Apparently a lot of people know about MKUltra. I honestly didn't know about it until I played Outlast. I asked a few people after I received your comments telling me that it's common knowledge, and all those people didn't know about it. Oh well... we all have blindspots. If you haven't heard of MKUltra, could you please respond to this pinned comment and let me know?
I too knew about it but I'm also surprised most people know of it. But maybe that's because you're audience was already interested in stuff like MKUltra and it's not actually common knowledge. I'd be surprised if I brought up the subject on a random date with a sociable girl and she knew anything about it.
It had struck a bell at the time, I think because of some unrelated list of atrocities a friend of mine was going down but I had never really sat down and looked it up. It's rather unsettling now that I know...
Its also worth noting that in the first game, there is a note that explains why there are no female patients in the ward. For some reason, one of the bizarre side effects of the experiments was women (patients and female workers alike) were experiencing phantom pregnancies. I love stories that deal with perception vs reality, so I really dug how it was implemented in outlast 2.
Yes. It leaded to women dying and caused the murkoff cooperation to cause financial problems. Thus why there was no women in the first outlast games except for the comics.
The pregnancy in outlast 2 is also connected to the morphogwnic engine, since a note in mount massive reveals that the machine causes phantom pregnancies.
@@MadeOfConfusion If you weren't really thorough in reading the documents and notes in the first Outlast then a lot of what's happening in 2 is not understood. In Outlast you find documents saying that the Morphogenic engine was causing "phantom pregnancies" not only in the patients but also female staff that had never even been in the same room with a patient that was exposed to the engine. The engine when in use seemed to passively give off some kind of signal or radiation that caused tumors to grow within the women's stomachs, released hormones, and caused side effects similar to pregnancy but it progressed unnaturally fast, ultimately ending in the women's tumors hemorrhaging and they died of blood loss. All of which happened to Lin once she was exposed to the signals from the towers. I figured out what was happening as soon as they mentioned she was pregnant and Blake mentioned they hadn't been intimate in months. That said, I agree that 2's story is nowhere near as good as the first and that understanding of the plot shouldn't depend so heavily on supplemental material (the first game and comics).
@@RivkahSong Outlast 2’s story can be summed up as “signal from towers make people go nuts” It’s really that simple if you break it down. A lot of the lore in that game is kinda superfluous, if you ask me.
@@jamesedleymusic That reductive way of thinking is the reason why so many people don’t truly understand Outlast 2’s story. The lore in a game that is not really gameplay focused is superfluous? Really? If you don’t want to use your brain and actually think about the Outlast story, that’s fine, but don’t say garbage like this. Like, come on man.
@@Scabloonshki I mean it's inconsequential. It doesn't really matter because it can be summed up with one simple statement. That doesn't mean I haven't read up on the lore, I know the specifics, but none of them are that interesting and or important. I'm not really a big fan of games or movies in which it's all in the protagonist(s) mind. It makes the events of the game seem unimportant in the overall arc of the story.
I like the ambiance in outlast 1. The thought of being a survivor among many. As the game continues, there are fewer and fewer living patients. The screams in the distance vanish abruptly. Finally, the only ones left are the murderers, the hidden, and the ones who hid alongside father Martin.
I played outlast for the first time when i was 15 and i swear to God chris walker gave me the worst nightmares for over a week. I cant imagine irl being stuck in an abandoned mental instute infested with brutal murderers and then some huge guy following you around everywhere trying to rip your head off... wasnt that scared of the walrider though🤣
@@CamoKKing no cause same. In the courtyard sequence, I kept seeing my body and was so confused. Then I realized he was ripping my head off. Walrider didn't scare me.
@@ordinarysausageman605 I think that's caused by how often and what setting they appear as an enemy in. Chris Walker follows the player around in all the dark corners, driven and relentless. But for most of the game, the Walrider is a ghost. A shadow that appears out of the corner of your eye. The buzzing in your head that you only know of from your character's notes. Glimpses of *something* in the camera. Most of what you see is the *aftermath* of the Walrider, dismembered bodies scattered everywhere you go - and you don¨t even know what did it, thinking it had to be a patient for most of the game. The closest encounter in the dark you have when walking through the shed and opening the door, and all you see is a skeletal figure flying straight at you, then past you, disappearing into the wall. When the Walrider finally comes to hunt you, it's in a well-lit laboratory, where it tears Walker apart before your eyes, yet leaves you alone for now. Then, it begins *really* hunting you when you *know* what it is and how to kill it. Then, it's an enemy to be defeated, not a monster to helplessly run from, even though there is a lot of running involved regardless.
Sorry, but I’m not exactly confident that we are in, have been, or ever will be in “good hands” judging by like all of modern history… there are still people that can’t imagine things like MKUltra even happened
There is much worse that has been done by governments in history and in modern day. Just look up CIA the finders and see what our gov is willing to sacrifice. The gov are a bunch of monsters.
What you should understand is that this is because there are no "hands" to speak of. Governments are only unified entities when confronted with other governments (or at least groups of similar size). Folks like umpteen above me don't appreciate the nuance behind it, but events like the Snowden files or Watergate wouldn't come to be if the very concept of ethics were incompatible with governments. Half of the great evils we see committed rely on well coordinated information warfare _inside_ of a state entity. MKUltra would have been the title of a file archiving the trial of a bunch of traitors to be executed, if it wasn't nigh impossible to objectively determine the negative consequences of an action. Things like "what if the enemy figures it out and we're left behind" or "this couldn't ever be done large-scale enough to bite us in the ass" are only bad arguments to those that let a loose set of predictions cloud the merit of the exact same kind of comparisons to previous events you use to justify not trusting governments. And for what? Morals. Not the one's true to their name though, we're talking about morals used to justify double standards, which is one degree of separation away from irony. Moreso, one degree of separation away from the logic that led to attempting MKUltra in the first place.
lol if you think MKUltra is bad look up Operation Northwoods - the CIA was going to bomb U.S. civilians, pin it on Cuba, and invade - it was approved by ALL HEADS OF THE MILITARY & only got denied by Kennedy
@@maxderrat they also really, REALLY want us to forget about it. That and when they wanted to bomb civilians here and then blame Cuba so we could invade.
I’ve always found them to be insanely treacherous games in that they know their aesthetics will already have you jumping at any sound you hear at home, but then they also bombard you with jumpscares every time you have something close to a quiet moment. I don’t hate that, though, it made my first playthrough of each a living hell in the best way possible.
Red Barrels really outdid themselves with the Outlast games. The lore and the connection between the three is phenomenal and it truly is a personal favorite series of mine! They really went all out with the documents and note written down in game and they didn’t shy away with how MKUltra really is. Gotta appreciate the dedication they put into creating the Outlast universe.
What's really scary is that everything you could've seen in the Outlast games was done in real life by someone to someone in the different times. Burning alive, being beheaded, quartering, cannibalism... whatever. Pick anything and it was probably already done, apart from turning mentally ill people into a bunch of nano robots (not yet)...
"We better hope no corporation gets access to this technology" Well Social Media and advertising companies are built around it already if you think about it. For example a study by Facebook found that they were able to intentionally manipulate the mood of their users.
Damn straight. The most recent Facebook leaks on the experiments they've done with influencing mood and how they can better retain younger audiences is chilling.
Ofcourse, it's simple, really: they specifically show you something in your feed or wherever, and look for your reaction: what will you post or say to other people, will you react or not, where do you go or do next and what you tell other people. They do this for everyone for a long time, and they have a picture they can work with. RUclips does exact same thing: it chooses what you will watch, trying to keep up with your interests, while subtly directing them, as for every video you clicked you had 10 or 20 to choose from and you made your choice consciously or not, and youtube put all of them up for you. The scariest part: it succeeded
Lol. I was just looking at yesterday's community post. Perfect timing! Edit: I'm a little surprised Mk Ultra is new to you. Those experiments also inspired the show Stranger Things.
Could you imagine; being tormented to such an extent and so horrifically that your own mind would be erased? You can't. That's what's so terrifying, and that that unbelievable amount of suffering was experienced by someone somewhere.
(MGSV spoiler warning) I just wanted to add that MGSV has a lot of hints to the MKUltra project, such as the scene after the final Paz hallucination, where Venom Snake catches the blue monarch butterfly, which was one of the symbols of the project. Nevermind the fact that Venom's memories have been locked out from his conscious, which was one of the main goals of the experiment. Also, in the transition from Cyprus to Afghanistan we can see Ocelot injecting something to Venom, and since Ocelot was aware of Zero's body double shill - this syringe might've contained LSD or other drugs. Hope to see a video covering MGSV in greater detail one day! Especially the Skullface Jeep ride.
@@donaldbiden636 What I was saying is that both games use MKUltra project as a part of it's story. If you misunderstood what Max said in the video - MKUltra is an actual experiment that took place in real life, and the unclassified data was used by the game creators of both MGS and Outlast.
I have always been intrigued by these kind of games because I was going through same kind of hallucinations as a kid. It was not like fear induced hallucinations/delusion which kids have at night, I believe it was due to some kind of drugs I was given by a doctor because I hit my head from a free fall from 10 feets above the ground. Now you might be thinking why am I so sure about this, but hear me out - that doctor was able to heal all my head injuries, but after healing was done, my medications weren't stopped and he asked my parents to bring me for checkup after every 1 to 2 months, and during the visits he would ask my parents if I panic, or cry, or have change in eating patterns, and me being a 3 year old kid, I wasn't able to tell my parents what was I was going through, so the only thing my parents knew that I would cry endlessly for hours without uttering a word, but they didn't tell the doctor about that because they thought it was normal crying kids do, and they never connected my crying to my mental health because everything was clear in my physical examinations. And I remember so many things which I experienced during those 2 years of medications - I would hear a constant humming of an middle aged man from my pillow, it was a deep voice, and I my imagination told me there's someone sitting inside my pillow, I would start crying because I wanted the voice to stop. Whenever I went to pee, I would see black and long bugs crawling on my legs, I never realised they weren't real, until I got 13 years old and drew figure of same bugs on a paper and showed it to my family members and they said such kind of weird bugs don't exist as far as the had known. And I would see skeleton kind of figure in tv, I would hear kids voices and ringing bells in the midnight and it was all so bizarre. These hallucinations stopped when I got 7 years old, even tho the medications were stopped when I was 5. I highly doubt about those drugs doctor gave me. But I was kid so everything remained buried under the ground.
Sounds like the kind of thing my cousin experienced as a kid, up until the age of 9. I don't think he was on any drugs but did see a doctor about the hallucinations. He suffered from insomnia and would be scared to go to sleep because he would frequently hallucinate a face embedded in the wall next to his bed, and it would talk to him in the night. He saw bugs on random objects, and when he tried to touch the bugs they would crawl away and disappear. I think one time he told me he saw a boy sitting in the middle of his bedroom, and the kid's body was all out of proportion, like his limbs were too short and head too large or something, can't remember the specifics. This was while my cousin was in bed, and he was scared to move for fear of alerting the hallucination boy to his presence. As far as i know, he was never diagnosed with anything and his hallucinations stopped when he was around 9 years old.
I was genuinely surprised by the amount of people who weren’t aware of MKUltra. For those interested, I would highly recommend Poisoner in Chief, and The Search For the Manchurian Candidate for further reading. Seriously, once you’ve got a better understanding of MKUltra and the lengths that were taken to conduct it, your mind will be blown. It’s also worth taking a deep dive into Operation Midnight Climax; a sub experiment that also contributed to the overall experiment.
13:00 theres a loss of data when converting it from analogue to digital. It gets compressed. The main attraction to a vinyl record player is that it is anlologue and has nuances that are lost when made digital. I imagine the same happens when replicating the human mind. I presume the mind ultimately becomes similar to AM from I Have No Mouth. The strongest emotion youd feel would be pain and hatred because such a logical system would know there is no reason for its existence. Life is not logical. It exists for the sake of existing and experiencing.
For me the scary thing is that humans will never learn from the horrors they commit. MKultra was a failure, but the intrinsic paranoia of the human means we will never accept that, so it will be repeated. This keeps happening for everything… even RUclips videos 🙈
Sorry, but I don’t think I want to watch some poor bastard’s genitals get sawed off by a circular saw and the worst case of gender confusion anyone’s ever seen.
I love OutLast for its lore. What a horrific sentance... " ...with enough powerful drugs and other extreme measures, Gottlieb found, it is possible to break a human mind..." Hopefully OutLast Trials will delve into more of this type of disturbing real life horror as Trials supposedly focuses on human experimentation...
man. when you talk about being able to see the boogeyman based on belief, i remember being unbelievably terrified of things like the tank and charger from L4D2 - to the point where I was starting to seriously hallucinate moments where I'd see them in the dark, as if they were waiting to absolutely murder me the moment i stepped within range
In Stephen king's apt pupil an old Nazi war criminal said something profound:"only losers are considered war criminals." This novela was one of the best I ever read.
That said, you'd have to be clinically insane to believe that the evils of the US government don't pale in comparison to what the Nazis did. What makes Hitler's Germany uniquely terrifying, even when compared to other totalitarian regimes such as Stalin's or Mao's, is that to them, genocide wasn't simply collateral damage or a sort of means to an end, but rather, their foremost aim - & they restructured their entire empire into an extermination factory in order to do it as quickly as possible.
Numerous Allied pilots (Americans especially) actually attempted to get themselves tried for war crimes because of the horrific things they'd been ordered to do, like strafing transit trains full of Jews which was later blamed on the Germans. Or the firebombing of Dresden, where tens of thousands of noncombatants were killed. But to try them would be to cast the entire Allied operation into question. Plus it might bring attention to the millions of German soldiers who were imprisoned and purposely starved to death to exterminate them.
I researched tf out of MK Ultra when I was 14 to 16, it was incredibly interesting and I was shocked but ofc heavily intrigued. It was cool that this actually came up in this video few years later
I remember having my mind blown first time I heard about *MKUltra* from the book *The* *Men* *Who* *Stare* *At* *Goats* based on a real story. Sadly there are many others though history, some even more horrifying. Look up: *The* *Tuskegee* *study,* *Japan's* *Unit* *731,* *The* *USSR* *Humanzee* *Scandal,* *The* *Twins* *of* *Auschwitz* and even *The* *Stanford* *Prison* *Experiment* (just to mention a few).
I was surprised to find out you haven't heard about MKUltra. I thought at this point its existence is a common knowledge since it's such a huge cultural thing and a source of inspiration for many horror movies and videogames. It even inspired Stranger Things among other stuff.
If I recall correctly in the expansion of the first game you find a document explaining the morphogenic engine allowed the human body to generate organic "nanites" . they are tied to the host body and dude was still in the device because somebody wanted to use Wallrider as a weapon
Ahh this makes me want a Ghost in the Shell video from you, maybe 2 at least because the tachikoma development in the Stand Alone Complex series deserves its own video as well. Yea, fingers crossed.
@@maxderrat I DK if I forgot or haven't watched them yet. Huge fan, on the spectrum as well and dealing with a series of new jobs has my memory more off lately. And I do still think the tachikoma deserve their own video. Thanks again for the videos and the representation, you've help me a lot over the past year, to cope and grow, and in a lot of ways help me better convey my experience in more stressful situations. Edit: 30 years old and along the savant spectrum with a lot of mostly dealt with childhood PTSD for better context of who is thanking you. You're helping a lot of people, on and off the spectrum to understand.
@@JustCozItsMe I recall watching this once scene that a friend of mine showed me from the anime. One of the tachikoma I think had the same English voice actress as Kari from Digimon? That scene was really good. I'm so glad I could provide you with some clarity, enlightenment, and reassurance. I have plans to do more in that regard in the near future.
3:47 Gotta love that good old American paranoia (and competitiveness) the Russians might be developing mind-control techniques so we gotta do it first! It's also basically how the atom bomb was created... "Well the bad guys are surely working on it, so we gotta beat them to it and use it on them before they do it to us!" I guess that's how it goes, for better or for worse... Anyway, keep up the great work Max, your stuff is always some of the most interesting interpretations of media that I've seen, always so eye-opening!
Always look forward to your videos, Mr. Max. I'm quite interested in these games now. The Morphogenic Engine is particularly interesting to me. I've been a student of my dreams and a lucid explorer for as long as I can remember.
Well done video. 3 months ago I became interested in the Outlast series again and I started researching the lore, that's how I found about MK-Ultra and other similar projects. I'm European, that's why I've never heard of this before. I cannot wait for The Outlast Trials in 2022, this game will be set during the cold war and the player will get to directly experience being a MK-Ultra (or other similar project) test subject.
"Let's just hope that if that technology is birthed, it isn't done to birth a weapon like the Walrider." I appreciate the optimism, but in this kind of world, something like the Walrider is inevitable.
Outlasts lore is utterly phenomenal. So deep and dark. I didn’t originally enjoy outlast 2 as much as the original, but the lore made up for it in big ways. Easily one of the scariest franchises out there
Like... forcing a bunch of people to leave their home island only to test radioactive stuff on their own soldiers, before simply abandoning the islands and leaving them at nature's mercy, radiactive waste still on them, with sea water leaking? Jup, that's a thing.
You should make a game analysis on Dead Space it has not only good sci-fi lore to it but it has interesting takes on mental health decline, hallucinations, and Dementia.
Great video, Max. Loooooove Outlast. So glad you enjoyed researching MKUltra. I'm surprised you haven't looked into Doki Doki Literature Club yet, what with its A.I, Simulation, Horror and very Meta themes. I'd love to see your take on them :)
Awesome video Max! You did a great job at highlighting how deep the Outlast lore really goes and why it’s so spOooOoOOoky. It’s one of the reasons why the first Outlast (and Whistleblower DLC) is my favourite horror game of all time…
Once I researched the things about outlast it terrified me and it made outlast scarier than what it is. Then on top of that it goes into details on what they’ll do on the letters in the game. It gives me chills, I like that type of horror
With the release of outlast trials. I surely be excited to see your thoughts on how the game will be exploring more mk ultra. Since the game is a prequel and redbarrels want to elaborate on the history of the mk ultra.
Another real-world event referenced in Outlast - although I don't think they ever actually mention it by name - is Operation Paper Clip, the program whereby Allied nations recruited Nazi scientists after WW2. Dr Wernicke is pretty much confirmed as part of that program.
The creators of the game deal with a very interesting subject by having the main antagonist be the murkoff corporation. While the original MKultra experiments were carried out by the CIA, as the material reality of our country changed with the rise of neoliberalism, which was the privatization of many of the state’s role in the economy, you also see a privatization of the state’s role in national security. We have companies like Black water who have been trying to replace the role of US soldiers with private mercenaries, there’s also companies like Palantir who are trying to privatize intelligence gathering. It would not surprise me if some of the companies who are advocating for open access to psychedelic research and testing, and stuff like that also maybe wanna take up the role of the cia in testing how far they can mess with the human brain. Scary stuff.
I was thinking about playing outlast for few years and the reason I haven't played it is that I find this game a little bit too jumpy ( don't get me wrong...I'm no amatuer to survival horror games )but today I decided to play it...it looks interesting so far...
i really recommend playing outlast... didn't play it because i'm too young to buy it and my mother wouldn't allow it, but i'd just watch the walkthroughs on youtube because i actually get easily scared.
Max, another astute analysis as always. I was never a fan of the gameplay of Outlast either, and as far as I know I'm neurotypical, I'm not wholly sure if that has something to do with it. I love horror, and your analyses are always on point. Stay awesome, Max, and I'll do my best to stay yellow.
No, it has nothing to do with being normal. It's just called having a taste. I, for example, also hate these walking simulators, where not fighting back is entirely unreasonable and stupid
@@TheBlueLink3 Agreed. The chase sequences where you have to navigate hallways etc while being chased kind of bars Outlast from being walking simulators imo. It's too "difficult" to be what I consider a walking simulator. Sincerely, someone who tried to play the game bc people were calling it a ws and that is the only kind I am capable of playing, that ended up having to give up bc the game was too hard
I remember as a child being visited one night by a darkness that covered the ceiling of my bedroom above me, I remember later the feeling of absolute evil. Later, and now, I do not know if it happened or not. Is it a repressed memory? Or a nightmare of a much younger child forgotten then remembered but unable to remember it was a nightmare? Similarly, but much nicer I remember dancing globes of multi coloured lights again I do not know if something had visited me, I don't even know if it actually happened. But as an older child I remember that something had happened when I was even younger. What these things were? Dream, nightmare or actualities? I think it's important not to just dismiss these things as they open up thoughts about the nature of things, false memories, repressed memories, visitation from other worldly beings.
Hey Max! Have you ever played Deadly Premonition? I feel it may really suit your general analysis and I would love to see something on it from you. Was just curious!
Outlast has been the first ever horror game to actually introduce me into the genre. At the same time after finishing the first and second game, I kept wondering if experiments like these actually happened, given that we still have lots of supplies and resources, with nearly 8 billion individuals living on Earth which meant that many of them could have actually ended up becoming test subjects of gruesome experimentations.
10:35 There is an X-Files chapter about radio towers affecting the brain and I think there was a movie from the 80's some Stephen King's work related to it.
Don't coorporations already have access to that kind of technology? I mean, isn't the constant feeding of small serotonin doses that social media gives to the average user, exactly what makes them think it's not harmful? Don't get me wrong, I use it myself (obviously, since I'm here eh), but there's a lot of artificially created dependency going on. It's not like addicts do that because they conscously think it's a good thing to look at instagram for hours. They do it because their subconscious wants them to.
Yeah the naïve among us think that the experiments stop and didn't reach any significant conclusions back in the 70's, but it's instead fused with the results of social experiments on PR like the ones done by Edward Bernays to develop ubiquitous techniques to control people and corral the public psyche. Corporations have their algorithms to curate your digital reality and systems to induce addiction to their software, mass media have fear porn to retain viewership and keep people in a constant state of stress to make them more malleable to new changes, etc etc. Just because they aren't frequently overdosing us on psychedelics doesn't mean they haven't found a way around it already.
This truly is fascinating, never really knew about the experiments prior to your video. One of the real experiments references almost identically in the game is insane (The women firing the bullet one). It is smart in a freaky way that the game linked and embedded the results of these real life experiments such as hallucinations into the game with the help of Knoth and our protagonist. With the strides Neuralink is making, I hope it is not the real life Murkoff in any way, shape, or form!
Great video Max! To anyone who is either new to MK Ultra, or would like a good comprehensive dive into it's history - even far enough back to it's scientific roots in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, then I recommend the Chilluminati podcast on Mathas' channel. They did a pretty frank 4 part series on MK Ultra that is definitely worth a listen.
@@helmaschine1885 atleast *officially* founded by US. I wouldn't be surprised if some early methods of that shit was developed by nazis or a similar entity
How do you play a game, and not notice half the game is there? The exploration, reading of notes, and trying to solve/discover the mystery of what's going on in the game makes the more obvious half of the game more compelling. I don't understand the mentality of the player who is only following the carrot on a stick, ticking off boxes to boost their ego. Experience the game. The game is a lot scarier when you are immersed in the experience, too. Don't just go through the motions.
The same reason that people need to watch videos by VaatiVidya to understand what's going on in the Dark Souls games. Though the information is there, not everybody is able to piece it together. Plus, it depends on the level of enthusiasm that the player has. For example, depending on how much you enjoyed a game like Spec-Ops: The Line, and paid attention to everything going on up until the ending, you will make one of four choices. In regards to a game like Control, I read all the documents from that game because I loved the world. Outlast just didn't compel that enthusiasm from me.
I hate games that do emergent gameplay over everything else. The make your own fun, or figure it out with no overall plan or purpose for what your doing, are the worst type of games in my eyes. The first section of the game, the game play or obvious side of the game needs to be compelling enough that you want to look into the lore and hidden meaning. Take my favourite horror game silent hill. When I was young playing it, the setting and the monsters and everything that is the main story made me want to delve more into the lore. That made me love the game even more. But if the obvious exploring of the town and story was boring, it wouldn’t matter how good the lore was I’d be bored.
@@maxderrat Hmm. But I don't fail to notice the lore in Dark Souls, I just need help understanding it. And it was compelling before I watched VattiVidya. I was immersed in the game before I watched him, too. Though I suppose it's more obvious that you are suppose to role play in Dark Souls than it is in this game.
I thought the fact that you play a journalist investigating the asylum for a story made it pretty obvious that you are supposed to find information to figure out what happened in order to get a story, and you find that out right at the beginning of the game.
I made a post about why Outlast is one of the best horror games, and it comes down, in my opinion, to empathy. In Outlast, the real enemy isn't the patients you run into, but Murkoff. and its abuses. Even when Miles Upshur cusses his attackers out and celebrates when one of the biggest threats is killed, he never lifts a finger to harm anyone. While this might have been to add to the horror experience, it's also just as likely that an investigative journalist like Miles would understand the horrific situation all these patients were put in and wanted to avoid hurting them. I LOVE these games, and the expansive lore, though I disliked the second one a lot because the first one felt way more put together.
Whistleblower is the best game, all killer no filler, the story is barebones but there's actual progression unlike the terrible ending in the first game and incomprehensible storytelling in 2. Whistleblower knows exactly what it is and does a great job of doing it
Great video as always. Taking my favorite medium that is video games and taking a deeper dive into its hidden meanings and references either done intentionally or subconsciously 😁
I'm curious as to if Outlast is not your type of game in the horror genre, what is it that you do prefer? Can you recommend a horror game you actually liked?
Joe Rogan had a guest on (I don't remember his name) who was an author or journalist and he claimed to know someone intimately involved with MK Ultra, and that the government DOES have the knowledge and capability of mind-control they just have it extremely classified outside the reach of any FOIA stuff because they've continued to use it for espionage. Edit: guest's name was Tom O'Neil
Thanks for this. I was never going to play the game my self, I find the story VERY interesting, but like you the gameplay not so much. I would love to hear more about the lore of the games.
The first part of Outlast 1 is a little rough, this is where most of the Jumpscares people complain about is located. It's only in the first hour do they lay on the jumpscares because your character isn't in any true danger yet. The priest who is controlling the place wants you to live and document what is happening in the facility, so they are mostly just funneling you towards their goal. After an hour or so, the game only throws a jumpscare at you once every hour or so, so you don't expect it. I really enjoyed the gameplay, because once you figure out when and where to look, most "hidden" enemies show themselves before you see them, like the big dude who throws you through glass in the first hour, you can see him walking around the place a minute before he attacks you. So most of the jumpscares actually come from your character (and you) not knowing what to expect. The only true unavoidable jumpscares are the crazy dudes who latch onto you as you walk by, attack you when you walk past a corner or grab you as you are walking by their jail cell. I believe there is only 5 of those events in the entire game (and about 11-12 true jumpscares in the entire playthrough), but people will act like it's every 20 seconds on the internet.
Jesus christ are people seriously that scared of jumpscare? Are you guys like old or some shit that a simple jump makes you shit yourself you children?
Apparently a lot of people know about MKUltra. I honestly didn't know about it until I played Outlast. I asked a few people after I received your comments telling me that it's common knowledge, and all those people didn't know about it. Oh well... we all have blindspots. If you haven't heard of MKUltra, could you please respond to this pinned comment and let me know?
aye
I've never heard of MKUltra
Prior to this I didn’t.
I too knew about it but I'm also surprised most people know of it. But maybe that's because you're audience was already interested in stuff like MKUltra and it's not actually common knowledge. I'd be surprised if I brought up the subject on a random date with a sociable girl and she knew anything about it.
It had struck a bell at the time, I think because of some unrelated list of atrocities a friend of mine was going down but I had never really sat down and looked it up. It's rather unsettling now that I know...
Its also worth noting that in the first game, there is a note that explains why there are no female patients in the ward. For some reason, one of the bizarre side effects of the experiments was women (patients and female workers alike) were experiencing phantom pregnancies. I love stories that deal with perception vs reality, so I really dug how it was implemented in outlast 2.
Yes. It leaded to women dying and caused the murkoff cooperation to cause financial problems. Thus why there was no women in the first outlast games except for the comics.
OH shit
That would explain why Lynn experienced a phantom pregnancy in outlast 2!!
@@VanHouse_Productions I was about to say the same thing! It would also explain her death, too!
@@VanHouse_Productions I thought Lynn was r*ped by the pastor at the very beginning?
The scariest part of MKULTRA is that we only recovered a tiny fraction of the documents.
Who needs drugs when you have propaganda. Just look up certain hashtags on twitter to see it's destructive power at work
@@512TheWolf512 hashtags on twitter and cancel culture are as terrible as torture and drugging random people. true.
@@aarontheperson6867 the end result is the same, dum dum. Which is what matters.
yea cause the former CIA(i believe) had most of it "destroyed" apparently
@@thescatologistcopromancer3936who cares?
The pregnancy in outlast 2 is also connected to the morphogwnic engine, since a note in mount massive reveals that the machine causes phantom pregnancies.
@@MadeOfConfusion You gain a whole new sense of appreciation for Outlast 2s story when you think about it a bit more.
@@MadeOfConfusion If you weren't really thorough in reading the documents and notes in the first Outlast then a lot of what's happening in 2 is not understood. In Outlast you find documents saying that the Morphogenic engine was causing "phantom pregnancies" not only in the patients but also female staff that had never even been in the same room with a patient that was exposed to the engine. The engine when in use seemed to passively give off some kind of signal or radiation that caused tumors to grow within the women's stomachs, released hormones, and caused side effects similar to pregnancy but it progressed unnaturally fast, ultimately ending in the women's tumors hemorrhaging and they died of blood loss. All of which happened to Lin once she was exposed to the signals from the towers. I figured out what was happening as soon as they mentioned she was pregnant and Blake mentioned they hadn't been intimate in months.
That said, I agree that 2's story is nowhere near as good as the first and that understanding of the plot shouldn't depend so heavily on supplemental material (the first game and comics).
@@RivkahSong Outlast 2’s story can be summed up as “signal from towers make people go nuts” It’s really that simple if you break it down. A lot of the lore in that game is kinda superfluous, if you ask me.
@@jamesedleymusic That reductive way of thinking is the reason why so many people don’t truly understand Outlast 2’s story. The lore in a game that is not really gameplay focused is superfluous? Really?
If you don’t want to use your brain and actually think about the Outlast story, that’s fine, but don’t say garbage like this. Like, come on man.
@@Scabloonshki I mean it's inconsequential. It doesn't really matter because it can be summed up with one simple statement. That doesn't mean I haven't read up on the lore, I know the specifics, but none of them are that interesting and or important.
I'm not really a big fan of games or movies in which it's all in the protagonist(s) mind. It makes the events of the game seem unimportant in the overall arc of the story.
I like the ambiance in outlast 1. The thought of being a survivor among many. As the game continues, there are fewer and fewer living patients. The screams in the distance vanish abruptly. Finally, the only ones left are the murderers, the hidden, and the ones who hid alongside father Martin.
I played outlast for the first time when i was 15 and i swear to God chris walker gave me the worst nightmares for over a week. I cant imagine irl being stuck in an abandoned mental instute infested with brutal murderers and then some huge guy following you around everywhere trying to rip your head off... wasnt that scared of the walrider though🤣
CamoKing walrider the strongest one
@@CamoKKing no cause same. In the courtyard sequence, I kept seeing my body and was so confused. Then I realized he was ripping my head off. Walrider didn't scare me.
@@byAresfx true, but Chris is far more intimidating in my opinion
@@ordinarysausageman605 I think that's caused by how often and what setting they appear as an enemy in. Chris Walker follows the player around in all the dark corners, driven and relentless.
But for most of the game, the Walrider is a ghost. A shadow that appears out of the corner of your eye. The buzzing in your head that you only know of from your character's notes. Glimpses of *something* in the camera. Most of what you see is the *aftermath* of the Walrider, dismembered bodies scattered everywhere you go - and you don¨t even know what did it, thinking it had to be a patient for most of the game. The closest encounter in the dark you have when walking through the shed and opening the door, and all you see is a skeletal figure flying straight at you, then past you, disappearing into the wall.
When the Walrider finally comes to hunt you, it's in a well-lit laboratory, where it tears Walker apart before your eyes, yet leaves you alone for now. Then, it begins *really* hunting you when you *know* what it is and how to kill it. Then, it's an enemy to be defeated, not a monster to helplessly run from, even though there is a lot of running involved regardless.
Sorry, but I’m not exactly confident that we are in, have been, or ever will be in “good hands” judging by like all of modern history… there are still people that can’t imagine things like MKUltra even happened
Trusting the ones in power is a bad idea.
There is much worse that has been done by governments in history and in modern day. Just look up CIA the finders and see what our gov is willing to sacrifice. The gov are a bunch of monsters.
What you should understand is that this is because there are no "hands" to speak of. Governments are only unified entities when confronted with other governments (or at least groups of similar size). Folks like umpteen above me don't appreciate the nuance behind it, but events like the Snowden files or Watergate wouldn't come to be if the very concept of ethics were incompatible with governments. Half of the great evils we see committed rely on well coordinated information warfare _inside_ of a state entity.
MKUltra would have been the title of a file archiving the trial of a bunch of traitors to be executed, if it wasn't nigh impossible to objectively determine the negative consequences of an action. Things like "what if the enemy figures it out and we're left behind" or "this couldn't ever be done large-scale enough to bite us in the ass" are only bad arguments to those that let a loose set of predictions cloud the merit of the exact same kind of comparisons to previous events you use to justify not trusting governments. And for what? Morals. Not the one's true to their name though, we're talking about morals used to justify double standards, which is one degree of separation away from irony. Moreso, one degree of separation away from the logic that led to attempting MKUltra in the first place.
lol if you think MKUltra is bad look up Operation Northwoods - the CIA was going to bomb U.S. civilians, pin it on Cuba, and invade - it was approved by ALL HEADS OF THE MILITARY & only got denied by Kennedy
@@mem7806 add it to the laundry list..
one of the most iconic games to ever exist in my childhood alongside slender, fnaf etc.
How old are you?
these zoomers are going to be badasses at creating videogames, mark my words
@@nolimitmuskegonboycrazyjam1179 i mark your words
Hell Yeah!
@@nolimitmuskegonboycrazyjam1179 oh wow someone saying something positive about zoomers. Pleasant surprise.
Really surprising to me, that there are people out there with such a huge frame of knowledge and yet never heard about mkultra.
Everybody has a blind-spot.
@@maxderrat they also really, REALLY want us to forget about it. That and when they wanted to bomb civilians here and then blame Cuba so we could invade.
Bruh the people saying mk ultra was discontinued are fucking liars. A liar doesn't fear getting caught when liars are everywhere.
@@aydenbelcourt6035 Its most definetely still running.
@@thescatologistcopromancer3936 Thankfully, that plan was immediately shot down by the POTUS, himself!
The whole scared child aesthetic thing actually is reflected in blakes recordings as he slowly loses his mind and calls the cultists adults.
The fact that the school flashbacks are in reverse order as well
@@ElleeDraws wait what
@@Oliviertj04 Yup, I'm guessing that's new info for ya?
@@ElleeDraws yh
@@ElleeDraws reverse order? How??
Outlast has always been a treasure to me. They don’t need Jumpscares to be scary. The aesthetic is all it needs
outlast has a lot of jumpscares tho
@@mutantfreak48 yes it does but the aesthetic is all it needs
I’ve always found them to be insanely treacherous games in that they know their aesthetics will already have you jumping at any sound you hear at home, but then they also bombard you with jumpscares every time you have something close to a quiet moment. I don’t hate that, though, it made my first playthrough of each a living hell in the best way possible.
Red Barrels really outdid themselves with the Outlast games. The lore and the connection between the three is phenomenal and it truly is a personal favorite series of mine! They really went all out with the documents and note written down in game and they didn’t shy away with how MKUltra really is. Gotta appreciate the dedication they put into creating the Outlast universe.
What's really scary is that everything you could've seen in the Outlast games was done in real life by someone to someone in the different times. Burning alive, being beheaded, quartering, cannibalism... whatever. Pick anything and it was probably already done, apart from turning mentally ill people into a bunch of nano robots (not yet)...
"We better hope no corporation gets access to this technology"
Well Social Media and advertising companies are built around it already if you think about it.
For example a study by Facebook found that they were able to intentionally manipulate the mood of their users.
As well as our education
And media in general including movies, tv shows etc etc.
Damn straight. The most recent Facebook leaks on the experiments they've done with influencing mood and how they can better retain younger audiences is chilling.
Corpos are way worse than governments. Because they're not even theoretically accountable to the public.
Ofcourse, it's simple, really: they specifically show you something in your feed or wherever, and look for your reaction: what will you post or say to other people, will you react or not, where do you go or do next and what you tell other people. They do this for everyone for a long time, and they have a picture they can work with. RUclips does exact same thing: it chooses what you will watch, trying to keep up with your interests, while subtly directing them, as for every video you clicked you had 10 or 20 to choose from and you made your choice consciously or not, and youtube put all of them up for you. The scariest part: it succeeded
In short, what made outlast more terrifying is the sense of realism
Lol. I was just looking at yesterday's community post. Perfect timing! Edit: I'm a little surprised Mk Ultra is new to you. Those experiments also inspired the show Stranger Things.
And the plot of Manhunt 2
And COD Black Ops
In what aspect of Stranger Things? Genuinely curious.
It's used in a ton of things infact the most extreme example of it I've seen was in clock work orange
@@johngo3715 eleven or whatever he name is the experiment on her
One of the best horror games ever. Ironically, I find Alien Isolation to be right there with it. The feeling of helplessness.
Alien Isolation is the best imo.
Alien was ok but it didn't scare me. Games like those actually kinda make me bored and i can never finish them
@@Yea___ yea. Outlast was super boring
Alien isolation is great but it starts off kinda slow
@@fullkomboz6492 That's the point of horror
Could you imagine; being tormented to such an extent and so horrifically that your own mind would be erased?
You can't. That's what's so terrifying, and that that unbelievable amount of suffering was experienced by someone somewhere.
(MGSV spoiler warning)
I just wanted to add that MGSV has a lot of hints to the MKUltra project, such as the scene after the final Paz hallucination, where Venom Snake catches the blue monarch butterfly, which was one of the symbols of the project.
Nevermind the fact that Venom's memories have been locked out from his conscious, which was one of the main goals of the experiment.
Also, in the transition from Cyprus to Afghanistan we can see Ocelot injecting something to Venom, and since Ocelot was aware of Zero's body double shill - this syringe might've contained LSD or other drugs.
Hope to see a video covering MGSV in greater detail one day! Especially the Skullface Jeep ride.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed.
Spoiler warning for MGSV
Venom Snake himself if basically a brainwashed soldier make to believe that he was the real Big Boss, he's a walking mkultra
So what you're saying is outlast and mgs are in the same universe?
@@donaldbiden636 What I was saying is that both games use MKUltra project as a part of it's story. If you misunderstood what Max said in the video - MKUltra is an actual experiment that took place in real life, and the unclassified data was used by the game creators of both MGS and Outlast.
What took you so long?
Outlast was scarier imo than outlast 2 but my god they were both masterpieces in their own unique ways
Nah you tripping outlast 2 was way scarier. I nearly shit myself on that beggining in 2. Outlast 1 was more atmospheric though and overall better
I have always been intrigued by these kind of games because I was going through same kind of hallucinations as a kid. It was not like fear induced hallucinations/delusion which kids have at night, I believe it was due to some kind of drugs I was given by a doctor because I hit my head from a free fall from 10 feets above the ground. Now you might be thinking why am I so sure about this, but hear me out - that doctor was able to heal all my head injuries, but after healing was done, my medications weren't stopped and he asked my parents to bring me for checkup after every 1 to 2 months, and during the visits he would ask my parents if I panic, or cry, or have change in eating patterns, and me being a 3 year old kid, I wasn't able to tell my parents what was I was going through, so the only thing my parents knew that I would cry endlessly for hours without uttering a word, but they didn't tell the doctor about that because they thought it was normal crying kids do, and they never connected my crying to my mental health because everything was clear in my physical examinations.
And I remember so many things which I experienced during those 2 years of medications - I would hear a constant humming of an middle aged man from my pillow, it was a deep voice, and I my imagination told me there's someone sitting inside my pillow, I would start crying because I wanted the voice to stop. Whenever I went to pee, I would see black and long bugs crawling on my legs, I never realised they weren't real, until I got 13 years old and drew figure of same bugs on a paper and showed it to my family members and they said such kind of weird bugs don't exist as far as the had known. And I would see skeleton kind of figure in tv, I would hear kids voices and ringing bells in the midnight and it was all so bizarre.
These hallucinations stopped when I got 7 years old, even tho the medications were stopped when I was 5.
I highly doubt about those drugs doctor gave me. But I was kid so everything remained buried under the ground.
damn that sounds horrifying
Outlast 3 material found
Sounds like the kind of thing my cousin experienced as a kid, up until the age of 9. I don't think he was on any drugs but did see a doctor about the hallucinations. He suffered from insomnia and would be scared to go to sleep because he would frequently hallucinate a face embedded in the wall next to his bed, and it would talk to him in the night. He saw bugs on random objects, and when he tried to touch the bugs they would crawl away and disappear. I think one time he told me he saw a boy sitting in the middle of his bedroom, and the kid's body was all out of proportion, like his limbs were too short and head too large or something, can't remember the specifics. This was while my cousin was in bed, and he was scared to move for fear of alerting the hallucination boy to his presence. As far as i know, he was never diagnosed with anything and his hallucinations stopped when he was around 9 years old.
I was genuinely surprised by the amount of people who weren’t aware of MKUltra. For those interested, I would highly recommend Poisoner in Chief, and The Search For the Manchurian Candidate for further reading. Seriously, once you’ve got a better understanding of MKUltra and the lengths that were taken to conduct it, your mind will be blown. It’s also worth taking a deep dive into Operation Midnight Climax; a sub experiment that also contributed to the overall experiment.
Not as blown as those who got pumped full of lsd though
im not from us so i dont know :/
@@gagaringagarinovic2600 same
13:00 theres a loss of data when converting it from analogue to digital. It gets compressed. The main attraction to a vinyl record player is that it is anlologue and has nuances that are lost when made digital. I imagine the same happens when replicating the human mind. I presume the mind ultimately becomes similar to AM from I Have No Mouth. The strongest emotion youd feel would be pain and hatred because such a logical system would know there is no reason for its existence. Life is not logical. It exists for the sake of existing and experiencing.
I Have No Mouth is such a horrifying story...
@@InitialPC Definently. One of the best sci fi stories ever too
@@InitialPC i had the pdf
For me the scary thing is that humans will never learn from the horrors they commit. MKultra was a failure, but the intrinsic paranoia of the human means we will never accept that, so it will be repeated. This keeps happening for everything… even RUclips videos 🙈
Definitely unfortunately.
Society is now desensitized, lack of critical thinking, cmon sense and lack of truth and accountability.
Who said it failed? It's never been confirmed that they stopped performing experiment's they only confirmed it exists
@@ChosenMan37 yep, this is exactly what I was talking about. Good luck humans!
Remember, humans are not the same entity. We are different individuals, which means it's harder to learn from what other people have done.
@@ulysses-pact that is so true its actually frightening.
i really wish they make a live action horror movie of outlast it would really be the best horror movie of all time
i can bet my life on it
If well made
i would love actual outlast movies. it would be amazing to see how others would represent it
I’d prefer to have a tv series that covers the expanded lore.
@@alechinshaw5990 Come On! A movie is more likely and maybe if it successful, they would make a tv series exporing the lore.
Sorry, but I don’t think I want to watch some poor bastard’s genitals get sawed off by a circular saw and the worst case of gender confusion anyone’s ever seen.
dude you should do a analysis on “the mandela catalogue”. it gets DARK
i enjoy those videos for some reason.
I love OutLast for its lore. What a horrific sentance... " ...with enough powerful drugs and other extreme measures, Gottlieb found, it is possible to break a human mind..." Hopefully OutLast Trials will delve into more of this type of disturbing real life horror as Trials supposedly focuses on human experimentation...
I didn't know Outlast was about MKUltra.
Makes me wanna play it now.
more outlast coverage please. that was incredible.
man. when you talk about being able to see the boogeyman based on belief, i remember being unbelievably terrified of things like the tank and charger from L4D2 - to the point where I was starting to seriously hallucinate moments where I'd see them in the dark, as if they were waiting to absolutely murder me the moment i stepped within range
In Stephen king's apt pupil an old Nazi war criminal said something profound:"only losers are considered war criminals."
This novela was one of the best I ever read.
Winners are never the villains.
But does that mean they were in the right?
It makes one wonder, when you look at the modern world.
That said, you'd have to be clinically insane to believe that the evils of the US government don't pale in comparison to what the Nazis did. What makes Hitler's Germany uniquely terrifying, even when compared to other totalitarian regimes such as Stalin's or Mao's, is that to them, genocide wasn't simply collateral damage or a sort of means to an end, but rather, their foremost aim - & they restructured their entire empire into an extermination factory in order to do it as quickly as possible.
Numerous Allied pilots (Americans especially) actually attempted to get themselves tried for war crimes because of the horrific things they'd been ordered to do, like strafing transit trains full of Jews which was later blamed on the Germans. Or the firebombing of Dresden, where tens of thousands of noncombatants were killed. But to try them would be to cast the entire Allied operation into question. Plus it might bring attention to the millions of German soldiers who were imprisoned and purposely starved to death to exterminate them.
I’d love you to go into a in-depth analysis of the individual variants of Outlast such as Chris Walker, the Groom, and Trager
Thanks so much! Outlast's lore has always intrigued me and made it out stand more amongst other horror games!
I researched tf out of MK Ultra when I was 14 to 16, it was incredibly interesting and I was shocked but ofc heavily intrigued. It was cool that this actually came up in this video few years later
I remember having my mind blown first time I heard about *MKUltra* from the book *The* *Men* *Who* *Stare* *At* *Goats* based on a real story. Sadly there are many others though history, some even more horrifying.
Look up: *The* *Tuskegee* *study,* *Japan's* *Unit* *731,* *The* *USSR* *Humanzee* *Scandal,* *The* *Twins* *of* *Auschwitz* and even *The* *Stanford* *Prison* *Experiment* (just to mention a few).
Imma need more examples of you gottem I gotta get some research done
I was surprised to find out you haven't heard about MKUltra. I thought at this point its existence is a common knowledge since it's such a huge cultural thing and a source of inspiration for many horror movies and videogames. It even inspired Stranger Things among other stuff.
Is thatva Legosi avatar?
Interesting, I never payed attention to the documents in the game now I feel like replaying it. Great video as always!
If I recall correctly in the expansion of the first game you find a document explaining the morphogenic engine allowed the human body to generate organic "nanites" . they are tied to the host body and dude was still in the device because somebody wanted to use Wallrider as a weapon
Fun fact, the unibomber was one of the subjects of the mkultra experiment!
Ahh this makes me want a Ghost in the Shell video from you, maybe 2 at least because the tachikoma development in the Stand Alone Complex series deserves its own video as well. Yea, fingers crossed.
I haven't done a video on SAC, yet... expect one at some point. I have done a video on both Ghost in the Shell movies as well.
@@maxderrat I DK if I forgot or haven't watched them yet. Huge fan, on the spectrum as well and dealing with a series of new jobs has my memory more off lately. And I do still think the tachikoma deserve their own video. Thanks again for the videos and the representation, you've help me a lot over the past year, to cope and grow, and in a lot of ways help me better convey my experience in more stressful situations.
Edit: 30 years old and along the savant spectrum with a lot of mostly dealt with childhood PTSD for better context of who is thanking you. You're helping a lot of people, on and off the spectrum to understand.
@@JustCozItsMe I recall watching this once scene that a friend of mine showed me from the anime. One of the tachikoma I think had the same English voice actress as Kari from Digimon? That scene was really good.
I'm so glad I could provide you with some clarity, enlightenment, and reassurance. I have plans to do more in that regard in the near future.
@@maxderrat I am pretty sure you're right about the voice actor.
And I am looking forward to all your future videos! Always engaging and informative.
3:47 Gotta love that good old American paranoia (and competitiveness) the Russians might be developing mind-control techniques so we gotta do it first! It's also basically how the atom bomb was created... "Well the bad guys are surely working on it, so we gotta beat them to it and use it on them before they do it to us!" I guess that's how it goes, for better or for worse... Anyway, keep up the great work Max, your stuff is always some of the most interesting interpretations of media that I've seen, always so eye-opening!
other nations were working on the atomic bomb.
Except the manhattan project mainly came to be because germany WAS going to invent the atomic bomb given enough time.
I really enjoy this series of games so I would definitely be happy if more videos on the subject were to come
Always look forward to your videos, Mr. Max. I'm quite interested in these games now. The Morphogenic Engine is particularly interesting to me. I've been a student of my dreams and a lucid explorer for as long as I can remember.
Well done video. 3 months ago I became interested in the Outlast series again and I started researching the lore, that's how I found about MK-Ultra and other similar projects. I'm European, that's why I've never heard of this before. I cannot wait for The Outlast Trials in 2022, this game will be set during the cold war and the player will get to directly experience being a MK-Ultra (or other similar project) test subject.
Outlast 1 and 2 are the most terrifying games I’ve played and I never get scared much but that game is something different
"Let's just hope that if that technology is birthed, it isn't done to birth a weapon like the Walrider."
I appreciate the optimism, but in this kind of world, something like the Walrider is inevitable.
Outlasts lore is utterly phenomenal. So deep and dark. I didn’t originally enjoy outlast 2 as much as the original, but the lore made up for it in big ways. Easily one of the scariest franchises out there
im so thankful for max's videos
I'm so thankful for followers like yourself.
Oh boy there's a whole Dark World of America most don't know about, or worse don't care for.
The soviets probably did much worse things . China is probably doing even worse things as we speak
@@flamestoyershadowkill That´s not an excuse for anything
Like... forcing a bunch of people to leave their home island only to test radioactive stuff on their own soldiers, before simply abandoning the islands and leaving them at nature's mercy, radiactive waste still on them, with sea water leaking?
Jup, that's a thing.
One of the games I just can’t play. I HATE being chased so much. Edit to add: holy shit. I may have to give this another go.
You should make a game analysis on Dead Space it has not only good sci-fi lore to it but it has interesting takes on mental health decline, hallucinations, and Dementia.
Thanks max! Once again you succeeded to shed a new light on games I looked over! Gotta play this again for sure, happy October!
This was literally me until I learned about the story and disturbing things that the variants endured. I can’t wait to play outlast trials
Great video, Max. Loooooove Outlast. So glad you enjoyed researching MKUltra.
I'm surprised you haven't looked into Doki Doki Literature Club yet, what with its A.I, Simulation, Horror and very Meta themes.
I'd love to see your take on them :)
Awesome video Max! You did a great job at highlighting how deep the Outlast lore really goes and why it’s so spOooOoOOoky. It’s one of the reasons why the first Outlast (and Whistleblower DLC) is my favourite horror game of all time…
Yo🙌
“Outlast 1&2 didn’t effect me like it effects you”. What a brave edgelord.
Once I researched the things about outlast it terrified me and it made outlast scarier than what it is. Then on top of that it goes into details on what they’ll do on the letters in the game. It gives me chills, I like that type of horror
the way that i found THE brain graphics a day after i watched the termina video
Great work!
With the release of outlast trials. I surely be excited to see your thoughts on how the game will be exploring more mk ultra. Since the game is a prequel and redbarrels want to elaborate on the history of the mk ultra.
I'm happy to see outlast still getting talked about lol
Outlast… havent heard that name in a while
The most terrible secret of Outlast is that Miles has a camera instead of a head, and he is powered by batteries
Another real-world event referenced in Outlast - although I don't think they ever actually mention it by name - is Operation Paper Clip, the program whereby Allied nations recruited Nazi scientists after WW2. Dr Wernicke is pretty much confirmed as part of that program.
The creators of the game deal with a very interesting subject by having the main antagonist be the murkoff corporation. While the original MKultra experiments were carried out by the CIA, as the material reality of our country changed with the rise of neoliberalism, which was the privatization of many of the state’s role in the economy, you also see a privatization of the state’s role in national security. We have companies like Black water who have been trying to replace the role of US soldiers with private mercenaries, there’s also companies like Palantir who are trying to privatize intelligence gathering. It would not surprise me if some of the companies who are advocating for open access to psychedelic research and testing, and stuff like that also maybe wanna take up the role of the cia in testing how far they can mess with the human brain. Scary stuff.
A movie released a month or so ago called "Hypnotic", I highly recommend it regrading the video subject is about hypnosis and MKULTRA experiments.
There's no way this technology would ever find moral hands.
Nope
Most technology*
Corbin here, you’re very much welcome bro. It was a pleasure
I was thinking about playing outlast for few years and the reason I haven't played it is that I find this game a little bit too jumpy ( don't get me wrong...I'm no amatuer to survival horror games )but today I decided to play it...it looks interesting so far...
i really recommend playing outlast... didn't play it because i'm too young to buy it and my mother wouldn't allow it, but i'd just watch the walkthroughs on youtube because i actually get easily scared.
I've been waiting for this video for so long. Great job, Max!
Max, another astute analysis as always. I was never a fan of the gameplay of Outlast either, and as far as I know I'm neurotypical, I'm not wholly sure if that has something to do with it.
I love horror, and your analyses are always on point.
Stay awesome, Max, and I'll do my best to stay yellow.
I would think it’s unlikely to be related to neurological conditions as people have different preferences, Neurotypical or not.
No, it has nothing to do with being normal. It's just called having a taste. I, for example, also hate these walking simulators, where not fighting back is entirely unreasonable and stupid
They’re more like stealth games than walking simulators. Plus, not being able to fight back isn’t always unreasonable.
@@TheBlueLink3 Agreed. The chase sequences where you have to navigate hallways etc while being chased kind of bars Outlast from being walking simulators imo. It's too "difficult" to be what I consider a walking simulator.
Sincerely, someone who tried to play the game bc people were calling it a ws and that is the only kind I am capable of playing, that ended up having to give up bc the game was too hard
@@BearlyAwake13 I'm sorry your experience with it wasn't too great.
I remember as a child being visited one night by a darkness that covered the ceiling of my bedroom above me, I remember later the feeling of absolute evil. Later, and now, I do not know if it happened or not. Is it a repressed memory? Or a nightmare of a much younger child forgotten then remembered but unable to remember it was a nightmare? Similarly, but much nicer I remember dancing globes of multi coloured lights again I do not know if something had visited me, I don't even know if it actually happened. But as an older child I remember that something had happened when I was even younger.
What these things were? Dream, nightmare or actualities? I think it's important not to just dismiss these things as they open up thoughts about the nature of things, false memories, repressed memories, visitation from other worldly beings.
Hey Max! Have you ever played Deadly Premonition? I feel it may really suit your general analysis and I would love to see something on it from you. Was just curious!
Please I really like outlast lore. More video like this. I really enjoy your videos
Outlast 1 and the dlc made me genuinely braver and i love them for it
Outlast has been the first ever horror game to actually introduce me into the genre. At the same time after finishing the first and second game, I kept wondering if experiments like these actually happened, given that we still have lots of supplies and resources, with nearly 8 billion individuals living on Earth which meant that many of them could have actually ended up becoming test subjects of gruesome experimentations.
Loved it man!
10:35 There is an X-Files chapter about radio towers affecting the brain and I think there was a movie from the 80's some Stephen King's work related to it.
Don't coorporations already have access to that kind of technology? I mean, isn't the constant feeding of small serotonin doses that social media gives to the average user, exactly what makes them think it's not harmful? Don't get me wrong, I use it myself (obviously, since I'm here eh), but there's a lot of artificially created dependency going on. It's not like addicts do that because they conscously think it's a good thing to look at instagram for hours. They do it because their subconscious wants them to.
Yeah the naïve among us think that the experiments stop and didn't reach any significant conclusions back in the 70's, but it's instead fused with the results of social experiments on PR like the ones done by Edward Bernays to develop ubiquitous techniques to control people and corral the public psyche. Corporations have their algorithms to curate your digital reality and systems to induce addiction to their software, mass media have fear porn to retain viewership and keep people in a constant state of stress to make them more malleable to new changes, etc etc.
Just because they aren't frequently overdosing us on psychedelics doesn't mean they haven't found a way around it already.
The "mind" or the "subconscious" don't even exist, mate.
This truly is fascinating, never really knew about the experiments prior to your video. One of the real experiments references almost identically in the game is insane (The women firing the bullet one). It is smart in a freaky way that the game linked and embedded the results of these real life experiments such as hallucinations into the game with the help of Knoth and our protagonist. With the strides Neuralink is making, I hope it is not the real life Murkoff in any way, shape, or form!
The title of video is wrong, it should be "Why Outlast is More Terrifying Than I Thought"
A little shocked this was your first run in with anything based off MK Ultra research, neways great video as always
Great video Max! To anyone who is either new to MK Ultra, or would like a good comprehensive dive into it's history - even far enough back to it's scientific roots in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, then I recommend the Chilluminati podcast on Mathas' channel. They did a pretty frank 4 part series on MK Ultra that is definitely worth a listen.
To clarify, Mkultra was founded by the American government, not Nazi Germany or Japan. They just bought information and man power from them.
@@helmaschine1885 atleast *officially* founded by US. I wouldn't be surprised if some early methods of that shit was developed by nazis or a similar entity
Community: "Baby in outlast 2 doesn't cast shadows so it must be him hallucinating"
Outlast developers: "yeah, it was bug"
How do you play a game, and not notice half the game is there? The exploration, reading of notes, and trying to solve/discover the mystery of what's going on in the game makes the more obvious half of the game more compelling. I don't understand the mentality of the player who is only following the carrot on a stick, ticking off boxes to boost their ego. Experience the game. The game is a lot scarier when you are immersed in the experience, too. Don't just go through the motions.
The same reason that people need to watch videos by VaatiVidya to understand what's going on in the Dark Souls games. Though the information is there, not everybody is able to piece it together. Plus, it depends on the level of enthusiasm that the player has. For example, depending on how much you enjoyed a game like Spec-Ops: The Line, and paid attention to everything going on up until the ending, you will make one of four choices. In regards to a game like Control, I read all the documents from that game because I loved the world. Outlast just didn't compel that enthusiasm from me.
I hate games that do emergent gameplay over everything else. The make your own fun, or figure it out with no overall plan or purpose for what your doing, are the worst type of games in my eyes. The first section of the game, the game play or obvious side of the game needs to be compelling enough that you want to look into the lore and hidden meaning. Take my favourite horror game silent hill. When I was young playing it, the setting and the monsters and everything that is the main story made me want to delve more into the lore. That made me love the game even more. But if the obvious exploring of the town and story was boring, it wouldn’t matter how good the lore was I’d be bored.
@@maxderrat Hmm. But I don't fail to notice the lore in Dark Souls, I just need help understanding it. And it was compelling before I watched VattiVidya. I was immersed in the game before I watched him, too. Though I suppose it's more obvious that you are suppose to role play in Dark Souls than it is in this game.
I thought the fact that you play a journalist investigating the asylum for a story made it pretty obvious that you are supposed to find information to figure out what happened in order to get a story, and you find that out right at the beginning of the game.
@@lordcavalier9688 So you hate Minecraft, too?
I made a post about why Outlast is one of the best horror games, and it comes down, in my opinion, to empathy. In Outlast, the real enemy isn't the patients you run into, but Murkoff. and its abuses. Even when Miles Upshur cusses his attackers out and celebrates when one of the biggest threats is killed, he never lifts a finger to harm anyone. While this might have been to add to the horror experience, it's also just as likely that an investigative journalist like Miles would understand the horrific situation all these patients were put in and wanted to avoid hurting them.
I LOVE these games, and the expansive lore, though I disliked the second one a lot because the first one felt way more put together.
i LOVE outlast ONLY bc of the story basically, and also the scenes and aesthetic. Like it reallyt gets me involved
Manhunt was crazy back in the day
Props to corbin for his help 👏
Great video, keep it up man. This must have taken a lot of time and effort for you, thank you mate.
Whistleblower is the best game, all killer no filler, the story is barebones but there's actual progression unlike the terrible ending in the first game and incomprehensible storytelling in 2. Whistleblower knows exactly what it is and does a great job of doing it
True. Whistleblower is my favourite too. It had the best tightly paced gameplay of the trinity.
Facts its a shame it was so short. It had so much potential
yeah. It was the best of both games in terms of storytelling, yet it's a DLC campaign lol
I found this video through RUclips recommended and was not expecting to hear my name
Yes! More Outlast! And also I know this is a lot easier said than done but Rule of Rose would make for very good content.
i thought MKULTRA was a new Mortal Kombat game button
This was a great video Max Derrat! Thank you 🙏
Your intro was pretty much entirely my thoughts on Outlast as well. The new Amnesia game struck me the same way
Great video as always. Taking my favorite medium that is video games and taking a deeper dive into its hidden meanings and references either done intentionally or subconsciously 😁
I'm curious as to if Outlast is not your type of game in the horror genre, what is it that you do prefer? Can you recommend a horror game you actually liked?
He said Cry of Fear was the only horror game that genuinely terrified him in the video he made about Dexter
Corben, the MVP in this video.
Great video! As always.
Joe Rogan had a guest on (I don't remember his name) who was an author or journalist and he claimed to know someone intimately involved with MK Ultra, and that the government DOES have the knowledge and capability of mind-control they just have it extremely classified outside the reach of any FOIA stuff because they've continued to use it for espionage.
Edit: guest's name was Tom O'Neil
Can't believe this game is based and inspired on events from my city, terrible things that happened but what a great way to shed light on the past
Thanks for this. I was never going to play the game my self, I find the story VERY interesting, but like you the gameplay not so much. I would love to hear more about the lore of the games.
The first part of Outlast 1 is a little rough, this is where most of the Jumpscares people complain about is located. It's only in the first hour do they lay on the jumpscares because your character isn't in any true danger yet. The priest who is controlling the place wants you to live and document what is happening in the facility, so they are mostly just funneling you towards their goal. After an hour or so, the game only throws a jumpscare at you once every hour or so, so you don't expect it.
I really enjoyed the gameplay, because once you figure out when and where to look, most "hidden" enemies show themselves before you see them, like the big dude who throws you through glass in the first hour, you can see him walking around the place a minute before he attacks you. So most of the jumpscares actually come from your character (and you) not knowing what to expect. The only true unavoidable jumpscares are the crazy dudes who latch onto you as you walk by, attack you when you walk past a corner or grab you as you are walking by their jail cell. I believe there is only 5 of those events in the entire game (and about 11-12 true jumpscares in the entire playthrough), but people will act like it's every 20 seconds on the internet.
@@The_Fat_Turtle Its still terrfying to be chased by an psycho every 10 minutes.I literally got a few heart attacks because of the stress.
@@elenvrag_1690 Agree
@@elenvrag_1690 Walrider?
Jesus christ are people seriously that scared of jumpscare? Are you guys like old or some shit that a simple jump makes you shit yourself you children?