Game Theory - Bow Before Him! (Poppy Playtime Chapter 3)

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he makes his predictions for Poppy Playtime Chapter 3! *Credits:* Writers: Matthew Patrick, Mike Keenan (The Pokémon Biologist) and Tom Robinson Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, JayskiBean, Warak, Gerardo Andrés Mejía Torres, and Shannon (Bomb0i) Sound Designer: Yosi Berman

that, welcome to Game Theory, the show that's full of hot air. It's that time again, folks. Mob Games has come out of its hibernation and finally given us what we've all been clamoring for for over a year now. The long-awaited Chapter 3's second trailer. Wait, are you kidding me? Come on. Don't get me wrong. I love brightening images frame by frame as much as the next guy. Are we about to brighten something? Oh, are we ever going to brighten something? But it's been, what, 15 months since Chapter 2? I feel like I need to get my Poppy fixed to complete my indie horror. Thanos glove of 2023. That said, if this trailer is anything to go by,

the newest chapter is going to be incredible. Immediately things feel different here. And it's clear they're leaning hard on the horror. This very clearly reads of like, hey, this is so starkly different from anything else in this franchise. Very clearly reads as, hey, we sold a movie. One of the developers was even asked about this

in the official Poppy Playtime Discord server, and he said, quote, it'll still have the same feel as the first two in a lot of respects, but the horror is definitely dialed up, which, of course, got every. everyone real excited. And from the creepy images of dead kids to the literal writing on the wall, this trailer is like a toy box exploding with clues about what this new chapter is about. And I think that I've figured it all out months before its release.

Not only will we have tortured kids and sinister poppy gas, but we're now being shown more about the monsters they became and the creepy religion they've created. A religion full of sacrifices, rituals, and a leader who's manipulating his congregation into serving him. So strap on your grab packs and Hold your breath, loyal theorists. We're heading deep into the cloudy red fog of playcare. The repeated theme for this chapter is the use of red gas, so let's start there. In a past theory, I suspected that this gas was made from poppies,

a red flower that we know playtime used in their experiments trying to bring dead rats back to life. It's also in the name of the game, so, you know, not that big of a logical leap. I also pointed out that poppies have been used throughout history as a sleep agent, mainly due to the natural opium that's contained in the plant. And that is exactly what we see in the trailer. On the walls of the plague here, we find a drawing that shows clouds of red gas with the phrase, Time for Bed, written underneath. This is the last thing that the child sees before falling asleep under the influence of the gas.

Which then leads us to the question, who's our new monster responsible for delivering it? We see some crude child drawings on the wall of a purple creature with red clouds around him, and text all associated with either sleep or nightmares. This then seems to be our gas monster. Sometimes the purple figure is shaped like a bird, other times it's got super long limbs, and sometimes it's just a purple scribble. gotten many people on the internet to think that he's a shape-shifter. I disagree. I suspect that this is just the result of sleepy kids not having a clear vision of what this thing actually is as they pass out. Fortunately for us though, we get to see a bit more this creature. By pausing the trailer on one of the final frames, brightening the image and then color balancing it a bit, we see that it's got itself a purple paw with four sharp claws. That, coupled with the shape of the nose and eye sockets that we see during the final jump scare, as well as the presence of a muzzle right here, reads to me like an old cartoon cat, almost like the Cheshire. cat from Alice in Wonderland. Now, that at first might seem weird. This franchise already has itself

two other cats in the form of cat bee and candy cats. Oh, why are they triple dipping? Can't they come up with something new? I suspect that it's because a cat that lures kids to their final sleep is actually a common superstitious belief. One phrase that you sometimes hear tossed around is that cats will steal a baby's breath. For centuries, there have been these urban legends circulated about cats sneaking into cradles at night, causing children to suffocate and die. It's unclear where that whole urban legend started, probably the story of just one parent where it happened to them, but it's thought that the smell of the milk on baby's breath, or the crib being a nice warm place to cuddle, or the cat being jealous, some combination of those things get them to climb into bed, lay across

the baby and deprive them of oxygen. There was even a coroner back in 1791 that came to examine a deceased child and actually stated this urban legend was indeed the cause of death, which only gave more support to the superstition. And that, I suspect, is what our chapter 3 cat monster is doing. After a fun day at the game station under the watchful eye of mommy long legs, this guy would come in to quote unquote, help the children fall asleep, stealing the breath of children by replacing their air with his poppy sleeping gas. Considering that we've been seeing more and more images of gas masks,

this is also something that we're likely going to have to use to protect ourselves. Otherwise, we might begin to hallucinate and have to distinguish between what's real and what isn't, just like the kid's drawings on the wall would suggest. So what is this gas cat? Or, I suppose if you're following the conventions of the naming system for this game, it would be gassy catty. Not the most sinister of names, but what is Gassie Caddy up to now? Well, the writing is quite literally on the wall in this trailer.

It's been busy carving phrases like, I live to serve our angel of salvation, I rejoice in him, wrapped us in garlands on the walls. Garlands, by the way, are reeds of flowers that are often used for Catholic baptism, so you might start to see where all this is going. So are these stage lights? They're not like candles to May.

Are they, oh yeah, like ritual candles. A lot of religious imagery here. Gassie Caddy is no longer taken on the role of a monster, but instead that, of a religious leader. This idea is also exemplified by another carving that we see on the wall, My Somniferous Flock. This isn't referring to a group of birds, it's being used in the Christian sense. One of the many roles that Jesus is associated with in Christianity is that of a shepherd, one who tends to, feeds and cares for his flock. The sheep, in this scenario, are his followers,

people that rely on and follow Jesus in their day-to-day lives. Meanwhile, the word somniferous stands out for a few reasons, mainly because I've never heard anyone ever use that word in a sentence before. Turns out that in the year since this factory closed, Gassie's been studying up for his SATs. Always be learning there, Gassie Caddy. Because let me tell ya, I am right there with you. I too am a nerd for words. Somniferous would be, what, my sleepy? Yeah, Cosomnia's sleep.

Turns out I was actually half right in my assessment there. According to Google, it's not just being sleepy, but having sleep induced upon you. So our Gassie Caddy is talking about his flock of sleepy kids, the orphans in the playcare that he's putting to sleep. But the playcare has been abandoned for years. There aren't kids there anymore. can serve as his sleepy flock, right? Wrong. The whole point of the playcare and the poppy gas was to help convert them into toys But rather than them all be in giant toys like huggy-wuggy I suspect a lot of these kids turned out much smaller With the team and I were playing through project Playtime's newest update we noticed this poster

What does this say take every step take every step like it's your last Oh and they're heading to PlayCath. Yeah and it's a bunch of random characters so these are kids not like toys A poster with three new plush toys walking towards the playcare now at the time I just thought that these toys were there to represent the children walking to the playcare, trying to make things seem wholesome and child-friendly, but now I don't think that these were representations at all. I've already mentioned the sad-looking images of the children on the walls of the playcare, but did you notice the remains of characters next to their faces on the edges of the frame? These are the same characters, the dog and the unicorn. There's also a new character

there that wasn't on the poster, a green bunny. And if you look at a later drawing from one of the children in the trailer, we see a plush with floppy green ears and the words, new friend. This kid became his friendly green bunny, and I suspect that the other children all had similar fates, becoming the very mascots of playcare. This is the sleepy flock that Gassie is talking about, a group of converted children that are lost and scared, and see him as their only savior. But then, who is this angel of salvation that Gassie Caddy's talking about here? Well, the last two wall scratchings give us that answer pretty explicitly. The original saved me, I rejoice in him, and never forget the hour of joy. In our last theory, we suspected the hour of

Joy was the moment that the toys revolted and reclaimed the factory. In one of the analog horror tapes released on the Mob Games YouTube channel, we see The Hour of Joy is at hand written on one of the walls right before we hear screams of the factory workers. Screams that match the ones we hear on the Scientist's VHS tape from Chapter 1. Though still missing, today's events are no doubt in relation to him. His absence was a flaw in the scientific process. It's the prototype, 1006. The one we believe was created from the man who wanted to bring joy to children,

Ludwig. He was the first successful toy from the Bigger Body's initiative. He was the original that led to the creation of all the others. And we actually get our very first look at him in these trailers. This massive robotic amalgamation made from various other toy parts. He got things like a huggy head near the top. And there, right there's Mommy's top half. One of you, darn! You make me part of him! This is what the prototype's working on. This is what Mommy meant by Make Me a Part of Him. And my suspicion is that this is what Gassian is some nift. flock are helping to build. Any cult needs themselves a goal, something that helps the leader to become more powerful and gathering parts of dead toys, maybe even killing other toys themselves in order to build a monstrous body. Yeah, that one seems to fit the bill. And if any of them die along the way, well, then they're just martyrs for the cause. In opening shot of Huggy's headless body, there's actually a dog plushy similar to the dog that we've seen in the posters, also missing a head. If you die or fall victim in your mission, you don't die in vain, you get the privilege of becoming part of the Savior. But did you notice some missing?

missing in this 1006 amalgamation, his spindly arm and long thin fingers that we see from the end of chapter 2. That critical missing piece in this silhouette makes me think that this isn't his body, or at least I don't think it's his body yet. Notice how still the silhouette is. Well, that could certainly be there for dramatic effect. I actually think it's because this body is a work in progress. The candles around the play care give off a ritualistic vibe, and that, combined with the missing iconic arm, makes me think that maybe 1006 gassy in his flock are gathering these materials to build him the perfect body. and that they still need to put his soul into that body.

And so chapter 3 is gonna be about us stopping it, stopping the somniferous flock from finishing the job so that maybe finally we can be a hero in this game. Maybe. But I don't think so. You see, thus far, we've been nothing but the villain. It's been well established at this point that we used to work here. And not only did we work here, we were instrumental in the creation of some of these toys. You wonder who we are, but why?

You should know. It was your doing that made us, Oh, we said that! They left. We served that. We worked here. So if anyone deserves to die alone. And now, look at what we've done since coming back to the factory.

We've killed both Huggy Wuggy and Mommy Longlegs. Two toys that were made from kids. It's not a great track record for our player character, right? Currently, there's a poppy ARG taking place in the lead up to chapter 3. And while there isn't enough information yet to fully solve it, there are aspects that have been discovered that shine a light on the children involved in the play care scheme. One of the discoveries was this incident report about one of the orphans in playcare, Marie Payne. Now, if the name Marie Payne sounds familiar,

well, it's because we found a transfer request in Chapter 2 about her. In that request, we were told that she was the child that would go on to become Mommy Long Legs. Now, why do I bring that up? Well, if you remember, Mommy was fine with the orphans, because she never wanted them to feel alone like she did. She was protective of the kids. No, the only people that Mommy Longlegs lashed out at were the staff. The people who tortured her and transformed her into a giant,

pink toy. She knew what they were going to be doing to these kids because it had all been done to her first. She was trying to be a protector a comfort. We also know that she doesn't trust the prototype or any of his religious rhetoric. One of you darned. You make me part of you! This is especially important if the prototype is indeed Elliot Ludwig, founder of Playtime, the man who started the whole toy conversion process in the first place. She doesn't buy his liberation at toy stick one bit. She knows that he's once again, trying to use the people around him for his own selfish gains. In fact, a group of toys building a big body using the parts of other living creatures, it's the bigger body's initiative all over again. But this time for the prototype. All of these clues together make me curious about what our motivations are for being here.

Are we actually here to help? Or are we just cleaning up the mess of evidence that we left behind? Are we on the side of the orphans? Unwillingly turned into monsters? Or are we going to end up siding with Elliot all over again? A man who created a nightmare for so many. Early signs aren't exactly promising. We stripped mommy of her freedom and independence only to feed her to the prototype.

So what do you think is gonna happen next with these kids from playcare? Seems like there's no route where we don't walk away with some blood on our hands. Though, some tells me that's something our player character is more than familiar with. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching!