Transcript
Speaker: You can't put that genie back in the bottle.
Speaker: That is that is that's destructive shit.
Speaker: And suddenly you're locked in your bathroom door every time you're not using it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: You know who else is locked in the bathroom?
Speaker: Who's that?
Speaker: Hey, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil.
Speaker: And on today's show, we are covering Seventh Guest.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: Seventh Guest.
Speaker: A novel.
Speaker: Right there, a novel.
Speaker: It's mirrored on my screen.
Speaker: You can tell because it says so.
Speaker: It says so.
Speaker: It says a novel.
Speaker: By Matthew J. Costello and Craig Shaw-
Speaker: So, seventh guest.
Speaker: It's a game.
Speaker: It was an FMV game released in 1993, I want to say.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: I'm pulling it up right now.
Speaker: Yeah, the very beginning of 93.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, it's...
Speaker: it's a trilobite game released by Virgin interactive and it was, it's full on just FMV, FMV point and click stuff.
Speaker: You know, if you've played any of the FMVs, it was a phantasmagoria was one of them.
Speaker: None of them were like, I'm not going to say that they weren't good.
Speaker: They were just not,
Speaker: You couldn't be uncheesy with them.
Speaker: They were campy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Very campy.
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.
Speaker: You weren't you were getting community theater people at best.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they tended to be real campy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now, what's interesting is that there's a Seventh Guest VR thing that you can get, which is...
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
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, which isn't too hard because it was, it was first person, which a lot of FMV games aren't right.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, the, the basic gist of the game was you're going through a mansion, you're solving puzzles.
Speaker: Then you,
Speaker: There you go.
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.
Speaker: And from Phil, who played the game, you played the game, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: From Phil, who played the game.
Speaker: It's the same.
Speaker: It's mostly the same.
Speaker: We'll get into this, but I will say that the authors, they really did actually make an effort on this one.
Speaker: Whether or not that effort succeeds is yet to be.
Speaker: Decided upon.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: This was actually a really important game.
Speaker: It came out the same year.
Speaker: Mist did.
Speaker: And they were like, it was like the first, it was the first game computer game that came out in C-ROM only.
Speaker: And that was when people were kind of like weighing their options when it came to C-ROM.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It was so much more expensive.
Speaker: Is this worth it?
Speaker: And a seventh guest.
Speaker: And then later that year, missed, uh, uh, sold it.
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.
Speaker: So they were pretty important.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, just goofy as fuck is all that's all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, uh, seventh guest, a, uh, a game that is also made by the same company was 11th hour.
Speaker: Um, so if you ever, uh, uh,
Speaker: saw 11th hour and it was like, Hey, it looks familiar to the seventh.
Speaker: It's because it's the same company.
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.
Speaker: Broderbund blast from the past.
Speaker: Uh, they did Carmen San Diego, right?
Speaker: That's correct.
Speaker: Fucking a yes.
Speaker: Broderbund.
Speaker: Um, I still get a tickle to, to play.
Speaker: That old school Carmen Sandiego shit.
Speaker: I fucking loved it so much.
Speaker: I love the format of Carmen Sandiego as a game.
Speaker: I love that style of game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I've always thought it would be really cool to kind of reinvent that, like go to multiple locations, do some investigation.
Speaker: And they're not very long, but you could just do it.
Speaker: And I remember I think in Carmen Sandiego, there's an element of randomization.
Speaker: Like it would be like it's this guy from this location.
Speaker: Yeah, because they had – yeah, they had multiple criminals and each one of them were different in different ways and you had to –
Speaker: slowly through the process of elimination based on what people saw.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, come up with it.
Speaker: And if you took the wrong path, like you also get clues about where they went in the next country they went to.
Speaker: And if you took the wrong turn, then you were kind of fucked.
Speaker: Like you could theoretically catch up, but you might as well just start over at that point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So one of the founders of Trilobite is Graham Devine, who he was involved in Quake three arena.
Speaker: So it's just kind of like a, I recognize that name, Graham Devine.
Speaker: I think it was in Masters of Doom.
Speaker: He might've been mentioned.
Speaker: I think he was.
Speaker: I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, yeah, so that's kind of like the game.
Speaker: It's relatively important, as Phil said, in terms in its place in gaming history.
Speaker: So we're going to go ahead and do the book.
Speaker: Phil, who did the book?
Speaker: Who are these two people on the cover?
Speaker: Well, this is this first we've got Matthew Costello, who actually wrote the screenplay.
Speaker: I don't know if that's the correct term for video games, but he wrote Seventh Guest.
Speaker: He wrote Eleventh the Eleventh Hour.
Speaker: He also wrote for a few of the Doom games he wrote for Resident Evil 4.
Speaker: I believe he I think he just I think he was he helped with the localization for the most recent version of it.
Speaker: But he's he's written a lot of really random stuff, everything from like like rage.
Speaker: If you remember rage to Barbie's writing club, like he's he's got a lot all over the map.
Speaker: all over the map.
Speaker: Uh, he's done a lot of, uh, right for hire stuff.
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.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Um, and he's done a lot of stuff for, you know, role-playing games, D and D call Cthulhu.
Speaker: Um, he's, and he written a ton of his own stuff too.
Speaker: Mostly, you know, genre fiction, uh, mystery stuff.
Speaker: He's, he's, he's a pretty prolific guy.
Speaker: Um,
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
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
Speaker: Hopefully a lot.
Speaker: I hope we get a background story on sexy sex, man, with his long hair and his muscles and shit.
Speaker: I want to I know that if I were assigned the novelization of the Lost Boys, Capello, there we go.
Speaker: I would I would at least have a chapter, just a just a quick chapter.
Speaker: Tell us a little more about him.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I think I just heard this.
Speaker: It might have been in the novelization.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: That's hilarious.
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.
Speaker: What a great idea.
Speaker: It's actually a really fun video.
Speaker: I'll send you the link.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
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.
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.
Speaker: That would be amazing.
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.
Speaker: No shit.
Speaker: I mean, you know what?
Speaker: That actually makes some sense.
Speaker: I like it because he was conspicuously like jacked.
Speaker: That's hilarious.
Speaker: I mean, I have to find a copy of the novelization.
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.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: That's good timing is what that is.
Speaker: Now I have to find the novelization of Lost Boys and find out if that's in there.
Speaker: That would be amazing.
Speaker: Especially if we're reading something by the guy who came up with that.
Speaker: He also did the novelizations for Back to the Future 2 and 3, which is pretty cool.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: What about Back to the Future 1?
Speaker: Not as far as I know.
Speaker: Who did Back to the Future 1?
Speaker: Let me see.
Speaker: Is that Alan Dean Foster special?
Speaker: That would be awesome.
Speaker: Novelization...
Speaker: Oh, here we go.
Speaker: Here it is.
Speaker: George.
Speaker: George.
Speaker: George.
Speaker: That's a name.
Speaker: That is a name.
Speaker: It makes sense that you would need to get a genre guy for the second and third one.
Speaker: Well, and also the second and third one and how they were handled where they were written and shot at the same time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you probably had you gave it to both of them to one guy at the same time.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, I found an autographed copy of his novelization back to the future, too.
Speaker: All right.
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
Speaker: Costello actually is, we're going to be reading another one of his books coming up soon-ish.
Speaker: I'm excited about this one.
Speaker: He was the, actually coming up next, he did the novelization of one of the Doom 3 novelizations.
Speaker: which is going to be, you know, several years after this one, at least 10 years, I assume.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: Easily.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a decade between the two of them.
Speaker: So we'll see.
Speaker: It'll be a good it'll be a nice comparison because we've never done that before.
Speaker: We've never actually had read the same author.
Speaker: Back to back.
Speaker: Back to back.
Speaker: We've done a bunch of authors, you know, obviously, you know, with Resident Evil and Kira Breed-Reesley.
Speaker: We've done, we had three and all that.
Speaker: But yeah, we've never done an author back to back.
Speaker: And so I'm curious as to how this will work.
Speaker: Two very different genres.
Speaker: Two very different genres.
Speaker: Dark, dark, dark horror, sci fi versus.
Speaker: Can't be horror point and click kind of thing versus FMV.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's that kind of says it all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, so before we get put the body in the marsh, uh, I want to tell you all about a fantastic website.
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,
Speaker: But you know where there's a home for you?
Speaker: It's on the Pixelit Patreon and the Pixelit Discord.
Speaker: Hop on over to patreon.com slash PixelitPod and you can join for free.
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.
Speaker: Let's be honest.
Speaker: It's like
Speaker: it's a lot of most of the time I can get the episodes up early for the, for the patrons.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're putting on the ball.
Speaker: You're good.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: It has been the amount, the catering of the leftist ads we have.
Speaker: We didn't mean to do this, I guess is my point.
Speaker: But we did.
Speaker: But we got it.
Speaker: It's worked out very nicely.
Speaker: So Patreon.com slash PixletPod.
Speaker: $10 a month at the top end gets your name shouted out in every episode.
Speaker: So to that end, I want to shout out our $10 a month people's
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.
Speaker: Thank you for being a friend.
Speaker: Yes, Phil, that's a new name on the list.
Speaker: I was about to say, I'll be damned.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Langolier.
Speaker: That's a Stephen King right there.
Speaker: That's a reference.
Speaker: That's a reference.
Speaker: Now we just need Tommyknockers.
Speaker: Or Tommy's Knockers.
Speaker: Or Tommy's Knockers.
Speaker: That would be good.
Speaker: That would be good.
Speaker: Make Kevin say Tommy's Knockers, somebody.
Speaker: Make him say it like every episode.
Speaker: Well, I already say Chet Beaks Dummy Thick every episode, so.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: Anyway, body in the marsh.
Speaker: When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh, you dump them in the marsh.
Speaker: Body in Marsh.
Speaker: Let's go.
Speaker: Uh, seventh guest chapter one.
Speaker: Uh, we open up with Henry staff, who is a two bit criminal.
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.
Speaker: I think we find out later that more that he's from this area.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: We learn more about the robbery, the fact that he threw away his gun, which he considers to be pretty stupid.
Speaker: But he's got voices in his head that are guiding him on.
Speaker: And and that's kind of giving him strength.
Speaker: He's he he he's starving.
Speaker: He falls asleep in the cold and the voices guide him to a construction site where he steals a hammer.
Speaker: And he loves this hammer.
Speaker: It's got the loves this hammer.
Speaker: It's got the right weight in his hand.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Very, very emphatic about how much he loves this hammer.
Speaker: He loves his tools, as we'll find out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Big fan.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And he he ends up kind of in a forest or a park or something.
Speaker: And he hears somebody singing to themselves.
Speaker: It's this young girl, not girl, girl.
Speaker: She's like,
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Did they ever say an age?
Speaker: It's like I pictured like late high school, early college.
Speaker: I thought this was an old woman.
Speaker: Oh, I thought it was a girl.
Speaker: Maybe I messed up.
Speaker: It's a person.
Speaker: It's a human being.
Speaker: It's a human being.
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.
Speaker: And that drives him to crush her skull with the hammer.
Speaker: That's chapter one.
Speaker: So right off the bat, just right right into the.
Speaker: Yeah, right into it.
Speaker: It's a lot right off the bat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Chapter two, we are introduced to Edward Knox.
Speaker: He's an older man.
Speaker: We've learned that he is in debt to some mobsters, two of which are in his home currently demanding payment.
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,
Speaker: Rich old Mr. Strauff, and he will pay them back afterwards.
Speaker: The fact that he's going there seems to convince them that he'll be as good as his word.
Speaker: And they leave.
Speaker: His wife arrives and he shows with the invitation.
Speaker: She touches it and it causes her to scream uncontrollably.
Speaker: So that's that's our introduction to these two.
Speaker: Very, very interesting.
Speaker: These are these are fast chapters, by the way.
Speaker: It's a fast book.
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.
Speaker: He finds six bucks in her purse.
Speaker: Um, and he considers, he kind of like considers the fact that he killed her and feels no guilt.
Speaker: He, he kind of like goes over that in his head, uh, kind of like, am I fucked up?
Speaker: Are we, am I the baddie, uh, kind of moment, but, uh,
Speaker: He kind of accepts that that's what he is, that he's fine with it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The cops pick him up for the robbery for because that's because he did it.
Speaker: He did it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But when they find this murder victim, they don't assume that he-
Speaker: Because there was another person stealing the jacket off of the body.
Speaker: So they're like, that's probably that guy.
Speaker: This guy did the robbery.
Speaker: That guy did the murder.
Speaker: They're like, that's the end of that investigation.
Speaker: Very timely, to be honest.
Speaker: Very timely.
Speaker: These details never get old.
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.
Speaker: But he just he just needs the voices to point him in the direction of these great things.
Speaker: Chapter four, we meet Brian Dutton, who wakes up from another nightmare about his dead brother.
Speaker: This one is Kevin Kevin, which is hilarious because my brother's name is Brian.
Speaker: It's Brian.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And it gets better slash worse.
Speaker: It gets better.
Speaker: Because Brian is the younger brother in this situation.
Speaker: It's reversed in our host Kevin situation.
Speaker: But we get kind of a classic story about how the younger brother is living in his older brother's shadow.
Speaker: The older brother is this perfect older brother who can do anything.
Speaker: He's the athlete.
Speaker: He's a genius, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker: And they're ice skating.
Speaker: And of course, his brother is like,
Speaker: fucking triple gainers and shit like that.
Speaker: He's, you know, he's a great skater.
Speaker: And the little brother, Brian, wishes to himself that there was something that he could do better than Kevin.
Speaker: And it turns out there is.
Speaker: It's called not dying.
Speaker: Because...
Speaker: Because poor Kevin, I guess he, you know, he did that old chestnut of one too many times in the same loop.
Speaker: One too many times on the same patch of ice.
Speaker: And down he goes.
Speaker: Boom, down he goes.
Speaker: We get a moment where young brother Brian is like, he's watching him flail and die.
Speaker: And he's begging his younger brother to go get help.
Speaker: And Brian just kind of watches him.
Speaker: Not for a long time.
Speaker: It's a moment of like a moment.
Speaker: I can just let this happen.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I can just let this happen.
Speaker: I could just I could just just wait until the bubble stop and then go get help.
Speaker: But he does end up.
Speaker: But actually, it's before he even needs to leave that his brother's dead.
Speaker: And he sees his body floating under the ice face pressed up against the ice.
Speaker: Yeah, I said gruesome.
Speaker: Pretty good shit, honestly.
Speaker: Now we cut back to Brian as an adult.
Speaker: He has become a businessman.
Speaker: It's very vague on what kind of business it is.
Speaker: He he has factories or he has a factory.
Speaker: The play he has these big dreams of becoming like this magnate, I guess, factory man.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: But he's got one kind of dinky factory in town.
Speaker: And by the way, this is all taking place in like the 1930s or something like that.
Speaker: I can't remember when exactly it's.
Speaker: Is it the flashback?
Speaker: Is it the 30s?
Speaker: That's that's the depression.
Speaker: It's prohibition.
Speaker: OK, 20s.
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.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, 60s or 70s, but it's definitely – it's vague.
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.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So – but yes, but we've got Brian Dutton in his dinky little factory.
Speaker: He is assuming and slash hoping that the invitation from Stauff is –
Speaker: an invite for him to take over Stauf's toy business.
Speaker: Because he's like, I'm a factory guy.
Speaker: So I should, you know, this, this makes sense.
Speaker: I can, I can help because, because we learn, we have learned that Stauf is this famous, um,
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.
Speaker: And so Brian immediately starts thinking of like, well, how can we, we could probably, he does, you know what?
Speaker: He does what these fuckers do.
Speaker: He's like, how can we mass produce?
Speaker: How can we take these, these bespoke, very intricate toys and make it so that everybody can have one all the time?
Speaker: Immediately.
Speaker: And since the beginning of time, people have been like, you know how Jeff Bezos made Amazon, right?
Speaker: This Amazon was not where Amazon is today.
Speaker: Not an original idea.
Speaker: Motherfuckers have been trying to make Amazon since.
Speaker: The dude who had the guy, the copper guy, the bad copper guy.
Speaker: Graffiti.
Speaker: What is that guy's name?
Speaker: World's first customer service complaint.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know this.
Speaker: This is good.
Speaker: Yeah, Nasir is the original customer service complaint from like 4,000 years ago about how he- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Okay, yeah.
Speaker: It was like on a tablet.
Speaker: It's like on a stone tablet or something.
Speaker: It's not a stone tablet.
Speaker: This customer service complaint to EA Nasir about his shitty product.
Speaker: And you know why?
Speaker: I bet that guy was trying to fucking mass produce it, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He was trying to just like cut down the quality, bring up the speed so he can make more profit.
Speaker: That is what –
Speaker: Jeff Bezos is just that guy reincarnated.
Speaker: And Brian Dutton in this book is that it's just Jeff Bezos made it happen.
Speaker: He was just right time, right place.
Speaker: But motherfuckers have been trying to do that for, you know, 4000 years.
Speaker: So none of these guys are doing anything but reinventing the wheel.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So, yeah, none of them are doing anything really original, like hosting a podcast about video game novelizations.
Speaker: That is peak originality.
Speaker: Anyway, that's chapter four.
Speaker: Chapter five, we are flashing back again.
Speaker: We're going to be going back and forth every other chapter here.
Speaker: We get a flashback to Stouff.
Speaker: He is getting out of jail for the robbery.
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.
Speaker: They're like, don't talk back to the judge.
Speaker: Say you've learned your lesson, be humble.
Speaker: And the voices kind of like guide him through the process.
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.
Speaker: Basically, they're like, yeah, you you pay you paid restitution.
Speaker: You pay back the money.
Speaker: You can go.
Speaker: Yeah, there you go.
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.
Speaker: Well, there you go.
Speaker: I mean, so so that story is all nice and tied up, buttoned up the random murder that staff committed.
Speaker: It's all good.
Speaker: It's all good.
Speaker: All good.
Speaker: He doesn't have to.
Speaker: He's so you can imagine he's leaving the jail.
Speaker: The bit of a swing in his step is feeling good.
Speaker: He's listening to the voices and they are sending him out into the world again.
Speaker: They're guiding him towards something and they guide him back to the construction site for a moment.
Speaker: And he starts going, well, I don't.
Speaker: I could what am I going to steal another hammer?
Speaker: But the you know, that doesn't feel right.
Speaker: I'm not going to I don't feel like I don't feel like I'm going to do that.
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.
Speaker: And oh, boy, is this for a stabbing?
Speaker: Oh, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: He's like, what's the knife for?
Speaker: What's the knife for?
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: He's he's waiting for the voices to tell him.
Speaker: And he has a vision of a wooden doll, a very intricately, beautifully carved wooden doll.
Speaker: And then he sees.
Speaker: a branch nearby on a tree in the park and he sees the doll inside the branch.
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.
Speaker: I just had to release it from the marble.
Speaker: And he has the thought like that, that that that my my doll is in this branch.
Speaker: I just need to carve it and realizes that's what the knife is for.
Speaker: Uh, so he's, I'm sure he's a little disappointed that it isn't a stabby stabby stabby now, right?
Speaker: You know, he's, he's getting, he's getting good at that.
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.
Speaker: Um, chapter six, we flash forward.
Speaker: Martine burden, great damn character name.
Speaker: I've got that written right.
Speaker: Martine burden, like a beast of burden.
Speaker: Uh, great name.
Speaker: Um, she,
Speaker: gets a certified letter from a leering mailman.
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.
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.
Speaker: Uh, I'm imagining her as Leslie Ann Warren.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is that, is that too much or is that, what would you say?
Speaker: Is that, yeah.
Speaker: I think that works.
Speaker: I think that works.
Speaker: I think, um, I think she, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I think she's, I don't know if she's at that age point yet, but like, sure.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I think that's a good, I think that's a good choice.
Speaker: Well, Leslie Ann Warren in Clue.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, actually, yes.
Speaker: Oh, you know what?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Specifically, we're talking about Miss Scarlet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's totally it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Then that's totally it.
Speaker: She does have that vibe.
Speaker: Like she she she keeps telling us that she's a great beauty, but we don't know for sure.
Speaker: But we do have the mailman who like she interprets it as him leering at her.
Speaker: He's just staring.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And she answered the door in her kimono.
Speaker: And what am I supposed to do?
Speaker: Get all my makeup done so the mailman can see me properly.
Speaker: It's it's that kind of thing.
Speaker: She has been abandoned after I think it's very fast.
Speaker: It's like two weeks in Manhattan with this, with this nobleman who leaves her for, for, you know, the new model.
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.
Speaker: And she's, she's, uh,
Speaker: really frustrated and pissed off about that.
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.
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.
Speaker: Um, chapter seven, we flash back.
Speaker: Stouth has carved the doll out of the branch in the park in as far as we can tell one go.
Speaker: Uh, and it is exactly the way he saw it in his vision.
Speaker: And it is the most perfect doll ever made.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yeah, it's exquisite.
Speaker: It's expertly handcrafted.
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.
Speaker: But the voices had kind of guided his hand.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he hasn't.
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 for six days and he's got to get himself a drink.
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.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just do something.
Speaker: Do you see it?
Speaker: She's flipping out because all of her friends are going out playing and I'm seven.
Speaker: I should not be cleaning your goddamn speakeasy, dad.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That whole thing.
Speaker: So staff has no money.
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?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: And he's like, look, man, if you can give her that, I will give you three drinks all afternoon.
Speaker: And Stow says, sold.
Speaker: And and the little girl spends the rest of the day kind of like dancing around the bar with this doll, just purely
Speaker: in enchanted by it, maybe literally.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: I've got a room in the back with a workshop.
Speaker: And if you make her some more stuff, I'll put you up for a week or so.
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.
Speaker: Whatever happens to the taverns and the bars that had like, yeah, you have a room for you or whatever.
Speaker: Just like just had a couple of rooms for rent.
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.
Speaker: But it's like you got a bar.
Speaker: It's like, well, we got a couple of rooms upstairs, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: Was that ever really a thing or is that just like a. No.
Speaker: I honestly don't.
Speaker: The thing I always hear about is like, you know, you got colonial stories and stuff and there's always like the
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.
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.
Speaker: Hey, Penny.
Speaker: Hey, Penny.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It's probably that.
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.
Speaker: He's just living in this lady's extra.
Speaker: I'm living at the old Mrs.
Speaker: Old Widow Flenderson's house.
Speaker: Old Widow Flenderson's house and Old Widow Flenderson is 27.
Speaker: Right, exactly.
Speaker: She's been married twice.
Speaker: She's been married twice.
Speaker: She has 17 children.
Speaker: Men who died under mysterious circumstances.
Speaker: Old Widow Flenderson.
Speaker: Still a knockout.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: She's getting a little up there in age, but, but still, you know, she's got it.
Speaker: She's got it going.
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.
Speaker: And it was the bar at the bottom of an even shittier hotel above.
Speaker: And I didn't know anyone who'd ever stayed there, but you could indeed, you know,
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
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Chapter eight.
Speaker: We cut a flash forward.
Speaker: Julia Heine.
Speaker: I'm assuming it's Heine because it makes me laugh.
Speaker: She was recently retired, quote unquote, from her bank job.
Speaker: Actually, she was forced out when they caught her drunk on the job again.
Speaker: She is an older woman.
Speaker: She's a lush and she has a lot of.
Speaker: pent up anger about, uh, about growing old and how men treat her now because of that, which, you know what?
Speaker: Fair enough.
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.
Speaker: Um, she has also gotten an invite from staff.
Speaker: Um,
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.
Speaker: And it was this big tragedy and her theory on this.
Speaker: And this is some weird goddamn law of attraction.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Woo woo shit.
Speaker: Like I could hear people saying this now, basically that the doll was so perfect that
Speaker: And it had a life-giving power and that she was just too young and she couldn't handle it.
Speaker: Couldn't handle the life-giving energy.
Speaker: So in a way, it's her fault when you think about it.
Speaker: In the real world, it was that the doll was a totem of Slaanesh.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, it was the totem of the God who turns people inside out.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: She wants to be a seductress in a way.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: She's just not very good at it.
Speaker: And so she's thinking, well, I'm going to go to staff and he's an older man.
Speaker: So there's no way he can't appreciate an older woman.
Speaker: I'm sure he'll appreciate this.
Speaker: All this.
Speaker: And you just imagine shaking it.
Speaker: All this going on.
Speaker: All this.
Speaker: So she's she's.
Speaker: She's going after the old man, too.
Speaker: Also, with the kids, it was it was like one out of every three kids that had one of his dolls died.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We're going to find out that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like a massacre took place.
Speaker: They would contract a very strange, vague consumption style illness or something.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Killed most of them.
Speaker: But not most of a huge portion of them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They basically almost miss a generation because of it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And in Chapter 9, we get a flashback to Stauf.
Speaker: We get a quick timeline.
Speaker: He's growing in success as a toy maker.
Speaker: He opens his own store.
Speaker: And he's still listening to the voices, but he doesn't know what the –
Speaker: what the long-term plan is.
Speaker: They still haven't revealed to him what the end goal is.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that kind of thing.
Speaker: He's got a serious, a lot of the people in this actually have a serious, you think you're better than me.
Speaker: You think you're better than me?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a serious to bullying complex shit going on here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, chapter 10, we meet Hamilton temple.
Speaker: Another good name.
Speaker: Uh, he's an elderly, former vaudeville magician.
Speaker: Um, he was very talented, very good.
Speaker: And then Vaudeville goes out of style.
Speaker: On top of that, he has terribly arthritic wrists and hands.
Speaker: And as any magician will tell you, it's all in the wrist.
Speaker: And he's just he's just he's not he's not that person anymore.
Speaker: He's interesting because at first you assume that he's kind of a.
Speaker: that he's purely like a stage magician.
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.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Uh, and he's eager to learn that from staff.
Speaker: So that's his, his main motivation for, for getting in there.
Speaker: Um, um,
Speaker: Chapter 11, we got we find out how many with the children are dying of this mysterious epidemic.
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.
Speaker: It's got something to do with it.
Speaker: They go because they all had a toy.
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
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.
Speaker: And they're all breathing in asbestos from the insulation.
Speaker: Yeah, they're all like, you know, throwing things into the never ending tire fire, you know.
Speaker: Right, exactly.
Speaker: So it's like, you know, I think we can...
Speaker: There are a lot of things.
Speaker: There's a lot of things.
Speaker: A lot of things.
Speaker: Our paint is leaded.
Speaker: That's how you know it's good.
Speaker: That's how you know it's good.
Speaker: That's actually the original it's toasted before it's time.
Speaker: It's leaded.
Speaker: It's leaded.
Speaker: Don Draper's had canned paint.
Speaker: He wished he took back.
Speaker: Coffin nail cigarettes.
Speaker: They're leaded.
Speaker: They're leaded.
Speaker: The good shit.
Speaker: So he he he knows for a fact that he is what's killing these kids.
Speaker: And he does what any supervillain does in this moment.
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.
Speaker: as far as the villagers are concerned until our invites go out.
Speaker: And he, he sits in this big ass mansion waiting for the voices to give him the next step.
Speaker: And we come to chapter 12.
Speaker: We have a nameless character outside of the mansion, looking it over.
Speaker: We, this is where we get a moment where the, the, the, this nameless person kind of observes how time is strange.
Speaker: Uh, in that area that we're not sure when the deaths happen.
Speaker: Uh, when did the kids die a long time ago or do they die recently?
Speaker: Uh, it's, it's really interesting.
Speaker: Um, it's, uh, same for the, the mansion itself, the mansions, this old rotting mansions.
Speaker: Like when did that happen?
Speaker: Was it, was it always like this?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it had to have been new at some point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's not that old.
Speaker: And I really appreciated that.
Speaker: And then remembers and hears these kids singing their, you know, Freddy's coming for you style nursery rhymes.
Speaker: And I'm going to read them here.
Speaker: Old man staff built a house and filled it with his toys.
Speaker: Seven guests all came one night.
Speaker: Their screams, the only noise.
Speaker: Blood inside the library, blood right down the hall, blood going up the attic stairs where the last guest did fall.
Speaker: Not one soul came out that night.
Speaker: No one was ever seen.
Speaker: But old Matt Stauff is waiting there, crazy, sick, and mean.
Speaker: And that is chapter 12.
Speaker: And that's the first third of the book.
Speaker: That's as far as we're going for today.
Speaker: So, Kevin, what do you think so far of The Seventh Guest?
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?
Speaker: And then Stauf's here.
Speaker: Like, it took me a minute to realize, all right, we're jumping back and forth between timelines, I guess.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Other than that, yeah, it's got a lot of fun characters and names and all that stuff.
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.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: There's something about it that just feels like you're like...
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.
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,
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: Everyone died that night.
Speaker: Here's how it happens.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I think – yeah, I had a similar issue when I first started reading it.
Speaker: I felt like it –
Speaker: There are a couple of things.
Speaker: It felt overwritten.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: At times it's very, it's not long at all.
Speaker: And yet it's not, it's overwritten.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's very purple.
Speaker: Let's say it's very purple prose.
Speaker: It just doesn't at first to me, it didn't feel like it was like, this is a video game.
Speaker: Like guys settle the fuck down.
Speaker: And it kind of felt like the project of an author who doesn't
Speaker: Wanted to be taken seriously as a writer.
Speaker: Damn it.
Speaker: I know this is based on a video game, but I'm a serious writer.
Speaker: I'm a serious writer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I got over it.
Speaker: I'm like you at first.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A pretty quick read at that point.
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.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: It is campy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The budget's low.
Speaker: Thirty five hundred dollars, by the way, it was the budget.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It is low budget, not great actors.
Speaker: It's kind of silly over the top.
Speaker: It is scary, especially in those days.
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.
Speaker: But the book is taking it deadly serious.
Speaker: So serious.
Speaker: So serious.
Speaker: And I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily because this is an adaptation.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We've talked a lot about having problems with books where they follow the game too closely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's like, why does this even exist?
Speaker: This has already kind of justified its existence.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: in kind of completing completing what's
Speaker: It's more or less completing the story, so to speak.
Speaker: Filling it out a little bit more.
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: Yeah, at least so far.
Speaker: I would say the worst chapter to me was chapter two, which is the first guest that we meet is Knox.
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?
Speaker: Where's this staff guy we were just with?
Speaker: Who's Knox?
Speaker: Why does he owe money and why does this guy care?
Speaker: Like...
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Why are we doing any of this?
Speaker: I totally agree.
Speaker: I think that as far as the first chapter that flashes forward, it isn't handled well.
Speaker: No.
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.
Speaker: It also does the thing of the book is being super, super serial.
Speaker: But then when it handles organized crime people,
Speaker: it makes them the goons kind of goofy.
Speaker: And I'm like, if you're being serious, be serious, right?
Speaker: Like in real life, like these motherfuckers should be terrifying, not like Bert with goofy grins and all that stuff.
Speaker: Right, yeah.
Speaker: You know, a Warner Brothers cartoon flipping a coin as he talks about who's going to rub you out.
Speaker: He's going to rub you out, see?
Speaker: Yeah, it does have that vibe.
Speaker: It truly does.
Speaker: But yeah, I think this is a really interesting start.
Speaker: I'm actually very happy with it so far.
Speaker: It's not like I don't that's not the same as it being a good book.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It's perfectly serviceable as a book.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: But as an adaptation, which is our bread and butter, I'm impressed with it so far.
Speaker: I think that's really interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, now that we've done that, Kevin, I only have one question left for you.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh,
Speaker: I was not expecting that.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I just dropped this on you.
Speaker: Just drop this on you.
Speaker: It's not your fault.
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.
Speaker: You know, just kind of plinking and plonking my way through it.
Speaker: It's my Steam Deck game.
Speaker: So my progress on it is,
Speaker: Is based on how much I am like if I'm sitting in bed at night versus sitting in the living room.
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.
Speaker: So, right.
Speaker: That's kind of like where progress is metered out by by that.
Speaker: By what's going on in the background.
Speaker: By what's going on in the background.
Speaker: I started playing Foundation.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How are you finding that so far?
Speaker: I really enjoyed that.
Speaker: It's cute.
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.
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
Speaker: Desire or desire path.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Oh, I didn't even notice that.
Speaker: That's what that was called.
Speaker: It's called a desire path.
Speaker: And basically there are examples of that where you have like you can see it everywhere, right?
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.
Speaker: They take the they take the the the path of less.
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: Least resistance.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So and what happens is there's actually a college or a university.
Speaker: I'm trying to find.
Speaker: Is it OK?
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's Ohio State.
Speaker: Instead of.
Speaker: They basically, they have, there used to just be a big lawn, right, in between the buildings.
Speaker: And then you would see these dirt, these trails where people crossed, right?
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.
Speaker: They paved the desire paths.
Speaker: So like the, what was, what people wanted to do naturally, it was then just like set in stone, literally.
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.
Speaker: Um, which is neat.
Speaker: Uh, it's, it's kind of like a, a nice touch, uh, so to speak.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: But I haven't put a ton into that, but it's neat so far.
Speaker: And what else have I been playing?
Speaker: I've been playing.
Speaker: I finally am back into Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader with the DLC and all that stuff.
Speaker: One of the cool things about the DLC is that at the very beginning.
Speaker: So I started a fresh save and you get a new character.
Speaker: She is a... What's her name?
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: I'm pulling it up.
Speaker: Is she the sister, the zealot?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: New DLC character.
Speaker: Robe trader.
Speaker: She is Cabela, a death cult assassin.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: The blood, like the web spinners, the bloody web spinner or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you recruit her early on.
Speaker: Basically what happens is like, she comes to you and she's like,
Speaker: We've been part of the Von Valancius dynasty, whether acknowledged or not for a long time.
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.
Speaker: So they approach you and you're like, they're like, hey, do you want us to be
Speaker: Do you want one of our people to be part of your retinue?
Speaker: And you have this dinner with them and then you're like, OK, now start the test.
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.
Speaker: Just it's just her.
Speaker: And part of the test is like killing all of them.
Speaker: And she has these moves.
Speaker: So she has a move called death from above, which lets her jump to any space that she could move to.
Speaker: Not any space she can move to.
Speaker: It's like jump within a pretty large distance.
Speaker: She jumps, lands, and attacks every space around her.
Speaker: And then she can do dance of blades, which then does that again.
Speaker: And then she gains an ability as you level her up to...
Speaker: to go back to the, her starting location that turn.
Speaker: So the dance, the death from above has no AP cost, but you have to have charges of it.
Speaker: So every time you kill somebody, you get a charge of death from above.
Speaker: So if you have several charges of death from above, you can go jump to this group, uh,
Speaker: dice them up, jump to this group, dice them up, jump to this group, dice them up.
Speaker: And then there's an ability for her to start back at the, to go back to her original style.
Speaker: The way she does that is she'll repeat death from above.
Speaker: So then she'll jump back a group death from above back a group death from above back to her original spot.
Speaker: So yeah,
Speaker: she is pure glass cannon.
Speaker: Like if she gets hit, if somebody gets a good hit on her, she goes down.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But the amazing thing is, is like within one turn, she could kill like 12 dudes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Unlike her first turn.
Speaker: So it's, it's pretty amazing.
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.
Speaker: She'll like,
Speaker: She'll point at an enemy and she'll cut herself.
Speaker: And then if she kills that enemy, she gets all the health back from cutting herself.
Speaker: The wounds that are caused by cutting herself.
Speaker: So it's like eight wounds.
Speaker: And then she kills that enemy.
Speaker: She gets 17 wounds back.
Speaker: Oh, fuck.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: So this is, she's just the combo queen.
Speaker: Combo queen.
Speaker: Her only downfall is, um,
Speaker: Very, very agile, low defense, like.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Low and low.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Glass cannon.
Speaker: I've had plenty of fights where it's just like, oh, and she's down.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Oh, and that.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, that's fine.
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.
Speaker: But then you're not taking her awesome cannon stuff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You're like missing the point.
Speaker: You're missing the point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's just like, no, just have her run through.
Speaker: Just make her a goddamn atom bomb.
Speaker: Like at a certain point, I think she has abilities that add to her movement points.
Speaker: So like it would be like her next move.
Speaker: And we're like, well, she can go anywhere on the map right now.
Speaker: Is it's like, right.
Speaker: So it's, it's, it's cool.
Speaker: I'm having fun with the, the, I haven't even gotten to the DLC part.
Speaker: I just, this is just the character that was added during the DLC.
Speaker: So it's, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker: It's also neat replaying it because the, the updates,
Speaker: there's more named characters now on your, uh, crew on the, like that run the ship.
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.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, like in furnace master or whatever, his only job is putting out fires.
Speaker: There are plenty of them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's plenty of them.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Oh, what I was about to say is that the death cult is actually in your ship.
Speaker: But because your ship, like their church is in your ship.
Speaker: But because the ship is so goddamn huge.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's the size of a city.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That it's like, well, nobody's actually ever been down there aside from these, you know, these blood spinners or whatever.
Speaker: So I think part of the DLC is actually trying to find it within your ship.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I've been reading the Night Lords trilogy.
Speaker: They're one of my favorite chaos chapters.
Speaker: And the ship that they're in, you forget how massive it is.
Speaker: And then they'll mention the menials, the people who work there and live there and stuff.
Speaker: And now it's got its own economy and traders and all that shit.
Speaker: It's wild.
Speaker: It's really, really cool.
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.
Speaker: And they might not ever even get off the ship.
Speaker: That's all they'll ever know.
Speaker: That's all they'll ever know.
Speaker: And they don't even necessarily understand, like.
Speaker: They wouldn't even necessarily know the ship is under attack all the time.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: They're not in a position to, unless they're in a position to know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they probably aren't.
Speaker: They probably aren't.
Speaker: And then one day the arch enemy dies.
Speaker: showed up on their deck and turn Johnny's child into a blue demon.
Speaker: And it killed 15 people before the, uh, the master at arms had a, had a squad, put it down.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they still don't know what the fuck happens.
Speaker: They don't know what happens.
Speaker: And they talk amongst themselves and they're like, wait, it becomes it just becomes an urban legend.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: No, that shit is it's that stuff is very cool.
Speaker: I love how deep that shit goes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's what I've been playing.
Speaker: What have you been playing?
Speaker: Well, first and foremost, I finished Cyberpunk 2077.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Had a lot of fun with that.
Speaker: Did you play the DLC?
Speaker: Did you have the DLC with it?
Speaker: No, I have not.
Speaker: I'm going to get to it eventually.
Speaker: I'm trying really hard to just really... I've created a list on my library spread on Steam called Credits in 2025.
Speaker: And I'm just trying to encourage myself to...
Speaker: rack up as many back catalog stuff that I can.
Speaker: And, and cyberpunk 2077 is one of the more recent ones.
Speaker: But I, I had a blast with it.
Speaker: It's an enjoyable enough game that I'm sure I will come back to it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think it's got some replayability in there.
Speaker: Oh, very much so.
Speaker: Very much so.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Really enjoyed it.
Speaker: Wish I had played it before we read.
Speaker: No, no coincidences.
Speaker: Did it feel like, did it, did that book make like, did it make sense with that?
Speaker: In retrospect, in retrospect, it was, it was, it fit in very, very nicely.
Speaker: So I'm hoping we get another, is there another?
Speaker: Another cyberpunk.
Speaker: I mean, the cyberpunk tie in media has been pretty good so far.
Speaker: I would just, I wouldn't mind giving those another, give them another one of those a try.
Speaker: That's just, oh, that's fun.
Speaker: I got one called.
Speaker: Oh, this is a, nevermind.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I really enjoyed that.
Speaker: That was really good.
Speaker: In the interest of going the exact opposite route of, of the triple a high budget,
Speaker: wide open world city of a game that, uh, cyberpunk 2077 was, uh, I played harvester next.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Uh, harvester is, uh, an FMV game.
Speaker: Uh, uh, you know, I was, I remember it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It came out in 96.
Speaker: Uh, it, it, I think the thing about harvester is, uh,
Speaker: It would have absolutely caused the level of stir that games like Night Trap caused.
Speaker: But actually with reason, it is foul.
Speaker: It is very violent.
Speaker: There's no nudity or anything, but it's very overtly sexual at times.
Speaker: And it's on sale for a buck forty nine right now on Steam.
Speaker: It's not a bad purchase.
Speaker: Yeah, it's not a good game.
Speaker: I want to say that right off the bat.
Speaker: It is, appropriately enough, it is incredibly Lynchian.
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...
Speaker: to fully grasp what David Lynch was doing.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So it's kind of like it's like baby's first attempt at being Lynchian.
Speaker: And honestly, it's not terrible in that sense.
Speaker: The storyline is very we've mentioned with FMV games.
Speaker: It's very over the top.
Speaker: It's very campy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's silly.
Speaker: You play this guy who wakes up in this 50s style town.
Speaker: He doesn't know who he is.
Speaker: He doesn't know how he got there.
Speaker: But it's this creepy Stepford Wives kind of town here in this town called Harvest.
Speaker: And.
Speaker: you have to try and join this lodge quote unquote, uh, to find out the truth and find out what's going on.
Speaker: And as you do, uh, you, you do your standard point and click stuff.
Speaker: There's a more than it's fair share of, uh, moon logic at times.
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.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Uh, because it is, it is, uh,
Speaker: that's half the fun seeing the different ways that your character can die.
Speaker: The first half of it is point and click mystery stuff.
Speaker: And then you get into the lodge and you start using a combat system.
Speaker: Um, it becomes, you're still, it's still point and click stuff, but there's like 90% more fighting.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And, and the fighting is dog shit.
Speaker: That is expected.
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
Speaker: Plowed my way through the last half of it.
Speaker: And I don't I don't I don't regret it.
Speaker: It's a very interesting.
Speaker: And as I said before, it could have started a an uproar in the same way that Mortal Kombat.
Speaker: A hundred percent.
Speaker: Just looking at the screenshots.
Speaker: I remember I vaguely remember when this game came out just from mentions in in gaming magazines, I believe.
Speaker: Yeah.
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
Speaker: It's an experience.
Speaker: It is not a good game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it is weird as shit.
Speaker: It has that.
Speaker: It is an absolute time capsule of that era.
Speaker: And I think that alone makes it worth a look, especially like you pointed out, you can get it for a buck fifty.
Speaker: But don't challenge yourself.
Speaker: Use a walkthrough.
Speaker: Just go through it and enjoy it.
Speaker: I played a couple of demos.
Speaker: Neither of them really.
Speaker: jumped out at me.
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.
Speaker: I want a good one.
Speaker: This was not it.
Speaker: Uh, this one seems a little more self-aware, um, but,
Speaker: but it's, it's very janky.
Speaker: It's, it's very, it doesn't play well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, it's got some interesting moments like all these do.
Speaker: There's, there's something there, but I, I, I just didn't think it was worth it.
Speaker: Uh, I, I'd recommend taking a look at, uh, some videos of people playing the demo.
Speaker: It's actually, it's got some really interesting moments, some very cool moments, but, um, it's not very good.
Speaker: Uh, I played the demo for Hunter the reckoning.
Speaker: The Beast of Glenn Kildove.
Speaker: Is that the entire title?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Because Hunter the Reckoning is an old school white wolf game.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And the adventure is called the.
Speaker: Oh, gotcha.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like actually more than a few old white wolf properties, it is a fully text game.
Speaker: It's an interactive novel, essentially a choose your own adventure.
Speaker: But you do get stats that you can upgrade and stuff like that.
Speaker: So there is there are.
Speaker: you know, moves to be made, but it's a very weedy game, which I find really interesting.
Speaker: I just didn't it just didn't, you know, grab me.
Speaker: It didn't move yet.
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.
Speaker: What are the other what are the other white wolf?
Speaker: Vampire the Masquerade.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Werewolf the Apocalypse.
Speaker: Which Vampire the Masquerade might be coming out this year.
Speaker: The new one?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Bloodlines 2.
Speaker: So far it is scheduled for 2025.
Speaker: We shall see.
Speaker: But yeah, so it's a good property.
Speaker: It's fun.
Speaker: And I was impressed with the level of gamification it has for it being essentially a choose your own adventure novel.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's more than that.
Speaker: And I was I was pretty impressed with that aspect.
Speaker: It just didn't grab me.
Speaker: But that's me.
Speaker: That's that's what I've played.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, that'll do it for tonight's episode.
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.
Speaker: Regular original recipe.
Speaker: Original recipe.
Speaker: KFC kernels go to a KFC and say, hey, I'll have a God bucket.
Speaker: I'll have a God bucket.
Speaker: And have you ever heard of pixel it?
Speaker: And then I love it.
Speaker: They'll see what happens.
Speaker: You know, yeah.
Speaker: Not a lawyer, not telling you to actually go do that.
Speaker: Yeah, so go Patreon, follow us on Patreon, follow us on Blue Sky, and hop on our Discord.
Speaker: Join the conversation.
Speaker: It's a lot of fun.
Speaker: Have a good night, everybody, and we will talk to you next time at the top of the 11th hour.
Speaker: God damn it, that's the wrong book.
Speaker: Ooh.
