The Details Racing Games Want You To Ignore

#burnoutparadiseremastered #burnout #ambient #liminalspace #analysis
patreon- / any_austin
discord- / discord
instagram- / any_austin
threads- www.threads.ne...
twitter- / any_austin
twitch- / any_austin
TikTok- / any_austin
For my music, search “The Excellent Man from Minneapolis” on your favorite streaming service, or click here for Spotify- open.spotify.c...

[@any_austin]

This was a fun one for me and was my first time trying a totally improvised video essay. It didn’t go exactly as planned and required some reshoots but I still think it’s a great topic and a great video. What are your thoughts?

[@Innofcogneato]

I'm enjoying this type of video Austin! I think it's a little more casual in nature and therefore a little cozier😊

[@FriskKoshimizu]

anything thats not skyrim

[@Eppobot]

very good!

[@user-xsn5ozskwg]

It was wonderful, a great topic for sure with your usual fun execution

[@Feurns]

one offs on the random shit that pops into your brain are great. do whatever you wanna do - the audience will follow

[@jacintaangel3438]

My older sister always ignored the races when we played the need for speed games as kids so she could go 'house shopping' and pick out where she would live in that world. It used to drive me crazy but when I got a bit older I found myself doing the same thing and making up my own little stories and characters when I got tired of racing

[@Tabbix]

That is so cute omg.

[@Unkraut]

oh yeah i loved just looking at the places in need for speed. the hillside in underground 2 and the parks in most wanted i really liked just stopping at

[@SolidIncMedia]

I did a similar thing when I played Duke Nukem 3D and Driver 2 as a kid (who had no business playing video games with violence, swearing and near-naked women in it). In Duke3D, I'd pretend to go to the bar or go and see a film or pretend that I was an employee opening up the subway station in the morning. In Driver 2 I'd just cruise around the city, maybe pretending to be a taxi driver or driving to and from work or something. Was there more "fun" to be had playing the game as intended? Sure I guess. Did *I* have fun driving around just seeing the sights? Absolutely. I'm probably overdue for another "don't play the game, just cruise around town and look at stuff"..

[@SammEater]

@@Unkraut Underground 2 city is still my favorite place in the entire series, especially when you can look at the city below from one of those hills, at night when it rains and it makes the lights shiny so bright it's such a good mood, especially if the song Unwritten Law is playing at the moment. I just love to park my car and look at the city from there.

[@SammEater]

@@SolidIncMedia I did something similar in Driver 3, in the Istambul level I would like to ride the train and look out at the window and pretend I was riding to work or something. lol

[@ohno5559]

There's just something so enchanting about wandering around in these drab, repetitive places that were only designed to be driven past and don't really make logical sense as a place for people to actually exist in. Then, once I'm tired from walking around San Diego, I head back to my apartment to play some video games.

[@rairaur2234]

Lmao

[@user-yv6xw7ns3o]

​@@rairaur2234yes

[@crashyyy4116]

Lmao

[@mousse.mousse]

Lmao

[@user-yv6xw7ns3o]

@@ohno5559 I'm getting notifications for these comments for no reason but that's cool Lmao

[@galaxa13]

I love how your channel is basically "Instead of playing a video game, let's just stop and look at it."

[@wzpu3283]

... Just look at it!

[@theblah12]

Something we should all do a lot more often, I think. Just stop and take in the vibes.

[@xTheReapersSpawn]

@@theblah12 We all need to stop living, and start vibing. Ya feel me, san?

[@redwiltshire1816]

Honestly I thought everyone did this? Especially in open work games

[@ohnothepossum]

@@redwiltshire1816 same but everytime i asked somebody about doing that they never do it theselves. I personally don't like playing a game and not actually exploring it and looking at it. It tends to make my gaming experience really long tho, usually, but also really detailed and interesting.

[@IFinishedAVideoGame]

This video really is a testament to the whole "video is actually way more interesting than it sounds" concept. It's peak KZbin really

[@any_austin]

I like your videos. Thank you.

[@vman99]

Videos like this are why are I started watching KZbin in the first place,

[@kiraoshiro6157]

something I started doing in gtav recently was go around looking for any phone number written somewhere in the world. I had to use my in game camera to be able to zoom in far enough to see the numbers in most instances. on billboards, fliers on poles, various company vehicles, posters and pamphlets inside buildings, and sometimes rubbish. there's one billboard advertising a clown and if you call the number it'll say it's no longer in use. that was the only one that was different, as far as I could tell if you called any of these other phone numbers you'd hear one of three responses: 1 it gets picked up and hung up immediately 2 a guy tells you to stop calling/pranking him or 3 what I can only describe as the worst machine noise ever. those and the clown number response are all different than if you just called a completely random number where it would say the line is busy. one detail I didn't notice until I started doing this, was that on the door of a taxi and on the back of the seat visible in first person when you're passenger, the number for the company is there and it works. there's no need for the player to have this information though, cos all three characters already have it in their contacts. but that was what made me start looking at other company vehicles too. I'm still investigating so maybe I'll discover more things idk. if anyone else wanted mess with this, remember the beginning of the number will always be (323) 555-whatever as 323 is apparently the los santos area code and fictional numbers start with 555.

[@ohno5507]

You can actually call any contact in the game as long as you know the number they have. Most interestingly, this includes the weird girl you can meet as Trevor and make booty calls with. The game doesn't check if yoy've met her, and she will answer as if you already got her number. I think it also has some speedrun application as well.

[@kiraoshiro6157]

@@ohno5507 oooh that is interesting, though I knew you could contact characters by dialing the number manually, I was mostly talking about the numbers that have nothing to do with the story and exist only for worldbuilding and/or shiggles what you said makes me think though, ik that it's possible to have trevor and franklin "meet" before they're actually introduced to each other but idk what happens if you call michael or trevor as franklin right after his first mission

[@Snoopy-20111]

Spot on. The interesting thing is that this approach goes for how it sounds as well. I worked on Forza Motorsport (2023) as a sound designer, on a bunch of things but most relevantly on the tracks Le Mans and Suzuka. It wasn’t open world but the same principle applied: I put in ridiculous effort to try and make it sound like those places in real life, have plausible birds and bugs for what looked like the season, and to make the environment reflections sound realistic at any speed. Nobody ever noticed, because it all sounded pretty much identical at 200 mph, and the wind+engine were obviously much louder than any owl hoot system or Japanese Cicadas. Sometimes tech is indeed the limitation (rendering tens of thousands of fully rigged and animated crowd members with individual voices and cheers and locations is still basically impossible, even if you make everything else look/sound like butt). But it’s certainly an order of magnitude less constraining than it used to be, and when you pump the brakes to look around, it still ends up in a similar place.

[@any_austin]

I wanna do a podcast with people like you

[@Snoopy-20111]

@@any_austin Would love to be on one! Full disclosure, Forza Motorsport was the first AAA game I ever shipped and I don't work there anymore, so I only have so much insight, but it would be a lot of fun.

[@cyberyogicowindler2448]

I guess Hard Drivin (Atari arcade machine) was the 1st 3D racing game with actual flowers spread on the ground (possibly just to see ones own speed when driving on the green offroad surface, but they have different colours and shapes).

[@ninjaswordtothehead]

Now I have to go and reinstall that game so I can stop and listen. Especially because I love Le Mans.

[@Snoopy-20111]

@@ninjaswordtothehead Please do! Try cranking the time scale as fast as it'll go to see the light change, hear the birds & bugs come in and out, etc. You may have to play with the volume settings to turn down engines & tires at times though, since in the final game they were turned way up by comparison.

[@WatchVidsMakeLists]

Austin is such a king of slowing down, I'm surprised he even owns a racing game

[@Syrange13]

You have to be moving fast in order to slow down.

[@THICCTHICCTHICC]

Nah I just go MAD slow ​@@Syrange13

[@sirtacovi3262]

Going slow is how he plays games, and he needed to start challenging himself

[@itsthedeek234]

We stan a Slow King

[@SuFoYa]

​@@Syrange13 lol u can be moving slow and slow down too. Wym?

[@regularrock8637]

10:10 That machine is called a pallet jack. It's basically a hand-pushed, hand-pumped equivalent to a forklift, used to move large amounts of goods that have been stacked onto shipping pallets. I use one at work to move bulk samples about. It's absolutely the sort of equipment I would expect to see in that sort of situation (in my job, a lot of people spend break times very close to the loading dock due to the easy access to fresh air).

[@cyberyogicowindler2448]

Some stunt people use them like a kick scooter. I wonder if there is already a game about this.

[@flyingdeathcatsgo]

@@cyberyogicowindler2448 I've ridden a pallet jack or 2 in my day. Real easy to jackknife and crash.

[@perriwinkleiii5361]

​@@flyingdeathcatsgoagreed, riding the pallet jack is a bad idea - BUT if you're looking for "unsafe" ways to have fun at work and haven't loaded your coworker onto a dolly and driven them around, I highly recommend it

[@Quadraplexion]

I can't even call it a machine lol it's more like a tool

[@AK-tf3fc]

how you afford internet is you do that low skill work

[@Leftysrev3nge]

10:30 And then he goes and does the powerlines idea. Mad genius!

[@JimChicken]

This channel is the definition of “videos you watch while you eat”

[@drcatboy9278]

just watched this while eating. so true

[@ImLightningSam]

just watched this while eating. so true

[@miguelgoldberg]

just watched this while eating. so true

[@henryjohnson-ville3834]

just watched this while eating. so true

[@baranoid]

just watched this while eating. so true

[@zerodollarbird]

The billboards in Remastered replace actual for-sale ad space in the original release, up to and including ads for the Obama campaign. Burger King, the clothing brand Diesel, XM radio shows, and car brands, all bought space.

[@any_austin]

That’s amazing

[@funx24X7]

Am I crazy or did they, for the PS3 version, have billboards that integrated your PS Home avatar? I remember the shock of seeing my guy reclining in a faux cologne ad but now I can't find any evidence that they actually did this.

[@zerodollarbird]

@@funx24X7 Can't say for sure but it sounds plausible.

[@42crazyguy]

​@@funx24X7 the 360 version did that too I'm pretty sure.

[@joeymooring5314]

dude i forgot about this. thank you. holy shit

[@WIImotionmasher]

The idea that older games' "don't look" areas are the same fidelity as their "look" areas, is a super remarkable point. Right, that's part of why exploring them can sometimes feel more exciting, because every part of the game says "there might be something here" even when there isn't. But with higher fidelity, its easier to see the sloppy areas for what they are.

[@cyberyogicowindler2448]

...until in future all this will be filled in by creative AI (possibly in realtime, with unexpected dream-like glitches).

[@maksrambe3812]

​@@cyberyogicowindler2448or just procedural generation. Dwarf fortress isn't a game with very advanced graphics, but the geography and history of the procedurally generated world's are very believable and are arguably unparalleled.

[@houdinigenie2]

Wtf am I doing

[@matibuche4897]

Do you know, now?

[@Onyx-_-liquor]

Bro same lol

[@lexxshot8894]

You figured it out yet?

[@unknowable4147]

Finding the best channel on KZbin :D

[@X862go]

We're learning (KNOWLEDGE)🤯

[@Draenen]

Someone was paid $28/h to write three spoofed, full-sized newspaper front pages, and then they got bit-crushed to depth to save resources and they're ineligible. There's philosophy in that.

[@Scubadog_]

these little areas is what really captivated me in games when i was a kid. i would just run around on empty counterstrike maps, try to get out of map bounds and just find cool places you're not meant to be. my playstyle is a little different now, but im glad you reminded me to look for it again.

[@martyshrekster]

I feel like the Tony Hawk games are ripe for this kind of analysis. Can't tell you how much time I spent in American Wasteland and Underground 1/2 just wandering around and looking at stuff. One of my favorite pastimes was going into the park editor and just building towns, always designating one spot as "my house." Even figured out a way to clip inside of the place-able shack so I could just sit in there and hang out.

[@Niclau96]

It warms my heart to learn that other people also did this kind of thing back when

[@eyeballjay]

Haha I used to do this with the EA Skate games, so much focus in those games was on skating ofc, so the fact they were set in big open world cities meant there were so many weird corners of the map + little details that were there as filler, and never meant to be skated on or looked at. When I built parks in the park editor in the 3rd game I always made sure there were places for my skaters to sit, eat, sleep etc 😂 Edit: sorry I have ADHD and do not perceive punctuation when I type, added some commas for you.

[@QWERTYCommander]

The 1/2 remake had some old Neversoft blood in the dev team and the art direction was incredible. They managed to take levels made for the PS1 and update them to an 8th gen standard with the collision detection and level layout barely changed. And if you play with the soundtrack off you can really notice how good the ambient sound design is, especially in the Mall level.

[@404ares]

I used to explore THUG2 SOO much as a kid, I especially loved the funny end-game outdoor punk skatepark level? With the hill? I have no idea what it was called it was like skatetopia or something but. All of their city maps were also super fun, spent hours exploring Boston and Barcelona. That era of tony hawk maps are just so fun.

[@n8thegreatest]

I definitely tried to re-create my high school in THPS 2 and other parts of my hometown to varying degrees of success

[@Dieselnaut16]

Just wanted to leave a comment to appreciate this kind of content your channel is a goldmine for random video game shit like this that no one else focuses on I love it

[@octavianpopescu4776]

This sort of content should become a YT genre.

[@keganmemestar4465]

@@octavianpopescu4776 It kind of is at this point

[@cyberyogicowindler2448]

​@@octavianpopescu4776 AFAIK there is an art genre of in-game photography, where they try to plan screenshots of strange scenes (sometimes with multiple player posing as actors).

[@cringeposting435]

The best part is that it's not quite random. Everything has a theme and everything relates to each other. I love this type of stuff but I just can't put it into words to describe exactly what it is... and he does it. Phenomenally.

[@JBrander]

the content really hits me with nostalgia, since I exactly used to do these mundane things in video games (even now). Like in GTA San Andreas I remember going into the suburbs and going to the shops and houses just to explore. To read the posters up on the wall and see if the apartments have air-conditioning units on their windows or something. lol

[@powdermonkey9300]

My sister and I used to roleplay random storylines in burnout and completely ignore the races. We would drive around to where we weren't supposed to go and listen to the soundtrack that had the music she liked at the time. This brought me back to a memory I didn't even remember I had, and that's one of the best things from your channel.

[@dudagladuos]

I love the action of ignoring the progression of a game and just play and roleplay with its virtual environment. I know many people, including myself, that did not know that GTA had missions to be done and a storyline rather than just being a theft and slaughter sandbox. And there comes that one day when they tell us about it and it feels we were "doing it wrong" the entire time. It's so nice you have memories of actually living in that virtual world with someone else real rather than just playing how it was meant to be done

[@cyberyogicowindler2448]

I wrote a little sci-fi background story about awaking in the lonely German small town of the Astragon Fahr-Simulator 2009, of that I made a whole playlist with plenty of absurd glitchride videos.

[@alexfarkas3881]

@@cyberyogicowindler2448 Wow, that's amazing. I genuinely love that idea!

[@bigboipapa1441]

Lmao just got done watching your GTA 4 power line video and then went back and watched some of your older vids. Kinda cool to see that details like that were ideas for videos for months in advance.

[@ShukusatsuDirk]

10:33 this video now also exists by Any Austin

[@QWERTYCommander]

When I was a kid I once tried to properly follow traffic laws in GTA 4. It's funny because that's when the simulation breaks down, just like if you look closely at these environments. Other cars ran red lights and stopped on greens, and I eventually got a Wanted rating for a car accident that I didn't even cause.

[@npc5z]

Haha yesss, I tried doing that too. I remember it being verrry difficult to not get into an accident, no matter how hard I tried, and since there isn't a fully designed traffic light/flow management system, you just hit a bunch of random red lights that last way too damn long. It became so painful that I ended up rage quitting my own simulation and rampaging on people and the city harder than I would have otherwise.

[@tortellinitime8533]

Dougdoug actually has a video of trying to follow all the laws in gta (albeit his is very chaotic cause of mods and antics) on a set drive across the city, which you might find interesting idk

[@abonynge]

You would enjoy Mafia 2.

[@alewis514]

@@abonynge I played Mafia 1 back in the day and I was like - what? Police chases me for doing 50 mph in 40 zone or simply running a red light? I have to drive these taxi missions by the book?! What sorcery is this lol xD A game that released along Mafia 1 (GTA3) had no traffic rules. The only rule was to not crash directly into a squad car. That's it. Otherwise even driving 100 mph on a walkway was fine.

[@NegativeProcess]

I did the same and I remember it so vividly, they'd honk at you and get pissed that you werevwaiting at lights. It was really upsetting.

[@maximum7790]

when i was a kid playing need for speed with my brother, my fav thing to do in the game (outside of spectacularly crashing my car) was to leave the road and drive in a the countryside until i found a nice enough spot where i would just stop and just…. soak the atmosphere in. i spend way too long looking at random shit in this game lmao

[@frontbottomsfan]

so real

[@maxwellmorgan]

What game did you play most like this?

[@maximum7790]

@@maxwellmorgan uh?

[@maxwellmorgan]

@@maximum7790 Which NFS games did you play in that way?

[@hashemmi24]

NFS 2 se I bet

[@anonymoususer8924]

I just wanted to say at 5:30 i feel like these are all a more realistic version of what we call liminal spaces nowadays. None of them are spots you would spend much time in, like a grocery store parking lot or a back alley, but they are transitionary spaces you have passed through and that you recognize now. Throw in the mid-2000s looks and you have a liminal space that reminds you of places you have gone and sometimes felt comfort previously. Combine that with the nostalgia of the time and you have a seemingly innocuous space that somehow calls out to you and you just cant put a finger on as to why.

[@IDNeon357]

Who paused 2:59 to see Any Austin tell us books have terrible graphics 😂

[@homesickNovalis]

I had a feeling that pause would be worth it lol. (And also just now realizing how fitting it is that you have to stop the flow of the video to get these little details, when you're watching a video about stopping your car in a race game to check out some buildings lol)

[@random_dragon]

​@@homesickNovalisI don't know if he did that on purpose or not, but it feels poetic

[@matthewschultz3691]

I’m sitting here watching an Any Austin video. If he had his way I would ignore the hair clips in his hair. How crazy is that?

[@GMoDiLLa]

I thought they were cell phones

[@evanseifert8858]

I thought they were those clips for chip bags. "Chip clips", as they are sometime known.

[@paul4000]

@@GMoDiLLa being ignorant is fine, but if that’s the case don’t comment, you don’t get a participation grade

[@GMoDiLLa]

@@paul4000 how am I sposta know I’m ignint if I don’t got chums like you to lmk?

[@TheTuttle99]

​@@paul4000being an ass is fine, but you as well don't need to comment

[@ikkenhissatsu8564]

Some of my favorite gaming memories is being a kid and exploring the map of need for speed underground with my cousin. It accomplished nothing, but we just wanted to explore and see the world. You do a great job at capturing the emotion of those feelings and that drive, that is unique to video games? Not exactly the same, but i remember reading a story about a guy who had his grandpa play LA noire because it was it was a time capsule for him. He drove sround and pointed out places to his grandson.

[@maximum7790]

i did exactly the same with my brother on need for speed! (i mean i did that while he watched me and begged me to give him his turn on the controller)

[@SoIstice]

I remember when I was younger I'd try driving into saloons and stuff in one of the maps in MX vs ATV Unleashed. I'd usually end up falling off of the bike but this topic in racing games in particular takes me back to that game specifically.

[@toddthezondalover645]

​@@SoIsticeMX v. ATV were great for this until they ruined the franchise

[@funx24X7]

Burnout Paradise had one of the most surreal, uncanny moments in gaming: On PS3 they integrated your PS Home avatar onto the in game billboards (if you had one). It somehow both added and removed immersion at the same time. I can't even find search results that prove they did this so it could just be a mandela hallucination.

[@AVirtualDuck]

I was living in Switzerland at the time I played BP and I distinctly remember getting a McDonalds cheeseburger ad in German on one of the billboards...in my English language Xbox 360 copy of Burnout. They were definitely up to some strange activities back then.

[@Rad-Dude63andathird]

​@@AVirtualDuck Ah yeah, 360 games were especially notorious for doing that! Personally thought it was the neatest way to do ads in a game, if you're gonna do them at all. I believe the first couple, if not just Saints Row 2 did the same thing with in game billboards. 😀

[@EmeraldAbyss77]

I know that the need for speed most wanted 2012 game had avatars on billboards, so I assume same devs, same features

[@toddthezondalover645]

Remember the Obama billboards in the demo?

[@syrelian]

@@Rad-Dude63andathird EA was absolutely shilling sponsor space on billboards and other surfaces during the PS2 era, and its by and large tolerable since its not intrusive, of course there's advertising there, why wouldn't there be?

[@SomeGuyWhoPlaysGames333]

I noticed this when playing Need for Speed Most Wanted. The downtown has unreachable skyscrapers, there are highway side apartments, farms and other buildings that can’t be reached, there are highway overpasses that connect to nothing and there’s apparently only one road that anyone can use to go in and out of the city, and it’s blocked off by construction, lol.

[@LeeDavisonYo]

A whole 11:30 video about a 2 second thought

[@upper8975]

That's why he's the goat, THE GOAT

[@Kavukamari]

i love the sort of raw literalist outlook you like to have in video games, like "what if this place were reality? does this snack machine make sense? does this hallway make sense?"

[@nelson-haha89]

As someone who has worked on a QA team for a racing game, I have spent a lot of time looking at this kind of stuff. This really captures the heavily curated falseness that is very particular to racing game environments.

[@bwc1976]

"Heavily curated falseness", I love that phrase! A lot of that goes into building theme parks as well.

[@burnin8able]

great video. I like the little bit about beautiful sunsets as seen from parking lots, the thing I take away from those pictures is just that's where people happen to be when the beauty of the world around them simply happens, since they aren't seeking it out. There's something surreal about the mundanity of our suburban structures being subjected to the majesty of the natural sky every once in a while.

[@eyeballjay]

At least in my country large supermarkets are often built at the top of towns because there is no room for them in the centre, so being at a height may contribute to it being a good view for sunsets. But yea there is a magic in seeing something beautiful and bigger than life in the context of the mundane. peace and love on planet earth

[@kloveda5]

Old guys used to have a joke called a 40/40 paint job. “From 40ft away at 40mph it looks pretty good” that’s basically the premise of set dressing in racing games.

[@HunterAllan]

8:27 what reading with astigmatism is like

[@bugjams]

It's kind of crazy seeing someone else interested in this incredibly hyper-specific topic. As a kid, I would _always_ do this with racing games. I loved completely ignoring the races and just driving around seeing the environments. Some of the racing games I remember exploring this way were Mario Kart Double Dash, Flatout 2, Lego Drome Racers, GT Legends, Test Drive Off Road 3, Hot Wheels Stunt Track Challenge, and a weird little game called Chicken Hunter: License to Grill (which I doubt anyone else even knows about). As a kid I had a fascination with out-of-bounds areas in games, or the little background details that were never meant to be looked at closely. I guess they gave me a weird dream-like feeling, which today would be called liminality, but at the time I didn't even know what that word meant. Details like that still fascinate me today, but it's kind of hard nowadays to find games with un-polished areas, let alone the ability to go out-of-bounds to see them without 3rd party engines. This was so much more common in early 2000's games which only makes their nostalgic oddness more potent to me today.

[@DELTARYZ]

Modern game design uses way more invisible walls and non-walkable terrain. You notice this especially with remakes like Spyro, where they will introduce more barriers and make surfaces non-walkable that you could stand on in the original.

[@cyberyogicowindler2448]

​@@DELTARYZ What happens when a game has none, shows the Astragon Fahr-Simulator 2009. I made here plenty of glitchride videos doing stunt tricks to jump with the car into offroad areas those were never intended to be seen closer or driven on. In many places you just fall through the floor or get stuck in bizarre ways.

[@theblah12]

@@DELTARYZI think that’s largely a result of the visible geometry no longer matching 1-1 with the collision mesh. You look at those old PS1 Spyro games and the levels are made out of simple geometry shapes - if you can see it you can stand on it, largely. Modern games, like the Spyro remakes, make most of the visible geometry out of individually placed meshes - lots of rocks smushed together to make cliff faces, buildings made out of a kit of modular structures like pillars and arches snapped together like Lego - by necessity the collision mesh needs to be a simplified representation of the level so the player and NPCs don’t get stuck on objects. Though I agree that a lot of games go a bit overboard with the invisible walls these days. The way the recent God of War games lock climbing up walls and structures to predetermined locations can become really annoying at times, it almost feels like you’re playing a board game with how limiting the player’s movement is on anything but flat terrain.

[@JackCheeseJ]

This kind of thing has been on my mind, lately, playing Splatoon 3. There's a huge amount of detail on the multiplayer stages that you really don't have time to appreciate during matches. A ton of attention seems to have been put into the design, to allow players to quickly interpret the environment as a bunch of surfaces relevant to painting and traversing them. When I use Recon Mode to just hang out and explore a stage, though, I notice details, decorations, or realize what some part of the level geometry is actually meant to be, that I've been rushing past so many times. Putting that much extra detail that many people won't notice during play seems like a cumbersome, and possibly very counterintuitive thing to prioritize along side of making sure the visual language is so mechanically clear, but it's really impressive how well it works in that game. There's also examples of the lower detail areas you're meant to ignore, but in Splatoon those are usually locations you can't actually reach. In-bounds areas seem to be consistently filled with little artistic embellishments.

[@Revenge-fm9tt]

The splatoon 1 plaza floored me with it's detail. Every vending machine was plugged in to an outlet. Each shop had a visible sensor for their automatic doors. The mailbox had a sticker on the side that was torn in half from the little door being opened.

[@dantesdiscoinfernolol]

YES I spent 30 minutes just walking around Robo ROMen once - there are robots working with Jellyfish chefs, trying and failing to get past each other in the halls, and one perpetually out-speeding a poor Jellyfish worker trying to catch up to it to give it the ramen bowl it's supposed to be holding!

[@theblah12]

There’s a real art to making game environments that feel like a real, lived in world without compromising on gameplay legibility. CS2 is another great example with a ton of details in its maps that very few players will stop to look at but really help sell the vibe of the place. It’s really interesting watching analysis videos of the maps and seeing how the careful placement of objects help guide the player down corridors or act as “soft” barriers between the playable area and the out of bounds, without feeling contrived or out of place.

[@zb3268]

Gerard Butler starred in a movie called Gamer. It was a surreal idea of a world that has always stuck with me because someone on production put a lot of effort into the world building for a rather mediocre forgettable film. In it, the crowd of the action sequences that the convicts kill each other in are criminals who basically pay off lesser crimes by being npcs for the death games. There is an entire throw away scene detailing this. The crowds in racing games always make me think of this. Just people trapped in an existential horror of being an npc glued to an animation sequence for the main protagonist

[@ThePlayerOfGames]

Great premise, fun story, rushed it's way the conclusion I can see why Gerard was interested in it though

[@bunkusboo]

I don't have anything to add, but I see your appreciation for that film, and I agree.

[@will-o-the-wisp-witch]

6:31 not everyone has access to a wide open field to see such a sunset or a mountaintop but the target parking lot is accessable to everyone.

[@cooppatness]

10:22 That’s crazy I’m coming from that video

[@matt4193]

With all the respect in the world, understanding what you meant and also sharing the idea: I laughed a LOT with the phrase "books have terrible graphics". +10

[@longlivelinux90]

You should do a video on games that really hone in on unreasonably realistic aspects of worlds in video games. The powerlines spurred an idea - how many games showed you exactly how things worked, but we were too busy playing to look at? Great vid, okay hair clips

[@any_austin]

Half life is a really good example of that

[@longlivelinux90]

@@any_austin I’m gonna have to actually play it one day lol. Love the vids, keep on keeping on

[@octagonseventynine1253]

Dark Souls and Bloodborne is kind of like that, the elevators almost always have a working mechanism, things rarely float in the air for no reason

[@Zicrixdoesart]

the weirdly realistic yakuza bread comes to mind

[@NiiRubra]

@@any_austin That is because Half-life is from a time where some games were trying to go for an "immersive sim" feel, a functioning world that doesn't need us, the player, that's what everyone, including developers, thought was really cool. So Half-life has all of these ideas (many of which never even made the cut) that do absolutely nothing for the gameplay, and most people will never see, but they are there, they exist, as a vestigial part of a more ambitious idea.

[@dr.whippersnatch7200]

10:10 That's a pallet jack. It makes it easy to lift and move heavy pallets. The prongs go in the bottom of the pallet, and it uses hydraulics to lift it up off the ground, above wheel level.

[@cyberyogicowindler2448]

and stuntmen enjoy using these like a kick scooter.

[@chasethecolors]

Please make more unremarkable and odd places in racing games, and games in general, they’re the best videos ever lol

[@georgepatton8693]

Couldn't agree more, I used to spend hours exploring the tracks in NFS Hot Pursuit 2 and the open world in Hot Pursuit 2010. I just enjoyed cruising, seeing the sights, and imagining I lived in those locations and was just commuting around

[@jameschristian192]

Love the content and dedication to employment surveys

[@burnttoasts]

The hair clips really elevate the look 👌

[@sierranicholes6712]

i've been inspired by austin to wear my morning hair clips while running errands

[@mattsomething4371]

Tucked in shirt looks sharp!

[@ellaisplotting]

@@sierranicholes6712 going full circle to the 50s housewives in their curlers and scarves

[@GerardMenvussa]

That's the parts he wanted you to ignore !!!

[@jrlepage2a03]

Austin out there inventing looksmaxxing before looksmaxxing was even a thing

[@elf_bot]

When me and my brother were little and playing trackmania (old version on a CD) we discovered we could drive off the course and into the water. In every course there was a background scenery of a few islands/hills and we would travel to one of them, which we called volcano island. It took around 20 minutes of pressing the forward key to drive the way to the island through the water. And when we arrived we would drive around the island for a couple minutes, trying to climb the mountain, before the car ultimately tumbled, landed on it's back or side, and we had to click back to the last checkpoint on the course. 20 minutes from the island. It was always worth it for some reason.

[@DELTARYZ]

I'm especially surprised that Trackmania Turbo (by Ubisoft) still allows you to exit the map like this. Even more fun, there's no barrier to the map at all, and if you hold the accelerator down for 10-15 minutes you start seeing floating point rounding errors and all the graphics start breaking.

[@rileybow8030]

10:12 pallet jack

[@subtlegong2817]

Beat me to it

[@caffineatedchef1001]

I wanted too say that so bad lmao

[@mommyjeans9483]

It's called an Amish fork lift.

[@davidswanson5669]

Came here to say it too.

[@ManicXMusic]

Just discovered your channel. Really enjoy the videos and your unique voice and humour when looking at video games. I think you hit on something fascinating about the way video games trick us into being immersed in a false world. But also while just being fun and silly. Look forward to more videos.

[@casey6556]

I’m reminded of Tom Scott’s video a while back about driving his favourite video game in real life after he realized that the Need for Speed demo track is based on Vancouver He mentioned wishing he could get out of the car and ride the train or look out at the totem poles, something he’s now been able to do I remember feeling really similarly about racing games as a kid; that video and this one really speak to me

[@Canleaf08]

My late grandpa copied NFS2 for me and I wondered how fictional this North American course looked until Tom Scott drove from Stanley park to North Vancouver. My favourite place there on this course was somehow the Totem pole parking lot, too. At some times, the NFS2 got scratched till it did not work, then I bought the Porsche edition.

[@theblah12]

I think my favourite example is the city race circuits in Gran Turismo. The London one is *shockingly* accurate to real life including all the real signage and shopfronts for every shop, restaurant and cafe you pass on the way (how that managed to pass legal I don’t know). Like it even has that Pret outside Trafalgar Square I used to grab lunch at. It’s essentially a 1-1 recreation of that part of London circa 2005 and I love it. I wish the modern games had more stuff like that.

[@nixel1324]

When you mentioned GTA IV, it made me think about how GTA San Andreas does it. In some places, they really go above and beyond to make things be right, but then other times it looks like they just didn't bother at all. Kind of makes it even more fun to explore, because now it can be rewarding in two different ways.

[@Journey_to_who_knows]

San Fierro is so nonsensical in parts it feels like an alien planet

[@Contra7311]

I spent a few days in NYC... Then fired up GTA IV. Blows me away how miniature star junction feels.

[@nixel1324]

@@Journey_to_who_knows And yet, I've seen scenes in movies that were instantly recognizable as San Fransisco to me, despite my only exposure to SF at the time being San Fierro.

[@theblah12]

Always find it interesting when you can notice the areas of the game that had the most development resources and polish and the ones that had less work put into them. It pulls back the curtain slightly, like seeing the individual brushstrokes on a canvas. Like with Skyrim where feels like as you go further away from the starting area or from the major towns the placement of objects starts to feel sparser and less naturalistic. The edges of the map in particular are a huge vibe, to some extent it feels like they put deliberately less detail in those areas to discourage players to explore too close to the invisible walls, as a way of telling us that there isn’t anything interesting over there.

[@unkletiny]

reading the unintelligible newspaper stand made me laugh

[@Shenorai]

At least he took a stab at it, though!

[@Subreon]

fun fact. the vehicles driving around in burnout games are remote controlled. burnout is an entertainment media company that focuses on vehicle based destruction in closed circuit environments. (there used to be screams when crashing into cars but that was removed)

[@supremeoverlordkrenner6160]

2:36 Coffee shops that look like coffee shops inside? Horrifying

[@savannahwise7058]

As a child, my friend and I would play in the Mario Kart Wii racetracks. We wouldn't race and we'd turn off CPUs. We would actually roleplay little stories for characters that worked at Coconut Mall for example. We noticed all these little details and it was always exciting to explore the maps in a new manner

[@QWERTYCommander]

Back when MKWii was new, there was a Wii channel made where Nintendo would challenge players to collect coins scattered around a given level, among other things. One of the challenges given was collecting coins in Coconut Mall, and honestly the amount of detail they put into drivable areas that aren't even part of the map was pretty cool to see.

[@59n66]

I did that with my sister too! We played hide and seek on the track while roleplaying our character.

[@Karl]

Really cool premise for a video. Well done man!

[@any_austin]

This means a lot coming from you, I appreciate it! Hit me up if it ever makes sense; I’d love to pick your brain about games since I wouldn’t have guessed this was your watch niche.

[@jdlenl]

i think i remember recommending "odd and unusual places in midnight club 2"...i'm glad racing games got a video :)

[@ReverendTed]

This brings to mind the quotes from developers of Outer Wilds, specifically in the NoClip making-of documentary. They tried to design the world(s) so that if you see something interesting, there should be something interesting there, and you generally won't find anything hidden in visually-uninteresting areas. (With the exception of things that are explicitly designed to be hidden until discovered via other means.)

[@marcusborderlands6177]

If only the devs of outer worlds thought like that lol.

[@mitchcoppo]

So weird. My 4yr old daughter's favorite thing to do in paradise city is to park on the top of parking garages and watch the city. And then I started noticing all the funny things you precisely talk about in your video.

[@Chevreau_]

The first game that evoked this feeling for me was Motorcross Madness 2. Despite not actually having a free roam mode, there were no barriers on the race tracks so there was nothing stopping you from exploring the map. For some reason, they included a button that let you cycle the camera between all the AI vehicles. You could forget you're even playing a racing game and just watch the strange facsimile of rural living from the perspective of a bus, a train, a biplane. (Of course, everyone knows this game from the way it launches you back into the map when you go out of bounds, lmao)

[@lurkio804]

MCM2 did have free roam, that was how come you could get the out of bounds launch. It had so much free roam I didn't know there were races in it when I was a kid.

[@Chevreau_]

​@@lurkio804 As far as I remember, the "free roam" was just loading up a race or stunts mode and then ignoring the actual goal and going off track. I'm with you though, I don't think I ever did the real races.

[@connoroflynn1750]

Oh this is going to be a million sub channel in no time

[@ObsidianGloria]

Everything about your speaking/presentation style and how you analyze overlooked details in games is incredibly comforting and appealing ☺️ Immaculate vibes

[@gui18bif]

10:12 bro just got confused by a pallet jack

[@bluejayskies93]

When I was a kid I did this a lot with Mario Kart Wii. The time trials were great for this. I drove around Moonview Highway on the right side of the road, or I came up with stories with the characters in a dollhouse fashion. With MKWii it becomes super obvious how strangely proportioned everything is to account for the camera perspective, the barriers and buildings up close are too big or too small but are designed to look the best while moving. Very interesting stuff

[@dsvoid]

Need For Speed Underground 2 has an arch made in memoriam to one of the devs who died

[@griggpev]

you always get me thinking about these video game spaces a little differently :) plus you’re a very witty writer-“books have terrible graphics” and “these games are meant to be viewed at 80mph” are very snappy and imaginative and effective things to say

[@anegginthesetryingtimes7636]

The guy on break is standing next to a loading jack

[@danhectic5629]

they destroy toes/ankles be careful!

[@GMoDiLLa]

@@danhectic5629my Achilles cried out when I read your comment, I know all too well.

[@FacePomagranate]

Always called them pallet jacks at my work.

[@hecklerthecrunker]

There's no pain like being the guy without a forklift license and having to use those.

[@Ramrodio]

@@hecklerthecrunker the real pain is having a forklift license while no forklifts are available, and having to use a pallet jack

[@thegrassisbluer09]

I don't want this content in my algorithm. I don't want to spend time watching this. But you did it. Your random nonsense explorations won my heart and made me subscribe.

[@CookieBoss52]

I have a final tomorrow and I’m watching this at 5am

[@09Scherzo]

If Tom Scott was from the Midwest 0:06

[@Penguinea117]

legendary comment

[@crimsonafterburner]

Austin you consistently have a way with humanising video games. Especially what you said at the end here, to just go back once you are done, and reclaim the joy of just wonder at what's going on in the game you are playing. It brought me back to my childhood playing fucken Cars Maternational of all things. I'd spend hours just driving into walls, trying to explore and see what random shit was in the shop signs, or to see if the main street was 1-1 for what was in the movie which I'd seen ad nauseum. You are an absolute legend when it comes to humanising Austin, Absolut Legend.

[@dylanboczar999]

Your channel throws me back to OG 2000s KZbin in the best possible way. Love the nostalgia and musings, love your humor and thoughtfulness, keep doing whatever doinks your dink. I'm here for it!

[@Reximus44]

6:50 There is some evidence to support that the massive parking lots grocery stores tend to have may have a meteorological effect on the local area that tends to produce objectively aesthetically pleasing views iirc

[@robertpaulson117]

man im so glad i came across your videos, i've always had an appreciation for the details in video game worlds and im glad other people do too, i could watch these videos for hours!

[@demit189]

Great topic! The part about grocery store parking lots having great skies is funny to me bc i worked at a grocery store for a summer and I fucking hated that I’d be stuck inside bagging or pushing carts or whatever while this beautiful sunset was there watching me. It felt mean, like take me with you !!!

[@TheDisarminghinkle]

I was playing Tears of the Kingdom today. I went toward a shrine from an angle you were surely never meant to do it from. Basically, I scaled a mountain on the shoreline from the shore side and trecked along the remarkably empty mountainside to the shrine. And, as I did this, I thought of Any Austin remarking on the fact that this was a superliminal location that only existed because other locations existed.

[@elia2649]

6:21 I like how you can see tire tracks as if he's had to redo his parking several times lol

[@snarkyshawn]

“Books have terrible graphics” now lives in my head rent free. 😂

[@jakezxz1352]

I love that I watched your GTA4 power line video first and then came to this one to see the idea formulate. I enjoy the way you see things. :)

[@RadishDoctor]

ok laughed too hard when you called a pallet jack a machine

[@TheFoggyjones]

Check this out: a pallet jack, is, in fact a machine.

[@JosephShemelewski]

Idk about GTA4 but in Red dead redemption 2 I saw a video this guy followed the power lines from the Saint Denis across to all the settlements with power. Ones without power lines only use oil lamps for lighting

[@davidvaughan5512]

I love the attention to detail of the ecosystem in that game. Just observing nature going about its business, the animals doing their thing. And, of course, that they went above and beyond and made the horses defecate. Attention to detail!

[@JosephShemelewski]

@@davidvaughan5512 Even realistic horse testicles lol I wanna know who was like "We gotta make em shrink in the cold!"

[@BierBart12]

Funnily, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 is the game that made me discover the art of just slowing down, turning off engine sounds/music and exploring the scenery. That game has a lot of unremarkable and interesting places. But what I liked were the spots that emit sounds you usually only hear in passing. One spot in the mediterranean tracks was just an italian mum arguing with about 5 kids over and over

[@phuturephunk]

There's another aspect of these open world racers that's overlooked. Even GTA does this. The roads are absolutely HUGE compared to normal streets. Every road is effectively a stroad with like 20foot lanes because of the way you have to navigate them behind the wheel. Like the footage in Paradise of going under that elevated train station? 8:30 ish...That station is absolutely enormous. The scale is so inflated for everything that almost nothing, if it were an actual place, could actually be navigated on foot. I'm also now having an existential crisis.

[@AlexRussellFilm]

Hey he made the gta 4 powerline video mentioned in this! Love the content.

[@sco145]

There are faux advertisements like billboards and posters, meant to give the impression that you're in a public space, where advertisers want to get your attention. Yet, these faux ads in video games are meant to do the opposite.

[@Spikehead777]

San Francisco Rush and San Francisco Rush 2049 are among my all time favorite racing games and they were on the N64. It's more than racing, though. You actually unlock some things by exploring the tracks Midway has created and finding keys and coins. Both games even reward you with cool secret areas that you would never see if all you did was stay on the obvious paths and shortcuts and race (meaning you really have to go out of your way to see and collect everything). That also reminds me of the time I made a track in ModNation Racers that wasn't really meant to be raced on, but for a chillout spot (It was a simple loop with an exit leading to the rest of the terrain). I added some secrets and even had a small challenge to "collect" the sheep. I miss that game.

[@coltranebartlett590]

I swear to god learning how oversteer works in video games saved my life. Long story short, i was driving my friend's V8 truck on a rainy highway and i started to hydroplane when i accelerated 😅 I managed to correct it, while going at 65 MPH!!! Luckily there were no cars on the left or right of me. I maintain that, because i learned the ins and out of how car physics works through video games (namely, Driver Sanfransisco which i had just played 2 months prior), me and my friend didn't die that day.

[@judithcannotdraw]

10:30 the birth of a legend

[@fishybiller7896]

2:58 "books have terrible graphics" new favourite quote

[@goullet86]

Idk how many hours I spent as a bored kid just staring at this exact kinda stuff. Love this channel so hard

[@DeLewrh]

Holy shit you blew up. I haven't checked out your channel for a while, but I like seeing what you're up to now and then. We spoke on Patreon sometime 2016, I'm glad you're still around.

[@any_austin]

Ye it’s crazy. Really appreciate that you were around back then.

[@DeLewrh]

@@any_austin ♥️

[@Emymagdalena]

Austin’s finger wave curls have been COOKING I can’t wait to see the results they’re going to be amazing

[@altairtodescatto]

Once i woke up and did my think without glasses. The moment i put it on, i cleaned all my house. I was ignoring the dust

[@pepito_white]

This is peak corner KZbin. Keep it up. Dont fail ever

[@Terinije]

I watched the recent eclipse in a grocery store parking lot in the path of totality. That unremarkable and odd space was glorious.

[@UnderABlanketOfRice]

Burnout Paradise is probably my favourite game, played it on XBox and now on Switch. I like how the objective of finding all of the yellow gates and billboards forces you to look at the surroundings more, especially when you get to the end and only have a few to hunt for.

[@iplay4us]

Hey Austin, you prolly wont read or even see this, but I just wanted to let you know that I am currently watching every single video of yours (starting from the oldest) while im on a long trip through South Africa. Please never change and always do what you enjoy doing! (currently at the COD:Ghosts Eggbusters EX episode) I hope its okay btw if I download a couple episodes as I dont always will have internet but I make sure to load the video first so in case of an AD pops up you still get the money for it!

[@any_austin]

It’s 10 years of content keep me posted

[@iplay4us]

@@any_austin Promise!

[@hoglacy]

I swear you have been reading my mind. I’ve been thinking about this stuff for years. Malls and shopping centers and such in racing games have always intrigued me

[@ducktelepathy8352]

When I was a kid playing Mario Kart Double Dash with my brother, my favorite thing to do was "Play Around" races. My brother was super competitive about the racing aspect of the game, but from time to time I could convince him to "just play around" in 1v1 mode, which meant things like collecting mushrooms on Yoshi Circuit and turning the secret tunnel into a battle zone, or playing MK64 and trying to land on the riverboat in DK Jungle Parkway or drive through the Kalamari Desert tunnel. In my humble opinion, the best thing about racing games is directly disobeying the course map and racing directive to explore to the boundaries of what the game allows!