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Don't Fear the Graphic Novel (Returnal: Fallen Asteria)
24 Plays10 months ago
This book is less of an adaptation and more of a tie-in/follow up for those that have played Returnal. Yar thar be spoilers abound. Also my mic sounds kinda cruncy here. I feel like I wanna replace it? Maybe?
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Transcript
Introduction to Returnal Fallen Asteria
00:00:00
Speaker
Luigi's laundry.
00:00:02
Speaker
Luigi's laundry.
00:00:05
Speaker
You know what else is laundry?
00:00:07
Speaker
What's that?
00:00:07
Speaker
Hey there, everybody.
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome back to Pixel.
00:00:09
Speaker
My name is Kevin.
00:00:10
Speaker
With me as always is Phil on today's show.
00:00:12
Speaker
We're talking Returnal Fallen Asteria.
Graphic Novel Versions and Art Discussion
00:00:16
Speaker
Well, we got a little graphic novel here.
00:00:20
Speaker
This might be the first time that you bought the physical copy of it.
00:00:24
Speaker
And then I got the ebook.
00:00:25
Speaker
It's a good looking, it's a nice looking cover.
00:00:29
Speaker
We got Celine from Returnal right there on the cover.
00:00:34
Speaker
Kind of doing an action pose.
00:00:38
Speaker
Doing the spacewalk kind of thing.
00:00:40
Speaker
Spacewalk, kind of Jack Kirby-ing somewhere.
00:00:46
Speaker
I like it.
00:00:47
Speaker
She's... You know what?
00:00:49
Speaker
My first criticism of this story is not enough Jack Kirby, like, cosmic... It needs more, yeah.
00:00:56
Speaker
Like, you know, kind of like the bullshit that he would just kind of, like, throw in to the lines.
00:01:01
Speaker
Right, yeah, yeah.
00:01:02
Speaker
Just...
00:01:03
Speaker
Just, yeah, it's flair.
00:01:04
Speaker
It's flair.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:05
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:06
Speaker
Jack.
00:01:07
Speaker
Jesus.
00:01:09
Speaker
God damn it.
Patreon Support and Benefits
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:11
Speaker
So, but before we talk about that, I want to talk about the best website in the world.
00:01:18
Speaker
Oh,
00:01:20
Speaker
What's the name of it?
00:01:23
Speaker
Oh, my God.
00:01:23
Speaker
I'm searching my brain, but all I keep thinking of is when I go into my mind palace and I search, I type, go to the computer in my mind palace, and I type, what is the best website in the world?
00:01:38
Speaker
I get...
00:01:39
Speaker
Patreon.com slash pixel of pod.
00:01:41
Speaker
Is that the answer?
00:01:42
Speaker
I think that's it.
00:01:43
Speaker
Oh, that's weird.
00:01:44
Speaker
I like when that happens.
00:01:46
Speaker
That's funny.
00:01:47
Speaker
That's nutty.
00:01:48
Speaker
Very twin peaks.
00:01:49
Speaker
That's what I like that.
00:01:51
Speaker
It's very twin peaks.
00:01:54
Speaker
So, yeah, if if you if you want to see a wonderful website, go to Patreon dot com slash Pixel at Pod.
00:02:02
Speaker
We have many ways of being supported.
00:02:04
Speaker
You could support us for free that we consider that supporting us.
00:02:08
Speaker
If you just absolutely sign up and and follow us for free.
00:02:12
Speaker
Otherwise, you get one dollar that gets you access to Phil's blogs.
00:02:15
Speaker
Five dollars gets you access to ad free versions of the episode, as well as the pre show.
00:02:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:23
Speaker
bonus episode and $10 gets your name shouted out in the episode.
00:02:29
Speaker
And to that end, I want to shout out Jesus loves you.
00:02:31
Speaker
Kyle Seaman, Ruthless Mudder, Middle of Things, Sigma Sal, Chet Beaks, Dumb and Thick, and Friendly Friend.
00:02:38
Speaker
Thank you for being a friend.
00:02:41
Speaker
We love you.
00:02:42
Speaker
We love you.
Introduction to Returnal Game and Mechanics
00:02:43
Speaker
So, Returnal Fallen Asteria.
00:02:47
Speaker
Returnal is, let me talk a little bit about Returnal first.
00:02:51
Speaker
Yeah, you've got the knack on this one.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, so Returnal is a game by Housemarque.
00:02:57
Speaker
It came out as a quasi-launch title for the PS5.
00:03:01
Speaker
It was actually one of the first games for the PS5 to use the haptic stuff on the controller.
00:03:09
Speaker
So the PS5 controller itself is...
00:03:13
Speaker
The PlayStation five had it really been it.
00:03:18
Speaker
It's never really been worthwhile to me as a console.
00:03:21
Speaker
Had it had more exclusives that I was interested in.
00:03:25
Speaker
Yes, it would be.
00:03:26
Speaker
Returnal, though, was.
00:03:28
Speaker
is one of those early games that was an exclusive for a while, then it's out on PC now, but it actually made use of the haptics on the controller.
00:03:37
Speaker
And when I say that, it uses the triggers on the shoulders.
00:03:43
Speaker
It'll like, say your gun is out of ammo, the trigger will be jammed, so you can't fire anymore.
00:03:51
Speaker
It actually puts out upward pressure on the trigger, so you can't pull it down.
00:03:55
Speaker
It's really cool.
00:03:57
Speaker
It has a lot of neat mechanics,
00:03:58
Speaker
But the game is a roguelike.
00:04:00
Speaker
You play as this character, a woman named Selene, who is an astronaut, and she crash lands on this planet.
00:04:09
Speaker
And basically, she is chasing this signal called white shadow, the elusive white shadow signal.
00:04:17
Speaker
And she has to figure out what it is.
00:04:21
Speaker
Her plane, her spaceship is wrecked.
00:04:23
Speaker
Her spaceship is called Helios.
00:04:26
Speaker
It is destroyed.
00:04:27
Speaker
And she wanders off into the wilds.
00:04:32
Speaker
The first level is this jungle.
00:04:34
Speaker
She wanders off into the jungle.
00:04:37
Speaker
And then she's in this area after that with red sands.
00:04:42
Speaker
And then it's
00:04:45
Speaker
It's an amazing game.
00:04:47
Speaker
It is –
Narrative and Music in Returnal
00:04:49
Speaker
it quickly became one of my favorite games of all time.
00:04:53
Speaker
And there are a lot of neat things to it.
00:05:00
Speaker
There is a lay it motif using a very famous song by Blue Oyster Cult that plays in very nicely to kind of the twists and turns of the plot as you finish the game.
00:05:19
Speaker
So, yeah, Returnal, my full recommendation, 100%.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:27
Speaker
Phil, do you know anything about the people who put this darn book together?
00:05:31
Speaker
A little bit, a little bit.
00:05:33
Speaker
What we've got ultimately is we've got like four writers, Greg Loudon, Evie Corhone, Khalil Osaimi, I want to say, and Igor Lamov.
00:05:45
Speaker
And most of them, from what I can tell, are actually work writers.
00:05:51
Speaker
worked on the video game.
00:05:52
Speaker
One of them's a narrative director.
00:05:53
Speaker
Um, yeah, they all, they work at a house mark.
00:05:57
Speaker
Exactly.
00:05:58
Speaker
Uh, one of them's even, uh, it goes beyond that.
00:06:01
Speaker
It's like, um,
00:06:03
Speaker
like we're talking like president and all that shit.
00:06:06
Speaker
Like we've got, it's everyone's kind of, and I think that means that most of them probably didn't actually sit down and write this thing.
00:06:14
Speaker
It's just their baby.
00:06:16
Speaker
But we do have Igor Lomov who actually does have some comic experience from what I can tell, just some, some, some like really indie stuff that you can see.
00:06:30
Speaker
And Khalil Osama,
00:06:32
Speaker
I'm sorry if you're listening, Khalil, your last name is failing me.
00:06:37
Speaker
I'm failing your last name.
00:06:38
Speaker
Or sign me.
00:06:40
Speaker
He's like a brand manager at Housemarque, which is always, always interesting when you got your brand manager coming in to help make it.
00:06:49
Speaker
But I mean, that does make sense at the same time if we're talking about, you know, this came out.
00:06:56
Speaker
long after the game came out.
00:06:57
Speaker
So making sure that we're sticking to our guns on the brand of what it is and that sort of thing, especially several years later, is going to be important, I think.
Graphic Novel as Companion to Game
00:07:07
Speaker
But yeah, not a ton about these guys beyond their involvement in the development of the game itself, which should mean that what we've got is a very
00:07:18
Speaker
true to form true to the source material kind of book here.
00:07:24
Speaker
And you would know that better than I would.
00:07:25
Speaker
Sure.
00:07:26
Speaker
Sure.
00:07:26
Speaker
I read it as well, but I wouldn't know.
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:31
Speaker
Let's put the let's put the body in the marsh.
00:07:33
Speaker
Hell yeah.
00:07:34
Speaker
When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh.
00:07:40
Speaker
All right.
00:07:40
Speaker
So this is not a very long graphic novel.
00:07:46
Speaker
And when I say there's not a lot to summarize, I mean it.
00:07:52
Speaker
There's not a whole lot to summarize that is in visuals.
00:07:55
Speaker
There's maybe 10 lines of dialogue in the entire book.
00:07:59
Speaker
In like just under 100 pages from my just under 100 pages.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:06
Speaker
Basically, it's it's separated into three parts and we follow what the graphic novel shows is it follows Selene through a course of kind of like through a loop on hysteria and.
00:08:27
Speaker
From crash landing there to going and countering hostile enemies, especially in this first part, she sees hostile enemies.
Themes and Imagery in the Graphic Novel
00:08:37
Speaker
In one moment, she finds a house.
00:08:41
Speaker
Now, the house is...
00:08:46
Speaker
It's interesting because, and here's the thing is it's, you can't discuss this without getting into spoilers for the game, right?
00:08:54
Speaker
Fair enough.
00:08:55
Speaker
That's, that's kind of the thing with this is that it is such a tie in.
00:09:00
Speaker
It is such an adaptation that,
00:09:04
Speaker
even though if you were just reading this and you haven't played the game, if you're reading this and you haven't played the game, you're not being spoiled on anything because you don't know the context necessarily.
00:09:17
Speaker
Yes.
00:09:17
Speaker
Okay, good.
00:09:18
Speaker
I feel better then.
00:09:19
Speaker
But if you've played the game and you're reading it, then you know the context of the images that the book is showing you.
00:09:29
Speaker
So...
00:09:30
Speaker
We'll just kind of like go through a few of the imagery so that the enemies are all kind of like,
00:09:37
Speaker
They're pretty terrifying.
00:09:39
Speaker
A lot of them are very tentacly.
00:09:41
Speaker
Great design.
00:09:42
Speaker
They have great design.
00:09:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:44
Speaker
Love the enemies.
00:09:46
Speaker
And there's a variety of enemies in the game.
00:09:49
Speaker
The jungle enemies are like, they have a lot of these like tentacles and ropes.
00:09:54
Speaker
And there's one where it's kind of like, looks like a humanoid tree monster.
00:10:01
Speaker
In other areas, you fight off enemies that are almost like sentient enemies.
00:10:06
Speaker
cubes that like rise up out of the sky.
00:10:09
Speaker
They're almost like drones, like an automated drone force that is fighting you.
00:10:16
Speaker
So some of the big moments in the game include Selene finding a house.
00:10:24
Speaker
And this is in the first area of the game.
00:10:26
Speaker
The house that she finds is her childhood home.
00:10:31
Speaker
This is where she grew up.
00:10:35
Speaker
Or ostensibly where she was raising her child, which is why it kind of gets into weird spoilery area.
00:10:46
Speaker
You assume that it's Celine's house from when she was a kid.
00:10:50
Speaker
Yeah, I totally assumed that.
00:10:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:53
Speaker
It's also Celine's house from when she was an adult.
00:10:57
Speaker
Ah.
00:10:59
Speaker
As you explore the house in the game, you find a whole bunch of information about how Selene was kicked out of the astronaut program and how she's not actually an astronaut.
00:11:10
Speaker
Stuff of that nature.
00:11:12
Speaker
How her mother was an astronaut, but she wasn't.
00:11:15
Speaker
So the house is...
00:11:19
Speaker
One of the first images that shows you in the book.
00:11:22
Speaker
And she says, I never wanted to go back there, but it's like someone wants me to not forget.
00:11:29
Speaker
And she spends some time like looking through the house and runs into this, this figure of an astronaut.
00:11:36
Speaker
And the astronaut is a recurring figure in the game.
00:11:39
Speaker
This character that you just, it's off in the distance and never quite,
00:11:45
Speaker
within your grasp to interact with.
00:11:52
Speaker
And it's kind of like an unknowable character.
00:11:55
Speaker
There's nothing to actually...
00:12:00
Speaker
There's nothing that Selene sees behind this mask.
00:12:03
Speaker
It's just this dark dome, right?
00:12:05
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:06
Speaker
After this, in the book, she's wandering around and she sees that Helios off in the distance is crashing again, right?
00:12:17
Speaker
Helios is the ship that she came in on, but she sees it.
00:12:20
Speaker
It's coming down again.
00:12:22
Speaker
the game is in a time loop that's not only the mechanic of like the the gamey mechanic of like returning back from death and things like and things like that it's like you're you're actually in a repeating loop and these loops are not um
00:12:44
Speaker
They're not in sync.
00:12:45
Speaker
They don't end when you die.
Sisyphus Interludes and Selene's Journey
00:12:50
Speaker
They start over kind of whenever.
00:12:53
Speaker
So the fact of the matter is you are still in an active loop, but you see Helios crashing from another time loop.
00:13:03
Speaker
Like the it's everything is kind of out of sync, which is one of the things that I thought is kind of interesting about this book is that the way it plays with frames like they will shoot the the illustrator create would create like a splash page.
00:13:20
Speaker
Right.
00:13:21
Speaker
But then there would be frames within the frame of Selene doing different actions on the splash page.
00:13:28
Speaker
And one of the – there's two things that it says.
00:13:31
Speaker
It's like, OK, this is a sequence of her doing the following things.
00:13:35
Speaker
Or she did these things at different times on different experiences.
00:13:41
Speaker
Right.
00:13:41
Speaker
Is like another way to look at it.
00:13:43
Speaker
And it's all overlapping in different ways.
00:13:46
Speaker
It's all overlapping in different ways.
00:13:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:48
Speaker
OK.
00:13:51
Speaker
So, yeah, she basically continues and she is fighting and decides to just go into a hole.
00:14:02
Speaker
She's going deeper.
00:14:03
Speaker
I think...
00:14:06
Speaker
This is not one for one for what you do in the game, but it's a hint of, oh, yeah, this is what you did at the end of the jungle level as you jump down into a hole.
00:14:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:20
Speaker
Kind of an expansion on the end of one of the levels, basically.
00:14:24
Speaker
Then there's these little interludes.
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:29
Speaker
At the end of every issue, so to speak, there's like three issues in this book.
00:14:34
Speaker
At the end of every issue, there's a little mini comic just called Sisyphus.
00:14:39
Speaker
I love this, by the way.
00:14:40
Speaker
Yeah, this is a great touch.
00:14:43
Speaker
Real quick, before you go into it, is anything like this in the game, this Sisyphus thing?
00:14:49
Speaker
No.
00:14:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:51
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:52
Speaker
Sisyphus is thematically connected to the game.
00:15:00
Speaker
Oh, sure.
00:15:01
Speaker
There's a eternal mode, like an endless mode called the Tower of Sisyphus.
00:15:08
Speaker
Ah, okay, cool.
00:15:09
Speaker
Where you just keep going and it never ends.
00:15:13
Speaker
Like the base game has an ending, like you can beat it, right?
00:15:16
Speaker
Right.
00:15:16
Speaker
But there is a true eternal roguelike mode that you can go into in this little Sisyphus cartoon.
00:15:24
Speaker
It shows Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill and he just like, he's like, oh, I'm done for the day.
00:15:30
Speaker
And he sticks a branch underneath the boulder thinking that would like hold it.
00:15:35
Speaker
And then the next morning he awakens to the boulder having rolled that back down the hill regardless.
00:15:41
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:15:42
Speaker
So, um, yeah, that's, that's a little sisyphus cartoon.
00:15:45
Speaker
It's a very cartoony kind of, uh, so stylistically different.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:15:50
Speaker
Like wildly stylistically different.
00:15:53
Speaker
It's striking.
00:15:54
Speaker
It's very, very striking.
00:15:55
Speaker
So yeah, that's, that's pretty cool.
00:15:58
Speaker
So, uh, as Celine continues down these paths, part of the thing is like, it seems like she might be seeing herself, uh,
00:16:07
Speaker
Like she looks at down this one tunnel and she sees a figure and she's like, okay, I'm, I'm on my way.
00:16:16
Speaker
And she gets there.
00:16:16
Speaker
She doesn't find anybody.
00:16:18
Speaker
But I think that the idea is like what she's looking at is just another Selene that she can never reach though, because the time, the time is too out of, out of sync.
00:16:32
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:16:33
Speaker
And yeah, so she's back in like the ranch.
00:16:37
Speaker
She sees the house again and is attacked by a tentacle monster before she kind of ends up in this like boss arena where the water is able to be stood upon and fighting this gigantic beastly demon thing.
Game Mechanics and Narrative Themes
00:16:55
Speaker
This is like a mini boss from the game.
00:16:58
Speaker
You see like, you know, you'll see a couple of these
00:17:01
Speaker
in the jungle level, so to speak.
00:17:06
Speaker
So she fights off this thing and then she finds a, it's this alien looking device.
00:17:16
Speaker
Now it's in the game.
00:17:19
Speaker
There is this device and it's like, clearly not for humans.
00:17:24
Speaker
Right.
00:17:25
Speaker
It's like, it's an alien ass.
00:17:27
Speaker
Like, uh,
00:17:28
Speaker
silhouette in there.
00:17:31
Speaker
Nothing human about it.
00:17:32
Speaker
Nothing human about it.
00:17:34
Speaker
And Celine can use that.
00:17:36
Speaker
You as a player can use that to create a copy of Celine so that if she dies in the run, she wakes up again on this device.
00:17:46
Speaker
Okay.
00:17:47
Speaker
I think what they're hinting at is like using the device is also what creates, um, uh,
00:17:54
Speaker
some unique mutations in monsters that you see later.
00:18:00
Speaker
So part of the neat thing of the game is that you can...
00:18:04
Speaker
As you go through, you can find dead bodies of Selene and you can read her logs.
00:18:11
Speaker
That's really neat.
00:18:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:18:12
Speaker
Sometimes though, when you touch the dead body, it's not actually dead and it's like turning out, it's like mutating into a tentacle monster and it attacks you.
00:18:22
Speaker
And these are actually really hard enemies to kill.
00:18:28
Speaker
And those will be like where certain players died or something like that.
00:18:33
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:18:34
Speaker
Isn't there something similar to that in in Bloodborne or in one of the Dark Souls or something like that where you can find where other people died?
00:18:43
Speaker
You get shadows of it or something.
00:18:45
Speaker
You can touch that.
00:18:45
Speaker
You'll see the bloodstains and if you touch the bloodstain, it'll like show the last moments of.
00:18:51
Speaker
Right.
00:18:52
Speaker
Another player before they died.
00:18:53
Speaker
That's pretty cool.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, I wish I was better at these games.
00:19:01
Speaker
So she uses the device and it kind of like cryptically cuts to like a version of her all wrapped up in tentacles.
00:19:08
Speaker
And we get another Sisyphus cartoon.
00:19:12
Speaker
This time, a different looking Sisyphus is rolling a tiny boulder up a hill, but it's a snowy hill and it turns into a giant boulder.
00:19:21
Speaker
And it rolls back down and he gets, he gets crunched.
00:19:25
Speaker
And as he's down on the grassy part of, uh, at the bottom of the mountain, looking at the tiny boulder again, he says, Zeus.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:38
Speaker
It's a nice touch.
00:19:42
Speaker
um, Selene, uh, continues on through and sees a lot of her dead bodies.
00:19:48
Speaker
Um, and, uh, she is, uh, she finds a rifle, can't use it for what it's supposed to be right for, for right now and continues on, uh, traveling through a wasteland and finds the tree monsters that I kind of talked about earlier.
00:20:03
Speaker
They're like, they're like skeletal mossy tree things.
00:20:06
Speaker
And they, they have this like slam into the ground and vines come up somewhere else attack, um,
00:20:12
Speaker
If I recall correctly.
00:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, she kills the shit out of them, murders the shit out of those.
00:20:20
Speaker
A lot of really good art.
00:20:22
Speaker
The artwork is outstanding.
00:20:24
Speaker
It really, really is.
00:20:26
Speaker
Eventually she comes upon a corrupted Selene corpse and kills it using the blade.
00:20:36
Speaker
So you get kind of a lightsaber in the game.
00:20:40
Speaker
It's your melee weapon and you use it to like...
00:20:45
Speaker
If you are like, if an enemy is like, I think if I recall correctly, if an enemy is like stunned, you can like melee it to like instant kill it.
00:20:54
Speaker
Um, but you also use the weapon to like cut open doors and things like that.
00:20:58
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:21:00
Speaker
So she kills like a corrupted version of herself, which has gotten authentically and ends up falling deep into a pit.
00:21:11
Speaker
And we get some and starts corrupting, getting corrupted herself and thinking about the, the house.
00:21:19
Speaker
And she got a, she gets a phone call.
00:21:24
Speaker
There's a voicemail saying, hi mom.
00:21:26
Speaker
I took care of it when the car was filling up with,
00:21:30
Speaker
And then it kind of cuts to static and she wakes up in the cloning device as if she died.
Graphic Novel's Story Conclusion and Artwork
00:21:39
Speaker
And then she comes back to the rifle that she had found earlier and continues on.
00:21:45
Speaker
And she kind of like finds a almost like a temple looking building.
00:21:53
Speaker
continues, finds the signal and sees, I think, a bunch of different futures and outcomes.
00:22:02
Speaker
And then when she is sitting on the ground, she looks up and she sees the silhouette of a child holding what appears to be a stuffed rabbit walking off into the light.
00:22:15
Speaker
And she apologizes to the child.
00:22:18
Speaker
And then she has a vision of a car.
00:22:21
Speaker
And then we get back to the Helios crashing from the sky again.
00:22:27
Speaker
And her saying, I can't give up.
00:22:30
Speaker
And that's the end of the main story.
00:22:32
Speaker
We get another Sisyphus with Sisyphus learning how to build a truck for a little trolley for his boulder.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:45
Speaker
And then he gets to the top of the mountain.
00:22:49
Speaker
And Zeus says to him, so you still haven't understood anything.
00:22:53
Speaker
And Sisyphus hops on the boulder and rides it down having fun.
00:22:58
Speaker
And he says, maybe just the first couple thousand times.
00:23:02
Speaker
And there's a bunch of pictures of him and the rock being happy together.
00:23:05
Speaker
Which...
00:23:07
Speaker
Is the who was it that said we one must imagine Sisyphus to be happy?
00:23:13
Speaker
I don't remember.
00:23:13
Speaker
But as far as I'm concerned, the Internet, I that's that's one I've only ever seen on the Internet.
00:23:21
Speaker
Sisyphus to be happy.
00:23:24
Speaker
Who is that?
00:23:26
Speaker
Camus.
00:23:26
Speaker
There we go.
00:23:29
Speaker
So that's that's returnal fawn hysteria.
00:23:32
Speaker
There's like.
00:23:34
Speaker
There's not a lot there in terms of, I mean, you can parse a lot from the imagery, but in terms of what happens, it's very brief for a 100-page graphic novel.
00:23:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:23:50
Speaker
I would, no, go on.
00:23:52
Speaker
Sorry.
00:23:52
Speaker
Go ahead.
00:23:52
Speaker
I just want to hear, I want to hear what you, your thoughts are before I spoil things.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny because on one hand, first and foremost, the art is outstanding.
00:24:06
Speaker
We have we have we have covered graphic novels on this show that have had some lazy slash sloppy art.
00:24:15
Speaker
And this is absolutely not one of them.
00:24:18
Speaker
The artwork is really dynamic.
00:24:20
Speaker
It's very kinetic, which is great because you're having all of these action moments and you can see the speed and the intensity of it.
00:24:29
Speaker
I loved the artwork in this.
00:24:31
Speaker
Honestly, probably maybe the best artwork of any of things, any of the graphic novels we've read so far.
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:37
Speaker
It's just that solid.
00:24:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:40
Speaker
I've never played Returnal.
00:24:42
Speaker
So I go into that completely blind and come out the other side, not at all sure what just happened.
00:24:54
Speaker
And on one hand, on one hand, that kind of makes me go, well, why are they?
00:24:59
Speaker
Why would they do that?
00:25:00
Speaker
If you're trying to, it's an old game at this point.
00:25:03
Speaker
Why wouldn't you try to like,
00:25:08
Speaker
explain it a little better so that people like me could go, Oh shit, I want to play that game or something like that.
00:25:13
Speaker
Right.
00:25:14
Speaker
But on the other hand, there is an aspect of the mystery of what has happened combined with some really intriguing moments
00:25:26
Speaker
artwork and and just snippets of a story here and there that honestly could probably be just as effective in that sense.
00:25:36
Speaker
So I'm of two minds about it.
00:25:39
Speaker
I think if I had a system that that could handle a game like Returnal, I would be I would be looking into grabbing a copy at this point.
00:25:46
Speaker
Sure.
00:25:47
Speaker
Sure.
00:25:48
Speaker
Uh, but yeah, I think it's, I I'm, I'm intrigued to hear from you more about the story itself.
Authors' Perspective and Graphic Novel Impact
00:25:54
Speaker
Uh, but I think that, you know, I was, I was looking through these, these authors and stuff.
00:25:58
Speaker
And one of them, I think it's, uh, Igor Lomov on, uh, on, on one of his social media pages.
00:26:03
Speaker
He was talking about how, like, he was talking about projects he's working on.
00:26:07
Speaker
And this is before this came out.
00:26:08
Speaker
And he was talking about how excited he is that he is getting to expand on the storyline that already exists in, um,
00:26:18
Speaker
in the game of Returnal, which is really cool because it tells me a lot about, you know, it tells me that this is clearly part of the game, but it's also there's more to it there, which I love.
00:26:32
Speaker
So, yeah, I thought it was definitely worth reading.
00:26:37
Speaker
But I would say without a shadow of a doubt, you're going to get way more out of it if you've played the game.
00:26:43
Speaker
No question.
00:26:44
Speaker
100% and this is one of the few books that I would say falls less into the adaptation category and more into the tie-in.
00:26:56
Speaker
It is a companion piece to the game.
00:27:01
Speaker
It is not meant to be read necessarily on its own outside of the context of the game.
00:27:07
Speaker
There's too much in this.
00:27:10
Speaker
that is referenced that you can kind of start to grasp a little bit of what it's referring to.
Exploring Returnal's Story and Metaphors
00:27:19
Speaker
But I don't think if you're not, if you're not familiar with the game itself and you want to play it, probably stop listening.
00:27:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:29
Speaker
Because the story of Returnal, and it's still, I think it's up for a little bit of debate, but the story of Returnal is a woman named Selene who is trying to process a level of grief that is untenable.
00:27:51
Speaker
So...
00:27:56
Speaker
Here's kind of how the game plays out.
00:27:58
Speaker
There's four acts in the game.
00:27:59
Speaker
The first two acts you go through and at the end of the second act, you find the signal, the white shadow signal, and you return home.
00:28:11
Speaker
You're able to like, the white shadow is preventing you from contacting for help, right?
00:28:17
Speaker
From reaching outside the planet.
00:28:20
Speaker
You contact help.
00:28:22
Speaker
And you return home.
00:28:24
Speaker
And then in a cut scene, you live out your entire life.
00:28:29
Speaker
Selene lives a full life.
00:28:33
Speaker
She dies, you know, in her 80s.
00:28:36
Speaker
So like another 50 years of life, she's put in the ground, buried, dies and wakes up again on the planet.
00:28:47
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:28:49
Speaker
It's like that arcade game in Rick and Morty where you're in the life and you're like, oh, I don't know, man.
00:28:57
Speaker
You died in your garage.
00:28:58
Speaker
That's weird.
00:28:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:29:02
Speaker
Oh, he's burning his social security card.
00:29:04
Speaker
He's off the grid.
00:29:06
Speaker
He's off the grid.
00:29:12
Speaker
Let me destroy your Roy score.
00:29:15
Speaker
I want to play that game.
00:29:16
Speaker
I want to play that game.
00:29:19
Speaker
You know what, though?
00:29:21
Speaker
Maybe I'm playing it now.
00:29:21
Speaker
Maybe I'm playing it right now.
00:29:23
Speaker
Shit.
00:29:23
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:29:24
Speaker
This is what they say, what they mean when you're living in a simulation.
00:29:28
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:29:30
Speaker
Then you die and you take the helmet off.
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:33
Speaker
You're in an alien arcade.
00:29:35
Speaker
You started a podcast with your friend, Kevin.
00:29:37
Speaker
All right.
00:29:38
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:38
Speaker
There's a choice.
00:29:40
Speaker
You want to play again?
00:29:41
Speaker
We still got a half hour.
00:29:43
Speaker
Where am I?
00:29:44
Speaker
Where are my kids?
00:29:48
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:29:49
Speaker
That is wild.
00:29:50
Speaker
That's some wild shit.
00:29:51
Speaker
So then you go through the next parts of the game, and you fight this one boss who is playing a song, and it's this magnificent boss that is at a gigantic organ, and it's playing this amazing song, but the leitmotif of the song is Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult.
00:30:16
Speaker
That's hilarious.
00:30:19
Speaker
When you're fighting the boss, you're like, that sounds really familiar.
00:30:23
Speaker
What is that?
00:30:25
Speaker
As you continue, kind of things start to get a little bit weirder and weirder.
00:30:31
Speaker
And at a certain point, you see, when you're on the ice level, you just see...
00:30:36
Speaker
like a Volvo station wagon just sitting in underneath the ice.
00:30:42
Speaker
And when you get to the end of the game,
00:30:49
Speaker
the visions and things are starting to like come closer and closer together.
00:30:55
Speaker
And you realize, and this is just one reading of Returnal.
00:30:58
Speaker
And I think it's kind of the, it's the more obvious one.
00:31:02
Speaker
And I know there's ways you can go deeper into Returnal is that the entire game is the last moments of Celine's life that
00:31:13
Speaker
on earth.
00:31:14
Speaker
She was never an astronaut, but her mother was.
00:31:18
Speaker
She has these images of her mother being an astronaut.
00:31:23
Speaker
She was driving her kid and something distracted her while she was driving and she drove off the road and the water, the car is filling with water.
00:31:34
Speaker
The radio is playing.
00:31:35
Speaker
Don't fear the Reaper by blue oyster cult.
00:31:38
Speaker
As during the last few moments of her, it's like the last synapses of her brain is firing off, creating as she's drowning, creating, creating,
00:31:50
Speaker
That's pretty cool.
00:31:52
Speaker
And that is why you see in the book, in this graphic novel, you see a child, the silhouette of a child holding a teddy bear and the headlights of a car.
00:32:07
Speaker
Right.
00:32:08
Speaker
Because that is the last thing that happens.
00:32:12
Speaker
But it's never spelled out.
00:32:14
Speaker
It's never actually spelled out.
00:32:17
Speaker
We see this.
00:32:18
Speaker
We see this, but is it?
00:32:21
Speaker
Is this actually what happened?
00:32:24
Speaker
It leaves, and this, in the graphic novel, also does not necessarily answer it.
00:32:30
Speaker
In fact, what's interesting is that at one point in Returnal, you shoot down yourself.
00:32:36
Speaker
You shoot the Helios down.
00:32:39
Speaker
Like you're responsible for the Helios crashing.
00:32:42
Speaker
And there is so, there is so much in Returnal above it being a mechanically pretty fucking awesome roguelike shooter.
00:32:52
Speaker
Right, right.
00:32:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:54
Speaker
It's got these really cool themes.
00:32:57
Speaker
And if you're you or anyone listening are interested in a more thorough analysis is I would go to Jacob Geller's channel.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yes.
00:33:13
Speaker
And watch Returnal is a hell of our own creation.
00:33:18
Speaker
which talks a lot about, it talks about Returnal, but it also talks about I have no mouth and I must scream.
00:33:29
Speaker
And Groundhog Day is referenced in there because they're all part of it.
00:33:33
Speaker
Sure.
00:33:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:33
Speaker
So...
00:33:37
Speaker
That video is a 30 minute video on the plot of Returnal and it's good.
00:33:47
Speaker
You had me at go to Jacob Geller's YouTube page.
00:33:50
Speaker
Go forth to Jacob Geller's YouTube page and watch the video on Returnal because it's good and it's
00:34:00
Speaker
But if you're not interested in any of that or you are and you're still listening for some reason after I've spoiled chunks of the story, go play Returnal before.
00:34:15
Speaker
Go do it.
00:34:17
Speaker
What are you doing?
00:34:18
Speaker
What are you doing?
00:34:19
Speaker
What are you doing?
00:34:20
Speaker
It's not an easy game, by the way.
00:34:21
Speaker
It is, in fact, a very hard game.
00:34:23
Speaker
So it's got some souls like kind of shit to it, doesn't it?
00:34:27
Speaker
Or no, it is.
00:34:30
Speaker
I wouldn't say souls like.
00:34:31
Speaker
I would say it is a roguelike bullet hell.
00:34:37
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:34:37
Speaker
OK, great.
00:34:38
Speaker
OK.
00:34:38
Speaker
So there's a lot of projectiles flying at any given time.
00:34:42
Speaker
So it's more about it's more about bullet hell dodging and stuff like that.
00:34:48
Speaker
I gotcha.
00:34:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:34:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:34:50
Speaker
That does make sense.
00:34:50
Speaker
Jesus Christ.
00:34:52
Speaker
And with that, that's so funny because with that style of game, you know, is it a third person game?
00:35:00
Speaker
Third person action bullet hell roguelike.
00:35:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:03
Speaker
That's not, that's not a bullet.
00:35:04
Speaker
Hell is not something I often associate with.
00:35:08
Speaker
A third person action game that's really interesting.
00:35:11
Speaker
Third person action or like it's like really dark sci-fi.
00:35:17
Speaker
Right.
00:35:18
Speaker
Right.
00:35:18
Speaker
Mixed with all this, like a really unsettling, deep personal story of sadness and it's a fantastic game.
00:35:30
Speaker
I wish it had gotten more of more laurels when it came out.
00:35:36
Speaker
But I think, I think it's, you know, just enough to like that people are, I know Sony, I think acquired house Mark like later that year.
00:35:46
Speaker
So yeah.
00:35:48
Speaker
Anyway, I love when big bombastic games like that are allowed to have those kind of dark personal stories.
00:35:55
Speaker
Yes.
00:35:56
Speaker
Yes.
00:35:56
Speaker
And it is a bombastic game.
00:35:59
Speaker
You can just play it and not pay attention to any of the story at all.
00:36:04
Speaker
And I know I'm pretty sure people have, but.
00:36:07
Speaker
Oh, sure.
00:36:10
Speaker
It's worth digging a little bit deeper into it if you want to learn, if you want some more of that weird stuff.
00:36:16
Speaker
Nice.
00:36:17
Speaker
Yeah.
Phil's Gaming Experience with Conscript
00:36:18
Speaker
So shorter episode tonight, shorter book coverage tonight, because I mean, yeah, yeah, it's shorter thing.
00:36:26
Speaker
So that leaves me one question.
00:36:31
Speaker
What are you playing?
00:36:33
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:36:34
Speaker
Well, I'm still on my UFO 50 bullshit, but I'm not going to get into that.
00:36:39
Speaker
Actually, the main thing that I have been playing, because we've reached the point in the year where I'm trying very hard to get back to some games that maybe I started and never finished.
00:36:51
Speaker
And, you know, while we're making the game of the year list and everything like that.
00:36:56
Speaker
So I have been playing a lot of Conscript, actually.
00:36:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:37:01
Speaker
which I have just been having such a good time with it.
00:37:06
Speaker
I stopped playing it in the end because I had originally started playing it on a work trip on my Switch.
00:37:14
Speaker
And so when you go back home after that, everything's
00:37:16
Speaker
different and you know you just put everything away and and i kind of forgotten about it um and i got back into it i was surprised because we were discussing this before about how some games getting back into them uh can be a lot of work yeah um
00:37:32
Speaker
I was surprised at how, because I finished the first chapter of the game before I came home.
00:37:39
Speaker
And so getting back into it, I was surprised at how easily I was able to pick back up from where I left off.
00:37:47
Speaker
Right.
00:37:48
Speaker
It's just a wonderful, it's still a wonderful, like, Resident Evil-like kind of thing where, and we've talked about this before, but for anyone who isn't aware, this is a indie World War I game.
00:38:03
Speaker
That touts itself as a survival horror, which it absolutely is.
00:38:06
Speaker
And it has the kind of grim atmosphere.
00:38:10
Speaker
And especially after playing Amnesia the Bunker last year, I think because you played this one, too.
00:38:18
Speaker
We were both ready for like a monster to show up at some point, but it never does.
00:38:25
Speaker
The monster is humanity.
00:38:27
Speaker
And you are this French conscript running back and forth through the trenches.
00:38:32
Speaker
I think if there's any and just, yeah, you've got to collect the keys to open this place, to get over here, to get these weapons to do this.
00:38:38
Speaker
and it's it's your very very standard kind of resident evil style sort of thing i think if there was one thing to say against it it would be that the level of backtracking uh borders on uh uh uh you know uh uh metroidvania yeah it's it's insane
00:38:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's actually why I stopped playing it the second time is that I was just like, all right.
00:39:04
Speaker
Okay, I'm all the way over here.
00:39:05
Speaker
I'm like, I gotta go all the way back over there.
00:39:07
Speaker
And it's not like a Metroidvania where you have fun traversal mechanics that make you move faster.
00:39:15
Speaker
No, you're just running.
00:39:18
Speaker
You're just a dude.
00:39:20
Speaker
You're just a dude running.
00:39:21
Speaker
Who gets out of breath.
00:39:22
Speaker
Yep.
00:39:23
Speaker
Yep.
00:39:24
Speaker
And I totally get that.
00:39:26
Speaker
And how much it has worn on me really depends on the mood I'm in.
00:39:32
Speaker
Sure.
00:39:33
Speaker
But I have resolved myself to play this through the end, and it's no –
00:39:42
Speaker
I'm looking forward to it.
00:39:43
Speaker
Let me put it that way.
00:39:44
Speaker
It's not I'm not going, oh, I have to beat this thing because I paid money for it and I better beat the thing.
00:39:49
Speaker
No, I'm enjoying it.
00:39:52
Speaker
It's a nice game to play on the Switch, which if you're like me, you only ever use as a portable mobile device.
Kevin's Thoughts on Indiana Jones Game
00:39:59
Speaker
Um, this kind of game really does.
00:40:02
Speaker
It's suited for, for that sort of thing.
00:40:05
Speaker
Um, so I'm enjoying it.
00:40:06
Speaker
Uh, still really, really getting a kick out of it.
00:40:08
Speaker
And I'm glad I came back to it, uh, before the year ended to be completely honest.
00:40:12
Speaker
So, um, I haven't gotten to any, many demos.
00:40:16
Speaker
Uh, that's been, that's basically been my main thing lately.
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:19
Speaker
Uh, what about you?
00:40:20
Speaker
What are you playing?
00:40:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:22
Speaker
Pretty exclusively.
00:40:23
Speaker
I've been playing Indiana Jones and the great circle.
00:40:27
Speaker
Is that still treating you good or you liked that?
00:40:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:30
Speaker
It's treating me pretty well.
00:40:32
Speaker
I got to say, love it.
00:40:34
Speaker
Hey, I, I, I,
00:40:38
Speaker
I talked about it last week, right?
00:40:40
Speaker
I think I'm pretty sure I did.
00:40:42
Speaker
Yeah, you had just started at that point.
00:40:43
Speaker
I think it is a wonderful game.
00:40:45
Speaker
I'm in the second area of the game.
00:40:48
Speaker
So now I'm punching Nazis in the first area.
00:40:51
Speaker
I was punching fascists.
00:40:54
Speaker
So I've gone from fascists to Nazis.
00:40:57
Speaker
What's the difference?
00:40:58
Speaker
You might ask.
00:40:59
Speaker
Well, in this case, we are the fascists.
00:41:05
Speaker
A fascist is only a fascist if it comes from the fascist region of Italy.
00:41:12
Speaker
Otherwise, it's just a sparkling Nazi.
00:41:16
Speaker
Mostly it's the uniform.
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:20
Speaker
No, it's because the fascists were – it was like the fascists refer to the Italians and the Nazis refer to the Germans.
00:41:27
Speaker
But now fascist is kind of expanded into be talking about the form of government.
00:41:35
Speaker
So yes –
00:41:37
Speaker
You go from the black shirts, the fascist black shirts to the Nazis in, in, in world two, where you are in Egypt and, uh, going underneath the pyramids and going underneath the Sphinx and solving puzzles.
00:41:52
Speaker
Uh, the Egypt level has a lot of fun, like classic indie type stuff where it's like, okay, now I gotta, I gotta find the mirror and rotate it.
00:42:01
Speaker
So the mirror, the light hits the thing and then the door opens.
00:42:06
Speaker
Um,
00:42:08
Speaker
And a really cool recurring like trap enemy of scorpions that are so basically if you don't have a torch on you in some areas, scorpions will start like crawling up out of the ground.
00:42:23
Speaker
Oh, that's good.
00:42:24
Speaker
That's good.
00:42:27
Speaker
And you have to like take the torch and like start swinging it at the scorpions to scare them off.
00:42:32
Speaker
Nice.
00:42:32
Speaker
Or else they only take a little bit of health, but when there's like hundreds of them, you know,
00:42:39
Speaker
It adds up.
00:42:40
Speaker
I imagine psychologically it could fuck psychologically.
00:42:43
Speaker
It's not good either.
00:42:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:46
Speaker
So yeah, you, you it's, it's, it's a lot of fun.
00:42:50
Speaker
I think I'm, I think there's one more area after Egypt or Giza to be specific.
00:42:57
Speaker
And then, yeah, it's, it's up there on my game of the year list.
00:43:02
Speaker
Nice.
00:43:03
Speaker
100% because, and it's a late, you know, late comer, uh,
00:43:07
Speaker
He's a comer.
Upcoming Game of the Year Discussions
00:43:09
Speaker
I don't know if anybody else knows, remembers this video of Donald Trump talking about Rick Perry back in like 2012.
00:43:18
Speaker
And, uh,
00:43:22
Speaker
Donald Trump is he's like going through all the Republican candidates who would run against like Barack Obama.
00:43:29
Speaker
And he's like, oh, you got to you got to watch out for Rick Perry.
00:43:33
Speaker
And he meant to say up and comer.
00:43:36
Speaker
Right.
00:43:36
Speaker
Right.
00:43:37
Speaker
Rick Perry.
00:43:38
Speaker
He's a comer.
00:43:42
Speaker
I mean, if anyone would know, to be fair.
00:43:47
Speaker
Oh God.
00:43:48
Speaker
Um, I think I have that video saved somewhere.
00:43:51
Speaker
I know, uh, uh, Cody Johnson, Johnson, uh, uh, saved all of, cause it was Donald Trump used to have a YouTube channel where he would post these weird fucking videos talking about things.
00:44:06
Speaker
Holy shit.
00:44:07
Speaker
Years ago.
00:44:08
Speaker
And it's, it's gone.
00:44:09
Speaker
It's all gone now.
00:44:10
Speaker
He like took it all down.
00:44:11
Speaker
Right.
00:44:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:12
Speaker
Cause it's fucking ridiculous stuff.
00:44:14
Speaker
Um,
00:44:16
Speaker
That's never stopped him before, but I get it.
00:44:17
Speaker
Never stopped him before.
00:44:18
Speaker
But yeah, Cody Johnson saved all of it.
00:44:21
Speaker
He's a comer.
00:44:25
Speaker
Rick Perry, he's a comer.
00:44:27
Speaker
He's a comer.
00:44:27
Speaker
And so is this game.
00:44:29
Speaker
It's definitely a comer on my game of the year list.
00:44:32
Speaker
Nice.
00:44:33
Speaker
So it's getting up there.
00:44:35
Speaker
And by the time this episode comes out tomorrow, I think there should be another episode.
00:44:42
Speaker
Should be another episode that out with Vidya Game Apocalypse.
00:44:49
Speaker
Yes.
00:44:49
Speaker
Where we guested on for their game of the year episode to talk about Ballotro.
00:44:55
Speaker
So check that out over on their channel.
00:44:59
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:45:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:02
Speaker
But other than that, this is our last regular episode of the year.
00:45:07
Speaker
Next year, we'll have next week, we'll have a we'll just have a compilation of all the bonus episodes that we push out for the non-patron Patreon folks.
00:45:18
Speaker
You get them.
00:45:19
Speaker
eventually you just gotta wait to the to the like end of the year uh to get them so it'll be a nice chunky episode of stuff that you haven't heard before but not stuff that phil and i have to record because guess what it's christmas next wednesday and if you're listening to us during christmas uh i just want to say thank you because it you should be you should be you should be um