Bendy and the Dark Revival

0:18 Oh my god. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Other Castle. No, no, I don't feel welcome. What the fuck was that? We've been gone for months, we come back to season seven, and now you're a demon? Well, yes, because I am the possessed version of Tom. Well, I'm the confused version of Andrea. And this is The Other Castle podcast, where we break down the plot, lore, and more of video games. That includes development, the creators, the performers, then the actual plot of the game, which I'm assuming and truly hoping are tying in to your little whatever is happening at you. Oh, sorry, no, I just had a little tickle in my throat. That's all that was. Uh-huh, yeah, you felt real ticklish there. Well, if this is your first time listening to The Other Castle, you can check us out at our website, theothercastlepodcast.com.

1:02 That's theothercastlepodcast.com. And over there, you can check out things like our Patreon, our Discord, you can message us, you can do all sorts of stuff, even listen to the show over there. If you have thoughts on this episode, you can hop in and talk to other people who've heard it. And I'm sure they're all gonna be like, is Tom okay? It's gonna be a wellness check for Tom this week. And I am so excited to be back starting season seven with this guy. Yes, season seven, because honestly, our Bendy and the Ink Machine episode is our most listened to episode by a very long shot. And so people have been begging us to do Bendy and the Dark Revival. Ooh, now from my understanding, I have not played this. I haven't played either Bendy, but this is like a sister sequel rather than a direct sequel.

1:47 We're gonna get into that. It's gonna depend on how you feel about it. Okay, fun. A choose your own adventure lore. Yeah, a little bit. It is a little bit, but it's a little bit more direct as well than the first game, I would say. I can appreciate that. The first one did get a bit abstract in parts, but it was, you know, as part of that same indie wave of like the mid-teen years where we're like, let's just do weird shit for being weird, and it'll work, because that's what everyone wants to play right now. Yeah, well, TheMeatly, who is the creator of Bendy and the Ink Machine and the whole universe and stuff, has always said that this universe is full in his mind. He knows it very well. He's just trying to translate it out to everybody else.

2:27 Okay, he's like, I have the full story in my head. I just need help getting it there. Sometimes. But before I begin, I want to give a bit of a warning to anyone that is like a massive fan of this game and franchise as a whole. Oh no. Because the development portion of this game gets really fucking ugly. Oh shit. And the people involved do not come out looking great. Oh shit. So this might turn some fans. Yeah, if you don't want to think negatively of the people behind this game, you might want to skip to the part where we just talk about the game itself, which yeah, I'll put the timestamp for that in the description. Perfect. And some might argue that what happened in the story was nothing personal.

3:10 It was just business, but it's still pretty awful. I don't like where this is going. I'm usually very excited, and now I'm nervous. Well, Bendy and the Dark Revival is the brainchild of artist and creator, TheMeatly, along with his business and creative partner, Mike Mood. They created the original Bendy and the Ink Machine together under their studio called TheMeatly Games, which later changed to Kindly Beast just before release of the final chapter of the first game. And the reason for that was TheMeatly didn't want people thinking he made the game all on his own. Oh, that's actually very sweet and thoughtful. Yeah, he's like, I had a whole team working on this game. It wasn't just me.

3:50 Yeah, like it's a little egotistical to just put my name on it because that doesn't represent the other groups of people that made this happen. That's, I appreciate that. That's thoughtful. Yeah. And as we learned in our first episode, TheMeatly loves Bioshock more than Ken Levine. More than most people, and everyone loves Bioshock. Right. And he borrowed the Kindly from Bioshock's big twist. Oh, cute. And Beast from his titular character's final Beast form in the first game. Cute, love that, perfect. And in fact, long time listeners of our show will know we have a running gag called The Bioshot. Oh my God, please don't do this. It's been a joke, and now I'm just truly encouraging people not to do a drinking game to this fucking show.

4:34 Yeah, it's just the way we call out a game when it makes a reference to Bioshock because so many games do. That's true. And it doesn't mean you have to drink alcohol. I don't. It's just a thing we say. Have that apple juice ready. But here's the thing. The Bioshot made its debut in our Bendy and the Ink Machine episode. And it's just a joke we've refused to let die, unfortunately, but it still makes me laugh a lot. Yeah, we don't even say Bioshot yet in that episode. We just say, take a shot. Oh, shit. Every time Bendy references it. We didn't get to the portmanteau of Bioshot, like it's right there. I know, I think it was like the next episode we came up with it. Okay, it took us a whole nother week to come back around. Right, and I assure you, this game will not be any different.

5:17 Oh no, yeah. So again, please don't actually play the Bioshot drinking game. If you do, do it with water. Yeah. You know, a nice purified water. Wheat grass or something. Stay hydrated. Anyway, the Meatly took the role of creative director and Mike Mood became CEO of Kindly Beast. So originally the Meatly was an internet artist, right? So that makes sense he stayed in the creative realm of the world. Yeah, it's all his like kind of creative mind that kind of powers the entire studio. Gotcha. Okay. And then Mike Mood was like the business end. So he would be the Joey Drew in the analogy and Henry would be the Meatly. Very much so. In the years since, they worked on a few other titles related to the Bendy universe, such as Boris and the Dark Survival.

6:02 Was there also Bendy Royale? There was no Bendy Royale. That was an April Fool's Day joke. It's a great April Fool's Day joke. Like I really like the trailer they put out for Bendy Royale. It's really great. You should definitely check it out on YouTube. In Boris and the Dark Survival, you control Boris from the first game in a top-down exploratory adventure through Joey Drew Studios. Not only that, they also produced a series of actual Bendy cartoons. Seven in total starring the characters from the game and made it look like actual 1930s rubber hose style cartoons. That's really cute. I love that. There was also a non-Bendy game called Showdown Bandit, which only released one chapter and then was never heard from again.

6:47 I was just gonna say, I don't think I've heard of that. That makes sense. Well, after the first chapter, the Meatly and Mike mood decided to pack up their California-based Kindly Beast Studio and move it to Ottawa, Canada. Oh, is this for tax reasons? Not really sure why, but in doing so, they let go of over 50 team members. Oh, shit, that sucks. On Thanksgiving. Shut up! And weren't even present at the layoff. Oh, my God. So first of all, they laid off everyone in person on Thanksgiving. Yeah. And then they didn't have the balls to be in the room when it happened.

7:30 Right. That's ass. Oh, I'm so upset right now. Most of the 50 were working on Showdown Bandit, effectively canceling it. Yeah. 50 is a lot of people, too. Yeah, for a small studio especially. Totally. I'm assuming that's a majority of their workforce then, right? Yep, it was. Oh, fuck. When Kindly Beast arrived in Ottawa, they renamed it to the now much more fitting, Joey Drew Studios. That is ominous as fuck. Are you kidding me? Yeah, the bad guy from their first game, because they lived long enough to see themselves become the villain.

8:12 This feels bad. It's pretty fucking awful. Holy shit. Oh yeah, that's horrific. It's about to get worse. Ow. The news broke and they received some pretty deserved harsh feedback from the gaming community about this. Reasonably so, yeah. Mike Mood decided to attempt some damage control. No, oh, oh no. So he hosted an AMA on Reddit. Shut up. Out of all the media outlets to do this on, he picks the one that can't be crowd controlled. Well, the ex-employees lined up for that one. Hell yeah.

8:53 And they ripped Mike Mood to pieces. Fuck yeah, absolute fucking lootily they did. Making some harsh accusations, such as telling the team there was gonna be two studios, and that nobody needs to worry, and that they would all still have a job after the move. That is fucking diabolical. Well, thanks to the Bendy series, as well as his family, Mike Mood has a lot of money. And according to ex-employees, likes to remind people of that fact often. By driving expensive cars, wearing fancy suits that he would casually mention the price of, like he's fucking Job in Arrested Development.

9:34 Jesus Christ. He would also say things like, it would take several years of zero sales before he would ever have to even consider selling the company. Ugh, he's so Icky. And again, this is according to ex-employees who were angry at losing their job. But there were enough of them corroborating the story that it should have some grain of truth to it. Yeah, I fully would not question that story. Then, the head of HR stopped by to give her two cents, defending the company and how it was handled. Oh, God. To which the ex-employees revealed, the head of HR was Mike Mood's sister.

10:25 I don't even, you can't write shit this bad. Well, if the verbal ass-beating wasn't bad enough, Oh, no. one of the most cringe things you can imagine happened next. Did he get a ukulele and sing an apology song? Even worse than that. How, oh my God. Mike Mood's mom stopped by the AMA No! and shared her opinions on the people being mean to her son and daughter on the internet. I can't. Could you even imagine?

11:06 My brain can't wrap around this. I'm fucking fucked up right now. This sounds made up, right? Yeah. Like, this is fucking insane. Well, the AMA shut down. Yeah. This breaks the internet. And Mike Mood has not made a single public comment since then. Since his mommy came out for him? Yeah. And he is still the CEO of Joey Drew Studios. Oh shit. But they removed his name from the credits of Bendy and the Dark Revival as a result. Wow, he just omitted entirely? Yeah, they later included it as simply Mike when it released on console a few months after its release on PC. Just Mike.

11:46 Bendy and the Dark Revival was made by teams from both Kindly Beast and Joey Drew Studios, as it was in development for seven years before its release. Oh goodness. Though Mike Mood claimed in the AMA that they restarted development of the game after the move to Ottawa with a team of just 10 people. Just to be cunty though. Yeah. When it was first announced prior to the move and the AMA, Mike Mood said that it isn't a sequel, it isn't a prequel, it's its own thing. And he's mostly lying when he says that. No way. He's such a slime ball. I'm just going into this with weird energy. I get why he says it, but it's very much tied to the first game.

12:30 Okay. It just has a new protagonist, it takes place 10 years later, and the setting is the same, it just looks different, which should sound familiar to fans of Bioshock 2. Oh, there it is. It's not a direct continuation of the first game's story, but it's still the sequel. Now for the voice acting, we have a ton of returning voices. Oh, I love that. As well as some new ones. For our new protagonist, Audrey, we have Erin Len, who only has a couple small roles prior to this in TV and voiceover. Returning for Alice Angel is Lauren Singer. She was so great in the first one. Yeah, she's another actress with a few credits to her name.

13:14 As well as a guy who's not a voice actor at all. A man named David Eddings, who returns to voice lunatic CEO, Joey Drew. Oh, great. So David Eddings is the head of console development at Rooster Teeth Games. Oh, oh, shit, fun. And Rooster Teeth programs all the console ports for the Bendy franchise. And they had such a great relationship with David Eddings, they cast him as Joey Drew for the entire series. They're like, why don't you just hang out with us? We're friends now. Yeah. That's cool. And for a ton of the audio logs that are made by one time appearance characters, they had streamers such as Jacksepticeye.

13:56 Oh, good for him. And who I actually found out through this has the same last name as me. Really? Yep. Fun. Five Nights at Freddy's legend, Docco, and Super Horror Bro Mike, along with a few others do the voices of those audio logs. I do watch a lot of Super Horror Bro. Bending the Dark Revival released on November 15th, 2022 on PC and then on consoles, March 1st, 2023. Were these released episodically like the first one was? They were not. These were released as just one full game. Easy. Love that. It is broken up into chapters, but the chapters don't really lead up to anything like, you know, say Dead Space or something. Gotcha.

14:37 The fact that since we've covered Dead Space having a trick to the chapter title naming conventions, we have to out loud say it so people don't think about that. I gotta be real. I didn't look into it. I don't think it does. Okay. It secretly is like Bendy lives or something. Yeah. It holds a 72% on Metacritic from reviewers. That's solid. And 77% from fans. And honestly, I think that's a pretty fair score overall. Okay, that's playable though. Yeah, the game definitely tells a more direct and straightforward story this time around. And it even goes so far as to drive hard lines in the sand about certain theories. Oh, I kind of love when creators are reactionary to be like, fuck that, that's absolutely ridiculous.

15:19 That's not what I intended. And are like, this is not lore. Shut up. Yeah, TheMeatly has said that while he loves fan theories, he does not allow them to dictate his story. Good for him. He's like, no, no, this is what I'm doing. If anything, he uses them to see where he needs to provide more context. It's kind of the school of Scott Coffin, right? A little bit, yeah. Or sometimes he finds out what people think and theorize just to make sure he doesn't do any of it. He says that the story of Bendy and the Dark Revival is an intentional mixture of shattered expectations and engaging fan service. I mean, I think that also drove the AMA, so sure, man.

16:01 Let's do this. But it's still a first-person melee game. Oh, that's not the best combat structure. Yeah, the combat is just as bad, if not worse than the first game. Oh no. But hey, at least this time around we can run. Okay, that's an improvement. You know, sometimes you don't realize you need it until you have it. Like, you couldn't jump or go prone in The Last of Us part one, but you could in two, and you're like, how could I live without this? You know? Same concept, but for running. I feel the same way about the Sonic the Hedgehog games, actually. What's the generational jump there? Well, in the first one, you don't have a spin dash. And in the second one, they introduced the spin dash. Spin dash is fucking great. And without the spin dash, Sonic is almost un-fucking-playable.

16:45 And I feel like people that remember nostalgically, like the first Sonic the Hedgehog is great. It's not. It's very bad. It's two and three that are great. Oh no. But anyway, with that, get your bio shots ready goombas. All right, let's do this. Because this is Bendy and the Dark Revival. The game opens up on a house that would be familiar to anyone who completed Bendy and the Ink Machine. Oh no, I think I know what house we're in. Yes, it's the home of Lunatics CEO, Joey Drew. The last time we saw this house, Henry had suddenly woken up there after defeating the Bendy Ink Demon. Oh no. Joey Drew had a conversation with Henry and then sent him right back into the studio to start all over again.

17:26 And Henry's like, all right, shall we? What was it you wanted to show me? This time, the house looks abandoned. Oh shit. Nature is starting to take over the home with vines growing on the walls and what little furniture is left is strewn around the different rooms of the house. Oh. We're on rails here, just going through the house while a woman's voice speaks. She talks about freedom and the illusions that come with it. Because when you take the time to really evaluate your own life, inevitably, the sense of your past will come back to devour you. Jesus, that's a dark way to open a game. While she says this, we can hear a pounding at a door, and it's revealed to be the door Henry stepped through at the end of the previous game that sent him back into the animation studio.

18:16 The screen goes black, and we see June 18th, 1973. Oh, yeah, because the first game takes place in the 60s, right? Yeah, this puts it roughly 10 years after the events of the first game. We see a full-color world with a woman working hard at an animation desk. At it, she's working away, drawing a familiar little demon character, our pal, Bendy. Oh. Not the scary demon version, the cute Mickey Mouse-like version. The happy version. She finishes up the drawing she's working on and says, there, only 800 more frames to go. Oh, Jesus Christ, crunch culture is so real, y'all. Before getting started on the next drawing, though, she's gonna need some coffee.

18:59 It's gonna be a long night. And you're given the prompt to stand. If you ignore this prompt, you say, coffee's great and all, but these frames aren't gonna finish themselves. And the game cuts to a black screen, and the credits roll. So in the same way a lot of the farcries have the fake out in the beginning where the game can just end peacefully. Bendy adapted that? That's great, fuck yeah. What's great is that these credits are exclusive to this ending, as the actual game's end has a different credit sequence. That's clever. I'm assuming maybe they only credit that one voiceover performer in that. No, they credit every single person involved.

19:40 It just looks completely different from the way it looks in the final version. Oh, it's just the aesthetic version. Okay, fun. But yeah, hit the prompt button, and we take control of the woman. And we can see that she is an animator working on new Bendy cartoons, as she also has references for Boris the Wolf and Alice Angel. You can also see the picture Henry signed for Joey Drew with Bendy, Boris, and Alice holding hands, hanging on the wall in her office. Oh, I like that one. Our playable character's name is Audrey, and she works for a company called Archgate Pictures. Oh. We take our first bioshot of many to come, as we are given our first objective, utilizing the exact same sound effect Bioshock uses for their objectives.

20:27 Also, the exact same font from Bioshock is used in the main menu. Oh no, so it just feels like Bioshock, but instead of that cool kind of sea green turquoise tone, it's all sepia? It's all black and sepia, yeah. This game was really shameless in its love once again. Our objective is to find the elevator that will take us to the kitchen for some coffee. It's apparent we're alone at work tonight, as the halls are devoid of people. The lights are flickering and there's a storm outside and everything. Oh shit. But you make it to the elevator perfectly fine, and you call the elevator to you. You go inside and hit the floor you want and the doors close. But just before they are fully closed, a man's hand dies between the closing doors.

21:12 As a woman, truly a fucking nightmare. Yes, and an old bald man with one good eye and one white eye with scars running down his face, pushes the door open, saying your name and sounding like the G-Man from Half-Life, but with gasps and wheezes while he speaks like he's always out of breath. You know him, as he is Wilson, the janitor at Archgate Pictures. He apologizes for startling you. He just noticed you were working late and alone and figured you'd want company down to the kitchen. No, no, never. Uh-uh, fuck you. Well, besides, a pretty girl like you shouldn't go wandering around alone.

21:53 How did it get worse? What the fuck? Audrey is an overall polite person and accepts Wilson's offered escort her down to the kitchen. Inside the elevator, Wilson coughs worse than Arthur Morgan ever did. A man suffering from tuberculosis. And you try to make small talk, ignoring the gallon of phlegm he just coughed up. I imagine she's like, man, allergies, huh? And he's just actually dying next to her. You literally start talking about the weather. Oh, classic small talk. And Wilson stops coughing just long enough to look you in the eyes and say, it's been gorgeous.

22:36 I hate this man. I'm very glad he's physically ill. As he says this, the elevator slams to a halt and a red emergency light and alarm go off. Wilson never even blinks as his blank white eye stares you down in this box of nightmares. You are terrified and beg Wilson to reassure you that everything is okay. And he does. He says this has been happening a lot lately. But everything is fine. You just need to hit the door open button. He hits the button and the door is open to a dark hallway. Wilson says to come along, he'll protect you, as he goes to a circuit box and turns on the lights.

23:18 When he does, the hallway lights up. And at the end of it, we get another bio shot. As the bust of the Lunatic CEO, Joey Drew, is on a plinth. Wow. And this bus isn't 30 feet tall. It's just a normal sized one. Not a whole ass sculpture. And it's flanked by two posters that read, Archgate Pictures presents, Joey Drew, the man and the demon. Oof. Just right off the bat, we're going to be very clear about this. Wilson says there are a couple more switches to throw on down the hall and to follow him. As we round a corner, we find a plaque.

23:59 And the plaque reads, Joey Drew, 1901 to 1971. Oh, he recently passed. With a small bio on his life and work, and how, with a pencil and a dream, Joey Drew created a legacy that Archgate Pictures strives to continue. His ass never drew anything. This area serves as a kind of museum to Joey Drew Studios of old, as they bought up all of its assets along with its intellectual property. You go down another hallway where you see some empty pedestals. And at the end of the hallway, an old acquaintance, the ink machine.

24:41 Which Audrey doesn't know what it is. Oh, it's just some relic that they have. Yeah, it's just a giant yellow box that kind of looks like an oily wood chipper. Wilson says that someone has been messing with the exhibits, as the pedestals are each supposed to have an item on them. Oh my god. Audrey. Sweet Audrey. Would you kindly help out an old man and find the missing items? He does not say that. No, he doesn't. I just threw that in for flair. Oh, I was like, fuck you. So if you are wondering why I'm freaking out, maybe you haven't played the first Bendy or listened to the episode. This is exactly how Bendy 1 starts. Yeah, there's these pedestals and you need to put some totems on them. Oh, that's so funny, though, that they reintroduced you to the exact same level, but in a completely different setting.

25:27 Right. It's wonderful, isn't it? It's way creepier this time, though. And you do when you place the items on their pedestals. Wilson says he got all the circuit breakers fixed. Now, the only thing left to do is turn on the power to the elevator, which is nowhere near the elevator. Why would it be? And is all the way down here in this room with the oily wood chipper. You know, in case you forgot, you're in a horror game. Wilson tells you to throw the switch. And when you do, the lights go out entirely. Ah, you fucked it up. Plunging everything into darkness. You beef this shit so hard, Audrey. Suddenly, Wilson is inches from you. Saying, it's done.

26:08 The ink machine roars to life and begins spewing dark, black ink all over the floor. The emergency lights kick on, you can start seeing everything in the room. Wilson shuts the door to the room you're in, saying that the ink is calling the two of you. Oh, fuck you, dude! And it's time to submit the ink. The ink levels rise and rise around the two of you, and he tells you that soon, you'll forget everything. Imagine if she took the job at Cartoon Network instead of us, and just got to live a nice life in Burbank. And Hanna Barbera somewhere else. Fuck, like, we know animators. There's an animator at her wedding who's doing characters.

26:48 She was cool as shit. She told us all these crazy stories from back in the day, but that could have been her. Yeah. This could have been her, and I love her. But it's important that Audrey remembers these last words. Come find him, and he'll show you your purpose. He next says, it's time to go home, and now we die. What the fuck, man? As Wilson pulls you both under the now chest deep inky blackness. Ew. The music swells and bubbles can be heard as the title screen appears over the black. Bendy and the Dark Revival. You awaken in a sepia-toned world of paper and ink, covered in ink yourself, with one of your hands being fully black, while the other looks like it's wearing fingerless gloves.

27:37 You cry as you look at your surroundings and self, asking, what's wrong with you? On the walls, you see posters saying, relax, Wilson knows your purpose, over a big caricature of Wilson. Nope, I hate this immediately. As you get your bearings and look around, you see a big white banner with sloppy black ink writing that says, welcome home. For the gamer, we're back in the ink world of Joey Drew Studios. So it's like a welcome home to the player and to Audrey. Yeah, for Audrey, she's in a brand new nightmare. Yeah, this is new for her, but we're like, ah, I know it. You make your way out of the room you're in, and eventually we hear a PA system announcement.

28:20 It's from Wilson, to his followers slash subjects. Oh, no. He reminds them that he is their protector, as he is the one who defeated the Ink Demon once and for all, 211 days ago, when he ripped the Ink Demon in half. Ugh. He said that there's a new person in town, a lady, and to find her and bring her to him. You go through more hallways and you find notes and audio logs filling you in on some of the strangeness around here. Some are written or recorded by familiar names like Sammy Lawrence. The music guy. The music director of Joey Drew Studios, yeah. Some notes are written in a sloppy handwriting with really dark passages about death and shadows.

29:06 It's all like cryptic nonsense kind of stuff. And down another hall, we see a poster for the Butcher Gang. And as we approach it, one of the members, Piper, falls through the ceiling in front of us. Oh, shit. But it's dead and tangled up in wires from above. Oh, recently dead or been dead for a while? Can't really tell. That doesn't make me feel better. Nearby, we find an audio log from a man named Nathan Arch, the owner of Archgate Studios. In it, he says that he just got word that Joey Drew is dead. He laments the death of such a brilliant man, and he wonders what will become of his beloved creations.

29:48 So just a quick pause here to explain who Nathan Arch is. Because we get just a few logs from him over the course of the game, but he's an important person in the life of Joey Drew. Nathan Arch was a business tycoon, a full-blown titan of industry. He had great success in oil and steel, and the thing he learned in those industries was to trust the experts in their fields and just give them the tools they need to get the job done. So while on vacation, he received a message from Joey Drew, an old friend as Nathan Arch liked to surround himself with famous people.

30:28 He's a star fucker and like kind of a leech. He leverages other people's talents for his own gain. A little bit, yeah, but he also just, he has an environment where they can succeed. This message was a difficult one to send as he was explaining that Joey Drew Studios was on the verge of bankruptcy. He has projects in the works. He just needs funding. Nathan knew, having learned from his success in other industries, that if he were to provide Joey Drew with the tools he needs, he'll succeed. This was Joey Drew we're talking about after all, someone Nathan Arch looked up to in many ways for his initial success with Bendy. However, one thing Nathan Arch learned in working with the creative for the first time was that there are different types.

31:14 Those who can dream it, and those who can do it. Because as we learned in the first game, Henry actually created Bendy. Bertram Piedmont built the amusement park. Sammy Lawrence was the musical genius. Joey Drew was just the boss. Nathan Arch decided to go out and build his own studio, having learned from his mistakes in funding Joey Drew. He found real creatives and fostered the makers in the industry and found great success in a third industry now. When Joey Drew died, he wanted to honor his old friend by doing Bendy justice.

31:54 So he bought the entire estate of Joey Drew, including the rights to his characters. He hired the most talented artists he could find, and revived the Bendy series of cartoons. With Audrey being one of those talented artists he hired. So that's Nathan Arch and how he fits in this whole situation. Do you think Mike Mood sees himself as the Nathan Arch? Who knows how he sees himself, honestly. Just a thought experiment, no worries. Yeah, exactly. I don't think he liked being portrayed as the bad guy in the first one, necessarily. So they tried to create Nathan Arch as kind of like a good rich person. Yeah, so this clearly won't go well.

32:34 Yeah, just off the bat. But yeah, there's I'm seeing like the money things and like I can make things work. I just put the creative in the right direction. I'm letting the meatly draw whatever the fuck he wants. I cash the checks. Yeah, exactly. Well, now back to Audrey. You see a wall with some brick sticking out just enough for you to climb it. So you start climbing this wall. And just as you reach the top of the climb, Piper from the Butcher Gang jumpscares the fuck out of you. Motherfucker. Throwing you off and then he dive bombs you from above. You scrambled to your feet and you're given the prompt to run and hide. You manage to find a little miracle station nearby, which are those boxes that look like an outhouse from the first game.

33:17 Oh yeah. Yeah, they're a safe space whenever you're being chased by a bad guy. So that same structure of gameplay is still valid. Yeah, you get inside it, the music calms down, indicating that everything is once again safe. Until it fucking isn't. Because Piper jump scares you again and starts clawing at you through the little window in the little miracle box. Fuck, that's actually very good to take what you assume is safe from the first game and be like, nah, fuck you. Yeah, this never happened in the first game. That's so good. As he gets his fingers within centimeters of your face, you hear a woman humming somewhere in the distance.

33:58 Piper gets scared and runs off. You exit the box and find some food. The Bendy staple, bacon soup. In the can? Yeah. Oh, that's so good. As you eat it, a woman says, that's not a great idea. Sure, it'll heal you, but the aftertaste is awful. Bitch, I don't know where I am. Please help me. Yeah, you look over and see Alice Angel. Oh. The good Alice from the first game. That's what's up. She promises she's not here to hurt you and offers to help. She explains that you're lucky the ink machine let you be a person and not a searcher. Let you be a person? What the fuck? She also explains the butcher gang and that the safest place in the facility is the top floors.

34:43 She knows it's confusing. She remembers her first day. But she says you'll catch on quickly. So start heading up and just keep going up. North and then north and then north. If you survive, you'll be fine up on the top floors. You ask her to accompany you and she says she can't. She has a wolf and he doesn't like strangers. She really said my dog doesn't like you. I'm not doing it. Yeah. Before she departs, she gives you one last piece of advice. Stay away from the Ink Demon. Do not let it catch you. He loves to smile and he'll kill anything that moves. Ah.

35:24 You ask her name and she tells you it's Alice, but she really doesn't like that name. Oh. You introduce yourself as Audrey. Alice says, well, Audrey, welcome to the studio. As lights turn on and you look around to take in your surroundings properly for the first time. Alice vanishes as you look elsewhere and you're off on your own. So Audrey has quite a bit more pep in her step than our last protagonist, 60 year old Henry Stein. You know, because he was fucking 60 years old. Yeah. Her walk is his run. That's what's up. And her run is very quick. She's a spry young lady.

36:04 Yeah. But she has a stamina limit, so you can't just sprint all the time. Oh, I get you. But it makes for good resource management, as there are very few resources in this game. You finally climb that wall you tried before, and at the top is a mirror. You can finally see your full self, and it's not pretty. Your eyes are just yellow glowing orbs with black ink actively pouring out of them. Ew, what the fuck? You look like a porcelain doll that you'd find on a beach near an oil spill. That's very specific, and I have not encountered this, but I get you. Yeah, you can picture it. You find a communication device and talk to Alice on it.

36:47 It's basically a giant pipe, and you talk through it like a couple of tweens at a science museum. She tells you that there are dangers where you are, and to find a gent pipe to protect yourself. And you find one, but it's embedded in the body of a dead searcher behind an electric fence. You complete some tasks to get through to the dead searcher and manage to get the gent pipe, the only weapon you will have through the entire game. Now, I know in the first one, there's a handful of different melees you get, but they all serve the same function. With this one, they're like, fuck it, you get one thing, I'm not coding out another thing. Yeah, and they're going to tease you with just about every other type of weapon in existence through the rest of the game.

37:30 And you're just not going to get it? Nope. That's fucking hysterical. Good for them. So the gem pipe is really two pipes connected by a cuff. And so it's like one straight pipe, then at the end is a cuff, and out of the side, another pipe that kind of has a curve to the end of it, sticking it out even further. I see like a candy cane shape. Yeah. Gotcha. You can upgrade it a bit here and there, but yeah, it's your only weapon as it's another first person melee game. Oh. But don't worry, there's actually a bit more variety this time. As you proceed through, you start to get a blurred vision and a voice comes into your mind. Oh, that's never good. It says that the ink has granted you a gift as a thank you for submitting.

38:13 You see a legless searcher ahead, and it's facing the opposite direction with big ink letters above it saying, You don't have to kill me. As you approach it, the ink's gift reveals itself. On your left hand, the one covered completely in ink, a glowing yellow symbol appears on the back of your hand. Never good. This gives you the ability to banish searchers and other ink creatures, which you get to practice on the searcher in front of you. Essentially, you absorb their life force, releasing them from the studio entirely, but also fully killing them. Jesus Christ, can you describe what a searcher is?

38:56 So a searcher is one of the bad guys from the first game, but it is a failed person who has gone through the ink machine. A failed person. Yeah, they don't have a personality. They have nothing to them. They are just basically a zombie. Ugh, it's giving NPC. But they're just a blob of ink. Yeah, they are. Cruising around. Oh, that's so scary. And a lot of times, they don't have legs. So they're just kind of mush? Yeah, kind of mush. Ugh. One of the things I really appreciated about level design in this game is that it's essentially one extraordinarily long hallway. Just straightforward.

39:36 Yeah, sometimes you go up or down a shaft, but you're always moving forward. So when you get lost or feel in doubt, you really need to just keep going forward and the right direction will reveal itself to you, like through clever uses of lighting and level design. Through one of these hallways, you find a locked barred door. Inside, we can see what at first appears to be a child playing with a toy train. Nope, I don't trust that shit. In actuality, it's a little Bendy. A cute one, like the one actually from the cartoon. This isn't the ink demon from the first game. It's a cute, sweet little baby Bendy boy. It's the version of Bendy that Joey Drew tried to make the first time with the ink machine.

40:22 And remember in the last game, when we had different versions of established characters, they all got like an adjective added to their name, like Brute Boris and Beast Bendy? Yeah. Well, this is just Bendy. Oh, perfect Bendy. Yeah, he is the version that represents the actual character. Good. You are blown away because while you met Alice, she's a human character more or less, Bendy isn't, and this is your first time ever seeing a living cartoon. Yeah, reasonably. And wasn't the goal to have them just in the parks, in the Bendy amusement parks, like walking around and interacting with people? Yeah, that was the idea entirely.

41:02 So remember, in the cartoons, Bendy was a silent character, so this one can't speak either, and he just smiles his big, toothy grin. Poor guy. You reach out saying, it's okay, you're his friend. And he takes your hand, locking his fingers with your inky black hand. And he smiles a big smile. And your newfound power activates and starts to banish Bendy. It shocks the both of you, and you let go as you both look at your own hand. Yeah. Thankfully, by letting go, you didn't actually banish Bendy, but it scared the shit out of him. Reasonably. And he looks at you with inky tears streaming down his face.

41:45 Wait, that's so sad. And he takes off running away. Oh, he scared him off. Yeah. You lose him immediately and just sort of continue on your path topside. You're like, well, traumatize that guy. Moving on. Oops. While going down a hall, the lights shut out and we hear a voice fill our ears. It's a deep, demonic voice. And it tells you that the ink has spoken to it and told it all of your secrets. Ah. It wants to know your name so that it may devour you. Fuck you. You continue on with the demon voice taunting you along the way.

42:26 You get to a narrow hallway with a door at the end. The door is old and metal and the door handle is jammed. You glance down the hallway and at the end, you see the silhouette of a seven foot giant monster taking up the entire hall. Oh, that can't be good. You panic and keep pulling at the door handle as the ink demon makes its way toward you. This is bad Bendy. This is big bad ink demon Bendy. Ah. You manage to open it just in time to slip through and slam the ink demon's fingers in the door, causing it to pull back and then you slam the metal door shut. Now we're faced with the first reference this game will make to a franchise other than Bioshock.

43:11 Because this game turns into Five Nights at Freddy's from here out. Oh, goodness. But don't worry, we'll still get a Bioshock out of it because it's also stealing from Bioshock 2. So what you're just saying is this is very derivative. A little bit. So here's how Bendy becomes both Freddy Fazbear and the Big Sister. As you play the game, every once in a while, you'll get a warning that the Ink Demon is coming. Is it an auditory warning in the same way it is in Bioshock 2? There's an auditory warning and the screen starts to go dark. Oh, okay. You have 13 seconds to find somewhere to hide before he comes to get you.

43:53 Is it 13 because that's the spooky number? Probably, yeah. And this can happen literally anywhere on the map, including during a fight with other creatures. Oh, shit. Wait, that sounds like a fucking nightmare. Truly. You say that in trauma, like, yes, it was fucking terrible. Fortunately, this game has many more places to hide than the first. Okay, so they at least plan for it structurally in the map, but it still fucking sucks. Yeah, but if you're not paying attention, 13 seconds is no time at all. And if you don't find a hiding spot, the Ink Demon will jump scare the shit out of you and kill you in a horrific fashion.

44:36 Now, you played this recently, like, very, very close to when we were recording this. And I remember you took a break for a couple days, and I was like, why not pop back in Bendy? And you went, bitch, it's scary. It's so fucking scary. There is no escaping it. And if you try to cheat it by backing into a corner or something, it just waits for you to move, and then he shows up and fucks you over. Oh, that sucks. And you die, and need to start back at the last autosave, which are painfully few and far between. Oh, that really sucks. Now, searchers and other creatures can't fully kill you the way the ink demon can. If they kill you, you resurrect at these ink vents scattered around the map that look like the portholes the Little Sisters use in Bioshock.

45:22 Oh, shit. So just a circle in the wall several feet up in the wall. Yeah, and they act like the Vita Chambers again in Bioshock. I'm sorry, it's not my fault the game, like, loves Bioshock so damn much. And it's not like you picked up Bioshock recently. It's been a couple months since you picked one up. Yeah. It's not like it's fresh in your mind. You're just like, this is clearly where this comes from. We all love Bioshock, but come on, Mr. Meatly. You eventually find a room with an artist's desk and some sketches of the Butcher Gang around. You find an audio log, and it's from a woman named Jane Todd. Oh, I don't think we know her. We don't. She says that she was tired of the three members of the Butcher Gang and decided to try out a fourth member, Carly, the first girl member of the gang to go along with Charlie, Barley, and Edgar.

46:14 They're killing my childhood. She says the other animators all make fun of her for it, but she knows Mr. Drew will like it, and the log ends with her saying she's going to go talk to him. In searching around the room, we see a big wooden crate. When we open it, we see Carly. Oh, God. She's a full-sized, horrifying baby monster. Horrifying baby monster. And she jumps to life, scaring the shit out of you. Is this a necessary action, or can you sidestep this? You can sidestep this by never opening the crate. Okay. But the crate is basically a giant do-not-push button.

46:56 Oh, so we have to do it. I get you. So you have to push it, yeah. Yeah. They got us there. And we get another FNAF reference basically, because this bitch is just going to jump scare you for no reason for the rest of the game. Oh, so you've just unlocked a scare. Yeah, a jump scare that's just going to fuck with you constantly. I hope they at least give you an achievement or something like that in exchange for your emotional pain, you know? Trauma, yeah, right? Yeah, and maybe that's the name of the trophy is emotional trauma. Yeah, you can't kill her that I know of. So it's literally just a pain in the ass for the rest of the game. Yeah, she just runs at you screaming. Honestly, that's kind of funny now. And then vanishes. I'm back on the team of this being hysterical.

47:37 Yeah, she can hit you if you're not careful, but she's mostly easy to avoid. However, her jump scares are not, and they're coming whether you like it or not. You make it to a room with a pit, and on the other side, you see a lost one, which is basically a searcher who can talk, and he's wearing pants, so he's more like an NPC, and he's laughing a silly little laugh, and he takes off running down a hallway and then vanishes before your eyes. He buzzes solve your way across the pit and eventually find this lost one at a dead end stuck in a pipe, feet first, so he's looking up at you. It's not like getting stuck in the dryer.

48:18 Right. He's not Winnie the Pooh-ing it that way. Gotcha. His name is Porter, and he says that he's stuck, but that this is the way out, which makes you stuck too. You agree to help him get unstuck if he helps you find your way out. The thing that's keeping Porter stuck is just a bunch of ink surrounding him, so you use your banished power to make some of that ink disappear. And it frees up the pipe, and Porter falls through it woo-hooing the whole way down. Fine. At the bottom, he tells you that the name Audrey doesn't suit you, and he's going to call you Bobby instead. That's so rude. What the fuck? He then asks you to give him your left hand, the ink one, and he gives you the power he used earlier when he disappeared in front of you.

49:05 It's called flow, and it allows you to teleport a short distance. So it's more like a blink effect than anything. This is kind of sick. You're at least getting these interesting ways of manipulating your environment that you didn't get in the first one. Yeah, it's nothing like a plasmid at all. Fuck. He blinks himself down a hallway and says, goodbye Bobby, try not to die out there. And he giggles himself off and away. You go further into the studio, killing searchers and lost ones along the way. And in one hallway, you see the ink demon eating a searcher. And it looks up and sees you. And you run through a hallway until you reach a hole in the wall that has ink letters above it reading flow.

49:51 And you use your new power to teleport through the hole just beyond the ink demon's reach. Good. I mean, also very heavy handed just to say what power to use when. But good. It roars at you from behind the hole and stomps away in anger. It taunts you in your mind later telling you that you will succumb to him, and he will make you one with the ink. I hate everything about this. Just like all the others. Ugh. Meanwhile, Wilson is once again making announcements. This time saying that the rumors that the ink demon has returned are false. Remember, he ripped that fucker in half.

50:33 The ink demon everyone keeps hearing about is actually that new girl, which is why it's important that she be brought to him ASAP. You make your way to an elevator, and while inside it, it shuts off and a new voice comes over the PA system. We need to do something about these local radio stations. Everybody's just taking them over. Yeah, it's a public access network. Everyone thinks they're a star. It's a broken and mechanical voice, saying there is an unauthorized presence in the elevator, and it activates remote ejection. Oh, shit. And the floor beneath you vanishes, and you fall into a pit below.

51:13 You land on a stone ground in a sewer, and little black spider-like creatures swarm you. I don't like that at all. They're basically ink versions of the facehugger from Half-Life. Like Lamar. They die with a single whack, but their mama doesn't. Oh, God. She's a gigantic black spider-like creature with a huge ink demon mouth. This is your nightmare. Oh, fully my nightmare, because it's terrifying and can full kill you the way the ink demon can. But you defeat it with your trusty pipe, and get to move on. You find another communication pipe, and tell Alice you are scared and don't know where you are.

51:58 Alice says to stay put, and she'll come get you. So you continue walking. Stay put. Got you. I'm gonna wander this way, though. Well, a door opens, and down the hall, you see little Bendy, the good one. The one that's terrified of you. Yeah, he's about as scared of you as you are of the Ink Demon. And he takes off running. You chase Bendy through a series of tight corners and come out into a big, open area. And a middle-aged man with a pencil mustache is standing on a scaffold above you. He says there's something special in all of us, especially you, Audrey.

52:41 He turns on a light, and you freak out, because this man is none other than Joey Drew himself. Who's dead? He died a couple years ago. He got eaten by the studio. Well, he's not the super old one that we saw at the end of Ink Machine. Oh, no. He froze himself. Yeah, he's a younger, much more spry version. He's a force ghost. Oh, I hate this. He says to climb the ladder up to the scaffolding. There's something he wants to show you. No, this has never gone well for anyone. You join up with him and ask just what the hell is going on around here anyway? What is this place?

53:22 He explains that with just a pencil and a dream and a little help from the Gent Corporation, this place came into being. He calls it The Cycle, a never-ending loop universe that exists outside the real world. Oh. Oh, shit. It also exists outside space and time. And it's a place he still can't decide if it was built out of revenge or regret. Oh, lord. It's the dot in the eye of Jeremy Bearme. Oh, no, but this loop is how he got Henry in here and shit.

54:03 Yeah. Oh, no. For years and years, every round of The Cycle, ran the same, but a little while ago, someone on the outside started messing with the inside. Creatures that Joey Drew Studios never created started coming up out of the ink. Oh, weird. The worst of which are creatures called Keepers, who have taken over the sewers entirely, which is where you find yourself. He tells you that you have a purpose in this world, even if neither he nor you knows what that purpose is. Everyone has one. You just need to find yours.

54:44 But if you want to break the cycle and help him get rid of these new evil creatures, you'll need to go to the stronghold first, which is the gent building downtown. You ask him why he can't change things if he's the creator. Yeah. He folds his arms over his chest and says, Because I'm not the man, I'm just the memory. And he fades away through a door behind him. He was a force ghost. Hell yeah. When you open the door, the tombstone of Joey Drew is all you see on the other side. This is his mausoleum. Oh, no. He is a literal Deus Ex Machina.

55:25 God damn it. The ghost in the ink machine. You chase after little Bendy down a couple more hallways. When you come upon another Bioshot moment, you enter a room with a gigantic window, and outside, you see a sprawling city with the words, a city built on broken dreams, written on the window in ink. You're like, how fucking big is this place? As you look out the window, you glance to your side to see Bendy next to you, also looking out the window. You apologize to him for earlier, saying you didn't mean to hurt him, and that you don't think he wants to hurt you either.

56:08 You ask if he wants to team up with you to escape together. He agrees with a smile and a nod. And you ask him where the gent building is, but he becomes scared and shakes his head no. He promised to keep him safe and not let anything bad happen to him, and he agrees to lead you to the gent building. The two of you make your way to a city street it's locked up and you need an ID card to get in. You and Bendy search the streets looking for it when you find a note from an employee of gent saying he left his ID card in his apartment. So the two of you set off for the apartment. The only way in is by using your flow ability, which Bendy doesn't have, so you have to go in alone.

56:51 Oh, you can't go in, unlock the door for him? No, it's blocked. Oh, that sucks. Once inside, you hear a familiar voice say, it took you long enough. It's Joey Drew, and he's in the apartment with you. Is it old Joey Drew or is it force ghost Joey Drew? It's force ghost Joey Drew. You ask how he got there, and he says, well, I have my ways. He says that while it took you a while to get here, you at least have your father's can do, never quit attitude. And you're all, oh, sure, you knew my dad. I didn't even know my dad, or my mom, or anyone else in my family. I'm a fucking orphan.

57:31 She's an orphan on top of this? Oh, honey, you were cursed. I am sorry, girl. And Joey says that he's surprised. You've chosen to forget the past. He takes your hand and says, you might not be ready for this, but there's something I want to show you. I hate when he shows people shit. I love that they keep using it. It's so good. He puts his hand to your temple, and the screen fades to black as you say, what are you doing? We next hear a different, familiar voice. The voice of a man named Henry Stein. Oh, our Henry? Saying, all right, Joey, I'm here.

58:18 Oh, your Henry. We awaken in the same spot Henry began his journey. 10 years ago in Joey Drew Studios. So you're just in the opening of the first Bendy game? Yep. Fuck! You go in further, and if you explore, it's the whole first chapter of the first game's layout. Oh, seriously? Yeah. That's so good. But Joey says to come over next to him as he's standing near an old school movie projector. You take a seat next to the projector and look over at Joey, who's standing framed in a way that keeps Henry's old desk where he first drew Bendy in view the whole time. Oh, that's good.

58:58 Joey turns on the projector and begins his story. He says it starts with a bitter, angry old man named Joey Drew. He admits it. Okay. The real Joey Drew, the one out there in the real world. He was a pissy old fuck who blamed everyone around him for his problems. Especially his former business partner, Henry Stein, for walking out on him. In his anger, Joey bought a machine from the Gent Corporation, intending to use it to create another world, one that he could control, and he could use it to torture his own version of Henry forever.

59:41 Oh my God. Why would the Gent Corporation offer something like that? What the fuck? Why is that a machine at all? Yeah, I mean, you see this weird shit on Tammu occasionally, but like, holy fuck. And he did. He tortured Henry over and over again inside this world. And every time Henry thought he'd won, Joey would start it all over again. Oh God. I appreciate that we can have this meta moment of them admitting that the first game is purely to torture Henry. Yeah, and it's not even the real Henry. Yeah, it's a version of him that's trapped in this world, almost like that Black Mirror episode where you have kind of your second in the game.

1:00:25 Yeah. Oh, goodness. I forget the name of it. It's like the USS Galaxy or something. There's a video game, but he could trap people's souls in the video game and shit. Bully. Fuck. Until one day, a miracle occurred. A woman named Allison Pendle came into his life. Now, we know Allison Pendle as being the woman who took over the voice acting role for Alice Angel in the cartoon series. She was kind to Joey, no matter how mean he was to anyone else. She always told him that he had a warmer heart than he realized. And through her kindness and friendship, Joey softened over time.

1:01:06 She actually was like, I can fix him and then fix him. Yeah. That's some dangerous fiction we're playing with. He began to feel bad for what he was doing to Henry. So he made a version of Allison and put her into the ink world with Henry. Oh. So he could have an Allison of his own to help him out. That's why we have Allison Angel in the game? Yeah. Oh. Now, seeing he could create real people in a cartoon world, he wanted to do it the other way around. In the first game, we talked about Bendy Land and how he wanted to populate it with living cartoons. Yeah. Well, that was all just a cover for what he really wanted.

1:01:47 Oh. Those creatures at Bendy Land were the mistakes, the attempts and the experiments. He wanted to create a real person from the ink. He wanted a daughter. Oh, no. And after many tests and failed attempts, he finally created one and named her Audrey. I hate this. So do you, because you're like, bullshit, fuck you. I'm not an ink creature. I'm a person. Yeah. And Joey says that being born in the darkness doesn't mean you belong to it. Is he fucking Bane? I knew you were going to say something about Bane and being born in the darkness.

1:02:32 So triggered by the Nolan trilogy. Yeah, and you're sick of his shit and demand he take you back to where you were, the apartment outside the Gent Corporation. And with a sigh, he touches your temple again and takes you back. You can't find little Bendy anywhere, so you decide to just press forward. You get to the security gate to the Gent Corporation, and you come upon the main entrance. And there are bodies of tied up searchers hanging outside with big sign that reads, We are the keepers. As you approach the door, the ink demon drops down from above and advances on you.

1:03:18 Suddenly, these giant electrical pylons just outside the Gent doors fire up, and they're full of colorful electricity that really jump out against the sepia-toned world. Oh, beautiful. And this causes the ink demon to freak out grabbing the sides of its head. The ink demon curls into the fetal position, and we watch as the ink demon fades away, and little Bendy is lying on the ground in its place, shaking. Oh, no! Oh, shit. That's cool. He stands up clearly in pain and hobbles off alone very sadly.

1:04:02 You go inside Gent and get immediately locked in a small room. A TV turns on, and a glowing creature appears on the monitor, and it speaks in a disturbing voice that crackles and breaks as it talks. I hate that. Yeah, it sounds more robotic than human. He says he's one of the keepers, and his job is to keep the cycle safe. You are erratic and emotional, so you're dangerous. You ask who created him, and he says that Wilson did. You say that Wilson asked you to find him, so the keeper should take you to him. He says that's too reckless, and decides to fill the room with deadly neurotoxin instead.

1:04:47 You're fucking with me. Yeah, he's gladdose now. Now he's thinking with portals. You manage to escape into the ventilation system, and we hear the keeper tell the others in the building to kill you on sight. Also, double the security on the cycle breakers. Make sure you can't get to them. And the keepers suck. They're kind of bad guys that cast a light, and as long as you stay out of the light, you'll be safe. Oh, that's kind of annoying. Yeah, they're like six and a half feet tall, and they move very slowly until they see you. Gross. And they're almost like a black ghost, but not transparent, with a glowing yellow face and long dreadlock-like attachments dragging along behind them.

1:05:29 Ew, I hate everything about this. Yeah, it turns the whole section into a terrifying stealth game. You find a door labeled cycle breakers, but the door is broken, which I think is their way of doubling security. I'm just like, fuck it, no one can get in or out. Yeah, there's no guards here. Oh, that's funny. A lost one appears, sounding like moaning Myrtle from Harry Potter, saying that through there is where they keep the troublemakers. It's basically a prison. Nobody ever comes out, and if they do, they're never quite the same again. Oh shit, this is the trauma wall. Yeah, but if you want, she'll open the door for you.

1:06:12 But if this all sounds good to you, we can proceed. Like, in what world are you like, that sounds great, let's do it. Well, they want to keep you out of there, so you feel a need to go in there. Oh, I hate that. Her name is Heidi, and part of her history is that she used to be kept in that prison. And she's one who got out and was never quite right again. Oh, honey. She's an adult, but she's stuck in an adolescent mindset. So before she will open the door, she wants to play her favorite game first. Can you guess what children's game Heidi likes best? Probably not hide and seek. Hide and seek, of course.

1:06:55 After you find her, she opens the door up for you. It'd be funny if she was like, I want to seek. Right, she wants to find you. Yeah. Well, she also gives you the ability to use those little sister portholes as fast travel spots so you can go backward through the game to collect anything you missed. Oh, clever. You enter the Cycle Breakers prison, and it's a bunch of windows covered by a sci-fi door, the kind that slides straight up into the wall. I was going to ask what a sci-fi door is, now I fully see it. Got it. There's a few, and they each have a three-digit number written on the sill underneath them. These three-digit numbers correspond to the release dates of each chapter of the first Bendy game.

1:07:36 Oh, I like that. Yeah. They have a lever next to each window, and when you pull the lever, the sci-fi door lifts up. In one of them, you see an ink person wearing overalls, playing a banjo. Their back is to you, and at his feet, you can see a discarded Bendy mask. This is Sammy Lawrence. Oh, the music composer. Yeah. Goodness, that's right. He was in overalls in the first game. And you can't interact with him outside this, as he just sits there playing a sad melody on his banjo. Is he still, like, very muscular? You just see him from behind, so you can't see his muscles. He's not, like, he don't got, like, a ripped back?

1:08:18 Not that you can see. Okay. Another room belongs to Alice Angel, but it's empty. There's also a secret cell you have to access through event system. Where you can find the gigantic, discarded head... No... . of Bertram Piedmont. One of my favorite characters in anything ever. Oh, shit. Bertram Piedmont is the crazy person who pitched Bendyland and then was so in love with his own creation, he became an amusement park ride? Yeah, and he's clearly still alive. No, it's like, is he twitching and shit? Well, his one working eye follows you around the room.

1:08:58 That is terrifying. I love everything about this, because he turns into like an octopus-armed wuxi game. And it's the heads that look like the heads in Spirited Away that the Baba Yaga witch bitch has. Oh, that's so good. Yeah, but he can't hurt you. He's just an Easter egg. The last cell you can open has a man sitting on a stool, drawing on a piece of paper, again, with his back to you. You ask him for help, and he's like, you must be lost if you're asking me for help. Oh. You explain that you just want to understand more about everything going on here. The Keepers, the Cycle, Wilson, anything. He asks your name, which you give.

1:09:41 And then you ask for his in return. He stands up and puts his book down and turns around. He so gets a heroic moment, and I love this. He's a middle-aged man in an old-fashioned suit with his sleeves rolled up and they're covered in ink. And he introduces himself as Henry. And this is the official face reveal of Henry Stein. We've never seen his face before? No, we never looked in a mirror in the first game. And he's once again being voiced by the Meatly himself. Oh, the Meatly's like, I am the artist. It is what it is. Henry Stein was the protagonist of the first game, and he's not in his fucking 60s.

1:10:22 Wait, really? Yeah, because as we learned earlier, the Henry from the first game was just a creation of Joey Drew. That's right, it's not actually him. It's just like a bit of his soul stuck in this contraption that Gent sold him. Okay, so he wasn't a 60-year-old man lumbering through the studio. He was a younger man. But Joey remembered him. Yeah, we just assumed he was old because of linear time. Right, fuck us for that one, right? And he created the one that he remembered, like you said. Which means Henry Stein is just a slow and lumbering son of a bitch. He's just an animator with a desk job. He doesn't do a lot of cardio. He's an indoor cat. That's me, I get it.

1:11:02 Yeah, his only excuse was his age, and we just took that away. Well, Henry explains that he was locked up by the keepers because he's what they call a cycle breaker. Oh, he can actually affect the timeline and shit, huh? Yeah, he knows how to reset the cycle and start the ink universe over again. Oh. Which would include erasing the keepers from existence. That's right. Everyone locked up here does, really, or at least have had a hand in making it so Henry could reset it in previous cycles. Got it. So they're like, nope, fuck you, we're on this timeline now, or this cycle, excuse me, to use the correct language. And if we keep Henry away, we can hang.

1:11:43 So fuck this, he's in a box. As Wilson told us before, it's been 211 days since he allegedly defeated the Ink Demon. Which means the cycle hasn't reset in a very long time. Yeah. Leading to this far worse version of the Ink Universe than we saw even in the first game. It has to be reset, otherwise it doesn't, it like spins out of control. So this is spinning out of control. Yeah, it also explains away any inconsistencies in character development and story from the first game. Because these are supposed to all be characters that have been cycle looping for 10 more years since the first game. Wow, interesting.

1:12:25 I can appreciate this context though for the first one. Yeah, and now they're all stuck in a shitty linear timeline. And everybody hates it. Henry explains that he discovered the way to reset long ago, and that the Ink Demon is the key to resetting it. The Ink Universe was birthed upon the Ink Demon's creation, making both the Universe and the Demon intrinsically linked to one another. He says that the way to reset is to show the Ink Demon a film reel titled The End. That's right. So it's the same rules as the first game. To save money, there's only one end card produced with the words The End, and they just tack that onto the ending of their cartoons.

1:13:10 When you see a YouTuber that uses the exact same end card for every single one, you're like, I see what you did there. Yeah, I used end card to kind of make it make sense for modern audience, honestly. Oh, got you. Every other film reel containing a Bendy cartoon doesn't have an end card. Right, because then they just slap it on the end of it and post before it ships. Yeah, so in the Ink Demon's history of being in those cartoons, they just loop back and start over from the beginning. Oh, it's like me binging things while I work from home. This is me with Veep. Right. By showing the Ink Demon the end card film reel, it starts the cycle over again.

1:13:52 Because it accepts this as the canonical end and it's like, it's over. Yeah, and it doesn't know what to do at the end of a cartoon other than start over. Yeah. He tells you where you can find it and wishes you luck on your journey. If you need anything else, you know where to find him. Henry's the shit. He's not athletic, but he is a very helpful kind man. Yeah, he's a wonderful character. Love him especially in this game. Yeah. As you leave, you find a room with contraband. And it's the viewer thing from the first game that let you see secret messages around the studio. Oh, that's great. As well as a record and an ax representing both Sammy and Alice Angel.

1:14:33 And in a drawer underneath the contraband table is a rocket launcher that Alice Angel used in the April Fool's Day joke, Bendy Royale. Shut up. Bendy Royale is my favorite property. Of properties that don't exist, that is the best fucking one. Good for them being like, we get it, that was weird, but here's a nod if you're like me and you love that shit. Hell yeah. You can't take any of them with you though, and you continue on. You get to a sealed door, and when you pull the handle, an alarm goes off, and a keeper's voice comes over the PA, alerting of an intruder. A door in the floor opens up, and a keeper comes crawling out of it, casting its light beam around the room looking for you.

1:15:18 You're trapped though, and when it sees you. You're the one who brought you here, and you've literally never done shit to him. It doesn't make sense why he did this to you.

1:15:59 And he says that nothing here makes sense, dummy. We're in a pocket dimension, you dipshit. The walls are made of paper. There's ink creatures, and we're in a cartoon studio that went out of business 30 years ago. But the place has evolved now. The things we create in here can be made real out there. I don't appreciate that he took a very pedantic part of the argument. When she's reasonably like, fuck you, I always put my trash out for you and shit. I'd give you some cake at fucking holidays and shit and birthdays in the office. Why are you doing this to me? And he's like, well, if you'll notice, there's ink everywhere.

1:16:43 She's like, yeah, she's like, that's not the fucking thing I was upset about. Well, he next pulls out a can and pours a glob of ink into his hand. The ink molds and transforms into a little six inch tall Bendy. The Bendy stands up and looks at you and waves his happy little wave. And you even wave back to him. Wilson asks, though, if these angels and demons down here are actually life. Or are they just stains? And he picks up the newborn Bendy and squeezes it until it explodes into liquid ink once more. This is why you gotta do background checks on every employee.

1:17:27 Fuck this guy. You finally ask, after all his rambling, what he wants with you. And he says he brought you here to help him save his father. Fuck you and fuck your father. Wilson's in his seventies. It's time to let go, Wilson. Yeah, buddy. Like honestly, let's say you lived the perfect life, exact life every person could only hope to live. In that life, your parents still die. Wilson, your dad's probably in his nineties. Just fucking let it go. But as he says this, the tram comes to a stop. You follow him out, and suddenly you hear a voice in your head, the voice of the ink demon, and he says, He's lying, Audrey.

1:18:14 I did not care for that. What the fuck? You don't realize this is all in your head. So you respond out loud, be quiet. And Wilson looks at you like, what did you just say? And you wave him off, and the two of you continue on. I told you to shut the fuck up, old man. You get to a security checkpoint, and a keeper instructs you to check your weapon before continuing forward, as weapons are prohibited. What is this, a saloon? You put it on a table, and just to tease you, there's a bunch of far superior weapons on the table, like an axe and a machine gun. A machine gun. You get in, and you see more of those electrical pylons that cause the Ink Demon to turn into friendly Bendy.

1:18:56 And again, they have these purples and blues and greens with their lightning sparks. We got none of that in the first one, so aesthetically, that must just be very jarring. It is, but it's very pretty and very cool. Wilson explains that they nullify the Ink Demon's powers and were built by the Gent Corporation years ago because they also had an issue with the Ink Demon. You ascend some stairs and come upon a gigantic painting in a frame. It's depicting Wilson, holding a sword, light shining behind him with the Ink Demon cowering beneath him. It's like the Nippoholian painting of him on the horse with the sword there and shit like that.

1:19:37 Yeah, perfectly. No, that motherfucker, that is the most lunatic ass shit you can do. He's not even a CEO. He's one of those self-made entrepreneurs that sells fucking skinny tea on Instagram. Like he's in an MLM and thinks he's winning and shit. Started a drop shipping business and thinks he's God. Yeah, fuck. And it's depicting his victory over the Ink Demon, a whopping 211 days ago. So he had that rush order. Because it takes a long time to paint. Like, what the fuck, man? I get that all you have is ink and time, but still. Shit. Well, you call him out because you know for a fact he didn't kill the Ink Demon, as it's been chasing you constantly.

1:20:22 Yeah, she's like, I seen it recently. And he says, no, killing the Ink Demon has proven to be completely impossible. Liar. What they learned to do, though, was weaken him to a point they could contain him in a simpler form. Oh, shit. And you answer, Bendy. Bendy is still the Ink Demon. They've just watered him down to where he's cute. Yeah, he said it felt fitting, all things considered. But somehow, Palpatine, I mean, the Ink Demon, returned. Well, unlike Star Wars, we actually have a reason why.

1:21:03 Oh, good. Instead of just like, what if we just said it happened and then just made that canon? Well, it's never explicitly stated. However, you never got chased by the Ink Demon until after you shocked little Bendy way back when we first met him. Hurting Bendy cracked whatever seal was containing the Ink Demon, allowing him to take control from time to time. Because the only other time in the game you weren't getting chased by the Ink Demon was when little Bendy was your sidekick for a while as well. And Wilson tells you to get some rest. You have a lot of work to do if you're going to help save his father.

1:21:46 And he introduces you to his robot maid. Oh God, what's the one on the Jetsons? Rosie. Rosie? Is it a Rosie? No, this one's Bendy. Is it basically a Rosie? It's basically a Rosie, right? Hell yeah. As he departs, you ask him why he needed to go to so much trouble getting you down here. Why didn't he just ask for help? Why didn't you just lie to me in the office like a normal fucking coworker? You can lie anywhere. There's not a rule that you can't lie at work. And he responds, would you have believed me back then? No, I kind of still don't now. We're not friends. Well, he walks through a door and leaves you with Bendy.

1:22:27 I hate him. She guides you to your room, and as she does, it becomes obvious that she's not actually a robot, but a person wearing a robot mask. What? That's some horrific shit you just said. Kind of, yeah. Yeah, what the fuck? You ask her if she's been here long, and she says no. She's told she's actually very new. She was made as a result of some experiment and didn't come out quite right. So Wilson employed her in his home, and she wears the mask to hide her mistake of a face. This is Guardians of the Galaxy 3. Over time, Wilson came to say that Bendy reminded him of his mother.

1:23:09 She asks if a mother is a good thing where you come from, and you respond that you don't know. You never had one. So the version of you that never had a chance departs from your sight for the night, saying she left a recipe for a sleeping potion on your nightstand in case you need a little help falling asleep. We home make our own ambient here. So if you'd like some organic ambience, I got you, baby girl. Some Valerian root. You go on a series of fetch quests to collect the ingredients for the sleeping potion. Little melatonin. And the final ingredient is water. So you head into the bathroom to fill your cup. There's a huge mirror above the sink taking up the entire wall.

1:23:53 So you see yourself in the bathroom around you. The instructions say to take three sips only. So you count them off. Each sip brings the cup up and over your eyes. And even though it's very obvious what they're about to do, it's still terrifying as you bring the cup down after the third sip and evil Alice from the first game is suddenly in the bathroom with you. Like she's fucking Bloody Mary. God damn it. We explain her full backstory in our episode on the first game. But briefly, the character of Alice Angel had two voice actresses. The first one got fired and in an attempt to save her job, volunteered to be turned into Alice Angel through the ink machine.

1:24:36 So terrifying. Since the actress had a shitty soul, the Alice Angel she turned into was horribly disfigured. Kind of like Two-Face, the Phantom of the Opera. Gross. And the meatly says she is his favorite character to write. She's depraved. I love it. Yeah, she's the only one. You never know what she's going to do next. So the sleep potion works instantly, and you fall over unconscious as Evil Alice says, Night-night. Oh, bitch. You wake up in a chair, and as you look around and take in your surroundings, you see that you're sitting at the head of a banquet table, laid out with cakes and candles and shit.

1:25:21 And there are guests at this party. They're all lost ones with burlap sacks over their heads, tied to their chair. Six in total lining the long sides of the table. At the opposite end is Evil Alice. She welcomes you to her party and says, it's not every day you get to bask in the glory of an angel. And when she says angel, her voice changes to that of a small child. Huh. And it sounds extremely similar to a little sister. I know it's been a while since our last Bioshot. Sorry. And her motives are still the same as the first game. She sees you as a means to making her beautiful, because she's never seen anyone quite like you before.

1:26:07 So she wants to kill you and peel your face off and wear it as her own. And Evil Alice mostly talks like a grown woman, but from time to time, her little girl voice comes out. But it's almost like a split personality sometimes. Oh, weird. Because before she kills you, she wants to play a game. And the little girl voice says, a game sounds like a wonderful idea. She says that if you win the game, she'll let you go free. If you lose, you die. And when you look at the chair you're sitting in, you realize it's an electric chair. Oh, shit. Like with the thing on the head and the cuffs on the arms and shit? Yeah.

1:26:48 While everyone else are sitting in regular chairs. But the puzzle, once completed correctly, will disconnect her power switch. And each lost one says a portion of the puzzle. And they're talking about four animals in the order they sit in a line, saying things like the fox sits next to the bird, but not the rabbit. Okay, so it's just a logic puzzle. We have to line up the order of operations of something. Yeah. You climb a ladder, and at the top is a series of animal pictures. And you have to put the animals in the correct order based on the clues you got from the lost ones. That's great. It's like an escape room puzzle. Yeah, very much like an escape room. Very good. And the final line up is rabbit, bear, bird, and fox.

1:27:34 Or if you will, Bonnie, Freddy, Chica, and Foxy. Fuck all the way off. And yeah, they're in the exact order they appear in the poster plus Foxy in Five Nights at Freddy's. Oh, that's good. Do you think that's an intentional nod? Oh, it's very much an intentional nod, yeah. Like it has to be, right? Fully, fully. Like, this is admitted to be a nod. Oh, okay. They've copped to this. When you sit down in your seat after solving the puzzle, she throws the switch, and you watch electricity surge through all the lost ones surrounding the table. You kill all the people that helped you solve the puzzle? Yeah, solving the puzzle only saved you and actually rerouted the current to the others at the table.

1:28:18 That's pretty fucked. You were your own trolley problem, and you didn't even know it. I'm the trolley. That's the problem. Evil Alice screams out, No, as the lights go out. When they come back on, the lost ones are all steaming and dead. Steaming! And Evil Alice is gone. You go through a door and take another Bioshock as you encounter something that happens a lot in both Bioshock and this game. When you enter a new area, you first come upon a wall, and that wall usually has an advertisement for whatever you're about to face. Ah, yes. And then you go around the wall to see the actual area for the first time. For example, in Bioshock, an ad for Dr.

1:28:59 Steinman's plastic surgery. Right. Or here, an ad for an Alice Angel cartoon with big Alice Angel banners on either side. As you approach it, bullets rip through the poster from behind. Bullets, oh no. Leaving a hole through the wall because everything here is made of paper and ink, and a clear line of sight to evil Alice holding a machine gun on an elevated balcony shooting at you. Horrific. You humiliated her, and nobody humiliates an angel, so you must pay. But babe, there's no survivors. No one knows you're in pain. It should be fine, like they're all dead. Who's she embarrassed in front of now?

1:29:40 Yeah, right? Nobody saw this but you. Yeah. Like, let's call it a draw at that point. You have to use your flow ability to run and hide and avoid her gunfire while also solving puzzles. All so you can work your way closer and closer to her and make it behind her where you're able to sneak up on her. You're given the prompt to banish her. Yeah, do that. And as you go to touch her, she catches you and points her gun right in your face. You smack the gun and throw both her and yourself off the balcony to the ground below. Oh, shit. You start getting up, but Evil Alice is already advancing on you with her gun again.

1:30:21 This bitch. Evil Alice says, It's final curtain, baby, let's blow them away as she cocks her gun and points it at you. Ugh. Suddenly, a sword burst through her chest by some unseen force. A sword? Oh, that's fucking cool. And she falls over, revealing the Good Alice Angel, standing behind her with a big ass sword. Hell yeah, honey. I feel like we kind of meet Alice Angel in a similar way in the first one, too. Like, doesn't she save your ass? Yeah, we'll get to that. Oh, I love this. She catches Evil Alice, and Evil Alice looks up at Good Alice and says, You have my face and I'm beautiful.

1:31:07 And Good Alice says, You always were. Oh, wait, that's so sweet. That's some healing between sisters right there. Yeah, Evil Alice takes her last breath and dies. Oh, but she gets to die happy, which I'm happy about for some reason, because she's like, oh, I'm pretty. Right? That's all I ever wanted. All she's ever wanted was to see herself beautiful, and she got it as her dying wish. Don't make me like her. And Good Alice stands up saying, why did that feel so familiar? I'm having deja vu, but it's probably nothing. You stand up and notice that Good Alice's wolf is also with her.

1:31:47 He's in the form of Boris the Wolf, but Alice introduces him as Tom, her protector. And this Boris is the one with the steampunk style robot arm. Hell yeah, this is cool ass Boris. You tell Good Alice that you can understand why she doesn't like being called Alice. She's like, first of all, understood on that one. Yeah, considering the one lying at her feet. She says that the machine makes lots of us look alike, but the inside parts are always different. Audrey suggests Alice try on a new name and suggests the name Allison, after Allison Pendle, the woman who was hired to be the second voice of Alice Angel and the woman that inspired Joey Drew to be a better person.

1:32:34 And she's also the reason this version exists at all, as Joey sent her into the Ink Universe to help Henry after years of torturing him. Allison asks you why you're in Wilson's hideout. And this reminds you that you need to get back to him in order to help him defeat the Ink Demon and save his dad. Which is on you for some fucking reason, because this man can't just manage his own emotions. Well, Allison goes, are you fucking crazy? Wilson's the bad guy. Was that not clear? And you ask her if she's ever actually met Wilson or spoken to him. And she says no, but I've seen what he's done to this place and that's enough for her. She's like, but like, vibe this man though, he's horrible.

1:33:17 You tell Allison that he's helping you reset the cycle, so he can't be all that bad. Allison trusts you and says that if the two of you are going to take on the Ink Demon, then you're going to need some help. So she and Tom set off to gather some old friends to help out. As she does, she goes, oh, a machine gun, dibs. Just right out from under you. Just mocking you at this point. That's funny. I know I like that one. They can have it. You make it back to Betty, and she tells you that Wilson is waiting for you in the lab. You head to the lab, and if throughout your adventure, you collected all of a certain collectible and decided to take a seat on a very specific chair while heading to the lab, the screen cuts the black, and we see you from the POV of a security camera.

1:34:07 Oh, shit. In full, normal color and flesh. In a straight jacket. In a padded room. Shut up. On a padded bed. Flopping around as the credits roll. What the fuck? Can you describe what collectible it is that triggers this horrific ass shit? It's a book. There's a book that's scattered throughout the entire facility. And if you collect all of the books, this weird Easter egg ending where Audrey is just a crazy person in an asylum occurs. Holy shit. I don't love that. Oh, it's super eerie because Audrey just kind of like flops around like a ragdoll all over the room.

1:34:50 Oh, poor girl. But this is not the real ending either. How far are we into this game? We're about to hit the point of no return. Okay, so there's like one more like, you know, Act 3 has started. We're about to have our final big bad moment. So they're just like, we're going to deprive you of like gameplay, is more what I'm hearing. Like at the beginning, I get that. That's been a far cry trope for years. And you know, it's just kind of a funny thing you do. You're like, ah, you solved the mystery. You got it, logic. But no, this one's just like, what if we're just like, fuck it, we're going to shave 30, 45 minutes off your gameplay just for shits and giggles.

1:35:30 So a completionist could realistically accidentally stumble into this. A completionist could finish the game without completing it. Ironically, I'm going back and forth on whether I hate it or not. I can't decide, so you just need to keep going. I can't. Well, we head to the lab like normal, and it's unlike anything we've seen in the game. There's color here. Oh, shit. A lot of it. But it's inconsistent and kind of not meaningfully placed. And it's just splashes of color and coloring outside the lines. I would say it looks like somebody who may be blind in the painting. Oh, weird. But it only persists through two hallways and then is just gone, putting us back in the Sepia world.

1:36:14 Huh. You get to the lab itself, and you're in a room with a big observation window, looking in at Wilson. And he does give you the point of no return speech, signaling the final mission. And there were a couple side quests you could complete, including one where you feed a giant ink blob man, creature kind of thing called Big Steve. And you feed him a still beating heart. What the fuck? And he just kind of sits down and eats it like an apple. I hate everything about this. I'm glad we didn't do that one in this run through. What the fuck? Well, he's a friendly giant, actually. And once you feed him, you can get a bunch of cool treasures and a power up for your pipe if you do.

1:36:55 Well, that's fucking cool, but I don't want to feed him a heart. He also shows up later, and if you didn't meet him by going off track and doing this side quest, you would see him later and go, who the fuck is this guy? There's a giant man who's being irrelevant right now. Well, anyway, once you're ready, you let Wilson know you're here to help, and he lets you into his lab. He says that since the Ink Demon can't be killed, we need to cast him out instead and replace him with a new deity, one that we control. And as he says this, a painted picture is revealed.

1:37:36 It's in full color, and it's of a little sailor boy with a big smile and rosy cheeks, with his sidekick blue crab in a bow tie. Was this whole thing just so this motherfucker could pitch a cartoon to an artist? Yeah, that's actually exactly what this is. Are you fucking serious? I'm so upset right now. And his name is Shipahoy Dudley. I want to kick this man's ass. I know this is a grown man with a crazy eye or some shit, but I want to cause him physical fucking harm. Well, you look at this thing and you agree this will probably be better than the Ink Demon.

1:38:18 But how can you make sure you control it? How do you avoid the same mistakes as Joey Drew? Wilson says that with the right character, the right science, and the right soul, it can't fail. As he says the right soul, a wall panel slides away, revealing a half dozen rotary saw blades spinning. He says that with your soul, his creation will live forever. You ask, what about his father going home, all that stuff? And he simply says, I lied. He's at least lying about having a family he needed to save.

1:38:58 His dad is long beyond hope. Perhaps you've heard of him. Nathan Arch. Oh, there it is. The owner of Archgate Studios. Son of a bitch. He's such a creep. The only way he'd get a job is doing the jander shit at his daddy's company, because he's such a fucking lunatic. And he still manages to kidnap a bitch. Yeah, Nathan Arch, the business tycoon and billionaire who spent his whole life funding every creative person in his path, including the constant failure, Joey Drew, spending more time with Bendy and his creator than he ever did with his own son.

1:39:39 Wow. It's still a commentary on Crunch Culture. Right. What the fuck though? Because people like Joey Drew are geniuses, and his son could never compare. Honestly, yeah, his son fucking sucks. I get that. In an audio log, we hear Wilson talk about being the son of the great Nathan Arch and how he would visit his dad at work, but nobody knew who he was, so he decided to pretend to be a janitor just to kinda fuck with everyone. Is he Andy Bernard on The Office? Seriously, right?

1:40:21 But when the ink machine arrived, nobody knew what it was, and they just threw it in a museum. But he knew what it was and what it could do, and he's been using it to pause the cycle and to create new creatures. Oh, what a fucking creep. He also learned how to go in and come out of the ink machine, which is why he looks as old as he does and why he's as deformed and sick in his human form now. It's deteriorating him, all the... I can't even describe what it is, the time loop transfer space? Yeah, he's got to die every time he goes back in. Oh, shit.

1:41:02 Yeah, he's not in his 70s. He's more in his late 40s or early 50s. He looks fucking terrible for his age. Yeah, this puts Nathan Arch no more than like 70 now, and still would be a very reasonable active businessman. And now he's going to use the ink machine to create Shippahoy Dudley and overthrow Bendy the Ink Demon. I love how fucking stupid the name is. And show his father once and for all that he is the real creative genius, not Joey Drew. Is this secession? I'm not caught up, but I think this is secession, but real bad.

1:41:44 It also feels like the brother relationship between Captain America and Tony Stark, because they both knew his dad. Oh, yeah, one's clearly better and not the familial relation, so he's just a bitter, shitty Iron Man, but instead he's fucking Chippsahoy Dudley, and I fucking hate it. Well, once he rules this world, he'll go on to rule theirs as well. Does he see himself as Chippsahoy Dudley and, like, he has a crab sidekick? I think he does, yeah, he probably does. He just wants to have a crab sidekick. Well, he knows now that he can bring anything he wants with him when he leaves this world. Oh, no. You reach out to use your banished power on him, and he says that the pylons that prevent the ink demon from showing up also prevents your banished powers from working.

1:42:32 That's convenient. You swing your pipe, and he catches your wrist. With both your arms in his hands, he starts dragging you towards the spinning saw blades. As he drags you, you struggle enough to get your wrist some swing power. Hell, yeah. And you bash Wilson in the face a few times with your pipe until he lets you go. Fuck, yeah, bust both his eyes all the way up in the skull. I hate this man. And you shove his ass into the spinning saw blade. Shit, yeah. And you watch his body get torn to literal shreds. Apt the fucking lutely. Down to ribbons, bitch. Fuck you and chips ahoy. And he is back to ink and paper.

1:43:15 Good. The wall closes, and you head out. If you die in the ink matrix, do you die in real life? Only with the banishment. That's the only way. So it like removes you from the cycle entirely. Cool. You enter a big room that has a large pool of ink along the far wall, with a bunch of pipes feeding into it. There's a lever to move on to the next room, so you pull it. But it doesn't open the doors. It turns on the ink machine, located somewhere else, and feeds into the pool of ink in the room with you. A gigantic anchor on a chain comes flying out of the ink and out climbs a 20 foot tall shipahoy Dudley.

1:44:01 No. With a spider lower half for a body. Oh no, cause he's a terrible person, so he made a terrible creature. Yeah. He's crackling with electricity, and he looks like a terrifying animatronic. And he also has an outy belly button in the form of Wilson's head. Ew, that's disgusting and horrible. Wait, is his crab friend there? No. God damn it, the coolest part of this didn't even come true. Actually thinking about it, it's probably that's what the lower body is, is the crab part of it. Oh, cause he's so fucked up, it's all fucked up. They combined together and he became both. So it's not a spider, he's on a crab. That's- That's a little charming, I'm not gonna lie.

1:44:44 Like the way in the fly when he goes in with the fly, he goes out all fucked up is what happened to his dream. Yeah, entirely. Good, fuck you. And Wilson's head is obviously the weak spot of the Spider Dudley. I don't want to look at it, and I'm very upset that the game makes you. During the fight, you manage to disable the power supply that's keeping you from being able to use your banished powers. And once you do, you grab Wilson's head and watch him scream out as he vanishes and dies once and for all. Hell yeah. Fuck you. But Crab Dudley doesn't die. In fact, Crab Dudley is now free, and Crab Dudley is fucking pissed.

1:45:30 This is very funny to me that the crab persevered. Well, Crab Dudley's first act as a free spirit is grabbing you and ripping your fucking legs off. Does he actually do it? He actually does it. Fuck off. And tosses you aside. And you look down and you can see your bones sticking out of the stumps where your legs used to be. I can't even watch that when it's in cartoons or anything. I think it's the grossest shit when the bones stick out. Fuck everything. That's honestly pretty hardcore animation gore for this. We haven't seen anything this gory yet, right? No, not at all.

1:46:11 And it's ink, but it's still fucking horrifying. Yeah, and just contextually, that feels like a big horror jump to get into gore after you've been in Creepy Crawly and Jumpscare World. And you drag yourself away from the advancing monster. Now the pylons that you shut down didn't just give you back your banish power. It also means there's nothing stopping the Ink Demon from coming. So just as Crab Dudley is about to finish you off, the Ink Demon comes in like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park to save the fucking day. Honestly, hell yeah.

1:46:52 Crab Dudley and the Ink Demon fight it out and with a horrifying crunch, the seven foot tall Ink Demon rips out the 20 foot tall Crab Dudley's throat with his teeth, killing him once and for all. That's a soft shell motherfucker. Die, die, die. The Ink Demon grabs Crab Dudley and drags him back into the ink pool from whence he came. This is horrifying. I love it. Oh, it's about to get so much better too. How? Oh, this is great. You pass out from a loss of ink and wake up a short while later, surrounded by your own ink and crying.

1:47:37 The Ink Demon emerges from the pool once again and sees you. The Ink Demon advances, growling, and you just lay there crying. He says that it's time, Audrey, to accept your fate. Your road is broken, and your whole existence is a lie. You're not the Audrey that won. You're one of the failed experiments, a monster like him. It's time to join the Ink and become one with the Ink Demon, where you belong. With the Ink Demon, you will become special again.

1:48:18 You will have meaning and purpose. And with no other options, you reach out your hand, and the Ink Demon eats your head. The screen goes black, and the Ink Demon says, We are now one, the daughter of Drew and the power of the Demon. What the fuck? Your eyes open, and you're looking down at your hands, and they are the hands of the Ink Demon. Oh no. You're struggling, and you can hear your own voice wondering what's happening. From over by the Pool of Ink, you hear Joey Drew say, There's always a choice.

1:49:02 He calls out to you, saying he knows you're in there, somewhere, and that you have a choice, even now, on what to do next. You're not one of the failures. You are real. Joey Drew really did succeed in creating a daughter, and both he and the real Joey Drew truly love you. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Fight this guy. Don't let him get in your head. You're a bad bitch. Can't kill her? The ink demon takes control of its own body and advances on Joey, saying the wretch is mine. Now that we're closer, we can see that Joey is holding a film reel, and he keeps saying that it's okay.

1:49:47 He knows you'll do the right thing. And the ink demon grabs Joey Drew, saying that the failure of Joey Drew dies here. Joey says that a pencil in a dream just isn't enough anymore. You have to have heart. And he shows you that the film reel in his arm is the one that says, the end. Hell yeah. You can hear Joey's bones snap. Oh my god. One by one. As the ink demon strengthens its grip around him. And with a final loud snap, Joey Drew goes limp. And you scream out from inside the ink demon.

1:50:29 Never thought you'd feel bad about Joey Drew dying. Okay, here. I don't still. I just, I'm surprised at the amount of gore they've injected into the third act of the second game where there has been none up until now. That's fair. That is jarring for me. I am rooting for Audrey, and I think this makes her sad. So I'm here for her. I don't give a fuck about Joey Drew. I'll make that very clear. I'm Team Bad Bitches only. Well, the demon tosses Joey's body into the pool of ink, and you take control again, catching your breath as you do. Looking down, you see the film reel on the ground. The ink demon asks, what are you doing as you pick up the reel, showing it to yourself, and by proxy him saying, you're finishing this.

1:51:18 This is the end. And you take full control of the ink demon's body and smash through a nearby wall. Because it's all made of paper, so it's very easy. We next see a legless searcher crawling down a hallway when the ink demon smashes through a wall screaming and crushes the searcher into a Rorschach test. Now, you play as the ink demon himself. And you are the massive, gigantic beast Bendy, standing 15 feet tall and able to break through these walls with ease. And while you have the body, the demon still has the mouth.

1:52:01 And he calls the faithful lost ones and searchers in the area to come take you down. Oh shit. But you tear ass through this place like an inky black Donkey Kong, just crushing the onslaught of ink people around you like they're nothing. You get to a room that has a bunch of much larger lost ones, and they're holding electric cattle prods that will clearly weaken you as they have that colorful electricity from before. Oh shit. The ink demon says, Your time has come, and then bullets start ripping through the lost ones, and Allison comes out a dark hallway and shoots everyone around you like a Tarantino movie.

1:52:42 Get it, bitch. She says, she knows it's you in there, and she's here to help. And then she says, Tom, make us some trouble. Hell yeah. But we don't see Tom. We see Big Steve as he lifts a sci-fi door up and over his 12 foot head. But we see Tom riding on the back of him. Does this trigger whether or not you've done his side quest? Yeah, I think if you hadn't met Steve earlier, which is completely possible, this would still happen and it would be very weird to see. So he helps you battle through the next sections of the map. Hell yeah. But you get to another dead end.

1:53:22 And Sammy Lawrence is there. And he's telling the Lost Ones to submit to their new ink lord. All of your friends along the way are there, including Heidi, helping you smash your way to the room with a projector so you can play the reel. That's what's up. But you get to another dead end. And the switch that will open the door is in a spot nobody can get to. And then you hear a voice ring out. Somebody need my help? And Alison shouts out, Henry, you came. And he says that some battles are worth fighting. Even for the millionth time. Oh, why do I love him? You're right. I feel more connected to him in this game.

1:54:03 I'm like, hell yeah, Henry. Maybe just because he's actually able to break the cycle and impact change when the first one, the whole core is that he cannot impact change and he's stuck in this world. But man, Henry in two is fucking sick. Yeah, I love Henry. You get into the room, and you can see someone has written, The End on the wall ahead. There's a projector on a table, dead setter between the two words. And there's a cardboard cutout of Bendy nearby as well. Oh. You put the film reel into the projector and point the thing right into your own eyes. That's fucking great. And with the cutout of Bendy still smiling at you, the world around you fades to white as the cycle finally resets.

1:54:50 Beautiful. You wake up in the same spot you did at the end of the last game in Joey Drew's home. You're a real person again with hands of skin. It's also the version of the home we saw at the start of the game, decrepit and falling apart. Oh, no. Yeah, there's vines and shit. You say that your father once told you that just because you're born in the darkness doesn't mean we belong to it. And you approach the door that Henry entered to restart the cycle in the first game. You open it, and you're back at the start of this game. Oh. In your office. Overworked, underpaid. Where you were working on Archgate's revival of the Bendy cartoon series that it recently bought from the estate of Joey Drew.

1:55:33 But now you realize you are the daughter of Joey Drew. And that it's right that this landed on you, because now you can control what happens in it. You've seen that the cycle can go on without resetting. Now it's time to make sure it's a good world for people, instead of a nightmare. But for you, you're the first of your kind. And as you say this, you bend your finger backwards like it's made of a rubber hose. Born of ink, but living in flesh. Joey's creations escaping into the real world.

1:56:14 And with that, you look to your right, to find Bendy here with you. Real Bendy? In the real world, a living cartoon character, smiling and excited. So what's next? Who can really say? Cut to black, created by TheMeatly. Holy shit. I do like this a lot better than the first one in terms of story, in terms of characters. I like the protagonist of the first game better as a side character in this one. That's incredible writing just going one to two, you know what I mean? That's a good point, yeah. That's fucking great.

1:56:56 And these credits are gorgeous. They keep the sepia tone, but use a completely different, but also beautiful art style. And it ends with a picture of Joey Drew drawing with a young girl. And there's also a short end credit scene where we see the ink machine, and it's in the back of a moving van. The door to the van slams shut, and we see the words, Gent Corporation on the outside, and the truck drives off. You know why? They had a recall on that model. They were people creating pocket dimensions. Holy shit. And that was Bendy and the Dark Revival. I really enjoyed that more than the first one.

1:57:36 I'm not going to lie. I know it is the product of corporate torture, which is ironically a theme of the Joey Drew Studios world, both in game and in our world. But man, if that's not a better story and more compelling in so many ways. I agree entirely. I thought the story was much better in this one. They just took out all the interpretation, really. Yeah, they're like, no, no, I'm going to spell it the fuck out for you. And as a person who does this podcast, I appreciate that. It actually works better for what we do. Man, I love Audrey. I think she's cool as shit. I feel bad that she got kidnapped, but I'm glad she figured out her parentage. Because honestly, if you don't know who your family is, I mean, it's a little bit early, but eventually she would do an ancestor.com thing, and they'd be like, you're 50% ink, 25% Irish, 3% Mongolian, and go down the line.

1:58:33 And this poor girl would have to be like, I'm part Sharpie. I don't know what the fuck that means. And she can't prove her parentage as well because of what I just described. So she's like, I know I'm Joey Drew's daughter, but being an orphan and probably not having the paperwork to back up that she is the product of Joey Drew, because there's no fucking birth certificate. She never had a birth certificate. How the fuck does she have a driver's license? She might not have a driver's license. You don't need a driver's license to be an adult. Anyway, oh, I'm in a bad place. Please start talking. Yeah, that was such a fascinating ride, wasn't it? I'm so glad that you're still spinning out off of her, all of that. Like we're saying, it's all definitive answers. You're like, but what about this?

1:59:14 I am going full Pepe Silverwall in my head about how Audrey has been able to enroll in school without a birth certificate. Well, there is another Bendy game on the way. There is? Yeah, they've announced another Bendy game that will be coming out I'm not sure when or anything like that. This game only just came out this year, so it's going to be a while. Did they describe that title as like a third entry or is it perhaps a smaller thing like that Boris Top Down game you mentioned? It's got the name Bendy in it, so it's probably going to be a third in the Bendy franchise. Okay, interesting. Because like, where do you go from here? No idea. I mean, the Gent Corporation has it now, so we'll see what happens when they take over. Lunatic CEOs from wall to wall, including the Delulu CEO of nothing, just some asshole.

1:59:58 And it's great because in the first game, Wally Franks, who's a janitor, sweetest man on earth. And this one, janitor, pure hell. An actual nightmare who is the worst person on earth. Not even a real janitor. He had to fake being a janitor. Yeah, like when Angie Bernard was like, I'm drunk and I'm a janitor. I'm the branch manager now. And you're like, this is horrible. He took that to heart and said, that's a fantastic fucking idea. Yeah, he did, didn't he? Oh, that was a great ride. Thank you so much. And if the rest of you enjoyed it, please don't forget to like and subscribe to us. Yes, for the next nine upcoming weeks, we have new episodes dropping. I have a trilogy of a PlayStation 1 classic coming up next week.

2:00:40 Yeah. And I'm very excited for you all to hear about it, because I spent potentially years, if we're going to count the years I was playing this in terms of working on it. So I'm very excited to nerd out about it. But holy shit, this one was really fun. I really appreciate it. And if you like horror, we do have a couple horror episodes coming up this season, because I got to pick what games I played, and I'm a weirdo. Yeah, apparently this season, I'm doing a whole bunch of games about gods. Are you? Oh, I am, and worship, and all sorts of fun stuff, so. Genuinely scanning, because my brain blanked, and I was like, what is Tom doing this season? I should know, I'm in the show. But anyway, thank you all so much. Yeah, please stay subscribed if this was fun for you, or if you want to see what other games we're covering in terms of this kind of depth of development and creation, and then the actual plot, so you feel like you're playing it while you're driving or doing something mundane.

2:01:32 We can escape with us, it's fun. Yeah, follow us on our social as well. Our Instagram is very active. We've got our website, theothercastlepodcast.com. That's the othercastlepodcast.com. And over there, you can join our Patreon. Just $2 a month, we drop monthly episodes over there. We've got a newsletter that we also do. You can just sign up for that on our website as well. There's a new episode out the same day that this episode comes out. So we are pumping that content out on the Patreon. Yeah, I gave a little bit of a Easter egg to that episode as we did a Donkey Kong episode that dropped today. Anyway, so we wanna thank our patrons that do support the show. We have Molly, Brian, Krisha.

2:02:15 Molly Mock, Jackie, Ellen. And Tijen. Thank you so much, all these people and listeners like you. Yes, thank you so much. You can sign up for our Discord if you wanna chat with all these people and ourselves. That link is in the show notes. It's also on our website. And other than that, I think that's everything we've got for you. Thank you so much Goombas for going on this ride with us. Oh, this was so much fun. Never trust anyone who wants to get in an elevator with you last minute. I don't care what your gender identity is. Carry pepper spray and tasers. It's not just for little girls, it's for everyone. Let's on gatekeep safety. If someone's being creepy, check them.

2:02:56 Stay safe, everybody. And this is Tom and Andrea reminding you. Don't skip the cutscenes. Can you not fucking do that?