12 MINUTES is a Pretentious Misogynistic Nightmare (STORY EXPLAINED)
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- Опубліковано 2 вер 2021
- Annapurna's latest release 12 MINUTES was one of my most anticipated games of 2021... and became one of my least favorite of all time. And I need to discuss why.
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So something I guess I didn't make clear in the video, as I see it crop up in the comments, is that, to me, the game does not adequately critique or analyze the main character enough for it to be clear that his choices are bad ones. I totally understand that a game or work of art depicting a protagonist who is a bad person IS NOT the same as endorsing that behavior, but it's also encumbent upon the work of art to make clear the character's actions are bad. Yet, in this game, the main character is a horrible human being yet is able to be given the emotional catharsis at the end of the story without the story actively acknowledging or criticizing the horrific actions he has taken, both within the "dream state" and the real world, at least in so much as what we can assume really happens in the real world given the interpretive nature of the ending. As I state, the game does not really ever address or acknowledge Daisy Ridley's character's agency in really any form within the narrative, and how the main character's lack of caring for her agency could be a problem. The film references The Shining, but does not seem to hold our the protagonist to the same level of self-scrutiny as Jack Nicholson's character in that film. So, I just want to be clear; I am not bothered by this game because it simply depicts horrific acts that bother me. Believe me, I'm all here for problematic leads (why do you think I love Jason Todd from Batman or Garak from Deep Space Nine so dang much). What I'm bothered by the game's lack of analysis of these actions, as well as it's lack of empathy for the harm (both interpretive and literal) done to the female lead. I think this in part comes down to the fact that the game is more willing to empathize with the male protagonist then the female one, and did not consider the implications upon writing a female character in such a way as to make her basically a prop. I think I say that in the video, but I don't make that as clear as I could have, given some people not coming away with that takeaway. That lack of conciseness is on me, so I just want to make it clear here in the comments.
Jessie, this is beautiful. Thank you for making it. I totally get how this topic could truly be teased out and discussed at extreme length, but I think your brevity was apt and the point was made succinctly. I wonder if the sensitivity of those claiming you are just uncomfortable with violence has more to do with their own internalized (and thus expected subconsciously) misogyny that has yet to be corrected. Context is fundamental and that is why indeed the violence is so problematic: it is devoid of context to direct us to a moral conclusion. In the absence of that context (which would subvert our dominant hegemonic tropes) viewers thus are subjected to the gauntlet of violence motivated by awful misogyny and bigotry. Anyways, this is great and timely and needed and you are amazing and beautiful and smart and just THANK YOU!
Personally, I thought you were pretty clear about all this in the video, but I admire that you clarified it since some of your audience needed it. 💜
Just getting started here, so I haven’t watch the full video yet.
Had a game idea while looking at the thumbnail/title though.
You would play in abused partner, stuck in a time loop before their partner hits them or worse.
Your “goal” in the game is to do whatever you can to stop your partner from being abusive towards you. Nothing you try will work, and you will always lose.
The lesson is that it’s not the responsibility of the abused to stop abuse, but the abuser.
I could almost imagine quitting the game being the exit from the house.
The only way to win is to leave.
@@hallowacko I like the concept, but time-loop media inherently deprives every character except the protagonist of agency in the same way that fate/destiny-style stories do. Narratively it's the abuser's responsibility to stop the abuse, but mechanically it's the victim's responsibility because they're the only one who's actions aren't predetermined. I'm not sure it's possible to write a time-loop story without robbing most characters of their free will and effectively 'un-personing' them.
@@hallowacko Or seeing who you play that you as much a villain and internalized abusive structures. and the only good way is to adress that actually, that would have been fine too. And from ther go on exploring that to find a way to find why and if there is a solution. But that didnt happens, it gets worse over time.
Imagine how terrifying this game would be if we played as the wife, slowly discovering the truth about her life
Maybe the reason she doesn’t know is because neither of them do. Rachel’s father took off and left for another city and never told David’s mother or David himself who he actually was. So neither of them knew they were related and thus this is a story about toxic fatherhood echoing down the generations.
Yes haha, and her having to survive an deal with the abuse.
Or imagine you pkay the first part as the husband and the socond part deal with it as the wife. I know the last of as is controverse, bit in a game about choices that would be a great twist to experience the other side after having chosen the husbands actions.
Missed opportunity
@@alicepersson9568 YAS!!! The game could have been really cool and interesting from that perspective.
As you play you actually can have the wife learn the truth. I actually don’t see it different no matter who you play as. It’s gross and the same level of gross to me. I think that’s the point - to disturb you
Imagine if they reversed who the MC was. You play as Daisy(I called them by their actor's names) who is stuck in this time loop where a cop is after you and you don't remember why. James doesn't know either. It takes a dark turn as you realize that you're being implicated in your father's murder and repressed memories start surfacing. You think it's true until the confession doesn't break the loop. Then you find your alibi and realize someone else killed your father. Then loop after loop you not only learn your husband killed your father but that he's also your brother and has been keeping this a secret in a desperate attempt to keep this dream of a life with you. The story suddenly goes from a stagnant story about a man with a secret and asking if he'll keep it to a story about a woman realizing her own cycle of abuse and escaping it.
that would have been so much cooler and so much more enjoyable
dude, forget that game- you should be the one making games! this is a really great idea!!
Would've been so much better and actually terrifying. People should understand that we need to get the victim point of view more often
What is this weird millennial notion that art can't portray bad people? Or that if there is no punishment or redemption the story is suddenly problematic? Not all stories are going to have morally good protagonists and good endings, wake up. Is like saying that American Psycho would be better if it was about a guy surviving a psychopath.
@@Hadeshy Seriously. Victims are treated as set-dressing while perpetrators are treated as main characters
My problem with incest between people who know they are related is that it's often indicative of some truly messed up family dynamics. Normal siblings who don't have anything traumatic happen to them just don't develop romantic feelings towards each other.
Or you know love has no actual boundaries
@@acetrainer_zack2455 Uh... platonic love and romantic love are very very different...... under typical circumstances it’s not normal for siblings to be sexually attracted to each other...
Yeah i was gonna say it can show that grooming took place or something similarly traumatic, there's reasons to be against it more than just "it's icky" or "don't have babies"
What are you talking about? They didn't know each other. It's safer to assume he fell in love, then later found out and didn't want to let go despite the dark truth.
@@darklordsatan4383 I thought it was shown that he knew since they were kids and he sought her out at adults?
now I get why this game made me so uncomfortable: the problem isn't that you have some (rightfully bad) choices of hurting your wife, but the fact that you ONLY have the choice of hurting your wife
Idk why there couldn't have been an option to just... ask the wife to lie down on the bed and pretend to be asleep. If my partner had managed to convince me they were experiencing a time loop and said "go pretend to be asleep when this guy shows up" I'd more than likely do it. No drugging needed.
@@violet7773 fr tho. Even if i genuinely thought my partner was goin nutty I'd prob do it just to either comfort them or just... see if they're right. Def don't need to drug anyone.
@@violet7773 She was apparently fine accepting time loops so just being asked to pretend to sleep is small beans.
you bring up a really good point in how the only way for YOU the player to get a good ending is to abuse your wife in a number of ways. Some of the ways even being played off as simple trial and error.
Same here. I just watched a no commentary playthrough of the game when it came out and I felt icky after I finished it
being able to shoot or stab your wife is so laughably pointless considering how brutal and out of character it is. like yeah, technically, if you had a knife or gun you would be able to, but he would also technically be able to whip out his wilson at any given time and pee right on the floor but the game doesn't let you do that for 'immersion'. does it?
I honestly think they added it solely for UA-camrs so they could try it and get a funny reaction comp out of it
I disagree. The Character is loosing his mind, actively trying to get to grips with the situation he finds himself in. He is also fighting his repressed memories and is clearly a bad person.
@@MrGreenTabasco would’ve been better implemented if the game made it more obvious that he’s horrible and would do that. He drugs his wife with no qualms, so give him that silent lack of care and empathy, or have him break down fully and show some interesting dark traits that come out when he has power over his vulnerable wife. Hell, if having a gun or knife enables you to kill her, in the same vein, shouldn’t her being unconscious on a bed make it possible to r*pe her? Or is that too far? Because obviously killing and drugging her is fine to this game
Honestly this game lacks immersion by not letting my character shit in the garbage disposal, put his face right over the disposal, and turn it on :/
@@MrGreenTabasco You know what I see mentally unwell people do way more often than murdering their loved ones? Pissing on the floor.
On the one playthrough I watched, when hiding in the closet the player tried to burst out and clock out the guy. He failed, because the game forces you to stand there and watch her being murdered.
Fun.
But experimenting with murdering her yourself is fine, apparently. I might have been able to rationalize being able to kill her as a an attempt to add a try anything/sandbox element (it'd still be in dubious taste at best). But apparently they're fine with locking you out of actions because the story demands it. So, murdering your wife is in there for...?
I'm choosing to believe "protagonist is an awful person" is the intended reading and it's just poorly done.
I mean, that’s what I would have done irl. I probably wouldn’t be successful, but I’d try over and over
I’ve seen matpat try to attack the guy with the knife too which I felt should’ve worked
@Izex she really doesn’t. The man asks her to leave the apartment and she outright says no. The only time she’ll actually leave is when she finds out that she’s pregnant by her brother
And? That's part of the progression of the story? Do u take it as an endorsement?
The game's true ending should just be you telling your wife everything, her leaving, and Willem Dafoe coming in and going "Why'd you have to spill yer beans?"
The true ending should have been an apology from the developer and a note from their therapist.
One thing I noticed about this game: The wife goes from being titled as your character's, "Wife" to becoming simply, "Her" after you learn the truth of your relationships. While it's true that a flaw of this game is the lack of personality in the characters, the wife's dehumanization, at least to some extent, is on purpose. At some point, she becomes not an important being in this man's life, but a means to an end. It really shows how he just doesn't care as much about her feelings as he does his own. Though, considering that, as stated in this video, the most rewarded ending of this game is the one where you have the protagonist selfishly abandon his wife and child without being honest about why - it doesn't have the intended effect of illustrating him as a bad person.
I dunno why but I always felt like the leaving ending was him not ever getting into a relationship with her. Like wasn‘t that the point of the ending? Stopping the loop to never get into the horrid situation to begin with instead of living in denial in a loop until you‘re locked down in it‘s last 12 minutes again? I dunno I felt like he was essentially hallucinating his future life wich was destined to be this horrid disaster and it came from him forgetting his past and if he stopped being in denial he wouldn‘t get into that relationship anymore. To me it always read as the dude chosing the best for all parties involved by accepting his past and preventing this terrible future in the process. And isn‘t that the good thing? Like how is him snuffing out his denial future that leads to horrid tragedy bad?
@@takke9830 Well, there's not really a concrete ending to the game, since it's interpretational - so it could definitely be perceived the way you described it. I always thought of it the same way that the creator of this video did (i.e the protagonist has known the truth the whole time, and was trying to hide it from her until he found out she was pregnant). Either way, I personally don't think he's a good person for even considering the options he did in the first place - since literally all of them are extremely selfish in one way or another.
@@ItsHaisho well yeah it‘s just about how you read it as it‘s everyone‘s own experience especially when games like these are vague. But still to me it didn‘t seem like he was aware of it at all. I mean if he was then why would he react so drastically to learning he‘s the brother in the game? Not to mention the player is kind of on the same level at least it seems like that. If he knew everything he wouldn‘t have to go through this elaborate trial and error to find the solution. And that‘s to me at leas the only way the plot works. Some guy has complete amnesia about the problematic aspects of his life and relationship cause he‘s in denial but learns to uncover the hidden truth as well because there is no closure to it unless he knows the full story. Do u notice how every timeline that ends in horrible death and murder is somehow linked to that one being incomplete in terms of what the characters know about each other? And the closer you get to the truth the longer they di survive and the closer you also get to fixing the situation. For example you go from home invasion in the middle of a date leading to double murder to drugging your wife in order to stop the intruder from killing you all and also gaining the upper hand there and being able to kill him. Sure it doesn‘t stop the loop. But it is a better outcome than the previous one and you also know more about the story so i feel like him remembering and the 12 minutes being less horrible (not saying they are perfect btw just less horrible) goes together. The more protag remembers the better it gets because the goal of this challenge of mind for him is to embrace his memories in order to stop the situation from happening in the first place. That‘s why I feel like the leaving ending was the canon one because it felt to me like the end of the butterfly effect. Undoing a horrible future by accepting your past and therefor saving yourself, your sister and your killer from ever going into this horrible relationship downward spiral.
@@ItsHaisho i rlly don't think considering doing rlly shitty selfish things necessarily makes you a bad person, as long as you're a bit dismissive/hesitant about it. If you only back out cuz of the effect it has on you thats pretty shitty, but just considering it is a pretty normal human reaction. Most people would prefer to take the selfish options in life, they just morally know they shouldn't.
The implication of the wife being referred to as "her" is that the revelation of their marriage disgusted him, and more specifically, he was disgusted by her. This is made worse as we find out that HE hunted HER down, knowing they were siblings. So if anything, he should have been disgusted by himself, not the marriage and definitely not his sisterwife.
I love how the only evidence they have that the nanny is his mother is that they have the same name. Maybe I just grew up in a weird part of the South, but Dahlia was a SUPER common name. I had 2 in my classes and about 10 in my entire high school.
Especially since he was in the same place she was when the man died, and this he couldn't have killed her when she thought she did.
lol yeah ive met like 7 different Johns
@@SakuraMoonflower I can't recall all the details, was quite a while ago since I cared about 12 minutes, but she did get some facts about the game wrong so, at least IIRC. In this particular case though *she* was in this city on new years, but he wasn't. They met the following day or something like that.
The fact that the whole story is "artistically up for interpretation" and lacks any cohesion makes it hard to care though. IIRC there were other gaps in the timeline, was he amnesiac or wasn't he, does she even exist or not. It was a nicely atmospheric horror game that then went off the deep end, and that's ignoring casual abuse of characters.
I've never met a Dahlia in my life and I went to a highschool with over 1000 students
@@alesbianhotmess still, it's not impossible to meet two different people with an unusual name
LMAO the "incest: probably best not" thing killed me
That one needs to be a meme!
Probably best not is true
It just needs an image of Jesse shaking a finger at the Lannister twins. Or backhanding Joffrey.
@@neuralmute Oh, god, yes! 😂🤣😅 and one with Hiddleston and Chastain from Crimson Peak! Somebody make it happen!
(Preface: I am not into incest in any way nor supportive of it, emotionally it freaks me out!)
It's a good point though! (and brought in a very meme-able format)
Because in the end, who is really harmed by such a relationship as long as there is consent and everyone knows everything (relevant) about eachother?
Even a child is only at risk in say, "royalty incest" of several generations where genetic defects (usually hidden recessive issues) show up the more generations on you go. Genuine comfort, safety and love are probably more important in the end than the very small risk a hereditary recessive thing brings harm to your child. But yeah, uh... keep it at a one-time thing, and best to avoid it altogether if you can? Historic royals really started struggling with their health after a while...
(Also interesting that the Lannisters being so "close" was such a big deal in that narrative because unless I'm mistaken royal families have done that kinda stuff A LOT and no one batted an eye because GODS FORBID THEY BRING IN AN "OUTSIDER"!)
YES THIS IS A GOOD COMMENT TO WRITE TOTALLY! NO WAY THIS WILL BACKFIRE ON THE INTERNET! :D
I… assumed the twist was going to be that there was no cop, because it was just an abusive husband’s way of mentally distancing himself from his own behavior (especially in connection to the pregnancy- like maybe he only felt guilty about the idea of harming his own unborn child, if not a fully existing woman that happens to be his wife) and the mixed reaction to the “Dahlia” thing was meant to be a reference to his own abusive upbringing (which would seem to be supported by the Shining reference, considering Jack Nicholson’s hatred of his own mother for being a “victim,” in the book). So I was honestly interested to find out how you could possibly fuck that up, since it would literally set up one character as the concrete “bad guy” (literally the antagonist), making the reveal that he and the main character were one and the same a thorough condemnation, by design… but, y’know, a run of the mill abusive husband is just too… easy. Let’s go for… incest baby murder mystery mind palace. Now THAT’S cutting edge.
If they did a game where you play as an abusive character AT FIRST and then his abusive actions are called out as such by the game, that'd be dope as hell.
Ngl I kind of expected either it'd be the abuse, the cop ends up being some dude who the husband wronged and it turns you youre a shitty person, or that he's just a robber who basically did some e-stalking to gain their trust
@@naomistarlight6178 That often just glorifies abuse. Many movies tried that but the reaction was the opposite of what was intended
I thought the same thing! lolsob
"Incest-baby murder-mystery mind-palace"
r/brandnewsentence
How could a indie game afford having three Hollywood actors voice their characters?
By cutting corners on their writing staff, apparently.
They also could have volunteered. I know Ray Chase did so as a villain for a Fallout mod.
Wasn't an indie game because it was made by a company. Genius.
@@Boakster It's definitely an indie game, just not a micro-budget one. The publisher (Annapurna) probably fitted the bill as the main developer guy made the game on his own time for years while working on a bigger project on another, larger dev team. He demoed it as early as 2015 here: ua-cam.com/video/8GferpF5rSU/v-deo.html
Can we also talk about how the nanny is demonized while conveniently forgetting that she was EMPLOYED by the father and therefore could not really consent to sex with him since her job could very well have been on the line if she said no... I've been noticing a lot of channels I follow play it and just something about it and how they titled the videos made my skin crawl and I didn't wanna watch. Thank you for confirming I was right in not doing so.
This too. It seems like every character is just a punching bag for the dad.
@@Queer_Nerd_For_Human_Justice This just show how he can't dodge a bullet.
You know it's a game right? The Nanny isn't a real person.
Yeah? Doesn't mean we can't analyze the character and sympathize with her? You do know what analysis is, right?
@@micklivi92 but it says a lot about people because this type of situation happens all the time in real life.
Man this Professor X, Rey and Green Goblin crossover timeloop fic went to a weird place. Shoulda tagged it.
lol
it's placed in alabama
@@cassiehosh1677 *sweet home Alabama* 🤣
I watched a play through and thought that the big twist would be that the *cop* was the illegitimate son trying to get revenge on the death of his father. Would have been a neat 'gotcha' and could have had some added depth by having him reconcile with the wife about how they both were mistreated by their father and that killing her won't help them heal. But no,,, they went the weird way..
Whenever I've tried to work with older men on projects they love to make women into foils with no self awareness that have to rely on their male counterparts. I've tried to reason with them but they have a vison and their creative voice is geared toward infantilizing at best to demonizing women at worst if they consider having any females in their story at all. This attitude toward females is very common, guys will write stories like these, claim they aren't sexist then cry "woke" when they see a woman in a position of power. I couldn't help but notice sister-wife's pants were too defined in the butt area, it looked uncomfortable like an eternal wedgey.
The way she laid on the floor with her butt sticking up, whilst DEAD, was also pretty heinous.
Ugh, this mentality towards even a slight deviation of established tropes is the reason artistic development takes years to get anywhere
I feel like this premise could be ripe for a self aware, David Lynchian examination of cycles of domestic abuse ala Lost Highway where you slowly realize that your character is an abusive asshole and no matter what course of action you take, you will ultimately harm her and the only way to win is not to play. Or something. I feel like there was a missed opportunity with this set up
Also Mulholland Drive is one of the only pieces of media to successfully pull off the "it was all a dream" twist that this game attempted but failed.
The only way to win is not to play: Spec Ops the line vibes.
@@elsiehupp Mulholland Drive is not quite a dream, I think it's more like a daydream. It's a failed actor and abusive stalker ex-girlfriend (Diane) reimagining herself as an innocent young girl (Betty) who only fails in her acting career because of a dark conspiracy, but who actually does get together with her romantic interest (Rita/Camilla) - but then reality and in particular the reality of guilt begins to seep into her daydream and dismantle it. (From what I've heard, Lynch at some point intended it to be a straight-up adaptation of the Black Dahlia case, with Rita as the murder victim, but eventually decided against it. There is still a scene of Diane hiring a contract killer in the movie, but nothing actually comes of it.)
Did you play it?
I think Moon: Remix RPG pulls off similar themes successfully.
Ok, so Im going to play 'devils advocate' but only to further highlight what could have been done right. Bad people are often amazing at justifying their bad behavior. Maybe they had the 'you did good for dipping and not telling your sister whats up' to show that the brother is so deluded that he can rationalize his behavior.
BUT if that were the case, they also need to show that. I think if the game flipped and in the end you play as the sister, going through loops as she figures out what the fuck the dude is on about, and end with *her* deciding what the dudes ending gets to be, that would be cool and much much better.
But why the writers should do something like that? I know when someone is a bad person that took bad decisions.
@@jorgemustonen3538 it’s an issue when the framing can lead the reader to make excuses for the bad behavior, which is very common
Especially troubling when we see ppl make excuses for irl abuse all the time
Maybe it’s just me, but being affirmed by your FATHER of all people makes it seem like a shitty decision? Like, your father is clearly not a great guy. Maybe he’s only affirming your actions because that’s the kind of shitty thing he would have done? I know it’s just an illusion of your father but I think there’s more stuff going on here than Jesse feels there is.
or at least name the the just dip ending something like "like father like son" to try to imply your now just as bad
You know, the game would be so much better/hold so much more weight if they presented the time loot as a sort of punishment for the husband for treating his wife/sister the way he did, and the only way tonescape being to tell her everything, thus giving her her power back
or they could have ended with him in a cell, reliving these scenarios as a way to pass the time while trapped in one room. it really felt a lot like he was in prison, so it's hard to feel good about him beating the time loop and escaping
23:33 the thing is incest is pretty much never consensual. It happens a lot of times from years of grooming and manipulation.
It can be, I have examples
@@evantaylor4796 It’s never good though so….
@@thenotsoamazinggracetnsag3463 well, I have a gay and consensual relationship with my cousin, it's been like that since the last 9 years
@@evantaylor4796 ...excuse me?
@@cath4566 yeah, what's the matter?
It doesn't fix the larger problem, but I'm not sure that I buy the "reconcile with dad" ending as a good ending. I mean, your abusive father, whose abusive behaviour was directly related to his feeling butthurt over his wife paying attention to their child, congratulates you on running away from family responsibility and responsibility more generally. You've become exactly the same as the villain. I haven't played the game, so I don't know what the tone of that ending is, but it sounds like that was at least intended as a fridge horror ending (though clearly it didn't work).
Yeah it does come up as a horror ending. The main charcter does ger revealed to be worse and worse as it goes on after all.
From this one video I've watched, that definitely seems like what they were originally going for. This dad is not a good person and getting praise from him is not a good thing. So an ending where the MC gets praise from his dad is a bad ending. He's become just like his abusive, hateful father. Not great. If they had played that up more, it seems like it could have been better. Instead of, presumably, just ending on the praise.
This is like one of those examples where if you just didn't have the twist it would be better.
Like, I don't think the character was treating his spouse *well* when you thought it was all real, but at least with it all being real you could justify it by saying he's trying to save her life, by any means necessary. But then finding out it's all in his head, that means that this guy conjured a metaphor of her abusive father to repeatedly murder her and their unborn child until he discovered an out, for himself specifically. I feel like in that context, it does make a lot more sense that the character can just murder his wife for no reason once he gets a gun, because that's literally what he's doing the entire time, just indulging in this gross fantasy of, "maybe if I just murder her I won't have to deal with this" over and over again until he finally convinces himself of something else.
I think a better way for the story to end would have been to have it actually been having the wife be the cause of the time loop, or more specifically the baby she's pregnant with. (before I go into details I want to say that everything up until the twist is the same, it's just everything after the twist and the twist itself are different) Now I don't think the solution should be kill the wife/force her to have an abortion, I think that after the protagonist learned that his wife is his sister he talks to his reflection and ask the universe for a way to fix this, and he is given 3 choices, a gun, the watch, or nothing, the gun leading to an ending where he kills his wife and is able to be free of the time loop (with the option to kill her earlier to get the ending early, he must be the 1 to kill her for the loop to end)(bad ending), doing nothing just causes the loop to go on forever except now he can't even kill his wife ever as he can't touch her anymore due to the universe basically saying "we gave you the chance to fix this" (for the sake of still having the cop represent something let's say he's the representation of the Universe and that's the actual reason he is killing your wife, to try and force you to learn the truth) (bad end), and the watch would let you travel back in time to before you and your wife got engaged and are given 2 options, 1) go through with the engagement again, causing you to remain in the time loop and basically play out the choose nothing ending but the universe comes up with unique ways to kill your wife (worst ending), and the 2nd option is to break up with her, you are then taken back to the present but your appartment is even more barren, and the universe (still going as the cop) gives you an option, rot in jail or die, to face the consequences for killing your father, leading to different endings. which way do I think would be the best ending, based on my interpretation of the father's death scene, probably the one were the universe kills him (his father's death looked accidental). Now, why did I make the universe a character with goals and sadistic behavior, IDK, I needed something to explain the time loop and a universe that is slowly leading the protagonist to the answer and solution seemed liked the best option
I hope a lot of people see this comment. The last few sentences bring it all home.
This, this, this! Not to mention, that the, "It was all in your head" trope is so overused - and very rarely well done - that it makes even a game that has the potential to be something compelling inherently somewhat of a disappointment.
If you enjoy some of the basic concept of this game you might enjoy Ghost Trick! It has a VERY different tone and art style but the mechanic of repeating the moments before a murder until you fix things seems similar in a way? It's a really fun and underrated game!
I LOVE GHOST TRICK SO MUCH DUDE
GHOST TRICK IS THE BEST! SUCH AWESOME MUSIC! :D
Interesting
I ALSO PLAYED GHOST TRICK AND AM POSTING IN ALL CAPS
So we're expected to believe Rey didn't recognize Kevin as her brother, his mother as her nanny, think it strange that the woman who had an affair with her father had the same rare name as her boyfriend/husband's mother.
"Your family had a cousin named anton and a grandmother Muriel too?! WILD!"
Well she only remembered him being called monster and didnt seem to have ever met him as her brother.
SHE WAS TWO!!!! XD Rey was TWO when the affair happened.. She didn't care about the name of the chick her father cheated with. She didn't remember it! She remembered her husband's mother's name because that's her mother in law that she never met. :/
@@SakuraMoonflower It doesn't matter that she was two when it happened, what matters is, you know, the entire rest of their childhoods and early adulthoods? The game never gives any impression that they were raised apart. In fact by knowing her brother's childhood nickname it kind if implies that they were raised together. Now I'm not saying that the game creators intended the wife to be so stupid that she didn't recognize a brother she grew up with, I'm just saying that they didn't do a very good job explaining what is going on otherwise.
Idk about you but I don't have a single memory from being 2 years old
I found it disappointing that the game focused so much on the act and idea of a concept within the story, the developers completely forgot to put an actual character within the "wife", and just made her into a stationary plot device for the sole purpose of moving the story forward and providing the source of conflict. Kind of a messed up damsel in distress trope to me.
The woe-is-me framing of the protag didn't help me sympathize with him either. All of the cast could've been fleshed out more, honestly, with the possible exception of the "cop".
To me, it makes sense, this is supposed to be taking place in the head of MC, MC is a dick, narcissist, and misogynist, this version of Rey is literally the version of her in his head. It grants access to the psyche of a monster. In the ending where you get up and leave, (the cannon one) it's definitely all in MCs head. In the other endings, the one where you shoot dad and get put back in the timeloop, it's less obvious. In the one where you recite poetry to make up with dad… it's less obvious that it's all in your head and can even be taken as "mc experiencing a painful reaction to having broken free of hypnosis" when it's really just all been in MCs head this whole time. AKA, while everything is hunky dorie in MC's fantasy of the future, the reality is MC would likely be abusive as heck to Rey, like he is in the loop. Keep in mind, this is just my own reading of this, and while spoiler and execution is pretty bad, the concept itself is not. The execution reads like Momento and Identity had a child and that child had a baby the child of with 50 First Dates and Primer, (BTW Primer shows up if you search "incomprehensible time travel movie".)
@@lucyinchat yeah but if the story doesn’t properly impugn him or hold him accountable for it. The effect just ends up yet again going through a game that treats women like shit
It feels lazy. as a character drama... you'd want some more details about the characters. you're all too aware that they have archetypes rather than personalities.
@@lucyinchat @AnorakTrend The fact that not alot of people could make that connection was what annoyed me about this game: needlessly convoluted where it doesn't need to be. The fact that the protagonist is the "monster" would've made more of an impact if the game made it's characters more dynamic: they're way too predictable, and I don't feel anything for them. Unlike Memento, (which is what I think you meant?) The time/memory loop doesn't give the game a sense of closure or make the audience motivated to understand the deeper context of the story at the end. This game casts a facade of having depth. So I'm not very thrilled at it's concept either. Then again, I dislike time loop executions in most games anyways (storywise).
Mentioning Memento reminded me of a film that was able to pull off this kind of story-telling incredibly well: Mulholland Drive. The main characters are perceived as full on icebergs despite the film explaining NOTHING to us. Every prop, setting, acting, character, and sound design has potential to become an important symbol. Why? Because the film allows us to organically thread the pieces together in a beautifully satisfying way. You aren't given an answer, but they leave you enough context to be able to discern the subtleties resulting in multiple watches that change your perspective each time (I love this film if you couldn't tell lol). This is completely imo and I'm not trying to say you're wrong. I never thought to make that connection with Memento which was pretty spot on.
Well MC also has no character. The only one with character is dad. I think that MC’s father ending shows that although he hates his dad he wants his approval. The dad endings where he is tied up and most talk with his father is him asking “what would dad do.” That’s the only way I could ever justify it. But yeah MC is a monster
I think Game of Thrones convinced everyone that incest is a lot more compelling than it actually is.
That would be a pretty fair assumption, although the narrowly dodged incest in Star Wars is also not helping. Game of Thrones did make it seem less squicky and abusive though.
they ripped off every romance anime.
No, not really
@@ddjsoyenby Right!! Yosuga No Soma said hi.
Rip Sophocles
Between this and The Suicide of Rachel Foster, can we just have a moratorium on video games tackling abusive relationships until they can get it right? There’s enough toxicity between those two to poison the Pacific Ocean.
Planescape: Torment handled it well with TNO and Deionarra.
@@zlodrim9284Also Lisa: The Painful with Brad and Buddy
I always found it so frustrating when the argument of women not playing video games come up, considering how women in the production, as well as the medium are treated. Of course, video games used to be a male dominated hobby, because the only places a women (or any minority for that matter) saw themselves reflected were as one-dimensional sex objects or plot devices.
Despite the rather interesting story arch that could have talked about and dicussed abuse in a creative way, it became just the story of yet another protagonist who uses the female characters as a point of story advancement and as a prop to be used, rather than actually interacted with.
You know what I find disturbing...the severely outmoded, tone deaf argument that women are nothing more than plot devices in gaming. It is a cruch designed solely to garner virtue points and spread political division. If you ever bothered doing the research yourself you would find that narrative you cling to implode.
For reference- There have been female led games since the mid 1980's. Some of which are still going strong today. I'm not even going to address your ridiculous minorities comment because you are so out of your depth it's laughable. Did you know the video game industry is a business? Did you know games are created, shipped, and sold all over the world? Did you know gaming doesn't strictly adhere to your "modern feminist" Westernized viewpoint?
One thing about the 'best ending' the mc is imagining his father who likely abused him too, right? Meaning the mc is imagining their abuser being proud of them for choosing a, while not the worst, not the best option either. Like that doesn't add to how many issues he has.
Oh ma god a heart
Yeah I haven't played the game, but it didn't sound like the father has any redeeming qualities, so I question whether "the father approves" actually means "best ending"
Really good and fairhanded dissection of the game. I agree that the themes there seem problematic in the treatment of women. It's kinda mean of you to target my and my husband's first apartment like that tho.
h-how did you post this comment 5 days ago
@@rae_diant Patrons from Patreon get access to videos before they’re released to UA-cam
@@rae_diant HELP I'm stuck in a time loop!
@@heathershapo2385 I'm choosing to believe this, tell me more
Expecting a child soon by any chance?
Why not meet the characters of 12 Minutes? We got:
-Flower woman
-Flower woman, baby variant
-Wife A AKA Sister
-Wife B AKA Background extra
-Random forsaken child
-The conflicted incestuous abuser with a bodycount who is very deep and has yearned for his sister all his life, choosing to enter a relationship with her without her knowledge not caring how massively fucked up and disgusting that is, and is now having a private stageplay to cope with getting her pregnant
-Killiam Dadfoe
i spit my water out at killiam dadfoe that’s fucking genius
Time Loop and Time Travel scenarios often seem to make being controlling, manipulative, and abusive seem inevitable, necessary, or even justified, and while a lot of Life is Strange was flawed, I can't help but think that it's at least cool that they attempted to make using powers frivolously to manipulate outcomes have dire consequences, even if subsequent spinoff games like Before the Storm complicated and contradicted that in various ways.
It's really frustrating because it could be used so interestingly to explore the cycle of abuse and breaking that cycle but instead it's always just used as some pretentious romanticisation of manpain and abuse like some kind of incel forum where everyone jerks each other off about how inevitably terrible their lives are and how it's impossible to change it like???? How is that even interesting to write, it just makes me wanna slap someone
Wha t about Chrono Trigger?
agreed i think ddlc also kinda works cause monika is portrayed as someone obsessive and @bus1v3 who mistakes this for love and a flip of the typical dating sim scenario where she becomes the player and the player is reduced to a generic disposable love interest.
The problem with that is just that so many other media have done it better.
The person who survives every time loop in Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni becomes an alcoholic, nihilistic, disconnected from everyone their own age, and eventually stops even bring a human.
Homura from Puella Magi Madoka Magica causes immense suffering because of her obsession with Madoka, and in the (unplanned) sequel is of the opinion that what she did was so evil she becomes the the Goddess of Gaslight, Gatekeep Girlboss.
And the gameplay is basically an expand Hello, Hell...o?, being that it's also about hidden trauma being discovered by poking around a living space and starting over and over.
This is such an old trope that even turn of the century webcomic Megatokyo admonished the main character for wishing the world worked like that.
There is so much deconstruction of time loops and manipulation coming from Japan and I guess just never made it across here to the mainstream.
@@butasimpleidiotwizard "pretentious romanticisation of manpain" ugh why does that describe so many books, movies, and TV shows?
I feel like if this game leaned more into the horror elements of it's story, it could have been excellent. Slowly watching your protagonist 's mask slip off until you finally lose control and where the "right" ending is your character admitting their cruelty and checking themselves into a mental institution or confessing to their father's murder and the rape of their sister.
I feel stuff like giving you the option to kill your wife could have had promise in this alternate version of the game. The fact that you *can* do it is a representation of the fact that your character is a fucking sociopath.
As it stands, it plays like a version of the Shining that goes "Well, actually Jack wasn't that bad of a guy." It's muddled as all hell.
I gotta say, an ending where my abuser tells me they're proud of who I became would be the worst possible one for me, and I have no doubt that scenario will occur in my nightmares tonight. Still, doesn't seem like the creators did a good enough job portraying that (if that was in fact their intent), as you mentioned in the comments. Great video!
23:30 as an incest survivor, i really thought i'd be in for a thorough and detailed dissection of how horrific the twist- and the fact that the game doesn't really condemn it that strongly- was, as that part of the game was highly upsetting to me. it was really disheartening to hear "i don't think this is that bad". in the future, please do better for the people in your audience that have been victims of incest, because there is no such thing as "consensual" incest, it requires inherently unbalanced and unhealthy familial dynamics to happen at ALL. other than that, this is a good video, and a very salient dissection of how misogynistic the game's tone and story are.
I'm so sorry this happened to you. I'm not a victim of incest, but I also was taken aback by her take on it as "okay if they're both consenting", like the baby is the worst part of it. Incest implies a really unhealthy relationship and/or mental illnesses/trauma (an important need for psychological assistance), and have an awful psychological impact on people. No healthy family would lead two "consenting" adults siblings to have a sexual relationship with each others. The tale of Oedipus even shows the impact of an incestuous relationship on the mental health of the two people involved, which gave their consent before knowing, so there is no way such relationship can be good.
Thank you. I'm glad someone brought this up, I was very confused that she decided to gloss over the incest bit just because they're both adults? I might be misunderstanding but this guy killed his father, and then purposefully SOUGHT OUT his sister and kept the secret that he was related to her, creating a relationship with a weird power imbalance. That just doesn't sound like consent to me.
@@lowqualitysleep I don't think she was excusing this instance, she discussed how he was hiding that information from her so she couldn't really consent to it, which was bad. She was just talking about other, hypothetical consensual incest which i will not comment on
I found that take very odd. I am by no means qualified to speak on the subject but it seems to me that in a family, there are always power dynamics already present, so any type of relationship could not be mutually consentual.
I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I really hope you’re doing well now and you’re safe. Please know it wasn’t your fault.
In a better game, you could say the ability to fruitlessly murder The Wife is to point the player in the right direction with the mystery. Without giving an anti-climactic gameplay result, players might waste time trying to find a way to kill her if they thought that would progress the story. This way you get the message - he doesn't want to kill his wife, that's not the solution, try something else.
But you know, it's the same game where you repeatedly poison your pregnant wife, so I can't really give it the benefit of the doubt.
Shoulda made her death an instant reset. Gets the message across easy.
You could also select it, then let the husband have a full meltdown even trying to consider it.
The weird thing is, that WAS how it was in the demo they showed years ago. Then I guess someone just went "hey, but wouldn't it be cool if you could actually do it".
I watched a let’s play, didn’t actually play it myself, but the person I was watching did the murdered wife endings after everything else (including after the “leave and don’t say why” ending) so the tone there felt like the MC was desperately trying to close the loop through any means necessary (because after all, if the loop doesn’t depend on reconciling with everyone then maybe it depends on the “truth” of you having murdered your wife). So I feel like locking those endings behind all of the other ones may also have made sense
Him murdering the wife and then dealing with the consequences creates more experiences in the game. Because you know, it's a video game, and you want things to happen because of your decisions.
If I wrote the story of the game I would make the wife the main character and have the story be about her coming to terms that she killed her father
I like that. Better story ngl
Sounds cool. Would she have killed her father, or would it still have been her brother and she comes to terms with him manipulating her into blaming herself for his crimes?
@@Salsmachev that sounds way better than my idea
Those would indeed be better stories.
@@bepisthescienceman4202 both~ :) Both are good
This game is the embodiment of betrayal. Such an uncomfortable descent into cringe horror that doesn't even pass as entertaining. It lures you in with some interesting details and then just makes you feel sick.
to be honest, I think this game is funny as fuck (in a bad way), I watched it with a guy named RTGames and i found it hilarious how you can do anything, when it tried to get serious I just, couldn't take it seriously, and the incest discovery only made it funnier because, YOU WANT ME TO FEEL EMOTIONAL FOR A DUDE WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS SISTER?
I also watched RTGame play this and you're so right that it just felt like a dark comedy game the way he played it. I didn't think about it that seriously cause I was so caught up with RT doing dumb shit and losing his mind
but the MOMENT you start thinking about this game at all... holy shit what the fuck did they think they were doing here???
@@hauntedsunsets I watched Callmekevin play it
@@DeathnoteBB why did you type the same person?
@@hauntedsunsets Precisely the same here. In fact, RT's video is the first reccomendation under this one for me lol. His playthrough was interesting and funny but that's because he's a comedic person.
the only thing i remember from his playthrough was the cop and the mc's wife having an angst moment and the husband just eating chocolate pudding beside them making "mm" sounds lol
Yeah, I can see this being more carelessness than malice. Empathy training should be incorporated into education.
I was in an “Academically Talented” course in my middle school, and in that, we had a huge weeks-long unit where our teacher just tried to teach us empathy through conversation and works of fiction and writing assignments about it. The “Empathy Unit” was probably one of the most influential positive moments of my childhood.
It’s a little ridiculous that it couldn’t be taught to EVERYONE instead of the “Academically Talented” “smart kid” class, it would benefit anyone, not just kids who were good at creative writing or spelling whatever BS got me into that class.
@@BirthquakeRecords I'm jealous. I was placed in a similar sounding thing in elementary school, and while it did do me good there was no empathy unit. Empathy is hard work, and now I feel like I'm having to figure out how to do it from scratch. 😠
@@BirthquakeRecords That's probably because of the sort of Sci-Fi Smart Scare that was a trend years ago. Remember when all the stories of smart kids turned them all into serial killers and so on? I'd bet anything empathy courses came up as part of the perception that smart kids would no doubt kill, or some similar trash
@@hugmonger oh, boy. I guess it figures that when a school does teach empathy, it's based on total pseudoscience.
It's a shame a top notch voice acting cast was used in such a botched game, with a storyline so convoluted even M. Night Shymalan couldn't come up with it.
Seem to me more like the Dolores dream sequences in season 1 of Westworld.
I watched gameplay of this game from a horror channel called Coryxkenshin and he made this game funny, interesting and entertaining but he can make anything entertaining, funny and interesting
I feel like this game would be way better if written from the woman's perspective. We could get a sense of her as a character and actually give her autonomy in how she handles this situation.
That sounds lame, I would have quit the game within the first minute if this were the case.
@@Boaksterthat's no suprise
@@tink6225 The game would have flopped.
that is probably true yeah @@Boakster
Idk how to feel about this video essay tbh.. I can agree with some of the points they made but I never saw this game applauding the guy for his disgusting acts.
Also, the constant and random 'bullying' of the game's aspects, like "the house looks ugly and bland, it doesn't add anything to the story anyway but it's bad", "conveniently she has a pic on her fridge LOL how convenient!!", "not naming the characters is misogynistic even tho not even the guys have names", and "dream ending bad!" it's not proving nor is it doing anything ://
Also, I don't think he KNEW the truth the whole time. His *literal mental breakdown* when he finds out proves exactly that. In my mind, he was coping with the truth and somehow convinced himself that he lived a normal life up until then.
Plus, them saying "the ending with more depth is the one disregarding her consent and fucking her anyway without her knowing"... what's the proof? I don't see them fucking, just making out, and where's the depth that's not in the other ending apparently?
Additionally, the ending where you just up and leave, again, I see this WHOLE game as a coping mechanism, as a world HE created in his head, so he didn't actually LEAVE her because he never even married her, he was never in that apartment with her.
no you're right, this video felt super nitpicky. i'm very left-leaning and have always been happy to say i'm a feminist but watching this video made me roll my eyes at how overly critical the message in this video essay is. and if i'm feeling this way i can only imagine how people who aren't lefties or women view this video.
for example the sarcasm in "you get to watch your wife being beaten yayyy!!!" point or the "why would you want to drug your wife" - the game clearly isn't celebrating violence and the violent scenes are clearly made so as to be uncomfortable to watch. you're literally continuing to play the game to try to get an ending so that there can be a conclusion to the story past the violence and get answers. when you look at games like GTA5 or pretty much any action game, violence is involved to a pretty extreme extent but your average player of those games clearly isn't going to say in real life (at least 99% of the time) isn't going to say the game made them 'approve' or even 'celebrate' violence. i know i wasn't playing the game thinking "yay, i get to assault my wife this is so great!" or "yay i'm committing incest with my sister!".
agreed also that the tone used throughout the video is pretty bully-like, there's a passive-aggressive tone used throughout which is pretty unnecessary. you can absolutely critique a game and make valid points without being overemotional about it. the over the top sarcasm really gets in the way of lending validity to the critiques and when there's zero humour throughout the video it makes it even less palpable.
there's critiques to be made of this game, yes. but to reduce everything in a horror video game to 'domestic abuse' 'misogny' etc is where my eyes rolled and i had to stop this video. as some-one who's actually been through sexual, physical and domestic abuse and misogny in real life to the point it's fucked severely with my mental health, nothing pisses me off more than people online trivialising these words and overusing them to the point where they lose meaning altogether. i've said it before and i'll probably have to say it many times again in the future - Joe Public learning pop psychology times like "gaslighting" "narcissism" etc and overusing them to describe people and their behaviour at the drop of the hat has been an absolute shitshow. misogny, abuse and trauma are all very real things. BUT those words lose their power and meaning when they're shouted out with this much ease to describe - again - what is a horror genre video game that is designed to be uncomfortable and stressful to play and is clearly presenting the fucked up behaviours in a rightly fucked up light. the game does not make the player feel rewarded for witnessing the violence or abuse, hell even your character on screen has a severe mental breakdown when he realises about the incest and collapses to his knees.
Jessie Gender - i hope you know i don't mean any hate towards you, this is all just my opinion and i have enjoyed some of your other videos but this is just my opinion on this particular video. i think if we say that video games can't have storylines that cover taboo topics - yes, even ones as horrific as abuse and incest - then we risk having to censor a medium and industry that benefits greatly in so many games for having storylines and ideas that can be produced in incredibly insightful and thoughtful ways. if i woke up tomorrow and video games were policed so that 'difficult' stories couldn't be told anymore out of fear of offending someone I can't help but see the industry would really suffer from being denied the freedom to put out games from every corner of an artists' vivid and creative imagination.
Exactly
Yeah, as a victim of spousal abuse and gaslighting, this was very much not my game. I played far enough to be given the opportunity to drug the sisterwife, stopped the game, and got a refund. Watching what else I missed? I'm glad I made that call.
I think the best way to experience the game is through irreverent gaming UA-camrs who don't take the game seriously at all. Once you lose the "artful video game" vibe, the game just starts looking goofy and pulpy, which highlights how fucked up the game actually is and prevents the viewer from siding with the main character.
That describes how I viewed the game when I watched manlybadasshero play it.
Yea I watched it in a stream and we all just made fun of the game the whole time lol
RTGame's video was great
@@PoggoMcDawggo fellow manlybadasshero fan???
@@rhymeswithmoose228 yeah, seeing the protagonist hide in a closet and spend 12 minutes on hold with a health insurance company while his wife is getting murdered in the next room really catapults the game straight into cartoon land doesn't it
Woah... This is not AT ALL how I interpreted this game. As I saw it, he didn't know she was his sister and fell in love, then Dad Dafoe found out and the scene plays out as an ultimatum with 2 possible outcomes: he accidently kills Dad Dafoe in self-defense OR he accepts to leave without explaining anything to her. Then the hypnosis to make him forget her happens and he goes on to live a solitary life, but he creates this fantasy life in his head which is interrupted repeatedly (time-loop) by Cop Dafoe, as a subconscious metaphor which forces him to explore his memories and find all those excruciating truths. There was never a baby and there was never consent withheld from her. It was all his brain unravelling.
Am I losing it? Did I get it wrong? What's happening, help
Yeah, as far as I understood it he just fell in love with his half-sister and she was never involved in it at all. Apart from the amount of abuse used without much care to advance the story, which is definitely fair, a lot of this review is just "This thing happened! This thing is bad!" even when the game acknowledges it as bad - the entire game is ABOUT the main character being forced to stop pursuing his half-sister.
nah that’s how i interpreted it too. i understand where she’s coming from but i feel like her take is too literal
Yeah, that's absolutely it. I cannot get where she's getting "he definitely knew she was his sister" from at all. It's just a poor reading of the game.
@@swordbladedevil.
Hey Jessie, really great and insightful critique as always. That being said, I think you might have missed a key element about the ending of the game. I only watched this be streamed, but I've also done a fair bit of reading on this.
The "true" ending to the game, the one you showed at 28:30, isn't him erasing his memory of everything that ever happened. Rather, this is the -actual- reality before the pregnancy, before... well... pretty much all of it. What happened was his father revealed to him that Daisy is actually his sister, and Professor X constructed a whole hypothetical future in his mind palace. So the killing the father, getting Daisy pregnant, all that stuff actually didn't happen. From the Wikipedia entry if that helps explain things a little better:
"Using the watch to reverse time, the husband returns to reality, where he is still talking with his father about falling in love with his half-sister; the time loops are revealed to be the husband imagining a positive future with his wife, and the cop is a manifestation of his father's interference. If the husband decides to accept his father's proposal to leave his half-sister, he enters a loop where the apartment is empty and he's alone. If the husband refuses the proposal, the scuffle repeats and he accidentally breaks his father's neck, and the loops continue to repeat. If the husband recites a book that the wife was reading during the loops, the father offers to help him to forget his half-sister, causing the loops to reset and begin anew. Finally, if the husband stares at the clock before choosing to forget, the father tells him to end his imaginary future, ending all the time loops, once and for all. "
I cannot see this until the premier but the phrase "Spousal Abuse Time Loop Simulator" already has me worried and intrigued
Willem Dafoe: "Where's your father's watch?"
Christopher Walken: "Uhh, yeah...about..............that..........."
I love this comment 😂
This is the best comment! I am deceased!
The ending with the husband sitting back on the couch while his wife is killed is more terrifying when you think about the mental breakdown, meaning he likely killed her himself and mentally tells himself this wild story of what happened.
Jesse: Half-brother, I'm sure that's not important.
Me, seeing the way nerd media has been going the past few years: Oh god it's incest isn't it?!
I feel like "Western" (I really detest that usage of the word) nerd media has taken pretty much all the wrong lessons from Japanese nerd media.
To be completely fair, I'm not sure the game considers your imaginary Dad being proud of you a good thing. They're pretty clear that the dude's a piece of sh*t, hearing him say you "turned out so well" when he has terrible values seems like deliberate irony to me. Everything else I 100% agree with, game's kinda f*cked up and it feels like its reach exceeded its grasp.
I got curious and did some digging. Apparently it's supposed to be the protaginist grappling with the reveal of his relation with Wife/Sister, so literally everything is mind palace shenanigans. So the "good" ending is meant to be Father revealing the relation to Husband all the way back on the new years after Wife thought she killed him, and by taking the leave option you avoid everything, continued relationship, pregnancy, shared apartment, the whole shebang.
Though watching your vid and others, this intended reading does NOT appear well communicated
It's still kinda shitty that the game wants us to sympathize with the father.
Like he cheats on his wife because he's jealous of the attention his daughter gets, abuses her, blames his son for his issues, and were supposed to think he's cool in our book? Cause he's encouraging his son not to commit incest?
I don't commit incest all the time, I don't get a medal
HOW IS THAT A GOOD ENDING?!
Yeah, and that doesn't change the fact that the female character doesn't get agency. I'm always of the mind that it's better to know than to not know, even if it doesn't change the outcome. Why couldn't he go back and tell her the truth?
The intended final, "good" ending is apparently the "hypnosis" or whatever one, because even after walking away the game still loops - he says there's a future where he walked away, but still obsesses over the other possibilities. This ending is instead about actually trying to let go, move on, possibly intended as dealing with his own trauma. And maaaaaybe if we stretch it a bit, an attempt at some responsibility from the father.
Except it's still very shitty because it's still ending a relationship without any closure for the her. And kinda abandoning her alone after a really traumatic event. *And* in the loops, in his own mind, he can imagine killing her, but not asking for help or figuring out a plan together or suggesting "pretend to be asleep and I'll hit the cop on the head". And the one attempt at giving her agency ends in his own failure - walk out the door and start again.
It is, in the end, all about these two men who did horrible things and can't figure out what to do next. The best I can hope for with something this, uh, problematic, is that that was the intent and nothing is meant to be "good".
And in that same vein, the truly good way to engage with this plot is to just not, at all.
Regardless of what the intention behind the game is, it still explores a man fantasising abuse and violence of his wife and it being perfectly OK because 'it's all in his head anyway.' At no point does the man appear to be concerned with how the morality of that - just 'would daddy approve?'
Me before clicking this video:
"Huh, I don't remember having a horrible experience watching this game... why do I not deny this title though...?
Gets to the part where you drug your wife to continue the plot
"Oh. That's a memory I threw away, huh? Oh boy... the memories are flushing back in..."
I liked that part (probably because it gets boring playing the good guy in games)
You made some good points but reached so hard in some areas dawg 💀 It felt genuinely satirical at some points 😭
"Oh so you memorize a MINORS phone number?" YOU KNOW THE CONTEXT. HER BEING A MINOR HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU MEMORIZING THE NUMBER??
I think the only thing I disagree with is saying the ending where your metaphorical father approves of you is the "best" ending. Because, frankly, the game is pretty clear that your father was an abusive shitheel and to me at least it feels like that ending was the game, and character, admitting that the character you play is also an abusive shitheel and claps him on the back for being just like dear old dad. Congratulations!
I assumed the protagonist was the bad guy. There's really no good ending, no matter what you do because you can't go back and change the past. No matter if you tell her or leave her or continue to lie, you're hurting Rey. That's because you realize you're the monster. And when you realize how badly you've made things, the only thing left is to atone. The ending where you run away and the dad says good job doesn't seem like the good ending, he isn't the authority on good decisions.
Its more about realizing how bad of a person you are and deciding if you want to face your mistakes, run away from them, or continue your lie. Only one of the options gives Rey the ability to choose for herself.
Actually, the "biological implications" of the baby born from incest are the least problem in most cases. It doesn't work like that. The problems of so-called "inbreeding" (I hate the term but I don't know better one) are usually about repeated marriages between close-knit relatives, because various recessive problems and genetic diseases rarely show in the first generation. So, biologically there is almost no problem, except a few rare mutations like haemophilia - which must be in the family in previous generations.
That said, it's not about the real problems with incestous relationships, which are completely different matter and I don't have a knowledge to speak about that.
I got the impression that the husband repressed everything (killing his father) so hard that he genuinely forgot everything and seeing the baby clothes with dahlia on it triggered him to remember which then caused the mental breakdown. I got this from the fact that the metaphorical dad-cop says something like “there he is, you’re back. It’s ok, I know it’s a lot to process” or something, which made me think that what he was processing is the fact that he remembered and realized what it means all at once. This is also supported by the fact that the library scene first occurs when he first remembers in his mental time loop.
It’s like the whole purpose of the time loop is that it’s his brain trying to get him to remember the truth, which is the loop part, and then decide what to do about it which is the library part.
So he either didn’t know or didn’t remember until something triggered him to realize/remember subconciously, and his brain forces him to acknowledge it using a mental breakdown time loop, before then giving him space and time to decide what to do about it.
I think the idea was supposed to be that just because he has to live with the knowledge that he killed his father and married his sister and got her pregnant now that he remembers/knows, doesn’t mean his sister/wife should have to live with the burden of that knowledge. That by choosing to disappear, the husband is sparing her the mental breakdown and anguish he’s experiencing due to his realization.
Your interpretation is interesting, too, though. I’m just confused as well by the question of why the husband is only disgusted and has a problem with it now, when he was fine with it for eight years. For that reason, as well as the ones I mentioned, I think he wasn’t aware either.
It has some major Oedipus vibes, to the point that I would not be surprised if the creators may used it as inspiration and made the game as a sort of modern take on the Perfect Tragedy.
As someone who's only contact to the game is this video, another reading would be that the protagonist is intentionally a piece of shit and the player is supposed to feel increasingly uncomfortable being in his point of view as you play. The wife not having any personality in this terrible man's internal world makes perfect sense, he never cared about what she might want only that he wanted her. And when you talked about the "best" ending I immediately went "getting approval from your abusive dad is so *obviously* a bad ending tho, right?" I don't know if it's framed more explicitly as a good ending in context, but to me it just sounds like it can't possibly be meant to be taken as a win. I know nothing about the people who made this game, so I might be giving them too much of a benefit of doubt, but to me it just seems like it's not meant to have a good ending at all. I think it's entirely possible the creators of this just wanted to write a disturbing and depressing story 🤷♂️
That was one interpretation I saw too. I think the biggest problem is that those kinds of stories are really hard to do well. If you're not careful, at best they just come across as gratuitous. At worst, they send a really bad message. I think what makes a good dysphoric story is when that atmosphere has something to say. This one didn't seem to.
that's a very fair reading but I would argue that even if that is the intention it's still a weak story. We've got multiple previous examples that critiques of toxic masculinity by using the audience insert as the example of toxic masculinity being critiqued just don't work. Breaking Bad and Fight Club are highly cited examples of this. The protagonist is an absolute villain, but by placing him in the sympathetic audience surrogate role, people are willing to give that character as much benefit of the doubt as they give themselves, and we get people who genuinely think that Tyler Durden is someone they should emulate.
@@cryofpainebut sometimes those stories aren't trying to send any message at all and that's okay too. Sometimes people just want to explore fucked up human things and be like " I dunno, what do you think? Shit is fucked up" and that's perfectly valid.
This story is, at least emotionally, very real, there is a lot of real people who did really monstrous things and there isn't any message in it, just the question of "what do we do from it? what's the moral path after monstrosity? Is there even one?"
I haven't really played the game, just seem a few videos, but that's what I feel they were going for, if it's a good game I don't know, but I'm definitely curious and will play after I'm finished with Kitty Powers Matchmaker
*btw, for those that need something sweet after playing/watching this game. Kitty Powers is a series of matchmaking games with a drag queen as a boss, it's everything you need to bring some joy.
More of a least bad ending than a best possible ending (of those presented).
Huh. I thought they started dating, then the father discovered and told him they're related, and that's where this whole thing came up, the main character trying to come up with a future with her, but they all fall apart because he knows it's wrong.
I thought she never got pregnant, because he broke it off with her, and he also never killed their father.
That's what I got from the strong imagination line.
I watched a playthrough of this and that’s what I thought, too! The conversation between him and his dad felt like the dad confronting the man who he knows is his son but pretended not to due to his wife not allowing him to take in his half son.
I thought his wife saying she’s pregnant is like the catalyst for the guilt he was suppressing finally coming out, because he was able to lie to himself that she didn’t need to know, but now that they created a child, they’d be bringing into the world a child with potential medical and health issues that didn’t Choose to be born.
But yea, games like these are easily interpreted differently based on the person for sure ^^;;
Yep i thought the same too. But even in this interpretation, the wife/gf lacks agency. In the "best" ending (the ending when mc reconciles with dad), the gf doesn't even get to learn the truth about mc. Two men in a room are making important decisions about her life without her around. Then, the men pat each other on the back for doing the "right thing".
@@phadenswandemil4345 oooooohhhhhh yeah, the pat on the back part especially made me SO angry. They weren't thinking of her, trying to spare her, no matter how many times they tell themselves that. They were just choosing to keep on lying to make it easier on themselves.
The pat on the back could have worked if they signalled through lighting, dialogue, and sound ambience design that it was a BAD END
Edit: dialogue as in more than just "bad person saying they are proud of you", but like maybe bad person saying that and saying how you two are so similar. Something that will make even any oblivious people go holup.
@@Call-me-Al YES! And the fact that they didn't is what ticked me off so much. Not a single fraction of a second was spent thinking about her, it was just "what's easier for us?". Also, in a game where the father is an ostensibly shitty person, him agreeing and liking the main character should've been portrayed as negative. But nooo, it was apparently a broken relationship in need of mending. Bitch, he only even got with your mom because he was legitimately JEALOUS of a freaking baby. You do NOT need someone like that in your life.
One problem that I see in this game that I see in a LOT of media is that the female characters don’t really have independent stories of their own. We’re never given their perspective, and whatever storyline they have ends up revolving around the men of the story. The female characters only have a storyline insofar as they are impacted by the actions of the male characters. It was a consistent problem I saw in breaking bad too, as much as I enjoyed it.
The game is messed up. Yeah? That's the point. It never tried to be anything it isn't. It's not holding your hand and pointing at the protagonist, telling you how terrible he is. You already know that. You're already repulsed, you're already disgusted. This video is pointless. Just because the game itself doesn't sit you down to shove it in your head how horrible he is, doesn't mean it won't come through. It has faith in its players. "Pretentious" lmao, alright.
But the problem is that the game doesn't seem to be condemning him for his actions. Yeah, we as the audience realize he's a bad person, but the game itself doesn't seem to realize that, and it makes it feel like it doesn't WANT us to think he's a bad person
@@shadowshade904 That's a fair argument. But it wouldn't it feel pretentious? I don't know, I wouldn't have liked it if someone had to tell me he's bad, it would feel like they're talking down to my own ability to recognize his horrible ways.
"Time loop" benefit of the doubt, reminds me of the "werewolf deal" I have with my nearest and dearest. Do I think werewolves are real? No. But if I ever think I have been bitten by a werewolf, or if a friend thinks they've been bitten by a werewolf (or similar situation), we agree to take it on faith. And said loved one will lock me/them in a cage, film it throughout the full moon, to prove or disprove the werewolf assertion. Just in case. Cause worst case scenario, no one believes you, and you murder everyone you love. Best case scenario, you spend a couple of nights in a cage and have video evidence that you are not a werewolf, and can take that information to a therapist if the fear is still lingering.
I think that's the most sensible reaction one could possibly have!
Haha I had the same deal with my old bf with regards to ghosts/hauntings. I don’t believe in them, he does, but just in case it’s an “I’ll take your word for it” situation to avoid any potential horror movie-esque spousal gaslighting leading to negligence-enabled ghost murder lmao
Honestly I love that idea, and that's how I personally look at time loops. Like Jessie said, at this point there's so much "time loop media" that if a friend approached me and said "I'm in a time loop, only you can help me break it" I would simply believe it. RIP Tom Hanks but I'm built different.
Who would have thought the spouse abuse part isn’t even the worst part. The game came off as sniffing its own farts to me during the previews but dang…..
I just watched a playthrough of this game a few days ago, but haven't played it myself. The player never admitted to Wife that he's her brother, but he did let her know he killed their father. Wife is understandably horrified. Imagine my suprise when I pop down to the comments after the video and see people deriding her (and women in general) for not immediately forgiving him like he so graciously forgave her when we thought she was the murderer.
I really wanted to like this game because I think the concept of it is so cool. But the actual plot and people's reaction to it that I saw ruined any chance of that. Glad I didn't buy it for myself.
I didn't pick up on the dream aspect. I thought he'd straight up suppressed his own memories. Still didn't justify any of his actions.
I agree with you in that the game is crazy, but I dont think that you are supposed to identify with the MC. We must remember that the Protagonist can also be evil in art.
Man, Daisy Ridley can't catch a break. This and Chaos Walking, she deserves better than this
Not to mention the Star Wars trilogy
@@Tareltonlives hey, at least one and at most two of those movies are good.
@@sleepinbelle9627 Technically at least 0 and at most 3, since any of them can be called good or bad.
Like Last Jedi is the best of them but I wouldn't call it good in my opinion
@@Tareltonlives fair enough. I haven't seen last jedi since I saw it in cinemas and it's possible my view of it was coloured by the guy in the row in front of me just having the best time in the world.
While I haven't played the game, I watched a playthrough of all endings and I came to a slightly different conclusions about the game. Instead of the level of "I have a sister-wife and she is pregnant" being the real layer with the timeloop representing the breakdown at the pregnancy; instead I read it as basically everything in the game being the mental breakdown at the point of teenage Husband learning that the girl he loves is his half-sister. The room with the father isn't the "mind palace" it's a real room Husband is tied up in and running through all the future potentialities if you choose to go through the relationship.
The ending where you decide not to go through with the relationship at all I see as the good ending. I don't know if I'm remembering incorrectly or not, but I think after the credits it's the first one where "continue" isn't offered on the starting screen which implies it as a best or true ending? I think the Husband character was in the room, trying desperately to think of a way to make the relationship work after he learns he's the half-brother, he knows the dad will ruin the relationship if he goes forward so the dad has to die, and then he's thinking about being a happy couple eight years from now, but oops what about eventually having a baby/family with her? Que mind-break looping in his imagination.
I absolutely agree with you that the actual gameplay of watching your wife get murdered, emotionally assaulting her with private information, drugging her, and using Cop's dying daughter against him were a huge turn off and should've been in a narrative about the Husband being abusive rather than... whatever it was we got. The concept of motivating a character to save sweet darling wife without a personality and little baby girl is already sort of overdone and if not problematic at least so weak as to open it up to being problematic (which this game then did.) If this game had been a sort of psycho-sexual thriller mystery it would've worked much better than how they tried to frame every character as ultimately "nice" and rewarding you for the horrible behavior.
There's a kernel of a good idea in here, but it needed more story work and I think suffered from the limits of trying to be such a tight indie game where they couldn't properly explore consequences and story beats, and from thoughtless regurgitation of tropes and behaviors found in these sort of mental-break purgatory themed games.
This!
I agree w this one :>
God you just accidentally read a much much better game in this.
@@harrylane4 Let's be real. It's not hard to imagine a much better game than what we got for 12 Minutes lol
JG: "peachs and cream is the best yogurt flavor"
Key Lime Yogurt: "Am I a joke to you?"
listen i completely understand what your point is, but honestly, how would you or an average person go about being stuck in a time loop? for most pieces of media, its shown that the characters will either do horrendious acts out of panic/desparation, and at the end ultimately its either a "happy ending" where they did everything right and no ones harmed, or the "bad ending" where enevitably someone or something had to go.
I interpreted the ending where you don't tell your sister/wife the truth as a bad ending BECAUSE the father agrees with you
"The best flavor of yogurt is Peaches and Cream"
This is key lime pie erasure.
But yeah this... This game sounds really bad, like wow. I'd been really excited for it too, I'm glad I heard all this before I played it.
i was watching a playthrough and i couldnt even get an hour in it was so terrible
key lime pie for the win!
Yogurt heresy! The best flavour is clearly rasberry!
I'm just guessing none of you have tried strawberry banana ☺️
Just saying that my feline owner, arbiter of all things yogurt related, has a clear preference for lemon, with blueberry in a close second. And the cat is always right.
"My problem with this isn't the incest."
What a sentence 😂
You’ll have to forgive me for this, and I do agree with a lot of the points.
But how is it abusive to interrogate her about her dad? Maybe I’m not remembering the exact dialogue choices…
I'm angry at how well acted the player's father telling him "it's good that you're abandoning your wife/sister with no explanation" is. Willem Dafoe can absolutely bring it and that role did not deserve an actor that good
I kept waiting for the Black Dahlia reference to make sense... because the shirt very clearly has a black flower on it when other colours of dahlia are more common/natural and given the infamy of the murder it would be Really Weird for a baby shirt to have an explicitly black dahlia on it without that being another hamfisted wink and nod to the audience... but nooooope? I can't think of any reason it's relevant other than There's A Lady That Dies? Like it's not even the mother. Is the entire reference a hint that the wife is going to die?
Yeah Me too. It just seemed a really odd choice. I honestly thought the twist was going to be that he had killed his wife and his mind was reppeled by it and making up either ways for her not to be dead or ways for it not to be his fault.
He loves her so much he can just leave, and that is the BEST ending. Wow, that is just... not love. None of these endings are real examples of love actually. Not in my opinion.
I feel like this point has already been said considering this video is 9 months old but you shouldn’t be neutral on incest considering the real life abuse it’s seeped in, like the p0rn industry has normalized it so much you actually think “it’s not that bad if there’s consent” is some real goofy shit, in no short terms incest is a crime against nature and I can’t believe that’s a radical statement
You had a point until you said crime against nature. Whilst nature doesn't encourage it and many times has evolved mechanisms against incest, there's no crimes in nature. There's living, and dying. If you're alive with offspring then mother nature has no qualms. If you're dead with no offspring, then that's that.
Homosexuality is tipically presented as a "Crime against Nature" even when is two consenting adults. Just because is taboo, doesn't mean is bad. If two consenting adults love each other, in a non toxic relationship, it isn't bad
Incest is some weird shit, especially with those you were raised with. And in the vast majority of cases, I imagine it comes from abuse. But...crime against nature? Excuse me, have you looked at nature? Incest happens all the damn time in nature. It happens all the damn time in human history. Incest is a sizeable portion of all relationships, humans or animal. If you said "incest is bad", then that wouldn't be radical. But crime against nature is very radical, because that makes no sense.
I kinda feel sorry Daisy Riley got a job as a sexy lamp. Looks like Defoe got another great role. That is one game I will avoid. I am a bit of a writer, and I try my best to make the female characters somewhat interesting.
Man you seriouslly passed up a chance to say "I'm something of an X myself"..
I think stories where the main character is an awful person who does horrible things can be really interesting, but only on the condition that the story makes it clear as day that the main character is awful, the things they have done are horrible, and sympathize with the characters who are wronged by the main character. Messed up as it is, a story where the main character tricks his half sister into marrying and having a kid with him by hiding his identity could be really interesting if it made the main character into an unambiguous villain hero and used its uncomfortable subject matter to tell an interesting story and make a point and not just to shock and disturb the player.
Why can't a game trust its audience to be able to come to its own conclusions about its morality? Why do you need to be told that a guy who is *clearly* a dick is in fact a dick?
Then again, Hatred exist. I believe a mixture of subtlety and clear message (maybe by timing instead of both being showed at the same time. Heck even through a second playthrough)
@@yurisei6732 because audiences have repeatedly displayed precedent to not only empathize with but mythologize amoral characters perhaps?
@@yurisei6732 The problem is that the game is framing the horrible main character as someone the player should emphasize with rather than a lack of trust of the audience.
@@AryTehCapricat Why shouldn't we empathise with horrible people? It is possible to have empathy for and to understand people who have done bad things without endorsing or excusing that behaviour. To not do so can only ever lead to more division and hatred in society. If we never explore the complexities of human thought and emotion where it pertains to harmful acts then all we're doing is casting these people as dogmatic archetypes to be defeated instead of humans who, like all humans, have made some bad choices.
No I don't think the game is misogynistic because the husband did some terrible things to her, He's in a time loop, he's probably doesn't think or care about the consequences because it will all be reset anyway, he need information and a way to break the time loop and safe his wife and himself, the game give you freedom to choose, because well these types of games let you experiment, what would be the gameplay otherwise if they just tell you exactly what to do. About the wife stabbing scene, in Fallout New Vegas you can grab a gun and kill every residents in goodsprings, is that what the courier would have wanted or done? Is it advocating for mass murders? I don't understand how it will take you out of the experience, if Fallout New Vegas just force you to not kill any NPC that the game deemed innocent, it would be an instantly worse game, why would gameplay be restricted like that.
In my interpretation of the game, the main character wasn’t portrayed as a good guy or a hero. But it still stands that the father, despite being an abuser… wasn’t represented like that by the end.
My boyfriend and I thought this game looked pretentious and boring when they showed the trailer at E3 but I was still a bit curious about it because of the incredible voice cast. It sounds so crazy and gross :( incredible video, Jessie! I hope that you feel better!
Also, coconut Greek yogurt is incredible too!
Coconut Greek yogurt is soooo good
Whether it's her father or her brother, relatively innocent wife is the only one suffering for the actions of the men in her life. Literally neither of the men get any repercussions for their behavior and actions except some internalize panic, it's the wife who has to pay for every sin, from being abused by her father to then her brother
Personally this video was kind of a miss for me. It's not that I don't see where you're coming from, it's just that you're picking apart literally how the story *has* to progress. The guy doesn't have "infinite time", he has twelve minutes, after which everything resets and he's back to square one. Sure, *HE* knows more with each loop, but to learn new information next time he has to start all over again, constantly aware that he doesn't have the time to be nice about it, hence the rushed explaining to his wife and the torture of the not-cop. The drugging is very off putting, I agree, but given the circumstances (that is him having tried everything else) it was the fastest way to get her out of the equation without, I dunno', literally shoving her out of the house and demanding she go somewhere else without explaining anything to her, which by your standpoint would count as more mental abuse for her, only people aren't going to listen to you when you do something like that and oh look! She doesn't leave and gets grabbed anyway.
The hiding in the closet and not doing anything loop comes *AFTER* having tried reasoning with the not-cop with no success, knowing the loop will start again and she'll be safe. The only people who instantly jump into the closet on their first playthrough are people who know the game or people just messing around, so your point of mentioning the character doing that like it was his first thought is moot, because he learned over a few failed loops that, sadly, he has to let it happen to learn more. Honestly I like that she doesn't just believe you, it's more human, if you explained you're stuck in a time loop and she just goes "oh okay how do we fix it?" it'd be dumb. She reacts like anyone would to seeing and hearing their loved one have essentially a mental breakdown in front of them, and it makes trying to get information before time runs out harder and more tense for the player.
The dialogue options are there for variety, like in almost every game with dialogue, they give you the option to be an ass because if every option was nice then what's the point in having a dialogue tree. If you would like the less technical and more narrative reason, it's literally showing you that your character has the capacity to be an ass, that among his thoughts are bad choices and that he's really not that far from being a bad person.
This video reminded me of hbomberguy's video on Pathalogic where he asks whether games are supposed to be fun. I would say no. A game can bring forth any emotion it wants, Getting Over It is a prime example and this game is another. You're not supposed to have fun playing 12 Minutes, you're supposed to be uncomfortable and disturbed, you're meant to suffer as you're forced to commit acts of violence against others. When you watch people play this game, do they look like they're enjoying what they're doing? Are they cheering on the actions of the character they're playing as? No, they aren't. This game makes it abundantly clear that you're not going to have fun, that's the point, so while you're right about how awful what happens is you've also missed the point, you're just taking apart fundamental building blocks of what makes the game work as it's intended.
I'd like to end by saying this isn't meant as an attack or anything, we all have different views on things, I just felt I wanted to give the opposite perspective on this game✌️
agreed friend x
He actually can make her leave the house, but the cop drags her back to the apartment room.
Honestly, I think the recent rise in popularity of "cozy games"" is a direct response to so many games having the narrative of "women exist to be harmed"
I swear she said, "I wrote this when I was six" and was like "Dayum... she was a genius before I could multiply..." for like half a second. Great analysis lol.
My first thought when I read this was wait, you couldn’t multiply at 6; before I remembered that would make sense for most countries given normal school age, also it wasn’t the point of what you said.
Section 1: pre twist: in a time loop story, morality will near always start degrading as the loop continues and you see it over and over again and the repetition starts causing you to not see those around you as people, which in a way they aren't. Unless every loop is specifically numbered most stories have hundreds or thousands of loops assumed unseen which would only have a continuous effect on one person. assuming the looped retains the will to act at all instead of just staying curled up on the loop spot, anything starts seeming morally correct as, if it doesn't work NHNF, and if it does work then the net positive to possibly the entire worlds timestream would far outweigh anything you can do in a 3 room apartment to 2.5 people. (Although "net positive good" isn't generally a great way to view things)
Section 2 post twist: ah geez that bit about people ceasing to be seen as people is coming off a lot worse now.
Having husband know all along makes his actions inexcusable, and having him know is an incredibly odd choice narratively, have him have repressed it from his mind until seeing the baby clothes reminded him and caused the breakdown (like the forget ending could just be it setting in again), or have the timeloop be real and he just never actually knew who his father was until willem tells him rays dad was sleeping with his mother. Or hell, delay the specific bit where ray says her dad was sleeping with the nanny, have her just say cheating on rays mum, give ray some more characterization material.
Yeah pre twist I was thinking, yeah okay but he only has a few minutes to functionally get to the bottom of things and thus has to do whatever it takes, even if it's uncomfortable for the wife because the incredibly fucked up situation they've been placed in demands her emotional trauma to be brought up all at once or else, both of them *die*. It's effectively a horror movie situation where a character is forced to do morally and ethically grey actions for the actual greater good. Now should the "she should just suck it up and deal with it" aspect be glorified? No. But I'd say given the context, a minute of your husband revealing he knows a great deal about your past, and he's not even judging you for it and instead just seems frantic to get more details right this second is a reasonable trade off for not getting shot to death by a home intruder. Damned if you do, extra damned if you don't.
I guess you could blame any irl author for writing such a story demanding a demented course of action and perhaps glorifying it by making it the grand solution to the characters' problems, but I don't think you can blame the character himself in-universe, if that makes sense. The husband can always talk things out with his wife and be repentant for bringing up her trauma like that... after the loop is closed and she is 100% safe from said intruder when the 12 minutes is up. He can't do that if she or both of them are murdered. Full stop.
But post twist just throws all credibility for tough choices made in a time loop out the window of course (hell it's not even a time loop story anymore, there's zero actual time travel). Then the story is like it's ABOUT the protagonist BEING the author and creating a fucked up scenario for himself to justify his fucked up actions. And it becomes even more fucked up considering what the irl writers of the game seem to consider the "best" ending.
@@getschwifty5537 I was feeling a similar way to you, but then I realized he literally has all the time in the world to talk to her and figure things out. We're all kinda trained by our familiarity with this trope to fill in the blanks a bit on our own, but tbh the way this loop works lacks the immediacy we tend to expect from these kinds of stories. Don't get me wrong, it's a stressful situation and a level of desperation is expected but the protagonist has nowhere to go and nothing to do that's particularly complicated, and they have time for decently long conversations before anything bad happens. There's absolutely nothing forcing them to do it with all the grace of a bulldozer. Certainly there's nothing that forces them to repeatedly accuse their wife of murder based on the word of the fake cop who just strangled them... Yeah.
That's without getting into the potential to murder her for no good reason, or how the entire story (including the wifes trauma) is framed around it's impact on the protagonist even before the twist. It's not a good look all 'round, really.
You should check out the anime Re:Zero, which many people see as "the redemption of an incel." It's fantastic, and the character becomes a BETTER person by constantly reliving his life after HE dies. He tries to keep those he loves alive long enough, since the "save spot" keeps changing depending on how much time has passed (he seems to only have a few days to fix things)
Basically, making a good person can be done. Having the MC care about those around him during this situation can be done.
As someone who's actually been emotionally abused, I find calling a discussion of someone's past "emotional abuse" both extremely demeaning and reductive.
yeah this video just doesn’t sit right… like it seems to be grasping at straws about what abuse actually is. the idea that this is a “spousal abuse simulator” just isn’t reflected in the actual content. sure it features dubious consent and physical abuse, but i’d be hard pressed to even call it a motif, let alone a theme or premise
Exactly bruh, it’s so frustrating
I felt so uncomfortable with emotional abuse constantly being mentioned as if it's just a fun buzz word to use when you see something you don't like. It's insulting.
I couldn't finish watching the video I'm sure you had a solid point regarding what you were trying to say, but the fact that you couldn't stop bringing up the "how convenient this is there" point while 99.9% of all stories ever created are built upon the improbability of circumstances made it hard to sit through. I wanted to let you know because I have genuinely enjoyed other videos of yours. Have a great one
I wrote a romance story with a blank slate protagonist for self-inserts (lemme tell you doing a daughter-father subplot without using the words dad or mom is hard.) and not even I referred to the side characters as "exwive" or "girlfriend". Not even once.
Y'know as a writer, I was about to throw in a 500-word paragraph about why I think this story breaks apart.
And I would have said that this game could've worked if they doubled down on the asshole protagonist and fleshed out the other characters. But after taking the characters apart somewhat methodically, I really do think they didn't know what to do with "the wife".
All characters look like 1960s cardboard stand-ins propped up by a reusable fixture made of victorian-countryside, but at least cardboard has a few millimetres of depth.
All I know about her is that she's "the wife" and that she technically has a backstory about abuse, which apparently didn't affect her that much. Somehow. From what you covered here, she has so few personality traits that, if you told me she was the reader self-insert, I'd fuckin believe ye (and advise to rewrite the story to centre on her experiences.).
So, yeh that was my very longwinded way to say: I do agree with you.
And what's worse is that how they wrote "the wife" reflects terribly on their character-writing ability... which might lead one to conclude they took the protagonist from somewhere else.
Well said!
Out of curiosity, how did you manage to avoid using "Mom" or "Dad"?
@@LittleMissLounge The fact that there is no normalized gender-neutral term for parent in English made it a major headache. Although, I don’t think it’d help to just go “progenitor”. I wanted the reader to self-insert instead of implying a non-binary father, after all.
There are scenes I cut completely, but often I implied a perceived parenthood (the daughter greeting the protagonist with a playfight. “Could you take care of her this afternoon.” That kind of jam.) or using different parts of the father-daughter dynamic than those we usually think of.
So the important part wasn’t that the protagonist is actually the father, but that they took on some of the roles and responsibilities often seen as a father’s (both in their own as well as the daughters eyes).
And of course, by not directly describing scenes in which the daughter would characteristically call the protagonist dad. Instead, just having her “greet” or “call” or “ask to” and letting the reader do the rest. Takes a little impact out of the scene, but add a dad-like response, and I’d say it works.
It was definitely a headache and might not have been worth it, because I largely framed the protagonist in what I'd describe as a stereotypically masc roles.
Do we get to refer to this game as the "The game where you drug your wife who is pregnant with your incest baby while deciding whether or not to further violate her consent, leave her without any explanation, completely destroy her life, or just straight up let her get murdered"?
Joking aside... what the heck is up with this game? This comes off as incredibly weird and it's hard to really figure out what kind of message this game is trying to say...
I thought that the option to kill the wife was given to keep the feeling of "I'm in a time loop, I can do whatever and nothing will matter" and madness that comes with it
This is really interesting to me, because I had an entirely different understanding of the plot (spoiler warning, obviously). I saw the conversation with the father as being set in the present, and the only real thing in the story, with the rest being imagined, or due to the hypnosis. This would actually fix some of the moral issues, but still leave a lot; like how the main character let himself forget about the incest in his relationship, or how his imagined self was so quick to use abusive solutions, and still leaves behind weird moral messages for the player. I'm not even sure if murdering the father was real; if the conversation with him is set in the present, then he hasn't died yet as the story is taking place, and instead his death depends on how you react to that conversation. I have no idea whether my interpretation is at all correct, but given the confusing ending(s), I think it's hard to claim anything with much confidence. Overall, great video, and good analysis!
I haven't watched the video yet but I have played the game to at least a couple of its endings. The whole experience left me feeling uncomfortable as the player character behaves horribly throughout and makes the whole experience about himself when his wife is the one truly suffering.
I feel like the premise had a chance to be really sweet, but then it went off the rails.
A boy and his half sister are abused by their father. She shoots him after he becomes violent, and the brother finishes the job when the father looks like he’s going to live to abuse her again. Even the mind palace torture loops feel like he’s reliving seeing his sister be abused and feeling powerless to do anything about it. He just wants her to be protected and loved.
…Then he deceives her and takes away her option for informed consent, rapes her, and gaslights her, and it becomes clear that he grew up to become an abuser himself. 😒
I haven't played the game, but after reading a bit about it it seems like a fairly common interpretation of the game is that the imagination fueled time loop was caused not by the revelation that the wife is pregnant, but by the father telling the husband that this girl he fell in love with is his sister (something he was previously ignorant of, as the family was fully split apart when they were both incredibly young). Therefore, everything in the apartment, including the pregnancy and anything to do with the murder of the father is entirely imagined, and the "mindfulness" ending isn't the husband brainwashing himself into forgetting they're related, but is in fact him accepting that his imagined future with her doesn't exist and moving on, making it the "true" ending.
Mind you even if this is the "correct" interpretation (which I couldn't say, like I said I haven't played it) this still doesn't change the fact that a lot of the writing is still not great in plenty of places. Like drugging your imaginary wife to act as nonconsenting bait isn't really any better than drugging your real wife to act as nonconsenting bait in this context. There are better ways to write and handle that situation. And even if their relationship wasn't that advanced he still absolutely should tell her that they're half-siblings.
Unless there's a known inheritable recessive genetic trait, half siblings (particularly with a shared father rather than mother) having a child together aren't taking an enormous genetic gamble with the child's health. This feels like a strong, objectively rational basis for objecting to such pairings, but I think there are major downsides to over-emphasizing the genetics as the central problem with in c'est babies. (Beyond the inaccuracy.)
- There's an uncomfortable resonance with eugenics
- Focusing on the genetics as a reason to uphold the taboo gives a tacit pass to / minimizes the harm done in circumstances where a non-blood-related abuser takes advantage of a family member.
- There's unnecessary stigma for any resulting kids
The moral problem with in cest is the harm done psychologically and socially.
What is the harm done psychologically and socially? This isn't a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious.
The only two arguments I've ever heard against incest are the genetic one (which, besides the problems you outlined above, would imply that people with a family history of genetic diseases should be forbidden from being together. Since we don't forbid people with heritable diseases from marrying or dating, it seems like a double standard) and the self-evident "it's gross because it's gross" one. I've found neither to be very convincing.
I've heard that apparently (I don't remember the source, so this could be total crap), children naturally learn to not grow romantically or sexually attracted to their caretakers and siblings as an evolutionary mechanism to stop in-breeding. But if going against this "evolutionary mechanism" was considered immoral, wouldn't that mean that homosexuality, which doesn't adhere to the typical reproductive evolutionary mechanism, is equally wrong? I find the "it goes against nature" argument to also be lacking.
You say "social and psychological" impact, but in 12 minutes, the main character and his sister grew up estranged, they didn't even know they were siblings. If the harm is social/psychological, wouldn't that make estranged siblings perfectly ok, since socially, they're basically unrelated?
Thank you for taking the time. I'd like to hear your thoughts!
@@Halucygeno by social and psychological harm i assume theyre referring to the power imbalance that often exists between family members, similar to a relationship with a large age gap or one between a boss and their employee. relationships with a power imbalance are more likely to be unhealthy or dysfunctional in some way.
and yeah a relationship between people who are unaware that theyre related is functionally no different from a non-incestuous one, but if they ever find out then it can end badly. most people are disgusted by and would not willingly engage in incest.
YES thank you for saying this, you hit the nail on the head