I Do Not Understand Hotline Miami 2
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- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2025
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“Hotline Miami 2 is a Misunderstood Masterpiece” by Ovandal: • Hotline Miami 2 is a M...
Interview about game’s difficulty: • E3 13: Hotline Miami 2...
The Hotline Miami Story (documentary): • The Hotline Miami Stor...
Visual Media Used: Hotline Miami, Hotline Miami 2, Boomerang X, Slay the Spire, Drive, Thirty Flights of Loving
Music Used (Chronologically- all songs from Hotline Miami 1 & 2 unless otherwise noted): She Swallowed Burning Coals (El Tigr3), Remorse (Scattle), Hydrogen (M.O.O.N.), Horse Steppin’ (Sun Araw), El Huervo feat. Shelby Cinca (Daisuke), Sneaky Driver (Katana Zero), Crystals (M.O.O.N.), Unfathomable (INSIDE), Bloodline (Scattle), Run (iamthekidyouknowwhatimean), Fahkeet (Light Club), Keep Calm (Endless), Coming Down, Silhouette (Katana Zero), You Are The Blood (Castanets)
Thumbnail Credit: / hotcyder 
Игры
Hello if you'd like to ask me questions about this vid and hear the answers in a Director's Commentary, or if you simply have too much money, I recommend joining my Patreon! www.patreon.com/JacobGeller
IS your beard painted on??
🙂
Is pixel art goddamnit Jacob, a video game, you are overthinking it
"If our life lacks brimstone, i.e. constant magic, it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in considerations of their imagined forms instead of being impelled by their force.”
Have you ever heard of Presentable Liberty? Fascinating game with a fascinating title that's... well... fascinating. It's quite short (2 hours if I remember correctly), think you'd really enjoy checking it out, and maybe it's predecessor Exoptable Money.
@@Lacie9 kmo p p p mom kkkp ln
Other people in the comments have talked about the sexual assault in midnight animal being a sensationalized reframing of jacket's relationship with the woman who became his girlfriend, but something that's only now hit me that makes the entire thing sadder is when you retroactively look at that moment he decided to take her back to his apartment and give her a safe place to recover as a parallel to when beard rescued him in Hawaii. Jacket's most humanizing moment of the original game echoes the most important act of kindness anyone ever did for him, and it got turned into something so horribly disgusting by the people who saw him as something they needed to exploit as quickly as possible.
Exactly this
Please, pretty sure everyone tried to exit the level after killing the fattso only for the game to literally make you save her on their fist run. Also that is not shocking at all.
@Scott's Precious Little Account the fuck are you talking about
@@rapatacush3 honestly you could even take that as a part of the narrative, Jacket immediately going to leave like always then hesitating and going back for the woman.
^ This, I’m so tired of people shunning sexual shock value, especially when the intense shock shines a spotlight and critique over practices an entire industry does. Mislead and sensationalize for better consumption.
My best conclusion is that Hotline Miami asks “what happens when you become completely desensitized to your own violence?” And Hotline Miami 2 says “This. This is what happens.” Everyone dies horrible deaths, loses their identity, sanity, or otherwise, and then the ultimate outcome of violence is a nuke! Great!
That's exactly my takeaway, too. Hotline Miami 2 is about the consequences of indulging in violence, regardless of motivation
So you're saying you gotta keep the violence fresh and exciting?
@@legion999 I think it's more, "Live by the sword, die by the sword."
“Wanna see what happens to Thugs like you?”
“See, that’s what happens”
@@legion999 How do you even come to that conclusion?
Oh boy this video activated my secret obsession. I remember in the last level in The Soldier's storyline, Casualties, there's this really beautiful song, "The Way Home," that kept playing over and over while I just kept dying. I was stuck on this level for so long, and as the song kept looping, I began to felt like the game was mocking me. 'Oh,' the game kept saying, 'you want your 80s action hero moment? Try and get it!' And then The Soldier dies in a cutscene. This game is so confident in what it's trying to do, and I've been spending years trying to untangle it.
The way I see Hotline Miami 2, it is a set of short stories, all cut up and scattered, that tries to examine how society reacts to violence, and specifically the events of Hotline Miami 1. The stories are short but each try to showcase a different response to violence. Jake and Martin Brown both use the pretext of 1 to indulge in hurting others, and Martin Brown, Manny Pardo, and Evan Wright all exploit 1 for their own fame. Evan in particular is a mostly peaceful man, but his obsession with the events of 1 can, on a story level, break apart his family and, on a mechanical level, turn him into a murderer. The Henchman and The Son's stories both compare violence to an addiction, a connection made literal thanks to the gang's activities. The Henchman keeps going back to violence until it burns him out, and his violent death (which, by the way, is a scene that viscerally affected me, and another reason why I've thought about this game so much) happens after the drug leaves him barely able to move. The Son, meanwhile, uses the drug as an escape from his life and his grief, and dies in a blaze that becomes unnerving when you actually play through it. He believes that he'll die like a warrior and ascend to Valhalla, while in reality he falls to his death and doesn't even get a mention by Pardo as the detective walks past his body. The Soldier/Beard, as you mention discuss military violence in the same way it frame as the rest of the game, but I think it also does something fairly important: The Colonel is implied to be the founder of 50 Blessings, and he's portrayed as downright pathetic. He's often drunk and his grand speech on human nature, which parallels the animal masks' speeches in the first game, is genuinely cringe worthy. The source of all the events of 1 and most of 2, the man behind it all, is someone you'd probably advert your eyes from if you saw him in a bar. This applies to virtually all of the protagonists: when they indulge in violence, they aren't cool or hyper-masculine or awesome, they're contemptible and too short-sided to realize they're walking to their doom
Around all of this are the events of 1, which are intentionally muddled. Both routes (Jacket and Biker) appear to have happened simultaneously, despite the fact they contradict each other. 1 was already a game that was purposefully vague about its plot and world building, and 2 frames it as inherently subjective, with neither protagonist being wholly lucid through the runtime. This introduces a meta aspect to the plot: the reactions to the plot by the characters parallel the reactions by fans of the game. The Fans (the characters) obviously want a retread of the game, Pardo is a copycat game trying to recreate the original, Evan is a game theorist trying to make sense of the first game (I'm using that term generally, because I don't believe that Evan is literally MatPat), and so on. Throughout the game, they try to make sense of or recreate the violence of the first game and fail. The Fans and Pardo don't live up to their standards, for example, and Evan can't connect the dots before his death. If he's obsessed with trying to "solve" 1, it comes at the cost of his real world relationships. There is a real sense that this game hates its fans, which is a can of worms I'm not going to open but certainly is there.
Then there's the game's relation to its player, which is characteristically caustic. The soundtrack is banging as usual, but the gameplay is off. 1's levels are like small puzzle boxes: with thinking, a possible path will show itself, and then it's a matter of sticking to the script until you manage to get out to the other end. It feels like an elegant action scene; I'm fairly certain a few reviewers compared it to John Woo movies back in the day. 2, meanwhile, feels like a fistfight in an alleyway. You kick and bite and claw with your nails and there's less a coherent choreography and more a desperate struggle. The impression is less "there's a way to clear these levels" and more "oh god, fighting 30 dudes is a mistake." 1's violence was idealized and smooth, while 2's feels more situated in the real world, so that even as the body count climbs to absurd lengths, it's clear that it's because you were lucky every step of the way, because none of the fights are even remotely fair. 1 had that famous line, "Do you like hurting other people?" The answer is obviously "yeah, it's fun," whether that be because of the hyperviolence or the soundtrack or trying to tie in the loose ends of the story. That question is implicit in the second game as well, but there isn't a clear answer here (besides the soundtrack which still bangs more than should be legal). The gameplay is frustrating, the characters are unlikable, and the story is contradictory. The game takes away what you like about the first game (besides, once again, the soundtrack) and in its place shows a perhaps not objective, but composite view of a city going off the deep end chasing the high of 1. Hotline Miami 2 seems genuinely committed to making a violent game that makes violence feel pathetic, the desperate flailing of people ignoring their own lives. And it's a prickly, possibly self-defeating thing because of that, but it's so committed to it that, in my mind, it does have some self-consistency.
Not mentioned in thus far is Richter, whose actions in the "current" year of 1991 are actually nonviolent, as his levels are all flashbacks told to Evan. He becomes defined not by his relationship to violence, but to his mother, as he wants to get enough money to leave the city and support her through her illness. His death scene uncharacteristically includes a conversation in which he makes peace with his death, presumably because he is finally satisfied with how his life ended up. His ending is uncharacteristically hopeful: Richter was able to break free from the allure of violence and devote the rest of his life to loving and taking care of those he loves, and because of that he dies lucidly and with dignity. Of course, he still dies, and not by his own actions. Hotline Miami 2 is a mostly an introspective work, focused on the damage it does to the perpetrator. Here, it finally looks outward, and the final message is somewhat bleak. Doing good, the game says, could award you with a good death, but the death is still coming, because violence boils over and spreads, whether or not you're in its crossfire. Do everything right and you still get hurt because other people weren't as careful.
That's right: Hotline Miami 2 was about Climate Change.
huh wow i could have saved myself a lot of time by being like 'wow cool video jacob! and i agree with the entirety of the linked video'
Good post, but its worth mentioning a much of HL2 was meant to be dlc originally, then expanded to be a sequel due to the "fans", the devs reacted in two ways: killing the fans the world yet also giving fans the tools to make their own stages, allowing the HL2 experience to never end
Holy shit. Thank you for taking the time to share this.
And at the end when you best the game the game on hard mode you get a text scroll with the context of a drummer boy in I think the Civil war who has been shot and singing to his mother about how his death has helped build a nation and asks her not to cry but if you disregard that bits it's quite sad he's dying for a country that probably won't remember him and be buried and forgotten and he will never see his mother again.
@just do it bot
One thing that I saw in the video that I thought I'd clear up. Manny Pardo isn't paranoid about becoming framed for the Miami Mutilator's actions. He IS the Miami Mutilator. The killings he's investigating become more grotesque with each one, probably as an attempt to draw media attention to them, to *him*. He wants so desperately to have that, but he still just gets overshadowed by Jacket's trial.
a bunch of people seem to have missed the little "*and IS" note he threw up on that bit, he acknowledged he knew his identity but he didn't make it super clear.
@@peachy_lili Ah. Gotcha
He even asks Evan to stop writing about jacket and focus on the mutilator
What I didn’t understand was the film crew that pops up briefly at the crime scene.
@@moonmoon2479 To me that is Pardo's want of attention for his murders visualized as a hallucination
I think the first one is "do you like hurting other people?" and the second is "can you deal with the consequences?". The violence jacket started, made every other character to follow him, resulting in the annihilation of all of them, the fact that violence only results in more violence, that is what I think the game is trying to say.
And the sex scene is another jab at the player, like "huh, you dismember people, and SA is too much for you?" basically another moment for the player to introspect, now about where they draw the line
Yes lol two different levels in prison you get stabbed for sa not even that deep lol
@@bignig7223 That's just a reflection of culture. You could argue, on the other hand, that a mass murder has harmed more people in way worse ways than a single instance of SA. It feels wrong to even try to compare them, because they should be just as bad. And that's why the game calls attention to it (intended or not), because you're easily desensitized to one but not the other.
Jacket was actually very human in the first game. He threw up when he murdered the homeless man, his first mark as initiation. He was a soldier, not a murderer, not until then. He rescued the prostitute from the mob, and it becomes clear that they actually get together, and she gets clean, taking care of the house, and eventually sharing a bed. Richter was sent to kill her so that Jacket would remain a broken husk of a man, and while it doesn't work, he ends up killing the Father and his guard, and finishing his work regardless. His mental interrogations become more and more full of trash and stains as the game goes on.
He was mute, but you could clearly read his character as he progressed.
Also Jacket could've off killed Richter when he was raiding the police station but it was canon that he left him live as shown in HM2. So even when he could of acted out his revenge, he chose to give him mercy.
@@RiceShogun And that is an example of his honor and discipline as a former soldier.
I'm unsure if I read your post wrong, but if I read it correctly; that homeless guy wasn't Jackets mark, nor was he even a target of 50 Blessings, he just happened to be in the alleyway that jacket was dropping the briefcase he stole from the mobsters off. It's why Jacket throws up after killing him, he was so hyped up on adrenaline from killing the mobsters that he killed him without considering how killing an innocent, completely unrelated person would affect his mental state.
Soldiers are murderers by definition.
Two things)
1. Richter was sent to kill Jacket for failing the phonehom mission
2. Jacket isn't mute.
Everything else is still good though
hey nice microphone holding, bro. loving the technique
LEARNING FROM THE BEST
Some of the best boys on RUclips right here.
I would love to see a Jacob Geller take on Leo Vader’s content. And a Leo Vader’s take on Jacob Geller’s content. All in one video. With no collaboration before hand.
@@2DayDavid lol no collaboration beforehand 😂😂
Did you need to use a tool like izotope because of handling noise ?
As one of reviewers in my country wrote upon release:
"Hotline Miami is a magic trick, Hotline Miami 2 is a magician's explanation of how the trick works"
For me, finishing both games several times, it is a well-rounded explanation till this day.
I love this statement.
It's because it implies that since a magician is doing the explaining, in order to get a complete understanding and appreciation of the magician's explanation, you would probably need to become an experienced magician yourself.
Which ultimately ties into what Jacob says in the video.
Despite all attempts to understand what HM2's devs are explaining through the video game, we'll never be able to understand the game as much as the devs themselves do.
wow thats really eloquently worded
what country is that?
Funny , i just platinum both game this week (i played them back when they came out but this weekk i felt i could platinum them for fun and get back to it).
My first thought after finishing both was more:
If the first one is a drug-acid-fuelled fun trip, the 2nd is absolutly its hangover, not the bad trip, but the descent after taking and enjoying that much fun drug.
All the players could feel like addict playing both games.
It reminded me of Metallica's solos in master of puppets.
@@vintheguy Russia, my friend. Homeland of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Bratva
"The actor accidentally shot someone for real, the gun had live ammo"
The timing on this release dude. Like when Jontron featured Notre Dame the week the spire burned down
I'm watching this 2 months after its upload date. Mind if someone talks about the context here?
@@ctographerm3285 this video was released the same week the actor Alec Baldwin fired what he thought was a prop or "cold" gun on a movie set, but there was a mix up and he fired a live round, killing a crew member.
@@142doddy Mucho thanks dude.
@@ctographerm3285 no worries
@@ctographerm3285 played this game for the first time 2ish weeks ago. Blew my fucking mind i had to re-check the release date.
In my opinion, the opening scene of Hotline Miami 2 did a good job of showing how little everyone outside of the plot had any idea of what was going on with Jacket throughout the first game, because from an outside perspective, Jacket was a mass murderer whose apartment was discovered to contain the corpse of a woman who was shot in the head. With that in mind it's almost certain that the fact that a murderous psychopath had a dead woman in his apartment would make headlines, and in an in-universe movie adaptation of the first game's events, it would make complete sense to include sexual violence as a main theme considering the general public's perspective of the events, especially considering the movie was likely intended to be a shocking grindhouse film.
Okay but the thing is that you're completely wrong. Do you know how Richter got sent to prison? I'd rather ask you that then have to explain why what you said makes 0 sense.
@@lasagna665 Explain how anything I said doesn't make sense, or how Richter has anything to do with the creation of an in-universe exploitation film. My entire point was that the media would pick up on a dead woman being tied to a mass murderer, and that if people making a movie wanted to make a gritty, shocking film about that mass murderer to draw in moviegoers, they would absolutely include that part of Jacket's story, simply because she was involved in the situation whatsoever. While it's scummy and disturbing, there are movies that use sexual violence to draw in viewers (like I Spit on Your Grave or Last House on the Left, for example). All I'm saying is that I thought the games portrayal of how some grindhouse/exploitative movies operate is accurate in that regard.
@@slenderiusmann4178The police knew Richter killed her, as he is waking up from the coma we can hear the cop say that jacket is the main suspect of all his crimes and then he says this, Police officer: "Is there nothing you can do? We need this guy! You people weren't able to save his girlfriend... I mean, we've got the perp who shot 'em in the locker. But that asshole ain't saying shit!" Still i agree with your point as jacket have not made a good name for himslef and having shot up a police station i don't think the police would go out of their way to correct that misunderstandment, also with girlfriend being there for just about 2 months and we even seeing her gone one of the days and coming back another after that it seems she was free to leave at any point and just stuck around as jacket is overall a chill dude, still i would highly belive the first printing of the story of jacket being shot is "man and woman found shot in appertment one is in a coma and the other is dead" as the police would have found the masks in his place but they would not have openly called him the masked manic until he woke up from his coma and they could have integrated him, the doctor seeing you walk about does not go "omg the masked manic is lose" he goes "sir get back to bed please" indicating not even he knew.
@@valdemartomlinson you understand that even that detail would fall through the cracks in a shitty exploitive grind house movie based on true (in-game) events.
the simple fact that there is a dead woman involved with a mass murderer is enough for this scuzzy studio to use for their marketing. I get you want to be correct but you're failing to understand what op is getting at.
@@janefkrbtt i do understand, my point was just that it is a narative that would have been spun up way later as the news papers would not a said dead woman found in mass murders apartment when it first broke.
29:05 I guess I need to go and rewatch the epilogue, because my impression was that Beard died in the 80s in Hawaii, and the reason Jacket kept seeing him working at every convenience store/pizza place/video store - despite how improbable that would be - was because he was deep in the fugue state, seeing the face of the guy who saved his life on every helpful clerk.
Beard dies in San Francisco, it's nuked before the events of the first game. America lost the war, hence why the "russo-american coalition" is a thing.
It’s been a while since I last played, but I think Beard does actually die to a nuclear bomb, but it’s a few years before the events of the first Hotline Miami 1 when San Francisco? gets nuked by the Russians. I’m pretty sure that was part of the motivation for 50 Blessings trying to escalate conflict further, seeing killing a bunch of Russian gangsters as “revenge” and it might’ve been Jacket’s motivation, too.
@@TEEFD Yes. He survived all that war stuff in Hawaii, only to go to SF and open a store, which he was then killed in when SF was nuked in '85 or '86 I believe. Then Hotline Miami takes place a few years later.
@@Theevil6ify Yes, which is at least part of the reason why Jacket is in such a sorry state at the beginning of HM, and why he's so ready to go and kill a bunch of Russians (besides his PTSD/mental illness)
@@deathgripskaraoke9351 I think it's the other way around, the russians lost and nuked SF, but then a peace treat was made forming the russo-american coalition, but maybe i'm wrong
jacob that isn't an "unreadable font" thats the Russian alphabet
What are foreign lexicons but simply unreadable fonts?
is there anything more unreadable than that?
And the title screen says горячая линия, literally "hot line".
@@Pakanahymni I really dont know about Jacob, but even i fucking knew it meant Hot Line.
its not even ''the russian alphabet'' its the ''cyrillic alphabet''
I’ve always seen the sexual assault scene’s purpose as to shock, but then make you question why that shocked you when the ruthless violence didn’t. Also to show how much the truth behind Jacket’s story was misunderstood or misinterpreted by the public in-universe.
This is easily Jacob gellers worst video, he proceeds to follow the title and not understand hotline miami 2 at all, so he proceeds to make a 30 min video of him not understanding it and misinterpreting every aspect of the game.
The only misinterpretations are gellers, yours, and almost everyone in this sad comments section.
Yeah, I agree. One of the functions of the scene is to make you question why the feelings of moral disgust and transgression aren't also generated when mercing entire rooms full of human beings. I don't think it was 100% successful in getting that message over, and it could have been built on throughout the rest of the game. But it's worth thinking about, and I'm happy the Dev's included it. The media response sort of proved their point, a bit like what happened with the show Brass Eye.
@@ogeI I’m glad someone agrees with me on this.
I thought that scene was showing us that even when making a movie of real life mass murders, it still wasnt brutal enough or sexy enough for america.
I had no idea the "Do you like hurting other people?" line was a quote from a chicken head dude in Hotline Miami. I know it as the quote underneath an image of the villain toy collector from Toy Story 2 dressed in his chicken suit. Which is even funnier now.
What I love the most about this video is that in Gellers pursuit of trying to understand this game, it’s opened up this little space for everyone here to express an understanding of interpretation of Hotline Miami that are all similar but a little to very different, and I think it really does bring an excellent point about the subjectivity of art and how art is understood. Like, the ephemerality of the concept, the vague way in wish it expresses itself leaves so much open to the viewer to interpret and understand and come to their own personal conclusion based on their own life and experiences, no one has to tell you what it means, partly because there is no distinctive clear meaning. Idk there’s just a lot of short little essays in this comment section all about this one game and everyone’s understanding of it and I think that’s a little bit beautiful.
Yo! Thanks for shouting my video out dude!!! I really like this take on it too!!!
I can totally agree with some of your criticisms and I really like some of your more positive takes!!! (you did a better job explaining some things i liked about the game better than i did like the way the game makes you play through the hawaii levels lmao)
The music cutting out at the end of each level in HM1 is basically the game's version of Post Nut Clarity.
Just a moment where you stand there and ask yourself: "I don't know why I did that, but it sure felt good."
I hate how good of a comparison this is
I also see it as coming off of a drug high, or the hangover after drinking. You look at it all with disgust and say, what was I thinking? A little time passes and then you do it again.
This is exactly what I thought and how it feels. Damn...
Why does this fit. I hate it
Hotline Miami 2 is about miserable people doing miserable things, trying to convince themselves it isn’t miserable. If the first game is about reaching the realization that you’re a bad person for enjoying the violence, then the second game is about the denial of that truth.
The characters who deny this to the end meet horrible fates, while characters like Jacket and Richter, who come to accept that they’re terrible people who have done horrific things, are met with relatively merciful fates, burned away in a brief moment by a nuclear blast. Richter even gets to enjoy a brief period of time where he and his mother escape from all of it.
At least, that’s my take.
Miserable people doing miserable things and pretending they aren't miserable...
So it is about working under capitalism.
Nah i think the HLM series is just about how fucked florida is lmao
A pontification on the human condition, if you will.
i think Tony and Biker are also very important in that context. Tony is pretty openly misanthropic and makes it clear that he's not there to rescue or help anyone, he just likes murdering people - and yet he's the only Fan who never partakes in the Henchman's murder, is the only one who survives Death Wish, and his last words are swearing off violence altogether as he tries to surrender to the police like Jacket did. i can't say if he dies because his surrender was ultimately just a pale imitation of Jacket's genuine repentance, or just because Manny is a dick.
Biker is also important because like Richter, he's sworn off violence, but like Tony he was also honest about his actions in HM1; on confronting the Janitors, he's downright disgusted at the idea of killing for a grander goal than simple pleasure, let alone the disingenuous nationalist politics that only end up destroying the US. conversely, Richter is a good man with entirely sympathetic motives, but ultimately he kills scores of people to protect a single one that was important to him, who dies anyway thanks to the nuclear holocaust he himself indirectly facilitated. that earns him a peaceful death, but a death nonetheless.
but Biker might not even be dead - he didn't just give up fighting, he left civilization altogether to go live alone in a desert, where he gave up his mind, his youth, and any connection to his previous life. i've always interpreted it as his candor and willing self-exile having earned him a little stay of execution, but maybe that's just because i think Biker is cool.
@@7fatrats that too lmao
Jacob: "I dont need to be spoon-fed plot points, i've got it all figured out"
Also Jacob, but later: "So it turns out that the level where you literally kill double swan monster is SAME event where these twin guys in swan masks die. Didn't think of it before!"
I mean the video is amazing and i love it, but that's just hilarious. I remember first playing this level and thinking "man, what an amazing and imaginative way to visualize other side of the event, a real blast of a level!". I'm really surprised to find that the connection was not obvious for everyone
When I played through I had absolutely no idea what the weird monsters were and looking back on it I didn’t even know that the mask guys attacked that same place, my brain cannot comprehend a story as complex as hotline miami 2, I just beat it today and literally already forgot 90% of it, still a very good gamd
Yeah he's being silly about this
Yeah, the only thing that didn't click right away for me was him jumping off the roof at the end, since when you play through the aftermath as Pardo, his body is covered up. Then I replayed it later on and it clicked, especially since it shares the silhouette of one of his death sprites.
Yeah, same to me. And the only level i ever had real trouble in hn2 was dead ahead. THAT LEVEL ON HARD DIFFICULTY MADE ME HOLLOW. (I have all achievements, and yes i say that every opportunity i get, i spent 70 hours getting them, i am gonna spit it out.)
Very good point.
Love when companies are just like "No. No more sequels. Just play the game again if you want more."
That's fine by me, I can give my money to other companies.
I don't think this is related to hotline Miami 2
Fine by me, I’ll just buy your game again but on other platforms 😁
@@Ender11037 like even if you're being snide, literally yes.
Give it to the dev of OTXO then @Ender11037
In my opinion the reason the sexual violence scene is there is because it adds to the message that jackets story is being warped to this crowd appealing horror story, and how misunderstood jacket is
That sounds about right. He saves a woman but deliberately does nothing with her until she's executed when Jacket's apartment gets raided.
woah yeah this is actually the vibe I got too but you put it into words. jacket HAS TO BE a victim, at least in some sense
And also how with video games and movies, brutal violence and murder is not controversial, in fact, it’s enjoyable to do in video games, but how rape crosses the line
late reply but this is literally the only valid interpretation. the entire movie was being filmed as a horror movie esque version of what happened to Jacket in the first game. Every thing that happens in the movie portrays Jacket as the bad guy, when the real version is the opposite. Jacket was simply a puppet.
@@OddGhoste Yup it's literally the story, yet alot of people apparently didn't get that :/
You said it yourself. Hotline Miami 2 is cruel. It's relentlessly difficult, most of the characters are creepy, pathetic, and overall unlikable as actual people. And chasing the violence only ends up with them dying in increasingly brutal, unsympathetic, and unremarkable ways.
If the question of Hotline Miami is "Do you enjoy hurting people?" I think the question of Hotline Miami 2 is "Why do you keep hurting people? In this miserable, exhausting, frustrating experience? Is the violence really enough?"
That is a good fecking reply. I'm commenting as a bookmark.
Nah mate, that why I'm watching videos about it instead of playing it
"Fuck you for daring to enjoy a game"
Or to be concise,"Do you STILL enjoy hurting people?" Whether that question is asked in a tone of concern or contempt is probably relative to the observer.
Also, once you start a new game a new cutscene plays
Richard asks every character and more directly you, why you're playing again
You know the ending and how this all plays out, do you really enjoy the violence so much that you'll do it again?
It really does seem that the theme is why are you still hurting people
I really like this comment, great way to look at it.
What I always thought was so interesting was after a level, when the music stops and everything around you is dead, you tend to loose your way back to the car. You just spent so much time memorizing nearly every corner and enemy placement. Every room, body, door, window, and weapon was the difference between life and death just seconds ago and now that it doesn't matter, you just instantly forget and are left standing there, lost and confused. It's just insane how alien a level can feel on the way out. That paired with the audio droning creates the most unique experience I've ever felt in a video game and I'll never forget it.
I really enjoy seeing a video where a creator struggles to come to a satisfying conclusion for, in this case, thematic cohesion. I wouldn't mind seeing more videos like this "thinking out-loud" variety.
In my personal opinion, I think the entire point of Hotline Miami 2 was to point out the fact that your beard looks painted on
This really reminds of that episode of Community where Abed agonises over whether Nicolas Cage is good or bad
I'M A CAT, A SEXY CAT
Be very careful, Mister Nadir.
Literally was just watching that episode
@@TheCyanSqueegee dammit I was gonna say that.
@@chuck_duck don't let me stop you
"I frequently return to the first game because it's fun to play. Whenever I try to do that with the sequel, I feel like it punishes me for it."
Years ago, when I originally came to Hotline Miami, I did it for self-destructive reasons. At the time, I was a good little Mormon boy struggling with violent and suicidal thoughts, and from my sheltered, Mormon perspective, picking up Hotline Miami was a genuine transgression, and the purest way in which I could think to indulge those feelings. But, I wasn't here for quite the same reason as Martin Brown, or the Fans--I didn't come to this game because I enjoyed killing people. No, I came to Hotline Miami because I wanted someone to _tell_ me I was a bad person for it.
I played Hotline Miami because I wanted to feel _shame._ I wanted to _hurt._ I wanted to claw my way through something brutally difficult for no purpose at all, just to feel the sting of the adrenaline and the guilt for having done it. Hotline Miami, for me, wasn't just a game about killing people; it was a game about _dying,_ over and over and over, and taking down everyone else with me. It was a game about watching myself and every other person on the goddamned planet dying in a nuclear fire, because nothing short of total annihilation made sense to my brain at that point. I'll never forget the first time I completed the game and watched the flames roll over Miami. I remember staring, exhausted, at the title screen after the credits ended, listening to Michael Cottone's quiet acoustics. I remember the wind blowing in slow motion.
And I remember feeling confused--so _utterly_ confused--because music was so gentle and kind.
I came to Hotline Miami because I wanted to feel _suffering_--I wanted _punishment_ and _guilt_--but the final image in HM2 is one of calm, forgiving solace. In the slice-of-life in which everyone dies, they're all--for once--not shooting each-other. The hurricane spiral of violence and pain has finally reached its eye, and in this frozen moment, everything is... _okay._ Despite everything, you, and Richter, and Jacket, and Evan, and Rachel--and everyone else--are all given a moment of peace, and when it's all over, you're allowed to sit there as long as you need, listening to _The Green Kingdom,_ with nothing assaulting your psyche or senses.
That room, to just _feel,_ without anyone in an animal mask to tell me how fucked-up I was, was an act of mercy I felt like I didn't deserve. I cried for an hour. I expected a final, crushing blow, a condemnation to finally _kill_ me, but it never came.
Hotline Miami is a series about anti-social and desperate people, but Hotline Miami 2 is a game about humanizing their pain. Where HM1 told me, "You enjoy hurting people, and you're a sick fucking bastard for it," HM2 sat with me and gave me _empathy_ and _understanding_ for those feelings. It helped me explore the emotional context of suicide-by-proxy in a raw way, and it _was_ painful, but by the end of it, I was alive.
HM2 was a game that, without judgment, allowed me to immerse myself in death until I was ready to drop the gun.
Jesus, man. You doing better?
I'm gonna be honest, that teared me up. HM2 served a kind of similar purpose for me, in that I was battling with ideas of nihilism that put me into quite a depressive state. I think something about the violence of HM2, the unrelenting cruelty of the gameplay and the story, the strange meaninglessness of so much of what happens, played into that nihilism I felt. But then at the end, Richter just accepts his random, meaningless death peacefully, just saying "No need to fight it then". Something about that really moved me, that he was able to be at peace in the face of something like that, because he was enjoying the moment of peace he was having with his mother, just watching TV. And Evan helped him get that plane ticket. I think what I took away was that people are cruel and violent when they're desperate to prove that they have an effect on the world, or that they matter (The Fans, Pardo, The Son, etc), but it's also people and the peaceful moments you enjoy with them, or even by yourself, that are important.
Thank you for sharing this. What a ridiculously insightful comment, holy shit.
i like how you're honest about how you feel, at first i thought you were weird but it's very possible that we like to pretend we don't think like that ourseleves from time to time
Holy fuck
Whenever I hear ‘Run’, my mind INSTANTLY remembers the absolutely batshit insane Death Grips mashup remix track. Really fits with whatever Hotline Miami is as a concept, and it never fails to get me pumped.
the way this comment blasted the track back into my head. gonna go give it a listen again, thanks for reminding me :)
OH SHIT IM FEELING IT
It is quite strange, how much overlap there is between Death Grips and Hotline Miami.
Both in terms of fans, but even in regards to the entire aesthetic of violence, mental anguish and human nature.
The mashups somehow epitomize this :D
Beware of the voyager
*_DEATH GRIPS X IAMTHEKIDYOUKNOWWHATIMEAN - RUN THE SPIKES - HOTLINE MIAMI 2 MASHUP_* ???
maybe you could be a bit more specific
What I like about Jacob's content is how humble it all is. With the amount of experience he has with this stuff, he could have easily called it "Hotline Miami 2 makes no sense" but he chose to admit that there is probably something there, he just doesn't get it. That's just something I like to see in content creators, especially those who engage in big brain shit and break it down for people like me.
29:50 It's Alex and Ash. They're twins, he's hallucinating the brother/sister duo as the "duck dragon". And they're swans. Not ducks. I should know. I am a duck.
...Quack.
this is the best comment on any video ever
Literally everyone in HLM2: i dont know whats going on
Richard and the devs: that's the neat part; you don't
*Everyone gets nuked*
"everyone gets nuked" is like the videogame version of "doesn't matter, Goku could beat all of them"
Biker survived cuz he was in the desert
*hotline miami 3 confirmed*
@@arkham_miami Typical Biker fan
@@arkham_miami confirmed to never happened
@@dradonie He didn't appear in the Table Sequence. Everyone in that room was dead.
I feel like the point of the game is to address all the different common perspectives on the first game and say “all of you are wrong.” The game has a million different perspectives on violence, violence in media, how violence begets violence, and it ends with a nuclear blast which, to me, says “if you think violence is innate to humans, all of us will die.”
It feels like the game is trying to say “If you think the answer to ‘do you enjoy hurting other people?’ is supposed to be yes, you missed the point.”
@Stix N' Stones See that is the divide in the reception of the 2 games in a nutshell; The first game asks a question & although it has an answer still lets you the player have space to think about it on your own terms & disagree. The 2nd game however is intent on definitvely *telling you*, in various different ways through multiple characters, "NO," & if you disagree you're gonna have a bad time bc 2 really makes you feel it, not just after the fact with silence but through basically every aspect except the music - theres even moments where it feels like its taunting you for your answer being "Yes".
Personally I liked it. It actually did what the 1st game set out to do: give a message condemning violence, one that actually forces you to confront the sad, viscerally disappointing reality of it, its perception & ramifications of both. It forces you to feel a certain way about it & in so actually takes a strong stance unlike the 1st game.
I dont fully agree with its view but i do think its accomplished its goal, & comments like yours are proof!
@@27TheMunchkin Ooh, that got me thinking as someone who loved HM1, and hated 2. I think has HM2 just been "kill more gooder" then it would've become self parody. You can't just give people what they want over and over again because you have to escalate the violence, condoning it in some form.
I guess that's the answer that brought the game together for me. If you want more violence, take it. Run it through every possible filter you could view HM1 and take it all to its logical extremes, instead of its most satisfying ones.
Just from this video (I only played the first game), the game has a very "this is what you asked for!" feel. Like it's answering the "How do you even make a sequel" question with "the same way every other sequel is made, bigger with little respect for the original". Everything looks to be about recreating the first events but it's all distorted. And you go play the past which is a more sophisticated version of the first game. You see a title screen for a game that will never happen at the end. It reminds me a bit of Twin Peaks s3.
Yes, Hotline Miami is a piece of cake so decadent you know you shouldn't be eating it, Hotline Miami 2 is what happens when you ask for a second piece and get the whole cake force fed to you.
The devs saying,
What, you want more violence, more difficulty, more bleakness. Fine I'll give you more, how do you like this. Oh is it too hard, too bad. Are you tired of being killed from someone you didn't see, that is what violence looks like, deal with it. It it all to bleak and pointless, well this is what you wanted isn't it. Tired of violence? Then you shouldn't have asked or it!
Hotline Miami 2 also seems similar to Paul Hart's game Edmund in that its a disturbing game that is more interested in existing then being played, Hotline Miami 2 is a lot less disturbing, though that first scene really made me think it was going down the Edmund rout.
@Immortal Science of Hauntology I think it's a little more than just that. There's a lot of stuff that was mentioned about the past. A good portion of it was a prequel. It's like making an indulgent sequel about people living an indulgent sequel. Funny, it's a simple comparison but it's hard to talk about it. I guess that's the purpose of art. Doesn't have to be deep but, just direct explanations are hard. So imagery and allegory and emotional manipulations are sometimes better.
@Immortal Science of Hauntology HM2 may be more elaborate and textured, but it is fragments of an incomplete whole rather than a cohesive narrative.
So fun fact about the Son’s abilities. They’re all references to dead members of the family/mob from Hotline Miami 1.
The bodyguard is a reference to, well, the bodyguard. You start the level with the same sword the bodyguard used. The icon is a pair of glasses that look very similar to those worn by the bodyguard.
What exactly Dirty Hands is I don’t know, but it’s probably his grandfather because he mentions dirty hands in one of his dialogues. You also unlock Dirty Hands in the same level that the son hallucinates seeing the grandfather.
Bloodline is not only a reference to the mob’s bloodline, but also a reference to the Father, who not only used the same guns in showdown, but also reloads them (the only time a gun is reloaded in all of HM1). Also, the icon is a bullet inscribed with the date of the Father’s death.
Dirty Hands is a reference to the panthers you fight at the beginning of Showdown
@@lovelytigress227 then why are they Brass Knuckles? Legitimate question not being an ass.
@@lovelytigress227 then why are they Brass Knuckles? Legitimate question not being an ass.
@@lovelytigress227
This. The Son is The Father's bossfight split up, and I always thought that was hella cool.
Watching this video, I almost feel like interrogating Hotline Miami 2 as a cohesive and singular work may be approaching it incorrectly. The large suite of separate stories with separate themes almost makes it feel like a collection of short stories, all with a loose connective tissue, but each meant to be doing its own thing and interrogating its own ideas. It's tempting to treat it all as one monolith that's trying to tell one story with unifying themes, and it certainly seems like that's what it's trying to do. But perhaps it's not. Perhaps the developers used it as a space to explore related but separate stories and concepts, and then brings them all to zero at the end, as if to say "We've done what we came here to do. It's done now. Don't expect any more."
I completely agree with this. Even the fact that in the first game the level select shows an abstract layout of every map but in the second one it's contextualized as collections of VHS tapes, hinting that, yeah they're not one singular thing
Manny Pardo IS the Miami Mutilator. The guy tied up in his trunk later to be found dead at the end of another lever is the smoking gun but there is a whole bunch of other evidence as well, If you notice every time the coroner is like "This isn't brutal enough to get media attention" the next victim is even more brutalized, and how he keeps encouraging Evan to write about the Miami Mutilator instead of Jacket. And the Colonel in the BEARD segments is likely the founder of 50 blessings, the leopard skin he wears has their symbol carved in it and also the whole inner animal thing and the animal masks, Also as you mention the communication style his team uses.
Very astute, I havent seen anyone else articulate that point I dont think.
He was reading that part from the wiki, it was worded to avoid directly spoiling it.
16:40 a serial killer he's investigating ("and *is*" is written below investigating)
What? MANNY PARDO?! No, there's no way. He's got skin too thick for that! And he's dashing and handsome! There's no way, man.
The intro scene made me think about our relationship with fiction. When we first see the sexual assault it's shocking, only for it to turn out to not be real but fictional. But we already knew that it was a fictional sexual assault, because we're playing a fictional game. Why does the assault being meta-fictional instead of fictional change our attitude towards it? Idk if this is intentional but I thought it was interesting nonetheless
That’s a good point. Why is it a relief that it was meta-fictional? Funny how that works
@@therandomdickhead5744 like some part of us didnt want the game to stoop that low
we were that character at least for a split second
and we didnt want to be put into the shoes of a sex offender even in fiction
it being fictional fiction was maybe a relief for ourselves as much as we didnt want to think that the game itself was swinging so low making a spectacle out of sexual assault
and while it DOES do that the subversion lessens it and while its hard to gleam any sort of moral or meta-narrative we still felt the feelings it gave us and that alone is worth pondering
sorry ik i sound pretentious as all hell
@@therandomdickhead5744
I think it just comes down to people getting attached to characters. The nature of storytelling and getting invested in those stories makes people want to see characters coming out through situations as unscathed as possible, at least more often than not, so seeing something awful happen to them sucks; but if it didn't *really* happen then it isn't so bad.
Plus the further of a degree of separation there is, the less uncomfortable it is for our brain to process it. Seeing a real sexual assault could ruin your life, seeing it in fiction could ruin your day, but seeing a fictional portrayal within a fictional portrayal? That might ruin the next few minutes of your life, maybe an hour if it really sticks in your head. Roughly speaking lol
I suppose one could view the killing of The Fans as the developers’ statement that they aren’t making a second game “for the fans”
Hotline Miami: You Want Violence?
Hotline Miami 2: We'll Give You Violence.
I thought Hotline Miami 2 was a discussion of violence, its motivations and its consequences. The war in Hawaii drove the commander insane and motivated him to start 50 Blessings (you can see the symbol on his panther mask) and the end of the war (the nuke in San Francisco) turned Jacket into the Russian-killing machine of a man that we saw in the first game. Every character has their own motivation for violence: fun, fame, money, patriotism. For each of them the violence rises to a catastrophic crescendo resulting in their individual deaths (Martin, the Fans) and then the end of the world at large (the nuclear exchange at the end of the game). I do think the sexual assault scene at the beginning of the game was about how society had glorified (in the worst way) Jacket's actions. Not only does Martin rape a girl but in the tutorial level he is killing defenseless teens, which was definitely not in the first game. Interestingly enough there are only two characters in the series who come close to figuring things out: Biker, who ultimately fails and ends up washed up in a bar, and Evan, who can choose not to kill everyone he meets. Unfortunately by the time Evan goes on tv to air out his findings, the situation has spiraled out of control and a military coup has already been started by the commander from Hawaii. I liked Hotline Miami well enough but Wrong Number really touched me in a way few games have.
I don't think the game itself is nihilistic; it isn't saying "there's no point to all this" just because it ends in Armageddon. It's showing the natural progression of violence in a society that glorifies said violence.
THIS EXACTLY. Thank you! That's how I've felt after a meaningful amount of research and multiple playthroughs. It's similar to what the Last of Us II attempts to explore which also explains Hotline's presence as scene dressing in that game.
Wish this was more liked. The only thing I can add is that Richard's dialogue is important to each characters view of the end. The only character to really accept it is Richter. Jacket may have as well. Richard is the inner voice for many though. He signals the disgust and inevitability of violence is subtle manners. Evan can have multiple endings where he stays with his family, I think there's some where he doesn't fully uncover the truth, and one where he basically does. You can meet up with Biker but he doesn't believe him, and Biker has gone into hiding after discovering 50 blessings and has become a drunkard. Ultimately I think Richard either signifies the things that radical violence leads to or is almost a metaphor for things out of our control taunting us in a way.
I always thought the movie scenes were delusions the "actor" had after committing horrible violence, like he would kill someone and then convince himself it was just a movie set so its fine. Something about them definitely had a metaphorical feel to me
The movie actually did happen though. There’s a newspaper clipping in the fans hideout that proves it, and when you see richter with his mother in Hawaii, the TV is playing the start of the Martin Browne interview
This is easily Jacob gellers worst video, he proceeds to follow the title and not understand hotline miami 2 at all, so he proceeds to make a 30 min video of him not understanding it and misinterpreting every aspect of the game.
I feel like, Hotline Miami 2 is an explosive end to the series in every sense of the word. In that vein, I think they wanted to bring every possible story that could be told in the series to the front, give them all a chance to shine through, and then let the series die in one explosive blast, every potential story having been told, nothing left unsaid. I don't know if that points to a deeper meaning, but damn did they succeed in bringing it all to a close.
The only way a series about violence can escalate to its very pinnacle is with the biggest act of violence it is possible to commit: a nuclear warhead.
(Also I think the Son’s rampage is because the story had already ended but maybe the devs thought if they didn’t have the gameplay go out in a blaze of glory people would be unsatisfied?)
I think you guys want to get deep into a game that never pretended to be deep, the only damn point is killing is fun in a video game, they literally told us at the end of the first game, the violence commentary came from pretentious douchebags that can't play games without thinking is something meaningful at the end...
@@PEDROGARCIA-qj3gr uh... nah
@@PEDROGARCIA-qj3gr dude, if you think hotline miami didn't have a message at all, you're the fans.
@@artemiswallace8716 no, because I'm not a brain dead teenager, that can't see the obvious difference between fiction and reality... let me guess you think the "you like to hurt people" quote is thought provoking? of course I like hurting people in a video game and watching it in a movie, you know why? because is not real, that's why the ending is kinda a middle finger to people that thought it was deep they are telling "did you really think it was a meaning? What a fucking retard"
The point of HM1: melancholic nihilism
The point of HM2: confused, realistic justifications
The other thing I think the missions in Hawaii do is convey to you just how suicidal these missions are. These soldiers are seen as expendable. They aren't supposed to live.
I can't stop coming back to this video. I find myself in this position a lot with art - confident that there is some satisfying, deeper read to it, but unable to really dig in and pull it out. But a part of me likes that feeling, being surrounded by a whirlwind of ideas and unable to find the center. Just sort of... being taken on a ride, never able to tell where it's going. And this video goes through a lot of those same motions.
I know, it feels crazy. It feels so deep that bringing a new future perspective of myself. like me 5 years in the future would have a completely different perspective. I will get more and understand it more. When a work sticks to you like that, and it continues to be brought up in your life. That is when you know you have something worth talking about.
There's a part of me that wonders if the devs made the game intentionally inscrutable and difficult to analyze properly - an escalation of the simple ending of the first game, an intellectual mouse trap.
"I frequently return to the first game simply because it is fun to play,
whenever I try to do that with the second I feel like it punishes me for it."
I feel like you almost got it there.
Also I'm surprised you didn't talk about the character that has a no-murder option.
What I'm really surprised by is that he doesn't mention the Richard hallucinations in HM2, which effectively do what he does here, albeit far more cryptically and in the second person.
That's actually a good take
Major skill issue
"Like it or not, understand it or don't, this is all you get."
This is the existential dread I've been living with most of my life.
The one bit of solace I've found is that we're not alone.
{not alone as in other people, or as in God, or as in aliens?}
@@2b-coeur yes
A few problems with the fast talking summary of the plot,
-Including the intro which has only one enemy who can kill you, martin brown only has two levels.
-The only member of the fans that express reservations about the killings is mark and that's only after richard warns him about their fate in death wish.
-The son doesn't keep ordering the henchman to go fight the columbians, he orders him to do a hit on a chop shop due to them not giving the mafia their cut.
-The henchman doesn't just run from the mafia, he directly asks to no longer work for them, the son accepts it but asks him to do the chop shop hit.
-The money the henchman takes is not ordered to be taken by the son, he takes it out of his own volition.
-The henchman didn't intend to escape with his girlfriend, he was planning on leaving her to keep the money for himself.
-The henchman doesn't return to the mafia, he goes to a drug den and takes the drugs he was given as a parting gift from the son.
-Evan doesn't just talk to Manny, he is good friends with Manny.
-The son didn't wait until the henchman was dead to start fighting the columbians, the son's first level (seizure) takes place three days before no mercy (the henchman's one and only level)
-You completely forgot that the son called the henchman right before his drug fueled rampage as well as the fact that the people who had his phone at that time, the fans, were some of the hallucination monsters.
-Jake isn't a white nationalist, he's just a nationalist.
-It's not a leopard, it's a panther. Also you forgot that the colonel is the one who started 50 blessings.
-Biker who lived through the events of the first game isn't shown to be nuked.
Just a few
Lol
The nuke scene isn't a prequel to hotline miami 1, since you see jacket in his jail cell die in the blast. Beards actually talking about the photo with jacket, before the blast happens. Also, the first half of the game (before the hospital mission) is believed to be in Jacket's head, his own version of what happened. Which is backed up by the illusions, Bikers take on the fight in the second game, and beard being in every store. Its his mind trying to cope with the coma and what happened.
There's two Nukes that Go off, Beard dies in the 1st, everyone Else dies in the second
I love watching Jacob talk about games I've never played and probably never will play. There's just so much passion in his work that makes me appreciate these games even though I have 0 interest in them. Stellar work as always!!!
I also don't know what this game is about. But I know that ending makes me FEEL it.
Hey I'm glad you made a video on a game that didn't make sense to you. It takes bravery to say "I don't know" to an audience since they expect a profound explanation or concept from you.
Keep up the great work Mr Geller. I'll always love deep analysis of whatever you find interesting.
24:10 That's the point. It's not SUPPOSED to be fun. The game creators pulled a David Lynch, they turned the much-demanded sequel into a statement. The fans missed the point of the first game, so they made sure they got punished for it in the sequel.
The fans literally get all killed, mostly by a russian mobster on drugs. Not sure how one can misunderstand that.
Hotline Miami 1 is the realization of how quickly indoctrination into patriotic or crusader style violence can happen, and how quickly we as a society can justify it if we put bad guy hats on the dead bodies. The shock after a level is done to force your own realization, as you mentioned in the video.
I disagree spectacularly with your take on midnight animal, but I don’t think it’s your fault? I didn’t even realize that you could see the woman in your apartment on my first playthrough of the first game.
The second game is not about violence, but the glorification of violence told through our media. That we denounce it, but still glorify it as entertainment and raw entertainment. Midnight Animal took the story of a rampage of a indoctrinated war veteran, and turned it into a slasher film, shot to entertain and shock them.
The point on sexual violence is valid, but not the case here, as Jacket removed a abused sex worker from one of his massacres and shortly started what is believed to be a consensual relationship. While “rescuing” someone by killing everyone they know and then expecting them to live with you is problematic, it’s what the game presented as the “human” side of Jacket.
But it’s not just midnight animal that glorifies violence. The fans sought out violence as a form of finding their identity, by emulating the guy who “killed the bad guys”.
The cop used brutal violence (and other things) as a means of gaining fame that he believed he should have had, by entering a dangerous profession.
The henchman had made an extremely lucrative career out of violence and sought it as a means to fund a lifestyle he couldn’t maintain.
The recruit to 50 blessings saw violence as a means of enforcing his own will over others and sought power in it.
Finally, we have the soldiers who, essentially live out daily violence and being told they are the good guys. But they are just left questioning, why did we have to do these things? why did it matter? Will this actually make the world a better place?
Beard just wanted to open a convenience shop, but was instead blown to nuclear ash. But this is after his country sought out violence against a country they knew they could subjugate, instead of seeking peace with the people with nuclear weapons.
Even the journalist holds himself differently if you are a pacifist or a barbarian. By letting the violence out, he could be a real man again!
But in a world with machine guns, war crimes, and nuclear weapons, our search for meaning is pointless when compared to nuclear devastation.
That our views of violence have to remain a power fantasy, a path to meaning, or a form of indulgent entertainment. Because when we see a serial killer, we decide to make a movie out of it, instead of reevaluating our mental health systems and how society managed to bring up a monster.
It’s why people pay to watch MMA or football, but won’t see the correlation between a concussion and the suicide that follows years later. The entertainment is worth the pain, as long as it happens to someone else.
Because the reality is that our existence would be wiped out in a blink of an eye if we actually saw what we are actually capable of and how we don’t have any way to stop it.
I dunno. This will get buried, and no-one will see this, but this is my take.
I personally dont think that patriotism has much to do with the first nor the second game, to me it seems like the violence commited by the 50 blessings operatives was related to other elements, (Jacket holding a grudge against Russians for the killing of his friends and squadmates in the war, jake's general xenophobia and assholery, Richter being forced to work for 50 Blessings to protect himself and his mother, Carl being sucidal and using the violence as a way to put himself into harms way while also doing something he might believe in, never clarified really) and the use of 50 blessings in these cases to justify what they are doing, i feel it shows people killing and committing violent acts and excusing it with 50 blessings telling them to, without the scapegoat of 50 Blessings would these people still be doing what they are doing? And why?
I see your take, and it's simlar to mine in some ways.
Hotline miami 2 is one of my most favorite games of all time, and I'm happy to know you appreciate all of the ideas and concepts behind it as well, great game
Didn’t get buried. It’s definitely an interesting take
Im gonna disagre on the conparison whit sports and violence. All thow simalar i would say that. These are forms of intertanament on the individual level its more about getting stonger an agrement betwean two peapole to that extent.
@@drakep.5857m
"Hey is his beard painted on?"
No... but future editor Jacob's Lemmy Kilmister mutton chops definitely are...
I also wound up feeling like I had missed something after my first playthrough. So I went back for more. And on the second playthrough, when the discovery and completion weren't novel to me anymore, that difficulty bump was all the more apparent. I didn't have the thrill of the game play and it became a slog to get through. In the first game, there are so many times where you fall into such a nice flow while playing. Those moments come much less often in the second game. You feel less like the combat is something you can get into the zone of and is more of something you really have to consciously work at. The gameplay is still fun and exciting, but does less to give you that power trip that the first game so often subverted. If you've been stuck on a level for a long time it really starts to get awful, the thing that initially draws you in on your first go around turns into something you feel relief at being done with.
In the end the overall take away I got was that the characters in the game are so often searching for meaning, enjoyment, or power through violence only to have their hopes frustrated or subverted; and this is reflected in the way the player has to work so hard and restart through so many mind crunchingly difficult levels to try and piece together not only the literal plot, but also the meaning of all the plot points. And in the end so many of them end and are never brought back up. There is no definite resolution, it just ends. So in the same way that the first game interrogates the player for their enjoyment of the violence through jacket, the second game interrogates the players search for meaning in violence through the characters in the second game.
Is "violence is senseless" a really deep revelation? Does it feel like some of the plot points may have had some other meaning that peetered out? Is it kinda a cop out for the point to be that there is no point? Is all of this possibly me reaching? Maybe. But the game definitely has stuck with me and prompted reflection I'm a pretty impressive way.
29:16 I think this section explains hotline Miami as a series perfectly:
I was talking with a friend about hotline Miami 2, who said that, "if you saw any single scene in the game you'd be like 'wow, this is doing something really cool and specific, can't wait to see where it goes with this' and then it just doesn't."
That's the entire point, it's always seemingly setting something up but that set is either violence or gets cut off by violence with the motivation coming from prior violence. Violence breeds violence and it's often equal or stronger violence, never less unless that's all that can be mustered then. That's why there's never going to be a hotline Miami 3, it's suggested that the resulting nuclear war caused omnicide. There's no violence, because there's no one to commit the violence.
Sorry, I know it's an old video but it just seems really obvious to me. Hotline Miami 2 is about cycles of violence. It shows the "start" of the cycle with Jacket's time in Hawaii to explain the causes of the first game, and it shows everyone who took some sick inspiration from Jacket and what that leads to. It might honestly be so straightforward that it flies under the radar for deeper analysis.
30:12 sick mutton chops, does this mean you've finally gotten around to disco Elysium? Lol
ruclips.net/video/Md5PTWBuGpg/видео.html
Oh hey nice seeing you on here watching based videos
Hahaha you too ziiko
Jacob, this has nothing to do with this video in particular, but I want you to know having watched your channel for months, I truly think what you do is art. The readiness with which you vomit your emotions into your videos is really brave, and I commend you showing us a peek into your soul every video. It’s that earnest love for what you do that I can feel in every sentence, bold or strained, and it’s what keeps me coming back.
You probably won’t even see this, but I want to tell you that your bold-faced vulnerability has broken through a layer in me that I needed broken, and it’s helped me see parts of myself that I didn’t know I needed or wanted to. It’s helped me *feel.*
You’ve also helped me get back into thinking critically about artistic intent, both in scrutinizing that which I love and trying to see the good in… that which I don’t. Your content helps me break my schema when I need it. You made art, in general, better for me! Thank you!
I know this whole comment sounds like I’m just sucking up to a stranger, but to be frank I don’t really have any friends. I don’t get to interact with people often. But these things you did for me? That’s what *friends* do. I know it’s one-way, and parasocial, and there’s a less than 1% chance I’ll ever get to shake your hand and tell you this in person, but you’re a friend to me. Thanks for reading, if you did.
This video is like the literary analysis version of publishing a null result in the hard sciences. It can be frustrating, but often just as valuable, to be unable to reach a solid conclusion. Most null results like this never get published, never get written, so it's refreshing to see a brilliant, seasoned analyst like Jacob admit when he's lost and what that feels like.
I'm very late to this video, but I wanted to give my interpretation of the opening scene to HM2 after playing its levels and looking at its story over and over to the point I can reasonably say I've gotten fairly good at the game.
So many people have interpreted the opening of the game as a commentary on violence against women or the distortion of violence by the media, but I feel the scene is a lot simpler than those scenes. I feel like the scene is foreshadowing of Hotline Miami 2 itself.
The scene begins with Martin Brown entering and doing what everyone who played the first game was expecting and wanting, violence. He kills all the shot on shiteo horror teens in increasingly brutal and escalating ways, smashing one's head in, grabbing a hammer to bash the other 2, and grabbing a shotgun to gun down the rest. The violence gets worse and the player soaks it up as the scene ramps up, and then Martin Brown knocks over the women.
All the violence and bloodshed the player has enjoyed escalates into his character sexually assaulting the woman. And suddenly, the player is taken out of it. "I didn't want it to end like this, I just wanted to bash people's heads in with hatchets and whatnot!" But of course the violence itself was escelating, it eventually had to reach a horrible, terrible end that no one wanted. And this is exactly what happens in the following game itself, the player unlocks weapons, plows through ever increasingly difficult and bombastic stages as the game's violence and flare continue to ramp up.
Until, after the bombastic and near seizure inducing drug trip that is the game's final level, everything is taken up under the rug as all the violence the player has committed leads to total nucleur annihilations. And the player is taken aback by all the character's they've been with are whiped out in an instant, "I didn't want it to end like this, I just wanted to bash people's heads in with hatchets and whatnot!" Because violence doesn't just get to stay as a constant, it needs to continue ramping up, getting ever more destructive until it eventually reaches a point of no return, as everything the player loved doing so much quickly transforms into something worse with no way to go back.
So yeah that's my 2 cents LMAO. Not exactly comfortable with connotating sexual assault with nuclear missiles, but I feel like this both logically and thematically explains why that opening scene is there very nicely.
Midnight Animal is both a jab at hollywood, and, the theory I personally align with; the actor and even the movie itsself is actually just a figment of Manny Pardo's imagination of what he wishes his life could be. Both levels where you play as Pardo and the Pig man, theres a part where you gun through a police station, on a "movie set" just to get gunned down at the end after you've had your fame and fun. Its a theory, but I think it fits Pardo's character.
This really reminded me of No More Heroes, if you want a story about what it means to kill someone then NMH is amazing to do a deep dive on. It also has a sequel that really doesn’t carry the themes from the first that well, and an amazing spinoff that dives into the depths of the topic with Travis Strikes Again. Truly Suda 51’s magnum opus.
Even Suda loves Hotline Miami and what it means, there’s a ton of Hotline Miami stuff in Travis Strikes Again
no more heroes 1 is a bit of a fixation for me because of how effectively the gameplay gets you into travis' headspace. travis doesn't want to work those meaningless jobs. they're unchanging busywork with colorless scenery and something he'll only do for a relatively substantial reward, but he WILL do it, so he can sink all his savings into the next fight. that's where he really wants to be. the rush of adrenaline, the personality of your opponent and the relationship you build in the few minutes before you kill them, the orgasmic punctuation of every kill with a spray of crimson. the meat of the game.
and in the background, the movements of organizations and/or individuals who see his insatiable bloodlust as a potential source of profit.
i dont really like the sequels lmao
His beard low-key reminds me of the guy from the first Hunger Games movie
Oh my god I can see it
talkin about acclaimed actor Charlie White aka MoistC1ritikal i see
Ben shapiro?
@@lorifoldvary836 Yes, Ben Shapiro, from Hunger Games.
@@DiscoBrain and from ghost rider
"Meanwhile you've got this jacob guy who tries to understand the motives of these criminals that aspire to be like a different criminal and all don't know his motives or reasons for his actions." It's a meta commentary on who and what they saw emerging out of their work's influences on other people.
10:48
Oh, that's nice that I can skip this depiction of extreme and horrible traumatizing violence so I can get back to the tamer core experience of the game.
Ive seen it said elsewhere but the plot of the games can be summerized into two parts
1: questioning and understanding your bloodlust
2: what happens when you indulge in violence recreationally or forced
“What did you do this weekend?” HORRIBLE INCREDIBLE UNMITIGATED VIOLENCE🎼🎼🎼🎼🎹
Edit: Oh no… is it actually BAD?
Yes but the funny numbers that appear after I bludgeon a mafia goon gives me dopamine
fuckin' rooster ask me if i like hurting other people i say uhhh yeah
I don't know if I've ever seen a game look more or sound more like a fever dream. I love it.
Seeing this, I now really want to see what your thoughts on a game like Killer 7 are.
Bro if this video is any indication the one for Killer 7 will be just as bonkers. Can't wait to hear Andrei say he's coming again
Sameeeeee
@@KnightlyVan MAN WITH A PLAN
That's exactly what I was thinking listening to it. A lot of similar themes to Killer 7 and bonkers no hand holding story line
I think the non consensual scene is there to completely villainize Jacket. In the universe of Hotline Miami 2 you can't make an empathetic movie about an Anti-Hero based on real events without being accused of glorifying his actions. Actions he's currently in court and prison for. In hotline Miami Jacket saves the girl because he's compassionate. In Hotline Miami 2 the guy playing the character of Jacket is removed of all nuance to be some crazy serial killer with no real motivation. It's just a movie being made to cash in on the fear of a real event. Which reflects a lot of the movies we have gotten made in reference to or about real serial killers.
Katana Zero has gotta be one of my favourite indie games of all time. And clearly so heavily inspired by the hotline Miami series.
Katana Zero felt like I was playing the first third of a game. It was like "oh, that's it?", so much stuff was set up but I never felt like oh this is a sequel hook, just, wow, feels like cut content. Amazing gameplay though
@@bajscast Free DLC is coming out but it is being coded by one dude it was going to come out sooner but it kept getting larger to the point of being around half the size of the original game.
Give me a min. Let me go buy and finish Hotline Miami 2 so I can watch this. I’ll be right back.
I'm putting off watching his video on Outer Wilds because I *still* have not finished it.
Yes thank you, very wise Mr. Geller, so smart, does anyone else think his beard is painted on?
I'm so happy this video exists. This is one of my favorite games, and I'm always happy to see people both understand it, and struggle to. Thanks for the video
His beard does look painted on though
All the better to draw attention to those big flobbin lips
That's because it's a tattoo
@@nannesoarit’s not
I always find it strange when people take the first game to be a commentary on violence in video games. I don't think that's the point. It isn't doing the classic "you enjoyed video game violence, does that mean you are bad?!". It's trying to put you in the shoes of jacket. A person that's being caught up in this violence and is only able to come to terms with his actions when all is said and done. It was never about you, it was about violence as a whole. Not just in video games, but in the real world. How violence can be this intoxicating thing that can completely take over a person, only to be looked at in retrospection.
Hotline Miami 2 delves even deeper into this, by showing how different people can be swept in by this violence. Richter is a gentle person who is forced to do horrible things by 50 blessings. He makes it clear that he hates what he has to do, and doesn't even resist if Jacket decides to get revenge on him. Jake is a political extremist who genuinly believes in what 50 blessings is doing. The game shows how these political ideals can lead someone to doing awful things because they believe and have been indoctionated into believing its whats right. Even to the point of him being tortured and killed for his actions. We see Pardo, a man who constantly fantasizes about violence. Making these scenarios of him being this badass super-cop that wipes out groups of criminals at a time. Wishing he could be this ultra-violent action hero. All leading to the point of him (at least form my speculation) committing real murder as the Miami Mutilator. And then there's Brown. A man who in all of this is a genuine pacifist who tries his hardest not to kill anyone. Yet in the end, still becomes a victim of this terrible cycle of violence.
Hotline Miami, though it may critique violence in media from time to time, is not mainly about violence in media and video games. Its about real world violence and all of the different ways it can occur, build up, and lead to awful things for those caught in it and perpetuating it. It's a game(s) that meditates on the causes and consequences of violence. And what truly makes people like to hurt other people.
This is just a bit of remembered intuition from way back when I first beat the game, but here we go:
The only people who would've made out alright (if not for the nukes) were also the only people to apparently find a measure of peace at the end of their arcs were also the only people to successfully WALK AWAY from all the violence.
Based on that, present me (perhaps reductively) concludes that the theme of the game is that violence, no matter the method or reason (IE vigilantism, revenge, military, less-lethal, sexual) , consumes all in its path and will eventually destroy the perpetrator as well.
Man, I think Jacob would really enjoy Hyper Light Drifter if he hasn't already heard of it. It's architecture and world-building seem to be right up his alley
I never thought I'd hear She Swallowed Burning Coals in a video essay before, putting that song in was pretty cool Jacob.
oh boy have I gotta another one for u ruclips.net/video/JsNm2YLrk30/видео.html
To add a bit that of my experience, i believe the game says something about casual violence. There are moments when you enter a game and get killed in 2 seconds. You just hit restart and are right at it again. Yes, that's an awesome game mechanic because you actually play once you are in a mission 99% of the time, no loading, no new screens, .. but at a certain point, after some time, it hit me hard. I just died, it was inevitable I died multiple times for a run, the movie and game violence depends on an illusion of immeasurabel luck or going back. I just killed 50 people, and when it went wrong, just rewind, I am the hero, as it is supposed to be. The hero slaughtering dozens. That's when the game made me realize the underpinnings of video game violence by taking it to the extreme in every single way. For me it was the re-spawn mechanics that hit hardest and made me think.
So, I realize, 3 years after this was posted, and hell I've watched this video several times, but somehow I had a random epiphany about what might be being said with the scene of sexual assault in the opening moments of Hotline Miami 2, and I think it comes down to the fact that the game was effectively *forced* to have an option to skip the sequence. Like, yes, sexual assault is horrible and traumatic and it's a good thing to be up front about what could be potentially triggering for survivors of said assault, especially considering how unfortunately common it is. ...But that's the only kind of violence that has the option to be skipped. Like, the more I think about it, the more it feels like both a commentary on how violence against women is sexualized, but also how sex in general is viewed as more taboo than grotesque acts of physical violence. A remark on how society as a whole refuses to treat the process through which the species continues to exist on a fundamental level because of ideas of impurity, but Jason Vorhees' murderous rampage through a summer camp gets an NES tie in, or how Rambo's PTSD fueled massacres can get action figures sold to kids. But if there's even a hint of something sexual, there has to be protections put in place to keep it in the dark.
I don't know it it's the case, and I'm sure there have been studies done on it but I do not have the mental bandwidth to go looking for them, but I can absolutely see how it would at the very least be a common line of thought that as men - particularly young men - are desensitized to acts of violence (and I do want to stress this would apply more to realistic depictions, super powers and the like wouldn't really apply there) they would be more likely to use said violence to get what they want, with the implication being the fact that a scene so horrific as a depiction of sexual assault being skippable would glorify it to the wrong demographic. Tell a teenager they aren't supposed to see something and they are almost guaranteed to seek it out. And thus create a sort of self fulfilling prophecy.
Again, I want to emphasize that being sensitive to survivors of sexual assault, providing content warnings and the ability to skip things that might re-traumatize people is a genuine, unalloyed good, but I am starting to think the scene's inclusion is a spotlight on how sexuality is demonized while violence is lionized. It's not a statement that I think pretends to have an answer, but is a sentiment I've seen a lot of creatives become frustrated with. How God of War can depict Kratos slicing and dicing and otherwise mutilating the Greek gods with wanton abandon, but Mass Effect gets dragged through the think piece mill of news networks as a pornographic game despite only having one scene, the scene showing nothing that wouldn't get much more than a PG13 rating at cinema, is optional, and depicts two consenting adults in a committed relationship.
favorite essayist covering my (regrettably) favorite game holy SHIT
nothing to regret. its a good game with a great message.... depending on what message you get from it
@@artemiswallace8716 i meant regrettably as in i absolutely love the idea of playing until i open the game 😅 it's so fun until its bloodboiling tbh
@@nickyt9350 A huge mood.
The first game is infinitely repayable. You need to be in the right (masochistic) mindset to play hlm2 again 😂
I always read the intro sequence to HM2 as a "You wanted more violence? You wanted us to dial it up to 11?... Really? You guys are sick, how about we just make a good game instead, deal?"
I doubt that's the whole story; but I kind of felt that was the general idea behind the scene at least.
It was, Denis said it in an interview.
Hotline Miami 1: Shoot people on screen
Hotline Miami 2: Get shot by people off-screen
You know a game is deep when even Jacobs massive brain can't pinpoint what it is about
hotline miami 2 is the closest game to really touching how real world violence can feel. It's never truly senseless, there's always some reason and motive, yet as people its hard to ignore all the paths that could have prevented violence... Leading us to focus on analyzing the reasons why someone would choose a violent path, and ultimately trying to sympathize... if only to maybe distance ourselves from the idea that, with enough trauma and stress, anyone could be a Jacket.
This is why it's impossible to get to the heart of HM2, why all roads end in the same place, because that is where we still are as a greater society. Just like in the real world, the motive of violence is almost always either unthinking and instantaneous, while often unnecessary... or it's too esoteric, vague, and in pursuit of some grand greater "cause" that is very disconnected from the reality of today. Just like in real life.
This is also why the military levels feel different. The military levels are neither. They are arguably justified, not because of "patriotism," but because of the legitimate threat that the Hawaii soviets represent to the average person. Thus, everyone involved has had the time to think this through, and understand that they want to do what they are doing. This is why Jacket, in hotline miami 1, takes to the phonecalls without question. As a man with a moral compass (vomiting after killing the hobo) who also loves violence, the phonecalls took Jacket back to that equilibrium of premeditated violence, against a "legitimate threat."
I laugh every time I think too hard about the "point" of Hotline Miami, because my brain always remembers this really over-acted line from the Volition Punisher game, where a random goon asks "You think this is a game?" but the word "game" echoes several times.
Also, great video essay and human beard.
I fucking lost it at the painted beard thing, I’ve been thinking it a couple of videos in, but never read the comments on it ? Lmao
I love this game. Hotline Miami 1 is one of the most perfect games I've ever played. 2 felt like it was deliberately designed to hurt people like me. Yeah you could clear all of the levels in the original with good scores, but in 2 you have to scrape your way by and die over and over. Yeah you could piece together what was going on in the original, here's even more unanswered questions.
I must say that I enjoyed the original game more, but 2 is one of the most respectable games I've ever played. The first game asks if we like hurting other people; the second game says "We do, too."
two years later and i still replay the section where geller says 'HORRIBLE INCREDIBLE UNMITIGATED VIOLENCE' its such a good segue i love it dearly
Damn, when the "you are the blood" song comes up it still gives me chills. I love that ending and the way it simply ends everyone and everything, including whatever the hell was going in your head about where the plot was going.
"i don't understand hotline Miami"
Dennaton: good!
HM2 does have a meaning, but it's disguised under lots of other themes it tries to push onto you, but it all comes back to a few important themes, which all stem from each characters.
Beard is most interesting, but only because he carries the most seniority in the series (along with Jacket), so for me, his message (and Jacket's) is probably the most important one of all. His message for me is clearly one of anti-war sentiments. His missions being set in Hawaii is parallel to Vietnam, where people were vehemently opposed to the latter. His prequel story ends in a failed mission, taking out most of his crew. His own story ends in nuclear annihilation, the worst type of annihilation we could face these days. One could think that his life mirrors the ideal story, with an abrupt bad ending. He fights for what he believes is good and does eventually live out a good life, owning a store, but ends up with the bad ending after all, as violence harbors more violence, always.
I think that's the most important take away from this whole series of games, all these people take part in violence, either as a means to an end, or pushed into violence without their consent. In the end, no matter how little or much you take part in the action, everyone gets the short end of the stick. The first game hinted at this, where the game tries to make you realize that you like violence, the second game shows you how violence breeds more violence, and how it all goes to shit if you keep trying to fix everything with violence, what happens if you obsess and idolize violence like you do in the first game. That's my ultimate take away, and I guess all these characters and what they represent always leads back to violence or harm (either self, or towards others), so that's what these games are ultimately about.
24:05 You were so close to finally understanding hotline miami 2. Just so close.
Wow so true😵
Your beard DOES look painted on! Also the best videogame commentary online. So insightful and eloquent.
The entire game permeates this feeling of "you made us make a sequel that will never live up to the expectations set by the first game so we will punish you for it but in a sadistically fun way" and i love it
hahahhaha my very well be
yep. the first game had a metanarrative about videogames and violence, the second had a metanarrative about the nature of game sequels.
To this day I still get a chill through my whole body and a bit misty eyed every time I see the nuke scene