Jason Schreier

It's not set in a real place.

It doesn't feel that believable.

The music doesn't totally make sense.

But also it's like kind of weirdly Australian.

Like I actually like having Australians tell me about their favorite bands.

It's like something that I spend a lot of time doing.

So it's kind of a fun part of the game.

And I guess the one thing I'll say that I should mention here in my one more thing is that what wound up being kind of the central realization in my writing about this game was that I figured out that some of the songs on Stacey's playlist actually aren't real songs.

And I thought that was actually kind of weird.

It was a creative decision that I don't love.

There are just bands that I'm not sure what they are.

I think it's likely or at least possible that they're library music made by this Sony label called Extreme Music that is credited in the credits.

But it's not clear where they came from.

There's like a band called Wooden Sword and there's a musician called Curtis Dunn.

And Stacey introduces them in game.

She's like, this is Curtis Dunn doing Deep Space Scan, a song that we loved.

And in the context of the game, like when I was playing it and I know everyone I've talked to who's played it, they were just like, oh yeah, I assumed that was just some obscure synth artist from the 70s that I'd never heard of because like Stacey's so cool and she knows all these cool bands.

But he's not real.

Curtis Dunn does not exist.

He's not an artist.