First off, I just want to say I am completely astonished at not only how many views this is suddenly getting, but the amazing positive feedback overall. I've never had a success like this on my channel before, and I really do want to thank everyone! Seeing this incredibly positive response has already pushed me to go ahead with the Moons of Madness video and make it far more comprehensive than I was originally planning. I want to get it out quicker than the delay between my MFN video and this one, hopefully before the end of September, but we'll see exactly how that pans out between grad school starting back up and a few other events I have between then and now. Again though, thanks a ton, I really mean it!
Keep up the dope work man. This is like when the My House vid started making the rounds, nothing feels better then seeing essayists like this get picked up in the algorithm. Subbed and notifications on, I can’t wait for what else you make
Genuinely it is so cool to find someone who just really found their niche! This video is one of the best essays I've seen in a while! So excited to see what you've got for the future!
Im so glad this is happening to you. As a new subscriber, I loved the jokes, they were my favorite part of the video. Please continue introducing your humor. Good luck, ill be watching (in a not-creepy way)
The swan turning around was like “man you thought THAT was shit? I have to run this fucking ride for my entire garbage existence how do you think i feel”
I'll admit, the swan was probably the creepiest part of that section, although it would have been even better if it turned around INSIDE the cave, where you couldn't see it, and thus it's staring at you when you exit, then turning back.
I’m calling it now, her son is going to be dead from the start and she is going through the five stages of grief while looking for him in an old and abandoned theme of park she used to take him to. Edit: I couldn’t have been more wrong
I don’t know. Sounds like every indie I’ve seen in the last ten years. I’m not gonna pretend the park does anything too different or better. But it is still different enough.
eh, its semi alright. From my understanding he was dead and she was reminiscing the whole reason why she did it. The 'security guard' was in the very same room she ends up in, which is not really a security room for a park.
Imagine if the monster just gets Fed up with her monologuing. Like, it’s a terrifying entity that’s trying to scare her, it doesn’t want to hear her whole backstory. She’s literally sucking all the fun out of trying to scare her
Could you imagine if James just kept monologuing and eventually pyramid head just appears and is like. “Dude you’re killing the vibe! We have a whole thing prepared but you won’t shut up! You’re bumming everyone out, get therapy or something Jeez!”
I think it would’ve been interesting if the story was the other way around: the mother starts out hating callum for the same reasons as in the actual story, but finds how important he is to her when he goes missing and learns how bad of a mother she’s been. It would also explain callum running away from the start, trying to escape an abusive parent. Edit: wow, did not expect to get this much positive feedback
OK BUT I WOULD HAVE LOVED THIS- I never understood what this game was trying to do. For YEARS. It took me reading comments here to realize apparently it’s postpartum.
The thing is thats way too cliche, like that character arc and been redone so many different times it's just boring, I like the abusive mother plot but they could've shown it in a much better way than they did lmao
They really went "Let's make a horror game but the only horror is listening to the female version of the Postal Dude wax philosophical for 90 minutes."
Really feel like they ultimately wimped out on the abusive mother bit. They really could have leaned in heavily to interesting imagery to show that she just really hates that poor kid but they express it entirely through monologues and the final stretch of the game. Actually, why wasn't the kid a monster? That alone would have been more interesting than whatever this is
I agree, plus a bit more nuance on the topic would've been better and much more of value. She's constantly talking about how she hates him, I think there was a better way to frame her as abusive then just telling us she resents him and showing how they tried to 'cure' her. And the kid being a monster could've been a great allegory. Perhaps she never wanted Callum to begin with, being forced or coerced into parenthood and leading her to resent him and seeing him as a monster, which would also give us more of an explaination as to why she would antagonize her son rather then just 'I hate the concept of children'
Abusive mothers are a genuinely horrifying concept, yet they're sadly underused in horror. They either backtrack and try to justify the abuse, make them a victim, or make them into cartoon villains.
TBH the 'mom is abusive and this is all allegory' thing is SO overdone in indie horror games these days, I think the game would have been fine as is had it actually given any hints and references to the MMO it's part of. Like, imagine everyone going in thinking it's another snooty abusive parents allegory that's trendy right now, and then at the end they actually reveal how the monsters were real instead of never actually acknowledging it and tie it better into their actual MMO game? way cooler.
@@nightperson1012 yeah wich is interesting because abusive mothers are more common than Abusive fathers. Yet abusive fathers are very common in story telling while abusive mothers arent.
Fun fact - the Bogeyman is actually Nathaniel Winters, the owner of the amusement park and you fight him as a boss in Secret Worlds. Is that relevant to this game? Nah, not really, I just thought to mention it.
Yeah I'm upset that it has a lot behind it because it's a tie in to Secret World but it does nothing to make you aware of it unless you already know thus it doesn't make you want to look into Secret World.
@@LadyBern Funcom had already written off Secret World as a failure by the time they made this. They're just milking the IP for whatever they can at this point.
Genuinely speaking the whole reason I like this game is because it makes the setting feel more lived in. Without the Secret World connection I wouldn’t care.
About the witch being the mother thing: I believe what she is referring to is a telling of the story where the events unfold like this: 1. Mom tries to deposit the children in the forest, despite the protestation of their dad. They drop shiny stones behind them, and find their way back. 2. Mom tries again, they drop breadcrumbs. The crumbs get eaten, so they get lost. 3. They find the gingerbread house, the events with the witch happen, Gretel pushes the witch I to her own oven, and they make their escape. 4. They get home, dad embraces them and assures them that their mother will never try to get rid of them again. So, it's not stated anywhere in the story that the Mom is the witch, its just left as fridge horror. You're supposed to realize on your own "wtf where did the Mom go? Why did she disappear from the story after they killed the witch?" I don't think it eas the oldest version of the story, but I quite like how it represents the dad as a perfectly legitimate caregiver.
I have read versions where the mother and witch are the same person. Except it’s usually that the father is a widower and the witch is his new wife and the father already had kids. Furthermore in those versions It is usually implied that the father is under mind control. I actually like these versions because it makes the father into a sympathetic human character struck by grief and trying to find someone to act as a parental figure for his parents, but also as a partner for himself. Not seeing the negative traits of this new person. Leading to the kids escape feeling more like they’re taking charge and control of their lives. and while they’ve had to mature more than any kid that young should have to, at least they’re a family. The park seems to be wanting to do something like that a little. Like “it’s not perfect but it’s our version of a family and if we work together maybe it can be perfect for us.” Like lilo and stitch or any number of stories with this exact premise. Except instead here the kid dies and I just… I’m worried that the monologue about kids being parasites isn’t just a bit from the character, but may actually be what the writer believes. And that’s really sad. But like… in an pitiful and kind of pathetic way more than anything.
I know the story as the father was widowed and got a new wife that wanted the kids gone. I always interpreted that the reason he assured the kids that she won't return isn't because she was actually the witch but because he killed her and threw her body somewhere in the woods. The step-mom and witch being the same person also makes sense in a way.
There is also a slight fridge horror in the Park’s retelling if you think that Lorraine is modifying the story in her own with false memories because of how she sees herself - the witch and mother being the same reflects on how she knows she resents Callum and is thus like the witch, someone out to cause him harm. This reframes her trying to find Callum into something sinister. She also wanting to see herself and Callum as brother and sister rather than mother and son also shows how much she wants to distance herself from the ‘mother’ role, further reinforcing how much she really hates being a mom and resents the role.
This being The Secret World, it's entirely possible that, in context, the witch and the mother are the same person, and the gingerbread house turned the kids into monsters who were supposed to be her faithful servitor critters but just turned around and ate her. And this isn't a fairy taile, it's historical fact. And that version of the story is gone because the Illuminati decided it wouldn't do to have that kind of knowledge in the public domain. ...it got a little weird at times.
"A carnival owner stealing childrens souls to gain immortality sounds way more interesting." It's already a classic tale. Look up "Something Wicked This Way Comes."
Looking up the backstory of The Bogeyman on the wiki makes me want to see a story that's more reminiscent of that and have the main characters be children. The Bogeyman actually has his own pocket dimension that when he traps a kid inside of it, all the adults completely forget about them like they never existed. I want to see a story focusing on that with kids eventually having to go into the pocket dimension to rescue their friend.
So, if I remember correctly: the park responds to the emotions you’re bringing into it. This also affects how it appears. Her bringing these darker emotions into the park causes it to grow twisted around her. While I do think the game could’ve done a better job, I think it does a semi good job of portraying Lorraine as a character and why she is the way she is. + Her mother abandoned the family and left her with her father and later decided to drop her like a hot potato because she’s already rebuilt a new life and doesn’t want the baggage of her old life + Her father is heavily implied to be emotionally abusive and very condescending + The only bright spot was her husband who was a contractor and he was killed while building the park. I think it makes more sense that she has untreated Postpartum depression from how she talks about her son which can manifest into other issues. The mental health industry is better-ish than it was back in the day but certain medications that not everyone should take are pushed onto people by PcPs and funnily enough - Antidepressants CAN cause hallucinations and even psychotic breaks. I was on Zoloft for like a week at most and in that week it gave me 3 panic attacks and at least one hallucination episode a day after the first day of taking it but a lot of PCPs will reinforce that there’s a period of ‘settling in’ the medicine has to do so you really have to tough through it. The wrong antidepressant can literally fuck you up for months to years after the fact and I always attributed her hallucinations to those
Alas: no. The park itself is a magical engine of sorts, built by Nathaniel Winter to harvest all the parts of children for fuel. Their fears, their laughter, their very souls. All of it is real.
Good analysis. From what I remember, a book at the end of the game is specifically about a severe form of persistent postpartum depression, so overall I would say you’re right. Also, medication induced psychosis fucking sucks man, nothing to add to that point but I gotta take every opportunity I can to express that 😔
It sounds like this game suffered a particularly bad case of lacking direction. It was trying too hard to tie into the Secret World franchise, capitalize on the mascot/amusement park horror trend, be some kind of introspective psychological horror, AND be a uber-casual indie game that even normies who've never touched a controller could play, all at the same. Doing too much and lacking any cohesion as a result.
I could imagine the pills at the carnival being used for a very effective scare. Medication in American society is a very private thing, and anything you’re putting into your body has an inherent vulnerability to it (see: every time horror stories decide to fuck with food or drinks.) If I was wandering around a theme park and found a bottle of my meds just sitting there, I would *FREAK,* because those things *should not be here,* they should be at home in my kitchen. The only way they could’ve gotten here is if someone took them from my house and left them for me to find, which is such an invasive & disturbing idea. I definitely wouldn’t ever take them, because if they’d been stolen then they could’ve been tampered with, but if that had been dealt with more realistically & less calmly, it could’ve been such an unsettling moment. Imagine a different seen where the protagonist comes across a bottle of pills waiting for her. She goes, “Oh, I should bring these to the security guard in case someone comes looking for them. I hope they’re not for anything serious.” She checks the label, and her name is on it. She mumbles a stressed, “what the fuck,” opens her purse, and pulls out an identical bottle. She makes it clear she’s not allowed to have more than one, that they’re for emergencies only, that no one should even know she has it. She yells out into the park, demanding to know if this is someone’s idea of a joke, if her son did this, that it isn’t funny. She goes to throw them out, only to realize either of these bottles could be legit-that for someone to make a copy, they had to have access to the real one. She purposefully puts them in different pockets so she can keep them straight, muttering angrily to herself. Later, the situation in which she needs her meds comes up, but in her panic she spills her purse and the two bottles are now indistinguishable from eachother. The game then prompts *you,* the player, to choose which one she takes her meds from or whether she will abstain altogether as she insists that things will get so much worse unmediated. That could be a solid sequence, if done well. Heavy handed, maybe. Wouldn’t fix any of the other shit. But it could work.
I had pretty much the exact same thought when that bit came up, that it would have been a very effective bit of horror if she'd been all normal chatty monologue and suddenly gone really, really quiet as she realizes they're her pills that were left locked in her car or at home. I also think the idea of bringing up the decision to take them or abstain is an interesting one with a lot of potential, but I think you could push the violation of privacy aspect further by sticking with the one bottle and raising the realistic scenario that if someone was willing to break into the MC's car or home to get those pills, they very well may have also tampered with them in some way. It takes that 50/50 chance and shifts the stakes so they're entirely in the hands of the person fucking with you-- which is a lot more uncomfortable than the 50% chance you pick the safe pills you know and trust, because even if whoever did this didn't compromise them in a damaging way, they still could have done something pretty awful to them. Additionally, if someone put them there for her to find, they are expecting some kind of a reaction from her, so before even getting to whether or not to take them, would it be playing into their hands to keep the bottle at all? Or leave them there? It's a strong opportunity for mindgames.
Yo, that actually sounds like a cool idea for a horror game based on an amusement park. Since Pleasure Island is a place MEANT to be harmful in a psychological way, turning kids bad and all, then the park being abandoned can add the physical stuff too, maybe add the spirits of the park goers as hallucinations or something and a dangerous monster that acts like the Coachman from the movie with an Honest John and Gideon based pair of characters that could be either side, helping the Coachman or the player, at any given moment... That sounds like a game I would love to play
@@Lalaloopsies_UnitedThat _Lies of P_ game was relatively close from what I understand. It's just that it was basically "action horror" with you being (very) capable of literally fighting back against the horrors.
@@MusicoftheDamned would be more fun to have a game like that but without fighting back with psychological horror aspects (and of course monsters hunting you down because that’s the best horror aspect)
So, regarding her hatred for her son, I'm pretty confident that this game was attempting to grapple with the concept of inadequately treated post partem depression. The feelings that the mother describes toward her son are not at all uncommon emotions for mothers to experience after pregnancy (cause human brains are pretty wonky, and pregnancy does weird things to the body), and a persistence of those feelings is also not uncommon if the post partem depression isn't adequately treated. In particular, electroshock therapy has a strong cultural connotation of being associated with treating women suffering from post partem depression. Based on the fact that Callum's death does genuinely appear to be a traumatic event for her, I think that we're supposed to understand that, while she did have these hateful thoughts about her son, they were not the only thoughts she had about him and that those thoughts genuinely caused her grief. Of course, the game is, indeed, poorly executed to a remarkable degree, so none of those themes are elaborated on in a manner that feels satisfying of thematically rewarding, so yeah
What's scary is how hard post partum depression hits and you never know if or how it will. I became so overly protective of my child after they were born that I refused to leave the house and feared someone would break in just to attempt to hurt my child. It was like momma bear mode on steroids...I was called overly emotional and hormonal. Till they realized I was in an actual fight or flight response 24/7. I had to beg for assistance. THAT ALL BEINF SAID. They could have done so much more to tell a better story in this game. The writers can go onto post partum focused social circles and a lot of information can be learned. One perfect example! When a mother walked up to me and asked. "Oh. Your pregnant?!" She leans in. "....have you started having 'the nightmares' yet?" HUH. WHAT?! WHO?!? The hormonal changes commonly cause nightmares! No wonder they don't tell you till after you join the 'cult' of parenthood! But that would also be much more compelling than the game mom saying something about not liking her kid. A story covering making parenthood alluring, then the mother experiencing all the cherubs and roses gives way to what they don't tell you? Slap that mom in some spooky robes while saying that line out of context. Boom! As traumatic as my experience was, I still see how it can be used to help with understanding a narrative using better metaphor. This game doesn't cover how absolutely bat shit crazy parenthood can be, it's like La Croix trying to tell your taste buds what fruit tastes like.
Regarding the security guard seeing Callum enter and letting Lauren in. Its the same guy as the police officer at the end. And given that Lauren says at the end that in her "heart and mind I always return to the park", I kind a took the entire game story as an imagination of Lauren. Like, she murdered her son in a rage or maybe let him die through neglicience and processed it by imagining her chasing after him through the park. Lauren closes her eyes in the end of the story when in the police room and the first thing she does at the start of the game, she opens them. So when the police officer asks her how she lost her son, she imagines herself at the park and how it came to this. (I am not saying the game is "secretly genius" or anything. Your points on why it fails are all valid. I was just saying, I don't think Callum was ever there and was already dead/missing at the start of the game.)
"...let him die through negligence" gave me an interesting thought that could make this kind of game work, but it would also completely change the entire game. I agree with you, the actual game is more a dream sequence as she sits through an interrogation with the police, but WHAT IF this were a game from the perspective of a mother that is trying to "murder" her son while fooling herself that she loves him - or is struggling with loving him but also hating what his existence has done to her. So she does take him to an amusement park, and does all the things a good parent is supposed to, but it's a "Something is Wrong" game, where happy surroundings are just a little bit off. The rides malfunction, the food is bad, there's no one else around, but mom insists that everything is fine so when/if the kid dies it's an accident and not murder.
I know the map thing was a joke but the idea of a horror game where you are given a map that starts out clear and understandable but slowly becomes harder and harder to use and you can’t tell if it’s you the map or the building that’s wrong sounds awesome
Playing Silent Hill was like that. It starts out with map of the city and then you find out more and more cut off ways and buildings interiors get more weird and get more rooms seemingly out of nowhere.
There is so much to salvage from this to actually make a good story thoooo 1: Show the apartment in a wreck at the start but her happily having breakfast with the son at the very start. Imply her disorder and build her character. 2: Guard railings all over the park. It makes the once wide space more closed off. 3: No monologues. 4: Anything alluding to her hating Callum? All in the flashback during the roller coaster. 5: The hansel and gretel stuff. Remove the boat bit at the start, have the book on the table while they are having breakfast or on a bookshelf in the background. 6: Pop corn trail. Theme parks have popcorn, they clearly WANTED a "breadcrumb trail" but why not stick with the theme park motif. 7: The end is an accident. Have her angrily scream at him or something and then suddenly realize she stabbed him. 8: Remove the other unnecessary characters like that Spindly Johnny dude. Keep it PURELY psychological. And all of that is just on top of my head, how did they fuck it up THIS bad
The thing is, NONE of it is psychological. In the world the game takes place in, the monsters are real and the mother's behavior isn't of her own free will but a condition created to drive people mad and to murder the innocent to keep the monsters immortal. The game would have been MUCH better were this alluded to at all.
in the game's defence, the fact her ahting callum comes out of nowhere is part of the point, because its meant to allude to the fact she doesn't actually hate her son and is jsut being made to think so by the very real evil ghost haunting the park. some may find this a terrible idea but you know what? I HATE when fictional stories set up a supernatural explanation only to go "oh no it was all in a characters head" so i appreciate the twist that, no, the supernatural stuff was real and the stuff suggesting it's in her head is the lie.
@@sarafontanini7051 THIS! Sadly, the game didn't bother explaining that AT ALL, and it suffered for it. I can't believe they didn't once make reference to SW in the plot or had the mother even comment on a very known phenomenon at this point.
Honestly they could of kept winters and made him replace the inner monologue have him i guess represents Doubts and regret and have him actually turn out too be the MC
That speech with the child actually got me sad, I’ve always had issues with being worried my family sees me as useless, so hearing that actually scared me more cause I’m always scared of that. The hatred to own her son is disgusting to me.
I am genuinely sorry you have gone through that in your life. And what I’m gonna say next I hope doesn’t come off as insensitive. I don’t think it will, I’m just clarifying as I approach both parts of your comment. I think it’s interesting, because it is disgusting. I think the premise for her character is really strong. She reminds me of James from silent hill. This deeply disturbed individual who you start off feeling bad for because you don’t know their past. When they’re put in danger you feel bad for them. But as you learn more about them and see who they really are and by the end you find yourself feeling like on some level they deserved it. And then you stop yourself because you don’t want to think that but you do. And then the real horror is revealed. What does this say about you? Or at least that’s what I get from James. Because James is in silent hill 2 and silent hill 2 is one of the best slow burn horror stories I’ve ever seen. Helped by the fact it doesn’t immediately show its hand regarding James past. The park could have had the same thing going for it but the pacing and execution leaves much to be desired and results in a main character who sucks but not for the reasons they want us to think she sucks.
@@juicebox7372I’m gonna say no. I think the devs were definitely inspired by silent hill. The park becoming derelict as you enter reminds me of the other world and how the town shifted. The horror being pulled from the player characters past trauma is definitely silent hill/Jacobs ladder coded. Even the reveal that the character killed a loved on in a manic state as a twist reveal at the end. But I think if you were to move it into the silent hill setting it would still fail. There are like a dozen silent hill games and they also suck for a lot of the same reasons as the park. Lack of subtlety, poor pacing, confusing messaging. Playing their hand too early and just generally not being scary. Like silent hill 2 doesn’t get enough credit for how much it has to juggle while coming out as good as it does in the end. It manages to make you feel both sympathetic and disgusted by James and that is no easy feat. Wether you kept the park as its own thing or moved it into another setting its problems would remain. The problems with the park don’t stem from the concepts. But rather it is the execution of those concepts where it fails. A tale as old as time. There are no bad ideas, only bad execution. Or so the saying goes.
There’s one easy way to make this a good game: Make the player Callum. Running and hiding from your mentally ill and abusive mother in a creepy amusement park would be much scarier than actually being the mother obviously is. The game isn’t scary or fun because you’re playing as the monster.
I was thinking the same thing. Plus, imagine this - Imagine Callum's mind having to explore his favorite park in a tainted state. Imagine you going back to your favorite place, now covered in the dark, with everlonging loneliness and even worse, the fear out of being found by a loved one turned into a killer. It would be tense and that would make the scenario we are brought in more scary. What a mind of a kid can come with is 10 times bigger than what it is indeed.
It would certainly add a lot more weight to the climax as well, seeing how despite his attempts to escape, Callum loses in the end and dies because of his mother's actions
For this quality of a review, I expected an established channel, not someone who made shitposts a decade ago and is suddenly churning out passion projects within the past month. Definitely recommending this to everyone I know
I think the REAL horror is this mother's mentality. Her taking these rides can be interpreted as goofing off while her child is missing. Sis doesn't even want to find him edit: im not even surprised she murdered him, i'm surprised she didnt do it sooner
I genuinely think if they dropped the cursed theme park bit and made it a story of a mothers mental health going off the deep end and the horrifying reality of someone who has no help or support system in place it could have been way better. But the theme park being the main location and basically outright stated to be haunted really drags it down because it just does not connect properly.
Nah, mental health horror themed indie games are a dime a dozen. They should have alluded to the fact that in universe the monsters are real and the mother's behavior isn't even her own but a condition brought on by said monsters to make people murder the innocent, Far more terrifying, having the MC slowly realize that she's been infected and can do nothing as her mind is altered and she's forced to harm the person she loves for monsters that feed off her sons death.
@troin3925 it didn't need to be in the first place. I don't think a majority of people who even played it knew it was related to secret world in the first place.
@@rivvyp i think making it related to SW was what made it stand out from every other 'the paranormal os actual mental illness ooooo spooky' game every indoe dev was churning out at the time. The issue is the absolutely failed to tie it into the game in any way that mattered it made the players not aware of the IP learn about it.
@@rivvyp I didn't know about it when I first became aware of the game either (I didn't even know what The Secret World was yet). I honestly liked the game, it wasn't amazing or anything, but I thought it was fine for what it was.
The ending had me confused for the longest time because I couldn’t tell if Chad was the one to kill her son or not because of the ice pick and she blames herself for his death (so in her mind she killed her son) or she physically did it herself and the credits where she’s talking to the cops is actually the very beginning of the game and the intro is a loop in her head since she always comes back or thinks about the park
to explain more, the whole game is a flashback, the supernatural stuff IS real and the whole point is to drive into wanting to murder her own son, hence why she starts thinking cruel thoughts while initially she was more worried about ehr son's safety. The entire game is a tie-in to an MMO game where you battle ghosts, monsters and secret societies, with the evil ghost haunting The Park being one of the entities you fight. btw at the end the jar with the bee in it next to the cop is part of a whole thing about the game's main organisation the player joins uses bees to empower its employees so the 'cop' is actually a member of that organisation hoping to use the woman's tragedy to enlist her as a member of the group.
@@sarafontanini7051 I feel like there are a lot of interesting ways they could have made that more clear imo. Like if she occasionally berated herself for saying these things about Callum, or if her resentment towards her son noticeably grew after visiting each attraction because she's stuck in the monster's lair that only wants to bring her in deeper. Hell, Lorraine could have repeatedly questioned her own irrational decisions (i.e., going on the swan when she could have just waited, like Yeen just said) but making up a justification on the spot for each bad decision. Because that's what abusers tend to do. At least then, it would provide insight into toxic behavior.
@@aquariumstudios1430 Maybe it's not meant to be made clear and the stuff people want more clear involves clarifying her "justifiably" is what's disturbing. She's the villain. Her power is persuasiveness and manipulation. Hence, her annoying monologuing. There is nothing more to her story. Nor should there be. She says who she is by hating her own son. To a critical mind that is all you need to know by self admittance. Any more backstory serves in attempt to vindicate what she's done and who she is.
Y'know what's worse about the "Old man Henderson"/Secret World-references? Old Man Henderson HIMSELF is a reference to a meme character from a Call of Cthulhu-TTRPG story. (think Dungeons & Dragons, but instead of Knights and Mages you play occult Investigators shitting their pants seeing a fish man) In that story, Old Man Henderson was a crazy Vietnam Vet (or at least he claimed to be), who wanted to destroy the Old Gods and their cults because he thought, they took his garden gnomes. (it was supposedly a troll character made by the writer of the story to fuck with his Game Master, whom he hated) So if you know THAT fact, you will take the game even less serious. P.S. and yes, before someone corrects me - I know, OMH wasn't directly from a Call of Cthulhu-game but from a Delta Green-game. That info isn't exactly necessary for people, who don't know either, thus not understanding the difference.
Admittedly what game the character originates from is irrelevant as the story is almost certainly a complete fabrication. The original story changes custody to a third party unrelated to the OP, and frankly even then the story reeks of being just a bit too unbelievable.
@@iceblaster1252 Oh, for absolute certain the OMH-story is BS. As a GM myself, if a player was this antagonistic to me by trying to derail my whole game, the game itself wouldn't have survived past the first session with that character, without me having a talk with that player. Hell, normally I create characters WITH my players so I can incorporate them into the story or try to find plothooks so the character is actually relevant in some way. If a player comes to my table and basically says "yeah, I rolled the character up, no need to look at the sheet or read the backstory", my alarm bell rings. I've allowed one player to play a Malkavian in my Vampire: The Masquerade-campaign without having knowledge about said characters backstory. Learned the hard way, why VtM-Storytellers make sure to check what a player understands under "playing a Malkavian". And especially, OP claims he made Old Man Henderson to try to one up the GM's bullshit and unfair rulings - you'd think Old Man Henderson would've just died in his sleep, if the GM was that much of an asshole that the character's existence was necessary. Though, to me it would still be relevant/distracting if I found a random reference to a meme character in a game I'm trying to take serious. And I say that as someone, who made a whole Warhammer Fantasy-One Shot based around an Among Us-reference/joke.
@@manticore6963 Honestly, I think OMH might be possible myself because I've known GM's who don't outright rocks fall bullshit characters because they want to try and beat problem players at their own game, but ngl I don't care if its real or not. I love the OMH story and character, genuinely one of my favorite TTRPG stories regardless of credibility: same with the ballad of edguardo. That being said, extremely weird to throw that in in both the secret world AND this game.
"Just because I am eating a burger king whopper, doesn't mean I hate the sewer rats that they used to make it" Okay, that joke got me to subscribe, lol.
Saw Markiplier play this. The only other thing I remember about this game besides the basic premise and ending was one scene where the mother casually descended into a rant about how much she found other moms annoying. It felt like something straight out of a r/childfree post.
@@cruncmcfuncle564He was kinda written from the heart. The dev really cared about that game, he just... sucks at making games. He even came back around after his initial tantrum and admitted the game was poorly made.
@@pancakes8670 Alex isn’t even a symptom of poor game design. He just isn’t well written. They said they made him unlikeable on purpose, but there’s nothing about him that makes you want to keep playing as him or to see him improve. You just want him to shut up and go away, due in no small part to the fact that he just. Keeps. Talking.
I think what the game is trying to go for with MC representing both Gretel and mother/witch is that MC WANTS to be Callum's Gretel. However, her depression has ruined that and caused her to be the mother/witch. You could also say with the ending that MC has a mental breakdown because of the buildup with being told all over again about her life falling apart. In that breakdown, she sees herself as Gretel and Callum as the Witch. Being in an irrational state and equating her and her son to those roles might be what drove her to take Callum's life.
I feel like it would make a bit more sense if she was actually the big sister and not the birth mother then being the mother and sister at the same time would make a bit more sense. It would change the context but I feel like it still tackle a lot of the same themes like fear of pregnancy thing can still be a part of her, but it’s now related to her seeing the pain she had to go through and how it made her afraid to have child, but due to the parents deaths she was forced to take of one.
Yeah, regarding the "In the oldest version of this story, the mother and the witch were the same person" comment she made on _Hansel and Gretel_- I swear I've heard that flung around the internet before, but there isn't any real truth to it. I think it may just be incorrectly mistaking _Hansel and Gretel_ for an entirely different fairy tale, _Little Brother and Little Sister_ (more details on that one later), and/or recalling the genuinely true statement that the step-mother in that story was actually the kids' biological mother in the earliest edition, and it was changed to step-mother in a later edition. That probably just went through the internet game of telephone and somehow "step-mother = mother" became "mother = witch." As far as earlier versions go, the Brothers Grimm were going around collecting folk tales from the Hesse region, things told orally that they re-wrote for publishing. I don't know of any other German tales before their version was published. Charles Perrault was well before them, and he had written _Hop o' My Thumb_ which is very similar but distinctly does not feature a witch. Unsure if there are earlier versions that he drew from for this tale. Looking at the ATU index for fairy tales, _Hansel and Gretel_ is 327A. None of the other stories categorized as 327A have the mother and witch being the same (honestly in most of the tales besides H&G, the mother doesn't even want to abandon the children in the first place). Even looking at every other story under ATU 327 and others, STILL not a single one has any sort of "the parent(s) and the monster are the same being" twist. I've now read every tale that's listed! Honestly though that should be obvious, if that story existed I feel it would be talked about and reposted often. I know I would have lapped up an edgy twist like that as a kid. The only "family member is a witch" one I GUESS is _The Woodcutter's Wealthy Sister_ and even then that isn't even the case. The "aunt" that fattens the family up to eat them is not their aunt at all, just a demon deceiving them. That's an interesting one, though. Now, _Little Brother and Little Sister_ *DOES* have the step-mother who is actually a witch that antagonizes them in the story! That's an entirely different fairy tale and other than both having two young siblings, a step-mother, and a witch, they don't have anything else in common. Due to the name though, they often get confused for each other (sometimes H&G is published under that title, or any of the other common titles like just _Brother and Sister_ or whatever). Both stories were collected by the Brothers Grimm- this one in particular had earlier published variants, even another similar variant under the same ATU classification (ATU 450) that was also collected by the brothers titled _The Little Lamb and the Little Fish_ with another instance of witch step-mother. In LB&LS, essentially the kids run away and the son is transformed into a deer by the witch step-mother, among many other things that occur afterwards. Read it if that interests you. TL;DR: Just your basic fairy tale misinformation. I don't really have anything of value to say about the game other than agreeing that the _Hansel and Gretel_ allegory is bad. I just like folklore. :b Also, 28:32 - the dad doesn't rescue the kids in the original tale, the kids escape and make their way back home and are greeted by their dad with the step-mother having died. Once they leave the witch's house, they find a duck that they ride on until they reach a familiar part of the woods and find their way home. And the end of the swan ride showing the kids eating the witch just strikes me as basic horror game shocking imagery, goes without saying that it's not grounded in any real story.
I WILL add though (just as a reply and not directly to my already long as hell comment LMAO) that you can absolutely read into it and view the mother and the witch as being connected to each other, in that they're both outwardly maternal figures that are actually abusive and plotting to kill the children. When the witch dies, so too does the mother. Two separate people (unless the mother was just disconcertingly absent from their family home the entire time and somehow the news just happened to make it back to the father about her death), but that connection can be made. Folktales are meant to be re-interpreted in the way deemed best to the reader. As written, though? Still not true.
@@exsanguination If memory serves right, "Snow-White" had also the Evil Queen being Snow-White's biological mother in the first version of the Grimms' work, something that also got changed in later editions due to backlash. On another hand, happy to see someone else cringe at the whole "the original Grimm fairy tales were horrific and gorish!!!" narrative going around, which is, like, only sometimes true, and never something to write home about (except the "Boys playing butcher" tale, which... huh...).
@drakegrandx5914 Yep! The concept of the sanctity of motherhood is very prevalent, and the very idea that a mother could be abusive or hateful to her own biological children is scandalizing. Not even just back then- I've met people who still believe that a mother could never truly be abusive to her own child. I'm glad people are more willing to discuss this topic these days. From my memory, I think of the big three stories most everyone knows that feature the "wicked step-mother" archetype _(Hansel & Gretel, Snow-White, Cinderella),_ only _Cinderella_ had a step-mother to begin with (Perrault and Grimm specifically feature the step-mother and her own daughters, older variants may have different figures in the antagonist role but the Cinderella-type protagonist is always a poor, mistreated servant/slave and iirc never had an antagonistic biological parent, but I haven't read every variant so I could be missing one lol). _Snow-White_ definitely though. I guess the concept of a mother becoming so furiously jealous of her own daughter's looks (who is about seven years old originally, mind!) that she orders her to be killed, and for her liver and lungs to be brought to her and cooked so that she may eat them... miiight go against the "sanctity of motherhood" stuff. Gotta add that "step-" to preserve those beliefs. On that point, though, yeah. People definitely over-exaggerate how DISTURBING and SCARY the Grimm tales were. I imagine it's both wanting to "ruin people's childhoods" by showing how much was changed for the Disney iterations and also taking the name Grimm literally and wanting the stories to be "grim" as well. Ties together neatly. Admittedly I'm probably a bit desensitized to this stuff. I *guess* mutilating your own feet to fit in a slipper, or dancing in red-hot iron shoes until you die, or cutting open a wolf's stomach to remove living creatures and replacing them with stones so you can sew it back up and drown the wolf, or all the cannibalism (there's so much), or many other instances that aren't from the more well-known tales... can be considered gory or disturbing to people who aren't very familiar with the original tales, but it never comes across as gratuitous. It's always stated so blandly! At some point you just accept it. It's just a basic feature of fairy tales- you're gonna get some crazy deaths, and they're probably going to be stated in the most matter-of-fact way possible. And, like you said, that's really only the case in SOME stories. They collected hundreds, most don't have stuff like that. People just get this idea that ALL of their fairy tales must be horrific in some way. The play slaughtering one is pretty gruesome, though. I get why it doesn't tend to be published. It's been quite a while since I read through all of the Brothers Grimm tales, but the story that sticks out in my memory right now as being a bit gruesome is _The Juniper Tree._ I do like that one, though.
@@exsanguination Supposedly, from another comment, there WAS infact a story in which if i remember the details correctly: They were led into the woods by their Mother, leaving shiny stones, and escaped the forest. Were led into the woods again, leaving breadcrumbs which were eaten. (Leading to the Witch encounter) And after baking said Witch, had returned home to their Father, with their mother conspicuously missing? Never stated, but implied that she'd been the Witch.
Chad actually appears during the Swan ride, standing on a rock off to the side watching the player and it's implied the "bump" your boat hits is actually him hopping on the back.
Honestly, I think The Park suffered kinda the same fate as Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. It feels that the creators/devs focused more on making a story than making a game, which is a shame because the story of A Machine for Pigs is amazing (in my opinion) but it got overshadowed for being a walking simulator with little to almost nothing gameplay. That being said, at least A Machine for Pigs is an actual survival horror game because it has ACTUAL THREATS that can kill you, while with The Park there's no fear to danger and losing.
The Park is exclusively a walking sim and clearly advertised as such. More accurately, it's just extended lore to The Secret World MMO. It can't "suffer" from lack of gameplay when it's designed specifically NOT to have any.
Machine for pigs is very overrated. Monsters in there show up for like 3 times, an AI is abysmal, the story isn't perfect either, the atmosphere is laughable at times.
@@kolbayada4938 It's funny you say it's overrated when the majority of people alsways shit on it, like you. Also what do you by saying that the atmosphere can be laughable?
It's funny cuz I only decided to watch this vid when I realized it wasn't about Indigo Park and was actually about that horror game I watched Markiplier play 7 years ago and for some reason always stuck with me.
@@AnimatedTerror Fr, I vividly remember watching his playthrough when it came out (really just skipping through bits) and being entertained, also saying "Damn, this looks solid". Of course, I never much looked into it beyond that. Turns out I should've kept it that way. It's crazy how much an entertaining lets player can transform a game.
I remember staying up late with a bunch of friends to watch Mark’s entire play through. We were glued to the screen, we didn’t understand the game but we liked Mark and there were a couple jumpscares
I remember watching Markiplier play this, thinking it was such a cool game with a nice setting, but wondering when the scares were gonna start. It really just ended up being boring, it had so much potential imo
9:40 Neglectful parent allowing their child to end up in dangerous situations as a result of said neglect. Underdeveloped child not understanding the danger the world truly poses, going along with a stranger trusting them despite not knowing them. A theme park is as dangerous as it is wondrous, much like a fairy tale in and of itself as a concept. *hits the 'that was easy' button*
the most terrifying parts of this game is that it's inexplicably connected to a failed MMO and that it came out a little over a full year after Five Nights at Freddy's 1.
The problem wasn't that the MMO was bad, it's that the company forgot to market it. TSW was arguably one of the best MMOs ever made. Server is still up if you ever had an account, and it still has a small but active playerbase.
@@watch_kitty The Secret World, developed by Funcom. There's The Secret World and the reboot/remaster/re-release/whatever called Secret World Legends. Both are effectively dead storywise as the writer(s) have moved on and so there will be no more substantial content for either unless I'm mistaken.
@@Valkod23 Dead but not quite. There's a solid story in The Secret World, and a small but active community on the server, though it's basically impossible to get in at this point. SWL at least lets you experience the story and atmosphere.
It's interesting to see someone come back to this game after nearly ten years without having a connection to The Secret World as originally, pretty much the connection to that was the only reason to play this and that this was basically Funcom's experiment at the time of them making a stand off title that was completely tied to their darling MMO at the time. (To my understanding, Moons of Madness also did this but I never got around to that one.) TSW ran a event called The Seven Silences not soon after The Park's release that was a big tie in to what this was ultimately leading to. It was neat if you were a fan of TSW at the time but I can definitely see why it's so lackluster standing on it's own.
@@quinnzykirThe boogeyman and bee thing at the end are parts of secret world and I think there was stuff in secret world that later mentioned this as an incident.
@@quinnzykir It's kind of a lot to go over but I'll try. The Park takes place in the same park that is part of the Solomon Island zones in TSW. In TSW, the Park in question is known for being a hotspot of paranormal activity ("The Bogeyman" uses it to attract kids, and those with any supernatural ability can tell how off the place is while others see it as normal) and is on the radar of the various factions of the game. At the end of The Park, Lorraine is questioned by a agent that carries a bee in a jar, this agent is assumed to be a agent of the Council of Venice, a U.N of sorts figuregroup in TSW. Because Lorraine has a smidge of supernatural ability to The Park in the first place but is otherwise a nobody in the grand scheme of things, Council agents decide to use her in a experimental test. In TSW, you as the player character have a connection to a force in the game that uses bees, these bees are what allow you the mechanic to revive upon dying, basically no matter what and those that have them are specifically chosen and the bee enters their body. Because of this, everyone who has a bee is sought after by the TSW factions because they're basically immortal and can be sent into all sorts of terrrible places and situations. Lorraine is used in a experiment by the Council to implant one of these bees into someone who wasn't chosen by the bees in the first place and she suffers greatly for it, through both her guilt over her son and having the bees act hostile to her due to perceiving her as a intruder. She very much wants to die after but is revived over and over again no matter how she tries to end it. The Seven Silences event goes over the events in which she manages to achieve what was considered impossible by everyone, she manages to find a way to nullify the bee inside of her and finally die, a secret basically every faction in TSW would want to learn as it would give them leverage.
This game was honestly so interesting to me as a 16 year old because I wasn't a TSW player but found the world so interesting, I started looking at more background information I could find about Chad or The Boogeyman. Through that, I ended up learning about TSW and it was really cool at the time because I had no idea there was a whole MMO behind it and felt like i stumbled onto a really cool connection. I wish I was more open to MMOs as a kid cause I would've loved to try out something connected to a horror game I liked the lore of.
About smiling critters being too creept for sale - In my country we are having a lot of plushies of these for some reason and I saw parents of 6 year olds who had no way of having seen the poppy playtime getting them for their children. Which is quite funny too me since the most popular one ( catnap) does quite fucked up stuff in the game
My only gripe with the critters is that their designs feel too... far from the era they are from. I could see them in the early 2000s or later, but for a 80-90s toy? Yeah noo... otherwise i think they are actually pretty good!
Fun fact about dog aliens (runners): In Monilith's Aliens Versus Predator 2, there was a multiplayer option called "Alien Lifecycle Mode) where all xenomorph characters would spawn in as facehugger, can facehug other players, turn into a chestburster then a xenomorph. What type of xenomorph you became depends on who you facehug. If you attach to a marine, you become a regular xenomorph. If you attach to a predator, you become a predalien. But if you attach to a corporate mercenary, you become a dog xenomorph. Confirming once and for all that they are, in fact, literally corporate dogs.
Holy shit I just realized this isn't one of those 900k subscriber channels. I came to read the comments and realized there were none and then realized there wasn't hundreds of likes or views. I'm trying to say that this is a really good quality video dude. Keep it up and you'll get more attention!
That's the algorithm for ya. Promoting the undeserving people over and over as some would probably put it. Personally, I'm just glad I got to watch this lad talking about a game that Markiplier played ages ago with quite some substance put into everything by the video maker.
I honestly thought he was a really popular big RU-vidr as well. I’m shocked that he is a small one, hopefully he keeps this up and makes it big one day
im so stuck on the swan boat/hansel and gretel portion. it has no real value or symbolism towards the story, it takes FOREVER, and (if i remember correctly) you can ride it more than once which is genuinely such a waste of a feature because why would you ever want to go through 10 minutes of inutile monologuing not once but TWICE
I remember the game crash bandicoot twinsanity has a bug with some releases of the game where after completing a level and you return to the overworld, you can go back to some levels and replay them. Now this is not intentional, nor can you leave them once you’ve restarted it. And I recall that some RU-vidrs who’ve covered the game and had the bugged versions didn’t understand this and thought it was intentional and a bad design. Now what’s the point of this tangent? Well cause I genuinely wonder if maybe the same happened with the park. You’re right, who would wanna do that again? There’s no new information. I think the developers forgot to remove the trigger for the ride after the first time you ride it. I have no proof of this. But the alternative is that for whatever reason they intentionally left the trigger so you could ride the swans again for… some reason. I don’t know which one would be more believable but neither option makes the devs look great.
Besides a coding error or bug, makes me wonder if you were supposed to use the Swan ride as a heavy chase sequence a 2nd time ?? The dark boat ride was literally the perfect set piece to set up a lurking enemy in the BG while the story of Hansel and Gretel is being narrated out but twisted and distorted the 2nd ride around. I thought I fever dreamed this game because I only remember Jacksepticeye playing it (thats if I did, I may be mixing him up with Mark or something similar) but the Swan boat ride did spooked me back then lol.
Let's not forget that the swan head turn makes it read like a punchline. Like even the game is giving you an aside glance for sitting through all of it.
For some reason this made me think of Myst and similar games, where you may need to backtrack to a different area to try and get some clues for a puzzle or something. But in Myst, you can spam click across the whole island in like 4 seconds, and play the silly number game in like a minute, not 10 minutes of inane rambling. Much closer to Obduction and it's egregious loading times and obnoxious routes.
If I could say something about the Hanzel and Gretel allegory, it's got to do with Lorraine's mental state, than actually being a 1 to 1 recreation. See, usually when good people are struggling with intrusive thoughts, they tend to be more harsh on themselves and view themselves in the worst ways possible. Her saying that she thinks of herself as Gretel in the story, despite being Callum's mom, or the Witch and the Mother being the same character in earlier versions of the story, aren't meant to be taken literally. In her fantasies of being Gretel and Callum being Hanzel are her mind's attempts at shielding herself from the truth. The idea being that Gretel and Hanzel are forced into this terrible situation, but they face it together; no matter what happens, the pair of them will have each other. It's why Lorraine wants to see herself as Gretel - the idea that she and her son are in a bad situation, but it's one that is being forced onto them from an external force. And no matter what, they go through it together. The reality of the situation is, there is no external force putting them both in this position; it's Lorraine who put herself and Callum in this position (that being their lives.) Callum is just a kid and can't do much, so the entirety of the burden falls on Lorraine - and due to her various flaws, she can't overcome these problems. It's the inevitable self-defense mechanism that everyone has in their brains whenever the goings get tough; people are more ready to see themselves as the _Protagonist_ of the story, before they accept themselves as _the Villain._ Her later claim that the Witch and Mother were the same character isn't meant to be taken literally, because it's the first step that her mind is taking to realizing what the problem really is; herself. She's starting to see or accept the truth, that she and Callum aren't in this together - she's the one who put Callum in this crappy situation, and it only gets worse from there. The idea of the Witch and the Mother being the same person is a lot like adaptations of Peter Pan, in which the actor who plays the children's father - George Darling - almost always and inevitably plays Captain Hook. In a sense, both the witch and Hook are meant to be manifestations of childlike fears of the worst of adults, and in a lot of ways, they play ultimately the same. Hook more often than not charms the children into revealing the location of Pan's hiding place; in a sense, it represents the childrens' desire that their father be kinder to them and play with them. But when Hook gets what he wants, the mask comes off and is ready to toss them aside. Same as the Witch; she invites Hanzel and Gretel in, taking them in when they have nowhere to go and offers them candy and food; in a lot of ways, it's how the two wish their own mother would be towards them. But like Hook, the Witch's kindness is only a means to an end, and once she has them, the mask comes off. So from this perspective, while not physically the same character, the Witch and the Mother are meant to be two halves of the same coin; meant to represent the childrens' regrets and their fears. Lorraine isn't 100% saying this factually about the story, but is more or less saying it about herself. She recognizes that she is the bad-guy in her story; she's the wicked mother who wants to abandon Callum so she can be free, but she's also the Witch because she is only concerned for her own ends and wants, not caring what damage she does to Callum. I figured this was the best explanation i could come up with for Lorrane's mental state. But still, the game makes no sense. If all of this is supposed to be in her mind, then why does she find Callum sleeping on a stone block inside the Witch's house? This game really is more art-experiment than game, and it feels like it needed a second-draft - especially at the ending. Because having her stab Callum is just such a disappointing finale.
Because while her psychological state plays a big role in the game, the Park itself IS supernatural and designed to make her spiral down into loathing and sacrificing her son. Spindly Johnny is real.
For the record, electro-shock therapy - or rather, electroconvulsive therapy - is done with the patient's informed consent, using muscle relaxants to avoid injuries, using low voltage current, and is performed in extreme cases (as it _can_ have side effects such as partial memory loss). It's not like how it's all too often portrayed in fiction, where a patient is essentially strapped to an electric chair against their will to have their brain fried because the doctors can't be arsed to treat them or as punishment (fun fact: mental hospitals are _hospitals,_ not prisons where people are punished for refusing to do as they're told. Not that electrocuting prisoners as punishment would be tolerable either). Admittedly, there _are_ some cases where ECT can be peformed involuntarily, but those are extremely rare and my understanding is that it's in cases where the disorder is so intense it genuinely becomes a threat to the patient's life (due to suicidal intent, for example) and they haven't responded to any other form of treatment. So while yes, in the early days, ECT was a lot more painful and unsafe than it is now (and was often performed without consent) and has been used in abusive manners, the idea that someone receiving the procedure in the 2010s would be forced into it without consent and blasted with high-current electricity without so much as an anesthetic is laughable. I also want to highlight the fact that ECT has been proven to genuinely be effective at treating ailments such as depression, bipolar disorder, catatonia and mania when all other options were exhausted. And yes, if there are other options, those should be used first, but the vilifcation of ECT is something that always annoys me.
I wonder if the developers added the bitter sweet music at the end to purposefully parellel two ideas: That not only was the mother now free from the torment of raising her son, but that the son was also free from his abusive relationship with his mother. ... As if that makes things any better.
no i don't think that was it at all especially when you hear about what became of her AFTER this game (she suffers horribly and dies, apparently) I don't think it was meant to be bitter sweet at all
Among the Sleep is also good, as it also plays with the idea on how a child deals with a divorce, and the depression that comes from it for all parties. I recommend the game, it's really good.
I agree on a lot of points, but I do think her mental illness is more important than it seems. Because she is being resentful while she's looking for him, she spouts feelings of hatred and resentment, and that's the kind of intrusive thoughts mental illness can give you. She wants to love Callum, considering she's chasing him and caring for him, but perhaps she doesn't have the capability to really do so as much as she likes. A lot of women go through periods post birth where they struggle to bond or perhaps have severe depression. It's something they tell you to look into. While this is much later, my point is it doesn't mean she really hates him, but she might have hateful invasive thoughts.
I feel like it's kind of questionable to say her being resentful of her son is cause of mental illness. Don't use mental illness as an excuse for someone being abusive. I wish a lot more games would address the fact that abusive mothers are more common than abusive fathers, cause sometimes games do that but then try to backtrack it and excuse her actions (kind of like what you're doing with your suggestion, I'm just saying, if she wasn't a woman you wouldn't be going "b-but she's mentally ill, and she's doing the bare minimum of making sure her kid isn't dead (until she kills him)") Also the Hansel and Gretel thing fits because in some versions, the mother and the witch are implied to be the same person
The Mental Illness is I believe Post Natal Depression. But either way, she's at fault for every bad thing, bad thought, and bad mouth she's done to Callum. Let's not use her mental illness as a shield for her bad actions.
As someone with OCD and does experience intrusive thoughts, including harm OCD, I don’t think her hate/resentment towards Callum are truly intrusive thoughts. Here’s why: Intrusive thoughts, by their nature, are thoughts that are inconsistent with one’s actual beliefs, personality, morals, etc. Above all else, they are *unwanted.* That is where the name “intrusive thoughts” even comes from. Because of this, people who experience them will go out of their way to prove them false and feel deep shame for even having these thoughts. My problem with this theory is that Loraine says these things with waayyyy too much conviction. There isn’t really a moment where she immediately backtracks after these long monologues or her trying to shut out these intrusive thoughts. Her mental disorder just doesn’t fit with OCD, PSTD-induced or not, from her words and actions to her treatment. Not to mention, her having intrusive thoughts about hating Callum would imply that she does truly love him, which is still unsubstantiated outside of her goal to look for him in the theme park. With how much she unreservedly goes on these long rants about how much she hates him or hates the fact that she is his mother, I’m sorry, it’s just too hard to believe she actually loves the kid.
@@UnbirthdayHatter in fact knowing the boogeyman is real could be used to extrapolate a third meaning for that sequence: that the mother being the witch is just a way to shift blame from the real monster, after all making it so the motheris the witch means noone fears the woods anymore cause, after all, the witch is supposed to be dead...meaning the real mosnter gets more morsels to feed on.... but that's just one way to look at it.
The swan boat was actually terrifying because since it was drawn out and stupidly slow it could be mistaken for the much more terrifying “it’s a small world” ride.
The weirdest thing about this game is that I vividly remember certain parts of it, and I remember watching someone play it but I can’t remember who. It’s stuck with me for all these years and at this point I had thought I might’ve dreamt it instead. To see it talked about, and to see how bad it was, is so surreal to me
Markiplier and I think also jacksepticeye played it! I also personally watched jaltoid games play this when I was younger, though you probably don't know who they are
I find it odd that the security guard lets her find her child on her own instead of helping her, it's quite literally a part of his job to do so, this is a sure way to get fired.
Given the ending, I don’t think that was real (he says almost the same thing as the guy at the end and even looks like him. It’s also incredibly surreal that he immediately knows what she wants). This entire game feels like a distorted flashback and there’s multiple indications of this.
@@crusaderthestranger5982 That's why I said that it's a distorted flashback (as in it's not entirely literal). The game states that at the time the game takes place, the park was no longer in operations. Not only was there that bizarre moment of what the guard said, but if you try to leave the park, there's a thick, unnatural, white fog and Lorraine would always say that there's things she needs to do in the park whenever you go inside the fog.
@@crusaderthestranger5982 It's really hard to tell since it seems like he was inserted into the flashback as the guy was interviewing her since, like I said, he said almost the exact same thing as him and looked like him as well as knowing her name. When I first played it, I assumed that he was her husband until the ending.
The mother looking for her kid in mix with Hansel and Grethel COULD actually work Just turn it into a mother who goes through mental issues after her husband's death having a manic episodes and leaving her kid alone in the forest just to coming to senses shortly after and going to get him back. Just to find out a witch or something similar took him in that time and the mother has to overcome the unnatural beings (which even can be left open to if they're real or just her imagination) and her past while realizing how much she loves her kid and fights to get it back
hey! the children eating (or at least brutally killing) the witch (and her henchman), and the witch being the mother (the "henchman" being their father), IS something ive seen before! specifically, from the Evillious Chronicles, which involves Vocaloid characters. so i say, retellings like this can be done pretty dang well! i love the Evillious Chronicles. just. this game dont do that
Another Evillious fan in the wild, you have brought a smile to my face :) The story of the Hansel and Gretel reincarnations is one of my favourites both in retelling that fairytale, and in all of Evillious.
literally my same thought, it was like “in the oldest versions of the tale, the mother IS the witch” and I’m like “what ‘oldest’ version are we talking about here? the one with eve moonlit???”
The weird thing about Theme Park is that it’s lore toes into an MMO, the protagonist shows up as an antagonist and you have to do some ARG junk to finish the questline.
On the topic of the establishing shot being everything for a first impression. Have the escalators go down instead. You Give us a balcony next to them or something and have the park be down in a sort of gorge rather than up a hill or island or whatever. Then we get a look at the park from above and can see how big it is. It’ll be daytime to so it should look real whimsical and fun. Heck you could have ambiance in the distance that sounds like music and crowds of people all cheering. Really make it look like some fun place to be to contrast with when you arrive. This will also communicate key locations to the player so when you arrive in the game proper you go “oh hey! I’ve seen that from afar!” Like the Ferris wheel or the haunted house. Then what should be done is move the haunted house to the center of the park and have it be the first thing you see, looming over you. Like how when you enter Disneyland the first thing you see is the castle. This sets up the haunted house for the end game. There, two establishing shots. The park from above and then the haunted house when we enter. You can then have the intro play out mostly the same, monologue, gets dark and everything gets all rusty and decrepit. Plus you get the “descending into hell” feeling that going down comes with. And I know this would work too! In resident evil 8, after the initial opening and after you crashed in the car. You make your way through a cabin that’s isolated from the rest of the village. It spits you out on top of a cliff face and you can see almost every major location that you’ll explore during the game. Your eyesight immediately goes towards the castle but you can see the village and even Heisenbergs factory though obscured it may be. Village also does a good job at making the area around you feel big but cramped. You’re mostly in linear corridors but the game works with this. It being a village it tricks you into thinking it’s bigger than it is since your outside but stuck to the playable paths. Faking the actual space it takes up. Obviously RE8 is a very different kind of horror game from the park and was made like a decade later. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it in retrospect.
That sounds much more amazing and interesting! It reminds me of how in Among the Sleep, the park area starts out all bright with the sounds of children laughing but after you get locked in the shed, everything’s all dark and the sounds of other children are gone.
"These smiling critters could never be successfully sold as toys." Me: Watching my child beg me to buy them smiling critters merch to wear. Has panic attack if they lose their Catnap toy... Also me: "Maybe my kid is just a one off." Proceeds to repeatedly have to prevent other kids from running up to take my kid's toy and/or watch them cry when their parent tells them no and they cant have Catnap. Me again: O.O; "oh....well...uhhhh....uh oh. Should I worry? I feel like i should worry now."
The Park is a disappointment, especially considering it's set in the Secret World universe. Secret World is a Horror MMO where everything is real from Zombies to Lovecraftian, it's first zone Solomon Island is packed with horror ambiance. The park is actually a location in game and you can fight the Boogyman as a quest, if only the horror walking simulator didn't fumble.
The MMO is brilliant. Not other story like it with unique quests and horror writing. Marketing dropped the ball super hard though so player counts were always low.
The game isn't good anymore, but it was, and the story and world are still awesome. The theme park is a fantastic quest chain and it gone done really dirty here. (What happened was a lot of unfortunate stuff that cost them a lot of their playerbase and then the direction of the game changed majorly and it became kind of a janky P2W mess, although it's still got fun elements and I'd say it's worth checking out just to spend some time with its atmosphere and setting.)
@@ythegamerita What do you mean by that? One of the big issues is that if you're unfamiliar with The Secret World, some aspects of it are incoherent (and this is coming from someone who likes The Park).
"That's not literary allusion, that's literary _delusion"_ would've gone so much harder in the script. All I'm saying. Jokes aside I quite liked this video
Seeing this recommended to me after all of what has happened to The Secret World and its own journey, Its kind of amazing how this snapshot in time is still sitting in Steam asking for money. Its connection to The Secret World is deep and at the same time useless, The Boogieman tells you to leave the park, but due to the nature of what he has built? They cant, and thus the ending. A few rambling notes from a Secret Worlder, The Park actively is meant to drain hope and joy from people as they spend time there, this caused a lot of the construction projects to fail, it also has bad effects on depressed people. The "fly" in the jar at the end? Is an Agarthan Bee, basically a direct line to Gaia's Magic. And due to the bee being captured and unwillingly bound to Lorraine, a lot of bad things happen. And on the funny side, they added the Squirrel Costume to The Secret World as a bonus for buying The Park. I do wish you luck with Moons. Its also got its Secret World ties but I dont remember them being so upfront.
Actually, Moons of Madness was pretty coherent even if you don't have any prior knowledge of TSW. It's also ironic that it involves things that are very important to TSW's lore while The Park was just a side quest.
Its so strange seeing The Secret World get mentioned in the year of our lord 2024 but also really brings me back: It wasn't the best game, but it felt like a game I could enjoy myself for a long while-- the thing that confuses me about the Park is that they didn't' even go the route of INFRA and make it a more exploration-rewarding horror/puzzle game, and given that the puzzles in TSW were actually really fucking interesting ones that encouraged you to do some research outside the box ARG style they could've done something really good with that. Just puzzles that were hard, but hard in this way I havent' seen any game besides the Room be in being challenging enough to make you interested more than even frustrated. If they had used even a fraction of the creativity I remember TSW's puzzles having in this instead of walking down a road listening to Loraine's High school diary when they CLEARLY SHOWED they had the skills to do so will never not kick me. As weird as it is the puzzles in TSW helped me get out of a bad spot in my younger years by getting me interested in a lot of things: Folklore, learning a bit of language (the late game puzzles have you just straight up have to learn Romanian/Japanese/Egyptian Hieroglyphs respectively to solve them) and got me way more interested in Mythology/culture and venting by doing worldbuilding of my own and eventually becoming a DM, so they definitely had some people on the team that could've made this good. I guess what I'm rambling about is that its always been funny that This game fumbled so bad when the dead MMO that it tied in with blows it out of the park in regards getting you invested in the story/puzzles. They had everything they needed to make this good and it just looks like they decided not to do a single bit of it and make A machine for pigs 2. Fun fact: If it seems weird that the haunted house at the end of the game very specifically has Cutouts of Nazi soldiers for some reason that's because for some ungodly reason they decided to reference the second to last act of the game in Romania where you fight Vampire Nazis. Why they did that instead of referencing something like the mummies you fight in Egypt or the ACTUAL GHOSTS in the game I don't know.
Lmao at Callum doing that sick jump over the hospital bed. I watched a let's play of this game way back when it came out, and looking back its bizarre how maliciously ablist this game feels. • presents disabled kids as an intolerable burden. • tells the audience to not seek psychological help. • Presents a completely unresearched scary version of receiving psychological help. I get so annoyed with modern media conflating medical electroshock with electric torture and electrocution. It literally just buzzes the person and causes neurotransmitter receptors to reset. It does the same thing as SSRIs but without taking pills every day. It isn't torturing someone and ordering them to stop being depressed.
Idk about it myself(since I never got it), but I think the reason electroshock therapy has been used as a bad thing in media is due to the fact that some doctors actively use too much energy and actively hurt their patients, even if said patients were kids. I've heard of a few cases where doctors who were known in the field as renowned were revealed to be abusing electroshock and have their liscense removed and them being arrested, but again, I haven't heard a lot on it(since I think it was made illegal in Canada), so idk. But yeah, now that you mentioned it, the game DOES come off as ablist and anti-mental health.
Electroshock used to be a torterous method as it was done with way too high voltage while the patient was completly awake. The muscles tensing up could litteraly cause bones to break. The modern version is completly diffrent. Its done with the patient sedated and packed full of muscle relaxants. The main side effect is issues with memory during treatment. My godfather recived it and it got him out from some pretty severe depression. The other parts made me very uncomfortable as a disabled person who also recives mental health care. I would probably be dead without it.
Maybe you're looking at it all wrong and misunderstand that her ablism is not supposed to be glorification but, her trait. She's the villain and the game leaves clues. You are trying to understand the true monster of the game and that is why it upsets you. Protagonist and good guy are not synonymous. Look at Joker. I've dealt with rotten mental cases that prolong diagnosis simply because, they believe they will end up in a straightjacket in a padded room facing a Lobodomy. Once you meet the criminally insane you will see many parallels with the protagonist in this game. Her being the protagonist is merely a plot device until you discover she was the bad guy all along.
The Park has always been my "guilty pleasure" horror game. Not cause its good, the constant monologs and lackluster jumpscares do nothing for my ADHD brain, but because it was willing to get uncomfortable with mental health stuff especially. As someone who has dealt with bad mental health, seeing a horror game use it (even if not use it well) really felt special to me in a weird way. Like my fears and dread about my own mental health problems, like intrusive thoughts, was something that other people experienced too.
Nah. I gotta be honest, as someone who suffers from very similar mental Illness as Loraine, this game is a masterpiece. It's not meant to be a thriller and I fully believe the slow painful burn is intentional. The atmosphere of the park is not meant to be outrageously horrifying because the park is not haunted and there are no real monsters. I know the "it's all in the main character's head" thing can be overdone, but this just really hit different to me. Even the emptiness of the park and lack of rides is a good representation of coming back to a place you used to enjoy when you were younger, and realizing that it's not nearly as wonderful as you remember. I'll be completely honest I only watched about 75% of the video because I got tired of how much you were ripping into the game. Her monologues are on point. They capture this desire to live in her "fairytale" really well, while also demonstrating her hatred and jealousy towards people who are actually able to lead happy and fulfilling lives. She's too caught up in her past to really help herself, and she feels like she's owed happiness without working for it. The Hansel and Gretel section ties into the story really well when she constantly expresses her desire to abandon her son, and how she feels she has been abandoned in the past. the "deep fried meme" part is accurate to what it looks/feels like to overdose on antidepressants, and the little detail of her not being able to understand the newspaper while she was on the pills was such a good touch because it is nearly impossible to read clearly when overdosing. Her resentment towards her son that suddenly turns into love and protective instincts is such a great example of mania. She is so far into her delusions that she separates herself from her actions to the point where she genuinely believes the world is out to get her and she's the victim. Even the P.T. like segment at the end feels really well done, her demented hallucinations are very accurate to what it could feel when reliving a traumatic event, even if they're played up to be more overdramatic for the horror aspect of the game. Loraine does not deserve sympathy and the game does not force you to feel it for her, and I really like that she finally realizes herself as the villain for herself instead of her just continuing to believe that she's just lost and scared and innocent.
I'm so confused by what message this game was try to communicate? Based on some of the deliberate choices made in the story one of themes legitimately seems to be "Children are evil and you'll be happier if you abandon them."
The game is tied to a bigger MMO, and all the monsters seen in it here are in fact real in the setting. The mother's behavior is brought on by a condition created by the monsters, using the death of the son to fuel their immortality. So..none, to be honest.
it actually makes more sense knowing its a tie in to an MMO and the park and the evil ghost inhabiting it is a questline in said game, meaning the boogmeyman is real, he drove a mother to kill her son for shits and giggles, and in the MMO you get to kick the evil gaslighting childmurdering ghost in the ass with your magic superpowers. so the moral is "Fuck this evil ghost man in particular, he's a cunt" :3
I don't think it was trying to convey a message or moral, just tell the story of somebody who was a victim (of childhood abuse, shitty life circumstances and a lack of support for what is probably PPD) and as a result turned into a perpetrator of abuse. Abusers come from somewhere, they don't just pop into existence as bad people. I always took the game as a look on a person and why they did something horrible without excusing it.
@@Brightfire19 Except that in game the monsters were very much real and she was a normal parent before the events in the MMO the game is tied to happened. That's the games real failing. It's only telling half the story while leaving out everything else actually going on in the world around them. The monster in the amusement park is real, and was driving people to kill their children because the deaths and agony fed it's immortality.
Uhh, no? The game never tries to frame her actions as right. From her monologues, it feels like we’re supposed to be appalled by what she’s saying (as the game progresses, her monologues even get increasingly angry and bitter). What made you come to that conclusion? Just because the game gives you no choice but to do one thing doesn’t mean that it’s trying to say that this is right or okay.
They might have been able to “””””justify”””” the boat ride if it exited at a different part of the park, and the normal way was blocked off by a locked gate or something. Most parks would never do that, but at least it would /technically/ be more reasonable from a logic standpoint.
Maybe have it break down halfway and you have to get out via one of the employee only doors or an emergency exit. Most dark rides I’ve been on have dozens of exits visible throughout in case it breaks down. Maybe she sees her son jump off and she does so as well. Then you can have some weird creepy dark hallways as you make your way through the inner workings of the ride and eventually get spat back out into the park itself.
9:19 sounds like someone who didn’t play the first Xenoblade Chronicles. If you think the second game is slow… you don’t understand how truly slow things could be.
Tbf, at least the first game sort of plays like a turn based RPG and chain attacks are pretty satisfying to pull off despite how simplistic they are. A sequel having worse combat has no excuse honestly
You have no idea how genuinely bewildered and shocked I was to see this was one of your first videos like this It’s made so well and amazingly that I just expected that you had been doing this for years…im a big fan of this vid and hope to see more from you in the future:3
The SH marks appearing on her arms look so goofy, i couldn't help but be reminded of tiger stripes. I may not SH, but i've seen what that shit looks like, and that ain't it.
Not really? The entire 'abusive mom having a psychotic break and it's all in her head' goes out the window once you realize everything IS real as seen in TSW. I think that's really something that could have been given more attention in this review and many like it. Not at all saying that makes the game better. It makes it worse, as they completely failed to give new players any information on the world it takes place in and how downright horrifying it is that these monsters exist and can make parents start to behave this way when they were relatively normal before hand. Absolute failing by the devs.
Despite being around when this game was all over the horror youtube space, I never really understood it no matter how many people I watched play. This is a really great analysis and a very solid video!
They had a chance on the ferris wheel to maybe flashback to the event where the father fell out of it. Seeing the mother interacting with him to give some idea of what their relationship was like instead of just telling us he was abusive. Like maybe they argue and he gets angry and stands only for the ride to jostle and he falls. Plus, the best way to get a read on a character is to have them interact with other characters- not monologuing to themselves. We'd learn more about the character we play, the life she's lived, and the circumstances she's in now without having to read a bunch of stupid notes.
@@shabillalma4907 Ah, I must've misheard. Whoops. My point does still stand though. Seeing a moment of happiness, seeing Lorraine at her best only for it to slip away? You could even make it extra tragic by it having something to do with the kid, so that she ends up subtly blaming him for her husband's death.
I could be wrong, since my memory about it is hazy at best, but I think the book, house of leaves used the tale of, "The Minotaur and the labyrinth" and do a retailing on it very well. because in that telling The Minotaur's father, the king, loved him despite how he looks, but had to keep it a secret, that he loves his son, since his people viewed him as a monster. Then when Theseus comes in to slay the Minotaur for the people. The king allowed it, but he was hoping he would fail. Then when he saw Theseus came out alive he thanked him for killing the monster, crying as he did so. The people think he is crying, since he thought this day would never happen, but they do not know he was heartbroken that his son was killed, and has to bear that weight for the rest of his days. it's been years since I remember the retelling. So sorry if I got some things wrong. Just thought I should share it.
HI There. I played the Secret World, even though not extremely Far. The Theme Park is a Playable Area in the Second Map of the Game and to be honest its Questline is shorter, but more Scary than "The Park", I Played both. Still I never understood the need for "The Park" and to be honest as it ended I was like "Wait? We arent even past the Intro!". The lore is loosely connected, but kinda just as much, as Namedropping Characters from older Games in a series to evoke nostalgia. Oh Ya: Spindley Johnney is the main antagonist in that Questline.
If they really wanted a Hansel & Gretel parallel, the Mr. Winter subplot had the potential to be... maybe not great, but certainly better than the one they try to do. Winter being the Witch and the park being the gingerbread house, luring unsuspecting people in with the promise of joy only to be something sinister. Maybe that was even the intent behind the Mr. Winter stuff, but it gets lost among all the other stuff. This might have fared better as two completely separate games. One about the nature of theme parks and using outlandish spooky stuff as an allegory for the real life poor working conditions and safety practises found at a lot of theme parks, maybe using a Hansel & Gretel analogy; and another, unrelated game about a depressed parent with intrusive thoughts about their parenthood.
Thing is, this game is actually conected to another game (an mmo) called the secret world (or secret world legends) Nathaniel is the bogeyman, a boss enemy you fight in the secret world in the now abandoned amusement park. There's a whole bunch of lore in the mmo that would explain the nature of the park, it's a shame that most people who played the park aren't familiar with the lore. In a nutshell, Nathaniel wanted to use magic, but he wasn't gifted so he search for ways to learn magic fast, that led him to solomon island (thats a whole another can of worms, just know the illuminati was involved and there are demonic portals and ancient magic), he created a device in an attempt to harness the magic in solomon island by using the fear of his victims. The park itself is the tool he used to harvest magic. Due to the curse nature of solomon island, accidents kept happening and with the increasing death of visitors the goverment took notice and decided to shut down the park. This game is simply shows how he would harvest magic (or how the game calls it, "anima") As for the hansel and gretel, I think it's less about an analogy and more about trying to tie the game to a story, in the secret world most quests in the amusement park area reference to other stories and tales. (well, most of the game quests do, since the whole premise is that myths and legends are real)
fun fact: mr winter IS the witch. you are right that he uses the park to lure in victims. I beleive the implication was he was making the mother have absuive thoughts so he could use her as a scapegoat for the murder, thereby making her mentione of "the witch is the mother in some versions of the story" true but also be used as a subversion with her being blamed for the actions of the real 'witch'
20:40 Honestly, after hearing this, I think the biggest problem with The Park is Lorraine herself. I was ready for her to be a nothing character, just another parent swept up in cult shit whose kid blames her for a death she couldn’t have seen coming. Now I know she’s a horrible person, ECT and meds or not, who had the audacity to birth a child into this terrible world and not be even the slightest bit comfortable with dedicating the rest of her life to supporting him. Yes, sweetie, parents *are* slaves to their children, and if you have a problem with that, you should have put Callum up for adoption. You have no one to blame but yourself for the mess you got yourself in, and whatever actual physical threat may come your way, I am now tempted to intentionally swerve into. If Lorraine was a likeable protagonist, I might have tolerated everything else. But the way she is, I’d rather blow my $15 on an NFT than spend it playing this game.
As an animation student, I just want to comment here on how HORRID the lighting in this game is. Everything is so dark and it's really difficult to see shit. That one moment where the swan boat's head turns around took me like three seconds to see what was even going on
That "Baka Mitai" music box and chiptune XD I can't believe I'm better at thematic cohesion than this game. Not sure whether I should be proud, as the bar is currently lower than hell.
It's so disappointing because I can see a version of this where Lorraine being the mom, the witch, and Gretel makes some kind of sense. Exploring the different sides of Lorraine and her conflicting feelings, how her mental illness works into that, etc. Maybe even a happy ending where Lorraine embraces her inner Gretel, killing the witch and saving the day or whatever. Alternatively, one where she embraces the witch. Hell, have her literally eat the kid. That'd be shocking. Then you'd get at least one good scare.
Hoooly crap, that genuinely heartfelt bit at the end where you talked earnestly about what you loved about the game and the respect you had for the developers instantly took this video from "wow, that was pretty good" to "honestly might be one of the best youtube videos I've seen this year". Don't feel like you need to rush the next vid or anything, I'm sure i speak for all of us when i say that i don't care how long it takes to come out, as long as it has this same passion behind it Also Spindley Johnny was not on my bingo card for this video but his presence is very well appreciated
Honestly, the only reason why the Park interested me is because it was a tie-in to another game I used to be very fond of You will be missed, Secret World.
The Secret World servers are still live, and have a small but dedicated playerbase! It's still out there, and still playable if you ever had an account and want to relive it. Secret World Legends also exists, but it's strictly not as good as TSW.
To confirm- played this without knowing about the Secret World and yes, the lore notes are insanely confusing. I actually ended up replaying the game a second time because I thought I must have missed characters or story beats somewhere along the way!
I'll admit, I've always had a little bit of interest in this game from Markiplier's playthrough years back. That interest is entirely about one thing: Lorraine's voice. Her VA (who is also Eggabel in Bugsnax) is really good, and I still like the first/last line because somehow, it stuck in my head all this time, and, since i can't find any other words, I always come back to that. But yeah, if I want to hear her voice, I don't go back to The Park. I go back to Bugsnax. Because I like Bugsnax.
When I watched ProJared's playthrough of this (at age 12) I thought that "Spindly Johnny" was the Witch and that the Witch possessed Lorraine or 'was' her in some symbolic way, symbolizing her being abusive or something, hence why "Spindly Johnny" was physically driving her to stab Callum, or even both sort of, insofar as Lorraine was open to possession by the witch (and thus the murder of her own child) because she was harboring that hateful or abusive nature and so the witch possessed her both because she was a viable host and as a karmic 'judgement' on her -- completely at the expense of Callum. Or this whole thing was just a hallucination she had in order to process the fact that she dragged her son out here to stab him.
i hope you do more horror video essays in the future, this was well-made! the fact that it was actual CRITICISMS WITH SPECIFIC REASONS instead of just going "storyline bad" made me respect you as somebody who is a huge horror fan
