Відео

Wow this must have taken so much work. Incredibly detailed critique. Personally feel you're a little too hard on the game but really enjoying your videos nonetheless. Keep it up! 🙏

Really enjoying these videos thank you

man I hate that I didnt see this coming from the video title

I am not in AA either, but from what I understand from other 12 step programs, both powerlessness and dedicating oneself to a higher power is about humility. Humility makes life easier and less stressful because you can ask for help in all different areas, which supports recovery. If you can get there without the steps, or if you don't need that, good! The language "recovering" is a way to say one has dedicated oneself to continued personal growth and service to others. If you have done that outside of a twelve step program and it helps your sobriety, great! If you don't need it, great! Take what you like and leave the rest.

Love the key jingling with no keys @20:55 !

That intro was hilarious

This video is top notch, the delivery and editing makes it very watchable. Plus the topics of JRPGs and the over use of references and post modernist writing is an interesting one. In a way being post modern seems like a defense mechanism, "you cannot criticize me! I'm not being serious!", it's less scary than putting your heart out there and perhaps getting mocked for it. Also if references are not classy, fitting and use sparingly then they become low brow and obnoxious.

Your line about gaining clarity 'once your rational brain is back to acting at full capacity' was exactly what I needed to hear today. My situation isn't 1:1, but your way of talking through all of this is helping me understand myself and what I'm going through a lot better. Thanks for making this series!

6:15 actually why don't RPGs reference another trio of Wiseman? Like Larry, Curly and Moe.

I've never had a sip of alcohol, but I suspect someone in my life may be dependent on it. What kind of support can I offer without coming off as presumptive or judgemental? Love the show! Keep up the sobriety, bruh!

yoooo I've been enjoying ur vids dude, preem shit fr. both vidya and alcoholism r topics I f heavy w/, also j2lyk: idk if u intend to ship it more frequently but i'd f heavy w that too ong

Very insightful, Alex

Whats the game at 26:45? edit suikoden

There is an element to this that I have been thinking about a lot lately. I find that limitations in the presentation of a game imbue it with potential and invite the player to imagine what these limitations hide. It's related to the Gestalt you spoke about. There it is the pixel grid that at first confuses the brain and then makes it come up with a plausible and familiar thing that the sprite is supposed to represent. What I mean is more general. In Secret of Mana many towns have boundaries that are trees. My imagination used to come up with stuff that lies beyond the trees, my brain wanted to know what happens when I entered that forbidden space. Something that should be possible in reality but that is also plausible in the game. Sometimes secret passages exist, a simple transition into a new screen could be hidden anywhere. In Final Fantasy 7, despite the very detailed prerendered backgrounds you only got specific perspectives to enjoy and my imagination had the exact same process. Maybe there is a hidden door, or something to interact with that I missed. In Star Fox 1 or 64 you have a full 3D environment to explore, but are yet confined to a slim path through a city or canyon. And again my brain was eager to imagine the space beyond, as branching paths are a feature in the game. Yet when I compare that to modern games I don't experience that. The Trial of Mana remake, FF16, Star Fox Zero, these modern games have similar scenarios where you are confined into a play space and a similar arbitrary barrier prevents you from going further. But my mind simply accepts these as gameplay limits, it does not imagine them as possibilities, it does not imagine the potential that they could hide. Perhaps that is purely my childhood brain being more active and less jaded then my adult brain. There is a good chance that's the case. At the same time I find that modern high definition games are burdened with making everything explicit. A simple treeline can not hide anything if the camera angle can be freely swung around and show that the 3D mesh the designers put there, is in fact not hiding anything. It is further incredibly unlikely that an extremely detailed environment like in FF16 will reveal some secret passage behind a seemingly solid wall; since the player model shall never simply fade through the 3D geometry of the level, anything that is revealed to the player needs to be animated. It turns a simple secret into a big affair that's more costly to implement. And when developers implement something like that, it's usually not a one off thing, they put effort into it, so the same style of secret will be put all over the game, it will usually have it's tells and by the third time it's not a secret anymore, it turns into just another checkbox on your todo list. It removes imagination and turns it into content. While the game might look like reality, it has a crucial difference. In reality I know that every wall hides a plethora of people, and places and stories and stuff to explore, it's a living space after all. In contrast a high def game makes it painfully obvious that everything I can explore and find is visible and accessible. You even get yellow paint and spotlights and architectual framing to steer you, whereas veering away is usually pointless. In short, the more elaborate the world becomes, the harder it gets to invite the player into that imaginitive frame of mind, that barrieres could be more than simple gameplay restricitions, that they could hold the potential of revealing further parts of the world, that the world is actually a living and breathing place.

an exploration of my favorite nomowo episode title, "HDMI don't give a shit"

Back at the start of this wave of retro-inspired revivals, I was pretty excited as I believed many older games had positive qualities that shouldn't be lost to time, aspects that didn't deserve to die under the label of "outdated". Some early successes made me feel hopeful that new, interesting experiences could be created by building on those forgotten design sensibilities. But seemingly time and time again every project of this nature either missed the mark entirely (too many to list) or played it so safe that it's fine enough to play once but doesn't stand out against what it is trying to replicate at all (ie. Bloodstained). Eventually it reached the point where seeing yet another classic-inspired game announced I'd have absolutely no expectation of it even being good, let alone surpassing what came before it. I had always rooted for any studio willing to try something outside the mainstream because they were passionate about making that thing specifically. So when I saw these early attempts at retro-inspired projects that were clearly missing important ingredients, the kind of pain it made me feel was like when you watch a kid who is about to ram their bicycle into a tree, you know someone is about to get hurt and you can't do anything to stop them. It was painful watching them pour their heart and soul into something knowing they'd fail anyway. I felt like even if they were flawed I should support them because doing good work takes time and nobody gets it right straight away. In hindsight I had deluded myself into thinking they were also aware of these shortcomings and would see them as things to be fixed on their next go around. But then something changed, despite the writing being as bad as ever some of these games started to succeed, bringing us to where we are today, Sea of Stars winning multiple GOTYs by being pretty and doubling down on all the worst parts of their previous work. While I still acknowledge these are works of passion, it became clear to me that so many of these projects were primarily the nostalgic passions of people who time and time again demonstrated they don't have anything interesting to say and little to share beyond their childhood love of videogames. You'd read the developer interview for the next project of this nature and it'd read almost exactly the same as the last one. The 'retro-inspired videogame' had seemingly become the place where all the developers without a single novel idea to their name came together to blur the line between homage and plagiarism. Not I feel there are far more worthwhile creative endeavours I could be supporting. A couple days ago I was reading a interview about an upcoming indie game primarily inspired by a title that is quite dear to me, but the aspects they chose to talk about and the aspects that didn't even get mentioned, it all kept reminding me of this video. Every paragraph I read just inflicted more psychological damage. It feels like so much of the indie space is just people who have this overflowing love for videogames (usually because videogames are their entire life) taking the "natural next step" which isn't of course getting a broader perspective, having something unique to bring to the table, something thought-provoking to say, but instead to dive in headfirst and cram all that love and nostalgia into a videogame-shaped package. And this isn't liable to stop anytime soon given that games like homeopathic Chrono Trigger sell well and win awards.

As a youngin currently I live pixil art because the pixil art is so apealing terraria looks so good and is one of my favorite games

Loved the video, I didn't play Chained Echoes but did fall off Sea of Stars after about five hours. I find myself mostly nodding along with the video but also finding it very entertaining. I appreciated how you were fair to the indie development backgrounds while not pulling any punches. Thanks for distracting me from work 😎 The "Attention Pittsburgh" gag is going to stick with me

I think Garl is the world's best boy the goodest cinammon roll everyone loves for the very simple reason - so we'd be extra sad when he died, and would be extra motivated to do the true ending. Like it seems they just didn't know how else to make a truly likeable character, but to make everyone like them. There is a character in Oz series, Shaggy Man, who possessed a Love Magnet, an item which made everyone treat him like Garl. He spent half of the book trying to get rid of it (in a way it won't be found by another poor sap who'd have to deal with it)

6:15 I mean to be fair, Balthasar, Caspar and Melchior are bible references, not necessarily from games.. (but we all know it's because the 3 wise men were in CT and the like. Technically that makes it a quadruple reference!)

Oh wow I never heard it explained that way.... but yes, Post Party Depression is real and it's why I tend to start get pretty sad when I feel I'm near the end of a game that has a cast of characters I absolutely love.

hey are you the guy who used to review cookies?

Finding Plot Armor as a piece of wearable gear IS the joke. I find that pretty funny. Maybe you were thinking too hard about that one? lol

Excellent video! It put into words what I felt(or rather missed feeling) when I played through Sea of Stars. I couldn't put my finger on why, but that game just didn't jam with me at all and I felt bad about disliking it.

I just think copying a game as fondly remembered (as well as frequently re-released) as Chrono Trigger is a bad idea. The stars aligned when that game came out, we'll never have anything like it again. Might as well put your own spin on the "Chrono Trigger" template, or at least make a "love letter" to a game that has not aged nearly as well but could be appealing with some modern touches, like Lufia and the Fortress of Doom.

I like the cut of this guy's jib. I SURE HOPE HE DOESN'T TURN OUT TO BE THE UNIBOMBER OR SOMETHING.

The way you read that last line in the "rumors" section reminded me of Mark Hamill reciting that Star Wars line that he'll never forget even though it didn't make it into the movie.

19 minutes in and yeah, I'm glad I hadn't played many of the games referenced in Chained Echoes yet (I never had a PS1 or 2). I recognized certain things like the parallels to Chrono Trigger, but a lot of the rest went over my head. Gameplay-wise though, I constantly felt like I was playing a 2D turnbased version of Xenoblade Chronicles. The exploration with its sprawling fields, collectible glowing orbs and mineral deposits for crafting feels exactly like XC1 or 2's open fields, complete with OP boss monsters. The robots immediately had me thinking of Xenoblade Chronicles X's Skells. And the way character building works, as well as how character roles work (every character has a general archetype, then you can choose to focus on certain aspects of it). I love Xenoblade Chronicles 1's gameplay, so I was all in when I played Chained Echoes, but I definitely see the issue. As an avid Pokemon player, the general issue is even more obvious to me. I like monstertaming games, I like Pokemon. I seek out other games in the genre. Some of them feel like they stand on their own, like, say, Dragon Quest Monsters or Monster Sanctuary. Others, like Coromon or Nexomon borrow so much from the Pokemon games that it's beyond hommage - they feel like very VERY elaborate Pokemon fan games. The most annoying thing to me is how there's usually a Pokeball equivalent in some other geometric shape. In Pokemon, they look like that because one of the inspirations was gachapon capsules, which look very similar if you imagine the white half to be translucent. In Coromon and Nexomon, it's a distinct Pokemon reference. I like these games (even though I usually look for games that DON't feel like Pokemon) so this isn't to be taken too negatively, but it always makes me wish these games could try to stand on their own more.

I came dangerously close to missing this video by virtue of its thumbnail. I did not expect a nuanced and well-thought-out criticism of the games, but rather more gushing over them. I'm glad I clicked anyways, I really enjoyed this.

"Matthias Linda (aka Ark Heiral)" What a weird place to reference Final Fantasy Tactics... Hyral is Delita's last name

I agree with most of your criticism of chained echoes, but i still loved it. I don't agree the creator should go back and fix things. I think he does have his own voice as a writer and I would rather see him grow and improve this craft in his next work.

It's a bit ironic I gave this video a like after Steiner's math reference while watching how annoying references could be for half an hour.

The side by side comparisons made me want to play even more. Haha. I've tried both Chained Echoes and Sea of Stars on Game Pass and I made it about an hour into each and just never went back. Currently playing Octopath Traveler 2 and it's a masterpiece.

Criminally underrated video.

Sea of Stars. My god, Sea of Stars. I wanted to love that game way more than I did. I backed that game on Kickstarter. The game is really pretty, the music is great, but the characters are so boring and the writing is so awful. And a good chunk of the problems I had with the narrative turned out to be because it was setting things up for the studio's earlier game, The Messenger, which I never played, so those references were lost on me.

I totally agree! I don't think there's anything wrong with being derivative, and a lot of people confuse homages/stealing with using genre conventions, but when people go out of their way to basically have an aversion to using their own ideas, it's a huge turn off

I think there's two big issues when it comes to love letter media, the latter applying more to JRPGs. The first is that it's so, so much easier to enjoy something and want to make something like it than it is to, you know, actually make a good thing. Naturally most people who want to make games or films or whatever inspired by [very good thing] are more likely than not going to lack the ability to make such a thing. The second thing is that for JRPGs, writing is of pretty much paramount importance. Sure, you want it to look and sound nice and have the combat be fun (please Japan, please, stop turning your JRPGs into action RPGs, try actually making turn based combat have depth and be fun in and of itself! I've seen it done, I know it's possible! Don't throw out the entire concept!) but at the end of the day what separates the genre, or at least what did, was its focus on story, on narrative and characters and the world. And making a video game is hard, it's something that requires a lot of different skillsets. And you just often, with small teams making a game, I find you have the issue where they're good at all the technical stuff, all the presentation bits, but no one in the team ever took so much as a Writing 101 course. You can go online and find all kinds of tutorials and guides on how to code, how to making 3D models, to use programs to creature music, etc. But there's much less for "How do I write good?" And so you get less good write. But goodwrite is what defines the genre, and without it... without it you're left with something approaching a hollow shell. Okay as I was writing a secret third issue that ties back to the first one. And it's the core motivation behind the game itself. These original games, your Chrono Triggers and what have you. They were made by people who had an idea for a game and wanted to make that game. But love letters intrinsically don't have that. They're not starting from scratch and trying to be their own thing, to the best it can be. They're trying to ape something that already exists. I think that kind of initial launching point is a subtle thing most people don't think about but I think it ties back into the first point I made. It's not people who have an idea for something cool they want to bring into the world, it's people who want to make more of what's already there. Which, don't get me wrong, I fucking love Skies of Arcadia, I wish there was more! I get it! But I think Jurassic Park said it best: "You were too busy thinking about whether you could that you didn't stop to think about whether you should." -George R.R. Martin, 2004, The Fellowship of the Ring

Well I liked it so there

So many of these "spiritual successors" and "love letters" are style over substance. The biggest issue appears to be that the writing just isn't there. It's affecting the whole creative industry, but writers suck now. They're all children who never had their work pressure-tested to become anything deeper or substantive. All our media is becoming drivel because nobody can write well anymore.

I have hated the term "love letter" for years.

51:30 JESUS CHRIST no wonder games suck huge donkey balls now. THIS is what the throwback developers think is somehow a good idea? Even accidentally voicing this opinion should get you permanently banned from developing games. For f*** sake.

I really like the in-depth critique of these games. They stand on a pillar of positive feedback and reviews for mechanical or artistic aspects, but both are let down a bit by shallow writing and references. Sea of Stars really took me by surprise, from a narrative perspective, because I was expecting a lot more depth. The very initial introduction of the characters, and the way the story handled Garl in the prologue was extremely off-putting. I couldn't help but see Garl as a culmination of toxic positivity and desperation to belong. Both of his "friends" spend most of their time telling him he isn't "special" so there is no point in him trying to be a hero like they are. Then he literally loses his eye to protect Zale from a sneak attack after their egos lead them to break into the sealed dungeon, and no one even stops to consider his sacrifice or selflessness or even thank him. He gets a "you are lucky that is all you lost" from the master, a thunk on the head for disobeying the master, and then forgotten about for several years. I was genuinely surprised he comes back with zero misgivings or regrets, just to act as a cheerleader and endlessly positive figure, and letter gets ret-conned to be "special" but different than the solstice warriors. Honestly, I felt like I resonated only with the sky god council characters who's on-screen bodyparts give strong indications that they are bored and don't really want to be there, having little to no interest in the party or their story.

Great video with a good analysis of the writing issues Chained Echoes and Sea of Stars have (those are bugging me, but I never could put it into words...). Having said that - I think your argument about name references is the weakest one. It's not like Xeno Gears or Evangelion invented biblical names and imagery e.g., so it's a bit weird to fault Chained Echoes for doing the same approach of just throwing that in. But I do agree with you that certain details keep adding up.

Delightful video. I'm grateful that UA-cam pushed this one in front of me. Your analytical technique is excellent, and I enjoy the wit as well. Great work, and thanks for sharing your well-constructed thoughts.

44:13 I'm gonna start saying this when my friends annoy me

OMG, I'M SUCH A QUIRKY AND RELATABLE INDIE DEV!

What is this, Jump Button Reviews? I'm just teasing, I couldn't resist the obvious joke given the subject matter. This is good content and you seem like a great person.

You have such a unique and candid analytical voice that, while I'm excited I get to experience the (relatively) early days of your foray into this style of videos, it almost hurts to find out that I can't go through your channel and find 10 other videos of similar subject matter to binge... yet. This is the sort of stuff I turn the bell on for. Do you have a discord? I'd love to reach out and just chat games with you and others :)

Kylian's absurd & upsetting twists ultimately made me put down Chained Echoes just before the very final act, but I enjoyed the rest of the game a lot. I had barely started Sea of Stars by the time the sickening tone & dull writing made me give it up. Garl alone was too much to bear, and I was anti-interested in the party's story. Very bleak and disappointing. Thank you for this catharsis!

Well considered arguments, very caringly presented. I've felt this way about a lot of film and TV writing, and some literature. My faith was renewed seeing a couple of really good films recently, but I'd wondered if the thread had been cut and we lost some fundamental understanding of storytelling. There has also been a tendency lately in popular media to just reference most of the time, and that feels like a placeholder to me. A subtle nod now and then can be great, but it feels like a lack of confidence in one's own world and squandered potential inherent in art. I haven't played most of the games you reference (beyond a demo or some of the older ones on the list), but I think I understand where you're coming from. I hope devs manage to grow from what lessons they've learned and really take things forward; given that these were independent projects they have that opportunity more than a risk-averse giant