Gaming's Harshest Architecture: NaissanceE and Alienation
Вставка
- Опубліковано 17 січ 2019
- with the power of their lives while from the dim-lit halls of other places forms that could never be writhe for the impatience of the few who have never seen or been seen.
Follow me at / yacobg42
Patreon: / jacobgeller
Heterotopias: www.heterotopiaszine.com/
Visual Media used: NaissanceE, Super Mario Odyssey, Blade Runner, Dead Space 2, Detention, Clustertruck, Proteus, Blame!, Why You Get Howls On Your Radio (1932, British Pathé), Power Pylons on Wappinger Creek (Milo Tsukroff)
Music: Interloper (Off-Peak, Cosmo D), Les Louves (Patricia Dallio), Lear (Pauline Oliveros), Prométhée (Thierry Zaboitzeff), Flight to LAPD (Blade Runner 2049, Hans Zimmer)
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This piece originally appeared as a written essay here: caneandrinse.com/alienation-a...
Check out Cane & Rinse for podcasts, written articles, and more caneandrinse.com/ - Ігри
I have pronounced Blame! wrong and thoroughly embarrassed myself.
It is with a heavy heart that I must officially inform you that you've been cancelled. My condolences to the loved ones you have left behind.
Woah I scrolled down here early on to mention that it reminds me of Blame! and saw this, better watch the rest of this vid i think
Update: vid is good and game is good i'm scared but i'm playing it
huh, I've played NaissanceE multiple times. I have never seen the 'grave room' and I'm usually someone who will sooner glitch out of the map than go to the exit before looking at everything.
Doesn't matter. Great review. Love Blame! Thank you
When I was 7 or 8, I saw a horror movie called The Cube for the first time. It’s this campy little movie about people trapped in a massive rubic’s cube filled with traps and the people looking for a way out. To a child, yes the visuals were scary, watching a man’s face get melted off or cheese-grated to death. But what always terrified me the most was a scene near the middle where they reach the edge. The camera zooms out and you see just how vast this structure really is. All you can see is endless, ENDLESS boxes in a dark room, with a few lights dotting the side. This visual is what shook me the most, and always left me filed with utter dread, the fear of endless nothingness, eternity stretching on forever. I spent a lot of my life looking for something to replicate this fear, maybe so I could confront it or understand it, but never could until I found Naissance. This game left me so deeply shaken, so horribly unsettled, and I loved every minute of it.
The game has a monopoly on those feelings. At least, until the official BLAME adaptation.
I just watched it right now after reading your comment. It's a really great follow up after watching this video. Thanks for sharing it.
On Netflix the movie The Platform gave me the same kind of vibe as Cube
The Cube heavily inspired Submachine games by Mateusz Skutnik. Later instalments in the series definitely give off some of that feeling you're describing. Probably to a lesser degree than NaissanceE, but still.
Sounds like you watched that ryan hollinger video
This architecture reminds me alot of this manga/movie called Blame!
EDIT: OH SHIT
those beautifull moments in life
Literally had the same reaction
same lmao
My reaction was about the same "what he knows Tutsomu Nihei!?"
I've been wondering if there is a Blame! game out there and I feel I have found it as close as it'll get. Gonna play this.
The sequel to this game would be RenaissanceE
NaissancE_Re:
Taken place at the time when all of the structure and algorytms just broke beyond recognition.
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...or in other words, it's an infinite loop of the word being written out onto the screen - written in BASIC.
Fun fact: I actually had to cut this short because UA-cam crapped out when updating the comment :P
bwahahah
I had this same feeling about the design of portal 2. Both the modern testing facilities and the abandoned levels, it's so vast and empty most of the time I keep wondering how they get the resources to build these machines as so many of them get destroyed and rebuilt
By selling bathroom curtains.
Especially the very lowest levels of Aperture. Possibly my favorite environment in any game is when you emerge from somewhere below onto this field of rock, with massive car-suspension-type things supporting massive towers of test chambers. You can also find a map of that portion of the facility somewhere. It reveals that you're in a massive, multi-kilometer deep salt mine.
Oh yes I liked this athmosphere in Portal 2 a lot. It's like you see only a tiny portion of something that is unbelievable bigger.
I've only played a bit of the first game but I get the same feeling. It's all so unnervingly artificial and serves such a specific person that it set me on edge for a while, despite there being no present dangers.
@@erictheepic5019 Those are seismic springs. They are there to keep the facility stable during earthquakes. These are actually real too, facilities like the NORAD bunker use these to support their structures.
Also the multi-kilometer deep salt mines are also real. They exist both in Cleveland, where the first game claiemd Aperture was located and in Upper Michigan, where the second game retcons the location to.
When I was playing TrackMania as a child, I decided to build a map with many boosters in a row and a ramp. I managed to land outside of the playable area, then go further and fall through the skybox dome.
I was deeply terrified.
what was there?
I did this too! You could land on the mountains in the distance and just drive. I'd leave a weight on the forward arrow key and let it sit. Eventually you would come to the end of the world and fall off into an infinite void.
@@alexlokanin3312 it depends. I think the guy talking about mountains played Trackmania Canyon. In that one, you can just drive around for like more than 10 mins before the sky starts glitching, the clouds too, and then the ground just ends. You fall into the void, all black, forever.
I think the original commenter played Trackmania Nations (Maybe Nations Forever?). In that one, just going out of the map directly leads you to the void.
You can probably find videos of that.
Reminds me of this episode of the Game Dungeon ua-cam.com/video/ulp99wSUNgk/v-deo.html
whats also weird is how far the mountains go in canyon. They go so far out that there is no longer any reason for them, yet it is still an extremely long way until the ground evens out, even after the skybox is exited the ground is still coming back to zero. They build area at this point is a few pixels if you look from a bird's eye at the whole map.
Fun fact:
The manga “Blame!” Is actually pronounced like “Blam” in the original Japanese. The extra ‘E’ is just there for…effect maybe. Makes me wonder if the extra E in NaissanceE is also there as an homage to the manga.
I think the name mimics the sound of the gun
@@existentialmoron6334 no that's "BAM" XD
@@ryuk5673 no, it's either. blam is the one that'd be used as a sound effect in a comic (I would assume in manga too, but I don't read manga), because "bam!" as written can be used for all sorts of loud noises.
@@MelMelodyWerner wtf are u babblin about lol?
This and "Blame!" kind of remind me of "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" and Lovecraft's "Mountains of Madness"
At least in "Mountains of Madness", one can see its a "city" for things other than humans. But in NaissanceE it us just literally madness. Old traditions and biases mixed and poorly executed. Just a mass of things that serves no more purpose other than being there.
I can't help but disagree. "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is an incomprehensibly beyond us existential horror, yes, but it's also one featuring an aggressive entity. That entity exists only to destroy and can live no other way (as it was never built with that in mind), and it uses its complete control of the world to endlessly torture the few humans it kept, but that is something you can understand. Not agree with hopefully, but comprehend.
Naissance lacks an explanation. Naissance doesn't hold a particular grudge against you, nor does it want to feel the only kind of fulfillment it can, like AM did. Surviving is so hard because you just aren't meant to be there. You are an alien because the world was not made for you, it was made for reasons you will never really know because no one will ever tell you. You are not loved, you are not hated, you are not thought about at all. Not anymore, and maybe not ever.
Simular on paper, very different in essence.
It would be easy to look at how hard the game is and say "Well that's some obvious blatant aggression!" but that would be like saying the vacuum of space hates you because it would kill you instantly. The vacuum of space doesn't want to kill you, you were just never meant to be exposed to space.
@@hermitcrabguy29 he didnt say they were similar dude, he just said it reminded him
hahaha i just commented i had the same feeling
I played this game when it came out five years ago. At the time, I had recently dropped out of art school
and gone back to live with my parents in Shanghai. I felt completely lost and alone, and being in a gigantic city
in a country who's language I could neither read or speak only exacerbated this sense of isolation.
NaissanceE perfectly captured that feeling of existential dread, uncertainty, and disorientation.
Two things you didn't talk about
1: The breathing mechanic.
While running, you have to click at regular intervals to make your character breathe. If you mess up the
timing, you slow down. This mechanic seemed completely superfluous to me at the time, but in
hindsight I think it highlights the fact that you are indeed playing as a human character in a world that is
otherwise devoid of any organic life forms, and therefor reinforces the feeling of isolation.
2: The music.... My god the music!...........
THIS this is the exact feeling ive been trying to explain to my friends when i was playing portal 2 and even stanley's parable.
Holy shit this is exactly what I've been trying to explain to people. If someone could put this type of feeling or atmosphere into words that would be incredible.
Exactly the part where the narrator is beta testing that shit struck me to the core
@Turner Daniels yes I would say so!
check out "liminal spaces"
The Stanley Parable is probably the game that has scared me the most in recent (well, "recent") memory, despite it not trying, and not being a horror game.
"i felt like an outlier on a graph that didn't even have other data points. there was nothing but axes left" (!!! :-O)
axis
@@xirensixseo Axis is the singular form while axes is the plural form so he is not wrong. English is confusing and it's understandable that anyone can get this wrong so do not worry. www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/axis
@@nathanasnan7044 Son sent the Webster link😂😂
@@zaydapsychonaut6051 Gotta support my claims my guy
@@nathanasnan7044 funny as hell b👏🏾😂😂
I have to say, this video really resonated with me, and with one of my favourite manga/series.
Girls' Last Tour.
I think I understood after this video what it is that makes the world of Girls' Last Tour feel so alien, and yet so familiar all the while. Unnerving. It's the megastructure, it's the endless construction that is no longer meant for you.
And unlike these examples of NaissanceE and Blame, it's a structure that we can, to an extent, identify. It's like the inbetween of this alien and the natural of a populated city. It's stripped of its humanity, but its still not stripped of its familiarity.
I've been trying for a while to replicate it, through nature, and I think I understand why I've been failing.
Being dwarfed by nature is never the same as being dwarfed by architecture.
Shoujo Apocalypse Adventure is a fantastic manga, one that drove me back to level design purely so I could recreate it's worldsm even if I have, so far, failed.
Honestly, the cute girls angle is just the icing on the cake. The architecture, like Blame, is the true protagonist.
@@Otakumanu I Googled this "Shoujo Apocalypse Adventure" thinking that it was another manga or something that was similar to Girl's Last Tour, with a weirdly similar name. Turns out Google straight away shows it was the same thing lmao
@@Reydriel It's a more direct translation of the japanese title before "Girl's Last Tour" was made. I found out about the manga a t that time, so I still call t that :v
Your description of the world of Girls' Last Tour is so spot on. I think what you said helps explain why I was drawn to the world of that series: "It's stripped of its humanity, but its still not stripped of its familiarity." Like, the fact that the world is so familiar, but at the same time so perplexing and huge, there is just something about that that is so interesting to me. I want to explore it for some reason.
YEEESSS exactly i was reminded of girls last tour quite a few times while playing naissancee. the moments with the city-like structures extending into infinity below you while you're on the catwalks felt very girls last tour esque to me. if anyone is itching for more naissancee-like architecture they absolutely have to watch or read girls last tour. it's brutalism taken to the nonsensical extreme
NaissanceE reminds me of the time when I'd make an imaginary character and use the creases of the bed or a table full of random shit to make a make-believe environment for the character to explore and I had to figure out how to make the surface explorable.
When I mistakenly end up outside of the map, or glitch through the world when I'm playing a game, I'm always very disturbed and get shivers..
.
Even now, not just when I was a kid. Because it feels like I reached somewhere I should not have gone to, somewhere I don't belong. And that feels deeply wrong.
And arguably when you exit the intended playable area, that's exactly the case. But sometimes when I play a game I will reach some area and just feel minuscule, even though nothing was stopping me from going in that unremarkable corner of the map I just feel like I walked upon some place I shouldn't be in and I should not spend to much time here. I've always found this feeling so strange, unexlicable, and facinating.
In NaissanceE, the whole game is that! And what's more facinating to me is that I absolutely had the idea that Blame! proposes many times before, I've often thought about "what if there was just city, constructions in all directions forever?" and the dizzying implications. So it's so strange to see a manga and a game illustrate that idea in such a striking fashion.
I really am at a loss of words for both this game and Blame!. I don't understand any of it, I can't and it's meant to be this way, it's all just so crushingly big and empty and suffocating in its mad immensity.
I'm in awe. I love it
Subnautica, before ghost leviathans and the teleport far down were a thing, was also like that. It's just an edge, stretching down indefinitely. At some point, the music changes to a creepy music; I never listened to it myself, it would be too much. It's just black down there, as continuing performance issues continue bending all objects in the game and your character to infinity, as it's just this void, with strange noises, and the occasional sound of bubbles raising from your breath.
Another thing is the cave of the past from Earthbound. The music, the feeling. NaissanceE, Subnautica and Earthbound are the only games I know that managed to create this feeling in me. Reality is a very scary thing, one which we can't escape.
The only reason that we can be certain that The City is not infinite is because it wasn’t always there so therefore it won’t be able to grow large enough fast enough to be all there is. That said, I’m sure that when Toha Heavy first attached itself, it’s full-powered Forwarding would have been able to leave, otherwise Central wouldn’t have thought it could be done, and yet wherever they end up is making no significant progress ok actually reaching the edge
When I saw this Game, i thought "Hey, that Game kinda reminds me of Blame! One of my favourite Mangas!" Then i hear that this Game was influencend by Blame! And now i wanna play it
Yo it’s free on steam now bro
Do it. It's free. It's very, very worth it.
I like your name, Harry :) You should come to my theater some time.
Same
I know I’m super late and I’ve come back to this video and this game many times. There are so many optional moments in this game, like the brutalist graves mentioned by Jacob.
The other two I found include:
A giant - and I mean GIANT, even for NaisanceE - room that holds one human sized doorway. You walk through and are met with the fact that the only wall/floor in this location was the 90 degree meet-up of where you just passed through. The only light is illuminating the doorway and nothing else. A white wall contrasted by an ever-stretching blackness just beyond where the lights could reach. When I experienced it, I walked into the dark... for minutes it was nothing... then... the same wall appeared despite me walking away from it and towards the dark. Confused, I figured I must’ve turned myself around and tried again, making sure not to change direction. I walk into the dark and find the same result, the same perpendicular wall with a singular human-sized doorway. I spent an hour or so walking into the dark only to be turned around to the same doorway, or perhaps lead to another perfect copy of the world. Maybe this was the center, maybe this was just another room.
Similar to the illusory giant room, this one also played tricks. As descent is a common theme of the game when I came across a standard staircase, albeit a bit tight, I figured it was par for the course. I descended and descended and descended. Getting bored I tried to optimize my descent, sprinting and breathing in time, cutting corners, jumping to increase speed or at least have fun within the monotony. I did this for way longer than I’m happy to admit before I realized... there is no end. As I slowed down, investigated the stairwell, and was promptly confused, I heard an occasional “ding” when passing by a certain area. Maybe I had to ascend? Surely not as I’ve already descended so far... as I stay there thinking, another “ding”, this one faster. I don’t move and more “dings” happen faster than the previous one until a door slides open and I’m left where I entered initially, making this whole section a tangential option.
I’ll refrain from including my thoughts about these optional places, but I truly think NaissanceE is a masterwork of applying meaning to things that don’t have them. Things happen because they happen, independent of your decisions. The point is how you react to them. How the player moves the mouse, how they slam the keyboard, how they play at all... or just watch a UA-cam video.
huh, I thought that staircase was a trap designed to waste your time until you eventually realise you're softlocked
I found that staircase and descended for several minutes too. Then I turned around and ran up for several hundred stories, looking at the doorway each time and never seeing it open. I'm pretty sure the door closes after you (or there's some warping shenanigans and the door is never recreated).
When I played NaissanceE, I was unable to forget that the game world was actually designed by a human so that players would be able to finish it. I thought of it in terms of some performance art piece with the designer doing something grander or harsher than the audience would expect. After I ran up and down the staircase for a while, I shrugged and thought, "You got me!" I reset the game and never waited long enough to hear the beep.
I often completely misinterpret unusual games like that. When I first played Dark Souls I looked at the expected route from Firelink Shrine towards Undead Burg and assumed that narrow stairway packed with soldiers and firebombers was not the intended first section of the game. I wandered down to New Londo and was killed by ghosts, then travelled pretty far into the Catacombs. Thankfully I saw a walkthrough video before giving up.
I never saw the graves but I did find the two things you said. The one I liked the most was the infinite black room, but the stairway was still really cool.
the staircase one is called "dumbchoice" in the save files, lmao. i didn't even have the audio up loud enough to hear the ding while i was in it, and escaped by complete chance because i'd tabbed out long enough for the door to have opened once i tabbed back in. i in general love the completely optional environments, many of which feel like they *should* be culminating in something, but ultimately never do, because naissancee defies even the familiarity of a typical narrative structure. every room, no matter how unique or grand you believe it to be, is just another room in this endless sprawling structure where each space holds no more importance than the last.
(and on a similar note, i love the moments where you finish this arduous, ridiculous, immense journey across a truly gargantuan part of the structure, something so infeasible that it seems totally unique in the world...and then after you emerge from the exit, you look back and see that it's symmetrical with another exit, implying that the massive space you viewed as one of a kind was nothing special in the grand scheme of the structure. such a fantastic way of adding a horrifying implied scale to the game)
this game was the closest i got to almost having a panic attack, always felt so much animosity from the game world i could never feel comfortable, even in the moments where i was at peace, looking at the prettiness of it all. It got to me when i was crossing a long thin bridge over an endless pit, with no rails, connecting two gigantic constructions littered with electric discharges almost as big as the bridges, and i felt paralyzingly unsafe.
Is it weird that i love that moment?
i just finished the game and i feel the same way as you
Hearing you talk about the feeling of the setting dredged up something I read in the past about something similar:
'...these places are called liminal spaces - which means they are throughways from one space to the next. Places like rest stops, stairwells, trains, parking lots, waiting rooms, airports feel weird when you’re in them because their existence is not about themselves, but the things before and after them. They have no definitive place outside of their relationship to the spaces you are coming from and going to. Reality feels altered here because we’re not really supposed to be in them for a long time for think about them as their own entities, and when we do they seem odd and out of place.
The other spaces feel weird because our brains are hard-wired for context - we like things to belong to a certain place and time and when we experience those things outside of the context our brains have developed for them, our brains are like NOPE SHIT THIS ISN’T RIGHT GET OUT ABORT ABORT. Schools not in session, empty museums, being awake when other people are asleep - all these things and spaces feel weird because our brain is like “I already have a context for this space and this is not it so it must be dangerous.” Our rational understanding can sometimes override that immediate “danger” impulse but we’re still left with a feeling of wariness and unease.'
I’ve met a person who feels like this and... it sucks...
@@Eighteen19 My brain was always that. Sometimes, I was suddenly like. "WAIT HOW CAN THIS BE REAL AND HOW CAN ANYTHING EXIST HOW CAN THIS BE REAL" and I was constantly on verge of panic attacks. But I guess it just stopped one day, and I am very thankful for that. That was probably one of the worst things you can feel. I hope that person you know will feel better as well.
You predicted the future. Solar Sands made a video about liminal spaces, mentioning this very game in that video.
.
First i want to say, that i stoped watching the video after you showed the "not this way" room and went to download it my selfe, to play it just a little bit before progressing with this Video.
After going into the game unbiased i can absolutly agree with you, for some reason the game fills me with an unexplainable dread to a point where i can not play it for long streches of time. I have stoped playing the game about 10 minutes ago as i am writing this and i am still on edge, goosebumps and this tickeling sensation that you some times get when when you feel like you are in iminent danger. and all this while the game its selfe is not actively trying to kill you. at least so far every danger i faced was of a passive nature, falling to my death, getting stuck in a room with no Escape and things like that.
Anyways, pretty happy that i found this a few days ago on accident made me aware of a great game!
I did something similar. Heard that part and played through the ENTIRE game in one go, (today). It was one hell of a labor day experience, that's for sure.
Hi, just downloaded the game because of your comment.
I just don't know about the controls? I'm stuck in the menu, i can't select anything because my cursor doesn't appear. I'm playing in my laptop. Do i need a mouse?
Please help,
@@ThePress00 i used a controller so far and a mouse both of them work, i dont know about touchpad
@@ThePress00 Strange, I haven't experienced the mouse falling off/disappearing, though the full-screen option in graphics (or f11) could fix that. You can find controls within options if you don't figure it out with gameplay, and I think a mouse would help due to platforming and generally looking around.
@@ReinerEvans its fixed. I had a graphic tablet plugged in when I installed the game, so when I started it something must have gone wrong, because after I closed my laptop, I could use the keyboard and the cursor just fine.
Thank you guys!
(Got stuck like a minute into the game...)
I once landed on a planet in No man's sky that, from space, appeared to have land rendered onto it. When I reached the planet's surface, I became incredibly anxious. The planet was endless ocean. no matter which direction I flew, It was just water. There weren't even any islands to land on, just water in all directions. The fact that I was also playing in VR gave me a feeling I haven't felt since. It was incredibly eerie.
The beauty of the alienation, of genuinly not understanding. I remember a scene from blame that just left me headache. It was just this particular moment kili and the girl had to go through an industrial build and took them more than a million of hours that just made me think about how much nothing there was to just skip it. Just like when kili turns off and the tiny voice wakes him up, he may have slept years or months until the other realized hey are you ok? how long was that?
thinking that those panels would flip time longer than many lives, how meaningless it was for the plot. Nothing changes, nothing. If anything it just gets larger somewhere but not change.
It is frigtening for some reason, maybe only for not being able to process it. Just like indian concept of complete infinity in any direction evenin one self.
Beautiful, alien.
I remember reading the manga, and feeling like... suns have come and gone in the time that killy has traversed this place, and for all of it, there was *nothing* to note. Just brutal in how mindbendingly massive it was. Like how killy came upon this area where he met a ai, or robot, of some kind, and it casually threw out the number of 400, 000, 000 kilometers for the size of it, and the next panel was months into the journey. The only thing that was notable of it, was that it was reality warpingly massive, that space itself ripped into itself. That manga is a total perspective vortex.
This is my favourite video on the Internet. I think I can say that safely.
I began writing poetry in high school, at first as a way to externalise and put words onto feelings and personal events that were very difficult to live through, but progressively, as those subsided with time, I found a new purpose to write and started writing just for the sheer pleasure I found in it.
But I then I did two years of preparatory class (a very intensive part of the French school system you can choose to follow after high school). The first year went well, the second was a catastrophe. It really affected my confidence and, most relevant to my overall point, my creativity. It really drained me, and for a while I had the hardest time finding the inspiration and... impetus... motion to write.
You can probably see it coming. A year and a half ago or thereabout, I stumbled across this very video, the first of your video essays I found, and watched it out of pure curiosity, not expecting what was to come in the slightest. I think the title and the very sober but suggestive thumbnail of a staircase stretching into the dark drew me in, in that time of inner confusion and searching for myself.
This video introduced me to another world that I instantly knew I would never fully explore. It's like this game, this manga, this architecture, these themes and atmospheres manage to propel me into previously unexplored regions of my imagination, where nothing else can drag me. It has been my *principal* source of inspiration ever since, and I feel like it may just always be.
I recently finished a poem that drew entirely from this inspiration, some passages directly echoing panels in BLAME! or environments in NaissanceE, and it's the one I am most proud of. I really feel like I matured in the way I write, and I think this very video is in large part responsible. I also happened to finish that poem just a day or two after my father died, which makes it even more important and personal to me, in a more tragic sense.
I will never be able to express my gratitude that, completely unbeknownst to you and by pure, fragile coïncidence, you have given me the keys to explore this strange unknown, this never-ending continent.
For anyone looking to replicate the intoxicating feeling of BLAME! or NaissanceE, I cannot recommend enough that you read *The Library of Babel* by Jorge Luis Borges, and *Piranesi* by Susanna Clarke.
one part in NaissanceE that stuck out to me, that you might not have seen (much as there were parts you've seen that i hadn't), is an endless staircase.
you can just stumble into it, it's off to the side somewhere, and there's... no end to it. it just goes down and down and down, and if you try to go back up you won't find the top, either. I wandered it for nearly half an hour before giving up and restarting the game, but in that time i heard the occasional knocking on the wall, in the place at every floor where it seemed like a door might be. but there wasn't a door, there was just. stairs. forever.
i didn't understand that part of the game at the time. but after seeing this video, and learning about the game's influences, it makes a lot more sense. it's almost a testament to the essence of the game.
the knocking was pretty creepy... the first couple times i almost doubted my own hearing?
i was playing it on stream, i think, though i'm fairly sure the VODs are lost at this point
, but like... it was just, occasional, almost at random, i'd hear a few little knocks.
the game gives no explanation for this
. i was so sure at some point i'd come across something, but i wandered for quite a while. i tried going back up, i tried interacting with the wall, i tried switching directions when i heard a knock, i tried everything i could think of. but nothing changed, the stairs just kept going. eventually, due to a combination of being tired of going down the stairs and just feeling thoroughly unsettled, i quit the game and restarted it.
i think about that staircase a lot.
Oh jeez I totally remember that part. Sends shivers down my spine.
I did the same thing. Well, on my first playthrough, I gave it a couple minutes' exploration and gave up. I had already figured out the game was willing to put inexhaustible obstacles around me for no reason. Later, I went back and deliberately spent a half-hour just going down, just on the off-chance something would happen.
@@SunroseStudios Incidentally, if you stayed still for a few minutes, the knocking would eventually come find you and let you out.
Oh my god sounds like House of Leaves.
Reminds me of the Thomas Ligotti story Vastarian, an infinitely large mechanical world inhabited by nobody, serving no purpose
Ooooh I am going to check this out
@@JacobGellerPlease do! Ligotti writes beautiful short stories in the tradition of Poe and Lovecraft. His writing is amazing and, importantly, SHORT
Getting some major House of Leaves vibes here, and I LOVE it
I see what you mean, I think, but there's a key difference. the house itself in HoL has a different vibe to it. Namely that the interior of the house was never meant to be used or explored. it's openly hostile to us. I chalk that up to the house being basically super natural in origin, and NaissanceE isn't. It's very intentional. it's an intention that is corrupted in some way that leaves us out of it's design by accident, but there is ostensibly still a logic to the way the world works in NaissanceE. In HoL, it's just plainly unknowable.
Or at least, this is true given what I have played of NaissanceE so far.
ok I literally have been reading the novel for the past week having learned about its existence just now and you Baader-Meinhofing me in the context of all of this is NOT COOL I am scared
To somewhat add to what @Hen Barrison said; The House is different to The City because the former tries to be interesting. While it doesn't try to be explored, it somehow also wants to be interesting. To be entertaining beyond just being a spatial aberration. Otherwise, why would it place the only locked door before a dying man that Navidson wanted to save? Why would it warp itself so much beyond what it had previously shown when Navidson entered alone? It knows that people are documenting it and are trying to extract some kind of pleasure from it, and reacts accordingly.
The City doesn't care about what you think is interesting.
@@s.t7282 A fitting metaphor for the novel as a whole. Desperately trying to be interesting rather than just honing in on a really good idea. Best write a story within a story within a story, and have the front-facing story be written with the utmost pretentious attempt to be cool and edgy and evocative of the 80's and 90's bar fiend rather than create interesting characters that aren't horribly misguided, poorly realized, and shallow beyond compare.
Ugh. That novel irritates me so much. It has such a solidly great idea and it squanders it with 500 extra pages of absolute dogshit. But no one would give a shit if it wasn't avant-garde, eh? Best to be interesting and popular than to slide under the radar and transform literature naturally.
The room at 4:36 might be the most meaning-dense locale in the entire game (or one of two or three).
Could you explain?
in the same vein of weird offshoot rooms that you can totally miss, I found a fuckin. legit strip club in some corner. Pole, bar, tables. the whole nine.
Yeah, the strip club was weird, but it at least tells us that The City was... well, its population, if there was one, had desires like those. My favourite Points of Interest, though, might be in The Desert Atop The Pillar. The weird orb in the lake of... something, the ruins that become an echo of their intended design, and most importantly, the pillar with the art that displays the journey to meet The Host.
@@MK.5198 The weirdest room for me is a kid's bedroom where there's no gravity. Found it on my second playthrough.
@@Myzelfa I think if I ever play the game through a second time, I want to do so with noclip on, just to fly around at my leisure and see whats what
I have had this game sitting in my desktop for ages because I got stuck,you just convinced me to give it another go,thank you!
It can be very tricky to get through. Two tips to try and get through it yourself w/out looking up a walkthrough:
1)Check every freakin corner. Seriously, even when you know the path to take, checking alternate paths can be really cool and rewarding
2)If you get a hunch about a puzzle solution, follow it. The game does a good job of suggesting the solution passively/subconsciously
I'm in a part with a lot of dark spots and vertical climbing,so I have no idea what I'm even looking for.
I seriously need to try this game. The concepts it puts forth regarding architecture, emptiness, and that feeling of being infinitely lost in an unfamiliar and artificial world are all things I think about a lot. That idea of not even knowing if you're indoors, outdoors, or if it even matters, is what really gets to me. Just the thought of never truly being able to understand the scale of something when you have no actual perception of it.
I was just thinking the environments reminded me of BLAME! right before you said it. It's damn spooky how talented individuals can recreate what they see in a different shape but still invoke the same feeling.
I played this game years ago, but I always come back to it every once in a while. I found this video on such an occassion, and it made me pleased to see that this game impacted more people than just myself. I realize that you're a small channel, but please, keep doing what you're doing. And I know the game may be less artistic than the ones you've analysed in the past, but I would love if you looked into a game called Tyranny, and gave your thoughts on its plot.
This is so kind, thank you Wromeo. I've heard really good things about Tyranny- always been intimidated by that kind of RPG, but my interest is piqued
This is literally Lovecraft cosmic horror expressed trough game design, an infinite landscape capable of creating pure dread, I would love to be able to see what Lovecraft himself would have thought of this experiment were he alive today
He'd have hated it, he expressed great disdain for all games (albeit referring to board, card and parlour games of the time) and pretty much all media other than literature in his letters
@hi hungry i'm dad Jesus christ guys, relax.
He'd probably go to his cat
I get the sense that Lovecraft, if he ever got hands of a model software, would probably spend lots of time fiddling around with it till he got the eldritch landscape he wanted.
Lovecraft was a terrible person and had a well deserved miserable life. He'd probably curse the jews and women and proceed to sulk in a corner thinking of his cat.
The Backrooms meme would fit so well into the thesis of this video
My parents worked at my school when I was very young, and my dad worked as a treasurer at my small church for decades, so I've always had memories of hanging out in classrooms and empty church auditoriums for hours. Usually it was several times a week, sometimes with a few friends, sometimes with my brother. We played soccer on tile floors with old socks stuffed with rags in the toe (so you could also pick them up and sling them around) and other assorted toys, read weird books in the church library, and played with a synthesizer that could arpeggiate the chopstick chords.
(You merely adopted the liminal space, I was born in it, molded by it...)
This reminds me of nightmares I used to have, of being lost in an endless and huge mega stractures.
A mall with thosands of stairs and multiple levels, that connects to somehow to an airport, one so big and un-understandable that until I got to the exist to the bus station, I only get out to a tiny station with the view of a huge central, and with each stop the bus reaches to, I find myself nowhere closer to where I want to be, to a place not so confusing, so large, so terrifying.
This looks like it would be terrifying for me to play. Incredibly intriguing, but terrifying. But it also reminds of little game called Against the Wall, a bit. Mostly because of visuals, but still. There's also a big, impossible, man(?) made structure (yea, the WALL), which you're supposed to navigate. It's similarly very... eerie.
Either way - great video.
This! This is the video that introduced me to BLAME! I just finished reading it and came back to find the video (I knew it was one of yours but I couldn't remember which one...). Thanks for introducing me to Tsutomu Nihei's work. The scale of these kind of megastructures is absolutely mindboggling and awe-inspiring and just stretches the imagination to its limits!
My favourite moment is when Killy founds himself in a huge jupiter sized empty room. For a second you ask "did he reach the end of the city?" and it turns out no it's still the city.
@@janogabor7697 YES! That moment was stunning. And I totally thought he'd found the end of the city too, but nope, it just keeps going... again the scale of the structure just boggles the mind in the most fascinating way.
@@ariamakesvideos803 I feel Blame is one of the only piece of fiction that can illustrate cosmic scale through the familiar concepts of architecture. You constantly feel the size of the world because unlike the real universe everywhere you look and go is filled with architecture.
So much so that the simple act of coming across a space with no visible ceiling feels hauntingly strange. It's too empty...
@@janogabor7697 Ooh that's a great observation! Thank you for your insight. Honestly I think that Blame is a type of cosmic horror, a horror of scale, like Jacob Geller talks about in one of the other videos (I think it's the Universal Paperclips video, but he touches on that kind of theme in a lot of them). The very idea of the Jupiter-sized room, that the city surrounded the great bulk of Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system, and dismantled it like so many spare parts for energy and building materials... it's absolutely chilling.
Your description of exploring a school by yourself, and the fear of doing so, is so accurate, I had visceral flashbacks of walking around my high school after hours, once staff had left.
Blame! is my favourite piece of art. It made me develop a taste for these kind of structures, and makes me enjoy them every time I see something like that. That's the reason I loved this game, because it basically gave me the chance to experience them.
The best moments in this game are the opening of Going Down and the utter scope and confusion of the city right after coming out of the abstract and disorienting Follow the Light, the confusion of Deeper into Madness, and the bridge in Interlude.
I had just commented on your new Haunted House video about how I’m glad you’ve played NaissanceE, without first realizing that you had done an entire video about it!! This was an extremely good watch, once again: I’m glad people are giving this game a look because it’s seriously just such an engaging and weird fantastic video game. Really great video!
This game reminds me of the aesthetics of an anime that came out a couple years ago. Girls last tour sees two young women exploring the remains of some kind of Supermassive mega city built in layers up into the sky. There is infrastructure everywhere, but no one to maintain or use it. Anyway I don't want to spoil it but I wonder if they took some inspiration from Blame! If anyone likes this Aesthetic I think it's worth a watch.
From what I heard Girls last tour was inspired by Blame! too
Girls' Last Tour gave me a good sense of existential dread.
After each episode, I was left feeling empty. I didn't quite understand why the main characters kept moving forward when I thought it was all going to be the same going forward: Unnatural, vast structures of concrete and steel seemingly without purpose.
Resting is supposed to be, a relaxing event after a hard day of wandering around the ruins on a half-track motorcycle, but in the series it's a concrete floor in some kind of concrete structure or shelter, everything with hard, 90° corners and not a hint of organic, humane design apart from a the empty, wide streets and a few sets of stairs and such. It all feels very cold and uninviting, like someone had designed the structures only with robots or alike in mind.
The existential dread has stuck with me ever since and NaissanceE was a nice refresher on how it felt the first time around. Terrible. At least to me, not unlike getting lost in a shopping mall and separated from one's parents.
Dude these architecture-related videos have introduced me to some stunning people and pieces of media that I might not have found otherwise. Can't thank you enough and keep 'em coming!
Your channel is really insightful and I hope you keep making these kinds of videos.
Having seen your essay on Control and the Anatomy of the House, I feel this title deserves a place in that conversation about hostile environments!
Fruity Troll Roll YEP!!!
omg, finally, a video talking about NaissanceE...
thank you for capturing in words what i found so compelling about this game, i never knew how to articulate it but this gave me new insight
1:14 Aside from the amazing explanation of the experience when playing this game... Man, how can you think exactly what i thought several times? It always intrigues me how i often dream with wide places like schools or hospitals, it's a weird sensation, kinda like something unsettling but comforting also. I, sometimes, even dream about having parties or fucking around with friends in those places that aren't made for those purpouses. It's a strange pleasure
!!! So glad to hear someone else has this. I would always daydream about like, playing hide and seek in a giant empty government building.
This video together with your Ueda one makes me believe that we have a rather similar taste in environments, which is awesome, because I never have been able to put those feelings into words, so thanks for making those videos!
You might like Kairo, which has a very similar feel of desolation and wandering about, though it has more puzzles than NaissanceE. I can't feel but a little bit sad at the reviews, but oh well, different tastes I guess.
Feeling same here about being able to describe the experience in words. Definitely well made quality video.
100% agree, Kairo is amazing. Especially the secret ending :)
i never actually finished Kairo but i loved it for the same reason i loved NaissanceE
it's a mysterious world that i didn't seem to have a place in, seemingly endless, beautiful, isolating
actually i technically never finished NaissanceE either. i got to that weird "final boss" sort of section (not sure what else to call it), and i just. couldn't quite get through it. the difficulty spiked just a bit too much for me i guess
but i learned that after getting past that point all i would've seen is the game ending, with basically no fanfare, just a noise and the title and then... nothing.
Also gonna jump on the Kairo train here... I need to go back and replay it, but even more than NaissancE, I loved it as an interesting obtuse-environment experience. As an aside, is that a good name for this sub-genre? Obtuse Environment games?
Kenopsia _n._ the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet-a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds-an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs.
This game did such a killer job of making me feel alien in the world whilst totally alienated from a sense of purpose other than "keep going forward"
I've never played this game myself, but based on what I understand of it from this video, it has a similar atmosphere to one of my favorite point-and-click series, Submachine. A vast, enigmatic, seemingly long abandoned world, architecture with clearly purposeful design but no real function, massive and jarring shifts in environment and atmosphere... They both make you feel completely lost in places beyond your comprehension. Submachine has a lot more in terms of world-building, story and gameplay, though. It's nowhere near this level of abstraction.
I actually picked up this game because of the video, and after playing through it for a few hours, I'm getting *exactly* the same Submachine vibe. It's very *different* from Submachine's architectural and artistic style - Submachine's world is far more *human*, filled with out-of-place ancient architecture and buildings compared to NaissanceE's low-poly geometric megastructures - but you get a similar feel.
Yeah, NaissancE is what the Submachine might look like if it grew so big that all the trappings and ruins it had collected from human society were just utterly dwarfed into irrelevevance by sheer size alone.
A Submachine fan! It's not often I see someone on the internet who's familiar with the series. I thought of Submachine immediately when I watched this video.
I've recently subscribed to your channel and i find your ability to narrate and analyze games astounding! I admire the way you express this deep admiration and love for your subject matter in a way that can captivate an audience. I look forward to seeing more videos by you! I honestly can’t get enough!
This reminds me of a British art history documentary about the color white I watched last year. There was a segment about whiteness and modernist architecture, the sterility, the way certain structures project power over the people moving through them, the way modernism could reduce people to parts of a great inhuman (even anti-human) system...
Functionality overgrown until humans can no longer function in it. A productivity engine that's run out of its fuel. That's what the world of NaissanceE looks like to me.
could you share the name of the documentary?
@@Ethan_Avila The History of Art in Three Colors! The other two parts are gold and blue.
@@indigohalf Thanks a lot!
@@indigohalf Cheers!
I always felt that way about modern architecture. I hate it. It’s so lifeless and harsh and it doesn’t feel like it should be habitable for humans
The part about being in a place that wasn't designed for you made me think of the feeling i've felt walking arround the subway, the pedestrian tunnels and big office lobby's and malls of my cities during the early lockdown period. That feeling of uneasyness that this space is too big for you was the creepiest feeling ever. The fact that i was alone in this giant subway station with only the noise of electrical equipement was out of this world
Hey just wanted to say that I discovered your channel through this video. I stopped it halfway and went download the game, thank you so much because it is such a unique experience and I think having the seen part of your video first made me enjoy it even more. I love discovering hidden gems such as this one.
I also wanted to highlight the amazing sound design in this game, I absolutely recommend playing with a headset or earplugs. My favorite touch can be seen at 6:04 where the sound from the lightning actually takes a while to get to you, it really makes it feel like they are striking miles and miles away and makes the gigantic room that much bigger. I hope this guy keeps making games such as this one.
I’ve been binge watching you’re channel the past few days and I’m just amazed at how well you’re videos are composed and how meaningful everything you say is. It really conveys you’re personal ideas but also invites your viewers to ask questions and form their own opinions on the topic. There’s true talent in the way you speak.
Been obsessing over your videos this past week ever since I found your channel. Thank you
This is one of my favorite cult classic games and I'm always glad to see people cover it. Subbed!
same
What an exceptionally well put together video, both inviting and descriptive whilst still giving critique. I highly appreciate this form of content, great video!
I just watched your Universal Paperclips (amazing game!) video and this one. You have some amazing content that fits right into my niche. Keep up the great work!
I just binged your entire channel, You make some the most interesting content ive seen. Love it.
This game perfectly conveys the feeling of dreams and architecture in them
I first saw this video probably 2 years ago, and played NaissanceE last year. For some reason, out of all the wonderful ideas presented in your videos, this one has stuck with me the most. There's just something about being completely dwarfed by the scale of the structure that's incredibly powerful to me, especially the final staircase. That room is so terrifyingly large that it feels like it could fit entire world, everything I have seen, everywhere I have been, my entire human perspective, it could hold all that and it wouldn't even make a dent.
I love Blame! and other Tsutomu Nihei works, and when I discovered this obscure game, which was love letter to his architecture, my mind was blown. It translates the feeling of being in megastructure perfectly. I wish more people appreciate it. I recommended it to many of my friends, but no one seems to actually play it.
Damn this channel is so well done. Should have more attention!
So I remember adding NaissanceE to my steam library a few years ago and my little school laptop could barely handle it so I quit playing early on, but I had liked the idea. I've always liked the more abstract things. AAA doesn't always have the better imagination, in fact it usually seems to be the contrary... Anyway, so I ended up buying a gaming pc and had forgotten about the game when I came upon this video and was absolutely astounded that anyone would talk about an unknown title like that. I've been hooked on your essays ever since and this one along with your essays on Control/Anatomy and the Soul of a Library are my go to when I get writer's block. The current novel I'm working on has bits that are heavily influenced by the media you talk about and the insights you bring to light of them. Some of it I already knew and some you've introduced me to. You are appreciated for your open mind, and even if I never sell a single copy, I want you to know I'm thanking you. For some of us you are more than just a youtuber.
2 muxh ko- kane? Cell sum 2 da prezadent
I have no desire to play this game but your analysis is incredible. You make me unbelievably interested in what it's trying to say and be. great work
So Blame is like the Kowloon Walled city x1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Like how Kowloon walled city would look to a dust mite
More like 1.0 x 10¹ººº
kowloon walled city was claustrophobic, while blame! is mainly agoraphobic
kilobits yeah yeah I know
I remember the first time I played this game, I just accidentally stumbled on it on steam, and not knowing anything about it made it even more interesting and insane.
Oh, also [obligatory SCP-184 reference]
I am now revisiting this video for the umpteenth time because it is absolutely one of my favorite videos on this platform. I have recently developed an interest in cities, architecture, and urban planning, and you have birthed a fascination within me of "places that hate you". Thank you so much for making this.
These documentaries of yours are brilliant and hauntingly beautiful.
7:40 Wow this whole part reminds me of certain dreams I've had (almost nightmare-ish even though upon waking up they feel so silly) where in places I would frequently go to on a daily basis would have some usual architectures, like stairs and bridges, replaced by things that could do the same thing but in an extremely needlessly dangerous way.
For example, bridges across huge gaps where it's just a narrow steel beam just to get to school, a bedroom in my house that I need to jump across a drop to the first floor to get to, the complete lack of guardrails anywhere to protect people from falling off ledges... anything really that involves a fall to your death if you aren't careful lmao
I'm so glad I stumbled upon this. I'd followed this for a while when it was in development, but lost touch with the project. I had no idea it had been released, much less for free. Thanks.
I want to thank you for introducing me to Blame! I read the entire manga online and it was a wild and confusing ride. It’s a gem of a manga that I will never forget.
Coming back to this after your most recent video called back to it. This essay still slaps!
This is a wonderful video of one of my favourite games. Thanks for making me think about it even more.
Thank you so much for putting my thoughts on this type of architecture into words. There's something about the huge, impoding structures that is so intriguing to me and makes me want to explore. You made some great points in this video that really helped me understand why I love this architecture so much. And ever since one of your videos introduced me to the artist Gerard Trignac, I've been wanting to find similar art in movies/games/etc, so I will definitely be looking into this game and I'm definitely gonna check out Blame! A great video!
The sense of dread I felt in the giant dark room in NaissanceE is unlike anything else I've ever felt. First time I've ever chickened out of something in a video game
God I love NaissanceE so much for years now and am incredibly happy to finally find a good video about it. Amazing channel
This is one of my absolute favorite games and it's almost impossible to articulate why.
excellent video man thanks for introducing me to a game i might never have tried otherwise
Horror takes on many forms, but many cannot unravel the horror of feeling being lost in something so familiar as human-esq and yet so far removed. Reminds me a lot of SPC otherworlds, Endless yellow office or Ikea creepypastas. This game truly shows that just simple location, scale, and perception can be an outlet of horror if just tilted slightly off. Silence and questions is intrinsically much more terrifying then jump-scares and screams.
thank you so much for this video. i had tried this game and got stuck early on and then forgot about it and now that i've finished it after watching this video it's one of my favorite games of all times. i'm starving for more games like this.
This is the single most underrated youtuber I know. You deserve more subs
This is pretty cool, and I'm so wrapped up in this concept.
I may even read that Manga you mentioned. I've never really read them before either..
These kind of moments were sweet to me. I’d finally see the building without its context, its noise. It also felt slightly lonely, but I felt comfort in finally being alone with my thoughts.
Just discovered you today! Totally subbed. :>
You got me with this one. Beautiful thoughts on intriguing issues. Subsribed.
man, i was just thinking about blame! thanks to another video of yours, i have decided i am reading it tonight
I picked up NaissanceE years ago, and it immediately resonated with me, like I had been waiting for the game for years and never even knew it. Since then I've never quite known what to think of it, how to describe it to friends. Thank you so much for making this video, and putting a spotlight on such a unique gem!
This video really helped contextualize some things that I've really found myself attracted to in media. The use of architecture to create unease is SO cool. This game, and another called Rainworld do a really good job of it
Holy crap, this is a glorious video. Thank you, Jacob.
I love surreal games like this. Blame! was one of my favorite mangas when I was younger and I was immediately reminded of it when starting this vid. Personally, I find the game's world is a great emotional metaphor for how I feel about our modern society and how dehumanizing and absurd it can be. We are often forced to interact with various systems which are man-made yet seem completely inhuman and alienating. Oftentimes, the original purpose and pretense of these systems, (whether they are bureaucratic, online, corporate, or whatever), is long lost, and all that is left are tangled webs of red tape and repetition and self perpetuating cycles of actions which exist for the sake of it. Basically, our world is very Kafkaesque, not to sound pretentious, but Franz Kafka did an excellent job of describing these kinds of endless bureaucratic nightmares in his stories.
Anyway, this game reminds me that we are never outside of this world we have built for ourselves no matter how far we may travel. We have taken what was once natural and straightforward, and created an oppressive megastructure which has in many ways grown far beyond any truly intended purpose. By design we are perpetually lost in this hollow labyrinth of a world, rushing around, going nowhere.
TL;DR, we live in a society.
god this reminds me of being a little kid and going with my best friend and her mom(a high school math teacher) to set up her classroom during summer break and going through sunlit but completely empty and echoing hallways just the two of us, and now i’m gonna lie on the ground and remember that for a couple hours
Watching the begging of the video gave me the urge to play this game, I played it and came back to watch all of it.
This game is one of those that words cannot describe, even with this amazing video it's not enough, you need to play it, you need to feel it to understand it.
Walking through an endless labyrinth made by something inhuman that tries to look human, not being able to tell where should you go, there are no points in the distance marked with a light, there is only architecture.
One example would be when I found this dark place, after walking through light up corridors and then exiting into what seemed like an endless void. I started walking into the darkness periodically looking back at the light, as I walked the light just got farther and farther, then I ran as fast as I could into the light filled corridors. Why? Not because I was scared of the dark, not because I thought there maybe be something to find, but because I was scared of nothing, the simple ideia of getting lost in nothing, not even a monster in the dark to keep me company, that is what made me run.
i wonder what it says about me that this is one of my favourite comfort videos. I always leave this video feeling quietly better than I arrived.
this is a concept that fascinates me as much as it disturbs me, and I relate to it a lot due to several dreams with settings like that throughout my life
I am so stoked to see someone else talk about this game. It is one of my absolute favorites!
This reminds me of Rendezvous with Rama a lot. It's a bit of the same feeling, that you are not supposed to be there.
What an awesome idea and premise. I love it
I want to say for finally giving me a bit of closure on this game. when i originally played it, i didn't get why i felt so unsettled, i was too young to really understand the ideas you mentioned. and thanks to you, not only can i go back and replay it, i can appreciate it for the work of art it is. Now that i'm older and have more experience. i can't wait. Also great work on the video. there really is not much i could say other than, maybe a little work on the thumbnails.