This week on Fully Ramblomatic, Yahtzee reviewed Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. Support us on Patreon: / secondwindgroup Second Wind Merch Store: sharkrobot.com...
I remember Bioshock's moral dilemma too. "What will you do with this little girl? Will you savagely murder her, or will you actually save her, which doesn't cost you anything more than the press of a button?" "Err..." "Wait, wait, wait! Be very careful before you answer! Because the award for saving the little girl is actually far greater than if you murder her!" "..."
Never played that one, but unless I'm mistaken the dilemma there is that sacrificing the gremlin girls gives you powerups, and not doing so "doesn't." As in, the game presents that choice, but if you then let them live you get a reward afterwards. What I don't know is how hard it is to figure out that you'd get a reward if you let them live while playing through the game the first time. Save scumming to get the better reward aside I mean.
This is actually the third Don't Nod game with this exact same moral dilemma being the whole story because Life is Strange also presupposes you like the protagonist's best friend/significant other enough to sacrifice an entire town to keep them alive. Clearly someone working there is trying very hard to justify the Faustian bargain they made as a thing people struggle with as well.
Life is Strange was a bit different, since the question was a lot more "Which Genre of Movie was this?" than "How do you resolve this pesky moral dillema?" Was it a tender coming of age story or a lynchian psychodrama at heart? Depending on which genre you think of it as, the answer is obvious and why would anyone pick the other one, you want the ending to the story right? These other games don't seem to have that angle.
I don’t know, speaking as someone who is only 2/3 episodes in, the town is full of such 1-dimensional cartoonishly mean and evil assholes that maybe it’s fine to see it get wiped off the map…
@@brysonlambes7175 you have spoken the Words, and you have spoken them rightly prepare for five years of notifications about how much gamers hated this teenage girl
I don't understand. Is Yahtzee implying I SHOULDN'T have just secured a mortgage in Nothing-Bad-Ever-Happens-HereVille? Because it was a hell of a deal...
Ya know, it's the little things about Fully Ramblomatic that fill me with comfort. In a time of uncertainty and not knowing what would or wouldn't carry over from the old show, it's good to know that a colon is still deserving of a nice hard dry heave!
@@86fiftyit’s an old joke from some kind of game that had way too many colons in its title and that reading all that made him feel ill, which morphed into him dry-heaving to pronounce the colons in any game’s title.
The funniest thing to me about Vampyr was the best ending being the one where you only drained around 3-5 people, and it was nicer to get because some of those people kinda deserve to die.
Reminds me of how you can apparently get the good/low chaos endings in the Dishonored series if you limited your killing to only the major targets (especially since some of the "peaceful" options were far worse than the murder one).
I think 2 or less gets you the good ending. As far as story goes, it’s the one with the best payoff. But I was also going for 0 kills, which meant I had to spare that horrible dickhead you meet at the end. That secret society leader you have to turn into a vampire so he can become a demigod
I feel like if this would be better if it was more like Shadows of the Colussus, where it was a "boss rush" where you investigate until you know enough to draw the ghost out and then each ghost is a unique enemy with special attacks and aesthetics instead of having "filler combat".
“Oh, sure, when Shadow of the Colossus makes you kill a bunch of innocents to save a dead person it’s groundbreaking art, but when we do it…” mutter the staff of Don’t Nod (in French).
To answer Yahtzee's post-credits question, I have never used "ghost of chance" except as a pun, in the same way that "going bananas" almost always involves monkeys
The new artstyle seems to be more accommodating for little details. The fading in of the witch silhouette. Yahtz lightly spritzed with blood after committing an implied off-screen mass shooting for the dog in a hat.
Considering the kind of folk songs the scots wrote for centuries, endlessly pining over the freshly dead and/or now completely rotted corpse of your spouse seems pretty on-brand.
Surely I'm not the only one thinking of that one music video from good ol' Square One? Pretty high up there when it comes to disturbing kiddie television, I reckon.
I feel like this moral dilemma would actually work iff the resurrection ritual involved sacrificing *the people who wronged the ghosts*, and not just a bunch of random innocents. Then it'd be an actual *choice*. Do you end the haunting and let the town continue in obliviousness as to the skeletons in its closet, or do you execute half the town in the name of justice? Lesson for all the people trying to write a moral choice into a video game: moral ambiguity tends to help things along.
That's basically how it actually works yeah, every haunting is an investigation and the choice at the end is basically "who do you think was the bigger asshole here?" Sometimes it's pretty clear cut, like the still alive person straight up murdering the one who's now a ghost or the ghost completely deserving his death, but most of the time it'll be pretty morally gray because they're both guilty (or they're both innocent and the whole thing was just bad luck)
At the very least, kudos to devs for making AAA-adjacent games with actual fresh ideas. Whether or not they work is another matter, but they actually try.
Yahtzee always exaggerates stuff for script purposes don't mind it you are not really ment to fully agree with him on everything anyway since its obvious he always kinda represses his on likes about a game for comedic value
Gotta love the moral dilemma schtick. I wonder if you murdered even just one person if you'd get the "bad" ending or if there's like a middle of the road ending which sucks all the way around.
there, in fact, is three endings: two where you swear one thing and do it, with variable outcome based on which path you chose (ascend or resurrect) and the bad one, where you do the opposite of your oath, and it does indeed suck all around :D
There's the good ending where you saved everyone, even those that didn't deserve it, the "okay" ending where you saved enough people to ascend Antea, but feel bad about killing some people, the "evil" ending where you kill enough people to resurrect Antea, and the "failure" ending, where you basically do the opposite of whatever you promised to do and everything fails.
"Ghost hunting doesn't strike me as having much potential as a game mechanic - it seems to largely involve overreact to faint creaking noises and getting really excited about specks of dust in the camera lens" That's the primary gameplay loop of Phasmophobia, yeah.
1:40 Also a skyscraper named Babil, Baybel, Babbel or just Babel. Bonus points if the The Tower tarot cart is somehow involved and/or the skyscraper is depicted on it.
In theory, I kinda like the idea of choosing between accusation and forgiveness whenever you beat a possessed person that deserved it. The only way you can sell a split ending like this is if the people you're killing to get the "murder a bunch of people" ending actually deserve it. But it doesn't sound like they ever really make it personal to the player, you're just doing witcher contracts and then deciding people's fate at the end, so you'd have to be a real bastard to go on executing people for that. A hypothetical better version of this could have the whole town be a bunch of pricks that hurt or kill NPCs that the player character gets close to throughout their journey (I know, this would require characters the player would care about, roll with me on this). Then the option of "Scooby Doo or Punisher" would really matter, and the ending could reflect the perspective the player had of the town.
That could be interesting. If you go far enough and with enough balance then you could make it so any ending is the good ending but it's the good ending for that particular type of player.
As someone who's done the evil Resurrection playthrough, I actually found it really satisfying narratively due to its slippery scope nature. In the early game it's much easier to justify Blaming the living. The first haunting is a cannibal driven insane by hunger and nightmares and he straight-up wants to die after killing his partner in a fit of madness, so you can tell yourself you're doing him a favor. The next hauntings are a spy who's been sabotaging the village food supplies and a straight-up mass murderer, so it's very easy to tell yourself you're killing them for justice or the good of the people. But then, soon after, you start encountering people who genuinely hadn't done any wrong - and you've gone too far to turn back now, since you need to commit nearly entirely to one of the paths to actually fulfill the chosen oath. Of course, you can turn back if you so wish, but the game is not lying - there are consequences and you will not enjoy the ending if you do turn back.
Sounds like instead of giving the player a choose they should've stuck to one and make a moral deep narrative about it I remember reading a spec ops the line e forum of people unironically wanting a way to not use the white phosphorus and have a happy ending. And all I could think was that because of the solid linear story it was so memorable and stuck with me
I personally like the choice aspect - that way the consequences always feel like they're on the player, because there always is another way. At about the halfway point the game gives you one last chance to change your oath (Ascend/Resurrect), but, of course, this doesn't erase what you've done beforehand - so do you really want to risk backing out now?
@@filipmelzacki9969 yeah, but it does still affect making a solid story since you're doing it because the mechanics make it better to do all one or the other. No stance, no real moral and any sort of character stuff can be all undone in a second evil playthrough
This game is very innovative, it might just be the first game ever to have a Scottish character voiced by someone who's actually fucking Scottish, and not someone doing an impersonation about as accurate as Dick Van Dyke's Cockney.
I can at least think of one other: Return of the Obra Dinn, which has people of the correct nationality for every voiced character. Abigail (the captain's wife) and her brother are both very Scottish.
I get what they're trying to do. Instead of Vampyr relying on you growing attached to multiple NPCs to do/do not do a bad thing, they give you one major character who sticks with you, to make you do/do not do a bad thing. Focusing the character drama. The problem is... they can't write. So it kind of falls down BEFORE the first hurdle.
This is a problem Dontnod should've learned after the *first* Life is Strange, where the final choice is "save your girlfriend" or "save literally the entire town and everyone in it", and it is completely detached from every other decision you make in the rest of the game. And Dontnod *did* seem to have learned this for Life is Strange 2, but then did they just forget about it for B:GONE here??
Thing is there actually is a HUGE benefit to flip-flopping in both Banishers and Vampyr. Yahtzee reasonably assumes that making any of the "bad choices" in either will instantly lock you out of the good ending because that's what most of these moral choice games are like, but in these it doesn't. In both you can kill a few people you feel deserve it and still get a good ending. The fun part of the game for me is seeing how close to the line I can go, how many times can you get away playing judge, jury, and executioner before you're just another monster and do earn a bad ending? Playing it all one way or the other kind of defeats the point of the moral dilemmas, as Yahtzee points out.
The point is that the game should INCENTIVISE you to do that, not have it be a suggestion on how you SHOULD play the game. If there was some sort of benefit to axing individuals in the world for example, that would make it more of a choice. The issue is that decisions like that take time and effort to think through, implement and balance. For whatever reason Don't Nod wouldn't or couldn't do that, but wanted to still have their cake and fuck it too. Hence the halfbaked system in place.
@@ninja3212 But Vampyr DID do that. The whole point of killing people was that it gave you huge amounts of XP to make you stronger, making the combat - admittedly fairly meh - easier and quicker. On a "evil" playthrough you feel like an unstoppable killing machine.
It's funny, isn't it, that games with "moral choices" almost always demand that you pick a lane and stick to it if you're going to get the in-game benefit and an ending that makes some kind of sense. You would think by now we'd see a _few_ games that tried to put as much depth and variety into moral decision making as goes into the overly convoluted skill tree.
There are some like that but they are in the minority. Even Undertale with it's 10 different Neutral endings still reward sticking with it fir the most part
Binary moral systems have always sucked narratively. Especially when most stories are written around the MC being pure good (or pure evil like in Overlord). Baldur's Gate 3 is a great choice-driven game that doesn't track how many goody-two-shoes or devil points you have. There are clearly good and evil choices, but the bedrock of the main narrative isn't too dependent on them. If DontNod did Baldur's Gate 3, you'd be locked out of the hero ending if you burned down the druid grove in Chapter 1.
The thing is, you don't have to stick with the lane in this game. Yahtzee just (reasonably) assumed that. You can kill a few people you think deserved it and still get the best ending. Issue is that people are so trained at this point, even if you don't force the players down a path they'll still assume you are.
Yeah, this pretty much nails the narrative issue with this game: it's like a long-form trolley problem, which takes all the punch out of the little banish/ascend/blame decisions you make along the way. Once you commit to a path, the decisions become easy as the consequences of each choice are telegraphed in terms of the possible endings.
Hopefully some of the choices are clearer about what the protagonist’s choices entail than Vampyr so I don’t erase somebody’s memory and turn them catatonic when I thought the choice meant I’d encourage them to pretend they know nothing and to leave.
The "be nice" or "be a cunt" moral branch path system was a fresh idea when KOTOR did it 20 years ago, but it's definitely past time we moved forward on it. Instead of "be a good person" or "be a bad person", give us competing versions of being a "good person". Like, make us choose between deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. Set a game in the aftermath of the French Revolution where we have to choose between prioritizing Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
This is a big problem in storytelling in Hollywood, we're supposed to be emotionally invested in the main character in a way we aren't. Like I might be an grumpy old man but I don't really care about the main character in Star Trek Discovery or her klingon lover boy. Boom! She was the main character. Boom! They were a couple. Now I should really really care what happens to them. That's not how it works. For us to care they have to do something more in the story than telling us to care. And this kind of writing is a big problem in a lot of modern tv shows, movies, video games, et cetera, et cetera.
Sucks too because there are some enjoyable character moments in this game like Red talking about his dead sister or Antea sharing her first experience with snow
At least the subtitle isn’t totally overused. This is the third “Ghost of _” subtitle in recent memory though. It does have a generic one word primary title though, yay.
I love you reviewing these kinds of games, GTA6 is just gonna be "Ew it's everything I hate." And Big Rigs 2 would just be "Ew I hate everything." But this is "I hate some things and here's me saying it an amusing way."
As someone who used to live in New England I have to say that having to deal with random ghosts that just happen to be hanging around is probably the most accurate part of it all.
It's a little hard to justify bringing people back to life to live with when you have concrete proof of some form of afterlife. "Oh, me wife's dead. I could conduct necromancy and revive her at the cost of many others, or wait a bit and catch up to her without having murdered several people to get to that point. Also I'd have more free time for my hobbies."
I do like the play on orpheus of two lovers in crazy love with each other, one pure in thought and deed, and the other brilliant in dark magic / mad science. And wouldn't you know it, the nice one tragically dies on their wedding day. The surviving partner is obviously not keen on _til death do us part_ bit. Not on their watch. It sounds like a good game of gathering the material components to bring the groombride back to life, in the mean time pondering if this really is the best idea. As sunk cost accumulates, more hints about unforseen consequences reveal themselves.
In Vampyr we had that couple of people that REALLY deserved to be sucked dry (like an actual effing serial killer psichopath) but if you did the logical thing then you got the BAD ending, and i'm guessing BGONE (eh) is the same.
Wasn’t expecting my knowledge of the twisted upbringing of JSM by his father and Bentham to appear twice as a joke today but here we are experiencing a maximum amount of pleasure from the fact
Honestly, the main problem with "moral dilemma" choices like this in games is that you have to care about the character you're trying to save. Most games that go this route don't actually do anything to endear you to the character in question, and instead just tell you you should be attached because of their importance to another character.
While true you could reasonably argue that the opposite is just as true. Why not revive the character that matters? Not like the sacrifices are going to be someone you care *more* about. But… The revive ending has to be interesting, even if it's dark. Like surface level happy but with undertones of damnation. I don't know what they actually did in the game though.
@@Sylfa Indeed, but most players are going to know from the tone of the game in most of these scenarios that it's intended as the "bad" ending, so it's less a case of worrying about making the sacrifices, and more that players know that whatever ending they get will be the less desirable route. Most players will default to trying to get the "true" ending on their first playthrough, unless there is something particularly compelling about the alternate path. The job of a moral dilemma situation like this is to make that path desirable, but tempting you with the return of a character you care about. They just tend to fail to make you care about said character, so there is no temptation.
Hey Yahtzee, my dad just read your book Existentially Challenged and loved it. Now he wants to know if you plan to write a 3rd book in that series. Till then I got him to check out your other series, Will Save the Galaxy for Food.
I'm pretty sure I've unironically used "ghost of a chance" at least once in my life, maybe up to four times. It's not a phrase I use pretty often but I AM the sort of person who'd use it. Thanks for the video!
JS Mill is one of the weirdest stories of child abuse in the he was basically a social science guinea pig where Jeremy Bentham was trying to create the ultimate philosopher and neglected that he was creating the ultimate nerd at the same time. Luckily, he managed to get past the whole suicide at 18 thing and really was very good at the philosophy bit. Also a cracking feminist l, which really was unexpected
How to make the dilema work. Have your the mentor who's a playable charater, the only one who has the abillity to exorcise something more powerful like a demon. Also the only one who can CLEAN UP all these evil murderers and such. While the living party member... is able to.. but it will come at a big cost that may get rid of something like a demon.. but make it vague like: "You will lose more then you know." and also add stuff like: "Death would be a mercy on a newly formed demon exorcist." This is what we call... suspense and curiousity. But also... add some sprinkles of: "If you kill the hauntee the ghost will help you in your fight against bigger baddies." And badabing bababoom.. being evil suddenly has a pay off. You could kill the evil ones only , bring back the mentor and stop the big bad evil demon from destroying town easily. But in doing so, you might invertingly invited other evils around and be damned from heaven. Or... you be the good boy the whole way to get the final struggle and then sit at the end going: "Atleast I was the morally correct one and doing my job!" It paints both sides as grey.
I think we need to up the realism in our ghost banishing games. You play as not Zak Baggins fighting everything spooky that he comes across. Like bringing space heaters to places with spooky temperatures, playing loud music over spooky noises, etc.
Oh! John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill. Plato, they say, could stick it away; Half a crate of whiskey every day. Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, Hobbes was fond of his dram, And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: "I drink, therefore I am"
You have to love that the initials of this game spell "B GONE"
I can't unsee that now
That almost justifies a second dry heave after the colon in the title
Pretty much like the studio
It almost makes the name not heave worthy.
Can't wait for the sequel, "Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden: The Horrors of Thetford"
I remember Bioshock's moral dilemma too.
"What will you do with this little girl? Will you savagely murder her, or will you actually save her, which doesn't cost you anything more than the press of a button?"
"Err..."
"Wait, wait, wait! Be very careful before you answer! Because the award for saving the little girl is actually far greater than if you murder her!"
"..."
That always confused me. You get way more ADAM via the "don't murder" route, but apparently huge moral quandary?
Never played that one, but unless I'm mistaken the dilemma there is that sacrificing the gremlin girls gives you powerups, and not doing so "doesn't." As in, the game presents that choice, but if you then let them live you get a reward afterwards. What I don't know is how hard it is to figure out that you'd get a reward if you let them live while playing through the game the first time. Save scumming to get the better reward aside I mean.
@@Sylfanope, the dilemma is murder a child for slightly more juice up front, or dont mirder a child and get better power ups you dont have to pay for
The thing is, you only get the bigger reward after rescuing three little sisters. It's not really obvious that rescuing them gives you a bigger reward
@@riverbecomesastorm375 don't know if that was your intention, but that's literally what you do in Bioshock 2
This is actually the third Don't Nod game with this exact same moral dilemma being the whole story because Life is Strange also presupposes you like the protagonist's best friend/significant other enough to sacrifice an entire town to keep them alive. Clearly someone working there is trying very hard to justify the Faustian bargain they made as a thing people struggle with as well.
Life is Strange was a bit different, since the question was a lot more "Which Genre of Movie was this?" than "How do you resolve this pesky moral dillema?"
Was it a tender coming of age story or a lynchian psychodrama at heart? Depending on which genre you think of it as, the answer is obvious and why would anyone pick the other one, you want the ending to the story right?
These other games don't seem to have that angle.
At least life is strange made you give a shit about that relationship.
I don’t know, speaking as someone who is only 2/3 episodes in, the town is full of such 1-dimensional cartoonishly mean and evil assholes that maybe it’s fine to see it get wiped off the map…
@@brysonlambes7175 you have spoken the Words, and you have spoken them rightly
prepare for five years of notifications about how much gamers hated this teenage girl
The writers at Don't Nod really need therapy.
I don't understand. Is Yahtzee implying I SHOULDN'T have just secured a mortgage in Nothing-Bad-Ever-Happens-HereVille? Because it was a hell of a deal...
Just make sure to create some random documents and audio logs about how great your charismatic utopian leader is! That way you won't forget!
@@LT-dn7mt honestly with those prices I'd buy it and just stock up on firearms, ammunition, and holy or blessed paraphanalia.
Just rent it out. I'm sure people will be desperate to have *any* place with cheap rent. (assuming they live to next month).
@@Magus_Union the solution is have them pay the rent in advance.
I mean in this market.
Ya know, it's the little things about Fully Ramblomatic that fill me with comfort. In a time of uncertainty and not knowing what would or wouldn't carry over from the old show, it's good to know that a colon is still deserving of a nice hard dry heave!
Ahh, I was actually wondering what that was, but that's how pronounces ":" good to know!
@@86fiftyit’s an old joke from some kind of game that had way too many colons in its title and that reading all that made him feel ill, which morphed into him dry-heaving to pronounce the colons in any game’s title.
Legally distinct dry heave!
Yeah the colon heave coming back made me grin so hard.
😂 he’s been doing it ever since his review of Lichdom *(heaves)* Battlemage. 9 years ago 😂
The funniest thing to me about Vampyr was the best ending being the one where you only drained around 3-5 people, and it was nicer to get because some of those people kinda deserve to die.
Reminds me of how you can apparently get the good/low chaos endings in the Dishonored series if you limited your killing to only the major targets (especially since some of the "peaceful" options were far worse than the murder one).
Pretty sure at least 3 of the people in that game were actual serial killers. Why WOULD I let them live?
@@Guymanbot97 I don't know, maybe if you think you can change them?
I think 2 or less gets you the good ending. As far as story goes, it’s the one with the best payoff. But I was also going for 0 kills, which meant I had to spare that horrible dickhead you meet at the end. That secret society leader you have to turn into a vampire so he can become a demigod
@@karmicrespite5737 Hold up.... Are you telling me the rape boat was morally questionable?
I feel like if this would be better if it was more like Shadows of the Colussus, where it was a "boss rush" where you investigate until you know enough to draw the ghost out and then each ghost is a unique enemy with special attacks and aesthetics instead of having "filler combat".
@@LT-dn7mtthat’s just FNAF
yeah but almost every game since shadow of the colossus would be better if it were more like shadow of the colossus, so that isn't much of a statement
“Varnishers: Dust of New Furniture” cracked me up 😂
After all these years, Yahtzee still complains about Nathan and Elena of Uncharted's fame. Something just never changes
Ah, the colon dry-heave, how we missed you.
The game's title was so bad it resurrected an entire joke.
Ain't a colon dry-heave just a fart?
If you're dry-heaving from your colon then you should go to the emergency room…
“Oh, sure, when Shadow of the Colossus makes you kill a bunch of innocents to save a dead person it’s groundbreaking art, but when we do it…” mutter the staff of Don’t Nod (in French).
I completely misheard "Antea Duarte" as " Tuatha Dé" and was like, "But the Tuatha Dé Danann are Irish folklore, what the heck"
That would have been a much cooler idea, bringing some fae bullshit into a ghost story.
To answer Yahtzee's post-credits question, I have never used "ghost of chance" except as a pun, in the same way that "going bananas" almost always involves monkeys
I'm a bit more concerned about when and how "ghost of a chance" is a good pun to begin with.
The new artstyle seems to be more accommodating for little details.
The fading in of the witch silhouette. Yahtz lightly spritzed with blood after committing an implied off-screen mass shooting for the dog in a hat.
Considering the kind of folk songs the scots wrote for centuries, endlessly pining over the freshly dead and/or now completely rotted corpse of your spouse seems pretty on-brand.
"Has anyone ever actually used the phrase "ghost of a chance" except as a pun?"
Me: *gets Yu-Gi-Oh 4Kids dub flashbacks*
What did you see in your flashbacks?
*TELL ME!*
@@Powoga Horrible things...
Surely I'm not the only one thinking of that one music video from good ol' Square One?
Pretty high up there when it comes to disturbing kiddie television, I reckon.
Hmmm
@@Powoga Oh, you'll find out - I'm about to summon it!
I feel like this moral dilemma would actually work iff the resurrection ritual involved sacrificing *the people who wronged the ghosts*, and not just a bunch of random innocents. Then it'd be an actual *choice*. Do you end the haunting and let the town continue in obliviousness as to the skeletons in its closet, or do you execute half the town in the name of justice?
Lesson for all the people trying to write a moral choice into a video game: moral ambiguity tends to help things along.
The resurrection ritual DOES include the people who wronged the ghosts. Some people are a straight-up threat to the town if you let them live.
That's basically how it actually works yeah, every haunting is an investigation and the choice at the end is basically "who do you think was the bigger asshole here?" Sometimes it's pretty clear cut, like the still alive person straight up murdering the one who's now a ghost or the ghost completely deserving his death, but most of the time it'll be pretty morally gray because they're both guilty (or they're both innocent and the whole thing was just bad luck)
At the very least, kudos to devs for making AAA-adjacent games with actual fresh ideas. Whether or not they work is another matter, but they actually try.
If it had been a German Shepherd whining about his dead owner I'd be negotiating which sacrifices gives best outcome.
A basset hound would not even need to whine, honestly.
Angry isn't how i remember the Scotsman, in fact it's his calm smooth voice that endeared him to me in the first place lol.
Yahtzee always exaggerates stuff for script purposes don't mind it you are not really ment to fully agree with him on everything anyway since its obvious he always kinda represses his on likes about a game for comedic value
ahhh first Second Wind era dry heave
WE'RE BACK IN THE GROOVE BABY! :D
Pretty good voice acting for the scottish protagonist in the game. Aah yes moral dilemmas according to game logic. How i have missed you.
How can you tell?
Do the normal thing for the good ending, or do the elaborate, nonsensical and time consuming thing for the bad ending
Gotta love the moral dilemma schtick. I wonder if you murdered even just one person if you'd get the "bad" ending or if there's like a middle of the road ending which sucks all the way around.
there, in fact, is three endings: two where you swear one thing and do it, with variable outcome based on which path you chose (ascend or resurrect) and the bad one, where you do the opposite of your oath, and it does indeed suck all around :D
There's the good ending where you saved everyone, even those that didn't deserve it, the "okay" ending where you saved enough people to ascend Antea, but feel bad about killing some people, the "evil" ending where you kill enough people to resurrect Antea, and the "failure" ending, where you basically do the opposite of whatever you promised to do and everything fails.
"Ghost hunting doesn't strike me as having much potential as a game mechanic - it seems to largely involve overreact to faint creaking noises and getting really excited about specks of dust in the camera lens"
That's the primary gameplay loop of Phasmophobia, yeah.
I just realized this morning that I hadn't listened to Yahtzee in awhile and I am so excited to see that he's over here still doing his thing ❤
1:40 Also a skyscraper named Babil, Baybel, Babbel or just Babel. Bonus points if the The Tower tarot cart is somehow involved and/or the skyscraper is depicted on it.
Ooh, Second Wind got custody of the colon HEURGH !!!
In theory, I kinda like the idea of choosing between accusation and forgiveness whenever you beat a possessed person that deserved it. The only way you can sell a split ending like this is if the people you're killing to get the "murder a bunch of people" ending actually deserve it. But it doesn't sound like they ever really make it personal to the player, you're just doing witcher contracts and then deciding people's fate at the end, so you'd have to be a real bastard to go on executing people for that.
A hypothetical better version of this could have the whole town be a bunch of pricks that hurt or kill NPCs that the player character gets close to throughout their journey (I know, this would require characters the player would care about, roll with me on this). Then the option of "Scooby Doo or Punisher" would really matter, and the ending could reflect the perspective the player had of the town.
That could be interesting. If you go far enough and with enough balance then you could make it so any ending is the good ending but it's the good ending for that particular type of player.
Idk, if you made it that personal then I think it might be hard for most people not to kill them.
As someone who's done the evil Resurrection playthrough, I actually found it really satisfying narratively due to its slippery scope nature. In the early game it's much easier to justify Blaming the living. The first haunting is a cannibal driven insane by hunger and nightmares and he straight-up wants to die after killing his partner in a fit of madness, so you can tell yourself you're doing him a favor. The next hauntings are a spy who's been sabotaging the village food supplies and a straight-up mass murderer, so it's very easy to tell yourself you're killing them for justice or the good of the people.
But then, soon after, you start encountering people who genuinely hadn't done any wrong - and you've gone too far to turn back now, since you need to commit nearly entirely to one of the paths to actually fulfill the chosen oath. Of course, you can turn back if you so wish, but the game is not lying - there are consequences and you will not enjoy the ending if you do turn back.
Sounds like instead of giving the player a choose they should've stuck to one and make a moral deep narrative about it
I remember reading a spec ops the line e forum of people unironically wanting a way to not use the white phosphorus and have a happy ending. And all I could think was that because of the solid linear story it was so memorable and stuck with me
I personally like the choice aspect - that way the consequences always feel like they're on the player, because there always is another way.
At about the halfway point the game gives you one last chance to change your oath (Ascend/Resurrect), but, of course, this doesn't erase what you've done beforehand - so do you really want to risk backing out now?
@@filipmelzacki9969 yeah, but it does still affect making a solid story since you're doing it because the mechanics make it better to do all one or the other. No stance, no real moral and any sort of character stuff can be all undone in a second evil playthrough
To answer the survey at the end: Rush has a song titled Ghost of a Chance that doesn't treat it as a pun
This game is very innovative, it might just be the first game ever to have a Scottish character voiced by someone who's actually fucking Scottish, and not someone doing an impersonation about as accurate as Dick Van Dyke's Cockney.
That indeed might very well be worth supporting in of itself.
I can at least think of one other: Return of the Obra Dinn, which has people of the correct nationality for every voiced character. Abigail (the captain's wife) and her brother are both very Scottish.
Shoutout to the Midsomer Murders reference. Loved watching that show with my mom!
The dry heave subtitle still carrying over :D
Hearing Yahtzee give a dry heave warms my heart💖and makes me smile😀, it's like he never left😄💖
First time in a long time I haven’t understood the final gag. Keep it up
I'm so happy to see the return of the "dry heave" colon!
I enjoyed this game. It was rough around the edges and a bit by the numbers but I loved a lot of the stories and the main couple grew on me.
Y'know, I think I'm with you on the dog thing.
I was expecting werewolves
When he said 17th Century England, so did I!
XD
"Has anyone ever used the phrase "ghost of a chance" except as a pun?"
Why yes, I use it almost daily. And I have a WHALE of a time doing so.
I love the background always changes color so much and clearly avoids yellow "for some reason"
Like he "escaped" from yellow or something.
I laughed way harder than I should have at the colon dry-heave. I expected it and was not disappointed.
I get what they're trying to do. Instead of Vampyr relying on you growing attached to multiple NPCs to do/do not do a bad thing, they give you one major character who sticks with you, to make you do/do not do a bad thing. Focusing the character drama.
The problem is... they can't write. So it kind of falls down BEFORE the first hurdle.
Ah. Yeah, they probably should bring someone on for that.
This is a problem Dontnod should've learned after the *first* Life is Strange, where the final choice is "save your girlfriend" or "save literally the entire town and everyone in it", and it is completely detached from every other decision you make in the rest of the game. And Dontnod *did* seem to have learned this for Life is Strange 2, but then did they just forget about it for B:GONE here??
Those games are written and directed by two different groups of people
The Mills Harm principle reference might be one of my favourite across the many vrilliant ones you've made
🎵John Stewart Mill of his own free will on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill
Plato they say could stick it away half a crate of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a beggar for the bottle, Hobbes was fond of his dram!
Thing is there actually is a HUGE benefit to flip-flopping in both Banishers and Vampyr. Yahtzee reasonably assumes that making any of the "bad choices" in either will instantly lock you out of the good ending because that's what most of these moral choice games are like, but in these it doesn't. In both you can kill a few people you feel deserve it and still get a good ending. The fun part of the game for me is seeing how close to the line I can go, how many times can you get away playing judge, jury, and executioner before you're just another monster and do earn a bad ending? Playing it all one way or the other kind of defeats the point of the moral dilemmas, as Yahtzee points out.
The point is that the game should INCENTIVISE you to do that, not have it be a suggestion on how you SHOULD play the game. If there was some sort of benefit to axing individuals in the world for example, that would make it more of a choice. The issue is that decisions like that take time and effort to think through, implement and balance. For whatever reason Don't Nod wouldn't or couldn't do that, but wanted to still have their cake and fuck it too. Hence the halfbaked system in place.
@@ninja3212 But Vampyr DID do that. The whole point of killing people was that it gave you huge amounts of XP to make you stronger, making the combat - admittedly fairly meh - easier and quicker. On a "evil" playthrough you feel like an unstoppable killing machine.
It's funny, isn't it, that games with "moral choices" almost always demand that you pick a lane and stick to it if you're going to get the in-game benefit and an ending that makes some kind of sense. You would think by now we'd see a _few_ games that tried to put as much depth and variety into moral decision making as goes into the overly convoluted skill tree.
There are some like that but they are in the minority. Even Undertale with it's 10 different Neutral endings still reward sticking with it fir the most part
Binary moral systems have always sucked narratively. Especially when most stories are written around the MC being pure good (or pure evil like in Overlord).
Baldur's Gate 3 is a great choice-driven game that doesn't track how many goody-two-shoes or devil points you have.
There are clearly good and evil choices, but the bedrock of the main narrative isn't too dependent on them.
If DontNod did Baldur's Gate 3, you'd be locked out of the hero ending if you burned down the druid grove in Chapter 1.
The thing is, you don't have to stick with the lane in this game. Yahtzee just (reasonably) assumed that. You can kill a few people you think deserved it and still get the best ending. Issue is that people are so trained at this point, even if you don't force the players down a path they'll still assume you are.
Yeah, this pretty much nails the narrative issue with this game: it's like a long-form trolley problem, which takes all the punch out of the little banish/ascend/blame decisions you make along the way. Once you commit to a path, the decisions become easy as the consequences of each choice are telegraphed in terms of the possible endings.
Hopefully some of the choices are clearer about what the protagonist’s choices entail than Vampyr so I don’t erase somebody’s memory and turn them catatonic when I thought the choice meant I’d encourage them to pretend they know nothing and to leave.
The dry heave might be my favorite running joke of Yahtzee's.
The last time I was this early my wife still loved me
The only real difference between this and ZP is the colour and the credit being patreon backers.
Love it.
And he can swear as much as he likes because ad revenue isn't as much of a thing for Second Wind.
I have no idea what this game is but I'm glad to be here.
The "be nice" or "be a cunt" moral branch path system was a fresh idea when KOTOR did it 20 years ago, but it's definitely past time we moved forward on it.
Instead of "be a good person" or "be a bad person", give us competing versions of being a "good person". Like, make us choose between deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. Set a game in the aftermath of the French Revolution where we have to choose between prioritizing Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
“He's madder than Mad Jack McMad, the winner of last year's "Mr. Madman" competition.”
"Rambunctious rogue resigned to regularly ruffle rhotacisms with his rubric"
This is a big problem in storytelling in Hollywood, we're supposed to be emotionally invested in the main character in a way we aren't. Like I might be an grumpy old man but I don't really care about the main character in Star Trek Discovery or her klingon lover boy. Boom! She was the main character. Boom! They were a couple. Now I should really really care what happens to them. That's not how it works. For us to care they have to do something more in the story than telling us to care. And this kind of writing is a big problem in a lot of modern tv shows, movies, video games, et cetera, et cetera.
Sucks too because there are some enjoyable character moments in this game like Red talking about his dead sister or Antea sharing her first experience with snow
At least the subtitle isn’t totally overused. This is the third “Ghost of _” subtitle in recent memory though. It does have a generic one word primary title though, yay.
My biggest moral dilemma is how much effort I should put into figuring out if "Cuba" existed in the 17th century.
I love you reviewing these kinds of games, GTA6 is just gonna be "Ew it's everything I hate." And Big Rigs 2 would just be "Ew I hate everything." But this is "I hate some things and here's me saying it an amusing way."
That outro music slaps so hard
paused the video halfway through to say the "start killing people before he looked at the camera" joke gave me a good laugh. Good writing on that one.
well now I want a dog & ghost adventure game
Nice to see Yahtzee bring back the dry heave
"...of his own free will / After half a pint of shandy was particularly ill."
Missed the colon dry heave so much.
As someone who used to live in New England I have to say that having to deal with random ghosts that just happen to be hanging around is probably the most accurate part of it all.
To answer the survey question, I've used the phrase unironically!
You know. I do miss the yellow.
Banisher? I barely know her! Hey where are you all going
It’s been a laugh riot hearing Yahtz’s old sense of humor back to his videos, evident by him not censoring himself
The Colon Heave is Back now it feels more complete by the day.
It's a little hard to justify bringing people back to life to live with when you have concrete proof of some form of afterlife. "Oh, me wife's dead. I could conduct necromancy and revive her at the cost of many others, or wait a bit and catch up to her without having murdered several people to get to that point. Also I'd have more free time for my hobbies."
You know, not that it matters, but I enjoyed Vampyr. It wasn't revolutionary or anything, but it was okay.
*Take a shot everytime Yahtzee says “17th Century New England”.*
I do like the play on orpheus of two lovers in crazy love with each other, one pure in thought and deed, and the other brilliant in dark magic / mad science. And wouldn't you know it, the nice one tragically dies on their wedding day.
The surviving partner is obviously not keen on _til death do us part_ bit. Not on their watch.
It sounds like a good game of gathering the material components to bring the groombride back to life, in the mean time pondering if this really is the best idea. As sunk cost accumulates, more hints about unforseen consequences reveal themselves.
John Stewart Mill?! Now this is content!
I don't get joke though, is it the half Scottish thing?
John Stewart Mill
Of his own free will
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Dope, New Second Wind Video.
In Vampyr we had that couple of people that REALLY deserved to be sucked dry (like an actual effing serial killer psichopath) but if you did the logical thing then you got the BAD ending, and i'm guessing BGONE (eh) is the same.
Wasn’t expecting my knowledge of the twisted upbringing of JSM by his father and Bentham to appear twice as a joke today but here we are experiencing a maximum amount of pleasure from the fact
Honestly, the main problem with "moral dilemma" choices like this in games is that you have to care about the character you're trying to save. Most games that go this route don't actually do anything to endear you to the character in question, and instead just tell you you should be attached because of their importance to another character.
While true you could reasonably argue that the opposite is just as true. Why not revive the character that matters? Not like the sacrifices are going to be someone you care *more* about.
But… The revive ending has to be interesting, even if it's dark. Like surface level happy but with undertones of damnation. I don't know what they actually did in the game though.
@@Sylfa Indeed, but most players are going to know from the tone of the game in most of these scenarios that it's intended as the "bad" ending, so it's less a case of worrying about making the sacrifices, and more that players know that whatever ending they get will be the less desirable route.
Most players will default to trying to get the "true" ending on their first playthrough, unless there is something particularly compelling about the alternate path. The job of a moral dilemma situation like this is to make that path desirable, but tempting you with the return of a character you care about. They just tend to fail to make you care about said character, so there is no temptation.
I am not even joking: When Yahtzee asked the first question my immediate answer was, "Either ghosts or witches."
WELL THEN.
Hey Yahtzee, my dad just read your book Existentially Challenged and loved it. Now he wants to know if you plan to write a 3rd book in that series. Till then I got him to check out your other series, Will Save the Galaxy for Food.
There's actually a Rush song called "Ghost Of A Chance". It's a good one!
Love the idea of Americans being introduced to Midsummer Murders by Yahtzee
It's pretty popular here. Been airing on public television for as long as I can remember.
@@BJGvideos oh cool! The more you know 🤷♂️
@@IriquoyPlisken It's also on some streaming services. My parents like to watch it, sometimes several episodes in a row.
@@BJGvideos My mam *loves* it. That and, A Touch of Frost, Poirot, Inspector Morse, Lewis.
@@IriquoyPlisken They've been watching Poirot lately too. For some reason they stream it despite owning basically the whole series in physical form.
I'm pretty sure I've unironically used "ghost of a chance" at least once in my life, maybe up to four times. It's not a phrase I use pretty often but I AM the sort of person who'd use it.
Thanks for the video!
JS Mill is one of the weirdest stories of child abuse in the he was basically a social science guinea pig where Jeremy Bentham was trying to create the ultimate philosopher and neglected that he was creating the ultimate nerd at the same time.
Luckily, he managed to get past the whole suicide at 18 thing and really was very good at the philosophy bit. Also a cracking feminist l, which really was unexpected
Okay, seems Yahtzee is ready to go all Son of Sam if the demon dog in question is a German shepherd wearing a tam O'Shanter.
It’s back. The dry heave is back!!!
it's really lucky they have the exact amount of patreons to fit the end song.
How to make the dilema work.
Have your the mentor who's a playable charater, the only one who has the abillity to exorcise something more powerful like a demon.
Also the only one who can CLEAN UP all these evil murderers and such.
While the living party member... is able to.. but it will come at a big cost that may get rid of something like a demon.. but make it vague like: "You will lose more then you know."
and also add stuff like: "Death would be a mercy on a newly formed demon exorcist."
This is what we call... suspense and curiousity. But also... add some sprinkles of: "If you kill the hauntee the ghost will help you in your fight against bigger baddies."
And badabing bababoom.. being evil suddenly has a pay off. You could kill the evil ones only , bring back the mentor and stop the big bad evil demon from destroying town easily.
But in doing so, you might invertingly invited other evils around and be damned from heaven.
Or... you be the good boy the whole way to get the final struggle and then sit at the end going: "Atleast I was the morally correct one and doing my job!"
It paints both sides as grey.
Ah, yes, the pale glow of a fridge at midnight.
and we back at it again
4:52 Have you read the webcomic Bad Machinery at all? Or any of John Allison's stuff? This makes me wonder.
One of the good things about Ass Creed Oranges was the husband and wife team. The spouse could have shown up a bit more often, but still.
I think we need to up the realism in our ghost banishing games. You play as not Zak Baggins fighting everything spooky that he comes across. Like bringing space heaters to places with spooky temperatures, playing loud music over spooky noises, etc.
Oh! John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away;
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: "I drink, therefore I am"
This dev really seems to have mastered "fantastic idea, mediocre execution."
So, is the Cuban lady the Scottish man's Persona or Stand?
A 17th century scotman who isn't racist breaks my suspension of disbelief quite hard