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