Transcript
Speaker: I think I found one on the side of the road when I was still teaching high school in Savannah and it worked and I became kind of obsessed with it briefly and I would write letters on it.
Speaker: I think I made a point of writing letters to people just so I could have an excuse to use the typewriter because I was very, very eager to be that kind of writer, I suppose.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Typewriters, huh?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a time in my life that, you know, some people I'm sure will look back on their time wearing a top hat in public or like growing their hipster beard or something and being like, oh, God, I was insufferable back in those days.
Speaker: And I
Speaker: I'm no different except it has more to do with a typewriter than anything else.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Try to forget about it.
Speaker: You know who else is insufferable?
Speaker: Who's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixlet.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, alongside me is Phil.
Speaker: Did you mean that the show is insufferable?
Speaker: What was that?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I honestly don't.
Speaker: I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker: that one came from.
Speaker: We just stumbled into a marvelous self-own, that's all.
Speaker: Yeah, a marvelous self-own.
Speaker: But today we're finishing up Halo, the Rubicon Protocol.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: This book, there's a lot of juice in this book.
Speaker: I'll say that.
Speaker: It's got a lot of chutzpah.
Speaker: This book's got the juice.
Speaker: There is no question.
Speaker: And it's worth the squeeze.
Speaker: Big time, big time.
Speaker: And I'm kind of, I'm so frustrated that it's this book.
Speaker: And because this is our first, as we pointed out in the first episode of this book, this is our first review copy book we've ever gotten where the publisher contacted us and said, would you be interested?
Speaker: Do you want it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Do you want it?
Speaker: And we said, absolutely.
Speaker: And we made a point of saying, yeah.
Speaker: You know, full disclosure, this is not a book we bought.
Speaker: This is a book that was offered to us in the same way we would if we were reviewing a game or something like that.
Speaker: And now, based on having read the entire book, I'm so frustrated that it is as good
Speaker: as it is because it makes me feel like people are going to hear this and go, oh, well, yeah, that's all it takes, guys.
Speaker: They gave you a free book and you're just going to give them a glowing review.
Speaker: Is that what it is?
Speaker: No, it's actually.
Speaker: God damn it, it's really good.
Speaker: It's really good.
Speaker: It's a good book.
Speaker: Why won't you listen to me?
Speaker: You should.
Speaker: And it made me want to play Halo Infinite.
Speaker: Same.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: I wrote that in my notes.
Speaker: I'm so glad you said that.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Because and we're going to get into it.
Speaker: But there are so many things at the end that you're like, I wonder if they tie this up in the game.
Speaker: I bet they do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm very intrigued.
Speaker: And yeah, suddenly I want to like skip all the other ones in between that I haven't played just so I can play infinite and find out what happens.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So when we left off, it was chapter 28 that we had just finished 27 and we're into chapter 28.
Speaker: And basically, so Phil, actually, if you could give us a rundown of what happens in the last episode leading into chapter 28.
Speaker: Leading.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Yeah, let me let me pull this guy because because 28.
Speaker: One of the things we actually ended up vaguely discussing over the phone today with her texts is that 28 ended up being one of the longest chapters in the book.
Speaker: And we got up to it.
Speaker: And I'm really glad we did because it was some really, really heavy shit.
Speaker: Basically, what we've been dealing with up until now is murder.
Speaker: At this point, months have gone by.
Speaker: These people are in full survival mode.
Speaker: We've got young Lucas, young sweet Lucas.
Speaker: Sweet baby Lucas.
Speaker: Sweet baby Lucas.
Speaker: He has been captured.
Speaker: by the Banished, they have unearthed this ungodly force, this alien presence that nobody recognizes that is basically some level of an annihilator that has promised to undo everything they hold dear, everything that they know which the Banished are good with.
Speaker: And for whatever reason, Lucas is a necessary part of the puzzle that they require him
Speaker: to connect to this creature, which is called, what was the name of it?
Speaker: The Harbinger.
Speaker: The Harbinger, yeah.
Speaker: So Lucas is rotting in a cell, slowly losing his mind.
Speaker: His Spartan friends have come by to try and rescue him.
Speaker: But he is basically hooked up there forever.
Speaker: Basically, they've shackled him in a way that he has implied could kill him or them or everybody.
Speaker: But no matter what happens, they should not be trying to break him out.
Speaker: And at this point, right when we get into 28, Lucas has been left away.
Speaker: with a plan, basically a recording device.
Speaker: Which one of the Spartans left it with him?
Speaker: It wasn't stone.
Speaker: It was Covan.
Speaker: Covan left him with a recording device.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And said, basically your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use this, set it somewhere in the process of your imprisonment, and we need to find out as much as we possibly can
Speaker: about this harbinger creature and we promise we will try to come back and save you.
Speaker: So we actually ended up stopping this at exactly the right point because it is the height of the desperation of this whole team.
Speaker: People are just surviving.
Speaker: Our team of misfits, like Bad News Bears style UNSC people, like, you know, barbers and, you know, retail assistants and stuff.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: trained to turn into this scrappy little assassin team where they're just going in and fucking shit up everywhere they can.
Speaker: They're starving to death.
Speaker: They are dealing with PTSD.
Speaker: They are running out of supplies.
Speaker: They're running out of hope.
Speaker: And now we have our first in with this, basically the MacGuffin for the banished, like what they're aiming for, what they're going for.
Speaker: And that's where we leave off.
Speaker: Like everyone's at the height of desperation here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So when we pick up Stone has been the basically the heat has been on for Stone for a few days.
Speaker: I think I think the author actually uses the word the heat.
Speaker: Yeah, I think she does.
Speaker: Because Stone basically made a distraction so that Kovan could escape from her little interaction with Lucas.
Speaker: And so Stone's been just running from the banished for for a few days now.
Speaker: And she decides to go into the excavation site that the Banish have underneath the mortal reverie.
Speaker: And it's a massive forerunner site that they find.
Speaker: And so she finds her way in and she she finds there's a stasis pod that she finds, which I think is supposed to be the Harbinger stasis pod.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That that they use Lucas to open.
Speaker: She finds it.
Speaker: She finds it empty.
Speaker: She's like, well, I hope whatever was in here is not is this isn't I hope this is old or whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Please let this not be relevant to my current situation.
Speaker: I really hope this isn't.
Speaker: Stone says, I hope this isn't relevant to the plot.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Please, please let this be window dressing.
Speaker: Oh, please.
Speaker: She continues on.
Speaker: But before she goes any deeper, she shoots off a message to Kovan saying what she's doing, where she is and all that stuff.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: So we have a lot of her basically going deeper and deeper into this forerunner base.
Speaker: And she runs into these first.
Speaker: The first thing she finds are like the like the signs of a struggle, some dead bodies of of banished people.
Speaker: And then she finds a she runs into this alien race.
Speaker: And they got like two legs or two arms, four legs, and they're just kind of floating around on jet packs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they're just watching her.
Speaker: Yeah, they don't seem very threatened by her at all.
Speaker: They're not threatened, but they're armed with banished weapons.
Speaker: So clearly they had taken the weapons from the banished excavation team that they had killed.
Speaker: So she's just seeing them.
Speaker: And at some point she, you know, puts her hand on her gun and realize that she's just going to have to make a break for it at some point.
Speaker: So she runs, starts running down a hallway and they start fire.
Speaker: As soon as she starts running, they start firing on her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she runs down this hallway and escapes into this like smaller alcove area.
Speaker: And as soon as she gets into like an area that isn't as open air, because these forerunner rooms are like the world, the word that is used often is like it was like like a cathedral, you know, has gigantic vaulted ceilings and all that stuff.
Speaker: So as soon as she gets into like a more enclosed space, these jetpack aliens are like, nah, they give up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, they seem only to be going after her half-heartedly.
Speaker: It's almost like they are just not threatened by her.
Speaker: She runs and they start shooting after her basically because like, well, she's running.
Speaker: Should we shoot her?
Speaker: That kind of feels like a thing to do.
Speaker: Let's shoot her.
Speaker: Yeah, let's give it a shot.
Speaker: Oh, well, there's no room.
Speaker: We can't use our jetpacks in there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let us know.
Speaker: If you're coming back, let us know.
Speaker: We'll give it another try.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she, as she gets deeper into the Forerunner excavation site, she sees another group of banished soldiers.
Speaker: And amongst them are two in particular that have been named,
Speaker: Gorian and Jaga.
Speaker: Jaga, yeah.
Speaker: Jaga is the elite blood sport.
Speaker: Is it blood sport?
Speaker: It's blood.
Speaker: Blood sport.
Speaker: But it's the it's like it's it's it's this team of of like it's it's covenant and old Spartans like who have who've.
Speaker: dissented, like who've seceded from the UNSC.
Speaker: Yeah, they're very, yeah, they're tough as nails.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so Gorion is one of them.
Speaker: Jega is another one.
Speaker: They wear black and red armor.
Speaker: They're tough to deal with.
Speaker: So she sees what they're up to.
Speaker: Jega and Gorion are using a woman, a female human hostage to interact with all the Forerunner stuff.
Speaker: They're using her hand.
Speaker: And they get this computer going and the computer gives them a data stream that will allow them to take control of Zeta Halo's defensive capabilities.
Speaker: And when she sees that happen, she...
Speaker: her role right at this moment becomes crystal clear.
Speaker: They can't there.
Speaker: They cannot be allowed to have that.
Speaker: And so what happens is Jega and Gorian just kill the woman that they had with them.
Speaker: Like, oh, we don't need her anymore.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so Stone goes in and basically she takes it from him.
Speaker: The data card that they had, she goes in, she takes from and it just turns into this pages long
Speaker: brawl between Jega, Stone, and Gorion.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like this ultra violent game of keep away.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At one point, Gorion, she throws Jega off the edge.
Speaker: And then Gorian hits her with a phantom and pins her against the wall.
Speaker: It's like hits her with a truck.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: He just rolls a truck into her.
Speaker: Because that's how you deal with Spartans.
Speaker: I mean, it's effective.
Speaker: I can't argue against it.
Speaker: And then she, she like climbs onto the hood and she beats the, she punches him until he like falls out of the phantom.
Speaker: And, you know, eventually she has an opening to just run.
Speaker: So she, she runs, she runs.
Speaker: And as she's running, she is killing the shit.
Speaker: out of so many banished soldiers.
Speaker: There's like, she runs into a room and there's like some grunts and she just like, she just like punches one and it hits the wall and it splatters.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of crazy because we've been dealing, it's terrific because you, for all of the dealing with PTSD and the dark side of war is hell and everything like that, you cannot accuse Kelly Gay of trying to reinvent the general violent joy of a Halo game because there's plenty of that.
Speaker: And this chapter is a prime example.
Speaker: It's just- Prime example.
Speaker: Oh my God, it's insane.
Speaker: And it's Blood Star, by the way.
Speaker: Blood Star.
Speaker: Okay, Bloodstar.
Speaker: So they, part of Stone's plan is that she, so she has the chip in her Spartan armor and her AI, Ukko, is,
Speaker: Copying it basically to her armor, but also trying to corrupt the data on the original chip.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So she's fighting, she's like killing grunts and then she's killing elites.
Speaker: And she fights her way through...
Speaker: almost basically every banished soldier that is that is left in this excavation.
Speaker: She's not that far from the exit at this point.
Speaker: And she says, we're like, all right, well, let's just get.
Speaker: And then her A.I.
Speaker: pops in trying to get her attention, but it's too late.
Speaker: As she is stabbed through the back by a plasma blade.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's Jaga who did not die clearly from being thrown off of the ledge.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He got better.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I got better.
Speaker: He climbed his way up and Jega and Gorion take the data chip back from her and that is a wrap on Bonita Stone.
Speaker: She just, you know, she falls and it says she lets the darkness take her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It is such a...
Speaker: It's a fucking bummer.
Speaker: It's such a bummer because she's like the first Spartan we met in the book, you know, like.
Speaker: Yes, she is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So and I kept and I did I did the thing that you shouldn't do where I was like, oh, I mean.
Speaker: They're going to bring her back.
Speaker: Like, like that's that.
Speaker: Cause it was a little vague for a second there at the end.
Speaker: I mean, she'll probably, no, it's the, this is it for stone.
Speaker: She's gone.
Speaker: She's, she's dead, but she does have a wonderful moment at the end where, because they've taken the chip from her and they have corrupted chip, corrupted it.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So she's able to die knowing that she fucked them over.
Speaker: Uh, pretty good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And yeah, it's a good moment.
Speaker: And it's it's and I know I'm not doing it justice in just recapping chapter 28.
Speaker: Chapter 28 is really long.
Speaker: It's a long one.
Speaker: It's a very long chapter.
Speaker: It might be the longest in the book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think it is the longest in the book.
Speaker: And it's 100% just Spartan Stone in this Forerunner excavation site fighting for her life to try to stop them from getting control of the defensive stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, and we've talked about in the past with these action-filled books and everything.
Speaker: It's not in our interest to give you a play-by-play on every fist thrown or bullet fired, but you can take it from us that that scene alone to me is worth the price of admission, especially with the context of knowing who she is and having gone through so much with her.
Speaker: This is a hard – you texted me and you said you needed a little break after you read this chapter.
Speaker: After I read chapter 28, I was like, I need a moment.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I don't blame you.
Speaker: I went and had a lunch break.
Speaker: Like I finished that chapter and I was like, well, daddy's going to have a sandwich and try to process his emotions because –
Speaker: And so I ate my feelings and I got on with it.
Speaker: But yeah, it's it is a it is a long, gloriously spread out chapter just filled with annihilation and and fucking Gorian's macho bullshit nearly ruining everything for him again.
Speaker: There's that that moment where like she's in a fight with Gorian and this other not a grunt, a brute, I think.
Speaker: And
Speaker: He basically interrupts the fight because the brute has the upper hand on stone and is about to take her down.
Speaker: But Gorion knocks the brute out of the way because he's like, no, this is mine.
Speaker: You can't have my kill.
Speaker: That's my kill.
Speaker: It's like, you could have had her out of your hair, you stupid idiot.
Speaker: Gorion is just the same Gorion we knew from way back when.
Speaker: Yeah, it's not like he if you thought he's learned anything in the past, I don't know, six months.
Speaker: Absolutely not.
Speaker: Whatever it is, five months.
Speaker: He hasn't.
Speaker: No, no, not a thing, which is good news for humanity, I suppose.
Speaker: So same day, this is happening at the same day, same time.
Speaker: We have a brief chapter 29 cuts back to Lucas.
Speaker: Lucas is not doing well.
Speaker: Yeah, he's he kind of gets roughed up by the banished on their way over to see Harbinger.
Speaker: And then he gets thrown into the room with Harbinger and she feeds him.
Speaker: And like she has a lot of food like she she just has a big spread, a nice spread.
Speaker: And he's eating.
Speaker: And then she's like, that's enough.
Speaker: I have things to tell you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She like, she's kind of like trying to commiserate with him.
Speaker: Like, you know, we have a lot in common.
Speaker: Like these, you've been fucked over.
Speaker: I've been fucked over.
Speaker: Like, so now I'm going to unpeel your brain.
Speaker: So now let's get, get on with the mind flaying.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Good Lord, some serious illithid shit.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: She's a fascinating and very spooky character.
Speaker: I don't know if there's any indication that the Harbinger is a she or not.
Speaker: She is a she.
Speaker: She is a she, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, according to the, I think in the book.
Speaker: So day 137, chapter 30, Murphy is pissed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He has a this is a great moment where he basically he he forgets that Kovan could end his life in a second.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: He's just like, what the fuck is going on, Kovan?
Speaker: You haven't been you've been like you haven't been saying anything to us for the past few days.
Speaker: He like pushes her.
Speaker: Like, yeah, he at one point he like grabs her armor and like pulls her.
Speaker: He's like, he's like, talk to me.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's crazy because it's a great they had a moment in the first third of the book where at some point they're joking about because all the rules have gone out the window and everything's gone to shit.
Speaker: And one of them calls.
Speaker: one of the superior officers an asshole or something like that.
Speaker: And they're all laughing.
Speaker: And he says, hey, you know, you can get thrown in the brig for calling your commanding officer an asshole.
Speaker: Ha ha ha.
Speaker: Because right then it doesn't matter anymore.
Speaker: And this is kind of like a no holds barred, fully serious version of that, where it's like, I don't give a shit that you're a Spartan.
Speaker: I don't care that you outrank me.
Speaker: I don't give a shit you owe me answers.
Speaker: It's a very human moment.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Covan finally admits to everything like, all right, well, we found Lucas.
Speaker: We tried to get him out.
Speaker: We couldn't get him out.
Speaker: And Stone has been like MIA since then, but I know where she is.
Speaker: And everybody is like, I'm not mad, but I'm disappointed.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They're like, oh, we get it, but this is kind of fucked up and your father and I are going to have to talk about this.
Speaker: So they go off to, they're like, all right, we're going to go.
Speaker: We're going to go and we're going to go get stoned.
Speaker: So they go to the excavation site and there's a really nice moment where the boat crew shows off how efficient they are at killing a brute.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, it's fun, isn't it?
Speaker: We get a serious play by play on how they're going to they're just immediately quietly take out a nine foot tall.
Speaker: Sounds.
Speaker: It's like the the the five of them just like basically run up to this brute and like one stabs him in the stomach.
Speaker: two of them like slices like Achilles tendons.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that, and then, and then Bender like stabs him in the throat or something like that.
Speaker: It's like, it is amazing.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's like, imagine being taken down by a dozen cats, like flawlessly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: terrifyingly, silently.
Speaker: Like that's the impression I got for this one.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: It's a great, we just, it's just a terrific, it's not, doesn't take up a lot of space.
Speaker: It's just a great scene.
Speaker: But it's a great scene.
Speaker: And it shows you how far these people have come.
Speaker: Like this dude was like making you your protein shake like six months ago.
Speaker: And now he's assassinating brutes in the jungle.
Speaker: Like it's crazy.
Speaker: um so they continue go they continue on and into the thing and they find a lot of the things that stone had seen um and then they find stone um yeah they see her her armor the like i recognize that light blue mjolnir armor anywhere um and you know they go up she's she's gone um
Speaker: And they have like a moment and then Kovan takes the chip out and starts like because the helmet basically has a full log of everything that happens.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So she takes chip out and like watches how how it went down.
Speaker: And then the Banished show up on their heels and they just have to run.
Speaker: And they are just running, running, running, running.
Speaker: And they find it's been they run for hours.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Until they're just like out of breath.
Speaker: They're tired.
Speaker: The Banished probably aren't coming anymore.
Speaker: And then suddenly...
Speaker: a sub monitor, Varidity, shows up and she's like, oh, this is great.
Speaker: Reclaimers are here.
Speaker: Fuck yeah.
Speaker: I fucking love Varidity.
Speaker: Like substitute good guy, yeah, yeah, as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker: I forget if it happens in this particular moment where they're like, oh, no, Varidity is just a submonitor.
Speaker: If I were the monitor, the Banished would be dead already.
Speaker: Right, yeah.
Speaker: Completely loathes the banished right off the bat.
Speaker: It's a great introduction.
Speaker: It's fantastic.
Speaker: And it's like she has so much personality you almost forget that she is just a floating metal sphere with like a green eye in it or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: It's like a less smart-ass version of who's the stupid little robot in the Borderlands games.
Speaker: I forget.
Speaker: But you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But also like a good guy version of what's it from the first Halo, the monitor from Halo 1.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's that kind of... Guilty spark.
Speaker: Yeah, they always have terrific personalities.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, because they've been there for tens of thousands of years.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They kind of lose their minds a little bit.
Speaker: They're probably pretty bored at that point, too.
Speaker: They're like, oh, thank God.
Speaker: So they talk about how they are in, they're basically in this hub type building.
Speaker: They need to get to the conservatory.
Speaker: But even if the covenant gets, not the covenant, even if the
Speaker: vanish, get to the conservatory, they don't have the data chip because, and the boat crew does because they have a corrupted version.
Speaker: And since Stone copied it to her personal chip, they actually have the information that they need to take control.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we jump over to Horvath now.
Speaker: Ah, yes.
Speaker: And Horvath is basically playing Castlevania II Simon's Quest.
Speaker: LAUGHTER
Speaker: It's just some weird is like he's looking at this map that the dying on I agent gave him and he's like it's like walk across the hard water, hard swamp or something like that.
Speaker: Bad, bad localization.
Speaker: And it's like some bad localization.
Speaker: Yeah, he's like he's like looking at it and it's basically a swamp.
Speaker: It's it's basically a it's kind of like a tar pit that he has to walk through.
Speaker: And his Elfie, his his AI is like, well, if you go in there, you can't stop moving.
Speaker: Like if as soon as you stop moving, you sink.
Speaker: But if you run too fast, you'll sink.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Elfie's like, Elfie's like, go, go, go, go.
Speaker: And he starts to run.
Speaker: He's like, but don't run.
Speaker: Go quickly, but don't run and please don't panic.
Speaker: If your heart rate goes too high, you will also sink.
Speaker: Stop holding your breath.
Speaker: It will also make you sink.
Speaker: It's just this.
Speaker: If you get sad, you will also sink.
Speaker: Ah, tigs!
Speaker: No, it's such a good comparison to Simon's Quest.
Speaker: Like all that was missing was him to like hold a crystal above his head and kneel by the lake inexplicably.
Speaker: Like it is a weird.
Speaker: Yeah, he's he's it's it's it's like a quick insert of like Resident Evil style puzzles into Halo for some reason.
Speaker: It's so weird.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: It's just weird.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: So Horvath, by the way, if you listen to the audio version, Horvath has a Spanish accent.
Speaker: Oh, he does?
Speaker: It's not Thomas Horvath.
Speaker: It's Tomas Horvath.
Speaker: So he continues across the tar pits until he gets to a platform that's
Speaker: kind of, uh, camouflaged within it.
Speaker: It's, it's like a black glass platform, uh, that you wouldn't be able to see otherwise.
Speaker: And he just kind of stands on it and it, it's an elevator, it's a lift and it just, it, he goes straight down 800 meters.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So and that lowers him.
Speaker: And now he is in the hub.
Speaker: And so when he gets down there, his sensors actually start picking up.
Speaker: Like, I'm getting some I'm getting a Spartan and some humans.
Speaker: And he runs into Kovan and the boat crew.
Speaker: And it's like, these are the first human beings that Horvath has seen.
Speaker: Since day two.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For months.
Speaker: For months.
Speaker: And they point that out too.
Speaker: They're like, wait, day two?
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: Like, he has been, he has gone full native at this point.
Speaker: It is, it is crazy.
Speaker: It is amazing, though, that this is and I if if we ever got to talk to Kelly Gay, I was I'm just curious about the how the days are listed, because this is happening on day 143 when the previous chapter for the boat crew was day 137.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So six days have passed.
Speaker: I guess it's like six days have passed of the boat crew just walking through the hub.
Speaker: Yeah, because at no point, it doesn't go backwards at any point.
Speaker: No, it doesn't.
Speaker: It's always forward.
Speaker: So yeah, so you have to assume this all links, but there's there's a, you know, a more dedicated Halo fan might sit down with this and actually like give us a timeline with all the different characters and clusters of characters.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I assume I assume that just means that the hub, they're walking through the hub and the the conservatory is just a really long, long distance away.
Speaker: Like they're physically walking to it.
Speaker: It's a right.
Speaker: It takes a while to get there.
Speaker: And I suppose you could argue that there would be moments too that like they just spent like 12 hours running, you know, so they might set up a little camp for a day or something like that and sleep it off and get their energy back.
Speaker: So maybe there's something to that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, Variety is like you, you humans are walking super slow.
Speaker: We got to get a move on.
Speaker: Um, uh, but they, they end up, they end up, so they have this reunion of sorts.
Speaker: Um, they, uh, Horvath has the realization that this boat crew that he's talking to is the boat crew that he was talking to on day two when everything went to shit.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, he's putting he's putting faces to names now.
Speaker: He's like, yes, exactly.
Speaker: And they had they there's a chapter 32.
Speaker: Now they give Horvath a full rundown of like, here's everything that happened.
Speaker: And it's kind of almost like a good recap at that moment for the audience of like.
Speaker: All the main characters that are left are in one spot now.
Speaker: Here's everybody knows everything that like is important now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's no there's no gaps in knowledge.
Speaker: Everybody everybody has now interacted with everybody.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: They talk about how like, all right, they start coming up with a plan.
Speaker: How do we get a message out to the UNSC?
Speaker: And Varidity is like, oh, you know, that's that communication style that you're talking about.
Speaker: We have these beacon towers that can do that.
Speaker: I just need to get the monitor Pyre's permission.
Speaker: And that'll be no problem.
Speaker: That'll be easy.
Speaker: Pyre's a real laid back dude.
Speaker: So a few days later now, it's chapter 33.
Speaker: Lucas is having a complete breakdown.
Speaker: Oh, Lucas just snapped.
Speaker: You know, having lunches with eldritch beings apparently is not good for one's mental health.
Speaker: I don't care how much delicious, squishy, exotic fruit you get to eat over lunch.
Speaker: You know, a lobotomy is a lobotomy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, but his mystery cellmate in the next cell over kind of talks him through it.
Speaker: And Lucas tries to tell the guy what is happening in these meetings with Harbinger.
Speaker: But every time he tries to say it, instead of saying words, he says numbers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he cannot say anything about the meetings that he has with Harbinger.
Speaker: He like...
Speaker: It's in his head.
Speaker: The information is in his head.
Speaker: He just can't recount it.
Speaker: And that fact, and that fact almost as much as what is actually happening to him at the hands of the Harbinger causes such a strain on his brain, like the inability to speak what's in your head really, really fucks with him.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's really sad.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we're another couple of days later, we're at day 149 and the crew finally reaches the conservatory.
Speaker: Now, the Banished are outside of the conservatory, but they have to break in because they are out of humans.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they have to just use one of their excavation lasers to just get into the building.
Speaker: So that's going to take them a little bit.
Speaker: And even then, the actual building is designed as a maze.
Speaker: So if you don't know where you are going, you won't get to where you need to go.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, you need a guide to get anywhere in this place.
Speaker: So Variety is like, yeah, we're fine.
Speaker: Things will be fine.
Speaker: The band is just trying to cheat and not just like go straight through.
Speaker: They just have a big old laser and they're just going to cut a hole straight through.
Speaker: It's a very orcish style strategy.
Speaker: Yeah, the red makes it go faster.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So they get to Pyre.
Speaker: So basically, Pyre is like a monitor who has really gotten into yoga and breathing meditations.
Speaker: Pyre's the big turtle in Neverending Story.
Speaker: Just like, nothing matters.
Speaker: And all the other sub monitors are like in meditation as well, being forced to meditate because Pyre is like, no, we're just all going to chill, bro.
Speaker: We're all just waiting.
Speaker: And Varidity's like, no, we got to get rid of the banished.
Speaker: And Pyre's like, it'll be fine.
Speaker: Pyre is a true like both sides are bad style guy.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He's like, look, these people have come, they've gone, we've healed to everything.
Speaker: Turn, turn, turn.
Speaker: You know, like just a centrist hippie.
Speaker: He's insufferable.
Speaker: He really is.
Speaker: And then Varidity mentions, oh, by the way, the Harbinger got out.
Speaker: And then Pyre, like, puts on, like, puts on a suit and tie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, like, breaks out the money clip and it's all down to business, you know?
Speaker: Right, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Suddenly it's 1982 and there's money to be made.
Speaker: And yeah, he's he's he's yeah, he's just ready to roll.
Speaker: He just Gordon Gekko is the fuck out of the next scene.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, he tells the rest of the sub monitors what to do.
Speaker: He's like, all right, this is what you're going to need.
Speaker: We got these beacons.
Speaker: Here's a security override code for the beacons because all the.
Speaker: All of the Banished have taken control over them, so we'll send you to one of them.
Speaker: Varidity, you got to stay here.
Speaker: We got work to do.
Speaker: And Varidity is like, no, I got to help my friends.
Speaker: And Pyre is like, nope, you got to stay here.
Speaker: We got a lot of work to do for the Harbinger.
Speaker: You find folks, you go down the hallway, you make a right.
Speaker: There will be a teleporter platform waiting for you to get to that beacon.
Speaker: It's almost like, yeah, he's like, I'm going to scroll down a map on a napkin for you, and you should be fine.
Speaker: We've got MapQuest down here.
Speaker: We're pretty advanced.
Speaker: It's going to be fine.
Speaker: It's going to be and but unfortunately, the Spartan helmets only run on Waze.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But at least, you know, when when there's going to be a cop like doing speed trap.
Speaker: So that's good.
Speaker: So this is the other part that I was confused about.
Speaker: So it jumps from 100 day 149 to day 154.
Speaker: It's like, did it take them five days to get to the translocation room?
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: Like, you do get an intense sense of size in with that place.
Speaker: So I guess, yeah, possibly?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, it isn't... I appreciate the brevity.
Speaker: I appreciate skipping, like, 20 pages of, like, and then they stopped and made camp, and then they went and did this, and then they're like, yeah, good, get to it.
Speaker: But I...
Speaker: I think a passing notification of like, of like it took days.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That, that, that would be fine by me, but yeah, that's a little, that is a little unclear.
Speaker: They get to the the translocation terminal and teleport to the tower that they're going to try to use.
Speaker: Everybody is vomiting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They land except Bender and Bender is referred to as one of those annoying people who are unaffected by translocating.
Speaker: Yeah, I know that old chestnut.
Speaker: Well, it's like people who don't get affected by like seasickness or whatever.
Speaker: You know, Bender's just like, man, it's fine.
Speaker: Or people who claim that they don't get hangovers, that whole thing.
Speaker: So they organize an attack on the beacon to take the beacon from the banished.
Speaker: And it's Murphy, Bender and Kovan who have to get in there.
Speaker: And, you know, they they fight their way in and they get to the comms platform.
Speaker: And now now that it's like in and the message is ready to go.
Speaker: they have to hold it until it actually sends.
Speaker: And now reinforcements from the banished are starting to arrive and they're trying to retake the comms platform or at the very least just destroy it so that the message can't be sent out.
Speaker: And there's a lot of fighting back and forth.
Speaker: At one point, though, an elite is aiming, drawing down on the comms platform, ready to shoot it.
Speaker: And Murphy knows basically there's only one thing left to do.
Speaker: And Murphy doesn't have any guns at this point.
Speaker: He's out of ammo.
Speaker: He jumps in and he takes the plasma bolt that the elite was aiming for the comms platform and he just takes it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he doesn't Murphy doesn't have any armor.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Um, and yeah, so they, they basically, you know, the, uh, Kovan and, and Bender get to him and Murphy, uh, dies, uh,
Speaker: knowing that the message has sent out and he gave it just enough time for it to send out.
Speaker: And he just has these fading memories of his childhood as he dies.
Speaker: This is another great moment to take a quick coffee break and stare into the mirror and consider the fragility of life and the fact that you're just a piece of sand in the desert in this great big universe.
Speaker: This actually was the one that really broke my heart.
Speaker: Gay wrote really, really well his final moments.
Speaker: He died knowing he'd done good, that he'd saved them and done everything they could.
Speaker: And those final moments of remembering his childhood and fall in Lexington.
Speaker: It's really evocative writing.
Speaker: It's well done, and it is perfect.
Speaker: heartbreaking.
Speaker: There is no getting right.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is heartbreaking because he's he's another one of those characters that I've just you just I grin every time they mention Murphy.
Speaker: So but but she did right by him.
Speaker: Like this is this is a good send off.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a great send off.
Speaker: Pretty much all of these characters have been good send offs when they die.
Speaker: It's not wasted.
Speaker: It's really well done.
Speaker: And this is different.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Murphy is, and Murphy is more or less the heart of the book.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, because for a human, like all of the for an unmodified human anyway, all of the Spartans loved the guy.
Speaker: They all had experience with him.
Speaker: You know, he was a legend among them.
Speaker: Like he was a Spartan without being a Spartan in a way.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: He was the he was the Pelican pilot that always got them to where they needed to go, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he dies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Outside now, Chapter 36, Gorion has arrived and he's brought reinforcements and Jaga is there too, but Jaga is not directly involved.
Speaker: And Horvath is like, all right, here we go.
Speaker: This is it.
Speaker: Cam is killed by a wraith.
Speaker: Basically, a wraith does a strafing run and kills Cam and really fucks up Dimmik.
Speaker: But Dimmik, meanwhile, like she is, you know, shell shocked.
Speaker: She's pale, but she sees Horvath is fighting with Gorion and she manages to get a grenade and walk over to like Horvath and get his attention and be like, you're going to need this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I brung you a grenade.
Speaker: I brung you sandwich.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Well, actually she was talking about sandwiches earlier in that chapter or in the previous chapter.
Speaker: It was like a, it was like a, a explosion sandwich or something.
Speaker: It's basically like two pieces of, uh, of a bomb and there's like around a grenade or something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, it's like, yeah, you brick, brick up around a grenade or something.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And doesn't, and doesn't, oh, that's later, that's later.
Speaker: We'll get to another sandwich for Korvath, I think, later.
Speaker: Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker: That's later, though.
Speaker: I forgot, I didn't write it down, but I didn't know what you're talking about.
Speaker: So, Korvath uses that grenade to take out Gorion's shield, and earlier in the chapter, Bender had given Korvath a plasma knife,
Speaker: And it was like attached to his to his wrist.
Speaker: And Gorian is like choking Horvath at this point.
Speaker: And Horvath just takes the knife and jams it right through Gorian's like side and armor and cook some from the inside out.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a that's a wrap on Gorian by Gorian.
Speaker: Unfortunately, the two of them tumble down onto a translocation pad and get zapped away somewhere.
Speaker: Somewhere.
Speaker: They're like, they're like, we don't.
Speaker: Where do you go?
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: We just got a back.
Speaker: I succeeded.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: It's now day 155.
Speaker: Lucas is.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Oh, he's gone full Lovecraftian madman.
Speaker: I stared into the Necronomicon for too long.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's gone to bye-bye town.
Speaker: He's gone to bye-bye town.
Speaker: The Harbinger is telling him how humanity and her species used to both be enemies of the Forerunners.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And how the forerunners forgave humanity and like let humanity become the replacement for the forerunners.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But but her species didn't like like we didn't get forgiven, but now we're back.
Speaker: And it's like, oh, that's that's creepy.
Speaker: It's a very Cain and Abel kind of thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it makes you think like, oh, I guess there must have been, it's like, they're like ancient humans who are much further technologically advanced.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of what they're hinting at.
Speaker: Maybe humans not from Earth originally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I always love that kind of thing.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: the the future dark ages that are still crazy.
Speaker: It's like it's it's like Battlestar Galactica.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: But so spoilers for a 20 year old show at this point.
Speaker: But Battlestar Galactica, it ends with them landing on Earth.
Speaker: And you realize that they're landing on Earth millions of years ago.
Speaker: And they are like they see the original human population or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Don't think about it too hard.
Speaker: Don't think about it too hard, but yeah.
Speaker: And Starbuck was an angel.
Speaker: Don't think about it too hard.
Speaker: Just go with us on this one.
Speaker: Just go with it.
Speaker: We're going to get to a point.
Speaker: Just trust us on this one.
Speaker: And then they wake up and present at just, you know what?
Speaker: You just got to watch the last episode of BSG yourself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just, and just, and you know what?
Speaker: Just enjoy it.
Speaker: Just enjoy it.
Speaker: You know, it's a great show.
Speaker: It has a lot of good moments.
Speaker: Who cares if the final episode was like, the show was humming on like a weirdness level of seven out of 10.
Speaker: And then the final episode went to like, it was just like a spike up to 11 without more.
Speaker: The final episode is just the writing staff going, ah, fuck it.
Speaker: Like we're done, right?
Speaker: Okay, whatever.
Speaker: It's over.
Speaker: It's over.
Speaker: So a few days later, we see Kovan.
Speaker: We catch up with Kovan, Bender, and Dimmick.
Speaker: And they, at the end of the battle, were rescued by Varidity.
Speaker: Varidity comes out shooting lasers and cutting people in half and
Speaker: just takes them somewhere and drops them off.
Speaker: And they're like,
Speaker: okay, well, we did it.
Speaker: This is it?
Speaker: We're done?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We're done.
Speaker: And then they're like, well, I guess there's only one thing left to do, and that's to go save Lucas.
Speaker: And have you seen those memes where it's like, if this thing was made in 2007, this film was made in 2007, and it has that, is it an Evanescence song or something like that at the end?
Speaker: Oh, what I've done by Linkin Park.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So it was the Halloween theme at first.
Speaker: What the fuck is this?
Speaker: So if it was, if it was, if this was in 2007, if this book was in 2007, it would be, well, I guess there's only one thing left to do.
Speaker: And it like camera pans behind them.
Speaker: And off in the distance, you can see the tower where they know Lucas is being kept.
Speaker: You're like, we got to rescue Lucas.
Speaker: Boom, yeah.
Speaker: What I've done.
Speaker: And it's like Halo with the Rubicon Protocol logo.
Speaker: Lock and load.
Speaker: Like, yeah.
Speaker: You're absolutely right.
Speaker: That's exactly what this is.
Speaker: It's like, how about one more?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Credits roll.
Speaker: But yeah, Kova and Bender and Dimik are not in great shape.
Speaker: I don't know what their plan is.
Speaker: I don't know what their plan is.
Speaker: Kova's not even in her armor anymore.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: The chapter starts with them like wrestling to get her out.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's just like, they're just like, she's just like sitting there in her like black, you know, tech suit or whatever.
Speaker: And they're like, what the fuck do we do with this?
Speaker: It's like 600 kilograms of armor.
Speaker: We can't carry it around.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's yeah, they are literally the worst they've ever been.
Speaker: And they're like, but now we're going to save our buddy from a God alien.
Speaker: That sounds.
Speaker: Yeah, we've got this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've got six bullets, a half finished roll of Tums and the script to Goodwill Hunting.
Speaker: Let's let's we can fucking MacGyver the shit out of this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then Bender goes, you like apples?
Speaker: And then Kovan says, well, how do you like them apples?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Boom.
Speaker: Halo.
Speaker: Why don't people pay us to write these scripts, Kevin?
Speaker: I will never understand.
Speaker: Never.
Speaker: I'll never know.
Speaker: I'll never understand it.
Speaker: Chapter 39, last chapter.
Speaker: Horvath.
Speaker: I love this chapter.
Speaker: This is a great chapter.
Speaker: Great way to close out the book.
Speaker: Horvath is somewhere.
Speaker: He's in the halo equivalent of the Arctic.
Speaker: He spends a little bit passed out in a coma.
Speaker: When he wakes up, he throws Gorian's body off of a cliff because fuck him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Fuck you.
Speaker: And then he...
Speaker: He walks around and he finds like a crashed shuttle from the from the Infinity.
Speaker: And there's like, you know, water and MREs in there.
Speaker: One of the MREs just says sandwich.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: And it's just like he opens it up and it's just like unidentifiable meat between two slices of thin slices of bread.
Speaker: It's so good because I spent a long time since I ate MREs.
Speaker: They were never good.
Speaker: I've heard that they're a lot better nowadays than they used to be.
Speaker: But I wouldn't put it past MREs.
Speaker: like space army to be like, yes, yes.
Speaker: UNSC sandwich.
Speaker: This is a sandwiched flavor MRE.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just the good old fashioned nostalgia of sandwich.
Speaker: Please enjoy sandwich.
Speaker: Colonel, my MRE says sandwich.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he he basically just starts like, well, I'm here.
Speaker: And he just starts broadcasting a message out saying, you know, to any UNSC personnel,
Speaker: Could use a hand.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I appear to be alive.
Speaker: I appear to be alive.
Speaker: And here.
Speaker: And the Ninja Gaiden snow level.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: And it's like.
Speaker: Eagles are a pain in the dick.
Speaker: They're a pain in the dick.
Speaker: Master Chief, if you're alive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Could really use you right now, buddy.
Speaker: And this is only like the second or third time that Master Chief is even mentioned.
Speaker: Yeah, he's not.
Speaker: He's they just talk about they say blue team a few times.
Speaker: And Master Chief, who I assume is the head of in charge of blue team.
Speaker: And he Horvath is the book ends with Horvath sitting alone in the Arctic.
Speaker: And then and then.
Speaker: And that's and that's the end of Halo, the Rubicon Protocol.
Speaker: Hell yeah.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: So what do you think?
Speaker: What do you think?
Speaker: This might be one of the best books we've read on this show.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it might it might.
Speaker: Beginning to end.
Speaker: Not a weak moment in there.
Speaker: No, it is tight.
Speaker: There's no padding in this.
Speaker: It does a good job of incorporating the game aspects.
Speaker: Like you could tell when there was like a drop off point of like, that's probably going to be in the game.
Speaker: That's probably going to factor into the game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Horvath has got to be like one of the first people you meet somewhere.
Speaker: There's a side mission with him or something.
Speaker: I have to believe that it's just integrated into the game and to the game world really well.
Speaker: It does its own thing.
Speaker: She explores the horrors of war and everything like that without forgetting that we are into Halo because we want war.
Speaker: We want that space opera battle space or anything.
Speaker: please give us some cool, crunchy stuff to think over.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: That's great, in fact.
Speaker: But, you know, we don't want a pacifist run on Halo either.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Although I bet that would be fascinating.
Speaker: Yeah, it would be.
Speaker: In the hands of the right writer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It might honestly be the best book we've read so far.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's not fair to compare because it brings something different than other books would do.
Speaker: But,
Speaker: I don't have a hell of a lot of notes for this book.
Speaker: No, it's fucking good.
Speaker: It's pretty tight.
Speaker: Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I agree with literally everything you said.
Speaker: It is, it's good.
Speaker: I can kind of see where like, okay, yeah, these are probably all like,
Speaker: um a lot of this stuff that they mentioned but they never really focus on or when they drop off like so like all right i i haven't played infinite i'm probably going to go play infinite now i think i'm going to play it now yes seriously but you're like all right well horvath and these characters i assume are involved at some point either side quest or main quest for infinite's plot we'll assume and then um it's an open world game right
Speaker: Yeah, it's an open world game as opposed to previous Halo titles, which were pretty much linear, you know, shooters.
Speaker: This is a it's an open world Halo game.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: But yeah, it's a really just damn good book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I enjoyed every minute of it.
Speaker: Yeah, so have I. So, which, I mean, it's hilarious coming off of one of our least favorite books.
Speaker: Seriously, yeah.
Speaker: Into this one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's such a stunning, like...
Speaker: To me, I think it's like also because I don't think to me, I don't think writing is a you either have it or you don't type of thing.
Speaker: I think it's a skill that you learn.
Speaker: And I think clearly Kelly Gay has been putting in the chops.
Speaker: She's been putting in the work.
Speaker: You know, I don't know.
Speaker: I've looked into some of her previous work.
Speaker: Just the Simon and Schuster.
Speaker: This is, I think she's published.
Speaker: She's had 11 books by way of Simon and Schuster.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I assume that there might be more.
Speaker: She's got some serious chops on her.
Speaker: It's kind of like, it's funny because
Speaker: It feels... It's a well-written book, period, and so you're automatically going to compare it to the last thing you read, especially if the last thing you read was kind of unimpressive.
Speaker: But there are times where it felt like...
Speaker: the quality of the book was responding directly to a lot of our criticisms of Silver Eyes, for example, like character development, making us care about these characters.
Speaker: She had a huge goddamn cast in this.
Speaker: There's an enormous group of people.
Speaker: The book's about the same length.
Speaker: This might even be a little shorter than the FNAF book.
Speaker: And she managed to get us to a point where we cared about all of these characters in a pretty quick amount of time.
Speaker: We had multiple characters had much larger arcs.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But everybody had a personality.
Speaker: Everybody had their moment.
Speaker: And you gave a shit.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: And you had to, frankly, because the stuff she asked us to feel emotion on, you know, when you're talking about PTSD and war and violence and the things that she expected us, she wanted to draw some hefty emotions out of us.
Speaker: And that's a big ask if you are not...
Speaker: developing your characters well.
Speaker: And she did it.
Speaker: She did.
Speaker: She's a, she's just a fucking good writer.
Speaker: She's a really good writer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I kind of want to go back and check out, um, maybe not her other halo books, but you know, some of the other books that she's written, the Charlie, uh, the Charlie Madigan, um, books.
Speaker: Uh, she was in a, she had a, she's in a short story collection called carny punk, uh,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She also wrote a Halo short story.
Speaker: There was a Halo short story collection called Fractures.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That she she had a story in.
Speaker: So she's she's got chops on it.
Speaker: I really would love to read.
Speaker: more stuff.
Speaker: We're going to have to go back to the chronological order, I think, of the Halo books for our next one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it kind of makes me go, all right, let's, maybe we pop through those a lot faster so we can get to the Kelly Gay stuff again.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's just solid.
Speaker: We'll jump through.
Speaker: I mean, there's like a million of them, so.
Speaker: Yeah, that's the trouble.
Speaker: That's the truth.
Speaker: Therein lies the trouble.
Speaker: So, yeah, that wraps it up for for Halo, the Rubicon protocol.
Speaker: I guess that leaves me only one question, Phil.
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I played Cult of the Lamb.
Speaker: That's all I've been playing.
Speaker: That's all you've been playing.
Speaker: Are you done?
Speaker: You've got to be close to done.
Speaker: I'm almost done with it.
Speaker: I've done the thing that I always do where I just focused so hard on the home base stuff and my cult that when I finally went, oh, right, I got to...
Speaker: I literally couldn't do anything more unless I unlocked the resources and that sort of thing that you unlock by doing the different levels.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so when I finally did that, I just burned through the bosses.
Speaker: And it was like, oh.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A little overleveled.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Just side quest, side quest, side quest.
Speaker: So I'm probably got another few hours in it before I'm done, but I adore this game.
Speaker: How many bishops have you beaten?
Speaker: I'm down to the last one.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Not the fifth one, but the fourth one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The fourth one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm in the spider land right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But yeah, it is, it is really, it's, it's easily in my game of the year list.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's what I want in this kind of game.
Speaker: Nothing's changed about it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I'm in this weird position though, where, cause I'm seeing the writing on the wall.
Speaker: I'm seeing,
Speaker: because I've maxed out all my research trees.
Speaker: I've done all that stuff.
Speaker: And my only complaint about it is that I wish there was more for me to do.
Speaker: But it's not a short game.
Speaker: I think it's probably going to round out at about 20 hours for me by the time I finish 2021.
Speaker: And from what I've seen, that's mostly other people's experience as well.
Speaker: That's a great length for a $25 indie strategy action game.
Speaker: I think it's just the right length for that, but I'm enjoying it so much that the civilization fanatic in me is kind of like, God, there's got to be more tiers to unlock.
Speaker: Need more.
Speaker: So I'm just going to wrap this up.
Speaker: I'm going to play something else, and I'm going to quietly hope that
Speaker: that they release a really kick ass DLC that just doubles it up again so I can get right back into it because I'm probably going to 100% this thing because I'm just enjoying the world so damn much.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a cute little game.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm really good.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: What about you, Kevin?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: So I beat Singularity.
Speaker: So you got that to work.
Speaker: Yeah, I got it to work.
Speaker: Yeah, I was having that.
Speaker: You hold ass in that one.
Speaker: How long did it take you to beat?
Speaker: It's about, it's on good old games and I don't have that open right now, but it takes about seven hours.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I think to get all the way through it.
Speaker: Yeah, it is...
Speaker: I was talking to James about it and the thing he said is it punches above its weight.
Speaker: And I agree with that.
Speaker: It definitely punches above its weight for what it is, which is like, yeah, it's a short game is published by Activision, made by Raven Software.
Speaker: It has a lot of Bioshock vibes, but it does some really fun, neat stuff with you have a you have a your power gauntlet thing is basically like controls time.
Speaker: So you'll go and you'll get to like an area with like a collapsed set of stairs and you can use the thing to rewind time and like the stairs will come back together.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: They kind of did that in the Blair Witch video game with the camera.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a really neat mechanic.
Speaker: And then you could like enemies, you could age them so you can like, you shoot an enemy with, it's like terrifying because you hit that guy and he's like, ah, ah,
Speaker: And he like turns into a skeleton and collapses.
Speaker: It's horrifying.
Speaker: It's horrifying.
Speaker: Or you could hit him with it twice, like really quickly.
Speaker: And they turn into a horrible mutant that with like, with like melting flesh and like,
Speaker: They like no eyes and they just attack anything that's nearby.
Speaker: So you have if you have like a pack of like soldiers that you're fighting off against, you turn one of them into this mutant thing and it'll start like killing all the soldiers around them.
Speaker: Oh, my God, that's insane.
Speaker: It's got some really interesting moments.
Speaker: So yeah, Singularity beat it.
Speaker: It's a fun game.
Speaker: I'll be talking about that at length on Bullet Time with Hot Cider at some points.
Speaker: What else?
Speaker: I was playing, what's it?
Speaker: Nightmare of Decay, which is, I talked about that the other day.
Speaker: I ran into a little bit of a
Speaker: like a soft lock only because there is like an enemy where I, I think I used up too much ammo earlier in the game.
Speaker: And now there's an enemy where it's like, Oh, I, I just don't have enough ammo to, you literally cannot kill him.
Speaker: I literally just don't have enough ammo to deal with this like boss type character.
Speaker: So I'm like, I'm like, OK, well, that's that's that that's very Resident Evil of it.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Credit where credit's due on that one, I guess.
Speaker: I could I could probably just like read restart the game, but I don't know.
Speaker: Maybe I'll get get back around to it.
Speaker: So to get my Resident Evil like fix, I started playing Tormented Souls.
Speaker: Yes, I've been looking at this one.
Speaker: Super duper Resident Evil-y.
Speaker: It's like it's Resident Evil 1, you know, it's original fixed camera Resident Evil style.
Speaker: It's it's great so far.
Speaker: The only thing that gives me pause and I haven't been like super paying attention to the story like I've just been kind of playing around, but there's a lot of story that's told in like journal entries and things like that.
Speaker: So basically it takes place in a old hospital.
Speaker: So it's a hospital that used to be a that it was a mansion that got converted into a hospital.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Yeah, they're not even trying to hide what they're doing here.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: The only things that gives me give me pause about it is that it's like, you know, they the enemies are like these.
Speaker: They're like monsters, but they're not.
Speaker: They're very much people who are like, you know, it's a dude that has his legs chopped off that's coming after you or it's like dudes in wheelchairs or like it's like.
Speaker: It's a it's a type of horror that I've become more aware of that makes me a little bit uncomfortable when it's like it's ugliness and disability are the thing that are scary about the enemies.
Speaker: And that's it's not necessarily a great vibe when you when you think about it a lot in terms of like gameplay and puzzle solving and all that stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's great.
Speaker: I mean, in terms of on that front, but that's my only concern with like giving it my full hearty 100 percent recommendation.
Speaker: It's not like you're blasting away.
Speaker: monsters, it's like, oh, they turned like people with disabilities into monsters in the game.
Speaker: You know, they have they have like knives in their hands and they're like they're monstrous looking.
Speaker: But at the same time, it's like
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I can understand that.
Speaker: That's tough.
Speaker: That's a tough one.
Speaker: It's a judgment call, but if you don't dig on that kind of stuff, if you have particular issues,
Speaker: Um, with like ableism in horror and its depiction and all that stuff, you know, I would say, yeah, just steer away from Torment's Souls because I think it has, it could probably reinforce some, some of those negative stereotypes that you're not a hundred percent.
Speaker: You might not be a hundred percent fond of, and I'm not fond of them.
Speaker: Um, but,
Speaker: And I didn't really realize it until I was into the game like, oh, this is kind of what it's going to be, isn't it?
Speaker: But at the same time, you know, I'm just kind of still making it and getting through the game because you
Speaker: A lot of it is still really good.
Speaker: And that's the problem is when you have these issues, you know, where it's like the rest of it is still really good.
Speaker: Well, yeah, it's a totally valid criticism.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And despite what despite what some people would tell you, you can enjoy a game and still have serious.
Speaker: Miscivings, yeah.
Speaker: Criticisms for him.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: You know, you can enjoy the gameplay and have a problem with the way they handle certain topics.
Speaker: That's totally valid.
Speaker: So it's a shame that it had to get marred like that.
Speaker: But it sounds like an interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it doesn't seem like it doesn't seem like it's even necessary in terms of like why.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It seems like it could have got easily gone a different direction.
Speaker: Maybe I'm just not paying enough attention to the story and it's like totally justified within the story.
Speaker: But, you know, there's so many journal entries and the writing is like fine.
Speaker: It's like I'm not I'm not super compelled to read the journal entries.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's tough with these indie games.
Speaker: Like they don't always have the best writer writers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And going back to while I'm on this on this talking about stuff like that, going back to Singularity, the main main ding about it is that it has no closed captioning options.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Zero.
Speaker: So even when you have your audio, when an audio log is playing, you can't just like play it and walk away because it also has spatial sound.
Speaker: So as soon as you walk away from it, you can't hear it.
Speaker: That's wild.
Speaker: So yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker: Accessibility in video games is very important.
Speaker: It's just wild that a 2010 game
Speaker: did not have any captions, closed captioning.
Speaker: Because I feel like that was, I feel like 2010 is a little, that's a weird time to not have a game, to have a game with no captions.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it was still pretty ubiquitous back then.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a punchline these days that, you know, everybody keeps closed captioning on their games, their movies.
Speaker: Their games, their movies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But it was definitely going on back then, too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's an interesting choice.
Speaker: Weird choice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But so, yeah, that's what I have been playing.
Speaker: I'm going to... I've got... I've got to...
Speaker: I've got such a backlog and I got to get back on what you were talking about with just devouring this backlog.
Speaker: I got to get in on that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Same with my books.
Speaker: I was doing really good there for a while that I was like refusing to let myself buy a new book or a new game until I played like 10 of them or something like that.
Speaker: And then you went to that thing where you were volunteering and you bought like 40 books for a dollar.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: My fiance literally was like, hey, you spend your money on what you want to spend your money on.
Speaker: That much is clear.
Speaker: And I know that it was a used book thing and they were like a dollar a piece, but we have only got so much room in this house, Philip.
Speaker: And I'm like, I know, I'm sorry.
Speaker: I've got a kid.
Speaker: back on it you're right i'm sorry yeah so 2022 the year of the backlog honestly 2023 could be the year of the backlog as well i think that's i think that's a very noble uh uh goal like i think if you give yourself a little grace for new releases that that you're really pumped about but i think that would be a good goal like treat 2023 like the year of the backlog just clear out your steam as best as you can
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I want to just move everything over because I have a little I have a little label like a beaten label label for for all my steam games, little category or collection that I put them into when I've beaten the game.
Speaker: Just it's like it's in a place and I can really look at all the games I beat.
Speaker: Yeah, that's fun.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Hell yeah.
Speaker: If you want to help us out, you could go to Spotify or you could go to Apple Podcasts or you could go to Good Pods.
Speaker: And you can rate us five stars on any of those platforms.
Speaker: It really helps us out.
Speaker: If you're feeling really spunky, go ahead and write...
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Speaker: It'll help.
Speaker: Otherwise, you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at PixletPod.
Speaker: You can also go to our website at PixletPod.com.
Speaker: Uh, from there, you can see the transcripts of each episode as well as get links to our discord and our steam curator page where we will be posting reviews of the things that we talk about in the, what are you playing segment?
Speaker: Um, so that wraps it up for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening, everybody and have a good night.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
