Transcript
Speaker: There's nothing to be ashamed of, damn it.
Speaker: Nothing to be ashamed of.
Speaker: You know who else has no shame?
Speaker: Who's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me is Zoe's Phil.
Speaker: And today we're finishing up Halo First Strike by Eric Nyland.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're closing in on the end of this one.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And we're picking it up at Section 5, subtitled Massacre at Eridonis Secundus.
Speaker: You know you're going to get into... Secundus.
Speaker: Yeah, you know you're going to get into some...
Speaker: Some heavy shit when they start with Massacre.
Speaker: Okay, great.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: The Massacre at... Like, this is the most Warhammer subtitle that they could have written right there.
Speaker: If you blind-tested me and said, what franchise does a book section called Massacre at Eridonis Secundus come from, I'd be like, 40k, next question.
Speaker: Whatever even...
Speaker: What are we even doing here?
Speaker: What are you softballing me for?
Speaker: What's going on here?
Speaker: What is this?
Speaker: It's got Latin.
Speaker: It's got genocide.
Speaker: 40K.
Speaker: Easy.
Speaker: but we're going to finish up this book and we're going to put the body in the mosh.
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: Let's put the body in the mosh.
Speaker: Let's put the body in the mosh.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Chapter 26.
Speaker: So this is right after we're picking up after chapter 25, where they had all the naval fun times and an Admiral Whitcomb was doing his little dancing with the ship.
Speaker: Master Chief wakes up in the med bay of the Gettysburg and,
Speaker: after the team was attacked.
Speaker: And Cortana confirms what he already thought was that Pulaski, Lee, and Anton were killed by the plasma blast.
Speaker: And he is actually pretty sad about Pulaski dying because he was like, he was like, okay, so she survived like...
Speaker: the pillar of autumn that she survived reach, uh, or she survived halo.
Speaker: She survived all these things only to get killed, like escorting the Spartans over to do a repair mission.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He does have a truly like, this is bullshit moment.
Speaker: And he's like, she would have made a good Spartan.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: That's like the highest honor that he can bestow on someone who's just died.
Speaker: She would have been a good Spartan.
Speaker: That's pretty cool.
Speaker: She would have been a good Spartan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Otherwise, Will, Grace and Fred are alive and getting treatment.
Speaker: Kelly is recovering from her burns.
Speaker: And Dr. Halsey is about to prep Linda for surgery.
Speaker: So we're getting we still got some Spartans left.
Speaker: Don't worry.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Plenty of extra lives.
Speaker: But unfortunately, Cortana tells Mass Chief that the Covenant has found Earth.
Speaker: Whoopsie.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: And they're massing their fleet around a massive command and control base called Unyielding Hierophant.
Speaker: What a good, that's another 40 K name.
Speaker: What that is another 40 K name right there.
Speaker: Yielding Hierophant.
Speaker: That is, that is 40 K. You can't know.
Speaker: There's no getting around that.
Speaker: That is as 40 K as fuck right there.
Speaker: Seriously.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Whitcomb has this theory that the crystal that they are carrying with them allows for nearly instant teleportation through slip space.
Speaker: So that's interesting.
Speaker: And Master Chief has an idea to repair the hybrid Gettysburg Ascendant Justice ship.
Speaker: And that is to go to a colony in Eridonis that no one cares about.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That he's been to once before.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: 20 years ago, in fact.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: Um, so chapter 27, uh, Dr. Halsey calls master chief into her office to talk about the mission logs regarding interactions with the flood.
Speaker: And she has figured out why Sergeant Johnson has survived.
Speaker: It's because the motherfucker's radioactive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He is radioactive as shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which, you know what I said way back when, when we first, uh,
Speaker: got reintroduced to him.
Speaker: I said, there needs to be a solid excuse for this.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: That's a good one.
Speaker: Pretty good one.
Speaker: Pretty good one.
Speaker: It's at least interesting.
Speaker: He has, uh, he has like weird nervous system damage from radioactivity because he was like handling, you know, he was handling weapons or munitions that should not have been handled with like bare hands or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just like, okay, fair enough.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: I buy it.
Speaker: I'll buy that one.
Speaker: I'll buy that one for a dollar.
Speaker: I'll buy that for a dollar.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So, uh, she gives, uh, master chief a choice.
Speaker: Um, and,
Speaker: Either he can give high command the report that leaves out Johnson's immunity.
Speaker: It's just everything about the flood except for the information on Sergeant Johnson.
Speaker: Or he can give high command the one with Johnson's files.
Speaker: But if he does that, Johnson's going to get killed.
Speaker: No ifs, ands, and buts about it.
Speaker: So Master Chief has a choice.
Speaker: He has to think on it.
Speaker: Halsey, after Master Chief leaves, Halsey then burns Cortana's memories of the conversation with a worm, which is like a type of virus.
Speaker: I remember that shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That took me back to 1994.
Speaker: That was, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she uses a worm to burn the memories out of Cortana's memory core.
Speaker: And then she talks to, she's like talking with Cortana, like, all right, let's figure out this stone.
Speaker: And Wickham had already said, you know, he thought that the stone was allowing for some instant teleportation.
Speaker: In this chapter, like...
Speaker: Halsey and Cortana are really focusing in on the time-space anomalies between when, like, the Master Chief and company left Halo to when they got to Reach.
Speaker: and how they got there at the exact right time and how it's like it was six weeks for the people on Reach but only three weeks for the people on Halo.
Speaker: And it was like it's all this weird, timey, whimely, wibbly-wobbly.
Speaker: And she's like, they got there to Reach when we needed them to get there.
Speaker: And Cortana's like, what?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I beg your pardon?
Speaker: I beg your pardon.
Speaker: What is this astrophysics bullshit?
Speaker: I need explanations, please.
Speaker: This is all nonsense.
Speaker: But yeah, basically there's something weird.
Speaker: It's like the stone is like a physical manifestation of like slip space and bends both space and time.
Speaker: So after they have this conversation, Halsey burns those memories from Cortana's memory core.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: This is where you're starting to get to the whole, so you're like, wait, wait, wait, what are we doing?
Speaker: What are we doing?
Speaker: What are we doing?
Speaker: Please, please.
Speaker: Okay, great.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like ethics with these smart AIs.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Uh, Cortana then asks Halsey talks to Halsey about the MIAs on the Spartan list.
Speaker: And I thought this was a really interesting detail where, uh, Spartans, there's a rule that Spartans are never listed as KIA.
Speaker: They're only missing an action.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was a really cool detail.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he and Master Chief talks about it earlier.
Speaker: And I think in the chapter before, but like they'll they never like get that rest, you know?
Speaker: So I thought that was neat.
Speaker: I thought that was a cool touch.
Speaker: It just kind of illustrates just how brutal these people's lives are.
Speaker: Even even in death, you don't get to sleep.
Speaker: You know, you're you're always missing.
Speaker: You're never dead.
Speaker: always missing, never dead.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So chapter 28, the crew of the Gettysburg slash Ascendant Justice arrives at the asteroid belt, asteroid base that Master Chief and company were at 20 years ago to capture the rebel leader.
Speaker: This takes place in Halo, the fall of reach.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I remembered this.
Speaker: That was like the very beginning too.
Speaker: It was just, it's towards the beginning.
Speaker: It's their actual first mission.
Speaker: And they don't even have Mjolnir armor in that yet.
Speaker: They were just wearing like their black tactical turtlenecks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And turtlenecks.
Speaker: And had some like grappling hooks or something.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's just like the Spartans were more spooky back then.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, that's an excellent word for it, actually.
Speaker: There were more like government spooks rather than like these walking tanks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They had more to do with the CIA than the Adeptes Astartes, like basically.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So they get into this like face off with the new governor, Jacob Giles, who is the smooth talking new governor of the base.
Speaker: And if you didn't.
Speaker: I love this guy.
Speaker: Did you listen to him on the audio version at all?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The way the guy reads him in the audio version, you would love him even more.
Speaker: Is he a total fop or something like that?
Speaker: Because that's how I read it in my head.
Speaker: Oh, well, why Admiral?
Speaker: He's basically doing a George Takei impression.
Speaker: Oh, I love it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That's what I have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: That's close enough to what I had in my head.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Captain.
Speaker: Oh, I love it.
Speaker: Admiral Whitcomb.
Speaker: I love he was such a piece of shit who I was still kind of on the side of like he was this character rules like it's such a shame we had to wait till the final third of the book to get to him.
Speaker: But this guy, I loved this character.
Speaker: So, yeah, keep going.
Speaker: This is great.
Speaker: So they have this standoff where it's like, what comes like, well, I'm going to fire my plasma cannons.
Speaker: And Giles is like, well, I'm going to nuke you.
Speaker: And, you know, Giles is like, fine, I'll stand down.
Speaker: And they get in there and Wickham's like, ha ha, my plasma cannons weren't working.
Speaker: Surprise, surprise.
Speaker: Surprise, surprise.
Speaker: And Wickham also breaks it to Giles over dinner that the Covenant is on their way because of how easy it is to track them with this stone that they have on board the ship.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, which, you know what?
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Fuck you!
Speaker: Like, I was so mad!
Speaker: I was like, yeah, we're led to, we're kind of led this entire section to see this guy as this pompous asshole who, but it's like, no, man, they were just minding their own business, hanging out, and you brought the Covenant to their doorstep, you ass!
Speaker: You asshole.
Speaker: It is such a shitty thing to do!
Speaker: Yeah, so...
Speaker: Um, then the covenant arrived.
Speaker: Um, so chapter 29, uh, what come is like, ah, well, you know what we're going to do.
Speaker: We're going to use those nukes to blow them up.
Speaker: And Giles is like, I was also bluffing.
Speaker: There are no nukes.
Speaker: What nukes?
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: He's like a mix between George Takei and like, what's his name from Die Hard?
Speaker: Alice from Die Hard.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Admiral Whitcomb, boobie.
Speaker: That's very much it.
Speaker: And it's just like, and I also love how much like at the, at the end of it, when he's like, yeah, man, that isn't real.
Speaker: We didn't actually have any of that shit.
Speaker: We just have like neutrino emitters up in the rocks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I just love it.
Speaker: It's just like,
Speaker: well, I don't know what I expected.
Speaker: I can't even be mad at you.
Speaker: Like, I can't even be mad.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: It's like that scene from Arrested Development where Michael takes the bag out that says dead dove inside and he opens it up and says, I don't know what I expected.
Speaker: I don't know what I expected.
Speaker: That's exactly it.
Speaker: It's like, okay, yeah, you know what?
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: So the Wickham tries to fire on the, cause there's one single covenant ship at this point, tries to fire covenant ship, but the plasma turret just like explodes and damages the Gettysburg.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So they realized that the Mack cannon of the Gettysburg can be used in place of the plasma cannons, busted magnetic field generator to fire the plasma.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, this is kind of a cool, like setting up this thing where, you know, the, cause the Mack cannons were the only weapon that,
Speaker: that the UNSC had that worked against the Covenant.
Speaker: Like the Mac cannons obliterated and it was like, but they didn't have a Mac cannon, but they, the, the electromagnetic generator that shot the rounds was still operational.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Cortana uses that to do the whole shaping and pla of the plasma charge and all that and shoot it out as a laser beam.
Speaker: I love this because it immediately took me back to the first Halo book that we read like over a year ago and how we – I remember distinctly us talking about how cool the Mac cannons were.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Like what a great touch they were.
Speaker: So yeah, this is fantastic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a gigantic – oh, what's the name of the – what is the name of the cannon?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The real world's.
Speaker: Oh, the magnetic.
Speaker: Oh, crap.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: We talked about this in that episode, too.
Speaker: We talked about it, too.
Speaker: It's like you can only put it on a boat.
Speaker: And it's like crazy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like a Gauss rifle kind of thing.
Speaker: It's like.
Speaker: Magnetic accelerator.
Speaker: Navy.
Speaker: Accelerator.
Speaker: Yeah, the electromagnetic railgun cannon.
Speaker: Railgun.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: So the Mac cannon is a railgun.
Speaker: Absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker: It's too cool.
Speaker: Too cool.
Speaker: Yeah, Nyland knows his naval.
Speaker: Because like everything Nyland writes is, it's not specifically a naval battle.
Speaker: It is a submarine battle.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is more along the lines of what like a battle in space would be is is is the is a is like a submarine fight.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: It's similar to naval battles, but you have more advanced stuff like stealth and, you know, that kind of thing.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker: It's very interesting.
Speaker: Which actually, that reminds me, it's kind of cool the way, this is completely, this is a tangent.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: On this show?
Speaker: On this show?
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Battlestar Galactica treated the capital ships as submarines, basically.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So they like had, it was the, the way it worked, it wasn't based on like visual contact.
Speaker: It was based on like a, like a sonar radar type of contact, which is the way it works on works in submarines.
Speaker: So I thought that's pretty cool.
Speaker: I never, that's one of those shows that I always tell myself I really need to watch.
Speaker: And I never, I never watched that show.
Speaker: Let me see it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's worth watching.
Speaker: It's weird, but it's worth watching.
Speaker: It gets weirder as the show goes on.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: I believe that.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So they win.
Speaker: They destroy the Covenant ship.
Speaker: Meanwhile, the Spartans, after all that, the Spartans are catching up about old times and their injuries.
Speaker: They're just, you know, showing each other their scars or something.
Speaker: And the Spartans are like, yeah, what are we going to do?
Speaker: There's nowhere to fight the covenant.
Speaker: They're going to go to Earth.
Speaker: And Sergeant Johnson comes in like, well, why don't we just fight them at the at the elephant?
Speaker: And they're like, you mean the unyielding hierophant?
Speaker: And he's like, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, the elephant.
Speaker: The wielding elephant.
Speaker: The wielding elephant.
Speaker: It's a nice touch.
Speaker: It's a nice touch.
Speaker: So Johnson is the one who basically makes a suggestion that like, well, if you want to take the fight to them, we know where to do that.
Speaker: Take it like take go to the the unyielding hierophant and and take the fight to them, because that's the only ground that you're going to be able to fight them between here and Earth.
Speaker: So they formulate a plan.
Speaker: The plan is going to they're going to drop, take a drop ship and they're going to drop out of slip space, infiltrate and destroy the unyielding hierophant.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Chapter 30.
Speaker: So while all this is happening, Dr. Halsey called Kelly up to the med station to get another injection of whatever.
Speaker: And the chapter 30, the injection happens to be a sedative and she knocks Kelly right on out.
Speaker: She is knocked out.
Speaker: And she calls Locklear down to help her move Kelly.
Speaker: And, you know, they move her over to another ship.
Speaker: And she gives Locklear the space-time artifact crystal to hold onto because you'll take care of it if it becomes an issue.
Speaker: She plants that seed in his head.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: And I, I'm immediately like, is this guy smart enough to know what the hell she's talking about?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is he smart enough?
Speaker: And we'll see.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: She, she then he's like, well, what do you mean?
Speaker: And she just like closes the door on him and launches the ship out into space.
Speaker: And Giles is like, Giles is like, Admiral Whitcomb, why is my ship being taken?
Speaker: Um, Wickham hails Halsey, but she responds with three, nine, two, which in the UNSC is the official non-response code.
Speaker: Basically go fuck yourself.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And I love to even ask, he's like, did that guy just tell me to go fuck myself?
Speaker: Say it pretty much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's pretty much what happened.
Speaker: He's like three, nine, two.
Speaker: He's an admiral.
Speaker: He doesn't know the code.
Speaker: He's like, what's three, nine, two.
Speaker: I don't remember three, nine, two.
Speaker: No one's ever had to say it to him before.
Speaker: And mass chief's like, it's a official non-response code admiral.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And he's like, did she just tell me to go to hell?
Speaker: Yes, sir.
Speaker: Yes, sir.
Speaker: She did.
Speaker: Press S to tell your admiral to go to hell.
Speaker: And then they slip space away.
Speaker: The Covenant then show up and Whitcomb recounts the story of the Alamo to Master Chief, leaving out all the racist bits.
Speaker: Which, yeah.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: There's no time for that.
Speaker: There's no time.
Speaker: We're all going to die.
Speaker: I'm just going to give you the cool Texas version.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: We're going to get, I'm going to give you the Texas version.
Speaker: And he's Texas style.
Speaker: And, and Master Chief is like, yeah, kind of like the battle of Thermopylae.
Speaker: And he's like, what comes like?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But this one was Texas.
Speaker: much to say that but everyone died at thermopoly and like oh cool the civilians were left alone yeah anyway what i'm saying is we're gonna jump into slip space now and leave these people on the asteroid to die leave them to die these people that we totally who did not ask for us to show up
Speaker: Like who we have been treating like assholes since we showed up.
Speaker: We're just going to leave them to die.
Speaker: And his little bit of like, he's just like, well, the covenant would have found them eventually and they would have died eventually.
Speaker: Go fuck yourself.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: It's like the covenant hasn't found them yet.
Speaker: I don't think the covenant was going to find them.
Speaker: If the covenant shows up at my door after I've been hiding and they're like, it's time to die.
Speaker: Be like, well, we did our best, you know, but if like you and your buddies show up and say, by the way, the covenant's on its way because of us, I think I've got more than a little reason to be a tiny bit pissed off.
Speaker: Like I am one.
Speaker: I don't care how pompous and shitty this guy is.
Speaker: Andy is.
Speaker: I'm just,
Speaker: I'm still on his side.
Speaker: I'm still on his side in this situation.
Speaker: What a shitty move.
Speaker: Such a shitty move.
Speaker: So anyway, what happens next is
Speaker: Meanwhile, Locklear is loading up equipment.
Speaker: He's like, I'm Locklear and I'm loading equipment.
Speaker: And he's like, oh.
Speaker: And he's putting stuff onto dollies and things like that.
Speaker: And he notices that they're jumping into slip space.
Speaker: And he's like, oh, shit.
Speaker: And then he looks at the crystal and be like, well, I'm not dying for no...
Speaker: no crystal, I'm going to destroy this thing.
Speaker: And he puts explosive foam over the crystal and tries to blow it up, except it kills him.
Speaker: It destroys the crystal, but he dies.
Speaker: That's a wrap on Locklear.
Speaker: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker: He's dead.
Speaker: And now the shards of it are just lost in slip space.
Speaker: And people think that this was Halsey's intention.
Speaker: That's like why specifically she gave it to Lockwood.
Speaker: Yeah, because like she figured when the going got tough, he'd be cool with just acing himself and the crystal at the same time, which...
Speaker: It worked if that was the plan.
Speaker: I don't think he was cool with acing himself.
Speaker: He just didn't know how big of an explosion.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That's, you know what?
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: No little crystal would generate, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: And I love that they treat it.
Speaker: They're like his, his accident.
Speaker: He had a little accident.
Speaker: He had a little accident.
Speaker: He's vaporized.
Speaker: There's nothing left of him.
Speaker: There's a shadow.
Speaker: And it's not a great shadow.
Speaker: It's not a great shadow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just that's it.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: Dick's out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's not a great dick.
Speaker: It's flopping.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just a mess.
Speaker: It was just a side profile and he had his pants on for some reason.
Speaker: He thought it looked good.
Speaker: It's kind of like the guy who sent you the dick pic and he's taking it from the bottom up.
Speaker: So you got the gut in the background.
Speaker: It's just, I don't have any experience with that sort of thing, but it does happen.
Speaker: It happens.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Can we move on to the next part of the book?
Speaker: So anyway, Master Chief pitches the mission to the Admiral and the Admiral denies like, no, you're not doing that.
Speaker: And then Cortana is like, but wait a minute.
Speaker: What if I made a copy of myself to go with them?
Speaker: Then they could hack into the Covenant ship.
Speaker: And the Admiral's like, yeah, fine.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Yeah, whatever.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: The Spartans then reinforce a drop ship in order to safely make the transition slip space from from slip space to normal space.
Speaker: Master Chief gives Haverson the crystal with the data information that will kill Sergeant Johnson to take back to Earth because he thinks sacrificing one person for billions is better than letting billions die.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: I wonder if this is the start of a character, a miniature character arc.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Chapter 32.
Speaker: The Spartans do their thing and they get jumbled and tumbled out of slip space, but arrive where they need to be.
Speaker: And then they see that there's like 500 covenant warships around the
Speaker: Oh, I see.
Speaker: Oh, this would be over before it began if they took this to Earth.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: They kid up.
Speaker: We get some gear porn.
Speaker: Good gear porn, too, as I recall.
Speaker: Good gear porn, yeah.
Speaker: And we get some descriptions of the Hierophant.
Speaker: It's like...
Speaker: The way it was described, it reminds me of those like retro futuristic space stations where it's kind of like a ring or something like that.
Speaker: And it's like spinning and it has like prongs and other ships are like docked all over it.
Speaker: That's kind of the way the hierophant, I think, is supposed to look.
Speaker: Chapter 33, they board the Hierophant and Cortana patches into the system and she says, yes, there's a reactor and if we destroy it, it will cause a chain reaction just like a Death Star.
Speaker: You know, it'll cause a chain reaction and it'll blow the whole damn thing up.
Speaker: But the the reactors computer systems are isolated to the reactor room area.
Speaker: So they need to get in.
Speaker: They need to get inside to do the trick.
Speaker: The next part I thought was hilarious because it says Master Chief Texas Mission Time and it says they've been walking for 11 hours in One Direction.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then I thought about like, I thought about like King's Quest and how like Eric Nyland writes like 11 hours later.
Speaker: And then in King's Quest, it would have been written like Master Chief notices the welding on the walls.
Speaker: It would have been, it would have been a chapter per hour.
Speaker: Guaranteed.
Speaker: Guaranteed.
Speaker: So they walk 11 hours in one direction, but they run into a dead end that is not on the blueprints.
Speaker: They would have to go through this like courtyard area, this spherical courtyard area in the middle of the ship, the station in order to get to where they need to go.
Speaker: So like, all right, we're going in, but there's a little cover in there.
Speaker: And Linda is going to cover them from the rooftop.
Speaker: And they cut across.
Speaker: And as Master Chief gets into one of the buildings, he has an encounter with a brute.
Speaker: And this is the first encounter with a brute in, I think, Halo, the Halo stories.
Speaker: Because we hadn't seen Brutes yet.
Speaker: We hadn't seen Brutes yet.
Speaker: This is the first one.
Speaker: And I think they were introduced in Halo 2 as an enemy type.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Could be totally wrong, but.
Speaker: That sounds right.
Speaker: I just, I didn't even think about it, that this would be the first time I ran into it.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: Well, Gorian from who Horvath is telling the story of Christmas to.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm not good at remembering the, uh, the names of the, uh, covenant archetypes, uh, characters.
Speaker: I just can't, I can't follow.
Speaker: The brutes are, can basically just go toe to toe with a Spartan.
Speaker: They're like, they're basically the, the covenant equivalent of a Spartan in terms of like strength and all that.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So yeah, the brute nearly kills Master Chief.
Speaker: He has him down.
Speaker: He's choking him.
Speaker: Chapter 34.
Speaker: Master Chief is able to fight the brute off, though, and he puts a grenade in the brute's belt, which kills him.
Speaker: It just blows out his midsection, turns it all wet.
Speaker: Wet and squishy.
Speaker: Wet and squishy.
Speaker: The word wet was used.
Speaker: It was, and appropriately so, I think.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pretty gnarly.
Speaker: He turns around and sees Grace out in the courtyard, probably dead on the ground.
Speaker: He goes to check on her, and she's definitely dead.
Speaker: Speaking of taking grenades to the midsection, she took two.
Speaker: She did.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: She did.
Speaker: And he's like, oh, her midsection's torn apart.
Speaker: Eric Nyland does not really go into a lot of detail about this.
Speaker: Just the fact that it's probably not pretty.
Speaker: Not a pleasant moment for anybody.
Speaker: Not a pleasant moment.
Speaker: Mash Chief sets the fusion reactor that powers her suit to overload and he gets moving.
Speaker: He gets to the reactor room and he copies Cortana into the computer.
Speaker: So now it's a copy of the copy.
Speaker: And this entire time Cortana has been like creating copies of copies of copies of copies in herself.
Speaker: And I think it's hilarious that like the communications in the unyielding Hierophant begin to crash because there's so many copies of Cortana.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's starting to, yeah, she's, she's overloading the system.
Speaker: It's getting real bad.
Speaker: It's getting real bad, real glitchy.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And she begins the overload sequence.
Speaker: Meanwhile, in the background, Grace's reactor detonates, killing a bunch of grunts and elites.
Speaker: And Linda begins shooting banshees just like out of the sky, just headshotting people.
Speaker: The remaining Spartans...
Speaker: steal the Banshees.
Speaker: So John, Will and Fred steal the Banshees and they start flying out.
Speaker: Uh, John sees his way to make, get Will and Fred out.
Speaker: Like you get to the drop ship.
Speaker: If we're not, if I'm not back in like three minutes, you go, he goes back in to get Linda.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Chapter 35, Master Chief gets Linda.
Speaker: Cortana begins venting the atmosphere from the station.
Speaker: Cortana's just really firing things up.
Speaker: She just, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's spread a little thin, let's say.
Speaker: Good Lord.
Speaker: The command and control station is now offline.
Speaker: It hasn't exploded yet, but it's offline.
Speaker: And the ships outside of the command and control station are like, what the fuck is going on?
Speaker: The Covenant ships have no idea what's going on.
Speaker: They're able to get back to the dropship with Linda.
Speaker: They get on board and they pull away from the command and control station towards a tiny moon.
Speaker: And they're like, we're just going to sit here and not draw any attention to ourselves.
Speaker: We're just going to chill.
Speaker: We're just going to chill and watch out.
Speaker: And then suddenly they get a hail from the Ascendant Justice.
Speaker: And they talk to Whitcomb briefly and he tells them to get to get to the far side of the moon.
Speaker: What's going on?
Speaker: So when they get there, they see the Gettysburg, but only the Gettysburg.
Speaker: The Ascent of Justice is nowhere to be seen.
Speaker: Chapter 36, on board the Gettysburg, and this is the final chapter of the book.
Speaker: It gets pretty, it's a really neat ending.
Speaker: On board the Gettysburg, the Spartans get the plan revealed to them.
Speaker: Haverson and Woodcomb are on the Ascendant Justice and piloting it toward the center of the fleet, towards the command and control station.
Speaker: they crash the Ascendant Justice into the Unyielding Hierophant and open a channel to the Covenant.
Speaker: Whitcomb opens the channel to the Covenant with like a hologram of the crystal.
Speaker: And he's like, come and get it, boys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So all the capital ships start going towards the Unyielding Hierophant.
Speaker: Like they're all being drawn in closer and closer.
Speaker: And then, you know, the last thing they see is a bright flash on the screen and the unyielding hierophant explodes.
Speaker: And it's just this massive nuclear detonation in space that basically wipes out the Covenant fleet.
Speaker: And when they poke their heads out with one of the scanners, they're like, well, there's only 12 Covenant ships left.
Speaker: That may have done it.
Speaker: That may have done it.
Speaker: That may be it.
Speaker: So, yeah, the Gettysburg heads off into slip space.
Speaker: John and Cortana flirt a little bit.
Speaker: And John, they do.
Speaker: They do.
Speaker: They do.
Speaker: They do.
Speaker: John.
Speaker: Lars and the real girl action going on here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: John rethinks his decision.
Speaker: He's learned his lesson and he destroys the data crystal that would kill Sergeant Johnson.
Speaker: And that's the end.
Speaker: But wait, there's more.
Speaker: An epilogue in section seven Harbinger.
Speaker: My note for this chapter is the covenant do villainous things.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: And the prophet of truth is like, we're going to win anyway.
Speaker: And it's a Dr. Claw moment at the end.
Speaker: It's a Dr. Claw.
Speaker: I'll get you next time.
Speaker: Next time.
Speaker: That's pretty much all it is.
Speaker: And that they're gathering the little pieces of crystal that they can find.
Speaker: They're like, we, we can only find a few.
Speaker: We have been combing the area and the prophet of truth is like, fantastic.
Speaker: Kill all the pilots that found that were on the search.
Speaker: They must never know.
Speaker: He's like, he's like reward them and then kill them.
Speaker: It's like, are you sure we've got like six pilots left?
Speaker: Like do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know if you heard that we got pretty obliterated, like pretty hard.
Speaker: If you, they're like 14 pilots in the entire armada.
Speaker: Do it.
Speaker: And that's, that's it.
Speaker: That's the end of, of a halo first strike.
Speaker: So film, what do you think?
Speaker: What are your thoughts?
Speaker: I thought it was a little slow to start with, but it was a hell of an intense final act there.
Speaker: Nyland, we've talked about this many times before, but Nyland really gets that naval combat shit just right.
Speaker: I've never.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've never been all that interested in sci-fi or adventure books that.
Speaker: Focus entirely on the naval experience and that kind of thing.
Speaker: But after I read his Halo books, I'm suddenly interested.
Speaker: I'm suddenly intrigued enough to look into that sort of thing a little more.
Speaker: So I thought it was it was it was a little slow to start with, but as solid as any of the Halo books have been.
Speaker: Yeah, I wasn't a huge fan of it at the beginning.
Speaker: I thought it was a little bit slower compared to the other books.
Speaker: The characters were a little bit less interesting.
Speaker: But yes, I will say the final third of this book was tight.
Speaker: It was really good.
Speaker: And I'd rather have a book finish strongly than...
Speaker: Like start slow.
Speaker: Start slow and finish strongly than the opposite.
Speaker: And we've had plenty of the opposite on this show.
Speaker: We absolutely have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I agree with you.
Speaker: I think this is good.
Speaker: It's not my favorite of the Halo books that we've read by far.
Speaker: But it's still it's still probably the weakest of the what four Halo books we've read so far on the show.
Speaker: We've read four so far.
Speaker: But it's still I mean, even even the weakest Halo book that we've read is still head and shoulders above a hell of a lot of series is that we that we've read.
Speaker: So it's still a solid like B plus for me.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's it.
Speaker: I mean, if you were going to keep reading Halo books in order, otherwise the one that we we got a little spoiled by Kelly Gay and her.
Speaker: Yeah, we sure.
Speaker: Rubicon protocol because we were asked to to read it ahead of time.
Speaker: So that was that was nice.
Speaker: But I think we're probably just going to be doing these Halo books.
Speaker: Every six months or so, probably.
Speaker: Give or take.
Speaker: And you guys seem to enjoy them a lot.
Speaker: Yeah, you do.
Speaker: So we'll knock them out.
Speaker: And then it'll take a few years to get through all of them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we will absolutely still be doing this in a few years.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: You guys keep showing up.
Speaker: We're going to keep making episodes.
Speaker: You keep showing up.
Speaker: We're going to keep making episodes, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: So, Phil, what are you playing?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: This has been a very dramatic week for me in terms of games.
Speaker: I began for the first time, believe it or not, I began Disco Elysium.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I had never played Disco Elysium.
Speaker: A dear friend of mine from college, Lucas, actually, I get the impression it's one of his favorite games of all time.
Speaker: And he bought me a copy of it years ago.
Speaker: And I finally started getting around to it.
Speaker: It is everything that I'd read about it in terms of being strange and very unique.
Speaker: And the world is bizarre.
Speaker: And I wanted to learn more about it.
Speaker: Unfortunately, I ran into a point where I...
Speaker: I'd been about five hours into the game and I lost an hour for all intents and purposes.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I went through a thing where I was going through a bunch of files and learning a lot of things and advancing the plot by basically just sitting there and reading stuff that I had on my person, which is fascinating.
Speaker: And then because this game is a true and total mindfuck, one of the things I read sooner than I should have, and it gave my character a mental breakdown.
Speaker: I lose the game and I haven't saved.
Speaker: So I lost like an hour's worth of playtime.
Speaker: And there was a time in my life where I could just muscle through that again.
Speaker: But I have to take a break.
Speaker: I'm going to come back to it because-
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: There are there is no role playing game like this out there.
Speaker: They're just from the aesthetic to the plot line to the mechanics.
Speaker: This is truly unlike anything out there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But that's not news to most people listening.
Speaker: It was just one of those games I never got around to.
Speaker: So in order to take a little break from that on the thinly veiled recommendations slash threats of a certain host of a show called Pixel a Day and and a certain steam spring sale, I went ahead and bought Soma and have been playing Soma.
Speaker: I thought you had already played Soma.
Speaker: That was another one.
Speaker: That was another blind spot for me because Amnesia and the frictional games things, those were games that I only got around to in the past year and a half or so.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And this to me, I'm only about an hour and a half, maybe two hours into Soma.
Speaker: And having played the original Amnesia last year and then the sequel, this is...
Speaker: This is the proper progression of that style of game.
Speaker: Um, machine for pigs was not the proper progression of amnesia.
Speaker: Soma is, uh, it takes all the good shit, uh, from amnesia and upgrades.
Speaker: It gives it a new sci-fi horror coat of paint.
Speaker: Um, the story is way more compelling.
Speaker: And I thought amnesia story was pretty compelling, um,
Speaker: I'm really enjoying it.
Speaker: And for those of you who don't know, I actually was a voice on Pixel A Day's recent video about SOMA, which I highly recommend.
Speaker: Great video.
Speaker: Not just because I'm in it.
Speaker: Her work is just fantastic.
Speaker: It's always a delight.
Speaker: So being able to be on it was an honor.
Speaker: And then I have I got a very specific itch.
Speaker: I got a very specific old school old man game itch.
Speaker: I used to play the Shining Force games.
Speaker: Oh, I love those games.
Speaker: They're so good.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And the one I played the most was the one that was released for Game Gear, Shining Force, The Sword of Harcha.
Speaker: I had that one too, yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: And I played the shit on many a road trip.
Speaker: I beat that game over and over again.
Speaker: And I said, how can I play that game?
Speaker: And then I remembered years ago, I bought it for maybe four bucks on my 3DS, which I haven't charged or turned on in...
Speaker: Five, six years.
Speaker: Yeah, a very long time.
Speaker: And so I literally found it, dusted it off, charged it overnight, turned it on, flipped open the cover, and it opened up to Shining Force Sword of Haja because that, of course, was what I was playing last time that I had my 3DS on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So while me and my wife watch movies in the evening after dinner, she plays Tetris on her phone and I'm playing Shining Force, Sword of Haja.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: Just a delightful game.
Speaker: It's glorious.
Speaker: It's still so good.
Speaker: And the other night we were hanging out.
Speaker: Oh, I see a munchkin.
Speaker: There she is.
Speaker: kid cracks me up.
Speaker: I blame myself, Kevin.
Speaker: For those of you who are listening at home, the daughter of the year just opened up the door behind Kevin, waved at me and left.
Speaker: She asked me the other day, she goes, you don't cut me out of the podcast when I show up, do you?
Speaker: And I say, no, usually you end up making it in.
Speaker: She makes it.
Speaker: She makes it.
Speaker: Oh, but the other night, me and Emily were watching.
Speaker: Oh, it was the day after St.
Speaker: Patrick's Day.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And Emily and I had our tradition.
Speaker: We drank some harp.
Speaker: We watched The Departed.
Speaker: Oh, that's a good scene, Patrick.
Speaker: That's our tradition.
Speaker: It's a movie.
Speaker: It starts out with – does it start out with The Dropkick Murphys or My Misremembering?
Speaker: It gets there.
Speaker: It gets there.
Speaker: It gets The Dropkick Murphys.
Speaker: It does start out with a speech about the Irish –
Speaker: taking their piece of the territory, so to speak.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so we were watching that.
Speaker: I was just a little drunk.
Speaker: We're watching this movie that she and I could literally recite backwards and forwards.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: We're discussing the finer points of it while she plays a game, and I'm playing one of my favorite games from childhood, and Kevin, I could have died happy.
Speaker: It was that.
Speaker: It was...
Speaker: It was wonderful.
Speaker: It was a beautiful couple of hours.
Speaker: It was the peak of your existence right there.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So I really think that what's going to happen is after I finish this, I'm just going to continue on to playing retro games on that and on the Switch and everything.
Speaker: It's going to be, what retro game is Phil playing now?
Speaker: That's really what it's going to come down to.
Speaker: Did you see that Gerard, the completionist, bought...
Speaker: Every 3DS and Wii U game.
Speaker: Yes, because they're shutting down the shop, yeah?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't... They spent $24,000 to get them all.
Speaker: $24,000?
Speaker: Every single game available.
Speaker: They don't... They haven't earned that.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No, you don't...
Speaker: Okay, listen, I would never openly say that you should absolutely 100% pirate games that are not being offered in any other way.
Speaker: But you should absolutely pirate games that aren't being offered in any way.
Speaker: And if they're not, if they have no plan for this shit, and they're going to shut shit down, you don't owe them a thin red cent.
Speaker: Okay, all right, that's $24,000?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Brass plated balls on these people.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: You know, and it's, it's such a shame because Nintendo is one of those few companies that like they're, they're that company that in this age of squeenix and, and blizzard Activision and all of the shit going on at Ubisoft and like all that stuff, just all the, all the harassment and nastiness that goes on, on a daily basis over there.
Speaker: you still can be tricked into thinking to yourself, well, Nintendo is good.
Speaker: And then they pull some shit like this.
Speaker: And it's, oh my God.
Speaker: There are no, there, where have all the cowboys gone, Kevin?
Speaker: Where have all the cowboys gone?
Speaker: Where have all the cowboys gone?
Speaker: Okay, so what are you playing, Kevin?
Speaker: What are you up to?
Speaker: I am playing.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: All right, so I started playing Against the Storm just a little bit.
Speaker: I haven't really-
Speaker: I haven't really gotten purchased it.
Speaker: You saw that I purchased it.
Speaker: I haven't, I haven't like totally gotten into it yet.
Speaker: It's mostly like the tutorial thing.
Speaker: It'll take a minute.
Speaker: It'll take a minute.
Speaker: I'm still kind of like futzing through.
Speaker: So yeah, against the storm I put in, I put in like, yeah, half hour into that.
Speaker: But the thing I, I have been playing is,
Speaker: is a little play test, a closed beta for a game called The Finals.
Speaker: The Finals?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So The Finals is made by some Battlefields devs.
Speaker: And they...
Speaker: It's this real hyper color.
Speaker: It's not a hero shooter.
Speaker: It's just like... Oh, wow.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's really cool.
Speaker: I'm talking with Harry a lot from Video Games Are Bad.
Speaker: I believe he's making a video on it.
Speaker: This is gorgeous.
Speaker: And it has destructibility.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: So the one mission type that I keep end up that they have in the closed beta is it's called cash out or something like that.
Speaker: Basically, you and your team have to go to a vault, which is just this like little box, open it up, take it and take it over to a cash out station.
Speaker: Um, and other teams are like trying to steal the vault and, or steal the cash out station.
Speaker: So there's some really cool things where it's like, you can, um, like you could be on one floor getting in the cash out, guarding the cash out station.
Speaker: And somebody could go to the floor of the building under you and like put C4 under it and blow it and blow the floor down.
Speaker: So the cash out station falls through the floor.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: This looks absolutely bananas.
Speaker: This is crazy.
Speaker: It's bonkers.
Speaker: And I love it.
Speaker: I've put about five hours into it.
Speaker: And this is just the play test.
Speaker: There's like, there's like, you know, nothing.
Speaker: There's, there's, it's.
Speaker: There's only like a few options for like styling your character in the game so far.
Speaker: And there's only one play mode.
Speaker: And still, I put five hours into it.
Speaker: And it's just.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: It's just so much fun.
Speaker: And you said this isn't like a hero shooter.
Speaker: Do you design your own characters or what?
Speaker: Yeah, you design your own character.
Speaker: There's three archetypes for.
Speaker: for the characters, there's light, medium and heavy.
Speaker: And I love it that the heavy model, it's not, it's like, he's just like a big boy.
Speaker: He's tall, he's thick, you know, it's not like they're trying to, you're not trying to make like the most like a meathead muscular dude.
Speaker: He's just the heavy, you look at the heavy and you're like, that's heavy.
Speaker: Give me more Roadhog, goddammit.
Speaker: And the Heavy is like, he uses like machine guns and rocket launchers and things like that to like, he's mostly for like punching through a defended position or defending a position.
Speaker: And then you have like medium, which is like balanced and also can kind of like heal and things like that.
Speaker: And then light is for the infiltration.
Speaker: Like the one of the powers of a light build is that they can turn invisible.
Speaker: But that's the thing is like there's multiple powers that you can choose.
Speaker: So you can really customize, like tweak your build to be the way you want it to be.
Speaker: And there's multiple weapons for each one as well.
Speaker: So like the heavy has like the machine gun, has the flamethrower, has a six rounds or six chamber grenade launcher, I believe as well.
Speaker: Just a lot of cool stuff.
Speaker: So, yeah, I've been playing the finals this week.
Speaker: Also playing.
Speaker: I just restarted playing control.
Speaker: Ah, okay.
Speaker: That one's, that's kind of a, uh, uh, you return to that one on a fairly regular basis.
Speaker: I find you, well, this is the first time I've really come back to it.
Speaker: Um, but I played the first time I played it, I played it for a long time.
Speaker: Um, and now I have it on my steam deck and I'm, you know, um, I'm really, uh, you know, back into it and I'm probably going to play through it again.
Speaker: So yeah, Control and what else?
Speaker: That's about it.
Speaker: That's about it.
Speaker: That's about it for what I've been playing.
Speaker: That's pretty solid.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, good stuff.
Speaker: But that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: If you can, please subscribe to us.
Speaker: Follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker: Subscribe to us on YouTube.
Speaker: Go over to our website.
Speaker: Subscribe to our newsletter.
Speaker: And there you can also join our Discord, which has been seeing some new life, some new folks joining recently.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, it's a good old time.
Speaker: It's awesome to see everybody coming in.
Speaker: It's really cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And please rate us five stars on Apple and Spotify.
Speaker: It really does help.
Speaker: But that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening and have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Bye.
