Resident Evil - The Umbrella Conspiracy Part 5

Episode Description

In this episode, Phil and Kevin finish the book! The book is over! No more Resident Evil: The Umbrella Conspiracy. We sprint to the end and give all of our super sophisticated opinions about it. TLDR we liked it. Listen, enjoy, rate us five stars, order us some take out, and share our ear sounds on social media.

Video Version

Automated Transcript

Phil 0:00
I’m just putting it out there Chris is a moron.

Kevin Erhard 0:03
He’s a dumb boulder punching moron and I will. Resident Evil. But five spoilers. I don’t care. Chris was on steroids at the time and he punched a boulder.

Phil 0:15
And it was a bad time. It was bad time. I’m not gonna. It was just a bad time in all of our lives. Really? Yeah.

Kevin Erhard 0:21
Yeah. Hey, everybody, this is Kevin. And before we start today, I want to say thank you to everyone who has been with us on this journey so far. Also, I would like to give a shout out to the following podcast that I fully recommend you checking out video jams a podcast hosted by two video SS who each week have a guest on to discuss YouTube videos. It’s charming and belligerent at the same time so worth checking out. Question show an actual play podcast hosted by hot cider, in which new guest joins him in a one on one tabletop session to solve a problem in the kingdom trottle era. And last but not least, oops all monsters in which two guys from wild and wacky West Virginia discuss monsters cryptids and more from books, TV, movies, gaming both tabletop and video. All of these podcasts can be found on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasting goodness. Today is the last episode of the Resident Evil The Umbrella Conspiracy series and starting next week, we will be going weekly with Halo the fall of reach, but enough of my blathering on with the show. Hey there everybody welcome back to pixel it episode five and the final episode. No matter what. No matter what, no matter what of Resident Evil the umbrella cry I can’t remember Chronicles no conspiracy The Umbrella Conspiracy The Umbrella Conspiracy crono trigger.

Phil 1:45
Yeah, the secret of Resident mana. Here we are. The krono umbrella,

Kevin Erhard 1:52
the corona umbrella. So we start out with a great sounding Yeah, it’s got a it’s got a nice square 1990s you know square soft sound to it. Yeah, with just the best just the best I’m just not a nice little pixelart and it’s it’s warm and it’s cozy and it’s basically what Resident Evil could have been if it was more of like a direct directly inspired by its predecessors. predecessor Sweet Home could have been nice warm, cozy pixel art game with terrifying zombies. Yeah,

Phil 2:27
why not? Sweet Home that’s something I haven’t thought about in a while. A long time long. Okay,

Kevin Erhard 2:37
so Barry had been gone for too damn long.

Phil 2:39
Anytime berries gone is too long in my opinion.

Kevin Erhard 2:42
Yeah, even if just for four seconds you start to miss his his ginger beard and and his his face.

Phil 2:52
His firm family man body

Kevin Erhard 2:54
has firmed his firm dadbod Let’s that’s that’s what that’s what Barry has rockin what else but a dadbod could could knock down a bolted door. Indeed. In various gone. He has chased after Westar Wesker. And Jill is concerned she is growing concerned. And she is beginning to hypothesize. Right. She’s like she’s really she’s really deep into the conspiracy thinking now. And she is it knows that there are there is a trader. And it’s either Richard Aiken, forest Speyer, and Albert Wesker. Now Somehow, I guess this is this is actually kind of neat because Jill because of the way we have that split perspective type of thing. Yeah, Jill does not realize that Richard and Forrest best characters ever but they’re very very dead.

Phil 3:50
Super dead like two dead in my opinion.

Kevin Erhard 3:55
There’s just a lot of a lot of deadness with them out of dentists you know to the reader we know it’s Albert Wesker and we also know she doesn’t even bring up Barry that’s the crazy thing is she’s just like it’s not Barry Of course anyone like obviously you know of course we know that Barry has is you know, Dom and has been duped by Albert

Unknown Speaker 4:16
thinking

Kevin Erhard 4:18
category King and he’s you fool you had that close but no potato moment last episode and yeah. Anyway, so she’s uh, she’s walking around now instead of like the halls hallways that we have in the mansion. We got the the corridors underground in the hallways, corridors are very similar in that there’s a lot of walking around, Phil, what does she run into?

Phil 4:41
She runs into Well, let’s just let’s just go straight to it because our author is clearly fond of the nasty and I’m here for it. So here we go. It was huge, shaped like a man but the resemblance stopped there. So Kendall naked, put six elicits entire muscular body was covered with a pebbled amphibious skin shaded a dark green. It was hunched over so that it’s impossibly long arms almost touched the floor. Both its hands and feet tipped with thick, brutal claws. Tiny light colored eyes peered out at her for a flat reptilian skull. So it’s mitch mcconnell. Yeah,

Kevin Erhard 5:23
it’s mitch mcconnell or I mean, I think it’s Mitch and then the other ones are the rest of the the GOP leadership but this one is definitely Mitch. Yeah. Yeah, so this is this is this is a this is a hunter and I don’t believe i think i think you kind of have to piece that together yourself.

Phil 5:45
Right. They never he references the hunters.

Kevin Erhard 5:48
Yeah. Well, your references them and yeah, he says out of the hunters must be out by now or something along those lines, but right. He never says, you know, he never pops up in the corner of the screen says that’s a hunter.

Phil 6:02
Right, right. Remember what I mentioned the hunters paw. That’s one of them right now. Don’t mind my old timey accent. That’s actually

Kevin Erhard 6:11
that’s actually how Wesker really sounds the the rest of his his speaking patterns is just to put on he sounds like he actually sounds like a vaudeville style of

Phil 6:24
Oh, you don’t want to date me? Ha. joke’s on you zombie date. I’m gonna shoot you on the head now. Oh.

Unknown Speaker 6:33
He just said he just started singing and with his cane and top hat off stage right? Just spinning it and curling his mustache, he

Phil 6:41
really is a character that Wesker she’s, she’s like, shooting the EverLiving crap out of a cheat sheet is not learn the lesson that so many of us learn when playing Resident Evil run, just run just run like crazy hell. And she just shoots the EverLiving crap out of the way runs in a bullet so

Kevin Erhard 7:03
much ammo. She weighs so much ammo so much in this one scene. And you know, she’s gonna need it in a few chapters. Absolutely, absolutely. So she finally you know, just wastes all her ammo, but kills it and rip mitch mcconnell. Yeah. And there could be more of them and she runs and then that she does the thing that she should have done in the first place.

Phil 7:29
Right? Right. Exactly. She

Kevin Erhard 7:30
only gets the mess. she kills it. She kills it. And then she runs away. Which is

Phil 7:35
it’s just, yeah, that’s not not usually how it’s done. I’m not going to criticize because I wasn’t there. But generally, it’s the opposite.

Kevin Erhard 7:47
So we have a scene change and I gotta be honest, I really Oh, boy. I was I was bored. With the Chris Rebecca plot plotline at this point.

Phil 8:00
I have feelings.

Kevin Erhard 8:03
A lot of feelings with the whole plant 42 thing. It’s, it’s just First of all, it’s like a. It’s like they talk so much about the goddamn plant.

Phil 8:15
Right? And then they kill it up.

Kevin Erhard 8:18
They talk it up so much. And then they kill it without ever going in the room.

Phil 8:23
No, they basically they talk about like, they talk about how it’s there. And it’s dangerous as a man eating killer plant. They set up this military grade herbicide. And then later on, they’re going to kill it. And I mean, we’ll get to that. But yeah, this whole thing, this whole subplot with Chris and Rebecca and the plant is such a bummer. And I have questions. I will get to it. But I just like, yeah, I’m glad you brought that up, because I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. I did. It did creep me out leading up to it before I realized that nothing was going to be like here this is I think this is a pretty good passage here. It says there was a faint whispering coming from inside the room, a subtle sense of movement. And Chris realized that it was coming from the sickly plant matter itself, the walls quivering in a weird optical illusion as the draping tendrils crept and grew and I liked that I thought that was nice and effectively creepy. And I think it’s because I’ve been like heavy duty gardening lately, like we’ve been growing a lot of stuff. And there is you know, if you’re not used to, I didn’t grow up growing things and we’ve been growing a bunch of stuff from seed. And when you wake up in the morning, you go check on things and you see that this plant is like doubled in size or something like there. It can be a little weird. It’s It’s very cool and gratifying. But the whole idea of the killer plant now is creepy to me. It’s great

Kevin Erhard 9:54
that S.T.A.R.S. Plants are extremely creepy. Yeah. And that is that is my take on plants they notify each other of, of, of predators. Yes, they do. And some of them

Phil 10:11
kill each other. They have self defense systems, their self defense

Kevin Erhard 10:13
systems they can they can move around if they certain plants move around using their their roots. No, sir. I don’t like it. They really bother me. And like, it’s just a plant. It’s a nice little plant like it. I think, I think, what’s his name? m Night Shyamalan was onto something with the hat. He was something it was a terrible movie, and it has some of the best worst line reads you’ve ever heard. But the idea that the plans could just suddenly up and start set, like making a, like, an allergen that makes everybody want to kill themselves. Like you. That’s pretty cool. That’s that’s pretty cool. And terrifying.

Phil 11:00
Yeah, like I know a lot of people gave it you know, people gave that movie a lot of shit as they should. But whenever they would talk about Oh, and what the bad guys are the plants. That’s so lame. It’s like, No, no, no, no, let’s not fuck with that. Like that actually could be great. That’s the part of slaps like, right?

Kevin Erhard 11:18
It’s it’s actually Mark Wahlberg. Talking to the old lady that that’s cool. No, ma’am. We’re not z.

Phil 11:32
Was he like simultaneously one of the most terrifying men alive? And one of the stupidest? I don’t know. They’re I don’t mean stupid and intelligence. Although I don’t think he has the highest IQ in the world. He really contains. He contains multitudes. Let’s leave he does. Mark. Mark Wahlberg contains multitudes. You heard it here. I got it’s full of stocks.

Kevin Erhard 11:53
So they, they they spend a whole lot of time talking about killing the plant, they kill the plant. It’s really like never a threat. It’s just in the way even though it’s possibly the most threatening thing in the house. Chekov is rolling in his grave regarding this entire see.

Phil 12:13
And that’s a nice thing. And it goes on like it goes into the next chapter. And and I think, you know, look ahead here. It they know they’re telling you now it does they do kill the plant. Obviously. They plan it takes,

Kevin Erhard 12:27
it takes it takes two chapters. Yeah. It takes two chapters. They’ve already said they started in the previous chapter in chapter 14, they finally kill it in chapter 17, I

Phil 12:38
think.

Unknown Speaker 12:39
Yeah. Yeah, like it and right now they’re just talking about they’re just talking about doing this building up this plant. This one is such a bummer. This one scene in chapter 15 is like six pages long of just talking about killing the damn plant.

Kevin Erhard 12:58
So finally we leave them they they haven’t in real time. They haven’t killed it yet, though. And it’s still around. It’s still around. Barry has come back to where Jill was supposed to be waiting and finds that jail is no longer waiting there because they’re stars and they do that.

Phil 13:16
Yeah, that’s that’s apparently part of their training, as we pointed out.

Kevin Erhard 13:20
And that’s very good training. Barry has a moment to himself. Just mourning the loss. Yeah, he mourns the loss of his good buddy and Rico,

Phil 13:31
Taiwan on have a smoke relax and

Kevin Erhard 13:33
smoke. Relax. You know, what do you what do you think berry smokes

Phil 13:37
berry? Oh, Marlboro lights marbling. In my mind. Yeah. Yeah, berry smokes Marlboro lights. He used to smart Marlboro reds, but he’s under the impression that the lights are better for him because now he’s got kids and stuff right? And he doesn’t want to quit but he’s like I better smoke these light cigarettes. These are better for me even though that is not the case at all. He’s like the filter like filter thing I’m doing these these cigarettes are all white therefore they couldn’t possibly be doing anything bad possibly be killing me. No I’m not even though

Kevin Erhard 14:13
he has a he has a he has a light cough apropos of nothing. Rhonda extinguishes it under his shoe and and carries on when Joe finally that it does that doesn’t happen in the book, everybody. We’re just we’re just riffing. He actually is not smoking. This is a book aimed at teenagers in the 1990s of course, they wouldn’t be smoking.

Phil 14:35
I left that to cartoon camels in those days.

Kevin Erhard 14:38
Yeah, exactly. This book had a head it was checked over by dare before when it was published. That’s also not true. I’m sorry. I’m I’m just might have been

Phil 14:48
I mean, that was the age of it, wasn’t it? It might have been except you know how you know it didn’t it didn’t have a dare stamp. A dare sticker on the car needed. They needed everyone to know where they were. At all times, you know, they’re the opposite of the CIA.

Kevin Erhard 15:03
Right? Derek, we’re everywhere. And we are everywhere entirely show give. Yeah. Barry, here’s Jill’s gunfire because she’s at that time killing a hunter and he runs into a hunter himself. And he manages to like, pretty much take it down and like one shot or something.

Phil 15:26
Yeah, far less dramatic than her one off with it.

Kevin Erhard 15:28
Yes. A big old cult that he just you know, Magnum that he just carries around. And even though it might be impractical in literally every other situation, it is very good at putting down these hunter things.

Phil 15:42
You’re glad he brought it at first. You’re like, come on, you got to be the one guy who’s special with this special gun. They’re like, Oh, no, no, that’s that’s probably fine. It’s probably fine. You have that? It’s a okay. Chapter 16. And questions right off the bat. Yes. Did she chill the way they described me and she appears she finds the corpse of a giant dead spider.

Kevin Erhard 16:10
Yeah.

Phil 16:12
Has have spiders been a thing in this? That I

Kevin Erhard 16:15
missed that spiders had not yet been a thing. They had not mentioned spiders.

Phil 16:20
Okay. Okay, so just so this this is a dead spider got killed off camera basically. Right?

Kevin Erhard 16:25
somebody killed her off camera. And I think we’re supposed to assume that it’s Wesker.

Phil 16:32
Okay, yeah, I did get in that impression. I will say I did get that impression, but it was just kind of like, come on, man. Like who was spiders? That’s always I like spiders. But that’s a that’s always an effective bad guy. People hate hearing about spiders. Why is that off camera? Right?

Kevin Erhard 16:47
Yeah. I think it’s, it’s weird that they they kind of just let Jill like, you know, it’s like, oh, the spiders. Yeah, it’s almost like it’s a yes. The spider room. Moving on.

Phil 17:02
Ah, right. This Yeah, exactly. It’s just she just basically she just looks at the camera and goes, ah, it’s like the game. It’s like the game. Moving on. Moving on. Exactly. And then we forget.

Kevin Erhard 17:17
And there’s a there’s a little quote, there’s a little thing I highlighted. Because she is Oh, and here’s where we get to the the the Indiana Jones sequence. She says to herself, I can blow away zombies and monsters with the best of them. Show me a spider and I lose my freaking mind. And what’s funny is like that kind of rings true. I feel like to be able to deal deal with zombie better than a spider.

Phil 17:47
I feel like yeah, I actually I totally agree. I feel like there are plenty of those people in the world that like zombie shopping. They’re like, Okay, we got to do what we got to do to take care of the zombies. But even after a zombie apocalypse, they see a Daddy Long Legs and I like spider. Just tails.

Kevin Erhard 18:04
It says a lot that you know, I can name like 20 zombie movies off the top my head. But I can only really name one horror film centered around spiders. Eight legged freaks. To then I was gonna say arachnophobia.

Phil 18:23
Oh, gosh, yeah. racket phobia was. I haven’t seen that. 1000 years. Yeah, I remember him shooting the spider at the end. That was the final moment.

Kevin Erhard 18:34
It just turns into like a pure comedy. Once john. Yeah, character ships.

Phil 18:41
So weird.

Kevin Erhard 18:43
It’s a weird movie. It’s got so many different like, the way it’s structured is just so odd. And if you haven’t seen it, basically halfway through the movie, this town is become overrun with spiders that can kill people and like a single bite. Halfway through the movie, this exterminator played by john Goodman shows up. Basically just there’s these these strange moments of comedy of him chasing down and killing spiders that are just brilliant. The the main character is played by Jeff Daniels as a man who is suffering from arachnophobia and he kind of has to overcome it in order to save the day so to speak.

Phil 19:31
It’s basically just like jaws in that sense. It’s just it’s the same like jaws. Oh, yeah, it’s this this same movie, same quality. Same everything guys. But yeah, yeah.

Kevin Erhard 19:45
So this is where Jill accidentally triggers a trap.

Phil 19:53
Yes.

Kevin Erhard 19:54
And basically what happens is she didn’t make You’re the little bag of sand properly when she was stealing the idol and it’s just and now there’s a boulder chasing her it is man it’s just amazing like he there’s just this moment of self realization where Jill thinks to herself Jeez, it must have taken them years to set all this up

Phil 20:23
almost impressed This is great

Kevin Erhard 20:27
a lot of money went into this and there’s just this great little thought to herself where won’t gonna make it gonna die is just written all in lowercase. No spacing. Yeah, and when I got to that I had capital outlay so the way it was written she really has a rough go of it with traps.

Phil 20:51
She does she does more than anyone else. There’s no question about it.

Kevin Erhard 20:54
She gets attacked by the crows. She gets nearly squashed by the ceiling and killed by a massive boulder back to the Chris Rebecca story. And yeah, he they’re in the basement looking for the ingredients they need for the vigil

Phil 21:12
Yeah, the the basement is flooded. Basically

Kevin Erhard 21:14
the basement is flooded because there’s a giant shark swimming around the basement.

Phil 21:20
Yeah, you know, like you do,

Kevin Erhard 21:24
like you do like you have this is actually where it becomes more and more like jaws.

Phil 21:29
Yes, it actually is like

Kevin Erhard 21:30
more like Joe’s SD Perry’s the descriptor black soulless eyes set above appointed grin, like a

Phil 21:36
does a second dose eyes. This is by the way, this is the moment that I consider doing zombie shark doo doo doo doo doo. But we’re a new podcast and I want us all to be friends.

Kevin Erhard 21:52
So I changed my mind Chris swims away from it he manages to find some key the keys and is vast and open the door that like a control room door after a scary moment with the shark.

Phil 22:06
Yeah gives the shark a kick on the nose for good measure.

Kevin Erhard 22:09
He his boob connecting solidly with the sharks fleshy snout deflect right from the opening and in a flash he was on his feet, which is weird, because like, I’m trying to visualize it. And and wouldn’t the room that he opened the door to have flooded when he opened the door?

Phil 22:28
Yeah, it should be flooded. Theoretically,

Kevin Erhard 22:31
theoretically. Theoretically. He’s in a control room. He finds a lever that says emergency drainage system

Phil 22:39
right there just just sitting there like a neon sign.

Kevin Erhard 22:44
And he says to himself, why didn’t you gotta be kidding me? Why didn’t anyone pull this thing the second the tank broke? And that’s nice. Let’s like a meta commentary. Like

Phil 22:54
that is a fucking solid question. Not you like they’d make he kind of explains it away himself with like, well, they’re scientists and they wouldn’t want to kill their their specimen boba. And it’s like, Yeah, I don’t know, man. Like,

Kevin Erhard 23:12
these are these are real promethease level scientists here.

Phil 23:16
Right?

Kevin Erhard 23:18
I’m gonna stick my face over the alien egg.

Phil 23:23
Yeah, for Science, Science, Science. Yeah. And it just never worked out and never works. The Yeah, they could have made a pretty cool book about this. And we could have seen just like, these guys are just like, whipping each other with towels and shit like, well, the sharks thrashing around, it would have been,

Kevin Erhard 23:41
it would have been fun if it came with like a laugh track. Right? Like, every, every time you turn the page, it’s like, what those birthday cards that have play a song when you open them. There’s like one of those chips in between every page and you turn the page and it’s the HA,

Phil 24:00
one of every now and then it’s yakety sax, you know, that kind of interactive experience.

Kevin Erhard 24:06
I think that’s my best. best idea. Ever.

Phil 24:10
I should probably get on making that you’re onto something you need to at least trademark looks with laugh. tracks.com.

Kevin Erhard 24:15
Right.

Phil 24:16
It just remind you where it’s where it’s funny. Turn by joke is always on the on the turns page.

Kevin Erhard 24:26
So he drains the tank. Yep. And he walks back through the door opening very carefully, and he hurt. Here’s the frantic wet thumps of a very big fish trying to swim through the air. And this is the most psychotic part of Chris in the entire book.

Phil 24:44
This is about as as cold as he gets really?

Kevin Erhard 24:48
Yeah. So Chris grinned, thinking that he should probably feel pity for the helpless creature and hoping instead that it died a long, agonizing death. Bite me, he whispered. Like, first of all, Chris, first of all, what? What did this shark actually do to you other than do what sharks do?

Phil 25:11
It was being a shark Chris wasn’t even, he wouldn’t have even needed to have been a zombie shark. Just a hungry animal.

Kevin Erhard 25:22
It’s not like the dogs which are acting outside of their behavior, right? of normal behavior. It’s just, it’s just a literally a shark. And you went into the sharks water, and the shark tried to bite you, as shark just do. And then you wished upon it. A slow painful death.

Phil 25:42
Right? And that’s the thing. And that’s the thing. There have been plenty of times that something’s tried to kill him and stuff like that. And he’s still like, kind of like they used to be a person, you know, or he didn’t have snarky remarks for the killer dogs.

Kevin Erhard 25:58
But the but the killer shark. That’s where he drew the shark who is just being a shark. He’s like, No, fuck that thing in particular.

Phil 26:08
Bite me, which is right up there with Arnie’s classic. Stick around from predator in line. Like that’s right up there. That’s pure 90s 80s cheese that I respected. I really care for it.

Kevin Erhard 26:23
So finally we get back to Wesker and he’s taking pleasure in killing more people.

Phil 26:28
Yeah, we’re back. We’re back to Wesker doing what Wesker does, which is

Kevin Erhard 26:32
just kind of making his way through the lab making his way downtown.

Phil 26:36
Right? Right. He’s humming that to himself as he goes

Kevin Erhard 26:40
some of them so that to himself as he just often people left

Phil 26:46
and right killing killing people he used to know when going Oh, it’s weird. We had tacos that night.

Kevin Erhard 26:52
Like it just yeah, execute everybody. And he said he thinks to himself the way he’d handled Barry finding the wolf metal in the tunnels even shooting Ellen Smith in the face had given him a momentary sense of accomplishment. A feeling

Phil 27:06
Ellen again,

Kevin Erhard 27:07
even brings up Elon again. This guy is like literally the definition of an incel

Phil 27:14
right. He’s looking for ease.

Kevin Erhard 27:18
He’s looking for a good Reddit board and he is he is he is Wesker has is is on 4chan every night. He’s in the green bitches.

Phil 27:30
guys aren’t gonna believe I finally got to shoot that self righteous bitch in the face.

Kevin Erhard 27:35
Whoa, okay, there champ.

Phil 27:36
So don’t worry. She was a zombies. Oh, well, that’s fine. Then

Kevin Erhard 27:40
he brings up the mesh monkeys which was weird. I it’s I don’t remember them.

Phil 27:45
I don’t I Yeah, that one. And I just don’t like the term mesh monkeys.

Kevin Erhard 27:50
That’s also very troubling term and

Phil 27:52
upsetting term. It’s

Kevin Erhard 27:53
very upsetting. It has a weird feeling in your ear. When you

Phil 27:58
yes when you say not. It’s not a comfortable not one word by itself in in either of those words by themselves. perfectly fine. perfectly good. Put them together. Don’t feel good.

Kevin Erhard 28:12
Right? He’s it’s it’s like a it’s like a moist. Yeah, if you added it that it would be an atomic bomb of a word or phrase. Moist mesh monkeys. Voice mesh monkeys the moist mesh monkeys? mandibles masticated, melons

Phil 28:32
messily Ah, whoo. Nailed it. Now is this now he does mention tyrant here is this. Is this the first time he mentions tyrant or did I miss that from before? I

Kevin Erhard 28:44
think it’s the first time he’s mentioned tyrants as as you know, just down here. He also his thought process ties in ADA. Yeah, sure. JOHN Howe had set the system up months ago using his name and the name of his girlfriend Ada as access keys. So, Ada Wong we get an 801 reference. I get Resident Evil to Easter egg in here because ADA is I believe part of what she’s doing is looking for john. Resident Evil. Not the only thing she’s doing. fallen in love with Leon. Whoo. And that pretty much brings chapter 16 to an end.

Phil 29:26
Yes, he he just he kind of he kind of Yeah, he unlocks the lab doors and thinks evil

Kevin Erhard 29:31
thoughts. It’s mostly an exposition dump and really go Yes. evil thoughts evil thoughts? Yeah, by the way. Rubber By the way, mesh monkeys and tyrants.

Phil 29:41
Right. Exactly. Joy. This is very clever. Yeah.

Kevin Erhard 29:51
And then we get to chapter 17. And Jill has arrived in She’s arrived in a separate area. It was like an It was like a military. It’s like a military complex. It’s Yeah, I liked

Phil 30:07
this. I like they made a point. She says that, you know, she found herself, basically in what she said is like, more military industrial and less Gothic. And, and I think that was kind of a nice touch because, honestly, you know, they hit a lot of Resident Evil tropes throughout this book. And that’s one of them. Like, I always know that we’re coming to the end of the game when we get to Atlanta doing military Yes, type thing. Exactly. less less haunted house. More. Yeah, military sciency stuff

Kevin Erhard 30:38
that the phrase that St. Perry used a utilitarians bleak paradise,

Phil 30:44
right, which is a nicer phrase I

Kevin Erhard 30:46
like I like that. It’s a really nice turn of phrase. Like, that’s a good way to describe it. So yeah, she begins kind of fight walking her way through the lab. And now that she is Gil is basically the first of the characters aside from Wesker to reach the quote, unquote, end game stage, which is right which is always the laboratory area of every Resident Evil. She opened the door and her hope faded as the dry dusty smell of long dead flesh hitter, she stepped out onto the cement walkway that led over a flight of descending stairs, a metal railing circling the path at the top of the steps was a crumpled zombie. So emaciated and trivial that it appeared mummified. So yeah, her her hope was like, oh, maybe there’s no zombies and then the lips there’s nice

Phil 31:32
and that always goes you anticipate no

Kevin Erhard 31:34
zombies boom zombies that’s how it always goes. The other thing is single time I thought was kind of neat was the fact that she realized that that there’s not going to be any traps in this area she is now she is now outside of the the zone of traps.

Phil 31:49
Right? I found that to be really funny because it’s like she finds the big red shiny candy like button and she just goes it won’t be a trap there were past that. It just she just kind of tells tells the on its we’re done with traps for now. I know I gotten I know I’ve been wrong before.

Kevin Erhard 32:09
But I know traps. Because I’ve got I have triggered all of them.

Phil 32:14
Yes. I always I’m great at triggering she

Kevin Erhard 32:18
is and won’t be one of them. Basically the wily coyote of the stars.

Phil 32:22
Pretty much boy and I have to give it to her. She ends up being right she hits the button, no hesitation. And we just get this

Kevin Erhard 32:32
projector isn’t it?

Phil 32:33
Something Yeah, yeah. And just a key. And she gets kills right? Yep.

Kevin Erhard 32:38
Yep. She gets a she gets a key and there’s files and there. She says they’re too thick and ponderous to spend time sorting through aka boring, they looked boring.

Phil 32:51
Right. And she kind of Yeah, she she she basically sets us up for endgame here because she she basically inner monologues that like this is where everyone’s been heading. And therefore she’s she’s anticipates I’m gonna find out who the traitor is. I’m trying to find out. Not not I’m hunting him down now. But it’s I mean, everyone’s gonna be here. So I’ll figure it out through a process of eliminating

Kevin Erhard 33:17
it out. She kind of chills out in that room and we cut to Chris and Rebecca. Oh my god. It’s been like fiery hours about plant 42 and they finally plant they finally fucking kill it. Jesus Christ. So

Phil 33:31
they Yeah, they drain because because he drains the water where the shark shark was. It’s also drained this room where like the plant bowl root is and that’s it was drinking that water. And so they destroy it with this super herbicide. And and then they go into the room where the plants meant to be and it’s just a puddle of goo. We never even get like they don’t even like see through a window at this thing. You know where it’s like and its petals had turned and hardened into claws and terrible thorns and bull. No, we never even have that. It’s just now because they got the root melted into goo. And it is just like

Kevin Erhard 34:17
in this room is Audrey to you’re never you’re never gonna see her.

Phil 34:22
You’re never gonna see her you’re never gonna hear her sing.

Kevin Erhard 34:24
You’re never gonna hear this thing or plan for you don’t

Phil 34:26
get to you know, mean grandmother. We never got it. It’s such a bummer. And I have to ask because you’ve played this one. Because Is this how it goes down in the game? Because the way I thought about it knowing this is based on a game, I was like I can see where what probably would have happened is there would have been a room with a plant in it. And a auto death. Yeah, function there unless you and so you’ve got to solve the puzzle. And you know,

Kevin Erhard 34:52
and I’m trying to remember and I believe plant 42 for the most part is basically it’s more or less a trick Rap rather than an enemy. Right that you you have to saw a basically you have to solve the V jump puzzle in order to progress that being said every other trap in this book was handled in about a half a page. And yeah, plant 42 was it took three over the course of three chapters in order

Phil 35:22
to act simultaneously. It’s simultaneously too much and not enough. Yeah, yeah, like they give us three or four chapters building up this plant. It feels like they got way ahead of everybody else and they had to hold them up. Yeah, you know, while everyone else kind of caught up and and then by the time we get to a part like this, it’s just kind of like okay, well just kill it. We’ve only got 20 pages left we got to wrap this up right you know, it just it that’s there have been a lot of weird things in this book, which I can excuse for a lot of reasons this this is the part of the book that really bummed me out. I

Kevin Erhard 36:02
wanted man eating plant I want to kill her plant dammit. Now Me too. And I what’s hilarious is that they kill it and they realize that the plant wasn’t blocking their way after all. Yeah, it wasn’t

Phil 36:14
even blocking out there at all.

Kevin Erhard 36:19
Like I was like, you gotta be fucking kidding me.

Phil 36:22
Right. But they do they find security protocol, right? Yeah. So that basically mentioned tyrant and they most importantly, implicate Wesker as the the traitor basically so they they know the truth now so that was that was what all of that was for, I guess. Right? I mean, like Look, you’re gonna find out Westerners the bad guy. Don’t worry you don’t need Yeah, you

Kevin Erhard 36:51
don’t need to have this big of a build up now jail and well, Jill has not found out yet. But Chris and Rebecca now in jail is is going to find out soon enough. But yeah, it felt like sometimes you have to be economical with the story that you’re telling and this seemed like it was a bit of a splurge.

Phil 37:14
Yeah, just yeah, it didn’t it didn’t feel it this this this was this part was disappointing. Like point I don’t know. It felt weird it just it just didn’t feel like it felt like she didn’t have enough the author didn’t have enough for Chris and Rebecca to do while everyone else was doing their own thing right? I don’t know it’s just it felt like the little license could have been taken you know, you’re gonna give us a fight or something even if it doesn’t exist in the game. Anything Really? Yeah. Even if you showed us what was going to happen like if you show a zombie like wander into the room and get plant rips it to shreds Yeah, right? Yeah, give us an idea of why this is something that should be scary

Kevin Erhard 38:00
and he says well it’s a giant plant maybe even a hunter accidentally gets in the room and they surely see the hunter and because we’ve just seen how tough the hunters are and then a hunter with ease and like that would have been like oh shit

Phil 38:13
yeah, show us exactly how much of a monster

Kevin Erhard 38:15
actually how much of a monster instead of telling us for that long how you’re going to kill Yeah, so that that happens.

Phil 38:23
Speaking speaking of monsters, we cut to Wesker he’s back he’s back guys. He’s got his honey do list for Madison I loved I loved it the first thing you said is his everything was done Wesker stepped into the elevator that led back to level three running through his his checklist as he lowered the outer gate and slid the inner one glows samples collected discs erased power reconnected tyrant support off like it’s just

Unknown Speaker 38:53
okay, and you know what?

Kevin Erhard 38:56
drastic Park would not have happened if it was Wesker incentive instead of Dennis nedry I get Oh, I gotta say that like Wesker is is on it. And nedry was was was a slob. And he was he did not have he didn’t he didn’t he didn’t have his his stuff together. But Wesker I feel like would have pulled that off. He would have gotten the samples and gotten out of there

Phil 39:23
Yeah, yeah he would he does have his for the most part. He does seem to have his shit together. He is effective he is in fact he is effective

Kevin Erhard 39:31
that’s not gonna stop him from spoiler warning getting killed but

Phil 39:36
right No.

Kevin Erhard 39:39
Killed I say in quotation marks as we all know So yeah, he had said the mistaken cost umbrella millions of dollars and it killed the researchers who had created it feels like a millions is like a bit of an under statement. I would this seems like a pricey mistake. This is, this is a lot of big this is pretty big. I mean Yeah. Like when you just sit when you say millions, it’s like, single digit million, you know, like this. This is this is at least $100 million worth of fuckup robbing time probably more.

Phil 40:23
Right? You can’t oversell at this point so you can’t ever sell your

Kevin Erhard 40:27
as you could have dropped 2 billion in there and I wouldn’t have blinked and I’m like, this is a lot. This is

Phil 40:32
Yeah, you know, there’s a city under a city like Yeah, lots of lab science stuff around. Sure. Sure. It’s a cool billion.

Kevin Erhard 40:39
Yeah, yeah. No, it’s it’s easily easily Wesker is walking around. And he notices that Jill Valentine is still alive. And he’s Yes, he does. He realizes he had underestimated the master of unlocking he had underestimated the master of unlocking shouldn’t do when she shouldn’t do it. She was that good. The MA tos might not kill her and she had effectively just blocked him from triggering the system. This is a this is a big complication. And you know, Wesker just whenever Wesker gets frustrated, he dips right back down into the misogyny.

Phil 41:14
Oh, yeah, big time.

Kevin Erhard 41:16
To quote, I am in control. Nothing is happening here that I can’t handle. This is my game. Wink. My rules and I will accomplish my mission without any interference from that little thief. ditch. Wow, Albert.

Phil 41:34
Wow. I’m not gonna have my plan ruined by a girl.

Kevin Erhard 41:39
Yeah, that’s, that’s pretty much it with their dumb vaginas and tea parties. While he’s just kind of like observing Barry shows up as well. And Wesker raised his weapon coolly, ready to fire when Barry stepped into view and then lowered it thoughtfully. After a moment, a slow grin spread across his face. And it’s basically like the Grinch grin where he just looks into the camera and just like, curls up.

Phil 42:12
Right? Yeah, terrible, awful idea. You’re I mean, one, Captain Wesker. Just, I have a terrible idea. I’ll threatens family again. Okay, so it’s the same idea. So it’s the same idea. Okay, cool. All right, fine. Keep doing the same idea. That’s fine, but okay.

And that brings us to chapter 18. Yes,

Kevin Erhard 42:45
yes. Go ahead. What happens in chapter 18,

Phil 42:48
Chapter 18. We get we get Jill in a boiler room of some kind, and she’s attacked by terrible awful clawed things. I got here we go. I like this is another one of those descriptions that I really enjoyed. There were two of the creatures overhead squat terrible things with vicious curving hooks. Instead of hands. One of them dropped down suddenly hanging by clawed feet to swipe it or with a bladed arm. And I just I, you know, I played the crap out of out of Resident Evil two. And that put me in the mind of a liquor so I was really enjoying that.

Kevin Erhard 43:28
Yeah, this is I believe this is her the description of the the mesh monkey.

Phil 43:33
Yes, the mesh monkeys. Yes. So this and just again, it doesn’t get any better. And now this one, she actually does have the right idea. She sees a bunch of them. And she just starts running like hell. She’s like, No, just absolutely not. And she escapes, and comes across a bloodied Berry. which is my favorite. hangover drink. Be fair, it’s I know you’re not a you’re not a drinker, Kevin, so a lot of our audience, they probably know what a bloody berry is. But for your benefit. A bloody Berry. You take a bottle of vodka, add some VA, a dash of Montreal steak seasoning, and then you threaten someone’s family? Of course, of course. Yeah. It just just melts that hangover away. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah, it all it all holds up. You know? Nothing. Nothing gets a little ginger hair of the dog. Oh, yeah. Yeah, nothing gets the fog out of your eyes quite like bodily harm to someone’s children. It really does work. So anyway, he claims to have found the main lab, and he wants to take her there and based on where we saw him last. It does feel a touch suspicious. Yeah, I have to say, huh, but yeah. Sure nothing bad could happen here nothing and then we cut to Chris and Rebecca who are trying to figure out how to kill the plants again no not that

Kevin Erhard 45:11
they decided they they they decided to collect some plant samples and are now re re trying to recreate the plant

Phil 45:19
right on so that they can kill it so they can kill

Kevin Erhard 45:22
it a second time now is boring honestly yeah the Christian Rebecca thing really fell off the all fell off once they left the mansion just as boring they’re there in the tunnels that everybody else that was in like 30 minutes ago

Phil 45:39
yeah, and they’re right yeah. And they’re outside a locked door that ought to lead to a hell a pad and Chris being Chris wants to split up of course again. Of course Rebecca showing some level of intelligence is like Absolutely not. This sounds a bad idea. Right and then we get this quote which I adored No, for all we know Wesker already killed the other stars and is looking to finish the job. If we’re the last ones we can’t risk both of us getting ambushed. Somebody has to survive and tell people about umbrella. I’m sorry but it’s the only way Chris it strategist to be here. If we’re separated there will be there will be no way they can ever have a chance that they can one of us won’t get ambushed. Right? Because the only way for us to be ambushed is if there are both of us together Exactly. Come on, man.

Kevin Erhard 46:44
Come on. Okay, Chris. That sense Sure.

Phil 46:53
By I guess again by so yeah, so he goes off to be a man and he’s a man he is and you can tell you can tell and so if you forgive a lot because he’s a man right and it cuts to Barry’s point of view as he basically just leads Jill as this lamb to the slaughter on her way to you know it’s it’s like it’s it’s not even subtle like she says Is something wrong it says he pulled the gate open and raised the mesh outer door and excuse to look away I yeah, something’s wrong he said quietly but Now’s not the time let’s just get this over with just like well let’s just go get you nice and killed

Kevin Erhard 47:44
let’s just get this over with and then I’ll tell it to your grave.

Phil 47:48
Right I’ll explain it to you when you’re dead.

Kevin Erhard 47:52
So yeah, Barry just leads right into one of those ambushes that Chris is afraid of which is like that’s thing is like Chris for all the dumb you that wasted like 45 minutes killing a plant that wasn’t protecting anything and now you want to split up because you’re afraid of ambushes Meanwhile, Jill is doing all the work and is actually getting ambushed

Phil 48:17
Yeah, I can see why we followed Chris after these games continued he’s clearly the master clearly the master mind we need clear Yeah. Oh

Kevin Erhard 48:26
god. Yeah, but that it’s like it really explains why Joe only got one main line game. And and Chris was in every other fucking one for the

Phil 48:36
first is popped up and basically all of them roared. I’m just putting it out there. Chris is a moron.

Kevin Erhard 48:47
He’s a dumb boulder punching moron and I will. Resident Evil. But five spoilers. I don’t care. Chris was on steroids at the time and he punched a boulder.

Phil 48:59
And it was a bad time. bad time. I’m not gonna it was was a bad time in all of our lives. Really? Yeah.

Kevin Erhard 49:05
Yeah. So Wesker goes full Bond villain now.

Phil 49:10
Yep. Give us the full explanation speech.

Kevin Erhard 49:14
Nice work. Barry take her weapons.

Unknown Speaker 49:20
Sita

Kevin Erhard 49:25
berry berry leaves when Wesker tells him to leave. And then you know, he just explains everything. And he talks about profit by the way. Redfield has been running around mouthing off about conspiracies you think umbrella didn’t notice I mean, it’s all great. He just like he just he says that the it’s called it’s actually the timer and virus very basically didn’t leave that’s the whole thing is like buried like just acted like he was leaving.

Phil 49:55
Yeah, just he just he just hides away a little bit.

Kevin Erhard 49:57
Yeah. And then finally He made up he Wesker admits to Jill that he made up the thing about Barry’s family being in danger. And that’s all it takes for Barry to be like, Oh, okay. Just knocks westerlo I

Phil 50:11
see. Yes. Oh, I

Kevin Erhard 50:14
see. I could have figured this out before, but I didn’t. And then he just knocks Wesker the fuck out,

Phil 50:21
knocks him the fuck out.

Kevin Erhard 50:25
Finally, finally, rescues deserving this for a while and he’s finally drops in on time. In fact, he drops him like a ton of breaks.

Phil 50:38
And that brings us to chapter 1919. Oh boy, we’re coming in for a landing room. Yeah, Joe basically just watches Barry get taken down. And then and then just kind of forgives him like immediately. She’s like, he’s like, Hey, sorry. And she’s like, it’s cool. I get it. I get I get

Kevin Erhard 50:56
your kids we’re in we’re in quote unquote, danger.

Phil 51:00
And he’s like, okay, now that he’s knocked out cold I have this other lab to show you. I still don’t feel good. Don’t worry about it. She goes, Well, he seems trustworthy. So now seems fine. Everything’s okay.

Kevin Erhard 51:13
They talk about handcuffing. Wesker but they kind of get distracted by

Phil 51:18
before I’m gonna tie him up with something I guess you know, like we’ll get back to it. It’s fine. They just leave them they just leave them they just leave them

Kevin Erhard 51:28
because they’re looking for you know something like a chord or anything to tie him up with and I just get distracted with literally everything else with basically they find tyrant and

Phil 51:38
yeah in a lab in a giant tube. They find tyrant which here i got i did make a point I again again I love these monster descriptions. I think she does a great job with them. So I’ve got it was tall but proportionally correct. At least to the broad muscular torso and long legs. Those carts appeared human. One of its arms had been altered into a cluster of massive dragon claws hanging past its knees, while the other seem to ordinary, if overly large. There was a thick, bloody tumor protruding from where its heart would be. And Jill realized staring at the bulbous mass that it was the things heart It was pulsing, slowly expanding and contracting and slow rhythmic beats. It’s I think that’s pretty good. That

Kevin Erhard 52:23
is pretty good. Yeah.

Phil 52:25
So yeah, they’re just kind of observing the tyrant for now.

Kevin Erhard 52:28
There had been no sexual. There was no sexual organs. They had been cut away. She looked at but you know,

Phil 52:33
we don’t want them to be distracted. Am I right? Hey, I stay eyes on the killing prize. Yes.

Kevin Erhard 52:41
She looked up at its face install that parts of the flesh there had also been removed, the lips were gone. And it seemed to grin broadly at her through the sliced red tissue of its face. All of its teeth exposed and stuff. That’s good. It is good stuff. And they also kind of make the connection that the tyrant was was probably a person once. Yeah. Which is like something that they don’t really talk about a lot in other games where it’s like, oh, there’s this big monster thing. You don’t actually realize that the the humanoid monsters were probably they weren’t they didn’t just come from nowhere. They were probably a guy that they turned into this. Right? Yeah, I think that’s like a nice. That’s a nice little nod.

Phil 53:23
Yeah, yeah. It attaches the humanity to it. Yeah, I wish I like but don’t get

Kevin Erhard 53:28
used to that they, and then they accidentally wake it up.

Phil 53:32
Right? Right, they start talking about like, or like we got, we can’t leave this thing. We can’t leave this because they, they they recognize that it used to be a person and they’re like, we can’t just leave this thing. Here like and it’s not a like, we got to kill it before it kills us. It’s like this poor thing should not be alive, it should not be and so they like find a series of switches, that kind of implies that it will, you know, kill it, it’ll turn off its life support or anything like that. And as if the thing was reading their mind, it just loses it and starts trying to punch its way through.

Unknown Speaker 54:05
what’s what’s gonna kill me.

Kevin Erhard 54:07
What’s hilarious is that Wesker had already turned off the life support. That’s right. And earlier, we would like Wesker is going through his list. He had already done it, whatever. They did probably turn the life support back.

Phil 54:20
Right? That’s true. So it’s like No, dude, I wanted to die.

Kevin Erhard 54:31
So like it so basically, whatever they did, like waked it up, woke it up. And now Wesker is gone.

Phil 54:39
Yeah, yeah. Now he’s Yeah, well, we of course he is.

Kevin Erhard 54:42
Of course he is. But not for not for that long though. He doesn’t he doesn’t have much left. No, in terms of in terms of lifespan, so he stumbles out of the room. He has a he has a concussion, like 100% has a massive contraction. can’t walk anymore. He and he starts like stumbling around the MA twos are like getting on him. And he’s he’s trying to like get into the triggering system to turn on the turn on the the self destruct system because there’s a self destruct destruct system he gets a really gruesome death.

Phil 55:26
Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s it is pretty like cuz you get for me what bothered me about his death was like his inner monologue like you hear his final thoughts and that sort of thing and it’s because he’s desperate to see he knows the tyrants there right. And he’s desperate to see it kill like he’s one like he expresses on more than one occasion in this book, sorrow that he asked to execute the tyrant because he wants to watch it work. You know, he’s that kind of, you know, sick man. And he had no idea how close he was gonna get.

Kevin Erhard 55:58
Yeah, yeah, he actually never gets to see it. Because it gets like, Oh, yeah, his his. He’s got blood just running down his face at this point. He can’t see it. And his last thought is I control Let me see the final line for Wesker picture wrap on whisker. Darkness stole his hopes away. And Wesker thought no more as like. That’s pretty good line. I like good stuff. Yeah. Pretty good. That’s that felt it felt very like po ask.

Phil 56:30
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Erhard 56:32
Never No. Never Mullah. And Wesker was then you know, he, he was he was behind the wall and all he had was a cask of Amontillado.

Phil 56:41
Right? Exactly.

Kevin Erhard 56:43
Non trance. Or the only thing I remember about the cask of Amontillado off the top of my head always is Peter Lorre. Oh, playing. What’s his name? Not montresor. But the guy.

Phil 57:00
Yeah, I don’t even remember that much.

Kevin Erhard 57:05
is Tim saying that Peter Lorre voice mine dress or

Phil 57:11
my trace or get my casket from the

Kevin Erhard 57:19
Lord. So for anybody born before born after depression 1960. God, Peter Lorre is. I just love his voice.

Phil 57:39
Laurie was one of those actors that like our age, we only knew of him because of Looney Tunes cartoons, I want to say, Yeah, like, they would always do impressions of him on Looney Tunes. And you didn’t know he was but you’d seen them do this impression of him so frequently, that you couldn’t help it go. Oh, right. That guy. Right. I don’t know many people associated with a real live actor who walked and talked right? Yeah, yeah. bugs. Sure. did a lot of impressions continuing on with the podcast. Yeah, Peter. Oh, yeah. And so again, and we get we get a cut to Rebecca, who’s by yourself again, because Chris is an idiot. And the radio finally cuts in and she’s hearing from the chopper pilot that he’s trying to find the xo copter pilot. Oh, right. Sorry, the copter pilot get to the copter that famous, that famous line? Get to the copter. And then, like you do an overhead system starts warning of imminent end times five minutes to be precise. And she’s still waiting on Chris. To get as aspect to her.

Kevin Erhard 58:55
Right. Yeah, because they split up because that was a good idea.

Phil 59:00
Because that was it was it was a very good idea.

Kevin Erhard 59:03
So we were we’re in the endgame. Now Jill and Barry have run into Chris The Three Musketeers have been you reunited? Why are they all know the same information so they don’t need to talk to each other? No.

Phil 59:20
No one needs any explanations done.

Kevin Erhard 59:22
No one needs any explanation. They all know westers the bad guy. Yeah. There. They had four minutes left, and they get to the helipad. And then suddenly, tyrant appears

Phil 59:37
with three and a half minutes to spare tyrant shows up oh geez, tiring superhero pose superhero poses.

Kevin Erhard 59:43
Like he lands the three point landing with the superhero pose. And he’s there and he’s there to fuck up their day.

Phil 59:50
Absolutely. Anybody who’s played any Resident Evil game knows what happens. Next you play the Dodge chute dodge game for a solid two and a half minutes.

Kevin Erhard 1:00:00
Yeah, you really just get that time eaten up you shoot when you can you try to hit the weak spot all that good stuff. It’s usually it’s usually a pain in the ass and a little anticlimactic if I’m being honest.

Phil 1:00:11
Yeah. Yeah. And then and then another Resident Evil trope, the helicopter or sorry, the copter pilot drops off a rocket launcher. Now I just saw

Kevin Erhard 1:00:21
this and I was wondering, I was going to go back and check but I didn’t. Whether they mentioned the rocket launcher in the beginning when they’re talking about all the guns that are on the on the helicopter.

Phil 1:00:34
I believe they do. Okay, you can believe that do

Kevin Erhard 1:00:37
Yes, that would be the that would be the true Chekhov’s gun. Right?

Phil 1:00:41
Yeah. Check offs RPG Yeah. RPG to be sure. Yeah, and they but they the copter pilot and this is I’ve seen this and this is happens in a lot of Resident Evil games like just at the very end when you think all is lost. someone throws you a crazy huge gun of some kind. And and they blow the tire into pieces. With very little ceremony. They’re like, fuck this guy and they just blast him apart.

Kevin Erhard 1:01:11
Yeah, yeah, he’s he’s. He’s food for he’s he’s a Feast for Crows now.

Phil 1:01:19
I go used to be a human being but fuck off. Yeah, I

Kevin Erhard 1:01:22
mean, there’s a real there’s a real jump from feeling sorry to him to like, oh shit kill him.

Phil 1:01:28
Yeah, which I mean, which is very human nature. You feel bad for that? Big angry looking sad, Rottweiler. If the Humane Society right up until it snaps at you and you’re like, ah, God, fuck this, man. Nevermind. So the, the the copter touches down, they jump into the cab and they get carried away. Which leads us to chapter 21, the shortest chapter in the entire book, which is just two paragraphs describing the Wesker estate exploded Spencer state. Spencer? Oh, what’s what’s Wesker state? That was the that was the real twist. You find out in the end that it was all owned by what it

Kevin Erhard 1:02:12
was Wesker all along. It was Wesker all along. So many ways. It blows up and blows up. There’s, it’s it’s gone. Just like at the end of a lot of Resident Evil stories. Yep, there’s a big ole explosion. That’s the one thing I’ve got a guarantee at the end of Resident Evil is there’s a big fuckin explosion at least in the original explosion the original games they kind of backed off the the promise of massive explosion. And in the recent ones, I don’t think there was a user pick one in seven. Oh, yeah. Kind of there was in at the end of seven ish. Sort of the house. The house wasn’t standing by the end.

Phil 1:02:54
Well, that’s true. That’s a good boy.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:57
Yeah. manner of speaking in a manner of speaking. Yeah. It was more of a flesh explosion.

Phil 1:03:05
Right. It wasn’t Yeah, wasn’t quite the it was not talking about the end of contrary here. But yeah. But And that brings us to the epilogue and as they fly to safety we’re given the POV of Brad because right not because why not our our chicken ship pilot who? Who feels regret about leaving them and bemoans the fact that he needs to pee really bad like Yep, and he’s also in any reveals Sorry, go ahead. Well, he reveals in his monologue not to them he doesn’t tell them but that he received received their exact coordinates from a Trent to Oh boy.

Kevin Erhard 1:03:49
Ah, mysterious Miss road unquote Trent, who we’re not gonna get a conclusion on in this story. I’m sure he’s brought up again in the other Resident Evil books by St. Perry, which are available from these fine booksellers.

Phil 1:04:08
The one near your house, the one online, the one that’s a little further away from your house, but you’d like to go there on Sunday afternoons if you’re already driving in that direction.

So Kevin, what did what did you think of Resident Evil The Umbrella Conspiracy?

Kevin Erhard 1:04:35
I it was actually I really liked it overall, as an adaptation of a game, which as much as I love Resident Evil, is it’s super silly and dumb, in like all the right ways. Like it’s it really does its best when best to ground some Have the more absurd story elements of Resident Evil like the, like, the traps and the puzzles and all that stuff? Yeah, which works for this specific book, it doesn’t necessarily explain why those things exist for the rest of the series. But the thing is this, this this book series was written, it was written basically when resin evil two had come out. Right. So, like, you know, I think there was a lot of like, Oh, well, you know, that’s, we’re just going to explain it away now, and not worry about the fact that Capcom is going to be making these games for another 25 years or so for ever, ever. And they’re all going to have the far fetched puzzle solving. And, and, and whatnot.

Phil 1:05:48
And honestly, that’s fine. That’s fine. You know, it is what it is. And and Yeah, I agree. I think this was a, you know, I think SD Perry, she had a lot of big, big task ahead of her. Yeah. This was not going to be an easy thing to adapt. And basically, she had two options when maybe she didn’t even have the two options. This is we are going to ask her some questions, to hopefully figure out a little more about how this all worked. But, you know, basically, if you’re left to your own devices on this one, which I doubt she was, but you basically have the option of trying to remain somewhat true to the source material, and make it work in this new format. Or you basically just rewrite the whole damn thing, right? like they did with the movies. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, she did what she could with the material. And I think she did an admirable job. I think it was pretty fun.

Kevin Erhard 1:06:48
I agree. I think it was, it was pretty fun, I think had had the first Resident Evil movie kind of gone in this direction, it actually could have worked, she did a really, really nice job, separating out the elements of the story and being able to assign them to different main characters, which is interesting based on like, the Resident Evil game. You experience everything as one character on each playthrough like it’s theirs, right? It’s not a split playthrough like Resident Evil two. It’s either Chris and you do it all or Jill and you do it all just in a slightly different order. So yeah, that being said, I think she did an admirable job doing that, that that’s not to say that there weren’t some really silly moments in the book. Some really Oh, absolute silly writing. I mean, her her the the way, she kind of wrote Chris, he’s, he’s honestly he was pretty unlikable by the end.

Phil 1:07:48
I agree.

Kevin Erhard 1:07:50
I didn’t give a shit about like, oh, man, Chris could fucking die. I don’t, right. He’s, he’s, he’s a moron. He’s and he’s not. He’s also not doing anything for the second half of the book. That’s important. He’s like, well, it’s like it’s it’s really Jill’s story. Jill is driving the plot forward with her moves his or her actions. And Chris is just he’s trying to figure out how to kill a plan or whatever.

Phil 1:08:18
Right? which honestly, that was that was the one part of the whole book that just frustrated me to no end where it was that we’ve expressed that obviously in this very episode, but it just man Oh, man, otherwise I think it did a pretty good job. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So I think if you got you know, if you got a couple of afternoons or going to the beach or some damn thing you could do worse than you know, I picked up I know Kevin likes his his his ereaders for various purposes here. I like my beat up used paperback copies. And I found this one on eBay for five bucks, you know, which I think is what it was selling for when it was brand new. So yeah, why not?

Kevin Erhard 1:09:01
Yeah, it’s interesting. I would give this maybe five out of seven stars it’s perfect. Score five out of six.

Phil 1:09:14
Really unorthodox rating system you got there. Out of Kevin’s famous seven star review system

Kevin Erhard 1:09:24
seven star review. No, it’s it’s good. You can pick still buy it. It’s, it’s everywhere. And

Phil 1:09:34
I think they have new editions of it, too. Yeah,

Kevin Erhard 1:09:36
if you’re unreleased, and if you’re a fan of like if you’re a moderate Resident Evil fan. I think it’s worth reading. It’s not it’s not up to date. It’s not it’s not gonna it’s not based on the Resident Evil remake. It’s based on the Oji Resident Evil so there’s some there’s a bunch of plotlines not that are just like not there, but it’s worth it if you’re just looking for something to Read as he said, fill it if you’re at a beach and you just want to book and you just want a book that has kind of like a familiarity to it, that’s that’s the thing is like wanting to just like, wrap yourself in something familiar rather than, you know, start something brand new. I think this is a pretty decent book for, for what it’s doing.

Phil 1:10:23
And speaking of someone who never played the first Resident Evil, like I still got a kick out of it. I played the other ones. And just and it still gave me that familiarity you’re talking about?

Kevin Erhard 1:10:35
Yeah, exactly. So this was just the first book in Resident Evil series. Maybe we’ll come back to the other ones. Maybe we won’t. We’ll figure that out as we go along.

Phil 1:10:45
Well, it’s an interesting note. The second one,

Kevin Erhard 1:10:50
I think it’s called caliburn. co is actually the first all original Resident Evil book. It’s not based on any of the games. And then the third book in the series is based on Resident Evil, right, she has a St. Perry got to write two books in this series that were completely original. Calvin Cove and underworld while the rest are based on our novelizations of the games.

Phil 1:11:17
So eventually, I think we’ll definitely want to come back. Yeah, this because I think it’d be really interesting to see what she did with an original story. Yeah,

Kevin Erhard 1:11:24
that would be interested in the Taliban Cove book for sure. Yeah. But that’s that’s gonna do it for Resident Evil l. Yeah. Welcome to conspiracy. We’re going to be doing halo halo fall of reach next. That’s the next book, right?

Phil 1:11:37
Yes, Halo fall of reach. Now that should be very interesting, because that one, every time you look up, as I have, you know, the best video game novels and stuff like that this one tops, a lot of lists. So I’m really interested. I’m

Kevin Erhard 1:11:53
excited. I’m excited. Check it out. I’m not a huge Halo guy, but I’m sure it’ll be fine. I do enjoy myself some like the military sci fi

Phil 1:12:02
genre, so to speak. Robert Heinlein.

Kevin Erhard 1:12:05
Yeah. That kind of that kind of whatnot. All right. Well, that’ll do it. Thanks, everybody.

Phil 1:12:11
Thanks, guys.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai