Transcript
Speaker: Sweet guy thought he was getting away with something.
Speaker: He's like, it's so important that you let me out of this room right now.
Speaker: Right now.
Speaker: Right now.
Speaker: Don't you understand?
Speaker: Don't I understand?
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I don't understand.
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me as always is Phil.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: And today we're starting on a brand new show.
Speaker: Brand new book.
Speaker: We're talking about ECO Castle in the Mist, which is an adaptation of the 2001 Team ECO game
Speaker: Titled Ico.
Speaker: Appropriately enough, titled Ico.
Speaker: So it was developed, a game was developed by Japan Studio and Team Ico, and it was published by Sony and released for the PlayStation 2.
Speaker: It is a wildly popular game among game designers.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Eco is a very influential game.
Speaker: It's one of those games where it's like, oh, not a lot of people have played it, but the influence of Eco is felt far and wide, most notably in the other games that Team Eco has made, which are Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian.
Speaker: Now, did this come before Shadow of the Colossus?
Speaker: It sure did.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It sure did.
Speaker: It was their first game.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So, yeah, Shadow of the Colossus is a spiritual successor to Eko, so to speak.
Speaker: Kind of an unofficial prequel, isn't it?
Speaker: I guess you could tie them together.
Speaker: I feel like there has been like plot stuff that ties them together.
Speaker: That's the thing about Eco and Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian is that they're all very, and I haven't played The Last Guardian, I've watched playthroughs of it.
Speaker: They're all very Spartan and sparse.
Speaker: They're very minimalistic and they have this like,
Speaker: melancholy that kind of surrounds them.
Speaker: But yeah, Ico is it's it's classic and it was I believe it was re-released.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: In 2011, there was a re-release of it and Shadow of the Colossus.
Speaker: um for the playstation 3 and then shadow of the colossus uh shadow the colossus eventually had a full-on uh remake uh in 2018 uh but eco does not have did not have the same uh treatment applied to it uh so to speak
Speaker: But yeah, that's that's the game Eco and in Eco, you are controlling a boy named Eco and trying to escape this like castle with a with a girl who will not we won't get into her name or anything like that in the book.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: yet in the parts of the book that we're covering in the game, she's referred to as Yorda.
Speaker: So it's kind of like you control Eko and you tell Yorda to stop, go, like you're trying to get her to solve puzzles with you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So yeah, that's Eko.
Speaker: Phil, tell me a little bit about the author of this book.
Speaker: Yeah, this one was written by Miyuki Miyabe, who is a wildly popular and successful Japanese author.
Speaker: She has written kind of a little bit of everything.
Speaker: It's fascinating.
Speaker: Like, she's really well known in some circles for her children's books.
Speaker: And in other circles, she's known for her mystery novels, her fantasy stuff.
Speaker: She's done a lot of short stories.
Speaker: She's written films, and a lot of her films have been adapted.
Speaker: She's even done a little manga here and there.
Speaker: She is all over the place and is very, very well-respected.
Speaker: She's won a ton of awards.
Speaker: She has a long list of books, none of which I'm going to attempt.
Speaker: to pronounce because I want to be as respectful as I possibly can be.
Speaker: But she's had several books that were translated into English, including this one.
Speaker: All She Was Worth is apparently, that one came out in 1996, and that's one that keeps popping up.
Speaker: It's a mystery thriller kind of novel that keeps getting brought up by her English speaking fans.
Speaker: And that one has been translated?
Speaker: Yes, that one was translated.
Speaker: And she's got a handful of translated stuff.
Speaker: All She Was Worth, Crossfire, Shadow Family, The Devil's Whisper, The Sleeping Dragon, Puppet Master.
Speaker: Crime and thriller novels.
Speaker: And then some fantasy stuff, including Eco, Castle in the Mist.
Speaker: And I'm glad you said the dates there because it did.
Speaker: The original book came out in 2004 and it was translated into English in 2011.
Speaker: when the PS3 re-release.
Speaker: Yes, the PS3 remaster, so to speak, of Eco was released.
Speaker: And I assume, it seems like, so Shadow of the Colossus was originally released in 2005.
Speaker: I was just wondering if they released the novelization of Eco to coincide with Shadow of the Colossus, but it does not look like the... It would have been just right before it.
Speaker: We also actually, for the first time, and I did a little more digging here, we have a translator.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Alexander O. Smith.
Speaker: And this guy is actually a very well-known and well-respected translator of Japanese.
Speaker: He went to Harvard and he kind of cut his teeth on translating video games.
Speaker: And that seems to be his major thing.
Speaker: But he's won awards for best localization and that sort of thing.
Speaker: He's done Phoenix Wright.
Speaker: I think the first thing he did was Final Fantasy VIII.
Speaker: Yeah, it looks like it.
Speaker: Yeah, he's done a ton of Final Fantasy, which I mean, if you're translating Japanese games, you're probably going to be involved in Final Fantasy in some way, shape or form.
Speaker: He did translation for, you know, what is it?
Speaker: Yeah, Ogre Tactics and Star Ocean and like a lot of classics.
Speaker: And he was a writer for Ori and the Will of the Wisps.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is the translation, the sequel to Ori and the Blind Forest.
Speaker: So this guy's all over the place too.
Speaker: And he's worked with Miss Miyabe on Brave Story, which was her children's book, which was huge.
Speaker: Uh, and so I guess, I don't know if, if they just worked well together and she requested them again or something like that.
Speaker: Uh, but this guy is kind of the perfect person to do your translating because he's, he's worked in the video game industry specifically.
Speaker: Uh, so the context, uh, you know, is, is important to him and, and I don't know, it just seems like, seems like a good fit.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's interesting.
Speaker: Because you wonder about when you're reading a translated novel, okay, how much of this is the original author's writing versus how much of it is created through the translation.
Speaker: And it seems like Alexander Smith, I was just on his Wikipedia page,
Speaker: part of his process is retaining as much of the very distinct style of the author in the translation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think that's, that's kind of cool that we can, we can kind of look at this now like, all right, well, it is a work, it's a work of hers.
Speaker: And in a lesser extent, but yeah,
Speaker: no less notable, it's a work of his as well in the translation in the way that we're reading it.
Speaker: Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker: With translation, it will not do to just run a book through Google Translate or something like that.
Speaker: Context needs to be added.
Speaker: things that a great example I always think about, and we may have even talked about this on the show before.
Speaker: When I lived in Pittsburgh, I lived next door to a young Japanese couple and he would show me anime.
Speaker: And I was not really outside of like Akira.
Speaker: I, you know, I didn't know much about anime and he would, and we would watch different shows.
Speaker: And I remember one of them,
Speaker: What was it called?
Speaker: Azumanga Daeo, which is this weird, funny comedy anime about Japanese schoolgirls and stuff like that.
Speaker: And one of the characters, I think she was from Osaka.
Speaker: And we were watching the dubbed version and she spoke with like a country Texas kind of accent.
Speaker: And he explained to me, he goes, that's really clever because, you know, over in Japan, like traditionally people see people from Osaka as being kind of hayseeds or bumpkins or something like that.
Speaker: So that choice, although it isn't a direct translation there, it makes you understand.
Speaker: It gives the context.
Speaker: It retains some sort of the context of the character.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: She would have had an Osaka accent.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And it isn't exactly the same, but it's, you know, the best translators are able to know when to leave the words as they are alone and when to, you know, get creative with it so that you can better appreciate, you know, what you're looking at.
Speaker: Because otherwise you end up with, you know, books like the Bible that are just terribly translated.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We wouldn't want that to happen.
Speaker: Nate.
Speaker: Nate.
Speaker: There's a munchkin on the loose.
Speaker: There's a munchkin.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Close the door, please.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: It's our evening wave.
Speaker: I've grown to look forward to it.
Speaker: I'm not going to lie to you.
Speaker: She has to go finish her homework.
Speaker: Listen, guys at home, the kids love Pixel It.
Speaker: They can't get enough.
Speaker: Can't get enough.
Speaker: They hop in to wave.
Speaker: I think what's important for anyone to take away from all this is that we're a family show.
Speaker: We are a family show.
Speaker: We've always been a family show.
Speaker: The aristocrats.
Speaker: The aristocrats.
Speaker: uh so we're gonna get right into it we're gonna we're gonna get right into eco and you actually have a copy i i did not i did not uh try to oh i love that cover too it's great isn't it i love it so much it was the it's the art for i think the japanese and european version of the game yeah way better than the
Speaker: than the American version.
Speaker: We always get the shitty covers.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: That cover is so gorgeous.
Speaker: Doesn't the cover have like, it's like a close-up of Eco with like a club or something like that, right?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Look, it's a guy with horns and a club.
Speaker: You'll like this.
Speaker: You'll like this.
Speaker: He's a Viking, maybe.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe.
Speaker: Or she'll buy the game and go, what the fuck, if that's what you're hoping for.
Speaker: But we'll have your money, so it won't matter.
Speaker: Ha ha ha.
Speaker: Yeah, Sony of America was not doing anybody any favors.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: But have they?
Speaker: So we start out and this book is divided into four chapters and each chapter is divided into a number of parts.
Speaker: So we're in chapter one, point one, chapter one, part one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And in this chapter, we're introduced to a few characters, the elder of the village of Tosca.
Speaker: And the elder is not actually ever given a name.
Speaker: He's just really known by his title.
Speaker: He is the elder.
Speaker: And we learn about the time of sacrifice, which is the time that they are currently in.
Speaker: We get some backstory about when he was he became the elder.
Speaker: He was.
Speaker: 57 years old he just turned 70 so it's a flashback he was 57 years old and his dad was on his deathbed his dad was the elder and his dad was basically dying and saying like I didn't want to have to hand this over to you and you have to deal with the sacrifice and just then like the sacrifice had been born they had discovered the sacrifice being born in the and his dad was like
Speaker: I've never I never had to deal with the sacrifice.
Speaker: The last sacrifice was when I was a child.
Speaker: So his dad had held on for as long as possible before bequeathing him the title of elder so that he didn't have to deal with the time of sacrifice.
Speaker: So basically what it is, is the sacrifice is a child.
Speaker: who is strong, he's healthy, and when he comes of age, he's gonna grow some horns.
Speaker: Yeah, I was gonna say, I love that.
Speaker: It's like, how do you know it's saccharine?
Speaker: Is he born under a certain constellation?
Speaker: No, he's born with horns.
Speaker: He's got a couple bumps on his head, and eventually those bumps will become, what's up, Munchie?
Speaker: Sacrifice, you're my baby.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What did she say?
Speaker: She looked in and said, sacrificed human babies.
Speaker: Oh, Kevin, you're raising her right.
Speaker: She's a good kid.
Speaker: The kids are all right.
Speaker: The kids are all right.
Speaker: The kids are all right.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Guess I'm going to leave that in.
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's not goddamn right you are.
Speaker: We're not putting that anywhere.
Speaker: That's got to stay.
Speaker: So the sacrifice is born with two bumps on there.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I was going to say, you got to love, you got to, because in so many ways, this book and, and, and, you know, and frankly, a lot of Japanese media in general, I've found to be very elegant with the way that they write, you know, prophecies and like the, the chosen one thing, which is a, which is a trope you see,
Speaker: You know, all over media, all over the world.
Speaker: But I've always found that in anime and manga and Japanese media in general, there's a certain level of elegance with the way they write that stuff.
Speaker: And I love that.
Speaker: I love this one.
Speaker: It's just like horns.
Speaker: You'll know him by the horns.
Speaker: Kid has fucking horns on his head.
Speaker: You can't miss it.
Speaker: It's like, that's the one man.
Speaker: What if, what if you miss the star sign or whatever?
Speaker: No, we're not, we're not.
Speaker: The kid is going to have horns.
Speaker: It's going to be only the kid with horns.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: You'll see him in a lineup.
Speaker: That's the one.
Speaker: See the one?
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I'm not even going to tell you what it is.
Speaker: Look at the kids.
Speaker: Which one of these is not like the other?
Speaker: That's the one.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: That's the one.
Speaker: That's the one.
Speaker: Pick that kid right out.
Speaker: You know I'm right.
Speaker: So the elder, the job of the elder is to raise the sacrifice as basically as their own kid.
Speaker: And the elder in this case is pretty darn old.
Speaker: And he's like, well,
Speaker: what am I supposed to do?
Speaker: And you're like, well, raise him like he's a grand kid.
Speaker: Like, okay.
Speaker: And the sacrifice's biological parents are sent away from the village.
Speaker: They're given a hefty payout.
Speaker: Like you gave birth to the sacrifice.
Speaker: Now you're going to go relocate to the Capitol or something like that.
Speaker: We'll take care of you.
Speaker: It's just, we're sending you to Orlando.
Speaker: Pretty much retirement.
Speaker: You're going to go to the villages and you're going to you're going to retire up by Orlando.
Speaker: So we are also introduced to One, who is the wife of the elder, and she's she's not taking this whole thing.
Speaker: I love her.
Speaker: She's just wailing and crying.
Speaker: And she's supposed to be working the loom that is designed to weave the clothes that the sacrifice is supposed to wear.
Speaker: So we now we're in chapter 1.2 and we're introduced to everybody's favorite character, Toto.
Speaker: Toto!
Speaker: Poor Toto.
Speaker: Poor Toto.
Speaker: Toto is just a sweet boy.
Speaker: He is Iko's best friend.
Speaker: So Iko is basically being kept in a cave until two things happen.
Speaker: The mark, which is the clothing item that his...
Speaker: his mom, so to speak, is working on, on the loom, is complete.
Speaker: And B, the priest from the capital arrives to, like, guide him away.
Speaker: He hasn't been raised in the cave.
Speaker: He hasn't been raised in the cave.
Speaker: He's just been in the cave for the past few days.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: They transfer him.
Speaker: Basically, what happens is the horns just fully sprout out and grow in one night.
Speaker: And that's the sign that things need to start happening.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So Toto, his best friend, sneaks behind the guards and brings eco baked goods and is basically like, come on, let's just run away.
Speaker: Let's just get out of here.
Speaker: This is dumb.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Eco is very steadfast in his resolve.
Speaker: He's like, no, I cannot.
Speaker: I can't because of what will happen to the town.
Speaker: And Toto doesn't believe basically a lick of anything like, eh, nothing's going to happen.
Speaker: By the way, how does how does the sacrifice work with Eco?
Speaker: With the what happens when he gets sacrificed?
Speaker: They're going to burn him with a stink.
Speaker: They don't say anything as to he is just taken to the castle.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In the beyond the Forbidden Mountain.
Speaker: I love the way they write the castle.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: There's the master of the castle demands a sacrifice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I ask because I love that aspect.
Speaker: I mean, it's like we truly, they just, and none of these kids have ever come back and we don't ask questions.
Speaker: Sacrifice doesn't come back, but we got to make it.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: And it's a big old shrug, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like.
Speaker: Moving on.
Speaker: You know, we sent that kid away.
Speaker: Six weeks of winter or...
Speaker: And there's a moment where Eco recalls to himself that there is basically a like a he was shown something by the elder that was terrifying.
Speaker: Like, this is why you need to do follow through on it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they it's not explicitly stated what it is yet.
Speaker: But Toto is Toto.
Speaker: He wants to go with eco.
Speaker: He's like, you know, my bud.
Speaker: I want to go with my bud.
Speaker: And we're so we're in chapter one point three.
Speaker: And one is just she's so sad.
Speaker: She is.
Speaker: She is the saddest person.
Speaker: There is a quote.
Speaker: Actually, I need to find it now.
Speaker: Come on, Kindle.
Speaker: I don't know if you know the quote that I'm referring to.
Speaker: Which one?
Speaker: It's about the humanity of the sacrifice.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: They talk about that a lot.
Speaker: When she's talking to her brother?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, wait.
Speaker: I can just pull up my notes and highlights.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: It's something that...
Speaker: her brother had said to her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So let me back up a little bit.
Speaker: One was born and raised in the capital, the big city.
Speaker: And her brother, her older brother, had been sent off to the seminary for training.
Speaker: He was top of his class.
Speaker: And right before he was going to be ordained as a priest, he drops out.
Speaker: He's like, you know what?
Speaker: I'm out.
Speaker: He goes and he moves to some small, you know, he fucks off to some small little town.
Speaker: When One gets married to the elder, the man who will become the elder, they start corresponding with letters and talking about like what what it means to be the elder and what her responsibilities are and all that stuff.
Speaker: And they talk through like what.
Speaker: a little bit about what the sacrifice is and the more specific she asks the questions the more uh her her brother starts to obfuscate and talk about like the light of god the sun god stuff like that yeah the more specific she gets the vaguer he gets
Speaker: There's one quote here from one of the letters, though, where the boy, he says, the boy has you enchanted, hasn't he?
Speaker: Don't forget, One, why he is so pure and kind and without fault.
Speaker: He is not human.
Speaker: His soul is empty and evil cannot cling to a void as it does to our tangled hearts.
Speaker: Emptiness absorbs only love and light and reflects it back.
Speaker: No wonder it's so easy for the one who must raise the horn child to love him.
Speaker: They see their own love reflected in his eyes.
Speaker: And I was like, damn, that's fine writing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A, that's fine writing.
Speaker: It's B, it's also...
Speaker: A wildly fascinating take on the nature of the soul where normally it's like, oh, soulless is like the evil, you know, or whatever.
Speaker: Michael Myers from Halloween.
Speaker: He's just a soulless monster who can't be stopped.
Speaker: And this takes the opposite take.
Speaker: We're like, no, he...
Speaker: if he doesn't have a soul, therefore he's pure.
Speaker: Like his ability to reflect love is 100%.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was like, that's interesting.
Speaker: That's an interesting take.
Speaker: That soul is what...
Speaker: actually mars us a little bit.
Speaker: It's what, or at very least it complicates us.
Speaker: It takes, it makes it tougher for us to be pure.
Speaker: I, I, I totally agree.
Speaker: I, I honestly, you know, the first, you know,
Speaker: pieces of this book where we get into the elder and all that stuff was really interesting.
Speaker: I knew right off the bat we had something interesting in our hands, but it was this part where we talk about her long lost brother and, and the, the nature of,
Speaker: of a soul.
Speaker: And basically, it's impossible to miss the symbolism of him growing horns and being a sacrificial calf, basically.
Speaker: This was the clincher for me.
Speaker: I was like, oh, this is going to be good.
Speaker: And you're like, oh, I'm in.
Speaker: I'm in.
Speaker: I'm in like Flint.
Speaker: Fully invested.
Speaker: So we're interrupted a bit.
Speaker: We get steered away from this backstory of One's and her brother to Toto.
Speaker: Toto.
Speaker: He interrupts.
Speaker: Toto.
Speaker: And he's like, hey, there happens to him.
Speaker: Hey, they hope nothing bad happens to Toto.
Speaker: Hey there, Iko's mom.
Speaker: Because that's what she is.
Speaker: Do you know where the priest is?
Speaker: The priest that's supposed to take Iko away.
Speaker: And she's like, no, I don't.
Speaker: And he's like, well, if I ask the priest something and the priest says it's okay, that means the elder can't stop me from doing it, right?
Speaker: Because the priest outranks the elder.
Speaker: And One is like,
Speaker: I don't... What do you... What?
Speaker: But then she's also... Then a guard arrives and Toto has to flee and One is like, well, I'm pretty happy though that he did go and visit Iko.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The kid is all like...
Speaker: Gusto and Moxie, you know, he's 100% charisma, charisma roles.
Speaker: Maxed out all his social skills.
Speaker: Maxed out all the social skills.
Speaker: So she was happy that, you know, eco was okay.
Speaker: I mean, and that's the thing she, she has fully fallen into what the elder would believe is kind of a trap of like, like he's, yeah.
Speaker: He's because all their other kids, their actual kids are all grown.
Speaker: Yeah, all their other kids have grown up, moved out, you know.
Speaker: But she loves this boy.
Speaker: And that's the thing is they talk about how like the grandkids are not like the eco.
Speaker: She loves eco even more than their grandchildren.
Speaker: Yeah, totally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's pretty honest about it.
Speaker: Like they're like, why do you love him more?
Speaker: He's like, because he listens, you little shit.
Speaker: It's also like – it makes perfect sense that the woman who wrote this is a children's book author.
Speaker: I didn't dig too deep into it, but I have to believe she's a mother because the way she writes Toto, for example, of that little – that he thinks he's being clever and he thinks that, oh, I'm slick.
Speaker: She's not picking up on what I'm saying.
Speaker: Well, if –
Speaker: If he said I could do something, then he outranks the elder and I can do it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's just like anyone who's even seen a child for more than five minutes has heard those conversations.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And you're just like, oh, you are.
Speaker: Oh, what are you getting at?
Speaker: What do you I don't know what you're doing yet, but I but I'm going to find out.
Speaker: Why do I smell smoke?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Why do you ask?
Speaker: Why are you asking?
Speaker: Why are you asking me this?
Speaker: What's going on?
Speaker: What are you doing?
Speaker: What are you thinking?
Speaker: Answer me first.
Speaker: Answer me first.
Speaker: Just wandering.
Speaker: Like, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: We don't wander.
Speaker: We don't wander in this house.
Speaker: Raised you Catholic for a reason.
Speaker: What are you doing?
Speaker: Oh man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And all right, I'm just going to say it again.
Speaker: I, and I'm going to keep saying it.
Speaker: She just, our author is creating such a,
Speaker: wonderfully crafted characters.
Speaker: They're so warm and, and just, you, you love them.
Speaker: You love them right off the bat.
Speaker: And, and she, it's really good.
Speaker: It's brilliant.
Speaker: It's, um, warm, loving characters.
Speaker: Uh, we're, we're barely into the book and we, um,
Speaker: The characters have a rich tapestry and, you know, they they're not the characters from Dark Souls.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I was going to say, you know, this is this is, you know, I haven't seen characters this well thought out and developed since FNAF.
Speaker: The Silver Eyes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, FNAF.
Speaker: Gosh.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: FNAF is the best book we've read.
Speaker: So far.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This.
Speaker: Up until Dark Souls.
Speaker: Backslash S on this post.
Speaker: Yes, stands for sarcasm.
Speaker: One of the guards, basically the guard is there to escort One back into town because the loom that she's working on is in a building that's just sequestered out in the woods.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she is like totally alone in her feelings about the...
Speaker: impending death, basically, of her child.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And she's like, but you got to work the loom and weave the thing.
Speaker: So this guard shows up to escort her back down because it's nighttime and there'll be, you know, wolves or whatever.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And the guard's like, sorry, I was a little bit late, but one of my men got injured out on a hunt because he looked north towards the North Forbidden Mountain and fell and got really injured.
Speaker: So you get this idea of like even witnessing like looking out in that direction is enough to spook people.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Toto is like, hmm, well, if they won't let me go with him, what if I go ahead of him?
Speaker: I'm sure this will work out fine, Toto.
Speaker: This will go great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then we're in chapter 1.4 now, and we cut into the cave where Iko hears from one of the guards that Toto has gone missing and has taken the fastest horse, Arrowwind.
Speaker: That's a goddamn fast horse name.
Speaker: That's a super fast horse name.
Speaker: I am betting on Arrowwind.
Speaker: Every time.
Speaker: And there is...
Speaker: One of the most, I want to say, harrowing conversations between an adult and a child ever, like, that I've seen put on page.
Speaker: Oh, between Eko and the girl?
Speaker: Between the elder and Eko.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Basically, the elder shows up.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: And I was I was I was like almost about to cry for ego in this case.
Speaker: It's my heart.
Speaker: So basically the elder is like, this is all your fault.
Speaker: And how could you be so cowardly?
Speaker: This is all part of some plan that you're going to do to to run away.
Speaker: And eco is like through tears.
Speaker: telling this man, the elder, his father, basically, for all intents and purposes, that he's he's telling him the truth.
Speaker: He's not lying.
Speaker: He's he he didn't tell Toto to do anything.
Speaker: And the elder at some point is like, you know, I should have never like even like treated you like my son.
Speaker: You're it's like this.
Speaker: It is so cutting.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: And he hits him at one point, doesn't he?
Speaker: He slaps him or something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Eco goes up and tries to hug him.
Speaker: And the elder slaps him away.
Speaker: It's heartbreaking.
Speaker: And at no point...
Speaker: Do you not... Do you stop sympathizing with the elder?
Speaker: Like, that's the best part.
Speaker: It's like you understand why he's so angry and why he assumes these things.
Speaker: You want to shake him and, you know, and like go, listen to him.
Speaker: Listen to the boy.
Speaker: Listen to the boy.
Speaker: But that's the thing.
Speaker: It's what he's raised to do.
Speaker: He has to...
Speaker: he has to hold the boy at an arm's length when he can.
Speaker: And this is just another example of that.
Speaker: And it's like, you know, you've got it's like, you know, Kevin and I were literally talking about before we got started, we're talking about the prospect of I've been I've been working on homesteading skills and that sort of thing.
Speaker: And I've learned recently how to kill and process chickens.
Speaker: And we were, you know, Kevin pointed out that that's, you know, starting with a chicken, that's probably easier than doing, for example, a pig, which
Speaker: could also be a pet.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And yeah, it's that kind of thing where you have to, Iko is a sacrificial lamb.
Speaker: He is a sacrificial calf.
Speaker: He is not meant, but you've, it's like, well, we're going to buy this dozen chickens so that in three months they'll be fully grown and we can kill them and eat them over the winter.
Speaker: And your kid walks in and says, I've given them all names.
Speaker: And you go, fuck.
Speaker: That's essentially what's happened here.
Speaker: He gave Eco a name.
Speaker: So it really broke my heart reading that segment.
Speaker: We cut to Toto and the horse.
Speaker: And the way this section is written is like...
Speaker: I loved the way this initial approached up the mountain, like where because it the narration says something like were Toto a trained hunter, he would have known something was amiss immediately, but he wasn't.
Speaker: And you're like, oh no, something bad's going to happen.
Speaker: Oh no, oh Toto, buddy.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And we've talked about this with Dark Souls most recently.
Speaker: I think where we were talking about one of the problems with Dark Souls was that it missed the tone and the atmosphere in many ways.
Speaker: And this is the first time that I was like, oh yeah.
Speaker: Because while I haven't played Eko, I have played Shadow of the Colossus.
Speaker: And they both have a similar atmosphere to them, this lonely, strange world kind of atmosphere.
Speaker: And this is where with Toto alone, we start getting into that and it felt...
Speaker: very correct uh for the source material yeah uh basically it's like he would have noticed that there's no wildlife making any sort of noise as he crosses through goes up the road and i was like yeah that's oh boy oh god
Speaker: So we and the segment ends with him coming up to the walls of this city and he's like, that's weird.
Speaker: Everything is gray.
Speaker: The walls are gray from corner to corner.
Speaker: Um, and also the, it looks like the people are not moving at all.
Speaker: And also the flag is not moving.
Speaker: And I guess it must not be very, he's like, but he's feeling wind, you know, on his face.
Speaker: He's like, well, I guess it might, must not be windy up there.
Speaker: And he's like, the flag is, it's not like the flag is down.
Speaker: The flag is not moving, but it is mid-air.
Speaker: like snap of a, it looks like it is being perpetually blown, like perpetually blown.
Speaker: I heard it as soon as I said it.
Speaker: I think we need a new t-shirt.
Speaker: It's just a frozen flag on it.
Speaker: It says perpetually blown.
Speaker: Perpetually blowing.
Speaker: in a direction.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Very good.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The aristocrats.
Speaker: The aristocrats.
Speaker: The aristocrats.
Speaker: So in section 1.5, chapter 1, section 5, the elder, not in great shape.
Speaker: Feels like he's losing control of the situation.
Speaker: Yeah, it might be getting away from him.
Speaker: It might be getting away from you, elder.
Speaker: Might be getting away from him.
Speaker: Yeah, a little bit.
Speaker: A little bit.
Speaker: But we cut back to Toto pretty quickly and he's walking through the city and everybody has been turned to stone.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: At one point he accidentally bumps into one of the stone people and they collapse.
Speaker: They fall apart.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just great job, Toto.
Speaker: Great job.
Speaker: This is a good idea, Toto.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You really thought this went through.
Speaker: So as he's walking through the city, this black smoke, he thinks it's like bats or birds or something like that erupting from the castle.
Speaker: He can see the castle off in the distance.
Speaker: Comes out and this is terrifying to imagine.
Speaker: Basically, this black smoke turns itself into a giant like smiling face in the sky.
Speaker: Such a bummer.
Speaker: So Arrowwinds, the good boy horse that we had already been semi-attached to, freaks out and runs away.
Speaker: The face blows a little gust of wind down and Arrowwind turns into a statue.
Speaker: And that's like mid-Winnie, just petrified.
Speaker: by this smoke face, giant smoke face in the sky.
Speaker: So Toto, he's running.
Speaker: He makes his way inside of the houses.
Speaker: He's kind of like fighting his way through, trying to hide, seeing if he can hide from...
Speaker: From the giant face in the sky.
Speaker: And while he's doing this, he finds a hidden passage in one of the houses.
Speaker: It's basically like he falls down into the basement.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like a library that they had down in the basement.
Speaker: And all the books are turned to stone just like everything else is.
Speaker: Everything else is like stone.
Speaker: And when you touch it, it falls apart.
Speaker: Except one.
Speaker: There is a single book that he finds.
Speaker: And it's white and it has like a light glow to it.
Speaker: And he takes it.
Speaker: And the Book of Mormon.
Speaker: The Book of Mormon.
Speaker: This is how it all starts, people.
Speaker: Toto is Joseph Smith.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You know, he's Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, all rolled into one.
Speaker: All rolled.
Speaker: The metaphors are obvious, people.
Speaker: Obvious.
Speaker: Keep up.
Speaker: So he finds it and he escapes and he runs out of the city.
Speaker: He's basically covered in this ash and he just makes a break for it.
Speaker: So we cut to the next segment and the Elder is informed that Toto has returned.
Speaker: And the Elder goes in and has a conversation with Toto.
Speaker: Toto is basically...
Speaker: laying down in a bed and he looks like he's he's not in great shape he's like covered in the ash from like the people he has people on him he's got people on him yeah he's got people on him and he sees the elder sees the book and he's like oh snap that's a is that what I think it is and Toto gives him the book and the elder like kind of wrestles it away from him
Speaker: And after that happens, Toto petrifies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe probably a wrap on Toto.
Speaker: I think probably a wrap on Toto.
Speaker: I think we're done with Toto because the only thing that was keeping him from not dying was holding on to the book.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So thanks, elder.
Speaker: Thanks, elder.
Speaker: Smooth move.
Speaker: And then the elder like sees the book and he flips through it and he goes back into town and be like, all right, people, we got to we got to tighten up this fucking shit.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: You everybody light the torches, light the torches.
Speaker: We're going to we're going to pray.
Speaker: We're going to put holy water down everywhere.
Speaker: We're going to purify this shit.
Speaker: All the kids start singing and dancing, singing and dancing, singing and dancing.
Speaker: It's it's, you know, Bible fellowship in here.
Speaker: Yeah, we got to we got to purify and get this place ready for the high.
Speaker: We're going to holy war here, people.
Speaker: And he does say it's actually like we're preparing for war.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he he goes to own a and is like here.
Speaker: Start from scratch.
Speaker: Like get this shit out of your loom.
Speaker: Stop it.
Speaker: Yeah, this is bullshit.
Speaker: Do this one.
Speaker: Do this one instead.
Speaker: And there's a different mark.
Speaker: So the mark that One had been working on, which is the cloth tunic that the sacrifice is supposed to, is basically the one that sacrifices have always worn.
Speaker: And what the elder finds in the book is a diagram for the mark, which is similar, but distinct in the way the pattern, I think they use the whirls of the pattern are done.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At a glance, it looks like the same basic.
Speaker: At a glance, it looks like the same, but it's not.
Speaker: So he's like, you got to make it like this.
Speaker: It came from this book.
Speaker: You got to do this.
Speaker: And then so we're on 1.7 and it starts out with Eco having a dream about a like a little pond that him and Toto found and how refreshing and fun it was and, you know, how good it was to be a kid.
Speaker: Really looking forward to playing with Toto again one day.
Speaker: That's going to work out great.
Speaker: So the elder wakes him up and they have he asked him to try the mark on and and him and One are there and, you know, it's like put it on and like the mark.
Speaker: It actually actually like glows when it's on him.
Speaker: He's like, well, the mark recognizes you.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: This is great.
Speaker: They're like they're like kneeling in front of him and they're they're like
Speaker: you're going to come back to us.
Speaker: Like this, you have to go there and you're going to come back to us.
Speaker: And it's like, it's like little emotional moment of like, you know, you know, the family kind of,
Speaker: the family unit kind of getting back together.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because they started the book a little bit fractured.
Speaker: The elder was kind of pissed off at One because she was not taking her time making the thing.
Speaker: One was sad because her baby boy, her sweet baby boy, Iko, was going to go off to die.
Speaker: And Iko was in a cave.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And I, I, there was, yeah, there's a brief moment where they point, Iko thinks that the elder, he looks at the, the way he's talking to him, he said, this is, he thinks this isn't the same man who hit me earlier.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it's kind of like this quiet, like,
Speaker: all is forgiven kind of moment.
Speaker: It's really, really.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, and then they have to basically take the mark back off and be like, all right, now give us the mark and, and don't, don't tell the priest about, yeah, don't, don't, keep it to yourself.
Speaker: Keep it under your hat, boy.
Speaker: So the priest arrives and a lot of this chapter is basically like the priest doing his his bullshit is like he cast in a spell.
Speaker: Eco is the sacrifice, all that stuff.
Speaker: And he's like, all right, this kid is acceptable to be sent off to a castle and on the mountain to die.
Speaker: Two thumbs up.
Speaker: Two thumbs up.
Speaker: And they put the mark on him and they take him onto the carriage.
Speaker: It's the priest and his two guards and it's Eco and and off they go.
Speaker: And Eco is going to spend the trip in chains.
Speaker: You know, he's all he's all chained up.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: In order to eat his soup, he has to like bend over and lick it up like a dog.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I guess they're not taking chances with him.
Speaker: They're not taking any chances with the sacrifice.
Speaker: One of the guards is nicer to him than the other though.
Speaker: I liked that.
Speaker: Again, it was just this little thing.
Speaker: We never hear this guy's name.
Speaker: We don't even see his face.
Speaker: He's wearing a helmet.
Speaker: He's wearing a big old helmet that you can't see his face.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he has these, she writes these moments in where that guard clearly, like, I think Eco speculates that maybe he has a kid back home or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, that he's a father or something like that.
Speaker: Right, because he treats him like, you know, just these little moments of kindness, whereas the priest and the other guard don't talk to him.
Speaker: And they say, don't talk to him, don't talk to us, don't acknowledge us.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they yell at the other guard occasionally for like, you know, so it's a little moment of human kindness.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She does an amazing job.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Humanizing random characters like even these just this guard.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's in it for a real brief amount of time.
Speaker: Very, very little amount of time.
Speaker: And you still just feel like, I think I know this guy.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I know that.
Speaker: Or at least I know this kind of person.
Speaker: I've met this kind of person.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's, I liked it.
Speaker: Yeah, me too.
Speaker: It's good stuff.
Speaker: Now we're in chapter two.
Speaker: So that was all chapter one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: By the way.
Speaker: By the way, that was all chapter one.
Speaker: This is actually where the game picks up.
Speaker: This is the chapter two is the opening cut scene of Ego for the most part.
Speaker: So they arrive.
Speaker: They arrive at the castle.
Speaker: They go up the winding road to the castle and they get out of the carriage.
Speaker: At the bridge, but the bridge to the front gate of the castle is broken.
Speaker: And there's a nice little poetic line of like no entry, no exit.
Speaker: Like you can't get in and you also can't get out.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The only way to get into the castle, they have to go down to the water and take a boat.
Speaker: across the waterway, underneath the castle, into the cliffs under the castle.
Speaker: And then there's this moment where one of the guards has to use a sword that is clearly too heavy for him to wield.
Speaker: But the sword casts a spell.
Speaker: on himself, the two guards, the priest, and like the icons in the, the iconography in the area, like gives them all this like white glow or something like that.
Speaker: And I don't think it's, it's not explained yet.
Speaker: I don't think as to what that does.
Speaker: I think given what we find out later that it's like a protection thing,
Speaker: spell or something like that.
Speaker: It's like a ward or something.
Speaker: A ward for whatever is in the castle.
Speaker: Doesn't go on eco.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Fuck that kid, right?
Speaker: Eco doesn't glow.
Speaker: Am I right, people?
Speaker: Everything else glows.
Speaker: And then they go up, basically up an elevator.
Speaker: It's like a round stone platform that raises them up into a room filled with sarcophagi.
Speaker: And they choose one of the sarcophaguses that looks pretty much the same as all the others.
Speaker: And the guards take the lid off and they're like, get in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they put them in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You ever seen Kill Bill, kid?
Speaker: And it's like, oh, so this is what the sacrifice is.
Speaker: You just put a kid in the sarcophagus and leave him there.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: That's very cool and good of you.
Speaker: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker: Good, good, good, good, good.
Speaker: So, so Eco, we're in two, two dot two now.
Speaker: Eco is sitting in the sarcophagus just wondering,
Speaker: I don't know what's going to happen next.
Speaker: And eventually the sarcophagus starts to like rock a little bit and it tips over, breaking open, sending him flying and he hits his head on the floor and it knocks him out.
Speaker: And he goes into basically like a dreamlike state.
Speaker: Where he wakes up in another part of the castle.
Speaker: And it's dark.
Speaker: And it's raining.
Speaker: And he's in a tower.
Speaker: And he has to.
Speaker: He sees a cage.
Speaker: Up in the ceiling.
Speaker: And he's got nothing to do.
Speaker: But climb the tower.
Speaker: And he climbs up.
Speaker: all the way up to the tower and what he finds in the cage is um like a a inky blackness like that it's like a void that doesn't really have a form um it it seems like it seems maybe like a person at times but it doesn't um and eventually it starts to like
Speaker: consume everything and then he wakes up and he's where he hit his head.
Speaker: You know, not that long has passed since he fell out of the sarcophagus.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he starts exploring the castle, jumping around, doing his sacrifice stuff of being able to jump and climb and all that.
Speaker: And he finds a window that he can jump into and
Speaker: And he jumps through the window and now he is actually in the room that he just dreamed about.
Speaker: But it's daytime.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's the same situation.
Speaker: There's a cage all the way at the top of the room.
Speaker: So he begins climbing up.
Speaker: Climbing up to the top of the cage, he sees that there is a girl.
Speaker: There's a person in it.
Speaker: And he finds a lever to start, like, lowering the cage down to the dais on the floor.
Speaker: And he gets stuck.
Speaker: He jumps on the top of the cage because...
Speaker: Maybe that'll do something.
Speaker: And it does.
Speaker: The chains are broken, knocks the cage all the way down.
Speaker: And when they get down to the bottom, these smoke monsters basically appear and start attacking and dragging the girl away and trying to pull her into the smoke puddle that they emerge from.
Speaker: Eco grabs a torch from the wall and I forget it goes out.
Speaker: I think he like swings it at one of the monsters and it immediately extinguishes.
Speaker: But he can still make contact with them, like kind of back them, back them the F up.
Speaker: He fights his way to the girl.
Speaker: He grabs the girl and he gets sent into another similar dream like the one that he had.
Speaker: A dreamlike state.
Speaker: It seems like he's sent back in time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because it's like he's in that room again, but it's clearly at a like it's looks better.
Speaker: It looks like newer, fresher.
Speaker: And he sees it.
Speaker: He sees the cage, but it's not damaged like he had just damaged it.
Speaker: And he sees an old man kind of muttering to himself.
Speaker: It's talking about how this how the castle is walking towards its destruction.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then we're back.
Speaker: We're back in present day.
Speaker: He wakes up.
Speaker: He snaps out of it.
Speaker: He's able to pull the girl away from the smoke monsters.
Speaker: And she goes up to these.
Speaker: There's these idols that are blocking the doorway.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: She's able to like say something to the idols and it casts that light spell.
Speaker: It's I think it's similar to that light spell that the guards cast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and it kind of like bounces around and it just like knocks away all the smoke monsters and like the pool and that they were emerging from and everything.
Speaker: And then the idols slide out of the way and they can they can leave.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's like, it's like we're, we're in a very interesting spot in the book because like it, the action really picks up here in this, in, in chapter two.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All this time, Ico is kind of talking to himself and to the girl.
Speaker: And he's like always reminding himself, like, you don't understand anything that I'm saying.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It becomes very clear that she doesn't speak the same language as he does.
Speaker: He's like, he's like, you want to come?
Speaker: You're like, you don't get what I'm saying.
Speaker: You don't understand what I'm doing here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Much of what he says to her could be directly transcribed from the things that I say to my cat when I'm alone and cleaning the house or something like that.
Speaker: So it's a very similar vibe.
Speaker: What are we doing now?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: We're cleaning, huh?
Speaker: You don't, you don't understand me.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: It's basically eco and he's just like frustrated.
Speaker: And also he just starts, it gives, I think it's good because it gives the narrator, the author, an excuse for eco to just kind of continue talking to himself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like he's like, whatever, you don't understand me.
Speaker: I'm just going to keep talking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm going to keep, it doesn't matter.
Speaker: I'm just, it doesn't matter.
Speaker: I'm going to keep talking.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: They find so they they they get to like a bridge and they find another statue, except this statue starts telepathically talking to Eco like the statues hand comes down and it puts its his hand on Eco's shoulder.
Speaker: And it starts talking about the history of the sacrifice and how the statue is probably of the guy who was the original sacrifice.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he refers to the sacrifices as his children.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Not necessarily.
Speaker: He's not like the his literal, like biological father.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think.
Speaker: But that the I don't think so far, I don't think as far as we know, but that the
Speaker: sacrifices are generally his children.
Speaker: Um, and he had this kind of, I gotta pull it up here.
Speaker: Give me one second.
Speaker: Cause he had this like list of things that he, uh, mentions, um, do, do, do,
Speaker: See, that's the problem with the the Kindle version is that the that I can I can only jump to the start of the chapters.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like chapter one, chapter two.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, I think.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: I think I'm there.
Speaker: Oh, there we go.
Speaker: Here we go.
Speaker: So basically, this knight speaks to him in these very short sentences, like they're coming right into his head.
Speaker: It says, Castle in the mist, resentment this strong, sin this deep, long years of atonement this cruel, 1,000 years of time did not erase my sentence.
Speaker: Barren years spent in prison here.
Speaker: Even now, it tortures my body, binding me to this place.
Speaker: But my son.
Speaker: And I just imagine that as the from the Superman.
Speaker: What's his name?
Speaker: Jor-El, who played Jor-El in the original Superman movies?
Speaker: Marlon Brando.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: My son.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: My son.
Speaker: Brando.
Speaker: So he says that to him and then he basically the knight just like fucks off, like disappears down the down the bridgeway and they follow him and they find him.
Speaker: They find the statue now is like up on the wall or something like that in a completely different position.
Speaker: And the.
Speaker: he starts talking to the girl and be like, will the castle curse this guy too?
Speaker: And be like, do you know anything?
Speaker: Do you know what's going on?
Speaker: Do you know his name?
Speaker: And she just like shakes her head.
Speaker: And she's got this, like every time they describe her, she's like, she's the most pure, innocent, doe-eyed creature you've ever imagined.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, bud.
Speaker: Just keep it calm here, bud.
Speaker: So they they continue on.
Speaker: Part of the bridge then collapses.
Speaker: They kind of like save each other and then they they just continue on deeper into the castle.
Speaker: And that's that's where we're leaving off.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A lot of stuff happened.
Speaker: A lot.
Speaker: A lot of stuff.
Speaker: A lot of stuff.
Speaker: This is easily one of our most involved.
Speaker: Like this is more involved.
Speaker: Like this is, this is right up there with like the halo books we've read in terms of like how intricate and multifaceted of a story.
Speaker: This is now, I feel like now that we're in the castle, it's going to be a little more straightforward.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But geez, like, yeah, there's a lot of mythology building here.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think it's amazing because it's all the first chapter.
Speaker: The bulk of what we talked about tonight, all added stuff.
Speaker: It was all added by the author.
Speaker: And I was like, that is some good shit right there.
Speaker: Yeah, it's well-developed.
Speaker: It's charming, but it's got a lot of drama and danger behind it.
Speaker: You've got everything from...
Speaker: parent and child relationships being tender and tragic and beautiful to being chased by a weird face and being turned into stone.
Speaker: We've killed a teenager, you know, and it's...
Speaker: And at no point is it jarring.
Speaker: It all flows so beautifully.
Speaker: I can't tell you how excited I am about this book so far.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I dig it so far.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's about one third of the book that we covered tonight.
Speaker: So we'll be going through three episodes on this.
Speaker: And I think episode two, if it gives any indication as to like,
Speaker: what the rest of chapter, what the first part of chapter two is like, I feel like it's probably going to be a bit quicker paced in terms of, of the intricacies and stuff like that.
Speaker: It's going to be more.
Speaker: Now there was an author's note at the beginning saying like, this is not going to follow the game directly.
Speaker: This is not a walkthrough of the game.
Speaker: So yeah, she makes a point of saying some of the solutions to the puzzle are different and, and,
Speaker: You know, she's pretty open about like, I swapped some stuff around and changed some stuff.
Speaker: Which is great.
Speaker: I think that's, I think that, you know, whatever you got to do to make it fit better as a cohesive story and theme and all that stuff, go for it.
Speaker: And that's something that S.D.
Speaker: Perry did, if you recall, all the way back to our very first series.
Speaker: All the way back.
Speaker: All the way back.
Speaker: 80 some episodes ago.
Speaker: Good lord.
Speaker: S.D.
Speaker: Perry did that with some of the solutions for the puzzles in the Umbrella Conspiracy where, you know, it was just like, oh, yeah, Jill just smashed the glass open.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a good adaptation then.
Speaker: It's a good adaptation now.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So, yeah, I guess that really only leaves one question.
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Well, I've been all over the board a little bit lately.
Speaker: I wrapped up a little bit.
Speaker: I think I'm done with Tiny Folks for the time being.
Speaker: I've been playing a lot of Marvel Snap.
Speaker: I even, I popped back in on Card Shark a little more.
Speaker: Played Sex Chess.
Speaker: I've also been looking into- Wait, what?
Speaker: Marvel Snap No no no after that Oh you mean sex chess Sex chess I would like to hear more about this
Speaker: It came out this week.
Speaker: And when I was young, one of the first NES games I ever played was Battle Chess.
Speaker: And for those of you playing the home game, Battle Chess basically took... It's just chess, but when you play...
Speaker: killed a figure when you took their knight or a pawn or something like that, there would be a fight scene and it varied depending on who was killing who.
Speaker: And it was very entertaining.
Speaker: It was actually a really smart, only quasi-manipulative way to getting young kids into learning about chess and keeping them interested.
Speaker: And based on what
Speaker: this game looked like I was expecting it would be the same thing with over the top silly naughty sex scenes.
Speaker: Because while I wasn't looking, Steam just said, yeah, fine, fuck it, put your porn game in here.
Speaker: And so I was like, okay, this looks silly.
Speaker: It clearly has a sense of humor about it.
Speaker: It doesn't look amazing in terms of like the graphics, all that stuff.
Speaker: But there's some creativity here.
Speaker: I'm interested.
Speaker: And it was released last week and it was five bucks or something like that.
Speaker: And I was like, yeah, fine, fuck it.
Speaker: I'll try this.
Speaker: I have the unfortunate duty to inform you that it turns out sex chess, not very good.
Speaker: I know this news comes as a blow.
Speaker: Hey-o.
Speaker: It's so unfortunate because it's one of those things where you really could have had a lot of... I have no problem with sex games.
Speaker: When Honey Pop came out, it was one of my top games of the year.
Speaker: I think if you come at it, Leisure Suit Larry was one of the most...
Speaker: one of my favorite franchises of all time.
Speaker: There is room for fun, sexy games.
Speaker: If you know what you're doing and you're having fun with it, you know, you give it the proper respect.
Speaker: And by proper respect, I don't mean watering things down.
Speaker: I mean,
Speaker: Trying.
Speaker: Just because there's a pair of tits doesn't make it awesome.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so basically in the game, the storyline, such as it were, is- Oh, there's a storyline.
Speaker: Yeah, believe it or not.
Speaker: It's heaven versus hell.
Speaker: And you are, they surprised me.
Speaker: I thought I was playing heaven.
Speaker: You're playing the devil, at least in the level I played.
Speaker: And you're playing an angel and trying to defeat the angel.
Speaker: And all of the different figures are very elaborate and strange and strange.
Speaker: It was part of what gave me like I was like, this could be fun.
Speaker: Like the the angelic knight.
Speaker: It's so weird because the angel side, the heaven side, they make a big point of him like being like talking about how I like basically sex in kind of like it's impure and you're being impure.
Speaker: Meanwhile, the angel speaking about impurities and stuff is wearing four cock rings made out of solid gold.
Speaker: with a dick hanging halfway to his knee.
Speaker: And then when you're playing the actual game, the knight on the angelic side is this woman riding a levitating butt plug.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And the king on the devil's side is a guy with a scepter that's just a pink dildo.
Speaker: And it's just absolute craziness just to look at it.
Speaker: And then you get to the...
Speaker: battle modes like where you know you take someone's rook or whatever and it's some of the most uncreative boring uh it's not even a scene uh like that like i said with battle chess like for example if you took the queen with the rook in battle chess the rook picks up the queen and swallows her whole and you know and belches out a shoe i right right that might not be true i i might be
Speaker: Something along those lines, though.
Speaker: Yeah, something along those lines.
Speaker: And it was like, ah, that's funny.
Speaker: And it takes a few seconds.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: It's fun.
Speaker: And, you know, it makes it neat.
Speaker: With this, it's just the same.
Speaker: Like, they all have different sexual animations, but it's the same thing over and over and over again on a loop.
Speaker: And it's very...
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And if there's anything that your sex game- It's just the worst crime a game like that can commit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If your sex game can avoid anything, it is being dull.
Speaker: And I actually, I couldn't play it further than that.
Speaker: It was- Sure.
Speaker: I know that this news is shaking the video game community at large.
Speaker: It does have, as I recall, it has a very good score on Steam.
Speaker: Don't listen to it.
Speaker: It's just people wanting to make funny reviews and stuff like that.
Speaker: It is actually not good.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And just play chess.
Speaker: Just play chess.
Speaker: After I got over the disappointment and the shock of...
Speaker: that I was feeling at sex chess not being a good game.
Speaker: I did end up playing the Resident Evil Village DLC that you talked about last week.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm really enjoying it.
Speaker: Oh yeah, it's great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love that game so much, Kevin.
Speaker: Oh, it's such a good game.
Speaker: It's such a good game.
Speaker: And I'm not finished with it yet, but it's just it's it's a terrific excuse to, you know, get back into that world with some new mechanics and some new takes on things.
Speaker: And it's not it got me to thinking it's funny because, you know, I'm not a huge Metroidvania guy.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But when you think about it, Resident Evil, which is one of my favorite franchises ever, has a heavy Metroidvania aspect to it.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, totally.
Speaker: You know, the puzzles aren't terribly complex.
Speaker: You're just kind of running from one end of the...
Speaker: the map to another as you collect things and other things become unlocked.
Speaker: And I love it.
Speaker: I'm always here for it.
Speaker: It always makes me happy.
Speaker: And maybe it's just because Metroidvanias are so sprawling and my ADHD shuts me down before I
Speaker: can get too deep into it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: With some exceptions, Blasphemous being one of them.
Speaker: But yeah, I'm really enjoying it.
Speaker: I haven't gotten into like the shooty modes and stuff like that that they have.
Speaker: That was never really my cup of tea, but it's enough that, you know, I paid 20 bucks for this thing.
Speaker: I might as well get the most out of it.
Speaker: Might as well, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's where I'm at.
Speaker: Kevin, what are you playing?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: What am I playing?
Speaker: I am playing God of War Ragnarok.
Speaker: Oh, OK.
Speaker: Which is pretty darn good so far.
Speaker: Did you get that on your PS5?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes, I did.
Speaker: It's available for PS4 and PS5.
Speaker: And I think next year they're planning on doing the PC release because it's one of the Sony exclusives.
Speaker: But Sony has been doing more with with getting the PC version of games out there.
Speaker: Yeah, God of War Ragnarok.
Speaker: Really interesting game so far.
Speaker: I feel like I'm about 10 hours into it.
Speaker: And it's it's got a really strong narrative.
Speaker: And I'd say that's probably one of the things that separates it from, let's say, Elden Ring.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which is.
Speaker: The Elden Ring's narrative is very understated and much like a lot of the FromSoft stuff, really focused on the world that you're exploring.
Speaker: God of War is very strong on character and the plot and all that stuff.
Speaker: And they are doing a hell of a job with the writing on this one.
Speaker: So, yeah, so far I'm really digging it.
Speaker: We'll see how I feel when I get all the way through it.
Speaker: But, yeah, God of War Ragnarok has been my main, the main thing I've been playing recently.
Speaker: And I also started, I also installed a Power Wash Simulator on my... Ah, yeah.
Speaker: On my Xbox Series S. And it's nice.
Speaker: Yeah?
Speaker: Does it scratch an itch?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I power wash our back patio off and off to be like...
Speaker: I'll just do it with my headphones on and be like, yeah, it's actually kind of satisfying to watch it get clean.
Speaker: So, yeah, I think I might spend a little bit more time with that.
Speaker: I can't think of two games that...
Speaker: It like there's such a contrast, but it makes perfect sense when you think about it, though, because you're not going to put down God of War and then go, all right, on to Elden Ring or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, like God, like I'm going to put down God of War in favor of like Last of Us Part Two or something like that, you know, some some very narrative driven game.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it's like God of War Ragnarok into Power Wash Simulator.
Speaker: I think those two go together.
Speaker: I need to just like chill and throw on a podcast.
Speaker: Let's know what's going on behind the bastards this week and see what's up.
Speaker: Great show.
Speaker: Great show.
Speaker: Great show.
Speaker: But speaking of great shows, that'll do it for this great show.
Speaker: This great show has ended for now.
Speaker: Yeah, that's all we got for you for now.
Speaker: So please, please follow us on social media.
Speaker: Twitter is still active.
Speaker: so far, but it might not be by the time this episode comes out.
Speaker: I gave that warning last week, but it's even more dire now because the bankruptcy stuff and all that.
Speaker: So follow us on Twitter at PixelitPod for as long as that is relevant and also on Instagram at PixelitPod.
Speaker: Better yet, go to our website, PixLitPod.com and sign up for the newsletter, which we can send you newsletter emails straight into your inbox.
Speaker: So you'll never miss an episode or when we post other stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're trying to expand.
Speaker: We're trying to expand.
Speaker: Try some new stuff out.
Speaker: And this is going to be probably the primary way that we get a lot of that stuff out to you.
Speaker: So join up on that newsletter is going to be the best way.
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Speaker: All it costs is your email address.
Speaker: You just drop it in there.
Speaker: Listen, you got a lot of shit in your inbox anyway.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: We might as well be in there too.
Speaker: We might as well be in there too.
Speaker: And guess what?
Speaker: We're actually giving you something.
Speaker: We're giving you our love.
Speaker: Lots and lots and lots of it.
Speaker: So pixel at pod dot com.
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: Hit sign up for the newsletter.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The subscribe button is spelled wrong.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That's my fault.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll get to it probably by the time.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: Did I miss that?
Speaker: By the time the episode comes out, I'll probably get to it.
Speaker: You know, does it only take me two seconds to change it to fix that?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Is there an autocorrect on the thing?
Speaker: No, there isn't.
Speaker: It's just just me, just me, baby.
Speaker: And just misspelled.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I might leave it there just to show you how much I love.
Speaker: But if it's if it's there, if it's fixed by the time you get around to it on this episode, then.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Who knows?
Speaker: So yeah, subscribe to our newsletter, pixelitpod.com.
Speaker: Also from our website, you can join our Discord and our Steam group where we drop reviews of the games that we talk about and what are you playing.
Speaker: Hey, I've even been popping into the Discord now and then.
Speaker: Phil has actually been...
Speaker: He is positively active on Discord recently.
Speaker: And when I say that, that's like he said 10 things over the course of three weeks.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But that's a lot.
Speaker: That's up from zero.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sound like my mom.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Yeah, you're wrong.
Speaker: I'll tell you why.
Speaker: I'll tell you why.
Speaker: That's an even deeper cut than... Yeah, that's a... We'll... Speaking of deep cuts.
Speaker: Yes, anyway, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Good night.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
