00:00:02.68 Dave J Hello, everybody. My name is Dave Jackson, and you're listening to Tales from the Backlog. This is a video games deep dive review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it, and discuss. I have two wonderful guests with me today. Both are friends of the show, Fireheart Media podcasters, and patron saints of the arts. First of all, we have the host of Jala-chan's Place, and a panelist on The Level podcast. Welcome back to the show, Jala Prendes. 00:00:34.70 Jala & Dave C Hello, I am here again. Yay. 00:00:36.78 Dave J Good to have you back. And we're also joined by a host of Monster, Dear Monster, returning after a short break from the show on Tales from the Backlog. Welcome back, Dave Cox. 00:00:49.10 Jala & Dave C Hey, glad to be back again. 00:00:51.39 Dave J Yeah, good to have you both back on here. Second time for each of you on the show, Jala was on the Resident Evil 4 Remake episode with Adam Bucceri, and Dave was on the Dave the Diver episode previously. I think that we have a game that At least Dave and I will have a little bit more fun talking about today than the previous one. 00:01:14.83 Jala & Dave C Right. 00:01:15.03 Dave J We're going to talk about Decarnation today, which is a psychological horror game developed by Atelier QDB and published by Shiro Unlimited for PC and Switch in 2023. 00:01:27.74 Dave J And that is going to be the first of many French words that I mispronounced throughout the course of this podcast. So something to look forward to everybody. If this is your first time listening, thank you for stopping by. Here's how spoilers work on the podcast. We are not going to spoil the story for a while. And there will be a link or a timestamp down in the show notes for when spoilers begin for Decarnation. So if you haven't played, don't worry. You can just tap out when we warn you that spoilers are coming. So. 00:01:57.78 Dave J Of all the games in the horror lineup in October, I think Decarnation is the least well-known of them, so we have some quick pitches at the top for what Decarnation is. I say it is true crime and psychological horror by way of RPG Maker. Jala, what's your pitch? 00:02:16.50 Jala & Dave C I'm gonna come back to RPG Maker later, but like later on. 00:02:20.11 Dave J Yeah. 00:02:20.22 Jala & Dave C Anyway, ah so mine would be a deeply psychological and at least for me, thought provoking and reflective dive into the dark side of the experience of being assigned female at birth and living in the male dominated world. 00:02:34.04 Dave J Absolutely. And Dave, what's the pitch? 00:02:37.34 Jala & Dave C The pitch is 80s French pop music all the time. 00:02:43.63 Dave J All the time. Yeah. Every situation. 00:02:48.14 Jala & Dave C Especially that one song. Well, I'm sure you'll put it in. 00:02:51.01 Dave J Oh, it'll be in the episode for sure, that song's great. um And I can't pronounce the name, so we're just gonna call it that song for now. I played Decarnation on PC and Steam Deck. I moved back and forth between the two, mostly Steam Deck though. ah Steam Deck worked fine for me, just wanna give a shout out for that, although the font size is minuscule. 00:03:12.26 Dave J unless you go in the settings and make it bigger, which you can do. But I played most of this on Steam Deck, six hours to play. How did the two of you play this? 00:03:21.75 Jala & Dave C So when I played, it was four and a half hours both times. Originally, I was the one who made you play this by talking about it constantly, we'll get there. 00:03:29.18 Dave J Uh-huh. 00:03:29.71 Jala & Dave C But, you know, anyway, like both times I played, it was four and a half hours for me. 00:03:30.73 Dave J yeah 00:03:33.84 Jala & Dave C And Dave, I think you were five? Yeah, five hours, I believe. Um, I played this on the steam deck as well. And my play-through came several, many months after Jollis, but I did like vicariously over the shoulder, watching her play most of the game. So it was kind of reviewing key points and then, um, giving my chance to, to engage with the gameplay aspects of this particular game. 00:04:02.61 Dave J That's true. Yeah. So I guess when we talk about the, uh, our histories with the game, our histories here both begin with Jala for why we played, uh, Decarnation. So Jala, I'll ask you first, what was it that originally brought you to Decarnation? 00:04:17.62 Jala & Dave C Well, I was looking around on the steam summer sale last year and I was like, what's new? I don't know what some of this stuff is. And I'm scrolling around and I see the like logo art for Decarnation, which is pretty eye-catching. 00:04:30.10 Dave J Mhmm. 00:04:31.80 Jala & Dave C You know, it's got a very pretty lady with her hair flowing back and there's a bunch of pink stuff and you don't know what it is until you zoom in on it today. 00:04:38.89 Dave J Yeah. like Yeah. 00:04:41.20 Jala & Dave C Oh, okay. Now that that's what that is. But anyway, so like, I was like, what is this Decarnation? 00:04:44.48 Dave J Yeah. 00:04:46.44 Jala & Dave C Hmm. And then I'm like, oh, it's a little horror game. OK, that's up my alley. OK, it's a little adventure thing. Psychological horror. That's even more my thing. Great. 00:04:56.64 Jala & Dave C And anyway, um there was a demo. So I went ahead and played the demo because I always do that if there is one before I pick up a game. 00:05:04.39 Dave J yeah 00:05:04.70 Jala & Dave C um I don't need to add to the backlog unless I'm actually going to realistically play it. 00:05:09.29 Dave J Uh 00:05:09.35 Jala & Dave C So ah played the demo, was immediately hooked by the demo and was like, okay, yeah, push by, I'm getting it. And then I promptly talked about it on the level. And then after I did that, I was talking to God and everybody about this game and like, come on, everybody needs to play this game. 00:05:22.91 Dave J -huh. 00:05:24.29 Jala & Dave C Somebody please play this game so I can talk to them about it. So here we are today. 00:05:29.09 Dave J Yeah. and And then for Dave, I assume that like part of it is we had talked about the three of us wanting to do a podcast about pixel art horror games. Um, but was like outside of that was Decarnation, something that you thought you wanted to experience for yourself. 00:05:45.44 Dave J Um, I know you said you watched a little bit of Jolla playing it the first time. 00:05:49.68 Jala & Dave C Oh yeah, absolutely. When she was looking, um, cause I was also there when she was going through the steam store previews and we were looking at, I think two or three games at one time and just the ah screenshots was like, yeah, this is my jam. Uh, just looking at the background art. 00:06:08.33 Jala & Dave C um and the psychological horror angle. I'm like, oh yeah, a big fan of Silent Hill. This seems to be doing some kind of thing like that. 00:06:14.50 Dave J Mm hmm. 00:06:16.24 Jala & Dave C And it looks weird and grotesque. And there's a lot of stuff going on here that is my jam, ah provided the demo holds up and it did. 00:06:27.07 Jala & Dave C And then I was like, oh, I should play this sometime. And I did eventually. 00:06:32.99 Dave J Yeah. So for me, it was really a combination of three people. And the third, I'm actually not sure if they played this and talked about it. 00:06:43.33 Dave J It's been so long, but it was Jala first talking about it. ah Like you said, shouting from the rooftops, you want everybody to ah to hear about it and give it a shot for themselves. 00:06:49.02 Jala & Dave C Hehehe. 00:06:53.24 Dave J ah So as you, it was Jill Groat from the Indian former. She wrote a review on her website, and I like to keep up with what Jill's doing over there. Shout out to Jill. ah And then I wanna say Adam Bucheri talked about this, friend of ours, mutual friend of ours. um I don't remember specifically if Adam did, ah but Adam is always talking about various horror games. So it's not a bad guess if it is a guess. ah So without the two, possibly three of you, I would have probably never heard of this game because no one else out there is really talking about it. Like I look at the Steam reviews, there's, 00:07:30.92 Dave J you know 600 or something like that, which is not a huge number. I don't see the video essayists that I follow talking about it. I don't see people talking about it on Twitter really. It's just you know the three of you talking about it. So that's what put it on my radar. I bought it a while ago. I think I bought it last year and then just sat there and I put it on my backlog resolutions for 2024. 00:07:57.40 Dave J to make sure that I played it because I don't want to suffer the wrath of Jala for saying I'll play something and then never playing it. Just kidding. 00:08:07.20 Jala & Dave C Yeah. This is a game that, um, ah graphically, I guess it could have, but when I was taking, um, it was like psychology for, oh, something, uh, back in college, I did a, my term paper on the anime serial experiments lane. 00:08:20.45 Dave J Uh huh. 00:08:24.37 Jala & Dave C And that like, that was a deep dive into psyche and all all kinds of things. This also. easily merits that same kind of treatment where you can sit there and probably do a term paper or a thesis on what this game is bringing to the table. 00:08:41.86 Dave J oh yeah yeah 00:08:44.11 Jala & Dave C In terms of anime, I would say the thing that I think of when I think about this game is Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue. So um that particular movie and how it deals with, you know, just like the male gaze and, you know, having a lady of some renown and all of that and what happens with that and the breakdown that that occurs. 00:09:06.45 Jala & Dave C That is really what this feels like to me. 00:09:11.68 Dave J Yeah, 100%. So I knew about that kind of thematic focus before I started playing it, obviously, because I heard you talk about it, whether it's in Discord or on the level and stuff like that. So that was one of the things that boosted my list of things to play, because I'm interested to see the artistic expression of that. And it's something that not a lot of Video games are covering certainly not the triple-a gaming industry is not really doing this kind of thing And then the thing about Indies is there's an indie game that's doing everything under the Sun But you have to find it first because there's so many ah So that was something that like drew me toward playing this because I do think this game is doing something that It's using the familiar type of thing like psychological horror 00:10:02.39 Dave J um But doing it in a way that a lot of, like I haven't seen another psychological horror do the plot set up that this game does. And I don't want to say too much right now, but it's a really, really unique plot. Like when you write down what happens in Decarnation, I've never seen another game do this with, and that's why I said like that true crime angle at the beginning in the elevator pitch. 00:10:27.23 Dave J And then within that, the exploration, the classic psychological horror explanation or exploration of the psyche of the main character is really, really interesting. And then all those other ways, like you said, in a world dominated by men, how does this woman of some fame, some, ah you know, public notoriety, what's her life like? And the way that this game explores that I think is really interesting. You mentioned pixel art. It's fantastic. The animations are really, really good. And I thought the writing was really snappy and fun. 00:11:00.63 Jala & Dave C And also it's important to note that the narrator is an unreliable narrator as well. So that's something to bear in mind when it comes to like, if you come across this game yourself and you decide to play the demo, like just have that in the back of your head, because you're you're never quite a hundred percent sure ah in certain scenarios, at least until you get a little bit in. 00:11:05.35 Dave J Mm hmm. 00:11:20.18 Jala & Dave C And even sometimes you're not really sure until it resolves itself, whether or not you're in the real world or inside of the main character's head. 00:11:28.05 Dave J Yeah, 100%. And then I guess the last thing is just to say before we dig in properly you know top level thoughts here, this ah Dave had mentioned the gameplay in Decarnation and how the gameplay is ah you know something to experience. And like when you look at a screenshot, you'd maybe assume that there's not a lot of gameplay in here. And there is actually a fair amount of little mini games and stuff like that. 00:11:54.31 Dave J And that was nice sometimes, sometimes I wasn't a big fan. It's a bit of a mixed bag there. But I don't know, it's one of those games that makes me wonder, um would this game have been better without all of that stuff? ah But some of it I think does add to the experience. 00:12:14.07 Jala & Dave C So ah we'll get more into in depth on that a little bit later. But what I will say is um when you come across any of those moments where you're not as much a fan of what it's doing with the gameplay, the thing is, it's also very gracious with the saving. 00:12:18.13 Dave J Yeah. 00:12:28.57 Jala & Dave C It's frequently saving itself automatically and you're not penalized. 00:12:31.04 Dave J Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:12:32.82 Jala & Dave C So like there isn't really like a barrier in place when you have those moments where you're like, oh, I hate this particular part of the gameplay. Like usually it's it's you know not really stopping you. 00:12:45.74 Dave J Right, 100%. Let's put a pin in all these various points. We will listen to a bit of music from Decarnation. And when we come back, we will set up the story. 00:13:00.03 Dave J In Decarnation, before we talk about the story, I want to give a couple of um content warnings that the game puts up in ah the, I think it's in the options menu, you can read the content warnings. ah A few quick shout outs here for ah content warnings for sexual harassment and abuse, abduction, stalking, 00:13:21.73 Dave J And um specifics to those things would spoil the story. I'll give a more specific warning when the spoiler section starts. But if what I have just mentioned makes you cautious, please check doesthedogdie.com if you want to know more before playing or before listening to the spoiler section in this discussion. So it is one of those games dealing with these very, very heavy things. 00:13:48.31 Dave J The direction and principal writing credit goes to Quentin de Boucouletre, second French. Jala, do you speak French by any chance? 00:13:56.91 Jala & Dave C No, I do not speak French, uh, Dave. No, unfortunately that wasn't one of the languages I picked up. 00:14:03.33 Dave J Okay. 00:14:03.35 Jala & Dave C Right. But I will say, so the, the guy who did this, and it is a guy, he, his pronouns at least, um, I did look up really nails the femme perspective in a way that is actually really surprising and sensitive and it's great. 00:14:18.70 Jala & Dave C Like ah you, you, you could have told me this was a woman that was writing it and I would, but would have believed you just as much. 00:14:24.63 Dave J Yeah, agreed. ah This game is set in Paris in 1989. You play as Gloria, who is a dancer in the Black Swan Cabaret. The game opens as Gloria is posing for a sculpture by an artist named Petrus. And Petrus is giving a little ah monologue to Gloria about how he's lucky. He found Gloria in time before everything fell apart. 00:14:51.66 Dave J ah and says he recently saw his first sculpture model and said that nothing was left of her former beauty, called her a troll in clown makeup. So we talked about a little bit you know the world ruled by men and the perspective um that some of these men have about the women around, and this game wastes no time ah giving you that perspective. 00:15:16.09 Jala & Dave C Right. And especially because this is the late 80s, it hadn't gotten to that point of like female empowerment in the workforce and all that other kind of stuff really yet. 00:15:26.39 Dave J Hmm. 00:15:27.02 Jala & Dave C So like I remember when I, in the late 80s, when I was a little kid, seeing this stuff all over the media where, you know, men were just smearing women like this all the time. 00:15:37.14 Dave J Yeah. 00:15:41.45 Dave J So four months later, Gloria and her partner, Joy, go to the exhibition where this statue is going to be revealed. Petrus is a real piece of work. He didn't leave tickets for them, and he didn't he also didn't pay her for the modeling. So there's that also. ah When Gloria gets up to the room with the statue, she sees a man groping it. ah Really, like this is where some of those pixel art animations um it's really gross the way he's groping the statue. ah It really got like a reaction out of me. And again, this is like 10 minutes into the game. So like you really get like, okay, they're really focusing on this. This is a point of emphasis for sure. ah So Gloria sees this, she gets upset, she rushes out of the museum. 00:16:29.05 Dave J Later on that night, she gets a call from a wealthy patron of the arts who wants to sponsor her, opening her own cabaret show. And she seems interested, but she declines. Maybe she's not feeling confident or something like that. So she declines. Later, she has a very annoying conversation with her mom. 00:16:49.84 Dave J um at the cabaret, her boss quote, graduates her up from dancing to coaching, kind of saying you're too old to be dancing now against her wishes. Uh, and, um, joy breaks up with her on that same day. So she has a really shitty day and she calls to accept that offer from the wealthy patron. 00:17:10.86 Jala & Dave C yeah Yeah, all of those bad things happened right before she declined until she saw her mom. And when she talked to her mom and she had that conversation with her mom and her mom is just like, you know, acting like a real piece of work. 00:17:18.49 Dave J Yeah. 00:17:25.60 Jala & Dave C That's when ah it ends up being like, oh, Gloria decides to call back and accept. 00:17:30.91 Dave J Yeah, so she goes out to meet the mysterious patron. His name is Mr. St. Louis. And that's where I'm going to stop. We're not going to tell you what happens when she goes out to meet him, but shit gets real wild when she goes to the meeting place. And then the story of Decarnation really kicks off from there. And what I've just described is about 30 minutes or less of the game so you get a nice introduction to Gloria and her life and the characters and people around her and then Decarnation begins so um this ah as a lot of psychological horror games are this is a ah Partly there's a there's a plot that happens But it is also a character study of Gloria and we've already mentioned a lot of things that the game brings up early on like um 00:18:21.35 Dave J how the people in her life view her, her boss, her mom, her now ex-girlfriend. um This character study of Gloria is shown through really amazing expressive pixel art and landscapes, we'll say, like psychological horror-y landscapes that you go through. ah So what did the both of you think about the way they explore her character? 00:18:47.30 Jala & Dave C So for me, the first thing that I thought was that this is more or less a hero's journey. Like the entirety of the game kind of runs through a hero's journey where you've got, you know, like the innocent person at the beginning who has to go through all these trials and tribulations and has these different stages that they go through until they get to the end where they resolve their conflict. 00:19:05.67 Dave J Mmhmm. 00:19:07.19 Jala & Dave C And that's really what is happening with Gloria here. 00:19:12.01 Jala & Dave C Yeah, we'll talk about that in specific after the spoiler wall, but that's pretty much right on the money first as far as hitting the tropes of the hero's journey. ah Also, 00:19:26.78 Jala & Dave C Because of the way the game is framed and the gameplay mechanics as you encounter them, you get a good taste of most of them in this introductory section. 00:19:36.99 Dave J Mm-hmm Yeah 00:19:37.31 Jala & Dave C A lot of it's sort of button waggles um and some just inputs or like a rhythm game. And those all feature increasingly so as the game progresses. But um a large part of this is you are firmly rooted in ah Gloria's like point of view. So not only is the ah the narration um unreliable as you as you kind of come to find out, 00:20:05.73 Jala & Dave C But the perspective is questionable on the count of her interactions with the people around her. And you don't really ever get anyone else's side of it. you just You're just getting her interpretation of what she feels like when people are talking to her. 00:20:27.33 Jala & Dave C and that it kind of draws into question um how exactly those, her relationships are because we have a snippet of her in like a bad time in her life. You know, we don't have her day to day. We just have this moment of like, wow, everything just really crashed out. And then, you know, in, in despair, you're reaching out for like a beacon of hope that would change your life for what you want ah more or what you assume to be the better. 00:21:00.38 Jala & Dave C Right. Something else to note too is that although this is a character study of Gloria and it is dealing with the harassment and the you know experience of being a woman in the world and whatever, it's also about Gloria having to grapple in different ways with aging. 00:21:17.10 Jala & Dave C That's from the beginning, from the very first you know interaction with Petrus, he's talking about aging and how 00:21:17.32 Dave J yeah 00:21:24.72 Jala & Dave C you know um you know, he's glad to have caught Gloria before it was too late. And then, you know, although her boss ends up, you know, sidelining her because she's too old, because she's almost 30, you know, and things like that. 00:21:38.32 Dave J Yeah. Yeah. 00:21:39.11 Jala & Dave C And ah as someone who is a dancer and um was you ah for a very long time considered to be attractive, ah and then now is aging and now ah is apparently turned into a massive hag. 00:21:55.03 Jala & Dave C I mean, like I can I can understand and relate to the kind of anxieties and things she has, but she also has age differences um in her relationships, like Joy is younger than she is and her relationship with other characters ah that we talked about in a little bit past the spoiler wall. 00:22:06.13 Dave J Yeah. 00:22:12.29 Jala & Dave C There's age differences there as well. 00:22:14.77 Dave J Yeah, the ah so the age difference I think is shown to you through her role as a dancer, which is a good way to, to share there the ah the the focus on aging is shown to you ah through her role as a dancer, which is good because um it's a, 00:22:21.79 Jala & Dave C Oh, no. 00:22:33.18 Dave J It's a good role for her to have because it's public facing and people seem to like her at the cabaret. ah One person in particular really likes her. ah But that doesn't seem to matter for the, well we'll say the men who are in positions of power, especially early in the game. And then There is a little bit of commentary also on how society views artists in general, which I think is, um you know, it's ah it's a secondary theme here, but it was something that I pointed out as interesting that they explore here. The main one that we talked about, we've talked about several times here, is this, 00:23:13.45 Dave J ah harassment and objectification of women seen very early on in the story, and how it escalates and how various different characters have their own version of it. And again, Gloria is a public facing performer, which is, I think, a 00:23:37.24 Dave J a really relevant position for her to be in because she is, everybody sees her. And so like these types of ah opinions and parasocial relationships and things like that can form so much quicker with like a, she's not like world famous or something, but like the people who go to this ballet or this cabaret, they know who she is. She's a headlining act there. 00:23:59.98 Dave J ah So the fact that she does have this gives this game a really good vehicle to explore this type of thing. And ah there's so many ways that this goes throughout the story. We'll have a lot to talk about in the spoiler section, but um ah this is a really clever way to explore this theme, I think. 00:24:20.21 Jala & Dave C Agreed. 00:24:23.15 Jala & Dave C Yeah, the game hits a lot of different levels of society and how it's not just the male gaze, but like social gaze, and then how that's perceived on both the receiving end and a little bit on when you're viewing 00:24:28.88 Dave J Mm-hmm. 00:24:43.00 Jala & Dave C a and notable figure, or in this case, you've you've put you've assigned a special, like ah you put someone on a pedestal, literally, you put a statue up on a pedestal, and not only is this just um Gloria's story, but it's her grappling with herself as a public figure, and then her grappling with herself as a ah literal like work of art and how that's received because that that becomes integral in the latter part of the story. 00:24:53.83 Dave J Yeah. 00:25:25.81 Dave J It is good to get it from both of those angles, like you get her the live performer, the dancer, and then you get her the statue later on. And there's some of that um conversation between Gloria and Joy really early on in the game about like there's this big statue of me being displayed, like how much of this is me and people who view this, what do they think of her, this person who is supposedly aging as told by basically everybody else in her life that we meet early on here. So to have that captured like in 00:26:04.11 Dave J Bronze or whatever that statue is made out of at the beginning of the game to have that kind of moment captured or like this ah this transition period as people are telling Gloria like but you're getting older it's time to Time to coach the girls instead of dancing and things like that to have that captured up there and then to have this guy at the exhibition just ah Just really going to town on that statue in a really disgusting way um It I don't know. It's a really really strong opening for these themes in particular really like once this all kicked off and then of course like the big inciting plot event which we're hiding once that all of this kicks off like that. The introduction of these themes got me hooked and then once the plot kicked off. I was like, oh shit. This is cool I can't wait to see where this goes and 00:26:58.94 Jala & Dave C I will say, though, that because everything in this narrative is so heavy and so thought provoking and reflective, for me, this was something that I absolutely played act by act. 00:27:05.11 Dave J Yeah. 00:27:09.67 Dave J Mm 00:27:10.25 Jala & Dave C I played one section at a time, sometimes less than that, depending upon how heavy that particular section was. 00:27:12.71 Dave J hmm. 00:27:17.15 Jala & Dave C It's not really something, even though it's a short game, you're not really meant to sit there and just play it in an afternoon. You're really meant to sit with it. 00:27:24.86 Dave J Agreed, not a super chuggable game. ah I played it in a very similar way. I was always very interested in what was going to happen next, but I usually felt like I was ready for a break once a big section concluded or definitely once I hit the end of an act. 00:27:44.17 Dave J um it's not like an enjoyable game to play and something like that. I want to call off work and play all the way through Decarnation because I can't stop playing like I was ready to stop playing at those, you know, those nice boundary points for sure. 00:27:59.10 Jala & Dave C Well, I think it's just because it kind of tickles the brain and you know again, really activates your empathy and your compassion, but also um gets you thinking and reflecting and you know musing on the different ways that the art and the sound and everything else is working together in unison with the narrative that's being presented to you. 00:28:19.66 Jala & Dave C to where it really benefits from having that breather time too. like you know You do need a break, but that's because it's so heavy and there's so much going on and there's so much nuance to what's on screen for you. 00:28:23.92 Dave J Yeah. 00:28:31.63 Jala & Dave C that you know It's kind of like if you're reading a really dense comic book, like if you're reading Watchmen, you're not really supposed to c chug Watchmen. You know You're supposed to read it a little bit at a time because you need to reflect on it because it's so dense. 00:28:44.90 Dave J Yeah, I would often lay in bed, like after playing it, this was my before bed game, which is, you know, but you might have weird dreams if you play this before bed, but any super text heavy game, that's when I usually play it. I would often lay in bed after this and like to recount everything that happened and try to piece things together. It was a good one to sit and digest after a play session. 00:29:08.37 Jala & Dave C Yeah and and this game also sits in the space of art so like separating art versus artist and like when that can be done or should be done and even just in the beginning of the game um ah prior to the event ah the The big point of contention, ah in at least in the immediate relationship um between Gloria and Joy, is that when ah Gloria is upset by the molestation of her statue, she tells that to Joy, and then Joy's just like, it's it it' it's just a statue, it's not you. 00:29:46.60 Dave J Mm hmm. 00:29:48.41 Jala & Dave C Joy also says, well, what's the big deal? You show off all of your bits at the cabaret anyway, which is also horrible. Like that, you know, ah that's kind of the entire like line of, oh, she's asking for it. 00:29:56.53 Dave J Yep. 00:30:01.84 Dave J Yeah. 00:30:01.96 Jala & Dave C That's exactly what that is. 00:30:04.14 Dave J Yeah, ah it feels like they're kind of, you know, checking all of these different attitudes that people might have about somebody else, like Gloria in the public eye, whether it's about her aging or about the way she dresses, ah or her supposed modesty or something like that. ah They do hit a lot of those points. And this is all really early on in the game, we haven't, we haven't gotten to like the 30 minute mark of the game in our discussion of everything this game brings up. So 00:30:34.29 Jala & Dave C This is in the demo, all of this. 00:30:36.56 Dave J All of this is in the demo, yeah. So I assume the demo ends at the event as Dave coined it. 00:30:42.93 Jala & Dave C I believe so. 00:30:44.57 Dave J Yeah, well, that's a hell of a way to end a demo. And that's also going to be where we put a pin in the story for now. And we'll revisit this in the spoiler section. 00:30:55.47 Dave J Let's listen to a bit of music. We'll come back and talk about the presentation in Decarnation. 00:31:04.15 Dave J Visuals in Decarnation, the principal artists credited are Johannes, Rakatoasimbola, and Brian Tibas. 00:31:09.61 Jala & Dave C Good luck. Yes. 00:31:15.92 Dave J Apologies to everybody in advance for your names. I'm trying. I could have left them out, but I wanted to give people their credit. Pixel art in this game. I mentioned RPG Maker. 00:31:27.07 Dave J It looks like an RPG Maker game. It looks like To The Moon or something like that. 00:31:31.11 Jala & Dave C No, it doesn't. 00:31:32.23 Jala & Dave C It doesn't. 00:31:33.41 Dave J To me, in my memory, since I haven't played on the moon in four years or so, it's very similar to me. 00:31:33.47 Jala & Dave C It's not. 00:31:42.06 Dave J What I'll say about the pixel art before I turn it over is it is expressive, it is evocative, it's super impressive, the animations are great, and when you start to get into those psychological horror mindscapes, we'll say, 00:31:59.78 Dave J It is super imaginative. And like every time a new screen came up, I'd be like, whoa, that's pretty fucked up. I love that. Look at that face in the wall there. That's awesome. ah The creativity here, ah one of those things where it's like pixel art can bring all this stuff to life in a way that more realistic graphics might struggle to, I think. And I really enjoyed this. 00:32:22.15 Jala & Dave C Right, so first off, it's not JRPG maker style because it's not little anime looking chibis. It's a very distinctly Western style. They don't have big googly eyes. 00:32:31.53 Dave J Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah. 00:32:33.05 Jala & Dave C It's not whatever, like these are all hand done and then like they're also longer. They're not as stumpy as a JRPG maker graphic would look. So I mean like it could have been made in a JRPG maker for all I know, but like the art assets are 100% not. 00:32:41.19 Dave J Mm hmm. 00:32:49.43 Dave J Yeah, actually I looked it up, they did start making this an RPG maker and then moved it to Unity to finish the game. So that's where it came from. 00:32:58.09 Jala & Dave C Yeah, like the way that it moves and stuff feels like aN RPG Maker game, but the look of it is not a JRPG Maker look. It's it's all hand tailored. None of these assets are borrowed from from the JRPG Maker. Like you might see some of the assets tweaked a little bit and basically most games that are made on RPG Maker, but this one does not have that. But um yeah, insofar as the visuals and the creativity of what you see, it's very surreal. It's very cool. um i I feel like indies are really the place where pixels get to continue to live and to be expressive. 00:33:33.28 Jala & Dave C ah You don't really see that anymore in any kind of mainline game for a AAA studio at all. 00:33:33.52 Dave J Yep. 00:33:39.37 Jala & Dave C You know, they're all trying to go for fidelity mostly. 00:33:39.91 Dave J Just some, uh, yeah, just some, like some square annex, like the octopath travelers and stuff like that. 00:33:45.01 Jala & Dave C Yeah, yeah, that's true. 00:33:46.76 Dave J Otherwise it's otherwise it's gone. 00:33:46.91 Jala & Dave C That's true. 00:33:48.64 Dave J Yeah. 00:33:49.56 Jala & Dave C Right, but like Octopath Traveler still is within its box. You know, like it's using the lighting, and it's really focusing on certain aspects of that presentation, but it's not doing at all what this game is doing. 00:33:53.94 Dave J Oh yeah. 00:34:02.30 Dave J Agreed. Yeah, this is very, very different. um I love the character designs. Now that you know you brought attention to the character designs, they're all super unique. You'll never forget a character, even like faces, which is not something that like this type of ah you know RPG maker looking game um They don't always have distinctive faces. In fact, I would say that most, you know, think of my old, you know, favorite Final Fantasy games and stuff. People don't have distinctive faces. They have distinctive costumes and haircuts and stuff like that. Decarnation, people have faces that you'll remember. And one character in particular has a face that you will remember forever. um Just the way they're ah they're drawn and kind of like given that space and that level of detail. 00:34:51.54 Jala & Dave C Yeah, what this kind of brought to mind oddly was an old Atari ST game. um ah Well, it was a whole series, but um Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, ah in particular, um I guess some of the themes, but um the backgrounds and the character movements and and just the shapes, 00:35:17.56 Jala & Dave C Reminds me a little bit of that. um Now, this has more fidelity. um It has more pixels per inch. um And it just looks fantastic. But it gives you that 80s Europe vibe like it is right there. 00:35:38.78 Dave J Yeah, the design of ah places that you're in like city streets or representations of city streets, Gloria's apartment, the cabaret and places like that are all really well detailed and ah memorable spaces. 00:35:54.63 Dave J ah Music in this game is credited to lots of people actually. ALT236, AL9000, Quarantine Brassard, and ah the biggest name on the list here is Akira Yamaoka. 00:36:09.94 Dave J And that is ah notable to me because I was playing this game thinking, hey, this sounds like Silent Hill background music. And then I was talking with Jala and she mentioned, hey, Akira Yamaoka had worked on the soundtrack. And I was like, fuck that, of course, makes perfect sense. Like you're going through some of these psychological horror spaces and To me, Silent Hill music has two things. Well, three. There's the rock, which is not really in this game. There are the industrial sounds, which there is a bit of in this. But what sticks out to me when I think of Silent Hill music is these huge, room-filling, sustained chords that will just go for measures at a time and then shift 00:36:52.95 Dave J and then a couple more measures of just this cord being held. And this game has that too. And so I would hear that and be like, sounds like Silent Hill, son of a bitch. It is the Silent Hill guy. 00:37:04.12 Jala & Dave C Right. And um that's a thing. um Silent Hill was also cited as one of the inspirations behind this game, along with stuff like David Lynch, Satoshi Kon's works, um things like that. Also the original Alice in Wonderland, like the original book, not like the movies or anything. So ah you get a little bit of all of those different flavors when you're going through this. And Dave, I believe you also said this looks a lot like Suspiria in some ways. 00:37:32.42 Jala & Dave C Yeah, some of the things they do with lighting in particular, um because it's stage presentation-esque and dancing-centric, there's play with the um red, green, blue that will form like a white spotlight or the lights on a stage. 00:37:53.56 Jala & Dave C That's very Suspiria coded, as well as the film's images, which is, I think I want to say 1969, or maybe it was 73, somewhere around there, or a few of Ingmar Bergman's works like Persona. 00:37:53.85 Dave J Mm hmm. 00:38:11.38 Jala & Dave C So if this is something that interests you as far as themes, then those movies will also deliver and give you a very, very strong visual component. 00:38:24.96 Jala & Dave C I'll also put it out there that like Persona 4, or really, I guess all of the Persona video games, they're kind of whole thing about ah going into the dark parts of your psyche and then having to come to grips with them and stuff like that plays a part in what's going on in this game too. so ah But also, wrapping back to the music though, Dave, what does the music remind you of? Well, aside from the aforementioned Silent Hill, 00:38:50.21 Jala & Dave C um I didn't really get anything else out of that. Uh, uh, the Euro pop was, was just ever, ever present. 00:38:58.08 Dave J Yeah. 00:39:01.96 Jala & Dave C Um, yeah, nothing particular. Go ahead. I don't have anything that it reminds me of, but something that I think is interesting that they didn't do now that I'm reflecting on it is that they use the Silent Hill music ah type of music in a lot of the parts that are creepy and stuff. 00:39:19.58 Jala & Dave C And they might use the pop songs and stuff, but they don't warp the pop songs ever, which is something that's pretty typical in horror games to warp the music, distort the music, change it up and make it sound like demonic or wicked. 00:39:19.74 Dave J Mm hmm. 00:39:25.35 Dave J Oh, no. Yeah. 00:39:32.63 Jala & Dave C That never happens. And that's actually kind of interesting, um but it doesn't. It works fine the way that it's presented. The sound does a good job. um The sound effects and stuff at some points ah work really, really well in favor of giving that sensation of horror. 00:39:51.05 Jala & Dave C ah In other places, it's kind of like, oh, that's a really gross and excessive sound for the thing. 00:39:51.22 Dave J Mm hmm. 00:39:56.17 Jala & Dave C She's just eating a pancake. I don't know why it sounds like that kind of thing. 00:40:02.38 Dave J Yeah, building out horror through we'll say like realistic sound effects that you don't want to hear in real life like you know mouth noises and things like that but there's also there's a lot of like gross stuff in here um but maybe it's just the sound of dripping water or other things to build out ambiance in the place that you're in um really really or just you know the movement of a security camera from side to side when there's not a lot of other sound going on in the room at the time ah That stuff is really, really good. Those pop songs, like you said, they're not warped for horror effect. um They are just pop songs thrown in here and it's because Gloria is a dancer and these are the songs that play when you do your rhythm mini game thing. um The songs are credited credited to Fleur at Blue and ah 00:40:56.62 Dave J Gloria dances to them throughout the course of the game and the good observation that no matter how terrible things get, whenever the pop songs come on, they're just presented as they are. And they're really cool. I really like those songs. 00:41:11.87 Jala & Dave C Yeah, and we'll get into that because there's a specific reason why that's the case. 00:41:18.65 Jala & Dave C Right, right. So um you did have a note ah about the sound effects, specifically about Gloria's yell. 00:41:27.23 Dave J Oh, yeah, yeah, it was weird. 00:41:27.95 Jala & Dave C And we have a little bit of a disagreement on that, or maybe I have a little bit more of an insight or something. I don't know. 00:41:34.27 Dave J Yeah, it's not a disagreement. I don't think it's a bad sound effect. It's just when you, I guess, hear in your head, somebody yelling, it doesn't sound like this. And maybe that's for a good effect. ah It's not ah what's the it's not an aesthetically pleasing yell, we'll say. 00:41:55.78 Jala & Dave C So what it is, is she has a higher pitch. She goes, oh, and there's like a lowering at the end of her yell. And, um, I understand what you mean. 00:42:03.13 Dave J Mhmm. 00:42:05.62 Jala & Dave C It's kind of quite weird, because when you think of a scream in a horror movie, you think of something else. You don't think of this, but what this sounds like to me, a hundred percent is just the kind of frustration, then I am done with this shit. 00:42:11.95 Dave J Yes. 00:42:19.42 Jala & Dave C The kind of sound that you know I have heard comes out of myself and other people who are assigned female at birth. ah This is a sound that is natural and normal for some female at birth individuals in this society when they are done with this shit. 00:42:34.04 Jala & Dave C So that's what I get. 00:42:34.45 Dave J Sure. 00:42:35.19 Jala & Dave C And so like when it comes into play, this yell comes into play in the ah environments and narrative and all of that stuff, um you know it's real it's it's appropriate that it sounds like that. 00:42:48.59 Dave J app Absolutely. Gloria is in a lot of situations where she would be fed up with this shit for sure. ah So it does make sense. Absolutely. 00:43:04.27 Dave J Let's see, let's get into gameplay. 00:43:09.11 Dave J Let's talk about what it's like to play Decarnation. And ah so this is you know presented from that perspective, that top-down perspective, um and it has some adventure gaming puzzles, but they're very, very light. Most of the time, it's like there's a key item hidden in the room you're in somewhere, and you need to go interact with stuff to find it. 00:43:30.63 Dave J There are little puzzles, there are light stealth sections, there's a boss fight, there are these rhythm games, mini game dance segments, there are QTEs to like maintain your balance when Gloria is doing stretching or ah trying to balance on something small and jump, things like that. ah What did we think of all of this gameplay? Because when I saw this game's aesthetic, I wasn't expecting this, ah like, varied amount of types of things that you're doing, we'll say. I was expecting To The Moon. 00:44:08.84 Jala & Dave C So as far as the gameplay is concerned, um I wasn't like 100% on board with it. I thought there was too much of it. um And it's very either by design or by virtue of it maybe being included more toward the end. um This was not the game's strong suit. 00:44:31.27 Jala & Dave C Its narrative is great. I would prefer this to have been in a more visual novel style, not the artwork, but just how you're interacting with it. um However, the gameplay mechanics are intricately tied into your uh sort of ability to put yourself in the shoes of Gloria because you have to be firmly entrenched in her as a person and what she's going through you are Gloria uh so that's reflected by I think the difficulty 00:45:06.24 Jala & Dave C curves that are kind of thrown into the gameplay itself. 00:45:09.59 Dave J Yeah. 00:45:09.58 Jala & Dave C And the gameplay generally will reflect things that's going on with her as well, particularly the puzzles. 00:45:22.83 Jala & Dave C ah But the frustrating part is the reaction between the button presses and then like what happens on the screen, there's a lag. 00:45:34.68 Jala & Dave C um And that makes it feel unpolished as far as that aspect of it. 00:45:35.21 Dave J Hmm. 00:45:41.60 Jala & Dave C Absolutely. All of those things, obviously, we talked about this a little bit ah so previously, ah seconding all of that. 00:45:46.00 Dave J Yeah. 00:45:49.30 Jala & Dave C But yeah, um for me, the gameplay elements at first, like that was the first thing that I complained about when I started playing and I talked about it on the level um is because I was like, I don't really know. 00:45:59.60 Jala & Dave C I was kind of on the fence about what I thought about the gameplay itself. um just because there are so many different types of gameplay and granted like they um but teach you how to do the rhythm minigame and you do it a couple of times before it becomes important and then when there's actually a fail state if you don't do it right. 00:46:19.77 Jala & Dave C Um, but there's just a bunch of different types. You don't know what's coming up. You don't know, you know, what it's going to ask of you. And sometimes if it's a timed button push, then, you know, granted, like it's very, very good about saving your progress and not penalizing you and making you go all the way back a long ways. It's right there. Like you start over right at the beginning of the thing that you're doing, but. 00:46:41.92 Jala & Dave C At the same time, it's still a time tax to sit there and Jack with it and be frustrated with it. But at the same time, there are instances where I feel like it really benefits you to be doing these things and actually directly interacting with these things. At the very beginning of the game, when you are Gloria and you wake up after the night of dancing at the cabaret and you have to put on her shirt and you have to push buttons to put on her shirt. And at first I was like, well, what is this nonsense? But really because of what the game is trading in, you like having that direct connection and that agency over what Gloria is doing is important because there's other times later where you have to mash a button to do a certain thing in multiple harrowing situations. 00:47:28.02 Jala & Dave C And you feel all kinds of feelings about what you're doing, and what you have to do. You have to push the buttons. And um you know that that gets you into the situation more deeply and you make you more invested in what's going on than you might be if you're just reading it on a screen and just watching this stuff happen in front of you. 00:47:50.08 Jala & Dave C So, um you know, granted some of the times where it is kind of frustrating, um you know, it is, it's frustrating to you. but i mean It's also frustrating to Gloria, yeah the situation that she's in. 00:48:02.46 Jala & Dave C And so like it's it's making you feel what Gloria feels, although I still feel like, as Dave said, it's an unpolished situation where like you know that the delay in the button pushes is really the most egregious thing. 00:48:02.61 Dave J Yeah. 00:48:16.02 Jala & Dave C Even if you are okay with all the different things it's asking you to do, and you're on board with learning them as they come up, the fact that there is that delay will kind of screw you over pretty often. 00:48:27.91 Dave J Yeah, the delay and then also, especially with the dancing rhythm mini game, like it often it starts up really quickly. And like by the time I'm like, I realize what's happening. I've already missed several notes in there. um And I'm not motivated by getting all five stars for the achievement, but like, I would like to have a bit more of a runway for, you know, okay, it's rhythm game time. 00:48:49.88 Dave J um 00:48:51.72 Jala & Dave C And also I have to add that sometimes the button pushes are on the beat and sometimes they're not. And it's totally unintuitive at times what they want you to push at the time that they want you to push it. 00:49:03.52 Dave J Yeah, the the other thing there's that and then the other thing about that rhythm game is the icons for because you press the D pad directions to do the the different moves in the you know, the guitar hero type and rhythm mini game, the icons for what buttons you're supposed to push are too similar ah for me to figure out what I'm supposed to do. So like, I love the simple Guitar Hero rhythm mini game in every game that it comes up in. um I'm playing Night in the Woods right now. It has that same thing. I love it. I do it when I'm not required to do it by the story in that game. ah Decarnation. I love this, like the visuals a lot of times, like when Gloria's in the cabaret on the stage and you're doing it and you have like the lights and the crowd and all of that. I really like the ah setting there, but I don't like the act of actually doing the game. 00:49:59.21 Dave J ah which is a shame because it's ah I like rhythm games, like I really like them. um yeah The other part of the gameplay that I did not enjoy was anytime I had to hunt around a room to find a key item. And this is just, I don't like adventure games where I have to check every single thing. And let's pretend it's not like pixel hunting with your mouse cursor, but it's like literally this room has 35 objects that might be interactable and you have to check every single one of them and it's kind of a drag. um So I definitely agree that there are parts where the gameplay 00:50:36.54 Dave J makes you empathize with Gloria, like say you're doing the stretching balance mini game and it's really hard because Gloria in her current state would probably have a hard time concentrating on her balance with everything that's going on. I get that and I enjoy how that reinforces that particular moment. But there's a lot of these other ones that aren't really reinforcing character or story and they're just not that enjoyable and it makes me think like this is one of those games that could have had less gameplay, I think. 00:51:11.91 Jala & Dave C Right. ah All of those. So the gameplay is not always to the point. There is not really a point necessarily to the gameplay at any particular moment. 00:51:17.21 Dave J Yeah. 00:51:22.10 Dave J Yeah. 00:51:22.10 Jala & Dave C So that is definitely a drawback. But yes, you are correct. The thing about those situations when she's looking around in the room or what have you and having to interact with a bunch of different objects, well, 00:51:35.17 Jala & Dave C It's like, okay, you didn't even give me a clue. like Have Gloria say something like, oh, maybe I can find a blah. you know 00:51:43.18 Dave J ah The thing that everyone complained about in God of War. 00:51:43.72 Jala & Dave C yeah Yeah. 00:51:45.99 Dave J Maybe I should check under that laundry basket. 00:51:48.65 Jala & Dave C But like that would have really helped it out here because there are some... you're just walking around mashing the button to see what she says in response to everything until you figure out the right thing. 00:51:57.38 Dave J Yeah. 00:51:58.28 Jala & Dave C And 00:51:58.91 Dave J Hugging walls, clicking A, hoping that you know you interact with an object in a corner somewhere. Yeah. 00:52:04.75 Jala & Dave C And as much as I love the game Corpse Party, ah Corpse Party is one of those games that does, it's an adventure game, horror adventure game that does that thing. And then you don't know where, but it's a whole school you have to go through. 00:52:15.73 Jala & Dave C So ah good luck with that. Have a walkthrough for that game. But, you know, ah this one is not quite the walkthrough level of frustration, but it is like a time tax to sit here and jack around with the buttons to figure it out. 00:52:25.09 Dave J Yeah. 00:52:31.02 Dave J Yeah. 00:52:32.33 Jala & Dave C Yeah. And I was just going to add that, um, because there's, there's no direction, nothing's, um, highlighted. It could be anything on the screen and you have a general idea because she might say, Oh, I need XYZ, but that's all the direction you're given. 00:52:51.62 Jala & Dave C And, um, I thought maybe it's Helen Hill, a few of the games where your character will turn their head toward what you like, that might be a thing. 00:53:00.24 Dave J Yeah. Silent Hill two does that. Yeah. 00:53:02.20 Jala & Dave C that could have been nice, just some sort of direction within the screen. And additionally, um it's thematic, like it works for the themes that's happening, but in certain segments of the game, the screen, particularly playing on the Steam Deck is very, very tiny. 00:53:19.41 Jala & Dave C Like there's a lot of just blank space and then ah a box of a screen. 00:53:23.16 Dave J Yes. 00:53:25.41 Jala & Dave C And so not only are you hunting around, the thing you're hunting for with my poor ailing eyes. It's very hard to find. 00:53:36.65 Jala & Dave C Right, so um there's a couple of things about that. So first off, when it comes to the hunting and pecking around in the room and all of that mess, when she says you know something like, oh, I'm looking for XYZ, like you said, um the thing is, what she says is something round or whatever. And then it's like, that could be anything. I don't know where I could find a round thing. I could open a drawer and find a round thing. 00:54:03.40 Jala & Dave C I don't know. 00:54:04.42 Dave J Yeah. 00:54:04.39 Jala & Dave C you know so That doesn't really give you an indication of where to look either. So like That that clue should have been kind of honed in a little bit more. 00:54:15.75 Jala & Dave C ah Absolutely. 00:54:21.59 Jala & Dave C What else did he say? There was another thing I was going to say. What was it? 00:54:24.99 Dave J The space on the screen, maybe your blank space. 00:54:26.36 Jala & Dave C Oh, yeah. Also about the space on the screen. So, um yes, thematically, that's very appropriate because she is feeling very claustrophobic during those moments. 00:54:33.67 Dave J Yeah. 00:54:36.45 Jala & Dave C So ah that makes 100% sense. But if you yourself want to play it on a steam deck, you will have to have it very close to your eyes so that you can see everything that is going on on the screen unless you have 20-20 vision and are a young person. 00:54:51.93 Dave J Yeah, I was going to say, I appreciate the experience of playing very narrative heavy games on the Steam Deck because I like to play them in bed before I go to sleep. And then I have weird dreams about what happened in Decarnation. But ah this is one where the small text size combined with the fact that, like you both said, there is a lot of unused space on the screen ah in a lot of these scenes. 00:55:16.84 Dave J means that your area for where you may be looking for something is really, really small in comparison to an already, you know, fairly small screen as far as screens go. um So I wouldn't go so far as to say don't play this on a Steam Deck, but just be aware that like, you might have to squint to see sometimes. 00:55:37.87 Jala & Dave C Oh, and I did want to circle back and say um about to the moon. This reminded me of the moon as well. But here's the thing I played. I tried to play on the moon like five times. I have tried and bounced it off several times. I got about halfway. And that's as far as I could get. And the problem with it was the gamification. I couldn't stand it. It didn't make sense to me. It didn't feel like it was additive to the gameplay or even pertinent to the gameplay at all. And that was my big issue. So I never finished that game. 00:56:07.95 Jala & Dave C But in this game, even though I do have some vexations with the gamification that happens here, it's not so much that it made me set it down. It was just like a mild irritant. 00:56:18.81 Dave J Yeah, everything that we're talking about might be irritating. either you don't have to pass it, like you don't have to pass the rhythm game. You can do your best and it's over when it's over. um So it's either stuff like that or it's stuff that like once you pixel hunt around and you find that key item that was hidden you know under a cabinet or something like that, then that part's over and that part lasted all of 45 seconds or something like that. So i while I don't think that a lot of these 00:56:50.19 Dave J mini games and little gameplay sections are like great from a ah play experience, they're at least short, which is a mercy, I suppose that they gave us is that even if you don't like it, it will be over soon, which doesn't make it good. But it will be over soon. 00:57:09.07 Jala & Dave C Right. Well, the thing is we're kind of hovering on that because that is like the major thing that is quite unquote wrong that we all feel about this game. Like this is the thing that is the struggle point for us. 00:57:19.06 Dave J Yeah. 00:57:22.09 Jala & Dave C um You know, not enough to make us go, oh, man, I can't play this game. I'm going to get frustrated and throw my steam deck across the room. 00:57:27.16 Dave J Right. 00:57:28.73 Jala & Dave C It's not that kind of a thing. But um that's like the thing that was my fault anyway. 00:57:34.07 Dave J Right. Yeah. And it's, you know, honestly, it's not going to be the thing that I remember about Decarnation six months from now. I'm not going to remember looking for a key item in a room, but I will remember the stuff about the story. So um maybe we're giving outsized attention to gameplay issues, but ah we do talk about the game that you're playing and all of the facets of it. um But the the the The juicy stuff is in the spoiler section, which will be coming soon. So um let's wrap the non-spoiler section here by giving our recommendations and um you know final thoughts about Decarnation. What type of person do we think this game would appeal to, or what type of person do you think should play this game? um Dave, I'll kick to you first. 00:58:23.02 Jala & Dave C Yeah, so if you like character studies that are relatively light on puzzles, heavy on narrative, and just have a little sample of gameplay kind of sprinkled throughout, um this could be right up your alley. However, bear in mind that those content warning warnings are there for a reason. um The themes are heavy. ah The game probably can't and probably shouldn't be played all in one go. 00:58:54.02 Jala & Dave C ah Yes, it's like a but about a five hour average experience um ah through I believe six chapters. So just take those at leisure a piece at a time, give yourself a little bit of a break um because I think it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, but you will probably feel a bit drained at the end of each chapter. 00:59:04.79 Dave J Mm hmm. 00:59:16.34 Dave J Agreed. Jala, what would you say? 00:59:19.46 Jala & Dave C So overall, I would just say that this game really knows what it wants to express and how it wants to express it. It comes out of the gate really strong when it comes to visuals, narrative, audio, all of that. um They set out to do something and they did it. And so ah because this game overall is, you know, a very fine piece of media and very, very interesting to boot. I kind of recommend this again with the caveat of, you know, remember the content warnings and stuff like that. Like if you're in a depressed headspace, like a, you know, a heavy headspace that, you know, you're you're burned out or whatever, maybe don't play this one yet. Put it on the shelf and wait a while until you're feeling a little bit better um just for your own feelings and then well you know energy levels. right um Because like Dave said, it can be a draining experience depending upon how much you ah get involved with what's happening on the screen. But I would recommend this to assigned female at birth people for you know kind of like this is another piece of Me Too media more or less. 01:00:24.74 Dave J Mm hmm. 01:00:24.73 Jala & Dave C ah but at the same time for assigned male at birth individuals. So they get a little bit more of you know I'm the kind of sensations and stuff that kind of go on inside the heads of people who have these situations and the kinds of experience that they live through and you know just kind of deal with quietly. 01:00:44.75 Jala & Dave C I mean, it's louder now, right? But um you know for a very, very long time, it wasn't. 01:00:51.76 Dave J Yeah, that last part is really the key part of the recommendation for me. like Obviously, if you like psychological horror, then this is a really good psychological horror game. Give it a try. um But that last part of your recommendation, Jala, is the like I feel like the more important piece of recommending this to other people, the beauty of game making tools becoming more accessible to people and people not having to, ah you know, make the focus group to video game that appeals to the masses means that people can tell ah really specific experiences and the people might that might benefit from, you know, a second hand experience via playing a video game or something like that ah could 01:01:39.38 Dave J see this and then go on and empathize in your real life because this does feel very real to different degrees of the experience that people have in real life. I talk about this a lot in games that are set in other countries and other cultures and how playing a space for the unbound will give you a little bit of a slice of Indonesian culture, which is cool. 01:02:01.69 Dave J This is much closer to home for a lot of people. And it might actually be the experience, you know, not to the very top of like the most extreme experience that happens in Decarnation. But there are certainly things in this game that I would venture to say that just about every woman listening to the podcast will have a firsthand experience with. And so for people like me, this is a type of game where you play this, experience this through the story of the game. And have like a higher level of understanding and empathy just from one more experience with something like this. ah Not to say that this is like my introduction to the struggle of women in the world run by men, but every new experience, every new story with this type of perspective or any perspective that's different from my own is valuable and worth having. And this is another one of those that I think is very valuable for a lot of people to play. So again, like but like the both of you said, with content warnings in mind, I recommend this to just about everybody unless you... It's actually, it's not even that scary. It's not a horror, horror game. 01:03:13.20 Dave J There might be a jump scare, something like that. But even the people that don't like horror games, I think should probably play this. um It's ah it's really good. And we'll get into the, you know, the exploration of the themes and stuff in the spoiler section. But I think that is really well done, too. And um the exploration of these characters and the way that they act is awesome. So, yeah, pretty ah easy to recommend to a lot of folks. 01:03:43.22 Dave J So let's do a little bit of housekeeping before spoilers and housekeeping always begins with the guests talking about the things that they make. Jala, you have the microphone right now, so I will kick it to you first. Tell everybody about Jala Chan's place and the level and where people can find you. 01:04:00.59 Jala & Dave C hey i will start with the level because that's easier so 01:04:03.43 Dave J Yeah. 01:04:04.33 Jala & Dave C At the level is a weekly video game round table show. I've been on it for a decade, but we have a rotating set of hosts because we cannot fit five people on the air every time. ah that There's no way that we would all die. But um anyway, so I pop on there every once in a while, sometimes more heavily than others, ah just kind of depends on everyone's schedules and all of that mess. But we cover games that we have been playing recently. That's easier. 01:04:31.61 Jala & Dave C ah question out to the listeners. And then we also talk about video game news. And of course we have a lot of fun banter at the beginning. It's like 20. just talking about what's going on with each of us as well. So ah that's The Level. That's at thelevelpodcast.com. And as for my show, Jalachan's Place, talking about perspectives and how important it is to think about things and ah have different people's viewpoints. That's essentially what my show is all about. 01:05:00.32 Dave J Mmhmm. 01:05:00.83 Jala & Dave C it goes in between media topics where we're covering a book, a comic, a video game, a movie, whatever, something, ah some kind of media. And then we're also talking about topics, real life, serious topics. So fat phobia and ah gender dysphoria and sexuality and attraction and burnout and toxic masculinity and all different kinds of things, like every single kind of topic. um you know If it's something that I'm thinking about or discussing with people, it's probably going to end up on the show. And I try to have a bunch of different people come on who all have different perspectives and have something unique to bring to the table so that we can get perspectives from people who are from different walks of life or different you know experiences, life experiences. so 01:05:50.56 Jala & Dave C um It's really just an open-hearted, open discussion ah about whatever it is we're talking about at the time. And that is at jalachan.place. 01:05:58.25 Dave J Yeah. 01:06:00.22 Jala & Dave C And ah Dave, you have been on a couple of my episodes. You were on Metroid Fusion, and you were also on the body weight fluctuation and body image episode as well. 01:06:13.21 Dave J Yeah, I was going to say I've got I've been on both kinds of sides of the coin at Jala-chan's Place. We have the real life topics and then the media podcasts as well. So Metroid Fusion. And then, ah you know, an episode that I shouted out in ah the Dave the Diver episode when we were talking about that came shitty, fat shaming. 01:06:35.35 Dave J um as an episode that if people want to learn something about my experience outside of playing and analyzing video games, that is a great place to go. and um The topics are well-researched, the voices are diverse and ah interesting, mostly people from your community. ah So not necessarily like people who do podcasts or make anything, really just people who have experiences and want to hop on and talk about them. So it's always a worthwhile listen for sure. 01:07:08.12 Jala & Dave C you. And how about you, Dave? 01:07:10.76 Dave J Yeah. 01:07:11.79 Jala & Dave C Yeah. So my podcast is Monster Dear Monster. And we basically take a look at monsters in popular culture internationally. And yeah that's in like all forms of media. 01:07:23.45 Jala & Dave C So we try to look at the books, movies, and video games that they've kind of come from and see how they've changed over time. Where is it at? 01:07:33.86 Jala & Dave C Yeah. you And you can find us at MonsterDear.Monster. Very easy. 01:07:38.39 Dave J Yeah. Uh, also a worthwhile listen and at the time of recording a monster, a deer monster is doing a slow walk through Elden ring. Um, so anyone who enjoys Elden ring, you probably enjoy the monsters and you'll probably enjoy the conversation around that game. 01:07:55.79 Jala & Dave C Yeah, we are doing a lower walkthrough of the Elden Ring DLC. So it's bit by bit. 01:08:00.99 Dave J Yeah. 01:08:02.31 Jala & Dave C It will probably take another two months or so. It's very, very slow paced. 01:08:08.73 Dave J So we're in a bit of a race. Will you finish that before this episode comes out for the public to listen to? We'll see who gets there first. But all the shows mentioned, the level, Jalachan's Place, Monster, Dear Monster, are worth everybody's time. And I will put links down in the show notes so people can find them easily. 01:08:28.10 Dave J And for this show, the same ways to support the show, as I always shout out, are appreciated. That was a weird sentence, but you can leave ratings and reviews if your podcast platform allows it. That will help people find this episode if they're searching for podcasts about Decarnation and all the other games I do on the show. ah That's what we want. We want people to find the show. 01:08:51.60 Dave J You can join the Discord community, which is full of, ah it's a lively community full of friendly people, love to talk about the games we're playing, talk about the game of the week on the podcast, talk about everything else going on in life, share photos of your pets and your food and stuff like that. ah We see Jala and Dave's poo in the pets chat from time to time, very cute doggo. 01:09:14.91 Dave J um You can listen to my other show. It's called a top three podcast where we do top three lists and draft topics. And that's a comedy show. It's quite different from this podcast. ah If you think that me or people I associate could ever be funny, you should check that show out. 01:09:32.60 Dave J And ah finally, you can support monetarily at patreon dot.com slash real Dave Jackson, where we do polls for games I do on the show each month. There are bonus episodes and lots of other treats. So that's a lot of talk. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, it's full spoiler time for Decarnation. 01:14:35.44 Dave J Okay, we're back and it's full spoiler time for Decarnation. And before getting into the plot, two things. Number one, it's not a chronological plot walkthrough. We might mention stuff soon that happens near the end of the game. So please be aware this is a full spoiler section, as we always do. 01:14:53.49 Dave J And then the other part is a reiteration of the content warnings. We will be going in detail about a plot concerning a stalker who then abducts the main character. ah There is lots of other sexual harassment and or sexual assault going on in the plot at certain points. ah So keep those in mind if you're going to listen to the discussion because we will talk about details of things that happen in the spoiler section. 01:15:19.85 Dave J so um The abduction. Let's just start there. So where we cut off in the non-spoiler part, Gloria goes out to meet this supposed patron of the arts and ends up getting abducted by a man who has been stalking her through years of her performing at the Black Swan. ah His name in the game is Bob, although I feel like that's not his real name. I don't think it's ever said, but that feels like a very fake name you would give to somebody who you maybe don't want them to discover your real identity. 01:15:55.92 Jala & Dave C At the end of the game, she does not, I don't think she refers to him by his name at all. So yeah, good will, will be. 01:16:04.72 Dave J Yeah. Yeah. 01:16:07.16 Jala & Dave C She, I mean, she calls him out on that, uh, toward the middle. 01:16:09.87 Dave J Mm hmm. 01:16:12.54 Jala & Dave C And because he's already juggling multiple identities, Bob, I feel is just his catch all. This is my relatable me, like get, get Bob is the friendly version. 01:16:25.78 Dave J Could be. 01:16:28.73 Jala & Dave C And then there's the others. Well, I mean, like. 01:16:32.57 Dave J Yeah. 01:16:34.60 Jala & Dave C If you hear about somebody who is a creepo or this, that, and the other, they're not generally named Bob. I mean, like they don't, like they're referred to as like Robert. 01:16:46.71 Jala & Dave C They're not referred to as Bob. Bob is like an inoffensive name, right? 01:16:49.51 Dave J yeah 01:16:51.39 Jala & Dave C So like that that's kind of, I think what's at play with that. 01:16:55.62 Dave J Yeah, so Bob ah was somebody who watched Gloria perform for a long time at the Black Swan, ah said that he felt a connection with her because she seemed lonely. So we have a parasocial relationship. 01:17:11.01 Dave J going on here uh bob stalked her to the point of knowing her blood type her shoe size her ovulation schedule and much more about her which these are this is something he reveals to her much later in the game as you start to you learn his real identity and like the ruse that he's been putting on falls. And then you he reveals slowly just how much of a fucking creep he's been for years and years ah throughout the story here. 01:17:42.07 Jala & Dave C And not only that, but he's the guy at the beginning who is sitting there molesting the statue. 01:17:48.43 Dave J Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:17:49.74 Jala & Dave C And when that happens, he is behind the statue and kind of like hunched over a little bit, crouched around waist height and then got his hands wrapped around and everything. 01:17:53.92 Dave J Mm-hmm. 01:18:00.44 Dave J Yeah. 01:18:00.77 Jala & Dave C And it's just like you see his fingers moving and stuff like that. And like allegedly he says that he's doing that because he's trying to get the measurements for all of the clothing and stuff that he would then make is what he passes it off. 01:18:16.67 Dave J Yeah, his grand plan after he brings her home. So he puts up this ruse basically where he pretends that he's the servant for the master of the house. And so that is his way of a connection for me. It's like a good cop, bad cop thing. Like he's, you can trust me. I'm only doing my best against this oppressive master of the house. Like this master of the house is keeping me down too. We're kind of in this together. Like he sets up that kind of a deal with Gloria there. And this lasts for about half the game, at least before you figure out Bob 01:18:59.55 Dave J that this is not a mansion with a master of the house and a servant. Like, this is actually a small house. And Gloria is just down in this cell in the basement, basically. um Did you all figure this out as you were playing? like did you think that Like, did you ever have an idea that there is no master of the house, that it was just Bob? 01:19:22.25 Jala & Dave C Well, first off, the red flags started way at the beginning, like, do you know, when, when they're having the conversations and stuff. And so I already had major red flags. And, and so there's something from the scam goddess podcast where like that, that show goes through and talks about different scams that people pull. And then it talks about how people fall for scams. And so a lot of times what they use is the Despo meter, you know, like. 01:19:47.50 Jala & Dave C you know you ignore the red flags because you are so desperate for whatever it is that that person is promising you. And that's kind of what's happening here. He's scamming her and she is so desperate that she ignores the red flags. And the same kind of thing happens where she forms a relationship with Bob that is friendly and everything like that. And then because she's doing that, it makes you know if I think he's trying to fake out the player to make them feel like maybe Bob is actually okay because she's being friends with him and everything. 01:20:16.15 Jala & Dave C But no, like she's just completely ignoring all the flags. you know um But yeah, like i had I was like, oh yeah, that this guy is not right. 01:20:21.06 Dave J Yeah. 01:20:26.15 Jala & Dave C And like I'm sorry, this is not a thing where he's gonna be um so held back that he can't do anything for her. And and like especially with the way that she begins to act friendly with him over time, 01:20:38.41 Jala & Dave C It's like, no no, no, no, no, this is a very wrong situation. There's lots of things wrong there. I'm pretty sure, especially since you never see the master ever. I'm like, yeah, no, the master doesn't exist. 01:20:47.06 Dave J Yeah. 01:20:49.62 Jala & Dave C I felt the same way and it was sort of sitting in that um misery situation where you just have Kathy Bates as the visible antagonist, but it's like, well, it feels like there's just the one person and he's just a massive creeper and oh, very quickly the the the master is talking, you're only getting interaction with him through the like the video camera ah microphone. 01:21:03.85 Dave J Yeah. 01:21:16.94 Jala & Dave C So you're hearing him on the intercom. You're hearing him on the intercom. You never see him. And the one time very quickly where ah Gloria is talking to both Bob and the master, but Bob is out of breath because he had to run down all these stairs while he was talking to her on the intercom. 01:21:34.46 Jala & Dave C And you're going, okay, wait, no. And initially when you first see him and he's molesting the statue of her, there's no way to read that as, oh, I was just taking measurements. 01:21:48.74 Jala & Dave C You're like, no, this is the creepiest little weirdo and that he's no good. 01:21:49.65 Dave J Oh no, no way. Yeah. 01:21:54.78 Jala & Dave C There's just no way. Um, 01:21:57.34 Dave J Yeah. I mean, he's like, it's to the point where it's like museum staff would have removed him because of how gross he is molesting that statue. Yeah. 01:22:08.94 Jala & Dave C The issue with that scene is the issue with the entire game of the unreliable narrator. 01:22:19.60 Jala & Dave C So all of the parts that happen when she's encountering the statue 01:22:19.79 Dave J Yeah. 01:22:24.43 Jala & Dave C I don't think that's what happened specifically when she actually did encounter that. I have no doubt that she saw Bob molesting the statue and she was there with Joy. But everything else is dreamlike. Joy isn't interacting with her as I think that they normally do. And then people in the museum there's like guests in the museum, like patrons, and they're acting real, it reminds me of like Jacob's Ladder, where people are just off the entire time. So you it casts a lot of doubt on 01:23:00.18 Jala & Dave C Uh, Gloria's version of events because it's, it's how she's experiencing things. So I believe that's how she sees what's going on, whether that's actually what's happening. Um, that becomes harder to parse because it's very difficult to tell when she's in her daydream mental retreat. And then when she's not, because they intentionally blur the line between the two quite often. Yeah. 01:23:33.04 Dave J so So when Gloria is in captivity, there is the plot of how she moves through like stages we'll say toward her eventually ah eventual escape and it's not like a steady climb up of like you know Gloria doesn't always have a master plan from the jump about like how am I gonna manipulate this so that I can get out of here like I thought it was really interesting how they spend several chapters of her ah Just being really fucking angry and confused and then the next chapter she's depressed and she doesn't eat and then the next chapter she's like kind of accepting the situation and then ah It moves on from there and stuff um meanwhile what the game is also doing is because Gloria has a 01:24:25.15 Dave J nowhere to go, ah she and nothing really to do. There's not really much entertainment in the cell. ah She retreats to her dream world or her mind palace or whatever you want to say ah with regularity. And there are characters in there that become the characters that she interacts with throughout this portion of the game. 01:24:48.59 Dave J So early in the game, she talks with her mom, um she talks with her her girlfriend, um the guy, Mr. Aldo araldo mr aldo ado at the cabaret. 01:24:59.21 Jala & Dave C Yeah, although, although. 01:25:03.74 Dave J um In the portion where she's in captivity, she talks to Bob in the real world, But we have these characters in the psyche, basically, um that all represent to me different parts of herself. So there is an older version of herself that they call gray braid here. And if we're saying that this is a hero's journey, this is the mentor that they meet along the way in the hero's journey, there's a younger version of herself. ah The older version gray braid to me is the, um 01:25:38.94 Dave J the wise part of herself, the practical part of herself. um And then there's a younger version that they call the kid, which is her more childlike self, the self that is in parts of the story, the part of her that wants to escape in that one section where she seems to be accepting what's going on here. So I don't want to introduce too many things at once. What do we think about Gray Braid and the kid and their roles here? 01:26:08.13 Jala & Dave C So, um, I, I know this is kind of like extrapolating out a couple of, uh, bits, but stick with me. So, uh, okay. 01:26:15.26 Dave J Let's extrapolate Hmm 01:26:16.26 Jala & Dave C So the hero's journey, that's an established thing. Well, it also is something that maps to the major arcana in the tarot. So all of the different cards in the tarot from the fool, which is number zero up to the world number 21, all of those are going through the hero's journey and they're going on that path. 01:26:34.50 Jala & Dave C So ah to me, ah Gray Braid, even though it is an older version of herself, it really kind of sticks out to me as kind of like the Empress figure, you know like the the um figure of like a female strong female presence that is giving some kind of order to your life, that kind of thing. 01:26:53.15 Dave J Mm hmm. 01:26:53.75 Jala & Dave C um So it kind of maps to that for me. And the kid is kind of like the fool, like the beginning innocent. ah It's her inner child. It's her inner child. And it's, you know, an innocent that's, you know, stuck in this situation and is just trying to to look up towards the heavens while falling off into the cliff, you know, off the cliff face. So um that's kind of the situation that I map them on to. But they are definitely aspects of herself 01:27:24.32 Jala & Dave C um you know I would say gray braid is her wisdom maybe, but it's also her intuition. 01:27:30.54 Dave J Uh-huh. 01:27:30.83 Jala & Dave C So ah that's what I think. And you know whether or not she listens to her intuition so you know to do what she knows is right. Because like again, her despot meter was so high that she's like, oh, it sounds perfectly normal to go to this abandoned park to go meet this guy you know in this forest somewhere. 01:27:45.91 Dave J ah Yeah. 01:27:48.08 Jala & Dave C like That's totally a normal thing to do. I'm absolutely going to do that. No red flag here. you know, um that kind of a situation. But Dave, how about you? 01:27:59.18 Jala & Dave C yeah So the game eventually kind of tells you or it maps the people in her head to her specific. 01:28:10.72 Jala & Dave C They're not really emotions. They're traits and characteristics like compassion or intuition or inspiration. 01:28:16.48 Dave J Mmhmm. 01:28:20.13 Jala & Dave C ah they get that um sort of appellation and she doesn't specifically um make those connections herself. Like they're they're given to the player and then she's just sort of along for the ride in her own head. So it's it's a little strange because even though we're dealing or or she's dealing with all of her sort of inner demons and an outer very real problem, 01:28:50.91 Jala & Dave C The player is not it's it's not so cut and dry ah there's there's so many aspects of it that you have to wonder just She's she's had a hard life. It's not all roses. She has a lot of issues with her mother and I think that's the basis of a lot of the problems that she has in expressing herself and then the root of her relationship with Joy is predicated, I think, on how her mother was treating her. it's 01:29:26.95 Jala & Dave C The game itself is very convoluted um in terms of how it's dealing with all this because none of it's cut and dry. um And when you even try to do that, to you if you're trying to work through issues, um it's not a sit down and you just, oh, now my problems are cleared because I thought about them for a little bit. 01:29:47.70 Jala & Dave C Um, you're taking things one at a time and sometimes that's a step forward. Sometimes that's five steps back because she does. That's the roller coaster is she's going forward in as much as she's trying to get out of her situation. But she takes a lot of leaves backwards because she has a lot of internal damage from society and from other things that she's still dealing with. 01:30:13.92 Jala & Dave C her quest, her path through this and then what you get at the end of the game aren't, it's not a straight through line and it's not a, it's really not a happy ever after because life doesn't work that way. It's more like, oh, I've dealt with an immediate problem, looked at things that I had, but I've been wrestling with. I've identified some of those and know that I can probably start working on them. 01:30:40.23 Jala & Dave C Um, and then the rest of it, I gotta still figure out what I'm doing. 01:30:40.74 Dave J Mm hmm. 01:30:43.47 Jala & Dave C You know, I'm only 30. I am not old. Um, and I've got a lot of life ahead of me and I'm gonna, I have, I have the good fortune to not have died in this, uh, situation. 01:30:56.97 Jala & Dave C And now I have a lot of stuff to figure out. And she specifically is taking these moments to go, okay, I have ah things in my head, like I've anthropomorphized my aspects of my traits and I can interact with them specifically because I can retreat into this mind palace at leisure. um So, 01:31:25.58 Jala & Dave C That's a good thing because then I can bounce. I am. I'm my own therapist. I can bounce stuff off of myself in my head ah forever. 01:31:33.85 Dave J Yeah. Yeah. And it's important that you point out that these are not just aspects of the mind world that she goes to that are like, you know, intangible. They're people that she can go talk to. And so when she needs advice, she often seeks out gray braids. 01:31:55.64 Dave J Uh, there is the one scene where she is kind of having this inner turmoil over her situation and what she's going to do. And this, like she's starting to feel comfortable in her situation in captivity. And this scene ends with her choking the inner child to death. 01:32:16.44 Dave J ah which is a really brutal scene to see. So the fact that she interacts and that that is how she makes this inner progress, maybe like you said, one step forward, five steps back, three steps forward, etc. But that's how it goes is she's interacting with parts of herself. 01:32:36.36 Jala & Dave C So I have um a couple more weird extrapolations. So again, bear with me. um the represent so So the first couple of characters that you come across that are from inside of her head that are like the main characters that are that are Gloria focused, Graybrade and the Kid, those are like, when you combine those with her, 01:32:57.97 Jala & Dave C Those essentially are like the triple goddess or the woman in her youth, the kid, the woman in her prime, which is Gloria, and then the woman who is the crone. right and so That would be gray braid. 01:33:12.06 Jala & Dave C and so you know um the difference like When she's choking out her inner child self, um to me, that's like that's the end of any semblance of innocence or or you know passivity that she's got left. At this point, she you know has to you know like her innocence, whatever elements of the fool or you know the maiden that she's got in her still now have been thrown aside and like she'll rediscover them later on in the game. 01:33:42.39 Jala & Dave C But like at this point, you know they're dead, essentially. 01:33:43.20 Dave J Yeah. 01:33:46.05 Jala & Dave C So she has to kill those in order to move forward. And as someone who's been through a lot of different difficult situations and been you know an assigned female at birth, I've actually talked about it before. 01:33:56.91 Jala & Dave C um At one point i was considering going into the military and the reason why i didn't is because i was like you know in order to stand like hang in there and. Especially being considered attractive and being in the military I would have to be so much harder than all the guys and better than all the guys and I would have to cut off part of myself to do it. 01:34:18.15 Jala & Dave C And I've said that for years and years. And that's essentially what Gloria is doing here. She's cutting off part of herself to get through her situation. And luckily, it's not gone forever. 01:34:27.16 Dave J Yeah. 01:34:28.37 Jala & Dave C But um some of the later aspects, which we haven't talked about, are more like shadow selves, you know, like the, the you know, id and the whatever, you know, kind of persona, Freudian. 01:34:37.71 Dave J You mean like the cage head and the princess and those characters? 01:34:39.73 Jala & Dave C Yes. Mm hmm. Yeah. Those are the shadow selves. That would be like the things that you would come across in the persona dungeon if you're playing persona four, you know, so. 01:34:48.41 Dave J Yeah, hey yeah. Yeah. And the fact that she, um I guess, likes her ultimate. 01:35:00.71 Dave J How do I want to say this, the way that she progresses in here is by joining all of them together or um 01:35:11.96 Dave J acknowledging that those are all a part of herself. And so like these past experiences and things, these are my past experiences and the lessons I learned from them and the ways that I learned to live with them helped me move forward is how she continues to go on later in the game and eventually get out of the situation. 01:35:36.25 Jala & Dave C Right. Well, she has to understand and appreciate and accept that these parts of herself that she does not like and these parts of herself that do not suit the situation are all things that are all still parts of her that she has to accept and she has to come to love. 01:35:44.39 Dave J yeah 01:35:55.12 Jala & Dave C in order to move forward and be happy and healthy. So this is also like a big therapy session, really. You know, like She has to come to that real life. That's what you're doing in therapy. 01:36:05.77 Jala & Dave C You're trying to come to grips with all these things and resolve the conflicts and and accept all these things about yourself and change what you need to change to move forward. 01:36:07.10 Dave J Yeah. Mm hmm. 01:36:15.18 Dave J Yeah, because, I mean, as you said, her killing the kid, the inner child, is not what helps her get out of the situation. 01:36:15.60 Jala & Dave C No. 01:36:23.70 Jala & Dave C no 01:36:24.52 Dave J There are a couple chapters and a couple of you know big changes in her outlook, we'll say, and the way that she acts up after that happens and before she gets out. 01:36:36.43 Dave J What helps her get out of it is, ah like you said, bringing all of these things together, and then finding her inner, um the the four things that Graybrade teaches her about to find and, you know, bring together or her inner hope, intuition, courage, and compassion, which um a lot of that and I think what's interesting about that is a lot of that is 01:37:03.79 Dave J hope, intuition, courage, compassion toward herself, not necessarily toward her abuser in this situation. 01:37:07.79 Jala & Dave C Mm hmm. 01:37:12.86 Dave J um you know A lot of these stories, you might you might have like a, this is how I need to approach the outside world, but this is a story very much about how Gloria needs to approach herself. 01:37:12.96 Jala & Dave C Correct. 01:37:23.81 Dave J And you know the way that she gets out of the situation in the real world is a very um ah very drastic action that could only be possible, I guess, if she fully has the confidence to like to take action like this, which she didn't earlier. 01:37:41.52 Jala & Dave C Well, so when she was choking out her inner child, what she's doing, like that's when she's broken. She has been broken and that is the symbolizes, you know, that's that's what that symbolizes right there. 01:37:48.36 Dave J Yeah. 01:37:53.49 Jala & Dave C But that also means that at this point, you know, she's radicalized. You know, that that innocent part of her is no longer going to stop her from harsh responses in one or another direction. 01:38:07.00 Jala & Dave C And from there, she does start to act out and act, you know, all kinds of negative, terrible things, you know, to her captor, but also to herself and everything else until she finally focuses and directs it in the correct you know way that she needs to in order to move forward with her life. 01:38:17.48 Dave J Mm hmm. 01:38:25.42 Jala & Dave C So. and the child isn't specifically just like your inner child, your innocence. It's also her escapism. 01:38:35.90 Jala & Dave C So if you're in a terrible situation and you're just projecting yourself anywhere but there and the child's specifically, let's go to the park. 01:38:46.27 Jala & Dave C Let's go outside. 01:38:47.00 Dave J Yeah. 01:38:47.74 Jala & Dave C Let's go see, you know, just doing something other than being stuck in this room. She can't, she literally can't do all of those things. So it frustrates her because she wants, she of course wants to be out of there. And her, her, her dream self does get her out of the cell. Like she has Herculean strength. She just rips them, she's like in your fantasy. I could just tear these bars right off of there. I'm my workout, you know? 01:39:14.09 Jala & Dave C and she does it in her head. um But when she kills that escapism, now she's becoming cold and pragmatic and she's able to look at the situation a little bit more objectively. Now, killing that innocence, she understands immediately like that was a bad thing. Like, is that permanent? At the time, you don't know. 01:39:39.26 Jala & Dave C because she doesn't know. And that's the other part of this being not only your unreliable narrator, but really your only narrator. Everything you're getting is from only Gloria's point of view. 01:39:51.35 Jala & Dave C There is the real Bob. 01:39:51.70 Dave J Yeah. 01:39:53.63 Jala & Dave C There's Bob in her head. She has another version of this like a kind of sycophantic Bob that, that is, is what he's projected to her. Is this just servile? Um, his, his interests are her best interests is what he's like portraying himself to be, even though he's still, there's nothing about him that's good. 01:40:22.02 Jala & Dave C Um, but he's also like, Oh, we're in this situation together. Oh, my master is, you know, making me do all these things. And she in the beginning, she's like, so let's just go. 01:40:33.63 Jala & Dave C You have a key to the door. 01:40:36.01 Dave J Yeah. 01:40:36.10 Jala & Dave C Like, let's just leave. We'll both leave together. You won't ever have to work for this terrible person. And we can and both agree that the master is terrible. You've told me so. And. Then he's immediately like, that's, that's the clue. Number one, or I guess number two, since he was doing the weird touch to the statue. Um, but the number two thing is he's like, Oh no, I'm like. 01:40:57.45 Jala & Dave C i don't I don't want anything. The master takes care of all my needs. you know i'm i'm I'm content to be here and she throws back at him like keeping someone captive in in a cell and he's like, well, it's not so bad because look, i get to I get to see you everyday and you're the light of my life and I get to make all these delicious foods and spend 45 minutes folding dough for you. 01:41:24.09 Jala & Dave C and handmade whipped creams and eat some more cakes. 01:41:24.27 Dave J Uh-huh. 01:41:28.31 Jala & Dave C I'm going to feed you so many cakes. 01:41:29.15 Dave J Yeah. let's ah let's talk about Bob a little bit, because we veered into that. And I think that this game does a really good exploration of the internal struggle of Gloria, but the characterization of Bob as you know He is a kidnapper in the game, in the plot of this game. But a lot of the behaviors and things that Bob shows could be applied to people who aren't kidnappers, but abusers in some way. And I think that the the behaviors that Bob shows are really 01:42:08.73 Dave J Uh, like it's, you see the things that he's doing. You're like, yep, that's a textbook. Yep. I've heard about that. That's a textbook. Um, and again, this, you know, I don't want to speak too definitely here. I know I kind of just did because I've kind of confirmed this by talking with other people, but, um, 01:42:31.23 Dave J Not from my own personal experience, thankfully, but the behaviors that Bob shows seem to map really well onto real everyday abusers and not necessarily just, you know, kidnappers that take it to that level. 01:42:42.06 Jala & Dave C Right. 01:42:46.76 Jala & Dave C Absolutely. And um I'm somebody who has a person in my life who is an abusive person in my family. So ah dealing with that, I'm very familiar with the kind of scenario of what those types of individuals are like and the kinds of ah manipulations that they will try to pull on you. ah So yeah, when I was going through and, you know, like when you were writing all of your notes and I was reading through, I'm just like, that's typical, of that typical abuser stuff. That's typical abuser stuff. um Yeah, Dave. The other, um ah there are tropes mapped onto Bob, of course. 01:43:31.85 Jala & Dave C But a lot of it is also, uh, abuser aside, um, is also involuntary, um, celibate behavior. So he specifically is like, I have been coming to your shows for like 10 years since you started. I'm there for every show I know all about you. Um, and I couldn't approach you until now because, um, like you wouldn't have given me the time of day. 01:43:59.01 Jala & Dave C Like I'm not a person that um you would have acknowledged because he's put her on this, you know, this giant pedestal. 01:44:02.02 Dave J Yeah. 01:44:06.62 Jala & Dave C um But at the same time, he's putting this onus on her that she owes him something because of all the devotion and time he's invested in her without ever making that engagement of actually talking to her. 01:44:15.42 Dave J yeah 01:44:22.63 Jala & Dave C I'm Not saying that would have been a good thing, but because he's cast himself in this, oh, I'm the sufferer here. I'm the one who's been, mal you've been maligning me for all this time, um but don't worry because I i love you. 01:44:38.89 Jala & Dave C Like, um you're perfect for me. 01:44:39.68 Dave J Yeah. 01:44:41.06 Jala & Dave C You're a perfect being. And um ah you would if you just spent some time with me, you could understand that too. Like, you would understand that I'm so great. 01:44:54.28 Jala & Dave C Like, look at all this stuff I do for A cook. um he gives her a Cosmo quiz. you know, like the, what kind of princess are you? 01:45:05.48 Jala & Dave C But really it's what kind of, you know, man of these choices and so and these are all obviously one of them is me every single time. And those are the ones you should have picked if you were the perfect princess and you just have to understand, just to realize that. 01:45:14.04 Dave J ah Yeah. 01:45:20.31 Jala & Dave C So he's skeevy to the max. 01:45:25.23 Dave J Yeah. 01:45:27.53 Dave J Real quick, Jala, while you were talking, and then like for the first half of what Dave was talking, I had a really bad connection. So I missed almost everything you said. So I might repeat something here. ah Apologies if so, I did not catch almost anything you said. I just know you're referencing personal experience and then it was gone for a while. Fun with remote recordings. 01:45:53.98 Jala & Dave C Thanks. 01:45:56.25 Dave J Yeah, like you said, ah Bob plays the victim basically when any kind of adversity comes his way, because he's set up this situation of power, basically. And he does whatever he can to keep that going. So when you talk about the Cosmo thing, like Gloria's like dying of boredom in there, and she says she'd like a magazine. And she, you know quote, talks him into going against the master's wishes and getting a magazine. But he won't give it to her. He has to read it to her. 01:46:30.35 Dave J she has to depend on him for stuff like that. And then anytime it's kind of turned against him, like when Gloria is rebelling against her situation, Bob plays the victim here saying, you know, I cook for you. I never take a vacation. I take out your trash. I saved you from this life, this pitiful life. I think he says um the fact that 01:46:57.92 Dave J Like he set up this situation of power for himself and he can't handle any time when it might be threatened. Like he has to be in that position of power um was really interesting. And as the game goes on, the mask comes off more and more and you start to see who he really is. And I think that that is really, really good here. 01:47:18.99 Jala & Dave C Well, so after the abduction happens, there's this whole first period where what's happening with Gloria is she's just like in denial that this is even happening. And then she's convinced somebody will come for her anytime soon and this, that and the other. 01:47:32.68 Dave J Yeah. 01:47:33.45 Jala & Dave C So she's just sitting there and dealing with it and just waiting. You know, and then during that time, Bob is trying to set up his dual personality because he can blame everything bad on the master so that he as Bob, but you know, is the quote unquote good guy in the situation. 01:47:50.03 Jala & Dave C And um unfortunately, that works on her, you know, over time, this several months that she's stuck here. 01:47:53.44 Dave J Yeah. 01:47:57.71 Jala & Dave C And um so. She's going through that sheet . That's how it starts. Then she kind of cycles into, hey, wait, nothing's happening. 01:48:08.72 Jala & Dave C um you know Then she gets mad and then starts to throw fits and I'm not going to cooperate and this, that, and the other. I'm going to starve myself and all of that. and Then that only lasts just so long. 01:48:19.43 Dave J Mm hmm. 01:48:21.12 Jala & Dave C you know and that's just like this whole whole period and then during that time bob is just like you'll get to like it here eventually it'll be okay it'll be okay that kind of thing he's just waiting her out. And then she gets into the depression phase where she just doesn't want to do anything and has given up and isn't caring for herself. 01:48:40.01 Jala & Dave C ah One of the most powerful scenes actually to me from the very beginning parts of the game is where Gloria is talking to Bob. Bob has come down and is at the door and then she needs to go to the bathroom. 01:48:53.84 Jala & Dave C But because she's on camera 24 hours a day and he's at the door and there's bars and there's no way to hide, she's just like turning around for a minute. And then she has to go to the bathroom with him just standing there with his back turned, which is, you know, like yeah she can't even have privacy to do that. 01:49:05.93 Dave J Mm-hmm. 01:49:09.86 Jala & Dave C You know, ah yeah. 01:49:10.16 Dave J Yeah. 01:49:12.51 Jala & Dave C And I was just bringing up earlier, Bob's persona and his worldview is that, you know, I'm a nice guy. Uh, he's, he's doing the involuntary cell bit, like the in-cell thing. 01:49:22.68 Dave J Yeah. 01:49:26.47 Dave J The classic nice guy thing. 01:49:27.70 Jala & Dave C yeah he you know his whole shtick is, i gay I gave you all these things. 01:49:27.87 Dave J Yeah. 01:49:34.42 Jala & Dave C I paid you all this attention. No one else has loved you like I have for 10 years. um and The only thing that has gone wrong is you wouldn't have given me the time of day. 01:49:44.93 Jala & Dave C so I had to create this situation where you can now appreciate someone who obviously will give everything up. 01:49:55.32 Jala & Dave C I don't have a vacation. All my time is spent on you and you deserve it and you should appreciate that. And ah you, you know, I will treat you like a princess forever and give you cakes and all the thing and some, and some wonderful jewelry. 01:50:11.86 Jala & Dave C And oh, you said that hope keeps you going. Here's, here's the bell of freedom and hope. Oh man. 01:50:20.54 Dave J Yeah, it's definitely not a dog collar with a bell on it. That's definitely not what it is. um Yeah. 01:50:27.15 Jala & Dave C Right. 01:50:30.82 Dave J Interesting. I just completely forgot what I was going to say. 01:50:35.03 Jala & Dave C Well, um we can kind of cycle back while you're thinking. um So she has that period of denial, then she has depression, and then she comes to accept the situation, as you mentioned previously. 01:50:45.28 Dave J Yeah. 01:50:48.54 Dave J Mm hmm. 01:50:48.52 Jala & Dave C And during that acceptance cycle, then she's chummy with Bob, super chummy with Bob, like too chummy, way too chummy with Bob. makes you feel often you know disgusted everytime that she's talking to him ah but then she's also then she turns into like a princess and she's like well you'll get me anything i want so i want blah blah blah and you need to hand make the blah blah blah the the hand make the the dough for the 01:50:56.68 Dave J Yeah. 01:51:13.44 Jala & Dave C Yeah, the cream fresh that you've you've you know whipped up by hand for 45 minutes or whatever. 01:51:18.62 Dave J Yeah. 01:51:18.92 Jala & Dave C And like, you know, she's being demanding and whatever, because she's pushing her limits and seeing how much she can do. And then she's trying to take that back as a form of power for herself, even though she is powerless in this situation, because Bob is acquiescing to these requests. 01:51:29.97 Dave J Mm hmm. 01:51:36.58 Jala & Dave C And in that way, she's feeling like she's gaining some kind of power back, but it's illusory. and that's something that you see. um well So what the game, we mentioned in the beginning is that it does very well with the visuals. 01:51:51.35 Jala & Dave C her mindscape is mapped one to one with what's going on. So when you do encounter the incarnation of her, that is the princess, the princess has, has all the cakes, um, but also has like this infantilized Bob, like she's swaddling this little baby Bob that is her super servant. 01:52:03.63 Dave J Yeah. 01:52:13.63 Jala & Dave C Um, but that's her puppet. So it's. She's doing a lot of a lot of heavy lifting in her head that she's like splintering her personality and having to rejoin them. It's a trip. Um, you know The game is doing that the entire time and that's one one place where the little minigames for the most part do shine because they often with like, I think in a single exception have something specifically to do with what she's suffering through. 01:52:50.20 Jala & Dave C Um, the one that didn't, the little puzzle is this chess piece puzzle, which I didn't see mapped to anything. 01:52:50.38 Dave J yeah 01:52:55.92 Jala & Dave C Like, so my thought was if she talks to her mother a few times at the cafe, like she just has these little monthly chats or whatever, where she meets her mother and her mother had been like a, uh, 01:53:08.18 Jala & Dave C Or I guess was still a, um, a figure in the dance world. 01:53:09.92 Dave J Yeah. Yeah. 01:53:12.83 Jala & Dave C Um, and had they been like playing chess, it would have made sense, but there's, there's no board, there's no chess pieces. 01:53:19.93 Dave J yeah 01:53:23.35 Jala & Dave C There's nothing like that doesn't figure in anything that she's doing. Whereas every other puzzle has some relation to, like, what's going on in her situation. 01:53:31.21 Dave J Yeah. 01:53:31.93 Jala & Dave C Oh, and another thing I want to mention about one of the earlier dreamscapes is the first big dreamscape that you go into. There's a bunch of people who have something on their head, like you can't see their face, but these are all just little incarnations of basically thoughts Gloria's had or or things that she's got hang ups about. 01:53:43.47 Dave J Yeah. 01:53:48.38 Dave J Yep. 01:53:50.17 Jala & Dave C And they just like to reflect back to her different things that she thinks. And um you know like basically, I think it's that way with pretty much everything that you come across in the um dreamscapes. 01:53:55.02 Dave J Yeah. 01:54:01.95 Jala & Dave C like Even the monsters and stuff, even if they're representations of big shadows with teeth and stuff, that's like her fears and everything. 01:54:08.83 Dave J Mm hmm. 01:54:09.15 Jala & Dave C So like all of that is 100% glorious stuff happening. 01:54:13.03 Dave J Yeah, yeah, like, like her random thoughts that, you know, maybe as you lay down in bed at night and random conversations and stuff from the days are just bouncing around in your head, those are NPCs in her dreamscape. Yeah. 01:54:27.79 Jala & Dave C Well, she specifically, um, early on in, in, when she's encountering her, her dreams, um, she runs across, I think it's like five of the shadows that are just organs. They're just in a line and they have like their terrible moths. Uh, but she personifies them. She gives each of them a name and a face of people she knows because the only way to kind of face your fears is to identify them. 01:54:58.47 Jala & Dave C but she's cast them in her personal life because I think that's just the one thing that is easy for her to do. ah And it's it's it's hard like that's one of the many, many things in this game that's kind of hard to watch and engage with because she's put her boss, she's put um her mother, she's put her lover, everything in her life is a problem. 01:55:12.94 Dave J Mm hmm. 01:55:23.93 Jala & Dave C Um, and that may not be that way all the time, but that's how she's, that's what she feels like, you know, nothing's going right for her. Uh, and she, yeah she speaks with them. She interacts with them specifically in her head. And that's where the lines start to really blur is because the, the situations that are outside of her captivity and outside of her, um, 01:55:51.87 Jala & Dave C mind palace are, they're not always in temporal order. And it's not always clear if that's actually happening or if she's just sort of imagining the situation. So that's what makes the unreliable as like that's, that's what creates that unreliable aspect of her narration. 01:56:16.67 Dave J Yeah, I think another good part about that too is like her internal story might be heading in one direction, but the story in the real world might be heading in another direction, which I think is kind of interesting. And the example of this to kind of move us into talking about her escape is When she's in that part of the acceptance, um where she has, you know, she's killed the inner child, she is, you know, exercising and i'm being friendly with Bob and things like that. That's the thing that initially helps her make a step towards getting out when it might seem like that's 01:57:01.42 Dave J She's becoming more comfortable with staying there, but that's ironically what helps Bob feel comfortable enough to let her out and for her to see the real truth of the situation here. ah So Bob lets her out. um They go up to the main floor of the house and it's a small house. 01:57:21.27 Dave J um Bob is acting really nice and saying like you can sleep in your own bedroom until you feel comfortable coming in and sleeping with me. He says he doesn't want to rush things, of course, because he's a nice guy, right? 01:57:35.02 Dave J um um Gloria immediately tries to escape ah from seeing this like one shot that she has, but the door's locked. ah Bob's really fucking creepy. He grabs her from behind and takes a big smell and then tells her that it will be alright. It's really creepy. ah So you see again who Bob really is. um And then ah Gloria asks if he's gonna kill her. Bob says, have I ever hurt you? 01:58:05.70 Dave J and says that you can move freely in the house, and Gloria says that she would rather die, and she jumps down the stairs to maybe try and to escape it, or just, you know, again, the only thing she feels like she can do, I guess, in that situation. um good ah Good point here, this kind of failed escape attempt. 01:58:27.95 Jala & Dave C Yeah, it's not, she doesn't jump, she throws herself down the stairs on purpose to try to die. 01:58:32.83 Dave J Yeah. 01:58:34.96 Jala & Dave C So there's, there's the, and this isn't the only episode of like suicidal ideation. 01:58:35.42 Dave J Yeah. 01:58:40.48 Jala & Dave C So yes, those content warnings are there for this very specific reason, because that's a tough That's the character you're controlling. You're already like, this is hours into the game. You're empathetic with her situation. And you see that she's well and truly trapped and you can understand. Uh, and this is ah a case of like most of this game, you can understand what's going on. You may not agree with a lot of what's happening or what she does because you don't have, um, you're in control of her. 01:59:13.84 Jala & Dave C or you're you're you're you're moving her around, but you don't have full autonomy of what her choices are. So one where that really stood out to me was when you're killing her inner child, you can see that that's wrong, but you can't not do it. 01:59:22.32 Dave J Yeah. 01:59:30.67 Jala & Dave C um it There's only one control ah scheme that the game is allowing you. 01:59:31.69 Dave J Yeah. 01:59:36.21 Jala & Dave C It's not a yes or no choice. 01:59:38.42 Dave J Right. 01:59:38.48 Jala & Dave C It's forcing you to do that thing. So some or a lot of this game is really railroading you through her experience, which um is a point in favor of the game because it has a story to tell. 01:59:51.98 Jala & Dave C It's going to tell you. You don't get to pick another route. 01:59:54.19 Dave J Yeah. 01:59:55.70 Jala & Dave C You don't have multiple endings to the game. 01:59:56.19 Dave J Yeah, you're not. Yeah, you're not making decisions as Gloria. You're along for the ride with Gloria. Yeah. 02:00:03.27 Jala & Dave C Right. And again, like because, you know, just like Dave just said, because you are forced to do these things and you are like, you know, you you shouldn't be doing this thing that you're doing, but you have to do this thing. You don't have a choice. um But like that makes you as the player feel cornered because you're feeling this empathy. And then you're like, oh, man, I don't really want to do this thing that I have to do. And that's, again, part of the way that this game makes its point. 02:00:32.69 Jala & Dave C is by making you do these things 02:00:34.98 Dave J Yep. 02:00:35.49 Jala & Dave C so um 02:00:37.46 Dave J By making you do those things and by 02:00:42.12 Dave J giving you giving you that runway to like really empathize with Gloria and then so she gets kidnapped and that's terrible and then you spend so much time with her that you you really at some point you start to hope like okay this game is going to move towards her trying to escape right like she's probably not just gonna die down here of old age or something like that 02:00:57.10 Jala & Dave C is by making you do these things. 02:01:04.76 Dave J So you get to this failed escape attempt and it feels that much worse because you've been spending that much time not only with Gloria but like inside of her head at this point and with all these different parts of her. So you know I think that like a part of a story like this would probably include a failed escape attempt. Just, you know, if you're writing out like the outline of a plot like this, but it's stronger and more impactful in this game than it could have been otherwise, like if they had, you know, a different approach to storytelling here. But because you're just spending so much time understanding Gloria and going through these steps with her, this, first of all, the failed escape, but also seeing 02:01:53.26 Dave J Like one layer of the mask comes off from Bob to make it really, really impactful here. 02:01:59.12 Jala & Dave C Well, and then again, because you're in the dreamscape of her mind and you are seeing her, all these individual thoughts that maybe don't pertain to the specific situation, but do pertain to Gloria as a person. 02:02:04.17 Dave J Yeah. 02:02:12.90 Jala & Dave C um You know, like it has a stronger presentation and makes you feel far more empathy for her and compassion for her than you would if you were just playing the actual scenario itself. 02:02:24.99 Dave J Listen Okay. 02:02:25.55 Jala & Dave C So um what this, in talking about that, what this has really brought to mind is the situation if you watch the film 10 Cloverfield Lane. 02:02:36.81 Jala & Dave C So that's specifically, um, folks that have been basically kidnapped and stuck in like a basement and dealing directly with their captor, but facing the same kind of like, Oh, I've tried to escape that failed. What options do I have now? Oh, this part didn't end well. Oh, I'm identifying with my captor. 02:03:04.43 Jala & Dave C And that's probably not good. um all All of these little things, the writing is just super on point and I just really want to hammer that home. So as we're going through all of this and analyzing all the characters, it's like Gloria is, or her situation that she's going through is incredibly relatable because the writing is so strong and you understand all of her motivations. 02:03:33.61 Jala & Dave C Like you get what she's doing and even the parts that you may not agree with were like, yeah, I wouldn't necessarily do that. You know why she's doing what she's doing. And that's where the game has its strong point. 02:03:43.30 Dave J Yeah. 02:03:48.17 Jala & Dave C We've talked about all the other characters in glorious, but we haven't really talked about cage heads much. Uh, we only mentioned cage head, but we haven't explained that at all. 02:03:54.09 Dave J We have not. Right. 02:03:57.77 Jala & Dave C I think we covered everybody else though. So, Dave. 02:04:00.88 Dave J Yeah. Cagehead was the one that I was a little bit less confident about like the role of. So maybe you can help out with that. 02:04:11.06 Dave J and 02:04:13.13 Jala & Dave C Yeah, so it's specifically cited that Cagehead is her inspiration and Cagehead is a ah trapped version of herself that's stuck in the way deep down basement of her mind um and has like, instead of atrophied, 02:04:34.97 Jala & Dave C um Has it's almost like a cancerous growth where you can tell that her inspiration was sealed because it's it's it's her face in a cage but then her body became a sort of mountain. 02:04:40.04 Dave J Yeah. 02:04:51.71 Jala & Dave C um it's sealed, but it didn't stop growing. And she was never able to let it free because she wasn't able to be herself on stage. She had a role she was doing, but she's being stifled creatively by Aldo and the company. She wants to, she has dreams of grandeur that aren't unrealistic. like Yes, let's take this show on the road. Let's go to New York. She wants to go to Broadway. she wants She has these dreams that are being held back because the Black Swan as as 02:05:34.64 Jala & Dave C high profile it as it is for her is only here and in Paris. She can't move outside of the thing that she achieved. 02:05:40.49 Dave J Yeah. 02:05:45.01 Jala & Dave C So she has dreams, she has hopes, she has stuff that she wants to do and she can see the trajectory. She can understand that yes, if we just took this internationally, we're good enough to do that. 02:05:57.20 Jala & Dave C Like we have the skills, we've built up this reputation, we've been dancing for 10 years and I'm still just like the headline name. 02:06:10.49 Jala & Dave C So something that it makes me think about is that um Gloria herself, because she has not accepted all of the different aspects of her in order to gain actual confidence, she actually at an earlier part in the game, and when she's talking to Joy and at some other parts, um Joy's like, oh, well, I thought you were so confident you were this, that and the other. 02:06:32.91 Jala & Dave C And then Gloria's like, yeah, no, I'm not. I'm not really confident. 02:06:35.71 Dave J Mm hmm. 02:06:35.95 Jala & Dave C That's an act. And um so what the what you were saying, Dave, when ah while you were talking, it made me think that so this is her inspiration and her inspiration cannot become ambition because she doesn't have the confidence to become ambitious with it in order to make it real. 02:06:55.05 Jala & Dave C That's the thing that she has to first come to grips with all these things inside of herself, these inner demons that she has, that she's put these faces on, these fears, these um parts of herself that she doesn't want to accept. She needs to um get all of those things together and and you know sort those all out so that she can move forward. 02:07:15.90 Jala & Dave C I mean, she literally stuck her inspiration in a cage and buried it deep down because she could see her life wasn't permitting the thing that her dreams were. 02:07:22.98 Dave J Mm. 02:07:28.27 Jala & Dave C Her dreams have stagnated and become moldy and put in her apartment basement. and it's really sad because you see that she has this potential and it's not gone unrecognized. Her mother understood that, her um boss understands that, but they're like their own sense of themselves has not permitted them to actually actualize that. like they Their own self-interest prevent them from letting her spread her wings. And she's in a position where she can't afford to do that without shaking up the status quo. like She would have to do big moves, do things on her own of her own accord that she probably feels that she can't do without a support she doesn't have a support network her mother is 02:08:33.07 Jala & Dave C Unarguably like a terrible woman, or a parent at least. She's not a good mother, not given what we see of her. 02:08:37.47 Dave J Yeah. 02:08:40.15 Jala & Dave C Her boss is not a good boss given what we see of him. And it's tough because we're only getting Gloria's version of them. Even when we see them in the, quote unquote unquote, real world, it's dubious because is that them or is that just the version of them that Gloria understands? 02:08:59.45 Jala & Dave C And the same thing with Joy. Joy is a college student. She's doing her own thing. Um, I don't think that they're bad for each other given the bits that we see. However, they're on two very different tracks of life. And that's, that's part of the ageism going on. Um, they're, they have probably a 10 year age gap and Gloria's going kind of nowhere. She hit a plateau that she has potential to go beyond, but that's just where she stopped. And Joy can see that she should be going elsewhere and doesn't discourage her from that. But Joy is also kind of caught up on her own. She's going to school. What's she doing in her own life? Trying to figure out her own future. And that future doesn't necessarily have much to do with Gloria aside from 02:09:50.57 Jala & Dave C uh, encouraging her girlfriend to go after her dreams. Um, and that comes at a later moment in the game and not the current like Gloria's dealing with a lot of shit and joys too busy to help her do that. 02:10:07.44 Jala & Dave C um And their relationships kind of, like everything else, stagnated. It's being caged up too. And the key that ah Gloria literally gives her joy to her apartment is a step that isn't um isn't a fear of freedom. It's more like a binding thing that joy is not able to accept. 02:10:33.45 Dave J There's a lot of examples in the game of Gloria not having control over her life in the way that she would like and that leads her to do sometimes drastic or sometimes, you know, actions that are not maybe the most well thought out. So like giving joy the key to her apartment as a way, you know, I think she probably recognizes that the two of them are not perfect for each other and that they don't actually have a lot in common in that their relationship has probably run its course, but instead of doing the, instead of like taking in the whole situation and thinking rationally about it, she wants to find a way to take control of the situation. So it's offering a key to the apartment and all the other things in her life going off the rails lead her to accepting the deal from the patron and things like that. 02:11:30.15 Jala & Dave C So something that I was thinking about when you were talking about that and also kind of circling back to the whole ageism thing. So ah Bob is older than Gloria. So um it's the same thing that Gloria was doing with Joy is like what Bob is doing with Gloria, but way more severe. 02:11:39.79 Dave J Yeah. 02:11:50.37 Jala & Dave C because he's trying to keep her and likes to obligate her to being with him and everything in his space and you know his seat of power, if you will. And you know that's essentially what it would have been with Gloria giving the key to joy. like you know The way that Gloria presents it to her is, well, you can come and go as you please, but what it really means is I want you here in my space that I can control. 02:12:13.87 Jala & Dave C you know and so it's actually like um you know like the the age gap is probably about the same and you know like the situation is kind of similar although you know also you know very very vastly different at the same time um but yeah like i just wanted to bring that up because there's kind of a mirroring going on between bob and gloria and then joy and gloria 02:12:26.68 Dave J Yeah. 02:12:37.03 Jala & Dave C And that's the way that the key is represented, it's in a little blue, like an engagement ring box. Um, and that's what initially, because you don't know what she's offering her, she's like, Oh, I have to get the box for, you know, ah for, for joy. 02:12:44.71 Dave J Yeah. 02:12:53.49 Jala & Dave C And I'll give her this present. When we went to the museum, I got this date all planned out. It seems like it's an engagement thing. It's, it's similar to say it's a couple, um, and they are having some troubles and trying to figure things out. 02:13:12.12 Dave J A baby. 02:13:12.52 Jala & Dave C And they're like, you know what? I'll fix this. A kid. yeah Yes. A baby. And that'll tie everything together and that creates this bond and we share this thing. We're sharing this apartment. We're sharing this responsibility. I'm extending this specific trust to you that you won't just come and steal all my stuff. Like there's so much meaning and investment in that key and joy was just like, I can't accept this. 02:13:48.69 Dave J Yeah. 02:13:48.75 Jala & Dave C You know, I'll peace out, sorry, I've gotta go. um I'm glad you saved me from a molester on the train. And that and that was the big thing that Joy put this hero status, this like this larger than life um emphasis on Gloria is because Gloria interceded when Joy was being like and about to be molested on a train. 02:14:14.76 Dave J Yeah. 02:14:15.10 Jala & Dave C and that heroic persona, that figure like became the representation of Gloria and Gloria never was going to own up to that because like that's not me. 02:14:27.48 Jala & Dave C I mean, I'll step in and do this thing, but that's not my everyday MO. I don't have the confidence for that. I had it in a moment and um realistically, that's what's what I had. 02:14:34.29 Dave J Yeah. 02:14:38.27 Jala & Dave C I spent it. 02:14:41.12 Jala & Dave C so Here's the thing. Everybody enjoys or does not have joy. Uh, Gloria's life is putting her on a pedestal, not just Bob, everybody. Her mom is putting her on a pedestal. 02:14:52.70 Jala & Dave C You've got all this ability. You can do all of these things. You should be blah. you know like Basically trying to live vicariously through ah Gloria and in some ways because her own glory days have passed. 02:15:01.41 Dave J Yeah. 02:15:04.09 Jala & Dave C um you know It's not like she didn't have her own, but she's now wanting ah Gloria to do that thing. Joy is putting hero status on Gloria. and Aldo is saying you're such a good dancer and you're so dedicated that you need to be the head of my team and I need to take you off because I would i want you to have you know had your glory days and I now want you to train a bunch more people so that we can have more glorious running around. 02:15:29.04 Jala & Dave C you know And so everybody in her life is making them you know making her stand on this pedestal. And that is very, very, very, very, very relatable for yours truly. I've had that happen throughout my life very many times. 02:15:42.36 Jala & Dave C It's only like now in this era of my adulthood in the last, I don't know, maybe five years that I've finally gotten to the point where I have people in my life that don't put me on a pedestal. 02:15:54.46 Jala & Dave C They understand that I am a human. 02:15:55.30 Dave J Mm hmm. 02:15:56.23 Jala & Dave C and I'm flawed like everyone else and that's the thing all these people are putting this pressure on Gloria because you know they are expecting these things of her and she is performing those roles for those people but then like inside she feels hollow because she's not getting filled back up she stifled herself in order to be what these other people want from her. 02:16:17.25 Dave J Yeah, either that or she's feeling those struggles inside because she can't live up to what those people want her to be also. 02:16:23.82 Jala & Dave C yeah 02:16:26.22 Dave J I mean, that's what happens when you put someone on a pedestal like that for that person. like there's a chance, a good chance that they're not gonna be able to live up to it, at least not over the long run, right? 02:16:38.75 Jala & Dave C This is. 02:16:38.88 Dave J Like she could be this hero for joy when they first met. And ah you know she could keep that up for a while, but eventually, 02:16:51.51 Dave J you 're you are yourself and nobody is a hero all the time like that, right? and especially if that was not necessarily a true representation of who Gloria is. It was a thing that she did in like a snap moment, ah not necessarily like, hey, I do this all the time. You know This is what I do on the train. It was a thing that she did to help somebody out one time. And that became like an image that was built up. 02:17:20.71 Jala & Dave C Well, and here's the thing. um People are allowed to be complicated, but most of the time society in general and like people's ideas of each other are such that we don't allow room for that complication to exist. 02:17:34.55 Dave J as not in public figures, especially. 02:17:35.87 Jala & Dave C Yeah. And so that's where Gloria is having trouble because I'm her not you know accepting and coming to terms with parts of herself is partially because it's being aggravated and and like extended by these people around her who also don't want her to accept all the different parts of her. 02:17:54.65 Jala & Dave C you know like They want her to be this one thing that she is for them in their own head because of their pedestal situation. 02:18:00.44 Dave J Yeah. 02:18:02.20 Jala & Dave C And as such, they don't allow her to be a living, breathing human. 02:18:07.19 Dave J Exactly. 02:18:07.86 Jala & Dave C And the hardest part for her, I would think after playing through this game, is that the pedestal that everyone has created for her, they're not the same pedestal. 02:18:18.52 Jala & Dave C Every person wants something different from her. 02:18:18.74 Dave J Mhm. 02:18:22.26 Jala & Dave C And so she had to split herself to try to do those things and until she couldn't. And that's when everything started falling apart. Um, so that's a good, uh, 02:18:36.09 Jala & Dave C vision of like if you have to like a mask in public, like you're doing, you create roles for yourself or people create roles for you and you're juggling those all the time. That's exhausting. She just became fed up and then she made some very poor decisions that put her in a place that was terrible for anybody. 02:19:02.39 Jala & Dave C um And through struggle and fortitude, because she's capable, you know she was able to get out of that. 02:19:02.79 Dave J Yeah. 02:19:14.23 Jala & Dave C and that's where this game does start to culminate. 02:19:18.21 Dave J Yeah. 02:19:18.37 Jala & Dave C Speaking of, Dave. 02:19:21.37 Dave J I was gonna say like it's interesting the way that you bring that up Dave like her feeling like she can't live up to the pedestal the different pedestals that all these other people put her on and her feeling this other pressure of um kind of feeling like she's because of this and maybe that she's trying to live up to what other people expect of her. She doesn't have any control over what's going on in her actual day-to-day decision-making life. That's what drives her to make the worst decision that she makes, which is to trust the call to go meet a stranger in the woods about this wild pipe dream 02:20:03.54 Dave J of a you know the ultimate control that she could have like you're going to control this theater troupe we're going to tour worldwide it's going to be you're going to have creative uh your creative vision is going to be the driving force behind this that's what drives her to make this rash decision when maybe if she wasn't feeling those pressures from every direction in her life, she would have heard that over the phone and been like, this is bullshit. 02:20:30.37 Dave J Who the fuck would call and give this to me? 02:20:33.48 Jala & Dave C Right. That's the Despo meter. The Despo meter was really high at that point. 02:20:36.21 Dave J Yeah. Yeah. 02:20:38.21 Jala & Dave C So I will say that through his observations, Bob did in fact understand her ah Gloria, the broken Gloria, and you know of course proceeded to take advantage of that. 02:20:50.21 Jala & Dave C So does he know the real her? 02:20:50.75 Dave J Yeah. 02:20:53.04 Jala & Dave C No, because she used that opportunity and opportunity, that situation to regain her grasp on herself. 02:21:05.04 Jala & Dave C Um, she hit the most rock bottom you can probably ever hit and pulled herself up. 02:21:05.15 Dave J Yeah. 02:21:13.98 Jala & Dave C Um, and through this adversity, she came to understand herself better and what she was capable of, but still didn't let go of the core of her that, um, other people did see glimpses of. 02:21:14.32 Dave J Yeah. 02:21:31.77 Jala & Dave C So in my own life, ah there was a period of time when I was living here, I just moved in with my parents and my parents are disabled and immunocompromised and they started to have major health declines. And it was only me here trying to take care of both of them. And like I would go away for a couple of days, I would come home and then like my mother's hip was broken and I had to call yeah ER and my dad happened to hurt his back trying to pick her up. And so they're both laying out. 02:21:58.82 Jala & Dave C And I'm just like, how long have you been laying here? I don't, I can't even like having my own life, that kind of thing. And so I was dealing with a situation that was very high pressure. 02:22:05.69 Dave J Mhm. 02:22:08.16 Jala & Dave C I was coming off of divorce, no less. And so I had a lot of things going on in my own personal life. I had a lot of changes at work. I had a situation at home where I had to be on constantly. And I'm still in a situation where I had to be on constantly, but it's a little bit different and more stable now. ah But back then, it was hard because I was the only one doing all of these things. And you know like my only sibling is in another state thousands of miles away. So um all of this was leaning on me. I had a lot of pressure. And so ah my way of dealing with it was to do a lot of endurance events. And when you're on an endurance event, like an 18-hour thing, 02:22:44.46 Jala & Dave C You are going, you are going, and you are burning past any amount of energy, water, you know enthusiasm that you might have. You have nothing left. 02:22:53.50 Dave J Yeah. 02:22:54.49 Jala & Dave C You have nothing, and you are out there, and you have no choice but to go forward. and It was doing that repeatedly over and over. Over the course of like two years, I was doing ultra marathons and endurance rucking events and things like that, led by Special Forces people and things like that. 02:23:11.57 Jala & Dave C where I was just out, just pushing myself to a physical limit. The reason why I was doing this is because that was helping me to burn away all of the things that weren't really important and to get back to like you know prioritizing things in my life properly and getting myself squared away like within um you know myself of like what all I needed to do for me in this situation while also dealing with the situation I had on hand. And I bring this up because This is my version of, you know, like the situation that Gloria was going through where she had to have like this, this kind of um dealing dealing with like a very harsh situation and it things have to culminate in some way, shape or form for her to then have to burn past everything to figure out her priorities and what she needs to be doing and like snap to that. 02:24:04.43 Jala & Dave C Oh, I need to get out of here is my priority, you know, so. 02:24:08.13 Dave J Yeah, yeah. It's ah the way that they intertwine the two of those two, where she goes through those things, ah those kind of stages, like you mentioned, the anger, depression, acceptance, and things like that, the way that it's intertwined with the inner progress that she's making discovering these parts of herself that she may have hidden away, ah reconciling these parts and bringing them all together, and recognizing that they all have to go with her basically. 02:24:40.38 Dave J um And then all the way up to that point where she makes the escape and the escape is exciting. I was on the edge of my seat, trying to figure out how that was going to go. 02:24:50.17 Jala & Dave C Oh, you should go ahead and talk about that since we said since we said that she failed her escape attempt. 02:24:50.68 Dave J So yeah, 02:25:00.46 Dave J So she fails the escape attempt and Bob Bob gets like Bob is ah the the nice you know the nice guy Bob he's gone he's he is the captor Bob now the jailer almost like he's he's feeding her canned ravioli um you know if she doesn't eat he doesn't bring her any other food stuff like that um She kind of makes a decision in here that it's best for her after she acts out and yells and breaks the security camera and stuff like that. She makes the decision that it's best to be submissive and try to stay alive. What I thought at that moment was that she's back to that other stage of acceptance, basically, when in reality, that's not what's going on here. She's figured out what it's going to take for me to get another shot. 02:25:56.15 Jala & Dave C Yeah. And that, and that shot isn't, um, Oh, I'm, I'm going to beg and plead and do this cajoling and and try to get Bob to let me out again. 02:26:09.23 Jala & Dave C Cause I think that that boat has sailed. Um, what do I do to get Bob to continually lower his guard and open that door? 02:26:12.12 Dave J Yeah. 02:26:20.33 Dave J Yeah. 02:26:23.42 Jala & Dave C Because at that point, Bob is now the obstacle. It's not the door. It's Bob. Bob is the obstacle. He was always the obstacle. And that obstacle needs to be removed. 02:26:35.05 Dave J Yeah. Uh, actually before she escapes, there's like one final thing from Bob, like Bob's getting more desperate too at this point. And there's the scene where he comes down and he has a knife and he says he's going to kill himself if she says the word and stuff like that. 02:26:50.37 Jala & Dave C Well, and the way that that happens is she's laying there asleep and he comes in and he's got a knife and then he, she wakes up and turns and she's like, you're going to, you've got a knife. You're going to try to kill me now. 02:27:02.06 Jala & Dave C And then he's like, and then that's when he turns it on himself and he's like, I'll kill myself. 02:27:02.46 Dave J Yeah. 02:27:06.80 Jala & Dave C Cause now he's feeling, you know, um, I'm not convinced he's feeling guilty, but um whatever. 02:27:13.14 Dave J I don't think so. We see later that he did not learn his lesson at any point throughout this, but yeah, yeah that that's part like he, I think he realizes, cause I think right before this, she said that she'll never love him or right at the end of this, he realizes that his, you know, this dream that he's concocted for this life that the two of them are going to share together where she's going to grow to love him and they're going to, you know, share the bed and all of that. 02:27:42.95 Dave J he's kind of realized that that's slipping away. So he gets like the most desperate right before this. And that's the thing that allows his guard to fully drop is when he actually thinks that she's in danger. When she floods the bathtub and her talent pretends to have drowned and that's what gets him to open the door and come in and she kind of rises up behind him like in an action movie and she drowns him. 02:28:12.29 Dave J ah in this water and walks upstairs. And that's how she gets out. um She plays Bob at the end. She plays the one thing that she knows that he will let the guard down for is that if he thinks she's actually in danger. 02:28:28.08 Dave J So that's what it does. 02:28:28.99 Jala & Dave C Well and what gets him to become desperate is her not caring at all anymore. Not caring one way or the other. 02:28:36.57 Dave J Yeah. 02:28:37.55 Jala & Dave C No anger, no sadness, no no no empathy, no nothing. She has nothing left to give him. She is empty of her responses to him when she's being submissive or just whatever, you know, just not even caring. 02:28:52.08 Jala & Dave C And that's what pushes him over the edge because he can't manipulate something that's not being given to him. 02:28:55.57 Dave J Yep. 02:28:58.85 Jala & Dave C You know, he can't he can't manipulate her emotions when she's not providing them to him. 02:28:59.69 Dave J Yeah. 02:29:04.42 Jala & Dave C And it's also important to note that when she rises up out of the water to go and attack him, that you have to be the one to kill him also. And that feels great, though, when you get there. 02:29:14.35 Dave J Oh yeah, absolutely. 02:29:16.10 Jala & Dave C Yeah, I was just gonna say that she's, and she's being apathetic rather than submissive. yeah She's just like, she's breathing. She's there and breathing kind of. 02:29:27.73 Jala & Dave C And so he's doing whatever he can to get that engagement. um And that's what, because he's fully invested in her, like for ill, obviously, but um ah she's his whole world. 02:29:38.69 Dave J Yeah. 02:29:41.95 Jala & Dave C He's made it that way. And for her to endanger herself, like that that's breaking all of his meaning, um potentially. And again, we see that this is the most selfish, destructive, disgusting man. 02:29:59.20 Dave J yeah 02:29:59.40 Jala & Dave C Well, that's why I'm the opposite of love isn't hate. It's apathy. If you don't give anything, like you don't care at all, then that's like the worst. Because if there's hate, there's still passion there, you know. So she has to give him nothing. 02:30:15.19 Dave J Yeah. What did you think of him? So what did you think of like the revelation that she didn't actually kill him here and that we get more scenes with Bob at the end? Do you think it's necessary to continue to show after the fact that Bob didn't learn a lesson and that he's still a creep even after all of this? 02:30:37.66 Jala & Dave C It's necessary for her um because that is allowing her to retain herself because she drowned him, but then she called the ambulance for him. 02:30:54.35 Dave J Yeah. 02:30:55.98 Jala & Dave C That's for one, allowing her to like not also go to jail because she just got out of one. Um, and then that's putting this, like, she's, she's done with the situation. She did what she had to do. She got out of there and she can say that, yes, she, she technically killed him, but then absolved herself of that. 02:31:23.94 Jala & Dave C That's her hero mode, um, that she had like little sparks of before. And now she can, she's come to grips with herself and it wasn't in her to just end him. And like, that's not closure for her. 02:31:41.29 Jala & Dave C So here's the thing. Um, the abuse victim almost always has a lot of empathy for the abuser. And that is a thing that is very common in all abusive, abusive relationships. So she, if he had died at that point, then she would come back to that later and be haunted by it, but there were these times he was nice to me. And we had these connections in these nice times where things were better in certain points. And I wonder if. 02:32:11.29 Jala & Dave C law you know when she sees he's in a wheelchair he is you know like all this other stuff like you know he's impaired from now on you know that he even makes a point of saying you know like i don't really like the diapers that i have to wear now because he doesn't have any control of his body anymore nobody autonomy he is now in the prison the way that she was in a prison. 02:32:32.76 Jala & Dave C um But he still hasn't learned his lesson and is still you know acting the same and doing the same stuff. 02:32:33.06 Dave J Mm hmm. 02:32:39.34 Jala & Dave C And she has to see that for herself because otherwise, that part of her that would have been compassionate to him and extended that compassion even past killing him, she would have come back to that later and felt ways about that. 02:32:53.31 Jala & Dave C and you know her seeing and going no he is in fact still a terrible person he didn't learn his lesson he is really a bad guy and i did what i needed to do that was important what's also important is at the end she gets all these offers for having a movie having a book having all this other stuff about her experience and she tells them no 02:33:12.95 Dave J Yeah. 02:33:14.81 Jala & Dave C And the reason she tells them no is because if she were to do that, it wouldn't be her story and her control anymore. It would be out there in public for everyone else to view and judge and do whatever and then spin her story however they want without it being her in control. And control is very important here because that's what she has been lacking. 02:33:36.90 Jala & Dave C Well, not only that, but she ended it. She finished what she was going through. And if she accepted those offers that puts it into this nebulous state of I'm stuck living this for the rest of my life and beyond. 02:33:52.48 Jala & Dave C And everyone's only going to know this about me. I'm the only female prisoner. Um, ah I'm only a survivor of this thing that, that. 02:33:58.46 Dave J Mm hmm. 02:34:01.79 Jala & Dave C yeah I'm not going to allow other people to define me because that's what's happened in her entire life up until then. Her choice was only to exist as other people viewed her. um So that was the cage she was stuck in. um Furthermore, while you are in control of her and have to do the drowning, 02:34:24.27 Jala & Dave C of ah Bob to escape, you get a second iteration of that when Bobby's wheelchair bound and you can just chuck him in the water. Again, it doesn't let you do that, but it it's it makes you do it and then relinquish it. Like it won't let you finish that action because that's not what she's looking for. She needs that sense of power over her own choices. 02:34:53.73 Dave J Yeah, the fact that Bob reveals once again, but like in this kind of new setting, he reveals who he really is. That's the closure that she would need like the closure of pushing him into the water would not be As. 02:35:14.80 Dave J it would now open up another can of worms for her to live with, right? But the closure of him ah her seeing him and him saying that, while you were unconscious here in the woods, this is where we hugged for the first time, and those are sweet memories to me. Her hearing that, which yeah by the way, yeah when I read that, I was like, Jesus fucking Christ, this guy. um Her hearing that just confirms in her head, like everything she needed to have confirmed, I feel like. 02:35:44.65 Jala & Dave C Absolutely and um so a couple of other little mindscapes right towards the end. um There is a mindscape where there is like she's dancing on the stage and she's dressed in like you know like a kimono and she's doing like a thing on a bridge or whatever and then after that there's like this oni figure that's coming after her. 02:35:59.75 Dave J Yeah. 02:36:03.37 Jala & Dave C I didn't realize this, even in my two playthroughs, it was only when Dave said it, he's like, the face is Bob's face. And it is. It's Bob's face as the big oni that's chasing you in this endless runner sort of section that you have at one part later in the game. 02:36:12.00 Dave J Yeah. 02:36:15.58 Dave J Mhmm. 02:36:20.21 Jala & Dave C And um that was pretty important to note. So that's her, her, her costume that she's in was her debut, um, dance. 02:36:30.84 Dave J Yeah. 02:36:31.55 Jala & Dave C And that's what, when she first started working with Aldo at the black swan, that was her debut dance number. And Bob specifically says to her, I have been with you. 02:36:42.42 Dave J Yep. 02:36:44.07 Jala & Dave C since like day one. I am your audience, like everything that you put on stage, like I've seen, I've witnessed and that's the demon ah that she's been stuck with this whole time, whether she knew it or not she and she didn't know it. But we also get a lot of ah her um her mind scapes when she's on the stage she finds comfort in the light she finds comfort in the stage the light specifically in gamification keeps the demons at bay it it it repels the 02:37:21.01 Jala & Dave C moths, these gooby things that just want to consume her. It keeps them away. That's her safe space. And that's also the safe space that I mentioned earlier is her music. Um, Joey specifically says, uh, or no, it's Bob. but He's like, here's a radio with a speaker and I have your playlist, your favorite playlist. And it's these songs. 02:37:42.60 Jala & Dave C And so every time that those tracks play, those are her safe space. 02:37:42.71 Dave J Yeah. 02:37:45.96 Jala & Dave C Like that's the thing that's carried her through like thick and thin through troubles is this music and she loves it. So it's never distorted because when she does hear that she is more at peace um regardless of the situation. 02:37:54.52 Dave J Yep. 02:38:00.77 Jala & Dave C But, uh, also, um, when you see her on stage in her mind, a lot of the things that you run into are just like lifeless puppets. And that's odd because she's when you're on stage, you're only, all you can see is the light. You don't get to see the shadows beyond the audience. She knows they're there, but they aren't people to her. They're just something that's kind of propping her up. 02:38:28.82 Jala & Dave C Um, and I don't think that she really ever gained satisfaction from that because if she did, then they wouldn't just be like these lifeless dolls. 02:38:37.40 Dave J Speaking of those safe spaces, it's interesting how those ah translate into the world for Gloria after she escapes. So it's interesting, I didn't put this together, but you mentioned the light, she doesn't want the light on her anymore. After the escape in the apartment, she keeps the blinds closed all the time. 02:38:57.63 Dave J um Partly because, ah I mean, she spent a lot of time underground, so that's probably part of it. But also, um it might be that, you know, this light, it no longer represents the same thing that it once did for her. But the song does, the music does, and when she ends up leaving Paris at the end, and you do that fun, 02:39:18.47 Dave J credits thing where you're driving and collecting the coins along the road that's the song that's playing so like the song that like you said represented a safe space when everything around her was danger now that she's past that that song still holds the association of a safe space 02:39:20.43 Jala & Dave C Listen. 02:39:36.00 Dave J for her, because she's leaving the comfort of you know whatever life she could have stayed in, and she's setting out for something completely unknown, but that song still represents ah safety and grounding for her at the end. 02:39:54.75 Jala & Dave C indeed. 02:39:58.78 Dave J There's a lot of stuff that we haven't talked about yet, and not necessarily that we need to spend a lot more time talking about it, but there is one thing that I wanted to ask the both of you, and that's about the title of the game. um The title, Decarnation. 02:40:15.38 Dave J is, uh, Decarnation I learned is a real word. Uh, it fell out of favor hundreds of years ago. So that's why I, you know, didn't see it before the title of this game, but it means, uh, separation from carnal desires or lust or desires of the flesh. so ah So you know, we're assuming that this is purposely the title of the game. Whose Decarnation are we working with here? What is the meaning of the title to you guys? 02:40:46.98 Jala & Dave C I mean, this is, this is Gloria's declaration. She's left behind by the end of the game, um, everything that was her, what she thought was her desires. She's left her romance and that was joy. She's left her, um, her dance life. 02:41:05.01 Jala & Dave C And that was her spotlight, her thing that she at one time probably derived pleasure from. And she's gone into a space that's unknown. 02:41:16.56 Jala & Dave C That is, I wouldn't say it's sterile because you're you're you're driving into this like sunset and this for this future. And there's hope in there because she has her safe music. 02:41:29.71 Jala & Dave C And she had the well wishes of... um joy Joy and her mother. 02:41:35.23 Jala & Dave C I don't think her mother was also like, go go do I wanted you to go do your thing this whole time. 02:41:40.49 Jala & Dave C I wanted other stuff too, but obviously that didn't work out. and her mother needs her own game because she needs to get some stuff corrected. 02:41:53.20 Jala & Dave C Wow. Uh, and yeah, so it's, it's that. And then it's also, I think for Bob, because those are things that he never had. Um, they're just in his head. So his lust, his, none of that was fulfilled for him. Um, but that, that's my thoughts. 02:42:16.12 Jala & Dave C So the thing about Bob is that he doesn't have any physical contact with Gloria except for very specific moments. And when there are those specific moments, they're always really dramatic. So ah the first time that he has physical contact is not with her herself, but with the statue, which is very affecting for everybody. 02:42:35.45 Jala & Dave C but the person playing and Gloria and everything um but then also her abduction he's like hugging her and like not you know obviously this is not consenting she didn't ask for any of this um but then also when she's too buddy buddy with him like that's that the moment that she touches his hand like I don't know about y'all but like when she touches he grabs her his hand I was like oh Oh, no, no, no, this is bad, like worse, like the worst alarms. 02:42:38.58 Dave J Yep. 02:43:00.31 Dave J Yeah. 02:43:02.28 Jala & Dave C It was already bad, but this is like, you know, really, really significant. um And then, of course, when choking him out at the end of the game and then at the very, very end of the game, when she's on the shore and she's about to dump him out into the river and all of that. 02:43:19.41 Jala & Dave C And there's one other moment, in which I like oddly, so the physical conduct that that's, that's bad. Um, but in her mindscape, when he's chef mode, he brings her these pancakes and then he's like, I'm going to give you chocolate sauce. 02:43:35.95 Jala & Dave C And he vomits chocolate sauce under her, like just completely covers her. 02:43:40.55 Dave J Yeah. 02:43:41.04 Jala & Dave C And that's like the, if. for him, like, busybird yeah, well, he's like, this is my love. My love is in the things that I give you. 02:43:52.49 Jala & Dave C Like it's not me, it's the stuff that I can provide you with the idea of these things, but it's, it's so twisted and grotesque that you're immediately like, no, this is bad regardless of the situation and regardless of who you are. Like that's for her, that's that suffocating, disgusting, but like perverse, the perversity that he's offering to her. 02:44:16.65 Dave J Yeah. 02:44:17.12 Jala & Dave C Well, it's also mama bird, baby bird situation. He's trying to become a mama bird who takes care of the helpless little baby that can't do anything, you know, infantilizing her. 02:44:26.48 Dave J Yeah. 02:44:28.01 Jala & Dave C And in her head, she infantilized him in that one little part where she's the princess. So. 02:44:35.08 Dave J Yeah, in his setting, setting up a power structure for her. 02:44:39.40 Jala & Dave C Right. 02:44:40.35 Dave J Yeah, or this since this is in her dreamscape, her psyche or subconscious setting up a power structure where she's at the bottom and he's at the top or something like that. 02:44:51.68 Dave J Yeah. i Interesting to think of Decarnation as 02:45:01.08 Dave J Maybe if we're viewing it from this perspective of the objectification of women or something, you could view Decarnation as uncoupling from these outside forces around Gloria. Because when I read the definition of the title, 02:45:16.87 Dave J While I was very early on in the game, the definition would make you think that it is your own desires that you're separating from. But it's never presented that Gloria has these desires of the flesh, really, unless you want to put that on to dancing, because dancing is a, you know, an artistic act that involves your body and things like that. um But a separation from 02:45:45.60 Dave J Yeah, maybe some of these outside influences, outside desires. 02:45:49.92 Jala & Dave C So um and a real world example would be in Muslim culture, ah you know, there's the hijab and and, you know, like the full body clothing, and depending upon the sect, you know, there's a different amount of clothing that is involved there. But that whole point in purpose is to have the Decarnation of the body so that women are not assaulted in public. which is one way of having like this Decarnation on a social level um by like via the vehicle of clothing. So ah here, you know like the Decarnation is happening via the violent 02:46:27.78 Jala & Dave C killing or not near not near not killing but nearly killing Bob and you know moving on from that and then stepping away from everything like all of the notoriety and all of the things that would set Gloria up for having that kind of a situation but like um you know like 02:46:33.58 Dave J Yeah. 02:46:40.55 Dave J Yeah. 02:46:45.86 Jala & Dave C You could also extrapolate it and be like, well, if this story, if this whole game is trying to tell you a narrative about, you know, something like a Me Too or something like that, maybe it is trying to also extend this idea to maybe, you know, um practice a little Decarnation yourself when you're in an attitude with other people in the world, in society. 02:47:04.35 Dave J Yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking that so like the, you know, 02:47:14.64 Dave J from the perspective of a man playing this game, seeing the story play out and seeing obviously a more blown up version of this with Bob. Bob is like the caricatured version of this in this game. 02:47:26.29 Jala & Dave C Mm hmm. 02:47:27.22 Dave J Not to say, I mean, this does happen in real life to real people for sure, but ah the the Decarnation a little bit on the part of the player and the the message here um about the way you view people and maybe the parasocial relationships you develop because It's something I really enjoy these stories that tackle ah issues of parasocial relationships because it's a yeah it's a normal thing that develops until you catch yourself doing it ah in a lot of these situations. um As someone who, you know, listens to a ton of podcasts, watched a lot of YouTube videos, ah listens to a lot of music and stuff like that, 02:48:06.81 Dave J um It's important to kind of catch yourself in that way. So maybe it is a little bit of Decarnation on the part of the player of the game as well. 02:48:16.91 Jala & Dave C Yeah, and I would say the the the major thrust of this and then going off the title is the act of removing those pedestals, the act of taking ah like a de-objectifying people, 02:48:29.75 Dave J Yeah. 02:48:35.28 Jala & Dave C seeing them as people. 02:48:35.70 Dave J yeah 02:48:37.32 Jala & Dave C seeing it yes and in In doing so, building that empathy, building that understanding that their lives are complex. Their lives aren't just this public face. 02:48:51.71 Jala & Dave C ah and coming to terms with that and extending that grace to other people. um At the end of the day, that makes everyone's experience and their hopes and dreams a little bit more attainable because they're not so, but yeah you're you're you're taking the burden and the onus kind of back away from what you're placing on people and then allowing them a little bit more freedom. 02:49:22.76 Dave J Well said. good ah Good stuff. That is Decarnation. 02:49:27.11 Jala & Dave C We talk about on my show, Jalachan's Place, we have um an internet and identity episode. There are some performances and the identity episodes are both really good ones. 02:49:30.11 Dave J Yeah. 02:49:36.67 Jala & Dave C If you want to dig into the way that the internet and today's society and like, you know, the performance of your face, your mask to the world, how all of those things interact. 02:49:48.95 Jala & Dave C ah We go into detail about those things in a couple of episodes of my show. So I just want to throw that out there. If anybody's interested in the topic. 02:49:57.21 Dave J as they should be interested in the topic, because if you've made it to three hours in the Decarnation podcast, you definitely have some interest in the topics we're talking about. 02:50:01.70 Jala & Dave C ah 02:50:06.68 Dave J Or you just love the tone of our voices, which is, yeah I'll accept that as well. ah So Jala, Dave, thank you so much for taking so much time to break this down ah with me. 02:50:17.71 Dave J We're almost at half the game length in the podcast here, ah but great discussion. 02:50:20.02 Jala & Dave C Yay. 02:50:22.60 Dave J I can't thank the both of you enough. 02:50:24.87 Jala & Dave C Thank you for having us, especially when you're tired. Get some sleep. Yeah, thanks thanks for having us aboard. This was a lot of fun to talk about and there's just so much to dig into. And I think that the game not only warrants it, but it deserves that attention. So yeah, everybody, um if you've played it, play it again. and There's more to see. And if you haven't played it, what are you waiting for? I'll go check it out. 02:50:52.49 Dave J Yeah, and there's definitely more conversations to be had about Decarnation too. I mean, we had our conversation and this feels like the type of game that if any of us talk to anybody else about it at this level of detail, you might dig into some different stuff that we talked about here today. it's ah It's a really dense and interwoven product here. 02:51:12.79 Dave J so Yeah, that is it for the episode. Thank you everyone for listening. And as always, check down in the show notes for links to Monster, Dear Monster, Jalachand's Place, and The Level for all of your monsters, real life, health and wellness, ah media, and video game podcasting needs. ah We have you covered with those three shows there. 02:51:37.43 Dave J And thanks again to Jala and Dave for a great conversation. Thanks to everyone who has listened all the way to the end. As always, you're my hero and tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog. 02:51:49.63 Jala & Dave C Did you put them on a pedestal? 02:51:56.80 Dave J You put the listeners on the pedestal for sure. That's fine.