142: Night in the Woods (with Rick Firestone - Pixel Project Radio)

00:00:01.84 Dave Hello, everybody. My name is Dave Jackson, and you're listening to Tales from the Backlog. This is a video game 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. My guest today is a friend of the show, host of Pixel Project Radio Podcast. And if you can't find him, check up on your local telephone wires. Welcome back to the show, Rick Firestone. 00:00:28.98 Rick Hey, hey, Dave. Thanks for having me back. I am really looking forward to talking about this game. Little, a little peek behind the curtain. You had reached out to me a while ago. You were like, Hey, here's a list of games. 00:00:39.49 Dave Yeah. 00:00:39.56 Rick why don't Why don't you choose one? You can come on and on that list for both Lisa, the painful and night in the woods. So like any good friend, I bribed Dave and I said, Oh yeah, I'll be on both of those. And he took the money and here I am. 00:00:49.41 Dave Yeah. Exactly, yeah. um It was a generous ah bribe package from you. It worked wonders. And that Lisa the Painful episode was also really, really good. So if anyone here has not listened to that, I recommend going back and checking that out. Rick's also been on the show many other times. i It's too many to list out at the top of the show anymore. But we did Lisa the Painful most recently. We're here for Night in the Woods. 00:01:16.61 Dave and Yeah, Night in the Woods. It's a side-scrolling narrative adventure game developed by Infinite Fall and published by Finji for contemporary platforms in 2017. Night in the Woods has three primary design credits to Alec Holowka, Scott Benson, and Bethany Hockenberry. 00:01:35.73 Dave If this is your first time listening to the show, first of all, thank you for stopping by. Here's the spoiler policy for today. As always, we're not going to spoil the story in the first main section of the episode. You can check down in the show notes for when spoilers begin, after which we will have all of the spoiler talk after that. and you know, discussion more in depth about what this game's story is all about in our opinions. So if you don't want to be spoiled, you are OK for a while. So what is Night in the Woods? We have our elevator pitches at the top of the show here. I say bounce on telephone wires, do crimes, be a trash mammal and figuratively get punched in the gut repeatedly. Rick, what is your pitch for Night in the Woods? 00:02:25.06 Rick Okay, would you believe me if I told you that I tested this on a real—wait, no. I did that joke on Lisa the Painful. I can't do it again. I won't. I shan't. 00:02:34.40 Dave I was ready to play along this time. 00:02:34.93 Rick My Night in the Woods elevator pitch. 00:02:36.72 Dave Come on. 00:02:40.80 Rick This is a meditation on homecoming, the young adult experience of blossoming independence, and small-town beliefs and ideals. 00:02:50.89 Dave So we got the real elevator pitch from Rick and then the goofy stuff in my pitch. Together we might be able to sell a game. 00:03:01.86 Rick I think together they paint a very accurate picture of what this game actually is. 00:03:06.31 Dave Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Good teamwork, Rick. Uh, I played this on steam deck via itch dot.io. I got this in the racial justice charity bundle on itch a couple of years ago. And, uh, you Mae have to, if you bought that bundle, you own night in the woods. You Mae have also gotten it free on Epic and it's also just available basically everywhere now. It took me around 10 or 12 hours to beat. Uh, Rick, does that sound right to you? I know you've played this multiple times. 00:03:36.11 Rick Yeah, I think 10 to 12 is about right. 00:03:39.16 Dave Fair enough. So we start the show as always with our personal histories with Night in the Woods. And my personal history with this game largely, like we said in Lisa the Painful, ah largely starts with you, Rick. So I will throw to you first, act like I don't do this on every episode, but ah the guest goes first, tell me about your personal history with Night in the Woods. 00:04:03.05 Rick Yeah, sure. So we covered this on Pixel Project Radio back in 2022, I believe, back in September of 2022. It's like episode 40 or something. And this was a pick of my co-host at the time, Ben. 00:04:19.19 Rick and it was one that it was a game that I had known about for a long time but it fell into that category that we all have that category that's well you know I'm sure I will like this and I want to play it but you know Maybe not right at this minute we'll we'll wait a little bit And so I played it and was just blown away by how much I enjoyed it. It really, really resonated with me very strongly back then. And I've since replayed it. I replayed it for this show, obviously. ah And I re listened to my episode on it, which is something I don't I tend not to do all the time, but ah it still holds the same 00:04:59.49 Rick weight that it did for me back then. The game does. I still really, really enjoy this game. I played this back then on Steam, and Steam Deck. I played it this time on Steam on my Legion Go. 00:05:11.18 Rick It works great. I do have it for Switch and PlayStation, but I haven't played on those platforms yet. I can't imagine it runs any worse. I'm sure it's great. 00:05:20.63 Dave Right. Yeah, um so like I said, it was basically your episode on Pixel Project Radio that made me interested in playing this because like I said, it was released in 2017 and I had probably never heard of this until maybe 2020 or something like that. um Just kind of like a title that comes up every now and then listening to other shows and stuff like that. And your episode on ah PPR was the first time that I ever heard like, 00:05:51.88 Dave What is this game actually? What is it about? Things like that. And so ah after everyone's done listening to this episode, go listen to Rick's episode because Rick and Ben will surely have a different conversation than the two of us are going to have here today to some degree. um But like I said, I got it in one of those charity bundles and it was just kind of sitting in the backlog waiting for me to have a good reason to play it. 00:06:16.64 Dave So I actually put it on my backlog resolutions list for 2024, trying to make sure that I actually get to some of those games that I like that I'm interested in, but, you know, maybe, Maybe later and then Maybe later turns into years and years. 00:06:33.43 Dave So um to get into our quick top-down thoughts at the top here, I also really, really enjoyed this. And you know one of the things that struck me was I remember talking to you after your episode came out about how this game setting is very ah familiar to you. um It is a part of the country that is like, it's almost like telling the story of where you're from. And I had wondered, like It's not where I'm from. So am I going to have that same experience? And it turns out that familiarity does not exclude you from connecting with things like the personal things that are going on or the socioeconomic themes that the game is talking about. So I really, really like this game. And I think I've seen lots of other takes about this game out there. And I think that this game is doing some things in a more subtle way than 00:07:31.40 Dave a lot of people are looking for or expecting to say. So I really dug that. I love the way that they explored the character of Mae, the protagonist. I love the way that what's going on in town is represented through what happens in the story. um I love Mae's relationship with her friends and it's a different story than I had expected. It's different from a lot of video game stories. And I also really, really enjoyed what this game was doing. So ah this is, you know, going to be one of my favorite games that I played in 2024. And we're gonna have a lot to talk about. So I'm going to shut up now. But ah top level thoughts from you, you pick this from my list, you obviously ah enjoy this. 00:08:14.34 Rick I do, and I'm largely just going to sort of respond to what you were just saying here. ah like you i've also seen to Like you, I've also seen a lot of conversations recently about Night in the Woods, um ah largely just due to coincidence, I think. But it's also caused me to seek out other videos and general responses and reads of this game and i I am largely unsatisfied when I see a lot of what folks are talking about whenever they're diving into this game and I think you and I can parse out to a to a bit of a greater degree if if I may say so some of the more subtle and interesting questions this game is posting because it is not um it's not as simple as just saying this game is about capitalism and it's cozy it's 00:08:59.97 Rick That it's technically correct, but that means such a reductive picture of it. I think there's a lot here. um you are You are right. ah This is based on southwestern Pennsylvania. ah Scott and Bethany are from, oh, I want to say central and southwestern Pennsylvania respectively, but that might be backwards. 00:09:19.59 Rick And, uh, when Scott and Alec were getting ready to create this game, Scott took Alec around Southwestern PA, around, uh, I think like Johnstown and Cambria County, just to explore and get inspiration for the settings. Uh, and I lived there for a time. I was a student in Cambria County and I still live in the suburbs of Southwestern Pennsylvania. So, uh, you know, I'm going to help yins get down. 00:09:46.27 Rick Into the tan of possum springs be careful. The rows are a little bit slippy. We'll get on the food donkey Uh, maybe cheer on those smelters go smelters and uh, we're just gonna go down and have a good time. I won't do that anymore throughout the episode. 00:09:51.84 Dave but so 00:09:57.06 Dave All right. Well, um I was just going to say you had better keep that accent up. 00:10:01.04 Rick I promise I can't I don't think I can 00:10:03.70 Dave ah 00:10:07.02 Dave All right, well, ah for now, we're going to put a pin in talking about it. We'll listen to a bit of music. We'll come back and talk about the story in Night in the Woods. 00:10:17.96 Dave Night in the Woods, story writing credits go to Scott Benson and Bethany Hockenberry. The game is set in the fictional town of Possum Springs, ah modeled after a Rust Belt town. Although some clues in game, like Rick mentioned, the local football team, the Smelters, ah you can safely assume that, you know, directly Pennsylvania here, ah around the Pittsburgh area. 00:10:41.66 Dave So in Night in the Woods, you play as Mae Borowski, who is a young feline woman. All the characters in this game are anthropomorphic animals. ah just It is just the style that um the artist decided that they did the best. There is no deeper meaning to the fact that Mae is a cat. That is from Scott Benson himself. 00:11:01.26 Dave um Mae has just returned home after a few years away at college. It's hinted that things did not really go well there and part of the story is Mae reintegrating into her hometown and then you're going to find out through the story what happened to cause her to go back home. ah But no more spoilers here, we'll talk about that later. 00:11:24.08 Dave I wanted to start this out just by talking about Mae, because one of the big things I hear people talk about for good reason is Mae, the protagonist and her as a character. um I think she is really, really interesting. 00:11:39.28 Dave um likable, but a super flawed character. And I think that this starts up a bunch of conversations because one of the things I see out there, which I kind of agree with, is that Mae's not a really good person. She's not a great friend. ah She's selfish. She doesn't seem to listen to people very well. And I think that clashes with an innate want that we have to like and relate to our protagonists. And this is a really interesting setup for, um you know, the vehicle you're going to experience this story through. 00:12:20.60 Rick Yeah, you know, that's something that a lot of people will clue into, the flawed nature of Mae. I'm not so quick to attach this notion or characterization to her that she is a bad person, because that's that's one of the things that this game I think indirectly asks, or at least asks you to consider, is what do we mean whenever we call or characterize someone as being a good or bad person? 00:12:39.31 Dave Mm hmm. 00:12:45.55 Rick i I think this game and you know this is a video game too right this isn't quite like real life where we can ah we are expected to simply take what is presented to us and that is the whole entirety of the thing because it's it's a piece of media but i don't I don't necessarily view Mae as a bad person. I think she can act like a bad person, but I don't know that that characterizes her as an entire human being in her own right. Cat being in her own right. I think there is an interesting nature versus nurture 00:13:17.80 Rick angle to this as well, where Mae's upbringing and her circumstances sort of foster this naivety that she has and influences the way that she acts and the way that she speaks to some of her other friends, which I'm sure we'll get into as time goes on. um I'm not I'm not disagreeing with you right out of the gate, by the way, I'm just I think I'm more hesitant these days to just say somebody is a bad person, if that makes sense. 00:13:46.89 Dave Yeah, yeah, for sure. um I think maybe that was just too much of the shorthand on my part because I agree she's not like, you know, the worst person like she is legitimately kind and helpful and things like that to people all the time. ah She's just not consistently like that. 00:14:04.52 Dave I think she consistently pushes her beliefs on people. She doesn't listen to what people are saying. She has a very rude streak towards anyone who she thinks is an authority. 00:14:17.65 Dave ah So she's complicated for sure. 00:14:19.21 Rick Mm hmm. 00:14:22.25 Rick And you know, so too were we all whenever we were in this stage of life. She's in that weird transitional period between being a child like in high school and being a full fledged adult in the world. 00:14:30.89 Dave Yeah. 00:14:33.19 Rick And that's a lot of what this game's thematic motif centers around is this idea of what does it mean to blossom into an individual and grow up, right? Especially whenever you're doing it at a different rate from your peers and in the same town that you were a child in. 00:14:50.30 Dave Yeah. Yeah, it's where the eventual like point that I was leading to is that I think the writing and characterization of Mae is really fascinating and ultimately really, really good and realistic. Because like you said, if you can kind of put yourself in your own shoes back when you were 20 years old, 00:15:13.62 Dave yeah maybe you weren't you know a petty criminal like Mae is, but maybe ah you were not always the best friend. Maybe you were selfish. Maybe you went to college and picked up some, you know, college kid progressive views that you then pushed on everyone who would listen to you or something like that. um that's like So we set up Mae as like this very complicated character and that writing that makes her that way is really, really good. And then as you said, this is a bit of a coming of age story with Mae, but it's different from like the Lion King or something like that. like 00:15:55.16 Dave It's much more nuanced than a lot of coming-of-age stories would be. I don't want to say too much here, but you're not saving the world in this game. Mae is not a hero, and it's much more, yeah, subtle than that. I'm running out of adjectives. 00:16:15.95 Rick It's okay. No, it is subtle. You are exactly right. one one of the reasons that i think this game is ah let me let me rephrase that you could cut that out um please do um one of One of the reasons that I think this game succeeds in how it is being subtle and making this ah coming-of-age story so meaningful is that it it nails the young adult voice in a way that I don't often see. You know, this game, um it's funny, we we... I saw a comparison to Life is Strange recently with this game, and I had some of those comparisons when I first played this as well. um And I won't go into what was being said before, but when I think of Life is Strange and this game side by side, I always think about how they handle, respectively, the young adult voice. And I think Night in the Woods 00:17:08.34 Rick does it much better than life is strange. It's less of a caricature and it feels less performative. And what I mean by performative is exactly that a performance. um You and I grew up roughly around the same time. I'm a little younger than you. But we were in middle school and high school in the early 2000s. And, you know, life is strange. We talked and dressed like that. You know, I know I'm going to be self-conscious about the Pittsburgh thing. We talked and dressed like that. um But um it It felt very much like adults writing that kind of language. It very much felt like ah almost a parody. Whereas this feels significantly closer to what is reality. um maybe not one-to-one, but I mean, I see a lot of myself in these characters, and I see a lot of my friends from that time period in these characters, and the way that they speak is a large part of that. 00:18:04.82 Dave Yeah, just the general writing and dialogue here is consistently really good. And it's a good thing because this game has light gameplay. You know you. You run around town, you have some little light platforming to do, but this game is largely reading conversations ah with some little shake-ups in gameplay every now and then. 00:18:25.85 Dave but I never got bored of you know talking to people. like the The main thing that you do in this game, because Mae is coming back home and reconnecting with people, the main thing you do each day is Mae wakes up, you go outside, maybe you talk to your mom in the kitchen, but then after that you go outside and you make your way through the town and just talk to people that are around town. And I legitimately looked forward to talking to everybody each day and seeing what's going on. not And not just with Mae's main friends who we'll talk about here in a second, but with you know the random people just like sitting on a porch on the the side of the street or going up and talking to the pastor or the you know the homeless guy sleeping behind the church. like I wanted to talk to everybody because the way they're characterized and the way the dialogue is written is really, really good. And it does feel real. 00:19:17.92 Dave um Some things are very, very close to home and like you so I'll use a word you said, not caricaturish, like some of the characters, the way that they act and the things that they do might be considered a little characteristic and a little over the top. like you know Gregg steals an animatronic Chuck E. Cheese robot from ah you know from a store as a gift. Things like that are a little less than realistic, but the writing, the way people talk to each other is real. 00:19:51.33 Rick Yeah, well said. It really is. um Yeah, I think there's gonna be a lot to talk about. 00:19:57.54 Dave For sure, yeah. So Mae connects with her main friends from high school. The main three that you hang out with the most are Gregg, who is a canine guy, Bee, who is a, I thought Bea was a dinosaur. It turns out maybe an alligator, crocodile, ah some kind of lizard. um And then Gregg's boyfriend named Angus, who is a bear. And each day you go out, you talk to people, eventually you will end up going out seeing what Gregg you and Bea and Angus are up to and then you can choose whether you want to hang out with Gregg or hang out with Bea most days. There are other little like hangouts that can pop up if you talk to the the right people enough times um and then 00:20:44.12 Dave Eventually you get one shot to hang out with Angus during a particular thing. We'll talk about that later, but you get to choose whether you're going to hang out with Gregg and Bee. These two characters are both really, really awesome. And like, I love Angus too, of course, but these are the two you hang out with the most. 00:20:59.33 Dave B in Gregg. And I chose to hang out with Bea most of the time, ah not because I didn't like Gregg, but just because I hung out with Bea once and that hangout was so interesting and the dynamic between the two of them was so good that I just wanted more of that. um But this is this main friend group I think is really fantastic too. 00:21:22.58 Rick And it's very well realized as well, because you had mentioned there's one Hangout with Angus. How often have we been in friend groups where there is that one friend that we're comfortable with in a group setting, but you just, one-on-one just doesn't work, you know? 00:21:37.10 Dave Yeah. 00:21:37.77 Rick It's sort of like that. um And that just felt very well realized to me. This playthrough I did all was. um just because my first play through I did all Gregg. 00:21:49.43 Rick In their stories there's not really routes in this game. You know, you're not going to get the Bea route or the Gregg route. 00:21:53.45 Dave Yeah. 00:21:56.69 Rick Not really. um I think their hangouts are very beautiful for very different reasons. 00:22:03.36 Dave Yeah, from what I've heard about you know what happens when you hang out with Gregg, there's more than meets the eye. You know the first time I hung out with Gregg, we just did some crime together. But as that as those hangouts go, from what I've heard, there is more there for sure. ah Bees were super interesting. I can't wait to talk about them in the spoiler section. But these hangouts set up maybe my favorite theme that this game explores which is ah what it's like to you know be part of the friend group leave and then come back years later and you are a different person everyone else is a different person but you expect things to be the way they were when you left. 00:22:48.15 Dave And there's an adjustment that Mae has to go through when she goes back to town and she doesn't have a job, but everyone else can't hang out because they're working unless Gregg just wants to leave work whenever he feels like it or something. ah But this is ah really interesting to see the adjustment, how Mae is ready to jump back into the way things used to be, but that's just not how things work anymore. 00:23:15.34 Rick Yeah, and that it's something that many of us have been through as well. You know, especially Dave, I know you had you had gone to college, I had gone to college, and every time, you know, we come back from college or grad school or whatever to our hometown, the way that I've described it before is that colors seem a little more muted than they did previously, especially if it's a small town like this. 00:23:19.04 Dave Yeah. 00:23:37.56 Rick You know, um you had mentioned at the very top that uh not being from southwestern pa is not going to dampen your experience with this game and i agree i mean there's certainly more small towns than just southwestern pennsylvania um the nice thing about being from here is you see little nods in the game like arnold applebaum and you think oh that's literally just andrew carnegie or you see Mae's very inclined street and you're like oh yeah that's that's squirrel hill i know that i know that place i've i've walked there 00:23:50.96 Dave Yeah. 00:23:55.13 Dave Hmm. 00:24:07.33 Rick Um, but yeah, this, this idea of coming back to your small town where, um, it almost feels like, uh, time has halted in a way time's forever frozen in this sort of area. Uh, whether that's positive or not, that's up to the viewer. And I think we'll get more into that as the plot goes along. But, uh, yeah. Ooh, so much good stuff to talk about after the spoiler roll. 00:24:30.82 Dave Yeah, for sure. It's one of those episodes. Yeah, I liked playing this and thinking about my own experience. And I didn't really have this experience when I went to college because all of my main friend group also went to college. So we all left and then came back for the same holidays and things like that. But it was this way when I moved overseas. 00:24:52.95 Dave and suddenly like I went back to my hometown twice in seven years and then I moved back to my hometown while we were getting situated when we moved back to the US and that was like stepping out of the time machine in the way that this game deals with too like some things have changed, some things haven't, but it's definitely not the same as you remember it. And I like the kind of ah metaphor that you used where you say that the colors have dulled a little bit. And I think that that gets stranger and stranger as you get older. And, you know, depending on how often you go back, if you ever do, um it might continue to evolve that way. 00:25:34.84 Dave But this was really cool. Like this game ah will we'll bring up a couple of other themes here in a second. But this is one of my favorite things because like and no one explores this in video games. I've never seen this in another game. And that's like what this game is largely about. 00:25:52.52 Rick Yeah, there's so many different ways to do that idea of homecoming, and this one is so great. 00:26:00.69 Dave One of the other things that you mentioned is the focus on these like small industry towns, like we had said, you know Rust Belt inspired. What happens in these industry towns when the industry goes away or when it's you know fading and things like that? And Possum Springs is struggling. ah They had prosperous mines there at one point, then there was a factory, everything is closed now, and people have had to take on you know whatever jobs are available, but they're not 00:26:37.40 Dave They're either not as well paying or the cost of living has gotten higher or probably both. So people are struggling with this. And again, it's one of those things where it's more subtle, I think, than you might expect when you hear us say that that's something the game tackles. It's not like you're walking around town and people are moaning in the streets or something like that. It's like little conversations when people let the veil down and they let you know what they're really thinking inside. ah Bee's conversations are a great window into this as are um talking to Mae's dad if you get the chance. and um There's a character named Selmers who 00:27:19.72 Dave If you choose to go to a certain optional thing, you'll get very loud, ah here's how I feel about this poem, which I think is really, really great. um The poem reads, and I'll have an excerpt from it here. ah The poem, part of it says, baby face boy billionaire, phone app sold, made more money in one day than my family over 100 generations. 00:27:47.55 Dave more than my whole world ever has. World where house buying jobs become rent paying jobs becomes living with family jobs, which is, you know, you want to nail down what this game is showcasing with a short little excerpt. That poem is fantastic. 00:28:05.14 Rick And that poem, we should say, comes after you are conditioned to Selmer's poems being very amateurish, such as, uh, when I feel a blueness, all I need is a eunice. 00:28:16.18 Dave Yeah. 00:28:17.29 Rick And even in the game, Mae is like, holy crap, what is that? 00:28:21.90 Dave Yeah. 00:28:22.16 Rick It's very cool. This is a, you know, we we keep calling this subtle and it's true it is but um one of the reasons that I think that is now that we're talking about the town setting is I mean, Scott and Bethany and or Bethany lived in this town, essentially they lived in Possum Springs, you know, I lived in Possum Springs, it's You know, this it's a it's a direct um reference to Pittsburgh's mining ah coal mining and steel mill industries. And yeah, once those jobs dried up, what happens? I mean, you still see abandoned steel mills and coal mining sites around here all the time. um And the small towns now, like you said, what do you do? you Those folks now work at the chain stores, the dollar generals, the family dollars, the Walmarts. and 00:29:08.19 Rick The impact that generational poverty, which is another big theme in this game, has on towns and the people within it is on full display here. It's great. 00:29:19.19 Dave And then that leads into another thing that this game comments on where there are some real world political um commentaries going on in here. um Those are things that again are not super obvious as you go. They're kind of something where you have to connect the dots a little bit ah to, you know, yeah I think you can easily map on some of the belief systems of people in the town onto real world things, especially things that were happening while this game was being developed. We said this game came out in 2017, with big changes in US politics in 2016. So this, I think like, again, without 00:30:01.43 Dave yelling it from the rooftops. I do think this game has something to say about politics, but not necessarily like this is right or wrong. In my opinion, it's more like, how did some of these people end up here? Like the right or wrong judgment is, is on us to decide whether we agree with, you know, political stances or whatever. But I think that this game does take some time to explain how some people got to some of these belief systems. And it's not like, 00:30:32.01 Dave It's not like they just say, Oh, this is a Republican town. We're all Republicans. This is, you know, this is why we feel this way. It's given through a different lens and it's more interesting for that. 00:30:45.32 Rick Yeah, yeah, if I think about politics, I think I'll save what I want to say until we get there after the spoiler wall. 00:30:52.27 Dave Sure. 00:30:52.49 Rick This is a game that was made during its time, 2017, and obviously it was in development before that too. um And I think knowing that is important whenever we get eventually to what this game is saying about that particular, how to say it, group of people, that particular ideological belief i think that's important to keep in mind. 00:31:14.43 Dave Yeah. Yeah, so we have a lot of stuff to save for the spoiler section. um But there's gonna be a lot of great stuff to talk about there. I guess the last thing I'll bring up is um I kind of found the pacing of this game to be odd. I thought this game ended way sooner than I thought it was going to. And the last Let's say, so if I played for 12 hours, I would say that the last two hours contain a lot and then it finishes really, really quickly. And it's not that I'm dissatisfied with the ending and like what happens. I think there was a lot that happened in a very short amount of time and then the game was over and I wouldn't have minded a couple more hours. 00:31:59.41 Rick Oh, i um I saw whenever I was preparing for this, as a studious guest does, whenever I was preparing for this, I saw a note that you made about the ending, and I really disagree with it, and I'm really excited to ah have a ah friendly sparring match about that whenever we get there. 00:32:16.27 Rick I'm a well-known lover of the ending of Disco Elysium and the Sopranos, so and and this, I think, has a lot in common with those. 00:32:16.27 Dave Okay. 00:32:24.00 Rick It doesn't fade to black immediately, don't worry, but... 00:32:26.52 Dave Right. 00:32:27.35 Rick Um, yeah, yeah, I hate to keep saying like i'll save it until after the spoiler wall, but There's just so much context there that we we can't spoil right now 00:32:36.46 Dave Right. Okay. Well, I don't know what it is that we're going to be sparring about. So we will say for one final time, uh, we'll stop talking about the story. 00:32:40.78 Rick yeah 00:32:44.57 Dave Now we'll listen to a bit more music. And when we come back, we'll talk about the presentation in night in the woods. 00:32:53.69 Dave All right, let's start by talking about what this game looks like. The art is credited to Scott Benson. Again, um in a talk at GDC, Scott Benson mentioned that the animal designs of the people are mainly just because he felt that was what he drew the best. So he went with that. Again, no special meaning to the fact that they're animals. This game has a really unique visual style um of, 00:33:20.85 Dave characters and environments and things kind of made out of simple shapes, we'll say, um almost like a very fancy version of construction paper or South Park for another media comparison with um the way that character designs are, the way that, you know, environments look and things like that. But a much more autumn tone to it, which is why this game is coming out in November on the podcast here. 00:33:47.37 Dave A little theming on the podcast for once. It's not just October, we got Fall Games too. 00:33:54.64 Rick Yeah. We got both kinds of games October and fall. 00:33:56.68 Dave That's right. 00:33:58.74 Rick Uh, I like simple shapes. That was an intentionally chosen phrase. And I like that. I just wanted to put that out there. Uh, you know, it's funny but Scott sometimes, or at least he used to would just post doodles of like these cat characters and people would always be like, Oh, that's Mae, that's one of maze family members. 00:34:15.94 Rick And at one point he responded, he's like, no, this is just how I draw cats. 00:34:19.51 Dave Yeah. 00:34:19.64 Rick Like it's not that deep bro. And, uh, that's, that's great. That's so good. 00:34:24.41 Dave Yeah, and they're um the-up game that was announced, Revenant Hill, which was you know not a sequel tonight in the woods, to my knowledge, but still showcased that same art style. yeah Real shame that that game got um canceled. And you know hopefully everything is going okay with everybody's health is the reason the game was announced to be canceled, but this is just the art style of the artist. So this is what we got. I think it looks cool. um I really liked just the simplicity of it, but the amount of detail and character to Possum Springs, despite, you know, we'll say like a lack of really close detail, I suppose. 00:35:08.86 Rick Yeah, I really love the way the art looks. I do. I love when Mae's eyes get real, uh, large, her pupils dilate. Uh, I think that's, I think it's so funny. 00:35:17.75 Dave yeah 00:35:19.23 Rick I love the way that her little mouth, she has just a little cat mouth. I love how it flips from a little frown to a little smile depending on her mood. 00:35:26.94 Rick It looks really great. I could see myself getting a tattoo of something from this game. I still don't have a tattoo, but you know, this game's a contender. I could see it. 00:35:37.42 Dave Yeah, and ah it is super recognizable. you know Someone who would see that would be like, oh yeah, Night in the Woods. 00:35:42.01 Rick Mm hmm. 00:35:43.70 Dave Or they would be like, oh yeah, Scott Benson's doodles from Twitter, not Night in the Woods. 00:35:47.53 Rick Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:35:49.30 Dave um Character designs are great, so I'm glad you brought that up. Everyone in town that you're going to go out and you know talk to, the characters that are, let's say, like the secondary characters that you'll go out and talk to. Everyone has a really recognizable design to them. I never found myself really getting people mixed up, whether it's the clothes they wear or the animals that they're modeled after. Those are good. ah But those little touches stick with you too. like I love the fact that Bea has a little cigarette that's not attached to her mouth. It's just kind of floating out there. 00:36:23.75 Dave I love that. ah Gregg yeah has this really mischievous face most of the time. He's always excited, ready to go cause some mayhem out in town. And of course the excited wiggling arms animation that the characters do, which I think is very charming and cute. 00:36:42.15 Rick I like that Gregg always wears a little greaser jacket. Like he just reminds me of a 50s greaser, you know, like a little tough punk kid. 00:36:45.06 Dave Yeah. 00:36:49.09 Dave Yep. This is going to go out and smash some light bulbs. Have a good time after work. 00:36:54.54 Rick Yeah, I mean, as we all as we all have. 00:36:57.09 Dave Yeah. 00:36:57.47 Rick And then to contrast that his boyfriend is ah Angus is just a real buttoned up sweater vest kind of guy or sweater, sweater, sweater vest, little dapper hat. 00:37:03.52 Dave Yep. 00:37:07.05 Dave Yeah, all the character designs are cute. And again, they help you remember the people and not just the main, you know, three or four characters. The music in Night in the Woods is credited to Alec Holowka, Scott Benson, Charles Hootner, and Sven Röthner. Apologies for names. But um music in this game is, there's two types of things to talk about here. There's like the in-game music, 00:37:35.22 Dave as you're walking around town or during scenes and conversations and things, there's also the like rock music because Mae and her friends are in a band and that's what they do on a lot of the days when you go out and hang out, once everyone's finished with work or when they decide that they're just going to leave work, ah you go out and have band practice. So let's start with those band songs. How did you feel about those? 00:38:01.73 Rick I mean , I like them a lot. I think that they lead off with their best one, which is titled Die Anywhere Else. 00:38:08.22 Dave Yeah. 00:38:08.47 Rick I like that one significantly more than the rest. um But no, they're cool. I mean they're fun. They're a nice contrast to the overworld and walking around exploring music. 00:38:21.03 Rick The minigame itself Is fine. There's one song that I think is just entirely too hard and I don't know why they made it that hard. But I think that's the pumpkin head guy. But no, I mean, it's so fast and it's so hard. ah But otherwise, yeah, I thought this was cute. I really liked it. 00:38:45.06 Dave Yeah. It's like a guitar hero-ish mini game that you play during band practice. Mae is the bass player in the band and she makes a mention that she hasn't played bass in a while and she doesn't know a lot of the songs that they're playing. 00:38:59.30 Dave So that kind of excuse, I think if the game is, is purposely too hard on a certain song, like she'll, she'll just straight up say like, guys, I don't know this song. 00:39:10.11 Rick Yeah, I literally do not know this. 00:39:10.32 Dave I can't play this song. They're like, it's whatever. Just, just do your best. Yeah. um The minigame itself is fine. It's a little clunky, but I just love rhythm minigames for the most part. like It takes like a really bad one for me to not just love it out of sheer nostalgia for Guitar Hero, I guess. ah But I like the songs in here too. like I think Die Anywhere Else is probably my favorite one. And that um parts of that melody get reused in some of the other songs throughout the game, which I think is really nice too, like a really prominent kind of um part of the song. I don't have the vocabulary. You do though. ah the do do do You hear that in like the song in Mae's House, I think. 00:39:59.44 Dave Um, you know, so it's kind of cool the way they connect those, those two things. 00:40:00.03 Rick Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:40:04.85 Dave And, you know, that's the song in Mae's house. And it has a part sharing with a song called die anywhere else. So maybe that helps to, uh, show how people May feel about possum Springs a little bit. 00:40:19.13 Rick Yeah, certainly so. I imagine all of them, I mean, even Angus probably feels that way. 00:40:25.20 Dave Yeah. 00:40:25.37 Rick I'm Certainly Bea and Gregg do as well. and There are, if you search these on YouTube, you can find real covers of people doing this. 00:40:32.04 Dave Mmhmm. 00:40:32.62 Rick And um have you listened to these at all? 00:40:35.26 Dave I have not, no. 00:40:38.11 Rick I really don't like them. I don't know There's something about it, so when you do this band practice, Angus is the singer, and ah it's the voice that is represented by MIDI, right? 00:40:49.78 Rick It's like a sound patch. 00:40:49.94 Dave Yeah. 00:40:52.21 Rick ah kind of It sounds kind of like a synth, like a soft synth. And I don't and there's lyrics like you can read the lyrics as you're playing this. It's kind of difficult to do depending on the song, but you can. It is something about putting it to a real voice. It just feels wrong to me. ah Secondhand embarrassment. 00:41:12.24 Rick kind of like that kind of feeling and it's it's not i mean sometimes it's because of the performer but it's not always because of the performer it's just like i don't i don't know this this is a tangent and has nothing to do with the game itself but i was just curious to know if uh whether or not you check these out 00:41:27.59 Dave No, I didn't. And I'm usually like, I love video game music, rock and metal guitar covers on YouTube, but I didn't think to look for these ones. I did listen to these songs and kind of think like, the way that the melodies are like the vocal melodies, they would kind of lend themselves sometimes to people um singing them, but it's kind of hard for me to imagine words coming with those, ah the way some of the rhythms are and things like that. So I can see how they might sound a bit weird when you go listen to them. What did you think of the um you know walking around town music, which is much more chill for the most part? 00:42:10.17 Rick Oh, I like it a lot. It reminds me of a mixture of the hazy vibes you get from Twin Peaks mixed with the aesthetic of a rainy Sunday afternoon. 00:42:22.74 Dave Mm hmm. 00:42:23.20 Rick That's kind of what this soundtrack is to me. um And Twin Peaks will make an appearance later on, too, to put a pin in that. 00:42:29.42 Dave Okay. 00:42:31.33 Rick But ah it's it's a lot of you know light, light percussion, maybe like some hand drumming, and very soft electric keyboard patches, ah maybe a little bit of hi-hat here and there. 00:42:43.51 Rick It's very pleasant. um it matches the aesthetic of the game, especially the day that it gets overcast. 00:42:44.95 Dave Yeah. 00:42:51.13 Rick I think there's like one day where it's like gray. ah It matches that perfectly. 00:42:57.73 Dave Yeah, I think the song on the soundtrack that is actually titled Possum Springs has this pretty optimistic melody to it as you're rolling around town. Once you get to the next screen away from Mae's house, it starts up and that song is also memorable because ah John from Gaming in the Wild uses that in his podcasts. so When that song started playing, I was like, oh shit, give me the wild time. So shout out to John. it's ah It's a good show he runs. ah But it does match the mood of it. um you know Whether Mae is walking out of the house, hungover after going to a party the night before, or whether some crazy shit has gone down in the story and you're still going out and doing your little um you know visits around town. 00:43:43.88 Dave that background music is just there to kind of give you a mood, I think, but it is really pretty. I like it a lot. 00:44:14.91 Dave There is one other thing about the ah the music that I thought was really cool and just to give a quick shout out to, at certain points in the story, Mae has dreams and they are like playable dream sequences that you go through where you're going around and you need to find these four musicians one by one to kind of build out a song. 00:44:38.19 Dave and I thought this was really cool. I like the songs and I like the way that the things layer on top of each other as you find the musicians. I didn't love doing these sections as a, you know, a thing that I'm doing in the game. But like, I thought the music was good enough. And um I was like, you know, like legitimately, I was like, Oh, cool. I found a tuba player, like there's gonna be a tuba going into this song now. Cool to see that. So just a shout out as like one kind of cool musical choice that they did in here. 00:45:11.19 Rick yeah and it's interesting and Yeah, and it's interesting instrumentation as well. I think it's a tuba, baritone, saxophone, accordion, and violin. 00:45:20.85 Dave Mm hmm. 00:45:21.16 Rick And I think there's percussion in there as well, but you don't have to find them. ah it's really neat. i Yeah, the dreams dream sequences aside, the music is very, very cool. 00:45:33.26 Rick And I do like that you get to build it out. that's ah it's It's a nice touch. 00:45:38.58 Dave Yeah, so as far as presentation goes, I think that this game has a pretty unique approach to art and music, definitely you know with those rock songs and stuff. But you know the art style is very unique to this game. I think I haven't seen a whole lot else like it. And presentation-wise, I think that this game is just really pleasant overall. 00:46:06.82 Rick Yeah, agreed wholeheartedly. 00:46:10.20 Dave All right, let's take our ah final non-spoiler music break. When we come back, we will talk about our final thoughts about Night in the Woods, our recommendations, and a little bit of housekeeping before we can finally let loose and get into spoiler time. 00:46:28.29 Dave All right, so in the last section here, as we always do, we give kind of wrap up thoughts if we have anything that we haven't already said, but also answer the question, who would you recommend to play Night in the Woods? 00:46:44.47 Rick I mean, I would generally feel comfortable recommending this to most people. There are those that do not like to read a lot in their games and they need to, you know, have very gameplay- forward video games, let's say. I think those folks that fall into that camp might not like this as much, um but I would still recommend it to most people. um Whether they're in it because they like, you know, quote, unquote, cozy aesthetic, whatever Whatever that means anymore, or whether they, you know, like the thematic ideas that this deals with the generational poverty homecoming, um what it means to find family, things like that. I would feel comfortable recommending this to most people. maybe I guess I suppose with that caveat, there's a lot of reading. 00:47:33.72 Dave Yeah, you know, I think most people who are going to listen to this podcast and come back and listen to many episodes in a row or find this, you know, night in the woods as your first episode of this show, you're probably down for some reading. So with that obvious caveat that you're, you know, this is not an action game. There's, you know, there's one. 00:47:53.99 Dave knife fighting minigame that you might end up doing but as other than that like there's not a whole lot else as far as that goes I would recommend it like you said to basically everybody who thinks that what this game is doing sounds interesting you know if you've listened up to this point you've heard us talk about the thematic material that the game is tackling and showcasing and I think that's really where the bread and butter is and it's done really really well in my opinion so you know, almost no hesitation recommended to anyone who thinks they might like it or might want to check it out and you might already own it. 00:48:31.78 Rick It's true. It's ah it's free on PS Plus, PlayStation Plus right now. I don't remember what tier that's supposed to be, but you can do it there. 00:48:36.88 Dave Yeah. 00:48:39.91 Rick And even still, the game at full price is like, what, 20 bucks? So it's not not too bad. 20 bones. That's, you know, it's affordable. uh this game feels very slice of life in some sections to me like it's not the the point of it is not to drive the plot forward the point is to exist in this world that they have created and that is its own reward uh i think they do it really well some people might not agree if you really you know if you're the kind that loves to move the plot forward and there's always something going on maybe not but 00:48:51.25 Dave yeah 00:48:58.61 Dave yeah 00:49:11.12 Rick Yeah, ah terrific, terrific recommendation 10 out of 10. And if you listen to like, like you said, Dave, if you're listening to this show, and you're listening to every single episode in the catalog, downloading it, listening twice to boost the number subscribing to Dave's Patreon and jumping into the discord, like all of you do, then you know, this you'll like this game. 00:49:29.96 Dave Yeah, um absolutely, like everyone does. um The slice of life angle is really interesting too, because what that does is it allows you to, like you said, exist in this world, get to know the people that inhabit this world, deepen the, maybe not deepen, but learn more about the relationships between the characters so that when the plot actually does kick off, and it does, there are things that happen for sure. When that does kick off, you have established relationships with characters and other people around town, like your main friend group and the other people around town, and so that you have, you know, stakes to what's actually going on, ah which 00:50:15.79 Dave you know I'm up for that slice of life stuff, because they do it really well. And then when the plot kicks off, I think that that's really interesting also. So we will, again, save that stuff for very soon. Spoilers are coming soon. But before spoiler time, we have a little bit of housekeeping to do. So we always start with the guests to talk about the things that they make. And like I said at the top, Rick is the host of Pixel Project Radio. 00:50:43.63 Dave ah One of the most frequent guests on this podcast and I've also been on pixel project radio several times So ah Rick if you can please tell the people what is pixel project radio and where can people find you? 00:50:53.26 Rick and 00:50:57.71 Rick Of course, yeah. If you're a fan of Tales from the Backlog, I think you will be a fan of Pixel Project Radio as well. You can find it really wherever you get your podcasts. And it's dedicated to doing a critical analysis of different games. 00:51:12.38 Rick as At the time of this recording, we just finished up two ah well a month of two games. We did... two episodes on 1000 Times Resist on which Dave was a guest along with Matt Stormageddon and we just finished and published today the final episode for an analysis on Pentiment. 00:51:26.60 Dave Mmhmm. 00:51:32.54 Rick ah The show recently just came back from a hiatus and I'm sort of restructuring things on how I want them to be moving forward and we're doing a great job at this point. I think it's in a good spot. But if you are interested in analysis of games from a story perspective, from a mechanics perspective, music music perspective, ah feel free to check it out. 00:51:54.75 Rick ah We have a Night in the Woods episode, which you can check out after you're finished listening to this one. I just re-listened to it. It holds up perfectly well. Dave, as Dave said, has been on many, many times doing ah talking about games such as 1000 Times Resist, Nier Replicant, Chrono Trigger. 00:52:12.64 Dave Mm hmm. 00:52:12.88 Rick I completely forgot you were on Chrono Trigger. 00:52:15.61 Dave Yeah, I was there. 00:52:15.61 Rick I was just reminded the other day, I was like, whoa. He was there in time. ah And yeah, those are a good few places to check out. 00:52:26.65 Dave Yeah. 00:52:26.69 Rick Check the show out. ah Like I said, if you like this show, Tales from the Backlog, you'll probably like Pixel Project Radio, maybe probably. And we would love to have you if you are willing to listen. 00:52:38.54 Dave Yeah, I definitely have my recommendation for people to check out. Again, we're doing a lot of the same stuff as on PPR as we do on Tales from the Backlog. But ah Pixel Project Radio does the beat by beat plot analysis and then stopping along the way to discuss you know what themes are brought up, what character motivations are being showcased and things like that along the way. And that's something I don't do here. So that's something that's always fun to go on PPR and kind of get into, like zoomed in on the level of detail on what's going on in the stories. So ah same type of conversation we'll say a lot of times, but a different approach to it, which is always good. 00:53:22.74 Rick Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I find a lot of value in doing a sort of beat by beat approach for folks that aren't interested in playing a game and just kind of want to know about it or folks that have already played it and want to rediscover something new by going through it a second time. 00:53:32.71 Dave Yeah. 00:53:38.81 Rick You know, it's a lot harder to do that with video games than it is with a book or you know a piece of music or something like that you know you can listen to an album five times in one day ah with the game that's you know even a short game like ten to twelve hours. 00:53:53.40 Rick That's still ten to twelve hours, that's a lot of time. 00:53:54.95 Dave Yeah, yeah it's a lot, but the dedication to the craft is there. Anyone who goes to PPR to listen is gonna hear that. So um again, it has the highest recommendation for me, and I will put all the relevant links down in the show description so that you can find it. While I'm talking about myself over the next minute or so, go ah find some episodes of PPR to download. I think you will really enjoy it. 00:54:20.52 Dave so Four, Tales from the Backlog. I would really appreciate ratings and reviews if you've really enjoyed this episode, if you've been listening and haven't done it yet. That's a big way to help people find the show so that when they search for a podcast about Night in the Woods, they might find this one. 00:54:37.15 Dave which I think is going to be um well, that's what we want. ah You can also join the Discord server and join the conversation about Night in the Woods this week and other games that you're playing, other media, you know, share pictures of your pets, stuff like that. We have a great community there. There's an invite link down in the show notes. 00:54:55.92 Dave And ah you can listen to my other show. It is called a top three podcast. We do the top three lists and we draft topics. We recast movies with funny actors. It is a comedy show. I think it's a good time. And last but not least, if you would like to support the show monetarily, you can do that at patreon dot.com slash real Dave Jackson. 00:55:17.44 Dave And everyone who joins on the Patreon can vote in polls for games I do on the show. You'll get some bonus episodes every now and then. There's other treats in there as well, but I don't want to spend too much time ah talking about this. Ready to get into spoilers. So with that said, Rick and I are going to take a break. We're going to listen to some music. When we come back, it's going to be full spoiler time for Night in the Woods. 00:56:37.67 Dave All right, we're back. It's full spoiler time for Night in the Woods. And it has the customary warning that I always give. This is not a chronological walk through the story. So we May spoil things that happen at the end of the game in the next like minutes. So if you don't want to be spoiled, please go play Night in the Woods. It's really good. And come back, save this spoiler section for later. Rick and I will be patiently waiting here. Not talking, just waiting for you to come back. 00:57:05.44 Rick That's right. As soon as you pause this episode, we cease to exist. 00:57:08.81 Dave That's right. So I wanted to start the non or the spoiler section by just talking about relationships with Mae's friends. ah Because this is what you do early in the game is you learn about these relationships, you advance them in certain ways. um You said that you hung out with Gregg your first time and your second time. 00:57:31.15 Rick Yes, sir. 00:57:31.96 Dave Okay. Can you kind of tell me a little bit about what happens with Gregg? Because I hung out with Gregg one time. I did the, uh, thing where you steal the robot, you give it to Angus, you get to build it in the, you know, the kitchen, you have to go steal a car battery. That's the other thing I did, uh, with Gregg, but I didn't do it. So I didn't do the thing where you steal the robot and then I didn't do anything else with Gregg the rest of the game. 00:57:59.92 Rick What I love about Gregg's relationship with Mae is that, well, it feels very real to me because I'm viewing this through my own lens of experience, through my own bias. 00:58:11.91 Rick As we view everything in this life, through our own biases, I had a friendship that was explicitly like this. 00:58:14.64 Dave yeah Yes. 00:58:20.41 Rick Mae and Gregg bring out the absolute worst in each other. they and this is a plot point too because Gregg's boyfriend Angus ah notices this and this is causing friction in their relationship but when the two of them are back together Gregg um Gregg and Mae they revert into this comfortable ah Partnership that they've had all their life um and some some criticisms that I've heard of this is like well I think actually Mae is just a bad friend. 00:58:49.36 Rick It doesn't show her actively encouraging Gregg to do this um But I think that misses the point a little bit this Relationship that they have is so ingrained that there doesn't need to be active encouragement them being together is the encouragement 00:59:00.59 Dave Yeah. 00:59:03.82 Rick it is something that I think a lot of us have experienced when we come home to our hometown and see a childhood friend ah and we immediately kind of revert back into that relationship. You know, whether it's through a nickname or whether it's through an inside joke, an old inside joke or whatever. um Gregg and Mae bring out the worst in each other. They do these crimes and they generally act like hooligans. And that bothers Angus a lot because it's causing friction in their relationship. 00:59:34.66 Rick They want to settle down. 00:59:36.53 Dave Mm-hmm. 00:59:36.56 Rick They want to have a loving dyad of a family. And that's difficult when Gregg is encouraging Mae to destroy shit and break into the abandoned food donkey. 00:59:47.55 Dave Yeah. 00:59:49.48 Rick um What's really beautiful about this too? And there's a lot that I'm probably missing, but um there is one really heartfelt hangout where Gregg discloses that. 01:00:00.57 Rick I mean, it's strongly implied that he has bipolar disorder um where he has really high highs and really low lows and. 01:00:04.48 Dave yeah 01:00:09.84 Rick You know He talks about his past and everything, and he explains that he wants to get out of Possum Springs as much as any of us. He relates this story to his childhood experience where he saw this group of sheep break out of a fence and run across the highway and some didn't make it, some got hit, but one did and he said, I want to be that sheep. 01:00:31.32 Rick And the problem is that this generational poverty that has stricken the whole town, they can't afford to move out and they're really saving, they're really trying, but it's so difficult because it seems like everything is working against them, and it is. um it's It's a really, I know that's kind of... uh it's a combination of being a large overview and also not entirely focused because this is all off of the dome but it's a really beautiful series of hangouts and while these are also beautiful in a different way i i really really appreciated this because i know how it feels to want to get out of a place but you just can't and and how it feels to have your brain working against you because of 01:01:15.92 Rick biological imbalances that are causing you to behave and think a certain way. 01:01:20.51 Dave Mm hmm. 01:01:20.72 Rick It's all, and of course, having a friend that brings out the absolute worst in you, but how do you tangle with that without destroying the friendship? It's very well realized. 01:01:32.22 Rick I have a lot of respect for what they did here. 01:01:35.45 Dave Yeah, and it was kind of surprising to me to like to listen to podcasts and read after the fact that this is the direction that Gregg's hangouts went in because I did the first one, maybe not the first one, maybe the second one, whatever. The one where you steal the car battery is really early in the game. And that's just pure mischief. i And after that, like I did one with Bea and it was much more interesting. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna hang out with B, not because I don't like Gregg, 01:02:05.42 Dave but because I'm more interested in the dynamic and the relationship between Bea and Mae. So to find out that like Gregg does have this you know thoughtful side to him that's just not on display all the time, kind of like you said, because when he's with Mae, 01:02:25.42 Dave that's not that's not the vibe but most of the time. They're just, you know, they're pranksters, they're having fun, they're breaking shit, ah doing crimes as they say. And you're right, like, maybe it's like the bringing out the worst in each other, maybe it's not that you go back home and you see somebody who you used to steal shit with and then you're like, okay, well, let's go steal stuff. Let's go have a good time like we used to do. maybe it's just like, you know, 01:02:54.70 Dave This is someone who you drink too much with when you hang out with or ah someone who, you know, maybe you just don't get into like those deep conversations all the time. And it takes a really special circumstance for it to come out. So that is really um real. I agree. 01:03:13.77 Rick And two, I mean, we can also think of it this way. Why would they be reverting to this way? It's because there's so much friction in their life, in their lives, that reverting to a place of safety, almost to reverting to a place of childhood safety becomes a sort of coping mechanism. 01:03:32.18 Rick Obviously Mae has a lot going on, which you know we learn about through the game about why she dropped out of college. And Angus and Gregg, do you know they are in a queer relationship in a very small town. 01:03:45.32 Rick There's no direct implication that they're getting harassed or anything, but one can imagine. And even outside of that, they're fruitlessly trying to save up, to get out of here, to die anywhere else. 01:03:51.53 Dave Yeah. 01:03:58.51 Dave Yeah. 01:03:59.24 Rick And the system makes that incredibly difficult. So reverting to this childhood safety net is almost a form of therapy for the two of them. 01:04:11.44 Dave Yeah. 01:04:11.59 Rick Destructive therapy that hurts others, but therapy nonetheless. 01:04:15.37 Dave Yeah, I agree. And like, they're saving up, they say like they've been saving up for a long time and it's gonna take a while longer. Like ah Gregg works at the Mini Mart and Angus works at the video store. Like they are not working high paying jobs where they probably have disposable income to just leave town whenever they feel like it. They have to plan long-term. And another thing I learned about this after the fact, 01:04:47.67 Dave It came up, I think, in a conversation with Bea, but not from Gregg, and I heard that it comes up with Gregg, is that Gregg thinks Angus is too good for him, and that this relationship is kind of doomed because of that. um And maybe he was thinking about it before, maybe Mae coming back, and Gregg you know breaking light bulbs behind the store is making him think about this more, I'm not sure. But Bea agrees with this, that their relationship isn't going to last and it's just because they're too different in her opinion. 01:05:22.35 Rick Yeah, I forget where this conversation takes place, but at one point, well and I forget who says it, I think it's B, but she'll say something to the effect of like, you know, once they move out of here, Angus will realize that he can do better. 01:05:33.66 Dave Yeah. 01:05:35.00 Rick um And this, it ties into one of these big hangout themes of proximity. and Whether or not that this is something that the game I think the game is asking the player to consider Whether or not proximity matters in terms of all of this which I mean I'll leave it up to you we can either talk about that now or wait until we get more into be but um It's looked at through a different angle with this relationship with Angus and Gregg and Gregg and Mae um and I mean again, that's 01:06:06.87 Rick Not something that I've seen a game ever tackle before. I'm sure they probably have, but it's done so well here. 01:06:12.54 Dave Mm hmm. It is done really well. And I think about do you know, like offhand, like roughly the population of Possum Springs, do they ever say it in the game? 01:06:28.96 Rick That's a great question. Um, no. 01:06:30.41 Dave It's like a small town. Like I consider myself to be from a pretty small town, but it has a population of 20, 25,000 in my hometown, which is like small ish, but like we have a Chipotle and shit like that. 01:06:44.31 Dave So like we're, we're not super small and sure. 01:06:45.38 Rick If I can draw a comparison to my hometown, if you'd like, um, because it, it is this, um, it's a, it's, it's a two stoplight town. 01:06:57.12 Dave Yeah. 01:06:57.39 Rick And, uh, according to the 2022 census, there were 4,357 people. 01:07:02.82 Dave Okay, so where I was going with that is we all have friendships by proximity when we're little kids. you know The kids on your street, the kids on the school bus, the kids in your class, things like that. And then once you're not on the same street or in the same class, a lot of those friendships go away, even when you're little kids. 01:07:23.63 Dave um Now we have you know older people, people with more means to drive out to another city to hang out with other people like Bea does in the one um you know a party hangout that you do, or shown through um you know dating, I suppose, from friends of mine that are you know in the dating scene in my hometown, 01:07:46.57 Dave it's a small group of people and proximity definitely does play into it. And you got to think that finding a um like a gay relationship in Possum Springs is not easy either. So the proximity effect there has to be even stronger. So I don't think it's necessarily wrong that Bea assumes that this is what's going to happen when they move out. And Gregg, to some degree, I think Gregg agrees with it too. But 01:08:23.43 Dave The way that proximity plays into who we hang out with um is super true in small towns and I think it probably gets 01:08:34.32 Dave stronger as you get older in a smaller town, if you just stay there for a while, you just become comfortable with the people that you hang out with, um the people that are around. And if you're stuck there, if you have no means to move out or go to college, like a lot of the characters in Night in the Woods, ah we get this through B. like That's her dream is to go to college, but she can't. So she's stuck there with the other people that are there. 01:09:02.30 Dave um I'm rambling, but the proximity, I'm mixing Bea and Gregg's storylines because they're both dealing with this in a really strong way. 01:09:11.62 Rick It's interesting um that it it seemed like for a minute you were going to take a more pessimistic approach to this idea of proximity, like um locking into the idea that, yeah, once Angus and Gregg moved to the city, maybe Angus will realize that he is better than Gregg, um whatever that means. 01:09:27.74 Rick and that's a certain, that's a valid read. I apologize. I didn't mean to interrupt you, Dave. 01:09:32.55 Dave No, it's all right. He may realize that because i'm in a lot of ways, you know Angus is presented as a lot more like together, 01:09:44.71 Dave You know, I'm more mature in a lot of ways, I guess. And if that's something that he values in a partner, but he can't find around here and he's within like Gregg and Angus love each other that's clear in the game but if that is something that he really values and he 01:10:06.00 Dave sees that there are other options, I guess, or gets dissatisfied with Gregg when they move to a new place. like It's certainly a possibility. I just think that the proximity effect, now that we're talking about it, in a small town with a small pool of people to choose to hang out with and an even smaller pool of people that you're compatible with, like I think that this is really strong. 01:10:31.14 Rick I think that there is a more positive way to look at it and a more neutral way. So if we're going on a positive stint here, a more positive spin, one could say proximity matters because we're both. Look, we're both here. We both have to. 01:10:49.31 Rick deal with this small town and we weren't we didn't ask to be here but we are and together we can get through this we can use this proximity as as a way to say i understand i know where you're coming from and we can get we could do this together 01:11:04.04 Dave Mm hmm. 01:11:04.69 Rick um I think there's also a more neutral read of this based on the game's general voice and thought process behind the universe. Many times throughout here, there are... I want to choose the words carefully. It is strongly not even implied. It's said that the universe doesn't care. 01:11:28.35 Dave Yeah. 01:11:28.82 Rick The universe is the universe doesn't care. It's the people that are misquoting Angus. 01:11:30.98 Dave Mm hmm. 01:11:35.51 Rick um And I think proximity matters there because I mean, this is all random, but it's not about that. This, you know, this is the absurd, random nature of the universe where we're putting up where we've got our intent that is being Put directly beside this irrationality of the universe proximity matters because yeah, it's all random But now what do we do with that? Sure at the end of everything we have to hold on to something 01:12:05.19 Dave Yeah, if the universe is random and uncaring, which is, you know, if I'm on board with that as a way of viewing certain things in the world, then what can you control? You can control who you hang out with and things, but in a place like Possum Springs, if it is as small as it seems, 01:12:27.13 Dave like your degree of control is much lower so you may like that's where I'm kind of going with this it's not like a pessimistic thing that like Gregg and Angus are for sure doomed but the fact that they are probably two of a very small number of gay men in the town would lead to them at least knowing each other and you know proximity can breed attraction. and Opposites can also attract ah for some people. I think that that quote from Angus um Mae gives a window into why he loves Gregg, because he loves Gregg. It's not like he's just like, yeah, well, I'm with him because he's the only one. 01:13:15.58 Dave you know ah probability and you know small statistics and a small group of people aside, it's clear that he loves Gregg and his his kind of view that you get in his hangout where he says, I believe in a universe that doesn't care and people who do, maybe that's why he is attracted to Gregg because he can tell that Gregg cares and Gregg loves him and they are good for each other in certain ways too. It's just interesting because we don't really get to see them ah Together that much we get to see them but maze like this wrench in the gears for their relationship Yeah Mm-hmm 01:13:52.24 Rick Yeah, she's not the glue that's explicitly said at a certain point. She's not the glue that's holding that friend group together. That's actually Angus, according to V. 01:14:02.35 Dave um Speaking of proximity then, let's talk about bees because Beais a different type of character. So Mae and Gregg enable each other in their relationship to kind of go back to this more childlike state of mind and, you know, let's go do crimes and break stuff and have fun like we used to. And in my experience, because I did most of bees hangouts, 01:14:26.76 Dave B is a reality check for Mae. And Mae, when she comes back from college, is super naive, I think, to the things that people in town have been living, the way they've been living, the realities of their life. And she seems super idealistic about the way people should handle their situations. And this comes out when she's hanging out with Bea. And a lot of the times when Bea talks about struggles with the situation that she's in, Mae's response is to, you know, throw all that shit aside, do what's best for you. And Bea is the reality check where she says, 01:15:08.67 Dave I can't just do that. Like, that's not how things work. And this was my favorite part about their relationship, the fact that she serves as that like, hey, this is how the things are for us in the real world over here. 01:15:22.83 Rick Yeah, Mae went off to college and didn't, or how was it phrased, ah we had to stay here and grow up while you went off to college and stayed the same. 01:15:31.31 Dave Yeah. 01:15:32.52 Rick Mae is a product of her environment as much as she is a product of her genetics and that's that's the nature versus nurture thing can come up here in that way. 01:15:43.72 Rick And She gets to be idealistic and see the world through the fiery eyes of a go-getter and of a dreamer because she's never had to deal with these crushing realities that Bea is currently dealing with for example. 01:15:52.97 Dave Mm hmm. 01:15:59.42 Rick She had the privilege, and in a small town this is a great privilege, of going off to college, of Bea never got that. 01:16:05.56 Dave Yeah. 01:16:08.17 Rick She is literally, I think, ah Mae is literally living Bea's dream. And like you said she chooses to throw it away from these perspective, she chooses to throw it away. 01:16:19.98 Dave Yeah. 01:16:20.15 Rick Now be does not have the full perspective and eventually she does get it if you hang out with Mae enough, or if you hang out with be enough. um So they are they are both approaching this in a way where they're not they're Neither of them are communicating as effectively as they could be. 01:16:36.80 Rick but I can add and I can absolutely see where both of them are coming from. But it leads, like you said, to this hard check into Mae's life that perhaps Mae doesn't always have the answers. 01:16:48.41 Rick Perhaps it's not as simple as saying, well, just do it better. Like, you don't deserve this. 01:16:54.34 Dave yeah 01:16:54.62 Rick No, I don't deserve this, but I don't have any other options. 01:16:59.38 Dave Yeah, I think these hangouts are where, it's where like part of my view that Mae is not a great friend comes from. And I think it's where a lot of people become dissatisfied with what seems like choices. You know, like you, you often have choices of what to say in a conversation. But in a lot of these conversations with Bea, you'll look at the options and be like, these are all shitty things to say. I don't wanna say any of these things. 01:17:28.62 Dave But that's like you're not an avatar deciding who Mae is. You're playing as Mae, as she is. 01:17:35.28 Rick Right. 01:17:36.66 Dave So the fact that she's gonna just say the most tone deaf shit you've ever heard in some of these conversations with Bee, that's Mae. That's who she is. 01:17:46.81 Dave And that's her worldview. And I i This is why I have such respect for the writing of Mae because they're not afraid to let you not like her during conversations and be like, Mae, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you say that? 01:18:02.75 Rick Yeah, yeah, I never understood those criticisms. ah you're not it's Mae is not a silent protagonist. This isn't Persona or Chrono Trigger. like You are playing as Mae. You're not playing as Dave playing Mae. 01:18:15.10 Dave Yeah. Yeah. You, you're playing as her with her worldview and just how, how naive it is, you know, especially at the beginning. 01:18:25.39 Dave So I really like, yeah, go ahead. 01:18:28.65 Rick And that's a good word to describe it is naive because Mae, you know, I still maintain that Mae is not a bad person and she's not a bad friend. 01:18:39.70 Dave Mm hmm. 01:18:41.74 Rick She's just acting like a bad friend in that moment. And it's because of her naivety. She doesn't want to be a bad friend and she's not. She's not a bad person at heart, but because of the way because of her surroundings and the privileges she's had, and the events that Bea's experience that Mae hasn't had, she doesn't think of it that way. 01:19:02.56 Dave Mm hmm. 01:19:05.48 Rick She doesn't have that perspective, and here she is getting it. So she will presumably move forward with a better worldview. Yes, in these moments, she is acting like a bad friend, but it's very clear that it's coming from a place of wanting nothing but the best for Bea. 01:19:23.09 Rick she knows how smart Bea is and how capable she is and she's running the entire story by herself because her dad is mentally broken from the death of their mother and she's like Bea you deserve so much better than this you you are so smart and capable and badass but somebody like Mae telling Bea this, somebody that threw away her her dream, coming back and saying, you shouldn't be doing this. 01:19:45.13 Dave Yeah. 01:19:47.41 Rick That is what pisses Bea off. And understandably so. It's totally understandable that Bea flips the fuck out on Mae as many times as she does. 01:19:56.44 Dave Yeah. 01:19:58.08 Rick Totally, totally. 01:19:59.18 Dave Mm hmm. 01:20:01.13 Rick This is a very real friendship. It's very messy. um There is no clear like black and white there. You are wrong and this person is right. It's just this, these frictions exist in real life friendships and it's difficult. 01:20:15.25 Dave Yeah, so I think that in the state that Mae is in, like the early portion of this game, while the focus is on these relationships, I do think that she is a bad friend. Like, she is, you're right, she is, there is a want to support and uplift Bea, but she is just not, 01:20:42.64 Dave listening to what Bea is saying, and she's forcing her worldview out there. And the result is she's not a supportive friend. So I think that there's a difference between her wishing harm on people and being a bad friend, which is not what's happening here. But there's also like you know, the results of the way that she approaches these situations with Bea and, you know, maybe to a much lesser degree, the way that she's enabling Gregg's worst tendencies. The result is that she is a pretty bad friend in here. She coerces Bea to steal something in one of those things when Bea tells her like, hey, I don't want to steal shit here. um So 01:21:29.42 Dave Like I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I think I have a little more critical view of how Mae goes about things and the results of what she does. And, you know, maybe if it weren't for that proximity, Bea would have told Mae to fuck off and never talk to her again after a couple of these hangouts. 01:21:50.47 Dave uh, instead of just being like, well, you're what I got, you know, where they go out to that Mae invites herself to that college party. And, you know, we have another time where Bea freaks the fuck out with good reason, uh, at Mae in there. 01:22:03.31 Rick Yeah, 01:22:04.21 Dave So I think that we're mostly on the same page. I just do, I just do view her a little bit more critically, uh, during this. 01:22:09.20 Rick totally. 01:22:14.68 Rick Yeah, I absolutely understand that i don't think that. I would never say that your ah read on this is poor. um you did there's There's only one thing that I want to respond to. 01:22:25.57 Rick I'm not trying to hold us up, but you had said that Mae isn't listening to Bea. 01:22:25.65 Dave Sure. 01:22:30.26 Rick My counter to that would be, I don't think either of them do a good job of listening to each other at all. um the only time they truly express how they're feeling and why they are so upset is when they're freaking out on each other. 01:22:45.21 Dave Yeah. 01:22:45.64 Rick Right? 01:22:46.14 Dave Yeah. 01:22:46.50 Rick Bea will explicitly ask, hey, why did you come back from college? And Mae says, I'm not talking about that right now. 01:22:51.53 Dave Yeah. 01:22:51.55 Rick OK, understandable, because that's a pretty heavy topic for like the first conversation back. But still, she's not expressing herself. When does Bea express herself to Mae? Whenever Bea is yelling at her, neither of them are expressing themselves as healthily as they could to make this friendship ah have less friction. 01:23:12.51 Rick But here's the thing. That's just how it goes. 01:23:16.33 Dave Yeah, I was just going to say there they're 20 years old. 01:23:17.05 Rick That's that's how it be. 01:23:19.52 Dave They don't have as much emotional you know intelligence and empathy as ah I would like to think the two of us do at out at our advanced age. 01:23:20.49 Rick Yes. 01:23:28.13 Rick Yeah, they're advanced ages of of mid early to mid 30s. 01:23:33.28 Dave Yeah. 01:23:33.93 Rick Oh, that's, that's gonna if you have any 40 plus listeners, that's gonna give them a good chuckle. 01:23:39.00 Dave Good, I hope it does. ah So the the one thing I would like kind of disagree with is that Bea does say what's going on in her life and Mae Maee keeps it all locked up. Bea lets Mae know like, oh, you forgot that my mom died. Like that's what's been going on. Here's what's going on with my dad. We have this possible sexual predator working at our store, but we can't fire him because he's the only person who can do this job. 01:24:06.47 Dave then we This is what I'm dealing with and Mae like doesn't internalize like the realities of those situations. But Bea does say what's going on. 01:24:16.06 Rick With the exception of the mom thing, which I am not going to argue against, Mae just straight up forgot that sucks. 01:24:22.28 Dave Yeah. 01:24:22.73 Rick um like She doesn't tell Mae that until they're having that fight in her room about the the potential sexual predator at at work. 01:24:30.56 Dave Hmm. 01:24:32.03 Rick like that just and And you could say, well, why would she have told her about that beforehand? Yeah, maybe. I don't know. um But that's the first time that comes up. Like they're working through it in a very messy way. They ultimately do communicate with each other. 01:24:43.83 Rick But like you just like exactly like you said, they're 20 somethings. 01:24:44.28 Dave yeah it it Yeah, it takes three big fights before they actually get there. and that last I really like that scene when they go to the party. 01:24:57.22 Dave um you know Mae cause this it Mae goes on this big thing about you know all the elite college kids, and I was like the irony of Mae doing that in front of B, um or doing that at all. 01:25:08.10 Rick Yeah. 01:25:10.08 Dave do you know anyone who goes to college and then goes on a rant about elite college kids like okay, all right, you know, very nice of you too, to say that but ah that's when he gives the whole speech about how you're basically living my dream you threw it away. 01:25:31.42 Dave ah i she goes out there, Bea goes out to this college town to party and to feel normal. That's what she says. This is the only time when she feels like she gets to live a normal life. And when Mae fucks that up, then they have like their last fight. And the last fight where they, you know, 01:25:50.66 Dave B talks about that, Mae talks a little bit about her situation. um I just really like that scene. I like all of these though. That's why I kept hanging out with B. I loved, like I didn't. I didn't love seeing them fight, but I loved the way that this is all presented, like the way that it's written and everything is so good. 01:26:10.59 Rick Yeah, I completely agree. It's very true to life. That whole college party is so good. It's probably the best hangout that you get to do with B, at least I think. 01:26:21.58 Rick ah Mae is the worst wingman possible. 01:26:23.48 Dave Oh, yeah. 01:26:24.03 Rick Just truly, truly awful. 01:26:28.68 Dave um Yeah, so that's, that's Gregg and, and B, did you hang out with Angus? 01:26:36.60 Rick I did. I make it a point to hang out with Angus anytime. 01:26:40.28 Dave and Okay, so we already kind of touched on like the the topics of um or like Angus's worldview, I guess, and what I think we can blow up into a philosophy or belief system of this game in general, you know, and Mae kind of echoes this a little bit later, I think, with one of her realizations, but I believe in a universe that doesn't care and people who do is the result of a really traumatic upbringing for Angus. And it's really interesting that they they kind of they just keep that locked away for a while and Angus is this cool, put together 01:27:21.22 Dave Dude, he's like, you know, almost a foil for Gregg. Gregg's the, they're like a comedy duo. Like Angus is the straight man and Gregg is, Gregg's the wild guy. Um, and then when you finally do get to talk to Angus, you see like, oh yeah, he's been through some shit too. And it leads to this. I don't know. It feels like a thesis kind of a worldview from him. 01:27:46.58 Rick It's so heartbreakingly tragic hearing about what Angus had to go through and ultimately what led him into believing in his philosophy um that there simply can't be a god. 01:27:49.31 Dave Yeah. 01:28:01.89 Rick This game handles religion in a very interesting way. um And it's never it's never on the front street. like That's not the point of this game. It's not that kind of game. But between Angus and another character, Pastor Kay, 01:28:13.91 Dave yeah 01:28:14.54 Rick Especially Pastor Kay and Mae's interactions with each other, it talks about religion in a very fascinating way. um I think that this idea that Angus is gelling with, I believe in a universe that doesn't care and people who do, that worldview of this universe is ultimately kind of supported by, like you said, Mae's interactions in a future scene that we're going to get to. And it's why it's part of why I think the ending is really, really good. um um Obviously, I think we can hold off on that for a little bit. 01:28:55.23 Rick but It's that this philosophy that, you know, though the universe is uncaring, ah irrational, you know, going back to that idea of absurd ah intent versus the irrationality of the universe. 01:29:07.48 Rick You have to hold on to something, something to ground you. 01:29:10.46 Dave Yeah. 01:29:10.59 Rick You know, we can talk about that tagline, at the end of everything, hold on to anything. What is that saying? It's saying that at the end of the day, at the end of that chapter of your life, at the end of your life in general, 01:29:21.97 Rick You have to have something that gives you hope, that gives you power, that gives you grounding. And it doesn't in some ways it doesn't matter what that is, but you need that to navigate through this life. 01:29:34.79 Dave Mm hmm. 01:29:39.07 Dave Yeah. Agreed. I'm thinking about the ending now. Now you've got me curious about what about the ending was it that we are going to disagree about? Is it something related to the monster and the cult? Or is it related to the ending with Mae and the characters? 01:30:01.40 Rick It is ah I don't know if you are going to cut this out or not, but it is your aah point that says Mae is not coming out of the story resolved. Her and her friends blow off processing what happened, et cetera. 01:30:18.04 Dave Yeah, okay, so that's it's not too far off subject with you know the kind of philosophy and realizations that we had. Like I said earlier, this is a coming of age story, but it's not that Mae saves the day and then she's ready to save the town and become a hero or anything like that. She's just kind of made a small step for herself in the way that she's gonna view everything around because her big issue was dissociation and so like a lack of connection with everything around her. And now she has found a way to have that connection basically. So what I mean by that is not that like, not that she's not coming out of this a better person, but that it's more subtle than like, 01:31:07.85 Dave Like I used the Lion King as an example earlier. Like she comes out of this, she learned a little bit. She's turning a corner, but that's all it is. That's where the game leaves us. And it leaves us with room to wonder like, what is Mae gonna do next? How is she going to approach the world around her now? We have a little bit of a new way to think of things, but I don't think it gives us a whole lot else. 01:31:39.35 Rick It's difficult for me to talk about what I mean, unless we also talk about the cult and that aspect of the story. 01:31:49.69 Dave Sure. 01:31:49.95 Rick Uh, but I see that that is not next in your notes. So how would you like to proceed here? 01:31:56.91 Dave let's ah let's Let's talk about how Mae gets here then. Let's talk about her mental health and then we'll wrap back up around this. 01:32:00.48 Rick Okay. 01:32:03.43 Dave So part of the ah the other part of the story is learning why Mae dropped out of college, um what she had been going through before. 01:32:03.65 Rick Okay. 01:32:14.03 Dave And then this is where I think a lot of the great conversations with Mae's parents come into play too, ah when it involves why Mae dropped out of college because she won't tell her parents either. They just know that she's back. ah She hasn't said why. So we learned that Mae Mae went through these dissociative episodes where she describes ah things at first in a video game, but then in real life, losing meaning and turning into shapes as she describes it. So just these nameless, faceless, you know, lifeless shapes. And there was an incident where she had one of these and she attacked a kid, she beat him with a baseball bat. 01:32:56.92 Dave Uh, she did not get the help that would have helped her the most. Uh, Dr. Hank is apparently not a great ah psychologist in town, probably not qualified to be doing that. I think they mentioned that, but he's, he's what they've got. Um, so this is what's been going on with me. It just takes us a while to learn this. Uh, but I think that like the This being what brings her back to Possum Springs, leaves her with like no nothing to grab onto for a while, right? Choosing dissociation as the struggle, we'll say, the mental struggle, leaves her with a lack of connection to everything else going on around her, which then gives her the chance to come to the realization, like you said, at the end of everything, hold on to anything. 01:33:53.10 Dave Uh, she's, I forget the exact quote, but she basically says like, I want to feel what's going on around, which is apparently not something that was going on. 01:34:04.16 Dave She says, I want it to hurt. That's her, her quote. So yeah. 01:34:08.53 Rick Right, because if it hurts, then she knows that she's feeling, she knows that she's alive. 01:34:12.25 Dave Right. And which was not the case, um, when it started and then it started to happen again at college. And that's why she came back. 01:34:20.81 Rick it's It's very perplexing to me whenever I see, and and admittedly I don't see this too often, but some in the past week I have, it's so strange for me to see people discussing this aspect of Mae and still coming away with, she's just such a shitty character and a bad person. I i really struggle to see how people don't see her as a sympathetic character, given that, you know, while she did act as a bad friend, and I'm gonna keep phrasing it that way, acted as a bad friend, not was a bad friend, acted as a bad person, not was a bad person. While she acted in those ways, knowing the impetus behind it and why, I really struggle to know how some folks don't have any sympathy for her. um, I cannot imagine disassociating in this way. um I've never had experience with that, and I can imagine it is terrifying 01:35:21.30 Rick And it makes her decide to come back to retreat into childhood, right? Retreat into the safety of the child from back into her hometown. 01:35:24.78 Dave Yeah. 01:35:29.16 Rick It makes it so understandable. 01:35:32.05 Dave Yeah, absolutely. And i i i I Mae have, but the idea that Mae is a bad character is ridiculous to me. You know, what you want out of a character is you you want You don't have to like them. 01:35:51.32 Dave That's what I'm trying to say here. I'm trying to think of a way to express that a character being unlikable doesn't make them a bad character. 01:35:53.56 Rick Mm hmm. 01:35:59.58 Dave Mae would be a bad character if there was nothing to her, if she was very shallow, didn't grow, things like that. And like there are static characters too. Like that's fine in certain situations. 01:36:10.38 Dave But Mae is none of those things. There's a lot to me. There's a lot that goes into the way she acts. And there's a lot of, um there is growth that happens along the way in her personal relationships and in her own worldview and things like that too. So the idea that she's a bad character is insane to me. That's just like, if you come out of this thinking, she's a badly written character, I just think you've missed a lot of what's going on here. 01:36:37.91 Rick Yeah. Yeah. And the game, the game is not subtle about what it's trying to say in that respect. 01:36:42.76 Dave Yeah. so I think this is a good time. Let's talk about Mae with her parents, because I don't think I talked about them in the non-spoiler part. Mae's parents are two of my favorite characters in the game as well. um Every morning starts with the opportunity to talk to Mae's mom. I say morning, I mean early afternoon. ah The opportunity to talk to Mae's mom in the kitchen before she goes to work. And every night ends with the opportunity to talk to Mae's dad and watch the, 01:37:13.67 Dave the shitty late night comedy that they're watching, which is funny. It reminded me of Terrence and Philip in a way, like that type of show. 01:37:23.29 Rick Yeah, that's a WHOPPA. 01:37:24.49 Dave A little bit less crude than Terrence and Philip, but um Mae's mom serves as kind of like ah another reality check character because that's where you, you like you learn how Mae's naive kind of attitude clashes with the real world when you hang out with B. But then when you eventually get this out of Mae's mom, if you talk to her, you see how this affects her family because You don't know until then everything that Mae's family sacrificed to get her to college. And then she's withholding the reason why she threw that away or gave it up. I suppose it's a better way of saying it until Mae's mom tells her very frankly, like everything we sacrifice, like we might lose our house because we paid for you to go to college. 01:38:21.23 Rick What I love about this scene is you know they don't characterize Mae's mom as being very um overly righteous and an objectively good person in this moment. 01:38:37.49 Dave Mm hmm. 01:38:37.76 Rick The way that she chooses to communicate this with Mae is incredibly passive-aggressive. She's taking her stresses of adult life out onto Mae at that moment. 01:38:43.43 Dave Mm hmm. 01:38:48.00 Rick I think when she Mae well observes like, hey, you know you don't look so good like today. like Are you OK? And she's like, oh, just stress numbers. I don't really have time to talk. And then she'll say, you know, are you planning to tell me why you've come back to college? I'm just wondering why you're throwing away everything that we've done for you. 01:39:04.99 Rick And it's really passive aggressive at that moment. And it leads to this huge, huge fight that is just so upsetting to see how these two are speaking to each other. 01:39:07.21 Dave Yep. 01:39:16.72 Rick And it's very, very hurtful. And it ends with Mae saying, I'm just another in a long line of failures. You just want to see me succeed and you don't like to see me fail because I'm turning into you. 01:39:28.47 Rick And that is. 01:39:31.78 Rick It's just such a powerful moment. 01:39:33.73 Dave Yeah. 01:39:34.34 Rick ah It's very messy. They do reconcile pretty quickly in the coming days, which is nice. 01:39:39.94 Dave Yeah. 01:39:41.84 Rick um But what a hard hitting scene. It's just you just want to yell at both of them. No, just listen to each other. Both of you for like one second. Just listen. But they don't because that's not how these relationships work. 01:39:55.56 Dave Yeah, i I like like what breaks the dam I think in that conversation is how I think Mae's mom asks her like why did you come home again and Mae says it just wasn't where I'm supposed to be and that like really pissed her mom off like 01:40:14.58 Rick Yeah. 01:40:14.91 Dave Uh, she, I think she says something to the effect of, uh, we might not be able to stay in our house for very long and maybe it's not where we're supposed to be. Like again, very passive aggressive. 01:40:24.20 Rick Yeah, she weaponizes that. 01:40:26.37 Dave Yeah. 01:40:26.70 Rick Yeah, because at that moment, Mae is like, whoa, hold on, hold the phone. Mom, like this is let's stop this for a second. What? 01:40:32.81 Dave Yeah. 01:40:33.45 Rick What are you talking about? And she's like, well, it's just not what we're supposed to be. And it's like, well, come why don't do that right now? 01:40:38.39 Dave Yeah. 01:40:40.38 Rick Yeah, it is. ah It is really, really difficult. I don't want to. ah I'm not trying to dump onto your audience because this is your show and that seems uncouth to me, but I, I understand this all too well. 01:40:54.51 Dave Yeah. I mean, I've had some pretty rough fights with my mom through times too. And so like, you know, we have a good relationship overall as Mae and her mom do, but these things can get ugly because you know depending on what the stressors are on both sides. 01:41:13.91 Dave um It's not this exact same situation here, but it reminded me of some rough conversations that I've had where people maybe say things in certain ways that they don't mean or would not be the best way to say those things for sure. 01:41:27.81 Rick Mm-hmm. And it's really easy to see Mae's mom's perspective, right? Like, especially, you know, we're older now. 01:41:32.77 Dave Yeah. 01:41:35.71 Rick We've been through college. Like, we know college is exorbitantly expensive. 01:41:40.19 Dave Yeah. 01:41:40.73 Rick um That's a whole other topic, I'm sure. 01:41:43.22 Dave Mm hmm. 01:41:44.28 Rick But I can, I mean, it's so easy to understand where Mae's mom is coming from. At the same time, think about Mae's perspective, too. They've been, as Mae's mom, kind of passively aggressively says they've been planning for this for her since she was since yeah that expectation has been there since she was born Mae didn't necessarily choose that that was just a role being hoist onto her and now that she is developing into a from a kid into an adult she's reckoning with that well did I have autonomy 01:41:57.64 Dave Yeah, the expectations. Mm hmm. 01:42:15.32 Dave Mm hmm. 01:42:15.47 Rick I'm not so sure. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not defending Mae and saying that she was 100% in the right. Nobody here is 100% right. Life is not that simple. 01:42:22.60 Dave Yeah. 01:42:22.70 Rick That's just facts. Deal with it. But I can understand where she's coming from just as much. I just, again, I want to just reach into the steam deck or the Legion go or the PlayStation and shake them on the shoulders and say, just talk to each other, please. 01:42:36.92 Dave Yeah. 01:42:39.51 Dave I just really like this the way that it kind of lets us into realities in Mae's family as well. And this is an optional conversation so you don't have to talk to your mom. 01:42:50.95 Rick ah Can you believe that? 01:42:52.41 Dave Yeah, it's well, there are. 01:42:54.75 Rick Can you believe that? Yes. Okay. 01:42:56.92 Dave Yeah, not not what i not what i not to not sell you again, but the ah the fact that it's optional is kind of crazy to me because without this, you would lose a lot of the context for what's going on in Mae's family. You get a conversation with her dad at the end of the game. 01:43:12.98 Dave about like his perspective on this, but even his perspective doesn't let you in on the fact that like her family literally gave everything they had to get her to college. 01:43:25.12 Dave And like if you look around the town, like I think it's presented in a way that like they live in the nicer part of Possum Springs, but even with that, they don't have disposable income to just send me to college. 01:43:32.74 Rick Yeah. 01:43:38.54 Dave or get a loan or something like that, like, or maybe they did get a loan and the fact that she's back mean, means she has to pay and that's gonna fuck up their finances really badly. 01:43:49.59 Dave Like, as we know. 01:43:50.86 Rick Well, that's part of why their house is in danger. They took a loan out from a predatory loan company that preys on poor people with the expectation that they can't pay back the money and then they get the house. 01:43:53.10 Dave Yeah. 01:43:56.48 Dave Okay. 01:44:01.36 Dave Predatory student loan company? Never. 01:44:04.65 Rick Not even student loans, just predatory loans in general. 01:44:07.48 Dave Oh, yeah, probably. 01:44:07.89 Rick and I was and you lived in Kansas City for a while and there were payday loan providers like this on every corner. 01:44:15.40 Dave Yeah. 01:44:15.90 Rick It is one of the most unethical things in this country. 01:44:19.44 Dave Yeah. I was just going to say like, okay, so if it's not fucking Sally Mae or whoever Sally Mae is now, uh, one of those, like you said, payday loan places with, you know, double digit percent interest and shit like that, like that's yeah. 01:44:29.67 Rick Mm hmm. 01:44:33.94 Dave You, 01:44:34.01 Rick And the fact that they know their business model is predicated on the fact that, yeah, these people probably aren't going to pay back. So we'll give them the lump they won't get otherwise so we can just make a profit off of them. 01:44:45.43 Dave Yeah. 01:44:45.62 Rick That is so scummy. That is below the dirt on my shoes. 01:44:48.50 Dave Mm hmm. Yeah. It's really shitty. I didn't, and maybe I'd have forgotten that that was the exact circumstance that is why their home is in danger. ah But that window into what's going on at Mae's house and Again, this is another wake up call for Mae. like This isn't just going on in other people's lives. This is our life too at home. It's really good. She needs that, I think. it's just It was a really ugly fight that they had, ah which you know fights with family can be like that sometimes. Nobody knows you better. 01:45:21.56 Dave so Um, in her dad's perspective too, not to ignore his perspective. Um, I just really liked the conversation at the end where you, you May have gone to the grocery store and seen him working at the deli counter there. Um, after his factory job went away and he like, he puts on a strong face, he goes to work, he does his job, but he is fucking miserable doing it. And he doesn't make enough money to, you know, support the family and his mom works at the church and that's probably not enough money. 01:45:52.77 Rick Did you, so I'm curious, um, when I first played this, you got extra dialogue with your dad. If you got into the safe and found the contents in there, I didn't do it on this play through. 01:46:00.56 Dave Yeah, mm-hmm. 01:46:04.45 Rick I just forgot, but I remember saying the first time through that that was my favorite scene in the entire game. 01:46:10.46 Dave Yeah, um I did get the tooth out of the safe and that gets you a little bit of extra dialogue with her dad where Mae gives her dad encouragement to unionize at work. 01:46:23.97 Dave which is good, um but there I could not find this quote and I didn't want to scrub through a Let's Play to find it, but her dad freaks out at the end. He has a kind of a blow up, not at Mae, but just at the situation where it's kind of like Selmers' poem where he says like, 01:46:41.82 Dave Folks are supposed to be able to work a job and support their family. They're supposed to be able to buy a house. They're supposed to be able to live like this. And we can't because they just pay us like shit. Our job is, you know, not valued. We're not valued. And then if you find the tooth, make and give him a little push ah to go unionize after that. So I love that scene, too. 01:47:04.15 Rick Yeah, it's really good. I don't know that I would say the politics side of this is necessarily the game's thesis point necessarily, but I love what it does say. 01:47:16.17 Rick um I mean, it's just true to life. i i don't We don't have to get into it, Dave. 01:47:19.22 Dave Yeah. 01:47:25.46 Rick I know you feel the exact same. 01:47:27.62 Dave Yeah, it's not like this game has to make a big declarative statement politically about the situation the characters are in and what got them into this situation. They just show it to you and they show the characters reacting to the way their lives are. 01:47:39.99 Rick Mm hmm. 01:47:42.34 Dave And that's the statement like you don't need the game to just a character to turn to the camera and tell you 01:47:50.09 Rick Yeah, exactly. It's showing the reality. And I mean, we're living it too. 01:47:54.49 Dave Yeah. 01:47:54.79 Rick We're living it too. I I struggled to think of any of my friends that are just living alone because they have one good job. It's just not the reality anymore. 01:48:04.57 Dave Yeah, it's tough. This reality also extends to the rest of the people in town and it extends into the way that 01:48:16.84 Dave The way that this, I think like a really misunderstood part of this game is, which is with the cult and the monster in the pit and what is going on with that. So up to this point, we have not mentioned one time that there is a kidnapping, you know, ghost story going on in the game. You find an arm really early, like a severed arm in the street and along the way, Mae's aunt, who's a cop, just kind of warns Mae like, hey, mind your own business. Don't go digging around where you shouldn't be. You're not going to like what you find that only emboldens Mae because she's anti-authoritarian. But um what's what's eventually revealed is that there is this cult in the town that is worshiping a 01:49:08.46 Dave You know, an eldritch monster in a pit and they're literally sacrificing young people in town to this pit because they think when they do it, good things will happen for the town. And so we take those situations that that Mae's family is in, that Beais in, and we expand it out to the whole town and how everybody else is dealing with the situation that they're in, the adults, the The people who make decisions, the people who, you know, have a little bit more power in town. 01:49:37.85 Dave ah This is what they're doing. They're feeding the, what they call, I think they, they say the ones that don't matter. Or maybe I'm taking that from, I think you should leave. 01:49:48.92 Dave He's talking about the people that got hit by the car. yeah The cops said they just don't matter. 01:49:52.96 Rick Dude, that's my favorite sketch on that show and I can't find it anywhere online. 01:49:59.48 Dave It's okay. that The cops said those people are nothing. They don't, they don't matter. That's kind of what's happening here with the people that are being sacrificed to this. so Quick question for you. Since the game does present this as there's a monster living in a pit that is eating the people and might be helping the town out. People believe that's what's happening. um The people in the cult. Did you think that this is the reason why Mae started to have these dissociative episodes? They think the monster is reaching out to her. 01:50:35.36 Rick Well, not the dissociative episodes, like with what happened on the softball field. I, from her dreams and headaches, yes. 01:50:42.68 Dave Yeah. Okay. 01:50:43.21 Rick But, um, I, I didn't think that it was necessarily, uh, the cause of, because if that were the case, then that, I don't really like that. 01:50:50.86 Dave No, I didn't either, but yeah. 01:50:51.91 Rick You know, I thought that the game does such a good job of talking about mental health and to chalk it all up to a cosmic horror. 01:50:59.77 Dave Right. 01:50:59.80 Rick No, no, thank you. 01:51:00.69 Dave I didn't think that that was what was causing her initial issues. But it's definitely like the reason she's having these dreams about these, you know, these god animals or whatever. 01:51:11.83 Dave um So just wanted to get your take on that real quick. But Yeah, just generally finding out that we have this kidnapping and murder spree around town and that this is what it is. There's a cult, there's an eldritch monster, ah the young ones are being sacrificed. What's your take on this? 01:51:33.13 Rick Okay, so here's what this is. they And again, I don't think this is subtle. This cult represents this conservatism conservative idealism, um this small-town conservatism of wanting to maintain the glory days of the past and resist change. They say as much. They say, we're just a couple of, I don't remember the exact quote, we're just a couple of old guys or old boys that want to do right by our own. 01:52:03.64 Rick um And the people that they sacrifice are, like you said, the losers, the ne'er-do-wells, the ones that aren't going to go anywhere in life, the drifters, the immigrants. 01:52:14.44 Dave Yeah. 01:52:15.66 Rick I think they even call out like immigrants that are taking the jobs, things like that. 01:52:18.94 Dave Yeah, the ones that are holding us down, you know. 01:52:22.58 Rick right exactly um now this was made in 2017 as we said so viewing it through that lens is important because i think in 2024 using the cult analogy is a little tired it's it's a little past day is not the right word but it's been done it's they've it's been expressed in that way yes it's a cult that's not that interesting but um what So do i I don't necessarily love the vehicle of an eldritch horror. I think the messaging is fine. It makes sense, I understand. um I think... Shoot, give me a second to gather my thoughts here, Dave. 01:53:10.47 Rick You know, this isn't the kind of game that sets out to be politically motivated as a primary attribute. It's part of the trappings. and You know, there are more interesting conversations to be had about this, but it's not that kind of game. And I think if it tried to be, it would be unfocused and it would hurt the whole. That being said, it is pretty obviously a representation of small town conservatism. 01:53:44.29 Rick um and how it has a negative impact on pretty much everybody's way of life. ah One of the things that I am not really a big fan of with this is there are a few um dialogue points where they meet this cult down in the mines and they are dressed in uh, cloaks and masks or cloaks and helmets. 01:54:07.38 Rick So they explicitly say, like, you know, they're inviting Mae and her crew to be a part of this because they're getting older. 01:54:13.86 Dave Yeah. 01:54:14.26 Rick They need people to carry this tradition on to protect possum springs. And they're saying, you know, we're not trying to kill you. Like, you're free to go now. Just, you know, think about joining. But, uh, remember, you don't know who we are, but we know who you are. 01:54:27.50 Rick And then Gregg says, echoes that sentiment a little bit later. He says, like, could be any one of them. I'm not the biggest fan of them representing this idea that anybody can be a conservative, and unless they're explicitly talking about it, you might not know. 01:54:45.22 Dave Hmm. 01:54:45.70 Rick I don't love that. um I think that is divisive in a way that's not helpful um to anything. and I just want to say this now. I have faith in your listeners, but this might be a first time listening for somebody. 01:55:00.17 Rick um if you're listening to this and you think you can pinpoint my politics or Dave's politics based on this snippet, you're wrong. You simply cannot. um I am not defending conservatism. It's simple as. 01:55:12.50 Rick But um i that's the one part of this that I wasn't a fan of. This idea that we've got to be careful because anybody could be part of this cult of conservatism and we might not ever know. 01:55:22.62 Dave Mm hmm. 01:55:25.52 Rick That felt a little weird to me. I don't like that. But what I do like about this is that it is a major, major contributor to this generational poverty that is destroying, ultimately destroying, these small towns. 01:55:45.36 Rick and this pervasive fear of the other, this pervasive fear of change, that I think is well represented and is part of why small towns like my own, in real life, are the way that they are. And it is not a boon, it is a soul-sucking virus ah that You know, in some ways a cult isn't is too nice to paint it as in some ways, but I don't know. 01:56:12.42 Dave Mm hmm. 01:56:14.34 Rick I'm getting a little bit unfocused here as I'm going on. So I want to give it back to you to save me, save me, Dave, save me from talking myself in circles. 01:56:23.75 Dave No, I agree with the base. I mean, I agree 100 percent with what you read of what this is. And, you know, they stop short of saying make Possum Springs great again, but it's not too hard to draw the parallel there. 01:56:35.73 Rick Right. 01:56:37.40 Dave um And the focus on like trying to recapture a past that you're looking at through rose tinted glasses, I think is part of it, too, or that they're looking at, not you personally. 01:56:51.67 Dave um 01:56:52.11 Rick yeah yeah 01:56:53.30 Dave The people are looking back on the past of the town, you know, the mining and then the factory where, yeah, people had jobs. But like, you know, there were fucking like union busters and stuff going around town as you go and you read in like those newspaper clippings. um throughout, there were disasters and people got hurt and there were riots. 01:57:14.89 Dave And it's not like this was this old, amazing, prosperous past that they're trying to get back, they just view it as better than what we have now. 01:57:18.09 Rick Yeah yeah. 01:57:24.39 Dave And, you know, they might make an argument that it was better in certain ways, but in some ways, it absolutely was not better. which we can then parallel to the real world for anyone who wants to say like, we should just be like America was in the 50s. And like, it was much better back then. You're like, was it? Was it really that much better back then? 01:57:45.46 Rick Right. The people saying that and the people within this cult, it was better for them. 01:57:49.32 Dave Yeah. 01:57:49.80 Rick But it was not better for Gregg and Angus. 01:57:51.77 Dave Yeah. 01:57:52.05 Rick It was not better for Mae or Bea. 01:57:53.95 Dave Exactly. 01:57:54.46 Rick It was not better for people who aren't just like them. 01:57:57.43 Dave Exactly. And that's like one of the things I liked about the way that they show, because this is ah this is a parallel to the real world where an older generation is fucking it up for the younger people and people who are trying to claw their way out of this. And you can imagine that if Mae and Gregg yeah and B, maybe not B, but Mae and Gregg 100% could be a future sacrifice to this cult because they are not contributing to society in the way that these people think that they should be. 01:58:31.18 Dave especially Mae, if she's having mental health struggles and she doesn't have a job and she's you know bleeding everything dry or whatever they view of it. 01:58:42.12 Rick Well, one of the cult members actively tries to make that happen at the end, like the group says, No, we're not trying to kill any of you. 01:58:48.08 Dave Yeah. 01:58:48.39 Rick But then as they're leaving that one in the mining helmet comes back up the elevator and tries to take me. 01:58:53.39 Dave Yeah. 01:58:53.84 Rick So yeah. 01:58:56.13 Dave I laughed because I just remembered that Gregg randomly had a crossbow when they went out in the mines and it reminded me of a brick in Anchorman. 01:59:02.05 Rick So 01:59:03.56 Dave Like he's got a grenade. 01:59:06.33 Rick Rick, where did you get a grenade? I don't know. Uh, if you do the hangouts with Gregg, it's you like him, you do a whole crossbow thing. 01:59:13.12 Rick He's like, yeah, I got a crossbow. 01:59:14.55 Dave Okay. 01:59:14.64 Rick So yeah, check, check offs crossbow, you know? 01:59:15.05 Dave Fair enough. It was very, there we go. Okay. So it was a very random thing. Like, you know, brick, where did you get a trident? You know, so I killed a guy with a crossbow. 01:59:25.81 Dave Um, I thought that was funny, but, uh, Oh yeah. 01:59:29.40 Rick What a great movie. 01:59:31.27 Dave Um, I, I really love, I love how like, and I was thinking about this. Do I love that it's an eldritch monster in a pit that it's presented to that they're feeding and that Mae talks to during a certain portion of this. So like in the game they're presenting it as as real but It's more interesting to me if you if you think of it the way that that Godzilla is used, where, sure, Godzilla's a monster, he's busting buildings, grabbing airplanes out of the sky or whatever, breathing the nuclear laser, whatever the fuck it's called. 02:00:11.67 Dave um But that's not what Godzilla represents in a lot of those movies. Godzilla is there as you know a figurative monster just as much as a real one. And if you look at it through this, just think of the Eldritch pitt as like you know the Pit, the pits of society that some of these characters could get shoved and kicked back down into every time they try to claw their way up. um I think that works for me just fine. It was kind of strange to me that this turned into a fantasy story. 02:00:48.44 Dave when it wasn't a fantasy story for a while, but then just thinking a little bit more like, okay, monsters represent things. It doesn't have to just be an Eldritch pit. It doesn't have to be a Sarlacc pit. It can be a figurative thing. 02:01:06.50 Rick right and you know thinking back to this idea of the universe is indifferent the universe does not care it's not the monster's fault here it is the actions of the cult and the people in the town that are directly responsible for 02:01:17.43 Dave Yeah. 02:01:21.81 Rick everything it's you know and to the cult members they would say well if if we didn't do that then the floods and the blizzard of 2010 and etc it's like yeah okay sure but you still have to shoulder the blame for everything that's going on as as you continue to want to keep things the same um now okay so we talked about the cult now so i want to jump back to what you would ask me before about the ending here's the reason why i love the ending 02:01:30.76 Dave Yeah. 02:01:40.27 Dave yeah Yeah, let's do it. 02:01:50.56 Rick So there's a diegetic reason and there is a critical analysis reason. So let's be diegetic first. So because it's quicker when they finish the end, they get out of the mine. There's a cave in. 02:02:02.35 Rick They kind of grapple with the fact, hey, we killed those guys. No, we didn't kill them. It was self-defense. We wouldn't have done it. And Angus is like, I would have done it. And that's like, hell yeah, Angus. 02:02:10.88 Dave Fuck yeah. 02:02:12.16 Rick But, um you know, they get out and ultimately the game ends with them coming to band practice and it's like, do you want to talk about it? No, no, let's just let's just play some songs and be done with it. And Angus will say like, OK, well, which song? And then the game ends. 02:02:29.96 Rick And I think actually, now that ah now that I'm saying that, I think depending on whether you hanged out with Greggor V, I think the ending can be slightly different because I'm almost positive my ending was, ah you know, I'm almost positive the last words from Mae were, what were we talking about again? 02:02:46.82 Rick And then it's credits. 02:02:48.53 Dave Hmm. 02:02:48.73 Rick So I think, but ultimately it's the same, right? They reconvene after this really traumatic week of events, seven days of events. and when positioned to talk about it and think about it more and try and cope they say not right now and then credits that's ultimately what happens. 02:03:08.32 Dave Yeah. 02:03:11.33 Rick Diegetically I think that makes all the sense in the world because they've just been you know we've been playing this across a couple weeks a little an hour here an hour there they've been doing this for seven days straight this is just their entire life so If they continue to talk about it, I think that would be very detrimental to their mental health. And I think it is another act of self-safety on their part to say, right now, I just need a sense of normalcy. We can talk about this in a little bit. 02:03:40.25 Dave Yeah. 02:03:40.93 Rick from an okay so From a critical analysis standpoint, think about what this cult represented. It represented conservatism and these small-town ideals of wanting to keep things the same, living in the past. It wants the past to be the present. We don't need to change. The future is out there. Right here is now. This town is now. And it always will be. 02:04:05.73 Rick what And they're offered that position. The cult says, hey, join us. you know We want you to join us to keep the past present. And at the end of everything, what they do is not dwell on it. They don't want to dwell on what happened. They're not living in the past by thinking about these events. They're saying right now, let's just move forward and play some songs. 02:04:28.73 Dave Mm hmm. 02:04:29.21 Rick Right now, we're not going to just continually think backwards. For this moment, we choose to move on. And that's the theme of the game. It's not living in this past. It's not being defined by the cult of Possum Springs, by the dissociative event on the softball field, by how you've treated your mom. 02:04:49.92 Rick It's moving forward. And I think that is thematically, completely appropriate. And you know I don't agree with the... you know There are some takes where it's like, well, they didn't learn anything and it doesn't fit into this form that I learned in Literature 101. And it's like, yeah, no, it doesn't. Because that's not how art works. It's just not. you know i don't Don't go trying to put square pegs into round holes. It doesn't work that way. 02:05:17.63 Rick um I don't know. This ending probably could have gone a couple of different ways and been perfectly fine. But this way of them saying, no, right now we just need a sense of normalcy. We need to protect ourselves and we will move forward away from this idea of making the past present. 02:05:32.75 Rick And by moving forward, we are not making the past the present. We are making the present the present. 02:05:37.98 Dave Mm hmm. 02:05:38.44 Rick I love it. I think it's great. 02:05:40.78 Dave You can see that theme of moving forward and not dwelling on the past with a lot of characters too. You can see it with Angus, with the way his worldview is and how he doesn't focus on what's happened to him in the past. ah You can see it with Mae as she is kind of moving on, um kind of like I phrased it earlier, she's turning a corner, I think is the best way that I can describe it. 02:06:08.37 Dave um and And other characters too, like her dad is moving on a path towards trying to unionize and make things better for the workers at his place of work. So I totally agree with your reading on why the characters chose to just have band practice right there and how it reinforces that theme of what the cultists were doing was wrong. 02:06:32.65 Dave to live in the past in this way and then we see it character here a character there character here and then our friend group in the moment to just say now we need some time just to you know play some music and like whomst among us has not had some real you know heavy shit come up in our lives and just say like Not now. I need to watch a movie, play a game, take a walk and listen to some music. I will process this shit later and that's what they do here. So yeah, I'm with you on that. 02:07:08.48 Rick I think the only thing, whenever I said at the very beginning that I didn't agree with this, I think what was ah coloring my perception was just the phrase, her friends, quote, blow off processing. 02:07:18.94 Rick That was the only real thing. I mean, I don't have, I'm not going to come here and say, no, you're wrong. Mae is actually perfectly resolved, actually, because no, that would be totally antithetical to this game. 02:07:30.12 Rick um I just don't, I don't view it as blowing off. That's really the only thing. So, 02:07:34.41 Dave Yeah, just just a word choice. Like they have the opportunity to talk through this and they just say not now, ah which, you know, depending on what words you pick that that's just what I meant there, not that they're never going to think about this again, or anything like that. And I like how the game ends right here. Like, 02:07:55.38 Dave I said earlier, I wanted more time at the end of the game, but I like the way that it ends, basically. I just think that once you learn that there's a cult and that there's a monster, and you go through that whole sequence and then you get to the end of the game, it's like... 02:08:10.49 Dave I don't know, an hour or less of gameplay? Like, I really think that section is too short. But I like what happens and where the characters end up and all of that. 02:08:20.89 Dave It's just, I could have used more time. um So yeah. 02:08:24.92 Rick Mm-hmm. 02:08:26.24 Dave ah 02:08:26.81 Rick Hey, speaking of more time, um do you know we haven't talked about the omniscient janitor? 02:08:32.71 Dave I was just gonna say, we haven't talked about that. 02:08:35.21 Rick Two hours. 02:08:35.65 Dave And um The one thing about the janitor that I did write down is that there is like, I think this is an incredible quote from the end of the game, where the janitor says, the big things don't teach you anything, but they make you something. And sometimes you have to wait a while to see what comes of it, which is kind of where I am, this is the lens through which I'm viewing where Mae is at the end of the game. I don't see her as, 02:09:05.97 Dave changed in a huge way. Like I said, she's turning a corner. We're not going to know the full effect and the full you know changes that this experience and all of these conversations and learning about her friends and her family and all of that. We're not going to know all that stuff for a while. Mae's not going to see those changes for a while. 02:09:26.61 Dave ah in the moment, you just take it day by day, and then you'll look back on it in time and be like, hu Okay, so that was how it changed me. 02:09:37.56 Rick I love this quote, too. I'm really glad that you wrote it down. um And, you know, there are two two avenues of thought that a lot of people go down, that there is no such thing as the present, because once the present is over, it is the past immediately. So there is no present, truly. Or, conversely, everything is the present, right? Because we are never anything except living in the moment. And what I love about this quote is it reinforces this idea of moving forward, because things don't teach you anything, but they make you something. 02:10:06.96 Rick It's not saying that you learned something. So now it's time to retroactively and retrospectively reflect on what you've learned backwards facing. 02:10:13.41 Dave Yeah. 02:10:15.06 Rick It's saying you need to live in it and you need to move forward and you will learn along the way. It is. It's in total support of this thematic messaging, right? 02:10:24.41 Dave Yeah, and this game doesn't end with the characters all having, you know, the end of a South Park episode where Stan goes, you know, guys, I learned something today. 02:10:32.45 Rick like something today Yeah, 02:10:33.31 Dave This game doesn't end with that. And it would be stupid for it to end that way. I think that if you've been paying attention to what's been going on, you can kind of infer the direction that these characters are going to move in and like what what the um at least the immediate future is gonna be like for them and the answer is aside from the fact that you know a dozen people died in town and like you know you you go around town you see one of the smelters fan guys is missing so you're like oh fuck that guy was in there um 02:11:07.04 Dave Mae's aunt. I think Mae's aunt was in the cult. ah maybe she wasn't there that night, but I think she was involved. Maybe we can talk about that. But the um like the point is, the immediate future, I don't think is going to be that different for these characters. Bee's going to go back to work. Gregg's going to go back to work. Angus is going to go back to work. And Mae is going to take some steps on the path of recovery and finding normalcy, whatever that means for her. 02:11:35.47 Dave But I love that this is how it ends in this kind of ambiguous way, but you already kind of know, I think. 02:11:43.14 Rick Yeah, it's not, it's not pretending because if the game ended with the cult being destroyed and immediately everything got better, what kind of message is that sending, right? 02:11:50.13 Dave Yeah. All the flowers bloom in Possum Springs and yeah. 02:11:53.10 Rick ah yeah it would it would diminish the entire uh it would diminish everything quite quite honestly um i yeah i i don't like when endings of anything any work of any kind try to hand hold you into like guiding you to the message this is keeping things open because it wants you know the the 02:12:01.51 Dave Yeah. 02:12:16.35 Rick The job of works of art like this is to make the listener or a reader, whatever player, a basket weaver, to make them think and reflect, right? Which, okay, yes, reflects. It's antithetical to the game's messaging. Ooh, we got you, Rick. maybe. Okay, sure. but it's the purpose of these works is to make us have conversations like we're doing right now. 02:12:41.17 Rick And that's why they matter because it's not about playing this game and saying, here's what Scott Benson and Bethany Hockenberry, um I always forget her last name. It's not about, here's what they think. 02:12:53.09 Rick It's about having, promoting this discussion and saying, is it the small town values that are causing this generational poverty? Let's talk about it and come to a conclusion together as people. 02:13:04.65 Rick um It's terrific. I feel like I'm hogging the mic from you. I apologize. 02:13:07.95 Dave No, it's your you're you are on the podcast because I wanted to talk about Night in the Woods with you. So that's what we're doing. um I agree with you. And the the fact that 02:13:21.19 Dave The fact that the game just kind of leaves you to take your own interpretations here and that it sparks such discussion around ah means it's successful if you know what it set out to do. I'm playing an RPG right now for the podcast . It's a fun game, but it has absolutely nothing to spark a conversation. I'm not even gonna do a spoiler section about it. There's nothing to it. 02:13:50.09 Dave And those types of games, like you can get something from it, you know, you can enjoy doing the combat or whatever, but it's not going to be nearly as interesting to do a podcast about. And that's the reason I'm doing the podcast is because I want to have these conversations. I want to work through these thoughts. And, you know, I've learned a lot about other ways to view this game through talking with you today and listening to other podcasts and reading discussions about it. And 02:14:18.97 Dave The fact that this game spins out all of these like complex discussions in so many directions means that it's, you know, absolutely worth experiencing. If anyone's listening to this and you didn't play it, you just don't give a shit about spoilers and you're still here, like play Night in the Woods. See what you take from it. ah See if you take something different from the two of us because I think we largely agree on what the game is trying to say in certain cases, but there's different ways that we viewed, you know, Mae's character and stuff like that along the way. That's the mark of good art. And that's like the type of game that I want to keep having conversations about on the show here. 02:15:01.54 Rick Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There are, you know, our interpretations say more about us than it does about really anything else. Because as we said, you view everything through the bias of your own lens. 02:15:13.73 Rick Nobody on Earth is totally unbiased. We cannot be. 02:15:16.21 Dave Yeah. 02:15:17.29 Rick And we shouldn't try to be. That's also why like this is, I'm sorry, this is a bit of a tangent. This is why like on the recent King of Games that we just recorded, it's like, ah Don't try to be unbiased whenever you're reviewing a game. 02:15:30.09 Rick Don't try to be Mr. Or Mrs. Or person objective. 02:15:33.03 Dave Yeah. 02:15:33.32 Rick It's boring. Lean into who you are. I want to hear why you like the game. And I think we did a good job of talking about it. 02:15:39.79 Dave Oh yeah. 02:15:40.17 Rick um I just want to say like this is a little bit totally um to the side of what we're talking about. 02:15:45.65 Dave Sure. 02:15:45.74 Rick I did all of Lori's and Mr. Chazikov's quote unquote hangouts this time and a plus. 02:15:51.23 Dave Okay. 02:15:53.34 Rick I love both of those characters so much. 02:15:55.08 Dave Okay. Uh, what did you like about them? Cause I don't know who you're talking about. 02:16:00.11 Rick oh Oh, okay. Mr. Chazakov is the Russian dude that is on the roof during the daytime looking at stars. 02:16:06.27 Dave Okay. I did talk to him, but didn't know you could hang out. 02:16:10.23 Rick Well, it's really just looking at stars like that's the hangout, ah but you can do it multiple times. 02:16:15.53 Dave Okay. 02:16:16.00 Rick And ah he'll just, you know, you look at the constellations and there's some like lore about the constellations that kind of ties into the game. And he'll just pose these philosophical questions to me. 02:16:26.52 Rick And when she's like, I don't get it, he'll go because Russian. That's really it and then Laurie is the little mouse that is really into horror. And, you know, she hangs out with me a little bit. 02:16:37.06 Dave Hmm. 02:16:37.36 Rick I just don't know. I like them a lot. 02:16:39.27 Dave Okay. Yeah. I missed both of those. Uh, the two other minor optional things is I hung out with Ruki who's very loud right now, but also, um, come on, Ruki. 02:16:52.42 Dave Uh, I hung out with Mae's mom at the church when you can just kind of ditch work for an afternoon and go take a walk, which I thought was really good. 02:17:00.28 Rick Oh, yeah. 02:17:01.41 Dave Um, just kind of like. 02:17:06.15 Dave Viewing through Mae's lens, anytime you learn something about your parents, who you like, I don't know that I feel like I know everything about my parents. That is completely false. in its ah it's a like I don't know why you would think that. They had you know full lives before you were born and probably didn't tell you. they've had full lives right now when you're not there. 02:17:28.20 Dave So Mae learns about her mom and likes the history of the town and stuff like that a little bit. That was a fun hangout that I thought was nice. And then I did the storyline with the pastor and the homeless guy behind the church. And I really liked that as something you mentioned earlier, this game's portrayal of religion and like the church will say, as more so than like the church is amazing or the church is evil. It's like there's nuance in there. 02:17:59.32 Rick I don't want to drag this out and talk all about that, but I love those hangouts. Bruce is one of my favorite characters in this game. um And one of the times where I thought Mae was at her most immature was when she was talking to Pastor Kay and they were talking about religion because Mae's Pastor Kay says something very profound. She says, you know, I don't know if there's a man up there, but that's not what religion is. Religion is about helping those around you and making them uh, making things around you and the people around you doing right by them and being a source of positivity and light and groundedness for the community. 02:18:33.12 Dave Yeah. 02:18:38.28 Rick That's religion. And Mae is like, Oh, so you're preaching every week and you don't even know, you don't believe in God. You're a phony. 02:18:43.87 Dave they 02:18:44.02 Rick And it's like this Christ. 02:18:45.89 Dave She's the college kid atheist on the lawn trying to convince people that God's not real. 02:18:50.42 Rick Yeah. 02:18:52.48 Rick Yeah, yeah, I've read that she's the lead of reddit like I've read Richard Dawkins and it's like, oh, come on and I'm not you know, I'm comfortable enough to say that I'm not Christian myself, but I love religion. 02:19:00.69 Dave Yeah. 02:19:07.40 Rick I think it's very fascinating and Mae's views on it. Oh, they're just so immature. And, um, you know, you said you did the whole thing with Bruce. What I love about that is, uh, and I, I think people miss this because I don't see this talked about, um, it strongly implied that Bruce dies by suicide and nobody talks about this. 02:19:27.39 Dave yeah he he yeah he kind like I'm not sure that that's what I took from it, but I took from it that he is turning down help because he doesn't want to be a burden on people. and I got the impression that he's going to die . It's going to be winter soon. He's going to die in the cold. That's what I thought. 02:19:51.42 Rick True. i and I mean, if he's willingly succumbing to the elements, I mean, that is a form of suicide, I suppose. But ah the reason that I thought that is because Mae will ask him about his daughter at one point because he says he has a daughter and she's like, oh, where is she now? 02:20:02.98 Dave Yeah. 02:20:06.19 Rick And he just won't answer. 02:20:06.53 Dave Hmm. 02:20:07.03 Rick He did. And then whenever he says, you know, I'm going home, ah when he tells me to tell Pastor Kay I'm leaving. Don't tell her until tomorrow though, not not tonight. 02:20:16.51 Dave Yeah. Yep. 02:20:18.07 Rick um Once he's gone, she can tell him. He says, I'm going to be with my family. I'm so excited. They're going to be waiting for me there. 02:20:24.78 Dave Yeah. 02:20:25.15 Rick And then he says something too. He says, we'll all see each other again soon. And when you tell Pastor Kay, like, oh yeah, Bruce left, which by the way, Mae doesn't even tell him, tell her that Bruce said, thank you. That was the one thing he asked and she just didn't do it. 02:20:36.60 Dave Mm hmm. 02:20:37.32 Rick Mae, but whenever she tells Pastor Kay, like, oh yeah, he left yesterday. Pastor Kay just says dot, dot, dot. And she's like, well, aren't you, aren't you, aren't you glad for him that he's going to see his daughter? 02:20:48.45 Dave Yeah. 02:20:48.78 Rick And she says, dot, dot, dot. Thank you for telling me. 02:20:50.30 Dave Yeah. 02:20:52.44 Rick I just think that's so clear, so clear that that happened. And I just don't ever see anybody talking about it. 02:20:58.82 Dave Yeah, I had, uh, it meant to bring it up. Um, I forgot to put it in the notes, but I'm glad we got to it. Um, yeah, I didn't, that wasn't the way I saw it, but not saying that that is wrong or that I'm right. 02:21:10.36 Dave Like maybe ah it is something that maybe I should have picked up on, but I definitely got the, like, he says he's going to go back to his family. I was like, that's not what's going to happen in reality. Uh, that's maybe he just told me that so that Mae would, you know, help pass along his story and help him, you know, get out of there. 02:21:21.77 Rick Yeah. 02:21:28.49 Dave um But what I liked about this too is that the the portrayal of the pastor is, um 02:21:37.12 Dave You know, There are a lot of people, um religious people who walk the walk and they legitimately try to help people. And that's what this pastor is doing. She is okay with making everybody else uncomfortable, a little bit slightly uncomfortable if it means that she can help Bruce and that she is legitimately trying to do the right thing. And we just, I i feel like maybe it's the media I consume, but I just feel like we don't have a lot of 02:22:08.61 Dave portrayals of characters like that. But there are people like that. And I really liked that, like, no, in fact, the pastor is not evil. The church in the town is probably helping people out a lot. 02:22:19.53 Dave And she's really trying to help this guy. 02:22:23.08 Rick Well, if this were a JRPG, the church would be bad, but it's not. 02:22:25.04 Dave but Yeah, you yeah, you would fight the church at the end. Yeah. 02:22:28.09 Rick yeah No, Pastor Kaye lives by her philosophy. She tells Mae this on their first meeting. Nobody said loving your neighbor was easy. 02:22:35.37 Dave Yeah. 02:22:37.08 Rick Love and goodness, love and goodness and virtue takes work. And she, like you said, walks the walk. 02:22:45.34 Dave Mm hmm. 02:22:46.35 Rick It's beautiful. I love it. 02:22:47.54 Dave Yeah. And I don't want to. 02:22:52.09 Dave I'm not going to assume you know the religious beliefs of the creators, but I would be very surprised if everybody involved in the production of this game fought super highly of the church. Just the way that you know other beliefs in the game are shown. um you know And if I'm wrong, then tell me I'm wrong. But I don't think I'm going out on a huge limb here. and then I guess the intelligence to know that there are people who are actually trying their best to do good with the position that they have you know in the town, the small town. people 02:23:29.40 Dave will at least hear the pastor out. The town council doesn't help her and her plan doesn't work because they push back too hard, I think. But um yeah, I just thought that this was really, really good. A good portrayal of somebody involved in something that is often negatively portrayed, but this is also what it's like out there sometimes. 02:23:53.84 Rick Yeah, Pastor Kay represents religious ideals, not organized religion. I think that's a good way to say it. 02:24:00.95 Dave That's a lot you, you said it in like six words and I, I had to take like three minutes to get there. So that's why you're here, man. 02:24:09.18 Rick I don't know about that. Jeez Louise. 02:24:11.51 Dave Well, um, is there anything else about, uh, about night in the woods here that we skipped over? Um, did you hang out with germ by the way? 02:24:22.01 Rick I, you know, like once or twice, you know, he's hanging around those drifters and he's like, yeah, I didn't know him. Um, I have a, so I have a feeling that I missed some germs hangouts. 02:24:34.56 Dave Yeah. 02:24:34.85 Rick I don't know why, but I feel like I did. 02:24:36.42 Dave Same here. That's, it's just something that's not going to be part of the conversation. Then I hear people say like, uh, I fucking love germ and I got to hang out with German. It was amazing. And I never really had the chance. 02:24:49.28 Dave So yeah. 02:24:51.04 Rick I love how socially awkward he is, you know? I love at the very end when, when he finds Mae after, after Mae climbs out of the well, which by the way is sort of like a being born again metaphor. 02:25:05.78 Rick Right. 02:25:05.88 Dave Mm. 02:25:06.78 Rick Uh, we're not going to go down that route, but when, when she sees him there, she's like, Oh, germ, thank you. Thank goodness. You're like, do you have rope? Because she wants to help get everybody out. And he's like, yeah. And then they just stand there and she's like, can you go get it? 02:25:19.58 Rick And then he's like, yeah, and then he cracks me up every time. 02:25:23.60 Dave Yeah, it's good stuff. so All right, well, there's a mystery. If anyone listening to German wants to let us know what that's all about, ah please do. And this would be a good way to say, um here's where we wrap this up and feel free to share any thoughts about it. You know the way we analyze this or and your own thoughts in the Discord server over the coming week. We'd really love to have more conversation about Night in the Woods because There's a lot going on here. It's really complex for a 12 hour game. This game has a lot to say, and there's a lot of ways that you can see what it has, but, um, I'm satisfied with the conversation here. Rick, thank you so much for, uh, again, taking quite a long time to come on here and go through this stuff with me. It's always a pleasure. 02:26:11.42 Rick Yeah, of course. I am always happy to come on down to ah the town of Possum Springs and talk about Night in the Woods and to come onto this podcast. I mean, I come as often as you'd like. 02:26:21.33 Dave Yeah, thank you. We're, we're running out of, um, we're running out of the games that like, I know we're in like your top five favorite games ever. So it would be interesting to see what the next game is, uh, that we have you on here, maybe Zeno saga. 02:26:39.06 Rick Oh God, don't do that to yourself. i don't I don't think that's a game that you would like very much to be honest. 02:26:44.52 Dave Okay, well, now it's happening. if We have put it out into the universe. So ah sometime in 2025, people can look forward to Xenosaga episode one. And well, if Rick says no, it'll be with someone else. Otherwise. 02:27:02.27 Dave But I am again, I really appreciate it, man. Every time I have one of these games with you know a ton going on in the story like this, Lisa the Painful, I know you're gonna bring the heat, ah which you did today. ah So again, I appreciate it and um can can't wait till the next one. 02:27:21.21 Rick Yeah, of course. Like I said, man, I'm happy to come on anytime. ah It's, you know, not everybody. You can't always choose who you're going to have great chemistry with. And I think we do. So I'm always happy to talk. 02:27:32.54 Dave Appreciate that and everybody else listening I first of all would encourage you once again as I'm taking us away as you listen to the music at the end of the episode to click around on what pixel project radio has in the archives and Find yourself some episodes to listen to perhaps if you want more night in the woods that is a great place to start because I remember that episode being fantastic and Rick and Ben have that that closeness to the setting, both of them, that ah led led to a really great conversation there. And how do I end the show? Yes, thank you for listening all the way to the end. You're my hero. And tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.