00;00;00;05 - 00;00;02;04 Phil Because there's going to be more. 00;00;02;27 - 00;00;05;02 Kevin There should always be more. Yeah. 00;00;05;24 - 00;00;10;05 Phil Yeah, it's it's it's fascinating. It's my new favorite show. 00;00;10;05 - 00;00;11;05 Kevin New favorite show. 00;00;11;13 - 00;00;11;26 Phil Mhm. 00;00;12;11 - 00;00;14;02 Kevin You know what else is my new favorite show? 00;00;14;12 - 00;00;14;24 Phil What's that? 00;00;15;23 - 00;00;25;27 Kevin Hey there, everybody. Welcome back to Pixelate and if it sounds like we're extra excited, it's because we are. We actually have not recorded in a month and a half. Yes. 00;00;26;07 - 00;00;27;17 Phil We went on a little break. 00;00;27;22 - 00;00;43;02 Kevin We went on a break because Phil Phil done got hitched and we wanted to. Oh, look at that ring. Look at that ring. And we wanted to we built up a bank of episodes. If you couldn't tell by how out of date the what are we playing segments were. 00;00;43;21 - 00;00;46;11 Phil They because we noticed. 00;00;46;23 - 00;01;12;27 Kevin We noticed like, oh yeah I'm playing, I'm playing a game that, that at the time it would have been new and then it was like six months ago or something like that. So yeah, we banked up. We banked up a lot, right. Yeah. Cultural and everybody moved on from Cultivable land. Yeah, I know. We had banked up a ton of episodes over the summer just so Phil could. 00;01;13;09 - 00;01;23;08 Kevin We could take a little break. Phil took a break. He got his matrimonial and it was a lovely wedding. Yeah. Phil? Phil cried. I cried. It was all good. 00;01;23;19 - 00;01;26;21 Phil It was like it was a very crazy wedding, but very crazy. 00;01;26;29 - 00;01;27;28 Kevin Crazy good time. 00;01;27;28 - 00;01;28;09 Phil We have it. 00;01;28;09 - 00;01;42;09 Kevin Was a good wedding. And while Phil was getting married and basking in the glow of that, I recorded a another podcast with our friend of the show, Hot Cider. It's called Bullet Time. Go ahead and check that out. That's out now. 00;01;42;25 - 00;01;46;03 Phil You, like, recorded like a dozen episodes we recorded. 00;01;46;03 - 00;02;17;16 Kevin So there are I recorded personally, I want to say about a dozen episodes. And I'm not the only co-hosts. There's two other co-hosts on the show, you know, and they're they're going to be getting their stuff recorded very shortly. So, yeah, if you're looking for a podcast with, you know, people like Evelyn from IAMA or Arenac or Willow from Questing Refuge or Jacob Geller from the YouTube channel. 00;02;17;16 - 00;02;39;10 Kevin Geller, Jacob Geller is going to be on there, too. Snicker is one of the the other co-hosts. RAZ Rasputin was on there. It's it's a good friends, alums. It's a lot of a lot of great people on that show. And and Jesse Garcia, who is who has also been on the he's been on the show twice. Our show twice. 00;02;39;10 - 00;02;46;15 Kevin So, yeah, go check out bullet time. But yeah, on the show today we're starting a brand new series. 00;02;46;23 - 00;02;48;16 Phil Brand new series. Brand new book. 00;02;48;23 - 00;02;57;09 Kevin Brand new book. Like literally brand new as in as of when this episode comes out, it will still have only been out for a couple of weeks. Right? 00;02;57;18 - 00;03;09;25 Phil Right. Well, like, I don't know what's going on with us. Usually we're reading books that were written in like 1986 or something. And now we we did Halo, the Rubicon Protocol, which just came out. 00;03;10;00 - 00;03;33;09 Kevin Yeah, we did a two new books. Two brand new books towards the end of the year here. And the book that we're talking about today, the series we're starting is Dark Souls The Mask of Vindication, written by Michael, a stackpole who is a tried and true pulp sci fi and fantasy author. He's done a whole bunch of stuff. 00;03;34;03 - 00;03;34;28 Phil Lately. 00;03;34;28 - 00;03;44;16 Kevin But yeah, so dark souls, in case you guys don't know what Dark Souls is that? I don't know how that happens. 00;03;44;16 - 00;03;45;15 Phil I don't know. Yeah, I. 00;03;45;24 - 00;04;15;09 Kevin I don't know how they're not sure how, how you can miss that because dark souls became the most, the most common comparative game for spell. There in the 20 tens. Like it's the dark souls of of such and such so dark souls. It's game made by Fromsoftware. It was the follow up to a game called Demon's Souls. Fromsoftware had is an old, old Japanese video game company. 00;04;15;09 - 00;04;30;19 Kevin You know, they've been known for things like Armored Core Kings Quest Demon's Souls and The Dark Souls series. It's kind of like a spiritual continuation of the Kings Quest games. They're most notable for Quest, not Kings Quest. Kings Fields. 00;04;31;00 - 00;04;33;00 Phil Kings Field. Oxford. What's what? 00;04;33;14 - 00;04;36;01 Kevin No, no, sorry. They're not Kings. Queens. 00;04;36;13 - 00;04;47;09 Phil King Graham. In the land of. From suffering. Oh, my God. Kings fields. 00;04;47;09 - 00;04;50;17 Kevin It's been a few months. I'm going to have to shake off some of the rest. But, yeah. 00;04;50;19 - 00;04;51;23 Phil It's a. 00;04;52;04 - 00;05;29;06 Kevin Little WD 40 on that King seal is was a first person action RPG and demon's souls and dark souls are third person action RPGs and they're known for their punishing difficulty and the common refrain from gamers everywhere to just get it good. My personal take I don't I don't find those the games that difficult they are they're they're a game that you have of you it's just something that you have to kind of learn how to play, like the way that the game wants you to play. 00;05;30;20 - 00;05;34;23 Kevin There's the I mean, yeah. Anyway, that's a whole nother discussion about. 00;05;34;23 - 00;05;38;25 Phil That to remind everyone at home I couldn't get past the first level of Bloodborne. 00;05;38;25 - 00;06;14;23 Kevin So that's true. But I think Bloodborne is harder than dark souls in. In some regards. Yeah. So, yeah, Dark's Dark Souls, it's, it's been everywhere for over a decade now. The most recent game in the Soul from Soft Souls Born series just came out earlier this year called Elden Ring and Massive Open World Game. But with all the Dark Souls goodies that we have come to know and love, so that's basically Dark Souls. 00;06;15;26 - 00;06;18;26 Kevin I mean, it's, it's there. It's out there. 00;06;19;21 - 00;06;22;01 Phil And this is its first ever novelization. 00;06;22;01 - 00;06;30;06 Kevin Yeah, this is the first ever the last novelization. There was a graphic novel that came out in 2016 with the release of Dark Souls three. 00;06;30;16 - 00;06;30;23 Phil Okay. 00;06;31;24 - 00;06;46;03 Kevin By Titan, who are the same people who did The Bloodborne graphic novels and also the Assassin's Creed, uh, graphic novels. This is a company right there. 00;06;46;03 - 00;06;46;10 Phil Yeah. 00;06;49;12 - 00;06;54;15 Kevin So, yeah. Phil, why don't you tell us a little bit about who Michael Stackpole is? 00;06;54;15 - 00;07;29;10 Phil Oh, Michael Stackpole. We got it. Here's another O.G. in the geek pantheon. Michael Stackpole is a game designer. He is a writer. And he was actually a very important figure in the satanic panic of the 1980s. He got a name for himself among many geeks as being a guy who was writing on the regular against organizations like Bothered about dungeons and Dragons bad, which sounds like kind of a walking punchline. 00;07;29;15 - 00;08;01;09 Phil And nowadays it kind of is. But in those days, people were taking it very seriously, thinking that people playing Dungeons and Dragons was they were going to kill themselves and get lost in the steam tunnels beneath their school and all that stuff. People like, you know, me who wanted very badly to play D and D, but my mother wouldn't let me because of all of the urban legend she'd heard surrounding it, Stackpole became very well known for writing a pretty on a pretty regular basis about why Dad wasn't just a not a bad thing, but it was a good thing. 00;08;01;09 - 00;08;30;28 Phil And it was it was good for you. And it was fun then and encouraged adventure and play and stuff that that growing kids need. In the meantime, he wrote a few books. You may have heard of a couple of them, he wrote. He was the founder of the X-Wing Rogue Squadron series. He wrote X-Wing Rogue Squadron in 1996, which led to a huge spin off of Star Wars stories. 00;08;30;28 - 00;09;06;16 Phil Novels mostly. And he wrote a lot of really important battle tech books. He wrote the Dragon Crown War Series, a lot of stuff, dark conspiracy, mechwarrior stuff, and a lot of novelizations. One of the more recent ones, he wrote the novelization of the 2011 CONAN the Barbarian movie that came out with Jason Momoa in it, which I saw in the theaters and was not very good, but is it was but I will say this for that movie, it knew what it was trying to make. 00;09;06;16 - 00;09;26;08 Phil It was it was not trying to be as Lord of the Rings as it could have been. I thought they were going to be leaning hard into like more of the Tolkien kind of aspects of it. You know, they were like, No, we know who Robert de Howard is. We're going to we're going to make a big, campy, dumb fantasy movie. 00;09;26;08 - 00;09;32;11 Phil And they did. I need to watch it again. I haven't seen it since I take CONAN very seriously. 00;09;32;11 - 00;09;35;00 Kevin But you are you're a CONAN fan. 00;09;35;01 - 00;10;08;03 Phil I like I like myself a cimmerian. What can I say at Stackpole? Still very active today, obviously, as as this project shows, it kind of a very big deal to be asked to write the first novelization of of such a huge and dare I say, important with a capital I franchise. Yeah. So, you know, it makes sense that they'd want to entrust it with an old grog narrative the of the the old school fantasy world. 00;10;08;25 - 00;10;42;01 Kevin Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's, that's the game, that's the person. So we're going to jump right into the story and kind of work our way through it. So we read the first 13 chapters for this episode and we're going to start off in chapter one, the game that the game the book is told in a first person, first person perspective and are our primary character is waking up from death. 00;10;42;06 - 00;10;51;14 Kevin And this is this is going to sound like I'm dunking on the book. This is probably the most interesting part of the book. 00;10;51;22 - 00;10;52;28 Phil Yeah. Yeah. 00;10;53;06 - 00;11;28;26 Kevin And maybe that is a dunk we'll reserve the the that for later but it's a very interesting segment where the the this undead and that's what they're called in the in the dark souls. The verse is the the undead wakes up and he has to remember things like being able to touch things, being able to move his hand, being he remembers he he isn't able to see until he remembers the concept of sight. 00;11;29;10 - 00;11;30;27 Kevin Yeah. Yeah. 00;11;31;13 - 00;11;33;16 Phil And it's very inner monologue stuff, a. 00;11;33;22 - 00;12;06;13 Kevin Lot of really cool inner monologue stuff. And he wakes up and discovers that he is basically in a, in a chamber, in a mausoleum. And there there appears to have been a thief at some point who broke in to rob the grave. But because of the height of from which the ceiling that he fell down, the thief like landed and then ended up not being able to get back out of the mausoleum and dying. 00;12;06;13 - 00;12;29;15 Kevin And then he he basically he continues his inner monologue. He questions the thief, the dead thief, who then wakes up and he struggles with this thief and remembers his magic. And he cast the spell and blows the the head off of this this undead thief that attacks him. 00;12;30;27 - 00;12;36;01 Phil It's a very generic sort of magic, isn't it? I wondered, is that. 00;12;36;06 - 00;12;52;24 Kevin Yeah, it is. There is some spells that are basically like you're your very basic level spell in and I don't remember what they're called in Dark Souls specifically, but it's. 00;12;52;24 - 00;12;54;20 Phil Like you have specific names, don't they. 00;12;54;23 - 00;13;12;01 Kevin They do have a specific names. Yeah. The lowest the lowest level like caster spell, one of the lowest level caster spells at least in Elden ring and I need I haven't played a caster in Dark Souls in a long time. It's basically like a magic missile type thing where it's just like you're shooting a little pew, right? 00;13;12;26 - 00;13;29;15 Phil Right. Because you kind of will see this at least in this first third of the book. You see it a lot where he just kind of says, it's kind of like I used magic to destroy the enemy. I used magic to blow his head off. Yeah, it's not. 00;13;29;15 - 00;13;29;29 Kevin It's like a. 00;13;29;29 - 00;13;30;23 Phil Cast of fire. 00;13;31;10 - 00;13;57;21 Kevin No. And it's like a blue, glowy that melts things kind of and does force damage, but also cook things as we find out later. Burns things so not very specific on the magic. He basically he's able to get out of the tomb. He looks at the basically there is a seal on the tomb that is preventing him from leaving. 00;13;58;01 - 00;14;18;20 Kevin There's like a magic in place that prevents him from leaving his his tomb. So but he realizes he can, like, go down below it and get out through that. He, like, is able to sneak out through the like an opening that prevents him from being caught in the magic field. Right. It goes up in around goes up and around. 00;14;18;20 - 00;14;33;26 Kevin And he sees that there's a name on the outside and it's he assumes that this is his name and it's Pharos. Yeah. And he's like, All right, I'm Pharaoh now. Yeah. Cool. Moving on. Let's move on. Yeah, let's remember some new stuff. 00;14;34;09 - 00;14;34;18 Phil Yeah. 00;14;35;25 - 00;15;03;09 Kevin We get. We get some really neat descriptions of the lands, the the desert lands that he's in, which is very evocative in some points of dark souls where you have these. That's the thing about Dark Souls. Three games are set in a it's like post-apocalyptic fantasy, right? Things are not going well. And any Dark Souls story things, things are going pretty bad. 00;15;03;16 - 00;15;29;14 Kevin So he is continuing through this desert and he comes across a a man sitting by a fire and you guessed it, this is a bonfire. This is the bonfire that that Hallows and the undead are. They aggregate around and they're they're attracted to just like sit down. And it doesn't necessarily give out warmth, but it kind of comforts them. 00;15;30;16 - 00;15;38;23 Kevin So he talks to this man who's sitting at the bonfire and the guy who's been sitting there so long with his legs crossed that his legs have kind of like fuzed together. 00;15;38;29 - 00;16;01;17 Phil Yeah, I thought that was a really cool detail. Like, he'd been there for that long, and it was like because he says because he says it. He talks a little bit about he he had had the option of going out and you know, going out and fighting and seeing the world and that sort of thing. But after a while, he just didn't think it was worth it anymore. 00;16;01;17 - 00;16;06;11 Phil So he decided to just have himself sit down. And he's been that way for like hundreds of years. 00;16;06;11 - 00;16;25;06 Kevin He's he's and he it's a long sit down. And he actually further notes notices that the guy has this instinctual urge to continue to feed the fire. But there's nothing he's not feeding it anything. He's just like grabbing an invisible pile of sticks and throwing it in those guys, like on a looping animation. 00;16;25;21 - 00;16;29;16 Phil Right? Right. 00;16;29;16 - 00;16;29;21 Kevin Oh. 00;16;30;12 - 00;16;47;08 Phil It absolutely. Yeah. We've talked about this on several episodes in the past where you have to wonder, you're like, all right, how much of this was this person just playing through the game and like writing about things they saw? And that was one of the first ones that there was a part of that was like, did he just watch? 00;16;47;08 - 00;16;49;19 Phil It feels like watching an NPC. 00;16;49;27 - 00;16;54;00 Kevin Yeah. Did you watch an NPC? Just kind of loop through an animation a bunch of times. 00;16;54;00 - 00;16;55;23 Phil Like, that's a fun idea. Let's do that. 00;16;56;11 - 00;17;18;02 Kevin That's a fun team idea. So fairness decides to go. He is. He's being pulled in a direction he is. There's a supernatural urge for him to just go. And he's going and he's going and the guy is like, Well, the door is right there. It's that Rick and Morty scene. You're like, Well, I'm leaving you and you. 00;17;18;04 - 00;17;18;26 Phil That was always. 00;17;18;26 - 00;17;43;29 Kevin Allowed. That was which allowed. So Ferret, I was leaves and he goes down a set of stairs and he's like in this underground, like it's not like a cave system. It's like a buried fortress that he's walking through and he gets killed and it becomes Groundhog Day at this point. So he dies and he wakes up next to the fire that he just rested at. 00;17;44;12 - 00;17;47;09 Kevin And the guy is like, Oh, you're back. Yeah, it's. 00;17;47;16 - 00;17;54;09 Phil It is a pretty great moment. Or it's just like, Hey, hey, how'd that go? That sucked, huh? 00;17;54;23 - 00;17;56;00 Kevin That was terrible, right? 00;17;56;00 - 00;17;57;29 Phil You see why I've been sitting here all this time? 00;17;58;17 - 00;18;21;10 Kevin So he keeps doing it. And one of the things that keeps getting mentioned by fairness is that he doesn't really notice the passage of time. So we don't actually know how long he is doing this, but he is dying over and over again. Is it traps? Is it whatever? It's a group of soldiers down there. He's dying over and over again. 00;18;21;10 - 00;18;45;04 Kevin And eventually he gets kind of close. And finally the guy at the fire is like, Oh yeah, well, this might help. And he gives them a flask and it's never called the flask, but that's what it is. It's the it's a it's the nastiest flask, which is the thing that heals you in the games, in the guys and taught us is the guy could use this earlier and go and the, and the guy at the fire is like yeah. 00;18;45;20 - 00;18;56;00 Phil So it's like it's such a like Calvins dad moment from Calvin and Hobbes where he's like suffering builds character fucker character. 00;18;56;00 - 00;19;00;17 Kevin He nurses Calvin. And the guy at the fire is Calvin's dad, right? 00;19;00;18 - 00;19;06;10 Phil Exactly. Exactly. If you guys take away nothing from this. No, that that is the perfect analogy. 00;19;06;10 - 00;19;49;05 Kevin That's the hit. So the he goes yeah. So he goes and he he kills. It's this group called the Lost Patrol. It doesn't really matter. They're just a group of dudes down there. And he gets down there, he's able to kill the last patrol and he continues on and he gets into like this, this like, valley area. And he he goes keeps going through he runs into a town and the town looks like it's been demolished. 00;19;49;05 - 00;20;16;22 Kevin There's graffiti or whatever. And he ends up he kills a couple of hollows and he finds a coin and finds a few coins, but he finds one that looks older than all the rest. And on it is the word pannier, which strikes back. It brings back like a memory to him. He knows something of what Pannier is, by the way, every time, don't worry. 00;20;16;22 - 00;20;23;19 Kevin Every time he kills a Harlow, he is absorbing their soul essence that the souls mechanic is built into the book. 00;20;23;19 - 00;20;48;21 Phil And I think he handles it well. I think Stackpole does a good job with like, you know, he gets a little trace memory from everybody that he kills. He sees, like a brief moment in their life and absorbs it. And it's not really it shouldn't mean anything to him necessarily, because even though he doesn't remember his own past, but he's getting all of these memories from all these other creatures. 00;20;48;21 - 00;20;55;01 Phil It's kind of cool. It was that. Yeah, that's something that's baked into the mythology and dark souls it alters that knew that the memories. 00;20;55;01 - 00;21;22;09 Kevin No yeah. No I think no it's just, it's just souls are a little bit different then I feel like there is no. However, Miyazaki considers the soul in Dark Souls. It's a little bit different than, like, the essence of a person. I think there's a I think there's like a separation between, like the soul is like an animus. 00;21;22;10 - 00;21;43;26 Kevin It's like a thing that that moves the flesh, right. You know? And in that, it's power, it's not necessarily memory. Also, it's just the power, the the animus that that actually moved this sack of meat that we call a body. Right. 00;21;44;12 - 00;21;53;25 Phil So it's not like he's like he's not like becoming more like them, but it's it's kind of like the old folklore of, like, eating an animal's heart to gain its courage or something. 00;21;53;25 - 00;22;15;23 Kevin Sure. Yeah, yeah. And you're getting contact traces of, like, in the game. It's I don't think this is ever really brought up, but it is a neat little wrinkle in the book that in the book it's like, oh, you're getting some contact traces of who this person the last person who touched this soul. You're you're getting some trace elements of who they were. 00;22;15;29 - 00;22;17;22 Phil It's a really interesting touch. 00;22;18;01 - 00;22;38;16 Kevin Yeah. Yeah, it is. So he continues on and there's only one way forward. Yeah, he knows where he has to go and there's only one way forward. And that is down into an arena where there is a gigantic man with a with a is it a mace? I think it's like maybe some mace. 00;22;38;16 - 00;23;01;09 Phil Yeah, it's this is the I'm not I'm sure people have picked up on it. I do not play souls games. I'm not any good at them. I they bring me no joy, but I am kind of fascinated by that. I was excited to read this because the creatures and the landscapes that are in these fromsoftware games like are fascinating to me. 00;23;01;22 - 00;23;20;27 Phil And even though I've never fully played one of these games through, I can say for sure certain that this upcoming moment is like the most stereotypical souls moment in the book so far. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Because it's just a big boss guy who just sits there and waits. 00;23;20;27 - 00;23;47;23 Kevin For him is waiting for you. It feels very similar. There is a boss in Dark Souls three named you text. You text Gunn dear, who is basically this gigantic armored man who is he's kneeling down in the center of the arena. And the first thing you do is you go up to him and there's a there's a sword in his chest and you rip the sword out of his chest, and that wakes him up. 00;23;48;08 - 00;23;48;20 Kevin Of course. 00;23;50;16 - 00;23;53;17 Phil I mean, what else. What I. Yeah, of course I would want to get. Sure. 00;23;54;25 - 00;24;05;29 Kevin And see he fights you and he is you fight him in the first like 7 minutes of, of Dark Souls. Three. 00;24;06;15 - 00;24;08;26 Phil I mean that's probably what inspired this then. 00;24;09;10 - 00;24;15;10 Kevin Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he dies a bunch to this dude. 00;24;16;09 - 00;24;35;18 Phil Yeah. He, he dies and he, I love how he describes it where it's like the he's like just standing there like a statue, hands on his weapons, waiting almost politely for him to show up and start the fight again. Like, sure, he's not pacing, he's not doing anything but just waiting for the next guy to step in so he could kill him. 00;24;36;10 - 00;25;06;07 Kevin Right? Yeah. So he gets back to the, uh, he gets back to the he did light up a new bonfire nearby. He gets back there. And this time after the last time he dies, he wakes up and there is a night standing there with his sword pointed at fairness is like you good. You have to kill you and, uh, he in fairness, like, no, no, no, I'm good. 00;25;06;07 - 00;25;17;04 Kevin And he fairness remembers the guy sigil that he is a knights of the Knights dates of virtue. His name is Proto uh, Krupa truth teller. 00;25;18;00 - 00;25;20;13 Phil Good. Where another good dandy name and. 00;25;20;14 - 00;25;41;09 Kevin Good dandy name. Basically, he he. The virtue that he abides is the truth in all things. He what? He can never, he can never. He doesn't lie. He he hates lies in in that he also hates rumors and gossip because they are not necessarily the truth. So he doesn't play in rumors and gossip. 00;25;41;19 - 00;25;43;21 Phil Just lawful. Good, paladin. 00;25;43;26 - 00;25;46;26 Kevin Yeah. So he is a lawful good paladin. That's him. 00;25;48;24 - 00;25;49;19 Phil Easy peasy. 00;25;50;13 - 00;26;08;28 Kevin He easy peasy. Lemon squeezy now with crows the who is also in the same spot where he's like, Oh, I woke up and I have this vibe where I got to go that way. And Thanos is like, Well, there's dude in the way, and growth is like, Bro, now there's two of us. 00;26;08;28 - 00;26;18;20 Phil Yeah, it's fucking game grumps like plague. So just waiting for the second player to come in. 00;26;18;27 - 00;26;45;06 Kevin And then they, they go and they fight and they, they he basically jolly cooperation. That's, that's what it was called. And in In Dark Souls, there's a character called Silver who calls it jolly cooperation. When you work with somebody, they fight and they take down this this dude with the mace, and they get a big old rush of solar energy that blows their hair back. 00;26;45;06 - 00;27;14;07 Kevin Man Yeah. So, yeah, that's chapter four. And and Krupa is like, you know, it's it's a little bit I know I don't want to call him boring, but he's a little, a little boring. He's a character. He's a he's a real is a real square. He's got a yeah. We got to get some darkness coming out of this dude because it's so far, he's like. 00;27;15;09 - 00;27;19;19 Phil Yeah, well, it's like, we've got two Nick Carraway characters, basically, you know? 00;27;19;19 - 00;27;21;16 Kevin Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00;27;21;17 - 00;27;34;14 Phil It's very vanilla kind of sort of characters because neither of them know what's going on really. They're both. Yeah, so he doesn't. So introducing him doesn't at this point at least bring too much to the table, right. 00;27;34;22 - 00;28;11;07 Kevin Yeah. So chapter five, we're picking up now in chapter five and they're just walking and they have no idea how much time is passing. They're walking. There's there's lands they would fight. They would they would kindle bonfires as they go. Sometimes they would find people. But humans, the actual living people are like staying way clear of because because they look even though they are not hollows, they they are just like there's two levels, there's just undead. 00;28;11;07 - 00;28;37;25 Kevin And then there's hollows. Hollows are basically undead that have lost every, every bit of humanity that they had and are just mindless creatures doing, you know, whatever you undead are just are very much like regular people. They're just, you know, in a corpse. Right? Right. 00;28;38;25 - 00;28;43;17 Phil You know, like Mitch McConnell. It's Mitch McConnell. Yeah, I'll think of that, you guys. 00;28;43;18 - 00;28;45;26 Kevin Hey, we're back, baby. We're back. 00;28;45;26 - 00;28;48;04 Phil You guys fucking missed it. 00;28;48;14 - 00;28;54;15 Kevin Fucking Mitch McConnell and all of this goddamn turtleneck piece of shit. 00;28;55;12 - 00;29;01;16 Phil Yeah. Oh, it feels good to be back bed feels good. Feels good. Who? 00;29;01;16 - 00;29;36;17 Kevin So they. They go. They find a fortress. A tower, basically. They see some some graffiti about a land culture forum, which they are putting together that, oh, it's like a it's a beautiful faraway lands, yadda yadda yadda. Yeah. The they don't remember yet but crow those from Jafar that's that's going to get revealed in a little bit. And they, uh, they get jumped by some goons. 00;29;38;06 - 00;29;48;14 Kevin They, the while they're crossing a swamp area, they're fighting some hollows. They went, Yeah. 00;29;48;25 - 00;29;51;29 Phil Yeah. There's like it's the most since you don't have. 00;29;51;29 - 00;30;18;15 Kevin They don't strike me as any now there's no sticks to the fights right now because, um, in, in something that is really going good for a game. The, the coming back up out of the the bonfire it there's like no stakes to the any of these fights so far is like because you know they're going to just going to be able to try it again. 00;30;18;27 - 00;30;19;09 Kevin Right. 00;30;20;14 - 00;30;46;19 Phil So it's kind of where we run into our first roadblock in terms of this being an adaptation. Because on one hand, like I said before, that's kind of cool, like, like being able to work that into the book in such a way. I liked the idea of like, you know, working. It's like, okay, where you die and you show back up and gaining the souls and learning memories, there's something really interesting about that that you could totally see. 00;30;46;19 - 00;30;56;08 Phil You're like, Okay, as a book that works. But yeah, it eliminates pretty much all the fear of death. So the fights like, yes. 00;30;56;29 - 00;31;27;14 Kevin So you got to you can't that's the thing is I feel like if you do not focus on the fights as a set piece, like it's more of a matter of fact thing rather than just like the, the, the focus really needs to be on the, like the internal struggle of what this shit means, right? Rather than an external struggle of like, oh, we died and back up again. 00;31;27;24 - 00;31;53;07 Kevin I mean, in this case, they don't die on us. Loses his foot, though. He blows his own goddamn foot off like a cross because. Because a crocodile clamps on to it and he shoots sticks. It's kind of a cool moment, but still, he he sticks the staff, his staff down into the crocodile's throat, the blast it with with his magic. 00;31;54;10 - 00;31;54;24 Kevin Magic. 00;31;55;12 - 00;32;00;20 Phil The Dark Souls, Florida DLC. Yeah, the. 00;32;00;20 - 00;32;01;03 Kevin Florida. 00;32;01;03 - 00;32;02;07 Phil DLC sent it here. 00;32;02;07 - 00;32;39;11 Kevin Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so he kills the crocodile, but he loses his foot along with with it, and Krupa has to basically carry him the rest of the way that they're going. And they, they get, um, they basically find a, the pyramid and this like temple structure and we are in chapter six now. Yes. And they find a sarcophagus inside. 00;32;39;19 - 00;33;09;29 Kevin And this is kind of. So there's a puzzle that they solve here, right? Yeah. And it's I guess it's fine. But also feels like a dandy campaign, like the dam was stressing for a puzzle and just needed to throw one in because it doesn't it's not like a it's not like a very interesting puzzle to watch these characters solve. 00;33;10;00 - 00;33;28;28 Phil Yeah, right. And I wanted to ask you about that. Are puzzles really a thing in Dark Souls or. No, not a thing. It's just it felt it made me think and maybe maybe maybe you'll agree. It made me think of the Resident Evil adaptation. 00;33;28;28 - 00;33;34;29 Kevin It was very it's very much it's closer to a resident evil puzzle than anything you would find in Dark Souls. 00;33;34;29 - 00;33;48;12 Phil Yeah, it's such an odd choice, I guess. I guess it was a choice to vary up things, but. Yeah, puzzles. I know. I don't think of puzzles. I think of dark souls, so. And this won't be the only one. 00;33;48;20 - 00;34;20;21 Kevin No. So they have to basically figure out that they have to there are these dreams kind of swirling around the sarcophagus and they have to. Krupa ends up being the one to do it. Yes. To, like, step on certain squares while dream is in a certain area. Yes. To, like, match his emotion to the dream in order to proceed further into the magic field. 00;34;21;22 - 00;34;27;21 Phil And if he does the wrong emotion on the wrong square, Lady Dimitrescu pops out of nowhere and cuts his fucking head off. 00;34;28;00 - 00;34;37;01 Kevin Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. That's. That's basically it. That's basically it. Yeah. Heisenberg shows up and says, you boulder punching moron. 00;34;37;08 - 00;34;42;16 Phil Yeah. And yeah, yeah, yeah. Play that game again. 00;34;42;25 - 00;34;45;04 Kevin Yeah DLC is coming out. 00;34;45;09 - 00;34;46;05 Phil I know. 00;34;46;23 - 00;34;49;02 Kevin Or came out when this airs. Oh yeah. 00;34;49;02 - 00;34;50;01 Phil I guess it'll be out by now. 00;34;50;01 - 00;34;52;28 Kevin Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00;34;52;28 - 00;34;55;20 Phil Anyway so let's cut this short and it. 00;34;57;03 - 00;35;12;23 Kevin So the so he figures it out, there's, there's like some stakes where there's a wolf and the only stakes are inconvenience at this point. Yeah. Because like, oh, well, if I die, I got to fight all the way back here, which is like, okay. 00;35;13;07 - 00;35;15;13 Phil Which is the same as playing the game, which. 00;35;15;13 - 00;35;36;06 Kevin Is the same as playing the game. But the game has actually additional stakes because if you don't get back to the point at which you died, you lose all the souls that you had not already like banked into your character yet. So you have to do a corpse run first. You have to actually get back to where you died. 00;35;36;15 - 00;35;45;07 Kevin So in the book, though, that's that's been completely stripped away. Now it's just you the you just have to get back to where you were. 00;35;45;23 - 00;35;48;23 Phil Right? So yeah, so it's actually even lower stakes. 00;35;49;01 - 00;35;57;18 Kevin Even lower stakes than in the game. We've reduced the stakes. Right. This is this is dark souls, easy mode. Yeah. That you've been asking for. 00;35;57;18 - 00;36;10;03 Phil No wonder everyone was so pissed off. I'm sorry. Toxic fanboys. You were right. You were right all along. I didn't know. 00;36;10;17 - 00;36;36;08 Kevin I didn't know. So he solves it. He gets there, and now he has to. But now that the fields basically that this field was healing them and healing both truth and fair knows that now that it's dispelled daily solve the puzzle that the guy in the sarcophagus is now dying because there's no air in there. It was keeping him alive. 00;36;36;18 - 00;36;43;00 Kevin So they're like, Oh shit. Hey, enter some states now they have to figure out what how to open the sarcophagus. 00;36;43;11 - 00;36;50;13 Phil And I'm sure they come up with like a really elegant thought full solution to doing that. 00;36;50;21 - 00;36;53;17 Kevin Yes. Right. He hits it with his sword. He just. 00;36;53;18 - 00;37;04;17 Phil Breaks it. Just it's you know, and it's not even his idea. But Curtis is like, this is going to be like, hit it, hit it a bunch. 00;37;05;00 - 00;37;18;23 Kevin Bastard bash the shit out of it. And he does and it's just like and it crumbles and they were like, and it works and they're like, Oh, well, now he's just like a little sleeping baby, so I'm just going to let him see. 00;37;18;27 - 00;37;22;01 Phil His way through the bus. 00;37;22;01 - 00;37;54;07 Kevin We're going to let this this guy sit here right. Um, so, yeah, um, okay. That was, that's basically the start of chapter seven where they, they, they figure that out and they're like, all right, well, we have a real human now that needs food, so we got to go get some food. So they're out there. They find the the parts of the crocodile that he killed. 00;37;55;10 - 00;38;05;08 Phil I love this because might be the most gamer moment in the entire book, which is like, I killed a guy a few screens back. 00;38;05;08 - 00;38;07;11 Kevin Let's let's go rate his corpse. 00;38;07;12 - 00;38;07;23 Phil Let's go. 00;38;08;05 - 00;38;10;06 Kevin Cause he finds his old foot. 00;38;10;17 - 00;38;17;10 Phil If that's sprockets, it's such a fucking lie. 00;38;17;25 - 00;38;18;29 Kevin And he just discards it. 00;38;19;09 - 00;38;38;11 Phil So it's so mad. It's so weird. And they're like, Well, do you think he'll like like, how do I cook this? Because I wasn't I pretty sure I wasn't a chef in my former life. And he goes, Well, do you think I'll eat it? It's like, I don't know. I don't know what living people like. It's it's so bizarre. 00;38;38;11 - 00;38;40;10 Phil It's oh, it's so weird. 00;38;41;28 - 00;39;15;05 Kevin It's so weird. And they spill out some blood and it, it pulls into some, uh, some it's like chiseled out, like Yeah. Stuff on the ground. And it spells out a name as the blood pools. Yes. And the name is Bulgarian and they're like, huh, maybe that's this kid's name. So they go in and, uh, just by speaking the name Bulgarian, it actually wakes the kid up, right? 00;39;15;06 - 00;39;49;14 Kevin And he's like, Oh, yes, no, that is me. That is I Bulgarian. And they, they start kind of like deducing what they know. And at this point, like, okay, Bulgarian might be the son of the king, king paneer, who was from a real long time ago, eons ago, from the from what we can tell, because it was on the oldest of the coins that Veritas found. 00;39;49;15 - 00;39;56;06 Phil Right and also fair. Also like can tell that a long time has passed based on the stars or something like that. 00;39;56;06 - 00;40;20;13 Kevin Yeah, that's actually something that is a cool detail that I forgot to mention is that he is the memory of the stars that he gets from the thief is different from the position of the stars in the sky. When he looks into the night sky and he can tell that the stars are in different positions, he says degrees by degrees. 00;40;20;13 - 00;40;34;03 Kevin And the things that he knew as planets at one time are some are no longer there. Some have changed colors, things like that. So I was like, that was that was a really neat detail. 00;40;34;07 - 00;40;49;03 Phil It's a really cool detail. And and it could have it could have gone into anything really. But it's it's neat that it was used it's used kind of to tell us a little bit about fairness in the past, like who he is. 00;40;49;03 - 00;40;49;20 Kevin Yeah. He's Like. 00;40;49;20 - 00;40;49;29 Phil Yeah. 00;40;50;03 - 00;40;56;03 Kevin Yeah. Because he says to himself, I clearly knew a lot about astronomy and astrology at one point. Like that was. 00;40;57;02 - 00;41;10;10 Phil Some kind of cool tower mage kind of character and yeah, he or he used to be and right. It's so it's a, it's a clever way of getting to know him and it's a clever way of getting to know that like a shit ton of time has passed. 00;41;10;22 - 00;41;21;29 Kevin Right? Um, they kind of figure out that Bulgarian I wouldn't say figure out, but they're surmising that Valerian might be the bastard son. Actually, he says he's the best. 00;41;22;11 - 00;41;24;25 Phil That's like. It's like kind of how he announces himself. 00;41;25;00 - 00;41;28;15 Kevin Like, hi, I am Bulgarian. The bastard son of King, Pioneer. 00;41;28;15 - 00;41;30;08 Phil So many details. 00;41;31;13 - 00;41;32;15 Kevin Good. Good to know. 00;41;32;22 - 00;41;39;00 Phil Hi, I'm Phil Keeling. I'm allergic to walnuts and like we just met. 00;41;40;06 - 00;41;43;06 Kevin I was like. I was like. I feel like I would have known that. 00;41;43;10 - 00;41;44;11 Phil No, no. 00;41;44;18 - 00;41;45;21 Kevin You look like a walnut. 00;41;45;26 - 00;41;51;05 Phil Identify. And if I was, then I wouldn't give the Internet that information. 00;41;51;19 - 00;41;52;26 Kevin That's a good point. 00;41;53;06 - 00;41;58;11 Phil That's between us. Well, wait, did you just say it looks like a walnut? 00;41;58;11 - 00;42;04;00 Kevin Got to say no. It's like you look like a guy who enjoys a walnut, occasional. 00;42;04;00 - 00;42;06;10 Phil Kind of Dickensian insult. Is that. 00;42;07;08 - 00;42;09;03 Kevin Looking over there, those walnut. 00;42;09;03 - 00;42;15;27 Phil Eaters, walnut eaters over there, through them, good scrooge. 00;42;15;27 - 00;42;17;11 Kevin With his pipe. 00;42;17;29 - 00;42;18;09 Phil So, like. 00;42;18;17 - 00;42;21;03 Kevin It's like the week before Christmas. 00;42;21;09 - 00;42;22;00 Phil It is like. 00;42;22;08 - 00;42;27;01 Kevin He's like walking up and down the street and like by those wall nice itOs or where they. 00;42;27;01 - 00;42;31;18 Phil Are. I suppose you would be wanting Christmas off. Pratchett You wold that you. 00;42;31;19 - 00;42;32;16 Kevin Want Nazi to. 00;42;33;02 - 00;42;42;22 Phil Says Now you can't call us that anymore. It's a different time, but there's lots more like you. 00;42;42;22 - 00;42;46;00 Kevin Yeah. So it throws like a walnut at his head. 00;42;46;09 - 00;42;50;21 Phil Yeah. It's just like, it's, it's like racist against the Welsh or something like that. 00;42;50;22 - 00;42;59;08 Kevin It's good old English racism right there that we are inventing. 00;42;59;08 - 00;43;03;23 Phil I will say the best English, the best racism is the English racism. 00;43;03;23 - 00;43;12;19 Kevin This is the 19th century English like it like in like London, our racism against literature. Just like somebody who's from like ten miles up. 00;43;12;28 - 00;43;18;14 Phil Yeah, yeah. Just racism that is just covered in chimney soot. Just simply. 00;43;18;22 - 00;43;20;08 Kevin Chimney soot. Well muddied. 00;43;20;08 - 00;43;22;08 Phil Or just Jim best few. 00;43;22;08 - 00;43;31;10 Kevin Chimneys soot. The spotted wall 90. 00;43;31;10 - 00;43;39;04 Phil How dare you? Oh, well, it's got to him. How did that. 00;43;39;04 - 00;43;39;21 Kevin Yeah. 00;43;39;29 - 00;43;43;14 Phil So it's going in my profile by the way. 00;43;44;12 - 00;43;45;04 Kevin Good, good. 00;43;45;04 - 00;43;45;18 Phil Quality. 00;43;45;18 - 00;43;53;02 Kevin Too known to eat walnuts. Yeah. No. To enjoy a walnut or two at the end of a long day. 00;43;53;02 - 00;43;53;21 Phil Now and then. 00;43;53;21 - 00;44;19;20 Kevin Yeah, now and then. I'll snow walnut card. So they continue on. They continue talking basically Bulgarian got there because a couple of the other Knights of Virtue put him there. Their names are drugging him. They slowly drugged him over the period of a month until he lost consciousness for over a thousand years. Uh huh. 00;44;19;20 - 00;44;24;16 Phil Yeah. I've heard that one before. To Billary and get away and. 00;44;25;04 - 00;44;26;14 Kevin Been there and. 00;44;29;12 - 00;44;29;24 Phil Larry. 00;44;29;24 - 00;44;38;01 Kevin When I woke up, it was serious. It was it was 1115 when I fell asleep during the year. 00;44;38;01 - 00;44;38;20 Phil Yeah. Yeah. 00;44;40;26 - 00;44;47;18 Phil All the police constantly so yeah. 00;44;47;18 - 00;45;08;26 Kevin He gets, he gets drug for over a month and then he gets shoved into our sarcophagus and there he was and to and it was basically a day he had been asleep for one day to him from his perspective, he's like, oh, I had a good night's good night's rest and fair notice and growth are like, buddy, good, good. 00;45;08;26 - 00;45;10;10 Phil Good slash, bad news. 00;45;10;22 - 00;45;42;18 Kevin Good slash, bad news. They take him outside and he's like, Oh my God, yeah. The lands that he once knew as like, nice, you know, nice. They weren't bad. They were nice, you know, are now bad. These are Badlands young things it really reminds me of. There's that tweet about or somebody wrote a fake opening monologue to Dark Souls where it's like it's like things fucking suck. 00;45;43;00 - 00;45;43;09 Phil And. 00;45;43;09 - 00;45;53;14 Kevin It's ends and a real fucked up and only you the fucked up little guy The most fucked up little guy of them all can be done. Fuck them. 00;45;53;27 - 00;46;03;02 Phil That's pretty much it. Like that's basically what we're dealing with here. It's just multi-player now, that's all. 00;46;03;09 - 00;46;22;18 Kevin Yeah, it's just multiplayer. So. So they're, they're thinking, um, they believe him. That is probably the, the that the, the, the kid panniers kid. Um, and they continue on. Oh, I hear you're a kitty cat is. Yeah. 00;46;22;19 - 00;46;30;06 Phil That they're, they're demanding. Hold on God dammit. Fucking cat. I swear to God, it's going to be a regular part of the show. I swear. Like, let the cat in. 00;46;30;13 - 00;46;32;22 Kevin Let the cat in the office. 00;46;33;09 - 00;46;34;16 Phil All right, come on. God. 00;46;35;01 - 00;46;50;09 Kevin The cats are coming in here. They come. Are they just standing at the door or are they just. Are they coming in? We'll see if there's a kitty. Oh, my gosh. There's A big old kitty. 00;46;51;19 - 00;46;55;28 Phil Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Lieutenant Ellen Ripley, Jennifer Garner, Stockton, feeling. 00;46;56;16 - 00;47;01;22 Kevin Oh, like she's she she does not want to be involved. 00;47;01;29 - 00;47;05;29 Phil No, I just opened the door. That was all I wanted. 00;47;07;03 - 00;47;08;15 Kevin Yeah, she left. 00;47;08;15 - 00;47;09;21 Phil Yeah, she's gone now. 00;47;10;01 - 00;47;24;04 Kevin She's gone. So, yeah, they continue on and they, they have, you know, they start getting some, some more memories back. Uh. 00;47;24;22 - 00;47;33;17 Phil They kind of like basically infer based on who they found that like they're there to help his dad, like the king somehow. 00;47;33;17 - 00;48;01;10 Kevin Yeah, like. Like Blair. John is feeling a similar poll eastward that they were feeling to go get Bulgarian in the first place. Right. Which is something dark souls, where usually the undead have a quest. But now I'll get to that in a little bit. Yeah. So, yeah, the, uh, furnace goes hunting. He blows up a couple rabbits. 00;48;01;10 - 00;48;15;11 Phil Yeah, that's good. I like they point out that, like, these shoots, he shoots one of them directly with his magic. And it points out these like now while the the pieces of meat that are left behind are very well cooked, it's all. 00;48;15;12 - 00;48;16;09 Kevin Feed and feed. 00;48;16;09 - 00;48;18;15 Phil Anyone. Yeah. No one's going to eat that. Yeah. 00;48;18;24 - 00;48;30;28 Kevin The other one, he, he hit, he hits the ground next to it, which causes it to fly into the air and then grain itself on a rock. And then it smells like hilarious. 00;48;30;29 - 00;48;32;03 Phil Exactly. Everything else. 00;48;32;07 - 00;48;38;05 Kevin Not quite dead yet. So fair enough. Set to beat it against Iraq until it does die. Um. 00;48;38;24 - 00;48;39;22 Phil Dark souls. 00;48;39;27 - 00;49;09;25 Kevin Dark souls. The dark souls of. Of hunting. Of rabbit of rabbit hunting. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we, we get into some, like, uh, stories that blurry on tells about how there were, there were these wise men that always stopped by his village. And growth is like, I kind of call bullshit on this as a thing that was that should have been normal, right? 00;49;10;05 - 00;49;24;26 Kevin Like wise men wouldn't have gone to just a random ass village and also there is this old man who is like would come and tell stories and he would go by the name of Parness. 00;49;25;01 - 00;49;26;10 Phil Parness, yeah, yeah. 00;49;26;10 - 00;49;46;02 Kevin He would go by the name of Parness and he would tell these stories about these these three baby wolves who he told one story about a wolf who fucks over a village of sheep. Yeah, sure. And then he tells another story about a wolf with three kids. 00;49;46;02 - 00;49;50;03 Phil We get, like, two long winded folk tales in a row. 00;49;50;11 - 00;50;10;19 Kevin Yeah, it's very long. It's wild. We get to the first one. I was like, Okay, well, don't trust the wolf. All right? Right. You knew that. And then the second one is like, you know, the the wolf and his kids are real fucked up. They're real fucked up kids. And it's going to be another it's going to be another kid that's going to come in and save the day. 00;50;11;16 - 00;50;15;21 Kevin And then he winked at Bulgaria and and Bulgaria never understood why that was. 00;50;16;29 - 00;50;18;07 Phil Yeah. 00;50;18;07 - 00;50;26;20 Kevin So again, like, does like the guy who went by Parnas and is like, hmm. Whenever the king would write poetry, he would always use the name. Parness. 00;50;26;20 - 00;50;28;28 Phil Yeah. What a coincidence. 00;50;29;03 - 00;50;45;04 Kevin What a coincidence. Which, um, I didn't write. Uh, notes for this section. Right? But if I did, I would have wrote Dumb as this. 00;50;45;23 - 00;50;47;19 Phil It's a little dumb. It's. 00;50;48;01 - 00;50;59;19 Kevin I'm sorry. This is. This is. This is super dumb. This whole section, it's like. It's like, oh, you guys. Michael, sweetheart, you're trying way too hard here, too, to lay some track. 00;51;00;04 - 00;51;11;08 Phil We get this is this is where I started to notice just how much of our Dark Souls book was dialog. Yeah, like. 00;51;11;08 - 00;51;12;02 Kevin Lot of talk. 00;51;12;10 - 00;51;26;24 Phil Is upon pages of dialog. It's just them telling me things to each other back and forth constantly. And that's how we're getting the bits and pieces of exposition. 00;51;26;24 - 00;51;43;14 Kevin Whispering little nuts, sweet nothings to each other. But hey, hey, Croft, I, I maybe I was a servant when I was in growth is like, that's cool. I was a night and furnace is like, yeah, I know I yeah. 00;51;43;28 - 00;51;44;16 Phil I got it. 00;51;44;28 - 00;51;48;15 Kevin You're wearing your armor that you died in, right? It's like, yeah. 00;51;49;03 - 00;52;11;21 Phil And I guess, I guess I respect, you know, not sitting down and just writing 50 pages of, like, all the lore and mythology in a row, like some fantasy authors like to do, but it's this really is where it starts. You you start to see fully fledged how kind of it's getting a little clumsy, the writing getting getting. 00;52;12;01 - 00;52;21;13 Kevin Yeah, yeah, yeah. In chapter ten they continue on their merry way. They get fucked up by some welfare and this gets fucked up by some cacti. 00;52;22;12 - 00;52;25;00 Phil Yeah, yeah. Vicious cacti. 00;52;25;00 - 00;52;53;10 Kevin Vicious cacti. They're like sentient cacti. They sweat you and then they they encounter a group of people called the Yakka who are very hostile. Yes. At some point, uh, uh, Cerritos dies. At some point and he gets he gets booted back to the last bonfire and he sees and when he comes back, he sees like, oh, crowthorne blurry. 00;52;53;10 - 00;53;24;28 Kevin And they have made some progress clearly. And they went into this cave area and now remember this. He like he goes in through the cave and there's just hostile enemies everywhere. And yeah, he just is just like he does a lot of damage. Um, yeah. The it, the best thing about the scene happens later. Um, they, so this is, this is in chapter 11, by the way. 00;53;25;05 - 00;53;51;16 Kevin They find themselves in a chamber at the back of this cave. And there's a woman kind of standing in the same glowing fields that Bulgarian was in. And at some point, Farinas says to Croatia, I be like, Oh, yeah, you know, maybe we can get some stuff from the people that were living in the cave and Croatia goes, looks in the cave and is basically like, What the fuck did you do? 00;53;51;17 - 00;53;58;22 Kevin Yeah, and Billary and Bill, because Bolivian killed all of them and Blair just responds. They were hostile. 00;53;59;10 - 00;54;12;22 Phil Right? Just like you got. I had to. They were jerks. And there were these jerks. They had feral fairness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fairness. Did the killing. 00;54;12;27 - 00;54;15;11 Kevin Fairness. The killing process like growth is like. 00;54;15;11 - 00;54;25;21 Phil What did you do? Yeah, like they were carrots. Yeah. So you played one of these games? I have. You didn't kill you, didn't you? 00;54;25;21 - 00;54;27;19 Kevin Just kill the people. You don't bother. 00;54;27;19 - 00;54;28;25 Phil Making a lot of friends here. 00;54;29;02 - 00;55;00;13 Kevin There's it's like one in ten that one in a hundred people that you can talk to. So just swing first, ask questions later. Yeah. Um, so the woman that they find is, uh, Phil Larson, sci fi last Feliciana Phyllis Yes. Let's go with Phyllis. Gina. Phyllis She's one of the knights and her virtue is fidelity, which is so if Croatia is truth, she is fidelity. 00;55;00;13 - 00;55;38;14 Kevin And fidelity in this case means she is. She honors the bond with people above all else, as opposed to growth, who honors the truth above all else else. And they come into conflict. They're like, they kind of used to butt heads a lot because her virtue and his virtue don't always align necessarily right? Yeah. So they figure out how to wake her up by touching her with one of the stones that came from Bulgarians tomb. 00;55;38;22 - 00;55;40;04 Kevin They touch her on the back of the neck. 00;55;40;18 - 00;55;43;24 Phil And there's the resident evilly kind of puzzled. Yeah. 00;55;44;11 - 00;55;58;11 Kevin And she, she wakes up and she's there, and her only job is to, like, watch over Bulgarian and humans like she. She's almost like, oh, you two can go now. I got this. 00;55;59;06 - 00;56;02;05 Phil Yeah, I relieve you of your duties. 00;56;02;15 - 00;56;16;27 Kevin And they're like, no, we're going to stay so, so blurry. And Feliciana are humans. They are alive. Yeah. Infernos and Croatia are undead. So now we got kind of a mixed party going on here. 00;56;16;28 - 00;56;17;20 Phil We got a mixed bag. 00;56;18;22 - 00;56;29;07 Kevin So, yeah, they continue on their their merry way. A Bulgarian gives foreigners a ring. 00;56;29;07 - 00;56;33;20 Phil Yes, yes. Which which fair was kind of like it feels familiar to him. Like he's like. 00;56;33;20 - 00;56;36;06 Kevin He's like, yeah, this seems like something I'd wear. 00;56;36;28 - 00;56;42;27 Phil Right? Yeah. Yeah. This is so me. This is my esthetic. It's. I don't know if you saw my Pinterest boards. 00;56;43;08 - 00;56;46;20 Kevin But all this Jonesy, he jumped away. 00;56;46;25 - 00;56;52;18 Phil Yeah, these pacing. 00;56;52;18 - 00;57;12;04 Kevin Yeah. You know, rings and cowboy boots. That's how I imagine Fergus absolutely perfect. He's like, he's already is a nearly skeletal man with a top hat and and a staff and and cowboy boots and rings. And he's. He's ready to go. It's not a reference to anything. I'm just making up an image. 00;57;12;04 - 00;57;18;09 Phil I was going to say, I'm like, you're doing this something. No, you're just making your own mythology here. 00;57;18;09 - 00;57;20;14 Kevin I'm making my own mythology now. At this point. 00;57;20;22 - 00;57;21;09 Phil I like it. 00;57;21;29 - 00;57;37;29 Kevin They continue heading east because that is the direction where they feel like they need to go. And basically Crowther and Blair and not Blair, in fairness, are like, Hey, are those two fucking and. 00;57;41;18 - 00;57;42;23 Phil So I think that was that. 00;57;43;15 - 00;57;48;18 Kevin Was I imagining that? And in truth, it's like, Oh, no, they're fucking all right. Oh, yeah. 00;57;49;15 - 00;57;50;03 Phil That's happening. 00;57;50;12 - 00;57;51;04 Kevin That's happening. 00;57;52;11 - 00;57;55;17 Phil We better, we better go like, make ourselves scarce, like, right. 00;57;55;17 - 00;58;09;19 Kevin Yeah. So they do, they, they go and they get to try to get some food while they're down there taking care of their business and the fair those tries to feed area and and she's like, no, that's peasant food. 00;58;10;02 - 00;58;19;01 Phil That's right. That's right. And Blair, if there's bread, it's like, no, I'll I'll eat that. I've eaten that before. I like that. That's good. Oh, yo. Bit of meat for you. 00;58;19;18 - 00;58;21;10 Kevin It's fine. And she's like. 00;58;21;10 - 00;58;26;22 Phil You know, it isn't beneath you to eat, though, Blair In what I've got in my pants. 00;58;26;22 - 00;58;27;03 Kevin Damn. 00;58;27;03 - 00;58;36;06 Phil Straight. And then it got. And then the soles got very dark and wet, if you know what I mean. 00;58;36;17 - 00;58;42;01 Kevin We went from dark souls to wet souls, which is the which is the porn parody of Dark Souls. 00;58;42;01 - 00;58;57;17 Phil Moist Souls. Moist, damp soul. Oh, there it is. There it is. It was right there. It's right there. Where's my fucking thesaurus? God damn it! Oh, souls. 00;58;58;02 - 00;59;19;04 Kevin Yeah. So. And all this time, they're, like, being real touchy with each other. Yeah, she. She. It's like she's put her hand on him. He's putting her hand on her. It's a thing to think, you know? It's dark. It's dark souls, baby. Forget about it. Yeah, but people there's like the who are their, like nearly the last people on earth at this point. 00;59;19;04 - 00;59;19;07 Kevin Yeah. 00;59;19;16 - 00;59;22;18 Phil Yeah. At this point, yeah. They, they, we, they may not. 00;59;22;18 - 00;59;26;08 Kevin Working circulatory with working working circulatory systems. 00;59;26;08 - 00;59;36;19 Phil I might they, they might they might know each other. They might not. It's just it's just at this point, they're like, this might be our only chance. Let's just enjoy this. 00;59;36;19 - 00;59;52;27 Kevin Uh, yeah. So they, they get to a, um, they get to a town with a bunch of people who are pretty worn out and weathered. And there's a big statue in the center of town and, um. 00;59;54;05 - 00;59;55;19 Phil Made out of solid gold. 00;59;56;17 - 01;00;24;20 Kevin Yeah, um, it's made out of solid gold. There's a there's a statue of a man named Celeriac. He is King Celeriac, and he is one of Bulgarians brothers. From what we can tell, one of the the the the children of the the original. KING Yeah. And now we are in like the first of the Three Kingdoms, I assume, that got created from after like what I'm guessing is paneer died. 01;00;24;20 - 01;00;38;25 Kevin It got passed to his three kids. The three kids kind of split up the land in their own way. And Celeriac is the first one that they get to or the land his lands rather in. It is a fucked up little town where these people. 01;00;38;25 - 01;00;39;05 Phil Are like. 01;00;39;22 - 01;00;55;28 Kevin Brainwashed to give everything that they make. And like that's that's the thing about the town is like they're not hurting for anything. No. They produce so much food and they give it all away to the king because they love him so much. 01;00;55;28 - 01;01;17;02 Phil Yeah. Like the guy comes by like the tax collector, for all intents and purposes, comes by and they, like, bring out all the grain and all the, the leather work they've been doing, all this shit. And and he says, Well, I'll, I'll be taking 60% of this. And they're horrified. And at first you're like, Oh, cool, you know that they're. 01;01;17;12 - 01;01;19;25 Kevin He's taken too much and they're like, No, take all of its. 01;01;19;25 - 01;01;24;11 Phil Take all of it, because we don't want the king to think that we don't love him 100%. We don't. 01;01;24;11 - 01;01;26;01 Kevin Deserve it. He does. 01;01;26;01 - 01;01;26;25 Phil Yeah. Yeah. 01;01;27;14 - 01;01;35;04 Kevin And auditors like I'm going to leave you with some the because it's the law now. We got to we got to actually. 01;01;35;14 - 01;01;42;08 Phil Yeah. He literally says things like, like I would actually but it's against the law. Yeah. 01;01;43;01 - 01;02;09;15 Kevin So yeah. Basically and nobody has names and you don't get a name unless you earn a name in this country. The town also doesn't have a name, it has a number and towns don't get names unless they earn it. So even the auditor is that's just as title. The auditor does not have a name and we find out that the people in that are allow it. 01;02;09;15 - 01;02;31;03 Kevin The only people allowed in the capital are people with names. Because you have if you have a name means you have status. Yes. And that because they introduce themselves as having names, everybody assumed that they were higher status than them. Like the auditor from the auditor on down, everybody is like, well, clearly these are these are the main characters, right? 01;02;31;08 - 01;02;32;21 Phil We're just in pieces. 01;02;32;21 - 01;02;34;19 Kevin And we're just in pieces. But remember. 01;02;34;19 - 01;02;37;23 Phil Guys, fantasy doesn't have metaphors. 01;02;38;05 - 01;03;03;28 Kevin Now, that does not have metaphors. None. So they, they, they, they figure out that the, you know, this is they need to get to the capital. They need to talk to the king. That one point the capital's name was like the name of the capital has been changed since last time. Crows It was alive. It was like giraffes and now it's Drax Inn or something like that. 01;03;03;28 - 01;03;24;29 Kevin It was just like a subtle change in the spelling of it. But yeah, they get hitch a ride with the auditor in the orders, like, Well, I'll take you in that direction, but I am not allowed in the capital because I do not have a name and I like, okay, well, let's get going. And that's pretty much the end of the first third of the book. 01;03;25;06 - 01;03;49;25 Phil Yeah. Yeah. And that last chapter or two that's actually we'll get into this here. But that was actually the first bit of like law that I thought was really intriguing and interesting, like this whole city dedicated to this king in this way and that we were starting to get into some interesting stuff here. Yeah, but it's taken a minute. 01;03;50;05 - 01;04;16;28 Kevin It's taking quite a long time. So yeah, so far this book is kind of boring. Yeah. In terms of, in terms of what it is. I mean, the writing is fine. You know, it's Michael Stackpole and he is going to he's going to write write yourself a little, you know, some really good descriptions in there. But it doesn't feel like here's what it feels like. 01;04;16;28 - 01;04;29;04 Kevin Not dark souls. It feels like here's what it feels like. Michael Stackpole had a fantasy story already written and then graph did some dark souls elements onto it. 01;04;29;16 - 01;04;39;15 Phil Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There were there, there were a couple of moments that made me think a little bit of shadow. Keep in that. 01;04;39;23 - 01;04;43;25 Kevin Sure. Yeah. Totally. The generic fantasy setting and. 01;04;43;25 - 01;05;04;21 Phil We're gathering and here's the thing and correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the things that always fascinated me about the Dark Souls world and what you saw in it was that it was a very lonely place, very a very, very lonely place filled with hostels. And the the friendlies, so to speak, were few and far between. 01;05;05;01 - 01;05;05;12 Phil And then the. 01;05;05;12 - 01;05;10;28 Kevin First person that were were nuts, like they had lost their minds from being so alone, you. 01;05;10;28 - 01;05;20;06 Phil Know? So you felt like you were one of the only sane people in this world. And now so we've got four characters, none of which are really all that interesting. 01;05;20;20 - 01;05;48;05 Kevin There is not a single. One of the main characters is interesting. Maybe what's her name? Philip. Whatever. Yeah, she, she might have some, some teeth to her, but otherwise I'm not I'm not interested in any of the main characters. Yeah, SERENO'S might have something interesting I like. Maybe it'll come back around that he was never supposed to get out because for like a very specific reason, he was the bad guy all along, whatever. 01;05;48;19 - 01;05;59;06 Kevin But I don't that that also that was like a single breadcrumb in the first chapter that really hasn't been touched back on in the young in the 12th chapter. 01;05;59;13 - 01;06;00;29 Phil We haven't revisited that though. 01;06;02;02 - 01;06;26;00 Kevin I think there is something to be said about. Yeah, the it's not there's not enough loneliness in it. And there is one of the things that I like best, I'm a, I'm a big dark souls to defender. A lot of people don't like it. I love Dark Souls two, I especially love the opening cinematic of Dark Souls two. 01;06;27;00 - 01;06;57;07 Kevin Whereas Dark Souls one and three are more about the worlds and the state of the worlds, and these powerful forces, these lords and all that that are fighting to bend what remains of this world to their whim, dark Souls two Opening Cinematic is about your character and about how everything will fade. You're going to die over and over again. 01;06;57;14 - 01;07;34;19 Kevin It everything you know, everything you love is going to fade. And it's like it has this like the this the guy, your your character is standing in a room with his wife and his child. And as they say this, like their faces start to like melt away into like this, like ethereal, like mist, like the the idea, the concept of that the UN death is the primary motivating factor in the Dark Souls Games is that this undead? 01;07;34;19 - 01;08;05;18 Kevin It's a curse, right? And so far it's it doesn't feel like it's a curse. It's a curse that because the more you die, the closer become to losing everything, to becoming the hollow that has lost every bit of memory to the touch, to go back to your touchpoints in your life, they're all faded away. And that's the thing that's missing from this book is that it's it's less about the fear of losing yourself there. 01;08;05;18 - 01;08;32;09 Kevin It isn't there. That fear of losing yourself is not. That's the stakes. Yeah. Is is losing you die and you wake up as an undead. And now, instead of just the sweet embrace of death, you might be punished with the with cruelly decaying over hundreds of years and losing every bit of memory of every person that you ever loved. 01;08;32;19 - 01;08;47;23 Kevin Right. That is the that is the and that is the curse of the dark soul. That is that is that is the the curse of the first sin. That's that it's all this stuff and it's super heavy, and it's just not here yet. 01;08;47;23 - 01;08;50;12 Phil And it's I didn't, I didn't get any of that, like. 01;08;50;12 - 01;08;52;00 Kevin Yeah, no, that's the thing that. 01;08;52;00 - 01;08;53;13 Phil Feels like another fantasy. 01;08;53;13 - 01;09;14;23 Kevin And that's the through line that can carries you through the main three games. And I'm not saying you can't just tell another story set in the Dark Souls World, which a lot of that a lot of the time as you're going through Dark Souls, you have a whole bunch of subplots that are not necessarily about kindling the flame or whatever you have in Dark Souls. 01;09;14;23 - 01;09;57;28 Kevin Two, you have a character who is traveled from a faraway land, and she is just there to try to find her brother before. She forgets who her brother is. Wow. Okay. And it's like it is an it is this really heavy story. It's one of the most beautiful stories in the Dark Souls trilogy. And that's the kind of stuff that is that's the good stuff in Dark Souls and you can really get away with a lot with telling a story of of introspection into who you are and why you are and your place in the grand scheme of things. 01;09;58;14 - 01;10;18;08 Kevin But then take it and make it super personal. You can you could do that. You can make this big coerced world into a very personal thing. And right now, what we're getting in the book, as you said, is for, you know, a daddy party filled with some people who, you know, aren't that into roleplaying. 01;10;19;00 - 01;10;19;04 Phil Yeah. 01;10;19;14 - 01;10;28;01 Kevin She like they like dwarf undead. Like they like to combat, you know, they like the combat part of daddy. They don't really role play that much. They don't get into their characters. 01;10;28;18 - 01;10;28;29 Phil Right? 01;10;29;15 - 01;10;33;09 Kevin So that's kind of the vibe I'm getting right now in the book. 01;10;33;17 - 01;10;39;24 Phil Yeah, yeah. I don't again, I don't know a lot of I've watched a few. What was the who's the YouTube revathi Vidya. 01;10;39;25 - 01;10;43;05 Kevin Vardy Vidya who does the the story summaries? 01;10;43;06 - 01;11;02;24 Phil I've seen I've seen some of those. I know how deep this stuff goes. And I think so far, you know, if people are hoping that this is a novel that's going to be connecting elements of that already established mythology and that sort of thing, it's not yet like that's what this book is. 01;11;02;29 - 01;11;25;07 Kevin Yeah. And honestly, I mean, that's the thing is like, um, and as I was, as I might have said, you don't have to even get into the mythology, but you do have to get into the themes, right? Of, of the, of and the themes are, are very they're not here. They felt like they could have been in chapter one. 01;11;25;12 - 01;11;34;15 Kevin Like Chapter one got gets off to a really strong start with with him trying remember what it is to be alive. I was like, oh, this is the good shit. Yeah. And there's. 01;11;34;15 - 01;11;37;16 Phil Some really wonderful introspection in that first chapter. 01;11;37;24 - 01;11;48;19 Kevin And really then it just starts kind of slowly meandering to like, there's a lot of talk, like walking and talking. It's like, Come on, this is Aaron Sorkin's Dark Souls that. 01;11;48;20 - 01;12;10;26 Phil Takes and what it feels like. And the other thing that I wanted more of was like I was hoping more of the exploration aspect of it because it's such a huge series of worlds and all kinds of like, you know, different landscapes and places and stuff. And there's like that Indiana Jones vibe of like, we're going this exotic locale and going to that one. 01;12;11;05 - 01;12;29;26 Phil And we do get some. You briefly talked about them going away and finding food for the humans and they find and they find some he finds some grain and he's not sure if this is going to be edible, but he kind of describes it and takes it back to see if anyone will recognize it. And I was like, that was a moment. 01;12;29;26 - 01;12;50;00 Phil I wrote a note, I was like, I'd like more of this. You're building up. We get like, there are mountains over here and there's this over there. But I don't know. It didn't it thrill me on the same level that yeah, I feel like I almost feel like we need urban weight to come in and punch up. 01;12;50;28 - 01;13;05;18 Kevin Punch up some of this, like the landscape description. Yeah. Like, I mean, Michael Stackpole is, is a very, very good writer. He's written a lot of great things. But this is not I don't know, it doesn't feel like his bailiwick necessarily. 01;13;05;18 - 01;13;09;22 Phil No. This is like actually this might be Stackpole out of his depths. 01;13;10;01 - 01;13;10;13 Kevin Yeah. 01;13;11;07 - 01;13;23;19 Phil Which which is kind of insane to say because like, I have a lot of respect for that man. He's a great writer. He's a very important writer. But you don't give the impression that he knows a whole lot about. 01;13;23;29 - 01;13;49;28 Kevin He doesn't necessarily. Yeah, he might not be grasping the themes. And as we've always found out in the past, that might be a function of the client, you know? Yeah, it could be, you know, the I forget Fromsoftware is owned by a conglomerate, like a magazine conglomerate or something like that. And it might just be something like they wanted a book, they. 01;13;50;07 - 01;13;52;19 Phil They hired something generic and easy for people. 01;13;52;19 - 01;14;07;28 Kevin It's like, let's get, let's get one of the biggest fantasy writers. Like fantasy writers that we can get that will work for hire. They got Michael Stackpole and they're like, you're, you know, right, this is it. And that's like that could easily be what happens. 01;14;07;28 - 01;14;08;18 Phil Absolute. 01;14;08;25 - 01;14;35;13 Kevin From what we what we found out with how these books kind of come to be, sometimes that could easily be what happened, where it was just a higher up from the I think it's Cat Achour Corporation which is the one they're the that's the company that owns Fromsoftware is like they what property we have that could be turned into some it's a media tired right okay guaranteed. 01;14;35;13 - 01;14;44;12 Phil To us a little a little bit of cash, you know. Yeah, right. All right. No, I don't want you to go into deep, heavy literary themes here. I want you to make me a fantasy novel that. 01;14;44;17 - 01;14;49;18 Kevin Make me a fantasy novel that Scott can read. Make me a 300 page fantasy novel that's called Dark Souls. 01;14;49;27 - 01;14;56;28 Phil Pretty much. Pretty much. And it's disappointing. But, Lord, we, you know, that is how this works. 01;14;57;08 - 01;15;20;14 Kevin And we'll see where we're obviously going to finish the book and we're going to carry we will carry forth into into the and that's the other thing is like all the Dark Souls, NPCs that you meet are fucking weird and have their own little quirks and like give, just give me something. And they laugh a lot. They, they do a lot of weird laughing. 01;15;21;04 - 01;15;25;13 Phil It's a way less weird book than I expected it. 01;15;25;14 - 01;15;30;11 Kevin It needed to be expected. So that's it. That's really is the book needed to crank its weirdness up. 01;15;30;11 - 01;15;30;28 Phil Yeah. 01;15;30;29 - 01;15;32;07 Kevin To 11 you know. 01;15;33;18 - 01;15;43;08 Phil It's a shame really was expecting a far more bizarre kind of journey than the one we're getting so far. But, you know, we've seen things get turned around in the past. 01;15;43;17 - 01;15;53;28 Kevin Fingers crossed. It's fingers crossed it'll turn around. I mean, normally we get a lot of strong start, weak endings. Yeah, maybe this will be the reverse where. 01;15;53;28 - 01;15;56;11 Phil It's as always, we'd love to be proven wrong. 01;15;56;11 - 01;16;18;19 Kevin We would love to be proven wrong. Yes. So, um, and this has gotten more relevant, the voice I do for, for this segment because, because it's going to there's is going to be a remake even though they change the guy's voice. It's a it's a different voice actor. But Phil, what do you play in. 01;16;18;27 - 01;16;58;01 Phil Oh, well I'm so glad you asked. I played two I've been playing two games in particular in the past couple of weeks. I recently beat Strange Horticulture, a really interesting little indie game, very witchy game, kind of a strategy. Basically, you inherit this, you know, horticulturalists kind of store, very, very which store? And you're meeting all the people in the town and you've got plants that you can go all over the map to discover new plants and identify them based on descriptions. 01;16;58;01 - 01;17;15;18 Phil You've got a book that you have to actually flip through to read. Like sometimes you need the people identified by the Latin names. You got to flip through to find it. And that's Latin names. Sometimes they'll they'll say what it's meant to do and you have to read up, you know, find the the plants that do this or cure that. 01;17;16;00 - 01;17;41;13 Phil And then you have to label them. It's very it's very labor intensive in a certain kind of a way. Yeah, it's really neat. It took me about 6 hours or so to. Beat it. See if if you like those kinds of strategies, little puzzle kind of logic, puzzle sorts of games. I highly recommend it. It was really interesting. 01;17;41;19 - 01;18;07;18 Phil Again, didn't take me very long and they're like eight or nine endings or something. So oh, I'm probably going to come back to it at some point, try it again. So I really enjoyed that. On the other hand, I've also been playing Warhammer 40 K, what do you four can call? It's got like the longest of chaos gate demon hunters, which is basically Warhammer X come. 01;18;07;18 - 01;18;33;11 Phil And I heard a lot of mixed reviews about it and I was flabbergasted because I was like, Jesus, it's like, I'm not a huge Gray Knights fan, but it's Warhammer 40 K XCOM. How do you miss that? How do you drop the ball on that? And the short answer is you don't make it very interesting. It's just there is a ton of variety in it. 01;18;33;11 - 01;19;04;11 Phil Right. And it doesn't it doesn't give you the level of variety and that XCOM gives you, for example, most versions are basically the same. The bad guys are basically the same. The the good guys are basically the same. And it doesn't do a great job of explaining certain customizable aspects of it. And Even when you do customize the shit out of it, which you can do, your guys all kind of look the same. 01;19;04;11 - 01;19;23;27 Phil And sure, it lacks a lot of the charm that Firaxis X come and XCOM two has. Right? I've put about nine or 10 hours into it and I'm sure I'm going to play it a little more. But I think I've reached the point where it's just like, okay, I know what this is doing and it's, it's, it's a shame. 01;19;23;27 - 01;19;28;23 Phil I would love to see some DLC where they kind of tighten it up and give a little more. 01;19;28;26 - 01;19;30;18 Kevin Of that more, more to chew on. 01;19;30;20 - 01;19;36;08 Phil Right. I would like that because it's not a cheap game for an indie game. It's like 45 bucks. 01;19;36;08 - 01;19;37;01 Kevin Oh, Jesus. 01;19;37;06 - 01;19;43;11 Phil Yeah, it's. And I, it. I got it because you know me, I'm going to play every 40. 01;19;43;21 - 01;19;45;09 Kevin It's a 40 K game and. 01;19;45;24 - 01;20;02;22 Phil Right. What was I supposed to do. Yeah, but I cannot in good faith recommend it based on that price. Sure. Like if you can get it for like 20 bucks or something like that, then yeah, I'd say it's worth it's worth a whirl just to see if it's because I've read some people say they really loved it. Yeah. 01;20;03;08 - 01;20;09;13 Phil But at 45 bucks that's, that's a little much. Yeah. So what are you playing, Kevin? 01;20;10;17 - 01;20;30;24 Kevin Oh, boy. Well, I mean, I have been playing a whole mess of of mid tier first person shooters, but we're not going to get enough. We're not going to get into those on this podcast. You have to listen those on board time. But something that wasn't mid-tier that I finished recently was Titanfall two. I had. 01;20;30;25 - 01;20;32;09 Phil Oh, I liked that. 01;20;32;09 - 01;20;52;09 Kevin Game the, the campaign for Titanfall two so good such a such a such a good game. It'll make you it'll make you cry by the end. There's there will be tears. What else. And I just started trying to play pathologic to. 01;20;52;25 - 01;20;53;28 Phil Oh, okay. Wow. 01;20;53;29 - 01;21;23;21 Kevin All right. I've put about 4 hours into that bad boy. God, that's a tough game. You it's a just play. It's is it's tough on so what to get into the groove of it you're like all right well it's it's just a first person. Uh, it has like, some survival to it where you got to. You got to eat, you got to drink, you got to keep your health up and all that stuff, and you just do missions for people. 01;21;24;08 - 01;21;50;09 Kevin But it's caked in this very thick layer of folklore that is feels almost impenetrable because you're coming into it. And there's no there's no like touchstone for the folklore in pathologic two. It's just like it's just there and it's dense. Jonesy, are you going to knock something over back there like he is? 01;21;50;17 - 01;21;56;12 Phil He is just he thinnest finished of ice. Jonesy It. 01;21;56;13 - 01;22;01;07 Kevin Is. It's like I'm going to climb on these stacks and I think they're going to hold me. 01;22;01;26 - 01;22;13;13 Phil It's probably going to work out or he's going to die under 40 of RPG books. These are all hardcover, you idiot. They will kill you. 01;22;13;13 - 01;22;14;04 Kevin Come on, Cat. 01;22;15;14 - 01;22;16;14 Phil He's his father. Son? 01;22;16;24 - 01;22;17;06 Kevin Yes. 01;22;17;09 - 01;22;20;18 Phil So this. 01;22;20;18 - 01;22;26;08 Kevin So, yeah. Pathologic two. I've been playing a little bit that I beat, uh, faith. 01;22;27;04 - 01;22;28;17 Phil Oh, the, the. 01;22;28;29 - 01;22;48;26 Kevin The unholy trilogy. Yeah. So I play Beginning to end. I read a play chapter one, chapter two. And then when it's chapter three, really good. I mean, as a single experience, it'll take you about like 6 hours or so to get through all three chapters. And that's just me like kind of going through and rolling credits on each. 01;22;49;05 - 01;23;10;13 Kevin I, I didn't do, I wasn't super completionist about getting all the notes or all the endings or what have you. And in faith, chapter three I found out I missed like there's a whole it's like the game is actually probably twice the length that I thought it was because there's a whole bunch of stuff, more stuff in each location that you go to that you can do that. 01;23;10;13 - 01;23;25;03 Kevin I didn't even realize necessarily so, but yeah, it's it's good time and I really enjoyed I really enjoyed how it wraps up because I think it's supposed to be the last of the faith games. 01;23;25;16 - 01;23;28;11 Phil Yeah, he's got to be moving on to new projects and this. 01;23;28;18 - 01;23;41;23 Kevin I think he wants to, he probably wants to just be wrapped up on it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's pretty much what, what I've been playing and. Oh and then I just decided to install Red Dead Redemption two on my steam deck. 01;23;42;01 - 01;23;44;29 Phil I saw that. How does that play on the steam deck? 01;23;44;29 - 01;23;49;25 Kevin Beautifully. As smooth as butter, freaking wild. 01;23;50;01 - 01;23;52;01 Phil And it feels good to play and everything feels. 01;23;52;01 - 01;24;04;11 Kevin Good to play too. So I can just sit there in my bed and and, you know, I can I can walk around and the the the great wilderness of of the Grizzly Mountains. 01;24;05;28 - 01;24;09;21 Phil Oh, that game is so stupidly beautiful. It is. 01;24;09;29 - 01;24;16;28 Kevin It is. You know what? If they did a red dead redemption two or first one novelization Urban. 01;24;16;28 - 01;24;27;18 Phil Wait Oh, without question. Without question. Oh, yeah. He'd be the guy. He'd be a I mean. Yeah, after yeah after the far cry. 01;24;28;02 - 01;24;40;02 Kevin I just like I can I can feel it. I can feel his descriptions of, like, the landscape already. Yeah, yeah. Grab me, wrap it around me like a warm blanket. 01;24;40;10 - 01;24;45;15 Phil It would have to be like 1200 pages long, but goddamn. Yeah, absolutely. 01;24;45;20 - 01;24;58;15 Kevin Absolutely John Marston walked out of the small house looking out over the plains as tumbleweeds blew down from the Norther Mountains. So good. 01;24;59;21 - 01;25;02;04 Phil Audrey, that thing. Oh, my God, that's great. 01;25;04;02 - 01;25;16;03 Kevin But, yeah, that's it. And that'll do it for for tonight's episode. If you want to follow us on social media, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be on Twitter. 01;25;16;03 - 01;25;17;01 Phil Yeah, yeah. 01;25;17;09 - 01;25;46;05 Kevin Given its new owner. But yeah, follow us on social media at Pixelate Pad on both Twitter and Instagram and go to our website Pixelate podcast, where we post every episode with a transcript of the episode. So go ahead and check that out. If you can do a sell and rate five stars on the podcast platform that you listen to us on, that'll be Apple Podcasts or Spotify or even good. 01;25;46;05 - 01;25;57;12 Kevin It would do a world of good for our ratings on those websites, so that'll do it for tonight's episode. Have a good evening, everyone. 01;25;57;27 - 01;26;12;09 Phil Bye bye, Jonesy. You bastard. And.