VGFlicks: Free Guy (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Life Itself

Maybe IGN should focus on the game and the development
work instead of inquiring about the relationship status
of the devs.

We get Keys’ backstory with Millie Rusk. Together, they had created the video game Life Itself, which would contain revolutionary AI for its characters – they would learn from each other, grow like people, and branch out to the point where watching them would be almost like watching real humans. Things went awry when they looked for a publisher through which they could sell this “fishbowl game” (a term I have not seen anywhere else, by the way). Soonami Studios took it, but shelved it, claiming it didn’t do well with test audiences. And during interviews about their “revolutionary game”, journalists would pivot to asking whether the two are a couple, which would embarrass them.

This info is given through an old interview airing on Keys’ TV, which was on when he came home. Millie broke in to talk to him. He claims he can’t listen to nor look at her without violating his NDA; but she says that she might be close to finding evidence that their code was stolen by Soonami and used in Free City. She wants him to help, but he needs his job, so he declines.

The shadow of Antwan, Keys' boss and the CEO of Soonami
Studios, looms all over this discussion, and we won't see
him for another 10 more minutes!

Looks beautiful, but what do I do with it aside from watching?

Okay, the concept of a “fishbowl game”. This is one of the small things that kind of bugs me with the idea behind the movie, since so much of the plot hinges on that invented concept. A video game that you can’t interact with sounds… well, I’m gonna be a jerk and agree with Soonami there. If I pick up a video game, it’s to play it. Right? Technically, if it’s just observational, does it even qualify as a game? Because the more I think about it, the more I think that an idea like this would have just needed some tweaks. Some way in which players could impact the NPCs positively. Admittedly, maybe Keys and Millie didn’t have the resources to make something that players could genuinely interact with, using avatars and controls and whatnot; but, had Soonami not decided to go behind their backs, maybe the studio could have whipped up something different.

One of the video game posters for Free Guy spoofs Animal Crossing. Free Guy came out in 2021, and what was one of the biggest video games of 2020? Animal Crossing: New Horizons, because everyone was stuck at home and looking for ways to chill in stressful times! Yes, AC:NH came out in 2020 and Free Guy was filmed in 2019 (and the first script dates to 2016), but the Nintendo franchise has been around since 2001. A similar franchise, The Sims, is slightly older than that! Imagine a life simulator of that nature for players, with the super-advanced, evolutive AI – now that would have made Life Itself a smash hit!

The bunny is always there.
So is Antwan. And Goldie the goldfish.

Speaking of…

Road to LV100

Guy respawns in bed again from his recent death. The changes to his AI are still there. He spies around the multiplayer lounge and follows Millie’s avatar molotovGirl when she comes out. He follows her to the safehouse that contains the evidence she’s looking for. He startles her when he makes his presence known, and the ensuing exchange attracts the attention of the place’s guards, which shoot at them.

Nice collection. How long did it take to get to Level 195?

molotovGirl uses a portal gun (…huh?) to warp to her own vault, and he follows her into it. Her futuristic stash includes loads of weapons and vehicles. Although she is impressed by the NPC skin, she also thinks Guy is fooling around pretending to fail to grasp even the basic elements of gameplay. She’s Level 195 and forbids him from joining in on her mission until he’s at least Level 100. He’s currently at 1. He says he doesn’t want to hurt others, though, which surprises her. Hey, pacifist modes are popular self-imposed challenges! And, bonus, it turns out all kinds of actions can give experience, even stealing guns from other players.

The fire in the background, caused by a helicopter ramming
into a building; and the weirdo jumping instead of walking.

Guy exits the vault with his goal in mind. He looks around, and sees chaos all over. Okay, so here’s one thing I love about this movie: You’ve heard of the Law of Conservation of Detail, which posits that a work of fiction should always show what’s important to the plot. Why give importance to extraneous details that will never come up? In Free Guy, the action happens in a relatively crowded multiplayer video game, so there’s always something happening in the background. Stuff you don’t “need” to see, but it adds flavor to the world to see it happen; it’s all further hints at its artificial nature. Everything happening around that is not important actually IS important!

Question 1: Who brought their Metal Gear to Free City?
Question 2: Where the Heck is that thing for the rest of
the film? It only appears once, in the first 5 minutes!

We’re not even 30 minutes into the film; up to now, you may not have been paying attention to background events. Tanks are regularly crushing cars in the streets. While Guy and Buddy are walking side by side in the first minutes, a car passes behind them, changing its exterior color every second. When Guy sees his boosted bank account, there’s a player in the background doing acrobatics against a wall as though attempting to exploit a glitch. There’s soooooo much to look for, it’s nuts. And! Pretty much all the details like these that you can find are direct references to video game features, too. There’s more work put into this than I could reasonably discuss, and now that Guy is aware of the strangeness of the unending chaos around him, you, too, are forced to notice.

Guy’s first attempts at playing the pacifist route against player characters gets him killed. However, the more he “plays”, the more he picks up traits of the average player – as shown when he drops an F-bomb when greeting his pet goldfish one morning.

"Good FUCKing morning, Goldie!"

Which brings me to my next point: Ryan Reynolds has gotten a reputation for being the wisecracking smartass in any film cast. This predates Deadpool, but the shtick became noticeable when he started wearing the spandex of the Merc with a Mouth. I already talked about that in my Detective Pikachu review, where I pointed out that the titular character always had a wisecrack to tell, even lines that sound too ad-libbed to be told by a Pikachu. You can rate most Ryan Reynolds performances on how close to Deadpool they get. It takes non sequiturs, random pop culture references, meta quips, and an improvisational tone.

"You've met God? And he's a dick?"
Well, they are talking about Antwan, so... yes.

Guy here? He fluctuates a LOT. He starts being mostly so bland it becomes funny, which is the point since he’s meant to be an NPC with few, if any, personality traits of note. And even as he grows self-aware, he retains his general niceness, as well as his complete obliviousness to social cues and to references to game mechanics. This changes during his rise through levels, where he picks up some, uh, undesirable traits from the far more aggressive and edgy players he encounters. Yet, he’s still so damn oblivious and likable that you just don’t want to hold that against him. It speaks volumes that all the other major characters from the real world first assume he’s just a PC playing that role to the fullest, since he comes across as so dumb at first.

In a normal video game, the Law of Conservation of Detail
would not allow these two to have such intricate and long
conversations on their way to work. Players would not even
know about those discussions. But they still have them.
So there's already something out of the ordinary about
Free City, even if players themselves don't notice.

But Guy was already showing unexpected traits before his AI truly gained self-awareness; just listen to the dirty and salacious gag he tells after getting a sip of coffee, the first time we see him at the coffee shop. It’s always been there. Combine that to the complex interactions Guy has with other NPCs: Stuff that game developers would never include willingly, since it would require writing these lines of text, having voice actors tell them out loud, and integrating them to the game, all stuff that an average player would never even notice or hear! This is just another hint that all the NPCs share the ability to go self-aware, they just need the right push… God damn this movie is great. And yes, I do enjoy Reynolds’ performance here. He spends most of it just enough off his usual to keep it interesting.

Pacifist Route, Instant Celebrity

Guy stopping crime, one player character at a time.

Man, it's crazy how much Blue Shirt Guy looks like Ryan
Reynolds. Are we sure Soonami didn't steal a few
likenesses too?

Slowly, Guy improves at doing heroism. He beats up robbers and takes their cash, steps onto crime scenes and beats up the aggressors, extinguishes characters set on fire – and his level increases at an astounding pace. Almost as if doing good actions… earned more EXP than bad ones! However, his acts haven’t gone unnoticed. In the real world, pop news outlets, YouTubers and streamers alike are reporting on Blue Shirt Guy’s rise. They all try to understand what type of player this may be; is this a stunt by Soonami to boost sales of Free City 2, or a lone person roleplaying as an NPC enacting revenge on chaotic players?

And so, we get cameos from the likes of Ninja and Jacksepticeye commenting on the event, and game shows having questions about the story. The news has broken into the mainstream. It’s like when, in slightly older stories, a strange situation was shown being discussed in a late-night show. I do admit that I appreciate this aspect of the movie, an attempt at anchoring it into the real world to some degree.

"C'm'on Buddy, you can do it." "No I can't."
Why does Buddy get all the best moments of emotion?
...Well, because he's the best, duh.

A ninja, a boxer, a cowboy, a Norseman...
...Are we going against the roster of a fighting game?

Guy reaches Level 100 in record time. He first visits the bank to try and make Buddy discover the same level of freedom, but his friend refuses to put sunglasses on. So, he goes back to molotovGirl. She’s once again trying to infiltrate the safehouse that contains the evidence she wants. Keys is helping her on his laptop, hidden in Soonami’s bathrooms; they assume they’ve got five minutes before the safehouse’s owner returns. She steals the video evidence, but this causes armed guards to appear; the place is booby-trapped with spawn points. Right as she’s cornered, Guy comes in on a motorbike. She talks to him as they fend off more attackers, leaving Keys puzzled as he watches; there’s no other player character in that room.

This is not running away, this is a tactical retreat!

In the ensuing fight, Guy falls in love with molotovGirl even harder. Unfortunately, they’re outmatched, so they flee aboard Guy’s bike without the recorded video. At least they escape as absolute badasses. Well, that failed, but Keys has something else to worry about; his boss is coming.

Meet the Dick

Waititi doing what he does best: Playing comedic roles.
Even if this character is the worst.

Antwan (Taika Waititi) makes his grand entrance at Soonami Studios. The tone is set in his first minute, where he randomly fires an employee, and upon being told about an ongoing lawsuit, he asks, “which one?”. Pleasant. Upon being told that it’s the Millie Rusk one, he dismisses it entirely, confident that she cannot win it. Mouser wants to ask him what to do regarding Blue Shirt Guy and his sudden popularity, and Antwan seizes the opportunity to commodify that, telling the design team to add a roided “Blue Shirt Guy” to the next game.

CEOs don't like the risk of new properties. But also,
franchises get old after a while. Look at the MCU!

The team says they’re late on importing the skins to the sequel, to which Antwan says it doesn’t matter, the game won’t be backwards compatible; when Keys mentions that promotion for Free City 2 promised it, Antwan admits to lying to the entire fanbase. The sequel’s playtesters are reporting tons of glitches; the CEO doesn’t give a shit, the studio will make bank off the name alone no matter the quality. When Keys suggest creating something new, Antwan instantly dismisses the idea, throwing in a couple of insults by the wayside; IPs and sequels is what people go for rather than original stuff, right? Again: Pleasant.

I hate even more that he’s right about that last one.

The one time he looks nice and supportive is when he offers
Keys to be a dev on Free City 2; but Keys refuses, probably
because he doesn't want to contribute anything that will
make Antwan money in the long run.

He’s every awful thing about AAA studio CEOs rolled into one asshole. He is a shithead to his employees, he lies to customers (willingly, at that!), and is so creatively empty that all he can think of is to extend existing properties, even if that means selling shitty products. He isn’t that exaggerated, compared to stories of sucky people in high positions in such studios that surface every year. The only thing Antwan is missing for the total package is sexual misconduct. But God damn, Taika Waititi is so damn funny in the role. He’s so despicable that you want to slug him, but also you just want to see what’s the next outrageous thing he’ll say. The perfect antagonist for a movie about gaming and the industry. His only saving grace is that he knows Keys is one Hell of a programmer, and offers him to work as a dev on Free City 2 (which the QA employee turns down).

I find it hilarious that Guy picked up everything he could
get his hands on; a sports car, a space probe, and a horse
buggy. Who would even use a horse buggy in Free City?

While Keys investigates the identity of Blue Shirt Guy, the NPC shows molotovGirl his safehouse, packed with cars and stolen firearms. She tries to get info about his identity, but he’s as oblivious as ever. Instead, he invites her on a date; they head to a park that’s empty of players because there are no quests there. (I doubt that such a place could exist within a popular multiplayer game, but what do I know.) They stop for some bubble gum-flavored ice cream. molotovGirl can’t believe it; it’s her favorite flavor! Between that, the love for pop music, and his funny quips, it’s weird just how many traits of Guy directly fit Millie’s own tastes and preferences.

...Awkward!

They talk through the stroll and share a kiss. Well, Guy kisses molotovGirl. Millie can only watch awkwardly. (Apparently, Free City doesn’t even have a button for that!) Someone’s at her door, so she ends her date with Guy, telling him her real name as she exits, and goes to open. It’s Keys, who has been studying the AI of various NPCs while looking for Guy’s. Some characters have been evolving beyond their programming – the barista taught herself to make new drinks, as an example.

Here, Keys talks about the Bombshell, the "arm candy"
woman NPC in the game, and how after an interaction with
Guy, Bombshell became a feminist.

Guy’s AI, however, showed such an extreme change that it was hard to believe. Guy has evolved to the point he can practically be considered a real person; the first real artificial intelligence. Leagues beyond LLMs, those glorified autocorrects! And this is a direct match with the AI Keys and Millie had designed for Life Itself. Yep, Soonami Studios did steal it for their GTA pastiche.

Poor Millie – her first romantic relationship in a long time, and he isn’t even real!

Maybe they will have an easier time proving that their game
served as the foundation of Free City if they have someone
within the game helping them finding it.

Keys realizes. If Free City 2 contains none of the assets from the first, then Guy’s progress will be lost and erased. The sequel will launch in two days, and Antwan, being a dick, will shut down the original Free City servers on the same day to force players to migrate. It’s a race against the clock to save Guy, get him to help, and find more evidence that Soonami built their game on top of Life Itself. But this will require them to be honest with Guy regarding his origins.

I love this concept. The science-fiction theme of a singularity, of an AI or a machine that grows to the point of sentience, is one of my favorite. And this movie basically asks what would happen if the singularity happened in the most unlikely of places, like within a video game. I am geeking out about this, can you tell?

Anyway, I’m stopping here for today. I’ll resume in Part 3.