Really? Only four stars again? I've been playing all night. I've mastered the choreography,
memorized the song beat by beat, note by note. How am I not getting five stars on this? I will get it
perfect this time, just one more game. What's going on? What's happening to me? Stop! Stop!
Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory. The show that's going to be okay as long as you
[Lady Gaga]: Just Dance. Matt's voice was totally
destroyed at VidCon, so that means you get Head Editor Dan today. Jerika, hit the air horns!
Gee, thanks. Glad we're friends. Anyway...
Today we're talking about a game that, honestly, I never thought we'd cover. But
month after month after month, every time we went onto the Game Theorists subreddit.
I would always see people asking for a Just Dance Lore theory. How? How would
that even work? I mean, the clue is in the name; you just dance. Sure there have been
a lot of entries in the series, and I'm sure they're chock full of little Easter
eggs. But Easter eggs don't necessarily mean lore. Unless you're Scott Cawthon.
But then again, if a random mobile game like Merge Mansion can have deep hidden lore. Then
why can't a dancing party game? And that's when we discovered that the Just Dance developers
have hired someone whose job title is, get this, Lore Master. Since Matt found out,
he's been signing his emails as MatPat - Founder, CEO, Lore Master and Internet Dad.
But if these guys have gone to the trouble of hiring a lore master,
clearly there is lore to find. So hit me with your best shot. Just dance. Let's see
what you got for old team theorist. If you don't know what I'm talking about,
where have you been for the last 14 years? Are you okay? Do we need to call someone?
Pretty sure everyone and their grandma has played this game at some kind of gathering
or another. But regardless, just dance started out as a mini-game from Rayman Raving Rabbids
TV party where you mirror the moves of the character you see on screen. The mini-game was
such a hit that it birthed the entire motion based multiplayer franchise we know today.
Each game includes a collection of songs with their own choreography. One minute you're dancing
and jiving to Dancing Queen, the next you're not talking about Bruno. You pretty much have a song
for everyone on here. They even have YouTuber songs like Tomska's Beep Beep I'm a Sheep,
which is a certified Bop. But where's the love for classic Pokémon Masters are Broke?
It's like one of the few scripts that I've personally written. It would be really cool
if they did that. Maybe in Just Dance 2024 that song will finally get the love
it deserves. On the surface, it seems like a simple party game and for a long time it was.
But the most recent game Just Dance 2023 has a narrative driven story mode. In it,
a girl named Sara is taken from the real world and brought into the game by this blue skinned
character in order to stop an evil witch called Nightswan, who is abducting and
taking over the other dancers that show you the moves for each dance known as coaches.
But that's just the story Ubisoft wants you to see. There's a whole world of stories going on
in the background while you whip and nae nae your way to superstar rank. *groan* Matt,
why do you make me see these things? While a lot of the settings for dances
take inspiration from the music videos of the songs you're dancing to. The coaches
that teach you these dances begin to overlap and tell a more connected story.
They aren't limited to just their primary song. They appear as background characters in other
songs and even started to become lead characters across multiple songs and even games. The most
talked about coaches to follow this trend are The Bride and Rasputin, which people have decided
should be shipped. Seriously, is there nothing the internet won't ship these days? Don't answer that.
In the Internet's defense, there is good reason for this particular ship. In the
very first Just Dance game from 2009, a dance coach dressed as a bride dances
to Katy Perry's Hot and Cold. Which makes sense, the original music video did focus on
Katy Perry dressed as a bride. In Just Dance 2019, we see this same bride dancing a duet
to Maroon five Sugar with another Just Dance coach, the one for just dance 2’s Rasputin.
Given that the original music video is also of a wedding party, that would seem to imply
that these two are a thing. Maybe this is just before the bride calls him out on his hot and
cold tendencies. All of which culminates in Just Dance 2023, where the opening shot for
Sweet but a Psycho is of a wedding cake with Rasputin and the bride as toppers.
However, clearly things haven't gone well. The bride mimics Ava Max's streaky eyeliner,
like she's been crying while tearing down photos of them together. And Rasputin is
nowhere to be seen. Poor bride, she's sweet but a psycho. Matt,
why!? Seriously Matt I can't keep doing these puns. But this is just the tip of
the Just Dance lore iceberg. This thing gets way deeper and spans way more songs.
In Just Dance’s 2021 Season four trailer, we were given a sneak peek of a new story,
that of the traveler. He runs through portals that put him in different locations to chase
down this one blue skinned woman whose name we learn is Si’ha Nova,
thanks to a tweet from the developers. By the way, all of these locations are
the backgrounds of other dances from previous games, and they're all from different years.
He's not just traveling between levels within his own game,
but between all of the dances ever created for Just Dance. How are us normal non time
space traveling people supposed to compete with that kind of affection? That's just
setting unrealistic expectations for the rest of us. Sadly, this relationship wasn't
built to last. I'm starting to see a theme with all of these Just Dance storylines.
When Just Dance 2022 came out, it had the song Save Your Tears, where both the Traveler and Si’ha
dance to a song that gives us some insight into what happened between Just Dance 2021 Season four,
and now. The lyrics “I don't know why I run away” and “take me back because I
want to stay”. Show us that this couple hasn't been together since that fateful meeting.
That one of them ran away but they now realize it was a mistake. I think it's likely the
traveler who ran away. Firstly, we know he has a thing about running and has the ability to
go literally anywhere, but also because of what we see in his solo song, Rock Your Body. In it,
we see the Travelers Mansion that appears to have been decorated by M.C. Escher.
He dances around the floating platforms with copies of himself. Give this guy all
the superpowers, I guess. But at the end of the song, the traveler opens up several
portals and each clone walks into one with the traveler himself walking into a portal
that leads to the dance Levitating. And can you guess who the coach for this dance is?
That's right, it's Si’ha. Si’ha leads the dance to Save Your Tears, which ends with
the traveler opening a portal for Si’ha and they go their separate ways. Fortunately,
unlike the bride in Rasputin, this story has a happy ending. Remember
that tweet that gave us Si’ha‘s name? It also reveals she is pregnant. Clearly,
these two did a little bit more than just dance, if you catch my drift, huh?
Another tweet shows a comic strip of the traveler with a blue skin
child wearing a crown and a belt buckle with the traveler symbol,
which matches the blue guy that brought Sara into the world of Just Dance 2023. He also has a name,
by the way. He's called Wanderlust. And you'd once again only know if you follow the Twitter account.
I see you guys are taking the J.K. Rowling approach to Lore. Regardless, what this
particular story does is open up the lore to be contained, not just within the current game.
Wanderlust in Just Dance 2023 is the son of the characters from Just Dance 2022 and his father,
the traveler, has traveled to dances from Just Dance 2020, 2021 and 2022.
So what if there's a bigger story going on here, one that spans the entire franchise? So I picked
up my Wiimote and got ready to feel my body burn, baby, burn as I dance the night away, playing
through all these different games. And let me tell you, it was worth it. The song that caught our
attention was Toxic by Britney Spears from Just Dance 2023. Because, well, look at this dance.
And now imagine Matt doing that dance. That's objectively funny. The coach is dressed as
a flight attendant dancing her way through the plane, which is all pretty normal for the series
until the chorus kicks in and two guys in black suits aggressively approach the flight attendant,
forcing her to dance-fight back. I knew flight attendants were trained,
but I didn't realize martial arts was part of the onboarding process.
It turns out this is no ordinary flight attendant. The coach's name is Agent D,
which I discovered from Twitter. Again. Could you imagine if all games did this? lore would be so
much easier to solve. *COUGH* Scott Cawthon *cough* Sorry. Something was caught in the
back of my throat. I think it was Freddie. No, don't put that… No, don't put that in.
I… I hear it now Back to the story. Agent D continues to move through the plane,
fights some bad guys, rescues the tied up pilot, flies off to the sunset. So basically everything
you would expect from a dance game. This isn't a plane hijacking. This is a rescue mission.
And while the story seems pretty tied up, unlike our pilot, it actually raises a lot of questions.
Who does Agent D work for? Who do the guys in the suits work for? And why was
the pilot tied up in the first place? Fortunately, the answer was staring
me right in the face thanks to our friend in hot pink, the pilot himself. The pilot
is the coach for a song in Just Dance 2017. And I'm going to slaughter this:
Dragosta Din Tei… It's the Numa Numa song!
And let's quickly move on before YouTube slams us with the copyright hammer. I see
you. The song itself is actually sung in Romanian. And so if you're able to
move past the song virality and memeability and actually translate it, you start to reveal some
information about how the pilot may have landed himself in hot water tied up in the cockpit.
The first line of the song's first verse: “Alo, salut, sunt eu, un haiduc” I'm so sorry. But
translated it says “Hello, hello, it’s me, an outlaw”. And the “Numa Numa iei” in the chorus
literally translates to “Don’t take me, don’t take me”. So wait, the pilot is an outlaw, and
agent D has just freed him from what looks like federal agents. Are the dance coaches the baddies?
This just raises more questions. It turns out we play as criminals semi-regularly throughout
the series. In Just Dance 4 two coaches are escaping prison in striped outfits in
Everybody Needs Somebody. In Just Dance 2020 the song policeman shows the coach getting harassed
by a policeman and then we have the classic Lady Gaga's Telephone in Just Dance 2023.
Now, all of these once again mimic their music video counterparts,
but it is interesting how often we hear and see coaches being harassed by law enforcement,
and it's still not clear who is in the right. Are the coaches actually breaking the law or
are we in a footloose style world where dancing is slowly becoming outlawed? It's hard to say.
That is, until this random little moment in the middle of Telephone. All the different Lady Gaga
coaches from her different songs are all in a lineup, and the camera pans out for a brief moment
behind the one way glass, where a hand reaches out and points to the one in the center. This person
is the one pulling the strings, convicting the dance coaches and having them locked up.
But whether that's a good or bad thing will rely entirely on if we can figure out who
that hand belongs to. And lucky for us, our dance marathon proved helpful once again.
There's only one character in the whole Dance-verse with a clawed hand like this:
Nightswan. The villain of the Just Dance 2023 story mode. She first appears in
Can't Stop the Feeling where she is seen abducting other coaches and then in her
song Witch we see her placing them under a spell, forcing them to join her army.
Why? It turns out Nightswans' whole motivation is that she is obsessed with perfection. She wants
every dance danced perfectly. No mistakes, no screw ups. How do I know this? Say it now with me:
Because of Twitter. I promise that's the last time I'm going to say that. Unless
Matt's lying to me. This explains everything that we've seen so far.
Nightswan is the one in charge, in control. She's able to mind control whoever she wants, making
the law enforcement detain whoever isn't dancing perfectly throughout the series. And then once
they're put in jail, she is able to put herself in charge of the prison system and pick out her next
set of victims. Which means that during Toxic the guys in suits are working for Nightswan, they've
finally caught the outlaw pilot and are going to bring him back to Ninthswan for conversion.
That means Agent D isn't trying to take down the law. She's a freedom fighter, trying to save those
who Nightswan wishes to control to create her perfect world. All of this leading to a final
showdown between Sara and Nightswan, where Sara frees the other coaches and Nightswan retreats
defeated. Feels like a pretty happy ending, except Nightswan hasn't actually been defeated.
One, we all know if a character doesn't die, then the battle's not over. And these days,
even if they do die, that doesn't mean much either. Thanks, Marvel. But also,
let's think about her plan a little closer. Turning dancers into mindless drones that
just dance more and more, getting perfect scores every time. Doesn't
that sound familiar? It should, because that's exactly what we're doing by playing this game.
The goal is to dance each dance as well as we can. The better we do,
the more points we get. How many times have you lost your cool because you
didn't get it just right? or because your friend beat you in the dance? Meaning you
had to try again and again and again. That's exactly what Nightswan wants.
We are so focused on the dance moves being just right that we, much like the coaches,
are just mimicking; becoming mindless drones doing nothing but dancing over and
over and over again just to get that perfect score. That, my dear theorists, is the real
story behind Just Dance. It's a warning. Sara's story is designed to mimic our own.
Fun fact: Sarah and Nightswan are actually played by the same actress. Sara’s initial
timidness while all her friends were playing is because she knows the monster she becomes
when playing this game. But Wanderlust reminds her of the fun it can be to just
dance. And eventually she overcomes her corrupted self all while meeting a bunch
of fun characters along the way, each with their own motivations and stories to be told.
If all you're doing is focusing on getting the dances perfect, you'll miss out on
these cool details we've talked about today: the personalities of the characters, their journeys,
their heartbreaks. It's all right under our noses. But we were all too blinded by our want
for perfection. Despite playing these games for decades, we totally missed the point. So the next
time your friend invites you to dance along to the latest Bop, instead of worrying about winning,
let the devs and their Lore Master tell you a bunch of new and exciting stories.
Invest in these characters and their relationships. And most importantly,
just dance. Not for a high score, but for fun. But hey, that's just a theory.
A GAME THEORY! Thanks for watching. And if you don't want this dance party to stop,
you can always go and see where Matt's lore journey began by watching this video on the
left, it's the GTLive where Steph and Matt played Just Dance 2015.
It's funny and cringy in all of the best ways. Or if you want to find some more lore where no
one would expect it, you should probably check out this video on the right about
the meme game of 2022: Trombone Champ. It's required viewing for all tromboners.
Just needed to make sure you knew that. As always, don't forget to subscribe.
You'll have Matt next week. But until then, Seibert out.