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The Jedi Kinda Suck (Star Wars: Fatal Alliance - Part 1)
2 Plays2 months ago
Right? They are all repressed and everything? I mean I'm no Sith fan myself but you gotta be able to deal with your emotions better than shoving them way... way down.
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Transcript
Exploration of Knights of the Old Republic Storylines
00:00:00
Speaker
Again, there are eight classes.
00:00:01
Speaker
Each class has a different storyline for free.
00:00:06
Speaker
You could play through like just fucking hundred hours worth of the third Knights of the Old Republic for all intents and purposes.
00:00:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's really worth a go for anyone who hasn't done it.
00:00:18
Speaker
It's lovely.
00:00:20
Speaker
It's lovely.
00:00:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:22
Speaker
You know who else is lovely?
00:00:24
Speaker
Who's that?
Introduction to Pixel It Podcast & Book Discussion
00:00:26
Speaker
Hey there everybody welcome back to Pixel It my name is Kevin with me as always is Phil on today's show we are doing Star Wars the Old Republic Fatal Alliance we this is a it's a double colon title oh yeah oh yeah by oh fuck what's the guy's name
00:00:44
Speaker
Oh, Sean Williams.
00:00:46
Speaker
Sean Williams Scott.
00:00:48
Speaker
That's right.
00:00:49
Speaker
Stifler wrote this.
00:00:50
Speaker
Stifler.
00:00:50
Speaker
His name is Sean Williams.
00:00:53
Speaker
Oh, you got the hardcover.
00:00:55
Speaker
I did.
00:00:57
Speaker
I decided I was like, this is something that really I really like.
00:01:01
Speaker
And I
00:01:03
Speaker
It didn't sell.
00:01:04
Speaker
I don't think it sold particularly well, so it's not like it cost me an arm and a leg, but I liked I just look at that.
00:01:09
Speaker
That's pretty.
00:01:10
Speaker
It's just.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, there's so there's three books in this.
00:01:14
Speaker
I think three books in the series, maybe three or four.
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah, because I bought the so the Kindle version I bought has all of them.
00:01:24
Speaker
Oh, nice.
00:01:25
Speaker
Yeah, there are four.
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, so it starts with Fatal Alliance, and it's 1,600 pages of Star War.
00:01:37
Speaker
You know, before we were recording, or maybe when it was the pre-intro stuff, Kevin pointed out, he said, does this feel like a long
Pacing and Length of 'Fatal Alliance'
00:01:48
Speaker
book to you?
00:01:48
Speaker
And Kevin, I think it might be the fact that you're looking at 1,600 pages
00:01:53
Speaker
I think that might be because as I go through, it's like I'm at like 1% of book read and it's not moving.
00:02:00
Speaker
Right.
00:02:00
Speaker
Exactly.
00:02:01
Speaker
Exactly.
00:02:02
Speaker
So it just it's it's forcing you to look at it as just dragging on.
00:02:08
Speaker
But that's smart because the way this one is going, I fully intend on getting through all four of these books over the next, well, four years, let's say.
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's it.
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:17
Speaker
So the the the book is based on the game Star Wars, The Old Republic.
Transition of Game Development and Industry Trends
00:02:22
Speaker
We were just talking about it.
00:02:23
Speaker
Not a game that I really played.
00:02:24
Speaker
I played Knights of the Old Republic pretty religiously.
00:02:29
Speaker
Love those two.
00:02:31
Speaker
Star Wars, the older also developed by Bioware, who did Knights of the Old Republic.
00:02:37
Speaker
And it's currently it's since been moved from Bioware over to another company called Broad Sword Online.
00:02:44
Speaker
But yeah, it's it.
00:02:46
Speaker
It's if I know correctly, I think Broad Sword Online, I think owns like a lot of those MMORPGs that kind of short
00:02:55
Speaker
shifted to the free to play kind of.
00:02:58
Speaker
It's yeah, it's it's there.
00:03:00
Speaker
That's their bread and butter is.
00:03:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:02
Speaker
Probably maintaining MMOs after a certain point because it's been out for looks like 15 years now, 14 years now.
Political Structures: Old Republic vs. Modern Star Wars
00:03:12
Speaker
And
00:03:15
Speaker
It is set in the Old Republic, as the title says, which is about 3000 to 4000 years ago in the Star War universe.
00:03:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:27
Speaker
And this is actually the thing that was confusing me.
00:03:30
Speaker
So it's the Sith Empire and there's actually that they are fighting that they are fighting against in the Old Republic.
00:03:38
Speaker
but it's more of a even playing fields.
00:03:42
Speaker
Whereas I feel like in, in every modern day star modern day, uh,
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:49
Speaker
Non-old Republic Star Wars stories tend to be like, oh, there's one galactic government.
00:03:54
Speaker
And we're like, uh, now there's one galactic.
00:03:57
Speaker
Like, it's like the, the, the, the line between the two governments are always very narrow.
00:04:04
Speaker
So it's like, it goes Republic to empire, empire to new Republic.
00:04:12
Speaker
And then new Republic to first order.
00:04:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:15
Speaker
And and there's like no like transition periods between these two, these entities having control of the universe.
00:04:25
Speaker
And I think there's something I appreciate about these stories and this story so far set in the old Republic and probably that game is that it's like
00:04:32
Speaker
No, it's a it's a war.
00:04:34
Speaker
It's it's too large.
00:04:35
Speaker
It's large factions going at each other with intermediary factions kind of like being third party spoilers like the Hutts or the Mandalorians or, you know, just the big like that's that's the cool thing.
00:04:50
Speaker
I think in this is like the Hutts are just kind of there as like these big corpo slugs literally just they're just taking advantage where they can, making their money where they can.
00:05:01
Speaker
Which is, which is, which actually now that I think about it, it's wild that the sequel trilogy didn't feature, they have an entire planet set on a gambling planet and it doesn't have the Hutts involved in that.
00:05:17
Speaker
Isn't that weird?
Critique of Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
00:05:18
Speaker
I thought that too.
00:05:19
Speaker
I just like,
00:05:20
Speaker
That's a gimme like that's that's just that's you got to have at least one sitting in the corner smoking a hookah or something.
00:05:26
Speaker
Despite me liking Ryan Johnson's effort in that trilogy, I think we can we can all kind of collectively like, you know, that's fine.
00:05:36
Speaker
We don't need to think he did.
00:05:38
Speaker
I think he tried.
00:05:39
Speaker
He tried.
00:05:39
Speaker
They tried.
00:05:40
Speaker
They they were not.
00:05:43
Speaker
I'll tell you each one of them, even the third one.
00:05:47
Speaker
which I know wasn't him.
00:05:48
Speaker
Yeah, it was JJ again.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:05:52
Speaker
With that trilogy, though, each one of them has excellent stuff.
00:05:58
Speaker
There are some ingredients in each one of them that are fucking excellent and can inspire and get you excited and that sort of thing.
00:06:05
Speaker
But overall, it just is kind of a meh, sort of a...
00:06:09
Speaker
And I feel like it was just never fully thought out or outlined or what have you.
00:06:13
Speaker
Well, that's just it.
'Andor' Series Mention & Gameplay of Old Republic
00:06:15
Speaker
It's just, just, they just, they kind of threw it around, let's see that their pants, you know, just like, uh, it's JJ Abrams style.
00:06:22
Speaker
I don't know what I'm fucking doing.
00:06:23
Speaker
So I'm going to,
00:06:24
Speaker
You know, I just I'll just fake it and eventually it'll be awesome.
00:06:29
Speaker
It's like, no, that's no.
00:06:30
Speaker
It actually didn't.
00:06:32
Speaker
It didn't end up being awesome, JJ.
00:06:34
Speaker
And we keep falling for it like.
00:06:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:38
Speaker
And then they I still got to watch Andor.
00:06:40
Speaker
I mean, they give never watch that one either.
00:06:43
Speaker
I've never watched it, but everybody's telling me to watch it.
00:06:47
Speaker
But yeah, the game, the game, you played this game.
00:06:51
Speaker
Yes, a lot.
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:54
Speaker
And as you were informing me before the call, it's free to play now.
00:06:58
Speaker
You just you just do it.
00:07:00
Speaker
If you have two characters with a free account, two characters, a free account.
Lore and Continuity in Star Wars Games
00:07:06
Speaker
Even if you don't like MMORPGs and you just like this, people were after after Knights of the Old Republic 2 came out, people are like, when is the third one coming out?
00:07:14
Speaker
The Old Republic is the third and the fourth and the fifth and the sixth and seventh and the eighth one, because each class has its own
00:07:22
Speaker
for all intents and purposes, single player storyline.
00:07:26
Speaker
You do not have to interact with anyone.
00:07:29
Speaker
You do not have to do anything but go from mission to mission and do your thing.
00:07:33
Speaker
There's a lot of the standard wow MMORPG collect ten, whatever hides and that kind of thing.
00:07:39
Speaker
Yes, that is there.
00:07:42
Speaker
But it's a lot of
00:07:44
Speaker
good writing and interesting story.
00:07:46
Speaker
And it takes place 300 years after the second Knights of the Old Republic and Revan's still around somehow.
00:07:53
Speaker
It's amazing.
00:07:55
Speaker
It's amazing how far hate will get you.
00:07:57
Speaker
I know, right?
00:07:59
Speaker
So is the canonical ending of Knights of the Old Republic one that you go back to the dark side?
00:08:06
Speaker
No, the canonical is the light side.
00:08:08
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:08:10
Speaker
But he does, I don't remember, someone will tell me, but in Old Republic, there is a instance mission where you interact, at least one where you interact with...
Sean Williams' Contributions to Star Wars
00:08:24
Speaker
with Revan and he isn't.
00:08:27
Speaker
I want to say he's not quite dark side, but he's kind of jaded.
00:08:30
Speaker
He's not the guy used to be that sort of thing.
00:08:33
Speaker
It's it's interesting.
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Knights of the Old Republic, if they came, if they announced a
00:08:41
Speaker
like if that would be like a bombshell announcement of like KOTOR 3 coming out, you know, 2026 or something like that.
00:08:50
Speaker
Well, they were supposed to do the whole not reboot, but like like what they did with Final Fantasy 7.
00:08:58
Speaker
They're supposed to do that with First Knights of the Old Republic.
00:09:01
Speaker
And and I was fucking on board and then they cancel it and they're there now rumblings that someone still has it.
00:09:08
Speaker
But it's just not
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't get my hopes up for anything in particular with the games industry these days, especially when you talk about Microsoft and laying everybody off in the news today.
00:09:22
Speaker
Well, not news today, but news recently.
00:09:25
Speaker
There was an article posted that apparently the staff at King, so King, the makers of Candy Crush owned by Microsoft,
00:09:34
Speaker
the staff at King had been building these AI tools under the guise of, oh, it's going to help your productivity.
00:09:41
Speaker
And then a lot of the staff was let go in favor of the AI tools that they built.
00:09:48
Speaker
Garbage in, garbage out.
00:09:51
Speaker
Bananas.
00:09:53
Speaker
Just absolute bananas.
00:09:55
Speaker
So that's frustrating.
00:09:58
Speaker
The optimist in me thinks that
00:10:03
Speaker
we will see just how shitty uh relying entirely on this garbage is and and a lot of those people will uh come back to work and and that sort of thing that this is a blip um yeah but but it also shit quality has never stopped corpos from just churning it out so who knows corpos man
00:10:29
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:10:30
Speaker
So, so who's the guy that wrote the book?
00:10:34
Speaker
Who's stiff?
00:10:34
Speaker
Who's this stifler guy?
00:10:36
Speaker
This is Australian stifler.
00:10:39
Speaker
Sean Williams.
00:10:41
Speaker
He is, he's Australian.
00:10:44
Speaker
He is not just a, he's, he's written a ton of novels, a lot of obviously speculative fiction stuff.
00:10:51
Speaker
He also is a composer.
00:10:52
Speaker
He does like ambient kind of, you know, trancy music.
00:10:57
Speaker
I haven't, I haven't, uh,
00:10:58
Speaker
listened to it yet, but like it's supposed to be pretty good.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:05
Speaker
He does some acting here and there.
00:11:07
Speaker
His big claim to fame is, well, he wrote like six or seven Star Wars books, this one included.
00:11:14
Speaker
But his novelization of Star Wars, The Force Unleashed was the number one.
00:11:20
Speaker
It was number one on the New York Times bestseller list, which was the first ever game novelization to do that.
00:11:29
Speaker
So that's his big, excuse me, claim to fame.
00:11:32
Speaker
And so he wrote he wrote The Force Awakens, The Force Awakens, The Force Awakens, The Force Unleashed, The Force Unleashed 2.
00:11:41
Speaker
And he had a trilogy that was from the New Jedi Order era back where they they brought in the sentient Terranids for all intents and purposes, the
00:11:50
Speaker
what were they called?
00:11:50
Speaker
The Yutong Vong or something like that.
00:11:53
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yuuzhan Vong.
00:11:56
Speaker
Yuuzhan Vong.
00:11:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:58
Speaker
They are a trilogy for that era.
00:12:00
Speaker
They are, um, uh, the force is blind to them.
Yuuzhan Vong and Star Wars Legends Discussion
00:12:07
Speaker
Right.
00:12:07
Speaker
So like Jedi are they they are like they're literally a hard counter to Jedi.
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:14
Speaker
The like Jedi won't be able to sense them coming like with their force powers.
00:12:19
Speaker
They can't they can't choke them with the like
00:12:23
Speaker
They can't do anything force related to them to fight them.
00:12:28
Speaker
That's why they use on Vong.
00:12:30
Speaker
It was like such an interesting era of Legends books where it's like, oh, this alien race from a literal other galaxy has arrived via generation ships and we can't do anything to them.
00:12:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:46
Speaker
Yeah, and it started with Vector Prime, which is the only one I read.
00:12:50
Speaker
That's the one where... Yeah, that's Chewbacca... Dying, yeah.
00:12:56
Speaker
The death of Chewbacca in the Legends canon.
00:12:57
Speaker
R.A.
00:12:57
Speaker
Salvatore, who just balls of solid rock chose to kill Chewbacca.
00:13:04
Speaker
But I'll tell you what, though.
00:13:06
Speaker
If you're gonna kill Chewbacca, he died the way he should have.
00:13:09
Speaker
He's literally the last time I think Han sees him because it's like a moon about to it's in the gravitational pull of the planet, I think.
00:13:17
Speaker
And the last time he sees him is Chewbacca literally screaming at a moon that is about to crush him.
00:13:23
Speaker
It's like, oh, well, come on.
00:13:25
Speaker
That's the way to go.
00:13:26
Speaker
We don't want none of us want to be dead.
00:13:29
Speaker
But like if he's good, that's how he should go.
00:13:31
Speaker
Like the only thing that's going to take him out is a fucking planetoid.
00:13:35
Speaker
Like that's yeah, that's a good way to do it.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:38
Speaker
So he wrote a trilogy for that force heretic.
00:13:41
Speaker
Mm hmm.
Patreon Promo & 'Fatal Alliance' Prologue
00:13:42
Speaker
And but he's he's very prolific.
00:13:44
Speaker
He's he's another one of our lifers.
00:13:47
Speaker
You know, he's he's got his own original stuff.
00:13:52
Speaker
Admittedly, he doesn't do as much novelization or as much pay to write kind of stuff.
00:13:59
Speaker
But he's got a lot of awards.
00:14:00
Speaker
He's won a bunch of the Dittmar and the Aurealis.
00:14:04
Speaker
Aurealis is Aurealis Award.
00:14:06
Speaker
And those are both like Australian versions of like the Hugo and the Nebula Award and that sort of thing.
00:14:12
Speaker
Aurealis.
00:14:14
Speaker
Aurealis.
00:14:15
Speaker
Aurealis.
00:14:18
Speaker
I get more when I do that, I get more like Aurealis.
00:14:22
Speaker
And then it just becomes a twisted rabbit.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:27
Speaker
So he's a pretty cool guy.
00:14:29
Speaker
He's got...
00:14:31
Speaker
He's got the chops and I'm enjoying the book so far.
00:14:33
Speaker
So that's nice.
00:14:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:36
Speaker
All right.
00:14:37
Speaker
So that's the game.
00:14:38
Speaker
That's the book.
00:14:41
Speaker
The only I guess we should put it in.
00:14:44
Speaker
Oh, wait a minute.
00:14:45
Speaker
I forgot to tell you about my favorite website in the world.
00:14:47
Speaker
Patreon.com slash pixel.
00:14:49
Speaker
We got three tiers.
00:14:51
Speaker
Four if you count for free.
00:14:53
Speaker
We got $1, $5, and $10.
00:14:54
Speaker
$1 gets you access to the ad-free episode.
00:14:57
Speaker
$5 gets you access to the bonus episode we record before each episode.
00:15:01
Speaker
And $10 gets your name shouted out.
00:15:09
Speaker
In each episode, to that end, I want to say thank you to Jesus Loves You, Kyle Seaman, Ruthless Mudder, Middle of Things, Sigma, Sal, Ch- Beaks, Dummy Thick, and Friendly Friend, thank you so much for being a friend.
00:15:24
Speaker
Patreon.com slash Pixlet Pod.
00:15:26
Speaker
Do it today.
00:15:27
Speaker
Do it today.
00:15:29
Speaker
All right.
00:15:29
Speaker
Well, what do you say, Kev?
00:15:30
Speaker
What, are you going to put the body in the marsh here?
00:15:33
Speaker
Let's put it in the marsh.
00:15:34
Speaker
When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh,
00:15:39
Speaker
You dump them in the marsh.
00:15:43
Speaker
All right, Marshies.
00:15:45
Speaker
So we start with a prologue.
00:15:47
Speaker
We've got a group of scoundrels and they are attempting to rob a cruiser in space.
00:15:53
Speaker
Jet Nebula is the name of the leader of these scoundrels.
00:15:59
Speaker
I'll take names that aren't real for 500, Alex.
00:16:03
Speaker
Even for the Star Wars universe.
00:16:04
Speaker
Even for Star Wars universe, which let me tell you,
00:16:07
Speaker
Star Wars, the Star Wars universe is one bullet point one A for like, yeah, we're just going to make up the dumbest fucking thing that we can we can think of.
00:16:18
Speaker
But Jet Nebula is is a Zap Brannigan levels of.
00:16:23
Speaker
Yes, that's exactly the reference.
00:16:25
Speaker
I was.
00:16:26
Speaker
Yes, Zap Brannigan.
00:16:27
Speaker
That's it's that level of.
00:16:29
Speaker
And they do kind of imply that this is an obvious thing.
00:16:34
Speaker
a fake name that he uses pseudonym pseudonym thank you nom de piracy yeah he does he has a really interesting relationship with his first mate who um who like
00:16:48
Speaker
It's like he's been mutinied at this point.
00:16:52
Speaker
And he gets the upper hand on his first mate and like threatens him with a gun and says, you know, I'm taking back the cap being the captain of the ship.
00:17:01
Speaker
And it's like, all right, fine.
00:17:02
Speaker
And they just go back to being captain and first mate again.
00:17:04
Speaker
Like nothing happened.
00:17:05
Speaker
Like you actually kind of respects him for it.
00:17:08
Speaker
It's it's it's like we're we're unmuting this mutiny.
00:17:13
Speaker
And he's the first mates like that.
00:17:15
Speaker
He got me.
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah, fine.
00:17:17
Speaker
And he just, and he doesn't stay butthurt about it.
00:17:19
Speaker
He just kind of gets back into the role.
00:17:21
Speaker
He gets back to work.
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah, he gets back to work.
00:17:24
Speaker
It's okay, fine.
00:17:26
Speaker
I'll try again.
00:17:27
Speaker
Oh, you, you know, it's that kind of, it's a very interesting relationship.
00:17:32
Speaker
So they're trying to pirate this, this boat, boat, Jesus, the ship that is, they're talking to them on the, on the, on, you know, speaker.
00:17:44
Speaker
What are you,
00:17:45
Speaker
I'm look, I am no good with words.
00:17:48
Speaker
I have not.
00:17:49
Speaker
This is the only drink I've had.
00:17:50
Speaker
And look, there's hardly any.
00:17:51
Speaker
I am just stumbling today.
00:17:54
Speaker
So they're talking to them on the on the on the bullhorn.
00:17:58
Speaker
The bullhorn.
00:18:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:01
Speaker
Hello.
00:18:03
Speaker
It works.
00:18:04
Speaker
Monty Python ever did a did a space movie.
00:18:09
Speaker
It would have been it would have been some some stuff like that going on.
00:18:12
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:18:13
Speaker
Oh, without doubt.
00:18:15
Speaker
They've
00:18:16
Speaker
They're interrogating him, trying to say, hey, just let us on board.
00:18:19
Speaker
We all know how this is going to happen.
00:18:21
Speaker
We don't want to get into a fight.
00:18:23
Speaker
We don't want anyone to get hurt.
00:18:24
Speaker
And the ship explodes rather than be boarded.
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:31
Speaker
Which...
00:18:32
Speaker
admittedly, is they're all a little confused by that scenario.
00:18:37
Speaker
This is not normal.
00:18:39
Speaker
And the prologue ends with them deciding they're just going to search the remains of the ship and see what they can find.
00:18:46
Speaker
Moving on.
00:18:48
Speaker
Chapter one, we're on Coruscant and Shigar Kanshi.
00:18:54
Speaker
He is a Jedi and he is being denied knight status.
00:18:58
Speaker
They still they say he still needs to learn self control.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:03
Speaker
This Padawan is he's a pissed off Padawan.
00:19:06
Speaker
Just pissed off Patty.
00:19:08
Speaker
Just pissed off Patty.
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah.
Character Introductions: Shigar Kanshi & Laren Moxla
00:19:11
Speaker
His master is Satali Shan, who is kind of a regular NPC in the game.
00:19:20
Speaker
She's she's yeah, she's she's constantly throughout the game, as I'm recall recalling.
00:19:25
Speaker
And she tells she literally says, take a walk, like walk it off.
00:19:28
Speaker
You're going to be all right, buddy.
00:19:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:31
Speaker
Now, and as he's walking it off, he happens to hear blaster fire and runs toward it.
00:19:37
Speaker
We cut to Laren Moxler, who is a we don't know the full story on her just yet.
00:19:44
Speaker
We're going to find out she is a former commando, basically.
00:19:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:48
Speaker
Black ops, like, yeah, really in the shit stuff.
00:19:52
Speaker
Exactly.
00:19:53
Speaker
And she's she's she also sees this commotion.
00:19:57
Speaker
It's at the HQ of some local gangers, and she finds a Mandalorian who is looking for a Lima Zandrit.
00:20:07
Speaker
This is these names.
00:20:08
Speaker
They're beautiful.
00:20:11
Speaker
Roll off the tongue.
00:20:12
Speaker
Just just just so graceful.
00:20:14
Speaker
Shigar shows up and a fight breaks out.
00:20:20
Speaker
And they noticed that they both have the same facial tattoos, which designates them as, I think it's Kifian.
00:20:27
Speaker
They're from the planet Kifu.
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah, they're actually not human.
00:20:32
Speaker
They're Kifian.
00:20:33
Speaker
They're near human.
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah, they're one of the near human races.
00:20:40
Speaker
Right.
00:20:40
Speaker
And we'll even find out that their tribes used to fight each other, that at some point they had a civil war or something.
00:20:48
Speaker
The Mandalorian gets away.
00:20:49
Speaker
We find out from one of the survivors that he's called Dao Stryver, and he was looking for, quote unquote, Cinzia.
00:21:00
Speaker
And then the one survivor promptly dies.
00:21:03
Speaker
And it's important to note that this Mandalorian has killed a fucking whole like HQ filled with criminals by himself.
00:21:12
Speaker
Just an absolute ass load.
00:21:15
Speaker
Mandalorians, not ones to fuck with.
00:21:19
Speaker
Absolutely not.
00:21:20
Speaker
They do a great job of setting that up of like, yeah, by the way, because this was before the Mandalorian TV show or before the Mandalorian TV show.
00:21:29
Speaker
And probably no, I mean, it was this is probably written after Clone Wars.
00:21:36
Speaker
Yes.
00:21:37
Speaker
Yes.
00:21:37
Speaker
Where we get a lot of Mandalorian action.
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:40
Speaker
And it's in the yeah.
00:21:42
Speaker
And the show, it's basically for anyone who doesn't know you don't fuck with them.
00:21:45
Speaker
Like, that's what they're that's what they're basically there for.
Plotlines and Political Intrigue in 'Fatal Alliance'
00:21:48
Speaker
In case you didn't, in case you're new, you don't fuck with these guys.
00:21:53
Speaker
So we get a small moral argument, which basically it displays the same subtlety as the morality system in KOTOR.
00:22:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:07
Speaker
You've got really clearly chipper sweetheart light side or unnecessarily evil dark side.
00:22:14
Speaker
There's nothing in between.
00:22:15
Speaker
Nothing in between.
00:22:17
Speaker
Nothing in between.
00:22:18
Speaker
They, uh, but they do have a, they, they hit it off and they go together to update, uh, about what just happened.
00:22:26
Speaker
Uh, chapter two.
00:22:28
Speaker
By the way, it was the name of the ship in the prologue.
00:22:30
Speaker
Yes.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yes.
00:22:31
Speaker
It's true.
00:22:33
Speaker
Um,
00:22:34
Speaker
I want to make sure I get this name right.
00:22:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:35
Speaker
Chapter two starts Eldon Axe.
00:22:39
Speaker
Great.
00:22:39
Speaker
Honestly, my favorite name for a Sith so far.
00:22:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:44
Speaker
Axe.
00:22:44
Speaker
And she's only ever referred to.
00:22:46
Speaker
She gets.
00:22:48
Speaker
Everybody calls her Axe from like in most scenes.
00:22:51
Speaker
So.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:22:53
Speaker
So she's a Sith apprentice, and she's on her way to Dromund Kaas, which is the capital of the Empire.
00:23:00
Speaker
And we find out that she has recently lost a fight with...
00:23:05
Speaker
Dao Stryver, our Mandalorian, and she promises herself that she is going to kill him one day.
00:23:12
Speaker
She debriefs with her master, Darth Kratus, and she was defeated by the Mandalorian.
00:23:21
Speaker
He interrogated her.
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:23
Speaker
He was also also asking her about this Lima Zandrick character and Cynthia.
00:23:31
Speaker
And the mention of it's like it's it's like remember that like not not only.
00:23:40
Speaker
Did the Mandalorian is like recontextualizes the Mandalorian's battle like fight.
00:23:44
Speaker
Right.
00:23:45
Speaker
Not only did he kill everybody in this space in the he also like beat a Sith Lord, a Sith apprentice in one on one combat relatively easily.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:57
Speaker
Like it's not a sweat for him.
00:23:59
Speaker
It was it was like 100 against one guy and he cut through all of them.
00:24:05
Speaker
And it reminds me of this.
00:24:06
Speaker
There's like this.
00:24:07
Speaker
There was this Wolverine series and I can't remember the details of of it, but it was he was looking to he was looking for somebody.
00:24:19
Speaker
And like there's just a page of like of Wolverine having like just killed everybody from like the the X mansion to New York City or something like that.
00:24:31
Speaker
Right.
00:24:33
Speaker
Like that's Stouse Driver, you know.
00:24:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's it's leaving, leaving a hell of a body count behind him.
00:24:39
Speaker
In fact, it's impressive enough that acts like got away.
00:24:43
Speaker
Yeah, she survived the whole thing.
00:24:45
Speaker
And she, yeah, he wasn't interested.
00:24:47
Speaker
He wasn't interested in killing her.
00:24:49
Speaker
He just wanted information.
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:24:53
Speaker
At the mention of Lima, Xandrit and Cinzia, her master freaks out.
00:24:58
Speaker
He has a visceral response and he takes her to a data center where he shows her Xandrit, who he tells the story of her being the mother of a would-be Sith because the Sith basically come in and just like the Jedi do, they choose children to be trained.
00:25:20
Speaker
but very frequently with a Sith, the parents don't want anything to do with it and they will kill the parents and take the kid anyway.
00:25:27
Speaker
Uh, and Xander, uh, had a child like that who had some force powers and she ran off and tried to hide her child and was never seen again.
00:25:35
Speaker
And, uh, uh,
00:25:38
Speaker
Darth, I don't know how to say, Chatris or Chatris, whatever it is, he releases a block, like a force block that he had put in Axe's memory and has her remember that Xandrit is her mother.
00:25:52
Speaker
So there's a connection there, a pretty significant one.
00:25:56
Speaker
And so...
00:25:58
Speaker
They go to see the minister of Intel who tells them about the ship, the Cinzia, that the Hutts are auctioning off.
00:26:08
Speaker
And Cinzia, we find out, was Axe's birth name.
00:26:12
Speaker
So the connection between her and her mother and the ship is a straight line, really.
00:26:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:21
Speaker
Uh, Kratos orders her to use her new memories to find her mother.
00:26:26
Speaker
And the reward will be that he'll put the mental block back when she's like, I'll make you forget once again.
00:26:32
Speaker
Don't worry.
00:26:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:33
Speaker
Kill your mom.
00:26:34
Speaker
And I'll make sure that you don't, you're not aware forever that you killed your mom.
00:26:39
Speaker
Um, and, uh, and we do get a lot of stuff with acts where she's kind of like confused because she, even with the memory back, she doesn't feel anything.
00:26:49
Speaker
Uh, for this woman as, as her mother's no like, oh my God, it's my mom.
00:26:53
Speaker
She doesn't have that.
00:26:54
Speaker
And even as a Sith, she's kind of like, shouldn't I have some feeling there that doesn't know what happens when a sociopath becomes a Sith?
00:27:04
Speaker
Right.
00:27:04
Speaker
We'll find out.
00:27:06
Speaker
We are in the next 400 pages.
00:27:12
Speaker
The Sith do rely on emotion.
00:27:15
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:27:16
Speaker
Big time.
00:27:16
Speaker
It's funny because the Jedi rely more on controlling your emotion and the Sith are more about like, let it go, buddy.
00:27:26
Speaker
Passion and anger.
00:27:28
Speaker
Anger and fucking...
00:27:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:30
Speaker
Fucking you.
00:27:31
Speaker
You know, they never say it.
00:27:33
Speaker
They never say it.
00:27:34
Speaker
You got to know that that's.
00:27:35
Speaker
You got to know that that's that's that's I mean, even Palpatine had kids.
00:27:40
Speaker
Right.
00:27:41
Speaker
Right.
00:27:41
Speaker
You know, I figure I figure that's got that happens a lot.
00:27:45
Speaker
I know Star Wars is made for kids, but.
00:27:49
Speaker
I think we all know what's going on behind closed doors.
Hutt Auction Infiltration by Factions
00:27:52
Speaker
Come on.
00:27:53
Speaker
In Chapter 3, we meet Ula V, an imperial informant on Coruscant.
00:28:00
Speaker
We find out that he is basically posing as an assistant to an important republic politician, but he is secretly feeding information back to the empire.
00:28:13
Speaker
Okay.
00:28:14
Speaker
Satale briefs his boss on this Mandalorian situation, and he ends up being sent to follow up on it, find out more.
00:28:25
Speaker
We learn a little bit about the current history of the world, the Treaty of Coruscant, which ended the war on
00:28:32
Speaker
between the Sith and the Republic.
00:28:36
Speaker
The Sith was assisted by the Mandalorians in a big way.
00:28:40
Speaker
So the war is over, but it's still considered a Cold War, which actually is one of the more interesting things about the old Republic game.
00:28:48
Speaker
Because that's the...
00:28:51
Speaker
you can end up in empire areas if you're part of the Republic and vice versa.
00:28:58
Speaker
Um, right.
00:28:58
Speaker
You don't go in and like interact with their cities or anything like that, but you, you end up in the places and you're just kind of tolerated because we can't do anything overt right now.
00:29:09
Speaker
It's not a hot war right now.
00:29:11
Speaker
Exactly.
00:29:11
Speaker
Not a hot war.
00:29:13
Speaker
Um,
00:29:14
Speaker
So he gets information from the local information broker about this Dow Stryker character who, by the way, left an hour ago.
00:29:25
Speaker
Just missed him.
00:29:27
Speaker
Just missed him.
00:29:28
Speaker
He finds out about the hot auction and Cinzia.
00:29:32
Speaker
Another contact tells him that the big secret is the mystery cargo on board of the ship and where the ship came from.
00:29:42
Speaker
Uh, because, and that, that there's basically people seem to agree that the, the planet that it came from is probably unknown and probably resource rich, which they point out finding new plants in this world is, is this universe is no big deal.
00:29:57
Speaker
It happens all the time, but finding one that is rich in some sort of mineral or anything along those lines is it can make you, it can make you, you know, very, very wealthy and very powerful.
00:30:09
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:30:10
Speaker
So he reports to his superiors.
00:30:13
Speaker
We get a little self-hate.
00:30:14
Speaker
He is also a near human.
00:30:17
Speaker
And we get kind of log cabin Republican style self-hater kind of dude.
00:30:25
Speaker
He hears from an imperial, another imperial agent he works with called Shulis Kamar.
00:30:32
Speaker
She's this up and comer.
00:30:33
Speaker
You get the, they were kind of in the same class basically.
00:30:36
Speaker
And she, she's recently totally, you know, blown the doors down.
00:30:43
Speaker
And she knows all about, she already knows about the Hutts and the planet and everything like that, which kind of just, because you can tell you what's to impress her.
00:30:50
Speaker
You get the impression he has kind of a little crush on her or something.
00:30:54
Speaker
She's like, you're not telling me anything I don't already know.
00:30:56
Speaker
And he's like, ah, but what about this?
00:31:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:04
Speaker
He pitches the idea, and apparently they've talked about this before, but he pitches the idea that they want to take this planet as a way of making the Empire more civilized, kind of.
00:31:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:15
Speaker
He's got some real Ben Shapiro energy.
00:31:18
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:31:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:19
Speaker
He is not a, he is a, he loves the Empire for trad values.
00:31:28
Speaker
Right.
00:31:28
Speaker
Exactly.
00:31:29
Speaker
Exactly.
00:31:30
Speaker
But does not like the Sith.
00:31:32
Speaker
No, he's not down with Sith.
00:31:33
Speaker
He's not down with the rage.
00:31:35
Speaker
And, you know, it's like someone who's a Republican but hates the Proud Boys, really.
00:31:41
Speaker
Sure.
00:31:42
Speaker
So it's like they're a necessary evil, but sheesh.
00:31:46
Speaker
So he wants his own planet that they can basically make the Empire seem more respectable.
00:31:54
Speaker
Right.
00:31:55
Speaker
Yeah, he's very Nazi in a suit is what you get from it.
00:32:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:01
Speaker
Chapter four, Moxla in the Senate gardens.
00:32:06
Speaker
We find out she was a Republic commando and that she was let go.
00:32:12
Speaker
We get some passers by who recognize her.
00:32:16
Speaker
We find out her nickname was toxic Moxla.
00:32:19
Speaker
And apparently she snitched on her sergeant and on her CEO.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:26
Speaker
So she has a bad reputation and she was let go for it and kind of left in shame.
00:32:31
Speaker
Right.
00:32:32
Speaker
So meanwhile, Shigar briefs Master Satale, tells her everything, and she tells him that something's in play.
00:32:42
Speaker
He's going to get everything that he can about this Sinzia and its contents from the Hutt court.
00:32:50
Speaker
And he's confused because he...
00:32:53
Speaker
is really a social warrior kind of guy.
00:32:56
Speaker
Like he's he sees the poor population and the injustice on Coruscant as his job, basically.
00:33:04
Speaker
And she's like, look, she's basically like, look, every social issue on Coruscant isn't our problem.
00:33:10
Speaker
And I just wrote here, man, fuck the Jedi.
00:33:16
Speaker
It's fucking Buddhist nonsense where you're like, I'm getting like Hakeem Jeffries over there.
00:33:22
Speaker
Right.
00:33:23
Speaker
I'm going to stick my nose in a place that isn't my business when it's convenient for me.
00:33:27
Speaker
But then it's like, well, what about all these people who are experiencing injustice and starvation?
00:33:31
Speaker
So it's like, well, that's not our problem.
00:33:34
Speaker
It's like, go fuck yourself, man.
00:33:37
Speaker
So Shigar and Moxler share dead parent stories.
00:33:42
Speaker
Both of their parents, their planet had some sort of like civil war annexation kind of situation.
00:33:50
Speaker
And both of their parents, their sets of parents have died.
00:33:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:54
Speaker
She has skills that he doesn't slicing, for example, covert ops, gunning, that sort of thing.
00:34:00
Speaker
This is the first of many instances where we're going to.
00:34:04
Speaker
Well, not the first, but one of the first of many instances where we're going to have clearly like a little something that's put in there to make you salivate about the game a little bit.
00:34:15
Speaker
It's like this is this is a commando and you can play one of these characters and you can play one of these as guns.
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:20
Speaker
And here are cool powers.
00:34:22
Speaker
And this is a Jedi Knight and he's got these powers and that's fun.
00:34:26
Speaker
It works.
00:34:29
Speaker
I want to download it and play it again.
00:34:33
Speaker
It's like you're installing it as.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yes.
00:34:36
Speaker
If if the connection fucks up, it's just the old Republic.
00:34:39
Speaker
Don't worry.
00:34:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:42
Speaker
Chapter five.
00:34:44
Speaker
Axe and her master address the Sith Council.
00:34:48
Speaker
Beautiful.
00:34:49
Speaker
It's like they're meeting the Supreme Court.
00:34:51
Speaker
Just some of the worst people you've ever seen in your life.
00:34:56
Speaker
And they're talking like this.
00:34:58
Speaker
They're all talking like this.
00:35:00
Speaker
And one of them, I forget his name, but he's got.
00:35:02
Speaker
Alito.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah, he's got sharpened teeth and yeah.
00:35:12
Speaker
That's good.
00:35:17
Speaker
So they basically request permission to go after this traitor.
00:35:23
Speaker
And she ends up having to admit that it's not so much about...
00:35:31
Speaker
catching this person.
00:35:32
Speaker
But what she really wants is revenge against this Mandalorian.
00:35:36
Speaker
They're like, that's not why you want to do it.
00:35:37
Speaker
Tell us the truth.
00:35:40
Speaker
You want to kick this guy's ass.
00:35:41
Speaker
Yeah, revenge.
00:35:42
Speaker
And she's like worried.
00:35:43
Speaker
She's worried like, oh my God, they found out that I just want to get revenge.
00:35:47
Speaker
And then the guy is like, I approve.
00:35:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:50
Speaker
He's like, that's, that's a good reason.
00:35:52
Speaker
That's, that's the Sith reason.
00:35:53
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:35:54
Speaker
That's a Sith reason right there.
00:35:56
Speaker
Go get that.
00:35:57
Speaker
Go get that sweet revenge.
00:35:59
Speaker
Good enough for you, baby.
00:36:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly it.
00:36:02
Speaker
And they're like, just go get that sweet revenge.
00:36:05
Speaker
I don't give a shit about this other traitor stuff.
00:36:07
Speaker
Go get your fucking revenge.
00:36:09
Speaker
And it's, it's very sweet.
00:36:10
Speaker
She feels supported.
00:36:11
Speaker
And it becomes clear that she feels seen.
00:36:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:36:15
Speaker
She's very seen.
00:36:16
Speaker
And she has impressed the Sith Council on some level that her master, who was very mid, never has.
00:36:25
Speaker
And you can tell that it's really pissing them off.
00:36:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:29
Speaker
Chapter six, we've got Ula V, who's in a similar situation, but on the Republic side.
00:36:37
Speaker
And he finds out his boss is going to send him to the huts to find out more info on the Sinzia situation.
00:36:44
Speaker
On the Sinzuation.
00:36:46
Speaker
The Sinzuation.
00:36:48
Speaker
He's told he's told that he is told to mention any Jedi that he sees.
00:36:53
Speaker
That's very conspicuous.
00:36:54
Speaker
They say, let us know if you see any Jedi.
00:36:57
Speaker
He is disappointed about this because his whole thing is listening to this guy and form in the empire.
00:37:02
Speaker
But then he realizes this is actually this could be very advantageous.
00:37:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:07
Speaker
And we get a moment where he's got his he's going to.
00:37:10
Speaker
pose as an envoy and he'll have like a, you know, bodyguards and that sort of thing.
00:37:16
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:37:17
Speaker
And he immediately they're like, yeah, you're going immediately.
00:37:20
Speaker
So he's got this team of security there.
00:37:22
Speaker
And he's like, well, I got to go back to my house because he wants to drop a message to, you know, to the powers that be.
00:37:29
Speaker
Yeah, his handlers at the Empire need to know why he's disappearing.
00:37:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:34
Speaker
Right, exactly.
00:37:35
Speaker
And so, but they're like, nope, we got you.
00:37:38
Speaker
We got your clothes.
00:37:39
Speaker
We got everything.
00:37:39
Speaker
And even like goes, but my pet, I got to feed my pet.
00:37:43
Speaker
And they're like, well, let us know when it needs to be fed.
00:37:45
Speaker
We'll have someone go in there and feed it.
00:37:47
Speaker
It goes, never mind.
00:37:48
Speaker
Forget it.
00:37:50
Speaker
So instead he secretly drops a message to the Imperial forces like Matt Damon and the departed.
00:37:55
Speaker
Like, yeah, dad.
00:37:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:59
Speaker
Oh, no, my friends are coming.
00:38:02
Speaker
You know, that whole thing.
00:38:04
Speaker
And that brings us to part two on Hutta.
00:38:08
Speaker
Hutta.
00:38:09
Speaker
Hutta.
00:38:10
Speaker
With all these characters being sent to the home planet of the Hutts.
00:38:16
Speaker
Yes.
00:38:18
Speaker
And we do get a, we were talking about this before.
00:38:20
Speaker
You do get a cast before it starts and it tells you who everyone is.
00:38:25
Speaker
Very smart.
00:38:26
Speaker
There are a lot of characters with a lot of nonsensical names.
00:38:29
Speaker
It's nice to be able to go, wait a minute.
00:38:30
Speaker
Okay, great, great, great.
00:38:32
Speaker
Um,
00:38:33
Speaker
Chapter seven, Shigar and Moxler, Laren.
00:38:36
Speaker
I'm going to circle under Laren.
00:38:37
Speaker
It distracts me less than Moxler does.
00:38:41
Speaker
Shigar and Laren, they're on a ship to Nar Shaddaa, which is a moon in Huttese space.
00:38:48
Speaker
And it's basically the center of the gambling,
Auction Chaos and Battle with Unknown Species
00:38:54
Speaker
smuggling, crime world of the Hutts.
00:38:58
Speaker
Right.
00:38:59
Speaker
He is practicing.
00:39:00
Speaker
And if you look at a picture of it, it's basically the artist's renderings of it basically make it look like a hive planet in 40.
00:39:08
Speaker
Yes, absolutely.
00:39:10
Speaker
It totally looks like a hive planet.
00:39:12
Speaker
It's just overpopulated and just you don't want to know what the people on the surface are living like.
00:39:18
Speaker
You're just grateful that you're somewhere above the clouds.
00:39:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:22
Speaker
It's a mess.
00:39:23
Speaker
It's exactly what you think.
00:39:26
Speaker
So he's working on psychometric powers, which is the ability to basically get an inanimate object and kind of learn about its surroundings, learn about its background, that sort of thing, just by kind of focusing on it.
00:39:39
Speaker
It's one of the things he hasn't been able to master yet.
00:39:43
Speaker
which is one of the things that's kept him from being a knight.
00:39:46
Speaker
They are on the ship with a lot of dregs, a lot of rough characters.
00:39:52
Speaker
We find that they're gambling and fighting.
00:39:55
Speaker
Dejarik is mentioned, which is the Knights of the Old Republic card game, little sub game, which is actually very fun.
00:40:05
Speaker
So a smuggler they're talking to the smuggler approaches them and tells Laren that Chigar's disguise isn't convincing.
00:40:15
Speaker
Not good enough.
00:40:16
Speaker
Is he if he's supposed to be a racer?
00:40:19
Speaker
Yes, he's supposed to be a racer.
00:40:21
Speaker
And it just they're just like, what are you doing?
00:40:22
Speaker
It's like it's like if Barbie and Ken showed up with the fringe and trying to come off as real as actual cowboys.
00:40:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:40:33
Speaker
It's the same kind of thing.
00:40:34
Speaker
They kind of tease him about that.
00:40:36
Speaker
So they make it to Jabroilia, the city closest to Tassa Barish, which is the crime lord, the Hattis crime lord who's running this auction.
00:40:47
Speaker
They make it into the palace with a combination of Jedi mind tricks and bribery, which is classic, just classic.
00:40:56
Speaker
Um, chapter eight, uh, Axe and her master touched down.
00:41:01
Speaker
Uh, this, this retinue, this envoy's retinue, uh, comes to her and they asked to take her lightsaber and she cuts the guy's head off.
00:41:11
Speaker
Ha!
00:41:12
Speaker
I love this moment.
00:41:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:15
Speaker
Like just run a random guard just gets his head chopped off because because she's like, oh, I'll give you my lightsaber.
00:41:20
Speaker
All right.
00:41:22
Speaker
It's it's that.
00:41:24
Speaker
So her whole thing is she's she's meant to be pretending to be a bar, a bodyguard in this.
00:41:30
Speaker
Right.
00:41:31
Speaker
Hopefully and hopefully being inconspicuous.
00:41:34
Speaker
And she's failed immediately.
00:41:35
Speaker
Immediately.
00:41:37
Speaker
She's like this is too.
00:41:38
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:41:39
Speaker
Just.
00:41:40
Speaker
Snake!
00:41:41
Speaker
It's all over.
00:41:42
Speaker
Snake!
00:41:43
Speaker
Snake!
00:41:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:46
Speaker
So they're...
00:41:49
Speaker
So they're shown what they're bidding on.
00:41:53
Speaker
We find out that Cinzia is the ship that was blown up in the prologue.
00:41:57
Speaker
They find out for sure.
00:41:59
Speaker
And we hear the black box, basically, the final back and forth that took place between Jet Nebula.
00:42:07
Speaker
Jet Nebula.
00:42:10
Speaker
Jet Nebula.
00:42:11
Speaker
There's no other way to say it.
00:42:13
Speaker
Jet Nebula.
00:42:14
Speaker
We find out...
00:42:17
Speaker
what happened.
00:42:18
Speaker
And there's also the other auction piece is this capsule.
00:42:22
Speaker
And there's some sort of bio component inside.
00:42:26
Speaker
And she is not sure what it is.
00:42:28
Speaker
And on top of that, it doesn't trigger any memories for her.
00:42:32
Speaker
The whole point is she's supposed to go through all this and hopefully certain things will trigger memories of her mother on a certain level so that she can track her down.
00:42:40
Speaker
But nothing doing just yet.
00:42:42
Speaker
Uh, chapter nine, Ula is basically getting the same treatment.
00:42:45
Speaker
He does not cut anyone's head off.
00:42:48
Speaker
Uh, but, uh, he, uh, he's, he is the envoy in his coverup story.
00:42:54
Speaker
Uh, and he sees our dear friend, Jet Nebula, uh, starts doing some, uh, research on the ship and he gets a request to meet, uh, with, uh, with Jet.
00:43:07
Speaker
Uh, he goes immediately.
00:43:09
Speaker
So he and Jet drink these drinks called reactor cores.
00:43:15
Speaker
Reactor cores, right.
00:43:16
Speaker
And they're like on fire or something like that.
00:43:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:19
Speaker
They're like it's like the perfect combination of an over the top tiki drink with like
00:43:24
Speaker
pure rubbing alcohol.
00:43:26
Speaker
Like it's a flame and Mo basically.
00:43:28
Speaker
Yes.
00:43:30
Speaker
That's a, that's exact.
00:43:32
Speaker
Mo flame and Mo.
00:43:34
Speaker
Uh, that's exactly what it is.
00:43:36
Speaker
And they just play up the fact that they are disgusting and heavily alcoholic and, and Ula's already feeling it.
00:43:44
Speaker
Um, he is, he is hammered by the end of the first one, but yeah, exactly.
00:43:49
Speaker
The first one knocks him on his ass.
00:43:51
Speaker
Um,
00:43:52
Speaker
So they talk and Nebula tells him the story of the ship, elaborates a little more about the Cinzia.
00:43:59
Speaker
And then the place is gassed, knocking everyone else out.
00:44:04
Speaker
But it turns out reactor core drinks, they make you resistant to those kind of toxins.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:12
Speaker
I thought that was an interesting little detail, but it's like, there's a reason why smugglers are always drinking reactor course drinks at bars is because they make you resistant to like being basically being roofied.
00:44:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:24
Speaker
It's genius.
00:44:25
Speaker
It's, it's, it's a fantastic little detail.
00:44:28
Speaker
I really liked it.
00:44:29
Speaker
Um, so, uh, the place gets gassed and, uh, and our dear friend, the Mandalorian shows up and takes them prisoner.
00:44:39
Speaker
Um,
00:44:39
Speaker
Chapter 10, Shigar and Laren are breaking into the palace.
00:44:43
Speaker
They're continuing to break into the palace through the sewers using mind tricks and good old fashioned violence.
00:44:49
Speaker
They kill several people on their way.
00:44:52
Speaker
They find a room full of passed out Republic guards who are clearly also gassed.
00:45:00
Speaker
Along with a Twi'lek who we meet, who is kind of the assistant to the crime lord there.
00:45:06
Speaker
They wake up Sergeant, Sergeant Patanen, who ends up joining them.
00:45:15
Speaker
He's got, so the whole deal.
00:45:17
Speaker
One of Ula's, one of the guys with Ula.
00:45:19
Speaker
Exactly.
00:45:20
Speaker
And Ula is missing, obviously.
00:45:22
Speaker
He has been kidnapped by a Mandalorian.
00:45:24
Speaker
So they realize they have to find this envoy.
00:45:28
Speaker
So Laren and the sergeant are going to go find him while Shigar is going to head to the vault to investigate this bio thing that's in there.
00:45:41
Speaker
Chapter 11 is Axe breaking into the vault, a Mission Impossible style.
00:45:47
Speaker
She is in the walls.
00:45:51
Speaker
It's kind of hilarious because she's just kind of working her way around the walls.
00:45:55
Speaker
She is constantly worried about setting off tripwires and stuff like that, but never does.
00:46:04
Speaker
And she's not really comfortable with that.
00:46:06
Speaker
Right.
00:46:07
Speaker
She senses the life in the artifact and it makes her really uncomfortable specifically.
00:46:12
Speaker
One of the things I love, by the way, of like what is the way she's kind of like going through the walls is she's like using her lightsaber to boil the concrete, the ferrocrete.
00:46:25
Speaker
And then she's making a force bubble around her so that she kind of just like floats through this molten stone to get to the other side.
00:46:34
Speaker
Right.
00:46:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:36
Speaker
She, she just, she sets everything on fire and then protects herself from the molten concrete.
00:46:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:42
Speaker
With a force bubble.
00:46:44
Speaker
It's great.
00:46:45
Speaker
It's, it's giving a Galinda from wicked, but evil, evil or.
00:46:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:52
Speaker
So she's not sure what's going on.
00:46:54
Speaker
This feels it's kind of a this is too easy kind of situation.
00:46:58
Speaker
And then she senses a Jedi who is outside the vault trying to break in as well.
00:47:05
Speaker
So she's kind of like, oh, shit.
00:47:07
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't know I was going to get to kill a Jedi.
00:47:09
Speaker
Fucking right.
00:47:09
Speaker
Sick.
00:47:11
Speaker
Chapter 12, the Mandalorians interrogating Jet and Ula about Lena Zandrit and just the stuff that he's been asking everyone about.
00:47:24
Speaker
And
00:47:25
Speaker
Jet is stonewalling him, being a smart ass.
00:47:29
Speaker
And Ula is literally going, I don't know why he's why is he making this so hard?
00:47:32
Speaker
It doesn't matter.
00:47:33
Speaker
And so he's like answering for him.
00:47:35
Speaker
He's like, why aren't you talking, Jet?
00:47:37
Speaker
I know the answer.
00:47:38
Speaker
I know the answer.
00:47:39
Speaker
You know, he's an apple polisher.
00:47:42
Speaker
So he's got a holdout blaster hidden on him and he tries to get the jump on the Mandalorian with a gun and and immediately gets taken out.
00:47:52
Speaker
I love this moment.
00:47:52
Speaker
Strap back into his chair.
00:47:54
Speaker
I love this where a guy's like, he's like, he pulls out the holdout pistol, points it at the Mandalorian.
00:48:01
Speaker
And then it's like, it's like Dow is just like, get the fuck out of here.
00:48:04
Speaker
And it knocks it out of his.
00:48:07
Speaker
It's nothing to him.
00:48:08
Speaker
It's nothing to him.
00:48:09
Speaker
And Jet's basically laughing his ass off going, oh, you've never met a Mandalorian before.
00:48:14
Speaker
Okay, great.
00:48:15
Speaker
That explains a lot.
00:48:19
Speaker
So he fails miserably.
00:48:22
Speaker
Laren and the Sarge find a distress signal, and it's originating from Nebula.
00:48:29
Speaker
So they follow it with his troops, with his bodyguard retinue, and they find out that it's a droid.
00:48:36
Speaker
It's Jet's droid.
00:48:37
Speaker
He's got this kind of rust bucket droid, and it has sent out a distress beacon for anyone who will listen.
00:48:45
Speaker
And it's going to...
00:48:46
Speaker
They're basically going to follow it to where Jet is.
00:48:50
Speaker
We also get some nice moments here with Laren where she's feeling like an old soldier again.
00:48:56
Speaker
She, without meaning to, ends up kind of like giving orders and that sort of thing.
00:49:02
Speaker
And they listen.
00:49:03
Speaker
You know, they listen to her authority and that sort of thing.
00:49:05
Speaker
And so she's getting the old feeling again.
00:49:09
Speaker
Right.
00:49:09
Speaker
You're happy for her.
00:49:10
Speaker
She's like, I missed this.
00:49:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly it.
00:49:14
Speaker
Chapter 13, Shigar enters the vault, also has kind of a that was too easy moment, and we got a fight scene with him and Axe, who this is a new one.
00:49:26
Speaker
She refers to him and the Jedi as repressed, which totally accurate.
00:49:35
Speaker
Totally accurate.
00:49:36
Speaker
I just don't think I've ever heard that one used against the Jedi before.
00:49:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:42
Speaker
True.
00:49:43
Speaker
Very true.
00:49:43
Speaker
I just have true.
00:49:45
Speaker
Yes.
00:49:47
Speaker
The fight ends.
00:49:49
Speaker
They take turns kind of getting the upper hand on each other.
00:49:53
Speaker
And then finally, the fight ends when Dao Striker shows up and Axe is like, oh, shit, because she's caught between a Jedi and a Mandalorian, which unless it's a porno, is not an enviable position.
00:50:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:08
Speaker
So.
00:50:11
Speaker
Chapter 14, Laren and the boys, they are making their way to the vault, accompanied by this suspicious Twi'lek assistant to the crime lord there.
00:50:24
Speaker
Jet calls Ula out on his crush because, wait, did I skip something?
00:50:31
Speaker
Oh, I forgot to mention that when, fuck, I skipped something.
00:50:34
Speaker
Yeah, when they finally find, forget it.
00:50:39
Speaker
Let's go back to the interrogation with the Mandalorian.
00:50:44
Speaker
They are following the distress signal.
00:50:46
Speaker
They're following the droid, and they do find him, and the Mandalorian rockets out of there just in time, and they find Jett and Ula.
00:50:52
Speaker
And Laren takes her helmet.
00:50:55
Speaker
off oh god I wanted to mention this because we haven't actually like what's his name the Jedi guy Chigar Chigar hasn't like he's the only other point of view character that has interacted with her aside from herself and he didn't like he didn't think anything necessarily other than she's like the same race as me right and then when when Ula sees her he's like
00:51:24
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:51:25
Speaker
She's the hottest woman ever.
00:51:28
Speaker
That's exactly it.
00:51:30
Speaker
He just immediately starts his nose starts bleeding.
00:51:33
Speaker
It's just, it's anime protagonist, nose bleeding.
00:51:37
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:51:38
Speaker
Way too hard.
00:51:39
Speaker
It's he's so into her all right off the bat.
00:51:42
Speaker
So, uh, as, as we've got the party, uh, walking out there, uh, jet calls Ula out on his crush.
00:51:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:49
Speaker
And refers to her saying that she's faking, you know, and that's going to be a problem.
00:51:56
Speaker
And Ula, I mean, I'm sure Ula knows one or two things about women faking it.
00:52:01
Speaker
Right.
00:52:04
Speaker
But in this situation, yeah, I said he's got Ben Shapiro vibes.
00:52:08
Speaker
But.
00:52:09
Speaker
In this situation, though, he's really he doesn't know what he means by that.
00:52:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:14
Speaker
So they make their way to the Jedi Mandalorian Sith knife fight just in time for another explosion and a voice booming out.
00:52:26
Speaker
We do not recognize your authority.
00:52:31
Speaker
Chapter 15, we go back a little bit and the fight is happening.
00:52:35
Speaker
And this is a moment where the
00:52:38
Speaker
the Mandalorian bounty hunter is showing off all of his cool bounty hunter toys.
00:52:43
Speaker
Download Star Wars, the old Republic today.
00:52:49
Speaker
It's what it is.
00:52:50
Speaker
He's using is he's using all the cool little toys you get to play with when you're in the micro rockets.
00:52:55
Speaker
He's got the flame flamethrowers.
00:52:58
Speaker
Yep.
00:52:58
Speaker
All that jet pack.
00:53:00
Speaker
He's got everything.
00:53:00
Speaker
You can, too, when you play Star Wars, the old Republic.
00:53:06
Speaker
So Shigar saves Axe at one point, like she gets missiles thrown at her and she and he pulls her out of the way, which confuses her.
00:53:15
Speaker
She does the standard like, why?
00:53:17
Speaker
Why?
00:53:17
Speaker
What does he have to gain?
00:53:18
Speaker
Oh, it's probably he needs my help to kill the Mandalorian, but he'll take me out after after this is done.
00:53:24
Speaker
Right.
00:53:26
Speaker
So the ceiling caves and the Mandalorian is nowhere to be seen.
00:53:31
Speaker
He disappears.
00:53:33
Speaker
Everyone's there.
00:53:34
Speaker
Our whole cast is there now.
00:53:36
Speaker
And the vault is wide open and everyone's kind of staring because what happens next is a figure steps out.
00:53:45
Speaker
And I was starting to write some commentary on this figure, but I thought I'd just read the description because I wouldn't do it justice because this is nuts.
00:53:57
Speaker
Let's see.
00:53:59
Speaker
It didn't look like any kind of being Chigar had ever seen before.
00:54:02
Speaker
It stood two meters high and seemed at first to be an ordinary biped with skinny arms and legs of equal length.
00:54:09
Speaker
Fine.
00:54:10
Speaker
Then it unfolded another pair of arms attached to its midriff, spaced equally between shoulder and hip joints.
00:54:16
Speaker
Okay.
00:54:17
Speaker
It bore no resemblance, however, to insectile species like the Genosians or the Killick.
00:54:23
Speaker
Its body was a perfect...
00:54:25
Speaker
Hexagon.
00:54:26
Speaker
Stretched vertically.
00:54:28
Speaker
There was no head.
00:54:30
Speaker
Black sensory organs dotted the central body like the eyes of an arachnid gleaming in the light.
00:54:35
Speaker
Apart from those organs, its suit was silver.
00:54:38
Speaker
Its skin was silver.
00:54:39
Speaker
He couldn't tell if it was a creature in an environment suit or some kind of construct.
00:54:45
Speaker
Even for Star Wars, that's some weird fucking shit.
00:54:48
Speaker
Like, yeah, weird ass creature they're describing.
00:54:52
Speaker
It's a hexagon to take a perfect hexagon.
00:54:56
Speaker
Now stretch it and stretch it.
00:54:58
Speaker
A whole bunch of eyes.
00:55:01
Speaker
And six arms and legs.
00:55:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:03
Speaker
Arms and legs.
00:55:05
Speaker
Try to try to imagine that.
00:55:07
Speaker
And I'm like, I'm having trouble.
00:55:10
Speaker
I, it sounded to me like a character in, in promise mascot agency.
00:55:16
Speaker
Like I couldn't, it felt like a cartoon in my head.
00:55:19
Speaker
I haven't looked it up yet.
00:55:20
Speaker
I probably should, but I don't know what species this will end up being because I'm not reading ahead, but it,
00:55:28
Speaker
I can't get the image of a goofy cartoon out of my head.
00:55:33
Speaker
And I don't know.
00:55:34
Speaker
I haven't decided if that's a good thing or not yet.
00:55:37
Speaker
So it says to them that we do not submit to your authority, which is different from what we were told in the previous chapter that he says.
00:55:45
Speaker
And I wonder if that was a mistake.
00:55:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:49
Speaker
And ends up just shooting blue flame at everybody.
00:55:53
Speaker
Just blue flame.
00:55:55
Speaker
Just blue flames.
00:55:56
Speaker
Like just starts hitting everybody.
00:55:58
Speaker
Axe goes down.
00:56:00
Speaker
She takes a lot of the brunt initially.
00:56:02
Speaker
And Shigar blocks a lot of it with his lightsaber.
00:56:05
Speaker
And then another one pops out of the vault.
00:56:08
Speaker
It just doesn't say anything, just screams and opens fire.
00:56:13
Speaker
Everyone's trying to blow him up, but it's not working.
00:56:16
Speaker
You know, our commando is like pumping rounds into this thing.
00:56:20
Speaker
And it's just kind of it's kind of the way I read it was like T-1000ing it like and then goes right back together.
00:56:26
Speaker
Yeah, it was just taking it.
00:56:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:28
Speaker
And it doesn't mean anything.
00:56:29
Speaker
And then a third one comes out.
00:56:32
Speaker
This is when Chigar finally says, fuck this.
00:56:35
Speaker
And orders Laren to get everybody out and he's going to stay and hold the creatures back.
00:56:42
Speaker
And the chapter ends with all three of them opening fire on him.
00:56:46
Speaker
And that's where we're leaving it today.
00:56:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:50
Speaker
So, Kevin, what do you think so far about Fatal Alliance?
Reflections on Story and Character Development
00:56:55
Speaker
I like the second part.
00:56:59
Speaker
I liked it better once we got to Hutta.
00:57:01
Speaker
I felt like the opening was dragging just a little bit when we were on Coruscant.
00:57:09
Speaker
But once we got to the Hutt stuff, and it was like, okay, now we got hijinks on hijinks here.
00:57:18
Speaker
We got several people.
00:57:20
Speaker
We got a Mandalorian.
00:57:21
Speaker
We got a we got a J apprentice.
00:57:23
Speaker
We got a Sith apprentice.
00:57:25
Speaker
We got a smuggler.
00:57:27
Speaker
And it's, you know, it's it's basically mad, mad, mad, mad world or whatever.
00:57:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's a power cast.
00:57:37
Speaker
No, I totally agree.
00:57:38
Speaker
And this happens to me a lot with movies or media of any kind where you
00:57:44
Speaker
Yeah, that first part is spent introducing you to one person after the other.
00:57:49
Speaker
And I just go, oh, God, get on with it already.
00:57:52
Speaker
But I know that this is required to make me be invested in them later.
00:57:57
Speaker
I know, but it's so annoying.
00:58:00
Speaker
But I totally agree.
00:58:01
Speaker
The second part is way better.
00:58:04
Speaker
My I don't like Ula.
00:58:07
Speaker
I'm not sure if we're supposed to like him or not.
00:58:09
Speaker
I feel like I don't know.
00:58:11
Speaker
I feel like he's just an asshole.
00:58:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:14
Speaker
He reminds me too much of the right wing grifters that we all know.
00:58:17
Speaker
No, that's exactly what I'm thinking about.
00:58:19
Speaker
This is 2010 when this came out like this precedes a lot of that shit and him.
00:58:25
Speaker
It's like his simping over a character to which we had not there was no standard of beauty applied to in the previous 120 pages or so is is hilarious.
00:58:41
Speaker
Just I love it.
00:58:41
Speaker
Just lose absolutely losing his shit.
00:58:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's
00:58:46
Speaker
Pretty outstanding.
00:58:47
Speaker
I totally agree.
00:58:48
Speaker
It's it.
00:58:48
Speaker
He's he's he is he is kind of every bit of a try hard that kind of try hard tech bro wants to be a badass, but everyone seems to be doing better than him.
00:59:01
Speaker
And and then the moment a pretty girl walks past him, he just completely loses his cool.
00:59:08
Speaker
So I'm I'm interested in seeing where that's going.
00:59:13
Speaker
They've also set the seeds for Axe to come back to the light side.
00:59:22
Speaker
I've also seen some subtle hints that maybe they're trying to get Shigar to the dark side.
00:59:25
Speaker
I don't know.
00:59:26
Speaker
Maybe.
00:59:26
Speaker
Maybe it's a fatal alliance.
00:59:30
Speaker
It's a fatal alliance.
00:59:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:33
Speaker
We like to have fun.
00:59:36
Speaker
We have fun here.
00:59:38
Speaker
Well, then, now that we have finished the first third of this book, Kevin, I only have one question left to ask you.
00:59:46
Speaker
What are you playing?
00:59:50
Speaker
Okay, so I played a bit more of Parcel Simulator.
00:59:55
Speaker
I think my stance on it is it takes too goddamn long to get to the automation part of it.
01:00:05
Speaker
It just feels like you're playing for too long with like sorting packages manually and be like, I just want to set up the conveyor belts already.
01:00:13
Speaker
And it's like, oh, well, you got to earn the money to buy the conveyor belts, to buy the scanners.
01:00:19
Speaker
You'd be like, oh, OK.
01:00:21
Speaker
And then I just had one of those moments where I was like scanning packages and I was like, fuck, I got to play something else.
01:00:29
Speaker
So I got a game.
01:00:31
Speaker
I bought a game called Last Report.
01:00:35
Speaker
And this is a it's a short little horror game, a little point and click type type game.
01:00:44
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:00:46
Speaker
You are a national park ranger who is you have just come back from vacation.
01:00:55
Speaker
And you're sitting in your cabin and you're filing reports that have piled up on your desk.
01:01:02
Speaker
And it's at first, it's just like your standard.
01:01:06
Speaker
OK, make sure that it has the right numbers.
01:01:08
Speaker
Make sure what the photo says on the report actually matches what's being described.
01:01:13
Speaker
All that good stuff.
01:01:14
Speaker
You file, scan, file report.
01:01:16
Speaker
If the report is damaged, you you shred it and move on.
01:01:21
Speaker
And then weird shit starts happening where it's like you pick up a report and it's just like a picture and there's just a bunch of dead bodies.
01:01:29
Speaker
And it's the great thing about it is like it's one of those games where you're not being gaslit at any point by other characters.
01:01:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:41
Speaker
You were like you you call on the radio to your supervisor like hey I found this and he's like what Jesus fucking Christ I'm on my way you know like yeah people aren't like nobody says you're going crazy in this they're all they all take you on face value it's not a long game it's not a long game at all and it still has a demo I find that really interesting
01:02:04
Speaker
It still has a demo.
01:02:05
Speaker
It's only four bucks right now.
01:02:07
Speaker
This looks good.
01:02:09
Speaker
And it took me just a little under a little under two hours to play it.
01:02:15
Speaker
And it's like it's like, yeah, I would have I wish there was more like that.
01:02:22
Speaker
It had more stuff going on.
01:02:24
Speaker
Not more stuff.
01:02:25
Speaker
I just wish it was a little bit longer.
01:02:28
Speaker
I wish it teased out the story a little bit more.
01:02:32
Speaker
Still, I think it's a it is a fun, fun little game.
01:02:38
Speaker
And it it's I think it's there.
01:02:40
Speaker
It's their first this little studio mono pixel games.
01:02:43
Speaker
It's their first.
01:02:44
Speaker
Really?
01:02:45
Speaker
So this looks really good.
01:02:47
Speaker
Like this looks outstanding.
01:02:48
Speaker
OK, cool.
01:02:50
Speaker
Cool as definitely worth definitely worth.
01:02:53
Speaker
There were some some actual moments where I was like, ah,
01:02:57
Speaker
And I think that's a good sign for it, you know?
01:03:02
Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
01:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, cool.
01:03:04
Speaker
We talked about Blood Soaked Bastard.
01:03:09
Speaker
I played it for a few minutes.
01:03:11
Speaker
uh not not very long it's it's it's interesting i i need to like set aside some time to play it because it's one of those games where it's like all right so the jank factor is going to be really high on this but there's like underneath that jank there is some stuff in here that's pretty interesting so you are a you're you're a blood knight
01:03:36
Speaker
Your armor is pieced together out of the armor of slain people that you have found on the road.
01:03:44
Speaker
You don't actually use a set of armor, so it's like all it's just real mishmash.
01:03:49
Speaker
And you have you drive nails through the armor.
01:03:53
Speaker
I assume into your skin.
01:03:54
Speaker
It's not specific, but that's why you're all spiky and stuff.
01:03:59
Speaker
Um, and basically you had just been run out of the last town you were in and you're on your way to the next town when you come across a goblin and, uh, the goblin's like, don't kill me.
01:04:11
Speaker
And you're like, I don't care.
01:04:12
Speaker
Uh, I'm a blood knight.
01:04:13
Speaker
And then you behead him, uh, and you take his head into town and they pay you because he was, you, there was a wanted list for this goblin.
01:04:20
Speaker
And now there's like,
01:04:22
Speaker
The guy who is like, hey, listen, we don't want you here, but if you're going to be here, here's a bunch of monsters that we need killed.
01:04:29
Speaker
Make yourself useful, Blood Knight.
01:04:33
Speaker
Make yourself useful.
01:04:35
Speaker
And, you know, there's other party members that you can get.
01:04:39
Speaker
And, you know, the creature designs are absolutely creepy as fuck.
01:04:45
Speaker
So I only I didn't play for very long, but I got the vibe of it pretty quickly and I want to sit down and go through it.
01:04:54
Speaker
It's just like it doesn't it doesn't control very well.
01:04:57
Speaker
It's like entirely mouse based, right?
01:04:59
Speaker
You don't use your keyboard at all.
01:05:01
Speaker
It's like so you're clicking on on the screen.
01:05:04
Speaker
Like there's no even WASDA to like walk around when you're in the little overworld thing.
01:05:11
Speaker
Interesting.
01:05:11
Speaker
You just click, click, click, click.
01:05:13
Speaker
And even the clicking is a little bit janky.
01:05:16
Speaker
Sure.
01:05:18
Speaker
I'll say.
01:05:18
Speaker
It's like clicking on a character to talk to them.
01:05:21
Speaker
It's like, okay.
01:05:22
Speaker
All right.
01:05:23
Speaker
If I click here, okay.
01:05:25
Speaker
Okay, finally.
01:05:25
Speaker
I got the dialogue box to open.
01:05:28
Speaker
So, Cenk, a lot of it.
01:05:32
Speaker
But the music and the aesthetic are really interesting.
01:05:41
Speaker
The aesthetic's pretty cool.
01:05:44
Speaker
Creepy as fuck.
01:05:46
Speaker
And like nobody, it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, nobody's reviewed this game.
01:05:52
Speaker
Like it's got 12 reviews.
01:05:53
Speaker
It was released in December of last year.
01:05:55
Speaker
And it's just like everything is, everything is disturbed and ugly looking.
01:06:04
Speaker
And your character is just named bastard.
01:06:06
Speaker
Right.
01:06:09
Speaker
It's it's just basically the the worst medieval fantasy world that you can imagine where there is no sun.
01:06:19
Speaker
It's just gray skies at all times, you know?
01:06:23
Speaker
Nice.
01:06:26
Speaker
between two fires uh yeah yeah and literally it's pretty grimdark it's pretty cool uh the aesthetic they've done a good job with it that's neat it's a shame it hasn't gotten more attention yeah like if it had more attention you know there might be more my like the the actual creator might actually update it more but um
01:06:49
Speaker
It's not a it's not like, you know, look outside.
01:06:53
Speaker
Right.
01:06:54
Speaker
It didn't didn't pop off like that.
01:06:56
Speaker
But I think look outside from the very beginning was a more of a polished product.
01:07:02
Speaker
Very much so.
01:07:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:04
Speaker
This is very polished in terms of style.
01:07:10
Speaker
in terms of style and aesthetic and all those those very important elements.
01:07:14
Speaker
But in terms of just like playing the goddamn game, it's it's a it's it's a bit fiddly.
01:07:24
Speaker
What else have I played?
01:07:26
Speaker
Uh, uh, rogue trader, play more rogue trader, you know, getting my, uh, going to get, I just got a call from Salamorn to go recruit him officially now.
01:07:39
Speaker
And I'm in act two.
01:07:40
Speaker
So I'm, I'm on the way back to footfall to go pick them up.
01:07:44
Speaker
So, uh,
01:07:44
Speaker
That's where I am in the Rogue Trader new DLC.
01:07:49
Speaker
Nice.
01:07:50
Speaker
Not nude DLC.
01:07:53
Speaker
New.
01:07:54
Speaker
New.
01:07:55
Speaker
Hey.
01:07:56
Speaker
Hey.
01:07:57
Speaker
Heinrichs and Jay, though, in a nude DLC.
01:08:01
Speaker
I mean.
01:08:03
Speaker
Huh?
01:08:04
Speaker
Come on.
01:08:05
Speaker
Shereen.
01:08:08
Speaker
So anyway, Phil, how about you?
01:08:10
Speaker
What are you playing?
01:08:11
Speaker
Ah, also, a lot of Rogue Trader.
01:08:15
Speaker
I am not quite at Act 2, but I just had my first ship battle, which is fun.
01:08:22
Speaker
I like how they... you forget how much extra they put into it.
01:08:27
Speaker
It could have just been the standard CRPG kind of thing, and it's like, oh, there's a whole other...
01:08:34
Speaker
style of game in here with a whole other series of upgrades and stuff like that that you've got to work toward.
01:08:41
Speaker
It's it's pretty cool.
01:08:44
Speaker
Right.
01:08:44
Speaker
And I'm I'm I'm enjoying it.
01:08:46
Speaker
It's still I mentioned when I first started playing again, I'm having way more fun than I did the first go around.
01:08:52
Speaker
That's still true.
01:08:53
Speaker
And I had fun on the first go around.
01:08:55
Speaker
Right.
01:08:56
Speaker
Just something about this that's letting me concentrate on it more and enjoy it a little more.
01:09:02
Speaker
I played a demo for a game called Grit and Valor.
01:09:08
Speaker
This is a Kaiser punk kind of thing.
01:09:12
Speaker
Well, not Kaiser punk.
01:09:13
Speaker
It's World War Two.
01:09:17
Speaker
It's 1949.
01:09:19
Speaker
Americans and the allies lost the war because the Nazis have mechs and and the the the allies stole a few of them.
01:09:29
Speaker
And, you know, you're slowly taking back Europe.
01:09:33
Speaker
Um, which it's a pretty cool setup.
01:09:35
Speaker
It's the aesthetics are outstanding.
01:09:39
Speaker
you have a rock, paper, scissors style kind of a sort of a weakness to strength kind of rule.
01:09:49
Speaker
Sure.
01:09:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:51
Speaker
And you just have your mechs and you have to and you have bad guys getting thrown in in different waves and you've got to arrange them just so while also protecting your intelligence truck, which doesn't
01:10:07
Speaker
kill anything uh but is you have to have it there to be able to uh work your other mechs um interesting i i i wanted to like it a little more it's just that it's it's
01:10:21
Speaker
I don't know.
01:10:22
Speaker
The whole, again, rock, paper, scissors kind of style.
01:10:28
Speaker
After a while, it's pointless because you're getting hit with all these people and it's not a big map.
01:10:35
Speaker
So you're just you've got all three of the guys.
01:10:37
Speaker
So you just point them towards the same people.
01:10:40
Speaker
right and and everyone's hitting everybody so it doesn't it doesn't quite work on that level of strategy um you can upgrade the mechs and that kind of thing which is always fun i i i am enamored with the um
01:10:56
Speaker
map system they have, because in this demo you are you're going making your way through the UK and there are a bunch of different places along the way before you can finally take over the whole country.
01:11:08
Speaker
And something about that really appeals to me and my I want to I want to fill the whole thing with the same color.
01:11:15
Speaker
Right.
01:11:17
Speaker
So that's nice.
01:11:18
Speaker
Right.
01:11:18
Speaker
Very cool.
01:11:19
Speaker
Static.
01:11:20
Speaker
It came the full version of it came out.
01:11:23
Speaker
Well, it's not out yet.
01:11:24
Speaker
Oh, wait.
01:11:24
Speaker
Sorry.
01:11:24
Speaker
No, the full version of it came out last year.
01:11:28
Speaker
And, you know, if you're into diesel punk, if you like the whole World War Two mech thing, it's it's not bad.
01:11:37
Speaker
It's it's it's it's just not I just didn't keep me.
01:11:41
Speaker
I also and this is new.
01:11:43
Speaker
This is not new, but it just hasn't happened in a while.
01:11:46
Speaker
I'm under embargo for a game.
01:11:49
Speaker
What?
01:11:50
Speaker
Yeah, because an indie developer reached out and gave me a free release copy of their
01:11:57
Speaker
game, which hasn't happened in a long time.
01:12:00
Speaker
So thanks for making an old man feel relevant, guys.
01:12:03
Speaker
The game is called Let Them Trade, and it is right up my alley.
01:12:08
Speaker
It is a city builder kind of thing.
01:12:14
Speaker
The whole point of it, though, is they say it's relaxing, it's chill, but it's still got some strategy elements to it.
01:12:21
Speaker
And I can't say any more than that until next week.
01:12:24
Speaker
I'll be able to talk about it.
01:12:26
Speaker
Awesome.
01:12:26
Speaker
But I've been playing that one and interesting stuff.
01:12:30
Speaker
So, yeah, that's me.
01:12:32
Speaker
Fantastic.
01:12:33
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for listening, everybody.
01:12:36
Speaker
It's a blast to start up a new book.
01:12:39
Speaker
It's a blast to start up a new Star War.
01:12:42
Speaker
Honestly, the last Star Wars book we read was probably one of my favorites that we... The Republic Commando one?
01:12:48
Speaker
Republic Commando was...
01:12:51
Speaker
That was a banger.
01:12:52
Speaker
It's like the Halo series.
01:12:54
Speaker
You can kind of rely on them for having quality writers.
01:12:59
Speaker
They always have like a good writer in their back pocket for these things, you know?
01:13:05
Speaker
And I know what's his name?
01:13:06
Speaker
The guy who wrote the Mass Effect plots also wrote the Old Republic stuff as well.
01:13:15
Speaker
And I think he always drew...
01:13:19
Speaker
Drew Capsaicin.
01:13:21
Speaker
Capsaicin.
01:13:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like in my head.
01:13:25
Speaker
It's like Capartian or something like that.
01:13:27
Speaker
Capartian.
01:13:30
Speaker
something like that um but yeah so uh thank you yeah uh for so much for listening you can follow us on a multitude of social media platforms including blue sky tick tock instagram uh you can find us on discord uh and you can get to our discord through our patreon patreon.com slash pixel lit pod
01:13:55
Speaker
Phil, I have a question for you.
01:14:00
Speaker
So I kept digging in my yard because we're planting trees and I found a cave underneath my yard with giant mole people.
01:14:15
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:14:16
Speaker
Now they don't want anything, but but they want Bitcoin, but they don't have any technology otherwise.
01:14:28
Speaker
They just keep asking for Bitcoin.
01:14:29
Speaker
What what do I got to do about these Bitcoin love and mole folks underneath?
01:14:35
Speaker
It's it's it's it's annoying, but it's simple.
01:14:40
Speaker
You start by calling your third ex-wife.
01:14:43
Speaker
You do have a third ex-wife, right?
01:14:45
Speaker
Obviously.
01:14:46
Speaker
Okay.
01:14:47
Speaker
So you call her.
01:14:50
Speaker
She's not, she's getting pissed, but she's your ex.
01:14:52
Speaker
So it doesn't matter.
01:14:53
Speaker
All right.
01:14:54
Speaker
And you tell her to send you, um, just a quick, doesn't have to be good.
01:14:59
Speaker
Just tell her to send you a nude, but it has to be specifically focused on her.