Transcript
Speaker: They're just they're just they are meant to be taken out of the foil and consumed, preferably while standing and thinking about anything else than eating.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, preferably like standing over the sink.
Speaker: It's like a it's like a it's like a shame consumption.
Speaker: You're eating it over the sink so that a decreases the chance that somebody else sees you eating it and be there's already like a thing to catch the crumbs.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you just you just take that foil out and you shotgun a pair of Pop Tarts and you move on with your day.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: You move on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's and it's tasty and everything, but you barely notice at this point anymore.
Speaker: You're just you're just feeding the monkey, you know, just.
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It to another bonus episode.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: We got a we got a bonus episode here and we're talking about Halo Reach.
Speaker: It was just the most obvious thing, wasn't it?
Speaker: It is the obvious.
Speaker: It's like a really short line between the fall of reach and Halo reach.
Speaker: So, you know, it was just a good way of seeing how much we could see if it lines up or if we notice anything really.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I mean, what's funny is I actually had to watch a video afterwards to make it make sense to me.
Speaker: But we'll get into that.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: I watched no such video.
Speaker: You watched no such video.
Speaker: I did not.
Speaker: I did a little.
Speaker: I was doing, you know, I played the game and played through it and did a little research.
Speaker: And when I just Googled Halo Reach,
Speaker: And you know how it'll like pop up the most frequently asked questions when it comes to that sort of thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The first one that came up was what was the point of Halo Reach?
Speaker: So I suppose it's our job to answer that question.
Speaker: What was the point of Halo Reach?
Speaker: What was the point of Halo Reach?
Speaker: So Halo Reach, in summary, was a game released in 2000 something or other.
Speaker: It was 2010.
Speaker: 2010.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So it comes out about nine years after the Fall of Reach novel.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And the Fall of Reach novel is the direct prequel, the original prequel to Halo 1.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we've got a prequel.
Speaker: of a we've got a video game prequel of a video game that already has a literary prequel.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Basically, you take control of a character who really doesn't have a name other than he's referred to as Noble Six.
Speaker: And he also is referred to having the rank of lieutenant.
Speaker: And I am not sure if we talked about this on the pod or off the pod.
Speaker: I know you and I talked about this.
Speaker: The thing that really confused me is that in naval structure, you
Speaker: The rank of lieutenant is, I think, de facto higher than master chief because master chief is a non-commissioned rank.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And lieutenant is an officer's rank.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know if that how that actually lines up.
Speaker: I'm sure there's somebody.
Speaker: I mean, it really depends on, you know, when you're when you're.
Speaker: you know, when you're going between commission versus non-commission.
Speaker: Yeah, technically it's higher, but you're going to get a lot of different answers on that one.
Speaker: Yeah, like a lieutenant not not listening to what a master chief says is probably going to be in for a hurting.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, it's you.
Speaker: I'm sure you get you get some people who probably take that rank to heart and I'm an officer and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Those those people are not going to hold that attitude for very long.
Speaker: Or if they do, they're they're they're in for a
Speaker: really, really unpleasant time in the military.
Speaker: So yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think, I think you could argue that maybe he's on some sort of higher level, but I don't know when you get into the Spartans and everything like that, it's kind of tough to say.
Speaker: Well, and that's the thing is it, it's just this kind of a weird internal consistency where, um,
Speaker: John 117 is supposed to be the leader of the Spartans or at least that unit of the Spartans, except now we have this other group of Spartans where the the first group of Spartans that John is the leader of, hypothetically, they all have non-com ranks.
Speaker: They're all, you know, private and corporal, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: And master chief and chief and whatnot.
Speaker: Meanwhile, this group, the Noble Team, they're all officers.
Speaker: The leader of the group is a commander.
Speaker: So, which, it's just a weird little internal consistency that I'm sure there's a lore reason for it somewhere or other.
Speaker: If not officially, there's got to be...
Speaker: Some damn, you know, fan fiction theory on it.
Speaker: And I'm sure it holds a lot of water because Internet geeks are smart and they do not give up.
Speaker: So they do not stop until that wiki is finished.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: No, they don't leave.
Speaker: They don't they don't stop until that bone is good and clean.
Speaker: No wikis left behind.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So I'm sure there's a reason, but they don't really it's not really addressed.
Speaker: You know, honestly, as far as I can tell in Halo and I actually had I played through the first Halo and then for the purposes of this, I played through Halo Reach and
Speaker: And I have that collection of all the games and stuff.
Speaker: So I've been kind of off and on playing two as well, just for the fun of it.
Speaker: And I don't know if it's ever going to come up, but the whole rank system, I think it's kind of a moot point, really.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: That's a certain point.
Speaker: If you're a Spartan, you're probably good and far ahead of a lot of people.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker: But yeah, so this is this is a whole different team.
Speaker: Master Chief is nowhere to be seen in this game.
Speaker: Nowhere to be seen.
Speaker: Not even a hint of them.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: And it basically documents the fall of reach.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And one of the main divergent detail points is that this early.
Speaker: Getting started early.
Speaker: This game starts a lot earlier than the Battle of Reach does as depicted in Halo.
Speaker: Oh, right, right.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: It's got a lot more going on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As opposed to the book.
Speaker: If I was smart, I suppose I could have put it put together like a side by side.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's not that important because one of the things that I realized after playing the game and listening to the book was that the book is mostly not about reach.
Speaker: No, it has.
Speaker: And I think we even talked about that in the last episode where it's just like.
Speaker: You know, for a book called The Fall of Reach, it's that's like the last 20 goddamn pages.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker: It just kind of ends.
Speaker: And the way it's constructed is that Master Chief doesn't.
Speaker: He does stuff, obviously, but he doesn't do a ton.
Speaker: No, it's our introduction to Master Chief as a being.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, what gets him to the first game, but that's not as snappy of a title.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: the the being of master chief yeah yeah what how did i am john yeah uh i am john 117 right something something like that right something snappy and and sci-fi right i have no i have no mouth yet i must scream that i am a spartan yeah
Speaker: I have no mouth, and yet I'm a scream because I'm a six-year-old in a boot camp being zapped with a cattle prod.
Speaker: Being hit in the chest with a cattle prod.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: I mean, the first Halo book, Child Abuse by Eric Nyland.
Speaker: I mean, that's really...
Speaker: That's really what it is.
Speaker: They could have gone with that.
Speaker: But we're not here to talk about the book.
Speaker: We've talked about the book enough.
Speaker: We're here to talk about Halo, Reach.
Speaker: And I got to tell you, I bounced off this game pretty hard initially.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I got through the first two or three campaigns.
Speaker: And I think it was, by the time I got to the third campaign and it was a mission where it was getting behind enemy lines or something like that.
Speaker: I just that particular campaign is now that I've played the whole thing, it is the weakest one in the entire game.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: And it comes at a really tough point for somebody who's like, is this going to be basically the rest of the game?
Speaker: Because the way I felt, it happens at night.
Speaker: The entire thing is, you know, you have your night vision goggles on.
Speaker: You're just kind of like walking around mountain ridges.
Speaker: And it's just this rinse and repeat.
Speaker: Sneak around.
Speaker: You find a base.
Speaker: You clear it.
Speaker: You hold it.
Speaker: You move on.
Speaker: You find another place.
Speaker: You clear it.
Speaker: You hold it.
Speaker: And I just couldn't force myself to get all the way through it because it was just like, okay, fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, that's an interesting thing that you bring up because I actually had similar feelings when I was playing the first Halo game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: For the first time in forever when I was playing it while we were talking about the book, because it's such a simple, you know, when you compare it to shooter games nowadays, it's so simple and very, very straightforward.
Speaker: And I think reach no matter how much time passed between the
Speaker: the first Halo and Halo reach, it's still a pretty straightforward sort of shooter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think part of it is because at that point, a lot like the Call of Duties nowadays, where, you know, they don't even always have a single player campaign.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because really, they're just trying to get you to play the multiplayer at that point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So they're not, you know, I'm kind of amazed that there are so few bosses in this game and the bosses that do exist aren't really bosses.
Speaker: It's just one last, you know, stretch of, you know, bullets.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Monsters to kill.
Speaker: It's usually.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's usually a mob spawn or of some sort.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or it's the way I think they did it.
Speaker: The way I noticed they did it is that they would.
Speaker: They would kind of like say, all right, well, now you're going to have to deal with these guys.
Speaker: But then maybe two campaigns later, these guys are actually mixed in as part of the regular, you know, rank and file grunts or whatever.
Speaker: Or you might have these guys that have better shields or you have these guys.
Speaker: OK, I'm jumping around.
Speaker: But mostly it's a swarm ending, though.
Speaker: It's a swarming.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a swarming.
Speaker: The guys, the thing that I don't like about the Halo games, and it happens in the first one as well as in Reach, is that there are so many bullshit deaths in the game.
Speaker: oh you mean like like like the plasma grenade like you might not even notice that one got stuck to you right right and that's an instant kill when it goes off um or like the the guy with the the little sword thingies the or the brutes if they punch you once if they melee you once it's an instant kill yeah um which is crazy considering all of the
Speaker: how much Master Chief coming off of reading The Fall of Reach and then going to play the game.
Speaker: I was like, ooh, Master Chief is a lot, or these Spartans are a lot squishier than they're made out to be in the book.
Speaker: Dude, like that's exactly how, because I was playing Halo while we were reading Fall of Reach, and I was like, holy shit, these guys, you know, it's just like any other kind of,
Speaker: game like that, you do, you, you read Warhammer 40 K or something like that.
Speaker: There's that.
Speaker: There's that reference again.
Speaker: And you and you read the books and the lore and you've got, you know, the adeptes starties and the space breeds.
Speaker: They're these gods, the angels of the emperor.
Speaker: They're there.
Speaker: Each one of them is worth one army of any lesser, you know, race.
Speaker: And sure, that's an unfortunate way to put it.
Speaker: But there it is.
Speaker: And yes,
Speaker: And that's, I mean, when you think about it with the way that the Emperor in space reigns, it's, that makes sense.
Speaker: There's a lot of weird, uncomfortable race stuff in Warhammer 40k.
Speaker: Let's point that out.
Speaker: It's fashy, it's weird race stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Put it on the table.
Speaker: But continue.
Speaker: But yeah, so...
Speaker: But so you got these these guys who are written as these super soldiers, literal super soldiers, and you get hyped up about the lore and you go and play the game and you've got a squad of five space Marines that just get wiped out because of a mortar bombing or something like that.
Speaker: You're like, son of a bitch.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's it's the power of the pen versus the power of the pixel, I suppose.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was pretty good.
Speaker: That was pretty good.
Speaker: Pretty good.
Speaker: That's a T-shirt.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: We got to make T-shirts.
Speaker: Write us and tell us which one of our kitschy catchphrases would you like to see on a T-shirt?
Speaker: At pixel at t-shirts at frontier land, Disney world.net.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: God.
Speaker: Glad we got that internet real estate.
Speaker: That was lucky.
Speaker: Yeah, it's free real estate.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So now reach was also interesting because for jumping from the first Halo to this one, you've got these special powers.
Speaker: Yes, you can use these power ups that can give you
Speaker: or increased armor and everything like that.
Speaker: And because I wasn't used to them, I almost never used them because I, yeah, I use sprint like 99% of the time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I used them when they basically told me, Hey, here's a part where you have to, like, there's a part where you get the flight pack.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they're like, Hey, you got to get from this place to the other.
Speaker: You better hit X to fly over there.
Speaker: And I'm like, Oh, I better hit X to fly over there.
Speaker: And that was, and then I forgot about it.
Speaker: But I will tell you one of the things that reach had.
Speaker: I don't know if it existed.
Speaker: I'm sure it did.
Speaker: And one of the other games leading up to this.
Speaker: But reach had the opportunity for me to grab a giant fucking hammer and just nail my.
Speaker: That was fun.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: That was one of those.
Speaker: One of those.
Speaker: One of those hammer wielding guys.
Speaker: Those hammer bros down and got their hammer.
Speaker: And you, yeah.
Speaker: And you pick it up and, and just start beating the shit up.
Speaker: God, it was fun.
Speaker: Like those are, Oh yeah.
Speaker: And there were a lot of moments playing reach that occur.
Speaker: It occurred to me that one of two things, maybe both, but I, I, I strongly suspect it has to be mostly one of two things.
Speaker: One, either I am just the most,
Speaker: innocent, pure video gamer, you know, on the Eastern coast on a certain level.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Uh, because there would be these beautiful landscape shots and this is not a new game, uh, right.
Speaker: It's over a decade old and, and there would be these beautiful, uh, shots and landscapes and, and, and, you know,
Speaker: all kinds of different things.
Speaker: And you just kind of stop these set pieces, you know, and stop and, and take it all in.
Speaker: And I would just there, Oh God, that's pretty, holy shit.
Speaker: I'm going to get a screen cap of that.
Speaker: La la la la la.
Speaker: And, and just move on happy.
Speaker: I got the, this, this landscape and, and I'm, and, and for that reason, I'm either like just a really pure, sweet gamer, or I don't play first person shooters enough.
Speaker: because that's kind of the thing for first person shooters say what you want about them yeah they are built around gigantic impressive epic set pieces yes and just about any time i have played an action video game uh like like uh the uh remakes of tomb raider
Speaker: that they did.
Speaker: Those are filled with the most beautiful set pieces.
Speaker: The first one, the first Tomb Raider reboot is what got me writing games journalism in the first place.
Speaker: And part of it was just because of how gorgeous it was.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I get the, I get the strong, distinct impression that there are most other people are not nearly as impressed with this shit as I am because they don't talk about it.
Speaker: They don't talk about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There was, there was a whole thing on Twitter, um,
Speaker: Well, when we're as I guess it's it'll be two weeks ago now when this episode comes out.
Speaker: But it's I think it was earlier this week where basically there was a there was a demo of Halo Infinite.
Speaker: And this guy, there's like a fruit stand where you pass by and the guy shot the shot at the watermelons and the watermelons just kind of like blew up.
Speaker: But there's like no particle effect or whatever.
Speaker: And then they compared it to the most one of the Call of Duty whatever's.
Speaker: And they in that the the guy lays into a watermelon with a machine gun and it falls and has like all these like little chunks and particle effects or whatever.
Speaker: And basically this guy tweeted this out, like calling the Halo devs in so many words, lazy.
Speaker: And it was it was
Speaker: Basically not being able to see the forest from the trees.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because like the important thing is the big brushstrokes.
Speaker: A. It's like it's the the moment where you that it's not like a piece of fruit.
Speaker: crumbling with like accurate particle physics as you as you fire your m16 into it you know that that bullshit doesn't matter right and the guy was trying to defend himself saying oh details matter blah blah blah um they need they should be able to do stuff like this and the game dev community was basically like listen dude this is the kind of bullshit that leads to crunch and
Speaker: And I agree.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I think I think they should be focused, like focus on the big moments.
Speaker: I absolutely emotional impact moments.
Speaker: I don't give a shit whether the watermelon blows up with realistic physics.
Speaker: I totally agree, because what is that?
Speaker: That's a novelty.
Speaker: You know, that's novelty.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's circus shit.
Speaker: And the moment someone the moment the first 10 people post clips of them doing it in 4K on YouTube or whatever to show it off, the moment that's all done and everyone's looked at and went, holy shit, look at that.
Speaker: It'll be forgotten.
Speaker: And I know because I remember before Skyrim came out, my brother who my brother, I forgot that when I was a kid, I played the I had the dagger fall.
Speaker: demo.
Speaker: And for those of you who don't know, Daggerfall was the second, the second second.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And and I played it over and over and over again.
Speaker: And and I guess my brother, it's so funny because I remember so clearly playing that game over and over again.
Speaker: But I guess my brother also played it and or was sitting next to me while I played it.
Speaker: And I hadn't paid much attention to the news of Skyrim or anything like that.
Speaker: And my brother had this moment of
Speaker: geekery because he's he's not really he's not a geek on the level that, you know, you or me or any of the listeners are.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But he has he has his moments and sure.
Speaker: And they are dipped and deep fried in nostalgia.
Speaker: And that's really what it comes down to.
Speaker: And he sent me this video, this this, you know, dev video.
Speaker: of the guy showing the first like 15 minutes.
Speaker: We've all seen it of Skyrim going into the cave and killing archers and stuff like that.
Speaker: And fighting a drogger or something like that.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And you find and at one point he finds a piece of salmon.
Speaker: And he spins it around in game so you can see what it looks like.
Speaker: And my brother's going ballistic.
Speaker: He was like, dude, look at that fucking salmon.
Speaker: It looks like real salmon.
Speaker: And I myself was going, oh, my God, holy shit.
Speaker: It looks like real salmon.
Speaker: And it is a detail now.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It does not matter.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Maybe every now and then, if I'm playing Skyrim, you know, I'll stop and go, wow, that does look good.
Speaker: And then I move on.
Speaker: But that's not what keeps me playing it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And people are right when they talk about that is that is what happens.
Speaker: That's where crunch comes from.
Speaker: That's where all of when you get a buggy ass piece of shit game on day one and you bitch and moan that these these developers
Speaker: you know, are lazy.
Speaker: It's because they were trying to put seeds in the watermelon, you dumb piece of shit.
Speaker: And our technology is only going to get better over time.
Speaker: Don't get me wrong.
Speaker: You'll have that.
Speaker: I'm convinced that one day in the future, your average game, you'll be able to shoot that watermelon, pick up one of the seeds, take it off to the side, bury it in the ground and revisit it in a month and a fucking vine will have grown.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we won't care.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It'll be the most passe bullshit that doesn't matter because it'll be in a game that they focused on the watermelon instead of making a meaningful gameplay experience.
Speaker: So anyway, what I guess I'm saying is that Halo Reach is pretty good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it was.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, but it, it's good.
Speaker: It had those great set pieces.
Speaker: There's great moments now.
Speaker: Now, you finished this a lot sooner, more recently rather than I did.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: How did it leave you?
Speaker: How did you feel finishing it up?
Speaker: Ultimately, you felt it was good?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, all right.
Speaker: I had that issue with campaign, like the third campaign of the game.
Speaker: And then after I got over that hump, I started getting pulled more and more and more into the game.
Speaker: um as the stakes like got higher and higher right because it was like oh it's the you know your team is tasked with fighting off this like it's really tiny covenant invasion force right and until it gradually blows gets bigger and bigger until it's a full-blown uh it's a full-blown invasion um and the the covenant fleet finally arrives and all that stuff um
Speaker: I was it was it had this really melancholy ending.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And it really struck a chord with me.
Speaker: So and spoilers, obviously.
Speaker: But, you know, it's a 10 year old game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Come on, people.
Speaker: Help us help you.
Speaker: Help us help you.
Speaker: So, yeah, the one of the final missions, basically everyone is dead except you and one other squad mate.
Speaker: And you have to clear a landing pad for our favorite character, Jacob Keys.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Who is awesome and we never forgot about.
Speaker: We never forgot about him.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Yeah, clear landing passage.
Speaker: So Jacob Keys can land and you can hand off Cortana.
Speaker: And that's it's something I can I can kind of dive into a little bit more like lore wise because I had to look it up.
Speaker: You have to hand off Cortana to Jacob Keys because it's really important, according to Dr. Halsey.
Speaker: So you're fighting through throngs of these aliens and you, your partner, your last remaining squad mate is up at the, the, the ground based Mac gun, just firing and taking down ships while you're taking down the troops and you do it.
Speaker: And you're, you were designated to leave.
Speaker: So your character is,
Speaker: Noble Six, you were the one chosen to get off, to escort this off the planet.
Speaker: You're supposed to go with Cortana.
Speaker: You hand Cortana to Keyes, and just then...
Speaker: your partner gets killed on the Mac gun, leaving no air coverage for the Pelican.
Speaker: And like your character has to make the sacrifice to provide air cover for the Pelican to get back to the Pillar of Autumn.
Speaker: And it's, it's just got these series of moments that,
Speaker: And you get the you you keep fighting until a pillar of autumn gets to gets to take off.
Speaker: And there's there's a cut scene where of like weeks later, the pillar of autumn arrives in like, I think the solar system that Halo is in.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The Halo.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But then it cuts back a few weeks earlier and it's your character is out of the Mac gun and you get one final mission objective and it's just survive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But you can't.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's no way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The final it's one of those endings where like the final level is just you killing as many of the Covenants you can before they ultimately just take you out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's and it's this moment you never get to see Noble Six's face.
Speaker: He loses his helmet during the fight, but it's got this final cut scene where you're viewing him through the camera that's based on that's in the Mjolnir helmet.
Speaker: And he basically kills like 10 elites that are like trying to take him down.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Every time you think it's, it's, it's just the classic action hero martyr thing where like every time you think this is the one that's finally gonna stick the final knife in, it's just like, Oh shit, no, he killed that one too.
Speaker: He like pulls out his pistol and shoots him in the head or something like that.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: But yeah, it's just this bummer of an ending.
Speaker: And it's like, oh, yeah, no, nobody survived.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: You're not going to get out of this one.
Speaker: Just because you're playing a character in this, this is how it ends.
Speaker: There's no getting around it.
Speaker: This is the fall of reach.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is how it goes.
Speaker: So yeah, it just had this melancholy ending that I really appreciated.
Speaker: After being like...
Speaker: ho-hum with the game at the start and it's like a it's just you know straight line you know shooter no and and i think immersive sims have kind of ruined shooters for me okay so games like um so games like dishonored games like prey um games where it's like it's more than just shooting right right it's the hacking it's the sneaking it's the you're doing all this other stuff
Speaker: Yeah, there are more than one ways to solve the situation.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's not it's not completely linear.
Speaker: So in that way, that kind of stuff has has, you know, I like I love that kind of stuff.
Speaker: And then on the straight line shooter stuff, the newer Doom games have ruined those for me.
Speaker: Oh, God, because they just because they're pure id, if you'll excuse the use of that term.
Speaker: They're pure id.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And even like the retro boomer shooters like Dusk, which are just speed, pure adrenaline, quake, basically quake likes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I when I play Halo and the Halo games that came out between 2000 and 2010, I
Speaker: They they feel a little too linear, a little too slow.
Speaker: You know, all this stuff, all this stuff that has either been refined or it's been thrown back to before that to like either the mid 90s or it's been refined into something completely new.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think that's why I had a problem with it initially.
Speaker: And then I started getting a little bit more invested in what was actually happening in the game.
Speaker: Yeah, it's, you know, the plot line itself, you know, it's funny because.
Speaker: I see what you mean at first with the plot, it just kind of feels ho hum, and then it gets really melancholy to me, like as you realize, you know, it started now for me specifically starts to sink in that these people are all going to die.
Speaker: like including your character and that kind of thing.
Speaker: So, yeah, it makes for an interesting tone that maybe you didn't always see in the book.
Speaker: They tried to do it in the book, but they never, you know, well, they they tried and they succeeded on a certain level.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Um, but, uh, you know, you lose, you know, Master Chief loses people.
Speaker: He loses, you know, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't feel the weight of the loss of reach until playing this game though.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, that's because it's kind of a detail reach itself because most of, uh, you know,
Speaker: it's not really on the ground very much.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Uh, there, you know, he, John, he, he, he has to go get his whole thing is he sends another team onto the ground.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Uh, you know, they're at the ground force and, you know, at the end, and he leads a team where they're getting, uh, that navigational information that will lead them to halo ultimately.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So he doesn't, you know, he hears about reach, uh, being destroyed basically in loss, uh,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it makes sense.
Speaker: It makes perfect sense.
Speaker: So it's it's it works pretty well as a companion piece.
Speaker: If you think about it, where it's like, you know, you get, you know, it's sad to hear.
Speaker: It's like if it's like if we found out if we found out that that Idaho had just fucking exploded, you know, we'd be sad.
Speaker: You know, God, that all those people, that's that's horrible.
Speaker: But, you know, the real the real story is about those poor potato farmers getting blown up, you know, right.
Speaker: And where's their video game?
Speaker: God, right.
Speaker: Damn it.
Speaker: Where is the video game for the potato farmers?
Speaker: Where is the potato farmer first person shooter game?
Speaker: I'm pretty sure there is one.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I. Yeah.
Speaker: Rampage.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, there it is.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now another another little and you kind of you briefly touched on it.
Speaker: But another thing about this one that I liked is we got another of our favorite characters made made a couple of appearances.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Dr. Halsey.
Speaker: Dr. Halsey is a big part of this.
Speaker: And it's weird because... So there is ways that you can kind of...
Speaker: people have kind of like retroactively reconstructed how reach in the fall of reach fit together.
Speaker: And when you, when you look at the events of the book and the, and the game, sure.
Speaker: They make sense.
Speaker: They, they may, they're not perfect.
Speaker: They don't, they're not perfect companion pieces in terms of plot structure.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And also they are definitely holes.
Speaker: There are definitely some holes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And if we're noticing them, I bet, I bet the real lore heads,
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: No, a lot of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I watch a video on how they all fit together.
Speaker: But yeah, Halsey is there and she makes several appearances.
Speaker: Basically, the true the true treasure of reach and the reason why the covenant wants reach so badly is
Speaker: Is this alien artifact that is buried way, way several kilometers underground.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At reach that the only person who really knew about it was Halsey in the O.N.I.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And she had and this is actually this was explained in the video that I watched.
Speaker: She the AI is referred to as Cortana, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's considered that Cortana.
Speaker: This was not.
Speaker: The Cortana.
Speaker: This is a subroutine of Cortana that is only there to analyze the alien artifact.
Speaker: It has all the information.
Speaker: It is being brought back up to the Pillar of Autumn to be merged with regular Cortana.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That is that is how that's kind of how they actually piece the two things together.
Speaker: So it is lore.
Speaker: It is canon still that Master Chief and Cortana did have like several weeks together before this all happened.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's also canon that Halsey had a subroutine version of Cortana working with her down in this secret Resident Evil lab.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: That's God, man.
Speaker: The fucking is.
Speaker: And that's is that official canon?
Speaker: That's I don't know if that's official canon, but it's kind of been lured together as it's about as official as it's going to get.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The best you can hope for, really, because the book is apparently still considered canon for the most part.
Speaker: So you got to do you got to make do with what you can.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: That's funny though.
Speaker: Oh wow.
Speaker: I had no idea.
Speaker: I had no idea.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: It's, I'm, there is a level of merger though that happens with official Canon and non-official Canon too, though.
Speaker: So it could either way and people will just take it at its word.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So one of the things I noticed, the characterization of Halsey in Halo Reach, she is I thought she was a little bit meaner in Halo Reach than she is depicted in the fall of Reach.
Speaker: Because in the fall of Reach, we're getting, we're privy to her thoughts and her doubts.
Speaker: And I think in Reach, we only get her kind of tough exterior.
Speaker: I think that's exactly what it is.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We know that she has doubts from in the fall of reach and in Halo reach.
Speaker: It's she's, you know, she's a, she's a scientist.
Speaker: She can't have emotions.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I, I think, I think that's exactly what it is.
Speaker: It's that we only get to see, you know, the, the tough, uh,
Speaker: bad bitch on the outside.
Speaker: You know, she's, she's, she's Dr. Girl boss.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's just all there is to it.
Speaker: But we get to, yeah, you're right.
Speaker: We get to see the inside of her and that kind of thing in a purely non pornographic way.
Speaker: we get to see the inside of her and what she's thinking and that kind of thing.
Speaker: And also, honestly, even without that, like she's so close to John specifically that, right.
Speaker: You know, there, there, it might just be that there's something about him specifically that brings out that, you know, matronly sort of a thing for her.
Speaker: Yeah, which is why I think why Cortana had chosen John as well.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because Cortana is, yeah, Cortana is a scan of Halsey's brain or something like that.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: So that at least makes sense.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: What else?
Speaker: So what else about the game?
Speaker: If there was if there was one thing about the game that you wish was done differently, what would it be?
Speaker: The dog fighting.
Speaker: Oh, didn't care about the dog fighting.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: It was the first time that they'd done it in a Halo game.
Speaker: And I don't know what it was about.
Speaker: It just it just bored me to tears.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I wasn't as interested in that as I, you know, as I was in actually being on the ground and that kind of thing.
Speaker: And I don't like, you know, jet games and stuff like that.
Speaker: I absolutely do.
Speaker: It was a little casual to me.
Speaker: It wasn't sure.
Speaker: It wasn't quite as interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I could see that as and as somebody who grew up basically playing X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing versus TIE Fighter, X-Wing Alliance, like my whole like my 90s were preoccupied.
Speaker: I had a flight stick.
Speaker: My 90s were the real thing.
Speaker: That was the real thing.
Speaker: So my 90s were preoccupied with a lot of these space flight simulators.
Speaker: I hated Wing Commander, by the way.
Speaker: Moving on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So let me clear that up.
Speaker: Wing Commander, kind of a neat sci-fi story starring Mark Hamill.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: The dog fighting, absolute bullshit compared to like X-Wang and all that stuff.
Speaker: Because there's like, it just didn't feel, and I think this was kind of the same thing.
Speaker: It was just like, oh, you know what it is?
Speaker: It's like Rogue Squadron.
Speaker: You ever play Rogue Squadron for the N64?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I never played that one.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So it was like, it was kind of on the rails ish space sim flight.
Speaker: You know, like it had levels.
Speaker: It was more like Star Fox.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And those types of flight games.
Speaker: I just can't, I can't,
Speaker: get behind because i like the ones where it's like oh your objective is to uh objective defend this freighter like okay and it's just then it's just do it whatever way you you have you choose your loadout you choose your weapons you choose the fighter that you're using all that awesome stuff um i don't like i don't like this so yeah i understand where you're coming from when it's like yeah it's a little
Speaker: It's a little like, like, eh, I'm just chilling.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Now in this ship.
Speaker: And, uh.
Speaker: Yeah, it didn't.
Speaker: It had, you know, you had you had bullets, you had missiles.
Speaker: And, you know, and I always it's a small thing.
Speaker: But I always did quite like when your targets you had to lead, you know, that was the that was the best thing about it was that was pretty terrific, was that the the computer would tell you where to fire.
Speaker: for the bullets.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Instead of like, instead of like, oh yeah, fire at the thing.
Speaker: Be like, no, here, fire into this empty spot and they'll run into them.
Speaker: Cause that's, cause that's how fucking physics works.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: There's something about that, that I, I really appreciate that.
Speaker: There was a game that I loved and it's such a classic.
Speaker: If you've never played it, you really should.
Speaker: It's called crimson skies.
Speaker: Crimson skies, high road to revenge.
Speaker: And and it's like a alternate reality future where it's vaguely World War Two ish.
Speaker: Everyone is up in the air like everything is a Zeppelin or a jet.
Speaker: And they're all kind of biplane looking jets, but super, you know, ramped up with machine guns and missile launchers and shit.
Speaker: And it was so much fun.
Speaker: And that was one of the things they had to lead.
Speaker: If you were going to hit anything, I don't know why that makes it more fun.
Speaker: It's cool.
Speaker: It's a nice touch.
Speaker: It's a, it's a, it's a nice touch.
Speaker: And, and I like it as opposed to like hit scan.
Speaker: Oh, you know what they developed right before, before X-Wing, the first flight simulator that they did was this.
Speaker: So Lucasfilm games back in the day, they weren't allowed to use star Wars, the star Wars license.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So the first flight simulator they did was it was a game called Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.
Speaker: And it was like this alt reality World War Two flight simulator where you flew against, you know, Germany and the Luftwaffe and like, you know, they're like special planes that they were developing or something like that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, that's it was like along the same mold.
Speaker: It was it was pretty cool.
Speaker: Say, yeah, I'd like that kind of thing.
Speaker: There's something it's very, very futuristic Indiana Jones in a way.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: And so, yeah, so that made me think a little bit, you know, the dogfighting made me think of that a little bit.
Speaker: But there really wasn't much to it.
Speaker: At least when I'm on the ground, there are tons of weapons to pick up as I go and that kind of thing.
Speaker: and, you know, buildings to hide behind and shit like that.
Speaker: But with the only thing they were really equipped for was big outer reaches of space and your surrounding.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Usually, you know, a command vessel or something that you're trying to defend.
Speaker: And they didn't do it all that much.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it was just kind of a yeah, I didn't.
Speaker: I thought that was something that they could have skipped.
Speaker: I didn't unless they wanted to, like, go into, you know, they either needed to add a whole lot more
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Or just take it out entirely.
Speaker: But what they added was kind of distracting.
Speaker: Yeah, it was just this one campaign and then that's it.
Speaker: Sort of like, that being said, I did not mind the helicopter section that much.
Speaker: Only because it felt more like a regular, you're on the ground, you're just happening to use this helicopter vehicle.
Speaker: It's like more like the Warthog, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, I liked that.
Speaker: I think even even when you weren't using a minigun or something like that to like mow people down, there was something kind of real about riding the helicopter.
Speaker: It's like it's like you would think that they would just like do a quick cut.
Speaker: to the next is like, okay, you hop on the helicopter and now you're in this next part where you're going to start shooting.
Speaker: No, you actually transport from one place to another.
Speaker: So you're seeing the destruction that's taking place.
Speaker: And I thought that was great.
Speaker: Yeah, I thought that was a great choice story wise.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So overall score, what would you say?
Speaker: Oh, gosh, I suppose I'd give it an eight out of ten.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I'll give it I'll give it five noble squad Spartans out of six.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: That works.
Speaker: Only because only one lived.
Speaker: Only exactly.
Speaker: The one that went with Halsey.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Yeah, it was fun.
Speaker: It was fun.
Speaker: It made me look forward to reading the Halo books even more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not just because those have been the best ones we've read so far.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But also because it just gives us another excuse to play another Halo game.
Speaker: So, yeah, why not?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: I'm actually actually started playing Halo one again, and I might just play through all of them.
Speaker: But I am about it myself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm actually, I am potentially, though, doing a full arcane run just because they're on Game Pass.
Speaker: Oh, hell yeah.
Speaker: Because Deathloop will be coming out in September, and I'm playing Prey right now.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: So I might as well do Dishonored and Dishonored 2.
Speaker: Yeah, just do the whole schmear.
Speaker: Wolfenstein Youngblood and I believe Arx Fatalis throw that on there too right Jesus yeah that one's going back I'm playing two survival games at the same time right now I might make a video about it wow I'm playing the survivalists which is the same the same studio that did the escapists
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: And, uh, and, uh, Chernobyl light.
Speaker: Ah, yes.
Speaker: That looked weird.
Speaker: It is weird.
Speaker: And it's got that kind of indie game screwballness where you're like, what the fuck are we doing?
Speaker: Um, but, uh, but, but I, I,
Speaker: I'm enjoying it tentatively, but it made me laugh because I got both of these from the developers and I'm trying to make a point to, you know, give them some coverage.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And and it occurred to me while I played one, I put it down next day, played the other.
Speaker: And I was like, I'm playing two survival games at the same time.
Speaker: So maybe maybe I'll talk about the similarities and the differences between the two of them.
Speaker: Because they are essentially the same game in many ways, but in other ways they could not be less different.
Speaker: So it's an interesting juxtaposition.
Speaker: So we'll see what we do with that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, coming up next, I believe starting next week, we'll have our run of Bloodborne.
Speaker: Bloodborne!
Speaker: You all will.
Speaker: I think you'll enjoy.
Speaker: I think you'll enjoy those.
Speaker: That Bloodborne series of reviews.
Speaker: And then after that, we'll see where the road takes us.
Speaker: And as always, if you guys have.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Far Cry Absolution.
Speaker: So if you guys have any suggestions, as always, any, any, any of them, no, no.
Speaker: In fact, even the more esoteric, the better, because frankly, there are lots of obvious ones.
Speaker: Give us something weird.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Let us know about something that's just truly strange that we're going to have to like bit torrent a shady PDF of it somehow, because the only way to otherwise get it is to pay five hundred dollars for a beat ass paper copy of it.
Speaker: Like like if
Speaker: Do that.
Speaker: If there's like a pathologic novelization out there.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: Read the fuck out of that.
Speaker: If that exists and it's only in Russian, we'll pay somebody to translate it.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: We'll figure it out.
Speaker: We'll figure it out.
Speaker: The people need to know.
Speaker: That is a fact.
Speaker: The people need to know.
Speaker: They do.
Speaker: So until next time, follow us on Twitter at PixelitPod.
Speaker: And you can now join our Discord, our community Discord, where you can occasionally talk to us.
Speaker: Well, talk to me because I'm a discord junkie and maybe see Phil as online.
Speaker: I'm the phantom of the discord.
Speaker: He is the phantom of the discord.
Speaker: Always watching.
Speaker: Never always watching.
Speaker: Never speaking.
Speaker: Christine.
Speaker: Those who have seen his face.
Speaker: They cower in fear.
Speaker: Yeah, that's that.
Speaker: Well, I mean, but enough about my love life.
Speaker: I am the mask you wear.
Speaker: It's me they hear.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: I gotta go talk to my theater major fiance.
Speaker: Only she will understand.
Speaker: Only she will understand.
Speaker: Just be careful around the chandelier.
Speaker: And until next time, I've been Kevin.
Speaker: I'm Phil.
Speaker: Take care, everyone.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
