That feeling of being denied the emotional gratification of a good vs evil story, makes for a poor story, but its such an accurate depiction of reality. Reality isn't gratifying, reality is having a meeting with your manager about your progress on meeting KPIs that he knows, you know, he knows that neither of you give a damn about, but he has to do this because it's his job and you have to play along because it's your job, and the whole thing is such a pointless waste of time.
That would be so interesting... Like you keep in touch and continue to talk to each other, but later you start noticing that things are off... She starts to "forget" things and slowly but surely starts to tell you corporate propaganda...
@@s.p.clague2616 Imagine they fucked with the clone somehow so that she was forced to weed out the other union members. You work so hard, she dissappears without warning, comes back like everything is fine, and you find out in the end that the company got to her
That doesn’t make any sense, since one of the points of killing her would to be scare the rest into line, and if no one thinks she’s dead that fear never exists.
"Sure, but I did last time... and the time before that... and before that... You realize you're on 17 different medications, all of which 'help' you by making it easier to forgot reality? Did you even notice that I'm floating and have 8 arms ands you're wearing a VR headset? My God, you've been removing that thing at night, right? Oh no, that headset has started to fuse with your flesh?!?! I can see the tell tale subdermal tendrils tracing down your neck... one moment. (Doc speaking into wristwatch with his weird,slippery fish lips): "We need neural excavating worms in room 3b, Stat. Possibly arthropod-level retractors, the uh, the big boys..... yeah, I know, they freak me out too." Ugh, DOCTORS, am I right?
I think that the best way to handle Lou's disappearance was to keep the whole campy "I'm fine" call, but have her mention something totally inocuous like "I'm just having a few drinks with my dad" but have her mention in a previous, totally insignificant conversation that she can't stand alcohol. Something as simple as that, and it shows that not only did Lynx kill her, they are trying to cover it up and fake her continued presence with an artificial voice.
Hearing you say "Just turn off their oxygen" made me think of a really cool idea. After you start striking, LYNX cuts the life support to the habitations of any and all shipbreakers suspected of helping you. Only you, having returned still wearing your suit, and a couple other fast thinkers survive. Now you have to wander about this hostile labyrinthian station that you have to disassemble room by room to b-line to some cache of supplies or objective that'll help you live longer or help you escape. The final gameplay section would probably be sabotaging the stations main reactor to turn off some security measure to get to your space jalopy, or taking all your shipbreaking knowlege to deliberately fuck up a massive cutting edge military ship docked at the station beyond belief and pin its destruction on LYNX. Completely out of scope of the games concept, but man it would be cool.
its would "more-grounded" ending than just friendship ending. you will survived to tell the tale of how a lynx just killed off an massive crew of shipbreaker and on the after credit your sitting on a bar then saw lynx a commercial about new opening for shipbreaker. no one in that room can tell the reason but only you. grim and dark, yes but ground in real world, yes.
I think it would be cool if one of the missions involved union busting enemies trying to kill you while you're still on your shift, that you have to defeat by chucking spare ship parts at them: managing the time between finishing the actual shipbreaking and not getting turned into an incident report.
That would be so good! The game has been teaching you how to use and abuse both your tools and the mechanics of the game, and being able to unleash that experience such as pulling doors, throwing explosives and changing room pressure in order to navigate a station that is being controlled against you, sounds like a perfect ending both thematically and mechanically. So, what happens after you take the station? Is it independent? is this a large enough bargaining chip to establish the union? The way options and tensions automatically come to mind shows how good it is. Anyway, excellent idea.
I could see something similar. Towards the end LYNX would only give you oxygen if you complete certain salvage milestones rather than just add to debt.
Fun fact: 1920s Union breakers used to paint their brass knuckles red, so you couldn't see that they were wearing them since they would blend in with bloody knuckles.
@@sonny0jim there is literally no source on-line, just an old brass and iron knuckles expert I've talked to online about old weapons, he hand makes knuckles for EDC and just knows a lotta side knowledge about the history of old personal defense weapons. His name's Billy Trident if you wanna try I find him.
@@buzasandras123 you should read more about the robber barons and early industrialists. They literally stoled people's land and killed them just to build train tracks and pump oil. Cyberpunk capitalist dystopia is only fun in games. Just like any extreme is a net negative. I'd highly recommend reading the book how Nations fail if you actually want information.
Here i sit 5minutes thinking wether I should write "daddy cobbler" at the end of my comment, wether that short fun is worth my *tEgRiTy* (farms (no not farms keep to the topic God damnit)) then I see yours and I am inspired. Thx random RU-vid commenter
@@notalanrogers3173 you already lowered yourself when you deigned to reply to a RU-vid comment. You're an adult watching RU-vid videos about video games like the rest of us. I know you feel a need to be better than other people, but be less obvious less time. Now that I've been pretentious and cripplingly self aware, I'll shut up.
While playing I was thinking, what is stopping the company from making unlimed clones of me, each having their own station, each thinking they are the only one and chipping away their own debt? Or something as dystopian. This really is a good game to chill and play while listening to music
Oh, that is actually interesting. They clone you like 9 times to have 10 of you, working down the same debt as each clone and the player work tirelessly to become free. At the end, the debt has been payed 10 times by the player and their clones, and as a result the company kills of 9 of them to ensure that this never gets out.
Cobbler nailed my exact thoughts and disappointment with Lou's disappearance when I played the game. Of all the ways that could've gone, her just turning up being 'fine, I'm fine' should not have been it. She was DISSAPEARED by the company that both practically and legally owned her, her right to life, her right to *die* - imagine being a prisoner of a faceless group of profit-obsessed monsters with reason in their mind to punish you and total power over whether you even get to *die*. That should have absolutely been the point where the tone of the story shifted. Hell, even if it was as simple as we never hear from her or find out what happens that would have been perfect for the setting. The devs were too insistent on keeping the tone light imo. Its like if Papers Please tried to deliver its anti authoritarian message but all the people you were signing off on were just visiting Arstozka on holiday rather than as people trying to reach their family or start a new life. The feeling that none of the workers are actually at risk in any way completely defangs the message. If companies in the real world dealt with union leaders by sending them back to the farm for a little while to cool off we'd live in a socialist utopia by now.
They had alot of sinister options for Lou's end aswell. Change the message to an obviously fake one or one done under duress encouraging the others to not strike. They could have leaned into the whole existential horror of the clone aspect also. Have a new Lou show up thinking its her first day again, showing the company just killed the previous one and then cloned her with an earlier version of her memories so that she can continue making them money.
@Fisher Price That would make dying and being cloned a different kind of a hazard to player character. Imagine your character dying in game and not knowing why there's a ship build from "salvaged" components. Imagine that your character has to relearn about the situation it's in...
@@PobortzaPl Instead of the media saving the players they just delete their memories, new game is just playing as the new clone generation with deleted memories
@Dani O'Toole dear gods, the cycle never ends, the wheel just crushes new generation of clones... Hard hitting story but I'm not sure if it would be a good game.
its very clear they changed their minds around halfway through the story to try and make it hopeful and positive and 'we can fix it through unionisation' and I think it really ruins the excellent atmosphere of the first half. They dehumanize the manager even further in the second half and I think both of these things weaken the impact of the story. Unionisation is important, but it's not a catchall and it can't magically fix something as broken as this system. The manager is an asshole but he's an asshole cause he's protecting himself the only way he knows how, they weaver even directly tells you that, and yet in the final arc of the game he just turns into an insane psychopath to make the plot happen. There's loads of potential here and they blew it by pulling punches and forcing a happy ending in a bleak setting. Also un-killing a character seconds after they die is just peak bad writing, pisses me off every time. Still love this game though, 10/10 and fully endorse it's message even if I think they dropped the ball halfway.
Great alternative ending for the game. Union is formed. Lynx turns off everyone's immortality because of union objections to not letting employees die. A series of "accidents" occur while Lynx claims it's because they had to cut back on safety regulations due to reduced profits and 90% of the union is killed outright. Including the player. 30 years later Lynx revives you to continue salvaging ships, with no sign that the Union ever existed, and no evidence you ever did any work to pay off your debt, which has increased due to compound interest. You continue the game in new game +, History repeating itself, ad infinitum.
A game that does the "evil corporation" thing really well is the Wild Pines shipping company in Disco Elysium. They even send in actual mercenaries to break up a strike. And the main representative of the company is one of the nicest most helpful people you meet, but even she isn't able to change anything in a meaningful way.
For real!!! During the video I just kept thinking. Well... in Disco Elysium they just send trained killers to stop the strike. I feel that it is possible that armed resistance against workers appears that game and not on Shipbreaker bc people from the imperial core didn't have to witness it during their lifetimes, unlike the Eastern Europeans devs that made Disco Elysium.
If they'd something as daring as giving us The Battle of Blair Mountain *IN SPACE* then I'd be singing the praises of the game, even if it comes down on the 'commie' side of socio-politics. Instead, we get this limp-wristed garbage that refuses to actually commit to its story, written by cowards who're happy to point out problems, but then not even propose solutions. For goodness sake, I AGREE about the problems, so be daring! Be bold! Offer a solution that I can agree or disagree with, not this safe, middle-of-the-road garbage that goes no-where because, guess what, you're another corporate asshole who doesn't want to alienate potential consumers! The writers and developers of this game are part of the very problem that they are criticising.
@@Spaceman-15 It's neat and simultaneously appalling that the moment you stepped into the situation- -The Major already decided you had to die too. Because no matter what points you bring, or if he concedes a single thing, the fact of the matter is he's doing this because he wants to. You cannot choose peace. You cannot reason with someone that does not want to be reasoned with. It's an uncomfortable truth.
One thing that kind of weirded me out was the lack of company surveillance. They despise unions and have the technology to make a perfect clone of you with memory and all, but they don't have the ability or interest to spy on their workers' coms or computers? It's already possible right now. They should have a whole database of every bit of communication between the workers with a system that looks for keywords, or something like that
Or even as you're stealing items from the ships, small items could easily be smuggled out, but to smuggle out a live reactor without the collection cameras seeing, well you may need to get creative with your ship breaking movements and shield the line of sight with some larger items. Maybe don't even let the player know to begin with that they're being watched at first. Just send an easy to skip email about on site theft not being allowed.
The email system that the workers were using to start unionizing was a illegal set-up specifically to avoid being caught by LynxCorp upper management. The unionization email getting leaked and Lou being fired for attempting to organize by shitty middle management is what elicits the sabotage of ships and the whole "turn off their oxygen" incidents.
I work at a retail location. There is a union, I was told by an employee that I would receive an email that sends me to a survey that will be used to improve working conditions based on what the workers say is needed. I never received that email. It was never mentioned again. No one was fired, nothing good or bad happened. And that felt worse because management didn't even think the union is worth putting effort into controlling because of how weak it is.
reminds me of the starbucks strikes. the workers demanded double pay, less hours, complete medical benefits, the whole shebang. starbucks just fired them and hired new people
The baffling thing is that the game stops you in-between missions to force the story down your throat when it should just let the story play out while you play.
Honestlly, you can enjoy this game without the story lol. I didn't really pay attention until right at the end when suddennly i had to blow up a ship lol
Space Pikertons with railguns does sound like game of the year material. Specially if they are involved in something like a Battle of Blair Belt were they fight on an asteroid field and the UN or whatever space government brings a star destroyer to "calm down" the workers.
I'm the kind of person to declare, "Better dead than red," and even I think the Battle of Blair Belt, seizing control of the breaker yards and sparking a full-on worker's revolt against the corporation and the corrupt government would be based as hell.
@@Ma_Zhongying I don't believe in unions and workers kicking up a stink and rioting over every little thing, but when the corporation or government is so clearly abusing the common workers and citizens for the sake of the few at the top, then yes, you don't just have a right to revolt, you have a DUTY to do so!
An idea that popped into my mind while watching this was, that the more you and collegues work to unionize against the company, the more the company would switch out equipment. Little hints for you to quit your game. Say, first they switch out the oxygen tank, have them have "better dexterity", the reason being that the old ones seemed to explode randomly out of some reason but in exchange they lose more oxygen, so the player has to pay the company more for more oxygen.
the story is so sad in citizen sleeper, there is no hope for you to ever get your realbody and you arent even the real you, because technically the real you sold off his mind to get some money i think? so he doesnt actually suffer, but you do which is evil but its also somewhat your fault? also since you escape and the corp may never find you, your real you is gonna be frozen up for eternity.
@@KikogamerJ2 sorta like soma, just other way around. Where a copy of you is made, one living an inescapable nightmare, another living in paradise, neither having actually earnt their place.
It's like a story was unfolding in a certain, potentially revolutionary direction before the writing team's intentions were found out by the producers who then demanded they reign it in to be more friendly to the status-quo and completely castrate the narrative in the process. I call it the "Warner Bros The Batman" effect.
I swear, part-way through the story, I was ready to launch rebar through that middle-manager's face or yeet an unstable reactor at their precious FTL-projector thing, REALLY put the hurt on the company and tell them and theirs that Cargonia just declared independence... And then... Nothing. Nothing at all. It's so typical of this pathetic, wishy-washy attempt at being edgy and critiquing modern wage-slavery and how we're slowly devolving back into 1900s company towns, etc. The developers, clearly on the left side of the modern progressivism/conservatism scale, talk a good game but bring NOTHING actually powerful or subversive to the conversation. I might despise people chanting about owning the means of production or collectivizing ownership, but at least they STAND for something, rather than just whining and stroking themselves off about being "On the right side of history." It's contemptable.
You think that producers might've had a saying in the matter, but really? I just think that whoever wrote this wasn't really all that good at the job. With how over the top and cartoonish some of the beats in the story were, I'm thinking that's more than the case. Unless you think it's a psy-op to make the unionisation look worse... Please, don't tell me you actually think that. The thing is, before they started cramming the story the way they did, they used to do it actually better. In the days of Early Access, aside from Weaver, you had nobody to talk to. Just you and him. It was clear that Lynx screwed him over, but we weren't exactly aware of the full scale. It was also a juxtoposition - we really had the benefit of improvements for the cutters. However, majority of the "story" you learned were through audiologs and such you found on the ships you were salvaging. There, it was revealed more about the Lynx, how they were screwing people over, as well as state of the world affairs. A lot of people share the sentiment, hell, Steam forums are practically filled with it. I don't know what happened, really. Maybe a freshman joined the writing team, seized the reins and made his manifesto? It honestly feels that way.
I have a sneaking suspicion this is what happened to Borderlands 3. It felt like the game writers were planning on wrapping the trilogy up with some big race against the Megacorporations to find the vaults. Instead, the main antagonists were the bandits, a group of people stated in lore to be former prisoners-turned-slaves by said corps. And one of your main allies ends ip being the CEO of Atlas who runs a planet sized company town. Turns out the language of revolution makes for a very profitable product.
You know my thoughts to this game. What if, instead of voice logs they just have chat rooms full of basic named people Joey, Jeremy ect. But as you begin to organize a union in the chat room you have to actually fly to a separate work rig and you find Joey who is actually just a clone of you. As you do this you find the whole work force is just clones of you. Also everything you die, you increase the debt but you change names thinking you got a new person assigned. As wel
Another great sci-fi story of the first type with existential dread is Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers, from which the Stalker film by Tarkovsky and the videogames of the same name took inspiration. Basically, in that novel we are the equivalent of cockroaches, scavenging alien trash that we barely understand.
One of my favorite tidbits from roadside picnic is that there are multiple “Zones” that all have very different effects on reality. Like one in Eurasia makes plants grow faster then normal, and anything that was made by industrial means will rapidly decay and break down over a few days
If you like existential dread then boy howdy do I have a book series for you: The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu. It explores the possibilty that Humans are not alone in the universe, the human condition, the future of humanity, and the possible damnnation of extraterrestrial contact.
@@channingtaintum that trilogy is so good, definitely messed with my head lol. I need to watch the Chinese tv series they recently made finally. Also Netflix is adapting it too
@@yourmanjimbo second thumbs up for the Three Body Problem. It isn't my flavor of ice cream but it IS very very good. I would consider it to be significantly more optimistic than I Have No Mouth Yet I Must Scream.
i think the implication with the union ringleader being "fine" is that this company, which is capable of cloning you indefinitely, is also capable of modifying both your clone's memories and emotions. She says she's fine because they killed her and changed her clone to not care about unions anymore, keeping her alive exclusively to take the wind out of the sails of the workers who wanted to join the union. If they just killed her, she'd be a martyr. If they change her, she's a reminder.
And it would have been really cool to work that out, find a small bomb in your suit or something, have to use your shipbreaking skills to bypass life support to keep your pod and others running, then start sabotaging company property, escalating all the way up to firing lengths of aluminum girders through company ships, security and 'security contractors' (mercs) and slinging nuclear reactors at their precious FTL launcher. Declare the Independent Station State of Cargonia and fight the Battle of Blair Mountain *IN SPACE!* But no... The developers and writers are the kind of limp-wristed progressives who love to point out a problem and pat themselves on the back for being, "On the right side of history," without ever proposing a solution or taking any kind of risk, because the chance they'll alienate consumers is just too much of a risk for them. I despise commies, but I have nothing but contempt for those who refuse to even stand for _that_ much.
My god. It was the biting and sarcastic commentary on real issues that no one seemed to want to talk about that hooked me on your channel. But you have shown an insight in SEEING these issues that is amazing. We have college professors that don't tackle philosophy with such a passion and desire to understand and explain the human condition. You have my support for every video, and every sweat-shop plushie, you produce, but I truly hope you someday get the recognition you really deserve. Thank you for all you do Cobbler!
I had just a fundamentally different experience with the debt; I paid off all the money I owed before my industrial action. But I do like the idea of making the player character pay a deposit on the ships they salvage.
@@MrDj232 It basically says "congrats on the first STEP of your repayment but we had some 'accounting errors', so you'll get more debt soon, just wait!"
@@BullofCrete That is disappointing. Overcoming an unfair work environment to succeed really should be more impactful than a dev note that says "Congrats on doing things the hard way. We'll just have to make it more unfair so you see the parts of the game we want you to see."
@@jessh4016 I dunno, the idea of paying off this impossible debt, which I imagine took many in-game years, and then returning home only to find everyone you know has died of old age is pretty cool to me. Imagine outliving your own daughter because of the cloning?
Cobbler is such a brainfuck for me. I love his videos and there themes. They make me laugh and sad at the same time. Hopefull and doomer. Keep doing what you're doing brother. If we don't laugh and try to have fun we will cry
The friendly manager isn't inherently unrealistic, but he should have been axed the moment he broke company policy to help you. Also, he should have been the one who called you to say he got sent home to Dad. Meanwhile, your other coworker never contacts you again.
Go full Bah Sing Sai, he breaks company policy to help you and he gets replaced, and the guy who replaces him acts like nothing has changed, and you may find out later the reason is more of a joke for his management, they think it's funny so if he lets on at any point that he's not the other guy, despite you knowing, he'll be killed, painfully, repeatedly, and then revived and demoted. That way the game can really hammer home the idea that yeah your manager is a dick and you don't like him but he's still fucked even if it's not as hard as you. It's like, you getting sodomized forcefully by a brook stick is worse then your manager getting forcefully sodomized by rubber horse cock but that doesn't mean whats happening to the manager is in any way fun for him.
agreed, seeing that your manager isn't even alowed to make your job easier or is in just a crap situation at the hand of the company as you would do wonders for the story
(Spoiler warning) After this video I checked out “Slaughterhouse 5” from my schools library, (tldr I really genuinely enjoyed it get it as soon as you can), it was such a joy to read that I did what I did with Frankenstein ,read it every time I could and read it in 3 days. It’s such a wonderful book about trauma, war, life, and time itself it really had me think what point in time do I always go back to that holds me back from personal growth, but the explanation of the trapfamadorians after giving Billy the knowledge of how the universe ends, and Billy asking why they allow it with them answering, “He has ALWAYS pressed it, and he always WILL. We ALWAYS let him and we always WILL let him. The moment was STRUCTURED that way”, that response brung me comfort in a way we’re bad things happen and I’m in a way powerless to stop it. Even tho I’m powerless to stop it I’m not powerless on how I think of it in a future moment I don’t want to be constantly coming back to that moment in a sense of dread and helplessness like Billy pilgrim. I also have the choice to how to think of it as life passes on, to think of it as a puzzle piece to my ever expanding life. Enough with the philosophical stuff now characters, cause I read this book as a cluster of characters in different times, even though Vonnegut made sure I knew exactly what happened to each character wether they will die takes care of billy or whatever. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get connected Edgar derby a perfect example everytime Vonnegut said a sentence about the man he always came in, or followed up with a “poor old” noting he’s going to die just wait I still felt after he got shot but what I felt was a matter of injustice and grief even tho I knew he was gonna die I didn’t see the reason why, since in the middle of all this destruction and murder after the bombing he gets killed over a teapot. I enjoyed that character and I find it hard coming to terms with the way he died but I knew and I kept reading so it goes. The death of Billy’s wife, that dog that got mutilated by Lorenzo (that scared the hell out of me it came outta nowhere), it’s all written in a way to know there going to die and force your morals of injustice to weigh in, and then coming to terms with the fact bad things happen and there as easy to stop as glaciers. “even if wars didn't keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.” There’s my book report on slaughterhouse 5 hurry up and read it already I’ll be back for the rocket by ray bradbury
I wonder if cobbler has tried Citizen Sleeper? It doesn’t have the most exciting gameplay loop but to me the story is unmatched and really captures the themes and ideas I think you were wishing this game had.
Big spoilers ahead for Citizen Sleeper. If you read this before playing the game it probably won't be worth it anymore. This game has so much potential but it has the same problem that shipbreaker has, it's environment is harmless. At first, if you play decent enough to keep yourself from the supposed "failure states", it's really compelling, struggling to survive in an unknown and dangerous place, unsure if to trust the next pj you find, scared of entering cyberspace because of the shadows you see there sometimes. By mid/end you start noticing that getting money/food/medicine is not hard at all and if you lose condition until reaching zero...you won't die, nothing will happen. You also realize that everyone is a good person but the corpo evil guy that tries to sell the station because he is bad, no depth at all. The evil bounty hunter turning to be a pathetic guy who becomes friendly would be a good plot twist if the world was mostly hostile people. Okay so let's explore the gangs of the game, see from ourselfs all the dirt they surely have. Nah, they are also the good guys, just protecting the citizens. No drug deals, no violence, no depth. There is one pj who ends up killing one you were trying to protect and this kicks hard, ofc it's not a bad pj, it was all a misunderstanding but you still feel guilt for bringing her here and hate her for her stupidity. I whish more storylines in this game were like this. So for the most part you are gonna have to imagine by yourself the bad outcomes but if you do is the best storytelling I have seen in a long time. In the end game you have to find your place in the world, you explore all the pj and slowly choose what you gonna do. I was pretty invested in a little girl and his father. He wants to get into a colonizing ship destined to a new world, away from the shitty living conditions of the station, fresh air, and horizon. I need a special medicine regularly to keep myself from dying but I hope that by the end of the game I have found a solution. For the time being I need tickets for the trip. I end up getting three smuggled ones for the three of us in exchange for giving info of the trip to the station. The guy wants to keep an eye on the corpo that own the ship. Fair enough. The time has come and we have to get the ship. While in line I keep thinking about my other me, the one made of meat and bone, I wanted to know them. I don't have a solution either for the lack of medicine, I have a few pills but the trip is long. I won't make it to the planet. The kid and her father will watch me deteriorate and die without being able to do anything. I can't do this to them, to myself. I wait till they cross into the ship and I run away, not before seeing the betrayal in the kid's eyes. The pieces for a good story are there, but the game assumes everything will be fine. The guy who gave you the tickets is fine with your decision even if he threatened before against betraying him.
honestly when I was playing the game I failed to consider how horrible corporations are and what theyve done during the gilded age. I just accepted that as the worst they could do to Lou on the basis that nothing else was legal, despite the fact that the whole goddamned game is a human rights violation
I get the feeling Cobbler would enjoy Deadeye Deepfake Simulator; it uses the same premise as Shipbreaker where you start out in debt, and the company you owe money to will just keep printing new yous at an exorbidant cost. Only, it uses the debt in the plot (or at least, in some of the routes) and initially it does seem feasible to pay off: you're a million in debt, but immediately after the first mission you get access to a replayable mission that pays out $100k. He'd also love/hate the UwU writing, and since he's a vidya video essayist he's required by law to fellate anything imsim
I watched the first 3 seasons before reading the books and I really liked the show until I read the books. In the first 10 minutes of the first episode they just fuck up one of the major plot threads that ties the whole series together, one of like the core messages and themes present through out the story, all for the sake of adding some additional and quite frankly unnecessary drama. Throughout the first season while I had been enjoying the show some of the character decisions and motivations just really didn't make any sense to me and it all comes back to what they changed in the first episode. I tried to go back and re-watch the show and I couldn't get past the second episode it frustrated me so much.
Jokes aside i think cobblers voice acting is very good. He knows where to use what kind of voice and how to finish the delivery with it, genuenly good job Mr.Cobbler thank you for making great content!
I love that you mentioned the Pinkertons I grew up in that area of the rebellion without knowing it's history but learning it later in life and being proud but sad by what we had to go through to get the bare minimum.
It sounds like they had a set up for a really dark story and then chickened out. Decided at the last minute they didn't want to get THAT dark. Lou's disappearance is the best evidence of them changing their minds. They wrote her disappearing, (and there is likely a rough draft that never explains what happened to her) but decided to give it a happy ending without completely rewriting things. Having the media come to the rescue makes sense to most people because their are stories of companies facing embarrassment when their bad deeds come to light; but the reason you hear those stories isn't because they change things, it is because those are the stories the media covers. Of course without the media we wouldn't hear about what is going on much at all, except for stuff happening nearby or to a friend of a friend of a friend.
For a short period, I had thought that Lynx was just gonna spin up an old version of Lou after killing the current one in a 'freak accident'. Because we the player see the entire process, it's pretty clear that we keep our memories in universe. So what if when tou died they just spun up a version from 6 months ago who doesn't recall the last 6 months of work (And debt paid off) or trying to make a union. How painful would it have been to the other shipbreakers to see the union leader brought back to the early days of thinking about Lynx as an opportunity to better oneself while defending them against the union they started but dont remember.
There is a tiny bit that's easy to overlook. After you escape in your space jalopy, the company just pumps out a new clone of you. A replacement you has to keep working, and the new you doesn't have their own ship to escape in.
The getting sent home to your parents as a punishment might just be a 1:1 version of the real life punishment the game devs went through if they got fired from a job.
I propose a third type of Sci-fi, one which is neither fatalistic nor campy. It simply explores the ideas and technologies of Sci-fi without being depressing to read. This sci-fi is my favorite and I think it may be more common than you think, Cobbler.
It's funny, there really are kind of three. Cobbler absolutely nailed two of them, I think you've solidly pointed out a third. But the reality is that often, you can't sell to publishers the kind you mentioned. So all of these 3ed kind and up at least aping the two Cobbler points out to get published.
Thank you, I really did miss the philosophical game reviews... From beginning to end, this was a great video to watch, a true masterpiece. Thanks for making it.
It's almost like all these stories that try to engage with the theme of human hardship and fail were written by people that never really experienced human hardship or something.
@@acceptablecasualty5319 I disagree. There are literal writing courses. They can just read/consume quality human hardship stories, and learn what about them is interesting. It's like saying a heart surgeon isn't set up for sucess unless he's had heart surgery himself.
@@acceptablecasualty5319 well but human hardship is a thing everyone experiences. Even the most privileged person has had moments of sadness and disappointment (even if it's with stuff most of us would roll our eyes at, it's still felt by them the same way). So I would argue that everyone has "taken a few appendices", just not on the same scale. Just to clear things up: I think anybody could write a decent story on human hardship if they study up on the subject, specially since writers are usually working in teams. Maybe not a masterpiece, but a decent work. And I would argue, one better than Shipbreakers'
kai not dying was another thing that let me down a lot. yes the malfunctioning mic plot point was spread around a lot long before the end, but i felt that them not having the guts to kill characters off like that ruined the moment where Hal seems to panic and regret disabling his thrusters and deleting the genetic backups. The malfunctioning mic plot point infact probably made me think about his death more than if it didnt exist, because i was thinking a lot about if it was that or if he was actually dead, but the fact that he was actually alive and that everyone was fine, there was no cost in rebelling and everything worked out in the end with no consequences for the workers at all (like with lou being fine) ruined the story for me. ive seen other people mention how good for the story it would have been if her clone was messed with in some way to reveal the rest of the union, or an ai synthesizing her voice and sending messages to people that knew her to try and quell some rebellion would have made the story better and ive got to say i agree with this. tldr: loved the gameplay, music, feel of the setting, but the story and lack of consequences for the workers actions in revolting, for example kais "death" and lou's "disappearance" really let down the story enough that im not sure i actually liked the ending.
Honestly? You convinced me to check it out. Warts and all. See if my opinion is different. that's what I love about cobbler vids. I spent years not playing doom. Until I came across the channel and played it. I took an honest look at cyberpunk after your video and enjoyed it for 20ish hours. You have a way of putting meaningful thought, completely opposed to your skitzo rants that makes me actually look at it as an art form and not "durrr, dopamine go up when I hit the pretty button" I don't always agree but I will say not once have I watched a cobbler video and not looked at a game different. Keep doing good shit
Thanks for going in and examining that dissatisfaction I also felt with the story. Goddamn the gameplay is so good though, I find myself coming back to it every so often. I just DO go ahead and put that podcast/audiobook/video essay on
This is a great video essay! I appreciate your take on Sci-Fi literature juxtaposing other forms of futuristic entertainment. Also, maintaining that the philosophical undercurrent within this game is just as important as - if not essential - experiencing a piece of interactive art.
"Well you lift 16 tons what'd you get get? Another day older and deeper in dept... Oh Peter don't call me nooo, cause I owe my soul to the company store."
Cobbler the Almighty should definitely give sleeper citizen a try in his free time, if there is such a thing for him in between these amazing videos he continues to deliver us. Gameplay may not much but the story is neato and also in *space*
@@AlexDenton0451 gay, femboy, former British spook that dunks on lefties and righties alike. Actually kinda based. Plus he’s an alcoholic and that just reminds me of home
Imagine if one of your striking co-workers has an accident and dies on the job. Not a problem, the company can revive them... But then they never revive. "A glitch with the DNA sequencer" the company says. They tell you "it's unfortunate, but it was a freak accident that could happen to anyone... and you should really get back to work."
After spending countless hours explaining to my co-worker who makes minimum wage why him trying to work un-paid overtime for the company is not a good idea I am convinced that anyone who thinks that a multi-million dollar company can be taken down with hashtags has never held down jobs like the ones here they romanticise over.
JFC It's insane that anyone outside of practicing medicine and charity work would ever work unpaid overtime. These corporations thrive on exploiting the IQ people.
I'm usually loose my interest at even the mention of anything political-related - to my real life any modern dialogues around such things seem like something from the fever dream, but you really got me invested with this speech around 18:40. No space horror can come close to existentional dread one can feel after acknowledging how manipulated our society had become, how just a few decades of work can completely substitute meaning of one thing with another, how wraped our perception of world becomes by will of power that be. And i'm glad that i'm not the only one off my medications long enough to comprehend it. Well done, Mr. Cobbler.
@@DJPeachCobbler since you seem very interested in how the working class and the ruling class interact have you ever considered making a video on the gracchi brothers and how ancient Roman society itself saw class and maybe reflect on how it can be seen today
@@abird4170 Definitely gonna happen at some point, but it's an intimidating subject considering how tied in it all is with the fall of the republic and land reform and Sulla and you see the problem.
Imagine if, when you died, instead of making a clone of yourself, they just hire your son/brother/sister/daughter/mother/father to pay off your debt. At a cost, of course.
Its like, a leftist game with a leftist message, but also with corporate approval. It just couldve been such an amazing game if they were willing to take up a more revolutionary story. A more realistic one. A truly leftist game.
I just read Fahrenheit 451 a few days ago… how scaringly good timing to have a Cobbler’s video talking about it’s genre and how good the setting of hardspace shipbreaker is despite it’s story not being so great
Cobbler, you have articulated my cynicism and frustration with the meaningless political movements that are so prevalent in the last 20 years, and I am truly thankful for that, glad to know I'm not the only one watching this train wreck and going insane. great video as usual BTW, will definitely check out the soundtrack..
If the corporation can just keep printing workers, then does it matter if one copy of that worker "escapes"? Just print another one. If that copy leaves, nothing is stopping them from making another slave.
yes but why would you let your property escape? its not about the costs, they can off load those costs back on to the property, its about control, both trying to halt the problem of more of your property attempting to leave, quell possible rebellions a large enough force of your escaped property could create, sure, but most importantly you are better than it. it is your property, or in imperialism, workplaces, and colonial settings, they are the lesser child like races, the disgusting degenerate workers who are too stupid to EVER even understand your thought process, how dare they insult you by demanding something, the idea that they could even make eye contact with you as equals makes your skin crawl. They are lesser. They must be made to listen. Them not listening to you, them finding life outside of the bounds of controle is an insult to your supremacy. So you kill them. So you fugitive slave act. So you make the KKK. SO you line every corner of theirs with police and pump drugs in to finacnce your deathsquads in villages accros your backyard in the south. So ludlow, so pullman, so thousands of other massacres im too stupid to think of. Once you have all the power you are still human, but you cease to see most others as human. their pettiness belies the fact that they are not actually any better than the rest of us, the prayer is that supremacist ideology does not permanently warp the user, that one day we can all deserve the sun
tldr; how do you treat your computer when its not working? what if you were told your whole life that there are people that are equivalent to your computer? how would you treat your property if it told you it was done and wanted to go off and live its own life? Youd proably assume you were just imagining it and learn to tune out the cries of you property
That worker is company property and if they escape then that provides hope to others that they too can escape without consequence. I also assume the resources needed to make a clone are more costly than retrieving an escaped worker.
Fuck yes, that's exactly what's wrong with it. Like. Why the hell doesn't he boss who has admin rights on your gear throw you into the furnace a hundred times and then send you back on shift? Because no one can come up with any sort of answer that isn't just completely losing to the corporation. Or just taking all those ships you've got and doing god-rod strikes on corporate hq with then. Or trashing the entire satellite by rigging all the engines up to it, or a hundred other variants. Because that wouldn't be proper. That would be terrorism. And there's no excuse for that, not even your mortality being signed away on the dotted line. They got so close, but they blinked. Games still good tho.
Another reason he might not throw me in the furnace a hundred times is because I've already willingly done that myself, because there are achievements/collectibles tied to it. In the end, the fact that this is a videogame - with videogamey mechanics and cool videogame stuff to do, which you play of your own free will, at no risk - just ends up completely undercutting the story that's being told. The material can still be relatable if you've worked min-wage-corporate, but you have to meet the game way more than halfway to see it. I wonder if it would have worked better if they had told a more utopian-leaning story instead of a dystopian-leaning one (e.g., where all the nice things you have that make your job possible are there due to union regs, and we can make lore reference to why all the procedures work like they do, and how insane shipbreaking used to be before them). Perhaps it would have worked more with the gameplay, and gotten the message across through a sort of negative-space contrast.
Thank you for introducing me to Ray Bradbury. I just read The Rocket today. I'm now in a thought loop about how 'we' may make techonolocal leaps and bounds but it will leave many of us behind, to dream and to slave away.
@@obitosenju3768 you mean "antisemitic fascist"? Because that definitely doesn't track. Man knows way too much about actual Jewish history for anti-Semites, and regularly makes fun of fascists, who are extremely bad at self-ironic critique compared to almost every other political movement.
I often think of where automation will lead us. People have theorised that new technology will eliminate poverty, hunger and deprivation. "Every man a king." Right now, we have the tech and resources to make it so every man is a king, yet the ills of yesterday are still present. Rather than "every man a king", we're content to let a few live as gods while the rest of us live as animals. It's interesting to me that one of the only Sci-fi universes better than our present universe is the Star Trek one. A universe where technology did not solve humanity's woes, the conquest of greed and the collectivisation and equitable distribution of resources did. Food for thought. If you're reading this comment, thank you for the video. Give my regards to Mr. Abyss.
every time you make something it is completely what about you want to make. keep on not giving a shit about we want because we don't want shit to be given about us. you give interesting opinions on things I didn't know or care about and i fucking love it. don't try to appease us ever, don't even try to make us laugh because the shit you make will appease us and make us laugh whatever you make no matter what. thank you for being the most interesting youtuber I've ever watched
The intro sequence to Hardspace Shipbreaker is an impressive work of art. The "narration" and the visuals perfectly convey the tone of the situation and I love it.
Realistically, huge companies really don't care about insane inefficiencies and waste. I mean, we're already at a point where nobody actually reads resumes. Deeply tiered hierarchical authority structures ensure that nobody really knows nor cares what the company does. Your manager wouldn't care about your mistakes, because it doesn't directly impact them, or their manager, or their manager... There are a dozen degrees of separation between people who benefit from the bottom line and people who produce it, so the only reason to care is the personal pride of "doing a good job"
I think part of the reason the game turned out this way is that they wanted the game play loop to be a relaxing experience and making the story dystopian wouldve clashed somewhat with that
the story is attempting to be dystopian by putting u under massive unpayable debt, as he said they had the set up for a good story but went to weak on the themes
the family idea is really good. like, you are working to get back to them, and you finally do by whatever means, only to discover youve been cloned thousands of times and have lost all sense of how long youve been gone and your family and anyone who remembers them died centuries ago.
step one: have lots of money and live in an economic system where every single institution is explictily designed to protect the rich and kill and disempower the poor as you either coopt or destroy their methods of and structures for organizing. step two: say whatever you want and profit step three: treat all criticism of you public evil as censorship and send your legions of fluffers to work out their negetive feelings on whatever marginalized group is most in the news at the current moment
I know you saw my comment about the Expanse book on your bookshelf. I don’t care if it’s wholly narcissistic, but I am taking credit for this entire video. I’ll take my payout in NFTs of your plushie.
