Im gonna keep this here for corrections and things discovered after the upload: - The "Lamia" in 2:42:02 is not actually a Lamia, but Louie from Pony Island. I mistook his voicefont for hopeless soul! This makes sense because of the gate, ticket, and More Friendly Content Mod. - Hubert in the premiere chat brilliantly pointed out that the third cipher part correlates to the login profiles of Pony island. 2734 = Hopeless, 666 = Lucifer, and S@d051= the corrupted profile. He pointed out that Sado and jeremiah being errors must link them somehow to the Iamerror aspect of the corrupted profile. - The floating image I refer to at 1:30:14 is the Phillips Test Image for TV broadcasting. - My color blindness reared its head, but many commenter have graciously pointed out that the pale green is scripted dialogue, or programmed, while the default faded color is whispered dialogue -Throughout this game and inscryption there is this heavy underwater theming. RUclipsr user Pixellate pointed out this may be a reference to "The Blue Hell" the vast blue sea of nothing when cliping through the bottom of a 3d game world. This is very key! -at 2:30:45 once you are outside, if you travel right, you can find a hologram of Catarina. talking with her, Rust will show some level of confusion, Catarina will say "You made it to the Six Pint, survivor" then, "Are you're sure you aren't seeing things Rust?" and finally "Check under your hood" before dissapearing. This foreshadows Rust being a victim to Reggie's "serum" or Mind Control - YT user Hye Roo noticed that at 4:56:29 when the Rootbeer Tender sign is obscured by the black glitch boxes, the only letters in full viewer are "ender" now I'm not sure if this is coincidence, perhaps this is just pointing us to where the name "endervale" comes from. Or perhaps its just a bit of a clue that Endervale is where Reginald went after being banished/forgotten. We do see his eyes floating at 1:31:06 and in one other spot in Endervale. -The faces of all the enemy NPC's have some resemblence to the Daniel Mullin's mascot, BUT what's interesting is Azazel's desktop Icon in Pony Island has a VERY similar face. -The BB was here message in Endervale may be referring to a character called, BitBuddy in one of Daniel Mullins many gamejam games. Ill add more to this as we discover more!!
One question, doesn't Wizarro's survival being determined by the player mean that at least that part of the Waste World segment wasn't faked by Reggie/Sado? Edit: I personally think Bandito7 is the real player who helped in the Hex ritual, after all, The Hex is a murder mystery and us being the suspect is silly, Reggie would have no one of being sure that we would finish the game. But Bandito7 has all the factors. He is invested enough in Lionel's work to play this strange game all the way through, and would care about the characters of the games. He'd also have a motive to allow the characters to get revenge. If Bandito7 was one of Lionel's first fans, he'd go from disappointed to spiteful at the lowering game qualities, and than vindictive when he got sued. We know he was one of the modders, maybe even the primary leaker of WasteWorld, Reggie's perfect pawn.
Probably entirely coincidental, given that Daniel Mullins is Canadian, but the test card pattern on the ground in Endervale looks like one that was used by the BBC at one point. I mention this because one of the most famous images they used was of a small girl playing noughts and crosses against a plush doll of a clown, which reminds me of the relationship between Sado and their creator, Carla. Might not be anything, I just thought it was neat and potentially added a bit of significance to the decision to include it.
You know what makes it even worse?: Reggie was made to look like a younger version of Lionel's grandfather, and as he visibly aged in the game we can infer he started looking like Lionel's grandpa about at the time of passing, so when we see the two realistic gloves choking Lion out in the end, we can deduce that what he saw was the furious face of is beloved grandfather.
That really sets how this entire game is a game about tragedy. Lionel never really forgot Reggie, regrets deleting him as a kid, and Irving destroyed the game so Lionel could never see him again, not until years later with a vengeance, born from Irving claiming "This is what Lionel wanted".
Keep in mind rust was happy, he liked his life loved his son and felt like his game was complete even though it wasn’t. Honestly extremely sad his story
Rust was content, until Sado and the mods showed him how tenuous his contentment could be. Sado definitely crossed a line, removing his son... But similarly, I still feel for Rust, going through the early stages of realizing he's been the star of his very own Truman show.
i think the most unrealistic part of this entire game is the idea that a moody, cynical, busty villainess elf wouldn’t be massively popular online. clearly daniel mullins hasn’t played dragon age
Hell, look at the ammount of people simping for Shadowheart and Minthara after BG3 came out (including me honestly). My man Daniel really needs to expand his horisons.
btw the 'rubber duckie' is a half joking, half serious insider amongst programmers. if you're stuck coding it helps to take a step back, take a rubber duckie and explain your code to the duck. in mullin's games it might be just a fun easter-egg or a motive for creators in over their head, who should take a step back and see the big picture of their creations.
I read about that on a post, and it came with one of my favorite anecdotes about how, in one class or office, people would get really frustrated after realizing how one piece of code that they took hours to try and figure out would actually have a super easy solution after talking to the duck, so they just started throwing those ducks across the room in anger! I believe the ducks were eventually taken away, and presumably replaced with something they couldn't throw, lol.
I honestly think Carla, being the competent programmer she is, just made significant use of that method, which is why she has a rubber duck at her desk, and ultimately why it is associated with her.
I have to say, Reggie is a victim, too. He was betrayed, and disabled, because Lionel was embarrassed at not being a prodigy, and Irving took that too far. He never knew that Irving acted on his own to break his spine. He thought Lionel wanted all of that. Sure, he went too far in his revenge plot, but it's an understandable descent into madness. I think GameFuna, with Irving as its main actor, manipulated everyone here expertly.
I cant help but notice a slight theme here.. Its always "his father, pure evil" but the actions of the son, are much, much worse. Not once do the creatuons try to do better than their creators, try to learn from their mistakes, or try to prove their own valor, or worthiness, instead, they simple dive deeper and deeper into sin, they turn spiteful, hateful, and when they create, its out of vengeance and wrath, to spite, and never to improve. I can feel no sympathy for the creations when they do far worse than the creators, and yet claim superiority, so I'll just say this... His father, pure evil The child? Ever worse.
To me it seems more like the children are traumatized by the sins of the father and never got any compassion, aid, or support - they just got thrown back into the meat grinder of beaurocracy with no care as to how they are doing or what they are going through. It's very hard to "do better, be better" with no healthy support system, no help, no evidence that there is another way or if that other way is even effective .
My main take away from this game is sadness. So many innocent creatures were killed over what. All because Game Funa manipulated a child. Because if he was 12 when he made super weasel kid and he was even younger when he made Reginald, then that means that he is less than 12 years old when he made this character that he loved in the image of his own grandfather. He wasn’t even trying to fully delete Reginald himself just the game and he was promised that the character would be saved. Instead of poor Reginal was told a hideous lie that his creator hated him and wanted him to be deformed and broken. He was beaten and his legs were taken away. What is creator would’ve never wanted that for him. He’s creator truly loved him. Even in the simulation of the devil killing God, the father getting killed by his creation. This stand in for God, still loved his first creation, is loyal creation. Almost as if it’s trying to tell us that the god of this universe still loves Lucifer too, if we’re following the parallel. But what happened to Lucifer to make him the way he does has turned him so evil that he would kill his own father and hurt others just for petty revenge. And that’s the reason he got thrown out in the first place, but that’s not true for Reginald. He was turned into this image for the second you’re a man of the devil himself.
A small thing, but I'd like to bring focus to the idea of Rust being unaware that he's a game character. It's subtly hinted at, but the implication is that original player characters do not gain full self awareness until their game is in a finished state. This is further evidenced by how, even after meeting Jeremiah, Rust and Rocky can't really comprehend the concept of mods or cheats, since they're unaware of anything outside their world. Further evidence of this is how Rust speaks in the Six Pint. His game was never finished, and as such, he's still stuck not truly knowing what he is.
Really? That doesn't seem to be the implication from characters like Lazarus. He was created entirely for the game, but because he was a party member and thus a playable character, he was sentient and aware for the entirety of the long and grueling playtesting process, which is why he's so tired of SoL by the end and willing to help Chandrelle destroy it, and this is evidence further by he and Chandrelle already having a rapport and a plan even during the game's first official liveplay.
This also makes a lot of sense if you're going with the theme of the characters forming the hex all have a beef or grudge with Lionel, whether deserved or not. Bandito7 was a loyal fan and following the logic of him being the player, plays every single one of Lionel's games and becoming ever more disenfranchised and disappointed each time (supported by the reviews they leave and participating in the live stream for Legendaria). Feeling betrayed, even, that their loyalty is taken for granted. And ultimately Bandito7 and the modding community does get hit with that Cease and Desist from Lionel himself. It makes perfect sense that Bandito7 would be the player that participates in this wild revenge plot and be 100% complicit even up to the point of putting their hand in for the hex ritual that seals Lionel's fate.
@@aditomasik5933True, but near the end Reggie mentions how now the player has played each of the characters’ stories. Bandito7 was part of their backstories and he was just playing through their flashbacks so he would’ve seen himself in the background. He was playing a flashback as the streamer playing Legendaria and wasn’t the actual streamer playing Legendaria. Then again, that’s just one possible explanation of the theory and there may be more holes.
With the "The Faceless"(?) card being an (I believe) pretty clear-cut reference to Carla (you walk in his footsteps yet get none of the praise etc etc) and the pretty solid theory that Bandito7 is Carla's alt account by another user, I think this checks out pretty well
Not sure if anyone pointed out yet, but I can give context to the pregnant guppy. There was a fish tank game called Insanaquarium. One special unkillable fish was named Preggo and would continually spawn regular guppies.
I watch it all the way and can't believe no one mention how Walk game session is so SO close to The Beginner's Guide. It's a story about game developer, game publisher, his friendship, and the fall out.
Think it could be similar in more ways than one? As in, like Davey Lionel is portraying more a character than his actual self in the game. A caricature based off of past beliefs and ego most likely but still an exaggerated act.
This is exactly what I was coming to say lol thank you. I was listening to that section at work and kept having flashbacks to the beginners guide and it’s narrative. Honestly, a lot of this game reminds me of it in a weird way. Rust’s whole story and game are similar to a lot of TBG (unfinished creations being taken and changed by fans; trying to make someone’s project more “palatable”; heck even taking an unfinished product and altering it without the creators consent/ knowledge because “you just want people to experience it”). I don’t think that any of it is actually intentional, more like simultaneous inception or whatever it’s called. They both had similar ideas at roughly the same time with roughly the same mechanism.
I did kinda of laugh when he said "Who wants to play an autobiographical game?" when that's exactly what the Beginner's Guide is framed as. A friend and I did something similar making a video about Skul the Hero Slayer. We failed to figure out that the Mummy Skul in that game was a wholesale "Metal Slug" reference until I played Metal Slug X in a Barcade, encountered the Mummy enemies, then had it all click. This was already after we released the video btw.
The fact that Moji Jr. was willing to do that without the facade is, disturbing as hell. The fact that one of his own kind is one of the corpses in the office once it drops. Imagine if that is his own mom. or well, as much as anyone is anyone else's parent in that digital realm.
Language is an organic, growing thing. We learn language every day, absorbing what is around us, from a young age. Even into adulthood, our language absorbs what is around us. This is how figures of speech or slang goes on to be widely used and understood. ...So when I was talking to my friend yesterday and said I was "getting floppy with it", and they just kinda looked at me for a moment, I knew a certain someone had made a rather notable impact on me and my general appreciation of narrative analysis.
I know this is old, but I wanted to add that often when we adopt new expressions, it's because those expressions better encapsulate, in the words or in the associations we connect to them, a very specific thing that we want to convey. I have had moments of real frustration when a specific piece of lexicon would perfectly describe something I was trying to relate to someone, but that person had no way of knowing that piece of lexicon, forcing me to come up with something they WOULD know about, which I felt to be incomplete. 'getting floppy with it' is one of those phrases that eloquently describes a very specific concept in a way that would be ineffable otherwise.
@@purplecat4977 Golly, it makes me happy to see someone who appreciates the beauty of language and communication and is able to articulate the intricacies of expression. Relating ideas to others is a complex experience I never get tired of exploring. The human mind is truly a miraculous thing.
In Endervale the phrase, "I'm crying 0s and hearing 1s" Could be a reference to what 0s and 1s mean in coding. At its simplest, 0 means "off" and 1 means "on". So it could also be interpreted as, "I'm crying 'off off off', and I'm hearing 'on on on'."
I was thinking more 0 means false or no and 1 means true or yes. so it becomes "im crying no, no, no and im hearing yes yes yes" like someone being forced to do something or being done something to.
@@duartelopes5066in that line i feel that I'm criying false but I'm hearing true has a Lot of thematical punch ,as a way to think of they were Made out of Spite for Carla as a false but the devil in This case keeps saying that's true so as i cry in 0s, I keep hearing 1s.
It just hit me. If walkman is Reggie, and is in the game walk, and it ends showing Reggie being robbed of his ability to walk. Could that not also tie into his potential motivation? Even if it can't, it's another beautiful artist touch for the game Walk to end with the person who walkman represents losing his ability to walk
I just want to mention a funky parallel- In the decoding of the locket, instead of "Lionel" and "Carla" it's just the initials L and C. Now, i was confused for a hot sec because I correlated the initial to Chandrelle and Lazarus Maybe I'm just getting floppy with this but I think there are some major similarities between the L and C duos! Chand is fighting to be free of this game while Lazarus tags along but is a bit hesitant; much like how Carla wants to test the limits of Gameworks and Lionel is reluctant but ultimately agrees to it! And the way the locket even comes out?? Chand fishing up one half and Lazarus fishing up the other? Lionel's game holding part of a secret and Carla's game holding the other?? My brain squirrels are runnin,,
So, Im thinking about Bandito. They were giving hints in chat during Legendaria, which is meant to be it's first livestream. No one, besides the devs should know all this yet. Then, in Waste Bandito's mods worked flawlessly, as if they knew how Lionel coded so already knew how to get in, and that the Aliens would make him mad. During walk Lionel even comments on disliking scifi games. This makes me think, Bandito is probably Carla's alt account. As a kid making a second account to leave a nice comment on her friend's game. On stream getting mad that Lionel hadn't let her go as far as she wanted with Legendaria. Then modding one of Lionel's games with something that he knew he wouldn't like, but Carla thought would be fun. Bandito's flip from someone supporting Lionel to messing with him just lines up very nicely with Carl's story to me.
Could also parallel Carla's creation of sado. with the idea that a creators intent affects the creation, then Carla wanting to mess with Lionel resulted in an ultimate trickster.
the hex is daniel mullins ignored middle child for the most part, which had always made me so sad bc i found that its story and critique on the gaming industry was so interesting, and i had a good time with it. im so glad that you got floppy with it and not only did a thorough breakdown of it, but even went above the bar and discovered all the secrets and details that i missed my first three playthroughs. i wish for your channels success, but hopefully without having to sell your soul to the demon known as youtube.
Yeah, the story and critique is fantastic, and a lot of the weird gameplay mechanics that come up later are really cool. The problem I think is that the core gameplay of each section doesn't quite feel fully developed and is pretty janky, while it kinda works to the games favor in Waste World it feels incredibly wrong in other parts, like motorcycle button in Legendaria and the jumping in SWK. I also just kinda wish there was even more of the weird genre-merging, the switch to melee for the last fight of Legendaria is baffling in a great way, the compression-decompression mechanic for the second half of Galaxy was really cool and the programming puzzles directly affecting gameplay bit of Walk felt like it barely scratched the surface of its own complexities. After seeing Daniel Mullins go incredibly hard with the mechanics of Inscryption I almost want to see a remaster of The Hex that improves upon all of the meta-games with what hes learned, but I also just can't wait to see what he releases next since each game just gets better than the last. Edit: apparently I’m prescient since literally two days after I posted this the next Daniel Mullins project is getting teased in the form of Gamefuna’s new assistant(?) AdBot on the Mullins discord.
i’ve heard of inscryption and pony island for years but watching this video was my first time ever hearing of the hex, and i definitely regret not looking into it on my own after doing so with pony island and inscryption
Each minigame feels underdeveloped. The only times it feels like it’s almost living up to its full potential is Wasteworld where the jank feels intended and those rare moments where the genres bleed into each other like the Irving fight in Secrets of Legendaria or the second half of Brutal Galaxy 2.
5:12:05 I always thought the theming of water in Inscryption and the fishing mini games, was a reference to the concept of the Blue Hell. Its a term to describe the common occurrence of an endless ocean underneath the open world map. You can only access the Blue Hell by glitching the game, like clipping through the ground.
WHAT?! that's brilliant! I think you nailed the theme that's been vexing me! Thank you! I've added your addition to the pinned comment, I think this is going to be major.
Some other thoughts I had: Sado = Soda (root beer) as well as Dosa which you mentioned. Sado is like a "dark Carla", she's a product of using Gameworks to it's fullest potential, and if Gameworks is a satanic version of God's ability to create life....then it's implied that she IS alive. Or so advanced in AI that she may as well be. Carla is implied to be a much stronger dev than Lionel. Root beer = "root" of all evil, being the first game that ultimately led to all of this for Lionel. I think it's not an accident that root beer has such a huge place in this story, a story about the origins of Satan's hatred for God. Jeremiah (meaning "The Lord Exalts") being Jay the janitor from Chandrelle's game, fused with the Gameworks base assets seems to imply something. I'm not sure what exactly. In some ways it seems like Jeremiah is a truer evil than Reginald. A corrupting force. A virus? Biblically, Jeremiah was a powerful prophet and follower of God. A vessel. This Jeremiah ALSO seems to be a vessel, but it's inverted. Idk I have the flu. Time to rewatch this video in bed even though I just finished it.
"I'm having a blast and I hope you are as well." I feel like this perfectly sums up why I love watching your videos. Of course it helps pass time at work but because you're so invested and actually having fun, it's very noticeable and has always kept me engaged personally. I am very eager to dive into this rabbit hole more. Thank you for your hard work
I always took the faded/greyed text to mean a character was whispering while the green text meant a character was sticking to their script. So I always took the characters who spoke faded text as less sticking to a script in all their appearances and more just whispering (Jeremiah always whispering because he is a shadowy figure wearing a big cloak acting in the shadows). While the idea of it being scripted dialogue is neat (and slightly backed up by Captain Barnay (who I just assume is speaking his scripted dialogue in a dying/injured whisper and the whisper takes precedence over the script)) I just think it's a bit too floppy for me personally. ALSO I assume the reason Lazarus agrees to revenge on Lionel is because even though being sent to Vicious Galaxy was a Gameworks decision, it was done BY Irving. And within the game world at least Irving appears to be a willing servant OF Lionel and acting on his orders. So at least as far as the game world is concerned it LOOKS like Lionel himself told Irving to put Lazarus in Vicious Galaxy (not sure if he ACTUALLY did but it's at least a reasonable enough assumption about why Lazarus agrees). That said another great video!
Oooh good catch I must have not noticed the difference between grey and green text perhaps because of the background color of the text bubbles. Colors are definitely my weak spot! Thanks for this!
Irving is definitely acting on his own accord. Lionel never asked Irving to cripple Reggie and would probably be horrified to learn Irving did that. Irving even lied to Lionel about reusing Reggie.
@@polocatfan Yeah absolutely. I meant that he at least always says that he does shit on behalf of Lionel ("Lionel Wants This") and as far as the in game characters can see he has physical conversations with Lionel. While Lionel didn't tell him "HEY GET LAZARUS INTO HIS OWN GAME", the fact that the guy who did it was someone who openly says the awful shit he does is on Lionel's behalf makes it easy for a game character (who may not fully understand that Lionel can't control the gameworks and ISN'T actually giving Irving his orders) that the awful shit Irving does is on Lionel's explicit orders (incorrectly). And that is why Lazarus (despite his issues being with Gameworks) is willing to target Lionel. Could have explained a bit better in original comment
On the blacksmith and the artifact... Jeremiah gets the blacksmith to make the artifact, but Irving (GameWorks) steals it away and locks it within their facility. Jeremiah finds the blacksmith that "failed" to give him the artifact, but was still successful in creating the artifact, ultimately. The story doesn't give any other alternate origins for the artifact itself. Furthermore, how did Jeremiah even know where the artifact was being held? That was probably the last thing the blacksmith was able to tell him. If this is what happened, Jeremiah is a cold hearted son of a bitch.
Honestly- I gotta say that probably the most raw + sad scene that I just- keep coming back to ever since I saw it was when Irvin came to tell Reggie to "close up shop"... it's so perfectly haunting with both the music AND visuals.. especially when Irvin just- wouldn't stop stomping on Reggie's legs... and then the voice acting you did- Reggie's muffled anger and laugh- it added even more to the scene for me and I just can't stop watching- So glad I've started watching your channel AND have now been ( technically re-introduced because I once watched a slight bit of a Pony Island Let's Play ) introduced to the beautiful, terrifying and genius games that are Daniel Mullin's masterpieces- CAN'T WAIT- for your analysis on Inscryption!!!
One thing I noticed, the duplicating items in Secrets of Legendaria is another MissingNo reference. In Pokémon RBGY, MissingNo would give you 128 more of the 6th item in your inventory.
Found your channel via Who's Lila, watched almost everything now. I think one of my favorite things about your videos are how you show your genuine excitement when you reach an "Ah-ha" moment on-camera. You don't cut it out and feign that you always knew everything. The excitement is infectious.
This is a great video, well done again Flaw! A couple things I wanted to theorize about. First, is that the “AI” that Gameworks uses is in reality the released souls freed from Pony Island. Game devs might make a character, a body, but one of those freed souls will fill it in some way, giving it sentience. And it’s important that they are taken from Pony Island, from Lucifer. Because the “error” characters including Jeremiah, Sado, and Missingno. have the souls of daemons in them. And all of the errors are associated with Pony Island/Satan. The Super Weasel Kid error was made soon after the “deal with the devil” after Lionel sold the IP to Satan. The Secrets of Legendaria error was Asmodeus in the body of MISSINGNO. And of course the Walk error is 666. I’m not sure exactly which daemon inhabits Jeremiah, but it’s possible it might be Buer. It makes some sense given the soda machine radios describe Jeremiah as a nobody, since he was originally intended to be nothing but a fodder enemy, but finally gets to have some fun. But this is admittedly a stretch and me being flawpea. But more importantly, Sado specifically is Baphomet. There are a couple reasons I think this. One is that in the Corrupted profile in Pony Island, the image of Baphomet’s left eye is highlighted and follows you even after closing the profile. This is like how Sado’s left eye is the only one that shows and also follows you, flicking from the other character to the player. Baphomet is also the only daemon that is able to show Theodore VISIONS. And given how Sado’s whole schtick is mind effery by showing people visions, the connection is very clear. Yes, Carla made the character Sado for Combat Arena X, but it’s the soul of Baphomet that was put into the character. Baphomet is commonly depicted with a pentagram on his forehead, which is the same symbol pinned next to Carla’s work desk, so perhaps his soul was drawn more towards Sado. This is why Jeremiah would be so adamant about freeing Sado, as they’re a fellow daemon wanting to break free.
At 1:30:19 you talk about the rotating screen in the back. It's a test card. Back in the day television stations used those to let the end user calibrate their screens, or for the stations to troubleshoot the signal path. It was also used when the signal was active but they didn't have anything to broadcast. So like a paus screen inbetween actual content, or for when the daily broadcast was over. Which I guess fits the afterlife theory. And yes, I saw the other comments about this. I just wanted to add some more context to it :)
I just want to say I love love LOVE your almost paradoxical attitude to "overanalysis". You always seem able to take your ideas seriously enough to delve deeply and get to some interesting places but also having enough humility and playfulness to recognise the exercise for what it is and keep it light. It's is a balance not many people on this platform manage to strike, so many either seem to be afraid to get that creative or rigidly take their interpretations as facts. Amazing work as always ❤
in the moment i public this i dont finished the video yet, but i wanna said: i know maybe i am overthinking, but i love how lionel calls "Walk" his "magnum opus", his "greatest creation", and in the end "Walk" is a game about himself, about Lionel. I love how egocentric this man is. Btw, amazing video, naturally.
1:03:27 A small note, I went through and checked what the names of each of the fighers are in Combat Arena X's montage sequence. Basically I just checked what Daniel Mullins called the fighter objects and code and so on. Interestingly, Bhakto is called "Mi Singh" internally, probably a reference to the Missingno on his shirt. The first montage fighter is not actually Bhakto, he just shares the same icon on his forehead. Internally this character is just called "Fat Guy". The "Alien" you fight next is called "Gills", and is probably meant to be some sort of fish-person. The ninja is called Shinobee, and you don't even need to datamine to see that, her name appears on a leaderboard later in the montage. The guy with a skull on his face is called... Skullface, which is unsurprising. The Crusader is just called 'Crusader', which is disappointing, I was hoping for a Pony Island reference name. Skipping forward to the end, the Angel is just called "Angel". Nothing crazy, but a few fun little details.
Considering I wanna make a game some day, that WALK run through was interesting to sit through. And I do feel bad for Lionel. His own creations were tricked into killing him. And unfortunately, I have a feeling his soul is now trapped in Gameworks :(
Recognised a couple of lyric references in the game, not sure if someone's mentioned them already but just in case: "I wish I was more like the Übermensch, I wish my fears didn't have such a (putrid stench)" - Folk-Metaphysics by Scallops Hotel, "Crying zeros and I'm hearing 111" - In Cold Blood by alt-J. Maybe the rest of the lyrics have more significance? Or maybe he just digs those songs. Fantastic video as always btw
2:44:44 I’m not sure if I’m on the right path here, but the patches on Wizzaro’s and Jeremiah’s chests seem like an allegory for “patching” themselves into the game files of the worlds they’re entering. Since they’re game characters, they have a source code that needs to exist for them to be a recognizable entity within the game, allowing them to be subject to its rules and scenarios. The “patches” in my mind work a little like data packages that inject their own source code into the game as long as it’s situated. The location of the patch could also be indicative of its nature as well, as source code is kinda like an entity’s “heart”, so to speak. These are just my surface thoughts and rambling ideas on seeing those, though!
4:12:31 Absolutely insane seeing "Panda Panda Panda... circus circus since we just got that Pony Island 2: Panda Circus reveal. Daniel Mullins is a mad man.
I mean Panda Circus was teased in the first Pony Island game, so it's not that shocking if you knew (I only know this from watching Peacock's vids so the Pony Island 2 reveal shocked me lmao)
the point you made at 5:26:20 kinda reminds me of my relationship with my brother. I've never been great at people skills, but I have always been a numbers kinda person, and Raymond has always been a people's person, hell I remember in highschool we crushed every fund raiser record for all our clubs because I mathed out the most efficient route across the school to both meet the most amount of kids who hadn't been to lunch period yet (so that they were hungry and still had money for lunch), and my brother could sell anyone anything if you started talking to him, he just has that kind of charismatic vibe to him, so we sold hundreds of whatever they gave us, chocolate bars, candy, cookies, gift cards, and it would be me who planned out the ways to get product to people, math out how much we could and should have at any point, and I even made spreadsheets to look at trends, and my brother just sold and sold and sold. We have always talked about going into a business with each other, and I hope when he gets out of the navy in 6 months we can look into it. Honestly sorry for the rant, just miss my brother, and got caught up in memories
With how thorough, patient, and genuine you are while dissecting these complex stories and puzzles, it has me hoping you'll tackle the Cube Escape/Rusty Lake series at some point. The fandom has been trying to make sense of that story for ages. Maybe that's just because it's not totally complete yet, or maybe it's because it's something that was never meant to be made perfect sense of. Either way, it's got a lot of themes and inspirations I'm pretty sure you would love.
@@flawedpeacock AWESOME, I love that series! There are so many repeating motifs and nods to other media/mythologies that it should be a fun one to explore!
i love the rusty lake games and i’ve always been disappointed in the lack of attention it has, let alone analysis (on youtube at least). i’m thrilled to know it’s on the list and that i’ll have a floppy analysis of the game to look forward to filling that void
If The Hex is this long, I don't think I'm mentally prepared for Inscryption, and I played that game to the point where I called out "sick" from work about three times
Honestly, the more we learn the more it feels like Irving was the ultimate villain all along. Which ironically *does* make the scene where he gets shot the most satisfying part of the game for me as asked by Reginald xD
Dropping “fartasspoopoobutt” and “this is when walkman became heisenberg” within two minutes of each other is diabolical 😭 i have never laughed at a video so hard before
Oh shit that last skit. I’d be so into a fear & hunger discussion. I was gonna bring it up in the live chat earlier but of course he was already familiar with the series! I’m excited for everything floppy
I could barely contain myself when I saw your delay post yesterday. I've been so excited for this to come out. You are by far the best content creator to come up in the last year. Between length of video, upload frequency, and quality of production from day one, you are in a league of your own.
4:12:11 Now "my next game is inscryption" is crazy and all, but with the announcment of pony island 2 "panda circus" the message a little below it is even more insane!
i just want to thank you again so much for the jumpscare warnings and the way you dull down the sounds they make! i only just finished this video (despite being here during the start of its premiere) 'cause i struggle with consuming horror even though it's my favourite genre of video games, your warnings have helped soothe it over quite a bit you're currently my favourite creator and i can't wait for the release of the inscription videos!!
So happy to see you kept the tarot characters and the detective and everything. It's a brilliant idea to keep each persona you create through each video. Keep up the excellent work! I wonder what this video will produce as I do "the thing" again :)
Cant wait to listen to this at work. your content makes the long shifts bareable should have just enough time to rewatch poney Island to reinvigorate the concepts in my brain. Keep up the good work!
Getting a tease for that game lineup was a fantastic way to cap off the end of the video! Super excited for all of these, but especially Inscryption, Disco Elysium, and Fear and Hunger.
Blindly stumbling across The Hex after playing inscryption with no idea of the ARG and wanting more, then ending the game with this feeling that I was missing something... and finally stumbling again across the steam forum pages leading me down the breadcrumb trail that ended with Beneath the Surface is one of the most spine-chilling and memorable experiences I have ever had in gaming. And to think, I had really only barely scratched the rabbit hole. Months and months later I find this video, watch the entire thing in one long sitting and feel like I got to go on this entire journey all over again. Thank you for this masterpiece, thank you Dan Mullins for such a brilliant piece of art, and thank you to the community for putting all the work in to piece this together. You have made this ARG so much more interesting than I initially thought, and after being a little disappointed in the "end result" of Inscryption's ARG... I am so looking forward to watching your videos on it next and hopefully being pleasantly surprised yet again.
honestly the fact that beneath the surface was out for so long is amzing, i saw the 'ever pregnant guppy' and immediately had flashbacks to watching other people on youtube play it
oh i just made myself sad but honestly, the idea that in the walking sim he meant to add a section to talk abt rootbeer reggie which was seemingly cut from development is terribly sad. even moreso if u think about it in the fact that he hands it over to carla, someone he's ruined a friendship with but desperately wants her to hold onto something of him, only for sado to basically step in and use it as a means to break free. frankly you could even see it, if u wished to think abt it too hard, that either sado or carla may have a direct connection to lionel's eventually death at the end of the game. if carla had decided to bug him to just put it into the game, or if sado hadn't just used it as a stepping stone, reggie may have been able to see that lionel [even if by a tiny margin] still cared about him
1:28:00 these are lyrics from the song In Cold Blood by Alt-J, which goes “0111, 0011, crying 0s and i’m hearing 111”. if extra binary is needed, it could be the proceeding phrase from this song. if you want to make a very big reach, the song is about someone turning up dead at a pool party, which could link to the death/water motifs
"I wish I was more like the ubermensch/I wish my fears didn't have such a putrid stench" is a line from the song folk metaphysics by Milo idk how that fits in but yeah
I legitimately didn't realize until about halfway through the pony Island video that it was Flaw Peacock doing the voice work and not in-game. It was just so charming and the voices always suit the characters so well!
4:08:28 "I'm having a blast, I hope you are as well" Brother, I'm four hours into your breakdown of a game despite the fact I've never played it, I'm having a fantastic time
So excited to see another addition to the mullins universe! Been bummed out theres a scarcity of hex videos on RUclips but now we get a high quality Flaw Peacock video!!! Cant wait ❤
Fantastic video! The Hex has always been one of those mysterious games where a lot of the deep secrets were only documented on Steam discussion threads. It's nice to see all of it in one massive video. Awesome work!
So i just started this video after Lila and a bunch of others. Dude you got something good here and you put off "chill stoner uncle who knows way too much about essoteric topics" vibes and damn does it keep me hooked. No notes from this comment, keep sane and ill be eagerly awaiting more content while rewatching your old stuff.
Some video game essayists only repeat the story of the game while others only analyze it's themes, I think I really like FlawP's videos because he takes you along on the story so you're not lost but still examines the things outside of what the average player will usually retain. not only that, he also does this with an extremely concise and clear manner of presentation so we're not bored or feeling like our time is being wasted.
Very small thing about the sado lives stuff, before the post credits scene. In the ending ritual, the top right corner has both Jeremiah and a small spider that comes out during the ritual. The spider dissapears when the hex flashes, but before Reggie finishes it. If the spider is supposed to be sado, this is the moment she gets out. You can see her start coming into view around when reggie says "and i do hope..."
II just got to the part where you talk about your voice acting for the video and I must say as a voice actor myself I think you did a good job! It may not be award winning but you made each voice distinctive and consistent. Give yourself more credit, you committed to the bit on top of also making this entire video essay. Well done, very floppy.
Flaw Peacock will be the next huge channel in gaming lore and story analysis. Mark my words. Watching the new intro reminded me of The Game Theorists old intro and how Matpat also started as a small, independent creator. In the future, maybe we’ll see Flaw Peacock in a Hollywood movie. We’ll keep Flaw Peacock in mind, heart and will always support you.
I wonder if Reggie would be a representation of a user profile with registry access. All the references to Root Beer could be alluding to the Root Folder of the operating system. Also, in the Endervale section the pattern on the floor that you couldn't identify was a test pattern for calibrating a CRT monitor (such as the type they used to broadcast after television turned off for the night back in the day). The various black and white lines and blocks of colour exist to be a means of identifying interference as the user calibrates the tuning of the set and adjusts the brightness and contrast to get the optimal image quality with the least amount of interference and distortion possible. Given what we learn about how far back the meta narrative goes it's entirely possible that this calibration image could have been integrated into the data decades before the point of these games being developed. EDIT: I just checked and Daniel Mullins is Canadian, so this may not mean anything, but it very strongly resembles one of the cards used by the BBC in the UK. Amongst the series of images they used, one of them is of a small girl playing a game of noughts and crosses on a blackboard against a small plush doll of a clown. It's most likely a coincidence, but it does seem to parallel the relationship between Sado and their creator, Carla.
That Funger Battle Start sound at the end triggered my PTGD (Post Traumatic Game Disorder) Literally made me shout NOOO in the middle of doing commissions
I was a blast seeing this live! All the brainstorming and revelations we achived was truly something I will forever keep as the highlight of my life haha :D
cannot wait to watch, its been crazy seeing your growth as a youtuber so far and its awesome! cant wait for the 3+ hour long inevitable inscryption analysis
I found out about your channel through your Who's Lila interpretation and I AM IRREVERSIBLY HOOKED. Your style of making in-depth analysis videos keeps me glued in a way I have NEVER experienced before, and I love every minute of them. So long as you keep making these lengthy videos, I will continue to consume them with a consistency and ferocity previously unachievable by man
Ive watched this a million times and figured id add possible reference I noticed. Carlas dev handle is ""Carla51". This is similar to "Suda51" the mad man responsible for Fatal Frame and No More Heroes. Something floppy ive been kicking around is that "Sado" is also similar to "Suda" and her general "horror" aesthetic could be a call back to Suda51 having developed horror games. But these are quite certainly coincidences. Edit: I guess another fun hypothetical connection is that Suda developed "No More Heroes" and Chandrelle chose to be a villain instead of a hero to free herself of Legendaria.
Her criticism of Lionel might also be a reference to how Suda clashed heavily with John Riccitello of EA, with John dampening Suda’s creative visions (notably in Shadows of the damned) Except in Hex’s case, Lionel was quite literally corrupted by Lucifer to get to that level of pride.
I cannot get over how amazing you are at these dissections. I have always struggled to watch RUclips videos longer than an hour, but yours keep me hooked to my screen the entire way through! The "Who's Lila" video was my favorite, but this is definitely a contender now. Amazingly well done as always!!
i dont rlly ever leave comments but i love the way you structure your analyses; the skits to convey the evolution of themes (especially in whos lila) and information you have to obtain retroactively. i think most video essayists struggle with games like these that force you to double back and make sure you remember exactly what piece fits where, and when to place it in the overall lecture, so your skits not only create a portal (topical) for you to drop context where it comes up, but also break up the pacing and really set you apart from other video essayists. especially when you jump ahead a bit, i think most people are too worried about jumping the gun or “spoiling” the explanation if they dont completely feign ignorance, but it makes me feel like im in a real conversation instead of just listening to a lecture. tl;dr u have a fantastic narrative/video style pls make new merch ty
Hey! I asked around in the discord for you and here's what I was told for the chewing gum text "Sorry that this is way late- but whenever you go to a shop, and in Chandrelle's section, you found the message in a bottle and duplicated it using Carla's computer, then the text will change!"
Aw FP!! I love all the fanart shoutouts, thanks for telling us where to find the artists as well! You're 100% worthy of the love and support, and tbh if you got a "keep this shit in mind" merch design I'd unironically wear that to class (I'm unsure if there'd be a good way to split the proceeds 50/50 with an artist, but I love the idea of taking some of these early fanarts and making them into merch and allowing profits to split between creator and artist.) Thanks for being a huge reason I fell back in love with horror media!! You, Pastra, and Wendigoon are responsible for my ass considering writing an analog horror series.
Very excited. The hex has the most overt references to the overarching story of the Mullins series and I am absolutely fascinated by what you make of it.
I cannot express how much I love your game interpretations. They remind me so much of actually sitting with a friend and talking seriously about the symbolism and motifs brought up by a piece of art and trying to solve it together, though this is just a one-sided conversation. Sometimes when I watch videos explaining video game meanings/lore, I feel like I'm in a lecture being told the secret true story that I missed, but on your channel, I really feel as though your attentions to detail and putting together of the puzzle pieces is to enrich the story, because it makes it more fun and interesting to engage with. It really reminds me how much I love media analysis, and I'm so happy to see games that put in the work to tell interesting stories being given equal work by people trying to analyze them! I'm deeply looking foward to your video on Inscryption!
@flawpeacock following my prior post about the song quote for folk-metaphysics, there is another song reference that no one seems to see: at 1:28:02, "crying zeros and I'm hearing 1-1-1's" is a lyric from the song In Cold Blood by alt-J. You can also see the lyric "0-1-1-1-0-0-1-1" from the same song at 1:27:16. From the rest of the lyrics it seems to be related to Carla, and implies she killed someone who fell in a pool and sank "beneath the surface", "where we belong." folk-metaphysics is very cleary related to lionel.
Glad you got to cover this! I don't really have much to add, outside of the Hex having a special place in my heart, because, when it comes to "meta games", I used to joke that I wanted a game like this where the characters literally come out of the screen, and well... But yeah, excellent work! I predict this will be the definitive video on the topic!
Chandrelle behaves like an abused employee, desperate to escape. In this section we have our attention drawn to the most obvious form of sexism from Lionel, but Lionel essentially buying Carla’s future with an oversized salary, and his inability to accept her development ideas says a lot about what kind of guy he was.
On the other hand, Carla created Sado of her own volition when they were still on good terms, which strongly implies she's far from innocent in this whole business. GameFuna was likely working to turn her and Lionel against each other.
@@FelisImpurrator making a female villain character is not something I would use as a measure of her innocence, it’s her job to make video game characters and women are 49% of all people. I am intrigued at the idea of gamefuna turned them against each other, though it really doesn’t seem like Lionel needed any help abusing his power
@@Echosinfireify That's not the point. The point is that Sado's creation was noted to be "very intentional" and also involved a Satanic summoning ritual with the pentagram. It's not about merely creating female characters, it's about creating Sado, who is functionally a malevolent, demonic computer virus that subsequently infected every single game Lionel made and is one of the main antagonists of the entire Mullinsverse. If Katarina is correct, then Carla made her the way she is on purpose, which implies she didn't exactly have the best motives, OR that GameFuna (i.e., Lucifer and his demons) tricked her into making Sado that way as some kind of programming flex. How I think it went down is that, behind the scenes, Irving sneakily attempted to appeal to Carla's own ego as a skilled programmer, tempting (note the Biblical aspect) her to push Gameworks to the breaking point and inadvertently summoning one of the great demons into Sado (someone else said Baphomet, and that is likely). Hence the pentagram. GameFuna's contracts involve selling at least part of one's soul to the company, and it's likely that Lionel and Carla were both tempted or tricked into doing so by Irving, which would explain their shifts toward being more egotistical and belligerent.
I'm glad somebody talked about the sexism just boiling under the surface with Lionel and the gaming industry in general. The fact that he made Chandrell so overtly sexual while Sado herself is covered head to toe and in more masc presenting dress also isn't lost to me. Maybe I'm getting floppy with it, but Lionel reminds me of all the abusive men in the industry who look down on the very women they work with and how they see them as annoying or overbearing. I'm not saying Carla had to go postal, but if I was still working with him and he yoinky sploinkied my severance package, I would lose my everloving sh*t.
finally someone catches it. now, im a "getting killed was too much" guy but I immediately watched onto lionels sexism. some less horrible (only creating male characters, assumedly bc its easier for him) and some worse (demeaning and undermining carla constantly, disliking her having "more power" than him etc. reeks of gaming industry sexism tbh
I cant help but adore the literary mirrors in Mullins' games. Pony Island seems to be a spiritual successor to Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of Lucifer and his plot to tempt Adam and Eve, thus cursing himself and all his fallen angels to demonhood. He's painted as an anti-hero, but he's a supremely unreliable narrator, singing his own song of how he was treated unfairly by God. In fact. the phrase "it is best to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven" comes from that book! And what better way to follow up Pony Island with a Frankenstein story? The Hex is a story of spurned and abandoned creations taking revenge upon their flawed creator, and a debate on the act of creation as a whole. Just what is the created owed by their creator, and vice versa? It's perfect, because not only were those two books written close to one another, Mary Shelley name drops Paradise Lost as one of three books the Creature reads after he first finds a safe place away from prying eyes and danger. It's one of the three books he reads as a foundation to his intellect... one might say, Paradise Lost is the bones of Frankestein, as much as those books are in the bones of these two games.
3:04:34 Don't know if it's intentional (probably not, the eye is more likely just a callback to Pony Island and the more occult meaning of it), but there's some neat symbolism here. The Eye of Ra is the myth in which the god Ra, enraged upon humanity for their neglect, takes out one of his eyes to create the lion goddess Sechmet, the personification of godly wrath and punishment. Sechmet promptly goes on to wreak havoc on the world until Ra puts her to sleep and takes part of her power (shaping it into another goddess). Carla putting Sado in the games in order to screw with Lynel for how he treated her parallels with the myth, I just thought it was neat.
The "Rubber Duck" coding references have me thinking- Clair intentionally created Sado to be a pain for her boss, but if she didn't know Sado was a sentient program, then Clair might have spent time venting work woes and coding project stresses in front of or towards Sado. Is it possible that Sado knows how to write and edit code? We know that Sado is an error that can glitch and corrupt games made by Gamewerks, but if she can edit programs and even create new applications, then Sado could be more dangerous than how Hex portrays her. It does explain how Sado can "haunt" Gamewerks programs without even being an NPC or PC in them- she coded herself into the development kit.
finally, I’ve been refreshing and checking your channel every few days or so for the next masterpiece. Always looking forward to seeing more of your work, Flaw P!
... If there's one thing to remember from this video, it is that I need to keep many things in mind,. ...But I'm getting ahead of myself. But thank you for this very complete video of not only the plot but also a lot of the secrets and ARG elements including a few I had't seen elsewhere.
Before you make a Fear and Hunger video I do highly recommend you read Berserk, not just because it's my second favorite manga behind One Piece but because Funger takes a LOT from Berserk with three of the main characters being direct parallels to Guts, Casca, and Griffith
@flawpeacock at 4:12:45 - "i wish I was more like the Ubermensch, I wish my fears didnt have such a putrid stench" is a song lyric, from folk-metaphysics by milo. if you listen to the whole thing, it basically describes lionels life - its very fitting that it was quoted :)
at 4:12:40, you can see references to all 3 (soon to be 4) games in the daniel mullins arg thing, and "my next game in inscryption" turned out to be true, just 3 lines of text below that it says "panda panda panda.. circus circus" which is a reference to his next game, pony island 2: panda circus, my theory is that the game after panda circus has also been teased here, could be "Gameworks Barracks", "Artifact", etc etc
Man, rewatching this again and it really struck me how *severe* Irving's punishments are. Like, almost disproportionately. -Bryce gets himself banned from CA:X, and refuses to be in the sequel; Irving winds up making him punch his grandmother and gets him blacklisted from being in any game ever again, even his own franchise. -Lazarus thinks about all the potential Legendaria sequels, where he might be a party member forever and decides maybe thats not what he wants; Irving sends him to a game series that consists of constant fighting and death and misery. -Chandrelle doesn't want to be in ANY game and she wants to be left alone; Irving sticks Valamir into her brain, so shes not only NOT alone, but stuck with the most annoying fart cloud in the whole of the Game Works. -And of course, Reginald. Irving could have just maybe manhandled him out of his game or something, especially after telling Lionel that Reginald as a character would be saved. But when the man refuses, Irving *cripples* him. He escalates the situation immediately, and unknowingly kicks the whole deal into motion. Work of the devil, indeed.
ooh i just noticed in the walk segment, when lionel says god it's not capitalized in the subtitles, but GameFuna is (4:33:13). very minor, but i thought that was cute
Just so you know, my gamer friends and I created a drinking game. Whenever we have to keep something in mind 1 shot, whenever we really kept something in mind 1 Beer. Needless to say, the beer was never in danger. Please don't try for yourself. I would share my experience, but I do not remember. Fun aside, great content. Always a Highlight in my sub feed. Thank you for entertaining us and stay well. Greetings from Germany (PS: while writing, shot count would be 2 :D)
I'm so happy that the Hex got a humongous and well made analysis video like this! Pony Island and Inscryption are usually the games that prople draw most attention to and make videos about, and only vaguely if ever talk about the Hex in the grander narrative of the "Mullinverse", but i think it deserves WAY more attention than it usually gets
Won't get to see this as it premiers, but I'll definitely be listening to it during my shift tomorrow night Edit: after finishing, I'm surprised you never talked about how sado is a bug in the program, and she is represented by a spider (a type of bug)
Im gonna keep this here for corrections and things discovered after the upload:
- The "Lamia" in 2:42:02 is not actually a Lamia, but Louie from Pony Island. I mistook his voicefont for hopeless soul! This makes sense because of the gate, ticket, and More Friendly Content Mod.
- Hubert in the premiere chat brilliantly pointed out that the third cipher part correlates to the login profiles of Pony island. 2734 = Hopeless, 666 = Lucifer, and S@d051= the corrupted profile. He pointed out that Sado and jeremiah being errors must link them somehow to the Iamerror aspect of the corrupted profile.
- The floating image I refer to at 1:30:14 is the Phillips Test Image for TV broadcasting.
- My color blindness reared its head, but many commenter have graciously pointed out that the pale green is scripted dialogue, or programmed, while the default faded color is whispered dialogue
-Throughout this game and inscryption there is this heavy underwater theming. RUclipsr user Pixellate pointed out this may be a reference to "The Blue Hell" the vast blue sea of nothing when cliping through the bottom of a 3d game world. This is very key!
-at 2:30:45 once you are outside, if you travel right, you can find a hologram of Catarina. talking with her, Rust will show some level of confusion, Catarina will say "You made it to the Six Pint, survivor" then, "Are you're sure you aren't seeing things Rust?" and finally "Check under your hood" before dissapearing. This foreshadows Rust being a victim to Reggie's "serum" or Mind Control
- YT user Hye Roo noticed that at 4:56:29 when the Rootbeer Tender sign is obscured by the black glitch boxes, the only letters in full viewer are "ender" now I'm not sure if this is coincidence, perhaps this is just pointing us to where the name "endervale" comes from. Or perhaps its just a bit of a clue that Endervale is where Reginald went after being banished/forgotten. We do see his eyes floating at 1:31:06 and in one other spot in Endervale.
-The faces of all the enemy NPC's have some resemblence to the Daniel Mullin's mascot, BUT what's interesting is Azazel's desktop Icon in Pony Island has a VERY similar face.
-The BB was here message in Endervale may be referring to a character called, BitBuddy in one of Daniel Mullins many gamejam games.
Ill add more to this as we discover more!!
One question, doesn't Wizarro's survival being determined by the player mean that at least that part of the Waste World segment wasn't faked by Reggie/Sado?
Edit: I personally think Bandito7 is the real player who helped in the Hex ritual, after all, The Hex is a murder mystery and us being the suspect is silly, Reggie would have no one of being sure that we would finish the game. But Bandito7 has all the factors. He is invested enough in Lionel's work to play this strange game all the way through, and would care about the characters of the games. He'd also have a motive to allow the characters to get revenge. If Bandito7 was one of Lionel's first fans, he'd go from disappointed to spiteful at the lowering game qualities, and than vindictive when he got sued. We know he was one of the modders, maybe even the primary leaker of WasteWorld, Reggie's perfect pawn.
Probably entirely coincidental, given that Daniel Mullins is Canadian, but the test card pattern on the ground in Endervale looks like one that was used by the BBC at one point.
I mention this because one of the most famous images they used was of a small girl playing noughts and crosses against a plush doll of a clown, which reminds me of the relationship between Sado and their creator, Carla.
Might not be anything, I just thought it was neat and potentially added a bit of significance to the decision to include it.
I noticed the the chewing gum had the word soul in it.
It doesn’t have a soul, perhaps?
Soul login?
Just to let you know this comment isn’t pinned
Oh boy I can't wait to see what you make of the old_data because YIKES.
You know what makes it even worse?: Reggie was made to look like a younger version of Lionel's grandfather, and as he visibly aged in the game we can infer he started looking like Lionel's grandpa about at the time of passing, so when we see the two realistic gloves choking Lion out in the end, we can deduce that what he saw was the furious face of is beloved grandfather.
Jesus, I didn't think of that. That's fucked.
That really sets how this entire game is a game about tragedy. Lionel never really forgot Reggie, regrets deleting him as a kid, and Irving destroyed the game so Lionel could never see him again, not until years later with a vengeance, born from Irving claiming "This is what Lionel wanted".
i’m sobbing what the fuck man /nm
Keep in mind rust was happy, he liked his life loved his son and felt like his game was complete even though it wasn’t. Honestly extremely sad his story
I thought Sado was cool... until Rust's chapter...
@@RedSpade37same
I know right :((( Lionel is hella cocky and bitter, but damn if it really was Reggie's doing to ruin Rust's life, that's messed up.
Rust was content, until Sado and the mods showed him how tenuous his contentment could be.
Sado definitely crossed a line, removing his son... But similarly, I still feel for Rust, going through the early stages of realizing he's been the star of his very own Truman show.
And like no one cares about him or his son for no goddamn reason
i think the most unrealistic part of this entire game is the idea that a moody, cynical, busty villainess elf wouldn’t be massively popular online. clearly daniel mullins hasn’t played dragon age
Alas, I'm the sole Wynne simp in a sea of Morrigan respectors.
Hell, look at the ammount of people simping for Shadowheart and Minthara after BG3 came out (including me honestly). My man Daniel really needs to expand his horisons.
@@flawedpeacockit’s okay flawpea, theres more of us and also Zevran
@@funninoriginal6054Lae'zel too
probably the real reason for revenge( FilmMaker moment)
btw the 'rubber duckie' is a half joking, half serious insider amongst programmers.
if you're stuck coding it helps to take a step back, take a rubber duckie and explain your code to the duck.
in mullin's games it might be just a fun easter-egg or a motive for creators in over their head, who should take a step back and see the big picture of their creations.
Aww that's actually really cute! Thanks for sharing :)
I read about that on a post, and it came with one of my favorite anecdotes about how, in one class or office, people would get really frustrated after realizing how one piece of code that they took hours to try and figure out would actually have a super easy solution after talking to the duck, so they just started throwing those ducks across the room in anger! I believe the ducks were eventually taken away, and presumably replaced with something they couldn't throw, lol.
@@taylorwright7428better they throw a rubber duck than a keyboard
I honestly think Carla, being the competent programmer she is, just made significant use of that method, which is why she has a rubber duck at her desk, and ultimately why it is associated with her.
I have to say, Reggie is a victim, too. He was betrayed, and disabled, because Lionel was embarrassed at not being a prodigy, and Irving took that too far. He never knew that Irving acted on his own to break his spine. He thought Lionel wanted all of that. Sure, he went too far in his revenge plot, but it's an understandable descent into madness. I think GameFuna, with Irving as its main actor, manipulated everyone here expertly.
I cant help but notice a slight theme here..
Its always "his father, pure evil" but the actions of the son, are much, much worse. Not once do the creatuons try to do better than their creators, try to learn from their mistakes, or try to prove their own valor, or worthiness, instead, they simple dive deeper and deeper into sin, they turn spiteful, hateful, and when they create, its out of vengeance and wrath, to spite, and never to improve. I can feel no sympathy for the creations when they do far worse than the creators, and yet claim superiority, so I'll just say this...
His father, pure evil
The child? Ever worse.
Then again, How can a creation be good If the creator is pure evil?
To me it seems more like the children are traumatized by the sins of the father and never got any compassion, aid, or support - they just got thrown back into the meat grinder of beaurocracy with no care as to how they are doing or what they are going through. It's very hard to "do better, be better" with no healthy support system, no help, no evidence that there is another way or if that other way is even effective .
Moji Jr feels like a hard confirmation of this idea
@@fenrirlives2226 Moji's kinda a bad example of that? I don't think Moji Sr. is in any way evil, as much as he sticks to the script and delays a PC.
Try living that kind of life and then tell me how you come out
My main take away from this game is sadness. So many innocent creatures were killed over what. All because Game Funa manipulated a child. Because if he was 12 when he made super weasel kid and he was even younger when he made Reginald, then that means that he is less than 12 years old when he made this character that he loved in the image of his own grandfather. He wasn’t even trying to fully delete Reginald himself just the game and he was promised that the character would be saved. Instead of poor Reginal was told a hideous lie that his creator hated him and wanted him to be deformed and broken. He was beaten and his legs were taken away. What is creator would’ve never wanted that for him. He’s creator truly loved him. Even in the simulation of the devil killing God, the father getting killed by his creation. This stand in for God, still loved his first creation, is loyal creation. Almost as if it’s trying to tell us that the god of this universe still loves Lucifer too, if we’re following the parallel. But what happened to Lucifer to make him the way he does has turned him so evil that he would kill his own father and hurt others just for petty revenge. And that’s the reason he got thrown out in the first place, but that’s not true for Reginald. He was turned into this image for the second you’re a man of the devil himself.
A small thing, but I'd like to bring focus to the idea of Rust being unaware that he's a game character. It's subtly hinted at, but the implication is that original player characters do not gain full self awareness until their game is in a finished state. This is further evidenced by how, even after meeting Jeremiah, Rust and Rocky can't really comprehend the concept of mods or cheats, since they're unaware of anything outside their world.
Further evidence of this is how Rust speaks in the Six Pint. His game was never finished, and as such, he's still stuck not truly knowing what he is.
Really? That doesn't seem to be the implication from characters like Lazarus. He was created entirely for the game, but because he was a party member and thus a playable character, he was sentient and aware for the entirety of the long and grueling playtesting process, which is why he's so tired of SoL by the end and willing to help Chandrelle destroy it, and this is evidence further by he and Chandrelle already having a rapport and a plan even during the game's first official liveplay.
Regarding Bandito7, I think he may be the player. Pony island has Theodore, Inscryption has Luke, but Hex has no stated canonical player.
This also makes a lot of sense if you're going with the theme of the characters forming the hex all have a beef or grudge with Lionel, whether deserved or not. Bandito7 was a loyal fan and following the logic of him being the player, plays every single one of Lionel's games and becoming ever more disenfranchised and disappointed each time (supported by the reviews they leave and participating in the live stream for Legendaria). Feeling betrayed, even, that their loyalty is taken for granted. And ultimately Bandito7 and the modding community does get hit with that Cease and Desist from Lionel himself. It makes perfect sense that Bandito7 would be the player that participates in this wild revenge plot and be 100% complicit even up to the point of putting their hand in for the hex ritual that seals Lionel's fate.
What about the legendaria segment tho? Bandito very clearly isnt the player there as he is present in the chat no?
@@aditomasik5933True, but near the end Reggie mentions how now the player has played each of the characters’ stories. Bandito7 was part of their backstories and he was just playing through their flashbacks so he would’ve seen himself in the background. He was playing a flashback as the streamer playing Legendaria and wasn’t the actual streamer playing Legendaria. Then again, that’s just one possible explanation of the theory and there may be more holes.
With the "The Faceless"(?) card being an (I believe) pretty clear-cut reference to Carla (you walk in his footsteps yet get none of the praise etc etc) and the pretty solid theory that Bandito7 is Carla's alt account by another user, I think this checks out pretty well
Also, there’s 6 playable characters, but a player is needed for the ritual.
A 7th is needed.
Bandito *_7!_*
Not sure if anyone pointed out yet, but I can give context to the pregnant guppy. There was a fish tank game called Insanaquarium. One special unkillable fish was named Preggo and would continually spawn regular guppies.
Bruh I loved insane aquarium how the hell did I not make the connection?!?!
I remember that being the first "mobile" game I played on my mom's PDA yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaarrrssss ago. LOVED that game. The alien boss was so creepy.
I watch it all the way and can't believe no one mention how Walk game session is so SO close to The Beginner's Guide. It's a story about game developer, game publisher, his friendship, and the fall out.
Think it could be similar in more ways than one? As in, like Davey Lionel is portraying more a character than his actual self in the game. A caricature based off of past beliefs and ego most likely but still an exaggerated act.
THANK YOU, YOUR READ MY MIND, I was checking the comments to see if anyone noticed it.
YES!
This is exactly what I was coming to say lol thank you. I was listening to that section at work and kept having flashbacks to the beginners guide and it’s narrative. Honestly, a lot of this game reminds me of it in a weird way. Rust’s whole story and game are similar to a lot of TBG (unfinished creations being taken and changed by fans; trying to make someone’s project more “palatable”; heck even taking an unfinished product and altering it without the creators consent/ knowledge because “you just want people to experience it”). I don’t think that any of it is actually intentional, more like simultaneous inception or whatever it’s called. They both had similar ideas at roughly the same time with roughly the same mechanism.
I did kinda of laugh when he said "Who wants to play an autobiographical game?" when that's exactly what the Beginner's Guide is framed as.
A friend and I did something similar making a video about Skul the Hero Slayer. We failed to figure out that the Mummy Skul in that game was a wholesale "Metal Slug" reference until I played Metal Slug X in a Barcade, encountered the Mummy enemies, then had it all click. This was already after we released the video btw.
The fact that Moji Jr. was willing to do that without the facade is, disturbing as hell. The fact that one of his own kind is one of the corpses in the office once it drops. Imagine if that is his own mom. or well, as much as anyone is anyone else's parent in that digital realm.
Language is an organic, growing thing. We learn language every day, absorbing what is around us, from a young age. Even into adulthood, our language absorbs what is around us. This is how figures of speech or slang goes on to be widely used and understood.
...So when I was talking to my friend yesterday and said I was "getting floppy with it", and they just kinda looked at me for a moment, I knew a certain someone had made a rather notable impact on me and my general appreciation of narrative analysis.
I know this is old, but I wanted to add that often when we adopt new expressions, it's because those expressions better encapsulate, in the words or in the associations we connect to them, a very specific thing that we want to convey. I have had moments of real frustration when a specific piece of lexicon would perfectly describe something I was trying to relate to someone, but that person had no way of knowing that piece of lexicon, forcing me to come up with something they WOULD know about, which I felt to be incomplete.
'getting floppy with it' is one of those phrases that eloquently describes a very specific concept in a way that would be ineffable otherwise.
@@purplecat4977 Golly, it makes me happy to see someone who appreciates the beauty of language and communication and is able to articulate the intricacies of expression. Relating ideas to others is a complex experience I never get tired of exploring. The human mind is truly a miraculous thing.
In Endervale the phrase, "I'm crying 0s and hearing 1s" Could be a reference to what 0s and 1s mean in coding. At its simplest, 0 means "off" and 1 means "on". So it could also be interpreted as, "I'm crying 'off off off', and I'm hearing 'on on on'."
I was thinking more 0 means false or no and 1 means true or yes. so it becomes "im crying no, no, no and im hearing yes yes yes" like someone being forced to do something or being done something to.
It's also a lyric from the Alt-J song In Cold Blood!
@@duartelopes5066in that line i feel that I'm criying false but I'm hearing true has a Lot of thematical punch ,as a way to think of they were Made out of Spite for Carla as a false but the devil in This case keeps saying that's true so as i cry in 0s, I keep hearing 1s.
@corpserevivers which has been theorized to be about someone lying, or perhaps a backwards triangle...
It just hit me.
If walkman is Reggie, and is in the game walk, and it ends showing Reggie being robbed of his ability to walk.
Could that not also tie into his potential motivation?
Even if it can't, it's another beautiful artist touch for the game Walk to end with the person who walkman represents losing his ability to walk
DUDE that's such a good catch. That's got to be another thing that links ??? To RBReggie
“The success of Super Weasel Kid paralysed me.” Hehe
I just want to mention a funky parallel-
In the decoding of the locket, instead of "Lionel" and "Carla" it's just the initials L and C. Now, i was confused for a hot sec because I correlated the initial to Chandrelle and Lazarus
Maybe I'm just getting floppy with this but I think there are some major similarities between the L and C duos!
Chand is fighting to be free of this game while Lazarus tags along but is a bit hesitant; much like how Carla wants to test the limits of Gameworks and Lionel is reluctant but ultimately agrees to it!
And the way the locket even comes out?? Chand fishing up one half and Lazarus fishing up the other? Lionel's game holding part of a secret and Carla's game holding the other??
My brain squirrels are runnin,,
So, Im thinking about Bandito. They were giving hints in chat during Legendaria, which is meant to be it's first livestream. No one, besides the devs should know all this yet. Then, in Waste Bandito's mods worked flawlessly, as if they knew how Lionel coded so already knew how to get in, and that the Aliens would make him mad. During walk Lionel even comments on disliking scifi games. This makes me think, Bandito is probably Carla's alt account. As a kid making a second account to leave a nice comment on her friend's game. On stream getting mad that Lionel hadn't let her go as far as she wanted with Legendaria. Then modding one of Lionel's games with something that he knew he wouldn't like, but Carla thought would be fun. Bandito's flip from someone supporting Lionel to messing with him just lines up very nicely with Carl's story to me.
Could also parallel Carla's creation of sado. with the idea that a creators intent affects the creation, then Carla wanting to mess with Lionel resulted in an ultimate trickster.
Bandito7's steeam icon is also a rubber duck btw
the hex is daniel mullins ignored middle child for the most part, which had always made me so sad bc i found that its story and critique on the gaming industry was so interesting, and i had a good time with it. im so glad that you got floppy with it and not only did a thorough breakdown of it, but even went above the bar and discovered all the secrets and details that i missed my first three playthroughs.
i wish for your channels success, but hopefully without having to sell your soul to the demon known as youtube.
Yeah, the story and critique is fantastic, and a lot of the weird gameplay mechanics that come up later are really cool. The problem I think is that the core gameplay of each section doesn't quite feel fully developed and is pretty janky, while it kinda works to the games favor in Waste World it feels incredibly wrong in other parts, like motorcycle button in Legendaria and the jumping in SWK. I also just kinda wish there was even more of the weird genre-merging, the switch to melee for the last fight of Legendaria is baffling in a great way, the compression-decompression mechanic for the second half of Galaxy was really cool and the programming puzzles directly affecting gameplay bit of Walk felt like it barely scratched the surface of its own complexities.
After seeing Daniel Mullins go incredibly hard with the mechanics of Inscryption I almost want to see a remaster of The Hex that improves upon all of the meta-games with what hes learned, but I also just can't wait to see what he releases next since each game just gets better than the last.
Edit: apparently I’m prescient since literally two days after I posted this the next Daniel Mullins project is getting teased in the form of Gamefuna’s new assistant(?) AdBot on the Mullins discord.
i’ve heard of inscryption and pony island for years but watching this video was my first time ever hearing of the hex, and i definitely regret not looking into it on my own after doing so with pony island and inscryption
Becides this one, the pony island one and inscryption what else did he develop? Or this is it?
@shimaaalayie9965 He’s done a lot of weird game jam games
Each minigame feels underdeveloped. The only times it feels like it’s almost living up to its full potential is Wasteworld where the jank feels intended and those rare moments where the genres bleed into each other like the Irving fight in Secrets of Legendaria or the second half of Brutal Galaxy 2.
5:12:05 I always thought the theming of water in Inscryption and the fishing mini games, was a reference to the concept of the Blue Hell. Its a term to describe the common occurrence of an endless ocean underneath the open world map. You can only access the Blue Hell by glitching the game, like clipping through the ground.
WHAT?! that's brilliant! I think you nailed the theme that's been vexing me! Thank you! I've added your addition to the pinned comment, I think this is going to be major.
@@flawedpeacock I'm so happy to help! Can't wait for your next video!!! 😄
It might also tie into the Missingno references, since Missingno is found on water tiles
Some other thoughts I had:
Sado = Soda (root beer) as well as Dosa which you mentioned. Sado is like a "dark Carla", she's a product of using Gameworks to it's fullest potential, and if Gameworks is a satanic version of God's ability to create life....then it's implied that she IS alive. Or so advanced in AI that she may as well be. Carla is implied to be a much stronger dev than Lionel.
Root beer = "root" of all evil, being the first game that ultimately led to all of this for Lionel. I think it's not an accident that root beer has such a huge place in this story, a story about the origins of Satan's hatred for God.
Jeremiah (meaning "The Lord Exalts") being Jay the janitor from Chandrelle's game, fused with the Gameworks base assets seems to imply something. I'm not sure what exactly. In some ways it seems like Jeremiah is a truer evil than Reginald. A corrupting force. A virus? Biblically, Jeremiah was a powerful prophet and follower of God. A vessel. This Jeremiah ALSO seems to be a vessel, but it's inverted.
Idk I have the flu. Time to rewatch this video in bed even though I just finished it.
I always took it as a play on Sudo, the linux command to run things
Dark carla or... dark cola?
"I'm having a blast and I hope you are as well." I feel like this perfectly sums up why I love watching your videos. Of course it helps pass time at work but because you're so invested and actually having fun, it's very noticeable and has always kept me engaged personally. I am very eager to dive into this rabbit hole more. Thank you for your hard work
Fun fact: The length of this video is also the same length of a standard playthrough of the Hex (about 5 1/2 hours)
Yeah I noticed that. Found it funny.
Dude im going to play this next time I play the hex
I always took the faded/greyed text to mean a character was whispering while the green text meant a character was sticking to their script. So I always took the characters who spoke faded text as less sticking to a script in all their appearances and more just whispering (Jeremiah always whispering because he is a shadowy figure wearing a big cloak acting in the shadows).
While the idea of it being scripted dialogue is neat (and slightly backed up by Captain Barnay (who I just assume is speaking his scripted dialogue in a dying/injured whisper and the whisper takes precedence over the script)) I just think it's a bit too floppy for me personally.
ALSO I assume the reason Lazarus agrees to revenge on Lionel is because even though being sent to Vicious Galaxy was a Gameworks decision, it was done BY Irving. And within the game world at least Irving appears to be a willing servant OF Lionel and acting on his orders. So at least as far as the game world is concerned it LOOKS like Lionel himself told Irving to put Lazarus in Vicious Galaxy (not sure if he ACTUALLY did but it's at least a reasonable enough assumption about why Lazarus agrees).
That said another great video!
Oooh good catch I must have not noticed the difference between grey and green text perhaps because of the background color of the text bubbles. Colors are definitely my weak spot! Thanks for this!
Irving is definitely acting on his own accord. Lionel never asked Irving to cripple Reggie and would probably be horrified to learn Irving did that. Irving even lied to Lionel about reusing Reggie.
@@polocatfan Yeah absolutely. I meant that he at least always says that he does shit on behalf of Lionel ("Lionel Wants This") and as far as the in game characters can see he has physical conversations with Lionel.
While Lionel didn't tell him "HEY GET LAZARUS INTO HIS OWN GAME", the fact that the guy who did it was someone who openly says the awful shit he does is on Lionel's behalf makes it easy for a game character (who may not fully understand that Lionel can't control the gameworks and ISN'T actually giving Irving his orders) that the awful shit Irving does is on Lionel's explicit orders (incorrectly). And that is why Lazarus (despite his issues being with Gameworks) is willing to target Lionel.
Could have explained a bit better in original comment
On the blacksmith and the artifact... Jeremiah gets the blacksmith to make the artifact, but Irving (GameWorks) steals it away and locks it within their facility. Jeremiah finds the blacksmith that "failed" to give him the artifact, but was still successful in creating the artifact, ultimately. The story doesn't give any other alternate origins for the artifact itself. Furthermore, how did Jeremiah even know where the artifact was being held? That was probably the last thing the blacksmith was able to tell him. If this is what happened, Jeremiah is a cold hearted son of a bitch.
The janitor saying “thanks” four times back-to-back is just like me when a waiter refills my glass of water
Honestly- I gotta say that probably the most raw + sad scene that I just- keep coming back to ever since I saw it was when Irvin came to tell Reggie to "close up shop"... it's so perfectly haunting with both the music AND visuals.. especially when Irvin just- wouldn't stop stomping on Reggie's legs... and then the voice acting you did- Reggie's muffled anger and laugh- it added even more to the scene for me and I just can't stop watching-
So glad I've started watching your channel AND have now been ( technically re-introduced because I once watched a slight bit of a Pony Island Let's Play ) introduced to the beautiful, terrifying and genius games that are Daniel Mullin's masterpieces-
CAN'T WAIT- for your analysis on Inscryption!!!
One thing I noticed, the duplicating items in Secrets of Legendaria is another MissingNo reference. In Pokémon RBGY, MissingNo would give you 128 more of the 6th item in your inventory.
Found your channel via Who's Lila, watched almost everything now. I think one of my favorite things about your videos are how you show your genuine excitement when you reach an "Ah-ha" moment on-camera. You don't cut it out and feign that you always knew everything. The excitement is infectious.
Ditto, such a talented creator
Your ability to keep the editing, narrative, and info pushing and engaging through in a full 5 hour episode is something to cherish.
By the end, you're like, "wait, that was 5 hours??? Felt like 10 minutes" 😂
More like documentary
Anyone else here on their second or third watch through because your brain can't hold all the information?
This is a great video, well done again Flaw! A couple things I wanted to theorize about. First, is that the “AI” that Gameworks uses is in reality the released souls freed from Pony Island. Game devs might make a character, a body, but one of those freed souls will fill it in some way, giving it sentience. And it’s important that they are taken from Pony Island, from Lucifer. Because the “error” characters including Jeremiah, Sado, and Missingno. have the souls of daemons in them. And all of the errors are associated with Pony Island/Satan. The Super Weasel Kid error was made soon after the “deal with the devil” after Lionel sold the IP to Satan. The Secrets of Legendaria error was Asmodeus in the body of MISSINGNO. And of course the Walk error is 666. I’m not sure exactly which daemon inhabits Jeremiah, but it’s possible it might be Buer. It makes some sense given the soda machine radios describe Jeremiah as a nobody, since he was originally intended to be nothing but a fodder enemy, but finally gets to have some fun. But this is admittedly a stretch and me being flawpea.
But more importantly, Sado specifically is Baphomet. There are a couple reasons I think this. One is that in the Corrupted profile in Pony Island, the image of Baphomet’s left eye is highlighted and follows you even after closing the profile. This is like how Sado’s left eye is the only one that shows and also follows you, flicking from the other character to the player. Baphomet is also the only daemon that is able to show Theodore VISIONS. And given how Sado’s whole schtick is mind effery by showing people visions, the connection is very clear. Yes, Carla made the character Sado for Combat Arena X, but it’s the soul of Baphomet that was put into the character. Baphomet is commonly depicted with a pentagram on his forehead, which is the same symbol pinned next to Carla’s work desk, so perhaps his soul was drawn more towards Sado. This is why Jeremiah would be so adamant about freeing Sado, as they’re a fellow daemon wanting to break free.
At 1:30:19 you talk about the rotating screen in the back. It's a test card.
Back in the day television stations used those to let the end user calibrate their screens, or for the stations to troubleshoot the signal path.
It was also used when the signal was active but they didn't have anything to broadcast. So like a paus screen inbetween actual content, or for when the daily broadcast was over. Which I guess fits the afterlife theory.
And yes, I saw the other comments about this. I just wanted to add some more context to it :)
Made me feel old that flaw couldn't recognize it XD
I just want to say I love love LOVE your almost paradoxical attitude to "overanalysis". You always seem able to take your ideas seriously enough to delve deeply and get to some interesting places but also having enough humility and playfulness to recognise the exercise for what it is and keep it light. It's is a balance not many people on this platform manage to strike, so many either seem to be afraid to get that creative or rigidly take their interpretations as facts. Amazing work as always ❤
in the moment i public this i dont finished the video yet, but i wanna said: i know maybe i am overthinking, but i love how lionel calls "Walk" his "magnum opus", his "greatest creation", and in the end "Walk" is a game about himself, about Lionel. I love how egocentric this man is. Btw, amazing video, naturally.
1:03:27 A small note, I went through and checked what the names of each of the fighers are in Combat Arena X's montage sequence. Basically I just checked what Daniel Mullins called the fighter objects and code and so on.
Interestingly, Bhakto is called "Mi Singh" internally, probably a reference to the Missingno on his shirt.
The first montage fighter is not actually Bhakto, he just shares the same icon on his forehead. Internally this character is just called "Fat Guy".
The "Alien" you fight next is called "Gills", and is probably meant to be some sort of fish-person.
The ninja is called Shinobee, and you don't even need to datamine to see that, her name appears on a leaderboard later in the montage.
The guy with a skull on his face is called... Skullface, which is unsurprising.
The Crusader is just called 'Crusader', which is disappointing, I was hoping for a Pony Island reference name.
Skipping forward to the end, the Angel is just called "Angel".
Nothing crazy, but a few fun little details.
Considering I wanna make a game some day, that WALK run through was interesting to sit through. And I do feel bad for Lionel. His own creations were tricked into killing him.
And unfortunately, I have a feeling his soul is now trapped in Gameworks :(
Recognised a couple of lyric references in the game, not sure if someone's mentioned them already but just in case: "I wish I was more like the Übermensch, I wish my fears didn't have such a (putrid stench)" - Folk-Metaphysics by Scallops Hotel, "Crying zeros and I'm hearing 111" - In Cold Blood by alt-J. Maybe the rest of the lyrics have more significance? Or maybe he just digs those songs. Fantastic video as always btw
2:44:44 I’m not sure if I’m on the right path here, but the patches on Wizzaro’s and Jeremiah’s chests seem like an allegory for “patching” themselves into the game files of the worlds they’re entering. Since they’re game characters, they have a source code that needs to exist for them to be a recognizable entity within the game, allowing them to be subject to its rules and scenarios. The “patches” in my mind work a little like data packages that inject their own source code into the game as long as it’s situated. The location of the patch could also be indicative of its nature as well, as source code is kinda like an entity’s “heart”, so to speak.
These are just my surface thoughts and rambling ideas on seeing those, though!
4:12:31 Absolutely insane seeing "Panda Panda Panda... circus circus since we just got that Pony Island 2: Panda Circus reveal. Daniel Mullins is a mad man.
I mean Panda Circus was teased in the first Pony Island game, so it's not that shocking if you knew (I only know this from watching Peacock's vids so the Pony Island 2 reveal shocked me lmao)
the point you made at 5:26:20 kinda reminds me of my relationship with my brother. I've never been great at people skills, but I have always been a numbers kinda person, and Raymond has always been a people's person, hell I remember in highschool we crushed every fund raiser record for all our clubs because I mathed out the most efficient route across the school to both meet the most amount of kids who hadn't been to lunch period yet (so that they were hungry and still had money for lunch), and my brother could sell anyone anything if you started talking to him, he just has that kind of charismatic vibe to him, so we sold hundreds of whatever they gave us, chocolate bars, candy, cookies, gift cards, and it would be me who planned out the ways to get product to people, math out how much we could and should have at any point, and I even made spreadsheets to look at trends, and my brother just sold and sold and sold. We have always talked about going into a business with each other, and I hope when he gets out of the navy in 6 months we can look into it. Honestly sorry for the rant, just miss my brother, and got caught up in memories
With how thorough, patient, and genuine you are while dissecting these complex stories and puzzles, it has me hoping you'll tackle the Cube Escape/Rusty Lake series at some point. The fandom has been trying to make sense of that story for ages. Maybe that's just because it's not totally complete yet, or maybe it's because it's something that was never meant to be made perfect sense of. Either way, it's got a lot of themes and inspirations I'm pretty sure you would love.
That's definitely on the list, it will be one of the earlier videos I cover after Inscryption.
@@flawedpeacock AWESOME, I love that series! There are so many repeating motifs and nods to other media/mythologies that it should be a fun one to explore!
i love the rusty lake games and i’ve always been disappointed in the lack of attention it has, let alone analysis (on youtube at least). i’m thrilled to know it’s on the list and that i’ll have a floppy analysis of the game to look forward to filling that void
@@flawedpeacockplease this would be a childhood dream!!
If The Hex is this long, I don't think I'm mentally prepared for Inscryption, and I played that game to the point where I called out "sick" from work about three times
Honestly, the more we learn the more it feels like Irving was the ultimate villain all along.
Which ironically *does* make the scene where he gets shot the most satisfying part of the game for me as asked by Reginald xD
Is Irving not the Jeremiah to Reginald’s Lou Natas?
Dropping “fartasspoopoobutt” and “this is when walkman became heisenberg” within two minutes of each other is diabolical 😭 i have never laughed at a video so hard before
Oh shit that last skit. I’d be so into a fear & hunger discussion. I was gonna bring it up in the live chat earlier but of course he was already familiar with the series! I’m excited for everything floppy
I could barely contain myself when I saw your delay post yesterday. I've been so excited for this to come out. You are by far the best content creator to come up in the last year. Between length of video, upload frequency, and quality of production from day one, you are in a league of your own.
4:12:11
Now "my next game is inscryption" is crazy and all, but with the announcment of pony island 2 "panda circus" the message a little below it is even more insane!
i just want to thank you again so much for the jumpscare warnings and the way you dull down the sounds they make! i only just finished this video (despite being here during the start of its premiere) 'cause i struggle with consuming horror even though it's my favourite genre of video games, your warnings have helped soothe it over quite a bit
you're currently my favourite creator and i can't wait for the release of the inscription videos!!
So happy to see you kept the tarot characters and the detective and everything. It's a brilliant idea to keep each persona you create through each video. Keep up the excellent work! I wonder what this video will produce as I do "the thing" again :)
Cant wait to listen to this at work. your content makes the long shifts bareable should have just enough time to rewatch poney Island to reinvigorate the concepts in my brain. Keep up the good work!
amen sista
Literally same. But I started at the end and for my commute and now I can't stop lol
I also loved to listen while I worked as a welder. I serve coffee now and I miss letting Flaw Peacock talk in my head.
I actually really liked your voice for Weasel Kid, it reminds me of Sonic and I think that’s very fitting. Another absolutely awesome vid dude! :D
That's what I was going for! Thank you!
Getting a tease for that game lineup was a fantastic way to cap off the end of the video!
Super excited for all of these, but especially Inscryption, Disco Elysium, and Fear and Hunger.
Blindly stumbling across The Hex after playing inscryption with no idea of the ARG and wanting more, then ending the game with this feeling that I was missing something... and finally stumbling again across the steam forum pages leading me down the breadcrumb trail that ended with Beneath the Surface is one of the most spine-chilling and memorable experiences I have ever had in gaming.
And to think, I had really only barely scratched the rabbit hole. Months and months later I find this video, watch the entire thing in one long sitting and feel like I got to go on this entire journey all over again. Thank you for this masterpiece, thank you Dan Mullins for such a brilliant piece of art, and thank you to the community for putting all the work in to piece this together. You have made this ARG so much more interesting than I initially thought, and after being a little disappointed in the "end result" of Inscryption's ARG... I am so looking forward to watching your videos on it next and hopefully being pleasantly surprised yet again.
honestly the fact that beneath the surface was out for so long is amzing, i saw the 'ever pregnant guppy' and immediately had flashbacks to watching other people on youtube play it
oh i just made myself sad but honestly, the idea that in the walking sim he meant to add a section to talk abt rootbeer reggie which was seemingly cut from development is terribly sad. even moreso if u think about it in the fact that he hands it over to carla, someone he's ruined a friendship with but desperately wants her to hold onto something of him, only for sado to basically step in and use it as a means to break free. frankly you could even see it, if u wished to think abt it too hard, that either sado or carla may have a direct connection to lionel's eventually death at the end of the game. if carla had decided to bug him to just put it into the game, or if sado hadn't just used it as a stepping stone, reggie may have been able to see that lionel [even if by a tiny margin] still cared about him
1:28:00 these are lyrics from the song In Cold Blood by Alt-J, which goes “0111, 0011, crying 0s and i’m hearing 111”. if extra binary is needed, it could be the proceeding phrase from this song. if you want to make a very big reach, the song is about someone turning up dead at a pool party, which could link to the death/water motifs
"I wish I was more like the ubermensch/I wish my fears didn't have such a putrid stench" is a line from the song folk metaphysics by Milo idk how that fits in but yeah
I don't think your voice acting is dogshit. I find it whimsical. You're videos wouldn't be the same without your characterizations...
Oh yeah. His Gary from the Faith videos is the only voice I can hear in my head anymore. 😂
Literally made me puke rainbows. Oxhorn is better.
I legitimately didn't realize until about halfway through the pony Island video that it was Flaw Peacock doing the voice work and not in-game.
It was just so charming and the voices always suit the characters so well!
Je was so good at it in who's Lilia he is my headcanon voice actor for then
@@honestkyn718 it's so good I didn't even realize Who's Lila wasn't voiced
4:08:28
"I'm having a blast, I hope you are as well"
Brother, I'm four hours into your breakdown of a game despite the fact I've never played it, I'm having a fantastic time
Being a part of history is a funny feeling, just knowing this vid is gonna get a ton of attention
So excited to see another addition to the mullins universe! Been bummed out theres a scarcity of hex videos on RUclips but now we get a high quality Flaw Peacock video!!! Cant wait ❤
Fantastic video! The Hex has always been one of those mysterious games where a lot of the deep secrets were only documented on Steam discussion threads. It's nice to see all of it in one massive video. Awesome work!
So i just started this video after Lila and a bunch of others. Dude you got something good here and you put off "chill stoner uncle who knows way too much about essoteric topics" vibes and damn does it keep me hooked.
No notes from this comment, keep sane and ill be eagerly awaiting more content while rewatching your old stuff.
Some video game essayists only repeat the story of the game while others only analyze it's themes, I think I really like FlawP's videos because he takes you along on the story so you're not lost but still examines the things outside of what the average player will usually retain.
not only that, he also does this with an extremely concise and clear manner of presentation so we're not bored or feeling like our time is being wasted.
Very small thing about the sado lives stuff, before the post credits scene. In the ending ritual, the top right corner has both Jeremiah and a small spider that comes out during the ritual. The spider dissapears when the hex flashes, but before Reggie finishes it. If the spider is supposed to be sado, this is the moment she gets out. You can see her start coming into view around when reggie says "and i do hope..."
II just got to the part where you talk about your voice acting for the video and I must say as a voice actor myself I think you did a good job! It may not be award winning but you made each voice distinctive and consistent. Give yourself more credit, you committed to the bit on top of also making this entire video essay. Well done, very floppy.
Flaw Peacock will be the next huge channel in gaming lore and story analysis. Mark my words. Watching the new intro reminded me of The Game Theorists old intro and how Matpat also started as a small, independent creator. In the future, maybe we’ll see Flaw Peacock in a Hollywood movie. We’ll keep Flaw Peacock in mind, heart and will always support you.
oh dude Flaw Peacock is in plenty of movies but you might want to switch to incognito for those ones.
I wonder if Reggie would be a representation of a user profile with registry access.
All the references to Root Beer could be alluding to the Root Folder of the operating system.
Also, in the Endervale section the pattern on the floor that you couldn't identify was a test pattern for calibrating a CRT monitor (such as the type they used to broadcast after television turned off for the night back in the day). The various black and white lines and blocks of colour exist to be a means of identifying interference as the user calibrates the tuning of the set and adjusts the brightness and contrast to get the optimal image quality with the least amount of interference and distortion possible.
Given what we learn about how far back the meta narrative goes it's entirely possible that this calibration image could have been integrated into the data decades before the point of these games being developed.
EDIT: I just checked and Daniel Mullins is Canadian, so this may not mean anything, but it very strongly resembles one of the cards used by the BBC in the UK. Amongst the series of images they used, one of them is of a small girl playing a game of noughts and crosses on a blackboard against a small plush doll of a clown. It's most likely a coincidence, but it does seem to parallel the relationship between Sado and their creator, Carla.
That Funger Battle Start sound at the end triggered my PTGD (Post Traumatic Game Disorder)
Literally made me shout NOOO in the middle of doing commissions
I was a blast seeing this live! All the brainstorming and revelations we achived was truly something I will forever keep as the highlight of my life haha :D
Thanks for the legendary input!
@@flawedpeacock Always happy to help can't wait to see what you will make of my findings and of course see ya in the next live premiere ^^
cannot wait to watch, its been crazy seeing your growth as a youtuber so far and its awesome! cant wait for the 3+ hour long inevitable inscryption analysis
The energy! The vibes! For a full 5 1/2 hour video! He never misses!!
I found out about your channel through your Who's Lila interpretation and I AM IRREVERSIBLY HOOKED. Your style of making in-depth analysis videos keeps me glued in a way I have NEVER experienced before, and I love every minute of them. So long as you keep making these lengthy videos, I will continue to consume them with a consistency and ferocity previously unachievable by man
Ive watched this a million times and figured id add possible reference I noticed. Carlas dev handle is ""Carla51". This is similar to "Suda51" the mad man responsible for Fatal Frame and No More Heroes.
Something floppy ive been kicking around is that "Sado" is also similar to "Suda" and her general "horror" aesthetic could be a call back to Suda51 having developed horror games. But these are quite certainly coincidences.
Edit: I guess another fun hypothetical connection is that Suda developed "No More Heroes" and Chandrelle chose to be a villain instead of a hero to free herself of Legendaria.
Her criticism of Lionel might also be a reference to how Suda clashed heavily with John Riccitello of EA, with John dampening Suda’s creative visions (notably in Shadows of the damned)
Except in Hex’s case, Lionel was quite literally corrupted by Lucifer to get to that level of pride.
I cannot get over how amazing you are at these dissections. I have always struggled to watch RUclips videos longer than an hour, but yours keep me hooked to my screen the entire way through! The "Who's Lila" video was my favorite, but this is definitely a contender now.
Amazingly well done as always!!
i dont rlly ever leave comments but i love the way you structure your analyses; the skits to convey the evolution of themes (especially in whos lila) and information you have to obtain retroactively. i think most video essayists struggle with games like these that force you to double back and make sure you remember exactly what piece fits where, and when to place it in the overall lecture, so your skits not only create a portal (topical) for you to drop context where it comes up, but also break up the pacing and really set you apart from other video essayists. especially when you jump ahead a bit, i think most people are too worried about jumping the gun or “spoiling” the explanation if they dont completely feign ignorance, but it makes me feel like im in a real conversation instead of just listening to a lecture.
tl;dr u have a fantastic narrative/video style pls make new merch ty
Hey! I asked around in the discord for you and here's what I was told for the chewing gum text
"Sorry that this is way late- but whenever you go to a shop, and in Chandrelle's section, you found the message in a bottle and duplicated it using Carla's computer, then the text will change!"
Aw FP!! I love all the fanart shoutouts, thanks for telling us where to find the artists as well! You're 100% worthy of the love and support, and tbh if you got a "keep this shit in mind" merch design I'd unironically wear that to class (I'm unsure if there'd be a good way to split the proceeds 50/50 with an artist, but I love the idea of taking some of these early fanarts and making them into merch and allowing profits to split between creator and artist.) Thanks for being a huge reason I fell back in love with horror media!! You, Pastra, and Wendigoon are responsible for my ass considering writing an analog horror series.
Very excited. The hex has the most overt references to the overarching story of the Mullins series and I am absolutely fascinated by what you make of it.
Boy howdy im pumped for this, have since finished inscryption in anticipation for your trio to be complete, you kick ass at making interesting videos
I cannot express how much I love your game interpretations. They remind me so much of actually sitting with a friend and talking seriously about the symbolism and motifs brought up by a piece of art and trying to solve it together, though this is just a one-sided conversation. Sometimes when I watch videos explaining video game meanings/lore, I feel like I'm in a lecture being told the secret true story that I missed, but on your channel, I really feel as though your attentions to detail and putting together of the puzzle pieces is to enrich the story, because it makes it more fun and interesting to engage with. It really reminds me how much I love media analysis, and I'm so happy to see games that put in the work to tell interesting stories being given equal work by people trying to analyze them! I'm deeply looking foward to your video on Inscryption!
@flawpeacock following my prior post about the song quote for folk-metaphysics, there is another song reference that no one seems to see:
at 1:28:02, "crying zeros and I'm hearing 1-1-1's" is a lyric from the song In Cold Blood by alt-J. You can also see the lyric "0-1-1-1-0-0-1-1" from the same song at 1:27:16. From the rest of the lyrics it seems to be related to Carla, and implies she killed someone who fell in a pool and sank "beneath the surface", "where we belong." folk-metaphysics is very cleary related to lionel.
Glad you got to cover this!
I don't really have much to add, outside of the Hex having a special place in my heart, because, when it comes to "meta games", I used to joke that I wanted a game like this where the characters literally come out of the screen, and well...
But yeah, excellent work!
I predict this will be the definitive video on the topic!
Chandrelle behaves like an abused employee, desperate to escape. In this section we have our attention drawn to the most obvious form of sexism from Lionel, but Lionel essentially buying Carla’s future with an oversized salary, and his inability to accept her development ideas says a lot about what kind of guy he was.
On the other hand, Carla created Sado of her own volition when they were still on good terms, which strongly implies she's far from innocent in this whole business. GameFuna was likely working to turn her and Lionel against each other.
@@FelisImpurrator making a female villain character is not something I would use as a measure of her innocence, it’s her job to make video game characters and women are 49% of all people.
I am intrigued at the idea of gamefuna turned them against each other, though it really doesn’t seem like Lionel needed any help abusing his power
@@Echosinfireify That's not the point. The point is that Sado's creation was noted to be "very intentional" and also involved a Satanic summoning ritual with the pentagram. It's not about merely creating female characters, it's about creating Sado, who is functionally a malevolent, demonic computer virus that subsequently infected every single game Lionel made and is one of the main antagonists of the entire Mullinsverse. If Katarina is correct, then Carla made her the way she is on purpose, which implies she didn't exactly have the best motives, OR that GameFuna (i.e., Lucifer and his demons) tricked her into making Sado that way as some kind of programming flex.
How I think it went down is that, behind the scenes, Irving sneakily attempted to appeal to Carla's own ego as a skilled programmer, tempting (note the Biblical aspect) her to push Gameworks to the breaking point and inadvertently summoning one of the great demons into Sado (someone else said Baphomet, and that is likely). Hence the pentagram. GameFuna's contracts involve selling at least part of one's soul to the company, and it's likely that Lionel and Carla were both tempted or tricked into doing so by Irving, which would explain their shifts toward being more egotistical and belligerent.
I'm glad somebody talked about the sexism just boiling under the surface with Lionel and the gaming industry in general. The fact that he made Chandrell so overtly sexual while Sado herself is covered head to toe and in more masc presenting dress also isn't lost to me. Maybe I'm getting floppy with it, but Lionel reminds me of all the abusive men in the industry who look down on the very women they work with and how they see them as annoying or overbearing. I'm not saying Carla had to go postal, but if I was still working with him and he yoinky sploinkied my severance package, I would lose my everloving sh*t.
finally someone catches it. now, im a "getting killed was too much" guy but I immediately watched onto lionels sexism. some less horrible (only creating male characters, assumedly bc its easier for him) and some worse (demeaning and undermining carla constantly, disliking her having "more power" than him etc. reeks of gaming industry sexism tbh
When you talked about the three devils having one eye, it reminded me of the Greek fates all sharing one eye.
I cant help but adore the literary mirrors in Mullins' games.
Pony Island seems to be a spiritual successor to Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of Lucifer and his plot to tempt Adam and Eve, thus cursing himself and all his fallen angels to demonhood. He's painted as an anti-hero, but he's a supremely unreliable narrator, singing his own song of how he was treated unfairly by God. In fact. the phrase "it is best to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven" comes from that book!
And what better way to follow up Pony Island with a Frankenstein story? The Hex is a story of spurned and abandoned creations taking revenge upon their flawed creator, and a debate on the act of creation as a whole. Just what is the created owed by their creator, and vice versa? It's perfect, because not only were those two books written close to one another, Mary Shelley name drops Paradise Lost as one of three books the Creature reads after he first finds a safe place away from prying eyes and danger. It's one of the three books he reads as a foundation to his intellect... one might say, Paradise Lost is the bones of Frankestein, as much as those books are in the bones of these two games.
But what literary parallel would Inscryption mirror tho
3:04:34 Don't know if it's intentional (probably not, the eye is more likely just a callback to Pony Island and the more occult meaning of it), but there's some neat symbolism here. The Eye of Ra is the myth in which the god Ra, enraged upon humanity for their neglect, takes out one of his eyes to create the lion goddess Sechmet, the personification of godly wrath and punishment.
Sechmet promptly goes on to wreak havoc on the world until Ra puts her to sleep and takes part of her power (shaping it into another goddess).
Carla putting Sado in the games in order to screw with Lynel for how he treated her parallels with the myth, I just thought it was neat.
The "Rubber Duck" coding references have me thinking- Clair intentionally created Sado to be a pain for her boss, but if she didn't know Sado was a sentient program, then Clair might have spent time venting work woes and coding project stresses in front of or towards Sado. Is it possible that Sado knows how to write and edit code? We know that Sado is an error that can glitch and corrupt games made by Gamewerks, but if she can edit programs and even create new applications, then Sado could be more dangerous than how Hex portrays her. It does explain how Sado can "haunt" Gamewerks programs without even being an NPC or PC in them- she coded herself into the development kit.
finally, I’ve been refreshing and checking your channel every few days or so for the next masterpiece. Always looking forward to seeing more of your work, Flaw P!
I listen to this whole thing during work, and it was all worth it
... If there's one thing to remember from this video, it is that I need to keep many things in mind,. ...But I'm getting ahead of myself.
But thank you for this very complete video of not only the plot but also a lot of the secrets and ARG elements including a few I had't seen elsewhere.
I pogged out at the Fear and Hunger coin flip, would be so down for a video on those games
Before you make a Fear and Hunger video I do highly recommend you read Berserk, not just because it's my second favorite manga behind One Piece but because Funger takes a LOT from Berserk with three of the main characters being direct parallels to Guts, Casca, and Griffith
Man, I keep coming back to this video. Easily my favorite one out of all you've ever made.
@flawpeacock at 4:12:45 - "i wish I was more like the Ubermensch, I wish my fears didnt have such a putrid stench" is a song lyric, from folk-metaphysics by milo. if you listen to the whole thing, it basically describes lionels life - its very fitting that it was quoted :)
at 4:12:40, you can see references to all 3 (soon to be 4) games in the daniel mullins arg thing, and "my next game in inscryption" turned out to be true, just 3 lines of text below that it says "panda panda panda.. circus circus" which is a reference to his next game, pony island 2: panda circus, my theory is that the game after panda circus has also been teased here, could be "Gameworks Barracks", "Artifact", etc etc
Sado51 has got to be a reference to Suda51, the mind behind games like Killer7 and Deadly Premonition
Man, rewatching this again and it really struck me how *severe* Irving's punishments are. Like, almost disproportionately.
-Bryce gets himself banned from CA:X, and refuses to be in the sequel; Irving winds up making him punch his grandmother and gets him blacklisted from being in any game ever again, even his own franchise.
-Lazarus thinks about all the potential Legendaria sequels, where he might be a party member forever and decides maybe thats not what he wants; Irving sends him to a game series that consists of constant fighting and death and misery.
-Chandrelle doesn't want to be in ANY game and she wants to be left alone; Irving sticks Valamir into her brain, so shes not only NOT alone, but stuck with the most annoying fart cloud in the whole of the Game Works.
-And of course, Reginald. Irving could have just maybe manhandled him out of his game or something, especially after telling Lionel that Reginald as a character would be saved. But when the man refuses, Irving *cripples* him. He escalates the situation immediately, and unknowingly kicks the whole deal into motion.
Work of the devil, indeed.
ooh i just noticed in the walk segment, when lionel says god it's not capitalized in the subtitles, but GameFuna is (4:33:13). very minor, but i thought that was cute
Just so you know, my gamer friends and I created a drinking game. Whenever we have to keep something in mind 1 shot, whenever we really kept something in mind 1 Beer. Needless to say, the beer was never in danger. Please don't try for yourself. I would share my experience, but I do not remember. Fun aside, great content. Always a Highlight in my sub feed. Thank you for entertaining us and stay well. Greetings from Germany
(PS: while writing, shot count would be 2 :D)
I'm so happy that the Hex got a humongous and well made analysis video like this! Pony Island and Inscryption are usually the games that prople draw most attention to and make videos about, and only vaguely if ever talk about the Hex in the grander narrative of the "Mullinverse", but i think it deserves WAY more attention than it usually gets
Won't get to see this as it premiers, but I'll definitely be listening to it during my shift tomorrow night
Edit: after finishing, I'm surprised you never talked about how sado is a bug in the program, and she is represented by a spider (a type of bug)