Philip's dad doesn't tell him to come to Greenland. He tells him to burn the documents and information on how to get to the facility. It's Philip's curiosity, trait running in his familiy and in Archaic, that compelled him to look and doomed him
I'm kinda mad at the end of Black Plague. I wish you'd have had a choice, I would have spared the tuurngait. They're not a danger to anyone, they just want to be left alone.
Eh, the series aged badly with the exception of black plague, which was carried by its story. It gave the basics to amnesia but calling it underrated its weird, at least for modern standards
@@ZZZZZZDDDDADA I honetly prefer it over The Dark Descent. Penumbra just does things better in some ways and managed to keep me captivated all the time in both games. Amnesia is great, but I simply enjoyed Penumbra series way too much. Late reply sorry.
The combat system lead to one of the most terrefying moments in a game for me, when sneaking into a room a wolf saw me and attacked, it was to close to pull a weapon out so I was forced to kill it by slamming the door on its head over and over. Nightmare.
SPOILERS: There is only one issue though, Philips father didn't want him to come to the Greenland mines, he wanted Philip to destroy all of the evidence leading to the mines to prevent others from finding it. If no one had messed with the evidence, then whenever someone empties out the safe at the bank they'd end up with a trail leading to Greenland, potentially making things far worse. Philip was never meant to actually become curious about Greenland and go there, and his father most likely didn't say anything in his letter because he was under the influence of the Tuurngait. EDIT: Also, the email Philip sends out at the end was a call for his friend to kill the Tuurngait more than anything, the facility is part of that, but it was a call of arms against what he believed to be an enemy of mankind. The whole reason the Tuurngait sends him on the spiritual journey is to see if he has what it takes to help them and to make the facility unknown to others, but instead he tricks them.
I read somewhere that it was supposed to allude to how the Tuurngait inhabit the further reaches of your mind or your mental “penumbra”. However, that very well could be some bullshit some Slavic wiki dude came up with.
@@The1of1000 It's more likely it was named that to reflect the lighting engine, since it held that name in the original demo. A catchy, cool word to corral interest in the tech. A penumbra can allude to an opening door with light coming from behind it or moving shadows being cast.
The contrast between the OP, and each reply, is brilliantly mind boggling. Does the title match the game, or not, is the question- I feel after reading each reply, it does & doesn’t, but it does.. not really, though. Lol I’m intrigued to research further, thanks to this thread.
I remember learning about Penumbra as a teenager around 2011. I found some demo concept thing from frictional game and installed it for free. I was amazed by the physics and it stuck with me for a long time. They're one of the first game I bought on steam, and every now and again I like to explore them a bit. I never finished them because I'm scared and hate horror games, but idk. I love them
I really want Frictional Games to make a new Penumbra game. I absolutely adore the setting of the Penumbra games. It has a very 'The Thing' feel to it, in some way. With today's graphics, I'm sure it would look amazing, too. And I'd give anything to get another soundtrack by Mikko Tarmia.
I played the whole trilogy start to finish on my old laptop, from sundown to sun up, one October night/morning in 2012. It was life changing and got me into writing horror.
After playing just 30 min of this game back in the day for me it was an instant 9/10, this was at a time where the horror genre was being abandoned so it was just so refreshing to be able to play something so atmospherically creepy, especially after the dissapointment that was silent Hill homecoming
Where the genre hadn't been abandoned, it had stagnated into shooters where the only scares were jump scares (more of a cheap adrenaline trick than a scare), because you can't fill players with real fear when they can just turn around and fill something with lead. No other game at the time had that bone chilling feeling where you just wanted to hide in a corner and not move in-game for 45 minutes. Those games made hardened horror fiends squirm and take breaks to cool off lol
I think Penumbra is an example of a game to be enjoyed for the journey rather than the ending or some "deep" plot, like the older Silent Hills. I've come to realize Lovecraft and most horror writers weren't after life-changing plots or enlightening stories for the reader's personal development, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Hey, I'm the guy who uploaded the tech demo to Archive.org! Yknow it was weird, it took me quite a while to find the thing cuz it seemed like it wasn't availible anywhere. And the moment I found it, İ uploaded it to the Archive fearing it could be lost. I'm glad if it helped you make this awesome video.
That laser tripwire bomb trap, is a clear reference to MGS2 where an *exact same* explosive trap is present, even its layout is identical. But this one isn't *A DUD!*
16:05 (spoilers) had to have been the most memorable moment for me out of the entire series just because of how shocked I was when I found out what I had done. I don't even think Bioshock was able to top it.
Just finished the series about a week ago and I found myself quite surprised how scary “Black Plague” was. I think the winning formula that made it scarier than pretty much every other game, is that it forces you to complete complex and obtuse puzzles under extreme duress. I’d say this was even scarier than Amnesia, because in this you spend a great deal of time trying to understand what the puzzles even conceptually are supposed to be in the first place, when you’re simultaneously being chased by the Tuurngait.
Amnesia TDD made the mistake of having enemies disappear if you hide for a bit, it's worse when you have to slowly sneak around the creature while trying to solve a puzzle to get out of there.
@@norwegianboyeethat was really lame in Amnesia once I realised that the scripted monster pop ups, just go away permanently if you aren't discovered for about 30 seconds. There was a new patch in 2017 though, where you can play Amnesia with the monsters remaining within the levels permanently
For reference, There’s a large homeless population/encampment that usually hops around. The main locations are usually Gilbert street/near Disneyland and near angel’s stadium. I live about 30-40 minutes away from there
One of my gaming sins was playing this before the hype and getting so lost and confused I never even saw a monster before uninstalling. I spent around 2 hours just wandering around with the insanity effects maxed out because I'm dumb.
0:14 Ya if you didn't have that little line of text saying "Obviously, none of this is for real." I would have believed you since this year has been that insane.
Ah yes. Oveture had a combat system. Looks just as terrible as I remember! I've never actually played the tech demo, and I remember you recommending the fan games, I will absolutely give them a shot. Thanks Charlatan, good luck with your move.
Theses videos are well produced, but it feels like you are just describing the basics of the games with little to no analysis or opinion. I think that having more of that would make the videos more personal and interesting.
I kinda forgot of Penumbra, since i watched gameplay of it when i was little, but now the feels rushed in! It was the first horror game that made me love horror games as a genre! Oh i am so happy to hear that name again, it took me back to when i was 13 :)
Replaying Penumbra: Black Plaue now to see if it really is as good of a horror game as I remember it to be. I must say, Oe umbra got so much overshadowed by Amnesia that I have barely seen anyone covering it, despite it being fairly superior to almost any horror game/series IMHO and really the granddad of any horror games of its ilk. Also, it has one of the BEST atmospheres in any horror game ever. Thank you for covering it! Amnesia, while okay, is inferior in almost all aspects to Penumbra I think.
Good luck with your move, my family moved all of our stuff from Maryland to California in our SUV and a box truck so I know how stressful the cannonball can be. Hopefully with covid traffic and the warmer weather it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle.
Damn man, can you tell me why? It looks mad interesting to me and is it action horror or just action? Cause it looks like some action was going on with some rpg elements
Diseasel oh shit okay bro bro I gots you, imma prolly look up reviews for it just to hear more about it to see if I’m actually interested but idk because there’s so many horror games I really wanna play so badly and already have games I’m tryna complete just like penumbra
@@FrozenStarFish yea its an fps rpg. Theres a light horror atmosphere but not really. Its a fairly complex and poorly explained game but I cannot stress how much fun it is once you get into it. Very worth it tbh tbh.
i've just discoveres all these game critique/review/video essay sorta things this past week and this is probably my fave so far. the penumbra trilogy and amnesia tdd are some of the first pc games i played and i'm grateful for that
Don't know if you'll ever read this, but I love the structure of your videos, and you got some good vocal transition skills. Definitely coming back to this channel.
Played all 2.5 Penumbras before Amnesia back in the day like the good boy that I am. That pickaxe in Overture carried me hard through the latter half of the game and broke the challenge of it. Don't think the devs ever intended for me to lug it around from that area you find it in all the way to the end. P. S. Wait, not sure fi I played Requiem, but if not - guess I didn't lose out on much.
11:22 Consider this: If you had not looked into them, and said that, they wouldnt have sod off, and you'd have taken a sponsorship from them. Im glad it turnout out this way
Just to clarify on your Anti-sponsor segment. You wouldn't get in trouble for not mentioning is a sponsored video, they are the ones who get in trouble. But for sure your audience would judge you for not saying it's sponsored
Not going to lie, I found your content recently and love it so much I've watched your backlog and caught up. I love your cat and cooking segments. Keep fucking with the normal formula. It's the best.
I stillll go back and play these games every now and then. I hate the dogs in the first one, but not being able to kill anything in the second was a stark change of atmosphere. I still think about the spider eatin' dudes journal. Great series
Penumbra: Black Plague is still my favorite horror game. Though admittedly I have not really played much of, say, Outlast or even Amnesia, but something about Black Plague's gameplay merges perfectly with unsettlingly terrifying atmosphere.
Something to note on the combat system - the "jank", for want of a better word, has been speculated to be (and has been proven to be through the find of "easy combat" in the games files) *_entirely_* intentional. Philip is not a fighter, not a super soldier, not even a cop, security guard or bar bouncer. In fact, canonically, he's just a physics professor. There is no reason to suggest that he should be any good at combat of any shape or form. The "janky" combat system is supposed to represent this. I've never played Amnesia, only the Penumbra series. I can't personally speak for how the mechanics in Penumbra feel less refined than that of what you'll find in Amnesia, but that does seem to be something most people tend to say. But I can say that Penumbra is fantastic for the atmosphere alone, but is also damn good in many other ways. And I will always recommend people play it.
I played the penumbra games as they came out. In retrospect I regret not making youtube videos about the game at that point. Could have hit the let's play gold rush.
This trilogy is so good. I remember stumbling onto an LP of it when I was a teenager almost 15 years ago. Really hooked me, and ever since I've been amazed by how little it ever gets talked about. I mean, Siren's gotten more send-ups and reviews and retrospectives than it! Not that Siren's attention is undeserved, just that I think Penumbra deserves similar attention and recognition. Like how Dark Souls' success has lead to more light being shone on King's Field, I want Amnesia's success to spotlight Penumbra. But it hasn't. And that makes me sad in my emotion-hole.
