00:56:55
Speaker
Kill them, but smile about it.
00:56:57
Speaker
Which one are they?
00:56:58
Speaker
You decide.
00:56:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:02
Speaker
It kind of works either which way.
00:57:04
Speaker
But I'm working my way through act two, working my way downtown, working my way through act two and I'm nearly, I think I'm nearly at the end of act two.
00:57:15
Speaker
I just got the, got my fourth planet back online.
00:57:22
Speaker
Uh, um, cause like, it's like in act two, it's like, you gotta get three, these three planets back online and then it's like, all right, now get this.
00:57:30
Speaker
There's a fourth one that you have to go find.
00:57:32
Speaker
Um, so I think I'm, I'm getting pretty close to, to having that, uh, all settled.
00:57:38
Speaker
Um, there's a bunch of act two, like side quests though, that I want to finish before I get into act three, knowing, knowing what happens in act three, I it's, it's good thing that you,
00:57:48
Speaker
It's a good thing to do those first.
00:57:50
Speaker
It's a good thing to do as many side quests as possible before you get to Act 3.
00:57:54
Speaker
I think some of them you might be able to come around and do again in Act 4, but clear the decks as much as possible.
00:58:02
Speaker
Good to know.
00:58:04
Speaker
That's what I'm doing just out of pure habit, so I'm glad to know that's going to be helpful in the long run.
00:58:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:12
Speaker
And also make sure Argenta's in your party at the end of Act 2.
00:58:17
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:17
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:18
Speaker
Good to know.
00:58:18
Speaker
She's usually part of my usual.
00:58:21
Speaker
Just have her with you.
00:58:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:24
Speaker
Good to know.
00:58:25
Speaker
Good to know.
00:58:26
Speaker
Argenta.
00:58:29
Speaker
Not trying to spoil anything.
00:58:31
Speaker
Just it's like there's certain things that you don't that are elucidated upon in act three if you have certain characters in your party.
00:58:42
Speaker
It's wild.
00:58:44
Speaker
You can totally miss them otherwise.
00:58:46
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:47
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:58:48
Speaker
So Rogue Trader almost through Act 2 and then Act 2 is one of the longest stretches of the game.
00:58:56
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:58:59
Speaker
Act 3 is a lot more self-contained but very different.
00:59:04
Speaker
And then Act 4 is like back to Act 2 shenanigans of like you're doing stuff again all over the galaxy.
00:59:13
Speaker
But yeah, finishing up Rogue Trader Act 2.
00:59:18
Speaker
And what else?
00:59:19
Speaker
I think that's it.
00:59:21
Speaker
That's all.
00:59:22
Speaker
That's it for me playing things.
00:59:23
Speaker
Nice.
00:59:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:29
Speaker
So thank you so much for listening.
00:59:33
Speaker
If you want, you can follow us on Blue Sky and on Instagram and on TikTok.
00:59:38
Speaker
It's all pixelipod over there.
00:59:40
Speaker
Starting to post more on TikTok in terms of like, I'm just like recording myself talking about books that we've had.
00:59:47
Speaker
If you want to ask us a question on our TikTok, go ahead, throw us a comment on one of our videos and I'll get around to it and be like, hey, I'll answer that question.
00:59:56
Speaker
I'll answer that question nine times.
00:59:58
Speaker
I'll take that one.
01:00:03
Speaker
But yeah, thanks so much for listening.
01:00:05
Speaker
So Phil, I don't know if you can see him behind me, but...
01:00:13
Speaker
Homestar Runner has been standing in my closet for a while.
01:00:19
Speaker
How do I get rid of a Homestar Runner that has decided to take up residence in my closet?
01:00:26
Speaker
Oh boy.
01:00:26
Speaker
Let me tell you with the Homestar runners, it's all about trauma.
01:00:31
Speaker
Uh, the last time I had a Homestar runner stuck in my closet, I ended up just sitting outside with my wife.
01:00:39
Speaker
And after I explained to her over and over again, this is just, we're just, this is a put on, this is an act.
01:00:44
Speaker
Uh, I got into a vicious argument with her, uh, about,