American Arcadia: Your Life is a Reality TV Show, Escape it 

This game is so entertaining and one of the best things I've played in 2023, I cannot recommend it enough. I've seen very few people talk about this game which is a genuine shame. The variety of mechanics and gameplay styles easily put this game as innovative as the likes of INSIDE, but with a much more lighthearted tone. It has an amazing voice acting cast as well, starring Yuri Lowenthal (Spiderman 1 & 2), Krizia Bajos (Cyberpunk, League of Legends) and Cissy Jones (Firewatch!!). The game is genuinely great and I recommend trying it for yourself if you enjoy this video

I love the fact that the ending, for the most part plays it straight. Walton goes unpunished, and hell, even finds success in the actions that happened.

Fun thing I noticed: Angela's fake name while going on vacation to Arcadia is Sylvia Lauren, which is both the real and fake name of the lady on The Truman Show who Truman fell in love with and helped get him out.

the one guy in the arcadia chat who said "Truth is, the game was rigged from the start" made me laugh so fucking hard, the devs are geniuses

Good news, they updated the game so you can now boop the cat on the nose.

The most unrealistic thing about the game’s twitch chat is that despite a million viewers, it’s still possible to read the chat

For anyone who was in the stream, you will know how much twitch chat freaked out because how accurate the in game chat at the end was

“Average White Guy Experiencing The Horrors” is my favorite game genre

Trevors ranking is 23409th.. vivian says there are 23414 arcadian citizens. So trevor is the fifth lowest ranked person. That is almost impressive

Man my favorite is when Trevor was talking to the audience and one man goes "Let him cook" This game better not age quickly.

Reminder: this isnt just fantastical. Walt Disney the real human person wanted to make epcot a real city, where appliances and homes would be regularly renovated and updated with prototypes of the latest products from their sponsors. It was for all intents and purposes supposed to be a company town, where anyone unable to work would be evicted, but the residents would also have to serve double duty as entertainers as the true main source of revenue would be tourism from the people visiting both epcot and disney world. The only reason epcot didnt end up a city was because Walt Disney died before he could see it through, and pretty much all of his buisness associates saw the problems with trying to run a city like that

god, the credits as the game ended.... "the jingle has been declared legal by the supreme court" is PAINFULLY goddamn real. wow. they did not pull their punches

So Vivian made Angela purposely brain wash Trevor into becoming an action hero just so she could get the first person to press the button. Not only that but she has the player convinced it's what they want too.

One thing I love about this game his how it captures the look of the 1970's Disney futurism aesthetic, I've always thought that kind of setting would be great for a game.

At 1:50:59 someone in the ingame chat said "Truth is, the game was rigged from the start".... This chat is way to freaking real man

57:45 its crazy how he literally said “hes spiderman! theres gotta be a reference somewhere” while the voice actor of trevor is literally the same guy who voices spiderman in the ps4 games

The twist at the ending is actually genius! Without spoiling too much, it reminded me of how todays society relies on manufactured consent to handle dissidence. How being a "rebel" and against the system is sold to us like a product. Che guevara T-shirts and all that.

One thing I'll admittedly took me a bit too long to realize is that Angela and Trevor were mirroring early and modern time periods. Trevor is a middle-aged, young adult male who dresses like he lives in the 70's and prefers not to cause a fuss at his generic office job while doing everything he can to keep his head down. Angela is a latina young adult female with dyed hair, who works for what she thought was an activist group, and openly crap-talks her superiors. This even reflects in their gameplay while Trevor is a classic 2-d platformer (who even mentions that he loves arcade games) Angela is a 1st person puzzle solver which has actually become exceedingly popular with VR. There's also kind of an interesting parallel between individualism and collectivism. Trevor is referred to as a boring person who single handedly escapes from Arcadia and frees everyone. For crying out loud, the dream sequence at the Drive-In literally shows him singlehandedly freeing everyone from Arcadia by pushing a button. Meanwhile Angela just views herself as another person in an activist group who is just doing what she can to help. And the game ends with them learning to find a happy medium. Trevor mentions that he could've never done it without Angela and how Angela realizes she could make a bigger impact than she thought she could.

Gotta love how they barely change Walt to Walten so Disney doesn’t sue them for making him look like Walt Disney, sounding like him and semi acting like him lmao

1:43:29 “ruuun Flanders ruuuun” in the chat is the funniest thing they could’ve possibly written and I love the devs for it.

1:37:50, I just realized after a second watch that this is the moment Vivian aka Number 6 inserted her own part of the jingle, without it Trevor would just escape instead of trying to be a hero and save the city.

"Now he becomes death, crasher of cars." My god. They truly captured Twitch chat in a bottle. "Truth is, the game was rigged from the start" oh my GOD??

Something really cool I noticed was that the main security guy’s name was Javert. I think this is a reference to Les Miserables because the character Javert in that story only calls the main character by his assigned number and not his name, much like the one in this story.

I am glad the turtle was evidently rescued from his house. - Also hotdamn, managers can just enter your apartment? This outer world context is at least 2 notches further on the dystopic scale than we are right now, not that far off though.

Honestly that "I QUIT" line was so accurate. I used to work at a restaurant and you know what? My boss not only looked like Kendra, but had the same vibes. And I even quitted while being on a shift

I love how the moment Dan noticed he was also 28, the entire game became a comparison to his own life and made the whole experience that much more relatable

For how much Trevor complained about getting Pavloved, I don't think Trevor truly realized how much "Don't be a fool" ingrained an instinct to question and disobey what he was being told. At the very end, if Vivian didn't tell him "Don't be a fool" I'm not sure he would've reacted how he did. To comment on the game itself this was truly out of nowhere for me, I haven't heard a single thing about this game before watching this, and I think that sells the idea very well. We too, are just living our ordinary lives until something snaps us to a realization of the truth.

I listened to the whole DON'T BE A FOOL song, and it's actually really good. It even incorporates those song bits that seemed absurdly convenient really well.

I love that this whole game is basically one big Plato’s Cave, with Trevor and the player wanting so desperately to escape when we find out Arcadia is a fake world, and “Vivian” explaining how, the real world could be considerably worse, and how she begged to go back. Amazing work

I instantly recognized Yuri Lowenthal's voice the moment Trevor spoke. Man is way too iconic.

This game is probably one of the best meta games I’ve seen in a while that’s really immersive doesn’t make things cringey, especially with its real depiction of this game’s version of Twitch Chat. But hey, at least RT isn’t a subject to this kind of experiment where thousands of people watch him play games and let people know he used to be called the Drift King back in college on a daily basis 🙂

Every scene with the “Chief of Security” is amazing. They just never miss.

The enemies summoning the drones on trevor is the true "mods, crush his skull" of the Arcadian world

the part that broke me was the fact that, despite everything, BOTH companies are doing better than they ever have before. the bit about "being 30 years old with no experience or a job" was equally horrifying. and the fact that the supreme court said the "jingle" was still legal... fuck dude

It's crazy how this game started out as a basic re-tred of the Truman Show, then turned into a whole new thing with themes relevant to the modern day obsession with viewership.

The head of security was definitely one of the best characters, and his reveal at the end was hilarious.

I'm sure other people mentioned things like this, but I'm impressed by the other subtle references. Like the big 6 badge and Number Six being likely references to The Prisoner, which was a show from the 70s about a man trapped in a fantastical resort town that was being constantly monitored, or Kovacs probably being a reference to Ernie Kovacs, the man who pioneered so many In Camera effects for television.

The Truman Show turned into a game? That sounds like a hell of a time. Real talk Dan sounds like he adores it from the description. I might have to check it out and come back to the video later to avoid spoilers because I'm very intrigued.

Imagine how horrifying it must be knowing that all your life you have had people staring at you, even in areas that might be undesirable…

I love the symbolism in how playing as Trevor is 2D while Angela is 3D which shows how Angela knew of Trevor’s life but he was trapped behind a barrier not allowing him to view hers

The smile fell clean off my face when Gus was missing one day and announced the winner of a huge travel grant the next day. First time watching this, I have no context- that man is *definitely* dead.

I think both the credits and the post credits scene is what really makes this game for me. Dont get me wrong, the twists and hooks all throughout had me fully invested, but once you see the end, and how Walton Media really barely got more than a slap on the wrist, Trevor and Angela are still alive. They're happy, and pushing back the same as they always were. They see the new content, all the drivel being churned out by focus groups and machine learning algorithms, everything they're fighting against, all still working away as if nothing ever happened, and they laugh. Really wholesome moment and a great reminder that despite all the control that media exerts on us nowadays, we always have the choice to be free.

In the immortal words of that one Arcadia chatter: "7.8/10 - too much police" This chat had no right to be that well done. Even including the correct current time to completely shatter the 4th wall. It was literally perfection

You know what I think? Vivian and the other original escapees were still affected by The Jingle when they managed to escape, explaining why they found the real world so unbearable and she begged to go back...

I like how rt lowkey predicted like the most jaw dropping scenarios in the game. He, for one, is not a fool

hearing Yuri Lowenthal yell "LEAVE ME THE FCK ALONE!" is such a beautiful experience.

Not going to lie. "what if the Epcot Walt Disney originally planned, was made into a larger version of the Truman show" is a fun idea.

story aside can we talk about how good this game looks.. hyper realism isn’t required to make a stunning game

Angela and Trevor’s banter is honestly great Can’t wait to finish the episode

As a fan of theme parks and more knowledge about Walt Disney’s EPCOT than I should realistically know, they absolutely fucking nailed it to even the smallest details. Example: the group badges for tourists are this game’s version of the Experience Band at WDW.

24:43 Fun Fact: The poster on the left "Call of the Sea" was the developers previous game! A woman exploring an island in search of her lost partner with some lovecraftian twists.

1:47:25 the fact that the in game twitch chat has an argument here is way funnier to me than it should be

The game seems to be talking about 6 things in particular: 1) Alot of the time it's immoral to criticise something while still taking part in it. Like Arcadia would've ended decades before the year 2023 in that universe if people outside Arcadia had just stopped watching the GD show. 2) Large corporations and unscrupulous individuals will literally do controlled dissent and turn would be attempts to stop them from doing immoral and/or unethical things into ways to make more profit if they can. Like the Walton corporation clearly anticipated that people like Angela Solano would try to end Arcadia so they set up events that instead tricked her and Walter into helping them create a new spinoff TV show Escape from Arcadia instead. 3) The banality of evil, like how almost all the people running or working for Walton media were not really evil people but instead had just normalised something f+++d up like a Truman show featuring tens of thousands of trapped people that should NEVER be normalised. 4) It was showing that in real life it's very hard to stop a large rich corporation from doing something immoral and unethical if they've been doing it for a long period of time and it's become an institutionalised evil. A small group of people just working a short period of time is usually NOT enough to stop an institutionalised evil, usually it takes dozens if not hundreds of people working for decades to end it. 5) There's little that individuals can do to stop corporate corruption if the political system is corrupt or prioritises the wrong things. Like Angela Solano was sadly rightly worried she was going to go to orison for exposing the Walton corporation's Jingle mind controlling thing rather then being confident that she would be defended by legal whistleblower protections. Also sadly it seems Angela and Walter's efforts were largely for naught since that universe's Supreme Court did f++k all to ban the Jingle and is doing f++k all to prevent the Walton corporation from creating genetically modified citizens as seen in the end credits 6) Sadly there's a problem where sometimes anti-corruption protester later betray their principles and end up working for the company or corporate interests they originally worked in opposition against.

Incredible respect for editors for being able to pump out the highlights so fast

This game has some cool details like in 5:17 when Romano says hed want to travel to Fiji. Thats cool because in the Truman Show Fiji was also used as a cover for the people who got removed from the show

@1:50:00 Just before she notices that Tervor is outside the window. we can see that the Camera catches her lift going up as well... BUT Stream Chat has some nice lines there... "This mans the boss." "yep, but Vivians the FINAL Boss" "So we are at the end of the game. "I think so." This is a TV Show not a game, you stupid." "We know, but what if this is a TV show inside a game???"

We need more writers like this, the diologue manages to be up to date, funny, with good chemisty and doesnt sound cringy. I especially loved how accurate the AA live stream chat was. Story games arent dead, they are just waiting for good writers to be a part of them.

I love how the worldbuilding feels its own thing despite us all being familiar with a truman show-esque premise. Arcadia feels like its own thing with its own unique aesthetic enough to make you want to investigate, and its great.

It's a neat bit of game design that Trevor is only allowed to move on a 2D plane while Angela can move freely in 3D. The ending being presented from a 2D perspective seems intentional.

The fact that Kovacs piano was still in tune after all that time was incredible

34:24 this is REALLY good game design having narrative interwoven with gameplay the emotions haven't seen something like this since edith finch

The game’s livestream chat when Trevor climbs the building was amazing. When he punched Steve people told him to get good LOL.

55:11 If I had a nickel everytime Yuri Lowenthal played a role where his wimp-turned-hero character had a terminal weakness of being rendered useless and in agonizing pain when exposed to certain sound frequencies which would then later in the story, get resolved by the 2nd mc messing with his subconscious to get rid of the problem, I'd have two nickels! Which isn't a lot but it's weird that he had two completely different VA roles exactly like that.

1:44:56 "Let him cook" best game 10/10

I've been absolutely loving the long-form playthroughs recently, Killer Frequency, Slay The Princess, and now American Arcadia, were all games I had never heard of but fell in love with because of these videos, I'm really hoping for more of this content in the future!

"don't be a fool" is the new "would you kindly"

YES! I knew that number 6 was Vivian. You could tell because they both said the same thing, Vivian at 1:04:29 and number 6 at 1:25:01. Same timings on the word, same words, same situation. What a masterpiece.

Holy shit this game just took me on a roller coaster of emotions. It was a hilarious watch, and a bit TOOOOOOOOOOOOOO close to home with the "we're obviously doing a LOT of illegal things but guess what? It makes money and the public thinks its okay!" Zoinks

My favourite thing that RT does is just when he sits down and plays some indie game from start to finish

I love how the ending is, just like The Truman Show all it shows is that people want a good story and nothing else, you can see human injustice, blatant tragedy being exploited for views and by the time it's all over all anybody says is "I wonder what else is on?" and it continues like clockwork.

This is fascinating and incredibly well done, it's almost not satisfying cause it's so accurate. You want to be vindicated somehow, but the win involves Angela settling out of court and a documentary as a takedown attempt, and it's so believable it hurts. I can honestly say this is some of the best writing from any game I can think of, and it[s almost hard to enjoy it because of it. Bravo

1:12:11 around here I like how they were taking about Trevor here and that person's leg you broke And Trevor only starts swearing after his jingle changes

Something that makes me love this game a lot is how it seemingly is inspired by the actual original idea Walt Disney had for Florida. Defunctland made a video on it, but it was basically a “perfect community” where all his employees would live

This is the most interesting commentary about how hard it is to fight against the machine and the way things are in modern times that I’ve ever seen.

I find it really interesting how American Arcadia (the game itself) could actually have been the documentary the both of them released. It makes sense, at least to me: the media inserts and the interrogation scenes (the latter which was actually just interviews done for the documentary) would doubly make sense as context for the player *and* a watcher of the documentary! It's genius, and I only really realized it after the game.

Can't believe Trevor Hills is voiced by the same VA as Yosuke Hanamura from Persona 4

I like how this game plays how Walt Disney actually wanted his legacy to happen. Look up the plans for his city. If EPCOT survived into the 21st century, it 100% would've become a real-life Truman Show eventually.

The world is a lie, but based on the trend of how these games end up being, I'm not surprised if the whole escape ends up being a lie too.

This is like Disney's initial dream of Epcot. He was going to build a town where all of his employees would live; a paradise much like Acardia. There were concerns over privacy issues because the citizens would basically be on display to tourists. However, Walt would die before he could achieve this. Defuntland did an amazing video on it. This game has a lot of parallels to it

One thing I haven't seen anyone comment on: In the final scene, when Angela turns off the TV show they're watching and the game ends, it doesn't cut to black, but rather turns the scene we're looking at off like a tv turning off. While maybe just an artistic choice, it could also imply that they're, in fact, still being watched, and that the 'real world' they escaped to, is just another Arcadia layered on top of it, inception style

I went from hypercritical to amazed so fast- I noticed the little dialogue hints at the twist (Six calling Trevor and asset, Vivian giving Trevor detailed instructions on how to beat the game, Trevor essentially doing in show product placement) but didn't think any of it was gonna come to fruition. It's such a good mystery because it makes the player feel smart for figuring it out.

A lot of people are comparing this game to the Truman Show and rightfully so, but I think a lot of people forget that Walt Disney legitimately pitched something similar to this as his original vision for EPCOT

The "cs" in Kovacs is pronounced kind of like "ch." It also means Smith in Hungarian so Arpad Kovacs is kind of an equivalent to John Smith, Hans Schmidt, Jan Kowalski or some such.

So glad I stopped 10 min in the vid and got the game for myself. Something about how they kept cutting away to other footage and the contrasting perspectives had me hooked and the whole package was well worth it. My god, this was a good year for smaller and independent studios.

I love the detail that you always control Trevor from a third-person/sidescroller perspective. It's like you're not actually playing as Trevor, moreso controlling him like a character in a video game (which is pretty fitting considering 90% of the game is just other people telling him what to do and him blindly following directions).

As someone who lives with a spine twisted like a corkscrew I can say this, take care of your back. The unending pain isn't worth it, and really does terrible things to your mental state. Please, take care of your skeleton, it holds you up.

this reminds me of that one indie game where you and a neighbor escape a reality tv show... forget the name but its awesome to see more of that genre

51:47 Holy shit, that is something Henry Ford would do

Though aquatic turtles don’t really eat vegetables, Kovacs the turtle is still the highlight of this game for me. 100% accurate blur of eating Game has turtle? You have turtle? Instant win

Fun fact (which I guess others commented on already): Walt Disney actually wanted to make a "Town of the future" in Florida. He bought huge parcels of lands to build that city. Just like in the game, he died before it could come to life. Unlike the game however, it was turned into Disneyland Florida. Defunctland made a great video about it : Walt Disney's City of the Future, E.P.C.O.T.

So this is basically the Truman Show but a video game? Alright, I’m game.

I have a theory that the reason trevor was different from the 6 was because he was granted free will via the visiorama while the 6 did not which could well have led them fall back to the dome

RU-vid autoplayed this in the background and by the end of the story I would have stayed in my house if it was on fire to see how the story went

It was still a legitimate twist, but i called number 6 almost immediately. The fact that the reveal wasnt contrived despite my ability to call it is amazing.

I loved watching the full vod for this game, it was sooo good. I kinda love how the game uses swearing quite sparingly, making the ending hit so much harder. Such a well done story.

cant believe i managed to instantly recognise trevor's voice actor as the same as ben 10s

29:40 "Is being polite an old fashioned custom in 2023 or what?" Me: *YES!!*

It's so unbeliavable how this game is partially based on an actual thing Disney was planning and is entirely possible they are moving forward with, this entire thing could happen in the next 10 years and that is not an exaggeration.

In the post credits scene, Trevor and Angela are watching and reacting to Escape from Arcadia. Despite everything they went through, they have become the audience. Fuck, this game is deep.

Interestingly, Javert, the policeman, is the same name of the legendary police inspector Javert, from the iconic musical Les Miserables. Nice of them to do that.