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7 Minutes in Guest (7th Guest: Part 1)
10 Plays8 months ago
Heyyyyy who wants novelizations of early 90s point and click horror FMV game 7th Guest? Get them RIGHT here RRRREEEEED hot.
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Transcript
Introduction to Pixel It and Seventh Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
You can't put that genie back in the bottle.
00:00:02
Speaker
That is that is that's destructive shit.
00:00:05
Speaker
And suddenly you're locked in your bathroom door every time you're not using it.
00:00:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:09
Speaker
Oh, my God.
00:00:10
Speaker
You know who else is locked in the bathroom?
00:00:13
Speaker
Who's that?
00:00:14
Speaker
Hey, everybody.
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome back to Pixel It.
00:00:15
Speaker
My name is Kevin.
00:00:16
Speaker
With me, as always, is Phil.
00:00:17
Speaker
And on today's show, we are covering Seventh Guest.
00:00:22
Speaker
There it is.
00:00:23
Speaker
Seventh Guest.
00:00:25
Speaker
A novel.
00:00:27
Speaker
Right there, a novel.
00:00:27
Speaker
It's mirrored on my screen.
00:00:29
Speaker
You can tell because it says so.
00:00:31
Speaker
It says so.
00:00:32
Speaker
It says a novel.
00:00:33
Speaker
By Matthew J. Costello and Craig Shaw-
00:00:40
Speaker
So, seventh guest.
00:00:42
Speaker
It's a game.
00:00:44
Speaker
It was an FMV game released in 1993, I want to say.
00:00:48
Speaker
Hold on.
00:00:48
Speaker
I'm pulling it
The Seventh Guest Game: History and Impact
00:00:50
Speaker
up right now.
00:00:50
Speaker
Yeah, the very beginning of 93.
00:00:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:51
Speaker
So, it's...
00:00:54
Speaker
it's a trilobite game released by Virgin interactive and it was, it's full on just FMV, FMV point and click stuff.
00:01:05
Speaker
You know, if you've played any of the FMVs, it was a phantasmagoria was one of them.
00:01:12
Speaker
None of them were like, I'm not going to say that they weren't good.
00:01:18
Speaker
They were just not,
00:01:20
Speaker
You couldn't be uncheesy with them.
00:01:23
Speaker
They were campy.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:24
Speaker
Very campy.
00:01:26
Speaker
Because you weren't getting at that point, you're not getting like you weren't getting like, like, you know, Sean Penn, you know, coming in to be in your fucking video game.
00:01:36
Speaker
You weren't you were getting community theater people at best.
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:41
Speaker
So they tended to be real campy.
00:01:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:44
Speaker
Now, what's interesting is that there's a Seventh Guest VR thing that you can get, which is...
00:01:54
Speaker
it's been it's had pretty positive reactions it was released in 2023 uh it's the iconic supernatural mystery the seventh guest brought back to life with cut-edge vr technology so i mean it's out there if you want to get it on vr and it's i think it's straight up the original game remade as a vr game
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:20
Speaker
I mean, which isn't too hard because it was, it was first person, which a lot of FMV games aren't right.
00:02:30
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:02:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:33
Speaker
So yeah, the, the basic gist of the game was you're going through a mansion, you're solving puzzles.
00:02:40
Speaker
Then you,
00:02:44
Speaker
There you go.
00:02:45
Speaker
I mean, I'm not going to get into the plot of the game because it is we're about to get into the book.
00:02:50
Speaker
And from Phil, who played the game, you played the game, right?
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah.
Trilobite's Legacy and Related Games
00:02:56
Speaker
From Phil, who played the game.
00:02:59
Speaker
It's the same.
00:03:02
Speaker
It's mostly the same.
00:03:04
Speaker
We'll get into this, but I will say that the authors, they really did actually make an effort on this one.
00:03:11
Speaker
Whether or not that effort succeeds is yet to be.
00:03:16
Speaker
Decided upon.
00:03:17
Speaker
But yeah, it's just another one of the corny point and click FMV games that Kevin and I love to find novelizations for.
00:03:26
Speaker
Right.
00:03:27
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:03:27
Speaker
This was actually a really important game.
00:03:30
Speaker
It came out the same year.
00:03:31
Speaker
Mist did.
00:03:33
Speaker
And they were like, it was like the first, it was the first game computer game that came out in C-ROM only.
00:03:39
Speaker
And that was when people were kind of like weighing their options when it came to C-ROM.
00:03:43
Speaker
Right.
00:03:44
Speaker
Right.
00:03:44
Speaker
It was so much more expensive.
00:03:45
Speaker
Is this worth it?
00:03:47
Speaker
And a seventh guest.
00:03:48
Speaker
And then later that year, missed, uh, uh, sold it.
00:03:51
Speaker
It just, it, it, if without those games, we don't have, uh, well, we don't have games as we don't know.
00:03:57
Speaker
So they were pretty important.
00:03:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:59
Speaker
Um, just goofy as fuck is all that's all.
00:04:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:03
Speaker
So, uh, seventh guest, a, uh, a game that is also made by the same company was 11th hour.
00:04:13
Speaker
Um, so if you ever, uh, uh,
00:04:17
Speaker
saw 11th hour and it was like, Hey, it looks familiar to the seventh.
00:04:21
Speaker
It's because it's the same company.
00:04:23
Speaker
Uh, trailer bike games lasted until 1999 where it was closed down, uh, after some shenanigans with the learning company and, and Broderbund and all that stuff.
00:04:33
Speaker
Broderbund blast from the past.
00:04:36
Speaker
Uh, they did Carmen San Diego, right?
00:04:38
Speaker
That's correct.
00:04:40
Speaker
Fucking a yes.
00:04:41
Speaker
Broderbund.
00:04:43
Speaker
Um, I still get a tickle to, to play.
00:04:45
Speaker
That old school Carmen Sandiego shit.
00:04:48
Speaker
I fucking loved it so much.
00:04:53
Speaker
I love the format of Carmen Sandiego as a game.
00:04:55
Speaker
I love that style of game.
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:58
Speaker
And I've always thought it would be really cool to kind of reinvent that, like go to multiple locations, do some investigation.
00:05:08
Speaker
And they're not very long, but you could just do it.
00:05:12
Speaker
And I remember I think in Carmen Sandiego, there's an element of randomization.
00:05:17
Speaker
Like it would be like it's
Authors and Novelization Process
00:05:18
Speaker
this guy from this location.
00:05:20
Speaker
Yeah, because they had – yeah, they had multiple criminals and each one of them were different in different ways and you had to –
00:05:28
Speaker
slowly through the process of elimination based on what people saw.
00:05:32
Speaker
Right.
00:05:33
Speaker
You know, come up with it.
00:05:35
Speaker
And if you took the wrong path, like you also get clues about where they went in the next country they went to.
00:05:42
Speaker
And if you took the wrong turn, then you were kind of fucked.
00:05:44
Speaker
Like you could theoretically catch up, but you might as well just start over at that point.
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:53
Speaker
So one of the founders of Trilobite is Graham Devine, who he was involved in Quake three arena.
00:06:06
Speaker
So it's just kind of like a, I recognize that name, Graham Devine.
00:06:12
Speaker
I think it was in Masters of Doom.
00:06:14
Speaker
He might've been mentioned.
00:06:15
Speaker
I think he was.
00:06:15
Speaker
I think you're absolutely right.
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:18
Speaker
Anyway, yeah, so that's kind of like the game.
00:06:22
Speaker
It's relatively important, as Phil said, in terms in its place in gaming history.
00:06:29
Speaker
So we're going to go ahead and do the book.
00:06:33
Speaker
Phil, who did the book?
00:06:35
Speaker
Who are these two people on the cover?
00:06:40
Speaker
Well, this is this first we've got Matthew Costello, who actually wrote the screenplay.
00:06:47
Speaker
I don't know if that's the correct term for video games, but he wrote Seventh Guest.
00:06:52
Speaker
He wrote Eleventh the Eleventh Hour.
00:06:56
Speaker
He also wrote for a few of the Doom games he wrote for Resident Evil 4.
00:07:05
Speaker
I believe he I think he just I think he was he helped with the localization for the most recent version of it.
00:07:13
Speaker
But he's he's written a lot of really random stuff, everything from like like rage.
00:07:20
Speaker
If you remember rage to Barbie's writing club, like he's he's got a lot all over the map.
00:07:27
Speaker
all over the map.
00:07:28
Speaker
Uh, he's done a lot of, uh, right for hire stuff.
00:07:31
Speaker
He wrote a book called Island of the skull, which was an original prequel to, uh, the Peter Jackson, King Kong, uh, uh, movie.
00:07:40
Speaker
Okay.
00:07:40
Speaker
Um, and he's done a lot of stuff for, you know, role-playing games, D and D call Cthulhu.
00:07:46
Speaker
Um, he's, and he written a ton of his own stuff too.
00:07:49
Speaker
Mostly, you know, genre fiction, uh, mystery stuff.
00:07:52
Speaker
He's, he's, he's a pretty prolific guy.
00:07:55
Speaker
Um,
00:07:56
Speaker
his partner in this is craigshaw gardner who is far more kind of down the line fantasy uh uh sort of writer right uh he's done a lot of trilogies and stuff like that nothing that offhand i've heard of um the changeling war is probably the one i've heard the most of
00:08:17
Speaker
um but he's also like a lot of these guys are right for hire guy he wrote the novelization for batman uh and batman returns which i think is kick ass um and he wrote uh the lost boys the novelization boys yeah how much does the novelization for the lost boys uh spend on uh what's his name a six sexy sax man
00:08:41
Speaker
Hopefully a lot.
00:08:42
Speaker
I hope we get a background story on sexy sex, man, with his long hair and his muscles and shit.
00:08:47
Speaker
I want to I know that if I were assigned the novelization of the Lost Boys, Capello, there we go.
00:08:53
Speaker
I would I would at least have a chapter, just a just a quick chapter.
00:08:58
Speaker
Tell us a little more about him.
00:08:59
Speaker
You know what?
00:09:00
Speaker
I think I just heard this.
00:09:03
Speaker
It might have been in the novelization.
00:09:05
Speaker
What?
00:09:06
Speaker
Really?
00:09:07
Speaker
That's hilarious.
00:09:08
Speaker
Because I was watching Dead Meat Presents was doing their horror Royal Rumble, where basically they take the most recent WWE wrestling game and they create 30 horror characters and they do the Royal Rumble with them.
00:09:26
Speaker
What a great idea.
00:09:27
Speaker
It's actually a really fun video.
00:09:29
Speaker
I'll send you the link.
00:09:31
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:09:31
Speaker
So what they did is is one of the characters was it was Tim Capello, who is the guy who plays the sexy sax man in Lost Boys.
00:09:41
Speaker
And, you know, he's running up and they're talking about how they wish they had a saxophone prop that they could have given him.
00:09:46
Speaker
That would be amazing.
00:09:48
Speaker
But I think they said that in the novelization, the background is either in the novelization or like a deleted scene from the screenplay or something that the reason this guy is that like he that character was supposed to be a vampire hunter.
00:10:05
Speaker
No shit.
00:10:06
Speaker
I mean, you know what?
00:10:09
Speaker
That actually makes some sense.
00:10:10
Speaker
I like it because he was conspicuously like jacked.
00:10:16
Speaker
That's hilarious.
00:10:18
Speaker
I mean, I have to find a copy of the novelization.
00:10:21
Speaker
Maybe I'm misremembering it, but I remember they said it on the horror Royal Rumble and I just watched it today because they did it live on Saturday.
00:10:30
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:10:32
Speaker
That's good timing is what that is.
00:10:34
Speaker
Now I have to find the novelization of Lost Boys and find out if that's in there.
00:10:38
Speaker
That would be amazing.
00:10:39
Speaker
Especially if we're reading something by the guy who came up with that.
00:10:44
Speaker
He also did the novelizations for
Plot Overview: The Story of Henry Stauf
00:10:46
Speaker
Back to the Future 2 and 3, which is pretty cool.
00:10:48
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:10:49
Speaker
What about Back to the Future 1?
00:10:52
Speaker
Not as far as I know.
00:10:53
Speaker
Who did Back to the Future 1?
00:10:55
Speaker
Let me see.
00:10:56
Speaker
Is that Alan Dean Foster special?
00:10:59
Speaker
That would be awesome.
00:11:02
Speaker
Novelization...
00:11:04
Speaker
Oh, here we go.
00:11:05
Speaker
Here it is.
00:11:06
Speaker
George.
00:11:07
Speaker
George.
00:11:07
Speaker
George.
00:11:09
Speaker
That's a name.
00:11:11
Speaker
That is a name.
00:11:12
Speaker
It makes sense that you would need to get a genre guy for the second and third one.
00:11:15
Speaker
Well, and also the second and third one and how they were handled where they were written and shot at the same time.
00:11:23
Speaker
Right.
00:11:23
Speaker
So you probably had you gave it to both of them to one guy at the same time.
00:11:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
00:11:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:32
Speaker
Oh, I found an autographed copy of his novelization back to the future, too.
00:11:37
Speaker
All right.
00:11:38
Speaker
add that to the collection um yeah so we've got a couple of pros here uh uh one specifically works in games a lot uh the other one who has a lot of uh novelization they both have some novelization uh background but uh gardener's definitely right the heavy when it comes to that yeah exactly and uh costello uh to be uh
00:12:03
Speaker
Costello actually is, we're going to be reading another one of his books coming up soon-ish.
00:12:09
Speaker
I'm excited about this one.
00:12:11
Speaker
He was the, actually coming up next, he did the novelization of one of the Doom 3 novelizations.
00:12:21
Speaker
which is going to be, you know, several years after this one, at least 10 years, I assume.
00:12:27
Speaker
Right.
00:12:28
Speaker
Oh, gosh.
00:12:28
Speaker
Easily.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:29
Speaker
There's a decade between the two of them.
00:12:31
Speaker
So we'll see.
00:12:32
Speaker
It'll be a good it'll be a nice comparison because we've never done that before.
00:12:36
Speaker
We've never actually had read the same author.
00:12:41
Speaker
Back to back.
00:12:42
Speaker
Back to back.
00:12:43
Speaker
We've done a bunch of authors, you know, obviously, you know, with Resident Evil and Kira Breed-Reesley.
00:12:51
Speaker
We've done, we had three and all that.
00:12:55
Speaker
But yeah, we've never done an author back to back.
00:12:57
Speaker
And so I'm curious as to how this will work.
00:13:00
Speaker
Two very different genres.
00:13:02
Speaker
Two very different genres.
00:13:04
Speaker
Dark, dark, dark horror, sci fi versus.
00:13:10
Speaker
Can't be horror point and click kind of thing versus FMV.
00:13:15
Speaker
Right.
00:13:16
Speaker
Yes.
00:13:16
Speaker
You know what?
00:13:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:17
Speaker
That's that kind of says it all.
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:22
Speaker
Uh, so before we get put the body in the marsh, uh, I want to tell you all about a fantastic website.
00:13:30
Speaker
Uh, listen, I know you're all worried about what's going on out there with, with, uh, with the orange man and his, his blood diamond having friend, um,
00:13:46
Speaker
But you know where there's a home for you?
00:13:49
Speaker
It's on the Pixelit Patreon and the Pixelit Discord.
00:13:54
Speaker
Hop on over to patreon.com slash PixelitPod and you can join for free.
00:13:57
Speaker
And just joining for free gets you access to the episodes a day early when I have the wherewithal to do that, which is like 90% of the time.
00:14:07
Speaker
Let's be honest.
00:14:08
Speaker
It's like
00:14:08
Speaker
it's a lot of most of the time I can get the episodes up early for the, for the patrons.
00:14:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:13
Speaker
You're putting on the ball.
00:14:13
Speaker
You're good.
00:14:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:14
Speaker
And from that, you can also join the discord where we have a lovely group of, of leftist dads just chatting about all sorts of things.
00:14:26
Speaker
It has been the amount, the catering of the leftist ads we have.
00:14:34
Speaker
We didn't mean to do this, I guess is my point.
00:14:37
Speaker
But we did.
00:14:38
Speaker
But we got it.
00:14:39
Speaker
It's worked out very nicely.
00:14:40
Speaker
So Patreon.com slash PixletPod.
00:14:42
Speaker
$10 a month at the top end gets your name shouted out in every episode.
00:14:48
Speaker
So to that end, I want to shout out our $10 a month people's
00:14:54
Speaker
That's going to be Jesus Loves You, Kyle Seaman, Ruthless Mudder, Middle of Things, Sigma Sal, Chet Beaks Domethic, Langolier, and Friendly Friend.
00:15:07
Speaker
Thank you for being a friend.
00:15:09
Speaker
Yes, Phil, that's a new name on the list.
00:15:11
Speaker
I was about to say, I'll be damned.
00:15:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:12
Speaker
Langolier.
00:15:13
Speaker
That's a Stephen King right there.
00:15:16
Speaker
That's a reference.
00:15:18
Speaker
That's a reference.
00:15:21
Speaker
Now we just need Tommyknockers.
00:15:24
Speaker
Or Tommy's Knockers.
00:15:25
Speaker
Or Tommy's Knockers.
00:15:26
Speaker
That would be good.
00:15:27
Speaker
That would be good.
00:15:28
Speaker
Make Kevin say Tommy's Knockers, somebody.
00:15:31
Speaker
Make him say it like every episode.
00:15:32
Speaker
Well, I already say Chet Beaks Dummy Thick every episode, so.
00:15:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point.
00:15:39
Speaker
Fair enough.
00:15:42
Speaker
Anyway, body in the marsh.
00:15:44
Speaker
When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh, you dump them in the marsh.
00:15:52
Speaker
Body in Marsh.
00:15:54
Speaker
Let's go.
00:15:55
Speaker
Uh, seventh guest chapter one.
00:15:58
Speaker
Uh, we open up with Henry staff, who is a two bit criminal.
00:16:02
Speaker
He's he's coming out of a robbery that's gone sideways and he's hiding out in a small town, uh, that he's from.
00:16:10
Speaker
I think we find out later that more that he's from this area.
00:16:14
Speaker
Um,
00:16:14
Speaker
We learn more about the robbery, the fact that he threw away his gun, which he considers to be pretty stupid.
00:16:21
Speaker
But he's got voices in his head that are guiding him on.
00:16:26
Speaker
And and that's kind of giving him strength.
00:16:29
Speaker
He's he he he's starving.
00:16:31
Speaker
He falls asleep in the cold and the voices guide him to a construction site where he steals a hammer.
00:16:40
Speaker
And he loves this hammer.
00:16:42
Speaker
It's got the loves this hammer.
00:16:43
Speaker
It's got the right weight in his hand.
00:16:45
Speaker
Right.
00:16:46
Speaker
Right.
00:16:46
Speaker
Very, very emphatic about how much he loves this hammer.
00:16:48
Speaker
He loves his tools, as we'll find out.
00:16:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:51
Speaker
Big fan.
00:16:53
Speaker
Exactly.
00:16:54
Speaker
And he he ends up kind of in a forest or a park or something.
00:16:58
Speaker
And he hears somebody singing to themselves.
00:17:01
Speaker
It's this young girl, not girl, girl.
00:17:05
Speaker
She's like,
00:17:06
Speaker
I don't know.
00:17:06
Speaker
Did they ever say an age?
00:17:08
Speaker
It's like I pictured like late high school, early college.
00:17:12
Speaker
I thought this was an old woman.
00:17:14
Speaker
Oh, I thought it was a girl.
00:17:15
Speaker
Maybe I messed up.
00:17:17
Speaker
It's a person.
00:17:18
Speaker
It's a human being.
00:17:19
Speaker
It's a human being.
00:17:21
Speaker
And this person seems to like is talking to him and sees what a state he's in and pities him as he interprets it.
00:17:29
Speaker
And that drives him to crush her skull with the hammer.
00:17:35
Speaker
That's chapter one.
00:17:36
Speaker
So right off the bat, just right right into the.
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah, right into it.
00:17:42
Speaker
It's a lot right off the bat.
00:17:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:45
Speaker
Chapter two, we are introduced to Edward Knox.
00:17:47
Speaker
He's an older man.
00:17:48
Speaker
We've learned that he is in debt to some mobsters, two of which are in his home currently demanding payment.
00:17:58
Speaker
He tells them that he has an invitation to attend an event that's being held by I don't think a quote it, but you can imagine, quote unquote,
00:18:10
Speaker
Rich old Mr. Strauff, and he will pay them back afterwards.
00:18:17
Speaker
The fact that he's going there seems to convince them that he'll be as good as his word.
00:18:22
Speaker
And they leave.
00:18:23
Speaker
His wife arrives and he shows with the invitation.
00:18:27
Speaker
She touches
Stauf's Toys and Mysterious Events
00:18:28
Speaker
it and it causes her to scream uncontrollably.
00:18:32
Speaker
So that's that's our introduction to these two.
00:18:35
Speaker
Very, very interesting.
00:18:37
Speaker
These are these are fast chapters, by the way.
00:18:41
Speaker
It's a fast book.
00:18:43
Speaker
So chapter three, we cut back in time, back to Strauss, who throws away the hammer that he has used to kill the woman.
00:18:53
Speaker
He finds six bucks in her purse.
00:18:56
Speaker
Um, and he considers, he kind of like considers the fact that he killed her and feels no guilt.
00:19:03
Speaker
He, he kind of like goes over that in his head, uh, kind of like, am I fucked up?
00:19:09
Speaker
Are we, am I the baddie, uh, kind of moment, but, uh,
00:19:12
Speaker
He kind of accepts that that's what he is, that he's fine with it.
00:19:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:17
Speaker
The cops pick him up for the robbery for because that's because he did it.
00:19:25
Speaker
He did it.
00:19:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:26
Speaker
But when they find this murder victim, they don't assume that he-
00:19:32
Speaker
Because there was another person stealing the jacket off of the body.
00:19:36
Speaker
So they're like, that's probably that guy.
00:19:38
Speaker
This guy did the robbery.
00:19:39
Speaker
That guy did the murder.
00:19:41
Speaker
They're like, that's the end of that investigation.
00:19:44
Speaker
Very timely, to be honest.
00:19:46
Speaker
Very timely.
00:19:48
Speaker
These details never get old.
00:19:49
Speaker
So they throw him in jail and he has a moment in his cell where he sits there thinking about how he is meant for great things.
00:20:01
Speaker
But he just he just needs the voices to point him in the direction of these great things.
00:20:08
Speaker
Chapter four, we meet Brian Dutton, who wakes up from another nightmare about his dead brother.
00:20:16
Speaker
This one is Kevin Kevin, which is hilarious because my brother's name is Brian.
00:20:22
Speaker
It's Brian.
00:20:22
Speaker
Yes.
00:20:26
Speaker
And it gets better slash worse.
00:20:28
Speaker
It gets better.
00:20:29
Speaker
Because Brian is the younger brother in this situation.
00:20:33
Speaker
It's reversed in our host Kevin situation.
00:20:38
Speaker
But we get kind of a classic story about how the younger brother is living in his older brother's shadow.
00:20:44
Speaker
The older brother is this perfect older brother who can do anything.
00:20:48
Speaker
He's the athlete.
00:20:49
Speaker
He's a genius, et cetera, et cetera.
00:20:52
Speaker
And they're ice skating.
00:20:54
Speaker
And of course, his brother is like,
00:20:57
Speaker
fucking triple gainers and shit like that.
00:20:59
Speaker
He's, you know, he's a great skater.
00:21:01
Speaker
And the little brother, Brian, wishes to himself that there was something that he could do better than Kevin.
00:21:09
Speaker
And it turns out there is.
00:21:12
Speaker
It's called not dying.
00:21:13
Speaker
Because...
00:21:17
Speaker
Because poor Kevin, I guess he, you know, he did that old chestnut of one too many times in the same loop.
00:21:27
Speaker
One too many times on the same patch of ice.
00:21:29
Speaker
And down he goes.
00:21:30
Speaker
Boom, down he goes.
00:21:32
Speaker
We get a moment where young brother Brian is like, he's watching him flail and die.
00:21:39
Speaker
And he's begging his younger brother to go get help.
00:21:43
Speaker
And Brian just kind of watches him.
00:21:45
Speaker
Not for a long time.
00:21:47
Speaker
It's a moment of like a moment.
00:21:49
Speaker
I can just let this happen.
00:21:50
Speaker
Right.
00:21:51
Speaker
I can just let this happen.
00:21:52
Speaker
I could just I could just just wait until the bubble stop and then go get help.
00:21:57
Speaker
But he does end up.
00:21:59
Speaker
But actually, it's before he even needs to leave that his brother's dead.
00:22:03
Speaker
And he sees his body floating under the ice face
The Mansion and Its Mysteries
00:22:08
Speaker
pressed up against the ice.
00:22:10
Speaker
Yeah, I said gruesome.
00:22:11
Speaker
Pretty good shit, honestly.
00:22:14
Speaker
Now we cut back to Brian as an adult.
00:22:17
Speaker
He has become a businessman.
00:22:19
Speaker
It's very vague on what kind of business it is.
00:22:23
Speaker
He he has factories or he has a factory.
00:22:26
Speaker
The play he has these big dreams of becoming like this magnate, I guess, factory man.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:22:33
Speaker
But he's got one kind of dinky factory in town.
00:22:36
Speaker
And by the way, this is all taking place in like the 1930s or something like that.
00:22:40
Speaker
I can't remember when exactly it's.
00:22:42
Speaker
Is it the flashback?
00:22:46
Speaker
Is it the 30s?
00:22:47
Speaker
That's that's the depression.
00:22:49
Speaker
It's prohibition.
00:22:50
Speaker
OK, 20s.
00:22:52
Speaker
And then but then but you're right, because the it flashes forward when staff is when when all these people are getting their invitations staff is like old man staff.
00:23:02
Speaker
So the implication is like, I don't know, like 70s, 40s, maybe 70s, something like that or 60s or I don't know.
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah, 60s or 70s, but it's definitely – it's vague.
00:23:15
Speaker
In fact, the timey-wimey shit in this book is actually addressed at one point where it's kind of like, this doesn't really make sense.
00:23:23
Speaker
Sure.
00:23:25
Speaker
So – but yes, but we've got Brian Dutton in his dinky little factory.
00:23:29
Speaker
He is assuming and slash hoping that the invitation from Stauff is –
00:23:35
Speaker
an invite for him to take over Stauf's toy business.
00:23:39
Speaker
Because he's like, I'm a factory guy.
00:23:41
Speaker
So I should, you know, this, this makes sense.
00:23:44
Speaker
I can, I can
Critique of the Novelization
00:23:45
Speaker
help because, because we learn, we have learned that Stauf is this famous, um,
00:23:51
Speaker
ultra rich toy maker that he hand makes all these toys and all the kids got to have one of his toys and he's made his fortune off of it.
00:23:58
Speaker
And so Brian immediately starts thinking of like, well, how can we, we could probably, he does, you know what?
00:24:03
Speaker
He does what these fuckers do.
00:24:05
Speaker
He's like, how can we mass produce?
00:24:06
Speaker
How can we take these, these bespoke, very intricate toys and make it so that everybody can have one all the time?
00:24:18
Speaker
Immediately.
00:24:19
Speaker
And since the beginning of time, people have been like, you know how Jeff Bezos made Amazon, right?
00:24:29
Speaker
This Amazon was not where Amazon is today.
00:24:33
Speaker
Not an original idea.
00:24:34
Speaker
Motherfuckers have been trying to make Amazon since.
00:24:38
Speaker
The dude who had the guy, the copper guy, the bad copper guy.
00:24:47
Speaker
Graffiti.
00:24:48
Speaker
What is that guy's name?
00:24:54
Speaker
World's first customer service complaint.
00:24:56
Speaker
There we go.
00:25:00
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know this.
00:25:02
Speaker
This is good.
00:25:05
Speaker
Yeah, Nasir is the original customer service complaint from like 4,000 years ago about how he- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:15
Speaker
Okay, yeah.
00:25:17
Speaker
It was like on a tablet.
00:25:18
Speaker
It's like on a stone tablet or something.
00:25:20
Speaker
It's not a stone tablet.
00:25:21
Speaker
This customer service complaint to EA Nasir about his shitty product.
00:25:26
Speaker
And you know why?
00:25:27
Speaker
I bet that guy was trying to fucking mass produce it, you know?
00:25:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:30
Speaker
He was trying to just like cut down the quality, bring up the speed so he can make more profit.
00:25:37
Speaker
That is what –
00:25:41
Speaker
Jeff Bezos is just that guy reincarnated.
00:25:45
Speaker
And Brian Dutton in this book is that it's just Jeff Bezos made it happen.
00:25:52
Speaker
He was just right time, right place.
00:25:53
Speaker
But motherfuckers have been trying to do that for, you know, 4000 years.
00:25:57
Speaker
So none of these guys are doing anything but reinventing the wheel.
00:26:00
Speaker
Exactly.
00:26:01
Speaker
So, yeah, none of them are doing anything really original, like hosting a podcast about video game novelizations.
00:26:07
Speaker
That is peak originality.
00:26:12
Speaker
Anyway, that's chapter four.
00:26:16
Speaker
Chapter five, we are flashing back again.
00:26:18
Speaker
We're going to be going back and forth every
Current Gaming Highlights
00:26:20
Speaker
other chapter here.
00:26:21
Speaker
We get a flashback to Stouff.
00:26:23
Speaker
He is getting out of jail for the robbery.
00:26:28
Speaker
He is in front of the judge and he is listening to the voices in his head as they tell him how to act.
00:26:35
Speaker
They're like, don't talk back to the judge.
00:26:37
Speaker
Say you've learned your lesson, be humble.
00:26:40
Speaker
And the voices kind of like guide him through the process.
00:26:43
Speaker
And as a result, the judge kind of takes pity on him and just releases him like he's had some jail time and they, you know, they just let him go.
00:26:52
Speaker
Basically, they're like, yeah, you you pay you paid restitution.
00:26:56
Speaker
You pay back the money.
00:26:57
Speaker
You can go.
00:26:57
Speaker
Yeah, there you go.
00:26:59
Speaker
And and meanwhile, the guy, the the the homeless guy who was caught and accused of killing the woman that staff killed, hanged himself in his cell.
00:27:10
Speaker
Well, there you go.
00:27:12
Speaker
I mean, so so that story is all nice and tied up, buttoned up the random murder that staff committed.
00:27:18
Speaker
It's all good.
00:27:20
Speaker
It's all good.
00:27:21
Speaker
All good.
00:27:21
Speaker
He doesn't have to.
00:27:22
Speaker
He's so you can imagine he's leaving the jail.
00:27:25
Speaker
The bit of a swing in his step is feeling good.
00:27:29
Speaker
He's listening to the voices and they are sending him out into the world again.
00:27:35
Speaker
They're guiding him towards something and they guide him back to the construction site for a moment.
00:27:39
Speaker
And he starts going, well, I don't.
00:27:41
Speaker
I could what am I going to steal another hammer?
00:27:43
Speaker
But the you know, that doesn't feel right.
00:27:45
Speaker
I'm not going to I don't feel like I don't feel like I'm going to do that.
00:27:48
Speaker
And the and the feeling that he's getting keeps pushing him forward until he finds like basically in the middle of the road, a small, sharp knife.
00:28:00
Speaker
And oh, boy, is this for a stabbing?
00:28:04
Speaker
Oh, yeah, exactly.
00:28:05
Speaker
He's like, what's the knife for?
00:28:06
Speaker
What's the knife for?
00:28:07
Speaker
Come on.
00:28:08
Speaker
He's he's waiting for the voices to tell him.
00:28:11
Speaker
And he has a vision of a wooden doll, a very intricately, beautifully carved wooden doll.
00:28:20
Speaker
And then he sees.
00:28:22
Speaker
a branch nearby on a tree in the park and he sees the doll inside the branch.
00:28:29
Speaker
And it's kind of an old idea with I think it was Michelangelo who said something like that, that the sculpture was in there.
00:28:36
Speaker
I just had to release it from the marble.
00:28:39
Speaker
And he has the thought like that, that that that my my doll is in this branch.
00:28:43
Speaker
I just need to carve it and realizes that's what the knife is for.
00:28:48
Speaker
Uh, so he's, I'm sure he's a little disappointed that it isn't a stabby stabby stabby now, right?
00:28:54
Speaker
You know, he's, he's getting, he's getting good at that.
00:28:56
Speaker
I'm sure there's, that was a bit of a bummer, but all the same, he's got a, he's got a purpose now and that's, what's important.
00:29:03
Speaker
Um, chapter six, we flash forward.
00:29:05
Speaker
Martine burden, great damn character name.
00:29:09
Speaker
I've got that written right.
00:29:10
Speaker
Martine burden, like a beast of burden.
00:29:14
Speaker
Uh, great name.
00:29:15
Speaker
Um, she,
00:29:17
Speaker
gets a certified letter from a leering mailman.
00:29:21
Speaker
We get her backstory as she's kind of one of the great beauties of the town who's felt that she's like too, too good for the town.
00:29:30
Speaker
And she ran away with a mysterious foreign noble as far as she knew and ran around New York, you know, the upper crust of Manhattan, living the good life with this count.
00:29:44
Speaker
Uh, I'm imagining her as Leslie Ann Warren.
00:29:48
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:29:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:50
Speaker
Is that, is that too much or is that, what would you say?
00:29:54
Speaker
Is that, yeah.
00:29:55
Speaker
I think that works.
00:29:56
Speaker
I think that works.
00:29:56
Speaker
I think, um, I think she, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:30:00
Speaker
I think she's, I don't know if she's at that age point yet, but like, sure.
00:30:05
Speaker
Yes.
00:30:05
Speaker
I think that's a good, I think that's a good choice.
00:30:07
Speaker
Well, Leslie Ann Warren in Clue.
00:30:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:10
Speaker
Well, actually, yes.
00:30:12
Speaker
Oh, you know what?
00:30:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:13
Speaker
Specifically, we're talking about Miss Scarlet.
00:30:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:16
Speaker
That's totally it.
00:30:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:18
Speaker
Then that's totally it.
00:30:19
Speaker
She does have that vibe.
00:30:20
Speaker
Like she she she keeps telling us that she's a great beauty, but we don't know for sure.
00:30:25
Speaker
But we do have the mailman who like she interprets it as him leering at her.
00:30:29
Speaker
He's just staring.
00:30:31
Speaker
Right.
00:30:32
Speaker
And she answered the door in her kimono.
00:30:34
Speaker
And what am I supposed to do?
00:30:35
Speaker
Get all my makeup done so the mailman can see me properly.
00:30:38
Speaker
It's it's that kind of thing.
00:30:40
Speaker
She has been abandoned after I think it's very fast.
00:30:44
Speaker
It's like two weeks in Manhattan with this, with this nobleman who leaves her for, for, you know, the new model.
00:30:52
Speaker
And, uh, and, and she has to come home, uh, with her tail between her legs and, and everybody in town hates her, uh, because she got too big for britches and that sort of thing.
00:31:01
Speaker
And she's, she's, uh,
00:31:04
Speaker
really frustrated and pissed off about that.
00:31:06
Speaker
She has also received an invite from Stauf and kind of like she kind of toys with the idea of like, well, I've been with older men before.
00:31:17
Speaker
It's kind of a, you know, as we get the invitations, we find out what people, what they're assuming that they want and what they think that they can get from rich old man Stauf.
00:31:29
Speaker
Um, chapter seven, we flash back.
00:31:31
Speaker
Stouth has carved the doll out of the branch in the park in as far as we can tell one go.
00:31:39
Speaker
Uh, and it is exactly the way he saw it in his vision.
00:31:43
Speaker
And it is the most perfect doll ever made.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yep.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's exquisite.
00:31:48
Speaker
It's expertly handcrafted.
00:31:50
Speaker
You would think that he's been studying to do this his entire life and not that this is the first doll he's ever made.
00:31:57
Speaker
But the voices had kind of guided his hand.
00:31:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:01
Speaker
So he hasn't.
00:32:03
Speaker
They emphasize they're very emphatic on the fact that he has not had a drink in six days because he's been in jail
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:32:09
Speaker
for six days and he's got to get himself a drink.
00:32:13
Speaker
So he knows the speakeasy that he and a bunch of the other drunks go to in town and he goes there to celebrate.
00:32:19
Speaker
He walks in on a screaming match between the owner of the bar, who's the bartender, and his seven year old daughter who he's trying to get her to like mop the floor.
00:32:29
Speaker
Right.
00:32:30
Speaker
Just do something.
00:32:32
Speaker
Do you see it?
00:32:32
Speaker
She's flipping out because all of her friends are going out playing and I'm seven.
00:32:36
Speaker
I should not be cleaning your goddamn speakeasy, dad.
00:32:39
Speaker
Right.
00:32:40
Speaker
That whole thing.
00:32:42
Speaker
So staff has no money.
00:32:45
Speaker
And so he he he says and he's he says, what can I he he basically holds up the doll and says, how how many can I get for this?
00:32:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:53
Speaker
And as he's doing that, the little girl just kind of like is magnetized by an enchanted big eyes coming over towards it and just in love with it and is just kind of the happiest that the bartender has ever seen her.
00:33:06
Speaker
And he's like, look, man, if you can give her that, I will give you three drinks all afternoon.
00:33:12
Speaker
And Stow says, sold.
00:33:14
Speaker
And and the little girl spends the rest of the day kind of like dancing around the bar with this doll, just purely
00:33:22
Speaker
in enchanted by it, maybe literally.
00:33:24
Speaker
Right.
00:33:25
Speaker
And and the bartender says, you know, hey, if you can make her some more toys, I've got I'll give you a room and board.
00:33:31
Speaker
I've got a room in the back with a workshop.
00:33:34
Speaker
And if you make her some more stuff, I'll put you up for a week or so.
00:33:39
Speaker
So we know staff is going to become incredibly wealthy because this but this is this was clearly his his foot in the door.
00:33:45
Speaker
Whatever happens to the taverns and the bars that had like, yeah, you have a room for you or whatever.
00:33:51
Speaker
Just like just had a couple of rooms for rent.
00:33:53
Speaker
You know, just you get you got to it's it's it's just like a JRPG holdover nowadays where, you know, we go and you're like, oh, I got a room, too.
00:34:03
Speaker
But it's like you got a bar.
00:34:04
Speaker
It's like, well, we got a couple of rooms upstairs, you know.
00:34:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:08
Speaker
Whatever.
00:34:09
Speaker
Was that ever really a thing or is that just like a. No.
00:34:13
Speaker
I honestly don't.
00:34:14
Speaker
The thing I always hear about is like, you know, you got colonial stories and stuff and there's always like the
00:34:21
Speaker
though it's, it's usually a woman and she's got a family and maybe the husband's dead or he's off at war or something.
00:34:26
Speaker
And she's like, well, we have a room that you can rent for, you know, 50 shillings a week or whatever it is.
00:34:32
Speaker
Hey, Penny.
00:34:34
Speaker
Hey, Penny.
00:34:34
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:34:35
Speaker
It's probably that.
00:34:36
Speaker
And, and, and you just, that's just, and that's where the guy, whoever he's a student or he's working, that's just where he lives for now.
00:34:43
Speaker
He's just living in this lady's extra.
00:34:46
Speaker
I'm living at the old Mrs.
00:34:52
Speaker
Old Widow Flenderson's house.
00:34:53
Speaker
Old Widow Flenderson's house and Old Widow Flenderson is 27.
00:34:58
Speaker
Right, exactly.
00:34:58
Speaker
She's been married twice.
00:35:00
Speaker
She's been married twice.
00:35:02
Speaker
She has 17 children.
00:35:05
Speaker
Men who died under mysterious circumstances.
00:35:08
Speaker
Old Widow Flenderson.
00:35:09
Speaker
Still a knockout.
00:35:11
Speaker
I do.
00:35:11
Speaker
Yeah, of course.
00:35:12
Speaker
She's getting a little up there in age, but, but still, you know, she's got it.
00:35:17
Speaker
She's got it going.
00:35:17
Speaker
I mean, I used to drink in a, in the college, in college, there was a kind of a shitty bar, the dive that everyone went to called the Brown hotel.
00:35:28
Speaker
And it was the bar at the bottom of an even shittier hotel above.
00:35:32
Speaker
And I didn't know anyone who'd ever stayed there, but you could indeed, you know,
00:35:37
Speaker
get a room there and uh at least i don't think i knew anyone who did um but it was i think that was like that might be the closest thing i know to hold over from those days yeah yeah
00:35:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:50
Speaker
Chapter eight.
00:35:52
Speaker
We cut a flash forward.
00:35:55
Speaker
Julia Heine.
00:35:56
Speaker
I'm assuming it's Heine because it makes me laugh.
00:36:02
Speaker
She was recently retired, quote unquote, from her bank job.
00:36:06
Speaker
Actually, she was forced out when they caught her drunk on the job again.
00:36:13
Speaker
She is an older woman.
00:36:15
Speaker
She's a lush and she has a lot of.
00:36:20
Speaker
pent up anger about, uh, about growing old and how men treat her now because of that, which, you know what?
00:36:27
Speaker
Fair enough.
00:36:28
Speaker
Uh, you know, if, if, if a brandy at lunch makes you feel better, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say none of that personally.
00:36:34
Speaker
Um, she has also gotten an invite from staff.
00:36:37
Speaker
Um,
00:36:38
Speaker
she flashes back in her own head, remembering Karen, who was the little girl, the first little girl, the daughter of the bartender to get the doll and how she died not long after she got the doll.
00:36:55
Speaker
And it was this big tragedy and her theory on this.
00:36:58
Speaker
And this is some weird goddamn law of attraction.
00:37:02
Speaker
Sure.
00:37:02
Speaker
Woo woo shit.
00:37:03
Speaker
Like I could hear people saying this now, basically that the doll was so perfect that
00:37:08
Speaker
And it had a life-giving power and that she was just too young and she couldn't handle it.
00:37:13
Speaker
Couldn't handle the life-giving energy.
00:37:16
Speaker
So in a way, it's her fault when you think about it.
00:37:22
Speaker
In the real world, it was that the doll was a totem of Slaanesh.
00:37:27
Speaker
Right.
00:37:28
Speaker
Pretty much.
00:37:28
Speaker
I mean, yeah, it was the totem of the God who turns people inside out.
00:37:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:34
Speaker
And and she is theorizing on she she's kind of like a less successful version of Martine Burden in the sense that, like, she kind of she.
00:37:45
Speaker
She wants to be a seductress in a way.
00:37:47
Speaker
Sure.
00:37:48
Speaker
She's just not very good at it.
00:37:50
Speaker
And so she's thinking, well, I'm going to go to staff and he's an older man.
00:37:54
Speaker
So there's no way he can't appreciate an older woman.
00:37:57
Speaker
I'm sure he'll appreciate this.
00:38:00
Speaker
All this.
00:38:01
Speaker
And you just imagine shaking it.
00:38:03
Speaker
All this going on.
00:38:05
Speaker
All this.
00:38:06
Speaker
So she's she's.
00:38:08
Speaker
She's going after the old man, too.
00:38:10
Speaker
Also, with the kids, it was it was like one out of every three kids that had one of his dolls died.
00:38:20
Speaker
Yes.
00:38:21
Speaker
Yes.
00:38:22
Speaker
We're going to find out that.
00:38:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:23
Speaker
Like a massacre took place.
00:38:27
Speaker
They would contract a very strange, vague consumption style illness or something.
00:38:33
Speaker
Right.
00:38:34
Speaker
Killed most of them.
00:38:36
Speaker
But not most of a huge portion of them.
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:39
Speaker
They basically almost miss a generation because of it.
00:38:42
Speaker
Right.
00:38:42
Speaker
And in Chapter 9, we get a flashback to Stauf.
00:38:47
Speaker
We get a quick timeline.
00:38:49
Speaker
He's growing in success as a toy maker.
00:38:52
Speaker
He opens his own store.
00:38:55
Speaker
And he's still listening to the voices, but he doesn't know what the –
00:39:02
Speaker
what the long-term plan is.
00:39:03
Speaker
They still haven't revealed to him what the end goal is.
00:39:08
Speaker
Right.
00:39:08
Speaker
His assumption we learn is that they're going to help him get revenge on this small town that looked down on him and spat on him.
00:39:15
Speaker
Right.
00:39:16
Speaker
And that kind of thing.
00:39:17
Speaker
He's got a serious, a lot of the people in this actually have a serious, you think you're better than me.
00:39:21
Speaker
You think you're better than me?
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:24
Speaker
It's a serious to bullying complex shit going on here.
00:39:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:31
Speaker
Uh, chapter 10, we meet Hamilton temple.
00:39:34
Speaker
Another good name.
00:39:34
Speaker
Uh, he's an elderly, former vaudeville magician.
00:39:38
Speaker
Um, he was very talented, very good.
00:39:42
Speaker
And then Vaudeville goes out of style.
00:39:44
Speaker
On top of that, he has terribly arthritic wrists and hands.
00:39:48
Speaker
And as any magician will tell you, it's all in the wrist.
00:39:52
Speaker
And he's just he's just he's not he's not that person anymore.
00:39:57
Speaker
He's interesting because at first you assume that he's kind of a.
00:40:02
Speaker
that he's purely like a stage magician.
00:40:05
Speaker
Um, but he clearly is very interested in the occult as well because he, when he gets his invite from staff, um, he has been thinking about stuff for a while and assumes that staff, uh, works in some kind of magic of his own.
00:40:21
Speaker
Right.
00:40:22
Speaker
Uh, and he's eager to learn that from staff.
00:40:24
Speaker
So that's his, his main motivation for, for getting in there.
00:40:28
Speaker
Um, um,
00:40:30
Speaker
Chapter 11, we got we find out how many with the children are dying of this mysterious epidemic.
00:40:36
Speaker
Stauf alone seems to know that the toys are the reason, although there are whispers, people, people every now and then will like the rumor that goes around town is like, well, the toys have got something to do with it.
00:40:47
Speaker
It's got something to do with it.
00:40:49
Speaker
They go because they all had a toy.
00:40:51
Speaker
But then again, most kids in the in the area have one of his toys because that's yeah, I mean, he's so it's so it's one of those like
00:41:00
Speaker
Yeah, you can't really draw a correlation because, you know, also all the kids played on the rotting, you know, play set in the back of old McConnell's house.
00:41:14
Speaker
And they're all breathing in asbestos from the insulation.
00:41:18
Speaker
Yeah, they're all like, you know, throwing things into the never ending tire fire, you know.
00:41:23
Speaker
Right, exactly.
00:41:25
Speaker
So it's like, you know, I think we can...
00:41:29
Speaker
There are a lot of things.
00:41:30
Speaker
There's a lot of things.
00:41:31
Speaker
A lot of things.
00:41:32
Speaker
Our paint is leaded.
00:41:35
Speaker
That's how you know it's good.
00:41:36
Speaker
That's how you know it's good.
00:41:38
Speaker
That's actually the original it's toasted before it's time.
00:41:42
Speaker
It's leaded.
00:41:43
Speaker
It's leaded.
00:41:48
Speaker
Don Draper's had canned paint.
00:41:51
Speaker
He wished he took back.
00:41:52
Speaker
Coffin nail cigarettes.
00:41:54
Speaker
They're leaded.
00:41:54
Speaker
They're leaded.
00:41:57
Speaker
The good shit.
00:41:59
Speaker
So he he he knows for a fact that he is what's killing these kids.
00:42:04
Speaker
And he does what any supervillain does in this moment.
00:42:06
Speaker
He builds an enormous fuck off Resident Evil style puzzle mansion and disappears into it, closing the toy shop never to be heard from again.
00:42:19
Speaker
as far as the villagers are concerned until our invites go out.
00:42:22
Speaker
And he, he sits in this big ass mansion waiting for the voices to give him the next step.
00:42:33
Speaker
And we come to chapter 12.
00:42:34
Speaker
We have a nameless character outside of the mansion, looking it over.
00:42:39
Speaker
We, this is where we get a moment where the, the, the, this nameless person kind of observes how time is strange.
00:42:48
Speaker
Uh, in that area that we're not sure when the deaths happen.
00:42:51
Speaker
Uh, when did the kids die a long time ago or do they die recently?
00:42:55
Speaker
Uh, it's, it's really interesting.
00:42:57
Speaker
Um, it's, uh, same for the, the mansion itself, the mansions, this old rotting mansions.
00:43:03
Speaker
Like when did that happen?
00:43:04
Speaker
Was it, was it always like this?
00:43:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:08
Speaker
Yeah, it had to have been new at some point.
00:43:10
Speaker
Right.
00:43:10
Speaker
And it's not that old.
00:43:12
Speaker
And I really appreciated that.
00:43:15
Speaker
And then remembers and hears these kids singing their, you know, Freddy's coming for you style nursery rhymes.
00:43:25
Speaker
And I'm going to read them here.
00:43:27
Speaker
Old man staff built a house and filled it with his toys.
00:43:31
Speaker
Seven guests all came one night.
00:43:32
Speaker
Their screams, the only noise.
00:43:35
Speaker
Blood inside the library, blood right down the hall, blood going up the attic stairs where the last guest did fall.
00:43:42
Speaker
Not one soul came out that night.
00:43:44
Speaker
No one was ever seen.
00:43:45
Speaker
But old Matt Stauff is waiting there, crazy, sick, and mean.
00:43:50
Speaker
And that is chapter 12.
00:43:52
Speaker
And that's the first third of the book.
00:43:55
Speaker
That's as far as we're going for today.
00:43:58
Speaker
So, Kevin, what do you think so far of The Seventh Guest?
00:44:01
Speaker
I had a little trouble kind of getting into it, if only because I was like, what the fuck is going on with Stauf?
00:44:07
Speaker
And then Stauf's here.
00:44:09
Speaker
Like, it took me a minute to realize, all right, we're jumping back and forth between timelines, I guess.
00:44:14
Speaker
Sure.
00:44:16
Speaker
Other than that, yeah, it's got a lot of fun characters and names and all that stuff.
00:44:26
Speaker
And it's... I'm not... I don't know what it is about the particular prose in this book that was giving me issues with really locking in.
00:44:41
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:44:41
Speaker
There's something about it that just feels like you're like...
00:44:46
Speaker
it's, it's a little harder to down than you want it to be because something about the, the way it's written or the prose or the sentence structure, however, this guy is, these guys are writing it.
00:44:57
Speaker
And what I'm assuming is that in, in the end it was, it was actually a gardener who wrote the book and Costello who wrote the, like wrote the outline basically of what treatment, you know, if I, if I'm assuming how that worked, um,
00:45:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:16
Speaker
So I but chapter 12 makes up for it in kind of a way where it's like it has this really cool acknowledgement of of like it's like, oh, yeah, you know, the.
00:45:31
Speaker
Everyone died that night.
00:45:32
Speaker
Here's how it happens.
00:45:34
Speaker
You know?
00:45:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:35
Speaker
Before we get into the next two thirds of the book, which I assume are going to be all focused on that night or what have you.
00:45:44
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:45:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:46
Speaker
I agree.
00:45:47
Speaker
I think – yeah, I had a similar issue when I first started reading it.
00:45:51
Speaker
I felt like it –
00:45:53
Speaker
There are a couple of things.
00:45:54
Speaker
It felt overwritten.
00:45:55
Speaker
Yes.
00:45:56
Speaker
At times it's very, it's not long at all.
00:45:59
Speaker
And yet it's not, it's overwritten.
00:46:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:02
Speaker
It's very purple.
00:46:04
Speaker
Let's say it's very purple prose.
00:46:07
Speaker
It just doesn't at first to me, it didn't feel like it was like, this is a video game.
00:46:12
Speaker
Like guys settle the fuck down.
00:46:14
Speaker
And it kind of felt like the project of an author who doesn't
00:46:18
Speaker
Wanted to be taken seriously as a writer.
00:46:21
Speaker
Damn it.
00:46:21
Speaker
I know this is based on a video game, but I'm a serious writer.
00:46:24
Speaker
I'm a serious writer.
00:46:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:27
Speaker
I got over it.
00:46:28
Speaker
I'm like you at first.
00:46:29
Speaker
It took me a minute, but but then when you get into the rhythm of it, it it yeah, you catch and it was it became.
00:46:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:38
Speaker
A pretty quick read at that point.
00:46:40
Speaker
I think it's interesting having played the game so far in this first third of the book, none of this, only a little of this has happened in the game so far.
00:46:50
Speaker
This is just background story about all the people you meet in this game, which I think is a good use of the time, frankly.
00:46:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:59
Speaker
And but as an adaptation, it's fascinating because as we mentioned at the beginning of this, this is an old FMV game from 1993.
00:47:08
Speaker
It is campy.
00:47:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:10
Speaker
The budget's low.
00:47:11
Speaker
Thirty five hundred dollars, by the way, it was the budget.
00:47:14
Speaker
Yes.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yes.
00:47:15
Speaker
It is low budget, not great actors.
00:47:19
Speaker
It's kind of silly over the top.
00:47:20
Speaker
It is scary, especially in those days.
00:47:22
Speaker
You know, I remember being a little kid and it scared me, despite the fact that I also knew that it was very corny and cheesy, but it was still effective at what it did.
00:47:33
Speaker
But the book is taking it deadly serious.
00:47:37
Speaker
So serious.
00:47:39
Speaker
So serious.
00:47:40
Speaker
And I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily because this is an adaptation.
00:47:46
Speaker
Right.
00:47:47
Speaker
We've talked a lot about having problems with books where they follow the game too closely.
00:47:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:54
Speaker
And it's like, why does this even exist?
00:47:56
Speaker
This has already kind of justified its existence.
00:48:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:01
Speaker
in kind of completing completing what's
00:48:07
Speaker
It's more or less completing the story, so to speak.
00:48:10
Speaker
Filling it out a little bit more.
00:48:12
Speaker
I think so.
00:48:13
Speaker
Yeah, at least so far.
00:48:14
Speaker
I would say the worst chapter to me was chapter two, which is the first guest that we meet is Knox.
00:48:22
Speaker
It's just written so poorly that you don't really have a... I didn't really... I had to read it because I was like, what the fuck is going on?
00:48:30
Speaker
Where's this staff guy we were just with?
00:48:33
Speaker
Who's Knox?
00:48:35
Speaker
Why does he owe money and why does this guy care?
00:48:39
Speaker
Like...
00:48:41
Speaker
Why?
00:48:41
Speaker
Why are we doing any of this?
00:48:43
Speaker
I totally agree.
00:48:44
Speaker
I think that as far as the first chapter that flashes forward, it isn't handled well.
00:48:50
Speaker
No.
00:48:51
Speaker
I think the assumption is that if you read this, you played the game, and so they didn't feel the need to explain too much.
00:48:58
Speaker
It also does the thing of the book is being super, super serial.
00:49:03
Speaker
But then when it handles organized crime people,
00:49:09
Speaker
it makes them the goons kind of goofy.
00:49:13
Speaker
And I'm like, if you're being serious, be serious, right?
00:49:16
Speaker
Like in real life, like these motherfuckers should be terrifying, not like Bert with goofy grins and all that stuff.
00:49:24
Speaker
Right, yeah.
00:49:25
Speaker
You know, a Warner Brothers cartoon flipping a coin as he talks about who's going to rub you out.
00:49:33
Speaker
He's going to rub you out, see?
00:49:35
Speaker
Yeah, it does have that vibe.
00:49:37
Speaker
It truly does.
00:49:39
Speaker
But yeah, I think this is a really interesting start.
00:49:43
Speaker
I'm actually very happy with it so far.
00:49:46
Speaker
It's not like I don't that's not the same as it being a good book.
00:49:51
Speaker
Right.
00:49:51
Speaker
It's fine.
00:49:52
Speaker
It's perfectly serviceable as a book.
00:49:54
Speaker
It's fine.
00:49:56
Speaker
But as an adaptation, which is our bread and butter, I'm impressed with it so far.
00:50:01
Speaker
I think that's really interesting.
00:50:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:03
Speaker
All right.
00:50:03
Speaker
Okay.
00:50:04
Speaker
Well, now that we've done that, Kevin, I only have one question left for you.
00:50:09
Speaker
What are you playing?
00:50:10
Speaker
Oh,
00:50:13
Speaker
I was not expecting that.
00:50:15
Speaker
I know.
00:50:15
Speaker
I know.
00:50:16
Speaker
I just dropped this on you.
00:50:17
Speaker
Just drop this on you.
00:50:18
Speaker
It's not your fault.
00:50:19
Speaker
I'm still playing Ender Magnolia, which is, you know, I talked about that last week, I believe, which is the sequel to Ender Lilies.
00:50:32
Speaker
You know, just kind of plinking and plonking my way through it.
00:50:36
Speaker
It's my Steam Deck game.
00:50:38
Speaker
So my progress on it is,
00:50:42
Speaker
Is based on how much I am like if I'm sitting in bed at night versus sitting in the living room.
00:50:49
Speaker
If I'm sitting in bed, then I'm playing my Steam Deck from in the living room that I'm just watching TV.
00:50:54
Speaker
So, right.
00:50:55
Speaker
That's kind of like where progress is metered out by by that.
00:51:01
Speaker
By what's going on in the background.
00:51:02
Speaker
By what's going on in the background.
00:51:05
Speaker
I started playing Foundation.
00:51:09
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:51:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:10
Speaker
How are you finding that so far?
00:51:11
Speaker
I really enjoyed that.
00:51:12
Speaker
It's cute.
00:51:13
Speaker
It's a cute little concept where it's like instead of, you know, you build little buildings and you paint the little like, all right, this is the area I want.
00:51:23
Speaker
houses to be in just go ahead and do that and the uh it it does that thing with the the paths i think is so cool um where you uh what is the term for that um path of is it
00:51:41
Speaker
Desire or desire path.
00:51:46
Speaker
There we go.
00:51:47
Speaker
Oh, I didn't even notice that.
00:51:48
Speaker
That's what that was called.
00:51:49
Speaker
It's called a desire path.
00:51:51
Speaker
And basically there are examples of that where you have like you can see it everywhere, right?
00:51:59
Speaker
You'll see like a paved sidewalk, but then you'll see a path in the grass where people always go through because that's where they where they actually want to walk to get to the place.
00:52:12
Speaker
They take the they take the the the path of less.
00:52:16
Speaker
What is it?
00:52:16
Speaker
Least resistance.
00:52:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:19
Speaker
So and what happens is there's actually a college or a university.
00:52:27
Speaker
I'm trying to find.
00:52:28
Speaker
Is it OK?
00:52:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's Ohio State.
00:52:33
Speaker
Instead of.
00:52:35
Speaker
They basically, they have, there used to just be a big lawn, right, in between the buildings.
00:52:41
Speaker
And then you would see these dirt, these trails where people crossed, right?
00:52:46
Speaker
So instead of, when it came time to paving and putting in sidewalks, instead of like, all right, well, we're going to make in, it goes this way and it goes this way.
00:52:54
Speaker
They paved the desire paths.
00:52:57
Speaker
So like the, what was, what people wanted to do naturally, it was then just like set in stone, literally.
00:53:05
Speaker
Um, so that happens in foundation is that actually your little dudes start creating desire paths between the locations that they have to go to from their house to work to all that stuff.
00:53:17
Speaker
Um, which is neat.
00:53:18
Speaker
Uh, it's, it's kind of like a, a nice touch, uh, so to speak.
00:53:23
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:53:23
Speaker
But I haven't put a ton into that, but it's neat so far.
00:53:30
Speaker
And what else have I been playing?
00:53:33
Speaker
I've been playing.
00:53:34
Speaker
I finally am back into Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader with the DLC and all that stuff.
00:53:41
Speaker
One of the cool things about the DLC is that at the very beginning.
00:53:45
Speaker
So I started a fresh save and you get a new character.
00:53:51
Speaker
She is a... What's her name?
00:53:57
Speaker
Hold on.
00:53:57
Speaker
I'm pulling it up.
00:53:59
Speaker
Is she the sister, the zealot?
00:54:03
Speaker
No.
00:54:06
Speaker
New DLC character.
00:54:10
Speaker
Robe trader.
00:54:13
Speaker
She is Cabela, a death cult assassin.
00:54:19
Speaker
Nice.
00:54:21
Speaker
Nice.
00:54:22
Speaker
The blood, like the web spinners, the bloody web spinner or something like that.
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:29
Speaker
So you recruit her early on.
00:54:31
Speaker
Basically what happens is like, she comes to you and she's like,
00:54:35
Speaker
We've been part of the Von Valancius dynasty, whether acknowledged or not for a long time.
00:54:42
Speaker
Like basically Theodora, who's your predecessor, like never really acknowledged them, but they're like, we still did things in the shadows to help Theodora.
00:54:51
Speaker
So they approach you and you're like, they're like, hey, do you want us to be
00:54:56
Speaker
Do you want one of our people to be part of your retinue?
00:54:59
Speaker
And you have this dinner with them and then you're like, OK, now start the test.
00:55:04
Speaker
And the test is they have all basically all the people from the mutiny with Kunrad are let loose into a room with her.
00:55:15
Speaker
Just it's just her.
00:55:17
Speaker
And part of the test is like killing all of them.
00:55:21
Speaker
And she has these moves.
00:55:22
Speaker
So she has a move called death from above, which lets her jump to any space that she could move to.
00:55:31
Speaker
Not any space she can move to.
00:55:32
Speaker
It's like jump within a pretty large distance.
00:55:35
Speaker
She jumps, lands, and attacks every space around her.
00:55:39
Speaker
And then she can do dance of blades, which then does that again.
00:55:44
Speaker
And then she gains an ability as you level her up to...
00:55:49
Speaker
to go back to the, her starting location that turn.
00:55:54
Speaker
So the dance, the death from above has no AP cost, but you have to have charges of it.
00:56:01
Speaker
So every time you kill somebody, you get a charge of death from above.
00:56:05
Speaker
So if you have several charges of death from above, you can go jump to this group, uh,
00:56:12
Speaker
dice them up, jump to this group, dice them up, jump to this group, dice them up.
00:56:15
Speaker
And then there's an ability for her to start back at the, to go back to her original style.
00:56:20
Speaker
The way she does that is she'll repeat death from above.
00:56:24
Speaker
So then she'll jump back a group death from above back a group death from above back to her original spot.
00:56:31
Speaker
So yeah,
00:56:33
Speaker
she is pure glass cannon.
00:56:35
Speaker
Like if she gets hit, if somebody gets a good hit on her, she goes down.
00:56:40
Speaker
Right.
00:56:40
Speaker
But the amazing thing is, is like within one turn, she could kill like 12 dudes.
00:56:48
Speaker
Right.
00:56:49
Speaker
Unlike her first turn.
00:56:51
Speaker
So it's, it's pretty amazing.
00:56:53
Speaker
And there's just ways she has a way of, she has this thing where it's like, she heals herself by cutting herself.
00:57:00
Speaker
She'll like,
00:57:02
Speaker
She'll point at an enemy and she'll cut herself.
00:57:05
Speaker
And then if she kills that enemy, she gets all the health back from cutting herself.
00:57:12
Speaker
The wounds that are caused by cutting herself.
00:57:14
Speaker
So it's like eight wounds.
00:57:16
Speaker
And then she kills that enemy.
00:57:17
Speaker
She gets 17 wounds back.
00:57:20
Speaker
Oh, fuck.
00:57:22
Speaker
Okay.
00:57:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:23
Speaker
Holy shit.
00:57:24
Speaker
So this is, she's just the combo queen.
00:57:26
Speaker
Combo queen.
00:57:28
Speaker
Her only downfall is, um,
00:57:32
Speaker
Very, very agile, low defense, like.
00:57:35
Speaker
Right.
00:57:35
Speaker
Low and low.
00:57:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:37
Speaker
Glass cannon.
00:57:39
Speaker
I've had plenty of fights where it's just like, oh, and she's down.
00:57:42
Speaker
OK.
00:57:43
Speaker
Oh, and that.
00:57:44
Speaker
OK.
00:57:44
Speaker
OK.
00:57:45
Speaker
All right.
00:57:45
Speaker
Well, that's fine.
00:57:47
Speaker
I'm sure there's things it's the funny thing is, is like you can buff up her health and defense if you want to.
00:57:54
Speaker
But then you're not taking her awesome cannon stuff.
00:58:00
Speaker
Right.
00:58:01
Speaker
You're like missing the point.
00:58:02
Speaker
You're missing the point.
00:58:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:04
Speaker
And it's just like, no, just have her run through.
00:58:06
Speaker
Just make her a goddamn atom bomb.
00:58:10
Speaker
Like at a certain point, I think she has abilities that add to her movement points.
00:58:15
Speaker
So like it would be like her next move.
00:58:17
Speaker
And we're like, well, she can go anywhere on the map right now.
00:58:20
Speaker
Is it's like, right.
00:58:23
Speaker
So it's, it's, it's cool.
00:58:25
Speaker
I'm having fun with the, the, I haven't even gotten to the DLC part.
00:58:30
Speaker
I just, this is just the character that was added during the DLC.
00:58:36
Speaker
So it's, it's a lot of fun.
00:58:38
Speaker
It's also neat replaying it because the, the updates,
00:58:42
Speaker
there's more named characters now on your, uh, crew on the, like that run the ship.
00:58:50
Speaker
Like there's the, the master of fire or whatever the guy who puts out the fires, who's like you, who runs the fireman on the ship.
00:58:59
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:59:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:00
Speaker
Um, like in furnace master or whatever, his only job is putting out fires.
00:59:06
Speaker
There are plenty of them.
00:59:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:07
Speaker
There's plenty of them.
00:59:09
Speaker
Um,
00:59:10
Speaker
Oh, what I was about to say is that the death cult is actually in your ship.
00:59:17
Speaker
But because your ship, like their church is in your ship.
00:59:22
Speaker
But because the ship is so goddamn huge.
00:59:25
Speaker
Right.
00:59:25
Speaker
It's the size of a city.
00:59:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:27
Speaker
That it's like, well, nobody's actually ever been down there aside from these, you know, these blood spinners or whatever.
00:59:35
Speaker
So I think part of the DLC is actually trying to find it within your ship.
00:59:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:43
Speaker
I love that.
00:59:44
Speaker
I've been reading the Night Lords trilogy.
00:59:49
Speaker
They're one of my favorite chaos chapters.
00:59:52
Speaker
And the ship that they're in, you forget how massive it is.
00:59:57
Speaker
And then they'll mention the menials, the people who work there and live there and stuff.
01:00:01
Speaker
And now it's got its own economy and traders and all that shit.
01:00:06
Speaker
It's wild.
01:00:07
Speaker
It's really, really cool.
01:00:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing to think that, like, you have these ships and there's the size of cities and there's people on these decks that are just living, being like cradle to grave.
01:00:21
Speaker
And they might not ever even get off the ship.
01:00:23
Speaker
That's all they'll ever know.
01:00:25
Speaker
That's all they'll ever know.
01:00:26
Speaker
And they don't even necessarily understand, like.
01:00:30
Speaker
They wouldn't even necessarily know the ship is under attack all the time.
01:00:35
Speaker
You know what I mean?
01:00:36
Speaker
No, no.
01:00:37
Speaker
They're not in a position to, unless they're in a position to know.
01:00:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:41
Speaker
And they probably aren't.
01:00:42
Speaker
They probably aren't.
01:00:43
Speaker
And then one day the arch enemy dies.
01:00:48
Speaker
showed up on their deck and turn Johnny's child into a blue demon.
01:00:56
Speaker
And it killed 15 people before the, uh, the master at arms had a, had a squad, put it down.
01:01:03
Speaker
Right.
01:01:04
Speaker
And they still don't know what the fuck happens.
01:01:05
Speaker
They don't know what happens.
01:01:07
Speaker
And they talk amongst themselves and they're like, wait, it becomes it just becomes an urban legend.
01:01:11
Speaker
Yes.
01:01:12
Speaker
No, that shit is it's that stuff is very cool.
01:01:15
Speaker
I love how deep that shit goes.
01:01:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:17
Speaker
So that's what I've been playing.
01:01:20
Speaker
What have you been playing?
01:01:23
Speaker
Well, first and foremost, I finished Cyberpunk 2077.
01:01:26
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:01:28
Speaker
Had a lot of fun with that.
01:01:29
Speaker
Did you play the DLC?
01:01:29
Speaker
Did you have the DLC with it?
01:01:31
Speaker
No, I have not.
01:01:32
Speaker
I'm going to get to it eventually.
01:01:35
Speaker
I'm trying really hard to just really... I've created a list on my library spread on Steam called Credits in 2025.
01:01:45
Speaker
And I'm just trying to encourage myself to...
01:01:51
Speaker
rack up as many back catalog stuff that I can.
01:01:56
Speaker
And, and cyberpunk 2077 is one of the more recent ones.
01:02:00
Speaker
But I, I had a blast with it.
01:02:02
Speaker
It's an enjoyable enough game that I'm sure I will come back to it.
01:02:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:06
Speaker
I think it's got some replayability in there.
01:02:09
Speaker
Oh, very much so.
01:02:10
Speaker
Very much so.
01:02:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:12
Speaker
Really enjoyed it.
01:02:13
Speaker
Wish I had played it before we read.
01:02:15
Speaker
No, no coincidences.
01:02:17
Speaker
Did it feel like, did it, did that book make like, did it make sense with that?
01:02:23
Speaker
In retrospect, in retrospect, it was, it was, it fit in very, very nicely.
01:02:27
Speaker
So I'm hoping we get another, is there another?
01:02:29
Speaker
Another cyberpunk.
01:02:31
Speaker
I mean, the cyberpunk tie in media has been pretty good so far.
01:02:38
Speaker
I would just, I wouldn't mind giving those another, give them another one of those a try.
01:02:42
Speaker
That's just, oh, that's fun.
01:02:45
Speaker
I got one called.
01:02:45
Speaker
Oh, this is a, nevermind.
01:02:49
Speaker
Anyway.
01:02:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:51
Speaker
So I really enjoyed that.
01:02:52
Speaker
That was really good.
01:02:56
Speaker
In the interest of going the exact opposite route of, of the triple a high budget,
01:03:04
Speaker
wide open world city of a game that, uh, cyberpunk 2077 was, uh, I played harvester next.
01:03:12
Speaker
Okay.
01:03:12
Speaker
Uh, harvester is, uh, an FMV game.
01:03:16
Speaker
Uh, uh, you know, I was, I remember it.
01:03:19
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:20
Speaker
It came out in 96.
01:03:21
Speaker
Uh, it, it, I think the thing about harvester is, uh,
01:03:27
Speaker
It would have absolutely caused the level of stir that games like Night Trap caused.
01:03:35
Speaker
But actually with reason, it is foul.
01:03:39
Speaker
It is very violent.
01:03:42
Speaker
There's no nudity or anything, but it's very overtly sexual at times.
01:03:48
Speaker
And it's on sale for a buck forty nine right now on Steam.
01:03:53
Speaker
It's not a bad purchase.
01:03:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's not a good game.
01:04:00
Speaker
I want to say that right off the bat.
01:04:03
Speaker
It is, appropriately enough, it is incredibly Lynchian.
01:04:08
Speaker
Clearly the person who made this game, who wrote this game, loved David Lynch, but didn't quite have the presence of mind to...
01:04:18
Speaker
to fully grasp what David Lynch was doing.
01:04:21
Speaker
Sure.
01:04:22
Speaker
So it's kind of like it's like baby's first attempt at being Lynchian.
01:04:27
Speaker
And honestly, it's not terrible in that sense.
01:04:29
Speaker
The storyline is very we've mentioned with FMV games.
01:04:32
Speaker
It's very over the top.
01:04:33
Speaker
It's very campy.
01:04:34
Speaker
Right.
01:04:36
Speaker
It's silly.
01:04:38
Speaker
You play this guy who wakes up in this 50s style town.
01:04:47
Speaker
He doesn't know who he is.
01:04:48
Speaker
He doesn't know how he got there.
01:04:50
Speaker
But it's this creepy Stepford Wives kind of town here in this town called Harvest.
01:04:54
Speaker
And.
01:04:56
Speaker
you have to try and join this lodge quote unquote, uh, to find out the truth and find out what's going on.
01:05:03
Speaker
And as you do, uh, you, you do your standard point and click stuff.
01:05:08
Speaker
There's a more than it's fair share of, uh, moon logic at times.
01:05:13
Speaker
Um, and it is one of those games kind of like, uh, Phantasmagoria where, uh, you, it would behoove you to let yourself die every now and then.
01:05:21
Speaker
Sure.
01:05:22
Speaker
Uh, because it is, it is, uh,
01:05:25
Speaker
that's half the fun seeing the different ways that your character can die.
01:05:29
Speaker
The first half of it is point and click mystery stuff.
01:05:32
Speaker
And then you get into the lodge and you start using a combat system.
01:05:39
Speaker
Um, it becomes, you're still, it's still point and click stuff, but there's like 90% more fighting.
01:05:48
Speaker
Okay.
01:05:49
Speaker
And, and the fighting is dog shit.
01:05:52
Speaker
That is expected.
01:05:55
Speaker
fucking terrible it is fmv fighting terrible oh it's it's it's terrible it's not fun it's not well thought out uh it's it's bad and it to the point that i had to look up i looked up cheats and they're still old school type in this thing and you get infinite lives or whatever style cheats that still work right even on the same version and i just made my guy invincible and and
01:06:21
Speaker
Plowed my way through the last half of it.
01:06:24
Speaker
And I don't I don't I don't regret it.
01:06:27
Speaker
It's a very interesting.
01:06:29
Speaker
And as I said before, it could have started a an uproar in the same way that Mortal Kombat.
01:06:38
Speaker
A hundred percent.
01:06:39
Speaker
Just looking at the screenshots.
01:06:41
Speaker
I remember I vaguely remember when this game came out just from mentions in in gaming magazines, I believe.
01:06:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:49
Speaker
yeah and and and it could have done that uh if anyone played it uh i don't think it did very well i don't think i think it was largely ignored um until the lovely people at night dive studio came in and re-released it for us um and uh and and now i've seen a few uh youtube videos of people commenting on it um
01:07:12
Speaker
It's an experience.
01:07:13
Speaker
It is not a good game.
01:07:14
Speaker
Right.
01:07:15
Speaker
But it is weird as shit.
01:07:18
Speaker
It has that.
01:07:19
Speaker
It is an absolute time capsule of that era.
01:07:23
Speaker
And I think that alone makes it worth a look, especially like you pointed out, you can get it for a buck fifty.
01:07:30
Speaker
But don't challenge yourself.
01:07:32
Speaker
Use a walkthrough.
01:07:33
Speaker
Just go through it and enjoy it.
01:07:36
Speaker
I played a couple of demos.
01:07:38
Speaker
Neither of them really.
01:07:40
Speaker
jumped out at me.
01:07:41
Speaker
The first one was fossil fuel too, uh, because I'm going to continue to play the demos of these, uh, in the dinosaur survival horror shooter games until one of them is good.
01:07:55
Speaker
I want a good one.
01:07:56
Speaker
This was not it.
01:07:58
Speaker
Uh, this one seems a little more self-aware, um, but,
01:08:02
Speaker
but it's, it's very janky.
01:08:04
Speaker
It's, it's very, it doesn't play well.
01:08:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:08
Speaker
Um, it's got some interesting moments like all these do.
01:08:11
Speaker
There's, there's something there, but I, I, I just didn't think it was worth it.
01:08:16
Speaker
Uh, I, I'd recommend taking a look at, uh, some videos of people playing the demo.
01:08:21
Speaker
It's actually, it's got some really interesting moments, some very cool moments, but, um, it's not very good.
01:08:27
Speaker
Uh, I played the demo for Hunter the reckoning.
01:08:32
Speaker
The Beast of Glenn Kildove.
01:08:35
Speaker
Is that the entire title?
01:08:38
Speaker
Yes.
01:08:39
Speaker
Because Hunter the Reckoning is an old school white wolf game.
01:08:43
Speaker
Sure.
01:08:43
Speaker
And the adventure is called the.
01:08:45
Speaker
Oh, gotcha.
01:08:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:48
Speaker
And like actually more than a few old white wolf properties, it is a fully text game.
01:08:57
Speaker
It's an interactive novel, essentially a choose your own adventure.
01:09:01
Speaker
But you do get stats that you can upgrade and stuff like that.
01:09:06
Speaker
So there is there are.
01:09:09
Speaker
you know, moves to be made, but it's a very weedy game, which I find really interesting.
01:09:15
Speaker
I just didn't it just didn't, you know, grab me.
01:09:18
Speaker
It didn't move yet.
01:09:20
Speaker
No, but I do think that if anybody is listening who likes the old white wolf properties and likes that kind of thing, likes the lit RPGs and stuff like that.
01:09:30
Speaker
What are the other what are the other white wolf?
01:09:33
Speaker
Vampire the Masquerade.
01:09:35
Speaker
Yep.
01:09:35
Speaker
Werewolf the Apocalypse.
01:09:37
Speaker
Which Vampire the Masquerade might be coming out this year.
01:09:40
Speaker
The new one?
01:09:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:41
Speaker
Bloodlines 2.
01:09:43
Speaker
So far it is scheduled for 2025.
01:09:45
Speaker
We shall see.
01:09:48
Speaker
But yeah, so it's a good property.
01:09:50
Speaker
It's fun.
01:09:52
Speaker
And I was impressed with the level of gamification it has for it being essentially a choose your own adventure novel.
01:10:01
Speaker
Right.
01:10:02
Speaker
It's more than that.
01:10:03
Speaker
And I was I was pretty impressed with that aspect.
01:10:05
Speaker
It just didn't grab me.
01:10:07
Speaker
But that's me.
01:10:08
Speaker
That's that's what I've played.
01:10:09
Speaker
All right.
01:10:10
Speaker
Well, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
01:10:13
Speaker
Folks, if you can do us a salad, recommend us to your friends, to your family, to your enemies, to your coworkers, to your fellow parishioners at the Church of Satan, to your fellow parishioners at the Church of regular Vanilla God.
01:10:32
Speaker
Regular original recipe.
01:10:33
Speaker
Original recipe.
01:10:35
Speaker
KFC kernels go to a KFC and say, hey, I'll have a God bucket.
01:10:42
Speaker
I'll have a God bucket.
01:10:43
Speaker
And have you ever heard of pixel it?
01:10:45
Speaker
And then I love it.
01:10:46
Speaker
They'll see what happens.
01:10:47
Speaker
You know, yeah.
01:10:50
Speaker
Not a lawyer, not telling you to actually go do that.
01:10:55
Speaker
Yeah, so go Patreon, follow us on Patreon, follow us on Blue Sky, and hop on our Discord.
01:11:03
Speaker
Join the conversation.
01:11:04
Speaker
It's a lot of fun.
01:11:06
Speaker
Have a good night, everybody, and we will talk to you next time at the top of the 11th hour.
01:11:12
Speaker
God damn it, that's the wrong book.
01:11:14
Speaker
Ooh.