I Played the most Insane MMO on Steam...to the End. [Otherland - Part 1]

[@youssefchaoui2940]

Its the only MMO that when the NPC says that you are the only one who can save the world, you believe them because you the only player in the game lol

[@2Btoobee]

you can't be the "chosen one" since you're the "only one".

[@devforfun5618]

@@2Btoobee you are the "you will do one"

[@Damienx247]

@@2Btoobee No you are the one that "chose" this.

[@dreamer8973]

this video got more views then player base lol

[@mikeottonahrgang8456]

Depends, if you ask me, using the stragegy to win, and which force you use trying.

[@vyngeance1128]

This feels like a game made by a fan of the series who wanted to experience the world they love so much.. and the fan had only surface level knowledge of game design but was an amazing artist.

[@2small_paul]

Might have nailed it on the head.

[@Glockmog2007]

This was clearly made by a large team of people but in way over their head. The level designer was the only one who knew what he was doing.

[@kagemushashien8394]

Would be a big plot twist that after the starting level things go back to normal after you defeat that dude, hinting that he was messing with the game and your interface.

[@hazukichanx408]

I'm definitely getting the vibe of, "Art by an artist, game-mechanical design by an artist, writing by an artist". If you've ever seen _"Art by a writer",_ you'll know two of those _aren't_ compliments...

[@angelvalentine9354]

I feel like someone should take this game,chop off every multiplayer aspect of it and just make a really cool polished single player game that works,it would get played for sure If an MMO is dead its dead,but people play single player games no matter what,especially if it looks good

[@leomessenger2893]

no shit, i still play daggerfall... lol

[@marinakrae5505]

That's true. Could be something like Borderlands 2

[@FuelDropforthewin]

@@leomessenger2893 I tried some Daggerfall for my channel. Those barrels had it coming.

[@miras9489]

I don't know much about modding, but I think this game would benefit highly from it. If someone managed to fix all of the bugs, it seems like it would be pretty cool.

[@Hero-do7wm]

@@miras9489 I bet with how much spaghetti is likely inside this behemoth modding would be very hard. on top of this it is likely some of the issues originate with the net code which might be only fixable by modifying the server. modifying the server is impossible unless someone decides to reverse engineer it which is hard, and time consuming. On top of that you would then have to host your own servers for the game. In general its a ton of work to actually fix a lot of the bugs as a modder. with the source code it would likely be easier but it still might be awful, depends on how bad the developers were. if they did a decent job, just a lot of design mistakes then it might not be too hard to salvage. if the devs were shit on top of design mistakes then it almost might be better to just scrap all the code and rewrite it from scratch.

[@CrimsonTentacle]

Oh my god, I stumbled by this series by complete accident and can hardly believe the coincidence. I worked for Drago Entertainment, the developer of Otherlands. Granted, I left before they started making it, but knowing the company I can absolutely see how it ended up like this. What an insane trip down the memory lane.

[@wotwott2319]

from your experience, could you elaborate on what happened before development even started?

[@HCG]

Story time?

[@CrimsonTentacle]

Not much of a story to it, the company was just very chaotic and less-than-professional in terms of design and development (and everything else, really), so Otherlands seem like a very fitting result ;D I am very curious how did they get the money and knowledge to actually publish it.

[@ryanman56]

@@CrimsonTentacle Did they work on any other MMOs?

[@CrimsonTentacle]

@@ryanman56 oh yes. if you search "Grimlands" some trailers should pop up. I worked on some visuals for it!

[@ROBDEWAND]

the visual designer really was like: "i know this game is gonna be a piece of shit, but god damm i will make it the most beautifull piece of shit in the world" and hot damm he/she delivered.

[@acuteavocado1962]

i honestly feel extremely bad for the designers... they obviously poured their heart and soul into the world, but the gameplay was just unsalvageable, and now here they are with this beautiful world they worked so hard on and a heartfelt thank u message inside every players apartments... and they have exactly 0 players. i honestly am incredibly sad for them..

[@thecasualgaymer9349]

/they

[@Astra-1]

they polished this shit so much it looks like marble

[@xelloskaczor5051]

@@thecasualgaymer9349 no

[@Barolax]

@@xelloskaczor5051 but yes.

[@z1mt0n1x2]

I was a closed beta tester for it, and I always told them the combat needed reworking. They could've fixed the bugs and text boxes, animations and quest text later but idk what they did, it was closed beta after closed beta and no words were ever given prior to the next closed beta of how things would change... You'd basically just hope they got the message you wrote in their forums. Also, you were not supposed to pick a gender from creation menu, you were supposed to be a polygon, and later change/design your character/animal to whatever you wanted it to be. Literally speaking, get out and explore the world, extract a texture and use it to create with this DNA-tech they had going on. This game was supposed to be the ultimate sandbox MMORPG, but the combat was so generic and broken that even the closed beta testers gave up during testing.

[@szymonsabat8272]

So sad, I hate when sth has great potential and end up bad :(

[@z1mt0n1x2]

@@szymonsabat8272 yeah, the idea of making such a game was just too far ahead of its time. UE5 and DX12 or Vulkan would've saved it today, such a shame rly. i would've loved it.

[@RavenTheBlack]

It was originally based on the book series by Tad Williams. The storyline took up after the last book. The original build was done by a company who went belly up due to embezzlement and there was multiple problems when the second company took over... I tested it at that point. There were physics issues, mechanics traps, etc... They were trying to unravel an intro, 4 worlds, and the virtual mall worth of code. From watching this video it was worked on, the intro was changed. But it is still plagued with programming issues... Sadly I am a huge fan of the book series (4 books of content)... I wish they would have got the bugs worked out. It had a ton of potential. It was meant to be... more. LOL

[@Reverands]

Some how ended up here. Need to go back to the books, they really influenced my teens.

[@Trifler500]

The books are fantastic :)

[@HoloFizz]

YES this was the comment I was looking for. I was wondering if the name had any attachment to the book...

[@SquidmanMalachar]

It was one of the OGs in promising you the world and 'anything you want' but I'm still sad it failed.

[@FuzBrain]

is it the book the one where the virtual world is run by a little kid's brain trapped in a computer or am I thinking of a different virtual reality/cyberpunk/scifi?

[@MercenaryMuse]

As an ex game asset creator, you are making me cry with your consideration toward the forgotten artists that created those gorgeous spaces.

[@szymonsabat8272]

Right? When ppl dislike sth, they usually generalize and blame the team as a whole. I like when they see good in bad.

[@ChimonesLFS]

It's like the developers finished the design and were like ''yeah, fuck this man. I can't fucking do this anymore. I'm done.'' Those designers have an amazing amount of talent. Wish they got some credit for it.

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

Yeah the visuals and environments are class, the mechanics, not so much

[@Apple_Beshy]

@@JoshStrifeHayes I hope they got hired by big companies that will fully utilize their talent, honestly they're fcking insane

[@MartinX333]

Just realised that the developers themselves confirmed that Otherland's servers have shut down for good. You really managed to create something special with this documentary/archive of the game's world. Truly a shame so much hard work became inaccessible with the flick of a switch. And no, the irony of a video game whose plot was about preventing a virtual world from dying...actually dying isn't lost on me.

[@deverd9771]

@@khymaaren i mean i would agree if anybody even played the game, but no one is gonna buy that stuff anyway

[@Ecliptor.]

@@khymaaren that means a group of crazy enough people can make a private server of it and maybe even fix some stuff. Like a wow private server of an old expansion.

[@MartinX333]

@@Ecliptor. Hah, yeah, "crazy enough" is the right word. Out of curiosity, I looked into what reverse-engineering an MMO server is like and it is indeed crazy. Even if there is a live server that the game client could exchange data with (e.g. WoW), you still need to do a ton of experimentation to figure out how all of those exchanged packets are actually used within the game. And if all servers are dead like in the case of Otherland, then it becomes even more insane - you would have to reverse engineer the message protocols themselves used for the server-client communication. It may very well be possible to build an entire game from scratch in the time it takes to reverse-engineer such a server.

[@paulmahoney7619]

@@MartinX333 Maybe at some point we could get a team-up between JSH and Ross Scott to make MMO creators release their source, server, and net code when they shut down to make creating a private server without the original MMO up a reasonable task.

[@KasumiRINA]

@@MartinX333 at this point it makes more sense to just rip the assets and create a new game from the ground up with same level textures and geometry but well, different game.

[@TheAyanamiRei]

It's honestly heartbreaking how much potential this game CLEARLY had, and yet how much of it they've wasted. This has been VERY informative video from The BEST Otherland Player in The World

[@rescuerex7031]

I mean FF 14 was awful before world got nuked and they rebuilt the game , maybe (probably not at all) that could happen for this game and I hope it does

[@myname9130]

@@rescuerex7031 Very unlikely for any MMO, the FFXIV revival only happened because Square was willing and able to dump millions of dollars into recreating the entire game from scratch, it's not something most studios are capable of

[@Asinr7]

Having read one or two of the books, the glitchyness can be handwaved as lore-accurate

[@Sage-Thyme]

I been binge watching JSH this weekend while doing DIY and the term Otherland gave me full on conniptions. I really wanted to like these books, I bought the whole series but never managed to finish. I could tell there was so much story Tad Williams wanted to tell but I found the novels so hard going and gave up after a couple of books as to me the story hadn't progressed far enough. Whoever tried to turn this into. MMO must have been slightly deranged, but looks like a good visual effort.

[@someguycamping9972]

The books any good? From the visuals here, I think I might have to read some of them if they were what inspired this madhouse.

[@Asinr7]

@@someguycamping9972 I remember myself enjoying some of them when I was a teenager.

[@hazelwood5184]

​@@someguycamping9972 I'm going through the audiobooks now, I read them when I was younger and really liked them, to the point where once I'd read the first two I had the bookshop order the third and fourth for me. On the second one and it's standing up pretty well. It very much reads like exactly what it is, a cyberpunk series written by a fantasy writer. I like it but obviously that's very subjective. I like Snow Crash for similar reasons, if that helps.

[@hippocampusexpert8936]

​@@someguycamping9972The story is basically Lord of the Rings retold as a cyberpunk novel. The four books are not four stories but is one enormous slow burn masterpiece, so volume one is mostly 800 pages of introductory set up. It's about a diverse group of people gathering in the Otherland after investigating a phenomenon that is leaving children around the world in weird comas. The story is then a lurid multi-thousand page romp through this weird fever dream where the fellowship's goals are to escape Otherland, save the kids, and stop "Sauron", who is the in-universe Jeff Bezos, from becoming God. Many of the scenes and NPCs in this video are pulled from the book ie Jonas, Sellers, Dread etc

[@joshslaughter8343]

Cyberpunk 2088 is looking great

[@thatmeme1360]

Looks better than 2077

[@MaDDsHoTT]

CyberASS* 2088

[@culturalliberator9425]

It's being heavily improved

[@mimisezlol]

The Lambda mall is what Night City was supposed to be.

[@BlueBD]

What braindances should have been

[@dwarvengamesmith9726]

Can you imagine being on the art team and obviously putting your heart in to every asset for this game then seeing what the programmers and leadership turn the game in to.

[@stevejohnson6593]

everybody was (probably) hella high so it's fine

[@IntegrityGames]

Hands down the most impressive, least impressive game, with the best cinematics I've ever seen that were also somehow the worst, where the animation was brilliant even when it's only the camera that is animated, with a story you can watch unfold in front of your eyes, without paying attention to any of the story at all. ??/10 will keep playing maybe.

[@TheNathanNAPALM]

Lol

[@cvernon5256]

Congratulations, you have successfully described the paradox that is The Outlands, a game where the only story that matters is the one you are shown and everything you are told doesn't matter.

[@Hals]

I'm happy you continued playing this. What a ride!

[@AmyBohemi]

Considering how you described the Neon Egyptian Environment, the devs pretty much nailed what the books were going for. Read them if you haven't already. The world they create is amazing in many very strange ways.

[@Snerdles]

So this is what happens when you hire amazing artists but then use the first programmer to respond on fiver?

[@ndaemon1718]

or hand the programming job to your 5 yearold :)

[@adjacent-smith]

seems to be an issue with every game out there. Every game is like "props to the art department but.."

[@rik0904]

i thing that designer and programmer was the same person

[@shfhsvomvolakis2318]

i think that the makeres of this game had taken drugs before creating the game

[@jordanpowell2242]

@@ndaemon1718 the programmer was an alien and I think were seeing issues with translation

[@1tsUrDad]

I rewatch the Otherland every few months. It was my introduction to Josh and it just feels cozy idk

[@GoldenFoxTV]

Really glad this video popped up on my recommendations list. My girlfriend is a historic preservationist. Though I don't understand the trade myself, we are always talking about how the field really could expand in the digital age. As a long time MMOer, it breaks my heart thinking of all the worlds lost to time. Places real people inhabited, bonded in, and built communities/memories around. I think of the dozens of zones that lie barren in EQ, the maze-like jungles in FFXI, or the hundreds of player built cities nuked when SWG was unplugged. The list goes on and on. There's just so much out there. What you're chronicling here is no small feat. And though this game may not be as beloved as others, it was obviously a labour of love for many. Thanks for doing what you're doing. Looking forward to more.

[@queerlibtardhippie9357]

You don't understand preserving history?? It's really as straightfoward as it sounds lol

[@GoldenFoxTV]

@@queerlibtardhippie9357 is that really the one thing you keyed in on from my entire comment? lol No, im not going to posture to know as much about the *field* of "historic preservation" as much as someone with an MS in it. I don't work in labs, I don't analyze paint chips, conduct wood treatments, or make assessments and recommendations on treating buildings so they stand the test of time. I'm not versed in alteration or demolition laws / ordinances. That's why I said what I said. Comparing my knowledge relative to my girlfriend's in the field, not the understanding of the need to "preserve history". Lol

[@exilestudios9546]

If you are interested star wars galaxies is stills a thing in the form of star wars galaxies Legends a fan built server. The game even has new content such as the planet bespin with over 100 new quests, an entire new "space" combat zone in bespins atmosphere, new PvE and pvp arenas, and a whole lot more. There are about 2000 active players at any moment but we could always use more

[@etinarcadiaego7424]

Well, your girlfriend is an awesome lady who is doing a great thing. The past is always worth preserving.

[@andromidius]

@@GoldenFoxTV You know, the fact you know the names of things that are involved in the field demonstrates one thing - you listen to your girlfriend. That alone is admirable. She'd probably be a fascinating person to talk to!

[@maddogdugan]

I read the books long ago. This story was so fun and intriguing. Was getting goosebumps remembering the story. One of the plot twists in the the story is so dark and depressing it's haunted me ever since. I have no idea how they would possibly think to convert it into a game.. It's a virtual reality universe built by elites to live in forever. It could literally be anything.

[@theanarchist_0025]

is it the other?

[@theanarchist_0025]

Or is it Jonas?

[@maddogdugan]

@@theanarchist_0025 Satellite of love🎶🧠😬

[@Jabez525]

"At this point I faced my toughest enemy, a dead fox. It has zero health yet refuses to give up." I died xD

[@BloodWolf2005]

One might say this is where the game... 😎 "fox" him over.

[@TheToonpimp]

@@BloodWolf2005 Corner of shame, right now.

[@BloodWolf2005]

@@TheToonpimp I make my comments from the corner. I live here. No one can stop me!

[@diversezebra6754]

You didn't die as badly as he did. Lol

[@spycom82]

This is an incredibly fun KZbin serie. Regretfully, the game has died recently after being in coma for 2 months. Thank you Josh for making this beautiful memoire of a game no one will be able to play anymore...

[@justbuildgunpla1315]

With the art direction and how the opening plays out, they could have made a single player horror game instead of an mmo.

[@mandisaw]

This was from the era when every project had to be an MMO, and everyone wanted to dethrone WoW. Also, there was a lot of "accepted wisdom" in the industry that single player was either dead or dying, so you couldn't get SP games funded. The idea of an MMO set in a book where the world itself is akin to an MMO was certainly appealing in its audacity tho.

[@ChaoticNeutralMatt]

@@mandisaw that idea of SP dying.. baffles me today.

[@specialnewb9821]

I honestly never knew about this game despite being a Tad Williams fan since 1996. As an author imo his greatest strengths are giving each character a memorable unique voice and being able to weave a huge amount of disparate story threads into mind blowing endings. Fun Fact: Tad Williams's Memory Sorrow and Thorn series convinced GRRM that the fantasy genre could support things like ASoIaF. Also at one point GRRM met Williams before that series was done and, I shit you not ... *told him he should hurry and write the next book.*

[@vollmagnet]

This GRRM guy sounds like an entitled detractor

[@specialnewb9821]

@vollmagnet He did it at a convention! So rude!

[@JesusProtects]

I was like "what in the world is ASolaf?" Turns out, it's asoiaf.

[@specialnewb9821]

@JesusProtects cool I never read the series so I don't know how its usually written.

[@Godithseeker]

"What is this SciFi Egyptian Aesthetic?" ... Necrons.

[@Xel963]

I'm happy I'm not the only one thinking that.

[@LoliMaster69227]

Lmao

[@mikeloeven]

The entire game actually takes place in Trazyn's archives and your looking at all the poor humans frozen in stasis taken from different points in time.

[@RAFMnBgaming]

Feels more like what I'd expect EYE Divine Cybermancy's version of necrons to be.

[@a.j.2796]

The Goa'uld have entered the chat.

[@RendMaim]

This reminds me of a game a couple game dev students would make for themselves as a labor of love that would sadly sit unfinished on a hard drive and be forgotten but if it were to be discovered, finished, and polished could be a real gamechanger. It just makes you wonder how many revolutionary ideas are left in someone's head and on the cutting room floor and never realized.

[@ciscornBIG]

This is a thought that keeps me up at night some times.

[@ChaoticNeutralMatt]

An untold number. Uncountable.

[@clockworkkirlia7475]

Thanks for the motivation. We can do something about it.

[@sgtwisky]

I died at the "On behalf of the entire player base" line.

[@bobleonheart9600]

I was literally looking up one of the characters names that I couldn't quite remember just as you said it in the video... Dread. All those guys with the same model. Those are all Dread. Not sure how deeply the game goes into it but Dread takes control of the Otherland system at one point and populates it with copies of himself. I remember a Wild West mining town in the books where everyone is Dread and the main characters need to hide/fight him. He is one of the weirdest and most fucked up characters in the series. A psychopathic assassin who is rape/murder oriented and just lives to fuck things up. Something made very easy for him to do due to him having some pretty OP technopathic powers in a world where almost everyone has cybernetics installed in them in order to access the Otherlands. Now that I think about it the whole thing has a striking similarity to Ready Player One and I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that Ready Player one was kinda inspired by Otherland... only neutered and sanitized.

[@AunCollective]

This is the absolutely most frustrating MMORPG I've ever played because the actual virtual world is so unique and interesting but just trying to explore the virtual world resulted in experiencing progression-breaking bug after progression-breaking bug, quest design that involves such great quests like "add an item to your house" that are required for progression, and combat that seems like something from a pre-alpha game that was never replaced.. and other issues. I really wish the game would just stop getting in the way of letting me explore the world. I ended up off of the map permanently on an entire account and never went on to finish the game (I tried creating a new toon but somehow that toon was in the same state as the previous one and even trying from a different install from the same account resulted in the same issue) and a set of bug reports that are going on 2 years of not being answered cut my journey short. Great work capturing this virtual world. The world itself is worthy of preservation. It's a shame that the game is lacking. Definitely curious to see this adventure and see what I never got to experience.

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

Really hoping i dont run into a gamebreaking bug before getting all the achievements

[@AunCollective]

Off topic -- but you missed out on Ever, Jane. It closed down in December 2020. :( I love these usually broken but unique MMORPGs. If only the resources were available to help the creators fully realize their dreams...

[@Eazy_Bruh]

Love your story. Thanks for the time you took to write this comment. :)

[@Cendoria]

@@JoshStrifeHayes This is either masterful foreshadowing or the worlds worst aged comment

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

@@Cendoria little of colum A. Little of Colum B.

[@hmgrraarrpffrzz9763]

Bought the game when it was new, as I had enjoyed reading the books back then and was yearning for a new MMORPG. Played it until a little bit after the region with the giant bugs. The game seems to have been less buggy back then. I did enjoy it actually well enough, but then there were more enjoyable games out. What I disappointed me was actually that I had certain expectations based on the book, many of which were not fullfilled. Like in the books, the region with the bugs described insects half the size of Godzilla, while in the game they were just the typical slightly bigger than usual bugs as enemies. Anyway, still a thousand times better than anything Dream World could ever be I guess. I had streamed the game for a couple hours and one of the developers had personally thanked me. I feel kinda sad for them.

[@ChaoticNeutralMatt]

Definitely didn't turn out how most of them hoped, for sure

[@wanderroberts2438]

I quite literally got this game on launch day, that whole opening that he showed off wasn't even in the game at all. Put in about 8 hrs and in the water world couldn't complete the quest no matter what I did, just refused to work. Stopped playing it, went back at one point and the login server was down for a long ass time. This was even before they pulled the plug, eventually they came back up after like a month of being down or so. Never went back after that.

[@snekkoheckko4466]

so heres how i imagine the budget for this game went 40%: Graphics 50%: Drugs 10%: everything else

[@CyanPhoenix_]

within that 10% of everything else, there is 9% that ass

[@davidcardona9243]

The books are really good, my grandpa gave me the first one a few years ago and it was a really good read, so this really reminds me of my grandpa. Rip Grandpa, thanks for the good books.

[@Hotshot2k4]

"I don't seem to be able to change my gender", he reports, staring down a yellow toggle with the letter "M" on it.

[@gabbyb9418]

Thats what I saw 😂 i spotted the toggle literally as soon as he said it. Speaking to an npc again to grab a quest isn't that weird either lol...

[@augustheat]

I was screaming also lol it’s right there!!

[@BaeCat872]

I ran to the comments so fast

[@FerinitheBloodHusky]

i just assumed he meant that it was broken

[@austin8293]

Came just to comment that. Only a few of us I guess

[@Brahlam]

Really amazing how much I recognized from the books. Read them years ago, they are really really great. Did completely forget that there was ever an MMO being build.

[@AzzRushman]

I always wondered about the endgame of bad MMOs. I mean, they have to exist, and not ALL their assets have to be bad. There must be something salvageable from the very end of each trashy game's endgame. But who would grind that much tho? This guy.

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

I've got some free time.

[@wolfmangler25kmagoo87]

Otherland is one of the greatest sci-fi series ever. Super worth a read.

[@lawlessx9]

I remember seeing videos about this game years ago and never heard from it again. I seriously started to believe I just dreamt it all up and it wasn't real

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

It feels that way playing it

[@bogelins]

I remember too. A really cool looking neon lighted trailer and never heard from it again.

[@clumsybanana6524]

You did...

[@Original-Yellow]

I had a similar thought about a dream anime. I fell asleep watching gundam wing. And apparently my eyes were open when escaflowne was playing and my dream blended the two So i had Hero flying a gundam wing that turned into a dragon.

[@TravelAboveMe]

I reviewed this game on steam in 2015 and basically played to the bug planet you showed on episode 2. Couldn't keep it going. My review included many of your issues, which one of the admins suggested were being addressed.. in 2015.. I'm amazed that the bugs/issues were still present in 2021. I think I gave Drago a fair review back then and genuinely wanted to like it, but boy was it tough, especially back then. I've just started episode 2, and am truly amazed at the effort you undertook. So far enjoying the journey!

[@melvoid01]

I read the books and when i heard they were making an mmo of it I knew it would fail, great books but you would need so many resources to do it justice and they obviously ran out of money. And the kids are there as a reference as to in the real world (in the books), kids all over are going into the grid and going into comas, turns out they are being used to power the world for the rich people who use the virtual worlds as their playgrounds.

[@mandisaw]

Yeah, one reason the game project failed was because they never did figure out the audience. Was it book-readers hungry for more, or game-players new to Jongleur's wiles? Even without bugs, that would have doomed it.

[@puppyfood]

I come back to this series once or so twice a year to re watch it. one of my favorite series from you

[@carlmanvers5009]

I am the same. This series has evolved from 'review' to 'entertainment'.

[@markbiermann]

Such a shame; this whole concept looks amazing. Just from watching this I got the feeling as if I was some ghost running around behind the scenes of other mmo's and games. Almost to a degree where if I were to boot up wow now I'd wonder if there's some person running through a freeze time of whatever I am doing.

[@mandisaw]

Without spoiling much, this is sort of how one of the POV characters actually works in the books as well. Most of these key level NPCs are all major/recurring chars from the novels. As a thematic adaptation, it is outstanding.

[@HikingFeral]

I strongly believe that when a project ends up like this, the studio (if they have 0 intention of making it) should sell it to the highest bidder. That way another studio gets to make something amazing, especially if they were struggling for ideas and the devs of this game get something for it too. If this was finished and polished and all the systems were balanced etc, it could be maintained on minimal hardware with an extremely small team of people and it would have a small but constant stream of players and money. Hell, I'd be willing to maintain the server on my property and handle much of the back end. I would just need 2 people to work on bug fixes and a very slow release cycle of the odd new zone every 2 years.

[@kvesterskvester6047]

The rock jail scene was amazing. I loved it🤘

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

I just didnt expect it, which happens a lot with this game

[@tedwooter]

Was it me or did the character who broke out grow in size and then shrink after he killed the guard?

[@draxx85]

I would love it if your playthrough gave it cult status like the movie "The Room"

[@CynicallyDepressedx]

I've never felt so frustrated to see such incredible talent wasted. It's incredible that the art team for this game was able to create a world more beautiful and engaging than companies with billions of dollars behind them like Blizzard. But it's genuinely upsetting that even basic functionality within the game is lacking and very few people ever experienced the game to begin with.

[@xerojer]

This seems like the kind of game my friends and I would have gone hard on for about 4 days and then never play again, back in 2006. Maybe I'm thinking of City of Heroes or The Matrix Online

[@Sevetamryn]

@Josh: OK. i wanted to try this myself. Conclusion: Your Series woke up your community about the game (like me), they jumped on it, even made positive reviews, this woke up the developers, probably they totally have forgotten about the game and still active servers, so they shut down the servers for good. The game is dead and you are guilty about ! ... ;)

[@HyPNoTiKx]

Idk I think it's possible that the attention may have brought a renewed interest to the franchise. But who knows? Lol kzbin.info/www/bejne/iaXKnaiDoqx8ers

[@davidmiller9485]

i love Tad Williams, his stuff is good. The dragon bone chair was in my top 10.

[@mandisaw]

Otherland was his magnum opus though. I was so thrilled when they announced they were making a game - and then crushed when it was an MMO during the days of "we're gonna make a WoW killer".

[@TheEntireUniverse]

It’s remarkable that you could see the soldiers face from inside, because it means they had back face culling disabled. Which you always want enabled because it skips drawing polygons you can’t actually see, and is on by default in almost every 3D game engine. Such a basic detail to screw up.

[@raccoonja-ronja]

32:16 In Unreal Engine the engine detects on what type of object your character is on. As a programmer you can make a menu that switches sounds based on that objects physics material (glass, metal, sand, whatever else you want). This is seperate from the visible material and is also responsible for how bouncy the surface is. It could be that they forgot to add a sound for some of the materials to the character animation or forgot to assign a physics material to the surface. That acually happened to me, when making my own game in UE4, but I realised it quickly while I was testing it.

[@tatianasearle3470]

Otherland is one of my favourite novels. It is set in the end of the 21st century, where virtual reality is ubiquitous, and people just plug themselves in to get online, via a neural interface. The story starts when the protagonist, Renie (one of the NPCs you meet at some point) loses her brother. The teenager unplugs himself from a virtual world, but instead of just getting on with his life, he falls into a coma. So Renie, and some other characters, decide to investigate. They discover Otherland - a top-secret simulation, so realistic, that when you die in in Otherland, you die in real life. So they spend the rest of the story trying to get to the centre of the simulation and discover how it was created, going through a series of virtual worlds, which are all creepy and broken in some way. I'll try not to spoil the plot any further, but, the masterminds turn out to be a bunch of elderly billionaires, who aimed to become immortal by uploading their minds into Otherland, committing multiple crimes to achieve that goal. I was really looking forward to playing this game at one point, but the game was never finished and the reviews were mostly bad.

[@discipleofthemosthighgod1536]

Isaac Asimov said, "everything once science fiction, ultimately becomes science reality"

[@ThiagoIndioAraujo]

Thanks for the summary! It's my favorite kind of story

[@henotic.essence]

Wow thank you for the summary, I actually might want to read it too!

[@AbdallahTeach]

Literally dothack story

[@leetaeryeo5269]

This feels like it could have been good if it were a single player rpg with battles like FF7. Separating the battles out into their own system so they didn’t have to worry about an action combat system and could use the slightly easier to predict nature of turn-based combat could have reduced the battle system frustrations. And being single player would have let them cut the shitty filler “kill x” quests and focus more on the storytelling that the environments deserved. It looks like a game with a good concept that just falls apart because they picked the wrong gameplay systems

[@Elyxe]

rewatching this again never managed to try myself this game but im so glad that josh managed to record nice playlist before the was shutdown

[@KTChamberlain]

So far I've read the first two books in Otherland and I like the series. In many respects, Otherland is a lot like Ready Player One if it was multi-perspective, four books long, told in third person, and not obsessed with the 80's.

[@shy-watcher]

I have to say, the frozen war really reminds me of the final level of Painkiller. And the tabletop being both big and small was just as mindblowing in Psychonauts. I don't want to imply this game is not original or not cool. Also you should play Painkiller. And Psychonauts.

[@zeriel9148]

Lol when you revealed what it was based on I was like, "That makes perfect sense." having read the books.

[@TheAyanamiRei]

Wow. The books are that bad?

[@zeriel9148]

@@TheAyanamiRei No, the opposite, the books are fantastic, but very weird.

[@RubensBudgetCreations]

I just finished the second book, can't wait to start in book 3

[@rattslayer]

@@TheAyanamiRei the books are amazing, its peak 90's cyberpunk... And the game seems very, very loosely based on it.

[@AmayaElls]

Wow, the Otherland series is crazy I really look forward to seeing how it is used to its fullest potential. With you talking about the drugs and impossible to understand, that just reminds me how much the books kinda felt like that a lot of the time too.

[@ProblmSolvd]

This comes off as an indie passion project to the highest degree. Someone loving a franchise and wanting to show the world why they love it in the most engaging way they can. Reminds me a lot of the better WH40k games, just taking the most off the wall shit from the franchise and serving it on a silver platter.

[@gdwnet]

21:02 Amazing cut scene and that music is pretty good as well.

[@zworg2]

this got me subbed, and watching part 4 has now got me registered with Patreon so i can support the creation of your videos. thank you

[@eula1194]

the setting is on the same level as the book called "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion"

[@martonlerant5672]

32:10 - it's "not as if", its really like that. In plenty of game engines the running sounds is tied to wjat texture your character is standing on. Thus ensuring you hear theappropriate sound of crunching leaves in a forest, or clanking of a metal floor in an industrial area. The real question is "why did they NOT assign a default walking sound effect?"

[@assassinofkeyblades]

Man rewatching this series is almost nostalgic I remember watching each episode as they came out and it was such an experience 😌

[@Jawtrick]

I just started watching your videos and your channel is criminally underrated! I hope you get the attention you deserve and I look forward to the next part!

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

Cheers man, glad you're enjoying the stuff, look forward to putting some more stuff out :D

[@leoca8691]

It would be nice to see a game which starts full of glitches and bugs and everything starts to get fixed as u advance through the story/gameplay.

[@thegrayyernaut]

Amazingly, the final mission that Josh played in this video series worked flawlessly. xD

[@dinkledankle]

I find your quest to record and finish the game for posterity to be extremely admirable. Subscribing so I can follow your journey 👍

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

Thanks man, I'm hoping its a fun journey

[@PsychOsmosis]

"See if you can hear what I hear." The ambiant sound design is that of a fucking casino..! "Some of the surfaces don't have footsteps." Oh, that too I guess.

[@tkell31]

You are lucky there is a Part 2 to this or I would have to track you down and...probably buy you a beer. Hilarious review sir. Well played.

[@TheNeoVid]

As someone who tried the Otherland beta, had some hopes for the game's potential and got those hopes crushed, the first thing I looked for when I learned about your channel was an Otherland video. Finding out you needed to dedicate a 5-part series to the disaster is... kind of comforting. There were more players in beta (I was one of them, because I liked the books) and the game had a ton of potential... which was not implemented in the full release. In fact, the single coolest and most original feature was removed from the game for Live. There was a mechanic that, since you're in a virtual setting, let you pull code out of defeated enemies for crafting plans and the ability to make cloned enemies as minions using the eDNA lab in your home. Also, one of the main bad guys from the original novels, Johnny 'Dread' Wulgaru, appears in the game as a tall, pale Goth guy, when he's actually an Australian Aborigine, so I'm doubting they even read the damn books. To top it off, I'm still bitter about the $12 I spent on the beta supporter pack. Not because I spent cash on a game based on something I liked that I hoped would turn out decently, but because my account never even received the unique rewards promised by the pack.

[@RobotMaria]

I had no idea the Otherland series got a game adaptation! (Big Tad Williams fan here.) Ngl, I kinda want to play it now, just based on that fact.

[@Chapien]

Tad Williams has fans that aren't 40something dads?

[@RobotMaria]

@@Chapien I haven't met a single Tad Williams fan that is a 40something dad, but I suppose those exist. Williams is still a respected author in the fantasy community, so I imagine he has a wide variety of fans (unlike some other old white dude authors I shan't mention, lol).

[@writinggamer8059]

I read the books way back when I was teenager in the late 90s/very early 2000s. That was when cell phones were still flip phones and just starting to be common. Google wasn't even a thing yet. It was before I ever played an MMO, the first I played being EQ. I don't know how well the books hold up these days, but I will say that they stuck with me all these years. It has often blown my mind the things Williams seems to have predicted with the books. Smartphones, being one of them. MMORPGs being the other. We aren't all doing VR online constantly yet, but VR has become an obtainable thing that was just sci-fi back then. The game for sure would make more sense if you read the books. I see characters I know and remember as you play. Renie, for example, is in the main cast if not the main character. Sellers and Jonas are key characters. But the story is basically "trapped in a video game" more advanced than Tron but the predecessor of stories like Sword Art Online. I'm sad I missed out since the game is no longer available now. I had known it was in development but never thought it reached a stage to be playable. But I can tell just from the opening sequence it was set around the time of the climactic phase of the final book. Lambda Mall is separate from the Otherlands and more like... a VR version of social media? I guess? Actually, if you think of the movie Wreck it Ralph Breaks the Internet, and how the internet is like a city, that's Lambda Mall. But also, it's incredibly eerie to be able to have movie and show comparisons to a book that came out more than a decade before these well-known systems in our society existed. Also it was cool to get a chance to see key moments and places from the books. Too bad the game failed.

[@Kop9894]

Few channels get me to hit that bell notification but this is definitely one of them now

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

I hope part 2 is as enjoyable:D

[@SL2797]

That's precisely what I was going to say!

[@brianbrockway2453]

I have become quite the addict recently! Please keep doing what you are doing Josh!

[@uziel25]

I signed uup for this game way back in the day and even had the launcher on my computer that the original team released. Broke me heart when I saw it fell apart. For years I would watch the game play trailers that are/were on KZbin. Thanks for giving me the "feels" Josh.

[@Agamemnon2]

I can't escape the feeling that someone could make a pretty entertaining walking simulator / indie game with these assets, setting it inside the actual half-finished MMO itself. On one hand, it's sad that someone seems to have bought the rights to a half-finished MMO, patched it up to meet Steam's rather low minimum playable product requirements, then rereleased it in this state, but who knows, if they hadn't done that, we might never have known about this game at all. And that'd be pretty sad too.

[@olympus10001]

Knowing Tad Williams books, but without reading the series, "this plot was made while on drugs" is not a bad way to describe any of his books. They are all very eldritch and really trippy.

[@a-blivvy-yus]

From having become a fan of Tad Williams because of Otherland, "this plot was made while on drugs" sounds like an understatement. The plot of the books includes references to the idea that ancient African magic works inside a virtual reality MMO that's imprisoning people like the Matrix (or SAO) and one of the main characters thinks that one of the most cartoonishly evil villains of Arthurian myth is a hero worth emulating. And those are some of the *tamer* details of the setting. It reads like the author was in the middle of a psychotic episode and accidentally taking psychedelic drugs instead of his antipsychotics.

[@olympus10001]

@@a-blivvy-yus I never read otherland, but I was a huge fan of his shadowmarch book series. He seems to have a knack for very surreal writing

[@LiamDTurner]

I have the whole series of Otherland books. It's a great read!

[@Charlamanga]

I have read the series, I quite enjoyed it so I tried this game when it came out. You've more patience than I sir. Well played

[@BleachWizz]

To be honest the intended mechanics of this game seems to be cool, just poorly executed. Idk if it was early for the game or if it was laziness, but this is definetly a gem on the dirt.

[@Nassifeh]

Someone may have already said this but just in case nobody has: the biggest credit to this in the early game is that you, without having read the books, immediately refer to the aesthetic as "ancient Egyptian techno nouveau riche." This is simultaneously exactly what it should be and an *incredible* burn on some of the book characters. 😆 Otherland is the epic VR story that Ready Player One wanted to be, and it deserved better than this, but there's something unfortunately thematic about the way this all crashed and burned, too. I'm sad I missed the chance to poke around its weird decaying remains myself, so thank you for recording this.

[@marthamoza8070]

Man this guy make really good vids and when i see the subs count bro this guy deserve moree

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

Cheers man, I'll just keep making what I enjoy making :)

[@thesquid8823]

Josh is growing slowly he should make it big at some point.

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

@@thesquid8823 man i hope so. Until then ill just keep making strange mmo videos

[@HuriaJoni]

its the clear articulated way he speaks and the accent that got me. the streams have nice athmosphere in them whenever you drop by. this series will be fun to watch!

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

@@HuriaJoni thanks man, i really enjoy the streams :)

[@yourguysheppy]

It's funny how this probably started as another entry in Worst MMO Ever but it became so much more. I know it's out of the scope of the Plays channel, but I would love to see more deep dives into obscure MMOs

[@SkillGame]

Oh man, you've got me hooked. I never expected to devote 46 minutes to an exploration of this game and somehow my mouse is moving to click on part 2 immediately

[@Mutantcy1992]

Wait but when did you type this?

[@sirgreedy88]

I've watched quite a lot of this series so far, and I just have to say, you seem incredibly easy to please.

[@connerblank5069]

You don't dedicate years of your life to deliberately playing bad games if you have a low judgement threshold.

[@BabyCal]

0/10 Josh didn’t refer to the ass graphics as “absolute dumptruck.” Great video!

[@TheRogueX]

I bet the server admin was thrilled that someone was playing, lol

[@dusksentry5836]

scrolling through the comments hoping desperately to see someone saying some variation of "I worked on this game"

[@DTPandemonium]

SAME lmfao

[@CongaYT]

It's insane how breath taking the art is, but the gameplay itself feels like it was abandoned mid-development; while it was still in the middle of conceptualising

[@AeroQC]

That declaration to get the one rarest achievement located at the end of this game's story was just full of Nick Robinson vibes for me, going full-on journalist for the sake of the obscure, odd, and innocuous. Absolutely mad! :D

[@ultgamercw6759]

Wow the visual style of this game is amazing. Id love to see something like this made as a single player story based game.

[@soulechelon2643]

I like how there's the ability to make a totally social character, i.e. a roleplaying character, yet the character creation is the most barebones I've ever seen. I vaguely remember being interested in this game, but wow.

[@ImperialAquila]

What a shame the game was not developed to the same standards as the series. Tad Williams is a god-tier writer and the series is one of the few I would buy in advance and hardback, anything to get the next book ASAP.

[@MrPeterref]

I wondered if you would actually review this game, but you did, you're a man of your word Josh. Great stuff btw.

[@IamusTheFox]

"Otherland has the same shooting mechanics as doom", I laughed like a madman, thank you!

[@travismontgomery1897]

My god, this is actually amazing. I've never seen such a beautiful clusterfuck. It's...It's *the most magnificent thing I've ever see.*

[@justinb2824]

I loved the books and had no idea this existed and an MMO based on them makes completely no sense. Wow. Thank you for making this video.

[@aurarookie2293]

I wil nitpick too. At 26:24, that is "A" Pose, not "T" Pose. Great gameplay as always.

[@JoshStrifeHayes]

You, are correct

[@khankhomrad8855]

This series feels like an unofficial extended Game Dungeon episode.

[@alfreddrewes9362]

6:28 In the words of Shirou Emiya from UBWA: "Those... were words."

[@superOMGgirl123]

Oh my God the thing you said about being filled with Dread just from being in the vast open ocean.... I have that exact same feeling! especially when playing video games!

[@PresidentOfBepis]

Man, if I had Star Citizen money, I'd hire every person that worked on this and give them the funding they deserve to make a fully realized game.

[@paulmahoney7619]

Certainly got a stronger, more interesting art direction than SC.

[@SendarSlayer]

​@@paulmahoney7619 Also more functional than SC honestly lmao.