the Fallout Feed #560: Xbox Bethesda Layoffs + Fallout TV Show S2 E1 Discussion

In the first half we talk gameplay in Fallout, Starfield, and Cyberpunk 2077 followed by a serious discussion of the Xbox and Bethesda layoffs so far. Then in the back half it's Vault-Talk, our recap of Season 2 Episode 1 of the Fallout TV Show.

04:00 Gameplay
33:12 Xbox and Bethesda Layoffs
56:00 Vault-Talk

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Transcript

SPEAKER_14 0:27

Hello and welcome to the five hundred and sixtieth edition of the Fallout feed. I am Andrew, joined by a flock of my favorite Fallout folks. Tonight I've got Jess. What's up, Jess?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Hey, Andrew. Greets everybody. It's me. I'm Flocken.

SPEAKER_14 0:44

And Ray. What is going on, Ray? Hello, hello. So tonight, everybody, we'll go over some gameplay where we've been getting into recently, right off the top. And then we are maybe switching gears, rolling into our next. This is the quickest roundtable turnaround I think we've ever done, by the way, going from this the our previous New Vegas round table straight into this Fallout show season two roundtable, which isn't really a round table. We're just we're watching the show, guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Slightly easier round table. They did the schedule for us, you know, instead of us having to do it. They're like episode one, two, three. They're actually label. Really help.

SPEAKER_14 1:24

So how are you gonna get out of your comfort zone? You gotta play a different playstyle somehow. We'll watch the episodes in reverse. How about that?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

There we go. We'll play devil's advocate with our own emotions here because the season is gonna really put us through it, you know?

SPEAKER_14 1:39

It is, it is. Alright, so yeah. So we got some gameplay off the top. Vault talk. We'll go through that first episode of season two of the Fallout TV show on Amazon Prime. Check it off if you don't have it. Do they do they put out a like a DVD box set for those poor souls who don't have Prime? Both of those people in the United States at this point who don't have Amazon Prime.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

And people who want to actually preserve their physical collections and you know have it with the extras.

SPEAKER_14 2:09

So that an unnecessary just burn them.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

I know there's so 2015 at this point, especially after Sony's announcement. But but they still make Blu-rays. And yeah, I actually got the season one disc set the other day. So I do have season one with all the extras.

SPEAKER_15 2:24

Oh, did you?

SPEAKER_00 2:25

And we'll get it for season two when that's available. Yeah. Funny thing on this one, a lot of the extras they added for the box set are clips that they had on Prime. So if you're on Prime and you know you can watch the little outtakes, like these little two-minute, three-minute vignettes. The majority of what's included on the Blu-ray are those things and then a few clips for the YouTube. So there aren't many exclusive bits, but still it's all in one place.

SPEAKER_14 2:50

I like the bits of Maximus and the big foam-headed vault boy playing games on the couch and stuff. I think those are fun.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Those ads have been wicked fun. Some people are annoyed because they're so unserious. As Bethesda has been doing those for Fallout in General, Fallout 76, and for the TV show. Well, I couldn't say that was airing, the ones with Maximus. But after basically after the ones to the TV show with Maximus, they said, hey, let's kind of keep this going. So essentially, Vault Boy is doing goofy ads for the games. And some people are like, this is so unserious for Fallout. But I feel like that's really who Vault Boy is. Like Vault Boy was very much a Mickey Mouse of the time, you know, just a goofy cartoon mouse scot in goofy situation. So that's what they're doing with him.

SPEAKER_14 3:37

What do they expect him to do? Like, you're gonna come out and Vault Boy's gonna have like the Rambo bandana on, he's that eye patch, like a grenade in one hand, like he's ready to rumble.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Exactly. He's representing pre-war Vault Tech, not the post-war one.

SPEAKER_14 3:52

Oh boy. They don't know much anymore. Alright, you guys. Well, let's see what everyone's getting into. How about that? Ray, do you have a chance playing the video games this week, sir? What have you been playing?

SPEAKER_13 4:04

Uh pretty much the same old, same old.

SPEAKER_14 4:08

Lots of Nintendo Golf and uh stuff like that, right?

SPEAKER_13 4:12

Yeah, Wii tennis. All my favorite console stuff.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

How do you make a new character for Wii Tennis? Like, do you just create a new Mi after every 10 rounds?

SPEAKER_13 4:23

Oh yeah. So I ran into the same thing that Silior did running on the Long 15 mod, in that our super high-level characters were not necessarily quite geared towards what this mod kind of is intended for. So I think he started a character that he had previously gotten, you know, all the way up to Wapin level three. I wasn't quite as aggressive.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Oh no. Oh, you started earlier.

SPEAKER_13 4:56

So I took my Monty character uh back to uh the Lonesome Road so that I knew that I would be able to get at least three levels during that time. I dumped all of those points into harder, which is where I came up short initially. Uh and also I took so at the end of Lonesome Road, you get a point to your specials. And so I put that in charisma.

SPEAKER_15 5:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_13 5:27

I did a one of my level ups was an even level, so I got a perk or yeah, a perk. And I took intense training and took a point in charisma.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

So what was the roadblock that you both ran into here? I mean, you needed more charisma and barter in order to progress very far in Lonesome Road, or I mean sorry, yeah.

SPEAKER_13 5:52

There's a it's there's a lot of uh speech checks, and I think the other thing that Deselia ran into was that you need a lot of NCR cred. And uh since his character wasn't uh you know with the NCR, he was coming up short on that.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Definitely.

SPEAKER_13 6:09

So my character had a one in charisma, and so for the entire run of the game during the round table, I stayed true to that that one in charisma and never raised it uh beyond that. So that's where my shortcoming came in was in harder and charisma.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yeah, Long Coen was like, who you calling a dump stat?

SPEAKER_13 6:32

Yeah. Exactly. So it it's already paid off. I was a I was able to convince the first guy that you run into at the at the Mojave Outpost that hires you to do a job. I convinced him to pay me more. And I know there was a there's a couple of quests that I haven't gotten back to yet that do require a barter check. So I'll get there.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

And that'll open up additional side content. But you did you get stuck on the main quest line of it, or was it essentially side content that you guys were locked out of?

SPEAKER_13 7:07

I never really went down the main too much. It was mostly side stuff that I started running into trouble and thought, you know what, I can just need to might as well optimize the build. Yeah, kind of back this out a little bit. You know, I still have a speech of a hundred, guns a hundred, sneak a hundred. All the important stuff is still there. But it's uh it's a really cool mod, it'll got a lot of good little side quests on it. So I've already kind of almost got up to where I was before. Because fortunately, I had spent a lot of time just wandering around discovering all the locations and everything. So I've been able to streamline that a little bit now that I know where stuff is.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

You got the lay of the land or the lay of the road, as it were.

SPEAKER_13 7:53

I've been playing a lot of Genesis and in between the last show and now they had an update.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Oh, really? Okay, another one coming fast and furious.

SPEAKER_13 8:07

Unfortunately, so I I was really excited because it was you know, I had bumped up against the limit of where their the main quest had been, but that wasn't what they updated. They actually updated the mantis quest line. Oh really? So they completely revamped it. And so now you're so the mantis is a a Mandalorian and so the reward at the end of the quest is a set of Mandalorian armor. And the bummer is that so it has a soft lock at level 75 because it's a high-level armor set, and they don't level the armor to the character level. And so if they let you go in early, you'd end up with in-game armor too early in the game. So they soft lock the quest line at level 75. Evidently, there's a certain set of conditions that you can activate the quest mid to late game, but we'll see. Finished up getting all the stuff I needed to build my create dragon armor. So I built that. That's what I'm running around in now. And so we'll see. I was happy with one of the things that they changed was so you can recruit a Wookiee in Dantu City, and previously it was named Chewbacca, and they recognized that that was not, you know, not appropriate, not not not lore-friendly, not lore friendly. It should be there at that time, so they've now it's just an obscure Wookiee rebel named Garcon.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Sweet, that's a good Wookiee name. Does he make Wookie noises?

SPEAKER_13 10:07

Yeah, he definitely makes Wookiee noises and speaks Wookie, so you can't understand.

SPEAKER_14 10:11

What do you mean you can't understand? Everyone just replies to him in English in the whole movie. Like everyone understands him. It's weird how many people speak Wookiee. There is it's weird that he refuses to speak English, huh? If they can understand everyone, huh?

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Maybe he can't. Maybe he doesn't have the vocal cords for English. He only has the vocal cords for Wookie Tude.

SPEAKER_14 10:31

What do they call it? They call it common or something.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Wookiees. Yeah.

SPEAKER_14 10:35

Didn't mean English. What's the difference?

SPEAKER_00 10:38

The Ewok language and the Wookiees language. Do we know?

SPEAKER_13 10:41

Yubnub?

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yubnub. That's the answer to everything.

SPEAKER_13 10:47

So I got really excited because I did I did go to Indoor and found the the Wookiees. Not the Wookiees, the Ewoks. And their little tree cities. The little jerks are hostile. They poking you with sticks?

unknown 11:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

You're like, oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_14 11:11

They were hostile in the movies, too. I mean, until C3PO brainwashed them by pretending to be a golden god.

SPEAKER_13 11:19

Maybe that's what I need to do.

SPEAKER_14 11:21

Yeah, pretend to be a pretend to be a some sort of higher entity and they'll bow down to you.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

So but I'm glad they're adding to it. I'm glad that Scarfield Genesis is still evolving and all this new stuff being added. That's great.

SPEAKER_13 11:36

Yep. So I wrapped up the Rebel Quest line. Unfortunately, they just give you the uh War Eagle or whatever it is. Star Eagle.

SPEAKER_14 11:48

Millennium Falcon, please. You can you can buy a Millennium Falcon. Is the end you said you just beat the Rebel Quest line? Is that blowing up a Death Star of some kind or no battle station or anything fun?

SPEAKER_13 12:01

Well Hoff was you kill a you kill a moth and take out his network and uh you take out Gallifrey and did you say Gallifrey?

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Really? They have a planet Gallifrey?

SPEAKER_14 12:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

That is the home of the Time Lords, for those who don't know.

SPEAKER_14 12:22

I don't. What is is that a Who?

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah, Doctor Who. Yeah. I don't know if there's a Gallifrey in in Star Wars lore, but they might have just brought it in as a read the books and stuff.

SPEAKER_14 12:33

You know, there's lots of lots of ancillary material.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

That's awesome. This is just such a cool overhaul mod. Like they're doing so much with it. I'm glad they're still working on it.

SPEAKER_13 12:43

Oh yeah, they're and they're working feverishly. So it's pretty cool. So I've been you know putting some time into Skyrim, playing the Nordic Souls mod. That's been fun. And No Man's Sky, we finally got to complete the community event. And so we were able to finish the expedition.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Or whatever it was you guys were doing.

SPEAKER_13 13:10

We were trying to gather technology from the hostile forces of the heart of glass. So and was finally able to wipe out the big heart of glass boss and free the galaxy from their oppression.

SPEAKER_14 13:28

I only know the Blondie song. What is the Heart of Glass? Is that a real thing? Is that a reference to something? Is that like a treasure of some kind or something? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Yeah, I don't know either. Just a cool name, The Heart of Something. Now, to be fair, I don't know if that's as cool as wiping out two million infestations in 76. But still, good job, No Man's Sky Players.

SPEAKER_12 13:49

Oh, good job with your dump trucks.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Good job with your heart of glass and your dump truck or technology.

SPEAKER_14 13:57

Condescending can you get right? Jeez.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

This is a fallout show. I've got to represent Fallout Superiority.

SPEAKER_13 14:05

Yep, so I think that's about all I've managed to do. Alrighty.

SPEAKER_14 14:12

Sounds like a good week, though. Yeah, lots of fun. Hey, but how about you, Jess? Do you get a chance to have any fun with some Veggie games this week?

SPEAKER_00 14:18

So yeah, it's been, you know, two weeks since we last recorded, and I'm still wicked busy, but I'm getting in some good game time. In fact, I have one to talk about, but I'm finally stepping into a big game and excited to pow out with Ray about this and kind of follow the journey. But one achievement I got this week, I finally broke 300,000 gamer score. Like I mentioned, I've just been on an indie game kick lately. You know, some of them are serious, kind of hardcore puzzle games and hardcore catfinding games, roguelike games, and then yes, and some of them have been catfinding games. Or I played one that was basically Dima's Blue Nightmare, the game.

SPEAKER_15 14:56

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

The entire game is a maze and laser puzzles all in blue. The whole time I was playing this, I'm like, man, Andrew would hate this. Andrew would really hate that.

SPEAKER_14 15:05

I don't know. I love puzzle games. It's you just have to hate Dima. Whatever. Go visit episodes 223, 356, 418, and 512 if you want to catch up on all of my feelings on Dima.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

All of the Dima fun. I just dropped a picture of the game in Discord, figuring out these little laser puzzles. Yeah, that's what I'm playing.

SPEAKER_14 15:29

I'm gonna go see it.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

I finished it. It was good for achievement points, but I broke 300k, which is great. But I had the realization at this point that I haven't really locked into a hardcore RPG or serious RPG outside of New Vegas for the round table and what we play, you know, Starfield, Fall 76, follow up New Vegas recently, since last summer when I was doing the Oblivion Remixer and then Final Fantasy Tactics. And since then, it's been almost a year that I haven't locked into a deep RPG, which is I mean, that's what I do, right?

SPEAKER_14 16:02

So Vegas not a role-playing game.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Oh no, it is. It is, but we've played it a bunch before. And we're playing it slowly for the round table.

SPEAKER_14 16:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Just and the way that you lock in. You let a game kind of take over where you're like, you're putting in 15, 20 hours a week or more if you're retired and just really enjoying it. I've been feeling a little bit adrift on my gaming because of it, I think. And so I'm like, okay, I need to lock in. A couple friends have been playing Cyberpunk again. And Ray has always talked about Cyberpunk. We've had many discussions over the years about it going back. And the reason I didn't jump into it, I mean, first we all know that there were issues at release, but I figured, oh, I'll play Cyberpunk once it gets the next gen update for console and everything's polished. It's it's good now, guys. I promise it's good on console. And then when that happened and they announced the next DLC, I'm like, okay, well, the next DLC is right around that. And then it came out the same time as Starfield. And priorities.

SPEAKER_12 17:01

Womp.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Yeah, exactly. So it never happened. But we are now a little over five years since Star Punk released. It was like, what was it, December 2020 or something, Ray?

SPEAKER_13 17:11

About like good five years ago.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_13 17:14

Yeah, it's been a while.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Five and a half. So time has come. So I jumped in and unbeknownst to me, our friend Rando is also playing. And so that's awesome. He jumped in playing for the first time. A couple of people I know on Twitter are playing. Like, this is great. Okay. So my first time through, I made a nomad character. I hit up Ray and I said, Ray, what's the best start out of the different backgrounds? Because you've got nomad, you've got street kid, and you've got, is it corpo? Is the other one? Yeah. So, and that's obviously a corporate business dude. So you can be a business dude, a street dude, or a road dude.

SPEAKER_14 17:49

And nomad is a little bit more a road dude, a street dude, or a wall street dude.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Exactly. Exactly. And Ray said Nomad was interesting that he liked it. And that it has kind of Mad Max vibes too. So I'm like, okay, that's good. You know, that'll fit the wasteland aesthetic. So that's where I started. Made him like girl, you can't name your own character. They're all V. You're playing V. You're either playing male V or female V, but Odysseus Maker, I'm like, oh, her name's gonna be Riley because she was like Riley to me. And then I'm like, wait, I can't pick a name. But I can pick a face. And Ray, you will be impressed to know I took less than two hours to create my character.

SPEAKER_13 18:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

I finished. Did you hit on a random that you liked, or I I tried a bunch of randoms and locked in on one to start. But yeah, I saved when I got to the fuel station, looking at the mirror, and then you load into a fuel station when I finished character creation, and I had to go to bed then. I saved it and went to bed. An hour 58. So one hour 58 minutes in character creator.

SPEAKER_14 18:56

Under two hours, like she said. But it was there, are there like sliders and stuff, like a good character creator to get into?

SPEAKER_00 19:05

So some of it is sliders, but a lot of it is selecting pieces. It kind of like the Baldur's Gate character creator for the people who have done that. So you can choose from 20 eyes and 50 hairstyles, and so where you're kind of flipping through a little bit more like, say, the New Vegas character creator than the Fallout 4 character creator.

SPEAKER_14 19:21

Or making a me, like you mentioned earlier.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Yeah, make it a me. But but I had a lot of fun with it. I think she I think she's gonna be cool. So played that. I'm only, I don't know, like four hours in total, including my time with character creator, right? So I did a lot of exploration. I checked all the terminals. I tried to talk with people who didn't really want to talk around town at the start. You start out in that, you know.

SPEAKER_13 19:45

Yeah, the little desert down. Yeah, they're not real talkative there.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

That sheriff ain't too friendly. And you know, when you climb to top of that radio tower, but and then I discovered photo mode, which that was exciting because I knew it was gonna be good, but they don't teach you how to use it. I was pressing every button and looking at every menu, like, how do I do photo mode? I didn't want to look it up. And then finally, you get a photo mode tutorial pop-up when you get to this radio tower. I'm like, hell yeah, right here. I'm gonna take it one more step till I test photo mode.

SPEAKER_13 20:10

So so so in your four hours of gameplay, you made it to the top of the tower.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Close. Did a little more than that, did a little more than that. But uh yeah, that was fun and driving. You mentioned that it's a lot of driving. I actually the driving is okay so far.

SPEAKER_13 20:24

So yeah, it's it it has gotten so much better.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Yeah. Um, I'm glad to hear that because if it was not good before, then I am glad it is better now because I'm actually enjoying it. I like driving in some games, you know. I like driving in State of Decay 2, I like driving in the old like Saints Row games, but then like driving in some games so annoying. Like LA, what's that LA confidential game? Somebody in chat.

SPEAKER_13 20:52

LA Noir.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

LA Noir. Thank you, thank you, Red.

SPEAKER_13 20:55

Yes, I hated that.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Yeah, the driving in LA Noir was not good, not good. And I don't I haven't played many Rockstar games otherwise, so I don't know how the driving GTA is. I mean, you would think a game called Grand Theft Auto would'd be pretty good, but I I I don't know. I haven't played it. Yeah, I know you guys. Look, I have a few gaps in my in my repertoire.

SPEAKER_14 21:16

Did they do Red Dead?

SPEAKER_00 21:17

They did.

SPEAKER_14 21:19

I ran the carriages up the goddamn tree. Remember, I couldn't steer for your horse stuck between two trees. Yeah, I got my hor my carriage stuck between trees. I've run horses off of goddamn cliffs. Yeah, I don't know. If the if horses are equivalent of driving in GTA or something, but if you can take an indicator from it, I would say it's probably not their best feature.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Well, horses don't come with screen wheels. They don't have string wheels, they don't have pedals. It's kind of hard. Yeah. You gotta you gotta drive stickers.

SPEAKER_14 21:47

Cyberpunk, does it take place in like a real place world, or is it like a fictitious land?

SPEAKER_00 21:54

It's a fictitious land, so it's the future. The basic the city it takes place in is called Night City. And Cyberpunk as a setting has been, we mentioned how it was a tabletop game first that I had played back in the day, Cyberpunk 2020. And then they did Cyberpunk 2077, which is what the game is based on.

SPEAKER_13 22:11

Yeah. It's essentially Southern California.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yeah. A big amalgam, a city that kind of takes up part of the West Seaboard, right?

SPEAKER_14 22:19

Just 50 years in the future.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Yeah. It's at the border between North and South California, Northern and Southern California. That's part of the plot, right, Ray? I think from what I'm getting so far.

SPEAKER_14 22:30

Ooh, there's a border between Northern and Southern California. Civil War.

SPEAKER_13 22:34

All right. That's always been a thing.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

It's like the it's like the free states. The South is like the free states, I think, and the top is like the UC something. So yeah. They're trying to like reunite because in the world of cyberpunk, it's actually post-catastrophe, and there was a big division, and the states, you know, states broke up.

SPEAKER_13 22:53

Corporate wars.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Yep. Corporate wars. So anyway, I'm learning all about that. But so far I got in. I'm enjoying, I enjoyed the driving. No, but I met Jackie. I did the thing. I went through the checkpoints and did the chasing and the shooting. And I got into Night City, had a kick-ass montage.

SPEAKER_13 23:09

After you basically It's pretty wild.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Right? I enjoyed that. Like what a cool way to teach your character. So after you do all the intro stuff, and you can explore and take your time with it if you want, but essentially you have basically a goal. And once you finish the initial tutorial mission and get into the city, it gives you a montage about Welcome to Night City. And you see your character getting an apartment, initially moving in with their bud and meeting people, taking jobs, moving up in the world a little bit, learning the ropes, getting their own apartment. It's like this kick-ass like two-minute montage, Andrew. It's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_15 23:46

That's funny.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

And then you get dropped into your first real mission in the city after that. And I am about halfway through that. Me and Jackie doing a job. No, it's fun. And there's a tutorial in there too.

SPEAKER_14 23:58

And by job, do you mean like stealing something or you know planting something, that sort of thing? Or what sort of job do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 24:05

I'm actually a little fuzzy on the one we're doing right now, the first one. I think we are procuring something for someone.

SPEAKER_13 24:10

It's a rescue mission.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

It's a rescue mission. Who did they take? Who did they do I know yet? Okay.

SPEAKER_13 24:17

Yeah, if you well, if you did you do the tutorial on how to do how to the Militech tutorial about stealthing and yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Yeah, I just finished that. That's essentially where I am. I just went through all that stuff.

SPEAKER_13 24:33

So the next thing you'll do is be introduced to the job that you're going to do.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

So I'm excited. So it looks cool.

SPEAKER_13 24:44

You know, I've been I've just been chomping at the bit because I really don't want to tell you anything about the game. I want you to find all this stuff for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

So Fully Or in chat says, with how I play, the tutorial will last about 10 hours. I mean, I guess I am technically still in the tutorial, maybe, probably. But you know, I'm only four hours in.

SPEAKER_14 25:06

If you already found one pitfall with photo mode, please tell me there's no aspect of building or like home design or decoration or anything like that, please.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

But you can buy apartments, yeah, and get this photo mode. You can change the time of day, you can change the weather, you can add stickers and characters. You can be like, oh, I want to put this character in. So, like, it's funny because I don't even know who these people are yet. And I'm finding the menu, I'm like, oh, what's his lizard all about? I like lizards. Lizards are cool, and like this songbird character, I'm like, oh, she's pretty. But I don't know who any of these people are yet. But it's funny because in the montage, I saw some of the people I'd seen in photo mode. I'm like, oh, that person, that person.

SPEAKER_14 25:49

Whoa, you're that dude from my picture.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

You're that dude from photo mode. Like, I know I'm doing things backwards, but whatever.

SPEAKER_13 25:56

And there's uh there's fo there's pictures on your wall in your apartment that you can change to pictures that you have taken.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Oh, see, that is so sick. Yeah, I gotta say, it feels really good so far. I mean, it's a good first-person open world RPG, the kind that we love. And I should have played it forever ago. But like I said, things got in the way, and now I might be a little unhappy with certain things, just trying to deal with what's happening around Bethesda and Xbox right now, and I needed a good game to escape into. So that's what we are doing.

SPEAKER_14 26:33

That hang up your own art on the wall was like one of the first features I requested in Fallout 76.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Right.

SPEAKER_14 26:40

We all wanted that little camera in game that makes sense. Put a fucking dark room in there, and then you can develop your own pictures and have nice big posters on the wall.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

We get them as our loading screens, but it'd be nice for other people to see.

SPEAKER_13 26:55

Right. Lee hit the nail on the head. What do you say? Building in cyberpunk is your body mods.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Oh, baby, I am into body modification. Let's go. That's fun. I started checking there's like a threshold there, but I can get more cyber stuff and all that, and you know, implants. It's funny, they call them implants. First couple times I saw that. I'm like, why does everybody talk about implants? I know the boobs are big in this game, but then I realized, oh, wait, they're talking about implants and events. Random and I were joking because Boobenstein's ride again. So he didn't know this, but when you first start up the game and you start doing character creator, and then it pops on screen and like you're not wearing anything, you you're you're not, and it's very much in your face.

SPEAKER_13 27:39

It it depends on how you have your settings.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

But the default settings on console are defaulting to very nude, frontal, not just very nude.

SPEAKER_13 27:49

What on PC they're they default to covered.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Oh, yeah. No, they did not. I mean, I don't know about Randos, but mine sure defaulted to Nipple City.

SPEAKER_13 28:00

Yeah, that's what that means. So the so the the one bit of it the one bit of advice that I will give you that I don't think I really have to, because you do tend to take your time. Take your time. In the first city in the first section of the city, the Watson, where you'll be locked in for uh until you progress through the first act. Yeah, don't rush the first act.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

I won't. And I mean, you know I don't generally, like you're saying, but I'll be extra careful not to. Because I was looking at the map, it's big. When you simulate out, there's a bunch of sections. There's like Watson, San Domingo, Haywood, Doggy Dog Town, like City Center, a few things.

SPEAKER_13 28:41

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, just you'll you've you'll get more comfortable with your character if you just wander the streets and pick fights with people.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Okay. I mean, I don't intend to pick and fights with people, but we'll see what happens. Maybe they'll pick fights with me.

SPEAKER_13 28:57

No, no, you should. And they will. They, you know, if you come across the wrong people, get too close to them, they will fight you. But you know, just don't harm civilians. If they don't have a bounty, don't mess with them.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

I would never. I mean, that's gonna be my problem with this game.

SPEAKER_13 29:13

As soon as you're as soon as you're driving down the street and you you push the wrong button and all of a sudden you're careening through sidewalk.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Oh no. That's like what I'm trying to take my vehicle and Starfield into town. You don't do it. Sarah Morgan gets mad and everybody starts shooting you. It's no good.

SPEAKER_13 29:30

Yeah. Yeah. The cops the cops will will definitely set on you if you run people over.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

I'm just looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_13 29:39

Or, you know, throw a grenade.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Oh yeah, I mean, wrong buttons do happen.

SPEAKER_14 29:46

So what you're playing on, Jess?

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Xbox, yeah. Like usual. Yeah, on the Series X. Because they did come up with the next gen version, it's got everything now. I actually I went and because I had bought it, actually purchased it for real probably two, three years ago. Even though I hadn't ever installed and played it. But I had to pick up the what is the DLC? Phantom Liberty.

SPEAKER_15 30:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

So I I had to buy that, and that was full price on a sale. But because they made a number of changes with it, I wanted to make sure I had the full game when I started. So I don't know if it makes any difference in the base game, really, or just the extra missions, but did you say it's available on Game Pass now or yeah, the game the base game is on Game Pass.

unknown 30:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_13 30:31

Yeah, the the DLC adds some weapons and some other modifications.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

But yeah, I had purchased it to own, but but it is first person only, Andrew. It's the one thing about Cyberpunk.

SPEAKER_13 30:42

Whereas like The Witcher was third person only, so you know and then the other thing is that if you get an outfit that you really like, can I save it?

SPEAKER_00 30:53

Can I do it a clock?

SPEAKER_13 30:55

You do, and so you save the outfit, and then no matter what you put on after that, you always look like that.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Oh, that's sick. So it's like making a basic skin and then so it's kind of like you know, in some of the games, we can wear an outfit over top that dominates like a costume and fall it for. Like if I want to always, you know, look like silver shroud, I can do that even with armor underneath. Yep. Okay.

SPEAKER_13 31:21

Yeah, and so you can change you know whatever other pieces you want because you've if you've got you'll find some stuff that have buffs on them, most don't. But if you do find something that has a buff but it's really stupid looking, you can put it on and you won't see it. You'll only get the buff from it.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

You don't need to have a bucket on your head. Like you've got a stupid helmet looks like a bucket on your head, but gives you plus ten stealth or something. We all know what that's like all the time.

SPEAKER_13 31:49

So that's when you get to your apartment, you'll you'll find that closet where you can do your outfits.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Killer. Okay. So yeah, it's a game where I can collect things, I can customize things. And the thing about Character Creator 2, I figure that you can even customize your appearance as you play different times too. So I might change my hairstyle as I go through, you know, maybe age my character a little bit. Kind of just add those role play elements. But I'm really happy with how she came out.

SPEAKER_13 32:17

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_13 32:20

Be looking forward to your updates.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

Awesome. I think I think I'll be really into it until my vampire game comes out. That'll be the big one this summer. And then I did, like I said, I pre-ordered Blood of Dawnwalker, officially, officially plunked the money down. So I have no excuses when that comes out on September 3rd.

SPEAKER_14 32:38

Summer a big marketable game release season?

SPEAKER_00 32:41

I mean, it is the slowest game release season generally, outside of, yeah, some of the big conventions in June and occasional drop there. Usually June, July, August are the slowest months. But with the number of games coming out the last few years, that's getting less and less true. And now is also a great time to catch up, which is kind of why I'm playing Cyberpunk here. So I can get that in and use the time to catch up. Because normally we have a round table game going, but we don't right now. So good time to do something else. But that kind of leads me out of my gameplay, indie games, cyberpunk. And like I said, part of the reason why I kind of just felt I need a good game to jump into, forget my troubles, forget my worries, because of all the stuff going on with Xbox and Bethesda finally announced this week. And we've known it's been coming for a few weeks. But I said in the past don't want to comment on it until we actually know what's happening. Because there was so much rumor, speculation, nonsense. They're closing this studio, they're closing that studio. Xbox is for sale, fire sale, big sale. And finally we got the announcements on what is happening with the Xbox reset, as they're calling it this past Monday, Tuesday. And I know you had some questions.

SPEAKER_14 33:56

That's fucking lame that they would refer to it as a reset.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

That's yeah, you don't want to be cute around layoffs. It's they're not the way that Asha Sharma, the current CEO of Xbox, has been doing things. She's been doing open letters. So letters and communications to the team. But then they're also because these kind of things always leak anyway. She has been publicly putting forth, here's what we're doing, here's full transparency on why. Because they are some pretty big changes coming. Because leading up to the showcase, like it was so positive. And a lot of things, return of Xbox, we're focusing back on the core console experience and all our customer core players, and the whole this is an Xbox, your phone is an Xbox, your Fire Stick is an Xbox. We're not focusing on that anymore. Yes, you can still play things remotely in other ways, but we've been ignoring our core business. So that was positive. And then the showcase really good. So there was so much good there. And then we find out about a week after the showcase, there was a letter as well that essentially said if the first hundred days were the return of Xbox, the next hundred days are going to be a reset. We are falling behind in many areas. The business is not healthy, and so we need to look at this. And so then the rumors started, and they didn't really say much more for two, three weeks. And then, you know, there were rumors coming, oh, I've heard the studio is closing and this and that, and like we've heard about. And so there's obviously been worry and speculation. And finally, they did publish that open letter on Monday or Tuesday. And in it, she essentially says, here's why we are falling behind in these areas. The business has not been healthy for some time. We are down to this 3% margin. We have lost 64 cents on every dollar invested in recent years. And she goes into talking about having too many layers of management. The Xbox platform team is 40% larger. Yeah, and so that's what we're gonna get to because that's what our people care about more than anything else. But long story short, that the platform team has grown while things have shrunk. And so all this is what they put out, and that's why they're calling it resetting Xbox to the core. Now, what's going on with Bethesda? I mean, and of course, all of Xbox, but you know, it's all a big deal. But when they started, so they have announced right away that they will be reducing Xbox staff by 3,200 jobs this year.

SPEAKER_15 36:27

God damn.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Which is a lot. We're looking at almost 20% of their staff. They're somewhere 16,000 something. Yes. And right away, it's 1600 actually, that they were announcing that we're being cut this week. And over the last couple days, we've seen those names and how that was divided up. Now, the other 1600, and this is where it's a weird axe over your head. They're like, we're doing this now. We have to cut more jobs, and yes, they're not being announced right away. We understand it's better to do this all at once, but this is too much to do all at once. So they started with Xbox Studios and Xenimax, Bethesda specifically. Most likely those are cut as much as they're going to be cut in the near future. But here's what's happening. So as it came out, Xenemax Online Studios, you know, the makers of ESO, which got cut a good bit last year when they canceled Project Blackbird, and they lost some people working on ESO. That is being cut again by quite a bit. So they did just launch their first season in their new season system, yet Xenemax Online Studios has lost about 50% of their employees. I don't have the exact number, but it's well over 150 people going through, working out what's going on, a good half of their staff from their studio locations. And they're going to have to work to maintain. Now, they are still going forward. Their other community manager, they had two, Jessica Folsom and Gina Bruno. Gina Bruno has been let go. And she was kind of the face of ESO. She did the majority of the communication on socials and host a lot of events and public stuff. And they said, Yeah, we are continuing. We're still going to do the season system, but we're not going to be able to hit our roadmap anymore with what we had planned. So we are reworking that and we'll announce that as we have information. So that's Xenemax Online Studios. Bethesda Studios, BGS. Initially, the information came out a little bit slowly. Again, one source of information was Jeff Gardner. Salior had seen this, and then I double checked on socials. He talks about he was hearing about 35 people cut from Bethesda Game Studios he knew of. Over the course of two days, that went up to about 60 people across Bethesda Game Studios.

SPEAKER_15 38:42

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Yeah. Now Bethesda had grown to almost 500 people between their studios. We're talking, you know, Montreal, Maryland, Austin, Dallas, and remote positions. They had cut a little bit in the layoffs last year. Their community social, like their international team, for instance, a lot of their people who did socials in the UK, a lot of that group was cut. We still have Rob. He's wonderful. And he's still working for the international, but a lot of the other international positions were gone. But now on this one, they cut from across all the locations. So what does that mean for 15% of staff or so? Where did they cut them from? So it's been a mix of things. But what I can determine from it and what matters for the question people have are they canceling games? Are they stopping Fallout 76? They fired everybody working on Fallout 76. No. No, I mean, we are obviously this is what we're hearing, right?

SPEAKER_14 39:42

Lord.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

And the truth is they didn't, but they we lost a lot of them. I want to be sensitive how I put this because it's awful. I I think it's far too much. And I think what happened was that they were given targets. You know, they make a certain amount of revenue. They need to cut this much. It's up to you where you cut. I mean, maybe corporate from above came in and made some of those decisions, but I think a lot of the studios had to cut at least this much, which is what was happening with Xbox the last year. Because we know that they have money coming. We know that 76 is making money, you know? We know that the creations system is definitely they're getting things to these various areas. But so on 76, a number of people were cut at Bethesda Austin, but also at Bethesda, Maryland, people who work specifically on Fallout 76 quest content. So two names people might recognize that I've mentioned for is Stephanie Zachariatis. She was the one who was the lead writer for Fallout London, who was then hired by Bethesda to come over and work on 76. She did a lot of the stuff for expeditions. She did a significant portion of Atlantic City. She was with the city for almost five years and she's been let go. Another one who worked on Quest was Josh Moretto. There was a graphic going around, one of the first, a graphic about uh Bethesda Quest designer, senior quest designer in his case, being let go. And it didn't have the name, but that's who that was. If you guys saw that post was Josh Moretto. But a lot of them who worked on 76 were part of the ongoing Quest content and Quest Design Content. Now there are still people at Austin for sure. And actually, Jonathan Rush, the design director for 76, came out today to make a statement. Let me pull that up. Oh, another person who was let go was Jesse McLean, who is a senior seasons designer, which he's a monetization specialist. So he helped work on stuff on the atomic shop. But you know, the less aware people, some people are like, well, I'm glad he's gone. It's like, no, I just I get really upset. Some people are celebrating that. Anyway, Jonathan Rush came out and in the public test server notes that they published today about the current PTS, because they are still testing. He says specifically, quote, our focus on Fall It 76 remains steadfast as the team continues to work on exciting new content for the future of our Appalachian wasteland. We look forward to sharing some details and teases in parentheses about what we have planned soon. End quote. So work is going forward. They still have plans. I imagine a lot of ways teased is still on the roadmap, but I think we might have to expect less added in the way of story and stuff like that. We may not get quest content for a while after the people who were let go, which is sad. We also lost people who worked on the creation system. But the one community manager let go, my friend Jess, she was a community manager who worked with Starfield. She worked with Oblivion Remastered. She helped on socials. But one of her biggest things the last three years has been with the verified creator system, onboarding modders, being their liaison with them and answering what they needed and helping them get what they needed to create paid creations. This has been a huge part of her job. She's done great at it. And she got let go. And a few other people got let go who deal with creations too. So if we got affecting creations, we got affecting Fallout 76. We've had other things reduced on side content and projects in Montreal. I feel like they were given a target. And this is just my interpretation, you guys, my interpretation of what we're seeing. They were given a target, need to cut this much, and they optimized it to be like, okay, we have to cut people and we have to get Elder Scrolls 6 out. We are in the final, you know, year or two of Elder Scrolls 6. We need to make sure we have the people we need to get that done. And so they've narrowed focus. They're not sunsetting 76. It's not going to maintenance mode yet, but it will probably slow down. They're not sunsetting ESO. It's not in maintenance mode yet, but it will probably slow down. Don't expect a new side project. I imagine they still have people out there working on the Fallout 3D remixer, which should still happen. Starfield, I don't know about Tim Lamb's team yet. I fingers crossed, hoping they are still going to be doing. Another official DLC update and creations, but it wouldn't surprise me after all this if they have to refocus on Elder Scrolls and we maybe get a little bit more creations content. Yeah. I don't know. That's beyond that. Just Obsidian was cut by 25%. And yet, at the same time, the exciting news is that they are also saying Obsidian will be working on a Fallout game. That's come out via reporting for Jason Schreier, not officially announced. But it's been reported that what do a lot of people want? Obsidian make another Fallout game, Josh Sawyer leading it. That is happening. Josh Sawyer had been previously on a Fallout-like project. You might remember I mentioned five months ago he did a tweet that I loved that said, the time for talking about games is done. The time for working on a game has begun. So he had started a new project. Well, that has been moved over to a Fallout game. Tim Kane and many of the others at the studio were already working on another project too. That's rumored to have been a shadow run. We don't know if that's continuing or not. Avowed two, they were working on. That's gonna have a skeleton crew now. But hey, we're getting an obsidian fallout, but this is not how I want it to happen. But at the same time, that could be really cool. I don't know.

SPEAKER_14 45:12

Oh it seems ominous, I'm gonna be honest.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

It's not good. They talked about how the system was currently unhealthy as far as income and how they're reducing. As far as studios leaving, I think people listening, like again, it doesn't maybe affect the games we play as much, but Ninja Theory, who did the Hellblade series, are they found another owner. They're going to be going to another company. We don't know who. Same thing for Undead Labs, the makers of State of a K, a series that I love. They're at Zombie Game series. They are going to be going to a new home too. So they are both being sold off as studios. The Studio The Mage South of Midnight Compulsion Games and We Happy Few, you guys might remember, was a really cool game. They are going independent. Doublefine, the company that did Psychonauts and Massive Chalice and many other games, recently did that Lighthouse Keefer game that was on Game Pass. They are going independent again. So there's four right there. And then Arkane, who they made dishonored, among other things. And Arkane is in discussions according to French law. They have to go through a bit of a remediation and make sure everything's been explored, and then they'll decide what's happening with them, if they are being sold, if they're going independent, or what will happen. And they're currently working on a blade game. The cursed superhero franchise blade, but it looks great. It should be so cool. Just mad. I want another blade movie.

SPEAKER_14 46:40

Cursed won't come out.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

I say cursed because they've canceled things on it so many times.

unknown 46:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_13 46:46

Yeah, it's always a bummer when people lose their jobs. It's not it's turmoil and a hard situation in their life. Yeah. And that sucks. I mean, job cuts are inevitable when a company isn't making profits.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

Right. When we hit hard times like the current economy, and our company overexpended themselves, like Microsoft. And actually, to be fair, most of the game industry did during the pandemic and after. Because between pandemic overspaffing, which many of them did, id software, I didn't even mention them. And Ray, I'll let you finish your thought, but real quick, id software, makers of Doom, they've done so much. They were cut by half. And people were incredibly people were saying, okay, how are they going to support the engine? How are they going to make another Doom? How are they going to do this when they're supposed to focus on these franchises? But id actually released a statement themselves yesterday. This is a paraphrase, of course, but you know, think about the people they lost, they worry for their team. But the rumors of their demise are exaggerated. They are currently down after downsizing at about the size they were when they did Doom 2016. So they had grown by double since the first game of the current trilogy. So a lot of these companies have grown. And what seems drastic and it's awful for the people losing their jobs, it also isn't as crippling to the studios as people first thought would be.

SPEAKER_13 48:02

Yeah, for sure. But we don't know, you know, what their corporate structure is. We don't know what their before org chart is and what their after org chart is.

SPEAKER_16 48:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_13 48:14

You know, so part of the reason why I never worry about any games that are coming up. You know, I only worry about them when they're available.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

Right. Worry about them when they release. And you'll see what this means after decisions are made. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's the healthy way to go. L live in the present. And uh while I have personal feelings about it, because I do think, and I know this is idealistic, but I do think companies have a responsibility to their employees. But I also know hard times happen and the realities of business. And that sometimes you do make mistakes and things need downsized. But I I think Microsoft has the capability to keep more than they are. I think they are being too drastic. And I think they're honestly kind of pulling the trampoline out from under themselves that they got many of these studios for a reason to have a good, healthy cadence of games. And by removing them, they are removing exactly what they were working towards over the last decade. And they need to find a healthier balance. And I I don't know if this is the way, you know, but time will tell. And our thoughts with people and the industry right now, there are so many studios closing and downsizing. And this year alone, I think over 8,000 jobs have been cut in the games industry. You know, and Microsoft has so many people, Xbox is so many people that they are going to be a large percentage of that. But we lost Blue Point, for instance. Blue Point's a fantastic studio that Sony owned, and they were just closed down a few months ago. And there are so many games.

SPEAKER_13 49:48

I blame it all on the consoles. If it wasn't for the consoles game, the game industry would be so much healthier.

SPEAKER_00 49:58

I don't know about that. And I think people can own both consoles and PCs and and all that. Honestly, if anything, we talk uh a little bit about how there are too many games these days. How like there's so many cheese from our background is getting bigger. And I almost think that in a way, with more games releasing on Steam and everywhere than ever, like twice as many games releasing in the last couple of years as at least in 10 years prior, that it is actually a real thing affecting the industry that it's harder to get. There are still hits, of course, but nobody has time to play all the games coming out. And we're feeling that on top of everything else.

unknown 50:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_14 50:35

Phones are to blame.

SPEAKER_00 50:37

Partly phones for sure. Phones, you know, where they're fighting with YouTube and Twitter for your gaming time, your betting market, and you're watching TV shows like Followed on Prime, taking all the gaming time.

SPEAKER_13 50:48

Yeah. My child. And if the company really wants to make money, they make a mobile game.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

Yeah, although even that has slowed up quite a bit recently. Like I know they've got dedicated players. Oh, I know they're still doing well, but not as well as the market. The butcher household says the mobile game market is alive and well.

SPEAKER_13 51:12

Yeah, we're yeah, they're rolling in it.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, some of them still do well, and then you have hits out of nowhere. Like right now, there's a game called Mecha Chameleon, and it is Mecha, not Mecha, which is odd, but that's how they pronounce it. Mecha Chameleon sold 15 million copies on Steam. It's a six dollar game. It's become so popular in just like the last two, three months, it sold 15 million copies. You just never know.

SPEAKER_14 51:36

Is it a robot chameleon?

SPEAKER_00 51:39

Yes, a robot chameleon that can change colors. Even though it's written mecha. At first I heard people saying that I was annoyed. And then I heard the people made it say it too, and I'm like, fine. Mecha chameleon, you win this round.

SPEAKER_13 51:57

Well, they didn't want to get sued by mecca.

unknown 52:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:01

Oh, don't want to be insensitive. But that is what I've got on that whole situation. Obviously, there's more unfolding. The further 1500 are including the five studios that are being divested in various ways, whether sold or gone independent, etc. So it's just it's a big change. And it's rough for the industry, and we are losing talent. We are losing people that have been there forever. I didn't Chris talking about BGS, Christiane Meister, I believe is her last name. You guys all know Christiane. She's a character artist, creature artist. She's been on the game since Oblivion. She's did a lot of the original Khajit art, a lot of characters in Skyrim, Morrowind, Oblivion, some of Starfield, even the creatures. When you whenever you watch a documentary on the making of Oblivion River, you're gonna see her. It's hard to see some people gone. They lost, I believe Ray Lederer was a concept artist on Skyrim. He's the l last concept artist still there since Skyrim. And he was let go. I just I'm naming these names. I shouldn't treat as a memorial. They're still with us. But it's just that is the legacy of these games we play. And these are all people whose work that we especially on this show and our listeners have appreciated for years and years.

SPEAKER_13 53:14

Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully they land a new gig and you know, are better off for it.

SPEAKER_00 53:20

Hell yeah. Or because they're hopefully, because it's layoffs, they're getting a little bit of a severance package. Hopefully it can serve as like a bit of an on-ramp to an early retirement.

SPEAKER_13 53:31

Which hopefully they got some some stock options.

SPEAKER_00 53:34

Exactly.

SPEAKER_13 53:35

When Bethesda sold.

SPEAKER_00 53:37

Exactly. But we will see if Todd makes a statement in the next week. I imagine he will. And we'll hear more about this and that for the studio and what is on track. But meanwhile, we've got a new Fallout game to look forward to. Unannounced, probably three, four years, but it's something extra. Plus the remixter unannounced that we know it's coming. And all hands on deck for ES6. So hopefully we get that in the next two years.

SPEAKER_14 54:04

So is that gonna be the concentration now?

unknown 54:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_14 54:08

Pushing out a new main Yep.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

That's a lot of what they want to do. The entire reorg, so greater but this, their current president, she did a letter about the direction essentially that they are moving from an individual studio with individual properties and games to working more as a team as a whole and focusing on what needs done to support the group. So in other words, the model where if there are two or three main games working on, the other studios will help focus on them. Means less new IP, less new games and experimentation, maybe for the time being. But the ones that we get will have more support and maybe come out faster. Not that you can rush an Elder Scrolls, as we know too well, or a Fallout, but they'll have more people working on them.

SPEAKER_14 54:52

I think I'd like to live in a world where Fallout and Elder Scrolls games come out uh as often as Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed.

SPEAKER_00 55:04

Maybe I don't know if I want Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed. Every year, every year is pretty much I mean Assassin's Creed slowed down to every two years for a while, but then they did a couple years in a row again. I think every three years would be pretty ideal. That would be pretty ideal.

SPEAKER_14 55:20

I like that. I think I think my first round of Fallout 4 took me about three years before I got it out of my sleep.

SPEAKER_00 55:27

We'd still play in that game. Yeah.

SPEAKER_14 55:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:31

That's funny. No Starfield 2 in the near future, though. That's not coming.

SPEAKER_14 55:35

No Starfield 2, no Skyrim 2. Come on. Elder Scrolls 6 is the next big thing, right? Still or aka Skyrim 2. Bump that up, right?

SPEAKER_00 55:48

Yep. Yep. We're looking at saying two to three years. You know, my estimate was fall 2027, but probably realistically it's more fall 28, but we'll see.

SPEAKER_14 55:57

Christmas 26, you mean, right?

SPEAKER_00 55:59

Oh, hell yeah. Andrew, tell me more about this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_14 56:03

Look in your stocking. Get super hopeful, everyone.

SPEAKER_00 56:08

Oblivion the third, the emperor returns. Yes.

SPEAKER_14 56:12

All right. Well, let's switch gears from the sad business corporate news to a new TV show, Jess.

SPEAKER_00 56:22

Yeah. Do you guys want to drop into a Vault Talk and talk about the TV show right now?

SPEAKER_14 56:27

I would like to do that. I think that'd be a good fun thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 56:31

Okay. Well, buckle up. Hello and welcome to Vault Talk, our show within a show with a Fallout feed, where we are discussing the Fallout TV show on Amazon Prime. We are just restarting, finally, six months after finished airing, season two. We're going to talk about season two, episode one, The Innovator. Now, this episode was written by, let me just pull that up right there. It was written by the headwriters, I believe. Geneva Robertson Duarette and Graham Wagner. And it was directed by Frederick E. O'Toy, who directed several episodes last season too. So we're starting off this season with the headwriters and the director who's done the most episodes just kind of set it firmly. And we're rolling right back into the action. The show is picking up right where it left off. So while time has passed for our main characters, it's still moving kind of seamlessly right into it. So now that we've had some time since the episodes, we've all seen it multiple times. I don't know. I I have watched them, I've watched actually only about three times each this season. I'll admit, I've only done maybe three watch throughs so far. So I'll be watching it again for this as we go through. But how about you guys?

SPEAKER_13 58:08

This is just my second time, I think, that I've seen this episode. Yeah, I just watched it the one time when it first came out.

SPEAKER_00 58:14

Okay, so it's been just one watch through this time. Now that's different from season one, where season one, we were so into it. I think, Andrew, you watched it probably three times in the first week or two.

SPEAKER_14 58:24

It was one of those things, you know, I'm not actually watching it. It's like have it on in the background when I'm doing stuff, fold of laundry, you know, just whatever. That sort of thing. And Will was like he had it on a loop on repeat, I think, for a while.

SPEAKER_00 58:41

Yeah, Will definitely became his number one background rewatch show. But I will say season two, while I've watched it and I three times, yeah, I think I've watched most episodes three times, although I may not have watched the whole thing because there were a few episodes I did not like as much. So the second time I just kind of watched the highlights, the one I like the best. And I'm watching the whole thing again to talk about it. My feelings on season two, and let's get into that first. I will say, just to anyone listening, there will be spoilers. Okay. Vault Talk is a recap show where you can discuss what happened in each episode, some of our thoughts on it, maybe some connections to the games, etc. And obviously, we will spoil things as we go. We'll try not to spoil too far ahead for you. So we're not going to talk about what happens in episode eight right now in episode one of the second season, but there references will happen. But I will say my feelings on season two is that overall, I really still enjoyed it. It didn't have quite the same impact as season one, as far as like the overall quality of every episode individually all the way through that I felt season one had. But it had some of the highest highs, some really cool moments, both plot twists, exciting scenes, cool characters, and all that. Did you guys enjoy season two as much as one? Like for me, if I put season one at a nine, I might put season two at an eight point five, you know, like up there, but not quite the same high.

SPEAKER_13 1:00:06

Yeah, for me, it was season two point A.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:10

Right, right. Because of how far we go in the season that you feel like there's still more to come.

SPEAKER_13 1:00:15

Yeah, season three will be part B. Um because they didn't finish.

SPEAKER_14 1:00:22

Like it just felt like we're pausing here for a second. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

Yeah, no, that's fair. They do resolve some of the story, but there's still a whole lot of dangling threads that they set up. And again, we don't want to spoil the ending episode yet in the show, but you're right. We it does feel like we got half eight eight episodes. Eight episodes just weren't really enough to tell the rest of the story arc that they were setting up this season.

SPEAKER_13 1:00:48

Yeah, because they have it split off in so many directions now. Not to mention the fact that they kind of add to it as you know we get in a little deeper. So it's a lot more to keep up with.

SPEAKER_14 1:01:03

They need to uh watch out. They're gonna start too many threads and it's gonna be hard to wrangle and they're gonna have a mess on their hands.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:11

That is something to think about that I I will say for this season going forward.

SPEAKER_15 1:01:15

For the lost season four.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:17

We see it this episode a little bit in that there are enough disparate characters that were main characters last season, but they are split up enough that now the story is more split up like that. And so we are jumping from scene to scene. In this episode, people we deal with, we're dealing with Lucy and the Ghoul as kind of a team mostly together. Well, they're all together in this episode. We have the Vault Dwellers, but now the Vault Dwellers is not just Vault 33, it's Vault 33, it's Vault 31, and Vault 32. We've got to follow all of them, you know, and so they're a section together, like that they cluster them, but it's still separate little plot threads.

SPEAKER_15 1:01:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:56

One thing to mention, and we've got stuff from the past, but this episode, we don't see Maximus at all. So when I first saw it, that that was a surprise.

SPEAKER_14 1:02:04

I didn't even realize that. That's hilarious.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:06

What about Max? Yeah, which is well, you know, a slight spoiler. We'll get more of Max next episodes.

SPEAKER_14 1:02:12

Well, they had the both the previously on Fallout, and then a six minute, six minutes to start the damn episode of stuff from last season. And I guess that's necessary for anyone. But golly, is anyone gonna jump in on this on season two? You think? No one would ever just walk into this thing. Oh my gosh, my TV just happened to fall on to season two of this show.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:42

Well, it's this Fallout show they're talking about, and wouldn't this be a great place to start season two?

SPEAKER_14 1:02:46

Such a rare occasion, like my mom, my mom, like accidentally, my brother sort of introduced her to it. Like that sort of occasion, yeah, you could sort of see how that can. But seriously, no one's gonna start a season two.

SPEAKER_13 1:03:01

Yeah, but if they watched it a year ago, right? Do they remember everything about it?

SPEAKER_14 1:03:07

Oh, probably not, but if you're true fan, you know you're rewatching season one the week before season two comes out.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:13

Well, one one thing that's kind of cool about this, about becoming as big as it was and that popular, is that you don't have to be a true fan to be a fan of Fallout now, you know? And obviously, true fan is air quotes. You might be a fan of just the show, but you might have played the games a little bit, you might not have. But there are people like your mom who probably never played the game. The way see she is a secret shelter addict too.

SPEAKER_14 1:03:35

Oh yeah, dude. Can't keep her out of the shelter.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:40

So we start, as you say, with a big old last year on, and we go through the whole montage. But then we get into the episode, and it this one starts a little differently because the name of the episode, the title is The Innovator. But then we get a flash on screen, a kind of a subtitle, The Man Who Knew.

SPEAKER_14 1:03:58

Too much, too little, or just enough.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:01

Right? And it's interesting because they don't do that often. Like they that kind of title, it sounds very much like an in-game movie, the kind of like movie or show that they would do.

SPEAKER_14 1:04:12

Like the title of some of Cooper Howard's movies, even in this case showing tonight at the Starlight Drive-in, the man who knew too much, too little, inquiring Andrews want to know.

SPEAKER_13 1:04:24

But it also sounds like the title of a side quest.

SPEAKER_14 1:04:28

Oh, it so totally does absolutely does a New Vegas side quest right there.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:33

And that's where we start is in a bar.

SPEAKER_13 1:04:37

So it's in no, we start off with a protest outside.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:42

Sorry, we start off outside the bar with pre-war protests. Yeah.

SPEAKER_13 1:04:45

So it's like the protests that we get, you know, in Fallout 76, where we find the you know, the communists that were mad that the robots were taking their job. It's a great theme. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:01

That's for people who haven't played Fallout 76. That is a big theme because it takes place in West Virginia, somewhat rural West Virginia, and robots were taking a lot of the mining jobs and the big old company jobs there.

SPEAKER_14 1:05:15

Well, this miners should grow drill hands if they want to get a job. Come on.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:19

And of course, unionization was frowned upon as anti-American in the fallout world at the time, a bit, you know. So people standing up for their jobs and protesting, they were kind of some of them were put down as a riot. So they could point where it became a bit of riots where people were protesting and standing together, you know, solidarity against the mechanization. The parallels to what's happening with AI are a little bit uncanny right now.

SPEAKER_14 1:05:44

But absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:46

And that wasn't even a thing as much first season, but times change and it seems very apropos. But yeah, so we start outside with the riots and people picketing and beating on bots, which again is a thing that happened a bit. In 76. And it's hinted at in other parts of the series, but they really made it very much a thing. There are a number of events in Fall of 76 that deal with that specifically, where your idea is to put down the robots that are rampaging, deciding everyone is, you know, their union busting.

SPEAKER_14 1:06:15

Those poor robots.

SPEAKER_13 1:06:17

Yeah. Then then it cuts to the scene inside the bar with the guys grousing about the protesters outside. Well, no, they were part of the protest. They were mad at the corporations for giving their jobs to robots. Oh, stupid robots.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:34

They are in, they're having a drink, and they're watching what's up on the TV. And there is news. It's kind of flashing to Mr. House that we knew from last season. Mr. House on the screen, you know, talking about industry and technology.

SPEAKER_14 1:06:47

The Robco House or the House House?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:50

Well, and that's the thing.

SPEAKER_14 1:06:52

The figurehead house. The actual house.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:56

At this point, we don't know that. But you know, we kind of did we learn that?

SPEAKER_14 1:07:00

Is that later this episode?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:02

We actually don't get it officially for a few episodes where so at this point speculation was rampant. So we've got Rafi Silver's the actor's name, and he's playing Mr. House. We saw him last season, and now he's on there talking and they're complaining about him. And then in the corner, there's this gentleman. And interestingly, in the actual shooting script for the show, they refer to him as Errol. The gentleman, Errol, in the corner watching, and makes a comment, gentleman. And he starts to talk about how, in some ways, I would think you might be a fan of the technology. It makes your job easier. For instance, you gentlemen, what are you in? And you know, one of those construction. He's like, well, then perhaps you're familiar with the HH nail gun. Yeah. And talking about compared to using a hammer, oh, it's an advanced technology and it makes their job better. And the guys aren't having this. They're like, you know, who is this dandy in the corner? After our after our protest, and we're here drinking this is very much a blue-collar bar or a blue-collar group here at least. And I think they say to him, Who are you? His his biggest fan, because this gentleman sitting here is not Robert House on the TV screen. And so we're all wondering, who is this guy? Because he was identified ahead of time. It is Justin Thoreau playing the character. And he was identified in the credits as Mr. House. So there were fan theories here. They're like, wait, is this person Mr. House? And they just changed the actors. Like that's one thing. Okay, they changed the actors from this guy to this guy.

SPEAKER_14 1:08:33

But then when we saw the other guy, we're like, wait a second.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:36

At the same time, why would they do that? They could just re-re-record the scene. You know, they don't need to have right. So then we're like, okay, maybe it's a plot point. And if that's the case, is this maybe Anthony House? Now, for those who don't know, Anthony House is Robert House's Robert Edwin House is the Mr. House we know from the games. Anthony is his older brother.

SPEAKER_14 1:08:56

This is real stuff from the New Vegas lore. Real stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_14 1:09:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:00

Yep. New Vegas and Fallout Lore.

SPEAKER_14 1:09:02

Sorry, what was his name? Anthony.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:04

Anthony House. He's a few years older, and technically they're half-brothers. Anthony House, they both had their father, was the original Mr. House. I'm forgetting his name, but they had different mothers. And so he's the half-brother. And Robert's a few years younger. So because Justin Thoreau looks a little bit older than Rapha Silver, no shade, Justin, just saying. And we thought, well, maybe he's the other Mr. House. And because also that house is the one that ended up owning H H Tools. Originally, HH was two houses, house and house tools, but Anthony bought out and was running that. And then Mr. House started Robco, which is, you know, his own branding company, and that's how he was making his fortune. So there was speculation. Is that, or of course, the one that turned out to be true? Spoilers, sorry, but I think everyone knows at this point. This guy is actually his body double, the public face of Mr. House. And this guy here in the bar is the real Mr. House who prefers to work a little bit more in the shadows, a little bit more anonymity.

SPEAKER_14 1:10:04

I don't believe for a second that this guy would be in a bar.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:07

Right?

SPEAKER_13 1:10:08

Well, except that he's he has a purpose for doing it.

SPEAKER_14 1:10:12

He wants to be there to piss these guys off. Yeah, right. He's throwing them into a trap for market research.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:19

He's there to pick up guys, but not like that. He's there to pick a fight with these guys. So he pisses them off, and they grab him by the shoulders, and next scene we see him out in the alley, and they kind of toss him a little bit, and he confronts them. Yeah, I liked this scene. And it's funny because you get how bizarre this guy is a little bit. Oh, I shouldn't say bizarre, but you know, not like us. And he he says to the one, the lead guy, I think his name's Bill, right?

SPEAKER_13 1:10:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:51

He says, What? Like, wouldn't you like to punch me in the mouth right now? Or maybe you should, I think you should punch me in the mouth. You know what I mean? Because they're already ruffled up.

SPEAKER_13 1:10:59

I I might like it, yeah. And so why Phil punches him in the mouth? Why did he think that he would like it?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:05

The novelty of the thing.

SPEAKER_13 1:11:06

What does that mean? What does he think? Market market research.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:09

Yeah, it's the novelty of the experience. Okay, so he's here with these blue-collar guys.

SPEAKER_13 1:11:18

No, he just is curious about he'd probably never been punched in the mouth before. He actually was okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:25

Like, like he's with these blue-collar guys doing the market research. He's here being roughed up, and he probably hasn't been beaten up since he was a kid. I mean, he's this wealthy guy that people do what he wants for the most part. Maybe there was a part of him, like you're saying though, that thought that if the other guy instincts instigated violence, he would feel less bad about what was coming next. I don't know. But anyway, he stands up if freaking hit, his lip is a bit split, he looks a little worse for wear, and he says, I'm rarely wrong. But he you could tell he definitely thought he was wrong that he did not quite like getting hit like that.

SPEAKER_14 1:12:00

Yeah, he didn't enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:01

But then he pops open his trunk of his a little Chryseless car of some actually nice car over there, opens it up, and there's thirty-one million dollars in the back. And he uh talks to Bill and and the two guys and he says, I want to propose a a deal for you guys, you gentlemen. I will give you thirty-one million dollars if you do this for me. Reaches in, he pulls out this little black box and says, just put this on, and I will give you thirty-one million dollars. Kind of a deal they couldn't refuse.

SPEAKER_13 1:12:36

Except they figure they'll just beat the crap out of him and take the 31 million.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:41

It's not like he's in a strong bargaining position right now. He's already got punched in the face. He didn't put up much of a fight. But so when they go to do that, and what the bigger one bill grabs him, Mr. House takes that item. Cause while he's talking, he's talking about putting it on if he then applies like a needle to it, and he's like, Instrument this in the back of your neck, he's explaining it, and but they're not having it. So he shoves it in the guy's neck and you get a little and then boom, suddenly silent. And the guy who was coming at him stands stock still.

SPEAKER_14 1:13:14

And this is when a little little thumb control guy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:17

And Mr. House has his box in his hands, and he looks at it and adjusts something, and he says, Do you guys remember what he says exactly? Uh you know, uh get rid of them for me, or your friends, get rid of them, something like that.

SPEAKER_13 1:13:31

And hands him a baseball bat. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:33

Hands him a baseball bat. And the guy does it. He takes a bat to one of his friends' midsections right there, and and beats him over, whacks him, hits him again, and tries to run away.

SPEAKER_14 1:13:46

And he does that thing where you throw it like 50 yards at the guy. Yeah, I just I was like, wow, that's a pretty impressive throw.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:55

Yeah, seriously. Well, because the guy's trying to run away, so he beams it at him. But he has a lot of strength. And so this is where during this, uh it was when Bill says, What the hell is it? And I just I pulled up a I got a copy of the script here. And that's where House says what you were saying, Ray, just call it good old fashioned market research with what he's doing.

SPEAKER_14 1:14:18

Pop it in the mouth.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:20

So yeah. So the first one is let's see, is it Dan and we got Dan, we got Bill, and they're both down. And then Bill is looking at Mr. House and starting to resist, right?

SPEAKER_15 1:14:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:37

And then Mr. House, he's kind of monologuing during all this. He says, You guys do use the H H nail gun when the guy throws it so well. Like as though his accuracy and aim shows that you know he's an H H tools user. And he's like, You should feel good about this. You paid for all of it. But then Mr. House cranks up the dial when Bill starts to resist and the guy starts to shake. And then kaboom. His head explodes. And I thought this was a good moment because then Mr. House brushes himself off, he reaches into the gunk that was formerly a person, and draws a little black box, and he has a line. What was that line? He says, The world may end, but progress marches on, and they start playing in the background, Cheek to Cheek by Peggy Lee, who I thought was kind of a fun little segue there.

SPEAKER_13 1:15:34

Yeah. And then one of the best scenes in the whole season.

SPEAKER_16 1:15:39

Set the scene. Right.

SPEAKER_13 1:15:41

So you got a long shot, and off in the distance you see Dinky the Dino, and you know we're going to Novak. Facing the wrong direction or something.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:53

Oh no. You had to bring it up.

SPEAKER_13 1:15:59

Yeah, and you know, so then it zooms in, and you see the great cons, and and then you see they've got the ghoul tied up and hanging over a swimming pool. And you know, then they're carrying on.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:19

Yeah, he's shouting. Nick Nick is shouting. So the name of the character there from the cons that we see. His actual name in the script is Nick the Prick. I think they just identify him as Nick on the on the Amazon listing, but he's Nick the Prick. And he's like, cons, for too long, this ghoul, this bounty hunter has hunted us down since our great granddaddy, you know, and all that, basically saying, and now we've got him. And a small bounty hunter found him and brought him in, and they are now finally gonna get just it.

SPEAKER_14 1:16:49

So why is the ghoul hunting and killing the ancestors of the great cons?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:56

So P Ferv, I think most people listening probably you know who the cons are, but the great cons are one of the larger gangs, or were one of the larger gangs originally from California who migrated to the Mojave after tussling with the NCR a few too many times. Depending upon how you resolve the Fall at New Vegas game, they may mostly stay here, or they may move on towards Colorado, is the kind of standard ending. But it doesn't mean they all went. So there may still be some there, and he may have just had dealings with them. Chances are knowing the ghoul and the fact that the cons are they work on making and selling drugs, probably over drugs.

SPEAKER_13 1:17:31

Yeah, well, and he was a bounty hunter.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:34

Right. That's yeah, true.

SPEAKER_13 1:17:35

You know, that's the job that he did. That's when we first meet him.

SPEAKER_14 1:17:38

So he's turning in a bounty, so would imagine that since they are drug dealers and he is a drop in a bucket of a drug user himself, that he might have a good relationship with the cons, but I guess not. No, he has other sources, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:55

I feel like the ghoul doesn't have good relationships with many people for long. Like, even if they start that way, they eventually run afoul of each other when you live as long as he has.

SPEAKER_13 1:18:04

Yeah. Then he starts talking about the uh the store that used to be right there run by Darla. Did you catch that name?

SPEAKER_14 1:18:12

I was like, Darla.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:14

Darla, yeah, I love that. So to me, you can't convince me that's not a New Vegas reference. So admittedly, the actual shopkeeper owners, I mean, it was Cliff Briscoe there. And then we had, what was her name? Who was the lady who ran the motel? Anyway, Boone's wife, Boone the sniper, who we meet here along with Manny. Boone's wife was named Carla. And so the fact that they used the name Darla, it just made me think, okay, that's a reference.

SPEAKER_13 1:18:42

You know, that's Jeannie May Crawford.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:44

Jeannie May Crawford. Okay, so yeah, again, not Darla, but I thought it was a a way to put it in there that I think that they were probably referencing Boone's wife without actually saying Carla specifically. Because she was there for a solid year before things went down that happened to her. That's in the far past. But that couldn't be when the ghoul was there. They don't give a time period exactly. He just says a few years back, right?

SPEAKER_13 1:19:08

Yeah. And so what is, you know, so they're ready to drop him. And what is the the ghoul has a code word for Lucy?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:17

Yeah, he says exactly. Exactly. He's like, Yeah, the woman behind the counter, Darla, she was reasonable. Then you matching jacket, mother humpers, had to move in. Well, it's been nice chatting with you.

SPEAKER_14 1:19:32

Yeah, the matching jacket.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:35

And he says, I'm ready to get on with it. I'm ready to get on with it.

SPEAKER_15 1:19:42

Get on with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:43

And then the camera switches, and we see little Ms. Lucy up in Dinky the Dino's mouth. She's up there with CX404, aka Dog Meat, and she doesn't appear to be shooting or doing anything, but we think she we get the idea that maybe she's supposed to be responding to this and she's not.

SPEAKER_14 1:19:59

Yeah, he thinks that she's gonna shoot him down, but why does she hesitate?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:05

And then he's like a heck with it, and he he pulls the uh he pulls the lever and the ghoul's hanging, and that's when Lucy is like, Oh, you can tell that she is like, what am I doing? What am I doing? So she then she stands up and we find out why she's hesitating, because she says, Hello. So this is the part of the plan where I'm supposed to shoot him down, and then there's violence, and and we kill you guys, all right. In my experience, that usually is a lot of violence. Like, so I'm hoping we can we can resolve this differently. Settle an argument to myself and my traveling companion, right? Because she called the ghoul, her traveling companion there. Meanwhile, he's choking, neck all up, and so she goes on, starts telling her whole life story while the ghoul's there dying.

SPEAKER_13 1:20:49

Talking about plan A. Yep, and plan B. But I'm really hoping that we can do plan C. You just let us go.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:57

Right, yeah, because exactly. Like he wanted to just take their food supplies, and she was gonna try it because Men Elsa plan C was that you will just, yeah, let us go, and let us keep the caps you gave us.

SPEAKER_14 1:21:10

And keep the caps, yeah. Well, we need them, they're important.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:13

Mr. the prick is not having any of this. So he says, Whoever kills the girl gets to eat the dog.

SPEAKER_12 1:21:20

That's funny.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:22

And she sighs and is okay, here we go, okie dokie. So she aims the rifle, fires, she shoots through the cord finally on the ghoul so that he can actually does she shoot the rope first? I think she does.

SPEAKER_13 1:21:35

Yeah, shoots the rope, he falls down into the bottom of the pool, and then she starts, you know, with her pacifistic limb damage.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:47

Yeah, right. She's batsing in and then pulling a little less shooting at elbows, shooting up butt cheeks. The ghoul rolls over and he manages to hide to catch his breath and hide behind the lid of a fridge. Again with the fridges. Fridge is very protective in the wasteland. Very good protection.

SPEAKER_14 1:22:08

Made out of lead, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:09

Yep. So he grabs his gun, he hits a couple of hits a couple of the guys, and this is when the music starts up, I believe, and they start playing Big Iron, which is what a moment.

SPEAKER_14 1:22:20

Yeah. I have the scene. Wanna take a listen to it?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:24

Let's do it.

unknown 1:22:25

Hi.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:26

Excuse me. I'm sorry. I'm hoping you can settle an argument between myself and my traveling companion there. We are hunting down my father, who is not a good guy. And on this journey, we found ourselves in need of food and supplies. But I bad I just started starving at the end of the day. It's a lot of fun. I'm really, really hoping you'll create a plan to be. You just let us know. How do we keep the captivity? Which to be clear, we do need for our survivors. Just to ask the question, would it help if I said please?

SPEAKER_12 1:23:19

Whoever kills the girl gets to eat the dog.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:23

Okie dokie.

SPEAKER_13 1:23:24

Okie dokie.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:26

That's exactly it.

SPEAKER_13 1:23:28

Yeah. And then the guitar riff starts and all hell breaks loose. Lucy does pull a Lee and blows up one of the cars.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:43

Yeah, Lee does love explosions. So she blows up the car, like we're saying, she incapacitates people. Meanwhile, the ghoul is actually taking them out, as you would expect. And we have the music playing, Big Iron, which is awesome. The whole setup, too. I think it's an homage, right? To good, the bad, and the ugly. Is that right, Ray? Have you guys, either of you seen that movie?

SPEAKER_12 1:24:04

I've definitely seen the movie. It's been a long time.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:07

Yeah, I'm just one thing that I've read from others say, I haven't seen good, bad, and ugly myself, but that the idea of turning the ghoul in for a bounty only to shoot the noose from afar to escape with the cash was homage to it.

SPEAKER_13 1:24:20

Yeah, you're right. Because that is in the movie about that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:24

Yeah, it's it's a big setup. And I mean the whole thing is kind of to highlight how they're surviving, how they're getting to know each other, but they're still not quite compatible because they have very different moral codes.

SPEAKER_13 1:24:36

Yeah, and I'm I'm convinced that the ghoul has the bloody mess perk because there is a lot of guts flying. You see, in test there's there's one where he he blows up like three people at a in with a grenade, and yeah, it's just splattered everywhere.

SPEAKER_14 1:24:57

Drops there was something with the level of the pool or something that prevented it from and he like stepped away from the ledge to like not get hit by trapnel himself, but then like you just see like a shower, a rainbow of like intestines and gusts just spraying everywhere. It's almost it's very messy.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:18

They really need to be ultraviolence in episode one of season one and of season two, you know, to kind of start it up just to remind you what show you're watching.

SPEAKER_14 1:25:26

Yep. Exploding faces. Here we go.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:30

The contrast of the music along with that, like, yeah, right into it. Beautiful. So they pretty much take out all the cons, they do what they gotta do. And uh, next scene, what we see them starting to walk away, leaving the aftermath. And the ghoul did something with the fusion core, Andrew. You wrote that down.

SPEAKER_14 1:25:48

Oh, I thought it was really cool that he had a fusion core in his hand, and he had the abrasion from the rope when he was dangling. Yeah. And he like just like was sort of like took it around the base of his neck on almost like an electric razor or something, and it was like and it was healing his his skin where the rope had cut into. It's like I thought that was I don't know why. I just thought that was really cool. I was like, that's fucking cool. Have we seen him do that before in season one? Did he use the fusion core to like heal everything?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:18

I think we saw radiation maybe heal him a little bit, but not like that, not with the fusion core. Like that's something I'd never seen before. Like it makes sense old fusion cores do leak some radiation and along with their power, but the idea of a ghoul using that to heal, that was pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_14 1:26:32

And shit, I don't remember. Did that have did he like get that fusion core from the snake oil salesman in season one or something? I don't remember. Wasn't there some weird interaction with him and a fusion core or something?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:45

Uh there was, but I don't think it was from that. I think he probably got it from somewhere else along the way. Right. Yeah, because this one was cracked, right? This was a cracked fusion core.

SPEAKER_14 1:26:54

It would have to be, right? If it was leaking.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:56

Yep, exactly. But so we're now and we see them walking through the desert from there. And the ghouls kinda he wants to talk through what just happened with Lucy and says, you know, I I know you think you're being helpful shooting folks in the kneecaps and in the ass. But if I'm being honest, you ain't. And Lucy says she's not gonna apologize for not murdering people, which I mean, yeah, I hear ya. But they kinda again are just highlighting the fact that these two they're learning to work together, but they're also meeting in the middle is gonna make Lucy compromise more than she wants to. And yet the ghoul is uh putting up with it more and more, you know. We saw that happen a little bit first season that in some way she was starting to change him. And I think we're seeing that even more now. But he still kills everybody. And Lucy says, I still help. I did shoot him, didn't I?

SPEAKER_14 1:27:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:52

So next up, as they're walking to you, they come up to a to a ridge and they're overlooking, and this is where they see New Vegas. Is that right? I think this is the place.

SPEAKER_14 1:28:01

Yeah. She's like, Oh, it looks like it just didn't like it always used to.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:06

Yeah, exactly. In the old photos or old holotape.

SPEAKER_14 1:28:10

In the movies or something, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:12

And he the ghoul mentions that they had rockets and you know they shot a lot of the missiles down. And he's like, and Lucy says, Well, if we were able to do that, why didn't we do that for all of America? And the ghoul says, There is no we. There's a him. It was Mr. Robert Howe. And so then Lucy tries to make good about it and mentions, well, then if maybe your family was there, it'd be safe. And he says, There ain't no place safe around Robert Howe. So again, the theme of the episode is very much focused on what's going on with Mr. House around here. Do you have another play, something that you wanted to play here, Andrew?

SPEAKER_08 1:28:52

Still looks like all the old photos.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:54

Bob got shot down. Most of them, anyway.

SPEAKER_08 1:28:57

If they could do that for Las Vegas, why couldn't they just do that for America?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:01

Because there was no day. There was a him. A man by the name of Robert House. Maybe if that's where your family went, they're safe there. Nowhere near Robert House is safe.

SPEAKER_08 1:29:12

Why would my dad go to Las Vegas?

SPEAKER_04 1:29:14

It's a lot of earning potential with the end of the world. How can you guarantee results? By dropping the bomb ourselves.

SPEAKER_14 1:29:24

That's that's jumping the couple minutes and ahead.

SPEAKER_13 1:29:28

Yeah, because it basically j it cuts from you know him saying nobody's safe around Robert House to a pre-war scene with the meeting that season one, yeah.

SPEAKER_14 1:29:42

Right.

SPEAKER_13 1:29:43

Yeah, the meeting where you know Robert the Robert House in the meeting, you know, talks about how they can guarantee it, and that's when his wife says that they'll drop them themselves.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:55

Yeah, and the look on her face, like this was a pinnacle critical moment from season one as we kind of hit the crux. And so we're right back to I'm dovetailing right where we last saw in the flashbacks with him. So we still didn't know what happened between this moment and the very beginning of episode one, season one, when he's at the birthday party performing, he's got Janie and the bombs drop. You know, we don't know anything that happened in between. So it looks like, okay, this season we're still gonna keep filling in that story. So he since we go back there, he immediately, you know, he hears that, he's in shock. Barb says that, and we next see him, it cuts to him rushing home and coming into his house and calling for his daughter, Janie. Janie, Janie, where are you? And come here. And she runs up, Daddy, and he says, Get your three favorite outfits and meet me back here. Yep, get your three favorite outfits and your favorite toy and meet me back here, okay? Go. Yep. And then Cooper just kind of slumps, you know. And then it comes back to him, and he is now getting in the car with his daughter. And we're getting like this picture perfect, kinda sanctuary style, fallout neighborhood. Very pleasantville. Just we didn't see a lot of we saw a little bit of this last season. I don't think we saw the neighborhood where they lived, really. We just we saw their house up on the hill because they have they have the nice house. We didn't see the neighborhood they would have to go through.

SPEAKER_13 1:31:21

Yeah. And she asks where they're going, and he says Bakersfield.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:25

Right. Yep. Because that's the second time it's mentioned, because that's where you told Barb before, like maybe they should get away and they should escape to Bakersfield last season, before he knew how involved she was in this, and he just sensed that things were going wrong and we just they just need to get away. So I think Bakersfield is one of his safe places. Does he have a ranch out there? I don't remember if he says he has a ranch out there or he's gonna get one.

SPEAKER_13 1:31:46

Yeah, I can't remember if he has one or had one, but yeah, it's uh you know, it's a more rural area out in the Central Valley.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:55

Yep. And so Jane, of course, asks, What about mommy? Is she coming with us? And he doesn't answer because he doesn't know what to say, although I think he is starting to tell her that they're going to meet out there. But just at the time the car radio comes up and he says, Please be advised. A test of the civil alert broadcast system for Los Angeles County will commence in 10 seconds. So he's looking back towards the road, pulling around the corner, and he's coming up, and there's a nice little Vault Tech van there parked in front of a house in this pleasant neighborhood. There are people out doing things, you know, they're having picnics, they're playing ball. A man gets out of the Vault Tech truck and he is wearing a tan jacket, yellow slicker, and a yellow hat. Yellow hat. And he looks and he smiles at Cooper and a little smile, like, good to see you, neighbor. Classic Vault Tech salesman, just like we see in Fall At 4.

SPEAKER_14 1:32:42

I thought there was more to that look than just a hello neighbor. It's either, oh, look, there's a the holy shit, there's fucking the most famous actor around there, or waiting for the buddy. It's gonna be what some some hots coming in.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:01

Yeah, well, we just we just saw Vault Tech being the most evil. You know what I mean? And we just had a flashback to that that we saw last season, and now we get the smiling face of Vault Tech again right in front of us, like the two things. I think they did it for contrast to get that, but also I don't know that he recognized Cooper, but if he did there, I don't think there's anything nefarious. This is just a Vault Tech salesman, happy face of Vault Tech, you know, bringing people safety.

SPEAKER_13 1:33:24

I think that he does see it happen. He does turn around and there's a giant Cooper Howard Vault Tech billboard right behind him.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:33

Yep. Yeah, and that that's just to prepare for the future. So now that the test that they mentioned goes off and the sirens start, you hear a vertebrate in the air, and people are they're stopping what they're doing, and they're starting to panic. And then some start yelling, and there's someone on the phone. Most of them don't know that it's only a test. And Cooper's trying, you know, shouting it's only a test, but they're scared and they're going for safety. And then Janie says, Daddy, I'm scared. And so he grabs her to kind of hug her to comfort her. And he said, It's okay, it's okay. And then he looks up and yeah, he sees the sign over their shoulder. And it's him, Voltec. Everything's gonna be okay, and it says, protect your family with Voltec. It's a perfect segue there where I almost think that this moment is when he realizes that he's not gonna protect Jamie by getting away, by just running off and leaving like he was planning. That you know, he's gonna have to deal with what's going on at Barb. He's gonna have to have a better plan. He might have to talk to Moldaver again, which we're gonna see in a little bit that he does in order to sort the stuff out. But most of all, he needs to protect his family. Like the sign says, It's just it's funny. Because we get Vaultek being evil, then we get the smiling face of Vault, and then we get Cooper as promoting Vault Tech, and I just I like the way it builds on the scene.

SPEAKER_14 1:35:00

Also, like the scene closed out with the air raid sirens blaring and the song Make the World Go Away. I thought that was a nice pairing.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:10

Yeah, the music is so good for so much of this.

SPEAKER_13 1:35:13

Oh yeah. Then we get a quick cut to Vault 33.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:17

Yeah, let's go. Vault 33. Do we start on Betty or do we start on Reg?

SPEAKER_13 1:35:23

Betty.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:24

Betty.

unknown 1:35:25

Right.

SPEAKER_13 1:35:25

And it's so Betty, the engineer's talking to Betty, telling her that their water chip's gone bad.

SPEAKER_14 1:35:32

She's fucking sassy, man. Bossing people around, cussing people out.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:36

She's great. Yeah, she's overseer again. And we know that she was overseer for a while before Hank. So she hasn't been overseer in 20 years, but now she's back in charge. Didn't ask for it, but doing what she has to do. And getting the scientists to help out, and they're trying to figure out the water chip issue because, and that's of course a reference, you know, Fallout 1 and the failing water chip. So it's great they brought it in. In fact, we joked last season about how, okay, water chip, they mentioned it only once, they gotta go back to it. Well, yeah, now it becomes a pretty major plot developed.

SPEAKER_14 1:36:06

And we need it for survival.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:09

Like so they are figuring out how to do this. So they're gonna reallocate power to temporary water filters, they built it as spare parts, and they're kind of trying to make things work while they figure out what they're going to do. And meanwhile, we get Reg coming down the hallway, licking a line.

SPEAKER_15 1:36:25

Slicking a lollipop.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:27

Lollipop, lollipop. And he's completely oblivious to everything going on. And he's walking in and he's Betty says interrupts what she's working on. Can I help you, Reg? And Reg is just like, have you seen Norm? You know, just curious. He hasn't seen Norm in a while. He's missing his buddy. Because we've got to remember, Reg was a double act before. It was him and Zach Cherry's character. I'm not remembering his name right now. Do you remember his name? Ah, anyway. It was the two of them together. And now he's lost his best bud.

SPEAKER_16 1:36:58

Is it Davy?

SPEAKER_00 1:37:00

No, Davy is is Lear Leary. He's the older guy. But Davy's cool too. But it was Zach Cherry is the guy with the Pro the little Yeah, the guy with the pro. Yep. And and so he's like, Have you seen Norm? Because he's maybe hoping to talk to Norm. And of course, we know where Norm is. Betty knows where Norm is. But Betty says, Norm has been sent for a leadership exchange program to Vault 31.

SPEAKER_15 1:37:24

He's already blood.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:26

He's prepared. Yep. And Reg, of course, is disheartened by this and he sighs. Everybody moving up in the world but me. You know, his buddy is going to Vault 32. Norm's in Vault 31 leadership program. And just he's feeling useless.

SPEAKER_13 1:37:41

Yeah, totally useless. Maybe I can help out. And he and he knocks something off of the water chip.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:50

Yeah, some kind of globe gizmo thingy.

SPEAKER_14 1:37:52

Broke something. Here you go.

SPEAKER_09 1:37:54

You'd be surprised what a guy with a PhD in event planning can.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:00

Maybe you should find an outlet. Start a club or something.

SPEAKER_09 1:38:04

A club? What kind of club?

SPEAKER_05 1:38:06

We've been through a lot lately. Maybe you could start a group for people to talk about any kind of feelings you may be feeling.

SPEAKER_09 1:38:13

What kind of feelings am I feeling?

SPEAKER_05 1:38:14

Shame? Uselessness?

SPEAKER_09 1:38:16

I don't feel useless. I like shame. Shame I can work with. There would need to be a snack budget, of course.

SPEAKER_14 1:38:24

Snacks are always the most important part of any club.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:27

Got a PhD in event planning. He knows what you need for an event. And apparently, snacks are on the menu. Literally on the menu.

SPEAKER_14 1:38:34

Event planner is also, he's got his master's degree in event planning or whatever, but like event planners also probably not like flopping their hands around a breaking super delicate water chip glass globe things and stuff. You know what I mean? They're they're probably delicate with their cognac glasses, if you would.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:51

Something tells me he has a little bit less practical experience in the vault. Yeah, might be more of a theoretical degree in event planning.

SPEAKER_14 1:38:59

Theoretical event planning.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:07

But yeah, so shame he can work with. I love how Betty like puts that out there. Maybe you're feeling useless. Like what she actually thinks of him in the moment.

SPEAKER_14 1:39:17

Hey, you you brought those up pretty darn quick.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:21

You can all, yeah, I can almost feel it painting him. And yet he seems oblivious. Shame I can work with. So he knows shame.

SPEAKER_13 1:39:28

That is a familiar territory. So then we get the quick cut to vault 32.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:34

Yeah, we are jumping from vault to vault. Yeah, that's kind of what I mentioned earlier that now there are three vaults to deal with. So we deal with them as a group, but we still got to continue plots in each of them. So when we jump over, are we in Steph's office, right?

SPEAKER_13 1:39:47

Yeah, Davy's complaining about getting lost.

SPEAKER_14 1:39:50

We're in different vaults with different storylines, but we're also in different timelines as well. Pre-war, post-war, all of a sudden, like there's just so many jumping around.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:01

There's a lot of jumping, yeah. And they get into a cadence where some episodes are more focused than others, but it was something that I did have a little bit of trouble with. But at least I'm like, I'm glad they made these people a block. You know, we get the vault dwellers as vault dwellers, even if they're not all together. But Davy is unhappy. He's having trouble adjusting to life in a new vault. You see what I'm up against? I leave my quarters, I take a right turn, another right turn, the elevator. But here in 32, it's a left and a left. Two wrongs apparently don't make a right for Davy.

SPEAKER_14 1:40:33

What's uh overseer's name? Is it like Stephanie or Stephanie?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:37

Stephanie Harper. By the way, did you know I got a copy of her ID? It hasn't come up yet in the show, so I I guess I shouldn't spoil.

SPEAKER_13 1:40:44

But what?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:45

I'll whip it out when we get there. The ID that uh that they find later that Chet finds.

SPEAKER_13 1:40:50

Yeah, so then she's is there anything actionable that we can do?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:57

Something I can do for you. Yes.

SPEAKER_14 1:41:00

I cannot lay out the new vault for you. Sorry.

SPEAKER_13 1:41:04

So just signage. You know, we need better signage.

SPEAKER_14 1:41:09

Oh no, that might be offensive. That might be stepping on toes.

SPEAKER_13 1:41:13

Uh so let's do a signage feasibility study.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:18

A signage feasibility study. We don't want to upset people with just tossing out new signage if they're not used to it because I mean he's had trouble adjusting to turning right, let alone seeing a sign where there didn't used to be a sign in the other vault.

SPEAKER_12 1:41:31

Oh, cultural scurve.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:32

Yeah, let's do a feasibility study. Now, this is where this kind of dialogue is where the idea of buds buds and raising a bunch of super managers that we learned about. My God, these guys are the perfect middle managers. They're mediocre at everything, they're planning events, they're doing feasibility studies on having meetings to put up signage about a thing.

SPEAKER_14 1:41:55

Oh my gosh, so much bureaucracy.

SPEAKER_15 1:41:58

Awesome.

SPEAKER_13 1:41:59

And then we've got poor Chet sitting out in the waiting room. Davy comes out and you know says hi to him.

SPEAKER_14 1:42:06

I thought it was kind of funny Chet kind of being the butt of the jokes in season one. Now I kind of feel bad for Chet in season two. I thought it was good to laugh at him in season one. Now I'm like, oh, poor Chet.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:19

He definitely matures as a character. Him and Norm both. Yeah. Norm was one of the great characters, and it is again this season. But Chet has gone from a little bit comic relief, pining after Lucy, cousin stuff, to now apparently Mr. Steph Harper. Because uh Davy comes out and he says, heck of a wife you got there, Chet. Not married, and a beautiful baby, too.

SPEAKER_14 1:42:45

Not mine.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:47

Davy says, I never had a family. What happened? Life, I guess. Things move quickly. Chet says, I don't have a family either, Davy. Davy says, Well, enjoy it.

SPEAKER_15 1:43:00

Well, enjoy it.

SPEAKER_14 1:43:01

Oh, that's good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:03

The delivery is so good. And Chet just shakes his head. And so then we go back to Steph still in the office after Davy walked out, and she's typing and getting frustrated with her computer or terminal. And Chet walks in, and Steph looks up and goes, Oh, just you. You. Davey. I mean, bless his heart, but you know. But I love that Chet is referred to as just you.

SPEAKER_14 1:43:26

Just you. You know what I'm saying about computers?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:29

Yeah. Yeah. Before he gets before she asks him that though, Chet, you can see Chet is just not exactly happy. He's non-plus, taking care of Steph's baby, and we don't know what to do with himself. And he says, I'm just here to see if you've gotten around to giving me a job assignment yet. If you haven't chosen a gatekeeper, I have relevant experience.

SPEAKER_14 1:43:50

He's literally the only person in the vault without a job.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:53

Yeah. Literally the only person in the vault. And he's like, Chet, I've been busy and I need someone to take care of the baby, and it's used to you. I love that she calls the baby it here.

SPEAKER_15 1:44:02

Like she's just it.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:04

She hasn't exactly bonded. And Chet emphasizes that when he responds to he's like, He is not my baby. Everybody is acting like he is. And Steph is just like Chet. Yeah, she's just kind of looking like, okay, and like so, and he says, Would you at least consider giving him a name? The neighbors have started him calling him Chet Jr. And she says, Let's go with that then. Chet frickin' Jr., not his son. Chet Jr. was my father's name. Kind of a personal area for me, having watched him die of starvation during the weevil famine. And Steph is looking at him like, is Chet back talking me? Are we having an argument? Is this where she stabs the knife in the ground?

SPEAKER_13 1:44:53

She like stabs it in the staff and she was she was cutting her orange. And then when he pushes back on it, she stabs the uh countertop. And it's like, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:05

Yeah, absolutely. J just Chet growing a spine, like just the lightest of pushbacks, kid gloves, even. And yeah, that's he doesn't find his spine. Because as soon as she says, Are we having an argument? And the knife has been stabbed, he says, uh Chet Jr. it is. The worst. He really shouldn't have given into that. I feel I feel wicked bad. But you can see on his face he's like mad at himself. So he turns around to leave and his face he just goes like crestfallen. Like this is BS. I need to stand up for myself. What the heck is going on here? And then that's when Steph says, How are your computers? And Jeff says, That was Norm's department. Maybe you can ask him in the terminal. Oh yeah. Great idea. And then she goes and she tries to, you know, message something and she clicks the message over there and it says inter intervault communications disabled. And she swears Cod damn cheese and rice. Which I thought was totally cute. I thought it was totally cute. If you turn on subtitles, like she doesn't say GD, she says cod damn instead of GD. I thought that was great.

SPEAKER_14 1:46:15

I didn't catch that.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:17

Cod damn cheese and rice. And of course, because intervault communications are down, we switch from the blinking there back to the blinking and vault 31. Where we're here with Bud, the brain in Arumba and Norm.

SPEAKER_13 1:46:33

Yep. All the food containers are opened up and Norm's eating all the stuff that he likes out of all of them. And Bud lets him know that it'd be a shame if you died of starvation. Bad way to go.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:48

Heck of a way to kick the bucket.

unknown 1:46:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:51

And so he's trying to convince him because Norm is just like ignoring him, suffering. And Bud says, I'm offering you a much more dignified solution. Get son of Hank, as he calls him, get in your dad's cryopod. Norm says, I I won't be your prisoner. And he says, You're already my prisoner. All you have to do is wait till the surface is safe to recolonize. And then we'll all head up for Reclamation Day.

SPEAKER_14 1:47:16

When is that?

SPEAKER_00 1:47:18

When there's no one left on the surface to disagree with us. I thought that was that was great. Because Reclamation Day has become a real thing for Vault Tech. And it's a big thing, of course, in Vault 76. But like any good line, Vault Tech will repurpose the slogan and use it for whatever they need to.

SPEAKER_12 1:47:36

Absolutely they will.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:37

And then of course, you know, he's not answering, he's not doing anything. And so Bud says, May it'll be more reasonable when you're a little hungrier. Good luck finding something you can't see. And he turns off most of the lights in the vault now. So it's like even darker in there. And Bud continues to threaten him. You're living in my world. These three, it's a great monologue. Did you save that sound clip, Andrew? Do you have that?

SPEAKER_10 1:48:01

No, no, no, no. Interfault communications. Disabled. Where is he? Where is he? Where are you? I'm coming for you. I'm coming for you. I'll be right there. Oh god, fuck in this mess. You really are a disgusting, filthy animal, aren't you? Well, I hope you aren't expecting me to clean this up. You found water. You're out of food. Starvation is a heck of a way to kick the bucket. I'm offering you a much more dignified solution to the one you've chosen for yourself, Sun Pank. Get in your dad's cryopod. You're already my prisoner. All you have to do is wait until the surface is safe to wait.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:39

No one is that existing.

SPEAKER_10 1:48:41

No one must agree.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:45

Everything I noticed is missing.

SPEAKER_10 1:48:47

Oh, we have a protocol for everything. Something goes missing. You're over here. No one is coming for you, buddy. The resources of the functioning civilization. You're just some malcontent to wander down the wrong corridor. Hope do you have to get the greatest achievement of the history of vertical integration? Written over your head. No one is coming to save you.

SPEAKER_14 1:49:25

Like the vertical integration.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:27

Greatest achievement in history of vertical integration. I'm glad you had that clip. That's one of the best lines. You know what's funny? I mentioned that I had pulled up the end of the shooting script and was taking a look at it before the episode. And they actually abbreviate brain on a Roomba as Boar, B-O-A-R, in some places. The boar moves across the room. I'm like, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_14 1:49:50

I like that. Who acts Bud? Who's that actor? That voice sounds so familiar, and I wanted to go back and look who played it. In season one, because I'm sure it's just the same guy.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:02

Yeah, it's gotta be the same guy voicing, right? His name is Michael Esper, I think.

unknown 1:50:08

Michael Esper.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:09

But I don't know what else he's done.

SPEAKER_14 1:50:11

Let me just I didn't mean to sidetrack you. I was just cute.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:14

Nothing listed as other work on here. I'm sure he has, but I don't have it here. That's awesome. Wow, and he looks very different in his photo than he does made up for the role.

SPEAKER_14 1:50:25

Giving out of a flea.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:27

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And speaking of fleas on to the next scene. Oh my god, that is the best segue ever, Ray.

SPEAKER_14 1:50:37

Good seg. Good seg.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:39

Beautiful. So yeah. So what? We flash over from here to Lucy and the ghoul kind of continuing to walk, right? They're coming up ahead.

SPEAKER_13 1:50:49

Yeah, they find a body that's been snapped on loud by Hank in his power armor.

SPEAKER_14 1:50:59

There's just a big bloody boot print in the ground and a person in two halves on either side of it. Oh, so funny.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:06

Yeah, you can definitely tell it was a power armor foot or a big foot, but since there is no bigfoot here, he was stomped by power armor right in half.

SPEAKER_14 1:51:13

Amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:14

It's very clear. Cooper says, you know, your daddy came this way, looks like.

SPEAKER_14 1:51:20

Yeah, well that also actually helped them in the long run because they just followed his bloody footprint into the their next location. Yep.

SPEAKER_13 1:51:30

So you see a little one-person settlement that I guess used to be two people. An old lady and her son.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:41

Yep, and so they're gonna they think Hank must have come this way because it's up on the trail past a guy who was stomped. Which by the way, the ghoul basically just stepped through himself. He just like followed right in Hank's footsteps. Gross. Lucy walked around. Perhaps she must have seen him. And the ghoul goes and reaches for his gun. But Lucy's like, dude. Well, she doesn't say dude, but we can just ask her. So Lucy kind of hurries to get over there, you know, and and see who's there. She's like, ma'am, ma'am, and what what does she say there? She basically the the woman starts to look up, and in order to get her attention, Lucy says, I'll have some Lee. Lee? The woman's excited about that, a customer. She cats. So she reaches up and she goes and starts to make the soup, and it is disgusting.

SPEAKER_13 1:52:28

Yeah, it is. She takes her hood off and runs her finger through runs her fingers through her hair into a pot of boiling water. Shakespeare.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:40

She's got like the broth going, if you want to call it that. Like who knows what was in it, it was just water. And then she adds fresh flea. I mean, hey, at least the fleas are fresh, right?

SPEAKER_14 1:52:50

They're still hopping around.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:51

Yep.

SPEAKER_14 1:52:52

Yeah, you could literally see them hopping out of the soup. It's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:55

And she's so generous, she says, I got some crackers if you want. They're in my other pants.

SPEAKER_14 1:53:00

In my other pants.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:02

Like you just picture like these crackers shoved into her pant pockets, like, oh my god. So when I first watched this, I thought this scene was so nasty and even kind of dumb. I mean, they go through it all, and Lucy takes a little sip, and she's like, Okay. And she's being polite. And so she asks, you know, have you seen a man passing by in an outfit made of metal? And she says, She has. She says, He took my son. And Lucy starts to be, Oh, I'm sure your son is out. And the ghoul says, He did.

SPEAKER_15 1:53:34

No, he didn't. He did not that boy did.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:37

And Lucy is trying to use all of her charisma, all of her vault tech training. She's like, now we don't know that. And the woman says, No, he did. Just my luck.

SPEAKER_13 1:53:48

Yeah. She figures it's her luck because he owed her money.

SPEAKER_14 1:53:52

Right. Like, oh, that son of a bitch owes me money. Or she calls him a cocksucker, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:57

Yeah, she does. Yeah, that's what she said.

SPEAKER_14 1:53:59

A cocksucker owes me money.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:02

I mean, you know, this is the way some that's a term of endearment for some people.

SPEAKER_13 1:54:05

Yeah. And then says if they find him, if he's got any money, it's hers.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:09

Yeah, if you find any money on the body, it's mine. But Lucy is so taken aback by this because she's here trying to comfort the woman and like get information the right way, but obviously the ghoul has the right of it. She she points him and she's like, Yeah, no, he went that away with my son. And so she points off screen.

SPEAKER_14 1:54:28

Let's take a listen.

SPEAKER_06 1:54:30

Excuse me. Hi there. I'd like one bowl of flea soup.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:36

So wondering if you happen to I got some crackers if you want 'em. They're in my other pants.

SPEAKER_06 1:54:42

Oh, I'm okay with eating while it's high. Hmm. Yeah. Happen to have seen a man passing by in a sort of oversized outfit made of metal. He took my son.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:54

Oh, I'm sure your son is up to He's dead. No, we don't know that. He's dead. Just my kind of luck. Koksaka loaned me money. Sorry for money. You went that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:09

Sorry for your money.

SPEAKER_14 1:55:11

Good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:12

Yeah, I thought that was great. So, I mean, obviously, like I said, the scene at the time annoyed me because I know there are there are obviously characters in the Wasteland. We got our no bark noonans, you know, we got our wacky characters. But this one, flea soup. Like that was almost too much for me. I'm just like, who is this a reference to something?

SPEAKER_14 1:55:36

No. No side story. Has this ever happened anywhere in the Fallout universe? Like, is this a Fallout tactics reference or something?

SPEAKER_00 1:55:44

No, because the games are a little more serious than that. And they're I mean, mostly.

SPEAKER_14 1:55:50

Have you played Fallout 1? Yes, we have not serious at all.

SPEAKER_13 1:55:55

Yes, we have and so what I want to know is why are fleas still small? Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:07

Most other bugs mutated larger.

SPEAKER_13 1:56:09

Cave crickets. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:12

You know, takes all sizes. Maybe they do get a little larger on some creatures, but these ones aren't. No, that's a good point. Anyway, I'm not complaining that much. I will say on subsequent watchings it bothered me less. But the first time I saw this scene, I'm like, everybody in the wasteland is an idiot in this show sometimes. Our main characters are bright. I mean, Maximus is bright enough, but like if they're not a main character, they're just there for like comic relief. And I I don't love that. This season, they improved that a little bit, but there are still a bit few too many random wastelanders that are wacky for me. Like, you know what I mean? There needs to be a balance, and I feel like you don't quite have that balance yet.

SPEAKER_13 1:56:52

Yeah, and I mean this scene didn't add anything really.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:56

No, just humor.

SPEAKER_13 1:56:58

You know, yeah, but and they don't even play off the fact that we see her son later.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:06

So true. It's true. So they follow where the uh woman pointed, and next thing we see them kind of coming up round a metal sign, and we realize that they are kind of walking up on a drive on a drive-in, an old Starlight Theater. And the ghoul drops a line while they're walking there. What is he planning on doing once we find yo daddy? As he says. And he's just, you know, are we gonna do it like usual? You put a bull in his ass and leave me to put one in his head? And Lucy says, No, I'm gonna bring him to justice. They're just kind of working through that. And they're gonna they this is the point where they kind of hit the movie theater. And they're having a discussion about whether or not he deserves it. And Lucy essentially says she was raised that believe that's what everyone deserves. And they don't give up hope. And why do you act the way you do? And Lucy basically just says, I'm trying to lead by example. Which that's a good that's kind of what an idealist does. And Lucy is still an idealist, even though she's dealing with the reality of the wasteland more now. She's still if you don't have your values or you know your moral compass, that's important to her and who she is. If she loses that, she'll be a different person, and maybe she will. But for now, that's what she needs. And anyway, she's walking ahead towards the sign, and the ghoul looks over at the marquee, and it shows double feature. And it's playing Man as Dog Three, starring Cooper Howard. And then the other movie. Did you see the name of the other movie on there? It was a pretty quick little shot.

SPEAKER_14 1:58:32

I didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:33

It was Drink Drunk Dracula.

SPEAKER_14 1:58:36

I think they just made up Drunk Dracula.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:38

I paused and zoomed in. Yeah, because I was watching my cabin the last time. Drink Drunk Dracula starring Sebastian Leslie. Wow. I thought that was pretty funny. And then, of course, you know, there are skeletons in the cars and your classic fallout scene around the drive-thru. Is it with people who are watching the movies when the bombs fall? Which is a weird thing, time of day wise. And we don't need to get into that, but that's been a people have asked for a while. Like if the bombs dropped Saturday morning, why were they what in an outdoor cinema at that time?

SPEAKER_14 1:59:09

But because you guys have never obviously partied so hard on a Friday night that you're still there on Saturday morning going hard.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:17

Yeah, they were just sleeping. Come on. And I mean, you know, maybe it's an early matinee. Matinee is happening to drive things, right?

SPEAKER_14 1:59:25

We're necking. This is the drive-in, baby.

SPEAKER_13 1:59:28

During the day drive-ins, it's the flea market.

SPEAKER_14 1:59:32

Fleas again.

SPEAKER_13 1:59:34

So they were there for the they were there for the flea market. They weren't there for a movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:38

There you go. That's perfect. Yeah, they're there for a daytime picnic in flea market.

SPEAKER_14 1:59:45

Right. Come on.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:46

See, this all, thank you. That all makes sense to me. They might not watch a movie uh, you know, early morning on a Saturday, but it works.

SPEAKER_14 1:59:54

Yeah, maybe they're showing Saturday morning cartoons.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:57

And this is where dog meat barks, and you get a little thing in the corner. Dog meat found something. No, you don't see that. But dog meat runs in through past movie screen to a hole, and there's a big old vault where it's like.

SPEAKER_14 2:00:09

That would be so funny if they did like a little, you know, UI thing on the screen really quickly that most people wouldn't notice, but like all the gamers would be like, oh, look, it's the reticle or something. You know, if they just put I don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:26

I totally thought that was kind of like what they were hinting at here, you know, the classic. I mean, he's not gonna eat you a cry later. Well, that would be cool, but Yeah. Okay, hey, we have the peanut gallery in chat has a thought that the fleas had nothing big enough to feed on. So any that got bigger starved to death because, you know, their natural habitat. They couldn't live in the fur when they were larger, and that's where they belong. I don't know, maybe makes sense. Anywho, next scene. Now we're going over to the diner. So we come in and Cooper is there with Lee Moldaver again.

SPEAKER_13 2:01:02

It's from last year so we know the Okay, I gotta call Foul on that.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:06

Okay, go on.

SPEAKER_13 2:01:08

Blood bugs.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:09

Oh, true.

SPEAKER_13 2:01:11

If a blood bug can mutate into a giant if a mosquito can mutate into a giant blood bug and still find enough blood to stay alive, a flea could do.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:21

Admittedly, blood bugs don't live in fur like fleas do. Fleas need hair to live in, but you're right.

SPEAKER_13 2:01:26

They don't need hair to live in, they just need blood.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:29

True. I'm hearing chat saying that was a flea-brained theory. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. So we're at a diner with Cooper and a Mole Daver. They're having a talk, and Janie is there playing Wakakami, which was another great reference.

SPEAKER_15 2:01:43

Yeah. That's really funny.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:45

We see Wakakami. Do we see Wakakami in Nuka World in Fallout 4? I mean, I know it's in 76 in multiple locations and such.

SPEAKER_13 2:01:54

I only remember it in 76.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:57

I'm looking it up. Can be crafted in a workshop, and yes, is in the Nuka Cade. Yep, there is Wakakami in the game. I love the little mallet with the red, white, and blue on it. Classic.

SPEAKER_12 2:02:07

Very cute.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:08

In fact, if you want to PvP friends, a little aside for any of 76ers out there, fighting friends with cami wackers is a really good time.

SPEAKER_14 2:02:17

Do those legendary drop?

SPEAKER_00 2:02:19

I don't think they legendary drop. I wonder if you can apply a legendary value to them. I don't think so. Legendary Kami Wacker. Like what bloodied Kami Wacker? Explosive Kami Whacker. That would be fun.

SPEAKER_14 2:02:32

That would be fun. Send them flying. The whatever the perk is called on the 2076 World Series bat that sends them flying. That that'd be fun on the Kami Whacker. The people airborne with the Kami Wacker.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:47

But so Cooper and Moldaver are talking. And Cooper's kind of sharing some of what he saw. And she says, sounds like he heard something interesting. You know, because he's talking about the meeting. And he's like, What? You knew? And she says, and now you do too. As in, she knows there's a big conspiracy, and she knows Mr. House or Vault Tech might be behind things getting worse and the war getting worse. And she says, So what are we gonna do about it? And Cooper's like, What do you mean we're gonna do about it? I told you I'm not a spy, I'm not a red, I'm a Hollywood actor who likes horses and cars.

SPEAKER_14 2:03:25

Horses and cars.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:29

And cocktails. I mean, this is who Cooper is, right? He's a he's an actor, he's not the man in the movies, but he kind of kind of becomes that. Time goes on.

SPEAKER_14 2:03:40

He does become that because the way he's speaking now, as you know, the pre-war actor is you know not the drawl he has as the ghoul, who is a character, a character in a goddamn Western movie, basically.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:55

Yep. Yep, that was his accent before, but as the ghoul, he's more detached and he doesn't care. And so it definitely comes out more. He's got that kind of calm, slow way of talking as the ghoul that he only had when acting as Cooper a lot of the time. But she says, You happen to be famous, and fame is a rare kind of power. You can sit in rooms with people I can't. And he says, People like who? And she says, Robert House.

SPEAKER_14 2:04:21

Nobody's safe near Robert House.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:24

Exactly. So there we go. The name again, he is the theme throughout the episode. And he says, Yeah, I'm familiar with him. He owns half of Las Vegas. And she says he's also building a privately owned missile system with enough firepower to follow through on your West proposals. Now, that of course is not true. As far as we know, the firepower isn't enough to start the war, but it's a missile defense system. But Moldaver doesn't necessarily know that. You know, she just knows he's building up muscles and he m muscles, missiles. He's not building that many muscles yet. But trying to set up a defense grid, but she just knows that he's building up the missiles. And so he wants she wants him to go and listen in on things. And and she's essentially suggesting, you know, you go you have the ability to meet with him. Your wife is gonna go on a trip to see him. She has information and Cooper doesn't want to murder him. Cooper, he's not she doesn't say it, but you can tell she's intimating that he should murder him or take him out or do something. And Cooper, he's not he's not ready to kill a man. At least not now, not again. He's been in war, and that's not who he is anymore.

SPEAKER_14 2:05:36

You want me to spy on the world's richest man?

SPEAKER_00 2:05:40

Exactly. Do you have a clip for the rest of this dialogue?

SPEAKER_02 2:05:45

They sat around that table and they talked about the ending of the world like they were talking about a new business strategy.

SPEAKER_04 2:05:51

Sounds like you heard something interesting. What you knew? And now you do too. So what are we gonna do about it?

SPEAKER_02 2:05:57

And what are we gonna do about it? I told you last I would have read a fucking Hollywood actor who likes horses and cars.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:05

You also happen to be famous. And fame is a rare kind of power. You get to sit in rooms that I can't meet people that I fuck. Are you familiar with Robert House? I'm familiar with Robert House. The guy outside of Las Vegas. He's also building a privately owned pistol system in Las Vegas with enough firepower to follow through on your white proposals. When the bombs drop, it'll be Robert House that presses the button. Are you asking me to spy on the wealthiest man in America? Not spy on him. You won't. Your wife is going to Vegas next week to sell Cold Fusion to Robert House. Then he'll have everything he needs. To press that button unless you stop him. Play nice with your wife, and get on that trip to Vegas. Where are you going? Home. Well, I still have one. When the world goes down in flames, at least you'll know your hands are clean.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:00

Oh. There we go. That's the whole scene we were just talking through. But that's exactly it. She's telling him what she thinks needs done. He knows something needs done, but he's resisting that. And then that line, when the whole world goes down in flames, at least you'll know your hands are clean. Like she is, you can see why she becomes kind of a great leader in the future, you know, of the NCR. She has a way with words.

SPEAKER_14 2:07:26

Enjoyed that scene.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:27

The outro. So the outro for the scene. He says, Come on, Janie, let's go. And Janie whacks one last commie and walks off when another one just pops up.

SPEAKER_14 2:07:35

And yeah, hang on. If you listen real closely here to the clip, you can hear it in the background. They sat around that table and they talked about the ending of the world.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:43

Like Yeah, you totally hear the commies popping up and laughing and getting whacked.

SPEAKER_14 2:07:51

Whack a commie.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:52

I love it. Because it's a nice kind of double on Tondra, too. Because obviously she's literally whacking him, but also whack in you know, in the mob sense, he means to off or kill somebody. Meanwhile, they're discussing whacking Robert House. So there's a there's a synergy here that's happening.

SPEAKER_14 2:08:09

Whacking. Huh, didn't catch that. Good one.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:12

So then for the outro of the scene, after they leave, we get Coop in the kitchen, and he's just trying to deal with all these thoughts in his head. And he's working on some, is it mashed potatoes, I think? Making some mashed potatoes. And in the background, you hear the radio listening and it's talking about West Tech. There's a West Tech reference. Westtech stops are up again. Mid reports their latest biological projects will revolutionize skincare. Biological products and skincare. That's an FEV reference. Hilarious.

SPEAKER_15 2:08:40

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:41

Hilarious. And meanwhile, Rob Cohen or Robert House created a stir today about remarks on the war. And then, you know, they go on and it's the last line it says, He stated the question might not be whether the world will end, but merely who will push the button. More on that afterward from our sponsors. Here's that yum yum deviled eggs. But after it says, Who will push the button? You hear the front door open and Barb coming through. They really the cinematography on this and the timing of the scenes and the transitions are just great throughout, you know?

SPEAKER_13 2:09:11

Yeah. Who will oh her. And it's totally a fallout for kitchen, too. And it's got the giant robot arm bed.

SPEAKER_14 2:09:20

Oh man. I was like, oh look, it's the th oh man. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:25

It's perfect. Is he wearing an apron as well for this scene? I know he hasn't others. I think this scene is a little bit darker, so I'm not sure he actually put on his apron for it. But then she comes in when you can she is shaken because this is still, remember, this is still all the same day that at work early today she had that meeting. So this is a few hours later. And she just had the worst day ever. And she doesn't know that her husband heard. And we don't know what's behind her. What caused this? Is she really all in on Vault Tech's plan? Or the way that she says drop the bomb ourselves and looks stone faced and also looks up is prompted by the shadowy figure up above the meeting. Is she being put up to it? So we have all these questions like is this what she believes? Is this what she has to do? Is she just doing what she has to do? And we will find out as she goes on, but right now we don't know. Meanwhile, all Coop knows, because he didn't see her when she said it, and he doesn't know what's going on with her that she suggested doing this, and maybe his wife is a monster. His wife is suggesting doing the worst thing that could be done. I mean, we just saw what happened with the bomb test earlier, you know, the test of the emergency broadcast system. Everybody panicking, we're all going to die. And his wife literally said, We do it ourselves. We can start the end of the world. So she is just incredibly shaken, but she steals herself. She has to go in to see her husband who loves her and her daughter who loves her and who she is doing this for, and she cares about more than anything else. And she walks in and Cooper steals himself. Because Cooper has to look at her in the eyes now that he knows what he knows. And so he finishes his drink and looks up as Barb walks in and gives her a big smile and says, Welcome home.

SPEAKER_14 2:11:12

Yep, he's got a this is the performance of his life right here.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:15

Yeah, it's a big smile, but you can tell that his face is kind of falling, that it's forced.

SPEAKER_14 2:11:22

Yeah, because Mold Davor said something about, you know, you play nice, you go with your wife, you go to New Vegas. Right. Talking about killing him. Yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:31

And I thought the welcome home was a good transition line too, because welcome home is used in vault tech a lot. Welcoming to you to a vault, welcome home. You've got the little lenticular, good night, good morning, and welcome home signs in in Fallout 76 and other places. And as he says, Welcome home, we cut to the vault again. I think we briefly see Lucy and the Ghoul entering the vault, and she's asking about have you been to a lot of vault?

SPEAKER_14 2:12:00

Right, yep. That exactly.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:02

Yeah, that's what it does. He says it looks like Daddy took a detour.

SPEAKER_14 2:12:06

She said, uh, I know all about the Vault Tech experimentation because I saw Vault 4. And he said Vault 4 was a best case scenario or something like that. What was Vault 4 again? Remind me.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:17

Vault 4 was with the Cyclops, the one where they were doing the experiments on human creature hybrids.

SPEAKER_14 2:12:22

Oh, right. Yeah, with uh Rnell.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:25

Yep. A lot of genetic experimentation. So maybe not best case scenario. We've seen a lot of vaults. Anyone who plays the games has, and some of them are, if not control vaults, at least not quite as bad as that. But they all experiment in some way, pretty much.

SPEAKER_12 2:12:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:40

So when she says, well, to be fair, it was a little worse than the one where I came from. And the ghoul, of course, reacts to that. And he says, and how many towns did they destroy down in Vault 4? Which again, knowing what her dad did, yeah, yeah. She's right, her vault was bad in his own way. Absolutely. But he gets her to open the vault. And so she, you know, pulls out the little dongle from her pit boy, plugs it in, goes the thing and gets in. And she says, You really think my dad is down there? And they followed him. So Ghoul says, Trail hasn't coming in, trail hasn't gone out, too. What I'm curious about is why he came at all. So this is where we're at. And we are heading in. And he says, Aren't you a little curious too? And he steps in the elevator and she joins. And they go down into the vault.

SPEAKER_14 2:13:26

So they don't need to catch up with him quickly. They need to find his motivation. Like, why did he come to this location?

SPEAKER_02 2:13:34

Welcome home. Looks like Daddy took a detour.

SPEAKER_08 2:13:38

Never seen a vault like this before.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:40

Part for the course in my experience.

SPEAKER_08 2:13:42

You know a lot of vaults.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:44

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_08 2:13:45

You must like them.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:46

Every time I step foot in one of these concrete shoeboxes, I gotta make peace with the fact that I might finally learn what happened to my wife and my daughter. As they be alive, dead, or something far worse.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:02

Something far worse. What do you think that might be?

SPEAKER_14 2:14:05

Him being a ghoul, I would assume.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:07

Could be, or any of the other things going on.

SPEAKER_14 2:14:09

I mean, once again, CV or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:12

We mentioned Vault 4. They could be hybridized with gulpers and eaten by him.

SPEAKER_14 2:14:17

Does he have any leads that they uh are alive?

SPEAKER_00 2:14:23

He's just living on hope, as far as we know.

SPEAKER_15 2:14:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:14:26

Yeah. Yeah. Right now he doesn't know for certain, but he knows that they were part of the management program. He initially at some point he knows what he did with Janie and how, once again, we don't know how she got to safety, but it seems like obviously he got them to his wife, or his wife had taken her at that point. Because again, we don't know where Barbs and Coop's Rice are going to lead at this point. But we know he does want to find them. So he obviously cares enough to try to find, if not just his daughter, his wife too. So yeah, I think he's just hope is kind of all he has at this point. It's kept him burning as a ghoul for 250 years now, almost.

SPEAKER_14 2:15:07

Well, I guess there's cryopods everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:09

Yep. More than we ever thought of before, right? Like they weren't even really much of a thing early on, but you know people have a funny way of surviving. Like we thought it was just ghouls, but it's ghouls and cryo and all kinds of other stuff now.

SPEAKER_14 2:15:23

FEV and all sorts of shit, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:15:25

Yeah, there we go.

SPEAKER_14 2:15:27

So FEV is Is it still getting developed at this point? Or was it no wait? It was getting developed pre-war, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:15:34

Yes, it was getting developed pre-war. Yep.

SPEAKER_14 2:15:36

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:38

And experimented in a couple locations. Like originally we thought just the one out in California, but now we know that there are a couple of places where it started. We've got Huntersville in West Virginia, we've got another batch that we're working on elsewhere, and then of course California. So welcome home. And we are back to the we are back to the vault. So after they go down the elevator, we then switch to our vault 33, where we got Reg. And Reg has got his snack budget and he's got his his event. And we didn't know what to expect, but we knew that Reg was going to work with his feelings of shame, and he can work with that. And so it's now we're at the Products of Inbreeding Support Group. So he's in there, just a couple people. There is a uh guy and a girl who look-like, are kind of fawning over each other. And you come to realize in a conversation that they are brother and sister. And then you've got this other woman here, I believe she's like the vault historian. Was that what she was? And so they're all there, they're having their snacks, and Reg is talking. And Marion, that's her name. And he says, It's not your fault you're born in a vault. Let me hear you say it. And they all say, It's not my fault. I was born in a vault, which is a catchy slogan. Maybe not vault tech approved, but it rhymes, so that's good. And Reg says, It's not your fault. My parents were our related. And they repeat that. And he says, Feels good to say it out loud. Trust me. And if someone's come on the other side, I know what it's like to wonder if people look down on their noses at you. And he's kind of lost in thought talking to himself. And the one girl says, So we're gonna change the rules, right? And he looks up, what do you have a sound clip for this, Andrew? The way you raise your hand or no?

SPEAKER_14 2:17:21

No, no, it's just okay. So I was mocking the excited nature of the we're gonna overturn this rule, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:17:31

Right, yeah. If you look at this, if you look to the script, it says horny red-haired lady and horny red-haired guy as the character descriptions. And yeah, so yeah, we're gonna change it. And the guy says, No inbreeding ad vault, we're gonna change that, right? And he's like, No, that's not what this is about. Rules are good.

SPEAKER_15 2:17:51

Rules are good.

SPEAKER_00 2:17:52

We shouldn't be inbreeding, but we don't need to feel bad about it. You understand? And they're mad. And they're like, come on, let's get out of here. And so they leave. And it's just Reg and Marion, and she's there and she says, I was wondering, I have a mild allergy to dust. I sometimes wonder if it was my father's fault because he fell in love with his cousin, right? My mom. I just wonder if there's a biological. And finally, something you work with, he was like, Well, I didn't study genetics, so and she starts to leave. And then Reg sees her eyeing the door and says, Well, it could be his fault. And she's like, I knew it.

SPEAKER_15 2:18:26

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:18:27

And now he's got his first real group member eating her cocktail and carrot sticks, and says, Great snacks. And Reg is happy while they start talking. And it's funny because she goes on and she just even says, My mother was in love with my father, her fifth cousin. So they're fifth cousins. I don't think genetically that even really counts.

SPEAKER_14 2:18:46

It's basically nothing.

SPEAKER_00 2:18:48

Basically nothing. Like 10%. 10% chance of like some match DNA or something. I don't know.

SPEAKER_14 2:18:54

No way. Less than that either. Like probably.

SPEAKER_00 2:18:57

And then she goes, but my fifth cousin and fifth cousin was fourth cousin to a second cousin. And yeah, we're like, oh my god, the cousin stuff runs deep. And we jump to Vault 31. And Norm is looking very ill. He's he's starving. And Bud says, Won't be long now.

SPEAKER_15 2:19:17

He found water. No, but don't eat that.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:22

Yeah, there's a millipede. And so he like reached across and like he just he sees movement and he grabs it and he stabs it. And Norm is like kind of put in his mouth, and that's where Bud says, eating that might seem like a good idea, but it's toxic. You'll die a slow, painful death. And if you aren't willing to go into cryo, you could always let me inject you with this guy right here. And he waves his little syringe. And he's got poison. He's like, Really? It'd be a lot easier for both of us.

SPEAKER_14 2:19:49

For both of us.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:50

Kills you quick and painless. And he said basically he goes on a whole speech. And he says, You really only have two rational choices. Get into your dad's pod or die. And Norm suddenly looks up with a thought. Because Norm is clever. He says, You're right. I only have two rational choices, but roll the clip.

SPEAKER_10 2:20:11

It won't be long now. You must be so hungry and so thirsty. Why torture yourself when there's a nice, cozy cryo bond just waiting for you to hop into? What was my dad's ambitious?

SPEAKER_03 2:20:25

Why was he here?

SPEAKER_10 2:20:26

Whoa, being one of Bud's Buds was a highly coveted position back in the day. Yeah, applicants from as far out as Fresno. Eating that might seem like a good idea, but it's toxic. You'll die a slow, painful death. If you aren't willing to go into cryo, you could always let me inject you with this guy right here. Really would be a whole lot easier for both of us. It kills you quick and painless. Your body will be turning into a dust that will get circulated through the ventilation system, ultimately making its way into your cornfields back home. Not so bad if you think about it. Then you won't have to deal with all the headaches being alive. Or die.

SPEAKER_03 2:21:10

Plenty of irrational choice. What are you doing? 200 years of planning in order for everything to go just right. Seems like a lot of work to be asked. I think plans are slightly overrated personally. Fine everyone.

SPEAKER_10 2:21:29

All the mall.

SPEAKER_03 2:21:33

Great. Plans are hard. Chaos is hard. Chaos is easy.

SPEAKER_14 2:21:37

Chaos is easy.

SPEAKER_00 2:21:39

That's like the best bumper sticker slogan. We need those. Chaos is easy, bumper stickers. That's awesome. I also love that when Norm kicks him and breaks off the needle to inject him. He's like, no, I need that to threaten you.

SPEAKER_14 2:21:51

No, I need that to threaten you. That is a great line.

SPEAKER_00 2:21:55

God. Such such a manager. The whole thing is just hilarious. I love it. I love the way they do this. Chaos is easy. And so we're starting to, you know, shut everything down and wake everybody up. Meanwhile, we then slip back from the flickering light into the flickering lights of Vault 24, which by the way, Vault 24, the vault they're in behind the theater here, this was a real vault in the New Vegas files. Now it wasn't actually in New Vegas, but there was a Vault 24 jumpsuit in the files. And so it was a cut location. They were possibly going to add to Fall at New Vegas. But you know, due to time, they can only have so many vaults in there. So they're able to, I believe there's a file for the suit. There's not a file for the layout, but there are a couple of references that didn't make it into the game. So the lore wasn't set. And as we're going to find out, the lore that they actually ended up using is that they were doing brainwashing experimentation and maybe convincing people that they were communists for whatever reason. Were they trying to simply see if they could take loyal Americans and brainwash them into being communists to for science? Were they actually doing it for a reason? They were then a leash these people who thought they were communists out there to like be able to blame for something like see the communists are infiltrating. Even your neighbor really could be a communist because they had brainwashed him into being one. I don't know. That's cool.

SPEAKER_14 2:23:14

Maybe Vault Tech really are communists. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 2:23:19

Better dead than red. You know that. Haven't you listened to Liberty Prime?

SPEAKER_13 2:23:23

So one thing I did see here was on the the video screen that they were using to brainwash him. There was the wild wasteland swirl going around on the screen.

SPEAKER_00 2:23:37

Oh, that's perfect. That is a perfect reference there. I I didn't catch that last time I watched. So they are walking in through the vault and discovering what happened, and that's when we realized that, you know, there's a guy there in the communist hat and they're trying to figure it out. And the ghoul even I believe mentions more matching jackets bringing back. That's a cool line. I like that. I like and I like his disdain for matching jackets. Because the ghoul's a loner. He doesn't want to be part of the club anymore. He's his own man.

SPEAKER_14 2:24:05

Factions are dumb.

SPEAKER_00 2:24:06

Yeah, exactly. Gunners and cons and commies and nope.

SPEAKER_15 2:24:12

Brotherhood.

SPEAKER_00 2:24:13

Yeah, exactly. Matching metal suits. Even even worse. Right? So they are kind of walking through. And Lucy says, These are Americans. The vaults turn them into communists. And so she's scanning through the files, trying to figure out what's going on. They can only get so much. The terminal's locked. But the ghoul looks down and as he's crunching through, and it's not just bones and dirt. He steps on a sugar bomb and there's a trail of sugar bomb cereal. So they look at each other and they start to follow them. And they get in past another lab and another room. And into a room with a medical table. And on it there's a box of sugar bombs. And it's right there. Like a quest object.

SPEAKER_13 2:24:57

Like, you know, brightly lit.

SPEAKER_00 2:25:00

Exactly. Like, hey, here's the thing you're looking for, adventure. Pick it up. And so as they walk up towards it.

SPEAKER_13 2:25:07

I think at this point they found that there was a hard drive missing from the computer.

SPEAKER_14 2:25:13

Yeah, they discover this is what the ghoul hadn't needed to go in there for. He wanted to know why Hank wanted to go in there. Hank went in there to grab the hard drive out of this computer. Lucy was trying to What was she trying to do? Trying to contact another vault or something? What was she trying to do? She just wanted to get access. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:25:34

Access to the databases to see what they were doing here. And so she didn't find all that.

SPEAKER_14 2:25:38

She's like, hey, the drive is gone.

SPEAKER_00 2:25:40

Yep. And so but that's what they were looking for. And then you're right. And then that's when they find the sugar bombs, is after coming up to a dead end at the terminal, right? So as they crunches on it. Look at the box, then we see movement behind and it kind of slows back to reveal a guy on a medical gurney. Right?

SPEAKER_15 2:25:57

Uh oh.

SPEAKER_00 2:25:58

And he just sits up and looks at her, right? Like he sits up and he's still like it's obviously the fully soup woman's son. And he's like he's bleeding from his eyes. And he's not really there. But he looks right at her and says in a perfectly happy voice, despite the way he looks. Well, hello there, sugar bomb.

SPEAKER_14 2:26:22

Go home, sugar bomb.

SPEAKER_00 2:26:24

And then the ghoul says, Looks like your daddy picked himself a guinea pig from the soup stand, you know, experimenting with him, playing with his brain. And she's struggling. And she says, What do you want? And then he starts to shake and sway, like he's starting to shake a little bit. And he says, I fix everything. Go home, sugar bomb. So basically he's like carrying a message from her father that has been implanted in his mind. And he's starting to bleed more from the eyes. And she's staring at horror. And he says, Go home. Go home. Go. And his head explodes. Blood and brains everywhere. On Lucy. On everything. This ends like half the encounters in the wasteland. Very bloody mess. And the ghoul bends over and he finds that black box that we saw from the beginning of the episode with the mysterious Mr. House.

SPEAKER_15 2:27:16

A little in the net.

SPEAKER_00 2:27:17

Yep. Ever seen your daddy use one of these before? And she hasn't. She says, You're gonna take his advice? And Lucy says he won't stop hurting people, and we better get going. So she resolves herself to deal with this mess that her dad keeps leaving behind her.

SPEAKER_15 2:27:35

Daddy.

SPEAKER_00 2:27:36

Daddy. And speaking of her father, we're coming to the final scene of the show.

SPEAKER_14 2:27:42

Let's listen to sugar bombs real quick.

SPEAKER_08 2:27:47

My dad removed the drive.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:48

Well, hello there, sugar bomb. Looks like your dad picked himself up again a bit. I fixed everything. Go home. Sugar bomb.

SPEAKER_14 2:28:09

I like the splatter sound effect they used to.

SPEAKER_00 2:28:13

It's very moist.

SPEAKER_14 2:28:16

It certainly is.

SPEAKER_00 2:28:17

Squelchy even at times. Yeah. They lean into the body more, for sure. Oh no. Oh, we we lost one of our live listeners. Bye-bye. They couldn't take the they couldn't take the explosions.

SPEAKER_14 2:28:30

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 2:28:31

Oh, it happens.

SPEAKER_14 2:28:33

Oh, that's the last one.

SPEAKER_00 2:28:35

So speaking of hard drives and speaking of daddy and what daddy is up to, we are suddenly into a mysterious vault tech location, a big underground location with multi-story buildings and Hank walking in. And then he starts walking through. And it's empty desks, drafting cables, tubes. It's it's huge. And Hank, is he at a terminal here? He sets down, he has the missing.

SPEAKER_14 2:29:05

He's walking around just doing stuff. I was taken aback by how long he was still in his power armor. I think he even makes a pot of coffee and everything's still in his power armor.

SPEAKER_00 2:29:18

Okay, yeah, that was the order of it.

SPEAKER_14 2:29:20

I was like, what the hell is he doing? Like, get out of that shit, man. Make enjoy your cuppa.

SPEAKER_00 2:29:26

He's been living in his power armor for a while, you know. He's trucked across in it. So yeah, he comes in, he makes that damn fine cup of coffee, which is a classic reference.

SPEAKER_14 2:29:36

I ex I expected him to say it like damn fine coffee.

SPEAKER_00 2:29:40

It definitely felt that way. And then he goes in, he gets into a closet, right? He's in the sealed vault, and he grabs out a nice bespoke suit up on the side, and he's getting himself dressed. He puts on his little spats or his little ankle sock holsters, like he's all like dressing up all dapper. A nice suit, nice pit boy on his arm again. And meanwhile, when they start doing that, it starts playing Is It Working for the Man by Roy Orbison.

SPEAKER_14 2:30:07

Yes. That starts going out. The one thing I noticed about the way he's dressed is the instinct to fold up the your suit jacket against itself and then wrap the hip boy around the not only the your long sleeve shirt, cuffed shirt underneath, but also the suit jacket on top. Like and then I was thinking, I bet you Vault Tech has their own, like besides all the technology stuff, they probably also have their side fashion industry. And you know that every left arm stops at like the forearm because they need to get their fucking Pit Boy there, or there's like special features, like, oh look, this is the Pip Boy with the fuzzy muff attachment or whatever, you know. That's like a well and he had access to all the best of Vault Tech middle manager, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:31:07

So he is in his element here, like this is home.

SPEAKER_14 2:31:11

This is his stuff.

SPEAKER_00 2:31:12

The way he considers all the suits and picks the one that is perfect, even though they're kind of almost all the same.

SPEAKER_14 2:31:18

Yeah, they're exactly the same.

SPEAKER_00 2:31:19

Flipping through. He's got that. He's uh I just love the way that they focus on the details, like it's so classy, you know what I mean? Like he's there quickly tying his tie, adjusting his gold Pip Boy, which by the way, it is a gold pit boy, right? Like like a pimp boy style.

SPEAKER_14 2:31:33

Pimp boy 2000, 3000, 3000.

SPEAKER_00 2:31:36

And if maybe it's not quite a pimp boy, but still it's got those kind of styles, you know.

SPEAKER_14 2:31:40

He's got like this big holds it sideways like this.

SPEAKER_00 2:31:43

All American style. Oh, yeah, definitely cool. So he is in his element working for the man. I just I love this whole scene because he is a man in control, back in his element. And again, he's got that hard drive with him. What's on it? What's he doing? So he looks himself in the mirror, he looks great, he walks down, and we then see him entering a dark room at a big ol' office, and he sits down there all dressed, he tunes something in, and he reports to somebody. Did you have a last sound clip for this or no?

SPEAKER_14 2:32:15

I did not have a uh a clip at the end here, but he mysterious. Oh, if you get this and I am excited to wear and eventually you will be begging me for help. But it's like, wow, that escalated quick.

SPEAKER_00 2:32:30

Yeah, he is laying out his case, right? He mentioned that there's nobody here anymore. He says he's alive. I hope you are too, but I don't doubt that you are because you don't spend that much time calculating how to survive on continued fate.

SPEAKER_14 2:32:42

No one at Vault Tech knows I'm talking to you.

SPEAKER_00 2:32:45

Right.

SPEAKER_14 2:32:45

Which again again, no one at Vault Tech knows much of anything these days. I think he says something like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:32:53

For sure. So we assume that he is radio into Mr. House, who is still alive or he thinks is still alive. Now we know from the MS in New Vegas that Mr. House may or may not be, depending upon how that ended. But we also don't know for sure that's who he's talking to. But given that the whole episode is revolved around Mr. House, that's kind of the assumption. But then it starts showing a showing him doing stuff while he's talking. So we see Hank entering a lab, and there are all these old corpses, and their heads have exploded with black boxes. They were obviously experimenting and testing the boxes here, and he yinks one out. And meanwhile, the voiceover says, Looks like a couple of vault experimenters ran into some speed bumps. But 24 made progress on the brain computer interface. Now we know why he was at Vault 24. And then he's going through, he's looking at a bunch of different black boxes getting smaller and smaller until they're miniaturized. And then he says, and this one, miniaturization. All it needs is integrating. But I'm confident if I roll up my sleeves, I can bring it all home for you. Then we can finally talk about my promotion. Which perfect. His promotion after all this time, he has blown up entire cities with dirty bombs and An attire town. He has uh worried about the damn promotion. Bucking for a promotion to whoever this is, so we'll we'll see. And then he sees a yo-yo and he grabs the yo-yo and he says to himself, I'm gonna complete the work you started. And when this is all over, you'll be begging me to help. But who? Who will be begging him? What is he up to? And yeah, we we know of course that he's working on some kind of mind control device that this is what this does. And w we don't know where he'll take it.

SPEAKER_14 2:34:32

It's himself in the future or something weird.

SPEAKER_00 2:34:36

So that was the end of the episode. We had a lot. We got stuff with the vault. Norm is in a new escalating situation. Other people are having trouble settling in on the other vaults. You got the watership situation, we got Steph and Chet and all that. Ghoul and Lucy, they are hot on the trail, but having trouble. And what about Maximus? Well, we'll find out next episode, because next episode is gonna have a lot.

SPEAKER_14 2:34:57

He's obviously chicken scratch over there. We didn't hear anything about him.

SPEAKER_00 2:35:01

So I wrote down separately a list of some of the references from New Vegas in here that we brought up. So I just want to go over those real quick for people, just kind of summarize. So the HH Tools nail gun, which was referenced during the pre-war flashback. Robert House talked about it. And that was, of course, introduced in Fault New Vegas and DLC Lonesome Road. And I was wielding it. I think a lot of us have wielded it and had to try it out in Lonesome Road during our last round table.

SPEAKER_14 2:35:27

Played around a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 2:35:28

Yeah. And Vault 24. Actually, two references there. Obviously, it was behind a Starlight Drive-in, which are the drive-in chains throughout the games. And then Vault 24 was never used in the game so they can make up their own lore, but it was referenced in the game as being in the area, so that's perfect.

SPEAKER_14 2:35:43

The drive-in at and on like the southern map of New Vegas, is that also Starlight brand? Is that is it?

SPEAKER_00 2:35:51

That one's not branded. I believe that's just called the Mojave Drive-in, right? Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_13 2:35:56

But Yeah, there's also the California drive-in.

SPEAKER_00 2:35:59

Yep. So there are different drive-ins, but it does seem like Star Starlight is multiple places. And this cements that if not. Let's get to obviously the music. I'll talk about the music separately. Dinky the T-Rex. So Dinky and the whole Novak thing is a location we know from New Vegas. That was awesome. Obviously, it calls a stir because Dinky is facing out to defend the town, not facing in to get good shots at the pool. But you know. Come see, come sa. Same with you know the Darla, I think, as a Carla reference. But I don't know if that's actually the case. Who knows? Then the credits. So the credits have some really cool Easter egg moments. Because they reference a lot of the prim stuff.

SPEAKER_14 2:36:39

Prim, right? New uh the bison steve and stuff. Yep. Yeah, roller coaster.

SPEAKER_00 2:36:44

Bison Steve Mojave Express. And then you even scrolling out, you see that sign that says Ruby's Rad Scorpio casserole, which is a reference to Ruby Nash. And you could bring her the Scorpion Stingers to make her famous casserole.

unknown 2:36:58

Oh.

SPEAKER_14 2:36:58

They go deep, don't they?

SPEAKER_00 2:36:59

Yep. And a robot in a cowboy hat. Yee-haw, partner.

SPEAKER_14 2:37:03

Oh, there was a Victor reference earlier in the episode, too.

SPEAKER_00 2:37:07

Yeah, on the upcoming.

SPEAKER_14 2:37:09

On the when the Oh, it's in the upcoming. Okay. Right. We haven't got there yet.

SPEAKER_00 2:37:13

And we I wasn't necessarily going to talk through that this week because we'll get to them as we get there, but yeah, they do hint at Victor. They do hint at dealing with the Mr. House situation because you see Cooper and Mr. House that we know in an elevator together, and it doesn't look like they're having the conversation. So music, songs that were in the show. Now, not all of these are on the soundtrack, but we have Cheek to Cheek by Peggy Lee, which I thought was cool, and that's not in the game as far as I know. We got Big Iron, of course. We got It's All Over But The Crying, which is perfect. And I love that he was blasting it over the Vault 31 loudspeakers. And when we see Norm in Vault 31, that's what's playing. Which I like that. It's a good reference to him dying. But also, if you really wanted to torture Norm, it would have been Johnny Guitar. We all know that. We got Working for the Man we talked about. But then they also delayed Make the World Go Away by Eddie Arnold, Come Go With Me by the Dell Vikings, Little David Killed a Giant by Lonnie Coleman, and The Singing of Erlingshan Mountain by Meng Guibin, which is not one I knew or have heard before. But these were all listed in the credits as long as they play it. So if you're looking for them, those were the ones. Any other thoughts you guys want to talk about on the episode?

SPEAKER_14 2:38:33

I believe we tied it up pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 2:38:37

Well, good. Well that wraps episode one of Vault Talk Season 2, Episode 1. Great talking with y'all. We're gonna go back and actually talk finish up the Fallout feed right now. Thank y'all for listening, and we will see you guys next week for a little more maximism. What's going on with the Brotherhood?

SPEAKER_14 2:38:56

Alright. Show notes. What else we got on the show this evening?

SPEAKER_00 2:38:59

We got nothing else in the notes.

SPEAKER_14 2:39:02

Just go ahead and say, hey, is there anything else you guys want to bring up on the show this evening? I didn't have any shouts or anything tonight.

SPEAKER_00 2:39:09

Yeah, get y'all feedback, sin. Rando in chat says, get y'all feedback, sin. You know, if you want to send in a clip about what you thought about the episode, we could play a little bit of that. We're down with that. Trying to keep it five minutes or less. But we're gonna be doing this for a while. We're gonna be talking gameplay, and then we're gonna be doing a Vault Talk episode, probably hit the usual length, an hour or two.

SPEAKER_14 2:39:31

All right. Well, go to our website. Everyone knows where to find it. All of our character generators, roll yourself a Fallout TV show season two character, and play along with us and send us your five-minute feedback.

SPEAKER_00 2:39:48

You asked at the beginning, like how we would play different than we usually do. And like I was saying, do it from the perspective of the devil, the devil's advocate. Think about an aspect of the show you wouldn't normally like put yourself in another character's shoes.

SPEAKER_14 2:40:00

From the perspective of the flea in the soup.

SPEAKER_00 2:40:04

Perfect. Perfect. What was the flea soup lady's name? I think her name was like Gretsch or something. Like instead of Gretchen, it was just Gretsch, like Gretch. It's I taking a look at the script. That's but that's been fun looking at the shooting scripts to kind of see everybody's actual names.

SPEAKER_14 2:40:18

You're getting all sorts of extra information I didn't gain just from watching, because I don't know that they actually said her name out loud or anything.

SPEAKER_00 2:40:25

Well, that's why we turning on subtitles can definitely help with the show a bit. And so I thought that would be a fun reference to pulling up that info.

SPEAKER_14 2:40:32

Smart. And Amazon has that cool feature where you like hit a button and it tells you who's on screen, what the character is, like all everything they're done. You can open their IMDB and all that shit from right from there. Yeah. Good stuff. All right. Well, let's go ahead and sign off for the evening. Thanks everybody for checking out the Fallout feed. You can find Ray and all of his stuff over there at RayLB and at BBC ISS for the butcher biker candlemaker in space. Ray, thank you so much, sir. Good times. Jess can be found at Sleep Is4T and at Starfield Lorecast. So check everything out over there, all of her mini projects. Jesse, thank you so much for hopping on tonight.

SPEAKER_00 2:41:20

Absolutely. Have a great week, all.

SPEAKER_14 2:41:22

Have uh I hope everyone had a happy 4th of July. Yeah. And glad to be back on the show. The show can be found at the Fallout Feed. I tend to hang out on the Facebook group, and we're all in the Discord. So join up in our Discord. I'd like to thank everyone for downloading this edition of the Fallout Feed. We will see you in the Wasteland.

SPEAKER_01 2:41:45

Thank you for downloading this episode of the Fallout Feed Roundtable. If you are interested in doing a play-along character with us, you can be contacted by emailing FalloutRoundtable at gmail.com. For the Roundtable Schedule, our Amazon link and all other show information, please head on over to ASApodcasting.com, where you will find the following podcasting, our YouTube channel, the chatterbox, as well as other content. Once again, thank you for downloading and we'll see you in the waist link.