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Star Wars: Republic Commando: Hard Contact - Part 1
10 Plays1 year ago
That's RIGHT! This episode is THREEEE levels deep on the title. Anyway, welcome to the new series and the last full series before Phil goes off to be a daddy for a bit. Republic Commando is written by Karen Traviss and is a heck of a good book so far!
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Transcript
Criticism of the Jedi's Morality
00:00:00
Speaker
Not sure the council would go for that.
00:00:02
Speaker
I'm not sure the Jedi council is going to go for that.
00:00:04
Speaker
But you know what?
00:00:04
Speaker
Look, let's be real.
00:00:05
Speaker
The Jedi kind of suck.
00:00:07
Speaker
The Jedi kind of suck.
00:00:08
Speaker
I don't like the Jedi.
00:00:09
Speaker
The Jedi are assholes.
00:00:11
Speaker
They're kind of shitty and not very smart.
00:00:14
Speaker
And honestly, this whole clone trip, and I'll get into it in the episode, but like this whole thing, I can't believe it took me as long as it did to go, hey, yeah, cloning some guy and basically just using clones as an army is kind of immoral and fucked up, isn't it?
00:00:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:32
Speaker
And the Jedi basically setting themselves up as the superior officers for all of it.
00:00:36
Speaker
Like,
00:00:36
Speaker
This is this is this is not OK.
00:00:39
Speaker
Like this is deeply wrong.
00:00:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:44
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:00:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:47
Speaker
You know what else is deeply wrong?
Introduction to Pixlet Podcast and Star Wars Republic Commando
00:00:50
Speaker
Hey there, everybody.
00:00:51
Speaker
Welcome back to Pixlet.
00:00:52
Speaker
My name is Kevin.
00:00:52
Speaker
With me, as always, is Phil.
00:00:53
Speaker
And on today's show, we're talking Republic Commando Hard Contact by Karen Travis.
00:01:03
Speaker
And it is a Star Wars book in the Republican, not Republican Commando.
00:01:12
Speaker
That'd be a very... I'd play that.
00:01:14
Speaker
That's a different type.
00:01:16
Speaker
That's a very different game.
00:01:18
Speaker
Final boss is storming January 6th.
00:01:21
Speaker
That's basically Far Cry 5.
00:01:23
Speaker
I mean, you know what?
00:01:25
Speaker
Yeah, you're not wrong.
00:01:28
Speaker
You're not wrong.
00:01:30
Speaker
Final boss is January 6th.
00:01:37
Speaker
Like if this was the 90s, yes, there would have been like a game made on the whatever whatever postal was made on.
00:01:47
Speaker
Is that the source engine or something where it was like like Jan six stormer or something like that.
00:01:56
Speaker
Right.
00:01:56
Speaker
Right.
00:01:56
Speaker
Exactly.
00:01:57
Speaker
Exactly.
00:02:00
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:02:01
Speaker
Oh, Jesus.
00:02:02
Speaker
Republican commando.
00:02:03
Speaker
Good Lord.
Overview of Republic Commando Series and Karen Travis
00:02:06
Speaker
Yeah, so it's part of the Republic Commando series, which was intended as like a multimedia effort of books and games.
00:02:16
Speaker
So they didn't really...
00:02:23
Speaker
It never really got finished.
00:02:25
Speaker
So I'm looking at the Wookieepedia of it.
00:02:28
Speaker
And so you have Hard Contact, which is the first thing that comes out, and that's a book.
00:02:32
Speaker
And then you have Star Wars Republic Commando, the game, which was made by LucasArts.
00:02:39
Speaker
And then you have a bunch of short stories and novels, everything written by Karen Travis.
00:02:45
Speaker
There was also another game, Republic Commando Order 66.
00:02:49
Speaker
I don't know if that's a port of the... No, it's its own.
00:02:55
Speaker
Oh, wait a minute.
00:02:56
Speaker
Was this a... It was a mobile game.
00:02:59
Speaker
Ew.
00:03:01
Speaker
Oh.
00:03:01
Speaker
No, here's the thing.
00:03:02
Speaker
I said, ew, as in, like...
00:03:05
Speaker
I actually kind of like there's a lot of mobile games I like, but this is a mobile game in 2005.
00:03:09
Speaker
A phone game in 2005.
00:03:15
Speaker
You can't imagine that this was like really anything.
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:20
Speaker
So there are a bunch of...
00:03:23
Speaker
There are a bunch of novels.
00:03:26
Speaker
There was supposed to be a game that kind of culminated the whole thing called Imperial Commando.
00:03:33
Speaker
That was canceled.
00:03:34
Speaker
And there was one book in that series, too.
00:03:36
Speaker
There was one book, and there was supposed to be a second book.
00:03:39
Speaker
So it was supposed to be Imperial Commando 501st, and then that was the only novel that came out.
00:03:44
Speaker
There was supposed to be a second novel written by Karen Travis and an Imperial Commando video game.
00:03:50
Speaker
Those two things were canceled.
00:03:53
Speaker
And according to this, I mean, I don't know.
00:03:58
Speaker
It doesn't say why it was canceled necessarily, but it looks like we're closing in on the Disney purchase.
Debate on Star Wars Canon and Disney's Influence
00:04:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:11
Speaker
So that's probably when things kinda like- I'm seeing here that at least as far, cuz this looks, I mean, this is such a great idea in terms of like taking Republic Commando and moving onward into Imperial Commando and the changes that could, that's a fascinating idea to the point that- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:04:30
Speaker
I actually really wanna read these.
00:04:33
Speaker
And it says here that she didn't write the sequel to Imperial Commando, at least the book, because of the Clone Wars television series and they were having issues with canon stuff.
00:04:47
Speaker
Oh, gotcha.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense.
00:04:48
Speaker
It's similar to the Disney buy thing, like canon shit.
00:04:52
Speaker
And this is my edition of the book has that lovely legend.
00:04:56
Speaker
Legends, yeah.
00:04:57
Speaker
Fuck you, Disney.
00:04:59
Speaker
It's been relegated.
00:05:03
Speaker
And that's the thing.
00:05:04
Speaker
It's like, I was as excited as anybody else when the new trilogy came out and a lot of these new shows that are coming out, some of them look really good, some of them are good.
00:05:15
Speaker
But it's like, you look at,
00:05:19
Speaker
the stories that take place, the way that the canonical story takes place after Jedi in the books with like the Yuuzang Vong and like all this, like Vector Prime and all that shit.
00:05:31
Speaker
And it's absurd and it's crazy and really over the top.
00:05:35
Speaker
And it's still better than what we ended on with the final trilogy.
00:05:41
Speaker
And it's hilarious because you got, you got, what's his name?
00:05:46
Speaker
The guy who did, who was the runner for the Clone Wars series.
00:05:51
Speaker
He was clearly a fan of the old canon because he includes,
00:06:00
Speaker
Like the Ahsoka series, the Ahsoka TV show that just came out.
00:06:05
Speaker
I mean, the main villain is Grand Admiral Thrawn, you know?
00:06:09
Speaker
Right.
Praising Dave Filoni's Clone Wars Contributions
00:06:10
Speaker
He's been slowly weaving in stuff from the Legends canon because I feel like he even recognizes how cool some of this shit was.
00:06:22
Speaker
Some of it's amazing.
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:24
Speaker
Like so make like Vector Prime anymore.
00:06:26
Speaker
Make it canon again.
00:06:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:28
Speaker
Like, let's make it canon again.
00:06:29
Speaker
Like Vector Prime, which was that's the one where Chewbacca gets killed.
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:35
Speaker
You can't just spoil alert for like a 20 year old book, but 20 year old book.
00:06:39
Speaker
That's that's quote, not canon anymore.
00:06:41
Speaker
But well, that's true.
00:06:42
Speaker
That's a good point.
00:06:43
Speaker
But you can't kill Chewie just any old way.
00:06:45
Speaker
They had to crush him with a goddamn planet.
00:06:48
Speaker
That's the only way you can get rid of that Wookiee bastard.
00:06:50
Speaker
Like, you've got to smash him with the moon.
00:06:54
Speaker
If you're going to fucking R.A.
00:06:55
Speaker
Salvatore, a lot of people were pissed off at him over that decision.
00:06:58
Speaker
But, you know, if you're going to do it, R.A.
00:07:02
Speaker
God damn it, man.
00:07:04
Speaker
He didn't die like some bitch going down trying to get his son to join him and give up bad ways and then get sliced in half with a lightsaber.
00:07:14
Speaker
God, they really did that to Han Solo.
00:07:16
Speaker
They did him so dirty.
00:07:18
Speaker
I know Harrison Ford was thrilled, and I respect his wishes, but god damn, they did Han dirty.
00:07:26
Speaker
They did Han so fucking dirty in that movie.
00:07:29
Speaker
They did so many things dirty in that movie, and I'll never forgive...
00:07:35
Speaker
I will never forgive J.J.
00:07:36
Speaker
Abrams.
00:07:37
Speaker
They just... I understand what... So I understand it now.
00:07:41
Speaker
I understand Star Trek fans that were pissed off at J.J.
00:07:45
Speaker
Abrams.
00:07:46
Speaker
And I was like, well, I'm not... Because I'm not a big Trek guy, right?
00:07:49
Speaker
No, yeah, yeah.
00:07:50
Speaker
I'm like, I don't know.
00:07:51
Speaker
I thought they were pretty good, whatever.
00:07:53
Speaker
And then he went and he did it to Star Wars.
00:07:56
Speaker
And I'm like...
00:07:57
Speaker
I get it.
00:07:58
Speaker
I get it.
00:08:00
Speaker
He went from your thing to my thing, and he did the thing that you hated over there to my thing.
00:08:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:05
Speaker
So we're united now.
00:08:07
Speaker
I mean, Abrams.
00:08:08
Speaker
Oh, God, that man.
00:08:11
Speaker
I'm glad that we live in an era where people are mostly wise to his bullshit, but it's just...
00:08:18
Speaker
It's just, yeah, it's just he took one of the most important franchises in the modern world and just just clearly the level of not taking it seriously was just off the charts and off the charts, off the charts.
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:34
Speaker
So and I think there's so much, you know, there's there's obviously there's a bunch of things that happen like.
00:08:42
Speaker
He like he fucking lets Oscar Isaac talk him into his
Critique of the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
00:08:48
Speaker
character staying alive.
00:08:49
Speaker
He Carrie Fisher literally fucking dies during production of the second one.
00:08:57
Speaker
You know, things like that.
00:09:00
Speaker
But you know, you just gotta be a fucking better filmmaker overall than what we had.
00:09:08
Speaker
And you should have a clear vision of how it's going to start and end before you get started and not just fake it as you go.
00:09:18
Speaker
Somehow the Emperor has returned.
00:09:20
Speaker
I just... I hadn't seen that movie.
00:09:23
Speaker
I had never seen that one until earlier this year.
00:09:27
Speaker
I just skipped out on it.
00:09:28
Speaker
I didn't want to know.
00:09:30
Speaker
In the end, I came out mostly positive on the second one.
00:09:35
Speaker
It had problems, but God, it had some of the most picturesque moments in the franchise.
00:09:41
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:09:42
Speaker
Rian Johnson.
00:09:42
Speaker
I mean, it's Rian Johnson.
00:09:43
Speaker
It was great.
00:09:45
Speaker
And...
00:09:46
Speaker
And finally, Emily and I did this thing this year.
00:09:49
Speaker
We actually just watched a bunch of trilogies, and we watched all nine Star Wars films, like main canon Star Wars films.
00:09:56
Speaker
And she, this is one of the rare instances where she out-geeked me, because she had seen all three of the new trilogy, but I had not.
00:10:05
Speaker
And she was like, I don't know.
00:10:07
Speaker
Do you know what happened?
00:10:08
Speaker
And somehow, Kevin, I didn't.
00:10:11
Speaker
I had avoided.
00:10:12
Speaker
I had like some vague idea of emperor something, but I didn't.
00:10:16
Speaker
I had somehow avoided the worst of it.
00:10:18
Speaker
I'm actually pretty good at that.
00:10:20
Speaker
If I don't want to be spoiled, I can avoid it, generally speaking.
00:10:24
Speaker
Right.
00:10:25
Speaker
But I watched that and I was, she looked at, she goes, look, I'm not a Star Wars geek and everything like that, but I know why people were pissed.
00:10:34
Speaker
I can see why people are pissed.
00:10:35
Speaker
And I was like, okay, wow.
00:10:36
Speaker
All right, sure.
00:10:37
Speaker
Now I really need to watch it.
00:10:39
Speaker
And it was just, I was amazed.
00:10:41
Speaker
You know what I was?
00:10:42
Speaker
I don't give a fuckery.
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:45
Speaker
You know what I was?
00:10:48
Speaker
What was wild to me was the first one is, we made a death star, but it's a super death star, planet death star, planet death, and it can shoot, kill a bunch of planets at once.
00:11:08
Speaker
And because of time dilation, you see them all happen at the same time.
00:11:13
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, oh.
00:11:14
Speaker
fine whatever fine fine where are we going with this and we're like we're destroying all these planets and i'm like oh that sucks yeah
00:11:22
Speaker
I had no idea that meant that the entire New Republic was destroyed.
00:11:28
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:11:30
Speaker
I was like, wait, why are they on the run?
00:11:33
Speaker
You mean they destroyed every New Republic planet?
00:11:37
Speaker
Off camera, yeah.
00:11:41
Speaker
It was only like they destroyed five planets.
00:11:44
Speaker
I don't think they destroyed Coruscant.
00:11:47
Speaker
What's going on here?
00:11:48
Speaker
Why would they be on the, why?
00:11:51
Speaker
Like, I understand this is a massive disaster, but there have been other times when the bad guys have destroyed a populated planet in Star Wars, and it didn't mean that the fucking, there just wasn't any ships anymore.
00:12:07
Speaker
It just, it just, it was, it set everything
Reevaluation of Star Wars Prequel Series
00:12:10
Speaker
in a weird tone and it was like an artificial sense of urgency that was just kind of plopped in your lap and it just, it didn't.
00:12:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:20
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, what you're hearing right now is a couple of aging geeks who, despite the fact that this podcast has been going for about two and a half, two and a half years, have never covered a Star Wars anything on this show and we're just letting loose
00:12:36
Speaker
we're ripping that band-aid off right now baby right off the bat yeah that's how this works that's how this works oh god um yeah so and i just have to ask you this after you watched all nine yeah what were your feelings and i i we did that like a couple years ago right we watched all nine
00:13:00
Speaker
I came out of that with better feelings about the prequel trilogy than I had when I was younger.
00:13:08
Speaker
What was your, what was your vibe?
00:13:10
Speaker
No, no, that didn't change for me.
00:13:12
Speaker
That didn't change at all.
00:13:13
Speaker
That didn't change for me.
00:13:15
Speaker
I appreciate the fact that nowadays, especially, um,
00:13:19
Speaker
Geeks in there, especially the aging ones, are starting to come around and realize that Hayden Christensen was in kind of an impossible position.
00:13:29
Speaker
He's not the reason that those movies failed.
00:13:33
Speaker
If anything, Natalie Portman is just as awful in them as he is, but he's the one who got all the fucking dirt slung at him.
00:13:41
Speaker
And it's just when you've got terrible dialogue, there's only so much you can fucking do with it.
00:13:46
Speaker
So I'm glad that he's getting kind of a clap on the back these days.
00:13:50
Speaker
You know, he's showing up at cons and people are cheering for him.
00:13:53
Speaker
I love that.
00:13:54
Speaker
I think that's great.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, he came back to play Anakin in the Ahsoka series.
00:13:59
Speaker
And by all accounts did an incredible job.
00:14:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:03
Speaker
And so good for him.
00:14:04
Speaker
I think that's great.
00:14:06
Speaker
I wouldn't mind, and we've talked about this before, I wouldn't mind some sort of TV show where it's like prototype Vader, like going off and like starting shit like that.
00:14:15
Speaker
I would watch him in that.
00:14:16
Speaker
That'd be fine.
00:14:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:17
Speaker
I would just fucking watch Vader.
00:14:19
Speaker
Sure.
00:14:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:22
Speaker
If you've got a good writer for it and everything.
00:14:25
Speaker
But no, those films are still hot garbage.
00:14:29
Speaker
I'll tell you what it did make me want to do.
00:14:31
Speaker
It did make me want to somehow, in some way, crack open the impenetrable walnut of the Clone Wars series.
00:14:41
Speaker
Yes.
00:14:41
Speaker
There's so much of it, though.
00:14:43
Speaker
Every time I want to start, it's like 200 hours.
00:14:45
Speaker
I'm like, Jesus Christ.
00:14:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:47
Speaker
The Clone Wars series and Rebels.
00:14:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:14:51
Speaker
The base, the two, Dave Filoni, that's his name.
00:14:54
Speaker
The two Dave Filoni series are kind of like the things that make
00:15:00
Speaker
they're like the redeeming features of the prequel era stuff, right?
00:15:06
Speaker
So, and honestly, I mean, you could go back and watch the Gennady Tarkovsky Clone Wars series, which is super stylized and all that.
00:15:15
Speaker
It was like running when the movies came out.
00:15:18
Speaker
But then there's the second Clone Wars series that came out much later by Dave Filoni, which not as heavy on the style, but in terms of like,
00:15:28
Speaker
the fucking war story shit that you're looking for, still targeted towards kids, teens, whatever, but it's not like for adults or whatever.
00:15:40
Speaker
It's not like fucking Andor.
00:15:41
Speaker
Right, yeah, it's not that bleak.
00:15:44
Speaker
It's not that bleak, but it has a lot of fucking good stuff in it.
00:15:51
Speaker
There are some moments in Rebels, or no, in the last season of Clone Wars, where just the cinematography,
00:15:59
Speaker
of, I mean, I know it's all CG, but the cinematography, just the shot design was impeccable.
00:16:08
Speaker
And because, I don't know, it's just amazing to see that kind of care and effort put into stuff like that.
00:16:19
Speaker
And that was the one thing I had always heard that those series were amazing, that they were just like, you know,
00:16:28
Speaker
in many real love letters to the star wars universe and it's like then you see then it's like you got dave filoni gets all this you know does all this stuff then you get to jj abrams with the sequel series right who clearly doesn't have that same connection to the universe that dave filoni filoni had and i know a lot of people criticize dave filoni because he's very very um
00:16:56
Speaker
He's very, very comic book-y in his character.
00:16:59
Speaker
Like, he loves to do the character crossovers, you know?
00:17:02
Speaker
He loves this character appearing in this thing and whatever.
00:17:06
Speaker
And then, you know, some people criticize him for that.
00:17:09
Speaker
I'm like, fine, fuck it, whatever, you know?
00:17:11
Speaker
It's a saga.
00:17:12
Speaker
You can have characters everywhere.
00:17:14
Speaker
That's part of the fun.
00:17:15
Speaker
You can have those crossed lines, you know?
00:17:18
Speaker
But I will say, go on, sorry.
00:17:21
Speaker
No, no, no, go for it.
00:17:22
Speaker
Well, I was going to say, I still think that the prequels are garbage, but I was able to watch them with a more critical eye in terms of what could be made of this that is so good as everyone says.
00:17:37
Speaker
And by the end of...
00:17:40
Speaker
The prequels, I was able to see it.
00:17:42
Speaker
I was able to go, okay, they've set a lot of seeds here.
00:17:46
Speaker
There's a lot of stuff that they could play with that you could, I get it.
00:17:52
Speaker
I can see where that would be going.
00:17:53
Speaker
I still have not braved that because that's going to take a long time.
00:17:59
Speaker
But yeah, I get it.
00:18:01
Speaker
Yeah, you watch it with your kid.
00:18:03
Speaker
You know what?
00:18:05
Speaker
That's a way to think about it.
00:18:06
Speaker
Eventually, like...
00:18:09
Speaker
That's a good way to think about it.
00:18:10
Speaker
That's going to be a good way to... I'm going to be revisiting everything with that boy.
00:18:13
Speaker
Holy shit.
00:18:13
Speaker
That's going to be cool.
00:18:15
Speaker
That's going to be pretty cool.
00:18:16
Speaker
This kid is going to be just tempered and raw geek.
00:18:20
Speaker
It is.
00:18:22
Speaker
It shall be.
00:18:23
Speaker
He shall be the purest of geek steel.
00:18:27
Speaker
I love
Karen Travis's Military Influence on Writing
00:18:28
Speaker
it.
00:18:28
Speaker
I love it.
00:18:30
Speaker
my my my in this you can trust uh that's another thing i'll show um uh well let's you want to get on with it then you want to uh let's put the body in the marsh let's put the body in the marsh but you know i do real quick want to say a little bit about karen travis oh yes let's take that body back out of the marsh take the body out of the marsh uh she is an english writer and uh
00:18:53
Speaker
And it does a lot of stuff.
00:18:56
Speaker
She wrote like all of the Gears of War novels.
00:19:00
Speaker
Wow.
00:19:01
Speaker
She's written a bunch of Halo novels and she's written a bunch of Star Wars stuff, including like you pointed out, the entire Republic Commando series.
00:19:11
Speaker
And I was pretty impressed with this book.
00:19:15
Speaker
Because of the military nature of it, it's very authentic in that sense.
00:19:20
Speaker
And that's because Karen served in the in the the UK's version of the Army Reserves and the Navy Reserves.
00:19:28
Speaker
So she's OK.
00:19:29
Speaker
She's actually a military woman for first firsthand.
00:19:32
Speaker
She's OK.
00:19:32
Speaker
Got it.
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, so I think that's pretty cool.
00:19:36
Speaker
And so we're probably going to be revisiting her if we ever get to the Gears of War series.
00:19:42
Speaker
I'm sure we're going to, I mean, Gears of War and Halo.
00:19:47
Speaker
And Halo, yeah, and she's in that kind of mid-level.
00:19:49
Speaker
Her first Halo book came out in 2011, so she's not as modern as some of the stuff we've read, but she's not as classic as some of the other ones we've read.
00:19:57
Speaker
So it might be a bit till we get to her on the Halo front.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, but we will get to her.
00:20:02
Speaker
uh yeah so this is but honestly that this is this is this is a great way to get introduced to her yeah this is fantastic i i totally agree and as uh i believe as troy denning said uh karen travis was was the one who kind of uh influenced him to get into writing halo
00:20:25
Speaker
Did he say that?
00:20:26
Speaker
I totally forgot.
00:20:27
Speaker
Holy shit.
00:20:28
Speaker
That's cool.
00:20:28
Speaker
I think he was talking about Karen Travis.
00:20:31
Speaker
Oh, that's cool as shit.
00:20:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:34
Speaker
I love that.
00:20:36
Speaker
Karen, we're going to get you on the show.
00:20:37
Speaker
We've got to get you on the show, Karen.
00:20:39
Speaker
Got to get you on the show, Bubla.
00:20:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:42
Speaker
Body.
00:20:43
Speaker
Body in the marsh.
00:20:44
Speaker
Marsh body.
00:20:46
Speaker
What fucking size a dog is that?
00:20:47
Speaker
That's a big fucking dog, man.
00:20:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:51
Speaker
We open up.
00:20:52
Speaker
With a prologue, we are introduced to a member of a Theta squad, Darman, who sets an explosive during a high-intensity battle in the Geonosian planet.
00:21:07
Speaker
And we basically witness, in a couple of pages, him losing his entire squad.
00:21:12
Speaker
And Republic Commandos are made up of four-people squads.
00:21:15
Speaker
They are the best of the best.
00:21:17
Speaker
And they work in tiny groups that basically function as families for them for all intents and purposes.
00:21:23
Speaker
So we get to witness the moment where he loses his whole family, essentially.
00:21:29
Speaker
Right.
00:21:30
Speaker
Yep.
00:21:31
Speaker
And not all that is clear in the moment, but we do pick it up.
00:21:36
Speaker
So we start out in chapter one with a report of Republic ships carrying literally thousands of wounded and casualties after this battle in Geonosia.
00:21:52
Speaker
It succeeded.
00:21:53
Speaker
They accomplished their mission, but the cost was crazy, crazy high.
00:21:59
Speaker
Yeah, this was literally, this is literally the final moments of episode two.
00:22:05
Speaker
Yes.
00:22:05
Speaker
Is is this is the battle on Geonosis where the the clone troopers swoop down and start, you know, killing a lot.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:15
Speaker
And they accomplish what they're out for.
00:22:18
Speaker
But at what cost?
00:22:21
Speaker
We Darman, also known as RC 1136, because all of the clone troopers are basically just given serial code.
00:22:29
Speaker
And so they all kind of develop their own nicknames and that sort of thing.
00:22:33
Speaker
Uh, Darman, he is among a bunch of other clone troopers, not, uh, commandos like himself.
00:22:39
Speaker
They, uh, the troopers are kind of more of your grunt, basic boots on the ground, meat shields, uh, and, uh, kind of act like it when they see Darman, they're kind of impressed, uh, by the look of him.
00:22:51
Speaker
Um, he is waiting for a pickup, uh, very, it makes a point of saying very specifically, this is not a retreat, uh,
00:23:02
Speaker
We got what we wanted.
00:23:03
Speaker
We're leaving.
00:23:05
Speaker
And he's also waiting for the rest of his squad, who he assumes has made it out.
00:23:12
Speaker
Or maybe not assumes, maybe the proper ones.
00:23:16
Speaker
He's hoping.
00:23:16
Speaker
Hoping.
00:23:17
Speaker
Hoping.
00:23:17
Speaker
He threatens the guy who is getting people onto the ship, and he's like, they're going to fucking come.
00:23:24
Speaker
Right.
00:23:25
Speaker
And he's like, ah, okay.
00:23:27
Speaker
And the loadmaster's like, okay, man, just don't fucking...
00:23:30
Speaker
He just screams dookie in Darman's face.
00:23:32
Speaker
Dookie!
00:23:34
Speaker
Darman wants to know what's that smell.
00:23:38
Speaker
What's that smell?
00:23:39
Speaker
Dookie!
00:23:41
Speaker
So,
00:23:44
Speaker
Eventually, he's basically alone.
00:23:47
Speaker
Nobody comes.
00:23:48
Speaker
He is informed that anybody who isn't there is dead.
00:23:53
Speaker
So the deck is silent.
00:23:55
Speaker
And he just gets on a gunship.
00:23:57
Speaker
And it's a ship full of trauma.
00:23:59
Speaker
Just all the bags of trauma everywhere.
00:24:02
Speaker
Oh, just everywhere.
00:24:03
Speaker
Just troopers and commandos.
00:24:04
Speaker
A bunch of guys who all look like each other.
00:24:07
Speaker
Just dealing with...
00:24:09
Speaker
The horrors of war.
00:24:12
Speaker
He keeps asking about his squad, but basically he's like, you know, just like, look, they're gone.
00:24:18
Speaker
They're gone.
00:24:19
Speaker
They're gone.
00:24:20
Speaker
He knew, like, you know, like identical twins know what's going on with their twin.
00:24:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:26
Speaker
Twin sense.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:24:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:29
Speaker
He has a vibe.
00:24:31
Speaker
He figures it out.
00:24:33
Speaker
And I think we also get some like interesting, uh, in this, in the, these moments on the ship where he's like asking around and talking and all that stuff.
00:24:42
Speaker
Some like interesting different differences between a rank and file file, uh, clone trooper and, uh, a commando.
00:24:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:52
Speaker
Um, whereas like the commandos have better gear.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yep.
00:24:57
Speaker
Uh, and then they're harder trained than the troopers are.
00:25:02
Speaker
And the troopers think the commandos are arrogant.
00:25:06
Speaker
Yes.
00:25:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:08
Speaker
It's so funny to think of it in terms of these being clones because they are.
00:25:13
Speaker
They're all genetically identical.
00:25:16
Speaker
Right.
00:25:16
Speaker
But some of them are better than others at certain things and are chosen for special positions and resentment forms.
00:25:22
Speaker
Right.
00:25:23
Speaker
So they are not the...
00:25:27
Speaker
in many ways they lack a certain level of free will, at least in the sense that they have been trained to death.
00:25:34
Speaker
Sometimes literally you hear a lot about, as we'll find out.
00:25:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:38
Speaker
You hear a lot about them dying in the training.
00:25:41
Speaker
So, but yeah, you, you do get some interesting, the better kit, better training.
00:25:47
Speaker
We get existential crisis.
00:25:49
Speaker
Number one, where he considers the fact that, um,
00:25:54
Speaker
As a trooper or a commando, as a clone, you basically don't need to know the purpose of your life.
00:26:02
Speaker
You already know what it is.
00:26:03
Speaker
It's to go out there and go where the Jedi tell you to go and go kill people.
00:26:08
Speaker
And he experiences shame even though they won.
00:26:14
Speaker
And he kind of contemplates to himself, if this is how it feels to win, how much worse would it have felt to lose?
00:26:21
Speaker
Right.
00:26:22
Speaker
And that's just the beginning of the story.
00:26:24
Speaker
Just the beginning!
00:26:25
Speaker
Of the existential meltdowns that make up, I would say, 60% of this book.
00:26:30
Speaker
Yeah, because guess what, folks?
00:26:33
Speaker
Get ready to meet the worst Jedi ever.
00:26:35
Speaker
The worst.
00:26:36
Speaker
The worst.
00:26:37
Speaker
Yes, and we cut two!
00:26:40
Speaker
The planet Quirlora, where Itain Turmuran is running from a Weequay sex pest, let's just say.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah, no, he's feeling a little amorous.
00:26:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, he is.
00:26:59
Speaker
He is.
00:27:00
Speaker
He is trying to find her.
00:27:02
Speaker
And it just seems kind of at first like he's a nasty character who maybe she met in a bar or something like that.
00:27:08
Speaker
But it does get steadily worse as time goes on.
00:27:12
Speaker
She hides successfully and her pursuer is attacked and threatened by a stranger.
00:27:17
Speaker
Who she recognizes the voice of or or can guess at who the voice is, but doesn't.
00:27:24
Speaker
But we don't we don't get that information quite yet.
00:27:27
Speaker
She hides in basically a dung heap is covered in shit.
00:27:33
Speaker
And finally runs.
00:27:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:35
Speaker
And she runs.
00:27:36
Speaker
She meets up with a local farmer and kind of make sure she's got her lightsaber on her.
00:27:42
Speaker
And you realize that she is a Padawan on the run and not even a very good one.
00:27:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:50
Speaker
Very bad.
00:27:51
Speaker
She's not a good fighter.
00:27:53
Speaker
She's not really good at Jedi mind tricks, as we'll see.
00:27:56
Speaker
She's not really good at moving shit with her mind.
00:27:59
Speaker
She's not really all that in tuned with the Force.
00:28:02
Speaker
As she puts it later in the book, her special skill is seeing opportunity, which I don't think you have to be a Jedi for that one.
00:28:08
Speaker
I feel like...
00:28:10
Speaker
I feel like you could have just done something else.
00:28:14
Speaker
I remember, and this is kind of funny and off track, but it's still Star Wars.
00:28:21
Speaker
I remember it was, I think it was Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina or something like that.
00:28:26
Speaker
There's a short story in there about this guy.
00:28:32
Speaker
A guy who's at the bar the night that Luke meets up with Han Solo.
00:28:37
Speaker
Oh, so he witnesses the whole fucking massacre there.
00:28:40
Speaker
He witnesses the whole thing, but he was there tracking Han Solo because the guy is a luck vampire.
00:28:48
Speaker
And and he's like he and he has there's this whole internal monologue about how luck is just as much of a like a thing in the universe as the force.
00:29:01
Speaker
Just nobody else realizes it.
00:29:03
Speaker
And he kills people and absorbs their luck.
00:29:06
Speaker
And he could see it radio radiating off of Han Solo.
00:29:10
Speaker
And it like always like stuck with me.
00:29:13
Speaker
This like weird little, I think it was tales from most like Mos Eisley Cantina or something like that.
00:29:20
Speaker
So I was like, yeah, she's like a, she's like a, you know, like Han Solo just has that, that luck energy.
00:29:26
Speaker
That is cool as shit.
00:29:30
Speaker
That's really neat.
00:29:31
Speaker
I would want to play one of those.
00:29:32
Speaker
And this is the fucking weird shit that you would get in the pre-Disney Star Wars universe.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yes.
00:29:37
Speaker
You could do this shit.
00:29:41
Speaker
So cool.
00:29:42
Speaker
You could have a random sci-fi author write a random story about a thing in Mos Eisley Cantina.
00:29:48
Speaker
I love it.
00:29:49
Speaker
I absolutely love it.
00:29:50
Speaker
I'm going to find that because that's some cool shit.
00:29:52
Speaker
Yeah, find that.
00:29:53
Speaker
Because I might have just made it up.
00:29:55
Speaker
I don't... But I'm pretty sure I remember... If you made that up...
00:30:00
Speaker
If you made that up, we've got to get you a gig fucking working to do right for hire shit for Star Wars.
00:30:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:09
Speaker
One thing about this entire scene is it could not be written like this today.
00:30:18
Speaker
Not because the weak way is a little sexual assaulty, but because of the way it talks about the weak way racially.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yes.
00:30:29
Speaker
And we get that a lot, actually.
00:30:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:31
Speaker
We get that a lot.
00:30:32
Speaker
And it's like, it's a little, it gets a little uncomfortable in the, in the book where it's just like the week is, you know, they're just fucking dumb, you know?
00:30:41
Speaker
Right.
00:30:41
Speaker
And when they learn words, it's only about their baser needs or something like that.
00:30:46
Speaker
And I'm like, Ooh, Jesus Christ.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:51
Speaker
There are a bunch of week way characters in a clone wars and other things like that, that are like,
00:30:58
Speaker
you know, really bright characters.
00:31:01
Speaker
And we have, you know, there's a smuggler, smuggler slash pirate guy who, oh, fuck, I'm forgetting his name now.
00:31:12
Speaker
But he's like, he's one of the guys that talks, they actually have an animatronic of him at Disney World now in one of the Star Wars rides.
00:31:23
Speaker
Oh, that's cool.
00:31:24
Speaker
because of how big of a character he is in, like, Clone Wars and Rebels and things like that.
00:31:29
Speaker
Nice.
00:31:30
Speaker
But, yeah, so I read those parts, and I'm like, uh.
00:31:33
Speaker
Huh.
00:31:36
Speaker
Huh.
00:31:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah, I can...
00:31:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's among the issues there.
00:31:46
Speaker
We find out that Itain is not an amazing Jedi, isn't really known for her discipline.
00:31:51
Speaker
She basically demands that the farmer give her some shelter, and they go off together.
00:31:56
Speaker
Meanwhile... Oh, it was my own.
00:31:59
Speaker
We head over to the barracks at Ord Mantell and RC 1309, also known as Niner, who is a sergeant within the public commandos.
00:32:10
Speaker
We meet him and he meets RC 8015 Fee, and they are both orphaned troopers.
00:32:19
Speaker
And basically they're going to be put together and it gets real awkward right off the bat.
00:32:26
Speaker
They're sharing a barracks and just kind of... Fee is like really friendly, kind of, and just trying to make friends, trying to be sweet.
00:32:34
Speaker
And Niner is still feeling some shitty feelings.
00:32:37
Speaker
And so he's kind of not being...
00:32:41
Speaker
He's not being mean.
00:32:42
Speaker
He's just not really.
00:32:44
Speaker
He's kind of cold.
00:32:45
Speaker
He's giving him a cold short.
00:32:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:47
Speaker
And keeps pointing out that the whole campaign, the Geonosian campaign was a giant waste, even though they won.
00:32:54
Speaker
He was like, we're we are commandos.
00:32:56
Speaker
We are like elite.
00:32:57
Speaker
We should not have been thrown into that to that fucking pressure cooker.
00:33:02
Speaker
That was that was something you just need to throw a wall of troopers at.
00:33:06
Speaker
And it was a waste that we lost our people.
00:33:08
Speaker
Right.
00:33:10
Speaker
And so Fee finally gets in his bunk and it's actually a really cute moment where he gets in his bunk and he starts kind of singing this little Mandalorian war chant to himself.
00:33:22
Speaker
It's just, it's like, you can tell he's like, just like, this is something he does when he's nervous or upset or something.
00:33:27
Speaker
He's trying to calm himself.
00:33:28
Speaker
And Niner joins in with the whole thing.
00:33:32
Speaker
And they sing together a little bit.
00:33:34
Speaker
Finally, they finish the song and Fee,
00:33:36
Speaker
looks at Niner and says, I did my best.
00:33:40
Speaker
You know, he didn't run away.
00:33:44
Speaker
He just lost his people.
00:33:47
Speaker
And Niner says, I know.
00:33:49
Speaker
And it's a nice bonding moment between the two of them.
00:33:54
Speaker
And that's chapter one.
00:33:55
Speaker
Chapter two takes us, we start off in a briefing room in Ord Mantell.
Commando Squad's Mission Briefing
00:34:00
Speaker
One second.
00:34:01
Speaker
The character's name is Danic Jericho.
00:34:05
Speaker
Oh, I know that name.
00:34:07
Speaker
He is a guy with like he's the guy that's smoking a pipe and has a really fucked up nose.
00:34:14
Speaker
He may have been a character in that Star Wars mobile game I was playing for years.
00:34:19
Speaker
He shows up in a bunch of things.
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:23
Speaker
But yeah, he is Jericho drank his victims brain matter or soup of life, as he called it.
00:34:31
Speaker
Jesus.
00:34:31
Speaker
He preyed on murderous thieves and thugs.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:36
Speaker
And he, on the day of Greedo's death, Jericho sensed a strong intoxicating soup of life from a human.
00:34:44
Speaker
And then he was, Jericho's attention was drawn upon his discovery of Han Solo's presence.
00:34:50
Speaker
Sensing a strong soup and wearer.
00:34:54
Speaker
of the bounty on his head jericho planned to make his move but the smuggler departed from tatooine before he could act ah i know i've read him and something uh yeah i know that name so yes i wasn't making it up no uh he's dan uh danic jericho or uh the uh the the luck eater uh they call him um
00:35:22
Speaker
He just Hannibal's people.
00:35:27
Speaker
I will never get tired of that, of the thing that Star Wars does where they're like, look, we had a million and one characters who pop up on screen very briefly.
00:35:38
Speaker
We did their makeup for hours to get them in that shot.
00:35:41
Speaker
Let's give them a full backstory.
00:35:43
Speaker
Why not?
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:44
Speaker
Why?
00:35:44
Speaker
And it's Timothy Zahn who wrote the story.
00:35:47
Speaker
That's, oh, that, yeah.
00:35:49
Speaker
I think he might be my favorite.
00:35:50
Speaker
Who wrote the specific short story that I'm thinking of.
00:35:54
Speaker
He is an incredible fucking writer in general, but his Star Wars stuff is incredible.
00:36:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:03
Speaker
Anyway, chapter two.
00:36:04
Speaker
Sorry.
00:36:04
Speaker
Chapter two.
00:36:05
Speaker
No, no.
00:36:05
Speaker
I just had to bring it back.
00:36:06
Speaker
That was absolutely worth coming back to.
00:36:08
Speaker
Okay.
00:36:09
Speaker
Chapter two.
00:36:10
Speaker
We're in a briefing room in Ord Mandel.
00:36:12
Speaker
We get a quote about clones having free will.
00:36:18
Speaker
Darman is awoken from his stasis and is assigned to Fi and Niner.
00:36:26
Speaker
The three of them have a meeting with a Jedi Padawan and some sort of strange shapeshifter alien that they do not know.
00:36:35
Speaker
And he just kind of creeps around being creepy.
00:36:38
Speaker
Yeah!
00:36:40
Speaker
He really just adds to the tension of the creepiness in the room.
00:36:44
Speaker
This whole scene is very tense because the Padawan is like talking and giving orders and stuff like that, but also doesn't know what the fuck is going on.
00:36:54
Speaker
Oh, yes, very much so.
00:36:55
Speaker
Somehow simultaneously is like, ooh, don't ask me.
00:36:58
Speaker
I'm just a little boy who doesn't know anything.
00:37:01
Speaker
But then he orders him around.
00:37:02
Speaker
It's...
00:37:05
Speaker
And all these clones know is obey Jedi, no matter how little they may know about what the fuck is going on, which will come into play later.
00:37:14
Speaker
Yes.
00:37:17
Speaker
So finally, we got our fourth squaddy, RC3222, who is not, we don't know his nickname just yet, but he joins them, and he's very badly scarred from the battle.
00:37:29
Speaker
He has refused back to treatment for this elaborate, long, red scar on his face.
00:37:36
Speaker
And so right off the bat, we're like, OK, you're different.
00:37:39
Speaker
Got it.
00:37:41
Speaker
He's not like other clones.
00:37:43
Speaker
Not like the other clones.
00:37:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:37:47
Speaker
So we get our objective.
00:37:49
Speaker
The planet Kulura is neutral but likely to change.
00:37:53
Speaker
It's mostly farmland.
00:37:56
Speaker
There is no government, but it's run by the traitors there through a militia that is led by a Mandalorian named Gez Hogan, who is known for being particularly nasty, brutal kind of a dude.
00:38:11
Speaker
And so it's very early days in the war still.
00:38:15
Speaker
Yes.
00:38:16
Speaker
And so it's like...
00:38:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's right now.
00:38:22
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
00:38:23
Speaker
It is.
00:38:23
Speaker
It is neutral, neutral, but it's trade.
00:38:26
Speaker
It's a trade federation planet for all intents and purposes.
00:38:30
Speaker
Right, right.
00:38:31
Speaker
So and very specifically, what they're meant to do is twofold.
00:38:35
Speaker
They need to go there and apprehend a scientist named this incredible name, even for Star Wars.
00:38:40
Speaker
And I don't mean incredible, but I love it.
00:38:42
Speaker
It's just so over the top.
00:38:45
Speaker
Ovalot Quail Uthon.
00:38:48
Speaker
That is a name.
00:38:49
Speaker
That is three names.
00:38:51
Speaker
She's a scientist and they are meant to capture her and destroy a nanovirus that she is working on.
00:39:00
Speaker
They used to have a Jedi contact there, but they haven't heard from him.
00:39:03
Speaker
They have no idea what's happened.
00:39:04
Speaker
Hasn't checked in.
00:39:06
Speaker
Hasn't checked in.
00:39:07
Speaker
Hasn't checked in.
00:39:09
Speaker
There's no long reach communications that they will be able to do down there.
00:39:13
Speaker
They won't because they don't want their signals to get picked up by the Neimoidian overlords there who are the basically the traitor, the leaders.
00:39:24
Speaker
And they don't want to piss them off.
00:39:25
Speaker
This needs to be super, super covert.
00:39:27
Speaker
Very covert.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:29
Speaker
So any comm stuff is like literally within like 15 meters of each other, which isn't much at all.
00:39:35
Speaker
Oh, and by the way, the nano virus they're working on is aimed specifically at destroying clones.
00:39:42
Speaker
So kind of an important mission they're on.
00:39:47
Speaker
So it's like clear that at some point, because the war hadn't really started quite yet until like there was the attack on Naboo and that was like 10 years earlier.
00:40:01
Speaker
I don't know if the war is full of...
00:40:04
Speaker
full-throated yet until really the clones get involved.
00:40:08
Speaker
But clearly somebody had started this development of this virus knowing that there was a clone army coming.
00:40:15
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:40:17
Speaker
It's super early.
00:40:18
Speaker
Clearly she's got some kind of insider information.
00:40:21
Speaker
Yes.
00:40:24
Speaker
Okay, yeah, side quest, if they can, rescue the Jedi.
00:40:28
Speaker
Please do so, yeah.
00:40:31
Speaker
Yeah, if you got it, it'll give you 500 extra experience if you can pick up that Jedi.
00:40:37
Speaker
But the virus and scientists are the priorities.
00:40:40
Speaker
So they're led to the armory by the Padawan, lots of tasty gun porn.
00:40:45
Speaker
Um, for them to, uh, to enjoy, um, Jusic, the, uh, uh, the Padawan is kind of just as curious about them as they seem to be about him.
00:40:56
Speaker
Like this is clearly his first time really interacting with the clones.
00:40:59
Speaker
Um, and he's kind of asking them about their nature and that kind of thing.
00:41:03
Speaker
Um,
00:41:04
Speaker
He the wounded commando has his I ain't got time to bleed moment or they say, you know, we really need to take care of that fucking giant massive head wound you've got.
00:41:16
Speaker
And and gives gives his nickname, which is Aten, which is I believe they said it was Mandalorian and stubborn.
00:41:22
Speaker
Mandalorian for stubborn.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah, there you go.
00:41:25
Speaker
Which, fun fact, my last name, Erhard, could be translated in German and like, I guess, middle German as stubborn.
00:41:34
Speaker
Oh, I love that.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:36
Speaker
I love that.
00:41:37
Speaker
That's perfect.
00:41:39
Speaker
Erhard.
00:41:40
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:41:41
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:41:45
Speaker
Darman very quickly takes on the munitions role.
00:41:48
Speaker
He sees all the blowy-uppy stuff and goes, yeah, I will have one of each, please.
00:41:52
Speaker
Thank you very much.
00:41:52
Speaker
I like the bombs.
00:41:53
Speaker
Yes.
00:41:55
Speaker
The shapeshifter explains that the Jedi Master that's missing, Fulier, has quote-unquote discipline issues, which totally weirds Darman out, because the idea that a Jedi would be anything other than this master...
00:42:14
Speaker
you know, Buddhist monk is crazy.
00:42:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:16
Speaker
To the clones up until this point in their short, relatively short lives, the Jedi have always been talked about as perfection, you know?
00:42:24
Speaker
Exactly.
00:42:25
Speaker
Exactly.
00:42:25
Speaker
So hearing that is, it's like finding out that Jesus Christ bit his fingernails.
00:42:31
Speaker
It's just, it's not really what you expected to hear.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:37
Speaker
He was a bit of a glutton.
00:42:38
Speaker
What?
00:42:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:39
Speaker
He was a bit of a glutton.
00:42:40
Speaker
I mean, that splitting the fish and the loaves.
00:42:44
Speaker
Right, right.
00:42:45
Speaker
I saw propaganda showing him that's... He ate half of it.
00:42:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:49
Speaker
You know, that's just propaganda.
00:42:51
Speaker
That's just fat-shaming propaganda that they throw up on the cross there.
00:42:56
Speaker
There were lots of people who wanted to eat and chose not to, but they didn't make a stink out of it because they didn't want to make a big deal.
00:43:02
Speaker
They didn't want to draw the attention.
00:43:04
Speaker
Anyway, they ask how much time they have to prep for this mission.
00:43:08
Speaker
And the guy says, oh, eight hours, because that's how long it takes to get to the planet.
00:43:13
Speaker
And we're fucking leaving now.
00:43:15
Speaker
We're leaving.
00:43:15
Speaker
We're going.
00:43:16
Speaker
We're going.
00:43:17
Speaker
Get in the car.
00:43:18
Speaker
So get your iPad.
00:43:19
Speaker
We're going to grandma's.
00:43:22
Speaker
And so we cut to Etain, the world's worst Jedi, hiding out in a barn.
00:43:30
Speaker
She assumes that her master, Fulia, is dead.
00:43:34
Speaker
And she needs to either escape the planet or get word of what's going on off of the planet somehow.
00:43:43
Speaker
She's stolen some building schematics that would be really helpful for this exact mission.
00:43:49
Speaker
And we also learned from her that Gez Hogan is basically a total fucking monster.
Challenges Faced by the Commandos on Kulura
00:43:54
Speaker
She has memories of wandering through villages that were just burnt to a crisp because they just kind of mildly inconvenienced him.
00:44:02
Speaker
Yep.
00:44:03
Speaker
She hears something outside, turns her lightsaber on, but it's just this old woman who has brought her some livestock.
00:44:10
Speaker
Well, no, she brings, she also has livestock, but she's bringing her dinner.
00:44:14
Speaker
She's bringing her dinner and also bringing the livestock into the barn for the night.
00:44:18
Speaker
Right, right.
00:44:20
Speaker
So Attain is very much like Jesus in that sense.
00:44:23
Speaker
In that sense, yes.
00:44:24
Speaker
Seeking shelter in the barn.
00:44:26
Speaker
We find out a little more about Bark, B-A-R-Q, which is like the major crop that that area...
00:44:36
Speaker
It grows and it's kind of like it's like a vegetal.
00:44:39
Speaker
It's like truffles in a way, like it's obscenely expensive.
00:44:43
Speaker
Sure.
00:44:44
Speaker
It's it's you don't get a lot of information on what it is at first.
00:44:48
Speaker
Later on, they'll talk about it being kind of earthy and kind of unpleasant in a way.
00:44:53
Speaker
But but the rich people love it.
00:44:54
Speaker
So it fetches a high price.
00:44:56
Speaker
But none of the farmers themselves could afford it.
00:44:58
Speaker
But she has actually sprinkled a little bit of bark on top of the food that she's brought to Attain.
00:45:05
Speaker
And Attain is like, dude, you can't you that you shouldn't have done this.
00:45:08
Speaker
This is too much.
00:45:09
Speaker
This is this is crazy.
00:45:11
Speaker
And she goes, well, you know, I got it out of the dung that was all over your robe and it seemed a waste.
00:45:18
Speaker
She was using, because she was, in an earlier scene, she had manure all over her, and she was using a handful of bark to, like, chip away at the manure.
00:45:27
Speaker
Oh, that's right, that's right, right, right.
00:45:29
Speaker
So she said, so we gathered it up and put it on.
00:45:32
Speaker
It would be a shame to waste, so knock yourself out.
00:45:35
Speaker
And then kind of cryptically tells her, they're coming.
00:45:40
Speaker
Ooh.
00:45:41
Speaker
So we get that.
00:45:42
Speaker
Ooh.
00:45:44
Speaker
Chapter three, we meet Gez Hogan.
00:45:47
Speaker
He is going to the Neimoidian to see a Neimoidian named Lick Anik.
00:45:55
Speaker
Lick Ankit.
00:45:56
Speaker
Lick Ankit.
00:45:57
Speaker
Ankit.
00:45:57
Speaker
That's it.
00:45:58
Speaker
Ankit.
00:45:58
Speaker
What a name.
00:45:59
Speaker
God.
00:46:05
Speaker
Yeah, he's been, quote unquote, questioning a Jedi for Lick.
00:46:10
Speaker
And he gets there, he's kind of mocked by him.
00:46:13
Speaker
There's some real elitist overtones.
00:46:17
Speaker
And he's got the lightsaber of the Jedi.
00:46:22
Speaker
We do get a heavy implication that he has killed the guy and taken his lightsaber.
00:46:27
Speaker
So he is now in control of a Jedi weapon.
00:46:30
Speaker
Yep.
00:46:31
Speaker
We cut back to Ord Mantell, where the squad, our fully formed four-person commando squad, is basically taking an old rust bucket down.
00:46:44
Speaker
It's like a sprayer, basically.
00:46:47
Speaker
It's like a crop sprayer.
00:46:48
Speaker
They're like, we're trying to keep you guys, like, fucking undercover here.
00:46:53
Speaker
So you're going to have to take this...
00:46:55
Speaker
this ship, this piece of shit down.
00:46:57
Speaker
Luke Skywalker, what a hunk of junk, you know?
00:47:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:03
Speaker
They're going to do that.
00:47:04
Speaker
And it's just like, maybe it'll land, maybe.
00:47:10
Speaker
We find out, this is funny.
00:47:11
Speaker
This is when I first suspected that maybe she was actually, our author, Karen Travis, is a military woman.
00:47:19
Speaker
When they talk about the six Ps.
00:47:22
Speaker
Yes.
00:47:23
Speaker
Which, for those of you who don't know, the six Ps are proper planning prevents piss, proper planning prevents piss poor people.
00:47:32
Speaker
Oh, what is the last one?
00:47:34
Speaker
Performance.
00:47:34
Speaker
Performance.
00:47:35
Speaker
Thank you.
00:47:35
Speaker
Yes.
00:47:36
Speaker
And he changes it to proper planning prevents bad.
00:47:42
Speaker
He goes, the six Ps, sir.
00:47:43
Speaker
Proper planning prevents inadequate performance.
00:47:48
Speaker
That's it.
00:47:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:49
Speaker
Sir.
00:47:53
Speaker
Because I grew up hearing that.
00:47:58
Speaker
It's kind of.
00:47:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:59
Speaker
So and that level of levity kind of raises the hackles of the Padawan in a way.
00:48:08
Speaker
He kind of he kind of gets gets a little shitty with him.
00:48:10
Speaker
And he says, this is real.
00:48:12
Speaker
to them, which you don't need to tell them that, which pisses off Niner.
00:48:19
Speaker
Of course, he's not going to say anything.
00:48:20
Speaker
He's not going to do anything about it.
00:48:21
Speaker
But he's like, yeah, we know that.
00:48:24
Speaker
All of us have lost all of our buddies.
00:48:28
Speaker
We know this isn't real.
00:48:29
Speaker
Atten is not playing well with others.
00:48:31
Speaker
He's very standoffish, kind of storm cloudy, not really, not very, very friendly, not getting along with everybody.
00:48:41
Speaker
Let's see.
00:48:43
Speaker
The Padawan basically tells them, I hope I hope to debrief you later after you get back.
00:48:50
Speaker
And it isn't until he's left that because Niner goes, what?
00:48:54
Speaker
Of course he does.
00:48:54
Speaker
Why would he?
00:48:55
Speaker
And Niner realizes what he meant was good luck.
00:48:57
Speaker
It was his way of saying good luck.
00:48:59
Speaker
Right.
00:49:00
Speaker
Which I got I got a real kick out of that.
00:49:03
Speaker
It cuts to Itain and the villagers.
00:49:06
Speaker
They are inside for the night to avoid Gedans, which are we get more and more about them.
00:49:13
Speaker
They're basically rats.
00:49:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:14
Speaker
Or jackals or something.
00:49:17
Speaker
I was like, I started picturing them as like the attitude of rats, but at the size of capybaras.
00:49:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:27
Speaker
That's a good way of looking at it.
00:49:28
Speaker
Like if capybaras weren't chill as fuck.
00:49:31
Speaker
Yes.
00:49:32
Speaker
Yes.
00:49:32
Speaker
And they had more of like that rat, you know, rat mode attitude.
00:49:37
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:49:37
Speaker
That's what you would.
00:49:39
Speaker
I totally agree.
00:49:39
Speaker
That's perfect.
00:49:40
Speaker
And they're and they're and they all and they they basically swarm things that are way bigger than them and try to eat them.
00:49:47
Speaker
And they're most active at night.
00:49:48
Speaker
So basically everyone has to lock everything up.
00:49:50
Speaker
You can't be out at night because the G'dans will fuck you up.
00:49:54
Speaker
They will just munch you down.
00:49:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:56
Speaker
There's like a reference to like children being killed by G'dans or whatever.
00:50:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:02
Speaker
Nasty customers.
00:50:05
Speaker
It's a is kind of eating her dinner.
00:50:07
Speaker
She's not really she's not really her poop dinner.
00:50:10
Speaker
Yeah, her poop dinner.
00:50:12
Speaker
And she gets a, I just felt a loss in the force moment and realizes that's probably her master who has died.
00:50:22
Speaker
She senses that someone has gone from the force and it must be him because on this planet could only probably be him.
00:50:28
Speaker
Right.
00:50:29
Speaker
And starts considering the cryptic, they're coming message from the old woman.
00:50:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:36
Speaker
And an after is kind of just getting more and more scared by the sounds of movement outside.
00:50:43
Speaker
And that's actually the end of my second notebook.
00:50:47
Speaker
That's the end of your notebook.
00:50:48
Speaker
That's the end of your second pixel-lit notebook?
00:50:51
Speaker
Yep.
00:50:52
Speaker
Got the other one up here.
00:50:53
Speaker
So that was the end of my second pixel-lit notebook.
00:50:55
Speaker
So.
00:50:56
Speaker
Jesus.
00:50:57
Speaker
Starting a fresh one.
00:50:58
Speaker
Fresh one.
00:50:59
Speaker
Fresh one.
00:51:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:51:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:51:03
Speaker
It needs a sticker on it.
00:51:04
Speaker
I know.
00:51:05
Speaker
I know.
00:51:05
Speaker
I've got, I've got, you can see, because I'm basically a middle school girl.
00:51:11
Speaker
I'm obsessed with my stickers.
00:51:13
Speaker
Yep.
00:51:14
Speaker
And I put all my stickers in my books.
00:51:16
Speaker
And this one's so fresh, it doesn't have a single sticker on it yet.
00:51:19
Speaker
And I'm glowing with anticipation of what will be the first.
00:51:25
Speaker
Something to peel off the little back end.
00:51:28
Speaker
Oh, the beauty of it all.
00:51:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:33
Speaker
We cut to the commando squad undercover in the rust bucket.
00:51:37
Speaker
They pass through security, claiming that all they've got is farming equipment on there.
00:51:42
Speaker
We get a little more weapon porn.
00:51:44
Speaker
They are carrying a lot more gear than they normally do.
00:51:48
Speaker
I think they said that usually they'll carry like 25 kilos on their back, which is a considerable amount.
00:51:54
Speaker
And they're all stacked to the gills with double that.
00:51:57
Speaker
Uh, so they're, they're, it's a little odd, uh, and cumbersome to say the very least.
00:52:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:03
Speaker
Um, an engine, uh, one of their engines goes out when it sucks up a bunch of birds.
00:52:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:11
Speaker
If you're wondering how well, right off the bat, this mission is going, it's going shit.
00:52:19
Speaker
I'm surprised FUBAR, as an acronym, doesn't make an appearance in this book.
00:52:23
Speaker
I can't believe they didn't bring up FUBAR.
00:52:25
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:52:27
Speaker
Maybe that one's not in the military reserves over in Britain.
00:52:31
Speaker
But yeah, so the fucking birds take down this rust bucket and they start to crash.
00:52:38
Speaker
So they are being ordered to jump.
00:52:41
Speaker
They're getting all their shit together.
00:52:42
Speaker
Niner, the sergeant, orders Darman to jump.
00:52:44
Speaker
But Darman really wants to salvage more of the gear than he should.
00:52:50
Speaker
He's literally trying to strap it to the back of his legs and shit like that.
00:52:54
Speaker
And he doesn't want to lose anything.
00:52:57
Speaker
Darman wants to take more of the gear with them.
00:53:01
Speaker
He doesn't want to waste it.
00:53:02
Speaker
He's literally strapping it to the back of his legs and shit.
00:53:06
Speaker
And he wants to salvage as much of it as possible.
00:53:08
Speaker
And Niner's screaming at him to go.
00:53:11
Speaker
And so he just literally shoves Niner out the goddamn thing and listens to him cussing him out all the way down.
00:53:20
Speaker
It's kind of great.
00:53:22
Speaker
He finally loads himself up and jumps.
00:53:24
Speaker
And the droid who is piloting the rust bucket, he's watching it go down and basically has this moment of realization where he says, you know, we're better than the droids.
00:53:37
Speaker
Everyone seems to say so.
00:53:39
Speaker
But we're just as expendable as they are.
00:53:44
Speaker
In many ways, I am no different than a droid.
00:53:45
Speaker
And this is existential crisis number four.
00:53:48
Speaker
five or six by now.
00:53:52
Speaker
He slams into a tree, blacks out.
00:53:55
Speaker
He is out.
00:53:55
Speaker
Chapter four.
00:53:57
Speaker
Chapter four.
00:53:58
Speaker
Chapter four.
00:53:59
Speaker
Is he dead?
00:54:00
Speaker
We don't know yet.
00:54:01
Speaker
We don't know yet.
00:54:01
Speaker
Well, we don't know yet.
00:54:02
Speaker
Exactly.
00:54:02
Speaker
We don't know yet, but no, he's not dead.
00:54:04
Speaker
He's not dead.
00:54:04
Speaker
He's the main character.
00:54:06
Speaker
We cut to the other three who are not Darman, and they are hauling their shit out.
00:54:13
Speaker
And Niner is hauling his parachute, grumbling to himself about what a piece of shit Darvin is, basically.
00:54:20
Speaker
And watches the ship explode and then suddenly is kind of worried that Darvin didn't make it.
00:54:25
Speaker
That's wild, though, when you think that we really don't get a lot of, like, fucking, like, just straight up paratrooper action in Star Wars.
00:54:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:54:35
Speaker
He's putting away a literal parachute.
00:54:37
Speaker
It's...
00:54:39
Speaker
It's kind of wild.
00:54:41
Speaker
My dad was a paratrooper, and I remember we'd go and watch him doing these jumps, and there was a whole thing you had to do with your gear and everything.
00:54:47
Speaker
And that's basically what he's doing here.
00:54:49
Speaker
I agree.
00:54:49
Speaker
I thought that was a really neat detail.
00:54:53
Speaker
So, yeah, he's worried that Darman didn't make it.
00:54:56
Speaker
We get a really funny moment where the G'dans notice him, and they all start to try and chomp on him, but they're doing nothing, so he just kind of leaves a little...
00:55:03
Speaker
So it's just him like trying to clean up his gear while these little monsters are like trying to shoot.
00:55:08
Speaker
Putting away his shoot, you know, his fucking rodents are chewing on his arm.
00:55:12
Speaker
Chewing on him and not getting, and basically one by one going, there's no fucking point in stopping.
00:55:17
Speaker
Um...
00:55:19
Speaker
He's trying to triangulate their position.
00:55:21
Speaker
He has no idea where they are.
00:55:23
Speaker
Finds Fi and Atten at a meeting point that they had set up.
00:55:28
Speaker
They have several rendezvous points that they're going to be going to throughout this.
00:55:33
Speaker
And they, of course, realize Darman and most of the explosives as a result are missing.
00:55:39
Speaker
Um, Etten's still kind of being a prick about finding Darman.
00:55:43
Speaker
He's, you know, he's kind of, he's like, he's probably dead.
00:55:46
Speaker
Why are we bothering?
00:55:47
Speaker
And Edmund Reiner's very, um, you know, heavy on, no, we're not giving up on him.
00:55:54
Speaker
We're not giving up on him.
00:55:55
Speaker
No.
00:55:55
Speaker
No.
00:55:56
Speaker
And it's just more of the fact that these guys, this is basically all the family that they have.
00:56:03
Speaker
So they really plant that home here.
00:56:07
Speaker
We cut to Itain and the farmer, Burhan.
00:56:12
Speaker
They are surveying an explosion in their bark field, which we can only assume is the...
00:56:19
Speaker
The rust bucket.
00:56:21
Speaker
It's the rust bucket, yeah.
00:56:22
Speaker
And it's just, it's just like destroyed this huge portion of his yearly crops.
00:56:28
Speaker
And he's fucked.
00:56:29
Speaker
He's absolutely fucked.
00:56:31
Speaker
And let's see.
00:56:32
Speaker
It's being inspected.
00:56:33
Speaker
The crater's being inspected by some of the mercenary militia that work there.
00:56:38
Speaker
And I really like this line, by the way, from
Civilian Impact of the Star Wars Conflict
00:56:41
Speaker
The Farmer.
00:56:41
Speaker
And it's a really interesting, and I think something that Karen Travis really does well
00:56:48
Speaker
in this book is like i that the movies don't necessarily touch on that because like the movies are like oh there's the bad guys and the good guys and they're like yay whatever and the farmer says to attain can't you have your fight on someone else's planet don't you think i have enough problems absolutely like this doesn't your your fucking galactic bullshit doesn't affect me right
00:57:15
Speaker
And I agree with you.
00:57:16
Speaker
They don't really touch on that all that much in the movies.
00:57:21
Speaker
But this is just the beginning of that.
00:57:22
Speaker
You get to see like the civilian life.
00:57:25
Speaker
It's like I don't it's it's like how it works in real life.
00:57:28
Speaker
Frankly, you know, it's like some of us are more politically inclined.
00:57:31
Speaker
Some of us read the news.
00:57:32
Speaker
Some of us pay attention to world events.
00:57:34
Speaker
But most people are just trying to get by and they barely know what the fuck is going on.
00:57:39
Speaker
They don't know.
00:57:40
Speaker
So who or if anyone to pull for, they don't have that hard of opinions on things.
00:57:45
Speaker
And they would just wish that if you're going to have a huge, massive fucking battle, do it over there.
00:57:51
Speaker
Do it the next house over.
00:57:53
Speaker
No, I totally agree.
00:57:54
Speaker
I think that's terrific.
00:57:56
Speaker
Militia gets an urgent call away.
00:57:59
Speaker
And Itain finds the remains of a Republic astrodroid in the rust bucket there and realizes that it's a rescue party.
00:58:10
Speaker
Cut to.
00:58:11
Speaker
Meanwhile.
00:58:15
Speaker
Darmond, he has dug himself into a pit and is watching the road.
00:58:20
Speaker
He's not sure where he is.
00:58:22
Speaker
His leg is badly damaged.
00:58:24
Speaker
He's treating it with bacta.
00:58:25
Speaker
He's hurting.
00:58:26
Speaker
He's hearing voices and it's the militia.
00:58:28
Speaker
They are searching.
00:58:30
Speaker
And one of them just kind of comes straight away.
00:58:34
Speaker
for him to the point where he's literally standing on top of his cover and, uh, Darman fucking assassins creeds the shit out of him.
00:58:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:43
Speaker
With the vibro blade.
00:58:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:44
Speaker
Vibro blades him and, uh, and then shoots the other one, uh, in the head and takes them both out.
00:58:51
Speaker
And, uh, and, and he realizes he sees these tracks and the Gadan who have also been like, uh,
00:58:57
Speaker
Chomping on him and trying to get his attention.
00:58:59
Speaker
They basically given him away because their tracks leading up to where he is.
00:59:02
Speaker
That's stop.
00:59:03
Speaker
Right.
00:59:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:04
Speaker
So fucking good Dan anyway.
00:59:07
Speaker
And then, but he, then he notices, well, the one good thing about the good Dan is a cleanup.
00:59:12
Speaker
See, he doesn't need to bury these bodies because they swarm the dead bodies and, and basically go to work disposing of them.
00:59:20
Speaker
Um,
00:59:20
Speaker
He does realize that one of the Weequay, though, that he thought he had killed is still alive, and he regrets that, not doing a clean kill.
00:59:30
Speaker
And he makes a point to kill him before the G'dan move on to him, because that would be a horrible way to die.
00:59:37
Speaker
And we find out that this is the first time.
00:59:40
Speaker
He's never really seen death up close.
00:59:42
Speaker
Right.
00:59:44
Speaker
I love this moment.
00:59:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:46
Speaker
They drilled him to.
00:59:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:48
Speaker
So the last last paragraph here is they drilled him to kill and kill and kill, but nobody had thought to teach him what he was supposed to feel afterward.
00:59:56
Speaker
He did feel something, but he wasn't certain what it is.
00:59:59
Speaker
He'd think about it later.
01:00:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:00:02
Speaker
And that's a great line right there, too, because that applies for a lot of the shit that goes on.
01:00:06
Speaker
I'll think about it later.
01:00:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:08
Speaker
And yeah, he's never seen it up close.
01:00:11
Speaker
Every kill he's ever done in the Geonosian campaign was, you know, at best he saw at the end of a scope.
01:00:18
Speaker
You know, he never really got up close and dirty like this.
01:00:21
Speaker
So he's feeling some feelings.
01:00:22
Speaker
Right.
01:00:24
Speaker
Let's see.
01:00:25
Speaker
We cut to chapter five, and Darman is setting up a post at the tallest point in a certain area he's at to observe and try to figure out where he is.
01:00:39
Speaker
We get a lot of moments here of, and I count this in with the existential meltdowns, just in awe of how beautiful the nature around him is.
01:00:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:48
Speaker
And if any of you have never been in areas that are just largely farmland, they can be quite comical in a way if you go out to like cornfields and stuff.
01:00:58
Speaker
And it's just just endless, endless corn.
01:01:00
Speaker
And it's kind of hilarious.
01:01:01
Speaker
Right.
01:01:01
Speaker
But they are tremendously beautiful at the same time.
01:01:05
Speaker
And and he's seeing that for the first time.
01:01:07
Speaker
He's never really left.
01:01:09
Speaker
He went to Geonosia.
01:01:10
Speaker
What's the name of the planet?
01:01:11
Speaker
Not Geonosia.
01:01:12
Speaker
Geonosis.
01:01:13
Speaker
Geonosis.
01:01:14
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:14
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:14
Speaker
So he had he had he had lived on Camino.
01:01:18
Speaker
Yes.
01:01:18
Speaker
And then he went to Geonosis for his first battle.
01:01:22
Speaker
But he hadn't really seen anything like this.
01:01:25
Speaker
Right.
01:01:25
Speaker
You know.
01:01:25
Speaker
Right.
01:01:26
Speaker
And everything he saw was like through a simulation or something like that.
01:01:30
Speaker
So he's like out in nature and having this like I am Groot moment of like watching, you know,
01:01:37
Speaker
daisies grow and all that shit um it's it's it's kind of sweet um he uh we get a little background on the bark uh sort of thing i i kind of think of it as caviar uh people go absolutely apeshit for it but myself and most other regular ass people go what the fuck no what's going on here it's basically shit well every time that and also every time they say bark i just think of the root beer
01:02:04
Speaker
Oh, well, it is kind of.
01:02:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense.
01:02:05
Speaker
That makes sense.
01:02:07
Speaker
And I don't like that either.
01:02:08
Speaker
It's one of the main things that my wife criticizes me for because she is obsessed with root beer.
01:02:13
Speaker
She I mean, that'll be why you end up getting divorced.
01:02:16
Speaker
Probably.
01:02:17
Speaker
Probably.
01:02:18
Speaker
You're of your.
01:02:19
Speaker
Yeah, it'll be bark and John Carpenter's the thing relationship forever.
01:02:29
Speaker
He starts questioning the wisdom of his superiors and the orders.
Darman's Existential Crisis
01:02:35
Speaker
Cue Billy Eilish's What Was I Made For to start playing Existential Meltdown number 26.
01:02:43
Speaker
Yep.
01:02:45
Speaker
In the distance, he sees some farms burning and the militia is responsible.
01:02:51
Speaker
He wants to do something.
01:02:52
Speaker
Civilians are freaking out, but he doesn't want to make it worse.
01:02:57
Speaker
He shouldn't do something, but he realizes that these civilians are being punished because of him.
01:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
01:03:03
Speaker
He doesn't want to do it right up until the moment he does.
01:03:06
Speaker
And so finally he just starts shooting and he kills everyone in record time.
01:03:12
Speaker
Pure easy mode, you know, full vats, just headshot, headshot, headshot.
01:03:17
Speaker
360 degree no scope.
01:03:20
Speaker
No scope, exactly.
01:03:20
Speaker
It just...
01:03:22
Speaker
Takes them all out, checks all the barns, makes sure that no one else is there.
01:03:26
Speaker
And this is a Republic commando with, from what I understand, he has a torn ACL.
01:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, he's fucked up.
01:03:34
Speaker
He's not at his best.
01:03:36
Speaker
And he just destroys everybody.
01:03:38
Speaker
And he goes to one of the civilians and they're all freaking out at the sight of him.
01:03:43
Speaker
They're all terrified of him.
01:03:44
Speaker
This goes back to what you were talking about before, Kevin, where it's just like, and everyone, they associate him with Hocam.
01:03:51
Speaker
which we'll get more of it.
01:03:53
Speaker
You know, he realizes his armor is similar to Mandalorian armor, and that's the only thing they can associate him with.
01:03:59
Speaker
So they associate him with Hogan, and they're all scared of him.
01:04:04
Speaker
And we do get a moment where one of them says, we don't want your help.
01:04:08
Speaker
Fucking go.
01:04:10
Speaker
Fucking go.
01:04:11
Speaker
You're the reason they're here.
01:04:13
Speaker
Right, exactly.
01:04:14
Speaker
And he literally has a moment where he's like,
01:04:16
Speaker
They didn't train us how to deal with ungrateful civilians.
01:04:19
Speaker
This is weird.
01:04:22
Speaker
It's a true, like, we'll be greeted as liberators kind of moment.
01:04:25
Speaker
He doesn't realize just how he thought he saved these people.
01:04:29
Speaker
And he did.
01:04:30
Speaker
But at the same time, this wouldn't be happening if it weren't for him.
01:04:33
Speaker
And he kind of knows that.
01:04:35
Speaker
It's just a mess.
01:04:36
Speaker
There's a part that I highlighted.
01:04:39
Speaker
that he's remembering from his training officer, Skirata.
01:04:44
Speaker
Don't worry.
01:04:46
Speaker
It's your forebrain shutting down.
01:04:47
Speaker
Just a fear reflex.
01:04:49
Speaker
You're bred from sociopathic stock.
01:04:51
Speaker
You'll fight just fine.
01:04:52
Speaker
You'll carry on fighting when normal men have turned into basket cases.
01:04:57
Speaker
I love that.
01:04:59
Speaker
You're bred from sociopathic stock.
01:05:02
Speaker
That is a great.
01:05:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:03
Speaker
And they are.
01:05:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:06
Speaker
It doesn't solve anything.
01:05:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:08
Speaker
So he's confused and just he's left with a lot to think about.
01:05:13
Speaker
And then he realizes he sees like a reflection of himself.
01:05:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:18
Speaker
And he realizes that the clone armor is designed after the Mandalorian.
01:05:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:24
Speaker
Battle armor.
01:05:25
Speaker
And he really I was like, oh, everybody fucking is terrified of guess.
01:05:29
Speaker
Okay.
01:05:29
Speaker
No wonder they're afraid of me.
01:05:33
Speaker
He gets it.
01:05:33
Speaker
He's a scary looking dude.
01:05:35
Speaker
They don't know who he is.
01:05:37
Speaker
The clone troopers are not a common – are not common knowledge for most people at this point.
01:05:43
Speaker
So, yeah, it makes perfect sense.
01:05:45
Speaker
We cut to the best – the rest of the squad.
01:05:48
Speaker
I wrote – I thought I wrote the best of the squad.
01:05:50
Speaker
No, the rest of the squad.
01:05:51
Speaker
It was the best of squads.
01:05:53
Speaker
It was the worst of squads.
01:05:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:56
Speaker
They're hiding from detention, detention, detection.
01:06:00
Speaker
They are there.
01:06:01
Speaker
People are still looking for them.
01:06:02
Speaker
They are hiding.
01:06:06
Speaker
And they're they're on their way to one of the rendezvous points.
01:06:10
Speaker
Atten is still kind of being a piece of shit.
01:06:12
Speaker
But then he surprises Niner by offhandedly commenting.
01:06:17
Speaker
I've been Darman, suggesting that he be.
01:06:21
Speaker
actually might understand what's going on more than, than he lets on, uh, the speeder that they are, that is searching for them locks on to Niner and Niner goes, Oh fucking shit.
01:06:32
Speaker
And, uh, then basically has to blow it up and has a, uh, has a run the fuck away from an explosion action movie moment.
01:06:40
Speaker
Um,
01:06:42
Speaker
And Fee starts giving him a little shit, and Niner starts getting kind of paranoid, like, because he saw me run from that thing.
01:06:48
Speaker
Is he accusing me of being a bad leader that I was running from?
01:06:52
Speaker
And Fee's just, like, giving him shit.
01:06:54
Speaker
And so they check the wreckage together.
01:06:56
Speaker
And Atten comes around with a fucking computer from inside of the speeder and says, I might be able to hack this.
01:07:04
Speaker
So that's that's their good.
01:07:05
Speaker
That's right.
01:07:06
Speaker
That's their next mission there.
01:07:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:07
Speaker
And I think I think it's funny because Fee is like, yeah, that'll make a good marker, you know, with all that smoke and shit.
01:07:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:18
Speaker
good.
01:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, because they want to leave behind markers for Darmond in case he shows up.
01:07:22
Speaker
They would do it.
01:07:23
Speaker
That way he'll know that we were there.
01:07:25
Speaker
This will do.
01:07:26
Speaker
That'll probably do a good job.
01:07:29
Speaker
I wonder if he'll know it was us.
01:07:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:33
Speaker
We cut to Hogan with his mercenary senior staff, let's say.
01:07:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:39
Speaker
We get basically informed that these people
Hogan's Mercenaries and Republic's Arrival
01:07:42
Speaker
suck.
01:07:42
Speaker
They're the lowest low.
01:07:46
Speaker
He doesn't have a lot of options, to be honest.
01:07:48
Speaker
He's not being funded a lot by Ankit.
01:07:51
Speaker
And so the only people he can really afford are people who otherwise cannot take any other gigs, which means they've got a criminal record as long as my arm.
01:07:59
Speaker
Right.
01:08:01
Speaker
so they're not the cream of the crop here.
01:08:03
Speaker
And he's pissed at them because they torched yet another farm.
01:08:07
Speaker
Um, he explains to them that you need to warn these people first.
01:08:13
Speaker
And, and if, cause they're, they're trying to say like, Hey, we were just like, just in case we're trying to show them what happens.
01:08:18
Speaker
If they, if they decide to hide one of these troopers, because no, no, you fucking warn them.
01:08:23
Speaker
And then if they do, uh, you know,
01:08:27
Speaker
hold somebody.
01:08:28
Speaker
Then you burn the place to the ground.
01:08:30
Speaker
So otherwise you're just making them hate you right off the bat and they're going to hate you.
01:08:36
Speaker
Their kids are going to hate you.
01:08:38
Speaker
And my fucking life is going to be terrible.
01:08:40
Speaker
And he's like, basically, do we all understand the difference between a warning and a punishment?
01:08:45
Speaker
And they all go, yes, teacher.
01:08:47
Speaker
And the mercenary that he's been berating, he cuts his head off with a lightsaber, just flick, flick of the wrist.
01:08:54
Speaker
And he explains to the crowd that,
01:08:56
Speaker
That was a punishment for fucking up those farms.
01:09:00
Speaker
But for all of you, for him, for the rest of you, it's a warning.
01:09:04
Speaker
Do we see the difference?
01:09:06
Speaker
It's such an amazing moment.
01:09:09
Speaker
I love this scene so much.
01:09:14
Speaker
It was so good.
01:09:18
Speaker
So, yeah, it's a terrific, terrific big bad moment.
01:09:22
Speaker
We just see how brutal he is and how clever he is.
01:09:26
Speaker
I love it.
01:09:27
Speaker
You get a Mandalorian with little to no, like, he's, yeah, sociopathic stock.
01:09:35
Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
01:09:37
Speaker
You get a Mandalorian, you know, full battle armor Mandalorian who now has a lightsaber.
01:09:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah, who loves this lightsaber.
01:09:46
Speaker
loves it he's like because he like he checks his clothes out and everything it's like oh it cauterized the neck immediately my clothes aren't covered in blood this fucking sword rules all right i'll take it he's pretty clean no blood none rather liked this lightsaber now yeah
01:10:05
Speaker
It's great.
01:10:06
Speaker
It's a great expansion of this character.
01:10:08
Speaker
I love it.
01:10:09
Speaker
He's still missing some of his mercenaries.
01:10:13
Speaker
He knows that the Republic's there.
01:10:15
Speaker
He knows that shit is going down.
01:10:16
Speaker
And he's actually kind of anticipating... No, Ripley, for Christ's sake.
01:10:21
Speaker
She got up here and she likes to stand directly on my notebook.
01:10:24
Speaker
It's like, I really need that.
01:10:25
Speaker
What if I gave you this notebook?
01:10:26
Speaker
I'm done with this notebook.
01:10:27
Speaker
Here.
01:10:28
Speaker
Here you go.
01:10:29
Speaker
Stand on that.
01:10:29
Speaker
Okay.
01:10:31
Speaker
Oh, she wants my notebook.
01:10:32
Speaker
No, that's... Here, I'll open it.
01:10:34
Speaker
It's like a computer screen.
01:10:36
Speaker
They're gonna... Here, do that.
01:10:37
Speaker
Okay, anyway.
01:10:39
Speaker
Jerk.
01:10:41
Speaker
So, rather than being particularly afraid that the Republic is coming for him, he's kind of pumped because his reputation as a Mandalorian is in the shitter.
01:10:55
Speaker
He sees this whole assignment as kind of beneath him.
01:10:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:00
Speaker
He's very much a Marty McFly of a Mandalorian where you really just got to call him chicken to get.
01:11:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:11
Speaker
He's ready.
01:11:12
Speaker
And hope that he'll just fuck you up.
01:11:14
Speaker
No, that's absolutely it.
01:11:16
Speaker
So he's looking forward to this.
01:11:18
Speaker
He sees this as an opportunity to show that he's still got some worth.
01:11:21
Speaker
He's still got some skill as a Mando.
01:11:26
Speaker
Chapter six, we open with the farmer trying to kick Itain out.
01:11:30
Speaker
This is all your fucking fault.
01:11:32
Speaker
Get out.
01:11:33
Speaker
Never darken my towels ever again.
01:11:37
Speaker
Itain tries to use the Jedi mind trick on him.
01:11:42
Speaker
She said, she's like, actually, you want me to stay?
01:11:44
Speaker
And he looks her in the eye and says, no, I don't get the fuck out.
01:11:49
Speaker
One more piece of evidence that Itain, worst Jedi of all time.
01:11:53
Speaker
I have it written here, terrible Jedi.
01:11:55
Speaker
Terrible Jedi.
01:11:56
Speaker
Terrible Jedi.
01:11:58
Speaker
But then the old woman comes in and kind of saves her bacon and explains, like, look, after this is all said and done, we'll need her because the Jedi can, like, help grow crops.
01:12:07
Speaker
And Itain goes, yeah, you know, like, outwardly she's going, uh-huh, uh-huh.
01:12:14
Speaker
In her head she's like, uh-huh.
01:12:15
Speaker
I'm not going to do that.
01:12:16
Speaker
I don't want to do that.
01:12:18
Speaker
I've heard of Jedi who do that.
01:12:20
Speaker
I can't imagine a worse hell.
01:12:21
Speaker
I know that's theoretically probable or possible.
01:12:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's possible, not probable.
01:12:29
Speaker
I don't know.
01:12:30
Speaker
I don't want to do it, and I don't think I could do it.
01:12:33
Speaker
Right, exactly.
01:12:34
Speaker
Exactly.
01:12:35
Speaker
Although we find out that basically the only time she can do well as a Jedi is when like all the conditions are perfect.
01:12:42
Speaker
And if she's just sitting there in a field able to like hum to the plants, that might be the only thing she's good at with this shit.
01:12:49
Speaker
Um,
01:12:50
Speaker
She she goes to the old woman and basically says, like, please explain yourself.
01:12:55
Speaker
And her name is Jinnart.
01:12:56
Speaker
Yes.
01:12:57
Speaker
Yes.
01:12:57
Speaker
Jinnart.
01:12:58
Speaker
And she says, you know, you said they're coming.
01:13:01
Speaker
You want to maybe clarify on that?
01:13:04
Speaker
She does not.
01:13:06
Speaker
But for whatever reason, she starts to have a sense of family with this woman.
01:13:11
Speaker
She has a sense of trust in this woman that she can't quite put her finger on yet.
01:13:17
Speaker
We cut to Darman in a huge field.
01:13:21
Speaker
He sends a little micro droid remote ahead to basically scout the area ahead of him.
01:13:30
Speaker
He's kind of nervous about it because it's got a lot of public tech and information on that thing.
01:13:34
Speaker
And if it gets caught, he could be fucked.
01:13:36
Speaker
But he doesn't anyway.
01:13:37
Speaker
Because he figures he might be alone for a good long while.
01:13:40
Speaker
So he's thinking, OK, I might have to find out if Gadan is good to eat.
01:13:44
Speaker
That'll be interesting.
01:13:47
Speaker
He spends a lot of time fantasizing about cake, which I can relate with.
01:13:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:52
Speaker
I mean, I do that.
01:13:53
Speaker
Oh, God, yes, absolutely.
01:13:55
Speaker
It made me think a little bit of...
01:13:58
Speaker
The, oh, what was it?
01:13:59
Speaker
The Brandon Sanderson thing we read.
01:14:01
Speaker
The Infinity Blade thing.
01:14:04
Speaker
And he was like, I'm going to have a whole pie.
01:14:07
Speaker
It's that kind of, it's that kind of feeling.
01:14:10
Speaker
And a whole pie.
01:14:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's really cute.
01:14:13
Speaker
And like you find out like that basically their training officer, like their main trainer, who they, who's basically their father figure, would, uh,
01:14:23
Speaker
like sneak them little delicacies and shit like that, even though they weren't supposed to have it.
01:14:27
Speaker
The Kaminoans were like very strict about what they were supposed to eat.
01:14:31
Speaker
But the training officer, the actual military dude that trained his batch of clones would be like, you want a little cake as a treat?
01:14:41
Speaker
And you can't help, but they don't say this, but I can't help but imagine that for all intents and purposes, this is like a little Debbie snack cake.
01:14:52
Speaker
Like it's not that big of a fucking deal.
01:14:54
Speaker
They got it for like 79 cents at the gas station on the way there.
01:14:57
Speaker
It's a fucking Twinkie.
01:14:59
Speaker
Right, right, exactly.
01:15:01
Speaker
But because these guys are basically used to eating like nutrition paste and shit like that, it's the greatest, most decadent thing in the world.
01:15:09
Speaker
And now here, Darmond is fucking in a field in the middle of nowhere fantasizing about this cake.
01:15:14
Speaker
It's really cute.
01:15:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:17
Speaker
Not long after that, he finds out that his remote has been eaten by a bird, possibly one of the same kinds of birds that brought their ship down in the first place.
01:15:28
Speaker
He can basically hear it screaming and cawing revenge over his head.
01:15:34
Speaker
He crosses the field eventually.
01:15:36
Speaker
He wants to rest, but he keeps pressing himself.
01:15:38
Speaker
We get more of nature stuff.
01:15:40
Speaker
And finally, he's kind of playing drill sergeant in his head, and he's imagining what a drill sergeant would say to him.
01:15:48
Speaker
And finally, he realizes this drill sergeant would point out that you being exhausted is not going to help anybody.
01:15:54
Speaker
You do need to rest.
01:15:55
Speaker
So he finds a pond or something, and he bathes in that.
01:16:00
Speaker
But then he cleans his armor off and then puts it all right back on because you're
01:16:04
Speaker
I'm gonna sleep in my armor.
01:16:05
Speaker
Exactly.
01:16:06
Speaker
Yeah, and he's also, suddenly he's paranoid about contamination because he notices these bugs in the field and they just kind of die.
01:16:17
Speaker
And he assumes there must be some sort of poison in the air, some sort of biological weapon.
01:16:22
Speaker
And he throws on his helmet and does the pressure seals and stuff.
01:16:25
Speaker
And the helmet's like, no, this is
Dharmon's Thoughts on Bugs and Humanity
01:16:28
Speaker
fine.
01:16:28
Speaker
And he doesn't quite get there, but he kind of starts to realize...
01:16:33
Speaker
these bugs just die.
01:16:35
Speaker
They just, they're just like, they, they reached the end of their life cycle or something.
01:16:38
Speaker
Right.
01:16:38
Speaker
And, and, and that kind of sad to him.
01:16:40
Speaker
He can't quite put his finger on that.
01:16:42
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:42
Speaker
And so he saves them in a bottle.
01:16:46
Speaker
It's, it's so, there's so much humanity in this section and I really love it.
01:16:51
Speaker
So much.
01:16:52
Speaker
And the,
01:16:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's just a really interesting whole segment when just Dharmon's little existential nightmare segments.
01:17:02
Speaker
It's fascinating to see what he's going through.
01:17:05
Speaker
He even creates his own, at one point he creates his own acronym.
01:17:12
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:17:14
Speaker
NFQ, normal for Kilara.
01:17:16
Speaker
Yes.
01:17:17
Speaker
That's right.
01:17:18
Speaker
I was like, I'm just going to assume that this is normal for this planet.
01:17:22
Speaker
Yeah, I'm just going to go, what choice do I have?
01:17:24
Speaker
This has got to be NFQ.
01:17:26
Speaker
That was a nice touch.
Hocan and Ovalot Quail Uthon's Plans
01:17:28
Speaker
At first, he can't sleep at all because his helmet keeps picking up movement, but eventually he does fall asleep.
01:17:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:35
Speaker
We cut to Hocan, who has been summoned by, let's say it again, Ovalot Quail Uthon.
01:17:42
Speaker
Who in my head is voiced by Shora Agdishlu, who is she is the she's the Indian woman with the very like very husky smoker voice.
01:18:02
Speaker
Yes, I love her.
01:18:04
Speaker
Yes.
01:18:05
Speaker
Yes.
01:18:05
Speaker
Good call.
01:18:06
Speaker
She is the voice for this doctor.
01:18:09
Speaker
Very good choice.
01:18:10
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:18:10
Speaker
Yes.
01:18:12
Speaker
I'm rewriting that in my head canon.
01:18:14
Speaker
Bingo.
01:18:15
Speaker
He's summoned by her.
01:18:17
Speaker
She's this scientist.
01:18:18
Speaker
Now, and that's the thing.
01:18:19
Speaker
She's not quite what I expected because she's a scientist.
01:18:22
Speaker
She's doctor.
01:18:24
Speaker
But...
01:18:26
Speaker
She has this stately kind of regalness to her, this noble way about her.
01:18:31
Speaker
And she's clearly a very, very big player on this planet.
01:18:35
Speaker
Hoken likes her, despite the fact that she develops weapons that are not what he thinks of as real weapons, like nanoviruses and shit like that.
01:18:44
Speaker
Right.
01:18:44
Speaker
But he likes her a lot.
01:18:45
Speaker
He respects her.
01:18:47
Speaker
He likes the way she carries herself and that sort of thing.
01:18:49
Speaker
Now, she's concerned about recent events and her own protection.
01:18:54
Speaker
And Hogan agrees.
01:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, your security is bad.
01:18:57
Speaker
You are vulnerable here.
01:18:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:59
Speaker
Your security is bad.
01:19:00
Speaker
My security is bad.
01:19:03
Speaker
I don't have the troops.
01:19:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:04
Speaker
He's like, you know, Ankit is, you know, and she's like, well, I thought you were supposed to.
01:19:10
Speaker
There's a lot of money, you know, set aside for all this shit.
01:19:14
Speaker
And he goes, well, I'm not getting any of it.
01:19:17
Speaker
So she.
01:19:19
Speaker
She basically suggests, well, maybe we can go around, Ankit.
01:19:23
Speaker
We can get you better resources for this contract that I can set up for you.
01:19:29
Speaker
And you can work for me.
01:19:31
Speaker
Oh, we'll go over Ankit's head for now.
01:19:34
Speaker
She clearly has no love lost between her and that guy.
01:19:38
Speaker
Lick Ankit.
01:19:40
Speaker
Ankit.
01:19:41
Speaker
And so she tells Hoken, she says, she basically tells him about the clones and says, do you know who's fighting for the Republic now?
01:19:48
Speaker
Oh, they're these clones.
01:19:49
Speaker
And he's like, well, that's fucked up.
01:19:50
Speaker
And she goes, yeah, yeah.
01:19:51
Speaker
You ready to hear what's really fucked up about him?
01:19:53
Speaker
You know who they're a clone of?
01:19:55
Speaker
And he goes, no.
01:19:55
Speaker
And she says, Jango Fett.
01:19:57
Speaker
And he...
01:19:59
Speaker
fucking flips out.
01:20:00
Speaker
He's so pissed off.
01:20:01
Speaker
He flips his shit.
01:20:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:03
Speaker
It's just the level of disrespect for one of the greatest Mandalorian warriors of his time.
01:20:08
Speaker
It's horrifying to him on so many levels.
01:20:10
Speaker
And she goes, oh, but you know, and completely off topic, you know, the nano virus I'm working on, it's specifically meant to kill clones.
01:20:19
Speaker
Isn't that fun?
01:20:21
Speaker
And he says, when can I sign on?
01:20:23
Speaker
And she goes, right the fuck now, fuck boy, here you go.
01:20:26
Speaker
Sign on the dotted line.
01:20:29
Speaker
And he's like, yes, I am in now.
01:20:31
Speaker
Yes, everything.
01:20:32
Speaker
And he literally says to her, I would have done this for free.
01:20:35
Speaker
Like, I am in.
01:20:36
Speaker
And she's like, great.
01:20:37
Speaker
I thought you'd say that.
01:20:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's great.
01:20:40
Speaker
I'm still going to pay you, but, you know.
01:20:42
Speaker
I'm still going to pay you.
01:20:43
Speaker
We'll get you a better army.
01:20:44
Speaker
Your mercenaries suck.
01:20:45
Speaker
And he's like, yeah.
01:20:46
Speaker
So she says the nanovirus is meant to kill the clones.
01:20:50
Speaker
And his response is, the kindest solution.
01:20:54
Speaker
Yes.
01:20:54
Speaker
And I...
01:20:56
Speaker
I can't help but agree with them on a certain level.
01:20:59
Speaker
I'm feeling worse and worse for these clones as it goes on.
01:21:02
Speaker
As it goes on, because here's the thing is, well, you know, I'm going to save my thought, my thought on this till after, because this is the last chapter coming up, right?
01:21:12
Speaker
Yes.
01:21:12
Speaker
Chapter seven.
01:21:13
Speaker
I'm going to save my thoughts on it until after this chapter because it kind of reveals some additional context about the clones.
01:21:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:21:21
Speaker
So, yeah.
01:21:22
Speaker
Yeah, we'll get into that.
01:21:23
Speaker
Chapter seven, we cut to Niner and the rest of the squad.
Reflections on Training vs. Reality
01:21:28
Speaker
Niner is considering the differences between their training and real life, and he's basically taking notes.
01:21:34
Speaker
He's like, I've got so many notes I'm going to give to our trainers when we get back.
01:21:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:38
Speaker
We are not.
01:21:39
Speaker
This is bullshit.
01:21:40
Speaker
This is totally not prepared.
01:21:42
Speaker
Not any good.
01:21:44
Speaker
They're they're hiding from some militia forces, the dregs, and they're waiting for them to go.
01:21:48
Speaker
They're all sitting out getting drunk and they're like, fuck, our rendezvous point is over there and we got to wait for these guys to leave.
01:21:54
Speaker
And I think Atten is the one who's like, maybe they'll die of alcohol poisoning eventually.
01:21:57
Speaker
That'd be good.
01:21:58
Speaker
Yeah, maybe.
01:21:59
Speaker
So.
01:22:02
Speaker
As they're doing this, suddenly this new group of mercenaries show up who are almost entirely droids led by what was the what's the alien that leads them?
01:22:12
Speaker
Oh, I am.
01:22:13
Speaker
Umbaran.
01:22:14
Speaker
Umbaran.
01:22:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:15
Speaker
Led by an Umbaran.
01:22:17
Speaker
And they basically show up and just blow them all away.
01:22:21
Speaker
Just just like there's a new there's a new boss in town.
01:22:23
Speaker
Go fuck yourself.
01:22:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:26
Speaker
Consider this their severance package and just decimate the militia and leave back the way they came.
01:22:34
Speaker
Just as casual as if you're kicking a can down the street.
01:22:39
Speaker
So the Embarans, just as a descriptor, are like very human looking, but bald, like they don't have any hair and they have like really creepy pale eyes.
01:22:50
Speaker
Okay.
01:22:51
Speaker
Yes.
01:22:51
Speaker
Okay.
01:22:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:22:53
Speaker
I do remember that.
01:22:55
Speaker
And as they watch them go, the Niners considering the similarities between droids and clones.
01:23:03
Speaker
They've got a lot of things in common and they're probably just as off-putting to regular people.
01:23:11
Speaker
So how much difference is there really between us and these droids?
01:23:15
Speaker
Do clones dream of electric droids?
01:23:19
Speaker
Exactly.
01:23:20
Speaker
It's kind of where we're at right now.
01:23:22
Speaker
I think it's pretty much it, yeah.
Etain's Encounter with a Clone Trooper
01:23:25
Speaker
We cut to Itain at the farm again.
01:23:27
Speaker
She is moving boards with the force in the back of the barn.
01:23:31
Speaker
Best she can do.
01:23:32
Speaker
It's the best she can do because no one's watching her.
01:23:34
Speaker
She's under no pressure and she can move these boards.
01:23:37
Speaker
She's got to make a little escape.
01:23:38
Speaker
She's trying to make an extra exit.
01:23:40
Speaker
She's sort of like that.
01:23:42
Speaker
Was it mystery men where there was the guy that could turn invisible, but only if nobody was looking at him.
01:23:49
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:23:50
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:23:53
Speaker
It's that kind of... She might as well not be a Jedi, is what I'm saying.
01:23:57
Speaker
Might as well, yeah.
01:23:58
Speaker
Just the worst Jedi ever.
01:24:01
Speaker
She starts to sense... She realizes she senses the Force in Jannart, who shows up.
01:24:08
Speaker
And she says, like...
01:24:11
Speaker
what you know like why didn't you tell me why you know she's so confused by the idea of this person who isn't and genard's like because you're fucking my shit up girl yeah yeah she's like she's like i chose to let you like she says she says why should i trust you what if you're a sith or something like that uh it's yeah yeah genard basically is like go fuck yourself you can only sense that i'm strong in the force because i let you so shut your fucking mouth and just do what i say um it's it's kind of great
01:24:39
Speaker
One of your dudes is here.
01:24:41
Speaker
Let's go.
01:24:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly it.
01:24:42
Speaker
She's like, your soldier's waiting for you.
01:24:44
Speaker
She's like, my soldier?
01:24:45
Speaker
Like, yeah, follow the stream up there.
01:24:48
Speaker
So Itain leaves and starts going through the woods, and she senses a child in the distance, and she can't quite...
01:24:56
Speaker
She's like, what the fuck is a kid doing?
01:24:57
Speaker
And the kid isn't, she senses that he isn't afraid per se, but his pulse is jacked.
01:25:03
Speaker
He's alert.
01:25:05
Speaker
And then before you know it, she's flash banged.
01:25:08
Speaker
Just, what the fuck?
01:25:10
Speaker
And it's a clone trooper.
01:25:13
Speaker
But she thinks it's a Mandalorian.
01:25:16
Speaker
So she swings on him with a lightsaber and the clone trooper very calmly says, man, please stop doing that.
01:25:20
Speaker
Please stop doing that.
01:25:21
Speaker
Don't make me.
01:25:22
Speaker
It's an amazing scene.
01:25:24
Speaker
It's so calm because she's such a shitty fighter and he's so cool and collected.
01:25:28
Speaker
He's like, ma'am, I beg you to please stop.
01:25:30
Speaker
And finally he grabs her and shoves her down in the stream and she loses her lightsaber and he goes, ma'am, please stop making me drown you.
01:25:39
Speaker
I'm begging you.
01:25:41
Speaker
And then he lets her up and she realizes this is not...
01:25:46
Speaker
Hoken, this is not the Mandalorian.
01:25:48
Speaker
And he apologizes.
01:25:51
Speaker
And he's like, you know, I should have made it clear who I was.
01:25:53
Speaker
Sorry about that.
01:25:54
Speaker
And he calls her general.
01:25:55
Speaker
Then he calls her commander, which very unnerving to her and the rest of the audience because she sucks.
01:26:02
Speaker
It's
01:26:03
Speaker
But that's all he knows Jedi as.
01:26:05
Speaker
And he sees that she's... He calls her general, and she goes, I'm not a general.
01:26:07
Speaker
And he goes, oh, you're right.
01:26:09
Speaker
I see now that you have the braid commander.
01:26:11
Speaker
Commander.
01:26:12
Speaker
And she's like, what?
01:26:14
Speaker
I beg your pardon?
01:26:15
Speaker
I beg your pardon?
01:26:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:16
Speaker
So she's... Yeah.
01:26:17
Speaker
So just very, very confused.
01:26:20
Speaker
She goes, what's the Grand Army?
01:26:22
Speaker
Right.
01:26:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:23
Speaker
She has no idea about any of this shit.
01:26:25
Speaker
No.
01:26:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:26
Speaker
She's like, I don't know what the Grand Army... She doesn't know anything.
01:26:29
Speaker
And so this guy...
01:26:31
Speaker
who was like armed to the teeth, who is a commando who she's very much thinking in terms of like, this guy has to save my, save me, uh, is going, well, you're, you're in charge.
01:26:40
Speaker
She's like, what?
01:26:41
Speaker
No, no.
01:26:43
Speaker
You're the man now, dog.
01:26:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:46
Speaker
And she's just kind of shocked.
01:26:48
Speaker
She makes a point of thinking like she's completely alarmed by not just his confidence, but how much confidence he seems to have in her.
01:26:57
Speaker
Like he'll follow her anywhere, that kind of thing.
01:27:01
Speaker
And she's like, well, who the fuck was the child I was sensing?
01:27:05
Speaker
And she asks him like how old he is.
01:27:07
Speaker
And he says, I'm 10.
01:27:09
Speaker
Uh, which of course he is.
01:27:11
Speaker
Cause he was in the lab.
01:27:12
Speaker
Like, yeah.
01:27:14
Speaker
I mean, for me, the price is right.
01:27:17
Speaker
You lose horn just kind of played in my head as soon as I read that.
01:27:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:26
Speaker
yeah yeah oh without a doubt this is oh man this really makes every prequel thing a supreme bummer doesn't it yes it's like this is this is not great uh we were killing children sweet uh yeah
01:27:42
Speaker
So we cut to Hoken admiring his new droid army.
01:27:49
Speaker
He is thrilled to be with them.
01:27:52
Speaker
They are heading to Ankit's villa.
01:27:55
Speaker
And he lets Ankit know, by the way, I'm keeping my droids here.
01:27:59
Speaker
You're staying in your house.
01:28:01
Speaker
Your house is now my base.
01:28:04
Speaker
Exactly, because we are under martial law because the Republic's here.
01:28:09
Speaker
Go fuck yourself.
01:28:10
Speaker
And I beg you, I beg you to push back on this.
01:28:14
Speaker
I beg you to give me a reason.
01:28:16
Speaker
Please give me a reason to fuck your day up, your fuck your rest of your life up.
01:28:22
Speaker
And it's, it's, it's, it's very satisfied.
01:28:24
Speaker
He's like, it's, it's this nice little moment of revenge.
01:28:27
Speaker
Um,
01:28:28
Speaker
We cut to the squad, the remaining rest of the squad.
01:28:32
Speaker
They're on their way to rendezvous point beta, but they can't find it.
01:28:40
Speaker
They basically have like, they know what they're looking for, but they can't find it.
01:28:45
Speaker
Fee actually expresses some frustration at the HQ.
01:28:50
Speaker
They've kind of bungled this mission.
01:28:51
Speaker
He says, we're not going to make it, are we?
01:28:54
Speaker
Like, we're going to die down here.
01:28:55
Speaker
Right.
01:28:56
Speaker
Everything has gone wrong.
01:28:57
Speaker
And it's clearly the first time he's ever, like, fully questioned the leaders.
01:29:03
Speaker
Yes.
01:29:05
Speaker
And they're bad.
01:29:06
Speaker
They're bad at their... Like, the leadership is clearly not...
01:29:10
Speaker
set up to do anything completely incompetent.
Clone Mortality and Emotional Struggles
01:29:14
Speaker
Uh, and so, yeah.
01:29:15
Speaker
And, and so they, they have these memories of their first trainer, uh, who was a miserable drunk of a man, uh, who was just as likely to like basically throw clone slurs at them, but then he would get into his cups and suddenly recognize their humanity and clearly hated what, uh,
01:29:34
Speaker
Right.
01:29:50
Speaker
There's a little moment here where they say they talk about how the Kaminoans were the only.
01:29:58
Speaker
Who was it?
01:29:58
Speaker
Fee is thinking he might have been bred for selfless obedience, but he wasn't stupid.
01:30:04
Speaker
The Kaminoan technicians were the only things that truly terrified him.
01:30:09
Speaker
And because and he's thinking about the time when a batch of clones is born with slightly less than 2020 eyesight and they were they just were disappeared after their first training exercise.
01:30:23
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:26
Speaker
fully, fully expendable.
01:30:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:29
Speaker
It's, it's deeply disturbing.
01:30:31
Speaker
And, and so they're, they're, they're, it's, it's, it really is eyeopening.
01:30:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:37
Speaker
And, and that trainer at, at, at some point then says, be proud.
01:30:41
Speaker
However much these ugly gray freaks treat, treat you like cattle.
01:30:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:46
Speaker
And it's just, it's, there's so much good stuff.
01:30:50
Speaker
There's, it's great.
01:30:51
Speaker
It is.
01:30:52
Speaker
It's really good shit.
01:30:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:54
Speaker
Um, Atten suddenly comes under fire by droids.
01:30:57
Speaker
Uh, they take out the organic leader and, uh, and then make short work of the droids themselves and decide they've got to make a marker, uh, for, uh, Darman.
01:31:08
Speaker
Uh, they basically have to, you know, they're, they're going to skip this next rendezvous point because it's too close to where this all went down.
01:31:15
Speaker
So they're going to go to another rendezvous point and, uh, just leave a marker there.
01:31:20
Speaker
Uh,
01:31:22
Speaker
Niner finally gets a chance to ask Atten what he meant by, why have you been Darman?
01:31:29
Speaker
And Atten explains that he's been the last man of his squad twice.
01:31:35
Speaker
Uh, so he knows what, and the, one of the first times was when he, uh, they were trying to rescue him.
01:31:40
Speaker
He got separated and they were trying to rescue him.
01:31:42
Speaker
So it wasn't that he disliked Darman for getting, uh, rescued.
01:31:47
Speaker
He just didn't want him to go through the survivor's guilt that he now struggles with, uh, on a daily basis.
01:31:53
Speaker
And he says, he tells me someone, someone told me there's this thing called survivor's guilt.
01:31:57
Speaker
I'm still trying to wrap my damn head around that.
01:32:00
Speaker
And then he says, and this is my favorite quote of the whole book so far.
01:32:03
Speaker
He says, he's talking about survivor's guilt and he said, they bred a lot of stuff out of us.
01:32:07
Speaker
Why not that?
01:32:10
Speaker
And that's, you know, like, that's great.
01:32:13
Speaker
It's, and it's so fucking true.
01:32:15
Speaker
It's like, for all of the shit that they are doing when they play with their genetics, they don't do anything to help them feel better after all this is done.
01:32:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:27
Speaker
They they're having trouble dealing with this shit.
01:32:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:32
Speaker
And the one other moment is Atten got shot in the chest.
01:32:36
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:32:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:37
Speaker
And he's like, so, you know, Darman, who they're still trying to, you know.
01:32:45
Speaker
find, you know, is down a leg, basically.
01:32:48
Speaker
He has an ACL tear, some sort of tendon tear.
01:32:51
Speaker
And Atten now has, like, they have to do, like, field work on him just to make sure he didn't have, like, a collapsed lung.
01:32:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, because it didn't break through his body or something, but, like, it's bad.
01:33:03
Speaker
It's a serious impact.
01:33:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's a massive bruise on his chest, so they're not doing well.
01:33:10
Speaker
They're not doing great, so...
01:33:12
Speaker
If I had to predict anything, that this feels like one of those, oh, they're all going to die stories.
01:33:19
Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
01:33:21
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:33:22
Speaker
It feels like they're setting us up for each one of them to get picked off one by one.
01:33:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:33:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:33:28
Speaker
Without question.
01:33:29
Speaker
And I am going to be so bummed out if that happens because you want to talk about like getting to know your characters before you punish them.
01:33:39
Speaker
Travis is doing a wonderful job with that.
01:33:41
Speaker
Yes,
Hocan's Anger and Misinterpretation
01:33:42
Speaker
yes.
01:33:42
Speaker
So finally, we cut to Hocan, and he finds the remains of said destroyed droid platoon.
01:33:52
Speaker
One of his kiss-ass sergeants runs up and tells him that they found something, and it's a pile of droid pieces that was a marker that they'd clearly left for Darman.
01:34:03
Speaker
However, Hocan interprets it as a trophy, as like them mocking him.
01:34:09
Speaker
Yes.
01:34:09
Speaker
So he is pissed.
01:34:11
Speaker
pissed and marvels over the idea of how much the clones resemble Jango Fett.
01:34:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:19
Speaker
So, and that is chapter seven.
01:34:22
Speaker
That's all we got for today, folks.
01:34:25
Speaker
So, Kevin, what are you thinking so far?
01:34:27
Speaker
Yeah.
Military Themes in Republic Commando
01:34:28
Speaker
It's, there's a lot of really good stuff in this book.
01:34:34
Speaker
Just really good war.
01:34:36
Speaker
And you can like look at this book and be like, yeah, this makes sense.
01:34:42
Speaker
Why?
01:34:45
Speaker
She, you know, she, I would be, I'm very interested in her Halo books.
01:34:50
Speaker
Oh, me too.
01:34:51
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:34:52
Speaker
Or Gears of War.
01:34:53
Speaker
There's a reason she does a lot of military science fiction.
01:34:56
Speaker
A lot of good military stuff.
01:34:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:59
Speaker
And not just, not even just like...
01:35:02
Speaker
the stuff where it's like the specifics, the movements and all that.
01:35:08
Speaker
She does a lot of good work in terms of the humanity in it as well.
01:35:17
Speaker
So I think that's pretty cool.
01:35:18
Speaker
And also I think there's two times in the book so far where hard contact is actually defined.
01:35:25
Speaker
Yes, yes, I forgot to bring that up.
01:35:28
Speaker
That's the name of the book.
01:35:29
Speaker
The name of the book is Hard Contact, and Hogan mentions it to the doctor at one point.
01:35:35
Speaker
He's like something like, yeah, I don't think the mercenaries I've hired would survive hard contact.
01:35:42
Speaker
And then he defines it for her because he realizes that she wouldn't know it.
01:35:47
Speaker
And it's like that hard contact meaning an actual engagement with the enemy.
01:35:53
Speaker
Yes.
01:35:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:35:57
Speaker
So I think that's, yeah.
01:35:58
Speaker
I think that, yeah, that's terrific.
01:36:00
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:01
Speaker
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.
01:36:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:03
Speaker
Okay, so.
01:36:04
Speaker
How are you feeling?
01:36:06
Speaker
I'm really enjoying it.
01:36:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:09
Speaker
I'm really, really enjoying it.
01:36:10
Speaker
I agree with you.
01:36:11
Speaker
This is actually, this is the first time that actually has made me excited about the prospect of maybe reading one of the Gears of War books.
01:36:19
Speaker
Sure.
01:36:19
Speaker
Which has always kind of been on the shelf in
Moral Issues of the Clone Army
01:36:22
Speaker
terms of.
01:36:22
Speaker
Yeah, we've always had it floating out there as a choice.
01:36:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:26
Speaker
But now that I know that this is the kind of fucking quality that she brings to the table, it actually makes you go, you know what?
01:36:32
Speaker
Could be fucking good.
01:36:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:35
Speaker
So I'm impressed.
01:36:36
Speaker
I like I've always enjoyed when we get into the military sci fi shit.
01:36:40
Speaker
It feels like military sci fi is where video game adaptations really take it seriously.
01:36:46
Speaker
Right.
01:36:46
Speaker
Really seriously, yeah.
01:36:48
Speaker
I mean, we even had like a, what was it, the last one, Fire Warrior, like as a middling game, and the adaptation is like, well, this adaptation is going to go fucking hard.
01:37:01
Speaker
Well, that's just it.
01:37:02
Speaker
The last two, they've both gone so fucking hard.
01:37:05
Speaker
This one, it's crazy.
01:37:09
Speaker
So I'm really impressed.
01:37:10
Speaker
I think...
01:37:12
Speaker
And I feel silly for this, but this is actually the first time I ever thought about how immoral what they're doing.
01:37:21
Speaker
That's what I wanted to.
01:37:23
Speaker
That's that.
01:37:24
Speaker
Yes.
01:37:24
Speaker
Thank you for reminding me, because that's what I was about to bring up is is like it wasn't until.
01:37:32
Speaker
What's her name?
01:37:33
Speaker
Etienne or 18.
01:37:35
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:37
Speaker
senses the clone trooper, his presence in the force is that of a child.
01:37:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:44
Speaker
Because he is a child for all intents and purposes.
01:37:46
Speaker
And I was like, ew.
01:37:48
Speaker
Oh, wait a minute.
01:37:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:50
Speaker
It's an army of child soldiers.
01:37:52
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
01:37:55
Speaker
It's crazy.
01:37:56
Speaker
And I can't believe it took me that long to realize that.
01:38:00
Speaker
But this puts...
01:38:02
Speaker
It changes everything.
01:38:03
Speaker
It changes everything.
01:38:05
Speaker
And I never liked the Jedi anyway.
01:38:07
Speaker
Right.
01:38:08
Speaker
But it changes everything.
01:38:10
Speaker
And it just shows you just how immoral and fucked up this whole situation is.
01:38:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:17
Speaker
I'm really impressed by that.
01:38:18
Speaker
That's pretty cool shit.
01:38:21
Speaker
Yeah, because like... And you can get into the whole... Of course, like... All right, well, it was the...
01:38:31
Speaker
There was a Jedi who had a vision of the future and that they would need a clone army.
01:38:37
Speaker
And that's why the clone army got started 10 years before the war actually happened.
01:38:42
Speaker
Like, there's a whole bunch of shit that goes into that.
01:38:46
Speaker
But still, the Jedi are totally cool with using a clone army of clone, just because they look like men, like he's 10.
01:38:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:39:01
Speaker
He's a child.
01:39:02
Speaker
He's a child.
01:39:04
Speaker
And they are people.
01:39:04
Speaker
They are people.
01:39:05
Speaker
And they're people.
01:39:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:39:08
Speaker
And this is what they're bred for.
01:39:09
Speaker
They're literally bred for this.
01:39:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:39:12
Speaker
And it's like, but then again, you think about it, how surprised can you be?
01:39:16
Speaker
The Jedi literally go into people's homes and steal their kids away.
01:39:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:39:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:39:22
Speaker
Like, this kid's got midichlorians.
01:39:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:39:26
Speaker
Jedi are basically an analog for the Roman Catholic Church.
01:39:31
Speaker
Big time.
01:39:32
Speaker
Yeah, no.
01:39:32
Speaker
Fuck the Jedi.
01:39:33
Speaker
Fuck the church.
01:39:36
Speaker
Well, yeah, think about the Roman Catholic Church in like the, you know,
01:39:42
Speaker
from like 900 to 1500 or what have you, where it's like they had an undue, they like controlled countries and shit like that.
01:39:52
Speaker
Uh, you got popes that are just like, you know, bigger than any King.
01:39:58
Speaker
And it's like, it was like, Oh shit, the Jedi are, are basically a church like institution.
01:40:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:40:06
Speaker
They're pretty much it.
01:40:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:40:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:40:08
Speaker
They're not great.
01:40:09
Speaker
They're not the heroes.
01:40:11
Speaker
Nope.
01:40:11
Speaker
They're just the church space cops, wizards.
01:40:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:40:15
Speaker
And all Jedi are bastards.
01:40:19
Speaker
A-Jab.
01:40:19
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
01:40:21
Speaker
A-Jab.
01:40:24
Speaker
So, yeah.
01:40:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:40:27
Speaker
So, now, with all of that out of the way, Kevin, I have a single
Kevin and Phil's Gaming Experiences
01:40:30
Speaker
question to ask you.
01:40:30
Speaker
Yes.
01:40:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:40:31
Speaker
That is, what are you playing?
01:40:34
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:40:36
Speaker
I...
01:40:37
Speaker
Did not expect you to ask me this question.
01:40:40
Speaker
I realize I'm putting you on the spot a little bit.
01:40:43
Speaker
So I have been playing a little ditty called Robocop Rogue City, and I talked about it last episode, and I'm getting pretty close to the end, I think.
01:40:55
Speaker
The time to beat says about 9 to 11 hours, and I put just about 8 1⁄2 into it, so I think I'm...
01:41:03
Speaker
I'm getting there.
01:41:03
Speaker
I'm closing in.
01:41:04
Speaker
It's a fun little game.
01:41:06
Speaker
You can shoot some people in the dick.
01:41:08
Speaker
Some of the juiciest headshots I've ever seen in my entire life.
01:41:14
Speaker
Such juicy headshots.
01:41:16
Speaker
It's ridiculous.
01:41:18
Speaker
Just blood everywhere.
01:41:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:41:20
Speaker
I actually have, like, you can actually get a power up on the... So there's these things when you're upgrading your pistol.
01:41:26
Speaker
There's these little boards with chips that you slide into them.
01:41:29
Speaker
And some of them, some of the boards have, like, an upgrade for more gore.
01:41:34
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:41:36
Speaker
How?
01:41:37
Speaker
How?
01:41:38
Speaker
Won't that shut your computer down after a certain point?
01:41:42
Speaker
And it just reminds me of the original Fallout games.
01:41:47
Speaker
Yes.
01:41:48
Speaker
There's a perk called Bloody Mess.
01:41:50
Speaker
Yes.
01:41:51
Speaker
And it did nothing.
01:41:52
Speaker
That's all it does.
01:41:53
Speaker
And it did nothing but make people die in the most violent way possible.
01:41:58
Speaker
I love it.
01:41:59
Speaker
And it's brilliant.
01:42:01
Speaker
I'm having a lot of fun with it.
01:42:02
Speaker
I'm almost towards the end.
01:42:05
Speaker
It's one of those games where I'm like, OK, well, I can skip most of the dialogue and just get to the question that they're asking me.
01:42:13
Speaker
Because it's like the story's fine.
01:42:16
Speaker
Actually, what's funny is towards the end, there's actually a really good horror.
01:42:20
Speaker
There's like a really good horror sequence.
01:42:22
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:42:23
Speaker
Like three quarters of the way through the game.
01:42:27
Speaker
That's kind of been hinted out throughout the game.
01:42:30
Speaker
But other than that, yeah, I'm having a lot of fun with RoboCop Rouge City.
01:42:35
Speaker
Nice.
01:42:38
Speaker
The other thing I've been playing is I just started playing Fear and Hunger 2 Termina.
01:42:45
Speaker
Oh, Jesus Christ.
01:42:47
Speaker
Okay.
01:42:48
Speaker
Because I love to do it.
01:42:52
Speaker
Because you hate yourself.
01:42:54
Speaker
It's actually, what's funny is I fired it up and I was like, all right, well, I'm going to start it.
01:42:58
Speaker
I'm going to play it on easy mode first.
01:43:00
Speaker
And easy mode is not easy in the Funger games.
01:43:06
Speaker
But it is a bit...
01:43:10
Speaker
Like I know next to nothing about fear and hunger too.
01:43:14
Speaker
Like I've seen super eyepatch wolf play it a little bit, but I don't like fear and hunger one.
01:43:20
Speaker
I know like a lot of the broad strokes of where things are, what I need to do, all that stuff.
01:43:25
Speaker
Fear and hunger too.
01:43:26
Speaker
I don't, I don't know where items are located, but like I was able to pretty much put like a solid three hours into the game and get to a save point.
01:43:39
Speaker
like a save point, like three hours in and then put another like hour into it before I died and got sent back to the save point.
01:43:45
Speaker
But I'm at a save point, like three hours in and I've done some stuff, you know, like, oh, okay.
01:43:51
Speaker
You know, I don't, it's not like as punishing.
01:43:54
Speaker
It feels like as the first one where like there is, it's a little bit,
01:44:02
Speaker
fine more finely tuned than the first one um i did have a bullshit and this one kind of has like a um masks to majora kind of thing right it doesn't it does it does actually the so um so was it majora's yeah moon name um
01:44:25
Speaker
So, okay.
01:44:27
Speaker
So in Majora's Mask, the festival is called Termina, I believe.
01:44:39
Speaker
Oh, okay, okay.
01:44:41
Speaker
This is not a coincidence.
01:44:42
Speaker
The moon of Termina appears in Majora's Mask and plays a massive... And it's not a coincidence that it's Termina, that's Fear and Hunger 2 Termina, because the moon is in its... Like, there's this moon presence, and it kind of looks like the moon from Majora's Mask.
01:45:03
Speaker
The difference is, basically what's going on is, as the days of the festival go on, people are becoming what's called moon-scorched.
01:45:11
Speaker
And they're becoming like mutated from this moon's like presence.
01:45:19
Speaker
It's and so you're you're finding villagers and they're like some of them are still like coherent and they're like, ah, it's like my skin's burning and itching, but I can't stop.
01:45:29
Speaker
And they're like ripping their own skin off.
01:45:31
Speaker
And others are like, have lost all semblance of sentience and are just running at you trying to kill you.
01:45:39
Speaker
There's this one character who is a doctor and I'm not playing as him, but I had him briefly as like a party member.
01:45:49
Speaker
And when you interact with a dead body, you get a list of options of things you can do with it.
01:45:55
Speaker
And when he's in your party, one of the options is medical examination.
01:46:01
Speaker
And basically, when he does the medical examination, he goes through, it's like, well, the skin seems to be falling off and underneath the muscles seem to be going...
01:46:11
Speaker
growing into this, like there's like a new skin like forming over the muscle.
01:46:16
Speaker
Like he gives this detailed synopsis of what's happening to the moon scorched people.
01:46:24
Speaker
um so that's that's interesting and each there's like there's a bunch of playable characters and over the course of you know time in the um game like as days pass more and more of those playable characters
01:46:43
Speaker
out in the city or whatever, they become moon scorched as well.
01:46:48
Speaker
And they become basically like mini bosses if you don't like save them or whatever.
01:46:54
Speaker
Okay.
01:46:54
Speaker
Before they're before they're moon scorched.
01:46:57
Speaker
Um, so yeah, that's, that's kind of, that's, that's also a thing that I am playing.
01:47:05
Speaker
Um, and I think that's, that's it.
01:47:11
Speaker
Uh, I've been firing up world of horror on occasion.
01:47:16
Speaker
Oh yeah.
01:47:16
Speaker
Um, because the 1.0 came out.
01:47:19
Speaker
I need to get back into that.
01:47:20
Speaker
I was enjoying it.
01:47:21
Speaker
I just fell off that one.
01:47:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's got its full release out, so, you know, might as well, it's a good time to do it.
01:47:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:29
Speaker
But yeah, Phil, what are you playing?
01:47:32
Speaker
Well, I actually, I'm here to say that I haven't played Marvel Snap in like almost a week.
01:47:40
Speaker
What?
01:47:40
Speaker
Yes, I have been playing Warcraft Rumble.
01:47:45
Speaker
How is that?
01:47:46
Speaker
It's pretty good.
01:47:48
Speaker
Okay.
01:47:49
Speaker
Is it like a... Is it a snap-like?
01:47:52
Speaker
No, it's... It's... Hold on.
01:47:55
Speaker
Which one is it?
01:47:56
Speaker
It's... Yes.
01:47:59
Speaker
It's kind of like...
01:48:03
Speaker
Clash, what's the name of the game?
01:48:05
Speaker
The one where you have a tower on either side and you send people up the board.
01:48:10
Speaker
Oh, a tower defense type thing.
01:48:12
Speaker
Yeah, well, kind of.
01:48:13
Speaker
But you've got, you collect, instead of cards, like in Marvel Snap, you're collecting minis.
01:48:20
Speaker
That got my attention right off the bat.
01:48:22
Speaker
And some of them are proper characters from Warcraft.
01:48:26
Speaker
Some of them are types.
01:48:30
Speaker
And it's like the Clash of Clans games and stuff like that, except it's got a pretty robust single player.
01:48:40
Speaker
And you're upgrading the characters.
01:48:42
Speaker
There is a ton of...
01:48:46
Speaker
payable shit, which I'm not really all that interested in just yet, because I've only been playing for a week, but I gotta say, I'm enjoying it.
01:48:57
Speaker
You do hit kind of a part where it just becomes real tough as nails, and you're like, okay, if I'm not gonna spend money, I'm going to need to
01:49:04
Speaker
You know, really, it's going to take a while.
01:49:07
Speaker
And that's fine by me because I only play these games when I'm bored and I'm pooping or something like that.
01:49:12
Speaker
So fuck it.
01:49:14
Speaker
But it did pull me away from Marvel Snap for almost a week.
01:49:18
Speaker
So that's got to be worth something.
01:49:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:49:21
Speaker
So I've been enjoying that.
01:49:23
Speaker
I'm going to see how long, just to ride this out, see how long.
01:49:26
Speaker
Yeah, see how long it keeps your attention.
01:49:28
Speaker
The feeling sticks.
01:49:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:49:29
Speaker
But I'd say the big game that I played this past week, though, was Cocoon.
01:49:34
Speaker
Okay.
01:49:35
Speaker
Which is by, I believe, I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right, Jeb Carlson, who made Limbo and Inside.
01:49:43
Speaker
Okay.
01:49:44
Speaker
And Inside was one of my top 10 games of the year when it came out, and I also like Limbo quite a bit.
01:49:50
Speaker
And it is very similar to those games.
01:49:53
Speaker
It's that kind of adventure.
01:49:56
Speaker
This guy should teach a class on how to deliver narrative without...
01:50:03
Speaker
looking you in the eye and telling you the story.
01:50:06
Speaker
It's all picked up as you go.
01:50:09
Speaker
And you play this beetle, basically, this little space beetle, and you are traveling between dimensions and solving puzzles and that sort of thing.
01:50:23
Speaker
But these different dimensions can be collected as a sphere, basically.
01:50:29
Speaker
And every sphere has a different ability, that kind of thing.
01:50:32
Speaker
And you have to find the right ways to use these spheres and these dimensions to solve certain puzzles.
01:50:39
Speaker
It gets very obtuse.
01:50:41
Speaker
It might be Jep Carlson's best game.
01:50:44
Speaker
It might be the best game he's ever made.
01:50:46
Speaker
It also might be the most difficult.
01:50:47
Speaker
Because when you're playing inside, for example,
01:50:51
Speaker
the extent of the puzzles, they can be difficult, but they're not going to blow your mind apart.
01:50:57
Speaker
I've got to figure out how to get these mindless guys over here to turn this lever or whatever.
01:51:03
Speaker
And you'll get it.
01:51:04
Speaker
You'll get there eventually.
01:51:06
Speaker
The level of difficulty in these puzzles was such that I used a guide for about 50% of it.
01:51:16
Speaker
And I am proud of myself that that's all I used it for.
01:51:20
Speaker
Some of them are so traveling.
01:51:23
Speaker
It's like you've got to put the dimension within this dimension and put that dimension over here.
01:51:28
Speaker
And it's so difficult.
01:51:33
Speaker
But the aesthetic is gorgeous.
01:51:34
Speaker
The music is beautiful.
01:51:37
Speaker
It's got this kind of biomechanical.
01:51:40
Speaker
Did you ever play Thumper?
01:51:42
Speaker
Yes, yes.
01:51:44
Speaker
It's got thumper vibes, like not just the fact that you're playing like a shimmery beetle.
01:51:49
Speaker
It's got, yeah, it's like metal and organic, not biomechanical like H.R.
01:51:56
Speaker
Giger, but like this kind of...
01:51:59
Speaker
It's beautiful, and the colors are incredible.
01:52:02
Speaker
It tells this story that's very strange, and I'm not fully understanding it, but I loved it, and I was fully engaged.
01:52:11
Speaker
And it's the first of his games that have boss fights.
01:52:14
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:52:15
Speaker
And they're very similar to, was it Death's Door?
01:52:20
Speaker
With the raven?
01:52:21
Speaker
Yes, yes.
01:52:22
Speaker
Very similar.
01:52:23
Speaker
The boss fights put me in the mind of Death's Door.
01:52:26
Speaker
And like his other games, literally the only button is, you've got like the A button.
01:52:32
Speaker
Everything is done with the one button and the directional pad.
01:52:38
Speaker
And the level of versatility...
01:52:41
Speaker
that he is able to get out of that single button is nothing short of genius.
01:52:47
Speaker
This is not, and I'm put in this funny position where this is not my favorite of his games, but it is unequivocally the best of his games.
01:52:57
Speaker
It is a work of art.
01:52:58
Speaker
It's amazing.
01:52:59
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:53:00
Speaker
I'll check it out.
01:53:01
Speaker
It's absolutely worth checking out.
01:53:03
Speaker
I love it.
01:53:04
Speaker
This guy, he is...
01:53:07
Speaker
Way up there in terms of game designers that from here on out, anytime I hear his name and attach to a project, I'm going to, I'm in.
01:53:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:53:16
Speaker
Because he knows how to get atmosphere right.
01:53:19
Speaker
And that's such a big thing for me.
01:53:21
Speaker
Yeah, because for me, that guy is like Lucas Pope.
01:53:24
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:53:25
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
01:53:26
Speaker
Like, he's up there with Lucas Pope for me.
01:53:28
Speaker
It's like, if I hear Lucas Pope is releasing a game, I'm like, oh, I'm in.
01:53:31
Speaker
That's, it's a done deal.
01:53:33
Speaker
You don't have to tell me about it.
01:53:35
Speaker
I'm buying it.
01:53:35
Speaker
No, I don't care.
01:53:37
Speaker
Or the guy who wrote, the guy who did, it was one of our top games last year.
01:53:44
Speaker
It was a card game, the really creepy one.
01:53:46
Speaker
Oh, oh, oh, Inscription.
01:53:49
Speaker
What's his name?
01:53:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:53:52
Speaker
It's a difficult name, if I recall incorrectly.
01:53:55
Speaker
Daniel Mullins.
01:53:56
Speaker
No, that's not difficult at all.
01:54:01
Speaker
But yeah, same deal.
01:54:02
Speaker
It's like Daniel Mullins, the moment I remember who he is, apparently, I will jump on.
01:54:08
Speaker
You don't even need to ask.
01:54:09
Speaker
I will play his games.
01:54:11
Speaker
Right.
01:54:11
Speaker
Because there's just that level of consistency.
01:54:14
Speaker
And this is the third of his games that I've played, and it just kind of sealed that deal for me.
01:54:22
Speaker
Absolute work of art.
01:54:24
Speaker
Again, I think I'd play inside again over it just because of the level of difficulty and everything.
01:54:29
Speaker
But I can also look at it objectively enough to be like, oh, no, but this is a better game.
01:54:33
Speaker
This is just a better designed game.
01:54:37
Speaker
It's definitely worth a look.
01:54:39
Speaker
But
Conclusion and Call to Support Podcast
01:54:40
Speaker
that's me.
01:54:40
Speaker
That's what I've been playing.
01:54:42
Speaker
All right.
01:54:42
Speaker
Well, that'll do it for this episode, everybody.
01:54:46
Speaker
A beefy episode to kick off.
01:54:48
Speaker
Beefy episode.
01:54:48
Speaker
Beefy side of beef.
01:54:50
Speaker
Wiggle, aren't you lucky?
01:54:51
Speaker
Aren't you lucky?
01:54:52
Speaker
You all got to listen to us for almost two hours.
01:54:55
Speaker
Almost two hours?
01:54:56
Speaker
Talking about Star War.
01:54:59
Speaker
A Star War.
01:55:00
Speaker
How did you not?
01:55:01
Speaker
Of course this was going to happen.
01:55:02
Speaker
Like either of us are surprised.
01:55:04
Speaker
either of us are surprised uh if you'd like to hear us and pay us you can go to patreon.com slash pixelit pod because that is where you can pay us your money we got three tiers one dollar five dollars and ten dollars and uh speaking of ten dollars if you are in
01:55:25
Speaker
the $10 tier, you get a little special shout-out at the end of the episode.
01:55:31
Speaker
So today, right now, we're going to shout-out the person that we shout-out every episode.
01:55:37
Speaker
You know who it is.
01:55:38
Speaker
You know who it is.
01:55:40
Speaker
It's Friendly Friends.
01:55:41
Speaker
Friendly Friends.
01:55:43
Speaker
Thank you for being a friendly friend, Friendly Friends.
01:55:46
Speaker
So...
01:55:47
Speaker
I know one of you out there is thinking, how could I join Friendly Friends?
01:55:52
Speaker
You know?
01:55:54
Speaker
And it's simple.
01:55:54
Speaker
Just you get an extra $10 burning a hole in your pocket every month.
01:55:59
Speaker
go on over to patreon.com slash pixelitpod.
01:56:02
Speaker
Or if that's too many slashes, just put in pixelitpod.com into your browser and it'll take you there as well.
01:56:08
Speaker
How easy is that?
01:56:09
Speaker
I'm going to do it right now.
01:56:11
Speaker
Do it right now.
01:56:11
Speaker
I'm going to do it right now.
01:56:13
Speaker
Phil's going to do it right now.
01:56:14
Speaker
While Phil's doing that, just to prove how easy it is and how easy was that, Phil?
01:56:20
Speaker
I'm there.
01:56:20
Speaker
I'm done.
01:56:21
Speaker
You're there.
01:56:21
Speaker
Okay.
01:56:23
Speaker
So simple.
01:56:24
Speaker
So simple.
01:56:25
Speaker
You know what is so simple?
01:56:27
Speaker
Following us on social media, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Blue Sky, on all the sites, at PixelitPod.
01:56:36
Speaker
Go there.
01:56:37
Speaker
You'll love it.
01:56:37
Speaker
You love us.
01:56:39
Speaker
You can find us.
01:56:41
Speaker
We have a Discord server that's linked in the show notes on every episode.
01:56:46
Speaker
Also, I haven't called for this in a while because you folks have been rocking it.
01:56:50
Speaker
But if you can, rate us five stars.
01:56:54
Speaker
Yes.
01:56:55
Speaker
I have not asked in a while, but you guys, y'all have been just crushing it with the rating of five stars.
01:57:03
Speaker
But I'm just throwing it out there as a friendly reminder.
01:57:06
Speaker
If you haven't, you're listening on iTunes or you're listening on Spotify or you're listening on some other platform that allows for a rating.
01:57:15
Speaker
Go ahead.
01:57:16
Speaker
Rate us five stars.
01:57:17
Speaker
Leave a lovely comment.
01:57:19
Speaker
And that would be awesome.
01:57:21
Speaker
Thank you so much, everybody, for listening tonight.
01:57:27
Speaker
Have a good night, everyone.
01:57:30
Speaker
Good night.