Transcript
Speaker: A little bit.
Speaker: I mean, I'm going to be wrapping this thing up just in time for the first piece of DLC to come out, which is like, oh, which is Deadpool, Deadpool, which, you know, I'm going to play that.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: And it adds a it adds a taco truck to the Abbey.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: DLC.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Like, it just looks like a bunch of beautiful chaos.
Speaker: Just beautiful.
Speaker: I got the, uh, I got the Wilhelm scream achievement.
Speaker: Uh, that's great.
Speaker: We just throwing people off of an edge.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was, that was a good feeling.
Speaker: I was like, Kevin's going to appreciate this one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, I forget.
Speaker: It's like throw 10 people down a pit or something.
Speaker: It's like, it's two people down a drop in the same turn.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's.
Speaker: Which is easy to do with, well, magic and Ghost Rider make getting stuff like that easier because they can create pits and stuff like that.
Speaker: Yeah, it was totally with Ghost Rider.
Speaker: I have a real fondness for him.
Speaker: He's a lot of fun.
Speaker: For the flaming skull edgelord.
Speaker: I just can't help myself.
Speaker: What can I say?
Speaker: That's how I was raised.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: Well, you know, you know who else was raised?
Speaker: Who's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: Whippy is always as Phil.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Whippy is always as Phil.
Speaker: Well, yeah, I'm here.
Speaker: And today on the show, we're finishing Marvel's Midnight Suns.
Speaker: What's the subtitle again?
Speaker: Infernal Rising.
Speaker: Infernal Rising.
Speaker: And my chair is sinking again.
Speaker: You've got to get a new chair, my friend.
Speaker: I've got to get...
Speaker: We're just I think it's fine.
Speaker: It's for now.
Speaker: I think it's fine.
Speaker: OK, like I have a perfectly good chair, like non actually hold on.
Speaker: Hold on, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker: Oh, we upgrading.
Speaker: It's more of a side grade.
Speaker: OK, OK.
Speaker: Lateral move.
Speaker: I dig it.
Speaker: It's a lateral move.
Speaker: It's going to revolve.
Speaker: Yeah, fuck it.
Speaker: This is how the sausage is made people open wide.
Speaker: Here comes some sausage.
Speaker: Poor choice of words when you were standing in front of the webcam.
Speaker: Open wide.
Speaker: Here comes some sausage.
Speaker: Here comes some sausage.
Speaker: This chair's a little bit taller, but it's probably better fit for.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: I don't have to be paranoid about it sinking anymore.
Speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, you have just witnessed a miracle within the first five minutes.
Speaker: We have solved the problem.
Speaker: We solved the problem.
Speaker: We're efficient people.
Speaker: Yeah, we're efficient people.
Speaker: It was has that been an issue for like three months now?
Speaker: Three years.
Speaker: But yes, we're not.
Speaker: We're not going to worry about it.
Speaker: No, let's not.
Speaker: Let's please not.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: How are we doing, folks?
Speaker: Good?
Speaker: Good?
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Phil, how are you doing?
Speaker: Good?
Speaker: I'm good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: We're going to.
Speaker: What are you drinking there?
Speaker: You got a white claw?
Speaker: I got my.
Speaker: There's no laws with the claw.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: There's no laws with the claw.
Speaker: I've just, I've officially descended our podcast into pure, delicious, natural lime flavored or a hint of natural lime flavored anarchy.
Speaker: The best kind of anarchy.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: This is the weirdest energy we've ever had to start an episode.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: But I think we're just going to go ahead and put the body in the mosh.
Speaker: Let's put the body in the mosh.
Speaker: And finish this book off because we're in chapter 11.
Speaker: And if you remember, Robbie had just gotten stabbed.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The evil plan, the evil satanic ritual of stabbing him in the stomach.
Speaker: Satana's like, I know what to do.
Speaker: And you think that she's going to do something clever.
Speaker: And she literally just stabs him in the gut.
Speaker: Just stabs him.
Speaker: It's like a James Bond villain, like setting up the laser to know this to Bond, expect me to die, and just pops him in the face with a.45, just...
Speaker: Oh, it's pretty easy.
Speaker: I could have done that a while ago.
Speaker: I'm surprised no one ever thought of that one.
Speaker: So the sons get into limbo and caretaker begins working on healing Robbie and she has to like send the spirit of vengeance away or she requests the spirit of vengeance away just because for some reason the nature of the wound is magical.
Speaker: And as long as the spirit of vengeance is
Speaker: hanging around, it's not going to heal.
Speaker: So she does, she does her stuff.
Speaker: Spirit of vengeance leaves, wound heals.
Speaker: Robbie's still a little bit out of it, but they get back to the Abbey and caretaker is furious at them because Robbie was outside of the shield that she had, she had resurrected the shield that would have stopped Satana from say, stabbing him in the stomach.
Speaker: Stabbing him in the stomach.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So actually, when you think about it, Satanist plan was pretty solid.
Speaker: When you give it when you think of it like that.
Speaker: It was a solid plan.
Speaker: You know, it worked.
Speaker: Good job, Satanist.
Speaker: So everybody apologizes to caretaker.
Speaker: And meanwhile, meanwhile, the most metal scene in the entire book is about to happen.
Speaker: Yes, it is.
Speaker: This is out of control.
Speaker: Xerathos needs to feed.
Speaker: He is a hungry boy.
Speaker: He is a hungry Jack, and he's all out of those frozen dinners.
Speaker: The hungry Jack frozen dinners or pancakes or whatever.
Speaker: Hungry Jack is frozen dinners, right?
Speaker: Or those pancakes?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I think both, but... Both?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, we're going with it.
Speaker: He needs frozen food is what we're getting at.
Speaker: So he decides to go to a church in Florida...
Speaker: And he goes into the church and everybody's like, holy shit, what's going on?
Speaker: And he goes up to the priest, which he refers to as a, was it a God shouter or God?
Speaker: A God shouter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I want to say and put it on the record that that if I design the
Speaker: some sort of post-apocalyptic slash like modern style RPG.
Speaker: Instead of being able to play a cleric or a paladin, you play a God shouter.
Speaker: That is freaking excellent.
Speaker: That sounds like a Warhammer 40k.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Heretical, they come upon a heretical planet filled with God shouters or something like that.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: That's a universe where there are people who literally go into the battlefield with a microphone and PA set up and just shout sermons into the microphone while fire and promethium and bullets and shit like that are flying around them.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Godshatter makes perfect sense when you think about it.
Speaker: So Zarathos grabs the guy, the priest, the Godshatter, on the face with his hand.
Speaker: On the face.
Speaker: And crushes it.
Speaker: in his hand it's he just he crushes a man's skull into little little gibley bits yeah um and everybody is so terrified that when he opens up his void he just rips all the souls out of everybody in the church and they all just flow into him
Speaker: It's like 100 people all at once.
Speaker: And Fen is like, please, please don't kill me.
Speaker: Don't absorb me.
Speaker: And Zarathos is like, I'm going to do it anyway.
Speaker: And Satan is like, fucking hell.
Speaker: And she like teleports Fen out of there because if she doesn't, he's going to, you know, he's going to, you know, soak him up.
Speaker: So, yeah, that was a pretty intense moment.
Speaker: It was pretty like...
Speaker: We've talked about this before, both this game and this book.
Speaker: It's kind of hilarious because on one hand, a huge, if you've played Marvel Midnight Suns, most people are gonna be like, yeah, I became best friends with Wolverine and, or I tried to get Blade and Captain Marvel to hook up.
Speaker: Like that's, that's the kind of Sims-y style takeaway.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it also deals with very, very heavy world ending subject matter.
Speaker: And this book is absolutely no different where it's like, we just need these kids to be confident in themselves.
Speaker: And it's like, oh, God, he killed 100 people at once.
Speaker: He just he just crushed a priest's skull and killed 100 people in one blow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's got a lot of Doctor Strange.
Speaker: What was the one that just came out last year?
Speaker: The Multiverse of Madness.
Speaker: The Multiverse of Madness vibes where it's like one second.
Speaker: We're like, oh, this is funny.
Speaker: Oh, God, what happened to Mr. Fantastic?
Speaker: Like it's.
Speaker: That movie bummed me out, man.
Speaker: That movie gave me intrusive thoughts for like a solid week.
Speaker: Like I couldn't stop thinking.
Speaker: It was like, please stop, please leave my head.
Speaker: And that's the magic.
Speaker: Yes, oh God, yes.
Speaker: That's the magic of Sam Raimi right there.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: He's very good at the intrusive thoughts.
Speaker: Sometimes the surgery scene from Doc Ock of Doc Ock and Spider-Man 2 pops into my head where we get a first person point of view of the tentacles killing every doctor in the in the OR.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's, that's one of those things that that movie, I, I, I don't clutch pearls very often, but it was an absolute feeling of like, oh, this is going to be one of those for some kid.
Speaker: This is going to be their equivalent.
Speaker: This is going to be the thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is going to be like the equivalent of when we watched the never ending story and Artax dies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was in the swamp of sadness.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, like that's that you realize that it's like, oh, that's
Speaker: I shouldn't write letters because why should I deny kids their own traumatic childhood moments?
Speaker: I turned out great.
Speaker: So fuck it.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: Every kid needs a movie that's going to traumatize them for the rest of their life.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And you could do worse.
Speaker: You could do worse.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I'm terrified of Howard the Duck.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: That was that movie was no joke.
Speaker: It was actually the video game that, that scared me.
Speaker: Oh, well the fucking terrifying.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The Commodore 64 video game.
Speaker: Bitmap smiling duck.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That lives in my head forever.
Speaker: Rent free.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's rents free.
Speaker: In fact, it might actually be a landlord in my head by now.
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's charging other tenants rent.
Speaker: He's charged.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Howard the duck is actually the landlord of all my other nightmares.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You guys do yourselves a favor.
Speaker: Go ahead and Google Howard the Duck Commodore.
Speaker: I guarantee you it'll be the first image that pops up.
Speaker: You will be sorry you did it, but we've placed that in your head and you know you're going to do it now.
Speaker: This has been your intrusive thoughts moment.
Speaker: Intrusive thoughts moment by Pixelit.
Speaker: So back at the Abbey, the team discusses how to deal with the issue of the triumvirate by they're thinking that triumvirate is potentially camping out at the vault now.
Speaker: And they decide they're like, all right, well, we're going to go head back to the vault.
Speaker: So they're going through Limbo and Magic opens the portal where the vault is and Zarathos basically like sticks his hand in and pulls Magic out through the portal.
Speaker: What the hell?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They have another throwdown.
Speaker: This is just like the first.
Speaker: This is just this is this is the second of like four basically in the back half of the book where the two sides just throw everything that they have at one another and both pretty much come out worse for wear each time.
Speaker: Yeah, we get to a point where everyone's sick of like pussyfooting around everything and just like, no, fuck it.
Speaker: We are going.
Speaker: Someone's going to die.
Speaker: It's basically.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like Captain.
Speaker: If Captain Marvel, it would be like Captain Marvel just like going binary and staying binary for the rest of the book for the whole book.
Speaker: That's pretty much it.
Speaker: We are no holds barred from here on out.
Speaker: She's like, you know what?
Speaker: I'm going to turn into a half person, half white dwarf star and literally nuke everybody.
Speaker: So here we go.
Speaker: So they have another battle.
Speaker: And during the fight, Nico casts a spell that accidentally turns off magic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The concept of magic deactivates.
Speaker: Just stops, which is hilarious.
Speaker: And also-
Speaker: Probably a little panic-inducing for most of the people there.
Speaker: Well, Magic, with a K, loses her sword and armor because of this.
Speaker: And basically, she has to borrow one of Blade's swords.
Speaker: And the entire fight is Blade and Magic going to town on Zarathos, just like trying to- Just sticking him.
Speaker: Just poking him with katanas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it reads like a bunch of halflings like circling a dragon and just go, just pin cushioning him.
Speaker: But the thing is, it's not doing a whole lot because Xerathos is like a massive beefy boy.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He can take the damage.
Speaker: If there's one thing you can count on Xerathos for, it's for being a beefy boy.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Nico reverses the spell and they escape back through Limbo.
Speaker: And they had successfully put a stasis field around the vault.
Speaker: Basically, the stasis field is is put up so that Xerathos cannot alter the matter of space time around the vault area.
Speaker: Because their concern was like Xerathos could turn it into like the void of space if he wanted to.
Speaker: And we would never be able to get back to it again.
Speaker: So they do this stasis field basically prevents that from happening.
Speaker: And there's 23 hours left until the vault opens.
Speaker: So chapter 12, we get Satan's point of view.
Speaker: She had to rescue Fen from the church that Zarathus ate earlier, and they're back at the safe house.
Speaker: And then they go back to the church again because now they got to clean up after Zarathus because, you know, a priest with a crushed head and a random hundred dead people in a church.
Speaker: That raises some questions.
Speaker: It's a teeny bit conspicuous.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a teeny bit conspicuous.
Speaker: So Fenn goes and he plants a bomb in the church and they leave because a regular hate crime is or terrorism.
Speaker: Just like do a little terrorism, cover it all up.
Speaker: That will cover up.
Speaker: That'll take care of it.
Speaker: No one's watching.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: No one's watching.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: I mean, at most you get Captain America showing up, poking around.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just get out of there.
Speaker: Get lost.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: But Zatanna basically thinks, as she continues to think, Zarathos is the worst.
Speaker: And when they get to Zarathos, he is fuming about what the sons just did, Niko in particular.
Speaker: He really has it out for Niko.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I wrote this one line down because it was great.
Speaker: Zatanna thinking about Zarathos.
Speaker: Zatanna clenched her jaw.
Speaker: It was like working with a toddler you weren't allowed to beat.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's absolutely the vibe you're getting the whole time.
Speaker: It's beautiful.
Speaker: It's so beautiful.
Speaker: I love these villains so much because on one hand, the stakes couldn't be higher.
Speaker: And on the other hand, they couldn't be lower.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: It's like your villain is, you know, Jim Carrey with a chainsaw, you know, that's, that is scary.
Speaker: But at the same time, I'm not that worried.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: That worried.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's Jim Carrey with a chainsaw and the mask as the mask.
Speaker: And it's Cameron Diaz from the mask.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, we'll go with that.
Speaker: Trying to like guide it.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Let's go with that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Xerathos lists off all these allies he wants to recruit.
Speaker: And they're all terrible suggestions.
Speaker: Satana's just like listing off like, no, that person, they won't work because of this.
Speaker: And Satana's like, you're dark lordness.
Speaker: How about some of these other people?
Speaker: They will actually follow orders.
Speaker: And he's like, ah, yes, good.
Speaker: Do that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: I am so smart.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Caretaker is trying to talk to Stephen Strange.
Speaker: Be like, you know, hey, Stephen, there's a problem.
Speaker: Let me get our little Dr. Strange cameo in here.
Speaker: Dr. Strange makes a little cameo and Dr. Strange is like,
Speaker: Yeah, whatever.
Speaker: I think it's a hilarious scene because he's like, what are you bothering me for?
Speaker: Yeah, he literally says, can you not handle this?
Speaker: Either the sons can handle this, or if they can't handle this, go talk to Captain America.
Speaker: He couldn't care less.
Speaker: It's like, it was amazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she leaves.
Speaker: Robbie is back on his feet and the team is discussing next steps.
Speaker: And they are like, all right, well, next step is we got to make sure that we have basically cleared up all loose ends in New York.
Speaker: So they use the mirror table to figure out, they change some of the inputs on the mirror table and they figure out, all right, here's where all the gamma shield radiation signatures are from
Speaker: Fen's little device and they they they're like here we have all of their safe houses now we're just going to go hit all of these and so in the next chapter they arrive at the first one it's like all right they've been here recently they destroy all the gamma shields they go all to the other locations and they confirm that the triumvirate has left New York they are not here they have to be in transia now
Speaker: And they go to dinner.
Speaker: They go back to dinner.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To the Abbey to eat a final team dinner.
Speaker: And one of them says it feels like a last supper.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they're, you know, was it Nico is eating miso soup and Robbie is eating, what is Robbie eating?
Speaker: A pizza with pepperoni and sausage on it.
Speaker: Yeah, they're just like consuming like cartoon teenagers, which is essentially what they are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Blade doesn't eat.
Speaker: He's too cool to eat.
Speaker: Well, yeah, he also just injects that like serum that he uses.
Speaker: Right, yeah.
Speaker: He's not an eater.
Speaker: No, per se.
Speaker: If Blade becomes an eater, then we're all fucked.
Speaker: That's basically what it comes down to.
Speaker: It's a bad sign if Blade wants to eat something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they all have their little moments.
Speaker: Nico then casts a sleeping spell on Robbie, and it's a pretty cool thing that I would like to have in my real life.
Speaker: Oh, my God, yes.
Speaker: it's a one hour sleep that makes it, you feel like you've gotten a full eight hour sleep.
Speaker: So she casts it on Robbie.
Speaker: And before she cast it on herself, she like talks to Ebony, the cat and mentions that she has PMS.
Speaker: Oh, that's going to come into play.
Speaker: Oh, I love this detail.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love this detail.
Speaker: This is fascinating.
Speaker: Amazing detail.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So the thing is, yeah, Nico's about to have her period.
Speaker: She's like, it's early, but whatever.
Speaker: And she does the sleep spell on herself.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Zarathos, still hungry, travels to a soccer stadium, kills everybody and collapses the stadium.
Speaker: As you do.
Speaker: As you do.
Speaker: As you do.
Speaker: And he's also figured out what the seal wants and begins casting a spell to speed up its opening.
Speaker: And it's now down to less than an hour before it opens.
Speaker: We're in chapter 14.
Speaker: The team goes through the portal and and magic has trouble opening the portal.
Speaker: It's because there's a ward in place, so they have to drop back and actually walk over up to the location.
Speaker: And when they get there, they realize the vault is opening soon.
Speaker: But, oh, no, there's fire demons in the way.
Speaker: And whoo, they just destroy everything.
Speaker: Yeah, they are brutal.
Speaker: They are tough to deal with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Nico teleports back to the Abbey because they have a fire demon.
Speaker: They have a fire demon that resides in their forge.
Speaker: This is so great, by the way.
Speaker: Just like, everyone's like...
Speaker: trying to stave off death that she's like, hang on one second.
Speaker: I'm going to ask a guy for help.
Speaker: She basically does the phone a friend of, of sorcery moves.
Speaker: Like it's fantastic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She goes and she talks to the fire demon that runs their forge.
Speaker: And it's like, how do you kill one of you guys?
Speaker: And the fire demons like, fuck off.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, just leave me alone.
Speaker: Just no.
Speaker: And it's like we've and then the demons like fine.
Speaker: We feed on air now go away.
Speaker: And she's like, thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: She teleports back to the scene of the action and she casts.
Speaker: She turns the sky above the fire demons into a void of of outer space.
Speaker: Like just a rift in the sky opens up and it becomes outer space, a vacuum of space.
Speaker: And as that vacuum starts pulling the air up around the fire demons, they get pulled and absorbed and like yanked off of the plane and into outer space.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: That's pretty neat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was a very clever way.
Speaker: Just snuff them out.
Speaker: Snuff them out.
Speaker: It's a clever way to deal with it.
Speaker: Xerathos then shows up and starts throwing lightning balls at them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then they try to run their way to the vault and Satana.
Speaker: Well, Satana does what she's going to do and she captures the sun in yet another glamour.
Speaker: That's what she does.
Speaker: That's what she does.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Each of them, each member of the sons and, and, uh, SD Perry does this several times in the book.
Speaker: It's kind of like a Rashomon like moments where she stops and she retells the scene from everybody's every different point of view.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we get each character on the sons, basically having their moment where they realize that Satana has captured them again.
Speaker: in a glamour.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they're trying to, they're like, all right, we know we're in a glamour, but it's a complex one and we need Nico to dispel it.
Speaker: Unfortunately, Satana, we're in chapter 15 now, and the action's moving fast and furious.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Satana has frozen Nico and she's unable to get to the staff of one.
Speaker: But,
Speaker: But, oh, before I reveal that.
Speaker: The Suns are being tortured.
Speaker: Satana and Xerathos are like enjoying the torture of the Suns.
Speaker: Magic fights through her glamor and starts calling out to Niko to get her attention.
Speaker: And Niko begins to wake up.
Speaker: And now Niko is frozen.
Speaker: And what does Niko need to do in order to draw the Staff of One?
Speaker: Well, she is a blood witch, so she needs blood.
Speaker: She needs to cut herself or something like that.
Speaker: She needs to cut herself.
Speaker: She needs to bleed.
Speaker: Just a couple chapters ago, though, it says Nico was having PMS symptoms.
Speaker: Nico, realizing that she is now on her period, is able, and that she is bleeding, is able to manifest the staff of one without cutting herself and cast a spell to break the glamour.
Speaker: And I was like, that is an awesome, like... That's really cool.
Speaker: Basically, the suggestion is that once a month, every blood witch has God mode for all intents and purposes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's pretty cool.
Speaker: Pretty cool stuff.
Speaker: Very clever.
Speaker: Really liked that.
Speaker: Really liked that detail.
Speaker: It's a great detail.
Speaker: And Niko breaks the glamour.
Speaker: And the group begins to fight the Triumvirate and their soldiers.
Speaker: This gets interrupted.
Speaker: We're in chapter 16 now by Zarathos.
Speaker: Again,
Speaker: grabs a chunk of the ground the size of a warehouse and rips it up and throws it at them.
Speaker: Satana is nearly crushed and she gets out of the way and she notices that most of the soldiers that she works so hard in recruiting, you know,
Speaker: They all got smushed.
Speaker: Just like that.
Speaker: Just like that.
Speaker: She's not not dealing with it too well.
Speaker: But the triumvirate heads down to the vault and Satana is like, all right, well, as soon as as soon as the we the vault opens and we see the Varkath's arm stealing power from Zarathos and grabbing the amulet.
Speaker: That's the that's the plan.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Caretaker, meanwhile, underneath the rubble, everybody was protected by Caretaker.
Speaker: They had Caretaker had cast like a very thin shield around them that prevented them from getting crushed.
Speaker: So Blade is the first one out and he starts cutting down the soulless and heading to the vault.
Speaker: The rest of the sons start digging their way out, kill the rest of the soulless, and they're ready for their final showdown.
Speaker: Xerathos had cast a shield around the vault to prevent them from getting in.
Speaker: Magic, Niko, and Caretaker combined their powers into this badass witchy power merge thing.
Speaker: And Blade and Robbie are like, we got to back the fuck up.
Speaker: We'll be over here.
Speaker: We'll be over here.
Speaker: Do what you need to do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the three magic users combine their energies and focus their energies.
Speaker: And then boom, Zarathos's shield is gone.
Speaker: And Zarathos begins throwing a tantrum once the ward dissolves.
Speaker: He's not happy.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's not.
Speaker: He is a pissed off Power Ranger villain.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He's stomping his feet.
Speaker: If you need to imagine Zarathus, just imagine a Power Ranger villain, but his head is a flaming skull.
Speaker: That's literally what he looks like.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So rubber encased monster kind of guy.
Speaker: That's how it goes in my head.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So we're in chapter 17 now.
Speaker: And Zarathos, he tries to absorb the sun's souls.
Speaker: But instead, Caretaker opens up a portal to her dimension, which is just pure light magic energy.
Speaker: And Zarathos starts accidentally absorbing that.
Speaker: And that is basically like a toxin to him.
Speaker: He's like allergic to it.
Speaker: So he starts like sucking in all this light energy and he's like, ah.
Speaker: So this like severely weakens Zarathos.
Speaker: He is not the big buff dude like doing whatever stuff anymore.
Speaker: He's been burned from the inside out.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: He's not feeling his full demon-y self.
Speaker: Nope, not at all.
Speaker: Satana and Fen are at the vault while Xerathos does this.
Speaker: She goes out to help him.
Speaker: She opens a hole to the pits of eternity from her region of hell, which are filled with, you know, just the worst of the worst are down there.
Speaker: And also her exes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Of which she has many.
Speaker: Of which she has many.
Speaker: I love this little detail.
Speaker: Okay, so it says like these terrible demons start spilling out.
Speaker: And it's like, and then a dumb actress.
Speaker: And it's like-
Speaker: It's the woman from the beginning of the book that she banished to the pits of eternity for looking at her wrong.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Just one of her most recent petty moments is literally crawling back.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So all these demons are attacking the souls and there it's just becomes this big battle moment.
Speaker: They're they're fighting.
Speaker: They're carving up.
Speaker: Ghost Rider is having a feast.
Speaker: He's slicing up lost souls because that's what he does.
Speaker: That's his thing.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Xerathos has been pinned down by magic while Nico and Caretaker close Satana's rift.
Speaker: Xerathos hits magic with a lightning bolt.
Speaker: Robbie fights off some more enemies, then wraps up Satana in his chains.
Speaker: And Fen, meanwhile.
Speaker: Meanwhile?
Speaker: Fen has been tricking everybody.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Fen?
Speaker: Fen.
Speaker: I thought we knew you better than that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's been using one of his little fancy devices to mimic the seal on the vault, making it seem like it was still shut.
Speaker: And he opens it while everyone is distracted, grabs the item of highest value, and teleports away.
Speaker: Fen.
Speaker: Fen.
Speaker: I wonder what that is.
Speaker: Chapter 18.
Speaker: Zarathos and Satana basically, they like try to three stooges their way over to the vault to grab the Varkath star.
Speaker: It doesn't go well for either of them.
Speaker: Zarathos gets to it first, but because of how weak and vulnerable it is, Blade throws his sword and is able to cut off Zarathos's hand.
Speaker: Like, Zarathos is holding the Varkath star.
Speaker: He's like, I've got it.
Speaker: And then just from off screen, Blade's sword flies in and chops his hand off.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just pure Kroll moment.
Speaker: It's beautiful.
Speaker: And then Zatanna grabs it out of the cutoff hand and starts to put it on.
Speaker: And then Nico casts a spell.
Speaker: And the result, and the spell was, it's not yours.
Speaker: That's the spell she cast.
Speaker: Or it does not belong to you.
Speaker: It doesn't belong to you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She says it does not belong to you.
Speaker: And she casts that from the Staff of One.
Speaker: I'm like, I wonder how the Staff of One is going to interpret that.
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: It shoots out a little energy beam.
Speaker: It hits the star and, oh.
Speaker: You've got a hand growing out of your head.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: Hey, kid.
Speaker: I love that kid.
Speaker: She's great.
Speaker: Cameo.
Speaker: So, so cameo.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Nico casts a spell and it causes the, the, the Varkath star to explode and, and disintegrate and just lets out like a energy wave and it's just gone.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker: And then the fight just basically turns into like a slugfest.
Speaker: You know, they're all tired.
Speaker: It's like when boxer, it's like 12th round boxing and it's like, they can't even keep their hands up anymore.
Speaker: And they're just kind of like leaning on each other and they have to be broken up.
Speaker: That's basically what it turns into.
Speaker: And at this point, magic cuts a portal to Mephisto's dimension and
Speaker: which recognizes Zarathos and it like reaches out and grabs him and pulls him back into Mephisto's dimension.
Speaker: And she closes the portal behind him and that's a wrap on Zarathos.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He, he went back to hang out with Mephisto.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In the video game looks like an aging eighties rocker, by the way.
Speaker: just, there was something about him in the video game that was very Bill Nighy in Love Actually.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he's like, you've done some terrible shit in your life, haven't you?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you're still having a good time.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: You're still sleeping with 18 year olds.
Speaker: You are?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right, Mephisto.
Speaker: You are the devil.
Speaker: You are the devil.
Speaker: Quote unquote, the devil.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's the thing about Mephisto is he calls himself the devil.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Or like Satan or whatever.
Speaker: And people are like, I don't think you actually are.
Speaker: You're just like...
Speaker: You fashion yourself to be that.
Speaker: They do have a moment in the game where like someone calls him like the devil and this is hell or something.
Speaker: And he goes, well, that's Mephisto and this is Limbo.
Speaker: And Mephisto goes, there is a difference.
Speaker: There is a difference there.
Speaker: Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker: I'm as close as you're going to get.
Speaker: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: So yeah, so he's back in Mephisto's prison.
Speaker: And then after that happens, Satana is like, she looks around and she's like, well, you can't blame a girl for trying.
Speaker: Yeah, no, she literally just,
Speaker: call it a truce?
Speaker: Call it square?
Speaker: Should I go now?
Speaker: Yeah, she's done.
Speaker: She's fine.
Speaker: She's like, yeah, alright, I'm done.
Speaker: And she strikes a deal with magic and swears by blood that she will return to her realm and not come back to Earth for 100 years.
Speaker: 100 years.
Speaker: And Satan is like, fine, deal.
Speaker: They cut their hands, they shake on it, swarm by blood, and Satan is like, alright, fuck off.
Speaker: And she's like,
Speaker: Walks away, probably flipping them the bird.
Speaker: I've always, I have always loved that like ancient medieval tradition of demons are awful, but they've got to follow the rules.
Speaker: They do have to follow the rules.
Speaker: There are rules.
Speaker: Like she tried to do it without swearing by blood.
Speaker: And then magic's like, no, you got to swear by blood.
Speaker: And she's like, my only weakness.
Speaker: She means it like, yeah.
Speaker: So she's like, and I love a lot of the internal monologue where she's like, I miss it at this point.
Speaker: Like it was like, I was bored, but now I want to go home.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's actually kind of grateful.
Speaker: She's like, you know what?
Speaker: You know what I learned today that, you know, the grass is always greener on the other side.
Speaker: And she's like, can you please go back to hell?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's like, all right, I'm leaving.
Speaker: Bye bye.
Speaker: I'm going back to I'm going back to hell.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: So they look at the at what's remaining of the stuff in the in the vault.
Speaker: And the only thing they find is a summoning spell for Mephisto.
Speaker: And they're like, well, you know what?
Speaker: That's that's some of it.
Speaker: Being able to summon Mephisto, Blade says those spells are a dime a dozen.
Speaker: Like, you can stumble upon spells to summon Mephisto.
Speaker: It's just that you never really want to.
Speaker: Yeah, it's not a good thing to summon him.
Speaker: He's more than willing to be summoned.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Happy to do it.
Speaker: Happy to do it.
Speaker: You know what Mephisto loves?
Speaker: He loves a good deal on a good.
Speaker: He loves a bargain.
Speaker: Loves a bargain.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He's bargain hunting all the time.
Speaker: All the time.
Speaker: Just like a spin.
Speaker: I would love it if they just did a spinoff comic of just like Mephisto, like literally going to yard sales.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a pretty good vinyl.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe.
Speaker: So chapter 19, the team is back at the Abbey.
Speaker: They're relaxing a little bit.
Speaker: Caretaker is in her study looking for answers as to why the vaults vault items were grouped like that.
Speaker: And she finds a passage referring to her sister, Lilith, the dark mother.
Speaker: She starts getting in her feelings a little bit.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Fen reveals himself to be none other than Dr. Faustus.
Speaker: We called it.
Speaker: We called it... Rewind.
Speaker: Rewind episode one.
Speaker: Let's go back to episode... I think it was episode one.
Speaker: One of the episodes.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: One of the episodes.
Speaker: We said it.
Speaker: Rewind the tape.
Speaker: Fenn is Dr. Faustus.
Speaker: He's at HYDRA headquarters and he's basically talking to one of the lieutenant bureaucrat people like, hey, listen, I got a map to somebody.
Speaker: I need more money and soldiers.
Speaker: And they're like, fine, fuck, whatever.
Speaker: If you can convince...
Speaker: Crossbones, then you're good.
Speaker: You can do it.
Speaker: And, you know, Crossbones is just a asshole.
Speaker: But yeah, obviously he he does it off camera in between the end of this book and the start of the game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Crossbones is literally one of the first villains we see in the game.
Speaker: So I think the first shot is Crossbones getting off of a helicopter.
Speaker: I think you're right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we really do cut straight to it.
Speaker: Blade, meanwhile, does some more investigative work in New York City, and he starts doing like he starts finding an ownership chain for all the buildings that they hit at the end of one of the previous chapters.
Speaker: And they're going through.
Speaker: He's like, OK, this is owned by this company.
Speaker: This is owned by this company.
Speaker: It was like all the shit that you that they didn't have time to do during the, you know, the actual run up to the end there.
Speaker: Now he has time to kind of like tie up loose ends.
Speaker: So he's like, oh, and this is this and this is owned by the Von Strucker company.
Speaker: And this is owned by and like and the Echidna Holdings.
Speaker: And then he's like and then he start goes into the Avenger database.
Speaker: He's like, oh, it was Hydra all along.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, he really was working for Hydra.
Speaker: Son of a bitch.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: He's like, he didn't just happen to have a Hydra bag.
Speaker: No, he didn't get that at some sort of like swap meet.
Speaker: Is he actually, he got it the, the, the honest to God way.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: He died donated to Hydra public radio.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Welcome to HPR.
Speaker: HPR!
Speaker: And then basically the end of the book is Caretaker realizing that the vault was an emergency kit to stop Lilith.
Speaker: The goal of the vault was you opened it, you put on the Varkath Star, used the spell to summon Mephisto, and then you used the Varkath Star to command Mephisto to destroy Lilith.
Speaker: And now that emergency kit was gone.
Speaker: And there's a clear pathway to the prophecy of the midnight sun happening now.
Speaker: And that is where the book ends.
Speaker: So the whole point was Fenn didn't actually want to do any of this shit.
Speaker: He was trying to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The only thing he wanted, the Varkath started to be blown up.
Speaker: All he wanted was the map to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he got it.
Speaker: And he got it.
Speaker: Leading to the events in Pixelit Game of the Year, Marvel Midnight Suns.
Speaker: Yeah, damn straight.
Speaker: So, Phil, that's the end of the book.
Speaker: What do you think?
Speaker: I had so much fun with this one.
Speaker: Man, S.C.
Speaker: Perry has never let us down.
Speaker: satisfying good books.
Speaker: Just, just a fun, you know, pulpy adventure.
Speaker: You know, you add, we've, we've done so much fun reading by dint of reading in the video game adaptation genre, but then you throw in comic books into the mix and it's just pulpy actiony fun.
Speaker: And I think she did a great job with it.
Speaker: I love this book.
Speaker: This is a lot of fun.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: It was a whole lot of fun.
Speaker: And I think one of my favorite things about it was how many little things, like the attention to detail that she had in it.
Speaker: Like in one of the early chapters, Satana casting that actress at her party down into the pits of eternity.
Speaker: And then at the end of the book, she opens up a hole to the pits of eternity.
Speaker: That actress wanders out.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: What a great detail.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You didn't need to have that in the book to make it a good book, but it's so much fun.
Speaker: I love little details.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Little Easter eggs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And how, you know, I didn't mention it, but there will be like stories about how like a news story playing in the background about how a soccer stadium collapsed because of a structural fault in the building or something like that.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: Stuff like that is, it just takes what would have otherwise been a totally serviceable, fun, you know, B plus of a book and takes it to that next level.
Speaker: And it's fantastic.
Speaker: The details.
Speaker: I would say this is one of those books that if you just listen to us talk about it and you are...
Speaker: There's a lot that I didn't specifically mention in my in my week.
Speaker: It's still a pleasure to read.
Speaker: I think if you if you even if you know what's going to happen and by way of it being a prequel, you know, you kind of know where the you know where the start of the game is.
Speaker: So, you know, that none of the main characters are going to.
Speaker: We're not losing any of these main characters.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: We're not losing anybody.
Speaker: But it does set up a fun adventure.
Speaker: And again, as I mentioned when we first started this book, it's really valuable if, for example, you're like me, and I didn't know who the Midnight Suns were.
Speaker: I wasn't familiar with that comic book.
Speaker: at all with that team at all.
Speaker: And so starting out the game, I got there, but there were a lot of details that I just had to go, uh, okay, I guess this is what I'm dealing with, whatever.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And this sets a lot of that, um,
Speaker: it ties up the loose ends and helps you appreciate the story a lot more.
Speaker: I find, I, I, I think it's, I would, I would venture as far to say that if you were like crazy about midnight sons and you just love it and have been soaking up the story and, and, and the plot and everything like that, this is kind of required reading then it's just, it's, it really is a wonderful companion piece.
Speaker: So yeah, I agree.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's,
Speaker: That's it for Marvel Midnight Suns Infernal Rising.
Speaker: Let us know what you thought.
Speaker: You know, you can you can tweet at us.
Speaker: You can do all that fun stuff.
Speaker: But before we close out the show, we have something important to talk about.
Speaker: Phil.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, what am I playing?
Speaker: Well, I am like two missions away from beating Marvel's Midnight Suns.
Speaker: So I'm right there at the end of that one.
Speaker: It took a while for me to get started on this game.
Speaker: But now that I've started, I can't stop.
Speaker: And it's constantly revving on my computer.
Speaker: Really enjoying it, having a lot of fun with it.
Speaker: Outside of that, I played a little bit of Aliens Colonial Marines.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: For a project that is- For a show?
Speaker: For a show.
Speaker: A show that maybe we've mentioned on this particular podcast before.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And it is, man, that game is a time capsule.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: Like, it really, it takes you back.
Speaker: It's a very specific time in first person shooters, I believe.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And it's not that old of a game or anything.
Speaker: It's just that it's very specific.
Speaker: It's very specific to that era.
Speaker: And I can already see moments of why this one pissed off a lot of people who are fans of this franchise.
Speaker: But, you know, they have done nothing to fix a lot of the bugs and the problems, which is, let's face facts, what I came here for.
Speaker: Uh, that one, that one is, uh, is going to be a real trip.
Speaker: I can tell you that much.
Speaker: Um, and another game I dipped my toe into, and this will serve as a transition to, uh, uh, what we're going to talk about later.
Speaker: Uh, but I, I started playing, uh, bionic commando rearmed.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: How are you feeling about that?
Speaker: Well, it's funny because I thought maybe it was just going to be kind of a reskin, like a, like a Xbox live, you know, game kind of reskin, um, of Bionic Commando.
Speaker: And it,
Speaker: is, but it's not.
Speaker: They've added in new aspects of gameplay to it, new bosses.
Speaker: It's not enough that you get to the end of the level and you just have to dodge a bad guy while trying to blow up a power core or something like that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They've added in some new stuff.
Speaker: That's another one that's a real time capsule, not just because it's based on a game that's from my childhood, but because- But because it was an XBLA.
Speaker: XBLA, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's such a specific look.
Speaker: It's not that it looks bad.
Speaker: It just looks so specific to that time period.
Speaker: It's like it's the low budget.
Speaker: It's the low mid budget XBLA, you know, absolutely.
Speaker: Like at a time when like studios were like, oh, yeah, we can crank out some lower budget stuff and just throw them up on on on this for like five bucks or whatever.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And it serves that purpose admirably.
Speaker: I haven't finished it, but I get the impression I'll probably finish it in an hour.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Bionic Commando was not a very long game.
Speaker: So even if they add in a little more stuff, it's going to be a pretty short experience.
Speaker: But I've always loved that game.
Speaker: And they get the feel of it, right?
Speaker: It still feels tremendously good to play.
Speaker: So that's what I'm playing.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Kevin, what are you playing?
Speaker: I am playing the.
Speaker: So I'll start out right at the top with I started playing yesterday.
Speaker: So everyone, you guys know the audience that we record these episodes several weeks in advance of when they come out, just to have a little bit of a buffer.
Speaker: When.
Speaker: We record this episode.
Speaker: We are two days out from Forspoken and all of the discourse about its dialogue being discussed on Twitter for ad nauseum.
Speaker: And I took the position of like, I don't
Speaker: think it's as bad as y'all are saying.
Speaker: I think y'all doth protest too much in this instance.
Speaker: Don't we have enough to whine about?
Speaker: My God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then I saw some other things about the game.
Speaker: Like, all right, well, fuck it.
Speaker: I'm going to buy it.
Speaker: So I bought it and I started playing Forspoken.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: Yeah?
Speaker: Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker: Like, it's like it's you can tell it's not like it's not as polished.
Speaker: Here's my wild, crazy, bombastic take is that I am having more fun playing it than I had playing God of War Ragnarok.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: God of War Ragnarok.
Speaker: I mean, let's be honest.
Speaker: God of War Ragnarok did not even make my, did it make my top 10 list last year?
Speaker: It did not.
Speaker: No, it did not.
Speaker: You were really not all that impressed with that one.
Speaker: I was pretty low on God of War Ragnarok.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: In terms of polish, no question.
Speaker: God of War Ragnarok is polished up and down side to side.
Speaker: But in terms of just like, hey, I can just like parkour around and zippity doodah around with my magic bracelet and stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm having more fun playing Forspoken.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: What am I going to?
Speaker: I can't really deny that.
Speaker: And it's funny because there's a whole bunch of people who are like, oh, it's a five out of ten.
Speaker: whatever it's a it's a six out of ten and be like first of all uh review scores are bullshit because they kind of yeah they kind of boil things down to uh a stunning lack of nuance if we're saying like polish and optimization yeah it's a pretty low score but if we're saying like just straight up fun and there's like a heart that's
Speaker: There's like a heart to the game that you can see is there and it still shines through even with other bullshit.
Speaker: And I think it was somebody on the discord mentions that.
Speaker: And I'm stealing that, that line basically from somebody else on the discord is that, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's fun.
Speaker: And for as cringe, quote unquote, as the dialogue is when people were talking about it,
Speaker: 95% of all that dialogue that people thought was like cringe or whatever happens in the first 20 minutes.
Speaker: And I've been playing for four hours now.
Speaker: And like there is it's like it's basically when when your character it's a fish out of water story.
Speaker: It's when your character transports teleports from New York City to this weird ass fantasy realm.
Speaker: That's when all of that quote-unquote cringe dialogue happens.
Speaker: And then it kind of like weans itself off of that over time.
Speaker: And it's like, okay, well, this is kind of just the character.
Speaker: She's very sarcastic.
Speaker: Like, there's a moment early on where she nearly gets the shit kicked out of her.
Speaker: So she's a criminal.
Speaker: She's a petty thief.
Speaker: She steals cars or whatever.
Speaker: There's a group of...
Speaker: people who are like, hired her to steal a car and they find her in an alleyway, she nearly gets the shit kicked out of her because she can't fucking shut up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like this is just like a character trait is where she just is constantly running her mouth.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: I mean, it's truly bizarre, though, when you look at the stuff everyone's calling cringe.
Speaker: Like, is this is this, you know, the dialogue of of of Cormac McCarthy?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: But have you guys played video games before?
Speaker: There is nothing out of the ordinary about that dialogue when it comes to video games.
Speaker: Nothing.
Speaker: I do not understand the the freak out.
Speaker: So everybody, everybody doth protest too much.
Speaker: And it's a it's flawed by a large margin, but still extremely fun.
Speaker: And I find myself like, I can't wait to go back and play Forspoken.
Speaker: Whereas other games that were very well received last year, like God or Ragnarok.
Speaker: And I people are going to get on me for my Ragnarok takes.
Speaker: Like I felt like I was trying I was like going through the motions with Ragnarok after like a few hours.
Speaker: Just to see where the story went.
Speaker: So anyway, that's my take on that.
Speaker: Also, I'm playing Bionic Commando Rearmed.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Because of next week's episode.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: What would that have to do with next week's episode?
Speaker: Oh, well, next week will be the start of a two-parter with a guest, James, a.k.a.
Speaker: Hot Cider, the thumbnail king of YouTube, will be on the show.
Speaker: As we read and recap, Worlds of Power, Bionic Commando, an FX9 production.
Speaker: Our good friend Seth Godin made that book happen.
Speaker: And we're going to...
Speaker: Seth Godin, friend of the pod.
Speaker: Friend of the pod.
Speaker: Official friend of the pod.
Speaker: No takesies, maxies.
Speaker: Official friend of the pod.
Speaker: We're going to be going through that next week.
Speaker: And yes, I agree with everything you said about buying a commando rearmed, but also it's like...
Speaker: pretty awesome remix of all the music.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The music is solid.
Speaker: By the way, Biana Commando's music was always underrated.
Speaker: Oh, super underrated.
Speaker: People don't talk about it enough.
Speaker: People didn't talk about it enough.
Speaker: Now the rearmed music is just fucking slaps.
Speaker: Oh, it's great.
Speaker: It's terrific.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening to the series on Marvel Midnight Suns, Infernal Rising.
Speaker: We'll be back next week, as I said, with Bionic Commando, Worlds of Power, and Hot Cider.
Speaker: If you can do us a favor...
Speaker: Follow us on Twitter.
Speaker: Follow us on Instagram at PixelitPod.
Speaker: Go ahead and go to our website, PixelitPod.com and subscribe to our newsletter.
Speaker: If you want, if you're feeling really anxious, as Beetlejuice would say,
Speaker: go over to the YouTube and subscribe to us there.
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Speaker: If you're not a TikToker or an Instagrammer, but you still, you still use YouTube, go ahead and, and check out our, our YouTube channel.
Speaker: So with all that being said, have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Good night.
