Wow this one is really well written. I feel like I can hear the fine tooth comb that picked through all these words. So many long video essays, even from the best, have awkward summaries and redundancies throughout but this is ironclad and shiny. Honestly just a joy to listen to and I haven't even really got to the point yet.
This was a fantastic and thought-provoking video! So, one incredible thing I ended up internalizing about Tunic's story entirely by accident, but I still think is a valid interpretation, is the nature of the "Fossils of Self." When I was translating the manual using my own hand-crafted key, I mis-translated "lever" as "leak" in the paragraph that first mentioned them. "A leak in the Canonical Plane" set my mind ablaze, because I then thought that the beings in the sarcophagi weren't just ghosts that all beings were destined to become, but *memory leaks.* Data of characters who died, still stored on the game cartridges, never fully deleted thanks to a programming oversight. How might a civilization where people simply fail to cease to be handle the ever-increasing echoes of past selves? Packing them up and filling a warehouse of them is definitely the kind of short-sighed solution this civilization might have come up with. And then they took these packaged ghosts and used them as energy sources, ethics and metaphysical ramifications be damned. Of course, I know now that I mis-translated that passage, but I'm not entirely sure that my read was *wrong*. On a physical piece of hardware, bits of data are recycled over and over. Garbage data, leftover substance of reality, that is what you'd be made out of, and what you will become when you pass. It all slots very nicely into all the themes, both narrative, mechanical, and philosophical, so I'll probably hold onto that read, even if it's wrong.
that doesn't sound like a wrong read at all, that's actually very astute!!! it's amazing how even as this game has been poured over top to bottom, it still somehow defies complete understanding. it's just so squishy, so subjective, and i find that really really compelling as a critic!
When I found the first page of the manual, it suddenly hit me "Oh, I'm *actually* playing a kid in the 90's who got their hands on an imported game and this language they've never encountered before just seems like another puzzle to figure out." When you pause the game, if you zoom in on the manual and move it around enough you can see the game in the background, but it's heavily pixelated and you can see scan lines like it's on a CRT. The ambient noise is even different, slightly distorted as if you're hearing a recording of something coming from speakers. Edit: I just finished the game and subsequently this video, oh did that go deeper than I expected. While I personally took more of a... Self reflective interpretation of the game, the class reading also fits great. The true ending itself hit me hard personally. It reminded me of a dear memory I have of, ironically, playing Majora's Mask with my older brother. My motor skills weren't great as a kid so he would control Link but I was better at puzzles than him, so we worked together to 100% the game and it's an early experience that I cherish dearly.
Damn the whole "Your tunic guy is actually your responsibility to some degree" has fully inspired me to go back and finish this. That was exactly the sort of interesting angle I felt the game was missing before I gave up on it for a while. Now I feel obligated. But in a good, motivating way.
TUNIC?! MORE LIKE TUNE IN BECAUSE IM EXCITED TO WATCH! … I didn’t get much sleep this is the best comment I got (glad to have another upload from you, friend!)
Part 3 is absolutely so relatable and understandable to me. A year ago I finally got access to a PS4 and was extremely excited to play Bloodborne finally after years of being fascinated with it. This very very quickly disappeared as I struggled to get to the first boss after almost 4 hours of playing. And it was so frustrating to me because I KNOW I love bloodborne. It is the DEFINITE media that made me interested in cosmic horror after understanding the twist from a video summarizing the story and this interest in cosmic horror has become more akin to the obsession I had with Pokémon when I first got Diamond in 2007. So I just really enjoy someone outright expressing the fact that difficulty is important to the game but can also put people off from things they should have been able to love and play.
only up to the difficulty section but wanted to chime in as someone who *does* enjoy Souls games in a slightly masochistic way - I also turned on invincibility for bosses, lol. I think it was more a case of me really enjoying Tunic's puzzle/discovery elements to the point where the combat became kind of an impedement. not that it was *bad* perse I just didn't want to be stuck fighting a boss when I could be figuring out more cool mysteries
Just finished watching this and while it’s a very different point from the one you make I think there’s a really interesting comparison that can be drawn between the reveal of the endless cycle of Tunic’s Heirs and the idea of the Zelda series representing a timeline of endless reincarnations of its three focal characters who are made to play out their roles again and again, and it feels really nice that the true end of Tunic is not one where you fulfill your role as The Hero but where you walk away from it, and by recognizing the Heir as being not the Damsel or Villain but someone like you also trapped in this cycle you free them from their role as well.
Thinking about difficulty and accessibility options, I didn't use them for the boss fights but I did go online and look up the solutions for freeing the fairies and finding the golden path. I thought it fit really neatly with 'sharing wisdom' theme of the game. That along with all the collaboration of deciphering the game's language and all the other deep secrets. Fantastic video Sarah, look forward to future releases 😊
Excellent, compelling work here. You really got to the heart and soul of what makes Tunic so interesting, nailing most of my favorite aspects of the game while introducing me to stuff that went over my head. I don't really have much to add. You see the game and everything surrounding it with such clarity, and your writing style is so smooth and fun to listen to. Can't wait to see where you go from here :)
i really enjoyed this video. never played Tunic, probably won't just because i have so many other games on my list of things to play, but the way you talked about the game gave me goosebumps. i hate the way my special interests, something that brings me so much inspiration and joy to the point they are a foundational aspect to my identity, can be arbitrarily sectioned off by the corporation that owns the *idea* of it. the labor angle of it i never considered until now; i appreciate the way you were able to put to words something i have felt for a long time. thank you for creating this video!
Thank you for helping me further deepen my understanding of Tunic and opening up even more things for me to ponder despite having already spent countless hours outside of the game deciphering it.
You really put into words the nostalgia I have for game manuals, I have a pile of them alongside all my actual books, I loved reading snippets of lore and story and information on elements of the fictional world.
I've had this video on my watchlist for a while but then held off since I was in the middle of completing the game. I'm glad I was watching this video in parts so I don't expose myself to the bigger spoilers because HOLY COW the endings were really worth it! It was such a satisfying and emotional end. Honestly without your commentary, I probably wouldn't have beat the Heir sooner when I was already almost done completing the game, fairies, secret treasures and all. I also really like how you mentioned how the booklet mentions it's ok to change your accessibility settings to have an easier gameplay. I tend to get incredibly frustrated with games, especially since I have struggled to get into gaming because I always thought games are always too hard for me to actually enjoy. This video also helps me feel less guilty about looking up online guides when I don't have the time, energy, or experience to translate the text. This video is so inspirational with your added commentary on questioning "the Canon"--I appreciate the encouragement of pursuing and sharing knowledge with others in order for us to end brutal cycles put onto us that are seemingly out of our control. Thank you again for this video! I don't typically comment on videos, but I really appreciate your commentary. Long time subscriber, longer time subscriber to your Trans Questioning Podcast (which has also helped me years ago on my transition ❤️).
This is the first video of yours I've watched, and it's already one of my favorite essays. Where many use verbose vocabulary while overwriting the soul and emotion of their text, the way you write gets meaning across and brings your thoughts out so precisely and beautifully that it's inspiring, it's like a breath of fresh air. I can tell I'm gonna be rewatching this one a lot!
Every few months I come back to this video and it’s just as spot-on as the first time. I often see people misinterpreting a lot of the game’s more metatextual elements and can’t help but think “god they need to read Homestuck”
I would like you to know that I purchased Tunic because of this video. I refused to finish this video before I walked the golden path, but I'm back to finish it up and say thank you. Best time I've had playing a video game in years. Subscribed.
Tunic had somehow been completely off my radar until the recent Polygon video about note-taking games, a genre (?) I have always LOVED. Now this video popping up in my recommendations suddenly has simply convinced me to play it. Commenting for engagement (I love your other video essays) but leaving now so I can play spoiler-free. I will return!!
Coming back to this video after a few months, it's really nice to see the developers implement more accessibility options. The reduced combat difficulty mode made it playable for my younger brother and the secret late-game accessibility menu option made the end game puzzles so much more doable. I also really liked the one that adds a visual element to the one audio puzzle. I personally really appreciated it because I am a very musical person and I was excited to have a music puzzle but was upset when it was literally impossible to hear what was going on and no matter how much volume fiddling I did I couldn't sound it out so I had to look up the solution. Anyway, tunic is the best game of all time, and even more so now.
Oh my god I just realized that the accessibility options came out before this video did and I just didn't update my game until I picked it up again a week ago.
Now, I've done a lot of secondary consumption of products there's just never enough time / ADHD Brain Juice to chew through. It's nice to keep an eye on as much of the zeitgeist as I can in this sense. So it's fascinating that the instant you mentioned The Golden Path is exactly where I decided to tap out, and go find it myself. The Sarcophagi reveal, or the Dragons Dogma esque Cycle isn't a shock - As soon as I'd heard that Tunic's essentially an Outer Wilds inheritor as much if not more than a Zelda inheritor I figured it had to be something like that. But the way in which one crunches through that? That I want to see, and try and pick through the game on my first go through. I'll be back for the last half hour of this in a week, I suspect.
I peaced out and gave it a shot, and OH! MY! GOD! I have never experienced something so deeply engaging and exciting as trying to pick apart the game's script in order to understand what's written... This is the first time in DECADES that a game has had me bust out the graph paper notebook to decipher and keep track of parts, and I couldn't be more grateful. All that time spent trying to figure out the way the script (that I now know is called "Trunic") works - I think it's engrained into my brain! I have a feeling I'll be leaving certain people secret notes using this for years to come.
Finally was able to watch this video after finishing Tunic myself! I don't remember if I saw the original trailer, but the vague picture I had of Tunic in the back of my mind for years was a Zelda look alike with a manual gimmick, and as much as I like video game manuals it wasn't enough to keep my attention. Tunic went under my personal radar for years until I saw this vid show up in my subscriptions and realized I must have been missing something. I finally got around to playing it and I want to say THANK YOU! I absolutely loved the game and will be thinking about it for a long, long time. This video did not disappoint - I'm so looking forward to watching that Puss In Boots movie too in order to watch your vid on it as well :) I appreciate the detail you went into exploring the "lore" and "story" of the game, it brought me a better understanding of my own thoughts and a greater appreciation for just how much detail this game has. Now I really want to reread all the translations in the game and go into new game + to see what I can re-contextualize after all I've learned. I also think a lot of folks discussing the game also ignore (or lack the ability to fully discuss) the messages about "sharing wisdom" and environmental horror (and others) that you went into here, so thank you for sharing that wisdom with us. Thank you again and I'm always looking forward to your next vid!
I'm still watching the video and I'm loving everything about your work, but I just wanted to say before the adhd makes me forget to mention it that when I got to the quarry, playing blind, I hadn't yet figured out the cards system. I wasn't using any. Which as you may have figured out means that I didn't equip the mask. This resulted in a long, terrifyingly ardous trip through the quarry in which I spent every single one of my consumables (and I had been using bombs in a very Jason Mendoza way until then) so that by the time I reached the elevator, I was genuinely scared of where it might take me. I hadn't saved in about two hours, I think, and my every step was calculated, and the miasma made it impossible to see where I was going or what I was up against, and it was memorable. Because when it says it "saps your will to go on" that... that's very fitting. I felt like quitting a dozen times. It wasn't fun, it was kinda horrible and too hard. But that experience made me think of how awful the miasma was and, admittedly, I hadn't put much thought into the meaning of it until watching your video. Now I feel like it's putting my experience in a better context. Idk, I'm rambling, just thought I'd tell this story before my brain finds something shiny to fixate on and I forget to comment.
i forgot to watch this when it came out, but your most recent video reminded me... i forgot how much i love your video essays. thanks for doing what you do.
You convinced me in the first 30 minutes to buy the game and this was the first game in a few years that I engaged with in such an excited and intense way! Thanks for putting it on my radar!
I very rarely play video games, but I do like how you talk about the things that hold your interest. Learning the new language of video game studies and modern modes of storytelling makes life far more fascinating. Best of luck with Lost!
after finally finishing the game, i've been able to watch this video all the way through multiple times and it's just amazing. my brother's around for christmas and i asked him to play some of it and the joy i felt when he started spamming buttons over the gold square to no avail was so palpable he knew something was up haha
This is such a lovely video! I was never going to play Tunic, so I watched without worrying about getting spoiled. It made me feel a little bit like I missed out, but I don't mind too much. Glad I got to hear your thoughts on it.
Wow, thanks for putting this up, it sorta conveys what I've been feeling towards this game and games as a medium in general! Been recovering from health stuff and just been enjoying more meta/subtextual approaches to games and some lil games that kept coming up in that conversation were Ico and Tunic!
This was a cool video. I have not played tunic, but I cannot be stopped from consuming. Also, it always ok to emulate games, it is always morally correct!
This game has haunted me like nothing else, it may just be my favourite game of all time. The experience of solving the Golden Path, dragging a friend into the game and trying to piece it all together... god it captured what I think only the best Zelda games have for me, it made me feel like a kid again. Excited to hit the playground to talk about the cool thing that happened last night in my favourite game.
Alright, finally getting around to watching this but unfortunately tapping out after the first 3 parts cause I haven't played Tunic yet and you have thoroughly sold on it. Despite not even hitting the half way mark yet though, I am already profoundly impressed by how well written and edited this is, the whole section about game manuals has given me a lot to think about. I'll be back as soon as I play through it myself. in the meantime, fantastic work👏👏👏
I've had this in my watch later file for a bit. Like, I only barely remember hearing about this game, could it really be--Oh hell yes! This was extraordinary to watch, I love your verbiage. Every circle of hell we descended into peeled back more fascinating layers. Oh, and I love your digression about game booklets? I still have collection (sadly I threw away almost all cases for space reasons) but my bucket of booklets is probably 40-50lbs now. I got a game for Christmas and the thing I was most excited for was finding it had a booklet with the character art, lyrics, etc. So I definitely get it.
i wanted to play this game but i literally got stuck and stopped playing. that hadn't happened to me since I was a kid, so it was successful in what it was trying to do. but its success meant i didn't get to experience the whole game so, idk. curious to hear your take on it!
Look at the manual again, there must be a detail that you have missed. And if that fails ask for slight spoiler free hints in a forum or the subreddit.
I will say that I think having gone in slightly spoiled (up to the 2nd bell ring and the discovery of prayer on the conventional playthrough), tunic's moment-to-moment gameplay didn't capture me. Especially the combat - I found it gets a bit tedious in the front half of the game. But once you start following along with the series of reveals, the game really shines; Once I started finding secrets for myself, I couldn't help completing the golden path (with some hints from my friends who had already completed the game). Just a disorganized thought. As always, your video essays are a wonderful watch.
Oh my lord, "no fail mode" has sold me this game. The "I get the point, I just can't do the thing fast enough/precise enough/whateverrrrr" difficulty curve kills so many games for me. I'm similar in that I like the lore and the puzzles and the challenge and all the things!!! but yeah, I'm locked out of the last several stages of The Talos Principle (this is the one that galls me the most and therefore I will always list it, lol), all of the PC games you mentioned in Part 3, almost all console games, etc. etc. (Baby games are super fun, though. I lovvvvvvvvvve Yoshi's Crafting World and the Toad treasure hunting game on the Switch 😅)
captain toad is so pleasant!!! and oh yeah, i remember getting near to the end of talos principle and just straight up copying a walkthrough to finish it because goddamn lmao
Holy shit. This is a really incredible video essay. Like. Wow. Ok. It’s probably going to take me a bit to formulate all my thoughts coherently, so I’ll be back with a better comment that’s actually about something later but for now I just wanted to boost the algorithm and… yea. Good shit. Well done.
god this video is good. i adored tunic when i played it, engaged entirely with the work its gives to the player to figure out the language and gitgud at fighting the bad men, but completely missed the philosophical time twisting stuff. this rocks very good and fills me with sincerely nice vibes. thanks for the epic gamer video sarah i liked and subscribed and hit the notification bell! five stars!!!!!
I had to stop at you should go in blind cause I played outer Wilds blind and I now respect the power of people saying you should go in blind. Will be back when I beat it! 💜
I watched about ten minutes of this before I decided that I really need to play tunic. And since then this essay has been on my "Watch later" list and I've been picking away at this absolutely lovely game. And I'm very much looking forward to the day when I can finally watch the rest of the essay.
This was a great video! I really like the message the no-fail mode and how the final boss is skippable sends, that this is not a game primarily about "beating it" or conquering, even if most of the ways you have to interact with the world are aggressive. The end was so perfect and moving to me. (Also, always here to rag on Nintendo and their hair trigger litigation!)
@@Yesnomu Yes! Absolutely one of my favs of all time. I manage the speedrunning community and have gone off the deep end with love for this game, for sure XD
I love you metanarratives I love you ambiguous storytelling that requires a fine attention to detail and thinking outside the box to solve i love you stories about breaking miserable time loops i love you self recognition through the other i love you Tunic i love you good video essay maker
I love your longer form videos, I hope you have the support to keep making them! I also adore the passion that you have for Tunic and its unique homage to an era of gaming that I wasn't aware of (and your Homestuck jokes)! You mentioned that you kind of skimmed the "bosses" of House of Leaves, and I was wondering if you'd considered making a video on the book. While of course the formatting is fantastic, the story seemed a bit cynical to me, so I'd love to hear about how the book appealed to you!
Tunic is such an incredible game and your look into it feels so personal and meaningful. I'd like to add that this dang game was the first one in so, sooooo long that actually wanted and encouraged me to take out a pencil and paper and make a dang map and that felt... I dunno, cool? I was making notes on translations in my phone and cross referencing things left and right while going down the golden path and god, it was just such an experience. I adored your video, I'm 100% subbing and can't wait to watch through some more of your work!
probably the best video essay ive ever seen. incredible. glad i played as much tunic as i could in my busy life before watching this. i've had this bookmarked for 'someday when i get around to playing tunic' for a long time after watching the intro and being sold on the game. I cant believe this video included so much information! i have such a new perspective on copyright law as an extension of capitalism and hoarding resources. i love this video. thank you for making it :)
This was/is an amazing video and there's so much I could comment on it but can I just say: Your "I'm just a goat" line made me smile with how goat-y it was :D
omg, ur video a bit ago w/ sophie from mars on the matrix was so good, and so is this!!! absolutely subscribed and looking forward to watching your other videos and future ones you make :)
i watched this video without having played tunic, but you make such a compelling case for it (especially the bit about the no fail mode), i plan on buying the game for the switch. wonderful work as always!
I can't watch this whole video yet bc I'm just starting my tunic play through, but I saw a part of your stream where you read out the script and I KNOW this is a video I'll love - I can't wait to watch it soon!!
Beautiful beautiful essay. I super relate to the part about replaying the opening of various Zelda games over and over, being shaped by that world and its mysteries without ever completing it. Also re: manuals, i had the official "strategy guide" for Majora's mask but couldn't actually get past the second dungeon. So i experienced most of the rest of the game through just reading the guide LOL. So all the screenshots and key art and stuff in Tunic's manual evoke that a lot for me
In like a year when I've forgotten the content of this video, I hope I'll be able to pick up Tunic and give it a whirl. Great video-I really wanted to stop before the spoilers but I got so curious I kept watching until the end.
I'm not sure if it's relevant, but the way players sleepwalk into the first ending of TUNIC reminds me of the first ending of The Room 3. (spoilers) The Room 3 is an escape room game with a sort of dark alchemy theme. The player is trapped in a castle by some guy called The Craftsman, who needs the player's help with...something.... To help The Craftsman and escape you need to solve escape rooms in various wings of the castle which you access through a hub area. It's pretty clear from the beginning that the hub itself is an escape room too, but you don't *seem* to have the tools you need to solve its puzzles, so you assume that you'll get them as you solve these side rooms. But if you do that, and solve the final puzzle without solving the hub puzzles, you end up trapped in a box filled with a dimension of infinite puzzles, where The Craftsman can use your soul as a battery. He even berates you in a letter as you discover what has happened, claiming he needed someone with a soul strong enough to solve the puzzles but too weak to see the trap he was building. When you get sent back to the hub to find the other endings, the ingame hints tool no longer works, signaling that you're really on your own for this one. And it turns out that you didn't need anything from those other puzzles to solve the hub, just access to all of the areas, which you got before you wandered into the trapped ending. It even hints there's something wrong with this ending before you get it, by ensuring there are items in your inventory which you don't need to solve this ending. You're supposed to ask "if this isn't to solve the *last* puzzle, what did I miss?" The game shames you for sleepwalking through its puzzles without thinking about them, and assuming the tools you need to solve any problem will just be handed to you when you need them with very little effort on your part.
wonderful video as always! :D I haven't played Tunic, and this is a rare occasion where going in blind is almost a mechanic of the game itself. but even so, this video makes me want to get the game anyways and experience it myself
The runic language of Tunic hit a very specific bit of nostalgia for me. As a kid I owned a PS1 with a modchip installed that let me play bootleg games; specifically an entire stack of random pirated PS1 discs my parents bought me from a flea market in Guang Zho China. MOST of the games were not in English so I had to learn how to play the game through contextual clues, just like how Tunic wants you to do it.
This was a really meaningful video to me, though I struggle to articulate why or how! Also I want to improve the algorithmic value of this video so I'm leaving a comment.
this such a banger video with so much meaty Concepts to mentally chew on. tunic rocks. this analysis rocks. i am going to be thinking about the things said in sections four and five for a long time.
Just holding a mirror up at me, who is afraid to talk about Hose of Leaves because I couldn't get through the chapter about echoes and eventually just skipped ahead.
Excellent video, I loved the breakdown of TUNIC and will be sharing this with folks. Despite being a Zelda fan, the art made me think it was NOT going to be something I liked, and all the aesthetic call backs did the same thing - I'm tired of folks not really GETTING what they were influenced by, and TUNIC succeeds where many others fail.
Well, this video peeling the layers of this game I've never played was fascinating. And I am not surprised in that I find that fascination in the meta-states of reality and the conversations between them, physical totems with a narrative role within the story of the game, the "choosing" of a predetermined path that locks you in causing what you were trying to prevent- Yeah, basically Homestuck. It keeps coming back to Homestuck.
I have way too many videos to watch to the point where I forget what videos I've put into my "Watch Later" playlist (I currently have 243 videos in my playlist, most of which are 30 minutes long) so I just forget what videos I've put into the playlist. So its a cool "Oh hey!" surprise when I finally get to a video about a cool topic by a cool person I forgot I'd put on the playlist. So Oh hey!
As much as I love pretty much everything else about Souls-like games, I am 100% on board with you here. I'm pretty decent at action games, so I'm sure I could beat most bosses EVENTUALLY, but I get bored very quickly and I'm much more likely to just stop playing the game altogether when I get to a point, where I die more than ten times. That's why must admit, that I haven't finished any FromSoftware title, despite being a fan from before they got famous (I imported the original "Demon souls" in 2010). I'm simply not willing to waste hours on a single boss fight, just to GIT GUD. If I'm going to invest tons of time to learn something, I feel like it's should be something useful IRL - a language or playing an instrument.
Great stuff. Kinda funny that wind waker was the only Zelda game i started and then gave up on, at the final boss no less! Must've been too busy playing eternal darkness, idk
I added the game to my wishlist cause it looked like Zelda games...I removed it from my wishlist when I saw the dark souls comparisons. I haven't heard anything of the assist option even existing until just now in this video.
