"the outer wilds" in game would be like saying "the space" (in reference to space). also this just seems like you're mixing up "The Outer Worlds" and "Outer Wilds"
Jurassic Park came out when I was 6 years old. I was obsessed with dinosaurs. And space still fascinates me to this day. Especially if I’m having a bad day, I watch a video about the vastness of space, and how insignificant we all are. It’s comforting in an odd way.
8:31 The reason why there is so much coffee is actually really simple. Alan Wake is a Finnish game and one weird think about Finland is that it's the world's largest coffee consumer country. Literally, Fins typically consume 3-5 cups of coffee per day. It's a really weird part of our culture.
Yeah I see it almost as an unintentional way of creating small mysteries in AW2 which shows how you could actually do it *intentionally* if you wanted. Definitely threw me for a loop when I first played. AW2 is the best Game I've played in years
What I really want in a game is the feeling of discovering something nobody else has. In linear games or ones with map pins and checklists everything feels like it's been done and you're just retreading the steps. In games with no guidance it feels like everyone knows all these secrets except you, which they tease you with while watching you flail around. But then sometimes you'll be playing a game and following an objective when suddenly you find something that isn't on the checklist. A landmark with no pin, a story that doesn't appear in your quest log. In those moments I feel like I've stumbled upon something new and overlooked, that somehow I was the first person to discover it. More games should do that.
Breath of the Wild. Though it was unfortunately already spoiled for me, but when I saw the labyrinth island far to the north north east, I was still amazed and intimidated. At one point I was in the uttermost west, in the mountains north of the Gerudo desert. I hit the game border, with a big ravine and unknown lands outside of Hyrule. Had that too in the north west corner, and northmost center of the map just above Death mountain. I want to see what’s outside Hyrule.
You should try RDR2 if you haven't already, an absolutely beautiful game with a fantastic story that has so many cool things to discover. Sure, there are the main and side quests that pop up every so often but it is a n absolutely fantastically designed game with so many niche and hidden things to find. There is so much that you could scroll the wiki for hours then go into the game and find something completely new that you didnt know was in the game. Its absolutely fantastic and i highly recommend it.
I remember being a kid and hearing about the lost city of Atlantis and El Dorado. I wondered what it would be like to see these uncharted places. What kind of ruins would you see? What kind of treasures would you discover? Hollow Knight captures that child like wonder masterfully by placing you in a long ruined kingdom, handing you a rusty nail and saying "Go on, then." True art.
Hollow Knight is by far my favorite video game, but a game I played that does by far the LEAST amount of hand holding ever is Rain World. In fact, the creators didn't even want to put a tutorial in at all, but found players couldn't even get out of the first screen, so decided to just add a couple of instructions for how to eat, traverse between rooms and end a cycle. Rain World is easily the most difficult game I've ever played (and I say this as someone who enjoys beating hollow knight with 0 nail/mask/vessel upgrades, 0 charms and white spells for fun), but it's extremely rewarding and teaches you a lot about suffering because of that. I recommend it for anyone who wants a game that doesn't hold your hand but instead grabs you by the neck and throws you off a cliff
And if the fall doesn't kill you, the pit of worm grass you fell into will. Or the large centipede that was waiting for you. Or a tribe of scavengers upset at you. Or a lizard that's been tailing you since four rooms ago. I love this game :) (Hollow Knight's fabulous, too! :D)
About outer wilds vs clear goals - the game actually goes out of it's way to guide you. You know what the questions are. It's built around the idea of "whoa, this is cool, but why..." => "oh, I see, but why..." => "oh, IDK" => an hour later, on other part of the world => "oh, now I get it, lemme go back there"... What you've described in Elden Ring with that wind rock thingy is the whole of Outer Wilds. So yeah, it has quite clear goals. There wasn't a spot in which I didn't have anything to solve. There were spots where I was stuck. But always clear goals. Always obvious that my knowledge gets larger. Always progressing. It's very gamey game in that regard. Impressively so, given it's genre.
Definitely, the game is paced really well for what it is. But you definitely still need to develop a trust in the game to push yourself forward. I understand why someone wouldn't fall in love with it despite its many positive elements
while not my favorite game of all time, i believe that hollow knight is the best game ever made. it has a little bit of something for everyone. do you like combat? here are dozens of bosses to test your skill. do you like exploring? here's a map with 18 areas, go wild. are you a completionist? good luck. there's so much to do in the game that i have a save file with over 350 hours and im still missing a thing or two.
Maybe I’m one of these snob players, but I can’t for the life of me understand how someone couldn’t find their way around Outer Wilds. You literally can’t walk 5 meters without encountering a PoI that includes direct instructions on how to access another PoI. This then gets added to your ship log with a picture of the discovery, a description of it, and a thread attached to the thing the discovery is related to with a detective board style of presentation.
I believe it's just that some people don't want to even attempt to piece everything together. You have to remember that people are used to being fed answers, with content creators, guides, etc.
My problem is the game really doesn't motivate me to do so, there's very little allusion to anything bigger going on. You very much either have to already be hooked from the get-go or force yourself to take interest, I am speaking as someone who couldn't get into it. The game felt clunky / unsatisfying to play and as such I really didn't feel motivated to power on to learn anything about the universe.
This is easily one of the best video essays I’ve seen on UA-cam, and I’ve been in the video essay rabbit hole for a while now lol. Also I love the editing style! It reminds me of CHUPPL who makes awesome investigative journalism videos
Speaking of ambiguity, it would be nice if some games provided a “were we too ambiguous? Here’s a hint that’s less ambiguous” similar to how the Professor Layton series has Hint Coins because sometimes people do want an “aha” moment but their mind isn’t connecting the dots or are on the wrong train of thought I.E. the snake boss mentioned earlier, there could have been a hint or two that said something along the lines of “make sure you keep your eyes peeled for fake walls” or “there are rumours that hissing can be heard coming from the walls in [location]”
This is a really well put-together video essay, I'm honestly surprised it doesn't have more attention! I enjoy the analysis you gave to all these different aspects of the unknown in games, especially Outer Wilds as a huge personal fan of that game lol.
not him having my favourite game as a thumbnail and then casually mentioning a singular film which just so happens to be my favourite film. Also how is this video so good whatt i love this channel already
Me and my fiance picked up tunic the other day and we're having a blast until 2 hours in, I had the sword, I had found the shield, and spend the next 3 hours wondering where the next thing was. I didn't want to use a guide but with the path forward not immediately obvious and I had backtracked through any area I could get to, I ended up needing a guide to end up going "really?!! I just had to walk through this one, not so obvious path to get to the next objective, great...." and then got jumpscsred by the garden knight. So enjoying it overall lmao.
Finally a video essay that feels like the good kind of drinking from a firehose. How do you go through like five ideas and eighteen examples so fast without losing coherence and throughline. The script for this video is a masterpiece even before we get to the visual splendour.
I want to bring attention to Liam Vickers’ Murder Drones. It may not be a game, but the sheer dedication from the fandom is incredible. The lore, the story, the hidden details in the background, even the ending itself, it sparked so much interaction and debate in the fandom. The amount of theories, the amount of fan fictions, the story than can be pieced together by the background details as you watch the show makes Murder Drones something truly special. Even the ending is literally subjective. There are moments in the finale where the ending could’ve branched into a completely different ending, so no one can ever say that any ending was 100% certain. It was a wild ride waiting for each episode to come out, and it was absolutely worth it to be able to theorize and connect the dots as we all tried to figure out what might happen next. I highly recommend it.
For me, expectations are also a lot of these ambiguous exploration based games. My favorites I've experienced are ones that I go in expecting nothing. I picked up Hollow Knight for the reason of, I'd heard the name a few times and got curious, and ironically that in of itself is a great way to explain Hollow Knight, and its now one of my absolute favorite games.
This video has been an eye opener for me. I tend to like difficult games, but for HK in particular I found myself looking up hints (especially for boss fights) to reduce that difficulty. I always told myself that I did this because I am a busy man, juggling work, my family, friends and other hobbies, and being stuck on a boss for two hours or more doesn't make sense. The truth is that, from early on, I believed that I am simply not good enough of a player and I won't make it through on my own. So I might not like the challenge because of that believe, not because it is actually too challenging. Some interesting stuff to think about...
This is one of the best recommendations ever served to me. Hello beautiful man with a great sense of humour. I am sooooo excited to listen to you talk about cool things with cool visuals and strong editing from now on.
Growing up, I was fascinated by the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis. I still am. I think every kid had that one thing out of their reach that they couldn't stop thinking about. For me it was those, for others it was space.
i love the concept of ambiguous games, and have a huge respect for them. unfortunately my brain is NOT wired for most of them, and i have a short fuse when hitting obstacles that lack a clear solution so i end up rage-quitting embarrassingly quickly. tears of the kingdom is perfect for my adhd brain; it has general directions for what you should do eventually whenever you get around to it, in a world FULL of things to explore. also, i really want to finish outer wilds one day, bc the time i spent with it was wonderful! but the movement mechanics and my terrible spatial awareness makes it impossible to get in a flow state. it's like i'm chasing a carrot on a stick, and boy am i getting tired. one day, though! one day!
23:22 I love the outer wilds statistic that says that most people who told (don’t know his name) guy what they were going to do, did that thing first most of the time
3:25 this is just rain world in a nutshell. The game gives you the absolute bare minimum help. The entire purpose was not to make a game, but an ecosystem. The game and plot was mostly just slapped on top.
I never forget Marissa. Hollownest's premier opera singer. You can hear her singing in the main thoroughfare, and if you go up to her tower, you can see a beautiful butterfly ghost just belting to an audience that isn't there. I sit there listening to her, and I wonder what the city looked like in its prime. What lengths the king went to to protect it, and how he failed. The characters like Marissa that were left to suffer that failure. She died, and so many others lost their souls to the plague. Yet here she is, still singing. Do I put her soul to rest with the Dream Nail, or let her keep singing? Will I be the last person to hear her sing? You save Hollownest in the end. Maybe the city will rebuild. Maybe future generations will hear her sing, and if I banished her spirit, they would never get that chance. However, is that what she wants? I don't know. Just one small thing makes me think so much, and it's one of a thousand things. God, I love Hollow Knight.
I'm a simple man. I see Hollow Knight in the thumbnail: I click. But, seriously, Hollow Knight is my favorite game simply for many of the reasons you brought up. But, also, for the cohesion between aspects. I've yet to find another game that is so good at combining art design, music, tone, themes, lore, and even gameplay into one specific experience. That feeling of tragedy and loss, yet mixed perfectly with wonder and beauty. That sense of woeful insignificance as you realize how huge and old this fallen kingdom is, only to have that dawning sense of "Wait. I may be of great importance." The world feels completely organic, with seemingly meaningless background details adding to the ambiguity that makes every room a new discovery waiting to be made. NPCs add some much-needed levity amidst the harshest of difficulty curves but also provide some of the most emotionally devastating moments. Couple all of this with an almost open-world amount of exploration freedom and you somehow have a metroidvania with no two identical playthroughs on UA-cam. This freedom, combined with the cohesion mentioned earlier and the insane attention to detail culminates in a world that stops feeling like a game, because everything feels organic and purposeful. I love this game and its community so much, and I can't wait to see the explosion of fan theories, art pieces, and speedruns online once Silksong finally comes out. Here's hoping for 2025. Best wishes, Asad, from the entire hollow head fanbase, and may your every journey be meandering and wondrous.
When i was playing Dragons Dogma 2 i came across the sphinx second shrine before the first one. At this point i didn't know there was 2 shrines so i convinced myself that you somehow had to summon it. I saw the raised piece in the middle and decided you probably had to put something on it, so i stacked all the boulders on it to see what would happen. When that didn't work i decided i probably needs a blood sacrifice, so i spent about 2 hours carrying live animals and monsters to the shrine and killing them on the platform (this was pretty difficult). Finally when that didn't work i looked at a tutorial and found out that i was at the wrong shrine. At first i found it frustrating, but now i just find it funny.
I LOVE TUNIC. I had no issue beating the game although I did get lost in the quary. I LOVE OUTER WILDS. I had some issues with beating it two puzzles I had to look up although I did try to do the correct solution of one but failed and thought it was inpossible
I'm still very curious about space, but the difference from when I was a kid is that I now understand how much I don't understand about it, and I understand how much work it would take for me to just begin to scratch the surface of understanding space.
5:33 I was playing minecraft with this in the background. right as I jumped into a cave, I saw red eyes in the dark and this f**ing played right as the red eyes started getting closer. I got jump scared by a spider in minecraft. BROOOOOOOO! what is that timing!?!
FEZ is a really cool puzzle game that’s got interesting ...discourse ...among people who’ve played it and their opinion of the late game puzzles. The style of puzzles and requirements to solve them get more strange and different from the rest of the game. It’s not necessarily good or bad, but makes it harder for a lot of people to engage with, and some people who’ve done it independently don’t seem to have bought into the value of that effort. When I was playing, my partner and I had a lot of discussions about whether it’s more earnestly engaging in a game to not play when you hit a wall you can’t surpass or to bypass the challenge (in this case, looking up guides, but this argument also applies to easy mode type tools). With FEZ, I simply do not know. I think ending on mysteries that I trust to be worth solving but can’t is more satisfying than the answers I found online. With games like Celeste and Hollow Knight, I struggled and struggled and I think the value I got was amazing and wouldn’t have been worth it if I didn’t get the help I needed sometimes (clues I missed being revealed, late game Celeste hearts I couldn’t solve, even my partner beating a core boss for me in hollow knight on my first playthrough so I could get to the end of the game).
Outer Wilds is an AMAZING game. True art in every way, there's no other game quite like it, and its a game you can only really experience one time... And yet despite this, I don't actually have any interest in playing Outer Wilds. I know enough about it to know that its a once in a lifetime experience, but I know that if I tried to play it I probably would not enjoy it. I've never liked games where you have to solve puzzles or figure things out yourself. I need some kind of guidance otherwise it gets stressful and makes me anxious (I played through Portal 2, a game I adore the story and aesthetic of, but the test chambers made me never want to play it again by the end of it all). I don't like feeling lost or helpless, and if a game makes me feel that way I don't enjoy playing it. Its just not the kind of game for me, y'know? So yeah... Despite the main theme making me emotional every time I hear it, I don't think I'll ever play Outer Wilds, because if I did I would probably just give up halfway through.
your explaination of elden ring is exactly why I prefer Sekiro than soulsbourne. I don't really want to use a wiki, I just want to get good at the combat.
I absolutely adore the flow of Fromsoft games, the slow progression and a vague pointer to which direction you have to go are nice. What I dont like are fromsoft questlines especially in Elden Ring. Having to find 1NPC in the entirety of Liurnia its tedious and a pain in the ass. While some are obvious to find like Nepheli others like Hiyetta are ridiculous dude to how weirdly ticked away they are. Especially with the reality of, "oh you didnt talk to this ncp iin the middle.of FuckYouVille? Well thats a shame theyre dead now, try again.next playthrough"
No, I just suck at puzzels. I play open-world games like genshin Impact and have to consistently look up the answers to puzzles on UA-cam when I get stumped.
"Most players find out hidden locations and side quest points through external sources." While I could maybe agree with the side quests, do you actually have proof of the former or is it merely your own experience? Generally, as a critic, you ought to avoid projecting your experiences onto your audience, even if they might be relatable. I found everything in Elden Ring and its DLC completely on my own, as have others I know and many others players. I could use that as proof that most people do find these things by themselves. I could also just say, "Most people just don't play with guides and wikis" and wash my hands of it. Obviously, this isn't conclusive evidence, but neither is pointing to a few other people online complaining about the vagueness and lack of direction. I also think it's a bit reductive to say that games should NEVER cause confusion or frustration. Engagement is achieved via many different means, including both immediate and delayed gratification and feedback. Momentary frustration and confusion can absolutely enhance the sense of accomplishment when victory or clarification is achieved. Most games based on trial-and-error, like the Soulsborne games and actually good and challenging stealth games like Dishonored, will deliberately induce these negative emotions so that victory ends up being all the more sweeter. Yes, this doesn't work for everybody, but no game should tray and cater to everybody. Like you said, art is about making us feel things, and negative emotions absolutely play a part in making a greater whole, games included. EDIT: I do take back some of what I said now that I've finished watching the video, but I still don't entirely agree with how you presented it. Yes, the "maybe it just isn't for you" is an argument that is used a bit too much, but the reason it's regurgitated over and over again is because it's fundamentally true. I'm absolutely glad you enjoyed your experiences with the Souls games while using a guide, but for me, it would neuter the charm and atmosphere these games try and achieve if I played that way myself or they added more overt hints. Sure, some specifics could've been done better and there's always room for improvement; I'm not trying to use "this isn't for you" as an excuse to avoid that. But while I get that you think adding them wouldn't hurt because of your own experiences, from my own perspective, they absolutely would. And I'd like to think my approach is closer to what Miyazaki intends, according to his interviews and the games he created. Obviously, this applied to the other more ambiguous titles and their creators.
I appreciate you taking the time to give this long writeup but I think you still missed my point a little. I'm not just saying that the "not for you" argument is problematic, I'm saying that there are tradeoffs. The souls games can keep their ultra-ambiguous exploration till the end of time, that's fine and it's clearly working. I have almost nothing but good things to say about those games. But that doesn't mean they don't also threaten the average player with a high level of frustration. The same way that I think checklist games can continue forever- I like a lot of those too. But they threaten the average user with experiences that seep away a lot of the exploration/discovery fantasy. You lose one for the other, and finding the balance for your game and your needs and your audience is a balancing act that's much more complicated than just "let me explore without holding my hand" You're an example of where the hands-off approach thrives without any compromise of high frustration/external guides. That's great! But that doesn't mean the compromise is not there for many users. There's a reason the wikis are so popular. There's also a reason (to answer your initial question about proof of players finding hidden secrets though guides) that videos describing how to get to volcano manor, cainhurst castle and archdragon peak have millions of views, which is pretty bonkers for late-game how-to guides for 60+ hour games. They're incredibly hard to find for the average person And I absolutely agree that frustration isn't something that should 100% be avoided. I'm not sure if this is one of the things you reconsidered after finishing but like I said in the video, a level of frustration is part of creating the challenges that lead to flow state. It's an ingredient. But my overall point is that there are always trade offs with your design, and always places where you can improve and hit a better balance. The souls games are fantastic and appeal to many audiences, but there's still some fine tuning to be done with the way it lays out important points of discovery. Hope that cleared things up!
I've heard so much about Outer Wilds. I've avoided any spoilers and know basically nothing about it. But I need someone to tell me honestly - is it a horror game? It will scar me mentally if it is, and I don't want to do that to myself. But i dont want to spoil it, either. If it is, and I should avoid playing it myself and watch someone else do it, that's okay too. There are some games that I'm better off watching people I trust to play for me. E.g. letting Jacksepticeye take me through Undertale was a much better decision than playing through it myself
@phaedra._. from everything I've played so far it's not a horror game. But I also haven't gotten close to finishing it. Hopefully someone with more experience can pop in here and give you a better answer haha
I mean I don’t know anything about outer wilds but like……. Undertale isn’t a horror game???? If you’re scared of undertale there’s a lot of games you should probably avoid…..
It's not a horror game and its narrative has nothing to do with horror. But there are a couple of scary locations. Big things around that want to chomp on you. Very chill for the most part though.
The base game is not a horror game, but there are some horror elements near the end. That being said, they're pretty easily avoided once you know how, and they're really not that scary in my opinion (and I'm an absolute wimp when it comes to horror). You might want to refrain if you specifically have a phobia of large deep sea creatures. The DLC on the other had is pretty explicitly horror, so it's probably not for you. Also, what the hell made you think Undertale was a horror game???
I've been playing dark souls since 10 years old, aimless and still enjoying my time with it. I just feel really frustrated while playing Tunic, try it 3 times and then dropped it, it's cool to se people talking about the game, but for me, it was boredom or frustration.
Incredible video. Seriously, I’m glad that there is so much talent on this platform. The editing is fantastic, the script was really well written and presented, you should have 10x the amount of subs you do
The term weanie came from walt disney and theme parks. To lure people deeper into areas so they know there is more to an area so people dont clog up opening areas. He said it came from him training his dog with hot dogs (aka weanies)
What game is the background music you play during the conclusion (and a couple other sections of the video) from? I know it but can't quite pull it out of my memory
I don't get why some people have difficulty with finding out where to go next in Nine Sols. There is almost always just 1 new path that you unlock with new abilities and you can always talk to Abacus if the game doesn't straight up tell you where to go. I found Hollow Knight way more confusing until I unlocked all the movement abilities
Idk, maybe it's partially because that game has a LOT of dialogue and I admittedly struggled to pay attention to it all. There may be hints that im missing cause if that. There's usually only 1 path like you mentioned but there's not a ton of indications of where that path actually is, and the collapsible map design is a little flat which makes it even harder to figure out what's now opened up for you. It was the most I struggled with a metroidvania map in a long time, I can't quite put my finger on why but there's definitely something missing. HK can be a little confusing too so I get that
Screw you guys I'm gonna keep saying The Outer Wilds cause the real title is stupid 😡
SECOND CHANNEL- ua-cam.com/channels/EohrTGj0KOSc40-py0xIAg.html
"the outer wilds" in game would be like saying "the space" (in reference to space).
also this just seems like you're mixing up "The Outer Worlds" and "Outer Wilds"
MY GOODNESS THAT'S A GREAT THUMBNAIL. also hollow knight good
Fancy meeting you here
it looks so shit but still whispers click-me-click-me
Oh yeah, why don’t you make a video talking about it then hmmmmm?
Blue how are you in the comments every video that makes an odd refrence to hollow knight????
Like my pp@@AugustRx
Space kids and dinosaur kids? Nah, I was a Space Dinosaur Kid.
Spinosaur Kid
Jurassic Park came out when I was 6 years old. I was obsessed with dinosaurs. And space still fascinates me to this day. Especially if I’m having a bad day, I watch a video about the vastness of space, and how insignificant we all are. It’s comforting in an odd way.
Professional grass eater
And everyone hates dragon kids
Fossil fighters
8:31 The reason why there is so much coffee is actually really simple. Alan Wake is a Finnish game and one weird think about Finland is that it's the world's largest coffee consumer country. Literally, Fins typically consume 3-5 cups of coffee per day. It's a really weird part of our culture.
Yeah I see it almost as an unintentional way of creating small mysteries in AW2 which shows how you could actually do it *intentionally* if you wanted. Definitely threw me for a loop when I first played. AW2 is the best Game I've played in years
What I really want in a game is the feeling of discovering something nobody else has. In linear games or ones with map pins and checklists everything feels like it's been done and you're just retreading the steps. In games with no guidance it feels like everyone knows all these secrets except you, which they tease you with while watching you flail around. But then sometimes you'll be playing a game and following an objective when suddenly you find something that isn't on the checklist. A landmark with no pin, a story that doesn't appear in your quest log. In those moments I feel like I've stumbled upon something new and overlooked, that somehow I was the first person to discover it. More games should do that.
Breath of the Wild.
Though it was unfortunately already spoiled for me, but when I saw the labyrinth island far to the north north east, I was still amazed and intimidated.
At one point I was in the uttermost west, in the mountains north of the Gerudo desert. I hit the game border, with a big ravine and unknown lands outside of Hyrule.
Had that too in the north west corner, and northmost center of the map just above Death mountain.
I want to see what’s outside Hyrule.
You should try RDR2 if you haven't already, an absolutely beautiful game with a fantastic story that has so many cool things to discover. Sure, there are the main and side quests that pop up every so often but it is a n absolutely fantastically designed game with so many niche and hidden things to find. There is so much that you could scroll the wiki for hours then go into the game and find something completely new that you didnt know was in the game. Its absolutely fantastic and i highly recommend it.
I think you’d like Outer Wilds
@@Geimgrog OuterWilds is such a good game, it's such a refreshing game.
@@Geimgrog Everyone would and should play it. Without spoilers, of course.
I remember being a kid and hearing about the lost city of Atlantis and El Dorado. I wondered what it would be like to see these uncharted places. What kind of ruins would you see? What kind of treasures would you discover? Hollow Knight captures that child like wonder masterfully by placing you in a long ruined kingdom, handing you a rusty nail and saying "Go on, then." True art.
It's great when discovering new places, new shop/npc or new upgrades
Hollow Knight is by far my favorite video game, but a game I played that does by far the LEAST amount of hand holding ever is Rain World. In fact, the creators didn't even want to put a tutorial in at all, but found players couldn't even get out of the first screen, so decided to just add a couple of instructions for how to eat, traverse between rooms and end a cycle. Rain World is easily the most difficult game I've ever played (and I say this as someone who enjoys beating hollow knight with 0 nail/mask/vessel upgrades, 0 charms and white spells for fun), but it's extremely rewarding and teaches you a lot about suffering because of that. I recommend it for anyone who wants a game that doesn't hold your hand but instead grabs you by the neck and throws you off a cliff
And if the fall doesn't kill you, the pit of worm grass you fell into will. Or the large centipede that was waiting for you. Or a tribe of scavengers upset at you. Or a lizard that's been tailing you since four rooms ago.
I love this game :)
(Hollow Knight's fabulous, too! :D)
yeah its why i couldn't get into it despite loving hollow knight and dark souls, progression feels much more intuitive than rain world
0:00 Outer wilds?
13:42 OUTER WILDS!
17:47 HELL YEAH!!!!
About outer wilds vs clear goals - the game actually goes out of it's way to guide you. You know what the questions are. It's built around the idea of "whoa, this is cool, but why..." => "oh, I see, but why..." => "oh, IDK" => an hour later, on other part of the world => "oh, now I get it, lemme go back there"...
What you've described in Elden Ring with that wind rock thingy is the whole of Outer Wilds. So yeah, it has quite clear goals. There wasn't a spot in which I didn't have anything to solve. There were spots where I was stuck. But always clear goals. Always obvious that my knowledge gets larger. Always progressing. It's very gamey game in that regard. Impressively so, given it's genre.
Definitely, the game is paced really well for what it is. But you definitely still need to develop a trust in the game to push yourself forward. I understand why someone wouldn't fall in love with it despite its many positive elements
while not my favorite game of all time, i believe that hollow knight is the best game ever made. it has a little bit of something for everyone. do you like combat? here are dozens of bosses to test your skill. do you like exploring? here's a map with 18 areas, go wild. are you a completionist? good luck. there's so much to do in the game that i have a save file with over 350 hours and im still missing a thing or two.
Maybe I’m one of these snob players, but I can’t for the life of me understand how someone couldn’t find their way around Outer Wilds. You literally can’t walk 5 meters without encountering a PoI that includes direct instructions on how to access another PoI. This then gets added to your ship log with a picture of the discovery, a description of it, and a thread attached to the thing the discovery is related to with a detective board style of presentation.
I believe it's just that some people don't want to even attempt to piece everything together. You have to remember that people are used to being fed answers, with content creators, guides, etc.
My problem is the game really doesn't motivate me to do so, there's very little allusion to anything bigger going on. You very much either have to already be hooked from the get-go or force yourself to take interest, I am speaking as someone who couldn't get into it. The game felt clunky / unsatisfying to play and as such I really didn't feel motivated to power on to learn anything about the universe.
This is easily one of the best video essays I’ve seen on UA-cam, and I’ve been in the video essay rabbit hole for a while now lol.
Also I love the editing style! It reminds me of CHUPPL who makes awesome investigative journalism videos
Speaking of ambiguity, it would be nice if some games provided a “were we too ambiguous? Here’s a hint that’s less ambiguous” similar to how the Professor Layton series has Hint Coins because sometimes people do want an “aha” moment but their mind isn’t connecting the dots or are on the wrong train of thought
I.E. the snake boss mentioned earlier, there could have been a hint or two that said something along the lines of “make sure you keep your eyes peeled for fake walls” or “there are rumours that hissing can be heard coming from the walls in [location]”
Wow, that conclusion where you bring all the chapters togethers by saying how they relate is really well done. Great quality video as always!
Yeah the way the words connected was just great
This is a really well put-together video essay, I'm honestly surprised it doesn't have more attention! I enjoy the analysis you gave to all these different aspects of the unknown in games, especially Outer Wilds as a huge personal fan of that game lol.
not him having my favourite game as a thumbnail and then casually mentioning a singular film which just so happens to be my favourite film. Also how is this video so good whatt i love this channel already
Me and my fiance picked up tunic the other day and we're having a blast until 2 hours in, I had the sword, I had found the shield, and spend the next 3 hours wondering where the next thing was. I didn't want to use a guide but with the path forward not immediately obvious and I had backtracked through any area I could get to, I ended up needing a guide to end up going "really?!! I just had to walk through this one, not so obvious path to get to the next objective, great...." and then got jumpscsred by the garden knight. So enjoying it overall lmao.
Tunic is one of my favorite games. I’m in the middle of trying to translate it
Finally a video essay that feels like the good kind of drinking from a firehose. How do you go through like five ideas and eighteen examples so fast without losing coherence and throughline. The script for this video is a masterpiece even before we get to the visual splendour.
@@vanirie434 you're very kind, I appreciate all the comments you've been leaving ❤️
I want to bring attention to Liam Vickers’ Murder Drones.
It may not be a game, but the sheer dedication from the fandom is incredible. The lore, the story, the hidden details in the background, even the ending itself, it sparked so much interaction and debate in the fandom. The amount of theories, the amount of fan fictions, the story than can be pieced together by the background details as you watch the show makes Murder Drones something truly special.
Even the ending is literally subjective. There are moments in the finale where the ending could’ve branched into a completely different ending, so no one can ever say that any ending was 100% certain.
It was a wild ride waiting for each episode to come out, and it was absolutely worth it to be able to theorize and connect the dots as we all tried to figure out what might happen next.
I highly recommend it.
I just found your channel and my god, this is exactly what I need. I'm gonna binge all of your vids now, see you in a week :D
For me, expectations are also a lot of these ambiguous exploration based games. My favorites I've experienced are ones that I go in expecting nothing. I picked up Hollow Knight for the reason of, I'd heard the name a few times and got curious, and ironically that in of itself is a great way to explain Hollow Knight, and its now one of my absolute favorite games.
YES! I feel the same way about Hollow Knight 😁
This video has been an eye opener for me. I tend to like difficult games, but for HK in particular I found myself looking up hints (especially for boss fights) to reduce that difficulty. I always told myself that I did this because I am a busy man, juggling work, my family, friends and other hobbies, and being stuck on a boss for two hours or more doesn't make sense. The truth is that, from early on, I believed that I am simply not good enough of a player and I won't make it through on my own. So I might not like the challenge because of that believe, not because it is actually too challenging. Some interesting stuff to think about...
Im glad I stumbled on this video, Great editing! and I love all your jokes
This is one of the best recommendations ever served to me. Hello beautiful man with a great sense of humour. I am sooooo excited to listen to you talk about cool things with cool visuals and strong editing from now on.
Growing up, I was fascinated by the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis. I still am.
I think every kid had that one thing out of their reach that they couldn't stop thinking about. For me it was those, for others it was space.
"When has there ever been this much coffee anywhere?" I hate to tell you. But that's actually just what the Finnish relationship to coffee is like.
why am I HERF.
I dunno but you should probably get that checked out
i love the concept of ambiguous games, and have a huge respect for them. unfortunately my brain is NOT wired for most of them, and i have a short fuse when hitting obstacles that lack a clear solution so i end up rage-quitting embarrassingly quickly. tears of the kingdom is perfect for my adhd brain; it has general directions for what you should do eventually whenever you get around to it, in a world FULL of things to explore. also, i really want to finish outer wilds one day, bc the time i spent with it was wonderful! but the movement mechanics and my terrible spatial awareness makes it impossible to get in a flow state. it's like i'm chasing a carrot on a stick, and boy am i getting tired. one day, though! one day!
23:22 I love the outer wilds statistic that says that most people who told (don’t know his name) guy what they were going to do, did that thing first most of the time
3:25 this is just rain world in a nutshell. The game gives you the absolute bare minimum help. The entire purpose was not to make a game, but an ecosystem. The game and plot was mostly just slapped on top.
I never forget Marissa. Hollownest's premier opera singer. You can hear her singing in the main thoroughfare, and if you go up to her tower, you can see a beautiful butterfly ghost just belting to an audience that isn't there. I sit there listening to her, and I wonder what the city looked like in its prime. What lengths the king went to to protect it, and how he failed. The characters like Marissa that were left to suffer that failure. She died, and so many others lost their souls to the plague. Yet here she is, still singing. Do I put her soul to rest with the Dream Nail, or let her keep singing? Will I be the last person to hear her sing? You save Hollownest in the end. Maybe the city will rebuild. Maybe future generations will hear her sing, and if I banished her spirit, they would never get that chance. However, is that what she wants? I don't know. Just one small thing makes me think so much, and it's one of a thousand things. God, I love Hollow Knight.
I'm a simple man. I see Hollow Knight in the thumbnail: I click.
But, seriously, Hollow Knight is my favorite game simply for many of the reasons you brought up. But, also, for the cohesion between aspects. I've yet to find another game that is so good at combining art design, music, tone, themes, lore, and even gameplay into one specific experience. That feeling of tragedy and loss, yet mixed perfectly with wonder and beauty. That sense of woeful insignificance as you realize how huge and old this fallen kingdom is, only to have that dawning sense of "Wait. I may be of great importance."
The world feels completely organic, with seemingly meaningless background details adding to the ambiguity that makes every room a new discovery waiting to be made. NPCs add some much-needed levity amidst the harshest of difficulty curves but also provide some of the most emotionally devastating moments. Couple all of this with an almost open-world amount of exploration freedom and you somehow have a metroidvania with no two identical playthroughs on UA-cam. This freedom, combined with the cohesion mentioned earlier and the insane attention to detail culminates in a world that stops feeling like a game, because everything feels organic and purposeful.
I love this game and its community so much, and I can't wait to see the explosion of fan theories, art pieces, and speedruns online once Silksong finally comes out. Here's hoping for 2025. Best wishes, Asad, from the entire hollow head fanbase, and may your every journey be meandering and wondrous.
Shhh! Careful! Don't you know that asking about Silksong extends the release date by 5 years???
Damn what a well made video
good shit, I will check out more of your videos
This is A absolutely wonderful and extremely enjoyable intro!!!
By 2:08 I forgot this was about video games
It's weird that astronaut kids versus paleontologist kids is basically space kids versus time kids.
When i was playing Dragons Dogma 2 i came across the sphinx second shrine before the first one. At this point i didn't know there was 2 shrines so i convinced myself that you somehow had to summon it. I saw the raised piece in the middle and decided you probably had to put something on it, so i stacked all the boulders on it to see what would happen. When that didn't work i decided i probably needs a blood sacrifice, so i spent about 2 hours carrying live animals and monsters to the shrine and killing them on the platform (this was pretty difficult). Finally when that didn't work i looked at a tutorial and found out that i was at the wrong shrine. At first i found it frustrating, but now i just find it funny.
I LOVE TUNIC. I had no issue beating the game although I did get lost in the quary. I LOVE OUTER WILDS. I had some issues with beating it two puzzles I had to look up although I did try to do the correct solution of one but failed and thought it was inpossible
I mean... Finns drink coffee the most in the world.... I think the Alan Wake's coffee fever is just easter egg about that
I'm still very curious about space, but the difference from when I was a kid is that I now understand how much I don't understand about it, and I understand how much work it would take for me to just begin to scratch the surface of understanding space.
5:33 I was playing minecraft with this in the background. right as I jumped into a cave, I saw red eyes in the dark and this f**ing played right as the red eyes started getting closer.
I got jump scared by a spider in minecraft.
BROOOOOOOO! what is that timing!?!
That ending blow my mind
Good work
*Absolute Cinema*
I read the title as "why I am a terf" and I felt the need to tell you
coffee is definitely a twin peaks reference
FEZ is a really cool puzzle game that’s got interesting ...discourse ...among people who’ve played it and their opinion of the late game puzzles. The style of puzzles and requirements to solve them get more strange and different from the rest of the game. It’s not necessarily good or bad, but makes it harder for a lot of people to engage with, and some people who’ve done it independently don’t seem to have bought into the value of that effort. When I was playing, my partner and I had a lot of discussions about whether it’s more earnestly engaging in a game to not play when you hit a wall you can’t surpass or to bypass the challenge (in this case, looking up guides, but this argument also applies to easy mode type tools). With FEZ, I simply do not know. I think ending on mysteries that I trust to be worth solving but can’t is more satisfying than the answers I found online. With games like Celeste and Hollow Knight, I struggled and struggled and I think the value I got was amazing and wouldn’t have been worth it if I didn’t get the help I needed sometimes (clues I missed being revealed, late game Celeste hearts I couldn’t solve, even my partner beating a core boss for me in hollow knight on my first playthrough so I could get to the end of the game).
Outer Wilds is an AMAZING game. True art in every way, there's no other game quite like it, and its a game you can only really experience one time... And yet despite this, I don't actually have any interest in playing Outer Wilds. I know enough about it to know that its a once in a lifetime experience, but I know that if I tried to play it I probably would not enjoy it.
I've never liked games where you have to solve puzzles or figure things out yourself. I need some kind of guidance otherwise it gets stressful and makes me anxious (I played through Portal 2, a game I adore the story and aesthetic of, but the test chambers made me never want to play it again by the end of it all). I don't like feeling lost or helpless, and if a game makes me feel that way I don't enjoy playing it. Its just not the kind of game for me, y'know?
So yeah... Despite the main theme making me emotional every time I hear it, I don't think I'll ever play Outer Wilds, because if I did I would probably just give up halfway through.
your explaination of elden ring is exactly why I prefer Sekiro than soulsbourne. I don't really want to use a wiki, I just want to get good at the combat.
20:34 So this is why Bill Watterson doesn't care about whether Hobbes is real or not - Ingenius!
Wow man great video and essay, it’s great to see other small creators making such banger videos with good editing, coming from an editor.
0:59 that’s so good
Subscribing to see the vid about why fear based stuff is being added to lots of games its a thought that i have been having.
I absolutely adore the flow of Fromsoft games, the slow progression and a vague pointer to which direction you have to go are nice. What I dont like are fromsoft questlines especially in Elden Ring. Having to find 1NPC in the entirety of Liurnia its tedious and a pain in the ass. While some are obvious to find like Nepheli others like Hiyetta are ridiculous dude to how weirdly ticked away they are. Especially with the reality of, "oh you didnt talk to this ncp iin the middle.of FuckYouVille? Well thats a shame theyre dead now, try again.next playthrough"
I mean the dinosaurs died from an astroid and that got me into space
19:36 Re-traumatize a whole fandom why don't ya?
As a dinosaur kid. I feel misrepresented in this video.
Shit I was the dinosaur kid..... Gravel is alright though
Purple tastes like grape soda 2:22
prettyyyy good video dude!!!!
Keep doing more amazing vid!!!!!
Uverthinking mundane things? Do i hear mattpat
The flow state guy’s name sounds like “Chick sent me high”
music choices were nice
I have learned from this video that I still haven't achieved adulthood.
You love games that abandon you?
But when i leave my kid to get milk ima deadbeat
Dad?
YESSSSS, NO MANS SKY MUSIC ON THE BG
No, I just suck at puzzels. I play open-world games like genshin Impact and have to consistently look up the answers to puzzles on UA-cam when I get stumped.
"Most players find out hidden locations and side quest points through external sources." While I could maybe agree with the side quests, do you actually have proof of the former or is it merely your own experience? Generally, as a critic, you ought to avoid projecting your experiences onto your audience, even if they might be relatable.
I found everything in Elden Ring and its DLC completely on my own, as have others I know and many others players. I could use that as proof that most people do find these things by themselves. I could also just say, "Most people just don't play with guides and wikis" and wash my hands of it. Obviously, this isn't conclusive evidence, but neither is pointing to a few other people online complaining about the vagueness and lack of direction.
I also think it's a bit reductive to say that games should NEVER cause confusion or frustration. Engagement is achieved via many different means, including both immediate and delayed gratification and feedback. Momentary frustration and confusion can absolutely enhance the sense of accomplishment when victory or clarification is achieved. Most games based on trial-and-error, like the Soulsborne games and actually good and challenging stealth games like Dishonored, will deliberately induce these negative emotions so that victory ends up being all the more sweeter. Yes, this doesn't work for everybody, but no game should tray and cater to everybody. Like you said, art is about making us feel things, and negative emotions absolutely play a part in making a greater whole, games included.
EDIT: I do take back some of what I said now that I've finished watching the video, but I still don't entirely agree with how you presented it. Yes, the "maybe it just isn't for you" is an argument that is used a bit too much, but the reason it's regurgitated over and over again is because it's fundamentally true. I'm absolutely glad you enjoyed your experiences with the Souls games while using a guide, but for me, it would neuter the charm and atmosphere these games try and achieve if I played that way myself or they added more overt hints. Sure, some specifics could've been done better and there's always room for improvement; I'm not trying to use "this isn't for you" as an excuse to avoid that. But while I get that you think adding them wouldn't hurt because of your own experiences, from my own perspective, they absolutely would. And I'd like to think my approach is closer to what Miyazaki intends, according to his interviews and the games he created. Obviously, this applied to the other more ambiguous titles and their creators.
I appreciate you taking the time to give this long writeup but I think you still missed my point a little. I'm not just saying that the "not for you" argument is problematic, I'm saying that there are tradeoffs. The souls games can keep their ultra-ambiguous exploration till the end of time, that's fine and it's clearly working. I have almost nothing but good things to say about those games. But that doesn't mean they don't also threaten the average player with a high level of frustration. The same way that I think checklist games can continue forever- I like a lot of those too. But they threaten the average user with experiences that seep away a lot of the exploration/discovery fantasy. You lose one for the other, and finding the balance for your game and your needs and your audience is a balancing act that's much more complicated than just "let me explore without holding my hand"
You're an example of where the hands-off approach thrives without any compromise of high frustration/external guides. That's great! But that doesn't mean the compromise is not there for many users. There's a reason the wikis are so popular. There's also a reason (to answer your initial question about proof of players finding hidden secrets though guides) that videos describing how to get to volcano manor, cainhurst castle and archdragon peak have millions of views, which is pretty bonkers for late-game how-to guides for 60+ hour games. They're incredibly hard to find for the average person
And I absolutely agree that frustration isn't something that should 100% be avoided. I'm not sure if this is one of the things you reconsidered after finishing but like I said in the video, a level of frustration is part of creating the challenges that lead to flow state. It's an ingredient. But my overall point is that there are always trade offs with your design, and always places where you can improve and hit a better balance. The souls games are fantastic and appeal to many audiences, but there's still some fine tuning to be done with the way it lays out important points of discovery.
Hope that cleared things up!
Soooo now I wanna know what purple taste like
YOU FUCK I JUMPED SO MUCH JESUS CHRIST LMAOO
I forgot this video was about games cuz of the intro 😭😭😭
I got invested in you talking about space lol
Grapes, purple tastes like grapes.
I've heard so much about Outer Wilds. I've avoided any spoilers and know basically nothing about it. But I need someone to tell me honestly - is it a horror game? It will scar me mentally if it is, and I don't want to do that to myself. But i dont want to spoil it, either.
If it is, and I should avoid playing it myself and watch someone else do it, that's okay too. There are some games that I'm better off watching people I trust to play for me. E.g. letting Jacksepticeye take me through Undertale was a much better decision than playing through it myself
@phaedra._. from everything I've played so far it's not a horror game. But I also haven't gotten close to finishing it. Hopefully someone with more experience can pop in here and give you a better answer haha
I mean I don’t know anything about outer wilds but like……. Undertale isn’t a horror game???? If you’re scared of undertale there’s a lot of games you should probably avoid…..
It's not a horror game and its narrative has nothing to do with horror. But there are a couple of scary locations. Big things around that want to chomp on you. Very chill for the most part though.
The base game is not a horror game, but there are some horror elements near the end. That being said, they're pretty easily avoided once you know how, and they're really not that scary in my opinion (and I'm an absolute wimp when it comes to horror). You might want to refrain if you specifically have a phobia of large deep sea creatures.
The DLC on the other had is pretty explicitly horror, so it's probably not for you.
Also, what the hell made you think Undertale was a horror game???
🥦 also does the trick :)
Dare to combine the two👀
I wonder what purple tastes like...
OBLIGATORY COMMENT FOR ANY CHANNEL MENRIONING OUTER WILDS. I hope you love it ❤
I've been playing dark souls since 10 years old, aimless and still enjoying my time with it.
I just feel really frustrated while playing Tunic, try it 3 times and then dropped it, it's cool to se people talking about the game, but for me, it was boredom or frustration.
dinosaur kid here. i became a depressed animator so.... close enough
I just read the thumbnail as 'why am I Herf 🤣'
I DID enjoy! The conclusion got me choked up :')
Incredible video. Seriously, I’m glad that there is so much talent on this platform. The editing is fantastic, the script was really well written and presented, you should have 10x the amount of subs you do
The term weanie came from walt disney and theme parks. To lure people deeper into areas so they know there is more to an area so people dont clog up opening areas. He said it came from him training his dog with hot dogs (aka weanies)
I actually didn't know that. Cool piece of info!
What game is the background music you play during the conclusion (and a couple other sections of the video) from? I know it but can't quite pull it out of my memory
i think you may be talking about “dirtmouth” from hollow knight! 3 days late but i hope that’s helpful lmao
@@rain_upon_glass Yes! That's it! Thank you!
Fish kids, no one remembers us....
@@XenoDystopia if you were a fish kid I'm sorry, you're a crackhead now
This might be my favourite video of yours but i can't explain why
I don't get why some people have difficulty with finding out where to go next in Nine Sols. There is almost always just 1 new path that you unlock with new abilities and you can always talk to Abacus if the game doesn't straight up tell you where to go. I found Hollow Knight way more confusing until I unlocked all the movement abilities
Idk, maybe it's partially because that game has a LOT of dialogue and I admittedly struggled to pay attention to it all. There may be hints that im missing cause if that. There's usually only 1 path like you mentioned but there's not a ton of indications of where that path actually is, and the collapsible map design is a little flat which makes it even harder to figure out what's now opened up for you. It was the most I struggled with a metroidvania map in a long time, I can't quite put my finger on why but there's definitely something missing. HK can be a little confusing too so I get that
What if I was a space and dinosaur kid?
i liked space and dinos as a kid, now im autistic
"When has there ever been this much coffee"
*Laughs in Seattle
Great video! Subscribed!
whats the background music at 16:13?
It's the "The Last Of Us" main theme :) ua-cam.com/video/Pt1pOY3_W64/v-deo.html&ab_channel=SonySoundtracksVEVO
yo wow great video, happy to stumble upon your channel
Gravel is delicious tho
as a dinosaur kid but grown up into a GD player...
no thats not real lmao
(well i was kinda both so yea)
Anyone else actually get got at 5:39? ;_;
subscribing for future Outer Wilds video
HE MENTION HOWLEL KNGT
This some good stuff
i see hollow knight i click
Today I learned what a weenie is