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Dave: Hello, everybody. My name is Dave Jackson, and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review, podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss. I have 2 wonderful guests with me today. They're both friends of the show. They're the 2 hosts of the retro hangover. Podcast and some would say they are 2 halves of a whole Chris Coplien and Shane Koski welcome guys.

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Dave: We're not. We're not clear on the manner of said whole. But let's let's yeah, sure we'll go with that. Hey? How's it going? Yes, with our our proclivity to get into

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Chris: genitalia jokes. That whole could be. Anything could be or could be, like a pie. The whole pie

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Dave: could be anything, a lot of holes in this game, too. Today we're talking about Signalis, which is a survival horror game developed by rose engine and published by humble games and playism for PC. And contemporary consoles in 2022

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Dave: spoiler policy for this episode. If you have not played signals, the way the show always works is we're not going to spoil things at the beginning of the episode. Especially, this game has a story that is best left experienced for yourself. So we're gonna set it up in the non spoiler section of the show. But then we are gonna warn you. When the spoilers start, you can also check.

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Dave: You can also check down in the show notes for a timestamp. For when those spoilers will begin. So Chris and shane, you guys host, a retro gaming. Podcast and this game we're talking about today is not retro, but it's very retro inspired. So let's give some elevator pitches for people. What is signal? I wrote down. That Signalis is a dreamy homage to classic survival horror like resident, evil and silent. Hill. What would you guys say?

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Chris: I would say that it's like like I was trying to think of an elevator pitch, and I read yours and almost was gonna copy it. Word, yeah, it's a so I'll just try to reword it, to, to broadly more encompass what I see out of it, which is a loving tribute to the 32 bit era of top down threed action, games or otherwise, with a heavy inspiration from the survival horror, genre

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Dave: and Shane

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Shane Koski: man. Mine was far more succinct than that. I that's it's Silent. Hill in space, baby. That's what it is.

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Chris: That's that space

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Dave: awesome. That is not most certainly is not dead space. But yeah, good good elevator pitches to give people a quick idea. I played this on PC. At the time of recording. It's on Game Pass, although I think it's leaving. By the time people hear this it might be gone. It took me 9 h to beat. How about you guys? Where did you play? How long did it take you.

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Shane Koski: Yeah, I was on well, I kind of bounce back and forth. So technically. PC, but II had cloud save with my steam deck, so I think the majority of my time was on steam deck with a little bit of PC. Action, and I want to say.

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Shane Koski: all told I was right in the neighborhood of about

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Dave: 10 or 11 h it took me a little bit longer

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Chris: I also played on PC. Via Xbox game pass ultimate. And it also took me about 10 and a half hours, and I just want to say, Here, wha how dare you, Microsoft? Take it off Game Pass. I'm just gonna blame Microsoft because they're the easy target here right before October. Horror game off game pass for October.

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Dave: Shame on you! Wait until November. The family friendly affairs. Then, exactly. Yeah. Once, once. That's Thanksgiving season, you can take the horror games away. But yeah no, that's part of the strategy. They take it away right before spoopy season. And then they put it on a sale

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Dave: but I don't know.

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Dave: yeah, so it sounds like, we were all in the the general area 9 to 12 h. Something like that. Ii don't think this is a game that I guess you could spend a lot of time like reading stuff and backtracking a ton. But I think it would be pretty consistent for a lot of people. So

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Dave: some personal histories with Signalis, and I think that it's worth mentioning personal histories with the games that very obviously inspired this game. So I know for the 2 of you. When we're talking about a game to have you both on the show.

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Dave: I posed a couple of options and we we picked signalis. But was it on your radar before that? And we've already mentioned Resident evil and silent Hill? So what's your experience with those classic series as well.

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Chris: no, Chris, you wanna take that one first? Yeah, sure. So

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Chris: never heard of signallis prior to it being pitched. I think it's one of those games that I kinda heard under the radar, but hadn't really paid much attention to, just because Indy darlings get talked about, especially in the discord servers that we're all part of from time to time. And if

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Chris: someone doesn't have a lot of time for more modern games, or just games outside of what I'm interested in general that didn't wasn't able to check it out. I'm happy I did, though. So thank you, Dave, do appreciate that. And I think I think Shane was on the final decision. Part of that process as well. So thank you, Shane.

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Chris: And yeah, in terms of resident evil and silent. Hill

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Chris: resident evil was probably the first playstation game I really got into, not the first one I played. I think the first 2 were crash bandicoot and a power Rangers pinball game.

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Chris: which we're we're fine enough in their own right, but they didn't hook me. But resident evil certainly did, with its cinematic storytelling. It's it's zombies, it's gore. It's horror. And that really got me into the survival horror. Genre, despite the fact that I'm a a giant wuss and do not like to play survival whore games to their completion, but had a game shark. So I found a way. So Silent Hill is just. It's it's part of that story. Because I was into quote into survival whore. And I was I got. I think I got that game like when it first came out, and again, it's one of those games I quickly put down because I got too scared, and I ran back to my metal gear salads in Castlevania's of the world.

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Shane Koski: Yeah, as far as I'm concerned. I suppose if anybody's familiar with our show at all, because II feel like in the

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Shane Koski: the Venn diagram of podcasts out there. I feel like we've got a probably a decent bit of crossover. So there's there's like, there's at least one of you out there, I'm sure. But

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Shane Koski: but yeah, II may be a little bit of a silent hill fan allegedly. Yeah, I've heard specifically silent hill. 2. That's probably one of my favorite games of all time. And so

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Shane Koski: when I had heard that, you know, we we had this as an option. I hadn't actually heard of it at all prior to us talking about doing this episode. And when we saw this as a potential, you know topic to discuss. That pretty much swayed my decision as soon as I understood what this game was trying to do, and I I'm sure we'll get into it a little bit later. But

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Shane Koski: it, it is absolutely an homage perhaps in some places a little bit more than that.

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Dave: it was actually your episode on retro hangover about Silent Hill 2 that made me want to like pitch this game to you guys to play because it

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Dave: to like, I got a lot of the same enjoyment of thinking about the story, and of course the game plays very similar. And so when I heard your episode about Silent Hill, too. I was like, huh! Signallis would if they're up for it. Signalis would be a good fit, because that was a really excellent episode, especially

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Dave: when you guys talked about the story in that game. So yeah, I'm I'm glad you you were both up for it for me. I had this on my radar before, because there are some friends of the tube in my discord server who really really loved this game and have been talking sugar about it, basically, since it released in 2022.

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Dave: So it's been on my radar. Of course, it's on game. Pass. Also that that helps when you know a a game is on game pass, and people are like, Hey, this is really good. It moves it up. The priority list, cause I don't have to pay for it again. I suppose I already paid for it. Kinda but yeah, it was on my radar. And I did. Wanna make sure that I played resident evil remake before I played this. So we're in this weird time zone where the resident evil remake has released for the people listening. But for you 2, Chris and Shane.

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Dave: I promise you it's there. It was a couple of weeks ago. But I did wanna play that game first before I played this, and I'm glad that I did, because the influence is on full display. There are outright references to the first resin evil game. Ii kind of think that I got like the mechanical side of resident evil with the story telling of Silent Hill

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Dave: in Signalolis and it inspired a ton of theory crafting in me which, like

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Dave: doesn't happen a lot

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Dave: in the last year I could probably name, like maybe 3 games that got me to really go crazy with the story, and this is one of them. So I had a really good time. Playing this, but I had an even better time thinking about it after I was done putting these notes together, just trying to figure out what the hell's going on in the story. So do you guys have any kind of quick, opening thoughts before we dig into the meat of the episode here.

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Chris: hey, you take this one shape.

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Chris: Why, just throwing it over to me. I could take it. I I'm different here.

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Shane Koski: sure. Go for it.

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Chris: I mean, you say, this is influenced a lot by resin evil and silent halo. And II mean, I think those influences are obvious. I think they're out front and in the open is very over, especially the way that they're storytelling the way that the game progresses. And I'm sure that we're going to get into, especially with spoilers and a lot of the gameplay elements, especially when it comes to inventory management, which I'm sure we're also going to talk about. What I think is kind of overlooked, and I think this is quite apt, because you're on. The episode with us lately

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Chris: is the the way you navigate around a lot of.

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Chris: You know the areas that you're in. There's a lot of similarities to metal gear solid as well.

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Chris: It's and I haven't heard that mentioned. But in terms of you know, getting around the enemies there, there are stealth mechanics, and the way that your character moves, even the way that your character performs actions is very similar to some tactical espionage. Can't talk tactical espionage action that we have recently discussed in in real life. A couple of months ago. By the time this comes out, of course.

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Chris: but I'm I'm seeing I'm seeing some parallels, and I'm I'm quite shocked. I'm not. I won't say it's shocked. But I'm a little surprised that that really hasn't been picked up on, especially with a lot of the 32 bit influence that is just overwhelmingly present.

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Shane Koski: Yeah, actually, that's that's an interesting take. I hadn't really thought about that. But I think the Mgs angle is is interesting. I could see where you could get that for sure. There, there were definitely times where II found myself stealthing about the various areas in a manner that I wasn't expecting to because if you think back to like well, really, any of the silent help games or even resident evil, that's typically not an option. I mean, you can pull that off in some areas. But a lot of the times you're kind of forced to deal with things.and in this game.

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Shane Koski: There are plenty of opportunities where, if you're if you're good about it, you can actually kind of make your way through pretty dangerous areas without, you know, getting the dreaded exclamation point

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Chris:  also have either of you played fear effect.

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Dave: Nope.

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Chris: no, I don't, think, I have, I have not played it either, and that's why I ask. I will say that the art style and the cutscenes is very reminiscent of the art style from fear effect, which is also another game so cool. I don't know about the gameplay. I don't know if it borrow anything from that, but definitely the the art style and the cutscenes very much reminded me of what was going on in, especially with the advertising and marketing for that game.

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Dave: All right. Let us listen to a little bit of signalis music. And then when we come back, we're going to set up the story and talk about.

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Chris: and we'll just cut that there

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Dave: so in signalis you play as an android a a quote replica android named Elster. You wake up out of a kind of pod on a ship. The ship has crashed, and your companion, named Arianne, has gone missing. You again. You play as an android elster has a very distinctive look the way her face looks. She doesn't have feet. She has a little weird goat

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Dave: feet as she walks around. Just kind of

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Dave: the it stops at the ankle. That's that's how her legs look so very obviously not human. You're looking for this companion on the planet that you

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Dave: crash land on you learn as you go about different kinds of replica Elster is not actually your name. It's the model of replica that you are. But for all intents and purposes it works as a name

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Dave: for Elster. Here you get out of your ship. You go out onto the surface. You find a big hole in the ground off to a good start which leads to an office. And a computer screen that reads.

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Dave: great holes are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice. Things have learned to walk that ought to crawl. Remember our promise.

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Dave: And that quote I had to look that up. It sounded cool to me, and I was like, Hmm! I wonder if that's a quote? It is. It's from the Festival by HP. Lovecraft. So we have a little bit of Lovecraft influence in the story as well.

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Dave: You go down into this station called Sirpinsky. It's on this planet called Lang, which is a vocational station.

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Dave: The station is a vocational station for a war effort against something called the Empire. So, going through this station, looking for your companion.

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Dave: Arian, so I will open it up to you guys. I don't want to go deeper into what's going on in the story. Not that like

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Dave: we could spend the non spoiler part talking about specifics, because it's very dreamlike and weird in the first place. But

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Dave: What about this story like? Jumped out as being interesting to you guys.

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Shane Koski: Well, I think right off the bat, at least for me, the the mix of and this happens very, very quickly. But the the mix of

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Shane Koski: sci-fi, and very like overt like almost occult themes. That really

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Shane Koski: stuck out to me. And I think part of that. It's like 1. One of my favorite movies is Event horizon. And so like, that was one of the things I thought of almost immediately with, this is like, Oh, we're we're going out into deep space. And there's like weird eldritch shit happening like, Hmm, okay. So II don't know if, like, maybe the developers are also fans of the movie. I'm not sure but

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Shane Koski: but yeah, that that was like the first thing that popped up to me

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Dave: it interesting. 2 weeks in a row. That event horizon has been brought up on the show. It was brought up many times in the dead space episode as well.

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Dave: so it deserves it. It's classic. It sounds cool. I'll never watch it, but it sounds cool.

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Shane Koski: Oh, you should. It's totally cheesy now it is. Yeah, you should, Sam Neil. Just choose scenery

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Chris: such a good movie. And I'm gonna I'm gonna echo just what Shane said right off the bat. This is a game that reminded me a lot of event, horizon or dead space. I thought that was the direction this game was going to go.

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Chris: The game is. The game struck me as immediately as something

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Chris: that was deliberately trying to be cryptic.

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Chris: Yeah, that is definitely something that maintains throughout. And I have. I have some criticisms towards that. Honestly, it's especially while playing through it

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Chris: the first time. I think there's a lot of things that II don't like the way it does it, or that I don't really like the way it does storytelling. It's definitely something that

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Chris: for me at least, had to simmer a little bit before things started clicking in my head. Maybe I'm completely off base, and we'll talk about that later, I'm sure. But this is this is something I looked at, and I think this is a problem with a lot of indie games, in my opinion.

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Chris: Whereas

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Chris: sometimes, like I look at a game like Silent hill or or resident evil, and I feel like the objective right off the bat in both those games is rather clear. So in resident evil. Of course the objective is to to get out of the mansion and Silent hill. It's to to find your daughter, and the same thing silent hill to is to to find Mary, and not Mary. Is it Mary's wife? And I hope is his wife? Not? I'm getting all confused now, but anyway, is to find your dead wife.

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Chris: and you find tidbits and extra lore around that stuff

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Chris: within the game itself. Stuff to expand the world and and learn more about what's going on

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Chris: here. It kind of seems to be the inverse where this game wants you to know about the world and what's going on. And I never really felt like I had any

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Chris: real, true, objective, and and even the objective itself, which

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Chris: which is, you know, first thing is, here's a photograph I need to find, my friend. It doesn't really seem as driving as a factor as what you got in either resident, evil or silent hill, and it was more like, Hey, here's all this stuff we want to tell you about everything else going on. This is what's more important.

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Chris: and that that's very hard to digest, especially right off the bat. II think

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Shane Koski: I think that's a fair assessment, and I would say that it's a very, very fine line that a game has to walk.

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to be purposefully and overtly cryptic without being like infuriatingly so. And I think there are times where this game does cross that line. I was never like....I was never really put off by it. I mean, right before we started recording this episode. I was telling Dave that like part of the reason, you know, apart from the fact that I'm gonna talk about this game in like 5 min. But that I really wanted to finish, it was because it it really did kinda hook me and in a time in my life right now, where, like II do not have like free time that does not exist. Being able to squeeze that in and get this game done. I was really happy about that, because I wanted to see this through, and I can't always say that about some of the games that we play for the show. And so

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Shane Koski: so it it was never so agree. Just that, like, I was just like, Man, I don't. You know what I'm gonna put this down like, I don't even know what this game is trying to do. But there are definitely some things. And honestly, they happen very early, like very, very early. That immediately kind of stuck out to me as like

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Shane Koski: this seems nonsensical like this. This feels like a like a puzzle or a cryptic thing for the sake of being a puzzle with no like real reason for it to exist.

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Dave: Yeah, I think that I

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Dave: II dug into it. I it sounds like I dug the cryptic nature of the story, and kind of trying to put the pieces together, or at least arrange them in an order that makes sense.

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Dave: Maybe not the perfect way as we'll get into in the spoiler section. But I think II got into that more than the both of you. But I agree with Chris. It is a game that is better. If you

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Dave: play it and let it simmer a little bit. Let those thoughts bounce around in your head, because II think there is a quality to this where I do think they walk that line of

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Dave: giving you

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Dave: pieces that don't fit together, but they're still like presented in a way where you want to know how they fit together. Which is how I experienced this like II said earlier, this inspired a great deal of

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Dave: theory crafting on my part, which is again not something I do a whole lot the last couple of games that made me do that were immortality, which that was like a huge thing for me, trying to figure out what was going on in that story, and return. All was the other one big one. That

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Dave: kind of tells a story in a similar way, where nothing really makes total sense ever. But they give you enough stuff that does that. I'm then inspired to do the work on my part. So you guys are right, though it is told in a extremely nonlinear, sometimes nonsensical order.

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Dave: Not nonsensical in the way that, like nothing will fit together in a way that's satisfying, in my opinion, but they will present things to you way out of order. There's a kind of dreamy logic to the way the story is told, and the way the the game progresses, where like sometimes, you'll just cut to a different time and place. And are you the same character during this. Who knows? We? We're not sure, and then you'll go back to a place where you were before, and it's very different in a way that

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Dave: kind of doesn't make a lot of sense, but it will if you just kind of roll with it. They also

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Dave: obfuscate some of the information from you by using different languages in the game. There's a lot of German text. There's a lot of Chinese and Japanese, if I remember right, text little things that will flash on the screen. It'll just be a German word, and I'm like, Well, I don't speak German, so

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Dave: I guess I can go look that up later. But right now I don't know anything about that, so

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Dave: they are kind of hiding stuff from you in that way. It was developed by a German company wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. Rose engine is a German 2 person development team. Yeah.

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Chris: and something interesting. I heard, too. And this could be an outside inspiration, and I think I'm not taking credit for this. I think it was 1 h one decision. But if it's not, I apologize to whoever I heard this from I can't remember right off the top. My head here, but inspiration a little bit from Firefly, because if you read the characters, names. They are both

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Chris: German and Asian. I think it's more like

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Chris: I don't. I don't know if it's in your Korea. I don't know if it was a Korean, or Japanese, or Chinese, or which of the 3 languages? But it was definitely Asian in inspired so having that mix up of languages is something I heard is what happened in Firefly, so I wanted to bring that up, and I think at least Shane would have some appreciation for that, or at least know what I'm talking about.

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Shane Koski: Yeah, yeah, for sure. That that actually is something that I did pick up on just particularly like the the inclusion of

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Shane Koski: Chinese is just being like a you know, a companion language to you know English. And what have you? It's sort of just being integrated in that way. Yeah, those that was very much reminiscent of that.

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Dave: Yeah, it's it's kind of set in one of these space future societies where we can't just take for granted that English is going to be used for everything. So you see, I recognize Korean text on the safes that you open in the game. They have a Korean warning labels on them. So they are incorporating a lot of different stuff. And like I have never been to the Iss, but I assume that they have different languages up there because it's an international thing. And you you're not just gonna take that for granted. And II think the society in this setting also works the same way. It's worth mentioning. Also, like we said, this is sci-fi. There's some eldritch horror going on, or at least some  some weird stuff. You know. We have a Lovecraft reference. You you find the book, the King in yellow. In that computer room at the beginning of the game. We also have this cool, like space communism.

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Dave: Setting as well like You are part of the nation, and you see propaganda posters for the nation. There are lots of instruction manuals for people, or how people are supposed to like conduct themselves under the rules of this nation. You see, discipline reports for people who broke the rules. I think that this ads, just a little cool bit of world building to the station because it's it's a. It's a dimly lit space station. We've been in places like that in video games before. But this one kind of stands out a little bit.

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Chris: Yeah, that's that's kind of explain. If I if I get to

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Chris: some spoilers here, you know, just cut me off. But the alternative to the nation is is the empire. And then talk about the Empress, and being able to manifest this bio resonances, but I think it's called in order to like manifest stuff for per people. and the Empress is in charge of the Empire. And they are counter to the nation. So it sounds like you have 2 warring, essentially authoritarian factions going at each other. II don't. You know. I'm not trying to do like a political lesson here. I don't national necessarily think the nation is is Communist, I mean, just in the name itself, with a with a nation-centric kind of viewpoint, with fascism being more the

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Chris: national like the love of like nation building blood and soil. When you get to what a what a nation is. And there's there's similar aspects to how fascism and communism has been carried out within. You know our history very, very similar aspects. So I mean, either way, it's a totalitarian

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Chris: regime that's definitely in charge, or that you're under, or you're running around. And the information you're getting, and of course the other side is is made to sound Utopic, but who really knows? Because everything is propagandist? You know, propagandist material and everything you're reading is, is making both sides sound fantastic at the end. They're at war, and you're that's kind of the backdrop to what you are doing

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Chris: as you're you're transversing throughout all these environments. So yeah, is that totally important? A little bit, but not really

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Chris: it. It does provide some key back story to is what's going on in in the key plot, I think. But it's it's not really the central focus, no, not the central focus at all, but it is background.

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Dave: the conditions that people were living under in the station that you're going through. And I kind of latched on to Communism as a way we'll talk about with the inventory limit earlier, but or later. But they gave, you know, a a very

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Dave: Communist sounding reason for why you have limited inventory, you know. Yeah, private property is a privilege and stuff like that. So yeah.

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Dave:  yeah, Shane, did you dig the this? The setting, the kind of more, the more grounded setting other than the sci-fi stuff.

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Shane Koski: Yeah, yeah, I think some of these things sometimes can be

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Shane Koski: mostly just superfluous. But

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Shane Koski: I think the inclusion of like the back story about the the war, and like the split between like the nation and the Empire, and kinda how that falls into place with how we end up with the characters that we end up with.

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Shane Koski:  I wouldn't. I mean, technically, it is integral to the story itself. But even if you didn't fully understand all of that, at the very least, it it provides a lot of really great sort of like

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Shane Koski: window addressing slash like scaffolding for the rest of the game that otherwise, if you didn't have that, I think like you said earlier, it would just be yes, another generic, derelict spaceship. Fantastic. Put it this way.

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Dave: We're talking about it here as part of the world building and setup for the story. But when we get to the spoiler section. I am not gonna mention it one time. I have much grander things to talk about in this spoiler section. It's it's very secondary to everything else. So I think I think, unless you guys have anything else about the story to bring up, you know, in this non spoiler part. I think that we've said what we need to say, although I wanna give a a little piece of advice to new players.

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Dave: If you start playing this game, which I hope you do. I think it's great. Don't worry if you don't understand what's going on in the story. Maybe take some notes. That was a big help for me. Obviously, I'm taking notes for a podcast, episode. But I'm, i'm imagining. If I played this without note, taking

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Dave: all the stuff that would have fallen through the cracks and kind of hurt my understanding of the story. So I do think this is a game that benefits from

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Dave: putting in a little extra work to try and understand it, or maybe even playing it multiple times.

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Chris: Yeah, I would. I would agree. Definitely. Yeah, don't go into this thinking you're going to understand at all. It it does require

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Chris: some, some reflection, some thought.

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Chris: Maybe even watch an analysis video, because I watched an analysis video. There's no shame in that, because putting everything together after one playthrough, especially if you don't have time.

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Chris: It'll help it. It definitely helped me get at least a basis for my thought, and then I have more to add to it when we get there. But no shame. Yeah.

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Shane Koski: yeah, no, definitely not. And I you know II will say that I absolutely did not piece together.

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Shane Koski: not not even just not everything, but probably what was going on. In the story just kinda by my lonesome. So there! There are other people that have done some really great legwork out there. There's there's actually one in particular that I was looking at that is a very in depth. Write up of this. So

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Shane Koski: feel feel free to go and and dive down that rabbit hole after you've played this at least once.

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Dave: I am excited to talk about the story more in the spoiler section, because I do think this is a game where

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Dave: 3 different people could play it and come out with 3 interpretations of what's happening. It is one of those games. I can't wait. I can't wait. Yeah, gonna be good.

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Dave: So we kind of mentioned earlier this inspiration from playstation one and 32 bit eras of video games. I think that this is most apparent in the gameplay. Of course, if you can, if you have the experience to relate back to those games. But in the visuals of this.

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Dave: This gave me th, this, didn't you do? This doesn't look like the original resident evil. This looks much crisper and better, in my opinion, because it's, you know, more, much more advanced technology we're working with here. But it is reminiscent

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Dave: of that. It's worth mentioning that despite the inspiration from classic survival. Horror. It does not have the fixed camera angles that shift from room to room like in those old games. Do you always have this kind of

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Dave: third person isometric perspective from the same angle every single time. So that metal gear solid comparison definitely fits in that. For sure, it's basically the same camera angle.

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Dave: yeah. The

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Dave: playstation. One aesthetic, I think, comes in in these first person segments. They're quite short in comparison, and maybe a short little thing, or maybe you'll go to interact with an object, and it will zoom in up close in first person, where you can mess with a computer and the floppy disks, or something like that. So I think that Aesthetic is here. But it's definitely don't expect this to look like a playstation. One game.

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Chris: II do think I actually would kind of push back, I think, going back to the Fear Effect visuals. If you go to a sell shaded game, it has a lot of the feelings on that. Now. The Pre render backgrounds. Of course, the backgrounds themselves. I think, yeah, definitely, they they're gonna look a lot better, but they're definitely inspired. You know, the resolution is going to be higher. What I think is interesting, though, is that the default setting

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Chris: isn't 60 Hertz.

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Chris: It's 24 hertz.

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Chris: If you go into the options menu and you go to settings, which

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Chris: I believe that's the cinematic

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Chris: frame rate. When you think so it is. Yeah, yeah. Now you can select 60 Hertz or 59 Hertz, and I think it's 23 Hertz, or 24 Hertz, but the default is 24 Hertz.

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Chris: and I think that's that's really interesting.

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Chris: that that would be an option. I can't figure out why that is, I tried to really rack my brain as to why I

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Chris: changed the resolution. I changed. Well, change the frame rate. I didn't see much of a difference.

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Chris: and I mean my PC. At least can handle that. Because this game isn't very demanding. But

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Chris: II do think if it does anything to make it more cinematic to have those lower frames per sec. You know, lower frames per second, that you know it kind of does enhance that

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Chris: feel, at least, and you could probably bump this up to perhaps maybe a dreamcast. Feel if you really wanted to. But I don't think it's as clean as what the dreamcast was doing at the time, because there are a little bit more. J, there's a little bit more jankiness to the to the Polygons they're in there the shading with on the Polygons themselves is A is a little rougher than what it possibly could be today. And that's very deliberate and very intentional, which is why you're you're saying this is not something the Playstation do

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Chris: can do. No, absolutely it couldn't. It looks way better than that.

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Chris: But this game is meant to be that nostalgia blanket that reminds you of the days. This is what if you're if you don't play playstation and you did. But you don't play playstation today. This is what your mind is going to tell you that a playstation, one game looked like I think they did a really good job of creating that

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Dave: they also have a a CRT filter you can throw over the the visuals, which I didn't, but it's cool that it's there.

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Shane Koski: I tried that, and it did not seem playable. III generally don't like those fabricated CRT filters for that reason, like it looks cool like just looking at the screen, but actually trying to play with that is.

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Shane Koski: no bueno

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Dave: doesn't feel like the way it was designed to be played being able to recognize the items and stuff like that. But it's cool that it's there.

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Dave: yeah. Also worth noting that there's not a whole lot of ui while you're playing. It's very clean screen, and then you go into one of those

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Dave: old silent hill style, resident evil style. Menus like. That's where you see your health is on those menus if you get hit, Elster will kind of walk

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Dave: in a laborious way. If you get hit a bunch she'll really struggle to walk so you can see that but you don't actually see a health bar, or they go to those color coding blue means you're at full health in this game, and then yellow and then red, etc. So it's it's a really clean experience, as far as that goes, too, which I think I think helps a lot. I mean, it's not.

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Dave: It's not dead space with the way that that game handles. Ui, but it is still clean lets you focus on what's going on, what's in the rooms with you cause you do have to sleuth around a little bit to find all the stuff you can interact with.

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Chris: And if you play on easy mode, like I did, then you have plenty of health. There you go.

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Dave: Yeah, so did I. Oh, yeah, awesome love to. I always support people playing on easy mode don't even need to give a reason just fucking, do it if you want to.

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Chris: I'm here to experience the story. Yeah, not not get frustrated getting murdered.

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Dave: This is a horror game. That is the genre that I would place it in. Would you guys say that this game is scary? Did it ever get scary tense? Anything like that?

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Shane Koski: No, no, II think it has. It has a lot of atmosphere going for it. And I appreciate that a hundred percent. But there was never a point where I

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Shane Koski: felt fear at all.

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Dave: Yeah, same.

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Chris: yeah, I think it's mostly the protect top down perspective that's not going to allow for that. They come really close at the beginning, I think when you're just starting to figure everything out, and you get one of the first displays of the enemies. And

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Chris: you start to get.

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Chris: you know, kind of the notion that something is not right there. They have some very, very on the nose imagery that's going on during those sections. And of course it's gore a lot of bodyboard that that's kind of what I feel like they're going for, but eventually, like things that should be scary, I felt became more frustrating.

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Chris: And you know we'll get to that in the game play when it comes to enemy placement, but because

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Chris: the enemies were just more obstacles that you're you're supposed to avoid, I feel took away from a lot of the fear while the atmosphere was fantastic. It's more of

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Chris: it. Didn't feel like the game was necessarily even trying to be scary. It was just trying to make you uneasy.

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Dave: Yeah, I would

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Dave: go ahead.

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Shane Koski: I say, yeah. And I think. And this, this may just be me. But the the other

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Shane Koski: part of what makes it

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Shane Koski: not genuinely frightening to me honestly, is is the the perspective, and that might sound weird. Maybe I don't know, but

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Shane Koski: the only games that I can think of where I was genuinely frightened by something not not just like that's weird, or like man. That sure is creepy looking, but like genuinely like, Oh, shit like those are all

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Shane Koski: 3 dimensional games, and whether that's first person is 100% scarier, in my opinion, but even just like

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Shane Koski: behind the shoulder. Third person 3 dimensional is going to have.

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Shane Koski: in my opinion, a much bigger impact in in that particular arena like if you have this isometric view.

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Shane Koski: I know that there are several other horror games that have this because they're, you know, indie titles, and they want to go like the twod route. And

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Shane Koski: I will never find that actually scary just because I think the the realness factor just isn't there for me?

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Dave: Yeah, I think that camera angle plays into it. Because if you think about games that games that have these third person but fixed camera. That shifts.

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Dave: That's the developer choosing what they want you to see in each room, whereas in this one you you see everything in a room. As you know. Maybe you have to move up to a a hired portion of the screen, but you see everything. Sometimes enemies will pop out of the floor or something like that. But that's about all you're gonna get.

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Dave: So II do think the camera angle plays into it. But, I agree. I think it was you, Chris, that said, I don't think this game's trying to scare the shit out of you. It's trying to give you a a tense

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Dave: but very atmospheric experience. That's mainly what it's trying to do. The

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Dave: things, you see might be unsettling not to spoil some visual things that happen with the levels that you're in. But when I first saw some of those I was like, that's weird and creepy. But I like it. I'm not scared of it, you know.

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Dave: lot of gore and body horror, as you said as well. The enemies have awesome designs. They all look creepy and weird, but they are all kinda

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Dave: lumbering and goofy to a point where I'm not scared of them. I can. I'm I'm fucking Barry Sanders. I'm juking them out. I'm running through hallways like.

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Dave: I'm not scared of the enemies in in a way that like

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Dave: when the first necromorphs pop out in dead space, I was like, oh, what is that? Oh, it's coming right at me like that! Nothing like that, really, in this game. This game does some cool other things, though, like there's a lot of visual glitching that goes on. And I think that the sound design throughout the game is like the real winner for setting up atmosphere, especially.

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Dave: Remember, like those enemies where you have to tune your radio and your radios. Yeah, it's awesome. Because it's it's really unnerving. It's a I don't want to hear it. It's a a

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Dave: it's a droning like sound that it bothers you. So stuff like that. Other enemy sounds environmental sounds. Really good stuff. Just to set up this really cool atmosphere.

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Chris: Yeah, II like, I like what you talk about the glitching.

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Chris: Yeah, because I thought the glitching was was really cool. And that's another one of those elements that lets you know that. Hey? There's more to what's going on than what you're seeing. Because why would an enemy glitch out? I also thought at that time the first time I saw it was Oh, shit crimson heads because I, fucking hate

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Chris: crimson heads. And

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Chris: oh, man, I bet you really like some of the mechanics in this game.

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Chris: But I that was something I kind of saw coming.

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Chris: because, like, there's no reason for it to glitch out

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Chris: unless something is going to accompany it. And yeah, II

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Chris: have. If I was, I was right. And so but yeah, that that is part of the unsettlement right there. That is, part of the unease is letting you know that, hey? Something's not right here, not just in the world that you're in, but probably with the thing you just quote killed.

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Dave: Yep.

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Dave: I also think that the music in this game is really good for setting up atmosphere as well. You have a lot of like the

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Dave: really unsettling industrial music that, you know combat, horror, game, combat, music that you know the grinding and the pounding, and all of that stuff. But this games music, what I'll remember from it is the the soft reserved like piano that plays in a lot of places like in the Save rooms

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Dave: or important story rooms. Maybe while you're doing a puzzle or something like that during cutscenes. It's really heavy on this like really soft, sad, melodic piano stuff. And I thought that was excellent done by 1,000 eyes and cicada sirens. Those are the 2 musicians groups. I'm not sure that are credited with the soundtrack.

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Shane Koski: Yeah, and and not to

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Shane Koski: take away from what they've done, or or besmirch it in any way, because I think it's it is very well done, and III dug it

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Shane Koski: But the reason I dug it is because

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Shane Koski: th this, this is probably one of the biggest parts of this game where I'm just like y'all just ripped off Silent Hill. That's that's that's what happened here like, and that's what I was saying is

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Shane Koski: the the music, I think, for me was one of the spots, one of the few. It's not many, but this one was particularly notable where I feel like we crossed from like

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Shane Koski: respectful homage to other games to just like we basically just kind of copied Silent Hill's homework a little bit.

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Chris: See? I don't. I don't care, because Konami's not doing anything with that silent hill homework. So let someone else do something with that silent hill homework. Let them rip it off like I get that as an homage. It's an homage to Silent Hill, and the people who are gonna get the most appreciation of it are probably people who have played Silent Hill. But again, like, I said with earlier, with the visuals.

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Chris: This is how you remember it looking like, and you remember it sounding like, if you have not played it in a very long time. So for people who may and not have played Silent Hill in the past 5 years like you and myself, Shane, this is going to be like, Oh, yeah, this is like a giant memory, nostalg. And it hits all the right notes.

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Chris: Umhm and II see you wrote this in your notes here, Dave. When they played Moonlight Sonata, I lost my shit because I was like.

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Chris: yes, this is this is straight up from resident evil. I love this, and then would incorporate other classical tunes into it for various plot points which II loved as well. In a stark contrast to the more industrial sounds that you would hear generally throughout the game. And yeah, is it a little on the nose? I will agree with you, Shane. Yes, it is.

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Chris: But again, I'm fine with someone doing something

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Chris: that is a little too, on the nose to Silent Hill, because we're

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Chris: you're not going to get it. Otherwise, let's be real. And I'm I'm okay with it.

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Dave: No faith in the Blooper team with the silent hill to remake. That's the smart position to take. Yeah.

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Dave: kind of continually. Kind of continuing.

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Dave: I can't talk kind of continuing along those lines of inspiration. And maybe copying a little bit of homework. We'll talk about the gameplay insignalis. This is very, very inspired by those games I mean, like I said. I played resident evil remake. And then 3 days later, I played Signalis, and I was like, Yep, this is the same game. Basically, the gameplay is exactly the same

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Dave: you. You run around, I mean, the only thing that's different is, I'm not struggling with

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Dave: I'm not struggling with tank controls. If I'm playing the original resident evil. You can play with tank controls if you're a fucking weirdo. I don't know why anyone would choose that.

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Chris: Yeah, it does not work here. No.

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Dave: there's there's I. I've heard the the the rationale that the the tank controls and the fixed camera perspective work together in tandem. But this doesn't have that camera perspective. So why, why would you do that to yourself? Anyway?

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Dave: it is third person gameplay. You're running around picking up stuff, picking up things to solve puzzles, doing a little bit of combat. We will dig into all of those a little bit. But first let's talk about that inventory limit, since it's already been brought up, you are limited to 6 items in this game, which, was kind of the hard mode in resident Evil one. If you play as Chris

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Dave: and

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Dave: they do give you a little bit of diagetic explanation for this again, that they call it the rule of 6 that private property is a privilege, and that each person may only have 6 pieces of property everything else belongs to the nation. That dieetic reason doesn't help when you're frustrated by the amount of things you can carry. But I did think it was kind of cool that they were like, we're gonna tie this

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Dave: genre staple mechanic into the story a little bit

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Shane Koski: I was about. Yeah, I was just say, I hate it. I hated it so much like it. It was the.

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Shane Koski: It was probably the biggest

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Shane Koski: detractor in this game for me, and and and actually

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Shane Koski: possibly one of the only ones. Now that I really think about it, the amount of forced backtracking that you have to do because of this 6 item limit just feels so bad, and and not only that, but

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Shane Koski: there are. There are some items that, frankly, should have just been just functions like, should it just been something that was mapped to a button for you like the thing that immediately comes to mind. We're we're I can't believe we're we're circling back to the fucking duct tape, MoD. But like

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Shane Koski: the flashlight, why is the

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Shane Koski: and according to the description in game, the shoulder mounted flashlight. Why is that something that takes up a space in your 6 space inventory like that's insane. It's personal property. Yeah. Oh, God, it sucks so much.

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Shane Koski: And the fact that you only have one like accessory equipped slot. So you really can't feasibly carry more than one of those, even though there are plenty of times where you really want to like having a flashlight, and like a you know, a good

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Shane Koski: 4 of those like stun rods, or something to get yourself prep to just take out some fools like that would be really nice, and I know I know there's like there's gotta be at least one person. Maybe it's one of you. And well, it's not Chris. He hates it, too. But maybe it's you, Dave. I don't know. But like there's somebody out there that is, gonna make the argument of like, yeah, but that's like part of the mechanic like that's you gotta make hard choices. Bro, and I'd be like.

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Shane Koski: well, that's like your opinion, man, because II hate it. II feel like it's a really bad mechanic.

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Shane Koski: I think limited inventory, extremely limited inventories like that are not great, anyway. But you actually made a really good point there, in that this is equivalent to the air, quotes hard mode for resident evil like I feel like that, says something in and of itself, that maybe maybe we should have thought about this one a little bit more and correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know if either of you saw this, but I could have sworn that I saw something posted about

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Shane Koski: the Devs considering changing that limit.

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Chris: I didn't see that. No, I can't remember where

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Chris: but I've heard that I'm not going to say that that's accurate or true. But II recall hearing it.

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Chris: That seems like.

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Dave: so like you guys said you both played on easy. That seems like it would be a very logical thing to do is easy. Mode lets you carry 8 items, or something like that, but

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Chris: 8 would have been perfect. 8. And and the way this game was designed would have been perfect.

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Chris: And it's not the entire game for me when this game started out for probably about, let's say, the first quarter of it. It wasn't.

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Chris: It? Wasn't that annoying? It was very similar to resident evil like, do you want to pick up the the health? Or do you want to hold on to bullets? And it's like, Okay, well, I'll I'll hold on to the bullets because I won't need health if I kill. The things that are in front of me makes sense. You know the offense better than defense.

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Chris: But then you start getting later into the game, and there isn't a real natural progression to the way that you pick things up, and the way that they're applied to puzzles. That's that's when it started irritating me. That's when I was like I if this had 2 more slots, because when it comes to your weapons.

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Chris: the weapons that you have are like you have a pistol for most of the game. You have a pistol and a shotgun, and there's other weapons you get as well. But for the majority of the game those are the 2 weapons you have a choice from. But both of those weapons have limited ammunition the pistol takes about 2 to 3 shots to take anything down, so you need to have reserve ammunition on top of that. So those take up 2 slots. So not only do you have your weapon, you have your reserve ammunition, you probably want to want to help.

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Chris: And you're going to run into other things you're going to pick up. And there's 3 different health items

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Chris: that you can pick up. So there's not just like a green herb and a red herb. You have, like the green, the red, and the bluer, which I yeah, much like resin. Evil is very similar where you can combine one with another one to get like an insta. Heel. But you can't combine it with the other one. It's it's

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Chris: it. Just your inventory gets bogged down really quick, especially if you're trying to pick things up. And then later in the game. If you perform certain actions in certain rooms. You can't go back to those rooms to get items

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Chris: so

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Chris: like the item management, especially with the puzzles you picking up items, realizing you're full, having to navigate back to a save room to dump it off in a crate which is a universal crate, much like resin evil one. It's not like a specific crate.

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Chris: That would have been a disaster if they were individual. That would have been horrible.

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Chris: But yeah, thankfully. But that that became like a game, play loop in and of itself is, find the items go back to the room, progress a little bit, go back to the room, progress a little bit. Think about what you've seen. Pick up the items you need, use the items. Go back to the room to pick up the items you might need for a boss fight it it just became.

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Chris: It became almost more trouble than it was worth towards the later half, particularly when when the puzzle items became more and more spaced out

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Chris: and numerous. There are several puzzles in the back half of this game that require you to have a dozen or more items to complete it. And

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Shane Koski: yeah, so no, I,

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Shane Koski: I 100% agree. I would. Also, I just as a blanket statement, I don't think this mechanic adds anything of value to the game like to me this was

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Shane Koski: almost like slavish, like

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Shane Koski: adherence to the sort of like traditional mechanics, because of how heavily inspired this game

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Shane Koski: is by games like resident evil and things like that. I mean this, this mechanic is is pure, resident evil, actually. So

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Shane Koski: I don't even think it needed to be there, and honestly, this game would have been maybe not half as long, but you definitely could have shaved a couple of hours at the very least off of this games playtime, just by allowing the player to just carry

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Shane Koski: everything that you find like. There's it adds nothing of value.

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Dave: Yeah, the inventory limits

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Dave: force you to make meaningful choices about the stuff you carry. But I do agree that this game takes it a little bit too far with number one

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Dave: like you said a basic load out for going out. Exploring

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Dave: includes a weapon, because, like you can, you can run around and avoid most enemies, but not all of them. You do have to kill some stuff, so you have to take a weapon. You you should probably take a health. Item. I did not carry extra bullets with me, cause I wanted the extra space, and I was dedicated to not fighting stuff when I didn't have to

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Dave: but you're probably carrying a key that you picked up, cause it might unlock something, and then you're gonna pick up some stuff along the way, and you run out of

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Dave: space really quickly, so that sends you back to the box to drop off your stuff.

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Dave: The boxes are usually in save rooms, and this statistic at the end kind of told the story for me. For how often this loop is happening.

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Dave: They tell you when you beat the game. How often you save time between saves and my average time between saves in Signalis was 6 min.

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Dave: So that means every 6 min. I'm probably in there, because I'm bringing items back to the box.

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Dave: And the other thing is

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Dave: this game in particular, more so than I remember from the other ones that use. This kind of mechanic will give you items for puzzles, but then those puzzles will not be.

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Dave: Maybe there'll be a couple of hours later, or there's a couple you pick up early in the game that you don't use until the very end of the game. So I got in this situation where I was like.

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Dave: I'm gonna fill my inventory up with stuff I might need, or I'm gonna go see the puzzle be like, oh, maybe I need to bring the the Russian doll I found.

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Dave: Go back to the item box, get the doll. Oh, I'm missing a part of the Russian doll. It doesn't work. Go back to the item box, put the doll back. and then go explore some more and it just

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Dave: there's it's just a little bit off

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Dave: the one saving grace, I will say, is that item. Boxes are plentiful. They're always nearby, like it's always a minute or less to run back to one. But you're still running back to them constantly. And it's just it. It happens, a little bit too much, and I do think that, like

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Dave: giving you 2 more inventory slots would have fixed a lot of it.

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Dave: especially late in the game. You mentioned that there are several puzzles late where you need 6 items you

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Dave: to solve the puzzle, and you can only carry 6 items. So I'm either going to have to make multiple runs to the puzzle to drop stuff off, or I'm going to go there with no weapons, no health, nothing

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Dave: which which is doable but not ideal cause. What if there's what? If something busts out of the ceiling or something like that.

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Chris: Yeah, if all the enemies, too, if if some of them didn't respond.

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Chris: I think it would be more tolerable

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Chris: because the the knowledge that every single enemy can respawn. It almost makes it so. I don't even want to kill them unless I feel like I absolutely have to. And there's a method to completely dispose of them.

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Chris: But knowing like you, you get like, what? Maybe 9 of those items limited, not a whole lot. Yeah. So you have to put them in very specific spots. You know, you're going to go back and forth, and unless you're using a guide, you're not going to know that those are the spots you're really going to have to focus on. Because why would you? That's not. It's not going to be inherent unless you start taking another enemy over and over and over again. So

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Chris: II would say, the item box frequency is a lot easier, and I think it might be because just learning how to play the game more this, that second half, and and navigating back to the item box to do what I needed to do was was far more tolerable than it was at the beginning. But II think that's just because, too, it's like at the beginning I'm like, is this game with this is really, expect me to do this. And yeah, it you get conditioned to it.

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Chris: And but it's still not something I really enjoyed.

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Dave: Yeah, III wanna be like, I didn't hate this as much as it sounds like you guys did. But I I'm not like

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Dave: if they were like, we're patching in and we're raising it to 8. I would be like, Okay, cool. I'm not mad about this at all. I don't think the game is

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Dave: I don't think this is like the

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Dave: the pillar that this game stands up on, or something. They're all come crumbling down. If you remove the inventory limit or something like that. So it's I like. When I was playing I was not that annoyed by it, but when I'm thinking about it and kind of discussing it, I'm

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Dave: thinking, back to yeah, I did save every 6 min, because that's how often I'm running to take an item back to the box cause the next room I go in is going to have more items to pick up. They're probably going to be important. I want to have them. So I better make room in advance. And it's it's just like

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Dave: that's not what I want my attention to be focused on. When I'm playing this game, but it was a focus for sure.

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Chris: It becomes snake and just evade everything.

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Shane Koski: Yeah, I mean, I guess just to add my sort of, I guess final thought onto that. I

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Shane Koski: I do really despise this mechanic, as I think I've already sort of elaborated on. But the thing that

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Shane Koski: really compounded. That issue is what Chris mentioned about

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Shane Koski: any enemy that has been down has the potential to stand back up at any random moment

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Shane Koski: and attack you again, and

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Shane Koski: it made that. And, by the way, my average save was about 8 min, I think, is what it was. It was like 8 and a little bit of change. So in this, in the same neighborhood, so roughly every 8 min I was hitting a save spot, and

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Shane Koski: that run back is, is always just frankly a pain in the ass, because not only do you have to run back after you've seen like a puzzle, and you're like.

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Shane Koski: oh, right, I need this, but my inventory is full, or you go into a room, and you're like man. I really wish I could pick up those shotgun shells. But I've got this random bullshit that I picked up that I don't know what it's for yet, and you have to go back, and that's bad enough on its own, but then, having the possibility of stuff just standing back up again wasting more of your ammo, or how

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if you get hit?

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Shane Koski: Yeah, it just it doesn't. It doesn't feel great. Is it a deal breaker? Obviously not. You know. I played through the whole thing and

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Shane Koski: overall. I enjoyed my experience, but, like

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Shane Koski: the game would be better better for it. If that was.

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Shane Koski: I won't say necessarily removed, but but tweaked a little bit. I think even those extra 2 slots would probably be enough, because it's it's interesting, actually, that, Chrissy, I think you were the first one that mentioned that. But now that I think about it, you're you're absolutely right. I always felt like I was just one or 2 items shy of like doing what I wanted to do.

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Dave: Yeah, it would also be helpful if you could drop items and pick them back up at a later time. The only way to free up a spot without going back to the item box is to either like, use a health item when you don't need one or you can destroy

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Dave: ammo, and I found myself destroying a lot of pistol ammo to make room for a key that I just found. Because that was the more convenient thing to do, and I wasn't fighting stuff that much, anyway.

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Dave: one thing that I'm glad they didn't bring from Resident Evil one is you can save as many times as you want. And I was after after playing that, I was like, Thank God, I'm I'm gonna save a hundred times, and I probably did save 100 times.

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Dave: It's it's just

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Dave: II get, you know, the added tension of like, I only have 2 ink ribbons left. I can only save 2 more times until I find more. But

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Dave: that just doesn't work with like, I said in the resident evil episode I have so much free time, but I still can't just like

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Dave: play a game, and. you know.

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Dave: stop when I want to stop every single time. Sometimes things happen. I need to take care of something, or you know, I need to eat dinner or something, and I don't want to just leave my PC. Running.

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Dave: or something like that, so I'm glad you can save as many times as you want in this.

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Chris: The game also mocks you where you say No, if

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Dave: if you go to save, and it asks you, do you want to save? If you say no, it'll be like, Hmm! You're gonna regret that it's just kind of funny

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Dave: that creep me out. Actually, that was kind of scary like, Oh, fuck you, I'm gonna save that. I suppose I will. Yeah, we we've kind of talked about fighting enemies or not fighting them. I already said II chose not to fight most of them. Part of that is because I don't think that I think the combat is designed to be the way it is which is not super fun to fight stuff.

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Dave: It's again very reminiscent of the games that inspired it. You press a button to raise your weapon, you can aim with the right stick the auto aim is is decent. You press another button to fire, but you are kind of like.

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Dave: plant it in place when you're shooting. It's it's just not fun to fight stuff. So I stopped fighting stuff.

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Chris: Yeah, I go ahead, Shane.

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Shane Koski: II kind of took the opposite approach. Also II never once destroyed any ammunition, because the the hoarder in me was just like, no, I might. I might need that later. And then, of course, I ended the game with like 30 extra pistol bullets and a bunch of other garbage. But you know it's fine.

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Shane Koski: but no, II didn't.

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Shane Koski: I didn't. I didn't engage with every enemy that I came across. There were definitely times

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Shane Koski: where well, actually, most of the times that I purposefully didn't engage. It was kind of out of frustration, actually, more than anything where I was just like.

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Shane Koski: yeah, I can't be fucked to deal with this right now. I'm just gonna kind of sneak through because I've got shit to do. And

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Shane Koski: I don't want to deal with you guys. It was less about like, you know, survival or conserving resources. And that's probably a byproduct of playing on easy a little bit. But

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Shane Koski: but no, for the most part II did engage in most combat scenarios. And yeah, it wasn't fantastic, and I don't know if this was an easy mode thing. Maybe somebody can

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Shane Koski: keep me honest on this. But

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Shane Koski: the sort of like auto lock on that the guns do was actually kinda janky and a little detrimental in some scenarios.

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Dave: It wasn't perfect for sure. I played on normal. But yeah, that that auto lock on was.

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Dave: Sometimes you'd you'd pull up your gun. It you would. It would clearly not be focusing on the enemy it's supposed to or like it's pointing at the enemy. But the little ridicule is not there, so it's not gonna hit them. If you shoot, so put it down, pull the gun back up, and now it works. And now I can shoot.

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Shane Koski: Yeah, there were definitely a number of times where I got smacked in the face by an enemy because I was trying to properly aim at it. I do like the fact, though, that they have the sort of

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Shane Koski: like shrinking ridicule mechanic, where like.

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Shane Koski: if you wait long enough, if you're able to hold that aim long enough, you'll actually be more effective with your shot, which I thought was a nice touch.

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Chris: Yeah, I agree with that. A 100%, I think what both of you have said here, I fully agree with what I look at with the aiming mechanic.

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Chris: And again, this is going. I'm I'm gonna say, metal gear solid here again, because you have the laser pointer, which is not something you had in resident evil. One

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Chris: or 2 to my recollection. No, Id. On 3 I still haven't played 3, but it did remind me a lot. Once again a metal gear, solid and shooting a metal gear solid is also equally as awkward, except you only have to press one button as opposed to 2.

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Chris: Of course there's more ways to dispose of enemies in mail gear salad. You have a melee attack which you do here as well, but it doesn't really do anything. I think you can shove them down and kick their head in, which is a

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Chris: I think it's a silent hill thing, but in terms of the combat itself, it being as inconsistent as it was, it just gave me a false sense of expectations, and this became like

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Chris: extremely and irritating and annoying on the final boss. because I would be running around. And I'm used to

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Chris: the character just automatically pointing at it. Well, it wasn't 100% used to it. But there was some expectation with lock on, and it didn't lock on. But the aiming ridicule. Yeah, I love the aiming ridicule, and I try to get as close as possible, cause it also did extra damage, and that would conserve ammo, especially when you're running around, as as I did much like you, Dave, putting the extra ammo in the bin

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Chris: and just using it to reload when I got back to items item box, because they are so frequent. But you still want to conserve ammo, because I think it can only hold 9 9 rounds

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Chris: in a magazine. So if it takes 2 to 3 shots to take down an enemy.

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Chris: You're going to need to be replenishing fairly often.

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Chris: But other than that, yeah, combat is a little bit awkward. If you have the stun rods, it's a little bit better, but stun rods are hit, hit, hit, or miss, they're far more frequent than the flares, which is nice.

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Chris: and there there were more frequent than than other special items. But II didn't find myself carrying stun routes around that much just because I didn't want to get that close to the enemies. If I'm being perfectly honest, it's always better to fight from a distance. Actually, it's just it's just better to avoid them, because most of the time it is easy to avoid them and just not get into combat.

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Dave: The other piece of the puzzle for the gameplay is

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Dave: are the puzzles.

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Dave: the adventure gamy type puzzles again, taking from the survival horror inspirations you pick up items that you're not sure when you're gonna use it like I said, you know, pick up a Russian doll nesting doll, or you'll pick up a a little bird or something like that or floppy disk, and you don't know when you're gonna use it. But you know you will use it for a puzzle at some point. I thought that overall. These were

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Dave: a little less adventure. Logicky in some ways. I found myself like naturally figuring them out a lot more than I did in Silent Hill 2, or in remake, or something like that.

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Dave: I do think that these puzzles do get into

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Dave: a little too much of like. I solve this puzzle, and I get a key, and then I go unlock a door, and in that room there's another key, and I take that key, and I unlock a mail box, and in the mailbox is another key, and we get into some of those orders of operations a little too often, but I will take that over.

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Dave: Seeing a puzzle looking at the items I have, and going. I have no fucking idea which is how it happened in some of the other games that inspired this one.

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Shane Koski: Yep, no. 100. II don't typically say this. But II actually really liked the puzzles in this game. II really did. Ii, too, solved. I actually didn't use a guide for this game at all. By the way, which is rare honestly.

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Shane Koski: but I felt that the solutions to the puzzles were so natural that

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Shane Koski: I didn't. I never felt like I needed it.

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Shane Koski: Which was a honestly a great feeling like the fact that I could get through this whole game, and that this isn't like me patting myself on the back. It's more of just a Testament to. I think the design, really, that I was able to get through all of these puzzles and figure them out without really getting stumped too hard. But also they weren't brain dead easy.

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01:13:42.130 --> 01:14:06.509
Shane Koski: I think they really hit that sweet spot where you really feel good about solving the puzzles on your own. So II actually really applaud Rose engine for that one. I that's a really hard one to pull off, because even one of my favorite games, Silent Hill, 2 playing that on the harder difficulties also ups the difficulty of the puzzles, and it turns them into these

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01:14:06.790 --> 01:14:14.999
Shane Koski: complete bullshit, nonsensical things that no sane person would figure out. Unfortunately, this game doesn't do that.

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01:14:16.560 --> 01:14:36.029
Chris: I am going to echo Shane again here, and II did use a guide. So I'm not. I don't have the big brains that Shane have. There. There were a couple I was like, yeah, this is kind of stupid like one with the. There's one involving planet placement being in specific locations when other are specific locations.

424
01:14:36.090 --> 01:14:41.540
Chris: And then you had to get an item to place in something and then use another item to where the

425
01:14:41.600 --> 01:14:54.059
Chris: planets are like, I don't like this. But when it came to like radio puzzles and the frequencies. Because you have this radio device you can tune to mentioned earlier, to fight one of the enemies which I thought was one of the more clever ways to kill an enemy which you just

426
01:14:54.190 --> 01:15:21.000
Chris: to in the frequency to whatever it displays on screen 3 times, and they died. That was cool. But the radio puzzles. Specifically, one where you have to triangulate a signal in order to get to solve a puzzle over a location of it and some other item. I thought that was really cool. I thought the safes and the way you figured out how to get into the safes. I think that was appropriate. They give the player a lot of agency and a lot of leeway to figure things out.

428
01:15:22.340 --> 01:15:30.269
Chris: the only other one, I think I had a problem with is when you had to match the names, and maybe I'm recalling a different thing. But you had to pick the name with the ailment of a specific.

429
01:15:30.600 --> 01:15:42.369
Chris: a specific person. And that's just because you had to start reading the notes. And it was all from the computer. And all this stuff like that. I don't want to go too much into it, because it is a puzzle. But

430
01:15:42.710 --> 01:16:04.979
Chris: A lot of most of them were very, very, very intuitive, and I really did appreciate that the puzzles are definitely a highlight of this game. especially for survival horror fans. They're some of the strongest I've ever seen in a video game. They're good. I did use a guide for 2 or 3 puzzles, and I did use a guide

431
01:16:05.180 --> 01:16:14.190
Dave: to just give me a little help with what I should carry with me. When I start a new area like I'll look at a guide, and the first.

432
01:16:14.480 --> 01:16:39.239
Dave: you know, sentence of the guide I was looking at will say, Okay, bring, you know, whatever combination of guns, ammo, and health you wanna bring, and then also bring this one key item that's been in your box for 4 h. Take it out, you might need it. And I that's a a little help. That I appreciated, because sometimes those items go unused for so long that I forgot that they were there. Without scrolling through all the stuff

433
01:16:39.240 --> 01:17:00.719
Dave: in the in the item box. So puzzles are good also. Just a quick shout out to the map, this game has a great map. Just like the map in Silent Hill 2 where it shows you doors that you have not interacted with yet doors that are locked, doors that cannot be opened. It shows you. If you picked up all the items in a room. It's just it's good, real good map

434
01:17:00.980 --> 01:17:07.690
Shane Koski: it's it is. It is really good when it's there when it's there.

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01:17:07.710 --> 01:17:25.000
Shane Koski: 1 one last thing on the puzzles, though, that I did wanna mention is that while I think the the design of the puzzles is fantastic. I it did for me. It some of them are actually, I would say, maybe even a majority of them tended to fall into

436
01:17:25.250 --> 01:17:29.630
Shane Koski: that sort of like adventure. Gamy category of like

437
01:17:30.070 --> 01:17:37.490
Shane Koski: this is the puzzle, because we wanted to do a puzzle. Not that it necessarily makes much sense right now.

438
01:17:38.020 --> 01:17:49.189
Shane Koski: But that's I mean, that's, I guess, kind of nit, picky, because if you're getting into a game like this, you kind of are expecting that. But it is something that II did notice that

439
01:17:49.290 --> 01:17:57.160
Shane Koski: some of them were very much like integrated into the world in a sensible fashion, and then some of them were just like

440
01:17:57.230 --> 01:18:05.419
Dave: very outlandish things for the sake of having a puzzle. It felt like but minor great.

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01:18:06.800 --> 01:18:26.509
Dave: Alright, so I think that this is a good point to give some wrap up thoughts and recommendations before we get into that sweet suite spoiler section for this signalless episode. So guys, the question here at the end is, if you have any wrap up thoughts, give those. But who would you recommend Signalis to?

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01:18:27.650 --> 01:18:34.510
Shane Koski: I'll go ahead and take that one first. Well, my wrap up thoughts, I guess if it wasn't already evident is that I would

443
01:18:34.930 --> 01:18:54.539
Shane Koski: highly recommend playing this game. It it doesn't, even though I, even though I struggled to to fit it in. That's a personal problem. But it it really doesn't ask a lot of time from you, which is always nice. You can reasonably get it done in like 9 to 10 or 11 h, and

444
01:18:54.540 --> 01:19:09.869
Shane Koski: it's a it's a it's an enjoyable and satisfying experience. To who I would recommend. I would say that if you are a fan of you know those old school like survival horror games like resident evil or

445
01:19:09.870 --> 01:19:27.789
Shane Koski: Silent Hill, or you know Clock Tower, or any of those things definitely give this a try because I do not think you'll be disappointed. And even if you have like, just a passing interest in really any of the things that this game is trying to do or is, is

446
01:19:28.030 --> 01:19:47.789
Shane Koski: you know, espousing as as a major part of it, be it the the sort of sci-fi or the like, the futuristic sort of dystopia or the tinges of eldritch horror. Any of those things I really think there's a lot here to enjoy so so big big recommend on my part.

447
01:19:49.220 --> 01:19:58.020
Chris: II would just go with your standard recommend. Because I do think there are some flaws in this game, as we mentioned with the item inventory system.

448
01:19:58.270 --> 01:20:02.670
Chris: That's very redundant. I just said there, but the inventory system is

449
01:20:02.870 --> 01:20:22.450
Chris: is is going to turn a lot of people off. Some people are not going to want to hang with it, and is going to cause a lot of backtracking. So I'm just gonna stay with the recommend. And who would I recommend this to? I would recommend this to definitely fans of the original resin, evil and silent hill, especially just fans of the playstation era, and if you haven't

450
01:20:22.530 --> 01:20:25.809
Chris: played a game from that time and you remember it fondly.

451
01:20:26.230 --> 01:20:43.720
Chris: you're gonna definitely an encounter Signalis here, and you're going to get that warm rush of nostalgia, and you're going to be like. This is what these playstation games used to look like used to play like, even though it's significantly better. This is what your imagination is. Gonna tell you what these games are.

452
01:20:43.720 --> 01:21:00.439
Chris: And in that case, yes, technology is going to deliver. I certainly had a good time with it. Ii don't walk away with it from it, thinking it's a fantastic game. It is a very good game. There's definitely a lot of effort and love and attention to detail that was put into it.

453
01:21:00.460 --> 01:21:08.639
Chris: And also the story that we were about to get into. It takes a couple times. It takes some simmering, but once it clicks, it's

454
01:21:08.730 --> 01:21:12.529
Chris: one of those things that much like the Silent Hill series.

455
01:21:12.970 --> 01:21:20.000
Chris: goes a lot deeper than you might think it does and does some very imaginative and fun things. So check us. Acknowledge?

456
01:21:20.810 --> 01:21:44.029
Dave: Yeah, yeah. Obviously, fans of the games that inspired Signalis should check this game out. And then I do want to just make you know, stamp that home if you like games that tell a story in a kind of cryptic or obscure way, but give you those little nuggets for you to cling on to and form your own theories for what's going on if you like games that will not

457
01:21:44.140 --> 01:22:10.189
Dave: explicitly like there are some games that inspire you to make theories about what's going on, and at the end of the game. They tell you exactly what happens. That's not Signalis. It's a game that you make your own theory for, and there are many, many different ways that I think people could come out of this game and and feel about the story. So if you like stuff like that, then absolutely play a signalis. I thought this game was great. I loved playing it. It.

458
01:22:10.420 --> 01:22:12.820
Dave: you know. playing the

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01:22:12.880 --> 01:22:23.610
Dave: be the classics. I covered Silent Hill 2 on this show a couple of years ago. I covered resident evil remake a couple of weeks ago, and II think that this game gave me a lot of the same

460
01:22:23.960 --> 01:22:33.029
Dave: fun. Experiences that those 2 games gave me so pretty easy recommendation for me. If the stuff we've talked about sounds appealing and like

461
01:22:33.280 --> 01:22:39.020
Dave: this is one of those episodes of tales from the backlog, because I structure the show the way. It is

462
01:22:39.890 --> 01:22:42.519
Dave: where we can't talk about the spoilers. Yet

463
01:22:42.650 --> 01:22:58.019
Dave: a lot of the stuff that like I'm just gonna go fucking nuts on and like lovefest about is after the spoiler wall. And so we get into talking about the inventory limit, and you know little gameplay nit picks and stuff like that earlier.

464
01:22:58.170 --> 01:23:01.320
Dave: Where it might sound like, you know.

465
01:23:01.800 --> 01:23:26.740
Dave: we're a little bit more, or me personally not to put words in your guys mouth. I'm a little bit more negative on it than I actually am. It's because, like the you know, the quote, the real shit is coming after the spoiler break. So just from the way the show is structured. So you're just gonna have to trust me or go play it. It's good. It's even if it's not on game pass anymore. It's not a $60 game. So go check it out.

466
01:23:26.810 --> 01:23:36.440
Chris: Yes, indeed. Support Rose Engine. They like, Chris said. A lot of love and attention went into this game, and I can't wait to see what they do next.

467
01:23:37.000 --> 01:23:53.749
Dave: So Chris and Shane, like I said, at the top of the show, are the hosts of the retro hangover, podcast covering retro games. And I will turn it over to you guys to talk a little bit about the show, explain what it is, and talk about where people can find you.

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01:23:54.900 --> 01:24:13.070
Chris: Oh, God, I guess that's me. That is, you're the master of the spiel. Oh, no. Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, I just, you know. Wanna thank Dave for having us on it is my first time, Chris, Chris, he, you know, as we said he he gets around, but

469
01:24:13.070 --> 01:24:36.480
Shane Koski: pod slot. But this is my first time here. So I really appreciate the the invite and the chance to to not only play this game, but to to talk about it as well. And if you happen to be interested in classic retro video games and dudes, what talk about them? Then? You are in buck, because that is, in fact, what we are offering to use. So

470
01:24:36.480 --> 01:24:45.759
Shane Koski: you could check out the retro hangover podcast by simply going to our link tree that's just LINK tr.ee

471
01:24:45.760 --> 01:25:00.079
Shane Koski: slash, retro hangover you can find the link to the show there, as well as all of our socials and all that other good stuff. So if that sounds like something that you'd be interested in, then please feel free to to check us out

472
01:25:02.070 --> 01:25:27.490
Dave: absolutely. And it's a it's a show that I really recommend. People do check out I've already mentioned your silent hill 2 episode, which was what I was like. I'll ask them if they want to play Signalis cause their silent hill. 2 episode was really really good and this game made me, you know, remember playing Silent Hill 2. Is there another episode that you think people should check out if they wanna get a taste of retro hangover.

473
01:25:28.580 --> 01:25:34.090
Shane Koski: Oh, man, I gotta think of the something in the backlog now. I don't know. Chris. Help me out here. What

474
01:25:34.230 --> 01:25:41.049
Shane Koski: What would be a good representation of the show and the 200 something things we got out there now.

475
01:25:41.640 --> 01:25:48.320
Chris: I'll recommend our our best performing new episode over year, and our worst, and they both have the same guest

476
01:25:48.460 --> 01:26:01.470
Chris: which is funny. So if if you want the more humorous side and our more sophomoric side. Then go check out Dragon Wang. That really does enjoy that.

477
01:26:01.480 --> 01:26:16.110
Chris: And if if you want, probably I'll just a really good episode Silent Hill to definitely definitely, everyone says that that's one of their favorites, but one of my personal favorites before, unless you say yours here, Shane, is our lunar episode.

478
01:26:16.530 --> 01:26:21.590
Chris: So go check out that one as well, because I love lunar, and I will always always pitch lunar.

479
01:26:22.050 --> 01:26:33.569
Chris: Yeah, plus. I think that was that ended up being a 2 parter back when we thought we had to split them into 2 parts, because one lunar state is one, did it? I thought we split that one. That's one.

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01:26:33.680 --> 01:26:45.049
Shane Koski: Okay. Oh, I'm thinking of Phantasy Star. That's what I'm thinking of, which, by the way, also another good one. So there you go, I mean my my recommendation would have been silent hill to actually I

481
01:26:45.460 --> 01:26:50.920
Shane Koski: I nerd it out hard on the lore in that episode so

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01:26:50.950 --> 01:27:14.099
Dave: very much enjoyed that one Yup, and it was fantastic. If people would like to hear me on retro hangover. I guessed it. Talking about Star Wars knights of the old republic and metal gear solid. So those are 2 other episodes that people can check out if they want to hear me there. So again check out retro hangover! Great show! There'll be a link down in the show notes.

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01:27:14.100 --> 01:27:24.180
Dave: So when I'm talking about myself for the next minute you can just tune me out. It's the same thing you heard last week, and go check out retro hangover, subscribe. You'll hear their newest stuff.

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01:27:24.530 --> 01:27:25.570
Dave: So

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01:27:26.240 --> 01:27:45.339
Dave: for tales from the backlog, I am going to plug joining the Discord server this week at the top, because there are several people in the discord server who want to talk about the story of Signalis, and if you played Signalis and you want to talk about the story, this is the week for that.

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01:27:45.340 --> 01:28:09.799
Dave: Hop in. There's a link again down in the show notes and invite Link to join. It's open to everybody, and we have a great community, and we would love to have you there, and it, I think details from the backlog Channel will look like a redacted FBI document this week as we talk spoilers for the story of Signalis. But it's a great community. We'd love to have you if you would like to support the show monetarily, patreon.com

487
01:28:09.800 --> 01:28:15.210
Dave: com real. Dave Jackson is the place you will get some bonus

488
01:28:15.250 --> 01:28:36.810
Dave: content. I'm planning a bonus. I'm recording this before the month of October. But I'm planning a bonus game episode for the patrons in October. And there's polls. There is a bonus retro gaming series where I have varying degrees of fun and success playing retro games called tales from the way backlog that's all on the Patreon.

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Dave: So

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01:28:38.430 --> 01:29:04.169
Dave: oh, I also do another podcast called a top. 3. Podcast that show is a a comedy show. Chris was a guest on one of our more chaotic episodes that we've ever done where we drafted things that start with the letter T, and if that sounds stupid and ridiculous, it's because it was. And it was a lot of fun. So yeah, we're gonna take a break. And when we come back full spoilers for the story in signalis.

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01:33:41.700 --> 01:33:55.160
Dave: okay. Chris and Shane and I are back, and we are talking spoilers for Signalis. This is one of those spoiler sections that is not a chronological walk through the stuff that you learn. We're going to spoil

518
01:33:55.910 --> 01:34:05.420
Dave: one of the late game revolutions right now. So if you haven't played, and you don't want to be spoiled again. This is another warning to get out.

519
01:34:06.170 --> 01:34:22.539
Dave: So I wanna start the spoiler section. Since this game is told in such an obtuse and nonlinear and confusing way. I want to see if we can agree on some facts before we start diving into theory. So

520
01:34:23.130 --> 01:34:31.999
Dave: Elster is a replica. That's something we said in the non spoiler section. But we do learn that replicas are copies of human consciousness.

521
01:34:32.010 --> 01:34:38.079
Dave: And the humans are called gestalts in this game. I think

522
01:34:38.100 --> 01:34:44.500
Dave: biggest Alts are humans still with me here. Okay, good.

523
01:34:44.700 --> 01:35:06.019
Dave: also, I was like, well, let's just check. Are those real German words because this German developers and it is Gestalt is German for shape or form, and replica means copy as as it were. So



525
01:35:15.690 --> 01:35:26.929
Dave: so Elster is a copy of a Gestalt named Falke is how I'm pronouncing their name? Because there are some late game

526
01:35:27.080 --> 01:35:41.140
Dave: things that you read, notes that you read where it is written, seemingly written from Elster's perspective. There's a quote. A letter that you find called the Red Dream. That lists

527
01:35:41.510 --> 01:36:00.669
Dave: stuff that you've done throughout the game. It! It says. A crashed ship, a strange gait, a hole in the ground. An island beyond reach, memories from other lives, dreams of suffering and loneliness, a promise, a search for someone lost. That's what you've been doing in Signalis. This is late game.

528
01:36:00.710 --> 01:36:17.400
Dave: and then a quote. I saw her in the red emptiness waiting for me. We had made a promise. As the memories of a stranger rushed into my mind, I felt the borders of myself blur now I can no longer tell well where Falky ends and Elster begins. So

529
01:36:17.540 --> 01:36:18.250
Dave: yep.

530
01:36:18.650 --> 01:36:24.900
Dave: and then, of course, Falke is the final boss. She says, let us become whole again. So there we are.

531
01:36:26.290 --> 01:36:34.530
Shane Koski: Yeah. And II assume we're going to touch on where? Where? Who? Who the gestalts are?

532
01:36:35.350 --> 01:36:40.380
Dave: Yeah, what do you think? Cause it's it's not quite

533
01:36:40.620 --> 01:36:48.470
Dave: part of my II think, like that answer could be anything in my greater theory for what's going on. So what do you think?

534
01:36:48.930 --> 01:36:58.299
Shane Koski: Well, in in terms of if we're talking just about like Elster, right? The the consciousness that is utilized to make

535
01:36:58.420 --> 01:37:00.850
Shane Koski: Elster models essentially

536
01:37:01.250 --> 01:37:07.119
Shane Koski: was based on a human. I guess all named Lilith.

537
01:37:08.040 --> 01:37:30.759
Shane Koski: of course. And yeah, of course, right? And presumably she was chosen because of well, honestly, in a way, because of her personality that was shaped by the Ptsd. That she suffered from being drafted into the war that was going on. And so this, like very sort of

538
01:37:31.760 --> 01:37:35.580
Shane Koski: baseline, like neutral.

539
01:37:35.690 --> 01:37:42.040
Shane Koski: stoic sort of personality that she foreign for herself as sort of a defense mechanism. I think.

540
01:37:42.190 --> 01:37:53.669
Shane Koski: Then, when I say they, I mean, like the that you know the the powers that be who are kind of running this program. Felt that that was an ideal

541
01:37:54.450 --> 01:38:05.770
Shane Koski: personality, slash consciousness to use as a gustalled for these Elster models, because they were meant to be sort of like, you know these, these subservient

542
01:38:06.000 --> 01:38:08.510
Shane Koski: androids, if you will.

543
01:38:08.580 --> 01:38:12.269
Shane Koski: Now and and stop me if I'm like

544
01:38:12.510 --> 01:38:20.109
Shane Koski: going too far off the rails or anything but

545
01:38:20.400 --> 01:38:26.269
Shane Koski: But the interesting thing about that one of the many interesting things about it. And it's part of what makes this

546
01:38:27.220 --> 01:38:28.460
Shane Koski: narrative

547
01:38:28.550 --> 01:38:35.419
Shane Koski: multi-layered and also potentially, incredibly confusing. If it if you aren't able to like parse out

548
01:38:35.790 --> 01:38:40.770
Shane Koski: what is happening and when is happening?

549
01:38:40.820 --> 01:38:43.060
Shane Koski:  is that

550
01:38:43.270 --> 01:38:50.489
Shane Koski: part part of the issue. And you see this from like several different notes and and log entries and things like that that you come across throughout the game

551
01:38:50.660 --> 01:39:02.109
Shane Koski: is that each different model replica is based on a person's consciousness, and there are very specific triggers

552
01:39:02.320 --> 01:39:09.840
Shane Koski: that people are told to avoid exposing the replicas to for fear of

553
01:39:09.870 --> 01:39:13.859
Shane Koski: the the original. Gestalt's personality

554
01:39:14.110 --> 01:39:33.419
Shane Koski: being basically re awakened because of these things, and like one of one of the many things that they list for Elster is like, don't expose Elster models to like the idea of war or watching like war movies or befriending them, or like any of that stuff like, Don't do that.

555
01:39:33.420 --> 01:39:47.180
Dave: Hmm! Really fucked up, too. They give the list is do not give photographs, do not show movies or listen to music, and already I'm like, that sounds pretty shitty, and then it's like straight up at the end. Don't be friend to them, and I'm like

556
01:39:47.200 --> 01:39:50.750
Dave: that's pretty fucked up that kind of like

557
01:39:51.120 --> 01:40:09.560
Dave: the fact that these are copies of a consciousness. But it's not a copy of, like the surface level consciousness, like the the desired traits. All of the stuff that's in there that's buried is also copied over. And it's it's a little bit on.

558
01:40:09.640 --> 01:40:23.479
Dave: I think, what this game is trying to say about the nature of consciousness. And you know, if you were able to copy it. All of it comes over, not just the stuff that's on the surface and visible and

559
01:40:23.490 --> 01:40:25.090
Dave: desired

560
01:40:25.790 --> 01:40:26.610
Shane Koski: right

561
01:40:26.960 --> 01:40:33.730
Chris:  and of course that kind of complicates things a little bit, too, because then you also have

562
01:40:34.490 --> 01:40:36.750
Shane Koski: a a mix of

563
01:40:36.930 --> 01:40:41.169
Shane Koski: gustaults and replicas.

564
01:40:41.200 --> 01:40:45.369
Shane Koski: sort of throughout the game, mostly by and large, mostly replicas, but

565
01:40:45.510 --> 01:41:03.660
Chris: that that is kind of thrown into the mix a little bit there to kind of confuse things. I think a little bit more. I also have a lot of theories on that. But that's going to be until much later. And it's based off an analysis video. I watched. So I want Dave to go through it because he has not watched an analysis video, not saying the analysis videos correct, but

566
01:41:03.770 --> 01:41:07.350
Chris: because Dave hasn't watched anything. He put all this together.

567
01:41:07.370 --> 01:41:15.589
Chris: I do want to go into that before I do get into that as well. But for some more facts I do think we should bring up

568
01:41:16.180 --> 01:41:19.049
Chris: Was it Falk? Who's a

569
01:41:19.180 --> 01:41:20.570
Chris: she was the girl

570
01:41:20.590 --> 01:41:25.469
Chris: that you read a bunch of notes the entire time that you're going throughout the

571
01:41:25.550 --> 01:41:29.359
Chris: the various settings that Elster is going through.

572
01:41:29.520 --> 01:41:45.319
Chris: And you're reading the notes specifically in a spaceship that she was sent off into space by the nation. And the reason she did is because she volunteered, because she couldn't stand being in the nation because she was raised to do things that were forbidden

573
01:41:45.410 --> 01:41:54.580
Chris: by the nation. She wanted to dance. She wanted to sing. She wanted to play music all that stuff like that. So these are probably triggering things for her

574
01:41:54.600 --> 01:41:55.670
Chris: replica.

575
01:41:55.750 --> 01:42:01.660
Chris: So she sent off into space to find a new planet to live on.

576
01:42:02.110 --> 01:42:03.200
Chris: and

577
01:42:03.660 --> 01:42:13.970
Chris: while she's out there she becomes lonely. So she starts friending her replica and becoming romantically involved with their replica and

578
01:42:14.040 --> 01:42:20.869
Chris: Eventually it says, Hey, look, you're you're going to die from radiation. Destroy your replica on top of it.

579
01:42:20.880 --> 01:42:24.290
Chris: and that that's something that happens near the very end.

580
01:42:24.320 --> 01:42:25.949
Chris: How that is revealed to you.

581
01:42:26.150 --> 01:42:29.709
Shane Koski: Well, that's it's it's kind. It's the other way around.

582
01:42:29.770 --> 01:42:37.760
Shane Koski: actually, that the it's not that they are supposed to destroy the replica. It's that they they eventually get that message where it's like, Hey, it's been

583
01:42:37.830 --> 01:42:48.550
Shane Koski: 3,000 cycles or whatever, and also surprised, you were basically sent on a suicide mission because we never expected you to come back. And so, rather than suffering like.

584
01:42:48.610 --> 01:42:53.850
Shane Koski: kill your human because the human is gonna suffer a lot. So it's the replica that was supposed to kill her.

585
01:42:53.890 --> 01:42:58.299
Chris: Yeah. But I think it was addressed to her to have a replica kill her, or something like that.

586
01:42:58.380 --> 01:43:06.040
Chris: It was because all the messages were towards fault. she, because they were they were all directed towards her. And instead of the replica, if I recall correctly.

587
01:43:06.860 --> 01:43:18.120
Shane Koski: well, also, let's I feel like we need to be careful about who what name we're using, because Falk was like the commander of the Sirpinsky station. Right? And

588
01:43:18.160 --> 01:43:20.829
Shane Koski: so she eventually gets

589
01:43:20.980 --> 01:43:44.289
Shane Koski: sort of taken over by Elster Slash Lilith but there's potentially a reason for that. But yeah, so it's it's it's the it's Elster. And is it Ariane? Or is it Alina? Which one is the one that's actually on the ship. I think it's area and right

590
01:43:44.420 --> 01:43:50.350
Dave: because this, because this game deals in such a a dreamy

591
01:43:50.400 --> 01:43:54.329
Dave: way of telling its story and narrative. It makes

592
01:43:54.670 --> 01:43:58.139
Dave: things possible in my mind that.

593
01:43:58.370 --> 01:44:15.880
Dave: like we see a scene where Elster and Arian are on the ship, they're dancing. They're watching a war movie. They're doing everything that that guide for Elster Unit says not to do, basically. But I don't think that that's Elster on the ship. I think that that's

594
01:44:15.910 --> 01:44:19.180
Dave: falky on the ship. I think that Elster is like

595
01:44:19.200 --> 01:44:27.370
Dave: cause. What what I think is happening is that there are consciousness is merging, and that's causing all these compatibility issues. And

596
01:44:27.830 --> 01:44:30.040
Dave: before we get deep into like.

597
01:44:30.180 --> 01:44:59.560
Dave: why is the planet made of flesh and all of that shit? I think, like the big thing that I think is happening in the story is that because people didn't follow protocols, and because this, like consciousness transferring system is imperfect, that they say in the game. I think that they're merging. Elster is reawakening for lack of a better word as old consciousness and memory starts to flood in, and so you can't trust

598
01:44:59.700 --> 01:45:04.290
Dave: the memories from Elster herself, cause they're not hers.

599
01:45:04.460 --> 01:45:05.490
Dave: I think.

600
01:45:06.730 --> 01:45:08.189
Shane Koski: Well, so

601
01:45:09.000 --> 01:45:20.530
Shane Koski: okay, let me see, there's there's so many. It is a lot we've already gone off of the let's just talk about the fax thing. We're we're already straight into the theory, crafting. But

602
01:45:20.570 --> 01:45:40.370
Shane Koski: okay, so the way that I saw this, or the way that I sort of interpreted it right. Is that Falk or Falky? However, you want to pronounce it was like the the like, I said the commander in charge of, like the Sirpinsky mining station, and Adler was the

603
01:45:40.420 --> 01:45:44.159
Shane Koski: sort of like her her right hand dude right?

604
01:45:44.430 --> 01:45:47.419
Chris: And they're both replicants. Correct.

605
01:45:48.260 --> 01:45:58.079
Chris: as far as I'm aware. Yes, okay. I see. I thought that they were both Guestalt.

606
01:45:58.290 --> 01:46:02.779
Dave: Falky and Adler. But I'm

607
01:46:02.860 --> 01:46:07.569
Dave: you know, not not confident in that. That's just what I thought.

608
01:46:07.920 --> 01:46:10.069
Shane Koski: Okay, okay,

609
01:46:10.600 --> 01:46:17.890
Shane Koski: well, I would say in. yeah, I don't know. II would say. In either case, II think there's a case to be made that at the very least.

610
01:46:18.310 --> 01:46:26.530
Shane Koski: I feel like Faulk is definitely a replica because of what ends up happening to her with with Elster's

611
01:46:26.710 --> 01:46:33.580
Shane Koski: personality. But at any rate they are at the Sir Penske station. Those 2,

612
01:46:33.810 --> 01:46:36.610
Shane Koski: the the ones that are on the ship. That's

613
01:46:36.780 --> 01:46:53.620
Shane Koski: that is Lilith. Slash the I'm I'm going to refer to it as the original Elster, right? Because Arianne was sent with an Elster model in in the ship, and what what was the ship called again? It started with an S.

614
01:46:54.650 --> 01:46:57.109
Dave: I did not write it down. Let's see.

615
01:46:57.820 --> 01:47:03.739
Shane Koski: I can't. I can't recall now. But essentially they were they were one of many

616
01:47:04.240 --> 01:47:16.470
Shane Koski: people that were sent on like you said. Essentially, these suicide missions out into the deep reaches of space in arguably like, not the greatest constructed ships.

617
01:47:16.710 --> 01:47:26.150
Shane Koski: purely just in the hopes that they would send some sort of useful information back, but there was never any intention of them actually coming back alive.

618
01:47:26.400 --> 01:47:35.250
Shane Koski: And so in those years that they were in space is before they were aware that they were on a doomed mission from the Get

619
01:47:36.010 --> 01:47:47.229
Shane Koski:  Arianne basically completely threw out all of those protocols like you said and befriended and eventually became romantically involved

620
01:47:47.360 --> 01:47:51.459
Shane Koski: with the original Elster replica that was with her.

621
01:47:51.580 --> 01:48:00.090
Shane Koski: And then, when we get to about the 3,000 cycle mark is when they get that letter that you find that print out.

622
01:48:00.200 --> 01:48:10.649
Shane Koski: They get this message that tells them that they're like, Hey, it's been this long. This is what's happening. Like, you're kind of screwed like, maybe you should kill your human basically and keep them from suffering.

623
01:48:11.110 --> 01:48:14.849
Shane Koski: And it's like, from that point

624
01:48:15.440 --> 01:48:26.149
Shane Koski: where some of a lot of like the subjective things start to kind of come into play right? I think that's kind of the sort of a turning point

625
01:48:26.310 --> 01:48:30.499
Shane Koski: in the story. Now, of course, II have my theories about kind of what's going on.

626
01:48:30.810 --> 01:48:36.129
Shane Koski: but I'm gonna stop my diatribe here for a second and give somebody else a chance to jump in.

627
01:48:37.290 --> 01:48:43.309
Chris: So, since since we're kind of in the theory, crafting. And now everything's kind of rushing back to me, and who all these characters are.

628
01:48:43.400 --> 01:48:57.400
Chris: So yes, Arianna Ariani, or however, you want to say your name, I'm just gonna say, Arianna she was sent into space. She's the girl that was, you know, raised a separate person. She has friends that she's with one of her.

629
01:48:57.660 --> 01:49:02.900
Chris: The friends are referred to as a sisters, one of those sisters you're you're chasing through the entire time.

630
01:49:03.070 --> 01:49:06.280
Chris: meeting up with her, and Adler's trying to to catch her.

631
01:49:06.330 --> 01:49:24.979
Chris: That's what's going on there. Now, if you read the notes, and this is something from the analysis video that I watched, that I happen to agree with the notes infer that certain people are bio resonant, much like the Empress, and certain people have the ability to create alternate realities with their biore resonance.

632
01:49:25.050 --> 01:49:27.980
Chris: Yeah. So when you get to the end.

633
01:49:28.210 --> 01:49:33.600
Chris: when they're getting to the end of this cycle. And now, remembering the note that you're talking about, whether or not you know

634
01:49:33.630 --> 01:49:39.129
Chris: she's going to die. What it says is you're getting to the end. Eventually you're going to be flooded with radiation.

635
01:49:39.140 --> 01:49:54.150
Chris: You have 2 options. You can either try to stay alive and and die, or you can have your. You can have your replica kill you now. She's romantically involved with the replica. She does not want to die. She wants to preserve their time together as much as possible.

636
01:49:54.310 --> 01:49:55.270
Chris: So

637
01:49:55.400 --> 01:50:01.769
Chris: one of the one of the theories that I happen to agree with is while she is dying from

638
01:50:02.040 --> 01:50:06.130
Chris: essentially radiation cancer. And that's why she's in this

639
01:50:06.190 --> 01:50:20.970
Chris: this pod. And this pod is meant to keep her alive, and that's what these notes say as well. That is, you can put yourself in like the stasis pod you can stay in. There is meant to keep you alive. However, it's like a false exist exist existence. While she's in there. She creates a reality

640
01:50:21.080 --> 01:50:22.200
Chris: where

641
01:50:22.460 --> 01:50:33.079
Chris: they get to the promise, and the promise that they make is that the replica will kill her. But the replica will not kill her, because the replica is friends with her, so the replica cannot keep the promise

642
01:50:33.130 --> 01:50:43.599
Chris: so. And that's one of the endings which I'll let you get into, Dave. The the Rev. And there's different endings that you can get. I think the ways that you get them is bullshit.

643
01:50:43.620 --> 01:50:47.160
Chris: But essentially, what's happening is that

644
01:50:47.210 --> 01:50:51.649
Chris: the entire world that you're in does not exist

645
01:50:51.710 --> 01:50:55.770
Chris: is completely generated by Arianne.

646
01:50:55.880 --> 01:51:19.309
Chris: Everything about it, and it's all crafted from the ideas that she has about these various locations that Sir Pinsky, about the the different planets, because you don't just jump from one location to another. You jump between planets within the solar system. So how are you? As else for jumping between these. It's all within this imaginary world space that's created by bioreance

647
01:51:19.310 --> 01:51:27.720
Chris: by area. And so everyone in there. They are manifestations of Arian's, you know, imagination. And this is why, when you get to a point

648
01:51:27.730 --> 01:51:54.139
Chris: relatively early in the game, you see all these Elstors in this elevator pit all dead, and you have keep on saying, You know, Adler saying, Hey, you're doing this again, or Hey, this is your last chance implied that every single time Elster goes in there and she fails. There's a restart, and this is heavily implied by the games for sanding. Where else are essentially dies, and then you come back.

649
01:51:54.180 --> 01:51:59.790
Chris: and it's not a full cycle. But you do start at the beginning of the game again, even though it's slightly altered. So

650
01:51:59.830 --> 01:52:24.169
Chris: there's this feeling of and that, like the ship is crashed, but everything is just metaphorical. Nothing is real. You're you're in a world that's been created by her. She's trying to find land. So she creates land through her bio resonance in her mind to be there, and the person exploring it is the replica that's on your ship that she's created this world, for in the hopes that eventually she will find her within this world that she created and kill her.

651
01:52:25.380 --> 01:52:28.149
Shane Koski: See, II would ascribe to

652
01:52:28.390 --> 01:52:31.910
some of that also II totally

653
01:52:32.140 --> 01:52:33.000
Shane Koski: got

654
01:52:33.540 --> 01:52:44.649
Shane Koski: strong, silent hill vibes off of this, because as soon as I kind of was piecing this together, I was just like, Oh, it's Alyssa, it. This is a. This is Alyssa, basically

655
01:52:44.780 --> 01:52:58.030
Shane Koski: but so so my take on, this is is a little bit different. And that's kind of the beauty of this is that nobody's really right. There's no real correct answer here, and that was very intentional, I think, on the developers behalf.

656
01:52:58.420 --> 01:53:02.159
Shane Koski: but they they weave enough things into it that

657
01:53:02.190 --> 01:53:10.819
Shane Koski: a lot of different theories are very plausible, which I think is great. My personal kind of take on it is is somewhat similar, though

658
01:53:11.460 --> 01:53:16.950
Shane Koski: my thought on it is that the the ship actually did

659
01:53:17.240 --> 01:53:22.499
Shane Koski: crash, and it was near this Sirpinsky mining facility.

660
01:53:22.610 --> 01:53:23.900
Shane Koski: and

661
01:53:24.810 --> 01:53:34.710
Shane Koski: because we know that there are individuals that can possess this this bio resonance, and we know that Arianne is one, and arguably a very strong one.

662
01:53:35.210 --> 01:53:44.230
Shane Koski:  One of the things that I was trying to pick apart in my brain is like, how if if this is a completely fabricated reality like.

663
01:53:44.430 --> 01:53:46.360
Shane Koski: how would she know

664
01:53:46.470 --> 01:53:52.530
Shane Koski: a lot of these like intricate details of a mining facility that she's like never really been to

665
01:53:52.620 --> 01:54:03.159
Shane Koski:  and one of the things and I can. I cannot take credit for this at all. But one of the things that I came across that is a plausible explanation, for this is

666
01:54:03.870 --> 01:54:16.740
Shane Koski: that she is one of the things they make a note of in the game is that those who have bio resonance are kind of tapping into what they refer to as like the song of the cosmos, that there's this thing that most people

667
01:54:17.050 --> 01:54:23.390
Shane Koski: can't hear. But for those that are attuned to it, it's it's ever present, and it's sort of like

668
01:54:23.440 --> 01:54:30.090
Shane Koski: it connects everybody right? And these bio resident individuals

669
01:54:30.410 --> 01:54:33.950
Shane Koski: can hear this, and part of that. Ability is that they

670
01:54:34.130 --> 01:54:44.450
Shane Koski: can sort of interconnect with one another and sort of feed off of each other. And I think that that may be what's happening where it's not necessarily that it's

671
01:54:44.500 --> 01:54:57.020
Shane Koski: a purely fabricated reality. It's that it is an extremely distorted reality, but one that's kind of caught in a per like in a purposeful time. Loop like

672
01:54:57.190 --> 01:55:07.600
Shane Koski: that she is able to control, basically like the the flow of time within this sphere of influence, and any individuals who are at the

673
01:55:07.710 --> 01:55:13.970
Shane Koski: mining facility that also possessed any manner of bio residence. I think she was kind of using

674
01:55:14.070 --> 01:55:24.019
Shane Koski: to amplify this, and that's where some of these details come in is because those people would know intimate details of these spaces.

675
01:55:24.250 --> 01:55:25.549
Shane Koski: And so

676
01:55:26.330 --> 01:55:37.320
Shane Koski: it's not that it's all fabricated in in my mind. It's that she's got this sphere of influence that she's basically created almost a time bubble around that she then

677
01:55:37.570 --> 01:55:45.179
Shane Koski: essentially has trapped people like Adler in, because he does make those those notes of just like.

678
01:55:45.340 --> 01:56:09.530
Shane Koski: I don't know what's going on. I feel like I'm living the same day over and over again, and he does say that to the the version of Elster that we're playing of, like on a number of occasions early on yeah, when he like kicks her down the elevator shaft. He's just like, Yeah, you're doing this again. And then at the end of the game, when he's basically a husk of a of a corpse. Almost.

679
01:56:09.530 --> 01:56:20.370
Shane Koski: he's just like, you can't keep doing this and it's not that it's the same else. Every time I think that what's happening is

680
01:56:20.450 --> 01:56:23.789
Shane Koski: Arianne is basically calling out to

681
01:56:23.800 --> 01:56:33.249
Shane Koski: other Elster models, basically, and bringing them to this sort of reality bubble that she's created

682
01:56:33.330 --> 01:56:38.470
Shane Koski: and running them through this sort of gauntlet to get them

683
01:56:38.880 --> 01:56:41.810
Shane Koski: to remember air, quotes

684
01:56:42.190 --> 01:57:05.640
Shane Koski: Lilith. And remember all of these memories, and remember the original Elster and the experiences there. Who then, at that point, then they're they're basically functionally the same as the original else. And they go on this mission again to try to get to her, and in the hopes that one of them is gonna fulfill this promise. And that's where you get all of these like replica corpses is because of

685
01:57:05.730 --> 01:57:19.690
Shane Koski: every one of them has basically failed up until this point. And it's for whatever the equivalent of cycles are in this game, because, like, you see, another note later that says that it's been 5,000 cycles and like area, and is

686
01:57:19.910 --> 01:57:26.160
Shane Koski: basically just suffering. And she's alone. And so I think that's

687
01:57:26.380 --> 01:57:36.639
Shane Koski: part of what's feeding this this thing very much like Alyssa and silent Hill like her pain from this like slow radiation death that she's trying to prolong

688
01:57:36.740 --> 01:57:39.219
Shane Koski: in this pod,

689
01:57:39.270 --> 01:57:41.900
Shane Koski: or or even you might even make the argument that

690
01:57:41.960 --> 01:57:55.419
Shane Koski: she's not in the pod by her own choice, that the original else to put her there as a mercy because she didn't want to kill her. But ultimately that's kind of like a worse fate, because she's just trying to get one of them to kill her because she doesn't wanna

691
01:57:55.460 --> 01:57:58.089
Shane Koski: continue existing in this way?

692
01:57:58.190 --> 01:58:03.570
Shane Koski:  so yeah, that's a lot I don't know. That was a brain dump. But

693
01:58:04.160 --> 01:58:09.380
Shane Koski: keep in mind one of the endings Elster does kill Arianne

694
01:58:09.780 --> 01:58:11.500
Chris: and fulfills the promise.

695
01:58:11.560 --> 01:58:18.409
Shane Koski: And I wanna I wanna talk about the Eldridge thing, too. But I'm gonna I'm gonna save that for a minute cause II have some thoughts on that also.

696
01:58:18.740 --> 01:58:19.640
Dave: So

697
01:58:20.800 --> 01:58:22.960
Dave: I didn't remember

698
01:58:23.750 --> 01:58:44.620
Dave: reading the note about the the promise actually being to kill Arian. So I either didn't read that, or I read it and forgot it was the implication because of the implication. You see. Exactly.

699
01:58:45.330 --> 01:58:51.239
Dave: So my theories on what's going on here are not based around

700
01:58:51.390 --> 01:58:57.940
Dave: fulfilling the promise to kill Arian at all. Basically. Ii came up with a

701
01:58:58.040 --> 01:59:16.600
Dave: very I mean, not that the the creation of a time bubble that replays this loop until there's an Elster that's able to finally get there and finish the job. Not that that's not off the wall also because this this game inspires that kind of thing, and that's why I was excited to talk about it here.

702
01:59:17.760 --> 01:59:21.680
Dave: I guess we can talk about the Eldred stuff before I go

703
01:59:22.080 --> 01:59:29.860
Dave: into like my theory that I came up with with what's going on. So I have 2 thoughts about this either.

704
01:59:29.950 --> 01:59:53.620
Dave: Well, 3 thoughts. One of them is kind of a joke, cause you read the can yellow really early in the game, and the King in Yellow, in the fiction in the book. The King Yellow is a play that makes people go crazy when they read it. So that's theory number one as they read the play, and they you just kinda went crazy. And everything, you see is the ramblings of a crazy person. But that's no fun.

705
01:59:54.490 --> 02:00:02.619
Dave: 2 thoughts here, number one, that the planet that they crash land on. Because I I'm of the opinion that the planet

706
02:00:03.370 --> 02:00:05.670
Dave: is real in a sense.

707
02:00:05.770 --> 02:00:29.939
Dave: So either, it is a real planet made of flesh, because this is a Sci-fi horror story, and I'm willing to suspend disbelief and that there is some kind of entity down deep in the planet that's calling out to the replicas on board or on the in the station. As people go deeper and deeper into the minds. There are notes that you find about

708
02:00:30.020 --> 02:00:49.270
Dave: something calling out and calling them to join them. Those scenes when you're on the beach and reading those notes as you're walking along. So there's that thought that there is an eldritch entity that was discovered and woken up, and it's a very HP. Lovecraft idea that once they found it.

709
02:00:49.560 --> 02:00:53.300
Dave: it can never be sealed away again, and everybody

710
02:00:53.440 --> 02:01:00.059
Dave: succumbs to the call. In this case I really latched onto the

711
02:01:00.340 --> 02:01:01.790
Dave: becoming whole

712
02:01:02.140 --> 02:01:07.860
Dave: part of this, where the the replicants and the gestalts, the memories of the gestalts

713
02:01:07.890 --> 02:01:14.590
Dave: have to become whole, whether it's because of this entity that they find that's that's causing this. And

714
02:01:15.020 --> 02:01:20.250
Dave: anyone who is not able to go through this process for whatever reason.

715
02:01:20.290 --> 02:01:28.240
Dave: Maybe they didn't break those barriers down like Elster did. Those are the ones that are going crazy and trying to kill you in the planet.

716
02:01:28.580 --> 02:01:30.770
Dave: This is assuming the ones.

717
02:01:30.850 --> 02:01:34.379
Dave: Assuming that this planet is a planet.

718
02:01:34.450 --> 02:01:41.489
Dave: There you are. It's physically there. It's real. It just happens to be made of flesh and has an Eldred's monster inside.

719
02:01:41.610 --> 02:01:53.880
Dave: The other thought. I guess we'll stick with this stick. With this I'll get to my other theory. After that. This was my idea at the possible eldritor. Explanation for what's happening.

720
02:01:54.130 --> 02:02:06.850
Dave: Elster is going through this merging of consciousness with the resurfacing of the human memories. And you know, if Elster and Falke are both replicants.

721
02:02:08.010 --> 02:02:15.729
Dave: then there's some crossover between them, because Elster has memories from Falky and Falky has memories from the human

722
02:02:16.180 --> 02:02:17.060
Dave: right?

723
02:02:18.010 --> 02:02:27.850
Dave: Because you do read a thing that's it's titled Falke's memory. And it's basically  The scene, you see, with Elster on the ship.

724
02:02:28.160 --> 02:02:32.899
Dave: And then. so I'm not sure how to square that.

725
02:02:33.120 --> 02:02:35.359
Dave: I don't know, but

726
02:02:35.470 --> 02:02:37.419
Dave: I do think that there is

727
02:02:38.170 --> 02:02:53.519
Dave: memories resurfacing, and it's a very messy process, and that's what's causing these random pop ins of memories. There's a memory sitting on a train that you. This is what's explaining. When you snap from place to place.

728
02:02:53.610 --> 02:02:59.140
Dave: It's memory surfacing and just dominating the consciousness for some time.

729
02:02:59.920 --> 02:03:06.179
Dave: yeah, I'll put a PIN in that, because it goes deeper with my other theory for what the planet is.

730
02:03:06.630 --> 02:03:08.790
Dave: But for now, eldritch

731
02:03:08.920 --> 02:03:10.370
Dave: ideas.

732
02:03:11.890 --> 02:03:15.959
Shane Koski: I say, why don't you go, Chris? I've been talking a lot.

733
02:03:16.130 --> 02:03:18.159
Chris: so there's there's a couple things

734
02:03:18.210 --> 02:03:22.870
Chris: to address your theory first, there's a couple of things. Why, I disagree with Shane's

735
02:03:22.950 --> 02:03:29.149
Chris: theory, and to an extent Dave's theory here. Because rock front is the last area you go to.

736
02:03:29.290 --> 02:03:52.319
Chris: and rock front is very much his own planet. That is, separate from the initial stages that you are on also the pen rows. This. The the ship you're on is both shown in space and crashed. This is all part of the cycle. So if it's actually on a planet. The fact that you're shifting planets and locations doesn't necessarily, in my opinion, lend credence to them. Summoning multiple elseters back

737
02:03:52.460 --> 02:03:59.199
Chris: to one primary locations specif because the transition to another planet is through some weird

738
02:03:59.390 --> 02:04:18.109
Chris: flesh hole. So unless there's, that's the way you travel, which is completely possible because this is sci-fi, and anything's possible on sci-fi. That's that's where my dash would be. Now, my theory is going to go incredibly dark, and I'm going to try to be very careful because it does touch on some sensitive subject matters.

739
02:04:18.610 --> 02:04:24.310
Chris:  when Dave mentioned he was theory crafting, I said, I've seen the analysis video. I think I have it figured out.

740
02:04:24.330 --> 02:04:37.080
Chris: but something something stuck with me that that really bothered me, that I started thinking about, that I was playing through the game, and it kind of was interesting. But then I started putting it together. And this is my theory. I just want to hear what you guys think of it.

741
02:04:37.090 --> 02:04:42.080
Chris: One of the things that stuck out that was atypical was that

742
02:04:42.300 --> 02:04:48.499
Chris: every single one of the replicants Angus stalls were were female, they were. They were women

743
02:04:49.000 --> 02:04:57.390
Chris: except for Adler. Yeah. And he is a he is a replicant. You don't know who this Gestalt is. You don't see any. You don't see any mail.

744
02:04:57.600 --> 02:05:02.529
Chris: You don't see any male or men gestalts

745
02:05:02.720 --> 02:05:15.649
Chris: throughout the entire game. The other thing that sticks out is the only time that you see a picture where they're not beaten up, or bruised, or bloody, or in a bad condition, is before they go to war.

746
02:05:16.260 --> 02:05:18.099
Chris: It's while they're in the Academy.

747
02:05:18.460 --> 02:05:28.000
Chris: So this is for me, where it gets a little dark. because there's a lot of references to becoming whole. There's a lot of references to something happening to them.

748
02:05:28.010 --> 02:05:29.969
Chris: and then they cannot get over it.

749
02:05:30.050 --> 02:05:40.950
Chris: And so what I'm looking into this, where you have a male figure in Adler is the bad guy, and you have a bunch of women who look like they have been abused.

750
02:05:40.990 --> 02:05:43.229
Chris: who talk about not being whole.

751
02:05:43.340 --> 02:06:01.170
Chris: who get into a lot of flesh situations. I start to wonder if the guest what is being represented through the bio residence of Arianne, and perhaps this happened to Ariana as well, which? Why she left the nation influenza? Space is because these are survivors of sexual assault.

752
02:06:01.460 --> 02:06:14.229
Chris: which why would explain? They are all women. Why why are there no men at the Sirpinsky station? Why are they all female soldiers? Why are all their pictures all bruised up and bloody? They have a Medical Bay.

753
02:06:14.560 --> 02:06:19.760
Chris: and whenever you're going to make an id of someone, you're not going to make it where they're all bandaged up

754
02:06:20.330 --> 02:06:32.419
Chris: that doesn't connect, unless this is a reflection of Arianne just in her own mental state about what someone would look like recovering from cancer. But that doesn't make sense, because these are obvious

755
02:06:32.820 --> 02:06:38.030
Chris: signs of trauma other than cancer. Now, you can make that relation to

756
02:06:38.340 --> 02:06:47.660
Chris: when you get to to nowhere, and that could be the the manifestation of the cancer taking over Arianne, which is not mine. That was in the analysis video. That's not my idea, but

757
02:06:47.940 --> 02:06:58.889
Chris: the fact that you only have one figure, and that's the bad guy who's chasing Issa throughout the, you know, throughout your excavation space in the hospital, and everything like that

758
02:06:58.950 --> 02:07:01.199
Chris: that's chasing her, harassing her

759
02:07:01.320 --> 02:07:06.200
Chris: and trying to PIN her into a corner. And that's the singular male character, you see.

760
02:07:06.570 --> 02:07:18.169
Chris: and then everything else, like all the humans, die immediately after this thing happens to them, and then their replicants carry on, which is just a shadow of what they were. But eventually, be they become

761
02:07:18.670 --> 02:07:25.429
Chris: angry, they attack you, they, they become just hollow shells of their former selves.

762
02:07:25.670 --> 02:07:29.350
Chris: And the entire focus is how to become whole.

763
02:07:29.730 --> 02:07:35.039
Chris: That's that's where I'm starting to think that that's why, there's this manifestation is

764
02:07:35.140 --> 02:07:47.680
Chris: she's coming to the end of her life. And there's still this anger of something really bad happened to her. and all these things that she knows that happened to everybody else, and that's manifesting

765
02:07:47.690 --> 02:07:52.350
Chris: in this reality that she created. And this is how she's trying to cope with it.

766
02:07:54.030 --> 02:07:55.989
Dave: It's a very silent hill

767
02:07:56.200 --> 02:08:04.839
Dave: theory. Again, I mean, it reminds me of some of the characters in Silent Hill, too. That's what Silent Hill is. Basically. So

768
02:08:04.940 --> 02:08:07.899
Dave: yeah, it. It makes sense. You. That's a

769
02:08:08.320 --> 02:08:14.090
Dave: a convincing case. I you know I didn't really think twice about why, they're all women. I just.

770
02:08:14.760 --> 02:08:21.130
Dave: you know not to say that I didn't ever notice it. But I didn't. Yeah, definitely didn't incorporate it into any

771
02:08:21.150 --> 02:08:38.590
Dave: story reason. So that makes sense. Adler is, you know, until the end, when he's got a knife sticking out of his face, and he's just kinda like, please don't go in there again. He's a real. He's a real pain in the ass for everybody involved in the story. So

772
02:08:38.710 --> 02:08:44.479
Dave: with that explanation, it would make sense that that's the role that Adler plays in the story.

773
02:08:44.730 --> 02:08:49.329
Chris: and one more thing as well is, remember these triggers you were talking about.

774
02:08:49.420 --> 02:08:55.849
Chris: and it reminded me when I was reading your notes is they're not called triggers. They're called fetishes.

775
02:08:56.080 --> 02:09:02.869
Chris: Yes, which is another thing that is a direct link towards more sexual activity.

776
02:09:02.890 --> 02:09:09.270
Chris: So like to me that that seems to add up, or it just adds more questions as to why

777
02:09:09.590 --> 02:09:14.669
Chris: these characters are presented, the way they are in their medical files, or their ids or everything like that.

778
02:09:16.330 --> 02:09:21.799
Shane Koski: That is, that is a really interesting take II hadn't thought of that angle at all, but

779
02:09:22.080 --> 02:09:39.960
Shane Koski: you do make a pretty convincing argument for it. And and like Dave, I never really. I kind of took the all female thing just sort of at like face value. I guess II didn't really even think about whether or not there would be a deeper implication to that. But that that is a very interesting take on it, though.

780
02:09:40.900 --> 02:09:43.239
Dave: Yeah, agreed.

781
02:09:43.480 --> 02:09:47.010
Dave: yeah, completely out of my

782
02:09:47.600 --> 02:09:56.409
Dave: train of thought. When thinking about the story. So that's awesome. I like the I like that theory, and I like the theories about the bio resonance and the time.

783
02:09:56.480 --> 02:09:59.420
Dave: time, bubble and all of that stuff, too. I mean, it's

784
02:10:00.390 --> 02:10:13.460
Dave: II haven't even gotten to what I consider to be like the coolest of my ideas about the story. But we're already up. What is this theory? Number 5. Now for what's going on in the story? Number 5. Yeah.

785
02:10:13.980 --> 02:10:16.510
Dave: So I gave my idea for

786
02:10:16.620 --> 02:10:26.419
Dave: what if the planet is real? What if it's a real planet made of flesh, and it has an Eldridge monster. All right, we actually didn't get Shane. You wanted to talk about Eldred stuff. So let's do that first.

787
02:10:27.230 --> 02:10:45.029
Shane Koski: Oh, sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know. Now. I feel like I'm completely like sidelined by take on this. But but going back to the mostly just sort of face value. Sci-fi horror.

788
02:10:46.130 --> 02:10:58.050
Shane Koski: so my take on it, I mean to me there's kind of like 2 not like that. This is a definitive list, but in my mind there's kind of 2 ways I could. I feel like I could go with it. One is that

789
02:10:58.530 --> 02:11:08.460
Shane Koski: it's kind of like what you were saying. They did, in fact, uncover an actual like, you know. Cosmic horror, Elder's entity beneath the minds.

790
02:11:08.700 --> 02:11:13.600
Shane Koski: and that is part of what's influencing everything that's that's happening.

791
02:11:13.820 --> 02:11:23.679
Shane Koski: the other take on it. And this is the one that I personally tend to ascribe to more if for nothing else that II actually just think it's more interesting

792
02:11:23.960 --> 02:11:28.070
Shane Koski: is that it's a fabrication as part of

793
02:11:28.080 --> 02:11:34.899
Shane Koski: Arianne's sort of bio residence projection through through the Sirpensky station.

794
02:11:34.960 --> 02:11:36.520
Shane Koski: And that's

795
02:11:36.530 --> 02:11:40.979
Shane Koski: sort of facilitated by the the

796
02:11:41.060 --> 02:12:02.980
Shane Koski: the non authorized books that the the the her friends, her high school friends, who, I believe were twins. The 2 the 2 sisters gave to her, or let her borrow and they were books about cosmic horror and things like that. And so I feel like if we're saying that her

797
02:12:03.290 --> 02:12:11.890
Shane Koski: sort of like subconscious and things like that could influence what's happening within this like sphere of influence that she has.

798
02:12:11.940 --> 02:12:16.889
Shane Koski: I don't think that there actually is

799
02:12:17.060 --> 02:12:28.870
Shane Koski: a real Eldridge horror entity on that planet, but I think she manifested one. and it was, what's that?

800
02:12:28.930 --> 02:12:30.760
Chris: I said, no, that's that's great. Take

801
02:12:31.160 --> 02:12:36.609
Shane Koski: yeah, II. So II think that she manifested it. And so for the people. And if we're sticking with

802
02:12:36.800 --> 02:12:48.540
Shane Koski: my theory about the Sirpinsky mining station and all that stuff actually being there, and she's like influencing it and affecting those who were already there.

803
02:12:48.800 --> 02:12:50.030
Shane Koski: Then

804
02:12:50.210 --> 02:13:00.730
Shane Koski: to them it's real right. And so to them there is some heinous shit going on at the bottom of this mine, and it's affecting people.

805
02:13:00.770 --> 02:13:03.200
Shane Koski: But it's ultimately

806
02:13:03.440 --> 02:13:07.620
Shane Koski: being created and manifested from areas

807
02:13:07.780 --> 02:13:16.590
Shane Koski: biore resonant abilities. So that's that's kind of my take on it. And also the other thing. That kind of ties into this as well is.

808
02:13:16.710 --> 02:13:21.500
Shane Koski: There's this whole concept of like the the red eye, right?

809
02:13:21.730 --> 02:13:22.950
Shane Koski: And

810
02:13:23.480 --> 02:13:35.209
Shane Koski: I believe, and I obviously didn't see all of the endings, but I know there's one called the Artifact, ending where there's like, I think, all of the different. There's different copies of

811
02:13:35.360 --> 02:13:38.699
Shane Koski: the Elster replica. And then

812
02:13:38.730 --> 02:13:48.189
Shane Koski: when the one with the like white body chassis like basically dies, then you get this weird metallic object. And there's this big red eye, and then you see

813
02:13:48.260 --> 02:13:53.349
Shane Koski: her an area, and like dancing in a decrepit ship, or whatever. And so I don't.

814
02:13:53.940 --> 02:14:07.920
Shane Koski: My, there's an interesting take on this one that II feel like I'm gonna stick with, cause II just like it. And that is that this red eye thing that they talk about  again. I think that that was something that was sort of

815
02:14:08.390 --> 02:14:22.370
Shane Koski: part of Arianne's subconscious, because they talk about the coins. There's this, there's a section where they talk about these coins that people get paid with where there was during this like festival that they do. There was a

816
02:14:22.610 --> 02:14:40.790
Shane Koski: a tradition where they would like dip the coins and red paint, or whatever before they gave them to people. Because it was part of this, like the early settlers of the planet, or whatever believed that this red eye, which ultimately is just like a solar storm, or whatever. But they ascribed. You know these

817
02:14:41.210 --> 02:14:57.440
Shane Koski: other worldly characteristics to it, you know, very like superstitious type stuff. And so I think that that had an influence on on Arianne. And so that's kind of how this, like red eye thing, ends up manifesting as part of this.

818
02:14:57.600 --> 02:15:01.590
Shane Koski: you know, Eldridge, entity, slash influence

819
02:15:01.660 --> 02:15:04.259
Shane Koski: that you see. Like as you're playing through.

820
02:15:07.770 --> 02:15:08.570
Dave: Whew!

821
02:15:12.130 --> 02:15:13.560
Dave: Yeah, man

822
02:15:15.050 --> 02:15:16.190
Dave: interesting.

823
02:15:17.790 --> 02:15:20.410
Dave: So I,

824
02:15:20.470 --> 02:15:30.130
Dave: what I actually think is happening is along the lines of that theory. And then the theory of the construct, the constructed world theory.

825
02:15:30.180 --> 02:15:32.750
Dave: basically. But

826
02:15:32.780 --> 02:15:34.839
Dave: I did not place as much

827
02:15:35.040 --> 02:15:47.390
Dave: importance on bio resonance as far as like the abilities of of one person. Basically the bio resonance thing that I was

828
02:15:48.350 --> 02:15:51.229
Dave: like taking into account is how

829
02:15:52.000 --> 02:15:59.830
Dave: they are looking for a way to make perfect copies. But they're not able to yet, because they just don't have the technology to

830
02:15:59.980 --> 02:16:16.410
Dave: to do that yet. And II think that biore resonance plays into that process. So by making those perfect copies. I think that what they mean is making replicas that don't have these repressed memories from when they were human.

831
02:16:16.420 --> 02:16:17.570
Dave: Or

832
02:16:17.910 --> 02:16:25.760
Dave: if there are multiple stops along the way. Like if Elster is a copy of Falky, who was a copy of Lilith.

833
02:16:26.280 --> 02:16:29.180
Dave: then we have 2 sets of memories

834
02:16:29.980 --> 02:16:39.420
Dave: flooding into a third person, basically, which is what I think is happening here. And I think that the planet that they're on is

835
02:16:39.860 --> 02:16:42.209
Dave: a metaphor.

836
02:16:42.309 --> 02:16:44.089
Dave: As you go deeper.

837
02:16:44.100 --> 02:16:58.369
Dave: a metaphor from higher levels of consciousness to much more primal ideas of life. Basically, when we're talking about robots androids versus humans,

838
02:16:58.830 --> 02:17:01.109
Dave: the organic nature of

839
02:17:01.270 --> 02:17:13.600
Dave: the human is something that can't be replicated. That's the most basic thing about humans and animals versus an android copy is that we are made of

840
02:17:13.730 --> 02:17:34.889
Dave: flesh. Basically. So this planet used to in this. I meant to say it earlier many times, and I kept forgetting in this. This is one of those games like silent Hill 2 where you are always going down. Every time you progress through the game. It's because you're going down. You're going down through the station. You're going down through the mines. You're constantly jumping into pits

841
02:17:34.910 --> 02:17:39.240
Dave: like good old James from Silent Hill, too.

842
02:17:39.270 --> 02:17:45.129
Dave: So that makes me think that we are moving deeper and deeper into like a

843
02:17:46.459 --> 02:17:58.470
Dave: like. I said a metaphor, for we start out at consciousness, and then we get down into like real human, or even more base than human organic living stuff.

844
02:17:58.629 --> 02:18:05.699
Dave: Basically. that's why, when you go down into the minds, everything's made of flesh because you're at that level. Now you've

845
02:18:06.010 --> 02:18:11.650
Dave: moved past higher levels of thinking, and it's a much more you're at the much more primal

846
02:18:11.840 --> 02:18:12.750
Dave: level.

847
02:18:12.900 --> 02:18:17.470
Dave:  why, Elster is moving down is because again, I think that

848
02:18:17.719 --> 02:18:20.389
Dave: because those protocols were broken.

849
02:18:20.590 --> 02:18:32.299
Dave: These memories from past lives are resurfacing, which is why you get that scene on the train, or that scene in the school which is clearly not Elster. It's a past life, basically.

850
02:18:32.400 --> 02:18:33.330
Dave: Yes.

851
02:18:34.030 --> 02:18:35.740
Dave: So yeah.

852
02:18:35.840 --> 02:18:37.950
Chris: Lilith

853
02:18:38.299 --> 02:18:46.090
Chris: is a Gestalt. Lilith is a Gestalt. Lilith is Esa's sister. They're the twins, Lilith and Erica

854
02:18:46.500 --> 02:18:49.909
Chris: and Elster. Yes, Elster is

855
02:18:50.070 --> 02:18:53.189
Chris: from my understanding Lilith's replica.

856
02:18:53.580 --> 02:18:54.639
Shane Koski: Right?

857
02:18:54.959 --> 02:19:01.760
Chris: Yes, II don't know our fault sets in. But I think Falke is is separate from the 2 characters.

858
02:19:02.799 --> 02:19:09.150
Dave: Yeah, I got kind of hung up on how Falke wants to become whole with Elster, and that's

859
02:19:09.430 --> 02:19:18.989
Dave: that's what they say you do when you beat her as the final boss, at least my interpretation of it was so. There is a connection there.

860
02:19:19.590 --> 02:19:24.860
Dave: I'm just not exactly sure what it is. so

861
02:19:25.090 --> 02:19:32.059
Dave: again, I think that we have a merging of consciousness and memories and things. Where

862
02:19:32.080 --> 02:19:47.219
Dave: memories from one person start flooding into another. And they're incompatible, basically. And that's where you get all the glitching. That's where you get all of the random pop in. That's where you get seemingly snapping from location to location. It's because it's a memory. It's not

863
02:19:47.459 --> 02:19:51.610
Dave: us moving from location to location. Physically.

864
02:19:51.770 --> 02:20:13.389
Dave:  There are other people who, I think, talk about going through this process, including Adler. Adler says he had a dream of his Gestalt life in one of his diaries. So that's what makes me think there are others going through this, and the ones who can't are put in this eternal

865
02:20:13.630 --> 02:20:18.620
Dave: cycle of torment, basically. And that's why they turn into monsters, I think.

866
02:20:18.660 --> 02:20:25.139
Dave: There's something there that's blocking them, not sure what it is. But you know something.

867
02:20:26.600 --> 02:20:41.930
Dave: and then once you get down to that red area at the bottom of the mines. We've talked about the cycle. I agree there's a cycle. Many elseors have tried this before. And this is an eternal attempt an eternal attempt

868
02:20:42.000 --> 02:20:56.609
Dave: to become whole. II think so. We do see the dead Elster bodies down there, the ones that have tried, and Adler's down there saying, like you've been here before. You've tried this. You've failed. But you're back again.

869
02:20:57.440 --> 02:21:05.849
Dave: Adler says that Falkes saw something out there beyond the threshold. This is in that red area at the bottom of the mine.

870
02:21:06.050 --> 02:21:08.670
Dave:  That could be

871
02:21:08.870 --> 02:21:14.770
Dave: the thing, the eldritch thing that is causing this. It's a classic Lovecraft

872
02:21:15.030 --> 02:21:24.819
Dave: thing. Someone went past a threshold and saw something they shouldn't have seen. And now they're fucked up forever, basically and it broke something in them.

873
02:21:25.080 --> 02:21:31.449
Dave: Or if you want to go in the more metaphorical way elster is just repeatedly trying to

874
02:21:32.510 --> 02:21:47.340
Dave: make this process this transition process whole or complete. And every time she gets down to this base red level at the bottom, including the time you see in the game. When you try to rip open the ship doors and she apparently dies.

875
02:21:47.410 --> 02:21:49.450
Dave: wakes up again in the ship

876
02:21:49.930 --> 02:22:01.399
Dave: with that that fake out ending. That is, you know. another attempt. But since this is metaphorical, we don't have to retrace our steps. We can kind of.

877
02:22:01.450 --> 02:22:09.170
Dave: I actually think. Correct me if I'm wrong. After that fakeout ending, you go back into the station, but everything's covered in flesh.

878
02:22:09.650 --> 02:22:13.399
Dave: Right? I think that's what happens. So like

879
02:22:13.410 --> 02:22:17.990
Dave: she failed. But she's further along in the process, basically.

880
02:22:18.250 --> 02:22:18.970
Chris: What

881
02:22:19.450 --> 02:22:24.870
Chris: what are the cool things about? That, too, is that when you restart and you go up, and there's that pod.

882
02:22:25.170 --> 02:22:29.219
Chris: Now you don't know what's in the pot. You just know there's a pod you're you take

883
02:22:29.520 --> 02:22:38.529
Chris: your new arm from an Elster unit. That's next to that pod, right? Which infers that. Yes, that's part of the cycle.

884
02:22:39.480 --> 02:22:41.139
Chris: So if you get that ending, yeah.

885
02:22:41.440 --> 02:22:43.230
Dave: yeah, I think that we

886
02:22:43.460 --> 02:22:46.700
Dave: generally agree that, like at least

887
02:22:46.740 --> 02:22:55.230
Dave: several of our many theories agree that there is some kind of cycle going on. I think the difference between our theories is

888
02:22:55.890 --> 02:23:03.360
Dave: whose cycle it is who constructed this? Because II personally, if I look actually, I don't

889
02:23:03.440 --> 02:23:06.590
Dave: think one is cooler than the other. But

890
02:23:07.810 --> 02:23:20.019
Dave: if I'm guessing like, if the developers looked at my 2 theories, aside from being, they're saying you're they're both wrong, you idiot! What are you talking about? They would, I think, that they would go for the more metaphorical

891
02:23:20.630 --> 02:23:28.849
Dave: read of the story than the eldritch, or read of it, and you can have eldritch, or inside of the metaphorical one to a degree, too.

892
02:23:28.870 --> 02:23:30.889
Dave: of course. But

893
02:23:31.560 --> 02:23:40.830
Dave: what I think is happening. Adler, down at the bottom. He keeps warning you about this cycle, because I think that Elster's mind is reaching a breaking point

894
02:23:40.970 --> 02:23:51.970
Dave: like the others that have gone crazy. He says, you know, are you willing to go through this again? This world can't take much more he actually says you'll destroy everything.

895
02:23:52.690 --> 02:24:02.759
Dave: It's a note you pick up. It says you've tried so many times, and you've failed every time. Don't you see that you're ruining everything? This is your final warning? It's a note written by Adler

896
02:24:02.820 --> 02:24:07.489
Dave: to Elster, I believe, because if this is a metaphorical world.

897
02:24:07.670 --> 02:24:13.680
Dave: it will all come crashing down once she goes feral, like all the others. basically.

898
02:24:13.810 --> 02:24:18.120
Dave: And then she does finally succeed at the end.

899
02:24:18.390 --> 02:24:19.290
Dave: Now

900
02:24:21.340 --> 02:24:29.160
Dave: I again I missed the note, and I didn't read anything, watch anything. So the promise being to kill

901
02:24:29.300 --> 02:24:30.520
Dave: REN.

902
02:24:32.360 --> 02:24:43.730
Dave: Could be. It could fit into this. If this is all mental struggle that she's going through along the way to try to reach Arien to carry out the promise. I don't think that that excludes anything that I've said

903
02:24:43.880 --> 02:24:51.849
Dave: it just the difference of what happens when she gets there. Does she remember the promise? Has she lost too much of her

904
02:24:52.010 --> 02:24:53.250
Dave: directive

905
02:24:53.690 --> 02:25:09.089
Dave: along the way, or you know, in the quote better ending, you do get up there, and she remembers Arianne remembers her, and then you end up. Elster ends up killing her in my ending. I got the memory ending where Elster goes into the ship.

906
02:25:09.220 --> 02:25:22.670
Dave: Arianne does not remember. Elster and Elster just lays down and dies next to her, which is not fulfilling the promise. So it's not that there's a good ending to this game, because some one dies in all the endings

907
02:25:22.680 --> 02:25:24.510
Dave: that sucks. Yeah.

908
02:25:25.080 --> 02:25:33.689
Dave: that is my spiel about what I think is going on. I skipped over some of my notes, but I got my point across

909
02:25:34.060 --> 02:25:45.950
Dave: and knowing that that is what the promise is, I think, fits in. because I think that what's happening in the story is is on the side of the quest to fulfil the promise.

910
02:25:46.400 --> 02:25:48.580
Dave: It's a lot of what's going on

911
02:25:48.700 --> 02:25:51.060
Dave: with merging consciousness.

912
02:25:51.090 --> 02:25:52.329
Dave: That's what I thought.

913
02:25:52.900 --> 02:26:00.220
Shane Koski: Yeah. So I've been while while we've been talking about this, I've been thinking through a couple of other things, and also kind of

914
02:26:00.370 --> 02:26:03.859
Shane Koski: doing a little bit more rabbit hole digging. And I feel like.

915
02:26:04.470 --> 02:26:17.890
Shane Koski: because a a obviously I didn't experience like the artifact ending because that one is one that apparently you only get if you've somehow, if you've played through the game like multiple times, and you know exactly what you need to do and whatever

916
02:26:18.000 --> 02:26:26.930
Shane Koski: so I didn't get that. But having understood now what that ending entails where II was kind of alluding to that earlier with

917
02:26:26.960 --> 02:26:33.869
Shane Koski: the multiple copies of Elster replica and the the sort of

918
02:26:34.070 --> 02:26:46.640
Shane Koski: weird like objects and the eye, and then the whole dancing thing, but it also involves these lilies right? So part of the key for that is getting this vasive lilies.

919
02:26:47.110 --> 02:27:00.549
Shane Koski: and you end up sort of like bringing them to this monolith, and that's part of that ending, and a thing that I didn't even really realize cause again. I didn't see this ending for myself. But is that this also mirrors?

920
02:27:00.640 --> 02:27:11.749
Shane Koski: What happened with Lilith and Alina? So that's something that we didn't necessarily talk a whole lot about, because those were 2 gestalts right?

921
02:27:11.780 --> 02:27:32.860
Shane Koski: And this was before the events of this game, right? So, like Lilith and Alina were both like soldiers. I think they were in the what's that plan, vanita vanita? Or however you pronounce that? And they were like infantry and the sort of like implication there is that they were romantically involved. And they both.

922
02:27:33.020 --> 02:27:44.049
Shane Koski: you know, unsurprisingly, perhaps. Visually, look very, very much like, Elster and Ariana. Yeah, yeah.

923
02:27:44.150 --> 02:27:57.370
Shane Koski: right? And so that ending with the artifact, ending the lilies and bringing it to this monolith and all that stuff, and even the configuration of how like the replica bodies are positioned around this thing

924
02:27:57.640 --> 02:28:09.030
Shane Koski: seem to mirror the Lilith like Morning Alina's death, like at at the grave site that you see like a flash of in one of like the memory flashbacks.

925
02:28:09.420 --> 02:28:14.710
Shane Koski: And so I'm I'm saying all of this, because with that knowledge.

926
02:28:15.580 --> 02:28:25.029
Shane Koski: II actually kind of want to retract a little bit of what I said about what I think that promise actually is not not anything about like

927
02:28:25.080 --> 02:28:26.990
Shane Koski: my theory on the

928
02:28:27.110 --> 02:28:30.070
Shane Koski: you know, the biore resonance and all that stuff.

929
02:28:30.700 --> 02:28:31.580
Shane Koski: But

930
02:28:32.310 --> 02:28:42.660
Shane Koski: I think the loops this this cycle that they're caught in. I don't. I actually don't think that the intention is to successfully kill

931
02:28:43.050 --> 02:28:44.829
Shane Koski: area. And I think

932
02:28:45.900 --> 02:28:52.550
Shane Koski: part of this was fueled by Arian's grief of losing Elster and also her

933
02:28:53.340 --> 02:29:04.960
Shane Koski: like her. Her pain and suffering from this radiation cancer. And the loop is actually, it's being created by area end. But it's for

934
02:29:05.220 --> 02:29:07.550
Shane Koski: Elstur's benefit.

935
02:29:07.620 --> 02:29:17.529
Shane Koski: And by that I mean what she's trying to get her to do. And perhaps with this promise is is to just finally come to terms with the fact

936
02:29:17.800 --> 02:29:26.100
Shane Koski: that this is what's happening, that that Arianne is dying. There's nothing that you can really do about it, and to break

937
02:29:26.380 --> 02:29:35.199
Shane Koski: to ultimately break out of this this cycle? And you could refer to it as like a cycle of grief if you really want to. But

938
02:29:35.340 --> 02:29:44.759
Shane Koski: because that could be interpreted as what the implication of like that scene at the end of that ending where they're sort of like dancing together and stuff. It's like there's this.

939
02:29:45.050 --> 02:29:51.190
Shane Koski: perhaps implication, that they have successfully finally broken out of this loop, and though it's not

940
02:29:51.460 --> 02:29:56.280
Shane Koski: arguably a good ending. At the very least.

941
02:29:56.420 --> 02:30:05.460
Shane Koski: You've finally gotten to this point of acceptance rather than trying to like vehemently fight against what is really just inevitable.

942
02:30:06.770 --> 02:30:10.300
Chris: I think, yeah, that's really good. Take. that's a really good take? Yeah.

943
02:30:10.440 --> 02:30:14.220
Dave: And II think that there's probably significance that

944
02:30:15.010 --> 02:30:20.329
Dave: lilies are the flower that's used. You know, lilies.

945
02:30:20.520 --> 02:30:24.470
Dave: you know, white flowers would symbolize like innocence, or some, or

946
02:30:24.560 --> 02:30:37.019
Dave: a rebirth or purity, or something like that. It could also just be that her her names, Lilith and Lilies are sounds a lot like it. But I you know you choose to choose the

947
02:30:37.130 --> 02:30:38.690
Dave: symbolic

948
02:30:38.940 --> 02:30:49.390
Dave: meaning that everything there is placed for a reason, and that they didn't choose daisies or something like that, because Lily's fit better.

949
02:30:50.570 --> 02:30:55.789
Dave: I didn't watch that ending. I probably should have, but I didn't. So

950
02:30:56.900 --> 02:31:05.040
Dave: if there is like a a meaning of rebirth or something like that, then that maybe that's that scene of them dancing at the end.

951
02:31:05.070 --> 02:31:06.650
Dave: In the ship.

952
02:31:08.300 --> 02:31:17.300
Dave: Something has restarted, basically. And I think that's like, I think that ending involves Elster dying from a quick check.

953
02:31:17.450 --> 02:31:23.860
Dave: but that is about as close to a happy ending as you'll get  dying in

954
02:31:24.250 --> 02:31:26.170
Dave: being reborn in that way.

955
02:31:28.250 --> 02:31:30.220
Shane Koski: Well, because the I think the other

956
02:31:30.400 --> 02:31:43.060
Shane Koski: take or the other part of this take that is definitely not mine. I just wanna be clear about that. But I I tend to kinda like it now that I've sort of understood some of this more as we've been talking through it. But

957
02:31:43.520 --> 02:31:44.360
Shane Koski: if

958
02:31:45.130 --> 02:31:56.309
Shane Koski: Ariana is at the point where we can assume that, like, she is able to bend reality right with this ability, that she has this bio resonance and all that stuff like she's

959
02:31:56.860 --> 02:32:02.640
Shane Koski: at at a point where there's really no purpose for her to still like exist

960
02:32:02.800 --> 02:32:13.609
Shane Koski: in in this like in this realm. Right? So it's like she's almost like making a choice kind of to continue to exist in this suffering because she cares so much for

961
02:32:13.820 --> 02:32:17.360
Shane Koski: her, Elster, that, like, she wants to

962
02:32:17.650 --> 02:32:31.089
Shane Koski: make sure, because they also yeah, it she does die, but the the like, the imagery there of the the lilies, and this monolith. And also I just put the pieces together, too, because part of the flashback

963
02:32:31.430 --> 02:32:52.239
Shane Koski: towards the beginning there. Of the 2 gestalts of Lilith and Alina Lilith is at a hexagonal sort of configuration of graves, and she places the lily at one of them, and the sort of metallic object that shows up at during that artifact ending is a hexagon.

964
02:32:52.360 --> 02:33:02.189
Shane Koski: And so, like. I think Arianne was doing this whole thing and creating all of this for the sole purpose of getting

965
02:33:02.420 --> 02:33:12.200
Shane Koski: and Elster like, because functionally, they end up sort of becoming the same person once they, you know, uncover all of that

966
02:33:12.210 --> 02:33:17.129
Shane Koski: consciousness to finally just accept this inevitability

967
02:33:17.290 --> 02:33:18.959
Shane Koski: and then die.

968
02:33:19.160 --> 02:33:21.130
Shane Koski: knowing that you know.

969
02:33:21.840 --> 02:33:32.139
Shane Koski: being able to accept that and then dying sort of at peace. And then Ariane is also sort of released from having to continue to do this, because she's now

970
02:33:32.830 --> 02:33:42.289
Shane Koski: sort of comforted by no in in knowing that Elster has finally stopped trying to fight this and can kinda go in peace if you will.

971
02:33:43.500 --> 02:33:48.550
Chris: Yeah, one of the things about the red eye as well is that Arianne has red eyes.

972
02:33:50.410 --> 02:34:01.760
Chris: That's true. Yeah. So so like, there might not be much more to the red eye other than that the world that Elster is in the world that's being created by Arianne is being watched over

973
02:34:01.950 --> 02:34:04.970
Chris: by Arianne. That's why the red eye is there.

974
02:34:05.010 --> 02:34:08.830
Chris: And so that's I think that's why, like your your take so much is

975
02:34:09.030 --> 02:34:16.929
Chris: the the promise might be to come to the acceptance that she is dying, and there's nothing that she can do about it. And then just like.

976
02:34:17.220 --> 02:34:20.329
Chris: but make your own path. so to speak.

977
02:34:20.460 --> 02:34:26.499
Chris: because one of the one of the ways you get the ending where she does end up killing

978
02:34:26.750 --> 02:34:34.269
Chris:  Arianne is. You have to do essentially what you do to get the bad ending in Silent Hill, to

979
02:34:34.380 --> 02:34:40.860
Chris: which I don't know. Maybe I'm spoiling Silent Hill, too, here. But you have to run around on low health.

980
02:34:40.940 --> 02:34:46.499
Chris: You have to constantly put yourself in danger. Not save often, not heal yourself often.

981
02:34:46.650 --> 02:34:51.080
Chris: Kill. I think you have to kill a ton of enemies

982
02:34:51.170 --> 02:34:53.749
Chris: at the same time, like kill everything.

983
02:34:53.950 --> 02:35:03.040
Chris: And that's how you get the one where you end up killing Ariana, the the memory ending, the one that myself and and Dave got

984
02:35:03.050 --> 02:35:16.010
Chris: is one where they all got it. Yeah, we all got the memory ending was the one where, like, you're not super cautious, because that's the third ending is where you're like, super cautious, and you're not fighting anything at all, and

985
02:35:16.020 --> 02:35:17.770
Chris: you're always at full health.

986
02:35:17.780 --> 02:35:25.729
Chris: But the the we got the middle one, where sometimes you get hurt, you kill a few things, and that's the one where you end up dying next to

987
02:35:25.910 --> 02:35:37.059
Chris: Arianne, and then the one where she just walks off and does nothing is where you're very, very prudent, like all you're doing is thinking about yourself. So in in this artifacting the secret ending that you get on the replay.

988
02:35:37.340 --> 02:35:44.330
Chris: I think that's I think you hit the nail on the head chain. I think I fully agree with you in that aspect, that the promise that she actually wants her to keep

989
02:35:44.650 --> 02:35:50.029
Chris: is a find. Your own path. Find your own way of healing come to terms with the fact that I am dead.

990
02:35:50.080 --> 02:36:00.220
Chris: and and I will die but, like you, you can make your own choice like you are free of, of the the contraptions that

991
02:36:00.250 --> 02:36:02.560
Chris: that underpin you, so to speak.

992
02:36:06.830 --> 02:36:13.180
Dave: with, with so much in the game. That's not. you know, taken at face value, or

993
02:36:13.820 --> 02:36:26.380
Dave: you know you you're encouraged to dig or to think on a deeper level about what you see and not to just, you know, like, I said, not take everything you see at face value and move on.

994
02:36:27.360 --> 02:36:30.180
Dave: maybe. I mean. maybe.

995
02:36:30.230 --> 02:36:37.770
Dave: even if they do explicitly state or or hint at very strongly that the promise is to mercy. Kill her.

996
02:36:37.920 --> 02:36:57.209
Dave:  I think that just because that that's said doesn't mean that that's not also open to interpretation, because everything else in the game is open to interpretation. Th. There's very few facts. And the I mean the real facts. The things the game is like this is how it is.

997
02:36:57.360 --> 02:37:12.219
Dave: That's the stuff we talked about in the non spoiler part about. You know the the nation and the Empire, the stuff we haven't talked about for the last 2 h. Basically, everything else is open to interpretation. And

998
02:37:14.010 --> 02:37:34.360
Dave: just because someone says something doesn't mean that that's exactly what they mean. And just because someone hears something doesn't mean that's exactly what they're going to do. And I think that these different endings kind of show you that I would be curious if you ask the developers if there's a canon ending to this. Which one do they consider to be?

999
02:37:35.170 --> 02:37:39.470
Dave:  the real one! Do they think that

1000
02:37:39.640 --> 02:37:46.169
Dave: it does end in Elster killing Arianne or not killing her? For whatever reason.

1001
02:37:47.040 --> 02:37:48.889
Dave: In the ending that we got

1002
02:37:48.960 --> 02:38:05.509
Dave: Arianne doesn't recognize Elster. And why would it be that she doesn't recognize Elster? Is it because, you know, in my thought the reason she doesn't recognize Elster is because in Elster's memories it's not Elster there. It's someone else.

1003
02:38:05.570 --> 02:38:10.319
Dave: So when she gets there with the memories from somebody else.

1004
02:38:10.590 --> 02:38:12.590
Dave: she Ariana's like.

1005
02:38:12.970 --> 02:38:20.280
Dave: Sorry I don't know who you are. What do you? What are you doing here? So all of this stuff is

1006
02:38:21.590 --> 02:38:26.139
Dave: it's it's a lot to take in. I mean, I think we were up to like

1007
02:38:26.320 --> 02:38:40.669
Chris: 6 or 7 total theories between the 3 of us here, which is awesome. Well, I think you can take that. You can combine it in with the artifact ending. whereas if she did end up seeing Elster again, Elster wouldn't recognize her. So

1008
02:38:40.740 --> 02:38:50.509
Chris: I mean, I'm sorry if she, if Arian, did end up seeing Elster again, Arianna would not recognize Elster, which is kind of like she is too far gone for anything

1009
02:38:50.680 --> 02:38:58.279
Chris: but the same. Yeah point. It's like, make your own path, and that's by the end. You see them dancing together. I think it's just the acceptance that both of them have come

1010
02:38:58.450 --> 02:39:06.719
Dave: to the end of their lives, and now they are they are joining. And what could be considered the afterlife? If you want to pair that with that

1011
02:39:07.310 --> 02:39:15.189
Dave: symbolic dance or a metaphorical dance it, and a or a metaphorical

1012
02:39:16.040 --> 02:39:32.919
Dave: or sorry, or a physical, like losing of Arianne's wits, you know. If she's sick she may not recognize Elster because she's sick, and it she just doesn't have the capacity for it anymore. You don't know what's going on like you literally. You see.

1013
02:39:33.030 --> 02:39:43.949
Dave: Elster talks to her. She says, I'm sorry. I don't know who you are, and then Elster dies, and it's like a 10 s ending. There's there's a lot of room for interpretation in just

1014
02:39:43.990 --> 02:39:51.210
Dave: what happens at the end, whether you ascribe to any real physical things happening in the game.

1015
02:39:51.220 --> 02:39:53.580
Dave: whether it's all

1016
02:39:54.870 --> 02:39:55.750
Dave: you know.

1017
02:39:55.930 --> 02:40:09.529
Dave: figurative or some combination of it. I think that this game does a really good job of supporting all combinations of those things, and in a way that is plausible. And

1018
02:40:09.710 --> 02:40:10.950
Dave: I think that

1019
02:40:11.350 --> 02:40:23.959
Dave: unless you guys have more theories, I think a good way to wrap this up would be just to commend them for walking that line where they they give you so little to really grasp on to. But it's not

1020
02:40:24.040 --> 02:40:26.259
Dave: too little for you to

1021
02:40:26.590 --> 02:40:41.480
Dave: take it and run and and come up with your own stuff, cause there's a world where they they make this game. They give you the the few things that they give you, and it's not enough, or it's not interesting enough for you to care enough to put all this work into to

1022
02:40:41.480 --> 02:40:56.819
Dave: to read stuff, to watch videos, or, in my case, to spend literal hours organizing my cork board of of notes in my Google Doc here. Not. All games inspire that. So big, big credit to rose engine here.

1023
02:40:57.240 --> 02:41:02.129
Shane Koski: Yeah, 100%, absolutely. And it's it's interesting because I I'm not

1024
02:41:03.080 --> 02:41:19.189
Shane Koski: I. I'm not sure that I'm quite at this level yet, but I have seen a few people out there on the Internet throwing around the notion that they believe that from a a plot construction point of view this game is superior to Silent Hill. To.

1025
02:41:20.670 --> 02:41:29.500
Dave: I think, Silent Hill 2 makes more of an effort to make sure that everyone's relatively on the same page than this game does.

1026
02:41:29.700 --> 02:41:31.609
Shane Koski: Umhm. Yeah, I would agree.

1027
02:41:31.790 --> 02:41:36.840
Chris: This. This game's for you to put the puzzle together. Silent Hill to

1028
02:41:37.410 --> 02:41:43.350
Chris: is, I mean, I'm just repeating essentially what David saying here, this, the storytelling is better

1029
02:41:43.380 --> 02:41:49.300
Chris: and silent. Hill, too, whereas here is for you to craft your own story. Essentially.

1030
02:41:49.860 --> 02:41:55.819
Dave: Yeah, I. And that's the thing is, I don't think one is necessarily better than the other. I think they both

1031
02:41:56.220 --> 02:42:03.890
Shane Koski: excelled at what they were trying to accomplish. But I think they were fundamentally different things.

1032
02:42:04.680 --> 02:42:13.639
Dave: Yeah, this is this is like the difference between this I was talking earlier about some games that lead you on this path of like

1033
02:42:13.710 --> 02:42:20.209
Dave: really holding back the truth and just giving you little things. And then at the end, they tell you what happened.

1034
02:42:20.270 --> 02:42:23.350
Dave: I'm thinking of like immortality

1035
02:42:23.610 --> 02:42:26.259
Dave: is a they tell you

1036
02:42:26.430 --> 02:42:28.720
Dave: what happened in that game.

1037
02:42:28.820 --> 02:42:48.029
Dave: You have to find it. You have to do a bunch of digging to find it, but the game will tell you. You can make up theories for why it happened. But they'll tell you what happened. Same in in Silent Hill 2. They'll tell you what happened, and then you fill in the blanks as you see fit, but it's it's not like a

1038
02:42:48.330 --> 02:42:54.899
Dave: a mystery as to what happened with James and his wife in Silent Hill, too. They tell you so.

1039
02:42:55.050 --> 02:43:08.840
Dave: This is not like that, though this is a game that doesn't tell you why or what it gives you just little things to grab onto and so it's a little bit of different style of storytelling a different goal even

1040
02:43:09.070 --> 02:43:19.520
Dave: even on the Wikipedia page. There's a a bit about how there is no single consensus on the story, and I would bet that that the developers are

1041
02:43:20.480 --> 02:43:21.440
Dave: either

1042
02:43:22.030 --> 02:43:28.100
Dave: they either don't know, and they just wrote it in a very vague way, or they do know, and they're just never going to tell

1043
02:43:28.880 --> 02:43:30.800
Dave: which is cool either way.

1044
02:43:31.220 --> 02:43:41.690
Shane Koski: Yeah, I would see a in. In either case, II have to imagine that they're pretty pleased with that. That being the conclusion that everyone has come to.

1045
02:43:41.990 --> 02:43:42.690
Dave: Yep.

1046
02:43:44.640 --> 02:44:04.769
Dave: So, guys, thank you so much for coming on to talk about Signalis. I was really really excited to have you both on the show. I was really excited to dive into this spoiler section and hear the theories. And we have covered a wide range of stuff. So I appreciate you both so much. Thank you. Thank you. Again.

1047
02:44:05.260 --> 02:44:13.150
Shane Koski: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having us on man. Like II thoroughly enjoyed this discussion. I always liked being able to to really, just like

1048
02:44:13.370 --> 02:44:25.080
Shane Koski: dive into theory, crafting about specifically about things that really really interests me. And this is this was definitely one of them. So II appreciate the opportunity.

1049
02:44:25.240 --> 02:44:50.650
Chris: Yeah 100 man. It's always fun stopping by talking games with you, or talking about what is going on with the letter T. That's right.

1050
02:44:51.130 --> 02:45:07.709
Dave: Collaborations on retro hangover. In the future and in the past now. And it's it's it's just great, always great talking with you both. Again. A recommendation for everyone listening to checkout retro hangover. You'll find that link tree down in the show notes where you can go

1051
02:45:08.080 --> 02:45:15.870
Dave: find an episode for a retro game that you want to hear someone talk about because, these guys do it really? Really? Well, so

1052
02:45:15.940 --> 02:45:35.310
Dave: thank you. Everybody for listening again. I appreciate everyone who sticks it out to the end if you somehow made it through this spoiler section and you didn't place acknowledge you just wanted to hear the theories you could probably still play signals and come out with something. You you're not gonna come out with exactly any of the things we said. I feel pretty

1053
02:45:35.360 --> 02:45:45.110
Dave: confident in that. You'll be able to make your own opinions. So thanks everyone for listening tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.