Episode 015 - We Happy Few

The speaker talks about feeling fine after being fatigued for a few days. They discuss a Halloween song called "Halloween" by JP Ashkar that the speaker recommends. They then talk about recording remotely for work and a funny incident involving caffeine and cottage cheese. They mention playing a game called We Happy Few and give their opinions on its graphics, art style, and sound quality. They also mention the voice acting and the first-person melee combat in the game. you feel you feel fine though? I feel fine I I did out of the two and a half weeks or so yeah I think out of the two and a half weeks I think maybe four days I was I was you know really fatigued and down bad and look yeah I don't know it was weird but anyway we're here we're here now so yeah I'm glad you're feeling better. So am I. Every day dude 3...2...1...Document okay I we are still in our Halloween stuff and I need to know immediately yeah if you've heard this song the how this okay it's Halloween no no it's it's the best Halloween song I have ever heard full stop like every every Halloween song that I'm aware of like yeah like like the spooky scary skeletons or an and monster mash all that they're like like parody you know like they're they're they're kind of jokey and and and I don't know just they feel like more of a joke than like a genuine song like Christmas songs we have like it gets you in that mood and it sets that tone and we've got tons of them anyway Halloween by JP Ashkar. I don't think so. Oh boy I I need us to stop for a moment I mean I need your I need your genuine reaction. Are you going to include a little clip of it? I'm yeah I think I think so so what I mean yes Ashkar Ashkar A-F-H-K-A-R Halloween will make you run, make you scream, deep into the darkness of the light. Halloween will make you live out your worst dreams, deep into the darkness of the light. Welcome back to 321 Backlog my name is James and as always I'm joined by my host Alec who specializes in selling people's grandmothers. Period. That sounds pretty spooky. She's in tip-top shape she's only got 40k miles. Oh man. Hey grandma you gotta run her till the wheels fall off dude. What? Oh man. So something else I'm also recording remotely which I don't do very often I you know I toss it on tik-tok just to be fun but I travel for work as we all know and I'm recording remotely as my co-host dies from something they just ate. Yeah that caffeine. It was just all at the bottom dude I just oh no big sand missile. Well you were you were eating you were you were getting caffeine and cottage cheese did you did you mix it? It's my classic it's like some kind of powder mixed with vitamin C and yeah Propel and I just didn't really stir it I just you might say I raw-dogged it I don't know it wasn't the way to go. You know I was gonna I was gonna get some caffeine but this is great this is where we're all over the place we've been we haven't recorded in like a month. I feel like it has. It probably has yeah I yeah you've been sick for at least a month. At least two weeks I think we had our it's been at least three weeks since you recorded us. So I'm scared half to death right now because it's October dude and we played a very very spooky game. I you know we're gonna get into it a little more I think I thought it was gonna be spookier than it was. It had a creepy setting but it didn't. It was creepy. It had some moments because I tried so so we are talking about We Happy Few today. Oh yeah yeah let's introduce the fucking game. We Happy Few single-player only yep released in 2016 the seventh month of that year. Looking at looking at the Steam page let's see what we got here. Set in a drug-fueled retro futuristic city in the in that city in an alternate 1960s England. Cut off here let's see. We Happy Few is an action-adventure game where you hide fight and conform your way out of a delusional joy-obsessed world. Allegedly. With a capital J and yeah relevant it is so interesting. So there's just just real quick because then we're we're we're jumping into like stuff about it but I had picked this game initially because I tried playing it a couple years ago closer when it came out and I got through maybe the first couple of minutes and you snap out of this like this fugue state and start in and are beating like a pinata and it turns into yeah you know the the delusion fades away and you're like beating a dead rat with a stick and it just it was just like like the whole tone shifted and it was just just creepy right so that way and then I stopped playing a few minutes after that so that's what I went in thinking that's how it was gonna be like the whole time not so much but but yeah 2016 it came out from convulsion games with gearbox software and publishing designer David Spears and it looks like it was released for the ps4 and up and Xbox one up and also PC which I what do I play this on I did a combo of my steam deck and in PC I kind of bounced back and forth I played only on the steam deck valve steam deck the two terabyte edition yeah and as far as scores that I was finding it did like slightly above average yeah IGN 7.3 Metacritic was mid 60s based on the the platform it was for damn but it which I feel like it I probably agree more with IGN Lee wasn't it wasn't amazing but it wasn't wasn't the worst I've ever played so I liked it overall so I don't know man at 7.3 seems a little high we got to get into it we're gonna dig right yeah so what else on our on our housekeeping stuff so I believe it really I'm on our little you picked it why did you pick it because it was Halloween ish spooky a little bit yeah you had you got this game free right yes yeah I had it for a while in my library I think I'm right yeah obviously yeah I played it on Steam yeah just to give you a hint okay did you know anything about I didn't know anything about this game I looked my typed game similar and it said Bioshock and I was like okay that that sounded sounds cool I feel like any game that has first-person melee combat as like a big component gets compared to Bioshock like yeah if I shot kind of set the precedence for a lot of games I think too yeah yeah it did a good job but this is not even what we're the game we're talking about but yeah I don't know no we're definitely some similarities to Bioshock time period being water yeah yeah a little bit of this I don't know I want to say maybe some of the steampunk atmosphere a little bit but yeah cuz it was in time I did not it's not what I expected yeah I'll just that's other than the time period it's not what I expected but let's see here on I gave it a pretty high score for like the graphics and more so on the art style I think for 2016 the graphics were on par but I like yeah I'll more so than the the graphics themselves I think the art style was really really nice I did not I didn't like the art so why not this setting the art style of the settings were good like I liked that but I didn't I didn't like the character models they just looked well I think the problem with this was they they used for character models yeah they really really strong so yeah you had three main characters which I didn't know about originally idea yeah yeah you guess their models and I think as far as NPCs and enemies there was maybe five more yeah and not many I noticed that too yeah everybody looked the same pretty much yeah yeah everybody looked the same either way like I mean I guess that's partially because of the masks and stuff like that but yeah I wasn't a fan of everybody just being like a lanky British guy or guy I think I think because you you you start out kind of not in the most populated area but at one point you end up going into a city and so there's people walking around and stuff but it was very noticeable that it's just the same character models you know the AI is just moving them around the areas but you could see like oh there's like three of that old lady like like just moving around it was just it was it was just noticeable because there were so few models yeah you can reuse models very easily but if you do it like blatantly it gets kind of ridiculous everybody's a triplet like yeah right what about the sound quality uh why did I guy I was a little poor on my notes here I gave it seven I also give the voice acting to seven I didn't like the I think I was noticing in my playthrough the ambient noise and the music where there was music and the voices were coming in at different volumes and different levels like like like when you're that's another similarity to Bioshock yeah well you know when you're when your TV cuts and you like you can't hear any of the dialogue and then music and sound effects go off and you have to turn away down it just it kept having a disconnect of the the voices coming in way too high compared to everything else right yeah there was definitely some and again I mean I did experience the kind of the same thing in Bioshock but it there were some weird inconsistencies in general with the sound but it wasn't anything that interest me I don't know there's some games where you have sound quality that just stands out whether it's like a huge element of the game or it just fits in really well but this one is just pretty generic I think yeah voice acting the same thing I don't I don't care man I'm tired of hearing hoity-toity new English people just hoity-toity like I made a lot of my notes as I was playing through Arthur's portion and I wasn't a fan of Arthur I think it was mainly the the voice and his dialogue and yeah he was a very monologue II kind of like yeah and they did a lot of flashbacks with him and every time they flashback that audio was jarring like it was it was it was good content good story but when it flashed through it was just like he had a lot of flashbacks to a wartime and a bad thing that happened and there's a lot of like screaming and stuff going on and that that bled through in like a really negative way for like the listening experience yeah okay well I guess the big the big thing to discuss is kind of gameplay and mechanics really I mean that's it was a game and there were there was a mechanic you know it was it was first person it shouldn't have been and I caught I call that out because I don't like first-person melee I despise it and like I you know I think this game would have worked really well if you took away the combat you didn't I think in Arthur's case because that's who you just go into first and that's a good half of the game the game is about eight to ten hours depending on your your speed there Arthur felt like a main character yeah yeah they they they they they put his storyline in place and then the subsequent characters we in and out of our yeah yeah so but the combat and I think I had this issue when I did melee the melee portions of Bioshock you would have to walk up swing immediately walk back wait a minute walk up swing it was that weird it was it was not an organic process of fighting compared to some of your other like third-person options I don't mind okay first of all as far as sneaking goes I feel like it should have been if you're gonna make a game where you have to sneak around just make it third-person you can have so much better spatial awareness the combat in this game dude so bad it was bad it was horrible the the NPCs were like rock-bottom trash stupid there was I mean I really didn't even have very many parts in in my playthrough where I did combat you could just walk away from things yeah yeah and yell and then yeah and take forever I don't know they I don't it's so weird that the combat was so lacking in this game for it's a video game you know it doesn't we play plenty of games on this podcast where you don't have to have like extensive combat but if you're gonna include it don't do it like that yeah I I think I think for me it was the poor combat system because it was really just take a blunt object and hit yeah that and that was it and then he's like I can't believe my lord and and go back to the field your field of view your field of vision was so unoptimal like you you you were it was like if it was like the camera was in front of his face not like where his like eyes would be it was just like it was like too far ahead and you couldn't see anything every time you tried the only thing you could sneak with to where you actually had a mechanical stealth element is like the the tall grass or bushes or something and yeah it got to the point where I couldn't see through the bushes because it is like so how do I sneak and like you know find people to you know to do my effective sneaking if I can't see anything well you could like see where their footprints were sometimes yeah but again dude that is so stupid like that's so unrealistic first of all you're you're you're gonna get in a 3d space but you can see little two-dimensional highlights kind of far out of the way it was it was just a it was cool that the feature was there it just wasn't done very well I didn't like that yeah I don't know I played like we talked you know I've played some Metal Gear Solid those kinds of games there's some that guy can be pretty sneaky but I feel like it just fits in better in a third-person world you can hide behind all right right you can have a better awareness of your character you know yeah the stealth in this game was borderline well first of all it was pointless but it was also borderline you know just didn't need to be there but that's beside the point I know there was one part where I was kind of just struggling with the stealth and I thought maybe it was because I was playing on the Steam Deck playing in bed whatever and I ended up getting caught by this guy and I just casually walked away and then made it to the next point and then it all goes away you know it just did the cutscene and then you don't have to deal with the guys anymore and that's just strange man it's just a strange thing it's moving on we try not to shit on these games for the whole time but we hit we hate game mechanics before we get stories so the game mechanics are literally the worst part of this game the story I found was actually very very good I did some research on this game after playing it and rewatching some cutscenes and stuff I the I found a tagline of an article for this game I forget I didn't mark where I found it from but I love the quote an amazing story way down by a bad game I agree that that is I saw that as well as a perfect yeah this is the story is really I liked it but it was bogged down by just really bad gameplay no I think a lot of people were really excited about this game like in in the early stages of it because it was it was supposed to be different than it turned out at some point the studio got purchased or something and it didn't it didn't go in the direction that people were hoping for yeah because I did I there was a couple videos of like how it was being developed everything and there was a ton of hype on it and it was kind of like a as the hype was coming in it was still like a work in progress and they had to keep changing it around and and what they landed on again great story it just bad game yeah yeah yeah there wasn't a lot of mechanic it's I guess we're still talking about mechanics the joy really hardly was a part of this game you know I thought it would be a lot more yeah yeah I thought it was gonna be we're gonna have to kind of you know use it more than once I don't know dude that's weird today but yeah I thought it was gonna be a mechanic to help you fit in or something like that no you just walk away walk away Jim walk away yeah and really because we can we can kind of get into in the story and we'll hopefully get away from the bad bit but in this in this world we're in and all you know an alternate 1960s in Wellington whale wells which is a I I don't know exactly where it is it's just in the UK but I've never been there got this yeah you've got this drug called joy that is making everybody happy and the year the reason I picked this game because I thought it was spooky is that the first couple of minutes something kind of triggers a bad memory and you you kind of like get kicked out of that that high of joy and the whole world does a 180 of like a really colorful and all that to dark gloomy and wrapping you know wrapping it's just everything's in disarray it was just it was just a very eerie feeling and then fast-forward 10 minutes after that and the you're no longer taking your joy but everything looks normal ish right it's not bright and colorful but it's it's also not like super creepy it's like just as you come off of your joy you like you'd like dive too deep and then you have to wait to come back to a normal level but the most of the game is just like normal atmosphere not not creepy not happy it's just like a weird in-between just everyday life I feel like the first hour of this game was made by different people you know what I mean like this was so atmospheric and such it like the setting was set up so well and then it was just generic the generic joy dude we want the real yeah and it was real frustrating because if they took out the combat and got rid of a lot of these it was a lot of like fetch quests you know I could go talk to person a okay they won't help you until you go get this one thing it was just it was a lot of that back and forth which I mean a lot of games have variations on like the fetch quest but this one there was no variation it was just just consistent it was it was the well the cod liver oil was it was a story beat but fucking measles though okay go ahead I don't know if that's accurate or not I don't think it is I don't know you're the doctor I don't know whatever but you know if they got rid of the combat and if they if they cut down all the fetch quests we could talk to different NPCs that were really inconsequential if they shaved a lot of it off made this into like you know a four to six hour game it would have been perfect did just no combat dial it way back down to like purely stealth I think it would have done so much better in my opinion or would have played so much better so yeah they've got the the joy to keep them happy and everybody's wearing these in Wellington Wells these masks these white like yeah smile smiling face masks that are I guess used to force their face into a smile nothing weird not just to look like you're smiling but it's supposed to like hold your mouth back and and keep your cheeks high and do all that to like force you to physically smile and I did like the what are the policemen called Bobby's yeah yeah the Bobby's I did like their character model though they were you know every single one of them like yeah yeah I did I did they were all the same but I did like the character model it was very the faces were very exaggerated very I liked it I did like how those looked but I liked the like at the like near the end there was like the guy Jack was talking and he had the mask on but it was a motion capture that was creepy looking it was actually was a mocap or was it like a live video like real that's what I mean yeah yeah well I yeah yeah but that was it was it was not a CGI thing I guess it's what I right yeah that was pretty cool it was very creepy yeah yeah and yeah that was the only cool part of the game after the first hour no story wise you I did I loved the story it was really good it was a cool idea it was so there's three main characters which I again playing this initially and then prepping for this game for this playthrough I didn't know there were more characters that were like main story beats so what it turns out to be is there's three acts where you go through each of these characters and it's the whole the whole idea is to play through how they leave Wellington Wells because they are not taking the joy they they see that this is bad and they want to get out right which was your which was your favorite character would you say which I guess we'll call them acts three acts what we have ever to act to play through um act one was the worst I didn't like Arthur I didn't like it was it was a lot of a lot of little things that compounded into one I I really like Sally and Ollie but for different reasons I liked Sally's story of trying to protect her kid and and all that yeah but I also liked Ollie is like my spirit animal just rude and crazy hallucinating his I think his daughter he thought yeah I think you I wasn't my neighbor's daughter he turned his neighbor's daughter in or something oh yeah but I think he also thought it was his daughter I could be wrong I don't know someone please correct me because I need to hear it I need to be it's important we go through we go through Arthur which turns out to be a grade a schmuck I I he was too whiny and complainy and yeah dude it was and I think also I because you get through a lot of the bad mechanics all the while playing through act one I think that was going against Arthur as well because it was hard to play yeah the game picked up and later acts like yeah Sally it was it was great it was Sally's yeah a lot less combat because it was going from Arthur who's like they tried to in some of the the stuff I saw online Arthur was supposed to be like a very balanced character boring Sally was very smart but frail so she couldn't really fight as well but she used like some more sneak and like drugs and things to incapacitate right yeah cunning so avoiding avoiding combat yeah and then Ollie was like the just like a pure tanky motherfucker Howard hit slow real hard yeah yeah so there was a I wanted him I don't know in my notes I did put rat pinata I liked that a lot I also put head boys I know that was the name of the first gang that you kind of encounter the head boys with the with the weird helmets and all that yeah strange name I don't was it was that the was that a gang that was called the head boys cuz I kind of glossed over I think I fought them a couple times but I kind of ignored what they were all about yeah you sneak into their place and you like you get pinned against like your childhood friend or something like that there was this only happened to me yeah as Arthur the great a schmuck I don't get like they basically give you like a non-lethal and a lethal weapon and they tell you you have to fight this guy oh like right up in a bright like right earlier winning yeah when the head boys I don't know but that I liked that area was cool I would when that happened I was like we were I was getting through that part and I remember thinking like I don't see what everybody hates about this game it's pretty fucking good and then once the head boys were relieved of their position I like to the part with the fake tanks when you're talking to Ollie and like you fall through you know there was a guy in World War two that did that or not a guy it was a it was a strategy I guess against the Nazis they did like inflatable tanks and stuff like that and they would like make it look cool like they had no you got no chance we got so much tank we have so much yeah I'm not I'm not a big I'm not a history buff by any means but I guess this was when it was you know World War two UK first Germany but Germany won I think yeah that's yeah and that would their method of like surrendering was to get everybody joyed up they were no no so the joy was a reaction to the thing that's been deemed by the community as the very bad thing which I missed this in my playthrough but had to go back and did research afterwards the very bad thing yeah the very bad thing was Germany won which is not what happened and not yet dude they're playing the fucking long game and as okay and because I finished this a couple like a couple weeks ago so I'm trying to remember this because we've been trying to nail down our schedules but first first for some reason whether it was a draft or something else or punishment I can't remember the exact reason all of the children a certain age or younger had to be shipped off to Germany so it was like Germany won Germany wants our kids I don't know if it was like we're going to like draft them to our side and get them accustomed to German life or if it was something else but anyway all the children were forced to leave that's all the flashbacks that Arthur's having was when his I believe younger brother Percy was being shipped off yeah we come to find out that yeah Percy was being put on the train and Arthur was supposed to go with him but was the wrong age either too old or too young but he was the wrong age and wasn't allowed to go he might have been too old and that's then that's kind of the flashback and horror that he's been having is remembering his him him losing his brother so that was a very bad thing no no children in Wellington Wells for 15 16 years so joy is there to make everyone forget and be happy from the very bad thing how do you feel about that that's a little convoluted I feel I feel pretty good oh that's um that's Arthur's whole thing just to tie it off because after you go through all Arthur's stuff he finally gets out and finally remembers all of the stuff and it turns out this is why I gave him the grade a schmuck was he convinced Percy to get on the train and leave Percy went up first and then Arthur basically lied and said he was not he wasn't able to go for again it was an age thing he wasn't able he was under too old too young whatever but he told the people that were like organizing taking the children's I guess yeah I'm I'm the wrong age I can't go anymore and basically lied to stay well after he convinced Percy to go so he was a piece of shit yeah not a very brotherly thing to do so that's not anything like block that at memory out right so yeah the more the more you take joy the more your memories get fucked and he was he was remembering the bad part and the emotional part of it but he wasn't remembering the details but it's entirely his fault yep yep Sally oh yeah Sally was pretty fucking cool so yeah I really go on no apparently Sally and Arthur were like high school sweethearts or something I'm like from their teenage years they were a thing yeah sure and she left yeah I don't blame her boy guys a loser you know he killed his own brother okay basically condemned his brother at least I liked dude Sally's kind of like her stuff was like kind of wild man like all of the still like the shit that happened in it it just felt kind of yeah wacky a lot of the time comparatively like Arthur's was boring he's a boring character or she the stuff that happened in hers there was like the cult type of people you know I don't know it just seemed it felt like this is a gearbox game I guess which is who makes Borderlands and her chapter kind of reminded me more of like the Borderlands style that I would have liked to see more you know with without the dark outline art style from Borderlands I can see a similarity in there right in that art style yeah borderline has like a yeah yeah just like you know proportions of their nose to their face like all that does have similarities on the borderline stuff that's that's cool I did not God liver oil for measles is that accurate historically accurate mr. dr. man I don't think it is I think cod liver oil is a just look at a central of fat I'm gonna look it up I'm gonna look up I think it's a triglyceride cod liver oil measles I'll say it's Omega England found that one ounce per day of cod liver oil containing about 400 down at that 40,000 what's IU international units international units of vitamin A plus vitamin D omega-3 fatty acids reduced measles related deaths in children for me dude you just said also I guess I guess it was I guess was big so so yes she I know the cause of her oil was she was trying to get it from somebody but that particular person that most likely had it was upset with Sally happens so Sally gave Arthur the fetch quest of getting cod liver oil yeah because her secret baby because that was the only baby in the last 15-16 years in Wellington Wells I don't know who the dad was I don't like it was one of the MP wasn't Arthur that guy does not get laid no I think it was that like the politician guy like the general or the old yeah yeah maybe I think it was him but anyway so so she's got the secret baby and who's got measles apparently and crying all the time so like the the level of stress like kind of like going into her shoes for that of like if anybody hears that yeah or sees it instant insanity which is just just terrifying to me what did she invent was it blueberry joy or something yes she was she was helping make joy and she did she called it blueberry I think it probably was flavored blueberry whatever what but I guess that version of joy it didn't have the harsh when they come off of it yeah it wasn't as harsh so they liked because they were using it so often and in in the story there outside of Wellington Wells in the garden district people that are forced to leave their downers and it's like a mixture of people that left by choice and some that had built up such a tolerance yeah yeah yeah to joy they couldn't take it so these these people these people are taking it so heavily that it's not lasting as long and when you come off of it it's horrendous so the blueberry joy that she was making I guess helped tell that that when they came down it wasn't as bad I like the idea of them developing a tolerance to a medication that everybody has to take and it's slowly becoming less effective and then you start to see reality that again was a very cool concept for this game antibiotics for everything what they had dude oh my god don't yeah is there anything else you wanted to add about Sally Boyle let's see here I liked oh I did not like her arms every time they were in the shot from the first person perspective she just had like a black rubber suit I didn't like I don't care for that I like her it's like her her cat a cat burglar suit yeah cool it was a rubber suit because there was like part of the puzzles and things you had to get through in this game one of them was like something that was electrified yeah you get a rubber suit and could be grounded or whatever I don't know it was it's fine I just thought I thought of it it was very like it was very it was they did a great job but whoever the rubber guy is did a great job on that texture did you did you see the do you remember going through what it was back on Arthur's but when he went into that like it was like a fetish house and they were like shocking each other and doing all that is when Arthur had to go in to get something another fetch quest or whatever was but it was in it was in like the house of rubber or something so it was like oh I remember the name yeah like that the name yeah there was one you get that out a lot of it you could skip through you could kind of get to where you need to get the item and leave but there was one big window on a wall with a curtain and a button outside and if you hit the button curtain comes up and there's two people in this room with rubber suits on and somebody's like like pulling making exposing their skin like getting shocked as like a leisurely thing it was weird it was weird but there's one other thing I want to say about Sally that because I think I mentioned this before on on the cast like ever since I've had kids in media stuff with kids to me hits harder right because it just just for the briefest of moments for me you get into like oh what if that was my son or my daughter whatever right you have that like briefest of moments of like shit what if that happened and it hurts all the time every time yeah no matter how big or small it is so the the I think that's why I think I like Sally's the story the most because the first introduction into the baby somebody comes in to get blueberry joy and she's out of it and they are not happy so they bust in and start scouring her house looking for it and get to the room with the baby and end up picking up the baby in this like crazy state yeah and it was like I genuinely didn't know what was gonna I was I was like scared of it that was with which not spooky but it's so scary right which is what straight-up horror is yeah so that that I think I just kind of put her situation like it made it real you know so yeah well having kids makes a character for you as a person with kids it automatically gives you another layer of a way to identify with them more you know yeah a whole extra layer that and with Ollie I don't remember because we can't remember if it was his daughter or a kid he knew I think it was the neighbor's daughter that he turned the neighbor in he turned his neighbor in or this is a you know person across the street or something he turned the man and I think they clapped his daughter out I think is what they did yeah but by the time I got to all these stuff I was three walking over it so yeah cuz even though the story was good the mechanics never got better yeah I think I think Sally's was was nice because it was less combat which was I think the worst part right she had less combat though Ollie had was was then this this so frustrating that I'm moving into Ollie stuff Ollie was built for combat right but the majority of Ollie's whole thing is taking this one that one bitch hostage for like I think like it get over an hour of gameplay where you're like I can't remember her name but he he gets into the city and talks to this one higher-up lady who holds a lot of weight in like the hierarchy of joy in the hierarchy of the of the of the city well he's like yes he's like on the council of something or whatever she has a lot of influence anyway she's the Bob Barbas of Wellington Wells yeah so anyway see you but a lot of all these gameplay is trying to convince this lady to do a thing but you like got her tied up in the house yeah it's it's so a lot of it is not actually playing the game it's conversations right with the character that can do a lot of damage and do combat well which I think was kind of a misstep but anyway yeah all these whole thing is he is actively going crazy but he's not not from joy he we've been talking about this this good little girl he's been seeing this little girl constantly for who knows how long I guess trying to like make I was trying to make better you know make good buyer or whatever but he ends up getting forced out of his little place he's calling home and oh that's that's what was he starts remembering stuff from the war and he had information that was kept from the public I think would like to thank the the fake tanks and stuff that Arthur Arthur had found the fake tanks all we knew about it and like the higher-ups in the military also knew about it obviously because they were the ones that have the tanks but he was taking joy and was forgetting all of that and then once he left Wellington didn't stop taking his joy yeah he started he started having that info come back I think a lot I mean as far as the story goes some of the the convoluted parts of it kind of are what we're talking about right now just some of the stuff another thing too I noticed is that this can I compare it to Bioshock please absolutely not okay we're gonna we're gonna stop now now go ahead so in Bioshock I was like area notes that you could pick up that were like voice memos there and they did it also Borderlands did the same thing there would be voice memos that would kind of help you get a better understanding of characters or the setting in this game it was all menu based reading which is not it's not a good thing for a game that's already you know lacking like I don't need to take a break from this combat to read that the game would have been better if they were just narrated they could read it as a voiceover while you play through I know you guys there were there were those little collectible like floating masks right and they did what I had they basically triggered a flashback or a memory of whichever character you happen to be playing as don't care they weren't they weren't super frequent though yeah yeah yeah it was yeah for every one of those there was like 20 different notes yeah they should have just had oh like narrated out loud the way they do in a lot of other games I know it would have cost more for a voice actor but I don't know Gearbox you can hire me next time our games out proper no I think I get completely overhaul as in remove the the combat system make it to make itself right make it make it conversation and stealth and what if you had a lot more instances like where you had to talk your way out of it kind of like in yeah like Skyrim or Baldur's Gate where there's like options to try to talk your way out of stuff yeah I would have been kind of cool because then that would make sense more sense for each character like all he would be very bad at that but Arthur would be probably fine right right I bet miss Boyle would do great at that right yeah that would have been kind of cool I think yeah I think give her the combat fix the stealth because itself it was promising but just fell flat and in in the case of Arthur being a little over 50% of this game cut his shit down to like none heard of what it was yeah right I think I think hat you know because they're slowly regaining their memories back give him more more chunks of that of his realization of the past a lot quicker and I think you know that I don't think there had to be much adjustment to Sally or our all these sections I think I think there's outside of the issues we've been calling out I think their storylines and their playthroughs were pretty okay I think Arthur's being so long as what what killed it yeah the one thing you know three different characters and they all had like their unique traits and everything I feel like all these was really the only one that in the gameplay made a difference like how he was strong in combat kind of thing I feel like Arthur's like if I can remember what Arthur's traits were it was like you'd sit on a park bench and people don't notice you it was like blending in did you do that ever no no not really you know it like it were like concepts in this game that just didn't make it into the final right yeah I feel like this game either needed to be a lot shorter or they need to flesh out some more things and make it more open world yeah because I think that would have worked as a concept what you know they would have needs a lot of work on what they had but I could see this being a bigger game right but I say I I think that would have been a heavier lift than just making it a little bit short more short and sweet yeah I just want to say I think it was an amazing story weighed down by a bad game and I thought of that that's something I I I did I did like through through all the story beats and the cutscenes between Arthur joy nope excuse me Arthur Sally and Ollie they had cutscenes with each other and then you started with Arthur then Sally then and then Ollie when you went back once you got to like Sally's portion and then had that same cutscene but from her perspective right I really liked how they did that I I actually went back and watched the interactions between Arthur and Ollie and I missed it the first time but when you first meet Arthur he's just talking nonsense but oh that's funny he's a little hallucination so when it shows from his perspective it's a lot it makes a lot more sense yeah that's pretty much yeah chaotic but when you meet him as Arthur it was just a shit show yeah so I really I really liked that that story beats a different ways they connected those those stories yeah it was interesting too because they kind of had different perspectives on like what happened like they're not yeah not reliable narrators kind of which kind of right they were doing it from what what the characters yeah thought happened and it wasn't necessarily what happened how they perceived it so say because Arthur and and Sally being like ex-lovers and stuff Arthur has no idea for the for most of it that Sally has a kid so he's like she's being just crazy selfish and she's the cod liver oil that's what you're worrying about when I'm trying to like try to save my life and maybe save my brother if I can find him why do we need cod liver oil yeah well because there's a baby with measles and that is the only cure for me well that's the thing she didn't tell you you know yeah and yeah yeah yeah so he's like this this bitch what is she doing fine whatever and you left and she and you know and she's sitting there like you know I'm trying to trying to say you know help my kid but she can't really talk about it because that's she can't have it I'm safe for people to know think of any other game where you had a stupid fetch quest and you thought it was pointless and just remember what we're talking about right now maybe that pizza you had to deliver in Death Stranding was very important oh maybe getting the music in stray was the only thing keeping that robot from just powering down forever it was probably yeah maybe probably not we'll never know we'll never know it's hard this game is hard to discuss the endings like the ending because I feel like you know it wasn't like a conclusive one end they all had multiple kind of perspective right to end it on right I don't know if we talk about that I think I think we can it's go there well the thing is they're open-ended right yeah because their whole their whole goal is to leave this one town it's basically do that the whole the whole you know the world is a roaster but yeah it's stray all over I think I texted you about this where I I had credits roll within the first 30 seconds of me playing they tell you about this it doesn't sound even remotely familiar it's it's an alternate ending and I think it's there as a joke so oh wait you just take you first yeah the very first option of the game is do you want to take your joy and forget your brother or do you want to remember and I was like I'll just take my joy and you take it everything goes sunny and then credits roll because it's like your character is deciding to not engage in in their story to leave I think I would probably just take it like yeah yeah what was the name of the joy that like obliviate a joy or something is like a oblivionator was it with the ones in that was it in like the vending machines no like a permanent joy that you can take where you just like forget everything oh I don't I don't remember it was like a bloominator or something I don't know I want that it's out it sounds good I wanted that after I played the game oh man so yeah I mean our art I mean it's we've we've talked a little bit about Arthur's he was trying to get to his brother or see you he wanted to get out to then try to find his brother to see if his brother's still alive that was his whole goal do you he finally makes it out and you get one more choice with Arthur with that policeman on the bridge as you're leaving with one last chance do you want to do you want to forget or do you want to keep right going to find your brother and you can make that choice one more time and if you forget or excuse me if you if you if he decides to not take the joy he goes off and then I think he meets he's just walking in the woods and I think he meets another boy like a like a kid who was showing that like very adult that was like a like a you know young adult you know like between 10 and 14 or something yeah you know sure he just looked kind of scruffy yeah well he looked like homeless kind of but anyway it was it was basically showing that like other parts of the world are fine right yeah right that was kind of the the the assumption or if he takes his joy and just says fuck it we don't got to worry about Percy it fades to black and then comes back to him like in a park on what you know those little like a little like yeah he's just like riding a little horse the happiest can be he's got a mask back on he's like yeah we're good you know Oh I mean Oh Arthur Oh Arthur Sally's wish she gets on a boat and and drives away what is your second choice eat it was so fucking lame she said something like we get to see the world or something I get to show you I can show you we can go we can go where we can go wherever you want to go or something it was it was something oh no there's like a specific quote and it was so like it made me it made me feel bad for the writer um some of the scripted dialogue was meh I'm trying to scroll quickly to see the two oh yeah dude we'll be the two musketeers oh my she said that to the baby and I thought that's pretty yeah yeah that sounds like a kind of woman with rubber arms she would say that there you go I'm Ollie Sparky yeah his ending to me was the most interesting yeah my my spirit animal he is in a hot-air balloon of course yelling obscenities down at Wellington Wells and I believe he whips out and just pisses on whatever he flies over yep it was great it was fantastic the best ending yeah that was yeah oh man so overall did did you did how'd you how'd you feel about it overall like what's your what's your lasting impression I'm glad you asked and write this down it was an amazing story way down by a bad game dude I know I know I'm I know but that's how I would just it was it was a good story man it was a very cool concept something got fucked up when they were making this game and it didn't come out the way it was supposed to and I think that's the general consensus of it everybody really it was there there's not a lot of games that have this cool of a setting where it really truly feels unique and original which might be the same thing unique and original but man it was fine it was cool it was okay it wasn't my favorite game that we've played on this podcast but it wasn't yeah the worst but it wasn't a worry in the blind forest dude that was my favorite game maybe I've got a war was hard to top but I really enjoyed or you fuck I'm profane sorry sorry man you've had a long day good along week I've had a long life dude no I think I think I'm right there with you yeah on on on that I it was not what I expected dude I went I went into this game extraordinarily blind like I had no idea what it was gonna be like at all and I thought that was kind of a cool way you know so many of these games you go in and you know exactly what you're gonna get ahead of time like I never played since we just mentioned already I never played Ori at all right but I knew what it was gonna be like I knew it was gonna be a platformer I knew it was gonna be a you know 2d side-scroller but this game I had no clue dude I thought it was gonna be very different but it was an enjoyable experience I wish it was a little more straightforward with the story because it was a little it was kind of complicated when it didn't need to be but it was good it was fine yeah improve the combat literally speed it up three times as much make it three times faster yeah give him a gun why were there no guns why was it that if I got caught and I hid in a bush they would stand outside the bush and throw rocks with blazing accuracy just a pinpoint accuracy throwing rocks at me why can you use a bottle to throw but you can't do the old like smash it over a table and do the old stabby stabbing make it make a shiv yeah yeah and then I would be like I don't like that I did this or whatever whatever he's every every time you choke somebody out I'm sorry I'm so sorry no wonder Sally Boyle left me Oh Lord a schmuck I like that all right you want to break it to a close goodnight so yeah before we sign off I think that's gonna wrap up our discussion on we happy few but we've got one more episode left in our season of spook little nightmares coming up next hey you like it you can do that you can do that at the end of every Halloween episode if you want me to um yeah I'll do it for you sure I'll do it for you thirsty listeners oh lord all right guys we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up next I got a little nightmare you get that on your list well we will see you next time thanks so much for listening that wraps up our discussion for we happy few if you enjoyed this episode please let us know with a thumbs up 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 socials and what games are up next at the end of every episode this has been three to one backlog with James and Alex you can connect with us on any of our social media pages or by sending us an email at three to one backlog at gmail.com until next time you