Slay is like a framing for the emotions of each partner where they become their own characters, changing their actions and personalities as the real people experience the ups and downs of learning to be together emotionally. We all begin as strangers and we all contain multitudes.
I really appreciate that you call The Long Quiet a god of “stasis.” It seems to be most popular in the fandom to call him a god of “stagnation,” which I feel adds a negative implication that should not be there. It’s not all that different from the Narrator’s fixation on The Shifting Mound being death. The Long Quiet is not stagnation, but he holds it in his eternity. He also holds homeostasis, the continuation of life. He holds boredom, stillness, the pause between heartbeats, and the gaps between stars. He is so, so much *more* that it almost feels insulting to call him stagnation. (Also, did you notice the Tower refers to the Narrator as a filthy film over your soul, and the Voice of the Hero says the mirror only isn’t working because it has a layer of grime we need to wipe away? And then we can only see ourselves once the Narrator is gone and the mirror is all that’s left…)
One of the criticisms I genuinely have for the game is that it doesn't do a good enough job explaining and arguing in FAVOR of The Long Quiet. Yes, The Long Quiet is stagnation, but he's also stasis, eternity, peace, memory, and time. There's negatives to that but there's also positives, just like the Shifting Mound has positives and negatives to what she represents. She is change, transformation, chaos, death, and life. But you almost don't even know what you're a god of by the time you awaken to your godhood; and so during the game's climax, where you have a grand argument with the Shifting Mound over your and her place in this universe, it often falls flat and a lot of people just get confused and can't really seem to argue against what she's trying to do, because they don't even understand what they are or why what they represent should be held on equal ground to her. This isn't just an argument for why you shouldn't kill her. It's a debate over the fate of the universe in which what you are matters every bit as much. The Shifting Mound spells it out what her plans are once she is released. It's change on-end with no constancy, no stability. "This universe dies and a new one is born then that one dies and another". Remember what the narrator feared "I... saw oblivion threaten the very memory of everything I knew and everyone I loved.... When the patterns are wiped from the sands, when the board is reset, who will remember them?" In her ideal world, no one would. The very concept of memory would be meaningless as it all would just be reset over and over again. It would be every bit as existentially pointless as endless stagnation, a constant change where nothing matters because nothing can be held onto. What's the point of change or growth if the reasons for it are tossed aside and forgotten along the way? She's not just arguing for her right to exist, she's arguing against your own, and that you should essentially just give up control and let her do whatever she wants on end. It's no different than what the Apotheosis wanted, and it's death to you even if she's not trying to kill you, even if she doesn't think that's what it is or what it means. She acknowledges you as an equal only insofar as you have the ability to stop her but she doesn't acknowledge a place for what you represent in her world, or rather she wants your place to be that of just a passive observer while she takes the helm. But you are different now, two distinctly different gods with bits of each other in one another, and what she's proposing is not a relationship of equals. "There is no constant, there is no center" she argues, but that's exactly what you are. And so you have a divine right to challenge these assertion at that moment. The game lets you do it and it's awesome when you do. I just wish the game made this point more clear to everyone by the time you reach that grand confrontation, because it makes the scene so much better; and suddenly some of the dialog options you have there are that much more powerful, where you can argue them in good faith rather than from the perspective of "babe I don't get any of this, can't you just stop being weird and scary so we can leave?"
Stagnation is equally not stasis. Stagnation is a very active process. Stagnant water is full of blooming life and rot is an active process. Stasis is simply _not._
What happens to Sayori and Yuri is, as someone with mental health issues, my worst nightmare. Especially since a line from Sayori implies Monika directly egged her on into killing herself. The idea you can be turned into the worst version of yourself, with not control...it's horrifying
It's doubtful that Monika actually egged sayori on. Deep down, Monika loves the other girls, despite them not being real. Monika admits as such towards the end, and attempts to make something of a selfless sacrifice for us and the other girls when she resets everything but doesn't allow herself to be brought back. While she does say something to sayori, something kinda bad and something that pushed her even further, we don't know exactly what it is that she said. That said, I think it was something manipulative and something that was hurtful towards sayori... but nothing necessarily malicious. A lot of people think Monika in some way told sayori that she should kill herself or something similar and that really doesn't match Monika's character, especially not in act 1 where she's still trying to keep up appearances. Instead, she probably said something similar to, like, "MC will never see you as more than a friend."
As someone with mental health issues I find it peaceful and calming. I think that all what i get, is what I deserve, and it will be really cool, if I can blain anyone else than me. Every person unhappy in his own way )
@@phoenixwright784 Pretty sure Monika canonically cranked up the madness-meters that were inherently set within the game. She didn't mean to go as ham as she did, or at the least - she didn't know what the consequences would be, as they played out.
@@mc-inversal7069 She did turn up the girl's negative traits. We're explicitly told this by Monika herself. However, we don't necessarily know how much she turned things up. For Sayori, if we go off of the side stories, she was already very, very depressed before Monika did anything so it's possible that Monika didn't actually crank her depression up by that much. This could explain why Monika tried the same thing with Yuri not expecting the same results that she got with Sayori. She may have seen that Yuri's obsessiveness was much lower than Sayori's depression had been and thus, figured she had more breathing room with Yuri. That might be getting into headcanon territory though
@@phoenixwright784 ssssooo... Yuri is just built different :|| well that's absolutely terrifying - I mean, I guess Project Libitina WAS gonna be a whole-arse thing originally, ssssoooo that does track.
Something I picked up on was how your reflection changes at end of each of the five route. Its literally death; "you are you": you're alive, "you've grown": a body bloats after death, "you've decayed": flesh starts melting off your bone, "you've withered": you are nothing but bone, "there's nothing there": you've become dust in the soil. Right after that you are born or reborn as a god. You've gone through what the shifting mound causes and there was something after that. You were a reflected unbroken pattern. She through her perspectives went through birth, infancy, childhood, adolescence and in adulthood she become a true goddess. Goddess being her version of being a senior right before death. She went through what you cause.
I really appreciate the clarification that you find Replika disturbing but do not judge or shame people who find comfort in it. I feel the same, it is HORRIFYING and pure dystopia nightmare fuel that sci-fi has been warning everyone about for decades to NOT create, but people are lonely and are just trying to get through the day in a difficult world. Some people fill that void with things I find horrifying and don't think is a good idea but they aren't hurting others.
slay the princess is the only thing that has even come close to giving me the kind of experience that i got out of disco elysium, so i am really glad that you mentioned their similarity!!
Fun little fact related to the topic of this video: There are scientists who create robots specifically designed to clear out mines from minefields by activating them. These scientists tend to give names to these robots, which as you may expect, makes the scientists bond with and sympathize with the robots. They become so attached to them that they hold funerals for them when they're released. You can imagine why this might be a problem lol
I heard someone once called off a test because watching a robot that was once built like a centipede drag itself along on just a few legs was “too cruel.” Despite the fact that was exactly what it was built to do. Anyway, human empathy is an amazing thing.
Yeeeees I'm so so glad you talked about the Witch->Thorn route. The ending with pissing off the Narrator is obviously meant to be funny but I was between laughing and crying by the time I finished that route. I love that your betrayal makes Witch almost child-like, but a child that has learned how painfully easy it is to be wronged and wrong in return. That her confusion about your emphatic trust in her after you hurt her the first time is so visceral and *real* . That the two of you come together at the end to say "we did these things, we can't just sweep that under the rug, but damned if we're going to keep letting the narrative (Narrator) push us to these constant, agonizing extremes. The way the most simple splash of red in Thorn's broken, crumbling cabin elicited this breathless response from me when I first got there; a beautiful, painful sign of someone wanting to bloom and be loved but so, so scared of what love has done to her that she still has to place thorns around herself. To hurt *herself* first before something else can. GOD I could go on and on about that route. It's my favorite as well.
...I think I was happier before I learned what 'degloving' was. The internet sucks, I hate it here. While DDLC never really interested me, this video is what finally made me bite the bullet and pick up Slay The Princess after letting it languish in my steam wishlist for ages. Even knowing as much about the game as I did going in, it was still an absolutely amazing experience from start to finish and I ended up binging two playthroughs in my first sitting. What a ride. You're also the third person I've heard lavish the Magnus Archives with such praise, so I guess that's where I'm headed next. Cheers, Zuldim!
Omg thank god someone else was able to break down why act 1 in ddlc is so important. In my eyes it was always the most important act. It makes you care about the characters enough that once the characters start dying, it hits hard. I believe this game would not have worked at all without act 1. Especially since Sayori does not appear in 2 of the acts and she is the second most important character in this game, especially for the ending.
To the people here who have seen the similarities between Slay the Princess and Disco Elysium - I implore you, look up "The Fury of a Shattered Mirror". It's a crossover fanfic between the two of them, presented in the visual style of Elysium, and the writing is legitimately on-par with both pieces of source material.
1:17:02 It should be noted that, aside from the moment of clarity route, which is very unusual even by STP standards, and the apotheosis route where She destroys the cabin in her ascension, the exterior of the cabin remains exactly the same on every single route you go on in Slay The Princess. Even The Thorn route, which shows the interior of the cabin to be completely burned out, the outside world clearly visible, the exterior seems as undamaged as it was in your first ever visit, despite logic telling you it should be otherwise. The exterior of the cabin is you, the Long Quiet. It is the physical manifestation of the narrator’s construct binding the shifting mound into place. It makes sense that Apotheosis and Moment of Clarity were able to break it, as Apotheosis is perceived to be above the concept of life and death itself, and the nightmare broke you in a very literal sense, hence all the voices with you by the end of that route.
it took me way too long to realise the voices were jonathan sims... but gods, i adore that eldritch horror archivist, space pirate singing, supernatural dork (reference to The Magnus archives as well as Jonny's old band, The Mechanisms btw)
There are quite a few lore and thematic quibbles I have with you with regards to Slay the Princess, particularly on the nature of the Narrator and the New and Unending Dawn ending, which I'd be happy to list if you'd like, but this is probably my favorite video essay on both DDLC and StP. Congratulations on a monumental achievement, and I hope that so many people will be able to see this.
Great job in exploring both of these games. They both mean something for me in different ways. I wrote a poem review on Steam for DDLC when it first came out and it reflected the game itself as well as the meta narrative without saying what it is. I was quite surprised by the amount of love it got. It is what opened my mind to visual novels as a whole and let explore all sorts of things for what games could do in creating meta narratives in themselves as well as what you can find ourselves as we explore them. If you are playing Slay the Princess with authenticity right off the bat, I have a theory that the first princess you find is based on your personality traits (good and bad) because of your point on the game reacting to you, the person. All of the friends that I've witnessed this, relate to their first princess the most. I found The Stranger princess right off the bat and I was playing it with a friend who couldn't believe that's what I found as she found The Tower and accepted her. We both recognized that it made sense for us. I wound up gifting it to a friend and they found another Princess that made sense for them as well. Your first princess? That's your princess and she's also you as you figure this out together. I can't choose one princess over the other in terms of singular princesses, they all bring something unique and wonderful (and also terrifying) to this incredibly well drawn game. I didn't know about the Stranger achievement until I looked at the list and realized that she had one of her own. So I made sure to explore every scenario of the game (at the present time) before returning to her. When it was time for me to walk out that door with her, it felt like I was opening the door to my heart and embracing ALL of myself from previous traumas to my greatest triumphs and everything in between. I haven't played it since and I'm so excited for the Prestine Cut. Your line about the mirror looking like a window is quite a wonderful way of putting it. I'm done gushing now; heh. I'll have to check out the rest of your stuff! Oh and one final note, I've been learning Japanese for the past few years thanks to that Tim Rogers review you linked as I really want to explore the Tokimeki Memorial games for myself as I've been collecting them. I guess I can't help myself with visual novels these days!
Your comment on what your first princess says about you made me remember and think on my first play through. Mine was the Razor, which in hindsight was probably the best route I could have done out the gate. The Voice of the Cheated pretty much voiced what I was thinking going through the route, getting more and more frustrated when nothing I tried worked.
Doki doki is terrifying as someone with bpd because it's essentially the same feeling from all 3 girls, when you are in a relationship. When I'm unmedicated I become obsessive, depressive, aggressive (lots of essives) and it's terrifying. I love that game because it opened my eyes to a lot of my behaviours and I was so immersed that I scared myself straight and got help 💀💀
You've really broken down the mystery of that damn mirror for me. Your explanation rings so true. My interpretation was always that the mirror in StP was a piece of the narrators construct that he built for you two - which is also true in a way. But I really like your explanation of it also being a meta way for the authors to tell us "I'm trying to show you yourselves"
I'm sure there are plenty of other games that do this, but they way that DDLC uses game files and save states reminded me a bit of Undertale. I feel like they have a similar relationship to the player in that regard, and they make you aware of it.
Scariest thing about Monika in Act 3 is if you've been recording your playthrough like for a LP or walkthrough which I did for DDLC+ on PS4 later PS5 Monika will actually acknowledge the fact that you've recording your playthrough and will reveal this by saying "So you've been recording me and the other girls that's creepy but hey you do you. You know how about I give you something really nice to record." Let's just say that disturbed me on a whole other level this is after the scene in Act 3 where she calls me by my PS4/PS5 Gamertag Darkwolf instead of my character's name which already disturbed me on it's own.
Something interesting about Slay The Princess you didn't mention, is that every chapter II both has it's own unique chapter III and a chapter III it shares with it's canonical counterpart (which you learn in The Stranger route) For example, both The Witch and The Beast share The Wild route, The Spectre and Nightmare both share The Wraith, and so on. The only exception to this is The Stranger (which is meant to only be a chapter II only route no matter what you do) but that still works bc it's counterpart is The Razor, which 1, is the only route to lead to a chapter IV, and 2, because The Razor is also unique for having two differently named chapter III's depending on your actions in the second chapter, despite both essentially being the same route just with different voices accompanying you. Also, right now, The Spectre, Damsel and Prisoner routes do not have their own unique chapter III's, but they have been confirmed to be getting ones in the Pristine Cut update coming out next week! Also another interesting fact is that whenever the Princess is taken away by The Shifting Mound and you look into the mirror, the text that comes with it (it's you, you've grown, you've withered, you've unraveled, and you're nothing at all) is based on the five stages of decay, confirmed by the creators themself.
Lovely list of shared chapter threes for y'all: - Damsel and Prisoner can both lead to Grey; this one has the greatest differences between its counterparts, which lead to either the Burned Grey or the Drowned Gray. - Adversary and Tower can both lead to Fury - Witch and Beast can both lead to Wild - Spectre and Nightmare can both lead to Wraith - Razor and Stranger are both delightfully weird and are just built different I guess (Sorry if I forgot any!)
Addendum to my previous reply: each counterpart also shares other thematic similarities, including: - You are completely passive in Damsel and Prisoner - Adversary and Tower are a demon and a god respectively, and both are more than willing to kick your ass into the next life - Witch and Beast are both very "nature-y", for lack of a better term - Spectre and Nightmare are both *spoooky ghooooosts* - Razor and Stranger are just built different ig I also find it interesting that Mutually Assured Destruction (Razor 4) and Moment of Clarity (Nightmare 3) are the only two routes that give you *all* of the silly little auditory hallucinations that may or may not be your past lives.
I'm early in the video so I may comment again. But I totally agree that the first act of DDLC is a solid game in its own right. I was lucky enough to play the game totally blind when it came out. When I saw Sayori in that CG, I still didn't instantly twig on that this was turning into a horror game. I actually assumed that I was going to continue the story of this close-knit group of friends dealing with Sayori's suicide. And honestly I would still have enjoyed that game.
42:40 This is also the horror that made FNAF: Sister Location my favorite game in that series. I'm not that scared of haunted animatronics, but Baby's monologue about watching herself do something terrible without being in control of herself gave me nightmares.
This is an absolutely wonderful video essay, your interpretation of slay the princess was fantastic and I especially love how you explained the final "good" ending that allows both the player and the princess to leave not just godhood, but everything far beyond just the construct and media. I wish I could say something more profound but the analysis of both of these games really speak to how desperately humanity strive to connect, to find feeling with that which cannot. Its an idea that all of us can intrinsically understand
Damn man you have that incredible skill of turning a discussion of a game into something that becomes so much more. Both the games talked about are great and this video gets me to appreciate them more, also showing what is possible with this video format, outstanding job!
I played with Eliza and Azile (its angrier version) quite often growing up. I got a lot of fun out forcing the program to just give up. EDIT: Figured I should clarify a little. The programs would give up if you either echoed everything said by the program back at it, or by getting increasingly more nonsensical. The program giving up was just by no longer responding when you typed something in. As for Azile being the angrier version, if Eliza said "and how does that make you feel?" Azile would say "and why should I care?"
just completed "Slay the Prinzess" because of your suggestion to play it. and im shocked how much i underestimated how nicely done the writing and presentation is. thank you for suggesting.
The game itself I can separate from, but I have a much harder time separating myself from music, and I get lost in it easier. Talking about the game didn't really do much for me, but the moment you mentioned Monika singing in the credits, I kind of expected to hear it and started tearing up lmao. I don't particularly like Monica, but that song gets me man.
Absolutely incredible video. 10/10 - exactly the type of incisive insights i watch these types of videos to hear. Thanks for making this, the only thing i wouldve wished had been included was some analysis of "Your Reality" specifically. An extremely tragic song and beautiful in that expression of something so existentially frightening yet simultaneously brave, full of love.
I did think about it because I *love* Your Reality, it's on my big Spotify shuffle playlist, but I felt like a lot of what I have to say about it was already covered by the rest of the video and would have just been largely repeating myself. Rest assured-- I absolutely love it!
this might be the best analysis of slay the princess (and of these two games in conjunction) that i have??? ever seen??? phenomenal work!! edit: also that final line has me in tears
I've only watched other people play these games, but they didn't do any major or deep analysis on them. I have my own thoughts on them through that but games just hit differently when you play them yourself. If this is anything like your "Lies of P" video I'll walk away knowing practically everything. Actually, on that note, I've watched your "Lies of P" video about 4 times now; it's just so interesting and cozy to have on while playing Warframe or whatever. 😊
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the Lies of P video that much! It's always funny to think some of my videos are comfort videos are comfort/background videos for other people, since I have videos like that to me. Definitely an honor!
One thing I'd like to add to your ddlc analysis is that while Monika absolutely is just as much of a victim as the other girls and arguably just as broken as they are, Monika herself would dislike the "Monika did nothing wrong" argument that some of us Monika fans (she is best doki ) unnecessarily use when trying to defend her actions. Monika very clearly feels guilty over her actions, as shown in the lyrics of her song where she mentions how her pen only writes bad things for those that are dear to her. She basically admits that what she did was wrong. She may have had understandable reasons for why she did what she did, but it's important to her character not to fully justify what she did and claim that she did nothing wrong. Monika is a very tragic character, and part of that tragedy is that she's deep down a good person, who do to circumstances that were entirely beyond her control, ended up doing some very bad things to people that she did love at the end of the day. Not as bad as her detractors like to claim (she never actually kills anyone and likely never intended for anyone to get hurt either ), but something that will probably plague her conscience for a very long time.
Always love to see a new Zuldim post! This time you're talking about a game I used to really love, and a game I actively really love. Hope you're excited for the Pristine edition of Slay the Princess... and glad to hear you're enjoying The Magnus Archives!
Great video, Slay the princess is fantastic and I always love when I see people talk about it. I originally followed you for your Fear and Hunger video, and this video feels the most like what I was hoping to see more of since then. (Just not huge into hitman or FFXIV no hate! lol) But honestly really enjoyed it from start to finish and hope to see more videos like this in the future!
55:45 Also a bit of yellow, but that's pretty rare; most notably when the Beast princess vores, digests, and subsequently vomits you. edit: whoopsie, wrong timestamp; I fixed it.
This is genuinely fantastic and I'm going to finish it, but I'm an hour and five minutes in and just want to throw out an example of a Visual Novel that only has one chapter with interactive elements, ONE branching choice for the player, yet I'd argue it has an immense amount of gameplay. Umineko no Naku Koro ni. If you haven't already, give the VN a shot. Find a patch to change the awful Pachinko slots sprites and add voice acting, or play it like me with the original (charming, if amateurish) sprites. It's a series that at first challenges the reader to a game of understanding what's going on and solving its mysteries that gradually shifts into something else. Just give it a shot.
I loved this video with all of my heart. The thought, the care and the love you put into not only this video but also the games while you played them are obvious. This is definitely one of my favourite analysis videos on RUclips. Thank you for making it
Not even the first games I've seen play with the 4th wall. One was a vn where you date the girl and on second playthrough she attacks you since she remembers what you did. Another one between two girls. If you are a hyper loser and choose the girl who cheats on you and forgive her. She takes you out and you got a lot of 4th wall breaks. Forgot the names it's been a few years since i last saw them
thank you for making this, these are my two of my favorite games of all time!! after watching the video, i think that DDLC and Slay The Princess should absolutely be paired together in the way they parallel and contrast each other. both are extremely well done meta narratives that portray being trapped in an inescapable cosmic horror. However, DDLC illustrates the damage that happens when one refuses to accept the reality and tries to control it while Slay the Princess shows the hope when one accepts it and changes themselves based on it. its two sides of the same coin and its fantastic!
I watched the video piece by piece over the last days and when you circled back to the beginning, I almost forgot there was an intoduction xD But very strong points and great video! Thank you so much for this in depth look on reflective games
This video is SO good and got me to wishlist Slay the Princess so I can play it for myself, but why did you have to call me out so specifically with Anders in the end? 😅
I love Slay the Princess, and Dokidoki is also great! I loved your video, it was very pleasing and "educative" for the lore and philosophy of both games
Im not recommending this game as it is basically a hentai game but "You, me and her" is a REALLY good game in the same mold as DDLC and that i think does a better job than DDLC in how it works "horror" and the 4th wall into its structure and all of this INSPITE of the hentai. If you arent willing to interact with it yourself theres censored playtroughts on youtube
i feel like DDLC really fits the usual visual novel while Slay the Princess felt alot more like The Quarry/Until dawn, without the moving of the character.
For visual novels u might like I recommend the house in fata morgana if you’ve never heard of it it’s very long but very good but yeah there is only like 3 choices in it but it’s soooo good story wise
Just want to say, this channel has really been a breath of fresh air and I'm so glad I discovered it. From the great, comprehensive Hitman videos to these thought provoking video essays, it's all wonderful. The kinda stuff youtube was made for,
This was such a fascinating watch, I never would have thought to put these two games together, but now that I’ve seen this, I feel dumb for not thinking of it before 😆
Gah! The Wild is my personal favorite route though! Mostly because it lays out the situation in a rather ambigious way, but if you join with the Princess in that route, the Narrator reveals his true colors as the true antagonist of this story. And my favorite tidbit is this. In the Witch, you can continue to fight the Princess all the way to the end, and take the Stubborn in with you into the Wild. The Stubborn is your meathead in other routes, will always go for fighting the Princess. He and your dodge-good Voice Hunted would make an OP pair in many a video game and are usually a very good combination to have if you want to actually end the Princess. The Stubborn is surprisingly of all, the voice least resistant to the Narrator, and in that specific situation, where you and the Princess are one once more, he does not want to fight her. BUT, but but but but but but but! You the player, as the Long Quiet, still don't have to listen to him. In fact, I find it hard to. My actions proved that I was willing to fight and kill her again and again and again, and that there is a bit of spite there between us. When she said as the Witch before she became the Wild that she hated me, it's hard to not feel the same sort of hatred in turn. It is hard to be co-operative and willing to stay together with someone who's words of hatred linger in your ear. Also I just love the sequence of fighting in the Witch, it's so viscerally fun! Contrast that to my reaction towards getting the Wild via the Beast. While the Beast is calculating, she is acting on a predators calucation towards it's prey, and towards it's goal. It feels in the moment, with all of it's primal horror, to be a more natural state of things. Either route, either way, you get into the Wild dying tightly woven to the Princess herself. It feels to be the moment in which death lingers over them both, and they have become one with the world itself, becoming the closest approximation of what the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet once were, with the musical theme being letmotifs found associated with both, mixed and garbled together in such a way that sounds gentle and tender. The only thing standing in the way of you two, is something foreign, something that shares a voice with what you think is you, but isn't you. A voice that you yourself, unknowingly, reflect and twist into something different. But your choices in the Long Quiet are always yours and yours alone. The game is meant to be a reflection upon the player itself, which reminds me of that Tomomeki Memorial video you also mentioned. Many people may only make a few choices along that game and date who they find the most desirable or who they most agree with. In watching the Doki Doki Literature club bit, I was interested in the gameplay bit and wondered what words, if I picked organically, would match to which girl. And then was horrified about what the game pulled to them. But that comes to the point, we are all reflecting oursleves in these games. Reflecting upon these statues. And I for one, crave that togetherness in a romantic relationship...despite the fact that the yearning of being one with a partner is one that can not be done. Not in life. And not for anything human or mortal.
I'm not entirely sure the Narrator is the True Antagonist of the Game any more than The Princess is the true antagonist of the game. Everybody has clearly defined goals and enough orange and blue morality to really make everyone look like a lovecraftian abomination.
I think the most intense part of STP is that the game really does show you yourself. I thing the biggest part of it is which princess was your first princess. My first princess was the wraith. I couldnt handle the pressure of either choosing to trust her or condemning the world, so i left and hid and kept running until the princess hunted me like a deer. I'm a deeply bleeding heart person unwilling to hurt someone or compromise the big picture. I totally panic when forced to confront something big like that. The reflection that first princess had on me as a princess wasn't something that sunk in until i saw someone get the prisoner as his first. He was terrified too, suspicious, and got the skeptical voice and skeptical princess and ended up chained to a wall. That was a damning read on him too
Hey uhh cool bg3 reference but after an hour and a half of talk about meta narrative only to have you reference the game I'm playing whilst I listen to this video, I did get a bit spooked
Fun fact, crows is a famous symbol of death, in some cultures the crow is also a symbol of change. I find this interesting with Slay the Princess's use of crow imagery with it's main protagonists.
Great video! I plan on making my own StP video soon and hope to make it as good as this one (though fair warning: I liked it, not loved it, but find it fascinating to think on why that is)
I love slay the princess for the way it inspires so many valid readings. My interpretation of the story is less abstract than your interpretation and less direct than the reading of some people that see it as a reflection of a broken relationship between two distinct people. I see it as a story about the distractive cycle of the patriarchy. The player character is “The masculine” who in the beginning is yet untouched by the patriarchy until the narrator how represents the patriarchy and its benefactors instruct us to “Slay the princess”. The princess in my eyes represents not only “The feminine” but also queerness. In other words she is everything that is not the patriarchal ideal of masculinity. That which must be controlled and or destroyed by any means necessary. That is also why the narrator says that if she is freed aka gender is liberated from the oppression of the patriarchy the world will end. In this context the masculine and the feminine/the queer are both victims of the patriarchy by focusing us the player to be the perpetrator or by punishing and demeaning us for disobeying and the princess by becoming our victim that is forced to retaliate against us. In that context the knife represents not just physical violence but also sexual assault. The knife is a phallic object in this context. It also contextualises the “The Good Ending” where you just do what you are told and slay the princess immediately. Because you changed nothing and the patriarchy doesn’t actually cares about your well-being either it just abandons you in the cabin. I could continue with details but this comment is long enough. As you meet more version of both the princess and of yourself our perspective, our mistrust of the patriarchal narrator and our empathy for the other grows stronger. At the end of my game I choose the become one with the divine feminine/queer to create a new world. One without the patriarchy… one without that which device use from one another. It is a love story after all.
The end of the video makes me think of Buber's _I and Thou._ When you say a character isn't "real" I feel like that misses a fundamental aspect of our perception of reality. All we truly know is our experience, what we've connected to, and the reflection we've created in our mind. If a character in a story touches us, affects us, changes us, evokes fear, love, catharsis, etc... how are they less "real" to us than any other interaction, or any other person? The emotional reaction is real. The image in our head is real. I think the idea of "unreality" is based solely on our social need for reciprocity. A feeling evoked by a person, a character, an author, whatever is not lessened if it is not reciprocated. I can write a story, record an audio file, or whatever so a complete stranger can experience a moment of kindness, or catharsis, and that experience, their relationship to the character, their tears or joy are still "real" even if their relationship to the author/actor is nonexistant. The characater is formed in the mind of the audience, and has a very real effect on them.
12:57 say that to TREVOR TREEFORT who did a full play through completely blind!!! He didn’t even know what the art style was gonna be before he looked up images for the thumbnail!!! (And he played it like under a week ago)
Comment for the algorithm! And if you're interested in visual (romance) novels & reactivity, I highly recommend ad astra (it is free! It is also Very 18+) where you are kidnapped by a space wolf and have to deal with Space Politics and also the horror (& appeal!) of Being The One Romanced instead of the one doing the romancing. There are some essays out there that talk about it but also It Is Free so you should just go and play it
its unfortunate this wassint held off till after experiancing the updated pristine cut, which not only polishes what was already theyre adding beautiful full animations in key scenes and fleshing out many characters and paths, but even adding several new paths... my favorite of which, is the new path princess and the dragon, but without telling anything about it to avoid spoilers, in my own first playthorugh of the game i keept choosing to see good in the proncess and keept choosing her over a wolrd that demanded murder to sustain its ways, in short i value even a single life of a decent person more than infinite worlds of currupt careless beings, and also probably do to my own history with mental ilness i saw the princessess as metaphore for human sentiance, many tiny parts each its own being unwittingly, or unwillingly mashed togather to form a greator whole, the individual cells of the body, the individual nuerons of the brain, the many aspects of the ego, and the two sepporate, yet whole hemisphears of the brain... one silent, the other able to speak, both seeing theyre own view of the world through your eyes... you... are two, you are many. my fight with life long self hatrid and depression has gevin me a strange view of my own mind, all of its me, but some parts are so different so alien as to nearly be an invading mind or perhaps, i wish they were an invader, those parts have all my memories, and can only moves or think or speak when im awake, they are a part of me, wether they are an enemy or not.
You call the opening warning to Doki Doki Literature club a spoiler, but I argue a thing that is part of the game/book/whatever we're talking about cannot be considered a spoiler. It's best called foreshadowing, like an attract mode in a game that's intended to be viewable even before that player gets to its levels or an opening sequence that hints to things that will come. It would be like calling an original installment a "spoiler" to the later released prequel, when if you're taking a series as a whole narrative it's just non-chronological storytelling, or calling it a spoiler whether a play is a tragedy or comedy, or calling one's history class a spoiler for historical fiction. It'd be like saying Moby Dick's narration spoils the survival of its narrator when that's a narrative tool. You're right, the message itself contextualizes the first act as something it wouldn't seem on the surface, but that doesn't mean it spoils anything. It's just the start of the game. Also, subtitles seem to stop appearing about 41 minutes in
I agree with you fully on this point, I don't think it should be classified as a "spoiler" and think of it more as foreshadowing, or a narrative tool. For this video, I specifically refer to it as a "spoiler" because unfortunately, that is how I see people refer to it constantly (and saying it ruined the "surprise" of the game for them), so to counter that argument, I talk about it in those terms, if that makes sense. Thank you for notifying me about the subtitles error, RUclips is processing them again now so hopefully it'll be fixed in a few hours.
STP is by your favorite VN and nothing else comes close? That's interesting. While I also think STP is excellent and the branching is unmatched, my favorite VN goes to Muv-Luv Alternative, even if it's (*cough*)relatively linear. It's the third game in a trilogy and I really didn't expect such an incredible emotional payoff, especially when I initially looked at the store descriptions of the first two games which can be crudely summarised as "Romcom harem VN" and then "Scifi isekai romcom harem VN".
![Twenty One Pilots - The Line (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XCz7WUotXs8/mqdefault.jpg)
![Lethal Company Music Video 🎵 "Follow The Orders" [VERSION A]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QeooZB4Z7RA/mqdefault.jpg)
In the past, I've said Doki Doki is a horror game disguised as a dating sim while Slay the Princess is a dating sim disguised as a horror game.
I CONCUR BASED INDIVIDUAL.
YOU'RE SO RIGHT
Slay is like a framing for the emotions of each partner where they become their own characters, changing their actions and personalities as the real people experience the ups and downs of learning to be together emotionally. We all begin as strangers and we all contain multitudes.
It's gem
@@lukethekuya It's truly outrageous? Truly truly truly outrageous?
I really appreciate that you call The Long Quiet a god of “stasis.” It seems to be most popular in the fandom to call him a god of “stagnation,” which I feel adds a negative implication that should not be there. It’s not all that different from the Narrator’s fixation on The Shifting Mound being death. The Long Quiet is not stagnation, but he holds it in his eternity. He also holds homeostasis, the continuation of life. He holds boredom, stillness, the pause between heartbeats, and the gaps between stars.
He is so, so much *more* that it almost feels insulting to call him stagnation.
(Also, did you notice the Tower refers to the Narrator as a filthy film over your soul, and the Voice of the Hero says the mirror only isn’t working because it has a layer of grime we need to wipe away? And then we can only see ourselves once the Narrator is gone and the mirror is all that’s left…)
Im saving this im my "cool comments" folder :P
One of the criticisms I genuinely have for the game is that it doesn't do a good enough job explaining and arguing in FAVOR of The Long Quiet. Yes, The Long Quiet is stagnation, but he's also stasis, eternity, peace, memory, and time. There's negatives to that but there's also positives, just like the Shifting Mound has positives and negatives to what she represents. She is change, transformation, chaos, death, and life.
But you almost don't even know what you're a god of by the time you awaken to your godhood; and so during the game's climax, where you have a grand argument with the Shifting Mound over your and her place in this universe, it often falls flat and a lot of people just get confused and can't really seem to argue against what she's trying to do, because they don't even understand what they are or why what they represent should be held on equal ground to her. This isn't just an argument for why you shouldn't kill her. It's a debate over the fate of the universe in which what you are matters every bit as much.
The Shifting Mound spells it out what her plans are once she is released. It's change on-end with no constancy, no stability. "This universe dies and a new one is born then that one dies and another". Remember what the narrator feared "I... saw oblivion threaten the very memory of everything I knew and everyone I loved.... When the patterns are wiped from the sands, when the board is reset, who will remember them?" In her ideal world, no one would. The very concept of memory would be meaningless as it all would just be reset over and over again. It would be every bit as existentially pointless as endless stagnation, a constant change where nothing matters because nothing can be held onto. What's the point of change or growth if the reasons for it are tossed aside and forgotten along the way?
She's not just arguing for her right to exist, she's arguing against your own, and that you should essentially just give up control and let her do whatever she wants on end. It's no different than what the Apotheosis wanted, and it's death to you even if she's not trying to kill you, even if she doesn't think that's what it is or what it means. She acknowledges you as an equal only insofar as you have the ability to stop her but she doesn't acknowledge a place for what you represent in her world, or rather she wants your place to be that of just a passive observer while she takes the helm. But you are different now, two distinctly different gods with bits of each other in one another, and what she's proposing is not a relationship of equals. "There is no constant, there is no center" she argues, but that's exactly what you are. And so you have a divine right to challenge these assertion at that moment. The game lets you do it and it's awesome when you do.
I just wish the game made this point more clear to everyone by the time you reach that grand confrontation, because it makes the scene so much better; and suddenly some of the dialog options you have there are that much more powerful, where you can argue them in good faith rather than from the perspective of "babe I don't get any of this, can't you just stop being weird and scary so we can leave?"
Stagnation is equally not stasis. Stagnation is a very active process. Stagnant water is full of blooming life and rot is an active process. Stasis is simply _not._
What happens to Sayori and Yuri is, as someone with mental health issues, my worst nightmare. Especially since a line from Sayori implies Monika directly egged her on into killing herself. The idea you can be turned into the worst version of yourself, with not control...it's horrifying
It's doubtful that Monika actually egged sayori on. Deep down, Monika loves the other girls, despite them not being real. Monika admits as such towards the end, and attempts to make something of a selfless sacrifice for us and the other girls when she resets everything but doesn't allow herself to be brought back. While she does say something to sayori, something kinda bad and something that pushed her even further, we don't know exactly what it is that she said. That said, I think it was something manipulative and something that was hurtful towards sayori... but nothing necessarily malicious. A lot of people think Monika in some way told sayori that she should kill herself or something similar and that really doesn't match Monika's character, especially not in act 1 where she's still trying to keep up appearances. Instead, she probably said something similar to, like, "MC will never see you as more than a friend."
As someone with mental health issues I find it peaceful and calming. I think that all what i get, is what I deserve, and it will be really cool, if I can blain anyone else than me.
Every person unhappy in his own way )
@@phoenixwright784 Pretty sure Monika canonically cranked up the madness-meters that were inherently set within the game. She didn't mean to go as ham as she did, or at the least - she didn't know what the consequences would be, as they played out.
@@mc-inversal7069 She did turn up the girl's negative traits. We're explicitly told this by Monika herself. However, we don't necessarily know how much she turned things up. For Sayori, if we go off of the side stories, she was already very, very depressed before Monika did anything so it's possible that Monika didn't actually crank her depression up by that much. This could explain why Monika tried the same thing with Yuri not expecting the same results that she got with Sayori. She may have seen that Yuri's obsessiveness was much lower than Sayori's depression had been and thus, figured she had more breathing room with Yuri. That might be getting into headcanon territory though
@@phoenixwright784 ssssooo... Yuri is just built different :|| well that's absolutely terrifying
- I mean, I guess Project Libitina WAS gonna be a whole-arse thing originally, ssssoooo that does track.
Something I picked up on was how your reflection changes at end of each of the five route. Its literally death; "you are you": you're alive, "you've grown": a body bloats after death, "you've decayed": flesh starts melting off your bone, "you've withered": you are nothing but bone, "there's nothing there": you've become dust in the soil. Right after that you are born or reborn as a god. You've gone through what the shifting mound causes and there was something after that. You were a reflected unbroken pattern. She through her perspectives went through birth, infancy, childhood, adolescence and in adulthood she become a true goddess. Goddess being her version of being a senior right before death. She went through what you cause.
*Ooh,* that’s a very interesting take! I like that!
I really appreciate the clarification that you find Replika disturbing but do not judge or shame people who find comfort in it. I feel the same, it is HORRIFYING and pure dystopia nightmare fuel that sci-fi has been warning everyone about for decades to NOT create, but people are lonely and are just trying to get through the day in a difficult world. Some people fill that void with things I find horrifying and don't think is a good idea but they aren't hurting others.
Something I love about Slay the Princess is that every video essay gives me a new interpretation of both the lore and the meta elements
slay the princess is the only thing that has even come close to giving me the kind of experience that i got out of disco elysium, so i am really glad that you mentioned their similarity!!
Fun little fact related to the topic of this video:
There are scientists who create robots specifically designed to clear out mines from minefields by activating them. These scientists tend to give names to these robots, which as you may expect, makes the scientists bond with and sympathize with the robots. They become so attached to them that they hold funerals for them when they're released. You can imagine why this might be a problem lol
I heard someone once called off a test because watching a robot that was once built like a centipede drag itself along on just a few legs was “too cruel.” Despite the fact that was exactly what it was built to do.
Anyway, human empathy is an amazing thing.
Yeeeees I'm so so glad you talked about the Witch->Thorn route. The ending with pissing off the Narrator is obviously meant to be funny but I was between laughing and crying by the time I finished that route. I love that your betrayal makes Witch almost child-like, but a child that has learned how painfully easy it is to be wronged and wrong in return. That her confusion about your emphatic trust in her after you hurt her the first time is so visceral and *real* . That the two of you come together at the end to say "we did these things, we can't just sweep that under the rug, but damned if we're going to keep letting the narrative (Narrator) push us to these constant, agonizing extremes. The way the most simple splash of red in Thorn's broken, crumbling cabin elicited this breathless response from me when I first got there; a beautiful, painful sign of someone wanting to bloom and be loved but so, so scared of what love has done to her that she still has to place thorns around herself. To hurt *herself* first before something else can. GOD I could go on and on about that route. It's my favorite as well.
...I think I was happier before I learned what 'degloving' was. The internet sucks, I hate it here.
While DDLC never really interested me, this video is what finally made me bite the bullet and pick up Slay The Princess after letting it languish in my steam wishlist for ages. Even knowing as much about the game as I did going in, it was still an absolutely amazing experience from start to finish and I ended up binging two playthroughs in my first sitting. What a ride.
You're also the third person I've heard lavish the Magnus Archives with such praise, so I guess that's where I'm headed next. Cheers, Zuldim!
Magnus Archives is great! Just have your cork board and red string ready. Early seasons have a lot of little details that end up connecting.
I think I too would like to not know what "degloving" is
Omg thank god someone else was able to break down why act 1 in ddlc is so important. In my eyes it was always the most important act. It makes you care about the characters enough that once the characters start dying, it hits hard. I believe this game would not have worked at all without act 1. Especially since Sayori does not appear in 2 of the acts and she is the second most important character in this game, especially for the ending.
My two favorite visual novels analyzed in the same video? This blessing is too much.
Ikr???
To the people here who have seen the similarities between Slay the Princess and Disco Elysium - I implore you, look up "The Fury of a Shattered Mirror". It's a crossover fanfic between the two of them, presented in the visual style of Elysium, and the writing is legitimately on-par with both pieces of source material.
Okay you got me, but holy crap 266K words and it's unfinished??
@@threerings13 Yep, it’s in progress - They just uploaded a new chapter two days ago. It’s completely worth reading from the very start.
Yeah it has really cool fan art and even for the latest chapter Princess too
The sheer conceptual insanity of this is stunning.
This is like having schizophrenia² bro how tf you live like that
1:17:02 It should be noted that, aside from the moment of clarity route, which is very unusual even by STP standards, and the apotheosis route where She destroys the cabin in her ascension, the exterior of the cabin remains exactly the same on every single route you go on in Slay The Princess.
Even The Thorn route, which shows the interior of the cabin to be completely burned out, the outside world clearly visible, the exterior seems as undamaged as it was in your first ever visit, despite logic telling you it should be otherwise.
The exterior of the cabin is you, the Long Quiet. It is the physical manifestation of the narrator’s construct binding the shifting mound into place. It makes sense that Apotheosis and Moment of Clarity were able to break it, as Apotheosis is perceived to be above the concept of life and death itself, and the nightmare broke you in a very literal sense, hence all the voices with you by the end of that route.
Even as the woods shift and change, the cabin itself remains familiar, at least at first glance.
Just started the video and I’m already confronted with the fact that Hamilton still has my brain in a chokehold after all these years
🎶 ELIIIIIIIZA 🎶
I'm glad you covered DDLC, the concept of having no freewill is terrifying. Incredible video as always 👍👍
Wake up babe a new Zuldim video essay just dropped
it took me way too long to realise the voices were jonathan sims... but gods, i adore that eldritch horror archivist, space pirate singing, supernatural dork
(reference to The Magnus archives as well as Jonny's old band, The Mechanisms btw)
There are quite a few lore and thematic quibbles I have with you with regards to Slay the Princess, particularly on the nature of the Narrator and the New and Unending Dawn ending, which I'd be happy to list if you'd like, but this is probably my favorite video essay on both DDLC and StP. Congratulations on a monumental achievement, and I hope that so many people will be able to see this.
You can feel free to share what quibbles you have, I certainly don't claim to be a complete lore expert on the game.
Doki Doki Literature Club: Come closer, I am a normal dating sim
Slay The Princess: Stay away, I am a mentally scarring horror game
Great job in exploring both of these games. They both mean something for me in different ways.
I wrote a poem review on Steam for DDLC when it first came out and it reflected the game itself as well as the meta narrative without saying what it is. I was quite surprised by the amount of love it got. It is what opened my mind to visual novels as a whole and let explore all sorts of things for what games could do in creating meta narratives in themselves as well as what you can find ourselves as we explore them.
If you are playing Slay the Princess with authenticity right off the bat, I have a theory that the first princess you find is based on your personality traits (good and bad) because of your point on the game reacting to you, the person. All of the friends that I've witnessed this, relate to their first princess the most. I found The Stranger princess right off the bat and I was playing it with a friend who couldn't believe that's what I found as she found The Tower and accepted her. We both recognized that it made sense for us. I wound up gifting it to a friend and they found another Princess that made sense for them as well. Your first princess? That's your princess and she's also you as you figure this out together. I can't choose one princess over the other in terms of singular princesses, they all bring something unique and wonderful (and also terrifying) to this incredibly well drawn game. I didn't know about the Stranger achievement until I looked at the list and realized that she had one of her own. So I made sure to explore every scenario of the game (at the present time) before returning to her. When it was time for me to walk out that door with her, it felt like I was opening the door to my heart and embracing ALL of myself from previous traumas to my greatest triumphs and everything in between. I haven't played it since and I'm so excited for the Prestine Cut.
Your line about the mirror looking like a window is quite a wonderful way of putting it. I'm done gushing now; heh. I'll have to check out the rest of your stuff!
Oh and one final note, I've been learning Japanese for the past few years thanks to that Tim Rogers review you linked as I really want to explore the Tokimeki Memorial games for myself as I've been collecting them. I guess I can't help myself with visual novels these days!
Your comment on what your first princess says about you made me remember and think on my first play through. Mine was the Razor, which in hindsight was probably the best route I could have done out the gate. The Voice of the Cheated pretty much voiced what I was thinking going through the route, getting more and more frustrated when nothing I tried worked.
Doki doki is terrifying as someone with bpd because it's essentially the same feeling from all 3 girls, when you are in a relationship. When I'm unmedicated I become obsessive, depressive, aggressive (lots of essives) and it's terrifying. I love that game because it opened my eyes to a lot of my behaviours and I was so immersed that I scared myself straight and got help 💀💀
Never played Slay the Princess, but you had me at Johnny Sims
You've really broken down the mystery of that damn mirror for me. Your explanation rings so true.
My interpretation was always that the mirror in StP was a piece of the narrators construct that he built for you two - which is also true in a way. But I really like your explanation of it also being a meta way for the authors to tell us "I'm trying to show you yourselves"
I'm sure there are plenty of other games that do this, but they way that DDLC uses game files and save states reminded me a bit of Undertale. I feel like they have a similar relationship to the player in that regard, and they make you aware of it.
LMAO Using the guidelines as the censor. It's great. 10/10, no notes.
Scariest thing about Monika in Act 3 is if you've been recording your playthrough like for a LP or walkthrough which I did for DDLC+ on PS4 later PS5 Monika will actually acknowledge the fact that you've recording your playthrough and will reveal this by saying "So you've been recording me and the other girls that's creepy but hey you do you. You know how about I give you something really nice to record."
Let's just say that disturbed me on a whole other level this is after the scene in Act 3 where she calls me by my PS4/PS5 Gamertag Darkwolf instead of my character's name which already disturbed me on it's own.
Something interesting about Slay The Princess you didn't mention, is that every chapter II both has it's own unique chapter III and a chapter III it shares with it's canonical counterpart (which you learn in The Stranger route) For example, both The Witch and The Beast share The Wild route, The Spectre and Nightmare both share The Wraith, and so on. The only exception to this is The Stranger (which is meant to only be a chapter II only route no matter what you do) but that still works bc it's counterpart is The Razor, which 1, is the only route to lead to a chapter IV, and 2, because The Razor is also unique for having two differently named chapter III's depending on your actions in the second chapter, despite both essentially being the same route just with different voices accompanying you. Also, right now, The Spectre, Damsel and Prisoner routes do not have their own unique chapter III's, but they have been confirmed to be getting ones in the Pristine Cut update coming out next week!
Also another interesting fact is that whenever the Princess is taken away by The Shifting Mound and you look into the mirror, the text that comes with it (it's you, you've grown, you've withered, you've unraveled, and you're nothing at all) is based on the five stages of decay, confirmed by the creators themself.
Lovely list of shared chapter threes for y'all:
- Damsel and Prisoner can both lead to Grey; this one has the greatest differences between its counterparts, which lead to either the Burned Grey or the Drowned Gray.
- Adversary and Tower can both lead to Fury
- Witch and Beast can both lead to Wild
- Spectre and Nightmare can both lead to Wraith
- Razor and Stranger are both delightfully weird and are just built different I guess
(Sorry if I forgot any!)
Addendum to my previous reply: each counterpart also shares other thematic similarities, including:
- You are completely passive in Damsel and Prisoner
- Adversary and Tower are a demon and a god respectively, and both are more than willing to kick your ass into the next life
- Witch and Beast are both very "nature-y", for lack of a better term
- Spectre and Nightmare are both *spoooky ghooooosts*
- Razor and Stranger are just built different ig
I also find it interesting that Mutually Assured Destruction (Razor 4) and Moment of Clarity (Nightmare 3) are the only two routes that give you *all* of the silly little auditory hallucinations that may or may not be your past lives.
Two of my favorite games of the meta horror genre drew me here and I enjoyed your thoughts laid out all in one package =]
I'm early in the video so I may comment again. But I totally agree that the first act of DDLC is a solid game in its own right. I was lucky enough to play the game totally blind when it came out. When I saw Sayori in that CG, I still didn't instantly twig on that this was turning into a horror game. I actually assumed that I was going to continue the story of this close-knit group of friends dealing with Sayori's suicide. And honestly I would still have enjoyed that game.
42:40 This is also the horror that made FNAF: Sister Location my favorite game in that series. I'm not that scared of haunted animatronics, but Baby's monologue about watching herself do something terrible without being in control of herself gave me nightmares.
The fact that Abby drew all of STP herself makes me want to eat my skin
This is an absolutely wonderful video essay, your interpretation of slay the princess was fantastic and I especially love how you explained the final "good" ending that allows both the player and the princess to leave not just godhood, but everything far beyond just the construct and media. I wish I could say something more profound but the analysis of both of these games really speak to how desperately humanity strive to connect, to find feeling with that which cannot. Its an idea that all of us can intrinsically understand
This is an amazing study piece, its going in my "watch several times and take notes" catagory of videos. Im enamored
Damn man you have that incredible skill of turning a discussion of a game into something that becomes so much more. Both the games talked about are great and this video gets me to appreciate them more, also showing what is possible with this video format, outstanding job!
I played with Eliza and Azile (its angrier version) quite often growing up. I got a lot of fun out forcing the program to just give up.
EDIT: Figured I should clarify a little. The programs would give up if you either echoed everything said by the program back at it, or by getting increasingly more nonsensical. The program giving up was just by no longer responding when you typed something in.
As for Azile being the angrier version, if Eliza said "and how does that make you feel?" Azile would say "and why should I care?"
just completed "Slay the Prinzess" because of your suggestion to play it. and im shocked how much i underestimated how nicely done the writing and presentation is. thank you for suggesting.
Hey your video essay got shouted out by blacktabbygames both on their Twitter and tumblr:D!
Holy shit! That's awesome!
That interpretation of "The miror" sounds so good to me, in the end, the game is what WE make of it.
13:08 If you want an example of what a playthrough looks like without that prior knowledge, go check out the game grumps playthrough!
The game itself I can separate from, but I have a much harder time separating myself from music, and I get lost in it easier.
Talking about the game didn't really do much for me, but the moment you mentioned Monika singing in the credits, I kind of expected to hear it and started tearing up lmao.
I don't particularly like Monica, but that song gets me man.
Same here.
Absolutely incredible video. 10/10 - exactly the type of incisive insights i watch these types of videos to hear. Thanks for making this, the only thing i wouldve wished had been included was some analysis of "Your Reality" specifically. An extremely tragic song and beautiful in that expression of something so existentially frightening yet simultaneously brave, full of love.
I did think about it because I *love* Your Reality, it's on my big Spotify shuffle playlist, but I felt like a lot of what I have to say about it was already covered by the rest of the video and would have just been largely repeating myself. Rest assured-- I absolutely love it!
this might be the best analysis of slay the princess (and of these two games in conjunction) that i have??? ever seen??? phenomenal work!!
edit: also that final line has me in tears
I've only watched other people play these games, but they didn't do any major or deep analysis on them. I have my own thoughts on them through that but games just hit differently when you play them yourself. If this is anything like your "Lies of P" video I'll walk away knowing practically everything. Actually, on that note, I've watched your "Lies of P" video about 4 times now; it's just so interesting and cozy to have on while playing Warframe or whatever. 😊
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the Lies of P video that much! It's always funny to think some of my videos are comfort videos are comfort/background videos for other people, since I have videos like that to me. Definitely an honor!
THIS VIDEO IS SO GOOD WHY IS THERE ONLY 10K VIEWS BLOW THIS TF UP
Tell your friends :D
One thing I'd like to add to your ddlc analysis is that while Monika absolutely is just as much of a victim as the other girls and arguably just as broken as they are, Monika herself would dislike the "Monika did nothing wrong" argument that some of us Monika fans (she is best doki ) unnecessarily use when trying to defend her actions. Monika very clearly feels guilty over her actions, as shown in the lyrics of her song where she mentions how her pen only writes bad things for those that are dear to her. She basically admits that what she did was wrong. She may have had understandable reasons for why she did what she did, but it's important to her character not to fully justify what she did and claim that she did nothing wrong. Monika is a very tragic character, and part of that tragedy is that she's deep down a good person, who do to circumstances that were entirely beyond her control, ended up doing some very bad things to people that she did love at the end of the day. Not as bad as her detractors like to claim (she never actually kills anyone and likely never intended for anyone to get hurt either ), but something that will probably plague her conscience for a very long time.
The Narator's vision of a new universe reminds me so much of what The Hunger was trying to achieve in The Adventure Zone: Balance.
(Also yess Yuri in act 1 is my fav too even if she is way too close to me in personality for my comfort)
Always love to see a new Zuldim post! This time you're talking about a game I used to really love, and a game I actively really love. Hope you're excited for the Pristine edition of Slay the Princess... and glad to hear you're enjoying The Magnus Archives!
Great video, Slay the princess is fantastic and I always love when I see people talk about it.
I originally followed you for your Fear and Hunger video, and this video feels the most like what I was hoping to see more of since then. (Just not huge into hitman or FFXIV no hate! lol) But honestly really enjoyed it from start to finish and hope to see more videos like this in the future!
I've never understood the point of the mirror until you explained it. Thank you, you scratched an itch I didn't know I had
This was wonderful, its was good to see these two games discussed together.
55:45 Also a bit of yellow, but that's pretty rare; most notably when the Beast princess vores, digests, and subsequently vomits you.
edit: whoopsie, wrong timestamp; I fixed it.
Oh sick this comes perfectly timed since there's a Void Stares Back bundle with the two!
This is genuinely fantastic and I'm going to finish it, but I'm an hour and five minutes in and just want to throw out an example of a Visual Novel that only has one chapter with interactive elements, ONE branching choice for the player, yet I'd argue it has an immense amount of gameplay.
Umineko no Naku Koro ni. If you haven't already, give the VN a shot. Find a patch to change the awful Pachinko slots sprites and add voice acting, or play it like me with the original (charming, if amateurish) sprites. It's a series that at first challenges the reader to a game of understanding what's going on and solving its mysteries that gradually shifts into something else. Just give it a shot.
Is this the same as Umineko When They Cry (on Steam)? I've been meaning to play Higurashi When They Cry for ages.
@@ZuldimYT Yes that's exactly it. It and Chiru, the Question and Answer arcs
Thank you for your hard work on these videos. You are so well-spoken.
I think you would adore Outer Wilds if you haven’t already, considering how you speak about Slay the Princess.
I played it back when it came out, and it is indeed a great game. Maybe I'll cover it someday!
I loved this video with all of my heart. The thought, the care and the love you put into not only this video but also the games while you played them are obvious. This is definitely one of my favourite analysis videos on RUclips. Thank you for making it
This was an absolutely spectacular video. The connection you made to Eliza, and fiction as a whole, was just fantastic!
i did not know I needed this video essay till I saw the title aaa
Not even the first games I've seen play with the 4th wall. One was a vn where you date the girl and on second playthrough she attacks you since she remembers what you did.
Another one between two girls. If you are a hyper loser and choose the girl who cheats on you and forgive her. She takes you out and you got a lot of 4th wall breaks. Forgot the names it's been a few years since i last saw them
The first game is called You, Me and Her and it's from Nitro, if i remember right.
thank you for making this, these are my two of my favorite games of all time!!
after watching the video, i think that DDLC and Slay The Princess should absolutely be paired together in the way they parallel and contrast each other. both are extremely well done meta narratives that portray being trapped in an inescapable cosmic horror. However, DDLC illustrates the damage that happens when one refuses to accept the reality and tries to control it while Slay the Princess shows the hope when one accepts it and changes themselves based on it. its two sides of the same coin and its fantastic!
I watched the video piece by piece over the last days and when you circled back to the beginning, I almost forgot there was an intoduction xD But very strong points and great video! Thank you so much for this in depth look on reflective games
This is fabulous analysis, thank you for your hard work!
One of your best video, thank you for this.
This video is SO good and got me to wishlist Slay the Princess so I can play it for myself, but why did you have to call me out so specifically with Anders in the end? 😅
I love Slay the Princess, and Dokidoki is also great! I loved your video, it was very pleasing and "educative" for the lore and philosophy of both games
Im not recommending this game as it is basically a hentai game but "You, me and her" is a REALLY good game in the same mold as DDLC and that i think does a better job than DDLC in how it works "horror" and the 4th wall into its structure and all of this INSPITE of the hentai. If you arent willing to interact with it yourself theres censored playtroughts on youtube
i feel like DDLC really fits the usual visual novel while Slay the Princess felt alot more like The Quarry/Until dawn, without the moving of the character.
Absolutely brilliant, you have a real talent for this
Great video as always!
For visual novels u might like I recommend the house in fata morgana if you’ve never heard of it it’s very long but very good but yeah there is only like 3 choices in it but it’s soooo good story wise
Just want to say, this channel has really been a breath of fresh air and I'm so glad I discovered it. From the great, comprehensive Hitman videos to these thought provoking video essays, it's all wonderful. The kinda stuff youtube was made for,
I really appreciate that!
This was such a fascinating watch, I never would have thought to put these two games together, but now that I’ve seen this, I feel dumb for not thinking of it before 😆
Gah! The Wild is my personal favorite route though! Mostly because it lays out the situation in a rather ambigious way, but if you join with the Princess in that route, the Narrator reveals his true colors as the true antagonist of this story. And my favorite tidbit is this. In the Witch, you can continue to fight the Princess all the way to the end, and take the Stubborn in with you into the Wild. The Stubborn is your meathead in other routes, will always go for fighting the Princess. He and your dodge-good Voice Hunted would make an OP pair in many a video game and are usually a very good combination to have if you want to actually end the Princess. The Stubborn is surprisingly of all, the voice least resistant to the Narrator, and in that specific situation, where you and the Princess are one once more, he does not want to fight her.
BUT, but but but but but but but! You the player, as the Long Quiet, still don't have to listen to him. In fact, I find it hard to. My actions proved that I was willing to fight and kill her again and again and again, and that there is a bit of spite there between us. When she said as the Witch before she became the Wild that she hated me, it's hard to not feel the same sort of hatred in turn. It is hard to be co-operative and willing to stay together with someone who's words of hatred linger in your ear.
Also I just love the sequence of fighting in the Witch, it's so viscerally fun!
Contrast that to my reaction towards getting the Wild via the Beast. While the Beast is calculating, she is acting on a predators calucation towards it's prey, and towards it's goal. It feels in the moment, with all of it's primal horror, to be a more natural state of things.
Either route, either way, you get into the Wild dying tightly woven to the Princess herself. It feels to be the moment in which death lingers over them both, and they have become one with the world itself, becoming the closest approximation of what the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet once were, with the musical theme being letmotifs found associated with both, mixed and garbled together in such a way that sounds gentle and tender. The only thing standing in the way of you two, is something foreign, something that shares a voice with what you think is you, but isn't you. A voice that you yourself, unknowingly, reflect and twist into something different. But your choices in the Long Quiet are always yours and yours alone.
The game is meant to be a reflection upon the player itself, which reminds me of that Tomomeki Memorial video you also mentioned. Many people may only make a few choices along that game and date who they find the most desirable or who they most agree with. In watching the Doki Doki Literature club bit, I was interested in the gameplay bit and wondered what words, if I picked organically, would match to which girl. And then was horrified about what the game pulled to them.
But that comes to the point, we are all reflecting oursleves in these games. Reflecting upon these statues. And I for one, crave that togetherness in a romantic relationship...despite the fact that the yearning of being one with a partner is one that can not be done. Not in life. And not for anything human or mortal.
Side-note, Black Tabby devs found your video and linked it on tumblr and that's how I found it so good on ya!
I'm not entirely sure the Narrator is the True Antagonist of the Game any more than The Princess is the true antagonist of the game. Everybody has clearly defined goals and enough orange and blue morality to really make everyone look like a lovecraftian abomination.
1:40:18 Sayori and the Thorn, respectively. (Clarification: Sayori = best girl, Monika = best waifu)
I think the most intense part of STP is that the game really does show you yourself. I thing the biggest part of it is which princess was your first princess. My first princess was the wraith. I couldnt handle the pressure of either choosing to trust her or condemning the world, so i left and hid and kept running until the princess hunted me like a deer. I'm a deeply bleeding heart person unwilling to hurt someone or compromise the big picture. I totally panic when forced to confront something big like that. The reflection that first princess had on me as a princess wasn't something that sunk in until i saw someone get the prisoner as his first. He was terrified too, suspicious, and got the skeptical voice and skeptical princess and ended up chained to a wall. That was a damning read on him too
Nice! I was just thinking I could use a new Zuldim vid!
Hey uhh cool bg3 reference but after an hour and a half of talk about meta narrative only to have you reference the game I'm playing whilst I listen to this video, I did get a bit spooked
Fun fact, crows is a famous symbol of death, in some cultures the crow is also a symbol of change. I find this interesting with Slay the Princess's use of crow imagery with it's main protagonists.
TL;DR Humans will pack bond with anything. ANYTHING.
I really love this video it made me relive my fav moments of slay the princess whille going deepee in the meta-narrative
I am reeeeeeady for some Zuldim digging into some bideo james
Thank you. I enjoyed this.
Zuldim is my parasocial RUclipsr of choice
Great video! I plan on making my own StP video soon and hope to make it as good as this one (though fair warning: I liked it, not loved it, but find it fascinating to think on why that is)
I love slay the princess for the way it inspires so many valid readings.
My interpretation of the story is less abstract than your interpretation and less direct than the reading of some people that see it as a reflection of a broken relationship between two distinct people.
I see it as a story about the distractive cycle of the patriarchy. The player character is “The masculine” who in the beginning is yet untouched by the patriarchy until the narrator how represents the patriarchy and its benefactors instruct us to “Slay the princess”. The princess in my eyes represents not only “The feminine” but also queerness. In other words she is everything that is not the patriarchal ideal of masculinity. That which must be controlled and or destroyed by any means necessary. That is also why the narrator says that if she is freed aka gender is liberated from the oppression of the patriarchy the world will end. In this context the masculine and the feminine/the queer are both victims of the patriarchy by focusing us the player to be the perpetrator or by punishing and demeaning us for disobeying and the princess by becoming our victim that is forced to retaliate against us. In that context the knife represents not just physical violence but also sexual assault. The knife is a phallic object in this context.
It also contextualises the “The Good Ending” where you just do what you are told and slay the princess immediately. Because you changed nothing and the patriarchy doesn’t actually cares about your well-being either it just abandons you in the cabin.
I could continue with details but this comment is long enough.
As you meet more version of both the princess and of yourself our perspective, our mistrust of the patriarchal narrator and our empathy for the other grows stronger. At the end of my game I choose the become one with the divine feminine/queer to create a new world. One without the patriarchy… one without that which device use from one another.
It is a love story after all.
When i finally played Slay The Princess, My first rout ended with The Thorn. Honestly, would not have had it any other way.
I’m excited
Doki doki? Hell yeah!
Another great video!!!!!
53:05 hell yeah it is
The end of the video makes me think of Buber's _I and Thou._ When you say a character isn't "real" I feel like that misses a fundamental aspect of our perception of reality. All we truly know is our experience, what we've connected to, and the reflection we've created in our mind.
If a character in a story touches us, affects us, changes us, evokes fear, love, catharsis, etc... how are they less "real" to us than any other interaction, or any other person? The emotional reaction is real. The image in our head is real.
I think the idea of "unreality" is based solely on our social need for reciprocity. A feeling evoked by a person, a character, an author, whatever is not lessened if it is not reciprocated.
I can write a story, record an audio file, or whatever so a complete stranger can experience a moment of kindness, or catharsis, and that experience, their relationship to the character, their tears or joy are still "real" even if their relationship to the author/actor is nonexistant. The characater is formed in the mind of the audience, and has a very real effect on them.
Amazing video.
12:57 say that to TREVOR TREEFORT who did a full play through completely blind!!!
He didn’t even know what the art style was gonna be before he looked up images for the thumbnail!!!
(And he played it like under a week ago)
Comment for the algorithm! And if you're interested in visual (romance) novels & reactivity, I highly recommend ad astra (it is free! It is also Very 18+) where you are kidnapped by a space wolf and have to deal with Space Politics and also the horror (& appeal!) of Being The One Romanced instead of the one doing the romancing. There are some essays out there that talk about it but also It Is Free so you should just go and play it
its unfortunate this wassint held off till after experiancing the updated pristine cut, which not only polishes what was already theyre adding beautiful full animations in key scenes and fleshing out many characters and paths, but even adding several new paths... my favorite of which, is the new path princess and the dragon, but without telling anything about it to avoid spoilers, in my own first playthorugh of the game i keept choosing to see good in the proncess and keept choosing her over a wolrd that demanded murder to sustain its ways, in short i value even a single life of a decent person more than infinite worlds of currupt careless beings, and also probably do to my own history with mental ilness i saw the princessess as metaphore for human sentiance, many tiny parts each its own being unwittingly, or unwillingly mashed togather to form a greator whole, the individual cells of the body, the individual nuerons of the brain, the many aspects of the ego, and the two sepporate, yet whole hemisphears of the brain... one silent, the other able to speak, both seeing theyre own view of the world through your eyes... you... are two, you are many. my fight with life long self hatrid and depression has gevin me a strange view of my own mind, all of its me, but some parts are so different so alien as to nearly be an invading mind or perhaps, i wish they were an invader, those parts have all my memories, and can only moves or think or speak when im awake, they are a part of me, wether they are an enemy or not.
You call the opening warning to Doki Doki Literature club a spoiler, but I argue a thing that is part of the game/book/whatever we're talking about cannot be considered a spoiler. It's best called foreshadowing, like an attract mode in a game that's intended to be viewable even before that player gets to its levels or an opening sequence that hints to things that will come. It would be like calling an original installment a "spoiler" to the later released prequel, when if you're taking a series as a whole narrative it's just non-chronological storytelling, or calling it a spoiler whether a play is a tragedy or comedy, or calling one's history class a spoiler for historical fiction. It'd be like saying Moby Dick's narration spoils the survival of its narrator when that's a narrative tool. You're right, the message itself contextualizes the first act as something it wouldn't seem on the surface, but that doesn't mean it spoils anything. It's just the start of the game.
Also, subtitles seem to stop appearing about 41 minutes in
I agree with you fully on this point, I don't think it should be classified as a "spoiler" and think of it more as foreshadowing, or a narrative tool. For this video, I specifically refer to it as a "spoiler" because unfortunately, that is how I see people refer to it constantly (and saying it ruined the "surprise" of the game for them), so to counter that argument, I talk about it in those terms, if that makes sense.
Thank you for notifying me about the subtitles error, RUclips is processing them again now so hopefully it'll be fixed in a few hours.
STP is by your favorite VN and nothing else comes close? That's interesting. While I also think STP is excellent and the branching is unmatched, my favorite VN goes to Muv-Luv Alternative, even if it's (*cough*)relatively linear. It's the third game in a trilogy and I really didn't expect such an incredible emotional payoff, especially when I initially looked at the store descriptions of the first two games which can be crudely summarised as "Romcom harem VN" and then "Scifi isekai romcom harem VN".
Bro. You NEED to play milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk.
You will love it.
39:23 I deleted her while the game was still running. IMO, adds an extra lair to it. XD