#blw

I was immediately soured by the fact that this game doesn't have a flashing lights or photosensitivity warning anywhere on the Steam page OR in the game itself, which is frustrating because the other full release Bendy games have that. It's literally just this one and Secrets of the Machine that don't have it. (Y'know, the teaser game that opens with a lightning strike and has a flashing rainbow rave as a secret.) This game NEEDED it with how often you see flashing lights when you die to the ink demon, it is not okay that there's no warning. I don't expect JDS to change anything about this title, nor do I want them to, generally speaking, but PLEASE put a warning in there. The last thing we want is for someone with epilepsy that's unfamiliar with Bendy to play this game and have a seizure. I really don't want to see a news article where a fellow fan is dead because of something that could have been avoided.

Compared to a very real health concern, most of my other criticisms are fairly tame. As cool as the gimmick of 'randomly generated levels' is on paper, it loses its charm after a couple of hours. Sometimes I would be playing for two hours and make absolutely zero progress because of how the collectibles and enemies spawned in, and that made me want to put it down on more than one occasion. When a game doesn't let me feel like I'm making meaningful strides towards my goals, I'm not inclined to keep playing it. (But bear in mind, I'm learning that my taste in games is very "pick up and play" in short bursts. Like Kirby Triple Deluxe has the format of my ideal game at the moment, make of that what you will.) In truth, I kept going because of a plot point I unlocked early on. I needed to see if anything came up with it again. It did not. We'll get into that later.

My favorite parts of the game were the parts that had callbacks to other Bendy entries. And I'm not sure if it's because I'm sentimental, or because of how they were executed. Playing as Sammy in the BATIM Chapter 2 music department was kind of surreal. As a long time Bendy fan, that was cool, and the way it got my brain gears turning to figure out what to do was nice. Same with the story beats for each of our characters getting captured by the Keepers. Like okay, this game leads into Dark Revival, that's cool. It was vindicating to see my previous theories about BATDS proven right with additional details in this entry, and the way these scenes were executed felt good. I was honestly surprised we didn't get the Keeper as a new enemy in the Gent Workshop levels as a result. That was a bit disappointing given that's literally their turf, but I guess they haven't fully taken over the cycle yet or put up the signal towers that keep the ink demon away at this point in the story. Which, I question, but hey, it's somehow not the strangest thing in this story's execution.

That said, going back to the specialty sections you play from collecting all the things, I'm very bummed that Sammy and Porter aren't playable in anything beyond their specialty levels. Same with Norman and Alice not being enemies beyond their sections. I understand why they did this in terms of plot and gameplay, but I have questions about it. It looked like Sammy would still be playable given the instruments and teleportation holes were still in these levels, I felt a little led astray. Same with the Projectionist. What was the point of having all those clicky clacky projectors in the Abyss if they're only meant to throw us off from this one enemy ONCE? Like my intuition is that they're there to confuse the player about where the Projectionist is on the map, and because I was exposed to them for so long before we meet the Projectionist proper, it kind of loses something. Also, the instructions for most of these special gameplay sections were non-existent. Like, okay, sure, Projectionist and Alice were the standard collections, that needed nothing new. Sammy, I'm unsure how I feel about that one. On one hand, it makes sense if you've played BATDS and BATIM, but is it holding up for players who have Lone Wolf as their first Bendy game? This is a topic we'll return to. Porter, why are we finding Heidi three times? Like, every other level has us with the same number of items to collect in order to end the sequence. Why is Heidi suddenly three interactions before the section ends? It's not a bad thing, but it felt like I barely got to play with Porter, and there's no reason to go back to it given it was kind of bare.

I didn't like the combat. I was expecting the combat to be a lot worse going in, because let's be honest, BATIM didn't exactly handle it with grace. The feeling of being very powerful that we got with Henry's axe has returned for me with the Mallet. I love this hammer, it felt good to control. But more often than not, I didn't love the new health system. I get why they did it this way, maybe it would've felt like the stamina bar was overloaded if health was part of it. But my luck for spawning in healing stations was very mixed. I died too many times because parrying didn't work. I'm gonna be honest, by the time we got to the Gent Workshop with the turrets you have to destroy, I was confused by how those machines would hit me. Sometimes I would get hurt and die, and sometimes I wouldn't look like I was taking any damage. It was weird. The enemies that could deplete my health felt more like an annoyance than anything else? Like they were just getting in the way of my goals as a minor inconvenience. They didn't add anything meaningful to the gameplay for me.

New bosses? Not much to say about them. They were very easy, they took barely two to three minutes to beat, and there's not much to them beyond "oh cool, the Bendy animatronic can move now". I expect they won't ever show up again in this series, which is a shame because like, the way Bertrum's log introduces them actually makes them sound scary. Like randomly throw that in a level to chase me when I least expect it, and I would have been a little more scared. Most of my scares were more about losing progress than the enemies actually being scary. Which leads me to my next point.

My biggest criticism for this game is its story. And this is where I think it matters if you've played a Bendy game before or not. I don't think this game does a good job with the execution of its plot. And there're a couple different things I can cite as the reasons why.

One, the plot doesn't mean anything unless you've played other Bendy titles. It heavily relies on its player having experience with the series to understand what's going on. None of these characters have enough time on screen for you to really know them or what their deal is, and therefore, there's not much to get attached to. If I didn't know the Projectionist, Sammy, or Porter from other entries, I would not have much of a reason to care about them here, and it makes their appearances feel random and disjointed. Alice fares a little better, since as usual, she gets the most dialogue in the form of the Milla tapes and a lot of lines as she chases you. She's the only character here that I feel we get to know anything about. But even then, a lot of it is repetitive.

On the flip side of that, most of the information gleaned in this game isn't anything new or substantial for long time fans. Most of it is stuff we reasonably assumed leading into Dark Revival, we're now just being confirmed that we were right, three years after Dark Revival came out. And on top of that, there's just, a lot of stuff in here that feels disjointed? Like, okay, we kept the audiologs from BATDS, good, happy about that, but then... there's only two new audiologs found within the levels themselves, and two new ones in the Safehouse. Why? I was expecting to hear more from Bertrum given how much we got in the trailers that felt tied to Bendyland. But no, he's only two logs, both that serve to clue us in about upcoming gameplay, and that's it. It's a shame, Joe J. Thomas does such a good job, I was hoping to hear more of him. We hear from Lord Amok to contextualize why the game has traps now, and then he's gone and irrelevant again. We hear one new log from Thomas Connor that makes little sense, and that's it. All the other logs are the same, and they don't really have anything to do with this story. They're just flavor text, which is cool, but I was hoping for something more. I got so sick of hearing them over and over again on the rare times I found audiologs, and I didn't think I could be sick of Wally Franks. That was a little disheartening.

The plot points I take the biggest issue with are the mural cutscene and the ending. And in reflecting on why they bother me so much, I've come to the conclusion that it comes from multiple sources. For anyone who doesn't know what happens, let me break it down: much like in BATDS, by collecting the scraps of the mural in the Safehouse, we get a cutscene where Boris remembers who he used to be, and then forgets. They changed it in Lone Wolf, not just in terms of visual style, but in the information it gives us. It quite literally spells the name "Buddy" on the screen.

This upset me. And mind you, I'm one of those people that was on board with Buddy as Boris back in the day. Some of you might be looking at your screens asking "who the heck is Buddy?" And you know what, that's a GREAT question! There is exactly one character we have that is officially known as Buddy with a capital B, and that is Daniel "Buddy" Lewek from the first Bendy novel, Dreams Come to Life, which released back in 2019. Spoiling the ending of this book, Buddy is revealed to have been turned into a Boris that is hiding somewhere within JDS. He is, notably, the most perfect Boris Joey has seen to date within the context of the book. When Boris and the Dark Survival first came out in 2020, you know, the game Lone Wolf's bones come from, a lot of fans were divided and arguing about whether Boris was Wally or Buddy, and there was a bunch of discourse over required reading to understand the games, etc. It was not a fun time for the fandom.

What's that though, you didn't know Bendy had a book series? You wouldn't be the first, lots of people don't, and you don't see the game devs promoting them these days. In fact, they've made multiple Twitter posts to say that the books aren't canon since September of 2023, some more direct than others. Which, as an added bit of context, the first time we were told the books aren't canon came right off the heels of fans finding the preview pages for the graphic novel adaptation of Dreams Come to Life. The fan reaction was not pretty. It was never clarified in or on the books themselves, in fact most of them have it written right on the back cover, "from the world of Bendy". Heck, back in 2019, Adrienne Kress, author of the Bendy novels, was very much under the impression that the books WERE canon. So, there's a lot of confusion with that that doesn't add up. So I'm rolling with they were canon, they've been decanonized, and now suddenly Buddy is relevant again?

My feelings on having Buddy suddenly be in the games are complicated. Most of it is because it makes it feel like the devs can't make up their minds on how they want to tell this story. But when I put that part of it aside, I still think this plot point didn't need to be here. Boris' identity doesn't matter at any point in this story. I'd argue his identity has never mattered in this series.

With other characters, there is a tragic downfall from the time they're human to when they become inky monsters. We get to know their human selves through audiologs, and it makes them hit harder when we meet them in the cycle. But Boris has never had that until we got the books. Boris doesn't have a lot of character development period within BATIM, and there's somehow even less in Lone Wolf.

Let's look at BATIM. We know Henry cares about him, which, I'm gonna be real, there's not a lot that happens on screen in BATIM to make me really believe in that. Like, okay, we can see on the table of the Safehouse that they play cards together. We see that Henry knows Boris' eating habits in his dialogue. There's a hidden audiolog for Henry where he's making a new character, which COULD be Boris but is never confirmed. Boris occasionally helps us with useful items. But we just, never spend enough time with him in BATIM? There is no emotion in this wolf beyond fear of the ink demon, there's nothing here to get invested in beyond the game telling us we should be invested in him. And that's a problem. Boris' appeal is that he's a cute cartoon dog with a name that's the equivalent of the werewolf name generator meme, Moon Moon. (Boris means wolf. He is literally Wolf the Wolf and that's funny as hell.) I have no reason to get invested in Boris, and I think the big reason I WAS invested in him back when BATIM was coming out had more to do with fan content than the game itself. The game alone did not do enough to make the Brute Boris boss fight feel earned and tragic. It's supposed to be this big, emotional moment, but the build up to it isn't sufficient.

Boris in Lone Wolf suffers from more of the same problems. His identity getting revealed doesn't matter, because he has never had the time on screen to have his character be sufficiently developed. At least, in the games. In the books, namely DCTL and the Crack Up Comics, Boris is great. Here, he is a vessel for the player that's appealing to look at, and nothing else about him is expanded upon. He gets some cute idle animations, and that's about it. Him being Buddy doesn't make a difference in this story, it just makes the series as a whole more confusing. Boris doesn't seem to be struggling with who he is for this to feel like it was earned or a logical progression of the story.

Which leads me into my most recent frustration: the ending. Now, I should note, my viewing of this cutscene had very glitched audio, and I don't know why. The identity cutscene also struggled in that department for me when I had OBS open, so I'm not sure if that's an issue with my setup, or an issue with the game. I have yet to watch a playthrough to see if anyone else experienced this.

But that aside, the ending has us building that dangerous machine that Thomas Connor mentioned earlier, and what does it do? Gives us a minor horde battle that's easy to beat, and then the machine opens a portal with some limited colors (mostly white, gray, and red) that has cars honking and city noises on the other side. We walk through, the game gives us the text "Boris has Escaped the Cycle", and the game is over. We don't get to see what's on the other side.

I don't like this scene. It feels entirely unearned, and it makes the timeline confusing. Everything else in this game is a lead-in for Dark Revival, and we KNOW that Boris is in Dark Revival. You can see him for a brief moment in the vents of Chapter 4. So what do you MEAN he escaped the cycle, where did he go? When? Where? Why???? Is that a different Boris than our Boris? Which Boris were we playing as this whole time? It introduces a bunch of questions that we will likely never get answered, because this series consistently does that.

But also like, nothing in this adventure had me thinking our goal was to get out? Like, once again, Boris has no new character development. He goes through these levels again and again, content to collect supplies and drink soup. There is nothing in here that makes me believe he's looking for a way out, or he's motivated to leave. Every time he's faced with a conflict, he runs from it. Boris is so incredibly passive, what do you mean he just, stumbles upon a way out of the Cycle??? Even though I spent hours collecting all the pieces to do so, I didn't feel like this was earned narratively at all.

Especially when you take into account the log about this new machine. Like, what's dangerous about it Tom??? Nothing about the way this machine is built matches up with what Tom is saying, and the disconnect is throwing me off. Like I can make guesses, but there's nothing concrete to go off of, and it's frustrating. Because whatever explanation I come up with will not come close to whatever the next entry actually does with this, assuming we actually get this expanded upon in the future. My best guess right now is that Boris has gone from the Cycle to the world of Silent City, just given the coloring and the sound design. Because let's be real, if he's escaping into reality and this is a Bendy 3 tie-in, I think that's somehow more confusing, and it would completely kill the vibe of this being what I assume is a hopeful moment. Like that guy would be snatched up by Gent so fast. Another cartoon dimension with new threats on the other side would at least give Tom's tape some merit.

Overall, I'm just, tired. Bendy as a series has been consistently dropping the ball in terms of having no build up or foreshadowing with its stories. Bendy has reached a point where it feels like the plot twists exist to be shocking first instead of telling a cohesive narrative. Doing something unexpected doesn't mean your story is good, it just means it's shocking in the moment. Shock is short term, it rarely has longevity, and it's not a sustainable model to build your stories on. It makes me feel like I'm wasting my time thinking about the Bendy game narratives, trying to make sense of them and analyzing the details, because it has never paid off. I don't want to feel that way about a series I've loved for the better part of almost a decade now.

What I want going forward is for the writing to utilize more literary elements. Give us more foreshadowing, give us more characterization, let your protagonists be people. And most importantly, don't be afraid of fans guessing the ending. If you play your cards right, that can be a good thing. I feel like since BATIM released Chapter 2, the devs have made choices that feel like they're afraid of being too predictable, of the fans figuring them out too fast. I think, it's not about whether or not we can foresee what will happen that matters. I think what's far more important is whether or not the big reveals have impact. Sometimes guessing correctly makes it more satisfying, you feel like you did a good job and were rewarded for paying attention to all the details on your adventure. Sometimes, you guess correctly, but there are things explored with it that you weren't thinking about that recontextualize the story so much, that you want to play it over and over again to feel something new. I assume that was part of the intent with the idea of the cycle, its execution just needed more build up. Like, it's OKAY if we know what to expect. I'd rather have a meaningful adventure the whole way through than be faced with a twist that throws everything out the window.

Overall, Bendy: Lone Wolf has had me thinking about what it is I love in Bendy, and I think, I've been right to not be as involved with it over the last year. I'm gonna be honest, ever since the decanonizing of the books, I've been having some really mixed feelings about this series. Those were my favorite stories, Adrienne Kress does so many cool things with this world, and it makes me sad to see them discarded.

I want to be in love with Bendy again. I want to be excited for the next game, the movie, the cartoons, what have you. But I need to be shown proof that the team behind it all is ready to take on these ambitious projects they're proposing. Because stuff like The Cage and Bendy 3 (which have a lot of confusion regarding their development cycles) sound like much more serious plots that have more complex things to execute. If the most recent Bendy game is making the same mistakes as the games that came before it, how can I trust that the next one won't be more of the same?

Thank you for taking the time to read. I understand that this is probably more than you bargained for anon, thank you for bearing with me. Hopefully the next time I come to talk about Bendy will be a little more positive. I try not to voice this stuff too much, purely because I don't want the devs to be hurt by my words or feel bad about it (Assuming they even see this, I get the sense they don't come over to Tumblr. Frankly I wouldn't either after what happened when the graphic novel got leaked.) I don't want my fellow fans to feel bad for liking something that I didn't vibe with either. Because, they're people, human beings, and we all have emotions and vulnerabilities, no matter how we present ourselves to others. It's hard to hear that your art didn't hit right for someone, even if you don't know that person. And that's what Bendy is, it's art. Video games are art. And this art wasn't for me. That's okay. I hope, someday, it will be for me again. That I can get the joy I got out of BATIM out of something else in this series, that maybe it'll grow with me again. For now, this is where we are.