Transcript
Speaker: 16 cold black horses all hitched to a rubber tired hack carried seven girls to the graveyard only six of them coming back six crap shooters as pallbearers let a chorus girl sing me a song with a jazz band on my hearse to raise hell as we go along
Speaker: so good oh god you know what else is so good what's that hey there everybody welcome back to pixelate my name is kevin with me as always is phil and on today's show we're talking you know we're just going to talk st james infirmary we're talking we're talking about jazz jazz and blues songs and folk songs that inspired it man we're just going to lean back and you know
Speaker: And you're along for the ride, fucker.
Speaker: We're just going to light one up and put on some jazz albums.
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: God damn right.
Speaker: That sounds excellent, in fact.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: No, in fact, we're talking about the third Final Fantasy book or the third Final Fantasy game as a book, so to speak.
Speaker: I don't even know where to put my copy of the book.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: I have notes this time.
Speaker: You own it.
Speaker: It's yours.
Speaker: It's mine.
Speaker: It's there.
Speaker: It's there.
Speaker: And you know what else is there?
Speaker: It's also patreon.com slash pixelipod.
Speaker: Always there for you when you're struggling, when you're having a time of need.
Speaker: Um, you can go to patreon.com slash pixel pod.
Speaker: You can join for free and you get access to early, early access episodes.
Speaker: Just joining for free gets you early access comes out the day before ish when I get a chance to post them.
Speaker: But yeah, early access.
Speaker: But when it comes out, you get it.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: But you get it.
Speaker: Uh, $1 gets you access to, uh, additional writings by Philbert over there.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: $5 gets you access to the ad-free episodes that get posted on a separate RSS feed, as well as the bonus episodes in which today we were just talking about, there's just going to be like three minutes of just St.
Speaker: James and Firm Re playing for the bonus episode.
Speaker: You're going to love it.
Speaker: You're going to love it, I guarantee.
Speaker: If you're not on that, you're missing out, people.
Speaker: You're missing out.
Speaker: And $10, $10 gets your name and all that other stuff and also your name shouted out at the beginning of every episode or at the end if I forget to do it at the beginning.
Speaker: But we're doing it at the beginning right now.
Speaker: Damn it.
Speaker: So I am going to say thank you so much to our $10 tier, Jesus Loves You, Kyle Seaman, Ruthless Mutter, Middle of Things, Sigma Sal, and Friendly Friend.
Speaker: Thank you for being our friends.
Speaker: We have never had so many $10 patrons and it just, it, it makes me feel so good.
Speaker: I did the support.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: The support is just excellent and we love you guys for it.
Speaker: We really do.
Speaker: And that's not to suggest that if you're not there that we're thinking any less of you, that is not even close.
Speaker: If you're listening, if you are listening to these words right now, we love you.
Speaker: We love you personally.
Speaker: Like here's a box, right?
Speaker: And let's say that box represents the cubic amount of something of I can think of anybody.
Speaker: right yeah and that is anybody right don't don't it doesn't matter what the size of the box is it's just this box represents it our listeners our dear listeners fill up the whole box like a gas all the way like a gas which expands to fill the volume that it is in yes that's you people that is you people you are our gas you are you are
Speaker: You are our gas.
Speaker: That's what we're going to do.
Speaker: We start.
Speaker: We start.
Speaker: If we sell merch, I feel like for fans of the show, we need to we need to call it the gas club, the gas club.
Speaker: You are our gas.
Speaker: And we love the gas cans.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, perfect.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Um, so Phil, what is the deal with Final Fantasy three?
Speaker: You said you did a little dig into it a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is another one that has a, uh, a, a storyline as opposed to the first.
Speaker: In fact, I believe, I think it is the first one.
Speaker: That's the only one that doesn't have like,
Speaker: you know, as deep of a storyline as the rest of it does have a storyline, but it's not as, it's not as involved.
Speaker: This is, they got rid of, if you remember in Final Fantasy two, they were doing, they got rid of experience points in Final Fantasy two and they were just doing kind of a, you use it or you lose it kind of experience track where you, you practice with certain skills and they increase over time.
Speaker: Which is actually now that I think about it, that is the way that the that is the way like Morrowind.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes, it is.
Speaker: Yes, it is.
Speaker: And that's the thing.
Speaker: You know, it's not a naturally better or worse way to do things.
Speaker: It's it's just different.
Speaker: But for whatever reason, they said, you know what?
Speaker: we're not doing that for this one.
Speaker: We are going to go back to the experience system.
Speaker: However, what they did keep that was similar to two was rather than just picking your classes right off the bat and sticking with them the entire time.
Speaker: Like the first one, you start out as onion nights is the, is the term for it.
Speaker: You start as on nights, which is your basic, uh,
Speaker: rudimentary level one character.
Speaker: No, no real specific skills.
Speaker: You can only use general items.
Speaker: You can't use.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Basic ass.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it that they're called onion nights.
Speaker: That makes me so freaking happy.
Speaker: And not just because I want to be an onion farmer.
Speaker: But they are it's so you start out as that.
Speaker: And then, as you mentioned in the second one, it goes into a job system and there are I think there are like a dozen different jobs to choose from.
Speaker: in this and you pick them up as you go along.
Speaker: There are different things you can pick up and they have different specialties.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: You know, and so it starts out with a tabula rasa of sorts.
Speaker: You've just got these generic characters and and then as the game goes on, you can choose to customize them in different ways, which is a lot of fun.
Speaker: A pretty cool way of going about it.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: And this is another one that was not released in America.
Speaker: This is the third one.
Speaker: And the last one, I think the last one that wasn't released in America, because as I mentioned before, when Final Fantasy two came to the SNES, that was actually that was that was number four.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: We've got Sid is back in this one.
Speaker: I believe we've got some chocobos like we're starting to see a through line here.
Speaker: And there isn't much of one in Final Fantasy.
Speaker: They're all kind of very different games in their own ways.
Speaker: But we're starting to get recurring characters and recurring themes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's it's it's pretty cool.
Speaker: It's another one where I was just like, oh, shit, I might actually have to play this.
Speaker: That's, I gotta say, after we're all said and done with this book, this trilogy, if you will, if there's anything it's done for me, it's inspired me to actually play the original goddamn Final Fantasy 2 and 3.
Speaker: So that's pretty cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I was just digging around on Onion Knight.
Speaker: So I haven't found a real...
Speaker: So apparently in one of the designers just said the helmet looked like it was an onion.
Speaker: So I said, isn't an onion swordsman fine?
Speaker: But there's only three, there's only like three things in like fiction that have that title, right?
Speaker: There's the final fantasy job class, right?
Speaker: Number one.
Speaker: There's Davos Seaworth from Game of Thrones.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And then there's three characters from the Dark Souls series that are called the Onion Knight because of the shape of their armor.
Speaker: Oh, I love that.
Speaker: I didn't know that.
Speaker: That's fun.
Speaker: Siegward, Siegmeier, and Sieglund.
Speaker: And they're all from the land of Katarina, and they're all very gregarious people.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Sigward has probably the most heartbreaking story of any, one of the most heartbreaking stories.
Speaker: It's a really good prepare to cry.
Speaker: If you're in the mood for Avati Vidya, Vidya.
Speaker: I need to get back into those.
Speaker: Go watch the Dark Souls 3 one on Sigmar of Katarina and his quest to fulfill a promise that he made to a friend named Yorm the Giant.
Speaker: So it's worth checking out.
Speaker: It's a little bit of a heartbreaker.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Speaking of Dark Souls, let's put this body in the marsh.
Speaker: Let's do.
Speaker: Let's put it in the marsh.
Speaker: When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh, you dump them in the marsh.
Speaker: Such a bummer that there isn't a good Dark Souls book.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Maybe one day.
Speaker: I feel like there's got to be at some point, right?
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe what we ought to do is we've been threatening to go into fan fiction for years now.
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: Maybe that's what we need to do.
Speaker: We need to look into some fan fiction.
Speaker: I bet there's some really good amateur stuff.
Speaker: There probably is some good amateur stuff out there for Dark Souls.
Speaker: And I think it's worth investigating.
Speaker: I think so, too.
Speaker: To see if there's anything worth having.
Speaker: but yeah final fantasy three chapter one
Speaker: We begin in media res as Ingus.
Speaker: Ingus.
Speaker: Ignus.
Speaker: Ignus.
Speaker: I hate this name because it's like the N and the G are not in the right order for what I want to say.
Speaker: Ingus is attacking a djinn so that Princess Sarah can seal the djinn away and save Castle Sassoon.
Speaker: A few weeks prior, the djinn had shown up and attacked the castle and turned people into shadow monsters, which is very eco-friendly.
Speaker: Like, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I hadn't thought about that, but you're absolutely right.
Speaker: I think this is interesting because this is the only one so far where it opens with some action.
Speaker: It opens right off with some action.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's actually.
Speaker: Let's fill you in on the way, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like he's figuring it out as he goes along.
Speaker: I think he's got it.
Speaker: I think he's got it.
Speaker: Um, the Chocobos, the rain in the plane, the Chocobos in the plane mainly on the rain.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't, I don't got it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's fine.
Speaker: So Princess Sarah had gone to seal the djinn away and Ingus, Luneth, and Ark and Rephia had gone to find and help her.
Speaker: After the djinn is sealed away, a voice calls them the Warriors of Light and teleports them away, minus Princess Sarah, who is just left in this dark...
Speaker: creepy cave all by herself to go speak with a, to go speak with a crystal.
Speaker: No matter what the print, princess Sarah, no matter which princess Sarah it is, she's always, always having trouble.
Speaker: Getting screwed over.
Speaker: Getting screwed over.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Basis.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The wind crystal bestows them with power and tells them to go forth and defeat the coming darkness.
Speaker: And each one of them becomes an archetype or a job from final fantasy.
Speaker: Warrior, monk, white mage, black mage, red mage, and thief are the options, and they become, and Luneth becomes a warrior.
Speaker: Ark and Rephia become black and white mages, respectively, and Ingus a thief.
Speaker: They return to the castle and Princess Sarah yells at them for a little bit.
Speaker: She was worried about them.
Speaker: And they were like, we have to talk to the king and tell him about the end of the world.
Speaker: And the king's like, yeah, that's rough stuff.
Speaker: I don't like.
Speaker: It's a real bummer, man.
Speaker: That's a real bummer, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But he can't move the military might of the kingdom without an investigation.
Speaker: So he's like, all right, you guys, you go check it out.
Speaker: And Princess Sarah tells them all to come back safely, especially Ingus.
Speaker: Wink, wink.
Speaker: Moo.
Speaker: Moo.
Speaker: Moo.
Speaker: Chapter two, they need to get over a mountain pass and decide to head back to another town and talk to Sid, the airship pilot.
Speaker: Oh, Sid.
Speaker: Oh, Sid.
Speaker: Sid's like, yeah, the ship wouldn't be able to get high enough to clear the mountains, but it might be able to break through the mountains if we created a prow made of mithril.
Speaker: And the prow would be designed by Refia's father, who is very emotionally abusive towards her.
Speaker: While they're waiting to get this Myrthral Prowl, Luneth and Ark take this opportunity to go back to their home in a nearby village to see their mother, Nina, who cooks them dinner.
Speaker: They head back to Sid the next day after their mother doting on them and loving on them.
Speaker: They come back safely, boys.
Speaker: And she's their foster mom, right?
Speaker: She's not their actual mom.
Speaker: She is their foster mother, yeah.
Speaker: Because, well, you know, we'll get into that.
Speaker: We'll get into it.
Speaker: We'll get into it.
Speaker: Because Refia mentions that as well.
Speaker: That's like, he's my adoptive father.
Speaker: They come back the next day.
Speaker: Sid is like, I'm leaving with her without you.
Speaker: because he wants to get to the town on the other side of the mountains called Canaan to see his wife who has been there for a while.
Speaker: All by her lonesome.
Speaker: They take off without Raffia because she should stay with her dad, I guess?
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: That was.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I wondered about that too.
Speaker: I was like, oh, OK.
Speaker: I guess she's not coming.
Speaker: We shouldn't go look for her because she should stay with her dad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: While learning.
Speaker: And while someone was learning how to pilot the ship, it gets tilted a bit and Raffia falls out of a box.
Speaker: She was hiding on the ship the whole time, and she's quite pissed that they tried to leave without her.
Speaker: And she talks about how like she had to sneak off because her father was too worried about her.
Speaker: She mentions that she's adopted.
Speaker: And then all the warriors are like, wait a minute, we're all adopted.
Speaker: What a clinky dink.
Speaker: That's wild.
Speaker: And meanwhile, Sid's off in the corner like, mm hmm.
Speaker: They ram through the mountain, but they end up crashing.
Speaker: And Luneth has a memory unlocked of an airship crashing, even though he claims to have never been on one before.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Chapter three, they walk the rest of the way to Canaan and they find out about an amnesiac man named Desh, who the daughter of the innkeeper had fallen for and was heartbroken when he left town.
Speaker: All he had was a memory of that he was important to saving everybody.
Speaker: They go to look for him on Mount Genora, home of the dragons.
Speaker: Refia is going to make him go back to the innkeeper's daughter.
Speaker: She's like, I'm going to drag him back because he broke this girl's heart.
Speaker: It's very, she's very, like, gets really intense.
Speaker: Really intense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We've been watching Vampire Diaries recently.
Speaker: I don't know if you've ever watched Vampire Diaries.
Speaker: And this is for all my Vampire Diaries peeps out there that I know listen to the show.
Speaker: Refia is very Caroline Forbes-pilled.
Speaker: So just look up Candice King and you'll see who I imagine is Refia this entire time.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: She has a very good pouty face.
Speaker: She's just very... Candice King?
Speaker: Candice King, yeah.
Speaker: King.
Speaker: Candice King.
Speaker: Oh, my.
Speaker: That is the blondest woman I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker: I don't get much blonder than that.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: They don't.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Caroline Forbes on Vampire Diaries.
Speaker: That's where I'm thinking Raffia is kind of
Speaker: I'm linking those two characters.
Speaker: Maybe it's just because we've been binging it recently, but it's natural.
Speaker: It's natural.
Speaker: So they're all going up the mountain.
Speaker: They're almost immediately captured by a dragon and they're taken up the mountain to the dragon's nest and placed amongst the eggs.
Speaker: They meet Desh and Refia is mad at him on behalf of Selena, who is the innkeeper's daughter.
Speaker: Um, they compare notes and plans and Desh decides that their goals are aligned and shows them how to get out of the nest.
Speaker: As they leave, Ark hears the dragon speak to him, calling, uh, asking him to call upon the dragon when in need.
Speaker: Um, what's funny is, did this actually ever pay off?
Speaker: I don't remember.
Speaker: I don't think it does.
Speaker: Now that I'm reading my notes and I'm like, I don't specifically remember, um,
Speaker: And honestly, it's like, that's the thing I told Kevin before we started, I was like, I'm really glad you're doing this because I read this and I still don't, I don't remember a fucking thing about this.
Speaker: But of course, in true fashion, as Kevin is leaving me, I'm like, okay, I remember, but that I don't remember that paying off in any way, shape or form.
Speaker: No, I'm not going to, I'm not going to put my eggs in that basket.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: On the other side of the mountain is a Viking Cove where Dash had previously made friends with the captain.
Speaker: The captain agrees to give them a boat and they are going to take it and go to Castle Argus, which should have more information about anything strange going on in the West.
Speaker: Once they're on the water, though, Dash notices a tower and feels compelled to visit it, even though his memories have not returned.
Speaker: So they're like, all right, well, we'll check it out.
Speaker: They get to the tower and as Desh enters, he remembers everything.
Speaker: It's called the Tower of Owen, named after his father.
Speaker: And it's the thing that keeps the floating peninsula floating.
Speaker: That's another thing we talked about.
Speaker: We talked about Scott last episode.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Tower of Owen.
Speaker: Owen.
Speaker: Owen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm aware that that's a very old Irish name, but it still sounds like just some schmuck you went to school with.
Speaker: Well, you know what's funny is the only, anytime I hear Owen, the only thing I think of is Owen Hart.
Speaker: As is your right.
Speaker: As is correct and good.
Speaker: Yeah, that's how it should be.
Speaker: Which, you know, speaking of which, the Mr. McMahon Netflix documentary is great.
Speaker: just came out as we're recording this.
Speaker: I need to check that out.
Speaker: I need to check that out because I have a feeling like there's more to dig into with the Owen Hart thing and all the other shit that.
Speaker: Oh, I bet.
Speaker: But if you don't have time for that documentary, at least listen to the Behind the Bastards on.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: Five parts, I think.
Speaker: It's a masterpiece.
Speaker: It's a masterpiece.
Speaker: It's one of the best.
Speaker: A chunk of.
Speaker: Yeah, a chunk of one of the episodes covers the Owen Hart and the Hart family relationship with Mr. McMahon.
Speaker: God, I've listened.
Speaker: I probably have listened to that behind the bastards from front to end like four times.
Speaker: I just love it.
Speaker: There's something something so satisfying.
Speaker: It's so well done.
Speaker: It's the same thing as the dollop.
Speaker: And their Ronald Reagan episode.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Where it's just like, I could listen to that over and over and over again.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I might be, I might be a masochist.
Speaker: There might be something wrong with my head.
Speaker: You know, I think Robert would appreciate the numbers, you know?
Speaker: I think he would.
Speaker: I think he'd better.
Speaker: If he's being forced to read BetterHelp ads, you know.
Speaker: Oh, bless his heart, right?
Speaker: Bless his heart.
Speaker: You know, my new theory is that he's literally holding his nose while he does those ad reads.
Speaker: It sounds like he might be literally holding his nose while he's doing some of those ad reads.
Speaker: I could see that.
Speaker: I could see that.
Speaker: I don't think it's I don't think it's shocking to assume for me that he's holding a great big bowie knife and just like caressing it as he has to do that.
Speaker: That's my that's where my head goes every single time I listen.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Tower of Owen keeps the continent afloat and safe from the calamity on the planet down below.
Speaker: The other characters did not know that the continent was floating.
Speaker: They climb the tower and face off with a Medusa-like creature.
Speaker: Ingus gets his arm petrified and in a baller move just shatters it.
Speaker: And Refia casts cure on it and it grows his arm back.
Speaker: That is actually probably the coolest thing that's happened in this entire book.
Speaker: Like...
Speaker: fucking cool, man.
Speaker: Like, yeah, all right.
Speaker: He's like, bam, just shatters his stone arm.
Speaker: And now it's like stump.
Speaker: And he's like, all right.
Speaker: You can go this back, right?
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Fuck.
Speaker: Okay, sure.
Speaker: The Medusa is defeated, but then it throws itself in a furnace, causing a near meltdown.
Speaker: Dash is like, all right, well, I got to get into the furnace to calm it down.
Speaker: And they're like, what?
Speaker: And he's like...
Speaker: The fire crystals that way.
Speaker: You got to go up to this island.
Speaker: And then he goes into the furnace.
Speaker: At this point, initially, I wrote down he dies because I thought that that's what going into the furnace meant.
Speaker: That's a totally fair assumption.
Speaker: We'll circle back around to it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Later.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's fucking crazy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So anyway, he's where they go to the islands that he tells them to go to.
Speaker: And there's two caves on it.
Speaker: One is sealed.
Speaker: So they go to the one that's not sealed.
Speaker: And there's a bunch of dwarves and dwarves are running around with their hands in the air like they're like a thief has stolen the horn of ice or one of the horns of ice.
Speaker: And they need it back to spell the other caves barrier.
Speaker: So the warriors are like, all right, where'd you go?
Speaker: And they're like that way.
Speaker: So they run further into the cave to an underground lake and they face off against a man named Gutsko the thief.
Speaker: Great name.
Speaker: Great name.
Speaker: 10 out of 10.
Speaker: No notes.
Speaker: Just beautiful.
Speaker: It's like almost like Gutsko.
Speaker: It's like it's almost Gaston.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Guts go.
Speaker: They defeat him.
Speaker: Guts go.
Speaker: They defeat him and get the horn back, but it was all a ploy from him to play dead and grab the second horn so he could go after the fire crystal.
Speaker: Gutsko, they chase him to the other cave and Gutsko uses the power of the fire crystal to turn himself into a dragon-like creature.
Speaker: They fight and Luneth goes a little too try-hard and is hurt in killing Gutsko, but the crystal appreciates the extra effort and gives them all a new power.
Speaker: they have to go to the main world now for the other crystals.
Speaker: So they have to leave the thing.
Speaker: Or back to the crystal finding.
Speaker: It's a classic.
Speaker: Why fuck with it?
Speaker: Why fuck with it?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: So the first three games are like, there's crystals in two, isn't there?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's always crystals.
Speaker: It's just crystals, baby.
Speaker: Just crystals, baby.
Speaker: You know, the game, a gamer doesn't care.
Speaker: You know, a gamer doesn't care.
Speaker: You're not, you're not playing this.
Speaker: Well, I don't know.
Speaker: Not at this point in role playing game history.
Speaker: You know, what's funny is like, so there is three final fantasies on the Nintendo.
Speaker: There's three on the super Nintendo.
Speaker: And then there was three on the PlayStation.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And then 10 was on PlayStation 2.
Speaker: And then after 10 is when the series gets all wibbly wobbly, because 10 is the first one to actually have a direct, like a direct sequel.
Speaker: 10 and 10.2.
Speaker: 10.2.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I never played them, but I think subconsciously it was because of that fact.
Speaker: I was like, no, fuck you.
Speaker: I'm not.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: 13 eventually got a sequel as well.
Speaker: 13 and 13 too.
Speaker: So yeah, it's interesting to just think about the generation, like how the generations changed.
Speaker: Because I'm not sure if the crystal, finding the crystals transferred over to
Speaker: the next round.
Speaker: I don't think so.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think so, but I never played them.
Speaker: Like, like the extent of my Final Fantasy experience is Final Fantasy one and Mystic Quest.
Speaker: I am ill prepared to discuss Final Fantasy with anybody.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's.
Speaker: That's good to know.
Speaker: They go to the kingdom.
Speaker: This is chapter four now.
Speaker: Now I go into the kingdom of Argus to see how they were going to actually get off the floating continent, but they find it empty except for one guard.
Speaker: They heal the guard and tells them about the royal advisor.
Speaker: Hein took on powers of darkness and kidnapped everyone.
Speaker: Hain is using a floating tree as his fortress, and the Warriors of Light wait in the town of Tokul for it to float over them so they could board it.
Speaker: They fight through the floating fortress tree and find the king who tells them that the fortress is made out of a magic tree that is thousands of years old.
Speaker: They get to the top of the tree and they find Hein.
Speaker: Luneth distracts him while the rest sneak and cast spells, eventually defeating him.
Speaker: The tree calls forth to them, saying it will return to the forest now and heal its wounds.
Speaker: They return to the kingdom of Argus and speak with the now freed king, who gives them a device called the Wheel of Time and tells them to go talk to a man named Cid, who they've already met.
Speaker: Cid.
Speaker: They return to Sid, who agrees to build a new airship out of their boat, the Enterprise, using the Wheel of Time, which is a perpetual motion machine that lets you turn any boat into an airship.
Speaker: All right, Sid.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: All right, Sid.
Speaker: They have to wait in Canaan, and they get sad about having to break the news to Selina about Desh.
Speaker: They tell her, and it's a bummer, and then they return to Sid's house.
Speaker: Sid finishes the airship and tells them it can only land on the water because it's a regular-ass ship at its heart.
Speaker: You know, he...
Speaker: It's hovercraft.
Speaker: It's like I could have built landing legs for the land, but fuck it.
Speaker: I don't have time.
Speaker: So this is the same guy who said, I can't fly over something.
Speaker: But if we barrel through it, that might be a solution.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sid talks about his old job.
Speaker: He was just a ferry driver back in the day down below.
Speaker: And then when darkness took over, he flew his ship to the floating continent and it crashed.
Speaker: Almost everyone died in the crash, but he saved four babies.
Speaker: The Warriors of Light.
Speaker: He tells them to stay safe as they fly into their... So, yes, the four main characters who are all adopted were saved by Sid years ago, like 15 years ago or something like that, when they were babies, because they were all babies on this plane.
Speaker: Everybody else died except the four babies that he saved.
Speaker: Except for the babies.
Speaker: There's probably like...
Speaker: eight babies, but he could only carry four at once.
Speaker: Yeah, that's the part he leaves out.
Speaker: No, but there were like 20 of you.
Speaker: So you should be glad I grabbed you guys.
Speaker: Like, wait, what?
Speaker: I just grabbed who I could.
Speaker: You guys were right by the door.
Speaker: God.
Speaker: So that that burning wreckage was filled with baby veal.
Speaker: It was just unbelievable.
Speaker: Babies tap the bottom.
Speaker: Just all the way.
Speaker: Just packed in like cordwood.
Speaker: It was.
Speaker: And an apt comparison, because I'll tell you what, it went up.
Speaker: It went up like it had been soaking in whale oil.
Speaker: It was just unbelievable.
Speaker: You ever soak something in whale oil?
Speaker: You ever wonder how they get the whale oil out of the whale?
Speaker: First, the whale has to still be alive, and then they put it up in the air.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: Let me show you.
Speaker: Let me show you.
Speaker: Let me show you.
Speaker: This is an art book from the game called Dishonored.
Speaker: And to that end, how about listening to products and services who may or may not be advertising on this podcast?
Speaker: Ooh, they're brave, aren't they?
Speaker: And welcome back.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: Chapter five.
Speaker: They take the ship down below the cloud line and see that the world below is covered by water.
Speaker: It's a water world.
Speaker: This is where Kevin Costner got the idea.
Speaker: Just starts drinking his own pee.
Speaker: And they're like, you don't have to do that.
Speaker: So, okay.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: I just learned something.
Speaker: This is deviation, but whatever.
Speaker: Kevin Costner was offered the part, offered a part in Tombstone, right?
Speaker: Which is everyone's favorite Western movie.
Speaker: It's wait, not Tombstone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Tombstone.
Speaker: tombstone okay okay he was offered a part in tombstone right and that is that's the one with kurt russell val kilmer uh so he's offered the lead just a magnificent cast yeah magnificent cast he was offered wyatt erp he was offered wyatt erp he said no and then he made his own wyatt erp movie that's right yeah jesus christ
Speaker: And which one does anyone remember?
Speaker: Which one does anyone remember?
Speaker: So apparently, apparently, part of, there was like a little Oscar buzz for Val Kilmer.
Speaker: And out of spite, Kevin Costner used his connections to kill the Oscar buzz for Val Kilmer in Tombstone.
Speaker: What the fuck?
Speaker: I didn't know any of the oh, what a look.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Look, before tonight, I just thought of Kevin Costner as like a mediocre slash subpar actor who just got lucky on some level.
Speaker: I don't know how he keeps getting work.
Speaker: I genuinely don't.
Speaker: But that's he cost Val Kilmer like a nomination for that.
Speaker: That's.
Speaker: That's unforgivable.
Speaker: It's unforgivable.
Speaker: It's unforgivable.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: So it's one of the best.
Speaker: God damn.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Now I'm angry.
Speaker: Now I'm pissed off.
Speaker: And I would watch.
Speaker: I, I, it, tombstone is one of those movies, man, that if I was, if I, if I still had cable and I was just flipping through the channels and tombstone was on, I'd be like, well, I guess I'm watching tombstone now.
Speaker: No, that's that.
Speaker: That was exactly what I was going to say.
Speaker: My brother once told me, my brother once told me that if he was, if he was flipping through the channels and good fellows was on, he didn't, didn't matter if it had just started or if it was almost over.
Speaker: That's what he was watching for the foreseeable future.
Speaker: And I told him that's how I feel about tombstone.
Speaker: It's the same kind of deal.
Speaker: Like if I will, I will watch the shit out of that movie.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it from top to bottom.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, you had, oh God, that cast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That cast is, is just unstoppable.
Speaker: Just an amazing cast.
Speaker: Just listen, top, top billing.
Speaker: You got Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp.
Speaker: You got Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday.
Speaker: You got Sam Elliott as Virgil Earp.
Speaker: The late great Bill Paxton as Morgan Earp.
Speaker: You got the late great Powers Booth as Curly Bill.
Speaker: Fuck yes.
Speaker: Fuck yes.
Speaker: Fuck yes.
Speaker: You have Michael Bane as Johnny Ringo.
Speaker: The scene between, just watch the scene between Val Kilmer and Michael Bane.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The lack of respect that the industry has for Michael Biehn is unforgivable.
Speaker: That man dominates.
Speaker: And that's the only person who could have stood up to Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And by the way, let's not forget Dana Delaney, who was like,
Speaker: really crush worthy material for a young Phil Keeling.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: What a fucking knockout she was.
Speaker: I would watch East of Eden on HBO, uh, uh, at about two in the morning when my parents thought I was asleep and I turned the volume down to three pegs and I'd sit right next to it so that if my parents came in, cause I had a remote and I had to, if my parents came in, I had, I could like change the channel real fast.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: You guys don't know what it was like.
Speaker: You guys don't appreciate what you had to deal with.
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: You had to really, you had to really, it's just like, you had to train your hearing first.
Speaker: It was like, first so you could listen to the TV, but also so you could hear footsteps and be like, right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you could, so I thought we were, we thought we were being real slick.
Speaker: We're like, oh yeah.
Speaker: They came in there.
Speaker: Like, yeah, I was, I was, I was just watching an infomercial for some reason.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And you'd get a boner.
Speaker: And you wouldn't do anything with it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's how that worked back then.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's how we're so fucked up.
Speaker: That's what happened to millennials.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's what Desert Storm did to us.
Speaker: Unbelievable.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I think that was our, I think that was our legally obligated tombstone rant for, for the year.
Speaker: Yeah, no.
Speaker: And I agree also just to name Stephen Lang and Thomas Hayden church as the Clantons.
Speaker: Oh, hell yes.
Speaker: Thomas Hayden church.
Speaker: And Michael Rooker is in the movie too, by BT dubs.
Speaker: If you, if you like those people and you like them in movies, go watch tombs.
Speaker: Do yourself a favor.
Speaker: Just get out of your daughter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Get on a recliner.
Speaker: Get a beverage of choice.
Speaker: Throw on Tombstone.
Speaker: Oh, I'm going to do that tomorrow.
Speaker: It's my wife's birthday tomorrow, and I'm going to be like, sorry, baby.
Speaker: We're spending a couple hours watching Tombstone on the couch.
Speaker: Actually, she loves that movie, too.
Speaker: Yeah, and it's like three hours long.
Speaker: I think it's a pretty long movie.
Speaker: It's longer than you'd expect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where the fuck were we?
Speaker: I don't know, man.
Speaker: Oh, the reason I got on this rant was Waterworld.
Speaker: Waterworld, yes, yes.
Speaker: Which was his next movie after Wyatt Earp.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: That man got too many second chances.
Speaker: I swear to God.
Speaker: Too many goddamn second chances.
Speaker: But you know what?
Speaker: He did build a baseball field, and I appreciate that movie more than I should.
Speaker: He did.
Speaker: He did.
Speaker: He did that thing.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: He did that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they go down and they see a small bit of land with an old wooden shack.
Speaker: And there's an old man in the shack guarding a priestess there.
Speaker: Her name is Aria, and she is the maiden of water.
Speaker: And she will show the Warriors of Light to the water crystal.
Speaker: She's like, oh, I'm glad you're here.
Speaker: I sealed off the water crystal.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: There's no bosses.
Speaker: Everything's cool.
Speaker: This will be easy.
Speaker: On the way, she explains the darkness spread across land years ago and stopped time, which stopped the forces protecting the crystals.
Speaker: The earth crystal was silenced and the land collapsed beneath the water.
Speaker: Arya takes them to where the crystal has been sealed.
Speaker: And after unsealing it, they are attacked by the Kraken.
Speaker: who is working for Lord Zandi.
Speaker: The Kraken attacks Lunelith and Arya steps in the way, causing the tentacle to go right through her chest.
Speaker: The Kraken can't get its tentacle back out of her and is like, get it off me, get it off me.
Speaker: And while it's happening, the Warriors of Light attack and defeat him.
Speaker: They activate the crystal and try to save Arya, but it's too late.
Speaker: A girl has no name.
Speaker: They bring her body back to the old man who tells them he expected this and tells them that they need to get back onto their ship because the land is rising and it's going to cause some wild ass waves.
Speaker: So they do so and the waves wash him and the shack away as their ship gets tossed about and Luneth gets knocked out as they're doing it.
Speaker: Chapter six, Lunath awakes from being knocked out and sees an old woman standing near him who tells him to go see Doga because they need his power to drive away the darkness.
Speaker: The others all had the same dream.
Speaker: They're in a village now called Amr where the Enterprise crashed nearby and they asked for around for Doga, who they knew of, who the village people knew of, but didn't know where he might be.
Speaker: Their only lead is the great library of Saronia.
Speaker: They get close to Saronia, where two armies are doing some sort of weird training exercise where they're fighting each other and a stray cannonball hits the airship, causes it to crash outside of the city.
Speaker: This time goes up in flames.
Speaker: RIP Enterprise.
Speaker: So that's two two airships down.
Speaker: They're just not built like they used to be.
Speaker: That's just that's a shame.
Speaker: It's a real shame.
Speaker: They get their belongings and head into the city where they come upon an inn where a boy is getting shouted out by a bunch of drunks.
Speaker: They stand up for the boy.
Speaker: He's more of like an adult.
Speaker: He's more like a guy.
Speaker: Yeah, he's a dude.
Speaker: He's a dude.
Speaker: But drunkards are saying that he started it by yelling at them for disparaging the king who has been acting weird, including making the army fight itself.
Speaker: The drunks leave eventually and the warriors talk to the new dude, Alice, and he is the son of the king.
Speaker: He explains that his father has become a completely different person and has disowned him when he tried to get him to stop being so bananas.
Speaker: B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
Speaker: The warriors say they will go with him to confront the king.
Speaker: We have a brief interlude with Raphia and Luneth talking about Ark and how his personality has changed from this really shy and demure dude to being really bold and confident.
Speaker: They get to the castle and they talk to the king's advisor, Gigameth.
Speaker: His name is Gigameth.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Giga.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Meth.
Speaker: Gigameth.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The highest quality of myth available.
Speaker: Somebody cooked here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Can I cook or can I cook?
Speaker: You're goddamn right.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: It's just Brian Cranston in the Heisenberg hat.
Speaker: Let's be real here.
Speaker: You all know who it is.
Speaker: We know who it is.
Speaker: They ask him to ask the king for an audience.
Speaker: And the guy's like, eh, tomorrow.
Speaker: Here's a guest bedroom.
Speaker: That night, a man tries to kill Alice in his sleep and Ark wakes up to stop it.
Speaker: It's the king himself.
Speaker: And he says that it's part of Gigamethron's wretched scheme.
Speaker: So instead of stabbing Alice, the king stabs himself so that he wouldn't kill his son.
Speaker: And then Gigameth enters and he's pissed that the plan didn't work.
Speaker: So he transforms into a giant bird known as a Garuda and attacks the Warriors of Light, however, call upon the mighty Morphin Power Rangers and take on the power of Dragoons.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And Slake Arruda under a hail of lances.
Speaker: Alice thanks them.
Speaker: Sick.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Sick.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The next day they head to the library and find the great mage to find out about the great mage Noah and Doga.
Speaker: They read a book about Noah and that when Noah passed away, he left Doga, his manor, and his other two students, Uni and Zandi, his other two students, Uni and Zandi, left.
Speaker: They just fucked off.
Speaker: the same Zandy that summoned the Kraken.
Speaker: Alice summons them back to the castle to give them a brand new airship.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Because they took such good care of the last two.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, keep an eye on this one.
Speaker: Chapter seven.
Speaker: They fly to the continent of Dalg and land near an estate they assume is Dogas.
Speaker: When they go inside, they meet a Moogle who says, and is this the first appearance of Moogles?
Speaker: I think it is.
Speaker: I think this is the first Moogle appearance.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: who says, Doga will see them immediately.
Speaker: Doga explains, when Noah passed away, he gave them each gifts.
Speaker: To Doga, all the magic.
Speaker: To Yunai, the dream world.
Speaker: And to Zandi, the gift of mortality.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Doga guesses that...
Speaker: Guess what?
Speaker: We're not going to explain the book is the story's never going to explain why mortality is a gift.
Speaker: I got bad news.
Speaker: I think we all have that gift.
Speaker: We all have that gift.
Speaker: I'm not sure Noah really understood what to write in a will.
Speaker: I think he ran out of presence and he was like struggling.
Speaker: He was like, to you, I pass on the fact that you're going to die.
Speaker: You're going to die one day.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: Didn't know that.
Speaker: That's a bummer.
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: Doga guesses that Zandi took over because he was annoyed at being made mortal or something.
Speaker: He then shows them where Zandi is based out of.
Speaker: But first they must awaken Yunai with Noah's loot.
Speaker: They wake up Yunai and who then takes them to who is the old woman that they saw in the dream.
Speaker: And she then takes them to a mountain with ruins where she calls forth another airship.
Speaker: They need a spare.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just, just, yeah.
Speaker: Aaron on the back burner.
Speaker: Uh, number, number four, for those of you at home called the invincible and it's massive.
Speaker: Uh, you know, better goddamn be with their track record.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, I gives them an errand to run with the airship and tells them to meet her back at the manor when they're done.
Speaker: Uh, the manor, the, the, the errand happens off camera.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: They fetch the Fang of Earth and return to the manor where they meet with you nine Doga in the basement.
Speaker: They tell the warriors that they have to attack the mages while the magic is that their magic is at full power and kill them.
Speaker: So the magic becomes imbued in the Fang.
Speaker: This causes a rift in the party with Luneth and Ingus ignoring over whether it's like the right thing to do.
Speaker: And then the mages are like, I'm sorry for putting you in this position.
Speaker: And the warriors of light are like, all right, let's do it.
Speaker: Fight begins.
Speaker: And soon Doga and you and I are dead with their magic spilling forth out of their bodies like a zneech space marine with the warp exploding out of its out of its like armor after it's been killed.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: That's a good reference.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: With that, the circus key was created.
Speaker: Outside, they meet the Moogles and one of them warns them that Doga thought Zandi might be even more powerful than he could conceive of.
Speaker: Chapter eight.
Speaker: They fly the they fly the Invincible starring Mark Wahlberg to the Crystal Tower using its cannons to fend off attacks from monsters.
Speaker: They arrive at the tower and use the key to enter it.
Speaker: And inside is the Earth Crystal.
Speaker: They light up the Earth Crystal, which then tells them the only thing left is to defeat Zandi.
Speaker: They choose new powers.
Speaker: Ingus is a ninja.
Speaker: Ruffia, a devout.
Speaker: Ark, a summoner.
Speaker: And Luneth is like, yeah, I'm fine as a knight.
Speaker: This is fine.
Speaker: I'm going to stick with this.
Speaker: This is fine.
Speaker: This is working.
Speaker: This speaks to me.
Speaker: They fight their way up the tower, and when they get to the top, they find Zandi, but he has four dragon statues that freeze anyone they look at, and it's looking like it's over for the heroes when four pillars of light appear, and it's Desh, Sarah, Alice, and Sid.
Speaker: They were beamed in by Doga and Yunai, and yes, Desh is not dead.
Speaker: Of course not.
Speaker: Of course not.
Speaker: That would be silly.
Speaker: They step in front of the statues so that they're the ones frozen.
Speaker: And they take the burden of the dragon stairs so the heroes can fight Zandi.
Speaker: After a brief encounter, they kill Zandi, but a cloud of darkness spills out from him and covers everything.
Speaker: And they awaken in the void and are face to face with the actual embodiment of the dark, the cloud of darkness.
Speaker: In there, they meet the warriors of dark.
Speaker: They're opposites who a thousand years ago had to beat back the forces of light in order to balance things out.
Speaker: And the two groups do join together and they fight the cloud of darkness and they defeat it.
Speaker: And then they are out of the void and it's just like, it's, you know, a happy ending.
Speaker: And they're like, oh, so you defeated darkness.
Speaker: And they're like, well, actually, um,
Speaker: that's not the way it works.
Speaker: You don't defeat darkness.
Speaker: It just has to exist in balance with the light.
Speaker: And anyway, they, they go back home.
Speaker: The end.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, I, it's like, I guess, you know, everything in balance, yin and yang and, and that kind of philosophical, um,
Speaker: tradition of like, you know, one cannot exist without the other.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But you'd think if that was the case, they would just have an arrangement.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, it's like if we literally cannot live without each other, there'd be some, we don't have to go on these excruciating wars and shit like that.
Speaker: It's just like, let's just, let's figure something out.
Speaker: So we both, you know, we're not, not, no one is good or evil.
Speaker: It's just two sides of the same coin.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And also, like, they can.
Speaker: I mean, you ever seen deep space?
Speaker: It's pretty fucking dark out there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Bad news.
Speaker: In the grand scheme of things, light is losing pretty hard.
Speaker: Light is going to lose pretty dang hard.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: There's no winning in this.
Speaker: There's no winning.
Speaker: It's in the end.
Speaker: Nothing ever matters.
Speaker: Nothing.
Speaker: Nothing matters.
Speaker: Do you guys want to hear about the heat death of the universe?
Speaker: That'll be the next episode.
Speaker: Next episode.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: That's a bonus episode for patrons.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's talk about heat death, which.
Speaker: I know there's, like, every few years, there's more discoveries in physics about, like, the nature of the universe is expanding, how it's expanding.
Speaker: And they're like, well, it might not be as expanding as fast as we thought, because you get to heat death, because if the universe is in a constant state of expansion and speeding up, eventually everything is too far from each other to create new planets and stars and et cetera.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Anyway, that's that's that's that.
Speaker: What do you think, Phil, of this story and the collection as a whole?
Speaker: As a whole.
Speaker: On the whole, this one.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, let's start with the individual.
Speaker: On an individual level, this is this is.
Speaker: better than the other two that the author seems to have grasped the excitement of battle scenes and not just reporting what happened as if it is a debrief.
Speaker: And that's nice.
Speaker: The characters are a little better developed, a little more interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now, having not played the game, I don't know how much of that is his fault or the game's fault.
Speaker: But on the whole, while reading these, I couldn't help but think as a genre fiction author, I'm constantly looking up new publishers, new magazines, new whatever periodicals or whatever to publish my work.
Speaker: And I write a lot of horror, but there are a lot of magazines and publishers out there that do fiction, science fiction, horror.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Or fantasy, science fiction, horror.
Speaker: And the thing I keep seeing with fantasy publishers is they will often say the same basic thing.
Speaker: They'll say, please don't send us a transcript of your D&D campaign.
Speaker: This is the reason why it is just, it's so like you are have, here's the thing I remember.
Speaker: It doesn't matter how complex your D and D game is.
Speaker: And in fact, for a D and D game, overthinking it is stupid.
Speaker: I, the best, the best campaign, longest running campaign I ever played in college, multiple years was literally us playing guys looking for like the six pieces of
Speaker: of the missing crown of destiny or some goddamn thing.
Speaker: And it just was a dungeon crawl with, and we were having fun with it and it was the best.
Speaker: We had a goddamn blast and it wasn't, but that's not going to translate to a story like it.
Speaker: So playing final fantasy,
Speaker: And going, yeah, I got to get the crystal fire again.
Speaker: I got to get the crystal of earth again.
Speaker: That's that's fine because you're playing it, you're doing it.
Speaker: And it's in the in the adventure of it, the action of it.
Speaker: That's fun.
Speaker: Transcribing it like this, it's not doing it any favors.
Speaker: Although I did say earlier that this has inspired me to actually play those games.
Speaker: So maybe I'm completely fucking off base there.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, that's, I get it.
Speaker: Because, like, basically, the, I feel like these are good for creating a structure of plot, right?
Speaker: But plot in and of itself is not story.
Speaker: It's just like the shit that people do or don't do.
Speaker: And I think if you have the structure of like, okay, these characters need to do, like I have this story.
Speaker: These characters I envision need to do X, Y, and Z in order for something to happen at the end of the story.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So I think part of it is the characters are not developed enough.
Speaker: And when you have a D and D campaign,
Speaker: the characters are just you and your friends fucking about like, I know there'll be people who listen to this, who are just like, Oh yeah.
Speaker: Well, you know, what about critical role?
Speaker: And I got to tell you, you're not critical role.
Speaker: You're not, you're not, you're not critical role people.
Speaker: And even when critical role adapts their shit into something else, it, they have to, they have to really like, it has to be rewritten.
Speaker: Like they have a lot of stuff, but,
Speaker: I guarantee that the animated series that is based off of their first campaign is not like a one for one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, all right, well, you know, we'll take the characters that they created and we'll take and we'll mess around with the stakes and all that and try to make it into a story that is well structured and characters who have motivation and
Speaker: you know, like consistent, coherent motivation, because that's the other thing is like when you are role playing, sometimes there is a inconsistency in motivation.
Speaker: Oh, that can happen for the sake of the rule of cool.
Speaker: Like, well, you know, my character would never do this, but, uh, but it would be super sweet if this, what if they did?
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Um, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker: That's a great way to play with your friends.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But,
Speaker: entertainment it does not make for other people no no it doesn't so you know that's the final fantasy memory of book heroes uh memorized um memory of heroes yeah yeah yeah phil
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, oh, I'm glad you asked because it's been a very interesting week for me.
Speaker: I've been in training at work for some managerial shit, so I haven't gotten as much time to play as I'd like to.
Speaker: But I did.
Speaker: I did get my hands on Space Marine, too.
Speaker: Ooh, yes.
Speaker: And promptly found out.
Speaker: that in order to play this and enjoy it, I might need an upgrade on my computer.
Speaker: Ah.
Speaker: I played it at the lowest.
Speaker: It's times like these that I realize I'm like, oh, I truly am an indie gamer in the sense that I really don't think about this shit anymore.
Speaker: I don't think about a new video card or RAM or anything like that much anymore.
Speaker: And it was on the lowest settings and it was playing, admittedly, after a very long load screen.
Speaker: But it was so slow and I played it a little and I was playing it.
Speaker: And I said, this is good.
Speaker: This is a good game.
Speaker: This is nice.
Speaker: It's not the fucking game of the year that a lot of people are having me believe that it is like the way people were talking about this game.
Speaker: I expected it to blow the head of my dick off.
Speaker: It was like that.
Speaker: That level of like, oh, for the emperor.
Speaker: And it's bringing in new people to the hobby, new interests of the hobby.
Speaker: I think it's great.
Speaker: I think that's cool as shit.
Speaker: It looked even at the lowest settings, it looked really good and I could see the appeal.
Speaker: But I played enough of it to go, OK, this isn't something.
Speaker: that I have to do right the hell now.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: This is something I could save for later.
Speaker: I could I could return it, get my money back and wait until sometime next year when when Graham's a little older and and I can justify buying a new video card and I can play some triple A game.
Speaker: the way it's meant to be played.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I and I and I made peace with that and I returned it and I fully intend on coming back to it at some point next year, probably.
Speaker: And I went ahead and bought a Crow Country.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: And and Kevin, when I when I played the demo, I told you it just didn't really grab me.
Speaker: Yeah, it didn't click with you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you said you said you really should give it another try.
Speaker: You were right.
Speaker: I sat there.
Speaker: I'm in a point in my life where I can't play.
Speaker: I generally can't play of the same video game for more than an hour straight for responsibilities call upon me.
Speaker: uh which is fine i'm not that's just life for me now um i i managed to get two hours straight uh of this game uh uh and it was just very satisfying i really enjoyed playing it i like the story i like the funniness of it i like uh i like the throwback to the old you know the resident evil like come on yeah
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I think it's kind of cool that they've streamlined a lot of stuff.
Speaker: Like, whereas in say Resident Evil two, you've got the diamond key, the club key, the spade key, the heart key.
Speaker: And with this, it's like, and each one of them like opens one, maybe two doors basically.
Speaker: And with this, they're like, okay, there's a bronze key and it opens like five doors.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you,
Speaker: the order in which that you solve this game is kind of up to you in a way.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think that's really cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's it's big without feeling, you know, intimidating.
Speaker: It's it's charming.
Speaker: It's it's I'm really glad I came back to this.
Speaker: It is a it is a satisfying game.
Speaker: I feel like I could probably knock it out this weekend at some point, based on how long I've heard it is.
Speaker: It's like six hours, something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's about that.
Speaker: It's, um, I was looking at my, trying to see if my play time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It took me five hours to beat it.
Speaker: 5.2 hours.
Speaker: It took you five hours to take me about seven.
Speaker: Uh, so that's how it's always worked with us.
Speaker: But I'm, I'm really glad I came back to it.
Speaker: I find it really charming.
Speaker: It's game of the year territory.
Speaker: It's, it's just, it's, it's just challenging enough.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: to keep me engaged, but it's also just relaxing enough for a guy like me who's played these games over and over again, where I can really feel like I can lean back in my chair and just go, okay, what are we looking for now?
Speaker: What are we doing here?
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I'm not tense and up there, which believe it or not, kids, you start to value that as you go over.
Speaker: Having said that, I'm also thinking about buying Alien Isolation for my Switch.
Speaker: Because work is sending me on another work trip in a couple of weeks.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, I really need to.
Speaker: I really need to beef up on my on my library of Switch games.
Speaker: But the the new Zelda game did just recently come out.
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: Something of wisdom?
Speaker: The one where you're playing actually Zelda, the first one you play Zelda.
Speaker: And I have been shocked because I thought that it was going to get the kind of same reception that the Princess Peach game that came out this year would get where it was just kind of like, OK, it's another female led like that's fun, but it's just fine.
Speaker: It's getting really good reviews.
Speaker: People are people are saying that it's like.
Speaker: I've heard people comparing it to like the perfect crossover of Breath of the Wild and and like Link to the Past.
Speaker: And Laura Kay, a video games journal I adore and have been following for years, pointed out that this is if this was if they were hinting at the idea that from now on, Zelda would have a
Speaker: big 3D Breath of the Wild style game, and then it would have a fun little 2D lower stakes kind of game like that.
Speaker: And that's just the path that it took for a little while.
Speaker: That should be fine with that.
Speaker: And I can't agree more.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that would be really, really good.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because the Breath of the Wild games just don't reach me.
Speaker: They just don't.
Speaker: But a 2D Zelda game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'll chew that up.
Speaker: So that'll be perfect.
Speaker: I'm thinking about maybe picking that up at some point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The only thing I've heard is like the it's like it doesn't run particularly well.
Speaker: Sometimes there's some like frame rate issues, which I would assume are solved by this switch to whenever that comes out.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which I think is it's either it's it's they're probably announcing it at the end of this year.
Speaker: I mean, there's rumblings of the next gen switch.
Speaker: Apparently, there's pictures of it floating around.
Speaker: Yeah, it was like either that was designed.
Speaker: There was like pictures of a 3D printed version that was made out of.
Speaker: the CAD files that was from the fact.
Speaker: I don't know how I like.
Speaker: I don't know what it means in terms of whether that was really it or not.
Speaker: If it is it, it's basically just like, oh, it's a larger switch.
Speaker: The controllers attach a little bit differently like they have, which is what I'd want, frankly.
Speaker: There's no don't fuck with the switch.
Speaker: There's nothing wrong with a switch.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What are you playing, Kevin?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So UFO 50.
Speaker: I love when you start that way.
Speaker: Oh, here we go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: New UFO 50 games.
Speaker: Gimme, gimme, gimme.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: New UFO 50 games.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So I beat...
Speaker: Pilot Quest, which is a pilot quest is fascinating because it is like an idle game.
Speaker: It's like an idle clicker type game mixed with Zelda.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So basically what happens is when you first start up, you have no resources and there's just this like moon crystal and you can mine the moon crystal for a while and get up enough resources.
Speaker: And then you can turn those into, it's called like moon ingots or something like that.
Speaker: And then you use those moon ingots, the first thing you do is like you rebuild this one dude's house who's a hunter.
Speaker: And then the hunter starts producing meat from you.
Speaker: And if you have meat, you can go out into the wild zone.
Speaker: And each piece of meat that you have gives you two minutes.
Speaker: out in the world.
Speaker: So you would have like, you would go out, you would go out, and every time you got hit by an enemy, it would take like 30 seconds off.
Speaker: Oh, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker: And your weapon is a yo-yo, which is very, very StarTropics.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: So, yeah, but a big part of it is also setting up like your economy back at base where you build houses and then these little alien dudes show up and you can put them to work making like doing the moon ingots for you and like researching science stuff.
Speaker: And you can use that stuff to get better yo-yos and stuff.
Speaker: you can make a stamina pill which makes the little alien dudes work faster and then like you can build silos so you can have more collect more resources and then so at one point i had like so much meat uh in my inventory that when i went out i had like i think it was like two hours of exploration time that i could do oh that's awesome
Speaker: So the goal of the game is to find your pilot has crashed on this planet.
Speaker: You have to find three of the, uh, ship pieces.
Speaker: Um, and which is very toe jam and Earl.
Speaker: Um, so you have to find three, three, three of the ship pieces, and then you have to make ship fuel, which is part of the econ, like people, you know, doing stuff back at the base thing for you.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: uh, so yeah, it's, you know, it's a neat little game and most of the work on the game happens while you're playing other games.
Speaker: Like, Oh sure.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So you go into, you open up UFO 50, you start up pilot quest, you get everything going and then you, you,
Speaker: quit out a pilot question you go into another game and then you could go back into pilot quest after a bit and you you like a little dude comes up and says hey in your absence your friends made this this x y and z um
Speaker: So it's pretty cool.
Speaker: That's really neat.
Speaker: Pilot Quest is my second game that I've beaten on UFO 50.
Speaker: The first one was Night Manor, which I talked about last time.
Speaker: And Night Manor, I got the cherry disc, which means that I got everything.
Speaker: It's 100%ed.
Speaker: Pilot Quest, I only have a gold disc because I didn't 100% it.
Speaker: Basically, I know I had 100% it, but it was just...
Speaker: I didn't want to deal with it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I'll come back to it.
Speaker: There's like this boss character.
Speaker: After you beat everything, there's this boss character that starts wandering around the overworld.
Speaker: He basically looks like a really freaky.
Speaker: It's like Felix the cat meets Bendy in the ink machine.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: And he's like just walking around and he has all the attacks of all the bosses in the game.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: So you have to beat him six times on one run.
Speaker: Oh, Jesus Christ.
Speaker: And every time he hits you, he takes off 30 seconds, right?
Speaker: So I beat him four times, but by the time I'd beaten him the fourth time out of six times needed, I was like, I'm out of time, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And once I go back to the base, it resets the counter back to zero times.
Speaker: So I was like, yeah, I don't want to do this anymore.
Speaker: That would make me snap.
Speaker: I was satisfied with just beating the game and moving on.
Speaker: Which just proves that you're a sane human being.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So, I'm still playing through, you know, I'm going through a bunch of other games here and there.
Speaker: Overbold is one that I've been playing, which is like a, you know, it's an arena shooter type thing where you basically have to
Speaker: Raise the stakes of your fights.
Speaker: So you do your first fight and it's like a top down thing.
Speaker: You play this woman with a gun who is actually the protagonist of another game on the game.
Speaker: in the collection and you first fight you kill two two dudes two monsters and you get paid a hundred hundred bucks right and then it takes you to this fight screen where you can buy upgrades and then it shows you what your next fight is like what are you going to fight against next and then it's like you're going to fight this for a hundred
Speaker: Uh, but you can hit this button that says raise stakes.
Speaker: And every time you hit it, it goes up a hundred and it adds more enemies to the fight.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: So there's a balance that you have to strike because you only have, I want to say six or seven fights, because by the time you get to the seventh fight, it's the, you get to the final fight, which is every single enemy.
Speaker: It's like 85 enemies plus a boss.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So if you don't have any upgrades, you're going to die in one shot.
Speaker: So you have to balance it between like getting upgrades through the other preceding fights and like making it hard, but not too hard so you don't die.
Speaker: So I've been playing a lot of a lot of overbold, a lot of vanger.
Speaker: So, which is like a Metroid meets, Metroid meets, oh, what's the name of that game?
Speaker: Metal... Metal Slug?
Speaker: It's not Metal... No, not Metal Slug.
Speaker: Metal game.
Speaker: Metal Storm.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Sure, sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's the one I'm thinking of, right?
Speaker: Is it?
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I haven't played it.
Speaker: I got to say, I'm really looking forward to Metal Storm.
Speaker: Basically, it let you, which lets you like change your gravity.
Speaker: Like you could go on the floor and then up to the ceiling.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's basically that plus Metroid.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm really looking forward to like the think pieces that are going to come out in the following weeks, uh, rating, uh, the best versus the worst, uh, games on this.
Speaker: Uh, uh, it's going to be very, very funny.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, uh, okay.
Speaker: So aside from UFO 50, I finally got my hands on hollow body.
Speaker: Um, yes.
Speaker: Tell me about hollow body.
Speaker: Hollow body is okay.
Speaker: It is good.
Speaker: It might sneak onto a game of the year list just because we do a top 10.
Speaker: So we do name a lot of games.
Speaker: Oh, that's true.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: Hollow Body, like, I might even give it more points just because it's a single developer made the game.
Speaker: The problem I had with Hollow Body was it wears its influence too clearly on its sleeve.
Speaker: It is very much like...
Speaker: And this is no shade to the developer, because I really like the game, but it is very much like, oh, this feels a lot like Silent Hill in certain regards.
Speaker: Just the way it, like too much, almost, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a difference between like influence and straight up like this is what we're doing.
Speaker: Specifically Silent Hill 2 when you are getting going through the apartment complex area in Silent Hill 2.
Speaker: That's kind of like the vibe you get from the first hour.
Speaker: And it doesn't really change a whole lot until like the very end.
Speaker: So or in part in like
Speaker: The first half of the game is very much that.
Speaker: And then it's, it's, um, you move on to some other locations.
Speaker: Um, but yeah, overall though, it's a really, really fun, you know, little survival horror game.
Speaker: It doesn't take that long to beat.
Speaker: Uh, the only reason I currently have, uh,
Speaker: I don't know, seven hours is because three of those hours it was sitting on pause while I go eat dinner.
Speaker: I went to eat dinner.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I'm very familiar with that.
Speaker: That's happened to me plenty of times.
Speaker: It's like four or five hours or something like that.
Speaker: To actually, if you're focused on playing, getting your way through it.
Speaker: So it's a tight game, very...
Speaker: very lean uh doesn't really have anywhere to trim um necessarily there's some areas where that you're walking for a little bit too long but that's a critic criticism i got off to the level at the original silent hill 2 where you're just kind of walking through silent hill for a little too long without much going on other than running past enemies um
Speaker: And I think that's what makes me appreciate things like Resident Evil, which tend to be very claustrophobic, very tight corridors, which obviously this has some of that because it's an apartment building, but not as much as you would...
Speaker: hope, I guess.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But yeah, Hollow Body, pretty dang good game.
Speaker: Single developer made it.
Speaker: It's fully voice acted and the voice actors crush it.
Speaker: I'm doing a new game plus run right now and I might maybe I'll have different thoughts because I'm
Speaker: It's one of those like, okay, well, I know how to do everything.
Speaker: I think I can blow through another playthrough of the game pretty quickly.
Speaker: Resident Evil style.
Speaker: Resident Evil style.
Speaker: It's like the first time you're like...
Speaker: you know, cautious and all that stuff.
Speaker: And then the second time you're like, uh, fuck it.
Speaker: I'm just going to baseball bat my way through this game.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I'm going to run past this guy.
Speaker: Here we go with this thing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Great, great, great.
Speaker: Like wasting ammo is for suckers.
Speaker: What's funny is that you never really need to save ammo and hollow body necessarily.
Speaker: Uh, there's like one big fight, uh,
Speaker: like at the 75% mark where it's better if you have a good chunk of ammo, but there's not like- But otherwise it's pretty plentiful or?
Speaker: No, it's not that it's plentiful.
Speaker: It's just that in the overworld, I'll call it, when you're in between areas, when you're running through the streets from building to building, most of the time you can just run past-
Speaker: the enemies.
Speaker: When you're in a building, you really can't.
Speaker: You have to kill them.
Speaker: For the most part, though, there's no real boss fights.
Speaker: There's just like some tough enemies that take more shots to go down.
Speaker: So, you know, hollow body.
Speaker: It's
Speaker: It'll go on my games of the year list, my unranked games of the year list.
Speaker: That's what I... And usually those games are not... Some of those games don't even get read out in the episode that we have at the end of the year.
Speaker: Because right now I have 12 on the list.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's getting...
Speaker: There's this.
Speaker: I feel like I keep saying this.
Speaker: I feel like I've said this every year for the past five years.
Speaker: Like, this has been such a good year for games.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's crazy how much there is.
Speaker: The cup runneth over and all that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I got.
Speaker: Is it six?
Speaker: Uh, one, two, three... Oh no, that's eight.
Speaker: That's eight plus... seven, fifteen.
Speaker: I have fifteen
Speaker: 15 games, it's basically my favorite games of this year.
Speaker: And then the top 10 of which will be the games of the year that we do at the end of the year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I've grown to look forward to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I start centering my Steam purchases around our end of the year game of the year list.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Trying to find the last few things that are like pertinent to play.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Just like, okay.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Before we close the year out, is there any like indie games that I didn't play that, you know, some things that might slip through.
Speaker: I will say if I'm looking at, so, oh, I need to...
Speaker: I like deleted all my collections and I'm like because I was reorganizing them so I can't look at oh no no I have it okay due to my view filter what the fuck is a view filter no one knows no one knows anyway okay so yeah last year yeah no last year was pretty fucking banger though
Speaker: Do you know, because you know what came out last year?
Speaker: Baldur's Gate 3.
Speaker: I mean, that was... And you know what else came out last year?
Speaker: Was the Resident Evil 4 remake.
Speaker: And also Amnesia the Bunker.
Speaker: And also Alan Wake 2.
Speaker: Like...
Speaker: I need to replay Amnesia the Bunker again.
Speaker: That game was fucking tight.
Speaker: I loved that game so much.
Speaker: So I have a lot of games that I really love for 2024, but nothing far and away that matches up with like the 2023 list quite yet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's been a good year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: People say it's a good year.
Speaker: It's a good year.
Speaker: Everybody's saying it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, I don't do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker: If you can, please go to our YouTube page, hit subscribe, leave a like and a comment.
Speaker: Really helps out if you can, you know, do that and build up, build up that that YouTube presence.
Speaker: um yes otherwise follow us on on uh shitter uh blue sky instagram uh you name it we got it except for facebook really we we don't do facebook uh it's kind of there but we're not doing anything we're not really doing anything don't bother don't bother delete your facebook account actually just do it just do it
Speaker: Just do it.
Speaker: You should also delete your Twitter account.
Speaker: Delete your social media presence.
Speaker: Delete your social media presence.
Speaker: Come over to our Discord.
Speaker: Hide out in there.
Speaker: That's the way to do it.
Speaker: That's the way to do it.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Yeah, come on.
Speaker: You know you want to.
Speaker: Come out to the coast.
Speaker: Have a few laughs.
