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[00:00:00] Out of context summary? Yeah, let's hear it. In this episode, we reject a hot dog. We learn that vote restrooms are somehow worse than your standard public restrooms. And is Sarah gonna leave Tommy cause... he's drinking again. Uh oh! Thank you for coming back from our replay reviews.
[00:00:21] My name is Leah. And my name is Kathy. We are two friends who are here to replay a review and analyze your favorite video games. And since Kathy has never seen the games before, it helps me view them through her fresh eyes.
[00:00:32] Almost like I'm discovering them again for the first time. We hope we'll be a similar experience for you. Scene one? Yeah. Salieri and Morello are officially at war. No one's trying to hide it anymore.
[00:00:52] Salieri's plan is to take out people close to Morello to show that it's not safe to stick with him. The first target is Counselor Galati. Finally! Mm-hmm. Tommy is assigned to assassinate him during a public speech at his birthday boat party. It goes okay. He dies.
[00:01:10] They shoot him. Yeah. And then sometime later, Vincenzo and Sam are chasing down the next target, Morello's brother Sergio. And it sounds like Sergio has exceptionally good luck and has avoided multiple assassination attempts.
[00:01:25] And so then now it's Tommy's turn to carry out the next attempt, which is a car bomb. I will have to say that the boat scene really reminded me of Yakuza. Kind of all goes back to Yakuza. She power a wharf. We're back.
[00:01:42] Tommy plants the bomb supposedly under Sergio's car, but it's horrified when Sergio's wife, daughter, someone falls victim to it. Are we sure Tommy's cut out for all of this or have things just gotten more intense since he first joined? Because he is shell shocked again. Yeah.
[00:02:03] He doesn't even take any time to process what happens because he goes from one thing to another and he just pretty much hangs up on Sarah. So, one, he's going to be in the doghouse because of that. But two, she hears the explosion.
[00:02:14] She's still on the line when that happens. And there's a moment where I feel like Tommy reconsidered saying that you know what? I'm out. This is not okay because I don't think he's ever killed someone innocent at this point. I would agree with that. All right.
[00:02:32] So right as the crap is hitting the fan with the car bomb, Tommy is informed that Sam and Polly have trapped Sergio down to a restaurant and Tommy races across town to meet them. So the three of them enter the restaurant with Tommy guns in hand.
[00:02:47] So first, Sergio is a ginormous ass for using the waitress as a shield. Yes. We need to talk about that. What a coward. It gets worse though because second, there is no hesitation to shoot at her from Polly. But then third, Tommy tries to stop him.
[00:03:09] So this goes kind of back into this Tommy cut out for this question. But like has Tommy changed or has Polly changed? Or is Tommy just starting to like realize how intense the mafia actually is?
[00:03:20] As of this part of this game, I say that Tommy started to see more because it kind of goes back to last week where we see a lot of red flags in terms of the character of Celery.
[00:03:33] And you have Sergio willing to put an innocent woman and use her as a shield. And you have Polly who's willing to shoot an innocent woman, but Tommy isn't and choose to shove the gun away from Polly aiming it at the woman.
[00:03:49] His character isn't willing to harm innocent people. And that's so different than everyone else. So I'm thinking at this moment he's probably too busy to think about it.
[00:04:00] But he'll be thinking, I don't know if this is right or I don't want to be the type of person who shoots and harms innocent people. Kind of like the Frank situation where it's like, it could be me. Like this could be you again.
[00:04:12] Maybe someone puts a bomb under your car and Sarah or your daughter goes out for a drive at some point. Do you think that if Polly reported back to Celery saying that hey Tommy is the reason why it kind of slightly went south between the bomb and this?
[00:04:27] Do you think that Don's going to lose trust in Tommy if he failed twice now? I think last episode. Yeah.
[00:04:35] But in this episode, I don't think so because I think he's just so intense about taking Morello down that he doesn't really care what kind of trail they leave behind them. Yeah. He's changed Sergio.
[00:04:49] He's able to get away and takes off in a car and Tom follows on a motorcycle. You did well. But right when you get used to the driving in this game, they say, hey, I think you're too comfortable. Let me throw a motorcycle at you. This thing sucks.
[00:05:08] Okay. It does seem that Sergio's luck has run out because by the time Tommy reaches him, he's all out of ammo. But so is Tommy. That's okay because Sergio is deciding to hide in a giant pile of explosive liquid barrels, which is an odd choice.
[00:05:26] So as you might expect, Tommy just tosses a lighter. But it seemed risky. It seemed risky. Tommy was in there too. He could have at least taken a couple steps towards the door before he, you know, dropped that lighter. Yeah. Anyway, is this the first so long?
[00:05:42] Yeah, I think so. Like we're not counting insignificant characters. He is a coward. He decided to take an innocent waitress as a shield. So definitely so long mother. I would agree.
[00:05:56] And I think it would be hard in this series to have anyone that's not a mother just because of the world we're in right now. There's not as many redeeming qualities as there are in games like Yakuza. So I would agree so long mother.
[00:06:11] But I will say, I would like to know more about Sergio. I would like to have more of him in a game. They could have done more with him. I think they kind of missed an opportunity here. They made him really shallow too.
[00:06:25] We hear Celieri say that he's a smart person. And so you know that he could have had a lot of character depth, but unfortunately his time was cut short.
[00:06:35] Even the voice actor and the facial animations that they give him and the way that other characters talk about him. There is a lot more depth to this character and it's like maybe they had a plan for him and just decided to scrap a lot of it.
[00:06:49] But I agree, they made him really shallow, but there was so much more potential there. Honestly, I thought he was way more interesting than Morello. I was going to see that too. Celieri, I think the quote was he has more brains than Morello.
[00:07:03] It's unfortunate that we didn't get to see more of him, which I also don't understand that if Morello and Celieri go way back. I don't understand where Sergio is. Why is he not in that picture? I really would have liked to see more.
[00:07:16] I think he's actually one of the most interesting characters in the game. And it's unfortunate that we didn't get to see more or know more about him. But either way, he's a mother. So, so long. So long. Well, what an explosive way to end scene one.
[00:07:33] It's somehow funnier because you said it again. No, well, how to cut the first one out. What an explosive way to end scene one. We haven't even gotten to the actual part. Anything before scene two? Nope. Short scene for me. I don't know about you, but uh...
[00:07:51] Very short. With the war raging, Morello has been hiding. But the guys here that he'll resurface at Agala. So they plan to attack him guns blazing. And Celieri wants every important figure in the city to know that he owns it.
[00:08:07] The city is Celieri's and he wants Morello's execution to be brazen. And I have to say, the scene and Celieri were intense until his little fingers on the map did the little swish-swish. And for whatever reason, that just killed it for me. Immediately I'm not immersed anymore.
[00:08:24] It's very cutesy of a guy who's declaring war. But speaking of the scene, Celieri is not the same person. He's not level-headed like he was at the beginning of the game. What do you think about how he's changed so far?
[00:08:40] He's actually becoming more and more similar to Morello. Because didn't he say Morello was really hot-headed, emotional, doesn't play the long game type of guy. Yet that's kind of him right now. And it's so funny because he's a bit of a hypocrite. Yeah, and it's almost like...
[00:08:55] Because he was trying to be the better one. He's saying we're more classy than Morello, but he was losing to him. So I don't know what that says. But I think it's interesting.
[00:09:06] So they start shooting when they see Morello jumping into a car and they chase him to the airport where Morello manages to get into a plane, but they shoot the engines out while it's taking off and it looks like it will crash. So they pursue it.
[00:09:20] At the crash site, they find Morello clinging to life. And to my surprise, Tommy and Sim with no hesitation and maybe a few more bullets than are necessary. I was a little surprised by Tommy here.
[00:09:34] He also gives Morello a long look, very similar to the look he does with Carlos, but I don't think that he's thinking the same thing. Like with Carlo dying, he's probably saying that that could have been me.
[00:09:47] But with this one, I have a feeling that is it relief that I killed him and I'm not going to be like him or I don't know what exactly he's thinking. But it's very different than the look he gave Carlo when he saw Salieri smashing his head.
[00:10:04] And I don't know if it has anything to do with what he tells the detective in the next scene about Morello. Should we just jump into that? Or should we first mention, we see Salieri's reaction to hearing that Morello is dead. Yeah.
[00:10:18] And it seems kind of bittersweet to him. I mean, we know he wanted this guy dead, like dead, dead. But now he's like, see you on the other side, Mark, who looking at a picture of them and pouring one out. Right?
[00:10:29] He looks more sad than relieved that he's dead. I think it's one of those situations where you just miss the challenge. Because he realizes there's no more threat that Morello is posing. Once he's stripped out of way, he'd probably just see Sim as a former brother
[00:10:47] and he's mourning that relationship because he no longer has to worry about what Morello can and will do to him. So once you take that part out of the equation, that's why he probably looks more sad than relieved
[00:11:00] that he no longer has to seek an all out war against him. Yeah, that makes sense. I don't know. I just wanted more of a reaction from him. It feels kind of underwhelming. It feels like he's too sad.
[00:11:16] I feel like because he had Tommy, Sam and Polly be the ones to kill him that he didn't do it himself. It made it a bit underwhelming. It's not sitting well with me that you have goons kill Luton.
[00:11:29] And it also makes it look like Morello is not as powerful as he is that he can get hunted and killed so easily. Yeah, I think you're onto something because when they're at the start of the scene talking about Morello's hiding out
[00:11:43] and they say he couldn't stay hidden for long because for a dawn to be respected, to be feared, they have to be visible. Sally Airey wasn't visible in this. I don't know. Something just, yeah, is a little bit off about it for sure.
[00:11:57] Scene three, Tommy continues to chat with the detective and tells him about the war ending. The detective is a little bit angry at first. It turns out he's been searching for Tommy for three years. I'm assuming looking for Morello's killer.
[00:12:10] But Tommy says that he wants Sally Airey, the bigger fish essentially, not Tommy. At this point it becomes absolutely clear that Tommy is selling out Sally Airey and he says my family for the dawn.
[00:12:23] Tommy does say that he has the books, which was one of the questions I had last week about, oh, who has the books? Like, is it still with Tommy? And this is where it gets really interesting for me because why does he have the books?
[00:12:36] Is it to cover his tracks that he didn't kill Frank? Because I guess why would him having the books equal, I let Frank go. I don't think it's that.
[00:12:47] I think it's always been an insurance policy for him to get out that it's smart to not immediately tell Sally Airey, but he's already had a few red flags and he knows that one day is Sally Airey threatens to kill me or to take my family hostage.
[00:13:03] And I have this one thing. The only thing I have that can one up Sally Airey are these books and he probably is using those as a way to prevent himself or his wife and kids being threatened by Sally Airey.
[00:13:18] Yeah, and that's where my questions come up because if there's no reason to keep these two cover your tracks about I didn't kill Frank, then like you said, you're keeping them as leverage. And this is where I have issues with this game.
[00:13:31] And this is like one of my only issues with this game. But at what point is Tommy realizing these things? At what point does Tommy realize I need insurance, you know, because we keep seeing him act shocked at things he sees.
[00:13:44] But if you're shocked, then why do you already have insurance in the books? Something just doesn't quite track for me with Tommy and when he realizes this isn't good because it's just now in this chapter. When he starts talking about him realizing this.
[00:14:02] I mean, should we just get into that conversation? Let's keep going because I think I know what my answer is, but let me give you a moment to type it up. Okay. All right, so we'll put a pin in that topic for a few minutes.
[00:14:14] Chronologically in this conversation next is that the detective shows Tommy a picture of young Sally Airey and Morello who are with Don Papone.
[00:14:22] He says that Sally Airey was the best man at Morello's wedding and let's Tommy know that there is a lot of information that he's not aware of. He continues to tell Tommy that when Papone died, Sally Airey and Morello divvied up the city.
[00:14:37] And I have in parentheses, do you think Sally Airey and Morello killed him? But I think we already have been thinking that. Mm-hmm. And then he says it should have worked but it didn't for them to divvy up the city.
[00:14:48] Again, if it's not because of power, it's because of a woman and maybe that he was the best man for the woman that he loved but she decided to marry Morello or something like that.
[00:15:01] But I think because of that, he can never be satisfied with the land being divvied up. I don't know why it didn't work other than it just seems like a stupid idea. Why would you put two people in charge of something that previously had one person in charge?
[00:15:17] I don't know. To me it just seems like they did something rash if they did kill him. I mean he drowned so it seems pretty suspicious. I feel like we're missing a small piece of the backstory. I hope we get the backstory later.
[00:15:28] I want a whole game that's just the backstory and then we could get more Sergio. Yes! I want more Sergio. And then going back to the conversation that we just put a pin in, Tommy continues and says,
[00:15:42] I got to thinking what good was all of Morello's money if it couldn't protect him from a regular Joe like me? It only got him one thing, a great big bullseye.
[00:15:51] One day I'm looking in the mirror and I start seeing a bullseye too but I told myself I was smarter than Morello. It seems like it's just after Morello that he starts to realize, oh no, I could be any of these people in this world.
[00:16:07] But he's been doing things like keeping the books as an insurance policy, as leverage. So I don't understand. I don't understand Tommy. I try to defend him but I can't because I don't know if I understand him well enough. Yeah.
[00:16:23] Because at what point do you think that he should have realized that he has a target on his head? And I'm thinking when Carlo was killed, that's like the best time for him to realize but he doesn't.
[00:16:38] The only thing I can justify is that it was happening so quickly that he never had time to really digest everything that was happening and it was only until when Morello died and the war was over that he had time to reflect about what's going on.
[00:16:53] That could be. And maybe he just held the books and didn't know why. And it was just an internal thing he hadn't really processed yet.
[00:17:02] I mean that's really all I can think is like you said he just had more time after the war was over but it's clear that paranoia is starting to get to Tommy
[00:17:11] and he also talks about Sam and Polly and says that you're wondering if your best friend is hungry enough to betray you. What did you think of that line?
[00:17:19] That's what I'm questioning is because very similar to maybe how Salieri felt with Morello that he started to get paranoid and say that Oh is Morello going to kill me? Is he plotting something? And they were like brothers.
[00:17:34] And right now Tommy, Polly and Sam are like his brothers. So maybe he's starting to be more and more similar to Salieri by being paranoid. I think you're right though. I think that might be the missing piece with the Morello-Salieri backstory is just the paranoia of that lifestyle.
[00:17:53] You don't know who's going to be gunning for you at what point. If Tommy's feeling that then they, I'm sure we're feeling it at some point too so maybe that's the missing link.
[00:18:03] And kind of going back into more of that paranoia we know loyalty is a thing with the mafia and I'm going to jump ahead because Salieri has a lesson that he teaches Tommy when they're doing their collections and Salieri finds that Polly is a bit smaller
[00:18:20] and Tommy's like oh I'm going to cover his tab but then immediately Salieri's like don't be loyal to Polly yet he's pretty much demanding loyalty from everyone.
[00:18:33] So it's a bit of a hypocrite but that lesson may be the lesson that he pretty much got when he and Morello were brothers. But also Tommy's drinking again right in front of Salieri. He pours himself a glass and drinks it. Is this just a plot hole?
[00:18:55] Salieri is the one that made Sarah threaten to leave him so that he would stop drinking and now he's drinking right in front of Salieri. Don't get it.
[00:19:04] I didn't even think much of it until you mentioned it and the way the camera has it is that it wants you to know he's drinking again. Yeah, it's weird.
[00:19:13] I went back and I looked again and at first it's like oh maybe he's pouring Salieri a drink and then you realize no there's two glasses and then he goes around to the other side of the table and drinks it. Yeah.
[00:19:24] I feel like this is a plot hole. Salieri tells Tommy that a guy named Turnbull, a candidate for governor is running on an anti-mafia platform and sends Tommy to assassinate him now.
[00:19:35] After a lot of unnecessary gameplay, Tommy succeeds though things do get quite hairy and he eventually returns home. Any comments on this whole Turnbull scene? Once and has come to his end, Tommy kills Turnbull or Turnbull. Yeah, it was about like an hour section. Right.
[00:19:56] And why did a person need to go drop off a gun? I'm confused why Tommy couldn't just bring the gun. It's not like he walked through. Exactly. It's not like he took a bus to get there. At home again, Sara asks Tommy if he's heard of Turnbull.
[00:20:09] I guess she's reading about his assassination in the paper and Tommy says that he heard he was corrupt and Sara responds. It says in the paper he's going to be remembered for fighting the past the 19th amendment. Put his whole career on the line for it.
[00:20:24] Which one was that again? Woman's suffrage, you idiot. He gave me the right to vote, Tom. Gave it to his wife and six daughters too. And then she ends it by saying, guess nobody's just one thing, are they? And that feels like a deep line. Yeah.
[00:20:44] Why doesn't Sara know that he killed them? I think she suspects it. I think that's why she said guess nobody's just one thing, are they? Easily Tommy could have done this. And then she says don't do anything you don't want to be remembered for.
[00:21:00] And so I think she's kind of like, oh no, how far is this going? This is more intense than anything I've seen in the mafia. And Tommy responds probably too late for that. Do you think that's part of the reason why he's selling out Sally Airee? That's, yeah.
[00:21:16] Doesn't like who he is anymore. I think that also is the moment where he's like, you know, these books can come in handy that it might be too late for me to get out of this or to leave,
[00:21:29] but it's not too late for me to start using these books as a way, any opportunity I get, it's a way that I can try to get us safer. And I'm thinking that this might be the moment or if not close to one of the breaking points.
[00:21:44] I think Sarah kind of knows that things are going downhill and she helps Tommy realize that a little bit. I think next episode will be long. It'll be the final gameplay part, the last time before the summary.
[00:21:57] This episode was a lot of build up probably to things that we're going to see in the final section of gameplay. So I'm excited for that one. But is there anything else that you have on this episode? Oh, we didn't even do a solo for Morello.
[00:22:13] Wow, that's unforgettable. His characters in Turnville you do. Who cares about Turnville? We don't know him. I mean, we'll call him a mother, a mother neutral because we know who's bad guy, but he also apparently helped us get the whatever amendment. The 19th. Yes.
[00:22:31] So neutral, but Morello obviously mother. Yeah, mother. He shot a guy. He was torturing because he wouldn't stop crying. Mm-hmm. Done. I didn't see any redeeming qualities from him. I think that's the issue with this game is we don't see redeeming qualities.
[00:22:49] Besides Tommy and Salliery, we don't get much of a character death in it. And I get it. We followed Tommy. We're playing from Tommy's point of view, but I would love to get some more. I don't know what exactly how we would get more character death in them.
[00:23:07] Well, yeah, I feel like just the detective has more depth than Salliery and Morello. I think the detective is more interesting than the two main villains or Sergio Sergio was more interesting. So interesting, such a complex individual.
[00:23:24] You can tell that he's complex just by like one scene with him. So yeah, I am disappointed in Salliery and Morello's characters. I feel like they're very just like copy paste standard. They're not very interesting. Yeah. So yeah, I guess so long mother you're kind of boring.
[00:23:45] Although you did beat that guy's head with a tire iron. That was mildly interesting. Yeah. Anything else? Do we forget and did anyone else die? No, but we don't know where Ralphie is. Yeah, what happened to Ralphie? Why do you say it like that?
[00:24:02] We have to keep it now. What happened to him? He's gone. He's gone. I don't know. I hope he's okay. Another useless character in this game. Yeah. Should you pee-pees in your Mrs. Yeah. Well, there is one that you like clearly ran over him, but like nothing happened.
[00:24:27] And then there's like another one that like he just flew out of the way. But I don't even know if you were even close to him. So I'm going to say like two pee-pees? I did one because you're right.
[00:24:37] There is a section where clearly he would have been deceased. Yeah. But the game just didn't register. And then the other ones there was one where another car hit him into my car. Oh, yeah. So I didn't count that one. Yeah. Not your fault.
[00:24:55] So I landed on one pee-pee. Okay. So if I were to count one person, I would have flattened had the game reacted appropriately. I think there's like two near-misses? Were there more? I was just about to say I need to count up the tallies real quick.
[00:25:10] Oh my God. How many? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. What? Holy cow. I was going to say like four and you're like fifteen. I think you lose today. Oh. I'm sorry. We still have one more part left.
[00:25:39] Anything else or should we end the episode? No, I think we're good. So let's do a dacite on one, three, two, one. Thank you for listening and don't forget to send in any questions, comments, or game suggestions.
[00:25:53] You can find all our contact info on our website, replayreviewspod.com, or contact us directly through our site. Do we completely miss something? Are we way off the mark? Or do you just want us to take a deeper look at anything from the game?
[00:26:05] We'll tackle any topics you all want to hear in our season wrap-up episode. We also have a Reddit where we discuss anything we're curious about. Go take a look and let us know what you're thinking. Our theme music is condemned by EggieToast.
[00:26:17] They'll play you out and we'll be back next week.