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 Welcome to this video let's play of the 1995 point and click game, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Do I need to know anything going in? Not necessarily, although it will help greatly knowing some backstory. The game is essentially a sequel to the apocalyptic sci-fi story of the same name, by cantankerous author Harlan Ellison. While the game has the same name as the book, it is very much an expansion on the book, more or less a sequel. Before diving in, check out either the original story here in written format, or here in audiobook . The book is really short, short enough to be written in one night by a slightly unhinged man. If you are wondering, the symbols in between chapters are telegraph code and translate to "I think therefore I am" and "cogito ergo sum" For those of you who just want the short(er) story, the world has been taken over by an A.I that goes by the name of AM. It inhabits the planet along with the only five human survivors left, who he has tormented for the last 109 years. AM has set up a series of games in which the survivors can each get something they desire if they do well, and that is where the story begins.... Why should be interested in a really old point and click adventure? Because it is surprising in how deep this game gets. Despite some of the weird at times voice acting, obscure event triggers and pixel hunting, this is a game I feel more people should experience. If psychological horror is something you are in to you should definitely check out this game. How are you LPing this? Videos with limited narration. I will try not to get in the way of the voice acting, but will step in to explain certain things that happen that are not particularly well explained, or have that special kind of adventure game logic to them. I will also explain extra bits about the plot that are a bit cryptic. After each character, I will then play the scenario again (skipping through largely identical sections) and making all the wrong decisions so you can see more of a full picture. Bonus in that you get to watch me stuff up, because I don't really know what happens either. Player Characters  Left to right. Ted: Narrator for the book. No overt changes from AM, which makes him think everyone is jealous of him. Benny: Benny has been greatly mutated, and his entire person flipped around. He was handsome, now he's a chimp. He was a brilliant scientist, now he's barely capable of functioning. He was gay, now he's straight. Ellen: Ellen is the only woman left in the world. She has forgotten a great deal about her previous life, but is constantly anxious. Gorrister: Once an idealistic conscientious objector, Gorrister is now deeply cynical, and wants nothing more than to commit suicide. Nimdok: Real name, unknown. AM named him, and after spending 109 years with the other four, nobody knows anything about him more than he occasionally wanders off and comes back terrified. He has no memory of his life before AM. Spoiler policy? Spoil the book all you want and feel free to discuss things up to the latest episode. There is a lot to spoil in this game though, so if you know what happens, or how one scenario is related to another that hasn't been played yet, please wait until that part has been shown. Participation? A bit. The game presents you with many options for choosing who to play as next, so anytime there is a choice I'll let others decide. Also if you want me to go back and try something else that you think I may have missed or done differently, ask and I'll go back and do it to see what happens. Schedule? Two released initially, then one every three days after that. This is not a long game, and I'm only expecting to do a total of twelve videos. Let's Play! Introduction Ted Selfish Ted Gorrister Cynical Gorrister Benny Bit of Benny I missed (cheers Aces High) Hungry Benny Ellen Nimdok Nimdok Evil Scientist Nimdok - Good Finale All Character Areas in the Last Section Ted - Bad Finale Thanks to everyone who voted throughout! Zenithe fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Apr 17, 2016 |
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Mar 22, 2016 06:45
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reserved
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Mar 22, 2016 06:45
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oooo here's an adventure game that is still fairly unique after all this time. Despite all the usual trappings of the genre I always remember it probably just because of how  it is in...well we're going to see
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Mar 22, 2016 07:23
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Aces High posted:oooo here's an adventure game that is still fairly unique after all this time. Despite all the usual trappings of the genre I always remember it probably just because of how I only played it for the first time a few years ago. It really does put the overt controversy over games around the same time like Duke Nukem and Mortal Kombat into perspective. For what it's worth, I think it does a far better job at justifying the mature themes than any game of this period.
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Mar 22, 2016 07:45
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If the game of 'I have no mouth...' wasn't it wouldn't be true to the source material. Let's see Ellen's story.
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Mar 22, 2016 09:04
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Starting to read that story I was pissed as an author knowing it was unedited. About halfway through I was pissed at you for getting me to read it a beautiful spring morning. I did not expect it to be so good. Few horror stories are able to actually make me feel horrified. Oh well. I guess I will watch the first video now. Edit; Okay, watching the video was good. Nothing like a hammed up intro nineties style to make things feel less horrible. Also, I forgot to say that I am very happy to see this game LP'd. As an avid Adventure Gamer I have heard lots of good things about this but never managed to make it work for me. I was never very good at DOSbox. So thank you for that! Edit2; I also vote for Ellen. I am curious to see if/how they turned her character into something more than the Useless woman/Cumdumpster of the 1967 novel. Oh and Zenithe, is there a reason you skip so much of the flavour text and conversation options? And if so are you going to cover it later? Thesaya fucked around with this message at 12:05 on Mar 22, 2016 |
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Mar 22, 2016 10:06
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Thesaya posted:Starting to read that story I was pissed as an author knowing it was unedited. About halfway through I was pissed at you for getting me to read it a beautiful spring morning. I did not expect it to be so good. Few horror stories are able to actually make me feel horrified. Oh well. I guess I will watch the first video now. I'm trying to skip over some less important things, but in future I'll go in more detail. Ted's scenario is fairly bare bones, which is why I did it first. I find all the others much more interesting to be honest. as for dosbox, if you get the GOG version, it comes in some weird frontend that makes it work on basically anything. https://www.gog.com/game/i_have_no_mouth_and_i_must_scream
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Mar 22, 2016 13:16
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Are you going to get all the characters to white? Whenever I play, there's someone (I forget who) that I can't ever get that high, and I haven't been able to find a guide to help.
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Mar 22, 2016 19:45
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This is legit one of my favroite books, I ead it in High School and hit me at just the right time to make me into the horror goober I am. I've never heard of the adventure game before, but it's got me excited, I can't wait to see how it plays out. Do Gorrister next!
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Mar 22, 2016 20:01
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Agreed on Gorrister. Ted's scenario was probably the least interesting of the five, why not follow up with probably the best scenario.
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Mar 22, 2016 20:04
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CirclMastr posted:Are you going to get all the characters to white? Whenever I play, there's someone (I forget who) that I can't ever get that high, and I haven't been able to find a guide to help. Yeah, that's the plan. I'm also doing every character with all of the bad choices to show the other side. Anti-Citizen posted:I've never heard of the adventure game before, but it's got me excited, I can't wait to see how it plays out. I want to know who managed to pitch the book as material for an adventure game, and how. I'm amazed this game exists.
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Mar 22, 2016 21:23
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steinrokkan posted:Agreed on Gorrister. Ted's scenario was probably the least interesting of the five, why not follow up with probably the best scenario. heck yeah, all for GorriSTEEEEEER I can never get over how Harlan says that in the intro 
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Mar 22, 2016 22:53
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Aces High posted:heck yeah, all for GorriSTEEEEEER He's actually a bit crazy, if writing that horrible story in one night didn't give it away. My favourite of his escapades involves a professor who insulted him. He bagged on his writing ability, so Harlan apparently punched him and got expelled. He then sent him a copy of every book he ever got published throughout his entire career.
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Mar 22, 2016 23:07
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Let us just say that Mr. Ellison doesn't suffer fools gladly.
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Mar 22, 2016 23:09
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let's not forget his lawsuit with James Cameron because Cameron didn't properly acknowledge the influence two Outer Limits episodes Ellison wrote had on The Terminator. I mean on one hand, good for him that he is all about protecting his IPs but jesus gently caress
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Mar 22, 2016 23:19
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Harlan's stance has always been that the entertainment industry takes writers for suckers, that the odds of getting paid fairly for your creative work are stacked against you, and that if you, a writer, don't acknowledge that the entertainment people are not your friends, and that they are already playing dirty, you'll be ripped off at every turn.
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Mar 22, 2016 23:26
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steinrokkan posted:Harlan's stance has always been that the entertainment industry takes writers for suckers, that the odds of getting paid fairly for your creative work are stacked against you, and that if you, a writer, don't acknowledge that the entertainment people are not your friends, and that they are already playing dirty, you'll be ripped off at every turn. The funny thing is that he's probably absolutely correct.
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Mar 22, 2016 23:36
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It's pretty much a crapshoot as to whether you can get the sale price, but this game has shown up in the current GoG's insomnia sale (a limited number of titles stay up until they sell, typically for only a few minutes at a time, and with no real indication of the order).
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Mar 23, 2016 00:30
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well you can always wait until the summer sale if you miss it this time. I almost got this for something around $0.50 last summer but I ended up not getting it because I already had 30 games in my cart that I would probably never get around to 
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Mar 23, 2016 00:36
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Aces High posted:well you can always wait until the summer sale if you miss it this time. I almost got this for something around $0.50 last summer but I ended up not getting it because I already had 30 games in my cart that I would probably never get around to I love reading lps of adventure games but I very rarely like playing them.
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Mar 23, 2016 00:54
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Cathode Raymond posted:I love reading lps of adventure games but I very rarely like playing them. I'm most likely doing Gorrister's scenario next based on feedback, so feel free to follow that for all the reasons why old adventure games are dumb. His scenario is my second favourite out of the five, but goddamn does it have some adventure game bs to it.
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Mar 23, 2016 01:29
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Zenithe posted:
The 90s were a really wild time. It looks like this studio was some sort of programmer art collective, so finding Ellison had to have been someones passion project. It's really interesting to see the characters developed a lot further then they were in the novella. It makes sense to me that Ellison would try and get into games, the interactive element creates a level of immersion that seems right up his alley.
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Mar 23, 2016 10:12
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steinrokkan posted:Harlan's stance has always been that the entertainment industry takes writers for suckers, that the odds of getting paid fairly for your creative work are stacked against you, and that if you, a writer, don't acknowledge that the entertainment people are not your friends, and that they are already playing dirty, you'll be ripped off at every turn. SnowblindFatal posted:The funny thing is that he's probably absolutely correct. Harlan Ellison is like Walter from The Big Lebowski: "You're not wrong, Also: Ellison wrote the best Star Trek episode, "City on the Edge of Forever," and bitched about CBS trying to gently caress with his script. His mistrust of studios goes waaaaay back. He also got thrown out of a sci fi convention for getting into a yelling match with some members of the audience, and threatening to attack them. Suffice it to say, he makes a perfect voice for AM. Great LP so far. I've been meaning to try this game for a long time, but this will be just as good. It'll probably spur me to go out and try it myself eventually.
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Mar 23, 2016 12:19
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Anti-Citizen posted:The 90s were a really wild time. It looks like this studio was some sort of programmer art collective, so finding Ellison had to have been someones passion project. You may be right about that, from his quote it sounds like he was head hunted specifically. This quote is his response to a question regarding the game: Harlan Ellison posted:Well, first of all, my basic philosophy of video games is this: They're one of the greatest wastes of time ever invented. So when Cyberdreams came to me, I told them I would do a game that you can't win. I wanted to do a game that teaches ethics and courage. And they said, "But don't you think somebody should be able to win the game?" And I said, "No, not really." I think you ought to be able to lose more heroically than otherwise. The idea of the game is to stretch people's imagination and to make them aware of their responsibility to the rest of the human race -- not to shoot down dinosaurs for four hours. As for the studio Cyberdreams, the only other games I know of that they did were Darkseed and its sequel, both of which I think had art design done by H.R Geiger. edit. Googled it, yes they used H.R. Geiger's artwork. This also made me laugh quote:It was one of the first point-and-click adventure games to use high-resolution (640 x 350 pixels) graphics Zenithe fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 12:39
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Back then you cared about if stuff was CGA, EGA, VGA or SVGA. 640x 350 is EGA if i recall right, vga was even better at 640x 480. (CGA was 320x 200) Now it's all just resolutions.
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Mar 23, 2016 13:28
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that quote about making a game unwinnable will definitely make more sense as we go along. I had never seen that before but having gone through this game a few times in the past it sheds light on why certain things happen
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Mar 23, 2016 16:36
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Aces High posted:that quote about making a game unwinnable will definitely make more sense as we go along. I had never seen that before but having gone through this game a few times in the past it sheds light on why certain things happen At least most of the times you can just die and try again. Most of the times.
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Mar 23, 2016 19:18
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 Scumbag Ted run is up This run skips through most of the dialogue options that I took last time, and I take every bad option I am aware of. If you are joining this for the first time, I seriously reccomend going through the first Ted run. If you want to skip the first four or so minutes of me getting to the different things click here instead Spoiler tagging because it discusses the end of this video. Does anyone know why Ellen is in the vision of the surface world after Surgat tears her soul to shreds? She's also wearing her regular real world clothes instead of the ones in this scenario? I'm not sure it isn't a glitch.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:06
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Zenithe posted:Does anyone know why Ellen is in the vision of the surface world after Surgat tears her soul to shreds? She's also wearing her regular real world clothes instead of the ones in this scenario? I'm not sure it isn't a glitch. I would assume calling the wrong sprite, since it should be Ted there - so a bug
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Mar 23, 2016 21:16
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Zenithe posted:You may be right about that, from his quote it sounds like he was head hunted specifically. This quote is his response to a question regarding the game: This is basically Harlanellison.txt, and is a great example of what I meant when I said, "You're not wrong, Harlan. You're just an rear end in a top hat." I love this idea, and more games need to do this in earnest.
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Mar 23, 2016 21:37
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Just in case anyone's interested, here's a short 'Making of' PDF that you can read through.quote:However, the real casting coup was when Ellison himself agreed to perform the voice of the demented computer AM, for as Ellison puts it, "in all the dialogue you will hear my smart mouth, and the cadences in which I speak, and the way my stories read."
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Mar 23, 2016 22:22
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Railing Kill posted:I love this idea, and more games need to do this in earnest. I experienced this first I think Papers Please in that you basically have to screw over innocent people in order to "win", and doing the "right" things all the time will get you killed quick smart
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Mar 23, 2016 22:58
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Kangra posted:It's pretty much a crapshoot as to whether you can get the sale price, but this game has shown up in the current GoG's insomnia sale (a limited number of titles stay up until they sell, typically for only a few minutes at a time, and with no real indication of the order). Spotted for $1.50, gone within ~ a minute. I've seen a few rotate through though so you may get lucky.
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Mar 23, 2016 23:25
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so does anything "special" happen when you push on a different monitor? Does AM chide you for not advancing the story or anything? I've never seen anyone do that, just look at the monitors and then push the castle one
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Mar 25, 2016 05:47
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Aces High posted:so does anything "special" happen when you push on a different monitor? Does AM chide you for not advancing the story or anything? I've never seen anyone do that, just look at the monitors and then push the castle one The door closes and you get the standard sarcastic "oh, sorry, try again" from AM. I'm fairly sure that the fact there is no real clue (that I know of) to the only correct answer and that it happens right at the beginning makes me think it's purely just paranoia material, which plays into Ted's psyche well. It's not a game over though, you can just redo it, unlike getting eaten by wolves.
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Mar 25, 2016 07:27
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I imagine the guys who made this game couldn't believe their luck when Ellison wanted to voice AM, since he does it perfectly.
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Mar 25, 2016 08:49
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So AM's attempt to torture Ted was to dump him in a comfortable mansion surrounded by women who want to sleep with him? Is this his first real shot at it?
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Mar 25, 2016 09:40
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Mr.Kattykat posted:Just in case anyone's interested, here's a short 'Making of' PDF that you can read through. Please confirm, that Ellison's place is seriously called "Ellison Wonderland".
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Mar 25, 2016 09:45
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Ironslave posted:So AM's attempt to torture Ted was to dump him in a comfortable mansion surrounded by women who want to sleep with him? Is this his first real shot at it? I don't understand why people have problems understanding it. AM's torture in this game is not about inflicting pain on people actively. It's about presenting them with a scenario where their personal shortcomings and baggage will lead them to making self-destructive decisions. In this case Ted is expected to be undone by his playboy, opportunistic tendencies as he gradually allows himself to ruin his one shot at ever doing the honourable thing by selling out and repeatedly betraying Ellen, ultimately in exchange for nothing. He is permanently being made aware of his dark side, never allowed the respite of not being self-conscious and self-loathing, and never allowed an easy solution to a problem that wouldn't involve indulging in the causes of his mental stress. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Mar 25, 2016 |
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Mar 25, 2016 09:46
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well Zenithe did say he wanted to start with Ted because his scenario is kind of boring. I have definitely felt that his is the weakest of the characters and part of that, I feel, is because when compared to the other characters it doesn't have a lot of stakes in it. Zenithe didn't really touch on this in the videos but while AM feeds his paranoia in the intro talking about how all of Ted's stories are fabrications we notice that Ted doesn't stop himself when commenting on things. Pretty much everything you can look at in his scenario Ted will have a colorful story about how he is familiar with this thing or that and so while it is true that paranoia is a huge detriment to his character he is still a compulsive liar. On top of that also a huge blowhard with his  comments on getting dirt under his fingernails again, when fixing the stove.However having said all that the fact that in Ted's scenario there are no people that he knows except Ellen is rather telling as well when compared to the other scenarios but I'll leave that when we get to our next contestants
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Mar 25, 2016 11:25
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