The Quiet Man

*The Quiet Man* is the twenty-first episode of Just Bad Games, released on August 11, 2020.

## Transcript

**Shane**: *The Quiet Man* is a game from 2018 developed by Human Head Studios and produced by Square Enix for the PlayStation 4 and PC.

**Adam**: You may remember Human Head Studios as the team that made *Prey*. No, not that one, this one, which has been slightly lost to time because another completely different *Prey* exists from a completely different company.

**Shane**: Which is a shame, because the original *Prey* was a fantastic first-person shooter that utilized *Portal*-like mechanics and clever level design. The company had a signature touch that made many of their games a blast to play.

**Adam**: *The Quiet Man* would arguably be their last big release before closing shop in 2019.

**Shane**: How did this one game render the studio silent for good?

**Adam**: Well, let's find out, with *The Quiet Man*.

**Shane**: We begin with a figure walking up to three guys in an alley who are talking loud and vulgarly about intimate relations.

**Adam**: The three totally awesome dudes threaten the incoming figure and tell him to get lost, but the guy signals to the group that he can't hear them, indicating he's deaf.

**Shane**: The camera takes us into the world of this character, and the sound of the game turns off. From here on out, we're gonna call this character Mr. Silent.

**Adam**: One of the alley guys attacks our character, but he takes him out with one punch.

**Shane**: We smoothly transition to gameplay, and now it's our turn to fight.

**Adam**: Except uh, we don't know how. The game didn't tell us, so we sort of just dive in and start smashing buttons to hopefully defeat our attackers.

**Shane**: We stumble our way through punching and kicking enemy after enemy, until we find ourselves inside a run-down building.

**Adam**: We were feeling kinda lost and thought, "hey, why not do a little world exploring"?

**Shane**: But no. The camera movement in this game isn't set up for that. It seems to kind of be stuck in the corner. Yeah, you can pan a little bit, but that's it. And as we try to move around the room, it kind of dips and weaves all over the place. Ugh. Cool. So we don't really seem to be able to explore or look at anything. I guess the game just wants us to keep punching and kicking.

**Adam**: So, we do.

**Shane**: Mr. Silent comes across some graffiti on a wall that triggers a cutscene.

*(Completely silent cutscene plays)*

**Adam**: So, was that a flashback to his childhood? Was the kid with the gun and the guy in the painting the same person?

**Shane**: Who knows?

**Adam**: We jump back to adult Mr. Silent and clear out the whole building to retrieve a suitcase that was apparently the reason for all this, and leave. Silently. Shhhh.

**Shane**: Time for another cutscene. Maybe we'll finally have the world and story fleshed out for us so we can get a handle on this character.

*(Another completely silent cutscene plays)*

**Adam**: I think something's wrong. Did you turn down the volume?

**Shane**: Uh, nope, it's still on.

**Adam**: That's- oh no... Does that mean?

**Shane**: Eh, yeah. This is the game and it's totally silent!

**Adam**: They don't give you a single subtitle. They don't even give you a soundtrack, nothing to guide you through what the characters are talking about in the slightest.

**Shane**: You do get some atmospheric sounds.

**Adam**: Ah! I get it. Because the character's deaf, we're meant to feel like we're walking in his shoes. All we need to do is read the lips of the actor to get the story.

**Character**: (lips read) Yeah. Some obese kitty cats.

**Adam**: Problem solved.

**Shane**: You would think, but no. Half the time, the character speaking in the scene isn't even looking at the camera. How are you gonna read that?

**Adam**: Hm, okay. That's a big problem.

**Shane**: It's not a problem for Mr. Silent, though. He can actually see this dude's face, so he has no problem following what's going on.

**Adam**: So our character, our hero through the story, can follow what's going on, while we as the players cannot.

**Shane**: This is a problem throughout the game. Mr. Silent is reading lips we can't see and following conversations where we are totally lost.

**Adam**: And to make it worse, there are scenes when Mr. Silent actually speaks, and the game still doesn't subtitle this. The character we're supposed to be is communicating something, and we have no idea what it is. Come on!

**Shane**: On paper, this probably sounded like a bold, revolutionary game. But really, this isn't immersive, it's just aggravating.

**Character**: (lips read) Fart mouth.

**Shane**: Some of these cutscenes can last upwards of ten minutes.

**Adam**: Ten minutes of being in the dark, not being able to follow anything that is going on.

**Shane**: These drawn-out silent cinematics- which cannot be skipped, by the way- take up over half of your game time, with the rest spent with you beating the snot out of people.

**Adam**: Because this, at its heart, is a basic beat-'em-up. There's no other gameplay. You don't even have any special silenced skills.

**Shane**: It's almost like they went out of their way to keep out any defining features from the gameplay that would make it stand out.

**Adam**: I mean, it basically writes itself. A hero who has learned unique techniques and strategies as someone who has grown up not being able to hear. They could've made him capable of doing all sorts of useful things.

**Shane**: For instance, the ability to pick up covert information by reading people's lips from far-off distances.

**Man on Mountain**: Your game sucks!

**Adam**: Or heck, maybe a deafening sound-based weapon, like a siren, that can completely confuse and disorient his hearing enemies.

*(air horn plays "La Cucaracha")*

**Shane**: But nope. Nothing like that. Instead, we have this run-of-the-mill fighting game with no significant identifying feature. How does the combat feel?

**Adam**: Ooh, not good. Not good at all. You're not told how fighting even works, so you're literally button mashing the whole time.

**Shane**: There's no fluidity to the gameplay. Mr. Silent will be fighting one enemy, and automatically quick snap to a different enemy without warning.

**Adam**: And thanks to the useless camera, finding enemies around a scene can sometimes be impossible.

**Shane**: You'll take hits before you even know where they're coming from.

**Adam**: Oh wait. If you pause the game, guess what comes up? A map of the combat controls.

**Shane**: This? This is how they teach you to play the game?

**Adam**: Yeah. All the menu settings are all set up this way as well, with no words- just fancy lights.

**Shane**: We sorta interpreted these neon hieroglyphics, but fighting still felt awful.

**Adam**: Okay, so gameplay's a lost cause. Let's turn our attention to this game's story.

**Shane**: Well, the story isn't any better. We have a full cast of characters, but no names and no clear idea of their relationships.

**Adam**: There's our protagonist, Mr. Silent. We guess he works with this guy, since he delivers him the briefcase from the first sequence. We'll call him "Briefcase Man".

**Shane**: There's this lady, and we only know her as "The Singer".

**Adam**: And here's another character we only know as "The Cop".

**Shane**: And we also have a "Strange Person Wearing a Bird Mask".

**Adam**: A bird mask? Why?

**Shane**: No idea, but they kidnap the singer, so they're probably bad.

**Adam**: How can we follow a plot when we can't listen in or even read the story-building scenes?

**Shane**: Is Mr. Silent working for Briefcase Man? Are they friends? We don't know.

**Adam**: Why is Mr. Silent standing outside the singer's window? We don't know.

**Shane**: What is happening in this flashback of Mr. Silent with a cop? We don't know.

**Adam**: Speaking of flashbacks, you'll see plenty. Eventually, they reveal this woman getting shot... this is probably important.

**Shane**: We also see the same woman in scenes with her playing a piano and hugging the little boy who we assume to be Mr. Silent as a kid.

**Adam**: Wait a minute. That's the same woman from the present-day scenes. If Mr. Silent has aged, like 15 years, why doesn't she look any different?

**Shane**: The only possible explanation is that she totally recovered from that gunshot wound, and it stopped her from aging. She's super lucky.

**Adam**: We keep pushing forward as each level offers the same boring beat-'em-up gameplay and ending with more unsatisfying and incomprehensible cutscenes.

**Shane**: We believe the Bird Person to be one single character, but it turns out everyone in this game has a bird mask.

**Adam**: Mr. Silent puts it on, and beats up all these guys.

**Shane**: Then this guy has a mask too.

**Adam**: And then the mask's here, too. How's it travelling around so freely? It's making this even more confusing to follow.

**Shane**: Briefcase Man shoots the cop. Mr. Silent is angry and goes to fight Briefcase Man on the roof, where he gets gunned down.

**Adam**: He's dead. Or wait. Maybe not?

**Shane**: Mr. Silent now has super bird ghost powers.

**Adam**: What's even going on?

**Shane**: After you defeat Briefcase Man, then the cop shows up. You can tell it's him because of his signature raincoat.

**Adam**: Wait, we just saw him get shot not too long ago. What's the deal? Do bullets work differently in this universe? They don't seem to affect anyone.

**Shane**: Uh oh, he's not here to celebrate! He puts on the bird mask, and Mr. Silent fights him too. The two of them literally knock each other out at the same time for no reason.

**Adam**: The singer stands over Mr. Silent to see if he's okay, and it fades to black. That's the end.

**Shane**: The credits play, and for the first time since the game went silent, we hear music, with a cascade of images that play over top that don't really further the plot at all.

**Adam**: Eh. Well that was a mess. Looks like we're done here. **IT'S JUST BAD.**

**Shane**: Nope! Now it's time to play it again.

**Adam**: What? Why would anyone want to do that?

**Shane**: Because beating the game once unlocks sound mode, so now you can play the game again with full dialogue.

**Character**: You know, if you were anybody else, you would not get in here dressed like that.

**Adam**: WHAT?! You mean they designed the entire game with sound in mind, and made us play it in silence for HOURS just to unlock the sound later?

**Shane**: Yeah. We weren't happy about this, and there are so many scenes that were broken while playing them silent, making it seem like the silent mode was an afterthought.

**Adam**: Like this scene here, that originally just seemed like an establishing shot. Turns out there was dialogue dubbed over this.

**Character**: You are to remain outside of SOL33 domain for now-

**Adam**: Good.

**Shane**: Or this scene, from early in the game, when Mr. Silent brings the briefcase to Briefcase Man, we had no way to know this without audio, but Mr. Silent, whose name is Dane, by the way, speaks to this guy, Taye, off-camera.

**Taye**: Early riser! Extra credit on your report card, Dane!

**Dane**: Prefer extra cash.

**Adam**: When Taye is speaking, he's looking down and away from him. How could Dane have so easily understood what was being said in order to have such a quick, quippy reply?

**Taye**: Extra credit on your report card, Dane!

**Dane**: Prefer extra cash.

**Adam**: Remember, Dane cannot hear anything. He needs to see their mouths.

**Shane**: Or this scene, with Dane and the bird person. He creeps behind Dane and starts verbally assaulting him.

**Bird Person**: What, do you think you're the hero now, Dane? When have you ever been anything but the villain?

**Adam**: But he can't hear what you're saying. Even if he was looking right at you, he still couldn't understand you, cause YOU'D BE WEARING A MASK!

**Shane**: You would think that adding in dialogue would expand the world and our understanding of it, but surprisingly, hearing the story unfold makes everything collapse in on itself and just creates more questions.

**Adam**: It's fair to say *The Quiet Man* doesn't hold up to a second playthrough. We began noticing all sorts of weirdness when we looked at it closer.

**Shane**: Which we wouldn't have seen if they didn't make us play through the entire game again a second time.

**Adam**: For example, the license plates in this opening scene. The game takes place in New York City, and you see all sorts of cars going by with New York license plates.

**Shane**: Turns out these scenes weren't filmed in America, but Bulgaria, with Bulgarian cars.

**Adam**: They had to figure out how to get North American plates to fit on foreign cars that use long, skinny plates.

*(The New York license plate is poorly put on the European car)*

Nailed it!

**Shane**: During our gameplay the first time around, we kept noticing this strange blue light in the top right of every fight, like a lens flare or something. Now, we didn't know what it was, so we ignored it.

**Adam**: Turns out it's a powerup system called "focus". You might be wondering how we missed that the first time. Well, check out how the game tries to teach it to you in this early fighting sequence.

*(Fight shown)*

**Shane**: Well, that was helpful. What was I supposed to do with this? At least tell me what buttons to push.

**Adam**: Focus, taught to you with this *Dragon Ball*-like power up animation in the pause menu, lets you perform fast and effective attacks against your enemies.

**Shane**: However, it's not fast, it's rarely effective, and it seems to not trigger properly when you use it. Awesome!

**Adam**: And there are so many glitches we could cover that we're just gonna go ahead and give you some quick highlights.

**Shane and Adam**: Highlights!

**Shane**: Enemies just sometimes pop into the scene, like this guy right here.

**Adam**: While fighting, you'll notice clipping through bodies again and again and again.

**Shane**: When walking around any part of the game, Dane's walking animation might break, causing him to lock up like this. The game isn't locked up here, folks. Only he is.

**Adam**: Or he'll get caught on something, with his arms and legs moving ultra-slow while the space continues to move at a regular pace.

**Shane**: Let's help him out. (game sped up 700%) Ah. That's better.

**Adam**: Sometimes during fighting, characters will get locked in a loop of punches that will never end. By this point, his brain's hamburger.

**Shane**: In this cutscene, the cop's eyes just light up. It happens twice, like he's got a flashlight that went off inside his head.

**Adam**: Also, why is the scenery going the wrong way here? Is he driving backwards?

**Shane**: Why are there raindrops hitting these puddles when there isn't any rain?

**Adam**: Why does this car's headlights pass right through Dane?

**Shane**: During this boss fight, you can trigger an event that breaks this statue, but the problem is they didn't design the surrounding cutscenes around it. So we went from gameplay with a broken statue to cutscenes with a perfectly fine statue over and over again.

**Adam**: and then, on one of the last boss battles, the game seriously glitched out. We were able to endlessly punch Taye over and over again in the junk.

*(Taye gets punched in the groin for over 20 seconds)*

**Shane**: The game should've had him break out of this eventually, but that never happened. When we had enough of playing the nutcracker symphony-

**Adam**: The boss man disappears when he wasn't supposed to. This caused a break in the game, forcing us to quit and restart the entire last level from the beginning.

**Shane**: Highlights over!

And now with the sound turned on, let's try and make some sense of this crazy story.

**Adam**: Taye is the proprietor of Moonrise night club. Taye's girlfriend and star musical performer in his club, Lala-

**Taye**: Lala.

**Adam**: Yeah, that's her name- is having threatening mail sent to her.

**Shane**: But there's a twist: she's in on it.

**Lala**: The greatest performance of my career: the night I was kidnapped.

**Adam**: What the heck is with this story?

**Shane**: That's not even the weirdest part. Remember the cop that Dane met up with earlier? Turns out that's his father, and they have a very dark history.

**Cop**: What are we supposed to do now, now that you've killed your mother?

**Adam**: WHAA?

**Shane**: Yup. The scene that looked like a friendly community cop trying to console an upset child was actually a father putting all the blame of this awful event squarely on his shoulders. Pair that with this memory from earlier of being beaten and threatened paints a picture of an awful and abusive childhood.

**Adam**: Wait, hold on. So, this woman is Dane's mom, and she was killed.

**Shane**: Yes.

**Adam**: So, if she died, like 15 years ago, who is this on the piano right now?

**Shane**: A completely unrelated person.

**Adam**: A completely unrelated person who just happens to look exactly the same and sound exactly the same as a dead woman. Everyone is just okay with that?

**Lala**: I wish I could've met her.

**Dane**: You are her.

**Shane**: I guess so! So she gets fake-kidnapped by the bird, and Dane is trying to rescue her.

**Adam**: After being no closer to finding his reincarnated mother, Dane is upset and takes refuge back at Taye's office. There's a package on Taye's desk. Dane opens it and finds her white dress with blood on it, and the bird mask.

**Shane**: We get a point of view sequence of Taye's guys getting beaten up. Without sound, we couldn't be sure what was happening here, but assumed it was Dane. With sound, we hear the #2 guy tell Taye on the phone that Dane is the stalker who kidnapped Lala.

**Dane**: Lala!

**Adam**: I don't think that makes sense. We saw Dane fight with the bird already. Why would he impersonate the person who kidnapped Lala?

**Character**: Lala.

**Shane**: I don't know. All we do know is for some reason, he lay waste to his own guys in the club wearing a bird mask, and he doesn't seem very happy about it.

**Adam**: Dane receives a video of Lala-

**Taye**: Lala.

**Adam**: -Tied up with a map of where to find her. Dane goes after her, so of course he's not the kidnapper.

**Shane**: Dane shows up at the hideout of Isaac, this guy- who is also this guy. He went to juvie for the death of Dane's mom. Dane doesn't like him very much.

**Adam**: Dane and Isaac have their epic fight. Dane rescues Lala-

**Dane**: Lala!

**Adam**: -But Taye stops them.

**Shane**: Turns out Taye is super peeved because he saw Dane beat up all his guys and accuses him of trying to steal Lala from him.

**Dane**: Lala!

**Adam**: Taye leaves his guys to beat up Dane, then his cop dad comes by to save him, and we get a flashback of Dane as a child in a therapist's office. Apparently he invented a person called "The Quiet Man" who looks exactly like the bird person as a way to deal with his feelings after his mom's death.

**Cop**: Why does he need an outlet for the pain? He deserves it. Every inch.

**Shane**: Father of the year right there.

**Adam**: They go for an uncomfortably long car drive, and we get more talking.

**Shane**: Does anything seem off here? Because it should.

**Adam**: The cop dad must realize he needs his hard-of-hearing son to look at his face for him to understand anything he's saying. He prattles on and on, despite the fact Dane refuses to look at him. He can't hear you.

**Shane**: Lack of respect for deaf people aside, cop dad reveals that this has all been to avenge the death of his wife. He orchestrated all of these events to turn Dane into the Quiet Man from his childhood, and use him to take out Taye and Isaac.

**Adam**: Turn him into what, a children's drawing of a bird guy? What kind of broken logic is that? He was expecting his son to just go crazy and beat up random people wearing a mask?

**Shane**: Well, it worked, didn't it?

**Adam**: Uh, that one time, sure, but it wasn't always Dane as the Quiet Man, because he was fighting him multiple times.

**Shane**: But maybe it was all a hallucination. Let's break this down. In this scene, the Quiet Man clearly was fighting Dane.

**Adam**: But in this scene, he vanishes into thin air. And also, over here in the creepy shrine, he disappears. Are these all in Dane's head?

**Shane**: I don't know what's fake or real anymore. This game can't keep its own story straight.

**Adam**: Okay, time for the final act at the club. Taye reveals he was actually the one who shot Dane's mom, not Isaac.

**Dane**: You!

**Taye**: Me.

**Adam**: But since the gun came out in the first place because they were fighting over some sneakers, I think they can share the blame on this one.

**Shane**: By the way, yes, this terrible chain of events started with a fight over some shoes.

**Adam**: And Dane witnessed the fight almost from the beginning. He saw what happened, but still became lifelong pals with one of the guys who killed his mom, and was seemingly totally fine when a complete replica of his mom just appeared one day and Taye started dating her? Despite the fact she looks and sounds exactly like the woman he killed when he was a kid?

**Shane**: Are we serious with this plot?

**Cop**: Save her... this time.

**Adam**: Taye shoots Dane's cop pop and tries to get answers to what the heck is going on from Dane, but Dane ignores him, likely because he can't hear you. Maybe he'd be able to hear your mouth moving if you didn't smack him in the head with your gun earlier.

**Shane**: Dane fights his way to the roof to confront Taye. Here is where Taye guns down Dane in what appears to be their final battle.

**Adam**: But Dane gets up, with his bird superpowers, and defeats Taye.

**Shane**: This whole superpower part is never explained and makes no sense. It's almost magical, but this game has no magic in it at all. So what just happened?

**Adam**: The closest reference we can find to supernatural powers in the story is the shoes Taye and Isaac fight over in the flashback. The shoes feature a logo of a bird head, and the brand name is Horus, who is the ancient Egyptian bird god of the sky.

**Shane**: Elements in the story were clearly written to build on this Horus symbolism. First, there's the fact that Quiet Man has a bird beak. Horus, being the avenger of wrongs, is represented in the game's plot about avenging the wrongful death of Dane's mom. And for added bonus points, Horus' eyes represent the sun and the moon, which is likely why you only ever see Dane's mom during the daylight, directly contrasted against Lala-

**Taye**: Lala!

**Shane**: -Who only ever shows up at night. And it gets better. Isaac, the guy accused of killing the mom, runs a gang called SOL33. The word "sol", translated from Spanish, means "sun", while Taye runs Moonrise night club. You get it? You following the confusing and ham-fisted mythology references yet? It seems they were laying the groundwork for Dane's Quiet Man to have a connection to immortal, godlike powers.

**Adam**: But that never goes anywhere. All we have are shoes with a bird on them, and Dane's unexplained ability to shake off two gunshot wounds to the back.

**Shane**: Anyway, after Taye is taken out, the father appears, and it's revealed that he helped orchestrate the fake kidnapping of Lala from the start. This news is very upsetting for Dane.

**Adam**: So Dane and his dad fight over Lala, fueled by their unresolved guilt. They both get knocked out. The end.

**Shane**: After the second playthrough, we see a post-credits scene with cop dad picking up his son out of jail for I guess beating up his dad or killing Taye, maybe. But they're cool now, so everything is fine, I guess.

**Adam**: This game took eight hours of our lives, and this is all it gave us in return? I'm offended.

**Shane**: You know what would've made more sense than a random lady who looks like another random lady? Make Lala-

**Dane**: Lala.

**Shane**: -The cop's daughter and Dane's sister.

**Adam**: See, that would explain the resemblance, and given the brother and dad more real motivation to do anything to protect her. Yeah. That actually works.

**Shane**: The themes of this story are all over the place, and none of it jives together.

**Adam**: Yeah, unfortunately, this game needed a lot more work.

**Shane**: If the story and gameplay had more polish on them, then it probably could've all come together to make something pretty special instead of this disappointing mess.

**Adam**: And the developers seemed to be very aware that this was one of their last games.

**Shane**: They placed this memoriam graffiti in a whole bunch of backgrounds in the game. That can't be a coincidence.

**Adam**: We can only hope the devs were able to take away some lessons from this experience that they can use in their new game studio.

**Shane**: That's right. After Human Head shut down, they announced they were moving their team to Roundhouse Studios, a new development house under Bethesda Softworks.

**Adam**: Maybe this once-great team of creators will make something amazing again. But for *The Quiet Man*?

**Shane**: **IT'S JUST BAD.**