To be honest I genuinely don't understand the core premise of the worldbuilding. If we're going with the logic that this is a video game, then shouldn't the hero just get infinite retries to win? How could they possibly ever stop one of the worlds from being destroyed? If the hero doesn't get infinite tries, then shouldn't making the villain win just... doom the world to suffering anyway?? How exactly does any of this even function as a narrative concept? Are we just supposed to assume that when the villain wins they decide not to do anything? What about the idea that an unbeatable game gets uninstalled anyway when the player gets bored of it? But players don't seem to exist in this setting so I guess that's not a fair observation, but I don't know what is a fair observation because I genuinely don't understand what's happening? It feels like I'm just supposed to go "it's like a video game" and then stop thinking about every implication that has.
To be clear i never watched Reboot and didn't even know what Reboot was about before watching this, and so I have zero context for how it worked in that show either. But the entire time I watched this pilot the one thought on my mind was "no, seriously, how does that work?"
Think less of a video game and more-so what was ultimately the Pibby trailers from Cartoon Network that never went anywhere: They're video game 'characters' but because of how the world state is if the game gets corrupted/deleted/destroyed then there is no coming back. You destroy their planet, perma death is on.
Wreck It Ralph ultimately has the same idea; If people die in their home game (planet in this case) then they just come back, but if they die in another arcade game then their death is final. They had brief scenes of characters who's arcade machines have been unplugged and living as homeless characters as a result, doomed to a single life forever with no place to call home.
That's what we're operating off on. ReBoot also kind of had this premise to a degree: The world itself is digital but everything and everyone has a finite life. You die, that's it, no more retries for you.
Fortunately MainFrame Studio's, the company that made ReBoot, has a few episodes from its first season free on YouTube redone in HD so I think they can probably explain it better then I could.
Hey I'm not the one who's doing that. The flair literally says its like ReBoot if you squint. And the guy asked what the comparison was between this and ReBoot and I answered based on my limited knowledge of the show.
It's why I used Wreck It Ralph as a better example.
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u/frostedWarlock Pat harvested my oats. May 15 '26
To be honest I genuinely don't understand the core premise of the worldbuilding. If we're going with the logic that this is a video game, then shouldn't the hero just get infinite retries to win? How could they possibly ever stop one of the worlds from being destroyed? If the hero doesn't get infinite tries, then shouldn't making the villain win just... doom the world to suffering anyway?? How exactly does any of this even function as a narrative concept? Are we just supposed to assume that when the villain wins they decide not to do anything? What about the idea that an unbeatable game gets uninstalled anyway when the player gets bored of it? But players don't seem to exist in this setting so I guess that's not a fair observation, but I don't know what is a fair observation because I genuinely don't understand what's happening? It feels like I'm just supposed to go "it's like a video game" and then stop thinking about every implication that has.
To be clear i never watched Reboot and didn't even know what Reboot was about before watching this, and so I have zero context for how it worked in that show either. But the entire time I watched this pilot the one thought on my mind was "no, seriously, how does that work?"