Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio, a video game discussions and analysis podcast.

My name is Rick, I am your host, and today begins the analysis of Near Automata, the highly acclaimed sequel to Near Replicant aka Near Gestalt up top.

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That would be great too, all of those plugs and more.

We'll talk about that at the end of the episode.

First, I have to welcome returning guest, frequently returning guest and guest host of Near Replicant when we covered it, Dave Jackson Tales from the backlog.

Host Dave, thanks for joining me today.

Of course, man, happy to be back on the show and looking forward to continuing our little mini near series that we're doing.

Absolutely, it's been a lot of fun.

I'm really glad to revisit this game.

My memories of it are a little different from my current feelings on it as I go through, and I think that'll be fun to parse out.

Before we do that, I wanted to set some expectations for the show.

If you're new to the show, First of all, welcome, We're glad that you're here, and we hope you love the show today.

The way the show works is we cover the story beat by beat straight through.

We're going to begin with some high level conversation about the development, overall thoughts on the presentation, the soundtrack, the mechanics, things of that nature, and then we will start the story.

Now, there will be a hard spoiler wall before we start the story, and as we go through, nothing will get spoiled before it happens.

Route C not before routes C, Route E hold off till the end, so if you're playing through or haven't got through, you'll know when to jump off and when in doubt.

Check out the time stamps in the description.

My host platform lets me do that now, although sometimes I try to get cute with it, but I think you'll know pretty much what they're about.

So enough blabrin from me.

Let's talk personal histories and initial thoughts.

Dave, I know that you're no stranger to this game.

When did you first play it, when did you first hear about it?

And do you have any high level thoughts about it?

Yeah?

So I think this is my third or fourth time playing Automota.

Here I got a PS four in twenty nineteen.

I want to say, it's pretty late to the PS four.

And then when I got the PS four, I've told this story about a bunch of different games, but I got the PS four and I just like googled top ten PS four games because I was like, I don't know what to play.

I just got this new thing, and Near Automata by that time was on basically every single one of those lists, and I knew nothing about it.

I knew nothing about Yoko Taro, I knew nothing about the original Near.

I had never heard of that game, even though I owned a three sixty back in the day.

So it was just like, this game is on all the lists, I should check it out.

And I played it, and it blew my mind wide the fuck open, and I absolutely loved it.

I replayed it several years ago now for an episode on my show.

And now the cool thing about this replay is I have since played Replicant for your series on Pixel Project Radio and then for my show as well, and now I finally get to play it in the kind of order that you know, if you'd been there the whole time, this is the order you would have played the stuff in.

I still have not played any of the Draken Guard games.

Maybe if you want to continue that series, maybe hit me up you want to continue the near series.

But Automata, I played it, loved it, played it again, loved it again, and now I'm on my third play through, and like, it's interesting playing a game that many times I'm not shocked by anything anymore.

I'm just kind of in it, soaking it all in and you know, catching more foreshadowing and stuff like that.

This time around, I really like this game.

I think that it's deeply affecting game for me, more so than Replicant was.

I think that, I don't know, maybe we'll get into this as we go.

Maybe it's something about the characters that hits me a little bit harder in this game.

I mean, there's some affecting shit in Replicant, for sure, but this is a game that, like every time I've played it, it has really drawn strong emotion out of me, and I got it again.

Even as far as I've played you know up ahead of where we're going to talk about on today's recording, it's still doing that for me.

So I really like this.

I'm really excited to do the Pixel Project, the Pixel Project radio style beat by beat, the walk through, the analysis and really talk through the stuff.

Feelings change as we go and as we replay things at different stages in our lives, for sure, and I got a bit of that too, But I still really like this game.

It's there's a reason why when you put out you know, your your call for guests, this was something that I was like, I would love to talk about this in a different, you know format.

So here we are.

Yeah.

Absolutely, this is a great game to go back and replay several times.

The recontextualization is high, and it's not the kind of game that gets ruined by spoilers.

It's it's not that kind of story.

And that's one of Tarro's strengths and his studio strengths as well.

Will we'll consider Dracking Guard.

I did not have a great time playing Dracking Guard.

One cool game, fantastic soundtrack.

I hated playing it.

Yeah, this kind of a kind of a half joke suggestion, you know, like the video of the guy pretending to drink bleach and then laugh about it and pretending to jump off the balcony and laughing about it.

That was me saying we should play Drack and Guard.

But maybe, but what if?

It'll be fun going through this.

I know you have a different relationship than I do with third person action games and games of that ILK, so it will be interesting to hear your perspective, and you have more experience with Platinum.

For me, I played this game for the first time a couple of years ago, I want to say twenty twenty two, only played it once, so a lot of this isn't super fresh in my brain.

Opposite to you, I remember feeling very strongly that I preferred Replicant, not that this game is bad.

It's not in any way bad.

I remember feeling that the characters and my relationships to them were a lot stronger.

That being said, even going through now, I'm experiencing the game very differently automata that is, and I'm feeling a little differently than last time.

So I'm thinking this time through things might change, both for the better and for the not so better.

For example, I am realizing this time around that there's not a ton of subtlety, at least stuff to where I've played so far, and indeed too a lot of the themes, which we'll we'll touch on in a second here, A lot of the themes.

If you're I mean, if you're really well read and interested in this stuff and or just really cynical, A lot of this can come off as kind of like one oh one or young guy, young gal really excited about this, just getting a grasp of it and has that fire burning in their belly, which is a noble thing.

Like I will never criticize somebody for doing that, because that's me.

I'm an amateur in everything that I do.

But depending on how cynical you are, I don't know.

That's not just that's not a put down for this game.

We'll get into it.

Let's talk those high level themes.

Though, I Dave you and I talked shortly before we hit the record button that's what we call the green room backstage, and we both kind of concluded that it would be best to talk about this stuff as we go through, but it would behoove us, it would be a boon to the audience.

To just give some high level thoughts about what they should be on the lookout for.

None of this is written down.

This is off the cuff.

This is exciting.

So Dave, what do you have in mind?

What are some things that you keyed in on as you went through this?

Well, I think that one of the big things, and this comes from having played Replicant now and now replaying Automata and seeing that they're playing in some similar space, specifically with like characters who really think they're doing the right thing and then having that challenged in some way, or having you the player, think you're doing the right thing and having that challenged in some way or both.

Replicant obviously does it in a different way than Automata, but I think they're both playing in that space in an interesting way.

And I, as far as I like from what I know of Drake and Guard, this seems to be something that Yokutaro really enjoys doing in games is playing with your expectations of like, what's my role as a player of games and what's my role as a video game protagonist?

And I'm doing the right thing, I'm saving the world, YadA, YadA, YadA, And these games really like to mess with you a little bit.

That's one of the big things.

There are others that like as we go through the beat by beat, that's when some of these other things will really start to pop up.

I think that the beginning of this game really is in that like non subtle territory, because it's like we have characters with very firmly established like belief systems, and then they go into those worlds this world with like this very very strongly established unbudging belief system and those once you start to have things like butt up against those, we get a little bit of those like not so subtle moments or dialogue that I think, I know what you're talking about here.

And then once the game goes on and on and on, we start to peel back some of those layers and things I think get more interesting as we go.

Yeah, but I know what you mean here, especially in this like first section.

Yeah, and that could be by design and full disclosure.

Like I said, a lot of this isn't fresh for me, So this could be by design to put things on front street so they can be expanded upon and viewed more subtly as things go on.

That's why I'm saying up top, I'm not going to speak on that too much because I'm excited to relive this with you, with all of you, and I agree.

Perspective is a big one for Yokotaro.

That was a big point in Near Replicant to Slash Gestalt.

This idea of perspective and this idea of blind ambition, or we could say in group out group loyalty to in group out group blind loyalty.

That's going to play a big part in this too.

Another big theme that I think folks will notice is what it means to be human.

This game is fundamentally about androids and machines, and humans are kind of in the background a little bit, and both factions are going to explore what it means to be human through things like yes, perspective, but also through worship, and Yoko Taro has some things to say about that, not like in an iconoclastic way, but you'll see when we get there, things like worship.

And then the other big one is existentialism, with philosophers like Jean Paul Sartra, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Canue.

Existence precedes essence is a direct quote from this game, and we'll actually get to that today.

So I'm gonna man, it's so funny.

You said you googled top ten games for PlayStation and I was like, yeah, and I think Yoko Taro googled top ten quotes from Existentialist and just through a couple of years.

I'm not knocking him.

It gave me a great chuckle.

But we'll talk about that soon.

All this to say, this is a very introspective game that takes a philosophy co bent about the human experience.

I mean fundamentally through things like what it means to be human, worship, perspective, everything.

There's a lot to it and it's going to be exciting to talk about.

And speaking of talking about it, I'm excited to hear what the community forum has to say.

And this is where I would put that if I had one and community forum.

Nobody wrote in for the community forum.

This time I put up and that's my foot I put it up a little bit late.

We'll collect them as we go through these next couple of episodes too, so if any trickle in, we'll read those as we go.

But for now, let's talk a little bit about how this game came to be.

Unintended.

Oh there we go.

Okay, I got it.

I got I'm with you.

I'll keep that voice crack in there too.

This game was released in Japan in February of twenty seventeen.

It came to North America and the EU the following month all the major platforms, including later on a switchport that is like regarded as a bit of a miracle port in how it runs.

Have you played the switch Port?

I have not.

I considered buying it for this replay because I'm all about playing games on my switch these days, but I did not, So no.

Yeah, I considered it too.

But then I looked at my library and it's like, well, it's already in there.

And then I looked at my wallet and I was like, well, there's nothing in there, So you know, decision made.

This was developed by Platinum Games and published by Square Enix.

Platinum played a big role in this, and we'll see that in a second.

Here.

As usual, you can find the full credits on the wiki, the IMDb, or you can just beat the game.

Of note, you've got director Yoko Taro and producer Yoski Saito, art by Akihiko Yoshida, as well as yu Ya Nagai and Toshiyuki Itahana.

Writers include Tarro as the head writer, Hanakikuchi Yoshiho, a Kabane composer, returning, Kichi Okabe who's also done Teken and Dracking Guard, a bit of Katamari Forever, Final Fantasy fifteen and a lot more, and Keego Hoashi near replicant Soul Hackers two various anime.

Also we've got a threesome here, Kuni Yuki Takahashi, who did various anime, And I found a Japanese DJ by the same name, and I'm unclear if it's the same person.

I like to think it's the same person.

That'd be fun.

I hope so, I hope so you could kind of you could kind of hear a like just like a two percent DJ influence in some of these tracks.

I think this is a little bit so, I don't know how much you know about this, Dave, I did not know much before I read this.

Yourha which is the main faction that we're going to be dealing within here.

This faction of androids or was first conceived by Tarro as an idol group think like Sailor Moon Squad, kind of like that, with a full backstory and even a couple of songs written for them by an artist called Manaka.

It was adapted into a stage play by Yokotara, which is canonical to the Near Universe.

Did you look into this at all?

I did not know about the Idol group, but I know that arguably nobody loves having like lower critical side games more than Yoko Taro and side media.

Yeah, I mean, almost rivaled by Kingdom Hearts.

But with Kingdom Hearts it's just spread across systems and then like a mobile and a web page thing.

Yoko Taro has actual books like Grimoire, was it Grimwore Noir?

I think Grimore of Weiss.

I forget what the actual physical thing was where you could read stories like, for example, the one with the ship in the Kraken was adapted into Near replicant like that all existed, and then you've got this stage play.

He's got mobile games, he's got crossovers with other series that are somehow canonical.

It's a little bit insane, and I respect it a little bit, and I'm also pissed off by it.

That's that's just he's doing too much, you know, Kingdom Hearts.

At least it's all video games.

I also wrote down here too, like Final Fantasy ten did this a little bit with that awful novella and what is it sound novel?

Do you know much about those?

I have just heard about one of the endings of one of those, which is very funny.

I won't spoil it.

I'll tell you off Mike if you want, but I've heard they're awful.

Even as a Final Fantasy ten megafan, I'm not the least bit interested in those.

And same with these, you know, lower critical side things for Near like I like the near story, I like the near universe.

You are not going to get me to play one of those gotcha games to get a little bit of lore about Huraa or something.

Yeah, that's the kind of thing that I would wiki dive for.

Like, I'm very into it, but I just can't do the gotcha stuff.

I can't do the MMO stuff.

I would like to see the stage play.

I think that's kind of cool.

The stage play sort of is just a direct prequel to this game.

It's about the Yorha units being created.

They're created by the humans who were driven to the moon, and this isn't spoilers.

You find this out within the first half hour.

Humans were driven to the moon because in alien race invaded Earth.

They set out all of these machines to start destroying and taking over.

Humans fought valiantly.

They couldn't handle it.

They went to the moon and they created this elite squad of Android battalion units humanoid units called the Yorha, and the stage play largely focuses on the main one, the two B of the group, and how she feels going through all of that.

It sounds very interesting.

I'm sure it'll never come to the States, so check.

Your local community theater for the near stage play.

Yeah, when is Near coming to Rickstown, Pennsylvania.

I almost docks myself there.

I don't want to do that.

Yeah.

If it does, I'll drive over and I'll see it with you.

Yeah, it's not that far I mean for that kind of entertainment.

Yeah.

If you're familiar with Dragon Guard one and Near Gestalt, the original Near, you might not be surprised to hear that there was some unwillingness for a sequel.

Tarrow was pushing for it, but due to low sales, the Square Nix was a little bit hesitant ban response was glowing.

They really liked the game, they liked the idea of a sequel.

This kind of pushed Tarro to push for it, and that's when Platinum stepped in.

Platinum said that they would be interested.

It was kind of a match made in heaven because Platinum is known for their action combat in terms of both mechanics and just visual animation.

I mean see Bayonetta, Yeah, see also Metal Gear Rising, is that what it is?

That's right?

Their best game?

Yeah?

And Nano Machine Son, that's right.

So it was a match made in heaven because the biggest criticism that folks had with the original near wasn't the story, wasn't the characters, wasn't the music, And it wasn't even that stupid leather daddy mask that Papaaneer wears.

It was the mechanics, It was the combat.

My understanding is that Replicant basically turned it into as close to automata as you can get, but it's it's still an improvement.

You know.

Yeah, So that that's good for them.

I mean that that is a match made in heaven between those two.

How does this feel to you for someone that's more versed in the Platinum sphere, Like, do you think this plays as well as Rising or Bayonetta?

Absolutely not.

No.

Oh it's smooth as hell and it's really flashy.

But as an action game, I don't.

I don't think it's very interesting, and it's just because, like the things you fight are never that interesting.

Yeah, when compared with especially Bayonetta or Metal Gear Rising, like they're like hardcore action games.

I don't think that what you do in Near Automaa is nearly as interesting as far as like what are you fighting?

What are they trying to do to you?

What do you have to do in response to what they're doing to you?

But it looks really flashy.

It's a fairly easy game, I think, and there's like some other you know, RPG systems that you can play with and kind of have some fun with that that that they don't normally do in their pure action games.

So like it's it's not like a chore to play.

It doesn't it's not awful or anything like that.

But I don't think this approaches their best by any stretch.

Interesting.

I Like I said, I don't have as much experience I have played Bayonetta, and that's kind of one of the gold standards for like third person action what the kids don't call hack and slash anymore.

I think I agree with you.

The battle animations in this are so smooth.

There's a move that two B does with her sword if you just hold down square the light attack, where she like zooms forward and almost does like a little like butt spin breakdance on the ground as she's swinging the sword all around her.

It is.

It is really badass.

It's one of my favorite moves to start off combos with.

But you are right, it's combo wise, it's not excessively deep, and I wonder if that's not because of the inclusion of the pod and their abilities, which we'll touch on once we get there.

Right.

Yeah, it's like, I think that you have some fun combos that you can do, and there's a bunch of different weapons that you can play with and stuff, but it all kind of boils down to you're always basically fighting the same things and you're fighting them the same ways, which an action game you have to have.

You have to have both, Like you you have a varied toolkit, but the things that you're fighting also have to bring something to the table as well, which the base of robots in AUTOMAA absolutely don't.

This is one of those things though, like since playing Replicant, which you know, does kind of the same thing as the original Near did, where like you're just doing the same thing over and over again, and it kind of brings to mind like the kind of futility of it, or like a boredom almost in a in an effective way, AUTOMAA doesn't get that same rise that I'm sure the original Near did, or like we talked about this in the Replicant series, where like you're doing a bunch of repetitive stuff and the combat is repetitive.

I think, and I think that it's really interesting that I think it's thematically good and relevant that it is repetitive and Automata gets into that too, despite how flashy the combat looks.

Yeah, I want a thousand percent.

I don't remember how the repetitiveness of Automata fits within it.

I'm gonna say Automata and Automata interchangeably, yes, sorry, but I'm interested to remember how that works.

I want to push forward just a tiny bit.

I'm just going to quote this directly from Eurogamer producer Yoske Cito.

He says this quote.

This collaboration with Platinum was suggested when we just come up with the idea of making the Near sequel a mobile game.

Their suggestion was remaking Near as a Vita title.

So we got two different projects together, and maybe the best option was doing a full console game.

Tarro goes on to say that the original idea was along the lines of Farmville, your mother's favorite Facebook game circa twenty twelve, and uh, and Cito says, quote, Yeah, we're very glad we didn't go down that route.

So yeah, pal me two.

Yeah, of course.

Uh.

I read these quotes from and there's a there is a not insignificant amount of me that's like, that's bullshit.

He's just saying shit, because he just says shit sometimes, you know.

But there is that other side that's like, well, he he does do stuff like that with regularity, with some of these side titles and stuff like that.

So yeah, I mean he might be telling the truth.

He's a bit of an enigma, as you know, people know, and that comes down to him saying, yeah, this this originally was our Farmville.

I'd be like, yeah, I kind of buy it, but also, you're full of shit, aren't you.

You know, I wouldn't be surprised.

I think before Autamata started he was doing some mobile games or at least involved in some.

Right, Yeah, so there is that believability factor, but also like he just says shit sometimes, you know, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, he doesn't take himself very seriously.

If you've never seen Yoko Taro, google him and you'll probably immediately recognize him.

I was gonna say, recognize the face with That's not quite right.

He tends to wear that giant mask that's a character from the game a Meal because I think the only thing that I've read is that he's fairly shy and he doesn't want the attention to be on him.

He wants the attention to be on the work.

I think, you know, that's admirable.

I think perversely, choosing something like that will call attention to yourself, and in a circular kind of way, it brings the attention onto you.

I don't know if that's conscious from his point of view, he might genuinely believe what he thinks.

There's a part of me that smells that and gets a whiff of not self righteousness, not bullshit, but kind of the two together, you know, like the artist being the artist, and he wants to come off one way, but you know, you can kind of smell the true intentions.

I don't know.

I don't I'm not trying to be super critical of the man.

I just think that, you know, his idea of calling attention to the work by wearing that mask doesn't work twofold, because one, it's a giant mask and you're gonna call attention to yourself with it.

And two, now every time I see a meal, I just think, oh, that's Yoko Taro.

Yeah, you know what I mean.

I was gonna say, like, regardless of his intentions, he is one of the most recognizable game designers out there because of the mask.

Like you know, just straight up everyone knows what he looks like, or at least the way he presents himself.

M hm.

You would alluded to some of his ideas for this game and the design philosophies behind it.

I have this quote down here.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, he said.

Quote.

Certainly, the first game was very emotional.

It was a very wet kind of story.

When I'm trying this time is a much more dry approach.

Looking at the themes of the unfairness of the world and the harsh, prejudiced realities that these characters are facing.

And quote, I'm not I'm not sure what he's getting at with the wet and the dry aspect.

I mean, maybe he's talking about emotional like there were a lot of emotions from the characters in the first one.

I could see how wet might be scriptor.

But I think in terms of the unfairness of the world and prejudiced realities, I think he did a bang up job in depicting those within Automata.

M Yeah, I would agree.

I mean, there's we'll talk about it as we go through the story, but there's the game is full of that.

Yeah, just two more things in development, if you'll oblige me, if you'll indulge me.

I'm not sure which of those is more appropriate.

No spoilers just yet.

But the final ending allows users to blow up their save data to help other users.

Tarro said that this was inspired by the Coke campaign, where machines in India and Pakistan were connected via live stream.

You know those those are two countries that have contentious relationships with one another.

You spend any time online in certain spaces and you could see that.

And he said he wanted to encourage the two people to overcome their political rivalry.

You know, I'm just what I wrote under this is we are all one people.

Why can't we all get along?

Sponsored by Coca Cola?

Have a coke with your neighbor like this?

Like, give me a break, dude.

I was listening to another podcast and I had heard their near analysis before, but I was listening to them and they were talking about this and they said, I choose not to be cynical about this because it's the easy route.

And I was like, that's the easy route?

Are you sure?

Man?

Like, come on, Palli boy, what are you talking about?

I don't know, dude.

Like I, I tend to be idealistic and a little bit pollyanna ish, which is one of my favorite adjectives a lot.

But come on, sponsored by coke like world peace?

That just that just stinks of capitalistic opportunity?

Am I am?

I being a grumpy old son of a bitch.

Do you do you get what I'm saying?

Uh?

I guess I had not I know of the coke ad before I'd seen it before, and I didn't really think twice I was just like, well, someone you know really has marketing skills.

That's a It's a good idea for an ad, but it's good that it's inspired other creators to be like, well, here's my take on this, because I think that the I think the thing that he's referencing with this that he was inspired by is interesting in one way, is like super interesting.

The other way that it comes forward is a little bit under baked.

I think maybe we'll talk about those as we go, but I don't know.

I never thought too much about that ad, although like I easy to be like, yeah, Coca Cola is not going to save the fucking world, of course not.

It's not going to bridge boundaries between cultures.

It's just it's a drink and they made a good ad.

All right, Well, Rick is a grumpy son of a bitch, I guess.

Then answer that question.

One last thing before we get into visuals.

You do not need to play replicant first, although I think it's better if you do.

One of Tarro's strengths and his studio strengths as a whole, is creating games that work in a vacuum but are enhanced by the games that come before and after them.

Replicant is a story in and of itself.

Automata is a story in and of itself.

Drac one, Drack three, Drag two is a different studio.

But all of these games can be enjoyed on their own.

Even though technically the timeline is Drag three to Drac one, Drac one ending e to near Replicant Replicant, my understanding is it doesn't flow directly into Automata, but it's like this third ridged gap thing, and then the anime comes through and does a whole separate timeline.

It's a whole mess.

All this to say, you certainly can play the other games and it will enhance your experience, if only just a little bit.

But Automata is totally self contained.

You can enjoy this top to bottom.

If this is your first game, no problem, jump right in.

It's a great time, agreed.

Also, one more thing, I guess before we dive into other categories.

You mentioned the final ending earlier and just a PSA.

I feel like this doesn't need to be said, but I get asked often enough that I feel like it should be said.

There is a misconception out there that you need to play near Automata five or more times in order to get the uh, the entire story, so to speak.

And that is just not true.

It was somewhat true of Near and Near Replicant, but Automata at least if you are playing through the same events, you'll get it from a different perspective, and that is not you know, you don't do that over and over and over and over and over again the way that its reputation may have some people believe.

So just follow.

We'll talk about more later.

I will stop saying anything now.

But you don't have to play this thing the same events five times, like the misinformation would have you believe.

Yeah, Instead, it's twenty six different times for all the twenty six endings.

That's right.

That's not visuals little bit.

Fans of Replicant will be familiar with this.

The visual design has a sort of opaqueness to it, just a little bit, not haziness, but things are just two percent blurry, like a lack of sharp clarity.

And it works.

I mean, it gives it this cinematic feel to it without the things like a grain filter.

You know, it's a post apocalyptic setting.

Nature has reclaimed the ruins of a civilization decimated by time.

The environments, they're pretty similar to Replicant.

There are some more factory settings, and I guess a little bit more sci fi tinged given everything that's going on, where if I had to describe the first one, it would be a little more fantasy.

But otherwise a lot of the set design, a lot of the environmental decisions, they're gonna feel very familiar to you.

Yeah, I would say that they have a bit of a budget feel to them, And that doesn't mean that they look bad.

It's just like you can tell where they chose to spend more resources far art or the entire game, I guess, if you want to blow it all up into you know, the whole scope of the project.

But the fact that it is a post apocalyptic setting means that like there shouldn't be a lot of and it's it's not just like a post apocalypse, it's like way after the event, right, So like if you're inside of a factory, or if you're inside of like a blown out building or something like that, there's nothing in there because it's all gone.

It's been so long, everything's gone, right, And so from a you know, from an art perspective, that means there's less demand.

You don't have to fill bookshelves full of books and stuff like that.

Now it's just it's empty because it's been so long since you know, people live there.

And it really works for the setting.

It really works for establishing a tone as you go through these places.

And I'm sure it didn't hurt when they were making the game to be like, yeah, it's fine, Like just make like the outer walls of this building and that's all we need.

Yeah, And it works doubly so whenever you factor in how they play with the camera and how they shoot these different scenes, they play with scale a lot and it highlights, well, one, it highlights some of the architecture around here, in things like castles and the ruins of a city, but it also highlights the desolation and how empty everything really is.

Like you were just saying, there's a factory section in particular where you get a really wide scope of the area and it's a lot of nothing.

I mean, there is a lot of machinery, of course, but it's a vast expanse of just never ending dark corridors or not even a corridor, just like a dark, empty floor plan.

And I mean that complement walks and yeah, yeah, yeah catwalks too.

Yeah yeah, it's it's really well done.

I think they do this setting really well.

It's like, you know, it's not post apocalyptic like Fallout, but it works.

Yeah, I mean I think that, Like, I don't know if we're going to talk about music as we go through each areas, but I think the music carries a lot of that like lonely and desolate tone too.

And it's just like a very it's like a profoundly sad game in a lot of places, just because of how empty things are, how overgrown things are, how the music kind of sets that tone.

But it starts with the way it looks when you look at it.

Absolutely.

I have a note here about the design of the characters.

I'm going to hold off on those.

I think I think we can hold off on those until we first encounter them.

Here we do that almost immediately.

I also found a quote here.

Tarro is somewhat known from what I understand for how he designs and writes women characters.

See also Kaine, who is probably my favorite character and replicant.

I found this point in think article from France that did a big interview with him.

I link it in the show notes, and here's what they said.

The question post to him was, during your teenage years, you weren't very popular with women, as you're already mentioned, as you've already mentioned on several occasion.

Is this why you seem so fascinated by women, whether in their design or their writing, You pay much more attention to them than male characters.

And Taro's answer was, I just think it's because I like women.

Hell yeah, dude, Hell yeah.

Okay, But in all seriousness, he goes on to say this.

He says, quote, I feel that the opposite sex, whether male or female, is somewhat enigmatic and therefore easier to thematize, thematize the matties.

I understand what he's getting at.

It's the allure of the uh, it's the mysterious allure of what you can't know.

You know, we can't ever know what it's like to be a different gender.

And there's there's a mysteriousness to that that that's not a forbidden fruit kind of thing, but a curiosity.

It's like, I wonder, and I can understand that, especially being that you know he's I'm pretty sure he's a straight man.

That's attracted to women.

That's kind of a double whammy there.

I can get where he's coming from and for what it's worth too.

I you know, he's very upfront about you know.

I think his character is pretty attractive, like he's he's opened all that fan art and stuff.

But I don't know, I don't.

I haven't felt like anything he's written about them to be that egregious or offensive writing wise.

No.

I mean we talked in the Replicant series.

I think Kaye's costume is a bit much, but I don't think that anything writing wise has been egregious.

I agree with that for sure, and I don't find anything really wrong with to be except I might be misremembering.

There's a trophy I think for like looking up her skirt when she's climbing a ladder.

I think that's kind of, you know, joke or not.

I think it's kind of gross.

But as far as like the costume and stuff, I.

Like to b yeah, that's like an old school Japanese anime kind of thing.

It's like a holdover, it is what it is.

I side note, I remember very much being on side of I thought Kyane's costume was very appropriate to her character.

I was a fan.

I love Kye.

She's so great.

Yeah, she's the best.

And I understand not to get into another like Kine thing, but I understand like the significance to her character and like what her character's about and why she expresses it the way she does.

But also Kine didn't design that costume.

A man did, so, right, I'm sure maybe a woman did.

I don't remember.

Yeah, no, I totally get what you're saying.

Yeah, let's let's hold off on the on the two B and nine S discussion and the everybody else for when we get there.

I think it'll be more fun.

Yeah, mechanics, I'm not gonna have as much to say about this.

I don't think, as I said, I've played the Replicant re release, not the original near I understand that's a little closer to Dragon Guard one, which I mean is just an extremely tedious experience to play.

It's it's like a worst Dynasty Warriors in a way.

And this is why Platinum Joining was so huge, Like they really even if if it's not up to snuff with Bey and Etta or Metal Gear Rising, it's really fluid, it's really visually exciting, even if you're not doing the most in depth combos.

It gives you this feeling of power and grandiosity in your movements.

It makes you feel like a badass, and that's important when you're holding a controller in your.

Hand, especially when you're playing as like, canonically a badass like to be is a badass.

That's her job is.

You know, she's the best of the best, So you should feel like that too, and you absolutely do.

Like basically nothing that you fight one on one in this game, except for like the hardest boss fights ever, feels like it is a legitimate challenge to be and that's the way it should feel, because you don't want to get in that situation where it's like, well, why are they causing me so much problems when I'm canonically the best fighter that exists and there's only a couple things in Automata that ever reached that point and there's a good story reason for that.

The rest of the time, you're just mowing down these robots that you're fighting.

Yeah, And that's part of the bullet Hell experience and part of the mechanics is that Tarro likes to incorporate various styles.

Bullet Hell is the most common in this game.

He does shoot him ups as well, and you get a lot of that going back and forth between the third person action, side scrolling action, shoot him ups and bullet hells.

I don't remember if there's an isometric section like there was like Diablo esque in Replicant.

I don't think there is, right.

There's just some times when it like the camera goes top down, like but you're you're still doing the same action gameplay, it's just from a different camera angle.

I gotcha, I gotcha.

There is a hacking mini game here, which is pretty cool.

It involves that'll make more sense when we get there in the story.

It kind of involves playing as this little ship that is shooting these various targets while trying not to get shot yourself.

It's very retro inspired.

It's cute.

What is it?

What is that one Atari slash arcade game?

Is it just called Asteroids there?

Yeah, there is a game called Asteroids.

I think that's I think, yeah, I think that's the one where you actually have control over your over your dude flying around.

Yeah, it's kind of like that.

It's they're pretty neat.

I like them.

Not my favorite hacking mini game.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, hacking games are pretty contentious out there, Like I feel like every game that has hacking feels the need to create a mini game for it, and a lot of them like they wear out their welcome at best.

I feel like and the one an Automata, I really like it.

It might be because of what the music does like tickles my lizard brain, but the the act of doing the hacking mini game I've like I said, I've played this game at least three times now, I'm still not tired of it.

Yeah, it's a great game for that.

Automata uses a mixture of light and heavy attacks.

I think like the longest streaks you're gonna get are like maybe five or six.

It's not not that crazy.

You can mix a match, you can charge them up.

Different weapons will have different attack patterns and styles and number of hits they can do.

Just like replicant, weapons are a big deal in this game.

Unlike Replicant, you don't have to collect them all and upgrade them to get all of the endings.

It is not a requirement this time around.

They learn their lesson.

Thank goodness, one.

Of the few things that Tarro didn't double down on as far as you know, making you do things you might not want to do, and that you can you can equip one weapon to the light attack and a different weapon to the heavy attack, so you can really mix and match, like what do you want your kind of combos to be?

Like?

So it's kind of cool if you really dig into that.

I don't.

I normally just play with the stock weapons and upgrade them.

I don't really care that much to explore the weapons, but you can.

There's a lot of them.

Yeah, you know, I was experimenting a little bit.

I feel like the pace of play and the flow that he puts you in so often is kind of at odds with how the heavy weapons play and feel.

They are very slow, as they should be, but they don't have They definitely have the weight, but I'm not convinced they have the power behind them to make them worth it.

And even if they did, like, they're so slow that the pace of play makes it difficult.

I usually I'm just a two swords guy, like the starting katana sword and then another sword.

To get dual swords, I tried using the spears.

I tried a dual spear set up.

Not a fan, don't like it.

Yeah, the swords are the way to go.

I think the last mechanical thing before we move on to sound design is the equipment system, which I think is super cool.

It's in the form of these plugin chips where you've got a certain amount of space allotted, and each chip is going to take up a certain number of space, like one line, two lines, eight lines.

You have to place them depending on I don't know what your proclivity is.

Are into whatever build you want to make, You start off with all the basics.

You start off with.

You know your hud gauge, your health meter, and you could take those off if you want.

You can also take out your operating chip, which immediately gives you a game over.

Big fan of that, yep, but yeah, I love this.

You can choose like you want speed up, you can put that in there.

You want a critical level heel where if you're in the critical and you don't take damage you start to heal, you could do that attack boost.

You can do it.

I'm a big fan.

I love how this is designed.

Yeah, it's the way they present it, like the UI of it just makes perfect sense and really, like I mean, they tell you the number two, so it's not hard to figure out, like do I have room for this extra chip, but just the way they lay it out, it's fun to experiment and try to fit in.

You know, I really want this thing that helps me pick up items automatically so I don't have to press circle every time.

But it won't fit.

So how do I make it fit?

You got to do some some rearranging.

Or there's you know, an upgrade system for these plug in hips.

There's ways to make them take less memory so you can fit more stuff in.

You can buy upgrades.

It's a really fun system.

It's like a you know, it is an RPG.

It's kind of like a Light Systems RPG, but there is cool RPG stuff for you to play around with.

If you really like to make a build, or you know, if you don't want to see your mini map, take that shit out of your operating system and replace it with something else.

Yeah, every time I play a game like this, I think about doing a challenge run like that, like removing the minimp or with this one, I had thought about just doing bare fists and nothing else, you know, going through like a straight up side Tama one punch man kind of deal.

I don't know.

I think removing the mini map would be super immersive.

I also think it would be really difficult because of how big these lands are.

I can't imagine doing that.

Yeah, honestly, like a lot of games are not designed to be played without a minimp just straight up.

And the map in Near Automata is terrible.

The one in the pause menu not helpful at all.

So, I mean it will tell you like go northwest, but that's about all you're gonna get.

So I can't imagine playing this without the mini map.

Yeah.

I agree that map in the start menu is not super great.

Gives you a rough idea, but not the best and it is a bummer too.

Like I appreciate the idea of removing a map not fast traveling.

I like the idea in theory.

It's just, you know, when these games like The Witcher and and Well Near, they're just so long fallout, like you could get lost in just trying to travel.

And yeah, it's super immersive, but with a game this big, that's tough.

I mean that, you know, look back to like Pokemon that had a really rudimentary map you did have to explore, but those games were not very long.

I mean you're finishing that in under what twenty hours?

Twenty five hours?

I guess Near is about that long too.

But the environments are so much bigger, is what I'm saying.

Yeah, Like, the environments are a lot bigger, but you will be revisiting the same six locations over and over and over again.

So if they're like, go to the desert, You're like, Okay, I know how to get to the desert, but once you're in the desert, maybe it's not going to be so easy to find something, so mini map just use it.

A lot of video games are not built to be used without that stuff.

There's some cool ones that are, like they have in game signage and stuff that's going to point you the right way, but this is not that game.

Yeah, Trails is really good at that I'm nearing the end of my Trails playthrough, and they've got signs everywhere pointing you where to go.

It's everywhere is a nice little town.

The problem is is that it's so convenient to use that minimp that sometimes I'm just not even looking at the town, looking at the minimp.

It's just easier, and it's a shame.

One more thing about like the mechanics of it and something that I want to get your take on.

I so the pods, right, So you have this little floating robot guy next to you that shoots you Just basically hold down our one and it will fire our one or I'll one I can't remember.

It'll just fire a string of bullets forever and you can charge up like a special ability for them and stuff like that.

I think you're encouraged to like always be shooting if you want to do like the most efficient DPS.

I think that makes the It makes the combat screen too busy in addition to your flashy animations, and the sound of the shooting really drowns out other sound in a way that I don't I don't think I like.

On my third playthrough, I don't think I like this anymore.

Nope, Nope, this is a noisy game.

You're right, And it's a busy game.

It's not busy the same way that like Final Fantasy sixteen is, which is more of like that MMO kind of busy or wait am I misremembering?

Like when you're attacking the enemies, does the damage amount show like numbers like Final Fantasy.

Side in Automata it does.

Yeah, it does.

Okay, it's small, but it does show.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of that.

That's that's visual clutter.

I m O, that's MMO visual clutter.

I'm I'm with you one hundred percent.

I don't.

I don't like the Pod system.

I mean, I think they're funny as characters.

They're no grim or advice, but you know they're funny unintentionally.

You know, there will be this big giant machine and it'll be like analysis Goliath machine approaching proposal evade.

It's yeah, no, kill the machine.

It's like, yeah, okay, sure.

I mean they're funny.

I don't like having to hold down a button to just constantly plink away and it's just it's peanuts in terms of damage unless you're fighting like one of those piddly wink flying robots that just shoot you there.

It doesn't feel like it's doing much of anything.

I don't know.

I'm not a fan.

I really don't like it.

There's also like the huge bosses that are not available like to you can't go hit them with your sword whenever you want to, so you're just shooting them with the pod holding down that button for like thirty seconds to a minute while you wait for your opportunity to like dodge their big hit and then go slash with the sword, and it's like, yeah, just kind of boring, Like the spectacle of those fights is fucking great, but what you're doing is kind of boring when you're just waiting and watching that health bar like plink down like one sliver at a time with the pod damage.

Yeah, yeah, I would almost rather just have an arsenal of the heavy attacks, not dissimilar to grimoarvice, Like you could take away the constant shooting if you wanted another heavy attack.

Yeah, the heavy attacks with the pods, they come and clutch, especially other fights that you just mentioned.

So I don't know, can you take away the constant shooting.

I don't think you can.

I think it's just the heavy attack button you can swap out for like the scanner and stuff like that, right.

Yeah, you can swap it out for different special abilities.

I wonder now that i'm thinking about it, if there's like an OS chip for auto firing with the pod, but I don't I don't remember one.

There might be, but I don't remember one.

I'm pretty sure there is on easy mode, but you have to be playing.

Yeah, easy mode has all the good chips.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's the eyewin button.

You click it and you're in coasting through the story.

Let's talk sound design before we jump into the story.

I think this will be just a bit of a quicker aside.

I think the voice acting is very, very good.

I think it's just kind of universally well done.

I think it's a perfect mix of tone in terms of like an anime and a cinematic kind of story.

It's great.

I'm in the pocket for this kind of thing.

It works very well.

I think too, b is very endearing.

I think nine S is very endearing.

Adam and Eve just chew on so many of their lines.

The pods are you know, they're robots and it makes it funnier.

Yeah, I like it, And of course the robot the machines with their synthesized voices.

I'm a big fan.

I like all of this.

Yeah, I'm a little less hot on Adam and Eve voice performances.

That's a like that is a tone from a character that I just don't like basically ever, But I do love to be nine S other main characters, robot voices, all that stuff.

Is awesome.

You know, everyone that calls in over the radio, the operators from from the bass and stuff.

I love all of them.

It's just there's that type of character, that type of voice perform and that Adam and Eve have where I'm just like I just can't basically ever, I'm never on board for that.

It's a me thing.

No, I totally understand that.

Yeah, that operator is great, which she'll just chime in and be like, oh to be don't you want to be pretty?

Like look at the flowers.

It's very good.

Yeah, And she calls in like crying, I don't want to live anymore.

She broke up with me.

To me, He's like, I'm not the person to talk to you about this.

Get the fuck out.

I'm it's crazy, Yeah, stop it.

But of course, the meat of this section is the compositions.

It's similar to Replicant in terms of the signature style.

You're gonna get a lot of hand drums and that bombastic sort of percussion, like you're large struck, like timpanies and bass drums.

You're like Tiko style drumming.

You get a lot of that.

You get the breathy mezzo soprano voice, that's sometimes multi tracked, sometimes choired up.

You get your strummed and your plucked guitar that's present in here quite a bit, and then absolutely bombastic balls to the wall sort of sheets of sound with the drumming sort of leading the charge.

You get tons of low strings.

It's it can get really intense on one area in particular, but I think everybody knows about when it comes to this game is a great example of this.

What did you think about the soundtrack overall?

This is one of my favorite soundtracks of all time in video games, and it is my like if I'm I'm like, if I'm depressed and I just want to like be in my feelings, I will put on the near automous soundtrack and just just feel it all.

Like I don't know, it sounds kind of weird to say it that way, but like this is my fuck me up soundtrack.

I will just listen to this, and the City Ruins song is like the one that kicks all that off for me.

But there's I mean, there's some really incredible songs in here, and then just anytime you're in a new area, the music is I think we probably talked about this in the Replicant series, But the arrangements in the Near games are unlike anything I've heard in any other game.

It's so distinctly near the personality of it.

I love the way they use vocals in the songs.

They're all in the made up language, the Chaos language, except for like one notable song that has English, Japanese and French and Chaos versions.

Yeah, but the way that the voice is used as like an instrument with different tones, rather than like we're gonna sing some lyrics to you, which is like the other song the ones in English.

Of course, lyrics important, but I love how we go through different areas of this game and like, sometimes the voices are really shrill.

Sometimes they're like you have this like in the desert, you have like this deep alto singing.

Right, it's amazing, Like front to back one of the best soundtracks in my opinion.

Yeah, they've crafted a really unique voice for themselves.

I'm not sure what the workload was, Like some reason, I think Okabe was the head on this.

I'm not sure why, but okabei Hawashi and Takahashi have created such a distinct sound in these sound tracks.

It's a voice that you wouldn't mistake for anybody else, although I will say there is one track and here, Peaceful Sleep, that is like a slower plucked guitar.

I want to say this plays at the Resistance camp.

It's a slower plucked guitar.

There's a harmonica melody that gets some like glissando's in it.

That could practically be a chronocross track or like just anything by Yasunori Mitsuda.

It's very j RPG big fan.

Yeah, love it.

I'm glad that you caught out City Ruins.

That's one that you're gonna hear a lot.

But it really sets up the world very well.

It starts with this bed of synth strings that gives way to like the sound of rushing wind just sort of ebbing and flowing while a strumming guitar, you know, sets up the harmonic progression, and there's just a single note piano in the like lower to mid upper register.

And then of course you get that breathy sort of auto meso soprano voice coming in that sets up the feel of the tracks perfectly.

Like, yes, there's bombastic, but the quote fuck me up music that you had mentioned, it's gonna be the slower, more reflective pieces like this, the pieces that allow you to sort of just be bathed in them rather than assaulted by them.

Both, yeah, both are good and valuable, but you know, being bathed in something in this made up language where you don't even have to think about the words, it's just another instrument.

It's very soothing.

And you know, the cool part about this too, is that a lot of these areas, like the area music is oh, what's the word, it's like context based, like, so there's different layers to it, and it will build as you go or maybe as the story picks up, Like for a while, you'll only hear like the first three layers of the City Ruins song, and then like the combat variant of it.

But then as you go through the rest of the game, you'll start to get more and more layers, and all the songs gradually get bigger and more intense depending on what's going on, and you have the like the little chiptune versions of it when you're doing the hacking game, Like every song has a chiptune version, which is awesome.

And that's one of the things I like a lot about the soundtrack too, is just how it builds and like when you enter a new area for the first time, it's very reserved most of the time, and then by the time you get to the end, maybe you're fighting a boss or maybe you're in a big story moment.

The soundtrack's going a lot harder when you're in that moment.

And it's so cool, so cool.

I love going on YouTube.

People have put together like these compilations that transition between all the phases of these songs, and it's really really effective for you know, setting an atmosphere when you first enter and then like building it up as the story in that area builds up.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

There are a couple of songs on Replicant in Replicant that outclass this soundtrack for me, just a couple though, But this soundtrack is just it's so good.

There's another one that plays It's Pascal's theme that I'll probably just hold on to until we get to him.

That is just terrific.

And then of course, you know the one that everybody knows become as God's Yeah, it's just fantastic.

Yeah, And I thought you were going to say Weight of the World.

Weight of the World is the one that oh yeah, that too.

That's a big one too, and we'll talk about that later.

Al righty, it is about that time to jump into the story for today.

For today's discussion, you can check the show notes just in case.

But we are not going to get up to the ending of ending A.

We'll get as far as we can, so don't worry.

If you haven't got there yet.

Things will be clearly marked.

Don't worry, but we're jumping in now.

Dave, any last words before that fantastic opening sequence, Glory to Mankind, that's all, or to mankind.

This game begins with a quote by to Be, who we're going to meet.

Shortly.

She says, everything that lives is designed to end.

We are perpetually trapped in a never ending spiral of life and death.

Is this a curse or some kind of punishment?

I often think about the God who blessed us with this cryptic puzzle and wonder if we'll ever have the chance to kill him.

Confirmed jeffyg Yes, we will kill God.

Not even playing around.

They just get it out there right at the start.

Yes, this is an exciting opening, and I think I'm not as hot on the shoot 'em up sections as I think a lot of people are.

But I do think they're exciting, and that's what this whole intro is.

It's to be along with a group of your house soldiers flying in these like Gundam jets but also robot hybrids depending on the situation, toward an unknown enemy, and you're just mowing down machines as you go.

This is your tutorial on how how the shoot'em up sections work.

Your comrades are getting gunned down one by one, you're getting your tutorial, and eventually it's just to be She'll crash at the very end.

She flies out of the flight unit with total style, and then you get your action gameplay tutorial.

Did you like this opening shoot them up section?

Oh yeah, it's I mean, the scale of it's really cool.

The music is awesome, and I so I like the idea of these old, these old school shoot them ups, but they're all way too hard for me.

So to be able to play one where I'm like, I'm actually good at this.

This is actually pretty easy.

I like it a lot.

This is another thing in the game that you know, I've played this game many times now, I'm still not sick of these shoot them up sections.

They're just pleasing.

Yeah, if you're a real shoot them up fan, I can imagine that they'd be a bit of a snooze fest.

But I mean they're just fun.

I mean they're exciting, and that's yeah, that's why they're there.

They're there to visually stimulate you, overstimulate you maybe and make you just feel like you are the king at that point in time.

And it works.

And speaking of feeling like the king or the queen or whatever royalty you'd like to feel like, I'm partial to Duke to Be crashes out and this is where she lands in a total badass style and we get our action gameplay tutorial and we kind of already talked about the mechanics of this visual appearance.

We didn't talk about that.

To Be to Be and the Joha units all are sort of draped in black.

They're various black dresses black not suits, but like you know, pants, shorts, jackets, shirts.

To Be Herself is wearing a sort of Gothida Gothida Gothic Lolita esque dress if you're familiar with that style, that's sort of ornate dress, dalled up, kind of look white hair like all of the or High units, and importantly, eyebands This symbolism gets very apparent as you're going through the ORHA units wear eyebands.

The inlure reason well, the inlaw explanation for this is that the eyebands on the inside have like they're computerized so they can actually see.

They're not like Kenchi for Mortal Kombat using telepathy, but the binding of the eyes and some of the YOURHA units also have bindings of the mouth too.

That's very reminiscent of the you know see no evil speak no evil here, no evil.

It's showing that their eyesight is binded in a metaphorical way.

They don't see, they're blinded by ideology.

They have the metaphorical blinders on.

Yeah, precisely so, and there's another bit of symbolism for that.

Once we get back to the bunker, we very quickly we meet up with Nins, who is also your unit nine S is a scouting unit.

Specialty is not combat like to be, but scouting information hacking.

He's also about the iband white hair he's wearing like shorts and just a kind of black top similar style.

Though he's pretty cool.

He's able to hack through, which he's going to do through this opening and the beginning parts of the game to help to Be, but for now we are running through the rest of this industrial level music is great as an opener, deep percussion, beds of sound.

There's this prominent violin going through when the rhythm's not playing as much in that austinato, and then you know, of course, as we both said, Dave, those vocals in an unknown language.

One thing that's very apparent too from the bat is that to Be is much more traditionally robotic, like not like like.

I think they do it much better here than in like PERSONA three.

I love Persona three, but I guess is the robot character there, and she talks like this all throughout the game, and it's really grating.

They did it better in the remake, I think, but in games like that, in games like a Chrono Trigger if you think Robo I had other examples, but I can't think of him now.

To Be talks like a normal person.

She's just very sort of austere and strict and cold, whereas nine s he's more of like you know, your anime shonan kind of guy.

He's well, all right to Be, I mean, you get a load of that stuff, and she's like this is not the time we're on a mission.

Yeah, okay to be, but it's clear very early on that like he's got affection for her.

Yeah, and you know, you get a little characterization at the beginning based on like how they interact, and like you said, like nine is trying to be more casual like or sometimes like too formal.

Nins is trying to figure this situation out, I guess is the best way to say it.

But he's also like he's got a sense of humor.

He's trying to make small talk to b is not about it, and it kind of like this is our starting point for our two characters.

To Be is a soldier and she's in this you know, mission to kill the target and that's it.

That's that's all that is necessary of her.

So that's all that she's going to give any attention to.

Whereas like nine S is not a soldier, he's a scout.

He's an information gatherer.

He is the type of character in world that would like ask questions about what he's seeing, and so to Be is just kind of like straightforward with the mission.

We have our mission, we have our target, onto the target, and nine S is like pushing at all these walls and stuff, trying to figure everything out, including his new partner who he's never met before, and he's he normally doesn't work with anyone, so he's like got this nervous, chatty energy to him where he's like, I'm normally by myself, I don't know what to do with another person here.

And so that initial characterization of the two of them is good, and then we start moving forward and we see them kind of like deal with the fact that they're with someone who's not like who they're used to being with.

And then like you said, of course instant crush from nins on two B and you know, frankly me too, and most other people playing I would imagine.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, he's like he's not sure how formal to be around her either, and that'll that probably plays a little different in the Japanese with honorifics, but you know, he calls her mam a lot, and she's like, stop calling me ma'am and he's like, okay, ma to be And to your point about him like being a little chatty emotional.

At one point he's like, you know, ma'am, I'm glad you're here.

Et cetera, et cetera, and she's like emotions are prohibited, and he's just like, h like that little anime.

Yeah, yeah, it's great, it's great.

Yeah.

Their dynamic is great right from the beginning, even when they're not super comfortable with each.

Other, it becomes pretty clear why we're here.

We're fighting machines.

There's one machine we're looking for, but in the meantime, we're plowing down loads of them.

And this divide is set up pretty early.

On nine s even says the following when two B is taken aback by a machine that's speaking, he says, there's no meaning to anything machines do, or something like that.

I mean, see also the iband the blindfold.

Yeah, at least like here, the thing that's going over the intercom is like a it's like a message for workers, like saying like thank you for your work, be sure to clock out and shit like that.

Like I've tried to pick up as much of that dialogue as I can.

You know, I think that he says like it's just regurgitating old things in the code or something like that, and it's like, yeah, they're you know, what you hear is nonsense, and so Yeah, the machines are just blabbing what they find in the in the system.

Yeah, that's gonna be a theme with nins and the Yorha units.

Weirdly to be is less intent on this, but nine S and the Oorha units they are intent on, I want to say, dehumanizing machines, which is I think what Tarro is going for.

He wants us to see that as dehumanization.

But at the very least, it's othering.

You know, the machines, they're not even life forms like us, like us androids, not that they don't mean anything, it's just random bullshit that they're saying.

It's just numbers things like that.

Also, I am glad that you said you were taken taken down as much as you could.

This game loves to do something that bugs me to hell, and that is puts dialogue, both incidental and story canonical dialogue in these fight sequences.

While it's so noisy, like we were just talking about, you're hearing the slashes, you're hearing the combos, you're hearing the constant of the pod.

It's so BioShock did this too, and it drives me absolutely up a wall.

I man, that sucks does that bother you as much as it does me?

Oh yeah, A near replicant did that too, So it was kind of good that you had to replace some of those boss fights three or four times, so like, oh, maybe I'll finally hear what they're saying this time.

In Automata, it's not that easy.

And yeah, they do it all the time.

There's a boss fight that, like we might talk about today where the thing you're fighting is talking to you the whole time, and I have no fucking idea what they said, no matter how many times I play the game, because they're always talking and it's always during combat.

Yeah, it's a pain.

I've said before.

I try to go back and rewatch cutscenes and gameplay on YouTube to take notes.

I kind of shot myself on the foot with that for this end of the year.

Kind of super behind now, but I had to do that on a lot of these because I was too focused.

I'm not dying.

I mean, I think I know exactly the fight you're talking about too.

I did take all of that down on a lot's play made sure too.

Speaking of a big fight, we find our target.

It's this giant machine back ho looking thing with sob blades.

It's pretty sick, and it's even sicker because it eventually turns into this like Transformers slash bionical looking thing, just this huge robot in disguise.

It is so sick.

Also, just a quick note, I want to hear if you think it's also sick.

But this machine, I forgot that they did this the first time around.

You can't read any of the names on these machines to Be because you're playing is to Be.

You will learn them whenever you play as nine S mild spoiler.

A lot of them are philosopher's names.

Some of them are just name checking, IMO, some of them aren't.

I want to hold off until the second play through just because that's technically a spoiler, even though it's a really tiny one.

The veiled reason behind that is I want more time to research that stuff.

But we'll go with the first explanation that it's technically a spoiler.

So tell me about how sick you thought this Transformer was.

Well, as someone who as a kid went through a I think construction equipment is awesome.

Phase.

I'm all about fighting a giant back ho in a video game.

I mean, I recently played a demo for a game called Motor Slice where you fight a giant like I forget what it was, it's like a steamroller or something like that.

I was like, hell, yeah, I want to fight a giant steamroller.

But yeah, I think a lot of like the big robots that you fight, like the big bosses, especially in this factory area, are like that kind of industrial robot thing, Like it's not they're built where it's like believable that they could be used in industry, but they're also kind of war machines.

You don't know why you'd need those giant spinning saw blades for anything good, you know.

But yeah, I thought it was cool and like this, like you've said a couple of times, like the scale of fighting these things is awesome, Like the camera will zoom out, or if the camera doesn't zoom out, it will just take up the entire screen because it's that big.

And then that's before they start playing with like different angles and stuff like that.

So yeah, I love all of these even though I, like I said earlier, they're not the most exciting as a boss fight and a big sin by Nero Automoty here you cannot save until after this fight, so if you die at any point, you have to start the whole game over again, which that sucks.

Yeah, so don't die, use your healing items.

Yeah, thankfully they give you a bunch, but that is a bummer.

Not a fan of that.

This opening fight really checked me on dodging.

You can perfect dodge in this game, which kind of slows time down.

I mean, kind of like Benetta.

Actually, now that I think about it, it allows you an opportunity to do a special counter attack.

Pretty nice, and that especially helps here.

They do that scaled camera trick where they put the camera like real close to two B, but they also put it close to the ground, so it's looking up at the machine, and that makes the saw blades just appear even more ginormous than they actually are.

Yoko Taro and his team are just fantastic at cinematography, at least as far as these action games go.

It's really good stuff.

This is an epic fight.

I mean, you're just ripping, tearing shit up, trying not to get ripped and torn up yourself, or at least I was.

Two B only wins this fight with the help of nine S, who, right before two B gets sawed to death, flies in in his flight unit smacks into its arm.

This hits him away, though he's terribly injured.

And funny enough, after nine s was doing the chit chat and the the getting real close, and Halle Wallly to be brushing him away, saying, folks on the mission to be begins to show a lot of emotion here m hm, which is you know, totally contradictory.

It immediately sets this friction up in her character, which is important.

It'll come back throughout this and it's it's not clear now, it will become clear.

Chekhov's friction pod will say, like, proposal, it's inadvisable to save him to be just snapped.

She's like, shut up, pod, get me staunching gel and logic virus vaccines, then access to the advisable.

The subject's vital signs are too poor to attempt field repair.

Just do what I say.

To be, just go.

You shut up to even to the point where her voice begins to waiver a little bit, like what's going on?

Yeah, you know it's interesting.

We mentioned at the top that one of the big themes of the game is like, what is the thing that separates humans from anything else?

Approaching?

You know, conscious thought or something like that, or maybe that's the thing that separates it.

But we don't play as humans.

These are androids.

But I'd like the way that they characterize, like these are effectively humans.

They have feelings, they have conscious thought, and like even though to be starts the game very focused on the mission, it's not like she's breaking down barriers in code or something like that to feel emotions.

She just had these walls built up because it's not necessary for her job.

And that's all that's been, you know, that's all she's ever had to do.

She's a soldier.

She fights.

She doesn't need to care for other people beyond what's necessary for the mission.

And something about nine S is just it's chipping away at that quickly.

And that's one of the things that evolves as we go through these different situations.

Yeah.

Absolutely, And on first brush you might be thinking like, oh, okay, maybe she was just trying not to show her emotions and she likes the little guy, and yeah, yeah, you know, that's that's a good read for your first time through.

I think that's what they want.

It's good stuff.

This section ends this fight with another You go another round with one of these transformer guys.

But you can't compete because like several more I think, three more rise up from the ocean all around you.

You're done.

Nine S is critically in Juredi's missing his leg.

He can't he can barely function to be as frazzled.

So they decide to pull out their black boxes, their little black cubes, and they create this immense explosion.

I love the way that they do this.

They clink them together like champagne glasses, like they're celebrating.

It's a toast.

It's it's pretty good, and it's just this catastrophic explosion and everybody's dead.

Mm hmm.

It's it's interesting they have this in their back pocket, right because they are androids.

We find out, you know, soon that they just print a new one and upload their consciousness into the new body and they move on.

But the fact, like, you can do this at any time, by the way, it's like part of your os as to be.

You can just self destruct any time you want.

But the fact that this is like, well, we got to do this, I'll see you on the other side type of deal.

But we don't know what the other side looks like quite yet.

It's cool, Yeah, that's a good point too.

Death for the Yoorha units, it's different.

They can upload their consciousness into other bodies.

They upload them, their memories, their personalities all into this system at the bunker which loads them into a new body, so that being so like, it seems that death isn't totally meaningless to them.

You know, when we get back to the bunker to be we take control of her.

She's walking around, she's okay.

When she nine s she thanks him for uploading her data to the bunker so it could be put into a new two B unit, and he kind of doesn't know what she's talking about.

He's like, I did that.

Sorry, I don't remember.

There wasn't a whole lot of bandwidth down there.

You know, I probably only had enough time to back up your memories.

Mine are only intact up to the point just before we rendezvous.

I see after that, it's not you know, he doesn't have any memories.

And it's interesting here because she seems a little upset, and as he walks away, the camera frames her fist and then nins in the background walking away, and she clenches it in anger, which it poses this interesting idea she lost her nine s, But what does that mean to them?

And this is functionally as post death society and it opens up, you know, the classic ship of theseus example, at what point when things begin to change in us one at a time, at what point do we lose ourselves?

This is another core question of humanity that Yokotaro is getting at.

And this has explored in other games really well too, like Signalis, And there's a bunch of philosophy stuff that I think we'll get to a little bit later when we deal with a couple of other machines.

It's this fascinating idea like at what point do we become somebody different?

If one thing is changed at a time?

What makes me me?

And it's like that that kind of like bald fist by to Be can give you a lot of different ideas about like why is she angry?

Is she angry because they failed their mission or that they succeeded but at you know, not in a satisfactory way, a way that she's satisfied with as a soldier, and as you know, someone who gets shit done.

Is she upset that?

Like she felt a connection with nine s and now that connection is wiped out and he's reset, you know what, like a couple hours earlier, but a lot happened and in that couple hours, and like can we regain that for her to it's like for her to have the burden of like knowing that all of this shit happened and he's just over there like yeah, I'm nine S, I'm a scout?

What up?

And having none of that left and basically not quite having to re introduce yourself.

But that's where you start, basically like you're you're basically strangers or people who just met.

So yeah, a lot of different opportunities for interpretation of like why is to be upset right now?

I think it's very telling that you use the word strangers in keying me into how you view this strangers.

I'm not saying I disagree with you.

I just think it's interesting.

Yeah, well, if they go back to that time when they you know, they just met basically, then what do you really know about to be as nine s?

And what do you know about nine s as to be one of them knows a lot more than the other one.

I think yeah, it's fair one sided.

I mean, you're not wrong, they are functionally stranger.

She lost her nine S anyway, we'll get more into that as time goes on.

Now we get a brief introduction glory to mankind.

We get an introduction to this world from our commanding officer, Commander, here's what they say.

Fifty twelve AV the year Mankind's glorious history came to a sudden and abrupt end when the world was invaded by aliens from beyond the stars.

The aliens unleashed a new breed of weapon machine life forms that all but annihilated human civilization.

The handful of survivors that were made fled from Earth, seeking refuge on the Loon.

Fifty two four AD.

Humanity launched its counter attack, deploying an army of androids from a network of orbiting bases.

But after more than it does in large scale descents upon the enemy, we still haven't managed to repel the invaders.

That is why you, the Yoha Forces, exist to break this stalemate once and for all.

You are our ultimate weapon, and you must put an end to this war.

This is where I made a note here.

The your units have veils over their mouths, you know, restraining the eyes blind, restraining the mouths unable to voice opinions, not having a voice.

This makes me wonder glory to mankind.

Is it a proclamation or is it a you know, chant of subservience.

Knowing Yoko Taro, it very well could be either, and that's just something to keep in mind.

Another thing that adds to this is the bunker is in black and white, totally black and white.

Yes, that view of blinders.

My in group is part of me.

I am my in group.

No individuality.

Machines are just machine.

There's nothing more to them.

Nonsense that inability to see nuance.

Again, it's not subtle, but it's worth pointing out, especially in an audio format.

I think.

I think that some of the lack of subtlety in the beginning is to get you to start thinking about stuff and then some of the more subtle things will come later on.

But there are points where people just straight up say what they want you to be thinking about.

And this is one of the times when it's conveyed in other ways.

Oh yeah, you're right.

Yeah, there are some I have noted a few later where they just like say something and they're like, nah, forget it.

It's very funny.

Yeah, you're right.

This whole beginning is Yokotaro pulling the cord on the lawnmower twice before the third time actually launches it up, you know, and Twob wakes up without her blindfold.

By the way, Ninus is doing some maintenance on her.

This is kind of wrapped into the accessibility options with like voice brightness stuff like that.

Pretty cool, it's it's pretty unique.

Yeah, the commander gives us an order.

We are to go to the surface of Earth to one do recon with the resistance group that's down there, and two look into why they're regular YORHA and resistance resistance contact is m I A.

I'm not sure what's going on there.

We're gonna go do some recon.

Why are they sending a combat model to be down to Doon with nine S an actual recon unit.

Well, nine S asks that same thing.

Nine S ponders it to be, says, just do the mission.

That's what we were told.

Yeah, it's we asked and answered.

Yeah, Hey, things might be dangerous.

You might need to be yeah, or not to be.

That's the question.

Down on the surface.

This is where we get that tune that you liked so much, The city ruins and I agree, I like it too.

Destroyed buildings everywhere, dotting the area, gnarled roots of trees.

They're striping the land.

You Also, interestingly, there are packs of hostile machines, but there are also non hostile machines.

I think back to Near Replicant or Gestalt, that first encounter with Shades.

They don't attack you, you can just sit there.

They won't engage same here, but of course it kind of funnels you into doing it.

There's a later scene where a computer does it for you that I think is a really nice subtle touch.

But here you know you are going to have to kill machines even though they're not attacking you at first.

It's just the way Yoko Taro does things.

Yeah, as you enter the city Ruins, you go down this ramp and then you go into this building or the hollowed out structure of a building, and there's the first robot you see is in that building, and he's just kind of wandering around.

And then as you go down onto the ground, you'll get a couple of remarks from people about like, wow, there's a lot of vegetation, and then one of the operators will come in and be like, yeah, since the humans left, the plant life has flourished and grown to unheard of sizes, and then some of the robot packs will be non hostile.

And I think nine S says like, yeah, we've been getting more reports about machines like this that just kind of stare off into the distance and you're like, okay, well slice them up or not.

But that's just what's going on down here.

But there are some hostile machines in the city ruins, and then there's the ones that are like they're blocking the vending machines.

You got to take them out.

But yeah, starting to kind of challenge what you know about the machines when the first ones you encounter are just kind of they're just chilling in the sun or in that build a wandering around.

Yeah.

Yeah, And it doesn't it doesn't feel good attacking these little guys.

And they do turn hostile as soon as you attack them, but it doesn't it doesn't feel good.

I mean, they have a very cute design, which I think adds to this very rounded features in tiny little circular lights for eyes, and when they do speak, it's not like a gruff robot voice.

It's I don't know, we'll hear it throughout here I'm sure, I'm sure I could find some sourced audio.

But speaking of killing them and beating them up, we're gonna take some miscellaneous tasks around here.

The resistance camp is right inside gets that harmonica theme.

That's like a JRBG chrona cross kind of deal.

The leader of the resistance is anemone.

Tough word to say, anemone.

She's taken aback by seeing two.

She calls her too.

She's like, two, you're here, but she evades any follow ups when when we're like, what does that mean?

She gives us some miscellaneous tasks.

It largely just serves to, uh get you to get a lay of the land, you know, little fetch quests, little uh explore this area, practice your skills kind of a deal.

It's fine, it's not too long.

Unlock the merchants.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's right.

Yeah, speaking of the merchants, this is where you and I and you and I have talked about this.

This is where the NPC trend of throwing you a softball questions before dismissing them.

Like the weapons dealer.

You'll talk to him and he's like, what if my weapons are just making my friends die?

All the faster.

Ah, never mind, forget I said anything.

Yeah, and then the supply trader who only has like his one good leg is human.

The rest of his limbs are like robotic because he's you know, he's had so much damage done to them.

And he's like, oh, yeah, my good leg is hurting, but I can't replace it.

And he says, uh so if I go and replace that the leg, what happens?

I mean, would I even be me anymore?

Or would I just anyway?

It's my own problem.

Didn't mean to trouble you with it.

Yeah, And it's like I get what they're doing.

You know, they want you to get into the mindset.

They want to ease you in because not everybody thinks about this shit.

There are a lot of people in both of our respective servers, I know that for a fact, that see this kind of thing and they're like, this doesn't matter, you know, like this kind of sitting and pondering doesn't help anything.

It's just sitting in your own head, not productive at all.

And I get it.

I don't agree with it, but I get it.

So Tarro in his his crew, it's maybe slightly crude, but he's priming you again.

He wants you to start thinking about this stuff, and there are other games that do it a little more subtly, like Pentiment is the one that I wrote down as an example.

But I don't think I don't think this is necessarily bad.

I just think it's it's funny and like a like like an okay, man, all right, does that make sense?

No, totally like to have the NPCs all basically give like a two sentence summary of like a famous philosophical you know, conundrum or something, and then just be like, ah, I was just kidding, like, yeah, what do you what do you need?

I'll sell you something.

It's weird, but I don't know.

I think that there's a better way to like seed and then like explore these ideas if if some of because some of them are like explored throughout the story at at large, like as you go through you can connect dots and start to think about some of these things as kind of we talked about before, like to be a nine s got re uploaded into another body?

How similar are they to the ones that we knew thirty seconds before that?

But then we have this guy basically being like in case you're not familiar with this idea.

Here's a two sentence summary of it.

It's a little blunt.

I guess I get what you mean when it's like they want you to think about this stuff.

But I also kind of feel like Yokotaro or whoever wrote these just wanted to inject some of their favorite philosophy in a clumsy way.

I don't disagree.

I do think it is clumsy.

I think this kind of goes back to what I mentioned at the top, where depending on how much you think about this kind of thing, you might see this as more blunt or more rough around the edges, or as you said, more I already forgot what you said, but just.

Kind of like the idea that like, Okay, we're going to talk about this throughout the game.

Now here's here's the big idea, and then we're going to explore this later on.

Like if you are thinking about it that way, then it is really clumsy to just be like, here's the theme, write it down or something like that, you know, right.

Right, or or clumsy right it's but but I I think I can see what he's trying to do, because not everybody, like like we just got done talking about not everybody thinks that way, and I think most folks have stumbled across these thoughts before.

But yeah, I don't know.

I know a lot of people that I've tried to talk to, and this is only anecdotal, that I've tried to talk to about some of this stuff, and they just seem like they couldn't care less.

And part of me thinks that he's a little bit deft in phrasing these so bluntly, like there's no room for interpretation on what they're going for.

Here.

He is giving you the food on the plate and he's handing it to you, or rather he's handing you the silverware.

And for some people that might be the ticket, that might be the trigger that gets them thinking like you and I think already, which is why you and I see this and we're like okay, all right, buddy, okay, But it's because we're not we're not straying yes to this kind of thing.

Yeah, I guess, I guess in that you would have to have faith that the person who was not going to consider that type of thing at all is then going to be like, oh, this merchant is spouting this and then tells me to forget about it.

But I'm not going to forget about it.

I'm going to remember that.

I'm I'm not sure it's going to break through to the people who just mash through, you know, NPC dialogue.

So I don't know.

I'm not like mad at it.

It was just like I played it and I was like, oh, Okay, we're just putting it out there, putting all these things out there, and then then we're doing that thing.

We're like, ah, I'm just I'm just Josh and yeah, don't worry about that.

That's just me.

Yeah, yeah, I get you.

I get you.

Oh.

This is also where we meet Operator six.

Oh.

We kind of talked about her today.

How's the weather today?

What does this have to do with the mission?

Oh?

This is so like you to be.

Operator six oh to two B.

It is time for your regularly scheduled contact.

This is to be nothing to report.

Good to hear say, how's the weather on Earth today?

Good?

It's fine.

Does that question have anything to do with our operation?

Not really.

I just figured it might feel nice to have some good weather.

Feeling nice has no bearing on completing missions.

That is so like you to be anyway, talk to you.

Later, I chuckled.

I chuckled every time, and Neminee asks to be a nine S to clear out the desert.

There have been some hostile machine reports.

There some resistance members up ahead too that we're going to rendezvous with, including Jackass, which I love.

When Ninas addresses for the first time, he's like, jack Ass, was it?

So?

It's so good?

Uh?

That's who do that too.

If I if I had a work appointment with someone and I read their name was Jackass, I'd be like a little hesitant to to to be like, all right, what's up, Jackass?

What can I do for you?

I think that reminds me of like all of those great name gags that you that you see.

I think it's thirty Rock where one of the doctors I want to say, I'm probably gonna get this wrong, where it's like they try to say his name like doctor Spacemen and he's like it's doctor space Man.

Yeah.

It's like pretty good, or like that old there's like an old commercial for something where this guy's interviewing and he keeps calling the guy mister dumbass and at the end like old guy, it's yeah, exactly, it's dumas.

Yeah, doctor beardface on scrubs.

Uh oh, you can call him doctor beard Face and he's like, it's Beard Fasset.

It's classic.

That's always that'll always get a laugh.

It's always good.

Yeah, funny names are funny.

This desert's great.

It's a nice contrast to the greenery we just came from.

Pretty cool.

The Council of Humanity, that's like the higher ups, the big guys, the big wigs.

They broadcast via the pod.

It's mostly propaganda, like I don't know how else to say it, in service of Yrha, glory to mankind, et cetera, fighting for the humans on the moon.

I mean, it's just sort of like an army propaganda kind of broadcast.

But more interestingly, I think in this desert, the machines begin to speak more, and nine s is gonna start to bump up against the idea that it doesn't mean anything.

They say things like ow ow ow run away if you're attacking them.

If you don't, they might say hello, how are you?

They might also just say kill over and over again.

But Ninas still doesn't buy it.

He says, quote, I wonder what makes them choose those combination of words?

M h oh, And then he says two B.

Don't worry.

They're just emitting words at random.

They don't mean anything.

I think two B said the first quote.

I wrote it down a little bit unclear.

It's so crazy.

He's fully bought the propaganda.

He's he's not willing to lift the lift the blindfold to see this stuff, to question this stuff.

Yeah, well, he's just he's just woken up a couple hours ago and now he's down here, and all he knows is that the machines are unintelligent and that what they say is just a random, you know, random assortment of words.

And hey, they happen to come out in a context that makes sense or in an order that makes sense.

It's just a weird coincidence.

So nothing to worry about here.

Glory to mankind?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Why does that look like a duck and sound like a duck?

It smells like a duck too.

Get that rock out of here.

This part is pretty sick too.

As you're making your way forward and there are loads of dead android bodies leading to this opening, and then there is this deep valley down in this deep, deep valley full of debris, more debris than usual and more android bodies than usual.

You see a very peculiar site.

You see a group of these machines all basically pretending to be humans.

Child, child child, What is this?

Don't listen to them, to be.

To to get them.

They don't have any feelings, they're just imitating human speech.

Let's take them out.

Some are playing like children, you know, they're they're going up to other machines saying pick me up.

One is rocking a baby in a cradle.

I think, if memory serves correctly, he's rocking and just saying love, love or something like that.

Care Maybe I don't know, but mostly they're fucking like, they're just pretending to fuck.

There's a lot of fucking going on here, like unga bunga starfish style.

It's it's funny.

It's not played for comedy, but it's funny.

Once again, nine s they don't have any feelings, they're just imitating human speech.

Let's take them out.

Yeah, mass extermination.

Yeah.

Why does you get your take on this?

Because up until now we've seen the robots are the machines they have, so they're wearing clothing in the desert.

They're starting to say things that start to make sense.

But now we have like actions that they're imitating, and I was wondering, especially like the first couple of times I played this, like if they are so we start to get the idea obviously, like are they becoming conscious?

Are they?

Are they imitating what they know of humanity?

Where would they get this from?

Where would they get these ideas from?

Why is why are these the first actions other than fighting and running away that they would imitate, like taking care of children and then just really going at it like you said, unga bunga style?

What those are?

What would you say, like, you know, primal actions that you don't need an elevated level of consciousness?

Those are I mean basically all animals do that.

So are they starting at the bottom or do you think that they found this somewhere wherever they're getting these ideas from, Like is there a store of movies or something like that where they're getting these ideas from.

Well, I think the answer is too fold.

Part of it is.

Part of it can be recontextualized when you hear an upcoming quote from another machine that we meet who implies that machines can evolve and grow.

Now they say that this particular machine or rather these have grown much faster, and they clearly have.

But if that is true, then we can assume that all machines have the capability to do so.

And two, I also think it folds in nicely to the theme one of the themes of this game, the drive to be and what it means to be human these machines.

If we're giving a charitable read on this, we could surmise that these machines have woken up in some way and seeing that, like, oh, you know, my life up till now has just been machine order, blah blah blah.

What does it?

Why do I feel like I have brethren?

Why do I feel like I like this machine who I am close to more than the others?

Why do I feel like I suddenly have wants and desires?

And because they were sent down here to kill humans by the aliens, it's not impossible that they were observing them and seeing that these humans have the capacity to love and to have friendships and community, that they're trying to emulate them to strive to become human to they're emulating what they eventually hope to be.

They want to be human, they don't know how, so they're performing this simulacrum in hopes of arising and evolving, But at this point in time, it's just crude and it's the best they can do.

I don't know, that's my read on it.

I feel like I'm about to start repeating myself.

No, I'm with you.

I think that a character that we meet later gives if they all work the same way, if they all learn the same way, then a character that we meet later gives us an answer.

So maybe we'll revisit this when we meet that character.

Yeah, I think so.

If they all work the same way, I think so.

I think it's reasonable to assume that they do, even if they don't perceive the pace that those characters do.

Yeah, I really do.

And I think so much of this game is about what it means to be human from the machine's standpoint, from the android standpoint, even from the humans standpoint, and the goods and the ills that come from that.

And I think the machines are particularly interesting because they have this childlike wonder where they don't see the grotesque atrocities that humans do, like war.

The machine that we're about to meet specifically calls that out.

They have a line that's like, you know, you have the capability to destroy, but also to love.

An equal measure is perplexing.

The machines down here.

They don't see that.

They just see the good stuff, you know, the pleasures, the wonder.

They're like children in that way, which is why Pascal's theme in that villain it is so good pin in that.

Yeah, it's beautiful in some ways.

And my read on it is, you know that they represent the good of it all, whereas some of the upcoming ones maybe not so much.

Maybe even the Yourha not so much.

I don't know.

Perhaps every time I go up into that cadence, I just think of Dennis Reynolds the Two Wars.

But I use that joke on another podcast, so I can't do it.

Well, that's the rules, Yeah, what are the rules?

Uh?

This section is so cool.

It's a huge fight with all these machines.

They swarm you, and it's almost overwhelming.

I thought it was overwhelming anyway.

They just keep coming and then all of a sudden, one of them says this cannot continue, and then a couple more say it, and then a chance begins, and then a chorus begins to content.

Continue.

It's it's NonStop and at the climax, we get into a cutscene, the machines just stop for a second before freaking out.

They they just start throwing tantrums and kind of like yelling as much as a machine can.

But then they form this like sort of cocoon, but it's not a cocoon.

It's a womb, a mechanical womb, and out of it is Berthed, this tall, athletically built, sexless humanoid creature with long white hair.

This this is sick, dude.

I it becomes very obvious what this is once you learn their names in a little bit.

But this this is so cool also from uh, I mean, obviously we're gonna fight this guy.

But from a gameplay standpoint, this is cool too, Because we fight him.

He just kind of stands there at first, and you can get a bit of an insight as to what's about to come.

As you're fighting him.

You can see his level and his experience go up each time you hit him.

And as you do that, he starts to like catch on.

He's like a projectile reflect or sword dodge, and he starts to get moves, and he starts to become a little bit more articulate.

He is growing in real time exceedingly quickly.

Man, this is so exciting.

I like this a lot, not because it's like a tough fight, although towards the end he picks up some moves that really keeps you on your toes if you're not paying attention.

It's more so it's so unsettling seeing how quickly this like newly birthed sexless being is just reading who you are and evolving in front of your eyes.

It's it's unsettling.

Yeah, this was I like thinking back to the first time I played the game.

This is the first point where I was like, what the fuck is happening?

Like, okay, so I'm killing these robots right, well, how do they make this thing?

And so like that, just that moment where like the story really takes a turn here where things are not going.

This is the first time I guess where things are not going the way that you think they're gonna go.

And they'll just keep taking more turns as we go on.

But I love that trick with the like the game UI of it leveling up a bunch of times.

I love when games do that, like you don't want to I don't know some games want to do metas stuff all the time.

Most games don't want to do stuff like that, but like, if you pick your spots, it can be really effective to use game UI to drive home a point.

If they didn't do that and it just like started learning new moves and hitting a lot harder, you might be too taken aback to really like realize it or think about it.

But the way they do it gets the point home.

They've already played with your UI and stuff off a bunch of times already, so like they're just they're using all of it to really make you feel like, oh shit, this thing is.

It's growing, it's getting more powerful quickly.

And so then your question is like if these if this thing came from the robots, what is this?

And then you'll learn his name soon and you get an idea of what it is.

And just as importantly, why does it look like us?

Why did the machines produce a machine that looks identical to your h I mean without the clothes down to the white hair.

What is going on?

But no blinders, no blindfold, no mouth covering.

This thing is it's taking it all in.

Yeah, it's free, free to absorb all the knowledge of the world, not inhibited by Dogma, which man, that was not an intentionally chosen word, but it was the perfect one.

Sometimes we run into a perfect word every now and then on these podcasts.

Yeah, I tend to stumble ross several real boners before I get into a good one.

What was I gonna say?

I also love UI little tricks like that.

The first one that I always think of is Silent Hill too, with the photo in your inventory and how it changes at a pivotal point.

I really like that.

Yeah, I really like that.

I think what is that Nintendo game with like the sanity meter?

Don't they change your UI a whole bunch?

Is it layers?

Yeah?

I never played Eternal Darkness, but Eternal sounds sounds familiar like Metal Gear Solid series does a whole bunch of stuff with like inventory and UI and and stuff like that in cool ways.

So, uh, you know, I think that a lot of games I want to put up a veil of not being too gamey, and you know, messing with UI is is as gamey as it gets.

And Kojima, for all his flaws, doesn't give a shit about being gamey, and neither does Yoko Taro.

Yeah no, Kojima certainly doesn't.

I man, I don't know if I have it in me to play Death Stranding two.

That first one was a.

It might kill you, just straight up from what I've heard about the story, it.

Might kill you.

I saw, man, I saw the puppet, the doll man, and then I saw fucking what's his name?

Die hardman do a tap dance number, and I'm I just I don't know that I can do it.

Yeah, till that would you?

The ending of this is pretty wicked.

You do get the best of this machine.

Nine S stabs him through the back and two V stabs him through the front.

Uh.

Just it's pretty brutal.

Yeah, dude, there they are sympatico with each other and they slay this dude.

He falls, bleeds out, but then he, like Mitosis, is into two of himself.

The one is still dead and the new Mitosis one picks up the dead one and just lets out this primal yell and shit starts collapsing.

So we got to get out of there.

It's a side scrolling segment to get back up.

Well, no, it's side scrolling and third person getting back up out of there very exciting, and once you're up top, you phone into command let him know what happened.

This is where I don't I don't think we're gonna call this out every single time, because it would just be it would bog down the pace.

Nine S is gonna start really asking questions here.

For as much as he's saying like machines don't make any sense, like don't listen to kill them, he's he's starting to ask questions.

He's like, why are you know androids were modeled after humans?

So why were the machines trying to look like us?

And to me just says, this is a pointless question.

Yeah, this is Both of our characters have now had their walls and their indoctrination.

It's starting to chip away.

They've had it challenged by this point.

But again, remember that to be as a soldier, she is mission first.

Nine S is designed to gather intelligence, ask questions, and be curious.

You've got to be in order to gather intelligence in an effective way.

You have to ask questions and follow up on those and hypothesize in order to know where to look and to be good at that kind of job.

So it makes sense for nine S to ask the questions, especially if he's starting to reject what he's been taught.

And that's the first that's the first step of if you've been brought up in some sort of way that you never questioned before, the first step is to start questioning, like, this is not adding up in my head?

Why is this not adding up.

In my head?

And to be as you know, we'll we'll find out why.

To be is like this is not worth talking about right now.

Just you know, we got a mission to do.

Yeah, you have to be willing to lift the blindfold and remove the mouthguard, mouth veil, to see the iniquities and speak out against them.

Nine s is on that journey.

And interestingly, yeah, that's a good point.

Two Bee's demeanor of being very cold and to the point and wanting very little communication, that is that is a subtle foreshadow.

It's important.

Yeah, speaking of subtlety.

On the way out of here, we take this underground tunnel, we get to this big theme park.

This is Near's Disneyland, complete with castle and fireworks.

I was not expecting this.

No, especially because you you can't see it from like the city section or maybe if you like look at a certain angle or something.

But you definitely you don't know that this is coming it.

It's beautiful.

The fireworks are beautiful.

The music is gorgeous in this.

It's got that like magical like twinkly sound that you might associate with, you know, a Disney World or a Disney soundtrack from back in the day or something like that.

It has this real magical feel to it.

But it's still near music, so it's kind of depressing.

But and like the park is run down and stuff like that, but some of the stuff is still functional and it's it's beautiful.

You get this like really awesome like slow walk as you you come out of like these sewer tunnels and come up into this forest, and then you walk and approach the amusement park and you get this little short cut scene of them just approaching it, and the fireworks are going off and the music starts the do Do Do Do Do Do Doo, like the little the little Twinkles.

It's a it's really gorgeous.

I can't do the Twinkles with my voice.

It's a small world, after all.

I would love that.

I would love to hear that.

Yeah, Disney would be on Yokotaro's ass so quickly.

No, you're right, this is a gorgeous little set piece here, really really beautiful.

All of the machines are wearing like little costumes, and instead of shooting the like balls of classic near energy shadow energy stuff, they're shooting Confettian balloons.

Like one of the robots specifically, like he's got a gatling gun and he just shoots balloons in the air, and they're saying things like fun, oh, what joy, things like that.

They are so clearly non hostile.

They've even got a tank that like you can optionally you can fight it and it turns into a tough fight, but the tank is just shooting Confettian balloons like they are so clearly just trying to have a good time, that joy of what it means to be a human.

Literally, dude, as soon as I saw this, and especially leaving this, like you leave it at the end, and as you're leaving, you go through like a forest and you can see the roller coasters and pass on in the background.

It reminded me of me doing that as a kid, of leaving my local or local at the time, theme park, Idlewild, and just the joy of what that was.

And they're experiencing that, that childlike joy of being in an amusement park.

They are so pure, they're pure little creatures and we're killing them.

And you know, the first two times I played this game, I fought that tank because I want to say I want to say, nine S is like, you know, we got to take that thing out.

It's dangerous.

And then if you when you go to leave, nine S will be like, that thing's dangerous.

Are you sure it's okay to leave it?

Like, are you sure we shouldn't destroy it?

In the first two times I played the game, I fought it because it's a video game, and they told me this thing is a boss fight and it is a kind of mini boss and that's what we do.

We fight.

We fight stuff that we consider to be dangerous.

So only this third time I left alone and I got that dialogu where nine S is like, hey, are you sure we should leave this thing alone?

And yeah, we just kept moving, nothing bad ever happens.

Yeah, She's like, if they're not engaging, it's not worth our time.

That's not the mission.

The mission, if you'll, if you all remember listeners, is to find the missing Resistance and your HU members.

And after the roller coaster takes us to this amphitheater and I don't want to skirt past that.

The roller coaster is a side scrolling section where you're riding on the roller coaster.

It's very cool, it's awesome.

Yeah, it's very charming, and it's it's very cute, but it takes you to this amphitheater and Pod will chime in and say that multiple resistance members can be detected below.

They're the ones that were These are the droids we're looking for, and it leads to a boss fight.

This huge machine whose name I'm not gonna give now, but it's it's this giant, vaguely woman shaped machine, vaguely humanoid shaped machine, wearing a dress that the kind of dress that like, I don't know what you call these, like maybe a ball gown that goes down to like roughly your hips before it flares out into like a tea cup upside down tea cup shape ball gown.

Sure obsessed with being beautiful, says it so many times, and notably, dead androids are just lining the dress like like ornaments.

Those are our comrades.

Yep.

The song that plays in this boss fight, I believe it's called a beautiful song, is awesome the I think it's the same vocalist that does the song in the Desert that like low alto vocalist.

She's incredible in the songs that she's in a very recognizable voice.

Some of the other voices, you know, they have more voices around them, or they're just they don't stick out quite as much.

Good singers, all of them, obviously, But I love this song a lot.

And then this this boss fight is a bit of a challenge.

It's more involved than any of the other fights you've done up until this point.

And then there's a certain point when they like you get through like the first phase of the fight, and then it brings out all of these other android bodies.

Oh my god, and they're like they're basically crucified.

I don't know if they are actually like literally crucified, but they might as well be.

And they start shooting these hacking balls at you, and they keep trying to hack you.

This is where you first do the hacking minikame, which I fucking love.

And it's it's just like so many questions all at once, like why is this thing?

Okay, we see another aspect of like a robot imitating humanity.

Why is it obsessed with being beautiful.

This is the fate of the your high androids.

Obviously, this thing's really dangerous.

Why are they trying to hack me?

Why are they posed like that?

So many questions and you know, a great song, a fun boss fight, there's a lot happening.

All at once.

Oh, totally.

I don't think there's a reason they're strung up like that.

I mean, you think of there's a lot of Japanese media that uses Christian imagery because it's striking, and I mean that's that's just not a popular religion over there.

Shinto is the dominant one.

There's a little bit of Buddhism.

Christianity is just not a big thing.

But crucifixions, forgive me what kind of badass it is?

Striking?

Yeah, the fact that you took a beat to answer made me feel so shitty in the moment.

I'm not even gonna I was waiting for the waiting for the delay that we talked about to make sure it didn't cut you off.

Oh man, that was comedy gold, Yeah, I think.

But it is striking, and that's all of our comrades.

They're being kept alive by her nine s says and like you said, Dave, they're you're there.

Their reason is to fight us, and they hack us.

They try to hack us, and so can the Giant Boss and the hacking mini games.

Yeah, like you said, they're low stakes.

Here.

You know, three white boxes, three black boxes, and one enemy ship that's you know, just kind of kind of shooting at you.

You just got to shoot down the black boxes, I think, And that's it pretty low stakes.

The robot herself, she doesn't have a ton of attacks that caught me off guard.

At the very end, her like dress lifts up and it's not like a dog, but it's like a four legged animal esque machine under her dress that can like charge you and jump at you.

I don't know, I'm not probably not describing that very well.

Honestly, Like there's so much happening in this fight that I don't think I've ever even noticed that detail.

Yeah, you know, pods going all the time.

I'm jumping over energy waves, trying to dodge the bullet Hell's trying to get my own attacks in taking out the androids that are trying to hack me.

Like, it's just a lot.

That machine had pretty weird things to say, huh, almost like it had emotion.

Machines don't have feelings, you said so yourself.

All right, that's the last one.

Yeah, I'm sorry until the next one, yeah, exactly exactly.

Upon leaving, though, you walk out and a machine with a white flag approaches you.

Two b sees this and screams hostiles, which is hilarious to me, and it says notably, it's more verbose and speaking somewhat normally.

It says, no, it's not hostile.

It wants to thank you for defeating the quote broken machine.

And you get an invite to their village.

And I think that one of I forget who which is which, but one of them is like, I don't know if we should trust it, and the other one's like, well, we might as well go, see basically, and so again, like it's not part of their mission to go to the machine village.

And if they truly believe that machines are you know, unintelligent and they couldn't possibly have like a society or a village or something, then they wouldn't go.

But those barriers are being broken down, and curiosity is starting to take over more than like that dogma, like you said.

Yeah, yeah, And even if if they wanted to justify it.

They could you know, well, we're getting intel on the machines, and we could report this back to command.

Yeah, but we know that's not the primary goal.

We know that they're curious, or at least nine SA's yeah, yeah, this is this is so great.

The village there, it's a small little settlement among the trees, wooden huts and bridges.

Oh, by the way, we saw a rocket on the way over.

Shoot up supplies to the moon, just in case you forgot that humans were on the moon anyway.

The village, wooden huts, bridges in the trees.

The piece of music here, So we were talking about the machines and how they have that, how they are trying to embody like the icher of life, where it's just beautiful human emotions with none of the bad human emotions, just childlike wonder the ost here it's punctuated by like a pitched percussion, like a marimba kind of thing, and some hand percussion too.

It starts with this like robot synthesized voice and you're like, okay, this is gonna be a robot song, you know, machines.

But then there's like this chanting children's choir, not like a choir, but a chanting like a children's chamber group.

Like I don't know six eight of them, and it's just this very child friendly melody.

It's not like super pitched, but the pitches themselves are only like I don't know, a perfect fourth or so, they're not very wide.

It's something that children could sing, and they're singing not perfectly in unison.

It's kind of out of tune like children, and like that's I am like all these machines.

They're the childlike joy and the wonder.

It's being emphasized in the in the ost.

I love this soundtrack.

It's very peaceful.

This is one that's it's not like the fuck me up of music.

It's the like I need to smile right now kind of music.

Yeah, or just like you said to give that tone, like if you are pulling from the music, this is a very innocent sounding song.

It sounds like kids.

And so if you've put together that association of like the the machines are like children.

They're trying to figure out the world around them and they're picking out there is something interesting to say, like Babe, we'll get into this later that the machines who are trying to pick out the things from the world around them that they can learn and they can try to be more human.

That they're picking out the good things, and that I don't know if this game is trying to say that, you know, the basis, the core of humanity is good, but the machines are certainly picking that stuff up first.

And then when we get to a society of machines, we have arguably the most positive sounding, innocent song in the whole soundtrack that we associate with the village that are like they're banding together.

They're just trying to live a peaceful life.

They're pacifists.

They just want to hang out in their village.

They don't want to be part of anything else.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Did they in the village disconnect from the network or other I know some other robots that we deal with later disconnected from the network.

I don't remember if Pascal and these ones here are still connected.

They're definitely disconnected.

I don't remember why or how I know that.

Pascal.

You can ask Pascal about it, and that's when you learn about the Forest Kingdom.

Like they're also disconnected.

I just don't remember why they did or if it was a choice.

They said that the aliens their creators stopped contacting them a long time ago.

I just don't remember if it was a voluntary disconnect, you know.

Yeah, which is a great like I love there's some stories that do this to great effect, where like you're following you have like a faction or an army or like a general or something that following orders from something that's like really far away, like you can't directly interface with them.

You just kind of wait for communication and they just follow the orders forever until they're like, we haven't received anything in such a long time, you know, is this still correct what we're doing here?

And the machines here have taken that to mean like they all maybe they come to this realization they're like, okay, disconnect and then let's we're going to try and figure this out afterwards.

I don't know the process there, but it's I don't want to like name other stories exactly that do this, but it's cool to have like this idea of we're following orders and how long are we going to follow those orders after the orders stop coming?

Right?

And then this is what these have, this group has chosen to do.

They've chosen to be pacifist and just try to just try to get by right.

And the choosing to be pacifists is an interest choice, especially after being disconnected like you said, and then thinking well, how long are we going to still follow those orders?

How long until we make a life of our own.

It's cool that they're outsiders of humanity because they are impartial to it.

They can look on to humanity without any of the baggage, and what they see is the potential for beauty.

So they're like, you know, oh my god, we want to embody this and be the best version of it that we can be.

Whereas us as humans, yeah, we could do that, but we get jealous.

We could do that.

We fight, we do that, We cause territorial conflict.

It's messy.

But the machines see the goodness in it.

And it's because they stopped receiving those commands and they sat there and they're like, well, should we continue to follow orders?

You know, No, We're going to take things into our own hands.

It's very neat.

I'm a big fan of these guys.

This is also too speaking of pacifism and ideologies, this is where we get our first named philosophy references on play through number one.

Pascal is obviously a blaze Pascal Pascal's wager just a rudimentary understanding of it.

Pascal said, it's best to just believe in God, because if a god doesn't exist and you believe in him, nothing happens.

A God doesn't exist and you don't believe in him, nothing happens.

God does exist, and you believe in him, you go to heaven.

God does exist, and you don't, you go to hell.

You got one good option, a one bad option, and two doesn't matter options.

You might as well just believe that.

That's a really crude understanding, but it's it's fine enough for here and then there.

This is so funny.

There is a bigger machine named Jean Paul.

The literal first thing he says to you is existence precedes essence, which is like the big quote from Jean Paul Sartre, the founder of Well quote unquote founder.

It's not that simple of existentialism.

Literally, dude, this is what I was saying earlier.

Literally, if you type in like top, Jean Paul Sartre quotes, this is gonna get top every time.

It's almost like he was like, what can I name him?

Top existentialist philosophers?

Jean Paul Sartre?

Oh, okay, and that second one, simone Deeve will Okay, I'm gonna hold onto that one.

Jean Paul Sartre, what's his most famous quote?

Existence proceeds?

Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna put that in there.

It's like and it's like, you know, it's like we were saying before you and I, Dave, I mean, we think about this stuff.

Some people might not.

It's just it's so funny.

But he also gets a little bit you know, wink wink, nudge nudge with the player, a little bit ironic because a machine next to Jean Paul will be like, yeah, he's kind of a crackpot.

He just keeps talking about this mumbo jumbo called philosophy.

Nobody really knows what he's going on about.

Yeah.

I don't know if you remember this, but like we've been we've been talking about doing this game on your show for a long time now, and a long time ago.

When we first talked about it, I was like, because I remembered this guy specifically, and I was like, if there's something that I need to brush up on philosophy.

Wise, let me know, and I'll brush up on it because I remember this guy and then I started playing it and I was like, okay, so he says that line, and then he has nothing else of substance to say.

He wants you to go find his followers before they get converted by somebody else or his admirers, and then so you like go find the admirers.

They're in all these different places around and like side note, this goes alongside this, but like the side quests in this game are fucking pretty bad across the board.

Yeah, they all involve going to one of the six locations you've been to a dozen times already, and you know, finding a person or finding an item.

In this case, you find these admirers and they're like, oh my god, you know this guy, please take him this letter, and you give him the letter and he's like, ah, these losers, like there's nothing else to it.

So it's like I thought in my memory, it was like, you know, oh, this this is a an exploration of a philosophical idea.

It's just a character named after it who has a line.

And then there's a little like you said a little wink wink, nudge nudge, Like, hey, these philosopher types sometimes they take themselves too seriously, don't they.

And that's about all this amounts to, as far as I know.

Two super quick things.

One, I'm not doing a ton of side quests, but I do know there's one where machines will put on a stage play of like Romeo and Juliet kind of and it ends with them all shooting each other.

I think that's very cute and funny.

I want to find out how to do that too.

That one kind of does begin and end with Jean Paul Sartre there, you know, existence proceeds essence.

But what's very funny about this side quest is he's asking you to find all of these girl robots that are in love with them because he's afraid that they'll fall in love somebody else will come snatch him.

Jean Paul Sartre in an open relationship with Simone de Brouvoir, and you know, they both got around, but he was also like a little bit jealous.

So this is like totally a callback to that.

Pretty funny.

I think, yeah, no, that that existence precedes essence line falls right into the themes of this game, though, Jean Paul Sartre has a really good introduction to existentialism.

It's a transcription of a lecture he gave and it's titled Existentialism is a Humanism, and it's a perfect introduction.

It's very short because it's just a transcription of him talking, and it's got a Q and A from students at the very end.

Perfect introduction.

His other book on it, I can't quite remember the name, is like well over a thousand pages, so like it's very good, I've heard.

But it's a commitment.

The whole thing about it is like life doesn't inherently have meaning.

You have to give it meaning, and that in company says all the goods and ills that come with that, Like you have to be responsible for all of that, but you do have to take charge.

That slots right into the themes of this game.

Right of humanity, what it means to be human, of iconoclastic questioning of dogma, things like that.

I mean, it's never any more explicit with like existentialism specifically, but that's one of those like that's part of philosophy that's just baked into life, you know what I mean, Like people roll their eyes when you talk about this stuff.

But philosophy is just giving logic and words and reasoning to the things we all feel.

It's like, if you tell this to somebody else, they're gonna be like, yeah, dog, Like I thought of that my first night at Denny's after two am, and it's like, yeah, I know you know that.

I know you know that, But here's why you know that.

You know, I don't know.

That's why it's cool to me.

I mean, I don't know.

I also don't have time to read thousand page philosophy books, so.

Yeah, I mean, we got video games to play, but no, I agree, Like I especially like games, and I honestly I credit you for a lot of this.

I like games that explore these things because it does it gives me a context to explore these ideas instead of just reading one person's like kind of meditations on it, you know.

And I have not made a real effort to study philosophies.

That might be a little too reductive, but I do like analyzing these things through media more so than a philosophy textbook or a lecture or something like that.

So exploring it through something like Zeno gears or something like near Automeda here.

That's really interesting to me.

It's just interesting that near Automaa is like, you know, here's a big sign with the big idea on it, and then we trust you to connect the dots the rest of the way.

Yeah.

Yeah, And it's totally cool to approach those topics from games and you know, from secondary sources.

Like there's there's a fellow that I recommend on the Patreon named Joe Fowley.

He does a YouTube channel called Nsolicited Advice.

He's, uh, he graduated from philosophy from like Oxford, I'm pretty sure, one of the big English schools.

He's just like a late twenty something.

He's very approachable.

He begins every video like, yeah, you know, I've got a degree, but please don't take my word for it, go look up other stuff.

He just gives like a twenty to forty minute, you know, breakdown of a philosopher or an idea.

It's you know, it's one of those things where it's like he's not just a nobody.

He's got credentials.

You could listen to him and you can get a you can get a basic understanding of a lot of this stuff.

You don't have to be an expert in everything in life.

You know, that's that's how you lead an unhappy life in a burnt out life.

Uh, that's my problem, you know, I don't know.

I don't know.

We could probably sit on this soapbox for a while.

You want to keep going with the story of that.

It's just no what were you going to say?

It's just what I Honestly, it left my head as soon as I was like, okay, story back to the story, so we can just move on.

Yeah, like any like any good podcaster and any good philosopher in one ear out the other, that's.

What I say.

Yeah, So, Pascal, every machine here is waving a white flag.

They are all surrendering, every single one.

Pascal immediately says, there's something that you must understand.

We are not your enemies.

Nine s will immediately yell to be we can't trust anything the machines say.

Very funny.

The machines, we learn, have a relationship with an MM anemony an enemy or nmone an enemy.

They've been trading like like commerce basically.

So Pascal is like, hey, take this fuel filter she requested, take it back to her, and then you're gonna do a delivery back to Pascal one little thing.

I mean, we've been doing a lot of tangents, and I hope listeners are cool with that.

I'm cool with it on podcasts.

So, you know, I accidentally shot one of the machines here.

I had been experimenting with button mappings on my like on the paddles, and uh, I accidentally shot one and they just immediately start yelling I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Oh no, like such an I didn't know that, like such a piece of shit.

Dude.

Yeah that's rough.

Yeah, dude.

So this, uh, this part here, this is another one of those like worldview shattering moments, right for two B A nine s, especially like do you think I?

I think like I in my head?

Like two B is vacillating pretty wildly between like asking the questions that he should be asking, and then like its hard turning back into the indoctrination.

You know, he's asking, like, why are they creating machines that look like us?

Why does that machine?

Uh?

Why is that machine obsessed with being beautiful?

And then we get to the village of these clearly peaceful robots, He's like, you can't trust them, don't trust anything they say, and you're like okay, like h almost like like he's in a moment of like discomfort maybe like it's too much, like the worldview is being challenged too much, you like snap back to what you know in a in a cool way, Yeah, because he is he's very inconsistent with like what is he on his teaching side with and what is he on curiosities and realities side with?

And like in the span of a couple of minutes of gameplay, he like he goes in all extremes of this right and now he's snapped back having the worldview shattered that we have a village of peaceful robots that has been trading with the androids like they're supposed to be the enemy, and the resistance camp is the resistance camp is not resisting them, they're trading with them, like they have a mutually beneficial relationship.

Like how the fuck did that happen?

Like walls are crashing down or walls are being smashed down, but not in like not in like super big, flashy ways, like yeah, a robot does not get up in front of them and be like nine s, please sit down and listen to me.

Uh understand listen to me explain the worldview of the robots.

Like you talk to Pascal and then you're like, you've been trading with the resistance camp, like they're supposed to be the resistance camp.

Like this is all it's all coming it's all coming down, right, the walls are all coming down.

And it's a little wink.

It's a little ironic wink in a nod to the to the player via the story.

The fact that they're called the resistance is funny because one, as you said, they're not resisting the machines.

Who are they resisting?

Yeah, here's something for you.

They're not your huh.

They're they're unaffiliated, like they have contact with your HU.

But they are not proper YOURHA members.

Right there you go.

They don't have like your code names or anything like that.

They all got regular names.

Yeah, Jackass, a regular name like Jackass or an enemy.

Yeah, normal things.

Yeah.

They have a pack going on an enemy and the machine village.

They trade back and forth.

You do that, return to Pascal with the little oil, and you get an emergency notification from the bunker.

There is a Goliath class enemy.

This is like we fought earlier, tons of machines besides all your precede and engage.

Immediately, nine S thinks that this was a trap by Pascal, who is standing directly beside me and then decides to ping me on the transceiver and it's like, no, it wasn't us.

And of course to be is like, I don't have time for this shit.

We gotta go.

I don't mean to breeze through a lot of this.

It's a lot of like visual excitement going through and fighting all of this.

The Goliath is enormous here, you go through the city ruins in to get to your flight units, you have to go through its legs.

The scale is insane.

The fight is partly on the rooftop as well, with you and nine S fighting fighting it like up up top, very very cool.

This is just bombastic.

Yeah, it's super cool.

And again they do these big boss fights with scale really really well.

The music is always really exciting and cool, and it just seems like things have things have taken a turn.

Basically as soon as as soon as your worldview has been very much challenged like that, we take a turn towards action to be like, actually, robots, you gotta go kill these ones.

These are bad.

They're taking over the city.

So put all of your questions about this on hold.

We gotta go fight.

And it's an exciting fight.

It's partly like on the rooftop, partly in your flight flight sections, your shoot them up sections, you shoot them up.

Also, your little robot also has like a sword to that's that's worth mentioning.

The Goliath though, at the end of this charges up this huge blast explodes and it takes a big chunk of the land and surrounding areas with it.

Notably, it opens up some of these passages underground.

And if that weren't a coincidence enough, a notification comes to two B to nine S and the bunker.

The aliens, who haven't revealed themselves for hundreds of years are hiding underground.

Uh oh, so I had wanted to go through this next part.

I think what we'll do is introduce these next to characters and begin the discussion next time with them and what their deal is.

I would hate to go crazy long.

I know the listeners are already in for the long haul, but there's a lot to talk about with these two, so let's at least introduce them.

You have to go underground to sure find these folks.

Inside, it's just these hollowed out rock hallways.

They're very, very old, but it's clear they've been traveled and traveled recently.

There are there are some hostile machines down here too, but also long dead machines lining up This staircase up to a heavily reinforced bunker door, and another bunker door and another.

This is deep inside this underground facility, clearly nobody was meant to go into.

And inside is a circular kind of sci fi esque meeting room, sort of Star Wars A little bit.

Nine says no data on this exists.

And if you go around to the lower circular area you see the corpses of all of the aliens.

They have died long long ago.

You can even see the detritus of their alien motherships in the wreckage outside.

They're dead.

So how the hell did we get that signal?

Well, we got it from Adam and Eve.

Welcome to the graveyard of our creators, they say.

These are the two white haired individuals that we met up and fought with earlier.

Except now you thought they were evolving fast last time.

Now they are not only back to primo fighting form, totally intact.

They seem to be a little more physically fit.

They're wearing Devil May Cry style like black jeans, leather pants.

I should say one of them has a Dante's style haircut and the other is you know, rocking the Sepharroth look.

They're both shirtless.

This is definitely they're fashionistas.

I would say this is where they set themselves up.

This is also another section where they speak during the combat and it's hard to shit to hear anything.

Yep, But I wanted to introduce them before we stop today because one it's a nice little cliffhanger, and two these two are so fascinating.

Yeah, you know, I think it's part of it's the voice performance again, not performance direction.

Let me correct myself that I don't.

I've never really liked these characters, as I don't find them very compelling, as I find these situation a more compelling antagonist of sorts than these two because they do present as antagonists as we go further through the story.

But I love that.

I think what I said earlier, one of the themes that I like most about Neu Automta that Replicant also played with was the idea that like you are following your mission or you're following what you know to be true, and then that turns out that that not only is it not true, like the aliens are not alive, they're not waging war against humans, but the aliens have been dead for a long time, So not only is this not true, this has not been true for probably most of two b's operating life.

She's never seen an alien before, or at least she doesn't say anything about it, and neither has nine S.

So there it's like their worldview got tilted on an axis when they find out that the machines are not what they thought they were, and now it's thrown completely off kilter because what they knew about the way the world works is also not true.

The aliens have been dead for a long time, and now we have these two new machines that are obviously ultra intelligent, you know, as conscious as anything has ever been.

And what I find fascinating about the story of Near Automata is how these characters deal with this, what happens to them and what happens to their mental state, and how do they continue on?

What do they do even like now that they know that what they've been taught has not it's not true, and it starts with it started with learning about the machines.

But this is the part where they're like, oh shit, the aliens have been dead forever, Like okay, so what else about what we know about the world is also not true?

Now?

So I mean, if we're if we're leaving cliffhangers for next the next section of the game, that's a good one.

But these characters are interesting because they're they're the sped up version of what we saw with those other robots right there.

They have jumped so far ahead of like mimicking actions.

Now they're all these two robots, Adam and Eve are all about like the experiences.

They want to feel what it's like to be human, not just acted out.

Well, that's the thing too, right.

I don't think they're necessarily the end goal.

I don't think they're the natural progression for the machines that we saw.

We could say the machines that we saw are the sort of idealistic but maybe a bit idealistic or a bit foolhardy head in the clouds kind of deal, whereas Adam and little Naive maybe precisely yeah, Naive whereas Adam and Eve, somehow, through their excessively accelerated evolution, they've become fascinated with those that they are emulating, and they see humanity for what it is, contradictions.

We have the capability to wage war and love with equal fervor.

Why in the world is that?

So you are fascinating creatures, and that's they are trying to emulate that and get to the bottom of it and in their own way, birth a new species.

It's the Genesis.

It's Adam and Eve to the point where I and I mean also speaking of the machines, we're gonna see this from another angle later.

We literally have an entire bombastic section and badass tune based around a passage from Genesis in the Bible.

It is so fucking cool.

But yeah, there's even well, if you find their performance not you Dave, but listeners, if you find their performance a little bit like how Dave does over the top and a little bit too hammy, I think that that's valid, of course, But at least what they're saying and the ideas that they're asking us, the readers, the listeners the players to engage with is pretty cool.

I mean, we're going to get into all of that next time.

I don't want to get into it while Dave and I are tuckered out and not do a good job of it, so and of course not fatigue all of you.

So this is where we're going to pick up next time, and until then, I think it's time we all took a breather.

I gotta thank you listeners for sticking around again.

If it's your first time here, what an episode you picked.

I hope you loved it.

Dave, I gotta thank you as well.

I know you're always eager and willing to join these conversations, but it bears repeating that I appreciate you very much and what you do.

And speaking of what you do, of course, longtime listeners know that you are the host of Tales from the Backlog.

But if there are newer listeners or folks that tune out at the end of these and they're just so happened to catch this one, why don't you tell folks a little bit about what's going on over at Tales from the Backlog right now?

Sure?

Yeah, so for anyone who doesn't know, again, I'm the host of Tales from the Backlog, and every episode is me with a different guest, and by different I mean often different, but a lot of returning guests, such as Rick, who's been on the show upwards of ten times now, so we have a lot of stuff that we've done together.

Every episode is kind of similar to what we did at the top of this episode before we got into the story, talking about different aspects of the games that we play, and then a spoiler wall, and then afterwards a more general selective discussion I'll say about, you know, with full spoilers about whatever game we're playing.

So the kind of the tone of it, the way that we take games seriously is very similar between me on my show and on Pixel Project Radio, which is why Rick and I I think have worked together as many times as we have because we approach things in a similar way.

So that is my show if you are looking for things to check out.

Recently, there has been an episode about Heaven's Vault, which is a very cool narrative game by a very cool narrative studio.

Inkle in an episode about Osra's Wrath, which is the complete opposite of Heaven's Vault in every single way, and I can't remember what's coming up after that sort of the Sea, an indie game from twenty twenty five, the successor to Journey and Absu.

So there's a little smattering of what's going on on the show in November and December.

And yeah, thank you Rick for having me back on to talk about this game.

Having a good time, absolutely, man.

I'd wager if you're a fan of either show that you're going to be a fan of the other.

The center of that, then diagram has got to be over fifty percent.

I just don't see it any other way.

The politeness roulette spends on and on once again, and I'll conclude it here.

Thank you again, Dave, Thank you again, listeners, new and old.

We're gonna sign off for today.

We're going to take a breather, ta get some rest, and come back rejuvenated to talk all about the rest of this fantastic game.

My name is Rick, I am your host.

As always, Glory to podcast kind.

We'll see you next time.