The Disturbing Development of a Haunted Game...

[@SaganHawkes]

Hey everyone! The music I made for this video (including the title sequence song) is available on my Spotify now! open.spotify.com/album/1Psa4wJsfmy6kQ7dtqIKUT?si=XMbExXGcQu2s0iSd4zwFyQ The vocals for the opening track, 'What Lies Within It' were created using the Alter/Ego singing synthesizer in Logic X, using the Bones voice bank, voiced by Tora-Ouji.

[@Gearmaster70]

The music slaps!

[@thisgoddamusernamestoodamnlong]

this game makes me sad this wasn't a real rpg franchise that got a few successful releases before being left untouched for 20 years, and after a series of legal battles for the rights to the ip: given an amazing modern remake expanding on its lore, followed by a mediocre dlc.

[@danielsurvivor1372]

You need to do more videos about "haunted" games like that, this is SO good and scary in a good way.

[@SirFailure]

​@@thisgoddamusernamestoodamnlongstrangely specific

[@rabbtdemon]

It sounds awesome!!! What vocaloid did you use??? :O

[@musicaluprising924]

As my high school audio engineering instructor taught us, “We don’t do PERFECT. We do DONE.” This lesson has stuck with me. As an artist, this lesson has helped to prevent me from driving myself crazy when working on various creative projects.

[@AnomalyINC]

Same. It is an invaluable lesson for any creative mind. "Finished, not perfect."

[@kaijuultimax9407]

The way my art teacher used to put it was "An artist's work is never finished, only abandoned."

[@miser2570]

audio engineering in highschool? was it an specialized highschool or a club or something? Not saying its specially weird, i know where i live capacitation in highschools is fairly limited, and we dont have clubs.

[@mxmissy]

Huh. That actually is really good advice. I have perfectionist tendencies (it doesn't help with ADHD where you're never really "finished"), but I like that quote a lot.

[@MatTurner-e5r]

What awesome school did you go to where there's classes like that?!

[@NutyRiver]

I think the body in the basement David saw was the game. Think about it. It’s a dead project, which the entire snes team experimented on in an attempt to create something, which they all forgot about, which David obsessed over for 10 years before becoming the project lead of it’s sequel.

[@kirabey8946]

Yep this is the most sensible thing about the project. I can't believe I didn't think of it. Its like an answer to a riddle.

[@xChikyx]

makes sense

[@zOMGGaiaOnline]

This cements it well seeing how it was also described as “living in the back of David’s mind.” As well as making the horror purely *human* David found the sword that he’d cut himself in twain with and became the Basilisk himself.

[@simonmalmstrom9593]

yeah it makes the most sense in my opinion

[@KristofskiKabuki]

If this is true, which seems very likely to me,, I'm wondering whether it's possible to strip out elements of the game from the code like how they describe making the Basilisk? Like they say the first thing is to remove the skin, can you somehow delete all the object skins from the game? (I'm not at all techy so apologies if that's nonsense)

[@ZuldimYT]

Fun fact: David Bunch, the in-universe lead of Basilisk 2000, is named after David Bunch, who is one of the first NPCs you meet in King's Field IV: The Ancient City. That David Bunch was, in turn, named after an admin on a fansite/forum for the King's Field series called The Verdite Inn. It's a pretty cool deep cut reference imo!

[@FrostTheRedeemed]

So, its (kinda) a dark souls reference? Cool.

[@worstinshow]

Fitting, considering that the first thing that came to mind when I first saw Basilisk was King's Field

[@oculartremors]

Perhaps irrelevant, but there's a sci-fi writer also named David Bunch, who wrote a lot of very odd (and great) short stories.

[@NewkTheGeckgoat]

This is REALLY cool as not only was KF:TAC my first intro into Souls games, but it’s honestly become my favorite for its nostalgia, atmosphere, and intrigue.

[@cosmic2750]

Didn't expect Fromsoftware to show up in a place like this but well here we are.

[@approachingetterath9959]

as an artist who is literally crippled by perfectionism ... just hearing sentences like "Perfect is the enemy of Good", and "Perfect is the enemy of Finished" is good to hear and try to internalize. getting something done will be more rewarding and teach you more than not making anything at all just because you already feel the sting of it not being perfect before even starting.

[@appalachiabrauchfrau]

you know those mistakes you only notice on your second viewing of a piece of art? Other people likely won't unless they're trained in art criticism. People hardly look at the same piece twice, so perfectionism and hyper focusing on one small corner of a work isn't productive. That's what we were taught in college, at least. Shake yourself out, draw from the shoulder, get loose, do a gesture study and throw yourself back into it upside down or sideways.

[@johnwaggner9143]

As a fellow artist who struggles with perfectionism, my first art teacher did had me do two things that broke me of that habit in art. 1) He forced me to draw with pen rather than pencil. Any mark you make is permanent, so you have to learn to live and work with lines that weren't perfect, and never waste time erasing because you can't. 2) He made me redraw the same thing multiple times in multiple ways. It builds both consistency in the way you make your forms and challenges your perfectionism head-on because even if you spend all the time to make this one drawing perfect, you're gonna have to draw it again once it's done, and invariably the next attempt will be better. It's frustrating, but you learn more from failure than you do from success, so why waste time fixing a mistake when you could just do it again without making that mistake? Please, try both of these out, and I promise they will help you not just in art but in life too!

[@theminiyosshi2901]

It’s very fitting how the criminal says “it’s been a rough day at the office” Edit: it’s at 32:02

[@daltongarrett3393]

I think it’s a kenshi reference

[@Ahrone1586]

​@@daltongarrett3393it is? Ive never heard that line

[@БруноБуччелати-н6б]

​@@daltongarrett3393huhh? Kenshi? The game or the character?

[@daltongarrett3393]

@@БруноБуччелати-н6б the game

[@daltongarrett3393]

@@Ahrone1586 not the line, but the situation

[@sptsnc]

as a brazilain, even if the hall of skeletons is kind of out of place i find it a funny coincidence with the brazilian saying "ossos do ofício", translating to "bones of the office", meaning a hard or uncomfortable task / extra work! thought this would be a cool fun fact to mention lmao, specially since the hall of skeletons shares the wall textures with the office

[@Artthur_femboy]

Brasileiro spotted

[@lanagomisc.6005]

I think the detail of the player being able to clip underneath gravestones and see bloodied corpses is a parallel to David B finding the body in the basement. You were never suppose to see it, but you were given access and you were curious.

[@GrumpyF0X]

Good GOD that thing crawling towards you frickin GOT ME. 💀

[@Strawberry_Cubes]

25:17 I don’t know if you cover this later but if you come back to the goblin tribe with a weapon and kill all the goblins it makes a victory sound and you get new dialog that does indeed confirm the guy was locked up because he killed their goblin cat

[@Strawberry_Cubes]

It’s a bit buggy, but the best way you can do it is if you manually kill thrm with a weapon not the debug tools

[@Unlucky1776]

Ah that’s kinda cool in a messed up way

[@pawprint1]

Thats both cool and messed up.

[@RailfoxStudios]

Justice for Goblin Cat!

[@w花b]

Lmaoo

[@TurtlesPancake]

I kind of wonder if all the anachronistic modern references are deliberately immersion breaking? The year 2000 is crossed out on the disc after all, and we don't really know what happened to David in the end beyond him possibly taking a plane and "leaving." The game is already distorted, maybe the cultural references and mentions of "DLC" are supposed to be hints that the timeline is slightly fucked up, while also doubling/being disguised as funny haha moment? If nothing else, the modern discord emote is extremely out of place in a way that isn't "just reference comedy" in the same way as a bunch of the other stuff. Since reality in-game is warping to match SOMETHING in David's memories, maybe the Skyrim references are also maybe supposed to be reflecting a sense of failure -- someone ELSE made this grand epic fantasy RPG first, and that's what Basilisk 2000 could have been if everything else hadn't gone down. It's perhaps a manifestation of David's guilt and jealously? And if nothing else, someone from modern day is definitely involved here. Not sure whether that's supposed to be Kira or just the "porter" as a concept, but regardless....

[@caav56]

And given all the Lunacid connections...

[@FourthDerivative]

Another small thing, which honestly might just be an oversight, is that Windows XP was released in late 2001, but the devs are somehow using it in 2000.

[@KamillahM-q3v]

@@FourthDerivative Even if it's just a mistake, I think it adds to the messed up reality feel

[@mercaius]

One thing I want to say: I don't think the "ingredient" list is a list of materials to acquire. The alleged goal is to take a man and turn him into a monster, a basilisk. A serpent. I don't think those were ingredients they needed to acquire. I think those were human parts they chose to remove to "create" the serpent-like monster, and the shape of the corpse David was traumatized by in the building. The skin, to create a bloody, red and "slimy" texture. And arm and a leg, to create a single line from the remaining hand to the foot. And ribs, to make the torso more "flexible"... And the person would have been alive through the whole process.

[@gayrurumon]

How does one remove three ribcages from one person, exactly?

[@pana7897]

@@gayrurumon bonesaw or just hammer

[@gayrurumon]

@@pana7897 I think you've misunderstood my issue here

[@bojogaming9385]

​@@gayrurumonfind a person with an above average amount of ribcages

[@creativeusername7951]

​@@gayrurumon sus 🤨

[@ProfessorMonstru]

If you equip a weapon and use E or spacebar to action (swing), you can kill the goblins and 'save' the cats. The person being held prisoner in one of the huts will have new dialogue that changes to... "Thanks! Wretched beasts locked me up for drowning one of their cats." Well, that didn't go as planned. Yikes, really makes me regret assuming the goblins were the bad guys and killing them. 😂

[@walterk9916]

I think the creation of The Basilisk is the creation of the game itself the corpse was the original Basilisk SNES and David was obsessed with the original version and made 2000. The idea of flayed bodies and actual basilisks are merely a distorted mythology like the Torn Knight's story.

[@OhNoBohNo]

the game, unfinished, like a body without legs, arms, or ribs

[@feluto7172]

i mean the game is literally called "The basilisk". The game is the actual basilisk

[@SecuR0M]

can't believe Kira made a game about Roko's Basilisk

[@elsoupidas4974]

@@OhNoBohNowas

[@cosmic2750]

I feel that too. The game itself is the Basilisk, the "monster" that "killed" everyone involved (ie burned everybody out of their creative minds into a severe burnout). And the "human body" parts? Those are the parts because of which the "Basilisk" are unfinished. The "monster" is the game. It was "created." The evil monster that affected everybody and basically "killed" the company was the game itself.

[@waspslug6713]

Okay, so just finished Basilisk 2000 with my girlfriend and I think I've got an idea what the deal with the story is, specifically what the Basilisk is. So a recurring idea seems to be that any story even associated with the Basilisk is unreliable or more accurately frayed. Things are described as being "it lived in his mind, or maybe it was him, or maybe he made it, ect" which I slowly realised was less like an unreliable story and more as if the speaker or story itself wanted you to choose one, even if it was the answer to "what is the Basilisk?" Hell the story gives the options of "it was real, it was a corpse David found, it was David, it was a video game, it was the final boss of a video game, it was something hiding inside a video game, ect." That made me realise something: the Basilisk isn't a physical thing, it's basically a parasite of creation, a bastard work. Stories involving it are frayed and beg to be defined because doing so is quite literally what allows the thing to "live". By defining and thinking of it's story and narrative, it's made real. I actually think changing to a new narrative is what the Basilisk "shedding skins" is a metaphor for. I think that's why it's called the Basilisk, because to witness, or in this case picture and think about it, is what will kill you. The game even states "Your eyes contribute to your own destruction." tl;dr: The Basilisk isn't real but wants you to think about and define its story so it can be real.

[@shinyrayquaza9]

that also fits in with the rokos basilisk themes, it doesn't exist if no one thinks it up or creates it

[@snqoqo]

So it's a tulpa?

[@waspslug6713]

​@@snqoqo After thinking about it slightly more, I'd say "kinda". I don't think the actual Basilisk character, like the corpse or David, is the true form of the Basilisk, but it's the story itself about the Basilisk. It's the narrative of mass death with a central figure that takes the shape of Basilisk. I think that's actually what the phrase "Within It" means, to be in the narrative of the Basilisk means that you've already been swallowed by it. I'd say think of it as a beast made of words describing it's story, whatever form the Basilisk takes in the story simply acting as the face of the beast.

[@DarknessEmpireLeader626]

Here for comments.

[@catboysephiroth560]

I love this interpretation, and it makes the most sense IMO. Another commenter already mentioned Roko's Basilisk and I do think the Basilisk of this game is intended to be a cognito hazard.

[@Aconium]

A small detail I think might help make sense of the massacre scene in Basilisk SNES. You were confused about why Scratch was left unharmed, which led you to believe he and the Knight are the same. Scratch appears to be pretty old. "Old Scratch" is an archaic name for the devil. The error even says "the devil is in the details, but the devil is in everything," which I think is a little nod towards the naming. I don't think this means that you need to add literal demons/the actual devil to your theory. I think it represents a kind of metaphorical deal with the devil for creation that ties into the idea of the basilisk as creative/destructive force- the idea of trading away an incredibly valuable part of yourself (your metaphorical soul) in order to create. People who create- artists, writers, game developers, video makers- have a well known history of neglecting or even actively harming themselves for the sake of making something, completing something, improving what they make. The horrible working environment in game dev spaces pushing people to sacrifice themselves for the 'team' and the quality of the finalized game, but also things like- well, NaNoWriMo just ended and anyone who knows someone who participates has probably just witnessed a yearly fit of creative madness. We're expected to see a certain amount of self-harming sacrifice as good or even necessary to create. So the way I see it: Old Scratch, through ways we don't see, makes a monster of the knight. In the extended metaphor, I see him as a stand in for the studio, the devil making deals, trading souls for the chance to create something great, who loses nothing in the bargain while the one who deals with him loses everything- Scratch is unharmed in the massacre, the knight's transformation into the basilisk, because it was HIS doing, he was the one who started it, the basilisk is HIS creation. The rest of my analysis follows much as yours. I see the basilisk as the *act* of self-destruction for the sake of creation, and Scratch as the inciting idea- the common refrain that you HAVE to suffer in order to create, the creative culture (especially in game dev) that encourages it. Tellingly, once the basilisk has been created, Scratch drops out of the narrative entirely- once you have people thinking they need to stay up all night chasing a flare of inspiration before they lose it, skipping meals to met deadlines, taking themselves apart to create something perfect, they'll create basilisks on their own.

[@ethanmacleod1721]

Yes! I was looking to see if anyone else thought along these lines.

[@ieToastie]

Brilliant interpretation, thanks for sharing.

[@impishlyit9780]

Outside of the analogy though, they might genuinely be using him as a devil stand-in. The idea of a devil in Christian mythology is often as an initial corrupting force - in fact, the corrupting force that encouraged the Original Sin™. After that sin occurred, humanity was supposedly sinful by nature, regardless of their state beforehand. After humanity was deceived, he also disappears from the Biblical narrative until the authors later reintroduce him for metaphorical effect. The idea is that once a group is corrupted, they no longer *need* a corrupting force - they will continue the cycle until something forces them to stop. (As an aside, I am not Christian. You can probably tell that by my word choice alone, but I do find the mythology interesting in a literary sense.)

[@Aconium]

Oh, I agree. I've been considering there being two narratives- the textual narratives of the Basilisk games themselves, and the layer above it that sets up the allegory/analogy. I do think within the text of Basilisk SNES Scratch is the devil, who corrupted the Knight to make him into the Basilisk, starting off the cycle of split gods creating and destroying worlds- which does fit into Christian mythological ideas of the devil as progenator of false/hollow gods.

[@meanpersona4686]

I thought I was the only one who made the connection (I was like "Scratch", like "Old Scratch"?)! Thanks for this lenghty comment.

[@shashummga3477]

Greg's health being at 0 and his Darkness being at 100% is really curious. His flavor text doesn't mention anything about Basilisk 2000, only that he's 'The programmer in charge here'. Maybe he was the skinned man David.B found in the office that started it all

[@SpaceCowboy57]

49:24 Greg is the lead programmer, he doesn't just have zero HP, has _no life._

[@kirabey8946]

Ok this is kinda cute and wholesome

[@legonidasCZ]

@@kirabey8946 It kinda isnt since Greg is based on a real person that the dev of Basilisk 2000 disliked.

[@annixity]

​@legonidasCZ it's the thought that counts 😊

[@boota2474]

How do you kill that which has no life?

[@Green_Bean_Machine]

@@legonidasCZaaaaand who cares, if he thinks its cute, its cute, if you dont, it isnt, and i think you're annoying and that this was a worthy use of 1 minute, so you are, and it was.

[@SpoopyChicken]

What I love about the horror in this game is the fact that 95% of everything in this game is basically completely static, so you're even more scared out of your mind when you find something moving... Especially if it's moving towards you...

[@piyerus1153]

In regards to the promo art, I think that Umbra AI is likely a reference to the Radiant AI system in Bethesda games. Silly reference aside, I think this may actually be what the darkness stat on the various NPCs is. "NPCs can know when they are about to die" after all. So a higher darkness means that an NPC is more certain of their own upcoming death. Thinking of it like this, it can be interesting to look at the darkness of some of the corpses. The King was 100% dark, so he knew for certain he was about to die before it happened. However the mutilated corpse of your childhood rival you can find in the first area is only 70% dark. They knew something was up, leaning more towards certainty, but still had some hope they may live.

[@PlayABetterGame]

now i'm looking at everything differently wtf

[@sitonthemelon2742]

I had the same thought, came to the comments to suggest it!

[@arenlex4981]

That makes the observations in the office level much more interesting. More so with the chat messages in the video found later and how that might connect to Greg's stats (perhaps Greg Jason?) in the office level.

[@the_ecips9692]

I feel like Darkness refers to the curse, like how far the curse has spread within the person/object. The word "dark" somehow only appears once in all the dialogues - at the start, with "[...] dark basilisk [...]" Though 100% Serpent Curse does kill, so seeing this as "how dead am I"-meter is kinda the same :-D

[@5ld734]

Umbra is also a character in The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, and she carries the strongest sword in the game (also called Umbra) it is easy to get the sword early by getting her AI stuck on level geometry (specifically a rock nearby) then shooting her with arrows until she dies, which might be relevant? Or not maybe it’s not relevant

[@jakepfrag]

16:28 is a vine boom and the image of "Inside you there are two wolves"

[@PrivacyResponsive]

Saw that lol

[@shshyie]

I remember trying this out when it first came out and just being obscenely confused lol Akuma Kira is an obscenely underrated indie dev, Spooky's, Lunacid and Lost in Vivo are all such good games and along with Basilisk, such unqiue experiences

[@Guntfarm]

but lunacid is shit, worse than the game its trying to emulate with copy and pasted areas everywhere trying to coast off having anime bait characters

[@phoenixmarktwo]

​@@GuntfarmAin't no way you called an anime-esque style "anime bait".

[@Guntfarm]

@@phoenixmarktwo what would you call having anime characters in the game that dont match the art style at all other than anime bait for weebs

[@dolphin2046]

@@Guntfarmlol @ anime pfp.

[@enzoqueijao]

​@@GuntfarmA good business decision

[@machine.angel.777]

56:14 this is a real rendering technique called parallax mapping, very often used in this exact context-that being creating illusions of rooms that are cheap to render. i was a bit taken out of it when i saw it, bc i've never spotted it in older games but apparently it was introduced in 2001 so it'd make sense

[@matthewhartman1855]

There's nothing more cathartic than following the story along with my good parasocial friend

[@slimeinabox]

We’re his parasocial friend.

[@stein6861]

So true... He is literally my favorite parasocial friend

[@lauralulu4444]

He’s my best and favorite parasocial friend 🥰😆

[@mosshivenetwork117]

Yes!

[@veryepoc6949]

Hi

[@Slurpgerk]

My theory: David B *is* the basilisk. What David saw was his future self having been transformed into a monster after killing his coworkers. The story of David and the knight are near identical: A member of authority, meant to be tasked with protecting/helping his community, instead slaughters them all when they need help the most. After David's massacre, he was torn apart, either mentally, or physically through some supernatural force. What remained after was the corpse that David saw in the basement. I think David knew exactly what he saw. I think what David was trying to do was change his fate by finishing Basilisk 2000. By finishing a story with a good ending, where the monster is vanquished, the real monster would be slayed as well, and David and his coworkers would be saved. It didn't work though. David's obsession with finishing the game, the stress that he and all his team was put under *fed* the basilisk, in turn twisting David's mind more and more. By trying the ensure the Basilisk's destruction, David instead ensured its creation.

[@Slurpgerk]

I just now realized this fits perfectly with the allegory to Roko's Basilisk. The entire point of that hypothetical was the concept of the future dooming the past.

[@ana-dv7jb]

I'm sure people are already pointing out the multiple morrowind references but something else I noticed was the "OFFICE" area might be a reference to Might and Magic VI which features an easter egg that has the entire developer offices recreated in game with npcs for all the staff, including ea founder Trip Hawkins who is represented by a goblin.

[@ishmaelcamillo]

Hey hey people

[@notgray88]

Ah a fellow member of the merchants guild

[@kekson14th]

Not sure if you knew this, but Kira's games have a connected universe. In the most recent game, Lunacid, one of the achievements is called Basilisk. To get the achievement you have to find a secret corpse, and the corpse looks like two people attached together. Maybe this is the corpse that David mutilated attempting to make a Basilisk?

[@KristofskiKabuki]

Or maybe it's the two games connected by a vein?

[@itsaUSBline]

Could just be an easter egg.

[@Sandythefloofer]

Specimen 8 in Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion is also featured in Lost in Vivo! Albeit as a hard-to-spot cameo

[@getshroomd3520]

​@@KristofskiKabuki that made sense

[@slimeinabox]

“Perfect is the the enemy of good. Perfect is the enemy of finished. Perfect is the creation of a basilisk”

[@sirkit2105]

Underrated comment.

[@Snowmanse]

The windows in the chapel are bullets. I didn't notice it until I saw the 3 right next to each other on the back wall, making a commonly used icon on ammo boxes from older games.

[@thishandleistacken]

Past cultist here (ex-OTO) and the Egg surrounded by a Snake is often used by Gnostics but has its roots in Orphism (which makes sense since that was practised in post Mycenaean Greece) and seems directly related to the subject at hand. From Wikipedia's article on Orphism: "In Orphic theogonies, the Orphic Egg is a cosmic egg from which hatched the primordial hermaphroditic deity Phanes/Protogonus (variously equated also with Zeus, Pan, Metis, Eros, Erikepaios and Bromius), who in turn created the other gods. The egg is often depicted with the serpent-like creature, Ananke, wound about it. Phanes is the golden winged primordial being who was hatched from the shining cosmic egg that was the source of the universe. Called Protogonos (First-Born) and Eros (Love) an ancient Orphic hymn addresses him thus: Ineffable, hidden, brilliant scion, whose motion is whirring, you scattered the dark mist that lay before your eyes and, flapping your wings, you whirled about, and through this world you brought pure light." This cosmic egg and serpent symbolism also has some similarities to Typhon who inspired aspects of the Orphic traditions. From Wikipedia on Typhon: "Iliad 2.783, preserving a possibly Orphic tradition, has Typhon born in Cilicia, as the offspring of Cronus. Gaia, angry at the destruction of the Giants, slanders Zeus to Hera. So Hera goes to Cronus, her and Zeus' father (whom Zeus had overthrown), and Cronus gives Hera two eggs smeared with his own semen (often symbolized by snakes, who also lay eggs mind you), telling her to bury them underground, and that from them would be born one who would overthrow Zeus. Hera, angry at Zeus, buries the eggs in Cilicia "under Arimon", but when Typhon is born, Hera, now reconciled with Zeus, informs him." Typhon is connected to the Egyptian Dark God Set (who battled the Solar Horus) as well as the Mesopotamian Dark God Tiamat (who battled the Solar Marduk). These myths lay the foundation for the Judeo-Christian stories of The Leviathan: According to Ophite diagrams, the Leviathan encapsulates the space of the material world. The Leviathan of the Book of Job is a reflection of the older Canaanite Lotan, a primeval monster defeated by the god Baal Hadad. Parallels to the role of Mesopotamian Tiamat defeated by Marduk have long been drawn in comparative mythology, as have been wider comparisons to dragon and world serpent narratives such as Indra slaying Vrtra or Thor slaying Jörmungandr. Leviathan also figures in the Hebrew Bible as a metaphor for a powerful enemy, notably Babylon (Isaiah 27:1). Probably not a direct influence but... one of the main reasons I left the OTO was discovering the "secret" teachings of the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th degrees which involve the creation of homunculus (you can find the text in Francis King's The Secret Rituals of the OTO, the vast majority of the first initiations match those I went through +/- changes to passwords/handshakes and I've verified through multiple means that the homunculus texts are genuine). You can read more about it on a website called "parareligion the OTO phenomenon". Influenced likely disinformation about a Gnostic sect the Orthodox Catholics called the Borborites as well as stories about The Golum in Hebrew mysticism and Paracelcus' alchemy experiments in "De rerum naturae" (1537) to create life artificially Crowley wrote this stuff as both a metaphor for higher spiritual matters and a genuine experiment in the physical realm. Just thought I'd mention that... since I honestly have no idea what to think about this stuff. Fun fact: OTO member Jack Parsons performed some of these rituals with L Ron Hubbard before Hubbard created Scientology. For more info on that look up The Babalon Working on Wikipedia.

[@EngiGODS358]

Ain't nobody reading allis... 😂😂💀💀💀💯🔥‼️🗣️💯💯‼️‼️

[@reedman0780]

Thanks for the info, though this needs more prior knowledge and context than just this wall of text. Its gonna need more but I dont think me or anyone would want to know more lol

[@thishandleistacken]

@@reedman0780 yeh I've grown a little tired of writing essays about my time in the OTO and the occult world... I just thought these would be interesting tidbits people could use for further research if it interests them. My only advice is to stick to academic and primary source materials, there's a lot of disinfo out there on all sides

[@thishandleistacken]

@@EngiGODS358 Probably for the best :p one is much better off studying science and classic philosophy than Aleister's ramblings. Most of what he has to say, that which is of any use, comes from elsewhere anyway

[@BNK2442]

I guess that at this point my comment won't even be related to the game anymore, but I remember reading that the Hellenistic Greeks correlated Typhon-Seth with the Judean-Christian god and depicted him with a donkey head because of this...

[@snowblind9551]

I feel like there's no way David actually killed his coworkers. Kyle Tubman would've mentioned something so major in his addendum.

[@quisslequassle404]

I think Leave and the endings of BasilikSNS deserve more consideration in the analysis. Failure is such a big theme in both games, and I think assuming that creating the Basilik, especially when the first basilik as in the body D.B. found had already failed, actually succeeded kind of goes against the rythm established by the entire rest of the games. Just as the torn knight choses to put down his weapon/cut himself in half, I think it makes way more sense that D.B., both the monster and the victim and a bystander, chose to simply leave. Abandon the project, ruin it for everyone else (maybe literally was "I'm ruining the project" as a statement could be referring to) and simply leave. Leaving behind the Basilik, the office, the game, and everything that has defined his life up until now.

[@matheuskirisame]

It kinda makes sense if you invert the runs, since first is when David B. discovers the Basilisk (and probably sees the tortured man alive running up to him) and the second time he returns there it's a crime scene, which he returns again and again because of his obsession until the "last run", where it's just an abandoned room he goes a last time and then leaves for good of this whole Basilisk stuff.

[@Glacidon]

This would make far more sense to me then the idea that D.B. murdered literally every employee in his company, programmed the scene of the crime into his game, then programmed several more stuff into the game, yet somehow the one person who did some research into the company developing it couldn't get a news article about a guy killing his entire work place. If that really was supposed to happen and isn't a metaphor or is D.B. venting then it's a huge jumping of a shark from the implications that nobody could find out about it in universe from a simple google search.

[@nyxxxed]

really random but is your profile picture a wyngro

[@quisslequassle404]

Indeed it is. Sadly not one that really exists anymore @@nyxxxed

[@Anouar1347]

😮

[@cyanflower]

Tried piecing the story of the development story, and came up with this: - David discovers a body and has trauma/obsession - Basilisk SNES begins development, David taking inspiration from the body he saw for the Basilisk - David proves to be pretty uncomfortable to work with and the development of SNES Basilisk falls apart - after Basilisk SNES got cancelled, David couldn't stop thinking about it, wanting to create “the perfect Basilisk” - Basilisk 2000 eventually starts development, and David gets a slightly flawed dev team - The game’s development turns out too ambitious, levels becoming subject to removal/DLC (disk loadable content?) and venting becoming more common around the dev team - David ‘kills’ the development of the game, all employees leaving - David continues to have thoughts about Basilisk, slowly losing it - David dreams about an actual Basilisk in the office, the murder, etc and ends up adding them to the game, buried deep - David eventually sells the disk on a site, leaving it be and moving on - Akuma Kira finds it, making a shell for the game to work and putting some shitposts innit before releasing the game to the public tldr; David creates a game based off trauma, ends up being a pain in the ass, tries making it again and fails, slowly losing it even further before moving on and selling the disk to Akuma Kira if I goofed up some elements of the story oops! mb It's entirely possible that the body isn't even a body. It could've been referring to Basilisk as in the game being developed. Formed by a group as a failed abomination that ended up driving someone insane still trying to turn it real, and yet it failed again, eventually causing that someone to move on after years of still being driven mad by it.

[@ArgaJacint]

I think DLC just simply means downloadable content. I know it's associated more with current day gaming, but it has technically existed even in the 90's.

[@cyanflower]

@@ArgaJacint I am fully aware that DLC means that, I was just. ok I was just stupid at the time mb

[@cyanflower]

looking back I feel like the body = the games themselves connection makes a lot more sense than it being trauma from a dead corpse

[@farewelltimetofly]

Since I didn't see anyone else mention it: the opening cinematic in Basilisk 2000 is also a Morrowind reference! Mysterious narration about where you're going, hazy fly-by footage of in-game environments, and the phrase, "first by boat and then by carriage" (in Morrowind, "first by carriage and now by boat").

[@EngiGODS358]

But of course the clown ass niggas like to forget that Morrowind existed. Because apparently to the modern gaming community only Skyrim and oblivion exist and there were no games before that. Hella sad how Morrowind has a lot of its recognition stolen.

[@nemoguy]

I get more of a king's field vibe for some reason

[@PlayABetterGame]

as a game like Morrowind or as Dark Souls (this would be perfect for a DS game but both are some of my favorite series so idk) this would actually be really cool. GIVE ME THE REAL BASILISK!

[@somoneelse3488]

The level editor UI also bears a notable resemblance to Morrowind's Creation Kit editor, though notably more privative. Like if Daggerfall had a creation kit.

[@djcoopes7569]

@@PlayABetterGame DS game is a very good point

[@greyalight6224]

i don’t know if this was talked about in the video, but i’ve done a lot of thinking as to the implications of david being the 90s basilisk victim, but as i’ve thought about it i’ve realized that metaphorically it makes perfect sense. this thought process began when i realized that david finding the body also has a second meaning, that being finding the original SNES game. david found a canceled, forgotten game (a dead body, if you will) and became obsessed with it, haunted by a burning desire to recreate what he found (this could also explain how the game exists without any developer overlap). but as we know, he failed. the game never came out, development was tedious and miserable, and nothing ever seemed to turn out the way david envisioned. why does this matter? well, i’m sure most people reading this are at least somewhat aware of the emotional and physical strain that comes with being unable to properly realize your creative vision. and we see this happen to david firsthand: he grows restless, paranoid, violent, he keeps a gun under his desk, and he either explodes in a deadly office shooting, or at least heavily ideates on it. taking these two threads into account, the misery of failing to manifest your ideas, and david’s violent deterioration, it’s perfectly viable to say that the original developers, in a way, DID perform the basilisk experiment on david: they tore him apart and made him into a monster.

[@vinidood]

[REALLY LONG COMMENT] Just as you began going into the thematic analysis in the end it clicked for me too. It's not really about the monster Basilisk, is it? It's like the games changed into one of Persona's dungeons to me and things are more than they seem at first. The "body David found" could be David himself. Maybe he was part of the Basilisk SNES' team. A young artist who's doing his best and is too naive to notice how the people he looks up to are just creating this terrible workplace environment. Too excited to realize how it's affecting him. Three investors, one artist, one producer working on a single game - three ribcages, one arm and a leg under a skin. In Basilisk 2k, David is now the chief. And he's trying to recreate whatever experience he had 10 years ago, but to finish and deliver the game. He looks up to the Knight, his old boss, and how he would split himself to manage everything, to be a good dad and a good manager. David wants to give this team the same amazing experience he had when he was younger. But he didn't know the experience he had then had been traumatizing, that it made him the victim of an abusive working environment. That abuse was the only way he knew to lead, because that's his experience. And that behavior only gets worse when he suffers the pressure of executives and investors who are "losing money". Maybe the deaths in the office aren't even literal but the sad reality of completely overworking a team of passionate people, who are willing to put themselves in their work ("the skin of one, the bones of another"), and taking away the joy of something that was made out of love for being creative. Maybe they're not physically dead, but the people who they were, the creatives, had the life taken from them by being drained from work. Dave being the only one who managed to continue to be a creative, since he managed to hide. Like in the game, David realizes in the end that the Knight he looked up to and who helped form his world was never a real hero. Looking at a photo of him in the office, he sees not himself encouraging the eager-to-help Greg, but an monster feeding on a helpless victim. But it's too late now. The damage was already done. As a creative person who is desperate to create and who sometimes struggles with work, this was a very emotional reading for me. Hopefully Dave can help break that cycle - as he shares David's name but in a different way. Maybe he can share the passion David had, as that made the team so encouraged as they wanted to help bring life to his idea, but remembering that even though alchemy had successful results, no alchemist ever was able to create a basilisk.

[@SAUglaz]

The way i see it, there's only been one death. David was an intern(hence not being on the official dev list) during the development of the first game and he was overworked to hell and back, all while confined to a cubicle. Quite possibly the same one that Greg is slowly losing his mind in(notice how it's located in a much bigger room with all that space wasted seemingly out of pure corporate spite). Cubicle is the carapace that is meant to protect against distractions but ends up isolating people in a cramped space. One night, probably being the last to leave, David stumbled into the basement and found a scene of a crime. It probably wasn't anywhere near as gruesome as the things that we see imply, but it left a huge impact on David's weakened psyche and that scene got irrevocably linked with the game that was consuming his life. And then the real break happened when all his suffering was made futile, likely by some suit who saw all David's(and other devs) work just as figures on a spreadsheet. Ten years later, David is a manager and lead engineer. He has the chance to finish the Basilisk and purge that obsession out of his mind. He somehow convinces the company to shift resources from a different project(the post-apoc game that other devs worked on and held some resentment towards David over) to make it happen. But he has less than a year to do it. If you follow the history of game dev, you probably know that in the late 90s the time to create a game was increasing almost exponentially. For reference, look up the timeline of idSoftware releases in the 90s. David's obsession grows. He has but few months. He starts believing that all communication his team needs is through the level editor UI. Even AIM seems an excessive waste of time for him. The team discussing him behind his back and even suggesting going to HR about his erratic behavior doesn't help. In the end, i don't think he really snaps. It's possible that one of the other devs made the office map just as an easter egg, and David sees it as a way to vent. It is possible that he pushed it into the main build to send a message about wasting time and that led to the project being shut down, but it's just as likely that he kept it private and the game died in the most mundane way - no viable product was produced by the deadline and the company shut it down. I believe that if David actually went postal or if any "ritual" actually have taken place, then Kyle Tubman would have found more than simply "the office isn't there and the phone is busy". Oh, speaking of id and code, i'm not sure how accurate it is, but people say that most modern 3D games still carry some left-over code originally written for Quake. It would make sense that something was carried over from the first project, especially with David's obsession being the driving force behind the new game.

[@nikothecat4500]

This is close to what I interpreted as well, though I think the corpse David found might have been his old boss. It’s possible if the original dev team was as stressed out as the dev team for Basilisk 2000, one or more people from that team might have decided to take their revenge on their old boss, and David just happened to stumble on it. This would explain why he’s so paranoid and constantly spying on his dev team- he wants to finish the work he’s so passionate about, but he worries his team might turn against him if he pushes too hard.

[@pezyg]

Nerdy fun fact, one of the most complex algorithms ever written was made for Quake. It is however, incredibly efficient, so it has been reused since forever. Its the algorithm for the Fast Inverse Square Root.

[@OhNoBohNo]

Ah, I remember the good old '90s days of video game development, when you could just sacrifice a human body as an office exercise and move on. Good times.

[@nonAehT]

wouldn't suprise me if John Romero actually tried this

[@simonsoupshark8009]

@@nonAehT i think you mean succeeded in this, how else could you run doom on any object on earth

[@nonAehT]

@@simonsoupshark8009 that might also explain Daikatana....

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

@@simonsoupshark8009 Binary Space Partitioning

[@Auldous]

What if the man that was tortured was more symbolic of David B's experience in the games industry? He started out making Basilisk SNES and that was scrapped. He then spent years making other games, leaving the Medieval horror he set out to create *forgotten about* by every one but him. Maybe this is where the post-apocalyptic cityscape comes from, from the other game David had been assigned to work on before he went off the rails and started pushing the team to make Basilisk 2000. The dull monotany of creating games like every other game out there collapsed in on David's mental state, having never forgotten his cancelled project, his Basilisk. And in that regard, maybe the dark office was more symbolic of David killing the careers of his coworkers by shifting from the game they had been making to making Basilisk 2000. Maybe that is the symbolic sacrifice he makes to this project of his, and his team leaving was them breaking through the skin of the monster to the world of light on the other side.

[@caav56]

I love this idea.

[@matthewcorridor]

The line about cutting a level to make dlc is completely immersion shattering, since that wasn't a thing at the time the game would be getting made. Back in my day we called them expansion packs

[@theMoporter]

This, the skeletons and the Windows XP user blunder are particularly cringeworthy because they're so harmful to the themes of the story. These could have been caught they'd recruited more playtesters. Akira, if you read this: this project fell at the last hurdle because you called it done prematurely :/ you can't let "perfect" be the enemy of "done", but don't let "done" be the enemy of "good" either.

[@CodeeXD]

Yall are cringe loser nerds. Akira has dine more then you ever will. 😂

[@DarkwaveMistress]

Exactly.

[@bender9740]

Also the "SNES" game looks nothing like what you'd get on an SNES, which in my eyes is a bit of a deal breaker when it comes to immersion. It would not look/run like that.

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

@@bender9740 Yeah, it looks strikingly as something the SNES couldn't really do. Things like too many shades of color for given sprites, or how a lot of them have a really high resolution, a game on the SNES just wouldn't look like this. If anything, this looks more like a PC game such as Witchaven (1995). Conversely, Basilisk 2000, on PC, looks very oddly archaic and crude for being a PC game from the year 2000. The low poly count, the very crude characters completely lacking in any kind of animation, the way textures are visibly absent and then pop in, even if this would be the most rudimentary of alpha builds this looks very strangely understated. This is all obviously very inspired by the King's Field games (one of the forerunnrers to Demon's Souls/Dark Souls), and Basilisk 2000 looks more like it would have been a 1995 Playstation game like those, or the very rough alpha pitch for one.

[@WobblesandBean]

1:33:00 I really needed to hear this. I'm an artist and I have ADHD, unfortunately this leads me to redo my art over and over, I spend hours agonizing over insignificant details and I'll work on a piece for months on end. I can't just lay down a brush stroke and be happy with it, I have to redo it again and again until I'm satisfied. Repeat ad nauseum. Maybe I need to start drawing with ink, it's a very unforgiving medium. Once you put down a line, you're stuck with it. You have to live with the imperfection.

[@vinegar3617]

The one nitpick I have about this story is the presentation of Basilisk SNES, and namely the fact that it looks more like a PS1 game than an SNES game. It looks way too advanced for a 1990 project (that was the literal year the console came out) and the only way the SNES could achieve anything close to what Basilisk SNES presented would be with a 3d processor chip that would still make the game look super blurry and run way more choppy than it's actually presented. The textures are too hi-res as well, and in all honesty the game looks more like a 32-bit one than 16-bit like what the SNES actually was. It's not a super important thing to worry about because ultimately it doesn't really affect the story and everything else about the unfiction project is incredible but I feel like Kira should have either used a better reference for a SNES game or just had it be a PS1 game instead.

[@genyakozlov1316]

This is actually a good point. Since most of the game isn't on the cartridge you could say they used the free space for higher quality textures, but the year is too early in the console's lifespan for such graphics.

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

Even Basilisk 2000 looks out of time, the graphical fidelity is like 1995 or 1996 era, it'd be crazy dated looking by 2000.

[@MrMickio1]

@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine That seems fair to me? Considering most of the game seems barely finished and the development looked like an unfocused mess, it might say more about the team than the meta-reality.

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

@@MrMickio1 That almost works, but not really, even as a very rough alpha as just a pitch for a publisher, it looks unbelievably understated for its time, and the story is that this development continued at seemingly an absolute glacier's pace until it reached its deadline. I'm not saying this couldn't EVER happen, but looking at the remark about the publisher making a mandate to cut out a section of the game to sell as post release content, that suggests that they would be invested *enough* in this as product and have enough confidence in the concept that it's an investment worth paying attention to, so they would insist to take looks at the game every now and then during development. If a game in the year 2000 still looked like THIS as they checked in every few months, with just about zero development into it as a playable product and the game having nothing that they could show to the press or in any public material, that's when a publisher pulls the plug early. This would really make much more sense for around 1994 or 1995, for a console like the Playstation (because it's basically a creepypasta about an alternate reality stillborn King's Field if you look at it), and it would probably not have gotten to just linger all the way until its originally agreed upon deadline, instead it would have been cancelled well in advance.

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

@@genyakozlov1316 That would be a really unlikely approach by itself, the SNES couldn't really hack it for those kinds of graphics so it wouldn't make any sense to use even as placeholders. A much more likely thing to do would be to just make some crude placeholder doodles, or optionally even lifting content from some other game as placeholders.

[@LarryXLR]

"All new systems so NPCs can know when they're about to die" Boy, that's one sadistic dev team. Imagine slaving over a computer to make sentient NPCs just so you can have them be mentally and physically tortured over and over again. It's like if Free Guy was a psychological horror film.

[@angelorosso4871]

in regards to the Corpses in the starting area of Basilisk 2000, some games do let you dig up the corpses from Graves and the rival corpse may have been (in universe) intended to be revealed at a later point in the plot

[@silverdededestruction2197]

genuinely what ruined the experience was The Hall of Skeletons. That is something that should have been an actual meta easter egg and not something you could encounter in the first hour. I am the kind of person that would compulsively enter new areas if I learn about them, and if I played this, I would be baffled at all the memes that are literally to up to date.

[@SShonix]

I'm sorry 😿 I thought it was funny, made me feel better from the whole scary vibe ☹️

[@DualEdgest]

So when it comes to reusing old code on new games, it actually happens. There's stories from former Electronic Arts devs who were still receiving royalty checks in the mid 2000s for code they wrote while on contract from all the way back to Madden '94.

[@bananapug4685]

1:20:23 a group torturing an evil man also parallels the goblins with that cat murderer

[@wayfareangel]

I always assumed Scratch was a stand in for The Devil, as Old Scratch is another name for it, and that Scratch was never really there.

[@MakooWallinen]

Also: "The Devil is in the details. Oh, but the Devil is in everything" Also helps.

[@alocalarsonist]

One thing I thought about when reflecting on this whole video was the house with the keyboard mash, to me, at least, it seems like panicking to get up from the computer to run away, like David Sue was running from the massacre that David Bunch caused in the game development office.

[@Bexsteros]

It would be wild if there was somehow the twist that David wasn't (at least entirely) the bad guy. It could be that the reason he kept the gun under the desk was because he saw the basilisk and maybe even took the picture. The basilisk got away and he reported the body, then stumbled across information about the SNES game that compelled him to make a sequel. The gun could be "just in case" the basilisk returns, which perhaps it did leading to the new office level.

[@lucalovespopculture3743]

My interpretation is that the the "body" that David found was the SNES game itself. It was skinned experimented on, but still alive. Think about it: The game never released and yet they make a spiritual successor with David as the lead? That doesn't makes sense. Why should anyone make a spiritual successor of an unfinished game? David became obsessed with the game, pushing the developement. He wants to finish it, but the developement is rough, the other developers are getting frustrated. But David is getting frustrated too, cause of the developement, but also cause of the lack of obsession of his co-workers. So he kills them, cause they don't show the same devotion to the developement. Maybe there is an evil supernatural entity, that makes people obsessed with it and pushes people into madness and makes them commit heinous acts or it was just Davids worsening mental state. Who knows?

[@frippo421]

what if greg is the body? he has a 100% dark meter which might indicate he was the "evil" person who was killed which explains why he has 0% life and the reason he is in the office is because his existence haunts David B. and is essentially with him constantly

[@obetovan]

i kinda find that head-shrug motion used to unblur the screen in event such a nice touch, as if the character in such disbelief, not realizing himself as part of reality, he shrugs it off, almost saying "no" to the whole vastness of what we call "life", thats stationed in front of him. and the possibility to change so many values give way to so many theories, it makes me wonder if anything changes if dark lvls are changed. i wonder if there's still more to explore.

[@nullnull7352]

God I love this, the freaky lost old game with scary real life mysteries inside by looking through the code or game itself is so disturbingly amazing. Playing through Mysteries Under Lake Ophelia while watching and the match of uneasy lost old style game is blending PERFECTLY! Thank you so much for sharing this experience.

[@TheLuvMummy]

This project is so brilliant, but I lowkey wish it was a real game. It's like Dark Souls but set right before the entropy kills everyone.

[@Farron_Claire]

Oh man, I remember exploring this with the community when the game launched. First time doing anything like that.

[@SShonix]

I wish I was happy

[@Farron_Claire]

@@SShonix skill issue

[@SShonix]

@@Farron_Claire Oh ok sorry

[@NotSoMelancholy]

Strange that they choose the SNES as the console for the first one. A game like that with it’s graphics and 3D environments would’ve been more at home on DOS (which they still could’ve kept the fake emulator for)

[@ecoute00]

Yes! It bothers me much more than it probably should. I think making it a PlayStation or Saturn game would work too, but SNES? No way.

[@Strawberry_Cubes]

Thank you so much for making this, I was gonna make a large doc on it, and that doc got corrupted so having a video on it is way better than

[@sarasoj]

There is one line that got overlooked: "I can't sleep lest the dreams come true". D.B couldn't sleep because the body would revisit. He fell asleep. The dream came true.

[@ANGELECSTASY]

you probably wont see this sagan, but thanks so much for the new video, you clearly put endless effort and time into each one and i think im speaking for most people in the audience when i say we cant thank you enough! also i hope you enjoyed the fnaf movie :]

[@w95os]

What you said in your closing statements was one of the most provoking things I have ever heard in a KZbin video. I hardly ever feel enticed to comment on videos, but I felt as if I had to because of its importance to me. I struggle with perfectionism due to my trauma, and although I knew the logical reasons as to why perfection isn't possible, I've never heard it said in such a way that had me genuinely want to attempt to stop being this way. I've loved your content for awhile man, one day I want to be able to do the things you do. Thank you so much.

[@alexandragabitto2573]

Another home run! I agree with the meme thing although it didn’t put me off too much. One of the things I love most about Kira is that they’re a developer that’s really great at balancing the line between horror and humor. That moment in Lost in Vivo where the protagonist remembers their dog and a pic of them pops up had me in tears for an entirely different reason! Kira is also great at grasping how trauma or experiencing/witnessing traumatic things is truly Lovecraftian it really comes out in his works!

[@xMaugrex]

17:00 for your consideration: The sword has not fallen to the ground. It's a POV of the knight, having impaled himself.

[@impermanentLucidity]

This is fascinating, I'm now starving for "level editor of an unreleased adventure game with a haunting backstory" content. The story I extrapolated: David B. made a game in the past, Basilisk for SNES, but the dark story created a thought in his head of a literal basilisk, a monster. Somewhere in restless dreams and haunted visions, he finds/creates a mutilated body in the basement of his studio- a body missing one skin, one arm, one leg, and three rib bones. A real basilisk, a real monster. Production of Basilisk halts, but the thought haunts him, eventually causing him to create a larger team to capture Basilisk 2000 in its full glory. However, the team begins to slack off, fear David, and generally not get the game done, causing the basilisk, the real monster living through the game- to become starved, yet also to become real. One day, David sees the basilisk through himself (I also find it interesting here that B. could stand for Basilisk) and, in a fit of paranoia and rage, he uses the gun under his desk to.. recreate office(0,1). Afterwards, haunted by the monster he created and became, he finishes detailing his sins, unknowing of the references other developers left regarding them, and dumps the CD somewhere, never to be found again- until it comes into our hands. Such is the themes of saviors becoming monsters, of failure and waste: David sought to create a realm to contain the monster in Basilisk 2000 and to create something to absolve himself of the twisted things he saw in dreams and visions, but because the project didn't come to fruition, his basilisk- the one we see in the office- did. I don't think the basilisk is a real monster that's actually crawling around the development offices. More likely, it's a corpse like the ones seen under the graves, potentially skinned- it also seems to be draped across a stack of chairs blocking a doorway, perhaps the exit of the building. I also think the monster that attacks you in the alternate offices is David's recreation of the monster he saw, the one he feared and eventually became. It doesn't harm the player, but it does scare them- much like that corpse did so long ago, the one that David just might have created. I think a lot of details are kept vague on purpose, because there's simply things we shouldn't have information about in the canon of the story, and because the beats of the story are inherently vague, just as the final NPC of Basilisk SNES would tell you. "Maybe he was the monster, maybe just an office worker," etc.

[@XaviosAedifica]

That "friggin sweet" reference to morrowind actually occurs three separate times in the game. The DLC Tribunal pokes fun at this with a naked barbarian who is indignant at you for assuming a witch had something to do with him being naked(He's actually just "cooling off")

[@bearnaff9387]

When is this game supposed to have been burned to disk? The whole concept of DLC as ""Downloadable Content" was invented for Oblivion, in 2006. These graphics seem to be lie somewhere in fidelity between Daggerfall and Morrowind. A professional game meant for sale in the early 2000's wouldn't really have intentionally primitive graphical assets in terms of polygon count. Even if the textures were placeholder - which they appear to be - the models and on-screen effects imply a slightly earlier era of game design. None of this really detracts from the story being told, but it is noteworthy and does really lean into the suspension of disbelief.

[@xX_Thaddeus_Xx]

Would've been better if that mention was changed to 'an expansion pack'--*that* would've been era-appropriate.

[@Clavanz]

The homages to Morrowind really ties together how the creator(s) appreciates RPGs with some deep underlying stories, if it wasn't obvious from the story they created themselves.

[@LosoaII]

I fully accept the hall of skeletons being a bit of a moodkiller for the story. I'd go a step further to say that seeing Basilisk supposedly being on the SNES looking like that was a bit of a moodkiller for me. Ain't no super fx chip or mode 7 gonna be pulling off that.

[@NovaAeternus]

I was thrown off by the word "DLC", cause even I know those didn't exist back then

[@oi6915]

​@@NovaAeternusdlc did exist in the form of expansion packs, one example off the top of my head is the Dreamcast which had dlc capabilities or the failed n64dd which had expansion potential

[@dentelle2190]

more of a 3DO, Jaguar, or 32x game

[@lixyororke]

@@oi6915DLC existed but it wasn't called DLC, it was called expansions or whatever. DLC is a more modern term

[@MarioFromMario]

That game being intended to be an SNES game made me click out of the video. It looks literally nothing like an SNES game. Completely took me out of it.

[@MobiusChickenStrip]

Great video! I've never heard of this developer and now I'm really intrigued. Another anachronism that bothered me was the use of the term "DLC" in the editor notes. That term wasn't used in the year 2000.

[@AstralPhnx]

The concept certainly existed at the time what with the Dreamcast and PC games starting to make better use of online patches and stuff but it absolutely was not called DLC at the time yeah

[@LunaWitcherArt]

It's amazing just HOW MANY creative fields have to deal with the fact that if you just tweak it until it's perfect, you will never finish and you will never learn.

[@JonathanDavidsonn]

1:04:00 for context, that's a raytracing/pathtracing rendering method, which I'm totally not geeking out on rn. It's just simply not clearing the previous pixels where the ray hit, it's not truly raytracing, but it provides a texture at the position the ray hits, but it deletes itself outside clipping space. I'm so impressed by how the developer did this game. It's so clever and I didn't know of this cause I watched a streamer play it a few months ago called Tomato. This blew my mind, thanks for sharing this!!

[@RaverSnowLep]

Its just plugins for the game engines store. A dev of this size is not creating their own.

[@marycatgirlnya]

Came for the horror, stayed for the existential crisis and reflection this caused me. Good game, good video. I'll never try to pursue perfection ever again on my projects, sometimes finishing something is just good and even better than being perfect.

[@Salty_C.J.]

In Kira’s later game Lunacid the basilisk returns to give you a magic spell that kiIIs yourself after you stare at a corpse in a hidden room of one of the levels

[@messatine]

Curious, the first thing that came to mind after seeing the protagonist spare Scratch was that Scratch summoned the Basilisk

[@HyperfixationWizard]

Something really interesting is that the Serpent Fang and Blood Sword (now called Saint Ishii) appear as equipable weapons in Kira's other game released this year, Lunacid. Saint Ishii even has a description of it being "a blade from a dead world."

[@DarkwaveMistress]

This is such an interesting game. AkumaKira is a really talented dev. I just wish devs who make retro games talked to people who actually played old games at the time to get the vibes right. Dlc? Despite that, fantastic.

[@colbaltmind5696]

Morrowind did such things. Tribunal and Bloodmoon are dlc, they were just called Expansion Packs more than DLC and morrowind came around in 2002

[@Divuar]

​@@colbaltmind5696 The term hadn't been invented back then because most people didn't have the Internet speed good enough to download such amounts of data. they were expansion packs or add-ons, yes.

[@rando843]

@@colbaltmind5696that’s the point tho, call them expansions and not dlc lol

[@cactuss33ds]

this was my biggest pain point. it's hacky.

[@MaitreMechant]

​@@colbaltmind5696 "morrowind did such things" lmao no ? they were called expansion, just like you said, not Downloable Content.

[@juice6199]

If the game was supposed to be released in 2000, I find the "May use later as DLC" thing to be kind of odd, maybe just an accident or something.

[@strongfork]

oh my goodness im so happy you made an akuma kira video they have been my favorite dev for so long

[@dracorex426]

I'm not entirely sure that the Torn Knight was necessarily evil. I think he was mad. Sent to somehow end a famine that was ultimately caused by his own king hoarding resources, surrounded by pointless suffering it was his duty to end while unable to complete that duty, seeing the hope his coming inspired in the populace and then watching it slowly fade away as he failed to end the crisis, he broke. If everybody was dead, nobody would starve. So he killed them all. And then, coming to his senses and horrified by what he'd done, he ended himself. Through some combination of pure will, madness, and the magic of his home he created a new world. Or something like that. At the very least I think it's pretty objectively true that he killed everyone to end the famine.

[@toolatetothestory]

The only game that would come to my mind that has a "haunted" vibe to it would be "Please love my Computer Game"

[@poisonsumac2944]

YAI gameworks mentioned???

[@toolatetothestory]

Their games in general may not be really my thing, BUT I cannot deny that PLMCG has some of the best haunted game vibes I know. Really feels like a game you'd find somewhere next to a dumpster in a dark alley @@poisonsumac2944

[@aikordcz4424]

I don't know if you've noticed, but I think the room at 1:05:38 is the same one the basilisc foto (54:48) was taken in (or at least its really close to it). Also, I think this room is the one where David B find the basilisk body, and maybe this is where the door blocked by police tapes (from Arena 42:18) lead to

[@zesty_honey]

I have to be honest, the hall of skeletons bit took me out of the whole experience. Akuma went through such lengths to keep the immersion of it being developed in the 90's-2000's, but then just blatantly breaks it pretty much right out of the gate

[@PlayABetterGame]

the Sus skeleton makes up for it though be honest with yourself

[@TheRadioSquare]

Eh, it's one indie developer that made a very cool and conceptually unique horror "series," but it's still just a game. It's someone creative expression, their hobby, and a way of having fun.

[@notgray88]

I mean, having a level editor of this complexity is already very unrealistic for a videogame that supposedly was developed in the early 90s, not the mention the very realistic looking hidden levels such as "EVENT"

[@ExValeFor]

@@TheRadioSquare and they've completely fucked it

[@richardlionerheart1945]

​ @notgray88 basilisk 2000 was developed in 2000, and the devkit looks like the creation kit for morrowind, which came out in 2001

[@bluekitty0105]

24:39 “Your eyes contribute to your own destruction”- a basilisk has the ability to kill just by being seen/making eye contact with another- so, The Basilisk is destroying itself by looking at, examining, scrutinizing itself too much?

[@dylanmiller9162]

Literally choked at the two wolves thing, incredible

[@MRG462]

What still confuses me is what was up with the photograph of a “real Basilisk”? Was it the same body that David found and if so when exactly does the photograph date? Is it the day he found it or someone else’s photos? We were told the body was still alive at least in the back of David’s mind, but what if we took that literally as to connect it to the photograph allowing for multiple possibilities of when it was taken. It was most definitely in the same office so maybe it was David the day he found the body, this would propose the body being alive or dead it would work either way, or maybe it’s a photo of David finding it again later. There’s also the possibility it is dated after all the main events and someone stumbled across it in an “abandoned” office building, proposing it being alive literally as roaming the building.

[@gayrurumon]

Very glad I stopped the video to play Basilisk 2000 for myself. What an amazing game, I can't believe this is the first time I've heard about it. *some spoilers ahead* I did find a few things you missed or left out of the video (some additional tablets in Arena, a coffin with a strange description in Nimoor). By the same token, you found a whole bunch of stuff that I missed or didn't figure out when I played blind. It's kind of incredible just how much stuff is packed into this game.

[@lmcvd314]

I read the basilisk David found as a metaphor for the first game. People attempted to create something but eventually abandoned it, and David hopes to in some way recreate what he saw. I think the fact that the recipe calls for an arm and a leg supports this idea of what the basilisk is. The basilisk, just like it was in the first game, isn't a literal thing as much as a projection. Also that's why both games share code despite that not being possible.

[@terrymechem4296]

Haven't watched the video yet but just wanted to say that when I glanced at the thumbnail I legitimately thought it said "BALLSACK 2000"

[@CHika-360]

This was literally my first impression of Sagan and the intro impressed me so much. It felt cinematic and kind of dreamlike if that makes any sense? I'm going to subscribe because I'm looking forward to Sagan's future vids. (catch me binge watching him hehe)

[@dekkoks9631]

Something that isn't touched upon (Might be due Sagan not having played Lunacid yet) is how the Moon section and it's 'Angel' bear a striking resemblence to the Great One in Lunacid and it's secret Ending. Would say it might have been a hint of how those two worlds are connected as Basilisk 2000 was released around when Lunacid was still in Early Access and how there are many references inside the game when it left out said phase, with some weapons and other 'things' appearing. With even the probability of more connections as Kira did say that they planned in an interview to add post launch content, maybe new zones or others things. At the moment this comment was made Kira did indeed confirm on adding somethin new this december, just christmas, but it's still neat that it will get some care.

[@AstralPhnx]

Considering Lunacid got a big hecking 2.0 update recently it's defo still cooking. Kira still has plans for it which is very exciting

[@MrSnozzer]

As a side note that I haven't seen anyone mention, after a certain point (I believe visiting the RITUAL map as it triggered before killing the Basilisk for me but after loading the map) most of the other normal maps become night time and slightly change. I only noticed one major change and one Easter egg which I likely just missed on my daytime play time. Firstly the important change. The guards inside CHAPEL00 are dead. One with their jaw missing and the other with their limbs missing. This seems important to me and indicates that there may be more changes that I have failed to find. The Easter egg is a guy called Ted dancing inside a hill in the Castle map. I'd be very interested to see any additional changes that are added after night time comes around.

[@theclown6217]

Opening to the video was immediately captivating and also really well made! I don't know how to explain it but it was very satisfying!

[@GISchmo]

Having worked on multiple game projects that were killed off before release, there are a lot of themes in Basilisk that I can relate to. Hey! Great video! Impressive job of telling a story from a source that is so amazingly non-linear.

[@arknark]

An interesting dive into something I never would have known about otherwise, while also serving as a great painting companion. Thanks for the vid dude. I see your hard work.

[@ChristopherSadlowski]

What are you painting? A room or art?

[@arknark]

@@ChristopherSadlowski art :)

[@Falkenhorst2000]

The "turn it into DLC" note feels a bit off, since the term "DLC" wasn't really widely in use at the time this was supposed to have been made. (I say that, because IIRC the Dreamcast had actual DLCs, even around that time. Tho, I don't exactly know if it was actually called DLC, but I wouldn't be surprised.) Back then, it would have probably been called "Expansion".

[@danielsurvivor1372]

You need to do more videos about "haunted" games like that, this is SO good and scary in a good way.

[@wulptices]

fantastic work as always, mister hawkes! your essays are a big go-to when i need to get some drawing done, and i simply cannot begin to describe the way you elicited an ache in my chest by making me hear "perfect is the enemy of finished" while coming to a close on an illustration that's taken me months to tackle. chills. you absolutely, completely, unequivocally Get It. thank you sir

[@oneinathousand2156]

It always takes me out of these types of unfiction that involve things from the past when they don’t recreate past limitations very well, and they might put in some kind of excuse like “Oh, these fake devs/animators/etc were super ahead of their time and had powerful tech!” or “Oh no the game’s haunted!” which I find silly. Basilisk SNES doesn’t look like an SNES game. It clearly takes its aesthetic/gameplay influences from Baroque for the Sega Saturn, so Akuma Kira could recreate that look pretty well, and Basilisk 2000 looks more convincing to its era. Plus, the anachronistic elements are more justified by the people making the emulator probably putting in things after the fact or Easter eggs from Kira, while Basilisk SNES lacks such justifications for its whole look. If it were supposed to be for the PS1 or Saturn, I wouldn’t complain. Still, overall this is a really cool piece of art.

[@TheMemeSheriff]

The question on my mind is how were these games supposed to be actually played? It seemed no combat or challenge or objectives were ever developed. How would the SNES game have worked if it was just a knight killing people? And how would the SNES have been able to load those graphics? Was the 2000s game a platformer, or a first person fighter, or both? It feels like these games were meant to tell the ARG story (which obviously they were but you get my point) then games that were abandoned.

[@honeyxew469]

I like the idea that, since the two dev teams had no connection, the ending of Basilisk SNES was theorized about within 2000’s team, to which they came up with the theory that the basilisk and knight are the same being. This leaves it so we still don’t know truly what Basilisk SNES’s ending means!