Am I really surprised that a video essay is yet again about how “evil” capitalism is. Cus I can assure you communism or whatever the fuck else isn’t going to be any better. I’m just sick of the same shit being brought up in a video about every game, movie, book, ect. Just talk about the damn game.
THANK YOU FOR THIS!! It pains me how much this trilogy's underlying themes and overarching story are glossed over by impatient players. I have a degree in film studies, so I tend to over-analyze narratives and pay close attention to even the most microscopic details of media that intrigues me. It's been frustrating trying to find analyses that actually pay attention to the story in WoA, so this was really refreshing to hear. I especially enjoyed how you went into detail about the actual commentaries of the trilogy, which isn't something I've heard people talk about. Even though I disagree with your conclusion on the ending, this was still a fascinating watch. Excellent work!
This movie is a masterpiece. I’ve always accepted that in the end, Bruges is very obviously purgatory, and I’m fine with not needing the pedantry of having to look too deep for the meaning. There’s something to not trying to convince yourself that you’re smart enough to get it when the real message is pretty obvious. All that said, my grandfather killed himself on my sister’s 12th birthday. This was only a couple weeks before I left for Basic. I flew down to the city and met my grandma and uncle. They hadn’t gone in his room. He was like my father and I talked to him every night, so they didn’t feel right going in his room. They wanted to let me go in first. He left a note on his bed next to his glasses that said “meth + booze = death… sorry”. We went to the morgue before he was cremated so I could see him one more time. No one else wanted to go in because they didn’t want to see the hole in his head. I flew up to tell my sister the next day. My dad thought I should be the one to tell her. I had just turned 18 two months before, so it was a pretty heavy burden, but I understood why I had to be the one to carry it. Unfortunately, that was only one of about a dozen or so suicides in my inner circle throughout my ~30 years (uncle Ricky killed himself in his hot tub, buddy Matt shot himself before senior year started, etc.) With all that in mind, I view Bruges as Ray’s head. Ken is trying to get him to appreciate “the past” (all historical sights) as a tremendous stack of accomplishments which should be revered. Ray views “the past” as a bunch of stuff not worth considering. He doesn’t want to DEAL with the past at all because, much like the art we see, the past is very often horrifying. By the final scenes, Ray cannot help but accept that the past will deal with him, willingly or not. It is only at this point that he is truly confronted by his past as he confronts his worst fear: Harry shoots him, which represents Ray coming face to face with his past and realizing that he in fact cannot deal with and overcome it. For this reason, it is my firm belief that Ray does die at the end. His story ended with the little boy and he toiled with the decision to confront the past and lose, or run as long as possible, but still inevitably lose. This is what Chloe represents; the fleeting hope (someone…. nice, who he knows won’t actually be with him, which he says explicitly) that’s he actually could overcome, though he doesn’t believe it. The last thing of substance he sees is that hope fading away before he meets his fate. Suicide, I have come to learn through thorough personal experience, is the acceptance that checkmate has already occurred. One can either accept the loss now, or run until it catches up. Either way, anything but a loss is impossible. Those who go through with it are the ones who refuse to run, ironically enough. If you are feeling such a way, consider two things: has there ever been anything in your left that you haven’t yet overcome? You’re still here, so by definition, no. Secondly, have you ever had a feeling, no matter how deep, that never changed in any way? This one will too. You need only hold on and make it happen rather than falling for the checkmate illusion. Finally, I leave you with this: I thought I was suicidal when I was younger. I took 18 50mg diphenhydramine pills and drank a half a bottle of Nyquil (dextromethorphan). These are both antihistamines, so the dose was fatal at least twice over. After about 20 minutes, I realized that I was just weak and feeling sorry for myself. I realized that my life could be more if I only kept myself from giving into that pathetic weakness. Truly think about it: am I just weak? In the vast majority of our cases, the answer is yes, and that’s something you can change.
This is the third time watching this video and it never fails to amaze me every time I watch it and this truly deserves all the praise it has gotten and more love this and I thank you ❤
Never thought about the targets being terrible as being very good for replayability. You are right of course. A mission could be fun as hell but if it is a tragic target a lot of people would not replay it as much
Whenever I hear the words “No one is untouchable” I see the meaning as being this: no one is untouchable, from the most ordinary of people to the most powerful to ever live, invincibility is a myth, death is always there.
Mostly Great until the last 3rd Some Nice Reminder of The Potential Good in Hitman’s Simple Memetics No Need to Be That Doomer Calm Down Hypocrite Hitman Roughly Represent’s a Vaguely Efficient Understanding of The World And The Devs Are Consistently Politically Inept Still No Person Is Untouchable
This game is truly special. Having spent the better part of the last two decades attempting to understand the precise nature of systemic power hierarchies within and outside capitalism, I was just so enamored with just how accurately (if not a little simply) these systems of power are represented in the Hitman games. All while making room to poke fun at the conspiracy theorists and over-dramatized imaginings of how the elites likely conduct their lives. To find a piece of fiction that managed to establish believable villains and provide me the means to exact my own brand of hilarious vengeance on them has been nothing short of cathartic. I hope that more people take the story presented here seriously. And I especially hope that people can come to some kind of agreement on what the actual problems of the world are and how we can solve them. My parents are Qanon, full blown conspiracy theorists who believe Tom Hanks is a literal satanic lizard person who eats babies. I've argued with them for years. But I asked my dad recently "Were you handed a gun by Donald Trump himself, and told to kill the evil people responsible for all the ill in the world, where would you aim the gun?" He didn't have an answer... And I think that was the most honest response I'd seen from him in a very long time.
Currently playing through Hitman 2016. Yea I get that the people you go after have to be completely insufferable to make the assassinations more palatable and fun but why do games have to get so political? Once I saw the black and red flags and the kid who copy and pasted his speech from a Bernie Sanders introduction speech from 2016 in the middle east mission, it's so disappointing to see. Who benefits from this particular narrative? The plot line is pure propaganda and it's incredibly annoying.
because all art is political. It comes with being made by humans who live in political systems. and the workers at IO clearly do not like the rich or the excesses of capitalism. If you want a game that openly supports the status quo, starfield is waiting with open arms for you.
If you hear a video essayist launch into an "Everything is political" tirade, get ready for some commie gobbledygook. While all art might be political to some extent, when someone says "everything is political" in this context it either means "here's why this game I like totally endorses endorses the politics I believe in" or "here's why this game I dislike is deeply problematic and pays lip service to such and such evil ideology"
The entire time I was watching Oceans Eight, I kept thinking that the script must have just told Cate Blanchett, “be Brad Pitt.” I don’t blame her at all. It just felt like that was the only goal for her character. Play the character people like just be a woman while doing it. And that summarized, to me, the entire design goal of the movie. With that cast it could have been great and there’s nothing stopping an Oceans film from working with an all female crew. It’s a shame that it didn’t work, for whatever reason.
This has nothing to do with the video but i just want to tell anyone who has not played these games to try to find your own ways to eliminates your target the first time. My friend his first time just clicked on a mission story and did what it said exploring and finding your own way feels much better.
I will stop a moment and criticize the unnecessary use of Capitalism as an dehumanizing and corrupt medium. Sorry. Capitalism is only the most successful societal organization that produces prosperity. There will always be corrupt people, for that's a choice for each individual to follow, be it in capitalism, socialism, communism, fascism, and any and every other system that has ever been imagined. As for the analysis on Power, that's always that will always be present. As a social animal, Human are bound to adhere to hierarchies, parents will always be heads of the family over their children, Officers are appointed law enforcers over civilians, governments are forged to deem the directions to their citizens, and money of course, is a facilitator to this sort of hierarchy yet not the only facilitator. Favor, blackmail, and family ties also play part on this mechanic, yet one will have to agree that those are no way near the freedom that money provides. Money is so free that it will provide all of the privileges to everyone and anyone who owns it, be it corrupt or not, be it talented or nor, be it smart or not, be it moral or not. And it is in the way it is used by the individual who uses it the real point that must be criticized.
The difference between Avater and Dances With Wolves in terms of how their anti-imperialist message manifests is DWW is set in the real life past, meaning we know how it ends. Kevin Costner goes to the frontier and makes friends with the Native Americans to show them not all white people are bad but is sad that he knows they will all lose. The film literally believes in manifest destiny! Avatar is set in the future, which means it's up in the air how this event shakes out. It asks the viewer "If you're placed in the situation where you're a colonizer interacting with Indigenous people during a genocide, what should you do?" And James Cameron's answer is resoundingly "Well sooner or later you're gonna have to pick up a gun if you really believe it's the right thing to do". Man lived through the Vietnam War and decided next time we should be the good guys and join the Viet Cong. Respect
Cameron copied 3 Hayao Miyazaki movies for Avatar. He copied certain plot points and aesthetics settings from Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. He also copied the floating forest setting from Castle in the Sky.
Very good video. I'm glad to see others giving this story some love, because it's a lot more well written than many people give it credit for. I really started appreciating it more after replaying the game for a second time and playing through each level much more quickly than I did the first time, so it felt more coherent.
I haven't confirmed it but it appears than in Whittleton Creek there is a totally random npc selling muffins, and if you follow her you can discover she actually sells human meat muffins. It's details like this which makes the world of Hitman so alive, so worth taking down the "people no one can touch" while you learn more about lives of NPCs totally unrelated to the story itself.
A great analysis on hitman. I agree on almost everything except one (and this is very minor so dont really mind it) i disagree about the cartoonishly evil targets. While some are indeed, cartoonishly evil. Some may not. As for today the Palestine occupation still happening, the WEF decision of "you own nothing and be happy" the epstein list, and, well. Many more that i cant mention. Those things i mentioned are cartoonishly evil and they are real
A lot of what this guy says is blatantly wrong. For example the disguises being about how bad capitalism is 😂 like dude doesn't go to plenty of socialist and communist countries and disguises himself all the same. This is what happens when everything needs a deeper meaning than what it actually is. He tells half truths so that you'll believe the lies just like MSM. Stop using my favorite assassin for clicks u dgaf about facts
A small but somewhat impactful addition: while Hitman has stealth elements, it is largely a _puzzle-solving_ game. The puzzles aren't easy to see as puzzles, but they absolutely aren't your typical stealth mission fodder, either. Like you said, Hitman is blunt, and while he can dress up easily very little of what he can do has to be stealthy. Looking at your analysis from this perspective, it shifts the whole idea of "what do we need to do to defeat this broken system". It is absolutely a power fantasy, but it is also ostensibly a school-playground, where students go to learn to analyze, deconstruct, and navigate these same massive, complex, and unique scenarios out in the wide world. You begin to get the idea that the devs are saying "we feel this pain, so we made a tool others can use. Practice, learn, and use."
31:44 Oh god not this again... "all art is political" is such a dumb statement used by pretentious people who look for deep political meanings in everything they see. You can dress it up as "author's politics always affect their work so all art is political!", but it is still a foolish statement... what is the deep political meaning of Mona Lisa then? Or to use something more basic what is the political meaning of 18+ erotic fanart on sites like DeviantArt? What is the deep political meaning of a picture of an anime girl eating a hamburger? That last example I bring up because I saw one pretentious guy unironically try to desperately find a political meaning in it, and every normal person knew he was a complete clown for it. And the fact you bring up POLYGON(One of worst media outlets pretending to be about gaming), and Philosophy Tube(A breadtuber, so an obnoxious far-left activist who is all about propagandizing their ideology and finding everything that goes against it or doesn't spread it "problematic") really drives home how idiotic that point it... Some things are political, sure. But to say "everything" is political requires a particularly deranged state of mind.
I do think it’s worth pointing out another notable, if slightly less obvious, way Hitman stops being a tool in Chongqing. I always thought the scene in the core room felt off because it was broken up by interaction prompts for searching for 47 and Diana’s files, deleting the files and then exposing the ICA when it easily could’ve just been one long cutscene without any player input. After watching this video though it just struck me that it might’ve been another way to signify 47’s growth. You as the player are given those prompts, you’re the one that clicks Y or triangle or whatever but 47 is the one making the decision there to go through with this. That’s HIS agency there, not the player’s. You can’t decide to pull away or change your mind, because 47 already made that decision and at this point it’s a done deal.
As sad as it was to have Lucas Grey die as soon as he did, he represented the path 47 had to avoid going down on. Lucas's whole identity was going against the partners and Providence and he had no purpose in life outside of that. His death is almost a blessing in disguise, I mean could the man really have lived his days out in peace now that he got his revenge? His single minded pursuit of one goal is not unlike 47's life of being controlled by people around him. And it's that single minded pursuit that leads to his end, probably because he realized he'd have nothing if he lived to see himself win. 47 has to become more independent, or he could easily end up like Grey. A husk with a singular purpose who gets disposed of.
If 47 and Lucius Grey's backstory was actually properly depicted in-game instead of sequestered on a comic book, then both of their motivations and by extension the plot would be much more clrar
Isabel definitely wasn’t short changed. They made her more than just the woman Rusty’s in love with. She’s tough, she’s smart, she’s a bit ruthless especially towards rusty like she was waiting to make him suffer
31:00 I disagree with the conclusion of saying all art is political, because it starts with the assumption that nothing transcends the political and therefore all ideologies are political ideologies. It’s awfully reductionist.
Stopped listening once you got into the climate change, class warfare nonsense. Forcing people to be luddites in a modern globalist feudal technocratic system that won't even let people light cow patties on fire when even Medieval Feudal lords weren't that control freaky to decrease global temperatures by 0.00000000001 percent is not a solution to some fictional global apocalypse. Barring arabs getting their hands on nuclear weapons, we're nowhere near a catastrophe that would literally lead to extinction. China and India alone have more than enough people and people used to hardships to ensure that doesn't happen.
