Bourne to Run: The Tuna's Dream

So what's going on with these fever dream inserts of Danny playing other games or hearing playthroughs from the past? Some kind of ARG or hidden message?

The most recent episode featured a segment from Dune 2000 and we previously had sections from Super Mario 64 as well as flashbacks from Brad's playthroughs of the Souls games.

Is Danny asleep and this is all a dream? Are we asleep and this is all our dream? Do tuna dream?

At first I thought it was all just references to earlier discussions from the show. I'll list the references below in the order I recall them appearing:

1. In the first episode or two, Danny talked about how Brad and Vinny had previously played through the entirety of Demon's Souls on the site. Danny talked about how much he enjoyed that playthrough, as well as commenting that he didn't want Borne to Run to feel like a re-tread of that, and wanted to differentiate it by having it be edited and having Tamoor there to kind of coach him. Then, a couple episodes later, the "flashback" of Brad's playthrough was edited into the show.

2. In the first episode or two, Tamoor spent a significant amount of time outlining how you could look at Super Mario 64 as a template for Demon's Souls, specifically with how the paintings work as portals into the various worlds and levels in Mario, and the archstones do the same in Demon's Souls. In a later episode as Danny is entering a level via archstone (i.e. jumping into a "painting") the footage of him playing Mario 64 cuts in.

3. In the most recent episode, Danny fights various magical enemies and those enemies often drop the items "fresh spice" or "aged spice." During that segment, Danny makes multiple offhanded references and jokes about how the spice will let him travel through space, uses the phrase "he who controls the spice controls....Latria," and then even calls it "spice melange" at one point. These are all references to the book/movie Dune (he who controls the spice controls Arrakis). At the end of the episode, Danny has edited in footage of himself playing the Dune 2000 game as a reference to those jokes and the "spice."

So while I do love this theory that Danny is leaving clues to some grander message or hidden twist that Borne to Run is going to have, I'm thinking Danny is just having some fun in the editing room by editing in fun stuff that references earlier moments in the show.

However, I kind of hope I'm wrong. Because some grand mystery or overarching storyline about Danny being asleep and it's a dream would absolutely rule.

Tamoor made some veiled allusion in the intro video for A Very Online Show to Bourne to Run being weirder than it appears if you pay close enough attention so...maybe?

I'm all for odd insertions, even if they are just that.

Dune was probably a sneak peak for the next Guilty Pleasure

Mario 64 was a reference to Tamoor saying he considered the Souls games to be clones of Mario 64

The part with Brad and Vinny was probably just paying homage to their run of the original Demon Souls.

With all due respect,

1. It's very unlikely Dune has anything to do with Guilty Treasures. It would be crass and lazy of Danny to just splice in random footage of a game he's researching for GT just to pad out some time in Borne to Run for no reason. As @akbrehmer mentions above, the BtR episode with Dune also had a lot of spice pickups/references. Also, I believe Danny has mentioned the next GT episode required him to buy a GBA, so likely nothing to do with Dune.
2. I appreciate the input, but the rest of your post is a low effort, less detailed version of @akbrehmer's more thorough post above.

I was going to make a thread about this, but call it "Lorin' Fo' Fun" so thank you for saving everyone from that.

The Mario 64 segment seemed to draw comparisons to the Tower Knight, in both setting and circling around to the two bosses' backs to defeat them.

The general edits are pointing to a theme of repetition, I think. (I know I just wrote that blog post about repetition in Metal Gear, but hear me out.) The distortion and flashbacks mostly accompany references to previous playthroughs and there's Tamoor's insistence that Danny has been training for this his whole life. Danny playing old games alone could be cut together as a training montage. I don't know the lore of these games well, but I think there's a motif of breaking cycles and the gameplay of going through the same areas multiple times definitely supports that. Another Souls series is the perfect place to get experimental and explore this territory, especially in this manner where they're rationing out new information as a Souls game rations out its story in sparse item descriptions. Maybe this is a fitting send-off for Souls playthroughs on this site.

If you want to get really deep with it, the Domino's thing when they were naming the character seemed to come out of nowhere. I think it was Tamoor who suddenly said something like "Oh yeah, we have to get Domino's in there somewhere" and maybe I missed something, but I didn't know why they had to get Domino's in there. So I looked up "Souls game domino" and I found the Black Witch Domino Mask, the flavor text of which says "When Zullie the Witch learned of Alva's dedication to Saint Serreta, she used all manner of tricks and deceit to ruin him, but in the end she would spend her life with him, supporting his endeavors" which I think sums up Tamoor's love-hate coaching style. Maybe that's a level deeper than they've planned, but this is the type of speculation they're hoping for, so let's go as deep as we can.

So how much of it is scripted, etc? Why are they presenting this as a series built specifically for people new to Souls games? Tamoor's comments about this series being weird if you pay close enough attention feel a little unfair to me, since the first two episodes have so little of this weirdness, if any, that they're too subtle for anyone to reasonably notice unless you're second-guessing every word they say. I wouldn't blame anyone for watching the first two episodes and considering it just a normal playthrough. Which almost makes me think they started doing this stuff from episode 3 onwards as a response to the criticism. Personally, the ARGness is interesting, but for me there's far too much of a series I'm not interested in between the morsels of clues and intriguing edits.

They took too long to get into the weird, for my taste. I sorta watched the first two episodes, though I'm not interested at all in Souls games, and fell off of the series. Now I am finding it hard to go back into it to check out a few moments of interesting bits of inserted-strangeness that may or may not have a long term payoff. I guess I'll wait to see what people say about the next few episodes.

@whitegreyblack: Might be worth just watching the shortened free ones then - a lot of that stuff is still in them, with just less of the game itself.

@aiomon: That's a great suggestion, thank you

The vocal effects on Tamoor after they beat the spider boss and this insert of someone else (a young Tam?) saying “save my soul too” in a distorted voice a minute or so later in the nexus are way more than just game references. Something else is going on for sure.

@cilonen: I assume Borne to Run: Demon’s Souls is the MGS2 of Demon’s Souls playthroughs. It’s all part of the S3 Plan, Tamoor is an AI, Danny is in a VR simulation and was a child soldier, etc.

What if Danny's actually hideo kojima

@landhawk said:

Hide O'Kojima

!

God bless your hearts

Turns out Cleopatra is coming at ya.

The love/hate relationship definitely got ratcheted up this week with that last boss fight.

So, I’ve not had a chance to watch episode 5 yet but extrapolating from where we are now to where we’re going…

I can only hope that by level 5-2 Tamoor is reciting twisted verses in dark speech from a dimly lit room where only his eyes are visible whilst Danny is playing with one hand on the controller whilst the other is trying to hide his tear-streaked eyes from the horrors displayed on screen.

At least, that’s kind of how I felt in 5-2 of Demon’s Souls.

Slight spoilers for the most recent episode...so this is the non-spoilery question...

Is someone doing a parallel run to Danny and they're showing up as a phantom here and there?

Spoilers below (be prepared to put on your tin foil hat):

I only bring this up because of that sequence where they're fighting the invader in the steps up to the boss, there's a splice to the Brad/Vinny playthrough where Brad drops down to the steps, and when it cuts back to Danny's run, a phantom drops down at that exact moment.

Now for the real tin foil hat segment: Purposefully showing a phantom like that is basically impossible in a souls game due to the asynchronous nature of the multiplayer, however seeing as how Danny has those Bluepoint connections...

@xolotl: I'm pretty sure you hit the nail on the head there. Danny got in touch with Bluepoint and with their help he used a debug menu to spawn a phantom in the exact same spot. I would go even further to say that Brad is actually playing alongside him this whole time and they both have specially modded PS5's that allow them to connect to the same world. How deep does this go? Well if you put the video file into Premiere and play it backwards.. well I'll let you see that one for yourself.

I never expected to care about the story of a play-through of a game I've beaten and watched other people beat multiple times. This has me feeling like the early Lost days. I hope the pay off is worth it.

Didn't Tamoor point out that that phantom is always in that spot until you kill it? Was interesting that Brad encountered it from above and Danny from ground level, with the editing involved, though. Also cool at the moment they were basically in the exact same stance at the exact same spot at the exact same moment of the Fool's Idol fight, or at least editing made it seem that way.

I also love Deep Fake Tam!

This series is great, the deniers are fools! Fools!

@xolotl: I noticed that too and I'm hoping for more next time.

@xolotl: I haven't played Demon's Souls in a decade, but I still remember that phantom being scripted. It's there every time until you kill it, like all scripted phantoms in the game.

Anyway, my initial speculation was that Danny was being held in the Matrix where he's forced to play games by his A.I. overlords (Tamoor), though I'm sure they've come up with something more inventive.

@axersia: I'm not talking about the invading phantom. I'm talking about the white phantom that drops from the same spot Brad did

I caught this as well and thought it was pretty awesome! I would guess it was just a happy accident because the amount of work to make that happen seems off the charts. Great editing, either way.

I do hope it's all building up to something dumb and glorious.

It’s gonna turn out Danny was Potato Marshal, Brad and Patrick’s nemesis invader with the rust spear that destroyed their gear over and over, episode by episode.

Patrick Klepek turns up in the Old Monk fight.

Has anyone counted the number of tuna chunks on the slice of tuna supreme at the end of the most recent episode? Maybe it has some significance.

@landhawk: Finally someone making some damn sense around here! I’ve been analyzing the type of tuna it could be and cross referencing bar codes myself.

I posted this in the comments of Episode 5, but figure this is the better place for discussion.

I'm real onboard with the initial theory in this thread that the archstones are sort of portals/paintings to other worlds. The fact that in EP4, deep-voice Tam makes Danny watch the cutscene that goes through each of the archstone locations again so that he can properly absorb it made me think they were going for that kind of structure. I can't think of any other reason they would replay that cutscene for us.

I had the working theory that each of the game flashbacks was related to the archstone of the area that Danny was currently progressing in. Almost like a "the six leaders with the six precious archstones" were spread amongst a bunch of different games that Danny was searching through/stuck in.

"One to the king of a small, yet industrious land" - King Bob-omb and Bob-omb Battlefield fit that perfectly.

"One to the king of the burrowers underground" - I don't know much about the Dune game but it looks like it meets this description. Especially if my rudimentary googling was correct and Dune involves an Emperor who wants people to dig for spices.

From this latest episode though, I'm now at a loss for the Flower reference. The next archstone reads "one to the wise queen of the great Ivory Tower". So, my grand theory may have just fallen apart.

I'm keen for the next episode. This is the first time I've ever been engaged enough with Giantbomb content to actually post - so great job to Danny & Tam.

Interesting observations! For "the burrowers underground", in the Dune novels (and games), a major feature of the setting is that there are giant burrowing sandworms which burrow beneath the desert, on the planet which has the valuable spice. Also Danny and Tam started picking up a lot more "fresh spice" and "aged spice" items in that episode. It's hard to say if "burrowers underground", or the "spice" items, or both, is what prompted Danny to have the Dune segment.

For the recent episode with Flower, yeah I also struggle to see any connection to the archstone. Does the artwork on the archstone feature the queen holding a flower or anything? The only connection is that in that episode, Danny does have to use/talk about the lotus items when he is poisoned/plagued, and maybe Flower is simply a reference to the lotus items.

I'm not sure we've quite figured out the pattern or meaning yet, but between yourself, @akbrehmer, and @eccentrix, you've done some good work so far. One of you has to be at least halfway on the right track.

@eccentrix: I watched the first two episodes, assumed a regular playthrough, and have watched the Youtube edits ever since.

I guess it's like Frog Fractions now? I'm guessing Danny made some fun little edits, but with the community turning it into a grand conspiracy, they'll be forced to make it something crazy.

@csl316: Yeah, I'm assuming they're reading the feedback and this thread and adjusting accordingly to fit some of the theories when they can.

I was thinking that Danny was showcasing games that pioneered a genre, in the way that Demon’s Souls sort of started the Souls-like genre. Mario 64 set the ground rules for 3D platformers, and I haven’t played Dune 2 but according to Wikipedia, “While not the first real-time strategy (RTS) video game, Dune II established the format that would be followed for years to come. As such, Dune II is the archetypal ‘real-time strategy’ game.” Not exactly sure what to make of Flower, but it’s worth pointing out that Blue Point did the ports for the Vita and PS4 versions of the game. I haven’t watched the Blue Point No Clip videos but maybe these games get mentioned there?

I think people are missing that right before the transition to Flower, Tam is reminding Danny that one of the worst mistakes you can make in this game is getting overeager and anxious to get back to where you were and making mistakes that get you killed in silly situations. It's then that Danny steps back through the fog door, but comes out the other side playing Flower instead of Demon's Souls and finds himself suddenly sedated.

I don't have anything useful to contribute here, but the ending pizza looked exactly as vile as I expected a tuna pizza to be.

The real mystery is why anyone would do that to a poor innocent pizza.

I posted this a couple days ago on the Episode 04 comments page, but figured I'd post it here too: amidst all the other weirdness I haven't seen anyone mention that Danny briefly talks about how they've been doing this for "almost a year" (@ around 1:02:25 in that ep).

@el_blarfo: seconded. And I’m not totally anti-fish on pizza, my stepdad loves anchovies and taught me to not mind them (though I don’t order them for myself.) I don’t blame him for spitting it out immediately, even if he didn’t deliver a line afterwards.

Now that I've had time to think about this, I would put money on this being them inserting little bits of narrative and world-building and letting us, the viewers, theorise and piece together the wider story. Just like Miyazaki had to do when he was younger and just like the Souls games are designed to make you do.

In that way, they've 100% succeeded already and I'm fine with this not leading to a bigger payoff.

@octopuns: I was just thinking kind of the same thing! They're building lore that needs work to piece together, like the game. I want more weirdness. Glad they're using the editing to make the show different. Can't wait for more

i think the "weirdness" is crafted episode to episode with no big payoff at the end.

Unlike many in other threads, i love Souls content, and though there is "a lot" on giant bomb.... Dark Souls 2 and 3 were largely overlooked compared to the others. I'm more excited for when Danny get to spots in these games he hasn't been to yet...cause there are plenty of hints out there pointing at that everything he's beaten so far he has beaten in the past.

Does anyone know where these clips of Danny playing old games come from? Did he ever play them on his Twitch channel?

Flower could just be a reference to the Noble’s Lotus which Danny keeps forgetting cures poison.