Fort Solis

0:17 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Other Castle. The Other Castle in space. Oh, we're in space right now? Yeah. Oh, better hold our breath. They can't hear you scream out there. No, but they can hear us say, my name is Tom. And I'm Andrea, and this is The Other Castle podcast. This is a podcast where we break down the plot, lore and more behind games. Yes, we do, and thank you so much for tuning in. If this is your first time, you can check us out at our website, theothercastlepodcast.com. That's theothercastlepodcast.com. Over there, you can check out things like our Patreon, our Discord. We have every episode listed there. You can sign up for our newsletter, all sorts of fun things. And if you're in our Discord, I have been hinting at doing this game, but as of recording, no one has guessed it yet.

0:58 The guessing games have been fun on Discord. I think it's very fun, because if you can figure out what the game is based on a Wheel of Fortune-style puzzle and some vague hints by us, you can be like, oh, I know that game. I give a shit, I'll check that out next time. But what was the first game that got spoiled? Oxenfree got guessed immediately in the Discord. That was impressive. That is coming up next week. That is next week's episode? Oh, giving it out of way. I am, yeah. Here's a teaser. But the Discord knew first, but that's been really fun. No one has guessed this, and I am scared that it's because no one knows what this game is. It's very possible. No, the Gears of War one. They also called that one just after I dropped the Terry Tate office linebacker video.

1:39 They're like, oh no, it's Coltrane. I'm glad you dropped that in the DOS card just so I could watch it over and over again. That's the funniest fucking commercial. Oh, it's so good. Anyway, so this is The Other Castle. We're doing the plot lore and more. And today we are doing a game that, like you said, I don't think a lot of people know about. That's fair. Today we're doing Fort Solis. And I just want to clarify by plot lore and more, I mean, we're getting into development. We're getting into the production, and then we're getting into the whole story of the game. So if this is your first time joining us, spoilers by design. Full spoilers. But Fort Solis, it's a newer game. It came out on August 22nd, 2023. So as of the time this is posting, within two months or so.

2:21 Yeah, very, very soon. Yeah, this came out across PS5 and PC and was developed by Fallen Leaf Studios. Haven't heard of them. Well, this is their first game. Okay, that makes sense. Fallen Leaf Studios is self-described as an exciting new independent game developer based in Liverpool's renowned Baltic Triangle. Hmm, I don't know where that is. You don't know where a lot of stuff is on a map, but Liverpool is in England. I know video game maps way better than I know the actual earth. That is a fact. Fallen Leaf also has an office in Warsaw, Poland, but a big chunk of the development team is apparently rooted in the UK. I did look at some LinkedIn posts, so if you saw me creeping, I'm sorry.

3:03 It was for a podcast. The UK team includes studio director James Tinsdale Tinsdale has been a game developer since at least 2010. Okay. You know, because I stocked his LinkedIn profile and his IMDB and joined Fallen Leaf in March of 2021, which is kind of right when the studio was formed and like really got the wheels turning, it looks like. Since he's been in the gaming industry for years, he has worked on a lot of titles, but the only thing on his IMDB is Fort Solis. Does that mean it's because it's his like baby? What kind of role did he take with this? Well, this is definitely his baby. He's the writer director. He is like the heart and soul of Fort Solis. He's the full driving factor behind it.

3:44 Oh, okay. So he's the mastermind. Yeah, I think perhaps the credits of other games he's been on just may not have transferred to IMDB. I just thought it was interesting that he's been in this industry for a while, but this is the only thing on his page. So it doesn't represent how storied his career is in gaming. It's probably just that nobody thought to track his history until he became the director of Fort Solis. That's fair, he probably doesn't have an agent adding shit to his page. Like that fully makes sense. Now, as we talk about Fort Solis, while in lockdown for the pandemic, the Fort Solis ideas are really starting to form for Tinsdale. And when we're talking about a COVID-inspired game, you know it's gonna be a little claustrophobic, a little lonely.

4:29 And when he talks about his time in COVID, he talks about like, I was stuck at home, I watched everything on Netflix, like I finished Netflix. So what if I could take this kind of like whimsical storytelling that I'm seeing as I've binged literally everything, and pair it with a video game experience? Kind of make a binge moment that was still highly engaging, entertaining, and really top tier quality in terms of who put love into it. That's a really innovative idea just from watching Netflix videos. I can't wait for in 10 years when we're like, they were inspired by prank videos on YouTube to have great jumpscares.

5:10 You know what I mean? I was watching a TikTok and... And it made me think of this AAA title. Right. Tinsdale also has this like really big admiration for ominous space shit. He's like, man, don't you love when you're in space and everything feels horrible? So dead space. I love that. Yeah, yes. So with this kind of idea of like ominous world of space and then claustrophobia of being locked at home, paired with like really high end entertainment value that doesn't feel cheap, really feels meaty and worth your while, Tinsdale moved forward with Fallen Leaf Studios to create the setting for Fort Solis.

5:50 This idea started moving for Tinsdale, who started working with the graphic designer Mark Cushley. With a tight vision, the two game developer veterans came together. Fallen Leaf and Fort Solis started to take shape under their wing. It's a good little origin story for this company. Yeah, small beginnings in acorns and oak trees, whatever. Yeah. Tinsdale has cited narrative styles from Detroit Become Human. Hell yeah. All the super massive games. Shout out to the quarry, Pop Pop. Oh, that's great. As major influences in terms of the storytelling for how narrative driven to how character driven this piece is. So is this going to be a branching narrative game? There are more than one ending. More than one? More than one ending.

6:31 Yes. He also really loved the aesthetic style of one-shot movies like Birdman and one of your favorites, 1917. Oh my God. I love single shot movies. 1917 blew my fucking mind away though. You scared me out of watching it. Oh my God. It's just so good. And like that movie like touched me in ways that I didn't ever expect it to. That's beautiful. Yeah, it was like it came out right before COVID hits. So hardly anybody got to see it in theaters, but I managed to get out to see it in theaters and I was just mind blown. I love the idea that so many people's last movie in theaters was Cats before shutdown. Like I know a lot of people who are like, the last time I was in a theater is for fucking cats.

7:15 You get a good story. Yeah, and it's funny cause Sam Mendes, he's the director of 1917. So now he's directed my favorite war movie, but he's also directed my least favorite war movie in Jarhead. Oh shit, so both ends of the spectrum. Yeah, he really did. That's really funny. But taking that idea of doing the one shot, so within 1917 and Birdman, the one shot that we're referring to is that it looks like the camera doesn't cut back and forth. So you get this very rhythmic involved sense of watching these properties. Very much like this bird's eye view of these characters. Yeah, entirely. It's super intimate. Now, he's also cited God of War as a visual inspiration kind of paired with that one take beautiful perspective for keeping the player immersed.

8:01 And we're also thinking of things like Dead Space, which he has name dropped as an inspiration for this. So like, good for you. Take your fucking, I told you so shot or whatever. Dead Space is just a perfect, perfect game. It's beautiful. Although, no, I won't get into its sister sequel today. Eventually, as the Fallen Leaf team grew, they were able to hire more talent and they first focused on Simon Brattle. Brattle or Brattle, I apologize. I'm gonna go with Brattle. Brattle served as the technical director of this game and had come hot off the heels of working on a game that hasn't come out yet, but you've heard of GTA 6.

8:44 Has he actually, though? You're like, everything's alleged. We've seen nothing. Fuck you. Allegedly, he left the GTA 6 team to work on this. Oh, damn, okay. I mean, GTA 6 has just taken so damn long. I know. We've gotten one GTA 6 leak of a weapon wheel, maybe, I think. I don't remember. They took the footage down very quickly. Very quickly, yeah, but there was a lot of fighting. Okay, cool, love that. So Fallen Leaf only had 10 developers, but these are all kick-ass fucking developers working on under an incredible technical director. So everyone that came in knew exactly what they were doing and they were really killing it. That's awesome.

9:24 Now, again, securing key talent, that's gonna be kind of a theme with the development of Fort Solis, and that absolutely continued with the cast. Now, the cast is small, as this game is an isolated, lonely sci-fi horror game, but it is fucking stacked for how small it is. This is a perfect example of quality, not quantity. I think the casting is what made you wanna play this game to begin with. It's the only reason I gave a shit about this game. You were following this game so closely because of the cast. Yeah, after this got announced and I saw who was associated, I just went, was Googling updates, even when I wasn't prompted. It was just, oh, it's been a week. Let's see what they're up to.

10:05 What's going on with Fort Solis? Yeah, now, the reason I love this so much is because you literally could not do better in this world. I don't think so. So for our protagonist, Jack Leary, the team was able to secure probably one of the best video game performers in the game right now. Of course, I'm talking about the incomparable Roger Clark, AKA Arthur Morgan from Red Dead Redemption 2. Oh, like to get the person who has made so many people laugh, cry, cheer, and get him as like your lead. That's a fucking get. And it's right on the heels of Red Dead 2. It's been five years since that game has come out, but. Oh, don't remind me. But it's still so impactful that it doesn't feel like an old game.

10:47 It looks better than 90% of the game is fucking out there right now. It's because they take a long time making these games, though. That's why. Yeah, they are perfect. I also do have an Arthur Morgan tattoo now, so. Kind of, yeah, you do. That's where my life has gone. It's a long story. Anyway, it's unclear if they leverage their former Rockstar technical director to come in and lock in the baddest cowboy in the West, but I'm gonna throw it out there. I'm just gonna speculate. Yeah, I think so, likely, that they might have something to do with that. A text might have been sent. We never know. You know, we've run into each other at a party. But regardless, Roger Clark was hooked once he actually got to read the script. Oh, that's great. Well, this performer is incredible and absolutely has nothing to prove after that fucking entire performance as Arthur Morgan, where he showed people how to feel again.

11:36 He did say that he took on this role to show his fan base that he's been lucky enough to show his work to, that there's more to life than being a cowboy. Hell yeah. He's gonna be a space cowboy. Also, what a humble moment to say, thank you all so much for following me. I'm not just a cowboy. I'm just a performer. Yeah, right? He does Shakespeare and shit. Like, he's done a lot of stage performing. He's an incredible performer, period. He's like, if you liked that, wait till you see what I got next. He loved that the game concept was different and the script really stood out to him, and it did take a big departure from who Arthur is. So he gets to show off his acting straight up. And he is an actor at his core. This is an incredible performance and is nothing like Arthur.

12:19 I don't even hear Arthur in the undertones of his voice. It's completely different. Oh, that's great. Is it all done in mocap though? Yes. Well, I mean, like with most video games, it's large portion mocap with some ADR here and there, but I'm just splitting hairs there. To balance out the powerhouse of Roger Clark, the Fallen Leaf team managed to book the other incredible voice actor of our generation. The fact they managed to get two A-list actors. This is Troy Baker, y'all. Yeah, Troy fucking Baker. You know who Troy Baker is, so like, don't start with me. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the listener. Being real aggressive right now.

13:00 Anyway, Troy Baker is Joel Miller from The Last of Us. Troy Baker is Batman and the Joker and the Penguin at different times in the Batman universe. Troy Baker has been around forever. He's Sam Drake in Uncharted 4, the fourth Uncharted. He's in everything. Yeah, he's an incredible performer. He is, and he does a lot of mocap. He also does a lot of anime dubbing too, which I saw on his IMDB. Oh, good for him. Now, Troy Baker was able to work closely on the character development of his performance with the team really like early on in development. So he said, I'm into this, but I want to have a hand on the wheel. I want to work with this to make this a great character study. And they said, oh, thank God.

13:43 There's four of us here, man. Please, we would love your support in figuring this out. And like, if there's anybody that you can trust to do this right, it's Troy Baker. Yeah, and you pair him with the other great performer of our generation, Roger Clark. Yeah, they're gonna do some fucking acting. Yeah, Roger Clark spent five years making Red Dead. And we've spent five years loving him since the day it came out. Yeah, right. So it's fair, it's even now. So Troy really was focused on making this a big character piece for him. And I really appreciated that in all of the interviews with Troy or even where it's Troy's reference in this game, they're like, he would never call in fucking anything.

14:24 Troy is an all or nothing, like, I am in it to be in it kind of guy. And it just, you know, you don't get this kind of reputation and this kind of work in any industry without being a hard worker and someone who's dedicated to doing the best you can. And I love that. And, you know, it's kind of funny. We just watched behind the scenes on Bioshock Infinite. And the way he also hams up for other performers was incredible. Like we saw this scene of Elizabeth's vocal performer doing a performance and Troy was in the room, like feeding her lines to get her excited and to get her energy up. It was like, damn, he fucking works. No, he absolutely does. And like, sorry, everybody, that's not a preview for this season. No, oh no, I'll take a shot for that one.

15:06 I'm sorry. No. Yeah, we weren't watching the behind the scenes for this season. We were just watching it to watch it. Oh yeah, we were doing that for fun. That's who we are now as people. Our YouTube algorithm is so fucked though. Yeah, it's terrible. It's all just like, lore explained, developer interview with game titles. Like there's nothing fun on our algorithms at all. Nope. So I just also wanted to share an anecdote from an interview that I heard. During the development of Red Dead Redemption 2, Roger Clarke would play Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us to study specifically Troy Baker's performances. Really? Yeah, he said there was intricacies of gun work and space work in The Last of Us and other games where he was like, holy shit, this guy knows what he's fucking doing.

15:49 I'm studying how he owns these different roles too. Also, let's get Roger Clarke in a goddamn Naughty Dog game. Come on. Seriously. He's out here name dropping Uncharted and Last of Us all in a breath and it's only partially for Troy. Let's get this man some work. I'm sure Troy will say something. He'll put in a word with Neil. Yeah. That all culminates though, in the boys working together. And during production, they did argue over who would win a fight, Arthur Morgan or Joel Miller, because we all share the same fucking brain cell when it comes to video games. And it's Arthur. Roger Clark insists that if Joel can be taken down by a golf club, Arthur's got this fight, no problem.

16:30 Oh my God. That was a low fucking blow. You talking about that golf club? Yeah. Oh shit, that was fucking mean, if anything. It's just a reminder that Arthur Morgan is the baddest motherfucker in the West. Like I say in that episode, there's that part where he gets shot in the shoulder with a shotgun point blank and survives it somehow. So yeah, if a golf club, damn Joel, goddamn that's mean. You sound so upset for Joel right now. I think it's hilarious. You're not even a Joel apologist. I know your heart says Arthur Morgan on this one, so does mine, but holy shit, you're upset.

17:12 That was vicious. Roger Clark is one of the most charming people in the world to watch interviews from. He is so grateful and so excited to be there. I love him so much. I want to protect him, and everything in my heart says he's not gonna be problematic, and I feel like we can trust in him. Fingers crossed, everybody. Yeah, I hope this doesn't age poorly. Now, in addition to the Boy Squad, Scottish actress Julia Brown rounded out the cast. She's mostly done TV, but really enjoyed the process and embraced the experience of working on a video game. That includes mocap, that includes ADR, that includes all kinds of scanning of your stuff. That sounded weird, mostly her face scanning.

17:55 Yeah, the face scans in this are pretty accurate. She's also talked about how wonderful it was to work with Roger Clark and Troy Baker, which also solidifies my theory that these are all great people. Oh, that's good. Fort Solis was announced on June 9th, 2022 with a full trailer at Summer Games Fest. And with it, Jeff Keighley brought both Roger Clark and Troy Baker on stage to talk about the trailer. Because holy shit, you just showed us a space trailer. It ends with who's in it, and then you bring out the two best performers. Like, Nolan North was busy that week. But these two can't, you know what I mean? Yeah, right? Oh, so good. No, he gets some great exclusives. Now, this moment in gaming history is only 15 months after Tinsdale went full time with Fallen Leaf.

18:40 That is a tight fucking turnaround. That's faster than like Stray. Oh, right, this is just incredible to see it all really come together and like hitting these deadlines. And because they're a small studio and they're in Europe where there's a lot of, you know, work-life balance, I actually have faith that they weren't too crunchy, but I didn't see anything either way. But, you know, I'm perhaps very hopeful with this game and its intention and its creation because I really enjoyed it and I really liked the people involved. After this announcement, the studio was silent, to the point of me telling Tom, I'm just Googling Fort Solis for funsies in hopes something will show up. Every single game announcement after that, you're like, why no Fort Solis?

19:23 I was. I think we got a state of play, we got a lot of Summer Games Fest packs of trailers, I was like, yeah, yeah, I don't care about this. Where's Fort Solis? Where's my cowboy? Nowhere. Nowhere. But the things that did trickle out were fantastic. GamesRadar and Roger Clark have called Troy Baker's performance in the game some of his finest work to date. And they said that separately. Nice. The game is admittedly very short. Like you can do this in like a two and a half, three hour run. Holy shit. Yeah, because it's a Netflix thing, it's a sunken in the couch thing, it's an evening, like let's roll with it. A quick binge. It's a big quick binge. Okay. However, it is dense.

20:05 There's not a lot of that time that feels stupid. That feels stupid. There's no filler content. Yeah, filler content, thank you. There's not a lot of fetch quests necessarily. It's a lot of constant moving, it's a lot of constant updates. It doesn't feel like a slog. This game has been cited as a walking simulator, but it doesn't have that weightiness of your steps, where it feels like, oh, every step you have to take in the fucking environment. Yeah, it's so beautiful. Like, no, I'm taking my step towards my next goal. But their goals were, they're like small and achievable, when you get through and it feels good. This is a fucking endorphin rush of a three-hour game.

20:45 Okay, cool. Troy Baker's called the story akin to a black hole. It's deep and it's dense, rather than a wide net of a story. It sucks you in. Yeah, Tinsdale's has concurred by saying, it was a small team that put this together. I cannot keep emphasizing the amount of people that worked on this is very small. And if anything didn't move the plot forward, it had to be cut. They didn't have their resources to put in any filler, anything stupid, like I said. The team, including Roger Clark himself, has called the game a walking simulator. So we'll bring that back around. But it still gets stuck to its label. Yeah, but it's set in a horror sci-fi world, which I think does kind of help elevate the genre.

21:30 It's been a lot of walking around in a field or a house or a set environment. Now it's a much more expansive fantasy world. Fantasy? No, space is real. Space world. Sci-fi world. Please, no one clip me forgetting that space exists. Fort Solis is truly, in my heart of hearts, the intersection of Firewatch and Dead Space. Two games which I've covered on this show as a plug, but truly it is, whatever that bastard baby is, it's Fort Solis. Awesome. They wanted to create a concise moving experience. They wanted the best in the industry to put it together.

22:11 They want to ride this baby all the way to Mars. This is Fort Solis. The game opens with a quote, Courage is not the lack of fear, it is acting in spite of it. Mark Twain. He said a lot of things, though. You don't mean to take everything so hard. I was gonna say, he says a lot of things, and they're not all great. Nah. We are on Mars. It's the year 2080 here. The red planet is dark at night, but we are illuminated to the sight of a mining operation. This is Fort Miner, like the band. Do you know that band? Nope. All right, I figured not. It is the offshoot of Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park.

22:52 Oh, okay. I don't know if you guys are here at Emo Game Episode. Tom doesn't know music, especially this genre very well. I just want to throw that shout out for the one other person that will get that. It's not Tom. Anyway, we meet two engineers who are prepping the exterior machinery of this area before a big storm hits the surface. Oh, there's a big storm coming. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We see Jessica Appleton, a junior engineer up on a tower prepping some shit. And then we come down to senior engineer Jack Leary, my cowboy. So this is Roger Clark's character? Yes. Okay.

23:32 Jack and Jessica are chatting about some zombie TV show they've been watching together. Jack didn't love the ending of whatever show they just watched. He thinks the hero could have done more to save everyone. They have perfect platonic banter. Like this is one of those, when you think of those great non-sexual friendships that look like they could be a relationship, but aren't because they're just friends and respect each other. A good platonic relationship, yeah. Oh, I love a good platonic relationship so goddamn much. It's so rare. Yeah. And you guys, just as an example, Leslie Knope or Ron Swanson. Or, you know, Arthur Morgan and Sadie Adler. Although there's some tension. Hey, you know, we all want it to happen.

24:12 If I believe in it hard enough. Jack is a little bit older than Jessica. He's a senior engineer, you know, aged. Jessica likes to poke at him, knowing she's close enough to get under her skin. So there's a little brother sister relationship to it. Little ribbing. Yeah, a little ribbing. Their chat is interrupted by an emergency alert from a nearby mining plant, Fort Solis. That's the name of the game. That's the name of this game. Jessica is surprised because, as she calls it, Fort Solis is a relic, and she didn't even think anyone was there or doing anything. What the fuck? Ew, Fort Solis, that was so last season. Jack is grumpy, because he's an old dude, so go for it.

24:53 He says, the second the shuttle gets here and his shift is over, he's going on his goddamn vacation. Good. It's a well-earned one, and Jessica knows he's been looking forward to this for so long. Don't look forward to anything. You can never have a dream in a video game. Especially a horror game. You dummy. Jack goes to a comms base and reaches out to Fort Solis. He pings them a few times, but no one answers. And he's like, damn, that's crazy. I can't wait to go on vacation. Jessica is like, it's just a stone's throw from over here. And Jack says, we're on Mars. That idiom isn't really relevant for science reasons, but whatever.

25:34 Jack does, by design, have to follow through on the emergency call because it's just the protocol for it. And he figures he'll just take an LTV to Fort Solis, check it out, loop back around, will be great. Jessica is still up in the towers prepping things for the storm, and she's like, perfect, I need to finish this or whole shit's gonna get fucked up, but then I'll catch up with you. Jack says, Roger that. Jessica's like, you're not in the military anymore, you can cool it. He says, Roger that. So that's just like some of the banter and the energy they have. They don't wanna fuck each other. No, it's good character introduction. They just respect each other and they're both funny. Jack heads off in a six-wheel LTV, similar to like to the ones we saw in The Martian.

26:19 Okay. Which is the only Mars thing I think I've ever seen. I was gonna say, this is already feeling very Martian vibes. Right, there's a storm, shit's going down, people are getting separated, not a good scene. So yeah, when you think about The Martian, the things that he's driving, it's like that, but this one's really, really big. It's like a tank-sized one. Got it. It's 2080, you know, so machinery's always gonna be a little bit bigger and better. Right, souped up lunar rover. Exactly. The LTV slowly takes Jack to Fort Solis alone as we get a glimpse of the miraculously detailed and somehow lived-in atmosphere of Mars. There's something about this that does feel traversed as opposed to this very desert-like, shaped-by-nature world that we typically see at Mars, which the character in that set design alone tells me so much about how long people have been here and the studies and structures and how common it is to be working on Mars, like these two people.

27:15 Yeah, I was gonna say, this sounds like we've been here a long time already. Oh yeah. As he heads off, Jack tells Jessica to watch out for the storm. In Jessica's charming and gentle Scottish accent, she says, I doubt it'll pass by me unnoticed. While the LTV finds its way to the nearby and yet still very far Fort Solis, we get the opening credits across the screen. The dust from the surface dances in the highlights of Jack's LTV as we approach the game's namesake and we get the title card, Fort Solis. Also location. Yeah, it doubled, I like that. Yeah. Following the title card, we get the cast. Roger Clark as Jack Leary, Julia Brown as Jessica Appleton, and then with the and treatment.

27:58 Of course he gets the and treatment. And Troy Baker as Wyatt Taylor. Can you tell me why the and is so important? I can't actually, I wish I could. I think it's one of those things they introduced for when you have two mega stars, essentially in the same role, and they both want to be at the top. Oh, so one gets an and at the end to be like, and I'm the standing ovation of it all. Yeah, that makes you kind of the special guest, the big treat, the get of the project. Okay, so like in Fast X, Helen Mirren and Ria Moreno. Okay, you can't compare it to Fast X, because there are 14 people that get an and in that movie.

28:40 I came home from work the other day, and you were just at the credits of this movie, and it was literally at the and and with section of the credits, and there was seriously like 14 people on that list. So I think it's like, and these people also blessed us with their time. Yeah, we were lucky to have this person show up. I fucking love the Fast and Furious movies unironically. You really do. I wish it was ironic. It's not, it's a genuine love. My hair is a little shaggy because of Michelle Rodriguez in Fast Five right now. Anyway, I don't wanna talk about nerd shit. Let's get back to space. The credits stop rolling as the LTV slows to approach the campus of Fort Solis, covered in space dust.

29:25 Jack radios into Solis, but gets a notice that the whole facility is on lockdown. Jessica's like, well, maybe it's storm damage? Jack says, that's super weird though, that no one's even like here or answering the comms. I'm saying, hey, I'm here to help you. You called the fucking emergency line and no one's there? That's weird. Jessica says, well, she's wrapped up here, but she'll be online to keep Jack company because it's either that or take a nap. Fair. All the exterior doors of Fort Solis are locked and shows like a lockdown alarm when Jack approaches. So he can't even finagle his way in. So hold on, the whole place is just locked down, nobody can get in? Yeah. Hmm.

30:06 The sky is dark with dust and night, so Jack has to cruise around just by the light on his helmet. Like Firewatch, we see our protagonists navigate orange and red rocks with the voice of a charming female coworker in his ear. With all the doors locked down, Jack's like, all right, I guess we're going climbing. And wires into a loose rope to climb his way to the top of the building to approach a different area of the campus. He scales part of a red mountain swaying in the wind as the storm approaches. On his way up, Jack complains about the fort being a relic and just a straight up pain in the ass at this point, because now he's scaling a fucking mountain. Yeah, right? As he gets closer to the top, Jack looks to his side and sees a ladder right next to where he was rappelling.

30:54 Jessica hears Jack struggling to breathe as he climbs and climbs and asks him if it's time to quit the beer, buddy? They're still drinking beer on Mars? Like, it's expensive to send shit to Mars. Maybe they're brewing. Every single... Yeah, I guess so. They could be brewing, but they'd have to grow the wheat. This does not seem really logical to have beer on Mars. I gotta be honest. The year is 2080, Tom. In 50 years, we could be brewing beers on Mars. There could be horrific breweries infesting Mars, like it's your hometown. An MPA, Martian Pale Ale. Oh, yeah. It's just a beer garden on the Red Planet. Jack says, next time, I don't give a fuck.

31:35 I'm cutting through the door. Here, as Jack opens the main door atrium of Fort Solis, we exit the prologue and we enter chapter one, Dark Descent, 1903, the timing. So it's like 7 p.m. Oh, okay, not the year. No, the year is 2080. Like I keep reiterating to you. No, but I thought you were saying, like we just stepped through a time portal. Oh my God, what a nightmare. That would be so fucking embarrassing. Right. What a terrible game. In fact, open the door and they're like, hello, we've got the Black Plague on Mars. Why would you change planets? No, that's horrible. I fucking hate it. What year do you think the Black Plague happened? 1903?

32:15 Was it not 1903? So there was no plague in 1903? There might have been, but it wasn't that plague. So you admit there's a chance. Just after 7 p.m. I had to look that up also because I don't know how to do military time. I know it's just subtracting 12. My brain is like, weird. We don't have the bandwidth for that ever. Jack approaches the main doors. Jessica asks about the campus, telling Jack to paint a picture for her. It's so nice, too, just to have the person in your ear constantly checking in on you. One, as a safety measure, fully makes sense. This is a logical thing that she's like, you're going alone. I'm going to be on comms in case you need help. And so you don't have space madness because space madness is real.

32:59 Oh, entirely. You see Peter Stormar get it really badly in Armageddon. Oh, shit. He was in Until Dawn. He was. All these games are connecting. It's crazy. It's all coming. My Pepe Silva wall of just video games is all coming together. Well, he said Supermassive Games were a huge inspiration. There's something there. There is. I'm telling you. It's also just very nice to hear two friends talking. Like when people talk about what they love about The Last of Us, one, it's mostly Joel and Ellie's banter and them getting to know each other and them loving each other. With this, we've just skipped, and these are coworkers who've been working together for long enough that they're sharing their Netflix account and watching TV shows together.

33:40 These are best fucking friends. So this is more like Gears of War with Dom and Marcus. Hell yeah, they are ride or die as fuck. They're just not as beefy. Right, no beefy boys. Can I tell you, Tom was like, oh, are you excited for the Gears of War episode? I'm like, yeah, I think I had a lot of fun. And you were like, oh, that song you sang was crazy. And I said, I sang a song in the Gears of War episode? I blacked out, no idea what happened. And then he played it for me right before we started recording and I cried laughing. Because what's wrong with me? Anyway, this will not be a musical episode. This is, I put my bard hat away for this one. Is it very clear I'm a bard?

34:21 Very clear, all the time. All the time. You make it very obvious. I've never been good at hiding who I am. Good. So Jack is going to paint a picture for Jessica of the whole campus. He says, it's old school. There's a lot of single structures, whatever that means, that's space gibberish. And upon hearing the place being described as old, Jessica tells Jack he should feel right at home then. I love them so goddamn much. Through the main atrium doors, Jack is able to get into the main station. He's a little skeeved out that all the doors are locked and no one seems to be home. But Jessica's like, hey, it's protocol, man. Like, if something went wrong, they do have to shut all the doors.

35:01 You understand. We're in goddamn space. Opening a window could kill thousands of people here. Opening a window. It's so funny to compare it to, because yeah, on Earth, that seems like such a simple thing, and on another planet, it kills people. It'll suck the soul out of you. Jack enters the atrium where he's greeted by a 15-foot tall cherry blossom tree, which is rare on Earth. There's not every climate that can handle that kind of tree, you know? I've seen them in Washington, DC during the Cherry Blossom Festival. Fucking amazing. Also, cherry blossoms play a huge role in 1917, just saying. Really? What the fuck happens in 1917?

35:45 All you've told me is that Sherlock's in it, and people die in really gory ways, and I was like, I'm out. I don't love to see violence. Sherlock and Moriarty are in it. Oh, I love Moriarty. With the generators powering the entire campus, Jack takes the opportunity to take his helmet off. Because there's always a goddamn generator. This one's already on. Calm down. Jessica notices that his comms moved from his helmet to a Bluetooth and yells at him. He's like, chill out. It's fine. I'm inside, and I hate wearing my helmet. Jessica's like, I love my helmet. My helmet has a frog on it. I'm cool as fuck. Frog helmet, hell yeah, like Lucio. Exactly. Seemingly alone in this huge facility, Jack beelines straight to the beer fridge, where he has a nice frosty beer while enjoying the sight of the tree.

36:33 One of those Martian pale ales we were talking about. Exactly. According to the plaque, the tree is just about as old as Jessica. It's from 2053. Jessica also gives him shit for drinking on the job. She should, because I don't care that he's already on vacation mode. There's an emergency, sir. And he's like, the emergency is that I'm thirsty. Looking around, Jack notices a lot of doors need battery packs to open, which is an old school space thing, apparently. Many doors are unlockable just by walking around them or kind of figuring out how to put the battery pack in. But either way, there's clearance cards sometimes. It's just one of those things they give you to make it a little harder.

37:15 Because Jack's from Fort Minor, his key card access is useless here. He has no authority in this place, so... Then why the fuck did they send him? No one else was there. I know, but still, like, they need authority to go in there. You'd think they might, like, oh, you're responding to the call. Here's an updated access card. Yeah, something. Nah, it's just annoying. Jessica is amused by all the old tech that Jack keeps running into. And speaking of, as Jack starts navigating the Atrium, he's able to see old space posters and relics from when space travel was more novel. Oh. It'll be like, here's the sky walk. Look at the stars. And he's like, oh, my God. Introducing trains. Yeah, the people mover.

37:58 Don't sue me. The Atrium consists of a few rooms, mostly outlook posts and hallways to other locked off areas. Jack is like, it's really spooky that no one is here, though. Like, it's strange being alone in space for me at this point. I've been in a fucking work situation, so I'm constantly surrounded by people. To make him feel more at ease, Jack downloads the schematics of the campus, so he actually does have a map throughout, which is very helpful. Okay, good, not just a hand-drawn one. He's not writing this on the back of his glove, like, Atrium North, let's go. The map, as well as any files you find throughout the game, are accessible via a wrist device that Jack has on his arm.

38:39 It's a little screen that he can navigate through to hold data and check where he is, and it's simply called a multi-tool. Using an old battery that he finds, Jack is able to get into some of the offices and conference rooms in that area of the Atrium. Here's where the player gets into the game part of it. Jack pokes around some people's computers and, like, personal shit in their offices, but he still can't find anyone or, like, a sign of life. You know, in movies, sometimes you'll get, like, a hot coffee mug and you're like, ah, they're nearby. Fucking nothing, it's super strange. He sees some doors, he's going through, he just doesn't see anyone. He's also able to unlock some doors down to the downstairs part of the building, which is helpful, so he can at least get into, like, the guts of the building.

39:22 Right, is he doing anything, like, hello, anybody home or anything like that? Yeah. Okay. He's kind of cruising around, he's also playing with people's shit, he's talking out loud to Jessica. Drinking a beer. He's having... He fully just had a nice beer and looked at a tree and enjoyed himself for ten minutes. He can go into one office and play with an abacus, and then there's another office with a Rubik's Cube. And in game, you can solve the Rubik's Cube. Really? I've seen videos of players solving the Rubik's Cube in the game, and I'm like, God damn, how does your brain work? I can't even do that in real life. I don't remember your phone number, and I've had to put it into things so fucking often, including my own phone. Like, I am...

40:02 My brain don't work like that. Nope. Using his multi-tool, Jack can find some recordings of people singing Happy Birthday to a loved one, and he's like, Oh, what a try-hard. It's a dick. Jessica is like, Wow, you're divorced, right? And Jack goes, Look, there are a lot of reasons that we broke up, but I was not a try-hard. Oh my God, this is great. Apart from this, like, grouchy divorced moment, Jack does find ways to be playful in his search of the building. He finds, like, a little marching spaceman toy, and he's like, look at the little guy go. Like, there's so much joy to him to balance the grouch and, like, the grumpy old man exterior, but there's still such a sweet little boy in there that's like, I'm playing in space, you know?

40:51 It's a really well-balanced performance. Question for you about the performance. Is this Roger Clark's natural voice? Is he doing a voice like he was with Arthur Morgan? I'm glad you asked that. He is using his regular Irish accent. Which is probably why I can't hear any fucking Arthur Morgan in there. These are different people from different planets. Literally. Planets and countries. With access to the lower levels unlocked thanks to Jack's cool computer hacking skills, he put someone's birthday in and it worked as their password, and then he figured it out. Jack heads downstairs. It is old school fashion. Fort Solis. So that's the way that they just did passwords.

41:34 Oh, yeah, I'm sure if he typed password into every computer, he'd get into a third of them. Jack is like, he's coming downstairs. He's gone through every office. He's like, Jessica, this is fucking creepy. Where is everyone? Who even sent this fucking warning? Because no one's here. Seriously. Jessica figures they were cursed to walk the surface of the planet as Mars zombies. And Jack is like, oh my God, are we still talking about the goddamn zombies? Jessica defends it, saying, hey, he sacrificed himself. Chivalry isn't dead. He's about to be. Jack says, yeah, but did he die? Jessica says, it's romantic.

42:14 Downstairs are some of where, like, the crew would spend their time. We see a small gym and a rec room area where people could play cards and unwind. At the poker table, Jack sees a hand with two pairs, two weights and two aces, all in black suits. Why are you gasping? That's the dead man's hand. Can you tell me what the dead man's hand is? So the dead man's hand is the poker hand that Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot in the back of the head just by a random passerby. By that coward. By that fucking coward piece of shit, yes. And since then, that hand has been called the dead man's hand, and it's a widely known poker thing, and Jack does make a note of going, oh, God, dead man's hand.

42:59 I thought that would impress you, though. We've been watching Deadwood, so... Yeah, and they show the death of Wild Bill Hickok, spoiler alert, for Deadwood, a 14-year-old show. About history. But yeah, the real life Wild Bill Hickok, that's how he died, and he was holding that exact poker hand. That's terrifying. Now, Jessica is, at this point, still pretty shocked he hasn't run into anyone. Not even a security officer doing a perimeter check. No one's in the rec room. That's where you hang out. That's where space people go to relax. Jack goes, yeah, this is continuing to be super fucking creepy because I'm all alone. This is weird, and I'm concerned that I should have found someone by now. I'm very concerned that he hasn't found anybody yet.

43:42 Yeah, and he's reasoning, like, a manual emergency alert was sent out. Someone was physically here and sent an alarm. Why is no one here? What happened to at least the one person that sent the alarm? This isn't the one beer talking either. Yeah, we don't know how powerful space beer is, but he seems to hold his own pretty well. If you think about it, when you drink at high altitude, it's actually more effective, so you're at real high altitude in Mars. Well, you're high from Earth, from where your natural Earth-bound gravity is. I suppose, but I think there's science that's wrong there. Probably, I don't know shit. I can't point it out.

44:24 Jack finds a panel, and he's able to override some of the locks in the crew quarter rooms, because he's like, okay, if they're not in the rec room, maybe they're all bunkered down in their individual dorm rooms, basically. These are tiny fucking rooms. It's like when you see an apartment tour of a $3,000 Manhattan studio, this fucking tiny. It is a bummer how tiny these fucking rooms are. Going through the crew quarter rooms, he finds one for Helen Dunpart. Helen is the chief botanist, and she's studying plant life on Mars. Helen, in a vlog, muses that her planet is dying and Earth is running out of time. Her research is currently into making growth and farming viable on Mars, which is fucking cool.

45:06 But she just keeps running into the plants dying, which is kind of the story of the Martian. I was going to say she's kind of the Marsha Watney in this. Also, just as a general plug, Andy Weir is an incredible sci-fi writer. Yeah, if you haven't read Andy Weir's books, you absolutely should. The Martian, Project Hail Mary, two of the greatest books ever written. Not just sci-fi, greatest books ever written. The movie The Martian is good, but I will say that in doing the audiobook of The Martian prior to seeing the movie, I cried the last act. I fully tears. It's so fucking good. It is better than the movie, like everyone says. Movie's solid. Movie's still very fucking good. Solid fucking movie.

45:47 Book, incredible. Yeah, but his whole deal was that he stuck on Mars. Not a spoiler. That's the whole fucking movie. But he has to grow food because he's running out of food, so he ends up growing potatoes in his own shit. And very fortunately, he was a botanist back on Earth. Yeah, he was the chief botanist there. So similarly to Mark Watney, Helen is the chief botanist, and her whole thing is just trying to grow shit on Mars and make it viable. And she's super worried about Earth, because yeah, in 50 years, we're probably not in a great place. No, probably not. Not to bum everyone out, but I use a tote bag when I go to the grocery store. If we do have full communities on Mars by 50 years from now, it might not be that bad.

46:30 I wouldn't go. Well, you know what happens at this game, so let's find out. I am plagued by knowledge. Yes. So she's working on this new formula, Compound 26, and it's starting to show some positive results. But as she starts to describe it, a man enters her room and begins to scold her. She is in her private room, and a man barged in to scold her. What a bad person. I hate everything about that. You are stuck on a colony with coworkers in space. No loved ones. There's not like a plus one situation in a Mars colony. Your room should be only accessible to you. Yeah. Straight up.

47:10 Fully. And, you know, there's this situation that he had where he couldn't get in to certain places with his key card. Your private room? Nobody should have access to that. A hundred percent. Now, the man that's scolding her, he says that's two. Two people are now sick after interfering with your work. She defends herself saying what she's doing is important, and he says the people are getting sick. And then the video cuts off after she stops arguing with him. Oh, this is starting to sound like serenity now. Like there's so many like birth points for this story that I'm seeing and I'm loving it because it's taking all of my favorite science and like space stories and kind of cramming them all together. As Jack turns to explore the rest of the lonely building, Jessica whispers in his ear, shh, shh, shh, shh.

47:57 What a bitch. Sorry, you said that at the perfect moment to call out these incredible inspirations from media and then this happens immediately after. Oh, that's so good. Does the Halloween on her. Because the game knows what's happening and Jessica has the funniest fucking sense of humor on Mars. Mars, that's good. Jack goes, what the fuck? I'm alone, I'm unarmed, I don't need the goddamn soundtrack, Jessica. And Jessica is like, no, this was very funny. I agree with Jessica. Jack is rifling through people's shit, and he does find an access card in one of the bedrooms.

48:39 So now we can move a little more freely about the cabin. Okay, good. It's not full access, but it's a start. You know, we need some normal gameplay elements. It can't all just be walking. In one of the bathrooms, Jack comes up on a sink with spots of blood and a deep red rag next to it. He goes, that's one hell of a nose bleed, thinks nothing of it, and moves on with his life. So to recap, alone in a giant facility that should be full of people, emergency signal went off, no one's there, and now he's found signs of blood. Nah, probably nothing. It's probably nothing. Jack moves deeper into the dormitories of Fort Solis and still hasn't found anyone, which is wild at this point.

49:24 He figured the crew quarters would be where the crew fucking was. This is ridiculous. Yeah, that's where the crew goes. Jack goes hopping around like he's on goddamn room raiders looking for any sign of life. If the call came from inside the house, why is the house empty? Who called from here? How recent was whatever that happened with all that blood in the sink? Jack heads down deeper into Fort Solis and hears the walls creak as they fight the storm on the surface. The building groans at you, and they echo down the lonely hallways while Jack wanders around looking for signs of life. In the lowest level, Jack comes up on a door that looks like no, it couldn't be.

50:05 It was sabotage. Oh no. He kneels to get a better look and he's talking to Jessica, and he says it's something really odd. Something snapped the manual lever of the door off. Jessica gasps and goes, something? Which is so rude. He found something that could be dangerous, and she's like, something or someone. Is it spooky? It's so easy for her to have this attitude from far away. Yeah, from the safety of a manned facility, she's like, haha, Jack's fucking paranoid, and he's having the worst night of his life. Also, why aren't there cameras in Fort Solis? But anyway. There are security cameras.

50:45 They are accessible through certain computers you could find throughout the game of people who had access, like department heads or security people or main facility cameras. But she can't access them. She's not in their network. She's from Fort Minor. I know. They should have that. They should. Yeah. I'll give you that. Jack hunts it down and is like, what the fuck? But we gotta figure out what's going on. This is crazy. Jessica warns him to be careful because obviously there's weird shit going on and she's here, but she's like, okay, it's getting kind of weird now. Jack says, yeah, no shit. Now, occasionally the sound of the ship's computer will remind you that there is a lockdown in effect.

51:27 The only human voices you get are the ghosts on these computers telling you what happened before you got there and sweet baby Jessica safely somewhere else off-site, waiting out the storm. For Jack, the loneliness really starts to creep in. Jack unlocks the door to the medical bay where the sabotage drawer was, and it's also completely deserted in here. There are some medical reports showing crew members with some strange medical issues. Dizziness, loss of balance, low blood pressure, maybe it's radiation poisoning? And then we finally see the face of Wyatt Taylor, the chief medical officer, aka Troy Baker.

52:07 Oh, hell yeah. We see him in vlogs, and he vlogs that he's had some crew members with issues he believes may be radiation poisoning, citing they've been working really long hours on their work sites on the surface and ignoring the risks. He's annoyed that he seems to be ignored by basically everyone on the crew when he's literally just saying, like, watch your exposure levels. We're not supposed to be on this planet, and we are, so our bodies are not used to this shit. You can get sick by just hanging out. And everybody's like, eh, it's probably fine. Entirely, they're like, oh, crazy fucking Wyatt. And he's like, I'm a literal fucking doctor. And they go, ah, Wyatt's so annoying.

52:49 Whatever, we're all doctors. Jack watches all these videos of him being like, why isn't anyone listening to me? They're getting fucking sick. And Jack's just like, damn, that's crazy. I'm gonna get a pina colada tomorrow when I get home. Walking around, Jack then sees something a little scarier. He comes up on a large pool of blood. Pool. He messages Jessica and he's like, there was a fucking incident here. Something bad is actually happening. Jessica's looked up the contacts at Fort Solis and asked Jack if Officer Taylor is there. She figures the chief medical officer should be on site clearly, and he's in the medical bay, so like, where else would the fuck he be?

53:34 Jack still hasn't seen a soul, but continues through the medical offices to see if he can at least hunt down Officer Taylor. Jack remembers a story about a co-worker named Tom. He asked Jessica if she remembers when he ate space soil on a dare and ended up in medical isolation for two weeks. They laugh about this. Are they four-year-olds? Like, seriously? I just really like that he brings this up of, like, radiation poisoning. Oh my god, do you remember when we got Tom to eat all that space dirt? All that dirt? Yeah. And he was sick for two weeks.

54:15 I mean, yeah, they're giggling, but it also lays down the groundwork that Mars soil could very well be a source of radiation poisoning, like Officer Taylor suspected. So we're qualifying the theories here. Through more of the offices, we can see a lot of files from Officer Taylor. Obviously, Chief Medical Officer, he's leaving data all over the place. A lot of Wyatt's videos are talking about missing his family, and at one point his video calling was broken so he couldn't even fucking FaceTime his family back home. Oh, that's awful. He also talks about his raising suspicions on people doing weird shit at the facility. He's... he doesn't want to say... He's gonna say it.

54:56 He thought he heard some weird shit at night? Weird shit. He's ramping himself up to talk to people the next day and bring it up and get down to the bottom of this because it feels like they're hiding something from him. In the crew quarters in a supply closet, Jack finds lots and lots of blood and a space suit with Officer Taylor's name on it, also covered in blood. Oh, shit. Jessica tells Jack to finish a sweep and then get out of there because this just does not feel right. No, it doesn't. Jack agrees and is like, okay, I can get the fuck away from this shit. This is actually scaring me and I'm alone. Absolutely not.

55:37 Yeah, this needs a whole fucking team. He is compelled, though, to do his due diligence and be like, if Officer Taylor is anywhere, he's probably here. So let me get him out. I can get his story. I can drive him back. And then he can handle the investigation so I can go to Margaritaville, Europa. Going in deeper, Jack does find an office with Officer Taylor's actual computer. An email shows up that Helen, our botanist friend, dropped off a plant that he had requested, but next to the computer is wiped up blood and a plant. So, I don't know, someone bled on this plant. I don't know, I'd stay the fuck away from that plant. You're getting Little Shop of Horrors vibes?

56:18 Yeah. That's Audrey, too. Yeah. Some vlogs capture Officer Taylor pleased after a call with his wife and daughters. He is deeply focused on getting home. His kids are pretty young. I'd say like maybe six and eight or nine, you know, like kid, kid aged. They're cute little girls, and he's a loving dad. He's just like, God damn, this feels so long. And he is increasingly desperate as he talks about how much he misses them, how he aches to see them in person and not just through a screen. And they're back on Earth? Yeah. Oh my gosh, I mean, just the fucking flight out is two years. He wipes tears away as he says the next five months are gonna be hard.

57:01 Oh. And he mentions getting something for his daughter that she asked for. She wanted a space plant. Oh, no. The next blog has Officer Taylor discussing the first incident of what we know is that radiation poison issue he's been seeing. Right. He says the first stage is trembling hands. He's paranoid and says that something is going on, and he needs to find out what it is. Through some messing around on the computer, Jack is able to override a door to the surgical bay and is like, cool, I'm gonna go take a look. He's going through some of the rooms, and he goes through a furnace room, and he sees something actively burning, and is like, this is disgusting, I wish I had my helmet on.

57:42 Finally some activity in this fucking place, though. Jessica is like, hey, dipshit, you should always have your helmet on. We're in space. Right. You answered an emergency call. You know what that means? Shit's not right, my dude. Something is wrong. They could all be suffocating. In the surgery ward, Jack opens these slideaway curtains to see a body under a sheet. Through the medical blue tones of the blanket is a pool of blood on the surface of the fabric. He rips off the blanket and screams, as he should, as he sees the security guard dead. He knows he's security by the uniform, and his chest is bleeding through his clothes.

58:23 Jack is panicked, but tells Jessica his name, and manages to get his data card off his multi-tool for some more videos and context from this guy. Jack also makes the great decision to grab his security badge and tells Jessica, look, Officer Taylor isn't here, but we need to update Central. Central is just kind of the generic, oh, the cops, like the people running Mars. Right. The authorities who are supposed to be in charge of everyone here. People who should be handling this right now. Jessica is all over it to help Jack out. She says, I'm reporting it right now. I got you. In the Bay of the Surgery Ward, Jack also finds a saw blade near a sink with lots of blood.

59:04 He is like, seriously, what the hell happened here? Jessica lets Jack know that she reached out for backup and tells Jack to get out of here. As Jack enters the main medical bay, he looks over and sees another space suit walk through an activated door down the hall and exit. We are not alone. Oh, fuck me. And it's such a split second on the screen, and then Jack reacts and goes, hey, hey, and screams after him, but it's too late. Well, yeah, it's the first fucking person you've seen this whole time. The first live person we've seen this whole time. As the door closes behind that person, red lights flash and the computer voice comes out saying the levels are being reduced and the whole system is shutting down due to an airlock breach.

59:54 Oh, shit. I'm going to remind you one more time. Jack took off his helmet when he walked in. Yeah, and he left it where he fucking took it off. With an airlock breach, that means the oxygen is going away. Shit. Jack screams out for help, but is once again alone. That person is fucking gone, whoever the fuck they were. So, like, to recap, we found a fully dead security officer. There's been lots of blood, and we also found a bloody suit for the medical officer Wyatt Taylor. Right. We don't know where anyone else is. We have not seen anyone. And we only saw the back of that suit as they left the room. So we don't know who the fuck that is. Ugh. Jessica screams, knowing Jack doesn't have his helmet on, and if the oxygen goes out, he will suffocate and die.

1:00:37 On calms with her. Jack panics and sprints through the medical bay, landing in the furnace and taking a maintenance route out of the closing down medical bay. He crawls on his belly along a coffin narrow corridor, breathing heavily, panicked that he's about to die. Yeah. This area is at least somewhat stable and isn't actively being shut down by the computer, so he's fine. He's like, okay, let's just fucking go. Jack snake bellies through the perimeter of the ship and comes up on another out in the system. Now at the base of the stairwell, he used to get downstairs. Once he's safe, Jack is like, holy shit. And Jessica goes, what the fuck happened?

1:01:17 Are you good? And Jack goes, I don't know. But someone's down here with me. Jessica is shocked to hear this as we all were at the time, but still reiterates, okay, it doesn't matter, but you need to get your ass out of there right now. Yeah. Jack goes, I'm trying. I just snake crawled my ass through a fucking narrow ass corridor. As he climbs up the stairs, the airlock breach alarm goes off here too. And Jessica is like, oh my fucking God, put on your goddamn helmet. Jack understands, okay, so this is the time and place for a helmet and sprints back up to the atrium to grab it from where he left it.

1:01:58 Now fully suited up, Jack catches his breath. Jessica asks him what's happening, but Jack gets distracted. He opens the front door that he entered from, and as he does, a body flops dead in the doorway. Jesus, just bodies falling from everywhere now. He goes for the first hour of nothing and nobody, and now bodies are just throwing themselves at him. And, you know, he hasn't spent that much time wandering around the facility. This person is dead in front of him in the time it took for him to wander around. Jesus. He pulls the corpse to the side and tells Jessica, Dunpart? Jessica confirms that Dunpart is Helen Dunpart, the chief botanist at Fort Solis.

1:02:42 Oh shit. Jack inspects her body and tells Jessica the body was stabbed multiple times. Stabbed? That her helmet was damaged and she couldn't breathe, but she still made it back to the facility. She was hurt outside somewhere and crawled back to Fort Solis. Jesus. Jack tells Jessica to update Central that this was a violent incidence. Now there's two confirmed kills. Shit. Maybe three, we don't know where Wyatt is, but we found his bloody clothes. Right. Jessica notes there's only six crew members on Fort Solis right now. Well, five. Yeah. Okay, I guess four.

1:03:23 Chapter two, Let There Be Light, 2045, which is 845? Bingo. Okay, yeah, so it's been about an hour and a half. Ugh, poor Jack. Jack can't leave. His heart is saying he has to sweep and try and use the cameras to locate anyone else and get them out safe, because there's four people who may still be alive here, and I cannot let them die. Right. Jessica was like, I would rather you leave now and Central handle it, because what the fuck? Jack is like, but no, if I can stop someone from dying, I'm gonna stop someone from dying. I can't in good faith walk away from this.

1:04:04 Jack figures he'll go down to security, find whoever's left, get them out of here safely, and then go on his divorced guy vacation. Knowing he's no longer alone, or maybe knowing he was never alone, Jack continues exploring Fort Solis. Gently, after knowing he's seen two dead bodies, Jessica asks how Jack is doing, you know, with all this. Right. Then teases Jack saying, what's the point of watching all these fucking shows if you don't learn from the heroes? Jack says, well, for what it's worth, I haven't ruled out zombies. Haven't ruled it out yet. I love them so much.

1:04:47 Jack goes through offices and closets and rooms as he may sit down to the hangar bay on his search for security, because if he can get to security, he can check the monitors, find everyone, and hopefully, like, get them safe, help them get rescued by Central, help find out what's going on here. At least see where the fuck they are. As he enters the hangar bay, a platform, a huge space shipping container, rolls out right at Jack. Now, there's a QTE, and if you fuck it up, Jack can get injured. Oh, shit. Just to throw it out there. Is there permadeath in this game? No. No, okay. I don't think I died in this game. But there's no permadeath.

1:05:27 This is not a heavy rain situation. Right. With that one platform container thing fucked up, it hits one of the doorways that Jack needed. So he's like, cool. Almost got killed, and I'm trapped. This is the worst day. There are some tunnel tracks used to move platforms back and forth, because again, this is a mining facility. Right. So they're moving heavy shit around. Totally makes sense that there's crazy machinery. Not at Fort Minor. Yeah. And Jack looks around and goes, it's a nice night for a walk. Let's go. In the depths, as he goes on, Jack can find a voice memo from the head of operations saying that the medical officer, Officer Wyatt Taylor, has been on his ass about overexposure to his team.

1:06:12 This is the ops manager Nick, and Nick brushes it off, but it's clearly really annoying him. And while I've only named three performers that are in this game, because those are the only ones that get opening credits, there is about 10 performers or so that round out the full cast of people doing vlogs. So we know Jessica's there, we know Jack's there, but everyone else is appearing in video memos and voice memos. It's actually kind of funny because early on, Wyatt Taylor is doing one. I think it's the one where he's talking about his kids, but he says, they make us do these vlogs for our mental health, and I kind of get it. But I like the notion that they put forth a reason for the vlogs to exist, not just a bio shock of someone recording something on a device and then leaving it in a convenient place.

1:07:03 They're like, no, no, they make us do these like once a day so we don't go fucking space madness, you know? Right, no, they do that in all sorts of different space movies too. And they say it's a mental health thing? Yeah, fully. Oh, that's funny. So Jack sets off down the tunnels, which is a tedious process of opening doors, running back and forth, but he makes his way down and out to the guts of Fort Solis. Unlit tunnels are dirty and lonely, while Jack walks down with only the light of his helmet to guide him out of the larger campus. He ends up on the edge of one of the mining locations, outside in the middle of a brewing storm on the surface of Mars. He figures he needs to get back to the surface and climbs up and out.

1:07:44 Jack talks to Jessica and is like, seriously, what is going on? Why was no one here radioed us or reached back out? What happened here? She's finally starting to get on board that there's something fucking wrong. Jessica reminds Jack that he hasn't ruled out zombies, so it could be zombies. On another level of the mining levels, he sees a storage unit with the door swinging wide open kind of through the wind, which is weird because obviously that's not protocol, especially during a storm. He says he's just going to go take a look. Jessica says, it's like you watch these movies and try to outdo the dumb protagonists who die early.

1:08:26 Jack, who knows he's in a horror movie, tells Jessica, I'll be right back. Jesus Christ. She says, I can't even with you. And I'll be right back is obviously a nod to one of your favorites. Oh, scream, of course. The iconic Jamie Kennedy, who is truly like that is the best he's given to people. Ever. Ever like bless his prank show, I guess, whatever. But his scream performance is weirdly on point. He is perfect as Randy in those fucking movies. Yeah, when he's yelling in Jamie Lee Curtis, like Jamie turn around. It's one of the best meta moments in the history of cinema. Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say horror, but yeah, you're right.

1:09:06 He said Deadpool, who? I got this. Yeah. Jack has to check out the storage unit because he's in a horror movie. And as he peaks in, he trips on something soft and lands on the corpse of Nick, the operations manager. Damn it. So now we're down three. Jack screams and panics and tells Jessica he found him. He reads the manager's name off and Jessica confirms, yep, that's Nick. That's the operations manager. They log the third body Jack has found and Jack wanders deeper into the storm to find a way to save whoever is left. Now, Nick's body wasn't wearing a helmet and his face was distorted, frozen in a full scream as his corpse lay there in the dust.

1:09:52 Oh, and this is like a very realistic looking game, right? This game is absolutely beautiful. This fucking sucks to look at. It is, and I mean that lovingly because it is so scary. It's kind of like in the ring, the way that people's faces are distorted after they're dead. It's like a stretched out forever scream, kind of like Edward Monk's The Scream, the painting. Yeah. I sound so douchey referencing a painting in a podcast about video games. Get the fuck over yourself. But that's what it looks like, to be real. It sucks to look at because you also see his vlogs prior, and he's like a nice, charming looking dude, and then you see just the worst death someone could have.

1:10:33 Ugh. Jack finds the maintenance unit where he can hopefully make his way to security. To appease him, Jessica says, Roger, and Jack's like, oh, hey, you're doing my thing. Thank you. That's my name. He's like, I've seen three dead bodies tonight. Jessica immediately admits that she did it to add a little levity to the horrible situation he's in. Right. Their ribbing is so fucking good. It's probably very necessary considering how dark we're going. How dark and how lonely everything is. After the maintenance unit airlock, Jack is basically in the workshop of Fort Solis. There's tools and lots of different items around that the team has used to build and maintain all these mining units.

1:11:15 Like I said, tons of machinery. An audio file from Nick, who is now confirmed dead, is optimistic, saying they could be figuring out the future here. He alludes to something here being the actual future. He stops himself and he goes, I sound like her. Hmm. The botanist? Perhaps. Jack is excited to see a 3D printer here, though, because frankly, any dude is excited to see a 3D printer, especially an engineer. Jessica is like, okay, you like the printer, but the star walks to see space are boring.

1:11:59 And Jack is like, yeah, I don't give a shit about space. I fucking love 3D printers. Jack makes his way through the empty maintenance halls in search of some way to find everyone. He comes by one of our favorite things and sees the power generator. Oh, it's a goddamn generator. It's shut down, so you know what that means. You gotta turn this bitch on. No, because as Jack is inspecting it, he tells Jessica it looks like it was manually powered down. Oh. The only way to do that would be to hack the control panel and override the generator's security measures. And it's done in a way where this person clearly didn't want to get caught.

1:12:40 With the security hacked and compromised, Jack can't do anything to get the security comms on and find anyone else. So this is intentional. This was deliberate. The backup generator next to the main one has been whacked, and all the wires are like pulled and yanked out, fully sabotaged. Oh, shit. It's all bad. There's truly no hope of getting these comms back up and running. Jessica, once again, the voice of reason is like, Jack, you have to get out of there. Jack admits defeat and says, you're right. Like, he really wanted to save whoever he could, but there's no way he could find anyone now. As Jack stands from inspecting the sabotage generators, he turns to leave when a pair of hands wrap around his helmet.

1:13:26 Shit. This is the same suit we saw earlier in the medical bay, and this person overpowers Jack. They hit him in the ribs and slam him against the walls. They pin him up and punch him deeply right in between the ribs. Fuck. As Jack crumbles to the ground, we meet Chief Medical Officer Wyatt Taylor. Oh, shit. Really? Oh, yeah. So Troy Baker was the bad guy? Why is he, though? Do we know what happened? No, true. He might be mistaking who this person is. Oh, this is exciting. He's never met Jack. That's true. Wyatt grabs Jack's helmet and screams, How many are with you?

1:14:10 Who else answered the alarm? But frantically, before Jack can get the wind back in his lungs to say anything, Wyatt slams Jack again to the ground. Without saying a word, Jack crawls away as much as he can, but Wyatt comes up behind him and screams, I asked you a question. Didn't give me a chance to answer. Jessica's voice comes over screaming for Jack in his ear, but as Jack looks up at Wyatt, Wyatt stomps him the fuck out in the face. Oh my God. As the screen turns to black, we hear Jessica scream out for Jack one more time.

1:14:50 Now I want to take a moment here to give you some behind the scenes fun stuff. Please. During one of the fight scenes, I think it might be this one, it could be another moment, but I do want to tell this story now. The crew went out to lunch. They're like, cool, take 20, we're gonna eat sandwiches. Roger Clark joined the whole crew, but Troy Baker stayed behind to practice some of his fight sequence with a stunt performer. During the practice, Troy flew into a wall, and his body made a hole in the wall. The entire crew came back, and Roger was like, hey Troy, what's this hole in the wall? It looks like a butt.

1:15:32 And Troy Baker said, that's me with my butt shaped body. Oh my god, his whole body was butt shaped? He's a tall man, like he seems more lanky than butt shaped, but I guess we don't know what shape we are until we go through a wall. We're not all going to look like Roger Rabbit. The team never bothered fixing the hole, and Troy Baker eventually signed the butt wall. I don't know why, but Roger Clark is like wildly tickled by this story, and it's so tender. I guess it wasn't a very eventful set. It was real dark, they wanted any kind of levity. Meanwhile, across Mars, in the LTV Jessica was sitting in, Jessica is screaming at her comms.

1:16:15 She's like, Jack, please, I need you to tell me if you're okay. Jack, Jack, Jack. She hears nothing. Oh, shit. On her other line, she follows up with Central, calling for help and asking for an ETA on backup. The operator tells them they're on the way, but with this storm, don't hold your breath, they might not get there until tomorrow. Jessica hangs up with Central and turns the autopilot off on her LTV. She says, hang on, Jack, I'm on my way, as she heads to Fort Solis. Unfortunately, because of the storm, her LTV is overridden with instructions to not move. It just has an automatic thing of like, bitch, no, stop it.

1:16:56 Jessica says to herself, echoing Jack's words, nice night for a walk, I guess. The wind fights Jessica every step of the way, as she breathes through the tedious task of walking against the weather and the wind. As the player switches to Jessica, we get the title card, Chapter Three, Midnight Run, 2320. I did not see us switching characters at any point in this game. I didn't either. I didn't realize, it really caught me off guard that Troy Baker was on site. I was really hook, line, and sinker for this. And probably because they didn't put anything fucking out for this game. There were no spoilers, but I fully thought we were playing as Jack Leary the whole time.

1:17:41 I thought at this point, maybe Troy Baker is just like the ghost in the computer that we interact with the most, and they just gave him a title card, because obviously it's Troy Baker. Put some respect on his name. And I thought Jessica would truly be the Delilah from Firewatch that we'd see maybe a little bit, but never interact with. And now we are her. That's pretty great. Like, yeah, I did not see us at all changing characters. It's really great. The script on this was surprising, and it's a really tight script. I really enjoy this. It's giving MJ and Spider-Man. But useful. But not tedious and ass, where you're just hiding behind a box and throwing shit. That's another thing.

1:18:22 Now we're Jessica. Jessica manages her way through a pitch dark stormy conditions as she approaches the same area of Fort Solis Jack approached on his first point of contact. Unfortunately, Jessica experiences the same issues Jack had on coming in, but can't climb up the wall and propel herself because of how bad the storm is. So she's like, what would Jack do? All right, Jack told me, next time I'd cut through the goddamn door. So she goes to Jack's LTV, grabs his tools, and cuts down the goddamn door. Damn right. Hell yeah, Jessica. She's also an engineer. She's problem solving like a motherfucker. I love that these are smart characters.

1:19:04 Yeah. Like, I appreciate that they're engineers because all of this makes sense, how they approach problems and solve it. And noting that Jack has military background kind of speeds to him saying, no man left behind. If there's someone here, I'm not going to let them get hurt. You know, that drives so much of what just happened. Fully, yeah. I mean, you got to be smart to make it to Mars. So... Yeah. These aren't Seas Get Degrees engineers. Yeah, you still kind of got to be an astronaut. Jessica fires up the wall cutter and says, I'm sure it's fine to cut this door, but there's only one way to find out, really. And then she tears apart the Fort Solis airlock door with lasers, which is so fucking cool.

1:19:46 Hell yeah. Inside the airlock immediately, she runs into a man. As the player, we are reintroduced to Wyatt. Shit. Wyatt has caught her completely off guard. He starts with, oh my god, I'm so sorry. I saw you out in the storm. Are you okay? Oh, so now he's playing all kind? Bitch. Jessica is on edge. Obviously, she doesn't know what happened to her best friend. She says, yeah, I'm good. She's hesitant. She's shy, and she's short and careful with her words. Wyatt kindly asks, hey, you know, there's some crazy weird shit going on tonight. I'm so sorry.

1:20:27 Who are you? Jessica answers him and asks his name. Wyatt looks her in the eyes and says, I'm Nick. I run the drills around here. He smiles at her and can't take his eyes off of her eyes. Oh shit. Jessica asks about his team. He says, oh, they're off site because of the storms. He asks, are you here alone? Jessica says, yes, I'm responding to the alarm. There is some time. They stare at each other. And then Jessica hauls ass, sprinting off through the facility. Smart. Wyatt chases her with some joy in his voice. He goes, hey, where are you going?

1:21:08 Why are you sprinting? But Jessica has managed to run through a hall and lock a door behind her, leaving a barrier between her and Wyatt. Wyatt kindly tells her again, hey, come on, it's okay. Open the door. I'll explain everything. And you know what? I'll take you to see your friend. He tells her to open the door, over and over. And it turns from, hey, open the door, to open the fucking door. Oh my God. Jessica stounds her ground and doesn't say anything, and Wyatt realizes he won't get through to her. And he says, okay, fine, but I'll be seeing you. And he turns and he leaves another way. I like Jessica.

1:21:49 Jessica's a bad bitch. Hell yeah. Jessica watches him leave, and she just goes, what are you doing, Jessica? Holy shit, we are, is this space madness? Oh my God. Seriously. Now in the belly of Fort Solis, following her best friend's footsteps, Jessica figures the last place she heard from Jack was in that maintenance unit, so that's where we have to check first. If he's dead, we'll find him there. If he's hurt, he can't be too far, right? As Jessica, you can explore a lot of the same areas of the fort as Jack, so you can double back and find collectibles or clues that you may have missed. Kind of nice, but also like you have a sense of where things are, so good for you.

1:22:30 The more of the gore that Jessica confirms from hearing it from Jack and now seeing it with her own eyes, the more she's like, fuck this shit, I have to get Jack out of here. Jessica, now partially alone with a deranged weirdo somewhere else, calls herself an idiot. This is what you get for being a hero. Poor Jessica. And poor Jessica doesn't seem to have anybody on the other line for her. Right? Yeah, she's talking to herself for part of this. But then she's not. Because as Jessica explores, Wyatt comes on to her comms. God damn it. He tells her, look, it's been a long night, and I'm just trying to contain this. When Jessica speaks to Wyatt, she is calm collected, but there is fear and urgency in her voice as she tries to communicate with this person she is terrified of.

1:23:21 She asks, where is Jack? Is Jack alive? Wyatt takes a pause and tells her, even with his Hippocratic Oath, which is like a do no harm, save everyone kind of thing, it's slightly different in different regions. It might be different on space, but core concept, don't hurt anyone. If someone comes to you in need, help them regardless of who they are or what the situation is. He says there is nothing he can do for either of them now. Jessica says, what you're doing is insane. Wyatt tells her to look around and tell him he's wrong. Jessica says, why would you do this? Wyatt quotes Jack London and says, the proper function of man is to live, not to exist.

1:24:07 I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. And then he fucks off into the night, and we don't hear from him for a while, which is so horrifying. I'm just gonna say some cryptic shit and leave. Yeah, why? It's like he wants to be the villain. Jessica navigates deeper and deeper into Fort Solis, trying to track Jack down someplace in the dark. She comes up on the drill bay hanger door, blocked by that platform that fell on Jack earlier, and like I said, it's blocked, so she's like, okay, whatever. There's some backtracking and some navigating, but Jessica manages to open a door that leads right to the generators that Jack was reporting live from when he was jumped by Wyatt.

1:24:48 So there's that one generator that was manually powered down and the other that was like, they yanked the wires out of it, so they couldn't turn it back on. Jessica is at least not far, so she searches the nearby areas. Like, he got jumped, he couldn't have gotten far, he has to be nearby. As she does, in her ear, Wyatt goes, Jessica. Jessica asks again, calmly but horrified, where is Jack? Wyatt goes into complaining that Helen tried to silence him. It's a whole conspiracy. Jessica asks what he was silenced about, and Wyatt invites her to the greenhouse so he can show her in person.

1:25:31 He goes silent, and after he does, Jessica goes, well, that must be where Jack is. Okay. I don't care if he's luring me somewhere, I have to find Jack. And again, Helen is the botanist who is trying to silence him allegedly. And we did see that one clip of her talking about her discovery and being so excited, and Wyatt rushing in and saying, people are sick, Helen, fuck your research. There's something going on between those two. There's something very going on. Jessica finds a security camera that was covering the generators, and we see the footage of Wyatt brutally attacking Jack in the generator room from not that long ago. Like, canonically what, an hour ago?

1:26:14 She whispers to herself, what happened here? She gets through the maintenance workshop area and sees the 3D printer Jack was admiring. She gets closer, and on the screen is an axe. She says quietly to herself, but also to Jack, I hoped you printed that out and not him. Oh, man, me too. Jessica makes her way out of airlock to a different part of Fort Solis, and has to manage some fallen equipment from tonight's storm. She is dead set on this point at removing the lockdown that has the entire Fort Solis campus shut down and locked up so she can manage through the facility and actually find Jack.

1:26:55 She's so, fuck this, let's burn it to the ground from the inside out, and I fucking love her for it. She's a bad bitch. She is the baddest bitch. Once inside the internal comms and logistics area, Jessica's like, okay, let's Scooby-Doo this shit, I guess. I'm gonna remove the lockdown and get all this shit sorted out, find Jack, get that lunatic under control somehow, and then Jack can go to Margaritaville Europa. Jessica manages to find a loose multi-tool, and as she checks it out, a video of Nick, the actual operations guy, was showing off some tools they've been using to mine the site. As he's talking, he gets interrupted by Officer Taylor bursting in, demanding to be seen.

1:27:40 She can see more videos, but she's basically caught up that Wyatt was starting to get really paranoid, because the mining teams that were out on Mars are getting a lot of exposure, they're getting sick, and he's like you guys are staying longer than I'm telling you is safe, and you're not listening to me, so why are you putting people in danger? What the fuck are you working on where you're letting people get sick? And that has something to do with Helen, the botanist. Yeah, this is all so crazy. Jessica sees more and more, and she just gets more scared, cause like people are clearly on edge, like the days leading up to this, everyone seemed to be really at each other's throats. The whole area feels empty, but through that stillness, Jessica knows she's not alone, and that Wyatt is trying to keep some kind of tab on her.

1:28:29 She stops at the top of the stairs and catches her breath. As she does, she looks down at her hand, which is trembling. Oh no, that's the first sign. Jessica goes downstairs to the full server room to give the system a reboot and get the lockdown taken off. She's like, I can't even fucking get through to where he wants me to be with this shit on lockdown. As she approaches the main servers, she's caught off guard with nausea. She doubles over and throws her helmet off just to spit up on the ground. She stops and tells herself to pull it together. Knowing she has to save Jack, she rallies, puts her helmet back on, and gets back to work.

1:29:09 At the base of the main terminal of the server is... Fuck, it's another pool of blood. Jesus, more blood. Looking deeper, there is a severed hand at the very center of the pool of blood. Fuck me. Jessica, now unfazed by the horrors of seeing several dead bodies this evening, picks up the man's arm and uses the multi-tool that it's wearing to scan into the server room's database. That's some dark shit. That's some real dark fucking shit. The rest of the man is slumped over by the wall. Clearly very dead. So, this is four confirmed dead bodies, Wyatt, and Jack, all around here.

1:29:53 Ugh. Ugh. With some home database resetting, Jessica solves a quick puzzle to reboot the whole server system. She's a goddamn engineer after all. With her plan working perfectly so far, Jessica is able to reset the server. And she's like, hell yeah, I did that shit. But she does need one more thing. Access to unlock and fully send the reset. She does a quick search and finds Hoskins, the guy with access, in the canteen from the server's security footage. She's like, perfect. There he is. One more stop, and then I can find and save Jack. As she sets off, Wyatt whispers back in her ear, saying, Jesse, Jesse, Jesse, think about what you're doing.

1:30:39 With the same tone she's brought to him every time, she says, I am. Wyatt pleads, it's been a long night, and I'm just trying to contain this. She hasn't seen what he has. Wyatt becomes more erratic, yelling at her to listen to him. And then frustrated, he says he's let this go on long enough. And then he just fucks off into the nothingness again. And like, explain yourself, sir, what the fuck are you containing? Right? This. He said it twice, I'm trying to contain this. What, dude, can you use your words? Once again, how many video game issues would be solved if people just use their god damn words? Use some fucking communication.

1:31:20 Like, this should be a study in therapy, like, processes of, here's what happens if you don't explain your situation. Here's what happens if you don't effectively communicate the situation. You get a Fort Solis. I would love to see a therapist be like, okay, what video games have you played? I will explain to you what they did wrong and how that relates to your shit. Jessica, the baddest bitch, says nothing to Wyatt having a mental breakdown in her comms. She knows better than to give in to his bullshit. She's a goddamn space engineer. She knows how to manage a fragile male ego. She has a fucking septum ring. I don't know why I wanted to put that in there, but septum gang gang.

1:32:04 She's cool as fuck. The energy is never let them see you sweat. Julia Brown is the baddest bitch, and her performance is so goddamn good. I love Jessica so much. No, she's been fantastic, honestly. In the canteen, she comes up on Hoskins, who is dead. Of course he is. His corpse is slumped over a table in the canteen, and it appears he may have been strangled with a rope or a cord. Fuck. Jessica is horrified at this, just seeing just another dead person confirming that everyone in this crew is dead except for Wyatt. But then she sees his access card, full Level 5 security access, and she goes, finally, fuck lockdown.

1:32:48 Which I think might be that echo of this being a pandemic story that was written. Yeah, right. After her joyous moment, she closes Hoskins' eyes and rests his body back how she found him. With as much access as her heart could desire, Jessica heads around looking for Jack. She can stop by some areas Jack never had access to to check out, like, extra crew corridors and shit like that, so you can really fill out your punch card here. Okay, nice. Through her room raiders era, Jessica can find more and more crew diaries outlining Officer Taylor's dive into obsession with Nick's team and how much radiation they were exposed to and how Helen's botany work was increasingly suspicious for him.

1:33:33 You can also find the security tape of Hoskins eating alone at the canteen, Wyatt coming up from behind him with a cord and strangling him to death. Oh shit. This particularly sucks because via the voice memos you can find, Hoskins actually reported the weird activity and sickness and stuff to Central as well. He wasn't against Wyatt. He said, hey, there's people getting sick from exposure and our chief medical officer's been reaching out for help and everyone's been ignoring him. He was on his side. He was like, wait, this guy was right though. Yeah, but he was still collateral for whatever happened. Jessica knows the only place she has left to go to find Jack is exactly where Wyatt wants her to go, the greenhouse.

1:34:17 Chapter four for Lorne, 0330. So now it's 330 a.m. Yeah. This started at seven. This is a whole second shift. In the depths of Fort Solis, as Jessica comes closer to the greenhouse, Wyatt interrupts her on comms again. She asks where Jack is, and Wyatt continues to beg her to stop looking. He says he's saving lives because that's what he does. No, he's taking lives. We've seen it on video. We've definitely seen him kill a couple people, yeah. Jessica mentions the names of some of the dead crew she's found, and Wyatt just sighs and says, I've let this go on long enough.

1:35:02 As Jessica enters the greenhouse, she's met with huge trays of live growing tomatoes. The vines are stacked to the top of 10- or 11-foot ceilings. More planters throughout are harvesting fresh vegetables like zucchini and potatoes, Martian, you know. You gotta include a potato if it's on Mars. Andy Weir has changed the pop culture zeitgeist for growing food on Mars, and I don't say that lightly. Jessica is actually a little taken aback and overwhelmed, and she says, I can't believe these are real. Another wing of the greenhouse shows rooms full of growing herbs and some clear tester planters for other produce.

1:35:44 There are audio files from chief botanist Helen Dunpart. One specific voice memo has Helen saying, unironically, progress. It's a funny thing, really. You're so preoccupied with whether you could. You never stop to think if you should. Oh, come on, Jurassic Park. Are you fucking kidding me? Bitch, that's what the dinosaur people said. And you know what? They were wrong. There's so many movies talking about how it was wrong. Yeah. Two generations. OK, but for real, they just drop that in there like I'm not supposed to have a minor pop culture panic attack about it.

1:36:25 Jessica loves old shit. Can we also take a beat? She went, shh, shh, shh, shh. It is the year 2080. That is the equivalent of us watching the black and white Nosferatu and making jokes about it, you know? Right. She loves old media. Now, Jessica also runs into a bee hive behind a glass panel and is like, holy shit, they have bees on Mars. Then she snaps out of it and says, okay, come on, Jess, no time to look at the bees. Which I think is just such a sweet moment of like, get your shit together. It's just an insect. Although bees, it's really cool to see bees on Mars. She preps herself and says, focused and calm, just like they taught me.

1:37:08 Focused mind. Again, she's a junior engineer. She's like, what in my notes can help me right now? I'm fucking scared. Yeah. Now, the greenhouse is as massive as it can be, and this is where the botanists were doing a ton of research. There are rooms and rooms and rooms of planters. And Jessica can find a lot of key information, mainly about the compounds that had failed to support the growth of produce on Mars. There were a lot of issues with the soil and the materials being mined from Mars not being sustainable to grow Earth produce on, which fully makes sense. However, if they were able to use a compound in addition to the Mars materials, they thought they could manage to find a solution to harvest crops directly on Mars.

1:37:54 The rooms of the greenhouse are as dense with planters as they are with Helen's notes and reports of failure, as she tries to figure out how the fuck all these plants are going then. Then, as it appears, Helen came on Compound 26. With Compound 26, it appeared to help accelerate the plants' growth, and Helen was very proud of this, without dying quickly like the previous components. The compound, in mixture with the natural Mars materials, made it so they could get plants harvested super fast and actually have a viable way to sustain life on Mars. For Helen, this was a huge discovery, and it's more than just sustainable farming. Because of the growth of plants, it would sustain humans' oxygen in an enclosed environment so they could actually survive on Mars.

1:38:41 That's true, yeah. There are emails you can find that show that the head of research and development that oversees the Mars project were backing Helen and all her work, including allowing the team to overwork to support Helen's research. So when it was reported to Central that people were working too long or getting sick from overexposure, Central turned a blind eye because they just really supported Helen finding a solution to this. Central was fully made aware that people were overworked and were getting sick, and they did nothing about it. They just let it happen. Exactly. Fuck them. Wyatt is reasonable in this, then, because there is evidence that his shit was being overlooked and he was being silenced.

1:39:28 Yeah. There was a conspiracy. In a vlog, Helen says that time on Earth is running out. We know this. And this work they're doing is bigger than all of us. She describes how Compound 26 can sustain environmental hazards, so this development is fundamental for our future. She's interrupted by an assistant saying, Officer Taylor is here again. He's asking to see you again. Helen tells her assistant he doesn't have access, and he's been told to back off my work. The assistant tells her he said the visit was a question of ethics. We can see video footage of Wyatt aggressively confronting Helen.

1:40:12 He screams at her and walks away. By this point in the timeline, as we go through some emails and piece some things together, we see that Central actually were called to remove Wyatt from the site to allow Helen's team to continue working. In a video, we see a man reporting on behalf of Central security who is there to remove Wyatt. When we see the image of this man, we realize this is the same security officer that was found dead in Wyatt's medical bay. Oh. But of course, you know, I do want to bring this up with the extended research and exposure to Mars' organic materials, the crew was being exposed to more and more of the surface.

1:40:53 Like, is this what would cause the radiation poisoning that Wyatt had been treating? Or was Compound 26 what was getting them sick? Was it pure coincidence? Are we just suffering from space madness? All of the above. Yes. In Helen's office, we can even find a sample of Compound 26. Central had dispatched a team to collect an extra sample of Compound 26 to move on to Phase 2. We see that whatever is here in Compound 26, it is already cycling through Central, through the teams, and being expanded to work on to make Mars habitable for everyone. Deeper in the greenhouse, Jessica can find tons of irrigation tables, plant matter testing materials, just general botany shit.

1:41:39 She starts to find some of the successful lab reports and wonders, what if Wyatt was after this discovery for himself? What if this was for the glory? That would be a dick move. He's kind of a dick. Finally, the greenhouse culminates in a several stories tall indoor courtyard garden. This scales between floors as trees grow directly up between the buildings, stories and stories high. Jessica says, out of the depths, then into the jungle, I guess? Where's goddamn Jack? This courtyard area is so full of plant life. It's growing everywhere, and there are vines crawling up the walls and around the scaffolding.

1:42:23 This is on Mars. This is fucking crazy. Yeah, this feels like that level in Bioshock, Take Your Bioshot, where it has all the greenery for the entire fucking facility. Yeah, entirely. And it was a study in oxygen and sustainability. Jessica can't find Wyatt as she carefully goes through and certainly can't find Jack, so she's like, all right, let's get to exploring. She figures all of this, these botanical discoveries, that's why the space is even operational. This is incredible to see. So much plant life on Mars of all places. Right. Several stories up on the catwalk above the courtyard, Jessica does take a moment to admire the view.

1:43:05 She hasn't seen plants in so fucking long. Right. She says all this. It's such a beautiful sight, even up here. She extends her hand out over the railing, and we see a tremor before she brings it back down to her side. Jessica continues and pep talks herself. It's going to be all right. It's going to be okay. She quietly trudges through looking for Wyatt, when Wyatt finds her first. He comes up from behind and pulls her immediately into a headlock. Jessica thrashes, kicking and clawing away at this man to break free. Eventually, she takes the fun route and brings out a knife and stabs his arm that's wrapped around her neck to get out.

1:43:47 Oh, hell yeah. Because unlike a certain someone in Troy Baker's long line of work, this bitch carries a knife. Fucking Joel without a knife. I apologize if you already heard on the last of us episode, but it's mostly me going, why the fuck does Joel not have a knife? But for real, Wyatt lets go of Jessica as he realizes he just got fucking stabbed, and Jessica slashes at Wyatt, nailing him in the arm. Wyatt goes for her knife, but in the scuffle, Jessica stabs him in the abdomen. This is the baddest bitch on the entire planet. He backhand hits her so hard she falls over, and before she's even turned around to get up, Wyatt is gone.

1:44:34 Well, he knows this place. I want to take a beat here to bring up a video log you can find. This is the most recently recorded video log from Wyatt, which he recorded this very night. In the last video log, we see Wyatt in a suit, covered in blood. Right over his chest, we see a bloodied handprint, even in the depth, reaching out for mercy against a madman. He says, there's no going back. He just has to finish it. They may never really know what he did to save them, all of them, but he'll know. And that'll just have to be enough for now. In the timeline, this is between him killing Helen and then killing Nick.

1:45:18 Does he think he's mercy killing them? Yes. Jessica catches her breath and says, Fuck this, fuck staying calm. Hell yeah, girl. She goes deeper still into the greenhouse where she finally sees her friend. Oh shit. Jack is in a garage just off the greenhouse, tied to a chair, but he is unawake and unmoving. She runs to Jack and she throws her helmet off and gets on her knees at his side, frantically telling him to wake up. Are you okay? Jack, Jack, are you okay? Wake up, Jack. But as she does this, Wyatt catches up to her. He says, do you have any idea what I've done? What this has taken from me?

1:46:00 Jessica is so emotionally intelligent because she takes this approach where she says, I read Helen's work. We can report this together. She offers him the justice road. She says, we can fix this. You can still be the hero. Wyatt says, Helen's work. What about my work? Oh, no. And I did report this to everyone, but they just suspended me, me of all people. They came for me at my facility, and they took everything. Jessica pleads that they can walk out of here and they can tell everyone what happened. She is so brave, but she has never had to navigate a man like this before.

1:46:42 Nobody has. As we get a full look at the recently stabbed Wyatt, who's been stabbed multiple times. Good. We see he's leaning on some sort of cane. Wyatt says, These were my colleagues. These were my friends, my family. You know what it feels like to realize you're not going home? Jessica is crying now, but through the tears she says, We can. We all could. Wyatt leans on his cane as he comes closer to Jessica, but as he does, we see that this was not a cane, but something we saw earlier. The 3D printed axe. Wyatt shakes his head and says, That's sweet, but your hand is shaking, and that's the first sign.

1:47:29 And after that, it's not good. Leaning on the axe, Wyatt slowly takes steps closer and closer to Jessica. No, thank you. Jessica is in full sobs now as she is standing eye to eye to Wyatt. He says, I'm sorry. I'm sorry it has to be this way because you look like really good people, and trust me, I take no joy in any of this. Oh, shut up. Yes, you do. And Wyatt, with whatever energy he had left, raises his axe and swings down hard at Jessica. Jessica raises her hands and screams, no, as she backs up behind her, dodging Wyatt's axe blow.

1:48:12 They struggle for a bit with the axe, and Wyatt finally gets on top of Jessica and starts to push the axe down across her throat. They grapple over the axe until Wyatt manages to plunge the sharp side into Jessica's stomach. Oh. Jessica is on the ground, grasping for air desperately, as Wyatt looks down at her and says, I'm sorry. No, you're not. As he does this, Jack gets up and hits Wyatt over the head with an oxygen tank. About fucking time, Jack. The way he grunts, we know it's the last bit of muscle Jack can muster together, so he's gonna make it fucking count. As Wyatt drops to the floor like a dead sack of shit, Jack hurries to Jessica's side and mutters, can you walk?

1:48:57 It comes out in all one breath, because that's all he can do. Regardless, he picks her up and swings his arm around her, and together they walk to the airlock. Just two broken fucking people. They are both completely out of breath and walking in tandem pain. Jessica coughs and holds her stomach together as they get closer. At this point, neither has a helmet on, so as they get to the final airlock, Jack puts Jessica down so he can go grab her a helmet. He tells her, you wait here, and he jumps up into the airlock gear area to grab helmets for them. He moves as fast as his body will allow, now pumping with adrenaline to even out his excruciating pain.

1:49:39 Right. Jack gets a helmet on himself and turns to Jessica as she looks at him with all that she can in her eyes, and she says, I told you Chivalry is not dead. As she finishes this thought, Wyatt raises his axe right above her. Jack processes fast enough to say, don't you fucking dare. And as he does, Jessica reaches up and closes the airlock door. Keeping herself and Wyatt on one side, with Jack alone on the other in an airlock. Through the door, we hear hacking. Hacking? Fuck me. Jack panics. He is breathing loud, sharp, exhausted breaths, and he doesn't have the words.

1:50:23 He just has the pain escaping through his lips. The last person on this planet he trusted is now dead. And once again, he is alone in Fort Solis with Wyatt. She's like fucking hacked to pieces. The final thuds come through as Jack listens to Jessica die, separated only by sheet metal. Jack crumbles to the ground but gets up and leaves the airlock. And as he does, the thuds of the axe are now against the door, separating Wyatt from Jack. The prompt on the screen now is simply to escape Fort Solis. In the storm, Jack heads down the Fort Solis garage where the LTVs and terrain units are kept.

1:51:08 Jack closes the door behind him and starts checking out LTVs to escape through, but he's unable to get into the ones he sees with his access status. Fucking access. This dumb access status, really? Wyatt enters the garage and tells Jack, he knows this is hard because being a martyr always is. He tells Jack that Jack has the chance to do the right thing, that they'll be the ones who saved them all from certain death, that they'll be immortalized, they'll name schools after them. Wyatt tells Jack that his friend, her, he can't even remember her name. Jesus. As Jack creeps up on Wyatt, he kicks the shit out of him.

1:51:50 Good. Jack throws him up on an LTV, and he punches him relentlessly. Every ounce of pain from hearing his friend die is coming through his fucking fist. But then Wyatt gets the upper hand. He gets Jack on his knees, and slams his head into the LTV over and over again. Wyatt closes an LTV car door on Jack's arms, and the crushing of the bones comes through his screaming. Jack writhes in pain and reaches out and manages to grab the axe. He sinks that axe into Wyatt's leg and crawls away to get as far away from Wyatt as he can, trying not to move his now shattered arm in the process.

1:52:33 Jack leans on the wheel of an LTV and cries hard for a short time. That screaming cry where you can't get enough pain out of your lungs at once. He screams, God damn it, as he punishes himself for tonight, but stops short of breath as Wyatt comes up to him, limping and holding that fucking axe. Fucking axe. Wyatt looks at him and says gently, we do what we must for those we love. He says this, and then Wyatt lifts the axe, ready to kill Jack and end the night. And then Wyatt is shot in the back. By the fuck who? Wyatt turns, confused, bleeding and falls to the ground.

1:53:16 Two central officers are pointing guns at Wyatt. As Wyatt deflates to death, the officers descend on Jack. They tell him to identify himself. They say, sir, sir. They ask if he's able to respond. Jack struggles to breathe staring through them, unable to understand what he saw and what happened tonight. I'm barely able to understand what just happened. He looks at the self-proclaimed martyr on the ground, immortalized as the martyr of Fort Solis after butchering his entire crew and Jack's last friend, Jessica. Jack's ears begin to ring out. And that's the good ending.

1:53:57 Holy shit, that's just the end? That's just the good ending. Oh my god. There's a darker ending? There is somehow a worse version of this. I got the good ending when I played, which I was very pleased about. But then I was doing some research, and it was like, did you get the good ending or bad ending? And I was like, how is this? And I think you asked me, you're like, oh. I did, yeah. Is it different? And I was like, yeah, and I don't know if I got the good or bad ending. And you went, how do you not know? I'm about to tell you, audience. In the bad ending, we pick up just at about where Jessica is fatally stabbed by Wyatt and closes the airlock to project Jack. Jack still has a panic attack and then runs off into the dark storm on Mars.

1:54:39 As he gets closer to the next airlock, Wyatt jumps him with the axe and manages to stab Jack in the stomach. Again, they are on the surface now. The two men grapple on the ground and Jack manages to use the axe to fatally wound Wyatt with a stab in the stomach, just like Wyatt stabbing Jessica in the stomach. With both of their suits compromised due to axe wounds down their bellies, the two men lay there and die in the storm. They both just die there? Yeah. Oh, damn. So, like, Jack is dead-ass dead in that one. Regardless, in an epilogue through the credits, we hear a voice memo that Wyatt is sending to his wife.

1:55:21 He's telling her he sent her a package, but do not, do not open it. Oh, no. Just take it to one of my colleagues and don't tell anyone. He'll know what to do. Fuck. As you recall, Wyatt's daughter asked for a plant. In the voice memo, Wyatt continues and tells his wife there's something he's got to do up here, but he asks that she tuck the girls in for him. He begins to cry as he says, give them a kiss, and then he tells his wife he loves her. And that is Fort Solis. Holy shit.

1:56:02 So do you want to talk about what we just saw? Do we want to speculate? Do you want a hug? Are you okay? That just... We were laughing so hard at the start of this episode. It takes such a turn. And it got so dark and depressing by the end. Holy shit. Okay, so let's look at the facts. This Compound 26 shit is killing people with the exposure and everything. Wyatt was like, hey, guys, we can't do this. It's not sustainable. It's making people sick. And they said, shut the fuck up. I need to grow potatoes. And he said, are you fucking kidding me? People are gonna die. You're gonna kill everyone if you try to use this.

1:56:42 Everyone involved, everyone eating it, everyone in the same fucking facility as this, they're gonna die. And they're like, can you not though? So he went, I'm gonna shut the entire fucking thing down. If I shut this down, I don't give a fuck what they do to me. If I destroy this, if I burn the whole place to the ground, if I kill everyone involved, they're not gonna touch this. But what the fuck, man? I think he just had space madness. He had a little space madness. That's definitely still on the table. But I appreciate that there's some open to interpretation of like, were they playing him? Is this space madness? Is this pure of heart? Right. On his part, on anyone's part, you know?

1:57:24 There are certainly some innocents that were killed. Like, Hodgkins, who got killed in the cafeteria, didn't need to die. Not at all. No, he agreed with you. There's one astronaut here who joins a poetry club, and he's playing chess with other people, and it's so sweet seeing his voice memos. I believe he's the one that gets killed in the security server room, and we get his arm. He's just a sweet man who writes poetry, and it's like, he's just a nice dude. He didn't have to die. Ugh. Helen could have been checked. She didn't have to die. No one had to die. And to come out swinging at Jack off the bat instead of being like, you need to leave, there's a dangerous compound in Fort Solis.

1:58:07 Right. This whole thing could have been solved if you included that in the first emergency message. What the fuck? And then for Central to actually get there in the morning. But just the way that in the first section of Jessica and Jack being like, oh, chivalry is not dead. He died for everyone to save them. And then for the end, her final words to be chivalry is not dead with the notion of dying to save everyone. Fuck my life. I really enjoyed this game. You really did. I did too. This was an incredible story to go through. And it's three hours if you ever have a sick day. There are QTEs.

1:58:48 It's a lot of walking and playing with things, but it's a pretty low-maintenance game in terms of like, oh, you can check your phone for a text message while you're playing. You know, it's not too crazy. But, man, I just... It's a short, sweet game, and I feel like it was dense with content, to everyone's point. The performances are absolutely incredible. For Julia Brown to come in against two of the biggest and most renowned fucking video game performers in the game right now. Hold her own and completely create this character that I fell in love with, and carries the back half of the game, truly. It's so good. It really did. I was shocked that we did not get to play as the main character for a huge portion of the game.

1:59:32 We got red-dead-ed. When I was playing, I know you were saying all I heard was Roger Clark scream crying. Those sequences in the end are some of the most moving acting I've seen. My chest hurt for him. The way he screams after watching his only friend get butchered by this crazy person. Fully, yeah. Holy fuck. You know, if he ever wants to step away from the controller and get in front of a traditional camera, it's going to be Oscars on Oscars, bitch. He is such an incredible performer. Oh my god. He is more than just a cowboy. Fuck me. Oh my god. I really enjoyed this game. You know what's funny is that I also think it's funnier than I expected it to be.

2:00:15 Oh the first part is very very. This is gonna be funny. The fact that Jessica's best friend is wandering around a spooky space and she's in his ear going, shh, shh, shh, shh. Like, bitch, that's fucking hysterical. No, their chemistry, and because their chemistry is so good, it just hurts that much more when they're separated. Right. It was truly painful, but I say that in the best way possible, because I'm a masochist, apparently. I love scary shit and I love sad shit. Oh, I'm glad you had fun with that, though. I had a great time, and I hope everybody else did, too. Yeah, I mean, there's some people that are like, it's a walking sim, it's not that scary. Like, not everything has to be Dead Space.

2:00:56 Right. Dead Space is Dead Space. Yeah. Callisto Protocol is Dead Space. This can exist as the intersection of Firewatch and Dead Space. Yeah. I think that's a very good example of exactly what this is. Actually, it uses a lot of games. Yeah, that's true. Like, we're getting some Bioshock exploration and lore drops in the same function as Bioshock. We talk about Jurassic Park. Yeah, no, it has a lot of references in it. It wears it right on its sleeve. Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with that. No. There's a difference between ripping shit off and homage. And when you're talking about a scary, isolating space thing, there's so much content for that that you kind of naturally nod to or naturally reference because tropes exist and it's in a video game, so let's all just have some fun.

2:01:44 Yeah, exactly. Ah, I'm glad that you hung out with me through that because I really enjoyed Fort Solis and I'll probably pick it up again on a rainy day. It feels like a good rainy day game. Yeah, three hours, three and a half hours. That sounds like a very easy, just kind of sit down and binge a game. Ah, absolutely. So thank you all very much. I really appreciate it. I would love for you guys to hang out. We have a couple more episodes coming out this season, so if you give the show a like or subscribe, we'll be able to show up in your algorithm, and I would really appreciate that. Yeah, and you can visit us over at our website, theothercastlepodcast.com. That's the othercastlepodcast.com. On there, we have links to our Patreon where you can get bonus episodes.

2:02:24 There is a free trial on there, so you don't even have to pay immediately. If you do want to pay and hang out with us, it's two bucks a month because gaming should be accessible, but we have full-time jobs, so we have to carve out some time. So we appreciate if you do want to hang out behind the wall with us. I am dropping a very fun Halloween-themed episode this October. You are. We just covered Among Us as well. So another COVID game about space and murder. Oh no, am I on a track right now? You kind of are, yeah. Yeah, I am. Fair enough. So speaking of our Patreon, we have some friends to call out.

2:03:05 Yes, we've got Aaron, Trevor, Molly. Brian, Krisha, Mollymauk. Jackie, Ellen, and Tijen. What's up? Thank you all very much. We appreciate the support. And some of these fine friends of ours are on Discord, where again, you can find out what games are coming up earlier if you solve our riddles. Like we're trolls. Yeah, you can also play Pokemon Go with me. My code is on the Discord, and I am happy to send you gifts from fun places I explore. It's usually Albertsons. I get a lot of them from the grocery store because I just have my phone out, and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna spin and get a bunch of gifts. That made sense to three people who still play Pogo, and for those three people, please add me.

2:03:48 I'll send you gifts. I'll raid with you. It'll be fucking great. All right, Goombas, well, thank you so much for joining us. And until next time, this is Tom and Andrea reminding you. Chivalry is not dead. And don't skip the cutscenes. Bye. Born in the ocean.