WMG / Shipwrecked 64

Unmarked Spoilers Below!

2023 Bucky remembers the 1997 version.

No matter what horrors are in the 1997 version, it's still in 1997. The SWRC did Bucky a tremendous favor by putting together the remake; after 26 years, being able to save everyone without the ghosts of his past tailing him has brought him closure and peace. His friends, meanwhile, are blissfully clueless, since they weren't in the same state during the original game's collapse like he was. His troubles aren't entirely over, though; his experiences are going to have a long-term impact on him. His best hope for getting the help he'll need is to reach the Golden Ending, because that means the only other characters who know and understand what he's going through — Chief Wulf and Stumbler O'Hare — will also be rescued.

The Starlings still have to resume the duties they had in life.

Olive's voice actress is still credited as Olivia Finch, despite her death eight years prior. And Olive does still have some voice lines ("Hey, watch it!"), despite most voiced cutscenes being Dummied Out. The other characters are also credited as their respective Starling victims, though their characters don't still have voiced lines unlike Olive; Gary had a theme park job, and Nathan was an animator, but Olivia was a voice actress. Part of the suits' purpose is to help prevent decay, and in the case of Olivia's voice, they seem to have done just that.

Having them still at work may also have helped deflect suspicions their friends and family may have had about their whereabouts. If Olive's still being voiced by Olivia in cartoon appearances throughout the nineties, surely Olivia must be just fine, etc.

The true reason for the recall was not because of parent complaints, but because Broadside knew it had incriminating evidence.

With the game being rereleased, and people revisiting it knowing in advance what they're getting into instead of confused kids being traumatized by mistake, the game's secrets are going to become much more well-documented in universe. Which will almost certainly lead to an investigation into Broadside Animation. Mark Mullins will probably attempt to file a cease & desist before that happens, but just like any other fan remake, once it's out on the internet even for a moment, trying to stop it will only spread it to an even larger audience. One thing's for certain: Mullins's Karma Houdini Warranty is about to expire.

The Dwellers go after Bucky because they think he's Brandon Lester.

They aren't brainless beasts. They don't try to kill or even harm Bucky, even though they very easily could; they just lock him in a cell. Their killer, meanwhile, was disguised as him during the act. It's reasonable for Olivia, Gary, and Nathan to assume that, if they're in this virtual world, why wouldn't Brandon be? If they get their hands on him, they just want some kind of justice, but (fortunately for Bucky) without stooping to his level.

Rex, meanwhile, doesn't have a personal grudge against Bucky or Brandon; he just brings Bucky back to the entrance of the layer, wanting to be left alone.

• Wouldn’t really explain why Brandon does it though, for obvious reasons.
• It also wouldn't explain why the Starlings will still go after Bucky even if Brandon is in the same area as them.

The Starlings and the cartoon characters are fighting over control of the same body.

Stumbler O'Hare confirmed on his official in-character Reddit account that the characters in the game world all have free will, but he isn't sure about Bucky and his friends, calling them a "strange case". Indeed, Olivia says some lines that aren't hers, and the fact the gang disappears at the same time that their respective Dwellers emerge suggests a direct link between them.

Olive acts not like herself during that moment because she isn't entirely herself. The cartoon characters don't originate from the game world; they're from a cartoon. Therefore, they're just as much outsiders to Nulla Terra as the Starlings are. And thus, they don't have any advantage over the Starlings who are trying to influence the game themselves.

Bucky himself is in a similar boat, except the fellow outsider he wants to take his body back from is you. He isn't quite as bad off as his friends because his own morality and the player's are still mostly aligned, despite your very different goals. And like with his friends, neither will is entirely in control of Bucky's body: Bucky can control what he says and acts like, but not where he goes.

In other words: You are player one. Olivia, Gary, and Nathan are players two, three, and four. Or alternatively, you are Bucky's Dweller.

Fortunately, it also goes the other way around. Even when the Dwellers are unleashed, the cartoon characters are still in there. Instead of voluntarily holding back, the Dwellers could be being actively stopped from harming Bucky by the souls of Olive, Giovanni, and Walter fighting back against the souls of Olivia, Gary, and Nathan.

The Little Mermaid was the last straw before Brandon's rampage.

Olivia Finch, the first known intentional victim, was killed in 1989; the same year the Disney Renaissance began. While Starlings were already in development at the time, Mark Muller is known to have started it because he'd panicked about being unable to outperform Disney... who wasn't even doing too well themselves in the eighties. Now that Disney was actually coming back, they needed to ramp up the research. And to do that, Broadside Animation needed more test subjects. So in a fit of desperation, Muller ordered the first hit.

Bucky is going to come back to life after the True Ending, to his dismay.

According to an in-character e-mail from Stumbler O'Hare◊ courtesy of the Fourth-Wall Mail Slot, this is not the first time that Bucky's died. Maybe he thought that doing it himself wouldn't trigger his Resurrective Immortality. It's even possible he's tried it before; his suicidal tendencies were Foreshadowed in the museum, when he commented on a title card of an old cartoon where he was Buried Alive that he wishes he was buried right now.

That said, though the chances are high of him coming back again, he's not going to be okay. Poor guy is still going to remember all the stuff that he's been put through, along with the knowledge that he — not just Brandon, he specifically — was indirectly responsible for Connor's death, at least according to Connor. He may survive, but he's still going to be in the same mental state that drove him to attempt it. One thing's for sure: he needs help.

The real selling point of the original game was an adaptive A.I., and it wasn't ready when Mark pulled the plug.

During the ending of the game, Mark Mullins lists off all the things that Connor and Cogware oversold about the game. While most of the complaints are completely valid, the complaint about the characters being "flat" when they're supposed to have "depth and life" seems to come out of nowhere. Cogware Games is a team of programmers, and no writers were credited on either the team or the credits, the latter of which shows both the in-universe and real life people in each role. Heck, if Broadside was so concerned about the writing, why did they just let Cogware run loose?

The answer? Cogware promised an artificial intelligence in the game, one that could learn and grow as time went on with each repeated playthrough, just like the rumors about Super Mario 64 and its own gameplay. Unlike those rumors, Cogware succeeded. Stumbler and Chief Wulf know about things they logistically shouldn't, seem to have access to the Internet, and (in Chief Wulf's case) can straight up remember every time the game ends. Bucky seems to have some semblance of intelligence as well, if his reaction to all of the events in the game have anything to say. Additionally, all three have interesting things to say about their creation, with Chief Wulf feeling as though his creator hates him and his world, Stumbler being extremely self conscious about the fact that he was based on a terminally ill person, and Bucky straight up hates his creator for the torment he was put through in his early shorts, something that shouldn't even be a factor in the game. Whether or not Olive, Giovanni, and Walter share this is unknown, but Olive goes off the rails describing Olivia's death if her minigame is failed enough times. Heck, Stumbler has an email where he talks about the fictional reality that the Broadside Beach ARG takes place in, and if those are taken as canon, that opens up a new can of worms considering he talks about his creators somewhat often.

Seems like Cogware did it, having created sentient characters in their game. The only problem? The game was in its infancy when Mark Mullins tested it. The game's characters didn't grow as much as it should with just one playthrough, and as such, the game was no longer. Now the characters are stuck in an elaborate exposé, stuck in the same cycle of seeing Broadside's transgressions again and again

This also seems to make Broadside and Cogware parallels to each other. Both companies created living versions of Bucky and the gang, and in both instances, the characters are suffering. It's just that Broadside needed the bodies of dead people to make their Starlings work, while the A.I. Cogware created was their code alone.

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