Game Theory - Leave The Cycle Of HATE Behind! (Bendy)

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

Join Game Theory Host Tom as he explains how the new Bendy and The Ink Machine game predicts the future of the franchise! *Credits:* Writers: Tom Robinson Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, Danial "BanditRants" Keristoufi, Dom Sealion, Gerardo Andrés Mejía Torres, Warak, Tyler Mascola and Shannon (Bomb0i) Sound Designer: Yosi Berman

Bendy has been on a role recently. After a successful sequel at the end of 2022, they announced that a brand new game is coming this year and we're getting a movie. Considering the franchise had been dormant for four years, that felt like quite a lot of Bendy in a short space of time. So imagine my surprise when out of nowhere, a different Bendy game dropped on Steam with zero warning or fanfare. And it teased not one, not two, but three upcoming games.

Man, if 2023 was the year of FNAF, then 2024 is shaping up to be the year of Bendy. But there's more to this game than just some fun Easter eggs. Hidden inside its inky depths is a story that's not only disturbing, but it is going to affect everything we see in the franchise's next big installments. Hello internet, welcome to Game Theory, the show that is making a habit of guzzling down mysterious liquids. And on the menu today is a big old pint of that inky goodness because Bendy is back. We've got a brand new game that is full of secrets to find, aptly called Secrets of the Machine. By doing certain types of tasks in a specific order, you could unlock teasers for new games, discover hidden Easter eggs,

and even get jump-scared by the Dancing Devil himself. No joke, I actually had this game paused while I was on a call with our writers discussing what this theory would be, and suddenly, on that poor screen, I get jump-scared by Bendy and nearly fly off my chair. But besides the poor screen jump scares, what's been cool about this particular game is that it's being updated every single day by the developers, with slight changes and alterations, adding more hints as to what the law of this game truly is. It's been a week since the game's release at the time of writing, and I'm still having to go back and change things because new secrets are being added, which is great for teasing fans, but not so great if you're trying to figure out the story.

But despite the developers working against me in real time, I think I figured out what's really going on. The story we're being told isn't just to tease new games. It's a story of loss, regret, and an evil corporation that has taken things too far in the name of innovation. And for once, we're not talking about Joey Drew. So dive into The Ink with me, friends, as we uncover the secrets of the machine. As I've mentioned, this game is very much about exploration. You walk into an isolated house within a black void and through an inky portal. And once there, you can unlock a bunch of things just by experimenting.

One thing you're able to do is get cans out of this vending machine. And so, naturally, most players pick them up and started throwing them all over the place to see what they could break. Which is good, because that's actually what the devs want you to do. Dang it, we've become predictable. It is quite fun, though. You can throw cans into this pipe, at bendy cutouts, at posters on the wall, literally anything you can see. Try throwing a can at it. because chances are you'll unlock something.

But the important one for us today is over here on the right, where you can find two windows and a locked door. By playing the games as the developers intended and throwing your can of beans at the lit window, the lights go out and the door unlocks, taking us to a room with a family portrait front and center. There's a pencil attached to the painting, and by using it, we can measure our height on the wall and see that the person we are playing as is six years old.

Ah, yes. A time full of innocence and wonder. But don't worry, just like all Bendy games, Our life is about to get a whole lot worse. We hear a car honk, and suddenly blood splatters onto the parents of the family portrait. There's only one interpretation here. We lost our parents in a car accident. That'd be traumatic for anyone, let alone a six-year-old. So, of course, this sends our character down a very dark path.

As we walk into a middle school, we see a teacher talking to the school psychologist about us. We're pursuing art, however, our drawings have become twisted since the accident. Instead of cute birds and butterflies, we've now taken to drawing monsters that are scaring the other. students. It's also during this conversation we learn of our character's name, Riley. That's not a name we've heard before in this franchise, but, you know, it's nice to put a name to a POV, I guess. As time goes on, we see one of Riley's drawings that scared the other kids at school, an angry-looking car with blood pooling underneath it, the car that killed her parents. At least, that's how Riley sees it. Her trauma is definitely outworking itself through her art. Though this character is unusual,

not because it's disturbing, but because we've seen it before. This is gasket, and if you're that name isn't familiar to you, I'm honestly not surprised. He was one of the villains you went up against in the mobile game, Bendy Nightmare Run. That's right, Bendie had a mobile game. And I say had, because the game is no longer available to download anywhere due to a whole host of reasons, including rising costs and lawsuits. So, Gaskets' inclusion here felt like a really weird callback, especially when according to the game's description, this is a game made of, quote, Lost Cartoons recently discovered in the dark vaults of Joey Drew Studios. But Riley doesn't work for Joey Drew. Or at least, she didn't. Because after she draws this horrifying car,

we get a letter through the door from the one and only Joey Drew, offering Riley a job. We continue to draw more of the same angry car while at the studio, only for Riley to get fired from the studio because of these disturbances, which explains why her infamous car was pulled from the dark vault of lost cartoons. Joey Drew hid her work some way, would never see the light of day, because it was considered too scary. And that's coming from a company whose mascot is a literal devil. If you take a look at the rest of the characters from Nightmare Run, they all seem to fit that description. They're all much angrier, more violent characters than the cheeky devil that made the studio famous. Regardless, as we turn around, there is one final door to walk through, and above

it reads one word, gent, the corporation that made the ink machine in the first place, and was seen taking it away in their van at the end of the dark revival. That is where the main story of Secrets of the Machine ends, a tragic story of trauma that causes nothing but misfortune. for this new character Riley. However, that isn't where the story ends for us theorists. There is much more going on in this story than meets the eye. If you take a step back and look at some of the seemingly random details this game has to offer us, we can start to figure out the bigger picture.

What's going on with this ending? Why have we been introduced to a new character? And how does it tie into the wider bendy story? Well, for starters, it's important to establish that these events aren't just flying by in quick succession because the game's artistic. This kind of world manipulation, along with the sepia tone color scheme and Inky Tunnel is the kind of thing we'd expect from one place in particular, the cycle. The cycle is the Inky World created by the Ink Machine, a world that can be bent and molded

to the creator's will. We first experienced the cycle at the very end of Chapter 5 of the original Bendy and the Ink Machine. Our lead character Henry beat the Ink Demon and woke up in Joey Drew's apartment. After some pleasantries, we walked through a door and end up right back at the start of Chapter 1. Everyone. And I mean, everyone was confused by this ending. Even to this day, we still don't really have a full grasp of how the cycle works or how people end up there. What we do know is that it's called the cycle because existence here is quite literally a cycle,

a continuous loop that forces people to relive the same thing over and over again. And any time the ink demon is defeated by playing the old movie reel called The End, the world resets and everything begins again. But how does that relate to our new character Riley? Well, by completing the story, we also end up starting from the beginning. If we get killed by Gaskett immediately after completing the main story, we're right back at the beginning. Get jump scared by Bendy and you guessed it, we're right back at the beginning. This game takes place inside the cycle.

Riley is in the cycle. And we can see that reflected in the archway that appears at the beginning of each playthrough. This archway contains a word or phrase, but it changes each time the cycle resets, showing us a different side of Riley's personality. Some of them are things like remember or discover, which makes sense. We're going to the house to discover secrets and remember. remember the horrible things that have happened in Riley's past, but then we also get words that seem to contradict that sentiment.

One of the words that can appear is conceal, a word that literally means not to be seen. How can we both discover and also conceal? Well, when Henry resets, he doesn't remember it's a cycle. He has to go through and figure out what's going on, hence remember and discover. However, in future playthrus, using the seeing tool, you can find messages presumably from past Henry's warning this current Henry

about what's to come. He was able to learn about what this place was, and he's trying to stop his future self from suffering the same fate. And if Riley is also continuing to go through the cycle, uncovering more and more secrets, revealing more and more about horrible past, like the death of her parents, the rejection of teachers, and her firing from Joey Drew Studios, I don't think she'd want her future self to remember any of this. She'd want to keep it hidden, to conceal it. And who could blame her? I thought Henry's loop suck, but yikes. We also end up getting words like real life and illusion. Obviously, real is spelled like film real, because, I mean, who doesn't love a good pun?

But if you take out the pun and focus on it being real life as in, it is real, then we end up with two more phrases that are opposites. It would align with what Henry expressed when he's in the cycle, trying to figure out whether the whole thing is real or fake. Riley is going through that exact same experience. The world around her is weird and mysterious, constantly shifting with characters and objects appearing and disappearing. It'd be natural for her to assume it's all an illusion.

But as with Henry, this is all very, very real. Then there's this final word, regret. What exactly does Riley regret? The death of her parents wasn't exactly her fault. Does she regret the drawings that caused her to lose her job? Maybe. Although, I actually think the word is more closely connected to the ending of Riley's story. She ends up walking through a Gent door,

presumably meaning that after her firing from Joey Drew Studios, she ended up at Gent. She sees a black container and upon interacting with it, the cycle resets. But while that's where our game loop ends, that last detail tells us a heck of a lot about what happened to Riley after this final moment. Since Bendy and the Dark Revival, it's been clear that Gent were more than just the creators of the Ink Machine. They had some ulterior motives. While Joey Drew Studios was going bankrupt, the Gent Corporation is what kept them afloat. How this studio's still going at all.

Though, the obvious answer here is a gent's privately pouring in some funds. And truth be told, they really creep me out, especially that Mr. Gray. He doesn't seem to be motivated by money. Ben, he sure as heck ain't telling us what he's really after. Later on in the story, we hear this audio log, and it makes Gentletia motives crystal clear. So when I saw this here out in the newspaper that reads, Gent Corporation looking for research subjects pays $3.50 a week. I figured it'd be good for me. Easy money, right?

With my record, you can't afford to be picky. But it turns out something really wrong is going on in this place. I mean, I've seen dead people before. But here, death is like a way of life. A clockwork march. They wheel out with bodies and they disappear down the shoot. Forgotten men from the street paid to die. 3.50 a week.

And then, once you finally do walk into the Gent building during Bendy and the Dark Revival, you'll find a number of those bodies under tarps with black ink staining the sheets. Gent were advertising jobs to people in order to use them as research subjects. People who were desperate and needed money. People that were criminals, homeless, or just couldn't keep a job. People like Riley. In secrets of the machine, by shooting some cans into an overhanging pipe, you can access the theatre. And if you throw another can at the screen, you begin to see a video that doesn't really fit anything we've seen before.

It uses real footage of eyes, tentacles, dripping ink, along with the words, reject, submit, and of course, Gent. This appears to be showing us exactly what these experiments were. Gent, experimenting with what the special ink from the ink machine does to a person. Will it submit to its magical, sentient will? Or will their bodies reject it? leading to another failed experiment and another dead body. We see a similar thing happen elsewhere in the franchise, and now we get to do my favorite thing ever,

Talk about the books. Woo! Party Poppers! Woo! Originally, the authors said that the books were actually full-blown canon to the games, but now the Meatley, the series creator, has come out with this tweet. Quote,

In regards to Bendy Books and content outside of the games, I've always viewed them as fun extras for people who want more from the universe. The super talented authors and artists who work on them, are given freedom to make things their own. To me, the games decide the canon. The books kind of live in this nebulous space between canon and not canon. That doesn't mean that information we get

from the books is wasted, however. Books like this are often a place for the writers and developers to experiment, to test out ideas and plant seeds in the minds of the audience to see what sticks and what doesn't. The stuff that does work might then have a chance

to work its way into the games. And so I wanted to bring this stuff up because I think that might be what we're starting to see here. Do you guys remember the insane cultish ink man from the first game, Sammy Lawrence? Well, in the book Dreams Come to Life, we learn a bit more about his backstory as the director of the music department for Jerry Drew Studios.

He ends up accidentally consuming some of the ink machine's magical ink when a pipe bursts. He immediately becomes addicted to drinking the stuff, and it slowly drives him insane. Eventually leading to him becoming the black inky, demon-worshipping version we see in the very first game. Just like the ink machine can turn human souls and drawings into living versions of characters, the ink from the ink machine has the ability to physically change people into inky monsters. That is what Jent seems to be experimenting with, and Riley was one of those experiments. Remember, these are her memories we're cycling through, so seeing that video of an experiment

happening to someone, it feels like it's her replaying the moment back to herself. She's only remembering quick flashes of the horrible thing she's experienced as her mind tries to forget and conceal them. Plus, if you go into the game's Steam page, you'll see this in the description. Quote, subject number 131-389-145. Property of the Gent Corporation. No unauthorized viewing or interaction. Danger.

Unstable. This confirms that the story we're experiencing is from a Gent experiment. You don't just give a video file a subject number for no reason. Riley is subject 131-389-145. When she walked into Gent at the end of that story, it's not because she works for Gent. But instead, she's a young adult down on her luck that needed money to stay afloff. after losing her dream job. And Gent were happy to provide that.

So long as she was willing to be part of a little experiment. That container we interact with at the end is ink from the ink machine. She's asked to consume it as part of the experiment to see if it would change her. And now they're observing and recording what happens. That's why the archway signs keep changing to words like conceal and regret. She doesn't want to keep reliving these memories and regrets the decisions she made to get there. But there's nothing she can do. She's stuck repeating it over and over and over again.

completely helpless while Gent just stand there and watch. Or at least, I thought she was completely helpless. But there's one detail that caught my attention. The name of the building. It's called the drawing board, which on the surface just sounds like a reference to Riley's artistic roots. But in reality, I think it has a double meaning. The phrase back to the drawing board means that you've attempted something, but it was unsuccessful. So you're going back to the start in order to try again.

Riley is constantly going back to where it all began. The car accident, the firings, the submission to Jensics, However, this name tells us that she is refusing to sit there resigned to her fate. She's literally going back to the drawing board each time she resets to see if some other change will affect the outcome. We were warned that this game was considered unstable, which also implies that Jen aren't the ones controlling what's happening inside the game, despite being enabled as the developers. They aren't the ones changing the arrangement of items inside the house. It's Riley trying desperately to change her fate, to find a way to break out of her cycle. Ultimately, I think she'll end up succeeding.

At least partially, anyway. When you enter the main room of the drawing board, you're greeted with a banner that once again can have a couple of messages. But the most common one I've encountered is this. Escape your Cage. Obviously, this feels like a message for Riley, encouraging her to keep going and to try again to break free. But the word choice is interesting. While Cage reflects a place where an animal or a test subject would be trapped, just like Riley is, it's also the name of the next big installment of the Bendy franchise.

The Cage was teased late last year, but other than a short, teaser and a couple of screenshots, we know nothing about this game, which I guess seems to be the marketing approach for most Bendy games these days. The only thing we do know is that this game takes place during Bendy and the Dark Revival, between when Audrey visits Henry and the Jent Corporation building and Henry and the rest of the gang arriving during the final battle to help her. The only other detail we have are these lost ones that are trying to attack us. Lost ones have been enemies for us in basically every installment of the Bendy franchise. Although they have personalities, they appear to be living in a constant state of suffering.

slowly driving them insane and in turn, becoming hostile to anyone who they come across. Exactly like what happens to Sammy when he becomes addicted and transformed by the ink in the books. This is the fate of those who are part of Jent's experiments, or the ones who submitted to the ink, that is. But these lost ones we see in the cage teasers are different. Unlike normal lost ones that are completely made up of goopy black ink, these ones have skeletons showing and weird apparatus around their skulls. It looks like something straight out of the Saw franchise, but if, the lost ones are experiments created by gent, and this apparatus does look like something you might use as part of an experiment.

Also, the place Henry is escaping from in the cage is known as the pit, which is found inside the gent building. So seeing more gent experiments in that particular area isn't all that surprising. But the most noticeable detail is that amongst the usual black ink is also some kind of red liquid mixed in. The only time we've seen any colours in this world other than the black and sepia yellow is from Wilson in Bendy and the Dark Revival. He was trying to bring his new character Shipahoy Dudley to life, and to do so, he was using multi-coloured ink. The final creation was still a mostly black and yellow monster, but with streams of rainbow-colored ink leaking out of him. But that's not what we're seeing here. It's just red.

There are no other colours mixed in, and it's worked into their bodies rather than leaking out of them like blood. That tells me these aren't connected to Wilson, but someone else. Someone that specifically uses red ink. Someone like Riley. When she draws gasket, she uses red ink to draw blood underneath it. She's been told that her designs are too creepy, and I don't know about you, but these new lost ones are way creepier than what we've seen previously. She has to be connected to this in some way.

I'm not entirely sure how, but we do see a bunch of coffins building up outside the drawing board. In both the games and the books, for the ink to take, the person needs to be living. They need to submit to the ink and not reject it. But as we heard from that audio log, a lot of the experiments from Jen don't work out, and they just end up with a bunch of dead bodies. But here, death is like a way of life. A clockwork march. Given that these new lost ones have skeletons showing,

they look more like the dead raised to life than a living being corrupt by ink. It's almost as if those rejected bodies are what ends up in those coffins. And from there, Riley is able to take these failed experiments and give them new life thanks to her red ink and twisted imagination. It may even have something to do with the bendy summoning circle

that is slowly being drawn on the floor of the hidden room in the back. Is she using it as part of her creation process? Or is it to summon Bendy to help her escape this cycle? Sammy Lawrence drew the same circle to try and summon the ink demon in the original Bendy. And he's also due to return in this upcoming game. So I wouldn't be surprised if these two are connected. Working together as a force to stop Henry as he tries to defeat Bendy and help Audrey.

I mean, Henry was the partner of Joey Drew after all, the man who fired Riley and led her down a path towards Gent, the experiments, and being stuck in the cycle in the first place. doesn't want to escape. She wants revenge. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.