This game stole 3 hours and 44 minutes of my night, caused me to download numerous programs and probably a good few viruses onto my computer, and will have single-handedly ruined my sleep schedule. In other words, this game was fantastic. All this despite - or perhaps because of - the immense pain and suffering it has brought upon me.
I am not writing of the game's content itself, that has been done already and I assure you it was fantastic. No, I seek to tell the story of my arduous journey in searching for a way to play the original speaking audio of the... characters(?) in the game.
Admittingly, I may be my own to blame for this games trespass. I won't lie, I thought it would be easy to find and play the audio. I started off and went into the game data, finding a folder of streaming assets. Easy right? This story complete? NO! NOT EVEN CLOSE! NOT BY A MILLION MILES CLOSE IN ANY CONCEIVABLE WAY! Why not, you might ask? Well because of the painful, and I do mean painful fact that the audio files were of the .BANK type.
You see, the way in which one goes about converting this file type is so brain dead, so cruel to anyone who might try, I honestly question the mental state of whoever designed such a heinous file format. Hours spent reading guides from online websites, downloading programs which were supposed to convert BANK. files and didn't, frustration incarnate is a meek and meager description of what I could call my supposed feeling at that point. Quite frankly, there was no feeling. Only a sunken suffering of the soul as I plunged deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of YouTube videos with less than five views and hyperlinks with less than superb standards. Download buttons placed in the abandoned wreckages of decade old websites, whose remains I robbed in search of a conversion tool.
Over and over I went through the excruciating process of trying programs, which either didn't work due to my computers age (it uses windows 7, so sue me) or which were so broken they wouldn't have functioned under any right circumstance. A repetition of program deletion, guide finding, video watching, hyperlink clicking, program downloading, program failing, and program deletion.
Finally, after multiple hours, I stumbled upon a blessing of a video, with a functioning download and a working program to convert .BANK files. They were then converted to .WAV files, which forced me to download VLC Media Player. I would attend to frustration further, but compared to what I had already faced it was very little to ask at that point. I finally had access to the voice lines of the games characters. The oh-so inspirational dialogue that I sold my life to.
Game developer, James Poole, you have created something which has changed this day in my life completely and totally. It means something, to have had purpose in a task, even one so frustrating. Well, after all is said and done anyways. It has been been done, and now it is said. Thank you James, and whoever else needs thanking of course.
Also, forgive what are surely ramblings of stupidity in this comment, I am tired. So, so tired.