Here is on amateur’s long note to get the convo started: This was written as response to a gamer’s criticism so it leans towards that mindset.
It was uncomfortable, violent, loaded with easter eggs and in the end unspeakably tragic, but also pg-13 with no gratuitous stunts or cgi whimsy. This was a theater play, not a big screen fandango but people are going to remember it the way they remembered seeing Star Wars that first time. LOU is a world built for a the mental challenges of a game but scripted for the heart.
This episode ultimately made a huge and necessary connection between who the main characters both might have been previously, and who they both now need to become. Why they need to go forward was discovered, not revealed, in a way that probably just hooked the audience for a generation.
If you know the concept of “beats” in wriitng and film this all makes more sense.
No mater what you think about this episode, it is already being spoken of as a master class in beat-rhythm script writing and production. This is already in the texbooks. The writers of this thing are going to get a WGA building named after them. Or at least, hopefully, a South Park three part episode.
There is not an unintentional millisecond of material in this. The truth is we only get to rest our attention at the end, looking through the window, even as the next big-ticket “beat” already calls our attention. There is not a space-filling or irrelevant moment in the whole script. Everything fits and moves the interlaced storylines forward, deliberately.
It is also exactly what a game seeks to be in this hugely deliberate way. While your are “playing” this one, you never want to take your eyes off the screen.
Total immersion.
To me the 1st two episodes were an introductory cut scene “show”. Now this one slammed the door to the rest of the house closed. Dinner and homework and chores will have to wait. This episode left us mouth gaping inside that awesome never obtained bounty: The joy of our first moves inside a perfect, big, new, wonderful, infinitely promising, puzzle-filled, risk and redemption driven gameworld.
This might not be an accurate reproduction of the original game, sure. It’s like Doom going from 2d to 4d graphics. It’s a huge step forward into a new version of that game. So loyalists might need time to accommodate that change.
The one hitch that must agitate gamers is that, even though this is a game-like experience, we aren’t contolling our own movements. The trust required to adapt to that is immense. But for me, and this is the key point, they have delivered a massivley trustworty hand at the mouse.
I am all in..
As with all games every object and interaction is either intentionally distracting debris, design elegance, or an artifiact that moves the adventure forward: As soon as I realized this I also realized that in this series almost everything is an artifact or a story advancing “beat”. The easter eggs are to fast for first time viewing but they are plentiful.
Being a game there is a temporary side quest (finding a battery) and a main quest - gettig the girl to safety across the wastland). The writers meticulously ensure that everything we encounter is a clue for the side quest, a puzzle piece for the main quest or connectable dot with the story that moves unfolds backwards and forwards thru time. It also has intentionally subtle but weird game fantasy tones. Everything, including the people, look a little bit warbled, because that is how games look.
The gay beard love stuff is our first real (metaphoric) monster in the series (nevermind the half-life worthy brain mutants). And it’s a direct challenge, especially to more game focussed and skeptical watchers: Storyline aside, it says we’re not in Kansas anymore.
This gay storyline is brimming with gameworld style genre challenging themes. But it is not only about cracking a “wokeness” barrier - it’s also about waking the kraken. This plotline is a warning, a dare and above all else an invititation: Abandon all trope ye who enter, because yeah, mutherfuckers, we went there. Which means you’ve been warned: We’ll go anyhwere now.
(And btw if the gay story offended you but you didn’t even notice the black holocaust mass murders, well - another day then, Chad.)
As for the gameworld “beats”… one example shows how detailed the writing is:
Early in the bunker we see two things. 1st a glance at lots of “Sulf” which we later realize is sulphuric acid. That has side quest written all over it. We next (beat beat beat..) see an element of likely design debris: The wine cellar. But something immediately scratches clue-like about the wine. Indeed it is paired with and distracted by the “sulf”.
Bottles waiting on shelves..
I mean, that was the nicest little wine collection in the history of doom preppers. Not only that but whoa, the wine is physically part of the passage between the hide-in bunker and go-fight gameworld above. We have to leave the safety of the bunker through the wine to get into the world.
The wine is love, dummies.
It’s in the love scenes. It’s what they drink from and what they die drinking in the end. It’s what the four of them shared in the sunny days of happy happy joy joy time.
In fact that foursome wine date is what sets them all down the new course towards moral purpose, self-sacrifice (ahem, radio song codes) and thus the Big Quest.
In order to save the world you need something in the world that makes it worth saving. This is where we discover what that something is.
Frank even sets down his gun of hate and takes up the wine of love at the outdoor table. That beat is the pivot of the whole episode. (But keep an eye out to see who picks UP her gun of hate next to the empty wine glasses in the end).
Ultimately, in order to assemble the smal side-quest item, by using suplurc acid and metal plates etc.. he/we has to bring it back to the surface through the wine passage.
Through the transforming secret passageway of love. They even read the letter that seals his motivation to save her at the wine tableau. The wine symbolized love changed him just as it did the prepper dude, and he has a bigger quest now.
Redemption.
Which hooks us as well.
Meanwhile every color, object, word, glance, breeze, flower, spark and sound has meaning, value, or needed information for us.
edit: the South Park guys’ beat rule::
When you have a set of story beats (or an outline in other words) and you can put the words “and then” in-between each one–“you’re fucked” as Trey would say. That’s boring.
However, if in-between each story beat you can put the words “but” or “therefore” then you have a story in which the events taking place are reacting to each other. The story/plot builds momentum and tension based on everything else that has happened previously, not because of the arbitrary whims of the writer.