Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Backlog Book Club. We are here to chat about the final segment of the Phantom Liberty expansion of Cyberpunk 2077, up through the end credits of Phantom Liberty and before being dropped back into Night City. And you guessed it, still not starting. Nocturne OP5591 reminder, please join. Not yet. Not yet. We’ll get there eventually.

Maybe. Or maybe we’ll just end a season early and not do it.

Gotta live as part of that meme, huh?

Please join us on our Discord server. You can find it in our description here, in our episode notes, and on our website, thegamingbacklogbookclub.com and the obligatory spoiler alert warning. We talk about spoilers.

Alex, did you listen to any radio station this week?

[00:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah, a little bit, I guess while just playing. It had Night fm.

[00:00:56] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:00:57] Speaker B: Just.

[00:00:57] Speaker A: There was a little bit of driving in here. Yeah.

[00:01:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, not just driving, but also just like running around and.

[00:01:03] Speaker A: True. It was pretty

[00:01:04] Speaker B: cool. Yeah.

[00:01:05] Speaker A: I decided to put on the new Edgerunners 2 station, which is 102.0 HKGNFM.

That’s probably an acronym for something. Didn’t look it up.

Have you modified your appearance at all?

[00:01:24] Speaker B: No, I have not.

I have not modified.

[00:01:27] Speaker A: Not a requirement by any means.

I did just a little bit since that EdgeRunners 2.5 update released.

So as soon as I got the text from Ariadne about some new clothes to put on, I went straight back to that wantsa department to check it out.

And when I saw the Witcher 3 ursine armor inspired coat and pants, I immediately put that on as well as the sword Sihilan.

The ursine armor in Witcher 3 was my favorite one.

[00:02:00] Speaker B: Okay. I did.

[00:02:02] Speaker A: Because of the stat bonuses and all that stuff.

[00:02:04] Speaker B: I went back and got all that too. I didn’t put any of the armor or the pants on, but I am using the sword.

[00:02:10] Speaker A: Awesome. It’s a very cool sword.

[00:02:12] Speaker B: Yes, it is.

[00:02:13] Speaker A: Both in appearance and, you know, the stat effect was pretty cool too.

And then, you know, just because this update just came out, literally as we were starting this session, I went straight for one of Those brand new EdgeRunners 2 Ripper docks to change the colors of my arm Cyberware.

Since I did. Did you do this at all?

[00:02:35] Speaker B: No, that’s. No, that’s something I do.

Yeah. So

[00:02:39] Speaker A: there’s. I think there’s. If I looked around the map, there’s six of these glam docs, as they’re called, since I currently have the Projectile launcher system as my arm Cyberware. It only changed the appearance of my left arm doing this kind of color change. But I’m assuming anything that uses both arms has that. I think the rest of them all do.

But the glam doc I visited only had one option available in an Aldecaldo’s color scheme.

So I guess the way that it works, I thought for some reason you could just pick anything from a color wheel and go crazy. But it’s like set themes so you can change the color of at least in my case, two parts of the arm. So. So like the fingers are a different color from the rest of it.

And it’s kind of like how you can have that two color scheme on your cars with the, you know, color change system there.

[00:03:29] Speaker B: Got it. Okay.

[00:03:31] Speaker A: But it was, yeah, for, for this Aldecaldo’s one. It was locked into this small set of four colors for some reason. Yeah, that. Yeah, that’s the way they went with it. I guess it’s easier to implement so.

But cool enough. It’s nice to look down and see something completely different from what we’ve seen all before.

Also during this run of side jobs that I was doing, I picked up randomly picked up a level five Machete that had a stat modifier that when you sprint attack, it unleashes this more intense combo.

So because I was doing my.

My Cyberware color change, I was near an NCPD quest and so I just try to decided to try out this Machete and it was quite cool to use actually. I still love my katanas, but this might come into my blades mix more often now.

[00:04:24] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:04:25] Speaker A: there are also, I mean actually thinking about it, there are all of the kind of base non iconic weapons may not look and sound as cool or have crazy stat modifiers, but they are very effective.

What was the other one? The primary knife that I’ve been using is actually just a random punk knife that has a stat modifier that. Where gravity doesn’t affect it. So you just aim properly directly at the like a bullet and it hits its target. You don’t have to account for angles of any kind.

[00:04:56] Speaker B: Oh, that’s nice.

[00:04:57] Speaker A: So I, I just use that all the time.

[00:04:59] Speaker B: I wish, I wish mine had a modifier like that. I, I mean I have just as well like a regular, like not an iconic knife, just a regular. I think it’s like a tier 5 plus plus punk knife.

It has a couple modifiers on it.

One that like I’m pretty sure if it’s like if you get a Crit shot, a critical shot. It’s like 30% chance to come back faster to you or. Yeah,

[00:05:23] Speaker A: I think, I think that might be something similar to that mod was like most of the time it ends up automatically repopulating in my. Yep. I can like throw it again very quickly, which is great.

Gotta love throwing knives.

Well listeners, we also want to see on Discord what your V looks like now. Did you make any changes with the Cyberware Update Firm 2.5 or just leave things as they are?

[00:05:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I did upgrade myself. As in my whole all my Cyberware and other things. As in upgraded most things. I’ve almost maxed out to tier 5 plus. Plus

[00:05:58] Speaker A: wow. I really wish I had the Eddies for that.

[00:06:02] Speaker B: So. No, so I realized. So I went to Anthony Anderson again. So yes, if you buy something new. So like I, I changed out one of them. Um, I forgot that costs money. But when I’m upgrading.

It didn’t take the money.

[00:06:19] Speaker A: Okay, but it still took your components that you need for it though, right?

[00:06:22] Speaker B: It takes the components. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it doesn’t cost. It wasn’t costing Eddie.

[00:06:26] Speaker A: Okay, well that’s not bad. Upgrade the

[00:06:28] Speaker B: tiers.

[00:06:28] Speaker A: Maybe. Maybe that did. That did happen to me too. I just didn’t realize it.

[00:06:32] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:06:32] Speaker A: I, Yeah, I, I’m constantly lacking in components and Eddies and I really. There’s a couple things I really want to upgrade and buy both in the Cyberware and in the weapons department because I have, you know, six katanas in my inventory at all times.

[00:06:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I need to double check what the specific like Cyberware, whatever mod I’m using because I have, I now have for RAM wise, I think I have 28 or whatever. So I’ve upgraded.

[00:07:01] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. And you know, expecting some craziness to come out of this session, I did go and see if there was any cool new Cyberware, any new Sandevistan that I could use because I’ve been kind of riding with I think the second one I ever picked up a long time ago and there are some iconic cyberwares which I guess I didn’t realize before that, but I got the. I think it’s called the Militech Falcon iconic Sandevistan and it is incredible.

I get to get to use it. I think it’s on a 30 second cooldown and I get 10 seconds worth of active time which is huge compared to. I think it was six before that. So.

[00:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I did swap.

Yeah, my, my, my main Cyberware out for. I did as well. I had like a tier 5, whatever was iconic.

[00:07:54] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:07:55] Speaker B: And I swapped it out. So actually for next episode when we go through stuff, I’m gonna. I’ll make a note of what it all does and what I’ve upgraded.

[00:08:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s kind of. There’s so many stats involved though. Like sometimes they ice glaze over, but it.

[00:08:08] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:08:09] Speaker A: it is very interesting because, you know, all these builds can be radically different if you just choose a different version of the same thing or a different corporation brand version of the same thing.

[00:08:18] Speaker B: I like.

One thing I have on my build is for like your like body slash, armor wise, I have or whatever. It’s like a synapse.

Synapse something. So basically if I’m seen, time slows down

[00:08:33] Speaker A: for like 40

[00:08:34] Speaker B: seconds plus.

[00:08:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So I kind

[00:08:36] Speaker B: of get the little Sandevistan, like the slowdown of time. But

[00:08:40] Speaker A: yes. Not for as

[00:08:40] Speaker B: long. But it helps because then I can actually take out

[00:08:44] Speaker A: a few quickly. Yeah.

[00:08:46] Speaker B: Without them knowing. And then also I have one called like Shock and Awe, where if they attack me, I pulsate like a giant shock out of my body and do a ton of

[00:08:55] Speaker A: damage. I don’t think I’ve seen that before.

[00:08:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s actually. It’s pretty

[00:08:59] Speaker A: cool. Okay. Yeah. I’ve stuck mostly with Sandevistan and optical camo for my stealth, but yeah, it’s. It’s. It’s pretty great.

[00:09:08] Speaker B: Yeah. I kind of went with the more the quick hacks with armor and carry capacity because I have like 400 something carry capacity.

Really?

[00:09:21] Speaker A: I

[00:09:21] Speaker B: have

[00:09:22] Speaker A: 250, I think. Yeah,

[00:09:23] Speaker B: I think I’m

[00:09:24] Speaker A: at 54.

[00:09:25] Speaker B: I’m at like 470 or 470.

[00:09:26] Speaker A: So are you just hoarding weapons and stuff?

[00:09:30] Speaker B: I. I was until basically I disassembled every.

Every weapon I had with the exception of my iconic weapons.

So that’s also

[00:09:41] Speaker A: how

[00:09:42] Speaker B: I

[00:09:42] Speaker A: had a lot

[00:09:42] Speaker B: of

[00:09:43] Speaker A: disassemble sell components, especially disassemble the ones that are this at level, I guess what level five now,

[00:09:51] Speaker B: which is how I was able to upgrade a

[00:09:53] Speaker A: lot. And I do, I do. I disassemble fours and threes and then upgrade the components into the next level of component until they’re all fives and I still upgrade one weapon at a time.

[00:10:03] Speaker B: I don’t. I just for the first time upgraded the weapon. I upgraded the Her Majesty to do a little more damage. So.

[00:10:10] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, Sweet.

Let’s see then.

I guess before jumping into the next segment, I kind of knowing that we are going to be wrapping up Phantom Liberty this session, I And then even though I know we can come back to Dogtown, because I’ve left and come back before, and I still decided to try to knock out as many side quests as possible before going further down the path.

Some side quests are less notable than others, but some of my favorites were Spy in the Jungle, which I know you said you did too.

[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yes, I did.

[00:10:46] Speaker A: Where Brazilian operative went missing in Dogtown six months ago. But now his bio monitor started pinging again.

So his old crew, huh?

[00:10:55] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:10:55] Speaker A: his old crew broke protocol and then get.

They defy orders to try to come save him, basically in Dogtown.

[00:11:05] Speaker B: Did you. What did you pick at the end?

[00:11:08] Speaker A: So yeah, I mean, I guess just for context, it’s you.

I guess my first question is actually how you, how you enjoyed that boss fight. Because there’s after you work through like the scav infested museum, there’s that you find out where the ping is coming from in this office and then you.

There’s like a really vertical boss fight with a bunch of elevated walkways against an elite sniper.

[00:11:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that was.

They can turn him. Yeah, they have camo, right? Yeah, they did. They

[00:11:36] Speaker A: have, they have optical camo. I think he had Sandevistan.

And then at some point he summoned some drones and then eventually in like the last phase of it, there were like 30 copies, like red light copies of him. I think it was.

[00:11:52] Speaker B: Oh, that’s right. Okay. Yes, I do remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:11:55] Speaker A: It was pretty wild. Yeah,

[00:11:57] Speaker B: that was a wild fight.

[00:11:59] Speaker A: And I hadn’t really seen anything like that until then.

I was at least my strategy. You know, I actually died a handful of times, but at first I was just using my new that Witcher sword against him up close because I just Sandevistan run up right next to him, smack him as many times as I could. And then I was using the. I was using the dual wielding revolvers to take out his drones.

[00:12:26] Speaker B: Nice

[00:12:27] Speaker A: and yes. Okay. Actually, how did you handle that fight?

[00:12:31] Speaker B: I did a lot of hit him with a throwing knife quite a bit using the pistol as well my mono wires. Like if he got kind of close, I was using the mono wires because it was set him on fire.

[00:12:44] Speaker A: That’s convenient. Which

[00:12:45] Speaker B: helped. I did use Quickax as well as in like I did weapon glitch. I did a few different contagion. I did a few different on him.

[00:12:53] Speaker A: So yeah, I think

[00:12:53] Speaker B: for the drones you can do like sonic shock or I forgot what it is, but it takes them out.

So. Yeah,

[00:13:00] Speaker A: yeah, I, I, Yeah, I suppose it’s. It’s all a matter of just how to figure out how to neutralize in your own specific way.

So you kill the guy, you end up going inside, and it turns out it’s not a Brazilian agent. It’s a Russian agent who is going to be killed by her own crew if she doesn’t. You know, the crew you just wiped out, but someone else eventually, if she doesn’t have a chance to escape. So she spoofed the Brazilian signal to try to get out.

You asked me, what did I do? I let her go, but took the biomonitor.

Okay.

Obviously, there’s the option to kill her, which I’m sure has some cause and effect to it for us.

A. I’m assuming you also got the. The call from the. The guy of the two Brazilians who said,

[00:14:00] Speaker B: yeah, don’t like,

[00:14:01] Speaker A: hey, you shouldn’t tell Anna because,

[00:14:04] Speaker B: mm,

[00:14:05] Speaker A: she’s gonna lose it and go way too down the rabbit hole. And then, yeah, he ends up.

His name is Steven. I think he ends up keeping it. Which Steven is not really a very Brazilian name.

[00:14:18] Speaker B: No.

[00:14:20] Speaker A: But, yeah, I ended up giving it to

[00:14:24] Speaker B: Anna.

[00:14:25] Speaker A: You did? Okay. I did not. I ended up depositing it in the box.

Oh,

[00:14:30] Speaker B: okay.

[00:14:31] Speaker A: And then I don’t know if you’ve heard of the repercussions since then. I’m assuming they’re different for you. I got a. I got a call from Stephen, like, after finishing all the Phantom Liberty stuff, and he said to meet him at a cafe, and he basically said, yeah, like, I’m just kind of now doing this job, but, you know, the Russian Brazilian oil agreement went through, blah, blah, blah, and Ana’s now been fired.

So, yeah,

[00:15:02] Speaker B: I haven’t had anything yet since I’ve done

[00:15:05] Speaker A: it. All right, well, I’ll be curious if it ends up giving you any more information on their situation, because I also did. The only other quest, at least up until this point, that I thought was really interesting, was I did this quest called Shot by Both Sides, where you have to recover a 2010 Militech Shard from Bree the reporter.

[00:15:29] Speaker B: Okay, I haven’t done that yet. I have that. I haven’t done it

[00:15:32] Speaker A: yet. I will hold my thoughts on that until next time.

[00:15:35] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:15:38] Speaker A: Because it’s a very interesting quest. It did tie in a little bit towards the end of this playthrough for me, but only a tiny bit. So I’m gonna take that and save it for next time.

[00:15:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, I have not. I do have that in my. It’s in my.

In my list.

[00:15:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Sweet.

Of

[00:16:00] Speaker B: jobs to do,

[00:16:02] Speaker A: and then, let’s see.

Yeah, I guess at this point, I did actually exhaust all of the available Dogtown side jobs and gigs available at that point, so I moved on.

Yeah. To the quest. I’ve seen that face before. AKA Heist 2.5.

[00:16:23] Speaker B: Yes.

Yeah, I did a couple more. I did do. Just quickly. I know we don’t have to talk through, but I did do the talent academy one, which

[00:16:32] Speaker A: was. Oh, yes, we. We almost talked about that last week. Yeah, I

[00:16:35] Speaker B: did end up doing that one.

[00:16:37] Speaker A: I just used optical camo the whole way through. Because without hacks, that’s really my one way to get into that back room without killing everyone.

Um,

[00:16:46] Speaker B: yeah, mine. Mine went a little sideways, and then I was able to bring it back on track and.

[00:16:55] Speaker A: Yeah,

[00:16:56] Speaker B: and then in the

[00:16:57] Speaker A: end. What do you mean get on back on track? Like, wipe out a whole room to go. Wipe out a whole

[00:17:01] Speaker B: room to get it. Then it wasn’t in combat,

[00:17:04] Speaker A: were you. Wait, did you. Did you wipe out the. The front room where everyone is like. No, I had meter. Or I was able to get

[00:17:12] Speaker B: into the back.

[00:17:13] Speaker A: Okay,

[00:17:14] Speaker B: so

[00:17:14] Speaker A: like, the whole lab area.

[00:17:16] Speaker B: Yeah. But then I was this, like, scene, and then I had to take out a few people and. Yeah. And

[00:17:21] Speaker A: then

[00:17:21] Speaker B: I was able to bring it back, and then in the end, I think you have a long talk with the lady. I

[00:17:28] Speaker A: forget her name. Yeah, you have a long talk. Yeah. What did you do with her?

[00:17:34] Speaker B: I said basically, like, stop pulling my leg. Stop bull crap, and just give me all the contacts.

[00:17:42] Speaker A: Oh, okay.

[00:17:45] Speaker B: I went like, I’m not taking your crap type of thing, and just said, give it

[00:17:49] Speaker A: to me, even though she was like,

[00:17:50] Speaker B: it’ll destroy me. I was like, yeah, I don’t care.

[00:17:53] Speaker A: So you got the contacts? I told her to delete everything, I think it was. And she said, you’re gonna ruin my school.

And then I took her out after she did that. I just like, you know what? There’s a scum of the earth here. Bam.

[00:18:10] Speaker B: Dang. Okay, I didn’t do that. I left her alive, but.

[00:18:14] Speaker A: Okay, so wait, what? How did you get out of the building?

There’s an elevator there. I don’t know if she gave you.

[00:18:19] Speaker B: Yeah, there was an elevator,

[00:18:20] Speaker A: and then I just ended

[00:18:21] Speaker B: up walking out.

[00:18:22] Speaker A: Okay, okay. Actually, so when

[00:18:24] Speaker B: I

[00:18:25] Speaker A: didn’t take out anyone except for her in the whole building, but somehow when I got outside, I don’t know if I just happened to walk out of the elevator into, like, a hostile zone, and that’s why. But it literally was immediately surrounded out that door from by, like, 20 enemies. And. But there was this hanging, diagonally hanging construction pipe that I saw in the distance. So I just popped Sandevistan, sprinted at it, jumped up, double jumped up into this pipe, and then ran up and then got back to the fast travel point and was out of hostility. So that was an adventure.

I was like, I don’t know. I don’t want to deal with all you right now. I’m out of here.

[00:19:07] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:19:08] Speaker A: All right, Back to Heist 2.5.

And, yeah, right. You kind of leave off with abducting Aurora and Emerick. Right.

There’s a little bit of, like, scanning.

You bring them in, and then they. Yeah, it’s an interesting situation as you take over the car. It’s a bit of a squirrely car, if you ask me. Kind of like all of them in this game.

Someone on their side tries to hack it to save them.

[00:19:45] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:19:46] Speaker A: Don’t know who that is. Don’t think we ever found out.

But once you arrive at this garage where Reid and Alex are waiting, they both get flatlined immediately.

[00:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I was not expecting that.

[00:20:00] Speaker A: I thought there would be an interrogation or something, but it was just an execution all along.

[00:20:05] Speaker B: Yes, it was. It was. Yeah.

Myself, I was, like, playing, and that happened, obviously, just out loud. I was like, what the. Like, what.

[00:20:14] Speaker A: Why

[00:20:14] Speaker B: did that just

[00:20:15] Speaker A: happen? You and V both, right? Like, the same reaction happens there in game, you know, Neither of those two really enjoyed sharing much information, did they?

[00:20:28] Speaker B: No, they

[00:20:28] Speaker A: did not.

But, yeah, I guess we can’t change the past, so it’s time to just go execute. Heist 2.5 question. Playing as female V, did you embody Aurore or Emerick?

[00:20:41] Speaker B: Auror.

[00:20:43] Speaker A: You did. Okay, that’s interesting.

I was Emmerich as a male V.

[00:20:48] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:20:49] Speaker A: So they actually did swap, so that’s curious. So I don’t know if the roles are that much different. They both kind of have an interchangeable skill set, but you. You must have had different, like, background.

[00:21:01] Speaker B: Yes, I had, like, a little. Yeah, you have, like, a little background. She.

[00:21:04] Speaker A: Background dossier. Yeah, and I miss. That’s a question too. Did you sit on this? I sent you a screenshot of where I was. Did you sit on the same seat, or were you where.

Or were you where Auror was for me, to Hanson’s left.

[00:21:22] Speaker B: I was to his.

Well, I guess it’s to his left if you’re looking at him, but on his. Like, his. It’s his right.

[00:21:34] Speaker A: All right, like,

[00:21:34] Speaker B: if you’re Actually him.

[00:21:35] Speaker A: Interesting.

[00:21:37] Speaker B: Now

[00:21:37] Speaker A: you’re in the same spot. So they just. They just. They just move the bodies around.

[00:21:40] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:21:40] Speaker A: that’s. I mean, it makes sense, I suppose, which is since you’re teamed up with Alex, but. So Alex is embodying Aurora gas, or was it Reid?

[00:21:49] Speaker B: Oh, it was Alex.

[00:21:50] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. All right.

[00:21:52] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:21:53] Speaker A: cool.

So, you know, as you arrive deep within the stadium to talk to Hanson, you know, you get your face to face ID check.

And surprisingly, the game this reminded me most of was a campaign quest of one of the Call of duty World War II games. Campaigns from many years ago, where you had to. I don’t know if. Did you. Do you play Call of Duty campaigns? Here and there

[00:22:23] Speaker B: I did back in the day.

[00:22:24] Speaker A: So in this one, you had to infiltrate a Nazi base and office building, like a multi floor office building, and not draw attention to yourself by following this Persona dossier of the person you’re imitating.

Which was surprisingly tense for a COD game. I don’t ever play COD multiplayer, but occasionally run through the story of one when they’re free on PlayStation Plus.

And that particular quest was interesting enough to actually view the game overall pretty favorably. But this kind of brought me back to that because you have to answer questions in a right way.

I didn’t fail enough because I studied that dossier.

I imagine you can have an instant fail though, in that scenario.

[00:23:06] Speaker B: I don’t know. I just had it. You can have it open too, the whole time. So I just had

[00:23:09] Speaker A: to open side, which helps. But there was. I don’t know if it happened for you. At one point there was one that kind of had two sets of overlap happening dates. And so you had to like recalculate that. I answered that question wrong.

[00:23:21] Speaker B: I don’t think I answered any.

[00:23:23] Speaker A: Okay, that’s

[00:23:24] Speaker B: good. Anything wrong? Nothing happened. I mean, I got through.

[00:23:27] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:23:29] Speaker B: Well enough. And with my Aurora.

I’ll use the word charm of what she has. Yes.

[00:23:38] Speaker A: Emerick is not charming at all.

[00:23:40] Speaker B: No.

[00:23:43] Speaker A: Well, okay. How did your conversation go overall? I mean, like. Yeah, I fumbled a little bit, but Somi shows up and brings you downstairs, so.

[00:23:52] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that was. Yeah, it was. No, it was just a good overall conversation about background. I think there was something he’s

[00:23:59] Speaker A: just like

[00:24:00] Speaker B: about when I was in prison. Oh, he was trying to be like, oh, did you know this person?

Like they were in the same prison of you. Like I like and tries to catch you out on like that. And then I have the answer of, oh, I was in the VIP area. I’m Not a peasant, basically, like, I’m not a peasant. I

[00:24:15] Speaker A: was in

[00:24:15] Speaker B: the VIP area compared to this person.

[00:24:17] Speaker A: So that whole your side of the conversation actually happened for me. I was just watching it instead of choosing.

[00:24:23] Speaker B: Interesting.

[00:24:24] Speaker A: So maybe you saw the same bit about Immeric then

[00:24:26] Speaker B: that

[00:24:26] Speaker A: I

[00:24:26] Speaker B: did. So I had to choose that and I got it right.

And then. Yes. And then Somi comes and says like, we’re ready.

[00:24:33] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:24:34] Speaker B: And then.

[00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah, all right.

And so you go downstairs. So Mi has her relic powered body double there talking to you at the same time.

And after jacking into the matrix there, a very important choice appears on screen. And I am so glad it didn’t have a timer since I legit paused and thought about it for a few minutes.

[00:25:02] Speaker B: I paused. I paused because I texted you. I did text you about this because I was curious. I literally had that on pause for like 30 minutes because I was like.

[00:25:14] Speaker A: I paused and I thought through it for a few minutes. Right. You know, between our conversation about it and then just trying to assess my thoughts on everything. Especially since I didn’t expect it to come down to that choice.

[00:25:29] Speaker B: Same.

It also like caught me out of the blue. I was like. It was literally like, pick now. I was like,

[00:25:34] Speaker A: yeah, it. You know, it. At up to this point, it still seemed like maybe something could be worked out between Reed and Songbird.

And not like you’re gonna down and out betray one or the other immediately and commit to it.

But. So, yeah, I’m very thankful for the lack of QuickTime event there. Because I would have panic chosen something and then been like, all right, well then who did you betray and why?

[00:26:05] Speaker B: I betrayed Reed.

So I chose to stick with Songbird.

I don’t know. We had a little conversation about this just off.

I was sort of leaning.

I don’t know, Both of them were iffy to me.

[00:26:23] Speaker A: Yeah, right. But both had. They’re both hiding a lot.

[00:26:26] Speaker B: Yeah, both.

I kind of wish there was a third choice of like, do your own thing but

[00:26:32] Speaker A: walk away.

[00:26:33] Speaker B: Yeah. But no. So I ended up choosing going. Yeah. Choosing against Reed. So betraying Reed and going with Songbird.

[00:26:42] Speaker A: Okay, okay, yeah, here.

I chose to support Reed and betray Songbird.

My final decision came down to, you know, because even though he was Reed was constantly hiding important information on an apparently need to know basis, as they say in the special agent world, he did more or less seem to be straightforward on his end goals at least.

[00:27:08] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:27:09] Speaker A: Even if his means were very, very questionable.

So Mi, on the other hand, was kind of full of crap from the Start.

And that long disappearance that she had with the. After the Chimera showed up was kind of fishy. I’m not convinced she didn’t actually tell the Chimera to try to take out Myers as her original plan, and it failed until she’s explaining it away, but I don’t know.

[00:27:36] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, we both kind of had the same gut feeling. Feeling on Somi. And I’ll tell you, just foreshadowing. It was. It was right. Of a gut feeling, sort of. So she was. She was more shady.

[00:27:52] Speaker A: Oh, even more shady. Yeah. Well, you know, are you ready for your monologue here? I. You want to walk us through what happened for you based on that decision from here through the credits, basically? Sure.

[00:28:05] Speaker B: I

[00:28:05] Speaker A: mean. No, no, sorry. What happened in the immediate term, right after making this decision, we. I’ll tell you about mine. To the rest of this. What was this quest called? I’ve seen that face before.

[00:28:16] Speaker B: Is it that or Firestarter?

[00:28:18] Speaker A: Well, this is Fire Starter. You’re right.

[00:28:19] Speaker B: This is Fire Starter. Yeah, because

[00:28:21] Speaker A: that was from before. This is Firestarter. So, yeah, just walk me through the rest of Firestarter until it completes the quest, and then I’ll do mine and then we can go back to what happens after.

[00:28:30] Speaker B: So for me, I do it. We jack in, or she jacks in or whatever sends it off, and then Alex kills. We give, like, the nod to Alex. Alex kills Hanson.

And then how

[00:28:48] Speaker A: does she kill him? Do you see it?

[00:28:50] Speaker B: Yeah, she shoots him.

[00:28:51] Speaker A: Oh, all right. Simple enough.

[00:28:53] Speaker B: Yeah, she shoots him and then we kind of. I then have to escape through the stadium.

So,

[00:29:06] Speaker A: like, you go back upstairs from where you came from.

[00:29:09] Speaker B: No, so after we. After whatever, we jack into the. The Matrix and so. So MI gets what she needs out of it. Or I forgot exactly what.

[00:29:22] Speaker A: What we need. Right, yeah. What

[00:29:23] Speaker B: we need out of it, then. Yeah, it’s kind of Alex, like, looks down and she calls on Reed saying, like, they’re betraying us. They’re betraying us. They’re getting away. And, like, you kind of. And so he’s like, run. And you run for. There’s an open door and this, like, a door opens up. She opens up a door for you at the bottom of the stadium, and you start running through there. You have to take out people to go through.

[00:29:44] Speaker A: Okay. There are enemies in your way, and she’s alongside you.

[00:29:47] Speaker B: Yep, she’s alongside me. So you’re kind of just taking out enemies in the stadium. You’re kind of.

[00:29:51] Speaker A: Does she fight at all

[00:29:53] Speaker B: or

[00:29:53] Speaker A: is she like quick hacking or just kind of standing by.

[00:29:56] Speaker B: She’s kind of just standing by. She’s pretty weak and fragile after this. Yeah. Because it’s to help help her escape through, basically,

[00:30:06] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, sure.

[00:30:09] Speaker B: So, yeah, she’s pretty weak and fragile. So you kind of just make your way. Then you go through some of the tunnels of the stadium and then some sewers, and then that’s kind of about it. Then you get out of the stadium, you drop into, like a homeless camp area.

It’s really just fighting your way out of the stadium. It’s really what it was.

There are some cool parts, actually. She does help you. That’s a lot, actually. I did like, there. Somi does help you. There are little prompts that come up of. You can ask her to get, like, for the helicopter to get the rotors spinning. It will take out some enemies or, like, make some cars. Then you go through. If you remember in the stadium part, if there are those, like, cars down below, there’s like one of the big cars on a stand and then some others.

Like when you first start Phantom Liberty and you’re walking around the whole market

[00:30:53] Speaker A: area.

Yeah, sure.

[00:30:55] Speaker B: Because you’re going through. You go through the market area as well. Out of the stadium, through the market, all that. And then, like, you can tell, like, oh, turn on the car, and it, like, turns it on and it runs over multiple of the bad guys.

[00:31:07] Speaker A: Okay, that. That’s pretty cool.

[00:31:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So you. There are little prompts that you can do, which is cool.

So you do that. You go out and as I said, you go. You get through all the market, you go through some of the sewers, and then you come out at a homeless camp somewhere in Dogtown, and she has cars that are there waiting to pick you up. She gets in one car and says, basically she looks like crap after all this.

And it’s funny because she kind of looks like crap, but then she doesn’t really, like, you don’t really see her face. Like, it’s always, like, she’s always in a hunched over position, like, hiding her face, which was like, a little weird to me.

[00:31:45] Speaker A: Okay. Through

[00:31:45] Speaker B: this. And a little bit of the later part too.

[00:31:48] Speaker A: Huh? So she’s just. All right.

[00:31:51] Speaker B: And.

Yeah, she gets into a car and basically says, I’ll be in touch in a few days.

And then it’s the

[00:31:59] Speaker A: fun.

[00:32:00] Speaker B: The fun waiting game.

[00:32:02] Speaker A: The fun waiting game. Okay. And actual waiting.

Yeah,

[00:32:06] Speaker B: that wraps up Firestarter. Yeah, that was Firestarter.

[00:32:09] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.

[00:32:10] Speaker B: Because you’re just. Basically, it’s just Escaping the stadium,

[00:32:13] Speaker A: getting

[00:32:13] Speaker B: out of there.

[00:32:15] Speaker A: Well, at the end of the day, escaping the stadium happens for me, too.

How I got there was very different.

So rather than jacking in and grabbing the neural matrix on my end, you upload the Icebreaker protocol that Reed gives you.

[00:32:34] Speaker B: Okay?

[00:32:35] Speaker A: And that immediately alerts SO mi.

No surprise there, since she’s an elite netrunner after all.

But she looks up at you, and then she pages Kurt Hansen, and you hear her say, we have a problem. No, I can handle the one down here.

And then her eyes light up bright red, and I had some kind of ocular malfunction on the kiroshi there before you see from where you’re standing down downstairs there, Kurt throws Alex up against a window and brutally slits her throat in front of you.

[00:33:17] Speaker B: Dang. Okay,

[00:33:19] Speaker A: so while SO MI in the meantime says she does what she has to to survive, and in this case, she reached beyond the black wall to pull out some essentially sith level red lightning and fries all the guards that are around.

[00:33:36] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:33:38] Speaker A: And essentially massacres everyone in the stadium in the near vicinity.

Actually, a lot farther than that, too. Like, including a lot of the vendors in the black market and that kind of thing.

So, yeah, she’s gone full on cyberpsycho.

And also, I guess, damn, whenever anybody in a dangerous line of work goes out for one last mission and then retire, you know they’re toast.

At least in my scenario here, that. That applies to Alex.

She is just about to retire.

You do have to do some light sneaking or I suppose, fighting by some guards patrolling near a busted chimera. And then you get up to where you put your gear into a locker before entering, which is a godsend because I can’t imagine doing the rest of this level without it. There is a long set of narrow rooms, including the black market, with tons of enemies to work through. I died a ton of times in here and then almost started kind of spans save scumming a little bit just to get through, but it was rewarding to finally make it out. And then I reached that room where you and I both took a screenshot of the football player statue.

Like the three football players.

And side note, there should be a football helmet and shoulder pad set of gear available to buy as clothing, don’t you think?

[00:35:09] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:35:09] Speaker A: Anyway, so you’re in that room and guess who shows up.

Kurt Hanson, with two goons that I dispatched immediately with my katana before having to retreat and then trying to run circles around the area and in the, you know, balconies above, because hurt Kurt Hits like a truck.

On my first attempt, I was shooting him with an assault rifle from afar because I was a little worried about getting so close.

I got him down to about 70, 75% of his health left, so only 25% taken away. And then he Sandevistan over to me, grabbed me and stabbed me through the hand, leading me with about 4 health and then ran away. I ran away and healed up. And I thought this was a scripted kind of like phase two boss fight transition thing, but he killed me really quickly after that.

On my next attempt, I just went all in with Sandevistan and I have that scalpel katana that has a Sandevistan induced critical chance amplifier. And he was able to beat me just when I mistimed a dodge.

And third time’s a charm. And between my quick cooldown, Sandevistan, the scalpel, lots of dodging and double jump dodging, finishing moves and EMP grenades. When I needed a couple seconds of a breather, I finally took him out.

And then he’s just waiting there kneeling, expecting you to flatline him. And he’s just kind of flabbergasted about how this was even possible at my hands, of all people, because throughout the fight he was taunting me, saying how he

[00:36:47] Speaker B: respected

[00:36:48] Speaker A: President Myers even less because she should should be sending black ops at him, not some random merc.

[00:36:53] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:36:55] Speaker A: but haha, who has the upper hand now.

And V repaid him by using another one liner and then grabbed Hanson’s own knife off of his chest and put it through his neck.

So yes, hell of a boss fight. And you acquire all three of Hanson’s iconic weapons out of this route.

[00:37:17] Speaker B: Oh,

[00:37:18] Speaker A: so he has this throwing knife called the Fang, which if you throw it at a leg, it cripples the enemy. And then he has a revolver called the Bald Eagle, which if you shoot the leg that you just used the throwing knife on, it’s lodged. The knife is lodged in there. It obliterates that leg so they can’t move or escape.

[00:37:35] Speaker B: That’s cool.

[00:37:37] Speaker A: So it’s like a one, two punch.

I wish you could disable a third weapon slot because it swaps to hands automatically. There’s nothing equipped because it would be good to just be able to really quickly between one and two.

But it’s. Yeah, it’s basically like a setup and then finish off combo between the two weapons. And he also has an LMG called Wild Dog, which to be honest, I’m never going to use, so I didn’t even read the description. But overall, very cool. Rewards

[00:38:05] Speaker B: Very cool.

[00:38:08] Speaker A: So now with Alex dead and Hanson taken care of, Reed comes to pick me up in his car.

We turn our next step plans into finding Songbird, who ran away as a cyberpsycho. And basically, while Reid is muttering himself trying to think of where she might go, we listen to some police radio chatter. And then Maxtac is on the way.

And so we follow where they’re describing that they’re going. You see the AV show up and of course they’re looking for her. But yeah, it makes me think actually, especially after how much they’re mentioned and sometimes appear in Edge Runners. Max Tac is. Feels pretty non existent in this game.

[00:38:50] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:38:50] Speaker A: at least on my end. Like I almost never or actually maybe have never seen them until then.

[00:38:55] Speaker B: No, I’ve never seen Max Tac. I know maybe I’ve seen them once, but I think the way you can get them is if you get your. What’s it like GTA up to five, you’re.

[00:39:06] Speaker A: Oh, you know what? I don’t ever go around killing random citizens in this game. Yeah,

[00:39:10] Speaker B: neither do I. So.

[00:39:11] Speaker A: The way you would in gta. Yeah, we don’t occasionally run over someone. Yeah,

[00:39:15] Speaker B: yeah, if my car kind of skids off the road, but otherwise, yeah.

[00:39:20] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, well, maybe that’s an experiment worth having.

But yes. So we, Reid and I in his car, follow the Max Tac avs, reach a lookout point and then we see them from a distance off on a cliffs. Take in Songbird.

Reid reports it to Myers on the phone, who basically told him it’s your problem to fix since she’s not able to push anything to happen with the city government, considering how Night City is separate from nusa.

And Reid responds he’ll get her to Langley V immediately. Questions Reid since he had said before we were just going to ask her some questions and help her get home.

Obviously that’s not the plan, but Re just says, hey, let’s just finish this and ask me to find a netrunner so you can breach into Max Tac.

And then this new quest called Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos starts.

Of course I need a call and then wait around, but at this point I decided to take a quick breather since that was pretty intense overall and actually ended up doing all of the side quests that were available to me here, including one that’s called Run this Town, which you said you’ve started but haven’t finished. So. Okay, I did all of the side quests that I think what’s it called Phantom Liberty has to offer. But I don’t want to spoil anything because they’re pretty interesting. So we’ll put a pin in this one too and chat about it next time.

[00:40:58] Speaker B: Yeah, because I started that run this town, but then I got like you to do the waiting. And then after my waiting, I got a call from Somi. So.

[00:41:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, cool. So you were waiting for a call from Somi. You want to take your side of the story home from now until the credits starting with that call from her?

[00:41:20] Speaker B: Sure. So you get a call from Somi. She tells you to come meet her at a van, kind of down in an alley.

[00:41:29] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:41:31] Speaker B: So you go and meet her, you get into the van with her, and she does not look good. She looks like. It’s like death. And she is. She’s dying.

Yeah, she looks terrible.

And she basically tells you that we need to go to the spaceport.

[00:41:50] Speaker A: The spaceport?

[00:41:51] Speaker B: The spaceport. Yeah.

I didn’t know this is a thing, but it’s.

[00:41:57] Speaker A: I know that in world people go to space. I think there’s people that live off planet or in space somewhere. But I know that because of Edgerunners and a little bit because of random lore shards.

[00:42:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I did not know this, but yeah, she wants to go to the spaceport so she can get a flight to Luna to meet the black clinic. That’ll cure her.

[00:42:20] Speaker A: Got it. Okay.

[00:42:22] Speaker B: So, yeah, with the neural matrix, obviously, that we got.

[00:42:29] Speaker A: Which you have and I do not, by the way.

[00:42:32] Speaker B: Sorry.

That I have.

That I now have. Or both of

[00:42:38] Speaker A: them. Yeah.

I’m going to assume. I mean, I know. Okay, so MI ran off with it because I betrayed her.

[00:42:44] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:42:45] Speaker A: She was not mad.

[00:42:46] Speaker B: So we have to go to the spaceport. So Mika kind of says, look, don’t like blend in. Don’t.

Don’t go killing anybody. Don’t go nuts.

[00:42:56] Speaker A: I know you, V. Don’t you go. Go crazy now.

[00:43:00] Speaker B: So, like, you have to go through. And before you go through, you kind of get like a scan security check and you have to like answer it.

One of my answers wasn’t the best. And so me was just like V. Like, no, like, calm down. Like V, like

[00:43:16] Speaker A: more cooperative. Yeah.

[00:43:18] Speaker B: Then there’s like, there’s like one of the questions the guy asked you. Like, okay, we just need to do a face scan, verification.

Can you look into the camera and

[00:43:27] Speaker A: if

[00:43:28] Speaker B: you

[00:43:28] Speaker A: have. Oh, for a face. Yeah, like confirming. And

[00:43:30] Speaker B: Songbird’s like, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. Let me hack into it and all that. So she hacks into it, but before she hacks into it like, you can.

Since I have level 20. Cool.

You can like, pretend to be it and you can say like, oh, what camera? Which one? What camera do you mean? There’s like a camera like right in front of you.

It’s like, what do you mean? And you just like, look everywhere. And he’s like, this one, this one.

And then she hacks into it.

And then you get through. You pass through security and then you have to make your way to the Tycho Terminal. Is what it’s called.

[00:44:03] Speaker A: Is the name of.

[00:44:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. There are two types of terminals.

Um, I forgot what the other one’s called, but the one you want is Tycho Terminal. But the Tycho Terminal is under construction, so you have to like, sneak your way in.

I did not know this.

I was like, just looking up a walkthrough. Just. Just like now, just earlier, I guess there was a bag that I could have retrieved that would. Had a uniform, which might have made this easier.

[00:44:31] Speaker A: Yeah. A little less suspicious.

[00:44:33] Speaker B: Yeah. But

[00:44:34] Speaker A: what were you wearing at this point?

[00:44:35] Speaker B: Just the outfit that you have for the.

The like Netrunner, whatever outfit that you

[00:44:41] Speaker A: wear

[00:44:42] Speaker B: through it.

I didn’t even think that I could probably put on my other stuff, but

[00:44:48] Speaker A: I don’t know. I could. Yeah. I mean, it’s a new quest after all. But.

[00:44:51] Speaker B: Yeah, because there are a couple times I almost died because I didn’t have like the armor and stuff I usually wear.

But I found like a back way, like a grate in the floor up on the second floor to sneak into. So I snuck in that way and like, snuck around the back and got in to the terminal.

I was able to. I had to stealth a couple people I don’t like in this game that I understand why it’s lethal.

But I stealth people and I didn’t like, kill them. I just knocked them out. But then when you, like, hide their body, it’s an automatic lethal.

[00:45:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Like you think you could throw someone into a box and not have it kill them.

[00:45:32] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:45:33] Speaker A: Although, I mean, I don’t know that there are any rewards.

Like, it’s not like.

It’s not like some stealth games where you get a grade at the end of a level.

It’s not like you get.

I guess maybe you get some bonus points by being non, lethal, but unless you just want to really immerse yourself as a. I won’t kill like Batman. I won’t kill anyone.

[00:45:55] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:45:56] Speaker A: I guess it doesn’t really matter that much. Unless someone’s asking, like Regina asks you to not kill any of the cyberpsychos. Yeah, there’s.

[00:46:05] Speaker B: I think I killed maybe one by accident, if not two, max out of there.

But, yeah, I snuck my way in. I got into this, like. I think it’s, like, the service shaft, and snuck my way through the terminal. Stealth. Stealthily took out a few people.

And then you get onto, like, the roof. And on the roof, you throw down a fire hose to bring SO Mi up so she can get up onto the roof with you.

And of course, like, right as you’re about to pull her up over the rail, like, very close to it, your relic malfunctions.

[00:46:41] Speaker A: Oh, no,

[00:46:43] Speaker B: but she still, like, just. She just makes it. She grabs on, like, just in time and told me. It’s like, are you okay? Are you okay? And I kind of answered with the, yeah, well, you know what? I’m dying. So.

So then from there, so you’re on.

You’re, like, sneaking around to get to.

Basically, to the launch pad to. Yeah, to the launch pad to get onto the shuttle.

[00:47:11] Speaker A: So, okay, so you’re very much smuggling so me onto the shuttle.

[00:47:15] Speaker B: Yes.

And to do that. And before you, like, start getting there and you’re on the roof, SOMI says, oh, FIA is inbound. Myers and Reed are inbound. Let’s go hide in here. And you go hide and, like, you start going through more, like, back tunnels and pipes.

But you can then see Reed and Myers and their conversations. You can kind of eavesdrop on their combos. And Myers is not a nice lady. It’s what you

[00:47:44] Speaker A: see. Her true colors, not. Yes.

[00:47:47] Speaker B: Yeah, her true colors kind of come out in some of the conversations.

I can’t 100% remember exactly what they were.

Some I eavesdrop, some I didn’t because I, like, missed the prompt or I just kept going.

[00:48:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it happens.

So you’re hiding this whole time.

[00:48:04] Speaker B: Yeah, we’re hiding this whole time away from Myers, Reed, and all the other guards that are up there.

[00:48:10] Speaker A: Okay,

[00:48:13] Speaker B: so you get that you exit the shaft, you enter an elevator, and you go down to the main hall. And when you get into the main hall, there are Noosa soldiers fighting.

They’re called OS guards.

I forgot the OS Something, maybe spaceport, I don’t know.

But they’re fighting the guards, and so you can fight them both.

So I took out some of them, and you kind of just go through. You go through, kind of taking out a bunch of both. I got caught up with a few people.

I tr. I tried to be like. I took out some that were by their lonesome and it wouldn’t be seen.

And then I tried to sneak around a few people, but I got seen by a few people. So then it got a little hairy a couple times.

[00:49:08] Speaker A: Yeah.

As it will.

[00:49:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You’re trying not to alarm the rest of the room. There were a couple times I did alarm the rest of the room, but I was able to neutralize that threat quickly. And then it calmed down.

Then you kind of again, you’re just making your way through, like, the main hall and then through little bits of the terminals.

The helicopter comes.

That has, like, dropped off, I guess it’s like a.

Yeah, it’s an attack chopper. Yeah, attack chopper comes and, like, kind of shooting at you through.

Through the terminal sort of earlier. Like, way earlier in the game when we had the drone with Takamura.

[00:49:52] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Not the drone.

[00:49:53] Speaker B: Is it a drone or. Yeah. What? The big. You know, when we’re doing the parade one.

[00:49:59] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:49:59] Speaker B: With Hanukkah.

So you’re kind of sneaking through that and getting. Trying to not get caught by that or get shot.

Sometimes some of it just automatically shoots at you.

[00:50:10] Speaker A: Can’t control everything.

[00:50:11] Speaker B: Yeah.

And then you’re trying to make your way to the monorail. So then we get to the monorail part because we need to get on the monorail to take us to the.

To the shuttle. The monorail takes

[00:50:24] Speaker A: you to the shuttle. Spaceport is pretty.

[00:50:25] Speaker B: It’s a big spaceport. It’s pretty cool.

[00:50:28] Speaker A: You

[00:50:28] Speaker B: can see the shuttle. Like,

[00:50:29] Speaker A: it’s similar to an airport in real life here, I guess,

[00:50:33] Speaker B: basically,

[00:50:34] Speaker A: for a large city, is massive.

[00:50:36] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:50:36] Speaker A: Sounds like it’s. You didn’t load into it. Is this, like, a real part of the map?

[00:50:42] Speaker B: Yeah, this

[00:50:42] Speaker A: is

[00:50:42] Speaker B: a real part of the map.

[00:50:43] Speaker A: You know what? I think I’ve seen it and just been like, I’ve never been over there. What’s the point?

[00:50:48] Speaker B: Yeah, no, this is a real part of the map.

And then, yeah, you’re making your way to the monorail.

You have to fight off a few more people, and you have to get into the control tower. So we need to get into the control tower so she can hack in and everything to unlock the monorail to get it operating.

[00:51:12] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:51:14] Speaker B: While you’re doing that, though, you’re kind of inside with her, and all these nooser operatives, like, come out everywhere to ambush you, and you get locked outside the control tower, so you have to take everybody out.

[00:51:28] Speaker A: Wonderful.

[00:51:29] Speaker B: Yeah. That was kind of a hard fight.

I was getting hit from all different directions.

I was trying to just, like, dash around and

[00:51:37] Speaker A: do you? So the little I remember of quick hacks. Do you have enough RAM to just be constantly popping off? Yeah,

[00:51:43] Speaker B: I can quick hack, like, four to five people at once with multiple

[00:51:48] Speaker A: things. Pretty good. Yeah.

I’m assuming that helps disable people so you can shoot the ones that aren’t stunned or whatever.

[00:52:01] Speaker B: So you get in there, and then you. You attack all them, and then the attack chopper comes back, and then you jump into the control tower with so me. And basically, she says that she needs to get past the black wall, but she’s not going to survive it on her own, requiring you to act as, like, a proxy, basically,

[00:52:20] Speaker A: Sketch.

[00:52:21] Speaker B: So when the

[00:52:22] Speaker A: black

[00:52:22] Speaker B: wall daemons she’s uploading, like, are complete.

Yeah, she, like, she uploads all the black hole daemons, and it says, like, oh, it’s complete. And you’re prompted to release a pulse, like you said earlier, like, sith.

[00:52:40] Speaker A: Oh, okay.

[00:52:41] Speaker B: So you unload at least the pulse, and all the guards and everything outside are just shocked by, like, black and red lightning.

[00:52:48] Speaker A: Okay. And

[00:52:49] Speaker B: it’s pretty. It was pretty badass, I’m not going to

[00:52:52] Speaker A: lie. So you were in control of this, though?

[00:52:55] Speaker B: Mm,

[00:52:57] Speaker A: I was definitely the victim of it. Almost.

[00:52:59] Speaker B: So then I saved Songbird. As in, like, I grabbed her and said, we gotta go.

And then I have the power.

And so as you’re walking, you’re walking to the monorail.

I have the power and the prompt of, like, use the black wall

[00:53:16] Speaker A: or

[00:53:17] Speaker B: black lightning.

[00:53:18] Speaker A: Okay, the

[00:53:18] Speaker B: black wall daemon. So I’m just, like, shooting out of my hands and all these guards are just going up in flames and.

[00:53:25] Speaker A: Awesome.

[00:53:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it was sick. I was like, okay, that’s. This is a cool part of the

[00:53:29] Speaker A: fight. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. I’m gonna pause you there and then fast forward. You don’t get to keep it, do you?

[00:53:33] Speaker B: No, I don’t think

[00:53:33] Speaker A: so. I don’t. I

[00:53:34] Speaker B: highly dou.

[00:53:38] Speaker A: All right, all right.

[00:53:40] Speaker B: So you get her onto the monorail, and then the bombshell comes where? Well, gut feeling was correct with Somi. She tells you the neural matrix can only be used once.

[00:53:55] Speaker A: Of course, she knew that all along.

[00:53:58] Speaker B: She knew it all along. I had some angry responses.

[00:54:02] Speaker A: Good, good.

[00:54:05] Speaker B: And basically, yeah, but she’s dying.

Like, she’s.

[00:54:10] Speaker A: Well, she. So. But is it gonna actually cure her legit, or is it gonna just cure her a little bit and then,

[00:54:15] Speaker B: I don’t know, it’s

[00:54:16] Speaker A: just gonna waste the neural matrix. Yeah,

[00:54:18] Speaker B: exactly. So basically she kind of tells you all that, and you say, what the hell? Like, you knew this the whole time. Why don’t you tell me? Like, how could you? And then it gives you prompts of, like, to pick up Songbird to take her to the launch pad.

[00:54:35] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:54:36] Speaker B: And it gives you three prompts of picking her up nicely, which I kind of did. And saying, like, time to go, let’s go.

Picking her up with a, like, wake the hell up. Which I didn’t do. I did the time to go.

Or the last prompt, which was I was curious about. I didn’t do it, though. But it’s call Reed.

[00:54:57] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.

[00:54:58] Speaker B: It gives you the choice to

[00:54:59] Speaker A: just call Reed.

[00:55:00] Speaker B: And it said, reed will take care of you.

But I didn’t do that one. So I picked her up, I said, time to go. And you start walking her towards the launch pad. And as you’re getting right up there, it’s that cool dramatic movie thing where right as you’re walking into the pad, Reid walks out of the shuttle.

[00:55:22] Speaker A: He goes there, all stops

[00:55:23] Speaker B: you,

[00:55:24] Speaker A: stops you. Oh, no. Okay.

[00:55:26] Speaker B: And literally says to you, don’t take another step or I’ll shoot. And I

[00:55:32] Speaker A: shoot you or shoot Songbird,

[00:55:34] Speaker B: shoot you, me.

And for some reason, I didn’t take this seriously. I thought it was just a movie line. And I took a step forward and he legit shoots you, kills you. So I.

[00:55:45] Speaker A: Oh, you died. You had to reload.

[00:55:46] Speaker B: I had to

[00:55:47] Speaker A: reload.

[00:55:48] Speaker B: So I reloaded from when I was back on the monorail. I just picked all the same stuff and went back and then.

And then stopped when he said that. Like, just stopped and just went on with having a conversation with him. And basically my conversation was, take so me, I’ll give her to you, but you better make sure I live with the Noel Matrix thing.

[00:56:16] Speaker A: You made a bargain.

[00:56:17] Speaker B: I made a deal with him.

[00:56:18] Speaker A: Okay?

[00:56:20] Speaker B: So, Yeah, so I

[00:56:26] Speaker A: did.

[00:56:26] Speaker B: Yeah. You say, like,

[00:56:28] Speaker A: she just betrayed the crap out of you. So, you know, she’s your new bargaining chip.

[00:56:32] Speaker B: Yeah. So he takes so many off. Well, not off of you, because I think you put her on the ground.

He grabs on me. He gets onto like a chopper or whatever.

It’s not a trauma centered one, but it’s one of those AV carriers.

[00:56:48] Speaker A: Right.

[00:56:50] Speaker B: And you kind of say to him as he’s taking off, like, you better not forget our deal. You better save me. You better help me live.

[00:56:59] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:57:00] Speaker B: And then.

And that was it. And then it kind of rolls credits. So I

[00:57:05] Speaker A: think

[00:57:05] Speaker B: there’s. Now I think I’ll get.

I’m pretty sure after this. There’s like a.

A quest comes from this.

[00:57:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Like an epilogue kind of thing.

[00:57:15] Speaker B: Yeah, an epilogue type thing, but the Phantom Liberty Party is done, so. Yeah, that was. That was mine.

It was pretty unique. Yeah,

[00:57:24] Speaker A: that was pretty unique. Also,

[00:57:25] Speaker B: if you would like to see it, I did record, like, the last three minutes, if not more.

[00:57:29] Speaker A: All right, I might need to watch that. Or you’re just enticing me to do another playthrough.

[00:57:34] Speaker B: Yeah, either one.

[00:57:35] Speaker A: All right. All right. That was my. Okay. Wow. That’s.

[00:57:39] Speaker B: It was pretty intense. But, yeah, that. The whole, like, Blackwall, Black Daemon, Black Lightning thing was sweet. I was like, this is such a cool

[00:57:49] Speaker A: power. That sounds quite fun. Yes.

[00:57:51] Speaker B: Yeah, that was fun.

[00:57:53] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Um. Well, you have a lot of, like, Neo noir super spy stuff going on there.

[00:58:03] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:58:07] Speaker A: Okay. Well, I guess on. On my end, you know, I just.

I betrayed Songbird and she freaked out.

So she’s in the hands of Max Tac as of now.

And of course, my next step was finding a Netrunner because Reed needed that help to figure out where to find Max Tac in the first place.

So I just called up Mr. Hands, who’s been our best bud this entire time, to ask for any Netrunner contact who has the capability to get info on a Max Tac convoy.

And what do you know? He sends us to Yoko.

Do you remember Yoko?

[00:58:52] Speaker B: Yoko.

[00:58:55] Speaker A: That’s what I thought. I walked in and she said, hey, Vy, it’s been a long time.

And I had to think for a sec. Is

[00:59:02] Speaker B: this

[00:59:02] Speaker A: the lady on Gig

[00:59:03] Speaker B: Street?

[00:59:04] Speaker A: No, she’s on. Oh, that’s Wakako.

Yoko is the.

I think, one of the very first netrunners you ever meet who helps you get set up for the heist.

[00:59:19] Speaker B: Oh,

[00:59:20] Speaker A: in Watson, in this, like, kind of the top floor of like a Metro station kind of thing with.

It’s a circular building.

Anyway, so, like, it gave me a prompt to ask her about T Bug.

So. Yes. Anyway, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen her, because it’s not like I’m going buying.

I switched off my. I took out my quick hacking ability. I haven’t even thought about it, but that’s who you go talk with. And she’s just, like, trying to pry for information. She even cuts you a deal to share the location of this convoy you’re about to hit. Obviously all in disguise language so that her crew can pick up the pieces.

And so she gives you a shard to track down the Max Tac convoy that has Songbird.

And we group up with Reed to track it down after. Of Course, a long wait. And so I met with him in Pacifica at the abandoned hotel near the mall. The roller coaster.

Surprisingly enough, he had members of Six Street Gang there.

I guess they’re like the FIAs, kind of on the ground support in some situations.

So they provided us with traps of various sorts and set up this full on roadblock and explosives and all of that. And then basically after running through what our plan was, it was just about waiting until the convoy arrives.

And then like right before they, they do show up, Somi called me and said to stay out of her way, that she wasn’t about to be freed from one cage to be put in another.

Yeah, she’s pissed.

And well, I just kept reiterating like, hey, we’re trying to help you.

And once our trap springs, it takes out, you know, I get a chance to take out the regular escort. So just like standard rent a cops.

Simple enough. And as I open the truck, the back of this armored truck to bust out songbird 4 max tac soldiers jump out instead and like basically I’m on the ground like kind of inching away. And you end up in this four enemy boss fight.

And they are heavily armored and heavily specked out, as you would hope.

Fortunately, there was enough debris and other obstacles to hide behind, so I could just sandevistan in, give one of them hell, and then bail out before being shredded by their LMGs and whatnot.

[01:02:00] Speaker B: They

[01:02:00] Speaker A: did use a lot of quick hacking on me, which hadn’t happened in a while, actually. I had like optical reset and something else. But I. Whenever I saw them starting the hack, I would try to sprint up and smack them out,

[01:02:11] Speaker B: take out the person who was

[01:02:12] Speaker A: either not take them out because they had a lot of resistance, but interrupt the hacking, I guess.

[01:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah, okay.

[01:02:21] Speaker A: And you know, Reed was helping me from above with the sniper rifle to kind of whittle down their armor so I could actually deal damage. One of the guys didn’t take any damage that I dealt to him at all until he did that

[01:02:32] Speaker B: dang.

[01:02:33] Speaker A: So I, yeah, finally took him out. But as I tried to again open the truck door, Songbird short circuited me again and said not to follow. Yeah, fat chance.

But Reid in this explosion was hit by some shrapnel and of course he’s out for the cow while I have to go track her down by myself and save her. Cool, cool, cool.

You follow her tracks down some roads. She crashed the truck into a building that has this long staircase downwards into the ground, just like she crashed through a Wall.

And she’s not in the truck that’s crashed there a couple floors down. But you can follow this kind of bit of blackwall residue that’s left behind on all the electronics in there. So you get a bit of a trail to follow.

It’s a bunch of dark corridors. Eventually you work through this building and you reach a super long vertical shaft with water at the bottom that requires you to pull James from Silent Hill 2 and jump in just because it’s the only option.

Johnny gives you a bit of a pep talk, talking about how such a terrible idea as you would expect.

And yeah, the James From Silent Hill 2 comparison is pretty fitting actually, because what comes next?

Let’s just say I’m a little more okay now that our horror game, Spooky Season game was pushed out of October into November because I got a dose of it here, bit of dose of survival horror.

I’ll just leave it at that.

[01:04:17] Speaker B: Okay,

[01:04:18] Speaker A: okay, I’m kidding. There’s a lot more to explain, actually. So you jump in, you swim out. Down below, you see the Militech logo.

So it’s a very old facility of theirs called Cynosure.

And once you jack into a terminal, you find out it’s a pre. They call it the data crash, right? That’s like the big event that caused a bunch of Internet problems.

So it’s a pre data crash, top secret facility.

Reid says that Songbird is likely looking for a permalink to the blackwall.

And right as he’s spilling more info about it, Songbird fries us.

Cuts off Reid, and then starts this monologue that everyone promised help, but they couldn’t or they didn’t. Reid already ruined her life once. And then her video feed cuts out and you have to go find her.

So I take an elevator down even further into this rabbit hole of the heart of darkness as Johnny described it.

And then the true survival horror kind of kicks in here.

Machinery starts turning on and moving all by itself.

Blackwall Songbird is taunting you along the way, but Realsong is trying to keep you out and keep they, as she calls them away without really describing it. And my mission is now to breach some terminals to disable this lockdown of the building.

Once I got past alpha and beta rooms, it starts up this game of cat and mouse, where I was very much the mouse, and the cat was a freaking military Militech Cerberus robot.

[01:06:03] Speaker B: Dang.

[01:06:04] Speaker A: Who looks like. Looks like a smaller version of a Chimera. But you know what it looks a lot like? The robots from The Matrix.

The like real world ones that have tentacles to move around and whatnot, but it was like more of like a spider. And then it had this stinger on it as well.

Yeah, scary Songbird. When you first. When it first jumps out of the ceiling at you, Songbird keeps it from crushing you outright, but you don’t have much of a choice but to hide and keep pushing forward because you can’t damage it at all.

I shot at it. It did nothing but alert it. So it starts chasing you. It’s a super tense situation where you’re unlocking terminals and running whenever it shows up. And then after multiple layers and areas of this, there’s like this dead sprint section across a bridge with it right on your tail before you have to dive into an airlock and shut the door behind you.

And then you find SO MI stuck in the system core, like a giant sphere that looks like an eyeball, but you can’t actually go straight up to the thing. So throughout all of this sneaking, there’s some exposition with you seeing some of her through the relic, seeing some of her memories.

And right as you finally fix all the panels to shut things down, the Cerberus shows up and is about to run you through with that stinger. And it cuts to this long conversation with Somi in her Brooklyn studio and a bunch more flashbacks in there showing how a number of things. This is where I saw the true colors of Reed and Myers. Right. Like you described. So it shows you how, you know, she was being manipulated by Reed and Meyers throughout her history with them.

Then it, you know, it talks about, you know, Reid tried to blackmail her to get her out of Brooklyn and go back to the fia, blah, blah, blah.

And then it cuts back to yourselves with the power down Cerberus and a chance to go enter the core, Reed finally reaches you again on the comms and is headed your way. This whole scenario up until this point reminded me a lot of the game Soma, which I don’t know if you’ve played that, but it’s like a. I guess it’s not quite survival horror in a traditional sense because you don’t have any items, but you know, it doesn’t give you any weapons at all and you have to avoid enemies that are creepy and can kill you easily.

And then also, while I haven’t played it yet, it sounds like the high intensity encounter of the entire game of Alien Isolation.

[01:08:53] Speaker B: I’ve never. Yeah, I’ve never played Alien.

[01:08:56] Speaker A: I haven’t played it either, but I hear it is Very good, actually, in terms of, like, the. The AI tech behind the alien itself and finding you and chasing you around.

So it’s. I think it’s very similar to that, based on the review I’ve seen of it.

Anyway, you get inside the core where SO MI is, you wake her up, and she asked me to kill her.

And probably very similar to the, you know, almost dead that you had seen.

She asked me to kill her. I told her, hey, we have the neural matrix. We still have a chance to be cured. Mind you, I didn’t have this information that she was going to betray you if I went the other way.

But she’s not convinced about a cure because the Black Wall has most of her already.

And I know this is a dark world, but if I can be free from the relic overriding me, I have to hold out hope that I can help cure her, too. So I didn’t kill her.

And that turned out to be a mistake, she immediately said, I’m leaving her to a fate worse than death.

And then, even though I kind of, you know, I had my own expectations of where the story would go and my ability to affect it. But never underestimate the power to abuse and take advantage of everyone else for their own benefit from the Powers that be.

So while. While I was in the car, it cuts. Reed arrives, and you help him pick up Somi.

It cuts to you in the car. Reid’s driving, so mi’s in the backseat, knocked out.

Reid seems relieved she was alive and hopeful that he could find her help and actually seemed to have the conviction that he can help her, but also has some regret in his voice and the way he tells this story about when he first brought her from Brooklyn. He said, she said, it seems like you’re saving me. But he could kind of tell she didn’t believe it.

And then Reid asked me rhetorically, would she say the same thing now?

And I think that’s probably going to be a no.

[01:11:01] Speaker B: It’s

[01:11:01] Speaker A: going to be a no for me, dog, because I think he knows what’s in store for her, obviously, in the future, even though she’s alive now. Right? As we cross the border into the Noosa, surgeons show up in a helicopter. Reed stops answering my questions, not loving that, but I have to get out of the car. I carry Somi to a stretcher. And then another AV lands with Myers in it.

I told her, I’m not going to shake your hand. And then she tried to give me a medal, and I turned a medal down, too.

[01:11:36] Speaker B: Connie would be proud of that.

[01:11:39] Speaker A: And you know, I did also from Myers, demand the help that she promised and asked her to let me know when Somi is better so I can talk to her. But she said it’s not possible since everything we just went through will be classified as top secret.

[01:11:54] Speaker B: Of course it will be.

[01:11:59] Speaker A: After she leaves, Reid has more stories about when he brought Songbird to work with Noosa. She said, I lost all my friends when you recruited me. Now don’t you become my enemy. That’s all I ask.

At this point, the Surgeon helicopter flies away. You sit down with Reid and tell him, I told him at least he better make sure that she gets the help she needs.

And he just kind of shrugs it off and says, it’ll be a few days until you get your help.

Then he stands and walks away as the credits roll in. A very Bond esque song.

[01:12:38] Speaker B: Yeah, the song at the end, it’s probably

[01:12:40] Speaker A: the

[01:12:40] Speaker B: same song for the credits.

[01:12:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it’s called Phantom Liberty. Yeah,

[01:12:44] Speaker B: it’s a cool song.

[01:12:46] Speaker A: Cool song. And you know it. I’m assuming you had to save where I did. So it drops you back off in Night City at your Watson apartment.

Did it happen to you? Yeah,

[01:12:57] Speaker B: pretty sure. I think I saved like, right. Yeah. I don’t even think I’ve massively paid attention. I think it’s just sick because I was playing it later tonight. I just saved.

[01:13:06] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. So it drops you back off in Night City at your Watson apartment. You have a debrief with Johnny and you know, kind of just recap what happened, more or less.

So I definitely feel like a bit of a scumbag at the end of all this.

And I, you know, we know that Myers and Reid are both awful, but Songbird did betray me multiple times too. And I get the impression that although she kept the Cerberus from killing me and was sort of looking for redemption by doing that, it was likely just needing me to help her free again.

We’ll see if Reid and Fia pull through with some help for her or for me. I guess at this point.

[01:13:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it kind of ends the same way for me. Of he takes her and then.

Yeah, goes off in

[01:13:59] Speaker A: the

[01:13:59] Speaker B: AV and it’s like, will you help help her? And then as I said, help me better make sure that I live.

[01:14:05] Speaker A: So you saved as the credits were rolling and didn’t continue. Okay, I.

[01:14:10] Speaker B: I saved like right after credits finished, I’m pretty sure.

[01:14:13] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. I’ve got a tiny bit more. So, you know.

[01:14:17] Speaker B: Okay,

[01:14:17] Speaker A: that, that. That’s a wrap on Phantom Liberty, as far as the credits go. But is it a wrap?

At least on my end, because of this ending that I chose. After talking with Johnny, I got a text from Reed that he had a memorial made for Alex that I can visit, which, if it exists in the game world, I’ll be sure to do that one day.

And then he asked me to meet him at the basketball court where we first met for a new quest.

Oh, okay.

So I humored him.

The old dog just missed me, you know, he said when I sat down, he said he already decided he won’t kill me.

He’s actually here to thank me. So, mi’s alive. And I asked how she’s doing. He told me her nervous system was too far gone, and they put the neural matrix in storage for me.

So she’s stable. They’re gonna, like, still help fix her, but they. They. That’s because they switched to an alternate method to try to help her. So she’ll live and might even return to active duty, which I grilled him about, since she’ll be Meyer’s puppet again.

You know, she can’t give up access to the Blackwall after all.

[01:15:30] Speaker B: Yeah,

[01:15:32] Speaker A: it would.

It didn’t happen. But I was really hoping this was going to be the moment that they introduced the option to spill all the beans about Myers shady dealings to the world through someone in the press. Maybe, like as this last epilogue bit of just screw you, Myers. But it didn’t happen.

[01:15:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that would have

[01:15:52] Speaker A: been cool.

[01:15:53] Speaker B: That would have been cool

[01:15:55] Speaker A: because that would have been a fun kind of, hey, turn your dystopia back on you.

But, yeah, that’s where that goes. And then Reid is being summoned back to work, a desk job, which he seemed kind of resigned and okay with doing.

[01:16:12] Speaker B: Okay, good. Well, I’m intrigued then, because I’m pretty sure I’m going to hear from him, so. Once I hear from

[01:16:17] Speaker A: him, you probably will. Yeah.

And, yeah, that’s actually a wrap now.

Fantastic expansion, if you ask me.

[01:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it was.

Yeah, it was.

[01:16:28] Speaker A: It’s action packed, super strong scripted moments, and plenty of new activities to engage in. I. You know, we’ll. We’ll.

We’ll consider Phantom Liberty as part of our review of the overall package of Cyberpunk 2077 when we finish the base game in a few weeks. But if I just look at the expansion by itself, I’d probably give it a nine out of ten as a whole.

[01:16:49] Speaker B: Yes, I agree. Yeah,

[01:16:54] Speaker A: I will say I didn’t actually engage in much of the Stronghold type content.

Like I Only did.

I only did 2 of the air drops and found them at best.

And I still actually haven’t even found any of those bases that you mentioned with bosses in them, but maybe I’ll look for those.

[01:17:11] Speaker B: Okay.

I thought there was three and I cannot find the third one.

[01:17:15] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.

Well, maybe there aren’t.

But yeah, great. Great.

[01:17:25] Speaker B: No, really

[01:17:25] Speaker A: great. CDPR knows how to do an expansion.

[01:17:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, seems like it.

So

[01:17:32] Speaker A: now, this week the goal is to run through all of Johnny Silverhand’s side job quest line, starting with Chipping in, and then wrap up every last side job gig, Cyber Psycho, ncpd Hustle, and anything else you might possibly want to do in this world. Since the following session, we’ll finally be meeting Hanako at Embers and wrapping up the main story

[01:17:56] Speaker B: to

[01:17:56] Speaker A: finish the season.

[01:17:58] Speaker B: Very nice.

[01:18:00] Speaker A: Of course, like we will probably do, you can still drop back into the world after the game is over and this season of the podcast ends. So you can continue knocking out side quests even if we finish our season here.

But yes, looking forward to some side quests. Lots and lots of them.

[01:18:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I have still, I have a long list of side quests to do.

[01:18:21] Speaker A: Exactly. There’s a lot of points on that map

[01:18:24] Speaker B: and I am actually, I mean I’m in. I’m interested in the Johnny ones because just the character. There’s a character who I think is supposed. It’s like pretty big. Carrie. Carrie Eurodyne. And like I haven’t even seen him.

[01:18:40] Speaker A: I heard him mention, oh, I got a text from someone about Kerry showing up in Dogtown. But yeah, that’s about it. He’s only shown up in the flashbacks.

[01:18:50] Speaker B: Oh, that was also actually speaking of caryuridyne, that was one of my questions with Aurora that Hanson asks me of. Like, who is that designer you wanted me to look into for you? Whose background or like designer type did you like? And it’s Carrie’s like design look.

Yeah.

[01:19:09] Speaker A: So

[01:19:11] Speaker B: it just made me think of man. I was like, hopefully he’s more involved in the Johnny similarities.

[01:19:17] Speaker A: One would hope considering he’s supposedly associated based on the band. Band. Yeah. So

[01:19:22] Speaker B: yeah, we’ll see.

But yeah, but Phantom Liberty was a great time.

Yeah. Really great expansion.

Hope you, all of you out there enjoyed it as well as much as we did and looking forward to doing the Johnny Silverhand side quest as well as all the other psychoists that we have. So before we go meet Hanako. So yep, thanks everyone for listening and have a great one.

If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of any games on the Gaming Backlog Book Club Podcast, please give us a follow on your podcast platform of choice, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music or Pocketcasts, as well as our Discord and Instagram accounts under the same name. Thanks.