Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Backlog Book Club SideQuest Season 2. About Signalis and major reminder and spoiler alert here since we’ll be going all in on trying our damnedest to break down this game as we see it, talking about the story itself. So if you want to avoid that, start at one of our previous episodes, catch up, finish the game, and come back to this episode once you’re ready.

Well, we didn’t quite pull it off finishing this by Halloween, which was our original goal, but we got close enough.

It’s just a week later.

[00:00:35] Speaker B: Yeah, we were pretty close

[00:00:38] Speaker A: and I’m glad we gave ourselves a bit of extra time because sinking into the creepy environment and the soundscape, especially of this game, pushing past the first credits to the true ending and just putting some thought and analysis into this experience was well worth it.

[00:00:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it was.

[00:00:55] Speaker A: Now that we’ve wrapped up Signalis, there’s obviously a lot to chat about and I think it’s good to mention this up front.

There is a lot to unpack here, putting it lightly.

[00:01:08] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:01:09] Speaker A: and I can guarantee that we don’t have the answers to everything and possibly not even a fraction of what is truly going on in its story.

Especially considering this game released four years ago, the fact that it has a passionate fan base who likely spent a good chunk of time after release working things out, and the Internet exists, so you’re likely to find much more intricate breakdowns of the story and themes in a variety of other places than this podcast.

But we still want to get into it and want to frame this discussion as being the interpretations of two people playing Signalis for the first time, going in blind and spoiler free in 2026. We want to keep chatting about it and theorizing with you all, whether you’re playing it for the first time now, or have loved it since day one.

So please join our Discord and give us all the information that you know. We want to know more. We’ll be doing some investigations as we go on.

[00:02:03] Speaker B: Oh yes, we will be.

[00:02:05] Speaker A: You can find the link to our Discord in our podcast description and episode notes and on our website, thegamingbacklogbookclub.com so I think what struck me, Alex, because you usually keep your very intense superlatives when talking about video games with me on hold until you’ve beaten the game most of the time. But when you were about, I want to say, somewhere in the nowhere after the mines, you sent me a text and said, and I quote, I’m addicted to Signalis

[00:02:37] Speaker B: out

[00:02:38] Speaker A: Of the blue.

[00:02:41] Speaker B: Yes, I got addicted.

[00:02:43] Speaker A: Do you remember at this point what it was specifically that earned this kind of reaction from you? Or was it just everything piling up?

[00:02:50] Speaker B: Just everything piling up. Like, I was just so intrigued because I think I sent that text. I don’t know, probably also early morning after midnight at some point. And it’s like, I don’t want to go to bed, but I need to go to bed because it’s like now 1130 in the morning.

But, like, I’m just, like, I just wanted to keep going. I was just feeling the addiction of, like, I want to keep going and finding, like, the next keys, the next everything. I need to get to the next section to, like, check out all the rooms to be like, okay, I can’t get into this room now. Let’s find a way to get into the room. Or, like, I’d find myself, like, saving and then being like, okay, when I get back on, I know, like, I made myself. I made myself notes. Like, I wrote in my notes app, like, okay, I went floor by floor, room by room. And like, this is what’s in the room.

This room’s open. This room’s locked. And I was just, like, planning out my game through a gameplay of, like, for the next time. Of, like, okay, next time I’m in, I go. I go to this room. If I need ammo, go back here. There’s ammo in here. There’s healing in here.

This room has a puzzle in it that I gotta find out and figure out. I don’t know, I just gotta. Just wanted to keep going,

[00:04:06] Speaker A: just, just to the, you know, moment to moment, grind and discovery. And, you know, I don’t say, you know, grind is not always a bad thing. No, this was

[00:04:16] Speaker B: not a bad. No, this was not a bad grind. This was like a fun grind. Like, I wanted to. Yeah,

[00:04:21] Speaker A: just like, oh, I see this thing and I feel like I need something like this. But then where the hell is it?

[00:04:29] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:04:29] Speaker A: It’s not in any of these 20 rooms I’ve already been through.

I’m going in circles. I have no map.

What now?

[00:04:37] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:04:37] Speaker A: And then you find something in the complete opposite corner, or you realize that there’s actually a hallway where you thought there was a wall and you didn’t. Just didn’t walk the five extra steps because you didn’t want to run into that monster that’s pacing back and forth across the entryway. You may know what I’m talking about.

It’s. Yeah, I think that was that room kind of near the classroom safe point in the nowhere. Yeah, it’s like I went through there a lot and didn’t realize that there was a long hallway above it. Anyway.

Yeah, I, you know, it just. It didn’t catch me off guard necessarily because, you know, we both love video games. But I think it’s the fact that you jumped at this, like, halfway through to proclaim how much you were obsessed was. Was funny.

Um, okay, so let’s jump into some gameplay commentary and other more visceral things.

But I guess, you know, as we go along, we’ll just run through things at face value as we came across them.

I think, you know, my. My limited notes here pretty all over the place for various reasons, but I think one of the things that kind of. I never. I’m curious how you took them on was like, there’s those huskier type enemies. Not the. Just the normal, you know, insert zombie form. The ones that crawl out of the floors.

[00:06:03] Speaker B: The ones that crawl. Yeah, there was a couple like those that crawl out of the floor and the ones with, like, shields and. Yeah,

[00:06:09] Speaker A: the shields I felt weren’t too. Too bad. It’s the ones that came out of the floor that I don’t think I ever shot a single one. I was just like, get me the hell out of here.

[00:06:19] Speaker B: Yes, I did. Majority of the time, that was what I did. It was like. Because they’d pop out of, like, the floors. Yeah.

[00:06:28] Speaker A: And it’s usually like when

[00:06:29] Speaker B: you’re

[00:06:29] Speaker A: trying to slowly, you know, analyze what room you’re in and all that. I think what got me was the one in the.

In one of those barbed wire rooms and there were multiple floored enemies.

[00:06:42] Speaker B: Yes, okay, I know what you mean. Yeah.

There were a couple times too, where like, they would come out in a room where there was something else in the room I wanted to get. So I just kind of run out the door.

Remember? Just. Okay, it’s in there. There’s where it is in the room. Run back in because I’ll know they’ll be in. Back in the floorboards.

[00:06:58] Speaker A: Right, right. Pick it up

[00:06:59] Speaker B: quick and run back out.

[00:07:00] Speaker A: Yep, yep. Yeah. The. The room refresh. Leave and enter. Room refresh is.

[00:07:05] Speaker B: Those

[00:07:06] Speaker A: was so useful.

[00:07:07] Speaker B: I can’t. There was so many times. Tripled, quadrupled, whatever. Back into rooms.

[00:07:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, I think that the game. The environments are separated into a number of different sections and I. You know, obviously the ones that you kind of see in the trailers or screenshots are mostly concentrated in the sierpinski. Station at the beginning.

And that’s what gave me my sort of overall expectations for the game.

And, you know, very cool. Like, very much like a, you know, Raccoon City Police Department or Spencer Mansion in Resident Evils or like the initial town in Silent Hill, like, before going into the other side or whatever it was called.

There’s.

There’s like, that’s the, you know, I want to call. Use the word generic, but it’s not generic. It’s more like the, you know, normal to real life, ish type environments. And then, you know, just like, drop off a cliff into complete insanity.

[00:08:16] Speaker B: Yes.

Yeah, you do.

[00:08:20] Speaker A: And so I think, you know, as you’re working through. Right. The elevators.

As you’re working through the elevators in that first area, there’s like the point where you reach. You have to do some things on the third floor, which is connected to the fourth floor, and then you can’t go much farther past that. And then you end up in the fifth stage through eighth floor all combined.

There’s like that weird kind of rotary mini elevator thing that kind of reminds me of a dumbwaiter from, like, Home Alone.

[00:08:48] Speaker B: Yes, I know you. Yep. Going back and forth. Yeah.

[00:08:51] Speaker A: Which was. Which was fun and useful. Yeah, for sure. Because they’re, you know, there’s. But it only is available on, I think, two or three of those floors, not all of them. So, you know, a lot of shuttling back and forth.

But, you know, eventually you figure most of that out and you end up with the first boss fight against.

I’m gonna pronounce it Mina.

Did you. Of course. You just drop in there and don’t know it’s gonna be there from a safe room. Did you, like me start aiming at her and only see a giant X on the targeting reticle and then assume that there was some puzzle involved?

[00:09:29] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:09:29] Speaker A: Since I think because this is a game where we’ve realized by this point we want to conserve ammo as much as possible.

[00:09:36] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:09:37] Speaker A: I didn’t shoot. I just kept running around and eventually realized, okay, well, nothing’s happening, but there’s a bunch of ammo and repair patches all over the place. So eventually she kind of kneels down and starts coughing up blood with the helmet open. And then you can actually hit her. Right.

But that targeting laser got me,

[00:10:03] Speaker B: so. Yes. Yeah. And I. I get that. There is, though. There’s like a pillar there that every time she would aim it, I kind of run behind the pillar to have this shot blocked.

[00:10:12] Speaker A: I think sometimes it clipped through there and still hit Me, but

[00:10:15] Speaker B: yeah, I wouldn’t be.

[00:10:16] Speaker A: I do hear you. Yeah.

[00:10:17] Speaker B: Shocked by that, I will say.

And I know for some people this might be a little bit of a cheat. I. I tried it a couple times. I died a couple times. And I was curious on like, am I doing it right? So I did look up somebody during the fight and I was doing it right, but then I found somebody who said, oh, you can do like a one shot on her by spamming, like equipping a thermite and just spamming the thermite like right at the beginning next to her and it will take her out. I tried that like twice or three times. It did not work and I just died. So I was like, okay, I’m not.

I then was able to do the fight.

[00:10:54] Speaker A: So your thermite trick did not work.

[00:10:56] Speaker B: No. So instead I use the thermite on like a couple of the minions that she.

[00:11:01] Speaker A: Okay,

[00:11:02] Speaker B: the. Yeah. Brings up. And then.

And then. Yeah, I just did the.

Yeah. Shot her. And the face just conserved until I could make sure I had proper, like hits in the face. Also, I think you do more damage per shot the smaller the square gets.

So when you’re

[00:11:28] Speaker A: aiming at an enemy, the square collapses as you. As you’re more likely to hit. It’s more accurate.

[00:11:33] Speaker B: I think it’s more. And I think sometimes it does a little more damage because there are a couple times where a couple enemies went down on two or three hits instead of four or five of the same types for me, so.

But when I like shrunk the box, so. But yeah, but I got pacify. It was a good. It was. It was fine. Once I, yeah, kind of figured it out. It was a lot of just running around trying to dodge.

[00:11:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. A lot of

[00:11:58] Speaker B: difficult dodging game with no dodge.

[00:12:00] Speaker A: A lot of. Yeah, right. It’s like, can you. Can you slow jog a little bit in a direction that somehow they don’t hit you?

[00:12:08] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:12:14] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. But, you know, overall, for a first boss fight, it was relatively straightforward once you figure out the little gimmick there of being indestructible until the helmet opens. Yeah, the suit looks pretty productive, but yeah, I sure used a lot of ammo in there. I think only because I was able to pick it up because I at by this point, I was already only carrying a full single clip loaded in and not any extra ammo unless I was picking it up and working to a safe point.

[00:12:44] Speaker B: Okay, gotcha. Okay. I always had with me like, because obviously later on you get different Guns. I always had, like, the gun and then the extra.

The max amount of extra ammo that you could take with you.

Okay.

[00:13:00] Speaker A: In a single clip, though, right? Because I think sometimes actually.

No, that makes sense. I don’t think you. It doesn’t take up extra slots in your storage. It’s just a full group.

[00:13:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s just a full group.

[00:13:11] Speaker A: Yeah, you’re right. So,

[00:13:12] Speaker B: yeah, if it’s in your, like, actual, like the storage bin or whatever that you can go through, they just go together. But when you take it out.

[00:13:19] Speaker A: Oh, I

[00:13:19] Speaker B: think it only goes into your actual inventory. Your six.

[00:13:23] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:13:25] Speaker B: You can have a max limit in one slot before, if you want to take out more, it goes into another slot, I think.

[00:13:33] Speaker A: Right, that sounds right.

[00:13:34] Speaker B: I always had usually three slots taken up, and it was usually the. The stun prods.

A gun and ammo.

[00:13:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, at this point, I definitely. I was primarily stun prod, a gun, no ammo, and then maybe one, like, type of healing item through. Through most of that area at least. But definitely a lot of shot at conservation when possible. So I was running around here at, like, orange or red health a lot.

[00:14:07] Speaker B: Yeah, same.

[00:14:10] Speaker A: Except in some moments, you know, a little bit later in the game.

But yeah, basically you finish off this fight with Mina and then Adler walks in.

You know, my first reaction was, hey, you could have made an appearance a little bit sooner, dude.

[00:14:27] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:14:27] Speaker A: like, can I get some help? Or what? And he does tell you, hey, the gestalt you’re looking for is named Lina SEO.

She’s a factory worker.

But you shouldn’t have come back here. And then pushes you into an elevator shaft.

[00:14:47] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:14:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess we didn’t need his help.

[00:14:53] Speaker B: No, I guess not.

[00:14:56] Speaker A: With a lot of these cutscenes, there’s a bit of a flashback.

And so in this case, right, there’s a cutscene of someone looking out a window at a snowstorm. And then you kind of walk down the hallway and you go looking for Issa, who we find out later is Isa Ito, one of the twins in a library where she’s being bullied by three other people in masks, which was kind of off putting.

And then you just wake up in the bottom of the elevator shaft on the fifth floor and you’re on top of a pile of bodies.

[00:15:33] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:15:34] Speaker A: Most of which look like you.

Obviously, the graphical fidelity of the pixels doesn’t give you a perfect idea, but it’s pretty darn close.

Um, of course, also the. All these replicas are kind of a single model with the Imprint inside of them. So you miss. Maybe it’s not the exact same one, but it also feels like the same one.

Reminds me a little of James in Silent Hill 2 before fighting.

What was the guy’s name? The guy in the meat packing plant.

[00:16:09] Speaker B: Oh, I know who. I cannot remember.

My gosh. Yeah,

[00:16:14] Speaker A: that was a year and a little ago. That’s okay.

[00:16:17] Speaker B: It’s a good fight.

[00:16:21] Speaker A: Adler is definitely extra creepy. Yeah, he’s. There’s this scene of him approaching Issa, who wanted to go see the Commander. And he’s like, I can take care of you.

So that weirded me out. But there’s. I don’t think they ended up following up on that specifically.

There’s also, like, a lot of. Obviously, there’s a lot of numbers read out in German throughout. There’s a lot of inner cut. Very quick cuts of different words and things and random messages. One of them says, none of us are here by choice, which I noticed happen a number of times.

Clearly, I don’t think anyone would choose to be here.

[00:16:58] Speaker B: Also notice that.

Which is Danger.

[00:17:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Danger warning. Yeah.

[00:17:05] Speaker B: Yep. So now I’m just gonna say that everywhere.

Since I know

[00:17:12] Speaker A: the German

[00:17:12] Speaker B: word for danger,

[00:17:16] Speaker A: you. Eventually. I mean. Okay, I guess a lot of these things I assume most people find because you get intrigued and click around and everything.

You do find a file on the Protector Unit class called Falk, which it says is the Commander. She’s never to be questioned. She’s a nearly godlike being and resembles the nation’s leader who. Or leaders who are the great, great revolutionary who kind of liberated whatever this Eula nation is from basically an empire of some sort.

And, you know, I think that’s the framework for the mind of the Falk unit. And the daughter is the. Like, the physical likeness.

Clearly there’s some kind of superiority complex going on there. Or, you know, a secondary dictatorship or a cult.

It says she also. Or the Falcon also has a bioresonance module, which gives her some degree of precognition and lets her manipulate other minds and objects from a distance. So some kind of telepathy.

You know, obviously we know a bit more now, but my. After finishing. But my first thought is, how do they get this technology working in the first place?

[00:18:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree.

[00:18:40] Speaker A: I don’t know that there’s necessarily an answer to that question. They just know what to do.

And a little bit later, you come across the Falk unit’s bedroom, actually might be right after that. I don’t know.

And the Falk unit itself is actually Lying in a medical bed there, hooked up to some stuff.

[00:18:59] Speaker B: Mm. Yes.

[00:19:01] Speaker A: And the diary next to her says, I don’t know how much longer I can go on. I don’t want to live anymore as what I have become.

The red eye beyond the gate showed me. No. Touched me. Poisoned me. It feel like. Feels like my mind is been contaminated, defiled by another person’s memory. I’m no longer fully myself anymore. But I’ve not fully become someone else either.

I’m stuck here between her and me with half formed dreams and recollections penetrating my brains and tainting my every action. Who is she? Who is that white haired girl? Why do I long to see her again? Why would she curse me like this?

Wow.

[00:19:42] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:19:46] Speaker A: sounds a little bit like V from Cyberpunk 2077 with Johnny’s engram slowly taking over the mine through the relic, doesn’t it?

[00:19:53] Speaker B: Kind of does,

[00:19:55] Speaker A: albeit in a very different context.

I think I choose V’s predicament over this one.

[00:20:01] Speaker B: Same.

[00:20:04] Speaker A: In a room nearby, there’s also a note from a Kolibri that talks about nothing being in his diary. But when she searched his mind, there were memories of an Elster unit working at Sierpinski, even though there was never one deployed there.

Which must be about us, the player, you know, whether that’s actually us in control of it or not. But the weird thing is that. Why does nobody remember that there was an LSTR unit there?

[00:20:34] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah, I don’t know. It was weird.

[00:20:38] Speaker A: And yeah, it was I guess about here that I kept making this massive mistake of trying to use a stun baton.

But I had my flashlight equipped.

[00:20:52] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.

[00:20:53] Speaker A: So has that happened to you? So I would just turn the flashlight on and off like four times and then get smacked when I was trying to defend myself.

[00:21:00] Speaker B: Yeah, there happened to be a couple times. But I. Yeah, I got. I got used to just.

I got used to going

[00:21:09] Speaker A: back into the inventory, back

[00:21:11] Speaker B: out of the room, running, go and swap it out. Or then, like, I’d know since I’d gone back and forth into some of these rooms. Like, okay, let’s take off the flashlight because I can see in the room and if I need it, I’ll put on the stun baton or thermite or whatever, just in case. Yeah,

[00:21:31] Speaker A: yeah, yeah. I.

It only took a couple of times doing that. And I just keep kicking myself saying, well, just figure it out.

I would have appreciated, you know, an R.

Like, instead of putting two parts of the menu screen into face buttons, put one as a Reload and then use R1 for a second item. But that’s just nitpicking.

Some of Adler’s other diaries throughout here talk about this extreme sense of deja vu, that he’s writing the same date in his diary for every day.

That one was kind of odd.

He can’t remember writing any of those diary entries. So are they in a time loop here on Sierpinski, he specifically says that the mine holds the answers.

And so we leave the sterile building to go further underground.

Someone or something calls for him there.

And with that you have this administrator key and you ride a different elevator than the ones you’ve been shuttling up and down into the mines. While a scene plays of Adler hunting someone.

I think that’s Isa again, because I don’t know why he’s after her. Then she turns the table on him and pushes him into a giant hole.

[00:22:57] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:22:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I cheered at that one.

[00:23:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that was a good one.

[00:23:05] Speaker A: I will say, entering the mines, I felt like after all of Sierpinski, it was a bit more visually interesting than the offices and the living quarters in the hospital up there.

But it’s also definitely a bit like a labyrinth.

[00:23:22] Speaker B: Yeah, the mines.

Yeah, the mines were a bit of a labyrinth. There were. I. I have a feeling there was a good amount of the mines. I don’t know, maybe not a good amount, but I. I’m pretty sure I skipped or maybe missed something.

I tried

[00:23:39] Speaker A: to. How did you feel in the mines?

[00:23:42] Speaker B: Um, I felt I was. For some of the mines, slash. I guess I said this for mines and for. Also part of the nowhere that I was, like, kind of losing my mind in the mines, going through, like, okay, have I gone through this door? Have I not come through this door?

[00:24:01] Speaker A: The lack of map doesn’t.

[00:24:02] Speaker B: Yes. The lack of map was

[00:24:04] Speaker A: help you out in there either.

[00:24:05] Speaker B: Yeah.

I will say, though, I kind of. Yeah.

And then once you drop into the nowhere with a lack of map.

[00:24:15] Speaker A: Yeah,

[00:24:16] Speaker B: Just kind of memorizing, like

[00:24:19] Speaker A: having a

[00:24:19] Speaker B: photographic memory and just remembering, like, every door.

[00:24:22] Speaker A: Eventually, eventually you piece it together from just kind of retracing your steps a million times down there.

I think especially the one that took a little while to go figure out. In the Nowhere, though, was the.

The doors where you’ll. On screen, you’ll go south through a door and then you’ll end up going north from the exit of the door.

[00:24:43] Speaker B: Yes, that was a little. Yeah.

[00:24:47] Speaker A: Anyway.

[00:24:48] Speaker B: No, but back in the mines, in the mines, I was running along, I was searching stuff. I found doors that I couldn’t open. I could go open. Sometimes there were just routes of you can only go this way, can’t go any other way.

Um, I found another Mina, like, sitting on the floor.

Um, I forgot what she was saying, but something along the lines of sort of like a. Like, get out or. Yeah, careful.

[00:25:16] Speaker A: Oh. Like, don’t. Don’t keep going.

[00:25:18] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:25:19] Speaker A: I.

I did not run into that. Um.

Yeah,

[00:25:27] Speaker B: yeah, the door

[00:25:28] Speaker A: by

[00:25:28] Speaker B: her was closed or locked like a concrete,

[00:25:31] Speaker A: I think, because we were chatting a little bit with people on Discord and about just not having a map in the mines. And that was just me. Right after finding the save room and then after that. Honestly, I think I only killed one enemy there and just bobbed and weaved through all the rest of them and was probably in and out of the mines in about 20 minutes total.

[00:25:55] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:25:56] Speaker A: I spoke prematurely on how lost I thought I was going to be. It was probably mostly just pure luck.

And, you know, as you just mentioned, the Mina that’s on the floor there, I definitely missed some things, but I did see that there was a one room where there’s a replica talking to someone else. Another replica dying on the floor and all that. Or maybe it was a guest. I don’t know, but it’s. It’s. Yeah, I don’t know. I think I just kind of stormed through there without even realizing it.

[00:26:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I might have missed that because I went. So there was one area where just. I remember this because I went to an area where it was like a big area. There was a door up north and I was running around and there was a door down south.

And so I was like, okay, I’ll go through the north door first.

And I didn’t actually check to see if the south door could be opened. I’m pretty sure it could have been opened.

But I went through the north door and in that north door was where there was another myna and then other creatures, replicas. And it was the drop down to the nowhere where it drops you into that.

Yeah, the shaft with whatever. With all the bodies and everything.

[00:27:09] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Yeah.

[00:27:10] Speaker B: So I dropped down, not thinking, oh, I can’t get back up.

[00:27:16] Speaker A: So

[00:27:16] Speaker B: I dropped

[00:27:16] Speaker A: down. There’s no ladder. There’s no way back up.

[00:27:18] Speaker B: I was like, oh, well, I don’t

[00:27:20] Speaker A: know if that

[00:27:20] Speaker B: was open. Yeah, I don’t know if I could open that door, but I’m pretty sure I could. And hopefully there wasn’t anything I massively needed in there, so.

[00:27:27] Speaker A: And, well, yeah, I mean, with the lack of checkpoints here, Which I. I’m not going to say anything bad about that. I think it’s a great choice to stick with. But after a long stretch of making discoveries, making progress without saving, and then accidentally going into a point of no return, I’m not reloading that save file to see if maybe there was something missing.

Exactly. Yeah.

[00:27:52] Speaker B: Same.

[00:27:53] Speaker A: So we both saw something that the other did not. That’s interesting.

But, yeah, like, I think.

I think it was definitely the mines. I think I just really liked the way they looked. They had that bit of information about the giant filament, kind of wire spools everywhere that you need to wear protective clothing to use them. I think that’s kind of talking about the barbed wire that you see in the Nowhere, maybe.

And it’s also interesting that in a lot of, like, you saw the Mina there that was talking to you. When I saw those two replicas on the floor, they weren’t talking to me at all. And they don’t even, like, acknowledge that you’re there, which is kind of.

[00:28:39] Speaker B: I wonder if that’s the room I didn’t go into, because I cannot remember that.

[00:28:42] Speaker A: Okay, well, that’s possible. Yeah.

And I guess once you’re in the Nowhere, things get darker and more unsettling very fast. Obviously, you drop straight into that room with some water in the.

You’re standing in water. You’re surrounded by a meat.

[00:29:01] Speaker B: Looks like body parts.

[00:29:03] Speaker A: Yeah.

And they’re your standard enemies. Sure. But then there’s that hole in the floor with a giant pulsating blob underneath that looks like a little bit like the Sarlacc pit from Return of the Jedi, but doesn’t attack you in any way.

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

[00:29:21] Speaker A: And then, hey, I know. I guess I can be okay with these things. There’s, like, eventually you end up passing doors and hallways where giant blobs are pouring out of the doorway. And they don’t attack you either.

[00:29:33] Speaker B: No, they don’t. Those things kind of annoyed me, though. I didn’t realize there’s a couple sections where those.

They shut the door. Like, if you finished in an area, they kind of block it off. And I remember.

[00:29:49] Speaker A: Yep. Whether you like it or not,

[00:29:51] Speaker B: I had left some stuff in the room, thinking, I’ll go back and get it later. And I went back, and I couldn’t get in. And I was like, oh, man.

[00:29:58] Speaker A: Nope.

[00:29:59] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:30:01] Speaker A: That’s just another way they teach you to limit your inventory usage.

[00:30:04] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:30:07] Speaker A: What did you think the weapon was when you found your first nitro express ammo?

[00:30:14] Speaker B: Oh, I don’t Know, I didn’t even realize, like, I don’t know, I would assumed it was to some type of rifle. Maybe like a.

[00:30:27] Speaker A: Yeah,

[00:30:27] Speaker B: like an assault type rifle. Not like a.

I don’t know.

[00:30:32] Speaker A: The word nitro express to you says rifle?

[00:30:36] Speaker B: I don’t know, I just.

[00:30:37] Speaker A: Maybe I just.

[00:30:38] Speaker B: No, not. Not the word. It was more of what it. The round looked like.

[00:30:41] Speaker A: Okay, sure. Yeah. Looking at the image that. That does make more. I don’t think I even opened it to inspect it or anything. I just saw it. It

[00:30:48] Speaker B: said,

[00:30:49] Speaker A: do you want to pick up nitro express ammo? And I. In that moment, I like didn’t think to look at the image of it and just was like, obviously it wouldn’t make any sense, but for like that split second, I heard the word express and thought, you’re saying I shoot the Phantom train From Final Fantasy 6 at the end of this.

[00:31:08] Speaker B: Less

[00:31:09] Speaker A: obviously. That’s way too outlandish. Never would happen. But I.

My real thought was some kind of fire round. And then you end up finding. Finding fire round because of the word nitro, I guess. Explosive.

[00:31:20] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:31:22] Speaker A: But no, you find more ammo that’s related to fire later.

And I thought maybe it was hunting rifle.

[00:31:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought maybe like, I thought it was a rifle, but maybe I thought it was some type of like. Not just like a regular rifle, but like a special.

[00:31:38] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Like not exactly like a cousin of a plasma rifle from the future, sort

[00:31:44] Speaker B: of. Yes.

[00:31:44] Speaker A: Did you end up picking up the rifle?

[00:31:47] Speaker B: Yes, I did. After. Yeah,

[00:31:49] Speaker A: I think I was very. I got it almost immediately before leaving. Like, I just. All I had to do was put the last plate in to leave the Nowhere.

And I was like, what is this incense in my inventory still for?

[00:32:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that one. Yeah.

[00:32:07] Speaker A: No, not the incense. It was like the jar of smelling salts or something.

[00:32:13] Speaker B: Oh, yes. Yeah, that. Ammonia. It was ammonia.

[00:32:18] Speaker A: I was like, what do

[00:32:19] Speaker B: I

[00:32:19] Speaker A: do with this?

We already did the incense with the fire.

Like it’s. You don’t need it for that. And then it.

[00:32:27] Speaker B: Before we get. Yeah, before we get to all that, though, there is you.

When you drop down into that Sarlacc type pit, you go straight into another boss battle.

[00:32:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was great.

And yeah, it leads you to a boss that doesn’t want to go down. What did it remind you of, Alex?

[00:32:47] Speaker B: It is. That is The Silent Hill 2.2.0. The Cage Boss. It is.

[00:32:53] Speaker A: I mean, I think it had some name to it, but it was like, it’s the one in the. I think it’s in the hospital, isn’t it the last floor of the hospital?

[00:32:59] Speaker B: Yeah, the one that comes out of the ceiling.

Also, spoilers for anyone who hasn’t played Silent Hill 2 or the Silent Hill 2 remake like we did last year, it’s also sort of similar because the final battle, Mary or whatever turns.

She turned into a cage.

[00:33:17] Speaker A: Yeah, she kind of does turn into something similar to that boss. Similar to

[00:33:20] Speaker B: that, too. So

[00:33:21] Speaker A: you are right.

[00:33:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that’s instantly the second I hit the ground and I saw that thing, like, running around after me, I

[00:33:27] Speaker A: was like, oh, not again. I thought we got rid of this thing.

[00:33:30] Speaker B: I was like, oh, okay, we’re playing Silent Hill 2 again. Got it

[00:33:33] Speaker A: in 2D. Hey, that’s great.

[00:33:35] Speaker B: And then I forget. Issa. Is that Issa that’s

[00:33:37] Speaker A: on the ground? That’s Isa. She takes

[00:33:39] Speaker B: like

[00:33:40] Speaker A: 20 minutes to, you know, click two rounds of ammo into this rifle. I mean, obviously she’s been fixing it or something, but, like, I’m glad the thing didn’t go after her because.

[00:33:52] Speaker B: No. So I actually.

For this fight, this battle was actually very, very easy.

I had a thermite and I shot one thermite into it and it fell to the ground.

[00:34:02] Speaker A: Using the flare gun.

[00:34:03] Speaker B: Yeah, using the flare gun.

[00:34:05] Speaker A: You already had the. I don’t know. Oh, I guess I must have had the flare gun, too.

[00:34:08] Speaker B: Yeah, you should have had the flare gun. It was definitely got earlier. Yeah, I had the flare gun and I shot a flare or whatever there might flare into it.

[00:34:16] Speaker A: I will say I got through. Oh, if it just insta. Dies.

[00:34:20] Speaker B: No, it falls to the ground and sits there for a bit. And then I started, like, running. Like a running. Oh, I was sitting there waiting, and then it gets back up and then you can just like. I ran it in circles around the pillar one time and

[00:34:32] Speaker A: I

[00:34:32] Speaker B: was about to get ready to shoot it again, and then she got up and shot it and it was over.

[00:34:36] Speaker A: Look at you.

[00:34:36] Speaker B: To use one round.

[00:34:38] Speaker A: See, this is what you’re. This is your reward for experimenting with the weapons they provide you with. Like a normal person. I am. So I guess just from past survival horrors like, so set in my idea of I want to conserve all of that cool gun ammo for whenever I did it later. But I. I don’t think I used any gun except for the pistol until the last, like, 20 to 30 minutes of the Nowhere.

[00:35:09] Speaker B: No, I used. I used where

[00:35:11] Speaker A: I only used a shotgun and that I don’t think I used. And I didn’t use anything else until later, which. Which in Hindsight was a mistake because I ended up with a bunch of ammo left over. But.

But yeah, I don’t know. It’s just like I forced enforced scarcity on myself.

Okay. No, yeah, I, I was using the pistol and it took a fair bit longer. It was like, I don’t know, a four or five minute fight. Just circling the pillar for a while.

Yeah. Otherwise, how, how long did it take you to realize that the radio transmitter required just manually and visually scrolling the entire set of radio frequencies?

[00:35:56] Speaker B: Forever.

[00:35:59] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:35:59] Speaker B: That’s

[00:36:00] Speaker A: why I think

[00:36:00] Speaker B: I texted you saying I think I’m stuck. Because I was like, I had done everything. I gone to the rooms and I was like, what am I supposed to do?

Like I don’t. And I kept going back and forth to that thing. Like I know there’s something there.

[00:36:15] Speaker A: Right.

[00:36:15] Speaker B: But how do I use it? Like I don’t. I, I don’t get it. It never came to my brain and I, and yes I did. I googled it quickly to figure this out because it never was. That wasn’t even top three of my thoughts of I have to scroll through the radio stations to get.

[00:36:33] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:36:33] Speaker B: In front of the microphone to get it to show me the patterns and then the.

[00:36:37] Speaker A: Right.

[00:36:38] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:36:38] Speaker A: And I think whenever I use the radio I usually turn it off after leaving the menu and forget that you can scroll through it while you’re playing and walking around.

Yeah. I was trying to, you know, I was in front of this microphone, I was trying to use the frequencies from the frequencies document from earlier.

[00:37:01] Speaker B: Okay, Yep, that makes sense.

[00:37:02] Speaker A: And I was like, oh, none of these are doing anything really. And then I, you know, I was opening it up, doing that, closing the menu, looking at what was there on the screen. But then I, you know, reopened it for the next one. It didn’t save my spot in a document list, so I had to re. Scroll all the way down to the frequencies document. And after doing that like three or four times, I realized, you know, nothing’s changing.

And I should have, I suppose the whole purpose of this asked someone in our discord for a. I should have.

[00:37:31] Speaker B: I should have too. Instead

[00:37:32] Speaker A: of

[00:37:32] Speaker B: all I did was I’ll say is I googled it quickly. All I said was whatever something room puzzle. And I saw the use radio and then that’s all I looked at. And that’s all. And

[00:37:43] Speaker A: then,

[00:37:43] Speaker B: and then I stopped looking and I just like started doing the radio. I was like, ah, okay now.

[00:37:47] Speaker A: Because I was finally figured it out because like as you’re scrolling with the, the Screen up, thumb. You know, you eventually end up seeing.

[00:37:57] Speaker B: Yeah, the patterns change.

[00:37:58] Speaker A: The patterns change like dudoy.

But the. I think the big thing too is that I never.

I kept forgetting that you can also in first person pull up your menu at least except for those transition screens. But

[00:38:15] Speaker B: yeah,

[00:38:15] Speaker A: yeah, that one was a stumper, that’s for sure.

[00:38:18] Speaker B: I was thinking because there was another room that was close to that that had like these like, looked like blood and little baths next to it and they were. Some were really bright red and some were faded out. So I was like, are these the patents of the.

[00:38:31] Speaker A: Right.

[00:38:31] Speaker B: Like the push pads? Am I all my. But I was like, no, there’s too many compared to. It’s not. Not like I’m so

[00:38:37] Speaker A: I think by then I had already seen two of those keypad doors to realize, like, especially there was one, that there was an *1.

And so I saw that and then I saw it show up there at like the maximum frequency and thought, oh, okay,

[00:38:55] Speaker B: okay, gotcha.

[00:38:56] Speaker A: And so I also, since I had wasted. Not wasted, Spent so much time deciphering this thing that I was not gonna come back to this room. So I screenshot. I used the PlayStation screenshot thing to like grab one of all of the.

[00:39:13] Speaker B: I just took my phone and took photos of my. Also so then I could just scroll through of all the codes and put them in the door.

[00:39:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah,

[00:39:22] Speaker B: yeah,

[00:39:23] Speaker A: yep, good stuff.

[00:39:27] Speaker B: That’s what happens when you’re playing in an age of technology where you can do

[00:39:30] Speaker A: that. I know that’s what we’re trying to like partially play along with. But back in

[00:39:36] Speaker B: the day, I probably would have grabbed a piece of paper and probably written down the.

[00:39:39] Speaker A: Oh yeah, to like draw it and then do a little diagram.

[00:39:41] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:39:42] Speaker A: yeah, yeah, good point.

So I think kind of overall in the nowhere they went full meta, right?

[00:39:50] Speaker B: Oh yeah,

[00:39:51] Speaker A: that’s full of these nesting. Like an actual nesting doll of item puzzles requiring you to solve a multi item scavenger hunt puzzle multiple times to find a single piece required for a larger puzzle, even including a literal nesting doll puzzle itself.

So if you’re not losing your mind yet, you’re losing your mind now with all that wonkiness.

There are also a handful of rooms that a little bit later are either absolutely stuffed with enemies. Like there’s a one at the operating table that I think had a myna and four other.

[00:40:27] Speaker B: Oh, that one I just ran for my life

[00:40:31] Speaker A: next to you had to grab an item off the table. There’s a room to the left of There had a bunch of enemies, but only in the dark. And Elster can’t pick up items even if you can see the glint on them. You have to turn your flashlight on, and that alerts all the enemies. And then you’re getting chased around there.

Or, you know, in most of those cases, there’s such a narrow route to take between the enemies that it seems literally impossible to kite them around or avoid tanking a hit.

It was after dying multiple times trying to do that in that sequence of rooms and the one later with the Kolibri blaring the radio at you that I decided, okay, I’m over the pistol, there’s too many people here. And I pull out the shotgun for the first time.

[00:41:19] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:41:21] Speaker A: Because I had had enough.

You. Yeah. So you continue going through. There’s puzzles. The transition from the nowhere was kind of strange. You walk out into that same vertical silo that we used to first enter the facility, but not through a knee high drainpipe, but rather an actual door.

Everything is much more red than before.

And there’s the staircase leading back up. And you get to the top of the stairs in a cutscene. Adler, the Douche, his official title, has been stabbed through the eye with a butcher knife.

He says he’s been here so many times, but has never returned.

That line by itself sure makes it sound even more like a time loop scenario, doesn’t it?

[00:42:09] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:42:11] Speaker A: he said the commander had made it outside before, but according to Adler, whatever she saw was what made her sick and changed her when she returned.

I don’t know where that all lines up.

Once you pass the red gate, there’s just emptiness, the text says, and then a whole hell of a lot of imagery flashes by. Again intercut with lstr walking through the red desert back to the ship.

You see a ton of different artistic interpretations of that painting of the island that we used a key on at one point.

[00:42:44] Speaker B: Yes,

[00:42:46] Speaker A: a ton of images of various replicas and gestalts, I believe, but what looked to be like a lot of different copies of them. And then lstr finally reaches the ship, and when she tries to open the hatch, her arm rips off and she falls off.

And then the credits roll and the game ends.

Or I suppose you’d say the false credits, which we already know about.

Now, if you are here listening to us today and you did not listen to our previous Signalis First Impressions episode all the way through to the end, and also somehow managed to avoid any other spoilers whatsoever for this game, there is more to signal us after the credits end.

[00:43:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah,

[00:43:27] Speaker A: it does kick you back to the game’s main menu. Yes.

But if you click it and then select Begin, you get dropped back in. Yes. So that is your spoiler warning.

If you didn’t play past the first credits, get back in there and play a few more hours and come back to finish here with us when you’re done.

[00:43:48] Speaker B: Exactly.

[00:43:50] Speaker A: Now, even the main menu changed there, with Elster’s eye looking bloodied and more angry.

And I took a screenshot of it to compare because again, love those kind of small details here in the next phase of the story, you wake up as Elster in the spaceship Penrose from the beginning. But it looks a whole lot less beat up than it did at the start of the game.

And that’s because it’s actually operational. Imagine that.

[00:44:17] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:44:18] Speaker A: And it sure is nice to have a map again.

[00:44:20] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that was nice.

[00:44:23] Speaker A: Did you read the classified documents in the mess hall?

[00:44:28] Speaker B: I believe so, yeah.

[00:44:31] Speaker A: It’s the one.

It details the things that you’re supposed to avoid

[00:44:36] Speaker B: talking about

[00:44:37] Speaker A: to not trigger the LSTR unit. Similar to the. There’s docs about all the other replica types throughout the game. Yeah.

So there’s one specifically about lstr. It says not to show LSTR units photos, movies, or let them listen to music.

And don’t try to befriend them either.

[00:44:53] Speaker B: And there’s something about war as well.

[00:44:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Photos of war especially.

[00:44:57] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:44:58] Speaker A: Like, what an unfortunate life for the LSTRs.

I’ll be your friend LSTR. Why not?

The notes all around the ship give you some insight into why this person, Ariane Young, was sent through space in the first place.

They were. You know, anyone that was sent on one of these Penrose ships was meant to look for resources, habitable planets or signs of life. Classic sci fi problem, you know, ruin the world you’re living on. So just go find another. And if you find another, eventually cause the destruction of that one too.

Another file advises that the Gestalts that they shouldn’t eat a replica if they run out of food.

And it’s better for the mission overall if the Gestalt just puts their effort into helping the replica survive and letting yourself die.

Gotta love these types of nations. They’re just great.

It turns out also that Ariane, the Gestalt pilot, is a painter and actually has some personality too.

In one of her notes, she’s complaining about how there’s too many manuals and wishes there were more movies.

You know, paints a bit of a Better picture than before.

When you finally get to Ariane’s room, she runs up and hugs lstr and then kisses her. And they say they missed each other, that it’s their 3,000 cycle anniversary. Yeah, they’ve been together a long time.

[00:46:32] Speaker B: Yes, they have.

[00:46:33] Speaker A: Yeah.

They put on some music. There’s a slow dance. It cuts to where we last saw lstr missing an arm in the red desert and then walking into a snowy area.

Ariane has long hair now, looking down at her, and we’re back in the crashed Penrose.

And here I’m just thinking, oh, no, not this again.

But it’s a different version of the Penrose.

After it’s crashed, she finds a massive lump of red viscera all over that hibernation chair and someone who I guess this could still be Ariane’s body on the floor or Elster’s body, but lstr is still missing an arm. So she rips off the body’s arm and attaches it to herself and then patches herself up to cover her exposed ribs with a bunch of armor pieces and whatnot. So our lstr has a new look.

[00:47:31] Speaker B: Yep.

That was pretty cool.

[00:47:34] Speaker A: Yeah. A little bit of a change.

[00:47:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it is.

[00:47:41] Speaker A: Then from inside the ship, there’s another hole in the floor of meaty flesh, and you have to jump in yet again.

But, yeah, something’s clearly not right this time around.

And of course, just as I was getting excited to have the map back on the ship, they yank it right out from underneath it.

[00:47:57] Speaker B: Yank it away. Yeah,

[00:48:00] Speaker A: the.

The notes on the beach describe something that sounds like following a siren song to become part of a hive mind or something, which was certainly unusual. I think those may be pages from the King in Yellow or from some other text, but it seemed really closely describing some events from the game.

And then you end up in the seemingly the same bathroom as before, when we first dropped into Sierpinski, but more nightmarish. All those early rooms that we’re revisiting in Sierpinski have a mutated form to them. They’re many doors with the pulsating globs of flesh that basically just funnel you into the first safe room where you can actually pick up all your items, which was a wonderful blessing because I didn’t want to have to find them all again.

[00:48:53] Speaker B: Yeah, same.

[00:48:55] Speaker A: The chalkboard literally has scribble on it. You’ve been here before.

[00:49:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, it does.

[00:49:05] Speaker A: How do you know that? Chalk.

Who told you?

You have to jump in yet another hole and In a cutscene Alert isn’t wearing his replica mask. So you see his synthetic skull underneath kind of looks like. What’s that guy’s name in the Marvel stuff? Red Skull.

[00:49:25] Speaker B: It’s. Yes. I was. I was literally going to

[00:49:28] Speaker A: give you that same impression. Oh,

[00:49:30] Speaker B: yes. When him looking like that and under that arch reminded me exactly of Endgame with Black Widow.

And

[00:49:39] Speaker A: he was in that. I forgot,

[00:49:41] Speaker B: remember? Yeah.

[00:49:42] Speaker A: Was like assigned to be the Guardian.

[00:49:45] Speaker B: But hopefully you guys have seen Endgame. I’m not gonna say it though.

[00:49:48] Speaker A: Yeah,

[00:49:49] Speaker B: yeah, yeah,

[00:49:50] Speaker A: yeah.

He’s at this point crouching over, I believe, the commander and saying that he’s whole again and hates everything. This is all across those like flashing text on the screen.

And then you end up in a place called Rot Front that I remember reading about because there are memos about all the planets in this solar system and it is notably less flesh filled for a change.

And even better. The map is back.

[00:50:23] Speaker B: Yes, it is. Yeah.

[00:50:26] Speaker A: I was so happy for the map.

You quickly find a submachine gun.

[00:50:35] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:50:36] Speaker A: And an old school PC with an interactive email system. And I was actually gushing over the realistic clicking sound effects for no reason other than just pure nostalgia for when everything was so mechanical and it had gave feedback.

[00:50:49] Speaker B: And it has a. It has, for all you youngins out there, had floppy disks. Floppy

[00:50:55] Speaker A: disks, yeah, look it up.

[00:50:58] Speaker B: Yeah, look up for it.

[00:51:00] Speaker A: One of the emails in the first, I think it was the blue floppy disk had a subject line of.

Actually, no, that was the blue floppy disk goes related to the antennas. So that this was just on the computer. There’s an email system. There’s a one that has. I don’t know if you clicked through all those, but one of the emails had a subject line that just said relocation. And the received email didn’t have any pleasantries whatsoever. It just said no.

So rough.

[00:51:28] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:51:30] Speaker A: That’s one of the few moments that I was able to laugh in this story here.

What? I guess we can talk about that later.

But we also come across some.

A handful or at least one room here with more bugs in a survival horror game. Because there’s a butterfly room.

Because of course there is the. The. You know, every horror game has to have a puzzle, insect focused puzzle room. This one was kind of odd. And it has that little blurry text that says pareidolia, which I of course looked up with my handy dandy dictionary. Dictionary called the Internet.

And the definition of pareidolia is the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or Ambiguous visual pattern.

Kind of like also, you know, flashback to the 90s. Those giant posters with a weird psychedelic thing that if you stare at it long enough.

[00:52:38] Speaker B: Oh, yeah,

[00:52:39] Speaker A: it shows you an image. You remember those things?

[00:52:41] Speaker B: Yeah, the mind’s eye that I triggered. Yeah, I remember those.

[00:52:44] Speaker A: So, yeah, you stare at the four butterflies long enough with that concept in your head and you realize that their wing patterns spell out the word Aeon.

Cool puzzle. But had to leave the game world to look up something in real life. Unless you already know about Pareidolia, which seems pretty niche.

Eventually you go through the Ito backyard and find Issa, who says she never found who she was looking for, and proceeds to just disintegrate into this black goo puzzle puddle.

[00:53:22] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:53:23] Speaker A: that was startling.

She was such a help for us. And like seeing a friendly face throughout this whole thing and just gone.

You work through the tarot card puzzle with the black light, which wasn’t really telegraphed that there was a switch, by the way, at least for me.

My eyes just. I was so focused on the tarot card table that I didn’t realize that light was there.

[00:53:48] Speaker B: Oh, that there was the switch. You

[00:53:50] Speaker A: had to like, flick the

[00:53:51] Speaker B: switch.

[00:53:51] Speaker A: Like, I thought that was just background decoration, like set dressing. Yeah.

But yes, you find all these tarot cards throughout the ROT front apartment complex here.

Place them in turn on the black light. And then you see this kind of moon phase diagram. And you take that. And I took screenshots here too, so I could line it up with the ones on that giant wall right in the beginning of this ROT front area.

And then once you line all that up, you end up back in that early room with the King and yellow book again.

[00:54:36] Speaker B: Yes, you do.

Once you find. Yeah, all this

[00:54:39] Speaker A: stuff too. And I think the nice, like, okay, context and a bit more story. And now your character remembers that it all belongs to Ariane.

In the next room.

I thought, well, I was going to pick up the book and then end up. What’s it called in whatever’s Next, the way I did last time. That’s how we ended up inside of the station, I think, in the beginning.

But in this next room, you just walk through the door. It goes from first person back into normal. And you can save and use the storage box again. There’s a couch watching the tv.

A note from Ariane’s mother indicates that they had a chat about Alina SEO, who looked a lot like her.

So it sounds like she’s one of the Ito twins.

Right.

Still, hard to say the identities of these People comes and goes as you uncover more information.

I think

[00:55:46] Speaker B: I thought for a split second that we were Elena CEO.

[00:55:51] Speaker A: Which is weird because Adler said at the beginning, when we first met him that that’s who you’re looking for. But if it’s you, then how.

[00:55:59] Speaker B: Yeah,

[00:55:59] Speaker A: but also, like Ariane. Seems like she might be one of the twins, but then maybe not, because it talks to. It’s a different file in the computer there.

So, yeah, at this point, I was lost.

But you just got to keep pushing. There was a trail of notes going through this long hallway.

One of them says there’s always a crashed ship, a strange gate, a hole in the ground.

Definitely creepy, since that’s obviously what we’ve been through. But the cadence of there’s always XYZ sounds like a quote from another of our favorite games as well.

Don’t say it, Alex.

[00:56:38] Speaker B: Okay,

[00:56:40] Speaker A: don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t played through that whole trilogy yet, but I’m assuming you know what I’m talking about.

[00:56:47] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty sure.

[00:56:49] Speaker A: Okay.

Adler’s note goes on to say, an island beyond reach. Memories from other lives. Dreams of suffering and loneliness. A promise. A search for someone lost.

I saw her in the red emptiness waiting for me. We had made a promise. As the memories of a stranger rushed into my head, I felt the borders of myself blur. Now I can no longer tell where Falk ends and lstr begins. What the hell?

One of the other notes in the safe room earlier was from Ariane’s aunt, talking about picking up books for her uncle.

And in bright red text to it said to leave some space in your school bag for the books for your uncle. In the same way that the early tutorial notes blatantly told you to do something, it kind of cheekily hints at that same tip and tells you not to load yourself up because a final boss follows.

[00:57:49] Speaker B: Yes,

[00:57:51] Speaker A: and extra inventory space is especially valuable here because of the spears you can pick up because you’re fighting against Commander Falk herself and she’s gone full on mad.

[00:58:02] Speaker B: She. Yes, she has.

[00:58:07] Speaker A: Yeah, as you. So, basically, she has all these spears kind of floating around her.

They get launched at you, they land on the ground, you can pick some of them up and stab her with them, and legit, that seemed the best way to go.

So I’m glad I left one slot open. But as you finally get through these weird, I guess, room shifting phases, by stabbing her each time, you finally knock her out.

[00:58:35] Speaker B: That was a hard fight.

[00:58:37] Speaker A: It was an interesting one.

You know how I Had said before that I used the pistol until the last segments of the Nowhere and switched to the shotgun.

I still hadn’t touched any of the other guns.

And so I said, well, this feels like we’re getting close.

And so when I died the first time to Falca, I went in storage and grabbed the rifle, the flare gun, and the smg because I hadn’t used them any. Oh, I was using the revolver a good bit through rot front.

So I grabbed those three and then took those into the fight. And the flare was great. Yes.

SMG was okay for those dudes running around. And then the. I really liked the rifle, but it just.

Once the screen starts blurring in front of your face and then there’s these faded orbs that fly out in a bullet hell format.

[00:59:38] Speaker B: Yeah, that was.

Yeah, I used the flare gun.

[00:59:44] Speaker A: Yeah, flare gun’s great. Third gun’s great.

[00:59:47] Speaker B: And then I used the flare gun and I had the machine, the submachine gun, and only with the 30 rounds that it came with.

[01:00:00] Speaker A: And

[01:00:01] Speaker B: so for the last bit, I was like shooting her. And my last 10 rounds I shot. And I was like, please let this be the end, because if it isn’t, I’m done. Like

[01:00:10] Speaker A: to restart.

[01:00:11] Speaker B: And luckily, literally, I had like four, five rounds. I think it did like five rounds. I don’t know. I had five rounds or less left. And it. She went down. I was like, oh, thank God.

[01:00:18] Speaker A: Okay.

[01:00:19] Speaker B: And I finished

[01:00:19] Speaker A: it. Yes.

[01:00:21] Speaker B: But I

[01:00:21] Speaker A: was. I

[01:00:22] Speaker B: was also like, my screen was going nuts. Haywire.

[01:00:25] Speaker A: Yeah, like between I. I will say between I. I finished this late into the early. No, early into the morning yesterday.

So I’ll say between every time I end up with pulsating red to black with a vibrating controller and headphones on in the darkness.

That’s a way to drive up some cortisol.

Yeah, but you finish her off, she dies. And with six spears through her head. And she says, now we are one. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.

Right, Right. Take. Take what you get from that.

There’s also, you know, throughout some of these kind of weird cuts, there was one that said this space intentionally left blank various times. I don’t know if you saw caught that.

[01:01:30] Speaker B: Yes, I did. Is

[01:01:31] Speaker A: that supposed to be a meta thing? Is that like they actually forgot? No, I mean intentionally.

Beats me. I have no explanation. I

[01:01:39] Speaker B: don’t know.

[01:01:42] Speaker A: And then you walk out and Adler returns and says, you’ve returned. Are you willing to go through this once more? You’ve seen what happens. This world can’t take much more. This may be our last chance. If you go back. So I think when he says back here and in every other circumstance here, it’s always about going back to the surface, but he says, if you go back, it’ll all fall apart. I can’t let that happen, you selfish monster. And he stabs Elster in the eye with the same butcher knife that he was stabbed with before. She just kind of shrugs it off, pulls the knife out and walks through the red gate.

And he says, you’ll destroy everything.

Which honestly seems like the lesser of two evils here.

[01:02:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it does.

[01:02:27] Speaker A: So I ask myself at this point, why is Adler the one who has to live through this time and time again and remember it?

I’m still also wondering why he pushed down the elevator shaft in the first place.

Just to try to keep you from ruining the world, I guess.

And after lstr gets back to the ship, she’s actually able to open it this time. And there are new notes to read.

So you hear that the reason she joined the mission, she, Ariane Young, was that she wanted to leave the photo store behind and the school at Rotfront and get away from it all and supposedly finally be happy.

Obviously, that’s not at the end of the story because you read other notes talking about how if you haven’t found a suitable world to land on after 3,000 cycles, you’re highly unlike to. So you’re screwed. Just accept it.

[01:03:29] Speaker B: But, yes, yeah. Did see those notes? Yeah.

[01:03:35] Speaker A: The flashback or ending showed lstr. I guess this may be where things vary. Maybe not.

I think it was a flashback because the ending that I saw showed Elster putting Ariane in the cryopod permanently.

And despite really not wanting to, she went through with it and then collapsed in the floor next to her.

Does that sound similar to what

[01:04:04] Speaker B: you know, we had different endings.

[01:04:08] Speaker A: So that. That’s.

That. That’s what happened for me. Which is tragic, but it breaks the cycle. Question mark.

But if that’s not the same as what you saw, I am curious what you saw.

[01:04:24] Speaker B: So when I get back to that, and I have Ariane in the cryopod and comes back and basically says sort of probably. It’s probably very similar conversation to you. But then mine goes of, we have a promise.

You promised me. You have to finish the promise.

And the promise was that if it got to this point, you would kill her.

And so

[01:05:00] Speaker A: then I think, okay,

[01:05:03] Speaker B: so then myself as Elster, Elster reaches into the pod, grabs her around the throat and strangles her to death.

[01:05:11] Speaker A: What? Oh,

[01:05:12] Speaker B: and then.

And then

[01:05:15] Speaker A: falls down

[01:05:16] Speaker B: next to the pod.

I don’t know if I die as

[01:05:19] Speaker A: well. No, you know what? I think this is the same ending, actually. And I just interpreted the strangling part as giving her a hug.

[01:05:32] Speaker B: Oh, no, no, mine was definitely

[01:05:35] Speaker A: not. So maybe I should find this on YouTube and re watch the. No, I think it’s the same thing because the description sounds the same as Remembering the Promise.

[01:05:43] Speaker B: So

[01:05:44] Speaker A: there

[01:05:44] Speaker B: are like three different.

[01:05:45] Speaker A: I guess we

[01:05:45] Speaker B: can.

[01:05:46] Speaker A: Yes, right. Which I also discovered because after the credits roll, you get your results screen similar to other survival horror games. And there is a. It says ending and it has a name. So, yeah, I got the one that’s called Promise. That’s the same one.

[01:06:01] Speaker B: Oh, I actually, I’m not gonna lie to you, I didn’t even notice. But probably.

[01:06:04] Speaker A: I think. I think we have the same ending and we just both interpreted the visual element of strangling versus hugging very differently. And I might have been delirious after hours. At 1:00am, I was gonna say you.

[01:06:19] Speaker B: You. The father. At 1:00am, he’s like, oh, he’s hugging. And me, it’s like, oh, she’s strangling her and kills her.

[01:06:27] Speaker A: This is. Yes, right. This is why art is great.

[01:06:34] Speaker B: I’m pretty sure the

[01:06:34] Speaker A: Promise

[01:06:35] Speaker B: was the killer.

[01:06:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

So I. I don’t know how long you sat on the. On the results screen. I actually took a screenshot of it if you want to take a look.

But because it said ending and it said promise, I looked up not what happens in the actual endings, I’ll say that for later, but the names of the endings and the criteria or requirements for getting them.

And looking at this list, I thought, okay, well, Promise, the Promise ending must be the most common ending for people on a first playthrough because it caters to people that want to at least somewhat defend themselves and don’t know every corner of the areas.

And I say that because it seems like the sort of major factors are how many times you die, how many enemies you kill, how long you spend at low health.

And then to a degree, one of the endings is like finishing it in basically 40% of the time that it took me.

But I think it was like six hours to get one of the other endings.

So I think based on people going into this blind, like, it’s probably most likely to get the Promise ending.

But yeah, I.

I don’t know, it’s.

It just seems like it caters to like that first attempt playthrough.

But I think it especially made sense if we both got it that way. And after finishing yesterday and catching up on the Discord conversation that I avoided because of the spoiler tag comments, multiple other people also mentioned they got the promise ending and.

[01:08:26] Speaker B: Yeah, so yeah, I just looked it up. I did. I got the promise ending. It was.

[01:08:30] Speaker A: And I also. Actually I was curious, so I confirmed on PlayStation. Well, on PlayStation at least, I don’t know about other consoles or PC. 11.5% of people get the promise ending compared to 4.3% and 2.6%. So it is at least on PlayStation by far much more common ending.

[01:08:51] Speaker B: Okay,

[01:08:56] Speaker A: So that’s the game through the credits. What do you make of all that?

[01:09:05] Speaker B: I’m still confused with 75% of the game of who’s who, what’s what, but saying that it was a phenomenal game. As I said, I was addicted to it. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it.

[01:09:22] Speaker A: So, okay, so like pure gameplay stance, you’re. You’re all in on this game.

[01:09:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I, yeah,

[01:09:28] Speaker A: yeah.

[01:09:28] Speaker B: Once I, once I got it took me a little bit after that first hour, first impressions, I was still a little. But then I really got into it and. Yeah,

[01:09:36] Speaker A: yeah, yeah. I mean, I. So I just keep trying to go back and think about like, okay, what is the actual order of events here?

Like, it does seem like Ariane was the giant flesh blob in the cryopod next to where we picked up our armor suit and the arm after the false credits. Yeah.

And so like that must have happened before.

But then you start thinking about, about where like you’re seeing all these copies bodies of yourself being pushed in the elevator. So like half of those must have hit their neck on the way down. Like, are you in a time loop? Are you in an alternate reality? Why are there so many versions of this going on?

And so I, I at least sort of partially piece together as like multiple branching pathways that all also converge on each other at the same time.

It’s like it reminds me of that kind of Interstellar, the plan from Interstellar to cut through a wormhole.

I don’t know, what is your take on bioresonance? Like, had you heard of it before this game?

Like, do you have any thoughts on what it is or how it operates in this universe?

[01:10:54] Speaker B: No, to be fair, no. Didn’t even thought about it that much.

[01:10:59] Speaker A: They talked about Falco having it and, and whatnot. I mean, I. It sounds like just like no one really understands it scientifically by going all in on Bioresonance. They bailed on, like, normal technology too, but it seems like some weird telepathy mixed with telekinesis mixed with being able to just control things with your mind generally. But, like, it was never explained. And someone. One of the notes asked, why does the. Why did the emperor claim that it was some divine alien thing, but then our person doesn’t have it, so, like, why can we still do it? Like, a lot of open questions.

[01:11:49] Speaker B: No, there was a lot of open questions.

[01:11:52] Speaker A: And then there’s, you know, you get into the whole Android side of things too. Like, there’s this concept of the ship of Theseus, which is an ancient philosophical thought experiment, really.

Have you heard of it?

[01:12:06] Speaker B: No, I haven’t.

[01:12:08] Speaker A: So it. It takes the idea of the hero Theseus, who we know from our other side quest season. Hades. What a lovely guy, huh? No comment.

Anyway, he and his ship were so legendary that when the wood used to build his ship spent so much time in the water that they started rotting and falling apart. They had to be replaced. Right?

Obviously.

So over time and through enough wear and tear and use, if every single piece of that ship has to eventually be replaced, is it really still the same original ship of Theseus?

And so that’s the kind of philosophical question and the concept.

[01:12:47] Speaker B: Got it. That makes sense. Yeah.

[01:12:50] Speaker A: So. And the reason I know a little bit about this in some detail is that I’ve come across it in other pieces of. Pieces of narrative art and games.

But if you apply the concept to humans and their souls or brain patterns, if you take that out of a human body and place it into another human body, or in this case, a synthetic replica frame, is it still the same person or something completely new?

What do you think?

[01:13:18] Speaker B: Who.

Who knows? I don’t know. I want to say what you’re saying. Swapping out,

[01:13:31] Speaker A: like. Like taking, like, I guess simplify it. Take this. Take the soul. Take. We’re going to use you as an example. Sorry. Take your soul out of your body and place it into a.

A robot that has a computer system that can house your soul. Is it still you or is it something

[01:13:52] Speaker B: else?

I feel like it might still be you because it’s your soul.

[01:13:58] Speaker A: Okay.

I

[01:13:59] Speaker B: also think that. Because I love how this is where my mind went to. Anybody who ever watched this, I don’t remember late 90s, early 2000s movie with Chris Rock called Down to Earth.

[01:14:12] Speaker A: Yes. Down to

[01:14:13] Speaker B: Earth

[01:14:14] Speaker A: was great.

[01:14:15] Speaker B: He dies and then he comes back as the old

[01:14:18] Speaker A: white

[01:14:18] Speaker B: guy.

[01:14:19] Speaker A: Yeah,

[01:14:20] Speaker B: just like. That was my first thought just then. You Saying that. And I was like, oh, it’s like, Chris, I don’t know. It was hilarious. That’s such a good movie.

[01:14:27] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:14:29] Speaker B: Yeah. I would say it’s. Yeah. If it’s your soul and stuff, it’s still you.

[01:14:32] Speaker A: Okay. There is no right answer, by the way. This is just a. Everyone can interpret it as they wish, but. Yes. You know, again, I go back to, like, the existential crisis that V is facing in cyberpunk, since we’re playing it right now and

[01:14:49] Speaker B: we

[01:14:49] Speaker A: still have to see how that plays out, but, like, bam. The ship of Theseus is everywhere.

[01:14:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Seems like. Yeah.

[01:14:56] Speaker A: It almost makes you question if you’re even really you right now.

[01:15:01] Speaker B: And

[01:15:04] Speaker A: there was also this whole subplot or sub lore, or maybe a very important and consequential piece of the lore, but my mind was downplaying it because it wasn’t mentioned too, too much.

But it was definitely implied a lot here and there as the whole concept of, like, the propaganda type imagery and the empire.

But. Yeah, clearly some kind of either dictatorship or overly militaristic society going on that has, like, you should be proud that you’re giving up your life to go die in a void.

But I don’t know if there’s more deeper construct to it than that or if that’s just the way they frame the story.

Do you have any thoughts on why the puzzle items were what they were like that. We had rings, we had plates, nesting dolls, tarot cards. They all kind of seem.

At least from my frame of knowing, what about the world don’t seem all that related.

[01:16:11] Speaker B: No, I didn’t. Yeah.

Or

[01:16:14] Speaker A: is it just a matter of, hey, we need something to do for them to go find. Here it is.

[01:16:19] Speaker B: No, I find it funny, though, that the, like, the last puzzle.

The one. The last puzzle to get out of, like, the actual main game, say, before you. Before, like, the false ending.

[01:16:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

[01:16:30] Speaker B: With all the discs where it’s the. Yeah, the plates where you get the first one, like, right at the start.

[01:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah.

Super early.

[01:16:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, super early on. And then the rest of them are all in that section of nowhere. It’s like, oh, okay.

[01:16:45] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:16:46] Speaker B: So,

[01:16:46] Speaker A: yeah,

[01:16:49] Speaker B: I think they do that on purpose of a. What is this? What it. Like?

[01:16:53] Speaker A: I think it’s almost like another.

Another reminder of the rule of six. Like, you go through. You can probably. I’m sure somebody has gone through the entire Sierpinski base at the beginning, holding that plate for dear life, thinking they’re gonna find something and never put in my inventory.

[01:17:07] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:17:08] Speaker A: And then they realize, oh, man, this is just like a long con.

Yeah.

I want to know more about if there’s actual purpose behind it. And it feels like there’s purpose behind almost every decision in here, and I just haven’t cracked it.

[01:17:23] Speaker B: Yeah, same.

[01:17:25] Speaker A: And I mean, I will say I feel like there’s still somewhere between a little and a lot that we haven’t discovered or uncovered or interpreted here.

So somebody please join us on Discord and help us better understand what’s going on for starters.

And especially let us know what secrets we missed and what was hidden within them. I have to assume there was also a way to open that triple chained safe in the King and Yellow Room.

[01:17:49] Speaker B: There is. I think that’s one of the other. That’s another ending.

[01:17:51] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. Like something is scratching an itch in me. That reminds me of the kind of cryptic nature of late game puzzles in the game Tunic, which is a great game in all the best ways, but I felt like I explored pretty substantially and don’t remember finding any keys that it did not end up using

[01:18:11] Speaker B: exactly. Same. I. Yeah, I’m the same.

[01:18:13] Speaker A: There were no keys sitting in my inventory at the end.

Unless they’re all in the same, like lockbox in the mines. And I didn’t explore the mines closely. Like, maybe, but I didn’t see any extra keys lying around.

[01:18:27] Speaker B: Yeah, neither did I.

[01:18:30] Speaker A: So, yes, I want answers.

Did you settle on a favorite weapon throughout your play time or favorite weapon based on an enemy?

[01:18:40] Speaker B: No, I think I use the pistol a lot at the start. I then actually swapped because I had a lot of ammo for the revolver. So I swapped to the revolver for quite a while.

[01:18:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I love the revolver.

[01:18:52] Speaker B: Yeah, the revolver was a good time. That was a good weapon.

[01:18:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that was a lot of fun to use. I, you know, I used the pistol almost exclusively through 50% of the game, but I certainly love the.

Certainly loved the revolver a lot. What were your thoughts overall on the handful of first person segments?

[01:19:17] Speaker B: I would say, to be honest, a little confusing.

[01:19:20] Speaker A: Okay.

[01:19:21] Speaker B: I don’t. Because I know like you do the one at the beginning. I, I get that the one at the beginning helps you, I guess, with the radio figuring out the codes and stuff like that. I think it’s with the radio mainly. And then there’s a couple others. There’s ones where you’re on the beach, like in the. In the paintings, where you just find a bunch of papers on the ground you can read through.

Overall, I don’t know, I just.

They’re a little slower.

They’re a little.

[01:19:51] Speaker A: I don’t

[01:19:51] Speaker B: know. To me, I didn’t feel like it was massively necessary. I would assume. Also they’re. I don’t know if they’re. Are they flashbacks or are

[01:20:00] Speaker A: they.

Well, you tell me.

I

[01:20:04] Speaker B: don’t know. I don’t know if they’re flashbacks or. Because there was one that happened and then the story kind of continued on from there. So then. But then the one. The first one, which I said, which is about the radio, seemed like it was a flash back because you were like, out. We were inside, and then all of a sudden we were outside in the snow again.

[01:20:22] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:20:22] Speaker B: And then.

So.

Yeah, I don’t know.

[01:20:27] Speaker A: I. You know, based on my interpretation here, this is like a full set of folding universes that are overlapping with each other where the same. You know, the reason why Adler has seen the same and knows about.

What’s it called about LSTR revisiting constantly is because even. Even if.

Even if it’s a different version, she’s still doing the same events, but in different places. Like, Adler’s in all these different planets and everything too. So, like, I. I definitely look at it like, I don’t know, a stack of printer paper and you just stab it all the way through and like, they’re all connected but all different at the same time.

[01:21:12] Speaker B: I get that. Yeah. And

[01:21:14] Speaker A: like, there’s like these. Probably these wormholes or it’s like sort of. But like also the. They’re all the same universe at the same time, so I still lost.

Yeah, yeah. But yes, I think that the whole. The first person segments movement was way too slow. Way too slow.

Like, obviously this isn’t some first person shooter or anything, and I don’t expect it to be, but just literally turning around 180 degrees took so long, I kind of just said, ugh, every time they came up.

You know, fortunately, they were never very long and at least occasionally provided some insights into things, but I think they could have done without them overall.

Like, just incorporate that into your regular art style.

With the one exception being placing items for puzzles, which could have been done with. You could have been done with stylized menu screens, but I think there was a nice touch that they kind of went the Resident Evil route and you could, like, you know, manipulate the way things are on a model.

[01:22:15] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.

[01:22:17] Speaker A: But sound design is so on point here too.

[01:22:21] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

[01:22:22] Speaker A: Opening the save menu has never been so unsettling.

That screeching, like the thing that’s supposed to make you feel good and fuzzy inside is like. Makes your skin crawl. Yeah, Well, I think it’s, you know, we have a lot to still work out, both in our own time and in Discord and in comments, if people would like to do that. But I think it’s time for the bookend. Alex, how did this stack up to your expectations that you mentioned in our first episode of the season?

[01:22:58] Speaker B: It exceeded them in the end.

Again, I’m confused still by the ending and there’s a lot of confusing things about it. And I think also that’s the point of the story.

[01:23:07] Speaker A: It is. It’s very up to interpretation and there is no right answer.

I mean, at least for anyone but the dev.

[01:23:14] Speaker B: Yeah, but it was such a good game and I think it’s made by like two people who did this and

[01:23:19] Speaker A: it

[01:23:19] Speaker B: was. It’s incredible. It was. It was a. Yeah, good. I got addicted. It was fun. I beat

[01:23:25] Speaker A: it. Achievement. Yeah,

[01:23:26] Speaker B: I beat it a lot faster than I thought it was going to take me. So I think actually I beat it on November 1st, so the day

[01:23:35] Speaker A: after day. Yes.

[01:23:36] Speaker B: Wow. So.

[01:23:37] Speaker A: Wow.

[01:23:38] Speaker B: Or maybe this. Yeah, but I beat it quick. Yeah, but it’s. It was. Yeah. It exceeded all expectations I had.

[01:23:44] Speaker A: Yeah.

Yeah. I’d say I got pretty much everything I was expecting, but also a whole lot more. Like. Like with most of the survival horror games I have played, which granted, have primarily been in the mainstay franchises of the genre here it felt like there was so, so much more lurking beneath the surface, both in terms of there being a lot of environments and areas behind the primary more normal one in this case. I was thinking originally, like, okay, this game is like a Resident Evil with lumbering enemy types that act like zombies, but in a space slash industrial mining type location and not quite as far in the full sci fi direction as Dead Space.

And then you get that in spades in the first full sierpinski area. But what I didn’t expect was to get all of the wonderfully grotesque flush areas like the Nowhere and the kind of back to reality but strange in the rot front.

Yes.

And like that’s just from an environments you’re exploring perspective.

I think it takes it up a full step beyond all of that into the psychological horror element, but also being a heavily literarily influenced direction as well.

And I love that kind of level of nuance and next level of layered details.

[01:25:07] Speaker B: No, definitely.

[01:25:09] Speaker A: Well, what. Clearly you love this game. What would you rate it?

[01:25:14] Speaker B: I’ll give it. I’ll give it a 10.

[01:25:17] Speaker A: Wow.

[01:25:18] Speaker B: It’s.

Yeah. It’s a 10 for me. I know there’s a few things like, yes, not having a Dodge is kind of annoying, but I think obviously it’s on purpose. It just.

It’s got a. There’s timing on a lot of those, too, where you can kind of get them to run in a different circle, then you can time it to get around and. But I don’t know, with the amount of fun I had and I just kept going and didn’t want to stop and put it down.

Yeah, it’s. Yeah, I’ll give it. I’ll give it a 10.

[01:25:49] Speaker A: Okay. Bravo. That’s our first 10 here

[01:25:53] Speaker B: on

[01:25:53] Speaker A: the podcast. Wow.

[01:25:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it exceeded everything that I thought.

[01:26:00] Speaker A: I think as I was right as I was hitting the first, the false ending and then a little bit past that and kind of starting to think and formulate the overall thoughts. Like, I was. I was probably at an 8, looking at the gameplay and the surface level of the story, and I think once it kind of accelerated into the ending, I. It brings it up to a nine for me, really. Just because I love anything that makes me want to spend more time, you know, investigating, researching both things about the game itself and things outside of it is on top of that and kind of learning new things about, I don’t know, life in general.

So I’ll land on a nine here.

Any parting thoughts?

[01:26:48] Speaker B: No.

I’m kind of like you is. I’ll probably

[01:26:52] Speaker A: just look at the glory of this game for a bit. Yeah.

[01:26:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Looking up a bit more about it. About the ending, some other things that people explain it. People want to

[01:27:00] Speaker A: say

[01:27:00] Speaker B: anything they want in discord about it and their theories and explanations. Read them through and yeah, it was.

[01:27:08] Speaker A: Wow.

Yeah. I think. I guess first off, I didn’t mention farting thoughts for me, by the way. Didn’t mention it specifically throughout, but because it was never unexpected. But the game runs like a dream on the PlayStation portal. Yeah. In case anyone wants to play it like that. I just love small character model and 2D and isometric games in handheld. I played probably like 40% of the game like that.

I really wanted to read through the first four sections of the King and Yellow, which apparently are the relevant ones for Signalis before that series of stories goes into, like this romance genre.

I wanted to read those four sections of the King and Yellow before we chatted about this right now, but very much ran out of time.

So, you know what I’ll be doing over the next few days, interspersed with continuing cyberpunk and living life, I guess

[01:28:01] Speaker B: yeah,

[01:28:04] Speaker A: and yes, you mentioned it, right. It’s always great to see those extremely brief credits lists.

Two people made this game for the most part.

Maybe some additional album music and that kind of thing. But you know, I love seeing those small groups make games like this. Not for any reason other than just the proof that people with a unique vision and plenty of effort are able to create such amazing works of art. You know, they’re able to surpass the limitations of the budget and endless resources and make something fresh.

Even though it’s a callback to survival horror of yesteryear, it’s still a big deal. And it’s one of the reasons why I love indie games just as much as I love those less business driven AAA games that create beautiful worlds and fun gameplay systems.

And lastly, I’ll definitely be watching some video breakdowns about Signalis and the King in Yellow now because I’m super curious to know more about what we’ve beyond what we’ve been able to figure out ourselves.

I think just like you said, this one’s gonna stick with me for a while longer than most games that are more focused on spectacle or absorbing the story rather than thinking and interpreting it. Which is welcome and well, would you look at that. We completed a side Quest season.

Imagine the possibilities.

[01:29:27] Speaker B: I know

[01:29:28] Speaker A: if we can finish another

[01:29:30] Speaker B: to finish the other one too.

[01:29:33] Speaker A: Well, this side Quest season has been great, but now we really need to finish off Hades before we move on to Side Quest Season three, which should be a fun one with what we have lined up.

Stay tuned for that and in the meantime, check out our current standard season about Cyberpunk 2077, which we’re about to wrap up before moving on to our slightly delayed spooky season Book Club Season.

I’ll just, yeah, say the word season again here for kicks. All right, bye

[01:30:01] Speaker B: bye. Thanks everyone for listening and hope you guys all enjoyed Signalis as much as we did.

I know there’s a lot of love for this little indie game and it was phenomenal and a great time. I hope everybody else enjoyed their time playing it as well. So thanks again for listening. Have a good one.

If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of any 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 under the same name. Thanks.