Transcript
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: We're open and hot.
Speaker: We're going to come in hot on that.
Speaker: You know what else is hot?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pig Slip.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me today is Jesse Gratia filling in for Phil.
Speaker: He is, he should be, I think he's wrapping up his baby leave.
Speaker: Yeah, he's almost done being a father.
Speaker: He's almost done, yeah.
Speaker: He's put in a good couple months and I think he checks out until 18 now.
Speaker: Right, nice.
Speaker: But then he just kicks the kid out, so it's okay.
Speaker: You gotta love America, eh?
Speaker: It's beautiful.
Speaker: It's a beautiful system.
Speaker: But yeah, Jesse, how you doing?
Speaker: How's things going over up in Canada land?
Speaker: I'm doing well.
Speaker: It's cold.
Speaker: It's currently, we're recording this in January, beginning of the new year.
Speaker: Happy new year, by the way.
Speaker: How was yours, Kevin?
Speaker: Good?
Speaker: It was great.
Speaker: It was great.
Speaker: It happens, you know, and without incident.
Speaker: And then we're in a new one.
Speaker: It's the 31st and then it is the first.
Speaker: The calendar flips over and we're all good.
Speaker: We're all good here.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So today we're doing Dead Island, the book.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: Based on Dead Island, the video game.
Speaker: And here's the thing.
Speaker: Have you played the video game, by the way?
Speaker: I have.
Speaker: You've played the video game, right?
Speaker: Not all the way through.
Speaker: Maybe the first quarter.
Speaker: Not all the way through.
Speaker: Let me tell you, the game is... The game has two good parts.
Speaker: And when I say good, I'm using that very loosely.
Speaker: You have the beach area, and then you get to the town, and that's kind of fun.
Speaker: And the town is like, oh, this is like dying light vibes.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: A little bit of dying light, like proto dying lady.
Speaker: And then it's like, all right, well, now you go to the jungle.
Speaker: And once every time I played this game, I'll get to the jungle area and I'm like, I don't want to anymore.
Speaker: Not even the enemies are guys with guns.
Speaker: Now, why am I playing?
Speaker: Wait, hold on.
Speaker: I thought it was a zombie melee game.
Speaker: Why are there guys with guns?
Speaker: There's guys with guns.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It was 2010.
Speaker: What else were you going to do?
Speaker: It was 2010.
Speaker: It was a wild time back then.
Speaker: You could get away with a lot of racism.
Speaker: Nothing's changed, to be fair.
Speaker: Nothing's changed, to be fair.
Speaker: It was just a bold, fresh flavor.
Speaker: How much racism can we do in this zombie game?
Speaker: Well, it's set on an island, so go nuts.
Speaker: It's set on islands ambiguously.
Speaker: Is it near?
Speaker: Is it in Asia?
Speaker: Is it near Africa?
Speaker: We don't decide.
Speaker: Everybody's dark skinned.
Speaker: We're not going to differentiate.
Speaker: But we will name.
Speaker: I can't wait to talk.
Speaker: There's so many things about that.
Speaker: What you just said in this book that I cannot wait to talk about.
Speaker: This book is amazing.
Speaker: awful it's it's so frustrating and it's impossibility to talk about anything anything period just to talk about anything
Speaker: So the book was written by a gentleman by the name of Mark Morris.
Speaker: He's English.
Speaker: He was born just from his Wikipedia page.
Speaker: He was born in Bolsover, Derbyshire, but now he lives in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire.
Speaker: Bolsover, Derbyshire.
Speaker: Are you kidding me?
Speaker: That's a real place?
Speaker: That sounds like where every horse spawns from.
Speaker: Like what?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he's written a bunch of books.
Speaker: He did a ton of Doctor Who novelizations.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: He's done a bunch of horror.
Speaker: He's done, outside of Doctor Who, he's done a few novelizations for...
Speaker: Oh boy, I do want to read this.
Speaker: So he's done the Dead Island one in 2011.
Speaker: In 2017, he did the novelization for The Great Wall.
Speaker: Is that the... Yeah, that was the movie where somehow Matt Damon is the main character.
Speaker: Oh, that one.
Speaker: Set in China.
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: Yeah, knowing how this guy wrote Dead Island, I can't imagine how he talks about the people who live in the place where that movie takes place.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so, um... Yeah, we're just gonna kind of get right into it, put the body in the marsh.
Speaker: We're gonna put this body in the marsh because we got a lot of... I can already tell.
Speaker: I mean, I got thoughts, and I know Jesse came loaded for bear.
Speaker: Oh, buddy, I got... Double cocked, I'm ready to go.
Speaker: This ain't reality TV!
Speaker: We're going to talk about the first seven chapters in this bad boy and kind of go from there.
Speaker: But before we get into chapter one, we got a prologue
Speaker: In which a witch doctor is holding a ceremony with a woman, and she's screaming about how it's murder and all that, and she's locking her into a tomb, and also there's zombie spelled Z-O-M-B-I, which is the...
Speaker: That is I don't know where he's getting that spelling from.
Speaker: If is it is it the Italian movie or is it Haitian Creole or am I giving him too much credit that he actually put any research into it?
Speaker: Or did he like did he guess the Wii U zombie game that Ubisoft was going to make in advance?
Speaker: You saw it coming?
Speaker: Yeah, Zombie U was his, which, by the way, fascinating take on a zombie game, but we'll get to that later, or not at all.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: They take, so the woman is in the tomb and then they take the zombies over to another area.
Speaker: And they cut off all their heads and they line them up pretty particularly.
Speaker: And then the witch doctor scoops the brains out of one of the zombies and feeds it to a little boy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's the prologue.
Speaker: Look, I know you have to set up a zombie story and like establish the rules and like the origins of stuff.
Speaker: Sometimes usually they wait until like the end of season two to do that or like, you know, a couple books in or something.
Speaker: Got to get this out of the way.
Speaker: I suppose you have to get the audience to care about the concept of this.
Speaker: What a weird way.
Speaker: to do the zombie origin story.
Speaker: I get that we're on an island and there's like a bit of sort of Haitian voodoo stuff going on.
Speaker: Maybe he like overemphasized the opening song that Sam B sings of like, who do you voodoo bitch?
Speaker: And was like, we got to go all in on this.
Speaker: But man, this is a weird way to start this story, especially considering where we go right after this.
Speaker: We're going right after it into chapter one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where a guy in a mohawk sexually harasses a flight attendant in order to get a drink from her.
Speaker: Right off the bat, a black man who we find out shortly is Sam B. of Who Do You Voodoo intervenes and calms the situation down.
Speaker: We find out Sam B is a rapper, but only had one mega hit back in the 90s titled Who Do You Voodoo Bitch?
Speaker: And Sam talks about the price of fame and how the weight of doing anything afterwards was too much for him.
Speaker: The Mohawk guy is a former football player.
Speaker: Logan Carter is a former first round draft pick, and he had to retire, though, as boom, another character pops up.
Speaker: According to the book, she's hella beautiful.
Speaker: And she points out the reason Logan had to retire from football is because he killed somebody.
Speaker: And he's like, it was an accident, though, according to the judge at the trial.
Speaker: And the woman who is beautiful is she introduces herself as Perna and she used to be a cop.
Speaker: Logan, we find out, killed a girl in a drag race.
Speaker: She was the passenger in his car when he lost control and hit a wall and shattered his knee.
Speaker: Womp womp.
Speaker: Before they get much... Poor Logan, man.
Speaker: How's he going to play football anymore?
Speaker: He's probably, of the two people in that situation, he did the worst there.
Speaker: Let's be honest.
Speaker: He did worse there.
Speaker: Dead or broken kneecap.
Speaker: Yeah, really?
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Broken knee.
Speaker: Pretty rough.
Speaker: Logan, he's like... I know the name Logan is from the game, I believe, but...
Speaker: God, every Logan in this era of media is just a terrible person.
Speaker: You got Logan from Gilmore Girls.
Speaker: You got Logan from Veronica Mars.
Speaker: You got Logan from Dead Island.
Speaker: What's up with Logan's?
Speaker: Logan's just no good.
Speaker: Before they can get much deeper into their sad backstories, though, the captain interrupts and says the plane is landing.
Speaker: And Sam starts thinking about how anxious he is about his gig at Bannoy, the best resort in the area.
Speaker: And Perna points out through the window that there's a high security prison nearby.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Off to a good start.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: That's how you do it on islands.
Speaker: You put the resort right next to the high security, maximum, you know, totally, completely reasonable.
Speaker: Not even a big distance.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Two sides of the same coin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Resorts and prisons.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: super safe also i didn't i didn't touch on it much but uh the the way that they do the interactions on the plane embarrassing uh yeah there's like multiple paragraphs spent where they're just logan i think logan um is just harassing the stewardess constantly yeah i like sexually harassing yeah yeah i i say i sum that up in like three words it's paragraphs um
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, so much time is spent highlighting how he's sexually harassing the stewardess.
Speaker: I'm like, I can't believe that this is the character we're establishing.
Speaker: I have to spend 300 pages caring about this guy and his poor broken knee.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's like...
Speaker: I get this vibe that this guy, as a Whitey McWhiteface author, is... He writes Sam B. as if the man...
Speaker: couldn't possibly have a single fault and has, has, he's already, he's already well beyond his character development as a person.
Speaker: Like he is, he understands like I made all the mistakes already and I've already learned about it.
Speaker: And cause he is so afraid of being like being racist and writing a black character with faults.
Speaker: And yet he has the rest of the book surrounding Sam B. Like,
Speaker: You're totally right.
Speaker: He has written him like his arc is complete and he's just here to be the most model minority he could possibly write.
Speaker: And then he, yeah.
Speaker: And then because of that, he like, he wraps back in on himself.
Speaker: He's trying so hard to not be racist that he's actually just being racist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just incapable of writing a character who has any flaws, who can make any mistakes.
Speaker: And when he does make a mistake, it's like he raps with a mistake back into like, oh, actually, no, it was a good thing that he did this wrong.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's some scenarios that happen later in the book where I'm like, what are you doing with this character?
Speaker: What are we doing here?
Speaker: Why is the guy who got popular off saying, who do you voodoo bitch having this conversation?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So exhausting.
Speaker: So we're in chapter two and we're introduced to Jian Mei, who works at the Royal Palm Hotel.
Speaker: Or does she?
Speaker: Or does she?
Speaker: So by day, she is the receptionist for the Royal Palm Hotel.
Speaker: Also by day, she is a Chinese special forces operative from an all-female...
Speaker: Quentin Tarantino special forces unit.
Speaker: It's very important, by the way, that you point out that she's Chinese.
Speaker: I think every time you mention Jean May, you have to say the Chinese woman, Jean May.
Speaker: She's the Chinese woman.
Speaker: Very important.
Speaker: Because for a few chapters before she gets reintroduced to any other characters, she's only ever called the Chinese woman.
Speaker: Like...
Speaker: But the biggest problem to me is that there's two characters that are referred to as the Chinese woman.
Speaker: Like, at random, separate points in the same... Like, I... I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know what was going on in this story.
Speaker: So, this is interesting, I think, because this isn't, like, established in the game, right?
Speaker: The game is sort of like, you wake up in the hotel after the Sam Bee party, which they do get to at a point.
Speaker: So, all of this is... Mark just...
Speaker: writing backstories for these characters that ultimately you don't really need but i guess we do to like get to the parts of the story he's trying to get to uh and it makes the game which is mostly just a hokey b story feel a little more involved uh what do you think about these do you think they match up with the game much at all i mean no um
Speaker: That's what I was thinking.
Speaker: I'm like, none of these characters feel like these backstories line up with them at all.
Speaker: And I can't expect them to play the game and like care about it.
Speaker: But still, it doesn't.
Speaker: Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Speaker: You kind of that's the thing is you like you pick your character like you're presented with these characters.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, Perna, which are stereotypes in the game, to be clear.
Speaker: They're all stereotypes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're all stereotypes and they all have their stereo, like each one has different skill sets, right?
Speaker: So like Perna, I believe is good at throwing knives.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I can't remember.
Speaker: But either way, it's just like pick the thing you want to be good at and go.
Speaker: And they all start the same way.
Speaker: You wake up and you're being contacted and you got to run out and all that bullshit.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: It doesn't... None of it really ties into the game particularly well or easily.
Speaker: Maybe except for Sam B because he is so...
Speaker: such a big part of the opening cut scene kind of makes sense um but uh yeah so john may uh special forces operative for china uh we get a pages pages of her backstory right off the bat we're like we're gonna get all this out of the way right now so we don't have to talk about it again
Speaker: And they really hope you care.
Speaker: They really, really hope that you care about this setup so that in five chapters when she comes back, we're like, oh, okay, yeah, she's not a Mary Sue.
Speaker: She can just do this stuff.
Speaker: She's just good at it, obviously.
Speaker: I read the whole chapter about her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a whole chapter about it.
Speaker: Her dad was a police officer who was killed trying to break up a smuggling ring, and she worked her tail off as a kid to be the best cop ever.
Speaker: ACAB, but we appreciate the effort, kid.
Speaker: When she graduated, she was assigned to work undercover in Banoy to spy on rich people.
Speaker: No other real specific task.
Speaker: And she hates her job.
Speaker: And it was like, you know, that rich that's like, oh, yes, the Chinese government wants her to spy on the richest of the rich, the the decadent Westerners who are causing the fall of society or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, the rich of the rich who are going to an island resort right next to a prison and don't have their own like private island.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's like families who bought a package.
Speaker: Yeah, as we'll find out, there's a lot of children coming here.
Speaker: I don't think you're going to investigate much.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Being on the job for three months, Jean-May realizes that the people who visit the resort are mostly just normal people and not the great destabilizers of the world, as her bosses led her to believe.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: A drunk man gets off the bus filled with new guests and sexually harasses Jean-May.
Speaker: It's Logan.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Yeah, Logan's a problem.
Speaker: Logan is maybe, has maybe the most horrendous line in the whole book, which I think will be in part two of this series of podcasts.
Speaker: But man, he is, I don't know what we were doing here.
Speaker: I don't know if like...
Speaker: You gotta just... I get that it's a character.
Speaker: I completely understand.
Speaker: And it's reflective of things going on.
Speaker: But man, this guy sucks so much ass.
Speaker: I want him to die immediately before the zombies even show up.
Speaker: It's so bold to be like, yeah, let's make this guy who really sucks ass one of the heroes.
Speaker: That's a really bold idea.
Speaker: And you gotta feel for him and root for him and feel bad for him at times.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's like taking...
Speaker: It's like taking Ellis from Die Hard.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The guy who goes up to Hans Gruber and says, Hans, boobie, I'm your white knight.
Speaker: But making the whole movie about him.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: John McClane.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's exhausting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Sam calls him out on his bullshit.
Speaker: And as they're checking in, Sam, Logan and Perna realize that they are all on the islands because of their involvement in a blood drive campaign.
Speaker: Sam and Logan as celebrities and Perna won a random lottery.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Huh.
Speaker: Everyone's telling the truth.
Speaker: I think that's actually a somewhat interesting way of getting them all on there, especially with this sort of twist that comes later on.
Speaker: I was like, oh, that's kind of neat.
Speaker: It's neat.
Speaker: But in this scenario where they're all learning it, one of them says snap.
Speaker: Like, cause, oh, I heard about that.
Speaker: And then someone else says double snap.
Speaker: And I'm like, were we saying that in 2010?
Speaker: Like, was that like a thing?
Speaker: Were we saying snap, double snap?
Speaker: Like, I don't, I don't know.
Speaker: I don't remember that.
Speaker: That was 14 years ago.
Speaker: I would have been a child then, but I don't remember that being like a normal thing people did.
Speaker: We're,
Speaker: 14 years ago, I was a grown-ass adult.
Speaker: I don't remember that.
Speaker: And you still weren't saying it, eh?
Speaker: Yeah?
Speaker: I still wasn't saying it.
Speaker: I would have been 25.
Speaker: And I was not saying snap or double snap.
Speaker: Yeah, it's okay.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: Oh, fuck.
Speaker: Anyway, moving on.
Speaker: Turned 40 in June.
Speaker: Congratulations.
Speaker: Birthday gifts.
Speaker: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker: Chapter three.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Chapter three.
Speaker: I hadn't been paying attention to the titles until just now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When chapter three is titled, who do you voodoo bitch?
Speaker: I was like, there you go, baby.
Speaker: Roll credits.
Speaker: What a reference.
Speaker: That is kind of the thing of the game, the best thing of the game.
Speaker: Basically, no question.
Speaker: I quote that song all the time.
Speaker: Who do you voodoo bitch?
Speaker: Stand up.
Speaker: Sam B got the thing that go bump in the night.
Speaker: Like it's it's a classic.
Speaker: And it's so, I think it's really interesting because I love Techland's games.
Speaker: I played Dying Light 1, which they made after this, after they broke off, and Dying Light 2 as well.
Speaker: And in Dying Light 2, they actually make a reference to Hoodie Voodoo Bitch.
Speaker: One of the first items you could find is a vinyl of that song.
Speaker: I was like, that's cute.
Speaker: They know that that's the only thing people remember from Dead Island.
Speaker: Luckily, that's the only thing that people remember from Dead Island 1.
Speaker: Luckily, when you play Dead Island 2, they're like, we really hope you remember that that's the only thing because look at Sam B. Right away, he's the first thing you see.
Speaker: He's like your mentor.
Speaker: That's really funny.
Speaker: He's just a rapper.
Speaker: He's not like some zombie slay or well, maybe he is, I guess, after this story.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He breaks down like, yeah, you're immune like me, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: That's how I survived.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: Video games.
Speaker: Video games, huh?
Speaker: Logan is in his hotel room enjoying the view and taking drugs.
Speaker: Then he goes down to the bar and he starts drinking and lamenting the fact that there are no single ladies around.
Speaker: He then goes out on the town and just wanders around, getting even more fucked up.
Speaker: And has some misogynistic lines about not being able to catch any women.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Then he goes to Sam B's show at the ballroom of the hotel.
Speaker: And it's packed.
Speaker: Logan is very drunk, though.
Speaker: And he pushes his way through the crowd and tries to get Sam's attention.
Speaker: But Sam is performing and not looking at the drunk man in the front row.
Speaker: And so Logan then curses him out.
Speaker: because he wanted to be graced by Sam's gaze.
Speaker: And then he angrily goes back into the crowd.
Speaker: I think Logan, my theory is Logan kind of likes Sam.
Speaker: Like, likes him, likes him.
Speaker: A little bit more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that's, I'm adding that into my reading of this book.
Speaker: It's the direction it has to go.
Speaker: It makes perfect sense.
Speaker: He's constantly looking for validation from him.
Speaker: He wants his attention all the time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: That makes the reading a lot more interesting.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: He runs into Perna and has some racist things to say about hip hop before he hits on Perna.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Man.
Speaker: Perna knees him in the balls.
Speaker: Finally, that's the one good thing that happens to Logan for the whole story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, soon he gets.
Speaker: No, that's true.
Speaker: Come up.
Speaker: It's in a little.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: Berta needs him in the balls.
Speaker: He gets he is stumbling around now and has to throw up and he runs into the first bathroom he sees and vomits in the sink.
Speaker: And I think it's at this moment where he's having like clarity in his head of like, you're terrible.
Speaker: You're just the worst person in the world.
Speaker: Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And then he turns around and he sees like two women, one woman kneeling over another.
Speaker: And it's John May.
Speaker: And she's trying to care for a woman who seems like she's having a seizure.
Speaker: And he's like, what's going on?
Speaker: And then the woman sits up with a snarl and bites John May's hand.
Speaker: And John and Logan run out of the bathroom and they bar the door.
Speaker: And they
Speaker: She's like, all right, I'm going to go get help.
Speaker: Logan holds the door and May gets the security.
Speaker: And Logan, as soon as security gets there, Logan bolts back to his room, doesn't even look back, doesn't care.
Speaker: He's out of there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's chapter three.
Speaker: It's all Logan all the time, unfortunately.
Speaker: Yep, spending pages and pages reading about just the worst guy you can imagine and thinking, wow, 250 more pages I got to read of this guy, at least.
Speaker: I cannot wait to learn more about Logan and his fun escapades.
Speaker: You really start thinking about like page economy and you're thinking like, all right, we're three chapters in and two out of the three chapter, actually three out of the three chapters, Logan has said or done something terrible.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely horrendous.
Speaker: absolutely horrendous like you know people have been canceled on twitter for less than what logan is and like you're right about the page economy thing because i'm looking at the the little bar on the kindle app and it's like you're at seven percent at this point i'm like i'm only at seven percent wait we're just about at the start of the game and i already hate most of the people in this like
Speaker: This better turn around.
Speaker: This better turn around fast.
Speaker: Turn this ship around, goddammit.
Speaker: Chapter four, titled Unknown Number.
Speaker: Perna wakes up in her room.
Speaker: It's 4 a.m.
Speaker: And she hears someone screaming outside.
Speaker: And she looks out down her balcony down the street.
Speaker: And she sees someone being chased by something.
Speaker: So she runs into her room.
Speaker: And she calls downstairs on her phone, room phone.
Speaker: But the phone lines are all dead.
Speaker: She gets dressed to go help, but when she gets out of the hallway, there is a bellboy, but he's acting zombily.
Speaker: Logan then steps out of the hallway, still half drunk, I presume, asking what the fuck is going on when the bellboy attacks him and starts eating his shoulder.
Speaker: Yeah, they jump straight to the zombies just eating people's stuff.
Speaker: There's no build up.
Speaker: There's no sort of obvious zombie storytelling stuff that you do in advance.
Speaker: They don't do any news reports of sick people or a scene where someone's being pulled out on a gurney.
Speaker: There's none of that setup stuff.
Speaker: They just immediately, people are being eaten and they only just got here.
Speaker: Which is so like, I don't know, we spent three paragraphs or not paragraphs, sorry, three chapters just doing set up for these characters.
Speaker: And then there just is a zombie outbreak and there's no lead up to it.
Speaker: All right, sure.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: We're flipping the switch.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Perna fights the bellboy off with a fire extinguisher and she keeps whacking him in the face with it.
Speaker: And every time she's like, every time she's thinking, every time she hits him in the face, she's like, that would have killed a normal person.
Speaker: Why isn't he going down?
Speaker: I'm going to keep doing it.
Speaker: And then she decides to like, just take the fire extinguisher and shoot the foam in the zombies face, which causes them to back off a little bit.
Speaker: And she drags Logan back into her room, puts him on her bed.
Speaker: And Logan says something like, I knew I was going to get into your bed.
Speaker: And then he dies instantly right after you never have to hear from him.
Speaker: In the better version.
Speaker: In the better version.
Speaker: In the better version of this, he just got bit lightly on the shoulder, but then his head fucking explodes.
Speaker: Yeah, it was really cool.
Speaker: That version of the book that I read, I enjoyed that one.
Speaker: Eyeballs on the ceiling.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Right away, Logan calls it, it's a zombie apocalypse based on everything that he knows from movies and television.
Speaker: He was bit by a zombie and he's pretty sure he's going to die.
Speaker: And then simultaneously, everybody's phones ring and they're on a group call and there's this guy on the other line who explains the whole situation.
Speaker: He's like, you know what, guys?
Speaker: I'm going to
Speaker: Don't bother trying to have to figure anything out.
Speaker: I'm going to tell you it all right now.
Speaker: But, all right, I don't know if you noticed this.
Speaker: The guy keeps on talking about how he doesn't have enough time to explain everything.
Speaker: But spends three quarters of the call explaining how he doesn't have enough time to explain anything.
Speaker: It's like a gag from...
Speaker: like an austin powers movie like i don't have time to explain actually yes i do like allow me to explain if you ask me a question three times i have to answer it like i'm waiting for for him to do something like that and be like i will never tell you but no you're right like he's like if anything i say could be cut off in any moment this is imperative that we don't waste our time anyway i'm going to explain to you why i don't have time to waste because if we waste time bad things are going to happen you're
Speaker: Shut up.
Speaker: Just keep talking over Logan.
Speaker: He's an idiot.
Speaker: Stop taking him seriously.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: So I was so aggravated with that whole scenario.
Speaker: I'm like, just just just talk over them.
Speaker: Who cares?
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was great.
Speaker: So anyway, the bullet points are there's an outbreak.
Speaker: They prefer to call them reanimated dead and not zombies.
Speaker: The island is closed off and he wants Sam, Logan and Perna to get to the lobby where someone will help them.
Speaker: So that's...
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: That's we're in.
Speaker: We're in Dead Island now.
Speaker: We're Dead Island.
Speaker: Yeah, boy.
Speaker: Dead Island.
Speaker: Yeah, baby.
Speaker: Title card.
Speaker: Chapter five titled Cinemoy.
Speaker: The bellboys gone from the hallway and Perna and Logan knock on Sam's door.
Speaker: Sam is holding a weapon that he's made out of twisting all of the coat hangers together.
Speaker: I don't even I couldn't even visualize what they were trying to describe.
Speaker: But it's fine.
Speaker: OK, that's good.
Speaker: But it fits with the theme of Dead Island, right, where you're like making makeshift weapons, I guess.
Speaker: I'm trying to give some degree of credit to parts of this because there's like bits and pieces where there's decent observations of the video game and games in general.
Speaker: throughout this if you try really, really hard to be really nice about it.
Speaker: Be really nice about it.
Speaker: That was the one thing, I think, throughout the whole story where they're like, yeah, makeshift weapon.
Speaker: That's like Dead Island a little bit, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: It's a makeshift weapon.
Speaker: It's a giant... They say it's like a giant egg beater kind of.
Speaker: I just don't... I can see it in my head.
Speaker: I don't...
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: Yeah, I get it.
Speaker: Sam B. You're going to who do you egg beat bitch?
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: There you put that on a T-shirt.
Speaker: Maybe they're like straightening out the hangers.
Speaker: Like maybe they're like pulling them at lengthwise and then connecting all the hooks together to make an egg beater.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I wouldn't find that to be a particularly good weapon.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, it doesn't seem like it would be, it would, it feels like, like, like a hand would stop it.
Speaker: You know, I feel like.
Speaker: Or like it would get caught in their, their zombie bits.
Speaker: Like you would just stab them in the, in the, the, uh, uh, uh, GI tract and you just be walking around with small intestines on your egg beater.
Speaker: Who wants to lick it?
Speaker: It's like, you can't lick it.
Speaker: It's got raw intestine.
Speaker: Dude, no, but we can because we're immune.
Speaker: We're immune to the virus.
Speaker: So now I'll make a T-shirt with an eggbeater that is anthropomorphized to look like Sam B. And it'll say, who do you eggbeat, bitch?
Speaker: Who do you eggbeat?
Speaker: Good, good, good, good, good.
Speaker: good merch store.pixel.com is this also the chapter where we learn that they're um not just immune but how they became immune uh i think let's see not yet it's not yet chapter six where we kind of figure that out um
Speaker: So they decide to take the stairs instead of the elevator.
Speaker: And on the way, Logan makes his racist thoughts clear on rap.
Speaker: He expands on those thoughts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Sam educates him about rap is about caring too much about things.
Speaker: And that's why we're always angry.
Speaker: Like, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, that's certainly an interpretation from someone who doesn't know anything about rap music.
Speaker: Maybe has listened to one Tupac song ever in their life, and it's not even the good ones.
Speaker: It's not even like, I don't know.
Speaker: Maybe they heard one Coolio song, and they were like, yeah, that's it.
Speaker: He could rip off some mom's spaghetti.
Speaker: Oh, well, I love Eminem.
Speaker: I mean, you know, he's the one good rapper.
Speaker: Don't ask me why.
Speaker: He's he's he's really classy.
Speaker: I really like Macklemore.
Speaker: That's that's what the author.
Speaker: That's the vibe I'm getting from this guy.
Speaker: Oh, so Logan then complains because Logan is always fucking complaining that he doesn't have his pills.
Speaker: And Perna tells him to shut the fuck up.
Speaker: Finding painkillers and antidepressants isn't that hard.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he's like, but you didn't know.
Speaker: And she's like, I took a guess.
Speaker: You seem like the kind of guy you give me.
Speaker: You give me a perk vibe, you know, mixing that perk with with alcohol.
Speaker: It seems about right.
Speaker: I'm surprised he didn't make a codeine joke.
Speaker: Didn't make like a lean joke.
Speaker: Sam's like, do you want some you want some some purple drink?
Speaker: You didn't make a joke like that or anything here.
Speaker: I feel everything else is just being set up for that to just it's sitting in my brain.
Speaker: for the slizzurp.
Speaker: The slizzurp, I just, oh.
Speaker: You're the best.
Speaker: You're the best.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: They get down to the sixth floor and a door opens and a woman comes through and she's surprised to see them.
Speaker: But before she can say anything, she's ripped to shreds by a five year old zombie girl who is wearing my little pony pajamas.
Speaker: She just asked this little girl just absolutely terror just chunks everywhere.
Speaker: Flying everywhere.
Speaker: So zombie children, uh, the first trailer for this game.
Speaker: Do you remember that trailer that came out?
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was a very poignant trailer.
Speaker: They were hyped for this game after that trailer.
Speaker: And then the game came out.
Speaker: I mean, it was the, probably the biggest lie in video game marketing at that point in time.
Speaker: It was this beautifully produced trailer.
Speaker: The kind of thing you would expect to see for the last of us.
Speaker: Um, right.
Speaker: Was this before the last of us?
Speaker: No, right?
Speaker: That's a good question.
Speaker: I can't remember.
Speaker: If it is, then that's really cool.
Speaker: If it's not, then that's really funny.
Speaker: This predates The Last of Us.
Speaker: that's really cool that they did essentially a last of us style trailer before the last of us.
Speaker: Um, cause that trailer, I think I remember watching, um, someone from rooster teeth, I think was, uh, talking, they just become a father and they watched the trailer and they're like crying about it.
Speaker: And that was probably the best marketing they could have possibly asked for was grown men crying over that trailer.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So for that to be what we see and then the game to be what it was, was very funny.
Speaker: But I think in this book in particular, the fact that there's so many zombie children is really weird and like kind of feels gross to read, not in the way that's like, oh, that's the realities of horror.
Speaker: It's kind of like, why are we in such detail describing murdering children?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: What is this we're doing?
Speaker: We're going to get into some kid murder.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So this girl just rips the shit out of the woman.
Speaker: We don't know if there's any relationship between them.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: The girl kills the woman.
Speaker: And then Perna grabs, has her weapon, which is a leg of a chair.
Speaker: And she just beats the kid.
Speaker: the kid's head into a bloody pulp, basically until there's nothing left.
Speaker: They have a moment of catching their breath and Sam B, I think, says something like, you know, it's okay if you're not okay.
Speaker: And Perna's like, fuck you.
Speaker: Which is perfect.
Speaker: The correct response to that guy.
Speaker: Like, what a guy thing to do.
Speaker: I kept, like, as I was reading this, I would mention stuff to my fiance about this book and about, like, things characters were doing.
Speaker: She's like, yeah, that's what a guy would do.
Speaker: That is what a guy would do in this scenario.
Speaker: Like, you just bash the brains in of this little girl wearing a My Little Pony t-shirt and you're like, it's okay.
Speaker: It's alright to feel stuff.
Speaker: Shut up.
Speaker: Shut up, Sam B. You dork.
Speaker: Sam B. Go rap a song.
Speaker: Go rap something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, go wrap a present, Sam B. And then she burned.
Speaker: Burned.
Speaker: Got his ass, Kev.
Speaker: Good stuff.
Speaker: I nailed him.
Speaker: So Perna then snaps the neck of the woman that was just attacked before she turns.
Speaker: And then she says it.
Speaker: I learned it from the girl guides, which I assume is Girl Scouts for Australians.
Speaker: I'm not entirely.
Speaker: Are they stabbing necks there?
Speaker: You think?
Speaker: it's a well it's australia so they gotta snap a wallaby's neck you know i think you're at work that's do you know what a wallaby looks like um they're cute aren't they well yeah yeah but i mean it's like a tiny kangaroo basically it's like a
Speaker: I'm just like imagining like all these little Girl Scout guys just like, do it.
Speaker: Do you want to be a Girl Scout or not?
Speaker: They just have to hang it.
Speaker: Like there's a little troop of Girl Scouts hanging out in the bush and there's like a little wallaby in the field.
Speaker: And it's like, all right, if you want your patch, you got to go snap that neck.
Speaker: What did you do?
Speaker: What did you do at Girl Scouts today, babe?
Speaker: What did you do?
Speaker: I don't want to talk about it.
Speaker: I got my wallaby patch.
Speaker: It's just a wallaby, just like one tear going down its face, but its neck is 90 degrees.
Speaker: Like just... Do you want me to iron that on your suit, dear?
Speaker: You want me to put that on?
Speaker: Please, mom.
Speaker: Apologies to all Australians.
Speaker: Everywhere.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: It's okay, dear.
Speaker: Don't be too sad.
Speaker: You can go play Ocarina of Time after this.
Speaker: Don't worry.
Speaker: We're just really, we're just talking about cat from, from pixel a day.
Speaker: She's sorry.
Speaker: Well, I'll, we'll, we'll bring her back on one of these days just to ask her about the wallaby patch.
Speaker: They continue.
Speaker: They continue on and here's something down below them.
Speaker: And Logan, we cut to inside of Logan's mind.
Speaker: He is reminded of a time when he was at football camp and he was a teenager and there was a bear clawing at their tent.
Speaker: And it was a bear cub.
Speaker: And they all just like said, and the bear cub ran away.
Speaker: But then the next day,
Speaker: He told everyone that it was a grizzly that he scared away.
Speaker: It's just inside of Logan's Homer Simpson brain at the moment.
Speaker: That feels like a story that maybe they originally wrote to be one of those like, oh, yeah, we were hanging out with this girl and she gave me a kiss.
Speaker: And then he tells all all his friends.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, we totally did it.
Speaker: Oh, do you totally like that seems like a story Logan would tell.
Speaker: And then they were like, yeah, maybe let's not do that.
Speaker: Maybe let's just tone that down a little bit.
Speaker: Maybe he just scares a bear off.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes more sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, I can.
Speaker: I'm OK with the child death, but I cannot excuse lying about getting laid.
Speaker: I draw the line at lying about what you did with a girl.
Speaker: They decide to confront the big thing that's downstairs, and it turns out it's one of the security guards that May had found to deal with the zombie lady in the bathroom.
Speaker: Sam fights it with his metal pokey dealie, and it gets really gory in this section because every time he pokes at it, it's not actually killing the zombie, but it is making a mess.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a lot of detailed descriptions of gore and viscera and shattering bones and crunchy cartilage throughout this whole book, which I think goes to what I was saying earlier about how they kind of try to do what the game does in terms of describing the action of what you're doing.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But it kind of feels like they were given a page target
Speaker: And they were like, I don't know, just fill it up with murdering things.
Speaker: And what does that look and sound and feel like?
Speaker: Because God, does that stuff get boring really fast?
Speaker: Holy crap.
Speaker: When it's like, when you get a scene like this in a book,
Speaker: And it happens like one really specific time.
Speaker: It stands out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In this book, it happens like every few pages.
Speaker: There is just a really long-winded description of... It's like if you played Mortal Kombat and the only way on every punch, you got the x-ray shot.
Speaker: That is so...
Speaker: Accurate.
Speaker: Oh, my goodness.
Speaker: That is exactly what it's like.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like if you were playing Dead Island and every single hit was the sniper elite nut shot zoom in x-ray thing.
Speaker: Like you could just see every and then and then the aortic valve shattered and exploded, releasing 4.3 pints of blood.
Speaker: That's what that's how detailed and ridiculous this feels throughout this book.
Speaker: So the big security dude gets his hands on Sam.
Speaker: He's nearly cornered.
Speaker: And then Perna basically kills it by repeatedly hitting its head until the head falls off.
Speaker: And then they just twist the head off, killing the beast.
Speaker: They continue on.
Speaker: They find a body of a hotel employee that Logan thinks might be Jean May, and it's so grotesquely mutilated that he decides he needs to throw up.
Speaker: That's a bad tuna on the way there.
Speaker: They take a few pages to describe him feeling sick, and then they continue on until they find the two people who are not sick, Sinemoi and Gian May.
Speaker: Logan is excited to see her, but she doesn't really express much in the way of emotion.
Speaker: you know, uh, those aloof Asians.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: That's so stoic and, and, and, you know, straightforward with their thoughts.
Speaker: You get, you know, two great representations here.
Speaker: Stoic, very proud family, strong woman.
Speaker: And then cinema way.
Speaker: Cinnaboy who speaks.
Speaker: Boy.
Speaker: Who he's got who's described as like he's like 25 and he has dark skin and he speaks in broken English.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I was and I just I was like, I don't remember this.
Speaker: I know the name Cinnamoy from the game.
Speaker: I have to go back and check.
Speaker: So I go on YouTube.
Speaker: It was like Cinnamoy scenes, Dead Island.
Speaker: Cinnamoy in the game is a middle-aged Maori man from New Zealand who speaks perfect English.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they've created a stereotypical character here.
Speaker: For no reason.
Speaker: Just to write some broken English.
Speaker: There's a perfectly acceptable version of a character in the game.
Speaker: They must have known that already because everything else here is pretty on point for the most part, including the stuff they've added on.
Speaker: And then, yeah, we just get like a lot of broken English from this character who acts as like the NPC quest giver for the next little bit of the story.
Speaker: Yeah, he just has a little exclamation point above his head.
Speaker: And you just got to exhaust all his broken dialogue.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: You have to keep, you're like spamming A. Maybe that's what it is.
Speaker: It's not broken English.
Speaker: They're just spamming the A button so much.
Speaker: They're just skipping the dialogue too fast.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Maybe that's what it is.
Speaker: I'm trying to throw this guy a bone, all right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Chapter six, the safe place.
Speaker: Cinnamoy and the gang take the back streets to get to the lifeguard station, of which Cinnamoy is a lifeguard.
Speaker: Cinnamoy tells them in more broken English that the man that called the group had called him as well to explain what to do next.
Speaker: and to help the four people get out of the hotel, and that they need to go through the jungle to the other side of the island, where a helicopter will pick them up on the roof of the prison.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Logan needs... Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've marked it on your map.
Speaker: I've marked it on your map.
Speaker: Follow the waypoint.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's on your compass.
Speaker: My compass.
Speaker: Pops above their head.
Speaker: Just keep your eye on the mini-map in the corner of your eyeball.
Speaker: I wish.
Speaker: Logan needs some sleep.
Speaker: So he sits down and we get a little erotic tension between him and Sam as as Logan says Logan says to Sam that he has no designs on his black hide.
Speaker: And Sam says something like I'm to something for you anyway, white boy.
Speaker: And I'm like,
Speaker: It's getting kind of sexy in here.
Speaker: Boy, yeah, you could cut the tension with the butter knife, man.
Speaker: It was, yeah.
Speaker: There was so much.
Speaker: They were really dragging us along here with this yaoi bait.
Speaker: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker: You could cut the tension with a hood.
Speaker: It's good, though.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: Solid.
Speaker: Well done.
Speaker: Try.
Speaker: While Logan sleeps...
Speaker: Perna begins to put all the pieces together.
Speaker: Logan, Sam, May, and herself are immune to whatever's happening.
Speaker: And the three that came from the States had their blood collected by the NBDC or whatever it was called and sent to the island because they knew what was happening.
Speaker: And then May says it had to be intentional, that this is a bioweapons test.
Speaker: And they are there to see how good their immunity is
Speaker: And they don't know which side of this their helper is on, the person on the phone.
Speaker: And then Perna is like, hey, what's your deal?
Speaker: Because you're not a receptionist.
Speaker: And May is like, is it that obvious?
Speaker: I'm a special forces operative that was in the Quentin Tarantino all-female Chinese special forces.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I do think this sort of twist, this isn't in the game, right?
Speaker: This is like a different thing added to the story.
Speaker: Because there was no blood drive set up stuff.
Speaker: No, if it happens in the game, it happens not.
Speaker: It doesn't happen obviously enough for me to even know like care or notice.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah, it's in like some dialogue prompt or something or like an item description.
Speaker: It's in a dialogue prompt and it's like I'm playing fucking Dead Island.
Speaker: I'm skipping.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm just here to beat the shit out of things with an oar attached to a boat that I ripped off 45 minutes ago because all my other weapons are broken.
Speaker: I'm not here to learn about the origin of the virus or why I'm immune to it.
Speaker: I do think this is actually a pretty decent callback to the blood drive stuff.
Speaker: It's like the seed of a good idea.
Speaker: It's like the skeleton of a skeleton of a good idea for this kind of story.
Speaker: It's like a company runs a blood drive because they're looking for people who are immune to the zombie virus that they have...
Speaker: You know, something like that.
Speaker: That's like it's some umbrella corpse stuff.
Speaker: It's it's bordering on Resident Evil.
Speaker: It's bordering it.
Speaker: If this was however, if this was in a Resident Evil game, oh man, that would be so hokey.
Speaker: Yeah, it would have been perfect.
Speaker: I would have loved the shit out of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it would be like Leon gets to go undercover at a blood bank.
Speaker: Dude.
Speaker: But wait, but no, because you got to send Leon or somebody, one of them, Chris, whoever, to the actual vacation spot because then you get to have like the beach scene.
Speaker: It'll be great.
Speaker: Dude, yeah, they should make this game.
Speaker: Capcom.
Speaker: They need to make this game.
Speaker: Give us a call.
Speaker: Yeah, give us a call, Capcom.
Speaker: Capcom's listening.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: So she tells Perna her backstory.
Speaker: Then Perna's like, yeah, my backstory is I'm a former cop for the Sydney Police Department.
Speaker: And she got kicked off the force after a rough case in which a man that she arrested for molesting young children ended up with his charges dropped because he could afford a fancy lawyer.
Speaker: And then Perna followed him home one night and executed him.
Speaker: Just shot him in the face.
Speaker: The other cops covered for her, but she had to leave the force.
Speaker: Like, that was the most wild swing.
Speaker: This book really feels like it has, like, it's written with this level of confidence that is not deserved of a Dead Island novelization, where it's talking about stuff where it's like, dude, this game is about drop-kicking zombies into a pool.
Speaker: Like, I'm not... Why are we talking about the molestation cases and, like, extrajudicial killings?
Speaker: Like, what is going on?
Speaker: And, like, this is the origin story for... Like...
Speaker: I don't know, whatever, whatever your position is on that stuff.
Speaker: You go ahead.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But like, no, I, yeah, I get it.
Speaker: Like, it's still like, what are we doing?
Speaker: This is not this kind of story.
Speaker: And the dialogue between the characters swings wildly between this kind of stuff and like references to movies or like this sort of ridiculous B movie plot conversation stuff where they're like, are you sure?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, babe.
Speaker: You, you couldn't handle me.
Speaker: That kind of stuff.
Speaker: Like, and like, yeah.
Speaker: doing it's like the book like got caught in between it's like the trailer for dead island the game and dead island the game both went into the teleporter from the fly yes oh i was just gonna say yeah they jeff gold bloomed into this disgusting mutation and that's this book yes bang on bang on
Speaker: It's just this total mismatch.
Speaker: You're like, all right, well, yeah, it's like the trailer, but it's also like the game.
Speaker: And somehow it makes a bridge between the two that is just unsavory.
Speaker: Yeah, they should have never built that bridge.
Speaker: They should have left that alone.
Speaker: It's bad.
Speaker: Left that alone.
Speaker: But, you know, people were dying for a book about a novelization of Dead Island.
Speaker: They were literally begging for it.
Speaker: We're like, I want to know more about Perna.
Speaker: They were begging.
Speaker: Give me perna.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: Fucking Perna.
Speaker: So she gets kicked off the force and then she's a bodyguard for VIPs and she hates it.
Speaker: And then the three who are awake decide to leave Logan at the lifeguard stand to recover.
Speaker: And they ask Cinnamoy for weapons and he has a box of knives.
Speaker: He's like, but you can't have them unless you pay me.
Speaker: And then Sam just gives him a wad of cash and they take the knives.
Speaker: And that's chapter six.
Speaker: Chapter seven, the last chapter we'll cover today.
Speaker: It's titled Bare Necessities.
Speaker: You ever seen the Warriors?
Speaker: Have you ever seen the Warriors?
Speaker: Have you ever seen the Warriors?
Speaker: You ever seen the Warriors?
Speaker: It's really fucking weird.
Speaker: It's really poignant, man.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: You ever play the PS2, the Warriors game?
Speaker: You ever play that?
Speaker: Perna, Sam B.?
Speaker: Sam B is like, Sam B is basically doing the Chris Farley bit where he's interviewing somebody famous.
Speaker: And it's this old SNL bit where it was just like Chris Farley would be sitting there and like Paul McCartney would be on SNL.
Speaker: And Chris Farley would be sitting next to him and he would be like, hey, Paul, do you,
Speaker: Do you remember that time that you were in the Beatles?
Speaker: Paul McCartney would go, yes, Chris.
Speaker: And Chris Farley would go, that was amazing.
Speaker: That's this conversation between Sam B. and Perna right now.
Speaker: Whereas Sam B. is, they're just walking down the street.
Speaker: And Sam B. is like, you ever watch the Warriors?
Speaker: And Perna's like, I guess.
Speaker: And Sam B. is like, yeah, it was weird.
Speaker: I watched it when I was a kid.
Speaker: It was like weird.
Speaker: And they had face paint on and roller skates.
Speaker: and they're just going around New York and it was all, it was so weird.
Speaker: Anyway, this situation right now is like the Warriors.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Thanks, man.
Speaker: You remember 45 minutes ago where I was telling you the detailed story of how I had to kill a child molester?
Speaker: You don't remember that?
Speaker: You don't remember that?
Speaker: You think the Warriors were following up with?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Sure, man.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: She really could have hit Sam with a cool story, bro.
Speaker: It was 2011 or whatever, right?
Speaker: 2010.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He could have hit him with a cool story, bro, and that would have just ended his life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because that was... He set himself up so hard for that.
Speaker: Oh, totally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they're walking down the road talking about the warriors when suddenly a naked woman starts running at them and she is topless and her little boobies are shaking around.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is noted in the book, by the way.
Speaker: I'm not making this up.
Speaker: That's noted.
Speaker: She has little breasts.
Speaker: And they are shaking around.
Speaker: Swinging around.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They are shaking around.
Speaker: One of them is.
Speaker: The other one's been ripped off.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Sam shoots a flare gun into her open mouth.
Speaker: And then he tries to behead her, but misses and chops halfway into her face, spraying blood on him.
Speaker: She grabs his ankle and then May cuts off her arm and Sam finally chops the head off.
Speaker: these guys are they are not efficient at killing zombies no they're very bad at it these things they're very bad at it I thought May was supposed to be some special forces badass but they're like May is like some special forces person Perna is a cop we're like we're gonna let Sam handle this yeah Sam B he can be one of the main characters of this story he's kind of the heart of the story when you think about it so it's better if he's not killing you know he can't be good at it he's too nice
Speaker: He's too nice.
Speaker: He's too sweet.
Speaker: Just a sweetie.
Speaker: Sweet little Sam.
Speaker: Oh, so yeah, they, they, they're walking, they're walking more and they come across a house with a TV on.
Speaker: Here's the thing is I think they're already like as like game wise, I think they're already past the resort.
Speaker: Like I think we're done with the resort.
Speaker: I think they're just in it in the town now.
Speaker: And they come across a house with a TV on very loudly.
Speaker: And they decide, let's go investigate.
Speaker: Okay, so Sam and Perna decide to go inside the house while May waits outside.
Speaker: They walk sneakily around the house for like five pages.
Speaker: And then finally they turn the light on and there's an old woman sitting dead in a chair.
Speaker: And she's just, there's like nothing left.
Speaker: It's just like...
Speaker: It's just like a oyster that has had the meat shucked out and just the shells left.
Speaker: That's an awful description, but is exactly how the book does it.
Speaker: I was immediately thinking of the old lady fish thing from SpongeBob.
Speaker: Chocolate!
Speaker: chocolate.
Speaker: I love chocolate.
Speaker: I was just, that's all I saw.
Speaker: Just this like sunken in scary thing with hair.
Speaker: Um, you know, you mentioned the TV.
Speaker: What was on the TV?
Speaker: What was, what was she watching?
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: She was watching Friends, specifically the episode in which Ross and Rachel get drunk in Las Vegas and get married.
Speaker: Dude, I guess.
Speaker: These are the kind of details you can rely Mark Morris to put in his books.
Speaker: He's just, he's such an auteur when you think about it, really.
Speaker: I guess no one told him life was going to be this way.
Speaker: I've been holding on to that for so long.
Speaker: Just holding on to that.
Speaker: You're really like, I know the scene is coming.
Speaker: I know the scene is coming.
Speaker: Oh, I got to bring it up.
Speaker: Did you watch or read Leave the World Behind, the Barack Obama produced film?
Speaker: I just hit you with a couple bombs, didn't I?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So much like the drones that Barack Obama would operate.
Speaker: So there's this new movie on Netflix called Leave the World Behind.
Speaker: It's based on a book of, I think, the same name that was on Obama's, like...
Speaker: best books of 2021 or whatever.
Speaker: So he got this executive produced along with Michelle Obama and a bunch of other people also worked on it.
Speaker: Can you believe it?
Speaker: It wasn't just him.
Speaker: Despite what the people on the internet who are nuts would say, it's Obama's movies.
Speaker: Yeah, he made it.
Speaker: It's actually a message about the future, man.
Speaker: So it's this movie that's starring Ethan Hawke and who's the opposite?
Speaker: Mahershala Ali's in it.
Speaker: It's like it's got this stacked cast for no reason.
Speaker: Oh, I think I saw the reviews were terrible for it.
Speaker: Was that?
Speaker: Yeah, it's not a great movie.
Speaker: It's got like, I thought it was kind of fun for the most.
Speaker: Julia Roberts, he's opposite.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So it's, yeah, it's a movie about the end of the world happening in a way that feels sort of different from the rest of the end of the world stories.
Speaker: Like it's not, it's not like the Russians invade or like there's nukes or like a chemical warfare thing.
Speaker: It's sort of like an espionage, um,
Speaker: story happening outside of the world of the narrative it's about a family who is on vacation and another family shows up and is trying to hide from what is happening in the home together and they're just sort of like existing while outside of that the world is ending and the reason i bring the story up is because the main thing of that movie is uh is one of the main things is that the daughter of the family that ethan hawk has
Speaker: um is uh really into friends she's trying to watch friends like the whole movie she's constantly figuring out how to finish watching friends and all i can think is like right why are end of the movie end of the world things so obsessed with friends what is it about it that's so funny i don't understand like wait is it just because friends is like a cultural touchstone is it like it's i i don't get it yeah yeah you like to just have it on while things are going bad outside
Speaker: You want it.
Speaker: You want you want something familiar.
Speaker: You want you want to spend time with your friends, you know?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's a comfort show, right?
Speaker: While the world is ending.
Speaker: It's a comfort show.
Speaker: I mean, they have that line in the opening of like, I'll be there for you when the rain starts to pour.
Speaker: In this case, it's bloody rain.
Speaker: So it's.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Kind of works.
Speaker: It's bloody rain.
Speaker: It's like a like poetry.
Speaker: It rhymes.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: Do you think she died, this woman died while watching Friends?
Speaker: Or do you think it's on TNT or TBS or whatever?
Speaker: Is this like how she was watching Judge Judy kind of thing?
Speaker: And then Friends is just on.
Speaker: Was she watching Judge Judy and then Friends came on?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Or it's a Friends marathon.
Speaker: At which point, Ross and Rachel get married, episode number...
Speaker: I got to satiate this.
Speaker: It's season five, episode 23 and 24.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So there's two episodes that cover this.
Speaker: Friends, season five, episodes...
Speaker: Let's see here.
Speaker: So if we're saying she was probably towards the end of season five when it happened.
Speaker: Okay, so this is when Joey, he gets his first lead role in a movie.
Speaker: Yeah, and I'm not a lot of interest.
Speaker: It...
Speaker: It doesn't sound like it ties in with the story at all.
Speaker: No, it doesn't.
Speaker: So why be so specific?
Speaker: Why be so specific?
Speaker: I thought maybe the ending line would be, we really are on a dead island, aren't we, Ross?
Speaker: Like that, but...
Speaker: That's the only way I can see that needing to be mentioned.
Speaker: That, like, they have to know what episode of Friends she died, died watching or that these people are seeing on the TV.
Speaker: And then Chandler says, could I be any more dead?
Speaker: Sorry, Matthew Perry would have really appreciated that joke.
Speaker: I'm pretty sure.
Speaker: Could I be any more?
Speaker: Oh, that's good.
Speaker: Oh, I think I would like to think rest in peace, Matthew Perry.
Speaker: I'd like to think he would have appreciated that.
Speaker: So, oh, the lady is actually still alive, though.
Speaker: So it's just like the head flopping around on this body that's like been scooped out.
Speaker: And so Perna kills the woman with several whacks of the crowbar and calls it a mercy killing.
Speaker: And Perna just thinks about how she would just feel bad if the woman just couldn't get up and go out there and satiate her hunger and, you know, sitting there day after day.
Speaker: Watching Friends.
Speaker: Living the life.
Speaker: Just living the dream.
Speaker: She should have died and they saw like a Wilford Brimley commercial or something.
Speaker: Like, go all out, right?
Speaker: It was like just then, Wilford Brimley appeared on the TV asking if... I've not made you check your diabetes.
Speaker: Do you have... Do you know your glaucoma levels?
Speaker: Are you checking them?
Speaker: Check your... Check your blood sugar.
Speaker: Check it often.
Speaker: Ha ha ha ha.
Speaker: Or give me one of the catheter cowboys or something, right?
Speaker: She was definitely a Fox News viewer.
Speaker: She had to have been.
Speaker: She's resorting on an island.
Speaker: She just lives there.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: What else do you watch while you're doing that kind of thing?
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Hannity, to be honest.
Speaker: Well, no, back then it would have been O'Reilly, right?
Speaker: Oh, probably Bill O'Reilly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So... Maybe it's better that she's dead.
Speaker: Maybe it's better that she's dead.
Speaker: She didn't get... She did not get fox-pilled.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: She missed out on MyPillow.
Speaker: She missed out on MyPillow.
Speaker: She missed out on MyPillow.
Speaker: She might have been still with us if she had the MyPillow, to be fair.
Speaker: This podcast not sponsored by MyPillow.
Speaker: Not sponsored by MyPillow.
Speaker: Just to be clear.
Speaker: You know...
Speaker: I bought a MyPillow.
Speaker: You did?
Speaker: Before.
Speaker: Did you burn it?
Speaker: Before I knew the guy was, actually, I don't think I could because it's probably made out of some things that just don't smoke right.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: It would absolutely kill you if you inhaled any of the smoke coming off of that.
Speaker: It's actually made out of Donald Trump's hair.
Speaker: That's why he has so little.
Speaker: It's also why it's not very comfortable.
Speaker: And it's the least comfortable pillow I've ever put my head on.
Speaker: My neck pain increased immediately upon connecting my head to that pillow.
Speaker: And so I have no idea how he actually had a business selling pillows to begin with.
Speaker: Well, because they're not for the wokesters.
Speaker: They're for the sleepsters.
Speaker: They're not for the wokesters.
Speaker: They really should have marketed it like that.
Speaker: It just writes itself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It writes itself.
Speaker: Stay asleep.
Speaker: Stay asleep.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Don't be woke.
Speaker: Stay asleep with my pillow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Boom.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Boom.
Speaker: Done.
Speaker: We could have saved that guy from going bankrupt.
Speaker: He's bankrupt now, right?
Speaker: Is he?
Speaker: I hope so.
Speaker: Fingers crossed.
Speaker: Fingers crossed.
Speaker: Could have happened to a better, worse guy.
Speaker: So they kill the lady.
Speaker: May is outside waiting for them.
Speaker: And they're walking along and they decide they need a car.
Speaker: And the kind of car that they need is a delivery truck because it needs to have room for supplies but also be nimble enough to get around.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: You know, I get it.
Speaker: So they go to the surf shop that they see because there's a there's a delivery truck parked outside of the wave your worries.
Speaker: Goodbye surf shop.
Speaker: And they're going towards it and they notice two zombies out on the street that that aren't paying attention to them.
Speaker: uh and i i wrote foreshadowing no it's not foreshadowing they do pay attention to them in the next paragraph uh there's a lot of that there's a lot of just a thing and you're like oh is that something and then you keep reading and yeah literally two words later it's like actually don't worry none of that matters none of that matters you thought i was going to build tension no no no let that tension out right away yeah um
Speaker: The girl, it's a guy and a girl.
Speaker: The girl sees them right away and starts running after them.
Speaker: Sam shoots another flare.
Speaker: This time it's less effective and fights her off with his machete.
Speaker: May, meanwhile, is having trouble with the zombie guy.
Speaker: And then Sam helps her while Perna is trying to get into the surf shop.
Speaker: Perna finds the keys and meets the other two outside when another zombie appears, and it's a big boy.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: I was like, what's this guy going to do, huh?
Speaker: Is he going to spit in acid or whatever?
Speaker: Is he going to be a boomer from Left 4 Dead?
Speaker: Is he going to be a boomer?
Speaker: Is he going to be a butt?
Speaker: No, he's just a fat zombie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: His face was as blue as a heart attack victim, and his pendulous belly swung beneath a yellow... What was the rest of that?
Speaker: A yellow...
Speaker: It's a yellow shirt that says world's best lover.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yellow t-shirt bearing the legend world's greatest lover.
Speaker: Like this poor guy.
Speaker: He went out the way I wish to go.
Speaker: wearing that t-shirt that t-shirt um so they're like hurry we got to get into the van and but they didn't really need to hurry because he's also slow um he's a big guy he's a big guy uh they get in the van and the zombie is fat zombie is unable to catch up and as they pull away uh sam body shames the poor dead man um
Speaker: That's right, he does!
Speaker: That's right!
Speaker: You could lose a couple pounds, fatty, or whatever he says, right?
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: Like, what?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: He's dead.
Speaker: He's already dead.
Speaker: Stop killing him.
Speaker: He's already dead.
Speaker: Poor guy.
Speaker: He's not controlling the zombie for me.
Speaker: He's just dead.
Speaker: Maybe he's just bloated.
Speaker: He was a fit guy in the past.
Speaker: Who's to say?
Speaker: Give him a break.
Speaker: Who's to say?
Speaker: You don't know why somebody has gained weight.
Speaker: You can't.
Speaker: Sam B, I thought you were better than that, Sam B. Come on.
Speaker: Anyway, they need gas, so they have to turn the car around.
Speaker: And they clip the fat zombie, knock him over, turtles for a little bit, and gets back up.
Speaker: Life alert's going off.
Speaker: There are more zombies, including, as Sam points out, a really hot one.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's a lot of stuff in this chapter and forward where there's just like they're commenting on the zombies.
Speaker: Like, what are we?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What are we doing?
Speaker: You're like this.
Speaker: Listen, would.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Hear me out, guys.
Speaker: Hear me out.
Speaker: Look at it.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: So, okay, she's dead, but she's alive.
Speaker: But I mean, is she?
Speaker: But I mean, is she?
Speaker: Is it necrophilia?
Speaker: Are we going to debate the finer points of that?
Speaker: Or are you guys just going to look the other way while I do my business?
Speaker: You know, Sam, what are you doing, buddy?
Speaker: Listen, I'm immune, as Sam says, but Hurt is not listening.
Speaker: No!
Speaker: No, I can't get the zombie STI.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: I can't.
Speaker: I can't.
Speaker: I already got my shot.
Speaker: I'm all good.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: I got my hep.
Speaker: I got hep B, hep C. I'm good.
Speaker: What do I need?
Speaker: Zombie virus.
Speaker: I don't need no zombie virus shot.
Speaker: So it's a it's a hot lady and like a little boy zombie.
Speaker: And Pernod decides to run over the little boy who just explodes into a mist.
Speaker: They get to the gas station and.
Speaker: Fill up the truck when Sam sees a person inside the gas station, a 20-something named Jin.
Speaker: She's Chinese.
Speaker: Her dad has been bitten by zombies.
Speaker: Sam offers to go inside to help and follows her in.
Speaker: Jin's dad is in rough shape.
Speaker: She's a nurse and has treated him to the best of her abilities.
Speaker: So I don't know why she needed help because she's a nurse.
Speaker: What like she didn't even ask Sam if he was like a doctor.
Speaker: Like just hopefully hopefully Sam tells her the bad news that her dad is not getting better.
Speaker: She has a bit of a meltdown until her dad tells her that she needs to go with Sam because he knows something bad is going to happen.
Speaker: Sam promises to look after her and they leave.
Speaker: And that's, that's it for tonight.
Speaker: That's, that's the, so Jesse, what is your one third of the way into this book?
Speaker: We're, we're one third of the way in and, uh,
Speaker: It's like a lot, but not much has happened simultaneously.
Speaker: So my at this point in the book, I realized I'm just I'm reading a play by play of the video game.
Speaker: I kind of felt like if you sat down and tried to describe a Let's Play in a really, really poor way and like it was on mute.
Speaker: That's what this story probably would be.
Speaker: It's a lot of, like, up to this point, it's a lot of action being described.
Speaker: It's a lot of plotting.
Speaker: It's a lot of NPC exposition of, like, you know, we can get you more weapons, guns, maybe even explosions.
Speaker: Like, we'll show you a way to do that.
Speaker: Oh, they just got a new side quest.
Speaker: Like, it reads a lot like that in a way that's not particularly compelling.
Speaker: But it also, in a way, made me think, like...
Speaker: this is kind of what the game was like like this is not a good game to be clear like dead island is not a good video game it is schlocky it is dumb it is silly i think the book captures maybe five percent of that energy uh in a fun way and the rest of it is just like taking it at face value and and spewing it back at you much like the zombies do uh literal face value oh it tastes so good um
Speaker: And I just, I do not like it.
Speaker: I did not.
Speaker: I didn't like it at this point.
Speaker: I was a little, I was, I was a little on the fence because they did that, that like twisty, where did the virus come from thing?
Speaker: Who hired us to, who brought us here?
Speaker: I was like, okay, there's like a- Who brought us here?
Speaker: What's going on?
Speaker: It's like a deeper layer of like what, you know.
Speaker: Is this going to deal with that?
Speaker: So I was a little on the fence.
Speaker: This is the point where I was hopping off the fence.
Speaker: By the end of chapter seven, I was like, okay, this is clearly not trying to do anything interesting.
Speaker: What about you, Kev?
Speaker: Are you on the same page?
Speaker: Yeah, we're not fine here.
Speaker: Also, it's like they just... It's like we're just going to leave Logan here.
Speaker: We're like...
Speaker: No, there's no way that they're just going to leave him there.
Speaker: He's a main character.
Speaker: We spent so much time learning about his stupid backstory.
Speaker: They're not just going to leave him here and never come back to him, unfortunately.
Speaker: Stupid fucking bear thing and the sexual harassments.
Speaker: The sexual harassments have gone down precipitously since he left the party.
Speaker: Yeah, so don't worry, folks.
Speaker: Episode two, where we start covering the rest of these chapters, the sexual assaults will return.
Speaker: Don't worry.
Speaker: They will return.
Speaker: Don't worry.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm on the same page.
Speaker: It's kind of...
Speaker: It's rough.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's stretches of stretches of boring stuff and in between vaguely racism, vaguely racist stuff.
Speaker: And in between that, like explicitly racist stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Stuff where it's like, oh, maybe, you know, give him a break.
Speaker: It was 2010.
Speaker: And then like stuff where you're like, no, we knew to not do that then.
Speaker: We knew it was 2010.
Speaker: We could have done a little bit of research like the the whole like the prologue with the witch doctor and the voodoo and stuff like that.
Speaker: I'd be like, I don't think there is anything in this scene that is representative of.
Speaker: any sort of Haitian voodoo that I have actually heard of.
Speaker: Like there's nothing, there's no, like there's not even any terminology that is used in Haitian voodoo that appears in this scene.
Speaker: But we're supposed to be like, oh, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, it's the voodoo.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: Yeah, that's what voodoo is.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It's the song.
Speaker: What else would they be doing?
Speaker: Yeah, a lot of stuff like that.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, we talked about the book and we'll talk about the book more next episode.
Speaker: So Jesse, I have to ask you one question before we go.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, what am I playing?
Speaker: I have been trying my best to play video games for fun because I spent the last month of the last year playing video games that other people said were good and that I kind of agreed with a little bit.
Speaker: So my thing this year, I've set a goal for myself.
Speaker: Set a goal for myself.
Speaker: Oh, are you talking about for the Game of the Year podcast?
Speaker: For the Game of the Year podcast for Noclip.
Speaker: Check it out if you haven't already listened.
Speaker: Check it out.
Speaker: Hey, by the way, Baldur's Gate 3 Game of the Year.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Not Alan Wake 2?
Speaker: I would I agree with that.
Speaker: I I I like that.
Speaker: That's not me.
Speaker: I just I for whatever reason thought that was going to be yours.
Speaker: That was that was interesting.
Speaker: Oh, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: Yeah, no.
Speaker: Baldur's Gate three really left an impression on me.
Speaker: I'm a CRPG guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, you make it get you make it isometric.
Speaker: You make it turn based.
Speaker: You make me have to use a mouse.
Speaker: You're going to get me.
Speaker: No, I appreciated your guys' list a lot.
Speaker: I thought Amnesia the Bunker did not get enough discussion.
Speaker: I mean, I didn't bring it up in mind, but it was a really cool game.
Speaker: I talked about it endlessly on various discords, and most people were like, yes, sounds cool.
Speaker: I'm too scared to play it.
Speaker: And I was like, I think that's the problem.
Speaker: And part of the thing is Amnesia the Bunker, there's a lot of horror games that I play that aren't
Speaker: They're not super effective in their scariness for me, but I appreciate the effort.
Speaker: Amnesia the Bunker, though, that game scared the shit out of me.
Speaker: I got to go back and play more.
Speaker: I played the opening and I thought it was, yeah, I was really surprised how scary it was.
Speaker: I think you described it perfectly, or the both of you did, about how it feels like the, is it the Chinese room that made that game?
Speaker: It is... Did they do the first one?
Speaker: Frictional.
Speaker: Frictional.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think the Chinese room did the machine for pigs is what I'm thinking of.
Speaker: They did one of their... Yeah.
Speaker: They did one of the games.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, so Frictional, they... You said it perfectly that they found that middle point between gameplay and the sort of walking sim narrative...
Speaker: Exposition-y horror stuff.
Speaker: So that was really cool.
Speaker: I'm excited to play more of that and listening to you guys talk about it was like the catalyst for making me do that.
Speaker: But anyway, to answer your question that you asked me four minutes ago, what I'm playing right now is I've been playing through the Yakuza series.
Speaker: My goal for this year is to play more JRPGs and Japanese focused games in general.
Speaker: I've been playing through the Yakuza series.
Speaker: I played through Yakuza Kiwami and I'm currently playing Yakuza Kiwami 2.
Speaker: Love it a lot.
Speaker: I'm enjoying beating the shit out of Japanese businessmen who got too drunk.
Speaker: Those are just the remakes of 1 and 2, right?
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: Remakes with, like, moderate amounts of content that are supposed to sort of tie it together to the prequel game that they made.
Speaker: It's been a lot of fun.
Speaker: Oh, Zero.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, I've played Kiwami 1.
Speaker: a little bit and I was like, this is really cool, but it's one of those games that it's almost like I'll play it for like a week straight and then something will come up and for some reason it doesn't compel me to come back.
Speaker: And I always sit there and be like, yeah, I wish I kept playing that.
Speaker: Oh, well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm not going back.
Speaker: I don't know what was going on.
Speaker: What are we doing?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: What was I doing?
Speaker: I was helping some guy save an animal.
Speaker: Helping some guy win fights.
Speaker: Down an alleyway.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's an American guy that popped out in front of me, and he's like, ah.
Speaker: And I was like, ah.
Speaker: And he's like, you're a good fighter.
Speaker: And I'm like, all right.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a lot of that silly stuff where I love that silly stuff.
Speaker: I think that stuff's really funny.
Speaker: I love the humor of it and the writing.
Speaker: And like there's so many out of context things that even in context are still hilariously like silly.
Speaker: And I just love the tone of it and the humor and the combat.
Speaker: I know people get bored of that beat them up stuff, but it's my jam.
Speaker: I love pressing the square button 400,000 times and then listening to the silliest dialogue you've ever press it.
Speaker: And it's like every time you press it, it's like something different happens.
Speaker: And it's like, ah, punch, punch, grab the guy's face, put his head into the wall.
Speaker: How many games can you pick up a bike and beat the crap out of somebody with a bike?
Speaker: Not a whole lot.
Speaker: So it gets points for that.
Speaker: It gets points for that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What about you?
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: I have put way too many hours into Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader.
Speaker: Yes, speaking of isometric CRPGs, how's it going?
Speaker: Are you enjoying it?
Speaker: I love this game.
Speaker: I know it's got its... So I think when I say people should check out this game, if you enjoyed Baldur's Gate 3...
Speaker: go check out this game, but lower your expectations, right?
Speaker: And I kind of get why people were saying with Baldur's Gate 3, you gotta lower your expectations a little bit from other game devs, right?
Speaker: Because Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader is a game that's as big as Baldur's Gate 3.
Speaker: but you're not gonna get the cut scenes.
Speaker: You're not gonna get every line voice acted.
Speaker: You're not gonna get like every single story permutation thoroughly developed, right?
Speaker: Like Baldur's Gate 3 had like things where it anticipated you doing this one rare action in a scene and a character would comment on it with a fully voiced line.
Speaker: And it's like, no, you won't even be able to do the thing in Rogue Trader.
Speaker: but it's because it's made by a much smaller company.
Speaker: So like that's part of the thing is like, all right, CRPGs, fucking amazing.
Speaker: I love them.
Speaker: I'm glad Baldur's Gate 3 really said, hey, this is a genre that is not dead yet.
Speaker: By the way, everybody should come and check out other CRPGs.
Speaker: And I think Rogue Trader is like a good one to jump into
Speaker: if you are interested in continuing that path of checking out CRPGs, doubly so if you have any interest at all about learning more about Warhammer 40K.
Speaker: Yeah, that's the part of it that I'm really interested in because you guys talked about Boltgun in the Game of the Year episode.
Speaker: And like there's bits and pieces that I've heard about Rogue Trader.
Speaker: Where does this sit on the parody versus taking it way too literally meter for Warhammer?
Speaker: Oh,
Speaker: It's, well, so it's very, I mean, it is a straight up Warhammer 40k story.
Speaker: In terms of the story development, it was done by Games Workshop.
Speaker: A lot of the story development.
Speaker: Like Owlcat did the game, but I think a lot of the writing was very, very closely done by Games Workshop itself.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: you have, as you play the game, you have three paths that you can kind of go down, right?
Speaker: There's the heretical path, which is in the Warhammer 40K universe, heretics are anybody.
Speaker: You could be somebody who prays to the chaos gods or somebody who is like way too friendly with aliens, with Xenos, right?
Speaker: That's heretical.
Speaker: The other end of that spectrum is dogmatic, which is you could choose to be the full, fashy, you know, Warhammer 40K person that you always dreamed of being.
Speaker: You believe in the God Emperor, that he is the best, and you can make all your decisions based on that.
Speaker: Or iconoclastic, which is like threading the needle to be a good person, to try to be a good person in the Warhammer 40K universe.
Speaker: The great thing about Iconoclast is that it is really the way the universe is set up is the deck is stacked against you to be the good person.
Speaker: Whereas in like a lot of other games where there's some sort of morality.
Speaker: You're better off if you're nice.
Speaker: Yeah, you're like, choose the better.
Speaker: Like if you're nice in certain instances in Rogue Trader, it will come back to bite you because it's just not a good universe to try to be nice in.
Speaker: You can still try to be the best person you can be though, like going through all that.
Speaker: But sometimes you'll just have, you'll make things more difficult for yourself.
Speaker: And your associates, your companions will be pointing that out all the time.
Speaker: It'd be like, you know, you being a nice guy actually destroyed this entire planet.
Speaker: Like, it would be like, if you hadn't just like, just, so it's like, the option is like, destroy the planet yourself or let the chaos demons have it.
Speaker: And like,
Speaker: just trying to save a few people and not taking the option to destroy it.
Speaker: It's like one of your guys is like, well, great.
Speaker: You condemned billions of people to a life of serving the chaos demons.
Speaker: And now that it's a demon world, we can't destroy it.
Speaker: And you're like, oh.
Speaker: That's, yeah, okay.
Speaker: That sounds really interesting, actually.
Speaker: Like that the choices aren't exactly morally.
Speaker: It's not even morally great.
Speaker: It's just kind of like everything sucks.
Speaker: Every option you have is bad.
Speaker: Everything sucks.
Speaker: Try to be as less sucky as possible, I guess.
Speaker: Unless you want to be full on suck and you want to, you think that's cool.
Speaker: Unless you want to be full on suck.
Speaker: I mean, all I know about Warhammer is from this guy that I knew in high school that was really into it.
Speaker: And like he had Facebook groups he would share stuff from.
Speaker: I mean, I was on Facebook.
Speaker: I should have known that was a bad idea.
Speaker: But he would share stuff from this group he was a part of where they like bought in to the fashy parts of it.
Speaker: And they were like, oh yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker: So like to hear that actually there's other things going on is interesting to me.
Speaker: I want to get into that world and know more about it.
Speaker: I think you've sold me on Rogue Trader.
Speaker: I think it's worth taking a look at.
Speaker: The more you look at, you get into Warhammer media, the more it is about a world, everything has gone to shit.
Speaker: You start to understand why it's a universe where it's like, what if everybody was the bad guy?
Speaker: Like, what if everyone sucked?
Speaker: Like they have one race, they have two races that are kind of interesting.
Speaker: If you're talking about like character alignment, right?
Speaker: They have two races in the universe.
Speaker: There's the Tau, which are representative of like, they're kind of like the socialists of...
Speaker: They're like the socialist alien type.
Speaker: And you have the orcs who their ships and all of their weapons and all that only work because they believe it works.
Speaker: Oh, like is it runs on fairy dust?
Speaker: What do you mean?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: They believe this ship will fly.
Speaker: So therefore it flies.
Speaker: There's a, there's a trait you can add.
Speaker: If you paint something red, if the orcs paint something red, it goes faster.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Because red makes it go faster.
Speaker: Because red means fast.
Speaker: Oh, that's really funny.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: That's like a joke I would write if I was tired.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Phil does a great orc voice, but in one of the episodes, I mentioned that he's like, because red makes it go faster.
Speaker: Oh, that's good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's a really, it's like, it's so big.
Speaker: I mean, you think about like Star Wars and like Star Trek and all that.
Speaker: And then you look at the number of novels and media tie-ins there are to Warhammer.
Speaker: And it's like, God damn, this universe is massive.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's worth, like, dipping your toe into just because there's interesting stories in there.
Speaker: Yeah, but some people just don't get it, and they go, they're like, yeah, I'm a fascist, and this is my game.
Speaker: And they're like, ah, goddammit.
Speaker: You're making us look bad.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: But that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: Before we go, I want to give a little special shout out to our highest tier of patrons, the Geek Scholars.
Speaker: Friendly friend who's been with us the longest.
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Speaker: You know,
Speaker: say what how do you do what's going on um otherwise you can follow us on social media twitter on uh blue sky on facebook on etc on whatnot and who now at pixelipod just put pixelipod whatever platform you're on you'll find us um jesse you got anything to to plug before we go
Speaker: Yeah, you can find me on Twitter as well.
Speaker: My last name, G-U-A-R-A-S like Sam, C-I-A.
Speaker: It's not all that.
Speaker: It's just the S, not the S like Sam.
Speaker: It's very confusing.
Speaker: I need to stop doing that.
Speaker: My fiance heard me say that.
Speaker: She's fucking very upset.
Speaker: I know she's laughing at me in the other room.
Speaker: Um, I do that.
Speaker: My mom does it and I do it as a joke now and it's stuck in my brain.
Speaker: I can't stop doing it.
Speaker: Um, but yeah, you find me on Twitter.
Speaker: You could also find me.
Speaker: You may have heard of no clip before.
Speaker: I am the producer of the no clip podcast.
Speaker: I'm, uh, on it.
Speaker: Sometimes you'll hear my voice and my thoughts and my opinions.
Speaker: You might see my face if you watch us on YouTube.
Speaker: So that's youtube.com slash at no clip docs or doc gameplay or whatever the hell we call it now.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: The YouTube URLs are awful.
Speaker: or Noclip Podcast.
Speaker: You can just look that up.
Speaker: We're on Spotify, Apple Podcasts.
Speaker: We're on whatever, Libsyn, whatever you want to listen to.
Speaker: While you're done listening to Pixel It, you can check us out if you'd like to do so.
Speaker: And that's me.
Speaker: I love me some game docs and podcasts.
Speaker: That's where I'm at.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Thank you, Jesse.
Speaker: We'll be back next week with another episode on this fucking book.
Speaker: Have a good night.
Speaker: Have a good night, everybody.
