Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the gaming Backlog book club. This is our second side quest season and we’ve put a few hours into signalis, so we’re ready to have this preliminary gameplay conversation and strategy exchange.

Today is all about the early moments of signalis. We won’t be going into any major story spoilers, but we’ll chat at a high level about the early setting and events of the game within the first two to three hours worth of gameplay. Um, but we’re definitely going to be talking about gameplay tips and any tricks that we’ve come up with along the way.

[00:00:33] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:00:34] Speaker A: Did you choose a particular inventory capacity option?

It defaults you to one called Revised, which means you can have.

[00:00:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I did that.

[00:00:44] Speaker A: Six items in your inventory at any given time, but that the modules, as they call them, don’t take up a slot.

[00:00:51] Speaker B: Yes, I did that. I did the revised.

[00:00:53] Speaker A: It just defaults you to that. So I won’t default.

[00:00:55] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:00:55] Speaker A: Then there’s also Classic, which is a strict six items, including modules.

That’s for those hardcore survival horror folks.

And then Extended is for those who struggle with managing inventory space, which I assume either gives you unlimited space or at least many more slots than six. But yes, I also chose Revised, so seems like a reasonable way if they set us default.

[00:01:18] Speaker B: I chose Revised for now. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll do the expanded.

[00:01:22] Speaker A: Yeah, right. You know, if we struggle a lot, it might be worth switching it over. I’m. You know, I think anyone who enjoys this game will just say, hey, you can handle this.

[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

[00:01:30] Speaker A: Just like, it may be a little bit of a struggle, but just push past it. Like, I think that the. I think the expanded is probably for people. It’s like a story mode almost.

[00:01:41] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:01:41] Speaker A: Where like, if you want to experience the story, because supposedly there’s a very good story here, but you don’t. Or you are either aren’t a very experienced gamer, don’t love XYZ aspect of horror games, blah, blah, blah. But anyway, all right, we’re both unrevised.

Well, without even kicking off with anything specific, what are your first impressions here?

[00:02:05] Speaker B: So, first impressions. So actually now getting back into this and how far I played. So this is about where I played up to again, the first ever time I played this, which I actually looked really. It was three or four years ago now. So, yeah, so it’s been a little bit.

[00:02:19] Speaker A: So did you finish this? Did you. Did you save and quit the same point that I did?

[00:02:24] Speaker B: I think so. I had just.

I think I.

[00:02:28] Speaker A: What was the last thing you did? That’s a question.

[00:02:31] Speaker B: Unlocked the wall safe that had a tree on it to get a. Like a pass someone badge. Yes. That’s to, I believe which access is the elevator.

[00:02:43] Speaker A: It’s like a. But it was a butterfly detector pass.

It was called a butterfly key. Yes. Okay, so you’re at the same time.

[00:02:48] Speaker B: No, the butterfly. Yeah, the butterfly key opened something different.

And then after that I opened a wall.

[00:02:55] Speaker A: To get the protector pass. Yes.

[00:02:57] Speaker B: Yeah, the protector pass. Yeah. So I got that. Which I’m pretty sure then lets you

[00:03:00] Speaker A: go up the elevator.

[00:03:02] Speaker B: I saved right there.

[00:03:03] Speaker A: The butterfly key gets you to a point where you can get the radio signal chip thing and then you get the pass. All right. We stopped at the same spot. So you played up until here the first time you played multiple years ago?

[00:03:16] Speaker B: I think so, yeah. Because I do remember the butterfly. Like the butterfly key. When I saw it again, I was like, ah, okay. Yeah. So.

[00:03:25] Speaker A: Okay, so you, you’ve. You’ve done all this before.

[00:03:30] Speaker B: I have.

[00:03:31] Speaker A: How do you feel about it the second time around? Are you good? Intrigued to keep going?

[00:03:37] Speaker B: Yes. No. Yeah, definitely. I was actually paying again the first time. I wasn’t 100% sure how to play this game. I was paying way more attention to reading all the notes.

I actually took a screenshot of one of the things in that medical room that has all the frequencies for the radios. So I can remember that has the codes.

[00:03:58] Speaker A: Oh, actually, the frequencies for the radio.

[00:04:03] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:04:03] Speaker A: Okay. You took a screenshot of it. Like a PlayStation screenshot?

[00:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah, like a PlayStation screenshot.

[00:04:07] Speaker A: So I can go.

I guess I’ll throw out my first tip for you then. You don’t need that screenshot. If it’s easier to refer to on your phone or something, that’s cool. But in the menu, not the main menu and the like inventory menu, if you scroll, I think it’s up twice.

You. You get to a three, like a three column screen. So the left side is where your radio is. The middle one has a bunch of the notes and that has it every. Every note or text piece that you read populates in there. So you can just scroll up and

[00:04:37] Speaker B: find frequencies that I didn’t know because, like, you don’t pick them up. So I didn’t know.

[00:04:42] Speaker A: You don’t. Yeah, like, it doesn’t disappear off the screen, it just stays there. But like, it, I don’t know, saves into that menu.

[00:04:48] Speaker B: Got it. Okay, well, that’s good to know that it does that. So.

Okay, well, I just did it Yeah, I did it for that. Just so. Cause I again, my thought was I’m reading all these, I’m trying to sort of memorize and stuff and then.

[00:05:01] Speaker A: You’re not going to memorize, you know, six different radio frequencies.

[00:05:05] Speaker B: No, no, no. That’s why I took the screenshot. But good to know that I will look that next time I start the game up in the menu. Just look through that. So.

[00:05:12] Speaker A: And while we’re on it, it’s interesting that there’s a butterfly key and there’s something about survival horror games and insect related puzzles. There’s the moth room in Silent Hill 2, among many other insect related things.

If I’m not mistaken, there’s some kind of insect puzzle in at least Resident Evil 1.

Well, yeah. Anyway, Always funny to see that. I guess insects are creepy to many people. So I guess that’s why.

Where’s the ladybug room?

[00:05:46] Speaker B: You know? Yeah, I know. Seriously, a little bit nicer.

[00:05:51] Speaker A: Okay, so. Okay, so this is while they’re. They. They are renewed first impressions for you, so to speak.

[00:05:57] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah.

[00:05:58] Speaker A: All right, great.

[00:06:00] Speaker B: But I did find some new things. As in like just running around of areas where I was able to avoid some of the monsters other than actually going at them.

Nice that I didn’t know the first time. Like, I was walking and I was like, oh, it looks like it’s like blacked out. You can’t go. But you could go that way. I was like, oh, it’s like shortcuts

[00:06:18] Speaker A: to avoid interactions what you’re talking about.

But I guess that that was one of the tips that I had too, that I’ll just jump to now. Where the hell did I write this down?

[00:06:29] Speaker B: We don’t have. We can start. You want to start from the beginning of how it starts?

[00:06:33] Speaker A: I mean, I think, I think, yeah. Like, even before starting the game up

[00:06:37] Speaker B: though,

[00:06:40] Speaker A: my first thought was just, wow. Even just the settings menu was like decidedly low tech. You know, it looked like it was on a CRTV CRT TV screen displayed through hdr, like blurry and lo fi and everything.

But then on top I was like, oh, this looks like it by default. But then if you go into the settings under graphics, there’s an option to use CRT mode.

[00:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah, there is.

[00:07:01] Speaker A: Which has that whole bulbous switch to

[00:07:04] Speaker B: that I can’t even like, listen.

[00:07:06] Speaker A: I switched to it for a second. It bothered my eyes. Yeah, I tried it a little bit in gameplay and it just couldn’t do it. Like, if you give me a real CRT TV and some weird Adapter. I would play it on there, I guess, but.

[00:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah, so I did turn off, actually, in the setting, the film grain. I turned film grain off, really, which

[00:07:24] Speaker A: made it a little more clear. I turned it off in the menu and then thought, I’ll just give it a shot, because that’s kind of what they intended, I suppose, but. So you like it like that, then? Without the graininess?

[00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah. All right.

[00:07:36] Speaker A: I think, you know, maybe at some point, if it’s too dark or something, I’ll switch over.

Or if it’s easier to. I have. I’ve played only on my TV so far, not on the portal. So if I switch to the portal at some point, I might turn off the film grain just to be. You know, it’s a small screen to make it more easy to look at, but we’ll see.

And then also, I think it’s probably more useful for taking screenshots, but whatever.

There’s also the warning after the setting selection that says some parts of this game might be considered violent or cruel.

And it pops up, I think, every time you log in. And which, similar to Silent Hill 2 Remake last year, is a welcome disclaimer just to preface for people that things could be disturbing.

I always appreciate that in this day and age.

[00:08:27] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it’s good.

[00:08:29] Speaker A: I also like that there’s a small manual in the main menu, too, to give you an idea of the controls. And, you know, we were talking in one of our bookmark episodes about nostalgic things of the past. And, man, I love flipping through those instruction manuals on the way home from the store as a kid.

[00:08:49] Speaker B: Yep, that was always a good time

[00:08:51] Speaker A: in the backseat, just generating even more anticipation to be able to play. And then kind of you get to the chance to jump into the game already knowing a bit about the world and how to control things.

So most of the time, the tutorial wasn’t even necessary back then.

Now it’s all built in.

Now, if they wanted to take this a step further and go in the style of tunic with an in game in lore instruction manual to figure out, that would be awesome too. But I guess not everyone wants to go that way.

I think I also quite like, since this is not an FPS or even third person over the shoulder, that since we don’t have a highly precise joystick control scheme, you know, with an aiming reticle and all that, that it has that kind of visual collapsing box format based on how good LSTR’s line of sight is shrinking the box.

[00:09:44] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:09:44] Speaker A: And then it has A full on X in the box if you’re not going to get a hit in. So you don’t. I mean it’s helpful to not waste ammo sometimes you still do in panic. But.

[00:09:56] Speaker B: Other.

[00:09:57] Speaker A: I guess a lot of these things. I was just writing down as I saw the. I was looking through that manual in the main menu and the stomp.

One of the best moments in combat in dead space was when you downed an enemy enough that you could go run up and stomp to finish it off.

[00:10:12] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:10:12] Speaker A: I love that they included that here too.

[00:10:15] Speaker B: I do. Yeah. It’s good. It’s a good move.

[00:10:19] Speaker A: I also like, I guess I like and dislike. I haven’t had to deal with it yet, but the fact that there’s no autosave or checkpoints.

This is a legit old school survival horror. You have to manually save every time, which I don’t know about you, but it makes me play way more cautiously than I’m used to nowadays.

[00:10:42] Speaker B: And going back into this now knowing like what type of style the gameplay was, I’ve been trying to be more cautious.

I will say it is hard though.

[00:10:51] Speaker A: It is, it is.

[00:10:53] Speaker B: Those things have a hit range.

[00:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I think, I guess because I fairly recently played Resident Evil 2 and 3 remake and I don’t think 2 does, but 3 has a Dodge move, like a sidestep thing. So like you can, you can sort of bait an enemy and then dodge underneath their swing basically or around it. And in this. No you can’t. And there are some narrow hallways.

[00:11:25] Speaker B: Yeah, there’s some.

[00:11:26] Speaker A: You can, you can, you know, if you run, if you get them close enough and then run backwards. I just always have my finger on the. If I see an enemy, I always have my finger on the, you know, sprint or faster walking option if I’m trying to sneak around them. Obviously not.

[00:11:42] Speaker B: But.

[00:11:43] Speaker A: But the, the no auto save is interesting and you know, using healing items is important.

[00:11:51] Speaker B: I’ve already used that because I got to like the critical point for your health, like how your health goes and those patches. It’s not a one and done patch. I use like all three that I’ve used and I’m still in the yellow and I’m like.

[00:12:04] Speaker A: So it heals you. I think patch heals you a bit and then it slowly heals you after you leave the menu to continue restoring. But it doesn’t bring you to 100 or anything.

Yeah, but yeah, I mean, no, no autosave, you know, it ratchets up the tension. That’s for sure.

[00:12:22] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.

[00:12:23] Speaker A: And the nostalgia brings me back. But repeating a long section, I’m assuming, is going to be kind of daunting. So keep your head on a swivel.

[00:12:31] Speaker B: Yeah. I did wonder if they give us a dodge later, but it’s just nothing in the controls, because on one of the manuals or no, one of the notes, it says to, like, move past slow and to dodge attacks. And I was like, oh, we’re going to get a dodge. Like, that would be nice, but no, I don’t think we do.

[00:12:50] Speaker A: And then I guess the last. Last thing, even before starting sort of into the game itself. But that menu, the main menu is also kind of aesthetically really cool because it has a really deep close up on LSTR’s eye. And so when you move along the menu, the eye looks to focus on the different item you’re on.

[00:13:09] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:13:10] Speaker A: One of those subtle details that I love that some devs decide to include.

Yeah, like, rather than just, like, your character sitting in the background.

And that’s it.

That’s it.

All right. So when you take control of LSTR just outside of her sleeping pod, it took me a sec to remember this was isometric and actually walk behind the pod. Because the way it was, the art was designed, it kind of looked like the top of a giant computer system that the pod was integrated into. And I thought it was a wall or the, like, just art flourish. But I was walking down thinking there was, like, there was a cutout there. I was thinking it was a door you could walk through, but nothing happened. So I was like, I went to the right side, went to the left side, went down. Nothing’s happening. Where the hell am I supposed to go? It’s like, okay, is the game over already? And no. Yeah, I was just being dumb.

And yeah, you just walk around your podcast. So it’s just a freestanding pod in the middle of a room.

[00:14:06] Speaker B: Yeah.

Yeah.

That was just one of the things, as I said earlier, like, there are little. It looks like it’s blocked.

[00:14:14] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:14:15] Speaker B: But you can go there, right?

[00:14:17] Speaker A: Okay, that’s sort of what you’re referring to.

[00:14:19] Speaker B: Yes, that’s what I was referring to. Yeah. With some enemy areas

[00:14:23] Speaker A: also. Did you. I realized this almost immediately. Did you notice the animation makes it look like she doesn’t have any feet?

No, actually, they’re just like stumps that go directly. Like that go directly into the ground. So it looks like at the ankle, there’s just nothing below that.

It reminded me of Fire Emblem Awakening, where all the characters in the battle screen had their feet clipped through the floor, so you basically never see them.

[00:14:48] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:14:49] Speaker A: And like there, I think I’m pretty sure it’s a bug that just never either they didn’t care about or whatever. But yeah, here I think it’s by design, which it doesn’t look comfortable to stand on. Essentially a high heel, but with no foot. Yeah.

I also didn’t realize, you know, I didn’t. We didn’t talk about this in Expectations at all because I think we didn’t see enough of it. But I didn’t realize there would be moments where it takes you to a first person view, like a point and click game of sorts.

[00:15:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I actually. I totally forgot about that at that

[00:15:24] Speaker A: section, so I had no clue. I don’t know if you know, the review and trailers I saw when it came out, I just don’t remember because they were that long ago. But it reminded me of a point and click game. Kind of like it reminded me of Dango, which was my favorite of all time. But yeah, Myst. And what was the other one? Riven, I think was one of them.

[00:15:44] Speaker B: Riven. Yeah, it reminds me of something of that.

[00:15:47] Speaker A: So that was interesting. And it’s very slow moving first person. Yes, it is, considering we’re playing cyberpunk as our main quest here.

But that’s okay. You know, this is a slow, slow burner.

One of the computers says the details of the crash that because you crash, the surface temperature is dangerously low and to wear protective clothing.

This is all just in your ship. You also find a manual for our type of replica Android that states that we’re ship technicians and we have repair capabilities.

I don’t know if that’s just referring to the repair patch or we’re going to be fixing things later on, but it sounds like, you know, LSTR is an expert at that.

I’m sure. Well, I’m not sure. It sounded like the ship is beyond repair, but we might have to try to fix it up or fix up another ship that we find eventually if we have any hope of escaping the ice planet because.

Doesn’t look like a very hospitable place to be.

[00:16:53] Speaker B: No, it does not. Not at all.

[00:16:56] Speaker A: And I guess I wasn’t expecting to be outside so quickly, but I suppose it makes sense since our ship was pretty small.

And then it’s suspiciously convenient that we crash landed right next to a giant silo type structure that goes down into the ground instead of up.

[00:17:14] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:17:14] Speaker A: Like, of all the places that we could have landed on this Giant planet. Really? That’s the one.

Maybe the pilot was just saw it from a distance and was aiming for it.

[00:17:24] Speaker B: But

[00:17:27] Speaker A: suspicious if you ask me.

Did you like. If you walk towards the screen in that staircase red room. If you inspect the walls by like clicking on clicking interact next to the walls. LSTR wonders to herself who built the place.

But more creepily comments that asking why the walls seem to be like flesh.

[00:17:53] Speaker B: Oh no, I did not know.

[00:17:57] Speaker A: My money’s on some foreshadowing here and we have some weird fleshy enemies to deal with, but I don’t know what’s going on.

And then in that little silo pit, just like James sticking his whole arm into nasty holes in walls and dirty toilets in silo Silent Hill 2 LSTR has to put her whole body into a knee high tunnel and crawl through into the darkness.

[00:18:25] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:18:26] Speaker A: What’s up with that? Horror games.

[00:18:29] Speaker B: Seriously.

[00:18:30] Speaker A: And like, why do we choose and completely randomly choose two horror games in a row that involve entering disgusting holes?

[00:18:47] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:18:49] Speaker A: When you crawl into that hole, the spiral lines inside of it made me half expect to see Bond step out at the end of the barrel and fire a shot at me.

[00:18:59] Speaker B: That would be a very weird and interesting way to end the game.

[00:19:03] Speaker A: Or cameo. But no, this is a. Or introduce a game. This is a very, very different kind of game.

And I don’t think those worlds mix up.

I mean, considering the types of weird collaborations and cameos that video game characters are doing these days, all in the name of making money for their companies, I wouldn’t super be surprised. But it would be weird.

At the other end of that tunnel. There are some curious things in that little room, including a safe that is apparently not secure enough by itself. So it was wrapped in chains too.

A handful of. Did you see that? A handful of banned textbooks and another textbook about how to use a radio.

And the book the King in Yellow, which is a very heavy inspiration for this game, supposedly, as we discussed in our expectations episode.

And I just, I was taken aback that they included the book itself front and center. Inside the game.

[00:20:04] Speaker B: Inside the game. Yeah.

[00:20:06] Speaker A: So wearing their inspiration on the desk and I actually did pick up a copy of that book, so I’m excited to check it out once we’re done here.

[00:20:16] Speaker B: And you know what’s funny? You picked up that book and then so this weekend, this past weekend, I’ve gone to once there’s some Barnes and Nobles. It’s now like one of the top horror books on like the table, like on the main tables where they have horror books.

Yeah.

[00:20:29] Speaker A: So this may be a case of.

And I guess going with the themes of at least Lovecraft, who Robert Chambers inspired, but probably himself as well. Like this whole idea of insight and understanding the world. So it’s very possible that the King in Yellow has always been one of the primary horror books at bookstores during this season and we just never noticed it because we never heard of it.

[00:20:53] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But now, like, I just. I went to like a couple different Barnes and Nobles over the weekend stuff and I saw it at both on the main, like, tables of like top horror picks.

[00:21:05] Speaker A: So. Did you buy one?

[00:21:07] Speaker B: No, I did not. I. No, I have not yet. I’ll get through the game and I will. I have quite a few other books to read.

[00:21:15] Speaker A: You’ve got. Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

But hey, what are the chances? Maybe they’re telling you something.

[00:21:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And actually, I will also preface this. I was at a little convention over the weekend.

It was like a Halloween horror convention here in San Diego.

And one of the vendors, she was reading the King in Yellow.

[00:21:38] Speaker A: Like for her own entertainment or like reading out to the crowd?

[00:21:42] Speaker B: No, for her own entertainment.

[00:21:43] Speaker A: She just had a copy on her table.

[00:21:45] Speaker B: She had a copy.

[00:21:48] Speaker A: You should have asked her about it.

[00:21:50] Speaker B: No, I did. I was like. She had just started. Okay. I was like, oh. I was like, my friend just got that. And then we’re playing a game now that has like a big inspiration for that.

It’s just funny.

[00:22:01] Speaker A: Yeah. No, yeah. That’s the coincidences of life.

Or maybe it’s all by design and we’re being controlled like puns.

Anyway, but the fact, I guess the fact that this book, there’s a physical copy of this book on a desk in this game makes me ask, is this whole scenario we’re playing through a far future of our own civilization?

I sure hope not. But, you know, most sci fi tends to go in that direction. So anyway, you get onto the radio in that room after looking at the King in Yellow book that’s calling out to you, as she says, and get a whole bunch of cuts, like camera cuts and weird messages and glimpses of things that are hard to make heads or tails of. And on top of that, much of it is in German.

Rose Engine is a developer based in Germany, by the way.

[00:22:55] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:22:56] Speaker A: And then what passes when that happens?

The signalis title screen flashes up again. It drops you into a place somewhere completely different from where you were.

Bathroom, of all places. And if you inspect the mirror, Elster says, I’ve come all this Way to find her. There’s no turning back now.

Well, find who? The woman in the weird flashback?

I assume so, but obviously it’s way too soon to know. But it’s like she had amnesia almost after the crash landing, and now seeing the king in yellow just like sparked everything back.

[00:23:30] Speaker B: I think it’s the woman in the photo.

[00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so too because eventually she shows it to someone, says, I’m looking for this person.

[00:23:37] Speaker B: Yeah, a woman.

[00:23:38] Speaker A: Yeah, but I guess that’s the same person as that flashback. But I’m assuming we’ll uncover more about who that is and what the relationship is.

But yeah, very curious. You eventually pick up a pistol, some ammo, some repair patches which give that. Yeah, that micro boost of health, and then they give the prolonged healing for a few seconds after that.

You can also find these stun batons which go into the tool slot which in a game like the recent Resident Evil games can either be used proactively as, you know, a weapon you can, a melee weapon, or as a get out of jail free card when a zombie grabs you and is about to take a bite.

I haven’t tried to get bitten on purpose or get attacked on purpose like that to see if the stun baton will automatically use. I don’t think it does though.

Um, but yes, these peop. These enemies don’t exactly try to eat you, but rather something else that tend to carry weapons and swipe or slash at you.

[00:24:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I’ve used the stun baton once.

[00:24:45] Speaker A: So have I. I love the animation for it. It just lights up the room that you’re in and it’s just so awesome.

But I guess maybe I should try to see if it’ll auto trigger for science.

[00:24:56] Speaker B: I know. It also sucks though that they are literally one time use.

[00:25:00] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that’s. That’s. That is typical.

[00:25:02] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:25:03] Speaker A: At least you can stack them. You don’t have to use a separate inventory slot for each one.

[00:25:06] Speaker B: That’s true. I do like that you can stack them. Yeah.

[00:25:11] Speaker A: There are also NPCs called Guestalts that you can talk to in various states of disrepair or just have really weird personalities. I don’t want to go and say anime, but like they’re kind of at least the way that they’re dressed.

The first guest doll that you meet is bleeding out on the floor and then it’s not there anymore when you get back.

[00:25:38] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:25:42] Speaker A: And then once you have your first enemy encounter where the creepy corpse thing you saw on the floor reanimates, of course, you start to get Flooded by them all over the place.

[00:25:51] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:25:52] Speaker A: Both to get a feel for the shooting mechanics and the targeting system, and just to get some practice, since I’m sure it’ll get trickier later. But I did shoot and curb stomp a handful of the early enemies, and it was fun. Like it. I think it entices you to want to shoot them and stomp them, and then you realize you probably shouldn’t.

[00:26:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I shot a couple. I’m trying to be cautious with my ammo.

[00:26:15] Speaker A: Yes.

Try.

[00:26:17] Speaker B: Is that.

So there’s. I. I noticed there’s two different types that, like. There’s a regular type that they slash you with what looks to be like a.

Like a butcher’s knife or. I don’t. Yeah. But, yeah, they take, like, three shots, and then there’s one that looks like it’s either holding a stun gun or it’s holding something that’s, like, rectangular and they’re a bit bigger and they take more than. Quite a few. More than three. Says, I shot one a few times. And I was like, okay, I’m just gonna try and now run past it

[00:26:42] Speaker A: because it’s taking way too many.

[00:26:44] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:26:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Smart.

Yeah. I guess once.

Once I started getting into the more wide open hallways, I was started to give evasion a try for that same reason, you know, if you get too antsy with your shooting, you’ll run out of ammo fast.

I’ve been hit a couple times. Yeah. It lowers your health. And I guess just to kind of review that, it’s a color scheme rather than.

Rather than, you know, a health bar. I mean, it’s essentially a health bar behind the scenes in the code. But for here on PS5, you can kind of pull up your health diagnostic screen by hitting the touchpad and then. Or up on the D pad once or twice from the inventory or map screens.

And, yeah, I guess the color system is. Blue is your status quo, feeling good mode.

Yellow says caution, which means I’ve been hitting.

There are also multiple shades of orange, and that’s when I start to consider using a health patch.

Like, there’s. There’s two different levels of orange, and. Yeah, there’s. I. What did you say critical?

[00:27:51] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:27:54] Speaker A: Was that red? Probably red.

[00:27:56] Speaker B: I think it goes to red when it’s like, danger. I think it says danger. You’re in the red.

[00:28:01] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Red must be the brighter orange.

[00:28:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I’ve. I’ve been in danger.

[00:28:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, okay. Yes. If you’re in danger, use some health.

But, yeah, I did.

[00:28:13] Speaker B: And then let’s get back up to cost.

[00:28:15] Speaker A: A lot of damage then. It’s.

[00:28:16] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:28:17] Speaker A: Best to heal while you’re still in orange. You know, I don’t want to take the risk of backtracking all that red.

[00:28:24] Speaker B: No, I’ve tried not to. It’s just like, one of them.

[00:28:26] Speaker A: Like, I had two of them.

[00:28:27] Speaker B: They almost, like, quartered me. And I was like, I’m just trying to get out.

I don’t want to waste ammo.

[00:28:33] Speaker A: And so you were saying about the parts of the walls or whatever that, you know, it’s hard. You don’t know that you can go over there. So I guess the other major tip that I have is that in some rooms, since this is an isometric game, you can actually walk towards the screen and you get covered up by the wall with a little arrow icon showing where you are.

[00:28:53] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:28:53] Speaker A: And that’s cool and all, but my actual advice is using this to your advantage because you know your brain, when you see the wall there, logically assume, oh, that’s the boundary. That’s as far as I go. But when I just, by trying it out, walked along the wall slowly, I was able to actually walk right past an enemy without them noticing me.

[00:29:15] Speaker B: Yep, same.

[00:29:16] Speaker A: Did that happen to you too? So it’s very useful. You can use that to sneak past, which is. I mean, these enemies are kind of hard of seeing, aren’t they?

Apparently, yeah.

[00:29:27] Speaker B: If their backs are turned to you. Yeah. Like,

[00:29:32] Speaker A: they also do seem to respawn in the same. If you leave the room, like, running away and then come back, they respond in the same place.

So if their starting point is next to the door and you walk through the door, they will see you.

But if you start back at the first door and they were at the other end, you can kind of wait them out again.

[00:29:48] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:29:50] Speaker A: And then. Yeah. So I guess there’s also that super creepy butcher knife enemy that’s just chilling in a kitchen, slamming the butcher knife on the table, chopping something up before it notices you.

I was surprisingly able to just slowly walk behind it without being seen.

[00:30:12] Speaker B: That one you can. So that was the one that’s in the kitchen. So I noticed that if you go behind the table that it’s cutting on, you can go behind the table to get to the next area.

[00:30:21] Speaker A: Okay. Oh, you know what? I did not notice that. I went back around the other way. I think I ended up shooting it just for entertainment purposes.

[00:30:28] Speaker B: But, yeah, it’s like. It’s like a black spot, but you can actually go through it.

[00:30:33] Speaker A: There’s and there’s an enemy. I think it seems like it was coded in there’s an enemy later that’s in front of a mirror and I think it can see you when you’re not that. Not that close to it because of the mirror.

[00:30:46] Speaker B: Yeah. I was able to again go around that one to the side and avoid that mirror one.

[00:30:56] Speaker A: Much to my surprise, I did grab the elevator key and I was like, okay, like maybe I can save a little bit past this.

But entering the elevator lets you choose literally any floor.

Most games like this funnel you into a specific next step and it might still do that, but here it’s like semi flexible linearity, I guess. Not exactly open world by any means, but not just walking through hallways in a set path either.

So because of that seeming openness, I decided it was that good time to save and kind of reflect on these first impressions.

Getting a good feel for all this.

Also, what’s with all the malfunctioning locked doors?

[00:31:39] Speaker B: Yes, there’s a. There are a lot of locked doors.

[00:31:41] Speaker A: Like is it just for aesthetics, design and world building to show that things aren’t working or to make you waste time on purpose while being chased to check on a locked door as your escape?

Or will all the doors unlock eventually? I am curious about this because there are a lot of locked doors that don’t work.

[00:32:02] Speaker B: Yes, there are so far. Yeah. I feel like at some point some of them will open up or get keys.

[00:32:08] Speaker A: Like when you have. When you have such an expansive map. Like you can see a good amount of detail in this map and there’s just doors everywhere and at least half of them don’t open.

[00:32:16] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:32:19] Speaker A: Lastly, did you notice all the security cameras that track and follow every move you make in almost every room? Yes.

[00:32:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I did.

[00:32:27] Speaker A: Fortunately, there was no camera in the shower room.

But yeah, kind of odd and unnerving at the same time when combined with everything else going on and those weird flashback cuts.

You know who’s watching this camera footage?

A sick bastard, probably.

[00:32:44] Speaker B: I know. Yeah. I’m curious on actually who is because yeah, they follow you perfectly.

[00:32:48] Speaker A: So I guess side note here. So I started up Control, I guess a month or two ago and because of the podcast games, I not finished it yet. But something I noticed at some point and this may be answered and you’ve already played it, so you might know, but there are security cameras all over the oldest house in Control and they’ve tracked your movement just like this. And it’s creeping me out. In one level I just started shooting them all and then I’d walk out and come back and they would respawn. So I don’t like respawning cameras.

[00:33:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I could tell that.

[00:33:24] Speaker A: Okay, Alex, it is definitely too soon to decide, but how are you feeling about the game so far?

[00:33:28] Speaker B: Are you enjoying this exploration?

[00:33:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I, I have a feeling

[00:33:33] Speaker B: I’m gonna die quite a bit. So I’m trying to like also just save quite often if I can get back to.

[00:33:38] Speaker A: If you’re anywhere near a save room, go see.

[00:33:40] Speaker B: Yeah, because I just, I feel like I’m. I’m trying to get around and some of them I can pretty easily, but then there is some where I just got caught slightly and it’s. Yeah, it’s definitely harder to get through.

[00:33:55] Speaker A: But yeah, it sounds like, you know, overall enjoying exploration. The light puzzle solving, which is mostly just finding items or text in another area and bringing them back.

The combat’s good. Like it’s a twin stick shooter for all intents and purposes. And you got to slow down. You can’t really move.

[00:34:13] Speaker B: But so that, that took me a second because one of my. The first enemy I went to shoot, I. When I aimed, I was like, oh my God, how do you move the.

I forgot you have to laser.

Yeah, laser. I forgot. Oh, yeah, that’s right. You just stand still and then you just twist the other one. Basically you can.

[00:34:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s. That’s going back to, you know, old school survival horror too. Up until even the original release of Resident Evil 4, you couldn’t walk and shoot at the same time. I don’t know if. I think you probably can in the remake, but I haven’t played that yet.

But yeah, you have to stand still to shoot. It’s odd.

Yeah, but you know, before you had two joysticks, that was the answer.

I don’t know if Resident Evil 1 was released so early on that you couldn’t even.

There were no joysticks. It might have been with a D pad only version of that controller.

[00:35:07] Speaker B: Oh man, that would have been good for people doing back then because I

[00:35:10] Speaker A: didn’t play it back on that. Hats off to you all.

[00:35:13] Speaker B: Yeah, hats off to you.

[00:35:15] Speaker A: So the combat, like, okay, once you get past that little roadblock, like, it’s not terribly challenging. You just keep your distance and. And whatnot. But sneaking is more difficult than shooting.

Running out of ammo and then sneaking is more nerve wracking than any of the other stuff.

[00:35:33] Speaker B: Yes, that’s as I said. And I’ve been trying to be conservative with my ammo.

[00:35:39] Speaker A: That is, that is a good idea.

[00:35:41] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:35:43] Speaker A: Okay, so Alex, the people want to hear what’s your best way? Too soon. Minimal context and minimal available information theory about what the hell is happening here.

We don’t, we don’t have any answers yet. So think of this as a fun exercise and don’t feel the need to be right.

[00:36:00] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I, I, I think it’s something.

Well, I mean, we get some stuff. So it’s obviously it’s a sickness. There’s a flu strain of some kind of by the sounds of it, because it’s like I’ve read notes where it says like, oh, I had the flu or I feel sick or blah, blah,

[00:36:15] Speaker A: like you know what it sounds like. Maybe I’ve seen those ones. Huh.

[00:36:18] Speaker B: Oh, I don’t know. I’m wondering if it’s some type of infection.

[00:36:24] Speaker A: Like intense outbreak.

[00:36:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, intense outbreak. Or I’m trying to figure out like, are the ones that are the enemies, Are they just all the other LSTRs, all the other protectors, like the, the enemies?

[00:36:41] Speaker A: I don’t know because they look so different.

I know it’s, it’s hard to like they’re fully mutilated.

[00:36:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I know.

[00:36:49] Speaker A: In whatever way or mutated in whatever way that they, they look all fleshy. Right? I mean, yeah, you know, it’s a pixelated thing. I’m wondering what the, you know, concept art looks like, but maybe it’s a

[00:37:01] Speaker B: parasite of some kind of. That’s what I’m thinking too, so.

[00:37:03] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:37:04] Speaker B: But it’ll be very interesting to see

[00:37:06] Speaker A: ice planets in sci fi horror often house terrible parasites.

[00:37:13] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:37:14] Speaker A: In icy regions. Yeah.

Okay. No, I like that theory.

[00:37:20] Speaker B: I’m,

[00:37:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I don’t know. I guess I haven’t thought too much about what’s happening to the like why are the enemies the way they are? But obviously they’re anthropomorphic, so they must have been humans at some point.

[00:37:32] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:37:34] Speaker A: Like going based off of some information just from other game contexts around gestalt. So gestalts are like hum. They’re, they’re human shaped human shaped like frames where you put like either the soul or the brain of an actual human from before who may or may not still exist into the body of this like, frame essentially. So it’s, I think based on the way that it’s describing like each of our, like what’s, I forgot the name of the ship was. But every ship has a gestalt and it has a, an lstr replica.

It seems like. Okay, replica Is like a fully AI.

It was never a real person. And a guest alt either was or still is a real person controlling it.

[00:38:32] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:38:33] Speaker A: I think this is not based on game, so this is on other contexts. But I think that the other. I think the other people that you can talk to so far have mostly all been guest alts that live there.

[00:38:47] Speaker B: That’s what I was going to say because you might want to say Scorch or Storch or something.

[00:38:51] Speaker A: Yeah. With like the security person or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Storch. I think they were like, you shouldn’t be here.

Yeah.

And so I don’t know if. I mean, maybe it’s both are being transformed. Maybe it’s just one of the other. Or maybe it’s people that were living on this thing in this whatever laboratory thing is.

I don’t know.

[00:39:13] Speaker B: They’ve all gone down to the mines.

[00:39:14] Speaker A: I am curious like. Like why are. Okay, obviously this is like a we got to go mine whatever material for terraforming or, you know, saving our doomed planet kind of thing. Gotta be something like that in the background.

I. Yeah, I don’t know.

[00:39:30] Speaker B: I’m.

[00:39:32] Speaker A: I am curious where. Where it all ends up going.

[00:39:35] Speaker B: I am too.

[00:39:36] Speaker A: And I hope, yeah, there are some real answers.

Something, you know, a little different from a giant mega corporation being an asshole.

Cool. Uh, so I guess the last thing. When I placed the mention of this Side Quest season into the signalis subreddit, I received a very good tip which might be something of a spoiler. So spoiler alert for a couple seconds here. But I am glad I went past the spoiler tag because I might have stopped playing this game early otherwise.

Apparently there is more game to play after the apparent ending up up to one third more play time.

[00:40:19] Speaker B: Wow.

[00:40:20] Speaker A: So you, Alex, or you, listener, don’t have to by any means, if you don’t want to, or if you’re bored with it or ready to move on. But I will definitely try to see it through past that point because now I’m extra intrigued.

So to do it, you watch the credits of the game until they end, then reload your save file and it should start up into more.

If that doesn’t give you anything new pretty quickly, then fully close the game application itself, like from your console menu, then turn it back on and load your save again. I don’t know, I’m just assuming that maybe is the case. So reload after the credits roll.

[00:41:04] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:41:04] Speaker A: Because there’s more. More to be explored and discovered.

[00:41:09] Speaker B: Interesting.

[00:41:09] Speaker A: Okay, so for next time, our goal is to complete the story of Signalis and we’ll be discussing that full playthrough and we absolutely want to be chatting about it along the way with you all with spoiler tags. So share your thoughts on Discord. Please join our Discord.

[00:41:28] Speaker B: Yes please. Yeah, yeah. We’re excited to talk with you all about through Signalis and through beating the game. It’s very intriguing and excited and terrified to see where it goes.

So yeah. So thanks everyone for listening and hope your first impressions of the game are as good as ours and I hope you’re enjoying it and we’ll talk to you again. Bye.

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