Transcript
Speaker: That's the same price.
Speaker: Actually, it's less because it's 20% off right now.
Speaker: So I'll just do that instead.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: You know, these people.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Why are they ruining things that I like?
Speaker: Doing it live.
Speaker: Man, it's a bummer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a real bummer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, it's not a butter.
Speaker: A butter.
Speaker: A butter?
Speaker: What isn't?
Speaker: No, it's not.
Speaker: I can't believe it's not butter.
Speaker: What's not a butter?
Speaker: What's not a butter?
Speaker: Well, this isn't.
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil.
Speaker: And today we got a brand new series for you.
Speaker: We're talking Halo First Strike by Eric Nyland, who also wrote Fall of Reach, correct?
Speaker: That's the... Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Back, getting Mr. Nyland back.
Speaker: So I started us off with this series.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Phil, can you remind us who the heck Eric Nyland is?
Speaker: Eric Nyland is a novelist.
Speaker: He was he he was the guy, as I said, who started the Halo series.
Speaker: He's written up.
Speaker: He's written a bunch of them.
Speaker: Not recently, but he is one of our great writers for hire.
Speaker: Let's let's get into it.
Speaker: Actually, here's something that's that's interesting.
Speaker: He actually went to school for chemistry.
Speaker: He has a master of science in chemical physics, which honestly makes sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Makes some sense.
Speaker: He's written for some graphic novels.
Speaker: He's done a lot of Halo stuff, mostly Halo stuff.
Speaker: But actually, he's also the author of Crimson Skies, which I would love for us to get around to eventually because I loved that game.
Speaker: But he's done some original stuff, but mostly what he seems to be known for is the Halo series.
Speaker: He started in 2001 and wrote for them right up until 2009.
Speaker: And he doesn't have any.
Speaker: The most recent thing he has is a series, the Hero of Thera series, started in 2017 and the last one came out in 2019.
Speaker: So I'm guessing that's his latest baby.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, and Halo as a game, I mean, it's Halo.
Speaker: This is our, this is actually our fourth Halo book that we're covering.
Speaker: Fourth.
Speaker: Fourth.
Speaker: I mean, that's definitely the most of any series.
Speaker: It's the most of any series.
Speaker: We're picking up our third Resident Evil book at some point.
Speaker: But yeah, this is the fourth Halo book and it's.
Speaker: I mean, they've always been so consistent.
Speaker: It makes sense.
Speaker: They've been consistent and there's a million of them.
Speaker: There's a lot of Halo books.
Speaker: So, I mean, we could just do a podcast on Halo books and we probably would run for quite a while.
Speaker: So I think we're in pretty good shape.
Speaker: This takes place in between Halo Combat Evolved and Halo 2.
Speaker: and is actually set right after the there's there's a couple sections to the book.
Speaker: The first section or section zero and section one.
Speaker: We'll talk about section zero and section one tonight.
Speaker: Section zero happens during the fall of Reach and section one is happening after the events, almost immediately after the events of Halo Combat Evolved.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So we're just going to go ahead and
Speaker: Get right into it.
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: So section zero, chapter one.
Speaker: This is actually kind of interesting because it's a retelling of the later chapters of the Fall of Reach, except from the point of view of one of the other Spartans, Fred, who's one of the team leaders on the Spartan squad.
Speaker: So as a reminder, the Spartans, when Reach was attacked, they were off on a mission.
Speaker: They were about to leave on a mission to go take a covenant ship, take it into covenant space, and then capture a covenant leader and bargain a piece with the covenant for that covenant leader's life.
Speaker: They got interrupted by the attack on Reach.
Speaker: So they got to turn around and they split up.
Speaker: There's three go off onto the three of them go off onto the to get to one of the UNSC ships that had the location of Earth on it.
Speaker: And it was in dry dock.
Speaker: So they had to destroy it before the Covenant got it.
Speaker: So Master Chief and two others go and do that.
Speaker: The rest of them go down to reach to try to help out and stop the ground invasion.
Speaker: So Fred is leading that team, Team Red.
Speaker: And the Pelican, they get on a Pelican, they're taking it down to reach, and oh boy, is it blown up.
Speaker: And the Spartans have to jump out of it.
Speaker: while it's in the air.
Speaker: And at one point, Fred is like, this is like parasailing, except there's no parachute.
Speaker: And it's like, it's just falling.
Speaker: No, yeah.
Speaker: If you're not paying attention during this scene, you might completely miss the fact that they are just they just jumped out of the goddamn ship.
Speaker: Like there's no.
Speaker: Yeah, there's no plan, really.
Speaker: Just there's no plan.
Speaker: The ship's going down.
Speaker: It's blowing up.
Speaker: They got to go.
Speaker: So they go.
Speaker: And they go.
Speaker: That's chapter one and into chapter two.
Speaker: Fred is like, hey, aim for the trees.
Speaker: They'll break your landing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know we're dealing with super soldiers here, but this does get a little, what was that movie?
Speaker: The Other Guys, the ones where, have you seen that with Marky Mark and Will Ferrell?
Speaker: Yeah, it's very The Rock and Samuel Jackson, like just jumping off a building and just no explanation until they splatter on the concrete.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: It's kind of ridiculous.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So they do that.
Speaker: And it's a 2,000 foot drop from the pelican to the ground, which is, you know, the pelican was closer to the ground than you'd
Speaker: than you thought it was.
Speaker: It's not like they were in the stratosphere still.
Speaker: They were right.
Speaker: They were most of the way down.
Speaker: It's only 2000 feet, which just 2000 is like, it's not even a mile.
Speaker: Just look up the Burj Khalifa tower and imagine jumping off the top of that.
Speaker: No sweat.
Speaker: No sweat.
Speaker: I think we could all do that.
Speaker: I think we could all do that.
Speaker: I think we could handle that.
Speaker: Mjolnir or not.
Speaker: It's a simple enough thing.
Speaker: Or as the guy in the audiobook says, Mjolnir.
Speaker: Ah, the return of Mjolnir.
Speaker: He's back.
Speaker: He's back, baby.
Speaker: That's what we need.
Speaker: That's, that's actual merch that we need to make where it's a sticker.
Speaker: That's just the phonetic, uh, uh, pronunciation.
Speaker: Majolnir.
Speaker: We absolutely need that.
Speaker: We absolutely need that.
Speaker: So they land and the Spartans are scattered.
Speaker: A lot of them have lost their guns as that happens when you drop out of a for 2000 feet.
Speaker: And they come upon a group of Marines that were just involved in a skirmish between the Covenant and the UNSC.
Speaker: And it's four Marines, and they're like the only ones left out of the ground forces.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They are it.
Speaker: They are it.
Speaker: They're like, what company are you with?
Speaker: And he's like, company, sir.
Speaker: There is no company.
Speaker: There's no company.
Speaker: Company, shmumpiny.
Speaker: And even having come from Kelly Gay's recent Vietnam fest of Halo, that's pretty goddamn bleak.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: This ain't great.
Speaker: Yeah, it ain't great.
Speaker: So we're in chapter three now.
Speaker: And it seems like there's a lot of mismanagement going on because basically the Marines weren't killed by the Covenant.
Speaker: They were killed by airstrikes.
Speaker: They just got bombed to shit and back.
Speaker: Ordered by their own side.
Speaker: The hell, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we find out, Fred finds out that there's this naval admiral who has, you know, zero experience commanding a ground defense, is responsible for ordering these things.
Speaker: And the reason why he did that is because he wanted him and his team evacuated above everything else.
Speaker: So no securing any defensive positions.
Speaker: Nope, just get the admiral out.
Speaker: Just get us the hell out.
Speaker: And it's so polite.
Speaker: It's so diplomatic where they're like, I'm sure he's a really good admirable, but admirable.
Speaker: He's an admirable admiral.
Speaker: He's an admirable admiral.
Speaker: But, uh, but probably doesn't, uh, need to be leading ground troops.
Speaker: Let's just say, let's just say he's probably not an admirable, admirable, probably not.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They give him more credit than maybe he deserves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so Fred's like, all right, I got 17 of my 22 guys left.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: This is going to go great.
Speaker: So five died in the impact.
Speaker: Which, you know what?
Speaker: And he gives himself shit for it.
Speaker: And I'm like, dude, you literally dropped half a mile from the atmosphere.
Speaker: Not bad.
Speaker: I'm going to just go ahead and say not bad.
Speaker: Not bad.
Speaker: You know, you got a lot of, that's a pretty good survival rating right there.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: That is bad.
Speaker: falling off the top of the Burj Khalifa.
Speaker: I got to check.
Speaker: Probably better than you deserve, to be completely honest.
Speaker: I'm double checking to see Burj Khalifa is, how tall is that?
Speaker: Oh, it's even, okay.
Speaker: The Burj Khalifa is taller than that.
Speaker: It is 2,717 feet tall.
Speaker: Okay, so it's not even that.
Speaker: It's not even that.
Speaker: It's two thirds up the Burj Khalifa.
Speaker: I mean, if Tom Cruise can do it,
Speaker: The Spartan can do it.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: If Scientology can defend him, then Majolnir armor can defend everybody else.
Speaker: The power of Xenu.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: That's their...
Speaker: God, right?
Speaker: It's one of the dudes.
Speaker: It's one of the names.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Don't sue us.
Speaker: Don't sue us, please.
Speaker: We don't have anything to offer you.
Speaker: We have nothing to give you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Nothing.
Speaker: So he splits up his groups.
Speaker: The group of the Spartans that are critically injured, they stay there.
Speaker: They can hold, they can just stay here and hold this spot.
Speaker: And they're like, you know, they all have broken legs and they're like, got it, sir.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Sounds like a plan, sir.
Speaker: One group goes to extract the Admiral.
Speaker: The other is going to go guard the generators.
Speaker: And then the main team of Fred, Kelly, and another dude, they're going to go try to kill everything else.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And the chapter ends with Fred and company stealing some banshees.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So chapter four, those three Spartans take the Banshees and make a Death Star trench run on the Covenant outpost.
Speaker: Absolutely do.
Speaker: There's no other way of putting it.
Speaker: They take out as many as they can.
Speaker: Josh, who was the other Spartan, he got killed right away.
Speaker: He was the Porkins of the group.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm fine.
Speaker: I'm fine.
Speaker: I'm fine.
Speaker: I'm fine out there.
Speaker: Fred and Kelly land in the woods, and Fred estimates that they killed around 10,000 Covenant soldiers with that strafing run.
Speaker: Just, just ridiculous.
Speaker: Just, yeah, 10,000.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Like, what doesn't matter?
Speaker: Why not add another, just add another zero.
Speaker: I would believe it.
Speaker: Yeah, fine.
Speaker: 100,000.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: It's going to make about as much difference in the end.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: And then they look up at the sky and they're like, ah, shit.
Speaker: The Covenant is now starting the plasma bombardment to glass the planet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: End of section zero.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's our flashback.
Speaker: It's our prologue.
Speaker: Prologue.
Speaker: Section one is called Threshold, and it starts with chapter five, and Master Chief is sitting awkwardly in the pilot seat of a long sword, and it's like, there's a, Eric Nyland writes, make sure to note that he doesn't fit properly, so I just imagined him just like...
Speaker: jammed in this pilot scene.
Speaker: The armor's too big.
Speaker: It's built for somebody who's like a normal size person.
Speaker: He's nearly seven feet tall and then he has this big bulky armor on it.
Speaker: It's built for somebody who's not in like small tank armor.
Speaker: You've heard of plate armor.
Speaker: You've heard of chain armor, leather armor.
Speaker: This is tank armor is basically what he's wearing.
Speaker: Are you making fun of my automobile?
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Steps up.
Speaker: God, I hadn't thought of that one forever.
Speaker: So they're flying around.
Speaker: He's scanning.
Speaker: He's talking to Cortana.
Speaker: And then Cortana picks up on a signal.
Speaker: And what follows are several pages of, I'm just going to call it Spartan magic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're familiar with this.
Speaker: We've seen it before.
Speaker: So basically he sees that there's cryopods out floating in space and he opens the cockpit of the long sword and he tethers himself to the seat and he, Cortana's flying the long sword while he's free floating in space, just tethered to it via rope.
Speaker: And he's grabbing the cryo tubes and tethering them to himself and then to the long sword.
Speaker: It's so, it's the most, here's the thing.
Speaker: This is the fourth book of this entire series that we've read.
Speaker: And this is the most video game scene in any of the books.
Speaker: You could see it.
Speaker: You're like, okay, X to attach, attach to X to attach to.
Speaker: And you're just like, yeah, fine.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Yeah, we got it.
Speaker: What's up, buddy.
Speaker: Why are you growling?
Speaker: Oh, there's a dog barking outside.
Speaker: He's not happy about it.
Speaker: Oh,
Speaker: What are you going to do about it?
Speaker: What are you going to do about it, buddy?
Speaker: You going to start some shit?
Speaker: I mean, he's a pretty fierce warrior.
Speaker: You can tell just by looking at him.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: I can't believe it.
Speaker: Kevin's going to let this dog, this little dog, he's let it out.
Speaker: He's let it out.
Speaker: It's going to war all with Kevin's yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That dog, that dog doesn't know.
Speaker: It's, it's just gone out into the mean streets.
Speaker: You just released it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, I hear him.
Speaker: He's out there now.
Speaker: That poor dog out there.
Speaker: It has no idea what kind of hell is coming with him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, that is, that is going to get nasty.
Speaker: There's just going to be, there's going to be dog barking in the background for a bit.
Speaker: You're really going to piss off your HOA, man.
Speaker: They talked to us once about it.
Speaker: They're like, your dog is too loud.
Speaker: And I was like, what a,
Speaker: I know he's like, he runs around in the backyard and he barks at everybody.
Speaker: And I'm like, yeah, he's, he's a dog and he's a tough guy.
Speaker: And you're like, you don't want to be barked at.
Speaker: Don't walk by my backyard.
Speaker: What do I, what do you want me to do?
Speaker: HOAs are like 35% of why me and my wife want to live out in the woods.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, we've never dealt with one ourselves, but we have enough friends and family who have that we're like, no, thank you.
Speaker: Just skipping straight over that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it's like having like,
Speaker: It's like you save up and you get the money and you buy your house and then you're like, okay, well, you still have a, it's like you still have a landlord, sorta.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like you, you spent all that time saving up money to move out of your parents' basement and you just got a new parent who's going to nag you to death.
Speaker: It's real bad.
Speaker: Like, you know, you need to clean your driveway and be like, thanks.
Speaker: I'm not going to do that.
Speaker: I was going to.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: I remember, I literally remember one of our landlords, like we got COVID.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Me and Emily were both sick with COVID and my landlord sent us a message.
Speaker: It was like, uh, are you guys gonna mow the lawn anytime soon?
Speaker: And I had literally, I was feeling better and I literally had told myself I'm going to mow the lawn today.
Speaker: And, um, and instead I wrote back, sorry, we have COVID and I let the grass grow another week.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Out of pure spite, I was planning on doing this thing.
Speaker: And we lost focus on you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When we lose focus on the plot, we lose focus in real life.
Speaker: It's like dying in a dream.
Speaker: What if I leave and then come back?
Speaker: That worked.
Speaker: That worked, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that did the job.
Speaker: Okay, yeah.
Speaker: You shocked the camera into working.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I had a beverage somewhere, but...
Speaker: We're off to a great start tonight.
Speaker: This is good.
Speaker: This is real good shit.
Speaker: This is what the people came here for.
Speaker: Halo first strike.
Speaker: Motherfucker is all staying in good.
Speaker: It's all in.
Speaker: It's all staying in.
Speaker: You're going to love this.
Speaker: You're going to love every, every inch of this podcast.
Speaker: You're going to take every inch of this podcast.
Speaker: So Spartan magic.
Speaker: Um, they also, there's like a pelican nearby that's doing the Han Solo, uh, trick on a, uh, on a piece of rock.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Then when I say the Han Solo trick, if you don't know what I mean, it's when the, the Millennium Falcon parked on the back of the star destroyer and they didn't see, they couldn't see it.
Speaker: It was like, and that's, Oh, I misunderstood.
Speaker: I thought, I thought you meant getting murdered by your kid.
Speaker: Ah, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, the there's some covenant fighters that try to blow up the long sword, which would have been bad for Master Chief.
Speaker: But it's the pelican revs up and is able to chase them off.
Speaker: And then the pelican and the long sword start doing some shenanigans by lining up the covenant.
Speaker: So there's these covenant cruisers out there and there's a covenant flagship and they're kind of like in two different battle groups and they fly in between them so that they can get the the
Speaker: Covenant cruisers to stop firing at them because once they're in between the Covenant cruisers are like, well, we can't shoot at the flagship in the direction of the flagship.
Speaker: So they stop.
Speaker: And then Master Chief Dox with the Pelican opens up and there is Sergeant Johnson, Sergeant Avery Johnson, ready to go.
Speaker: He is he's he's a mean mother and
Speaker: And he died in Halo, but he's alive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's here.
Speaker: He's here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's basically the same explanation I've seen used for how Boba Fett didn't actually die in Return of the Jedi.
Speaker: They just didn't like the taste of him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which...
Speaker: look, they've got to come back to this, right?
Speaker: Like in this section, they don't.
Speaker: But if Nyland like leaves it at that and there's no weird...
Speaker: reveal or something like that as to what really happened or something, I'm going to actually be quite pissed off because that's just some serious shenanigans right there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, um, yeah, Avery, Avery Johnson.
Speaker: He is, he was modeled after, uh, one of the dudes in aliens.
Speaker: Uh, uh,
Speaker: Was it the drill sergeant?
Speaker: Because I always thought of the master sergeant or whatever.
Speaker: Sergeant Apone is who Avery Johnson is modeled after.
Speaker: That's the one.
Speaker: I always imagined him when I was thinking, oh, that's great.
Speaker: That's perfect.
Speaker: Because that's absolutely what I imagined.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Oh, that's perfect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's perfect.
Speaker: Yeah, or also it was like somewhere between there and Carl Weathers in Predator.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense to me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so they, they, uh, Master Chief docks.
Speaker: They meet, he meets up with Sergeant Johnson.
Speaker: There's some like tense moments.
Speaker: Cause Master Chief is like, you were dead.
Speaker: And then it's like, nah, it's all cool.
Speaker: And then they do the, the, the, the Arnold, uh, Carl Weathers like handshake.
Speaker: And you son of a bitch, you son of a bitch.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: They got you got you pushing too many pencils.
Speaker: We could go on like this.
Speaker: We can just keep doing it.
Speaker: It's not just the departed people.
Speaker: It's just.
Speaker: We got other.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: We got other tricks in this hat.
Speaker: I just got to get an audio file to play it because I forgot to say that we're putting the body in the mosh.
Speaker: Oh, we put the body in the mosh.
Speaker: The body is going in the mosh right now.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: We really should include just that clip.
Speaker: Put the body in the mash.
Speaker: Put the body in the mash.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Anyway, I heard- What was that?
Speaker: I heard footsteps, and I was just, I was predicting a Camilla open of the door, and it just didn't happen.
Speaker: It's fair.
Speaker: I mean, for those of you who are only listening, who have not got the visuals, Kevin just, like, looked paranoid over his shoulder and then turned back immediately, grumbling, okay.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I don't feel good.
Speaker: I'm not, I don't like this.
Speaker: Fucking Babadook or something.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, this is some bullshit.
Speaker: I don't believe that.
Speaker: There's some bullshit.
Speaker: Is it malignant back there?
Speaker: What am I doing?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I don't know, man.
Speaker: I don't want to deal with this.
Speaker: Samara from The Ring, she's back there.
Speaker: She's just like hanging out, waiting for me to look.
Speaker: I'm not going to look at her.
Speaker: You know, that's how the seven days happen.
Speaker: Just let it happen.
Speaker: If it's going to happen, let it happen.
Speaker: You don't need to see that shit.
Speaker: Did you know...
Speaker: Tangent, did you know that those movies are based on a book?
Speaker: What the... And that the... So Ringu, the Japanese movie, is based on a book.
Speaker: And what I didn't realize is that the Gore Verbinski movie...
Speaker: The Ring, a lot of people assumed as a remake of Ringu, was actually a read re-adaptation of the original novel and is apparently closer to the novel than the Japanese version of the movie.
Speaker: Oh, that's weird.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I didn't know that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Feel free to reach out and correct me if I'm wrong, but it was.
Speaker: I'm going to watch that movie again.
Speaker: I think it was Pym.
Speaker: Pym told me.
Speaker: Well, I trust Pym's.
Speaker: Pym, they are good.
Speaker: They know their horror stuff.
Speaker: So I'm going to let them, you know.
Speaker: They're an authority I can get behind.
Speaker: Yeah, that's, I'm a horror guy and I'm still going to go.
Speaker: Pym said, I'll get with him.
Speaker: Yeah, that's fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where were we?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Chapter six, Master Chief Cortana and Johnson talk about how unlikely it is that he was uninfected.
Speaker: What are you going to do?
Speaker: What are you going to do?
Speaker: That's essentially what they leave it at.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: For all intents and purposes.
Speaker: What are you going to do on the Pelican?
Speaker: What are you going to do?
Speaker: So aside from Johnson on the Pelican is an ODST named Locklear, who seems like an asshole, but what ODST hasn't seemed like an asshole yet.
Speaker: I think that is kind of standard.
Speaker: Haverson, who is a lieutenant with the ONI and petty warrant officer Pulaski, who is the pilot.
Speaker: Or as I like to put it, we've assembled our D&D party.
Speaker: We've got intelligence.
Speaker: We've got the grunt.
Speaker: We've got a pilot.
Speaker: This is just Shadowrun.
Speaker: We've got a rigger.
Speaker: We've got, you know, the face.
Speaker: The slicer.
Speaker: Is that a Shadowrun thing?
Speaker: A decker.
Speaker: A decker.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: It's called a decker in Shadowrun.
Speaker: The street samurai.
Speaker: We've got everybody present and accounted for.
Speaker: Roll your D20 and let it just, everyone's got their little specialty.
Speaker: Let's, let's get on with it.
Speaker: I want to play an intelligence officer, but it doesn't make sense that he'd be out.
Speaker: No, it's fine.
Speaker: Just put it in.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: Put it in.
Speaker: We'll make it work.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: We'll come up.
Speaker: We'll come up with a, we'll come up with an explanation later.
Speaker: And then one of them says, but I want to, I want to play vampire instead.
Speaker: And then somebody else says, well, I want to play a game where you fucking do something.
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: How about that?
Speaker: drinking wine.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: I just hate, I just hate that you're right.
Speaker: Well, I, the only thing I, the only thing I really know about vampire is, is, is from what you've told me and what the two episodes of oops, all monsters went off about on vampire a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker: So I think,
Speaker: If you haven't listened.
Speaker: Vampire has the potential to absolutely do that.
Speaker: If you've got the, if you basically just kind of sit and play with your dick.
Speaker: If you've got too indulgent of a storyteller.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
Speaker: It's like, I want to be a sexy vampire.
Speaker: Well, I want to be a sexy vampire.
Speaker: I want to be a sexy vampire.
Speaker: All right, fine.
Speaker: Everyone's dressed as the crow.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Doesn't matter.
Speaker: Everyone's sexy vampires.
Speaker: Everyone's sexy vampires.
Speaker: I do appreciate that you, the companion thing that you wrote for Vampire the Masquerade and is still for sale on DriveThruRPG.
Speaker: Please buy Clanbook Matango.
Speaker: I appreciate that the Matango are pretty, pretty grotesque looking.
Speaker: I really like gross vampires better than I. I got over my I want to be a sexy vampire phase when I was 16 or 17.
Speaker: And I've wanted to play gross and scary monsters ever since.
Speaker: So I think it's the right way.
Speaker: It's the right way.
Speaker: This is the right way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Halo?
Speaker: Halo.
Speaker: Oh, yes, we're talking about Halo.
Speaker: Halo.
Speaker: We're back.
Speaker: We're back.
Speaker: Okay, so Master Chief lays out a plan.
Speaker: All right, they're going to take the flagship by arming the pelican with mines and piloting the longsword into it while Cortana jumps aboard the flagship and hacks its forward weapons and shields.
Speaker: And the reason they need to do this is because the Pelican nor the long sword have a slip space engine.
Speaker: So yes, they can't, they literally cannot go anywhere.
Speaker: Um, they, they, they, they can't head back to earth.
Speaker: They can't, uh, they can't do anything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're just stuck.
Speaker: So they load up the, the Pelican with the mines.
Speaker: They all cram aboard the long sword.
Speaker: And the entire time Sergeant Johnson plays heavy metal music.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Got a real kick out of that.
Speaker: They try to dress it up like it's something else.
Speaker: Like it's like they basically say it's a precursor to that.
Speaker: And people still complain as if it's as if it's like classical music or something.
Speaker: But we know we know that this is this is this is when, you know, Dragula is playing in the background or something.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Sergeant Johnson, big time Rob Zombie fan.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: We all know what scene this is.
Speaker: And so they do it.
Speaker: They maneuver around.
Speaker: The fighters, the Covenant fighters go after the Pelican instead of them.
Speaker: And they crash land right into the Covenant ship.
Speaker: And the chapter ends with, that was the easy part.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: Chapter seven, Cortana gets a readout of the ship.
Speaker: The personnel is actually pretty light and it's mostly engineers with a company of grunts and only 100 elites.
Speaker: When they get on board, Master Chief has issues with the way Locklear just kind of kills some of the engineers without actually...
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: He just like kills them.
Speaker: And they kind of make them cute in a way.
Speaker: Well, the engineers are the floaty tentacle cloud dudes, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: With a little telekinesis, I think.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he just like shoots them and Mass Chief's like, don't.
Speaker: don't you come on man don't don't do that they don't they don't care they can't do anything to you yeah yeah they're not doing anything yeah just don't you basically just don't be a dick don't be a dick they're actually they remind me a little bit of the uh in mass effect uh on the what's it the the
Speaker: big station, the Citadel.
Speaker: There was those little weird like engineer dudes.
Speaker: They're like little green praying mantis looking dudes that were just like, please don't disturb them.
Speaker: We don't know what they do, but they keep the Citadel running.
Speaker: Right, exactly.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: It's like, we don't know what they do, but they're pretty cool.
Speaker: They're pretty cool, and they just kind of fix everything on the Citadel.
Speaker: So leave them alone.
Speaker: Don't ask questions.
Speaker: Just let them do it.
Speaker: You're probably right.
Speaker: Yeah, just let them do it.
Speaker: So they're fighting through the corridors.
Speaker: Sergeant Johnson's really enjoying himself.
Speaker: Says this is an old-fashioned turkey shoot.
Speaker: Cortana gets inserted into the ship's computers to start working on various things.
Speaker: And she knows that covenant systems are very different.
Speaker: And that makes sense.
Speaker: Well, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She begins making electronic ghosts of Master Chief in the group so that the elites are thrown off from the right path.
Speaker: And then Cortana has a battle of her own inside the computer system dealing with the other AI.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And at one point while she's dealing with the other AI, she vents oxygen from a certain part of the ship.
Speaker: And suffocates a bunch of elites.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Just one more massacre.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: You know, it's, it's pretty brutal.
Speaker: She does just kills this group of people.
Speaker: I mean, I know it's covenant and everything, but God damn.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: God damn Cortana.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: So as they continue and fighting their way through the ship, Cortana figures out that they need to keep the engineers alive because they're the only ones who know how to do it.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Do it, meaning fix the ship.
Speaker: Fix the ship.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Do the ship.
Speaker: They're doing the ship.
Speaker: Let's just leave it at that.
Speaker: Debbie does the flagship.
Speaker: Does the flight.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Does the flagship.
Speaker: The flagship.
Speaker: Dallas.
Speaker: Dallas.
Speaker: Dallas from Alien.
Speaker: Dallas from Alien.
Speaker: Captain Dallas.
Speaker: Tom Skerritt, man.
Speaker: Tom Skerritt.
Speaker: Anyway, an elite in black armor.
Speaker: And from what we understand, I think the black armored elites are supposed to be like really high up there in their, on the high muckety mucks.
Speaker: Extra big, nasty.
Speaker: Extra big, nasty.
Speaker: They show up with one of the, this shows up with an energy blade and starts attacking.
Speaker: And chapter eight begins with Master Chief fighting the elite in hand to hand combat.
Speaker: And Haverson and Pulaski are trying to shoot it and they can't.
Speaker: And Haverson gets sliced in the chest with the energy blade.
Speaker: And you're like, oh, is this the rap on Haverson?
Speaker: It's not.
Speaker: The other covenant ships realize what's going on and just begin firing on the flagship.
Speaker: The elite is getting the better of master chief and Johnson and Locklear begin unloading into it.
Speaker: And while the elite is like sawing through the Majolnir armor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The Majolnir.
Speaker: But yeah, master chief's not in good shape.
Speaker: He's the armors.
Speaker: The shield is broken.
Speaker: The armors getting cut.
Speaker: He's starting to bleed and nobody makes Master Chief bleed his own blood.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: One of the shots gets through and Master Chief uses this to push the elite off of him and into escape and escape pod and launches him off the bridge.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He, uh, he alien Queens, the little motherfucker.
Speaker: It's, uh,
Speaker: It's nice.
Speaker: It's a good move.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Haverson is still alive.
Speaker: He's in a lot of pain, but he's alive.
Speaker: Cortana tries to help the gang disable the holds on the nav computer, but it was a trap planted by the enemy AI that tricks them into disabling the slip space drive.
Speaker: Yes, which is interesting because they make a point of saying that they assumed, well, they believed that the Covenant had no AI, that that was not something that they had created.
Speaker: But they do.
Speaker: It's just very weird.
Speaker: And it's not like the UNSC's AI, which is very much a...
Speaker: created to be like a person, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The Covenant AI just is a bit more alien-like.
Speaker: Well, and it seems to follow rules that are less based in logic and more based in the weird, um, religious commune that, uh, that makes up the covenant.
Speaker: So, uh, yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker: It's a, it's a really interesting way of looking at it.
Speaker: The idea of an AI being somewhat illogical.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Following their own rules.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Okay, so that happens.
Speaker: And then Master Chief grabs one of the engineers and is like, all right, Cortana, translate.
Speaker: Tell him to fix the engine.
Speaker: And the engineer is like, yeah.
Speaker: And Master Chief's like, oh.
Speaker: And the engineer goes, yeah, hurry this way.
Speaker: And Master Chief's like, oh.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it because they basically say like, he says, he says, he tells Cortana to like, tell him like, Hey, I need you to follow me in here so we can fix the ship.
Speaker: And Cortana translates the alien basically saying, Oh, thank God.
Speaker: Oh, thank God.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Somebody.
Speaker: Okay, great.
Speaker: Yeah, it's pretty cool because it shows the engineers don't really have a dog in the fight.
Speaker: The only dog in the fight is the ship itself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The only thing they care about is doing their job, which is they like repairing things.
Speaker: Yeah, that's just what they're there for.
Speaker: That's what they're there for.
Speaker: That's what they do.
Speaker: So meanwhile, Cortana is working on the shields and plasma cannons and is furious over what the Covenant AI did to trick her.
Speaker: And she's also taking evasive maneuvers with the flagship around the planet threshold.
Speaker: She's trying to do like a slingshot maneuver.
Speaker: And she gets snippy when Pulaski's like, you know, you're...
Speaker: You're a little tight to the planet.
Speaker: You might want to pull up.
Speaker: And Cortana's like, okay, I know how to fly, lady.
Speaker: I beg your pardon.
Speaker: And then there's a concussion blast that pushes them too close to the planet and makes it so they can't have an exit vector out of the gravity of the planet.
Speaker: Pulaski was right.
Speaker: You know, maybe listen to the pilot, Cortana.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We know that you can do everything, Cortana.
Speaker: We know you're min-maxed to shit and back, but.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Maybe listen to the pilot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's crazy enough idea to work.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, the consequences of my own actions.
Speaker: Cortana was recorded as saying.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is where Cortana starts getting into like, she was kind of sassy before, but now she's actually getting into kind of like, you're kind of being a jerk.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, that's one of the things that what that Master Chief notes is like Cortana has been a little weird since she got out of the Forerunner computer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Huh.
Speaker: Huh.
Speaker: We skipped ahead a little bit in these books and yeah, he's not wrong to notice.
Speaker: He's not wrong to notice that things get weirder in the future.
Speaker: So, yeah, they're master chief is hanging out with the engineer and he's just.
Speaker: He just thinks it's so neat that the engineers don't have enemies.
Speaker: They just want to do their jobs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They are precious.
Speaker: They are downright adorable.
Speaker: They're precious.
Speaker: They're little pink blobby clouds.
Speaker: They're like, they're like more or less floating jellyfish kind of.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pull up the picture.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, let's confirm that.
Speaker: Engineers.
Speaker: Yeah, they're a little more horrifying than maybe.
Speaker: Maybe more horrifying than I'm giving them credit for, but you know.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, but cute.
Speaker: Cute in a way.
Speaker: In their own way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In their own way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sort of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Kind of.
Speaker: It's like, oh, look, OK, I found some chibi pictures of now.
Speaker: That's adorable.
Speaker: Oh, chibi, chibi.
Speaker: Halo engineer.
Speaker: That'll help.
Speaker: That'll help.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: See, so much better.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, and there's a Pokemon that looks like Halo.
Speaker: Oh, somebody Halo Comet of off.
Speaker: What's this?
Speaker: Oh, oh, yeah.
Speaker: The Hurishok and Tentashock.
Speaker: Is that a real thing or is this just some deviant?
Speaker: I think this is I think this is fan art.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Looks good though.
Speaker: Looks neat.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: That was, we went off on a tangent a little bit there, but it was halo related.
Speaker: Halo related.
Speaker: I want full credit for that.
Speaker: So they fight their way through and you'll get that credit.
Speaker: They fight their way.
Speaker: Master chief and master chief and, and his good buddy, the engineer, they fight their way through some grunts.
Speaker: The engineer picks up a gun for him.
Speaker: and fixes it and gives it to them.
Speaker: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I feel like the engineers aren't actually a fan of the Covenant.
Speaker: It's just they're so like passive that they're like, okay, we'll work on your ship.
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: Probably.
Speaker: I mean, you gotta figure most of the people who are part of the coven aren't, uh, are not really volunteering, uh, to be a part of this.
Speaker: You get the impression it was a join or die kind of situation.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, all right.
Speaker: Uh, master chief, uh,
Speaker: Okay, so the engineer restores the power to the slip space generator, but Cortana replies that it's too late because we're gonna die.
Speaker: Chapter nine, Cortana weighs whether it's worth trying to make a slip space jump while in thresholds atmosphere.
Speaker: But then she actually starts looking into
Speaker: the Covenant slip space engines and realizing, wait a minute, I might actually be able to do this.
Speaker: These are really precise.
Speaker: So basically, the UNSC slip space engine works by just brute force tearing a hole in this fabric of time and space.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I loved this detail.
Speaker: I thought this was great.
Speaker: The difference.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the covenant, it's like, oh, it just like opens a pinhole the size needed just in space time and the ship goes through it.
Speaker: And I was like, that's interesting.
Speaker: That's really interesting.
Speaker: And with how specific and precise it is, you could possibly jump from the atmosphere of one planet to the atmosphere of another planet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You don't need as much room for error, basically.
Speaker: And she's like, well, why doesn't the Covenant do this?
Speaker: And at the time that she's plotting it, one of the Covenant AIs yells heresy at her.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: For trying to do that, which I thought was a neat detail.
Speaker: Like, why would it be heresy to jump into the atmosphere of another planet?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's so weird.
Speaker: And it's like I was talking about before, where it's just like, it's not logical necessarily.
Speaker: And that's pretty neat, actually.
Speaker: That's really interesting.
Speaker: It's certainly something you don't see often.
Speaker: The AI is religious, so to speak.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that's not something I've heard a lot about in games, in sci-fi.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's really neat.
Speaker: So the...
Speaker: Master Chief leaves the one engineer to his own devices because it starts, like, just repairing other things in the engine room.
Speaker: He comes back.
Speaker: Another engineer is helping Pulaski fix the door control panels.
Speaker: And then he comes onto the bridge and a third engineer begins repairing Master Chief's shield generator on his suit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pretty cool.
Speaker: It's kind of neat.
Speaker: Chief and Haverson.
Speaker: You want to keep him around.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Chief and Haverson have a disagreement about what to do next.
Speaker: Master Chief says he is tactical command and Haverson acknowledges that Master Chief has tactical command because he's O&I and he knows that Master Chief's on a mission that kind of takes priority over basically everybody.
Speaker: and that was capture a Covenant ship, get to Covenant space, do the thing.
Speaker: And Chief's like, I gotta do my mission still.
Speaker: And the rest of his party is like, come on, man, we're all like...
Speaker: level one and you're level 20 and we're all tired.
Speaker: Like you're not, this isn't happening with your currents, uh, because chief's like, well, I got the covenant ship.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they're like, yes, yes.
Speaker: But a lot of other stuff has shifted.
Speaker: So maybe we could shift this.
Speaker: Maybe the UNSC doesn't really have a Navy right now.
Speaker: So maybe we want to,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Slow your roll a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah, just a little bit.
Speaker: I'm with them on that.
Speaker: I was with.
Speaker: Haverson's plan was like, let's take this ship back to Earth and reverse engineer the slipspace engine and the cannons and all the stuff that they have up on us.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Cortana's chimes in is like, yeah, actually, I agree with that guy.
Speaker: John, Johnny boy, Johnny old boy, old pal.
Speaker: But then Cortana is like, but we can't take it back to Earth because there's a subsection of the coal protocol that states that if you have captured a covenant ship, you're not allowed to take it back to Earth until you can 100 percent guarantee there is no tracking devices on the ship.
Speaker: Um, so they are like, well, what do we do?
Speaker: And mass chief's like, uh, what are we taking to reach?
Speaker: And it was like, okay, weird poll, but sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: There is, there is, there is a level of like that, that John Mulaney joke about just like, like, okay, I'll allow it, but I'm keeping my eye on you.
Speaker: So, so random.
Speaker: So, um, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, and he, and Master Chief's like, well, either the Covenant glassed it and moved on and there's no one there, or the Covenant are still there, but they won't fire on us because we're in a Covenant ship and then we can just leave.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they're like, well, fine.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So Johnson calls in over the comm and says, holy shit, one of the cryo tubes has a Spartan in it.
Speaker: Get down here, Master Chief, and Master Chief leaves.
Speaker: Chapter 10, real short one.
Speaker: Haverson murders the shit out of the engineer that fixed Master Chief's shields.
Speaker: Just, just, and, and here's the thing.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's tough because his reasoning ends up being sound, but it's still, I still don't like him.
Speaker: I don't like him either.
Speaker: I mean, the way it was described, like he holds the gun up at the engineer and the engineer like picks up his, his like little tentacles and starts like prodding at the gun and then he shoots it in the fucking face.
Speaker: It's extra cruel.
Speaker: It's, and then he's like, Hey, listen,
Speaker: That engineer just helped repair Majolniar armor here.
Speaker: And, and if he gets back to the coven, we have no reason to believe that he doesn't have secrets that he's taken from repairing you.
Speaker: So we had to do it.
Speaker: And you're like, I guess.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, like it's, it's, it's very much a, it's very much a, the big Lebowski.
Speaker: Like no, no Donnie, you're just an asshole.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Am I wrong?
Speaker: Am I wrong?
Speaker: No, that wasn't Donnie.
Speaker: That was Walter.
Speaker: No, Walter.
Speaker: You're just an asshole.
Speaker: No, Walter.
Speaker: Am I wrong?
Speaker: Am I wrong?
Speaker: Am I wrong?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm staying.
Speaker: I'm finishing my coffee.
Speaker: Finishing my coffee.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he finishes his coffee and it kills the engineer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Cortana was like, what the fuck, man?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Your AI is like, that's a little fucked up.
Speaker: Um, and then, uh, he also talks to Cortana.
Speaker: He's like, oh, by the way, I know he really just wants to go to regions, uh, to search for the other Spartans.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, so now we're in chapter 11, which takes us away from the action.
Speaker: Bold move.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Real brief, it's just a chapter featuring the UNSC High Command.
Speaker: They're talking to Lieutenant Wagner, who authored the report about what happened to Reach.
Speaker: And on the High Command is Ackerson, who I believe is in the Fall of Reach book.
Speaker: He's like the scientist who is the...
Speaker: He's like the counterpoint to Halsey.
Speaker: He like works on other shit.
Speaker: Like there's Halsey's Spartan program and Ackerman is doing other shady science stuff.
Speaker: Anyway, Ackerman's or Ackerson.
Speaker: Not Ackerman.
Speaker: Acker's son is a real piece of shit.
Speaker: And at one point says he's glad the Spartans and those freaks are gone.
Speaker: And one of the other generals was like, listen here, you piece of shit.
Speaker: They saved my life so many times.
Speaker: They've killed more Covenant than three ODST regiments combined.
Speaker: Like, you're going to talk about them with respect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: God damn it, you're going to respect them.
Speaker: You're going to respect them.
Speaker: But the high command is like, but there's no reason to go back to Reach.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: Even though they talk about the way the Covenant glassed the planet was not, according to the report,
Speaker: it might not have been as thorough as the way they glassed other planets because they didn't have, because most of the fleet chased after the pillar of autumn and that there was a few, only a few left to do the glassing and they started at the poles.
Speaker: So perhaps in the middle of,
Speaker: of the planet, there was some safety zones.
Speaker: Ah, how very convenient.
Speaker: How convenient for the Spartans.
Speaker: Well, I see.
Speaker: And something interesting to note that I picked up in that chapter was that the people that live in the inner colonies and Earth have no idea, like the civilians, have no idea how close the UNSC is to losing the war.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which, you know what?
Speaker: Fair.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's yeah.
Speaker: Let's keep that morale up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We don't have Tucker Carlson talking about how I don't know the government.
Speaker: It seems pretty close to the seems closer to our Christian forefathers than the demo rats.
Speaker: He would do that.
Speaker: He would.
Speaker: He absolutely would.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Piece of shit.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's the first part of, that's the end of section one.
Speaker: So we covered section zero and section one.
Speaker: And that is a little over, that's almost a third of the book-ish.
Speaker: Yeah, we're about a third away through.
Speaker: Phil, what do you think so far?
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: The Halo books are nothing if not consistent.
Speaker: Consistently solid.
Speaker: Good military sci-fi.
Speaker: Nyland is a really solid writer.
Speaker: I'm concerned about some of this retconning that seems to be going on with, no, the flood didn't kill me.
Speaker: Oh, and there are parts of Reach that are fine.
Speaker: It's like, oh.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Let's see what you do.
Speaker: Let's see what you do.
Speaker: Let's see what you do.
Speaker: Let's see how it goes.
Speaker: You know, we're, we're fine.
Speaker: So I'm optimistic.
Speaker: When did fall was fall of reach published?
Speaker: When was fall of reach published?
Speaker: That was, was it 2000?
Speaker: 2001, October 30th, 2001.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this was 2003.
Speaker: If I'm remembering correctly.
Speaker: And it was... Okay, so The Fall of Reach came out the month before Halo Combat Evolved came out.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, so it's like...
Speaker: Yeah, it seems like, all right, we released Fall of Reach, we released Halo Combat Evolved.
Speaker: Halo Combat Evolved is huge.
Speaker: It's going to keep going.
Speaker: We got some of the characters that, like, okay, by the way, no, Master Chief wasn't the only survivor of Halo, clearly.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because of...
Speaker: What's it?
Speaker: The people that he meets on the Pelican afterwards.
Speaker: Avery Johnson and company.
Speaker: So clearly some other people got off Halo.
Speaker: It wasn't a one man.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's that's interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't like retconning, but it's fine.
Speaker: Nyland's a good writer, so we'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now.
Speaker: Yeah, and it was probably, and I guarantee it's not his call.
Speaker: Well, that's a fair point.
Speaker: No, you're right.
Speaker: It's like, by the way, these characters have to be alive.
Speaker: Yeah, that's, you know what?
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: We're dealing with a lot of right for hire stuff here.
Speaker: We got to remember that.
Speaker: That's totally fair.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because he wrote the first one, our friend of the show, what's his name?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Who were the Deets?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: William William.
Speaker: Bill Deets.
Speaker: Bill Deets wrote number two, which is the flood.
Speaker: And he's and Eric Nelland wrote number three for a strike.
Speaker: So, yeah, Deets had obviously wrote some details in there almost entirely from the game.
Speaker: But.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was very clear in the game and in the book that no one else survived.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's, and, and, and, and if some Marines survived or some Spartans survived, why not?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right, so that all being said, now it's time for the part of the show that we all know and love.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, it always surprises me each and every time.
Speaker: Each and every time.
Speaker: I have played very little, actually.
Speaker: I have, for the past week or so, I've been in Virginia for a playwriting festival.
Speaker: Virginia.
Speaker: Yeah, southwestern Virginia.
Speaker: And I got to see one of my shows produced for full stage reading, got to meet some other cool playwrights and do some edits and and just really dug my heels in on the whole theater major thing for for a little while.
Speaker: And yeah, it was really nice.
Speaker: And there was a sheets and I got to I got to have some some Western Pennsylvania joy briefly.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: And, but, but, but I will say the day I was meant to leave, I was going to leave the house at like noon so I could get there early afternoon.
Speaker: No, I was going to leave in the morning or something.
Speaker: And I ended up playing like two, three hours of hi-fi rush.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I got it out a little, little later than I meant.
Speaker: I'm still really enjoying this game.
Speaker: It's I'm still, I get around not as good, I think, as other people who might be more used to the, the,
Speaker: you know, beat them up games that require those kind of button combinations and rhythm and everything.
Speaker: But it's, it's so damn fun to play that I don't mind taking that extra time and having a little extra concentration to do it.
Speaker: I'm definitely, I mean, this is, this is, if, if this doesn't end up in my,
Speaker: games of the year list, it means that 2023 was an unprecedented year of riches when it comes to video games.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker: It's just so solid all the way down.
Speaker: That's basically it for me.
Speaker: Kevin, what have you been playing?
Speaker: I finished Pizza Tower.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: How was that?
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: It's a good game.
Speaker: It's very much in the vein of Wario 4.
Speaker: It's a Wario-like.
Speaker: You play this guy.
Speaker: His name is Pepino.
Speaker: He has a pizza shop.
Speaker: And there's this dude, Mr. Pizza or Pizza Face.
Speaker: He builds a pizza tower.
Speaker: And he's going to put Pepino out of business.
Speaker: And Pepino's like, I got to deal with that.
Speaker: So you got to fight your way up the tower.
Speaker: with different levels and the creativity in the levels is amazing.
Speaker: So you have a bunch of different there's there's like four different floors that you have to go.
Speaker: You have to work your way up and there's a bunch of different levels per floor, like four.
Speaker: I think four levels per floor, except on the last one, there's three.
Speaker: And on the last one, there are
Speaker: There's the creativity is off the charts in the last last floor.
Speaker: You have a level where you are going through a haunted like Chuck E. Cheese with animatronics and it's called Don't Make a Sound.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: And if you get if you if one of the security robots sees you, you get jump scared.
Speaker: Oh, for Pete's sake.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: That's hilarious.
Speaker: But it's, it's a wonderful, delightful game there.
Speaker: It's dripping with character.
Speaker: The art style is amazing.
Speaker: It looks like it was created in Microsoft Paint.
Speaker: And it's amazing.
Speaker: It has that liquid television-like style to it.
Speaker: Also, it reminds me a little bit of also old Adult Swim with things like home movies.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: It's a fun game.
Speaker: You could tell that this was a definite labor of love because of how much effort was put into it on every level.
Speaker: How much detail, I shouldn't say effort, but detail was put into it on every level.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: A lot of games require a lot of effort, but it's the little details that you can, when somebody is really loving or wanting to put out something that they love,
Speaker: where you notice it.
Speaker: So yeah, Pizza Tower.
Speaker: That's what I was playing.
Speaker: I've also been playing what is it?
Speaker: Dead Island.
Speaker: Oh!
Speaker: Oh!
Speaker: The original.
Speaker: The original.
Speaker: The sequel's coming out soon.
Speaker: The sequel is coming out soon.
Speaker: And it might be a bullet time episode.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I pitched it to our friend Hot Sider because I know Jesse Garasha is a huge fan of Dead Island and Dying Light and as am I. And we know that Dead Island 2 is coming out.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: I figured it might be a good time to pop that one on a calendar at some point.
Speaker: Oh, I mean, that's, from my memory of Dead Island, I mean, it's kind of the definition of what bullet time's about.
Speaker: Yeah, a shooter that missed its mark.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, seriously, 6.5 to 7 out of 10.
Speaker: Like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: There's a lot of stuff to love about Dead Island, and I won't get into it now, but there's also a lot of stuff not to love about Dead Island.
Speaker: Who do you voodoo, bitch?
Speaker: Who do you voodoo, bitch?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Fangs that go bump in the night.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's me, Sam B. It's been 10 years since I played that game, and that still pops into my head from time to time.
Speaker: It's... Who do you voodoo, bitch?
Speaker: What a ridiculous, ridiculous song.
Speaker: Good for them.
Speaker: Good for them.
Speaker: It's an earworm that will last until the end of time.
Speaker: And it's referenced in Dying Light 2.
Speaker: In the beginning of Dying Light 2, you're walking around exploring this house and you find a copy, a vinyl record of Who Do You Voodoo?
Speaker: Oh, that's hilarious.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: You can't play it, but it's there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's probably for the best, probably for the best.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so yeah, that's, that's, that's what I've been playing and, um, you know, all that.
Speaker: Oh, and I also started some other stuff on my steam deck, uh,
Speaker: I randomly picked up Deliver Us to Mars.
Speaker: Oh, I've heard good things about that.
Speaker: Yeah, I have no idea.
Speaker: I know almost nothing about it other than I've heard good things.
Speaker: Which is... Deliver Us Mars.
Speaker: Deliver Us Mars.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, this looks fun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so that's about it.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: So, that'll bring us to the end of our episode tonight.
Speaker: If...
Speaker: You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Pixlet Pod.
Speaker: We also have a TikTok, right?
Speaker: We have a TikTok Pixlet Pod.
Speaker: Is that it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I told you what happened on TikTok, right?
Speaker: I fired up my... Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I was like, oh, okay.
Speaker: Just dead animals, apparently, on my For You page.
Speaker: Yeah, your algorithm's fucked, apparently.
Speaker: I'm not coming back.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: But Phil runs the PixelitPod account on TikTok, so, you know.
Speaker: Check out some clips.
Speaker: It's a big old clip show over there.
Speaker: It's a big old clip show over there.
Speaker: And our YouTube channel is almost at 100 subscribers.
Speaker: It actually might be at 100 subscribers by the time this episode comes out, but it's growing over there.
Speaker: So I'm happy to see that.
Speaker: Also, go to our website, PixletPod.com.
Speaker: There you can join our Discord.
Speaker: You can join the mailing list and get episodes early.
Speaker: You can download the transcripts from episodes.
Speaker: They're automated, but, you know, that's as close as we're going to be able to get right now.
Speaker: And that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening and have a good evening.
Speaker: Who do you voodoo, bitch?
Speaker: Thank you.
