PATRONE: bit.ly/3CbXW1E HAISONMEGURI: bit.ly/3JXKmke next couple vids are gonna be on some new games! lotta stuffs been coming out and i can do with making a few shorter videos lol also the screen shot at 02:45 is actually a game im workin on its p cool u should check out my super frequent progress thread: bit.ly/3K5UhEv
I was about to ask where 02:45 is from but i got my answer even before asking (looks like a place you could just be vibing instead of progressing, with a cool ps1 aesthetic) ps: Wait what ?! 52 minutes have passed already ?!!
I really love your content and style and what you are able to capture in detail the mesmerization that many games have been made with Id really love it if you were able to add a simple song list I love your music and other soundtracks you use and wish I could sleep to some
Thor, you might wanna check out this wonderful dungeon crawler game that carries weird vibes called Baroque. It's available on PS1, Wii and Saturn, it's a 3D roguelite with 2D sprite of monster and- well think of it like the old Baldur's Gate or Underworld. It's very immersive for its time and hey, it's pretty spooky too. So yeah, give it a go and see if you'll like it
The secret casino through a secret public restroom door reminds me of when I was in Paris visiting my grandparents. I was looking for a bar nearby on google maps and I arrive at the street it’s on and all there is is a tiny takeaway pizzeria, I ask the guy at the counter if there’s a bar nearby and he’s like follow me. He brings me behind the counter through the entire walk in freezer room for their food and out the back to an entire hidden cocktail bar where there is no menu and the bar tenders just make you something on the spot based on what you’re in the mood for. Easily one of the coolest experiences of my life, I love cities.
Super old comment but I just had to add to this. Saw a YT video on hidden restaurants in Japan, like holy shit you got restaurants and bars hidden behind vending machines and another one hidden behind a tiny coffee stand and you can only access the bar section by opening their app and finding a secret section of the app.. shits so wild.
3:52 Watching a woman you don’t know have a complete breakdown and saying “you okay, lady” after watching her completely silent for an uncomfortable amount of time is peak early-mid 2000’s. Between the stranger in the suit with an accent demanding answers and the officer’s face looking partially rendered, idk if I’m ever gonna stop ruminating about how I can’t go back in time and experience all of this for the first time again.
That segment on Yakuza was honestly delightful, echoed with so many of my "damn, i wanna go out in town and walk in the night lights" feelings and honestly hell yeah
I recently visited San Fran, and went to their chinatown area and the entire time I was thinking about how well this place lights up at night. With the lanterns at a perfect height and the old style gas lit street lights on with that amber hue....i get it @looroo
@@dgayle2348 it varies from person to person but the golden saucer in ff7 or the slums , kakariko village in OOT , many hub worlds would count but it’s those places where you want to stop just to hangout , maybe talk to some npcs and just sort of vibe .
Random rambling comment here, but this got me thinking about how a discussion about "real crime" media like Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row, which got me thinking about how I honestly spent most of my play time in Saints Row not actually playing the game but waiting until nighttime, stealing the absolute tiniest car I could, and driving it into strange little abandoned spaces that I wouldn't be able to go (legally or safely, especially after dark) in real life and just farting around because I enjoyed the nostalgic, mysterious feeling of being there. It's a very particular feeling, like walking to your old grade school playground during the summer when all the kids and teachers are gone and sitting on the swings.
You’re videos truly talk about games as art. Not so much about its story structure or mechanics/history, but how it makes you feel, and how it relates to the rest of your life.
I was originally gonna call myself Liminal Space Man. I regret everything. The first game I played that made me love liminal space was No More Heroes. Where despite being a very Japanese version of America was the first game that really captured the vibe of the shitty lesser known California beach towns I spent so much time in. He even came back and gentrified them in 3. I can remember all it’s little back alleys so well it’s like I’ve been there.
Kingdom Hearts' Traverse Town is a good example of a liminal space that is very literally and conceptually liminal in-universe, I think. As someone who hasn't noticed KH in the description, comments, or during a scrub of the trackbar (and who has never even played the games), it is my responsibility to bring this up before watching the video, I think. Edit: gambled and won!
SIlent HIll 3 is the main reason I love to explore abandoned places these days. First time I played the isolating feeling of once crowded places like metro stations and malls really stuck a chord with me.
Dude literally talks about hallways for an hour and I'm more invested than Elden Ring Critique #278, THH truly the GOAT on RU-vid. The vibes are always just hella immaculate and cozy
8:40 put the absolute widest smile on my face, the way the image and music come in, the ambience, it was just such a perfect little moment. great stuff as always, hyper enjoyed this one
That music - End of Small Sanctuary - is possibly my single favourite piece of music ever. It's simultaneously warm, nostalgic, sad, melancholic and comforting. Akira Yamoaka is a genius.
When I play Gravity Rush, I often explore areas without shifting. This game has hella sizeable liminal areas. Vendecentre has some really huge subway walkways. There's even Some areas make you wonder how one gets around these areas on foot without falling into the void.
Gravity Rush was such an amazing game, I liked to fly up real high above the cities and go into first person and then fall in between the cracks of the cities. Always felt so cool and kind of scary.
I can really relate to this! I like to walk around in the market from the second game and just follow random npc around. One time this one npc came to gather with a bunch of people surrounding a street musician and it's just the best feeling ever.
Yes, I enjoy just walking about and enjoying the vibe gravity rush 1 & 2 have. The pleasure district (I can't remember its name) has my favourite feeling about it.
Yeeesss, I love this topic to death. Mirror's Edge and Spirited Away (yes, the movie) really opened me up to the idea of looking into the environment of games and shows. Same IRL, being open to the wonder of a cluttered alleyway or abandoned park.
Never been so hype for a video. Just wanna tell you, Thor, that I'm starting my graphic design major next week and you and Pan Pizza from Rebel Taxi are two of my biggest design inspirations.
Man, I love late 90's/early 2000's urban atmosphere. Also Yakuza 7's gotta have the most well-realized and immersive urban setting of any Japanese game ever made, and I absolutely love it for that. Probably my GotY 2020 honestly, and easily the best current-gen JRPG.
Yoo if urban exploration in context of crumbling infrastructure is your shit I highly recommend game called Infra on steam. Very much the mood of exploring empty infrastructure complexes (like water treatment plant) and maintenance backrooms in different states of abandoned to someone was here hour ago. I was half expecting to see it due how it fit to the themes of the video.
Infra covers pretty much every single type of urban exploration there is, at least what's realistically possible in a European setting. I was amazed by how long the game was and how frequently it would shift to a new setting. By the end I felt that it had basically satisfied all my childhood fantasies of exploring all these places that I could only ever could never have had free access to.
That "stuck at school during a storm" metaphor is magnificent! What a perfect description of a vibe I almost forgot even existed having been out of school of any kind for almost a decade. Also what the actual fuck is "catcatcatcatcat"? They really did just invent memes like ten years before the public would, incredible.
I treasure your overbearing observations and warm aesthetic editing. Everytime you drop a new video I pour a drink or 7, watch, and become lost in a blanket of vague numbing nostalgia. Thank you
Less relevant when it comes to the Urban idea of Liminal Spaces but I feel it worth noting Shadow of the Colossus is one of my favorite games and one of my favorite things is just the big empty feeling it has. It's the Forbidden Lands, and there quite clearly used to be people there, and having not played ICO I didn't have much else to go on. Big empty temples, giant monoliths, a few small animals scurry around but the sound design does such a great job of making you feel absolutely alone. The howling wind that blows harshly in the valleys, and echoes in the small cave-like systems, and you are ever surrounded by huge hills and mountains that tower over you making you feel small and insignificant. I spent lots of time just combing the land looking at the leftover remnants of what used to be a previously populated land. Utterly abandoned and full of mysteries. Like for example the giant dead tree that looms so large you can see it from across the land, and yet it serves no purpose story or otherwise. An entire beach that also holds nothing but a view and ambience for you to enjoy, but you will always do it alone and only kept company by your horse Agro. I could go on and on about the game but I'm going to finish the video now. I just wanted to stop and say thanks Thor and I hope you are doing okay in light of the recent thing that happened to you. All my love and respect.
You're amazing and you've slowly grown on me over time. Also, I don't mean to be inappropriate, but I lost my dad last year. Your videos help me a lot, at least multiple times a week. I want to thank you, and let you know that I love all of these things just as much as you, or anyone else. I'm not sure how much your father influenced your love for any of it, but my father had a huge impact on my taste, even when I didn't think he did. I don't know why I'm telling you all of this. Maybe it's because life is short. I also listened to Positive Yellow multiple times from cover to cover, and it's inspired me not to give up on my own music. I make experimental jungle, and things reminiscent of these older days. Maybe I have a voice here. Thank you, again.
I used to live outside of shanghai and damn did we have liminal spaces out the ass. Abandon lots, empty houses for rent that were left completely open at all times, empty fields filled with rubble and abandoned milo cans, mostly empty dusty streets with the dvd store and the one bakery. Going to the game store and getting a bootleg wii game with our allowance and biking home at night to play it in the one room with a tv. I dont often indulge in nostalgia but damn this hit different
I've always been trying to find words to describe these through ways, these interesting areas which serve only transitory purposes in real life. I've always loved them even when other people don't understand their beauty. Liminal spaces are some of my favorite things, and I've never thought about them in the context of video games. Describing them in real life as being the pre-rendered backgrounds of real life was both funny and very accurate. I'm looking forward to watching this one over and over in the future. Yet another banger, Mr High heels!
Aaaah such pure undistilled hangout-able spots showcased here, peak comfiness. Genuinely surprised at the mention of The Ring Terror's Realm, I was starting to worry everybody forgot about it ! ; A ;
A game that features a lot of liminality is Infra, where you play as a safety inspection engineer exploring an urban environment (with a lot of creepy hidden shit that adds to the atmosphere). Set in a fictional Scandi city called Stalburg, it has strong urbex vibes and either empty or creepily-inhabited environments that make for a very cool liminal experience. There's also a bunch of hidden narrative and history of the setting that you can discover as you explore the game, and a couple of different ending possibilities.
Shout-out to my favorite liminal space...the back thoroughfare behind strip malls (where deliveries go). Great way to traverse and avoid parking lot stress. Always find them soothing.
One of the really fun things about liminal spaces in games is defying expectations and playing tricks on the player with them. Since liminal spaces are at once familiar feeling but also not memorable, you notice things that are wrong unconsciously before you're actively aware of them. Take the streets in Silent Hill 1 for example. They just look like typical small town 1 lane roads, but the fog's hiding the other side, and when you try to run across you'll find it's as wide as a 4 lane highway, and it's not consistent about it either. Makes the simple act of walking around town tense because you've got that expectation of having your expectations violated every time you step into the fog.
One example of this that I loved was City of Heroes, the superhero MMO. The equivalent of "dungeons" were just office buildings that you'd clear criminals from, but since it was a game, these offices were designed on a way that no real life building ever would be. Each elevator just went up one floor, with the next elevator being on the opposite side, and they had massively high ceilings and complex walkways in them. It was architectural nonsense.
You and Hazel are the youtubers whos videos are so cozy I often cant watch them as soon as they come out because the cozyness ending maked me anxious. If you couldnt tell this is a compliment
That ring game dredges up some memories for sure. When I was really young, maybe 10 or 11 my mom brought me to work at a job she must have only had for a couple weeks (she worked for a bigger company that basically contracted her out to work temporarily at places to fill gaps in staff before they permanently hired someone, I've never heard of anything like that before or since which is kinda weird) where she cleaned office buildings after hours. I don't fully remember what the situation was where I had to be there for a while until someone came to pick me up, but I spent an hour or two in a totally empty but completely lit up office building where the only other person was my mom vacuuming in a distant hall, and filtered through child brain and my rapidly rotting memory it looks exactly like that ring game in my mind eye, just slightly higher poly and more brown. A very similar situation happened in high school. We went on a trip to a cool local native American museum, and they had a big office attached and they let us eat in a big meeting room. I left for the bathroom and once again found myself in an empty office building (a much smaller one though) with brown carpet, white walls and that weird post rapture vibe where it feels like this place was full of people just minutes ago, pens and cups on desks, stuff like that. And of course I could hear the chatter of the meeting room where my class was while I wandered and took my sweet time getting back because the vibes were weird and cool. I only went back when my brain decided to activate panic mode for no reason and convince me I was seeing stuff peeking at me from around corners like that one 3d backrooms video (which I think came out a month or two later? Which is pretty wild) Also a weird detail, that museum office place had that same weird faint hosptitally scent of bleach and piss that I associate with like McDonalds and papas pizza play rooms, which was pretty surreal. Muffled laughter, the smell of my every childhood birthday party, and imagined shadow people watching me from the vents and corners is one of those things that sticks with you as a full sensory experience, I remember the cheap canned apple juice aftertaste lingering in my mouth and simultaneously smooth and harshly rough feeling of the shoddily painted drywall(?) Under my middle finger tip super vividly.
Your video presentation and voice sounds like you're some modern wizard i don't know why i just get the vibe of some magic man who's seen shit and just being casual while having an air of excitement to his next sentence he's gonna utter while still keeping it mellow
Hey! I really enjoy your videos. You're able to put into words the kinds of feelings I think about and kinda let pass in my mind to be forgotten later. My liminal experience is definitely with driving games, like Euro Truck Simulator. Driving is so liminal to me because for the most part, the entire environment passes you by with little to no interaction. It's such a mundane task, populated with the familiar highways, cars, and intersections. My favorite parts were the highways that cut right next to high rise office buildings. Looking in, you think about the people working there and the sporadically lit rooms. Funnily enough, the online mod for the game included a car mode, so you didn't even have to focus on deliveries and instead just drove lol. I genuinely hope you are doing well, or at least managing ok. You are one of my favorite creators and I would love to see what else you come up with.
Another game that fits this very well is "Infra", you are simply a structural engineer who has one hell of a work day in a city that is falling apart due to bad INFRAstructure, wandering along maintenance tunnels, through abandoned places and even locations that SHOULD be active and bustling but are for one reason or another completely empty.
ahhh I absolutely adored your use of Hotel Dusk sound effects ! It seriously made me pause and get really into the mood to think about Kyle and his lil mysteries wahhh. never thought about it too hard, but that game has suchh a lonely feel to it (poor guy ;'
10:48 not thru the whole video yet but in Ohio we've got an awesome arcade called arcade legacy that's been sitting in a dead mall for a long time here and I just noticed how much the empty mall in some of those areas in SH3 reminds me of it. Going there in the afternoon, staying in a dark arcade surrounded by an empty food court with computer stuff sitting where the food trays used to be, coming out to a long walk out the mall while the sunset comes through the windows marked as police training areas, it's wild. Thankfully the arcade's moving to another location, but the vibes of walking in that place are gonna be missed when they renovate it Dan Bell did a cool video on it in his dead mall series.
i fuckin love so much just walking around sh3 man, even in the hell park there's this quiet area with a stage on it and when i first walked in there i had the flashlight turned off and it was a darkness that made go 'wow it's like not even the sky exists anymore' that moment still stays with me a lot i also ended up seeking the liminals in all kinds of yume nikki fangames since it's a lot of those transitory passages and a bunch of labyrinths and sights you get no interaction out of and if you odd it's odd stuff or places unreachable or blocked off with construction cones yet it's been half or an entire decade since the game last got updated all mixed together and i spent so much time obsessed with them i still hold them dearly to my heart honestly
That anecdote of being stuck in school during a storm reminded me of when I was stuck in a mall during a hailstorm when I was a kid. The outside was completely pitch black and we could hear the hail pounding both the exit and the ceiling. After a while some parts of the floor would accumulate water and create these little flood pond sections, and since I was like 7 or something the water reached my knees. We where on the 1st floor where it was most flooded and were considering going to higher ground, but before we did in front of us a section of the ceiling of the 2nd floor fell apart. It wasn’t cement, the mall was cheap, so it wasn’t like dangerous debris or that hazardous, but it still scared the hell out of us.
Gotta echo most folks in the comments. I shouted with joy when I saw this, and you're the perfect person to cover it. I especially love when 'not using the space as intended' turns into 'movement tech.' From the way Forbidden Siren has you climb onto the roof, to the jump-glide in Ghostwire Tokyo. Also I've been calling destinations 'terminal spaces' personally.
The clean sophistifuture lab and office hallways of the Pokemon series come to mind. The ones goons are usually sitting in, waiting for you to crawl through for small battles on the way to a boss
I love your videos. You create videos with a vibe that are abundant with style, creativity and a thoughtfulness that we, as a species, need. You have transcended this mortal coil and become the vibe.
Man I don't even play video games anymore but I love your longer video essays about them. I'm glad you're taking more time to go through your ideas instead of those earlier videos of yours just dealing with one game. It's a shame you don't have more subscribers.
Incredible video as always but I gotta say that your point about offices often being liminal spaces rather than the destinations they should be really hit home. Lots of stuff to think about, thanks for sharing your thoughts with the world!
The vibes in Yakuza 7 look immaculate, I've started the series finally after playing through the first on PS2 a few years back. Blasted through Zero and absolutely loved it, and being that "virtual tourist" or I guess also virtual tresspasser was one of my favourite parts of the game, so seeing all these large scale new environments to explore in 7 have gotten me so excited to keep playing all the games to get through to it :) Amazing video as always, love the deep dives into obscure topics like this, shining light and appreciating aspects of games not many would think to highlight in the first place. Its soooo good and always makes me appreciate games in a new light
As usual giving me the kind of video I was craving without even knowing it. Actually got into the Yakuza series based on one of the previous videos on this channel and it fills this gap in my soul of just getting lost in a completely other world, one that's close to reality but ends up being somehow more engaging. It lets me do things like just wander back alleys, appreciate details one takes for granted during every day life, and just lots of wackiness between those moments. Currently refusing to play the last Kiryu game only because I don't want the experience to end.
Oh yeah, this is a mood. Dark room, all alone in the lab, watching this in-between miscroscope work. Anytime I check outside the room, all there is an excessively white hallway leading up and down other laboratories. Absolutely fucking no one apart from maybe the janitor, who is also possibly not a person but a monster.
hey dude, been watching your stuff for a hot minute & just felt like saying how consistently great your content is. you're excellent at breaking down art & weird, almost indescribable feelings that come from a lot of this type of media, & you only get better with each video. it's really cool to see a passion take this form & i appreciate you for always making such awesome shit. your videos have always been good but you're on another level now, & i know you've put a lot of yourself into this to get there. music & transitions/shitpost memecore stuff is always top tier too. keep killing it man
Your videos are really the comfort food of visual essays. Your manner of speech and the way you play with words (ie, "hella-ly"), combined with either laid back beats in the background or silence to emphasize the current game topic, is just so chill. Entertaining, interesting, and relaxing. Sometimes the algorithm does good with its recommendations to me. Keep up the good work!
I remember being totally absorbed by the liminal spaces within GTA: Vice City onwards. So strong was the effect that on occasion the feelings I had felt in the GTA games seeped into my everyday reality while walking about.
GTA III also have some good liminal spaces, but no one explore them or pay attention to them much because the npc AI is hellbent on killing you all the time.
Great vid as always man, another great example of that liminal space feeling is in the mortal kombat deception konquest mode. Playing that when I was younger always felt so eerie and uncanny to me.
Deception was fascinating. Specially to young me still learning English in school, not having a full grasp on what was happening besides the fact that it looked cool, and also not having other games to play😅 the different realms really brought a surprise each time you entered in one.
Thanks for the recommendation. I've always said that Rugrats Search for Reptar is the best kids show game adaptarion of all time. Still play it once every few years.
aw lawd the eurovibes from the intro, i'm super glad you made this to define the term better for ppl who didnt know, little transitional or secret shh places in games feel so g dang comfy :') i wanna take a lil downtown stroll now
I got a long silent and artsy introduction to this video. After 3 minutes I started to wonder if the silence was intentional. It wasn't and I was a bit sad about it. It was just a youtube bug. But it still made me appreciate, again, your top-notch quality content, that is quite comparable to investigative game journalism to me. Thank you!
This talks to my love of going for a walk after midnight during weekdays when the weather is hot, like back in day I liked coming back home really late just to take in the city when there's nobody else around, I still do sometimes.
I think the focus on games representing liminal spaces, and your fascination with weird ps games, overlooked a possible point of talking about more abstract liminal spaces in nintendo games, or more popular childrens abstract games. Like the spaces that are ACTUALLY meant to be liminal within the context of the game, hubworlds (peaches castle, crash bandicoots weird little hub circles) and menuing (those little pauses in the maps of fire emblem) could have been a point of comparison of something designed to feel liminal, vs something in yakuza that's more like a representation of it or in silent hill where it's used as a tool for its whole horror thing. It's like super mario 64 took the concept of a liminal space and shrunk it down to something "explorable" or something "worth" being curious about, like in a theme park. but then there's a rly interesting vacancy and eerie emptiness that comes out of the castle being unoccupied, clearly as a result of the hardware limitation, but it like makes the whole place feel super liminal. there's an interesting point to be made about stuff that the devs intended to feel liminal vs things that happen to be as a result of problem solving
Hey many, you have got to play INFRA if you have not already! It's an entire game of creeping through and surveying abandoned places. You play as an urban surveyor, making your way through a dilapidated industrial area. There is no combat, just the danger of the space. It's a pretty cool game and I haven't really played anything like it before. I highly recommend checking it out!
