I love being introduced to this kind of interesting stuff. This was a superb video, as they always are. That little bit about blindsiding endings was really cheeky.
I typed out a long ass comment about why he was correct about RAM disks vs SSDs, then I realized that both of you were referring to the slight pause he added to make his point. I wonder how many other people took Cyrusdexter1's comment the wrong way. I mean I'm not the only one who made this mystake.. right?
When I was a kid, I played games like Prince of Persia and Command Keen 4 on laptop with a busted hard drive. It took forever for them to load from a floppy until I realized I could use the RAM disk driver that came with MS-DOS. I made ZIP files of each game and BAT scripts to create a RAM disk and unzip the game files into it. This was all using less than 1MiB of RAM.
I've personally played less than like 20% of the games you review Matt but your analysis on games is really appreciated. Even if I've never played the game, having more games getting attention and being exposed to a wider audience is never a bad thing. Review what you want to, that's why I've always enjoyed your videos.
Another fantastic review, Matthew, and certainly improved by taking a look back at Riven first. I really appreciate the decision to focus on smaller, older, or more niche games that you clearly have a lot of interest in rather than just covering the latest Souls, Metal Gear, or Zelda etc. Not that those videos aren't fantastic too, but for a commentator who puts out content of as high a quality as yours, I think it's important to focus on things that genuinely capture your interest and have new, worthwhile points to be made about them. Looking forward to whatever comes next!
"You only have a 1 in 94,000,000,000,000 chance of getting it right, assuming you know what do with the yellow one." You weren't trying to be funny, Matthewmatosis, but you brought me to tears anyway.
"[...]By some forgotten reviewer." Hardly, Matthew. Even if your videos falter, many will take your viewpoints to mind and have it change their perspectives for the better. You'll live on in those and to those you've inspired to be a reviewer themselves. I'd say you have a much more glaring problem with becoming immortal, in that way!
Someone's probably pointed this out, but in CW's notes, he points out that the imager rocks DO have mass (I think, maybe I'm totally forgetting). Or the illusion of mass or something like that.
I heard, I forget where, that the villein number puzzles were originally harder, but they decided that would make the game too inaccessible and toned them down. Perhaps the original implementation was more carefully designed, and they didn't have the resources to reconsider it from the ground up when they changed it; a duct tape solution. I do kind of suspect I would have been altogether happier with the original conception, but maybe there was some fatal flaw with it too and the way it turned out was making the best of a bad situation. For what it's worth, it originally wasn't possible to backtrack to the garage to get the answer to the pod puzzle, but they added an extra path in Maray that allows it in a patch. As much as this trivializes the puzzle, I approve of the adjustment, because without it, players who brute force their way to that point without learning the numbers first are essentially stuck, with a choice between a much less manageable brute forcing task, using another save file to do what the added path legitimizes doing and returning to the garage, or looking up the solution. One might say that this is the player's deserved punishment for brute forcing at all, but in no other case does a Cyan game screw the player over like that, which I think is an admirable design tenet. You're right that Soria would have remained empty even if they'd reached the stretch goal to add another world; Rand Miller said in an interview that they planned for it to be that way from the start. I am curious how they would have managed to add just one more world, which is what the stretch goal said, rather than another linked pair of worlds though.
@@iquemedia its nothing, i replied to a comment you made on a youtube video uploaded literally a few months ago its was mr welbigs video on cursor aiming or whatever you didnt reply to my reply i was just surprised i found you here as well
I agree on all of your thoughts. I also had that moment with the Villein number system. I saw the "15" on the projector screen at Farley's and was sure it was a Villein number, just because it stood at that angle (Didn't realize the projector actually projects the markings on there). So i sat down and wanted to decode it but i could't find the solution, cause you cant correclty replicate the "15". So my next step was to "draw the extra lines as they were necessary", which comes out as 606. I didn't know you could use the gas station machine to convert from Villein to Human and vice versa. I thought it was Human to Villein only. So i was pretty disappointed to find out the machine "auto corrects" the "15" to the correct number. I guess I just couldn't connect the dots correctly. The other annoying moment was with the Maze-Puzzle. I mapped everything down, the pieces too, and was trying to find a way to move through. but you can't. So I thought you'd have to be able to turn the pieces around. But I couldn't find the turner. So I thought there must be someother way. I took like an hour to finally crack and look it up online only to find out i was right all along and just overlooked the turning mechanism in Hunrath. After that it was way easy. I liked the game. The visuals were good. But it lacked a certain something for me to be considered an equal to the originals. Good effort though! Also, I expected there to be some ending that required you to have every teleported piece in the world it originally belonged to. Oh well.
Everyone out here complaining and I'm just sitting here appreciative that I have a new video to sink my mind into over and over. Seriously I periodically watch most of your videos again and again.
I'm not sure which I like more, when Matthewmatosis reviews a game that I played and enjoyed, or a game I've never heard of and might not have played otherwise...
I'm really glad you've been going over these games recently. Because your audience seems to be the type who normally considers anything that isn't shooty shooty bang bang "not really a video game" and thus I hope they'll listen to you and grow an appreciation and understanding for different types of games.
I seriously didn't know about this game's existence until you posted this video. I stopped following Cyan because they didn't seem to have done much, but now, I'm practically hitting myself in the head for not having supported their Kickstarter. Time for another point-and-click adventure to go along with the Myst series and the Journeyman Project.
Jesus this comment section is cancerous. Very good video on a game not many have talked about. Personally I think Obduction was pretty good, but had some flaws that could easily alienate players; even ones who generally like these types of games. Above all else I feel like worldbuilding took a priority over puzzles and gameplay, and that there was an over-reliance on the swappers for puzzles. I like good worldbuilding in games, but the problem for me was that it felt like it was all in service of contextualising the gameplay which, because it took a backseat to story, felt a bit lackluster. At the end of the game I had to look up certain things to explain some aspects of the story that I missed, but I wasn't compelled to look into any deeper lore of the world. For having such a focus on worldbuilding, the story itself felt somewhat surface-level. The contrast to something like The Witness is pretty stark, and while I do much prefer The Witness, both games provide good examples of puzzle-adventures that are somewhat flawed, albeit in the opposite sides of the spectrum. It's games like these that help shine a light on why certain game-mechanics do or don't work.
I'm not saying they didn't work, it was a great concept and I liked most of the puzzles. Imo it just felt like they relied a bit too heavily on them, and at some point they just became tedious. Once you "got" them and knew what you had to do, the issue was not solving the puzzle any more, it was spending 10 minutes or more just executing it. Regarding the witness, as I said I think it is a much better game, but it does kinda fall flat on narrative. There was a lot of potential to the mystery of the island, but they failed to both build that mystery up and to deliver with the ending. I get that they were focusing on the puzzles and that story came in low on the priority list, but something more engaging story-wise would have made the game nigh perfect. A game I think has very good story and presents it in a very interesting and unintrusive way is The Talos Principle. It builds the mystery from the beginning and makes you want to find out more, and in that process you engage with philosophical ideas in a dialogue, instead of just being presented with them as prerecorded messages. Unfortunately the puzzles themselves, while quite fun and difficult, are fairly uninteresting mechanics-wise. I just want to see a game that perfects the puzzle-adventure in every aspect. It's a lofty dream, but with so many good games to learn from I can't help but feel like we're getting closer and closer.
I don't care what anyone says, keep making videos of what you want. I and many others don't watch you just for metal gear or dark souls, we watch just for whatever you make. so keep it up. :)
When you talk about how Obduction emulates the kind of worlds Myst and Riven players are interested in, do you mean these wholly unique looking "sci-fi" worlds? I've been on a scifi concept art binge for the past few weeks and your reviews of Riven and Obduction really showed me how intellectually and creatively desolate these scifi artists are compared to the folks who worked on these games.
I've played only a handful of the games you've critiqued, but I am so compelled with every new video. I'm in academia and I can recognize your skill in narrative organization; your analysis is clear, thoughtful and, most importantly, ordered with a natural momentum. Thanks for your hard work!
8:12 According to ChatGPT, the odds of correctly guessing the fire marble puzzle are actually 1 in 781,951,071,667. So, assuming you know what to do with the yellow one, the odds of correctly guessing it are only 1 in 6,252,924,151... far more forgiving than 1 in 94,000,000,000,000 /sarcasm
Really wanted to watch a new video by you but I'm holding this untill I play Riven, It's a bit sad because finding the time to do so will take at least a month. But keep up the good work, I'm always glad to see you uploading.
I don't know if you know this, or just missed it because you understood the number system first time, but it's worse than you make it out to be. I blundered my way through the bridge sections on Villein without understand the number system really at all. I knew it was a number system, but the fact that I could "brute force" the bridges meant I didn't have much incentive to fully understand it right away, and figured there might be more clues later on. Then, in what I can only describe as a staggeringly poor decision for this type of game, you reach the one panel that *requires* you to understand how to write a precise number. And unlike what you said in your review, you *can't* return to the register to just plug the number in for the result. I assume this is why they decided to *TRAP* you in this section until you give the correct number. They may have patched it since, but when I played it near release it was impossible to leave that area. This meant that I, as someone who didn't understand the number system, was trapped in an area with a puzzle that I could not solve and had no resources to learn how to solve other than putting something in and waiting 30 seconds for the animation to display what number I'd entered. It was by far the worst point in the game for me, next to atrocious 5 minute long loading times on the spheres and how that discouraged experimentation. I was forced to look up the answer online, which obviously ruined that aspect of the game to me. I still love the game, but how they didn't manage to catch that problem is mind-blowing to me.
I'm a freak when it comes to exploring numbers, so I understood this stuff immediately, but I also thought they made it too easy to play through without understanding.
Excellent review. You nailed them some of my major gripes with the game and even elucidated on some new observations I had not considered. Parts of the game felt like content deserts where I was left to unfortunately back track to a loading screen, not the best gameplay loop.
I thought the game ends too quickly, but I was forgiving considering the constraints. By the way, one of the main developers was battling brain cancer and he apologized in a blog if any of the puzzles didn't make sense. I thought it played out quite well. But the one thing I found irritating was the communication box on the one world. It has a ton of buttons and doesn't make much sense. You think you missed something about the game when you complete it without solving it (technically, I did solve it, but the buttons I didn't understand distracted me from trying stuff outside of the box itself) and then you find out that successfully doing anything with it is actually an "Easter Egg".
Thank you for what you said about the ending. I also really felt the good ending wasn't hinted at well enough. Also, about the game feeling incomplete towards the end, playing through it myself it seemed really obvious that they wanted to do more, but I suspect that they were running low on their funds and time, and so decided to leave it where they did.
The load times between swapping caused me to put down the game for a good while when I arrived to the Gauntlet/Maze puzzle, because I didn't have the patience to try different combinations and re-doing stuff. It's pretty sad.
It's a shame I just don't have a mind for these games. I did play and complete Obduction, but out of complete sheer force of will. I didn't learn anything, I just sat there for an hour either running back and fourth or fiddling until it worked, and even then I didn't understand why I got what I ending I did.
Yeah. The game seems to expect you to really pay attention to things. I played in much slower than an hour; I think it was more like 5, and things clicked together really well.
Great review, but I'm a bit confused by your characterization of the ending being a matter of going with one person's gut feeling vs. another person's gut feeling. It's more like choosing an outcome that's guaranteed to be bad vs. choosing to take a risk, just like the ending to Myst. Assuming you took a good look outside the Soria sphere, that is.
I am the Gamer of the Future brining news and trivia: - Between patches and hardware advancements the game only stutters briefly during seed hops, and that's on a SATA SSD and a Ryzen 3600 - I'm pretty sure CW's notes explain that Mofang projectors do obstruct physical space. You can also see that if you zap the fake mayor's corpse - There's two big hints about the good ending: Farley's journal mentions the battery connection and if you take the side route on Soria you can see the post-apocalyptic Arizona that's CW's plan would logically send you to But nitpicking aside this review is pretty spot on. I'm surprised Matt didn't gripe about the Maray gauntlet and maze more, even with fast loads the ratio of puzzle solving to walking is very poor. Still had a good time tho!
Didn't give it away to me that it was a bad ending, I thought maybe the atomic blast had somehow escaped the sphere and it was simply that local area that was devastated, no reason to believe from a small snapshot of a ruined town that the entire earth is gone, especially not since we know at least one dude from 2050 ended up in hunrath.
I had an idea for the Villein number panels. The final one could have been a panel with 13 "digits", making it 5x5 blobs plus edges. That way the one in the garage could remain unchanged yet the player would have to actually learn the number system. I thought the Villein numbers were the most interesting part of the whole game, learning to count in this unique way, and it was disappointing that it was barely used. Regardless it's pretty damning that the most fun I had was while using pencil and paper instead of keyboard and mouse.
I have to thank you. I watched a portion of this video roughly when it released. Maybe in 2018ish Epic Games released Obduction for free. I quickly set it aside after a 30ish minute first play session and decided I wasn't in the mood and it was too obtuse. Fastforward to 2023 some time in July and I revisited this video and gave Obduction another (more patient) try. It was magical to slowly patiently investigate the world of Obduction and I fell in love with it (circle maze puzzle almost made me quit). Quickly devoured the rest of the series. Massive thanks for your video recommendations. It's been a serene journey and it's sad that I'll never be able to relive that magic of discovery fully. Personal tier list. Riven>>Obduction>Myst>Myst III >>>Myst IV.
I was using a traditional hard drive when I first played it at launch, using short stroking to get the best speed possible, and although the load times were pretty bad at times, I didn't really consider them game breaking, just inconvenient. I also don't remember any hitching, but that might be because I had just upgraded to an 8-core AMD processor and a GeForce GTX 980 Ti, so the rest of my system was likely able pick up some of the slack of my hard drive.
I like your Dark and Demon's souls videos but the way they made souls fans come to this channel under the bizarre assumption that this is some sort of "Souls content" channel is annoying. I'm so sick of every damn video having comments just asking for Dark souls 3 or Bloodborne (MGSv too) despite these games already being talked to death anyway, what could really be added to the discussion at this point?
Which would simply echo the opinions that everyone else has already put forth. The length of time between his videos has nothing to do with when or if reviews on those games specifically come out though, its irrelevant.
'...what could really be added to the discussion at this point?' His opinions of those games. I wasn't aware you knew what they'd be. It certainly seems like he'd after an interesting viewpoint of MGSV given his feelings on the rest of the series. Its not irrelevant. Dudes on patreon on a monthly donation system so it seems a video a month would be fuckin minimum. Between Va-11 Hall-A and Riven dude got ~$2,450 and then to drop an 8 minute video about a 20 year old game is a fuckin joke. People are throwing dude money so it seems they're entitled to let their opinions be known. Not to mention legit falling off the face of the earth to avoid Persona 5 spoilers is fuckin funny. I prefer him to make videos on things he loves, but to act as if people who want him to make videos on more relevant topics are just whining is absurd.
There is literally hundreds of hours of podcasts, videos and shit out there on MGSV by people who have played the entire series, the game has been discussed to death, there is not much left o be said there. "Your pledge doesn't buy you any preferential treatment. In fact, I take my impartiality so seriously I try not to even see who's donating to me. I'm equally open to feedback from anyone, patron or not, it's the only way to be fair." He also mentioned multiple times he is not working on either Bloodborne, DS3, or MGSV videos at the moment. To keep talking about them and acting as if he owes you them is the joke here, grow up.
I loved Obduction, it's possibly my favorite game of last year. I was a little disappointed you didn't mention how the graphics are slightly stylized, instead of trying to look as realistic as possible. In many areas this probably works to their advantage, but in, I never fully figured out the worlds' names, the mechanical world, I kept getting pulled out of the experience because there were parts that looked closer to being real than others, and since the mechanical devices in the Myst games are my absolute favorite, I was really disappointed not to be able to fully appreciate it. Still, with the severe lack of Myst-style games, any game that comes close I greatly appreciate, and Obduction more than serves that purpose. I really hope Cyan goes on to make another game in this vain, whether or not it's a sequel to this.
tomstonemale Ah. missed that part about photorealism. Yah, as I said I think it was the best they could realisticly do with the resources at their disposal, since photorealism is expensive and time consuming, but I felt the mechanical world in particular was a little inconsistent in the stylization. Still, it's a really great looking game in general, even the mechanical world, and I wouldn't expect any less from a Cyan Worlds game.
Well this certainly feels like a bit of a return to roots, Matthew. Your sense of humour is incredible, and just keeps getting better with more experience, but I don't think it's been this overt since you tackled the MGS series. Not sure if that kind of distraction / calling attention to it is something you want to go for or not. N-n-not that I'm opposed! I actually enjoy both styles equally well! I just wanted to make sure you're aware of its impact.
To be honest I really hate these kinds of games simply for their intense dreadfulness combined with a lack of options available makes me feel like I'm personally doomed in a purgatory with nothing to appease or counteract the stress accumulated from it. I like Matt's reviews on these games because I'm given a deeper glimpse of their existence without having to suffer emotionally by the experience. I love adventure games, but I hate it when their goal is something that cant be attributed to something positive. I don't need the goal to be saving the world or anything at all, I just want the Journey to be pulled by a fulfilling or positive force. If it's not, I'd rather strive for positive goals in real life than play the game, and I just can't continue playing, honestly. The point of these games seem to be high personal player input that resolves in high personal player satisfaction through overcoming mysteries and situationals. I love that, but I hate the bleakness. I think the loneliness of these games can't be enjoyed by very many kinds of people, that's why it's definitely and always going to be a niche game, which is good.
Happy to report that I'm playing this in 2020 with basically zero technical issues, only real load times are in the central trees and they are just a couple seconds. I do have a PC built from last year though.
I wanted to like this game, but it is clearly just a shadow of what myst was. If my expectations weren't so high I think I would have liked it. Hunrath was great but the other worlds were too linear. And there was way too much warping and linking. And I have lots of other nitpicks.
Well the evidence that you can see a desolated earth from the mofang world is something. Also with the projectors, I think it was explained that they could project mass.
I remember seeing people say the comment section was cancer at the top. I then doubted them because Matthew usually has a pretty good comment section. Why didn't I listen to them? Everyone here keeps talking about how Joseph Anderson is better than him, but he's basically a Matthewmatosis that covers mainstream games, and is visibly less intelligent. And Matthew has a sexy Irish accent.
Jimel s I didn't insult him. I gave my opinion of him. I pointed out things about his character/videos I do not like. To insult him would be calling him a faggot or such. I like his reviews too, just not as much.
Jimel s And as for your last sentence, trying to pick exact words apart and take everything at face value isn't a valuable tool to get your point across.
Jimel s Well I suppose we have to agree to disagree. I will, however, agree that he didn't exactly rip Matthewmatosis off. But you can clearly see there was a degree of inspiration. This isn't necessarily bad, and in Joseph's case, it isn't.
Making a suggestion will probably be ignored especially if you put your own little reason for it. As in "Review Kojima and Miyazaki, I don't think they are geniuses so make a video that confirms MY opinion and please ME, do NOT make a video that you want to make and please just make a Blood Metal Gear Souls Zelda review already!!" Bad comments section.
I never was able to completely figure out the number system, especially for accessing the Mayor's pod, I eventually came to a fairly logical conclusion, but I don't think it was how the numbering system was supposed to work. That and the number panels were an absolute pain to use likely largely due to the Unreal engine REALLY not liking high DPI mice. I really like your idea for it, though. I would have really liked that if the interface was better designed.
So, about the "lag problem" really it's as if Cyan has ALWAYS made games "for the future" if you will. They had these ideas and then were like WELL current PC's are too limiting. lets dumb it down to the MAX PC level now and then PC's will catch up in the future. They even made Real Time MYST, which is PHENOMENAL btw. But again PUSHED the boundaries for PC's AGAIN when it came out. Now we can fit Myst, and Riven on my iPod. While lag is always annoying. I sort of appreciate that they don't let the limits of current technology get in the way of their storytelling, banking on their games being "timelsss" and replayable when PC's finally catch up.
I know I'm late to this one, but wanted to give my two cents. Excellent review! I love the game, but I agree it has its issues. I do want to nit pick a couple complaints though. CW's unhelpful vague-ness can be attributed to his ego. He is so hell bent on his plan to go home that he has the universe's worst case of tunnel vision. "Its not the best time to be explaining these things" somewhat mumbled while looking down, pretty good indicator of this. He's still not the best of characters to be sure, but I disagree with the notion that he's a cardboard cut out. As for the rocks the imagers make to block the rail ways, in the notebook explaining the imagers it does mention that they can be programmed with simulated mass; they are more than just holograms, they are also force fields. The world logic here is consistent, and also gives a possible explanation to CW's pondering in the same notebook of why the imagers disable transportation if an image intersects the cell wall (it would transport the force field across the entire sphere, completely coating the inside of it with an impassable field, stopping people from accessing the cell wall, therefore "disabling" transportation). And finally I disagree on the whole not enough clues for the good ending bit. There are plenty, enough to get the good ending on a blind play through first try, its just that most of it is presented more philosophically than objectively. And I don't blame Cyan for erring on the side of subtlety for the Arizona-outside-of-Soria reveal (even though you didn't raise this point specifically in your review, I've seen it cited elsewhere as why its easy to get the bad ending on a blind play through); for something like the binary ending of this game if they went too big on that or added in too many clues then it would be too obvious that CW is wrong and there would be nothing to "solve". Overall though, I'd like to say again that this is a good review of the game. The criticism of the number system in particular is spot on. Hunrath is well developed on the puzzle side of things, Kaptar oozes with atmosphere, Soria's melted hallway is forgiven for story reasons... what does Maray have? Seed-swap-bonanza, squandering the number system completely and introducing the biggest contributor to the load time complaints. If Cyan had received more money from their kickstarter, I would have loved to see it go to polishing out Maray completely before new worlds. Moving forward though, I'd love to see new games in this new universe as I actually like the trees more than the linking books to be honest.
There are definitely no clues for the good ending, Farley has something in her book about all of this being part of some natural order, but the player has evidence to indicate she is wrong. Her claim about everybody being saved from something by the seeds is clearly not true, which puts her further conclusions into doubt. It turns out she was right in the end, but it was really anybody's guess. It's weird that a game about solving puzzles logically could simply abandon logic completely in order to satiate Miller's religious views, but there we go. Speaking of Farley, where was she the whole game? In Hunrath presumably, otherwise she could not have appeared in the bad ending. Which means she just shut up and didn't say a goddamn word about anything.
Except for the part where in the check in log everyone was in grave danger when the seed found them. The player character themselves was in a storm that could have turned pretty violent, and trees are known to not be good protection from lightning (quite the opposite, in fact). Except for the part where earth outside the soria sphere is pretty barren (which is admittedly subtle, but as I said I forgive that; if it were totally destroyed no one would ever side with CW, there would be nothing to figure out/solve). Except for the part where the Villein resettlement group would have been wiped out according to the journal. Except for the fact the check in log also makes it pretty clear time inside the spheres is non linear if you bother to figure out that AH = days and cross compare them to other dates you find instead of skipping over them. That last one brings into question if its a good idea to swap back at all, because if you go back to the future then the people from the past will still be screwed out of the life they once had and if you go back to the past you mess with causality because you'll be bringing people from the future with you. There ARE clues. They may not be 100% obvious and objective and the biggest is also admittedly philosophical, but they are there. I'll admit that not a single piece confirms Farley is right and therefore it is easy to be biased against her, but holistically there is ample evidence that point to the fact that CW's plan really isnt a good idea. His heart is in the right place, he isn't an antagonist. He just isn't right. And Farley shows up in the bad ending... thats not incongruous or otherwise unexplained. You see her in the pod if you bother to actually learn the number system and check out more than just 222 (there is even an achievement for calling up her pod). And when you deactivate the mofang wmd the dying villein starts the wake up process to bring everyone out of the frozen stasis, hence all the steam. Then in the bad ending Farley herself said everyone survived the mofang attack, just that most were not able to swap. The implication being that she was one of the ones that was able to swap.
Ehh, I give you the check in log, but you can only see a few entries. I'm not convinced the opening storm was dangerous, seeing how far away the lightning was. Seeing Earth is an interesting point. There are some fires where there shouldn't be fires, and a pylon is down, but all that tells me is that there was a hurricane. And judging by the visible architecture, I'm not convinced you're actually far into the future. Yet one of the check-in entries is from the 2040's. So I don't buy that humans had perished yet. I have no idea where you get the idea that time is non-linear, the seeds time travel to bring people into Hunrath but once there, time flows normally. You don't need to reference anything to figure that out, it's made explicit. Speaking of time travel and salvation from danger, Farley's theory depends on the notion that the trees/seeds are prescient to an ashtonishing degree, and that they are either intelligent or they are guided by intelligence. I'm willing to buy this, but if it's true...why were a clan of genocidal maniacs chosen by the seeds? They must have known that either they would kill everybody, or that they would be killed. This makes saving them redundant. Admittedly I forgot Farley was in the pod, but if she got out in time, where on earth is she broadcasting from? I don't recall anything like that in her home, no monitors or cameras.
Yes, I meant time outside the spheres and got the wires between brain and fingers crossed. You are right that time flows one way on the inside, but thats not really the case on the outside (or the trees time travel like you say). And you are also right that its explicitly stated in *Farley's* journal that time is scrambled, I mentioned the check in log as objective proof of her claims which lends validity to her arguments. Either way, my point there still stands. Trying to take over the process of the trees and swap back only makes sense if the Collector Seeds didn't die in the process of bringing someone in, and could therefore be used in reverse to send everyone back to where and when they came from. But thats not possible. Its all or nothing, and that really throws a wrench in any return home plan. The scrambled time is the biggest objective clue to the good ending. Farley's dream entry is the biggest philosophical clue. Again, the clues are there that Farley is right. Meanwhile, what clues are there that CW is right? I mean, on a "technically correct" level he is technically correct that swapping back home is possible, but what evidence is there that supports such an action as being the correct one? A lot of your arguments are of trying to poke holes in the story at large, but none of them are of backing up CW. As for poking holes in the story, you got me on where Farley is transmitting from. If you look in the background of her transmission, it does look like her house. And she was able to update the message on her kiosk, so it stands to reason that she has a video camera somewhere. But I just did a sweep of her house in game and you are right, there isnt one. edited out this paragraph. flimsy theory about her going to CW's workshop instead of her house. A better flimsy theory is that the camera is in one of the boxes in her house. Still flimsy and lame and potentially immersion breaking, but thats what I'm going with. And as for the trees, intentionally not giving information on their nature leaves them open ended enough I can defend them just as easily as you can attack them. My interpretation was that they could see a lot but were not omniscient. They arent a god figure, just a collective entity trying to do good. They see something in danger, they try to save it. Doesnt matter who or what.
I actually really enjoyed the game, so I hope he touches on the gameplay and at least commends the story on some of the interesting parts. The cutscene where Ocelot repeats Snake's gun monologue from MGS3 is worthy of at least some praise, even if it doesn't make much sense post-twist.
The gameplay I felt was one of the only redeeming things about MGS V, but even then, it's still bogged down by repetitive mission objectives and mission structure. In my opinion, the story is just so far fucked up beyond repair, that I don't think there's much to can praise about it. What parts of the story did you find interesting? Just curious, not hating, I feel like there were some interesting parts, but it's so hard to remember that it goes to show how bad it was. I do like those nods to old MGS games, and the attention to detail is still there. At least it's not Portable Ops bad lol.
Well I only got into the series last year so I don't have as much reverence for the plot, so monumental reframing and the like aren't huge deals for me. I thought the initial couple cutscenes with Kaz were incredible at making the theme of revenge felt. Seeing the light and fun Kaz we once knew die felt like the kind of decent into madness that we always knew Big Boss had to experience. I found the first meeting with Eli also pretty amazing. Seeing a young liquid feud with ocelot kind of felt full circle to me in terms of the franchise. I also have listened to the Truth Records dozens of times, and seeing Zero's motivations and actions start to emerge made me understand Big Boss' MGS4 monologue about how everything starts in chaos long before what we assume is the initial catalyst. I'm also not saying the story was incredible. It absolutely meandered for way too long and got way too convoluted but I found it fun to experience and I enjoyed replaying the better beats. I also like the twist so fight me.
![Maximize Your Monster's Lifespan in Monster Rancher 2 [Rancher Rundown Ep 38: Life On the Ranch 2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/PTay2U4un_4/mqdefault.jpg)
"-eview of Obduction"
I like how Matthew plain doesn't care about requests but instead reviews what he's interested in
"You may consider this river to be the games primary antagonist"
No, you didn't accidentally skip the first second of the video, just in case you were wondering.
I love being introduced to this kind of interesting stuff. This was a superb video, as they always are. That little bit about blindsiding endings was really cheeky.
Your description of installing the game onto RAM rather than an SSD cracked me up
lol, "while it..................loads in."
I typed out a long ass comment about why he was correct about RAM disks vs SSDs, then I realized that both of you were referring to the slight pause he added to make his point.
I wonder how many other people took Cyrusdexter1's comment the wrong way. I mean I'm not the only one who made this mystake.. right?
Jake Reason You're the only one.
D:
When I was a kid, I played games like Prince of Persia and Command Keen 4 on laptop with a busted hard drive. It took forever for them to load from a floppy until I realized I could use the RAM disk driver that came with MS-DOS. I made ZIP files of each game and BAT scripts to create a RAM disk and unzip the game files into it. This was all using less than 1MiB of RAM.
I've personally played less than like 20% of the games you review Matt but your analysis on games is really appreciated. Even if I've never played the game, having more games getting attention and being exposed to a wider audience is never a bad thing.
Review what you want to, that's why I've always enjoyed your videos.
Another fantastic review, Matthew, and certainly improved by taking a look back at Riven first. I really appreciate the decision to focus on smaller, older, or more niche games that you clearly have a lot of interest in rather than just covering the latest Souls, Metal Gear, or Zelda etc. Not that those videos aren't fantastic too, but for a commentator who puts out content of as high a quality as yours, I think it's important to focus on things that genuinely capture your interest and have new, worthwhile points to be made about them.
Looking forward to whatever comes next!
I love how he does not even give a shit about how people are begging for a MGS5, BotW or DS3 review and just does what he wants.
"You only have a 1 in 94,000,000,000,000 chance of getting it right, assuming you know what do with the yellow one."
You weren't trying to be funny, Matthewmatosis, but you brought me to tears anyway.
4:17 That small pause you did was perfect.
"[...]By some forgotten reviewer."
Hardly, Matthew. Even if your videos falter, many will take your viewpoints to mind and have it change their perspectives for the better. You'll live on in those and to those you've inspired to be a reviewer themselves.
I'd say you have a much more glaring problem with becoming immortal, in that way!
I quite enjoy most every video you release, your writing and cadance of speech are intriguing and relaxing.
Someone's probably pointed this out, but in CW's notes, he points out that the imager rocks DO have mass (I think, maybe I'm totally forgetting). Or the illusion of mass or something like that.
You deserve a better comment section than this Matt. I'm genuinely sorry people don't appreciate the effort you put into your work.
Godspeed.
I heard, I forget where, that the villein number puzzles were originally harder, but they decided that would make the game too inaccessible and toned them down. Perhaps the original implementation was more carefully designed, and they didn't have the resources to reconsider it from the ground up when they changed it; a duct tape solution. I do kind of suspect I would have been altogether happier with the original conception, but maybe there was some fatal flaw with it too and the way it turned out was making the best of a bad situation.
For what it's worth, it originally wasn't possible to backtrack to the garage to get the answer to the pod puzzle, but they added an extra path in Maray that allows it in a patch. As much as this trivializes the puzzle, I approve of the adjustment, because without it, players who brute force their way to that point without learning the numbers first are essentially stuck, with a choice between a much less manageable brute forcing task, using another save file to do what the added path legitimizes doing and returning to the garage, or looking up the solution. One might say that this is the player's deserved punishment for brute forcing at all, but in no other case does a Cyan game screw the player over like that, which I think is an admirable design tenet.
You're right that Soria would have remained empty even if they'd reached the stretch goal to add another world; Rand Miller said in an interview that they planned for it to be that way from the start. I am curious how they would have managed to add just one more world, which is what the stretch goal said, rather than another linked pair of worlds though.
I feel so spoiled with all of these uploads lately
I love it
huh
@@dimitri13225 6 years ago.... bro why u gotta remind me
@@iquemedia its nothing, i replied to a comment you made on a youtube video uploaded literally a few months ago
its was mr welbigs video on cursor aiming or whatever
you didnt reply to my reply
i was just surprised i found you here as well
@@dimitri13225 thanks for the reminder! i found the comment and left you a reply :)
As soon as you click he starts talking lmao. Efficiency at its finest
Love the videos, your reviews are always insightful and introduce me to a new perspective I hadn't previously considered on many subjects. Keep it up.
i just finished this the other day, i was stoked to see your review come up
i'd love to see your take on uru and the whole mess with myst online
I agree on all of your thoughts. I also had that moment with the Villein number system. I saw the "15" on the projector screen at Farley's and was sure it was a Villein number, just because it stood at that angle (Didn't realize the projector actually projects the markings on there).
So i sat down and wanted to decode it but i could't find the solution, cause you cant correclty replicate the "15". So my next step was to "draw the extra lines as they were necessary", which comes out as 606. I didn't know you could use the gas station machine to convert from Villein to Human and vice versa. I thought it was Human to Villein only. So i was pretty disappointed to find out the machine "auto corrects" the "15" to the correct number. I guess I just couldn't connect the dots correctly.
The other annoying moment was with the Maze-Puzzle. I mapped everything down, the pieces too, and was trying to find a way to move through. but you can't. So I thought you'd have to be able to turn the pieces around. But I couldn't find the turner. So I thought there must be someother way. I took like an hour to finally crack and look it up online only to find out i was right all along and just overlooked the turning mechanism in Hunrath. After that it was way easy.
I liked the game. The visuals were good. But it lacked a certain something for me to be considered an equal to the originals. Good effort though!
Also, I expected there to be some ending that required you to have every teleported piece in the world it originally belonged to. Oh well.
Everyone out here complaining and I'm just sitting here appreciative that I have a new video to sink my mind into over and over. Seriously I periodically watch most of your videos again and again.
I agree with your criticisms with the number system. Not only was it cumbersome, but I brute forced it and was really unsatisfying.
Riven also had the optional lightening mode that would take you through areas you'd already been by in way less clicks.
I'm not sure which I like more, when Matthewmatosis reviews a game that I played and enjoyed, or a game I've never heard of and might not have played otherwise...
A Matthewmatosis video on April 2nd? If this appeared in my subscriptions yesterday, I wouldn't have believed it
I'm really glad you've been going over these games recently. Because your audience seems to be the type who normally considers anything that isn't shooty shooty bang bang "not really a video game" and thus I hope they'll listen to you and grow an appreciation and understanding for different types of games.
That early fade-out fake-out was great. It was very effective; it gave me a little panic attack as I thought I had lost a couple of minutes somewhere.
I seriously didn't know about this game's existence until you posted this video. I stopped following Cyan because they didn't seem to have done much, but now, I'm practically hitting myself in the head for not having supported their Kickstarter. Time for another point-and-click adventure to go along with the Myst series and the Journeyman Project.
what the hell this was such a random moment I eyed down on a video and saw you
@@pawlogates howdy :)
Jesus this comment section is cancerous.
Very good video on a game not many have talked about. Personally I think Obduction was pretty good, but had some flaws that could easily alienate players; even ones who generally like these types of games. Above all else I feel like worldbuilding took a priority over puzzles and gameplay, and that there was an over-reliance on the swappers for puzzles.
I like good worldbuilding in games, but the problem for me was that it felt like it was all in service of contextualising the gameplay which, because it took a backseat to story, felt a bit lackluster. At the end of the game I had to look up certain things to explain some aspects of the story that I missed, but I wasn't compelled to look into any deeper lore of the world. For having such a focus on worldbuilding, the story itself felt somewhat surface-level.
The contrast to something like The Witness is pretty stark, and while I do much prefer The Witness, both games provide good examples of puzzle-adventures that are somewhat flawed, albeit in the opposite sides of the spectrum. It's games like these that help shine a light on why certain game-mechanics do or don't work.
He's been getting popular on 4chan as of late.
"as of late" no, anons have been forcing his channel over 4 years at least.
Reddit just learned about him and now wants our boi for xirself.
I'm not saying they didn't work, it was a great concept and I liked most of the puzzles. Imo it just felt like they relied a bit too heavily on them, and at some point they just became tedious. Once you "got" them and knew what you had to do, the issue was not solving the puzzle any more, it was spending 10 minutes or more just executing it.
Regarding the witness, as I said I think it is a much better game, but it does kinda fall flat on narrative. There was a lot of potential to the mystery of the island, but they failed to both build that mystery up and to deliver with the ending. I get that they were focusing on the puzzles and that story came in low on the priority list, but something more engaging story-wise would have made the game nigh perfect.
A game I think has very good story and presents it in a very interesting and unintrusive way is The Talos Principle. It builds the mystery from the beginning and makes you want to find out more, and in that process you engage with philosophical ideas in a dialogue, instead of just being presented with them as prerecorded messages. Unfortunately the puzzles themselves, while quite fun and difficult, are fairly uninteresting mechanics-wise.
I just want to see a game that perfects the puzzle-adventure in every aspect. It's a lofty dream, but with so many good games to learn from I can't help but feel like we're getting closer and closer.
"popular"
You don't know what shitposting is? And it's propably just some desperated fan trying to force him as a meme for years.
Worst thing about these videos... I realize how inadequate my own are by comparison. Great work, as always sir.
I don't care what anyone says, keep making videos of what you want. I and many others don't watch you just for metal gear or dark souls, we watch just for whatever you make. so keep it up. :)
When you talk about how Obduction emulates the kind of worlds Myst and Riven players are interested in, do you mean these wholly unique looking "sci-fi" worlds?
I've been on a scifi concept art binge for the past few weeks and your reviews of Riven and Obduction really showed me how intellectually and creatively desolate these scifi artists are compared to the folks who worked on these games.
17:25
a sting of... MYST potential?
I'll show myself out.
Close the door also, please.
I've played only a handful of the games you've critiqued, but I am so compelled with every new video. I'm in academia and I can recognize your skill in narrative organization; your analysis is clear, thoughtful and, most importantly, ordered with a natural momentum. Thanks for your hard work!
Best way to get me to play a game, have Matthewmatosis review it. I want to play it so I can watch the video without being spoiled.
8:12 According to ChatGPT, the odds of correctly guessing the fire marble puzzle are actually 1 in 781,951,071,667. So, assuming you know what to do with the yellow one, the odds of correctly guessing it are only 1 in 6,252,924,151... far more forgiving than 1 in 94,000,000,000,000 /sarcasm
gotta agree on the number system, pretty much "ENTER IN THE HIGHEST NUMBER ALL THE TIME TO FILL IN THE BRIDGE"
very unchallenging.
Really wanted to watch a new video by you but I'm holding this untill I play Riven, It's a bit sad because finding the time to do so will take at least a month.
But keep up the good work, I'm always glad to see you uploading.
How'd Riven go?
I don't know if you know this, or just missed it because you understood the number system first time, but it's worse than you make it out to be.
I blundered my way through the bridge sections on Villein without understand the number system really at all. I knew it was a number system, but the fact that I could "brute force" the bridges meant I didn't have much incentive to fully understand it right away, and figured there might be more clues later on.
Then, in what I can only describe as a staggeringly poor decision for this type of game, you reach the one panel that *requires* you to understand how to write a precise number. And unlike what you said in your review, you *can't* return to the register to just plug the number in for the result. I assume this is why they decided to *TRAP* you in this section until you give the correct number.
They may have patched it since, but when I played it near release it was impossible to leave that area. This meant that I, as someone who didn't understand the number system, was trapped in an area with a puzzle that I could not solve and had no resources to learn how to solve other than putting something in and waiting 30 seconds for the animation to display what number I'd entered.
It was by far the worst point in the game for me, next to atrocious 5 minute long loading times on the spheres and how that discouraged experimentation. I was forced to look up the answer online, which obviously ruined that aspect of the game to me.
I still love the game, but how they didn't manage to catch that problem is mind-blowing to me.
I'm a freak when it comes to exploring numbers, so I understood this stuff immediately, but I also thought they made it too easy to play through without understanding.
Excellent review. You nailed them some of my major gripes with the game and even elucidated on some new observations I had not considered. Parts of the game felt like content deserts where I was left to unfortunately back track to a loading screen, not the best gameplay loop.
I honestly love anything you do Matthew, your critiques are always so on point. Never mind the douchebags who always get antsy about waiting around.
I thought the game ends too quickly, but I was forgiving considering the constraints. By the way, one of the main developers was battling brain cancer and he apologized in a blog if any of the puzzles didn't make sense. I thought it played out quite well. But the one thing I found irritating was the communication box on the one world. It has a ton of buttons and doesn't make much sense. You think you missed something about the game when you complete it without solving it (technically, I did solve it, but the buttons I didn't understand distracted me from trying stuff outside of the box itself) and then you find out that successfully doing anything with it is actually an "Easter Egg".
You're videos are really excellently done. Fantastic insight and intelligently explained.
Thank you for what you said about the ending. I also really felt the good ending wasn't hinted at well enough. Also, about the game feeling incomplete towards the end, playing through it myself it seemed really obvious that they wanted to do more, but I suspect that they were running low on their funds and time, and so decided to leave it where they did.
the ending was illogical and as you say seemed stunted. farley was f'in frozen, and now she is talking to us somehow??
nice to see you uploading more regularly. Excellent video, as always
The load times between swapping caused me to put down the game for a good while when I arrived to the Gauntlet/Maze puzzle, because I didn't have the patience to try different combinations and re-doing stuff. It's pretty sad.
again, Matthewmattosis needs to play The Witness
i just really love your reviews.
It's a shame I just don't have a mind for these games. I did play and complete Obduction, but out of complete sheer force of will.
I didn't learn anything, I just sat there for an hour either running back and fourth or fiddling until it worked, and even then I didn't understand why I got what I ending I did.
Yeah. The game seems to expect you to really pay attention to things. I played in much slower than an hour; I think it was more like 5, and things clicked together really well.
Great review, but I'm a bit confused by your characterization of the ending being a matter of going with one person's gut feeling vs. another person's gut feeling. It's more like choosing an outcome that's guaranteed to be bad vs. choosing to take a risk, just like the ending to Myst. Assuming you took a good look outside the Soria sphere, that is.
"A sting of Myst potential" lmao
Two uploads in quick succession? I love your videos so this is great!
Always happy to see a new video!
"Cyan's best works"
So... just Myst and Riven?
I am the Gamer of the Future brining news and trivia:
- Between patches and hardware advancements the game only stutters briefly during seed hops, and that's on a SATA SSD and a Ryzen 3600
- I'm pretty sure CW's notes explain that Mofang projectors do obstruct physical space. You can also see that if you zap the fake mayor's corpse
- There's two big hints about the good ending: Farley's journal mentions the battery connection and if you take the side route on Soria you can see the post-apocalyptic Arizona that's CW's plan would logically send you to
But nitpicking aside this review is pretty spot on. I'm surprised Matt didn't gripe about the Maray gauntlet and maze more, even with fast loads the ratio of puzzle solving to walking is very poor. Still had a good time tho!
Didn't give it away to me that it was a bad ending, I thought maybe the atomic blast had somehow escaped the sphere and it was simply that local area that was devastated, no reason to believe from a small snapshot of a ruined town that the entire earth is gone, especially not since we know at least one dude from 2050 ended up in hunrath.
I had an idea for the Villein number panels. The final one could have been a panel with 13 "digits", making it 5x5 blobs plus edges. That way the one in the garage could remain unchanged yet the player would have to actually learn the number system.
I thought the Villein numbers were the most interesting part of the whole game, learning to count in this unique way, and it was disappointing that it was barely used. Regardless it's pretty damning that the most fun I had was while using pencil and paper instead of keyboard and mouse.
Wow, intro is cut.
fucking WOW
*WOOOOOOOOW AHAHAHAAH DUDE WHAT THE FUCK BROKEN INTRO MECHANICS*
I have to thank you.
I watched a portion of this video roughly when it released. Maybe in 2018ish Epic Games released Obduction for free. I quickly set it aside after a 30ish minute first play session and decided I wasn't in the mood and it was too obtuse. Fastforward to 2023 some time in July and I revisited this video and gave Obduction another (more patient) try. It was magical to slowly patiently investigate the world of Obduction and I fell in love with it (circle maze puzzle almost made me quit). Quickly devoured the rest of the series. Massive thanks for your video recommendations. It's been a serene journey and it's sad that I'll never be able to relive that magic of discovery fully.
Personal tier list.
Riven>>Obduction>Myst>Myst III >>>Myst IV.
Would love to see your take on Pathologic. Seems fitting given the upcoming remake.
I could be wrong but I seem to remember reading that the rock images created by the mofang devices are actually solid
I was using a traditional hard drive when I first played it at launch, using short stroking to get the best speed possible, and although the load times were pretty bad at times, I didn't really consider them game breaking, just inconvenient. I also don't remember any hitching, but that might be because I had just upgraded to an 8-core AMD processor and a GeForce GTX 980 Ti, so the rest of my system was likely able pick up some of the slack of my hard drive.
Terrific work, as usual sir.
Keep it up!
Just beat the game and what you did cover was absolute truth. 110% accurate review.
I like your Dark and Demon's souls videos but the way they made souls fans come to this channel under the bizarre assumption that this is some sort of "Souls content" channel is annoying. I'm so sick of every damn video having comments just asking for Dark souls 3 or Bloodborne (MGSv too) despite these games already being talked to death anyway, what could really be added to the discussion at this point?
His opinions of what those games did right and wrong. I can't say I disagree with them either given the ludicrous spans of time between his videos.
Which would simply echo the opinions that everyone else has already put forth. The length of time between his videos has nothing to do with when or if reviews on those games specifically come out though, its irrelevant.
'...what could really be added to the discussion at this point?'
His opinions of those games. I wasn't aware you knew what they'd be. It certainly seems like he'd after an interesting viewpoint of MGSV given his feelings on the rest of the series.
Its not irrelevant. Dudes on patreon on a monthly donation system so it seems a video a month would be fuckin minimum. Between Va-11 Hall-A and Riven dude got ~$2,450 and then to drop an 8 minute video about a 20 year old game is a fuckin joke. People are throwing dude money so it seems they're entitled to let their opinions be known. Not to mention legit falling off the face of the earth to avoid Persona 5 spoilers is fuckin funny.
I prefer him to make videos on things he loves, but to act as if people who want him to make videos on more relevant topics are just whining is absurd.
There is literally hundreds of hours of podcasts, videos and shit out there on MGSV by people who have played the entire series, the game has been discussed to death, there is not much left o be said there.
"Your pledge doesn't buy you any preferential treatment. In fact, I take my impartiality so seriously I try not to even see who's donating to me. I'm equally open to feedback from anyone, patron or not, it's the only way to be fair."
He also mentioned multiple times he is not working on either Bloodborne, DS3, or MGSV videos at the moment. To keep talking about them and acting as if he owes you them is the joke here, grow up.
look at this 12 year old he sure is mad
I really like the way Matthew always gives his closing thoughts while the credits of the game play.
I loved Obduction, it's possibly my favorite game of last year. I was a little disappointed you didn't mention how the graphics are slightly stylized, instead of trying to look as realistic as possible. In many areas this probably works to their advantage, but in, I never fully figured out the worlds' names, the mechanical world, I kept getting pulled out of the experience because there were parts that looked closer to being real than others, and since the mechanical devices in the Myst games are my absolute favorite, I was really disappointed not to be able to fully appreciate it. Still, with the severe lack of Myst-style games, any game that comes close I greatly appreciate, and Obduction more than serves that purpose. I really hope Cyan goes on to make another game in this vain, whether or not it's a sequel to this.
But he did talked about the game having a great art direction instead of just going for photorealism.
tomstonemale Ah. missed that part about photorealism. Yah, as I said I think it was the best they could realisticly do with the resources at their disposal, since photorealism is expensive and time consuming, but I felt the mechanical world in particular was a little inconsistent in the stylization. Still, it's a really great looking game in general, even the mechanical world, and I wouldn't expect any less from a Cyan Worlds game.
had a dream where mathw did review of tanki online
Just finished playing Quern, now that's something equal to Myst in almost everything.
Except that it's quite boring and drab.
i love the fact that you're critiquing indie games. also love what you did at 16:12.
Well this certainly feels like a bit of a return to roots, Matthew. Your sense of humour is incredible, and just keeps getting better with more experience, but I don't think it's been this overt since you tackled the MGS series. Not sure if that kind of distraction / calling attention to it is something you want to go for or not.
N-n-not that I'm opposed! I actually enjoy both styles equally well! I just wanted to make sure you're aware of its impact.
When the mayor at the start of the video was saying Hello, he said "Shorah," D'ni.
To be honest I really hate these kinds of games simply for their intense dreadfulness combined with a lack of options available makes me feel like I'm personally doomed in a purgatory with nothing to appease or counteract the stress accumulated from it.
I like Matt's reviews on these games because I'm given a deeper glimpse of their existence without having to suffer emotionally by the experience. I love adventure games, but I hate it when their goal is something that cant be attributed to something positive. I don't need the goal to be saving the world or anything at all, I just want the Journey to be pulled by a fulfilling or positive force. If it's not, I'd rather strive for positive goals in real life than play the game, and I just can't continue playing, honestly. The point of these games seem to be high personal player input that resolves in high personal player satisfaction through overcoming mysteries and situationals. I love that, but I hate the bleakness. I think the loneliness of these games can't be enjoyed by very many kinds of people, that's why it's definitely and always going to be a niche game, which is good.
I don't agree with this, but it's such an interesting and honest take on a genre I love that I'm actually thumbing it up.
Happy to report that I'm playing this in 2020 with basically zero technical issues, only real load times are in the central trees and they are just a couple seconds. I do have a PC built from last year though.
I wanted to like this game, but it is clearly just a shadow of what myst was. If my expectations weren't so high I think I would have liked it. Hunrath was great but the other worlds were too linear. And there was way too much warping and linking. And I have lots of other nitpicks.
I've noticed people either complain about how obvious the ending clues are, or complain about how hidden they are.
HEY MATTHEW!! Your Reviews are great!!
Well the evidence that you can see a desolated earth from the mofang world is something. Also with the projectors, I think it was explained that they could project mass.
I remember seeing people say the comment section was cancer at the top. I then doubted them because Matthew usually has a pretty good comment section. Why didn't I listen to them? Everyone here keeps talking about how Joseph Anderson is better than him, but he's basically a Matthewmatosis that covers mainstream games, and is visibly less intelligent. And Matthew has a sexy Irish accent.
Yeah, it's bizarre; it's like there's been an influx of channers or something
Jimel s I didn't insult him. I gave my opinion of him. I pointed out things about his character/videos I do not like. To insult him would be calling him a faggot or such. I like his reviews too, just not as much.
Jimel s And as for your last sentence, trying to pick exact words apart and take everything at face value isn't a valuable tool to get your point across.
Jimel s Well I suppose we have to agree to disagree. I will, however, agree that he didn't exactly rip Matthewmatosis off. But you can clearly see there was a degree of inspiration. This isn't necessarily bad, and in Joseph's case, it isn't.
Making a suggestion will probably be ignored especially if you put your own little reason for it. As in "Review Kojima and Miyazaki, I don't think they are geniuses so make a video that confirms MY opinion and please ME, do NOT make a video that you want to make and please just make a Blood Metal Gear Souls Zelda review already!!"
Bad comments section.
I absolutely loved this game
What do you mean by the initials C.W wasn't a coincidence?
I think they stands for "Cyan Worlds"
I had no interest in this game, but the instant I realise the next eighteen minutes will involve you talking about it my day gets better.
Godamnit I was about to go to bed
I think the start of this video is a little cut off, it just says "review of..." instead of "this review of..."
Yo Matt just gotta say man this is great work right here. I have 0 interest in these type of games but you held my attention
So then... why was the blue beam aimed the entrance?
I never was able to completely figure out the number system, especially for accessing the Mayor's pod, I eventually came to a fairly logical conclusion, but I don't think it was how the numbering system was supposed to work. That and the number panels were an absolute pain to use likely largely due to the Unreal engine REALLY not liking high DPI mice. I really like your idea for it, though. I would have really liked that if the interface was better designed.
So, about the "lag problem" really it's as if Cyan has ALWAYS made games "for the future" if you will. They had these ideas and then were like WELL current PC's are too limiting. lets dumb it down to the MAX PC level now and then PC's will catch up in the future. They even made Real Time MYST, which is PHENOMENAL btw. But again PUSHED the boundaries for PC's AGAIN when it came out. Now we can fit Myst, and Riven on my iPod. While lag is always annoying. I sort of appreciate that they don't let the limits of current technology get in the way of their storytelling, banking on their games being "timelsss" and replayable when PC's finally catch up.
It may look too sudden, but any chance you will want to do a gothic/morrowind review?
On a roll lately, aren't you?
To those of you watching this video when it was uploaded, computers can now support much more complex games. Sucks for you.
Might want to look into Quern Undying Thoughts, it helped fill that MYST like void that Obduction made me feel.
"Myst potential"
I eat a variety of fine cheeses.
the start of the video is cut off a tiny bit i think. if you wanna re-upload do it soon!!
"a sting of myst potential"
I know I'm late to this one, but wanted to give my two cents.
Excellent review! I love the game, but I agree it has its issues. I do want to nit pick a couple complaints though.
CW's unhelpful vague-ness can be attributed to his ego. He is so hell bent on his plan to go home that he has the universe's worst case of tunnel vision. "Its not the best time to be explaining these things" somewhat mumbled while looking down, pretty good indicator of this. He's still not the best of characters to be sure, but I disagree with the notion that he's a cardboard cut out.
As for the rocks the imagers make to block the rail ways, in the notebook explaining the imagers it does mention that they can be programmed with simulated mass; they are more than just holograms, they are also force fields. The world logic here is consistent, and also gives a possible explanation to CW's pondering in the same notebook of why the imagers disable transportation if an image intersects the cell wall (it would transport the force field across the entire sphere, completely coating the inside of it with an impassable field, stopping people from accessing the cell wall, therefore "disabling" transportation).
And finally I disagree on the whole not enough clues for the good ending bit. There are plenty, enough to get the good ending on a blind play through first try, its just that most of it is presented more philosophically than objectively. And I don't blame Cyan for erring on the side of subtlety for the Arizona-outside-of-Soria reveal (even though you didn't raise this point specifically in your review, I've seen it cited elsewhere as why its easy to get the bad ending on a blind play through); for something like the binary ending of this game if they went too big on that or added in too many clues then it would be too obvious that CW is wrong and there would be nothing to "solve".
Overall though, I'd like to say again that this is a good review of the game. The criticism of the number system in particular is spot on. Hunrath is well developed on the puzzle side of things, Kaptar oozes with atmosphere, Soria's melted hallway is forgiven for story reasons... what does Maray have? Seed-swap-bonanza, squandering the number system completely and introducing the biggest contributor to the load time complaints. If Cyan had received more money from their kickstarter, I would have loved to see it go to polishing out Maray completely before new worlds. Moving forward though, I'd love to see new games in this new universe as I actually like the trees more than the linking books to be honest.
There are definitely no clues for the good ending, Farley has something in her book about all of this being part of some natural order, but the player has evidence to indicate she is wrong. Her claim about everybody being saved from something by the seeds is clearly not true, which puts her further conclusions into doubt.
It turns out she was right in the end, but it was really anybody's guess. It's weird that a game about solving puzzles logically could simply abandon logic completely in order to satiate Miller's religious views, but there we go.
Speaking of Farley, where was she the whole game? In Hunrath presumably, otherwise she could not have appeared in the bad ending. Which means she just shut up and didn't say a goddamn word about anything.
Except for the part where in the check in log everyone was in grave danger when the seed found them. The player character themselves was in a storm that could have turned pretty violent, and trees are known to not be good protection from lightning (quite the opposite, in fact). Except for the part where earth outside the soria sphere is pretty barren (which is admittedly subtle, but as I said I forgive that; if it were totally destroyed no one would ever side with CW, there would be nothing to figure out/solve). Except for the part where the Villein resettlement group would have been wiped out according to the journal. Except for the fact the check in log also makes it pretty clear time inside the spheres is non linear if you bother to figure out that AH = days and cross compare them to other dates you find instead of skipping over them. That last one brings into question if its a good idea to swap back at all, because if you go back to the future then the people from the past will still be screwed out of the life they once had and if you go back to the past you mess with causality because you'll be bringing people from the future with you.
There ARE clues. They may not be 100% obvious and objective and the biggest is also admittedly philosophical, but they are there. I'll admit that not a single piece confirms Farley is right and therefore it is easy to be biased against her, but holistically there is ample evidence that point to the fact that CW's plan really isnt a good idea. His heart is in the right place, he isn't an antagonist. He just isn't right.
And Farley shows up in the bad ending... thats not incongruous or otherwise unexplained. You see her in the pod if you bother to actually learn the number system and check out more than just 222 (there is even an achievement for calling up her pod). And when you deactivate the mofang wmd the dying villein starts the wake up process to bring everyone out of the frozen stasis, hence all the steam. Then in the bad ending Farley herself said everyone survived the mofang attack, just that most were not able to swap. The implication being that she was one of the ones that was able to swap.
Ehh, I give you the check in log, but you can only see a few entries. I'm not convinced the opening storm was dangerous, seeing how far away the lightning was.
Seeing Earth is an interesting point. There are some fires where there shouldn't be fires, and a pylon is down, but all that tells me is that there was a hurricane. And judging by the visible architecture, I'm not convinced you're actually far into the future. Yet one of the check-in entries is from the 2040's. So I don't buy that humans had perished yet.
I have no idea where you get the idea that time is non-linear, the seeds time travel to bring people into Hunrath but once there, time flows normally. You don't need to reference anything to figure that out, it's made explicit.
Speaking of time travel and salvation from danger, Farley's theory depends on the notion that the trees/seeds are prescient to an ashtonishing degree, and that they are either intelligent or they are guided by intelligence. I'm willing to buy this, but if it's true...why were a clan of genocidal maniacs chosen by the seeds? They must have known that either they would kill everybody, or that they would be killed. This makes saving them redundant.
Admittedly I forgot Farley was in the pod, but if she got out in time, where on earth is she broadcasting from? I don't recall anything like that in her home, no monitors or cameras.
Yes, I meant time outside the spheres and got the wires between brain and fingers crossed. You are right that time flows one way on the inside, but thats not really the case on the outside (or the trees time travel like you say). And you are also right that its explicitly stated in *Farley's* journal that time is scrambled, I mentioned the check in log as objective proof of her claims which lends validity to her arguments.
Either way, my point there still stands. Trying to take over the process of the trees and swap back only makes sense if the Collector Seeds didn't die in the process of bringing someone in, and could therefore be used in reverse to send everyone back to where and when they came from. But thats not possible. Its all or nothing, and that really throws a wrench in any return home plan. The scrambled time is the biggest objective clue to the good ending. Farley's dream entry is the biggest philosophical clue.
Again, the clues are there that Farley is right.
Meanwhile, what clues are there that CW is right? I mean, on a "technically correct" level he is technically correct that swapping back home is possible, but what evidence is there that supports such an action as being the correct one? A lot of your arguments are of trying to poke holes in the story at large, but none of them are of backing up CW.
As for poking holes in the story, you got me on where Farley is transmitting from. If you look in the background of her transmission, it does look like her house. And she was able to update the message on her kiosk, so it stands to reason that she has a video camera somewhere. But I just did a sweep of her house in game and you are right, there isnt one.
edited out this paragraph. flimsy theory about her going to CW's workshop instead of her house. A better flimsy theory is that the camera is in one of the boxes in her house. Still flimsy and lame and potentially immersion breaking, but thats what I'm going with.
And as for the trees, intentionally not giving information on their nature leaves them open ended enough I can defend them just as easily as you can attack them. My interpretation was that they could see a lot but were not omniscient. They arent a god figure, just a collective entity trying to do good. They see something in danger, they try to save it. Doesnt matter who or what.
I'm not buying this until I know exactly who is to blame for Myst 5 and Uru
I really hope he decides to do the MGSV review eventually. I don't blame him if he doesn't though, that game is a real beast to tackle.
I'm pumped for it because there's a lot I know he'll tear apart from the gameplay mechanics that I know most of the critics of the game haven't yet.
I actually really enjoyed the game, so I hope he touches on the gameplay and at least commends the story on some of the interesting parts. The cutscene where Ocelot repeats Snake's gun monologue from MGS3 is worthy of at least some praise, even if it doesn't make much sense post-twist.
The gameplay I felt was one of the only redeeming things about MGS V, but even then, it's still bogged down by repetitive mission objectives and mission structure.
In my opinion, the story is just so far fucked up beyond repair, that I don't think there's much to can praise about it. What parts of the story did you find interesting? Just curious, not hating, I feel like there were some interesting parts, but it's so hard to remember that it goes to show how bad it was. I do like those nods to old MGS games, and the attention to detail is still there. At least it's not Portable Ops bad lol.
Well I only got into the series last year so I don't have as much reverence for the plot, so monumental reframing and the like aren't huge deals for me. I thought the initial couple cutscenes with Kaz were incredible at making the theme of revenge felt. Seeing the light and fun Kaz we once knew die felt like the kind of decent into madness that we always knew Big Boss had to experience. I found the first meeting with Eli also pretty amazing. Seeing a young liquid feud with ocelot kind of felt full circle to me in terms of the franchise. I also have listened to the Truth Records dozens of times, and seeing Zero's motivations and actions start to emerge made me understand Big Boss' MGS4 monologue about how everything starts in chaos long before what we assume is the initial catalyst.
I'm also not saying the story was incredible. It absolutely meandered for way too long and got way too convoluted but I found it fun to experience and I enjoyed replaying the better beats. I also like the twist so fight me.
It's a good game with a shit story.
There's my profound analysis of Metal Gear Solid 5, spoiler free.