This video is the introduction of video essays to my channel! I have a full script for one more video even longer than this but I wouldn't expect that anytime soon If you enjoyed this video then please consider giving it a like and sharing it with anyone you think would be interested in the story of Ultrakill
Btw, the "growths" holding Benjamin still are roots from the trees you feed blood in the previous level, according to Hakita in one of his devlog videos.
Honestly knowing the terminals are bored and seek entertainment is kind of adorable. I imagine them being like “I’m bored. Hmmmmm. Oh, hey there! You play cool. How about this: you keep having fun, and I get to watch you having fun. Sound good?” V1: “yup.” Terminal: “yay! :)”
It’s all fun and games until you realize that if the terminals are the ones handing out your ranks, they’re also the ones that have control over the Prime Sanctum Doors. They literally have control over who lives and dies in Hell.
It gets worse when you realize they're probably extensions of Hell's will, since they more or less have the same intents and desires-- bloodshed on an unprecedented scale for mere entertainment.
@@percent3767 at this point hell and the terminals might be communicating in some way. both hell and the terminals seek entertainment from the machines so it wouldn't be surprising. hell was shown to be a very intelligent life form after all
@@percent3767im convinced that all footage all gameplay we see in game are just Terminal watching V1’s record, hence why we hear the disk sound when going to the next act, and why we have terminal’s score point on V1’s pov.
The idea of hell energy being alternative fuel also works because the player, being V1, can heal off parrying projectiles, which clearly do not bleed, but projectiles such as those thrown by the stray are canonically formed of hell energy, so the fact that V1 can heal to 100% of his health off a single projectile parry implies they can somehow heal off of them even though they do not bleed.
@@OST-jp4cc I dunno, the game does a pretty good job of making gameplay perfectly mesh with lore in almost every case, but we also don't definitively have this to be confirmed
@@OST-jp4ccthe whole thing about V1 is he repairs himself through absorbing blood through his plating. No idea how that actually works but technically yes V1 does heal and repair himself by using blood lol As for his fuel source, they're blood fuelled machines? The only one we know for sure isn't purely blood is the earthmovers but V1 is small enough to be fully blood fuelled
@@OST-jp4ccwhat if v1 has sentience or life (represented by the player playing as v1) due to the blood but the hell energy missiles are absorbed into the plates and serve as a fuel? You havent said why you think it wouldnt be possible
Fun little headcannon, the game environment is so simple and low-resolution because that's all V1 is allowing itself/is capable of seeing It's a simplified understanding of the world to speed up other processes and save resources.
@@megaflash335 Yes, Somewhere its said that the Sentries have higher res-vison cuz they're snipers. Which means that the style meter, weapon displayed, and ps1 graphics are actually what v1 is saying
One major thing, the fact that the prelude, made in earth, can be controlled by hell as evidenced by the husks being teleported around and doors being messed with, shows that either the prelude is in hell or that hell has spread and taken over at least some of earth
It would make sense that Hell has taken over Earth. Before humans found the gate the only way for them to interact with Hell was to die (or so I assume). Opening the gate would be the same as building a bridge, and Hell as a sentient being, would be able to cross it. I wonder how much energy Hell contains tho. Like is Hell Energy meant to be on par with God's Light? Practically infinite but can only be controlled by those given direct power to?
The ferryman's diary states that there was a steady flow of millions of dead every day (possibly the final war?) until one day, the river Styx swelled into an ocean, with billions of dead pouring in, completely overwhelming the layer and creating the ocean we see ingame. I think that this is Hell entering the Earth and essentially instantly killing every human alive.
I think this is how they went extinct with the latter thought. Hell expanded to earth, consumed it even, and gave itself a new land to conquer. It killed those within it for its enjoyment, and it could do the same with the rest of the earth. The world we knew is no more, there is only heaven and hell now.
27:35 this game gets really depresing sometimes An other example of machines getting sentience is when by the end of the war there was no sun left to fuel the Earthmovers due to lots of ash covering the sunlight, one of them at its final moments lifted his harpoon as high as he could to try reach and talk to God, but at that point… God was long gone. And thats why the name of the level is "Like Antenas to Heaven"
21:02 in the last sub-section of Violence it's stated that if you ever stop moving you won't be able to move again for centuries. So imo those growths on the Earthmover are there cause it stopped moving.
@@OST-jp4cc Well, that doesn't debunk my theory, it really doesn't change much, it's just the roots of trees, my point still stands as you didn't give enough info to completely debunk my theory. So, your fact and my theory still stands.
@@Maurice_Drip The growths aren’t there because the earthmover stopped moving, they are there because the blood trees were fed, their roots went out and stopped the earthmover. Hell stopped the earthmover so V1 can fight it, not because the earthmover suddenly stopped moving. They also couldn’t make a moving boss like that, limitations and if it did somehow get put in, it would just be janky as hell
Look up "history of the entire world, i guess", its by Bill Wurtz. Its a really good video that has some iconic moments which, after you watch it, youll probably realize youve heard before. @_eleb5302
"how many machines were created during the war with us only getting small insights such as sentries being a product of the war but we do know that this arms race culminated in the creation of THE EARTHMOVERS." 🔥🔥🔥🔥✍️✍️✍️✍️
Probably my favourite ultrakill lore video on RU-vid ngl. It's the most up to date, goes into a lot of detail, and even offers some new theories that i never heard before, but they still make a lot of sense if you think about them more
I do agree with V1 was created to defeat earth movers, but i think better evidence of this is that V1 gets popups in his fov telling him information about the earthmover floding, V1 was programed to know how to deafeat earthmovers. Hakita also likes to make game play mechanics part of the lore so V1 actually seeing these pops of flooding and time left before detonation makes sense. Maybe he somehow blutooth conects to the earthmover or his program can read/predict the movers next action
Some small notes (will probably update as the video goes on): You got the formation of a Husk and a Prime Soul mixed up From the Filth’s terminal entry: “Husks are physical manifestations of the souls of the damned. The physical form is based on the value of the original soul, which is determined by the strength of its will *and its prevalence in public consciousness: the living souls that remember it.* Filth are the lowest form of Husk, whose souls were too weak and unimportant to even form a complete physical body.” From Minos Prime’s terminal entry: “As manifestations of *pure will,* souls are incredibly powerful, to the point that even the prideful angels see them as a threat and will use any means necessary to stop them from forming.” To say that Minos and Sisyphus “formed into Prime Souls” is also misleading. If a person’s will is strong enough, their soul is already a Prime Soul. It just needs time to take shape when its Husk is destroyed. 21:05 As confirmed in the dev commentary stream, thise growths in the floor are the leaves of the trees from the previous level locking it in place for you. 28:26 Streetcleaners and Drones were made post-war. I think it’s a safe assumption that no amount of Streetcleaners could clean faster than the Earthmovers could destroy, so your idea that they could come from before the end of the war is a dud. Even if they were that good at cleaning, humanity was still of the mindset that every machine had to be stronger than the last at that point. Streetcleaners were explicitly made to clean up the long night and Drones were made for security but we know they were a recent enough invention to also be used as scouts for the Hell expeditions. 34:10 “Machine created to create the machine” is not meant to be taken literally, it’s a poetic way of saying “Each machine was only created to counter the previous one, therefore through Hell’s twisted perspective the machines are only to have an excuse for the mext one to be made.” The Final War was 100% an act of humanity and to say otherwise would be antithetical to their role in the story. 37:23 Machines are good at their jobs, there are barely any humans left, and the ines that are left are barely holding on after the war. 39:40 Where else would it take place? Space travel would’ve never been invented because of the war, and we see in 6-2 that Heaven exists across the planets like it does in Paradiso.
Thanks for taking such interest in the video! I'd like to give a little bit of a more indepth view into where my ideas came from for these points in the video. These are, to be fair, mostly my own personal headcanons with little evidence to support them so you're completely free to disagree with what I said lol I could've worded my bit on the Prime souls better to be fair, when saying they "form into a prime soul" I intended to mean that they were taking shape but I could've definitely made that more clear, and yeah I totally mixed up the part about their strength coming from the will of the people alongside their own will rather than it just being purely themselves. The streercleaners are a very interesting case because their time of creation is as far as I know, never actually specified. The closest we get it the line "they were made obsolete during the new peace". I could be wrong and missing some piece of text but this phrase is what makes me believe that they were made towards the very end of the final war. Considering that they were successful in cleaning up the atmosphere it's entirely probable that they could outpace the earthmovers destruction, managing to clean up the entire atmosphere is an insane achievement that would require a huge amount of efficiency. Obviously this would entirely depend on how long it actually took to clean up the long night and also how many Earthmovers and streetcleaners existed, it's at the very least within the realm of possibility. Plus the concept of them actually being made to prolong the war is interesting to think about :P I do realise that the book in 7-4 is supposed to be more superfluous than literal but it does make sense to me that the final wars arms race would eventually become fully automated. It would make sense to have some form of machine designing machines to keep up with such a frantic arms race but that's obviously just my personal headcanon with no real evidence outside of this very literal reading. That's a fair point actually I can't argue with that lol I mean yeah Prelude does most likely take place on earth like I said but there isn't anything explicitly confirming that so I didn't want to just jump in there and go "Yeah this is Earth" for definite.
Great video. Just want to point out a small correction with 21:00 In 7-3, at the bottom right of the "Feed Us, We Will Grow" sign, there's a tiny Benjamin. There's also 4 blood trees in 7-3 that you have to grow. These trees that you grow are what bind Benjamin in place. Also pastrami
I like how there is all these wars, tragedies, the extinction of the whole race, angels, Hell... And then there's V1 who's just like "I'm thirsty, more blood plz"
the first video explaining ultrakill's story i've watched :) as a person who has a hard time following vague stories in game (especially when spoken in mostly bible language) this video is very comprehensible and easy to understand to my feeble tiny little mind.
THIS IS SUCH A HIGH QUALITY VIDEO!! I've wanted to play UK for a while now and this video popped up on my feed, so I gave it a watch and wow, never knew how much there was to that game. I love the lore, its got mandela catalogue vibes and religious allegory that I absolutely fucking love in everything. Great work man! KEEP IT UP!!!!!!
less than a month ago i got into ultrakill and its lore with it, so you kinda had good timing as like 2 weeks ago i was looking for all the lore videos i could find and this one only adds to it jesus this game has such a godlike tier lore
how to defeat the whole hell: 200 years of endless pointless war to make humanity to invent machine that making machine designing other machine that killing other machine
Amazing video. As far as I can tell the only thing you missed out was the lore on the ferryman, and I had to rack my brains for a while to even think of that. Pastrami
The ferrymen are really interesting but they don't really fit very well into a chronological telling of the story like this video did. So I decided to leave them out for this one but them being the skull keys in game and showing off Gabriel's good side is really interesting
pastrami. also, simple correction, the two husks that were augmented by Hell were soldiers and _stalkers_ schisms are the physical manifestation of what happens when two souls manage to occupy the same space in the formation process, they have no cybernetic augmentations. stalkers used to be just sinners of greed sticking to their punishment: pushing heavy objects up mankind's greatest achievements. they've endured the punishment for so long their bodies have grown twisted in an attempt to make their task easier and more sustainable. Hell's augmentation on stalkers is replacing the heavy objects they'd usually transport with "sand" bombs that turns all blood of the organisms affected into dust. that's all, good video lingweener im really looking forward to more video essays :]
Very cool video. I've never thought about the story of ULTRAKILL until I actually watched a speedrun of the game. Thank you for giving me this insightful information.
Pastrami Also the lore about the terminals and the cyber grind is actually really interesting and is the best lore explanation for an in-game thing that happens in any game i can think of
This a beautiful video as someone who watches RU-vid as their main source of entertainment. This is awesome I had no idea about this game till now so thank you. Please keep making more
I just now realized why the earthmover doesn’t just laser you immediately I always thought that it tries to shoot you but shoots off into the distance for no reason, but what actually happens is it tries to shoot you, but it gets shot by the other earthmover first. That’s cool asf
This video is absolutely fantastic at holding the viewer's attention and making the story interesting and fun to listen to, the only thing is the organisation between game facts and your hypothesis that are slightly mingled which could lead to confusion, but i don't see it becoming a problem in future videos, you seem to know what you're doing
ok so concerning the book which you think is written by a gutterman, you can see at 25:25 the gutterman you killed has no coffin on its back, heavily implying it was the one who made the book
my headphones are somehow ahead of the video and it makes the visuals line up even better with the audio except for the points where it’s just showing what you said, one word at a time
On the point of machines having vocalisation, it would make sense for them to be developed with this ability for communicating with humans during peace time and early stages of final war, when human soldiers were still deployed. But something else that interests me in regards to it is the emphasis put on some machines retaining it even though it would be more efficient to discard. This is very similar to the description of mindflayers that construct humanoid forms serving no purpose. Perhaps both are a product of machines reaching a certain level of intelligence and being fueled by blood. Developing emotions and with them attachments. The gutterman poem certainly comes off as sentimental, after all. Perhaps in the absence of humans to do so, now machines seek to express themselves, results varying. It connects in my opinion to the first book you read in Violence, that when bringing up angels and god uses specific wording "their father", pointing to the author being not human, most likely a machine. It speaks of violence as art, like machines are rationalising their existence, weighed down by excess of intelligence they were never meant to have but somehow developed, and scramble to find purpose. Just as god of the game's universe is flawed, his children are too, having completely destroyed themselves, and now only their children remain, creatures of steel, perhaps many times as flawed and self-destructive. Snake eating its own tail
Ngl my belief as to why the machines of violence, got into violence, was that because they have a person's blood inside of them, when the person inside died (And the machine too) their last 'form' was taken to hell, and then the person inside died again, with the much more robust machinery surviving
i haven't seen any comment mention this (of the ones i checked), but The Final War being a version of WW1 that never ended is a fascinating spin on WW1 irl being called The Great War or "the war to end war" when it started bc it was a popular belief in Europe at the time that it would be the last war they'd ever fight due to its sheer scale.
Reall loved this video. Thank you very much for sharing to the world what this game has to offer, this lore part is the part ultimately got me in, and to also experience pastrami as well. Thank you for the video.
I think I may have an idea about the vocalization. Maybe during the earlier parts of the war machines were made with vocal capability in order to better cooperate with the predominantly human forces. My guess is when humans were replaced large scale, they didn't bother with voice capability because the machines didn't have to communicate with humans anymore
You just got a subscriber. Honestly, I thought you were a well established youtuber/reporter from the way you were talking. Keep working on it and one day you can be one of the greatest, like matpat level.
Another detail , the cerberus statue outside In 7-2 , andre's ball Is not glowing , Its simply laying there In the palm of Its stone hand , dark and not lit up one bit , and It takes focus to have It glowing , so I think , that the war outside In 7-2 , with the bullets , thunder , rockets and sight of three benjamins takes the cerberus's focus off of the ball , and maybe the cerberus Is terrified , just like a human soldier would be , upon seeing war Infront of their eyes , I know I sound nerdy , I just wanted to say It.
Me having very little exposure to this game was so caught off guard by a literal Angel screaming “YOU INSIGNIFICANT FUCK!” At a robot, so much so that I almost choked on a pretzel.
My personal headcanon is that the end of The Final War is linked to the abandon of V1's production. Because, if you think about it, what would be the perfect machine to counter V1 ? You would need a tanky exterior, so that it doesn't bleed that much to counter v1's healing. Next, you would need something that can quickly fire on a rapidly moving target to overload it's healing capabilities. Then, its projectiles would have to be unpariable, again to stop V1 from self repairing. So, what machine has -extra shielding but a "small" size -a fast firing weapon that can track anything -unpariable projectiles The answer is : a guterman. You can see it when you don't use the knuckleblaster, if you don't target them immediately (like the earthmover does against V1), it's gonna be a problem. And that's with centuries old gutermen designs, and even then, a slight tweak or two would make them a really good counter. And I think that's what led to the end of The Final War, as well as the clouds covering the sun. It had become a full circle. The last machine was crushed by the first machine, a self perpetuating destruction circle A war without reason
Btw I wanted to note that while I do not know what it implies, the earthmover we fight has a pretty easy to miss sign written in Japanese. You can find it a bit before you fight the security system, but I do not know what it translates to.
Really enjoy this type of content. Video essays seems to be your speciality. Your editing is also really good. I hope that you'll be able to pump out more essays on games, maybe even branching off to movies or music. Best of luck.
I really like this style or writing. Mixing machine with flesh and cosmic power. It's so cool. Fairly grim dark. I think this world would fit right in in 40K.
ULTRAKILL fans when they find out their favorite coin shooter has a deep story that spans multiple eras and even uses certain mechanics from the game as lore
In regard to Gabriel going specifically after V1 in gluttony, Hakita confirmed that Gabriel was just busy dealing with other machines, and since there were so many, some are able to go into further layers. V1 is just the one machine able to actually beat Gabriel.
wait a second the music in the section "hell itself" sounds a whole lot like "disassembly of the world required" which is a creepy modified version of "disassembly required" from murder drones
32:16 omg I always thought that he was simply charging while looking down and that then he just shoots I didn't realize that that was actually him getting hit and not him shoting
The fact that Earthmovers were made to fight eachother as well as also including that it has English text in some places makes me believe that "Japan" was not in the war but simply making money out of selling them for the war that would take about 200 years. As Japan was not in the war it could use its resources for not fighting but developing massive and advanced robots for other countries. That is my theory ig for why Earthmovers fight eachother in the first place.
V1 didn’t “destroy” a whole layer, it goes through a small section of a layer. Some things in the game just aren’t canon. Respawning isn’t canon and neither is it when levels are replayed
Gabriel killing the council is absolutely insane. He used to be loyal to it more than anything, but now, he’s gone off the deep end, and he’s furious. I love it so much.
He wasn’t really loyal to the council, he was loyal to Gods will and the council were the ones to take up the mantle of leadership. He hasn’t gone off the deep end or become furious, his terminal entry and cutscene go against this out right. What he thought was hatred, was actually passion. He was one of the strongest angels and never had to deal with an actual challenge.
it may be insignificant but i was pretty surprised the Gabriel cursed cuz ya know, why would you, they're angels i think it would be the last thing you would expect from them
The idea that the final war is actually ww1 means that the end of humanity was caused by the assassination of archduke franz ferdinand I find that funny
Ultrakill is a great game with a lot of lore that you skipped out on that could confuse some people that haven’t played before For example you could explain the layers of ultrakill which would help a lot Weird tho I would never guess the guy with a deep fried mic would be able to make this great of a video Good job 👍
32:39 All machines are designed to counter the other, earth mover was the last machine made before the war ended, v1 and v2's production were canceled because the war ended V1 and V2 were designed specifically to counter earth mover
The story is very good and I’m working on getting rude editor and I want to make a violence themed level/campaign where you fight in the war beginning to end (preferably campaign) and get to see the entire war play out. Good idea or nah?
20:59 Yeah no these are the roots of the trees from 7-3. The 7-4 Earthmover is the only one to have those "growths", but you can check the dev commentary VOD to hear Hakita explain it directly
26:06 “Your tortured love brought me to this war, that I could take the heart of another, and need you no more.” Not to get too speculative, but if the Guttermen are sentient and know of their power source This line specifically seems like they at least want to find an alternative power source so that the person trapped inside doesn’t have to be drained of any more blood, and be free from that torture
Yeah I totally agree, they seem to feel bad for the person fuelling them but can't end their misery without also ending themselves until they get a new power source
