In Search of Mystery
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- Опубліковано 29 чер 2024
- What is it about certain games that makes them “mysterious” - strange, enthralling, and unknowable?
Patreon: patreon.com/pixeladay
Twitter: @pixel_a_day
Transcript: bit.ly/pixeladay_mysterytrans...
We Are Explorers by Tevis Thompson: tevisthompson.com/we-are-explo...
The Final Fantasy VII Letters: www.pastemagazine.com/games/f...
Thank you to GC Vazquez, Chris Franklin (Errant Signal) and Evelynn (i am error) for providing their voices. Here are their channels:
/ gcvazquez
/ errantsignal
/ iamerror
All game footage capped by me, except for a few bits and pieces, so thank you to:
SilphSpectre for Pokemon Red & Blue footage
LPDarkSoulsHD for Abyss footage
IGN for Ocarina of Time speedrun
Weegee for SM64 speedrun
Music used in this episode:
No Mercy - Ilan Eshkeri
Prologue - Kow Otani
On That Day, Five Years Ago - Nobuo Uematsu
Divine Beast Vah Ruta - Manaka Kataoka, Yasuaki Iwata, and Hajime Wakai
Firelink Shrine - Motoi Sakuraba
Lovely Arps - James Primate
Sundown Theme - James Primate
Twyrin - Vasily Kashnikov
Synopsis XG Mix - Vasily Kashnikov
The Prettiest Weed - Jim Guthrie
Intro (0:00)
Hidden Things (04:17)
Strange Places (13:10)
A Living World (19:17)
An Endless Search (23:42) - Ігри
Seeing the PS2 version and remake of Shadow of the Colossus side by side was a little shocking in how much less visually interesting the newer version was.
the devs at bluepoint are obviously technically gifted, but both the sotc and especially the demon's souls remake look painfully bland compared to their originals. however, since the vast majority think the remakes look good, sony and microsoft are probably funding more cult classics to be remade with butchered art styles for the sake of showing off their console's graphical prowess.
Right - the uneven framerate issues and bloom combine with the fact that none of this is really explained to make it feel like you’re walking around in a dream.
I was sent by Adam Millard-the architect of games and i am so glad he sent me because after binging some of your content i found one of my newest favourite content creators and am eagerly awaiting the next upload. Keep up the good work 👏👏
I'm so glad Adam recommended Kat's channel. She's been a favorite of mine for about a year and a half, and became my favorite once I watched all her videos. She deserves more subs, more views, more patreon subscribers.
same here :D
Same!
After watching this video, I STRONGLY recommend the game Tunic to anyone looking for a game invoking a sense of mystery. It is genuinely amazing and still has me thinking about its world. It really feels like the game world wasn't made for you, including almost all of in game text being in a cryptic language. At first look it can seem like a simple zelda tribute, but very quickly you realize that there is much more to it. Playing, you always have a feeling that you've only scratched the surface. It has a lot of moments like "wait, I could always do that?" similar to what I felt playing Outer Wilds, and by the end you notice that actually you're playing a puzzle game instead of a slasher. Tunic's world is full of secrets at every step and watching this video I was just screaming "please mention Tunic I beg you". It fits most of descriptions of mystery mentioned in this video.
Please don't look up anything about the game and just play it. Trust me (a random stranger on the internet that doesn't know what you like).
Also it is free on Game Pass so if you own it you have no excuse not to play it
Haha I haven't played it yet but I'm psyched to!
Finished watching the video and literally just scrolled down to ensure that Tunic was being recommended. I was almost shocked that it wasn't the impetus of the video; it so perfectly captures all of the qualities that this video essay describes. I genuinely think it would be worth making a follow up video.
Well I'm sold. Thanks for the rec!
One of my favourite things is when I feel like the game trusts me as the player enough to leave some things unsaid or unexplained. That in itself is more of an invitation than making sure everything is obvious.
I hear you! I appreciate that so much in From Software games.
Mystery is sometimes done by accident, by limitations, and always by withholding information. I remember playing Library of Ruina, and feeling a overwhelming sense that my character was not all he appeared to be, the world was much larger than i could imagine but i havent finished it, because much like its world it is hard and complicated, but i do want to continue.
I'm surprised P.T. didn't come up in this discussion, considering that its nature as a teaser for a game that ended up being canceled, and its removal from online stores, means that it may very well remain the most mysterious game that we'll ever likely see.
I think you’ve made me finally understand why I hate finishing games, books and TV series.
I will always leave one episode or a few pages and with games I will put them down before the end the majority of the time. I don’t like the feeling it’s finished. I prefer to have the idea there’s so much more there to uncover.
This makes a lot of sense and you’ve captured it really well here. Thank you!
I had the same experience with Skyrim that you had with Tsushima.
Having cleared out a dungeon and stepping out back into the world, as I saw the vista they'd laid out before me I immediately knew that I was done. I had seen very little of the plot, but I knew the mechanics, the style, the flow and rhythm of the game, and my brain said 'We're done here'.
I was fortunate enough to recognize what it was that I felt in the moment, though it was oddly a little sad; I knew there was a lot more of the game to see, but I was immediately certain that I had no interest in seeing it, and I quietly mourned the enjoyment that I knew was over. Never been back since.
Skyrim's probably the last open world game I truly loved, way back when I wasn't yet completely jaded and bored of open world games...
@@PixelaDay not breath of the wild?
I think you've just made me fully realise why Skyrim never clicked with me. I don't think it's bad by any means, but I always described my issues with it being a lack of depth or authentic feeling world, however I don't think those are quite accurate. That feeling of mystery and a world that has more to it than your presence in it are definitely traits I long for in games, and this video has really made that clear to me. I'm sure different mysterious elements of different games speak to different people though!
@@jp9707 not Breath of the Wild obvs :)
The humongous difference between something like Tsushima and Skyrim is that the latter has a billion maximally creative mods that can turn it into the undisputable best game of all time IF you put in the work to make it so.
I've recently started playing Rain World, and that game has really captured my imagination as far as mystery. It's so difficult and esoteric, I'm obsessed!
Shout out to The Void @10:26. That game is dripping with mystery and atmosphere.
I always wondered why games felt so much more mysterious when I was younger, as if there was a whole world there and I could only glimpse a bit of it. It’s a feeling I still have with older games but rarely with newer ones. This video really is great at highlighting why I felt like that.
In terms of deliberately-obscure mechanics and a world that doesn't go out of its way to explain itself, what immediately springs to mind is Cultist Simulator. For me it has the added bonus that even after figuring out a lot about how it works, it has this sort of meditative-yet-driven rhythm to it that keeps me coming back.
This is a pristine crystallization of concepts I didn't know were missing from my own work, but are desperately needed. Thank you very much.
piano cat is the greatest mystery of them all
This feeling, to me, is one of the most powerful things that games can bring. I continuously say that I wish I could wipe my memory of having played Outer Wilds, for example, just so that I can experience the wonder and mystery from the beginning all over again. And it's one of the reason that Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor is one of my favorite games: its esoteric rules, the magic of not knowing whether or not praying to the goddesses actually does anything (and relatedly, the way the game naturally leads you to develop your own luck rituals just based on a feeling), and the ending of the game that makes it SO CLEAR that you are not a hero, you are simply here. Could I go and reverse-engineer the code and try and figure this out? Maybe. But I don't want to! Inhabiting that mystery is what makes it so compelling and memorable, and makes the experience so hard to shake.
I'm so pleased at your choice of examples and thoughtful investigation of this feeling that is so hard to put into words!
Someone else mentioned this game in the comments and now I have purchased it! Thanks for the lovely comment :)
Planescape: Torment is a perfect example. I'm glad it got recognition here. I would also cite other Black Isle games (and crpgs in general) including Fallout 1 & 2. The mystery always pulls me back in. I'm always left with the feeling that there is something more to discover. Some secret the game is hiding, waiting for me to find.
This is what I really like about the monster hunter games before world and half life. Both inspire my imagination so much that I never get tired of them
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
I'm so glad there are others that prefer the original aesthetic of Shadow of the Colossus. You hit the nail on the head with everything it pulled off so long ago that a lot of new games don't.
The opening quote Stefan Zweig reminded me of Finnish poet Aaro Hellaakoski. He wrote "Tietä käyden tien on vanki. Vapaa on vain umpihanki." which roughly translates to "By walking a road, one is imprisoned by it. Only unbroken snow can offer freedom."
Nobody mentioned Noita yet? That's a game that embodies 'mystery' down through every atom of its being. The gameplay is a process of solving mysteries, the goals of the game are a mystery, and buried deep within are mysteries that players are all working together to solve to this day. Even though the game is translated into English, all entity names are left in Finnish, because why rob English-speaking players of the process of trying to learn what these names mean? It's one of the most player-hostile games I've ever played, yet I'm so enamored with it.
I came because of Adam Millard mentioning your channel in his latest video. And I stayed for the great content. Keep up the amazing work! Your channel will hopefully grow a lot in the future.
It will if you spread the word! ☺️
Loved this one! Mystery is such an important part of storytelling. I read somewhere once that all great first lines are little mysteries, a sentence that makes you say, “wait, run that by me again?”
Really resonated with the parts discussing how older games had that ethereal and mysterious feel to them - the desire to conceive every part of a thing is deeply human, like water seeking the shape of its container. However the beauty is often in the negative space - the Christmas present under the tree is most exciting before it’s opened, the monster in the movie is scariest before it’s revealed.
If you’ve never read the writer China Mieville, you might want to check his novels out - he will write these incredible novels in deeply realized fictional worlds, but each one is unique, and he rarely writes two stories in the same world. he’s spoken openly about how he feels the art that is most beautiful is that which knows where to hold itself back, and I think this carries over to games as well.
Cheers and thanks for a great vid!!
China is probably my favourite modern sci-fi writer
So, my absolute #1 favorite game of all time, the greatest game that exists and that ever will exist, is Fallout: New Vegas. Something that's struck me is that part of the beauty of F:NV is how the developers found artistic ways to use hardware limitations at the time to their advantage. They really managed to embody the soul-crushing hopelessness and desperation of a post-apocalyptic Southwest USA desert through a creative use of hardware limitations. For all the (rightly-deserved) praise I've heard about F:NV, I never hear anybody talk about that part of the game.
Hey there! Came here from Adam Miller. I watched the whole video and enjoyed it. I especially appreciated when you kept it real and mentioned that some of older games' looks might have been due to technical limitations.
How dare you verbalise so succinctly my own thoughts and feelings? ;)
Also, this made me realise that I like older and/or more experimental films more often than modern ones due to the same principle. Or, at least, such mysterious films were more mainstream / easier to find back in the day. Ones that leave things unsaid, open to interpretation. It's on of the reasons I hate happy endings - they leave nothing to mystery.
This brings me back to the comment I left on one of your older videos - the affliction that turned people into zombies in "28 Days Later", how it's left unexplained, only vaguely described as "rage"... who made it and how? for what purpose? how does it work? Oh, there it is, the frisson of mystery...
Not to get too "old person yelling at clouds" but yeah I'm 100% with you XD God forbid we aren't explicitly shown that Darth Vader used a shuttle to get from one place to another, how could the audience possibly put two and two together themselves. And the kids these days, and get off my lawn, and so on and so forth.
@@PixelaDay haha, I'm observing with horror how I don't even notice myself turning into An Old Person! But that's why I rephrased it as "easier to find". As far as mysterious indie games go specifically, though, there's quite a selection of them I think.
For me, it's Disco Elysium.
Apart from the fact that I'm not literate
enough for many topics that the Game raises.
What really fascinates me is that unknown of the game world and everything it implies.
Where you have the feeling that you are only seeing a fraction of the game.
From the world itself that consists of vast continents of matter - isolas.
To the factions, (in particular the moralist international)
To the absolutely profound and rich Lore of the game.
To the 24 skills.
Where every thought has its own motivation and also its own story.
I was particularly impressed by shivers with his metaphoric reference to the game world.
Of course The Pale. Although you see very little about it, the story behind it has challenged my imagination so much. That this revelation on its own is one of my all time favorite gaming moments.
And then there's also the insulindian phasmid.
The game has an outstanding well-written main story. But I find what's happening in the background even more exciting.
Yes, disco elysium is definitely very high up when i think about Mystery and how you perceive it.
Disco Elysium is hardcore to the mega! Don't forget my favorite moment: ua-cam.com/video/iXyOyTneAK4/v-deo.html
Yes! Absolutely!
I would say that the gameplay itself can also hold that feeling of endless mystery. There are games I've spent hundreds of hours with, and I still don't feel like I've fully grasped what is possible within all the mechanics and systems.
I got the feeling of mystery and often hostility the first time I played Hollow Knight. Even after several playthroughs and reading and watching many comments and attempts at explaining everything, the world still eludes complete understanding. It is my favorite game of all time for a reason.
I had never considered that the mystery is part of the appeal until watching this video. Thank you for your insightful thoughts. What I have put into words is the sense of exploration, which kind of go hand in hand with mystery.
On a related note, this may help explain why I stopped playing Horizon: Zero dawn when I got to the main line quest that explained everything. Once I had that understanding, I no longer cared enough to go fight the rogue AI or whatever. My interest in the game world was in its past. I was much less interested in its present woes.
So glad I stumbled upon your channel. This is a beautiful essay, the sort of stuff that inspires me to create, looking forward to spending the next few weeks watching the rest of your stuff 👌
Welcome to the channel, I hope you like it here :)
i think what augments the mystery in these games are the intricate level designs and a complex world. Many of modern titles tend to revolve around an interesting protagonist in an uninteresting, shallow world. The development resources are spent on making the playable character complex e.g. (spiderman, shadow of war) while sacrificing the actual game you interact with. They give you so many different tools for one job and enemy varieties tend to suffer greatly, and the world uninteresting as a consequence.
The control scheme bit in the video was spot on, just wanted to add another point on top of the immersion aspect.
Banger video btw
Absolutely captivating video.
One other aspect that’s worth highlighting here is music. Sound is an element that is equally as important, and can even elevate that sense of mystery beyond what visuals can accomplish alone. The most alluring moment I’ve found myself in recently was back in February, when I gave a (very brief) go at the Bloodborne PSX demake. I’ve played through the entire Dark Souls trilogy, but none of the areas in all those games, from what I can remember, matched the sensation that I got from the Hunter’s Dream. And it’s because of the theme that plays in that area: that song which seems peaceful, but also eerily melancholic. (It was also made more alluring by the fact that I was going through a lot mentally, at the time, worrying about the uncertainty of my own “journey” in life; that mood resonated with the types of emotions I was experiencing outside the game, too.)
I’m hoping to play through it fully sometime soon, and of course the actual Bloodborne eventually. Exploration is one of my most favorite parts of video games, and I’m a big fan of many of the games in this video: Souls, Rain World, Hollow Knight. They’ve ranked among the top best games I’ve ever experienced, in no small part thanks to the sense of wonder I got from discovering their worlds. I’ve also been looking heavily toward Metroid and Zelda, now - two series that, despite growing up a Nintendo kid, I seriously missed out on. Stuff like the Prime trilogy, Twilight Princess, and Breath of the Wild all seem to greatly reflect much of what you’ve talked about here.
the rot "mechanic" in senuas sacrifice is a thing that i intentionally keep a mistery for me. i am pretty sure it does not really exist, but i wont look it up, because the uncertainty is such a great addition to the tone of the game :)
Haha don’t watch my Ninja Theory video!
@@PixelaDay dang, that advice came a few hours too late xD
The thing that made me instantly suspect that the mechanic is not real was the fact that the text describing it is directly followed up by the narrator voice saying "the hardest battles are fought in the mind". but i noticed what they were trying to do, so i went with it ^^
Assassin's Creed lore (especially the "modern day storyline") has become such a tangled web of dropped plot threads, ambiguity and half-truths told by self-interested aliens and madmen that it now offers a similar feeling of mystery that you have described. It's amazing to me that you can get such a feeling from such a mechanically simple game series even if the plot threads knots have thickened so much as to become Gordian.
Holy crap this is an amazing video. Really hit me right in the feels in a way I can't explain
After watching a lot of video game essays most of them have become formulaic and boring because they focus on a lot of surface level concepts and cover themes a lot of people have thought about.
This video is really a breath of fresh air, amazingly put together!
EDIT: Also, it sounds like you'd love Yoko Taro's games (starting with Nier)
great video! probably not a popular pick but I love the mystery of the Life is Strange; so much insanity stems from an event that's never explained in game at all.
I really enjoyed this video, and appreciate the clarity it brought to the idea of mystery in games. Ironically I am the exact opposite kind of person where I enjoy the mystery solved, the story fully concluded. I prefer the definitive but I must respect the sense of wonder and the enjoyment that comes when a game has this kind of mystery.
loved this video, i actually started playing shadow of the colossus this month, and it's easily my favorite game of all time.
Older games really did resist the player, holding back their mysteries.
your videos make me think about jacob geller (that's like saying "this game is as good as dark souls") , great videos, i am so happy to be here to see it
Really terrific video, this is the elusive factor of all my favorite games… that and scope of lore
Like dark souls, Xenogears, or Vagrant Story: the sense that there is a real tangible world with history and hidden secrets. Both emphasized by gameplay and atmosphere and lore
Other than those three, my favorite games with mystery have to be BotW and Subnautica and the Forest. All three made exploring the world feel genuinely dangerous and risky. Also, obviously minecraft.
I think there’s nothing more compelling, as mystery in games. And it’s what makes me wish I could forget everything about Bloodborne, Subnautica, and Breath of the Wild
Xenogears and Vagrant story. These absolutely.
@@mournsfortrees hell yeah, I adore these games. I must've replayed Xenogears 5 times over the years.
Great video. That overwhelming sense of mystery that some games provide really is enough to keep going often in the face of a game that sometimes feels like it doesn't want you to. Things like Rain World and Pathologic often give the sense that they push back against the player in a way that other games really don't and the senses that creates just makes for such a unique experience that games without it can never achieve, like the idea that the game doesn't want you to succeed compels you deeper in.
I am late but I would like to mention a game called “Hyperforma” it’s an interesting game that I won’t bother explaining (because I can’t really)and one that you should play yourself.However,when I played through the game, it skipped ALL THE CUTSCENES due to what is likely a bug. I didn’t even get to make the final choice to decide the ending for the game (It automatically choose the good ending).So I thought I was just cracking ancient code and stuff and the only pieces of information I got were the story bits from the keys and the protagonists odd remarks.Which made me experience the game in a very different perspective and made the game (which already had obscure and mind bending gameplay) into an incredibly mysterious experience.And I honestly wish that I didn’t even know about the dialogue.
Thanks so much for the recommend! 🙏
If anyone is looking for a horror game with this allusive mystery, I'd direct you to "No One Lives Under The Lighthouse" for it's limited sight range and simple controls. For more spoiler filled reasons too
I can't believe you have less than 100k subscribers? Your content is on par with the biggest creators on youtube!
Thank you! UA-cam success is more of a roulette wheel than you'll ever know.
Great analysis. This is why I love STALKER Anomaly, Rainworld and Outer Wilds.
Definitely agree with the lack of mystery in Ghost of Tsushima. I stopped doing all side stuff the moment I recognised that I was entering the exact same house over and over in different parts of the map. It didn't feel rewarding to explore, because as you say, it's always the same things.
This sense of mystery is a big part of why Control was so aggressively my Game of the Year in 2019, because it was deliberately obtuse and weird, and I keep thinking about it to this day. Hell, it was only yesterday I was thinking over some theories I have about it. And my second favourite game of that year is Disco Elysium, another game that asks a lot of questions and refuses to provide many answers, and arguably my favourite of this year so far is Tunic, another game that revels in obscuring info (often behind a weird cipher language) and making you figure stuff out for yourself, without ever really explaining anything. So clearly there's a theme going on here!
So happy to find another rain world lover! It's one of my favourite games and it is so under appreciated and misunderstood it genuinely upsets me
E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy. Finished it like a dozen times. I had literally zero idea what is going on for the first two playthroughs (which both failed miserably) and tbh still understand not very much more. I even bailed and left the game for about a year because it is so strange and hard for new players, but i kept thinking of it and at some point just had to revisit to get hooked for good. Story, locations, game mechanics, characters, sounds, cryptic languages - Mysterious.
Your way of speaking about the various ways Mystery and the want to know and to have unknown was nothing short of evocative, amazing essay and will be watching as many of yours as I can in days to come
Oh, that moment when "On That Day, Five Years Ago" started to sound, and the "Hello, hello!" label appeared on screen... I played FF7 a few months after its release, for many years it was my favorite game of all time... until I took the plunge and played Silent Hill 2 a few years after release, and then again jumped into the abyss and played Dark Souls 1 many years after its release.
Welcome back, Kat! I missed you.
My love for mystery, as you describe it here, started long, long before FF7. It started with Super Metroid, a game with heavy environmental story-telling in an era when that was not even thought about. I was 13, almost 14, when it released. My mom rented it for me, I played it from start to finish three or four times, each time rented. Then I saved money and purchased my own copy. There was something about this game no other game ever had shown to me. First, the graphics. Simple, almost NES-like looking, but evocative. The textures talk about dark tunnels and oppressiveness. I don't need realistic or high graphical fidelity, these abstract pixels carry more emotion and meaning than the sterile hyperrealism pursuit of only three years later games. Then the music. Lo-fi, opaque (if that's an adjective that can be used here; I mean, it sounds muffled, like a cassette recorded from a cassette recorded from a cassette), the music is equally evocative. You don't need a whole, real orchestra, the music feels like an orchestra (just like DOOM midis music sounds like thrash metal). Finally, the solitude. The focus of the game is exploration, not combat, not platforming, even when it contains both. There are long corridors either empty (of enemies) or with just minor monsters that don't pose a danger. Super Metroid was a very personal experience, and to this day, I sometimes dream I'm playing the game.
Recently, they released or announced (not sure what) a book containing the explanation of Dark Souls. The blurbs and ads say this is the official truth about these games, and I don't want to read that book, and feel sad it exists. If it's true it contains all the answers, and these are official, then this book will be the death of these games, because if these games are so much alive more than a decade after release, it's precisely because their mystery, their opaqueness. Every theory we formulate or read, is speculation, more or less informed, but speculation nonetheless. I want to explore the world of Dark Souls and learn things, as long as it keeps being mysterious and unexplorable, infinitely wild, unsurveyed, unfathomable. Never-ending.
Some games I love because their mystery:
-Syberia
-Blasphemous
-Momodora Reverie Under the Moonlight
-The Last Door
-The Last Door 2
-Journey
-Quake
-DUSK
-DOOM
-DOOM II
-Disco Elysium
-Dead Cells
-Death Trash (beta, no full release yet)
-Dark Souls
-Dark Souls 2
-Silent Hill
-Silent Hill 2
-Silent Hill 3
-Super Metroid
I've seen a Dark Souls book announced, but it's fan-made, which would just make it a book version of the Dark Souls lore wiki. I agree if a "definitive/official canon" book of Dark Souls lore ever got made, it would be a sad day.
I am so ready for more Death Trash content. I'm glad they're fleshing out the alpha area, but I'm chomping at the bit for more of that world.
This! 100% this. I'd never thought about games in this way before now, but now I know why I've dropped every game I've dropped, and what I love most about the ones I love (Rain World is my favourite game of all time, finish it if you ever feel the urge to. It goes some wild places). Thank you
Eyyy two of my favourite UA-camrs in one video. Awesome that you got ES to voice that quote
He was very nice to agree :)
Holy crap. Great essay and channel here. Pinpointing why I can't return to Horizon Zero Dawn at the moment, why I almost didn't finished Ghost of Tsushima, and so on with every open world game... Thanks for this great content ! Art talking about Art !
What a wonderful video. Sorry, nothing left to add. What a wonderful, insightful video.
Beautiful video. I found it funny seeing Tevis Thompson's comment about mystery being the opposite of mastery, because a lot of the games that really stuck with me are the ones where the first gave way to the second.
I can't see myself replaying games like Gone Home, where unraveling what happened is the whole deal, but Dark Souls is an experience I still come back to because, even after hundreds of hours of spent playing the game (and almost as many spent watching every video essay on it ever) the feeling of "gitting gud" in the face of such a cryptic and unwelcoming world never went away.
The main reason, I think, Dark Souls is mysterious, is the opaqueness of its narrative. What does the game mean? What are the facts? Is Solaire a child of Gwyn? Is Ornstein real or another Illusion? The game is not that hard as people who haven't played it think it is, but if you consider the story part of the game, the it's brutally hard, because it never can be finished, so to say.
Love the voice cameos from some some other great youtubers! Something more gamey that still felt like I was only scratching the surface of what was there was Spiral Knights. Its weird to think of an MMO that is really mysterious but between 'secrets hidden in the core of the planet' and the way the procedural dungeon delving worked together always had me looking for things scattered outside the play map.
Gave me some Blair Witch vibes with the slow tracking of the trees. Only for me to gaze at that QR code. I'll never look it up, only believing in the what could have been.
My cousin sent me this video last week, and it was one of the best content about gaming i've seen. Some games that had some mystery vibe in the way you speak are Ocarina of Time, Okami, and believe or not Dead Cells. I don't have much will to live nowadays, because gaming was my last passion, and don't have much feelings now, sometimes i even think about su1c1de, but knowing there will be more unknown stuff like games like those is a thought that keeps me alive. Thanks for the reflection, dear, keep doing your amazing videos.
Thanks, that means so much! And thanks for your vulnerability. Hang in there, you're a valuable part of the Pixel a Day community
This is incredibly well discussed and I see myself sharing this video for years to come.
Thank you!
Really loved this video. I've been writing about similar feelings lately, and my interest continues. I have recently come to terms with the idea that I almost prefer unfinished things, even TV shows or stories that have a sort of non-ending that refuses to give a version of "happily ever after" whatever it looks like. This is an interesting and refreshing perspective on these ideas and concepts and has really stoked the fires of conversation within my own mind.
I was happy to see a little snippet of Sunless Sea in this video. We never get the full information in so many of those stories, and I like that.
I don't know it Outer Wilds counts - the whole game is basically one big mystery, but getting to peel it back, layer by layer, as we repeated our time loops was such a special experience.
Loved this! Really crystallized a lot of stuff I've started to grapple with when it comes to the games I've loved most over the last few years. Subbed!
One of the most amazing video about games, I have ever seen! Great work!
Amazing, beautiful and well thought out video. It was a joy to watch - I love how you get deep into the things that actually turn video games into art and not just interactive entertainment.
Very amazing video, your work is extremely underrated. I've found myself multiple times with feelings like this over some games and worlds, unable to describe or understand why I found them so compelling or interesting or some sort of feeling that I couldn't quite understand myself. Outer wilds still somewhat evokes this feeling in me, even knowing of basically every detail in the game sometimes I just find myself wandering space in my little ship. Beautiful video, can't wait for the next one
REALLY good video! You're my favorite videogame analysis channel.
Heaven's vault is the most mysterious game I've played. It's not very well known, and I wonder if it adds to the mystery by not being mapped as soulsborne are, or subtracts by there being secrets no one has ever found. The main mechanic is literally deciphering an ancient language, and even when characters finally tell you that yes, that is the correct translation, you are never really sure: there are some irregularities that may be just irregularities of a language, or just a mistake by the developers, BUT they may also be something more. Are you supposed to notice? Are you supposed to find out?
The story is not only a mystery by design, but it is branching, going in circles and wrapping on itself not unlike the game's rivers. To exacerbate, for an adventure game there is a very minimalistic dialog system, the player never controls what the protagonist says. The player is more of an observer, really, only capable of suggesting a choice between alternatives neither of which they understand.
The graphics are... strange? Everyone looks a ghost of themselves, and the protagonist leaves faint afterimages with every move. It could just be a stylistic choice, but is it really? Or is the cycle religion you know for a fact is fake actually true? Are you a ghost, aware before your time, carried about by the rivers? Is there being no one but you out there a technical limitation or a deliberate choice? Is the whole game a giant metaphor for Sansara or Purgatory? It is the first game where the very existence of a new game+ button can produce an epiphany and cause one to question if they understood anything at all.
I came to the comments to suggest Heavens Vault as well. I genuinely love this weird game.
Finally got the game a few days ago. Yeah you're right
amazing video. Your passion for this art form really shows, love your videos
Awesome video! Keep up the great work.
very glad adam millard sent me here! one video and i've already subscribed, excellent work.
i'm currently playing through the witcher 3 (bit late to the party, I know), and sable. i think sable really nails this sense of mystery. it delights in giving you half-answers, its architecture, aesthetic, and sound design are all wonderfully strange, and it's got me totally hooked even though i've only put a couple of hours into it and the performance on my old xbox one is godawful.
i'm thoroughly enjoying the witcher too. i think its world, combat, and enemy design makes it more 'knowable' on a minute-to-minute level, but some of the choices i've had to make- most notably the demon under the tree- genuinely had me stuck for long stretches of time, doubling back to make sure i had all the information and never satisfied that i was in full possession of the facts. i can't wait to see what the ramifications of my decisions are!
this overarching sense of mystery in the witcher's story is really interesting, and i wondered if you were going to discuss a similar concept here. in dishonoured it was pretty clear what high and low chaos choices meant, and in mass effect 2 paragon and renegade, while fun, often seemed to do broadly the same thing. i've not finished the witcher yet, but its cruxes felt much more impactful- i just hope the ending bears that out!
Fantastic comment! I did consider branching stories as sources of mystery but ultimately I don't think they generally lead to the kind of enduring mystery I'm talking about here - as soon as the options/consequences are all discovered and laid out, the mystery is dead. But I'd be keen to hear examples where this maybe isn't the case!
@@PixelaDay that's a really good point, should have thought about that!! I guess the mystery I was talking about is more of a one-time thing, and any subsequent replays // game endings which lay everything out a la A Way Out // enthusiastic wiki communities kill it thereafter. sorry, by the way- wasn't meaning to imply that your video was any the lesser for not including this angle! i can totally see how it doesn't fit
i honestly can't think of any examples of branching stories which manage to maintain that lack of sense of mystery to the end (maybe it doesn't make for a satisfying conclusion?), but surely there must be some out there. it's such a human thing to make a call without being in full possession of the facts, and then to never know how things could have gone differently- i'll have to see if i can find a game which does that, because I think it would be really interesting in an interactive medium
I always love seeing Rain World appear. It's one of those games that holds a special place in my heart. The floppiness of the controls is so different to most other games over played, but once you 'get' the movement mechanics and how to make it flow, you can do some really amazing traversal across the map.
I would say that Nier Automata is a kind of game that has mystery in gameplay and narrative. In 19:18, when the music from Rain World came in it really, like really hit me, they just so masterfully handle music. It is so scarce, but when it kicks in you stop and marvel at the world before you.
This is a really cool and lovely video, and I think you really nailed why I often drop off so easily from games as well - once I no longer am wondering what will be revealed or develop in a game, I often lose interest very quickly. Of course, if the game *ends* shortly after that point, that is ideal...but most of the time, it isn't.
Great work! Now excuse me while I go back to working on more of the dark secrets of Piano Cat...
What piano cat I have no idea what you mean :p
I had been wondering why after playing all 3 Witcher games, for some reason the clunky Witcher 1 feels the most special to me. It's not even an open world game but somehow it felt open.
Another wonderful video! I found myself nodding along with plenty of your arguments in this - I think you've efficiently established why the deeply-engaging mystery of older games is so rarely achieved in modern AAA productions. Games like Sunless Sea/Sky and Cultist Simulator have the best mysterious worlds that I've experienced in recent times, and I think a lot of that has to do with the way they keep clear graphical depictions of their subject matter at arm's length.
This video is a masterpiece. Mystery is one of the main qualities I look in any kind of media. And it is not something that has to do with solving cases detective style. It's all about shifting your perspective while looking inside of an infinite black hole of opportunities. This extreme desire to reach for the unknown is embedded in our nature, we strive for mystery the same way we strive for sex, food and sleep. Our hunger for knowledge comes from that. And it is soo valuable in a world that has lost its ability to be amazed! Today we have all the answers! With both our scientific approach + the internet, we tend to encompass the entire universe under structures. But the universe is still a mystery, and the world is actually unknown. And that's why I love these games: they remind me of this fact. And they make me wonder, like when I was a child.
Thank you for reminding me of the biggest reason I play games and why I love muzles so much. I want to devour mysteries.
I recently went back and replayed Prey on Hard because I wanted to have to fight and hide in order to discover the mysteries aboard Talos-1 and after finishing the game 24 hours of play later I still didn't understand or know all the mysteries I immediately started a New Game+ on the hardest difficulty but I felt frustrated more than excited. I suppose that's because I secretly felt that I had learned enough unveiled enough of it's mysteries and that diving too deep would make it mundane.
That was such a good video, i've been playing rainworld recently, and i had similar thoughts while playing, I wish more game studios realized how information restraint adds so much to the feeling of their game.
I personally also find the graphics in modern AAA games to be graphically overwhelming. Perfection can be exhausting to look at when it's all the time. You don't get a lull and then occasionally the suprise of a beautiful new vista; every shot in these games is full of colour and detail. It overloads my brain.
Graphics from ten years ago and before are comforting. I'm thinking of Skyrim, and Far Cry 3 - you know you're playing a video game, it looks like one. I've realised that I love the flaws! Perhaps it's nostalgia.
@@jp9707 I'm totally on that with you! The overload of perfect shots don't make them special anymore.
This put into words a lot of what I like about some games
Rain World is a particularly interesting example of this, because the community is not just dedicated to exploring but also making new regions with new mysteries! So much so that the devs are working with modders to put out hundreds of new screens as official dlc. It's really cool to be surprised by a game all over again every time I load up some modded regions :')
Another great video and it fits so nicely with the topic of the last one!
It's so interesting to me, how there are so many mysterious games like Myst (lol) I enjoy, but I also can't get enough of the other extreme. Stacking advantages in my favor in rougelikes or rts games, exploiting predictable AI, making the most out of known variables in deck builders and factorio-style games. Huh, maybe there is a mystery in those games aswell. How do the players plans fare against other players or the game environments created by the devs.
To me, the allure of mystery are unanswered or even unanswerable questions.
Part of what draws me to speedrunning content as well as video essays about games, which always involve interpretation of the 'text'/medium/art are the questions:
How fast could one be? Can we do better? What does this game mean? How does it do this?
Looking for answers is pleasurable, and feels mysterious.
Ahhhh this is such a cool video!! Starting with "do not look for any mysteries" is such a good tease. I dont have enough time today to rewatch and really look for little details that may not be there but I'll definitely return soon! And damn this is such a well-written, thorough explanation of a feature of video games that I feel gives them *such* power as a storytelling medium. I also get off-put when games are too slick, too cleanly presented. The best games are crunchy, uneven, asymmetrical. You explore this idea beautifully and I added a couple of these games to my must-play list. I think the first game I can remember that left we with that longing for understanding an un-understandable world is probably Cave Story? And it's a feeling I'm experiencing right now as I finally play through Outer Wilds for the first time. Very, very cool video, your best yet in my opinion :)
Loved this so so much
Alien Isolation is also probably one of the mysterious games for me, due to it simply feeling like the alien is more than an AI, and Sevastapol is more than a space station - the station has a rich and evocative atmosphere that feels real in its consistency and quirks, and the xenomorph moves and acts in a way that doesn't feel artificial or human, but bizarre and unknowable. It's quite a flawed game in some aspects, with a story that drags on far too long, truly exhausting the player, and a crafting UI that is really unintuitive. But in some ways the flaws just make the whole experience feel more hostile and immersive, where the player begins to feel how exhausted the protagonist is, getting sick of the nightmare that won't end.
As a connoisseur of Puzzle Games, I find that Anais Nin quote to be particularly resonant. You briefly touch on, not by name but by way of visualization, the Myst series, which is the first game I can remember finding that sense of Mystery in. But Myst does lay its mysteries bare, it rewards reading through its library and turning over every nook and cranny accessible, piecing together the nature and purpose of these worlds... the whole Myst series gest caught in this exploration of explaining further and further the history and mechanics of Ages (to varying degrees of success and diminishing returns)
But therein lies my love for the Puzzle Game genre, or a subgenre, of puzzle games like Myst, that present you an intriguing location to explore and find the boundaries of and all the types of strange and fascinating interactions to be had within. Games like Obduction, Quern, Rhem, Sensorium, Antichamber, Slice of Sea, and especially Outer Wilds... these are games where the main draw IS unraveling the mystery of these places that seem so opaque and alien at first... where the reward IS Mastery over the Mysterious, where the at first seemingly disparate elements and mechanics you naturally uncovered through careful observation and experimentation lead to a grand realization or understanding of what your purpose is or how you can meaningfully effect your surroundings...
Maybe that is just me, and my goal/solution oriented mind drawn to lamp posts at the end of games.
Hi, I just wanted to hop in and say what a fantastic video this is. If you wish to further explore megastructures like in NaissanceE then I highly recommend the manga by Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei which was the primary influence for NaissanceE. It has striking art and the sense of scale is literally impossible to grasp.
Also a bit of advice, your microphone is highly picking up on "S"es, so i would run your recorded speech through a de-esser (there are free ones out there) or get another protection on your microphone. Anyway, this video was a joy to watch.
i think ghost of tsushima was such a good game, but one that i feel like i've been playing my entire adult life. it maybe just felt like the highest form of that style of game with the more sophisticated and intentional combat along with the outstanding graphics and interesting one-on-one duels, but between that, the game was one that i've already played nonetheless. and i didn't complete it, but most of what i predicted in the story would happen did, in fact, happen. so even the mystery of any narrative was lost there as well. it's not GoT's fault that's like that... i think it's a great game that just happened to come along a bit too late. i think it's one of the best examples of a game to, like, give your brother/sister-in-law for christmas if you know they like games but don't dig too deep into what's new. -- As far as mystery goes, i still really deeply love Control for the world they built and how few answers you get for a building that seems so ancient and ever-morphing, along with all the documents you find, etc, detailing a world and a series of possibilities that seem to reach so far beyond the surface.
I totally agree, GoT is a standard AAA open-world game but it's the best among them. I loved that combat is fast and brutal, I appreciated the loving insertions of Japanese words and cultural references, the writing and acting was awesome. I expected it to be cringey and it was just really nice.
haha when i started this vid i was like "she would like naissance" and then you mentioned, a game that fits this vibe that you would like however is "Hylics" and its sequel
I will look it up now! Thanks for the recommend
Kinda low-key fascinating to watch someone extol how much they love my pet peeve of video games. Everything you love about those games are things that annoy me lol. Throughout my time in Hollow Knight, I was just wishing it wasn't that kind of game. Dark Souls I liked the combat and exploration, but wished it was a more standard game in other aspects rather than being obtuse and mysterious. I'm glad y'all enjoy these games; someone needs to
Hey, we all have different tastes! I hope you found the video interesting anyhow :)
Outstanding video, glad I could in some way be a part of it lmao. It's such an interesting topic, since it can be approached from so many different angles, which you did expertly. The limitations of older hardware is my favorite talking point. To think that advancing technology would, in some ways, make things LESS interesting isn't likely something any of our kid selves would have predicted. Seeing the Shadow of the Colossus PS2 version compared to the PS4 version is staggering. Demon's Souls feels very similar for me, Latria was utterly decimated in bluepoint's remake, as was the valley of defilement's swamp level. In fact, the swamp would have made a GREAT comparison for this video. When wandering around in the knee-deep water on the PS3, it feels like it goes on forever, and you can barely see 10 feet in front of you. In the PS5 version, you can just...see everything all of the time... No sense of mystery at all.
Glad you could be part of it too! :)
That was a really great video! I’ve never before considered how simpler graphics can force players to interpret game worlds themselves, and form deeper connections with those worlds as a result. Your Pokémon clip really stuck out to me as a great example of this phenomenon. You may have helped me finally understand why I prefer older Pokémon games and sprites to newer 3D regions and models.
Glad to hear it :) I remember a ton of wild theories and rumours about the original Pokemon games and I think this is partly the reason.
Incredible video
You have a new fan
This video was way better than the 7.4K views it has right now.
Martin Odonell of Halo fame makes a point that mystery is important even if there is no actual answer. He attended a panel which discussed mysteries, conspiracies, and other such things. The short story is that the most important thing is not just making a great game, a solid story that solves everything but giving the suggestion that there is something more that you havent figured out. What is the secret of the patterns on the walls in Halo 3 ODST, why are there all these open spaces with nothing in Shadow of the Collosus and hinted architecture and secret areas with nothing in them. There isnt actually a mystery, but it feels enough like one.
Ive always found that low resolution gives the brain something tangible to make its own. You view old games you loved as more beautiful and can percieve it differently than it actually is because that grainy, low rez-ness allows the brain to extrapolate in a way new high res games cant.
I think you're missing out not seeing Rain World ending. Have you even gotten to meet 5p?
Although remembering my own time with this game, it's exhausting. I played a few days at a time, taking month-long breaks in between.
As for other mysterious games, I'm currently playing Tunic and it's delightfully cryptic, with instructions in a made up language and puzzles hidden in plain sight.
I spoiled a lot of things for myself when researching the Rain World video including the ending. That's perfectly OK, I fully accept I am never ever going to finish that game on my own.
great vid. thank you.
What a beautiful video. 😀
I think the more any work can capture our imagination, the more we tend to engage with it. I'm currently working on a video where I play the classics of the Atari 2600. It's amazing how engaging these simple, abstract games are, if just because there can be such a mystery to how they play and the variety of game modes on offer. Your section on older games lines up with my own findings. Maybe it isn't just nostalgia.
And to take a step further back, that's the joy I find in games criticism. The mystery of my thoughts and feelings on a game, and having to probe to uncover what lies at the heart of those thoughts and feelings. That's why I found your intro on Ghost of Tsushima so compelling. It felt like you followed that thread and it turned into this wonderful video.
Finally, it was cool to hear Tevis Thompson and Leigh Alexander's letters series both be referenced 😁