Transcript
Speaker: Oh, big time.
Speaker: The only way you could amp up the witch factors if they cast Stevie Nicks.
Speaker: Like that's as far as they could have gone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you know who else cast Stevie Nicks?
Speaker: Who's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me as always is Finn on today's show.
Speaker: I'm going to stumble through talking about Dead Space Catalyst a little bit more because God damn, this is might be the worst book we've ever read.
Speaker: Could you guys tell that we really, for anyone who gets the pre-show talk, this is probably the longest it's ever gone.
Speaker: We talked for 20 minutes before.
Speaker: Normally I go about 10 minutes, but this is a solid near 20 minutes of just like, I don't want to talk about this stupid book.
Speaker: That's exactly it.
Speaker: Without saying it, that's exactly why we couldn't.
Speaker: Just like, no, no, I don't want to.
Speaker: It's just, and I was telling Kevin this before the show started.
Speaker: I am...
Speaker: I let myself believe, you know, FNAF, which had been one of the worst books we'd read, or at least in the running, really pulled out of the nosedive.
Speaker: It really learned something from its previous iterations.
Speaker: That's one of the benefits you get from having the same author.
Speaker: And as I mentioned in the last episode, I respect FNAF.
Speaker: this author actually as a horror writer.
Speaker: So, you know, you'd think he'd like look at it and go, Oh, okay.
Speaker: I know what I need to do or make some kind of change.
Speaker: It's, it's the same shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think the reason why I categorically might put it as the worst book we've ever read, because the first one was bad.
Speaker: And the second one is just bad.
Speaker: pretty much the same goddamn book with the, uh, pieces rotated a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, it's, it's not underwater anymore.
Speaker: It's in space.
Speaker: Uh, we're off of earth.
Speaker: We're in outer space, but it's the same bullshit.
Speaker: Um, and here's the thing.
Speaker: here's one thing I'm going to tell you, and that is patreon.com slash pixel at pod.
Speaker: I think you should really head over there.
Speaker: It's a wonderful website.
Speaker: You can go there and you can join us for free or $1, $5 or $10 each gets you a little bit more stuff.
Speaker: $5.
Speaker: You get that, you get that bonus episode that we were just talking about at the beginning of the show and $10 gets you that also.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're getting your name shouted out in the episode.
Speaker: And to that end, I got a shout out.
Speaker: Jesus loves you.
Speaker: Kyle Seaman, Ruthless Mudder, Middle of Things, Sigma Sal, Chet Beaks, Dummy Thick, and Friendly Friend.
Speaker: Thank you so much for being a friend.
Speaker: PixelitPod.com or Patreon.com slash PixelitPod.
Speaker: That'll get you there.
Speaker: And go ahead and join the Discord from there because you know what?
Speaker: We have a lovely Discord filled with lovely people.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So let's put the body in the marsh because.
Speaker: Oh, let's.
Speaker: Why should we ruin our fun, Kevin?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: And so, Phil, what do you play?
Speaker: Just straight into it.
Speaker: That's what the people really want.
Speaker: Uh, God, yeah, so if I'm remembering correctly where we left off, there it is.
Speaker: not Istvan, the other guy, Genji, the other brother, had just heard from Henry about Aspera.
Speaker: That's where his brother is being kept.
Speaker: And then Genji's like, but Aspera, I'd never heard of that before.
Speaker: It could have been, what if it was Hasbero?
Speaker: And, okay.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: He's just like thinking out loud for this is an entire chapter.
Speaker: It's it's a it's a chapter that is half a page long.
Speaker: And it's just just Genji being like, I've never heard of that before.
Speaker: It couldn't be real.
Speaker: It couldn't be real.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, so yeah, then we get back over to Istvan and he is just in the prison and he's just like zoning out.
Speaker: He's disassociating, he's seeing things.
Speaker: And, uh, then eventually he snaps out of it and he meets the other cellmates, uh,
Speaker: They all have names.
Speaker: It doesn't really matter what their names are because they have no distinguishing characteristics aside from their names.
Speaker: There's a guy named Waldron.
Speaker: There's a guy named Bill.
Speaker: But all these guys are political prisoners, quote unquote, like Istvan.
Speaker: They're not like the real violent types.
Speaker: They were just...
Speaker: They were just the non-MAGA folk.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The non-redcaps.
Speaker: Now that Trump is in office.
Speaker: Well, he's not in yet.
Speaker: Well, yeah, no, he's not in yet, but we will continue pixel it from prison.
Speaker: Just in case.
Speaker: I just it's important that you people know that we will fight for you.
Speaker: This is this is our act of rebellion.
Speaker: This is our act of rebellion.
Speaker: Hashtag resist.
Speaker: That's got to be more effective than what most liberals are out there doing.
Speaker: They're posting.
Speaker: God bless them.
Speaker: They're posting through it.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: They're posting.
Speaker: You heard Nancy Pelosi basically said to Bernie Sanders, like, well, that wasn't very nice, Bernie.
Speaker: That's that.
Speaker: I don't respect that.
Speaker: Like, Bernie, you've never won a primary.
Speaker: And and I don't think you want to go down that route with Bernie Sanders about him not winning the primary for president.
Speaker: Fucking read the room.
Speaker: Read the room, Nancy.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Anyhow.
Speaker: He meets his friends and he starts talking about they start talking about how they could break out, break out of prison.
Speaker: But the people who are there, the other guards or the other prisoners are like, I don't think you can.
Speaker: Well, then we're in space.
Speaker: I think this whole space thing is really going to fuck that plan up.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Meanwhile, now we're in chapter 17.
Speaker: We cut out to a ship above the planet.
Speaker: This is the ship that Grotter is on.
Speaker: Remember Grotter?
Speaker: Grotter.
Speaker: Great name.
Speaker: Great name.
Speaker: We miss you, Grotter.
Speaker: We miss you, Grotter.
Speaker: That's about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's from the perspective of Ensign Halley, or Technician Halley, who also seems to be affected by whatever's going on on the planet.
Speaker: She's getting headaches at random times.
Speaker: There's this guy, Ensign Orthor, who's
Speaker: We have names that are pronounceable.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Just none of them.
Speaker: None of it's the, I, I have no problem with the little creativity, but give us a bill now and then for Christ's sake.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Anyway, Orthor is a real creep creeperton and he's a unitologist and is like, Hey, uh,
Speaker: what's, uh, what's your number?
Speaker: And she's like, get away from me or with her.
Speaker: Um, anyway, she has, she's getting headaches and then Grotter's like, yeah, go ahead, take a, take a break.
Speaker: And, uh, while she's on a break, she starts like sketching something on her vid pad and Grotter sees it.
Speaker: And he's like, what's this?
Speaker: Um, what the fuck is this?
Speaker: And it's like a bunch of equations and a drawing of a marker or something like that.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And he's like, don't show this to anybody.
Speaker: Only me.
Speaker: I want you to send me all the drawings you make.
Speaker: So weird.
Speaker: It's like, it's, it's like, it's a real, like, I need an adult moment.
Speaker: Despite the fact that these are both adults.
Speaker: It's very creepy.
Speaker: Chapter 18, we got Dr. Bryden, who is a dyed-in-the-wool unitologist.
Speaker: He really wants everybody to... That's all you... You know what?
Speaker: The unitologists just want basically the end of... You ever see the movie Society?
Speaker: No, I want to.
Speaker: I have never seen it, though.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Looks crazy.
Speaker: It's got some real intense body horror stuff in it.
Speaker: Basically, they just the goal of unitology is the ending to society.
Speaker: And a flesh orgy, a flesh orgy.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So basically society and the substance would make a good.
Speaker: Oh, double feature.
Speaker: Double feature.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've never even seen society.
Speaker: I've seen enough because I live in this age.
Speaker: And yeah, yeah, it'll be good.
Speaker: So the Dr. Brian is annoyed at a technician who fails to report the marker pulse.
Speaker: And he's like, incompetence.
Speaker: I should.
Speaker: I felt it before you even reported it.
Speaker: Do I have to do everything around here?
Speaker: There's another doctor named Dr. Callie.
Speaker: Callie.
Speaker: What's her?
Speaker: Callie Dexter.
Speaker: That's a good name.
Speaker: I appreciate that one.
Speaker: I liked that one.
Speaker: That was a good name.
Speaker: Callie Dexter, he hates her because she is not a believer.
Speaker: She is a just the facts man type of doctor where she doesn't want to care about your feelings, your little headaches, Bryden.
Speaker: She just wants the data.
Speaker: And Bryden's like, but the great ending of society.
Speaker: And Callie's like, could you stop talking about a movie that's 300 years old?
Speaker: Just enough.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No one saw it.
Speaker: So anyway, they analyze the vectors.
Speaker: Moving on.
Speaker: Chapter 19.
Speaker: If you guys can't figure it out, it's really exciting at this point.
Speaker: It's really exciting.
Speaker: They got the grant.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was a honestly that for those of you don't know what we're talking about and haven't listened to the first dead space book, you need to listen in for the they got the grant moment.
Speaker: That was a turning point for this show.
Speaker: I really feel like that was like a when we really hit our stride was they got the grant.
Speaker: Something got set in stone on that day is all I'm saying.
Speaker: And there's a scene from Parks and Recreation where Leslie Knope is talking about, like, some presentation.
Speaker: And every time I see that scene now, I just think of Dead Space Martyr.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because she goes, guess what?
Speaker: We got the Gramp.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, Grant.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's so dumb.
Speaker: Guys.
Speaker: Guys, it's so dumb.
Speaker: Istvan, chapter 19.
Speaker: Istvan is like seeing, like, I don't, okay, this is the thing that pisses me off about this book, all right?
Speaker: So chapter 19 is a lot of Istvan in the other world seeing things.
Speaker: And the words we're getting are shapes.
Speaker: We're like, well, what fucking shape?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Use your words, buddy.
Speaker: Yeah, you're literally being paid to do that.
Speaker: Like, there's shapes and there's boiling.
Speaker: It is the least effective version of some sort of Lovecraftian prose that I have ever seen.
Speaker: Like, there is no sense of terror or urgency in these words.
Speaker: It's like he's seeing things and then there's a human face and
Speaker: And it's kind of I wouldn't even say it's going through the motions.
Speaker: It's just it's like a piss poor imitation of what should be happening.
Speaker: Like, yeah, so weird.
Speaker: Basically, the long and short of it is the marker is trying to find out a way to communicate to Istvan in a way that makes sense for Istvan's brain.
Speaker: So it's trying a bunch of things, including various shapes and faces and all that stuff.
Speaker: What I just summarized is the next 40 pages of this book before we actually get to pay dirt on that.
Speaker: But it is really dumb.
Speaker: It just goes on and on.
Speaker: It goes on and on.
Speaker: We get more of the other guys, Bill and Waldron, being like, hey, what's going on with this guy over here?
Speaker: Chapter 20, we're back with the supposed main character, Jensi, who has figured out what Aspera is and that there's a prison on there named Hell, that there's something called Operation Aspera.
Speaker: And he's just like making a making a plan.
Speaker: And he's working with him.
Speaker: Some guys named Swanson and Talbot.
Speaker: They're like also they're like freight driver guys.
Speaker: So he he's he meets Swanson and is like trying to get on the ship that he knows is going to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: is going to Aspera and Swanson's like, nah, there's no, there's no spots on the ship.
Speaker: Um, and he tries to, um, he, he's like, well, what if a spot opens up?
Speaker: And then like Talbot, he kills Talbot, Talbot, Jensey does.
Speaker: It wasn't like totally intention to intentional.
Speaker: I think he was that he, he accidentally like, uh,
Speaker: I think he accidentally overdoses Talbot.
Speaker: Oh, is that what?
Speaker: I didn't understand what the fuck was going on.
Speaker: Talbot has a heart attack while he, while Gen Z is trying to scare him out of going on the front.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I'm so glad you real.
Speaker: I did not.
Speaker: admittedly I've been reading through one bloodshot eye lately.
Speaker: And, but I, I was like, okay, I guess Kevin's going to go into that later.
Speaker: Like, yeah.
Speaker: So Gen Z like goes in with a baklava on and, and like, is like, good.
Speaker: Don't go on the ship.
Speaker: I'm Batman.
Speaker: And Talbot fucking dies of a heart attack.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: And he's like, well, that's one way to not have the guy on the ship.
Speaker: Well, that happens.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And now Gen Z has like gets interviewed to be to have an opening on the shift ship because Talbot's unavailable now, apparently.
Speaker: That's that's you.
Speaker: You mark my words.
Speaker: That's in the future for getting jobs.
Speaker: That is going to happen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Someone's up for a job you like, and it's just going to be expected that you try to try their life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's just going to be, there's going to be an insurance, uh, that they sell for it.
Speaker: Um, I'm really looking for Trump to really flex flexes, uh, back to the future part two muscles.
Speaker: Um, I really want to see, uh, some peak Biff Tannen energy.
Speaker: It's coming.
Speaker: I got a, I got a, I got a good slash bad feeling about this.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: And Elon Musk just like walking around and going the easy way.
Speaker: The easy way.
Speaker: Am I cool and relevant yet, guys?
Speaker: Yeah, just keep doing it.
Speaker: You're doing great.
Speaker: Just keep doing it.
Speaker: Keep going.
Speaker: I'm sure this time it's going to work.
Speaker: Just keep going.
Speaker: I'm fine.
Speaker: God fucking idiot.
Speaker: God, yeah.
Speaker: He... Anyway.
Speaker: We haven't really addressed it totally, but...
Speaker: Obviously, if you're listening to this, you know that Donald J. Trump won the election.
Speaker: He's a piece of shit.
Speaker: If you don't agree with that, you can go ahead and unsubscribe.
Speaker: He's a literal fucking monster.
Speaker: Not that like, listen, I don't like the Democrats that much.
Speaker: I'm a leftist.
Speaker: They're Democrats are like mealy mouth.
Speaker: We can't win things because we are like focus testing what would work the best.
Speaker: Meanwhile, they're losing.
Speaker: So the Republicans are like, maybe we should just kill everybody.
Speaker: And people are, are cheering for that.
Speaker: Um, so in insert, uh, uh, the hippie, uh, the beatnik parents of Flanders saying, uh, we we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
Speaker: That's,
Speaker: That's the Democratic Party.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What was this?
Speaker: That Simpsons bit?
Speaker: I just said it.
Speaker: It was the beatniks.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: The other Simpsons, Simpsons Republican convention.
Speaker: Oh, oh, oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, for the Democrats and the Republicans.
Speaker: Republican convention inside.
Speaker: The banner says, we want what's worse for everyone.
Speaker: We're just plain evil.
Speaker: And the Democratic convention inside.
Speaker: We hate our life.
Speaker: We hate life and ourselves.
Speaker: We can't govern.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: It's funny cause it's true.
Speaker: It's funny cause it's true.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So hooray.
Speaker: Everything's working out so well.
Speaker: Everybody's coming up.
Speaker: Millhouse.
Speaker: to keep the Simpsons and presidential because Richard Milhouse Nixon.
Speaker: Hey there.
Speaker: Ah, there you go.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: Chapter 21, more Istvan bullshit.
Speaker: He's, he's going back and forth between the veil and not the veil.
Speaker: He starts calling the other world, the veil.
Speaker: And he's,
Speaker: At one point, he sees his mother's face.
Speaker: At another point, he sees Fisher, who is the politician he killed, that guy's face.
Speaker: The other prisoners are like, what's, why is he doing this?
Speaker: What the fuck is going on?
Speaker: And yeah, they need to, they need to like help him because he's, he'll just suddenly sit there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Then a prisoner named Khan kills himself with a fork.
Speaker: He stabs himself in the arm with a fork a bunch of times and then in the throat.
Speaker: Yeah, he just keeps going that way.
Speaker: Yeah, he stabbed himself in the throat.
Speaker: Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was something at least.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Meanwhile,
Speaker: We got Henry back, Henry Wondre, and he is like basically doing the security oversight for the prison and is really hating his job.
Speaker: He was doing the monitor work when the guy killed himself and, you know, they're not – he's not happy about that.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: He's had better days.
Speaker: Apparently they've turned the morgue in the prison into an interrogation room.
Speaker: Oh, that's right.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: He's asking the guy in charge, what do I tell them to do with the body?
Speaker: Should they incinerate it?
Speaker: And the guy's like, no, keep it.
Speaker: And he's like, where?
Speaker: And they're like, well, we don't have a morgue anymore.
Speaker: And the guy's like, put it in the refrigerator.
Speaker: It's actually just bizarre enough that I was like, okay, that one.
Speaker: I appreciate this moment.
Speaker: That moment, the level of like just really knowing bureaucracy and how pointless and stupid it is.
Speaker: I was like, okay, you know what?
Speaker: Fair point.
Speaker: Fair point to you on that one.
Speaker: That's pretty good.
Speaker: Pretty good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So and that was Grotter, by the way, who told him to put it in the refrigerator.
Speaker: Grotter, by the way, has gets one interesting characteristic here where he fucks with Henry's head by calling him the wrong name constantly.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just that classic, like just mean kid shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, uh, meanwhile, chapter 23, Grotter is telling Ensign Haley to just keep drawing, keep drawing your shit.
Speaker: And she can't, she keeps drawing, but she can't make him happy.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And he's getting really upset that he is not she is not drawing the marker like one of his French girls is very upset about this.
Speaker: And then eventually another pulse comes from the marker and she starts drawing again and gives him something.
Speaker: Chapter 24, Istvan is now talking to Khan and is able to communicate directly with the marker, so to speak.
Speaker: Khan being the guy who dead.
Speaker: Chapter 25, Dr. Dexter and Bryden have found the vectors.
Speaker: Yay.
Speaker: They found the vectors and they know where it is that they need to go to the penal colony.
Speaker: And they're going to Bryden's going to be like, I'm going to get the permission from the commander.
Speaker: And Dexter's like, yeah, good.
Speaker: We really should follow this.
Speaker: The strict, you know, rules of governance here.
Speaker: It's it's it's what the people crave in their science fiction horror novel.
Speaker: Brondo.
Speaker: It's what the people crave.
Speaker: It's what the readers crave.
Speaker: It's what the readers crave.
Speaker: Sweet Christmas.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Goddamn.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So also his mother is talking to him as well.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: As the marker.
Speaker: None of it is important.
Speaker: It's just that's the thing.
Speaker: None of what the marker fucking says is ever important.
Speaker: It's just dumb, pseudo riddle bullshit.
Speaker: OK, it's just like you should do this or you should do that.
Speaker: And blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: The marker told him to kill the guy like this is all part of it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The marker told him to kill the guy earlier.
Speaker: So you'd end up here like the marker.
Speaker: I don't give a fucking shit about the marker.
Speaker: Like this is the mistake of these books and I think of later Dead Space games is that the marker is not the thing anyone cares about.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: It is a MacGuffin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That causes a problem, not the thing to be all consumed by.
Speaker: It's like, oh, my God, it's like it's missing the forest for the trees.
Speaker: in a huge way.
Speaker: And we're on, we're halfway through this goddamn book and nary a necromorph to be found.
Speaker: Nothing, nothing.
Speaker: At least in the first book, there was one that was like on the beach.
Speaker: One of those like breather kind of balloon pulsey guys.
Speaker: Like, and it was, and they treated it with the, you know, the attitude of like a Bigfoot sighting, which was actually kind of interesting.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Uh, uh, uh, uh,
Speaker: this doesn't even have that.
Speaker: We haven't even dealt with that.
Speaker: It's just your standard issue, like vague psychic shit, which just bores me to tears.
Speaker: I just, I, I couldn't care less.
Speaker: I really couldn't, I could try, but it'd be hard.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Grotter tells Henry that he has to let the, um, scientists come in to the base and do their, their studies.
Speaker: And Henry's like, I don't want to.
Speaker: And Grotter's like, well, you're gonna.
Speaker: And he's like, all right, fine.
Speaker: And he explains everything to the guards and all that stuff.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Chapter 28, we're back with Gen Z and he's hanging out.
Speaker: Oh, oh, oh.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: How you doing, kid?
Speaker: How you doing, kid?
Speaker: I'm doing good.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: I can hear you yelling.
Speaker: This book is upsetting me and your dad.
Speaker: It's very bad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a very bad book.
Speaker: And we're expressing our frustration through the power of podcasting.
Speaker: Because that's the only way we can pretend anyone will listen to it and care.
Speaker: Okay, can you just quiet down a bit?
Speaker: Oh, oh, I see.
Speaker: The kid basically came in and gave you the verbal equivalent of banging the broom on the ceiling and telling you to turn your rock and roll music down.
Speaker: She told me to turn the rock and roll music down.
Speaker: So I'll try to do that.
Speaker: I'll try to keep the rock and roll music down.
Speaker: Worth a shot.
Speaker: It's worth a shot.
Speaker: Uh, Gen Z is talking to Swanson, yada, yada, yada.
Speaker: Uh, and there's, they're, they're talking, he's getting drunk with Swanson and the, uh,
Speaker: the captain and they're finding out about Aspera and etc.
Speaker: It's like basically re-explaining everything we the reader already know but just to a character who doesn't know.
Speaker: Yeah that's basically that's what's happening in this scene.
Speaker: I really think that they were like, I bet the readers totally fucking forgotten what brought us to this point.
Speaker: Anyway, let's just, let's just go for it, which is honestly a fair assumption.
Speaker: Fair assumption, but also it doesn't help anything.
Speaker: No, make your book more interesting.
Speaker: Do that.
Speaker: Do that instead.
Speaker: Do that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Bryden and Dexter are talking to Henry and they're like, and Henry's like, what are you, what are you doing?
Speaker: And Bryden and Dexter, like, we're looking for something.
Speaker: And Henry mentions how the prisoners are not dangerous, but recently they've been acting a little bit more.
Speaker: And Bryden grills Henry on being a unitologist.
Speaker: And Henry's like, oh, my God, stop.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: So they set up all their equipment and, you know, they're ready to go to figure out where the marker is on this planet.
Speaker: And then Istvan is talking with The Voice and talking about Convergence, talking about that society movie.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: Uh, so basically what happens is, um, there's another, like, um, uh, another guy like kills himself or something like that.
Speaker: Um, and the alarm goes off and the voice tells Istvan to just, just stay right there.
Speaker: Just like hang out.
Speaker: And then the guards come out and the scientists come out and they find out that the signal is coming from where Istvan was sitting and they start digging and they start digging with a laser gun.
Speaker: big old laser beam until it burns out.
Speaker: And one of the engineers is like, oh, well, we could get one of these drills.
Speaker: And Bryden is like, well, get the drill.
Speaker: And the engineer's like, well, we don't have one.
Speaker: And Bryden's like.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: This conversation is going really, really well.
Speaker: This book is a series of people having conversations of nobody yes-anding anyone.
Speaker: Nobody.
Speaker: There's no sense of just clipping this story along.
Speaker: I'm aware that in real life, this is how people talk.
Speaker: I'm aware that in real life, this is what happens.
Speaker: I just do not care.
Speaker: And I can't believe that you do either, unless you just try to pad the...
Speaker: have the length.
Speaker: But this book, I know we got a weird PDF version of it, but this one's got to be way shorter than the first one.
Speaker: I remember the first one being really, really long.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: I mean, we're reading off the PDF version.
Speaker: I'd have to convert it into like regular 250 words per page.
Speaker: But anyway, they figure out that the signal wasn't coming from the spot of the floor, but it was actually coming from Istvan.
Speaker: Istvan is the vector to the marker, not the...
Speaker: not the floor where they were digging.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Dun, dun, dun.
Speaker: That's the end of part three.
Speaker: And that's all we're talking about it.
Speaker: We're not talking anymore about this book today.
Speaker: And we're done.
Speaker: So what'd you think, Phil?
Speaker: I just, I just, I just don't know how somebody looks at the source material of dead space.
Speaker: and says, I'm going to make this like this could, this could be, I'm going to make this book and it's going to be so bureaucratic.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, this could be any kind of like political thriller with a slightly occult bent.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It deals with the same styles of MacGuffins.
Speaker: It deals all the same tropes.
Speaker: So why let's just, just,
Speaker: not even an interesting political thriller.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Yeah, not a good one.
Speaker: But it's like it's all the same.
Speaker: This is all it would take to make this into an airport paperback is a couple of tweaks.
Speaker: I don't know how you play through the first 10 minutes of Dead Space and say, oh, I need to make this book.
Speaker: Yeah, just don't.
Speaker: I'm at a loss for how that even happens.
Speaker: Like the only thing I can understand is if they were, if the author was like requested to write something like, all right, well, we need to really flesh out the lore of the marker.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But this isn't even like the lore of the marker.
Speaker: This is just like.
Speaker: Like you could do all that.
Speaker: You can do all that in the middle of action.
Speaker: You know, like Dead Space, the first Dead Space, right?
Speaker: You are on an emergency tech vessel that lands on a planet cracker, which by the way, we haven't even, we're not even getting into the really interesting part of the Dead Space, like the parts of the Dead Space universe that are wild is that they have fucking ships.
Speaker: that just crack planets in half so that they can be mined like that kind of stuff.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: There's a whole, there's a whole alien inspired blue collar space wage slave kind of story going on there.
Speaker: That's really cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like you said, in the midst of all this shooting and action stuff, you could still have, I think of Dead Space 2, which I mean, largely people consider that to be the best one, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Where they cut into so many fascinating facets of where this all comes from and how it happens and the past of it while putting you in great danger for pretty much the entire game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think I want to play that game again.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is, is it dead space two where you start out?
Speaker: You're like strapped to a table and some guy is like, I'm going to get you out of here.
Speaker: And then he gets like stabbed through the back of the head.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was into a necromorph.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like just, just, yeah, that was it.
Speaker: That was the one.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: That was a really good one.
Speaker: The third one sucked, but here's the thing.
Speaker: Here's the thing.
Speaker: The third dead space game was still better than these books.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because it's still recognizably dead space.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, this is, this is, I think I said this last episode, there's no way that a person who,
Speaker: Without being told what franchise this is based on, a couple, you wouldn't even need that many black bars, just a little redaction here and there and ask that person, what game franchise do you think that this is based on?
Speaker: There's no way they say Dead Space.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's unrecognizable.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's rough stuff.
Speaker: And I think the yeah, it just makes me think of the books and how fast they get into the heart, the meat of the action and still manage to communicate ideas about and concepts about what's going on.
Speaker: Just like that, the first game, you know, you land on the ship.
Speaker: It's like, everything's fine.
Speaker: And then power goes out.
Speaker: There's a lockdown and you're separated from the rest of the crew.
Speaker: And now you're fucked and you got to get, you know, backtrack your way through the ship, you know, it's just, it's so engaging and, and right off the bat, it doesn't waste any time.
Speaker: It gets right into it and it does it in a smart way.
Speaker: It's not a, it's not,
Speaker: There is lore to be had there.
Speaker: There is.
Speaker: I know it's a silly action horror game, but there is a lot that you can glean from it.
Speaker: And it's like, I don't know.
Speaker: You ever heard of that book?
Speaker: I don't remember what it was called.
Speaker: The book that some guy wrote that never uses the letter E.
Speaker: There's a book out there.
Speaker: It's like a novel.
Speaker: It's a full length novel that some guy wrote without using the letter E. I believe that's which one it was.
Speaker: It's one of the letters both.
Speaker: And
Speaker: And I guess it's just kind of like this exercise to show what's possible when you have those kind of limitations.
Speaker: I feel this almost feels like someone's like, oh, you like Dead Space?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I challenge you to write two novels about the Dead Space world that do not resemble Dead Space in any fucking way, shape or form, just as an experiment.
Speaker: Just give it a shot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's the only explanation I could come up with for this.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: This is one of those books that we do read a fair amount of out of print books on this.
Speaker: And sometimes it's out of print.
Speaker: You're like, oh, man, I wonder why that's out of print.
Speaker: This is not one of those.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is out of print for a very, very good reason.
Speaker: So it seems like there's a book called Roundabout.
Speaker: that doesn't use the letter E that's like gone viral on TikTok or something like that.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: But there's a book called Gadsby from 1939 that also does not use the letter E. Gadsby.
Speaker: That's the one I was thinking.
Speaker: Yeah, 1939, Ernest Vincent Wright.
Speaker: Okay, yeah.
Speaker: The 50,000 word novel without the letter E. Okay.
Speaker: not the longest novel in the world, but pretty goddamn long for never getting to use E. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: So there it is.
Speaker: Gatsby.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: I'd rather be reading that.
Speaker: I'd rather be reading Gatsby or or the great Gatsby.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I don't really like that one.
Speaker: Or, you know, what is it?
Speaker: Was I thinking of vile bodies?
Speaker: by Evelyn Waugh or I don't know what this is.
Speaker: No, I'm just going on 19, you know, early, early, early 20th century books at this point.
Speaker: Anything, anything.
Speaker: Well, Evelyn Waugh, it's, it's, um, what was it?
Speaker: Even law.
Speaker: Even law.
Speaker: They're like, uh, cause I remember what's it, what movie was that where, uh,
Speaker: The girl goes, I check in under the name Evelyn Waugh.
Speaker: And Scarlett Johansson responds, it's Evelyn Waugh.
Speaker: He's a man.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Lost in translation.
Speaker: Lost in translation.
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: Anyway, Phil, what are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, well, I think the big one for me, I'm still playing a lot of UFO 50.
Speaker: I finally beat and cherried Grimstone.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: It was way longer than I thought it was going to be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was like a 10 hour game, man.
Speaker: And it wasn't.
Speaker: And here's the thing.
Speaker: It's old school, final fantasy style.
Speaker: So you think grindy, grindy, but I didn't actually spend any time just wandering around places, trying to build up shit.
Speaker: It just naturally had, it just naturally happened as I went along.
Speaker: I was just naturally building up the right way.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: It's a very friendly game in that sense.
Speaker: And the world that you're in is fucking bizarre.
Speaker: It's literally cowboys in hell.
Speaker: Like it's, it's, it's so strange.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love the concept and they don't get into it a lot, but basically the idea between behind Grimstone is that a part of the American West fell into hell and
Speaker: not just like a town or whatever, but like a whole land is now in hell.
Speaker: That's Texas.
Speaker: It's like a, yeah.
Speaker: Texas fell into hell.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's spoilers.
Speaker: It's Texas.
Speaker: It's, and it's, and you, and you go and you fight God at the end of it.
Speaker: And it's just, it's,
Speaker: Truly, that's what we were talking about last episode, where it was like these games are very distinctly
Speaker: 8-bit Nintendo games from the eighties, but there's a lot of stuff in there that just wouldn't exist in those days.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's what keeps it fresh.
Speaker: And part of that isn't just the mechanics and stuff.
Speaker: It's storylines like this, where this is a distinctly 21st century storyline.
Speaker: It's that level of, of like indie video game insanity that you only get from the,
Speaker: you know, video games in this era.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The God is called Biggin.
Speaker: Biggin.
Speaker: Which is plenty silly.
Speaker: And you find out that the devil actually works for Biggin as just like pretends to be this evil guy just to make people worship Biggin.
Speaker: So yeah, you find and destroy God at the end of Grimstone, which, you know, as you do.
Speaker: I mean, that's that's the I think that's the goal of everybody I know at this point.
Speaker: So it's nice to fantasize every now get a power fantasy of killing God.
Speaker: A power fantasy of killing God with you.
Speaker: You got the guy who can use the the minigun, right?
Speaker: Bull, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's fucking excellent.
Speaker: Yeah, don't... I think I ended up on probably... I don't know.
Speaker: I haven't done the research, but my party layout was fucking great.
Speaker: And this is a coincidence.
Speaker: I did not do research.
Speaker: I ended up with Bull, who's your...
Speaker: Heavy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I had Lee, who's this kind of like melee artist kind of character, slashy slashy sort of dude.
Speaker: I had Anne, who is a dancer who does a lot of support abilities that she learns tango and cha cha and stuff like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: you know, help your evade and your hit and stuff like that.
Speaker: And it all stacks, by the way, remember it stacks.
Speaker: You can use it several times.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That helps a lot with the final boss and Umbra, who's like the native American shaman kind of characters who learn stuff from the, from the animals.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's, which is another really creative thing.
Speaker: You don't buy his spells.
Speaker: He learns them from animals out in the wilderness, which is cool.
Speaker: Yeah, so my party was the bull.
Speaker: Maria, who was the... She's really good with rifles.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: The one-eyed sharpshooter.
Speaker: Doc, who is basically... The cool thing about Doc is that every healing item is more effective, and you can use it twice.
Speaker: Oh, that's cool.
Speaker: So like, if you have a bandage, you use the bandage and then it says half bandage.
Speaker: Oh, that's useful as hell.
Speaker: So Doc makes your healing items more efficient and more powerful.
Speaker: And then I had the dog.
Speaker: Oh, Rufus, Rufus, Rufus, which I, I, I didn't know what was happening.
Speaker: I had to look it up because you start picking up dog treats.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And you can't use them if you don't have them in your party.
Speaker: I was like, what the fuck am I?
Speaker: The dog treats are basically a free level for Rufus.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's really neat.
Speaker: And at the end of the game there, if you have a ton of money left, there's a guy you can go to, to just buy as many dog treats as you want.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you can make Rufus really powerful.
Speaker: The only thing with Rufus is you don't control him during a fight.
Speaker: He just goes and does what he's going to do.
Speaker: What he's going to do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, yeah, I really, here's the thing.
Speaker: I have been, I have been playing other UFO 50 games, but yeah,
Speaker: I've mostly been playing this.
Speaker: This has been pretty much.
Speaker: Grimstone got your, yeah, really locked in.
Speaker: 95% of my, of my time.
Speaker: Which is wild because you bought a game with 50 games in it.
Speaker: And then there's like a game in those 50 games.
Speaker: That's, you know, a 10, 15 hour JRPG.
Speaker: 10, 15 hours.
Speaker: Easily, easily.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's it's so funny how that works.
Speaker: And and so now I'm just kind of like, OK, I'm going to and I actually have made a point now.
Speaker: I'm doing a little research and I'm trying to find like the ones that are the easiest to cherry just to knock a few more out.
Speaker: And that there's the quibble racing one.
Speaker: Playing that one.
Speaker: Which is a lot of fun.
Speaker: because it's just like, one of the things you can do is just like, you can go into this one menu option where there's a guy who's like, hey, do you want me to like take a bat to one of the knees of the other quibbles?
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: You need some steroids for your quibble.
Speaker: It's fantastic.
Speaker: It's so much.
Speaker: And that attitude is throughout the game.
Speaker: Throughout all the games.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Have you played Night Manor?
Speaker: No, that one's coming up.
Speaker: You told me that was one of the first ones you played, right?
Speaker: It's the first one I beat.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: First one I beat and cherried.
Speaker: So, and the cherry, basically the cherry is not that hard.
Speaker: It's just like, there's a midway point to the game where you can beat the game.
Speaker: Cherrying just, you just got to keep going.
Speaker: Like, you have to like do all of the, figure out all the puzzles to cherry it.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: So that's, that's pretty much it for Night Manor, but it's a good game.
Speaker: Yeah, so that was what I had.
Speaker: Oh, and I but I didn't want to come in and not having played a demo.
Speaker: So I went ahead and played the demo for the Stone of Madness.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Uh, which, uh, which, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I talked about, yeah.
Speaker: We talked about before it's, it's, it's the same people who did, uh, uh, blasphemous, very, very different game.
Speaker: Very different.
Speaker: And also the blasphemous to DLC just came out, uh, not that long ago.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: That's all I need.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: No, I, but so this is a, it's intensely Spanish.
Speaker: It's intensely Inquisition-esque.
Speaker: You play, they call him a priest, but he's basically a detective.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you're in this corrupt world.
Speaker: insane asylum.
Speaker: They treat it like it's like a monastery or something like that, but it's an insane asylum.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's that you're surrounded by all these.
Speaker: It's a sanitarium type.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and you've got to sneak out and the game is stealth party based.
Speaker: So you are collecting people as you go along.
Speaker: Everyone has a different group of abilities, but everyone also has a weakness that will fuck with their sanity.
Speaker: Um, which, which ruins things.
Speaker: And, and so like one of them is he's huge.
Speaker: He's, he can push things that other characters can't, uh, but he's afraid of, of the dark.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So whereas other characters, you really want to put out the lights so you could sneak a little better.
Speaker: He's going to suffer for it.
Speaker: Um, so you, uh, and then you've got this one woman who is a straight up assassin, uh, who is happy.
Speaker: Other characters are not really necessarily willing to kill guards or something.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: other characters are yeah the the main character guy can't kill like he can't even there's like not even an option right exactly exactly and so so so she doesn't give a shit and she will happily kill uh other people and uh but she's uh but she's afraid of fire so like the the fire scarred her and it will fuck her up uh ultimately and um
Speaker: It's super fun.
Speaker: So you have to put out all the fires that you see for her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And some of the some fires there you can't.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you just have to find a way around.
Speaker: It's a very it's a very effective demo.
Speaker: It gets the the mechanics and the story across really well.
Speaker: I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think the I think the priest guy was he was he's afraid of dead bodies.
Speaker: Yes, it's the dead.
Speaker: Yeah, the dead.
Speaker: Yeah, which is, you know, knowing Blasphemous, knowing the game kitchen.
Speaker: You're going to run into the dead.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, you're going to run into the dead.
Speaker: It's a pretty art style, very different from the original, from Blasphemous, not the original.
Speaker: The cut scene style is similar to Blasphemous 2.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And then the the portraits are extremely detailed, like the portraits that you see on the on the game's like cover arts in like for the demo for the Stone of Madness.
Speaker: That's kind of like what you see in the in the game for the portrait art.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, it's, they, they have always been good at art style and art direction and that sort of thing that creating a creepy world.
Speaker: It's gonna, it's coming out right now.
Speaker: It's scheduled for the end of January and that's a time when usually,
Speaker: good games aren't necessarily not there aren't a lot of games coming out so yeah it's a good time for indies a lot of times or like smaller releases so we'll see um yeah that could be important yeah yeah same uh but that's that's that's what i've been playing so kevin what have you been playing
Speaker: I have been playing.
Speaker: So I played a little bit of Dragon Age, the Veil Guard, which I need to get back into.
Speaker: It's pretty fun so far.
Speaker: There's it's it's it's what's it?
Speaker: Bioware.
Speaker: And it's like they're.
Speaker: A lot of people said it's like their best game since Mass Effect 2.
Speaker: I am not someone who can speak on that because I have not played any other of their games aside from the Mass Effect trilogy, really.
Speaker: I mean, prior to I played Knights of the Old Republic before that, you know what I mean?
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: They were a very different company back then.
Speaker: Very different company back then.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, I'm having fun with it so far.
Speaker: I'm playing a rogue, an elf rogue.
Speaker: And when you the dodge, like when you're playing as a rogue and you use the dodge mechanic, it's like like.
Speaker: She like the character like flies like halfway across the screen.
Speaker: And then like sometimes you double tap the button and she'll disappear for a second in a cloud of smoke and then come back.
Speaker: And it's the movement and traversal looks like gives it a lot of fun energy.
Speaker: So I'm enjoying it so far.
Speaker: I've only put a few hours into it.
Speaker: And I know it's a beefy, beefy game.
Speaker: So if I have any hope of beating it before the end of the year, I need to really lock in.
Speaker: Honestly, the main I was busy and you were busy in the first part of the week last week with the wedding.
Speaker: And then I recorded with with a bunch of people that roundtable episode.
Speaker: That came out last Wednesday and then the second half of the week I was busy putting down tiles in my living room.
Speaker: That's kind of why I haven't necessarily played anything anymore of Dragon Age.
Speaker: But you know what I have played is something that it takes a lot less brainpower and that's the Vampire Survival's Ode to Castlevania DLC.
Speaker: Oh, goody, goody.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That has come out.
Speaker: Have you, did you get this yet, Phil, or?
Speaker: Not yet, but it's so, it's everything I've seen about it is that, because I had the same reaction a lot of people did when I saw that.
Speaker: I was like, isn't that redundant?
Speaker: Like, it's already a send up of that.
Speaker: But then you look at everything that's involved and you're like, oh, they're really piling on.
Speaker: So what they did, so for the Castlevania DLC, it adds a level.
Speaker: And it is the largest level in any of the vampires – of any of the vampire survivors' levels.
Speaker: It is the area outside and inside of Dracula's castle modeled loosely after Symphony of the Night, right?
Speaker: And every area has bosses.
Speaker: So in order to progress through the castle, you have to beat bosses.
Speaker: And you get the boss – you spawn the bosses by standing on this little like red sigil that causes the boss –
Speaker: And the bosses are all from the Castlevania games, right?
Speaker: So you have bosses from Symphony of the Night, you have bosses from the DS games, all the fun stuff.
Speaker: And then all the characters it adds.
Speaker: It adds so many characters, including, you know, you got Alucard, you got Richter is there.
Speaker: Richter is actually one of the last ones that you can unlock.
Speaker: He's one of the hardest unlocks based on like based on order, because you kind of have to some characters are only going to be able to be unlocked from like you got to level this weapon up in order to unlock this character.
Speaker: And then you got to level this character's weapon up in order.
Speaker: So Richter, I think, is one of the last ones that you can unlock.
Speaker: Um, but I gotta tell you, um, you're playing through that.
Speaker: You're playing through, you got, you got Alucard or, or Simon, um, running through the vampire survivors countryside and you have, uh, bloody tears or vampire killer, just like fucking wailing in your, your headphones.
Speaker: And you're just like, yeah, buddy, I am here for it.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: The music is so good and they added there are so many tracks of Castlevania music that it adds to the game as well.
Speaker: Just so many.
Speaker: I want to say like 30 or so songs.
Speaker: That always had such good music.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's necessary.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: So, yeah, I'm probably going to go back and get the other DLCs that I haven't purchased yet.
Speaker: Like the they did a Contra one, right?
Speaker: I loved that one.
Speaker: I had a lot of fun with that one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So let's see.
Speaker: What's funny is it seems like Pankal, the developer of Vampire Survivors, actually has a decent relationship now with Konami where Konami is like, yeah, you know, we got Contra, you got Castlevania in there, whatever.
Speaker: Have fun, kids.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Have fun, kids.
Speaker: Which is nice.
Speaker: It's nice to see Konami very, like, you know, with the Silent Hill 2 remake, Konami has been gradually inching its way back into the video game space after...
Speaker: a decade of not doing it pretty much at all.
Speaker: They, it was like PT, they had PT and then they, uh, the, the silent Hills, which was going to be the silent Hill game that Hideo Kojima was working on with, uh, with Norman Reedus and Guillermo del Toro.
Speaker: They're like, Nope, we're canceling that.
Speaker: We're actually also just going to make pachinko machines now.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And now they're slowly inching their way back into the video game space.
Speaker: But still, I mean, fuck them overall.
Speaker: But, you know, they're inching their way back.
Speaker: So that's good to see because they do have some very memorable characters in their catalog that are, you know, the fans want to see.
Speaker: So they're still bastards, but at least they're still bastards, but they, they have at least they're, you know,
Speaker: at least they're letting people use their properties.
Speaker: You're not going to use it.
Speaker: They had Bloober team make the Silent Hill 2 remake.
Speaker: And if you want to hear my thoughts more on Silent Hill 2 remake, obviously you can go listen to that round table episode.
Speaker: We have, we had a variety of thoughts on, we had a diversity of thought, which is my least favorite saying in the, in the world, because when diverse, when people say diversity of thought, they usually just mean conservative voices are getting amplified.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That's just and so, you know, whatever.
Speaker: But we have a variety of opinions.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: On the game, ranging from hot cider, hating it to Pym and Sputnik loving it and me somewhere in the middle.
Speaker: I liked it.
Speaker: And honestly, guys, if you haven't listened to it yet or watched it, it's a it is a hell of a lineup of minds.
Speaker: It's a very cool group of of of content creators, not just Kevin, just a lot of people that we really respect.
Speaker: So it's a very cool group of voices together.
Speaker: Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: Yeah, so go and check that out.
Speaker: As for anything else, I've been playing not much else just because after trying to do the tiles, I'm usually tired and then I lay down and I fall asleep and then I wake up and I, you know, cry a little bit about the election and then... Sure.
Speaker: You move on.
Speaker: I move on with my life.
Speaker: There's no room for it anymore, people.
Speaker: It's like Uncle Henry Rollins said, this is what Joe Strummer prepared you for.
Speaker: It's time to be punk.
Speaker: This is all we can do.
Speaker: I won't lie.
Speaker: My family and I discussed the idea of what it would take to leave and everything like that.
Speaker: I'm not the only person to think that.
Speaker: But here's the thing.
Speaker: This is ours, too.
Speaker: This is our country too, goddammit.
Speaker: Goddammit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So get real punk with it.
Speaker: We're going to fucking start feeding ourselves.
Speaker: Fuck the grocery stores.
Speaker: We're getting into it.
Speaker: If anything, this kind of... And get out there and protest.
Speaker: Get out there and...
Speaker: Tell them that you will not shut up.
Speaker: You know, that's what they want.
Speaker: They just want you to shut up and don't shut up.
Speaker: Don't ever shut up.
Speaker: If you have the cachet to do it, just keep talking and, you know, we'll keep listening.
Speaker: One more thing, totally unrelated.
Speaker: Steam is releasing a limited edition white version.
Speaker: Steam Deck.
Speaker: It looks sharp.
Speaker: It is a sharp looking little machine there.
Speaker: Available worldwide on November 18th.
Speaker: I think next year is the year I finally break down.
Speaker: Oh, that does look sharp.
Speaker: I think that's next year's the year.
Speaker: It's got the red power button.
Speaker: It's very Super Nintendo coded.
Speaker: Yeah, very much so.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: Or PlayStation 1 vibes.
Speaker: I'm getting PlayStation 1.
Speaker: I'm getting like original NES.
Speaker: It's giving PlayStation 1.
Speaker: Yeah, it's giving PlayStation 1.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: I just...
Speaker: Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker: Yeah, I just, you know, when you've got a kid now and everything, it's just it's just you're going to have to gauge your time, use it more wisely.
Speaker: There's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker: This is all good.
Speaker: This is all a good thing because my kid fucking rules.
Speaker: But if I can have another hour or two to play a game,
Speaker: while we're all hanging out in the living room or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, this this gives you that time to now you can just like, you know, chill and watch TV.
Speaker: And, you know, I know I know, Phil, you're you're a two screen.
Speaker: You're a two screener.
Speaker: You know, you tend to have.
Speaker: Either a TV and a phone or a TV and switch, you know, something I'm trying to break myself of because I don't necessarily want that for my kid.
Speaker: But you know how it goes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, well, yeah.
Speaker: And Graham also might not have ADHD.
Speaker: So well, let's be honest.
Speaker: Let's be honest.
Speaker: He also ended up with blue eyes, which neither me or his mother have.
Speaker: So yeah, miracles happen.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: So that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Feel free to follow us.
Speaker: I'm just going to say it.
Speaker: Follow us on Blue Sky.
Speaker: Blue Sky has been popping off lately.
Speaker: That is where we are.
Speaker: That is where we are.
Speaker: Blue Sky is the best place.
Speaker: You can find me at Kevin.PixelItPod.com.
Speaker: And Phil is at HeMakesMonsters, right?
Speaker: That's what your handle is.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's PhilMakesMonsters.
Speaker: PhilMakesMonsters.BSky.com.
Speaker: You think I should know this.
Speaker: And you can find, if you just type at pixelitpod.com, pixelitpod.com on Blue Sky will get you to the main Blue Sky account.
Speaker: And it's wild because there's been like 700,000 new Blue Sky users in the past week.
Speaker: And the level of positivity in there, because I've had mine for a while, but I haven't really been paying all that much attention.
Speaker: And it's like, holy shit.
Speaker: Yeah, no, people are vibing over there.
Speaker: I think a lot of it is because people call it the nuclear block or the hell block that Blue Sky has, where if you block somebody, your presence in anything that they have ever done, quote tweets, mentions, whatever, is gone.
Speaker: You're just removed from everything that they have ever said about you.
Speaker: It's just, you're just, they just...
Speaker: pluck you right out of there.
Speaker: Now, obviously there's still like the photo, the photo tweet, but I think just the idea of like, uh, uh, extreme exceedingly strong block functions, block lists are built into the platform, but so our follow lists.
Speaker: Um, so it's, it's a really neat, uh, it's a really cool place.
Speaker: It's like, Hey, it basically blue sky is like,
Speaker: had Twitter, there was two roads in the woods in front of Twitter.
Speaker: And one was hell.
Speaker: And the other was like, not heaven, but just like a fucking 7-Eleven, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You can go to the 7-Eleven and hang out with your friends in the parking lot.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: Get yourself a big gulp, which, hey, by the way, which the big gulp remains one of the best values of anything in the world.
Speaker: Let me tell you.
Speaker: Still good.
Speaker: Still good.
Speaker: Still goddamn good.
Speaker: You go get yourself a big gulp, buddy.
Speaker: But Twitter chose hell and Blue Sky chose 7-Eleven with big gulps.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Fuck yeah.
Speaker: Fuck yeah.
Speaker: That'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: I think we've, yeah.
Speaker: I think we've covered it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Good night.
