@@davidh9354 Noah has this amazing tone where you're just like "ah he's kinda doing a serious review rn" and then he comes out with some of the best jokes I've seen on youtube
"The amount of traffic deaths I caused is greater than generally the Joker would even dream of, and I did it casually, while trying to balance a bong between my knees and hold the Playstation controlled at the same time." 😂😂🤣
The Evolution of Noah's look through the years is something else: from part time worker man, to uncle, to dad, to biker, and now to a cult preacher from far cry 5. Its been a journey.
I like how, in addition to the critique and analysis, you're like "let's talk about Black Mirror / Batman / V for Vendetta / etc, because those, unlike Watchdogs, actually have something to say about dystopias".
Watch_Dogs has plenty of things to say about dystopias, especially with Legion. The problem is that they never seem to go all the way with it or just leave that information as a backdrop for the world. - The first game set the basis, but focused more on a revenge plot rather than the actual premise that the game was marketed towards. - The second game did focus on said premise through the eyes DedSec and delivered a more grounded depiction of modern corporations, but lacked any sort of meaningful consequences or stakes to the narrative, causing all of your efforts to be essentially meaningless. Especially when the events of Legion occurred. Not to mention that it's overly cheery tone toke away from the severity of the situations that our characters were placed in. - Legion is the closest that the series had come to depicting a proper dystopian world by putting you the player in the position as the average everyday man instead of a super hacker with God-like hacking abilities. However, the games greatest strength also became it's greatest weakness when playing as anyone amounted to everyone that you play as being relatively shallow in terms of character. Not to mention that almost everyone was good everything which repeats the issue of being a God-like hacker again but on a larger extent. Watch_Dogs is a good franchise, but it has always struggled to find it's sense of identity and balance out it's gameplay with it's narrative in a meaningful sense. It seems as though the franchise still has a long way to go before it can truly ever become as big as other Ubisoft titles. At least the games do that is. If you want more out of the Watch_Dogs universe, check out the comics and tie in novels as they do a great if not better job at flushing out the universe.
If a game consistently fails to follow through on the themes it sets up, can it really be said to be saying much of anything about those themes? It’s like giving someone a birthday card with nothing written in it.
@@TheZacharias333 Not a good analogy. For one, Watch_Dogs unlike other dystopian media is much closer to home simply because most of the things accomplished in the games are actually possible in real life even now as we speak. Hacking technology such as vehicles, traffic lights, etc with a phone? All possible and done before in real life. Not exactly like the game of course, but that's to be expected. Watch_Dogs is relevant because it focus' on the present not an distant future with the obvious exception of course being Legion. I did say that the franchise didn't always follow through with it's themes that it presents, but that is not to say that it has nothing to say at all. The first Watch_Dogs game specifically very clearly touched on the nature of Ctos and Big Brother as well as why DedSec shouldn't be trusted. The conflict with Ctos is that people feel as though it is intrusive and a complete invasion of privacy which it very much is. But people's justifications for pushing it further is because it yeld's great results when it comes to predicting and stopping crimes. That's why it was initially utilized in Chicago to stop the rampant crime rate. The problem with this though is that the system and people in charge of it are allowed to frame anyone the see fit of being a menace to society even of they haven't committed a crime yet. There's a lot more that can be said on the matter, but here is a UA-cam how can express that much better than I can. ua-cam.com/video/Kk2G6zc5pKo/v-deo.html
"The amount of traffic death I caused is higher than generally the Joker would ever dream of in his schemes and I did it casually. While trying to balance a bong between my knees and hold the playstation controller at the same time. I'm still a hero because of an arbitrary point system" no, sir, you are a hero for that successful balancing act!
Timestamps (an attempt): *Watch_Dogs* 00:00 - The One Button Hack, introduced - UA-cam, Big Tech, and your drapes (4:30) - Aiden Pearce, and an analysis of Batman (7:45) - Being Vigilante rank, or: Batman in a GTA world (11:03) - Aiden part III: The main plot (13:36) - Voyeurism (17:30) - The meaning of privacy (20:20) - Voyeurism continued: Multiplayer (21:08) - Aiden part IV: Shopping for furniture as a Keyboard Cowboy (25:50) - Chess, Space Invaders, and Love Island (28:57) - Bad Blood (31:59) *Watch_Dogs 2* 35:41 - The sequel _Hackers_ deserves - Jiving justice in the land of Neverwas (38:30) - The brick of domestic terrorism (42:50) - Watch the ants fight (48:20) - DLC part I: Weird Naked Things (51:20) - DLC part II: Oh, Ubisoft (55:00) - Lenny, and the venal morality of corporations (57:14) - Tonal (in)consistency:
This isn't a criticism of the video at all, but I did just wanna say something about the point near the beginning: I've been a professional coder for almost a decade, so I can attest that depending on the person there are absolutely people who almost never use a mouse. It's usually Linux people, as if you set up your machine right, you can do just about everything with key commands, and at that point a mouse actually slows you down. That said, with a GUI heavy OS like Windows, it can become a lot less viable to do everything via keyboard and a mouse can be more efficient, but most "hackers" aren't going to be using Windows in the first place. So it's not necessarily ridiculous to portray "hackers" as people who never use a mouse, but you're right that almost every other aspect of portraying hacking in media isn't exactly accurate to life haha Editing this after finishing the video to say that the video itself was still phenomenal Noah!
This 100% The interface greatly affects the speed of getting something done. It takes me less time to make changes to a Dell BIOS that's setup with keyboard in mind compared to a HP one that wants to look like a Windows8 safe mode screen. What's funny though is that for me, it's more believable "hacking" if someone hits the 'enter/return' key six times in a row. lord knows how many people need to make sure their commandline is clear and responding before typing something out. lol
@@Solinaru I'm a cybersecurity student with a few certifications and know how to do some basic external hacks. You're right on the money. Getting a shell in real life is probably the least interesting thing to a casual spectator that you could possibly see. There's a reason why movies feature people typing 300 wpm on a fancy graphical interface. The only thing needed to perform real hacking is a near reflexive understanding of complicated technical details like ports, protocols and which exploit works for what. And that process isn't very thrilling. Sometimes for no fault of your own you just have to run metasploit like 5 times before it actually works lol. Not to mention all the waiting around for Nmap scans and other exploits.
I actually really like the “Alone” digital trip. It highlights how paranoid and misanthropic Aiden is becoming. People are literally cameras in the trip, he’s obsessed with being watched despite watching others.
The bloodline dlc in legion really showed how broken Aiden is as a person and is some story content that really would have helped make him a bit more sympathetic in the original game.
@@josegordo488 i loved the game too and some aspects of the story, but it really was despite Aiden as a protagonist rather than because. He could have worked better if they'd done more to unravel his flaws and have him go on some sort of growth, becoming a better person by the end of the game, or some sort of descent into an even more paranoid and avoidant mindset that leaves you questioning everything you have done the entire game, but instead he just ends where he started. He is Batman if he killed people, with less money, and now he's killed the Joker
God, I loved the first Watch Dogs multiplayer. Any game could be genius or comedy. Want to hack stealthily? Blend in at a street vendor and buy things repeatedly, hide in a dumpster, blend in with a group of NPCs... or steal a taco truck and play the Mexican music over the PA (which literally never gets played by anyone but a player, adding to the hilarity of getting away with it stealthed). Or you could just completely avoid all the intentions of the game and ram into the player you're paired with repeatedly as they cluelessly try to escape the carnage thinking the AI has gone haywire, as there's no multiplayer objectives that require doing something so completely stupid.
It's so underrated. We really need more oddball multiplayer game modes. You could really tell they designed the layout of Chicago just for hacking invasions. All the trash bins, or garbage pileups to hide behind and tiny little spots you could squeeze into really makes it feel fun to explore. I spent so much time just trying to see what cool spots I could get to because of that mode.
@@robertvangooff8506 Its sad that no one talks about this games multiplayer. Friends that didnt play video games loved watching me hack someone. its sad that everyone hates this game because i only have good memories from it
Haven't played that but always appreciate games or even just gamemodes that let you do stupid/silly things that are harmless in-game but that still require some skill or ingenuity, feels like a lot of ideas in games have been shoved aside or reduced to the press of a button. It works don't get me wrong, who wants to have to master a 5 button combo to grab a ledge? But I do miss silly dynamics in multiplayer maps/gamemodes that can be useful or just really funny
Still active in 2023. I rewatched this vid and got sold on the mp modes and had to try it. You do have to unlock multiplayer but if you just rush the 5 missions needed you'll unlock mp in at least 1-2 hours.
I sometimes wonder what Noah would make of the Yakuza games but then he would probably need two lockdowns and an extended vacatin to finish all of them and then make an over four hour long video.
@@timcosgrove707 The newest game, Yakuza: Like a Dragon is actually pretty different. It feels fresh, and I ended up liking it even more than the originals
@@timcosgrove707 honestly you could 100% convince Noah to do this as he made an entire video on Gears of War, a franchise he took a similar sentiment from, and made a big long video/love letter to the franchise. If “easy fun that doesn’t differentiate much through titles” describes Yakuza, and I know it does because I love them, it would definitely be up his alley
@@timgimmy609 yeah i wish games that ventured into "edgy" territory weren't so afraid to say something but i guess to attract the most people, they choose to not say anything at all :/
@@kaleidoscopickait I guess it's about the shallow, looking cool rebel without a cause kind of stuff that can actually look stylish despite saying really nothing in the end.
Idk it felt like it showed enough substance, the main focus of the game is not revenge or anything like that, it's about domination in the digital/informational war, it's about people who know something they shouldn't know, also the sequence where we see women being sold on an auction makes you want to actually destroy all the ones who are involved in this, same with Rossie-Freemont place. The game is not very very long, it doesn't show everything that can be shown in that setting and concept, but it had enough in it. Also gotta remember that quite a few games back in 2013-2014 had the problem like AC Unity, which is spending a lot of years creating a very good immersive city and gameplay mechanics, and as a result not having enough time to put all the story in the game for the release date. Unity got 3/4 story parts cut out from it, i imagine WD wanted to show more as well.
The focus of this game about "mocking others people private life" is especially disturbing considering the relatively recent revelations concerning the abuses and harassments at Ubisoft... Clues were always here, we were just blind to them =/
@@SirSpence99 it is fine because liberals with no actual beliefs aren't able to do the bare minimum to enforce consequences and boycott Or the reactionaries who actually work against consequences saying with full mouths how they'll now buy more copies because sjws are ruining the industry You clearly see leftist game critics refusing to buy and engage with these companies on the other hand You see also leftist viewers refusing to buy their games at least directly from the company and opt for used copies and such Don't twist the world so it fits your own biases
@@HosKaetan I have yet to see a leftist boycott a Ubisoft game. I've seen leftists who *said* they would, but then when it came out that there was trans representation they bought it. No twisting here, just what I've seen. I have however seen people stick to their guns and boycott it *because* of the trans representation. Funny that. And yes, even pirating the game means that you aren't boycotting. *Especially* if you then go and tell people about how good it is because of representation.
I feel like the big problem with Legion is that the "play as anyone" feature is really cool on paper, but hamstrung by the need to still follow the same basic structure of a Ubisoft open world game. It's a feature that belongs in like, a AAA version of Dwarf Fortress, where there is no set narrative, only a bunch of systems designed to allow players to build their own story. A pure sandbox that is able to respond to your actions in more long term ways than just immediate feedback of "you are now in combat, things are exploding!". But that's not the way that AAA games are made - you need cutscenes to put in the trailers, big "cinematic" moments that make people go "oh, shit!", and a drip feed of mission objectives to give players direction. I get why it happens - a lot of people feel lost in pure sandboxes; it's why games like Dwarf Fortress are still mostly a niche genre (the ascii graphics don't help either, but even Kenshi, which is a full 3D sandbox RPG, is still not even in the same universe as a mainstream AAA release in terms of sales), but it also means that the systems in Legion are never really going to be able to realize their full potential.
Its a compare a d contrast to Breath of the Wild. Even the developers expressed the same sentiment that to truly make a game, well, play how the player wanted as a huge sandbox, they have to write the story in such a way that it feels non-guided. Compared to past Zelda titles. So yeah.....I still don't know why Ubisoft, after knowing all that and thinking they could write it in a more focused way, think they could accomplish better....well....at least they tried.
In an ideal world Legion would be like this: collect evidences, find the name of the 2ry villain, find the place he would visit with his bodyguards, scan him, deep profile him, see his schedule, choose the best time and place to strike. Do this with all 2ry villains to get the main villain's attention to get him back in town from abroad, again find the place he would visit, deep profile him, see his schedule, choose the best place to strike. But we're not in that world that's why, just like with the Nemesis system, engaging with Legion systems and engaging with its story is like two separate things.
I've only ever played WD1, but despite the poor reception it got, I actually really enjoyed it. Aiden is a shitty guy roleplaying Batman, and on some level, he's self-aware of that, but he buries that awareness in all but his least lucid moments. And in the end, he doesn't even redeem himself: his curt hostility gets his sister kidnapped, and though he rescues her, his actions put them at odds; his poor communication gets Clara killed; literal scores of people die at Aiden's hands and in the chaos of the ctOS disturbances; and Blume just makes a more invasive ctOS 2.0 after Aiden demonstrates how exploitable the first one is. And yet, everyone _loves_ him. It's only the people he's close to who see past the fantasy. I think I value the way WD1 refuses to break Aiden's unwavering faith in himself--it makes for such a bleak story about social disintegration and urban vigilantism, with a nihilistic, 'people can't change' theme. I think I value the sheer, unflinching juxtaposition of conflicting worldviews and Aiden's resolution thereof with grandiose narcissism. In the eyes of Aiden Pearce, _Aiden Pearce is God,_ and no matter how many people die, that never stops being true--it's never even called into question, except during Aiden's lowest points taking digital trips. "Jesus, Aiden, just leave it; it's fine. How do you know what he thinks? I can handle this on my own; we do *not* need your help. Okay, look, Aiden, _god,_ you have not changed at all--Aiden, we *do not* need your help. Stop trying to fix our problems; every time you try, you just make things worse." -Nicole, in _Big Brother_
Aiden Pearce is deliberately written as a hypocrite. The author seems to miss that Aiden is still associating with a professional Hitman (Jordi), stealing cars, robbing ordinary citizens with your phone, and more. I don't think the people who ever reviewed this game ever suspected, maybe we're supposed to not LIKE Aiden. Especially since a huge chunk of the game is about how he's ruined all his personal relationships.
@@CT_Phipps I am fascinated by the way this author completely looked past the fact that Aiden is not a hero and is not portrayed by the game as such at all.
This. This is what I wanted to say in the author's section of the first WATCH_DOGS. Everybody has a different taste in what a well-written character is (if it isn't completely nonsensical) and I think Aiden is well-written in his own regard. The game never refers them him as a downright hero (at least from the first thing I can think of), but rather just... the vigilante.
@@ProfesserLuigi They still sell flip phones = you can opt out of a smartphone if you REALLY wanted to property in Nebraska = cheap, isolated, and generally a bit further away from other states in terms of "big-tech" modernity.
Noah can do whatever he wants with the presentation, because the substance underneath is always AMAZING. If only the same could be said for more than 0.00001% of youtubers.
I suspect he just picks one of the default thumbnail options UA-cam extracts from the video-that is to say, one of a few random frames that the algorithm thinks would make decent thumbnails for God-Machine-knows what reason.
I read your entire patreon announcement regarding feelings about depression and impostor syndrome and everything and I hope that from one depressed person to another, you inspire me, your videos are the highest quality videos in regards to the literary content and I hope that you keep making the content you want and know that a lot of people will support it even if it's a book or a novel and not necessarily a video game critique and analysis
Regardless of what anyone says to this day watchdogs, has been the only game to give me that jonh wick/punisher type of gameplay and vibe and for that alone is enough for me to consider it one of my favorite games. It's the type of game I'll gladly go back to anytime and just have a blast playing.
@@cool64378 There are two main reasons for that. First of all, Legion doesn't have slow-mo focus ability that made gun fights more tactical. Second, in WD1 you have four weapon slots and you could change them on the fly, in other words, you always have access to all weapons in the game. Also no sniper rifles in Legion.
@Dale Twokey oh yeah vim aint just for oldsters the plugins can make it a better editor (though not IDE) than the leading VS Code also, vi? not vim/neovim?
@@ofcrgry vi is a more common default install, so i'll also tend to use it more than vim since on personal systems i mostly just use emacs. neovim is nice though.
My favorite part of the game was after you kill the main antagonist, to which Aiden fourth wall breakingly states “You know this is supposed to make me feel empty, but actually, I feel more free”. That kind of encapsulates Aiden and makes everything, from the fact hacking phones and stealing cars doesn’t decrease your status (and killing civilians and cops barely does) to the side missions where you help criminals commit acts that you would have shot them in the back for any other time, make sense. Aiden only cares about being free to do what he wants. Throughout the game, we see him cause his niece’s death, his partner’s death, his sister’s kidnapping, the complete destruction of a city’s power supply, and various thefts from and deaths of random civilians, but by the end, Aiden doesn’t change at all. He still acts like he is some sort of Punisher for the city that should be free to kill, steal, and break into whatever he wishes in order to administer his version of justice. He even refuses to help the actually altruistic hackers by the end, because in his mind only he can be trusted with the power to stop the bad guys. I disagree that Aiden isn’t a deconstruction, he is the perfect analogy to what a real world Batman would be. A guy who just because he can fight crime will fight crime, even if no one asked for him or need him and even if they would have done better without him. Because at the end of the day, Aiden is just an ego driven narcissist who needs to feel like a god.
Me too. I feel that the game developers wanted also to deconstruct GTA's police and interaction mechanics, you can clearly see this with the karma-popularity feature: if you don't give a shit about the citizens like how people typically play an open world game, they'll most likely call the cops on you and you'll be disliked in the ending. But if you do give a shit, everyone will think you're actually a hero of justice. It's just that I can see what Noah is saying. It's more like how a social network measures your popularity. Heck, maybe the Chinese government's fun-fun Social Credit bullshit, first developed by Western companies. Just imagine how much tonally consistent the games would be if the citizens of Chicago/San Francisco/cyberpunk London went through the same karma system as you... Or if the game actually cared at all about, let's say, consequences. Supposedly Aiden is bad (when he's not being protrayed as good) in part because he finances his activities by stealing money, including working class people if you're not careful. So, if I hack away all of little Johnny's money off from his account: how about I see him later on as a beggar on the street? You wouldn't even need a karma system for that.
But Rorschach isn't Batman, he's riffing on The Question and Mr. A. He's a critique of two heroes created by someone (Steve Ditko) with a highly dualist sense of morality based on his objectivist philosophies. Or maybe I'm just being an insufferable nerd again.
I think it's almost the other way around, in fact: _Watchmen_ was so influential on mainstream superhero comics that later incarnations of Batman have exhibited Rorschach-like traits even though the character didn't possess them at the time.
You're right, but if we go by archetypes I'd say that Batman can be seen as a mix of Rorschach and both the Nite Owls, and Batman can express different aspects of those three characters depending on the era and who's writing him.
The segment on Legion shows how Noah (imho) blows most other UA-camrs out of the water. He goes so much deeper while everyone else just goes "well, by playing anyone, you aaackshually end up playing as no one"
@@GreebusBleeb I wouldn't call Noah's Legion gameplay analysis particularly great. Chris (Errant Signal), on the other hand, analyzed most of the game systems, including NPCs related ones. But it seems like both guys don't care much about stealth, that's why they ignored its one of the most important features - enemies don't shoot first - and didn't find the game as special.
Noah Caldwell Gervais, I have been watching your video essays for a long time. I really appreciate the calculated, well thought out writing for each of these in depth dives into this medium we call video games. It's clean, concise and your effort to present as an objective analysis still with a touch of your own subjectivity is welcomed. I particularly enjoyed the travelogue videos, so thank you. Really plainly thank you, as empty as an internet UA-cam comment is usually, I cannot express how much your work is truly valued by not just myself, but those like myself.
HORRAY FOR INDVINUALITY IN HOW WHILE WHEN YOU THINK OF HUMANITY ON A MACRO SCALE YOU SEEM LIKE A SPECK OF DUST ONLY TO REALISE THAT THE CONNECTIONS WE MAKE WITH OTHER SPECKS OF DUSK ON THE MICRO SCALE IS WHAT KEEPS US BONDED TOGETHER THROUGH TIME AND SPACE!!!!!
The police in the first Watch Dogs can’t pursue you if you ride in a subway or drive a boat out to the ocean - so once you figure that out, they’re actually really easy to evade.
I'll disagree with you on Aiden. He's clearly presented as as an unhinged crazy vigilante. His inability to let go is constantly putting his family (the one thing he claims he cares about) in danger. The game is very clear that his fixer work is what got his niece killed and that he is no better than the goons he kills. The dude is a mercenary. He has a weird and twisted moral code much like The Punisher. Also, unlike Marcus from WD2, he isn't fighting the power. He's using it exclusively for his benefit. He fully embraces Blume's fucked up system.
@@adeptdamage3669 saints row 3-4 fan. That explains it. You clearly have the patience of a 4 year old and think flashing lights and pew pew guns is better than a good story because of your simplistic "fun trumps all" mentality.
They all do, even if only in small ways like the (hilariously, relatably bad) hand-written font choices. An absolute masterclass in minimalist symbolism.
naturally a game by ubisoft, the company that can't resist violating the consent of its own employees and is infamous for an extreme amount of sexual assault, would not respect the consent of its NPC's
"Moving to Akron and opening a Cell Phone Repair store" Lol, that line reminded me of this trope that I've always hated in crime and action movies. They'll be some assassin or crime boss who is "the bad" and the good guy will ask them "why are you doing this???" and they'll reply "TO SURVIVE!". Dude, if you want to "survive" learn to code and get some boring ass job in Omaha, save up and buy some property and guns and provided society doesn't collapse TO dramatically you probably have an over 90% chance of making it to very old age. I don't think taking a job that constantly puts you in harms way for, what I image is at best an upper middle class income, is really the best way to live as long as possible.
21:00 A lot of the stuff in the original Watchdogs starts to make a lot more sense when you think about what has come out in regards to Ubisofts work environment in the last year or so.
saw a post about your depression/imposter syndrome, I sincerely look forward to your content and think you are one of the best content creators out there. you provide actual analysis from different perspectives while putting into words what everyone thinks but can't articulate. as someone that doesnt laugh or cry very often you've managed to do both. as a chronically depressed person myself, just know that life is worth living and your content helps make it a little better.
19:00 I don't know Noah, that's a bit of a stretch... Those scenes were meaningless to me, I thought they were just there to give you something to see, a lot of the times is just stuff that people do in their homes, you're not supposed to get something out of most of them, other than to see what you think you'll see if you'll spy on people, I don't think is as complex as you say it is.
It's obvious that he is taking it personaly, he pictures himself as the guy beeing watched. I agree with you, it's dumb. But he is from the far far left, and thinks everything is a political statement and should be interpretated even when it wasnt meant as a statement
Watch Dogs is the Hot Topic of video game anarchism and activism. It makes apeals to the culture. But it in itself is so sanitized, corporate and altogether spineless, that it's an empty thing.
So...I really hesitate to put forth a comment on a video like this, both for my genuine respect for your work, and the inevitable maelstrom to befall me once what's said is said. That, well, said, I feel compelled to voice a certain dissatisfaction with this review, at least the section dedicated for Watch Dogs 1. To put that dissatisfaction briefly, I feel that the vast majority of your complaints are built around *a lot* of moral projections onto the game, and then gravitating to the most negative aspects of it - real or otherwise - to uphold those projections, rather than an honest attempt to observe the game on its own terms. Given, again, that WD1 is presented as damn-near the antichrist in this review, I'm sure the assumption is that I'm going turn all of those negative qualities of the game into virtues of some kind. Frankly, no; a lot of the things players can do in WD1, its subject matter, the Walter White-ian nature of its protagonist, and the often schizophrenic focus and morality of the story, are things worthy of criticism. Where my own criticism lies with the review, is how often the review references despising the very idea of the game, far moreso than anything the game really does in service, or rejection, of those ideas. The best place to start (yes, this has now become a youtube comment essay, my apologies) is with Aiden Pearce. Or, to put it more aptly, how most people _play_ Aiden Pearce. Aiden Pearce, to be clear, is a jackass. He is, in truth, a violent man that has the capacity to sow chaos wherever he goes, possesses a system of morality that is exceptionally off-putting to bystanders, and explicitly has talents towards manipulation and terror that he uses to service his own ends. The obvious counter to all of this is that it's all intentional; to remind everyone that, however much he is obviously inspired by Batman, he actually is based more on Walter White from Breaking Bad, and that you really aren't meant to like either character beyond their basic humanity. This, however, is too easy. However true this rebuttal, it's one that can be pretty easily handwaved if someone just _really_ doesn't like Aiden, or prefers a more utilitarian proxy for players to inhabit, this is a video game after all. Same case occurs for any attention drawn to the myriad of moments where Aiden actually is a decent human being, where he routinely relinquishes the advantages he has when it becomes clear that following through on them involves harming innocents, or quiet introspection of the hypocrisy of his action and his own fallibility; easy to ignore such moments, past or present, when there's a lot of shooting to do, and bank accounts to hack. The better argument, I feel, is one of agency. Player agency. This may reek of copout, but I really do see WD1 as a rare specimen for how players react when faced with choice beyond single button presses. Games like Mass Effect allow players to perform a limited set of actions to build a Commander Shepard that they would like to inhabit, either as a kind-hearted and stalwart bastion for life, or a rampant jackass that looked at his/her drill sergeant, formed an even more exaggerated version of them in his/her mind, and went "yeah, that's who I want to be all the time". inFamous, similarly, lets you walk into the game deciding whether you want Cole's/Delsin's stories to be one of inspiring heroics and displays of humanity, or descents into power-obsessed mania and psychopathy, the protagonists often failing at the very mission they began, and not much caring about that failure anyway. I choose these both as examples, not just for their binary morality, but also how they use agency on the part of the player: the player selects a set of actions within recognizable guidelines of archetypal protagonists, then players develop an attachment to the shape of hero, or anti-hero, they have created. What makes WD1 unique is not just that the "morality/reputation" system at play doesn't change the outcome of the story, or Aiden's character in the beat-by-beat, but this kind of psychological reinforcement of who players _expect_ him to be. A lot of reviewers, to put it bluntly, talk shit about Aiden, as both character and person, but rarely ever show him _acting_ shitty fully of his own accord. They could show footage of him vaguely threatening a mobster to expose his criminal activity to his family and the police, or threatening a witness to Aiden's crimes _inside prison_ with extended time imprisoned, or pushing Clara away after he learns that she more-or-less doxxed him to the Chicago-South Club... ...But they never do, do they? However much these scenes could be used to prove Aiden is a terrible person, in isolation or in context, that's not what essayists tend to use; they instead use gameplay of _themselves_ *_playing Aiden_* as an asshole. The complaints aren't just that Aiden isn't present for his family - something that is true in the plot - it's also that he steals his sister's meds, which he only does if the player commands him to, and is not required to progress the scene forward. People mention Aiden's voyeurism, but every instance displayed and referenced is usually player-instigated. The sheer amount of collateral people claim Aiden leaves in his wake is usually evidenced by...how much players love using the grenade launcher into oncoming traffic. The obvious counter is, well they have to put _something_ in the video essay, yes? It's a game, show gameplay. True, but there is a pattern to be noticed about _the kinds of evidence_ people use to demonstrate Aiden's behavior in the story, and when you take a closer examination, it's almost never the things Aiden does in the story, but the things players do through him, and then use that playstyle as more evidence against Aiden's moral fiber. In this way, the _opposite_ of what happens in Mass Effect and inFamous occurs: whereas the aforementioned games let players create a character that best suits their personal actions and beliefs, players in WD1 engage in actions they *believe* would suit Aiden's character. Instead of player character following player action, player action follows player character. People act _assuming_ that this is something Aiden would do, even though the player is in total control of Aiden in the moment. It's, effectively, a self-fulfilling prophecy, where players start _believing_ that Aiden is terrible, players start doing terrible things as Aiden, which further reinforces the perceived personality of the character, even if "Aiden" is only acting by total player command, not merely consent. This, in simpler terms, is confirmation bias. None of this is to say that Aiden _isn't_ these things to some degree, but rather an observation that audiences tend to forget both sides of the interaction process of player and player-character. A note on how we may tend to shift the blame of our actions onto a vessel that we expect would be capable of carrying those choices. That, if were we to so choose, we could *make* Aiden a more earnest character, his mission statement a more sincere one. The effect of agency goes both ways; instead of assuming Aiden is sneering at the people he voyeuristically watches, maybe we can assume he's just curious, because _we_ may be just curious. Instead of firing grenades into a crowd, and then pin the collateral on Aiden, we can play more defensively, use more nuanced and precise tactics to keep collateral to a minimum, even no collateral at all. The end result of the latter is that Aiden starts to closer resemble the kind of hero he wants to be, while the result of the former makes him look like the narcissist he's often condemned as. There are *_very_* good reasons to take issue with any of the game's activities on a moral level; voyeurism and vigilantism are not without some kind of harm, the kind of harm that one writer for WD1 is desperately trying to display and denounce, and another writer completely indulges in. It's like if Alan Moore and Frank Miller were working on the same story at the exact same time; two completely different personalities and systems of conscience operating within the same space, muddying the themes within. I, personally, very much enjoy Aiden Pearce, and the greater whole of Watch Dogs, but I recognize a large part of that enjoyment came from how I played the game. I feel as though _not_ playing WD1 as a knock-off GTA clone (an unfortunate comparison that the marketing team for this very game very stupidly made), not as a generic crime simulator, but as something approaching an "ethical" vigilante simulator, where you're actively stopping crime nonlethally and protecting others from criminals and yourself, was the way this game was meant to be played...but it wasn't played that way by the majority of people, and no amount of my own personal opinion will change that, so I'll end with this: Watch Dogs 1 is a game rife with internal conflict at its very foundations, and lets players engage in a life that's hard to find elsewhere. While I personally find the wanton psychopathy and outright misanthropy of Grand Theft Auto more egregious than anything found in Watch Dogs, issues of privacy and vigilantism are things a little more personal to a lot of people, and I understand those that take issue with this game, a game that doesn't care much for escaping _from_ those issues. What I would suggest, in spite of all of that, is that there is a way to still enjoy this game; to find some merit within this story, and find some humanity in a monster. Noah, despite my issues with your review, thank you for sharing. Both for your unique talent, and for inspiring me to say what's been on my mind about this game for years. Take care of yourself in these trying times.
Couldn't that same logic be used when talking about Aiden doing 'good' things? It's the player's choice to toss grenades into crowds but it's also the player's choice to stop aggressive crimes or chase after purse thieves. Thinking back to my own time playing through the game I'd have to say that by pure narrative presentation that Aiden is a selfish asshole. Not a blood thirsty psycho but also in no way a selfless do gooder. Everything he does, story wise, is entirely self centered and pertains to his own goal of revenge and twisted sense of morality. Any good that comes from his actions is unintentional on his part just as whatever death and destruction that may occur is none of his concern. We as players can send him on a killing spree or save the random life but both would be purely a player's choosing. Because Aiden is only concerned with Aiden.
@@Valzahd As I repeated over and over, I never said Aiden was none of the things people have described, rather my argument was meant in response to the sheer toxic recursion audiences tend to have towards his character i.e. not really engaging with the text of the narrative. Were one to engage with the text, what would be apparent is that there is a not inconsiderable degree of reflection within him; there's a lot of guilt for what he's done, past and present. When Jacks sees Aiden kill his pursuers via camera feed, he starts thinking about how he must look to outsiders, and comes away chilled from the uncertainty. Towards the end of the game, Aiden, word for word, asks himself how many people he's killed, and how anyone can decide who lives and who dies. There's also moments were Aiden actively tries to protect others. Some are obvious: coming back for Clara after she tries to turn herself over to Damien is one. Others are more subtle: there's a scene when Aiden first infiltrates Quinn's human trafficking ring under a stolen alias, and one of the girls is left alone in a room with Aiden. She, believing him to be the man he's impersonating is expecting violence, as the impersonated (now dead man) was known for torture. Were Aiden that selfish asshole/narcissist/psychopath, he'd have zero trouble nor hesitation being violent to maintain his cover, but he doesn't; he immediately leaves. Doing so, of course, tips Quinn off that this isn't a colleague, and so Aiden has to sneak out of the compound later, but not before offering to get the same young woman out as well, and vowing to take down the entire operation himself. Then there's the ending choice, one that places greater pay off to sparing Maurice, rather than vengeance. Like I said, it's very easy to forget these moments in the heat of things. The difference between my argument and this here review, is that I'm more consciously aware of how my interaction affects my interpretations of the character and text, whereas Noah's supplied evidence tends to be largely him projecting what he's "supposed" to feel in any given moment. The example that I gravitate towards is his entire talk on "shame" during hacking intrusions, when, really, there's no reason or suggestion to shame the characters in the provided scenes, and is entirely an assumption on his end. I went into those scenes neither feeling shame against the characters, nor shame for engaging, nor felt as though I were expected to feel both, especially when considering the meta-context that everything is fictional anyways. His experience of shame, versus my lack thereof, would be a more audience-dependent example of how reactions form views on art, and how interpretations can snowball. Every painting a self-portrait, and such.
@@skullsridge I dunno. I think you're perhaps reading more into him than there is. The spare or kill Maurice choice is purely player oriented. Aiden finds recordings of how torn up Maurice is over what happened and Aiden responds with sneering judgement, clearly still putting the bulk of blame on him. Judgement that never softens through out the course of the game right up to that player choice. I spared Maurice when playing, not because Aiden had a change of heart, but in spite of Aiden. To me, Aiden hadn't shown signs of changing for the better. He was still the vindictive asshole he starts the game as, blaming others for the consequences of his own actions. I suppose it comes down to personal take. You can see some redeeming qualities that outweigh the negatives. While others see his negatives as outweighing whatever humanity that still remains. I may disagree with your take but I can't say you're objectively wrong. Just as it's not objectively wrong to not sympathize with Aiden in the slightest.
@@Valzahd -I'm not reading into him, he's outright telling us about shame. You can look at the scenes playing in real-time, and the cinematic language used in the actual scenes doesn't support his argument. Most of the "evidence" he uses is experiential and value-based, rather than rooted in the present reality. There's nothing wrong with that subjectivity, quite the opposite, I would genuinely love to hear more about the ethical ramifications of voyeurism, but the context of the scenes provided, in addition to the wider context of this being a review of the game (as opposed to a more focused dissertation of the text), leaves the points he constructs feeling very stream-of-consciousness, and insular in his reasoning.- Edit: Thought you were talking about my final note on Noah's review, since he was the last point in my reply. Re-reading, I see the miscommunication now, my apologies. I'll scratch it out for its irrelevance, but leave it up as my case against Noah's conclusions on the intrusive hack scenes. On that note, though, I really don't appreciate the "reading more into X", it reeks of intellectual dishonesty/not really hearing anything I'm saying, and is just condescending as hell. Since I'm here, I may as well point out that, yes, I did exactly point out the logic could be applied for doing good things, and how doing so affects perceptions in a positive manner. That was an entire paragraph. I'm pretty sure Aiden only comments on Maurice's lines exactly once, in the very first log when he finds it, while he's silent for the rest. It's hard to look up, since it's rather an esoteric thing to confirm via internet, but that's my strongest recollection. You're not wrong, I know he's still condemning that first time, but it's largely personal interpretation from there. Besides, we're going to blame Aiden for the death of Lena, but absolve Maurice, the gunman, for his involvement? He still pulled the trigger, and actively killed Lena. Aiden has a right to still be pissed at the man who murdered family. Aiden is responsible to a considerable degree, but I'd place him lower on the scale of guilt, under Maurice, then Damien, then Quinn. Also remember that Aiden has dialogue after the spare ending has been chosen, where he talks about forgiveness. You can still claim the player-oriented nature of the choice, but it's one that does actively shape his character, and is acknowledged by the game through cinematic language as the "canon" ending. Aiden working on himself to not be a monster is canon. I know that last bit in your reply is internet code for "I'm no longer interested in this argument, please stop throwing walls of text at me", and I apologize for still going on. I have 6-ish years of thoughts on this game, and never had the space nor resources to discuss them. Also, as a personal thing, I find the "you're not wrong, but I'm also not wrong" stance to be a little patronizing. I know there's no offense intended here, but it feels shitty to be on the receiving end of that, at least for me. Just a note if you're engaging with people in a random comments section for the future. It's okay to just say you'd like to end the discussion. Mentioning personal take is good, though, that doesn't feel condescending, and is very true. I understand people not liking, well anything really, I'm usually more behooved at lack of text engagement in general. I respect disagreement and subjectivity being acknowledged, just not being coddled over that subjectivity.
Tell-tale personalities 1. Total Asshole 2. Suspending Disbelief 3. Passive-Agressive 4. Proven that the story was written without you (... dialog choices).
All 3 watch dogs games tried to be something they were not, and failed in the process. WD1 had a great story but lackluster and bland gameplay compared to other games at the time like GTA 5. WD2 tried to right the wrongs of WD1 and was better gameplay wise but failed to deliver a good story, the weapons were worse and the already bad AI and gunfights got worse, not to mention basically copying the visuals of GTA 5 and Marcus was a much more shallow protagonist than Aiden. WDL failed in every single aspect lacking in both story and gameplay somehow and only doubled down on the wrongs of the last two games.
i think the fact the idea of a watch dogs game being interesting itself is deeply concerning. The knowledge that everyone secretly wants that fantasy power of intruding on others lives even in a digital pixel not real people type form of looking in through other's laptop cameras and controlling things in the room like a ghost. The fact that we just without question hack into people's phones and just remove money from their accounts. The fact that you can know so much about just a random person walking past you on the street, yet none of us wants to be on the opposite end of that spectrum being the one spied on or have money stolen. Yet now you actually do have people seemingly willing to open their lives to smart home technology and always listening devices and couldn't care at all. Humans seem to never learn despite being constantly reminded just how dystopic and tyrannical life can become in the future the more people give up their autonomy and agency to other people. Yet most blindly walk towards it anyways. It's psychologically infuriating. It's just a game? Or a sign of things to come?
Hell, I always felt extreme dissonance going on frivolous crime sprees in the GTA games, and you unapologetically play as criminals in those games. Watchdogs never really had a chance in that regard.
Yea the hammer and sickle tee shirt marcus can wear is sorta cringy. Not gonna go on and “REEEE SJWS REEE” I’m just saying, the idea of being anti authoritarian and then wearing the second most identifiable authoritarian symbol in the world is ironic at best.
Horatio's death was mostly because the game needs a reason to have the heroes fight the Hispanic gang because its meant to be a parallel to when Anonymous tried to pick a fight with the Zeta Cartel. As such, Horatio was kind of generic in characterization compared to the other guys.
When I saw the title, I assumed I was going to be watching a thorough analysis of the story or gameplay. Instead, I get a socio political analysis of the entire series. I'm digging it!!
I liked Aiden. I mean, i’m not saying he’s quite up there with Arthur Morgan, but Aiden was cool in his own way. I liked his dynamic with T-bone and Clara.
i iterally JUST finished the Red dead 4 hour video, and i take a look to my right and see you post this 15 minutes ago............ I haven't even played any of these games, yet you've got me feeling so many emotions. Thank you so much, and may 2021 bless you with many well deserved treats
Can somebody post more info on that movie "Possessor" he talks about at 6:28? I keep only getting a 2020 sci fi horror film (which actually looks like a good film by the way).
I don't get the Aiden hate. For once we had a protagonist who was different. A real psycho, without a maniacal personality. I actually enjoyed being Batman, and the shear terror Aiden Pierce brings around himself.
there's something so utterly ironic about Deadsec in the first game being anti-corporate and aiming to demolish the big names and wealthy elite of Chicago, and then pull a 180 to the point of where they have their own clothing brand and even treat their recruits in Legion like employees rather than people. essentially shopping for names with talents behind them that ultimately benefit the great conglomerate of Deadsec rather than garnering the trust of the masses in an attempt of protest against authority.
I think my favorite thing about your videos is that even when I disagree, I tend to go off in a pretty articulate way that helps me understand why I like something you dislike or vice versa. Your videos put me in a frame of mind where I find myself capable of that level of discussion, and it's refreshing for me.
Just going to put it here because I haven't seen it mentioned on this video yet: your video editing has hugely improved over these past few months. This one in particular is, I would say, your best edited video so far. Keep up the good work!
If anyone in interested in Aiden as a character (i know theres not much to his character) theres a great video that psychoanalizes his behaviour as a vigilante to see if he is truly an unrepenting psychopath as he first appears. ua-cam.com/video/oJ9-5iv68Vc/v-deo.html
It's so strange how despite agreeing with everything Noah says here, I still fracking love these games. I wonder if we'll get an addendum once the online content drops for Legion.
I really enjoyed the discussion of “one button liberation” in this video and the idea of commitment to a cause - I think there’s a strong tie to the critiques of “clicktavism” that were all the rage a few years ago (might still be, too). Thanks Noah - hope you have a great 2021.
So Noah is 420? I thought his heavy breathing was down to his weight. I hope he's on the calisthenics at least, 'cause he wasn't looking well last year tbh.
Hackers not using a mouse is actually realistic. Using a computer with only the keyboard is much faster if you are proficient enough. Instead of navigating endless visual interfaces you can be issuing commands. Visual interfaces requiring the use of a mouse generally only appear in software that is meant to be usable by people who are not computer experts. It is quite common that computer science majors in universities are prohibited from mouse usage as it seen as bad practice by professionals in the field.
That last bit about spending a whole game effortlessly solving systemic problems and then being left to consider how you haven't really done anything at all is very poignant. Capitalism's great power is Recuperation, the ability to take anything, profit from it, and remove all edge or teeth from it in the process. Capitalism can recuperate anything, up to and including structural criticisms of Capitalism and the deep, popular desire to see it destroyed. This is Watch underscore Dogs's reason for being. To capitalize on peoples' desires for revolution, and serve the illusion of it up on a platter. It will give people the _feeling_ as though their actions directly solved the abiding, far-reaching problems of the world. Placating the desire for real change, and walking away with another wad of our money in the process.
1:00 To be fair that's quite accurate. Very few people use the mouse much at all when editing because moving your hands off the keyboard leads to this annoying mode switching behavior. And for some escaping mouse reliance is something they enjoy generally. Tiling WMs are a prime example of people moving towards what looks more like movie-hacking but for practical purposes. I'd like a shortcut to submit this comment.
the idea that the BDSM porn being produced in the castle is not allways consensual is unfortunately realistic, despite what the sex positivity movement and new age of sexual freedom we apparently live in would suggest, pornography is still a business and bad business is where the big bucks are
This. I love Noah's way of criticizing games, as he leaves technical stuff as a secondary aspect, and just fucuses on the potential interesting takes that can be extracted from the narrative, writing, gameplay or even aesthetics. Cyberpunk may have been disappointing in some aspects, but it definitely has a lot of substance for Noah to dissect. I find that specially necessary given how everyone seems to be focusing in how the game is not the GTA they spected, while nobody seems to care about how the writing, characters and its take on cyberpunk themes are actually way better than what the edgy marketing suggested.
It depends on the business and size. For smaller businesses, it can create a way to find a niche, a specialty. But in big corporate world, let us see a case example. Oreo. Did you know they shit out constant varieties of Oreo? Novelty oreos vary wildly but they do actually generate profits from being 'weird' 'new' etc. But that alone isn't enough. After Oreo started this, regular Oreo sales also went up. It's a strange example of a common idea in the human zeitgeist. People want novelty for a moment but turn to staples of a very small variety. People don't want infinite choice. It paralyzes people. People want "the same, but different". You could extrapolate it to why people are sometimes attracted to people with family resemblances or why estranged family members end up in incest relationships. So the novelty item is meant to be attract attention, sometimes to be eaten but it will most likely not be a staple for you. It'll make you dedicate memory to that vendor for being the' place with a elk burger' but they got pretty good fries. Some businesses do strike gold however = the niche becomes the staple, the commodity. In those cases you are supposed to eat the novelty item. Square Enix is sort of a hybrid trapped between 'same but different' and gimmicks but collectively ti draws on it's properties, its commodities for new ideas or as content for their continual cash flow MMOs. Weird stuff like Kingdom Hearts is an example of a novelty becoming a staple originating from a simple gimmick. I'm just a moron on the internet so someone big smarter with big words can probably explain better and funnier.
I have to really disagree about watch dogs 2. I played it as a stealth game (no guns), and I had an absolute blast. I consider it among the best immersive sims!! Of course, I can totally see why many players would miss this experience, as stealth needs to be self-imposed, over just gunning everyone down.
THANK YOU! I was going to watch the whole video anyways but I'm happy someone finally remembers that Ubisoft hid sexual predators. I cannot begin to express how frustrating it is to watch hours of youtube content a day only to find someone doing a video essay on an Ubisoft game only to forget or choose to not include the reminder of how disgusting Ubisoft is.
I think that, at some point in development, they probably didn’t have any guns for the player to use in Watchdogs 2. The really complex hacking, and the interplay with that and the drones make it feel like a Shadowrun-esque drone rigging mischief game, and the tone makes way more sense when you just use the taser and knockouts. I absolutely adored playing the game by sending in the two drones and bouncing between them to complete objectives without even entering the building, or driving scissors lifts around to keep Marcus out of detection range as I found infiltration routes. Even stuff like calling in the cops has different reactions based on the disposition of the faction you’re targeting, with security guards often accepting their arrest. What seems strange is that all of these super refined mechanics end up being basically deleted by the fact that you can pick up an AK from your ghostgunner or whatever and massacre hundreds of gang members, police, civilians, or corporate security guards. It kinda reeks of the “no, we’re gonna need some guns” type of meddling that happened to Mirror’s Edge. Maybe this is why you’re of the opinion that the gameplay is much the same as the first game, but the sandbox is waaaaaay better, especially for higher-tech, less lethal, ghost playstyles.
As a fan of that show, I think it also worth a critical reexamination as it reflected much of the same pre-2016 angst just like Watch Dogs albeit more competently.
My favorite hacker TV show by far is Mr Robot, and it actually does a really good job of portraying real hacking in an exciting light. Namely, it makes the important point that coding a virus/worm is *way* less important than actually getting it running on the machine you want. All the boring coding can be done off screen and saved onto a gas station USB stick, and then the exciting stuff is all the bluffing and breaking & entering necessary to get that USB stick where it needs to go. It's intense, exciting, dramatic, and only ever a few steps removed from the real work hackers and cybersecurity experts do every single day.
exactly exploits are bread and butter in this game with most of the in-game exploits just coming from clara/dedsec aiden almost feels like a script kiddie
Brilliant as always Noah. I just wanted to thank you because this video, and particularly the section on Legion pushed me to read V for Vendetta for the first time. I loved it and found it so engaging i finished the series in one sitting. You are consistently one of the most interesting critics on youtube and you have my thanks.
Something that could fix the basic voyeurism in Watch_Dogs is to have the system interlinked with Blume employees watching. Hearing them snark about it instead of Aiden would suit the narrative much better. They’re watching these people in their houses by the thousands from the comfort of their desks.
I agree with your points on why watch dogs failed. It is a bad representative of its Genre, but I think its mostly the Genre thats at fault. To me the whole point of modern open world games seems to be to make you a keyboard Cowboy and have everyone else be the cattle. There are no meaningfull Consequences to play. The world usually just resets and i find, that the kind of cinematic stories these Games tell are fundamentally at odds with its gameplay structure. Stories are scripted. They currently have to be, if the goal is to make an interactive Netflix show. But the strength of open worlds is their systemic mayhem. The feeling that everything could happen, at any time. But that comes with a level of jank, that is hard to align with a certain level of production values. Take Assassins Creed for example. Its more of a good and bad wolves among sheep thing. But most NPCs remain the lifestock. In Far Cry everyones bonkers, including the actual wolves, which makes it more of a foodchain simulator, which is probably why it works best. The witcher 3 sidelines the whole problem, because the world is simply legoland, a gorgeous, intricate diorama that offers no meaningfull interaction with its inhabitants, outside of combat and trading. Where it shines is in the Quests, but they dont need the open world and its promises. They use it asacts as a stage for incredibly well made stories, but these stories are allways scripted and not systemic. Rdr2 is the only contemporary that comes to my mind as doing it differently. There are meaningfull interactions with everyone, but there are seldom consequences. Instead of being a cowboy simulator, where revenge plots spin off from your exploits in this violent world, it goes the Keyboard Cowboy route. Usually you end up in a fight, where you either win by killing everyboey who could live to tell the tale, or get killed yourself. Then you just respawn, a few bucks lighter, and the game and you agree to pretend this never happened. It allways felt like I was playing 2 games. The great netflix story, that is weighed down by the simple combat and boring level design that often comes with open worlds and the great cowboy simulator, that is weighed down by the need to be tied into a linear story. I liked both games, but i would have preferred to enjoy them seperately. Watch dogs legion went an interesting route. Its kind of a mix of a AAA game and a simulation roguelike, like prison architect, or streets of rogue. Sadly it carries the weight of the sins of both Genres and is to occupied being a playground aswell. I hear Zelda botw does a bery good job, but I havent played it yet.
Came for a breakdown on ubi games I've never played Stayed for the deep dive into hacker/anarchic ideology, a great interpretation of V for Vendetta and its message, and how technological growth has impacted us You are really one of a kind
Watching this and some of your other essays again makes me think about something "Mr. Plinket" says; "you may not have noticed, but your brain did" . Its one of the things that Inreally like about them. You seem to be able to isolate and explain why I feel a way about games. I appreciate that! It has actually allowed me to enjoy some games again after understanding those feelings better. Thanks
not that I'd claim Aiden is a great person, but it seems fallacious to put him on the same level as Silicon Valley business culture, since he's only one person. he won't cause as much damage as a whole system. (so, technically, he is the underdog here.)
![The Outer Worlds in Close Critique [Spoilers]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TpxidRlZyXc/mqdefault.jpg)
![The Outer Worlds in Close Critique [Spoilers]](/img/tr.png)
"Grandma, what poor labour practices you have!"
Fuckin' A Noah: 10/10, good stuff.
"All the better to deliver exciting pre-order bonuses to you my dear!"
That shit hit hard
@@davidh9354 Noah has this amazing tone where you're just like "ah he's kinda doing a serious review rn" and then he comes out with some of the best jokes I've seen on youtube
@@zcritten and the joke points out a serious flaw in the game or the world
@@nate567987 No doubt, it can be told on its own away from the video about the game industry in general
@@zcritten legit he will say the deepest shit, then juxtapose it with a perfectly timed joke
"The amount of traffic deaths I caused is greater than generally the Joker would even dream of, and I did it casually, while trying to balance a bong between my knees and hold the Playstation controlled at the same time." 😂😂🤣
Aldo Vicente later makes a dig at “dab dens” tho smh lol
Fuck, this was such a visual! Money extremely well spent.
This is like, half the reason I switched to an oil ring and mininail. No more juggling, just hit, cap & game.
@@Dwarfplayer this is an assumption that it was consumed illegally
@@Dwarfplayer ??? Lots of states have legal weed and ethical grow ops.
The Evolution of Noah's look through the years is something else: from part time worker man, to uncle, to dad, to biker, and now to a cult preacher from far cry 5. Its been a journey.
There was also the Confederate General look.
@IntrepidTit jslatr|fť
@@Nobody7720 you said it man!
As looks go, I think this one is more "Preacher you meet in a video game who has a rifle and is fundamentally good(if a little odd)".
I like how, in addition to the critique and analysis, you're like "let's talk about Black Mirror / Batman / V for Vendetta / etc, because those, unlike Watchdogs, actually have something to say about dystopias".
Watch_Dogs has plenty of things to say about dystopias, especially with Legion. The problem is that they never seem to go all the way with it or just leave that information as a backdrop for the world.
- The first game set the basis, but focused more on a revenge plot rather than the actual premise that the game was marketed towards.
- The second game did focus on said premise through the eyes DedSec and delivered a more grounded depiction of modern corporations, but lacked any sort of meaningful consequences or stakes to the narrative, causing all of your efforts to be essentially meaningless. Especially when the events of Legion occurred. Not to mention that it's overly cheery tone toke away from the severity of the situations that our characters were placed in.
- Legion is the closest that the series had come to depicting a proper dystopian world by putting you the player in the position as the average everyday man instead of a super hacker with God-like hacking abilities. However, the games greatest strength also became it's greatest weakness when playing as anyone amounted to everyone that you play as being relatively shallow in terms of character. Not to mention that almost everyone was good everything which repeats the issue of being a God-like hacker again but on a larger extent.
Watch_Dogs is a good franchise, but it has always struggled to find it's sense of identity and balance out it's gameplay with it's narrative in a meaningful sense. It seems as though the franchise still has a long way to go before it can truly ever become as big as other Ubisoft titles. At least the games do that is. If you want more out of the Watch_Dogs universe, check out the comics and tie in novels as they do a great if not better job at flushing out the universe.
If a game consistently fails to follow through on the themes it sets up, can it really be said to be saying much of anything about those themes? It’s like giving someone a birthday card with nothing written in it.
@@TheZacharias333
Not a good analogy.
For one, Watch_Dogs unlike other dystopian media is much closer to home simply because most of the things accomplished in the games are actually possible in real life even now as we speak. Hacking technology such as vehicles, traffic lights, etc with a phone? All possible and done before in real life. Not exactly like the game of course, but that's to be expected. Watch_Dogs is relevant because it focus' on the present not an distant future with the obvious exception of course being Legion.
I did say that the franchise didn't always follow through with it's themes that it presents, but that is not to say that it has nothing to say at all. The first Watch_Dogs game specifically very clearly touched on the nature of Ctos and Big Brother as well as why DedSec shouldn't be trusted.
The conflict with Ctos is that people feel as though it is intrusive and a complete invasion of privacy which it very much is. But people's justifications for pushing it further is because it yeld's great results when it comes to predicting and stopping crimes. That's why it was initially utilized in Chicago to stop the rampant crime rate. The problem with this though is that the system and people in charge of it are allowed to frame anyone the see fit of being a menace to society even of they haven't committed a crime yet.
There's a lot more that can be said on the matter, but here is a UA-cam how can express that much better than I can.
ua-cam.com/video/Kk2G6zc5pKo/v-deo.html
Unfortunately the game is cringey as all hell. As an Englander, I find the voicr acting to be beyond terrible.
@@m.a.k.dynasty4504 Wow, thanks for this breakdown mate.
God, it's only when you say it like that, that I realise how... _old_ the whole Shkreli/Wu Tang thing feels now. Wild.
The New vsauce video deals with that exact concept, check it out !!
@@0uttaS1TE for people born 4 years ago it was
he's still in jail tho lol
still cant believe we have to want 82 more years to listen to it
Holy shit Hamish I love your videos
"Right, I totally knew that you're not supposed to actually eat these!"
_Slowly puts down gigantic, novelty sandwich..._
Post workout, I'm eating that tho.
Honestly monster burgers that JUST didn't have multiple patties would be great. They're the boring part of a burger anyway!
@Withnail that actually sounds amazing!
I had to pause the video at that point. Never thought of it that way, and now I can't get over it.
"The amount of traffic death I caused is higher than generally the Joker would ever dream of in his schemes and I did it casually. While trying to balance a bong between my knees and hold the playstation controller at the same time. I'm still a hero because of an arbitrary point system"
no, sir, you are a hero for that successful balancing act!
He has a way with words, even his humor packs a punch.
Timestamps (an attempt):
*Watch_Dogs* 00:00
- The One Button Hack, introduced
- UA-cam, Big Tech, and your drapes (4:30)
- Aiden Pearce, and an analysis of Batman (7:45)
- Being Vigilante rank, or: Batman in a GTA world (11:03)
- Aiden part III: The main plot (13:36)
- Voyeurism (17:30)
- The meaning of privacy (20:20)
- Voyeurism continued: Multiplayer (21:08)
- Aiden part IV: Shopping for furniture as a Keyboard Cowboy (25:50)
- Chess, Space Invaders, and Love Island (28:57)
- Bad Blood (31:59)
*Watch_Dogs 2* 35:41
- The sequel _Hackers_ deserves
- Jiving justice in the land of Neverwas (38:30)
- The brick of domestic terrorism (42:50)
- Watch the ants fight (48:20)
- DLC part I: Weird Naked Things (51:20)
- DLC part II: Oh, Ubisoft (55:00)
- Lenny, and the venal morality of corporations (57:14)
- Tonal (in)consistency:
i always appreciate timestampers
This is great. You should add the spoilers.
Thumbs up for the Jim Sterling reference.
Boy that furniture shopping euphemism is doing some legwork. good stuff
What a saint, thank you!
This isn't a criticism of the video at all, but I did just wanna say something about the point near the beginning:
I've been a professional coder for almost a decade, so I can attest that depending on the person there are absolutely people who almost never use a mouse. It's usually Linux people, as if you set up your machine right, you can do just about everything with key commands, and at that point a mouse actually slows you down. That said, with a GUI heavy OS like Windows, it can become a lot less viable to do everything via keyboard and a mouse can be more efficient, but most "hackers" aren't going to be using Windows in the first place. So it's not necessarily ridiculous to portray "hackers" as people who never use a mouse, but you're right that almost every other aspect of portraying hacking in media isn't exactly accurate to life haha
Editing this after finishing the video to say that the video itself was still phenomenal Noah!
This 100%
The interface greatly affects the speed of getting something done. It takes me less time to make changes to a Dell BIOS that's setup with keyboard in mind compared to a HP one that wants to look like a Windows8 safe mode screen.
What's funny though is that for me, it's more believable "hacking" if someone hits the 'enter/return' key six times in a row. lord knows how many people need to make sure their commandline is clear and responding before typing something out. lol
Agreed. _ratpoison_ has entered the chat.
@@Solinaru I'm a cybersecurity student with a few certifications and know how to do some basic external hacks. You're right on the money. Getting a shell in real life is probably the least interesting thing to a casual spectator that you could possibly see. There's a reason why movies feature people typing 300 wpm on a fancy graphical interface. The only thing needed to perform real hacking is a near reflexive understanding of complicated technical details like ports, protocols and which exploit works for what. And that process isn't very thrilling. Sometimes for no fault of your own you just have to run metasploit like 5 times before it actually works lol. Not to mention all the waiting around for Nmap scans and other exploits.
Huh.
Ya learn something new every day.
Movie hackers are all big vim ppl
He’s back! The wait is over, what a New Year’s Eve!
it's 0100 here already (and first news was mf doom)
@@tsartomato rip MF DOOM
@@thehomiethin4790 this comment is how I found this out....
@@QUAD00DLE :(
Oh man, your profile picture. I haven't thought about armored core nexus for awhile, might fire up an emulator later. thanks for the nostalgia!
"very hackery, much technical"
Not even 5 minutes in and I'm already laughing. A good way to end this cursed year.
*Jingling keys*
I gotta find that program he talks about in the beginning of the video
@@nathanielhaven3453 hackertyper.net/
*clickity clack clack*
I'm in.
Dead memes.... 😌
I actually really like the “Alone” digital trip. It highlights how paranoid and misanthropic Aiden is becoming. People are literally cameras in the trip, he’s obsessed with being watched despite watching others.
It's explained from audio logs through his obsession with observation, Aiden was able to develop his focus bullet time skill!
@@josegordo488 The moment to moment dialogue between characters, especially Jordi, was top notch in the first game.
The bloodline dlc in legion really showed how broken Aiden is as a person and is some story content that really would have helped make him a bit more sympathetic in the original game.
@@josegordo488 i loved the game too and some aspects of the story, but it really was despite Aiden as a protagonist rather than because. He could have worked better if they'd done more to unravel his flaws and have him go on some sort of growth, becoming a better person by the end of the game, or some sort of descent into an even more paranoid and avoidant mindset that leaves you questioning everything you have done the entire game, but instead he just ends where he started. He is Batman if he killed people, with less money, and now he's killed the Joker
@@freetothink284how is that supposed to work?
God, I loved the first Watch Dogs multiplayer. Any game could be genius or comedy. Want to hack stealthily? Blend in at a street vendor and buy things repeatedly, hide in a dumpster, blend in with a group of NPCs... or steal a taco truck and play the Mexican music over the PA (which literally never gets played by anyone but a player, adding to the hilarity of getting away with it stealthed). Or you could just completely avoid all the intentions of the game and ram into the player you're paired with repeatedly as they cluelessly try to escape the carnage thinking the AI has gone haywire, as there's no multiplayer objectives that require doing something so completely stupid.
It's so underrated. We really need more oddball multiplayer game modes. You could really tell they designed the layout of Chicago just for hacking invasions. All the trash bins, or garbage pileups to hide behind and tiny little spots you could squeeze into really makes it feel fun to explore. I spent so much time just trying to see what cool spots I could get to because of that mode.
@@robertvangooff8506 Its sad that no one talks about this games multiplayer. Friends that didnt play video games loved watching me hack someone. its sad that everyone hates this game because i only have good memories from it
Haven't played that but always appreciate games or even just gamemodes that let you do stupid/silly things that are harmless in-game but that still require some skill or ingenuity, feels like a lot of ideas in games have been shoved aside or reduced to the press of a button. It works don't get me wrong, who wants to have to master a 5 button combo to grab a ledge? But I do miss silly dynamics in multiplayer maps/gamemodes that can be useful or just really funny
Still active in 2023. I rewatched this vid and got sold on the mp modes and had to try it. You do have to unlock multiplayer but if you just rush the 5 missions needed you'll unlock mp in at least 1-2 hours.
I sometimes wonder what Noah would make of the Yakuza games but then he would probably need two lockdowns and an extended vacatin to finish all of them and then make an over four hour long video.
Exactly what I was thinking lol
It would be totally worth it though
I don't think there's much to say about the series on a whole. You play one Yakuza, you've played them all.
@@timcosgrove707
The newest game, Yakuza: Like a Dragon is actually pretty different. It feels fresh, and I ended up liking it even more than the originals
@@timcosgrove707 honestly you could 100% convince Noah to do this as he made an entire video on Gears of War, a franchise he took a similar sentiment from, and made a big long video/love letter to the franchise. If “easy fun that doesn’t differentiate much through titles” describes Yakuza, and I know it does because I love them, it would definitely be up his alley
As a single loner, this is *exactly* what I need on new year's eve. Noah delivered this one for the homies.
I hope everyone in this community is doing well. I share your loneliness. Let's enjoy this great piece by Noah, together!
Happy new year buddy, I hope its a damn good one
@@edwhite7798 Same to you friend
Hey buddy, you're never alone when you post online
Dude same here. You said it. What a great new years gift!
“Grit with no substance.”
This. Absolutely hit the nail on the head and describes why all of Ubisoft’s games feel so vapid.
100% why are so many games obsessed with this nihilistic edginess? it’s so exhausting despite saying nothing
@@timgimmy609 low effort maximum profit.
@@timgimmy609 yeah i wish games that ventured into "edgy" territory weren't so afraid to say something but i guess to attract the most people, they choose to not say anything at all :/
@@kaleidoscopickait I guess it's about the shallow, looking cool rebel without a cause kind of stuff that can actually look stylish despite saying really nothing in the end.
Idk it felt like it showed enough substance, the main focus of the game is not revenge or anything like that, it's about domination in the digital/informational war, it's about people who know something they shouldn't know, also the sequence where we see women being sold on an auction makes you want to actually destroy all the ones who are involved in this, same with Rossie-Freemont place. The game is not very very long, it doesn't show everything that can be shown in that setting and concept, but it had enough in it. Also gotta remember that quite a few games back in 2013-2014 had the problem like AC Unity, which is spending a lot of years creating a very good immersive city and gameplay mechanics, and as a result not having enough time to put all the story in the game for the release date. Unity got 3/4 story parts cut out from it, i imagine WD wanted to show more as well.
The focus of this game about "mocking others people private life" is especially disturbing considering the relatively recent revelations concerning the abuses and harassments at Ubisoft... Clues were always here, we were just blind to them =/
Good time to remember Ubisoft spent years defending and covering for abusers and rapists and that the company has faced zero consequences for this
If anything it has only gotten more successful
The video covers this in the Watch Dogs 2 portion.
But it is fine because leftists will buy their games because of trans representation.
@@SirSpence99 it is fine because liberals with no actual beliefs aren't able to do the bare minimum to enforce consequences and boycott
Or the reactionaries who actually work against consequences saying with full mouths how they'll now buy more copies because sjws are ruining the industry
You clearly see leftist game critics refusing to buy and engage with these companies on the other hand
You see also leftist viewers refusing to buy their games at least directly from the company and opt for used copies and such
Don't twist the world so it fits your own biases
@@HosKaetan I have yet to see a leftist boycott a Ubisoft game. I've seen leftists who *said* they would, but then when it came out that there was trans representation they bought it.
No twisting here, just what I've seen.
I have however seen people stick to their guns and boycott it *because* of the trans representation.
Funny that.
And yes, even pirating the game means that you aren't boycotting. *Especially* if you then go and tell people about how good it is because of representation.
"The driest part of a soiled diaper" I'm sorry but I'm stealing that one, I had to pause I was dying, good god you eviscerated it.
I feel like the big problem with Legion is that the "play as anyone" feature is really cool on paper, but hamstrung by the need to still follow the same basic structure of a Ubisoft open world game. It's a feature that belongs in like, a AAA version of Dwarf Fortress, where there is no set narrative, only a bunch of systems designed to allow players to build their own story. A pure sandbox that is able to respond to your actions in more long term ways than just immediate feedback of "you are now in combat, things are exploding!". But that's not the way that AAA games are made - you need cutscenes to put in the trailers, big "cinematic" moments that make people go "oh, shit!", and a drip feed of mission objectives to give players direction. I get why it happens - a lot of people feel lost in pure sandboxes; it's why games like Dwarf Fortress are still mostly a niche genre (the ascii graphics don't help either, but even Kenshi, which is a full 3D sandbox RPG, is still not even in the same universe as a mainstream AAA release in terms of sales), but it also means that the systems in Legion are never really going to be able to realize their full potential.
Ubisoft keep trying to copy the Nemesis system without realising that it needs personality to really work.
Its a compare a d contrast to Breath of the Wild. Even the developers expressed the same sentiment that to truly make a game, well, play how the player wanted as a huge sandbox, they have to write the story in such a way that it feels non-guided. Compared to past Zelda titles. So yeah.....I still don't know why Ubisoft, after knowing all that and thinking they could write it in a more focused way, think they could accomplish better....well....at least they tried.
In an ideal world Legion would be like this: collect evidences, find the name of the 2ry villain, find the place he would visit with his bodyguards, scan him, deep profile him, see his schedule, choose the best time and place to strike. Do this with all 2ry villains to get the main villain's attention to get him back in town from abroad, again find the place he would visit, deep profile him, see his schedule, choose the best place to strike. But we're not in that world that's why, just like with the Nemesis system, engaging with Legion systems and engaging with its story is like two separate things.
I could actually hear Noah say the „you are now in combat, things are exploding“ part.
Sounds like Kenshi tbh
I've only ever played WD1, but despite the poor reception it got, I actually really enjoyed it. Aiden is a shitty guy roleplaying Batman, and on some level, he's self-aware of that, but he buries that awareness in all but his least lucid moments. And in the end, he doesn't even redeem himself: his curt hostility gets his sister kidnapped, and though he rescues her, his actions put them at odds; his poor communication gets Clara killed; literal scores of people die at Aiden's hands and in the chaos of the ctOS disturbances; and Blume just makes a more invasive ctOS 2.0 after Aiden demonstrates how exploitable the first one is.
And yet, everyone _loves_ him. It's only the people he's close to who see past the fantasy.
I think I value the way WD1 refuses to break Aiden's unwavering faith in himself--it makes for such a bleak story about social disintegration and urban vigilantism, with a nihilistic, 'people can't change' theme. I think I value the sheer, unflinching juxtaposition of conflicting worldviews and Aiden's resolution thereof with grandiose narcissism. In the eyes of Aiden Pearce, _Aiden Pearce is God,_ and no matter how many people die, that never stops being true--it's never even called into question, except during Aiden's lowest points taking digital trips.
"Jesus, Aiden, just leave it; it's fine. How do you know what he thinks? I can handle this on my own; we do *not* need your help. Okay, look, Aiden, _god,_ you have not changed at all--Aiden, we *do not* need your help. Stop trying to fix our problems; every time you try, you just make things worse."
-Nicole, in _Big Brother_
Aiden Pearce is deliberately written as a hypocrite. The author seems to miss that Aiden is still associating with a professional Hitman (Jordi), stealing cars, robbing ordinary citizens with your phone, and more. I don't think the people who ever reviewed this game ever suspected, maybe we're supposed to not LIKE Aiden. Especially since a huge chunk of the game is about how he's ruined all his personal relationships.
@@CT_Phipps I am fascinated by the way this author completely looked past the fact that Aiden is not a hero and is not portrayed by the game as such at all.
You have an abundance of correctly used semicolons after the colon in your first paragraph! 😍
This. This is what I wanted to say in the author's section of the first WATCH_DOGS. Everybody has a different taste in what a well-written character is (if it isn't completely nonsensical) and I think Aiden is well-written in his own regard.
The game never refers them him as a downright hero (at least from the first thing I can think of), but rather just... the vigilante.
I think you're filling the blanks left by the game's writers with your head canon, guys.
56:00 Used disestablishmentarianism in an actual sentence, my dude.
What I came here to say as well. Cheers
Folks, you absolutely love to hear it.
why "dis-" and not "anti-" though..?
"They still sell flip phones and property in Nebraska" is such a good line.
I don't quite understand that line still...
@@ProfesserLuigi They still sell flip phones = you can opt out of a smartphone if you REALLY wanted to
property in Nebraska = cheap, isolated, and generally a bit further away from other states in terms of "big-tech" modernity.
It's about going "off the grid," though less in an electricity sense and more of a surveillance state sense.
I love how the thumbnails are consistently and charmingly awful. Never change!
Dude, same! He's such a goddamn fantastic essayist that the thumbnails and occasional sound issues are in just endearing
Noah can do whatever he wants with the presentation, because the substance underneath is always AMAZING. If only the same could be said for more than 0.00001% of youtubers.
It's the Noah aesthetic™️ and we love it
I suspect he just picks one of the default thumbnail options UA-cam extracts from the video-that is to say, one of a few random frames that the algorithm thinks would make decent thumbnails for God-Machine-knows what reason.
Noah, you are the most unpretentious, considered, thoughtful and humble game critic on UA-cam. I love your work
Whitelight would like a word...
@@willmk4042 I enjoy Whitelight videos, but unpretentious and humble are not words I would use to describe him.
Noah saying "'Moooo' end quote" gives me life
shoutout to marcus' threat probability being 42% with 0 criminal record
I read your entire patreon announcement regarding feelings about depression and impostor syndrome and everything and I hope that from one depressed person to another, you inspire me, your videos are the highest quality videos in regards to the literary content and I hope that you keep making the content you want and know that a lot of people will support it even if it's a book or a novel and not necessarily a video game critique and analysis
Noah, you are the most sincere person I know.
You're the most sincere person I know keezlovsky
@@ataridc You are the second most sincere person I know :)
Thanks!
@@holygon you are the second most sincere Noah I know.
Regardless of what anyone says to this day watchdogs, has been the only game to give me that jonh wick/punisher type of gameplay and vibe and for that alone is enough for me to consider it one of my favorite games. It's the type of game I'll gladly go back to anytime and just have a blast playing.
Yeah I loved the gunplay in the first one. For some reason the gun play in Legion feels a bit awkward and a lot less fun..
@@cool64378 There are two main reasons for that. First of all, Legion doesn't have slow-mo focus ability that made gun fights more tactical. Second, in WD1 you have four weapon slots and you could change them on the fly, in other words, you always have access to all weapons in the game. Also no sniper rifles in Legion.
I was only just thinking about how our Noah was due an upload.
It's always like that for some reason
?
Even though he didn’t like VTMBL, I still love him. ❤️
The "No using mouse" aspect of programming is somewhat true, if you ever look at a 50 yearold programmer using VIM it looks like flying text.
Emacs is better anyways
weird way to spell ed but ok
set mouse=a
@Dale Twokey oh yeah vim aint just for oldsters the plugins can make it a better editor (though not IDE) than the leading VS Code
also, vi? not vim/neovim?
@@ofcrgry vi is a more common default install, so i'll also tend to use it more than vim since on personal systems i mostly just use emacs. neovim is nice though.
My favorite part of the game was after you kill the main antagonist, to which Aiden fourth wall breakingly states “You know this is supposed to make me feel empty, but actually, I feel more free”. That kind of encapsulates Aiden and makes everything, from the fact hacking phones and stealing cars doesn’t decrease your status (and killing civilians and cops barely does) to the side missions where you help criminals commit acts that you would have shot them in the back for any other time, make sense.
Aiden only cares about being free to do what he wants. Throughout the game, we see him cause his niece’s death, his partner’s death, his sister’s kidnapping, the complete destruction of a city’s power supply, and various thefts from and deaths of random civilians, but by the end, Aiden doesn’t change at all. He still acts like he is some sort of Punisher for the city that should be free to kill, steal, and break into whatever he wishes in order to administer his version of justice. He even refuses to help the actually altruistic hackers by the end, because in his mind only he can be trusted with the power to stop the bad guys.
I disagree that Aiden isn’t a deconstruction, he is the perfect analogy to what a real world Batman would be. A guy who just because he can fight crime will fight crime, even if no one asked for him or need him and even if they would have done better without him. Because at the end of the day, Aiden is just an ego driven narcissist who needs to feel like a god.
Me too. I feel that the game developers wanted also to deconstruct GTA's police and interaction mechanics, you can clearly see this with the karma-popularity feature: if you don't give a shit about the citizens like how people typically play an open world game, they'll most likely call the cops on you and you'll be disliked in the ending. But if you do give a shit, everyone will think you're actually a hero of justice.
It's just that I can see what Noah is saying. It's more like how a social network measures your popularity. Heck, maybe the Chinese government's fun-fun Social Credit bullshit, first developed by Western companies. Just imagine how much tonally consistent the games would be if the citizens of Chicago/San Francisco/cyberpunk London went through the same karma system as you...
Or if the game actually cared at all about, let's say, consequences. Supposedly Aiden is bad (when he's not being protrayed as good) in part because he finances his activities by stealing money, including working class people if you're not careful. So, if I hack away all of little Johnny's money off from his account: how about I see him later on as a beggar on the street? You wouldn't even need a karma system for that.
But Rorschach isn't Batman, he's riffing on The Question and Mr. A. He's a critique of two heroes created by someone (Steve Ditko) with a highly dualist sense of morality based on his objectivist philosophies.
Or maybe I'm just being an insufferable nerd again.
I think it's almost the other way around, in fact: _Watchmen_ was so influential on mainstream superhero comics that later incarnations of Batman have exhibited Rorschach-like traits even though the character didn't possess them at the time.
You're right, but if we go by archetypes I'd say that Batman can be seen as a mix of Rorschach and both the Nite Owls, and Batman can express different aspects of those three characters depending on the era and who's writing him.
He also seems to never realize that Aiden is presented as a hypocrite who ruined his family's life. I mean, this is textual in the game.
The segment on Legion shows how Noah (imho) blows most other UA-camrs out of the water. He goes so much deeper while everyone else just goes "well, by playing anyone, you aaackshually end up playing as no one"
Errant Signal did a great video on it too!
@@GreebusBleeb I wouldn't call Noah's Legion gameplay analysis particularly great. Chris (Errant Signal), on the other hand, analyzed most of the game systems, including NPCs related ones. But it seems like both guys don't care much about stealth, that's why they ignored its one of the most important features - enemies don't shoot first - and didn't find the game as special.
"I forgive you if that's too many surreal scandals back now to remember."
Laughs and then cries in still remembering that.
Noah Caldwell Gervais, I have been watching your video essays for a long time. I really appreciate the calculated, well thought out writing for each of these in depth dives into this medium we call video games. It's clean, concise and your effort to present as an objective analysis still with a touch of your own subjectivity is welcomed. I particularly enjoyed the travelogue videos, so thank you. Really plainly thank you, as empty as an internet UA-cam comment is usually, I cannot express how much your work is truly valued by not just myself, but those like myself.
HORRAY FOR INDVINUALITY IN HOW WHILE WHEN YOU THINK OF HUMANITY ON A MACRO SCALE YOU SEEM LIKE A SPECK OF DUST ONLY TO REALISE THAT THE CONNECTIONS WE MAKE WITH OTHER SPECKS OF DUSK ON THE MICRO SCALE IS WHAT KEEPS US BONDED TOGETHER THROUGH TIME AND SPACE!!!!!
The police in the first Watch Dogs can’t pursue you if you ride in a subway or drive a boat out to the ocean - so once you figure that out, they’re actually really easy to evade.
I'll disagree with you on Aiden. He's clearly presented as as an unhinged crazy vigilante. His inability to let go is constantly putting his family (the one thing he claims he cares about) in danger. The game is very clear that his fixer work is what got his niece killed and that he is no better than the goons he kills. The dude is a mercenary. He has a weird and twisted moral code much like The Punisher.
Also, unlike Marcus from WD2, he isn't fighting the power. He's using it exclusively for his benefit. He fully embraces Blume's fucked up system.
He's realistic. A man doing these things would not be a good or mentally sound person.
He's still boring.
@@adeptdamage3669 saints row 3-4 fan. That explains it. You clearly have the patience of a 4 year old and think flashing lights and pew pew guns is better than a good story because of your simplistic "fun trumps all" mentality.
@@kadnaz Nah Watch Dogs games all had pretty weak writing.
@@adeptdamage3669 says the saints row 3 fan
I've always enjoyed your intros, but your last few you've done really capture the essence of the game you're talking about.
Yeah he's getting better I'm glad to be along for the ride
Anyone got an ID on the tune?
really wanna find the track as well
They all do, even if only in small ways like the (hilariously, relatably bad) hand-written font choices. An absolute masterclass in minimalist symbolism.
naturally a game by ubisoft, the company that can't resist violating the consent of its own employees and is infamous for an extreme amount of sexual assault, would not respect the consent of its NPC's
"Moving to Akron and opening a Cell Phone Repair store"
Lol, that line reminded me of this trope that I've always hated in crime and action movies. They'll be some assassin or crime boss who is "the bad" and the good guy will ask them "why are you doing this???" and they'll reply "TO SURVIVE!".
Dude, if you want to "survive" learn to code and get some boring ass job in Omaha, save up and buy some property and guns and provided society doesn't collapse TO dramatically you probably have an over 90% chance of making it to very old age. I don't think taking a job that constantly puts you in harms way for, what I image is at best an upper middle class income, is really the best way to live as long as possible.
The "to survive" line makes sense in certain contexts. But it got so over used that it really doesn't work
21:00 A lot of the stuff in the original Watchdogs starts to make a lot more sense when you think about what has come out in regards to Ubisofts work environment in the last year or so.
saw a post about your depression/imposter syndrome, I sincerely look forward to your content and think you are one of the best content creators out there. you provide actual analysis from different perspectives while putting into words what everyone thinks but can't articulate. as someone that doesnt laugh or cry very often you've managed to do both. as a chronically depressed person myself, just know that life is worth living and your content helps make it a little better.
Oh my god, “the VIGILANTE!, instead of the temp who makes us all uncomfortable.”
Idk why I found that so hilarious.
I am not convinced you didn't make this whole video just so you could use the word "antidisestablishmentarianism" in a video casually.
19:00 I don't know Noah, that's a bit of a stretch... Those scenes were meaningless to me, I thought they were just there to give you something to see, a lot of the times is just stuff that people do in their homes, you're not supposed to get something out of most of them, other than to see what you think you'll see if you'll spy on people, I don't think is as complex as you say it is.
It's obvious that he is taking it personaly, he pictures himself as the guy beeing watched. I agree with you, it's dumb. But he is from the far far left, and thinks everything is a political statement and should be interpretated even when it wasnt meant as a statement
Watch Dogs is the Hot Topic of video game anarchism and activism. It makes apeals to the culture. But it in itself is so sanitized, corporate and altogether spineless, that it's an empty thing.
So...I really hesitate to put forth a comment on a video like this, both for my genuine respect for your work, and the inevitable maelstrom to befall me once what's said is said. That, well, said, I feel compelled to voice a certain dissatisfaction with this review, at least the section dedicated for Watch Dogs 1.
To put that dissatisfaction briefly, I feel that the vast majority of your complaints are built around *a lot* of moral projections onto the game, and then gravitating to the most negative aspects of it - real or otherwise - to uphold those projections, rather than an honest attempt to observe the game on its own terms.
Given, again, that WD1 is presented as damn-near the antichrist in this review, I'm sure the assumption is that I'm going turn all of those negative qualities of the game into virtues of some kind. Frankly, no; a lot of the things players can do in WD1, its subject matter, the Walter White-ian nature of its protagonist, and the often schizophrenic focus and morality of the story, are things worthy of criticism. Where my own criticism lies with the review, is how often the review references despising the very idea of the game, far moreso than anything the game really does in service, or rejection, of those ideas.
The best place to start (yes, this has now become a youtube comment essay, my apologies) is with Aiden Pearce. Or, to put it more aptly, how most people _play_ Aiden Pearce.
Aiden Pearce, to be clear, is a jackass. He is, in truth, a violent man that has the capacity to sow chaos wherever he goes, possesses a system of morality that is exceptionally off-putting to bystanders, and explicitly has talents towards manipulation and terror that he uses to service his own ends. The obvious counter to all of this is that it's all intentional; to remind everyone that, however much he is obviously inspired by Batman, he actually is based more on Walter White from Breaking Bad, and that you really aren't meant to like either character beyond their basic humanity. This, however, is too easy. However true this rebuttal, it's one that can be pretty easily handwaved if someone just _really_ doesn't like Aiden, or prefers a more utilitarian proxy for players to inhabit, this is a video game after all. Same case occurs for any attention drawn to the myriad of moments where Aiden actually is a decent human being, where he routinely relinquishes the advantages he has when it becomes clear that following through on them involves harming innocents, or quiet introspection of the hypocrisy of his action and his own fallibility; easy to ignore such moments, past or present, when there's a lot of shooting to do, and bank accounts to hack.
The better argument, I feel, is one of agency. Player agency.
This may reek of copout, but I really do see WD1 as a rare specimen for how players react when faced with choice beyond single button presses. Games like Mass Effect allow players to perform a limited set of actions to build a Commander Shepard that they would like to inhabit, either as a kind-hearted and stalwart bastion for life, or a rampant jackass that looked at his/her drill sergeant, formed an even more exaggerated version of them in his/her mind, and went "yeah, that's who I want to be all the time". inFamous, similarly, lets you walk into the game deciding whether you want Cole's/Delsin's stories to be one of inspiring heroics and displays of humanity, or descents into power-obsessed mania and psychopathy, the protagonists often failing at the very mission they began, and not much caring about that failure anyway.
I choose these both as examples, not just for their binary morality, but also how they use agency on the part of the player: the player selects a set of actions within recognizable guidelines of archetypal protagonists, then players develop an attachment to the shape of hero, or anti-hero, they have created.
What makes WD1 unique is not just that the "morality/reputation" system at play doesn't change the outcome of the story, or Aiden's character in the beat-by-beat, but this kind of psychological reinforcement of who players _expect_ him to be. A lot of reviewers, to put it bluntly, talk shit about Aiden, as both character and person, but rarely ever show him _acting_ shitty fully of his own accord. They could show footage of him vaguely threatening a mobster to expose his criminal activity to his family and the police, or threatening a witness to Aiden's crimes _inside prison_ with extended time imprisoned, or pushing Clara away after he learns that she more-or-less doxxed him to the Chicago-South Club...
...But they never do, do they?
However much these scenes could be used to prove Aiden is a terrible person, in isolation or in context, that's not what essayists tend to use; they instead use gameplay of _themselves_ *_playing Aiden_* as an asshole. The complaints aren't just that Aiden isn't present for his family - something that is true in the plot - it's also that he steals his sister's meds, which he only does if the player commands him to, and is not required to progress the scene forward. People mention Aiden's voyeurism, but every instance displayed and referenced is usually player-instigated. The sheer amount of collateral people claim Aiden leaves in his wake is usually evidenced by...how much players love using the grenade launcher into oncoming traffic.
The obvious counter is, well they have to put _something_ in the video essay, yes? It's a game, show gameplay. True, but there is a pattern to be noticed about _the kinds of evidence_ people use to demonstrate Aiden's behavior in the story, and when you take a closer examination, it's almost never the things Aiden does in the story, but the things players do through him, and then use that playstyle as more evidence against Aiden's moral fiber.
In this way, the _opposite_ of what happens in Mass Effect and inFamous occurs: whereas the aforementioned games let players create a character that best suits their personal actions and beliefs, players in WD1 engage in actions they *believe* would suit Aiden's character. Instead of player character following player action, player action follows player character. People act _assuming_ that this is something Aiden would do, even though the player is in total control of Aiden in the moment. It's, effectively, a self-fulfilling prophecy, where players start _believing_ that Aiden is terrible, players start doing terrible things as Aiden, which further reinforces the perceived personality of the character, even if "Aiden" is only acting by total player command, not merely consent.
This, in simpler terms, is confirmation bias.
None of this is to say that Aiden _isn't_ these things to some degree, but rather an observation that audiences tend to forget both sides of the interaction process of player and player-character. A note on how we may tend to shift the blame of our actions onto a vessel that we expect would be capable of carrying those choices. That, if were we to so choose, we could *make* Aiden a more earnest character, his mission statement a more sincere one. The effect of agency goes both ways; instead of assuming Aiden is sneering at the people he voyeuristically watches, maybe we can assume he's just curious, because _we_ may be just curious. Instead of firing grenades into a crowd, and then pin the collateral on Aiden, we can play more defensively, use more nuanced and precise tactics to keep collateral to a minimum, even no collateral at all. The end result of the latter is that Aiden starts to closer resemble the kind of hero he wants to be, while the result of the former makes him look like the narcissist he's often condemned as.
There are *_very_* good reasons to take issue with any of the game's activities on a moral level; voyeurism and vigilantism are not without some kind of harm, the kind of harm that one writer for WD1 is desperately trying to display and denounce, and another writer completely indulges in. It's like if Alan Moore and Frank Miller were working on the same story at the exact same time; two completely different personalities and systems of conscience operating within the same space, muddying the themes within.
I, personally, very much enjoy Aiden Pearce, and the greater whole of Watch Dogs, but I recognize a large part of that enjoyment came from how I played the game. I feel as though _not_ playing WD1 as a knock-off GTA clone (an unfortunate comparison that the marketing team for this very game very stupidly made), not as a generic crime simulator, but as something approaching an "ethical" vigilante simulator, where you're actively stopping crime nonlethally and protecting others from criminals and yourself, was the way this game was meant to be played...but it wasn't played that way by the majority of people, and no amount of my own personal opinion will change that, so I'll end with this:
Watch Dogs 1 is a game rife with internal conflict at its very foundations, and lets players engage in a life that's hard to find elsewhere. While I personally find the wanton psychopathy and outright misanthropy of Grand Theft Auto more egregious than anything found in Watch Dogs, issues of privacy and vigilantism are things a little more personal to a lot of people, and I understand those that take issue with this game, a game that doesn't care much for escaping _from_ those issues. What I would suggest, in spite of all of that, is that there is a way to still enjoy this game; to find some merit within this story, and find some humanity in a monster.
Noah, despite my issues with your review, thank you for sharing. Both for your unique talent, and for inspiring me to say what's been on my mind about this game for years. Take care of yourself in these trying times.
Couldn't that same logic be used when talking about Aiden doing 'good' things? It's the player's choice to toss grenades into crowds but it's also the player's choice to stop aggressive crimes or chase after purse thieves.
Thinking back to my own time playing through the game I'd have to say that by pure narrative presentation that Aiden is a selfish asshole. Not a blood thirsty psycho but also in no way a selfless do gooder. Everything he does, story wise, is entirely self centered and pertains to his own goal of revenge and twisted sense of morality. Any good that comes from his actions is unintentional on his part just as whatever death and destruction that may occur is none of his concern.
We as players can send him on a killing spree or save the random life but both would be purely a player's choosing. Because Aiden is only concerned with Aiden.
@@Valzahd As I repeated over and over, I never said Aiden was none of the things people have described, rather my argument was meant in response to the sheer toxic recursion audiences tend to have towards his character i.e. not really engaging with the text of the narrative.
Were one to engage with the text, what would be apparent is that there is a not inconsiderable degree of reflection within him; there's a lot of guilt for what he's done, past and present. When Jacks sees Aiden kill his pursuers via camera feed, he starts thinking about how he must look to outsiders, and comes away chilled from the uncertainty. Towards the end of the game, Aiden, word for word, asks himself how many people he's killed, and how anyone can decide who lives and who dies.
There's also moments were Aiden actively tries to protect others. Some are obvious: coming back for Clara after she tries to turn herself over to Damien is one. Others are more subtle: there's a scene when Aiden first infiltrates Quinn's human trafficking ring under a stolen alias, and one of the girls is left alone in a room with Aiden. She, believing him to be the man he's impersonating is expecting violence, as the impersonated (now dead man) was known for torture. Were Aiden that selfish asshole/narcissist/psychopath, he'd have zero trouble nor hesitation being violent to maintain his cover, but he doesn't; he immediately leaves. Doing so, of course, tips Quinn off that this isn't a colleague, and so Aiden has to sneak out of the compound later, but not before offering to get the same young woman out as well, and vowing to take down the entire operation himself.
Then there's the ending choice, one that places greater pay off to sparing Maurice, rather than vengeance.
Like I said, it's very easy to forget these moments in the heat of things. The difference between my argument and this here review, is that I'm more consciously aware of how my interaction affects my interpretations of the character and text, whereas Noah's supplied evidence tends to be largely him projecting what he's "supposed" to feel in any given moment. The example that I gravitate towards is his entire talk on "shame" during hacking intrusions, when, really, there's no reason or suggestion to shame the characters in the provided scenes, and is entirely an assumption on his end. I went into those scenes neither feeling shame against the characters, nor shame for engaging, nor felt as though I were expected to feel both, especially when considering the meta-context that everything is fictional anyways. His experience of shame, versus my lack thereof, would be a more audience-dependent example of how reactions form views on art, and how interpretations can snowball. Every painting a self-portrait, and such.
@@skullsridge I dunno. I think you're perhaps reading more into him than there is.
The spare or kill Maurice choice is purely player oriented. Aiden finds recordings of how torn up Maurice is over what happened and Aiden responds with sneering judgement, clearly still putting the bulk of blame on him. Judgement that never softens through out the course of the game right up to that player choice. I spared Maurice when playing, not because Aiden had a change of heart, but in spite of Aiden. To me, Aiden hadn't shown signs of changing for the better. He was still the vindictive asshole he starts the game as, blaming others for the consequences of his own actions.
I suppose it comes down to personal take. You can see some redeeming qualities that outweigh the negatives. While others see his negatives as outweighing whatever humanity that still remains.
I may disagree with your take but I can't say you're objectively wrong. Just as it's not objectively wrong to not sympathize with Aiden in the slightest.
@@Valzahd -I'm not reading into him, he's outright telling us about shame. You can look at the scenes playing in real-time, and the cinematic language used in the actual scenes doesn't support his argument. Most of the "evidence" he uses is experiential and value-based, rather than rooted in the present reality. There's nothing wrong with that subjectivity, quite the opposite, I would genuinely love to hear more about the ethical ramifications of voyeurism, but the context of the scenes provided, in addition to the wider context of this being a review of the game (as opposed to a more focused dissertation of the text), leaves the points he constructs feeling very stream-of-consciousness, and insular in his reasoning.-
Edit: Thought you were talking about my final note on Noah's review, since he was the last point in my reply. Re-reading, I see the miscommunication now, my apologies. I'll scratch it out for its irrelevance, but leave it up as my case against Noah's conclusions on the intrusive hack scenes. On that note, though, I really don't appreciate the "reading more into X", it reeks of intellectual dishonesty/not really hearing anything I'm saying, and is just condescending as hell. Since I'm here, I may as well point out that, yes, I did exactly point out the logic could be applied for doing good things, and how doing so affects perceptions in a positive manner. That was an entire paragraph.
I'm pretty sure Aiden only comments on Maurice's lines exactly once, in the very first log when he finds it, while he's silent for the rest. It's hard to look up, since it's rather an esoteric thing to confirm via internet, but that's my strongest recollection. You're not wrong, I know he's still condemning that first time, but it's largely personal interpretation from there. Besides, we're going to blame Aiden for the death of Lena, but absolve Maurice, the gunman, for his involvement? He still pulled the trigger, and actively killed Lena. Aiden has a right to still be pissed at the man who murdered family. Aiden is responsible to a considerable degree, but I'd place him lower on the scale of guilt, under Maurice, then Damien, then Quinn.
Also remember that Aiden has dialogue after the spare ending has been chosen, where he talks about forgiveness. You can still claim the player-oriented nature of the choice, but it's one that does actively shape his character, and is acknowledged by the game through cinematic language as the "canon" ending. Aiden working on himself to not be a monster is canon.
I know that last bit in your reply is internet code for "I'm no longer interested in this argument, please stop throwing walls of text at me", and I apologize for still going on. I have 6-ish years of thoughts on this game, and never had the space nor resources to discuss them. Also, as a personal thing, I find the "you're not wrong, but I'm also not wrong" stance to be a little patronizing. I know there's no offense intended here, but it feels shitty to be on the receiving end of that, at least for me. Just a note if you're engaging with people in a random comments section for the future. It's okay to just say you'd like to end the discussion.
Mentioning personal take is good, though, that doesn't feel condescending, and is very true. I understand people not liking, well anything really, I'm usually more behooved at lack of text engagement in general. I respect disagreement and subjectivity being acknowledged, just not being coddled over that subjectivity.
one last ounce of wit before the year ends. Perfect
Do a video looking at the Fable games. That would be really dope 👌😎👍
"ASSHOLE OR EXTREME PUSHOVER: WHICHYA WANT?"
Tell-tale personalities
1. Total Asshole
2. Suspending Disbelief
3. Passive-Agressive
4. Proven that the story was written without you (... dialog choices).
@@Marinealver You describing fallout 4 dialog options
All 3 watch dogs games tried to be something they were not, and failed in the process. WD1 had a great story but lackluster and bland gameplay compared to other games at the time like GTA 5. WD2 tried to right the wrongs of WD1 and was better gameplay wise but failed to deliver a good story, the weapons were worse and the already bad AI and gunfights got worse, not to mention basically copying the visuals of GTA 5 and Marcus was a much more shallow protagonist than Aiden. WDL failed in every single aspect lacking in both story and gameplay somehow and only doubled down on the wrongs of the last two games.
i think the fact the idea of a watch dogs game being interesting itself is deeply concerning. The knowledge that everyone secretly wants that fantasy power of intruding on others lives even in a digital pixel not real people type form of looking in through other's laptop cameras and controlling things in the room like a ghost. The fact that we just without question hack into people's phones and just remove money from their accounts. The fact that you can know so much about just a random person walking past you on the street, yet none of us wants to be on the opposite end of that spectrum being the one spied on or have money stolen.
Yet now you actually do have people seemingly willing to open their lives to smart home technology and always listening devices and couldn't care at all. Humans seem to never learn despite being constantly reminded just how dystopic and tyrannical life can become in the future the more people give up their autonomy and agency to other people. Yet most blindly walk towards it anyways. It's psychologically infuriating.
It's just a game? Or a sign of things to come?
Damn, you really can't get a more brutal insult from Noah than "I feel like I wasted my time for 3 games."
Hell, I always felt extreme dissonance going on frivolous crime sprees in the GTA games, and you unapologetically play as criminals in those games. Watchdogs never really had a chance in that regard.
Yea the hammer and sickle tee shirt marcus can wear is sorta cringy. Not gonna go on and “REEEE SJWS REEE”
I’m just saying, the idea of being anti authoritarian and then wearing the second most identifiable authoritarian symbol in the world is ironic at best.
Sjws think you can be free only under govt control.
Horatio's death was mostly because the game needs a reason to have the heroes fight the Hispanic gang because its meant to be a parallel to when Anonymous tried to pick a fight with the Zeta Cartel. As such, Horatio was kind of generic in characterization compared to the other guys.
When I saw the title, I assumed I was going to be watching a thorough analysis of the story or gameplay. Instead, I get a socio political analysis of the entire series. I'm digging it!!
Not the notification I was expecting but if Noah is making a video on this he has to have interesting things to say
I liked Aiden. I mean, i’m not saying he’s quite up there with Arthur Morgan, but Aiden was cool in his own way. I liked his dynamic with T-bone and Clara.
Yay! You have been MISSED, my friend! 🥰😘
For being about an old irrelevant game this may be Noah's most relevant video ever.
your aware Watch Dog Legion literally just came out like a month ago if not less
Literally jumped when I saw this video in my notifications
i iterally JUST finished the Red dead 4 hour video, and i take a look to my right and see you post this 15 minutes ago............ I haven't even played any of these games, yet you've got me feeling so many emotions. Thank you so much, and may 2021 bless you with many well deserved treats
Happy new years Noah. Thank you for your hard work buddy! Love your content 😄
Can somebody post more info on that movie "Possessor" he talks about at 6:28? I keep only getting a 2020 sci fi horror film (which actually looks like a good film by the way).
That's the one.
I don't get the Aiden hate.
For once we had a protagonist who was different. A real psycho, without a maniacal personality. I actually enjoyed being Batman, and the shear terror Aiden Pierce brings around himself.
there's something so utterly ironic about Deadsec in the first game being anti-corporate and aiming to demolish the big names and wealthy elite of Chicago, and then pull a 180 to the point of where they have their own clothing brand and even treat their recruits in Legion like employees rather than people. essentially shopping for names with talents behind them that ultimately benefit the great conglomerate of Deadsec rather than garnering the trust of the masses in an attempt of protest against authority.
I think my favorite thing about your videos is that even when I disagree, I tend to go off in a pretty articulate way that helps me understand why I like something you dislike or vice versa. Your videos put me in a frame of mind where I find myself capable of that level of discussion, and it's refreshing for me.
Also, V for Vendetta was cool. Read it as a result of this video.
Just going to put it here because I haven't seen it mentioned on this video yet: your video editing has hugely improved over these past few months. This one in particular is, I would say, your best edited video so far. Keep up the good work!
If anyone in interested in Aiden as a character (i know theres not much to his character) theres a great video that psychoanalizes his behaviour as a vigilante to see if he is truly an unrepenting psychopath as he first appears.
ua-cam.com/video/oJ9-5iv68Vc/v-deo.html
It's so strange how despite agreeing with everything Noah says here, I still fracking love these games. I wonder if we'll get an addendum once the online content drops for Legion.
I really enjoyed the discussion of “one button liberation” in this video and the idea of commitment to a cause - I think there’s a strong tie to the critiques of “clicktavism” that were all the rage a few years ago (might still be, too). Thanks Noah - hope you have a great 2021.
So Noah is 420? I thought his heavy breathing was down to his weight. I hope he's on the calisthenics at least, 'cause he wasn't looking well last year tbh.
Hackers not using a mouse is actually realistic. Using a computer with only the keyboard is much faster if you are proficient enough. Instead of navigating endless visual interfaces you can be issuing commands.
Visual interfaces requiring the use of a mouse generally only appear in software that is meant to be usable by people who are not computer experts.
It is quite common that computer science majors in universities are prohibited from mouse usage as it seen as bad practice by professionals in the field.
That last bit about spending a whole game effortlessly solving systemic problems and then being left to consider how you haven't really done anything at all is very poignant. Capitalism's great power is Recuperation, the ability to take anything, profit from it, and remove all edge or teeth from it in the process. Capitalism can recuperate anything, up to and including structural criticisms of Capitalism and the deep, popular desire to see it destroyed.
This is Watch underscore Dogs's reason for being. To capitalize on peoples' desires for revolution, and serve the illusion of it up on a platter. It will give people the _feeling_ as though their actions directly solved the abiding, far-reaching problems of the world. Placating the desire for real change, and walking away with another wad of our money in the process.
Thanks for mentioning capitalism and the need to overcome it. Always appreciated.
@@GodlessXVIII so what do you want to replace capitalism with? Something that's as efficient and more caring?
1:00
To be fair that's quite accurate. Very few people use the mouse much at all when editing because moving your hands off the keyboard leads to this annoying mode switching behavior. And for some escaping mouse reliance is something they enjoy generally. Tiling WMs are a prime example of people moving towards what looks more like movie-hacking but for practical purposes. I'd like a shortcut to submit this comment.
the idea that the BDSM porn being produced in the castle is not allways consensual is unfortunately realistic, despite what the sex positivity movement and new age of sexual freedom we apparently live in would suggest, pornography is still a business and bad business is where the big bucks are
Watchdogs seems like another series in Ubisoft's long prestigious line of "no-homo"-ing being political.
Obviously we need a thorough look at CYBERPUNK 2077.
Maybe a year or two from now, game's still young and still unfinished lol. Loved it though.
not yet pls give time for dlc and bugfixes (if any/possible)
This. I love Noah's way of criticizing games, as he leaves technical stuff as a secondary aspect, and just fucuses on the potential interesting takes that can be extracted from the narrative, writing, gameplay or even aesthetics. Cyberpunk may have been disappointing in some aspects, but it definitely has a lot of substance for Noah to dissect. I find that specially necessary given how everyone seems to be focusing in how the game is not the GTA they spected, while nobody seems to care about how the writing, characters and its take on cyberpunk themes are actually way better than what the edgy marketing suggested.
@@DestructorN7 Cyberpunk 2077 may somehow be underrated and overrated at the same time lol
@@ofcrgry it may sound strange, but I totally agree
Wait...
you're not supposed to eat the novelty Heartattack burgers once or twice to try em out?
It depends on the business and size. For smaller businesses, it can create a way to find a niche, a specialty. But in big corporate world, let us see a case example. Oreo. Did you know they shit out constant varieties of Oreo? Novelty oreos vary wildly but they do actually generate profits from being 'weird' 'new' etc. But that alone isn't enough. After Oreo started this, regular Oreo sales also went up. It's a strange example of a common idea in the human zeitgeist. People want novelty for a moment but turn to staples of a very small variety. People don't want infinite choice. It paralyzes people. People want "the same, but different". You could extrapolate it to why people are sometimes attracted to people with family resemblances or why estranged family members end up in incest relationships.
So the novelty item is meant to be attract attention, sometimes to be eaten but it will most likely not be a staple for you. It'll make you dedicate memory to that vendor for being the' place with a elk burger' but they got pretty good fries. Some businesses do strike gold however = the niche becomes the staple, the commodity. In those cases you are supposed to eat the novelty item.
Square Enix is sort of a hybrid trapped between 'same but different' and gimmicks but collectively ti draws on it's properties, its commodities for new ideas or as content for their continual cash flow MMOs. Weird stuff like Kingdom Hearts is an example of a novelty becoming a staple originating from a simple gimmick.
I'm just a moron on the internet so someone big smarter with big words can probably explain better and funnier.
I have to really disagree about watch dogs 2. I played it as a stealth game (no guns), and I had an absolute blast. I consider it among the best immersive sims!! Of course, I can totally see why many players would miss this experience, as stealth needs to be self-imposed, over just gunning everyone down.
This is such a brilliant essay. That analysis on Legion just blew everything else I've read about the game out of the water.
THANK YOU!
I was going to watch the whole video anyways but I'm happy someone finally remembers that Ubisoft hid sexual predators. I cannot begin to express how frustrating it is to watch hours of youtube content a day only to find someone doing a video essay on an Ubisoft game only to forget or choose to not include the reminder of how disgusting Ubisoft is.
I think that, at some point in development, they probably didn’t have any guns for the player to use in Watchdogs 2. The really complex hacking, and the interplay with that and the drones make it feel like a Shadowrun-esque drone rigging mischief game, and the tone makes way more sense when you just use the taser and knockouts. I absolutely adored playing the game by sending in the two drones and bouncing between them to complete objectives without even entering the building, or driving scissors lifts around to keep Marcus out of detection range as I found infiltration routes. Even stuff like calling in the cops has different reactions based on the disposition of the faction you’re targeting, with security guards often accepting their arrest. What seems strange is that all of these super refined mechanics end up being basically deleted by the fact that you can pick up an AK from your ghostgunner or whatever and massacre hundreds of gang members, police, civilians, or corporate security guards. It kinda reeks of the “no, we’re gonna need some guns” type of meddling that happened to Mirror’s Edge. Maybe this is why you’re of the opinion that the gameplay is much the same as the first game, but the sandbox is waaaaaay better, especially for higher-tech, less lethal, ghost playstyles.
I think my love of Person of Interest probably made me like the first game too much.
Yeah me too. I just bought it for the crime prevention mode. Let me live the fantasy of being Reese or Shaw.
As a fan of that show, I think it also worth a critical reexamination as it reflected much of the same pre-2016 angst just like Watch Dogs albeit more competently.
@@charlieni645 Oh a lot of the show definitively strikes diffferently now.
@@charlieni645 Competency is a surprising rare quality.
YES HAPPY NEW YEAR
also first?
3 minutes to go over here lol. Happy New Year ❤
My favorite hacker TV show by far is Mr Robot, and it actually does a really good job of portraying real hacking in an exciting light. Namely, it makes the important point that coding a virus/worm is *way* less important than actually getting it running on the machine you want. All the boring coding can be done off screen and saved onto a gas station USB stick, and then the exciting stuff is all the bluffing and breaking & entering necessary to get that USB stick where it needs to go. It's intense, exciting, dramatic, and only ever a few steps removed from the real work hackers and cybersecurity experts do every single day.
exactly exploits are bread and butter in this game with most of the in-game exploits just coming from clara/dedsec aiden almost feels like a script kiddie
I think I just found my favorite channel
Ah shit, I just realized, they literally gave Aiden Pierce a black hat. I bet somebody feels real clever about that one.
Brilliant as always Noah. I just wanted to thank you because this video, and particularly the section on Legion pushed me to read V for Vendetta for the first time. I loved it and found it so engaging i finished the series in one sitting. You are consistently one of the most interesting critics on youtube and you have my thanks.
Something that could fix the basic voyeurism in Watch_Dogs is to have the system interlinked with Blume employees watching. Hearing them snark about it instead of Aiden would suit the narrative much better. They’re watching these people in their houses by the thousands from the comfort of their desks.
Hey man, you should get a table for ya bong. They're great.
You can put other things on tables too. Like pencils and stuff.
Thanks for the video.
I agree with your points on why watch dogs failed. It is a bad representative of its Genre, but I think its mostly the Genre thats at fault.
To me the whole point of modern open world games seems to be to make you a keyboard Cowboy and have everyone else be the cattle. There are no meaningfull
Consequences to play. The world usually just resets and i find, that the kind of cinematic stories these Games tell are fundamentally at odds with its gameplay structure. Stories are scripted. They currently have to be, if the goal is to make an interactive Netflix show. But the strength of open worlds is their systemic mayhem. The feeling that everything could happen, at any time. But that comes with a level of jank, that is hard to align with a certain level of production values.
Take Assassins Creed for example. Its more of a good and bad wolves among sheep thing. But most NPCs remain the lifestock. In Far Cry everyones bonkers, including the actual wolves, which makes it more of a foodchain simulator, which is probably why it works best. The witcher 3 sidelines the whole problem, because the world is simply legoland, a gorgeous, intricate diorama that offers no meaningfull interaction with its inhabitants, outside of combat and trading. Where it shines is in the Quests, but they dont need the open world and its promises. They use it asacts as a stage for incredibly well made stories, but these stories are allways scripted and not systemic.
Rdr2 is the only contemporary that comes to my mind as doing it differently. There are meaningfull interactions with everyone, but there are seldom consequences. Instead of being a cowboy simulator, where revenge plots spin off from your exploits in this violent world, it goes the Keyboard Cowboy route.
Usually you end up in a fight, where you either win by killing everyboey who could live to tell the tale, or get killed yourself. Then you just respawn, a few bucks lighter, and the game and you agree to pretend this never happened.
It allways felt like I was playing 2 games.
The great netflix story, that is weighed down by the simple combat and boring level design that often comes with open worlds and the great cowboy simulator, that is weighed down by the need to be tied into a linear story. I liked both games, but i would have preferred to enjoy them seperately.
Watch dogs legion went an interesting route. Its kind of a mix of a AAA game and a simulation roguelike, like prison architect, or streets of rogue. Sadly it carries the weight of the sins of both Genres and is to occupied being a playground aswell.
I hear Zelda botw does a bery good job, but I havent played it yet.
Every time Noah uploads a new video = let's get the pop corns. What separates Noah from other lesser 'tubers is his writing. It flows like waterfall.
Disappointed how little you talked about gameplay in watch dogs 2
Came for a breakdown on ubi games I've never played
Stayed for the deep dive into hacker/anarchic ideology, a great interpretation of V for Vendetta and its message, and how technological growth has impacted us
You are really one of a kind
Watching this and some of your other essays again makes me think about something "Mr. Plinket" says; "you may not have noticed, but your brain did" . Its one of the things that Inreally like about them. You seem to be able to isolate and explain why I feel a way about games. I appreciate that! It has actually allowed me to enjoy some games again after understanding those feelings better. Thanks
I’ve been waiting for a Watch Dogs Franchise review ever since the Far Cry and Wildlands videos. Cheers and thank you
not that I'd claim Aiden is a great person, but it seems fallacious to put him on the same level as Silicon Valley business culture, since he's only one person. he won't cause as much damage as a whole system. (so, technically, he is the underdog here.)