Latest / THINK BEFORE YOU SLEEP / Why So Many Games Are Terrible
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Woman! My sandwich!
- 0:03Speaker 2: Woman!
- 0:05Speaker 3: My beer! Now!
- 0:09Speaker 4: Harder.
- 0:11Speaker 5: Jeez. Is that the new God of War game? How
- 0:14Speaker 5: do I pre-order it?
- 0:17Speaker 1: Place your soiled garments within me!
- 0:23Speaker 6: I like the graphics and this gameplay is top tier.
- 0:26Speaker 6: And you know, in a world where every male-centered franchise
- 0:29Speaker 6: is gender-swapping their main characters and making them ugly in
- 0:31Speaker 6: the sequel, finally, we have something that's more true to life.
- 0:35Speaker 6: I mean, there's a side of modern gaming that just
- 0:37Speaker 6: constantly releases garbage, yet wants us to think that it's gold. Well,
- 0:41Speaker 6: you know, maybe some of that's due to BlackRock ESG
- 0:43Speaker 6: funding for video games, but then again, you can look
- 0:46Speaker 6: back and see that, well, Avatar was kind of woke
- 0:48Speaker 6: and Katara was openly a feminist, but that show was
- 0:51Speaker 6: still good. So then you realize what's more likely happening
- 0:54Speaker 6: here is bad writers sucking up to people with deep pockets,
- 0:57Speaker 6: who are then given tons of money because they're willing
- 0:59Speaker 6: to promote the message. Because the uncomfortable reality is that
- 1:03Speaker 6: if these writers or designers were actually good, they would
- 1:06Speaker 6: be able to convince us over to their viewpoint. Fortunately,
- 1:09Speaker 6: they aren't though, so we won't be adopting their trash
- 1:11Speaker 6: values anytime soon. That being said, there's a reason why
- 1:14Speaker 6: their stories aren't compelling, and it's because of a lack
- 1:17Speaker 6: of fundamental communication skills that are necessary to get people
- 1:20Speaker 6: to like you. In fact, the primary reason why people
- 1:23Speaker 6: don't like their stories is because their characters are unlikable,
- 1:27Speaker 6: and no one's going to watch the journey of someone
- 1:29Speaker 6: who they don't find interesting. The question is, why aren't
- 1:32Speaker 6: they interesting? But before that, recently a jury ordered Meta
- 1:36Speaker 6: and YouTube to pay millions for their role in designing
- 1:38Speaker 6: and promoting addictive platforms. They knew their apps could contribute
- 1:42Speaker 6: to anxiety, depression, and body image issues, but did not
- 1:46Speaker 6: share those risks while prioritizing profits. If you or your
- 1:49Speaker 6: child spent years growing up on social media and experienced
- 1:53Speaker 6: serious mental health struggles, you should hear this. Morgan &
- 1:56Speaker 6: Morgan is stepping up to hold these platforms accountable for
- 1:59Speaker 6: the harm they caused. You can use the link in
- 2:01Speaker 6: my description or scan the QR code to take a
- 2:04Speaker 6: short quiz to see if you qualify for a case. Alright,
- 2:07Speaker 6: so some of you may have heard about what's likely
- 2:09Speaker 6: to become Game of the Year for 2026, and that's
- 2:11Speaker 6: an indie game called Mixtape.
- 2:13Speaker 5: Where's the gameplay?
- 2:14Speaker 3: I'm not doing anything.
- 2:15Speaker 5: Hands free, by the way. The game plays itself.
- 2:19Speaker 6: Right, so Indie Game of the Year Mixtape has decided
- 2:21Speaker 6: to subvert expectations by designing a game where your input
- 2:24Speaker 6: doesn't matter for over 90% of it. You see this
- 2:27Speaker 6: whole parody of that scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Well,
- 2:31Speaker 6: it's actually from a video where a player has decided
- 2:33Speaker 6: to press zero buttons and she still succeeds at the
- 2:35Speaker 6: challenge anyway. In fact, here's a player who intentionally tries
- 2:39Speaker 6: to lose and nope, it just Prince of Persia style
- 2:41Speaker 6: rewinds you and you're good. With training wheels like that,
- 2:44Speaker 6: I'm sure respected gaming journalism outlets like Kotaku love this game.
- 2:49Speaker 5: What a shock.
- 2:50Speaker 7: And then there's the gameplay, which honestly, would you guys
- 2:52Speaker 7: have guessed, there's really not much to talk about here.
- 2:54Speaker 7: I mean, quite literally every single game action is just
- 2:56Speaker 7: press buttons just because. This is such a key jingling simulator.
- 3:00Speaker 7: Make the character tap to a song just because. Float
- 3:02Speaker 7: the character into some boxes just because. The entire thing
- 3:05Speaker 7: just feels like they put those elements into the game
- 3:07Speaker 7: just so they could technically qualify this as a video game,
- 3:10Speaker 7: likely because these guys wouldn't be able to cut it
- 3:12Speaker 7: making a movie, which honestly makes a lot of sense
- 3:14Speaker 7: when I look back on some of these positive reviews as, well,
- 3:17Speaker 7: it does feel like we have a lot of wannabe
- 3:19Speaker 7: film critics trying to review a wannabe filmmaker's game.
- 3:22Speaker 6: Not only all of that, but also this game has
- 3:25Speaker 6: a keen eye for detail when it comes to the
- 3:27Speaker 6: technology of the 90s.
- 3:28Speaker 5: Watch this. This is just a few minutes into the game.
- 3:31Speaker 3: You pull up the cassette.
- 3:33Speaker 5: To do a pencil rewind, they spin it the wrong
- 3:35Speaker 5: fucking way, dude.
- 3:37Speaker 3: Rewind it. Are you kidding me?
- 3:40Speaker 8: Pencil in, and turn to the left.
- 3:45Speaker 3: It messes it up.
- 3:46Speaker 7: They made a game called Mixtape, and they got the
- 3:49Speaker 7: Mixtape wrong!
- 3:51Speaker 6: The whole premise has ADHD levels of continuity because it's
- 3:54Speaker 6: called Mixtape, but half the time the main character is
- 3:57Speaker 6: listening to a CD player. Why didn't they call it
- 3:59Speaker 6: Soundtrack or Playlist or Use a Walkman? The game is
- 4:02Speaker 6: just basically a two-hour greatest hits track of the author's
- 4:05Speaker 6: favorite copyrighted music, and also there's like a coming-of-age story
- 4:08Speaker 6: going on in the background. So those were most of
- 4:11Speaker 6: people's big gripes about Mixtape, along with pointing out that
- 4:14Speaker 6: it is conveniently just long enough for people to not
- 4:16Speaker 6: be able to return it on Steam. I also saw
- 4:18Speaker 6: people making criticisms of the characters, saying that they were lame,
- 4:21Speaker 6: but I didn't really see anyone go deep into these
- 4:23Speaker 6: specific storytelling reasons for why these characters suck and why
- 4:27Speaker 6: this story sucks. So because of that, Let's get into
- 4:30Speaker 6: the real challenge of this game, which is trying to
- 4:32Speaker 6: review it without being copyright claimed by YouTube's content ID
- 4:35Speaker 6: because of all the dumb background music. Now, I do
- 4:38Speaker 6: want to say that there are psychological reasons for why
- 4:40Speaker 6: stories are compelling. On Screen is a book that talks
- 4:43Speaker 6: about that called The Science of Storytelling, and granted, this
- 4:46Speaker 6: can kind of seem like specialized insider knowledge that's not
- 4:49Speaker 6: really applicable to regular people who aren't writers, but ultimately,
- 4:52Speaker 6: good storytelling is just good communication skills, and good communication
- 4:56Speaker 6: requires that you're good at telling stories. Talking about how
- 4:59Speaker 6: your vacation was or what happened to you yesterday are
- 5:02Speaker 6: stories that you can learn how to tell in interesting ways.
- 5:05Speaker 6: And speaking of stories, let's talk about what Mixtape is about.
- 5:08Speaker 2: I want to say something lighthearted, so I say, I
- 5:11Speaker 2: bet one of us dies this time.
- 5:15Speaker 5: Very Borderlands of you. It insists upon itself, Lois.
- 5:19Speaker 6: So in Mixtape, you follow the main character, Stacy, who
- 5:21Speaker 6: is basically that annoying person from high school who is
- 5:24Speaker 6: overly judgmental about people's music tastes.
- 5:26Speaker 2: I can't work in the fucking kayak, Shaq. The radio's
- 5:30Speaker 2: on smooth hits 24-7. I drown myself.
- 5:33Speaker 6: Stacy's goal is to become like a music producer or something.
- 5:36Speaker 6: I know that's not the correct term, but her dream
- 5:38Speaker 6: job is very much something that you would only know
- 5:40Speaker 6: about if you worked on a movie set. You might
- 5:42Speaker 6: as well have just said that she wants to become
- 5:43Speaker 6: a key grip. What regular person cares to know what
- 5:46Speaker 6: that is? Anyway, Stacy wants to become a person who
- 5:49Speaker 6: professionally chooses soundtracks for movies or whatever. And during the game,
- 5:53Speaker 6: we're seeing her last day with her friends in her hometown.
- 5:55Speaker 6: before she leaves to fly to New York to chase
- 5:57Speaker 6: her dream. By the way, the reason that certain parts
- 6:00Speaker 6: of the clips that I'm using are very quiet is
- 6:02Speaker 6: because I had to cut out all the copyrighted songs.
- 6:04Speaker 6: So note that during these scenes, the author's favorite 80s
- 6:07Speaker 6: music is playing. So you fly to New York, you
- 6:09Speaker 6: give this woman your mixtape, and what, she just hires you?
- 6:13Speaker 2: After she listens to the mixtape, yeah. I'll become the
- 6:16Speaker 2: world's foremost music supervisor.
- 6:20Speaker 5: What's a music supervisor?
- 6:21Speaker 9: Imagine before you.
- 6:23Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't care what that is. Stacy is joined
- 6:25Speaker 6: by her friends Cassandra and Slater, who are mad that
- 6:27Speaker 6: she's ditching a road trip that they were supposed to
- 6:29Speaker 6: go on. And basically, the quick outline of the story
- 6:32Speaker 6: is that all the main characters are graduating high school
- 6:34Speaker 6: and going in different directions, but tonight, a popular girl
- 6:37Speaker 6: is throwing a huge party... And for this game, we
- 6:40Speaker 6: join our heroes on a quest to get alcohol for
- 6:43Speaker 6: that party, which is a great storyline. I remember loving
- 6:46Speaker 6: it in 2007 when the movie Superbad did this.
- 6:49Speaker 10: Yeah, they basically copied a lot from Superbad.
- 7:07Speaker 6: Very noticeably, by the way. They even had the same
- 7:10Speaker 6: friend break up in Act 4.
- 7:12Speaker 3: You bailed on.
- 7:12Speaker 6: Me this morning when Jesse spat on me, and you're
- 7:15Speaker 6: bailing on me next year. It finally comes out.
- 7:18Speaker 5: We were supposed to go to college together, Evan.
- 7:20Speaker 2: This was supposed to be our last night together.
- 7:23Speaker 3: Just us three.
- 7:24Speaker 6: Don't act like you want us all together. All you
- 7:26Speaker 6: talk about is leaving. I mean, this is extreme levels
- 7:29Speaker 6: of copying someone else's homework.
- 7:30Speaker 1: Seth, me and Evan are rooming together next year at college.
- 7:33Speaker 3: What's the big deal?
- 7:33Speaker 10: I didn't tell you because I thought.
- 7:35Speaker 7: Because you're a backstabber and you lied to your best friend?
- 7:37Speaker 7: Nice to see you.
- 7:38Speaker 2: God, I hate Jenny fucking Goodspeed.
- 7:42Speaker 8: Jenny's coming with us to LA.
- 7:44Speaker 3: What?
- 7:45Speaker 6: And the reason I point that out is because one
- 7:46Speaker 6: of the most fundamental aspects of storytelling is change, or
- 7:50Speaker 6: subverting expectations. As in, as a non-writer, if you're telling
- 7:54Speaker 6: someone how your weekend or your vacation went, The part
- 7:57Speaker 6: you should start with is the part that includes something
- 7:59Speaker 6: that they wouldn't expect. And really, this is a lesson
- 8:02Speaker 6: that Hollywood should learn as they keep repackaging the same
- 8:04Speaker 6: formulaic dog shit over and over again, trying to sell
- 8:07Speaker 6: it as something new. That industry is so full of
- 8:10Speaker 6: superhero films and remakes that I don't think I've been
- 8:12Speaker 6: to an actual theater in two years. So the base
- 8:18Speaker 6: of your plot is going to be the characters in
- 8:19Speaker 6: your story. Who you're talking about has to be compelling,
- 8:22Speaker 6: otherwise people will not listen, and because human psychology is
- 8:25Speaker 6: geared towards noticing negatives, probably for survival, it is important
- 8:29Speaker 6: that you create interest in a character by showing their flaws.
- 8:32Speaker 6: In fact, every good story will lay out a lie
- 8:34Speaker 6: or a set of lies that their main characters believe,
- 8:37Speaker 6: and their story arc is discovering what that lie is
- 8:40Speaker 6: and changing their behavior so they can succeed. For example,
- 8:43Speaker 6: Harry Potter, as a kid who spent the first 10
- 8:45Speaker 6: years of his life with no friends, believes that he
- 8:47Speaker 6: must solve all of his problems by himself, and it
- 8:50Speaker 6: is shown during each book that he learns to succeed
- 8:53Speaker 6: through the power of friendship. With that, we have a
- 8:55Speaker 6: person who is relatable, struggles, and then succeeds when he
- 8:59Speaker 6: uncovers the lie that he doesn't need others, and changes
- 9:01Speaker 6: his behavior by accepting help from his friends. Thus, the
- 9:04Speaker 6: audience can learn the importance of friendship from the story. However,
- 9:08Speaker 6: in mixtape, the characters have their beliefs, and they're just
- 9:10Speaker 6: objectively correct the entire time, and that's it.
- 9:13Speaker 2: The next track is Just Like Honey by the Jesus
- 9:16Speaker 2: and Mary Chain. You're listening to More Than This by
- 9:19Speaker 2: Roxy Music.
- 9:20Speaker 6: This is The.
- 9:21Speaker 2: Touch by Stan Bush, originally released in 1986 on the
- 9:24Speaker 2: Transformers animated movie soundtrack. It's the cheese, the stuffed crust,
- 9:29Speaker 2: the quattro fromaggio.
- 9:30Speaker 6: The main character, Stacy, is a music know-it-all. that the
- 9:34Speaker 6: writers are using as an avenue to fill one of
- 9:36Speaker 6: the most fundamental storytelling principles, which is show-don't-tell. I don't
- 9:40Speaker 6: even get to listen to the music and decide if
- 9:42Speaker 6: I think it's good.
- 9:42Speaker 5: I just get told how to feel by the writers.
- 9:45Speaker 6: Now, if it actually was good, then that is a
- 9:47Speaker 6: natural conclusion that I should come to on my own
- 9:49Speaker 6: after hearing it. Also, who is this game even for?
- 9:52Speaker 6: I'm not exactly young and I don't recognize most of
- 9:55Speaker 6: these song references. I can only imagine how lost someone
- 9:58Speaker 6: would be if they were currently the actual ADCs of
- 10:00Speaker 6: the main characters, which is who coming-of-age films are supposed
- 10:03Speaker 6: to appeal to. But you have to be like 45
- 10:06Speaker 6: plus to enjoy this movie that was kind of already
- 10:08Speaker 6: made a bunch of times in the 90s and the 2000s.
- 10:11Speaker 6: Even Stacey's not original. She's just Philip Seymour Hoffman's character
- 10:14Speaker 6: in Almost Famous.
- 10:15Speaker 1: Did you know that the letter by the box tops
- 10:19Speaker 1: was a minute and 58 seconds long?
- 10:20Speaker 3: It means nothing.
- 10:23Speaker 1: Nil. But it takes them less than two minutes to
- 10:26Speaker 1: accomplish what Jethro Tull takes hours.
- 10:29Speaker 8: To not accomplish.
- 10:31Speaker 5: You see, this is fatuous, pseudo-blubber.
- 10:34Speaker 1: Or the doors of Jim Morrison? He's a drunken buffoon.
- 10:39Speaker 5: Posing as a poet.
- 10:40Speaker 7: I like the doors.
- 10:41Speaker 5: Ah, give me the guess who. Come on, they got
- 10:43Speaker 5: the courage to be drunken buffoons.
- 10:46Speaker 1: Iggy Pop! Amen!
- 10:50Speaker 6: I feel like this character is intended to be unlikable.
- 10:52Speaker 6: He just says that your music is bad and his
- 10:54Speaker 6: music is good, followed by not really explaining why. By
- 10:57Speaker 6: the way, here's an indie band that I like. Listen
- 10:59Speaker 6: to it or you're not cool. but it's fine to
- 11:02Speaker 6: have a know-it-all character. In Harry Potter, Hermione is a
- 11:05Speaker 6: know-it-all character, but the reason that people like her and
- 11:07Speaker 6: hate Stacey is because Stacey suffers zero consequences for her
- 11:11Speaker 6: know-it-all behavior and learns nothing new. Meanwhile, Hermione is punished
- 11:15Speaker 6: multiple times throughout the Harry Potter series for that behavior,
- 11:19Speaker 6: because in real life, people hate it when someone has
- 11:21Speaker 6: to constantly display how smart they are. But like I said,
- 11:24Speaker 6: when it comes to mixtape, there's no lessons learned at all.
- 11:28Speaker 6: And also, kind of another problem with a lot of
- 11:30Speaker 6: modern media is is that it lacks a strong antagonist,
- 11:33Speaker 6: or oftentimes they don't even have an antagonist at all.
- 11:35Speaker 6: And what I mean by that in terms of being
- 11:37Speaker 6: likable in human psychology or communication skills is that stories
- 11:42Speaker 6: are a game. You have players, these players have a goal,
- 11:45Speaker 6: and most importantly, you have someone or something trying to
- 11:49Speaker 6: stop the players from reaching their goal. That's the antagonist.
- 11:52Speaker 6: In video games, it could be a different player, it
- 11:55Speaker 6: could be a monster, it could be the environment. Like
- 11:57Speaker 6: a giant cliff or a thunderstorm can be an antagonist,
- 12:00Speaker 6: and the interesting part is talking about how the player wins,
- 12:03Speaker 6: or loses, if it's a tragedy. What actions does this
- 12:06Speaker 6: person take in the face of a challenge? However, when
- 12:09Speaker 6: you don't have an antagonist, it's a little bit like
- 12:12Speaker 6: watching a soccer game with no opposing team. And I
- 12:14Speaker 6: think the main part where Mixtape consistently fails is the
- 12:18Speaker 6: lack of any challenge. Which brings us to our second
- 12:20Speaker 6: boring character, Cassandra. We're not going to talk about the
- 12:23Speaker 6: guy character, nothing happens with him. Not even like a
- 12:26Speaker 6: will-they-won't-they relationship with the main character, Stacy. They kind of
- 12:29Speaker 6: tease that, they kind of maybe make this character a
- 12:32Speaker 6: competitor to Stacey, but ultimately, they go nowhere with it. Anyway,
- 12:36Speaker 6: Cassandra is the newer friend in the group, who is
- 12:38Speaker 6: the straight-A student who is good at sports and just
- 12:40Speaker 6: perfected everything. However, her friendship with Stacey and Slater has
- 12:45Speaker 6: begun to turn her into a degenerate. Cassandra's father, a
- 12:48Speaker 6: police officer, notices that, is opposed to it, and thus,
- 12:52Speaker 6: we have our antagonist.
- 12:53Speaker 10: Stacey, Van, could you step outside a moment? You're smoking pot.
- 12:58Speaker 2: No!
- 12:59Speaker 3: Who gave you this?
- 13:00Speaker 10: Those two out there?
- 13:01Speaker 2: No.
- 13:03Speaker 10: We've given you so much trust. But I can't bring
- 13:07Speaker 10: myself to give you any more. You're staying home tonight.
- 13:10Speaker 4: What?
- 13:11Speaker 10: Bill Robbie down at the liquor store said kids have
- 13:13Speaker 10: been in and out of there all day. Something's happening tonight,
- 13:17Speaker 10: and I don't want.
- 13:17Speaker 3: You part of it.
- 13:18Speaker 1: You can't.
- 13:19Speaker 5: This is our last night together. I told you about this.
- 13:23Speaker 1: No.
- 13:24Speaker 5: You will stay home, goddammit.
- 13:26Speaker 3: You leaving tomorrow?
- 13:27Speaker 6: No.
- 13:28Speaker 8: Yeah?
- 13:30Speaker 10: If I find you at that party, and I will
- 13:33Speaker 10: find that party, you'll spend 24 hours in detention, I
- 13:37Speaker 10: promise you that. You'll be walking to New York.
- 13:40Speaker 6: This is great, right? A classic 90s story. Teenage kids
- 13:44Speaker 6: versus annoying authority figures. And you would think that this
- 13:47Speaker 6: is going to create some excellent drama to interest the audience,
- 13:50Speaker 6: but nope, nothing happens. Actually, the lack of drama probably
- 13:54Speaker 6: kills the only good part of this game, which is
- 13:56Speaker 6: the acting. But when the story gets to its final
- 13:59Speaker 6: act where everyone goes to the party, Cassandra's dad's goal
- 14:02Speaker 6: is to find that party and stop it. At some point,
- 14:05Speaker 6: a fire is started in the middle of the woods.
- 14:07Speaker 6: Cassandra's dad shows up, And we see a standoff between
- 14:10Speaker 6: these two characters.
- 14:12Speaker 5: Daddy, if you trap me here, this will only be
- 14:15Speaker 5: the beginnings of my wicked ways.
- 14:17Speaker 4: Because I'm angry and I'm wired and I'm fixing for
- 14:22Speaker 4: a whole lot of trouble. If you make me stay here,
- 14:26Speaker 4: I'm going to burn the whole fucking place down.
- 14:29Speaker 10: Well, I guess we have ourselves an understanding.
- 14:33Speaker 6: Wow, that was an incredibly easy fight. I guess Cassandra,
- 14:37Speaker 6: as a 17-year-old, knows way more than her father, who
- 14:40Speaker 6: is just trying to keep her from becoming a druggie.
- 14:42Speaker 6: The whole story builds up to this point here, and
- 14:44Speaker 6: she is just deemed correct with no challenges or nuances
- 14:47Speaker 6: added to her beliefs.
- 14:48Speaker 1: Let me tell you about flat-R characters. Flat-R character mirrors
- 14:52Speaker 1: the player. The flat-R character begins the story already in
- 14:55Speaker 1: possession of a truth, a philosophy, and a conviction, or
- 14:58Speaker 1: an outlook that is complete and doesn't fundamentally change.
- 15:01Speaker 6: Yeah, and it's called shit-riding when all of your characters
- 15:04Speaker 6: are flat. There's no challenge in this animated film that
- 15:07Speaker 6: isn't solved almost instantly by its protagonist. Even the main challenge,
- 15:11Speaker 6: which is to find alcohol, is solved instantly. In the story,
- 15:15Speaker 6: Stacy's older sister graduates high school and moves away.
- 15:18Speaker 5: However, she does show.
- 15:19Speaker 6: Stacy and her friends a secret cabin in the woods
- 15:21Speaker 6: hangout spot that they end up using for years, I guess.
- 15:25Speaker 6: And during this story, we find out that the whole
- 15:27Speaker 6: time Stacy's sister has been hiding a secret stash of alcohol...
- 15:30Speaker 6: that they intend to use for the big party that night,
- 15:32Speaker 6: but first, they have to piece together a photograph to
- 15:35Speaker 6: learn where it is.
- 15:36Speaker 8: It's in the floor?
- 15:38Speaker 3: It's in the floor.
- 15:50Speaker 5: That's it.
- 15:51Speaker 6: It was just under the floorboards, right in front of
- 15:53Speaker 6: the front door with no rug over it, and they
- 15:55Speaker 6: never discovered it. You can even see that there's space
- 15:57Speaker 6: between the floorboards. They didn't see it by accident. These
- 16:00Speaker 6: have to be the dumbest main characters in existence. This
- 16:03Speaker 6: reminds me of Ready Player One, where the protagonists have
- 16:05Speaker 6: to win some impossible race, and this is how they
- 16:08Speaker 6: beat it. You mean to tell me that not one
- 16:21Speaker 6: player thought to drive their car backwards? This was quite
- 16:23Speaker 6: possibly the most boomer part of that movie, and it's
- 16:26Speaker 6: how you tell that it was written by someone who
- 16:27Speaker 6: does not understand people who play video games.
- 16:30Speaker 5: But as for Mixtape, the.
- 16:31Speaker 6: Reason that you don't like that movie, but you do
- 16:33Speaker 6: like the movie that it's copying super bad, is because
- 16:37Speaker 6: during their journey to find alcohol, they do the most
- 16:40Speaker 6: obvious thing first and show you why it didn't work.
- 16:43Speaker 3: Here's the money and the list. Change is yours.
- 16:45Speaker 2: Keep the change.
- 16:45Speaker 3: What if I go in there and they turn me down, man?
- 16:47Speaker 3: Then we're in the same exact place that we're in
- 16:49Speaker 3: right now. Holy shit, they busted Fogel. How did this happen, Evan?
- 16:54Speaker 2: Fuck, man.
- 16:55Speaker 3: His dad's gonna fucking kill him.
- 16:56Speaker 6: I'm not even sure if the main characters of Mixtape
- 16:58Speaker 6: tried just buying it at the store, which is dumb
- 17:01Speaker 6: because they're supposed to be like experts at illegally getting booze.
- 17:04Speaker 6: I mean, if they gave a reason for why they
- 17:05Speaker 6: couldn't do that, it certainly wasn't memorable. Meanwhile, that moment
- 17:09Speaker 6: from Superbad and the setup scene for it is the
- 17:12Speaker 6: most referenced part of that movie.
- 17:13Speaker 3: Wait, you changed your name to McLovin? McLovin?
- 17:22Speaker 6: Now, with all that said, if you were to look
- 17:32Speaker 6: at the ratings, you would expect this game to be
- 17:33Speaker 6: rated like a 2 or a 3 out of 10, maybe.
- 17:36Speaker 6: But for those of you who missed it, I kid
- 17:38Speaker 6: you not. Every major gaming journalism outlet was giving this
- 17:42Speaker 6: game a perfect score. IGN, a website that used to
- 17:45Speaker 6: be well-respected, gave this a 10 and said it had
- 17:48Speaker 6: a masterful sense of style. Keep in mind that a
- 17:51Speaker 6: 10 is like Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring
- 17:53Speaker 6: levels of quality. Also keep in mind that IGN gave
- 17:57Speaker 6: Stellar Blade, a vastly superior game, a 7 out of 10.
- 18:01Speaker 6: Not to say that Stellar Blade is perfect, certainly that
- 18:04Speaker 6: game has its flaws and places it could have been improved. However,
- 18:07Speaker 6: I think the FTC should investigate every single one of
- 18:10Speaker 6: these companies that rated Mixtape a 9 or higher, because
- 18:13Speaker 6: the chances that these aren't paid reviews are astronomically low.
- 18:17Speaker 6: Why isn't the FTC doing their job? The gaming journalism
- 18:20Speaker 6: industry has been giving suspiciously high reviews for like 10
- 18:23Speaker 6: years now. There's no way that this is their genuine opinion,
- 18:26Speaker 6: and it's against the law to get paid for a
- 18:28Speaker 6: promotion and not disclose that to people. There's no way
- 18:31Speaker 6: they actually believe stuff like this.
- 18:33Speaker 5: I'm not here to talk shit, but like, I played
- 18:34Speaker 5: Tony Hawk Pro Skater yesterday.
- 18:36Speaker 7: This was more fun skateboarding than that was.
- 18:37Speaker 6: Right, this piece of crap is more fun to play
- 18:39Speaker 6: than Tony Hawk. A game that created people's entire childhoods.
- 18:42Speaker 6: A game that actually did a good job at promoting
- 18:44Speaker 6: the creator's favorite bands. Meanwhile, double-speeding a playthrough of Mixtape
- 18:48Speaker 6: is practically torture. This game was so boring.
- 18:51Speaker 7: Mixtape launched when eye-watering 15,000 players, sorry, that's 1,500 players
- 18:55Speaker 7: before reaching their peak of just over 2,000 players. It
- 18:58Speaker 7: was developed by Beethoven and Dinosaur and published by Annapurna Interactive,
- 19:02Speaker 7: a subsidiary of Annapurna Pictures, a company that's owned by
- 19:05Speaker 7: Megan Ellison, whose father, Larry Ellison, is the fifth richest
- 19:08Speaker 7: person in the world that also happened to bail that
- 19:10Speaker 7: studio out of bankruptcy back in 2019. Isn't it great
- 19:13Speaker 7: when Indie games have a golden parachute. Isn't that so
- 19:15Speaker 7: common in this games industry? These guys are definitely not
- 19:18Speaker 7: going to be beating the allegations of being an industry plant.
- 19:20Speaker 7: I'm going to tell you that right now.
- 19:22Speaker 5: Right.
- 19:22Speaker 6: Nothing says independent game like being funded by some of
- 19:25Speaker 6: the richest people in the world.
- 19:26Speaker 1: There's a lot of very plot based stories in video
- 19:29Speaker 1: games and people do them really well. But we wanted
- 19:31Speaker 1: to do something that was more of like a hangout film,
- 19:33Speaker 1: something that was more character based.
- 19:35Speaker 6: Freudian slip there. The developer just admitted that mixtape was
- 19:38Speaker 6: not a video game. That was Johnny Galvatron, by the way,
- 19:41Speaker 6: a person whose name is totally not made up for
- 19:43Speaker 6: a band that no one knows about. Oh, look, they
- 19:45Speaker 6: named Cassandra after one of their songs.
- 19:47Speaker 2: There.
- 19:48Speaker 6: Now no one can say that I don't do research.
- 19:50Speaker 6: Because probably the best part of this video was researching
- 19:53Speaker 6: the development team. Because once you do that, you realize
- 19:55Speaker 6: that Stacey is just a gender-swapped self-insert of the head creator.
- 19:59Speaker 1: And like, I just remember being like that obnoxious teenage
- 20:04Speaker 1: music fan who would judge you by what bands you
- 20:08Speaker 1: listen to. And I remember being in that scene in
- 20:10Speaker 1: Melbourne and how cool it was. And that's what mixtape
- 20:12Speaker 1: is about. Just be into shit and like really get
- 20:15Speaker 1: into it and annoy people with it.
- 20:17Speaker 3: That's the best way to be.
- 20:19Speaker 6: This is peak millennial writing. I mean, yes, your interests
- 20:22Speaker 6: are going to be a part of your story, but
- 20:23Speaker 6: good writers focus on things that they like that an
- 20:26Speaker 6: audience would be interested in. And when they don't do that,
- 20:29Speaker 6: they come off as incredibly cringe.
- 20:31Speaker 7: I don't think I've ever been more embarrassed to be
- 20:33Speaker 7: a millennial. And honestly, that's saying something.
- 20:35Speaker 4: You know what?
- 20:35Speaker 7: As a self-elected representative of my own generation, I would
- 20:38Speaker 7: like to issue a public apology to the rest of society.
- 20:41Speaker 6: And when I say millennial writing, I'm saying that these
- 20:43Speaker 6: stories are written by people who are highly self-absorbed, don't
- 20:46Speaker 6: have any actual friends, and have never really faced any
- 20:49Speaker 6: difficult challenges, so they don't know how to write these things.
- 20:52Speaker 6: Watch any interview with a guy who made mixtape, and
- 20:54Speaker 6: you can see that he's full of himself.
- 20:56Speaker 1: Hey, interesting fact.
- 20:58Speaker 3: About Mad Max.
- 21:00Speaker 1: Did you know it was directed by Goo Gooman from
- 21:02Speaker 1: Death Stranding 2?
- 21:05Speaker 3: That joke is niche.
- 21:06Speaker 1: Love a Kojima game.
- 21:07Speaker 3: Have you met Kojima? I have. He played mixtape.
- 21:11Speaker 1: He gave me two thumbs up.
- 21:12Speaker 6: Holy autism. I mean also mixtape is written like it
- 21:15Speaker 6: was made for fans of Greta Gerwig films.
- 21:18Speaker 5: Of course.
- 21:19Speaker 6: By the way, I know this video is scripted, but
- 21:21Speaker 6: I called the Greta Gerwig thing before I found this
- 21:23Speaker 6: moment from the developer. So really, the lesson here in
- 21:26Speaker 6: storytelling for when you communicate in your personal life is,
- 21:28Speaker 6: if you're wondering which stories people will connect to, then
- 21:31Speaker 6: it is stories where you solve problems, preferably ones that
- 21:34Speaker 6: are difficult. That's how you interest those who are listening
- 21:36Speaker 6: to you. And most importantly, the last key feature of
- 21:40Speaker 6: peak millennial writing is the complete lack of mystery. For
- 21:43Speaker 6: any story, it is essential that you have some piece
- 21:46Speaker 6: of key information that you're withholding from your audience. People
- 21:49Speaker 6: get pissed off at spoilers because they want mystery. They
- 21:52Speaker 6: want you to lay clues out for them so they
- 21:53Speaker 6: can figure out the plot for themselves, because then that
- 21:56Speaker 6: turns the story into a game that they can participate in.
- 21:59Speaker 6: In fact, if you're trying to be interesting in your
- 22:01Speaker 6: personal life, then let me just say that the least
- 22:03Speaker 6: interesting people are those who overshare and behave like an
- 22:06Speaker 6: open book. You need to have some mystery in your life,
- 22:09Speaker 6: preferably mysteries that people want to solve, and then a
- 22:12Speaker 6: good story will give you clues along the way. I
- 22:15Speaker 6: thought that mixtape might possibly be engaging in good writing
- 22:18Speaker 6: by teasing a relationship between Slater and Stacey that would
- 22:21Speaker 6: be revealed at the climax of the story, followed by a,
- 22:24Speaker 6: don't leave because I'm in love with you, that would
- 22:26Speaker 6: force Stacey to make the difficult decision of, do I
- 22:28Speaker 6: chase my dreams and sacrifice love, or do I sacrifice
- 22:32Speaker 6: my dreams so I can be in a relationship with
- 22:34Speaker 6: my childhood friend? But nope, none of that happens. No
- 22:38Speaker 6: difficult choices are ever made in this story. There are
- 22:40Speaker 6: no opportunities to share reasoning so that if the viewer
- 22:43Speaker 6: has a difficult choice to make in their life, they
- 22:45Speaker 6: can reference back to Stacey's logic for why she made
- 22:48Speaker 6: her decision. I mean, the writing here is so lazy
- 22:51Speaker 6: that they don't even give us a good reason for
- 22:52Speaker 6: why Stacey has to skip the big friend road trip
- 22:54Speaker 6: that they've been planning so she can chase her dreams
- 22:57Speaker 6: in New York. They even point out how stupid of
- 22:59Speaker 6: a plot decision that was.
- 23:01Speaker 4: Why are you.
- 23:02Speaker 2: Being such a dick? Because you messed up our trip.
- 23:05Speaker 5: You couldn't wait one more week?
- 23:07Speaker 2: The road trip? We'll go next year.
- 23:09Speaker 3: It's not a big deal.
- 23:10Speaker 5: It's a big deal to me.
- 23:12Speaker 6: Yeah, why couldn't she wait one week? The writers couldn't
- 23:14Speaker 6: think of anything? Like maybe there was a convention that
- 23:16Speaker 6: Stacey had to go to that was at the same
- 23:18Speaker 6: time of the road trip? She's just ditching her friends
- 23:20Speaker 6: for nothing, and we're supposed to see her as an
- 23:22Speaker 6: agent of morality who has advice that we should listen to? Remember,
- 23:25Speaker 6: this storytelling is a 10 out of 10. Anyway, because
- 23:28Speaker 6: of the failure of mixtape, what we're going to do
- 23:30Speaker 6: is talk about a story that's actually good. Now that
- 23:33Speaker 6: we know what not to do... It's time to talk
- 23:35Speaker 6: about people who are good at storytelling, and for that,
- 23:38Speaker 6: let's talk about Resident Evil 9. But before that, some
- 23:41Speaker 6: good news and bad news here. The bad news is that,
- 23:44Speaker 6: full disclosure, I've not actually completed the game yet. Though
- 23:47Speaker 6: don't worry, that's not necessary here. And the good news
- 23:50Speaker 6: is that because I haven't finished it, I can't really
- 23:52Speaker 6: spoil that much. Though I will say that I'm about
- 23:55Speaker 6: halfway into it, and I will be spoiling minor things
- 23:58Speaker 6: up to the halfway point, which really is not that much.
- 24:00Speaker 6: I feel like zero of my important questions have been
- 24:03Speaker 6: answered at the point that I'm at. But in contrast
- 24:05Speaker 6: to Mixtape, where we see characters express a relentless amount
- 24:08Speaker 6: of selfishness, the story of Resident Evil 9 is a
- 24:12Speaker 6: story of self-sacrifice and doing what you can to help
- 24:14Speaker 6: those who are in need. So let's talk about the plot. Now,
- 24:17Speaker 6: for longtime fans of the series, understand that my experience
- 24:20Speaker 6: with Resident Evil is very limited, so please be forgiving
- 24:23Speaker 6: if I get stuff incorrect because it very much seems
- 24:25Speaker 6: like this game starts in the middle of a show
- 24:27Speaker 6: that has multiple seasons. But for new players, that doesn't matter.
- 24:30Speaker 6: It's still fun, and you can still follow what's going on,
- 24:32Speaker 6: plus not knowing the full context adds to the mystery. Anyway,
- 24:36Speaker 6: Resident Evil 9 is a story where some scientists are
- 24:38Speaker 6: trying to develop something called the T-Virus. I don't know
- 24:41Speaker 6: much about it other than it's supposed to relate to
- 24:43Speaker 6: human evolution, and the goal is to find a test
- 24:45Speaker 6: subject that's compatible with it, because when you're not compatible,
- 24:48Speaker 6: it turns you into a zombie, I guess. The story
- 24:50Speaker 6: starts off with our main character, Grace, who actually has
- 24:53Speaker 6: a flaw, unlike our mixtape characters. and her flaw is
- 24:56Speaker 6: that she's very physically weak by comparison to her enemies.
- 24:59Speaker 6: The game, by the way, makes you very aware of that.
- 25:03Speaker 3: This is perfect.
- 25:15Speaker 6: If this game has a large male audience, then this
- 25:17Speaker 6: is a chance to get them to empathize with how
- 25:19Speaker 6: scary it can be to be a woman, and navigate
- 25:21Speaker 6: the world with the limitation of being weaker than 50%
- 25:23Speaker 6: of the population. Traditionally, video games do a very terrible
- 25:27Speaker 6: job at communicating that. Anyway, Grace is an FBI investigator
- 25:31Speaker 6: who gets kidnapped while inspecting a crime scene. She then
- 25:33Speaker 6: is put into a hospital with a bunch of scary zombies,
- 25:36Speaker 6: and her goal is to escape. While this is going on,
- 25:39Speaker 6: we're introduced to a second protagonist named Leon who is
- 25:42Speaker 6: from other Resident Evil games, and he's like a 50-year-old
- 25:45Speaker 6: badass with a bunch of intentionally cheesy lines.
- 25:47Speaker 9: We can talk, or we can begin your treatment. It's
- 25:53Speaker 9: on the treatment, I hope. You know, I do have
- 25:55Speaker 9: a question. When was the last time you brushed.
- 26:00Speaker 3: Your teeth?
- 26:06Speaker 5: The puns and dad jokes in this game are next level.
- 26:09Speaker 3: Hey, can you hear me?
- 26:10Speaker 9: Leon, I've been trying to reach you.
- 26:12Speaker 3: Sorry, I was a little tied up.
- 26:13Speaker 6: So far, my favorite part of Resident Evil 9 is
- 26:15Speaker 6: the heavy contrast between each main character. Leon's playthrough is
- 26:19Speaker 6: an action game where you parry and use your aim
- 26:21Speaker 6: lab skills to defeat your enemies. whereas Grace's scenes are
- 26:24Speaker 6: more like a try-not-to-die puzzle game where you have very
- 26:26Speaker 6: limited resources. Oh, and also, there's this guy Victor. He's
- 26:29Speaker 6: the antagonist. I think he has super strength or something.
- 26:32Speaker 6: But to be perfectly honest, I hated playing Grace when
- 26:35Speaker 6: I started. However, since the developers are smart, they force
- 26:38Speaker 6: you to play her first, and once I got used
- 26:40Speaker 6: to it, now I love her part of the game
- 26:42Speaker 6: because it makes you think. And when it comes to gameplay,
- 26:44Speaker 6: the contrast is the frustration of being weak when you
- 26:47Speaker 6: play as Grace, followed by getting to kick the crap
- 26:49Speaker 6: out of everything as a reward when you play Leon, Also,
- 26:53Speaker 6: in comparison to Mixtape's characters that are instantly annoying, Grace
- 26:56Speaker 6: and Leon are written to be instantly interesting. Leon is
- 27:00Speaker 6: likable not just because he's a strong character, but also
- 27:02Speaker 6: because of his numerous self-sacrificing actions. Wait, you're DSO.
- 27:08Speaker 2: That's the counter-bioterrorism agency, right? Take this.
- 27:14Speaker 4: You're sure?
- 27:15Speaker 3: You might need it. Now go.
- 27:20Speaker 4: Get out of here.
- 27:25Speaker 5: Okay, Grace, here's the most powerful weapon in the game.
- 27:28Speaker 5: Just take it. You need it more than I do.
- 27:30Speaker 6: Leon regularly prioritizes the needs of others above his own,
- 27:33Speaker 6: but interestingly enough, there are even bigger moments of self-sacrifice
- 27:37Speaker 6: from Grace. Because while Grace is trapped in a zombie
- 27:39Speaker 6: hospital and while she's trying to break out, she meets
- 27:42Speaker 6: a blind child. Speaking of good writing skills, this kind
- 27:45Speaker 6: of complicates her escape because now she feels like the
- 27:47Speaker 6: moral good is not just to rescue herself, but also
- 27:49Speaker 6: this child named Emily. By the way, speaking of mystery,
- 27:52Speaker 6: who is this girl and why is she in the hospital?
- 27:54Speaker 6: Why was she locked in a room? I don't know,
- 27:57Speaker 6: that's something that we're supposed to solve as we play
- 27:59Speaker 6: the game. But getting to what I found to be
- 28:01Speaker 6: the best part so far, at some point while Grace
- 28:03Speaker 6: is in the process of breaking out of the hospital,
- 28:06Speaker 6: Emily is captured by a monster and taken underground. Now,
- 28:09Speaker 6: before I get um-actually'd by people who played this game
- 28:12Speaker 6: and paid close attention to this moment... Let's remove the
- 28:14Speaker 6: video game logic of Emily having the final key to
- 28:17Speaker 6: the front door and Grace not being able to leave
- 28:19Speaker 6: without her, because really, if she wanted to leave, she
- 28:22Speaker 6: could just blow the lock off the front door. Anyway,
- 28:24Speaker 6: Grace has a choice. She can save herself by leaving
- 28:27Speaker 6: the hospital immediately and nobody would know that she abandoned
- 28:30Speaker 6: the kid, or she can jump down into the abyss
- 28:33Speaker 6: and go save Emily. And the inspiring part of this,
- 28:36Speaker 6: especially in this antinatalist hellscape that we call modern times,
- 28:39Speaker 6: is that Grace chooses to sacrifice herself to try to
- 28:42Speaker 6: save the little girl. Grace, who is incredibly weak, scared,
- 28:45Speaker 6: and has very limited information, chooses to prioritize a child
- 28:49Speaker 6: that she doesn't know over herself.
- 28:51Speaker 1: I found this.
- 28:55Speaker 3: Well done, Emily.
- 28:56Speaker 2: Thank you.
- 29:09Speaker 3: Help! Help me! This is all my fault.
- 29:23Speaker 2: I can't just leave her.
- 29:32Speaker 3: Oh, God.
- 29:34Speaker 5: Great storytelling.
- 29:35Speaker 6: This is one hell of a dilemma, especially considering how
- 29:38Speaker 6: many people in the modern day would choose to escape
- 29:40Speaker 6: and let that child die. And yes, I know it's
- 29:42Speaker 6: a video game, but I also think that people really
- 29:45Speaker 6: underestimate how much of an effect the stories that you
- 29:47Speaker 6: consume have on you. If they didn't, then DEI freaks
- 29:50Speaker 6: wouldn't constantly be trying to change our stories. And on
- 29:52Speaker 6: top of that, look at the communities that have the
- 29:55Speaker 6: music and the movies and the books that promote trash
- 29:57Speaker 6: values instead of hero stories. They aren't doing that great.
- 30:01Speaker 6: So let's be clear. If you want people to like
- 30:03Speaker 6: and respect you, The times that matter the most are
- 30:05Speaker 6: the ones where you have to make difficult choices. And personally,
- 30:08Speaker 6: I think that if you took the people who wrote
- 30:10Speaker 6: Mixtape and gave them the same moral choice that Grace
- 30:12Speaker 6: was given, they would choose to save themselves, considering that
- 30:15Speaker 6: they thought it was a moral good to have their
- 30:17Speaker 6: characters continuously behave selfishly throughout the entire story. And that's
- 30:21Speaker 6: why we don't like people like that. We like people
- 30:22Speaker 6: who choose to help others when they're in need, whether
- 30:25Speaker 6: they are asked to or not.
- 30:32Speaker 3: That girl just can't stay out of trouble. Sherry, Grace
- 30:35Speaker 3: is still here. The FBI agent?
- 30:38Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 30:39Speaker 3: Is she okay?
- 30:41Speaker 2: No.
- 30:42Speaker 3: I've got her covered.
- 30:44Speaker 6: So far in the game, Leon is just constantly saying, here,
- 30:46Speaker 6: I'm stronger than you, let me bear the burden, and
- 30:48Speaker 6: let me deal with the difficulty. And the interesting part
- 30:51Speaker 6: is that Grace is basically making the same sacrifice that
- 30:53Speaker 6: Leon makes with her when it comes to the child, Emily.
- 30:56Speaker 6: With that said, I can't wait to finish this game,
- 30:58Speaker 6: but the reason I haven't is because of this next thing.
- 31:01Speaker 6: And for that, I'll say that a part of being
- 31:03Speaker 6: well socialized is preserving the stories of the past so
- 31:06Speaker 6: that the next generation can learn all the lessons from
- 31:08Speaker 6: the best stories of each time period. The stories that
- 31:11Speaker 6: we tell are incredibly important for transmuting social skills and
- 31:14Speaker 6: developing a cultural narrative that allows us to get along
- 31:16Speaker 6: with each other, so it kind of pisses me off
- 31:18Speaker 6: when companies like Disney have been taking beloved characters from
- 31:21Speaker 6: movies like Star Wars.
- 31:23Speaker 5: And changing them for the worse.
- 31:24Speaker 6: Now, I didn't really watch Star Wars as a kid,
- 31:26Speaker 6: but I did play a lot of Final Fantasy, and
- 31:29Speaker 6: longtime viewers will know that I'm quite upset about the
- 31:31Speaker 6: character and story changes that they made during a bait-and-switch
- 31:34Speaker 6: remake of Final Fantasy VII. I'm not happy that they
- 31:36Speaker 6: did things like take Sid, who was a chain-smoking misogynist
- 31:39Speaker 6: with a foul mouth, and Disney-fied him into everyone's happy uncle.
- 31:43Speaker 6: And the problem with this is that if they remove
- 31:45Speaker 6: the flaws that he had in the original, how is
- 31:47Speaker 6: he supposed to learn the error of his ways later
- 31:49Speaker 6: in the story? What am I supposed to take away
- 31:51Speaker 6: from this as a viewer? Just be perfect?
- 31:54Speaker 5: Thanks.
- 31:54Speaker 4: What constitutes a hero? I guess a guy who just
- 31:58Speaker 4: does good things and is willing to take chances to.
- 32:01Speaker 3: Help other people. He's pure and good, right?
- 32:02Speaker 5: He only wants to help.
- 32:04Speaker 4: But not 100% good because then he's an unrealistic hero. Basically,
- 32:08Speaker 4: to me, a hero has to be somebody who will
- 32:12Speaker 4: sacrifice or will take great chances to help others but
- 32:16Speaker 4: still have human traits, still not be perfect. When they
- 32:19Speaker 4: become perfect, they become dull.
- 32:21Speaker 6: They also censored and Disney-fied Barrett's backstory, which originally was
- 32:24Speaker 6: incredibly dark. and they completely ruined the emotional stakes of
- 32:28Speaker 6: one of the most popular scenes in gaming history that
- 32:31Speaker 6: occurs at the end of the first disc, a scene
- 32:33Speaker 6: that was made specifically because one of the creators suffered
- 32:35Speaker 6: a major loss, and it was designed to teach the
- 32:37Speaker 6: audience how to deal with that. So, uh, I hate
- 32:40Speaker 6: the remakes, and I think it's the obligation of the
- 32:42Speaker 6: people who are older to preserve the culture and each
- 32:44Speaker 6: generation's stories so that future generations can learn the lessons
- 32:48Speaker 6: of the past. By the way, that's why all these
- 32:50Speaker 6: well-loved stories are being remade like crap or having their
- 32:53Speaker 6: protagonists gender-swapped. It's to get rid of the good characters
- 32:56Speaker 6: for everyone to aspire to so that younger people who
- 32:59Speaker 6: didn't grow up with these properties don't learn the moral
- 33:01Speaker 6: lessons from them. Or worse, they think they did learn
- 33:04Speaker 6: the lessons, but what actually happened is that they got
- 33:06Speaker 6: baited and switched, and the story was remade to teach
- 33:09Speaker 6: a less valuable lesson so that the morals that they
- 33:12Speaker 6: end up with as adults are less good. And by
- 33:15Speaker 6: the way, this technique works. It either destroys interest.
- 33:18Speaker 5: In the property.
- 33:19Speaker 6: Or, in the case of Final Fantasy VII, there are
- 33:21Speaker 6: tons of people who defend the remakes, yet none of
- 33:24Speaker 6: them can give you reasons for why the story is better.
- 33:26Speaker 6: They just say it has good graphics and there's voice
- 33:29Speaker 6: acting now. And, well, considering that some DEI company called
- 33:32Speaker 6: Sweet Baby Inc. and Disney are involved in Square Enix,
- 33:35Speaker 6: I think that destroying the story of one of the
- 33:37Speaker 6: most revolutionary games of the 1990s and falsely calling it
- 33:40Speaker 6: a remake was intentional, especially considering all the random woke
- 33:44Speaker 6: shit that was sprinkled throughout the game. They baited you
- 33:46Speaker 6: with good graphics as they removed the storytelling principles that
- 33:49Speaker 6: made people like the game in the first place.
- 33:51Speaker 8: And FF7 Rebirth tackles its overall approach to story the
- 33:58Speaker 8: same way that Remake does, where about 95% of this
- 34:02Speaker 8: game is pretty much classic FF7 one-to-one.
- 34:07Speaker 6: What the fuck? Who's paying this guy to lie? Either
- 34:09Speaker 6: he's never played Final Fantasy VII before, or he's getting
- 34:12Speaker 6: some sort of kickback for saying this. I don't think
- 34:14Speaker 6: I've even seen Hasan Piker lie this hard. It is
- 34:17Speaker 6: obvious that the remake is a completely different story, even
- 34:20Speaker 6: if you get rid of the numerous filler arcs they
- 34:22Speaker 6: put in to bloat the game, and the DEI side
- 34:25Speaker 6: quests that Sweet Baby Inc. probably told them to add.
- 34:28Speaker 5: Oh, of course.
- 34:29Speaker 6: He got to meet the director of the remake, that's
- 34:31Speaker 6: why he's lying. He wants insider access. What a sellout. Fortunately,
- 34:36Speaker 6: what I've found out recently is that it's actually possible
- 34:38Speaker 6: for fan communities to preserve these titles for the next generation,
- 34:42Speaker 6: when companies that own the IPs refuse to do that.
- 34:44Speaker 6: Finding that out is why I put my playthrough of
- 34:47Speaker 6: Resident Evil 9 on pause, because the reality is that
- 34:49Speaker 6: video games are not like movies. For example, Snow White
- 34:52Speaker 6: was made almost 100 years ago, and I can still
- 34:54Speaker 6: watch it like people did back in the day. And
- 34:57Speaker 6: when I was a kid, I watched many movies that
- 34:59Speaker 6: were made decades before I was born. But when it
- 35:01Speaker 6: comes to video games, yes, Final Fantasy 7 was revolutionary
- 35:05Speaker 6: at the time it was made, but the reality is
- 35:07Speaker 6: that the original version is basically unplayable to young people. Well,
- 35:11Speaker 6: that was until recently. These days, production technology has gotten
- 35:14Speaker 6: so cheap that fans can now make major upgrades to
- 35:17Speaker 6: old games themselves. And a studio called Tsuna Mods has
- 35:20Speaker 6: done that with Final Fantasy VII. And I mean that
- 35:23Speaker 6: the amount that they have modernized this game and the
- 35:25Speaker 6: effort they have put in to genuinely improve on the
- 35:27Speaker 6: original is inspiring. They upgraded the character models, they retranslated
- 35:32Speaker 6: the entire script so it's closer to the original Japanese script,
- 35:35Speaker 6: they added the ability to turn off random encounters and
- 35:37Speaker 6: speed up the game... and most importantly, they voice acted
- 35:41Speaker 6: the entire thing, and I mean every single character has
- 35:44Speaker 6: a voice, and all of the main characters are voiced
- 35:46Speaker 6: by professional actors, so it sounds incredible. These mods are
- 35:50Speaker 6: not that hard to access, it only takes a few minutes,
- 35:52Speaker 6: and they're free. This video here that I've linked in
- 35:55Speaker 6: the description will teach you how to do it, and
- 35:56Speaker 6: after you watch that video, all you have to do
- 35:59Speaker 6: is download these mods that I have on screen, and
- 36:01Speaker 6: now you're playing the original Final Fantasy VII the way
- 36:04Speaker 6: it should be played. Personally, I'm never going to play
- 36:06Speaker 6: this game unmodded again. Also, yes, all of this is legal.
- 36:10Speaker 6: You can't use any of the mods unless you own
- 36:12Speaker 6: the actual game. Many games these days are modded. And
- 36:15Speaker 6: the good news is that if you're a fan of
- 36:17Speaker 6: other Final Fantasy games like 8 and 9, they're working
- 36:20Speaker 6: on those ones too. However, currently they're doing all this
- 36:23Speaker 6: for free. What that means is that fully voice acting
- 36:26Speaker 6: Final Fantasy 8 and 9 could take years. But if
- 36:29Speaker 6: they had a little bit of funding and could pay
- 36:30Speaker 6: the actors, they could finish these voice mods in a
- 36:33Speaker 6: few months. Currently they are working on Final Fantasy 9,
- 36:36Speaker 6: And if you would like to support that project, I've
- 36:38Speaker 6: put their Patreon as the second link in the description.
- 36:41Speaker 6: And with that said, I think that'll be enough for
- 36:43Speaker 6: this video. Thanks for watching, follow me on Twitter, and
- 36:46Speaker 6: I'll see you in the next one.