Transcript
Speaker: Has someone has someone worked Quint quotes into the Doom soundtrack?
Speaker: Because that feels like a missed opportunity.
Speaker: That does feel like a missed opportunity.
Speaker: You know how this feels like a missed opportunity?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixeling.
Speaker: I'm trying to I'm trying to actually surprise you.
Speaker: I'm always I'm waiting for it at all times.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: You're gonna have to like, we're gonna have to like do, cause we're gonna have to do one of those things where you and I are just sitting here shooting the shit at just, how was your week?
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: How was yours?
Speaker: And like, if you, if you like look over it, I'm just kind of like hand facing my hand, kind of like looking off camera.
Speaker: That's your moment.
Speaker: That's my cue.
Speaker: That's when I'm going to do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, well, you know, Phil, what isn't like that?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey, everybody's like, yo, you son of a bitch.
Speaker: You got me.
Speaker: Oh, we are back with William C. Dietz's Halo, the Flood.
Speaker: Flood.
Speaker: This guy right here.
Speaker: He's a monster.
Speaker: I played through, I finished Halo 1 recently.
Speaker: Played through it.
Speaker: Was that your first time through Halo 1?
Speaker: First time completing it, yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I had played it.
Speaker: I would say a dozen or so times years ago, just like starting it, never really sticking with it.
Speaker: But this time I actually beat it.
Speaker: And I got to say, this is the scariest that the flood will ever look.
Speaker: Because in the game, they just like little balloon men that are just going, ah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: They're not scary, but they're satisfying.
Speaker: They're satisfying.
Speaker: They pop.
Speaker: They're basically the enemy equivalent of popping bubble wrap.
Speaker: That's exactly what they are.
Speaker: And your thumb's the shotgun.
Speaker: And your thumb is a shotgun.
Speaker: No, but you're right.
Speaker: No matter how much they remaster it, you can't really make the flood all that terrifying.
Speaker: No, and I was switching back and forth because I was playing the anniversary edition because I have the Master Chief collection.
Speaker: And I was switching back and forth between like, all right, so what did the graphics used to look like back in the day versus the remastered version?
Speaker: And
Speaker: you know back in was 2001 or whatever the flood just looked like yellow balloons and in the remastered anniversary version they look like like a forest green balloon yeah but balloons nonetheless but balloons nonetheless yeah the one thing I'll give the remastered version is that the combat forms
Speaker: look creepier like in the original version they just looked like people with um yeah you know the stuff that you spray into walls um yeah like uh yeah insulation the insulation the but like the insulation that you spray on and then it starts inflating sure um they looked like people that had gotten accidentally gotten that sprayed all over them yeah in the original version um it
Speaker: Like they got insulation bombed or something like that.
Speaker: The people in the anniversary version, there is some actual interesting gore and viscera to be seen on the model.
Speaker: So I thought that was kind of cool.
Speaker: It was more in line with how they're described in this book.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And obviously, what that tells me is that was always the intent, obviously, but 2001, they were a little...
Speaker: even a triple triple a game uh in 2001 still had its limitations still had to only hint could only hint at the gore and viscera of uh of uh of a infection by the flood yeah a sentient infection for all intents and purposes it definitely doesn't look like
Speaker: that definitely doesn't look like that.
Speaker: No, the little tentacles, the tentacles are, are so tiny in the game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're definitely not this size.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Um, now if the flood was like this, this would be terrifying.
Speaker: It was just like a, a, like a literal flood of tentacles coming at you.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Sentient tentacles.
Speaker: There are plenty of games that did that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, but enough about your hentai collection.
Speaker: Hey, for the last time, we're making a separate podcast for that soft topic.
Speaker: Call it Hentai Lit.
Speaker: It's not a very good name.
Speaker: Hentai-in.
Speaker: Hentai-in.
Speaker: Hey, I'm talking Hentai.
Speaker: Speaking of that, did you hear about the Tifa thing happening in the Italian Senate?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: There was a porn of Tifa from Final Fantasy VII Remake.
Speaker: Somebody made a porn using the character model.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As you do.
Speaker: As you do.
Speaker: Rule 34 on the internet.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It exists out there.
Speaker: And accidentally, during a presentation in the Italian Senate,
Speaker: This video started playing of Tifa.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Was it an accident?
Speaker: I have to assume it was an accident.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I haven't looked into it that far, but since then there's been all these memes with like Tifa wearing like Italian flag shirts.
Speaker: As she should.
Speaker: As you should and as you do.
Speaker: As you do.
Speaker: No, I won't fully accept our own fame until there's Rule 34 stuff about Pixel Lit.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And I just love you as a friend, but that has to exist for us to know that we've made it.
Speaker: I expect a slash fiction eventually.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: And if there ever is one, we'll cover it on the show.
Speaker: We'll cover it on the show.
Speaker: It'll be an episode.
Speaker: We'll review it.
Speaker: We'll push right through the awkwardness and really engage with the material.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Just really go into the hypotheticals, the meta, the backstory.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Character motivations.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: But speaking of slash fiction, we left off in chapter nine.
Speaker: Chapter nine.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So we've got Master Chief in the Marines.
Speaker: They are fighting the flood outside of the ruins.
Speaker: We're finally out of out of the origin point of these things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they have been fully released.
Speaker: They end up fighting.
Speaker: We get introduced to one of the more famous monster versions of the flood, the explodey type, which.
Speaker: The explodey type.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you've played a PVE game with zombies or anything else, really.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's the explodey type.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Left 4 Dead has the, was it the Boomer, I want to say, is what it's called in Left 4 Dead.
Speaker: We faced off against some of those last week with Fireteam.
Speaker: When we played Fireteam, Aliens Fireteam on Twitch, there's Explodee Aliens.
Speaker: There's Explodee Aliens.
Speaker: Which seems like, that seems like a lot of work to create
Speaker: Like, what would that have come from?
Speaker: Like, would a facehugger attach itself to TNT or something like that?
Speaker: It's like, all right, let's get the 40k lore out of the way.
Speaker: Tyranids, which were my favorite army, which are heavily based on xenomorphs, they do this whole thing where they consume biomass and then they build new babies that are custom-made to the threat that they're dealing with.
Speaker: Xenomorphs don't have that in their lore, so a xenomorph built to explode is just like...
Speaker: Like, a facehugger on a really, really, really fat guy.
Speaker: Like, that's the only thing I can think.
Speaker: It's, like, just full of methane.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's a weird choice.
Speaker: It is a weird choice.
Speaker: A cow, maybe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Facehug a cow.
Speaker: A cow's got a lot of methane.
Speaker: Yeah, I could see that.
Speaker: I could see that.
Speaker: And then another facehugger, you know, does a book of matches.
Speaker: And they come together.
Speaker: They come together.
Speaker: Like Keymaster and Gatekeeper.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So we all know Sigourney Weaver is the book of matches.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's hot.
Speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, she's hot.
Speaker: It all works.
Speaker: It all.
Speaker: It's anyway.
Speaker: Our metaphor is sound.
Speaker: Our metaphor is sound.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Citation.
Speaker: Trust me, bro.
Speaker: Trust me.
Speaker: Yeah, so basically Fohammer tells them they got to get up.
Speaker: They got to get up because she does not have anywhere to land in the swamp.
Speaker: So they got to get on top of a tower that they see.
Speaker: And by the time Master Chief and his cadre of Marines get to the tower, it's only Master Chief.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: They all die on the way to the tower.
Speaker: It's pretty much him by himself and like, and, and, and a bunch of Sentinels show up to start burning up the flood.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: These robots, basically these robots that we're going to learn more about later for those of you who haven't played.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: First Halo game.
Speaker: So they, so they get into the chief basically gets into this tower and he meets the,
Speaker: Probably one of the most annoying characters in Halo lore.
Speaker: I mean, I think he's supposed to be funny, but I do not enjoy literally any second of him.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: 343 Guilty Spark, also known as the Monitor, also known in Halo 2.
Speaker: The Covenant calls him the Oracle.
Speaker: It's a lot of very lofty names.
Speaker: A lot of lofty nicknames for basically...
Speaker: Yeah, he's basically if C-3PO was a little bit sassier.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If C-3PO was Elon Musk, then we'd have 343 Guilty Spark.
Speaker: And then just a just he's more or less a floating eyeball of of like cameras.
Speaker: So, yeah, Guilty Spark basically says, oh, you the flood, the floods out.
Speaker: No, we got to do something about it.
Speaker: You're the you're the reclaimer.
Speaker: So you're going to go help me do deal this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Keeps calling him the reclaimer.
Speaker: Yeah, and basically teleports Master Chief and Foehammer starts flipping out because Master Chief is vanished now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She does not have a signal.
Speaker: And meanwhile, back to Alphabase.
Speaker: Yeah, where the legend of McKay's badassery has spread.
Speaker: Like, it's actually a really effective scene because...
Speaker: McKay is like marching through alpha base and all of the Marines around her.
Speaker: Basically anyone who has a spare pair of arms is digging grapes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, uh, for the covenant, for the dead Marines, for everybody, just to bury everybody.
Speaker: And, uh, every time she walked past a different group of Marines, they whisper out what about what a bad-ass she is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And because of her able to, you know, think fast and fight back in the last battle.
Speaker: But but she is not doing OK.
Speaker: No, she's not sleeping.
Speaker: She's not all right.
Speaker: She's not all right.
Speaker: Still pretty haunted by the whole thing.
Speaker: And we I feel like we get the first like hint at Silva being kind of a piece of shit.
Speaker: A little bit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He was already kind of a piece of shit.
Speaker: But McKay.
Speaker: So there's a moment here where McKay has literally been up all night trying to fix the base.
Speaker: And Silva's like, well, somebody's got to run the base at 730 in the morning and it's not going to be me.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: good news good news so like basically mckay has to just go and sleep for two hours and then wake up and be base commander while silva gets gets a full eight right pretty much
Speaker: So and we're and McKay on top of that to deal with everything else, McKay is getting basically reports that the attack on Alpha Base was in search of Master Chief.
Speaker: And so basically for the first time, the Silva we know already didn't really care for Master Chief.
Speaker: He did not care for it.
Speaker: Yeah, we didn't get a lot of sass from McKay, though.
Speaker: But this is the first time that McKay starts to see
Speaker: master chief as a liability instead of help because she's you know all these people wouldn't have died on her watch if they weren't looking if the enemy wasn't looking for master chief yeah exactly um so then we jump back to master chief who is uh de-teleporting
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They do an interesting little bit there where it's like literally describing like him being put back together piece by piece and how like nauseous that makes him and everything like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think it would have been a nice touch if if Master Chief actually threw up.
Speaker: But he's too perfect to throw up.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: I mean, come on.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: Now, he sees he sees a guilty spark and the first thing he does is just unload a clip on him.
Speaker: Like, Jesus Christ, John.
Speaker: Like.
Speaker: Maybe, maybe, maybe Cortana was right to call you.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Because the first thing he does is like, and the bullets are just pinging off of him harmlessly.
Speaker: And so, yeah, we get this is the this is the part of the chapter where we get a bit of a more lowdown on the flood.
Speaker: Guilty Spark seems happy that the flood is alive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: His job is basically to contain and monitor the flood.
Speaker: And he's kind of impressed that the flood is still has survived.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's like, oh, they went into hibernation.
Speaker: That's kind of neat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When their food disappeared, they just they just fell asleep.
Speaker: yeah and and it's been and and guilty spark has been doing this by the way for over a hundred thousand years uh we find out which might explain why he's basically insane he's just laughing to himself giggles several times throughout the next couple chapters he just says i am very smart to himself i'm a genius i'm very smart
Speaker: I'm genius.
Speaker: It's Elon Musk and C-3PO.
Speaker: Elon Musk, C-3PO, and you have 343 Guilty Spark.
Speaker: I'm so smart.
Speaker: I mean, and I think the dead giveaway was later on when Guilty Spark announces that he's going to be guest starring on Joe Rogan.
Speaker: I think that was the real, like, we know what you're doing, Deets.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: With this character.
Speaker: He's going on Rogan.
Speaker: He's going to talk about viruses.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And horse paste.
Speaker: Horse paste, exactly.
Speaker: And how you should use that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is where the explodey aliens come from.
Speaker: That's where the explodey aliens come from.
Speaker: The explodey aliens come from Joe Rogan's poop.
Speaker: Well, yes.
Speaker: I mean, there's a Joe Rogan poop to explode alien pipeline.
Speaker: It is literally a pipeline.
Speaker: It is literally a pipeline.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Into a pipe.
Speaker: Into a pipe.
Speaker: Out of a pipe.
Speaker: Out of a pipe.
Speaker: I really, I don't feel good about that joke.
Speaker: I don't either, but we've, Kevin, we're here.
Speaker: We're here and we just have to live with the facts.
Speaker: We just have to do this.
Speaker: We have to push through.
Speaker: That's that's canon now.
Speaker: That's part of the story.
Speaker: It's part of the highs and lows, the highs and lows.
Speaker: So the one of the things that I found interesting is that is for containing the flood.
Speaker: Guilty Spark mentions to Master Chief like, oh, well, for something like doing a containment job on the flood, you should have a class 12 combat skin.
Speaker: And like yours, yours registers as a class two, which is unsuited for this kind of work.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And Master Chief is like, wait, what?
Speaker: There's something six times more powerful than my armor.
Speaker: It just kind of leaves it at that.
Speaker: Yeah, it just leaves it that, but it's basically like a hint that, you know, the Forerunners had some pretty intense gear.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, that's exactly what that has meant to show is just how badass these guys were 100,000 years ago.
Speaker: Some very Atlantis kind of style lore building there.
Speaker: Right, exactly.
Speaker: There is...
Speaker: And I'll be honest, this is where I feel like the book starts to come off the rails a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think I know what you're getting at here.
Speaker: Because what follows in the Master Chief segments is literally just almost a beat for beat retelling of
Speaker: of the levels like the library like there is there is so much stuff about him wait like literally in the game where anytime you had to wait for guilty spark to open a door that is i think almost every time is reflected in this in the sequence of events yeah and it's like he had to stop and he had to fight some flood and then the door opened and he continued and
Speaker: This is one of those scenes where I think the artistic license and we always talk about how you don't know how much leeway the author was given to deviate.
Speaker: I think there I think this is one of those scenes where it's like, yeah, it doesn't have to be because I found there's two there's a couple levels that I found particularly tedious in the first first Halo.
Speaker: One was the control room level, which is basically it's like the you're going from the through the valley to the valley to the valley.
Speaker: And then I didn't I didn't find that one.
Speaker: And then you go through and reverse, by the way, at the end of the game.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: You totally redo.
Speaker: You go all the way back through that.
Speaker: Those levels again.
Speaker: And the library, I don't.
Speaker: Was so bored by the library because it was the same thing over and over again.
Speaker: You're down a hallway.
Speaker: You had to stop the flood attack you.
Speaker: And then seeing it in print in this in in these sections.
Speaker: Was mind numbing.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is mind numbing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I totally agree.
Speaker: And this isn't the only time this happens.
Speaker: No, it happens a couple of times where, and this is the, this is the, this is the thing that halo.
Speaker: The flood has most in common with worlds of power.
Speaker: Mega man too.
Speaker: I was going to say.
Speaker: It is frustrating to see.
Speaker: And you can kind of see the author kind of running out of ideas at certain points.
Speaker: Like, I think it was the last episode, we kind of complimented Dietz for being able to
Speaker: at least vary up some of the combat and try some things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There was a couple of scenes with master chief in the last episode where we talked about it, where it was like, Oh, he changed the scene up a little bit.
Speaker: Like there's some goofy shit that happens.
Speaker: Like, right.
Speaker: But I think he's seeing the light at the end of the tunnel here.
Speaker: I think he's seeing this book is almost over.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's get through this.
Speaker: And it becomes a bit of a slog.
Speaker: And this is the very beginning of it because yeah,
Speaker: Uh, master chief is attacked by the flood and they've got to make their way towards the so-called index.
Speaker: And, uh, they're just, and it's going to be a lot of move into this room, open a door attacked by the flood, move in the next room, open a door attacked by more flood.
Speaker: And sometimes we're being assisted by Sentinel bots.
Speaker: Uh, sometimes we're not.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: it's it we're gonna deal with that a lot here and it's just kind of it's a little rough there is one good moment where um where master chief finds the body of a marine of a random marine that it like at the midway point through the library
Speaker: Staff Sergeant Marvin Mobuto who basically got as far as Chief is now without the assistance of any of being a Spartan or the armor or anything like that and it was a nice moment because you know he takes the dog tags and he says I didn't know you Sarge but I sure as hell wish I had you must have been one hard ass son of a bitch and
Speaker: It wasn't much as eulogies goes, but he hoped that Sergeant Marvin Mobuto had been there to hear it.
Speaker: He would have proved it was a nice little moment.
Speaker: It kind of broke up the entire thing.
Speaker: But at the same time, it was like, I think it needed more moments like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I totally agree because the stuff that does work throughout this continues to be the fully original stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That interjects it.
Speaker: But it also means that we don't need three identical moments of the Master Chief fighting more Flood, opening a door, running through, fighting more Flood, opening a door.
Speaker: I know you do that in the game, but in the game you're doing it.
Speaker: And even in the game, it got dull.
Speaker: Even when you're actually doing the shooting, there is a part of you that was like, okay, guys, can we move on, please?
Speaker: This is the same goddamn thing.
Speaker: This level just keeps going, doesn't it?
Speaker: So why not consolidate it?
Speaker: Why not just have one moment like that and cut the book down by 10 pages?
Speaker: It is very padded at this point because of that.
Speaker: It stinks because Dietz has actually done a pretty decent job up until now.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: We jump over to McKay, who has decided to set a trap for the Covenant by using basically the burned out pelican that the Covenant had stolen and faking a crash site with a phony distress call.
Speaker: Basically, bodies and they strewn about bodies of fellow Marines that had been killed on the first attack.
Speaker: And they're basically just trying to see if they can draw the Covenant out to investigate the crash site.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And looking like it's going to work great.
Speaker: And we get a little we got a little description right before we got here where basically there is a great underneath the alpha alpha base that is the only thing separating them from the flood, essentially.
Speaker: And and I don't know if this is connected to that.
Speaker: We deal with it again later.
Speaker: But as the trap basically closes, the Covenant do indeed show up and start checking out this downed pelican and everything like that.
Speaker: And as soon as that happens, the flood and flood infected Marines and Covenant start making their way up and attacking both sides.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's basically for a moment, the Covenant and the Marines are working together for like a brief second.
Speaker: firing on the flood to try to like, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: This is our fight.
Speaker: You don't get to.
Speaker: it's it's it's their noel moment you know like world war one no man's land exactly have a snowball fight and take care of the flood and then we're gonna get back we're gonna get back to it yeah um and this is just a total aside it seems like had if if halo was not intended to be like a franchise right
Speaker: um and this is why a multi-part franchise some sometimes it's great because you want to tell a long story sometimes though you burn what could be a really good moment of resolution um because the flood is like this existential threat yeah that
Speaker: Had it been played out differently, could have been used to grant the covenant and the Marines some understanding and empathy of each other.
Speaker: You know, it could have been it could have been played out like that.
Speaker: But it's it's there are moments in Halo 2 and obviously the game the games continue and the lines get blurred between like there's covenant covenants that are races that are not totally happy with the arrangement and all that stuff.
Speaker: But it feels like that could have been a bigger thing in this story.
Speaker: This moment of the Covenant and Marines fighting together against the Flood.
Speaker: Especially because of how many liberties the author took with giving us the point of view of Covenant and even giving us sympathetic Covenant characters.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I'm totally in agreement with you because that's how I was thinking of it, too.
Speaker: Flood is the Earth killer.
Speaker: Flood is not... It's everything.
Speaker: It'll take everything.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's climate change.
Speaker: It's a play.
Speaker: It's an existential threat.
Speaker: It doesn't give a shit who you are, what side you're on.
Speaker: It just wants to eat.
Speaker: It just wants to devour.
Speaker: And yeah, and there's a brief moment we're going to get to later where Master Chief actually, he happens to catch a glimpse of Covenant Warriors fighting the Flood in what is clearly a last stand, that they're doomed.
Speaker: And he actually says he felt a kinship with them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Now, he doesn't help them.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: But he does sympathize, and I found that, but it doesn't really go further than that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In this book anyway.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it probably does in more like, I'm not the, I don't know a ton of Halo lore and it probably, I wouldn't be surprised if some of these thoughts are echoed later in future installments and books and whatever.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: It just feels like it could have been more of a thing right here and now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For the time being.
Speaker: For the time being.
Speaker: I totally agree.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the battle, basically,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just like you said, the covenant and, uh, and the Marines basically have to kill the flood until, uh, until they're gone.
Speaker: And then they're just going to fight.
Speaker: Then they're right back at it.
Speaker: And then the covenant eventually withdraws.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, and they, the, the Marines take one flood combat form, uh, prisoner, basically quote unquote prisoner.
Speaker: Clearly what clearly used to be a Marine.
Speaker: Yeah, and it was Jenkins, and Jenkins is the only Flood person that we actually get some point of view moments from because for whatever reason, it didn't fully destroy his mind.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We get a lot of struggling moments.
Speaker: It's Jenkins and keys.
Speaker: Basically.
Speaker: We got a lot of first person flood struggles, struggles.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's it's in, which is really interesting.
Speaker: It's really, really interesting stuff.
Speaker: It sucks that it's sandwiched between.
Speaker: And now master chief is going to keep going, killing flood.
Speaker: He's gonna, he's gonna, he finds an elevator.
Speaker: and rise it down to the index where he kills some more flood.
Speaker: And he's gonna take the index and they teleport.
Speaker: And they teleport.
Speaker: That's three pages we just summed up.
Speaker: That was it.
Speaker: That's all that happens in those three pages.
Speaker: And now we get to some good shit.
Speaker: We get we get a we get a keys moment.
Speaker: An internal short one, by the way, a real short one.
Speaker: He's is having memories stripped away.
Speaker: And he's trying it.
Speaker: Basically, the flood is trying to find out where Earth is.
Speaker: It's trying to probe his mind for the location of Earth.
Speaker: And he's really he's really fighting it.
Speaker: He's shoving it deep down.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the whole deal that they that he realizes is that the flood wants off of Halo and they're they're hoping that he's going to be able to show them how to get off of Halo, how to get to Earth.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, they they they want out, you know, because obviously they hate the flood, obviously.
Speaker: knows that it's being imprisoned on halo yeah and it wants to go out and find another planet with lots of delicious nutrient rich life people and life forms yeah uh and yeah and he's just he's just shoving his memories you know deep down inside where they can't get at him
Speaker: They can't get at him.
Speaker: He's doing the whole Village of the Damned in any other movie where they're fighting against psychic.
Speaker: He's got the Sherlock mind palace.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You ever see that scene in Scanners?
Speaker: Unless it's the guy's head exploding, then no.
Speaker: It is the guy's head exploding.
Speaker: You've never seen Scanners?
Speaker: I never saw Scanners.
Speaker: It's a solid...
Speaker: It's a movie.
Speaker: It's a thing that happened.
Speaker: It's a thing.
Speaker: It was a Cronenberg.
Speaker: It looks like Cronenberg.
Speaker: It's got a head exploding in the first five minutes.
Speaker: A really famous head exploding scene.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But anyway, yeah.
Speaker: They actually used a shotgun for that thing, didn't they?
Speaker: What did they use for it?
Speaker: They used, it was like a, I want to say it was a shotgun or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, it was like literally blowing this thing.
Speaker: Blowing like a model of the head apart.
Speaker: They took an extra and they blew his head off with a shotgun.
Speaker: They blew his head off.
Speaker: Yeah, it was a snuff film.
Speaker: That's how they got the effect.
Speaker: Scanners.
Speaker: Scanners is a snuff film.
Speaker: Movies were different back then.
Speaker: Movies were different back then.
Speaker: Anyway, yeah, Scanners, same thing.
Speaker: It's like trying to read your mind or something like that, and then one guy is resisting, and then he resists so hard that his head explodes.
Speaker: Boy, do I know that feeling.
Speaker: Fun fact, that guy is, the guy whose head explodes looks exactly like my godfather.
Speaker: That's got to get awkward.
Speaker: I don't know if he's ever seen scanners.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: Yeah, it's good for him.
Speaker: Best not to bring it up.
Speaker: Good for him.
Speaker: Good move.
Speaker: Good move, Godfather.
Speaker: Chief.
Speaker: Chief is back in the control room with 343 Guilty Spark.
Speaker: And we get just a boatload of Cortana sass in this scene.
Speaker: Oh, God, yes.
Speaker: She's back and she's pissed.
Speaker: She is pissed because the chief has just been helping Guilty Spark.
Speaker: And Cortana's like, do you even know what he wants to do?
Speaker: You're running around with the index.
Speaker: You're going to put it in the thing and you have no clue what it is.
Speaker: she is just like, she pulls the ultimate, she does this a lot, but this is like the ultimate put upon spouse moment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, like nineties angry put upon housewife.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like my man is a freaking idiot, but I love him, but I want to kill him.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: She is a nineties.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She is.
Speaker: She's the wife from a nineties sitcom.
Speaker: um where she is way too good uh way too attractive for the husband right uh way basically way too everything and the husband is just a lout you know right right she's yeah it's just 2000 and he's vincent d'onofrio and it
Speaker: Where is that sitcom?
Speaker: I want to see that one.
Speaker: Well, there's the Leia Romanian, Kevin James.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: But I want Vincent D'Onofrio.
Speaker: You want Vincent D'Onofrio.
Speaker: Specifically playing his character from Full Metal Jacket if he has survived.
Speaker: okay yeah change it he doesn't kill himself he spoilers for full metal jacket but also the movie is like 40 years old so for god's sake for god's sake it's 40 years old we can't we have to be allowed to say if you're listening to this podcast and haven't seen full metal jacket what are you doing with your life go see full metal jacket
Speaker: Go see Full Metal Lodge.
Speaker: And that's like the halfway point of the movie.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Yeah, it's not even the end.
Speaker: It's not even the end of the movie.
Speaker: No, I want a sitcom with Vincent D'Onofrio, equal parts stupid lout and PTSD riddled psychopath.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I want to see that.
Speaker: I'm going to write that.
Speaker: I'm going to make that.
Speaker: You're going to write that.
Speaker: Well, it's basically him as the kingpin.
Speaker: God, yeah, you're not wrong, actually.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: That's now headcanon.
Speaker: Pin is just what happens when Gomer Pyle makes it through NAMM.
Speaker: Makes it through NAMM.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh my.
Speaker: Kevin, you're a fucking genius.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: You embarrass me in front of Vanessa.
Speaker: It's done.
Speaker: So yeah, so Cortana basically tells Master Chief that she's like, because they've been trying to get the defenses of Halo activated.
Speaker: And because he's like, yeah, of course, I want Halo's defense systems activated.
Speaker: He's been helping me do it.
Speaker: And Cortana is like, do you know what they do?
Speaker: They don't kill the flood.
Speaker: They kill their food, which means humans covenant anything.
Speaker: that is on the on the halo gets eliminated so that the flood will go into hibernation and be contained so it's not going to blow up the flood it's going to blow up you you stupid jackass yeah and and you know i assume master chief his feelings are hurt again um because he's a but he's a barbarian so what does he want um so uh at this point though cortana has taken the index
Speaker: and like basically the the data of the index off of the little key and put it into herself like right she is the index now she like she is needed in order to fire the halo weapon um which also has like a range of whatever whatever it is 24 million square kilometers yeah it's like forever range
Speaker: It's a pretty big range.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: And yeah, so Master Chief like refuses to give, you know, Guilty Sparks like, give me the index, give me the index.
Speaker: Master Chief and Cortana say, get bent.
Speaker: And then Guilty Sparks is fine and orders the robot sentinels to kill them.
Speaker: So now you got to fight the robots.
Speaker: They got to fight the robots.
Speaker: They're not friends anymore.
Speaker: They're not friends anymore.
Speaker: Friendly robot.
Speaker: And that's the end of both chapter.
Speaker: That's the end of both chapter nine and section four.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then we jump into section five, which is called the two betrayals.
Speaker: And I just realized that the.
Speaker: that the sections are named after like the parts of the game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was like, Oh, cause I was playing the game and there's a level called the two betrayals.
Speaker: And I'm like, Oh, thank you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: No, I, same thing.
Speaker: So, and it just picks right up where we left off.
Speaker: Uh, master chief fighting himself, some sentinel robots.
Speaker: He's got some robots to fight off.
Speaker: Yeah, Cortana basically tells them they need to destroy Halo out now.
Speaker: That's basically the only way.
Speaker: You got to kill the flood.
Speaker: Kill the flood.
Speaker: You're going to destroy Halo, but we also have to get off of Halo.
Speaker: So we're going to destroy Halo and get off of it.
Speaker: And that is that is the plan.
Speaker: That is a super good plan.
Speaker: It's very simple.
Speaker: It's simple to execute.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they have a moment.
Speaker: They have a little moment.
Speaker: We haven't, we haven't seen them together in a while and they missed each other and they have this brief little miss you, missed you too.
Speaker: Love you.
Speaker: Love you back.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She lives in his brain for, for most, most part.
Speaker: So, you know, she's got a really kick-ass loft.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: rent controlled it's rent controlled yeah um basically though we get then a few pages upon pages of um
Speaker: So basically the level at this point is is Cortana has to.
Speaker: Has to.
Speaker: Get the has told Master Chief that they have to.
Speaker: There's like three power generators that they have to shut down.
Speaker: and that's they have to steal a Banshee and they're flying to the three power generators and she's modified Master Chief's shielding so that he can step in and it'll create an EMP and shut down the generator he has to disrupt it
Speaker: with the EMP and like normally that would kill him, but the EMP is going to neutralize the beam at the same time that he disrupts it.
Speaker: And that's not really a, it's kind of like them explaining away why in the video game you do exactly that thing.
Speaker: And it doesn't really go into it all that much in the game as I remember.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: No, it's just like I modified your shield so it'll create an EMP when you walk into the thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We do have a fun moment where he's like, the fuck you want me to do?
Speaker: And she says, you'll be fine.
Speaker: I'm almost sure of it.
Speaker: Which that's that.
Speaker: Oh, oh, that Cortana.
Speaker: Oh, that Cortana.
Speaker: She's, she's almost sure of it.
Speaker: She's almost sure of it.
Speaker: But that's the crazy thing is it's bananas, but I skipped.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: seven pages just now to describe that because six of them are master chief is fighting and there's there's yeah you remember how master chief had to fight his way up the pyramid now he's fighting his way down now he's fighting his way down the pyramid yeah he blows up a mortar tank with some rockets he takes a banshee and blows up a bunch of covenant elites yeah it's it's it's fine
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: If you played the level, you know what happens.
Speaker: If you didn't play the level, that's the thing.
Speaker: That's one of the things.
Speaker: And that's why I say the writing goes a little bit off the rails is like not even the combat scenes seem particularly interesting in this because they're not defined by like they're not defined by the beats of of of storytelling.
Speaker: They just become defined by what happens in literally in the game as you're going through it.
Speaker: That's exactly it.
Speaker: It'd be one thing to have a great big fight scene in the room that he's going to disrupt.
Speaker: And by the way, he's going to have to do this three times.
Speaker: We're going to watch him do this three times.
Speaker: He's going to disrupt three different beams and
Speaker: and shut down this generator.
Speaker: We're going to watch each individual room.
Speaker: First and foremost, consolidate that to one.
Speaker: Just make one.
Speaker: Just make one that he's got to do.
Speaker: And it's one thing to get into that room and have a bunch of guys who are standing between you and your goal.
Speaker: Master Chief needs to get over there and throw himself in that beam to knock out the generator.
Speaker: That's what he's got to do.
Speaker: But first, in order to do that, he's got to get through this crowd of hunters and elites and grunts.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: But we just have, we just have fights because that's what happens in the game.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It just, and we're running and Dietz is running out of ways to make these fights interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And here's something I'm going to do a deep pull.
Speaker: The first book we ever read was Resident Evil, the Umbrella Conspiracy by S.D.
Speaker: Perry.
Speaker: First book we read for this show.
Speaker: And and we had fun with the book and there's some some really campy, cheesy moments in it, which is pretty much on par with the game itself.
Speaker: You know, the game is very campy and cheesy.
Speaker: which so it it kind of works for the book um one of the things she did great was there were times where there was a puzzle in the game that you had to solve and she would like skipped it she like there's a moment where she has jill instead of like solving the puzzle she just breaks the thing that the thing that is holding the piece that she needs she
Speaker: just like smashes it grabs it and walks out and it was what every gamer wanted to do in this yeah she does like she was not confined by the rules of the game when you are writing and I feel like that is a lesson that could have been transferred into this book where you needed to be a little less confined by the systems and structure of the game in order to make it a little bit more of a compelling story yes so
Speaker: It's, it's, it's very, it's a, it's a pain because yeah, you're, there's nothing, there's nothing, there's nothing wrong with a good fight scene.
Speaker: This is a, this is a book based on an action game first and foremost.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So there's nothing wrong with this book being chock full of adventure and action.
Speaker: That is not what Kevin and I are saying is the problem here.
Speaker: The problem is that they're kind of meaningless fights.
Speaker: They're not there for any reason other than to match up moment for moment with the game.
Speaker: And it gets tedious.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's what we're dealing with here.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So we cut back to the... So he's going to have to go from one canyon to another to another.
Speaker: And then we cut back to Alpha Base.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And they're basically doing... Have you ever seen The Thing?
Speaker: They're doing the autopsy scene from The Thing.
Speaker: They totally are.
Speaker: That's exactly what they're doing.
Speaker: We've gotten the lore of The Flood.
Speaker: Um, we have got, we've gotten the lore of the flood.
Speaker: Now we're about to get the science of the flood.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, they've, they've taken a bunch of, uh, dead floodites, if you will.
Speaker: And, uh, and, and they're basic, we basically get a big rundown on what these things are.
Speaker: Yeah, except we don't have Wilford Brimley walking us through it.
Speaker: Much to our regret.
Speaker: Much to our regret.
Speaker: So McKay is basically just kind of walking Silva through what they've found so far.
Speaker: They're called the Flood.
Speaker: The Covenant called them the Flood.
Speaker: And like they manifest in different ways, yada, yada, yada.
Speaker: And there's just like a really gross scene where they're like dissecting one of the marine flood people where it was like a woman and her chest had been like split open.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: They get into some graphic.
Speaker: They get into some really graphic detail regarding like.
Speaker: um what it looks like which is i appreciate i i appreciate it it's very visceral and you know i think mckay especially but the mckay and silva scenes in general the marines let's just put it like that that's where we get into a lot of the heart of what's going on here because that's the people right it's just like silva telling them you know this war is going to be fought fought and won
Speaker: by boots on the ground, by people and not by some dumb ass super soldier.
Speaker: Yeah, he's wrong, unfortunately.
Speaker: But the you know, we get we get the heart of these of the people.
Speaker: We get people that we can really sympathize with and and feel for when we come back to these moments with McKay and Silva.
Speaker: And I think looking into
Speaker: Looking with a magnifying glass at the people that are affected by the flood is a fantastic way of making us, you know, realize the real horror of it.
Speaker: Because at first you're like, oh, gross, you know, but now you're actually really looking at it up close and personal and seeing what these things are doing to these people.
Speaker: And it's awful.
Speaker: It's horrible.
Speaker: It's pretty terrific body horror.
Speaker: it is terrific body horror um so after that we get a nice our favorite character comes back here we go yeah yep lives yeah yep lives um yeah yep is back and uh zuka danny zuko is going along with a plan that yeah yep has come up with basically they're just gonna pretend that zuka is somebody else right and get aboard the pillar of autumn
Speaker: So Kazuga didn't want to go back because he's failed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have done want to go back because he, because he doesn't want to die.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So yeah, they're going to find a dead commando and assume his identity.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Plan is identity theft.
Speaker: And you know, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker: Be prouder.
Speaker: Look, we're going to get his social.
Speaker: We're going to, we're going to get his passwords, his driver's license, everything.
Speaker: And they're going to, yeah, I'm going to plan to be that guy and it's going to keep them alive for a little while.
Speaker: That's the, that's the gist.
Speaker: That's the gist of their plan.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Then we get a moment with Jenkins and Jenkins and McKay.
Speaker: Basically Jenkins is trying to communicate with McKay.
Speaker: Because remember Jenkins is like half flood monster at this point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Half flood monster, half like, you know, half.
Speaker: Well, let's say quarter human still.
Speaker: He's got some he he's still in there.
Speaker: He basically has no control over his body is kind of where it is.
Speaker: And he's been trying to kill himself.
Speaker: um at one point the flood um takes his arm and breaks it off into so that the bone is protruding and then tries to stab mckay with it well yeah because mckay like sees that there's still a marine in there basically and she goes to give him some water and yeah he like jumps or breaks his arm
Speaker: Yeah, and it's just, he's a monster at this point.
Speaker: It's just the worst in terms of the Cronenbergian monster body horror stuff in this sequence.
Speaker: But basically, he successfully communicates that there is something below the base.
Speaker: They need to look below the base.
Speaker: And that's where they go.
Speaker: They gotta...
Speaker: And it's really it's kind of hilarious in a horribly sad way because, yeah, he's been struggling with the monster inside of him.
Speaker: And he's finally able to communicate.
Speaker: There's more flood below us, beneath us.
Speaker: And they go and they're really calm about it.
Speaker: First and foremost, they're like, like, good job, Marine.
Speaker: We're going to we're going to check this out.
Speaker: Then we're going to come back and help you out a little more.
Speaker: And I bet we can help you even more than this.
Speaker: And like his internal monologue is basically him sulking and being like, I just want to die.
Speaker: No one cares what I want though.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: Jenkins the suicidal sulky teenager over here.
Speaker: He's like, I, no, do you, do you care?
Speaker: No, no one cares about Jenkins.
Speaker: Jenkins just craves death.
Speaker: Um, Jenkins just craves death.
Speaker: Never forget.
Speaker: Jenkins just craves death.
Speaker: That's like a, that's like a, uh, uh,
Speaker: It's like a suicide pod or something like that.
Speaker: Jenkins brand suicide pods.
Speaker: Jenkins just craves death.
Speaker: Is the king in yellow feasting upon your mental stability?
Speaker: Well, just like you, Jenkins just craves death.
Speaker: Check out the suicide pod near you.
Speaker: You won't feel anything.
Speaker: Jenkins craves death.
Speaker: So we got Master Chief doing his boring bullshit.
Speaker: Yeah, he's getting the most interesting thing that happens to Master Chief for a while here is when he like finds a bunch of dead Marines and he like starts ammoing up from them.
Speaker: He's just like, oh, good, good old fashioned human guns.
Speaker: Not any of this gross gay alien gun stuff.
Speaker: I got some good old humanity.
Speaker: I got some good old fashioned bullets.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Slug throwers like an American ought to have like an American.
Speaker: He's not even American, but he is.
Speaker: He is very like he's coded American.
Speaker: He is coded American.
Speaker: Let me tell you.
Speaker: Johnny boy here is definitely American, red, white, and blue.
Speaker: He's American adjacent.
Speaker: American adjacent.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: And he's still, he's still, yeah, here we go.
Speaker: He's stepping into another beam, neutralizing that, fighting more flood.
Speaker: Stepping through.
Speaker: He's got, he's got valleys.
Speaker: And to get through, there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff.
Speaker: He's killing things.
Speaker: So when I was reading through these pages, I was just like, there's something.
Speaker: There's a lot of stuff.
Speaker: There's a lot of stuff.
Speaker: No, but that's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: He goes through another valley.
Speaker: Here's what he's doing.
Speaker: Here's what he's doing.
Speaker: Reader, listener, here's what he's doing.
Speaker: He's hopping on his banshee.
Speaker: He goes through a valley.
Speaker: He goes into another tunnel, goes down the tunnel, kills some flood, jumps into a beam, disrupts the beam, hops on his banshee down to the valley.
Speaker: Thank God he only has to do this three times.
Speaker: But yeah, so they start to realize that they need keys in order to set off the core detonation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That not even Cortana can do that because the captain of the ship is the only person who could.
Speaker: So they need to rescue keys again.
Speaker: So keys is the next step, really.
Speaker: And then finally we go.
Speaker: So they realize that they take, are you, were you listening before?
Speaker: I hope you were because here's what happens next.
Speaker: They get on a Banshee, they go into a Canyon, then they go into another area with a tunnel and there's a new beam area and they fight more flood.
Speaker: Were you paying attention?
Speaker: Here's another recap.
Speaker: They hop on the Banshee, they go into a Canyon down a tunnel where they disrupt a beam and fight more flood.
Speaker: Are you with me?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Let's do it one more time.
Speaker: He hops onto a banshee, goes into the valley, down into a tunnel, disrupts a beam, kills more flood.
Speaker: Three times I said that, three times he did it.
Speaker: Boy, howdy, this is a great book.
Speaker: Well, that's how I rescued keys, which we already did in the beginning of the book.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Let's follow a triple beat up with a double beat.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, all right.
Speaker: It's followed by an explanation.
Speaker: I actually got mad reading this next part.
Speaker: I wasn't mad reading the three valleys, three tunnels, three beams.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know,
Speaker: river, you know, mountain wide river deep, whatever the fuck we're doing here.
Speaker: Down in the valley to pray.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I was so he, he, the covenant, uh, he catches some covenant and some blood fighting it out, all that shit.
Speaker: So he's, he's found a bunch of weapons and he has to decide what weapons to go with.
Speaker: This is, this is actually a total reflection of the game.
Speaker: This is going to happen a lot.
Speaker: And he has any going through and he's like, he's like, Hmm.
Speaker: Do I get the shotgun or do I want a rocket launcher?
Speaker: But the thing is, as they point out, it would be to have more than two guns would be too unwieldy and definitely too heavy.
Speaker: That's why you can't have more than two guns.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Because you're a super soldier in an automatic robot suit of armor who can't carry more than two guns.
Speaker: Guys, I'm a 300 pound sedentary wine drinker.
Speaker: I can carry three guns.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: It's like, I don't know if we needed... That's another moment where it's like, I don't think we needed an explanation because the one you offered to me is kind of insulting.
Speaker: You think I'm stupid?
Speaker: Yeah, I wish they had just skipped that.
Speaker: I think they should have.
Speaker: I think it would have made worse sense.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he, he ends up with a sniper rifle and he's kind of like, he sees he's, he wants to get to this banshee so he can go to another Valley to another tunnel.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: He's, he's, and so he's, but he finds a sniper and he just kind of snipes a bunch of covenant and flood to basically give himself a pathway.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: This is actually hilarious, though.
Speaker: While he's doing this, while he's sniping Covenant and Flood, they point out, the narrator points out that it's real easy to get tunnel vision when you're looking through a scope for too long.
Speaker: And that's what happened to good old Master Chief.
Speaker: And so he's
Speaker: He's snuck up on by a flood warrior.
Speaker: What are they called again?
Speaker: Like weapon combat forms, combat, combat forms.
Speaker: So he snuck up upon by one of them.
Speaker: And I thought to myself, I went, that sounds like this actually happened to the guy while he was playing the game.
Speaker: Cause I know that's happened to me.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It happened to me.
Speaker: I think in this exact spot, like I was looking through the scope of the rocket launcher or something like that.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: And you just don't, you don't, you've got blinders on.
Speaker: So, you know, I, I found that actually.
Speaker: So I was followed by two of the most insulting and remarkably mind numbing moments of this book with a moment that actually genuinely made me laugh my ass off.
Speaker: So there's that at very least.
Speaker: There's that.
Speaker: But then we do it again.
Speaker: It's just the cut.
Speaker: Then.
Speaker: So he goes off and he's run.
Speaker: He's run up to fight a bunch of bad guys.
Speaker: And he goes, hmm.
Speaker: I need a rocket launcher to do this.
Speaker: There was a rocket launcher back that way.
Speaker: And he makes the point of writing that he had to run another half hour back and to get a rocket launcher.
Speaker: the rocket launcher.
Speaker: Why did we have, why did he have to be just like, I don't know.
Speaker: Again, I have more than two guns.
Speaker: And so later I have to, we're going to h ave a completely pointless moment where he goes, Hmm, a rocket launcher would be very useful here.
Speaker: So he runs, runs, runs, runs back to the cache.
Speaker: the fuck guys?
Speaker: What are we doing?
Speaker: I don't this.
Speaker: It feels like it feels like they gave this book to Microsoft or to bungee or three 43 or whoever.
Speaker: And they were like, Oh, we really ought to make a point and do it.
Speaker: And they gave it to an intern to add like two sentences to like, it just, it just completely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just so dumb.
Speaker: It's so dumb.
Speaker: Irresponsibly dumb.
Speaker: It's
Speaker: So there's no point, but he goes and grabs a rocket launcher and runs all the way back.
Speaker: They make a point of saying it took him a whole half hour to do this.
Speaker: I wonder how many Marines died in that half hour.
Speaker: How many Marines died in that half hour?
Speaker: How many?
Speaker: How many was that worth to you?
Speaker: And he uses the rocket launcher to kill a hunter.
Speaker: They broke, they break their rule on...
Speaker: Hunter's coming twos here because I only catch him killing one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then he finally gets to the last beam that he's got to throw his body into to disrupt it.
Speaker: And something goes wrong and it doesn't work.
Speaker: And the beam tears him to shreds.
Speaker: Oh wait, no, that didn't happen.
Speaker: That would be really interesting and a twist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, but no, it's just, it's just a successful action.
Speaker: There is no, it's just, he's just succeeding success after success.
Speaker: There's no, there's no draw a fail failure.
Speaker: Uh, no extra chief.
Speaker: There is no expectation gap in none.
Speaker: None.
Speaker: Protagonist took this action.
Speaker: They expected this result.
Speaker: This was the actual result.
Speaker: This is what's called an expectation gap.
Speaker: It creates conflict for the protagonist and continues the story forward.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: No, we just have takes action, gets the result he wants, moves on.
Speaker: This whole chapter is for those of you who play D&D or Pathfinder or anything like that.
Speaker: This whole chapter is basically Master Chief taking ten.
Speaker: It's like, OK, I'll have to do is take ten.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: No, no roles required.
Speaker: No spooky suspense.
Speaker: Nothing that'll cause that blood pressure to jack up.
Speaker: No, just just beams and disruption.
Speaker: So we find out he kills a bunch of sentinels that come his way.
Speaker: And Cortana lets him know that she's found a teleporter in the most Deus Ex Machina moment of a chapter filled with Deus Ex Machina.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And they've got, they find keys signal.
Speaker: He has a signal transponder and she can trans trans, uh, teleport, transport, teleport him to the vicinity to go and save keys.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And we do get a moment where master chief is like, why couldn't you have just teleported me?
Speaker: And she's like, uh,
Speaker: reasons reasons science just like oh it would have been a lot of energy a lot of energy might have messed up your shields whoo would have had to eat an extra burrito to get yeah calories that i need for that to happen and you know me i get all gassy in your in your mind palace yeah farting up farting up the mind palace you don't want portana doing that
Speaker: If we named our episodes anything other than the part, then this would be farting up the mind palace.
Speaker: I should just start pulling names and throwing them in as the episode titles.
Speaker: And that's chapter 10.
Speaker: That's chapter 10.
Speaker: We got two chapters left.
Speaker: Two chapters left.
Speaker: Spoiler alert.
Speaker: The mass chief parts don't get any better.
Speaker: Good news.
Speaker: Good news.
Speaker: I know you were worried.
Speaker: I know you were worried.
Speaker: We're going to shift things and make it like interesting.
Speaker: And no, no.
Speaker: Let me tell you, the flood, Halo, the flood started out.
Speaker: Pretty high.
Speaker: Not pretty high, but it was relatively high.
Speaker: It was promising.
Speaker: It was promising.
Speaker: I couldn't rank it yet, but that promise has really, really faded fast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is like, it's like watching someone in a race race.
Speaker: And they start out kind of leading the way and you're like, okay, all right.
Speaker: You know, you're almost there.
Speaker: And at about 75% through the race, like they're not like number one, but they're in the top three.
Speaker: They're doing okay.
Speaker: And when the 75% mark of the race hits, they like fall off the side of a cliff and explode on the way down.
Speaker: And there wasn't a cliff there before, so none of us know how the fuck this happened.
Speaker: Well, see what happened is Wile E. Coyote painted a cliff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's just, it's, I don't, I don't know how, I don't know how this happened.
Speaker: It's so weird.
Speaker: I just, we have, we have read a lot of quality levels of work and, and this is, but this is the first time that like, this is the most, um,
Speaker: whiplash I've ever received.
Speaker: Within one book.
Speaker: And it just feels like the end is in sight and we're getting a little rushed.
Speaker: Yeah, because with Far Cry Absolution, for example, we had... The quality of the writing never changed, but the story got a little loosey-goosey towards the end.
Speaker: Just the literal plot was like... But the execution of that plot was still good.
Speaker: Pretty solid, yeah.
Speaker: This... It's like, not only did the execution...
Speaker: not only did the plot get a little stagnant, but the execution of that also started to fall apart.
Speaker: Just the literal writing, the literal writing, the prose being used to describe these segments is worse in these later Master Chief scenes than they were earlier.
Speaker: Like it becomes these simplistic...
Speaker: statements that make that and it's funny you said the worlds of power megaman 2 i started thinking about that when i was reading some of these yeah oh it's it's fascinating it's genuinely fascinating because
Speaker: I think he's a good author.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like there's some, there's such good writing in here and it raises the same question that we've run into time and time again with this stuff, because obviously these are based on most of our, most of the books we've read are authorized novelizations.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So how much,
Speaker: input did a third party have and is the third party responsible for how for the weakening and the dilution of some of these moments?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Did did our author have to do all three moments or, you know, instead of like consolidating is like, I know this happens in the game, but is there something in the contract that's like you cannot deviate
Speaker: from the game, from what happens in the game.
Speaker: You can add shit like your, your hell Raiders and all that stuff.
Speaker: Like, yeah, that stuff, but you can't deviate.
Speaker: No, he went through three disruptor beams.
Speaker: He went and we're going to talk about all of them.
Speaker: We're going to do all goddamn three of them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's that.
Speaker: So, yeah, I am very curious as to how much input Bungie or Microsoft had in this instance.
Speaker: And that's the other thing.
Speaker: And I want to I might want to write up a longer piece on on just adaptation as we keep going through these things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There is a lot to be said and discussed with that.
Speaker: With adaptation.
Speaker: So anyway, I think that'll probably do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: I need to have a nice lay down.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Take a beverage and lay down on the couch.
Speaker: Later, I'm like, ask my fiance.
Speaker: You scratch my back.
Speaker: I don't feel good.
Speaker: I don't feel good.
Speaker: Maybe watch a musical.
Speaker: You guys still watching musicals?
Speaker: We watched Noises Off tonight.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: So it's an adaptation of theater.
Speaker: Adaptation of theater.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Now we tend to watch musicals, but that one, I think that might be the first straight play that was a comedy we watched.
Speaker: That was nice.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: So yeah, no, it's, it's,
Speaker: It's been a way easier challenge than let's say Christmas movies for two months.
Speaker: Christmas movies.
Speaker: Terrible Christmas movies for two months.
Speaker: That was just, it's, when you, you know, it's, it's just too easy to say terrible.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's redundant to say terrible Christmas movies.
Speaker: Christmas movies.
Speaker: Because they tend to be terrible.
Speaker: You have to call out when they're good.
Speaker: Good Christmas movies.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Versus.
Speaker: It's unusual when they're good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, anyway, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: If you want to help us out, please follow us on our Twitter at pixel at pod.
Speaker: Also on Instagram where we occasionally post stuff.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Same same username.
Speaker: Give us five stars.
Speaker: Rate us five stars on both iTunes and Spotify.
Speaker: They both have five star ratings.
Speaker: And if you feel feel up to it, if you get the moxie for it, write up a little review on your iTunes five star rating, because why not?
Speaker: You know, exercise exercise that writing muscle a little bit.
Speaker: Come find us on Twitch too.
Speaker: We've been doing that.
Speaker: Yeah, come find us on Twitch and we'll be on there occasionally streaming games.
Speaker: We're going to be doing, what won the poll?
Speaker: Monkey Island.
Speaker: Oh, Monkey Island.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Come watch us do some classic point and click.
Speaker: Yeah, we're going to do some classic point and clicks because that's about our speed at 40 years old.
Speaker: That's just who we are now.
Speaker: That's who we are now.
Speaker: It's just who we are.
Speaker: We talk about, we read books about the really actiony things, and we complain when they've got too much of that punch and kick in the shoe.
Speaker: Too much of that action.
Speaker: Oh, it just makes me tired just to think about it.
Speaker: Gives me the heart.
Speaker: I need to drink some Pepto before I read some spicy action scenes.
Speaker: Cortana gives me agita.
Speaker: A woman shouldn't talk to a man like that.
Speaker: I don't like it.
Speaker: Oh, um, if so, uh, and if you really want to help us out, tell your friends, tell your family about us.
Speaker: Please.
Speaker: This is, this is, this is how people find us.
Speaker: Podcast.
Speaker: It has been consistently word of mouth and we love each and every one of you for it.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Um, uh, so that'll do it.
Speaker: Have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Good night.
