Jump to content
IGNORED

Black Mirror - Bandersnatch

dumpster

By dumpster
in Film, TV & Radio

 Share

Recommended Posts

dumpster

dumpster

Posted
  • Author
Posted
30 minutes ago, robotattack said:

 

How? :mellow:

 

 Spoiler 

 

 


I got to a bit where I had to open a safe with a code to retrieve the rabbit. I can't remember exactly but it was different when I did it the second time.  I think, first time I could input the code as PAX or PAC, but this time it gave TOY as an option, the rabbit was retrieved, the mum turned up and said it was time to go, the kid had the rabbit.  The mum said about getting the 8.45 train but the kid says he's ready to go, and they will have time to catch the earlier one.
 

 

 

I really enjoyed this. But I did get a bit lost with things nearer the end.  For example (and I won't spoiler this because it's right at the start), in the software house (Imagine), Colin hasn't read Bandersnatch and his nosedive game crashes when he demos it.  Colin says it's a memory buffer error.  The first choice you get is to develop your game in-house or at home.  If you select to work in house you get an ending, but if you repeat the game the same scene is all slightly altered - Colin says he's met you before, You pre-empt the conversation about the crash, and Colin says he loved the book.  This seems to repeat throughout the show, with the second version of a scene being different.  I got lost with the different safe passwords, because Im not sure what I did in order to make the choices change the second time.  Another example I saw was when the psychiatrist asks him to talk about what happened to his mother, and in future runthroughs he says "you always ask me about this", to which she says "if you run through the details in your head again you might see something you missed.  That flowchart posted earlier shows some of the events, but there are loads of great touches.  My favourite thing about it is that....

 

 

 


I think you can play through it all without seeing all the PAC stuff and as far as you can see, that's really your mum.  Or there's another completely different ending where you basically tell this guy from the 1980s what Netflix is, and it turns out he's an actor in a studio and has a big fight scene with the doctor.
 

 

 

I'm sure there's loads I haven't seen and I played with it for ages.

2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
robotattack

robotattack

Posted
Posted
36 minutes ago, dumpster said:

 Spoiler 

  Hide contents

 


I got to a bit where I had to open a safe with a code to retrieve the rabbit. I can't remember exactly but it was different when I did it the second time.  I think, first time I could input the code as PAX or PAC, but this time it gave TOY as an option, the rabbit was retrieved, the mum turned up and said it was time to go, the kid had the rabbit.  The mum said about getting the 8.45 train but the kid says he's ready to go, and they will have time to catch the earlier one.
 

 

 

Spoiler

I had the same thing (using TOY as the password), but they still went for the 8.45 train. You see both of them on the train and then Stefan...

 

Spoiler

Is found dead in Dr Haynes office. I haven't seen anyone else mention an alternative version of that. (Not that I'm suggesting that I don't believe you; I'm just wondering what factor would alter it.)

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
K

K

Posted
Posted

I thought this was great. Really funny in places - I loved the Netflix bit - genuinely harrowing in others, and also perfectly taps into loads of different things I’m interested in, like

Spoiler

80s videogames, Tangerine Dream, Philip K Dick, this weird eighties ghost story where some guy started getting messages from the future on his BBC Micro, etc. It utterly destroyed me at the “end” where the boy chooses to die with his mother on the train, rather than go through his life with the knowledge of what happens to him. 

 

Couple of questions:

 

What happens

Spoiler

if you choose to stab Colin during one ending rather than let him go?

 

And is the

Spoiler

Spectrum program you hear during the post-credits scene a real program, and if so what does it do?

 

2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Pete

Pete

Posted
Posted

Answer to the second spoiler:

Spoiler

It's only a variant on the other one, but the game gets a great review before being pulled when they've found you murdered your dad and hero. Worth watching that scene though:

Spoiler

Colin encourages it, very weird

 

I love that I need to use double spoilers

 

2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
JohnC

JohnC

Posted
Posted
16 minutes ago, K said:

 

And is the

  Hide contents

Spectrum program you hear during the post-credits scene a real program, and if so what does it do?

 

Spoiler

It’s real and apparently produces a QR code which takes you to the website I mentioned earlier

 

https://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?/topic/308633-black-mirror-bandersnatch/&do=findComment&comment=12124236

 

 

1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • Popular Post
Majora

Majora

Posted
  • Popular Post
Posted

I liked it, although I'll never watch it again. I think I saw pretty much every permutation of ending before reaching the 'proper' ending as my main initial goal was to fuck things up as much as possible and see how far it stretched. Of course, in true Black Mirror style

 

 

Killing your dad and then chopping him up into tiny pieces results in you publishing the perfect 5/5 game

 

I can see people being a bit disappointed if they expected a linear branching story (does that even make sense?) as opposed to a circular one but I saw the episode as a meta-commentary on the general futility of the illusion of player/viewer choice in narratives - you all pretty much end up in the same place in the end, you're encouraged to make exciting choices instead of boring ones, you're encouraged to go back if you make a choice you don't like, you're encouraged to play out every single permutation in replays until you no longer have a unique story and have just gorged on every single scene and thus undermined the entire point of having a story unique to each player. 

 

Anyone who's ever read discussions about branching narrative videogames will surely recognise all the pitfalls listed above. Players are never happy with their own outcome, they reload saved games and consult guides and flowcharts and replay the game multiple times until there was never any point the game having multiple endings in the first place.

 

For that reason I strongly suspect this is just a one-off for Black Mirror as it's basically a dissection of the pitfalls of the putting the narrative in anyone's hands but the author's. And of course it had a good laugh at the idea that you could ever reload and redo the narrative over and over and force your way to a happy ending in a Black Mirror episode.

 

I do wonder whether it's all a bit meta and geeky to satisfy a wider audience but I applaud the ambition and thought behind it.

12
Link to comment
Share on other sites
MK-1601

MK-1601

Posted
Posted

I enjoyed the Jeff Minter cameo.

It's weird they dressed a whole street in Croydon to look like 1984 for a ~30 second scene.

I think it included too many story threads and ended up not exploring any of them satisfactorily.

Mainly it just reminded me why nobody has done this idea since the mid-90s.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
dumpster

dumpster

Posted
  • Author
Posted
2 hours ago, robotattack said:

 

That is what happened to me too.  I assumed that...

Because the kid got the train that didn't crash, he grew up to have a happy life and the previous version of his life never happened. So on the alternate timeline he ceased to exist. A happy ending! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Naysonymous

Naysonymous

Posted
Posted

I decided to play it like a 

Spoiler

malevolent god so I tried to fuck him over at every opportunity.  Ended up killing dad, chopping him up and releasing a 5/5 game.  I think I whizzed through in about an hour though. Will revisit again as I think a lot of the appeal here is seeing how they pulled all of this off.  

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
andygt

andygt

Posted
Posted
27 minutes ago, dumpster said:

That is what happened to me too.  I assumed that...

 

  Hide contents

 

Because the kid got the train that didn't crash, he grew up to have a happy life and the previous version of his life never happened. So on the alternate timeline he ceased to exist. A happy ending! 

 

It’s the 8.45 train that they catch in that ending (his mum still mentions they’ve missed the earlier train)

5
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Fletch

Fletch

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, Protocol Penguin said:

Doesn’t work on an Apple TV device, so I won’t be watching this in a hurry.

 

Thanks for letting us know, please report back with other things you won't be watching. 

 

After getting a couple of endings yesterday I can see I've missed a boat load so will dive back in and eat those Sugarpuffs. 

3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
robotattack

robotattack

Posted
Posted
10 hours ago, dumpster said:

That is what happened to me too.  I assumed that...

 

  Hide contents

 

Because the kid got the train that didn't crash, he grew up to have a happy life and the previous version of his life never happened. So on the alternate timeline he ceased to exist. A happy ending! 

 

Spoiler

They still get the 8.45 train though, so the suggestion would be that he died with his mum, which is why he dies on the future because he no longer exists. I guess you could still intepret that as a happy ending though, as he no longer has to live a life of feeling depressed, partly blaming himself for her death.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
choduk

choduk

Posted
Posted

I really enjoyed this. The way it played with your initial perception that it was just a choose your own adventure story and brought you in as a character rather than just a viewer was great. I had a fun comparing notes with my son who'd played/watched it the night before. We both saw things that the other hadn't.

 

Anyone else notice that the name of the medical practice was St. Juniper's?

1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
K

K

Posted
Posted

One really clever thing is 

Spoiler

that after I opted to have Colin to jump off the balcony, he was then mysteriously absent from the rest of the episode. Dunno how often he shows up if you choose for Stefan to jump, but I thought that was a nice touch.

 

Does the asian guy who works for Tuckersoft have any significance to the story? The guy who hands Stefan the VHS of the documentary. It seemed like there was more to him than just being some random assistant.

1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Majora

Majora

Posted
Posted
27 minutes ago, K said:

One really clever thing is 

  Hide contents

that after I opted to have Colin to jump off the balcony, he was then mysteriously absent from the rest of the episode. Dunno how often he shows up if you choose for Stefan to jump, but I thought that was a nice touch.

 

 

 

 


 

If you choose Stefan then he just dies, the game gets rush released and you have no option but to go back and pick Colin.

 

Like you, Colin disappeared for chunks in my game after he jumped to the point where his girlfriend was looking for him, but then at some point he kept turning up at the office and I eventually had the option to kill him in my bedroom.

 

Colin feels like the narrator of the meta aspect of the story but I can't really pin down why he's sometimes there after jumping, even conversing with the owner of the game company, and sometimes he is supposedly missing.

 
 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Thor

Thor

Posted
Posted

The concept of this is more interesting than the actual content. I like what it does, but I also don't like what it does. If that makes any sense. 

 

Just when it was getting really good and really into the existential themes of multiple paths through a multiverse, it got stupid. Which is a shame. 

 

Either way, it was interesting.

2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. Use of this website is subject to our Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and Guidelines.

  I accept