#also... i think... everyone... got drawn....

the ending if it was good:

anyways, generally i think Benrey is a little hard to read because of his tendency to switch up his demeanor on a dime (ex: all the times he calls Gordon his best friend vs. all the times he antagonizes him and says shit like "I HATE YOUU") ultimately i think its up to interpretation whether a lot of the things he says are him like. bullshitting or not

that being said, this is something I mentioned in the tags of my last post; i personally find it hard to believe that benrey is genuinely evil. is he menacing and antagonistic? Absolutely. but i honestly dont think he wants to be the villain

now. i have some thoughts about benrey's involvement in the betrayal in act 3! wayne said something in the commentary that stuck out to me, and what he said was that he had to justify why Bubby could be redeemed and Benrey could not, and its also something i noticed while watching as well:

it is. entirely likely that benrey was tricked by the military the same way bubby was.

its also equally as likely that he fully knew what he was getting into, but the important point here is that his intentions are ambiguous. gordon had no way to really prove that benrey had malicious intentions, yet he fully believes that benrey wanted to have him killed because more than anything, no matter what benrey does, gordon views him as an enemy. and this is something i will bring up later :-)

another important trait of benrey is his persistence, the most obvious example being how he follows gordon around incessantly after their first meeting solely because he didn't have his passport and benrey needed to "keep an eye on him." and, of course, he keeps coming back even after he dies (ill talk about this again later too)

basically, benrey takes his job very seriously. and ive been thinking about this character trait and how it relates to hlvrai's larger themes about "artificial intelligences with human self awareness" and the themes surrounding benreys character;

TO FINALLY GET TO MY MAIN POINT: my interpretation of benrey's behavior in act four is that he's a video game character being forced into this antagonistic role that he feels obligated to fulfill (due to his nature of being a video game character,) but doesn't necessarily want to. whether it was assigned to him by the game itself or inadvertently something he was forced into because of gordon's insistence on viewing him as a threat, i dont think benrey was the evil mastermind that gordon thought he was

the way he acts in act 4 leading up to the bossfight is fascinating and really suggests that he doesn't want to be a final boss! he's actively trying to lead the group away from the final area (saying things like "lets all go home. we should head back")

his final monologue sounds like he's desperately looking for reasons to want to hurt the science team. he talks about not wanting them to shoot at him because it means he has to shoot back. direct quote "i wanted to be good but you forced me to be bad so now i gonna be baaad"

side note: the reveal that him saying "let tommy go, its ok" was him trying to be evil and fucked up and telling the others to let him die, only for it to be fully misinterpreted as him being nice to tommy is So Fucking Funny. i cant decide whether i like the interpretation that he still cares about tommy or the interpretation that he was trying to say things that a villain would say and Failed Entirely.

and on a meta level, this is genuinely what is happening. wayne was directing scorpy to act like a villain and scorpy was doing his best, he even admitted that he kept forgetting that he was supposed to be evil so he kept throwing in lines like "IM GONNA KILL YOU" which is both hilarious and Extremely Interesting

and after he dies it seems to be implied that he's not quite dead. theres that persistence again! its so fascinating to me. im not sure whether to take the commentary stream scenes as canon or not but i do find it intriguing that he's a little pissed off after being killed. like. its understandable why hes like that

but following this interpretation its like. he did everything hes supposed to, he did everything right, and he still lost. if im being so honest i think all he wanted to do in act 4 was play playstation 3 but he had a job to do. he wasnt happy about it, but it Had to happen

but yea the thing that worries me is i cant tell if im looking too deep into this, if im admittedly biased because i like this character and he actually genuinely was fully intended to be a bad guy. i dunno. i just think hes funny

Thank you for coming to my funny benny talk. i have thought about the skeletons too but ill save that for the tags... if anyone disagrees with me or has anything they want to add id genuinely be really interested in hearing what you have to say!! feel free to lead a comment or literally anything