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Black Mirror : Bandersnatch


shinymcshine
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Black Mirror : Bandersnatch

 

The choose your own adventure style episode is now on Netflix, and it's pretty decent. The interface works well and there seems a reasonable element of choice and consequence.

 

An interesting sidenote is that there was a game called Bandersnatch under development at Imagine Software in the 80s before they went under, and you can watch a documentary about that on YouTube:

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj-KZdiSrg4]

 

 

 

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I don't know. Maybe I picked bad choices but the subject matter of it made for stressful viewing and every path felt like a lot of work for more misery

 

Spoiler

I got a funny joke ending where I fought the psychiatrist and then another ending where I killed the Dad. After the second ending it popped up a single choice which was to go back to the dead Dad ending and try cutting him up instead of burying him to see what would happen. But I had quite enough by then.

 

Interesting formal experiment/experience but narratively lacklustre lacking the "oh shit" punch of other Black Mirrors. Which is probably cause it got diluted by all those paths I suppose

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Ok well I can't do that now because it will make me do all the work again and pick all the old choices.

 

It just seems like a lot of work for some very basic metaphysical ponderings. If the meat of the message here was more compelling I'd be prepared to do the work but this is my least favourite of these Black Mirror things I think

 

(My favourite being that one where they are all in a virtual coma)

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6 hours ago, Blakey said:

You need to keep going @one-armed dwarf you've not finished it properly yet and got the true ending.

 

LOL, isn't that sort of missing the point, the true ending is the one that's driven by the choices you've made.

 

Now if you mean the 'best ending' or something like that, then it's not really a reflection of your instincts.

 

"Hey guys, anyone got a walkthrough for this TV programme I'm watching or for life itself......." :rolleyes:

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Just watched Bandersnatch.

 

 

Got the ‘Fuck Yeah!’ action ending, the ‘PACS/Kill Dad’ ending, and the ‘Get Rabbit/Go With Mum’ ending.

 

That last one was the only that that played th credits so I’m guessing that was a ‘proper’ ending?

 

Will watch it again for sure making different choices.

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Re: Bandersnatch

 

Seems on reflection that self confessed video game fan Charlie Brooker has actually just made a video game and passed it off as a TV show.

 

Maybe the ultimate crossover (game vs traditional entertainment) would be to lock in your responses so you can't redo with different choices, then get people to share their different experiences via social media etc.

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Locking people out of redoing their choices is a terrible idea, unless you mean on their first ‘playthrough’.

 

The fun of games like this is replaying them and making different choices on each playthrough. 

 

It’d be like playing Mass Effect once and being like “Okay I’m done now, I’ve seen everything.”

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I’ve split this off into its own thread, seems worth doing.

 

I haven’t seen it yet, will do in the next couple of days with a mate, but I will say that I think most people play games like Mass Effect in the “this is my canonical run” kind of way. Same as Life Is Strange and stuff like that.

Once I finished Mass Effect my choices were locked down and that was that.

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Most people I’ve spoken to regarding Mass Effect etc (including myself) will do multiple playthroughs (good and bad). Playing once is only half the experience. 

 

Sure, there’s the ‘canon’ run you do on your first playthrough, but have you never gone back to a game like that for a ‘what if?’ playthrough?

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One thing I'll say is it's rare to see a show take on the subject of videos games, much less the technicalities of developing them and then talking about it in a convincing way

 

When Colin's game crashes and he's like "oh we overran the video memory buffer or whatever" it's a realistic enough string of tech jargon and not the usual rubbish you get on programmes like this

 

But when it dispensed with the stuff about development and burnout and went into this metaphysical rabbit hole I got very bored cause it was all in service of winking and nodding at the storytelling form but at the expense of having a strong narrative.

 

After a point of reading, watching and playing lots of "meta" books, shows and video games stuff like this becomes kind of lame. I also just feel like Life is Strange is in a other league to this type of thing.

 

Well that's my "hot take" as the kids call it. One dwarf out of five.

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48 minutes ago, RikSP said:

Sure, there’s the ‘canon’ run you do on your first playthrough, but have you never gone back to a game like that for a ‘what if?’ playthrough?

I might in some cases hunt out other endings or choices on YouTube, but for the most part my play is what happened in that game. LiS, I dived back into specific chapters to hunt for collectibles but I have no intention of re-playing that story with different choices - what happened is what happened.

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1 hour ago, RikSP said:

Locking people out of redoing their choices is a terrible idea, unless you mean on their first ‘playthrough’.

 

The fun of games like this is replaying them and making different choices on each playthrough. 

 

It’d be like playing Mass Effect once and being like “Okay I’m done now, I’ve seen everything.”

 

My focus (on single run through) was to make the differentiation that it was a TV show not a game, hence a singular experience based on your choice, which you could then compare with others.

 

Yes I understand that in a game you might want to get your money's worth by exploring multiple avenues, but as a piece of televisual art I think the single experience would be worth doing.

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Well the narrative is sort of built around that whole idea where everyone who ever read those CYOA books like Fighting Fantasy would always just go back in the book to choose a different path if they messed up. Or cheating basically.

 

I'm not a huge fan of the series but the thing I like about BM is when it's a critique on how we distract ourselves with technology and media. Then it finds and shows what it thinks is the worst case scenario of our digital dependence. Some of this stuff has already been borne out in reality (the episode where a bear runs for office).

 

But Bandersnatch doesn't have anything like this. It all just refers back to itself and for all the possibilities it ends up feeling more limited somehow.

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2 hours ago, shinymcshine said:

 

My focus (on single run through) was to make the differentiation that it was a TV show not a game, hence a singular experience based on your choice, which you could then compare with others.

 

Yes I understand that in a game you might want to get your money's worth by exploring multiple avenues, but as a piece of televisual art I think the single experience would be worth doing.

 

Completely disagree. You miss entire scenes and moments if you stop at one ending, it is meant to be replayed with you changing certain choices until you see all scenes and put the full picture together.

 

Doing anything less is pointless in my view as you only get half an Episode essentially.

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