Stories That Don't Want to be Told 

Mine is mort theory

I feel sometimes it's more sharing a world maybe an experience more than a story

The description of Ergodic Literature brought to my thoughts about games like D&D, Vampire: The Masquarade, Fate Core, and all those similar ones, where the players - by their own decision - will be the heroes or villains of the stories, which are mostly described by the Game Master (in D&D it's called Dungeon Master), and the group together write one collective story. If they doesn't do anything, they wouldn't be part of the story - therefor they are forced to do something. In a similar way, as you talked about the video games, a good session isn't a "railroad"-ed one, where doesn't matter which direction you choose, ends up at the same spot, but a vast world, where every action has a consequence, and you need to work for your goals.

Oh, so that's why the NPCs in those game either speak cryptically or in riddles.

I love that type of storytelling in games, you can also see some of that in the game Ultrakill, where many parts of the story are clearly said in enemy descriptions, theres also a lot of environmental storytelling, such as seeing the giant Earthmover look down at you even though there are lots of other Earthmovers around it that it was fighting just then, this implies that V1 (the robot you play as) was designed to take down Earthmovers, small details like that can add a lot to the story of a game or movie

when'd he say that?

​@@maxleavitt8199Glad I'm not the only one who's noticed how Souls-like the writing in Ultrakill is. Only difference is that Ultrakill's lore is much more willing to give concrete answers if you put the pieces together, and the creator actually engages with the community and confirms/deconfirms theories.

As a gamer, I don't like such storytelling. As a student of game design, I find it amazing. Truelly creative work. And as a souls fan, I find it endearing.

Two narrators that aren't quite reliable yet so interesting

I love this book!

We making it out of the five and a half minute halfway with this one

Hey bro, I heard you liked footnotes, so I put a footnote in your footnote... and then I put another footnote about that footnote in a footnote, but upside down, at a diagnoal angle, fifty pages later, down the side of the page.

​@@IndustrialBonecraftdon't forget the footnote that mentions 20 pages of incomprehensible scribbling from a crazy woman at the very back of the book

@@HEXoslav LMAO

COBOL 😊

I laughed, yet I was sad.

Then try assembly

Tbh C is easy to grasp, but hard to use

Yes

No it’s a gremlin when you put it in four loko instead of water

That's me, they stole my likeness for the thumbnail

No, that's just Jerry from accounting

Yup. Her name is Flora.

Exactly

I get the original idea, but imo it's hard to get a message like that from that kind of gameplay. "You gotta memorize this guy's attack patterns until your hands can press the right button at the right timing before your mind can even register what they're doing if you wanna beat this game" doesn't exactly teach much about hardship. Specially since irl, real challenges are ones where you get no do overs, not ones where you can't move forward until you're an expert at this one very specific thing. I know you mention the story as well, but that does tend to get overshadowed by gameplay, since it's not like technically easier games don't have impactful messages on the same lines. But I agree it does end up being more about ppl ignoring everything else and just flexing about having great reflexes with a controller rather than necessarily being the game's fault.

​@@rahvithecolorful With a couple of exceptions, most bosses really don't require you to memorize attack patterns in that way. Unless you're a challenge runner (or the boss is shit let's be real) you probably wouldn't actually know exactly what every attack is the second you see the wind up. It definitely doesn't require you to act without thinking or purely on reflex. At least in my experience, it's much more a matter of getting a "feel" for the boss. You don't learn that when he raises his arm at exactly a 42° angle he'll do one backstep and then swing horizontally at a 62° angle, you learn that this is a boss that tends to swing horizontally, so rolling backwards is more effective than rolling sideways. Or that this particular boss moves great distances in little time, so trying to flee to heal doesn't make any sense. It isn't memorizing, it's getting comfortable. Most of all, it really isn't reflexive. Bosses are really tense, specifically because they require a ton of concentration and in the moment thinking. Generally any one wind up can mean several different attacks & there is always a risk of a boss acting in a way you didn't expect. It's a constant push & pull of risk & reward. Do you attempt to get in a few extra hits at low health, even knowing that there is a chance that the boss will punish you for it? Do you risk dodging another attack instead of running away, knowing that most bosses will punish you for exactly that behavior? There's certainly a lot of soulsborne games (especially the non-fromsoft games) that are way more unfair than this & do actually require you to memorize every little potential movement, but imo that's also generally a marker of a bad soulsborne game. Additionally, bosses aren't the end all be all of fromsoft games. There's just as much exploration. One of the most famous mechanics are souls/runes/bloodechos, which are arguably a much larger part of realizing this theme. The games don't teach you to deal with frustration through the bosses, at least not exclusively, a much larger part of the games is learning to let go of your level up currency. If you make a bad decision, or have bad luck, you risk losing potentially hours of progress. Worth noting that leveling up actually barely makes a difference most of the time, but the prospect is still deeply frustrating. This is probably why Sekiro simply doesn't have a traditional level up mechanic. That game, with its focus on parries, actually does require you to learn every attack in a much more exact manner if you want to beat it. Thereby you have to attempt every boss a lot more than you ever should have to in a more traditional fromsoft game, which would make the additional risk of losing your progress much, much more punishing. Sorry for the rant, I hope you understand what I'm trying to say. English isn't my first language.

@@rahvithecolorful The difficulty in the game is a reflection of difficulty in real life and real life hardship, it cant really ever truly match it. But for many people the fact that its difficult but do-able is amazing, more than. I've heard of people who struggle with mental health problems playing lots of souls games and really loving them because it gives them insurmountable odds but allows them to beat them giving a sense of control in spite of the lack of control they have in real life. And to many people they will hop on one of these games and get immersed in the story and world building for escapism (me included). Most of them don't want a challenge that reflects their actual problems they either cant escape or solve, and would rather have that boss that's bs.

@quisslequassle404 Your English is great, and it's not mine either haha I think I do understand what you mean, it's likely just that to my adhd brain that needs to think of every movement I do that isn't very different from having to memorize. Might not be a exact as my comment came off, but nevertheless it expects you to know exactly what's coming when before you have time to register it properly. I did play some of these games too, and from my perspective, they tends to become more like what you said and less memorizing the more you play exactly because your reflexes are good enough and the mechanics are similar enough that you don't need to memorize as much because you already did. You're use to the gameplay now, so it's ingrained. It's like learning to drive. Your take on leveling up and letting go of resources is interesting to me, honestly. Exactly because, to me, that is part of what makes the focus end up on the hard combat. Because what else you do in the game doesn't necessarily equal actual progress. That being said, it's nice to see how others see the same game when they don't have the same difficulties so their focus is on different parts of the mechanics. Thanks for talking the time to reply, it's not a rant at all!

Dude, I wish I could play Rainworld, but that game feels like trying to get a wet sock to jump across a pit for a berry.

​@@ruthlesshunter9187 If they just played a bit more like a cat than a slug^^

Yeah, he started to talk what it was. And Rain World was the first thing I thought

Not only beutiful but once you master it it's also one of the most rewarding. First time taking down a vulture was one of the most satisfing things in all games for me (competing only with hollow knight's last pantheon and celeste's dlc)

@@hokuhikene the movement doesn't need to be changed at all. you're slow and clumsy if you're just using the basic movement, if you take the time to start learning the very complex system of movement built on top of those simple foundations you'll be sliding and backflipping around in no time and the game gets significantly easier.

And punishes you for doing so, saying "No! You don't get the Good Ending EVER AGAIN!"

yeah probably jerry exists for a reason

More than hard, the genocide route makes the game boring, everyone remember the extremely hard boss battles but forget that at least 90% of the time in that mode is walking back and forth repeating the same battles

​@@diegocassola1exactly. It's got 2 punishingly, frustratingly hard boss fights and... that's about it. Beyond that, just hours of grinding through fights that don't present any challenge whatsoever. And if you screw up and go through too many screens without "clearing" an area, the run is screwed. It was very explicitly designed to be an unfun experience, to make you feel like that much more of a bastard when you do it. By contrast, the True Pacifist run is fun and engaging while still managing to throw some tough (but fair) challenges your way. Toby Fox knew what he was doing.

@@MrClickity When I lived in a dorm my firend tried the genocide run, just watching him clearing an area seemed dull beyond any reasonable game design logic and I couldn't even fathom doing it by myself just by watching how boring it was. It was absolutely a deliberate choice

Same, literally said it out loud like two seconds before he started directly talking about House of Leaves.

Most definitely

Ok glad it wasn't just me lol

I slowly looked at the book laying on my bookshelf

Maybe! There are 4 kinds* of narrative in video games - enacted, evoked, emergent, and in this case embedded. Just embedding a narrative doesn't make it ergodic. But if you have to struggle to collect all the pieces and create a timeline, that's definitely more ergodic. *Based on the work of Henry Jenkins, iirc

@@e.matthews cool, thanks for the info!

@@e.matthews So, FNAF could be considered ergodic? It doesn't even HAVE definitive timeline.

@@MeemahSN Hmmm never played it, but it sounds like an embedded narrative to me - same with a game like The Forest. With no timeline then that takes out a lot of the effort of analysis and interpretation. But it could be! Games present players with difficulty, and in that sense they require effort. But ergodicity involves effort in uncovering the narrative. An ergodic game example might be Return if the Obra Din, which requires investigatory work, memory, and interpretation of the text. There are definitely multiple POVs on this issue.

Sounds like a theory. A GAME THEORY!

Exactly this. I immediately thought of Curse of Strahd, where even though the main premise is established, my players are literally creating the story as they go.

*Main system activating combat mode*

It would be cool if tale foundry made a whole video on fear and hunger. Maybe someday.

​@@greenkitty1 yea it's going to be a huge project lol ngl

A fear and hunger video from them would be so, so interesting.

same 😭😭

Never has a goofier “game” done less to earn its reputation

I first thought this video would be about Anti-memes

@@sheersternfeld1914 didn't this channel already make a video about antimemes?

@@masela01 I know, I thought it was another anti-meme video

Eh not really, there are some files that are intentionally hard to read as part of the scp but the files as a whole are not. If your talking about how different files seen to conflict and scp 001 well that's just because there's no real cannon timeline.

​@@Diego-ps7eq It's moreso how difficult it is to build a cohesive picture. Even ignoring the conflicting canons and only focusing on one canon, you have to constantly cross-reference tales and articles and tales and articles all the way down in a lot of situations just to get a picture of what's going on. Reading one single article leaves a vacuum for all of the context surrounding it which you have to fill by reading something else, and it's usually hard to tell how related it will be.

The Elder Scrolls tells the same story from dif pll views, and to each one of those ppl, it is correct Not mang of thr stories are made to be wrong, unlike things such 40k, All to say the ES franchise gives you info to make your own “correct” conclusions Without having to discredit the conclusions of others

I love Umineko, it definitely came to mind when the subject of hiding the story came up.

Honestly, this ends up being the stories downfall, especially in the second half. While it works in the first half as it has a lot that helps carry it, by the second everything just completely falls apart.

I'd say that Umineko, its sister Higurashi, and all the non-linear mystery visual novels that tend to play a lot with structure (Zero Escape series, Raging Loop, Sekimeiya: The Spun Glass, Somnium Files etc.) fall into this. But Umineko perfected that active engagement required for the story to make sense. A lot of Umineko, especially back in its heyday when it was getting translated, happened outside the game (forums, social media, blog posts) where fans kept theorizing for years and years until the manga came out with the definite solution.

Aye, picking up the peices when the game is already over can be its own reward. Even if you know finding all the peices is a discord visit away, treading the path alone can give quite the unique view on a story.

Yeah, especially if you 100% a game because you get additional story content of it or get rewarded. Then again the game could also make fun of you for being a "try hard" but we'll never know until we do it.

@@deannal.newton9772 *cough* Drakengard 3 *cough*

You're a real man then. /s

@@FilipeLeviSilva god I hope not. xD

@@JDKT002 Damn. It's not that bad 😟

Well. I blame you now for Cultist Simulator going on my wishlist. Because it is entirely your fault. Thank you.

@@candlestone5397 see you in the Mansus soon fellow Long

Already did! Now you read Hyperion by Dan Simmons!

both of these (book of the new sun and hyperion) have been on my reading list for going on a decade. The universe has spoken - it is time. Also read Snow Queen by Joan D Vinge (edited to say that it's not Too hard to understand - it's more that it very slowly reaveals the inner workings of why things are the way they are, and about half can be figured out from foreshadowing and the others can't, which makes subsequent rereads almost necessary. Similar to Ender's Game in that way, I think. There are enough levels to the Fantasy Game in that one that I still don't have it all figured out)

Challenge accepted

I should have listened to you😓

Saw where that one was going.

RU-vid is sus

😂

🤣

I don't like the idea of media as a puzzle where you "win" if you solve it. However, media that makes me work feels like a meal I have to chew - I get more time with the flavor and there's the satisfaction of digging my teeth into something. If I get to enjoy the puzzle's picture and also enjoy the act of solving it, that's double the fun - but it's too easy for it to turn into "finish the thing! Go!" which sucks. I guess I'm saying I agree and also don't? It's experience first, and solving can add to that, but being an experience should always be priority one.

I've never had that experience past the halfway point of my first Souls game. Just getting to the end of the game isn't hard to figure out. Most of the time NPCs will straight up tell you where to go.

Basically, Throw the Player in a well built world, Explain as basic a premise as you can, then let them figure it out.

It prevents a lot of people from ever playing at all, though. Not everyone can intuit whatever arcane combination of the right stats and the right items will help, and not everyone has perfect eye-hand coordination.

@@MySerpentine I mean, I have chronic hand pain, terrible eyesight, and am clumsy af. I not only play them, I LOVE them, because with practice I can overcome those problems. Sure it's INTIMIDATING, which I get, but I don't think it's nearly as bad as people claim. To be frank, instead of an easy mode, I think the series could benefit more from a practice mode like Nioh 2's Dojo. Like a place where you can just summon some different enemy types to practice with and gain confidence, then go back to tackle the main game.

@@MySerpentine Oh also, if you're confused by the stats and systems, don't hesitate to look around for guides to learn. The games aren't as confusing as they look at first glance, but the community helping each other learn is one of the coolest parts of these games that ALSO shouldn't be missed. :)

​​@@jackofminds8338 you aren't that different from the dude bro mentioned in the video. You're just better at justifying your gatekeeping with nicer words. 1) You have disabilities and are able to play the game as is, so the disability argument is thus insufficient. (There exist a number of conditions that prevent people from engaging in this game, but hay I guess this game just isn't for them.) 2) people just need a practice mode to 'get good.' after all, there are plenty of people willing to tell them what to do to be better. I guess that means if they still can't win, then it's not the game or designers fault, it's just that this game isn't for them. I would be interested to know how many people need to verify that they are unable to actually play the game in any meaningful way due to no faults of their own before their concerns are valid?

Tbh the reason I disagree with having an easy mode is because the difficulty is literally what the game is about. To the point of the player getting frustrated and quitting the game is an actual part of the story. The entire theme of the game focuses on perseverance in the face of overwhelming challenges and fighting the urge to just give up. The game literally puts the player and the game character in the same boat, because just like you are struggling to push through the game. So is your character struggling to hold on to their will to go on, and if you give up and quit the game, that would be the in game equivalent of your character falling victim to the undead curse and going hollow. The plot pairs perfectly with the difficulty to the point where it basically is a textbook example of what it is like to struggle with clinical depression.

Morgott the Omen King? No way!

That would be a good topic for a few videos. One piece has some of the most insane Continuity, especially considering how long its been since it started. It also has Stupendously strange worldbuilding. and a rather Unique form of magic in both Haki and Devil Fruits, in addition to random weird things like that guy with infinite rope, or the Painting girl, which provides an example of a Structured Magic System (Haki and Devil Fruits) coexisting with a more unstructured Fairytale type of magic

I would say "Sometimes, depending on the party and the DM"

There’s a distinction between media that is an acquired taste versus media that is intentionally esoteric and laborious to consume.

@@qenismcgee yes, and that's what the rest of the video is about. What was said at the time marked is not talking about that, which is why I think it's weird/misleading to include it.

@@flibbernodgets7018I just disagree. It might have been a leading question, but to me it felt like a good jumping off point that transitioned into the media which was discussed in the video

@@flibbernodgets7018the quote said at the timestamp is “why make something like this? Why create a story that doesn’t want to be told?” That seems to align with the rest of the video pretty clearly

​@@swiftsushithe rest of the video, yes. Everything before that, no. When I saw the title, I was expecting them to talk about House of Leaves, which they did eventually, but I disagree with how they started out. The first part of the video sounded like it was describing a souls-like (safe bet from the thumbnail) or EVE online. I wouldn't say either of those are stories that don't want to be told, but they're not stories I and many other people want to engage with because of the nature of the gameplay. The example they described at the beginning didn’t fit the conclusion they drew at the timestamp, and that's strange to me because they had better examples after it.

In Conquest Born!! It's got a "main" plot but also a lot of vignettes - I think maybe??? it would make sense if only the "main" bits were read, but there would be next to no worldbuilding. I really like that balance for when I need something digestible to keep the simpler parts of my brain hooked, but I also want pieces to put together. Edit: also The Diamond Age. the shark is half jumped, but that's Stephenson for you. I think I just like a character center of comprehensibility and everything gets more and more ergotic the further from them it gets

Hilariously, that quote is Extremely fitting with this topic, While much less true of what it originally was talking about.

Project Moon, where pain is the point

Yeah. I can respect "artist's vision" and "the difficulty is part of the story" arguments for skipping easy modes. But just chest-beating "it's manly to struggle!" arguments are just like. Okay? Then play on hard mode? Let others who don't want to prove their manliness just enjoy their games? I do feel like some games would in fact, suffer from having easy modes. It would hurt the intent of the game. But at the same time adding easy modes makes it so more people can play those games. There isn't one true answer here that will work for all games! I'm working on a game now that won't have difficulty modes. But A. There will be other ways of making your experience harder or easier and B. The game is completely non-reflex based. Absolutely nothing in the game requires timing. Even if a person doesn't have any hands and their arms end in one finger and an elbow (example based on a real person I once knew), they could play it. Just... slower. The difficulty comes from the decisions you make during it, not your physical abilities.

Five franchises, it turns out. Final Fantasy 14, SinoAlice and Voice of Cards are also involved in the Taroverse. Drakkenier is just at the center of his lore, and I’m still trying to piece things together

@@tanuki01 it doesn't help that a lot of lore is locked in Japan exclusive media. Accord might be the most important character in the entire Nier universe, while only appearing in drakengard 3 when it comes to big budget games.