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- 00:00
- Chalk up another victory on the Game Theory win sheet! With the release of Bendy's last
- 00:04
- chapter, all my theories were put to the test,
- 00:06
- and it looks like we were overall pretty darn right! At least for the things
- 00:10
- theMeatly wasn't purposely misdirecting us on.
- 00:13
- Allison and Thomas were indeed revealed to be perfect Alice and Cy-Boris.
- 00:17
- Human souls are indeed used to power the Ink Machine, and most
- 00:20
- importantly of all, we totally called that Joey Drew would be revealed to be the true identity of Monster Bendy.
- 00:26
- Wait, you're saying he wasn't? That he's just this old dude in his kitchen, and Bendy is this mindless ink monster?
- 00:32
- Give me a few minutes. It'll all make sense soon, because this is the end of Bendy and the Ink Machine.
- 00:39
- Intro in 1920s-1940s Bendy/retro form (subtitles by dalva phillips)
- 00:50
- Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory!
- 00:53
- Where you don't need a special lens to see our hidden messages. More often than not, they're hidden in plain sight
- 00:59
- Right in front of your face.
- 01:01
- So, five chapters, three theories and one year 8 months and 16 days later,
- 01:06
- it's finally over.
- 01:08
- The saga of our little devil darlin' Bendy reached its sepia tinted conclusion and, uh, well . . .
- 01:13
- It was controversial, to say the least.
- 01:16
- Slow stealth sections,
- 01:18
- Bendy going on full beast mode,
- 01:20
- and no appearance of the plunger, were just some of the complaints that I saw circulating online,
- 01:24
- but it was the ending that left most people in the inky dark.
- 01:28
- After fighting off 'roid rage Bendy, suddenly we're taken to a kitchen with Joey Drew washing some dishes,
- 01:33
- before sending us back to the studio with the same exact words that kicked this whole thing off in the first place
- 01:38
- "Come visit the old workshop."
- 01:41
- "There's something I need to show you."
- 01:50
- "Alright Joey, I'm here."
- 01:54
- "Let's see if we can find what you wanted me to see."
- 01:56
- Are you kidding me?! Every time this game launches a new chapter I need to play through the whole thing again,
- 02:00
- since it's so unstable I lose my save data
- 02:02
- I'm telling ya; if I haven't found what you wanted me to see the other five times that I've gone through these chapters,
- 02:08
- this ain't it, chief. Also did it bother anyone else to hear Joey say, "I need to show you-"
- 02:13
- "There's something I need to show you."
- 02:15
- -but then the closed captions say "want to show you"?
- 02:17
- You're rankling my OCD here, game!
- 02:19
- Anyway, I don't think it's an understatement to say that this was far from the ending the series had been leading us towards,
- 02:26
- understandably causing frustration to gamers who'd spent the better part of the last two years
- 02:30
- theorizing about this game's mysteries.
- 02:32
- So today we're gonna dive down to the inky depths and add some color to a finale that most people found a bit sketchy. Let's begin.
- 02:40
- First things first. It's important to establish that the events in the game never really happened.
- 02:44
- At least, not literally, like we played through them.
- 02:47
- Yep, it's one of those, where everything is symbolic,
- 02:49
- like a dream theory, coma theory, or in this case, a story theory.
- 02:54
- You see, the game tries to leave it open to interpretation,
- 02:57
- revealing in the endgame letter that repairman Thomas
- 03:00
- Connor is a bit miffed that someone stole his invention, the ink machine, only to show us a few seconds later,
- 03:05
- after the credits, that it's in Joey Drew's house. So could it all have been real?
- 03:09
- Yeah, it could've, but it's not very likely.
- 03:13
- That's why the entrance to Joey Drew Studios is attached to the kitchen, and why there's this
- 03:17
- dramatic visual shift when we're entering the real world.
- 03:19
- The game designers are trying to tell us through aesthetics that the studio isn't reality.
- 03:24
- "This hallway with the six posters is very reminiscent of the opening hallway." "Yeah, it is."
- 03:29
- "It's really interesting." "And this room is very reminiscent of Chapter One." "It is"
- 03:33
- "So this is my desk- wait- oh-"
- 03:35
- "This is my old desk! I wasted so much time in this chair."
- 03:38
- Making it even clearer is the fact that in the gameplay Allison Pendle is
- 03:41
- transformed into the perfect Alice Angel and Thomas Connor is Cy-Boris,
- 03:44
- but in real life the two are married and living happily together,
- 03:47
- with their time at Joey Drew Studios a faint memory in the distant past.
- 03:51
- There is very obviously a set of real world events and a separate studio world,
- 03:55
- but making this distinction perfectly clear to us is this final post-credits moment.
- 04:00
- A little girl asking for yet another story from Uncle Joey
- 04:03
- "Tell me another one, Uncle Joey."
- 04:05
- It doesn't get any more direct than that- another story
- 04:08
- i.e. we were just told a story by uncle Joey
- 04:12
- So the five chapters of Bendy are just that- five-part story
- 04:15
- But just because this was a story all along doesn't mean that it's not rooted in fact
- 04:20
- quite the contrary- it's Joey's version of the rise and fall of his studio
- 04:24
- The small details in the story are inspired by things in the world around him
- 04:28
- for instance the little miracle safe stations throughout the game were actually just inspired by this TV and radio repair company
- 04:35
- that we see a flyer for posted on his bulletin board
- 04:37
- and if you look really closely in the background during this post ending bonus scene-
- 04:41
- on the back shelf there you'll see a bunch of items that should look pretty darn familiar.
- 04:45
- a record a plushie, a wrench, ink, a book, and a gear
- 04:50
- all the items that we had to collect in Chapter one of the game to activate the ink machine
- 04:54
- except now their visual style is more realistic.
- 04:58
- real items that he's translated into the fictional animated story world that he's created
- 05:03
- as for the bigger plot points in the game?
- 05:04
- Well, that's just Joey's life. Joey clearly created a studio with the help of Henry,
- 05:09
- who as we guessed was indeed the creator of bendy.
- 05:12
- Once Henry left the business to spend time with his wife the studio eventually died
- 05:16
- in part due to changing entertainment trends people simply growing out of the old silent black-and-white cartoons
- 05:22
- "But...when the tickets top-selling... When the next big thing came along"
- 05:27
- "Only the monsters remained-"
- 05:29
- But also because of a series of bad business decisions by Joey
- 05:33
- most notably Bendy Land, we know this from all the overdue bills on
- 05:37
- Joey Drew's bulletin board as well as blueprints of the failed theme park
- 05:40
- it's possible that Joey tried to keep up, evolve the Bendy character revive him for an older audience
- 05:46
- as we see darker more mature, more gun-happy versions of the characters on the animating table in his house
- 05:51
- But clearly nothing has worked, leaving Joey a poor broken old man, which leads us to monster bendy
- 05:57
- Why did I say that monster bendy is revealed to be Joey Drew?
- 06:00
- Well, it's because bendy in the studio is a symbol of his regrets.
- 06:04
- Listen to his final dialogue in the kitchen:
- 06:06
- "I thought I knew who I was"
- 06:09
- "But the success starved me! In the end, we followed two different roads of our own making"
- 06:18
- "You, a lovely family"
- 06:21
- "...Me... a crooked empire"
- 06:24
- "and my road burned"
- 06:26
- "I let our creations become my life"
- 06:31
- "The truth is you were always so good at pushing, old friend"
- 06:37
- "Pushing me to do the right thing"
- 06:41
- "You should have pushed a little harder"
- 06:43
- It's all a series of regrets: regret that he didn't start a family, that he let himself become consumed by work,
- 06:50
- greed, that he lost a friend in Henry; look at the letters on his bulletin board
- 06:55
- Joey is reaching out to employees of the studio decades after they worked together. They've moved on with their lives
- 07:01
- They've found love, other jobs, families
- 07:04
- But Joey hasn't. He's trapped by the ghosts of his past, all wrapped up in and represented by Bendy
- 07:11
- No longer just a cute, cartoonish devil
- 07:14
- But now a twisted, shambling monster who roams the remains of his failed studio
- 07:19
- the sharp-toothed embodiment of his own regrets.
- 07:22
- That's why bendy sometimes helps you out throughout the game: Henry and Joey had this complicated relationship
- 07:28
- that's also why you have to show Bendy "The End" to finish him off to show him
- 07:32
- and by Proxy Joey that that era of his life is over. It's all a shadow of the past
- 07:38
- "Only the monsters remained... Shadows of the past."
- 07:41
- In a lot of ways Joey Drew rightfully sees himself as the villain of his own story,
- 07:46
- all represented by monster Bendy
- 07:49
- It's incredibly sad, but then what about Henry re-entering the studio? The mysterious writing on the walls?
- 07:55
- What does Joey want to show us?
- 07:57
- Well, from a literal standpoint the writing that was on the walls was done by Henry
- 08:02
- if you replay the game you're given the ability to use a lens of truth in all the previous chapters
- 08:07
- Each time the cycle repeats you see on the walls that Henry makes a tally
- 08:11
- and that he's able to call out certain events that happen every time he goes through the loop:
- 08:15
- where he's attacked by Sammy with the word "Ouch" where jump-scares happened with the word "Peekaboo", etc
- 08:20
- But confirming that it's Henry writing these messages are two in particular
- 08:24
- "his dream my effort" which reflects Henry's frustrations of working with and ultimately carrying the business of Joey Drew
- 08:31
- As well as this one right next to a Joey Drew audio log, "that's the Joey I know"
- 08:35
- It's admittedly kinda odd that Henry complements his own drawings here in the prison cell
- 08:39
- and he might just want to check his grammar on this little bit of graffiti:
- 08:43
- "Dream too big and you'll fail"? more like grammar fail! Am I right? Up top-
- 08:48
- Okay, you don't have to high five me it's okay, but it's definitely Henry leaving these messages
- 08:53
- It's also why we have flashes of hallucinations throughout the previous chapters
- 08:57
- They're events from past iterations of the loop peeking through
- 09:01
- But then, why is everything a cycle?
- 09:03
- What does Joey want Henry to see?
- 09:06
- Well, it's a story Joey has told himself and probably those around him dozens of times
- 09:11
- He's relived these moments: this twisted history of his failed business countless times
- 09:16
- That's the thing about regret- it doesn't go away
- 09:19
- It exists in a constant loop of what-ifs and alternate choices
- 09:23
- Except, as Henry himself points out:
- 09:25
- reliving the past does not change it.
- 09:28
- Joey being a prisoner of his own history is just a spiral of sadness
- 09:32
- and no amount of reliving these events is gonna change them
- 09:35
- That's why everything in these loops is so predictable every single cycle.
- 09:39
- Like Henry writes, there never was any choice.
- 09:42
- Making it worse is that as Joey gets older those he once worked with to start passing away.
- 09:47
- Going through the game again we see on the coffins the names of some of the key side characters
- 09:52
- Susie Campbell, Grant Cohen, Bertrum Piedmont, Lacie Benton, all dead and in their coffins.
- 09:58
- Sure in the events of the cartoon studio, they may have been sacrificed to the ink machine,
- 10:02
- but I suspect what's really going on, is that in real life
- 10:04
- they're actually dead, passed away from old age or the like. Which just makes Joey's situation worse
- 10:10
- His past is crumbling away. The only people he ever had any connection with are fading away with time. Joey's alone
- 10:17
- And he's dying alone
- 10:20
- The only choice available for Joey is to end it, to put a close on Bendy and move on with his life
- 10:26
- and it looks like that's finally what he's trying to do,
- 10:29
- sending out letters to his former employees to reconnect with them
- 10:32
- to make sure that they no longer see him as the villain
- 10:35
- that they weren't victims of the ink.
- 10:37
- Not literally like we see in the studio,
- 10:39
- but figuratively, as he fears his work destroyed and corrupted everyone around him
- 10:44
- and they appear to be fine.
- 10:45
- They've forgiven him, which just leaves one:
- 10:48
- Henry his oldest and most important friend, his co-founder, the one who represents
- 10:53
- everything that Joey's life could have and would have been
- 10:57
- the perfect bendy to Joey's twisted monster of regrets.
- 11:01
- When he invites Henry to the studio one last time it's him baring his soul to us.
- 11:06
- The ugliness, the regret. It's Joey asking Henry for forgiveness, yes,
- 11:11
- but it's also Joey asking Henry for permission to forgive himself.
- 11:15
- And if that post-credits scene is any indication the permission is given, the cycle is broken
- 11:20
- Henry forgives Joey and brings over his daughter to hear some stories from the old studio.
- 11:25
- Joey has a family at last.
- 11:29
- "Tell me another one, uncle Joey."
- 11:31
- But hey, that's just a theory, a game theory.
- 11:37
- The End.
- 11:38
- But hey after an episode all about getting stuck in your regrets
- 11:42
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- 11:49
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- 11:55
- Every time you buy something on the internet
- 11:56
- It works on basically any website that's ever had a discount code ever like Target, Amazon
- 12:03
- Best Buy and all those other places that you're gonna go to anyway to buy all the stuff that you are already buying and spending
- 12:08
- More money than you need to on there is nothing that ruins a new jacket
- 12:12
- you just bought new phone or a new game which are seriously expensive then finding out that you could have paid less for it or
- 12:18
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- 12:24
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- 12:31
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- 12:36
- Honey actually went above and beyond we teamed up with them to donate five hundred dollars worth of toys
- 12:41
- For charities to see how much honey could save me for my shopping spree since this is on a bendy of a machine episode
- 12:47
- I headed over to shop Disney because Disney characters are kind of like bendy characters and heck what kid doesn't want a stocking full of
- 12:54
- Disney plushies and stocked up on everything from art sets to light sabers to scooters to the tune of
- 13:00
- 557 dollars until of course
- 13:03
- I applied the Honey discount.
- 13:05
- That took off shipping and got me 15% off of everything
- 13:08
- I purchased which in turn brought my total down to four hundred and sixty-eight dollars almost a hundred
- 13:15
- dollars less than I would have paid without Honey. At that point,
- 13:18
- I could afford to go back and buy disney 3d modeling kits and even one of those really expensive
- 13:23
- Lego Star Wars sets with like the zillion pieces
- 13:25
- It was awesome because that money was going directly into buying more toys for needy children
- 13:30
- And it was all thanks to the extra savings. I got because of Honey
- 13:35
- Money that would have just been thrown away without it. Heck. I know we all got a lot of holiday shopping coming up
- 13:40
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- 13:43
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- 13:47
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- 13:54
- That's joinhoney.com/MATPAT. Happy holidays and happy savings
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