The Void is great and it becomes more knowable when you take it as a metaphor of the creative process. Allegedly Sisters are like muses, inspiration, that's why the one you choose to release to the waking world changes the world in one way or another. The Brothers are all things non-creative, they are the patriarchy, cruelty, war, bureaucracy, rules, etc. And the Sleeper is you, you when you enter a stagnant creative state. You are unsure on what to do and you are near the verge of collapse. That's why you move with color, you feed color, you grow color. One of the best games ever
So much talk about the Souls games focuses on the difficulty that I had never thought some people just wanted the feeling of getting lost in a strange world; not to overcome the challenge of mastering the game but for the confusion of the mystery
Great video! Always happy to see people talking about “The Void”. By the way, if you have a moment, I recommend checking out a small game Ice-Pick Lodge released after “Void” - it is called “Cargo - a quest for gravity” and you will find really interesting and unexpected elements from the Void in the game about building toy cars and kicking pianos)
@@burningsheep4473 It feels incredibly out of left field for the studio, but perhaps partially because of it the game is especially fun for those familiar with their works.
@@PixelaDay I think the main one is that I am wondering where the line is for being mysterious or obtuse but still maintaining broad appeal? Elden Ring has an interesting hostile world to explore but, like you say, you still engage with it like you would many other third person action games. So I think the common thread is how the player themselves engages with the piece. The games you use as examples have alternate ways of doing tasks that would be basic in any other game so a new player is instantly hit with confusion about how to interact with whats in front of them and they bounce off. A game called Nauticrawl tackles this in an interesting way and the fact that I admire that game more than I like it makes my whole thought process ring a little true. This is all anecdotal of course.
I feel like for a dev wanting to make a worthwhile game, 'broad appeal' has got to be a secondary consideration, if it is one at all. Which is why so many AAA games end up as boring generic sludge - their primary aim is 'mass appeal' and it shows. I guess it's no different from UA-cam or other media products - if my main goal was making it big, this would be a very different channel XD Nauticrawl is now on my wishlist btw!
Fantastic analysis as always. When will we see a deep look at The Talos Principle? Is much, much more than a puzzle game and quite fitting for this channel. Would love to hear your thoughts about it :)
i remember playing the void ages ago. i didnt understand much, but it didnt feel like i really NEED to understand it. unfortunately, i frequently forgot to continue playing it until i couldnt remember anything. so ive started maybe 5 playthroughs without beating it or entering a fail state. i should probably pick it up again ^^ the one thing i do remember about it though was that you run faster if you move diagonally, which was mildly annoying. maybe they patched it, i dont even know which version i played all that time ago ^^
It's really interesting to hear how Elden Ring landed with you - it was the first Souls game that I properly got into, so it felt absolutely obnoxiously inscrutable to me! So I'm probably never going to play these, but I appreciate hearing why some people, such as yourself, find them so enthralling.
Brilliant idea drawing a connection between From Software's games and The Void. Also, if you don't have already, you might want to try "Cultist Simulator", a game with a similar approach. You have to find out the game mechanics and the lore and the story for yourself.
My experience with Dark Souls is very similar to my experience going through the ouvre of my favorite author, Gene Wolfe, over the past six or seven years. At first both are completely inscrutable, but eventually you learn how to play dark souls games and you learn how to read Gene Wolfe books. It's a skill you develop over time. While something is lost in the learning, as you say, it's also really cool to look back and say, "I now deeply understand the very unique and weird way this other human being creates art." You have a skill, and to some degree knowledge about another person you've never met. I don't know what Gene Wolfe is like as a friend or a husband, but I can definitely tell you some things I KNOW he's interested in and would love to talk about if you got him started. I don't think I would've gotten pulled into either in the first place if I didn't intuit that understanding was possible, given time. Nothing can give you that feeling forever, and I think it's unfair to expect it considering it wasn't really the goal of either Miyazaki or Gene Wolfe to be confusing on purpose, they were just making art the way they knew how. To expect them to make art a completely different way, that is equally as alienating and mysterious, is unrealistic. My guess is gonna be that if the souls formula stops selling and FromSoft has to do something wildly different, it's going to be a massive failure unless Miyazaki has nothing to do with it. I can't think of any author I've ever read that doesn't have an identifiable and learnable style. No human is truly a chameleon. A Neil Gaiman book is a Neil Gaiman book. A Gene Wolfe book is a Gene Wolfe book. A Miyazaki game is a Miyazaki game.
And yet Pathologic and The Void, for example, are extremely different from each other despite both being undeniably "Ice Pick Lodge" games. I have no doubt that Miyazaki could, if he wanted to, make a wildly different game that was still a "Miyazaki game".
Well yup, this video was exactly as cool as I thought it would be! Also good to know how Starseed actually ends, because even the starting levels were far beyond my ability to comprehend lol. But I *did* get to have the revelation you describe, at the very least! ^w^ And the Void is just a whole thing in itself, of course. Near impossible to coherently theorise for, but my goodness, what imagery it has! In any case, thank you for the great video! ^w^
I always love hearing you talk about games. I really need to leave my triple A bubble and try some of these. Hopefully, I can find the patience to play them haha.
This was beautifully written. I can appreciate your desire for mystery as you play games, but this video did not convince me to give Starseed Pilgrim another shot. 😁
I haven't thought abot The Void in a long time. :D I tried it and although it was very cool, I gave up on it pretty quickly. I just couldn't figure out any way to survive.
I wouldn't worry about it too much. Once you get over the initial hurdle with The Void it's actually not that hard to stay alive. The main issue is that actually finishing it is an altogether different story (no pun intended). The beginning where you have almost no colour is more of an exception though.
There's a Matthewmattosis video about Fromsoft starting to just go through the motions with Souls, and there is a quote vrom it that really stuck with me: "Eventually what we'll end up with is a generic blob of a game, liked by everyone, and beloved by no one." I have yet to play it, but ER sounds like that game to me.
@@PixelaDay I have been hearing some people talking about being burned out on SoulBournes recently. Otherwise I think it might have something to do with how much people enjoy these games for just combat and challenge. Perhaps for them it's more about getting another really hard game to conquer rather than something truly different.
im confused about the "surprise" at 7:37. I feel like how the game works wasn't described clearly enough to understand what the revelation is and the revalation itself isn't really explained either
I was wondering the same thing myself. I realised when writing the script that explaining how Starseed Pilgrim works is super duper hard as it's such a weird ass game and the "surprise" hinges on knowing the difference between the levels and the hub world which looks so similar on footage!
Did yoy know that the russian version of The Void (called Tension) is almost a completely different game? The writing is so much better and mechanics and progression are tweaked. There is a pinned discussion on Steam describing how to get it, have fun and great video, as always!
This is so well crafted, I'm stumped at just how much of this video feels special, yet still... normal? It's clearly told, and it's just overviews of a few games with a central thesis that's laid out immediately. That's probably why I felt it was short, though I was grabbed by it for whole 25 minutes. But it still feels so mysterious that I was watching with intent. Was it the chapter titles? The games themselves? The little editting choices to accomodate the game visuals? What will be brought up next? I think I might buy Starseed Pilgrim and The Void. I wish I didn't have so much on my gaming plate, but damn, this game I never heard about, and this game I only heard rumors about are so much more compelling than my still ongoing Elden Ring playthrough that I begrudgingly re-installed throughout the year.
I have played both games and most SoulsBorne games, but I never got into either Starseed, or Void. I think it is because both games feature time pressure. It was frustrating for me to play these games, because they punish me for not knowing and they punish me for taking time to learn. Demon's Souls let me go at my own pace. Sure, many people never heard of either game, but I can imagine many that tried them and found them frustrating in a way that wasn't fun.
It's funny to think about: as a fan of Morrowind I absolutely hate Skyrim for the the same reasons I love Elden Ring but had serious trouble getting into Dark Souls 1.
I keep hearing good things about Fear & Hunger, seems like it has a similar "the world hates you and won't explain itself to you easily" vibe as the older Souls games and The Void gave us.
If you like what I do please consider throwing me a bit of money on Patreon, check out the tiers and benefits here: www.patreon.com/pixeladay
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The Void is great and it becomes more knowable when you take it as a metaphor of the creative process. Allegedly Sisters are like muses, inspiration, that's why the one you choose to release to the waking world changes the world in one way or another. The Brothers are all things non-creative, they are the patriarchy, cruelty, war, bureaucracy, rules, etc. And the Sleeper is you, you when you enter a stagnant creative state. You are unsure on what to do and you are near the verge of collapse. That's why you move with color, you feed color, you grow color. One of the best games ever
So much talk about the Souls games focuses on the difficulty that I had never thought some people just wanted the feeling of getting lost in a strange world; not to overcome the challenge of mastering the game but for the confusion of the mystery
I honestly thought that i was the only one that was obsessed with The Void. The soundtrack is fire too.
Great video! Always happy to see people talking about “The Void”.
By the way, if you have a moment, I recommend checking out a small game Ice-Pick Lodge released after “Void” - it is called “Cargo - a quest for gravity” and you will find really interesting and unexpected elements from the Void in the game about building toy cars and kicking pianos)
I have recently been considering starting up Cargo. I'm sure I tried a demo some years ago, but couldn't really make heads nor tails of it.
@@burningsheep4473 It feels incredibly out of left field for the studio, but perhaps partially because of it the game is especially fun for those familiar with their works.
I think this is my new favourite of your work, its inspiring many thoughts
Share them here if you feel like it!
@@PixelaDay I think the main one is that I am wondering where the line is for being mysterious or obtuse but still maintaining broad appeal? Elden Ring has an interesting hostile world to explore but, like you say, you still engage with it like you would many other third person action games. So I think the common thread is how the player themselves engages with the piece. The games you use as examples have alternate ways of doing tasks that would be basic in any other game so a new player is instantly hit with confusion about how to interact with whats in front of them and they bounce off. A game called Nauticrawl tackles this in an interesting way and the fact that I admire that game more than I like it makes my whole thought process ring a little true. This is all anecdotal of course.
I feel like for a dev wanting to make a worthwhile game, 'broad appeal' has got to be a secondary consideration, if it is one at all. Which is why so many AAA games end up as boring generic sludge - their primary aim is 'mass appeal' and it shows. I guess it's no different from UA-cam or other media products - if my main goal was making it big, this would be a very different channel XD Nauticrawl is now on my wishlist btw!
To see some strange worlds play old games.
👆👆👆
Fantastic analysis as always. When will we see a deep look at The Talos Principle? Is much, much more than a puzzle game and quite fitting for this channel. Would love to hear your thoughts about it :)
I can't believe this is one of your lesser viewed videos.
It's so good.
That means so much!
The Void was fairly hyped at the time. Anthony Burch and Extra Credits both had videos about them.
Dude your channel is so damn good, I'm not even that much of a gamer and I'm binge watching your analysis.
Cheers from Brazil!
Thank you!!!
A banger video as always! The suprise cuts and the use of your voice to convey your emotions were superb!
That's so nice to hear, thank you!!
Metroid dread burrowed into my skull.
i remember playing the void ages ago. i didnt understand much, but it didnt feel like i really NEED to understand it. unfortunately, i frequently forgot to continue playing it until i couldnt remember anything. so ive started maybe 5 playthroughs without beating it or entering a fail state. i should probably pick it up again ^^
the one thing i do remember about it though was that you run faster if you move diagonally, which was mildly annoying. maybe they patched it, i dont even know which version i played all that time ago ^^
It's really interesting to hear how Elden Ring landed with you - it was the first Souls game that I properly got into, so it felt absolutely obnoxiously inscrutable to me! So I'm probably never going to play these, but I appreciate hearing why some people, such as yourself, find them so enthralling.
Hey, you got the Souls experience and that's a great thing!
Brilliant idea drawing a connection between From Software's games and The Void. Also, if you don't have already, you might want to try "Cultist Simulator", a game with a similar approach. You have to find out the game mechanics and the lore and the story for yourself.
It's on my list!
This was excellent
My experience with Dark Souls is very similar to my experience going through the ouvre of my favorite author, Gene Wolfe, over the past six or seven years. At first both are completely inscrutable, but eventually you learn how to play dark souls games and you learn how to read Gene Wolfe books. It's a skill you develop over time. While something is lost in the learning, as you say, it's also really cool to look back and say, "I now deeply understand the very unique and weird way this other human being creates art." You have a skill, and to some degree knowledge about another person you've never met. I don't know what Gene Wolfe is like as a friend or a husband, but I can definitely tell you some things I KNOW he's interested in and would love to talk about if you got him started.
I don't think I would've gotten pulled into either in the first place if I didn't intuit that understanding was possible, given time. Nothing can give you that feeling forever, and I think it's unfair to expect it considering it wasn't really the goal of either Miyazaki or Gene Wolfe to be confusing on purpose, they were just making art the way they knew how. To expect them to make art a completely different way, that is equally as alienating and mysterious, is unrealistic. My guess is gonna be that if the souls formula stops selling and FromSoft has to do something wildly different, it's going to be a massive failure unless Miyazaki has nothing to do with it. I can't think of any author I've ever read that doesn't have an identifiable and learnable style. No human is truly a chameleon. A Neil Gaiman book is a Neil Gaiman book. A Gene Wolfe book is a Gene Wolfe book. A Miyazaki game is a Miyazaki game.
And yet Pathologic and The Void, for example, are extremely different from each other despite both being undeniably "Ice Pick Lodge" games. I have no doubt that Miyazaki could, if he wanted to, make a wildly different game that was still a "Miyazaki game".
Well yup, this video was exactly as cool as I thought it would be! Also good to know how Starseed actually ends, because even the starting levels were far beyond my ability to comprehend lol. But I *did* get to have the revelation you describe, at the very least! ^w^
And the Void is just a whole thing in itself, of course. Near impossible to coherently theorise for, but my goodness, what imagery it has! In any case, thank you for the great video! ^w^
Ha ha glad I delivered :) You're the best!
I always love hearing you talk about games. I really need to leave my triple A bubble and try some of these. Hopefully, I can find the patience to play them haha.
Makes me want to play those games and put more thought into my experiences with games. Fantastic as usual!
excellent video as always. I like how you think and articulate those thoughts in ways I had never considered :)
Thanks as always for your support
perfect I just started playing the void justvtge other day :D
Stay strong my friend
This was beautifully written. I can appreciate your desire for mystery as you play games, but this video did not convince me to give Starseed Pilgrim another shot. 😁
Well I ruined it for you anyway now didn't I ;)
@@PixelaDay Nah. It’s all in the playing for me 🙂
I haven't thought abot The Void in a long time. :D
I tried it and although it was very cool, I gave up on it pretty quickly. I just couldn't figure out any way to survive.
I wouldn't worry about it too much. Once you get over the initial hurdle with The Void it's actually not that hard to stay alive. The main issue is that actually finishing it is an altogether different story (no pun intended). The beginning where you have almost no colour is more of an exception though.
There's a Matthewmattosis video about Fromsoft starting to just go through the motions with Souls, and there is a quote vrom it that really stuck with me: "Eventually what we'll end up with is a generic blob of a game, liked by everyone, and beloved by no one."
I have yet to play it, but ER sounds like that game to me.
plenty of people love ER
Matthewmatosis clearly underestimated how much people love playing the same FromSoft game over and over
@@PixelaDay I have been hearing some people talking about being burned out on SoulBournes recently.
Otherwise I think it might have something to do with how much people enjoy these games for just combat and challenge. Perhaps for them it's more about getting another really hard game to conquer rather than something truly different.
Well he was wrong
Don't you dare go hollow.
Too late XD
im confused about the "surprise" at 7:37. I feel like how the game works wasn't described clearly enough to understand what the revelation is and the revalation itself isn't really explained either
I was wondering the same thing myself. I realised when writing the script that explaining how Starseed Pilgrim works is super duper hard as it's such a weird ass game and the "surprise" hinges on knowing the difference between the levels and the hub world which looks so similar on footage!
@@PixelaDay cool cool, interesting problem :)
Did yoy know that the russian version of The Void (called Tension) is almost a completely different game? The writing is so much better and mechanics and progression are tweaked. There is a pinned discussion on Steam describing how to get it, have fun and great video, as always!
I can't find much about the original version, Tension is a much better title though! If you've found interesting info about the OG version do share.
Man, I would like to help you but youtube doesn't let me leave a comment for some reason! I suspect it's because I was referencing other websites
The way you describe Elden Ring is how I'm experiencing Tears of the Kingdom. Thanks for the tips!!
You're welcome
Ack, I love Starseed Pilgrim but haven't heard of The Void! I guess: brb, going to play the void, can't wait to watch this when I'm done?
See you in 20-30 years
This is so well crafted, I'm stumped at just how much of this video feels special, yet still... normal? It's clearly told, and it's just overviews of a few games with a central thesis that's laid out immediately. That's probably why I felt it was short, though I was grabbed by it for whole 25 minutes. But it still feels so mysterious that I was watching with intent. Was it the chapter titles? The games themselves? The little editting choices to accomodate the game visuals? What will be brought up next?
I think I might buy Starseed Pilgrim and The Void. I wish I didn't have so much on my gaming plate, but damn, this game I never heard about, and this game I only heard rumors about are so much more compelling than my still ongoing Elden Ring playthrough that I begrudgingly re-installed throughout the year.
This is such a great comment to receive! Thanks, you've made my day :)
I have played both games and most SoulsBorne games, but I never got into either Starseed, or Void.
I think it is because both games feature time pressure. It was frustrating for me to play these games, because they punish me for not knowing and they punish me for taking time to learn.
Demon's Souls let me go at my own pace. Sure, many people never heard of either game, but I can imagine many that tried them and found them frustrating in a way that wasn't fun.
Do you know that more you know the more you know?
I just started watching, but I'm already seeing a parallel between your time with Elden Ring and your time with Ghosts of Tsushima. 🙂
I just want AAA devs to stop making the same game
It's funny to think about: as a fan of Morrowind I absolutely hate Skyrim for the the same reasons I love Elden Ring but had serious trouble getting into Dark Souls 1.
I keep hearing good things about Fear & Hunger, seems like it has a similar "the world hates you and won't explain itself to you easily" vibe as the older Souls games and The Void gave us.
⬛🐇⬛ Love it.
🐇🐇🐇
AAA studios not making the same open world game over and over challenge: Impossible