What Makes Limbus Company's Characters Good And Where (A Lot) Of Games Fail
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- Опубліковано 19 чер 2024
- I am here, to talk about writing in video games. As I've felt for a while now that Limbus Company has one of the best written casts I've seen in a video game. And I wanted to talk about why I feel thats the case. So from writing to development let's talk about why the characters in Limbus Company are really well written. Why most players think the story is the strongest part of the game. That's what this video essay looks to cover..
Link to the Dante's Inferno breakdown doc:
x.com/unower_s/status/1795667...
My Discord: / discord
My Twitch: / tsunul - Ігри
Limbus Company is a gacha game made by the people with no experiennce with making a gacha game.
And that's exactly why Limbus Company slaps so much i love these goobers.
I have a lot of Project Moon mutuals atp, should I play this even if I don't really want to play that many gachas?
@@InfinitySevensyeah
@@InfinitySevensyes
while the game is hard its also VERY beginner friendly which makes it very easy to get into
@@InfinitySevens I've abandoned most other gachas, mainly because their cast of characters have gotten so large, to the point that the story becomes boring each time you keep meeting new characters. I've honestly gotten bored of gachas that give a shit ton of pulls with a sub par story or a huge cast of characters, because personally I don't enjoy pulling for or reading about characters that I don't care about.
Limbus company is a -dime a dozen- _one of a_ kind of gacha game that doesn't feel like a gacha and the character development in the game is so masterful that it's hard not to get attached to even more than one characters.
Gameplay-wise there's a steep curve to understanding the mechanics, but once you get them the game becomes very enjoyable.
@@stardanny yeah specially now that we have a lot more good IDs than before, you can really build the team you want and it's gonna work somehow xD
Its nice to not play some silent badass, but instead a crew of misfits BECOMING the badass
Badass misfits
You were once a badass feared across the Wings, now you’re a (thankfully learning) well-intentioned collection of all of the Sinner’s time and average brainpower and stupidity
To be fair half of them were badass before Dante
Everyone wants to be a badass.
But no one likes to be a bad ass.
I think my brain is rotting
*"All **-heroes-** Sinners are humans."*
I love them so much bro.
"They are not heroes or champions, they are just humans, sinners like the rest of us"
I know tsunul is clicking a pen for every second that passes until dons canto releases like kingpin from spiderverse
They've trapped themselves into a corner with how they keep coming up back-to-back absolute bangers for Cantos.
I certainly hope our little gremlin gets a good Canto.
Or we could be getting a mid like canto 1-2 that doesn't get resolved and instead opens up for a possible sequel canto.
DON'T CURSE HER WITH THAT @@relatablecancer9899
i dont think "the dream ending" is getting a sequel...@@relatablecancer9899
@@relatablecancer9899That’s because gregor’s and rodion’s behated characters are integral to the overarching plot and not one offs like dongrang or heathcliff. Tho if we get another oswald I won’t complain.
The staple of gacha is escapism. And PM simply does NOT do escapism. Every game they made is in one way or another focusing on FACING the things that you want to run away from, while staying real about the fact that it's *probably* going to be gruelling, endless struggle; emphasizing on the fact that it IS difficult, even if you know that it's right. But seeing characters like these get up and keep.. struggling.... makes you want to, too, at least keep trying.
And there's something catharthic seeing that not only the game has narrative that resonates with problems that its audience is likely to have - but reminds that those problems have existed for people for ages, as the books were written long before we've been born.
time ripper on its way to call ME out SPECIFICALLY
@@mrrp405 Think of it this way: let's be glad we live lives with luxury of having time to waste.
faing
Well, Face the fear, build the future
this is so real. even some inspired fans started making a few of those into fanfics. the most im fond of is that one Philip fanfic where he didn't distort and struggled himself into a slightly better ending from main LoR. the fanfic seemed pmoon level of worthy, as it stroke the drive of becoming a kinder person in me. dude was running and running and running away from his guilt, even his stay in Liu association did not help his survivor's guilt. he also had this fear from the feeling of complacency so much that it hits closer to home, and yes im still talking about that fanfic
because they only focus on 12 sinners
People also love ids/EGOs (pregor🤤)
UOOOHHHH PREGORR
Yeah like how tf do you expect a game like genshin have a cast full of good and well developed characters when they are like 80 and keep multiplying
@@lefttoe3937
I mean it's not like they did even that good of a job when handling half the amount of number of characters in each region's arc. The game peaked at sumeru where the region's cast got good development and care overall, but then fumbled fountaine with the 4.1 update that does nothing except for the last 20 minutes or so. At least that's much better than inazuma where there were only 3 actual characters
That's exactly other gacha games problem. They're don't know when to stop releasing new characters and not focus on any of them. For example, let talk about GI, specifically Albedo. Up until the end of Inazuma (that's when I stop playing) the dude is so irrelevant to the story and so little screentime that I forget him existed most of the time. I know there's dating sim quest but most of them if not all are so boring that people just speed through them for the primo. So many characters yet so little screen time and irrelevant to the storyline made them boring as hell. Mihoyo absolutely could have made them interesting like they did with Dainsleif. Even though he has little screentime but the fact that he has interesting backstory, motivation and actually pushed the main plot unlike those useless archon made him so much more memorable than other characters
Also, i'd like to point out is that Ishmael's gripe was nested more in her "need" to have someone showing her a direction. In fact, all of sinners have something incredibly relatable, not "directly" bound to their traumatic past.
Say, what is Gregor, if not story of a "gifted child", forced to live his life to fulfill ambitions of their parent - and, when let go, left with fear of people having expectations of him, and unable to hold expectations on his own? The war flashbacks had nothing to do with his fear - other than show us the true root of his wounds, the pressure of others demanding him to be a hero, and, ultimately, his mother's face.
To degree that sheer idea of changing the status quo and becoming more terrifies us. Have you noticed? In TKT, Gregor was actually raising his hand to partake in investigation, and backed off as soon as he felt someone else's eyes on him.
Are there not people like him among us, prodigies at youth, cast away and feeling like parasites after we can not meet the expectations?
What is Rodia? Is she running from guilt of killing her whole neighbourhood? Or is she running from the fact that what she did, she did for herself, rather than thers; that she cares not whether change happens for better, but whether she is the "Napoleon mind" that causes it to happen, getting praise from others?
Is it not relatable to us, that we *want* to have significance in the world? That we feel down, when the world rotates without our presence in it?
Is Sinclair's guilt all that powers his behaviour? Or iss he in liminal, unable to go back to childhood, but afraid of stepping into adulthood - pleading for someone to be a parental figure to him, making decisions for him and reaping consequences of said decisions; afraid of standing on his own feet and confronting the unpleasantries and adversities, and others' opinions about him.
(While his canto was not fully resolved, you can actually see that he is slowly making progress... by clinging to Heathcliff! Because Heathcliff is everything Sinclair is not and he hates about not being: decisive, acting without waiting for others to tell him what to do, and controlling his violence towards protecting others and defending himself. I assume part of Sinclair still looks for parent, which might be why he sticks around Ryoshu, too, the only confirmed mother in the cast, while observing Heath' on how to be a man on his own).
And that fear of transitioning into maturity is what is familiar to us, too.
Yi Sang's sin was passiveness, and his pain - the burden of lethargy. Once he saw how much he lost because of being idle, he convinced himself that he lacks means to ever change his situation. The depession only adding to marasm, as he spend whole day staring into colourful glass screen, showing him reallity that is not. Subconsciously coming up with excuses preventing him from leaving the cage.
One tiny detail i'd like to note is that originally, it is Sang Yi who tells him to get up and walk. And, at the time, that was an inception moment, as watching this occur on my "colourfull glass", was the nudge i needed to leave my own white room. Knowing well it will be cold, dificult and uncomfortable, but, slowly and stumbling, we move *forward*. You need not wings to fly, if you can walk.
As for Ishmael, her obsession she had was a symptome, not the cause. You correctly noticed her behavious change after C2 but what REALLY her gripe was: her fear from sailing without a port on sight. She needed someone to show her the way, to lead, a direction and a purpose in her life, as stumbling without light on horizon was too frightening. Queequeg being in the future "anchoring" "some" vision of future was what she held onto, like a rope thrown to her drowning in open sea.
And as you "fail" Ishmael as Manager, she realizes you, too, will not be her "lighthouse", not a "competent captain" to show her the way.
Having no island to sail towards to, only *then* the obsession for revenge became what she cling to, as the only direction left to her. The scene of Ahab's crew going down infected with her madness solidifies that vision - to us, humans, it's much more preferable to hold onto somethign that might be wrong, mad or even self-destructive, rather than having nothing to cling to at all.
To you or me it might be holding to a failing relationship, too afraid of breaking it and finding yourself with noone; or sinking into somethign without future, not wanting to having to start from scratch. We don't want to sail without having a firm, certain goal we move towards; but in reallity, even if we don't know where we're going, we're sailing *somewhere* all the time, and who knows where we find ourselves, as long as we have steady hand to not sink while voyage lasts.
Finally, Heathcliff. There's a story of someone who, seemingly, pushed away everyone's downtrodding him. To whom the insults and spite dripped off like water off a duck. But who, in reallity, had those experiences carve deep, deep scars into his heart. He always called out to people to respect him, to see him, to stop hurting him. He craved affection so he cast out his self, in order to earn it, just so he does not end up drowning in darkness.
And he ends up gettng the realization, that he's always been loved, and, hell, by the only person who's love he cared for. He lost it, but he gets to understand, that he DOES deserve happiness, that he has worth and that he matters - even if everyone else in the world claims otherwise.
World around us will not be kind or compassionate, and we will with our own hands, carve out the path to our goals. Because the sheer fact we hold something dear is worth it.
So, fellow children - shall we keep struggling together?
Bro cooked
@@Not-noteworthy thankies! I really love how those are things so familiar to us all, and to some degree we all relate to it. And, like Tsu~ said, it's all about growth and overcoming it, even if circumstances are unfair as the world won't have pity on us.
Not gonna lie, this made me see how much I understand sinclair, currently im at my first year of college, im living in a city far away my home (im not from America btw, im from a country in latinoamerica), im afraid of becoming an adult, im prone to rage when I feel powerless and I crave for someone to guide me when there is no one, reading all this made me realize why I love this characters soo much more and why I understand Sinclair more than the other Sinners
Thank you for this brother.
Thank you for writing this, the city may be cruel but we can find the hope to continue. As one person learned “The fearlessness to keep on living”
I think the fact that PM as a company never made a gacha game, is helming a project that is essentially their first venture into the gacha space, with writing that is notoriously excellent makes this game all the more easier to recommend to people
Are the chapters long? Sure
Are they hard to parce at times?
On occasion yeah
But at the end of the day, this game doesnt put itself as a slot machine first. It puts itself as a story that it wants to tell, that it wants everyone to hear first
Everyone knows Ruina has the hardest most unfair gacha system ever
>Are the chapters long ?
>Are they hard to parce at times ?
Looking at Arknight rn
@adrienlovera most people dont even read the story
I genuinely cannot be asked to play a round for 3 minutes max, then having to read for 10 minutes
@@thatrandomguyontheinternet2477Fr, I love and hate ruina, wdym i have to fight Xiao 3 times to get her page
@@adrienlovera I love Arknights but haven't read the story since I first started during chapter 9 release. Anime helps to give some perspective but honestly I care little about the world lol
One thing I especially love about Limbus Company is that PM isn't afraid to have Dante be incompetent. In a lot of other games, the mc is just good at everything or is super talented and we just have to accept that, while Dante acts like they are introduced to us: an amnesiac that has been thrust into their position from the get-go; armed with only amateur wit, common sense, and the bare minimum of knowledge in the workings of the City. The chapter after that shows us then at rock bottom with losing the golden bough and low spirits, but we only go up from there as Dante grows to be a more competent leader (though with some failings still happening) and they learn to also help guide the sinners through their own apparent turmoils. (And that is one of the reasons why Project moon writing is PEAK)
Probably because Dante is written as a Character rather than a Self Insert.
Perfectly Executed Amusing Kino
Kim Jihoon himself says that he wants to make games with the main focus on them being story in mind, and for all of PM games you could see that. We've never really got to know how the story came along in the PowerPoint documentation of LobCorp's development, but you could very easily see that Jihoon wrote the story with the game's hard nature and heavy themes in mind.
All of this contributes to why Limbus Company, even if it's a gacha game, has some of the most meaningful stories to tell and throwing it's gacha mechanics to the wayside. Sometimes it's to the detriment of the company's profits, but you could very easily tell that the main point of this game is to tell a story. This isn't saying that other gacha games has a poor story as well, but rather I'm saying it's why Limbus's story telling goes above and beyond in it's maturity.
First advantage is that instead of getting a hundred different dudes and dudettes to roll for the gacha we are focusing on the core cast of 12 sinners. This ensures that we can have enough screentime with all of them and avoid situations where one is just away for a couple chapters and then seamlessly returns. Them not revealing much about themselves is also a lot more realistic. They are our employees and we are some random jackass that's supposed to be their manager in a dystopian setting where higher ups are more conservative with their toilet paper than the lives of their employees. Why the hell should they trust us?
Also, their combination of being total lunatics and dumbasses with an in-depth backstory and complex motivations fits very well in the setting. There's something really special about Project Moons setting. It's basically the Looney Toons of dystopias, a world so utterly horrifying and yet cartoonishly silly at the same time and somehow the writers make both sides fit together perfectly. Ricardo being a great example. A big cheese of a crime syndicate getting ultra pissed and dramatic over a coupon sounds laughable but at the same time it's horrifying. Imagine you accidentally annoy him. Even if it's something so small that real life Mafioso or Yakuza would probably just let it go but in this world you now have someone strong enough to crumple a car like a tin can hunting you down to the ends of the earth to liquify you.
poor heathcliff. dude 's blessing was a cyrse.
I am Curious if we slowly grow to earn that Trust about them.
One of things i love about limbus compared to other gacha's is that there's no huge threat that if the sinners lose it will affect so many people.
If they lose it will change nothing in the city.If kromer succeeded or won Sinclair will just be another person who just kills.If dongran won he'll just continue to perpetuate the suffering that already happens in the city.If ahab won or if Ishmael turns into another ahab the white whale would just die regardless but Ishmael will still continuously affected by her obsession.If erkling heathcliff won he would just continue kill heathcliff's from every mirror world and what's one death when deaths happen everyday in the city.
The outcome of the fights do not affect the World but rather the characters themselves.That's what makes them so personal.
I mean I have nothing against fighting to save the World or a huge threat but it much more gripping and emotional when the fight is very personal.
Fun fact, originally save the world stories were much more focused, Tomas odd fights in his series to get justice for people who were murdered, and ends up going against terrorists that want to kill a lot of people in his town. The world threatened in Tomas Odd is entirely just the town the main character grew up in. Save the world stories mean nothing if the world is to big for us to care about.
@@encryptkitsune341That last sentence sounds like something Goblin Slayer would say
kromer might affect more of the world down the line with the purging people of prosthetic l thing and having a cult dedicated to it
Basically mirror world
@@user-bk1gk8wo3d That's literally just tuesday in the backstreets.
I think in my opinion, the main reason the characters are so engaging. Is both 1, like you say, they aren’t idiots. 2, they are relatably human. One of the characters, perhaps speaks to certain people more. Whether it be liking their archetype or story and obstacles they overcome as an outside observer. Finding inspiration or admiration in it perhaps. Or feeling like you understand the character on some similar level. Having allegories in your own experiences which you can compare to then, the characters as they experience their own things.
This is one of the many things I love about the world PM crafted. For as insane and non-sensical as it may seem, it is scarily close to real. While sure, it exhibits some traits of the usual fantasy story. With stuff bordering on magic. It feels so gritty and realistic, in it’s own world, that it translates over. For example, the recent chapter of Time-killing time, I believe is a great experience. While I didn’t care much for the Time Ripper himself. What I did care about, was the simple concept of killing time. Wasting away, not necessarily out of narcissism, or any malicious intent. But just, being bored that you aren’t doing anything, and proceeding to not to anything about it. Just killing time. It’s encouraged me to watch how I use my time more closely as well. These sorts of small relatable traits to an otherwise backwards and incomprehensible world, is what draws me in for the next chapter, and the next, and the next.
The PM brainrot is real, so I know most of you won’t read this, as we are all illiterate.
I feel called out by that last statement, because I literally read up to the 4th sentence of the second paragraph of this comment, went "I ain't readin allat" and scrolled down to check if there were any comments
i aint readin allat
TLDR: Character good & relatable, the City is realistic yet fantastical, story & dialogue has morals, me likely.
@@-Ripica-TLDR TLDR: char good, city real, story moral
Honestly the PM city would be an intresting place to thing about living. You might not live long if you get unlucky enough to be born in the backstreets but in a nest it could be compared to some huge city.
i think the biggest aspect about limbus that makes it's writing suceed, is that every literary source is taken seriously and those expectations are met in each canto, i hope don's canto is also peak
Main Idea: Amnesiacs are fucking overpowered
The sinners have faults. And we like it!
But whose fault lie with?
@@YDBHpoTheIllegalsay it with me now! *ISHMAEL*
@@YDBHpoTheIllegalishmael
@@Sky_darts 🐟MAEL
@@iambumbo7534🐟✉️
hmmm tsunul making this whole video because of sinclair for sureeeee
Bro definitely losing against the bisexual allegations
@@shiromiyaalexander3332 bro was never fighting em
Sinners: Have flaws and aren't perfect.
Us as humans: Have flaws and aren't perfect.
They struggle like us, and that's why I love them.
The story focuses on those 12 sinners. Compared to so much more characters spread out in gachas with hardly much substance.
And you know the writing is on another level when you don't expect much from them at first just to see their canto and want to hug them immediately and say "It's alright"
I agree. Heathcliff was my least favorite character when I started playing and after a Canto VI he graduated to my favorite.
Having a literature based character is undeniably helpful but the way they innovate them to fit such dystopian world is what makes pm good
Honestly, Dante isn’t even the usual gacha leader archetype.
I think there’s maybe just a handful of sinners that would obey a direct order from them if they disagreed with it.
Dante’s more like their walking box of bandaids, and the fact that they can talk is a design flaw.
To be fair, the first part of the arc with Dante and the Sinners' relationship (especially in Canto 5) has been them treating them as a glorified save point and not only Dante learning to lead them, but them learning to accept that Dante is someone worthy of following
We all know hes just making this to distract us from him still needing to make a whole apology video to vergilius
12 idiots fight SCPs and come to terms with their mid-life(and existential) crisis. Quite literally a story you don't hear everyday.
One of the reasons why I can't wait for Canto VII is because I want to see more of Don Quixote's "serious" self, that was briefly showed when the Mariachis called out her dancing for being "insincere and lacking a pure heart".
I also want to hear about/see the friends she said beat her face in when she was doing the same to Sinclair in C3
This is a lovely little video but I think that what makes Limbus so peak character wise is honestly quite simple. Even on a cursory level with no context all of the full art pieces are fit to bursting with personality and charm. You could show anyone even without them ever have heard of project moon a screenshot of the seagull biking scene or Sinclair going maraca mode or Ryoshu being the wicked tongue witch and they would immediately get a strong sense of what each character is like and why going on a massive adventure with them is going to be so entertaining. Limbus is just one of those rare pieces of media that even with very little narrative analysis you can walk away with an immensely entertaining story and only gets better the more you want to think about it. Just its been so narratively satisfying that it almost feels selfish to want more content. That the game could blip out of existence and never get any new content or be impossible to play again, and I wouldn’t be that upset because of just how satisfied it made me feel.
I entirely feel every single word you said, couldn't have put it better
the saddest thing about wuwa is that they had to change the whole hostile treatment because the CN players complained and wanted that specific messiahs treatment...
And guess what? They still ended up complaining about it. Tbf, The devs thinking they needed to change 90% of the story when they just needed to tone down some parts while keeping it's core intact was just stupid.
Knowing that makes me disappointed. I like Wuwa's gameplay but damn, the story's pacing is too fast and lack depth
@@JardrinOh God, changing the story because the audience asked for it is the worse decision ever. I've seen so many good series destroyed because the developer forced to listen to their idea.
@pbyn153 fr there also many plot holes too, like wtf is yuanwu, why did we remember him in the dreamless boss fight, we didnt even meet him once
@@mitacestalia7532 Precisely, I still don't get how Kuro caved in like that
It's my personal opinion, but I feel like every Canto that has come after 3 has gotten better. And the fact Don Quixote's is next is probably going to finish killing me off by giving me a heart attack. I don't know if I'm ready for this!
tfw I'm reading don quixote book before her chapter. I'm doomed, it's 700 pages. I'm only at 200 pages. the book barely has paragraphs space. help.
@@mitacestalia7532its worth it tho, i read the two of them (1400+ pages) but I enjoyed every chapter (I’m a big reader so no problem for me).
started the game HATING don and heath and also simping for ishmael, ended with heath and don being my top 5 favourite characters and i simp for yi sang now. truly ideal.
Same i started by simping for don.
Then i began loving mersault, heatcliff ishmael yisang. Gregor and don.
Game is great.
started loving Don until I saw fuckin der freischutz
…I fucking love magic bullet
update, sinclair.
Another interesting thing to comente for the first 3 cantos is that one could argue that the simplicity of them is prove of peak story telling. Gregor is the first one and also he is the most 'sane' and 'estable' caracter, he has alredy go througth all the depresión, anger and stuff, we can see some of the damage and trauma but he is able to funtions properly. So his canto feels more like another bad chapter of his live that he knows how to deal with. Also for true vengan e he would have to deal with his mother and that is something he cant do now. For Rodion we have a character that goes with the Flow is up beat and always tries to move forward, but she is always consume by the memories of her crime and refuse to take any option of healling taking it as her punishment for it. She is just a Woman with a very good coping mecanism to hide her problems to other People, one that crumble for moments and shows how empti she really feels for not being special or a good person. And finally sinclair his canto is the middle point Between what is Rodion and Gregor to the likes of ishmael and yi sang, were he adchieves do deal in big part of his traumas and heal for the best while also leaving some unfinish things
I won't pretend like the past three cantos haven't all made me cry, but Canto IV, for all its faults, is the only thing that consistently makes me break down whenever I revisit it, except maybe Path to Nowhere.
You brought this up in your review of what made Canto IV so amazing, but Yi Sang, Dongbaek, and Dongrang all being facets of the inability to move on struck a deep chord in me. From being chained to the past to hating it, each person's coping mechanism inevitably destroying their lives, and the swell of yearning as these former friends clashed - all culminating in Yi Sang learning to move on and rediscover a desire to live, yearning for another chance, one provided by Dante
Dongbaek's theme makes me cry whenever I hear it, full stop. Amid its beautiful melody, almost like audible nostalgia, you hear desperation as Dongbaek tries to realize her goal of tearing everything down, to return to an era where they were all happy, a dream Yi Sang also held. Whereas Dongbaek's hate consumed her (rightfully so, since they were outright betrayed), Yi Sang's guilt resonated with me just as well. In my lowest points of my life, I would swing between hating the circumstances I was in and the events that led to them to wallowing in depression over the cold realization that it was my choices, my inactivity that made me miss out in life, that I did not go down the road not taken, no matter how bright it looked. This song, not just reminiscing over better days but also crying over them, seemed to exemplify this dichotomy on regret, while the morose yet cold notes of Dongrang's theme feeled to echo his desire to hide or wipe it all away, to try to forge a future without acknowledging the past. This too have I experienced, and the ending of Canto IV, with Yi Sang finally rekindling a desire to live, felt almost beautiful, as the first story to be considered fully realized within Limbus.
That's not to say that Ishmael or Heathcliff's stories don't strike a chord with me either, and any time I see interactions between Queequeg and Ishmael I break down, but as someone who has sought counseling after the depression of not being able to overcome the guilt of not taking different actions was taking a physical toll on my body, it just holds a special place in my heart, for all its flaws.
Imo it's because Limbus (and Lobo corp/Library of Ruina) uses some character tropes but has them grounded enough so they feel more human.
Also the stories usually don't have the obvious "happy ending" that many games go for and you can feel that the main cast has a relatively thin plot armor.
People die and they don't come back or get ex-machinaed, if people do stupid things, they get some serious consequences for their actions NPCs or Protagonists alike.
In addition, while every sinner will usually "do what they have to do" they often will do things their way, the group be damned. This adds individuality to each sinner as it's quite obvious that not everyone is going to magically become friends and tolerate each other's anthics just because the main character said so.
The fact that there is no "karma" system is also great as some characters can be absolute asholes and get away with it scott free, you can't catch up to every person that badmouthes you and get your satisfying revenge on them because that's how life works and you have more important shit to do.
Which by the way, you also often FAIL in the story despite being the protagonist and having plot armorm you can't rewrite the past or magically resurrect people that are gone.
Also having great VAs and music helps a lot.
The thing that locked in how special the character writing is was when I noticed how much Heathcliff was developing as a character even when the spotlight wasn't on him. He sees Ishmael at her most rabid through her Canto, and starts to worry about how his "stop" is going to effect him. This sort of comes to a head when they pull up to wuthering heights and tells everyone that things could pretty bad for him. He gives people the heads up that he might not be equipped to handle things, and pleads with the group to not hesitate to knock some sense into him. It's such a breath of fresh air as oppose to stuff like Persona, where everyone acts like a looney tunes character outaide of their main arc
12:05 Thats why Fontaine arc where we see furina go through her 500 years of solitude is so peak, bc Paimon is completely absent from this scene. Like imagine if the traveller was with Paimon while that stage sequence is happening, it will utterly ruin it with her occasional yapping. Bud thinks shes Dora the Explorer
Characters aside, what hook me up gotta be the world building is this game. All things are compacted and shrouded in the City and it really lits me curiosity of what beyond the City border and within the hierarchical system of the City like what will corp A or B looks like.
BEACH VOLLEYBRRRE
Chokolat 😰😰
LIMBUS COMPANYYYYYYYYY
I hate this moment so much, but that's in character
Vecaccion
I really enjoy Limbus Company - and Project Moon as a whole - because of how game mechanics are basically always intertwined with the story, especially with how Abnormalities - things that are well known to be physical manifestations of peoples' subconscious thoughts - are basically constantly linked back to major characters due to sharing overall themes. Dante is partly so interesting to me because they're both symbolically representative of Carmen's WhiteNight (a healer with 12 followers) AND Ayin's One Sin and Hundreds of Good Deeds ("to be willing to bear pain is half the atonement", Dante revives Sinners by bearing all of the pain of their injuries and deaths over and over again).
The Sinners have such depths to them that people are writing dissertations on how the Sin Affinities of their base identities symbolize their surface-level, shallow, and deepest levels of characterization - like how Rodya is a surface-level hedonist (skill 1 gluttony), seems to have a protagonist mindset under that (skill 2 pride), but ultimately just wants to stand up against societal injustice (skill 3 wrath).
It's a story with so many layers and so much thought put into it that you could probably spin a wheel consisting of every character present for at least 2 scenes in the story and put together a whole analysis on how their story at the very LEAST serves as a foil to someone else and has thematic importance - for instance, Hubert's regular attire was present for maybe one minute of story and already I can see how his attire and color scheme are meant to contrast Dante as two wielders of time-based powers, with Dante being red (also associated with Kali, Vergilius, and Rodion, very much people who try to actively aid those in front of them even if it hurts them long-term) and Hubert being blue (also associated with Argalia, Demian, and somewhat Sonya, people who don't actively pursue good in front of them but try and pursue the greater good, even at the cost of the short-term).
The one character that I really connected with the most so far was Ishmael, how she didn't felt like she had any direction in life and didn't want to live through the usual cycle of study, work and retire... Then at the random whale's belly when she was inside the whale oil and thinking about how insignificant and fragile she was at the end of it. By the end, she event tries to push Dante away saying he is just doing it for his own satisfaction, to feel like he is a good person. The way she just gets angry at the sudden "it'll be ok" mentality of everyone once they reach U corp feeling like what is really important for her doesn't matter to them and they see all of them like a liability or even enemies at some point. It just spoke to me in a really deep, personal level that I can't help but feel like she will probably be my favorite character of all time.
"This is how I will chart my own path..."
Im disappointed in myself that i stopped playing Limbus Company in the first part due to me being more liking Arknights. I compared the two games and told myself that AK was better. than after canto 4, 5, 6 I was now more obssessed with LC than AK. To the point I didnt care for the events in AK I just skipped all their stories and just get the rewards. I was so invested with the lore of AK back then but now I got bored. I like how the worldbuilding in LC didnt make the people edgy or be not completely insane. The fact that act somewhat human. Even the cannibal chefs in Library of Ruina act normal in their own way despite literally eating people.
Man, the old Wurthing story was so much better. Chixia was actually worried about her friends.
“I’ll only explain worldbuilding when its inherently neccesary”
When has PM worldbuilding NOT been necessary unless you say, well, “Don’t worry about it”.
Fate moment
What is it with asian companies that have Moon in their name overlapping so damn much 😭
There's something about companies that have Moon in its name having nearly unexplainable lore and worldbuilding to outsiders
The stance Project Moon takes to writing their characters is very reminiscent to how some of the creators of some of my favorite fictional stories write their characters. Namely Royal Scandal (extremely underrated series. It’s kinda like Limbus but with fairytales and music videos instead of classical literature and cantos) and how they’ll foreshadow certain characters and motifs before they’ve even been introduced. I can’t really name one without spoiling it so I’d recommend checking them out. The series, like Limbus is still ongoing and it’s peak fiction.
Admittedly it is a bit hard to get into because the series is primarily in Japanese.
OMG ROYAL SCANDAL FAN SPOTTED ❤❤❤❤
@@casstone4132ROYAL SCANDAL SLEEPER AGENTS RISE UP
i personally love the fact that the stories are so well thought out (being inspired by inferno and other literary works) and fitting so well with the setting and mood of the city, the characters are so easily likeable and unlike most games, project moon actually has a reason as to why the sinners just comeback from dying which is actually extremely overlooked in a lot of other games, even the predecessors of limbus have reasons as to why our characters can just comeback like nothing happened.
limbus was a game that i thought i would never play mainly because of the genre its associated with, even the first time i played the game i was limiting my vision on the fact it was a gacha game and never really tried playing the game, which i regret a lot (missed out on a lot of events)
but after playing library of ruina and lob corp i felt inclined to play limbus, even then i didn't really expect the game to grow on me so quickly.
i love all of project moon's games and hope they release more bangers, thanks for readin :>
You made an excellent point about how other gacha games try to cram the characters' good points into their limited initial screen time. Part of what immediately hooked me on Limbus Company is that Limbus actively introduces the characters *by their flaws.* I love how instantly recognizable the characters' dialogues are from their worst traits.
I feel that this game really puts you into Dante's role very well. Dante has no memories and even if you have played all PM games, we as an audience dont know everything there is to know about The City. Having it focus on the sinners, who have lived and experienced different areas, gives the audience more to learn and love about the lore that is being meticulously laid out. PM may not be the best about gacha mechanics, but they are great at thoughtful writing.
The fact that PM made me care for 12 stooges as a clockhead and made me care about their book counterparts, especially knowing that this is loosely based from the Divine Comedy, is amazing
One of the other neat things about the Sinners is that they’re so distinct it even translates to writing - as in, the in-game Abnormality entries are written by the Sinners, and it doesn’t usually say who wrote one, but it’s pretty clear who did nevertheless because each and everyone has their own unique personality. Which is much more impressive considering there are like twelve of them.
My favorite thing is the fact that (being that I am in charge of leading a group of people irl) the game is extremely accurate to how your employees couldn’t really care what you or anyone else wants till they grow connected to them.
We have to earn there respect, and till then they’re gonna treat you like sentient luggage they have to carry around.
With my favorite scenes being mersault food critic scene since that’s when the group really starts acting like a team. And the scene were the sinners roast us out of genuine concern for our wellbeing for going into the outskirts with only heath and don.
*Inhale*
And finally, i NEED you to play Your Turn to Die. It's a simple game, sort of lovechild of Zero Escape and Ace Attorney, wearing a Danganronpa-shaped hat, but you will LOVE it for the way characters feel. Exactly like in Limbus, they're not just cardboard boxes carrying out dialogues for sake of story - they act, interact, reason and clash based on their personallities; incomplete information leads to mistakes, they'll be wrong and fall for bias - but will never act "dumb", every line underlined with reason.
Thanks for the recommendation
Oh dw, I've already played it. Good ass story(even tho its not done yet)
OH MEIN GOTT I USED TO BE A BIG FAN OD THAT AND I EVEN FOUND A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE IN THE DISCORD SERVER OF THAT GAME!!
@@Tsunul How'd you like it? YTTD has a lot of sideplots going on behind your back, just thanks to characters taking action outside of Sara's influence :D
Like, have you ever figured out what was Keiji and Alice up to in monitor room?
Ah yes, another GOAT game with fascinating story-writing and great characters introduction and developments.
So I'm an outsider looking in; just saw this video randomly in my recommends. I have friends that play the game, but I am already cosmically overburdened with Gachas, so I don't play anymore than the ones that I do.
What I've gleaned from this video is: A lot of games have a tendency to tell the story of the world over the story of the characters. For example, one of the games I play, Granblue has this problem really bad with their main cast. We're a group of seven traversing the world, but outside of very early events--the main cast is very stagnant, you don't delve into their wants, needs, or fears much, if at all, and they're mostly there to provide us backup in the moments that we require it. Which sucks because the narrative itself is very good, but the characters don't do anything beyond what they're needed to do.
Whereas, here, the characters _do_ and the story is tailored more towards what their actions, wants, desires, and fears, causes for them in this world. It's a much stronger way to endear people to characters because you get to _feel_ what the characters are. It's something that you can really engage with when the cast is smaller; you're allowed to say, alright, I can wait to develop this directly more because I have so much more time with this character. It's something that a lot of other gacha struggle with specifically because of the nature of Gacha--you _need_ to endear people to your characters in order for them to roll, or something. So you tend to frontload things, you want your characters to have their big moments, or failures, and sometimes that warps what makes logical sense within the narrative. I struggle to say that's always a bad thing; there are a lot of meaningful moments where there are just more logical ways for things to go, but a lot of games take it to an extreme where realistically they could have gotten everything they still wanted to do, but neatly packaged instead of the slapdash.
I think it really comes down to the structure of things--Limbus, at least from what I've seen, feels like a story that is written like a story, and they built a game around it. The game and the gacha are secondary to the story, whereas a lot of other gacha are gacha and game first, story second. All in all, as someone who has, _no_ idea what's going on, I really liked this video.
Honestly canto III is neat cause there’s even more moments beyond the mentioned that builds character. Meursault’s past with N corp being mentioned and Don beating the shit out of Sinclair to calm him down saying that’s what her friends would do to her. Everything is slowly building
33:09 lobotomy corp is very effective because it makes you feel the hell that the facility is
I love my band of dumbass misfits and I appreciate the care PM has taken in the storytelling 💕
I personally don't mind that we don't have constant main updates so I don't burn out and have time to digest the story.
The idea of the intervalos-minis is great because they can be seen as appetizers of information while we wait for the main dish and also progress through the story.
Thanks as always for the wonderful vid Tsunul! ✨
I can’t wait for Hong Lu’s Canto, from what we’ve seen so far definitely has more to tell, Behind his oblivious upbringing. Especially with the scene of Saude in Canto 3 and his connection Young-ji in Canto 4, being the one to realize Yi sang needs help.
I only know a bit about Red Chamber, but I hope it has that love triangle because I'm disappointed they erase Isabella in Heathcliff canto
The reason why Limbus characters work better is very simple. Other gachas treat their characters as merchandise. It's their main and only selling point and their goals for making the game is mostly just for profit. Limbus simply has a story to tell, while they are also driven by profit, I imagine they're using the profit to keep themselves alive and tell more stories than just to boost their bank account.
I really hate Wuthering Waves because how sheerly idiotic the writing is. As if one walking encyclopedia is not enough for info dumps, they added TWO, and whenever any exposition is required, Encyclopedia 1 speaks in a really fancy manner nobody really understands and Encyclopedia 2 repeats the exact same thing but in the most bland, straightforward way possible.
I find several issues with its characters too. Yangyang straight up said that working in backup support is much more difficult and exhausting than fighting on the front line. As a Gregor simp, I took that personally. I'd really love to see her go to the front line and "simply need to fight bravely". The moment when Jiyan chickens out for Yangyang to have her Big Hero Moment™ is clearly not thought out well enough. It turned him into a complete laughingstock. Many people I know interpreted his actions as one of cowardice. I just can't look at him with a straight eye when a certain other war hero gets downtrodden and traumatized and this chicken becomes the most respected guy ever.
I really don't think the writers of WW knew what they were doing, I can tell what they're aiming for in these moments, but the end results are simply horrendous.
PM sold a lot of LC Sinners merchandise at cons and stuff. 😅
@@Renko324 That's not exactly what I mean. They produce sinner merch and all that but at the end of the day they still treat them like good characters, unlike many other gachas where they just stockpile design elements for a quick waifu/husbando material and/or a strong unit to leech players' wallets.
When games like Genshin produce like 20 new characters per season, we only have these 12. I know there are ids, but the ids are still variations of the sinners we know and love. This makes it easier for them to focus on building these characters that we follow through the entire game without having to sacrifice the abundance of side characters that just exist to encourage players to pull the banners.
Besides, this releases tension between gameplay and plot. You can see this from, again, Genshin. I mean, though you might have pulled certain characters for your team, you can't realistically expect them to actually follow you through your journey. You might have pulled Raiden Shogun to help get past a boss, but she's still staying at Inazuma (think that's the name, not sure tho) plot wise. This creates conflict between gameplay and plot, and I didn't like this. Compare to Limbus, where if a character is unavailable due to reasons, you actually can't select them to fight. Sucks to be that guy who have no good Rodion and Hong Lu ids in the TKT event (which I am), but it makes sense for the plot and I'm all for it.
To summarize, I don't like it when games treat characters as less than characters, which is what I mean by treating them as merch, and is unfortunately frequent in gachas. And while it's certainly profitable, this approach can lead to serious drama and disaster, look at what happened to GF2...
@@stellarischloride7522 limbus have more merchandise than any gacha. Hell, they even have a litteral restaurant base on their games and somehow they still have the best writing in the gacha industry
What's interesting is that pretty much *every* Sinner is hiding a facet of themselves beyond the surface, and yet, they don't *tell* you that directly. Limbus does so much "show, don't tell". It gives you the pieces of them so you can come to the conclusion most people are thinking...before it all crashes down and tells you the "why are they like this" in their personal Canto with enough time to process with a compelling story.
We can see that with Don Quixote, for example.
She's a goofball, a screw up in the beginning. But she learns from that, but also doesn't completely change -- she's still very hyper, but tries to keep herself together, and we are shown that she is much more knowledgeable than we realized, regarding Fixers. She provides information about obscure Fixers such as Butlers. She rarely slips from this nature, but when she does, it's jarring. But I think we'll see exactly *why* she's like that once we get to her Canto.
I LOVE SINCLAIR ‼️‼️‼️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥
SAME ❤❤❤❤❤
PREACH 🙌
Thank you for putting into words what had caused me to just start skipping dialogue in Wuthering Waves.
At some point there was this one conversation where it felt like they were reiterating the same point like 3 times over and it felt like they were insulting my intelligence, and I can't even remember what that conversation was about now since it didn't really amount to anything. Meanwhile I overanalyze every line of dialogue in Limbus for foreshadowing of future chapters.
I think Limbus partially works because it looks at gacha tropes and actually questions them
Why should the MC be overpowered?
What does it mean to be a good commander?
Why should the MC be silent?
Why should the gacha pull for new characters? Why not different versions of the same units?
Why is the emo edgy character emo?
And most importantly
What makes sense for this character to say?
>Why should the gacha pull for new characters? Why not different versions of the same units?
Honkai Impact 3rd was doing it at the start, but then gradually stopped. My guess is that's a poor man's way to fill the gacha, and my answer - I like it, even if it is a poor man's way.
Самое лучшее здесь в том, что грешников нельзя просто так подвязать под какую-то определенную классификацию личностей, они не являются просто персонажами архетипами, несмотря на то, определенные архетипы в них явно прослеживаются. Спасибо за видео, чудесный анализ!
"since its for new and current players i will explicitely mark out spoilers"
-Tsunul 10 minutes after explaining canto 5 (and somewhat end of canto 6 in the introduction of the video)
Limbus company is the first game that required me several breaks during the story bc it was too emotional and my heart was exploding every lines. Truly one of the best casts I’ve ever seen❤
DON QUIXOTE
DON QUIXOTE 😈😈😈😈😈🍎🍎🍎🍎🐠🐠🐠🐠🗿🗿😰😰😰😰😰
DON QUIXOTE
I cannot escape blind obsession
800 views within 21 minutes…man never fell off, EVER.
Unlike GuardianZet lmaoooo
@@Yuri_Burger who?
@@YDBHpoTheIllegal project moon creator who is weirdly far right, reposts some really weird right wing stuff on Twitter and hates pride stuff
@@Yuri_Burger Well He didn't on UA-cam so I don't know, my X(Twitter) account is suspended so I definitely don't know him. Might as well I could remember if I saw him on Reddit though.
@@Yuri_Burger he’s far right?
I feel like there’s two different types of chapters, ones where the sinners do resolve their issues and use their ego at the end and ones where the sinners didn’t resolve their main issue, I also feel like heathclifs in the second category because something I noticed is that in the theater yi sang’s and Ishmael’s chapter covers show their ego bg while Gregor Rodion and Sinclair just show a shot from their chapter near the end just like heathclif’s does, only showing a shot of the rooftop of the mansion and not his ego bg, also noticed that the characters are gaining new issues after their chapters, Rodion feels bad about Sonya’s plan working good so far in the most recent chapter, Ishmael will have to deal with ahab again, yi sang is being forced to fight against like all of his old friends, and gregor’s mom is basically the cause of most of our issues, also anyone else notice the rubber duck in the image of Ishmael calling out for her crew after the ships destroyed
I love your analysis videos.
Yeah, it’s nice to feel that writers actually care about what they’re writing. Makes me really appreciate my time/money spent on a game that wants to tell me something.
With how big the gaming industry became, a lot of games feel more like a commercial product which sole purpose is to get my money, rather than an art piece that wants to share an idea or show something interesting.
The man has cooked once more with the video essay!
Seriously, these are always so rediculously high quality, keep on cooking man.
My favourite story moment is probably still when Queequeg's spirit joins Ishmael when she pulls her harpoon out of the whale's heart's heart, that scene always makes me tear up no matter how many times i see it.
But the entirety Canto 6's final fight is an easy second place, not only is the fight itself one of if not the most fun fight in the whole game (I CANNOT wait to get my teeth kicked in by it in the next railway) but that whole fight is just one gigantic cinematic masterpiece, and the parallels to the Black Silence fight back in Ruina just make it even better.
22:06 "You fighting a whale of the size of average american" got me crying XD
Imo, just like you said since we follow the story of only 12 characters, over time we get emotionally attached to it escpecially with how each canto we go deeper into their story.
Most gacha games just release new character for the sake of cash grab. after they released and we are done with the inkling of their character story, they just become...a unit to use, a means to fight things. And their story is just mostly shallow where you can get into it, feels the wow of it, and then forgets about it.
While in limbus, we only get different version of sinners but on a basic level they are still them, a character that we invest into emotionally because they are the only character that we can get.
People probably already mentioned it, but I think it's because there is a limit of characters.
In any other gacha you have a ton of characters that barely are important to the main story. A good example is the upcoming charater in Genshin. I legit didn't even KNOW who Emilie even was before her drip marketing x3
I know there are things like character stories, but even then, they only have like a 1 hour quest to fully develop (or not) a character.
Then there are pure fanservice gacha, like Age of Ishtaria, who only make characters lusting over the main character. It gets boring over time if you have basically cardboard cutouts of different busty females wanting you.
In Limbus, you have multiple different personalities. They all are unique in personality and design, even if they have uniforms to match. And due to the limit, they can focus on the characters. It also helps that each character gets a chapter for themselves, too, which ties into the main plot.
And the fact Dante is also not the allmighty savior or the like is refreshing. They are a normal person, as far as we are concerned thus far in the story, and that make me go "I can relate".
Like, in Genshin, why did the protagonist forgive Raiden Egg (I refuse to say her name right), but not Wanderer?
In AoI, why do I have to go along with every female's date plan for us?
Yes, in Limbus, I don't have any choices, but I don't need it, because I already can relate with a person.
Which in a way, the sinners are, too. They feel like people. People with less limitations than irl, but still people x3
They aren't your typical perfect waifu or husbando, but they are written as human.
Ah, sorry for rambling. I just love those guys so much x3
I am also sick and it's 3am.
But yeah. Limbus really put the bar high up regarding character and story writing. At least to me.
Heck, I am normally f2p with gacha games, but I really consider buying the battle pass for Hong Lu and Ryōshū's Seasons, because those are my absolute favorite sinners^^
tsunul vids about characters always give me chill.
Keep up the good work my man :V
4:11 Marth would not say this, he says "As a friend, you are... replaceable. Farewell."
This comment is approved by real Excelblem fans
LMAO
Nice to see some love for the writing in this game ♥
On top of everything you said, something I admire in Project Moon's writing is that while they do reference books for the different characters, they manage to strike an impressive balance: you never need to know the books to understand anything, but when you happen to know things about the "original" story it only adds things, and never removes impact. It could easily make Limbus feel less intense because we think we know already what's going on, but they change just enough to keep us surprised, while keeping just enough that we feel like we're seeing something bigger.
I tried to open the link to the Dante's Inferno breakdown doc, but it's a link to a twitter post with no link... and given that I don't have a twitter account, I can't see the replies, so I can't access to doc. Would it be possible to add the direct link to the doc?
Oh I gotcha
docs.google.com/document/d/1n9B2N26jBtXOY2oEndm8VdWWAf5SxCMOOhEW09HzALY/edit
@@Tsunul Thank you ♥
Since there doesn't seem to be any priority to make the characters suck up on Dante as the stand-in character (except for Outis), or anyone else for that matter, they are free to behave as they should be instead of bending over backwards for the plot and instant feel-good for the player side.
Also, maybe because they are practical nobodies who indeed behave idiotically at times, we don't have high hopes for them, so any stupid actions are tolerated (and also called-out in-game), and every little improvement and lucky roll feels more gratifying.
It helps with the setup of 12+ mainstay characters that is carried over every chapter allowing them to keep growing, compared to any other gachas with hundreds of characters but very few mainstays. God forbid if it's just the one blank slate protagonist, an exposition fairy, a couple cheerleaders, and a couple vanishing villains.
You can say anything that is wrong or suck of PM as a studio or Limbus as a game; I might even agree with a few. But no one can say Kim Ji-hoon doesn't take the story and the character he created seriously in any capacity.
Heck, no gacha company will ever go out of their way to fix a texture misplacement or recast a character just because it could give players a wrong interpretation of the character. Despite being a gacha game, you can feel that almost all of the main cast up to their EGO and Identity are all well thought-out instead of hot sexy anime waifu/husbando just to seduce the player into paying money
And yet they still haven't changed Don's combat sprite vs her dialogue sprite.
Maybe jihoons cooking something. Maybe jihoons fucking with us. Idk
KEEP COOKING TSUNUL I LOVE YOUR VIDEO ESSAYS KEEP COOKING
Not shoving their entire backstory is what made me LOVE Don. At first she was some hyper idolizer, which annoyed me as it seemed fake. But as I pried her identities for the free lunacy I started to realize that is exactly why. And I can relate to that well. Hell I used to forget about Yi Sang, now I based my TTRPG character off him I love him so much!
Blind Obsession? Heh... All hands, full speed toward where the lights flicker.
The waves… will lay waste to everything in our way.
What a nice characters review. It make me wanna read story again
I have to personally thank you, Tsunul, for making a video that summarizes why this game is so good because now I can actually hold my point when people tell me "but it's just another gacha, probably just hollow predatory business with just a little less boob on the surface, what's there to like" because people normally dont wait for you to type out a paragraph of reasons before dismissing the conversation. Genuinely good analysis, at least on a introduction level. I feel like, in a way, everyone can make a heavily detailed explanation of some characters more than others because, well, there's always someone in between these that you CAN relate to. They feel real, among the whole disastrous monolith of suffering that is the City, these feel like real people with problems. And Idk. It's just. Yknow. It's just really good.
I've come to realise over the years I'm not as much a thinker as I am a transmitter, I can understand pretty well and remember too but my thoughts aren't nearly as deep as this analysis or some of the comments (shoutout to the one with the deep explanation of each Sinner, you're so cool), so I'll use your video next time I gotta explain. Again, thanks for doing such a good intro analysis. Best of luck with all!
P.D. Also I'm fully biased with PM because Limbus made me cry with every Canto after 3, including some of the Side Stories and events. It's so visceral, you can't just watch it from afar. It pulls you in.
Vid goes hard. Good job on the running joke with the first three chapters. I love me a good bit.
Honestly incredible Soundtrack choice throughout this video, using You and Close in the Distance in the Yi Sang segment is truly peak
Regarding Wuthering waves. CN didn't like the original script about all of the people including the red headed girl being sus about the MC, heck the red hair girl even pointed a gun on the MC for being sus
And the result, Wuwa's story lack depth.
Pretty sad innit?
The fault lie within CN, after all.
@@pbyn153 in exchange for being a coomer bait, CN removed the lore and will continue listening to CN than the global fanbase.
Honestly in the end, the fault lie with Kuro. They change 90% of the story and look how that goes.
It not like they have to change all, just tone some hostility down (cuz 10hrs in and nothing improve) or make story that compliment the hostility of character.
32:59 THERE I AM GARY THERE I AM!!!!!
Memes aside this was a nice video to see, a nice way to put into words why I love limbus, and PM's writing as a whole in a nice 32 minute package in comparison to most things that come out these days. Nice work dude, hope the Sinclair cosplay isn't too uncomfortable
Oh my goodness... This video made me very happy to see, thank you for putting this together!
nice vid, thx for the doc link never knew it existed too
Me personally, I never found "gacha games" very entertaining to me as a long time thing. They'd captivate my interest for a week at most and then a new character comes out that seems interesting and that makes me spend a few hours total grinding for that character to eventually win or lose. Limbus doesn't make you continuously get new characters. You have the ones presented to you with their abilities and you can configure them however you'd like. There's no "pointless" side tasks for the point of gaining more money. Hell, there's hardly a currency outside of lunacy (No, I'm NOT counting the watches from TKT right now. Those are temporary.) while games like Genshin and HSR have multiple forms of currency that they make you get and it feels tedious. Of course, yes, I wobble and cry when I run out of enkephalin for a few hours but it's also necessary to have that limit because you can't just speedrun the entire story in a few hours. The stories behind each character are so captivating to me; I even CRIED during Yi Sang's chapter (I hardly ever cry. I ended up looping "Fly, My Wings" for over a day straight. Thanks Project Moon and Mili) and I already know I'm crying during Ishmael's as she's one of my favorite Sinners. They even make Dante so complex. They're not just supposed to be another version of the player that you can name, but their own person with their own struggles. I felt for them so bad during Canto V because they're getting attached to the Sinners as a whole and want everyone to be able to get along when it doesn't feel that possible since it's becoming apparent that each Sinner has their own gains from joining Limbus Company.
"I was wondering if all the times I've spent thinking, hoping, and contemplating about our futures together were... pointless. This thought lingered in my head for a while."
I took a step back right there. Dante's supposed to be a super firm manager, everyone relying on them for their power (and even at some point, it seems Dante themself is implying that they feel their only use is the power to turn back the clock.) and here they are getting sad at the thought that what they have won't entirely last forever.
The funny moments also save the game from being so entirely serious and honestly I get a good laugh out of some of the stupid shit they do too. So yeahhhh this game's had a grip on me for longer than the other gacha games could hold my attention span thanks Project Moon.
Always fun to see slightly different interpretations from different folks on specific stories :O
Everytime tsunul posts pm content it’s absolutely peak
LC's interpersonal payoff feels earned.
The conflicts at play won't see the world change if they lose, things would just play out "as intended" per se, but winning is still a crucial goal for the characters personally.
The emotional causality not only make sense, it's relatable.
Meanwhile.... WuWa tried so many times with "touching moments" with Jiyan's story but it all feels shallow at best.
Worse still, Yangyang crying over a random ass npc is literally that meme of Jeremy Clarkson going "Oh no. Anyway-".
We already know they're going to pull the tupical bullshit nakama powers thing to conclude the current story in WuWa that whatever inner demons/ conflict or sense of urgency they tried to instil comes off as fake at best, unnecessarily dragged out at worst.
All this in a "world changing" backdrop at that, compared to LC's more focused scale in general.
I think my favourite part of Limbus story/lore/mechanics compared to other gacha games is how tight everything is
One example is the gacha system itself, most gacha games this feel like just a formality, just an expected mechanic to getting more characters. Most games barely explain what even is going on when you "pull" for a character.
But in Limbus not only is it explained, the Mirror Worlds are not just a gacha mechanic but also a core aspect of the game's story and lore
With Canto I they explained the basics both as a gacha mechanic but also how it works in universe
(I don remember if it's touched on Canto II)
Canto III Kromer mentions how she saw an alternate world with her and Sinclair, which is almost directly connected to the playable N corp Sinclair ID
Canto IV had Yi Sang and his ideal self from a mirror world
Canto V I think only hints at the Mirror Worlds, with Hermann promising Ahab that she'd get to "hunt down every Pallid Whale"
But what I think is cool is how in Canto VI, we not only get the Erlking, a literal identity directly related to the gacha mechanic as an antagonist, this is also a version of Heathcliff who has been travelling Mirror Worlds to hunt down every other version of Heathcliff, showing us that Hermann's offer to Ahab last Canto wasn't just an empty promise
You then pull a erkling heatcliff and lose all you other heat ids.
A small but super cool detail is that if you use The One Who Shall Grip Sinclair during Kromer's Canto III fight she'll start the fight staggered and has a line like "are you... My Sinclair?" (this doesn't work in Mirror, and I don't know if it worked in Refraction Railway 1, since I didn't play at the time). Having the pulls tied into the lore/plot and then gameplay again is something I've seen only in Limbus and I wish more games did this.
Something i really like about pm's writting in general is that you dont discover every part of the world at once making feel quite large you got the syndicates and wings as two different groups yes but each going into smaller and smaller groups in any other gacha game you would instantly talk to the head of the group and everything feels just so smallin comparison
I think one of the reasons it works is because of the limited cast. Other gachas have like 34900 waifus and husbandos and only few are really important to the story, and so if you pull a character is mainly cause you dig their design etc. Many of the characters do not even appear in the main story and they are just in some events.
Instead limbus is like "ok here. The main cast is these losers. Like them or else go fuck yourself or something". Now don't get me wrong, i do also like gacha where my main reason to pull is "daum she hawt" but limbus story is just something else. The fact it restricts to the sinners allows to focus on them and to see their evolution, and like them not only cause of design but because you can understand them and grow to like them.
For example a person from a discord server told me she did not like ishmael, and after her canto now she is one of her favorites because she says she relates to her.
I think for me the character i want to see more is Dante themselves.
I think they are the greatest example of the "characters make slight changes throughout the cantos and not just suddenly change when their time has come".
At the start Dante is the fucking antithetis and mocking of the average gacha MC: many gachas have an amnesiac mc or a person who knows nothing of the world of the game. But like WuWa often they just treat them like a fucking god, like "omgggg. You have a super great powuuuurrr. You solved in seconds something we struggled with although we should be wary of you" and also the MC knowing to do stuff although they should be confused about the situation.
Instead in limbus, Dante wakes up and is basically clueless in front of this unknown world, and they immediately task them to do stuff. Usually the first mission in gachas ends well and everyone is like "ommmggg you are so cool and a great leader", instead here it ends in utter failure, and verg is angry at Dante because they couldn't do a task they weren't ready for. Dante is treated by the sinners as just a convenient tool to revive not caring every time they revive dante suffers. Everyone sees him and the sinners as a bunch of losers and have no problem to insult them.
But while the other people still see the sinners as a bunch of misfits, Dante is growing to be more competent as a leader and the sinners are beginning to trust them and not see them as just a revival ticket. From canto 4 on they try to help the sinner and they begin to do that more and more and now in canto 6 they even discover one of their powers.
That makes curious to how Dante's story will develop and what will happen when we discover their backstory.
In general i think now LCB is my golden standard for gacha story, like for example when everyone said HSR penacony arc was peak i thought "very good but not a masterpiece" because my standard is limbus.
Of course it is not the best game ever but still i believe it is a game people have to play even if they dislike the gacha system
10:31 "the reason why"?
like
like through patches of violet?
ryoshus chapter will prob include a conflict with all the fingers or the introduction to the pinky (based on how its depicted in her art its prob the most scary of powerful)
also death kid
what kind of person would have every finger mark them as their biggest opp 😭
@@Number1RedMistFan i mean she has hinted how much she hates the middle and the ring
I normally watch videos that talk about bad writing and even though it's fun to make fun of those badly written stories this video is a nice change of pace.
As a Korean who started playing the games from these people since Lobotomy, I like this video
This is one of the biggest points of why I can’t really feel anything for any gacha characters of recent especially with star rail and genshin.
Too many times have they devolved into “ making character have tragic backstory” and doing nothing with it or focusing an entire section of the story to vomit everything about the character from a one sided angle with no meaningful back and forth.
Limbus from the start tells you that these guys have it rough and will continue to and you’ll have to grin and bear it. We see who they were in all angles but in a way that feels realistic because they have people to bounce off, they have obvious likes and dislikes and aren’t afraid to say “ fuck this guy and everything they stand for.
This group went from coworkers and people who only care bout themselves to people who PRIMARILY care bout themselves instead of out the gate a happy go lucky group where the only enemy is the person impeding on their job
I agree with your points about the limbussy crew growing tgt and making their journey feel more earned. As for hoyoverse games, it depends. Genshin really dropped the ball during Inazuma, but Sumeru and Fontaine's story is a lot more dynamic and the characters have a lot more variety, similar to the limbus crew. It's just that limbus' playable characters are fixed (so no need to sell new characters) and hit the ground running with characters dynamics.
@@hanchengjun275 It's been a while since I touched Honkai Impact 3rd but I don't fully recall if it had the same problems OP outlines here.
@@InfinitySevens to be fair I explicitly pointed towards hsr and genshin primarily because honkai isn’t like that by any means
@@amari7782 Fair, a lot of people say Honkai 3rd and Gakuen handle character writing better though I'd need to give everything a re-read through.
@@hanchengjun275 while that’s fair I still wouldn’t call them all that interesting especially given the context tsunul mentions later which is character driven motivation.
For the most part sumeru and Fontaine are mostly plagued with the same problems as he mentions in Wuwa but characters kinda have a bit more personality.
The problem genshin suffers with is they always resort to character being sad as a means of them getting development and generally speaking it’s either a full on tangent from the story or is barely connected to anything prior.
Of the sumeru cast only cyno, nilou, and dehya really had much in character reason to help since their either connected to someone who was effected by the current events ( dehya) or they genuinely care for the archon like nilou and cyno while al haitham is just there to solve all our problems he mostly sees the traveler as an interesting dumbass but really doesn’t have much motive outside of that.
Fontaine entire story is held together by furina not telling anyone about wats going on and while its an interesting plot point when u actually know why she’s doing all this it really makes 0 sense because if celestia was truly problematic they would’ve stopped her long before the story started and with the story telling us they’ve been dormant since the cataclysm the plot twist falls further short especially since for whatever reason the plan also implies that neuv wasn’t born yet and he was the biggest crux of focalor plan working.
While both stories had a bit more variety the problem is that most of these characters are fairly replaceable in the grand scheme of things
Dehya ultimately adds nothing outside of getting us to the desert
Cyno basically became a security guard to sneak us back in
Nahida was just princess in castle
Nilou is by far the most useless character I’ve ever seen because all her moments are ham fisted solutions that don’t make much impact.
Al haitham was just there to solve the problem.
Same with Fontaine
Wrio, chlorinde, arle, skirk and the melusine kids are mostly useless for the whole story.
Childe was only there so we can learn about the whale
The siblings were basically the most useful since a lot of stuff couldn’t be possible without them.
To roughly the same extent with navia but I’d still argue u can kinda replace her.
While with limbus because we know so much about each character I feel as though some mine wouldn’t work without certain interactions since they take the time to develop them and progress the story
The whole game is an interesting conundrum about how a game that is both consistently good/interesting and profitable is super rare
I love the character development in all of the PM games.
There is a thing most seemed to have forgoten or just dont get about ishmael.
While hunting crabs she keep being annoying in how the group is not prepared.
And they where not, the first day at sea almost get crash by waves, then she goes out with her wetted harpoon and fight another wave (intentionally this time), almost got crush by the port gate, then mess with the pirate and almost got scam by them, to even the encounter in the party boat and the L corp station.
If ishmael didnt guide everyone by force who knows what will happened.
But the worst of them all was something that could be guess by the crabs but most didnt
The fusion fork.
Its effect permiete of EVERY living being in the lake, thus how Whales are "parasite who pray on humans" if it wasnt becuase the bough give the sinners LITERAL PLOT ARMOR, who knows how far they would have gone, even those under ahab where affected in some way or another, and those not strong enough discarded.
And there is the possibility she feared to experience once again, her whole crewmates shallow by the nature of the lake.