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Holy hell, that first death. I also find it interesting how the people chasing after the boy in this 'lab' seem to recognise him immediately as a threat that needs to be killed (I assume they're choking him); but once he reaches that central tank, the Poindexters don't mind him at all. Maybe the fellows in black are making the scientists in white work under duress, like an occupying force? That might explain why they're watching a parade of drones (mostly in white) in the destroyed city.
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May 1, 2017 20:10
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Montalvo posted:Holy hell, that first death. It's more a combination of "well we're busy people and if this kid wasn't supposed to be here then of course someone would be doing something about it," and the fact that they're clearly very, very concerned about whatever's going on in that tank.
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May 1, 2017 20:34
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We got girl powers from that girl, maybe they're afraid we'll somehow get dog powers too, and become an unstoppable force of nature? ...also I don't know whats with this game but all the underwater sections keep convincing me that there is some sort of leviathan lurking just offscreen, biding its time to swoop in to devour us. e: also I think that one drone was carrying his own head around  ...what did he need it for? Karate Bastard fucked around with this message at 21:31 on May 1, 2017 |
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May 1, 2017 21:28
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Whatever's in the tank, the kid saw it with everybody else. And now he's trying to get in? Just what is your plan, kid; and how much did you know about the weird stuff we've encountered? Has he been surprised by any of this, or was it all part of the plan?
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May 1, 2017 21:55
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A very long 7 days for sure!
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May 1, 2017 22:04
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The...new drones here are certainly, uh, something. They're quite pitiable. Especially the sad torsos just weakly trying to flop after you...  I'm still not entirely sure on how all these weird, disparate mad science elements fit together, but I guess what's coming up will either provide a LOT of answers, or it, uh, won't, at all.
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May 1, 2017 22:53
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Johnny Joestar posted:ugh, with a cliffhanger like that i don't know if i can wait another week Montalvo posted:Holy hell, that first death. 
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May 1, 2017 23:18
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Oh, you tease, Edmond.
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May 1, 2017 23:45
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Karate Bastard posted:...also I don't know whats with this game but all the underwater sections keep convincing me that there is some sort of leviathan lurking just offscreen, biding its time to swoop in to devour us.
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May 2, 2017 04:09
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So I guess we got implanted with some kind of control rig. Either that or the suspended humanoids are all just really into being helpful.
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May 2, 2017 05:02
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Drones are so weird. Even the detached limbs seem to move on their own. Xander77 posted:Exactly why I stopped playing. I dunno sounds like an incentive to keep going to me! Mindblast fucked around with this message at 12:19 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 2, 2017 06:58
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I think when that weird wave hit us when we came out of the mines it kinda... hardwired our brain so we can control the drones without a helmet? The helmet we were wearing sparked and went weird.
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May 3, 2017 11:17
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Sociopastry posted:I think when that weird wave hit us when we came out of the mines it kinda... hardwired our brain so we can control the drones without a helmet? The helmet we were wearing sparked and went weird. Maybe whatever bit is used to control the drones lodged into the kid's brain somehow, and whatever the plug the underwater girl pit in the kid activated it. Either way, this game is odd.
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May 5, 2017 15:38
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Edmond, I know why Artyom didn't answer us when we found him while we were playing OW: He is a mute protagonist, after all. 
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May 5, 2017 15:53
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HardDiskD posted:Edmond, I know why Artyom didn't answer us when we found him while we were playing OW: He is a mute protagonist, after all. 
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May 5, 2017 16:40
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Oh right, forgot to post this: Final update time! You didn't really think I'd make you wait a week, did you?(I strongly recommend you stay until the end of the video).  And that's an LP! Thank you all for joining me on this weird little journey. I hope you enjoyed it!  I have some stuff I want to post related to the ending, but I'll wait a bit before doing it so people don't spoil themselves by accident, and to let some discussion take place. Finally, if you'll excuse me, I'll copy/paste this from my previous LP: And now, a bit of a favour: I'm new to this LP stuff. I'm learning a lot by making them and while I like to think it wasn't a complete disaster I'm pretty sure there's room for improvement, so it would really help me if you could take a couple of minutes and tell me your thoughts about the LP. What did you like? What didn't you like? Did I 'speak' too much? Too little? Did I nail the commentary style/tone, or was I too flippant/too serious? Any and all comments would be appreciated, even if it's just stating your personal preference regarding some aspect of the LP. Just, you know, don't be a dick about it.
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May 5, 2017 18:47
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Yup, that sure is an ending...
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May 5, 2017 18:56
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What I liked about the LP: I felt the commentary really added to the experience, as this game is loaded with many unknowns. Quite often you'd ask the same question I had, and this helped me align with the entire LP. Also, you showed me things I never knew/thought about the game even though I've finished it, which really makes me love this game even more. I like the humor that you added in, as it contrasts with the dark/foreboding atmosphere, making each more pronounced. What I didn't like: I did notice that sometimes the commentary text is smaller on the screen (in previous episodes - I understand why it's smaller in the last one). Not sure if that was the video editing program, but this was the only negative I found, and it's minor at that. Kragger99 fucked around with this message at 19:36 on May 5, 2017 |
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May 5, 2017 19:19
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Huh well that was unexpected. The commentary was amazing (especially in the last video) my only teal complaint is there were sometimes that the quality of the video would drop like a rock for a small periods of time and then resume again.
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May 5, 2017 19:40
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So, it turns out this was a Danish remake of Akira? Edit: Great LP otherwise, can't say I noticed anything untoward.
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May 5, 2017 19:50
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Great LP. I was not expecting this to turn into Katamari Damacy, but here we are. Your commentary was good. It wasn't obtrusive, and you generally don't yammer on while there's something interesting going on. The last commentary gimmick was funny and appropriate. The video quality got rough at the end, but I think that's due to Youtube encoding being a butt and unable to deal with all the black. Here's to the next one, friend!
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May 5, 2017 19:52
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Fun fact, but during the Happy Fun Ball segment at the end there you don't have to 'hug' the guy in the office. If you back off and leave him alone for a bit, he'll eventually run off and hide behind a chair. Now, as for what any of it means... 'The Walrus Was Paul', anyone?
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May 5, 2017 19:53
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Tasteful Dickpic posted:Great LP. I was not expecting this to turn into Katamari Damacy, but here we are. This neatly sums up all the feedback I was gonna give, so I'm just gonna steal it. Glad to see this game LP'd and not playing it myself, 'cause while it looked fun, I know that I would have felt super cheated by getting that ending. Maybe it makes me unsophisticated or something, but I like when at least some of my loving questions get an answer.
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May 5, 2017 20:19
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Kragger99 posted:What I liked about the LP: The font size thing is on purpose; I use the different sizes when I'm interjecting something that doesn't quite follow with what I've been talking about, like when I point something out mid-rant, or when I go more meta-commentary than usual, if that makes sense. I can see what you mean though, and I may tweak it in future LPs. It'll be a hard habit to break though cokerpilot posted:The commentary was amazing (especially in the last video) my only teal complaint is there were sometimes that the quality of the video would drop like a rock for a small periods of time and then resume again. Tasteful Dickpic posted:Your commentary was good. It wasn't obtrusive, and you generally don't yammer on while there's something interesting going on. The last commentary gimmick was funny and appropriate. ) and to be honest I was terrified I was overdoing it while I was working on the subs. It wasn't until I got the transparency and fade effects for the subs in place that I thought 'hey, this may actually work'.Tasteful Dickpic posted:The video quality got rough at the end, but I think that's due to Youtube encoding being a butt and unable to deal with all the black. 
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May 5, 2017 20:27
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I'm surprised that none of the wranglers(?) from the start of the game showed up at the end with real guns instead of dart guns.
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May 5, 2017 20:37
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That was a very... strange ending. I don't quite understand the thing after breaking all the orbs, either?
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May 5, 2017 21:16
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I started to watch this LP last night, then despaired when I realised I'd have to wait ages for the last part. So, this afternoon I bought the game on Steam and played it myself, just to see the ending. Well, I whizzed through the game with no problems at all (first death was to the dogs-running-around-fence bit) - but I got stuck with the fire cube. I guessed what I needed to do, but kept failing. It was THEN that I noticed you'd posted the final part! Paused the video when I'd watched your flawless game of hot potato, then went and finished the game. Yup, lovely ending. I missed out on 3 orbs, so I was going to replay to get the extra ending but, eh, that's not much of a bonus. What are they trying to say - the boy was a mind-controlled drone all along? Meh. Excellent LP though, I will be following your stuff with interest from here on out!
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May 5, 2017 21:22
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all the way to the end drat. Was not expecting to morph into a Castlevania boss for the grand denouement. You're right, the animations on the huddle were absolutely incredible, especially given how (relatively) briefly you play as it
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May 5, 2017 21:32
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That certainly was a thing that happened. I would have appreciated a lot more clarity on what exactly is going on. You get pieces of the world, but not enough to really put together the explanation for many of the things you see in the game.
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May 5, 2017 21:45
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nweismuller posted:That certainly was a thing that happened. I would have appreciated a lot more clarity on what exactly is going on. You get pieces of the world, but not enough to really put together the explanation for many of the things you see in the game. I guess different strokes for different folks - the lack of clarity is precisely why I love this game so much.
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May 5, 2017 22:55
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snograt posted:Paused the video when I'd watched your flawless game of hot potato, then went and finished the game. Glad you got the game though, playing through that last part is amazing. There's just something about the feel for controlling the Huddle that just doesn't come across in the videos which I loved. curiousCat posted:That was a very... strange ending. I don't quite understand the thing after breaking all the orbs, either? snograt posted:What are they trying to say - the boy was a mind-controlled drone all along? Meh. WE'RE GOING INTO SPOILER COUNTRY IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST VIDEO GET OUT. (I'm spoiling the image links to avoid any add-ons parsing them automatically, we're in spoiler-free territory now).Alright, this seems to be a good segue into what I wanted to discuss about the ending(s). This is the final image you see in the 'secret ending': http://i.imgur.com/ufz4qO3.png With bumped brightness:http://i.imgur.com/1rIw4Tf.jpg Which seems to suggest that yeah, the boy was being controlled by something else. Was that something The Huddle itself? It would certainly explain why the Kid kept going further in the lab and jumped into the Huddle's tank, other than 'because it's a videogame and there's no other way to proceed'. But maybe it's something different. Look closely at the pictures being developed in this shot of Orb #2: http://i.imgur.com/w7TxMa4.png Did you guys notice anything when The Huddle falls through the floor? This is what we land on: http://i.imgur.com/LeIouEy.png, and this is where the game ends: http://i.imgur.com/hcwBoxK.jpg Even the spot of light is the same. So... was it an experiment all along? Was The Huddle itself being controlled or manipulated? The scientists were helping us along at a point, if you recall my Huddle-induced paranoia. Knowing Playdead, the secret ending could very well be artsy-fartsy metacommentary about the Kid breaking free from you, the player's, control. Ultimately, to me, it comes down to this: Mr. Flunchy posted:I guess different strokes for different folks - the lack of clarity is precisely why I love this game so much.  here as an obvious example, since I hid that picture in the update ).
Edmond Dantes fucked around with this message at 02:25 on May 6, 2017 |
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May 5, 2017 23:11
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I think they intended it to be scary, but the huddle's animations were just so incredibly goofy (well done, but goofy) that I couldn't help but laugh.
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May 6, 2017 00:33
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Well that was weird. Great LP, I binged through it a couple days ago and fortunately the final update wasn't far behind.
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May 6, 2017 00:54
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Not sure how to feel about the ending, tbh. Like, maybe it was an experiment all along or whatever, but I feel a little.... cheated? That the boy doesn't get out of it or whatever. I think it's because the beginning very much kind fo weirdly reminded me of videos/documentaries about the holocaust. I'm really glad you did this LP, though. Like others have said, it was a fun ride but I'd be more than a little peeved off if I had played and gotten that ending.
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May 6, 2017 01:45
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Obligatum VII posted:I think they intended it to be scary, but the huddle's animations were just so incredibly goofy (well done, but goofy) that I couldn't help but laugh. Sometimes that's just a thing with horror, especially body horror. Not knowing whether to laugh or cringe is all part of the schtick. As for the ending, eh. I'm not super sold on it, it's such an obvious art-game trope at this point that it's lost almost all of its effect, but I can at least appreciate that it was executed well. You succeeded because the world was set up so that you would, and the secret ending is suggesting that, yes, the boy is a drone subject to your control as well and in allowing you to remove that control symbolically allows you to say 'yup I did everything there was to do, the story is complete'. The problem with this idea, in my mind, is that it only needed to be executed once or twice in order to convey its message, and yet I could probably spoil a laundry list of dozens of games going back two decades or more for whom this is the entire point. My concern is that in trying to build your story around one Shyamalan twist, a lot of very creative people have cut the potential for their storytelling short. You can build a compelling world with a compelling story, and then also take the time to pull back the curtain and examine the strings; the latter act doesn't have to be the sole focus of the work, and in fact it loses a lot of its punch if you fail to build an inner narrative to examine in the first place. I will say its a difficult line to walk, and I can't blame the developers for erring on the side of not over-explaining (per the reference to Lost [the drat plot], among others), it's just not especially satisfying when that is such well-trod ground. Having some internal explanation for this horrorscape other than 'we built it to look weird and unexplainable' would be nice once in a while. E: Oh yeah, and while it's just a small personal pet peeve, I'm always a bit put off by musical puzzles, because my hearing damage tends to make them more difficult. It's nice when there's some other sort of visual cue or timing cue to help distinguish some of the notes.
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May 6, 2017 01:52
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I think what bothers me most about the vagueness of the game's world is that the game is clearly cheating at times for the sake of gameplay. At several times there are gateways that make no possible sense except as things in a platform game to get you to proceed. The 'insert flaming object to open door' puzzle was a pretty obvious example. The bizarro physics section and a few of the water portions are like that as well. There's also things that are just a bit too convenient, like the fact that the sea creatures kill you... except for this one that doesn't for some reason. To be fair, there's a number of places where progress does feel organic, but it did seem to me as though on balance, the arbitrary parts were starting to build up to a significant portion of the world. What that adds up to is a universe that has a lot of mystery, but also seems to hint that maybe it's not worth bothering about the mystery, because things might at times simply be arranged to work in your favor, because after all this is just a game. I think if you can get away with those segments if the rest of the world is moderately well-explained (since then they just seem like exceptions to the given rules), but if you don't give the background and fail to execute perfectly, the wires start to show, and the result feels hollow. Also, something Shady Amish Terror just said made me realize this game really has the feel of everything being great for the protagonist because the protagonist is going to get through the story and win. The world revolves around them, and everything they do is fine (e.g. tossing little chicks in a fan, murdering random scientists). It's an impulse I can't stand in games; although I know opinions must differ because plenty of games have it. I still enjoyed seeing this. It's rare to see such fantastic visual design and animation. Thanks for doing this LP -- I'd heard some buzz about the game (and I'd been spoiled on the fact that the kid gets 'inside' something at the end) but wasn't interested enough to play it myself. One minor thing: the secret ending image above only shows up to me as black with a light splotch in the middle. I know not everyone has consistent gamma, but I'd be curious to know what it shows.
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May 6, 2017 02:11
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Kangra posted:There's also things that are just a bit too convenient, like the fact that the sea creatures kill you... except for this one that doesn't for some reason. I was thinking about this myself, and the only thing I can come up with is that maybe the sea creatures figure out or sense that you're not actually with the scientists? They first attack the sub, which is associated with the scientists, and only help you once they've had a few encounters with you alone in the water. It's kind of a threadbare explanation, though. In light of the points you make, I kind of wish the final section didn't have as much guiding by the NPCs, or that the very end involved more forcefully breaking through that guidance/funneling. Reducing the number and/or fiddliness of the puzzles for the Huddle might have helped too, by making the gameplay more distinct in that section and more firmly establishing the Huddle as a force of nature that just goes where it wants, instead of having to work in the boy's sneaky-puzzly mode to get around.
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May 6, 2017 02:24
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Kangra posted:One minor thing: the secret ending image above only shows up to me as black with a light splotch in the middle. I know not everyone has consistent gamma, but I'd be curious to know what it shows. I bumped the brightness: It's the Kid in the 'drone standby' position, hunched over: http://i.imgur.com/1rIw4Tf.jpg
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May 6, 2017 02:26
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The 'meta' reading is reasonable, of course, but there's also an in-universe explanation for the secret ending: The Huddle is being used to control all the drones, and the boy (who is a drone himself) is its gambit to enact its own escape. Notice that the Huddle is wearing four control helmets in its tank, and that the big orb is right behind the Huddle's tank. In the normal ending, you pull the helmets off of the Huddle, freeing it; in the secret ending, you pull the plug at the other end, the system hub where all the cables meet, resulting in the boy (and probably all the other drones) collapsing. Of course it's just speculation, but if the "You were controlling a video game character all along!!! Oh my god!!" explanation doesn't do it for you, there you go.
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May 6, 2017 02:27
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That's pretty reasonable, but does still butt up against how manufactured and artificial the final puzzle segments and the associated dioramas make everything feel. Contrivance feels like the point of the exercise.
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May 6, 2017 02:34
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