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James and Alec dive into the unknown! What mysteries can be uncovered in Playdead's second amazing puzzle platform game? Our show music is Liftoff by Amie Waters. You can find this song and more of their work at amiewaters.bandcamp.com
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James and Alec dive into the unknown! What mysteries can be uncovered in Playdead's second amazing puzzle platform game? Our show music is Liftoff by Amie Waters. You can find this song and more of their work at amiewaters.bandcamp.com
Listen to Episode 010_INSIDE by 321Backlog! MP3 song. Episode 010_INSIDE song from 321Backlog! is available on Audio.com. The duration of song is 01:06:38. This high-quality MP3 track has 1536 kbps bitrate and was uploaded on 2 Aug 2023. Stream and download Episode 010_INSIDE by 321Backlog! for free on Audio.com – your ultimate destination for MP3 music.
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The transcription contains a conversation between two friends. They discuss a 3D printed phone stand that broke and talk about video game podcasting. They then discuss a game called Inside, which is a puzzle platformer adventure game developed by Playdead. They talk about the game's release, ratings, and awards. They also mention playing the game on different platforms and using different controllers. They briefly mention the graphics and suggest moving on to discuss the game in more detail. Oh, I wanted to ask you about this. Is it normal for, if you 3D print something, it just has like a zigzag pattern inside, but it's basically hollow? That's always how you do it? You get to choose the different pattern. Is this normal? I'm so tired of that happening. What is that? It's a phone stand. It's the infill. Yeah, I don't want- Something that thin shouldn't have any infill. Yeah, I agree. It seems almost like somebody's a douchebag. Is it meant to bend like that? No, it's a phone stand. It's actually the second time it's broken, but it's like the perfect angle to hold my phone, and it's like the perfect low profile height. But it's not supposed to bend like that? No, it's supposed to be solid, but I dropped my phone on it. Oh, yeah. Because I dropped my phone on it. That's poor design. Who made that? Me? Jaron. Oh, Jesus. I'll cut his name out. Oh, this isn't gonna go in it. Is it? It might. No, you would never. Look at that. Yeah, it's terrible. Welcome back to 321 Backlog, the video game podcast where we talk about games from our backlog. My name's Alec, and I'm joined by my good old pal, Jimmy old friend, good man, dude, pal guy, James. How's it going, guys? How are you doing tonight, Alec? Are you having the best night of your life? Here's how my day went. Woke up super tired, because I went to bed at midnight for no reason. I drove for eight and a half hours to work in North Carolina for the week. And then the last two hours have just fallen apart. I waited too long to get dinner. DoorDash is incompetent. In Williamston, North Carolina, don't wanna throw you guys under the bus, but my God, guys, come on. If you live there and you happen to work for DoorDash, go ahead and stop listening. We don't want you to listen. Just do something else. Yeah, just find something else to do with your time, okay? So yeah, I'm gonna be editing out my lip smacking and eating of this burger while we record a podcast. Yeah. What are we recording about today? Well, we're doing Inside Part Two. Inside Revision Two. That's a cool thing. I think this is like a milestone for a podcast where you just happen to lose your footage or something and you have to fully re-record and nobody's really excited anymore, but you did all the research. Yep, yep. For those wondering why is it a part two, it's because part one didn't get recorded. Yeah, it got recorded, but then something happened to it. We don't wanna talk about it. I don't even really know what happened to it. I don't know. I don't remember. I feel like every time we record, I don't even remember anything. I have a 15 minute memory. Yeah, so we use Discord to talk on our calls. And because we're cheap, we use a bot to record stuff and then we have to go download that file. And I think I was having network issues and I couldn't get it to download. And I was like, I'll get to it later because it stays for like a week. And then I waited. And I did not get to it later. But that's okay, because I actually am more excited to talk about it a second time. Yep, so we're at the end of the day. It's like almost 10 o'clock at night after we both had a very long, arduous day. Yep. And we're gonna get into it. Oh man, let me go back to our notes. Thankfully, we still have our notes. Yeah, I never delete notes, man. I will keep the notes forever. So let's see. We wanted to talk about... Norman Reedus. Wrong tab, wrong tab. We wanted to give some info about the game up front and kind of get that towards the beginning to get that out of the way and then kind of go into the basic discussion. So Inside was a follow-up for, not a follow-up, but a second game came out from Playdead. The same one that developed Limbo, which we've already covered. Yeah, it was originally released on Windows, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and that was in 2016. Oh my God, dude. It was almost, we're almost like, I think we probably recorded it right around the anniversary time of it, the original recording. Yeah. Fucking beautiful. It's so good. And it got a 10 out of 10 on IGN, but a 53 on Metacritic, which is pretty vastly different. I think we might have... Yeah, it was so weird. I don't understand how any of these, like the rubrics or metrics that they use for all these different sites. I think IGN just hands out 10 out of 10s. It's crazy to think, it's crazy to think that there's a person or a company out there that rates this in the same category as like Breath of the Wild or, you know, or just any of these huge, like Halo 3, like these games that really were like mind-blowing and they're like, yeah, Inside, that game you can beat in four hours, it's on fucking par. I don't know. It's odd to me, I don't know. Yeah. It got some awards too, but I don't... Yeah, won multiple awards. If you want to know what, yeah, I mean, look it up, you know. So it's kind of in the same sense, it's a puzzle platformer adventure game, very similar to Limbo, but yet also kind of different, but definitely, you know, you can tell it's the same company for sure. Oh, for sure. They took what they did with Limbo and then only improved on it. Nothing from Limbo that I was like, you know, this is kind of weird, got worse. More dead kids. Everything was an improvement, including the morbidity rate. Morbidity? Morbidity, yeah. Or mortality. Morbidity is like... Actually, both. Morbidity, no. No? No. I think the term morbid obesity comes from like... Can you be morbidly dead? Maybe, I mean, you might die in a morbid way. Oh, all right. Which you can do in this game, so if that's something you're into, play this game. But yeah, I think the term, so you're thinking of like morbid obesity, which I think just like, just refers to like unfortunately obese, just not good, gross. Unfortunately? Unfortunate obesity. That's a medical diagnosis. Oh, man. Disturbing or unpleasant is what morbid means. There you go. So yeah, disturbing and unpleasantly obese. Oh, man. I don't remember what this was. Yeah, that's like the medical diagnosis that like tries to guilt trip you into losing weight. Is that what it is? It's the descriptors to enhance your diagnosis? Yeah, like you have to read it in front of your family. They conference call your whole family. You know there's actually like a billing diagnosis that's listed as like morbid obesity due to excessive calorie intake or something like that. It's just like, yeah, you're fat because you eat too much and that's the reason. We're all guilty of that once in a while. As I drink my Coca-Cola at 10 o'clock at night. It's all right, man. You work night shift. Amen. Oh, I've been getting into the monster juices. Have you had any of those? I don't really drink energy drinks anymore, but I used to dabble with them back in my heydays. They're so good. There's a mango one and a peach one that are right up my alley. It's like the mango one's fantastic. It's like a blue and yellow, blue and gold. It's great. If you haven't had it, go check it out. Is it, they just like a little mango flavor, like a high mango flavor with just a little bit of like spousal abuse in there? Well, yeah, yeah. They have like a little bit of the original monster. It tastes like it'd be a good mixer. Okay. Mixing MMA with the marital dispute? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. There's a lot of background noise in like the room next to me and I have no idea what's going on. It's an animal. In your room or my room? In my house. It's an animal for sure, but there's like. I'm not picking any of it up, so. It's just startling. I don't know. It sounds like a raccoon is eating a shoe. Do you have a raccoon? Not yet, dude. Not yet. I think my wife's trying. Are we talking about video games? No, this is raccoon cast. Welcome to rocket cast. Well, our logo has a rocket in it. Okay, so we both, you picked this game. Did I? I think I did. You liked Limbo a lot and you wanted to do it because I think it was a kind of an easier pick. We knew that we would be able to finish the game. I think we were both just had time to play it one afternoon. We both beat it the same day. Yeah, I think you're right, yeah. Yeah, that's right, yeah. I mean, there's plenty to discuss about it, but. Yeah, I think we were wrapping up maybe a recording session and then we were picking the next game and I think I already happened to have this installed because I actually found and learned of Inside first, but then noticed that Limbo came out beforehand, so I wanted to play that one first. That's why we did Limbo first. Yeah, that sounds about right. I think I'd already had it downloaded, so I think after we recorded, we were still just chatting on the phone and doing like admin stuff for the podcast and I just started playing while we were on Discord and I think I got really far into it. I think you were messing with your Steam deck. Yeah, I think I was doing something maybe, yeah. It was something extensively frustrating and it was just like, we were kind of doing our own thing in a phone call, like two high school lovers that just couldn't hang up the phone. So you played this on your PC, is that correct? I did, yeah, with a controller. Yeah, I think it feels like it's mandatory for this game. Yeah, I mean, mouse and keyboard would work. I mean, I don't even think you would need the mouse at all, it would just be keyboard. Yeah, and I have in my notes, I played it on the Steam deck on my TV and some on the Steam deck, but when I played on the TV, I used the Xbox Elite Series 2 controller featuring four fully mappable back paddles and it made a huge difference, let me tell you. A pro controller that is overkill for how simple this game is. Yeah, with one of the highest latencies out of all time. God. So, okay, I guess that's kind of the preface stuff, you wanna kind of get into it a little bit? Should we talk about the graphics and all that stuff just to get that out of the way? Because that's a quick bit of it. Yeah, what'd you think about the graphics? Did you notice any? It was low poly, but it was well done, right? So I mean, it didn't have to be over complicated. It conveyed graphically what it was trying to, I think it did it well. Though it was low poly, it was really smooth and the art style worked, which I like. It had a little bit more 3D compared to Limbo. Limbo was very, all the assets were two dimensional even though they were laid out in a three dimensional space. Yeah. Each bit was two dimensional, but inside actually showed shadows and some more of that third dimension, which was a nice upgrade. Yeah, I think this is kind of one of the sweet spots as far as graphics go for me, because I don't really like super pixelated games. I just, it doesn't appeal to me. Vampire Survivors is a big one a lot of people love and it's like pixel graphics. I feel like it's just overdone. Like you have to find, to me, find a way to kind of, you can make it a low graphics, low poly game like this, but I'm not in the, like if the game was pixel art, I think it would really take away from it a lot, so. Yeah, and that pixel art, I've seen side-by-side comparisons of like the old sprites and things that were used for like early Zelda or early Pokemon even. Yeah. Put onto a, like 4K TV or something, or a monitor that's getting. A little hot, yeah. The sprites look worse, because when they were originally designed, they were designed for the lower quality of the TVs. The 19-inch CRT. Yeah, so it blended those edges on purpose and made it more readable, but now pixel art just looks funky. Donkey Kong Country 2 is one of my favorite games and it looks absolutely terrible on, like I have a 55-inch 4K. Yeah. It looks like just trash. But then there's newer games that are like kind of, like high-res 2D, I think, that, you know, they do more with the pixels. I don't know, I'm not a graphic designer. They do something and it somehow does look better. Right, right. But it's because they're, you know, they've modernized a retro concept. Right, right. Which is not what this podcast is about. I know. Yeah, and I know, I know. I just, it's, yeah. It's just something, I don't know. It felt like it was worth discussing, but I kind of got away from myself there, I think. I liked the graphics. Graphics, good. Eight out of 10, bro. Yeah. What else? The sound, there were no voice acting or anything. No. But the sound quality was on par with most games. It was good. I did fine. Yeah, there was a little bit of sound cues a little bit, but I think I could have beat the game on mute, probably. Right. I think it did more with like visual cues than Limbo did. Limbo was very big on needing some sound cues. Not 100%, but more so. Maybe some vibrations in the controller, but with Inside, there was this one bit where you're running and there's this intense sound wave or something coming through, but it kind of distorted the screen and everything. You kind of used that cue instead of the sound it was generating, so. Right. That was nice. I specifically remember there was certain sections where the kid would, he's the kid, right? The last we talked about God of War at some point, it's the boy, it's the kid. But he would jump down and the sound of his feet hitting the ground was just fucking abrasive. It sounded like a 20-legged spider wearing tap dancing shoes jumping onto a pile of sheet metal. I don't know. It was so clunky sounding. It was painful. I didn't like it. Was it clunky because of the sound, or was it so noticeable because it was mostly like not silent, but there wasn't a lot of, yeah. Yeah, I think it was an abrupt, unpleasant noise, and then I think it was also a, going from an almost dead silent atmosphere to just such a clatter. I mean, maybe those sounds where it bumped up in volume weren't maybe configured just right, because I had some issues with some of the sounds that kind of came out of nowhere. But I think what they were trying to convey was because your little kid boy character man is kind of like hiding and running from something and trying to be unseen, that when he does jump off of something and land, that makes noise. So it's like you're being quiet and then boom. Not so sneaky. Yeah, not so sneaky. So I think that was what they were trying to do, but there were some of those sounds that were like, all right, that's a bit much. One in particular I didn't like were there were these dogs through a couple of the sections. They were loud. Very loud and very rhythmic. And I think in our, if I remember how I did it in our initial recording, there was one section where you had to break down this little door or a little, whatever, this little door, and you had to do it over and over again, but these dogs were coming around to get you, so you had to lure the dogs around, get what you needed to, and then go back over this fence or something and keep doing it. And it took a couple of rounds, but the dogs kept staying in that area and would bark really bad, and it turned into almost like a record skipping, where it was just the same sound bite played over and over. Yeah, yeah. So times like that, it got a little frustrating. That's kind of what having dogs is like, though, sometimes. I put story, no. No, I mean, you put what the fuck. Yes, the story was interesting. I think, because I had this complaint or note with Limbo, and we're going to compare the two. To me, Limbo was a little, it was hard for me to find, only through the gameplay, any story at all. I didn't see one. Yeah, the story I found, I discovered through reading other people's discussion. Yeah, and if I'm going to play a game, I don't want to have to play a game and then go and search online for all the stuff. I do kind of like that. For a game this small, I mean. Right. You know? Yeah. If it's going to be this small, I don't need to spend another four hours scouring YouTube and all this, that, and the other to get the full experience, make the full experience in the game that I'm playing and that I paid for, right? Yeah, if it's a four-hour game, I want to be spoon-fed. Within the four hours. Give me four hours worth of content and don't make me have to go find something else. Yeah. So. I didn't think the game was very challenging. I know, like, we're going to kind of get into the gameplay mechanics, which is really, it's a game, so that's the big section of it, but I didn't find it, do you find it difficult, really? No, there was less trial by death. Limbo was really big on, you would encounter an obstacle, and the, genuinely, the only way you could figure it out was to die and then see, oh, there's the solution, and then change how you did it. I got so much playthrough bloat with Limbo on the trial by death, and I don't particularly like that, so there were- I think that commits that game a little bit. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot less of it in this game, and I liked it. Yeah, trial by death is cool that it can get kind of old, just dying, killing children over and over again. Not my style. The game kind of opens up, and you're, you just start out, you're the boy, and you're definitely running from people. I got some Holocaust vibes from that, for sure. Yeah, I don't think I jumped right to that specific, but definitely some nefarious things. Why is this boy in the woods? Yeah. Running from God knows what. Right away, you start seeing, like, vehicles and flashlights, guys with guns, like machine guns. Doggies. So you can see that there's something afoot with the world. More dying children. Yeah, yeah. Because it looked like a shoot-on-sight scenario. I found out the hard way. Yeah. Those dogs catch up to you, they're ripping you to shreds, and if the people see you, they'll start shooting, and they'll hit you. Yeah, they got good aim. No, I did like this, though, because right off the bat, this is something I noticed within the first few minutes of gameplay, again, compared to Limbo, apologies, the hazards that you deal with started coming from the background. In Limbo, it's very much what's behind you, what's in front of you. Right. There you go. Now you have to pay attention to what you're seeing in the background, because the dogs, for example, every time those came up, they would be a background piece and then become a hazard. Background to foreground, yeah. It was done, and that was done really, really well. So I liked the change, or the addition, rather, to having to find out where your hazards are coming from, not just the normal platformer of your hazards are either behind or in front of you. Yeah, and then there's a pig. Yeah. Oh, the pig. The slippery pig. With the most gnarly of squeals. Dude, that was, wow, that was pretty good, man. Was it good, was it good? Did you do the voiceovers for Razorfin Crawl? That's my side gig. Oh, man, yeah, the slippery pig, man. That was real gruesome. You see all the stacks of animals and all that. Yeah, and then I just tried to jump to get over it, and then you just kinda slide around on the pig. It was real gross. It had a really nasty feeling to it. Yeah, well, yeah, and it looked like it was dead. Yeah, it had kind of a corpse-like shuffle. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm not really sure, and then it won't, then you pull a worm out of its butt. Yep, another glowing worm, another addition. Which kinda reminded me of Limbo a little bit, because there were some mind-controlling worms in that. Yeah, it's, mind control is a really big part of this game. Hurting, too. Yes. Yeah, with the chickens, there's, very initially, early on in the game, there's chickens or ducks or something, and you kinda heard them. I'm surprised they somehow survived whatever you heard them into. Yeah, there was a conveyor belt or something, and you had to hit this block or something farther into the level, and you lure all these chicks that get caught in the conveyor belt and get rocketed forward and bludgeon this door out of the way. But they survive. Yeah, sure. They're fluffy. The only young things that Playdead likes to kill are human kids. Or young boys. Young boys and adult pigs. Poor pigs, man. Oh. Yeah, and then there's the mind-controlling of people, and then there's all kinds of, well, yeah. This game gets out of control quick. The understatement of the year. Something else I wanted to call out that's not really game story-specific, just game, something that Playdead improved on, the camera angle. We've talked about the typical 2D that they came up with, side-scrolling, that type of game. They started working on not having their camera position be a static position. So what I mean by that is there were parts of the level where your camera angle would move, and it would angle in different spots and actually be kind of behind your character, almost, or maybe in front of it, just to see more of the scenery around it. So it was nice to get more of the world in the shot. Versus limbo. Just by changing the angle of the camera. So I thought that was really nice. I think the next game that they have announced is gonna be even expanding on that more, because they felt like the 2.5D, or whatever you want to call it, was kind of limiting. So have they announced their next game? Not a title, but they said they're working on one, and they said it's gonna be more 3D than the other ones. Right. It's gonna have a little more dimension. Yeah, on their website, it's getting like a space vibe, or even like a Hoth, like the frozen planet. I've never heard of that. From Star Wars. H-O-T-H. Is that where the guy climbs inside of a Yeti or something? Oh, I forget what it's called, but it's like a little Yeti mixed with a dinosaur. Kangaroo. Dinosaur kangaroo horse. I don't think kangaroo is in there at all. No, it's like, it's got like two big legs, little legs in the front, and it kind of bobs, it's got a big old tail in the back, I don't know. And he climbs inside of it with a, there is a Yeti, there's a Wampa. I'm looking it up, I don't know any of this. There's a Yeti thing. Welcome back to Star Wars Podcast. Yeah, wow, that's practical effects on that word. I'm picturing like those dinosaurs from like Jurassic Park, that had like the duckbills, they sat on their back legs, they have like old cephalosaurus. Pachycephalosaurus? Wait, did that just come out of my, Pachycephalosaurus. Those were the headrammy boys. Oh, no, not like that. No, I know. I don't know if they were Hoth natives, like the. I'm just gonna Google pictures of dinosaurs until I find the one I wanna show you. Yeah, Ducky the dinosaur from Land Before Time. Ducky. He was a saurolophus. Dinosaurs are named pretty silly. Yeah, saurolophus, so Luke Skywalker cuts open his frozen tundra saurolophus, climbs in it. Anyway, that's, how do we get on this topic? I think you were talking about your Happy Meal toy. Playdead's next game looks like it's gonna be set in space-ish, maybe, or on Hoth. So, landscape, not actually in the Star Wars universe. That's what it looks like, so we'll see. Did you get held up anywhere in this game when you were playing? Oh, man. Any difficult sections? Water, the underwater area was pretty difficult. I didn't understand what it was trying to have me do in some parts. I think near the submarine, which, was the underwater right off the bat submarine? There was a couple, there were a couple water-based sections in this game. There was the initial part with the submarine where you have to ram walls and jump to get it through places, and then you have to actually go back and get it later on. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then there were some more underwater parts where you just straight up swam and. Right, actually, I think before that, one bit that really gave me issue was there was a spot in the game where you're in this facility, and you're like walking in a line of people, and you have to move when they move, and then towards the end of this little scene, I thought I wasn't doing it right, and then the dog would get alerted and come and rip my face off. I kept having to redo it. But I then realized that you, right when the dog starts barking, you just book it and run. Right, and I only knew to do that because I heard you doing that part. Yeah, that one, I think I died, I think I died maybe like 10 times before I really, maybe longer, before I really figured it out. Yeah, dude, the dogs in general in this game, man, I had kind of an epiphany about dogs. If I got attacked by three dogs, I'm pretty much fucked. Yeah. Three full-sized dogs. Give me three Chihuahuas and they're done. But yeah, like three, I think they're basically Rottweilers, right? Or, Rottweilers are Dobermans. I'm sorry, Dobermans, yeah, I meant to say that. I always mix them up. They're basically the- Pointier. Yeah, they're basically, they're the same dog, I think, right? They're the exact same dog, but it's like you take the Skyrim slider and move it shorter and fatter for the Rottweilers, and then like longer and slender for the Dobermans. But yeah, dude, if three Dobermans came after me, I don't even know if I can handle one. I feel like I could in my head, but probably not. But three, no chance. Yeah, that's pretty rough. Those pack animal tactics are pretty rough. One might- Yeah, especially in this game, dude. I had a neighbor's dog charge me when I was walking to the bus for school in high school, and I gave it a good old smack to the face. Oh, man. Well, I guess he had to. It was him or that, it was either him or you. It was like a dog that was kept outside on a chain all the time, and it broke off the chains. It was not a happy life dog. Was this in the neighborhood we grew up in? No, this was in Palm Bay. Okay. Yeah, back on Thuringer, for those that live in Palm Bay. Nobody I know lives there anymore, so it doesn't matter. Thuringer, dude, okay. This kind of raises another, an interesting fact. Apparently, 8% of men believe that they could beat a lion in a fist fight. Are you insane? That's the statistic. I don't know if they just- Like, maybe one that was just born. They didn't specify. I'm saying maybe. No. The stat rises to 9% when versus a gorilla. Look up a chimpanzee with alopecia. It's terrifying, but I want to look at it. They're fucking jacked. They're nothing but muscle. They will rip you to shreds. Have you, dude, I know, dude, they are jacked, bro. I used to work out with a guy that looked just like that. Yeah, like, they're just, they're straight muscle, dude. It's crazy. So are kangaroos. Have you ever? Have I ever fought a kangaroo? No. In my past life. Have you ever seen how jacked a kangaroo is? Like a male, like a, it feels like a Joe Rogan podcast right now, dude. Like a male. Have you seen their balls? Have you seen how big their nuts are? Oh, we're gonna start eating elk and weightlifting and doing the polar plunge. Yeah, dude, I can't, yeah, I can't do that, man. I tried taking a cold shower, like, last week, and I about- I do that occasionally, once in a while, because when I shave, I take, like, I throw the water as cold as it can get after I shave. Yeah. And then I wash, like, rinse off the shaving cream and everything. What are we talking about? I, I don't remember. Bald chimpanzees. They're, they are, their intelligence is the only thing stopping us from being absolutely destroyed. Yeah. Planet of the Apes is gonna happen. I'm ready for it. Speaking of the water parts, man, the submarine in that game. This is, dude, this is what you get when you- Seamless segue. Speaking of chimpanzees' biceps, the submarine in the game, I became emotionally attached to it, because you're so dependent on it, it feels like you're protected, you know? Yeah, for a little bit, and then. And then some stuff happens, but. No, I, I totally know what you mean. I, when we were playing through Death Stranding, I think I talked about this on the podcast, for that, I, you get to a portion where you have a vehicle, and I would go out of my way to make those vehicles last as long as possible. When the game was, like, basically saying, hey, you're gonna go up this mountain. You don't need a motorcycle. Like, I would just continue to try and use these vehicles. So, I totally get it with the submarine. I wanted to keep it as long as I could. Well, there was a part where you have to get away. You dip out from the submarine, and you go and you do a bunch of stuff, and then you get to go back to the submarine. It was the best part of the game for me. I was so happy to see. It's like my old pal, you know? It's like, it was, it was just, it's what I needed at that time. Yeah, and then, also, in the underwater, there was that mer thing, being in the depths, like, I don't think she had a tail, but I assumed it was a she. It was very long-haired, and you couldn't like see any features. So, it looked like a she to me, but that thing was ferocious. There are some people that think that she was trying to help you the whole time. Like, she's trying to pull you out of the submarine to imbue you with the ability to breathe underwater from the get-go, and it's just interpreted as a game over, a death, or whatever, but, yeah, there's some people think that she was, the whole time, was out to help you, not to get you. Right. I don't know. It's an interesting thought, because at one point, you end up, I think you find yourself outside of the sub, for some reason, and then, I think you get grabbed or pulled way, way down. Yeah. And then, it looks like you are drowning, but then, the game starts again, and you're aware. Yeah, I think you grab onto something, and it just snaps, and you fall in, or something, and then, she just pulls you down, and then, like, 27 minutes later, you gain control of your character again. It was so far. Yeah, it was. It was unreasonably far, and then, yeah, you're now breathing water. There's a couple other things that happen, I think, in this game, but. From that point, Yeah. strap in, but I was very confused. I didn't know what to think. I didn't, because, again, we already had this combo, so I'm remembering, kind of, bits and pieces of our last conversation about this game, but if I remember from playing it, in the moment, I was so confused on, like, why I could suddenly breathe water, and the thing that was trying to kill, like, I perceived, trying to kill me over and over again. Right. Just, and now, they're just gone, and I think no longer a threat. I don't think you encounter them after that. So, it was just weird. It was weird, and it just kept getting weirder. Yeah, I think at one point, when the mermaid is saying, I don't know what, there's a child of water, is pulling you down, I think you, kind of, end up with one of the mind control helmet things for a second. Was this the offspring from The Shape of Water? Did you see that? That's a movie, right? It's a movie. I've never seen it, but it's apparently, like, fish people and aquatic love. I don't actually know. I think I've seen that movie, and I don't think that's how I would describe it. Yeah, I know nothing about it. Yeah, I think I did see that movie. It was kind of strange, and I don't even want to get into it, because I don't remember it well enough to try. I do remember one part, where a guy gets two fingers bit off. There you go. And he loses these two. He loses his pinky finger and his ring finger, and he's on the phone with somebody, and he's very nonchalant about it, and he says, it's okay. I still have my trigger finger, my pussy finger, and my thumb. That's about the only part of the whole movie. I think I'd be okay with losing those, too. I feel like I'm probably gonna lose them anyway. I don't know why, but they're just, I open doors with my pinky fingers a lot, because it feels cleaner to me. Because you're not gonna do anything with your pinky finger? Yeah, I don't eat with my pinky finger. I don't, like, you know, so if I open a bathroom door with my pinky finger, it's gonna rip off one day. What the fuck are we talking about? I don't know. It's midnight, and we're rambling about the shape of water. I feel good about it, though. Yeah, I thought in the moment that I was dying, and maybe this was, like, an undead situation, or, like, a dream state. I, again, just after we got ripped down and learned the ability to breathe underwater, just confused. That's how the whole game falls apart, and yeah. Really, really, it does. These are also, I think, all the parts that we're getting into now. I was playing, like, in the pitch black bedroom on the Steam Deck, so it was even more, like, weird. I don't know, it was just more, I had headphones in, so I got to, like, really hear all of the body parts. Oh, Lord. So I do wanna talk about something before we get all the way to what you just alluded to. Yeah. Going all the way back for a minute, back to the pigs with the buttworms. Yes. That was, like, what, five minutes in? Very rare. I'd say it was closer to seven minutes, but yeah. Okay, all right. It's showing, from that point to the end of the game, you're, like, uncovering slowly that they're doing this, like, experimentation, and again, we mentioned mind control was a big thing about it, but, like, quote-unquote level progression, because there aren't really levels, it's very seamless all the way through, just like, you know. You're slowly watching the different stages of whatever this business, entity, agency, whatever, group, their stages of how they're doing their experiments, and it started with, Political party. Political party. It started with, like, pig and animal trials, then basic human trials with, like, getting the people to follow basic tasks, like, walking back and forth and removing, like, the consciousness from the body, but keeping them alive, because you saw a lot of, like, zombie-like. Yeah. You know, like, a lot of people just standing in corners and, like, not doing anything. They're not, like, dying or decaying or anything, they're just, like, standing there waiting. They're, like, waiting to be told what to do. Yeah. So, you got a lot of that. Then, after the water bit, you start going into, like, the actual facility where there's, like, science-y stuff and people in lab coats, and then you've got, like, the, there's one section where it's, like, that big diorama of, like, maybe where you are geographically. Remember that, like, there were, like, dioramas or cases that had, like, mountain sides and stuff that were, like, to scale, but, like, tiny. Yeah. So, yeah, I just wanted to call that out. So, we've been building up and seeing, like, this, we're uncovering this, like, weird experimentation thing that's been going on for a while, or going on, and then we get to the full what-the-fuck moment. Yeah, there's, like, the part where, I remember specifically feeling pretty weird going into the what-the-fuck moment, how everyone is just watching something and they completely ignore you, which you seem to be. Complete 180. Yeah, the protagonist of the game and the antagonist of these people, and they're just ignoring you, which is very strange. Right, yeah, because we went from, like, being shot on sight, ripped apart with dogs, to, like, walking through an office space and people running by you and just ignoring you entirely. Yeah, exactly, very weird. But then you go into this gigantic sphere, which I think they just built, in Vegas, they just built the same sphere thing, and there's just a pulsating, undulating amalgamation of human tissue and limbs. Yeah. Which I think is, is that what they just built in Vegas? I think so. Have you seen that? No. It's a giant sphere with an amalgamation of bodies in it. No. No, it's a, like, gigantic, it's called a sphere, and it's like, I think, an OLED screen in a sphere. Oh, jeez. And it's humongous, it's 516 feet wide, 366 feet tall. Is this Epcot 2.0? What are they trying to do here? It's a display on the outside, so they can make it look like anything, and it's crazy. They can make it look like, you're looking at videos, pictures of it, they made it like an eye. Anything, spherical. Anything you want, as long as it's spherical. They did the eye of Mordor. Can they put? They've done an actual eye. They've done a cool basketball, very fucking original. Can they put the tip of my pinky finger? I guess if it's spherical enough, yeah. There was one that they did where it looked almost like liquid, which was kind of cool. Have you seen that? No, I haven't. Well, I'm looking at the moon, but it looks weird. I'm gonna pop out a picture for you right there. Coming out. Pretty cool stuff. I don't know, that one looks particularly cool. And I guess it's capable of motion, so seeing it in person might look a little cooler. That's pretty cool. Yeah, but I think that's. It's wildly unnecessary. It seems extremely gluttonous, and I like it. I do wanna see it. Have you ever been to Vegas? No. I had a project there. I think it was there for a week or, doesn't matter. I was there, and like most times, I go somewhere like that or somewhere I've never been before. I'm gonna go out and maybe drive around or go look at things. I didn't stay on the strip because it was way too expensive, and this was for work, so they wouldn't pay for it. Anyhow, it's insane how short of a walk off of the strip you have to go before you start running into like. Prostitutes. Homeless and dilapidated buildings, and you're starting to see like maybe slightly above the poverty line. I think there's a fucking metaphor here. It's, I don't know what the metaphor is. One, Vegas is ridiculous. That none, this is gonna go on a tangent for sure. I'm gonna wrap it up here in a second. Just that it's insane to me. Dude, subscribe to our Patreon if you want more tangents about Vegas. It's insane to me that with all the money and revenue that's generated from that, you go two blocks away, and there's like people in the street and amalgamations of body parts. So it was, I didn't like it at all. Like it made me really upset. And. I think that happens in a lot of places though. I think it does. I don't know if it. I think that Vegas is so over the top. Yeah. Like okay, let's bring a home to us. Disney World. Yeah. Right, go by any of the parks. Go out a little bit. It doesn't dip to the degree that Vegas, the Vegas strip does. Yes, Orlando as the greater area does have its own problems, but. Right. But. Right outside of it in the Kissimmee area. Right outside of Disney World. It's not like. I'm not afraid I'm gonna get shot right outside of Disney. I think part of the reason for that is because Disney is essentially. Disney is for children, not for, not for gambling. Degeneracy. Well, I think Disney is also like a humongous property. Like they own. That's also, yeah, that's also true. A lot of their property is just garden space. Anyway, I, yeah, I may get rid of a lot of that, but. They have an Epcot orb, though. Anyway, so that orb, while it looks cool, seems unnecessary, but the orb we wanna talk about, or the spherical object we wanna talk about is the Blob from Inside. And. Do you think that the name of the game being Inside has anything to do with getting inside of the, I don't think we have ever considered or discussed the name of this game. I don't think we have either. Damn, I just blew my fucking mind. I thought it was maybe. No, I think maybe, without going too deep into it, I probably would have initially thought like, you know, Inside trying to get out. Right, but it doesn't. Even though, playing through it, you're kind of breaking back in. Right. Which is interesting. So I don't know. And I remember you brought this up before, so I don't know if I wanna get too into it, but there might be, well, we'll get into it. You brought this up before, it's gonna bother me if we don't. God damn it. This TikTok Live we're doing, I brought up the fact of like, if we're doing just an audio podcast and recording, strap in for the amount of ums and errs and uhs and long pauses. Anyway. Anyway. Do a Theo Bond. Yeah. Oh, right. Where was I? You were talking about, I think you were gonna talk about how it seems like maybe you don't even get out. Yeah, so you had brought this up on the first go through of recording this. I think you had maybe read it somewhere that maybe this blob was like calling to the boy. Yeah, like you don't even have free will and that's why you're out. Yeah. So backing up a little bit, we are going, when we start getting into like the sciency area where there's like people running around and they're like all flocking to this like tank, this window, and they're all like looking in. And I think at that point, I don't think we can get up to the window if something's blocking us, or we can't see far enough in, but we don't know what they're looking at. Right. Once we do some more platforming and all that, we get to the thing we're looking at and we some, I forget how, I think it's another case of like falling or something. We get sucked in into this like tubing pipe thing and we get into the tank that has like a 15 foot by 15, 15 foot massive blob of skin and arms and hands and legs, just like writhing around. And we start disconnecting stuff. And then I think at one point you get too close. You're also naked by the way, I guess getting into the tube, something happened to your clothing anyway. Nothing weird about that. Nothing weird about naked boys. And then you assimilate with it. Yeah, and then you like get sucked in. You get inside of it. That's another, yeah. Now you're inside of a blob, inside of a sphere, inside of a lab, inside of a mountain. Yes. We just figured out the name of the game. There's the name. There it is. Thanks for listening. So yeah, then the game really, I thought that would be about where the game ended. And then it just, like the game just fucking takes off. It goes off the rails. I think after that, there's another like at least 30 minutes. Or 30, yeah. Yeah, man. The game gets fucking crazy after that. Cause I thought it was going to be over and then you level up. Your character becomes the blob and then you have full control over it. That was really gnarly. Yeah, it was gnarly, but I liked it. So you start taking control. I was aroused by it. Instead of moving around this little boy, on two legs, you start rolling around this big blob of parts. Like squeezing into things you're not supposed to fit. Yeah, so you come into a doorway. You either bust completely through it or you slip underneath it. If you fall off of a platform from a great height or something, there's like a splat, a crunch, and you leave behind a leg or something. And you'll hear people groan. Like, oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was kind of nasty. There was certain parts of the puzzle where you would, oddly enough, push a button or something, but whatever. You would have to grab a pillar and you consumed this big stone piece and gooped it all up and manipulated it. Oh, yeah. What you just did with your hands was gross. Yeah, man. Man, oh, man. Yeah. And then it also seemed like this kind of lends to the idea that people wanted you to get out and that you were supposed to end up in a larger container. People were helping you. The people in this laboratory were helping you. You throw a box and you miss the part you're supposed to throw it to. They push it back down to you. Yeah, and they wave at you once you finally get it or something. Yeah, you go from being their antagonist to their hero, which is weird. And I think we talked about this on our first go-through of this episode. I thought we were just playing through a certain phase of the game and then something would happen and we would get plopped out again and then you'd be a little boy running away. And that did not happen. That never occurred. No, we were in it, right? But yeah, I noticed it in the moment and thought, huh, that's kind of funny. And then didn't think anything of it. But yeah, there was a part where, yeah, if you miss with this box or whatever, you have to throw a box at a button and this guy throws it back down and like, here you go. And they start, like you said, helping you through. I think in the moment I was like, huh, that's funny. Or maybe they were sympathetic to what was happening. And now after recording this two times over, I think it was all slightly intentional. Yeah. You know, that big diorama of like a hillside. It was like in a huge display case, maybe like a 10 foot tall diorama of this like mountainside with trees and stuff. And then smash cut to a little bit closer to the end of the game. You bust out of this wall from this like, this laboratory onto a mountainside and start rolling down towards the beach. Yeah. And it's like the same mountainside, which makes sense, it's the same one. But I'm wondering if maybe it's like a Truman Show size container now. It's just a bigger one. Yeah, I think that seems like the most likely ending to the game. Like you're basically, you think you're free, but you're basically, you're contained again. Right. Especially considering, like my interpretation of Limbo was a dark ending as well. This would be a dark ending as well. And it seems like the amalgamation of body parts or whatever was capable of some kind of mind control. It tried to call the boy to it. The boy assimilates with it and then they trap it again in something where they think, they make you, the player or the mass think that it's free and it's not. And then it's still being used in some way for mind control. Right. Which, yeah, I mean, they obviously have. What the order of operations were for their experiment. Did they experiment with mind control and then create the blob? Or did the blob, was that already like a thing and they were trying to replicate it? So I don't know. Yeah, I don't do, there's a lot of questions that come up from this. Like the scientists suddenly not be, I don't know. Like, are the scientists being mind controlled too? And that's why they were helping you. I don't fucking know. No, I. But would they be, I mean, wouldn't that make sense if this blob holds some kind of power to mind control? Like in retrospect, maybe the scientists were helping you because it's a form of some kind of mind control? It raises a lot of thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. It's possible. I think this is where it kind of goes into like, it's open to interpretation. It's whatever you want. Yeah. It's kind of crazy to me that the person that created the game, it's been out for nine years or something, right? Seven years, I'm not very good at math. Seven years, and he hasn't officially said, even for Limbo, he hasn't said what the story was. So we're never really gonna know. It's always gonna be open for interpretation. I don't think there's anything that we haven't seen in the game or no one has seen in the game, you know? There's not something, a hidden Easter egg that no one's figured out. Right, right. They had a little collectibles or something. They were like this game's version of like a collectible. Yeah, what was it? I think it was like a power source, and you could remove like a power source, I think, from it. I might be getting it mixed up with our next game, but it was, oh, what was it? I don't know. I think there was like a fan I unplugged or something. It's like briefly coming to my mind. Googling it is just insane to try to figure out. Apparently there's a Game Boy Easter egg in the game. I wanna see that. Really? Supposedly. If I type in Inside Game Ideas, oh wait, Game Ideas, that's not what I typed in. Inside Game Collectible. Yeah, so there's a box. If you step on it, the contents of the box fall out of the side, and I guess in it is a Game Boy. Yeah, okay, so the collectible I'm thinking of, it was like this sphere that had lights all around it and a board coming out, and you like unplugged it or something. Yeah, I don't know why, but in my poor memory, that was a fan, like an oscillating fan. But yeah, I wonder, what do you get for? What do you think of our next game? Because that had, if you've played, that had like weird stuff like that. Diablo IV? Sorry, because we're re-recording this, stuff is coming out in a weird order. I don't, yeah, I don't do, but no. No, anyway. What do you get if you acquire all of the Easter eggs? I don't know, actually. Two endings, the main ending and an alternate ending. Okay. Oh, really? That's what Game Rant says. I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling all the way to the end, because there was, I believe, 16. Oh no, sorry, 13. Once you've unlocked all 13. Collectible orbs in the game, there's 13 over the course of the game. Okay, what do you get? I know it's gonna be super ambiguous. It goes to a secret ending. Secret ending? What? Are you watching it? I'm about to. Well, yeah, we can truncate it. Running through some cornfields. It's five minutes, though. I'm watching a two minute version, so one's been better edited. There's an advertisement. Love that. Secret code to go up, up, right, left, right, right, right, right, up, up, up, right, left, left, left. That's insane. Okay, kid runs a lot through a hole. Take this time to relax if you're listening still. It's like if I skipped ahead too much, like an ad came up and I couldn't watch it. My guy's walking. I wonder if you just leave. Wouldn't that be crazy? Oh, I think you. Hold on, he's crawling now. He's going through a big butthole. How's my audio, by the way? Are you coming into the mic? Because I didn't put my headphones in. No, I don't think I am. Probably not a good thing for me to ask at the end of the recording. No, no, I'm not catching it. I always look to see if any noises I'm making are showing up. Right, okay. Good lord. That's the guy that got it figured out. He's walking for so long. Hold on, he's going through a little light tunnel. He's in like a basement. What in the world? Are you watching it too? I've already watched it now. Oh, okay. You're probably gonna need a little explanation. There's like a tentacle thing in front of some screens. What? Yeah, so it seems like the alternate ending, if you do get all the orbs, you basically get into a little, you go underground and you get into a thing and you pull a plug and then it somehow disconnects the boy and he just goes into like a mindless state. Right. Fourth wall breaking thing, like you lose control of the player or the boy was controlled the whole time and that breaks the link. Right. So yeah, like I said, it's interesting but it doesn't really like tell you what's going on. Yeah, if somebody would have ended there, they would have missed a bunch. Yeah. Yeah. Like a lot. Yeah, but I think no one would do that. Nobody would go out of their way and find 13 orbs and- You couldn't, there's so many like completionists. On your first play through? Well, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, while a probably a low percentage, there's gotta be a percentage that could have found that from the get-go. And they just like just closed out of the game. Yeah, and they're like, well, this was a dumb game. This game doesn't make any fucking sense. But that is interesting. Yeah, a little bit. I think it's interesting. Yeah. God damn it. I think it's really interesting. I wanna make a podcast about it. Oh, wow, that's cool. If you haven't watched the secret ending, if you've already played through it. Yeah, I'm actually kind of appalled that I didn't do that prior. I kind of forgot about it, so we discussed it. I wouldn't have, yeah, I guess, maybe that would be something I might start looking up, maybe like, is there a secret ending or something? Cause that's, I don't think there's been really any games that I was aware of while playing, where there were like multiple endings. We brought it up in Bioshock, but that had its own issues. And then this one. I think Limbo might've had alternate endings. You think? Maybe, I don't know. It did have collectibles, but I didn't get very far. Right. Yeah, alternate endings, I remember, were a really big thing in PlayStation 2 era games. They were like trying to pad it out. Well, maybe even PlayStation 1. Metal Gear Solid, the first one, had like a couple endings. It's a weird concept for me, again, cause I'm not used to it, of like, cause I've listened to other podcasts where they've gone through, oh, I got to the ending, watched the last cut scene or whatever, and then went back, like reloaded the save state, to go pick the other option, to then play through it again, just to see it. Which is cool to be able to see it, but it's like a weird mechanic, I guess you would say, of a game, to where you have to like, find a weird workaround to see all of the game, if that makes any sense. Yeah, I think it's just an easy way for the developers to massively increase the amount of time playing a game. True, true. There was an ending with Silent Hill 2, where you find out everything is just being controlled by a dog. There's just like a dog in a room, and he's just like sitting at the desk, controlling everything going on. Obviously a joke ending, but yeah. Yeah. I think it was Silent Hill 2, it might have been, it's Silent Hill something, but. I'm gonna hold you to it. Do you want to, do you want to add anything else about the game? No, I think. How did you like it? I, I liked it more than I liked Limbo, and I liked Limbo a good bit. It was, Limbo was challenging, and I had some issues with it, but I had a more positive than negative experience, and I liked Inside more than I liked Limbo. Okay, how would you think, I mean, do you consider it a pretty solid game then? I do, actually. You know. Is this what a video game is to you? It's what a video game can be, you know. I, what I think is a good plus for this is how it's, it's relatively small, it's really simple controls. I don't know about Inside, but I know Limbo is available on your phone. You can also play it on the, it would be really good for the Switch, really good for the Steam Deck, but if you wanted to, you could play it on pretty much any PC setup you wanted, as well as the, the typical consoles and stuff, but it's accessible in a lot of places, and I think this would be a really good game for handheld. I don't think you lose anything by doing handheld. You can be like right up in it. When you say handheld, are you talking about like cell phone, like mobile, or are you talking about like Switch, Steam Deck? Just in any form you consider handheld, because I know Limbo was on iOS and Android. I'm sure Inside would probably perform okay, but I'm talking more like Steam Deck, Switch, handheld device. Yeah, it's not a game that requires like extreme precision or anything like that, so yeah, it's good for that. So no, I think it was really good. I think it was, it was a good game to play. I'm glad I played it. I'm excited to see what Playdead does next, as I was with Limbo. I liked it. Yeah, I did too. It was, it was nice to play a game that wasn't like extensive to the point, you know, it was a short enough game where you could get through it. It was an afternoon game. I think I played it on a Sunday. Finished the game in bed, laid there with my eyes open, just confused. Yeah, very different from our last several games as far as complexity. Yeah, what a crazy game to play right before bed. Oh yeah. Yeah, that was my fault. Well, I mean, if you come at it with like, break it down to what it was, it was a relatively simple platformer, like mechanically. So it is a good game for bed in the sense of like, you don't need a lot of brain power to get through it. Right. So you could just get through it. It's kind of creepy in some bits. So at night, that atmosphere can really enhance it. You know, other than that, our last thing to do for this episode is to talk about our next game. Yes. I think it's one that we've both been very excited about. And I believe was probably one of the games we had talked about doing. We brought up the idea of doing this game really early on. Yeah. It was a big game. Yeah. So whose was it before we do that? It was my game. It was your game. Yeah. So it was your game. So what are we playing next, James? We're playing God of Fucking War. Nice. Which one? 2018. 2018, got it. Yeah. So that'll be a good one. I know our recording is a little out of order with all of this, but I can tell you, I can predict the future. I'm gonna enjoy this game. I think I will also enjoy this game. I believe you will as well. I think you're gonna like it. You know, it was always on my list of games to play anyway. Yeah. And it, again, I was an Xbox kid for so long and my PC gaming was limited to like World of Warcraft or in the last couple of years, Heroes of the Storm. You know, so I never got PlayStation exclusives and it was rare for me to pick them up after they went to like Steam or something. Right. So it's nice to get back into some PlayStation exclusive games. I'm really excited for this one. I'll be able to play it on a PS4, which is nice. So. Yep. Yep. You sure will. All right. Well, that was pretty cool. So. Yep. If you haven't played God of War, go ahead and get started on it. If you have played it, we'll be talking about it next. And I think that's gonna wrap it up for us here. Yep. Thanks so much for listening. That wraps up our discussion for Inside. If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know with a thumbs up, a comment, or by sharing with your friends and family. If you're able to do so, play along with us. We'll post upcoming games to our social media and what games are up next at the end of each episode. This has been 321 Backlog by Alec and James. You can connect with us on any of our social media pages by sending us an email at 321backlogatgmail.com. Until next time.
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