Ready Player One Read-Through: Chapter 26

Content warning: references to gun violence and cultural approbation.



Leftover note from previous chapter:

About Shoto's new motivation. Not once does Wade ever even think about revenge himself - against the Sixers for killing his family and friends in the real world, and destroying his home. His only motivation throughout Ready Player One is to win Halliday's contest so he can own the OASIS and become the most powerful billionaire in the world. At age eighteen, he is set for life. He wants to be rich, to make sure his precious virtual reality stays how he wants it, and then literally escape earth and reality altogether. That's the extent of his goal.

Wow. What a noble, selfless, responsible, likable hero, worth rooting for.



Wade figures out the Blade Runner connection from the riddle on the Jade Key's foil. "The origami unicorn had revealed everything to me." Deus ex machina!

He's off to the planet Axrenox in Sector Twenty-Two to find the Second Gate. Copies of the Tyrell Building from Blade Runner are everywhere in the OASIS - there are hundreds-to-thousands of them copied and pasted even in the same area - and he's going to the closest one to him.


Blade Runner was referenced in the text of Anorak's Almanac no less than fourteen times. It had been one of Halliday's top ten all-time favorite films. And the film was based on a novel by Phillip K. Dick, one of Halliday's favorite authors. For these reasons, I'd seen Blade Runner over four dozen times and had memorized every frame of the film and every line of dialogue. (Page 250)


Who gives a shit? Is this an excuse for the author to show how much he knows about '80s pop culture and sci-fi? Oh, who am I kidding, an excuse to talk about '80s crap justifies the whole novel's existence.

"over four dozen times" - Now I know you're full of it, Wade. Nobody - especially someone as young and super busy with absorbing other pop culture stuff as you are - watches the same film that many times. Nobody.

You are a Time Lord, aren't you?

No love expressed yet again - Wade only likes something because Halliday liked it. He is a mindless, soulless drone, devoid of a personality of his own.

The chapter is basically Tyrell Building porn, with plentiful sprinklings of other Blade Runner references. More infodumping about the film. Wade enters a Tyrell Building and apparently gets into a fight. I say apparently because:


The shooting started as soon as the elevator doors slid open. I had to kill seven skin jobs before I could even make it out of the elevator car and into the hallway.
     The next ten minutes played out like the climax of a John Woo movie. One of the ones starring Chow Yun Fat, like Hard Boiled or The Killer. I switched both of my guns to autofire and held down the triggers as I moved from one room to the next, mowing down every NPC in my path. The guards returned fire, but their bullets pinged harmlessly off my armor. I never ran out of ammo, because each time I fired a round, a new round was teleported into the bottom of the clip.
     My bullet bill this month was going to be huge. (Page 252)


And that's all folks! Another glossed-over fight scene containing no danger, no stakes, nor any emotional investment of any kind for our Gary Stu hero. Fun!

When Wade enters the office of Eldon Tyrell, he describes how it is a perfect replica of the film, down to the last detail, including "a massive floor-to-ceiling window offering a breathtaking view of the vast cityscape outside." A view? How? Is the exact same view from Blade Runner recreated in every one of the thousands of copies of the Tyrell Building in the OASIS, no matter where it is set?

Anyway, the Voight-Kampff is the portal to the Second Gate. Yeah, sure, why not at this point? Not like you could have done anything clever and creative with that device or anything.

Wade jumps into the portal and is now in a bowling alley - another fave childhood place of Halliday's. Then he is literally sucked into a game room, towards the video game Black Tiger ("Capcom. 1987.", as he so helpfully and unnecessarily lets us know). He also smugly lets us know that he had already mastered playing Black Tiger many times; since the beginning of the hunt, in fact. Even in virtual reality. Of course! No tension, remember?

He is inside the game, with no way out. It's do-or-die time.

Halliday's prisoner completes the game in less than a page. Crisis averted. Nothing to see here, people, just move along.

He is returned to the bowling alley simulation, and his reward is a choice of a giant robot.


There were several robots [as a long row of icons] I didn't recognize, but most were familiar. I spotted Gigantor, Tranzor Z, the Iron Giant, Jet Jaguar, the sphinx-headed, Giant Robo from Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot, the entire Shogun Warriors toy lie, and many of the mechs featured in both the Macross and Gundam anime series. (Page 257)


Robot toy as a reward for playing a video game. This is not helping to avert the stereotype that geeks are overgrown children. Lord knows that Halliday needed to grow up, but tragically never did.

One particular reference that strikes me is The Iron Giant. These toys are handed out to the winner in order to use them to fight with later. They are weapons of war and mass destruction in the OASIS. And the Iron Giant is included in that assemble. The Iron Giant, whose entire character revolves around peace and the choice of not becoming a war weapon. The choice to never take a life, no matter how small and insignificant they are to anyone else. Remember his famous line, "I am not a gun."?

Talk about missing the point of a film you're referencing entirely. James Halliday is terrible. Brad Bird ought to sue your arse, Cline.

Wade chooses the Leopardon robot from Supaidaman, an incarnation of Spider-Man in a '70s Japanese TV series.


I'd discovered Supaidaman during the course of my research and had become somewhat obsessed with the show. So I didn't care if Leopardon was the most powerful robot available. I had to have him, regardless. (Page 257)


What '80s thing are you not obsessed with, Wade?

He gets his toy, and the end credits of Black Tiger play. In the very last credit, Halliday's name appears as creating the OASIS port - the only text not in Japanese. There is a discussion to be had here on whitewashing and cultural approbation, but that would take far too long, and would be far too complex an issue to write about in this read-through.

Next clue pops up, Wade knows what it is right away, and he jumps (what a Jump Man he is today!) through a portal back to the Tyrell Building. Easy!

End of chapter 26. The next chapter is the final one of Level Two. I still don't care about anything that has happened so far.