The description of Ergodic Literature brought to my thoughts about games like D&D, Vampire: The Masquarade, Fate Core, and all those similar ones, where the players - by their own decision - will be the heroes or villains of the stories, which are mostly described by the Game Master (in D&D it's called Dungeon Master), and the group together write one collective story. If they doesn't do anything, they wouldn't be part of the story - therefor they are forced to do something. In a similar way, as you talked about the video games, a good session isn't a "railroad"-ed one, where doesn't matter which direction you choose, ends up at the same spot, but a vast world, where every action has a consequence, and you need to work for your goals.
I would love to hear your thoughts on Vermis. It's a guide to a video game that doesn't exist. I feel like it could fall in pretty well into the nature of the ergodic video games you were talking about.
"A well designed world can tell its story in silence." - Hidetaka Miyazaki Even within the same world the experience of someone creates its own story and thus each perspective is a different story. The story that doesn't want to be told but experienced.
My first thought on this was Shadow of the Colossus. A game with no lore collectables, no audiologs, no diary, almost no NPCs to interact with, and not a single moment where someone turns to the screen and starts lore dumping. The characters act as though they're all fully aware of what is going on, so they never need to say it out loud for the player's benefit. If you want to come to a conclusion about what happens both during the events of the game, and what lead up to those events, you must play the game multiple times and traverse the game world all by yourself, observing the smallest of details and connecting the pieces. The other games in the trilogy, Ico and The Last Guardian, are like this as well, but I think Shadow of the Colossus does it best.
Sometimes i wonder if the kill everyone route or as fans call it the ""Genocide" route in Undertale is a story that does not want to be told. As if the game tries as hard as possible to stand in your way of finishing the story of "what if you killed every single major character" in a video game.
More than hard, the genocide route makes the game boring, everyone remember the extremely hard boss battles but forget that at least 90% of the time in that mode is walking back and forth repeating the same battles
@@diegocassola1exactly. It's got 2 punishingly, frustratingly hard boss fights and... that's about it. Beyond that, just hours of grinding through fights that don't present any challenge whatsoever. And if you screw up and go through too many screens without "clearing" an area, the run is screwed. It was very explicitly designed to be an unfun experience, to make you feel like that much more of a bastard when you do it. By contrast, the True Pacifist run is fun and engaging while still managing to throw some tough (but fair) challenges your way. Toby Fox knew what he was doing.
@@MrClickity When I lived in a dorm my firend tried the genocide run, just watching him clearing an area seemed dull beyond any reasonable game design logic and I couldn't even fathom doing it by myself just by watching how boring it was. It was absolutely a deliberate choice
There is one example I can think of. There was this poet that had a piece of their work tattooed onto 20 different people, and nowhere else. Their work only exists in their head and scattered across 20 different people. When one of those people die, then the story will forever be broken.
Hey bro, I heard you liked footnotes, so I put a footnote in your footnote... and then I put another footnote about that footnote in a footnote, but upside down, at a diagnoal angle, fifty pages later, down the side of the page.
i think a good argument for not "making it easier" for people is that the difficulty is *part* of the story to an extent you really feel like youre fighting tooth and nail to develop the skill required to make it in that world, and your reward for that devotion is seeing the story to completion
Not only beutiful but once you master it it's also one of the most rewarding. First time taking down a vulture was one of the most satisfing things in all games for me (competing only with hollow knight's last pantheon and celeste's dlc)
@@hokuhikene the movement doesn't need to be changed at all. you're slow and clumsy if you're just using the basic movement, if you take the time to start learning the very complex system of movement built on top of those simple foundations you'll be sliding and backflipping around in no time and the game gets significantly easier.
Not sure if this counts but a fun reccomendation is "Ella Minnow Pea". It's a book comprised of letters from this fictional town that venerates a statue of the man who coined “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” which contains every letter of the alphabet and is written on the pedestal. One day one of the letters falls off, then another, then another, making them now "banned". So as the book goes on you need to decipher the increasingly creative workarounds they're forced to use to communicate, with the last chapter containing only L, M, N, O, and P.
I really like ergodic literature not because it forces me to work harder to read it, but because I enjoy the feeling of being genuinely lost in the pages not just lost in the immersive sense, but lost in the 'hiking without a map' sense.
Wait, so... history is ergodic literature. There is no grand narrative baked into the natural world, just causes and effects. Trying to piece together history requires going through materials that are obtuse, incomplete, or nigh-inaccessible, if it's even there at all. Great work has to be put in to translate the pieces of data into a coherent story. You can read compilations of these stories in textbooks, encyclopedias, scientific journals, but the actual play of history is just... life, and no one can ever live a hundred thousand lifetimes through the eyes of a hundred billion people to experience the entirety of it.
In a way, yes. Ergotic literature in a lot of ways tries to simulate what it’s like to be an archaeologist trying to piece together the ancient past with only the scantest clues
I remember that the biggest inspirations for the creator of the Souls Series came from a simple moment. When he was younger and he would read foreign fantasy books. There would often be parts of the story where his knowledge of the language failed him and he had to guess and theorize how the parts that he didn’t understand connected with the parts he did understand. This too informed his writing style in the game as he leaves vague hints and clues that tie in some way to the parts the game lets you know without any struggle. Putting you in that same position of knowing parts of the story while having other parts clearly be there but obscured just enough to make you wonder what happened in those blurry moments.
I appreciate the personal angle you put on this topic, and to a large extent it's true: everyone is going to have their own interpretations, their own experiences. But especially regarding the community aspect, Miyazaki himself has discussed how the other half of the difficulty argument is that the game is designed to be figured out and conquered by a community. While there are some bad apples, the overwhelming majority of these communities want to help you progress and fall in love with their favorite media. However, they won't do it for you: they will give you knowledge, but only you can beat the odds. As for why, especially with Elden Ring, the stories themselves are told in this way because it just makes sense for the world. Dark Souls and Elden Ring are worlds of untrustworthy gods and foolishly ambitious mortals all struggling for themselves: some for survival, some for power, some for understanding. There are mysteries that we will never get answers to because the gods that they concern dont want us to know about them. We have to parse through various perspectives and lives and consider what is coming from a reliable source and what is purely relative. And for many, this active engagement is what keeps us pushing through to find the next clue, even if we feel in our hearts we'll never get all the answers. The recent Elden Ring DLC in particular brought this to a point for me. Fans wanted it to explain mysteries from the base game, but it largely introduced new mysteries unique to the Land of Shadow instead. Instead of telling the story the fans want, these media tell the stories the worlds require.
Eh not really, there are some files that are intentionally hard to read as part of the scp but the files as a whole are not. If your talking about how different files seen to conflict and scp 001 well that's just because there's no real cannon timeline.
@@Diego-ps7eq It's moreso how difficult it is to build a cohesive picture. Even ignoring the conflicting canons and only focusing on one canon, you have to constantly cross-reference tales and articles and tales and articles all the way down in a lot of situations just to get a picture of what's going on. Reading one single article leaves a vacuum for all of the context surrounding it which you have to fill by reading something else, and it's usually hard to tell how related it will be.
I'd say Umineko: When They Cry is a good example of such works. Umineko never (at least for the first half, the Question Arc) tell you everything about it despite the pieces being there. Characters figure out what's happening, but they never tell you. The books follow rules that are never explained but are necessary to understand the story. Characters have backstories that they only hint at or lie about. To understand anything you'll have to actively go back and forth, map character's actions and their role in the story. And even then, you probably won't even find the truth.
Honestly, this ends up being the stories downfall, especially in the second half. While it works in the first half as it has a lot that helps carry it, by the second everything just completely falls apart.
I'd say that Umineko, its sister Higurashi, and all the non-linear mystery visual novels that tend to play a lot with structure (Zero Escape series, Raging Loop, Sekimeiya: The Spun Glass, Somnium Files etc.) fall into this. But Umineko perfected that active engagement required for the story to make sense. A lot of Umineko, especially back in its heyday when it was getting translated, happened outside the game (forums, social media, blog posts) where fans kept theorizing for years and years until the manga came out with the definite solution.
"where real men test their mettle!" My femme ass having beaten every souls game and finished Bloodborne multiple times. But all jokes aside, I think video games are a perfect medium for this kinda of writing. It allows you to feel like you're discovering the story layer by layer by exploring every little corner of the games universe and setting.
"The Old Axolotl" by Jacek Dukaj comes to my mind. Author loves to create entire worlds and pages of terminology for his stories, but leaves most of it outside of the actual book, leaving it to speculation. This particular book was intended to be digital and it feels a lot like an ARG - lots of footnotes, links, even 3d printable models. I have a physical copy and literally half of the book is reserved for this additional content. The first time I read it I felt as if I was going insane alongside the protagonist.
The difficulty of Dark Souls is inseparable from the story. The game has three canonical endings, two of these happen when you finish the game, the other one happens when you stop playing because you lose the will to continue. I won't spoil the specifics, but resilience in the face of a difficult goal is one of the key themes throughout the game's story. Every character you meet is working towards a difficult goal. You get to see the horrible fates that meet those who lose the will to continue. This is the fate of your character too, should you fail in the face of adversity.
Yeah, I have no problem with games being difficult. The problem then comes when the fandom then expects everyone to still want to play it, because they don't like difficult games/don't play games for challenge. You can't say "Fuck you, the game is not for you" and then also turn around and say "You better buy/play this game or else you're a pussy/not a real gamer" (as most of my experiences with the Dark Souls fandom has been) - Either you take pride in that the game isn't for everyone and also accept that this means many people will not want to give it the time of day at all, or if you really feel it's a game EVERYONE should have to play, at that point you do have to make it accessible, or else you're literally trying to tell/force people in how they're supposed to think/what they're supposed to spend their time and money on, which is just evil bullying, and is why I have an intense hatred for Soulsborne and everyone in their fandom. They're just egotistic bullies.
@@oak8594wow that is certainly a passionate opinion. Yes some of the dark souls community sucks. But I think some are eager for others to experience the joy they did learning to overcome these challenges and can get a bit overzealous about wanting others to share that experience. Hell it's so profound for some that there are dozens of videos about how Dark Souls pulled people out from depressive states due to the way the game handles overcoming its challenges. So yes they want everyone to share in that experience sadly forgetting that not everyone wants or needs that or is willing or has the time/energy to get there
The Elder Scrolls series and Minecraft kind of follow this, but most likely not intentionally. You have to really work to get the lore. For the Elder Scrolls, while there are books explaining some of the lore, they're all written from an individual's viewpoint, so you never get the full picture. With Minecraft, Matt Pat already showed how difficult it was to get anything from there. Both games feel like they're guarding their secrets and that you need to fight or, in this case, work for them to give them up.
The Elder Scrolls tells the same story from dif pll views, and to each one of those ppl, it is correct Not mang of thr stories are made to be wrong, unlike things such 40k, All to say the ES franchise gives you info to make your own “correct” conclusions Without having to discredit the conclusions of others
@@chlorophyll1415 Minecraft never really had a story to tell beyond the story of the player playing. Lore-wise, latest updates are just more content without ever really trying to make a specific narrative. Especially with the amount of resentment towards any changes to whatever makes up "the original vision of Minecraft".
I think this quote explains what people, who try to figure out these stories, think: "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept" -JFK, Sep. 12th, 1962
I read house of leaves last year and to say its my favorite book would be an understatement. The general plot is fairly straight forward and it doesn't really change with or without the all the 'extras'. However, with this book you can choose how far you want to go into exploring the book, there are so many layers but the plot remains the same, its completely unique and fantastic.
Another piece of literature that came to my mind watching this video was Homestuck. Incredibly long story that was built through years and years, absolutely magistral use of multimedia, a game of accpeting and negating the fandom theories and ideas, an onsessed fandom that is still pouring over the story years after its ending...
Dying a lot isnt just the challenge for Dark Souls and Bloodborne, ots actually a part of the lore. As a hunter, you can't really "die" until the hunter's dream is truly destroyed. Each death pulls you back to the dream to resume the hunt under Flora's control, which is why one ending is Gharman ending the hunter IN the dream to release them from it's cycle and waking up the next day.
DnD is kinda like that. If you DM sure you could run yourself through a solo campaign, but a session of DnD won't play itself. The work and input from everyone is what defines the shared experience.
I love stories like this. I don't often get to participate, but it's not like I've never participated. What I love about ARGs, even the one's I don't get to be part of myself, is that there are really 2 stories. The story the ARG is telling and the story of the ones the ARG was told to. They're often both just as interesting.
Aye, picking up the peices when the game is already over can be its own reward. Even if you know finding all the peices is a discord visit away, treading the path alone can give quite the unique view on a story.
4:10 I have a copy of that book, but I read so little that I might as well start over. In regards to the mirrored text... as a kid, I discovered that I can read backwards quite easily. So easily, in fact, that sometimes I'll read something that is backwards and not realize it's backwards for a few moments. I can also read upside-down text. When I was a young adult, I learned that this is supposedly common among left-handed people like myself.
Maybe! There are 4 kinds* of narrative in video games - enacted, evoked, emergent, and in this case embedded. Just embedding a narrative doesn't make it ergodic. But if you have to struggle to collect all the pieces and create a timeline, that's definitely more ergodic. *Based on the work of Henry Jenkins, iirc
@@MeemahSN Hmmm never played it, but it sounds like an embedded narrative to me - same with a game like The Forest. With no timeline then that takes out a lot of the effort of analysis and interpretation. But it could be! Games present players with difficulty, and in that sense they require effort. But ergodicity involves effort in uncovering the narrative. An ergodic game example might be Return if the Obra Din, which requires investigatory work, memory, and interpretation of the text. There are definitely multiple POVs on this issue.
that book description made me think of infinite jest -- which took me around 400 pages or so to finally have an inkling of a clue of what was going on in the story. ive gotten to love and appreciate that book. (currently on page 75x)
as someone who has all but one (1) achievement in hollow knight, its so beautiful and deep, ESPECIALLY in its difficulty. the difficulty itself is part of the game and part of the story. it communicates very well the harshness of the world of hallownest and compliments the tragedy of the world. i may be biased because trigger warning underneath i used to be very suicidal when i first played it, but i became so engrossed with hollow knight that it kept me distracted long enough for my medication and therapy to take enough root to help me. hollow knight legitimately saved my life, and for that reason, i will never forget it.
It's the kind of melancholy and perseverance and quiet beauty within the horror that I'd imagine would lend itself well to that type of Brain Help. (It also absolutely is engrossing. Curse the folly of tendonitis aaaaaaa)
Many Dungeons and Dragons (as well as other TTRPGs) modules are quite a bit like this. With so much of what happens limited by dice rolls and player choices, there is no ONE way to tell the same story. Sure, the major beats or events may still happen, but they will never be the same as before.
Exactly this. I immediately thought of Curse of Strahd, where even though the main premise is established, my players are literally creating the story as they go.
A really good game series like this that wasn't mentioned is the Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours games. They're a bit obtuse, but this vibe really creates the atmosphere that you're pouring through occult texts rifling through to find the deep secrets of the world.
@@jacthing1 The writing is just so amazing. To me, Cultist Simulator is actually great on my phone because it's great to play for 10 or 15 minutes while something else is going on
When you started mentioning how the act of reading is made difficult, my mind IMMEDIATELY jumped to House of Leaves but I was like "naahy he's not gonna do that, that book is way too obscure, people won't have heard about it..." I started losing my shit at "footnotes within footnotes". No way one of my favorite high quality literature channel covers my favorie book! Thank you so much
As a blind man who has completed every challenge that the dark souls series and even Bloodborne has put forward, I don't understand the elitist attitude that some people within the community have. At the end of the day these games aren't that hard, they demand your time and attention and that's simply it. Really if I can do it anybody can considering I'm operating at a severely reduced capacity. This isn't even a point of pride for me either, as I've said before these games aren't that hard. I think people who base their self worth on their ability to beat these games are fundamentally damaged individuals who would be better served seeking a therapist rather than attacking other frustrated players online for not "getting good".
"Get Gud" has always been said by different types of people. In my friend group it's likened to "Don't go hollow", another DS reference for ya. Those who say it to put someone down, unfortunately, either have gone hollow or are a person who hasn't matured in however way. At least how I see it, it's a phrase that's a coin toss for each person ya talk to.
I remember when jacksepticeye first began to create his alter ego antisepticeye. I mean sure fans had made a version long before and he explains he’s tried to incorporate how the fans see the character with his own views, but the way he began to bring him to life was like an arg and it’s one of the few times I caught it when a lot of people didn’t. He did it BEAUTIFULLY, and I gush to this day. He started sooooooo subtly. A glitch, a scratchy mic, things so small that the first one or three I missed, I thought to myself “wow, dude, you need a new set up”, but then they grew a little more to the point it didn’t seem accidental. I looked at the comments and no one else seemed to notice, so I didn’t say anything but I watched, until it grew into a half a second overlay of black eyes, or screaming, then back to normal. If you had him playing in the background you’d never notice. Then when anticepticeye finally appeared I felt vindicated. It was AMAZING and something I could never really explain to someone, unless they saw it too no one can really truly appreciate it.
Regarding the difficulty of SoulsBorne games, I think that it is not just to make winning the game more satisfying, but the struggle is a very important part of the character arc of the main character. All the MCs in SoulsBorne games start their journey weak outcasts, and through their hardships they become stronger.
There's also a bunch of games where understanding is harder than the game itself, where you play not for the "gaming" challenge but for the intellectual one. Things like Outers Wilds or Tunic (even though that game not only is hard but is near impossible to decrypt alone)
As soon as I heard the definition of Ergodic Literature, I was reminded of my old textbook, 'Fundamentals of Thin-Walled Structures' written by our professor and used ONLY by our professor for the last half-century. The book was so convoluted and full of errors that I spent half the time wondering what the author was trying to say, flipping through the previous thirty pages in search of context for a random formula suddenly used in an exercise. It was inexplicable how the author managed to mix old and new units in such a way that, when calculating in kilogram-force (an old unit favored by aviators), he would get results in SI units, and vice versa..
From your description I can't tell if it was badly written, or deliberately byzantine to keep your brain active and get you to learn more thoroughly, and I love that uncertainty. Conceptually. From a safe distance. It would absolutely drive me up the wall to have to learn like that.
Im curious as to if Noita would count as this kind of thing. You never get told anything directly. And yet there is so much to it that its insane. From breaking out of the game world borders into infinite amounts of parallel near identical universes, creating twin suns using esoteric alchemy, to mysteries that to this day NO ONE HAS FIGURED OUT.
@@itamarlibman One thing that can be learned is "what led to me getting into this situation?" An example is teleporting into an unexplored area. It's almost always a bad idea due to the high chance of enemies or dangerous props being hidden in the darkness, but it can be totally avoided by not firing a teleport spell into dark areas. Some deaths are totally unavoidable (like an enemy grabbing a nuke wand), but 99% are preventable with enough experimentation and knowledge.
So this reenforces my thoughts on stories. They exist in 3 places: The actual unbiased text written as it is with out interpenetration. The author's intent behind the text, their expierences and life or lives being poured into a work. Then lastly the reader's mind, their experiences and lives being poured into the story. But I think this made me see a 4th place, probably the largest and most undefined place. Because it is the place where all these things overlap. Stories as they are told and retold. STories as they reinterpited. Stories as they reexperenced. All change the story and the context. Probably the universe I think best in this is Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere. Every time I reread it I find things that I missed or different ways to see things. Talking to others change how I preceve it. Hearing Brandon's intents and thoughts on things also change on it.
My favorite part of games and stories like this is what you discover and what you figure out for yourself gets expanded upon so much when someone brings up a detail of something that you missed or another part to tie areas together or a real-world meaning. And with each piece coming together it's like this kind of crazy understanding and the beauty of what you have just discovered coming together. Like even when there are still mysteries and certain information that seems left out, a kind of flow and form to it emerges. What makes you just want to dive deeper and find more information about it even if you hit a brick wall.
I hppe you take this as a compliment Your voice is so calming. I just fell asleep listening to the video Yet the content is still so interesting that I come back to watch your videos over and over
Talebot: Because the real story, the one that makes this stuff so obsession-inducingly fascinating to the people who consume it- Me: IS THE FRIENDS WE MADE ALONG THE WAY Talebot: -is the one you create in the process Me: FU-
This video spoke to me SO much! As someone who grew up on theory-based communities, indie fandoms, ARGs and such, it bringed back a lot of hood memories!
My fave example of this is the 2004 film Primer by Carruth. The ending has a twist that makes you realize what was "really" going on the whole time. So when you watch a second time you notice things you didn't notice before, things that didn't make sense the first time round make sense in light of the new information, and then, this second time, you notice a new twist you didn't even see the first viewing, so now you have NEW new information, and you can watch a third time and now you know what's really REALLY for real going on, until you see another twist that was hidden before you had that information. It keeps going like that as you watch over and over all the way back to the start where you can figure out who is on the phone and WHEN that phone call was placed (and to whom) in the context of the timelines. There's also things the movie doesn't tell you that you would have to either just know or look up on your own. For example, spoiler here, aspergillus fungus does not grow without oxygen, which some think to be a mistake on the part of the film maker but it's actually a plot point that reveals one of the lies one of the characters is telling the other. I've watched many vids on Primer and never see one that actually figures out the full plot.
I think the Locked Tomb series is a perfect example!Each book is told from the perspective of the character least equipped to understand or handle what is going on, the world building is given through speech as if you already are living in the world and know its rules, and you only find things out when the characters do, and sometimes you don't find things out at all and are left to guess
I'm not quite sure this counts as ergodic literature, but "vignette" stories (there's probably a real name for this, I just don't know it) that are told through small, out-of-context excerpts taken straight from a bigger narrative, are one of my favorite kinds of media, and it's some of my favorite to write. Think trying to figure out the plot of Lord of the Rings using just random pages. It's sort of like a story made entirely of hooks, just carefully chosen to lay out a path you can follow to piece together the overarching narrative. You could also call it the ultimate in environmental storytelling - the plot left evidence of its happening in the information we receive. Like a mystery nove-- wait.
In Conquest Born!! It's got a "main" plot but also a lot of vignettes - I think maybe??? it would make sense if only the "main" bits were read, but there would be next to no worldbuilding. I really like that balance for when I need something digestible to keep the simpler parts of my brain hooked, but I also want pieces to put together. Edit: also The Diamond Age. the shark is half jumped, but that's Stephenson for you. I think I just like a character center of comprehensibility and everything gets more and more ergotic the further from them it gets
Thank you, you majestic being. I knew there must have been a word for the project I'm working on. Iyashikei/Ergodic literature, disguised as a cozy James Herriot story.
The thing about souls games is that, it needs no hard mode or easy mode because, depending on how one approaches the game like for example, being methodical and exploiting weaknesses of enemies is significantly easier than running in head first blind into everything you see. The challenge is still there it just depends on how you approach it.
I really liked how this video went about explaining this Like It started off with a lot of exposition and I was like why is this necessary but it all tied together in the end I'm glad this was recommended this was cool Also the art and voice are really fitting
I promise this comment isn't a 'snark snark you said the wrong word' comment... but I find the idea of 'weird masculine vibrato' just inherently very funny. 10:14 Also this feels like a lot of the descriptions of the Pathalogic or Fear and Hunger games.
In the late 90s and early 2000s there were several anime series like this. A few examples of these are: Serial Experiments Lain, Ergo Proxy, Boogiepop Phantom (although you’ll need to read the books first since this series is more a sequel/spinoff of the books than an adaptation), and the latter half of Haibane Renmei. Also I’ve not yet watched Kaiba, Texhnolyze, and Big O but I’ve heard they’re also like that.
I would also say that the effort or difficulty involved in something like beating Dark Souls or reading House of Leaves creates immersion - it is literally a storytelling mechanism. In the same way that changing the style or tone of your writing can help set the mood for certain scenes in a book, and draw a reader into them. Dark Souls taught me to persevere in a way no other media about perseverance ever could, because rather than just telling me that the protagonist failed over and over again until eventually they succeeded, it MADE me fail over and over again until I eventually succeeded. House of Leaves didn't just describe what it was like to be lost in a confusing, impossible labyrinth, it literally made the very act of reading it labyrinthine. I view these things as simply making full use of the medium at hand to convey the desired message.
This is why book clubs are so fun. Those books or stories that are obfuscated are the absolutely most fun ones to read and discuss with others (like "The Fall of the House of Usher"). I will encourage anyone to get their friends together and analyze the short story "The Library of Babel." You will likely go some very interesting places.
An adventure is told by it's journey. No single adventure is ever the same, yet we all wish to have a similar one. But despite it all, it never will be the same, and I'm very glad for that. Makes for so many similar yet such different stories
Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" is possibly the most famous early example I think. The joy of adding your own understanding to the experience - and seeing how your understanding changes the experience of reading it as you age - is amazing. I do think that the creators of art (including video games) contribute half the total. The rest is brought by the viewer, and there's nothing to be done about that. 8-)
I think you've sort of missed the point of Dark Souls's difficulty tbh. The difficulty itself is only a part of it. Yes, it' important that the player feels challenged. That allows for them to feel the brutality of the world, and it makes the game more fun. But honestly, Dark Souls isn't nearly as difficult as people say. The other part is the shared experience. People like me don't really care about creating your own story or whatever. A large part of Dark Souls is about the community. That's why there are so many multiplayer features in the game. An easy mode or even a hard mode (NG+ doesn't count because you have to beat the game first) would break that shared experience, the knowledge that we all made our way through the same world. As well, there are many themes of insignificance and the world not caring about you, so preventing you from changing the difficulty plays into that. With Hollow Knight, the situation is a little different. There're no multiplayer elements, and the lore and secret areas are actually meant to be possible to find without looking them up. While the game itself is more difficult than Dark Souls, the lore and sense of discovery come much easier. I think Hollow Knight would be fine with an easy mode, while Dark Souls would not. And for Hollow Knight, like Dark Souls, piecing together the lore isn't fun because of my creativity. It's fun because it increases immersion. It feels like the game world is a real lived-in place, which is enhanced by the organic exploration and secrets around every corner. Plus, it fits with the environments of the game. The biggest lore secrets are hidden away in the deepest parts of the earth and in dreams, which helps you feel like you're uncovering something. That's my 2 cents anyway.
I like your description of this genre, i dont have consciously engaged in stories like these. but i have seen similarities in stories i have experienced, in particular, in games. While it can be exhausting to trawl through als these disconnected pieces of information, it can be very rewarding piecing it together successfully. Also as you mentioned it kind of creates a unique experience for you alone. This, i think, makes the world feel even more alive, than a linear story, since your perception of the world may constantly shift. Much like in real life. It forces you to engage in the content in a more deep and meaningful way, and while the story itself warps and twists in your mind it also surprises you more often. All of this makes these stories much more exciting for me.
Never thought that you would mention one piece, even though it's the most popular manga of all time I think it still is pretty underrated, most people think of it as any other shounen or don't give it that much credit, I really hope you talk about the world of one piece cause you don't really hear about it anywhere else other than it's own niche
That would be a good topic for a few videos. One piece has some of the most insane Continuity, especially considering how long its been since it started. It also has Stupendously strange worldbuilding. and a rather Unique form of magic in both Haki and Devil Fruits, in addition to random weird things like that guy with infinite rope, or the Painting girl, which provides an example of a Structured Magic System (Haki and Devil Fruits) coexisting with a more unstructured Fairytale type of magic
'Its not that these stories want to be told, it's that they can't tell themselves...they need you for that' I love Tale Foundry he's given me so many good ideas for books, from videos like what is breaking the fifth wall?
The soulsborne use game mechanics, including difficulty, to tell a story. One that loses focus and qualiy if the difficulty is lowered. Those are games that are actually artful (obviously not only these games), but It's like saying Francis Bacon has to change his style because some people find it hard to look at or understand. All while depriving a real minority of people, from the very rare type of experience they are truly able to connect with.
This reminds of the Reader Trilogy series by Traci Chee--where there is no written languages and a majority of the populace are illiterate except a select few. The whole theme is basically asks the question are you following fate or writing your own story. This is especially true in the last book in the series, "The Storyteller," where before a great battle the protagonist actually begs--begs--the reader to stop reading in order to save her love and her friend. This of course makes the reader participate whether they help prevent numerous deaths of beloved characters or start the very devastating war the characters worked so hard to prevent.
I realize that this isn't quite on topic but in regard to the Dark Souls "wouldn't be the same" train of thought, I feel like a lot of the people who make that argument (if not nearly all) are assuming that the people requesting or requiring an easy mode can play and complete the game on normal, and may be lazy or unwilling to dedicate the time to play "properly". I have some brain damage from long-term, unrecognized seizures. Memorizing skills or recipes, understanding talent trees, and focusing on grinding out gear/levels are not easy tasks. I also don't have incredible reflexes, dexterity, or hand-eye coordination. Games like Dark Souls or Hollow Knight are completely inaccessible to me in their normal modes. Luckily I have a partner who has exactly what I don't and loves gaming, so if I want to experience certain games, I can do it as a fly on the wall, although then it's like super easy mode as I have literally no stake in the game and kind of invalidates the original "easy mode" argument. So yeah. Great video though!
Hey man, first of all I just wanna say, please dont take offense in my opinion. I just really want to know what your opinion is about um my opinion. I'm from the "No Easy Mode" camp, but I don't really wanna force that on to other people so please take my words as genuine discussion rather than as a debate: So, imagine a game where you're playing as a blind person. Not completely blind but still, you can only make a vague assumption of your surroundings in maybe like 2 metres around you. You are in a strange faraway land and you go around a huge open world, filled to the brim with a rich history, terrifying creatures, maze-like places, unimaginable horrors. Since it's a huge world, you are often really lost, and you struggle to go further. The invisible horrors past your vision fills you with dread every second. If you're someone who has trouble with spatial awareness, it would be an even greater struggle, and you might just quit the game. Someone who don't like weird games like this wouldn't even play it. But let's imagine someone who did. Let's say he struggled A LOT with the game, but he still kept going. He even quit the game at one point, only coming back after a week long break. But he felt like he wants to see the end of the game. So he kept playing. He doesn't have anything to prove, he just kept playing for some weird reason that he himself can't understand. And he finally managed to get to the end of the game, and as a reward what happens is that the protagonist of the game has his vision restored, and he finally gets to see the world as it really is. And the protagonist realises that the slithering snake-like appendages that he could make out faintly was just the funny friendly dragon that wanted to say hello, or the scary growl that he heard was the sound of a peaceful sleeping giant, and all the things that scared him wasn't really that scary after all. It was something that is even nice. Now take a second to imagine what the player who played this game would feel like at this climatic moment in the game. I'd guess it would a be something of a cathartic feeling. Now, let's say someone else wants to play this game, and this person has a LOT of trouble with spatial awareness, is easily scared, and abysmally bad with video games. So he decides to turn down the difficulty for this game. In this game, turning down the difficulty means that the main character can see much more of the world now. The writhing mass of snake-like shapes that was scary for the first player is just the friendly dragon that's waving hello for the second player. The deep guttural growl that was beyond the vision of the first player, is just the giant sleeping for the second player. It's easy to get where I'm going with this. The second player would find it easier to finish the game, and when he does, he won't get anywhere near the same impact for the ending. But still it could be a good experience, and the second player may not regret the time he spent on this game. I wanna talk about another thing too. Let's say you can also increase the difficulty. So this means, you can play the game as a COMPLETELY blind person. You can't see anything, so when you get to the dragon encounter, you don't see anything at all. You might hear something slithering but that's it. But the sleeping giant will still be the same experience as the first person since he couldn't see it either. So even increasing the difficulty made it a worse experience than what the first person had. So what difficulty should you choose to get the perfect experience? The difficulty should be such that you should feel a deep struggle, so that the payback at the end is worth it. The ending and the game itself works best when the player is struggling. But too high difficulty with no vision might take away from the climax, and a too easy stroll wouldn't work either. It should be perfect. But the problem is, we as players don't really know which difficulty to select. Maybe I'm bad at this game than most people, so lower difficulty? or maybe I'm better? Or am I just average? What if I select a difficulty and miss out on certain things? I don't know. The developer doesn't know anything about me either, but they do know the game. So what to do? What I do is just let the developer do what they want. I am someone who thinks of games as an art (at least some games haha). So I want to experience whatever the artist has in their mind rather than I want (even though I still gets pissed off sometimes). There's one last thing though. The second player who is bad at videogames, who has trouble with spatial awareness and is easily scared.. if that person was able to get to that ending without turning up or down the difficulty, that player's experience of that climax would be so much greater than the person who was better than him at the game. What do you think about my opinion on the matter? You don't have to reply if you don't want to, by the way. Your time is probably more valuable than mine right now.
@@dogemaester Hi! Thanks for being respectful. Unfortunately, your argument is exactly what I was talking about. And for what it's worth, I totally understand where you're coming from. I GET the argument of "no easy mode," but I don't think people understand fully why some people desire or require easy mode. Your second person who has terrible spatial awareness and frightens easily may find easy mode just as difficult as your first. The waving dragon could trigger a fear of the unknown, or a fear of lizards, or a fear of fire, etc., etc. Sure, it looks and feels easy to you and others, but mastering the controls may be hard enough. I think the best comparison from normal to "easy" (without actually making it easier) is the arachnaphobia option several modern games have these days. My favourite is the one that turns them into the word "SPIDER". 10/10 effort there, game devs. Oh, and colourblind modes too. Here's a mediocre example of one way "normal" hinders me: I desperately want to play games like Animal Crossing, Pokemon, or Zelda but they tend to be on consoles or handhelds. I have tried for YEARS to play with controlers and cannot manage it. My fingers can't spread the same way, they can't bend the same way, they can't move the same way as others. My experience with those games only exists as a fly on the wall and I lose the entire experience, immersion, and (as you have mentioned) that "catharsis" that comes with completing the game. I did nothing to earn the resolution. Someone else did all the work for me. Now this isn't the greatest example as it deals with my physical limitations rather than mental ones, and easy mode (for me) is more about my mental ability. There's a game I've played with my parter called Bokura. It is, admittedly, a simple and "easy" game. It's adorable, creepy, and requires teamwork. I love and hate it. It's so interesting and intriguing and it pisses me off... not because it's intriguing but because it's just difficult enough that I get upset, and when I get upset, I shut down. The majority of regular gamers find Bokura to be easy. It's difficult to me. So to ME, Bokura is like your one example of someone who struggles and goes back time and time again. I agree, it is rewarding to succeed in it. But it's already an EASY game and I'm struggling through it. My partner doesn't understand why because he's a regular gamer without the same mental limitation and invisible injuries I have. I want to point out something you said: "So what difficulty should you choose to get the perfect experience? The difficulty should be such that you should feel a deep struggle, so that the payback at the end is worth it. The ending and the game itself works best when the player is struggling." I agree. But the problem is that a "deep struggle" for some is a walk in the park for others. Walking might even be a half decent example. Some people are born with one leg shorter than the other. Some lose a leg. Some break their leg doing some activity. Some are just shorter than the person they're walking with, and the tall person's stride is longer, so the shorter person struggles to keep up and may not get a chance to enjoy the park to the same extent as they end up more focused on keeping up than watching the squirrels play in the branches. They might not even be aware there WERE squirrels in the branches! Another point you made: "If that person was able to get to that ending without turning up or down the difficulty, that player's experience of that climax would be so much greater than the person who was better than him at the game." How can you guarantee this though? Going back to Bokura, finishing a difficult-to-me level isn't a climactic, cathartic, enjoyable experience. It's me going "fucking finally" and then logging off because I can't handle another moment. Granted, it may not be THE climax of the game. And if I ended up forced, for whatever reason, to play Hollow Knight just the same as my partner does, I would end up finishing the story, likely recognizing the writing for how great it (probably) was, but inevitably looking back at the game and remembering how much I hated the entire experience. Sure, I'm just one person, and game devs can't cater to a single person, but if turning down the difficulty kept a not-insignificant portion of potential gamers from hating the experience, why WOULDN'T a game dev want to do that? Why would people want to play a game they know they're going to hate in the moment, just for a good story? Why not just watch a streamer or read the story online instead? Less frustration and anguish at that point. I 100% understand your stance and people with a similar mindset. I actually had the same mindset when I started playing video games. I just thought I was bad at games and that's why I struggled through things, and eventually quit. Cause I was just bad. But I'm not bad, not truly. I have invisible disabilities that I wasn't fully aware of when I was a teeny bopper. When I discovered games with easy modes, well, that's when I started realizing that I LIKED video games. It wasn't cause I was bad, it's cause I had a... handicap of sorts. And I love/d the ones that made games accessible to me. I got to enjoy their stories after all. I got to experience the joy that others had. Maybe they wouldn't be as immersed if they played the same difficulty level as me, but I got MY immersion. I got MY version of the climax. I got to enjoy that "catharsis" that I would've ended up missing out on had easy mode NOT existed. And I really can't thank those earlier game devs enough. They sparked my love of video games. Hell, there was even one game I loved so much that I played easy mode over and over and over again until I mastered it. And then I moved up in the difficulty to normal mode. I played it some more, mastered it, and made it to hard. If I had started on normal, I never would have experienced the game and developed a love for it. And for what it's worth, some games with multiple modes have a way to trial run how each mode feels before starting so you can decide what feels right for you and will bring you the best experience. So yeah. Overall, the problem with the mindset of "you won't get the same enjoyment on easy vs hard" is that you're expecting everyone to HAVE the same experience. Everyone experiences life differently. And "easy mode" for one isn't easy for all. "Normal" can be completely inaccessible. (Also, I had to write this twice cause I was responding while on another video and accidentally clicked out instead of scrolling and that "feature" is DUMB lol)
Not all things need to be accessible. While I do believe games should fundamentally be designed with their players in mind first and foremost, I also believe people should be allowed to create games in line with their own creative visions. There is a general intended experience for Dark Souls, and it is okay that that experience isn't for everyone. That said, there are far more ways to create accessibility than a difficulty slider. Dark Souls 1 is a fantastically uncompromising, but genuine and honest enough of an experience that I firmly believe it is within the realm of possibility for anyone to defeat it if they set their mind to it.
@@dogemaester Equity, not equality... What's hard for you may be impossible for someone else. What's easy for someone, may be that "perfect difficulty" for their friend. If there was an Easy mode, there's nothing stopping the "real men" gamers from playing the original mode and still get their kicks from that, ala the Fire Emblem series. As to trusting the developers... yes... to a certain extent. Death to the Author exists for a reason... Tale Foundry already said that simply beating a game front to back isn't enough to truly understand ergodic stories, so I'm not sure why he went back on that and got into the Dark Souls debate...
This is why every game should have a mode the developer thinks is the ideal way to experience the game, which may be quite difficult, but still have a lot of difficulty and accessibility options. An adult response, saying "don't play it this way unless you are certain you wish to do so." is perfectly reasonable, and most people won't click past that warning unless they have to. Policing how people enjoy their games is generally just kind of a jerk move.
My favorite example of this kind of storytelling that relies on the reader having to look for it is when games put bombshell lore info on stuff that would otherwise be very innocuous. Like how in Kirby games when you pause during a bossfight the game will straight up write you an paragraph about stories you'd never otherwise know relating to them and the world they inhabit, presented with as much care as a throaway fun fact on a loading screen. Or in Dark Souls games, where you can pierce togheter a lot of lore and worldbuilding just from reading the oddly beautiful description of an item named something like "lightly soiled master's loincloth"
10:10 I agree. I don't think Dark Souls needs an easy mode; that is part of what makes it great. You get better at the game and earn the story. It wouldn’t be the same if you could breeze through it. The words of the characters wouldn’t carry as much impact
Ddlc actually has 2 stories, the second being Project Libetina, which is a story hidden inside code's poems and small references, and there are lots of theories about this, but we may never see the real story. So it's technically a story that doesn't want to be told
I kinda disagree with you here. The difficulty in From games is PART of the story. Not the lore. The story. Every playthrough is unique, because every player meets those challenges differently. Those moments of overcoming sheer frustration are part of the image the makers wanted to convey. Facing every challenge with bullheaded resolve, or stopping, pulling back, and finding a different way. You say there is no easy mode, but that isn't true. Every single From game ever made has SOMETHING that can be done to make your experience a little smoother than average... if you care to learn the game and figure out what they are. Sure there are always toxic jerks like the one shown in this video, but there's also a whold community out there that is absolutely rabid to help you up where you fall and get you back on your adventure. Things like that are PART of a story much bigger than just the lore, and I argue against an easy mode not because it'd cheapen the experience for me, but because it would for you. You'd miss out on so much of these games if you didn't have to struggle and FIGURE OUT your own ways through. While some may be okay with that, to be honest, it makes me very sad that they'd so vehemently insist that this entire part of the game is unneeded, and that they don't even want to try seeing it.
It prevents a lot of people from ever playing at all, though. Not everyone can intuit whatever arcane combination of the right stats and the right items will help, and not everyone has perfect eye-hand coordination.
@@MySerpentine I mean, I have chronic hand pain, terrible eyesight, and am clumsy af. I not only play them, I LOVE them, because with practice I can overcome those problems. Sure it's INTIMIDATING, which I get, but I don't think it's nearly as bad as people claim. To be frank, instead of an easy mode, I think the series could benefit more from a practice mode like Nioh 2's Dojo. Like a place where you can just summon some different enemy types to practice with and gain confidence, then go back to tackle the main game.
@@MySerpentine Oh also, if you're confused by the stats and systems, don't hesitate to look around for guides to learn. The games aren't as confusing as they look at first glance, but the community helping each other learn is one of the coolest parts of these games that ALSO shouldn't be missed. :)
@@jackofminds8338 you aren't that different from the dude bro mentioned in the video. You're just better at justifying your gatekeeping with nicer words. 1) You have disabilities and are able to play the game as is, so the disability argument is thus insufficient. (There exist a number of conditions that prevent people from engaging in this game, but hay I guess this game just isn't for them.) 2) people just need a practice mode to 'get good.' after all, there are plenty of people willing to tell them what to do to be better. I guess that means if they still can't win, then it's not the game or designers fault, it's just that this game isn't for them. I would be interested to know how many people need to verify that they are unable to actually play the game in any meaningful way due to no faults of their own before their concerns are valid?
Tbh the reason I disagree with having an easy mode is because the difficulty is literally what the game is about. To the point of the player getting frustrated and quitting the game is an actual part of the story. The entire theme of the game focuses on perseverance in the face of overwhelming challenges and fighting the urge to just give up. The game literally puts the player and the game character in the same boat, because just like you are struggling to push through the game. So is your character struggling to hold on to their will to go on, and if you give up and quit the game, that would be the in game equivalent of your character falling victim to the undead curse and going hollow. The plot pairs perfectly with the difficulty to the point where it basically is a textbook example of what it is like to struggle with clinical depression.
Cloud atlas is my favorite movie and it definitely falls into this category. Ergodic literature, like working for anything in life, is so rewarding BECAUSE you worked for something that did not come easy.
@@kevinjypiter6445 Nah, not the words or grammar, the sheer structure. It is considered one of the earliest examples of ergodic literature. It is deliberately obtuse at times, meanders to reach a point, and has so many unimportant details within as to bog down the narrative.
The Arecibo message curiously fits neatly into this concept while being the exact opposite. The Arecibo message was sent into space because it WANTS to be read. It wants to be understood and it was designed to be the easiest thing to understand that humans could create. Yet even people at the height of their fields can't solve it on their own. Sometimes it takes work to make the message as clear as possible.
Not to be confused with "ergotic literature" which are stories that only make sense if you're under the influence of ergot, the fungus from which LSD is derived. Would you consider there to be such a thing as ergodic literature-lite? Your description of House of Leaves got me thinking of the recently released sequel book to the TV show, Gravity Falls, and while the show itself is plenty accessible (it's a show aimed at kids after all), the clues and hints and literal coded messages seeded throughout the series, to say nothing of the ARGs that emerged after the series ended, seems to be at least a cousin to or subset of ergodic literature.
One of my favourite movies is David Lynch's Eraserhead. I've seldom watched a movie that demands so much of its audience. But I find it so worthwhile to unpack it's meaning, and it makes it feel so personal. It also makes it infinitely rewatchable, as everytime I watch the movie, I come away with a slightly different interpretation on some aspect of the film. Its very special in that way.
both of these (book of the new sun and hyperion) have been on my reading list for going on a decade. The universe has spoken - it is time. Also read Snow Queen by Joan D Vinge (edited to say that it's not Too hard to understand - it's more that it very slowly reaveals the inner workings of why things are the way they are, and about half can be figured out from foreshadowing and the others can't, which makes subsequent rereads almost necessary. Similar to Ender's Game in that way, I think. There are enough levels to the Fantasy Game in that one that I still don't have it all figured out)
Something that came to mind for me in this category, immediately, was the works by Failbetter Games and Weather Factory-- Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, Culturist Simulator, and to a lesser but still present extent, Book of Hours. These games are HARD, sometimes infuriatingly so, but they use that difficulty to reinforce how very eldrich this lore is. If you want to find the secrets of this universe, you are gonna gonna end up losing limb, life, and sanity in the process.
I remember that the biggest inspirations for the creator of the Souls Series came from a simple moment. When he was younger and he would read foreign fantasy books. There would often be parts of the story where his knowledge of the language failed him and he had to guess and theorize how the parts that he didn’t understand connected with the parts he did understand. This too informed his writing style in the game as he leaves vague hints and clues that tie in some way to the parts the game lets you know without any struggle. Putting you in that same position of knowing parts of the story while having other parts clearly be there but obscured just enough to make you wonder what happened in those blurry moments.
I love that type of storytelling in games, you can also see some of that in the game Ultrakill, where many parts of the story are clearly said in enemy descriptions, theres also a lot of environmental storytelling, such as seeing the giant Earthmover look down at you even though there are lots of other Earthmovers around it that it was fighting just then, this implies that V1 (the robot you play as) was designed to take down Earthmovers, small details like that can add a lot to the story of a game or movie
@@maxleavitt8199Glad I'm not the only one who's noticed how Souls-like the writing in Ultrakill is. Only difference is that Ultrakill's lore is much more willing to give concrete answers if you put the pieces together, and the creator actually engages with the community and confirms/deconfirms theories.
As a gamer, I don't like such storytelling. As a student of game design, I find it amazing. Truelly creative work. And as a souls fan, I find it endearing.
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Mine is mort theory
I feel sometimes it's more sharing a world maybe an experience more than a story
The description of Ergodic Literature brought to my thoughts about games like D&D, Vampire: The Masquarade, Fate Core, and all those similar ones, where the players - by their own decision - will be the heroes or villains of the stories, which are mostly described by the Game Master (in D&D it's called Dungeon Master), and the group together write one collective story. If they doesn't do anything, they wouldn't be part of the story - therefor they are forced to do something. In a similar way, as you talked about the video games, a good session isn't a "railroad"-ed one, where doesn't matter which direction you choose, ends up at the same spot, but a vast world, where every action has a consequence, and you need to work for your goals.
I would love to hear your thoughts on Vermis. It's a guide to a video game that doesn't exist. I feel like it could fall in pretty well into the nature of the ergodic video games you were talking about.
You should check out Subnautica.
"A well designed world can tell its story in silence." - Hidetaka Miyazaki
Even within the same world the experience of someone creates its own story and thus each perspective is a different story. The story that doesn't want to be told but experienced.
The C programming language manual fits this description exceedingly well.
COBOL 😊
I laughed, yet I was sad.
Then try assembly
Tbh C is easy to grasp, but hard to use
@@ficolas2 Not hard to use, but rather hard to use safely. Important difference
My first thought on this was Shadow of the Colossus. A game with no lore collectables, no audiologs, no diary, almost no NPCs to interact with, and not a single moment where someone turns to the screen and starts lore dumping. The characters act as though they're all fully aware of what is going on, so they never need to say it out loud for the player's benefit. If you want to come to a conclusion about what happens both during the events of the game, and what lead up to those events, you must play the game multiple times and traverse the game world all by yourself, observing the smallest of details and connecting the pieces.
The other games in the trilogy, Ico and The Last Guardian, are like this as well, but I think Shadow of the Colossus does it best.
Yeah, Ico too. Imagine a girl just nonsensically yelling at you while you navigate a strange and deadly land.
Mine was SCP
Sometimes i wonder if the kill everyone route or as fans call it the ""Genocide" route in Undertale is a story that does not want to be told.
As if the game tries as hard as possible to stand in your way of finishing the story of "what if you killed every single major character" in a video game.
And punishes you for doing so, saying "No! You don't get the Good Ending EVER AGAIN!"
yeah probably
jerry exists for a reason
More than hard, the genocide route makes the game boring, everyone remember the extremely hard boss battles but forget that at least 90% of the time in that mode is walking back and forth repeating the same battles
@@diegocassola1exactly. It's got 2 punishingly, frustratingly hard boss fights and... that's about it. Beyond that, just hours of grinding through fights that don't present any challenge whatsoever. And if you screw up and go through too many screens without "clearing" an area, the run is screwed.
It was very explicitly designed to be an unfun experience, to make you feel like that much more of a bastard when you do it.
By contrast, the True Pacifist run is fun and engaging while still managing to throw some tough (but fair) challenges your way.
Toby Fox knew what he was doing.
@@MrClickity When I lived in a dorm my firend tried the genocide run, just watching him clearing an area seemed dull beyond any reasonable game design logic and I couldn't even fathom doing it by myself just by watching how boring it was.
It was absolutely a deliberate choice
There is one example I can think of.
There was this poet that had a piece of their work tattooed onto 20 different people, and nowhere else.
Their work only exists in their head and scattered across 20 different people.
When one of those people die, then the story will forever be broken.
HOUSE OF LEAVES MENTIONED ‼️ WHAT THE FUCK IS A RELIABLE NARRATOR ‼️⁉️🗣️
Two narrators that aren't quite reliable yet so interesting
I love this book!
We making it out of the five and a half minute halfway with this one
Hey bro, I heard you liked footnotes, so I put a footnote in your footnote... and then I put another footnote about that footnote in a footnote, but upside down, at a diagnoal angle, fifty pages later, down the side of the page.
@@IndustrialBonecraftdon't forget the footnote that mentions 20 pages of incomprehensible scribbling from a crazy woman at the very back of the book
i think a good argument for not "making it easier" for people is that the difficulty is *part* of the story to an extent
you really feel like youre fighting tooth and nail to develop the skill required to make it in that world, and your reward for that devotion is seeing the story to completion
0:35 Yeah, Rainworld is really the perfect example for that. Beautiful game, but one of the hardest games to set a foot in.
Dude, I wish I could play Rainworld, but that game feels like trying to get a wet sock to jump across a pit for a berry.
@@ruthlesshunter9187 If they just played a bit more like a cat than a slug^^
Yeah, he started to talk what it was. And Rain World was the first thing I thought
Not only beutiful but once you master it it's also one of the most rewarding. First time taking down a vulture was one of the most satisfing things in all games for me (competing only with hollow knight's last pantheon and celeste's dlc)
@@hokuhikene the movement doesn't need to be changed at all. you're slow and clumsy if you're just using the basic movement, if you take the time to start learning the very complex system of movement built on top of those simple foundations you'll be sliding and backflipping around in no time and the game gets significantly easier.
Not sure if this counts but a fun reccomendation is "Ella Minnow Pea". It's a book comprised of letters from this fictional town that venerates a statue of the man who coined “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” which contains every letter of the alphabet and is written on the pedestal. One day one of the letters falls off, then another, then another, making them now "banned". So as the book goes on you need to decipher the increasingly creative workarounds they're forced to use to communicate, with the last chapter containing only L, M, N, O, and P.
I really like ergodic literature not because it forces me to work harder to read it, but because I enjoy the feeling of being genuinely lost in the pages
not just lost in the immersive sense, but lost in the 'hiking without a map' sense.
@@clawrunner Lose yourself to find yourself. It's great.
Wait, so... history is ergodic literature. There is no grand narrative baked into the natural world, just causes and effects. Trying to piece together history requires going through materials that are obtuse, incomplete, or nigh-inaccessible, if it's even there at all. Great work has to be put in to translate the pieces of data into a coherent story. You can read compilations of these stories in textbooks, encyclopedias, scientific journals, but the actual play of history is just... life, and no one can ever live a hundred thousand lifetimes through the eyes of a hundred billion people to experience the entirety of it.
In a way, yes. Ergotic literature in a lot of ways tries to simulate what it’s like to be an archaeologist trying to piece together the ancient past with only the scantest clues
Yes and no there's a pattern that you could find but nature will still go oh that's cute you found a pattern not the pattern
By that logic, life is an RPG with strong survival elements.
I remember that the biggest inspirations for the creator of the Souls Series came from a simple moment. When he was younger and he would read foreign fantasy books. There would often be parts of the story where his knowledge of the language failed him and he had to guess and theorize how the parts that he didn’t understand connected with the parts he did understand. This too informed his writing style in the game as he leaves vague hints and clues that tie in some way to the parts the game lets you know without any struggle. Putting you in that same position of knowing parts of the story while having other parts clearly be there but obscured just enough to make you wonder what happened in those blurry moments.
I appreciate the personal angle you put on this topic, and to a large extent it's true: everyone is going to have their own interpretations, their own experiences. But especially regarding the community aspect, Miyazaki himself has discussed how the other half of the difficulty argument is that the game is designed to be figured out and conquered by a community. While there are some bad apples, the overwhelming majority of these communities want to help you progress and fall in love with their favorite media. However, they won't do it for you: they will give you knowledge, but only you can beat the odds.
As for why, especially with Elden Ring, the stories themselves are told in this way because it just makes sense for the world. Dark Souls and Elden Ring are worlds of untrustworthy gods and foolishly ambitious mortals all struggling for themselves: some for survival, some for power, some for understanding. There are mysteries that we will never get answers to because the gods that they concern dont want us to know about them. We have to parse through various perspectives and lives and consider what is coming from a reliable source and what is purely relative. And for many, this active engagement is what keeps us pushing through to find the next clue, even if we feel in our hearts we'll never get all the answers. The recent Elden Ring DLC in particular brought this to a point for me. Fans wanted it to explain mysteries from the base game, but it largely introduced new mysteries unique to the Land of Shadow instead. Instead of telling the story the fans want, these media tell the stories the worlds require.
Is that the Moon Presence from Bloodborne in the thumbnail.
Yes
No it’s a gremlin when you put it in four loko instead of water
That's me, they stole my likeness for the thumbnail
No, that's just Jerry from accounting
Yup. Her name is Flora.
erotic literature is my favorite genre of literature.
thank you auto-subtitles.
Oh, I thought of another example: The SCP Wiki. Excellent video by the way.
I first thought this video would be about Anti-memes
@@sheersternfeld1914 didn't this channel already make a video about antimemes?
@@masela01 I know, I thought it was another anti-meme video
Eh not really, there are some files that are intentionally hard to read as part of the scp but the files as a whole are not. If your talking about how different files seen to conflict and scp 001 well that's just because there's no real cannon timeline.
@@Diego-ps7eq It's moreso how difficult it is to build a cohesive picture. Even ignoring the conflicting canons and only focusing on one canon, you have to constantly cross-reference tales and articles and tales and articles all the way down in a lot of situations just to get a picture of what's going on. Reading one single article leaves a vacuum for all of the context surrounding it which you have to fill by reading something else, and it's usually hard to tell how related it will be.
I'd say Umineko: When They Cry is a good example of such works. Umineko never (at least for the first half, the Question Arc) tell you everything about it despite the pieces being there. Characters figure out what's happening, but they never tell you. The books follow rules that are never explained but are necessary to understand the story. Characters have backstories that they only hint at or lie about. To understand anything you'll have to actively go back and forth, map character's actions and their role in the story.
And even then, you probably won't even find the truth.
I love Umineko, it definitely came to mind when the subject of hiding the story came up.
Honestly, this ends up being the stories downfall, especially in the second half. While it works in the first half as it has a lot that helps carry it, by the second everything just completely falls apart.
I'd say that Umineko, its sister Higurashi, and all the non-linear mystery visual novels that tend to play a lot with structure (Zero Escape series, Raging Loop, Sekimeiya: The Spun Glass, Somnium Files etc.) fall into this. But Umineko perfected that active engagement required for the story to make sense. A lot of Umineko, especially back in its heyday when it was getting translated, happened outside the game (forums, social media, blog posts) where fans kept theorizing for years and years until the manga came out with the definite solution.
The moment I've read the title I scrolled down the comments to see if someone mentioned umineko))
@@Trash_G0lem Same here!
I knew "House of Leaves" was going to be mentioned as soon as you mentioned ergodic literature. Such a fantastic, brain-bending read.
"where real men test their mettle!"
My femme ass having beaten every souls game and finished Bloodborne multiple times.
But all jokes aside, I think video games are a perfect medium for this kinda of writing. It allows you to feel like you're discovering the story layer by layer by exploring every little corner of the games universe and setting.
@deannal.newton9772 *cough* Drakengard 3 *cough*
You're a real man then. /s
@@FilipeLeviSilva god I hope not. xD
@@JDKT002 Damn. It's not that bad 😟
@@FilipeLeviSilva eh, been there, done that. I found it a bit overrated. But that's a "me" issue. xD
"The Old Axolotl" by Jacek Dukaj comes to my mind. Author loves to create entire worlds and pages of terminology for his stories, but leaves most of it outside of the actual book, leaving it to speculation. This particular book was intended to be digital and it feels a lot like an ARG - lots of footnotes, links, even 3d printable models. I have a physical copy and literally half of the book is reserved for this additional content. The first time I read it I felt as if I was going insane alongside the protagonist.
The difficulty of Dark Souls is inseparable from the story.
The game has three canonical endings, two of these happen when you finish the game, the other one happens when you stop playing because you lose the will to continue.
I won't spoil the specifics, but resilience in the face of a difficult goal is one of the key themes throughout the game's story. Every character you meet is working towards a difficult goal. You get to see the horrible fates that meet those who lose the will to continue. This is the fate of your character too, should you fail in the face of adversity.
Yeah, I have no problem with games being difficult. The problem then comes when the fandom then expects everyone to still want to play it, because they don't like difficult games/don't play games for challenge. You can't say "Fuck you, the game is not for you" and then also turn around and say "You better buy/play this game or else you're a pussy/not a real gamer" (as most of my experiences with the Dark Souls fandom has been) - Either you take pride in that the game isn't for everyone and also accept that this means many people will not want to give it the time of day at all, or if you really feel it's a game EVERYONE should have to play, at that point you do have to make it accessible, or else you're literally trying to tell/force people in how they're supposed to think/what they're supposed to spend their time and money on, which is just evil bullying, and is why I have an intense hatred for Soulsborne and everyone in their fandom. They're just egotistic bullies.
@@oak8594wow that is certainly a passionate opinion. Yes some of the dark souls community sucks. But I think some are eager for others to experience the joy they did learning to overcome these challenges and can get a bit overzealous about wanting others to share that experience. Hell it's so profound for some that there are dozens of videos about how Dark Souls pulled people out from depressive states due to the way the game handles overcoming its challenges. So yes they want everyone to share in that experience sadly forgetting that not everyone wants or needs that or is willing or has the time/energy to get there
The Elder Scrolls series and Minecraft kind of follow this, but most likely not intentionally. You have to really work to get the lore. For the Elder Scrolls, while there are books explaining some of the lore, they're all written from an individual's viewpoint, so you never get the full picture. With Minecraft, Matt Pat already showed how difficult it was to get anything from there. Both games feel like they're guarding their secrets and that you need to fight or, in this case, work for them to give them up.
The Elder Scrolls tells the same story from dif pll views, and to each one of those ppl, it is correct
Not mang of thr stories are made to be wrong, unlike things such 40k,
All to say the ES franchise gives you info to make your own “correct” conclusions
Without having to discredit the conclusions of others
I think Minecraft's quasi-ent came out by accident. Although the latest updates are increasing this part.
@@chlorophyll1415 Minecraft never really had a story to tell beyond the story of the player playing. Lore-wise, latest updates are just more content without ever really trying to make a specific narrative. Especially with the amount of resentment towards any changes to whatever makes up "the original vision of Minecraft".
I thought of Minecraft immediately 😳
I think this quote explains what people, who try to figure out these stories, think:
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept"
-JFK, Sep. 12th, 1962
Hilariously, that quote is Extremely fitting with this topic, While much less true of what it originally was talking about.
House of leaves was what I was literally thinking about lol
Same, literally said it out loud like two seconds before he started directly talking about House of Leaves.
Most definitely
Ok glad it wasn't just me lol
I slowly looked at the book laying on my bookshelf
Infinite Jest and Gravity’s Rainbow also fit with the nature of these stories.
6:58 laughs in Matpat going insane over fnaf
Never has a goofier “game” done less to earn its reputation
@@billyalarie929I mean its cool if ya don't like fnaf, but its definitely still a game (franchise).
@@billyalarie929there still has to be something there to cause the absolute insanity around it.
I read house of leaves last year and to say its my favorite book would be an understatement. The general plot is fairly straight forward and it doesn't really change with or without the all the 'extras'. However, with this book you can choose how far you want to go into exploring the book, there are so many layers but the plot remains the same, its completely unique and fantastic.
Another piece of literature that came to my mind watching this video was Homestuck. Incredibly long story that was built through years and years, absolutely magistral use of multimedia, a game of accpeting and negating the fandom theories and ideas, an onsessed fandom that is still pouring over the story years after its ending...
Dying a lot isnt just the challenge for Dark Souls and Bloodborne, ots actually a part of the lore. As a hunter, you can't really "die" until the hunter's dream is truly destroyed. Each death pulls you back to the dream to resume the hunt under Flora's control, which is why one ending is Gharman ending the hunter IN the dream to release them from it's cycle and waking up the next day.
DnD is kinda like that. If you DM sure you could run yourself through a solo campaign, but a session of DnD won't play itself. The work and input from everyone is what defines the shared experience.
3:49 YES, DO YOU MEAN TOKIEN?
[EDIT]
11:18 Ah... More like Fear and Hunger...
It would be cool if tale foundry made a whole video on fear and hunger. Maybe someday.
@@greenkitty1 yea it's going to be a huge project lol ngl
A fear and hunger video from them would be so, so interesting.
Fear and Hunger Tale Foundry video. Please?
Funger
I love stories like this. I don't often get to participate, but it's not like I've never participated. What I love about ARGs, even the one's I don't get to be part of myself, is that there are really 2 stories. The story the ARG is telling and the story of the ones the ARG was told to. They're often both just as interesting.
Aye, picking up the peices when the game is already over can be its own reward. Even if you know finding all the peices is a discord visit away, treading the path alone can give quite the unique view on a story.
4:10 I have a copy of that book, but I read so little that I might as well start over.
In regards to the mirrored text... as a kid, I discovered that I can read backwards quite easily. So easily, in fact, that sometimes I'll read something that is backwards and not realize it's backwards for a few moments. I can also read upside-down text. When I was a young adult, I learned that this is supposedly common among left-handed people like myself.
So the story in games with more or less "hidden" lore, such as Minecraft, would count as ergodic literature, right?
Maybe! There are 4 kinds* of narrative in video games - enacted, evoked, emergent, and in this case embedded. Just embedding a narrative doesn't make it ergodic. But if you have to struggle to collect all the pieces and create a timeline, that's definitely more ergodic.
*Based on the work of Henry Jenkins, iirc
@@YouWinILose cool, thanks for the info!
@@YouWinILose So, FNAF could be considered ergodic? It doesn't even HAVE definitive timeline.
@@MeemahSN Hmmm never played it, but it sounds like an embedded narrative to me - same with a game like The Forest. With no timeline then that takes out a lot of the effort of analysis and interpretation. But it could be! Games present players with difficulty, and in that sense they require effort. But ergodicity involves effort in uncovering the narrative. An ergodic game example might be Return if the Obra Din, which requires investigatory work, memory, and interpretation of the text.
There are definitely multiple POVs on this issue.
Sounds like a theory. A GAME THEORY!
that book description made me think of infinite jest -- which took me around 400 pages or so to finally have an inkling of a clue of what was going on in the story. ive gotten to love and appreciate that book. (currently on page 75x)
as someone who has all but one (1) achievement in hollow knight, its so beautiful and deep, ESPECIALLY in its difficulty. the difficulty itself is part of the game and part of the story. it communicates very well the harshness of the world of hallownest and compliments the tragedy of the world.
i may be biased because
trigger warning underneath
i used to be very suicidal when i first played it, but i became so engrossed with hollow knight that it kept me distracted long enough for my medication and therapy to take enough root to help me. hollow knight legitimately saved my life, and for that reason, i will never forget it.
It's the kind of melancholy and perseverance and quiet beauty within the horror that I'd imagine would lend itself well to that type of Brain Help. (It also absolutely is engrossing. Curse the folly of tendonitis aaaaaaa)
Many Dungeons and Dragons (as well as other TTRPGs) modules are quite a bit like this. With so much of what happens limited by dice rolls and player choices, there is no ONE way to tell the same story. Sure, the major beats or events may still happen, but they will never be the same as before.
Exactly this. I immediately thought of Curse of Strahd, where even though the main premise is established, my players are literally creating the story as they go.
A really good game series like this that wasn't mentioned is the Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours games. They're a bit obtuse, but this vibe really creates the atmosphere that you're pouring through occult texts rifling through to find the deep secrets of the world.
Well. I blame you now for Cultist Simulator going on my wishlist.
Because it is entirely your fault. Thank you.
@@candlestone5397 see you in the Mansus soon fellow Long
@@candlestone5397 it's very good
Those games are just so unique. And while I haven't gotten into Book of hours quite as much as cultist simulator. Both are fantastic
@@jacthing1 The writing is just so amazing. To me, Cultist Simulator is actually great on my phone because it's great to play for 10 or 15 minutes while something else is going on
When you started mentioning how the act of reading is made difficult, my mind IMMEDIATELY jumped to House of Leaves but I was like "naahy he's not gonna do that, that book is way too obscure, people won't have heard about it..."
I started losing my shit at "footnotes within footnotes". No way one of my favorite high quality literature channel covers my favorie book! Thank you so much
As a blind man who has completed every challenge that the dark souls series and even Bloodborne has put forward, I don't understand the elitist attitude that some people within the community have. At the end of the day these games aren't that hard, they demand your time and attention and that's simply it. Really if I can do it anybody can considering I'm operating at a severely reduced capacity. This isn't even a point of pride for me either, as I've said before these games aren't that hard. I think people who base their self worth on their ability to beat these games are fundamentally damaged individuals who would be better served seeking a therapist rather than attacking other frustrated players online for not "getting good".
It's never been about getting good, it's always been about never giving up.
How did you comment bro?
"Get Gud" has always been said by different types of people. In my friend group it's likened to "Don't go hollow", another DS reference for ya. Those who say it to put someone down, unfortunately, either have gone hollow or are a person who hasn't matured in however way. At least how I see it, it's a phrase that's a coin toss for each person ya talk to.
@@fazleshahil7746 blindness is a spectrum not a strictly defined condition. This is a question you could have answered with 5 seconds of googling.
I remember when jacksepticeye first began to create his alter ego antisepticeye. I mean sure fans had made a version long before and he explains he’s tried to incorporate how the fans see the character with his own views, but the way he began to bring him to life was like an arg and it’s one of the few times I caught it when a lot of people didn’t. He did it BEAUTIFULLY, and I gush to this day. He started sooooooo subtly. A glitch, a scratchy mic, things so small that the first one or three I missed, I thought to myself “wow, dude, you need a new set up”, but then they grew a little more to the point it didn’t seem accidental. I looked at the comments and no one else seemed to notice, so I didn’t say anything but I watched, until it grew into a half a second overlay of black eyes, or screaming, then back to normal. If you had him playing in the background you’d never notice. Then when anticepticeye finally appeared I felt vindicated. It was AMAZING and something I could never really explain to someone, unless they saw it too no one can really truly appreciate it.
Regarding the difficulty of SoulsBorne games, I think that it is not just to make winning the game more satisfying, but the struggle is a very important part of the character arc of the main character. All the MCs in SoulsBorne games start their journey weak outcasts, and through their hardships they become stronger.
Which is only a medium to make the winning more satisfying.
You do not need to invoke Freud to figure that out.
There's also a bunch of games where understanding is harder than the game itself, where you play not for the "gaming" challenge but for the intellectual one. Things like Outers Wilds or Tunic (even though that game not only is hard but is near impossible to decrypt alone)
As soon as I heard the definition of Ergodic Literature, I was reminded of my old textbook, 'Fundamentals of Thin-Walled Structures' written by our professor and used ONLY by our professor for the last half-century. The book was so convoluted and full of errors that I spent half the time wondering what the author was trying to say, flipping through the previous thirty pages in search of context for a random formula suddenly used in an exercise. It was inexplicable how the author managed to mix old and new units in such a way that, when calculating in kilogram-force (an old unit favored by aviators), he would get results in SI units, and vice versa..
From your description I can't tell if it was badly written, or deliberately byzantine to keep your brain active and get you to learn more thoroughly, and I love that uncertainty. Conceptually. From a safe distance. It would absolutely drive me up the wall to have to learn like that.
Im curious as to if Noita would count as this kind of thing.
You never get told anything directly. And yet there is so much to it that its insane.
From breaking out of the game world borders into infinite amounts of parallel near identical universes, creating twin suns using esoteric alchemy, to mysteries that to this day NO ONE HAS FIGURED OUT.
There isnt even a tutorial, how the hell are supposed to learn after the 1583949266th unexplained one shot?
@@itamarlibman One thing that can be learned is "what led to me getting into this situation?"
An example is teleporting into an unexplored area. It's almost always a bad idea due to the high chance of enemies or dangerous props being hidden in the darkness, but it can be totally avoided by not firing a teleport spell into dark areas.
Some deaths are totally unavoidable (like an enemy grabbing a nuke wand), but 99% are preventable with enough experimentation and knowledge.
So this reenforces my thoughts on stories. They exist in 3 places: The actual unbiased text written as it is with out interpenetration. The author's intent behind the text, their expierences and life or lives being poured into a work. Then lastly the reader's mind, their experiences and lives being poured into the story. But I think this made me see a 4th place, probably the largest and most undefined place. Because it is the place where all these things overlap. Stories as they are told and retold. STories as they reinterpited. Stories as they reexperenced. All change the story and the context.
Probably the universe I think best in this is Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere. Every time I reread it I find things that I missed or different ways to see things. Talking to others change how I preceve it. Hearing Brandon's intents and thoughts on things also change on it.
Balam Industries sponsored field trip.
*Main system activating combat mode*
I've got a job for you 621
My favorite part of games and stories like this is what you discover and what you figure out for yourself gets expanded upon so much when someone brings up a detail of something that you missed or another part to tie areas together or a real-world meaning. And with each piece coming together it's like this kind of crazy understanding and the beauty of what you have just discovered coming together. Like even when there are still mysteries and certain information that seems left out, a kind of flow and form to it emerges. What makes you just want to dive deeper and find more information about it even if you hit a brick wall.
A lot of people don't realise that accessibility features don't preclude a "standard" difficulty
I hppe you take this as a compliment
Your voice is so calming. I just fell asleep listening to the video
Yet the content is still so interesting that I come back to watch your videos over and over
Talebot: Because the real story, the one that makes this stuff so obsession-inducingly fascinating to the people who consume it-
Me: IS THE FRIENDS WE MADE ALONG THE WAY
Talebot: -is the one you create in the process
Me: FU-
This video spoke to me SO much! As someone who grew up on theory-based communities, indie fandoms, ARGs and such, it bringed back a lot of hood memories!
My fave example of this is the 2004 film Primer by Carruth. The ending has a twist that makes you realize what was "really" going on the whole time. So when you watch a second time you notice things you didn't notice before, things that didn't make sense the first time round make sense in light of the new information, and then, this second time, you notice a new twist you didn't even see the first viewing, so now you have NEW new information, and you can watch a third time and now you know what's really REALLY for real going on, until you see another twist that was hidden before you had that information. It keeps going like that as you watch over and over all the way back to the start where you can figure out who is on the phone and WHEN that phone call was placed (and to whom) in the context of the timelines. There's also things the movie doesn't tell you that you would have to either just know or look up on your own. For example, spoiler here, aspergillus fungus does not grow without oxygen, which some think to be a mistake on the part of the film maker but it's actually a plot point that reveals one of the lies one of the characters is telling the other. I've watched many vids on Primer and never see one that actually figures out the full plot.
I think the Locked Tomb series is a perfect example!Each book is told from the perspective of the character least equipped to understand or handle what is going on, the world building is given through speech as if you already are living in the world and know its rules, and you only find things out when the characters do, and sometimes you don't find things out at all and are left to guess
I'm not quite sure this counts as ergodic literature, but "vignette" stories (there's probably a real name for this, I just don't know it) that are told through small, out-of-context excerpts taken straight from a bigger narrative, are one of my favorite kinds of media, and it's some of my favorite to write.
Think trying to figure out the plot of Lord of the Rings using just random pages.
It's sort of like a story made entirely of hooks, just carefully chosen to lay out a path you can follow to piece together the overarching narrative. You could also call it the ultimate in environmental storytelling - the plot left evidence of its happening in the information we receive. Like a mystery nove-- wait.
In Conquest Born!! It's got a "main" plot but also a lot of vignettes - I think maybe??? it would make sense if only the "main" bits were read, but there would be next to no worldbuilding. I really like that balance for when I need something digestible to keep the simpler parts of my brain hooked, but I also want pieces to put together.
Edit: also The Diamond Age. the shark is half jumped, but that's Stephenson for you. I think I just like a character center of comprehensibility and everything gets more and more ergotic the further from them it gets
Thank you, you majestic being.
I knew there must have been a word for the project I'm working on. Iyashikei/Ergodic literature, disguised as a cozy James Herriot story.
The thing about souls games is that, it needs no hard mode or easy mode because, depending on how one approaches the game like for example, being methodical and exploiting weaknesses of enemies is significantly easier than running in head first blind into everything you see. The challenge is still there it just depends on how you approach it.
I really liked how this video went about explaining this
Like
It started off with a lot of exposition and I was like why is this necessary but it all tied together in the end
I'm glad this was recommended this was cool
Also the art and voice are really fitting
I promise this comment isn't a 'snark snark you said the wrong word' comment... but I find the idea of 'weird masculine vibrato' just inherently very funny. 10:14
Also this feels like a lot of the descriptions of the Pathalogic or Fear and Hunger games.
In the late 90s and early 2000s there were several anime series like this. A few examples of these are: Serial Experiments Lain, Ergo Proxy, Boogiepop Phantom (although you’ll need to read the books first since this series is more a sequel/spinoff of the books than an adaptation), and the latter half of Haibane Renmei. Also I’ve not yet watched Kaiba, Texhnolyze, and Big O but I’ve heard they’re also like that.
0:24 rain world refrence
sorry that reply sounds like a bot i just really like rain world
@sirpootsman1048 im not a bot, im just a guy that plays rain world.
@@ItamarTene nonono IM SORRY I MEANT MY REPLY SOUNDED LIKE A BOT 🥺🥺
@sirpootsman1048 ohh. Sorry dude 😅
I feel like outer wilds is a perfect example of ergodic art, the entire satisfaction of the story comes from the enjoyment of discovery
Wait, so if I understand well, poetry is in a way an ergodic genre in itself
I would also say that the effort or difficulty involved in something like beating Dark Souls or reading House of Leaves creates immersion - it is literally a storytelling mechanism. In the same way that changing the style or tone of your writing can help set the mood for certain scenes in a book, and draw a reader into them. Dark Souls taught me to persevere in a way no other media about perseverance ever could, because rather than just telling me that the protagonist failed over and over again until eventually they succeeded, it MADE me fail over and over again until I eventually succeeded. House of Leaves didn't just describe what it was like to be lost in a confusing, impossible labyrinth, it literally made the very act of reading it labyrinthine. I view these things as simply making full use of the medium at hand to convey the desired message.
1:53 guys dont turn on the auto-captions it wont help hear/understand better
I should have listened to you😓
Saw where that one was going.
UA-cam is sus
😂
🤣
This is why book clubs are so fun. Those books or stories that are obfuscated are the absolutely most fun ones to read and discuss with others (like "The Fall of the House of Usher").
I will encourage anyone to get their friends together and analyze the short story "The Library of Babel." You will likely go some very interesting places.
15:10 one of the best line i've heard
An adventure is told by it's journey. No single adventure is ever the same, yet we all wish to have a similar one. But despite it all, it never will be the same, and I'm very glad for that. Makes for so many similar yet such different stories
YEAHHHHH TALE FOUNDRIES!!
Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" is possibly the most famous early example I think. The joy of adding your own understanding to the experience - and seeing how your understanding changes the experience of reading it as you age - is amazing.
I do think that the creators of art (including video games) contribute half the total. The rest is brought by the viewer, and there's nothing to be done about that. 8-)
I think you've sort of missed the point of Dark Souls's difficulty tbh. The difficulty itself is only a part of it. Yes, it' important that the player feels challenged. That allows for them to feel the brutality of the world, and it makes the game more fun. But honestly, Dark Souls isn't nearly as difficult as people say. The other part is the shared experience. People like me don't really care about creating your own story or whatever. A large part of Dark Souls is about the community. That's why there are so many multiplayer features in the game. An easy mode or even a hard mode (NG+ doesn't count because you have to beat the game first) would break that shared experience, the knowledge that we all made our way through the same world. As well, there are many themes of insignificance and the world not caring about you, so preventing you from changing the difficulty plays into that.
With Hollow Knight, the situation is a little different. There're no multiplayer elements, and the lore and secret areas are actually meant to be possible to find without looking them up. While the game itself is more difficult than Dark Souls, the lore and sense of discovery come much easier. I think Hollow Knight would be fine with an easy mode, while Dark Souls would not.
And for Hollow Knight, like Dark Souls, piecing together the lore isn't fun because of my creativity. It's fun because it increases immersion. It feels like the game world is a real lived-in place, which is enhanced by the organic exploration and secrets around every corner. Plus, it fits with the environments of the game. The biggest lore secrets are hidden away in the deepest parts of the earth and in dreams, which helps you feel like you're uncovering something.
That's my 2 cents anyway.
I like your description of this genre, i dont have consciously engaged in stories like these. but i have seen similarities in stories i have experienced, in particular, in games. While it can be exhausting to trawl through als these disconnected pieces of information, it can be very rewarding piecing it together successfully. Also as you mentioned it kind of creates a unique experience for you alone. This, i think, makes the world feel even more alive, than a linear story, since your perception of the world may constantly shift. Much like in real life. It forces you to engage in the content in a more deep and meaningful way, and while the story itself warps and twists in your mind it also surprises you more often. All of this makes these stories much more exciting for me.
Never thought that you would mention one piece, even though it's the most popular manga of all time I think it still is pretty underrated, most people think of it as any other shounen or don't give it that much credit, I really hope you talk about the world of one piece cause you don't really hear about it anywhere else other than it's own niche
That would be a good topic for a few videos.
One piece has some of the most insane Continuity, especially considering how long its been since it started.
It also has Stupendously strange worldbuilding.
and a rather Unique form of magic in both Haki and Devil Fruits, in addition to random weird things like that guy with infinite rope, or the Painting girl, which provides an example of a Structured Magic System (Haki and Devil Fruits) coexisting with a more unstructured Fairytale type of magic
'Its not that these stories want to be told, it's that they can't tell themselves...they need you for that' I love Tale Foundry he's given me so many good ideas for books, from videos like what is breaking the fifth wall?
The soulsborne use game mechanics, including difficulty, to tell a story. One that loses focus and qualiy if the difficulty is lowered. Those are games that are actually artful (obviously not only these games), but It's like saying Francis Bacon has to change his style because some people find it hard to look at or understand. All while depriving a real minority of people, from the very rare type of experience they are truly able to connect with.
This reminds of the Reader Trilogy series by Traci Chee--where there is no written languages and a majority of the populace are illiterate except a select few. The whole theme is basically asks the question are you following fate or writing your own story. This is especially true in the last book in the series, "The Storyteller," where before a great battle the protagonist actually begs--begs--the reader to stop reading in order to save her love and her friend. This of course makes the reader participate whether they help prevent numerous deaths of beloved characters or start the very devastating war the characters worked so hard to prevent.
I realize that this isn't quite on topic but in regard to the Dark Souls "wouldn't be the same" train of thought, I feel like a lot of the people who make that argument (if not nearly all) are assuming that the people requesting or requiring an easy mode can play and complete the game on normal, and may be lazy or unwilling to dedicate the time to play "properly". I have some brain damage from long-term, unrecognized seizures. Memorizing skills or recipes, understanding talent trees, and focusing on grinding out gear/levels are not easy tasks. I also don't have incredible reflexes, dexterity, or hand-eye coordination. Games like Dark Souls or Hollow Knight are completely inaccessible to me in their normal modes. Luckily I have a partner who has exactly what I don't and loves gaming, so if I want to experience certain games, I can do it as a fly on the wall, although then it's like super easy mode as I have literally no stake in the game and kind of invalidates the original "easy mode" argument. So yeah. Great video though!
Hey man, first of all I just wanna say, please dont take offense in my opinion. I just really want to know what your opinion is about um my opinion. I'm from the "No Easy Mode" camp, but I don't really wanna force that on to other people so please take my words as genuine discussion rather than as a debate:
So, imagine a game where you're playing as a blind person. Not completely blind but still, you can only make a vague assumption of your surroundings in maybe like 2 metres around you. You are in a strange faraway land and you go around a huge open world, filled to the brim with a rich history, terrifying creatures, maze-like places, unimaginable horrors. Since it's a huge world, you are often really lost, and you struggle to go further. The invisible horrors past your vision fills you with dread every second. If you're someone who has trouble with spatial awareness, it would be an even greater struggle, and you might just quit the game. Someone who don't like weird games like this wouldn't even play it. But let's imagine someone who did. Let's say he struggled A LOT with the game, but he still kept going. He even quit the game at one point, only coming back after a week long break. But he felt like he wants to see the end of the game. So he kept playing. He doesn't have anything to prove, he just kept playing for some weird reason that he himself can't understand. And he finally managed to get to the end of the game, and as a reward what happens is that the protagonist of the game has his vision restored, and he finally gets to see the world as it really is. And the protagonist realises that the slithering snake-like appendages that he could make out faintly was just the funny friendly dragon that wanted to say hello, or the scary growl that he heard was the sound of a peaceful sleeping giant, and all the things that scared him wasn't really that scary after all. It was something that is even nice.
Now take a second to imagine what the player who played this game would feel like at this climatic moment in the game. I'd guess it would a be something of a cathartic feeling.
Now, let's say someone else wants to play this game, and this person has a LOT of trouble with spatial awareness, is easily scared, and abysmally bad with video games. So he decides to turn down the difficulty for this game. In this game, turning down the difficulty means that the main character can see much more of the world now. The writhing mass of snake-like shapes that was scary for the first player is just the friendly dragon that's waving hello for the second player. The deep guttural growl that was beyond the vision of the first player, is just the giant sleeping for the second player. It's easy to get where I'm going with this. The second player would find it easier to finish the game, and when he does, he won't get anywhere near the same impact for the ending. But still it could be a good experience, and the second player may not regret the time he spent on this game.
I wanna talk about another thing too. Let's say you can also increase the difficulty. So this means, you can play the game as a COMPLETELY blind person. You can't see anything, so when you get to the dragon encounter, you don't see anything at all. You might hear something slithering but that's it. But the sleeping giant will still be the same experience as the first person since he couldn't see it either. So even increasing the difficulty made it a worse experience than what the first person had.
So what difficulty should you choose to get the perfect experience? The difficulty should be such that you should feel a deep struggle, so that the payback at the end is worth it. The ending and the game itself works best when the player is struggling. But too high difficulty with no vision might take away from the climax, and a too easy stroll wouldn't work either. It should be perfect. But the problem is, we as players don't really know which difficulty to select. Maybe I'm bad at this game than most people, so lower difficulty? or maybe I'm better? Or am I just average? What if I select a difficulty and miss out on certain things? I don't know. The developer doesn't know anything about me either, but they do know the game. So what to do? What I do is just let the developer do what they want. I am someone who thinks of games as an art (at least some games haha). So I want to experience whatever the artist has in their mind rather than I want (even though I still gets pissed off sometimes).
There's one last thing though. The second player who is bad at videogames, who has trouble with spatial awareness and is easily scared.. if that person was able to get to that ending without turning up or down the difficulty, that player's experience of that climax would be so much greater than the person who was better than him at the game.
What do you think about my opinion on the matter? You don't have to reply if you don't want to, by the way. Your time is probably more valuable than mine right now.
@@dogemaester Hi! Thanks for being respectful. Unfortunately, your argument is exactly what I was talking about. And for what it's worth, I totally understand where you're coming from. I GET the argument of "no easy mode," but I don't think people understand fully why some people desire or require easy mode.
Your second person who has terrible spatial awareness and frightens easily may find easy mode just as difficult as your first. The waving dragon could trigger a fear of the unknown, or a fear of lizards, or a fear of fire, etc., etc. Sure, it looks and feels easy to you and others, but mastering the controls may be hard enough. I think the best comparison from normal to "easy" (without actually making it easier) is the arachnaphobia option several modern games have these days. My favourite is the one that turns them into the word "SPIDER". 10/10 effort there, game devs. Oh, and colourblind modes too.
Here's a mediocre example of one way "normal" hinders me: I desperately want to play games like Animal Crossing, Pokemon, or Zelda but they tend to be on consoles or handhelds. I have tried for YEARS to play with controlers and cannot manage it. My fingers can't spread the same way, they can't bend the same way, they can't move the same way as others. My experience with those games only exists as a fly on the wall and I lose the entire experience, immersion, and (as you have mentioned) that "catharsis" that comes with completing the game. I did nothing to earn the resolution. Someone else did all the work for me.
Now this isn't the greatest example as it deals with my physical limitations rather than mental ones, and easy mode (for me) is more about my mental ability.
There's a game I've played with my parter called Bokura. It is, admittedly, a simple and "easy" game. It's adorable, creepy, and requires teamwork. I love and hate it. It's so interesting and intriguing and it pisses me off... not because it's intriguing but because it's just difficult enough that I get upset, and when I get upset, I shut down. The majority of regular gamers find Bokura to be easy. It's difficult to me. So to ME, Bokura is like your one example of someone who struggles and goes back time and time again. I agree, it is rewarding to succeed in it. But it's already an EASY game and I'm struggling through it. My partner doesn't understand why because he's a regular gamer without the same mental limitation and invisible injuries I have.
I want to point out something you said:
"So what difficulty should you choose to get the perfect experience? The difficulty should be such that you should feel a deep struggle, so that the payback at the end is worth it. The ending and the game itself works best when the player is struggling."
I agree. But the problem is that a "deep struggle" for some is a walk in the park for others. Walking might even be a half decent example. Some people are born with one leg shorter than the other. Some lose a leg. Some break their leg doing some activity. Some are just shorter than the person they're walking with, and the tall person's stride is longer, so the shorter person struggles to keep up and may not get a chance to enjoy the park to the same extent as they end up more focused on keeping up than watching the squirrels play in the branches. They might not even be aware there WERE squirrels in the branches!
Another point you made:
"If that person was able to get to that ending without turning up or down the difficulty, that player's experience of that climax would be so much greater than the person who was better than him at the game."
How can you guarantee this though? Going back to Bokura, finishing a difficult-to-me level isn't a climactic, cathartic, enjoyable experience. It's me going "fucking finally" and then logging off because I can't handle another moment. Granted, it may not be THE climax of the game. And if I ended up forced, for whatever reason, to play Hollow Knight just the same as my partner does, I would end up finishing the story, likely recognizing the writing for how great it (probably) was, but inevitably looking back at the game and remembering how much I hated the entire experience. Sure, I'm just one person, and game devs can't cater to a single person, but if turning down the difficulty kept a not-insignificant portion of potential gamers from hating the experience, why WOULDN'T a game dev want to do that? Why would people want to play a game they know they're going to hate in the moment, just for a good story? Why not just watch a streamer or read the story online instead? Less frustration and anguish at that point.
I 100% understand your stance and people with a similar mindset. I actually had the same mindset when I started playing video games. I just thought I was bad at games and that's why I struggled through things, and eventually quit. Cause I was just bad. But I'm not bad, not truly. I have invisible disabilities that I wasn't fully aware of when I was a teeny bopper. When I discovered games with easy modes, well, that's when I started realizing that I LIKED video games. It wasn't cause I was bad, it's cause I had a... handicap of sorts. And I love/d the ones that made games accessible to me. I got to enjoy their stories after all. I got to experience the joy that others had. Maybe they wouldn't be as immersed if they played the same difficulty level as me, but I got MY immersion. I got MY version of the climax. I got to enjoy that "catharsis" that I would've ended up missing out on had easy mode NOT existed. And I really can't thank those earlier game devs enough. They sparked my love of video games.
Hell, there was even one game I loved so much that I played easy mode over and over and over again until I mastered it. And then I moved up in the difficulty to normal mode. I played it some more, mastered it, and made it to hard. If I had started on normal, I never would have experienced the game and developed a love for it. And for what it's worth, some games with multiple modes have a way to trial run how each mode feels before starting so you can decide what feels right for you and will bring you the best experience.
So yeah. Overall, the problem with the mindset of "you won't get the same enjoyment on easy vs hard" is that you're expecting everyone to HAVE the same experience. Everyone experiences life differently. And "easy mode" for one isn't easy for all. "Normal" can be completely inaccessible.
(Also, I had to write this twice cause I was responding while on another video and accidentally clicked out instead of scrolling and that "feature" is DUMB lol)
Not all things need to be accessible. While I do believe games should fundamentally be designed with their players in mind first and foremost, I also believe people should be allowed to create games in line with their own creative visions. There is a general intended experience for Dark Souls, and it is okay that that experience isn't for everyone.
That said, there are far more ways to create accessibility than a difficulty slider. Dark Souls 1 is a fantastically uncompromising, but genuine and honest enough of an experience that I firmly believe it is within the realm of possibility for anyone to defeat it if they set their mind to it.
@@dogemaester Equity, not equality... What's hard for you may be impossible for someone else. What's easy for someone, may be that "perfect difficulty" for their friend. If there was an Easy mode, there's nothing stopping the "real men" gamers from playing the original mode and still get their kicks from that, ala the Fire Emblem series. As to trusting the developers... yes... to a certain extent. Death to the Author exists for a reason...
Tale Foundry already said that simply beating a game front to back isn't enough to truly understand ergodic stories, so I'm not sure why he went back on that and got into the Dark Souls debate...
This is why every game should have a mode the developer thinks is the ideal way to experience the game, which may be quite difficult, but still have a lot of difficulty and accessibility options. An adult response, saying "don't play it this way unless you are certain you wish to do so." is perfectly reasonable, and most people won't click past that warning unless they have to. Policing how people enjoy their games is generally just kind of a jerk move.
My favorite example of this kind of storytelling that relies on the reader having to look for it is when games put bombshell lore info on stuff that would otherwise be very innocuous. Like how in Kirby games when you pause during a bossfight the game will straight up write you an paragraph about stories you'd never otherwise know relating to them and the world they inhabit, presented with as much care as a throaway fun fact on a loading screen. Or in Dark Souls games, where you can pierce togheter a lot of lore and worldbuilding just from reading the oddly beautiful description of an item named something like "lightly soiled master's loincloth"
Most important thing i learned from Kirby is to never trust something based of its cuteness ever again.
Souls players don’t play souls to experience the the story. They watch UA-cam to experience the souls story
Can say i have to disagree. Its possible, and somewhat common to do both
10:10 I agree. I don't think Dark Souls needs an easy mode; that is part of what makes it great. You get better at the game and earn the story. It wouldn’t be the same if you could breeze through it. The words of the characters wouldn’t carry as much impact
Rainworld makes me think this all the time
Ddlc actually has 2 stories, the second being Project Libetina, which is a story hidden inside code's poems and small references, and there are lots of theories about this, but we may never see the real story. So it's technically a story that doesn't want to be told
I kinda disagree with you here. The difficulty in From games is PART of the story. Not the lore. The story. Every playthrough is unique, because every player meets those challenges differently. Those moments of overcoming sheer frustration are part of the image the makers wanted to convey. Facing every challenge with bullheaded resolve, or stopping, pulling back, and finding a different way. You say there is no easy mode, but that isn't true. Every single From game ever made has SOMETHING that can be done to make your experience a little smoother than average... if you care to learn the game and figure out what they are. Sure there are always toxic jerks like the one shown in this video, but there's also a whold community out there that is absolutely rabid to help you up where you fall and get you back on your adventure. Things like that are PART of a story much bigger than just the lore, and I argue against an easy mode not because it'd cheapen the experience for me, but because it would for you. You'd miss out on so much of these games if you didn't have to struggle and FIGURE OUT your own ways through. While some may be okay with that, to be honest, it makes me very sad that they'd so vehemently insist that this entire part of the game is unneeded, and that they don't even want to try seeing it.
It prevents a lot of people from ever playing at all, though. Not everyone can intuit whatever arcane combination of the right stats and the right items will help, and not everyone has perfect eye-hand coordination.
@@MySerpentine I mean, I have chronic hand pain, terrible eyesight, and am clumsy af. I not only play them, I LOVE them, because with practice I can overcome those problems. Sure it's INTIMIDATING, which I get, but I don't think it's nearly as bad as people claim.
To be frank, instead of an easy mode, I think the series could benefit more from a practice mode like Nioh 2's Dojo. Like a place where you can just summon some different enemy types to practice with and gain confidence, then go back to tackle the main game.
@@MySerpentine Oh also, if you're confused by the stats and systems, don't hesitate to look around for guides to learn. The games aren't as confusing as they look at first glance, but the community helping each other learn is one of the coolest parts of these games that ALSO shouldn't be missed. :)
@@jackofminds8338 you aren't that different from the dude bro mentioned in the video. You're just better at justifying your gatekeeping with nicer words.
1) You have disabilities and are able to play the game as is, so the disability argument is thus insufficient.
(There exist a number of conditions that prevent people from engaging in this game, but hay I guess this game just isn't for them.)
2) people just need a practice mode to 'get good.' after all, there are plenty of people willing to tell them what to do to be better.
I guess that means if they still can't win, then it's not the game or designers fault, it's just that this game isn't for them.
I would be interested to know how many people need to verify that they are unable to actually play the game in any meaningful way due to no faults of their own before their concerns are valid?
Tbh the reason I disagree with having an easy mode is because the difficulty is literally what the game is about. To the point of the player getting frustrated and quitting the game is an actual part of the story. The entire theme of the game focuses on perseverance in the face of overwhelming challenges and fighting the urge to just give up.
The game literally puts the player and the game character in the same boat, because just like you are struggling to push through the game. So is your character struggling to hold on to their will to go on, and if you give up and quit the game, that would be the in game equivalent of your character falling victim to the undead curse and going hollow. The plot pairs perfectly with the difficulty to the point where it basically is a textbook example of what it is like to struggle with clinical depression.
Cloud atlas is my favorite movie and it definitely falls into this category. Ergodic literature, like working for anything in life, is so rewarding BECAUSE you worked for something that did not come easy.
Bram Stoker's Dracula immediately comes to mind. Thing reads like a brick to the teeth.
It’s actually not a difficult read at all. Public school just hasn’t taught us sh&t lol
@@kevinjypiter6445 Nah, not the words or grammar, the sheer structure. It is considered one of the earliest examples of ergodic literature. It is deliberately obtuse at times, meanders to reach a point, and has so many unimportant details within as to bog down the narrative.
I've had recurring dreams about both House Of Leaves and Donnie Darko for years. The kind of dream where you think you wake up but haven't 3 times.
Yeah, one of the stories that don't want to be told is called "ALL OF MY COMMENTS ON UA-cam FROM BEFORE 2024"
The Arecibo message curiously fits neatly into this concept while being the exact opposite.
The Arecibo message was sent into space because it WANTS to be read. It wants to be understood and it was designed to be the easiest thing to understand that humans could create.
Yet even people at the height of their fields can't solve it on their own. Sometimes it takes work to make the message as clear as possible.
Not to be confused with "ergotic literature" which are stories that only make sense if you're under the influence of ergot, the fungus from which LSD is derived.
Would you consider there to be such a thing as ergodic literature-lite? Your description of House of Leaves got me thinking of the recently released sequel book to the TV show, Gravity Falls, and while the show itself is plenty accessible (it's a show aimed at kids after all), the clues and hints and literal coded messages seeded throughout the series, to say nothing of the ARGs that emerged after the series ended, seems to be at least a cousin to or subset of ergodic literature.
Oh my GOSH I am so happy I finally have found a term to describe this brand of storytelling, THANK YOU
What an excellent, nuanced, and gentle take on the subject. I cannot, as a hard-core souls fan, find any disagreement with this.
1:12 sounds like Kingdom Hearts.
i can tell he made this video because he could not beat rain world. I feel you man
Tale Foundry, when I have money I will give you money. :)
One of my favourite movies is David Lynch's Eraserhead. I've seldom watched a movie that demands so much of its audience. But I find it so worthwhile to unpack it's meaning, and it makes it feel so personal. It also makes it infinitely rewatchable, as everytime I watch the movie, I come away with a slightly different interpretation on some aspect of the film. Its very special in that way.
if you see this, read the book of the new sun by gene wolfe. this is a threat.
Already did! Now you read Hyperion by Dan Simmons!
both of these (book of the new sun and hyperion) have been on my reading list for going on a decade. The universe has spoken - it is time.
Also read Snow Queen by Joan D Vinge (edited to say that it's not Too hard to understand - it's more that it very slowly reaveals the inner workings of why things are the way they are, and about half can be figured out from foreshadowing and the others can't, which makes subsequent rereads almost necessary. Similar to Ender's Game in that way, I think. There are enough levels to the Fantasy Game in that one that I still don't have it all figured out)
Challenge accepted
I read them once, I can't seem to get through them a second time. Not for lack of trying or desire to do so...
New Sun was impossible for me to like. Felt like I was in a fever dream. The structure of Hyperion made it way more accessible to me.
I love that Rain World is becoming a recurring character in your videos.
"The fromsoftware theory of storytelling"
Basically, Throw the Player in a well built world, Explain as basic a premise as you can, then let them figure it out.
Something that came to mind for me in this category, immediately, was the works by Failbetter Games and Weather Factory-- Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, Culturist Simulator, and to a lesser but still present extent, Book of Hours. These games are HARD, sometimes infuriatingly so, but they use that difficulty to reinforce how very eldrich this lore is. If you want to find the secrets of this universe, you are gonna gonna end up losing limb, life, and sanity in the process.
I remember that the biggest inspirations for the creator of the Souls Series came from a simple moment. When he was younger and he would read foreign fantasy books. There would often be parts of the story where his knowledge of the language failed him and he had to guess and theorize how the parts that he didn’t understand connected with the parts he did understand. This too informed his writing style in the game as he leaves vague hints and clues that tie in some way to the parts the game lets you know without any struggle. Putting you in that same position of knowing parts of the story while having other parts clearly be there but obscured just enough to make you wonder what happened in those blurry moments.
I love that type of storytelling in games, you can also see some of that in the game Ultrakill, where many parts of the story are clearly said in enemy descriptions, theres also a lot of environmental storytelling, such as seeing the giant Earthmover look down at you even though there are lots of other Earthmovers around it that it was fighting just then, this implies that V1 (the robot you play as) was designed to take down Earthmovers, small details like that can add a lot to the story of a game or movie
when'd he say that?
@@maxleavitt8199Glad I'm not the only one who's noticed how Souls-like the writing in Ultrakill is. Only difference is that Ultrakill's lore is much more willing to give concrete answers if you put the pieces together, and the creator actually engages with the community and confirms/deconfirms theories.
As a gamer, I don't like such storytelling.
As a student of game design, I find it amazing. Truelly creative work.
And as a souls fan, I find it endearing.
@@sad9456 In an interview Miyazaki said it himself