Petscop is a curious but extremely moving material. While great in its length, it is an extremely worthwhile watch that showcases just a sliver of light onto the dark parts of ourselves, our identities, and our families. Paul's story interfering with the story that the game tries to portray, a story from the past of a life all too familiar to him, conveys a deep sense of melancholy found nowhere else. It is realistically dark, and you will come out of it with a new outlook on life itself. I can't recommend it enough.
One of the most notable and intriguing aspects is its very existence - it claims to be a game found by the main character, Paul Leskowitz. In reality, Petscop does not exist as a commercial game made for the Playstation, and is only a .exe file present on Tony Domenico's computer. It is an incredible feat of programming to be done by one man for this webseries, where he has created the game, scripted his actions, and played through it in real time while giving commentary as he goes. It adds a layer of reality to Paul (that of whom Domenico also voiced), where his speech is completely genuine in being slightly timid and unplanned. This connects the audience further to the character and story of Paul Leskowitz, even despite the game being a fabrication. This existence of the game has an added benefit of greatly heightening the capabilities of the story's immersion, and bringing the audience closer to the character as they both explore this mysterious game. It's not possible that anyone has played it going into it, after all - no one has torn the code apart to see each and every secret, every line of code and bit of data. Therefore, all of the secrets and tricks are just that, and are left to the audience's interpretation.
With this interpretation comes another extremely powerful aspect of the series. Instead of following a typical chronological and comprehensive structure as most stories employ, Petscop chooses instead to give a slow trickle of paradoxical and vague information to the audience, drenched in riddles and metaphors through the warped and unreliable mind of the game's creator, Rainer Hammond, and the mind and voice of the man playing it, Paul Leskowitz. While some may see this as a weakness, I see it as an incredible strength as it accomplishes exactly what Domenico set out to do - show that "there’s a lot more here, something strange and complex happening in the background, and you just aren’t getting a full view of it." You cannot construct an entire story from Petscop, but in observing the aspects you can see, your mind can fill in the blanks with the wildest possibilities, being much more impactful as it connects personally to you. This is why so many interpretations exist of its story, and many are very personal stories to those who write it.
While completely intentional in its existence and serving well to the series, Petscop is an incredibly long and quiet watch. Paul's commentary helps get the audience through about an hour or two, but the last few are played in complete silence. It has narrative significance, of course - making the audience not sure if it's really Paul playing the game, or someone else - but this silence makes it extremely hard for just about any audience to continue dedicating their whole attention to it. (Trust me - nearly all of my friends that I show this to have to take a break!) This aspect of Petscop is not a flaw that needs fixing, but moreso a weakness inherent to its existence that cannot be fully removed, and I accept it for that.