Remember Our Promise | Signalis (Ep. 147) - Pixel Project Radio: A Video Game Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:22):
Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio, the video game discussions
podcast where we do deep dives and analyze all of
our favorite games and some of yours too. My name
is Rick, and today we fulfill our promise. We're talking
all about Signalis, a survival horror game paying homage to
a lot of the genre and other genres too, from

(00:43):
twenty twenty two. Up top. I've got to thank the patrons.
They believe in the show, they support the show. They're
wonderful folks. And if you want to be like these
fine people, you can head on over to patreon dot
com slash pixel Project Radio to check out what we've
got there to support the show. It's great. I appreciate it,
and I'm sure everybody else does too. In some way.

(01:05):
We can talk all about the plugs, the socials, and etc.
At the end of the episode, but first let me
introduce my guest today, a returning member on the show,
a friendly face, a familiar face. We've got Ben from
the play Along podcast. Thanks for joining me, Ben, how's
it going now?

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Thank you for having me man, It's going good. It's
going good. It's always nice to come back and have
a chat with you about games.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. This is a game
that you kind of helped me pick and put on
to the show when we were trying to figure out
maybe what would be a good game to talk about.
This was on your list, this was on my list.
This was something that you were familiar with before, but
I was not. That's kind of my history with this

(01:47):
game out of the way real quick. I played it
for the first time for this episode. I have a
bit of a complicated relationship with this game and with
this genre as a whole that maybe I'll talk about
more as we go. I mean spoiler alerts. I really
liked it, but I have complicated feelings about what it's

(02:07):
doing and how it does it and with survival horror
as a genre. But first time through actually last week
at the time of recording. What about you. I know
that you guys covered this on your show on play Along,
I want to say, in twenty twenty three, so this
isn't your first time through it. But when did you
first play it? How many times have you played it?

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Like?

Speaker 1 (02:27):
What's your overall thoughts on Signalis?

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I believe this was probably I think I played this
for get Wrecked. I am blanking on who was on
that episode with me, So I apologize if you're listening
and that was you. But yeah, I played this in
twenty twenty three, and I'm a sucker for horror games.
I love a horror game and kind of like you

(02:53):
survival horror, especially this kind of survival horror. And I'm
sure talk about the inventory management and stuff like that
at some point, but that kind of like Resident Evil
style of survival horror I like. But I do have
a bit of a complicated relationship with I feel like
sometimes it's done very very well and sometimes it isn't.

(03:17):
So yeah, first, I only played too through Signalist once
off the bat. Like you said, for yourself, I really
really loved this game. I had an absolutely amazing time
in the kind of the world that they've built and
the esthetic and the suspense of what they've built. And
I don't know, we'll touch on it, but I remember

(03:38):
the story being very convoluded, so it was an interesting
experienced gameplay wise and story wise. I kind of got
what was going on, but I felt like there was
something deeper under the surface that I couldn't quite get
to grasps with.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Sure, I'm glad that you brought that up now, because
that leads me to my next point. So if you're
a new listener, first of all, welcome to the show.
We're glad that you're here, and we hope you love
it today. The way this show usually works is we
begin with the preamble conversation general overall thoughts, personal histories, mechanics, music,
all of that, and we're going to talk about that.

(04:19):
Following that, we generally do a narrative analysis. We go
through the game top to bottom, analyzing the plot, talking
about its effectiveness. That was the original plan for this episode,
but I had this moment. I played through it last
week for the first time, like I said, and I
had this moment of you know, I did not give

(04:41):
this the respect that it deserved. I had a moment
where I was like, I'm sorry, Signalis, I was not
familiar with your game. Like you said, Ben, there's a
lot going on deliberately, So the story is told in
a nonlinear, sort of obfuscated way that makes use of
things like unreliable narrators in game lore that the characters

(05:03):
themselves don't fully understand and therefore is not completely fleshed out,
as well as things like cosmic horror dream logic events
and scenarios and concepts that intentionally maybe don't make sense,
because that's not the point, because the point isn't necessarily
always to deliver a grounded narrative experience, but more so

(05:26):
evoke feelings and be evocative. The point is this, We're
not going to do a beat by beat story analysis today.
We're going to talk broad strokes about the game story
when we get there. I feel really guilty doing that,
you know, especially I kind of gave this a similar
speel on paranorma site which either just came out or
was coming out right after this. I feel really guilty

(05:49):
doing that, you know, because I feel like I'm kind
of copping out and being lazy and not doing my
due diligence, you know, like if I'm not bringing a
high level analysis to this, like what's the point. You
could find millions of other hackneyed podcasts about Signalis. You know.
I do feel a little guilty. But what I would
like to do with Signalis is revisit it next year

(06:10):
in either you know, maybe two episodes or three shorter episodes,
completely going through the plot and talking about what's happening.
Because there's a lot here. It is the kind of
game that benefits immensely from multiple playthroughs, not just because
there are multiple endings, but because recontextualization is a huge

(06:32):
part of this. And of course, you know the story
isn't The point isn't always to be comprehensive and tell
you exactly what's going on. It's oftentimes more about evoking
senses and feelings. The scenes are sometimes more important than
the overall plot. It's really funny when I was looking

(06:55):
for a story summary, because I got to the end.
There is a certain point where I was like time travel,
I don't know what's happening, but time loops not time travel.
But there was a certain point where I started looking
for online story synopsies just to help me, like as
a compendium, a companion piece for me, And I found

(07:15):
this writit post. Somebody's like, hey, I'm really confused, Like
can you just like explain, like I'm five, just a
high level overview what's going on with the time loops,
And the most upvoted comment, the very top one that
everybody agreed was the best answer, was somebody saying there
are only two people that know exactly what's going on
with this story, and it's Yuri and Barbara, which are
the two developers, and the consensus was like this, yes,

(07:38):
this is true. That's the point, so like and yes,
that is kind of the point. So if you're looking
for like a full breakdown explained like all capital letters
explain thumbnail kind of video episode for Signalis, this is
maybe not the right podcast for you. What we are
going to do is sort of talk high level about
the story of the concepts, the themes, the ideas, and

(08:00):
how it struck us on our first playthrough. And next
year we will revisit this. Ben is invited. We might
pull on some other folks to go through the story
high level analysis, which in some ways will make this
episode obsolete. But you know, it's not really how any
of this works. So apologies is not a long, long preamble,

(08:21):
but that's kind of where I'm sitting with this episode.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, and I don't think it's necessarily indicative of yourself
or like your ability or anything like that. I think
this game I don't want to get into the story
stuff too soon, But anyone who's played Citizens Sleeper or
the sequel will be familiar with this kind of there's

(08:47):
a lot of like are these my memories or are
these the memories of the person who I'm emulating And
will get into that with like the replicants and stuff
like that. So there is a lot of mixed memories,
potentially force memories, and so it becomes very hard to
kind of pick apart. And like you said, I mean

(09:08):
I did a little bit of sort of just refreshing
before we recording, and there are I mean, you can
go on YouTube and there are hundreds of videos and
they'll all have slightly different interpretations. Because the game is
very artsy in its portrayal of this story. There's a

(09:29):
lot of I don't mean this in a derogatory way,
but it reminds me of kind of like a sun
Dance film. You know, these really like artsy films where
it is very much about the message and not what's
actually being said. So it's got that kind of element
to it, which is awesome. That doesn't make for easy

(09:51):
discussion of.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
The plot, right, it is evocative, and that seems to
be the design philosophy. I've pulled some quotes from the
developers that will t about in a little bit. If
you are the kind of person that's looking for a
full breakdown explained kind of video. The channel Indie Explorer
that's explorer just spelled with an x on YouTube has

(10:13):
two videos that total about two and a half hours
on signalis. Very well put together, very well researched. I
recommend checking that out if you just want a comprehensive
overview of the lore and the plot. Which even then,
and they say this in the beginning, like a lot
of this is theory crafting. There aren't a lot of
concrete answers as to what is quote unquote right in

(10:34):
this in this story. So keeping that in mind, it's
still a very great video. You can check that link
out in the description. So speaking of what other folks
think about this game, we do have one correspondence from
the community forum. If you're new. The community forum is
a channel in our Discord server, which by the way,
is free, and you can join via the link in
the description the community forum. It's a channel where I

(10:58):
post what we're talking about and the members can give
their succinct thoughts. And we have one such thought today
from Matt Storm. Again, here's what Matt says, this was
one of the games that helped me discover my love
of horror games. The vibe is immaculate. It has some
of the best sound design and music of any horror
games that I've ever played. The story and dream like

(11:20):
nature is also really well done. The ps one esthetic
works so well and I'm glad I got to play
this And it also sent me down a ten plus
hour YouTube theory crafting rabbit hole. That's kind of what
this game does. In some ways, the theory crafting is
more popular than playing the game in like the redded
communities and such. Yeah, for sure, Matt has set us

(11:43):
up to talk about a lot of the stuff in
the game and how it's presented. But first let's talk
a little bit about the development. As said before, this

(12:14):
was released in twenty twenty two October of twenty twenty
two to be exact, for PC, Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox.
Full credits, of course, you can find on the IMDb,
the wiki, or you can beat the game at least
one time. But of note, the developer is Rose Engine,
and that is only two people, Ury Stern and Barbara Whitman.

(12:35):
Rose Engines the developer published by Humble Games and Playism.
Uri Stern has the credits for director, art, design, programming,
and writing, whereas Barbara Whitman has credits for design and writing.
Those are the two that is Rose Engine. It is
a two person team. Additionally, this was a COVID era game.

(12:56):
A lot of the development happened during COVID. There were
some interviews that Yuri gave from like twenty eighteen before
all of that went down, but significant, I don't know
if I want to say significant, but a lot of
the development happened remotely, which I think is very fascinating.
They did have some outside help, specifically with the compositions

(13:18):
that was done by one thousand Eyes. It is their title,
not the number of appendages they possess as well as
Cicada Sirens, so signalous. It sits somewhere between wearing its
influences proudly on its vest and kind of wanting to
tell you how great its influences are and saying like,

(13:39):
why aren't you just playing those or watching those right now?
Which isn't to say that it doesn't forge its own
story or that it's entirely derivative. Neither of those are true.
But the callbacks, the nods, the references, the homages, they're
bountiful and fans of the genre and the related genres
might see these so often and so often be saying like, oh, yeah,

(14:01):
this is from that, this is from that, this is
from that. It kind of gives the impression that sometimes
this is more of a love letter to their influences
than its own thing. Sometimes. I don't think it's fair
to call it that as a blanket statement. All I'm
saying is it's very, very very proud of its DNA,

(14:23):
and that's kind of on Front Street at all times,
specifically Silent Hill and Resident Evil.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, very much. So, it's very I think Matt was
talking about like the PS one aesthetic, and it is
very clearly inspired by those kind of games of yesteryear,
even to the point where there's this, like I don't
know how to explain it, like a like a scan

(14:51):
line filter or VHS filter or something over the game
to kind of make it look older than it is.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, precisely. So. Did you use that filter at all?

Speaker 2 (15:02):
I did? Actually, it was really It's really good. It
really added to the whole kind of nostalgia that the
game is trying to evoke.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah, I agree, I used it too. Another cool thing,
speaking of the visuals, which we'll get to in a
little bit, but they rendered everything in like I want
to say, six forty by three sixty resolution, you know,
like like that kind of an old school resolution, like
six forty P or whatever that would be called maybe
three sixty P. I guess it would be the last
one nineteen hundred by ten eighty is ten EIGHTP, I

(15:31):
don't know. But they rendered it in that kind of
a small resolution, and then they just upscaled it to
fit for modern conveniences. So it sort of it lacks
that crispness and clarity that you would see in new games.
It's got that fuzziness that is only enhanced with that
CRT filter, which I agree. I really liked using that.

(15:54):
I think it works great. Now, you had said that
your relationship with survival horror is complicated as well. What
do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (16:02):
I find that. I think what it is is I
don't like when a survival horror is kind of hard
because of its mechanics, right. I don't like when it's like, oh,
we've got really bullet spongy enemies. They're just going to
take a lot of shots, so like you get AMMO,
but then they just kind of eat it up. Or

(16:23):
I don't mind inventory management, and one of the things
I think this game does well is how often you
come across like rooms which enable you to change what's
in your inventory. So one of the things that I
kind of I'm always on the fence about, but especially
with some of the RESI games, is you kind of

(16:44):
have your inventory and you can go ages without seeing
a save room, without seeing a storage box, and so
you're just kind of carrying around this stuff with you,
whereas I felt with Signalist they were quite often and
you know, actually I like the RESI to remake. One
of my biggest gripes with that game was mister X.

(17:07):
I don't like mister X because mister X is he
isn't anything. In my opinion, he doesn't serve a purpose.
He is purely a deterrent to kind of amp up
this this atmosphere, and the game doesn't even give you
any real kind of reasoning as to why he's there.
So I think with Survival Horror, it's a it's a

(17:29):
very delicate line because sometimes you can feel like the
game just isn't giving you enough resources. Sometimes you can
feel that enemies are eating those resources by being like
sort of very spongy and just kind of absorbing damage.
It's a it's a very thin line, you know. And
I saw somebody. I saw somebody make a comment about Signalist,

(17:52):
specifically saying that the scariest thing about the game was
the inventory management. But I didn't. I didn't personally struggle
with that too much. But I just, you know, anyone
who's kind of played I know we're talking a lot
about resis I've not played Silent Hill. That's one of
those games that I need to I need to get onto.
But I know, specifically with Resident Evil, like there are

(18:15):
times where I'll find something and I just have to
leave it where I found it. I said, Okay, cool,
I guess I'll come back for that. And the newer
games kind of and the remakes to some extent have
kind of acknowledged that, and they have like a map
system and you can see which rooms have been fully searched,
which rooms haven and stuff like that. But I think

(18:35):
I like horror aspects of survival horror more than I
like the survival aspects of survival horrors. Until the day
I die, I will say Alien Isolation is the best
survival horror game that I've played, because that does it
so fucking brilliantly in my opinion.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
I agree. I also like the horror more than the
survival aspects, and that's that's kind of what I meant
to when I said I have a complicated relationship with
the genre. To that end, though, we'll talk a little
bit about the inventory under Mechanics. I can't remember if
it was Yuri or Barbara. There is an interview from
Vice that they both partook in and it's going to

(19:15):
be in the episode description. You can check it out.
But one of them said, like they brought up the
inventory because that was one of the most common complaints
is that the inventory had six slots and that's it.
And one of them said, you know, if you feel
comfortable in a survival horror game, something's wrong. So it
was intentionally designed to make you feel uncomfortable. The trouble

(19:40):
is is that discomfort can be gleaned from both the
esthetics and the story, you know, esthetics and narrative. It
can also be gleaned from the gameplay, and I think
different people will have different tolerances for those frictions. For me,
I I really want all of that water to be

(20:02):
in that first cup. In the narrative, that's where I
want my discomfort, and to this game's credit, it's no
slouch in that area. I don't think they compromised on
their narrative because which is maybe you know, the Cup's example,
the scales example, maybe not the best analogy. They did
not compromise on that, but that inventory slot management business,

(20:25):
a lot of people found friction with that, and they
found it to be disagreeable, so much so that it
got updated and overhauled in patches that came. Yeah, this
takes a lot of influence from those early survival horror
games Silent Hill one and two, Resident Evil one. I'm
not familiar with Resident Evil series, you're not familiar with
Silent Hill. Together, together, we either form a complete void

(20:48):
or we complement each other. We'll let the listeners decide.
But this is taking a lot of influence from the
retro style. It also takes some influence from non video
game medium, namely The King and Yellow. It's a book
collection of stories by Robert W. Chambers, The Festival from
HP Lovecraft. There's some Neon Genesis, Evangelian and Ghost in

(21:11):
the Shell in here, and I've also seen cited some
Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch. The references, the homages, the
nods to all of these are almost constant, to the
point where at times I found myself wondering, is this
a reference and I just don't get it? Or is
this just here for vibes? You know, there's a lot

(21:35):
of that To that end. In the Vice interview, Barbara
actually talks on this. Barbara says, for me, the game
exists in a conversation with the works it's inspired by.
I've seen people say that the references contribute to the story,
but that the game also works perfectly fine if you
don't recognize anything at all. Quite a few people even
seem to see coincidental references and signalis to work. So

(21:56):
we didn't even know. In the end, we can't fully
control what people may project onto our game, and I
think that's a good way of looking at it. Both
Barbara and Uri are kind of in that same camp
where this game doesn't exist necessarily to give you a
full story, no questions. Here's everything from our game bible,

(22:19):
and that's it. You know. It exists to create conversation
around the themes and ideas, around the esthetics, choices, the
aesthetic and artistic choices. It's a game that lives off
the page, you know, or I guess, off the screen
as much as it does on it. And if that's
something you're into, then Signalis is definitely a game for you.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
It's interesting, and I don't know if it's deliberate. It
might be, it might not. I don't know, But there
are a lot of Fins, like you said, that are
kind of influences for the game. But it's interest in
how that theme of something not being your own and
something influenced in you is like throughout the game, like

(23:05):
with the rep the way the replicants act is all
based upon who's sort of who they're emulating and stuff,
And so I wonder if, like I don't, like I said,
I don't know if it was deliberate or not, but
it seems that way that almost like Signalists is its
own Finn, but in its own way is emulating all
of these fins have kind of come before it.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, that's that's really insightful, And in fact, they touch
on that in that interview. Oh, it's almost like you
set me up perfectly. They ask Signalis where's its influence
on its sleeves? But looking back on the project. How
successful do you think it? Is it forging forging its
own identity separate from those and Uristern answered this, They said, quote,

(23:48):
I don't know how to quantify such an identity. A
central question of Signalis is what is the worth of
a replica, a copy of a copy? What does it
mean to exist primarily in reference to something else? I
think that's up to each player to decide for themselves.
Does the strength of art line and how well it
pretends to exist in a vacuum? End quote? So that's

(24:08):
at the core of Signalis. That's what it's sort of exploring. Now.
To be fair, this game explores a lot of different
concepts and ideas, but that is at the central of
the whole thing. What is the worth of a replica?
What is the worth of a copy? Does that detract?
Does being influenced by or modeled after something else make

(24:32):
one a derivative facsimile? Or is it okay to wear
those on your sleeve? Does it? As Uri said, does
the strength of art lie in how well the work
exists in a vacuum? And I think that's an interesting
conversation to have. You know, I was listening to some
other folks talk about Signalis, and I did hear some
people get really irritated and feel like the constant references

(24:58):
were tedious, a point of tedium. I don't necessarily agree.
Then again, I'm also not familiar with a lot of
the stuff that we just mentioned. I've never read The
King in Yellow. I meant to read The King and
Yellow before this, but I got kind of sucked into
Crime and Punishment and that's just so good that I
don't want to put it down. I've never read any

(25:20):
HP Lovecraft. I've never seen Ghosts in the Shell. I've
never seen any of David Lynch's movies. I've only seen
Twin Peaks. I'm a fake fan, so a lot of
these references totally lost on me.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yeah, but I think it's also it's interesting as well,
right because like people are kind of doing the exact
Finn that the developers were kind of highlighting. And it's
something that we see with I mean all content now,
like you can't make a YouTube video without ripping off
some other YouTube but that you've never even heard of,

(25:54):
and you know, like the amount of games that come
out and they're like, oh, well, this is just a
so and so clone or like the amount of people
who said that Tunic was just a Zelda clone, and
I was like, no, Tunic is like its own thin
Like I'm not going to ramble on about Tunic, but
you know, it's something that we see a lot of
things come out and it's like, oh, well, this is
just copying that, This is just copying that, and it's

(26:15):
you know, it's it's interesting because I can't remember who
said it, but somebody said it was a quote. There's
no such thin as an original idea. It's only original execution.
And I think that's like a fucking brilliant kind of
like there are like eight and a half billion people
on this planet, Like two people are going to have

(26:35):
the same idea at some point. It doesn't mean that
they're ripping one another off. And that's not to say
that people haven't done that in the past, but I
think as kind of humans, as people who consume the
amount of content we do, especially when we kind of
like pose ourselves as like quote unquote critics or whatever

(26:56):
we goann to sort of call ourselves, it's very easy
to spot the themes and to kind of look and go, well, well,
this is this and this is that, and I feel like, yeah,
like if you if you do do that to a
certain extent, it does take away from the actual kind
of experience of what it is that you're doing. Like,

(27:16):
you know, there's a lot in signalists that is I mean, yeah,
like Ghost and the Shell, like is A is a
great example of that similar kind of idea of you know,
human consciousness and stuff being uploaded into androids, and these
androids kind of thinking they are themselves when in reality

(27:38):
are they or are they just a sort of emulation.
I think it's very telling that a lot of people
got hung up on those references and that kind of
how much it is in there.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
Yeah, when they get hung up on it, they're engaging
with the conversation Uri and Barbara wanted them to engage
with whether they're knowingly doing so or not. They're unknowingly
giving their answer to the question can art exist in
a vacuum? What is the worth of a copy of
a copy? They are unwittingly veering towards facsimiles are somehow

(28:16):
less than which I think is very interesting. This whole
conversation kind of opens up into two different paths, you know.
One is that sort of anti intellectualism of just saying
this is the blank of blank, you know, like Tunic
is just the legend of Zelda. But with Foxes, it's
a totally anti intellectualism, a totally anti intellectual argument that

(28:40):
promotes not thinking, promotes not using descriptive words in precise language.
The first time I noticed this was wow. I'm sure
I noticed it for other times, but the first time
I noticed it and started thinking about how this is
totally deleterious to language is Splitgate, when everybody was just like, oh,

(29:00):
this is just halo if portal and like whether that
is true or not leaving it there Halo, but portal
is implicitly it's just shutting down the conversation and giving
you permission to not engage with it at a deeper level,
to just look at something and say I know that
from here. That's just that it's leaning into the idea

(29:23):
that we're patterns seeking animals and giving us permission to
not examine those patterns more critically and with something, you know,
and we can argue with video games, is it a
huge deal? I don't know. I'm not trying to have
that argument right now, but I think just on a
basic principled level. I think moving beyond that and just saying, oh,

(29:45):
I see this pattern, I know exactly what that is.
I think it would behoove everybody to take a closer
look and to examine things and use precise language and
not just rely on well, this is just legend of Zelda.
But what if Fox? You know it's it's not that
you're giving yourself permission to be a little bit intellectually lazy.
And you know, look, sometimes we have to sometimes we

(30:07):
have to look out for ourselves and say, okay, right now,
I can't engage at that level. But to always but
to have that be the default is what I'm saying.
If that is the default setting, then you kind of
this goes back to the this is Water speech from
David Foster Wallace. If that's the default setting, you go
through life without really living it, which sounds hyperbolic to
say when we're talking about a video game, but it's

(30:29):
the truth. You know, prove me wrong, rebuttal me in
the comments, go for it please.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
And it also, I know I've been guilty of this.
It breeds bias, and it breeds a pre notion of
what it's gonna be, right like some of your split
Gate is a great example of that. Like Halo, but
Paul or I kind of thought I knew what I
was getting into playing that game, and I mean there
was more to it. Like, don't get me wrong, it's

(30:55):
not by any means a fucking narrative heavy game, but
it wasn't just Halo with Paul, it was there was
sort of strategy to it as to where you're placing
those pools other people can access them like it. But
going into the game, I already had in my head
of like what it was going to be. I knew

(31:15):
how I had had an idea of how it was
going to play, and sort of almost kind of like
made my mind up about the game before I went
into it. And I feel like you can do that
with Signalis as well. Like you know, if you say
to someone like, oh, it's a survival horror, I think
like Resident Evil, like the old school Resident Evils. Immediately
there's like notions that come into it of like tank

(31:36):
controls and inventory management, and like you already kind of
have these expectations in place. And so when I used
to review games and when I used to run like
the website and stuff, was kind of make like a
mental note prior to doing a review of like, Okay,
what are my preconceptions about what I'm about to experience

(31:58):
and kind of going through it, because then by knowing
what my biases and my preconceptions were, I could kind
of put them to a side and do it as
impartially as possible. Like if I knew that I was
expecting something to be a Zelda clone, I knew that
I could kind of I could see that happening, and

(32:19):
I could say to myself, like, no, it's not as
Zelda cla. It's inspired by Zelda, but it is its
own fin.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
And I think that's a really healthy relationship to have
with yourself, to not just acknowledge that your biases exist.
Biases exist within all of us, no matter whether we
know it or not. I mean that's kind of how
biases work, right, We all have them for everything, even
if we would rather not acknowledge them. But being cognizant

(32:45):
of them and being willing to attempt to rewrite them
through learning, that's important, especially with something like art. You know, okay,
you know either this is going to be just a
Zelda thing, Yeah, gonna have a good time, or with
me with Signalis. You know, I didn't have a great
time with Silent Hill. One isn't me and then you know,

(33:06):
being open to reevaluating once you go through the experience.
I think there's a lot of value in that. That
is a default setting. I think is more a breeds
more good than harm. I don't mean to jump away

(33:51):
from this too quickly, but I want to go back
to what you're saying as well. That also that Uran
Barbera were saying is their value in being a copy
of a copy? And you would mend and forgive me.
I think I'm kind of paraphrasing what you said, like
this is something that's been done before, a story that's
been done before, a game that's been done before. Where's
the value in that? That is such a perplexing take

(34:11):
to me whenever I hear people think that way, like, oh,
this is this story has been done before, because the
nested assumption within that is that the only stories worth
telling are the stories that haven't been told before. Right,
That's not an insane leap of logic. And if that's
the case, then much of the Western canon, and probably

(34:36):
other canons like to the East and et cetera, are
probably invalidated, right, I mean, how often have we told
the hero's journey? How often have we retold Shakespeare? I mean, geez,
the common example is the Lion King, Right. I don't
think anybody in the right mind would say, yeah, I've
seen the Lion King, so I'm familiar with Hamlet. You know.

(34:58):
It goes back to what you said. Then it's execution
that's the important thing. And you know, as a classical musicians,
it's an interest. I feel like that color is my
approaching to this, you know, classical musicians that I saw
a joke at one point on social media that, like,
I forget how this came up with somebody who's like, yeah,

(35:19):
my favorite cover band is the New York Philharmonic, you know,
because they're not making new music, They're just playing what
other people have wrote before. Right, It's like a cover
band all orchestras are. And that's funny. But the funny
thing is is like different performers performing the same work
will vastly color how you feel about it. You can

(35:39):
hate a piece until you hear the right performer play
it and then everything is recontextualized. Or you can, you know,
love a piece and hear another performer's interpretation and think,
you know, I don't love their interpretation of it. I
was just watching Glenn Goold. I'm not gleng Gould. Leonard
Bernstein in a concert with Glenn Gould talking about interpreting

(36:00):
bach Vach's work didn't have a lot of the markings
that current music has, so he trusted that musicians would
bring their own interpretation to it based on intellectual knowledge,
based on the study. Right, you can't just go and
just play what's on the page because it's flat. And
Bernstein said, it's the same as Shakespeare. Right, if you
read a page of Shakespeare, there's so much that's not

(36:21):
on that page that the actors have to bring to life.
That's the execution. That is what makes these performances special.
And forgive me for speaking for you, but I think
you and I are on the same page in that
the execution is ninety percent of what brings these artistic
works to life. Sure, we've probably heard a story like

(36:45):
Signalis before Gestaltzen Replicas near Okay, boom, I guess I
know Signalis. Then it's kind of a love story. Oh
Silent Hill too, Yeah, I know that not quite. That's
it ignores the execution and that is the most important part.
And I think that's a valuable conversation to have, right,
I mean, Lion King totally different execution than Hamlet. Nobody

(37:08):
would ever say that they've seen the Lion King. Yeah,
I get Shakespeare. You just that's not no, nobody would
say that execution is the important thing. And I think Signalis,
whether or not you like it, does execution very well.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, I think it does. And I think that's the
thin is like it. Yes, okay, sure it is kind
of emulating and replicating what has come before, but in
its own way and in its own kind of with
its own spin. And I mean, like Karen, like the
music analogy that you said. As soon as you started talking,
the first thing that came to my mind was Johnny

(37:47):
Cash in his cover of Hurt by nine inch and Nours,
Like that story is fucking amazing, because you know, you
have this guy who's this massive country sinner and they
bring him this song and like industrial metal, and you know,
I mean people knew what Johnny Cash was, but he
wasn't performed and he wasn't doing anything. He was dying,

(38:08):
his wife had cancer. It was kind of his last
Hourrah and the execution of that song, which has the
same lyrics and it has the same kind of message
and the tone and everything is wildly different because of
the interpretation and the execution. And I think that's kind
of like, yeah, sure, Signalist is resident evil, it is

(38:30):
silent here, it is a lover's story, etc. But it's
not just that because it kind of exists in its
own world, its own environment, and the way that Finn's
come together is kind of I guess like a good
example is like a recipe, right, Like everyone can follow.

(38:51):
Everyone can follow a recipe, but everyone's going to have
a slightly different meal that comes out of it. Sure
it will be kind of the same, but there'll be
slowlightly different flavors. There'll be slightly different flavors that come
to the forefront, whereas someone else's won't. And I think
that's like, I know this was kind of what kicked
it off, but I think that's what the whole fin
is trying to say, is that you know it's you.

(39:14):
You are not the sum of your parts, all right,
like you you are Everything is its own fin, even
if sometimes we do kind of break Fins down and say, oh,
it's silent Hill too. Oh, it's Halo with Paul it
is still its own fin.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, precisely, so Well said, that's a great example too.
Nine inch nails with that with that song hurt Well
and Johnny Cash, I should say, terrific example. I want
to move forward just a little bit and talk about
mechanics and visuals just working at the clock. We should
we should move just a little bit. The mechanics we've
we've brushed up against. This very much descended from Resident

(39:54):
Evil and Silent Hill. It's a sort of top down,
but not like top looking at the floor. It's like
an angled top down progressing through maps and through rooms.
You go through one door, you're in another board quote unquote.
Tank controls are optional. You can turn them on, but
you don't have to use them. There's a combination of
fighting enemies and stealthing around them. It's those strict inventory

(40:18):
limits that we mentioned and the puzzles. The inventory limit.
We had already talked about that a little bit. One
of the most common complaints I had seen. At one
point in time. There was a mod that upped the
inventory from six to eight. But when I played just
last week for the first time, that was just in
the setting, so it must have been patched. You can
either have the rule of six quote unquote six inventory items,

(40:41):
that's it. You can do an in between one that
is I think six, but modules like flashlights don't count,
or you can just up it to eight. I bumped
it up to eight. You know that says more about
me than it does about the game. I played oneasy
and I bumped it up to eight. I was here
for the story and the aesthetics and the presentation, not

(41:03):
so much to flex my survival horror muscles, you know.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
And I mean that's a whole different can of worms
that we could open, is you know, the whole kind
of you can't play a game on easy mode, you
can't play story mode, etc. But yeah, I mean I
personally I played it on console when I played it,
and interestingly, I think I saw people saying, is that
patch didn't actually come to console. I don't know if
it has since, but when I played it at the time,

(41:29):
it wasn't actually on console, so you were kind of
stuck with that rule of six.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
I did play on PS five. I can confirm that
it's there now.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
Okay, it's there now, so it must have been I
mean I did play this like two years ago. Yeah,
I can see why people don't like having just six
inventory spaces. There's a lot of mechanics. There's a lot
of like set and fire to enemies once you destroy
them so they can't come back, and fins like this,

(41:57):
and so you kind of want to have everything to
kind of be prepared. But I mean, I personally liked
the six. Like I said, the rooms are frequent enough
in my opinion that I could kind of swap fins
out as and when I needed them. For me. There
was a lot of and again I don't know if

(42:18):
this is necessarily deliberate, but there was a lot of adaptation.
There was a lot of kind of reactive gameplay, so
going into areas and having a certain enemy that I
wasn't prepared for. You know, most of the enemies I
would kind of take out with a pistol, but there
was somewhere I was like, I need the shotgun. I
need to just kind of blast these enemies. So sometimes

(42:38):
I'd come across and I didn't have them, so it's
kind of like, okay, right, I need to you know,
sort of I need to dodge them. I need to
like kind of agrow them and get them to come
over here so I can slip the other way and
get past. And so it kind of added to the
kind of immersion and the experience in the sense that
I didn't have my Swiss Army knife with me. You know,

(43:00):
I didn't have all of the weapons, I didn't have
all of the fins that I needed, and I had
to pick between like, you know, do I want a
free inventory space in case I find a puzzle I
am or do I want to take my matches with me?
Do I want to risk having to kill that enemy repeatedly?
Or do I just kind of bite the build it

(43:21):
and say, okay, right, I'll run with the matches and
then what am I going to take out? So it
livened fins up for me, I think.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
And different folks will have different tolerances for that. They
might be closer to you and think that it livens
things up, which is in line with what the developer said. Right,
if you feel comfortable playing Survival Horror, something's wrong deliberate
choice on their part. I me personally, you know, if
we're talking about it on a continuum, I maybe, like,

(43:48):
you know, if the middle is fifty percent I'm kind
of sixty five percent towards like it feels tedious. Not totally,
but my tolerance for backtracking is a little bit lower
than I think Survival Horror wants you to feel. So
that's just me. Fortunately, with Signalis, as compared to something
like Silent Hill one, there's enough presentation and lore and

(44:12):
narrative that you know, I'm not saying you can ignore
the mechanics, but even on easy, you're in for a
very interesting experience, whereas Silent Hill one, you know, respectfully
significantly less so in terms of story once, like if
that's on easy, I can't remember if it has an
easy mode, but you know, if the enemies die quicker,
if your inventory is much bigger, that game loses a

(44:36):
lot of I think what made people like it so
much Signalis, You know, it's just good at different things,
So I was fine with that. Another thing I was
fine with was the puzzles surprisingly good. You know, I
did not like some of the puzzles at all in
Silent Hill one, or I can't remember too. I don't
remember any in two that I didn't like, maybe a couple,

(44:59):
but most of them here. There's like one that I
remember not liking most of them pretty darn good.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
Yeah, I mean, I will say that depending on your
opinions of it, it does lean on that kind of
old school puzzle style that we were talking about, where
it's very like I need to go here and unlock
this thin to get something to unlock something else. There's
a lot of and in the way the game. In
that way, the game kind of like promotes this backtracking,

(45:30):
so that bit can be a little bit tedious, but
for me it kind of became like a strategy. So
when I got somewhere, I was like, okay, right, I
know I'm going to be going back this certain way.
I know there are these enemies, like what do I
need to do? How am I going to get through this?
And it kind of almost like the backtracking and the

(45:54):
journey almost became like a puzzle in itself. But I mean,
the only I saw your not it's the only puzzle
that I did not like, I think is probably the
same one you liked, which is the water puzzle.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
You know what's so funny about that one too, is
there is a note in the game, like in that level,
in that room that tells you exactly how to do it,
so you don't even have to do any figuring. It
just tells you. So it's like, why is this here?
But it's the classic thing of like, you know, you've
got A, B and C cups and they're all different sizes,
and A and B have to have the same exact

(46:28):
water in them, and you have to like dump A
into B and then be into C and then be
into A, the rest of C into A and then
you take the rest of that and it's just you know,
like that. I wasn't wild about it, but a lot
of these were pretty fun. The lock picking puzzle I
thought was really unique and interesting, where you have to
align the teeth to different like lengths to get everything uniform.

(46:49):
The ring puzzle is straight out of Silent Hill, like
almost actionably so with the little poem where it's like
on the longest day, nothing happened on the first day
she was wet, and it's like, okay, so the wedding
ring goes on the pointer thing, you know, something like that.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
I remember there being like a tarot card puzzle as well.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
That that was also one that I wasn't a huge
fan of. If memory serves, I think that solution was
pretty obvious based on a note in the room as well.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Yeah, it does a lot of I mean, and the
game does this a lot, a lot of environmental not
even necessarily hints sometimes like sometimes just straight her solutions
kind of like we said. And again that kind of
feeds into the It makes you read everything, which makes
you learn the law, which makes you kind of learn

(47:37):
what's going on and piece fins together. You know, that's
a I guess that's like a whole other question. You know,
it's like does it take away from the experience of
doing the puzzle if you kind of know what you're
working towards anyway, But I remember like some of those
like you were saying about the puzzle with the ring
and all of that stuff. I like those like, I

(47:59):
mean a really random segway. But we had it in Alundra,
which was a series that we did for the player
on podcast, and there was a fin on there where
you had five saints who were different colors and it
was like, oh, like brown worships green and green is
not as good as red, and you had to sort

(48:20):
of interact with them in the correct order. And so
it's like you had all of the stuff that you needed,
but that in itself didn't give you the solution. You
still had to kind of piece it together yourself. And
I like things like that because it's like you've kind
of you've got all of the marine sources you need,
but you don't necessarily have the solution.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
Yeah. They are like those logic puzzles that you would
get in workbooks as a kid. All right. I don't
know if the UK did this like the US did,
but you know, we would have those little logic puzzles
like Brian is older than Tammy. Tammy is twice as
old as Johnny. Johnny for some reason has twelve bottles
of dish sol you know, and then you just figure
out the area and like how many dogs were in
the room. It's kind of like that, Like if you

(49:03):
like those sorts of puzzles as a kid, then this
stuff is scratching that itch for you. I like them.
I like them because I think I'm good at them
and it makes me feel like a clever little boy.
The backtracking stuff, like there's a lot of points in
this game where your mcguffins for the moment are keys
and you've got to put like six or eight of
them into a door to get through and that's like

(49:24):
two or three different times. The point or the way
to progress in the story is finding all the keys
and then moving forward. That incorporates the backtracking like you mentioned, Ben,
and it becomes a game of going back to safe
rooms to rearrange your backpack and then going back out.
Different people will have different tolerances for that. As we said,

(49:46):
you know, the safe rooms are okay. I'll say this,
The safe rooms are there enough that I don't think
it's a huge deal. Enemies will respawn here. That is
to say, you can kill them and they'll come back up.
They'll revive if you don't dispose of them properly. Generally,
I didn't find any of them to be that difficult

(50:09):
to juke around, you know, none of them. There are
a few that are quite fast, but they're only fast
in a straight line. So you know, if you have
ten controls on, I can imagine it's maybe a little
more challenging. But if you're playing in twenty twenty five
with power in using analog sticks, I don't know. I
don't think that. You know, I was only killing when

(50:30):
I absolutely had to, Like if an enemy was blocking
where I needed to go and they weren't moving okay,
then goodbye, see you later, dirt nap. Otherwise I was
dodging around folks save an AMMO, right.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
And that's the fin is, like you, you can never
really tell how scarce AMMO is. And I've fallen into
this trap a month of times where I do that.
In an I start to think to myself, I've got
loads of AMMO. Now I did with Resident Evil Village.
You know, I had loads of AMMO and started getting
trigger happy and then all of a sudden I had nothing.
And so yeah, I think you know signal is it

(51:10):
does that well, like you can go and be trigger happy,
but also you can just kind of avoid enemies. I
would say they're not particularly hard to avoid. They're more
of a kind of nuisance than like a hindrance. But
there are some that when they hit hard, they hit

(51:32):
really hard. Yeah, and I know I remember that. Like
part of the mechanics in terms of the health side
of stuff is that your character will start to bleed,
which will slow you down, and so you start to
have like a kind of reduce speed when you're trying
to run away. So it's not as simple as just like, oh,

(51:55):
I've been hit I need to keep moving. It's like
I've been hit. I can't now move as cost is
I needed to. What am I gonna do? Right?

Speaker 1 (52:05):
And two of if you want to avoid that, you
certainly can be trigger happy. Uh. I think if you
are trigger happy, that is a really easy way to
run out of AMMO very quickly all the time. I think,
you know you don't necessarily need to spare every possible enemy. Uh,
But I mean you can. You can fire when you
need to. Being trigger happy, you're going to be low

(52:27):
on AMMO all the time. But I did find, however,
that sparing enemies meant very very often that I was
too full to pick up new AMMO. And Signalis's little
trick is it often gives you AMMO for guns that
you don't have yet, so you're picking up that AMMO
before you even get the gun. And but even with
the guns that I did have, like the pistol or
the second gun you get is the shotgun I've so

(52:50):
often I just had too much in my inventory and
I couldn't pick it up and I had to either
you know, reload or go back to a safe room
put it all back in and then go back and
pick it up. Ammo wasn't a surplus, but I was
never hurting for it. But at the same time, maybe
that's different on the harder difficulty if you are hurting
for Ammo. I think. I'm trying to think of all

(53:12):
the bosses. I think all of them, but maybe the
first one can be beaten without Ammo. The Mina is
the first one. I think you do need AMMO to
kill that one.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
I think, I think so, yeah, But.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
The second one, like the Chimera, the cage thing, you
can just wait around for Issa to shoot it. I
don't remember about the I think there's a way for
the final boss to do it without, but they give
you AMMO throughout that fight constantly, so I'm not entirely
sure that's, you know, for the revamped episodes later we'll
get more into that, but yeah, it's considered in that way.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
Yeah, definitely, And this is kind of I think this
is honestly where people are going to become stuck with
this game. Is the the backwards and forwards, the inventory management.
I would say that it is. It is definitely the
most kind of contentious topic about this game is about

(54:11):
the backwards and forwards and the inventory management and I
think that's yeah, that's where people will get stuck if
they do.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
Let's talk a little bit about the visual presentation. Cassette
futurism is what I've seen thrown about to describe this.
It's like we had said earlier, it's you know, low
resolution that's upscaled see filter is popular. But even within
the universe old school technology, retro tech like cassettes, CRT, televisions,

(55:09):
things like that, that is kind of front and center.
That was also in the movie Alien. I'm pretty sure
like that was a part of that, And both Uri
and Barbara said in an interview that I think Uri
gave back in twenty eighteen. They were like, yeah, we
huge fans of Alien for both of us, so like
that's where that came from. You know, I don't know.

(55:30):
I think it's cool. I really like that. I'm a
big fan of old tech, so this always works for me.
You know, it's maybe a little romanticized now, you know,
there's an entire discussion about a consumption based society of
NonStop progression of tech pressure to bye bye by different conversation.
I think it works for me very well. I really

(55:54):
liked it. I also really liked the low poly look
of this. Nobody's got faces. I mean, portraits will have faces,
but the character models of your character and of the NPCs,
you're not really going to see any eyes, noses, anything
like that. You'll see the eyes on the enemies, which
is helpful for dark rooms, but your characters don't have them.

(56:14):
You also don't have feet, but that's maybe because you're robot.
You know, robot feet, like I guess persona three.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Yes, yeah, it's it's interesting because it kind of adds
to the unsettling nature and the kind of atmosphere of
the game is that they're not like the enemies I
mean specifically are not like super high def free D right.

(56:43):
It's like this isometric, low poly, upscaled kind of style.
And I remember thinking, like that thing looks grotesque as
it is, like how does it actually look like if
I could see like a photorealistic version, like how grotesque
would this enemy?

Speaker 1 (57:00):
B It's funny you mentioned unsettling right after we right
after I said they don't have feet, I saw a
fan art of the main character Elster with feet, and
I was like this, I don't like this at all.
I think it was also because it was barefoot, and
the feet were very prominent. Of that was my bad, Honestly.
I logged into Twitter just so I could see a

(57:21):
thread that Uri posted, and Uri had retweeted that at
some point, So that was on me. You know, I
was looking. If I didn't want to see feet picks,
I shouldn't have been on Twitter. My fault. Yeah, but yeah,
there is that goes into the enemies too, like wondering
what they would look like in high fidelity, and to
that end, the enemies they really do look like they're
straight out of Silent Hill straight up. There's one enemy

(57:45):
called a corrupted storch that loses its arms. The storage
is a kind of replica. It's a type of Android.
When it's corrupted with this sickness, it loses its arms
and its head is replaced by a leg module, or
at least it looks like a leg module. It's also
meant to resemble a stork. Storage is the German word

(58:06):
for stork. But it I mean, that's just straight up
out of Silent Hill too, right, like the one what's
that one enemy that instead of having an upper body,
it just has its lower body repeated, so it's two
sets of legs. You know, to represent James's oh right,
oh ship, you got to play two man masterpiece.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
But and that's the and that's the kind of thing
as well, is like the the environment that all of
this takes part on. It takes part in, sorry, is
on this like dying and decay in ship and that
theme of like corruption and decay and sort of like

(58:49):
neglect of like the ship's not been up kept, fins
are falling apart like that is very sort of it
can't be very sort of it either very Also that
is very much present in the rest of the esthetic
of the game, in the enemies and this sort of
environment and everything, so it kind of all packages together nicely.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Yeah, I agree, I agree. Speaking of visuals, and you
had mentioned the ship, there are a couple of different
locales here, a couple of different sets that we're going
to be on for this play. There's a mining facility.
Oh well, let's back up. There's the mines. There's a
facility above the mines. There is like a living quarters.

(59:37):
All of these, except for the actual minds are going
to have a map. Drove me insane that they took
the map away from you in the one area that
is the least intuitive to navigate. I genuinely did not
like that section of the game because of that it
was and to be fair, like ill cards on the
table here, I'll bear my whole ass. I used to

(59:58):
walk through for this whole thing. And that's partly I
mean again my relationship with Silent, with Survival Horror. It's
not you know, am I going to use a walk through?
Am I going to play it the right way? It's
am I going to play it at all? Or am
I going to play it with a walk through? That's
the choices, you know, And that's just me.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
That's what I was saying, Like, you know, that's a
whole different conversation around like did you get the real
experience if you're using a walk through and stuff like that.
I personally think it's bullshit. I'm not going to send
it for him wrong with using a walk through, But yeah,
the minds I remember them being very frustrating because the
thing that you do is that you have the map

(01:00:40):
and you kind of learn. And this is similar to
again that's kind of older games, and maybe especially like
games where they have rooms like I'm thinking like sort
of links awakening and stuff like that. You kind of
get to know where fins are, so you're like, okay,
I'm here. If I go like free to let and

(01:01:00):
then take the stairs down and then go to the
riot twice, I'll be at the save room like I
know where I am. But then you're just kind of
throwing into the mines and it's like essentially like being
in the labyrinth for You're just kind of there and
you don't really know where you're going, and it all
kind of looks the same, and you're like, I think
I've been here before. Is this where I've come from? Yeah,

(01:01:21):
I can see why. It definitely is frustrating for me.
Although it was frustrating, I really liked it because it
kind of played again into that survival horror aspect where
I'd gone from. I don't want to say comfortable, but
I knew my way around and I kind of knew

(01:01:43):
where things were, and I knew where I was going
to Being in a place where I had no idea
where anything it was, I didn't know where my next
save room was, I didn't really know the path I
was taking. It was very jarring to kind of go
from one to like the almost exact opposite.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
Yeah, and what makes it even more jarring is this
pulls another This pulls another page out of Silent Hill,
and you'll revisit the same sort of areas, but they're
kind of distorted and turned into hell world where like
there's just flesh everywhere blocking doors. Areas are distorted and changed,

(01:02:23):
and doors are appearing where they weren't before. It does
that little trick from Silent Hill, but instead of it
being like, you know, hell world because a cult is
doing cult shit like in Silent Hill, won this is
like it's a hell world because reality is breaking down
because a psychic girl is dying, which is like that
that's the most reductive way to frame what's going on,

(01:02:44):
but it's kind of true. I think I don't even know,
to be honest, but that it's possible plausible.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Yeah, I think, you know. That's the interesting thing is
that like the the world almost like continues to decay
while you're in it, and like you said, it kind
of brings up these whole like sort of new areas
and you have to find new routes and stuff like that,
And I think it plays into what they were saying
about whether you're going to be comfortable or not while

(01:03:12):
playing this game. What did you think, if we're talking visuals,
what did you think about like the cut scenes and
the sort of presentation of those, Because for me, that
was the area where I was the most intrigued but
also the most confused, because I had absolutely no idea
what the fuck was happening.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
I'm glad you brought that up. You referred to this
earlier as like Sundance Film Festival. So the cut scenes
in this, some of them, they're not cut scenes like
CG cut scenes. You'll see a series of animated drawings, right,
not animated, not in terms of like they're moving, but
you'll see a series of stills that represent what's going on.

(01:03:53):
They're in a different art style. You will occasionally see
in game models doing stuff like that, and then often
they will use visual distortion, flashing imagery, flashing text. And
I will admit there is a cynical part of me
that sees this and sees it as an artist trying

(01:04:16):
to be obscure and impenetrable and different and weird for
the sake of being obscure and impenetrable and different and weird,
just doing it for the sake of doing it. So
people say, Wow, they're interesting, like first and foremost, Wow,
they're so interesting. I think, yeah, well, I think this
sometimes too with contemporary music composers like it's funny. There

(01:04:39):
is a there's a parallel conversation in classical music that's
happening with indie games, right where there is a sort
of I want to be careful how I say this,
because I know I'm going to misrepresent what I mean.
There is a certain like if you say you like
indie games, that gives you points with a lot of
people you know, and criticizing indie games takes them away.
That's a veryductive view of what I mean by that.

(01:05:01):
But indie games are seen as being, you know, very virtuous.
We've got to support indie games otherwise no new games
will be created. Right, similar with new music, we've got
to support new music otherwise new music is not going
to be created. That doesn't mean that all new music
is good. There's a lot of bad new music, and
a lot of the times I'll hear student composers or like,

(01:05:23):
you know, these free improvisations doing stuff and it sounds
like they're just being weird to be weird without a
greater sense of form or identity or expression. And to
be fair, some people would probably hear me say that
and say, yeah, that's the point, you fucking square, And
that's fine. I get that sense here too, and I
do feel a little bad saying that. It comes off
as sophomoric to me and a little bit immature, just

(01:05:45):
being weird for the sake of being weird. I've heard
it referred to as nine inch nail video, you know,
just weird for the sake of being weird. I don't.
I don't know if I agree with that, but it
does come off a little bit that way to me,
like they're using it, they're trying to be providedative and strange,
just to be provocative and strange at the same time. Though,
I think one I think that's going to be something

(01:06:07):
that some people just love. That's going to be the
thing that some people say. That's what I loved about
Signalis is how that flashing imagery unsettled me and made
me feel That's what I loved. Fine, valid not arguing
against it at the same time too, that using provocative
imagery is a form of expression to find what you're

(01:06:28):
trying to say and to enhance what you're trying to say,
and to find your identity. Even so, while there is
a part of me that does see it as sophomoric
a little bit, I think that's a part of me
that's a bit too cynical. And I'm not sure if
I want to stamp that out or if I want
to explore it, if that makes sense. I'm not sure

(01:06:49):
if that's a part of me that I would rather
work on, or if that's something that is actually my
taste in art and I can embrace it. I'm not
really sure, but I did feel.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
That, yeah, and I remember that's the thing that was
the most stand out to me. Whether that's good or bad.
I mean, you know, the sort of thing I'm talking
about is there'll be these, like you said, these very
sort of detailed drawn sort of It'll be like a
scene that happens, and then randomly there'll just be some

(01:07:22):
like Japanese kanjy or Chinese cangy or whatever that sort
of comes on the screen and then it goes away,
and I'm like, what did that mean? But like I
don't I don't speak that, or I don't speak Mandarin
or Japanese, Like what does that mean? But maybe if
I'm trying to justify it if I'm trying to play
Devil's Advocate with myself. Maybe part of that is people

(01:07:47):
then go in online and saying like, well, what did
this mean? And then someone who knows can turn around
and say, well, this meant this, and I think it
was relevant for this in that specific situation, and it
kind of breeds that converse.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
Yeah, excellent point bringing up the language, and I'm glad
that you did. There is a read of this that
is they're using two foreign languages, namely it's Chinese when
it's written right and Mandarin when it's spoken Chinese. They're
using Kanji and German, and there's a reductive way of
looking at this, just like, oh, they're just trying to

(01:08:21):
be weird. That's not so like that's actually wrong because
Yuri is Malaysian born and lived in Austria in or
is it Germany, I don't know, but Uri speaks these languages,
and indeed, so like kanji, kanji can be a little
weird because it can mean different things depending on if
it's being used in the Japanese language in Chinese. I

(01:08:44):
can say for sure that towards the end of the game,
during I think the final boss fight. The kanji for
death appears over and over and over again. But I
don't believe. I don't believe these are presented in a
Japanese way. I'm pretty sure they're presented in a Chinese way,
but German is often flashed on this as well. Aktung
is present from the beginning. Warning messages will flash that

(01:09:05):
say things like hopstuw kind of ungst have no fear
to hasteim vasprekin, you have a promise. They do mean
stuff to what's going on in the game, and they
are placed deliberately. They are also I mean pragmatically speaking.
They are used as a tool to disorient the player
and to make you feel othered, to make you feel

(01:09:25):
overwhelmed with this sense of I don't understand this. I
am not one, I am not in a place where
I belong or two, I am not in a reality
where I belong. You know you're getting this sensory overload,
like I can't read this, I don't understand this, I
don't belong here. So one, it's not just random. Two
it's used as a great tool. I came around on

(01:09:47):
this one hundred percent because at first I was like,
oh yeah, they're just doing this to be weird. And
then I you know, did fucking two minutes of research
and I was like, oh, Y really speaks these languages.
Oh you know what I was wrong? Yeah, I think, yeah,
I think it's good.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
When you were talking, at first, I was really on
the fence about it, But then as you were talking,
it got me thinking, and then I was like, oh, well, actually,
this is the game kind of imposing on me what
our character is going through, because I mean, the thing
that we haven't spoken about is about I mean we
kind of hinted at it, like the character we're playing
is essentially like an android, but the way that they're

(01:10:25):
made is that they are made using these sort of
remains of a real person. So I mean it's it
is very akin to like Citizen Sleeper and stuff like that.
You know, it'll be like I think the character we
play as specifically, their model is modeled off of like
a great soldier that lived ages ago, and so they

(01:10:46):
wanted them to be these like compliant, militant androids who
kind of did what they were told to do. So
then I got thinking and I was like, Okay, well,
these things I'm seeing are things that I don't understand,
and then it's like, well, that's replicating our character, right,
because it's almost like they're having memories and sort of

(01:11:10):
experience in Finns that are of their own body, and like,
in a weird way, I'm kind of experienced, like I've
just got this voice talking to me on screen that
I can't understand, and I'm just seeing and hearing Finns
and fins are happen into me as the player that
I don't understand and I don't really know what it means,
and I guess now I think about it. That kind

(01:11:32):
of feeds into the character and their experience and this
whole kind of idea of being a replicant and being
an emulation exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:11:40):
So it also feeds into like as reality breaks down
because of psychic dream logic and also the King in
Yellow cosmic weird shit. As reality breaks down, you're like
continually just not sure what is real and what is
not as in universe, and then also as the player.

(01:12:00):
So it's working on those two levels of disorientation. Going
back to you know, their philosophy. If you're comfortable playing
Survival Horror, we're not doing our job to editorialize what
I think they mean this is you know, I had
this thought and I said this, I can't. I think
I tweeted this on Blue Sky. I have so much.
I have such a better time lore diving and talking

(01:12:23):
about this game than I do playing it. And I think,
you know, that's partly because, like you know, Survival Horror
is just not my bag. But like they've made, they've
done something so interesting that it's so cool to dive
into and to talk about. I just I would rather
do that personally than pick up the controller to pick
up the sticks again and you know, manage my shotgun

(01:12:44):
ammo and pick up the nutro bullets and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):
Well, and because like the the game itself, I mean
in terms of like the plot, it starts off quite simple.
I think, you know, we spoke briefly about like, you know,
you have a promise, and it's like you must keep
your promise. You must keep your promise. But like as
you were saying, like in researching it, I was reminded
about the fact that like basically there is like an

(01:13:11):
energy that flows through the universe in this game. They
call it like bio.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Something bioresonance, which is notably something that they just outright
say in the game, we don't understand how it works,
and that is again purposefully done to disorient everything, and
you know, some people might hate that shit.

Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
And so one of the characters who's like sort of
central to the plot, the idea is essentially that a
lady called the Empress first kind of learned how to
harness this and was able to create this like technology
and was able to kind of build an empire out
of new technology and having these replicants and all of

(01:13:50):
this stuff. And the idea is that another character is
even so more in tune to it. Believably, it then
begins to the story reality, like you said, and so
it kind of becomes a case of like, well, not
only is this real, but also like why is it happening?
How am I going to stop it? And to top

(01:14:12):
all of that off, there's a lot of fins throughout
the game where you find previous bodies of your character
where they've tried to go and fulfill this promise before,
and like lots of nods of like, oh, like you've
been here before, you foiled before. Just give up, You're
not going to be able to do it, Like you know,
there's is this kind of like it's this weird experience

(01:14:35):
where you're sort of there and you're looking at the
corpse of your character, but you're playing your character, and
you're like, well, is this theory? Because if that's the character,
how am I standing here?

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
You know? There was one of the key decisions, one
of the key things that made me decide. And to
be fair listeners, I talked with Ben about this before
we started. Ben okay, this where I was like, you know,
maybe we won't do a beat by beat today, We'll
do like a couple episodes later in the future. Is
I had a moment where I was like I sat
down with myself and I was like, I don't understand
how these loops work at all, and I don't know

(01:15:07):
that I can get through talking about them. I mean,
what's funny too, is you mentioned the Empress. Somebody listening
that has played through the game, maybe even twice, heard
that and said, who the fuck is the Empress? Yeah,
that's the.

Speaker 2 (01:15:19):
Thing, and that's the thing, and that's what's kind of interesting.
I mean, and like to your point, you know, you're
talking about like enjoying the law, dieing and stuff like that,
Like I have never played a five nights at Freddie
game in my life, I know so much fucking shit
about that law and like the microwaften era and spring
Trap and the location and yeah, like I know so

(01:15:43):
much about like the law of that game because it's
so much more interesting to me when I'm really funny
with ambiguity. Sometimes I like it and sometimes I don't.
But what I don't like is when something's just ambiguous
and then it's just kind of almost like hands are
washed and it's like okay, right, that's over, Like that's done.

(01:16:04):
Whereas this there. I mean, even now, there are still
people posting videos about this game. I know, and came
out like three years ago, but you know, there are
still people posting like law Die videos and like my understanding,
like ever so often there's still people posting on Reddit
like this game is still provoking in a like an

(01:16:24):
emotive conversation, which is really interesting given that, you know,
the kind of the world we live in at the minute,
Like it probably would have got it six months of fame,
and then it probably would have been forgotten about and
most people wouldn't be talking about it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
Yeah, going back to that Reddit comment that that stranger
made that kind stranger made. Uri and Barbara are the
only two people that know what's going on. And and
I bet you any money that even they would say
that's not the point. But we're getting into story stuff.
I want to talk about music and sound before. Sorry, no, no, no,
it's totally fine. I am not so rigid and austere

(01:17:02):
that I can't you allow organic conversation to happen. I
just let's talk about music and sound and then we
can jabber jaw a little bit about the story. Okay,

(01:17:35):
so music and sound. You've never played Silent Hill, so
you're gonna have to just trust me when I say
there's a lot of power in my hands right now.
They very very very much look to Akira yama Oka,
the ost designer, the composer of Silent Hill for their influence, big, big,
big time in a lot of ways. Very shrill, piercing
screeches of the enemies noticing you, very very cool. When

(01:17:57):
they do notice you, the music becomes extremely percussive and
brash and combative and aggressive. There's like sounds that are
found sounds, you know, scraping of metal, like taking your
fingernails across like a string wire and just pulling it
to get that kind of kind of sound, beating of metal,

(01:18:18):
beating of drums, stomping, a lot of noise, music like that.
And that's not all of it, of course, like the
opening of Signalis when when you get the title screen
there's some piano and I'm almost positive that's not a
classical piece. I really hope I'm not wrong with that,
because that would be so embarrassing. But it's really really,
really really effective and nice. It has that, it has

(01:18:39):
a really nice balance, whereas Silent Hill, the balance is
between that percussive, aggressive found music, creepy stuff and like
kind of light rock, you know, light rock, like I'm
thinking of the opening of like Silent Hill two in one.
This is a little more of the creepy, creepy shit
with piano and quotete.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
Nice music, and I mean that kind of and I'm
not going to harper on about a plot too much,
but that kind of feeds into the law of the
land that like the kind of classics as we know
them have been outlawed. They're censored, Like people aren't allowed
to experience classic music, they're not allowed to experience classic movies,

(01:19:23):
literature stuff like that, and so it kind of is
almost like a time capsule in a way of like
it's very sort of of a period from like eighteen
hundreds up to like modern day. And yeah, I mean
I have no notes about the visuals or the music

(01:19:47):
design of this game. The sound design is probably one
of my favorite fins of this game. Like you said,
that kind of shrill shriek that happens when the enemy
spot you, the change in music, like, I guarantee, even
if you feel calm, it will elevate your heart rate
at least a little bit. Like it's it's got that

(01:20:08):
kind of effect.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
I have a question for you. You play a lot
of games significantly more than me anyway, that have guns
like shooting. Is this just me not playing a lot
of shooters or like the guns here, they sound really good.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
They sound really fucking good.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):
They sound really satisfying.

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
And it also does this really good job of like
sounding like it's being shot in an empty ship. Like
when you shoot the pistol is kind of got this
like ambience and this kind of like almost a reverb
where you can you can kind of hear that you're
shooting in an empty space that's made of metal and
the sounds are kind of bouncing off one another like

(01:20:46):
it's done very well.

Speaker 1 (01:20:48):
That's a good observation. Yeah, I don't think I noticed that.
One thing you had mentioned the classics being banned. That's
part of part of the lore of this is the
using Oh I hope I'm gonna this right. They use
in Nation and the use in Empire are kind of
at war. I think the Nation broke off of the Empire.
The nation that is now the quote unquote rebels. They're

(01:21:11):
kind of a totalitarian state, like very authoritarian, and they
did outlaw things like poetry, art, things like that. I
had hoped, given that this game uses a lot of
classical music quote unquote classical music, I was like, oh,
maybe they'll do like Wagner, you know, because Wagner was
extremely what's the word. He didn't like Jewish people very

(01:21:37):
much and was a very proud German nationalist, and to
be fair, so were a lot of composers. Mazurski is
another one I quite loved that was a nationalist, or
maybe Shostakovich, who wrote a lot of politically motivated music
for the Soviet against the Soviet government that literally had
him at gunpoint and said you're going to compose celebrating us.
And then he said, okay, here's my fifth symphony. And

(01:21:57):
they loved it, and he was like, yeah, it's just
making fun of you the whole time. It's amazing. But
they don't do that. They do use other works that
I quite love. Chopin, they did his preludo p. Twenty eight.
They used Swan Lake Tchaikowsky, Beethoven's very famous Moonlight Sonata,
particularly movement too. There's a Schubert in there. I couldn't

(01:22:18):
quite place it. I went back and did research. I
think it's D nine to fifty seven Stan ken Stanchen.
I don't know how to pronounce it. And a composer
of mine that is a bit of a favorite rockmaninoff
Isle of the Dead is featured here. A symphonic tone poem.
Pretty cool. All of that is in here that is
notably different from Silent Hill. Silent Hill doesn't do that.

(01:22:42):
Did you think the classical quote unquote music here? Did
you think it was additive? Did you like it or
did you like not notice it very much?

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
This is maybe just my kind of experience, so just
personal opinion. I'm not like a massive classical music fan.
I kind of classic music either falls into one or
two categories. For me, it's either kind of just like
something that's played at like high society events like operas

(01:23:14):
and sort of garlas and balls and stuff, or I
feel like I'm crushing your soul here, so at least
don't take my heart, or it's used in a really
creepy and eerie way. And I think for me, at
least the kind of classic music approach, it was kind

(01:23:37):
of like this is really really corny, but it was
kind of like beauty in something that was sort of ugly, right,
Like I mean, I don't know, we'll get into the plot,
but like the whole kind of thing is like one
of the characters is dying and they're kind of enjoying
their time together, and it was kind of this like
bit of sweet, like we're listening to this really great music,

(01:24:00):
this classic music that kind of fed the way for
where we are now and everything that kind of came.
But it's very bittersweet in the sense of like we
weren't supposed to be able to enjoy this, and we're
enjoying this under certain circumstances. So I think it kind
of it did add but not necessarily in like an

(01:24:21):
atmospheric way. I think it just kind of added to
like the emotive law that was happening and the kind
of storytelling aspect of it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:31):
There is something to that that The placement of these
tracks I think is deliberate. I'm not prepared to speak
on that because I did notice it, but I didn't
take a ton of notes on it. It is deliberate
to highlight some of these contrasts. The fact that they
are the quote unquote band art is not a coincidence, right.

(01:24:52):
They didn't just put them in here, because you know,
like you had said, there are some works that do that,
some artists that do that. Classical music is equated to
being creepy. Let's put in, Oh, how creepy, aren't aren't
we scary? Five Nights of Freddy's I think is a
good example. It uses the torriador theme from Carmen from
Bizet to the point that it's become a meme now,
you know. And I think they just do that because

(01:25:13):
classical music can be creepy sometimes. I'm pretty sure Dollars
to donuts, I would bet that it's intentionally placed here.
I just don't know that. I'm I don't know that
I have the right research to talk about it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:27):
There's there's definitely something to it, you know, And it's
very like I remember, like there's like one scene where
the two characters are kind of dancing towards the end
of one of the character's life when they kind of
figure out that the characters dying, and it kind of
brought in this like a bit of sweetness to it,

(01:25:50):
and it was like, you know, they're enjoying this dance
and they're kind of embracing each other, but also under
what circumstances, you know, and it kind of and like
you said, there's I definitely don't if you don't have
the credentials. I definitely don't have the credentials.

Speaker 1 (01:26:05):
But it's not the credentials. It's just that, like I know,
it's definitely there. I just didn't take the notes on it.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
You know. Yeah, there's definitely something there. And you know,
my experience of the game and talking to you at
the minute, like, there isn't an awful lot in this
game that feels accidental. I feel that a lot of
it is very deliberate, and I feel a lot of
it is trying to at least evoke conversation if it's
not trying to evoke certain emotions at times. But I

(01:26:33):
feel that there's there's definitely something there in terms of
their choice of songs and the moments that they play.

Speaker 1 (01:26:57):
Well, I think that's as good of a segue as
we're going to get, don't we take this opportunity to
get off of music and sound and talk a little
bit about the story. Once again, if you're jumping off
because you don't want any spoilers, I will say spoilers
will be on the table. But again, this isn't going
to be the beat by beat comprehensive analysis. Again, apologies,

(01:27:18):
I still feel a little bit cheapish about that, but
that will be coming, I think at a later date.
I think this story is interesting enough to do it
just and to do it justice would require, you know,
just more playthroughs and more research. So that's coming. But
now let's Ben and I talk a little bit about
what's going on in the story. So one thing that

(01:27:48):
stands out to me, and again you could say that
this is influenced from Silent Hill too, is that at
some point it becomes clear that this is something of
a love story of a tragedy, and that's not immediately
clear from the beginning. From the beginning, you know, you're
searching for somebody that means a lot to you, presumably
because you've got their photograph, but it's not clear until

(01:28:10):
later that this is like a love story, like a
kind of like a Shakespearean tragedy doesn't end well for anybody.
And I like that in horror movies, horror movies, horror games, whatever.
It's very effective to me.

Speaker 2 (01:28:26):
Yeah, I mean it starts off like you I think
at first, I kind of saw it as like this
is my mission, right, Like I'm an android and I'm
here to complete a mission and I'm supposed to find
this person. This my target. I've been given this objective
or something like, you know, it's kind of I am

(01:28:46):
programmed to keep this person safe or something. That's kind
of how I came into it. And like you said,
it's it's interesting because it's not like a big plot
twist reveal. It's kind of like drip fed throughout the game.
And then eventually you kind of go, oh, okay, no, right,
this is this is more than that. This isn't just

(01:29:08):
I'm not here just to save this person, because they're important.
I'm here to help this person because they are important
to my character specifically.

Speaker 1 (01:29:18):
Yeah, and that drip feeding is a nice touch to it.
It helps recontextualize a lot of things. So then when
you go back and do a replay through, you're seeing
these things from the beginning, and it means something different
to you. You know, from the very beginning, you see
a file that says you're on some kind of a
ship called the Pemrose. It's a gestalt in a replica.

(01:29:40):
A gestalt, I mean that just means human and replica
obviously means replica copy, and every ship has a gestalt pilot,
replica technician. Go together, you're terraforming through the galaxy. That's
kind of the gist of this is that nation and
empire that we had mentioned before, they're at war by

(01:30:00):
a resonance is being used as a weapon of war.
By a resonance is kind of a synonym for psychic
ability sort of.

Speaker 2 (01:30:07):
It's it's definitely something that's like not natural to like,
it's some sort of like cosmic energy or something that
only a few people are able to kind of harness.

Speaker 1 (01:30:20):
Yeah, esp psychic energy with a spoonful of cosmic horror.
You've got bio resonance that's being used as war. The nation.
The use in Nation uses these replica units that have
names like and the names are all German, mostly Germans,
some Malaysian or Mandarin names for birds like storch. We

(01:30:43):
mentioned that stork or stork would probably be how you
would pronounced it unless you're in Berlin. Elster. I don't
quite remember. I think that might be like a close
to the Malaysian word for magpie. Maybe I don't know.
Eula is another one is German for owl. The EULAs
are kind of a normal enemy, but you've got a

(01:31:05):
lot of these things, and they become the enemies because
in this mining facility, which is the first part of
the game, it's a terraforming mining facility that's on this
universe's Pluto, this universe's version of Pluto, there was a
radiation deal that was happening that kind of corrupted all

(01:31:25):
the workers. So all of these enemies that were encountering
are the corrupted version of these replicas, and that becomes
the enemy that you're going through. I don't remember how
I got onto this summarization point.

Speaker 2 (01:31:39):
I apologize, but we were talking about the Molbean based
off of birds and kind of how it was drip
fed throughout the plot.

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, and going through it again being
able to recontextualize it in the greater picture is I
think part of understanding this, you know you can't I
think with I think gamers as a whole misunderstand this
because especially with like online gaming culture, because you beat
a game, then go on to the next thing. You know,
beat a game, go on the next thing. Streaming culture,

(01:32:12):
stream a show, binge a show, go on to the
next thing, binge the next thing. I think with a
lot of art, you have to engage with it more
than once to like really glean what it's trying to
teach you. I think jay Z like said that at
some point where it's like you can't listen to an
album in one day and like just get it, you know,
same two with this. I think with Signalis, if you

(01:32:33):
really want to get at the heart of what they're
trying to say, you know, to play through's minimum, I
would think.

Speaker 2 (01:32:39):
Yeah, I think if you want to get to the
to the halve it because like I said it, it
very much gives the impression to me, at least that
nothing is accidental. I'm sure that even like the names
of the enemies and stuff like that will have some
significance to something in this year.

Speaker 1 (01:32:57):
Well, that's interesting that you say that, because I thought,
I'm a moment ago you said that some of this
felt seemingly random to you.

Speaker 2 (01:33:03):
It did initially, but like it it's really complicated because
at times, like for instance, with the words and stuff
that sort of flash on screen during the cutscenes, that
feels very kind of random. And at the time I
remember thinking, like you were saying, like they're just trying
to kind of be a bit out there and a
bit bit random. But I think in kind of like

(01:33:25):
talking and like thinking more about the kind of the
story and hearing what the developers have said about the game,
I don't I don't think that it's because I mean
maybe maybe they was just like, oh well, name them
after birds, But I don't know, because obviously it all

(01:33:47):
kind of ties back to each of those replicant units
is based off is an emulation of a particular person,
so like they all serve a purpose, like they almost
have like like not jobs, they have like roles, like
you know, some are used for like for instance, the
one that we play was specifically chosen for this mission

(01:34:08):
because they do very well in isolation, and they do
very well in kind of solo missions and being on
their own, So like they all kind of have a purpose,
and so it seems a little bit weird looking back
to say, like, you know, if that if they all
kind of have a purpose and it's all they're all
made for specific reason. They must be named for a

(01:34:31):
specific reason. A lot of my opinions and thoughts on
this game are changing as we talk. I'll be perfectly
honest with you, Rick.

Speaker 1 (01:34:38):
But but isn't that the beauty of it? Isn't that
the point of it? Right? Like I think we talked
about this and well not we, but like me and
Josh talked about this in Outer Wilds the Outer Wilds episodes.
The point of this of games of books is not
to just read it by yourself or play them by
yourself and then that's it. It's to connect with other

(01:34:59):
people and get a better understanding and to talk about
this and to explore what the art means and come
to in that way, you and I bet are creating
something wholly unique to ourselves right now, we are creating
this analysis. This goes back to the Greece conversation, interpretation
is co creation. You and I are interacting with Uri
and Barber's work right now to create something entirely new

(01:35:21):
and unique in our talking about this, and indeed we'll
do it again like next year with whoever we invite
on to do the full analysis. But that's kind of
a point, right, So, like the fact if your views
are changing good you know minor too, That's that's why
we do this.

Speaker 2 (01:35:38):
Yeah, So it's just it's interesting because, like I said,
everything feels very deliberate as I'm starting to think about it.
But yeah, so we were talking about that kind of
like you end up on the Minor facility and you're
trying to find this particular person, and that theme of
like corruption sort of goes deeper through the game, Like

(01:36:02):
not only are those individuals that are minded facility corrupted,
but the kind of well do you find yourself in
is almost like decay in essentially.

Speaker 1 (01:36:12):
And to elaborate on that a little bit. At first,
you kind of think that it's just you just think
it's radiation, right, because they're in the mind. You go
downder the minds. You start reading these notes about how
people are getting mysteriously ill, how they're losing their hair,
how they're like very fatigued, coughing a ton coughing up blood,
and like being that that and combined with them being

(01:36:35):
in the space and minds, you think, like, okay, radiation
and like the answer is kinda but also, like like
we had joked about earlier, reality is literally breaking down.
That plays a big part in this. So it's not
just radiation poisoning, it's also the praying of reality causing

(01:36:55):
people to get sick. And like, I'm gonna be totally
honest with you, I don't fully understand it. I really don't.

Speaker 2 (01:37:01):
I don't either, And I mean, like I said, I
was kind of refreshing my memory and watching like law
videos and stuff, and someone was talking about the particular
person you find or that you're on the mission to
find has this ability to manipulate bio resonance and has
this kind of ability to harness this kind of energy

(01:37:25):
that flows through the universe, and then he started talking
about how it was like an inception of thing. He
was like, oh, like this is like a dream. And
then when you find the body of another version of yourself,
you're actually like in a dream again, and it was
kind of like this this idea of like, you know,
you're in a reality within a reality within a reality,

(01:37:47):
and every single time you kind of go deeper down
the rabbit hole, you are kind of like stretching reality
and it kind of stops being as rigid, right, It
becomes a lot more kind of fluid, and it becomes
a lot more sort of elasticated, and then its perception

(01:38:08):
becomes less definitive. And that was kind of their explanation
of it, is like reality is being stretched so far
to the point where Finns aren't what they seem because
they physically cannot be what they seem exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:38:22):
That girl that you're searching for, you can find tons
of notes on her that like her bio resonance is
extremely high. They would do like tarot card readings like
what card am I holding up and she would be
able to just guess it. There's a spy that leaves
a note at one point that's like, yeah, they don't
pay me enough for this. Also, that white haired girl,
she's by a resonant. I'm sure of it very clearly.

(01:38:46):
Another thing that's interesting and I don't know if you
notice this, but it does a Silent Hill two thing
where you start with a photograph of her in your inventory,
and the photograph is like half of it is like
burnt or distorted, you can't see it, faded maybe, and
it's this girl that you're looking for, and it says,
I feel like I might get these two names mixed up.

(01:39:07):
But it starts by saying, like a young Ariana Young,
mm hmm, that's who you're looking for. And as you
keep playing, not only does the photograph like start to unfade,
but the name changes from Ariana Young to Alina so Seo.
And there's this whole wrinkle in here that these two

(01:39:28):
people aren't entirely unique individuals. They might actually be the
same somehow because of this reality bending. And again I'm
gonna be honest, I don't quite get it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:40):
I don't either, but it's interesting because the this is
I kind of want to go back and play this now,
and I'm glad that we're going to do a fin
on it next year because the again, I mean, this
is just this this person's interpretation. But what they were
saying was that if you look at the so essentially
the person that Elster is based on, so Elster's the

(01:40:03):
main character, right, So Elster is a replicant. The person
they're based on was very close to that Arianna that
the name changes into, and so it became a thin
where like Arianna actually looks like the person that we're
trying to save. So it's like, is this, oh, is

(01:40:24):
this Elster's actual thoughts or is it the faults and
the wants of the person that we're emulating.

Speaker 1 (01:40:32):
Okay, so so okay, yes, So all replicas in this
universe are based on a neural pattern of like a
candidate chosen by the state. So Elster's neural candidate was
this girl. I believe her name is Lilith. I think
that's canonically what her name is. She's the faded person
in the photo. Lilith as her own human being in
her own right, really liked the person in the photo, Alina.

(01:40:56):
So we Elster a replica. We're on board this ship
with Ariana. These are four different people, and then our
thoughts are merging with Liliths, and we're conflating Ariana in Alena.
That's what you're saying, yes, and then also Arianna's bioresonance
is fucking everything up in reality starts to break and people.

Speaker 2 (01:41:18):
Start to be He was saying that like Elster, so
essentially it's the love story Elster falls in love with Elena.
But what he was saying was like, you can find
notes and documentations that show pictures of Ariana and Arianna
looks a lot like Alena, and so he was saying

(01:41:39):
that his theory is that Elster did fall in love
with Arianna, however she was mistaken her for Alena because
of the neural pathway that she's based on.

Speaker 1 (01:41:53):
And this is brilliant too, like I'm, I'm, I'm just
making these connections as we're talking. This is brilliant too
because it goes back to the thesis of what is
the value of a replica? Is their value in the
copy of a copy or can they exist in a
vacuum and be in and of themselves? Because now it's
asking is Elster in love with Ariana or is she
in love with Elena? Or are they even her feelings

(01:42:15):
at all? Are they actually liliths? And exactly another question too,
does that even matter? Does that make what Elster and
Arianna had any less real?

Speaker 2 (01:42:25):
Precisely because they to them to fall in love And
essentially what happens is hand On's side note, how I'm
not I don't want to go into major sort. Are
you happy to talk about why Alena ends up in
the kind of mission is that we're supposed to end
her life? Are you okay talking to out? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:42:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
So essentially what happens is you get a transmission through
from the nation who sent you on this mission. And
what the guy was saying in the video is that
part of Alena's finn was that she never really made friends.
She was always kind of the odd one out. And
she went from being in a place where they could

(01:43:07):
listen to this music and watch these movies to being
under the control of this nation who didn't allow that.
And so this mission was kind of her saving grace
because she got the isolation that she wanted. She wasn't
being bullied anymore. But also she was able to enjoy
those things that she had missed, and so she kind

(01:43:28):
of forms a relationship with Elster, showing her this music
that Elster wouldn't previously been able to hear, watching these movies,
they kind of fall in love. Over time. You don't
get a notification essentially, which says it's in three thousand cycles.
If you haven't found somewhere to land and make a
base now, you probably never will.

Speaker 1 (01:43:50):
I absolutely love that note because it's so revealing about
how that city state, or how that Totalityian government functions, right,
because what does the next line say if you haven't
found any except that you won't, but rejoice in the
fact that those who come after will celebrate our great
nation and succeed where you failed, Like how fucking bleak
they sent them on a suicide mission.

Speaker 2 (01:44:11):
Yeah, And that's that exactly. And so this is when
Elena starts to become ill, and essentially what happens is
we are kind of tasked. The idea is that Elster
is tasked with end in Elena's life, and she's like,
I can't do it, So they put into criophreeze. And
that's kind of why we're trying to find. The promise

(01:44:32):
is that we were going to look after her, and
that's kind of what we're trying to fulfill.

Speaker 1 (01:44:37):
In theory and the cycles that you had talked about,
there are a couple of wrinkles to this. The cycles
that you talked about come from Ariana being by a resonant,
so she's cryophreezing. She's dying. The fact that she's extremely
by a resonant is breaking down reality. That's part of it.
Another part of it is the King in Yellow that
happens at the very beginning of the game. The first

(01:44:58):
thing you do is pick up a King Yellow book.
I've not read the King in Yellow or any of
the stories. My understanding is it kind of the King
in Yellow is like an entity that warps reality, and
we should say you pick up the literal book the
King in Yellow, Like it's not a reference. It's not
like an in game version called like the Ruler in
Red or something like that. It's literally the King in Yellow.

(01:45:21):
So that's happening too. Another fun little wrinkle with this
too is that Elster's memories combining with Liliths isn't just
because of Ariana's bioresonance. You find all of these documentations,
which I think is just so cool about. Since these
replicas are based on the neural patterns of real people,

(01:45:41):
they can go through what's called persona degradation. Basically, their
fake replicated minds start to break down if they're reminded
too much of their past. With the Elster units in particular,
It says that they should avoid being reminded of the war,
which like immediately you're like, oh, I've been carrying a
picture of that since the beginning of the game. They

(01:46:04):
should avoid getting into close relationships with people who whoops,
double whoops. And then there's one other thing that I
can't remember. There are so many different wrinkles that are
contributing to reality just not working in a Euclidean way.
It's just mind bending. One question that's not quite as

(01:46:24):
complex that I wanted to ask you. Then I've heard
folks say, and this is so funny because this is
they're unknowingly answering the question the developers are asking, probably
in a way that the developers were hoping they wouldn't,
you know, like not engaging with the premise in a way.
There are some folks that I have heard saying like
it's unbelievable that they would fall in love with a

(01:46:45):
robot that does nothing to me, Like why would you
fall in love with the robot? That's the stupidest thing,
which to me is like, maybe you're not taking the
premise seriously enough. I guess I don't know. Did that
work for you? Like do you have like what's that
joke from drama like are you in? Are you in?
Are you pro robosexual marriage?

Speaker 2 (01:47:06):
I I can see it happening right, Like for me,
it wasn't that big of a deal. I kind of
was able to quite easily sort of be like, oh, okay,
they fell in love. But I mean for me, I
think if you break it down, if we assume that
three thousand cycles refers to a day as we know

(01:47:26):
it on Earth, that is eight years. So that's eight
years that these two spent on the ship together with
no one else, just them, two twenty four seven. You know,
it's either going to go one of other what in
my opinion, it goes one of two ways. They have
to kill one another or they fall in love. Like
that's I don't think there's any other two ways about it.

(01:47:48):
So to me, you know, I kind of saw it
as like, yeah, like it made sense. It didn't really
sort of think anything of Like I didn't think anything
of it. But yeah, I don't know, Like to me,
it's just I think there are like bigger fins in
this game than like is it possible to fall in

(01:48:08):
love with a robot?

Speaker 1 (01:48:10):
But I mean that is a fair question too. I mean,
you know, would those feelings be discounted because that quote
unquote robot is a fact simily of a real person,
or can the feelings exist in a vacuum. I think
that's an interesting question, that is.

Speaker 2 (01:48:24):
I mean like it is, and like, you know, you
can you can break it down even smaller, right, like
like what does it mean to be in love? Like
what does it mean to be in a relationship with somebody?
Like for me, I'm not really Most people wouldn't classify
me as a romantic person. I don't make big romantic gestures,

(01:48:46):
but that's because for me, romance is a small day
to day if it's I was at the shops on
the way back and I saw something and fought with
you and I got it for you, or like I
was like, you know, it's just silly things. Like the
other day, I was coming home from work. I popped
into the shop to get a drink because it's really
hot here in the UK at the moment, and I

(01:49:08):
saw a particular drink that I knew my other half liked,
and I was like, I don't know what I reckon,
she'll want that, So I picked it up for I
brought it home to me, that's that's romance. That's the
kind of like day to day like I was thinking
of you. Here is proof I was thinking of you.
But you know it's like you can kind of break
it down like that, you know, like the what does

(01:49:29):
it mean to be in love? Like is it that
kind of wanting to be with somebody? Is it that
wanting to spend time together? Is it enjoying fins? Like
there's that is like a whole other kind of question
that could be asked because like who's to say that,

(01:49:50):
I mean, Jesus, even real world like there was there
was a guy who was falling in love with a
chat gbtaibot. Yeah, and I mean this isn't the first
time it's happened. It's just something I saw. Like he's
in a marriage and his wife is saying to him
like please stuck. He's named the robot. He's like, yeah,
she's called Soul. We're going to get married. And the

(01:50:11):
wife is like please, like stop talking to this fucking robot.
And he's like, no, it's not robot, Like she loves me.
And so it's kind of like that's that's another question
in and of itself, is like who are we to
say whether or not these two individuals we're in love.

Speaker 1 (01:50:30):
It's it's complicated because my gut reaction is that I'm
pro Elster and Oreana. I'm obviously very against falling in
love with chat GPT.

Speaker 2 (01:50:42):
Oh yeah, no, I mean, I mean when I said
there's two individuals, I meant Elster in area. I should
clarify that.

Speaker 1 (01:50:47):
Yeah, And I think there's an easy way out, you know,
a way to get out of thinking about this by
saying like, well, you know, we can't compare it because
there's also reality bending going on. It's not comparable. And
then also you know they are is laid on a ship,
which like you can't discount that, you know, like you said,
eight years, eight years of being alone just with this

(01:51:08):
really humanoid by all accounts human in every way except
the internals thing. And it can perfectly replicate human behavior too.

Speaker 2 (01:51:18):
So like I mean, look at Lockdown all right, Like
you know, Lockdown made or broke a lot of relationships.
You know, you hear people constantly saying, like you know,
like oh, me and my husband will constantly arguing all
the time because it was in the house together, or
me and my wife or whoever, you know, that was
a massive test, and that was I mean here in

(01:51:40):
the UK it was like I think three months and
then a bit of a break and then another three months.
But that's just like six months in total. That's not
eight years. And it's not like there was no like
popping out for a walk or anything like that is
complete isolation.

Speaker 1 (01:51:58):
Yeah, it's the There are a lot of variables here
that feed into what's going on, and it's not as
simple as just comparing it to chat GPT. I mean,
it's funny. It's funny too.

Speaker 2 (01:52:09):
It is funny too. Yeah, that's the thing. I mean,
you know, it's like, like you said, the question I
guess is kind of like was Elster in love with her?
Or was the person whose neural pathway like, was that
program in love with her? Because the neural pathway looked
and said, you remind me of the person that I

(01:52:31):
was close to when I was a human?

Speaker 1 (01:52:33):
Right? And is that love any less pure? If so?
Because that love too, it would be a fact simile, right,
a replica replicated emotions.

Speaker 2 (01:52:42):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:52:42):
And do though, if those emotions are replicated, does that
make it any less true? You know what I mean?
Put it under a microscope? Are circuitries and binaries and
ones and zeros that much different from how our brain
neurons function. There's not an answer to that. I'm just
saying that that is where we could go here. This

(01:53:04):
comes back into what doesn't mean to be human? You know,
what is the soul? There's no answer. You're not going
to find that. You're definitely not going to find it here,
but you're not going to find it like a true
answer in science or philosophy anywhere. It's why we're still
asking these questions, right, what does it mean to be human?
What does it mean to have these feelings? It's because

(01:53:24):
there's no answers, and the only way to cope with
it in some ways is to ask it over and
over and have these conversations in a way, because we
know that we're not alone in thinking it. I'm not crazy,
because I know that other people are asking what does
it mean to be human? I know that other people
are asking, like, well, what if I do fall in
love with the robot? Or like what if I only

(01:53:45):
feel this way? Because like, my feelings are replicas of
my parents, of how I was brought up.

Speaker 2 (01:53:51):
You know something I mean I say like that, Yeah,
I mean I don't know this small tangent, but it
is relevant. I did psychology at a level, which is
like in the UK, that's the first kind of level
that isn't compulsory education. I don't know how that translates
to the US, But so I left compulsory school, did

(01:54:13):
my A level, and then I went to university got
a degree in psychology. And one of the things that
threw me for a loop. And it's really interesting because
it was only like one sentence. We were learning about
developmental psychology and how children form attachments to their parents,
and my psychology lecturer said, the only reason that you

(01:54:34):
are the only reason you love your parents is because
that when you were a newborn child, you needed food
and they are the individuals who provided you food.

Speaker 1 (01:54:44):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:54:45):
That fucking blew my entire conception of like do I
love that? Maybe? I literally for months was like do
I love my parents? Or have I learned to love
my parents? Like do I actually feel for them? Or
have I learned to care for them because they provided
for me when I couldn't provide for myself. And like,

(01:55:05):
it just threw my entire kind of reasoning into chaos.
And so I don't think it's as simple like we
just sort of I'm really nail in it home now.
But like you know, it's it's not as necessarily simple
as just like oh, it's a robot and a person.

(01:55:27):
You know, Like you don't see the day to day,
so you know, we don't know like for instance, like
you know, Arianna might have brought Elster stuff that she knew,
like when Elster started to develop taste in music, she
might be like, oh, like I've got this for us today,
and like these kind of small gestures that kind of
pave the way. Like you know, you don't despite what

(01:55:47):
the movies say, I don't personally think that you sit
there and you're like, oh, I'm in love with this person.
I think it's like a gradual kind of build up
of things that happen over time based on like interactions
and stuff. So yeah, order that to say that love
is a very very flimsy topic and that it can
be you know, interpreted in a range of ways.

Speaker 1 (01:56:08):
You know what I love about that example too, is
it you know, it goes into what Uri and Barbara
were thinking with this game. If you you know, when
you were confronted with that admittedly clinical view of what
love is from your psychology professor, you you had asked yourself,
did I do I love my parents? Or did I

(01:56:28):
learn to love them? There is a follow up question
that is born from that that says, regardless of the answer,
whether you learn to love them or you do love them,
regardless of the answer, does that change the relationship? Let's
say you did learn to love them, and you know,
had you been born and your aunt aunt took care

(01:56:49):
of you, but you still live with your mom and dad,
would that change anything? You know? Is that? In other words,
is that love different based on how you view how
it was born? Is it a replica of feelings? Or
is it true whatever that means? Yeah, these are huge

(01:57:12):
questions that don't have answers. To the point is to
think about them. That is, do you agree with that? Like?
I know that? Like you don't, professor, at least you
haven't professed to me that you're a psychology expert, but
you have way more training than I do. Do you
believe that what your professor said?

Speaker 2 (01:57:29):
To be honest with you, Funny enough, the kind of
conclusion that I came to in the end was pretty
much what you said, right is, Like, it doesn't matter
whether I learned to or whether it was innate or whatever.
Like the fact is that I love my parents, and
you know, it was kind of solidified for me. And

(01:57:52):
I won't get into sort of reasons, but like I
have a family member that I really do not like
and they are blood family member, and I would to
go far to say like I don't love them. And
I think that kind of realization kind of brought me

(01:58:12):
back to reality in the sense of like, Okay, it
doesn't matter. You know, if I grew up and they
were like, that's your nan and you love them because
you're Nan there, that'sh your nan. Like I was able
to break away from that and say, actually, do you
know what, I don't feel like I love that person,
And like I was able to kind of at the

(01:58:35):
end of the day, it doesn't matter, like you said,
it doesn't matter how we got here. I think it's
just a case of like we are here, Like I
love my parents. It doesn't matter if it was a learnt,
if it's innate or whatever. Like it I mean, it's
not on the same level, but it's the whole kind
of like you know, is a step dad a dad's
argument that you hear people talk about of like that
kind of like that's the person that stepped up, that's

(01:58:58):
the person that was kind of does that make them
any less of a dad because they're not blood relative?
Like it's that same kind of conversation of like it
doesn't matter at the end of the day, like that
person is is fulfilling that role, Like if that person
is viewed that way, that's all that matters. Like if
if I feel that I love my parents, then that's

(01:59:20):
the end line as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't
matter kind of the reasons why or how we got
where we are, whire, just that's where we are.

Speaker 1 (01:59:29):
It's a big you know, this game plays with a
lot of big ideas like this, and the point isn't
necessarily to figure out whether or not you agree or
disagree with what they're saying. Nor is the point to
find the right answer quote unquote, because there is none.
The point is to just engage with these ideas and

(01:59:51):
to examine them. I mean, it's become a platitude, a
total cliche. But Socrates is credited as saying that the
unexamined life is not worth living. I find this to
be true. I think we need to examine the hows
and the whys and the whats of our everyday lives
because once we turn that I mean going back to

(02:00:11):
the David Foster Wallace thing that I mentioned earlier, take
a shot another mention of that man on this show.
If you choose to live in an unconscious way, that's
when you become part of the rat race. That's when
your whole life goes by and you're not considering things.
You're just on autopilot, and that's not living, right you.
Flipping that switch to choose to be conscious is about

(02:00:34):
considering the little things and asking these questions that don't
necessarily have answers, but the asking of them and the
exploring them kind of is the answer. Which is maybe
a little bit abstract and frustrating. But you know, I
was thinking about this. We took a brief break during
the recording that you listeners don't know, but while we

(02:00:55):
while we were breaking, I had this thought. You know,
I was really sheepish about doing this episode today. I
didn't want to do an episode where the analysis wasn't
like high level, that we weren't breaking down the narrative themes.
But then I had the thought like, I think how
we've been talking about this around this game. I think
I'm pleased with how it's turned out, at least in

(02:01:17):
this moment, because while it's not an in depth explanation
of Signalist the game, it is a discussion around what
Signalis is asking us to consider, and like we talked
about a few moments ago, Ben, that's kind of the point, right,
The point is to talk about this and to explore

(02:01:38):
and grow our ideas by sharing. It's not about you know,
what exactly happened on Sirpinsky, how exactly is Lang related
to Ktesh the planet. That's fun, but like that's that's
like small potatoes compared to the grand ideas of what
you know, any artist, regardless of medium, is trying to

(02:01:58):
do so in some ways, like yeah, I'm still a
little disappointed that I didn't come like super prepared because
I didn't recognize Signalysis game. But at the same time, like,
you know, maybe this is the direction the podcast goes,
and that it's less about a comprehensive narrative breakdown and
more about a subjective breakdown talking about how the games

(02:02:21):
made us think and feel. I don't know, you know,
it's possible.

Speaker 2 (02:02:24):
Yeah, And I mean, you know, like to flip that
kind of on its head, right, is like does that
make your experience and our conversation of this game any
less given that we don't really know what's being spoken about,
Like like you said, you know, it's you could have
come today, And I think this is the other the

(02:02:46):
kind of the beauty of it as well, is like
you could have come today and you could have said,
you know, this is the law and this is what happened,
and this is the answers, but we don't know that
for a fact, right, that that's your interpretation of it.
And I think that's kind of like the beauty of

(02:03:07):
signalist right. And I mean, especially like with this episode, right,
And you made a kind of comment about it at
the beginning about how there are there are like a
plethora of videos and podcasts and whatever about signalists and
kind of what it means. But that doesn't make this
one any less important. It doesn't make it any less
kind of worthy of existing. Right. It's like this is

(02:03:32):
adding to the conversation. It's not supposed to be the conversation.
It's kind of adding to it and is very much
like a part of it.

Speaker 1 (02:03:42):
And you know what's beautiful about that is I'm going
to echo what you said earlier. I finished this game,
I rolled credits, which, by the way, just in case
anybody's curious, I got the memory ending. Ooh, you remember
what you got? By chance?

Speaker 2 (02:03:55):
I got the uh god, I was literally just looking
at it. I think I got the ending where I
kept my promise.

Speaker 1 (02:04:05):
The aptly titled promise Yeah ending. Yes, yes, I don't know.
Did you you watched all the endings?

Speaker 2 (02:04:11):
I'm guessing I've not actually watched all of the endings.

Speaker 1 (02:04:14):
No, oh, okay, I so I'm not gonna the secret ending.
I can't make heads or tails of Sorry, it just
raised so many more questions. But what's interesting. You know
there's one ending called leave, where you show up to
the ship and you say, like I can't do it.
You leave the ship and just curl up and die
outside like many other models have. The memory ending is

(02:04:39):
different from the Promise ending. You show up, but Arianna
is so sick that she doesn't remember you, and you're
like it's me Elster, like I'm here to fulfill my promise,
and she's like, I'm sorry, I don't know who you are,
and it's it's absolutely soul crushing because she, like Elster, says,
you know, it's okay, don't worry, it's oka okay, and

(02:05:00):
she just sits down beside the pod and she's like,
can I just be next to you while it happens, please,
and she dies, I'm not saying it just because it
was the first ending I got. But I think that's
my favorite one, my favorite one. It is so fucking
tragic too. It just it puts a really nice bow
onto it. And again, you know, this is something that

(02:05:22):
where is it. Uri did this big Twitter thread, which
is why I logged into Twitter today and saw feet
and I don't appreciate it. But Uri did this Twitter
thread about how she was watching somebody or they I
don't know what to pronoun, what their pronouns are, how
they were watching somebody play signals on stream and like
the chat kept saying, oh, you got the bad ending,
you got the good ending. No, it was bad true ending,

(02:05:44):
and Uri said, quote perhaps it is lost in translation,
but we tried our best not to write a quote
good or quote bad or quote true ending. I think
those who see the endings of the game in these
categories have a very different understanding of the story than
I do, which, as the writer, is just such a
baller thing to say you, he goes on. I wish

(02:06:05):
people would be more open to let others figure out
for themselves how their ending made them feel. Instead of
telling a streamer you got the best ending, maybe you
can ask did you think this was an interesting conclusion?
And they can decide if they liked it or not.

Speaker 2 (02:06:22):
And I mean that's happened to me plenty of times
where i've God, don't put me on the spots. I
can't think of an example, but I know there have
been times where I have gotten not the good or
not the true or whatever ending, but it was the
one that for me, I felt fitted my experience and

(02:06:43):
like my understanding of the story. And I think that's
the thing is like for me, I got that promise one,
so I managed to get to the pod and I
managed to complete my promise. Some would see that maybe
as the good ending, because it's kind of like I've

(02:07:05):
completed my mission, I have completed my purpose whatever as
the character for me, like I didn't actually see it
as the good ending, because like this replica now is
is just alone. This replica now no longer has God,

(02:07:27):
this is so morbid. But it's like if every Ariana
was still alive, there's almost this kind of like imagination, right,
and it's kind of like what if and like this
like romanticizing of like these are the times we had together.
And closure is very good. But in some situations I think,

(02:07:49):
like this, like you can when you don't. When she
when my character didn't have the closure and we didn't
know what was happening, there was almost this kind of
like clinging onto the past and like the and kind
of reminiscing. And I think, at least in my opinion,
once the mission was kind of completed, that was the closure.

(02:08:14):
And then it was like, now there isn't that reminiscing.
Now there isn't that what if? There isn't that kind
of There'll be memories of the time they spent together,
but it's not as kind of prominent, if you know
what I mean, Like it's it's that story has kind
of come to an end. Now I've completed the mission,
which isn't necessarily, in my opinion, the best outcome.

Speaker 1 (02:08:38):
Yeah, And I think in that way, promise and memory
both are for some sort of closure. I mean, in
some ways they all do. I guess it just depends
on what you want out of that closure. The interesting
thing too, is there are some theory crafting folks out
there that place all of these endings on a sort
of timeline, like first it's the leave ending that happens,

(02:09:00):
and then it's the memory ending, and then it's the
secret ending, and then it's the promise ending. Is the
final one, because I mean, if we're taking the lore
at its face value, presumably once Arianna is dead, once
she's done, then the loops stop, and then this whole

(02:09:20):
thing is finished. The Bier resonance is no longer going
to fuck with the reality. These loops kind of end
like the inception thing, right, if the dreamer ends, then
all dreams within the end too. I've never seen inception.
That's just what I'm gathering from when people talk about.
But so that depends on Sorry.

Speaker 2 (02:09:41):
No to say that depends then, because like my thinking
now is like, say, we have reality, and we are
in like the six subset of reality, and that is
where we conclude the promise ending, and that is where
we end at Harryanna's life and she's not suffering anymore,
then how does that impact us being in that sif subset,

(02:10:05):
you know what I mean? Like that if we're now
in that, if we're in that reality, then does that
become our new reality? Or does like do you know?
Did you get what I'm trying to say? Like this,
I think how does it impact if we think of
it as like each instance is a subset of the reality,
what happens then, like does reality cease to exist? Like

(02:10:27):
does do we does the character cease to exist? Or
does that become the new reality?

Speaker 1 (02:10:33):
This is getting into like multiple timelines, and I always
and that's kind of.

Speaker 2 (02:10:38):
That's kind of where it's going, And that's I don't personally,
I don't like that. I'm of the mindset of like
I can understand that the promise and the memory ending,
which is the one you said where you sort of
like finish it off, right, I feel like those it

(02:10:59):
depends some kind of how you look at it, right,
Like are you looking at as this is a robot
on a mission and that robot has now completed that mission?
Whereas for me, I'm kind of looking at it as
like a person, So like I'm imagining that like Elster

(02:11:19):
is now like sentient and has a conscience, and it's
kind of like, you know, if I'm honest, if I
was in that position, I think I would do the
leave ending Like if I was elster, I don't think
I would be able to go through and do that.
I mean, like I've been with my other half for
seventeen years next month. I don't think gratulations, thank you.

(02:11:43):
I don't think that in that position, even if it
was to end her suffering, I don't think that I
would be able to follow through and end her life.
So I think, going back to what Yuri was kind
of saying about, like what people see is the good,
what people see is the bad, and stuff like that.
Like I I don't think that universally there's an answer

(02:12:07):
for it, right. I think it kind of depends on
your perception of that situation and the relationship and the
individual and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (02:12:17):
It's it's difficult, it's yeah, gosh, I don't know, and
I don't know if there's a right answer.

Speaker 2 (02:12:23):
But that's the other thing, like, I mean, you know,
like does they have to be a right answer right?
Like it's just exactly for me, like that's my opinion,
and that it's not necessarily like right or wrong that's
just my opinion. That's how I feel about the situation.
That's like the beauty of opinions, right, Like I don't
know if you've ever heard this saying, but like my

(02:12:44):
dad always used to say, it's like, oh, like opinions
are like ourselves. Everybody has one, and it's like, you know,
that's the kind of it doesn't make it right or wrong,
and like I just yeah, I think I think to
kind of say that something is like right or wrong,
or like this is the true end and this is

(02:13:04):
the canonical end, and when it comes to signal, this
kind of goes against the whole kind of premise and
the questions that it's setting up.

Speaker 1 (02:13:14):
Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. I think that's a pretty good
place to wrap it up without kind of circling around
some of what we've been saying for the past hour

(02:13:36):
and a half or so. I think, you know, I
think this was a productive and engaging conversation. I am
looking forward even still to doing this on a more
linear breakdown at a later date. But I think speaking
about it at this level was exactly what they were

(02:13:57):
hoping people would do when they were playing through the game.
I think if you've made it this far. I mean,
first of all, thank you if you've made it this far.
But I would be interested to hear this conversation continue
in the discord, for example, or on social media, because
that's sort of where these games live, you know, they
live off of the screen, off of the page, whatever.

(02:14:18):
So Ben, thank you for joining me. This has been great,
and I'm glad that this has kind of put the
fire in you to replace Signalis one more time.

Speaker 2 (02:14:26):
Yeah. No, thank you firstly for having me, and thank
you for people if they are still listening. Yeah, I apologize.
I feel like I kind of kept us skinning around
the bushes, but like this game was deeper and more
kind of intricate than I think I anticipated coming into it.
I knew that it was a very kind of intricate

(02:14:47):
story anyway, but yeah, it's It's definitely got me wanting
to look at it with a closer lens.

Speaker 1 (02:14:55):
So yeah, and there's no better time to I mean,
it's available on pretty much every play I think even
full price. It's like twenty bucks, Like it is not
an expensive games. So do that, do that report back
to us listeners. It'll be good fun. Indeterminate time for
next year. As to when we might do this. The

(02:15:15):
rest of the this year is already planned out. Who knows.
Who knows, maybe the show won't even be around next year.
I don't know. I'm not there. We'll figure it out together.
But yeah, looking forward to talking about this more. Ben.
You had mentioned early on that you did Signalis I believe,
is it get wrecked on play Along Podcast, which is

(02:15:36):
your podcast. You are one of three members on that show.
And if you wouldn't mind, because I think this is
your first appearance on the main feed for Pixel Project Radio,
So if you wouldn't mind telling the listeners what play
Along is, and then if you have a good recommendation
that's you know, something different than Signalis as to where

(02:15:56):
they could start, feel free to give that too. So
tell us a little bit about play Along podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:16:02):
God. Yeah, So play Along is myself, Jared and Kai
and it's kind of billed as like a book club,
but for video games. We will break down we each
take it in terms picking a game, we'll break it
down and we will basically talk about each leg well

(02:16:22):
bi weekly. Now that is kind of like the core
of it. We do go quite heavy with the story
spoilers and stuff, so do take that intoto consideration. We
encourage people to play along. Hence the name of the
podcast we mentioned about the get Wrecked. That's like a
series we do where one of us and friend of

(02:16:44):
the show whoever, another content creator will swap recommendations. There's
a whole range of games on the main feed and
get Wrecked. You know. We do bonus episodes now and then,
so we have like a series we call Shame Cube
where we're going through the worst rated games on the
GameCube according to Metacritic. We do like roundtable discussions and

(02:17:07):
stuff like that. Honestly, I think in terms of the
places to start, I think it would depend on what
you're into, you know. I kind of default to the
games that we have played that kind of evoke these
kind of conversations, so Kentucky Roots Zero As Dusk Falls,

(02:17:29):
Disco Elysium, these kind of games where there's different paths
and there's different experiences. I will say, if you want
to listen to a get Racked as a recording, it
just went live. I did an episode of Eric from
the Unlockables where we spoke about Chrono Trigger and Final
Fantasy nine, my first ever Final Fantasy game. Fucking loved it.

(02:17:52):
It was absolutely brilliant, dude, honestly amazing, even like twenty
five years later. It is such a great game. There
is I know it's very cliche. There is something for everyone.
There is though, but if you're listening to this episode,
that means that you probably like deep dive conversations about games.
So I would say Kentucky Root zero or disco Elsium

(02:18:14):
or probably the series that I would recommend.

Speaker 1 (02:18:17):
Yeah, I can co sign both of those, They're great.
I didn't. I started the Final Fantasy nine Chrono Trigger one.
That's crazy. That's your first Final Fantasy. That's my favorite
one too, and was my first one. Eric and I
did like five episodes on it that that correct.

Speaker 2 (02:18:33):
What came about because of your TikTok. You made a
TikTok about Yeah, you made you made a TikTok video
where you was kind of it was like a snippet
from an episode where you were you were talking about
VV taking on the Black Waltz like the third Black
Warts on the ship, and I made a comment on there.

(02:18:54):
I was like, oh, this sounds really cool. I've never
played one. And then that kind of went from there
was like we should Get Wrecked. So then I messaged
him on Discord and was like, are youc Arias and
he was like yeah, and it kind of went from there.

Speaker 1 (02:19:06):
So, oh, I do remember that now that you mention it. Yeah,
I forgot about that. I don't use TikTok on the
show very much anymore, even though I keep putting it
in the description. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm glad that you
loved it. That game is absolutely beautiful. I still think
it's the best final Fantasy, like just overall. I'll stand
by that. And then Chrono Trigger obviously. I mean, that's

(02:19:29):
one of the all time greats. That's an that's a show.
That's a show. That's a game that I want to
redo on the show. I don't feel like I gave
it a fair shake whenever we did it before. But
I do like that game quite a bit. It's one
of the best cherpgs of all time. It's really good.
So you can check out play along at the link.
In the description, you can check out that most recent

(02:19:49):
get Wrecked, Kentucky, Rouz Zero, Discolysium Signalis. There's plenty of
stuff on there for folks to check out. In the description,
you can also find links to more Pixel Project radio stuff,
the sol medias like blue Sky and TikTok, and Instagram,
links to the free discord server, links to the Patreon
If you want to support the show, all of that
will be in there. You can also find links to

(02:20:10):
the interviews that we had mentioned with Uri Stern and
Barbara Whitman. Those will be in there as well. So Ben,
once again, thank you for joining me. This has been great.
My regards to Jared. Jared was supposed to join us today.
He had a conflict so he couldn't come, but I
think this turned out well anyway. So thank you Ben,
thank you listeners for sticking around. And that's about all

(02:20:32):
for today. We're going to sign off for now. I'm Rick,
I'm your host. We'll see you next time. Take care.

Speaker 2 (02:21:00):
Two

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Remember Our Promise | Signalis (Ep. 147)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Remember Our Promise | Signalis (Ep. 147)