Transcript
Speaker: every day, a little more gray in the beard.
Speaker: She goes, I know because she's six years younger than me and it makes her very happy.
Speaker: Like, look, I'm not Tycho, I teach yourself.
Speaker: It's not like Steve Martin here.
Speaker: It's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: This is, you know, it always is Steve Martin.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Hey, everybody.
Speaker: You're goddamn right it's the anniversary episode.
Speaker: You got me that time!
Speaker: I was reveling in our anniversary episode.
Speaker: You finally fucking got me!
Speaker: It's the anniversary episode of Pixel It!
Speaker: Welcome to Mixed-Light, where we read, recap, and review video game novelizations.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me as always is Phil.
Speaker: And on today's show, we are talking about Resident Evil Caliban Cove.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: We're going back to where we started.
Speaker: We're back, baby.
Speaker: With an S.D.
Speaker: Perry novelization in the Resident Evil franchise.
Speaker: It's Caliban Cove time to celebrate one year.
Speaker: One year.
Speaker: One year of Pixel.
Speaker: One year.
Speaker: Can you believe we've been doing this for a year?
Speaker: I can't actually.
Speaker: I don't have the attention span for year long projects, Kevin.
Speaker: I don't know how we did this.
Speaker: Somehow we just kept doing it and a year went by.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And time moved past us.
Speaker: And time stayed the same.
Speaker: We stayed the same.
Speaker: And and the year progressed.
Speaker: And and hallelujah.
Speaker: Here we are.
Speaker: Here we are.
Speaker: It's time for Caliban Cove.
Speaker: As we as we promised, I think I think we might have said it in another episode at some point that we would be returning to Resident Evil for the one year anniversary.
Speaker: And here it is.
Speaker: We're back.
Speaker: Here we are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is this is exciting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because we mentioned in previous episodes, not just the last one, but a couple now that we have so much more experience now with this style of novelization, the style of book that I don't think we were, you know, mean about Resident Evil, the Umbrella Conspiracy, which is the first in the series at all.
Speaker: Not at all.
Speaker: But I don't think we appreciated what we had.
Speaker: No, I don't think we did.
Speaker: I don't think we knew what we had in our hands.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's like a whole year of this shit to realize, oh, I see.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Resident Evil Umbrella Conspiracy is definitely in the upper quartile of the books that we have read.
Speaker: Easily, easily.
Speaker: My God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just, just, it's like, it's like, this is, this is the romantic comedy.
Speaker: This is the part of the romantic comedy where we like come back and we're like, let's, let's give this a try again.
Speaker: I'm older wiser.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, I don't want to be with Kelly anymore.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I want to be with, with you.
Speaker: With Caliban Cove.
Speaker: Just imagine Caliban from the X-Men comics.
Speaker: I just imagine a random rocky formation at the mouth of a cove, just sitting there, mute.
Speaker: Just cut to me saying, I love you, Caliban Cove.
Speaker: And it cuts to just waves gently crashing on some rocks.
Speaker: Slapping against the shore.
Speaker: A beautiful moon.
Speaker: You complete me, Caliban Cove.
Speaker: It just cuts back to us like, oh, that sure was a cove.
Speaker: Damn.
Speaker: It's the cove we made along the way.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So, uh, so SD Perry, it's her second time around with her.
Speaker: Uh, what can you tell me about SD Perry?
Speaker: SD Perry.
Speaker: For those of you who haven't been with us from the very beginning, SD Perry is actually the daughter of a, um, another, uh, for, you know, for work for hire, uh, writer named Steve Perry.
Speaker: Uh, they've between the two of them worked on like,
Speaker: every kind of sci-fi fantasy horror franchise there is working on.
Speaker: But S.D.
Speaker: Perry, she actually did a bunch.
Speaker: Well, she basically did all of these, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, she did all of all of the Resident Evil novels.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: She did a bunch of alien books, alien versus predator books like she did books that I read when I was a kid.
Speaker: I read through all the aliens books, all the alien versus predator books, the predator books, all that shit.
Speaker: She wrote all that stuff sometimes with her dad.
Speaker: Um, she did a magic, the gathering stuff, uh, star Trek.
Speaker: She did a ton of star Trek and, uh, actually, interestingly enough, uh, wrote for, uh, uncharted, uh, the video game series.
Speaker: So she's, she's got some, yeah, she's got some real, uh, stripes on her.
Speaker: She, she really knows this life.
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: She's got some bona fides there.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And just a point of point of order.
Speaker: Her dad, Steve Perry, is not that Steve Perry, who is the lead singer of Journey.
Speaker: Different Steve Perry.
Speaker: Different Steve Perry.
Speaker: I have to assume slightly better head of hair.
Speaker: Slightly better.
Speaker: Then again, I don't know what I don't know what Journey Steve Perry's hair looks like these days, but back in the day it was it was weird and stringy.
Speaker: I'm looking at a picture of him.
Speaker: It's got a lot of product in there.
Speaker: Oh, there you go.
Speaker: It's got a luminosity all unto itself.
Speaker: Oh my gosh, that's like...
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: He looks like Jerry Lewis.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: He does look like Jerry Lewis.
Speaker: He looks like he's about to step in and host Jerry's kids.
Speaker: I got to tell you, though, for a guy in this the picture I'm looking at, you're looking at his wiki picture.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, he's 70, 70, I think, 71 in that picture.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He looks great for a guy in his early 70s.
Speaker: I got to say, I mean, he's got a he's got that worn, leathery skin like some people.
Speaker: like tan too much and it's a problem and their skin is just and he looks like he tanned too much but the wrinkles just fell fell in the right spots now he has this nice nice crispy leathery skin that you know you you just you could you could make a wallet out of i'm not saying i want to make a wallet out of steve perry's face i'm just saying you could uh-huh does this does this have anything to do with our latest sponsorship with makeyourownwallet.net
Speaker: And you can specify the different building materials.
Speaker: Make your own wallet dotnet promo code pixel.
Speaker: It gives you 20 percent off of your own Perry wallet.
Speaker: Steve Perry.
Speaker: If you if you hold it against your ear, you can hear the screams.
Speaker: Make your own wallet dotnet.
Speaker: No, he looks like it's, it's the kind of tan that looks like it was come by honestly.
Speaker: It was an honest, it was an honest days tan.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: He didn't, he didn't spend a ton of time in a machine or with oils.
Speaker: Like he was actually out in, out in the damn fields or something like that.
Speaker: I don't know if they're fields where Steve Perry is.
Speaker: Probably not.
Speaker: Anyway, SD Perry, that's our, our author.
Speaker: If you want more of her work, head back to our first ever book series, episodes one, two, three and four.
Speaker: And five.
Speaker: I think we did five.
Speaker: Five.
Speaker: Five.
Speaker: That we did.
Speaker: That was before we really streamlined this thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: On the Umbrella Conspiracy, which is an adaptation of Resident Evil 1.
Speaker: And just to give a little background on what Caliban Cove is.
Speaker: So the first book in the series was an adaptation of Resident Evil 1.
Speaker: I believe the third book in the series, which is called The City of the Dead, is an adaptation of Resident Evil 2.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Caliban Cove is neither.
Speaker: Caliban Cove is actually, it's a completely original work by S.D.
Speaker: Perry set in the Resident Evil universe starring Rebecca Chambers as the main character.
Speaker: Now this was before Resident Evil Zero was a thing.
Speaker: Although S.D.
Speaker: Perry did write the adaptation for that.
Speaker: She did.
Speaker: She did write the adaptation for that as well.
Speaker: But this was to give Rebecca Chambers like a little extra something something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, just and it's set in between one and two.
Speaker: And it explains why Rebecca Chambers is not involved at all in.
Speaker: In Resident Evil 2.
Speaker: Why she's not around for RE2.
Speaker: And that's what Caliban Cove is.
Speaker: And we are reading through it.
Speaker: And if you want to join us, go right ahead.
Speaker: Pick up a book.
Speaker: It's pretty short, about 250 pages.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Join us at page one, won't you?
Speaker: Join us at page one, which is actually page nine.
Speaker: It's actually page nine.
Speaker: Oh shit.
Speaker: I got page one.
Speaker: In the old school version with the weird green and white pixelated.
Speaker: The prologue starts on page nine in this printing.
Speaker: Oh wow.
Speaker: What do they pack into pages one through eight?
Speaker: So page one says Resident Evil Caliban Cove.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And then page two says also by S.D.
Speaker: Perry.
Speaker: And then page three is Resident Evil Caliban Cove S.D.
Speaker: Perry.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Page four is your printing and is-bin numbers.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Page five is the dedication.
Speaker: Still Resident Evil Caliban Code.
Speaker: Dedication for Leslie, hole digger extraordinaire.
Speaker: I assume Leslie is her dog.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm assuming that too.
Speaker: I hope.
Speaker: Six is left intentionally blank.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Seven has the quote.
Speaker: Through avarice, evil smiles.
Speaker: Through insanity, it sings.
Speaker: From Anonymous.
Speaker: Anonymous.
Speaker: Page eight, intentionally blank.
Speaker: And page nine...
Speaker: Prologue.
Speaker: Prologue, baby.
Speaker: All right, here we go.
Speaker: So starting with the prologue.
Speaker: The prologue, kind of like in the original, the first book, it starts out with these ripped from the headlines newspaper clippings to kind of give us the background of
Speaker: what has been happening in the weeks since Resident Evil one.
Speaker: So you got three articles in here, one talking about how the Spencer Mansion was destroyed.
Speaker: The second one talking about how the stars, the stars are drug addicts.
Speaker: I love this.
Speaker: It's a cover up kid.
Speaker: There's this.
Speaker: Yeah, it was their fault.
Speaker: They went in drunk.
Speaker: They went in drunk and high and they crashed their helicopter and only a few of them lived.
Speaker: Which which where's that alternate reality video game?
Speaker: I play the shit out of that.
Speaker: If there's no zombies, you're just a five minutes long.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wesker's actually like the only sober one.
Speaker: He's trying to help you shoot him in the face.
Speaker: You accidentally shoot him in the face when the plane crashes.
Speaker: You're just gun goes off accidentally.
Speaker: Sort of like that conspiracy theory with JFK.
Speaker: Do you ever hear that one where it's?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: So, OK, so that there there was no real conspiracy.
Speaker: Lee Harvey Oswald did shoot JFK for the first bullet.
Speaker: The second bullet people that the conspiracy, it's a really light conspiracy, is that it was an accidental misfire from a Secret Service agent in the car behind him.
Speaker: So basically they did some trajectory mapping and it's like, oh yeah, these two came from the book depository.
Speaker: And then there was a secret service agent with his gun on his lap and he accidentally misfired, shot through the front of their car and hit JFK in the back of the head.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: So so now wait, is this just bad timing on his part?
Speaker: Or is he like it's just like he was startled by the gun gunshots.
Speaker: OK, OK, OK.
Speaker: Yeah, I was about to say they're like, it just so happened.
Speaker: And he, you know, it was like boom, boom.
Speaker: And then he accidentally fires.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We're going to have to ask probably not aliens about that one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, they just did a conspiracy talk an episode a few weeks ago at this point talking about what conspiracies they do believe.
Speaker: They did not bring that up when it's when it's
Speaker: But Tristan does want to do a JFK episode, I think.
Speaker: That's always the one that that people who are if if if an otherwise reasonable person tells you that there is a conspiracy theory that they actually believe in, you can put down money probably that that it's something to do with JFK.
Speaker: It's either JFK or Jimmy Hoffa.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Jimmy Hoffa isn't a conspiracy theory.
Speaker: It's more or less just a theory because there's no alternate like there's no real theory for Jimmy.
Speaker: It's just a mystery at this point.
Speaker: It doesn't even really count.
Speaker: Yeah, it doesn't count.
Speaker: That does not really.
Speaker: Not really.
Speaker: It doesn't have quite the oomph of a we fake the moon landing, you know?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Stanley Kubrick and and company.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: So the stars are drunk.
Speaker: The stars are drunk.
Speaker: That's article two.
Speaker: And the third one is that the cover up is in full effect and the Spencer estate fire has been deemed accidental.
Speaker: Accidental.
Speaker: So umbrella clearly has, you know, offered $55 and a $25 gift card to the sizzler to the journalists of Raccoon City.
Speaker: And it's money well spent, let's just say.
Speaker: Do Sizzlers still exist?
Speaker: I don't think that they do, no.
Speaker: I don't know why.
Speaker: That was the first thing that popped into my head.
Speaker: It is 1998 in the continuity of the book.
Speaker: So Sizzlers would still be at their peak, I think.
Speaker: I have to, yeah, I have to look.
Speaker: You have to look that up now.
Speaker: Restaurant Company.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: Doing Businesses.
Speaker: It is still around.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: There are 99 locations for the sizzler.
Speaker: This all makes sense.
Speaker: Most of them are out west.
Speaker: That's why we don't know anything about them.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Most of them are in California, with some in Washington, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Oregon, Alaska and Puerto Rico.
Speaker: Keep up the good work, Carrie A. Cramp.
Speaker: We're proud of you.
Speaker: Doing a good job.
Speaker: That's the CEO.
Speaker: You know, there's only... Speaking of the Sizzler, do you remember the Ground Round restaurant?
Speaker: Ground Round, I'm not so familiar with.
Speaker: Yeah, there's only 15 locations of that left.
Speaker: So Sizzler's got it up on somebody.
Speaker: Sizzler has it up on somebody.
Speaker: Not bad.
Speaker: The original was it from Culver City.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Chapter one.
Speaker: Chapter one.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Sizzler.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: We've learned.
Speaker: You go back.
Speaker: You guys go back and listen to the first.
Speaker: Nothing has changed.
Speaker: We've learned nothing.
Speaker: We've learned nothing.
Speaker: We're just hoping that you enjoy our tangents as much as we do.
Speaker: That's all we're relying on.
Speaker: Rebecca Chambers is riding her bike from the Sizzler.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or she had a hearty steak dinner and mashed potatoes.
Speaker: She's not feeling so good.
Speaker: Not feeling so hot.
Speaker: And she's on her way.
Speaker: She's on her way to Barry's house because Barry has called a meeting.
Speaker: He wants everybody to meet at his house because he has important information.
Speaker: And we get a lot of internal monologue from Rebecca and these...
Speaker: in these pages about, you know, what things have been like the few weeks since the Spencer Mansion incident.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, people have been like staring at her wherever she goes because they know she's one of them drunk stars people.
Speaker: She's like everywhere she goes.
Speaker: The stars are effectively suspended.
Speaker: And she just wants to she just wants to retreat from the field duty life and work as a biochemist back in a lab somewhere.
Speaker: She doesn't want to do anything out in the field anymore.
Speaker: And who could blame her?
Speaker: Because for those playing the home game, what is she, 19 years old?
Speaker: 18, 19.
Speaker: Actually, 18.
Speaker: She's 18.
Speaker: Yeah, 18.
Speaker: So she's a genius at biochemistry and all that.
Speaker: She's she's graduated from college at 18 with a degree in biochem.
Speaker: But as far as I'm concerned, literally a child.
Speaker: She's had a long summer and she just wants to find a nice, boring lab job at this point.
Speaker: And who could blame her?
Speaker: Yeah, I had a note here for when she arrives at at Barry's house.
Speaker: So she knocks on the door and or she's about to knock on the door and Barry answers the door.
Speaker: And one of the things that I love about S.D.
Speaker: Perry's writing is she doesn't shy away from being a little bit thirsty in the way.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, absolutely not.
Speaker: Absolutely not.
Speaker: You know, Barry is like Barry in the games.
Speaker: I don't think there's there's anybody who has thought of thought Barry of as like a sexual icon.
Speaker: No, I mean, maybe a little bit.
Speaker: He is a bit of a bear, but like.
Speaker: Yeah, sure, sure.
Speaker: But he's not traditionally not traditional.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then in in this open the line, when we get introduced to Barry again now for book number two,
Speaker: Barry opened the door dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, his heavily muscled body filling the doorframe.
Speaker: Filling the doorframe.
Speaker: Barry lifted weights with a vengeance.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He lifted weights.
Speaker: Period.
Speaker: With a vengeance.
Speaker: it's so good it's so good his colt python was tucked into a hip holster making him look like an overgrown cowboy i bet it was i bet that python was just tucked right into that hip right there it's so big
Speaker: You just got to you just got to you got to put that python down one pant leg, don't you, Barry?
Speaker: God damn.
Speaker: God damn it, Barry.
Speaker: God damn, Barry.
Speaker: So Barry says hi to Rebecca.
Speaker: He sure does.
Speaker: Yeah, like a gentleman, like a gentleman.
Speaker: And they have a, you know, it's like he's like, you know, hey, were you followed?
Speaker: And she's like, no.
Speaker: Now I have to imagine her with that voice like a prepubescent Muppet.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Elmo wasn't followed.
Speaker: Were you followed?
Speaker: No, Elmo wasn't followed.
Speaker: When you're.
Speaker: Hey, were you followed?
Speaker: Let's just run down the Muppets.
Speaker: Let's do it all.
Speaker: Do them all.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: What's the name of the rock that Elmo's always getting pissed off at?
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Oh, was it Rocky or something like that?
Speaker: It was something very Elmo and rock.
Speaker: Elmo and rock.
Speaker: The legend continues.
Speaker: Rocco.
Speaker: Rocco.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Hello, Rocco.
Speaker: Elmo had to kill Rocko.
Speaker: Rocko was bit.
Speaker: Rocko was becoming a zombie.
Speaker: Are you sure, Elmo?
Speaker: I didn't see any wounds on it.
Speaker: Elmo thinks you might have been bit too.
Speaker: Okay, well, let's all just calm down, Elmo.
Speaker: I think I did see that wound there.
Speaker: Let's just move on and defeat Wesker.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: There's a dude at Barry's house.
Speaker: Yes, a new dude.
Speaker: A new dude.
Speaker: He is another STARS agent.
Speaker: He's British.
Speaker: His name is David Trapp with two Ps in Trapp.
Speaker: And he's from the Exeter branch in Maine.
Speaker: And I was meaning to look up like...
Speaker: I mean, the standard issues state for, you know, high end, you know, secret military organizations.
Speaker: Exeter is a town of a thousand people.
Speaker: Uh huh.
Speaker: Of course it is because it's secret.
Speaker: It's it's it's close to banger.
Speaker: I hardly know her.
Speaker: Ah, ah, ah, ah,
Speaker: Yeah, I guess it's yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, whatever.
Speaker: Star's headquarters, London, New York, Washington and Exeter, Maine.
Speaker: Exeter, Exeter, Maine, home of the Exeter Red Claw single A baseball team.
Speaker: Yeah, it's what we've got a minor league baseball team and a fast pitch softball team, too.
Speaker: We've got everything.
Speaker: We've got everything.
Speaker: The only sizzler on the East Coast.
Speaker: We have a fair that comes through once every three years.
Speaker: We don't know how or why it just shows up.
Speaker: The fog rolls in.
Speaker: Ancient mystery.
Speaker: The fog rolls in and the.
Speaker: The fair just appears.
Speaker: Don't look directly into the band leader's eyes.
Speaker: Oops, you did.
Speaker: Bye-bye.
Speaker: Bye-bye.
Speaker: These carnies will eat you.
Speaker: Anyway, dig trap.
Speaker: Trap.
Speaker: Trappipa.
Speaker: Trappipa.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Both P's are pronounced.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: That's how the English do it.
Speaker: He's there and he's like, listen, good news and bad news.
Speaker: Good news is David Trapp is here.
Speaker: Bad news is Stars doesn't believe you and there's no backup coming.
Speaker: And, you know, that's pretty much the conversation that
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, he's just there to be a bummer.
Speaker: Like the best new.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The best news is I'm here.
Speaker: He believes them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He believes we find out he he he started with Barry.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He basically gives them the lowdown on everything that's happened.
Speaker: He's like been calling up other stars branches to like ask their advice.
Speaker: You hear about this thing?
Speaker: The zombie.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Isn't that fucking crazy?
Speaker: And they're like, oh, we'll get back to you.
Speaker: Yeah, well, I got a thing and I'll call you back, which I'm sure won't come back to haunt anybody.
Speaker: It's not going to come back to haunt anybody ever.
Speaker: So so Chris and Jill finally show up after Barry regales Rebecca with a story of of when David and and him were in stars, stars school together.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: about like it was a story about a grumpy commander and rubber snakes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We don't get any more details other than that, but I assume that it's hilarity ensued.
Speaker: That has to be what happens next, obviously.
Speaker: Obviously.
Speaker: So basically, Chris and Jill show up.
Speaker: They're like, hey, what's up?
Speaker: And David Trapp gives them lowdown, as you said.
Speaker: And it's just 20 questions from here on out.
Speaker: Chris is like, did you talk to the guy?
Speaker: There's a guy named...
Speaker: Palmieri, who is the head of STARS, the STARS national commander, Marco Palmieri, who he's on a classified.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, yeah, I forgot that STARS in the way it's set up in the book universe is a like a mercenary organization.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're private contractors.
Speaker: They're private contractors.
Speaker: They're like, oh, right.
Speaker: They're terrible.
Speaker: And the general idea seems to be the story that's going around is that
Speaker: they actually went in there to fuck up umbrella shit because there was some sort of funding dispute.
Speaker: Uh, that's, that's the, that's the implication that they're hearing from all over the place.
Speaker: So yeah, basically, I mean, do they go into like, are they disavowed officially or anything like that at this point?
Speaker: They're like suspended or something like that pending an investigation, but there's no investigation moving.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And the guy who could only sort it out, the only guy who could sort it out is the guy who's the head of stars and nobody can find him because he's on a secret mission in the Middle East, which is not problematic at all.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Everything's fine.
Speaker: Everything's fine.
Speaker: Everything's fine.
Speaker: It's 1998 and an American paramilitary organization is not destabilizing any governments in the Middle East.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: You enjoying the music?
Speaker: The music's good, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're going to enjoy that when you're older.
Speaker: It's extra special good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Smash mouth.
Speaker: Who here likes the wallflowers?
Speaker: Anyone?
Speaker: Anyone?
Speaker: Step back from that ledge, my friend.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Step back from that ledge.
Speaker: Yeah, but it's not looking good for old stars.
Speaker: It's not looking good for the old stars, stars family.
Speaker: So basically, David drops the bomb that there is another umbrella lab that he has his suspicions about.
Speaker: Contact has been severed.
Speaker: Nobody can figure out what's going on.
Speaker: He has a team of some stars peeps that he trusts wholeheartedly.
Speaker: And he wants to bring Rebecca along because she knows, you know, science and shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She knows science and shit and there's going to be virus stuff there and we need an 18 year old.
Speaker: I mean, a scientist to to check all this stuff out.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Because yeah, he's stars.
Speaker: People for the most part only know one thing and that's.
Speaker: Guns.
Speaker: Guns.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: It's guns and then the science person.
Speaker: There's a bunch of gun people and then science.
Speaker: That's the meta.
Speaker: There's gun guy, gun girl, guy with big extra gun and mousy gun girl.
Speaker: Underage question mark?
Speaker: Question mark?
Speaker: The other thing in this conversation is pretty fluid from like chapter one into chapter two.
Speaker: The break between one and two is kind of arbitrary in terms of like
Speaker: It's just an opportunity to break up the chapters, I think, because the first three chapters are one extremely long scene, basically.
Speaker: Pretty much, yeah.
Speaker: It kind of serves like two main purposes.
Speaker: A it in an in a nutshell, it gets everyone up to speed who maybe read the first Resident Evil book like a year ago, like, say us, us and and it gives you.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: That's OK, good.
Speaker: And frankly, probably is good enough for anyone who just happened to pick this one up and didn't read the first book.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, it just gets you up to speed.
Speaker: And also, but but in story, it gets
Speaker: the main characters, all right, here's our adventure.
Speaker: Here's the, you know, it's expository.
Speaker: Yeah, we're setting the stakes right now.
Speaker: Here's like, here's the stakes.
Speaker: Here's who's going to be involved.
Speaker: We're laying the track as somebody might say if we're, it's like the, you know that scene, a scene I love
Speaker: that I always point to in terms of good example of exposition, because a lot of a lot of people when they're talking about, you know, like, oh, you shouldn't just have exposition.
Speaker: There should be blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And they're like, no, you can have a scene that's just pure exposition as long as you make it interesting.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And the scene I point to often is Back to the Future.
Speaker: There's an entire stretch of Doc Brown just running around talking about what the DeLorean does.
Speaker: The plot isn't moving forward at all.
Speaker: He's literally just explaining the stakes.
Speaker: of the movie and how the DeLorean functions.
Speaker: And it's like a five minute sequence of him just doing that.
Speaker: And the reason why it works is A, Christopher Lloyd, and B, the writing is very snappy.
Speaker: And Christopher Lloyd's just executing on that writing and he's just, oh!
Speaker: Oh, Marty.
Speaker: They found me.
Speaker: I don't know how they found me, but they found me.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: You know, you nailed it.
Speaker: It's it's it's good writing and a fantastic actor.
Speaker: The exposition rests solidly on his string beanie shoulders and it works.
Speaker: It works.
Speaker: And honestly,
Speaker: This ain't half bad as far as an exposition dump is concerned.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that is what we get.
Speaker: We get it does break up a little bit in the sense that chapter one ends with him dropping the bomb that I'm taking the youngest, most inexperienced member with me to go check out this umbrella lab.
Speaker: But you're right.
Speaker: It goes right into it in chapter two.
Speaker: And yeah, we're getting more and we get more internal monologue from her.
Speaker: in the sense of the, oh, God, what am I doing?
Speaker: I don't know if I want to do this.
Speaker: Should I do this?
Speaker: The scene is also doing a good job of changing perspective, point of view between the different characters in the room.
Speaker: Like, for example, as soon as Chris hears this, he's like, oh, well, you know, I'm going, of course, we're all going.
Speaker: Everybody, everybody, Jill and Barry and Chris are like, yeah, we're going, we're going with you.
Speaker: And and and Mr. Trapp is basically like,
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, this is like a covert operation and five is already pushing the limit.
Speaker: So the fewer people, the better at that point.
Speaker: But we do we do get another name drop in this chapter that you might remember from the first book.
Speaker: Our mystery man, our man of mystery, Trent.
Speaker: Trent, the man with the most 90s name of all time.
Speaker: His name's Trent.
Speaker: And he's he's he's got a trench coat on and Trent's the trench coat wearer.
Speaker: He's that guy.
Speaker: What do you think he's listening to?
Speaker: What what music do you think he's listening to?
Speaker: Is it a complete cop out if I say Nine Inch Nails?
Speaker: No, no, I think I mean, a guy named Trent wearing a trench coat.
Speaker: I have to assume he's listening to Trent wearing a trench coat.
Speaker: And it's a little hate machine kind of shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it's just, it's, it's gotta be, especially when we get the scene, cause we do get David, we get a brief flashback to David recalling that that night that it was raining.
Speaker: Cause of course it was.
Speaker: And we're getting some serious crow vibes here and mysterious Trent shows up sopping wet with a miraculously it's only
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The rain is pouring down.
Speaker: Tappity, tappity, tappity, tappity.
Speaker: And his envelope is only described as damp, despite the fact that it just sounds like it's a it's a gully washer out there.
Speaker: And and he and he gives the envelope over to David with all kinds of expository information in it with riddles and shit like is because because
Speaker: This is still Resident Evil.
Speaker: Let's not forget.
Speaker: It's still Resident Evil.
Speaker: And Trenton plays the game.
Speaker: It's basically like it's like it's like an escape room, but out in the world.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's exactly it.
Speaker: So yeah, it comes with information.
Speaker: It's got a map with a bunch of structures from the Kalibankovic where David's basically getting his hunch, quote unquote, that there's some nasty umbrella shit going on.
Speaker: There's some big shit going on.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And then Trent turns around and walks away and David's like, but what?
Speaker: And all he hears is,
Speaker: I hurt myself.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Trent disappears into a flock of crows and just holy shit.
Speaker: That was metal as fuck, you know.
Speaker: So he's got he get the on one of the pages.
Speaker: There's a list of names, including one in particular that Rebecca recognizes as a as a scientist, I believe, and a researcher there and then a
Speaker: They call it poetry, basically.
Speaker: It's a poem.
Speaker: But anyone who plays Resident Evil, this is pretty standard clues and hints at Resident Evil style puzzles.
Speaker: It says, Ammon's message received.
Speaker: Blue series.
Speaker: Enter answer for key.
Speaker: Letters and numbers reverse.
Speaker: Time rainbow.
Speaker: Don't count.
Speaker: Blue to access.
Speaker: And so I think we've got a cheat sheet here is what we're looking at.
Speaker: Yeah, this is all going to play in later for stuff.
Speaker: I want to rewind a few pages, though.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: We can jump right back.
Speaker: We blew past Chris remembering the names of the dead.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: Joseph, Richard, Kenneth, Forrest and Enrico.
Speaker: So those are the stars members that died, right?
Speaker: Those are the stars, all of our stars friends, not to mention Billy Rabbitson.
Speaker: Rabbitson.
Speaker: Son of rabbit.
Speaker: Billy was just Billy in book one.
Speaker: And in book two, he is Billy Rabbitson.
Speaker: Billy Rabbitson.
Speaker: I love that name.
Speaker: Listen, we're going to be reaching out.
Speaker: We've spoken to S.D.
Speaker: Perry about an interview and she's actually interested in at least doing a Q and A, not live.
Speaker: But she's gonna answer our questions and your questions, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker: Billy Robinson is on that list.
Speaker: It's on the list.
Speaker: Billy Robinson question mark.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: That's the whole question.
Speaker: She goes, I know, I know.
Speaker: That maybe, I mean, she dedicated this to her dog.
Speaker: Maybe that's an inside joke.
Speaker: Maybe it's an inside joke.
Speaker: It's a rabbit dog.
Speaker: Maybe it's also like, Billy Rabbitson is like a reference to like, Billy Batson, who is, who is Captain Marvel slash Shazam in the DC universe.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Damn, you just pulled that out of the clear blue fucking sky.
Speaker: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: I mean, Rabbitson, Batson.
Speaker: I've never heard Batson before either.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: Son of Bat.
Speaker: Son of Bat.
Speaker: The old Norse name.
Speaker: The old Norse name.
Speaker: The classics never die, Kevin.
Speaker: Son of Bat.
Speaker: Son of Bat.
Speaker: That's actually, yeah, Batman's son's name is John Batson.
Speaker: Yeah, John Benson.
Speaker: He's the one that skipped being Robin and just went straight into Wall Street.
Speaker: Straight into Wall Street.
Speaker: He's not really mentioned in the comics.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: He's a Gordon Gekko type of character.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: He'll get there.
Speaker: He'll get there.
Speaker: The Wolf of Wall Street was actually a DC comic adaptation based on...
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: The twists, the turns.
Speaker: I read the fuck out of that.
Speaker: And now we have to watch the Wolf of Wall Street.
Speaker: I'm going to go to Emily and be like, look, we're going to watch Wolf of Wall Street and just let's just for funsies headcanon.
Speaker: He's the son of Batman.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Just trust me on this one.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: He's he's Bruce Wayne's bastard son.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But but why?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Just why not?
Speaker: We're doing this.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Batsun.
Speaker: Batsun.
Speaker: And now a word from our sponsor.
Speaker: Tonight's broadcast is brought to you by Winkles Tired Dad BBQ Sauce.
Speaker: You know it's good because we spent all this time working on it for you.
Speaker: Winkles, don't argue with me Patricia.
Speaker: So Rebecca, now jumping back ahead to where we were, Rebecca has a big expository moment where she breaks down this guy, Dr. Griffith.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Which is a really fascinating story.
Speaker: And normally I don't like these, oh, he's a famous so-and-so because, good Lord, most people don't think or talk like that.
Speaker: Like, oh, I know, he does, he's a blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: I mean, like...
Speaker: I think this could have been slightly more believable at the beginning had she just said, oh, he was a friend of my old professor.
Speaker: Like, just leave it at that.
Speaker: Just don't make him famous or whatever.
Speaker: But then go ahead and tell this story.
Speaker: And so she tells the story about a guy who basically...
Speaker: He's he has this like these insane viral theories that turn out to be unfounded.
Speaker: But and then he experiments on a bunch of people because he tries to figure out a way to cure Marburg, which is.
Speaker: That is a real virus.
Speaker: Oh, it is.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: A rare but severe hemorrhagic fever, which affects both people and non-human primates.
Speaker: So Marburg is it's like a it's a it's similar to Ebola.
Speaker: From the initial headache to extreme amplification in a matter of days, fever, clotting, shock, brain damage, massive hemorrhaging from every orifice, they would have died in pools of their own blood.
Speaker: So yeah, not a pleasant day at the park from that one.
Speaker: No, Marburg is not a fun virus.
Speaker: So anyway, this guy intentionally infected a bunch of people with Marburg to see if he could cure them with his experiments.
Speaker: Did not, did not succeed.
Speaker: No, did not succeed.
Speaker: And it's kind of funny because it's such good writing.
Speaker: Like this is like,
Speaker: If if if Estee Perry was not influenced by Michael Crichton and this is this was released in the heyday of Michael Crichton, then I for one would be very, very surprised.
Speaker: Crichton had such a talent, flawed man that he was.
Speaker: He had such a talent.
Speaker: for taking complex mathematical and scientific ideas and writing them in such a way that, you know, at least in the time that you were reading it, you could follow and you understood what was going on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, her and her dad would have been contemporaries, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I wonder if there's something to that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, it's, it's, it's good.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's actually good scientific writing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like old school sci-fi where it's based heavily in actual science and that sort of thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's not like, this is kind of cool.
Speaker: It's not like dead space, which was terrible sci-fi writing.
Speaker: This, this is good sci-fi writing, which is like,
Speaker: It doesn't have to.
Speaker: And that's the thing with good sci fi writing is it could be mostly zero percent accurate, but it sounds 100 percent accurate.
Speaker: It doesn't it doesn't have to like actually make sense as long as it sounds like it makes sense to the writer.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: And it's like I see Marburg and I'm like, oh, yeah, Marburg, it's like an Ebola type virus.
Speaker: Like I honed in on that immediately.
Speaker: Like, that's a real thing.
Speaker: That's not some made up thing.
Speaker: It's like that old saying how the best lies are couched in truth.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's that kind of thing.
Speaker: There's just enough truth in there to make for a convincing character.
Speaker: And I agree with you.
Speaker: I think this this is the way she describes
Speaker: this scientist and like basically the idea is that his he he never succeeded in his theories his hypothesis were never true like there's nothing there is no success in any element of the story the main problem is that he's a lunatic
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: And that's the thing.
Speaker: His theories.
Speaker: That's how she describes it.
Speaker: His theories are so off the wall and fascinating that he got a lot of attention and everyone was kind of fascinated by him, despite the fact that his theories were never correct or workable.
Speaker: They were just just bonkers enough, I think, that everyone seemed to enjoy him.
Speaker: Enjoy, quote unquote.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And including Rebecca, who read his work and was familiar with who what he did.
Speaker: So I think we've got our main antagonist here.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He feels like and there's actually a reference in here to.
Speaker: I believe there's a reference to Nazis in here.
Speaker: They, they, they look, I think, don't they like liken him to a Nazi doctor or something?
Speaker: Well, they say something like they kind of, it's kind of a self or an introspective moment where they're like, this is all so insane.
Speaker: All it needs is like a Nazi flag flying over it to be like a blockbuster sci-fi movie or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So yeah, which, yeah.
Speaker: It's very, you know what it is?
Speaker: It feels very, something about the setup to this one feels very Castle Wolfenstein.
Speaker: Totally, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Which makes sense.
Speaker: There's a ton of Castle Wolfenstein in Resident Evil.
Speaker: There's that gothic,
Speaker: You know, they're all they all tend to be centered around a giant castle or a mansion or something.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That gothic feel to it, even though Wolfenstein wasn't a horror game, it still had that classic, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And to to an extent, Wolfenstein does have a lot of.
Speaker: did have a lot of horror elements.
Speaker: You know, you have.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: As you progress through the castle, you go from fighting Nazis to fighting, you know, these zombies with three arms, like a third arm sewn onto their chest and stuff like that.
Speaker: It does get weirder and weirder as you go.
Speaker: There's no question about that.
Speaker: And then eventually you fight Hitler in a giant mecha suit.
Speaker: Well, that's just based on real life.
Speaker: That's not sci-fi.
Speaker: I mean, Bayonetta Commando and Wolfenstein can't both be wrong.
Speaker: No, they can't.
Speaker: It all it fits too many pieces of the puzzle.
Speaker: That's just all there is to it.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: So by the end of this chapter, Rebecca just kind of screws her courage to the sticking place and says, I'll do it.
Speaker: I'll do it.
Speaker: Let's go.
Speaker: If this guy's involved, I'll do it because it bad things can happen.
Speaker: Bad things, man.
Speaker: And they also name drop William Birkin again, who is William Birkin, one of the more famous Resident Evil characters, the antagonist of Resident Evil 2.
Speaker: It was 2, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, he's he's like an ever he's like an ever present monster.
Speaker: Less than less than antagonists.
Speaker: Like I differentiate the monster in some instances, I like to differentiate the monster from the actual antagonist.
Speaker: a little bit because you have like police chief Brian Irons who's like doing some really shady stuff and all that you know the human actors who are actively doing bad shit versus like William Burke and who at the time in RE2 is just like a mindless monster you know walking around he's a monster he's not our he's not the main bad guy he's not actively acting against he's just killing everything
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He's he's Frankenstein's monster and the actual monster is Dr. Frankenstein.
Speaker: Dr. Frankenstein is as the monster.
Speaker: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker: Actually, he's both the doctor and the monster.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: It's the only time when calling the monster Frankenstein is kind of correct.
Speaker: So, yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker: And yeah, we'll read more about him in the next book, actually.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But that brings us to chapter three.
Speaker: And we are for the first time in this book at Jill's POV.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: She she basically is just watching everybody's reaction to what Rebecca is saying and silently judging them as stereotypical men.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: She seems to be the only person that is fully confident of Rebecca's abilities.
Speaker: And she's like, these men worried about 18 year old girls being sent into the mall of hell.
Speaker: Ugh, man, I hate them.
Speaker: And I think Jill's like, Jill's point of view is slightly different because at Rebecca's age, she was already like a hardened criminal.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yes, that's true.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Jill was just Jill was on her 14th arrest by the time she was Rebecca's age, breaking and entering petty larceny.
Speaker: Yeah, he refers to her as a B&E expert.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Earlier.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Indeed, she is.
Speaker: Indeed, she is.
Speaker: So they're basically they're they're breaking down like, all right, what else should we do?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Should we go to the press?
Speaker: Should we do this?
Speaker: Should we do that?
Speaker: Basically.
Speaker: trap is explaining to them like all right jill chris barry this is what you guys need to do here this is what you guys need to do while we're gone um you know we'll we'll have to figure out you know you'll have to figure out reach out to some other stars people uh you could try go you could try go to the press but there's no proof etc etc yeah um
Speaker: And then suddenly all hell breaks loose.
Speaker: All hell breaks loose when a hit squad opens up machine guns on Barry's house.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: They just fucking unleash hell.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: We have had a prologue and two and a half chapters which have contained nothing but expository information.
Speaker: And I think S.P.
Speaker: S.D.
Speaker: Perry went, that's enough.
Speaker: That's enough.
Speaker: And just machine guns everywhere.
Speaker: Machine guns.
Speaker: Everybody.
Speaker: It's like that scene in the Predator where they were not the predator, but Predator, where they just bring down the entire jungle and unload the minigun because of a shadow.
Speaker: And they all just they're like, oh, yeah, let's go after two.
Speaker: And that's exactly what it is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's after that scene.
Speaker: If it bleeds, we could kill it is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, so basically Jill is the one who picks up on it and she tells everybody to get down and saves Rebecca's life and just, you know, guns firing everywhere.
Speaker: And they have to, it becomes this really tense action sequence as these umbrella soldiers basically start charging into the house and
Speaker: And they just have to fight their way through.
Speaker: And they fight their way out of the living room, through the foyer, up the stairs, and then out of a second story window.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: To kind of like duck around all of these umbrella people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, it gets really intense.
Speaker: And they get chased out of the house and into the playground next to Barry's house.
Speaker: Because Barry, there's a lot of description early in the book about Barry's neighborhood.
Speaker: It's like this really cute, quaint, suburban neighborhood.
Speaker: Barry's house has a playground like not too far.
Speaker: And there's the forest is on the edge of the neighborhood.
Speaker: He's basically is the last he's the last house on the left to borrow.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: He's ruined it for everybody.
Speaker: Tomorrow, everyone's property values drop.
Speaker: That's what happens tomorrow.
Speaker: So they basically just, you know, have to have to escape.
Speaker: They're running through the playground, the forest, and they start engaging and returning fire with a lot of the soldiers.
Speaker: They've already I think they've already killed a few in the house.
Speaker: And now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In fact, Rebecca shoots one, doesn't she?
Speaker: Rebecca shoots one and she's never shot a human before.
Speaker: And she is really bummed out about it.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: This is her first kill.
Speaker: And Barry ends up getting shot, shot in the arms.
Speaker: And it's actually kind of a neat sequence because not only does he get shot in the arm, he gets shot when the bullet spins him down and he hits his head on a tree as he as he's falling down.
Speaker: So not only is he shot, he's concussed.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: He's fucked up.
Speaker: He gets fucked up.
Speaker: It's a good detail.
Speaker: You know, it doesn't have to.
Speaker: It doesn't you know, you could have just had him be shot, but it's it's a it's a it's a pretty it makes for a pretty great action sequence.
Speaker: Yeah, it's good writing.
Speaker: It is good writing.
Speaker: So they they they kill the guy who shot Barry and basically the rest of the guys just kind of, you know, they flee.
Speaker: Like the moment is over.
Speaker: The combat moment is over.
Speaker: Everybody flees.
Speaker: And Rebecca tends to Barry's wounds by telling Chris to take his shirt off.
Speaker: Oh yes.
Speaker: Good times.
Speaker: Good times.
Speaker: So Chris takes his shirt off.
Speaker: Now, and I have to assume this isn't Chris in his boulder punching peak.
Speaker: So he hasn't quite bulked up.
Speaker: He hasn't quite bulked up.
Speaker: No, he's not.
Speaker: But I bet he's got some nice twink action going on here.
Speaker: He's got some nice, he's going to be cut a little bit.
Speaker: He's young.
Speaker: He's not.
Speaker: He's not.
Speaker: He's you know what it is.
Speaker: He's basically Brad Pitt in Snatch.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Real, real, real lean, stringy.
Speaker: But he could he could knock you out, you know, and you can and and you just can't understand a goddamn word he's saying.
Speaker: You can't understand anything that he's saying.
Speaker: No, you can't.
Speaker: Now.
Speaker: And by the way, this whole time they've they've been speaking
Speaker: pretty consistently about these attackers being umbrella.
Speaker: They they have they they're working under the assumption that they are being attacked by umbrella, who they know has it out for them at this point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then Barry's fine, by the way.
Speaker: Barry's fine.
Speaker: Barry's fine.
Speaker: He's alive.
Speaker: Rebecca uses Chris's shirt as a tourniquet.
Speaker: And then David identifies the body of the guy who shot Barry as as what's his name?
Speaker: Jay something.
Speaker: Jay Shannon.
Speaker: Jay Shannon.
Speaker: Captain of the Oklahoma City Stars.
Speaker: Which apparently David and Barry trained with the guy.
Speaker: I mean, 1998, the Oklahoma City Stars, I mean, they're probably on a lot of people's shit list at the moment.
Speaker: They got their work cut out for them at that point, yeah.
Speaker: Pretty good choice to not be in the actual city at that point, even if it did get you shot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Jay Shannon is the captain of the Oklahoma City Stars.
Speaker: So they suddenly put together that it wasn't Umbrella attacking them.
Speaker: It was other Stars members coming in to take them out.
Speaker: So so they got nothing not feeling good.
Speaker: They're not feeling good about their prospects at this point.
Speaker: No, nobody likes them.
Speaker: You know, that's that explains a lot about not getting, you know, getting kind of the cold shoulder from stars when it came to looking for
Speaker: any information leading to what the hell's going on at this point.
Speaker: Yeah, David points out that he had just talked to Jay Shannon on the phone a few days earlier outlining the situation and Jay's like, oh, that's terrible.
Speaker: I'll get back to you.
Speaker: Yeah, he literally shot the shit and all that.
Speaker: And then he shot Barry.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then he got shot back.
Speaker: So God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So so basically they got to find somewhere to hide somewhere to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and Brad Vickers, who has skipped town, they know that his his his house is is free.
Speaker: And you want to remind our audience who Brad Vickers is, by the way, old chicken heart.
Speaker: Brad Vickers is the helicopter pilot for the Starz Alpha team, who basically after once the dogs appeared in the in the woods outside of the Spencer Mansion, instead of waiting for the team to run back to the helicopter, Brad just leaves.
Speaker: He just fucking bails.
Speaker: He got the fuck out of there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And true to his now nickname, Chicken Heart, he has also left town.
Speaker: Didn't even bother ending his lease.
Speaker: And they know this, doesn't matter.
Speaker: They know.
Speaker: As one of the survivors of the Spencer Mansion incident.
Speaker: But you know what's wild is like, he didn't, he didn't, he survived what?
Speaker: He left before anything happened.
Speaker: He is the one who came and picked them up at the end.
Speaker: He picked them up at the end after Tyrant blew up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But you're right.
Speaker: He didn't survive shit.
Speaker: He just got the fuck out of there.
Speaker: Oh, Brad.
Speaker: So they're hiding out at Vickers place.
Speaker: They break in.
Speaker: They hide out.
Speaker: And for most of the rest of the chapter, we're getting a lot of just kind of
Speaker: the inner monologue of holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
Speaker: What's what's going to happen next?
Speaker: So now, obviously, at this point, Barry, you know, they're they're not, you know, David tells Barry, you're you're not coming.
Speaker: You're you're not coming on this secret mission.
Speaker: That's for sure.
Speaker: What's the reason that Chris and Jill stay behind?
Speaker: Is it to take care of Barry or something like that?
Speaker: Or is it just that
Speaker: Um, no, I think it's just they just need to work out.
Speaker: It's basically to figure out who in Raccoon City is under Umbrella's thumb.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So like figure out like what's what's the deal with Brian Irons?
Speaker: What's the deal with all these other people, you know?
Speaker: So there so it's going to be David and Rebecca heading on up to Maine at this point.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: David, Rebecca heading on up to Maine and they just they leave.
Speaker: And Rebecca is like initially she's like, yeah.
Speaker: And then she's like she starts feeling it a little bit more after they leave.
Speaker: like, yeah, it starts getting heavier and heavier for this girl.
Speaker: Uh, and we do, we do get, uh, in your monologue with, uh, David on how, uh, he gets kind of, I don't know.
Speaker: I interpreted it as kind of paternal.
Speaker: Uh, he's really impressed with Rebecca and, and, and,
Speaker: you know, her enlisting and now, you know, him, him saying, you're coming with me to check all this shit out.
Speaker: And she just goes, yep, absolutely.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Uh, so we do get a nice moment there where, where David's pretty happy that he had her joined the team, you know, that he brought her on.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Uh, and so the two of them, uh, they get out, they get on a plane.
Speaker: They somehow bring their weapons on a plane.
Speaker: Uh, sure.
Speaker: It's 1998.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: And we get some inner monologue from Rebecca talking about how like everything he says sounds so nice.
Speaker: Maybe it's the accent.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: It is a nice teenage girl moment, isn't it?
Speaker: That is a nice accent.
Speaker: And also that he he sleeps very efficiently.
Speaker: He just like basically puts his head head down and falls asleep when he's on the plane.
Speaker: I do want to be and I do want to cut back real quick before we close out this chapter.
Speaker: Yeah, we do get a moment where Chris, you know, Chris had removed his shirt.
Speaker: He had to to be to be helpful to Barry and for no other reason than that.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: But he does when they get into Vickers place, I guess presumably he disappears to go find himself something to wear.
Speaker: And they just kind of Perry just kind of throws this out there.
Speaker: And I can't get the image out of my head.
Speaker: Chris walked into the room wearing a faded blue sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off.
Speaker: and fell into a chair across from David, which I realize now the difference between a sweater and a sweatshirt.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I understand it might be a hoodie with no sleeves on it, which which is popular among men who don't mind other men seeing their arms out.
Speaker: Yeah, I immediately imagined him wearing like a sweater that he had just
Speaker: Then he had just gone fuck this and torn the sleeves off.
Speaker: Just like a really warm woolen like Chris Evans style kind of sweater.
Speaker: Yes, I was just thinking a Chris Evans knives out style sweater.
Speaker: And it was like Chris, Chris walks into the room in the middle of tearing the sleeves off a sweater.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is flexes and they, and the sleeves explode.
Speaker: Stupid sleeves.
Speaker: Fuck sleeves.
Speaker: I'm Chris.
Speaker: He gets into the chair.
Speaker: Will Riker style by.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: What are we doing?
Speaker: What's up?
Speaker: In any case, that's basically chapter four.
Speaker: That's chapter four.
Speaker: That's the first four chapters.
Speaker: You know, we're first four chapters.
Speaker: You know, we're about Kevin.
Speaker: What do you think so far?
Speaker: It's fun.
Speaker: I got to say there's not it's like it is it is front loaded with a lot of exposition.
Speaker: But I have a feeling I have faith in her ability to pay it off later with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Balancing the exposition with the action of because even even in that opening scene, there was no need for that real attack from the stars slash umbrella team to break up that scene.
Speaker: Storytelling wise, it doesn't necessarily change anything storytelling wise, but it does it does kind of raise the stakes a little bit.
Speaker: So even in the action, it acted like a little bit as an exposition world building moment.
Speaker: So, yeah, I like it so far.
Speaker: It's fun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, me too.
Speaker: I think it's a bold move to not have zombies in the first
Speaker: what, 80, 60 pages rather of your Resident Evil book.
Speaker: But I find I don't mind it so much.
Speaker: It's yeah, it's heavily expository, but I think it's kind of earned at this point.
Speaker: It's yeah, it's I feel good about it.
Speaker: And, you know, we all know in all zombie media, man is actually the scariest creature.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: 100% of the time, it works every time.
Speaker: Except for the guy with the eyeball in his shoulder.
Speaker: That guy fucks me up.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: But other than that- Birkin is the scariest.
Speaker: Birkin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I feel good about this.
Speaker: I feel it's kind of funny.
Speaker: I don't know if it's just me, but there's a somewhat, there's like a nice homecoming feel.
Speaker: to reading this, you know?
Speaker: It feels warm, you know?
Speaker: Like, I know what to expect out of S.D.
Speaker: Perry's writing.
Speaker: I know there's gonna be some, there's gonna be some, there's some weird, weird names are gonna be in there.
Speaker: There's gonna be some,
Speaker: you know, thirst, thirsty writing about various members of the group.
Speaker: Just real subtle thirst built in there.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: So I like it.
Speaker: Yeah, I do too.
Speaker: I'm feeling good about it so far.
Speaker: I'm optimistic.
Speaker: She did a she she she got us through a Resident Evil book that was based entirely on the first game.
Speaker: So now she's got free reign to do her own thing.
Speaker: And I feel good about this.
Speaker: You know, what's funny is it feels
Speaker: The opening of this feels a little bit more like a traditional Western thriller as opposed to basing it off of a Japanese video game, which is based off of a Western horror movie.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's degrees of difference, but there is a difference in terms of how it feels.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Creating this whole cloth out of just existing characters versus trying to jam a game into that format.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, no, I totally agree.
Speaker: You know, and
Speaker: there's a lot to be said for knowing the brand.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And S.D.
Speaker: Perry absolutely knows the brand.
Speaker: So I think I think that that's what gives me the confidence here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, so far, so good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, Phil, what are you playing?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, God, I mentioned this in the last episode.
Speaker: I was saving it for today.
Speaker: I just finished Resident Evil five.
Speaker: And I actually before that, it's just a year of horror games for me.
Speaker: For anyone who's following me on Twitter at El Conquistador, I've been playing through just nonstop horror games lately.
Speaker: It's my genre of choice, but I've never gone this hard on like one genre for this long.
Speaker: and there are a lot of i played the original resident evil trilogy you know years ago like those ones i'm familiar with and i've played uh seven and village uh right but that era in between when when things started getting really combat centric i never played those including four which is uh according to a lot of people i know a lot of people's favorite right uh resident evil
Speaker: which that one surprised me.
Speaker: I grew to enjoy Resident Evil 4.
Speaker: Yeah, it's not my favorite.
Speaker: Neither mine.
Speaker: It's neither mine, Jesus.
Speaker: Neither mine.
Speaker: It is not mine either.
Speaker: I think the controls are terrible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's call the whole thing off.
Speaker: I think the controls are bad, frankly.
Speaker: I got used to them, but I still never, I don't find them to be
Speaker: very just well designed for my style of play.
Speaker: And you could feel it starting to get into the combat heavy part of it.
Speaker: It didn't go as far as five did.
Speaker: And as you informed me, six will.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But yeah, but but I grew to enjoy it.
Speaker: And in the end, I was like, oh, it's more Resident Evil.
Speaker: That's that's great.
Speaker: I'm enjoying it.
Speaker: And I like the gothic sensibilities.
Speaker: And, you know, I think that's it's terrific.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And now I understand a bunch of references.
Speaker: Like, what do you play?
Speaker: I get it now.
Speaker: But but five pissed me off so much.
Speaker: I think I just beat that one.
Speaker: I was like, hate fucking it out of my steam library.
Speaker: It's it's it is garbage controls.
Speaker: They leaned into the least interesting parts of Resident Evil.
Speaker: It's combat heavy with controls that are not great for combat.
Speaker: And, you know, all right.
Speaker: The stupid can't be anime storyline, whatever.
Speaker: I can take it or leave it.
Speaker: But like hardly any of the puzzles, a partner who
Speaker: does not shoot at the right time, who will sit there and stare at you while you're shooting zombies that are coming down the way and then get in your way.
Speaker: Like there was a fight where I had to you have to shoot spoilers.
Speaker: You've got to shoot like this mind control leech off of Jill's chest.
Speaker: And and it and it helps to draw a bead and the fucking partner.
Speaker: Now, I've heard a lot of people say this is a lot of fun to play when you have a friend.
Speaker: I'm sure it is.
Speaker: All games are more fun to play when you have a friend.
Speaker: The shittiest games in the world are more fun to play when you have a friend.
Speaker: It doesn't mean it's a good game.
Speaker: And I would like draw down like a draw bead on this jewel or leech or whatever it was on her chest.
Speaker: And then a Shiva, I guess her name is or.
Speaker: Yeah, she would just like pop up.
Speaker: POV just staring at me like, what are we doing next boss?
Speaker: And it's like, God damn it.
Speaker: This sucks.
Speaker: I I was I was like down to the last couple of bosses.
Speaker: I was so close to being done with it.
Speaker: And I was just I was fuming.
Speaker: I'm telling my fiance about it.
Speaker: And she was like, why don't you just stop playing the game?
Speaker: Because the game wins.
Speaker: I exactly exactly like I'm so close.
Speaker: I'm so close.
Speaker: I have to beat it.
Speaker: I have to have the achievement that says I finished this fucker and then I can take it out of my to play playlist on Steam.
Speaker: And indeed I did.
Speaker: I hated it.
Speaker: I hated it.
Speaker: I think I'm going I'm going to play some other horror games before I continue down this path.
Speaker: But I think six is just going to make me even angrier.
Speaker: So yeah, I got it.
Speaker: You got it.
Speaker: Good on ya.
Speaker: Yay!
Speaker: I'm gonna know everything about Risen Abel by the end of the year!
Speaker: Woo!
Speaker: Whee!
Speaker: I'm a winner.
Speaker: Yeah, so what I'm playing is... I'm kind of jumping between a couple of things right now.
Speaker: Revenant from the Ashes, which is a...
Speaker: It is, it has the Souls-like tag on Steam, but it's, I don't know, it's definitely, it doesn't feel like a Souls-like.
Speaker: It's like a 3D action, it's like a 3D action shooter with some very, very light Souls elements.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it's fun.
Speaker: The big boss kind of thing, basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And there's, you know, you're running, you run through a level, you occasionally unlock a shortcut in the level and then you kill, you fight a big, big bad boss at the end of the level.
Speaker: It's got some really interesting design.
Speaker: The levels feel a little repetitive, though, sometimes.
Speaker: So we'll see how long I stick with it.
Speaker: A lot of people like Remnant and there's a bunch of DLC for it.
Speaker: So we'll see.
Speaker: We'll see how far I get with that.
Speaker: The other thing I'm playing is I went back to Death Stranding because I just I just needed to to play it a little bit more.
Speaker: I never finished it the first time I picked I played it.
Speaker: And it is a fascinating game.
Speaker: It's basically just... You play a delivery man.
Speaker: You play a porter.
Speaker: And the character is played by Norman Reedus from Walking Dead fame.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: It's it's an interesting little game.
Speaker: There's and one of my favorite little tidbits is recently it's come out that Hideo Kojima is a big Top Gun fan.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he got he watched he watched Maverick and loved it and all that stuff.
Speaker: He said on his Twitter.
Speaker: And I just I noticed as I'm playing it that there's a character played by Guillermo del Toro called Deadman, who is he's like a he's like a doctor who was formerly a morgue attendant.
Speaker: That's how he gets the name Deadman.
Speaker: Every time every character that calls you on your little phone has their own ringtone to signify that's them.
Speaker: And Dead Man's ringtone is the first like three or four notes from the guitar lick that starts Danger Zone by Kenny Lines.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: I noticed that the other day.
Speaker: I was like, that's Danger Zone.
Speaker: And then, you know, Hideo Kojima is talking about how much you love Top Gun.
Speaker: And I was like, there we go.
Speaker: That's...
Speaker: You know, that kind of makes sense when you think about it, because all of these intense, high energy songs that open Japanese television, they, you know, those those very anime style kind of rock and roll.
Speaker: Danger Zone, I feel like is is kind of the American version of that, like just unabashedly campy, high energy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, but I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker: so but how do you like i mean i've heard a lot of things about death stranding i like it so far speed yeah it's it's it's a definitely a slow game and i think one of the things that's kind of interesting about it is that um you kind of have to play it with a
Speaker: It's one of those games that's best played introspectively because there are scenes, there's moments where you'll go out on delivery and you'll just start walking across the field and suddenly the camera will start pulling out and go wider and wider and you're not controlling it.
Speaker: It's just doing automatically.
Speaker: And then it'll, a song will start playing.
Speaker: Like it'll be like, it'll, and the, the, the song's name and the artist will pop up like in the corner and be like,
Speaker: This song by so-and-so courtesy of Whatever Records.
Speaker: And you're just like walking through this massive field, like with a wide camera shot floating above.
Speaker: And you have this like chill song playing.
Speaker: It's kind of neat that it's kind of a, it's a very interesting design choice.
Speaker: If there's one thing I can say about it is that it takes, you know, the stealth and the and the control elements, all that stuff from like, you know, his Metal Gear work, but then strips out a lot of the the combat and maybe there's more combat later in the game.
Speaker: But like it really deemphasizes that.
Speaker: And it's more just like you got to get from point A to point B. You're going to have to climb hills.
Speaker: You're going to have to use ladders, you know, set ladders up, set set climbing ropes up, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: You know, I like it.
Speaker: It's fascinating.
Speaker: That makes me think of my brother.
Speaker: My brother travels quite a bit for his job, and he said that the best thing in the world is it's like an airport moment where you're like transferring from one flight to another or you're landing or you're heading in for the first time and you're listening to music on your headphones and you're like just walking with purpose and whatever song you're playing in your headphones, like somehow speaks to
Speaker: The moment that you're into that, and you feel like you're in a music video.
Speaker: Yeah, that's kind of it.
Speaker: Yeah, oh, that's cool.
Speaker: It has those moments, so.
Speaker: That's one that I truly have never known what to think.
Speaker: I know so little about Death Stranding, but I've always been curious, so.
Speaker: Yeah, it's weird, but it's not,
Speaker: It's one of those things that on the surface seems like it is like, oh, it's it's, you know, Death Stranding.
Speaker: What does that mean?
Speaker: It's so weird.
Speaker: Like, what is all this stuff?
Speaker: All of it is super weird.
Speaker: I don't get it.
Speaker: But it's one of those like, oh, it's it's weird.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: But it's actually not that hard to understand.
Speaker: Like it lays out a lot of the stuff like and it actually spawned this thought in me about
Speaker: What I find types of sci-fi that I find really interesting are is sci-fi that feels it appears weird and unapproachable, but isn't like.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Dune, for example, is a good example of like.
Speaker: It is a sci-fi futuristic world, but it was written before computers were really a big thing.
Speaker: So it has this complete... It's almost like a foreign feeling to it.
Speaker: And I think that's something that's really cool.
Speaker: That's something that sci-fi can lean into a little bit more.
Speaker: It's like, it shouldn't feel familiar.
Speaker: It shouldn't feel comfortable.
Speaker: It's science fiction.
Speaker: It should feel a little bit like...
Speaker: uneasy.
Speaker: The other.
Speaker: Yeah, the other.
Speaker: It shouldn't be a world that you are inherently familiar with because you got to think about like, okay, well, hundreds of years from now, you know, what is that world like?
Speaker: Imagine, you know, somebody from the 1700s coming to today.
Speaker: Like they would not be able to even begin to process what the world is like.
Speaker: And now expand that forward from here to 200 years from now.
Speaker: Like, would we be able to process what that world is actually like?
Speaker: Would we be able to even begin to understand?
Speaker: And I think that's something that Death Stranding does well in that it is a world that doesn't make sense to us, but it does a good job of explaining it in a way that you're like, okay, I can go along with it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That is that's a goddamn, Kevin.
Speaker: That's a great explanation of science fiction in general.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: OK, that's straining, ladies and gentlemen, fucking play it.
Speaker: Apparently, give it a shot.
Speaker: Give it a shot.
Speaker: Give it a shot.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, happy anniversary, my friend.
Speaker: Happy anniversary, Phil.
Speaker: But yeah, cheers.
Speaker: Thank you, guys.
Speaker: Thank thank all of you.
Speaker: You know, the fact is that what we do here is not the most it's it's it's pretty niche what we do here.
Speaker: And the fact that as many of you are listening as there are,
Speaker: That's special.
Speaker: It's really cool.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker: And it makes us feel really good.
Speaker: This is this is this was just our honestly, this is this is almost just more of an excuse for the two of us to hang out more.
Speaker: Yeah, that's pretty much what it is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the fact that so many of you are listening, it means a lot.
Speaker: And it's been great.
Speaker: So happy anniversary to everybody.
Speaker: Happy anniversary to us all.
Speaker: But if you want to give us an anniversary gift, feel free to follow us on Twitter and follow us on Instagram, both at PixelitPod.
Speaker: Come visit our website, join our Discord, chat with us, and share these episodes with your friends and family.
Speaker: And cohort.
Speaker: Cohort's a good word.
Speaker: I like that word.
Speaker: Cohort's an excellent word.
Speaker: It's an excellent word.
Speaker: That would be a lovely one-year anniversary gift from you to us.
Speaker: But our anniversary gift from us to you is we're just going to keep making these shows, you know?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, that's all.
Speaker: Have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
