Hope makes sense as a character. It’s just that the game he’s in is so unbearably boring it *literally* set off my neurospicies. I didn’t even think that was *possible*.

I always think of Halo 3 as “master chief leads the arbiter around disney world on a child leash”. The guy was a fleet commander before becoming the Arbiter, and now once again has a position of leadership among his people. At the very LEAST, he should be coordinating with Keys over the radio. Eg, Keys: “We need to take that tower.” Arbiter: “Understood. I will relay your plans to my people. We will cover your attack.” I usually call it 2 and 1/2 since it just seems to serve to wrap up 2’s plot

In my opinion, Halo does two things masterfully (1) a sense of a situation rapidly unraveling and (2) multi-faction conflict. The marines want the covenant dead and to escape the flood, the covenant want the marines dead and to escape the flood, the sentinels want the flood dead and secondarily want everyone else dead, the flood wants TO CONSUME, and the master chief funny enough acts as a fifth faction, wanting to discover the purpose of the halo, then to use it, then to destroy it. He doesn’t even really care about the covenant for the second half of the game, besides tangentially running into them as obstacles. His goals are unrelated. So we’re given a story with 5 groups all wanting different things, and the gameplay and ai design act accordingly! It’s amazing and so much fun to play through because of that

Harris Christopher Garcia Barbara Harris Laura

I still dont know why you want to go to nature and then ignore it though. I like hiking and games but i dont do them at the same time. That doesnt make sense.

gawd this video aged poorly

😍 Шикарная игра Очень долго искала её анализ Чувствовала что есть смысл глубинный, который хотелось бы услышать от другого человека И вот нашла, великолепно!

Climate cultists and the mEsSaGgGeEEe

I think higher difficulty often heightens the experience. It usually pushes you to utilize the mechanics of the game to make progress, embracing the entirety of your toolkit and immersing you in the role of your character. In the Witcher, it forces you to pay attention to monsters' weaknesses and actually craft items to hunt them, like a hunter. In Dark Souls 1, it forces you to proceed carefully, keeping your shield up and watching out for danger potential around every corner, like a puny knight would in such a hostile world. In Katana ZERO, it makes you dependent on Chronos for your ability to bend time, reinforcing your addiction to it. Et cetera.

I disagree on difficulty settings. I dislike when games expect me to know my skill level in a game I haven't played before. I hate to have to second guess if I'm just doing good or if I should've picked a harder difficulty, or on the other hand, having to second guess whether I'm supposed to struggle in a given section or I just guessed my ability wrong. I find it liberating when a game takes that responsibility off me and gives me just one difficulty. That way I can be sure I'm getting the game as intended.

You would think the Allen Wake episodes would be "Chapters"

Roughly 5% [This comment is for my own purposes of making a playlist, and is not a judgement of quality.]

I notice a lot of commenters dismissing the game's meta message. That is extremely unfortunate, because a well-intentioned piece of art is made for the viewer to reflect the meaning onto themselves. It seems to me that like Walker, some people prefer to keep the implications of the game's story within the story. There is clearly some deflection and denial going on. While I found the story enjoyable, viewing the game within the lens of the story itself was quite empty for me. Instead, I let the game confront me with many of the same realizations you pointed out in your excellent analysis. Let me elaborate. "The Line" is an excellent title for this game. In the end, that's what it's all about. Is Walker willing to cross the line? Does he even realize what line he is crossing? What are the consequences? These questions are interesting in the context of the story, but become more damning when reflected onto the player. By the time I was listening to Truth Revealed and staring back at Konrad, the game had revealed a piercing truth to me. I was crossing the line, and Walker is my proxy. There is a serious cognitive dissonance commonly accepted among gamers: We would never murder people in real life but we are completely open to it in games. There's all kinds of wonky justification too; such as entertaining our darkness is healthy and whatever. Those claims are baseless and have no proof. There is a rather damning truth many gamers are totally unaware of: video games activate and thrive on the same part of your brain that processes life achievement, purpose, and contentment. That is exactly why most games are objective-based and are designed around the postive-feedback loop. A gamer is essentially chasing down game objectives in the same manner they would chase real life achievement. That is why so many people spend thousand of hours in games based around mundane work such as farming: the game is the gamer's proxy for real life achievement. In a sense, video games are a cheap copy of real life achievement. From this, I argue video games cause severe consequences within a gamer but that is out of the scope of this comment. A short example being that video games condition your brain to seek out contentment in what you are doing in video games; it is scientifically provable that video games make you not only desensitized to violence but even enjoy it too. As The Line points out, the postive-feedback loop of combat games is the sense of feeling heroic. Engaging in combat for a justifiable cause produces a sense of achievement within a gamer and real life warriors. However, that's where The Line's criticism comes in: there hasn't been a justifiable cause for (American) war in 80 years. Many modern combat games subvert the questioning of your objectives, while The Line throws it in your face. You are shamed for mindlessly following what the game/Konrad/Walker has you do. The Line wants you to question not only your orders, but your purpose in playing this game. If you would never engage in such violence in real life, why would you commit such violence in fantasy? That's where The Line got me. The Line showed me the line I was crossing as a player. What line are you willing to cross to play a game? To experience a good story? To feel life achievement, to feel good about yourself, to feel like a hero? Are you willing to murder civilians? If so, what keeps you from finding that achievement by doing the same thing in reality? Laziness? By the end of the game, I realized how truly empty video games always were for me. The Line revealed truth to me and polarized me. In my quest for purpose, I saught out false achievment by proxy: video games. I still play games, but very little. I don't often cross the line to find satisfaction in violence or anything I wouldn't/couldn't do in real life. Because of this, games are generally more fun for me when I do rarely play them. The Line was one of the final nails in the coffin for me seek purpose in real life.

👇Warrior Within fans

52:33 That's isn't what the game wants to commentary on, it wants to commentary about why players shouldn't feel satisfied or heroic when killing human enemies or innocents. Violence can make players feel satisfied and heroic if the enemies they killed were zombies, demons, aliens or any deadly fantasy creatures, and not human soldiers, innocent people or any human-like creatures.

Dude. I played this game in 1997 at 13 and have played it nearly every year. You’ve comprehensively stated the reasons why the game is so great and why people keep coming back to it. “Caring for the planet, honoring those of the past, and refining your sense of self…being part of the same process” is brilliant. Well done my friend.

Thanks for this video!

I did insta buy on the remake at steam and cried again replaying more than 10 years after the first time I played it.

I think it's worth noting that this is a crime story where everyone can be truly happy at the end because they didn't have to live through a timeline where violent crime took place. Maggie Byrd's life is never the same after one crime in which she was innocent, but here there's not ghosts in the ending photograph. Violent crime does damage that can never be undone. Of course after he wrote so much ace attorney we get a game where violence can be undone, and in the end the cycle of pain is erased. Also the "like sisters" meeting for the first time in this new timeline and not knowing what happened reads to me as very counter to the "truth is always good" you saw.

Thank you for your review! I hate how people (and by that I mean right wingers) say that things are now overly political, but never care to go deeper on games like this, media like capitan planet, or movies like fight club. They are alll political and almost always lean left 😅

Also good work, more final fantasy please

1:30:02 it was easy, this story is so compelling and always has been - it inspires you to ponder on its universe in relation to our own and facilitates that at every turn

56:50 this also has some connections to project Blue book, the government program dealing with the crashed spacecraft in Roswell in 1951. The premise wasn't that it was aliens flying spacecraft, it ends up being the case that biological life are essentially just vessels for the spirit and that once the body dies, the spirit goes back into the universe and does its thing or inhabits a new body if it chooses. Look into it if you please

38:35 speaking my language, dude

2:11 I make this point about final fantasy VII all the time - it's a straight up allegory for the modern world, in MANY ways and it IS inherently incredibly political, agree

34:24 so do humans

I'm quite late to the conversation, but another way in which Bioshock criticizes objectivism is through its worldbuilding: Ryan's spurning of the working class who built Rapture created a resentment that proved fatal when they fought against him in the civil war. Yes, Atlas/Fontaine was using them and gloats about how easy they were to manipulate, but he wouldn't have been able to rally them against Ryan had not followed his objectivist beliefs that made desperate and destitute. The argument here is that a society built on Objectivism is self-destructive: its callous disregard of the poor and vulnerable creates a block of people for a demagogue, revolutionary, or grifter to leverage in toppling that society.

0:35 I see a Trails game, I squeel. Glad to see someone with a love for that severly overlooked series. I know this is an old video, but DAYBREAK HYPE!!

I stopped heading out every Friday night because when movie cgi becomes video games because of v chips it’s just terrible. Monique

Just finished the game and now I want to replay just so I can pick up on all the foreshadowing.

Never got into Halo's story, but then I'd already read Ringworld by Larry Niven at that point which examined that idea in a much more interesting way (IMO)

For me it'd probably be The Secret of Monkey Island.

I like your thorough look at this game. Your theory makes me appreciate this game more.

This is the best FFVII analysis to exist. The fact you managed to go in depth on all of the characters in the party and still cohesively cover Cloud's full story is amazing. This is so thourough and detailed, and puts into words everything that is so beloved about FF7's themes and story elements. Thank you for this video, thank you for caring to take so much time in writing this video.

21:00 I think it’s supposed to be about YOU the player… chief succeeds because he has something nobody else does… you controlling him keep in mind that bungie’s halo always had the player’s role in the background. Always present to some extent

i like the TWA fan art in the background. James being in the “wrong” spot is a detail that i just needed to point out

His character gets even better, as when Lightning disappears he takes on her role and more, he shoulders the fate of the world, all the while searching for her, he is the one who figured out time travel was possible and even had a back up plan incase the worst happened it's thanks to his efforts most of mankind survived. When lightning returns comes around is where he breaks down. The novel does a lot to expound on his journey, Light was watching him from Valhalla and during his childhood he along with his father gave rise to the academy through his numerous success and achievements he was dubbed the leader of Humanity and in the prequel novel to LR we learn that 500 years have passed since those even at keast what I remember it may not be accurate but during that Time Bhunivelze used the image of Lightning to basically fool the populace and it gave rise to an urban myth thus the "false saviour" during that time Hope had been searching for a way to deal with the Chaos and it was at this time Bhunivelze specifically targeted him and played with his feeling for Claire he would haunt him with past dreams of her and sometimes nsfw dreams, all in the hopes of breaking him down and turning him into a perfect vessel which he did. bhuni then used his child form cause it retained most of his innocence and also because it was the form he would use to fool Claire; also his adult form is very dangerous especially around Claire and people should already know the reason you gotta admit the guy is committed after more than century passed, anyways he was effectively a 500 year old man trapped in a childs body duing that whole fiasco a puppet with no will of his own till the final day, and he was tortured by Bhunivelze for 169 years out of everyone it's both Hope and Lightning who were the most damaged psychologically. In the final novel he was reborn into the world as 22 year old man with both his parents alive this time and was still working in the academy, there were still people who remembered him and Lightning as the leader of Humanity and as the saviour respectively so yeah the interviewer got those details and most them were still respected; anyways Lightning had already visited everyone else except Hope.

I want a Remastered of this game and a series of it.

Aguirre the wrath of god is part of the inspiration for apocalypse now and has a lot of the same themes. I would highly recommend as it is a good middle ground between heart of darkness and apocalypse now and Werner Herzog is fantastic

I think the vagueness of The Country actually does a lot to set up the themes by encouraging you to think about the finale allegorically, despite its dramatic framing. The waters are muddied on what death means in this universe, but whether it's retirement or evacuation or death or even imprisonment in the Transistor, the throughline is a giving up, willingly or not, of worldly power and agency. Cloudbank is a place where everything happens, where everything changes. Whatever the Country is, it's a place where things don't change, a literal or metaphorical peaceful eternity. Red's choice at the end could be understood as a suicide, but it's much more important that it's understood as giving up of worldly power and apparent agency in favor of things she actually wants. (It might be a bit of a reach, but you could see "being Processed" as a kind of inverse death - rather than going somewhere that nothing changes and nothing happens, you are turned into raw potential, unformed data, all power and possibility without any self. )

halo infinite is garbag

I myself can 100% relate to both hope & vanille because their stories combined with mine. Vanille deals with guilt Whilst hope deals with trauma & anger. Disagree if you want too, but nonetheless. It's just me showing off inside two characters. Excuse me for getting personal, however it's all true.

Goodness Merasmus from tf2 did some bad things in Dubai. He deserves to have the Chinese mafia on him now that I know what he did.

hey everyone that's here in 2024: at the start of the video it is stated that is game is available on pc, however it is not, licensing issues has caused the game to be removed from online stores, however through physical copies on ps3 and xbox 360, you can play the game

Yeah couldnt have cared less when aerith died. I always thought cloud and tifa were a better fit as a couple, i also never used her in my party. Obvious shes a major part of the story but as far as i was concerned it was the death of an NPC.

Remake shitted all over a legendary game and legacy. Absolute trash

Brother how are you doing

Please please please talk about ace attorney

41:05 how do you get that cutscene?

I don't understand why people criticize a story for a character like Cid when abusive assholes exist in the real world.