PATRONE: bit.ly/3CbXW1E HAISONMEGURI: bit.ly/3JXKmke next couple vids are gonna be on some new games! lotta stuffs been coming out and i can do with making a few shorter videos lol also the screen shot at 02:45 is actually a game im workin on its p cool u should check out my super frequent progress thread: bit.ly/3K5UhEv
I was about to ask where 02:45 is from but i got my answer even before asking (looks like a place you could just be vibing instead of progressing, with a cool ps1 aesthetic) ps: Wait what ?! 52 minutes have passed already ?!!
I really love your content and style and what you are able to capture in detail the mesmerization that many games have been made with Id really love it if you were able to add a simple song list I love your music and other soundtracks you use and wish I could sleep to some
Thor, you might wanna check out this wonderful dungeon crawler game that carries weird vibes called Baroque. It's available on PS1, Wii and Saturn, it's a 3D roguelite with 2D sprite of monster and- well think of it like the old Baldur's Gate or Underworld. It's very immersive for its time and hey, it's pretty spooky too. So yeah, give it a go and see if you'll like it
The secret casino through a secret public restroom door reminds me of when I was in Paris visiting my grandparents. I was looking for a bar nearby on google maps and I arrive at the street it’s on and all there is is a tiny takeaway pizzeria, I ask the guy at the counter if there’s a bar nearby and he’s like follow me. He brings me behind the counter through the entire walk in freezer room for their food and out the back to an entire hidden cocktail bar where there is no menu and the bar tenders just make you something on the spot based on what you’re in the mood for. Easily one of the coolest experiences of my life, I love cities.
Super old comment but I just had to add to this. Saw a YT video on hidden restaurants in Japan, like holy shit you got restaurants and bars hidden behind vending machines and another one hidden behind a tiny coffee stand and you can only access the bar section by opening their app and finding a secret section of the app.. shits so wild.
3:52 Watching a woman you don’t know have a complete breakdown and saying “you okay, lady” after watching her completely silent for an uncomfortable amount of time is peak early-mid 2000’s. Between the stranger in the suit with an accent demanding answers and the officer’s face looking partially rendered, idk if I’m ever gonna stop ruminating about how I can’t go back in time and experience all of this for the first time again.
That segment on Yakuza was honestly delightful, echoed with so many of my "damn, i wanna go out in town and walk in the night lights" feelings and honestly hell yeah
I recently visited San Fran, and went to their chinatown area and the entire time I was thinking about how well this place lights up at night. With the lanterns at a perfect height and the old style gas lit street lights on with that amber hue....i get it @looroo
You’re videos truly talk about games as art. Not so much about its story structure or mechanics/history, but how it makes you feel, and how it relates to the rest of your life.
Kingdom Hearts' Traverse Town is a good example of a liminal space that is very literally and conceptually liminal in-universe, I think. As someone who hasn't noticed KH in the description, comments, or during a scrub of the trackbar (and who has never even played the games), it is my responsibility to bring this up before watching the video, I think. Edit: gambled and won!
I was originally gonna call myself Liminal Space Man. I regret everything. The first game I played that made me love liminal space was No More Heroes. Where despite being a very Japanese version of America was the first game that really captured the vibe of the shitty lesser known California beach towns I spent so much time in. He even came back and gentrified them in 3. I can remember all it’s little back alleys so well it’s like I’ve been there.
Random rambling comment here, but this got me thinking about how a discussion about "real crime" media like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row, which got me thinking about how I honestly spent most of my play time in Saints Row not actually playing the game but waiting until nighttime, stealing the absolute tiniest car I could, and driving it into strange little abandoned spaces that I wouldn't be able to go (legally or safely, especially after dark) in real life and just farting around because I enjoyed the nostalgic, mysterious feeling of being there. It's a very particular feeling, like walking to your old grade school playground during the summer when all the kids and teachers are gone and sitting on the swings.
8:40 put the absolute widest smile on my face, the way the image and music come in, the ambience, it was just such a perfect little moment. great stuff as always, hyper enjoyed this one
That music - End of Small Sanctuary - is possibly my single favourite piece of music ever. It's simultaneously warm, nostalgic, sad, melancholic and comforting. Akira Yamoaka is a genius.
@@dgayle2348 it varies from person to person but the golden saucer in ff7 or the slums , kakariko village in OOT , many hub worlds would count but it’s those places where you want to stop just to hangout , maybe talk to some npcs and just sort of vibe .
Dude literally talks about hallways for an hour and I'm more invested than Elden Ring Critique #278, THH truly the GOAT on UA-cam. The vibes are always just hella immaculate and cozy
SIlent HIll 3 is the main reason I love to explore abandoned places these days. First time I played the isolating feeling of once crowded places like metro stations and malls really stuck a chord with me.
Yeeesss, I love this topic to death. Mirror's Edge and Spirited Away (yes, the movie) really opened me up to the idea of looking into the environment of games and shows. Same IRL, being open to the wonder of a cluttered alleyway or abandoned park.
When I play Gravity Rush, I often explore areas without shifting. This game has hella sizeable liminal areas. Vendecentre has some really huge subway walkways. There's even Some areas make you wonder how one gets around these areas on foot without falling into the void.
Gravity Rush was such an amazing game, I liked to fly up real high above the cities and go into first person and then fall in between the cracks of the cities. Always felt so cool and kind of scary.
I can really relate to this! I like to walk around in the market from the second game and just follow random npc around. One time this one npc came to gather with a bunch of people surrounding a street musician and it's just the best feeling ever.
Yes, I enjoy just walking about and enjoying the vibe gravity rush 1 & 2 have. The pleasure district (I can't remember its name) has my favourite feeling about it.
Man, I love late 90's/early 2000's urban atmosphere. Also Yakuza 7's gotta have the most well-realized and immersive urban setting of any Japanese game ever made, and I absolutely love it for that. Probably my GotY 2020 honestly, and easily the best current-gen JRPG.
Never been so hype for a video. Just wanna tell you, Thor, that I'm starting my graphic design major next week and you and Pan Pizza from Rebel Taxi are two of my biggest design inspirations.
I treasure your overbearing observations and warm aesthetic editing. Everytime you drop a new video I pour a drink or 7, watch, and become lost in a blanket of vague numbing nostalgia. Thank you
Less relevant when it comes to the Urban idea of Liminal Spaces but I feel it worth noting Shadow of the Colossus is one of my favorite games and one of my favorite things is just the big empty feeling it has. It's the Forbidden Lands, and there quite clearly used to be people there, and having not played ICO I didn't have much else to go on. Big empty temples, giant monoliths, a few small animals scurry around but the sound design does such a great job of making you feel absolutely alone. The howling wind that blows harshly in the valleys, and echoes in the small cave-like systems, and you are ever surrounded by huge hills and mountains that tower over you making you feel small and insignificant. I spent lots of time just combing the land looking at the leftover remnants of what used to be a previously populated land. Utterly abandoned and full of mysteries. Like for example the giant dead tree that looms so large you can see it from across the land, and yet it serves no purpose story or otherwise. An entire beach that also holds nothing but a view and ambience for you to enjoy, but you will always do it alone and only kept company by your horse Agro. I could go on and on about the game but I'm going to finish the video now. I just wanted to stop and say thanks Thor and I hope you are doing okay in light of the recent thing that happened to you. All my love and respect.
I used to live outside of shanghai and damn did we have liminal spaces out the ass. Abandon lots, empty houses for rent that were left completely open at all times, empty fields filled with rubble and abandoned milo cans, mostly empty dusty streets with the dvd store and the one bakery. Going to the game store and getting a bootleg wii game with our allowance and biking home at night to play it in the one room with a tv. I dont often indulge in nostalgia but damn this hit different
Yoo if urban exploration in context of crumbling infrastructure is your shit I highly recommend game called Infra on steam. Very much the mood of exploring empty infrastructure complexes (like water treatment plant) and maintenance backrooms in different states of abandoned to someone was here hour ago. I was half expecting to see it due how it fit to the themes of the video.
Infra covers pretty much every single type of urban exploration there is, at least what's realistically possible in a European setting. I was amazed by how long the game was and how frequently it would shift to a new setting. By the end I felt that it had basically satisfied all my childhood fantasies of exploring all these places that I could only ever could never have had free access to.
I've always been trying to find words to describe these through ways, these interesting areas which serve only transitory purposes in real life. I've always loved them even when other people don't understand their beauty. Liminal spaces are some of my favorite things, and I've never thought about them in the context of video games. Describing them in real life as being the pre-rendered backgrounds of real life was both funny and very accurate. I'm looking forward to watching this one over and over in the future. Yet another banger, Mr High heels!
Your video presentation and voice sounds like you're some modern wizard i don't know why i just get the vibe of some magic man who's seen shit and just being casual while having an air of excitement to his next sentence he's gonna utter while still keeping it mellow
You're amazing and you've slowly grown on me over time. Also, I don't mean to be inappropriate, but I lost my dad last year. Your videos help me a lot, at least multiple times a week. I want to thank you, and let you know that I love all of these things just as much as you, or anyone else. I'm not sure how much your father influenced your love for any of it, but my father had a huge impact on my taste, even when I didn't think he did. I don't know why I'm telling you all of this. Maybe it's because life is short. I also listened to Positive Yellow multiple times from cover to cover, and it's inspired me not to give up on my own music. I make experimental jungle, and things reminiscent of these older days. Maybe I have a voice here. Thank you, again.
That "stuck at school during a storm" metaphor is magnificent! What a perfect description of a vibe I almost forgot even existed having been out of school of any kind for almost a decade. Also what the actual fuck is "catcatcatcatcat"? They really did just invent memes like ten years before the public would, incredible.
Aaaah such pure undistilled hangout-able spots showcased here, peak comfiness. Genuinely surprised at the mention of The Ring Terror's Realm, I was starting to worry everybody forgot about it ! ; A ;
A game that features a lot of liminality is Infra, where you play as a safety inspection engineer exploring an urban environment (with a lot of creepy hidden shit that adds to the atmosphere). Set in a fictional Scandi city called Stalburg, it has strong urbex vibes and either empty or creepily-inhabited environments that make for a very cool liminal experience. There's also a bunch of hidden narrative and history of the setting that you can discover as you explore the game, and a couple of different ending possibilities.
One of the really fun things about liminal spaces in games is defying expectations and playing tricks on the player with them. Since liminal spaces are at once familiar feeling but also not memorable, you notice things that are wrong unconsciously before you're actively aware of them. Take the streets in Silent Hill 1 for example. They just look like typical small town 1 lane roads, but the fog's hiding the other side, and when you try to run across you'll find it's as wide as a 4 lane highway, and it's not consistent about it either. Makes the simple act of walking around town tense because you've got that expectation of having your expectations violated every time you step into the fog.
One example of this that I loved was City of Heroes, the superhero MMO. The equivalent of "dungeons" were just office buildings that you'd clear criminals from, but since it was a game, these offices were designed on a way that no real life building ever would be. Each elevator just went up one floor, with the next elevator being on the opposite side, and they had massively high ceilings and complex walkways in them. It was architectural nonsense.
Gotta echo most folks in the comments. I shouted with joy when I saw this, and you're the perfect person to cover it. I especially love when 'not using the space as intended' turns into 'movement tech.' From the way Forbidden Siren has you climb onto the roof, to the jump-glide in Ghostwire Tokyo. Also I've been calling destinations 'terminal spaces' personally.
Hey! I really enjoy your videos. You're able to put into words the kinds of feelings I think about and kinda let pass in my mind to be forgotten later. My liminal experience is definitely with driving games, like Euro Truck Simulator. Driving is so liminal to me because for the most part, the entire environment passes you by with little to no interaction. It's such a mundane task, populated with the familiar highways, cars, and intersections. My favorite parts were the highways that cut right next to high rise office buildings. Looking in, you think about the people working there and the sporadically lit rooms. Funnily enough, the online mod for the game included a car mode, so you didn't even have to focus on deliveries and instead just drove lol. I genuinely hope you are doing well, or at least managing ok. You are one of my favorite creators and I would love to see what else you come up with.
Shout-out to my favorite liminal space...the back thoroughfare behind strip malls (where deliveries go). Great way to traverse and avoid parking lot stress. Always find them soothing.
The vibes in Yakuza 7 look immaculate, I've started the series finally after playing through the first on PS2 a few years back. Blasted through Zero and absolutely loved it, and being that "virtual tourist" or I guess also virtual tresspasser was one of my favourite parts of the game, so seeing all these large scale new environments to explore in 7 have gotten me so excited to keep playing all the games to get through to it :) Amazing video as always, love the deep dives into obscure topics like this, shining light and appreciating aspects of games not many would think to highlight in the first place. Its soooo good and always makes me appreciate games in a new light
I got a long silent and artsy introduction to this video. After 3 minutes I started to wonder if the silence was intentional. It wasn't and I was a bit sad about it. It was just a youtube bug. But it still made me appreciate, again, your top-notch quality content, that is quite comparable to investigative game journalism to me. Thank you!
As usual giving me the kind of video I was craving without even knowing it. Actually got into the Yakuza series based on one of the previous videos on this channel and it fills this gap in my soul of just getting lost in a completely other world, one that's close to reality but ends up being somehow more engaging. It lets me do things like just wander back alleys, appreciate details one takes for granted during every day life, and just lots of wackiness between those moments. Currently refusing to play the last Kiryu game only because I don't want the experience to end.
Your videos are really the comfort food of visual essays. Your manner of speech and the way you play with words (ie, "hella-ly"), combined with either laid back beats in the background or silence to emphasize the current game topic, is just so chill. Entertaining, interesting, and relaxing. Sometimes the algorithm does good with its recommendations to me. Keep up the good work!
Incredible video as always but I gotta say that your point about offices often being liminal spaces rather than the destinations they should be really hit home. Lots of stuff to think about, thanks for sharing your thoughts with the world!
Another game that fits this very well is "Infra", you are simply a structural engineer who has one hell of a work day in a city that is falling apart due to bad INFRAstructure, wandering along maintenance tunnels, through abandoned places and even locations that SHOULD be active and bustling but are for one reason or another completely empty.
The clean sophistifuture lab and office hallways of the Pokemon series come to mind. The ones goons are usually sitting in, waiting for you to crawl through for small battles on the way to a boss
i fuckin love so much just walking around sh3 man, even in the hell park there's this quiet area with a stage on it and when i first walked in there i had the flashlight turned off and it was a darkness that made go 'wow it's like not even the sky exists anymore' that moment still stays with me a lot i also ended up seeking the liminals in all kinds of yume nikki fangames since it's a lot of those transitory passages and a bunch of labyrinths and sights you get no interaction out of and if you odd it's odd stuff or places unreachable or blocked off with construction cones yet it's been half or an entire decade since the game last got updated all mixed together and i spent so much time obsessed with them i still hold them dearly to my heart honestly
10:48 not thru the whole video yet but in Ohio we've got an awesome arcade called arcade legacy that's been sitting in a dead mall for a long time here and I just noticed how much the empty mall in some of those areas in SH3 reminds me of it. Going there in the afternoon, staying in a dark arcade surrounded by an empty food court with computer stuff sitting where the food trays used to be, coming out to a long walk out the mall while the sunset comes through the windows marked as police training areas, it's wild. Thankfully the arcade's moving to another location, but the vibes of walking in that place are gonna be missed when they renovate it Dan Bell did a cool video on it in his dead mall series.
ahhh I absolutely adored your use of Hotel Dusk sound effects ! It seriously made me pause and get really into the mood to think about Kyle and his lil mysteries wahhh. never thought about it too hard, but that game has suchh a lonely feel to it (poor guy ;'
It's insane that despite not being one of my favorite game, I have sudden urge to replay Mirror's Edge everytime someone mentions it. Maybe the minimalist artstyle with a simple colour artstyle and the sun burning through the city creating these gorgeous lighting effects just speak to me.
That anecdote of being stuck in school during a storm reminded me of when I was stuck in a mall during a hailstorm when I was a kid. The outside was completely pitch black and we could hear the hail pounding both the exit and the ceiling. After a while some parts of the floor would accumulate water and create these little flood pond sections, and since I was like 7 or something the water reached my knees. We where on the 1st floor where it was most flooded and were considering going to higher ground, but before we did in front of us a section of the ceiling of the 2nd floor fell apart. It wasn’t cement, the mall was cheap, so it wasn’t like dangerous debris or that hazardous, but it still scared the hell out of us.
Hey many, you have got to play INFRA if you have not already! It's an entire game of creeping through and surveying abandoned places. You play as an urban surveyor, making your way through a dilapidated industrial area. There is no combat, just the danger of the space. It's a pretty cool game and I haven't really played anything like it before. I highly recommend checking it out!
Oh yeah, this is a mood. Dark room, all alone in the lab, watching this in-between miscroscope work. Anytime I check outside the room, all there is an excessively white hallway leading up and down other laboratories. Absolutely fucking no one apart from maybe the janitor, who is also possibly not a person but a monster.
I used to spend a lot of my time smoking joints with my bud in parking lot stairwells. Kinda a stupid place in hindsight, but I still vibe with those concrete stairs whenever I walk down them.
That ring game dredges up some memories for sure. When I was really young, maybe 10 or 11 my mom brought me to work at a job she must have only had for a couple weeks (she worked for a bigger company that basically contracted her out to work temporarily at places to fill gaps in staff before they permanently hired someone, I've never heard of anything like that before or since which is kinda weird) where she cleaned office buildings after hours. I don't fully remember what the situation was where I had to be there for a while until someone came to pick me up, but I spent an hour or two in a totally empty but completely lit up office building where the only other person was my mom vacuuming in a distant hall, and filtered through child brain and my rapidly rotting memory it looks exactly like that ring game in my mind eye, just slightly higher poly and more brown. A very similar situation happened in high school. We went on a trip to a cool local native American museum, and they had a big office attached and they let us eat in a big meeting room. I left for the bathroom and once again found myself in an empty office building (a much smaller one though) with brown carpet, white walls and that weird post rapture vibe where it feels like this place was full of people just minutes ago, pens and cups on desks, stuff like that. And of course I could hear the chatter of the meeting room where my class was while I wandered and took my sweet time getting back because the vibes were weird and cool. I only went back when my brain decided to activate panic mode for no reason and convince me I was seeing stuff peeking at me from around corners like that one 3d backrooms video (which I think came out a month or two later? Which is pretty wild) Also a weird detail, that museum office place had that same weird faint hosptitally scent of bleach and piss that I associate with like McDonalds and papas pizza play rooms, which was pretty surreal. Muffled laughter, the smell of my every childhood birthday party, and imagined shadow people watching me from the vents and corners is one of those things that sticks with you as a full sensory experience, I remember the cheap canned apple juice aftertaste lingering in my mouth and simultaneously smooth and harshly rough feeling of the shoddily painted drywall(?) Under my middle finger tip super vividly.
Talkin' bout train stations closing. In the suburb where I live, the train station sometimes closes before the last train arrives/leaves. I have to bang the shutter so an attendee can let me out. Once, no one came, so I ran across the track and jumped the fence. It was hot as hell and there were crickets everywhere. It put me in a good mood.
This talks to my love of going for a walk after midnight during weekdays when the weather is hot, like back in day I liked coming back home really late just to take in the city when there's nobody else around, I still do sometimes.
At 21:56 you did mentioned the lack of cat games that's sadly true. But you forgot to mention the PC and PS4 cat game "Another Sight" Is a cat guiding a blind girl. Quite intriguing and fun game.
aw lawd the eurovibes from the intro, i'm super glad you made this to define the term better for ppl who didnt know, little transitional or secret shh places in games feel so g dang comfy :') i wanna take a lil downtown stroll now
hey dude, been watching your stuff for a hot minute & just felt like saying how consistently great your content is. you're excellent at breaking down art & weird, almost indescribable feelings that come from a lot of this type of media, & you only get better with each video. it's really cool to see a passion take this form & i appreciate you for always making such awesome shit. your videos have always been good but you're on another level now, & i know you've put a lot of yourself into this to get there. music & transitions/shitpost memecore stuff is always top tier too. keep killing it man
Man I don't even play video games anymore but I love your longer video essays about them. I'm glad you're taking more time to go through your ideas instead of those earlier videos of yours just dealing with one game. It's a shame you don't have more subscribers.
Ill never understand how you don't have millions of subs, with your sense of humor, your music, and haha I guess everything that is you, including yo knuckles chain! There hasn't been a video from you that didn't make me laugh like a jackass🤣 Thank you Thor, I'm so happy to be a part of The Church of Skung
There's a certain way with words you've managed to employ that makes these videos a must-enjoy each time i click on them. your vernacular caught me off guard at first, but with the presentation, the effortless flow of monologue, and the genuinely unique perspective on things, it feels very warm, understandable, and comfortable by now. No sharp focus, No 'bigly' word quota to enforce, just a very holistic vibe throughout. Please keep enjoying doing what you do!
I remember being totally absorbed by the liminal spaces within GTA: Vice City onwards. So strong was the effect that on occasion the feelings I had felt in the GTA games seeped into my everyday reality while walking about.
GTA III also have some good liminal spaces, but no one explore them or pay attention to them much because the npc AI is hellbent on killing you all the time.
I love your videos. You create videos with a vibe that are abundant with style, creativity and a thoughtfulness that we, as a species, need. You have transcended this mortal coil and become the vibe.
Great vid as always man, another great example of that liminal space feeling is in the mortal kombat deception konquest mode. Playing that when I was younger always felt so eerie and uncanny to me.
Deception was fascinating. Specially to young me still learning English in school, not having a full grasp on what was happening besides the fact that it looked cool, and also not having other games to play😅 the different realms really brought a surprise each time you entered in one.
"Paradise Killer" is Liminal Spaces + Retro 80s aesthetic on steroids. Absolutely give it a shot. Bonus: you get to listen to some really amazing city pop music too. (Stay Forever slaps)
Loved your video as always! I'm not sure if you've played it or thought it might not fit in well since it's rather... dark, but The Darkness really captures a lot of what is talked about here. The way most of the game's areas are linked up is by subway trains that you actually have to go to and get on. Otherwise, a very big chunk of the game takes place in inexplicably deserted streets in the very cool slick black night of New York. Even the collectables in the game are little scraps of phone numbers that you can call at payphones in the subway. They all lead to people's depressed sounding answering machine messages. It gives the feeling of Jackie (the protagonist) reaching out at random to these strangers in the void after the loss of his girlfriend Jenny amidst these totally indifferent dayless spaces where there's almost no one around. All very neat.
Only part way through the video yet, in a bit of a "liminal mood" I guess, but wanted to mention an old game that captured my imagination in this way, on 3 different occasions. First time I played a Tomb Raider game, it was TR3. I live in England. I don't live in London, but holy moly I'd never seen a "near" place in a game before. Going through that level, and it is an awesomely atmospheric level for sure, I imagined myself going there someday, if these bits of it actually existed (and bearing in mind, no way I'm hopping rooftops like Lara does). Second time it captured my imagination, years later, was when I realised my favourite sublevel of that level, Auldwych, is a real place - an actual abandoned underground railway station nobody is supposed to go in. Wow I think, wonder how much they had to change it to fit the block model, and the story they were telling. Wonder how much they had to change it because they simply weren't allowed to go in certain areas at all? And also to make it playable and well-paced in the context of the game loop, of course. An even bigger gap of time after that, wows me for the third time, when I'm talking with someone online who did a lot of work on underground London, and he says that it really is a real-life version of the idea of places built on top of forgotten places, themselves built on top of forgotten places. He said he'd be in a digging team and they'd sometimes dig out entire preserved rooms nobody knew was there. Bloomin' heck I was jealous. How mad is that? I never knew such places actually properly existed like that. I'd come up with the idea for a story (just the same as loads of people have), but I'd always expected once I began actually looking into it, it might turn out a very sci-fi idea, surely such things can't persist, they would just collapse? But no, apparently not... well, not sufficiently for them not to generally persist, anyway. I should've kinda known, though. I grew up in a mining boom area where most of the industry peaked back when people didn't keep good records. Every now and then you'd hear of someone's garden suddenly caving in due to an undocumented mine shaft finally collapsing. I think that's a huge part of why ideas like these grip me so, however by its very popularity it has to be something base within us as humans as well, that's satisfied by such things. There was a forest near where I grew up with loads of big dips in the ground. Absolutely everywhere! I would be absolutely terrified of them collapsing (and that's what they were... remnants of old mining). It was like an adventure, nudging my fear of a real thing. I think something like that when you're very young, can really light a spark of fascination that then stays eminently ignitable forever.
Another game with a lot of liminal spaces is Silent Hill Shattered Memories. That game has the perfect combination of music and empty nostalgic spaces.
Even though I saw the thumbnail, for a second I thought this video was about THH dissecting real liminal places, I mean, not video game related. And I was all for it. Also, played the Kiwami games because of THH, guess I’ll play 7 for the same reason!!
I was about to write a comment about how much I loved the video as always, the whole atmosphere of the liminal spaces in videogames but... god damn, 39:00 this has to be your greatest joke yet, fucking amazing dude, loved it.
I got so immersed in your Silent Hill 3 section that I totally forgot this wasn't just a Silent Hill 3 review and instead a whole overview of a niche topic.
PATRONE: bit.ly/3CbXW1E
HAISONMEGURI: bit.ly/3JXKmke
next couple vids are gonna be on some new games! lotta stuffs been coming out and i can do with making a few shorter videos lol
also the screen shot at 02:45 is actually a game im workin on its p cool u should check out my super frequent progress thread: bit.ly/3K5UhEv
I was about to ask where 02:45 is from but i got my answer even before asking (looks like a place you could just be vibing instead of progressing, with a cool ps1 aesthetic)
ps: Wait what ?! 52 minutes have passed already ?!!
I’m genuinely surprised you haven’t made a video on Chaos Legion. I think that kinda fits your criteria I think?
I really love your content and style and what you are able to capture in detail the mesmerization that many games have been made with Id really love it if you were able to add a simple song list I love your music and other soundtracks you use and wish I could sleep to some
Thor, you might wanna check out this wonderful dungeon crawler game that carries weird vibes called Baroque. It's available on PS1, Wii and Saturn, it's a 3D roguelite with 2D sprite of monster and- well think of it like the old Baldur's Gate or Underworld. It's very immersive for its time and hey, it's pretty spooky too.
So yeah, give it a go and see if you'll like it
What's the song at 22:25?
The secret casino through a secret public restroom door reminds me of when I was in Paris visiting my grandparents. I was looking for a bar nearby on google maps and I arrive at the street it’s on and all there is is a tiny takeaway pizzeria, I ask the guy at the counter if there’s a bar nearby and he’s like follow me. He brings me behind the counter through the entire walk in freezer room for their food and out the back to an entire hidden cocktail bar where there is no menu and the bar tenders just make you something on the spot based on what you’re in the mood for. Easily one of the coolest experiences of my life, I love cities.
I take it you'd enjoy the show Man Finds Food which is all about finding these hidden places
@@Creative_Welshman that sounds right up my alley, thank you so much for the rec
I wonder if that place still exists.
God, I wanna got out now and hit the big cities and just explore.
Super old comment but I just had to add to this.
Saw a YT video on hidden restaurants in Japan, like holy shit you got restaurants and bars hidden behind vending machines and another one hidden behind a tiny coffee stand and you can only access the bar section by opening their app and finding a secret section of the app.. shits so wild.
"Sadly, breaking and entering hits different as an adult"
- ThorHighHeels 2022
3:52 Watching a woman you don’t know have a complete breakdown and saying “you okay, lady” after watching her completely silent for an uncomfortable amount of time is peak early-mid 2000’s. Between the stranger in the suit with an accent demanding answers and the officer’s face looking partially rendered, idk if I’m ever gonna stop ruminating about how I can’t go back in time and experience all of this for the first time again.
Wake up babe new thor dropped
Wake up thor new babe dropped
Ok dear, but cbt after this
@Viewer it's probably best you don't think into it further than that.
@Viewer Cannabitol. It's like THC in weed but it gives you pain relief instead. Highly recommend CBT treatment for everybody honestly
Yes, honey... -_-
That segment on Yakuza was honestly delightful, echoed with so many of my "damn, i wanna go out in town and walk in the night lights" feelings and honestly
hell yeah
the selfish deed is not freedommmm
Sotenbori back alleys in Yakuza 0
Only yakuza could make me wanna walk around searching for cans
I recently visited San Fran, and went to their chinatown area and the entire time I was thinking about how well this place lights up at night. With the lanterns at a perfect height and the old style gas lit street lights on with that amber hue....i get it @looroo
New Serena
You’re videos truly talk about games as art. Not so much about its story structure or mechanics/history, but how it makes you feel, and how it relates to the rest of your life.
Completely agree
your*
On point
so much this ^
That's why I love this channel it definitely touches on aspects of videogames many people wouldnt really consider
Also the editing
Kingdom Hearts' Traverse Town is a good example of a liminal space that is very literally and conceptually liminal in-universe, I think.
As someone who hasn't noticed KH in the description, comments, or during a scrub of the trackbar (and who has never even played the games), it is my responsibility to bring this up before watching the video, I think.
Edit: gambled and won!
I was originally gonna call myself Liminal Space Man. I regret everything.
The first game I played that made me love liminal space was No More Heroes. Where despite being a very Japanese version of America was the first game that really captured the vibe of the shitty lesser known California beach towns I spent so much time in. He even came back and gentrified them in 3.
I can remember all it’s little back alleys so well it’s like I’ve been there.
Random rambling comment here, but this got me thinking about how a discussion about "real crime" media like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row, which got me thinking about how I honestly spent most of my play time in Saints Row not actually playing the game but waiting until nighttime, stealing the absolute tiniest car I could, and driving it into strange little abandoned spaces that I wouldn't be able to go (legally or safely, especially after dark) in real life and just farting around because I enjoyed the nostalgic, mysterious feeling of being there. It's a very particular feeling, like walking to your old grade school playground during the summer when all the kids and teachers are gone and sitting on the swings.
8:40 put the absolute widest smile on my face, the way the image and music come in, the ambience, it was just such a perfect little moment. great stuff as always, hyper enjoyed this one
It's an absolute mood, I really love it!
gave me chills down my fucking spine god i love the soundtracks of the sh series
That music - End of Small Sanctuary - is possibly my single favourite piece of music ever. It's simultaneously warm, nostalgic, sad, melancholic and comforting. Akira Yamoaka is a genius.
"Liminal spaces are the pre-rendered backgrounds of real life." Your videos deserve way more views!!
I find the “hangoutabilitly” is important in games . I’ve heard Tim Rogers talk about it a few times
that tokimeki memorial vid was insane, the equivalent of a UA-camr doing a triathlon
What are games that does that well in your opinion?
@@dgayle2348 it varies from person to person but the golden saucer in ff7 or the slums , kakariko village in OOT , many hub worlds would count but it’s those places where you want to stop just to hangout , maybe talk to some npcs and just sort of vibe .
@@gaijingabber1056 that wasn’t merely a review , it was an exegesis
@The Glove : yeah i played both thanks bro. I'm just a sucker for that niche so I'm asking people for their favorites.
Dude literally talks about hallways for an hour and I'm more invested than Elden Ring Critique #278, THH truly the GOAT on UA-cam. The vibes are always just hella immaculate and cozy
SIlent HIll 3 is the main reason I love to explore abandoned places these days. First time I played the isolating feeling of once crowded places like metro stations and malls really stuck a chord with me.
Yeeesss, I love this topic to death. Mirror's Edge and Spirited Away (yes, the movie) really opened me up to the idea of looking into the environment of games and shows. Same IRL, being open to the wonder of a cluttered alleyway or abandoned park.
When I play Gravity Rush, I often explore areas without shifting. This game has hella sizeable liminal areas. Vendecentre has some really huge subway walkways. There's even Some areas make you wonder how one gets around these areas on foot without falling into the void.
Gravity Rush was such an amazing game, I liked to fly up real high above the cities and go into first person and then fall in between the cracks of the cities. Always felt so cool and kind of scary.
I can really relate to this! I like to walk around in the market from the second game and just follow random npc around. One time this one npc came to gather with a bunch of people surrounding a street musician and it's just the best feeling ever.
I was hoping for a Gravity Rush mention in this video
Yes, I enjoy just walking about and enjoying the vibe gravity rush 1 & 2 have. The pleasure district (I can't remember its name) has my favourite feeling about it.
Man, I love late 90's/early 2000's urban atmosphere.
Also Yakuza 7's gotta have the most well-realized and immersive urban setting of any Japanese game ever made, and I absolutely love it for that. Probably my GotY 2020 honestly, and easily the best current-gen JRPG.
Better than 0?
Never been so hype for a video. Just wanna tell you, Thor, that I'm starting my graphic design major next week and you and Pan Pizza from Rebel Taxi are two of my biggest design inspirations.
I wish you luck, these kinds of things have more impact on our sad souls than some would think, I hope you impact us as much as thor has you
I treasure your overbearing observations and warm aesthetic editing. Everytime you drop a new video I pour a drink or 7, watch, and become lost in a blanket of vague numbing nostalgia. Thank you
I appreciate how you didn't fall into the trap of making it all about nostalgia. I'm glad you centered the "inbetween" kinda space concept
Shutp
Less relevant when it comes to the Urban idea of Liminal Spaces but I feel it worth noting Shadow of the Colossus is one of my favorite games and one of my favorite things is just the big empty feeling it has. It's the Forbidden Lands, and there quite clearly used to be people there, and having not played ICO I didn't have much else to go on.
Big empty temples, giant monoliths, a few small animals scurry around but the sound design does such a great job of making you feel absolutely alone. The howling wind that blows harshly in the valleys, and echoes in the small cave-like systems, and you are ever surrounded by huge hills and mountains that tower over you making you feel small and insignificant.
I spent lots of time just combing the land looking at the leftover remnants of what used to be a previously populated land. Utterly abandoned and full of mysteries. Like for example the giant dead tree that looms so large you can see it from across the land, and yet it serves no purpose story or otherwise. An entire beach that also holds nothing but a view and ambience for you to enjoy, but you will always do it alone and only kept company by your horse Agro.
I could go on and on about the game but I'm going to finish the video now. I just wanted to stop and say thanks Thor and I hope you are doing okay in light of the recent thing that happened to you. All my love and respect.
@4:00 "YOU OKAY LADY" Ah! The delivery of that line is perfection! *Chef's kiss*
One of the few creators on UA-cam I actually have notifications for. Love your content, Thor!
metoo. bell been dinged AF since i discovered THH
He had me at “liminal space” and the promise of some words on that. Instant like
I used to live outside of shanghai and damn did we have liminal spaces out the ass. Abandon lots, empty houses for rent that were left completely open at all times, empty fields filled with rubble and abandoned milo cans, mostly empty dusty streets with the dvd store and the one bakery. Going to the game store and getting a bootleg wii game with our allowance and biking home at night to play it in the one room with a tv. I dont often indulge in nostalgia but damn this hit different
Yoo if urban exploration in context of crumbling infrastructure is your shit I highly recommend game called Infra on steam. Very much the mood of exploring empty infrastructure complexes (like water treatment plant) and maintenance backrooms in different states of abandoned to someone was here hour ago. I was half expecting to see it due how it fit to the themes of the video.
Infra covers pretty much every single type of urban exploration there is, at least what's realistically possible in a European setting. I was amazed by how long the game was and how frequently it would shift to a new setting. By the end I felt that it had basically satisfied all my childhood fantasies of exploring all these places that I could only ever could never have had free access to.
I've always been trying to find words to describe these through ways, these interesting areas which serve only transitory purposes in real life. I've always loved them even when other people don't understand their beauty. Liminal spaces are some of my favorite things, and I've never thought about them in the context of video games. Describing them in real life as being the pre-rendered backgrounds of real life was both funny and very accurate. I'm looking forward to watching this one over and over in the future. Yet another banger, Mr High heels!
Your video presentation and voice sounds like you're some modern wizard i don't know why i just get the vibe of some magic man who's seen shit and just being casual while having an air of excitement to his next sentence he's gonna utter while still keeping it mellow
Im not high you're shut up
You're amazing and you've slowly grown on me over time. Also, I don't mean to be inappropriate, but I lost my dad last year. Your videos help me a lot, at least multiple times a week. I want to thank you, and let you know that I love all of these things just as much as you, or anyone else. I'm not sure how much your father influenced your love for any of it, but my father had a huge impact on my taste, even when I didn't think he did. I don't know why I'm telling you all of this. Maybe it's because life is short. I also listened to Positive Yellow multiple times from cover to cover, and it's inspired me not to give up on my own music. I make experimental jungle, and things reminiscent of these older days. Maybe I have a voice here. Thank you, again.
End Of Small Sanctuary just won my heart. Your work is amazing Thor, I'm gonna watch this three or four times just like the other ones.
Sometimes when I get off work, I wait for my ride and just vibe to EoSS as I watch a rainy sunset turn into black night. It's the best.
Man, I fucking love your videos. Your passion for video games is contagious.
That "stuck at school during a storm" metaphor is magnificent! What a perfect description of a vibe I almost forgot even existed having been out of school of any kind for almost a decade. Also what the actual fuck is "catcatcatcatcat"? They really did just invent memes like ten years before the public would, incredible.
"Stuck at school during a storm" watch the neverending story, it's genius
I took a screenshot of catcatcatcatcat to make my own version to put up in my own office
@@helloofthebeach legend
Aaaah such pure undistilled hangout-able spots showcased here, peak comfiness. Genuinely surprised at the mention of The Ring Terror's Realm, I was starting to worry everybody forgot about it ! ; A ;
These videos are all so comfy. You seem to be able to find joy and wonder in life in a way I just can't. I envy that.
A game that features a lot of liminality is Infra, where you play as a safety inspection engineer exploring an urban environment (with a lot of creepy hidden shit that adds to the atmosphere). Set in a fictional Scandi city called Stalburg, it has strong urbex vibes and either empty or creepily-inhabited environments that make for a very cool liminal experience. There's also a bunch of hidden narrative and history of the setting that you can discover as you explore the game, and a couple of different ending possibilities.
the first game made me feel better about how i replaced all the clothes in my closet with low quality jpegs of clothes.
One of the really fun things about liminal spaces in games is defying expectations and playing tricks on the player with them. Since liminal spaces are at once familiar feeling but also not memorable, you notice things that are wrong unconsciously before you're actively aware of them. Take the streets in Silent Hill 1 for example. They just look like typical small town 1 lane roads, but the fog's hiding the other side, and when you try to run across you'll find it's as wide as a 4 lane highway, and it's not consistent about it either. Makes the simple act of walking around town tense because you've got that expectation of having your expectations violated every time you step into the fog.
29:46 was really hoping you'd launch into a whole song there
One example of this that I loved was City of Heroes, the superhero MMO. The equivalent of "dungeons" were just office buildings that you'd clear criminals from, but since it was a game, these offices were designed on a way that no real life building ever would be. Each elevator just went up one floor, with the next elevator being on the opposite side, and they had massively high ceilings and complex walkways in them. It was architectural nonsense.
Man, these videos put me in the zone. Appreciate the chill and comfy vibe paired with creative video game discussions off the beaten tracks
Gotta echo most folks in the comments. I shouted with joy when I saw this, and you're the perfect person to cover it.
I especially love when 'not using the space as intended' turns into 'movement tech.' From the way Forbidden Siren has you climb onto the roof, to the jump-glide in Ghostwire Tokyo.
Also I've been calling destinations 'terminal spaces' personally.
Terminal space versus liminal space! I love it
Liminal Space video turned into a Like a Dragon 7 review
Hey! I really enjoy your videos. You're able to put into words the kinds of feelings I think about and kinda let pass in my mind to be forgotten later. My liminal experience is definitely with driving games, like Euro Truck Simulator. Driving is so liminal to me because for the most part, the entire environment passes you by with little to no interaction. It's such a mundane task, populated with the familiar highways, cars, and intersections. My favorite parts were the highways that cut right next to high rise office buildings. Looking in, you think about the people working there and the sporadically lit rooms. Funnily enough, the online mod for the game included a car mode, so you didn't even have to focus on deliveries and instead just drove lol. I genuinely hope you are doing well, or at least managing ok. You are one of my favorite creators and I would love to see what else you come up with.
One of the most liminal-esque games out there has to be the first Condemned game or the first F.E.A.R, both by monolith productions.
Shout-out to my favorite liminal space...the back thoroughfare behind strip malls (where deliveries go). Great way to traverse and avoid parking lot stress. Always find them soothing.
The vibes in Yakuza 7 look immaculate, I've started the series finally after playing through the first on PS2 a few years back. Blasted through Zero and absolutely loved it, and being that "virtual tourist" or I guess also virtual tresspasser was one of my favourite parts of the game, so seeing all these large scale new environments to explore in 7 have gotten me so excited to keep playing all the games to get through to it :)
Amazing video as always, love the deep dives into obscure topics like this, shining light and appreciating aspects of games not many would think to highlight in the first place. Its soooo good and always makes me appreciate games in a new light
I got a long silent and artsy introduction to this video. After 3 minutes I started to wonder if the silence was intentional. It wasn't and I was a bit sad about it. It was just a youtube bug. But it still made me appreciate, again, your top-notch quality content, that is quite comparable to investigative game journalism to me. Thank you!
As usual giving me the kind of video I was craving without even knowing it. Actually got into the Yakuza series based on one of the previous videos on this channel and it fills this gap in my soul of just getting lost in a completely other world, one that's close to reality but ends up being somehow more engaging. It lets me do things like just wander back alleys, appreciate details one takes for granted during every day life, and just lots of wackiness between those moments. Currently refusing to play the last Kiryu game only because I don't want the experience to end.
Your videos are really the comfort food of visual essays. Your manner of speech and the way you play with words (ie, "hella-ly"), combined with either laid back beats in the background or silence to emphasize the current game topic, is just so chill. Entertaining, interesting, and relaxing. Sometimes the algorithm does good with its recommendations to me. Keep up the good work!
Incredible video as always but I gotta say that your point about offices often being liminal spaces rather than the destinations they should be really hit home. Lots of stuff to think about, thanks for sharing your thoughts with the world!
Another game that fits this very well is "Infra", you are simply a structural engineer who has one hell of a work day in a city that is falling apart due to bad INFRAstructure, wandering along maintenance tunnels, through abandoned places and even locations that SHOULD be active and bustling but are for one reason or another completely empty.
The clean sophistifuture lab and office hallways of the Pokemon series come to mind. The ones goons are usually sitting in, waiting for you to crawl through for small battles on the way to a boss
i fuckin love so much just walking around sh3 man, even in the hell park there's this quiet area with a stage on it and when i first walked in there i had the flashlight turned off and it was a darkness that made go 'wow it's like not even the sky exists anymore'
that moment still stays with me a lot
i also ended up seeking the liminals in all kinds of yume nikki fangames since it's a lot of those transitory passages and a bunch of labyrinths and sights you get no interaction out of and if you odd it's odd stuff or places unreachable or blocked off with construction cones yet it's been half or an entire decade since the game last got updated all mixed together and i spent so much time obsessed with them i still hold them dearly to my heart honestly
I may not be dutch myself (I’m Belgian), but I always feel super happy when I see a dutch creator make great content. Give Willem a scratch from me
10:48 not thru the whole video yet but in Ohio we've got an awesome arcade called arcade legacy that's been sitting in a dead mall for a long time here and I just noticed how much the empty mall in some of those areas in SH3 reminds me of it. Going there in the afternoon, staying in a dark arcade surrounded by an empty food court with computer stuff sitting where the food trays used to be, coming out to a long walk out the mall while the sunset comes through the windows marked as police training areas, it's wild. Thankfully the arcade's moving to another location, but the vibes of walking in that place are gonna be missed when they renovate it Dan Bell did a cool video on it in his dead mall series.
one of my fav videos from you omg
ahhh I absolutely adored your use of Hotel Dusk sound effects ! It seriously made me pause and get really into the mood to think about Kyle and his lil mysteries wahhh. never thought about it too hard, but that game has suchh a lonely feel to it (poor guy ;'
This is the only video game channel I watch lately, and this is why. You can't be beat when it comes to "putting your finger on it"
It's insane that despite not being one of my favorite game, I have sudden urge to replay Mirror's Edge everytime someone mentions it. Maybe the minimalist artstyle with a simple colour artstyle and the sun burning through the city creating these gorgeous lighting effects just speak to me.
How about a game that takes place entirely inside an office/governmental building, while at the same time defying liminal spacing?
"Control".
I can already tell I’m gonna watch this three times by the end of the week.
16:23 i love the best friends. Only really started watching only about a couple months before they split up but i love all of their content
That anecdote of being stuck in school during a storm reminded me of when I was stuck in a mall during a hailstorm when I was a kid. The outside was completely pitch black and we could hear the hail pounding both the exit and the ceiling. After a while some parts of the floor would accumulate water and create these little flood pond sections, and since I was like 7 or something the water reached my knees. We where on the 1st floor where it was most flooded and were considering going to higher ground, but before we did in front of us a section of the ceiling of the 2nd floor fell apart. It wasn’t cement, the mall was cheap, so it wasn’t like dangerous debris or that hazardous, but it still scared the hell out of us.
Hey many, you have got to play INFRA if you have not already! It's an entire game of creeping through and surveying abandoned places. You play as an urban surveyor, making your way through a dilapidated industrial area. There is no combat, just the danger of the space. It's a pretty cool game and I haven't really played anything like it before. I highly recommend checking it out!
Back In The Day, Adult Swim also used this to great effect in their bumps
A new ThorHighHeels video is exactly what I needed to relax after starting school. Thank you for the wonderful video essays as always!!
I’ve been waiting for you to make this video!
You cover space in games better than anyone else
Oh yeah, this is a mood.
Dark room, all alone in the lab, watching this in-between miscroscope work. Anytime I check outside the room, all there is an excessively white hallway leading up and down other laboratories.
Absolutely fucking no one apart from maybe the janitor, who is also possibly not a person but a monster.
I used to spend a lot of my time smoking joints with my bud in parking lot stairwells. Kinda a stupid place in hindsight, but I still vibe with those concrete stairs whenever I walk down them.
it's like i'm listening to a friend ramble on about their favorite things in life and i'm here for it
Ghostwire is one of the best examples of lived in abandoned liminal spaces…. Like the entire giant map
That ring game dredges up some memories for sure.
When I was really young, maybe 10 or 11 my mom brought me to work at a job she must have only had for a couple weeks (she worked for a bigger company that basically contracted her out to work temporarily at places to fill gaps in staff before they permanently hired someone, I've never heard of anything like that before or since which is kinda weird) where she cleaned office buildings after hours. I don't fully remember what the situation was where I had to be there for a while until someone came to pick me up, but I spent an hour or two in a totally empty but completely lit up office building where the only other person was my mom vacuuming in a distant hall, and filtered through child brain and my rapidly rotting memory it looks exactly like that ring game in my mind eye, just slightly higher poly and more brown.
A very similar situation happened in high school. We went on a trip to a cool local native American museum, and they had a big office attached and they let us eat in a big meeting room. I left for the bathroom and once again found myself in an empty office building (a much smaller one though) with brown carpet, white walls and that weird post rapture vibe where it feels like this place was full of people just minutes ago, pens and cups on desks, stuff like that. And of course I could hear the chatter of the meeting room where my class was while I wandered and took my sweet time getting back because the vibes were weird and cool. I only went back when my brain decided to activate panic mode for no reason and convince me I was seeing stuff peeking at me from around corners like that one 3d backrooms video (which I think came out a month or two later? Which is pretty wild)
Also a weird detail, that museum office place had that same weird faint hosptitally scent of bleach and piss that I associate with like McDonalds and papas pizza play rooms, which was pretty surreal. Muffled laughter, the smell of my every childhood birthday party, and imagined shadow people watching me from the vents and corners is one of those things that sticks with you as a full sensory experience, I remember the cheap canned apple juice aftertaste lingering in my mouth and simultaneously smooth and harshly rough feeling of the shoddily painted drywall(?) Under my middle finger tip super vividly.
What you described in the first paragraph was a Temporary Employment Agency.
Talkin' bout train stations closing. In the suburb where I live, the train station sometimes closes before the last train arrives/leaves. I have to bang the shutter so an attendee can let me out. Once, no one came, so I ran across the track and jumped the fence. It was hot as hell and there were crickets everywhere. It put me in a good mood.
This talks to my love of going for a walk after midnight during weekdays when the weather is hot, like back in day I liked coming back home really late just to take in the city when there's nobody else around, I still do sometimes.
I can’t believe SH3 developers were dope enough to put in a THH and Hazel reference 😱
At 21:56 you did mentioned the lack of cat games that's sadly true. But you forgot to mention the PC and PS4 cat game "Another Sight" Is a cat guiding a blind girl. Quite intriguing and fun game.
You really are such a gem. I genuinely can't describe how delightful these videos are
aw lawd the eurovibes from the intro, i'm super glad you made this to define the term better for ppl who didnt know, little transitional or secret shh places in games feel so g dang comfy :') i wanna take a lil downtown stroll now
This definitely feels like the most “Thor-est” vid in awhile
hey dude, been watching your stuff for a hot minute & just felt like saying how consistently great your content is. you're excellent at breaking down art & weird, almost indescribable feelings that come from a lot of this type of media, & you only get better with each video. it's really cool to see a passion take this form & i appreciate you for always making such awesome shit. your videos have always been good but you're on another level now, & i know you've put a lot of yourself into this to get there. music & transitions/shitpost memecore stuff is always top tier too. keep killing it man
This video alone convinced me to buy Yakuza 7. I love how you put into words why exploration in games is limitless and exciting!
Man I don't even play video games anymore but I love your longer video essays about them. I'm glad you're taking more time to go through your ideas instead of those earlier videos of yours just dealing with one game. It's a shame you don't have more subscribers.
Ill never understand how you don't have millions of subs, with your sense of humor, your music, and haha I guess everything that is you, including yo knuckles chain! There hasn't been a video from you that didn't make me laugh like a jackass🤣 Thank you Thor, I'm so happy to be a part of The Church of Skung
Half-Life 2 has some god tier liminal spaces, best one is under the big bridge on the highway
There's a certain way with words you've managed to employ that makes these videos a must-enjoy each time i click on them. your vernacular caught me off guard at first, but with the presentation, the effortless flow of monologue, and the genuinely unique perspective on things, it feels very warm, understandable, and comfortable by now. No sharp focus, No 'bigly' word quota to enforce, just a very holistic vibe throughout. Please keep enjoying doing what you do!
I remember being totally absorbed by the liminal spaces within GTA: Vice City onwards. So strong was the effect that on occasion the feelings I had felt in the GTA games seeped into my everyday reality while walking about.
GTA III also have some good liminal spaces, but no one explore them or pay attention to them much because the npc AI is hellbent on killing you all the time.
I love your videos. You create videos with a vibe that are abundant with style, creativity and a thoughtfulness that we, as a species, need. You have transcended this mortal coil and become the vibe.
Great vid as always man, another great example of that liminal space feeling is in the mortal kombat deception konquest mode. Playing that when I was younger always felt so eerie and uncanny to me.
Deception was fascinating. Specially to young me still learning English in school, not having a full grasp on what was happening besides the fact that it looked cool, and also not having other games to play😅 the different realms really brought a surprise each time you entered in one.
"Paradise Killer" is Liminal Spaces + Retro 80s aesthetic on steroids. Absolutely give it a shot.
Bonus: you get to listen to some really amazing city pop music too. (Stay Forever slaps)
What if we kissed in the liminal spaces
Loved your video as always!
I'm not sure if you've played it or thought it might not fit in well since it's rather... dark, but The Darkness really captures a lot of what is talked about here.
The way most of the game's areas are linked up is by subway trains that you actually have to go to and get on. Otherwise, a very big chunk of the game takes place in inexplicably deserted streets in the very cool slick black night of New York.
Even the collectables in the game are little scraps of phone numbers that you can call at payphones in the subway. They all lead to people's depressed sounding answering machine messages. It gives the feeling of Jackie (the protagonist) reaching out at random to these strangers in the void after the loss of his girlfriend Jenny amidst these totally indifferent dayless spaces where there's almost no one around. All very neat.
You are so awesome man. Everything you have ever uploaded is amazing and I've watched them all countless times.
Gracias por esto, Skung is now my favorite word.
Only part way through the video yet, in a bit of a "liminal mood" I guess, but wanted to mention an old game that captured my imagination in this way, on 3 different occasions. First time I played a Tomb Raider game, it was TR3. I live in England. I don't live in London, but holy moly I'd never seen a "near" place in a game before. Going through that level, and it is an awesomely atmospheric level for sure, I imagined myself going there someday, if these bits of it actually existed (and bearing in mind, no way I'm hopping rooftops like Lara does).
Second time it captured my imagination, years later, was when I realised my favourite sublevel of that level, Auldwych, is a real place - an actual abandoned underground railway station nobody is supposed to go in. Wow I think, wonder how much they had to change it to fit the block model, and the story they were telling. Wonder how much they had to change it because they simply weren't allowed to go in certain areas at all? And also to make it playable and well-paced in the context of the game loop, of course.
An even bigger gap of time after that, wows me for the third time, when I'm talking with someone online who did a lot of work on underground London, and he says that it really is a real-life version of the idea of places built on top of forgotten places, themselves built on top of forgotten places. He said he'd be in a digging team and they'd sometimes dig out entire preserved rooms nobody knew was there. Bloomin' heck I was jealous. How mad is that? I never knew such places actually properly existed like that. I'd come up with the idea for a story (just the same as loads of people have), but I'd always expected once I began actually looking into it, it might turn out a very sci-fi idea, surely such things can't persist, they would just collapse? But no, apparently not... well, not sufficiently for them not to generally persist, anyway.
I should've kinda known, though. I grew up in a mining boom area where most of the industry peaked back when people didn't keep good records. Every now and then you'd hear of someone's garden suddenly caving in due to an undocumented mine shaft finally collapsing. I think that's a huge part of why ideas like these grip me so, however by its very popularity it has to be something base within us as humans as well, that's satisfied by such things. There was a forest near where I grew up with loads of big dips in the ground. Absolutely everywhere! I would be absolutely terrified of them collapsing (and that's what they were... remnants of old mining). It was like an adventure, nudging my fear of a real thing. I think something like that when you're very young, can really light a spark of fascination that then stays eminently ignitable forever.
Another game with a lot of liminal spaces is Silent Hill Shattered Memories. That game has the perfect combination of music and empty nostalgic spaces.
Even though I saw the thumbnail, for a second I thought this video was about THH dissecting real liminal places, I mean, not video game related. And I was all for it.
Also, played the Kiwami games because of THH, guess I’ll play 7 for the same reason!!
I was about to write a comment about how much I loved the video as always, the whole atmosphere of the liminal spaces in videogames but... god damn, 39:00 this has to be your greatest joke yet, fucking amazing dude, loved it.
You are the definition of under-rated mate.
I gotta say, you have a very Aussie sense of humour.
Keep making these vids!!!
I got so immersed in your Silent Hill 3 section that I totally forgot this wasn't just a Silent Hill 3 review and instead a whole overview of a niche topic.