I know everyone is loving the signalis stuff but i just wanna say im so happy to see PREY get some love and attention, its an indredible game with i think one of the most compelling narratives of the decade. To see someone tackle the ambition aspect of it is so satsifying, cuz while prey is a game about the joys of being human, its also a game about the pitfalls of it too
Just started the video but want to make a small correction. Japan was already on the way to surrender now that the USSR could turn its whole attention to it. The US bombed them so they surrendered to the US and not the USSR as they already got the surrender from the third Reich. So the bombs were dropped not to end the war and save lifes but for a political and economic advantage.
really appreciate this comment. i was thinking the same thing, that the bombs were dropped not to end the war, but for far more nuanced reasons, and significantly less "noble" ones, if there could ever be a noble reason to bomb a city. so often the narrative is perpetuated (intentionally, of course) that the USA absolute HAD to drop those bombs - both of them! - or else the war would drag on and isn't that a bad thing? the use of atomic weapons on civilian populations is justified by this idea that more people might have suffered if the war went on longer, but EVEN IF that's true... idk. i just think there's an important difference between causing soldiers to suffer in a war they already understand is a hellscape, and wiping out millions of civilians and forever scarring their descendents for generations to come, and i'm not even talking about the physical scars because we didn't yet understand the longterm effects of radiation exposure. they sure as heck knew what sort of an impression getting bombed to hell leaves behind on the psyche, though. but i'm not that eloquent with my words, i'm just verbose. if anyone is curious to know more, i encourage you to check out Shaun (yes, the youtube channel is just called shaun, ironically he also has a skull motif for an "avatar", so to speak) and his video about the bombings of the two cities. it very much reshaped my understanding of that historical event and is well worth the watch if you're still unsure about whether or not the USA "needed" to do what we did. (spoiler alert: no the f we didn't)
@@Darkfyyre the US land invasion would’ve just as many if not more civilians casualties. The Imperial Japanese Army had no issue sending them to the front lines, using women and children as human shields. They never should have been involved in the conflict but the government had no issue using them as such. Japanese military doctrine at time largely believed that there was no incorrect way to win a war. That was how they justified everything from kamikazes to false surrenders to torturing and killing medic to however many other crimes they committed. The USA is guilty as well of course, they did kill those civilians after all but it remains Japans fault that their hand was forced at all. Civilian deaths were unavoidable. Let’s be thankful that the US chose the option with less of them.
1) THIS IS SUCH A GOOD VIDEO THAT IM USING IT AS INSPIRATION FOR ONE OF THE VILLAINS OF MY TTRPG CAMPAIGN 2) this video felt longer than it was in a very very good way, because I was hanging onto every word and processing my own feelings and thoughts. Genuinely very entertaining, I also reflected on how outer wilds and its DLC fit into the theme of ambition, entitlement, and sacrifice. 3) thank you for music that I'm absolutely using for my campaign
Important distinction for Control: The Foundation DLC reveals that the head of the Federal Bureau of Control was mentally coerced by The Board, a strange higher being that's possibly some sort of alien hive mind, into moving FBC HQ to The Oldest House. There was a degree of humans touching something they didn't fully understand, and that continues to happen, but there is also definitely extra-planar meddling. Likewise, the majority of the problems caused are because of The Hiss, a different extra -planar entity whose only purpose seems to be to spread and infect, like a sort of semi-sentient plague. The Oldest House didn't create the Hiss or The Board, but rather the House is a highly sought after location of power that rival inter-dimensional powers seem to keep fighting each other for.
Yeah, I'm a bit confused with your thoughts here, Connor. Control is definitely about ambition and arrogance being stretched too thin, and the obvious results that leads into when added some extreme paranoia, but The Oldest House itself isn't really a villain. In fact, is at most indifferent, but I'd state it's benign, considering Ahti seems to be pretty cool with it, and Ahti, of course, can do no wrong.
To answer Connor’s question, I’d say greed is far and away the worst of human qualities as there is no external benefit beyond the ability of an individual to amass wealth. However, unchecked ambition often pairs with greed as the concepts of entitlement, conceit and a sense of superiority are embedded in both characteristics. Loved the video!!!
I'm so glad to see Prey get some love. I feel like every time I hear it talked about, people just call it "space bioshock", but there's so much more to it than that.
First off, if this is a Signalis video, excellent. Cant get enough of that beautiful, wonderful game. Second, I still got the original notification on my phone. I know what you did, Connor. I know what you did!
I dont normally comment on videos, and I am totally new to your channel, but this was a fantastic video. I was drawn to it because of the Signalis thumbnail, but I was gripped for the whole runtime. Your connections you made to the warning message in Signalis blew my mind, and I cant thank you enough for putting out such a great video.
so you’re telling me we covered human ambition, underwater facilities, transferring consciousnesses, AND black goo and not even one mention of soma? smh absolutely beautiful video though, you’re killing it dude
the "dusty room" mentioned in the Signalis section is the ship's broken-down nuclear reactor. Ariane is suffering from radiation poisoning, and the original Elster died from it, but that's not what's affecting the facility. Ariane's haywire bioresonance is- the tumourous appearance of the corruption everywhere is due to her subconscious mind transposing it's own pains onto reality. there may have been something beneath Leng's surface that helped this process along or otherwise amplified it, made it worse.
Currently watching, I am not all the way through but the editing/ writing of this vid is so good! Cosmic Amesia sounds like an expeirence of a game (Also happy belated b-Day to your dad!)
YESSSS I’ve been a fan of Sarcastic Scribbles for so long. The new art looks and sounds amazing! Makes me want to write up a campaign just to use it in, lol
Can’t wait to see what I’m sure will be an excellent video, I love the topic you chose Connor. Human ambition is indeed one of the greatest, and yet the most deadly and destructive aspects there is of human psychology, as while it can lead to things like great empires or leaderships, families, and dreams being realized, it can also power us into nightmares and we’ll never even realize it until it is far, far too late.
I think its telling that a lot of the games you talked about are one of my favourites! I love stories (or more accurate: cautionary tales) like this! :D In some weird way I was reminded of Nausicaä and how the violence and ambition is portrayed there.
5:00 it bothers me to no end. It feels like watching someone miss a mate in 1. It isn’t exactly wrong, but the phrasing just feels so inelegant. Ambition, in my mind, is a singleminded striving. It’s a goal so forceful it overtakes everything else. When you believe in something hard enough, you lose faith in everything else. When you’re so driven towards success, you will forget the chance of failure. When your desires outgrow yourself, all that stands in their way is your own well-being. Your videos are quite good. I’m just extremely irrational about these things, so when one of these moments comes up I feel an overwhelming desire to close the video. I watched the whole thing though, one blunder does not ruin the match!
4:00 I do feel like there is something that a lot of people don’t look at when talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And that is the casualties that were predicted to occur if the war continued. To put it in perspective, the US has not minted any new purple hearts since world war 2. Why? Because they stockpiled them due to those predicted casualties. Millions in an invasion, or hundred thousands in two bombings. Which is worse? Why is it worse? The greater loss of life over a longer time or the smaller loss of life in moments? When talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it isn’t the deaths that are the tragedies. It is that they were the better option. The bombs were quick, ‘clean’, and had minimal loss of life. That is why they are tragic.
I’m literally designing a brutalist cityscape while watching this video and to say I gasped when you said you loved Brutalism 🥰 Genuinely I’ve been catching up on all your vids and I think I’ve rapidly found my new favourite creator.
i clicked this video and tabbed away to listen in the background, and the second i recognized the bioshock opening i reacted like a sleeper agent whose activation phrase has been broadcast over loudspeakers. im literally 1 minute in but i already know this is gonna be good
Just finished watching Inventing Anna on Netflix today and Boy Howdy do I feel like this was the Perfect video to compliment that whole mess of a story!
If you read Signalis closely, you actually find that Gestalt and Replikas are treated... equally disposably. The facility on Leng is a gulag built for "reeducation" purposes, with dissident elements sent there as punishment. The Replika forces are disposable, yes, and heavily restricted, certainly... but they are also granted IMMENSE authority, serving as cops, secret police, and even facility administrators (the Leng facility is, after all, controlled by a Replika). Replikas even serve in education - during the academy flashbacks we can learn that a Eule was a teacher. I think it's actually one of the most interesting aspects of the setting, that it paints a dystopia without a straightforward upper- and under-class. Or, perhaps more accurately, the upper-class remains unseen and distant, some technocratic apparatus that rules by merit of controlling Replika production, but which has equally impoverished and mistreated its Gestalt and Replika workers. (I'll also say that your analysis of the plot is... not the most accurate. The most agreed-upon interpretation of events is that Ariane never went to the Leng facility at all, and that the "sickness" is in fact radiation sickness of some sort... but that it's an echo Ariane is psychically projecting somehow after /she/ got sick from the reactor aboard her ship breaking down and she was placed in suspended animation. The causality between "they dug something up under Leng" and "Ariane is creating some sort of psychic nightmare" is intentionally vague, but they aren't arranged the way you imply.)
Okay, specifically: Ariane and Elster were put on what turned out to be a one-way trip. Their ship breaks down over time - the weird foggy room with the Geiger counter ticking is the ship's reactor, if you pay attention to what Elster says upon inspecting it. They both gradually succumbed to radiation poisoning, with Ariane spending more and more time in the suspended animation pod and Elster eventually dying and leaving her trapped inside. Most of the game is implied to be... some sort of psychic nightmare Ariane is creating. How much of it is "real" is extremely ambiguous, but things like the disease on Leng don't take much thinking to realize are... metaphoric. The growing meat that begins consuming the levels is a manifestation of Ariane's radiation-induced cancer, and the disease mirrors the symptoms of radiation poisoning. There isn't really enough information to say how much of the game is "real" beyond the backstory we get about how Ariane and Elster ended up on that ship; some interpretations involve the incident on Leng really happening in some way, that they somehow "dug up" something that unleashed Ariane's nightmare, while others see the whole game as more directly a dream Ariane is having about Elster rescuing her, with no bearing on reality but a lot of things pulled from Ariane's experiences (like how she was /almost/ sent to the Leng facility before qualifying for the mission on the ship).
I seen someone's video talking about what ending for Prey they chose- the kill them all ending. I agree with that person about why Typhon Morgan, even after learning to be human, would kill Alex and the researcher operators- because what is the most human expression besides empathy if not rage, rage after you learn what was done to you. And on Black Mesa- what was behind their back, besides blind search, is US Military. Unlike Aperture, who were just in the "inventing" bussiness, Black Mesa was answering directly to the State, and they supposed to bring the tech for military use. Both Aperture and Black Mesa were stated to be in some financial trouble and it was Black Mesa who (to Aperture's ire) got suddenly "more funding"- one that probably arived due to Xen research. Keep the teleportation research going and the funding from Uncle Sam will be flowing
hey there man, i really appreciate you mentioning music played in this vid, i love music When i watched your video Dark americana: horror of home, though, i really enjoyed two tracks on the background and couldnt find them anywhere, even through shazam they were playing at 21:09 and 24:11 in that Dark Americana vid i would really appreciate if you told me even one of those musical pieces's names appreciate your content man, thank you for all that interesting stuff, i'm just a real music addict person i guess❤
I’ll look into it- I didn’t edit that video, and most of the audio is from Royalty Free sites on that one, but if I can find anything, I’ll respond to this comment with it!
WOW, what an inquisitive video. This speaks so much to the nature of humanity and gives a lot to think about. How important is pursuit compared to stability? And it's really a fine line to walk since sometimes, there's no way to know, but of course it's not always so blurry. Like you have so many people building capital at the expensive of others, you have, as you mentioned, hiroshima and nagasaki's bombings, but you also have things like the plane and electronics and yeah, it's a double edged sword. The industrialization of the world is a great example of the pursuit of knowledge vs stability. It's improved so many lives, allowed for so much more time, but now our planet is sheathed in smog. I knew of the problem but not its root. I suppose the opposite of ambition would be temperance, but some people truly don't care enough to know (cough cough billionaires)
You should on down here to DC, we got Brutalist architecture for dayzzz. Lots of government buildings just south of the national mall are that style, but the best example is our Metro system
Another good game that deals with ambitious goals being the casualty of mental health decline and hubris like some of the ones mentioned here is Spec Ops: The Line. ❤
Re Signalis (HEAVY SPOILERS TO FOLLOW, SERIOUSLY, TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED AND DON'T WANT IT RUINED!!!) ... Near the middle and final acts of the game, we learn that Elster and Ariane were a part of a doomed exploratory mission to colonize planets far away from their home solar system. They were placed in a craft and launched into deep space, but, unbeknownst to them, were more or less pointed a direction at random and only given enough supplies for a few years. Eventually, they receive their last communication from Eusan, telling them that, if they haven't found a suitable planet by this point, they likely never will, their supplies will run out soon and that it's recommended that they euthanize themselves. Ariane and Elster press on, Ariane taking continual rests within the stasis pod to conserve supplies while Elster keeps watch. Eventually, the ship's nuclear reactor fails and the radiation from it cannot be contained, causing it to spill into the main areas if the ship and cause radiation sickness in Ariane. The fact that this bleeds over into the replikas on Sierpinski station is likely due to something called bioresonance, a not-well understood energy field that Eusan has used for numerous purposes including space travel and replika creation. There are some gestalts who possess a genetic mutation that allows them to control bioresonance and that lets them do all kinds of crazy reality warping stuff. Ariane is revealed late in the game to have been a gestalt that can control bioresonance, and it's heavily implied that this power is causing her to rewrite reality on Sierpinski Station while she is slowly dying of radiation poisoning, causing replikas to become infected and mutated, since they are particularly susceptible to bioresonance. The bioresonance is likely what is also causing reality itself around the station to break down and echoes of her life to play out around the corpse of the mining platform. As for how she was able to affect Sierpinski while in deep space or why her ship is in the crust of the planet, there's multiple theories that I won't get into. Tl:dr - you're right on the money with the radiation poisoning stuff, but it's due to weird reality -bending powers and not just, like, tunneling too deep and running into something radioactive.
I think this is a good video highlighting ambition gone wrong using video game narratives. However i think it falls a bit flat on the whole "Ambition is the most dangerous quality of human beings part". As said at the final parts of the video, that ambition itseld isnt inherently evil, immoral or bad, but when used by the greedy, stupid, and overly confident use it is when it blows up in everyone's face. Then why is the trait that gets tagged "Humanity's most dangerous" not used for Greedy, Hubristic, or Ignorant/Stupid, Or some trait that makes those? Its like saying the knife is the murderer instead of the actual murderer.
Your interpretation of Signalis is quite odd. The game makes it pretty clear that it (or at least the S-23 Sierpinski Mining Facility) is set not on Earth (now Vineta) but on the distant world of Leng (formerly Pluto). We also know that Ariane was indeed suffering from radiation sickness due to her proximity to the failing reactor of the Penrose-512. The Lovecraftian thing that had been found on Leng had nothing to do with it. Furthermore, the Nation of Eusan was not motivated by success or progress (especially of the economic variety) but by power and control. They’re a revolutionary dictatorship loosely based on the German Democratic Republic - the USSR controlled part of Germany that regularly oppressed and censored its people. Replika are not second class citizens as there aren’t any first class citizens to begin with. Gestalts are crushed by the brutal (presumably communist) system of Eusan governance all the same. That said, it’s implied that the Gestalt population of S-23 Sierpinski was treated even worse. While the Replika dorms are furnished, Gestalt dorms are not. Gestalts are regularly interrogated and killed for “counter-revolutionary” behaviour. The Replika may only be tools in the eyes in the eye of the state and yet they are handled with more care than we see given to any Gestalt likely because it’s the best way to keep both Replika and Gestalt productive. So much have people fixated on the robot lesbians that they’ve gotten that those robot lesbians are all working in a space gulag.
Also... Signalis jeez, this gonna be a spoiler because you got a lot of things..... wrong (?) Ok, not wrong but in kinda way that seems to be differently insiniuated in game, tho the radiation is involved. SPOILER HERE: Ariane is suffering from radiation poisoning, but not because of something in the mines, but because of the ship she was on falling apart- she and first ELSTER were a part of doomed jurney in search of more habitable worlds and Usan ambition and imorality shows here: if you were on such mission and did not find something Usan conciders you dead, expended bullet. Tho due to exisrence of essentially psychics in that world and Ariane being one she basically projected her suffering into the ether. Be it out of some connection or due to cosmic accident- Sierpiński, the mining collony, recieved it and started to change. The mines do look indeed like a nuclear waste disposal facility, or outright a nuclear reactor in construction, and the plot structure is very dream-logical so the "REAL SIERPIŃSKI" probably looks or looked differently. But we are stuck in the other hell, one where someone's suffering and quite possibly memories from reading past books mingle with what's real- and what another memory to bring as you are dying due to radiation poisoning if not a nuclear disposal site, a grim reminder of what is killing you. And something to add: if I was to put in words what ambition is present in SIGNALIS, the one that would fit your video, it would be overambition and hubris of Usan, both Empire and Nation, ambition to controll everything, to reach everywhere, and blind belief that the people will bend to satisfy that ambition. It broke Empire in half once, and will do it again and again, especially with the knowledge that the psionics of the setting are not understood and relying on them stifled the progress of technology and research.
I know you didn't mean it this way, and you've probably just grown up hearing the myth before, but the idea that Earth is becoming overpopulated is a part of eco-fascism, and it's a part of manufacturing excuses for things like genocide or eugenics. In reality, we have a problem not with not having enough resources to support everyone, but with a portion of the population over-consuming to the point where it takes resources from others. Imperialism, colonialism, and to a large extent the current global trade system are to blame for the issues humanity as a whole faces in things like mass starvation or mass poverty. I'd really recommend doing some googling or reading into this subject, and maybe making a correction to this video
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
I know everyone is loving the signalis stuff but i just wanna say im so happy to see PREY get some love and attention, its an indredible game with i think one of the most compelling narratives of the decade. To see someone tackle the ambition aspect of it is so satsifying, cuz while prey is a game about the joys of being human, its also a game about the pitfalls of it too
Just started the video but want to make a small correction. Japan was already on the way to surrender now that the USSR could turn its whole attention to it. The US bombed them so they surrendered to the US and not the USSR as they already got the surrender from the third Reich.
So the bombs were dropped not to end the war and save lifes but for a political and economic advantage.
I see- This is a valuable distinction, and potentially serves the point to an even greater degree. Thanks for the insight!
Which I think only makes your point stronger. Unchecked imperial ambition is the source of so much of the worlds horror.
really appreciate this comment. i was thinking the same thing, that the bombs were dropped not to end the war, but for far more nuanced reasons, and significantly less "noble" ones, if there could ever be a noble reason to bomb a city. so often the narrative is perpetuated (intentionally, of course) that the USA absolute HAD to drop those bombs - both of them! - or else the war would drag on and isn't that a bad thing? the use of atomic weapons on civilian populations is justified by this idea that more people might have suffered if the war went on longer, but EVEN IF that's true... idk. i just think there's an important difference between causing soldiers to suffer in a war they already understand is a hellscape, and wiping out millions of civilians and forever scarring their descendents for generations to come, and i'm not even talking about the physical scars because we didn't yet understand the longterm effects of radiation exposure. they sure as heck knew what sort of an impression getting bombed to hell leaves behind on the psyche, though.
but i'm not that eloquent with my words, i'm just verbose. if anyone is curious to know more, i encourage you to check out Shaun (yes, the youtube channel is just called shaun, ironically he also has a skull motif for an "avatar", so to speak) and his video about the bombings of the two cities. it very much reshaped my understanding of that historical event and is well worth the watch if you're still unsure about whether or not the USA "needed" to do what we did. (spoiler alert: no the f we didn't)
@@Darkfyyre the US land invasion would’ve just as many if not more civilians casualties. The Imperial Japanese Army had no issue sending them to the front lines, using women and children as human shields. They never should have been involved in the conflict but the government had no issue using them as such. Japanese military doctrine at time largely believed that there was no incorrect way to win a war. That was how they justified everything from kamikazes to false surrenders to torturing and killing medic to however many other crimes they committed. The USA is guilty as well of course, they did kill those civilians after all but it remains Japans fault that their hand was forced at all.
Civilian deaths were unavoidable. Let’s be thankful that the US chose the option with less of them.
I'm a simple woman. I see Signalis in a thumbnail, I click.
Fr
1) THIS IS SUCH A GOOD VIDEO THAT IM USING IT AS INSPIRATION FOR ONE OF THE VILLAINS OF MY TTRPG CAMPAIGN
2) this video felt longer than it was in a very very good way, because I was hanging onto every word and processing my own feelings and thoughts. Genuinely very entertaining, I also reflected on how outer wilds and its DLC fit into the theme of ambition, entitlement, and sacrifice.
3) thank you for music that I'm absolutely using for my campaign
CONNOR WITH THE SIGNALIS????
Important distinction for Control: The Foundation DLC reveals that the head of the Federal Bureau of Control was mentally coerced by The Board, a strange higher being that's possibly some sort of alien hive mind, into moving FBC HQ to The Oldest House. There was a degree of humans touching something they didn't fully understand, and that continues to happen, but there is also definitely extra-planar meddling. Likewise, the majority of the problems caused are because of The Hiss, a different extra -planar entity whose only purpose seems to be to spread and infect, like a sort of semi-sentient plague. The Oldest House didn't create the Hiss or The Board, but rather the House is a highly sought after location of power that rival inter-dimensional powers seem to keep fighting each other for.
Yeah, I'm a bit confused with your thoughts here, Connor. Control is definitely about ambition and arrogance being stretched too thin, and the obvious results that leads into when added some extreme paranoia, but The Oldest House itself isn't really a villain. In fact, is at most indifferent, but I'd state it's benign, considering Ahti seems to be pretty cool with it, and Ahti, of course, can do no wrong.
The music in the beginning was chillingly fantastic.
To answer Connor’s question, I’d say greed is far and away the worst of human qualities as there is no external benefit beyond the ability of an individual to amass wealth. However, unchecked ambition often pairs with greed as the concepts of entitlement, conceit and a sense of superiority are embedded in both characteristics. Loved the video!!!
So basically the issue isn't Ambition, it's Hubris
I'm so glad to see Prey get some love. I feel like every time I hear it talked about, people just call it "space bioshock", but there's so much more to it than that.
CONNOR MADE A SIGNALIS VIDEO??????????????? We eating good tonight ladies and gentlemen
First off, if this is a Signalis video, excellent. Cant get enough of that beautiful, wonderful game.
Second, I still got the original notification on my phone. I know what you did, Connor. I know what you did!
The consequences of my actions…
@@spookymcg I'll destroy the evidence since you just made me want to replay Prey.
This is awesome dude, extremely well produced and beautifully written. Love to see it.
Thank you!!!
I dont normally comment on videos, and I am totally new to your channel, but this was a fantastic video. I was drawn to it because of the Signalis thumbnail, but I was gripped for the whole runtime. Your connections you made to the warning message in Signalis blew my mind, and I cant thank you enough for putting out such a great video.
so you’re telling me we covered human ambition, underwater facilities, transferring consciousnesses, AND black goo and not even one mention of soma? smh
absolutely beautiful video though, you’re killing it dude
Oh man, Soma would be another great example… I’ll find a way to talk about it in another essay, I promise!
@@spookymcg please do as that’s one of my favorites!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY (to your dad)!
the "dusty room" mentioned in the Signalis section is the ship's broken-down nuclear reactor. Ariane is suffering from radiation poisoning, and the original Elster died from it, but that's not what's affecting the facility. Ariane's haywire bioresonance is- the tumourous appearance of the corruption everywhere is due to her subconscious mind transposing it's own pains onto reality. there may have been something beneath Leng's surface that helped this process along or otherwise amplified it, made it worse.
FUCK YEAH CONTROL MENTION!!!
I’ve been wanting Connor to cover this for ages!!
EVERY VIDEO HITS I LOVED THIS
Currently watching, I am not all the way through but the editing/ writing of this vid is so good! Cosmic Amesia sounds like an expeirence of a game (Also happy belated b-Day to your dad!)
Thank you!! I’ve learned already that I got a bit wrong about the deeper plot, but as an experience, it’s pretty accurate of a title…
YESSSS I’ve been a fan of Sarcastic Scribbles for so long. The new art looks and sounds amazing!
Makes me want to write up a campaign just to use it in, lol
Do it!
The video game references just keep getting better and better omgggg 🔥🔥🔥
Can’t wait to see what I’m sure will be an excellent video, I love the topic you chose Connor. Human ambition is indeed one of the greatest, and yet the most deadly and destructive aspects there is of human psychology, as while it can lead to things like great empires or leaderships, families, and dreams being realized, it can also power us into nightmares and we’ll never even realize it until it is far, far too late.
I think its telling that a lot of the games you talked about are one of my favourites! I love stories (or more accurate: cautionary tales) like this! :D
In some weird way I was reminded of Nausicaä and how the violence and ambition is portrayed there.
Excellent analysis. That's a thesis paper, right there. Seriously, great video.
5:00 it bothers me to no end. It feels like watching someone miss a mate in 1.
It isn’t exactly wrong, but the phrasing just feels so inelegant. Ambition, in my mind, is a singleminded striving. It’s a goal so forceful it overtakes everything else.
When you believe in something hard enough, you lose faith in everything else.
When you’re so driven towards success, you will forget the chance of failure.
When your desires outgrow yourself, all that stands in their way is your own well-being.
Your videos are quite good. I’m just extremely irrational about these things, so when one of these moments comes up I feel an overwhelming desire to close the video.
I watched the whole thing though, one blunder does not ruin the match!
Followed you yesterday this is great!
4:00
I do feel like there is something that a lot of people don’t look at when talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And that is the casualties that were predicted to occur if the war continued. To put it in perspective, the US has not minted any new purple hearts since world war 2. Why? Because they stockpiled them due to those predicted casualties. Millions in an invasion, or hundred thousands in two bombings. Which is worse? Why is it worse? The greater loss of life over a longer time or the smaller loss of life in moments?
When talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it isn’t the deaths that are the tragedies. It is that they were the better option. The bombs were quick, ‘clean’, and had minimal loss of life. That is why they are tragic.
This was the best thing I've seen in a while! Great work!
Connor, you fool! You've messed with the natural order! Your reckless pursuit of making thought-provoking RUclips videos will kill us all!
new connor mcgrath video who cheered (it’s me i cheered)
Woo (me too i also cheered)
Im a simple man,i see a new Connor video,i click
You are a beacon of wisdom.
I’m literally designing a brutalist cityscape while watching this video and to say I gasped when you said you loved Brutalism 🥰
Genuinely I’ve been catching up on all your vids and I think I’ve rapidly found my new favourite creator.
34 minutes and 13 seconds before you mentioned House of Leaves. New record, maybe?
i clicked this video and tabbed away to listen in the background, and the second i recognized the bioshock opening i reacted like a sleeper agent whose activation phrase has been broadcast over loudspeakers. im literally 1 minute in but i already know this is gonna be good
Absolute 10/10 once again. Can’t wait for the next one!
Thanks man!
LETS GOOO CONNOR MADE A VIDEO ABOUT SIGNALIS!!
Just finished watching Inventing Anna on Netflix today and Boy Howdy do I feel like this was the Perfect video to compliment that whole mess of a story!
34:33
My ears are perked
If you read Signalis closely, you actually find that Gestalt and Replikas are treated... equally disposably.
The facility on Leng is a gulag built for "reeducation" purposes, with dissident elements sent there as punishment. The Replika forces are disposable, yes, and heavily restricted, certainly... but they are also granted IMMENSE authority, serving as cops, secret police, and even facility administrators (the Leng facility is, after all, controlled by a Replika).
Replikas even serve in education - during the academy flashbacks we can learn that a Eule was a teacher.
I think it's actually one of the most interesting aspects of the setting, that it paints a dystopia without a straightforward upper- and under-class. Or, perhaps more accurately, the upper-class remains unseen and distant, some technocratic apparatus that rules by merit of controlling Replika production, but which has equally impoverished and mistreated its Gestalt and Replika workers.
(I'll also say that your analysis of the plot is... not the most accurate. The most agreed-upon interpretation of events is that Ariane never went to the Leng facility at all, and that the "sickness" is in fact radiation sickness of some sort... but that it's an echo Ariane is psychically projecting somehow after /she/ got sick from the reactor aboard her ship breaking down and she was placed in suspended animation. The causality between "they dug something up under Leng" and "Ariane is creating some sort of psychic nightmare" is intentionally vague, but they aren't arranged the way you imply.)
Okay, specifically: Ariane and Elster were put on what turned out to be a one-way trip. Their ship breaks down over time - the weird foggy room with the Geiger counter ticking is the ship's reactor, if you pay attention to what Elster says upon inspecting it. They both gradually succumbed to radiation poisoning, with Ariane spending more and more time in the suspended animation pod and Elster eventually dying and leaving her trapped inside. Most of the game is implied to be... some sort of psychic nightmare Ariane is creating. How much of it is "real" is extremely ambiguous, but things like the disease on Leng don't take much thinking to realize are... metaphoric. The growing meat that begins consuming the levels is a manifestation of Ariane's radiation-induced cancer, and the disease mirrors the symptoms of radiation poisoning.
There isn't really enough information to say how much of the game is "real" beyond the backstory we get about how Ariane and Elster ended up on that ship; some interpretations involve the incident on Leng really happening in some way, that they somehow "dug up" something that unleashed Ariane's nightmare, while others see the whole game as more directly a dream Ariane is having about Elster rescuing her, with no bearing on reality but a lot of things pulled from Ariane's experiences (like how she was /almost/ sent to the Leng facility before qualifying for the mission on the ship).
I seen someone's video talking about what ending for Prey they chose- the kill them all ending.
I agree with that person about why Typhon Morgan, even after learning to be human, would kill Alex and the researcher operators- because what is the most human expression besides empathy if not rage, rage after you learn what was done to you.
And on Black Mesa- what was behind their back, besides blind search, is US Military. Unlike Aperture, who were just in the "inventing" bussiness, Black Mesa was answering directly to the State, and they supposed to bring the tech for military use.
Both Aperture and Black Mesa were stated to be in some financial trouble and it was Black Mesa who (to Aperture's ire) got suddenly "more funding"- one that probably arived due to Xen research.
Keep the teleportation research going and the funding from Uncle Sam will be flowing
Underrated channel
31:09 cave johnson *would* put his brain in a zune lmao
Just to see if he could
hey there man, i really appreciate you mentioning music played in this vid, i love music
When i watched your video Dark americana: horror of home, though, i really enjoyed two tracks on the background and couldnt find them anywhere, even through shazam
they were playing at 21:09 and 24:11 in that Dark Americana vid
i would really appreciate if you told me even one of those musical pieces's names
appreciate your content man, thank you for all that interesting stuff, i'm just a real music addict person i guess❤
I’ll look into it- I didn’t edit that video, and most of the audio is from Royalty Free sites on that one, but if I can find anything, I’ll respond to this comment with it!
I was wondering what the music playing was the whole video, so the end was a nice surprise
YO CONTROL?????
Amazing video as always 👍
WOW, what an inquisitive video. This speaks so much to the nature of humanity and gives a lot to think about. How important is pursuit compared to stability? And it's really a fine line to walk since sometimes, there's no way to know, but of course it's not always so blurry. Like you have so many people building capital at the expensive of others, you have, as you mentioned, hiroshima and nagasaki's bombings, but you also have things like the plane and electronics and yeah, it's a double edged sword. The industrialization of the world is a great example of the pursuit of knowledge vs stability. It's improved so many lives, allowed for so much more time, but now our planet is sheathed in smog.
I knew of the problem but not its root. I suppose the opposite of ambition would be temperance, but some people truly don't care enough to know (cough cough billionaires)
Oughh i loved this video !!!
This video is great, so much that when signalis appeared I closed for the spoilers
Break them eggs, sometimes it takes a rapture to get cool magic blood powers.
A minor apocalypse here or there is a risk we must be willing to take.
WOAH I WAS JUST WATCHING SOME OF MY FAVOURITE VIDEO ESSAYS ON RUclips AND I SEE MY FAVOURITE GAME!? FUCK YEAH
Amazing video. Keep up the good work v
ambission
connor’s back guys 🙏😼‼️ time to get spooky
What a great video!
You should on down here to DC, we got Brutalist architecture for dayzzz. Lots of government buildings just south of the national mall are that style, but the best example is our Metro system
When you mention vaults, I thought you were talking about vaulttec.
Another good game that deals with ambitious goals being the casualty of mental health decline and hubris like some of the ones mentioned here is Spec Ops: The Line. ❤
Great example!
Oh so that's what the signal is
:3
Re Signalis (HEAVY SPOILERS TO FOLLOW, SERIOUSLY, TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED AND DON'T WANT IT RUINED!!!)
...
Near the middle and final acts of the game, we learn that Elster and Ariane were a part of a doomed exploratory mission to colonize planets far away from their home solar system. They were placed in a craft and launched into deep space, but, unbeknownst to them, were more or less pointed a direction at random and only given enough supplies for a few years. Eventually, they receive their last communication from Eusan, telling them that, if they haven't found a suitable planet by this point, they likely never will, their supplies will run out soon and that it's recommended that they euthanize themselves.
Ariane and Elster press on, Ariane taking continual rests within the stasis pod to conserve supplies while Elster keeps watch. Eventually, the ship's nuclear reactor fails and the radiation from it cannot be contained, causing it to spill into the main areas if the ship and cause radiation sickness in Ariane.
The fact that this bleeds over into the replikas on Sierpinski station is likely due to something called bioresonance, a not-well understood energy field that Eusan has used for numerous purposes including space travel and replika creation. There are some gestalts who possess a genetic mutation that allows them to control bioresonance and that lets them do all kinds of crazy reality warping stuff.
Ariane is revealed late in the game to have been a gestalt that can control bioresonance, and it's heavily implied that this power is causing her to rewrite reality on Sierpinski Station while she is slowly dying of radiation poisoning, causing replikas to become infected and mutated, since they are particularly susceptible to bioresonance. The bioresonance is likely what is also causing reality itself around the station to break down and echoes of her life to play out around the corpse of the mining platform. As for how she was able to affect Sierpinski while in deep space or why her ship is in the crust of the planet, there's multiple theories that I won't get into.
Tl:dr - you're right on the money with the radiation poisoning stuff, but it's due to weird reality -bending powers and not just, like, tunneling too deep and running into something radioactive.
isn't the name for the sin of ambition "hubris"?
Edit: can't believe it took almost 40 minutes to use the perfect adjective for the subject at hand
I think this is a good video highlighting ambition gone wrong using video game narratives.
However i think it falls a bit flat on the whole "Ambition is the most dangerous quality of human beings part". As said at the final parts of the video, that ambition itseld isnt inherently evil, immoral or bad, but when used by the greedy, stupid, and overly confident use it is when it blows up in everyone's face.
Then why is the trait that gets tagged "Humanity's most dangerous" not used for Greedy, Hubristic, or Ignorant/Stupid, Or some trait that makes those? Its like saying the knife is the murderer instead of the actual murderer.
dope video
Great video loved it, but you did get story of SIGNALIS both right and wrong at the same time, haha.
I totally expected this. There’s a lot going on…
ambition?
That's the one- fixed!
@@spookymcg love the video either way 🧡 you did great
Just ask the Japanese about what they did in Bataan, Manchuria, or about Unit 731
I am watching 👀
Your interpretation of Signalis is quite odd. The game makes it pretty clear that it (or at least the S-23 Sierpinski Mining Facility) is set not on Earth (now Vineta) but on the distant world of Leng (formerly Pluto). We also know that Ariane was indeed suffering from radiation sickness due to her proximity to the failing reactor of the Penrose-512. The Lovecraftian thing that had been found on Leng had nothing to do with it.
Furthermore, the Nation of Eusan was not motivated by success or progress (especially of the economic variety) but by power and control. They’re a revolutionary dictatorship loosely based on the German Democratic Republic - the USSR controlled part of Germany that regularly oppressed and censored its people.
Replika are not second class citizens as there aren’t any first class citizens to begin with. Gestalts are crushed by the brutal (presumably communist) system of Eusan governance all the same. That said, it’s implied that the Gestalt population of S-23 Sierpinski was treated even worse. While the Replika dorms are furnished, Gestalt dorms are not. Gestalts are regularly interrogated and killed for “counter-revolutionary” behaviour. The Replika may only be tools in the eyes in the eye of the state and yet they are handled with more care than we see given to any Gestalt likely because it’s the best way to keep both Replika and Gestalt productive.
So much have people fixated on the robot lesbians that they’ve gotten that those robot lesbians are all working in a space gulag.
👌
I’m a simple lesbian. I see a Signalis thumbnail. I click the video.
Also... Signalis
jeez, this gonna be a spoiler because you got a lot of things..... wrong (?)
Ok, not wrong but in kinda way that seems to be differently insiniuated in game, tho the radiation is involved.
SPOILER HERE:
Ariane is suffering from radiation poisoning, but not because of something in the mines, but because of the ship she was on falling apart- she and first ELSTER were a part of doomed jurney in search of more habitable worlds and Usan ambition and imorality shows here: if you were on such mission and did not find something Usan conciders you dead, expended bullet.
Tho due to exisrence of essentially psychics in that world and Ariane being one she basically projected her suffering into the ether.
Be it out of some connection or due to cosmic accident- Sierpiński, the mining collony, recieved it and started to change. The mines do look indeed like a nuclear waste disposal facility, or outright a nuclear reactor in construction, and the plot structure is very dream-logical so the "REAL SIERPIŃSKI" probably looks or looked differently.
But we are stuck in the other hell, one where someone's suffering and quite possibly memories from reading past books mingle with what's real- and what another memory to bring as you are dying due to radiation poisoning if not a nuclear disposal site, a grim reminder of what is killing you.
And something to add: if I was to put in words what ambition is present in SIGNALIS, the one that would fit your video, it would be overambition and hubris of Usan, both Empire and Nation, ambition to controll everything, to reach everywhere, and blind belief that the people will bend to satisfy that ambition. It broke Empire in half once, and will do it again and again, especially with the knowledge that the psionics of the setting are not understood and relying on them stifled the progress of technology and research.
Signalis :)
(:
follow my dreams but don't be a filthy capitalist about it. gotcha
I know you didn't mean it this way, and you've probably just grown up hearing the myth before, but the idea that Earth is becoming overpopulated is a part of eco-fascism, and it's a part of manufacturing excuses for things like genocide or eugenics. In reality, we have a problem not with not having enough resources to support everyone, but with a portion of the population over-consuming to the point where it takes resources from others. Imperialism, colonialism, and to a large extent the current global trade system are to blame for the issues humanity as a whole faces in things like mass starvation or mass poverty. I'd really recommend doing some googling or reading into this subject, and maybe making a correction to this video