The red forrest is interesting, ther in the 12 monkey series, thats brilliant mystery time travel scifi drama that also fun exit one, especialy season 2-4 that is it gets so much , its also so good integrating the learning to move on, being trapped in the past valuing time we have, and the antagonists actually have a reason that is justified or reasonably as have the heroes tht are ight but still , but its good in 1 too, , i didnt thought there were a real red forrest. And th twists are that good dont spoil yourself, thre are really good misleading and twists that are organic in the story. There is a youtube docimentry of japan abroad about how japanese people dealt with the tsunami, and its, fitting. One person even preserve a building, others dis do new opportunities. Like the ffisher aking a service to call people in th morning to make pr for fishermen and women i guess after.
Cleaning up a relative's place after they died has a very similar effect. Everything from the left behind food in their fridge to how much toilet paper is left on the roll-- just mundane things gaining completely new value and meaning. Great video as always!
!!! I haven't seen enough people talk about this. I'm going through my grandma's stuff and it's just. Tax returns from 1972. Things she clearly thought she'd use. Things that got set down in 1950 and never picked back up.
My aunt lived with my grandmother, her mother, her entire life. It used to be her, her brothers, my grandmother, and my great grandmother. Eventually my father and uncle moved out to make families of their own. She never did. It's not good or bad, maybe she just never found the need (or courage) to leave. A house of 5, plus visitors, slowly became a house of 3 and when my great grandmother died when I was a baby it became a house of 2 and old memories. Dad and uncle and us kids always visited, but the cracks were there. Grandma started hoarding and it got worse when she got Alzheimers. The house was never cleaned, even after grandma had to be put in a home when taking care of her was too much for my aunt to handle. Grandma recently died. I can't say I feel bad. I never really got to know her, and by the time she did she couldn't remember us either. Everything she left behind is still in that house though, never cleaned, never touched by my aunt who still lives there. Her old jewelry and magazines from Marshall Field's and church gloves simply covered up by piles of new things, things she would've never been able to imagine when she first moved in around my age some 60 years ago. This place that was a fossil even when I was young, that I'd visit and be babysat in after school and later come to so I could babysit my grandmother... The whispers of abandoned places always echoed there even before I was old enough to recognize its voice. Eventually it will be my siblings', counsins', and I's job to clean it. And it's gonna be one hell job to do.
I kinda feel this with my grandpa right now. We always lived together, but when he got older, he had terrible knee pain, so we decided on surgery. He got his knee replaced but he didn't like the surgery at all, so when his other knee started hurting, we decided he shouldn't repeat the experience. For this reason, his mobility was limited and he mostly stayed in the living room. Particularly in the bed. We lost him last sunday, and going into the living room is very strange now. I laid in his bed today, and it's reminding me of how I'd sleep with him when I was in kindergarten, but now it's different. Now it's just me. Well, my mom and my grandma are still there, but it's strange with just three ladies in a house like ours, you know? We always had some man around, wether that'd be my brother, my grandpa, my uncle or my dad. Now it's just us.
I used to walk around my city and end up in the quiet corners. The places that you speed past in cars going from one place to another and never think about. Those places have the same feeling. A kind of desolation, a means to an end, a space in between, vital but overlooked. IDK... but I was colonized a very long time ago. Beautiful video Tim
This is a truly remarkable piece, Tim. Seeing our own backyard featuring in this incredible thought piece just rams it home so much harder. The stories I feel the most power from are the ones where the point is our impermanence; here you've explained exactly why. I'm actually seriously considering moving to Christchurch at the moment; I see so much potential for the city to evolve into something truly awesome, making the best of a truly terrible situation. But my visits always have me caught up in the melee of traffic, shopping malls, those friggen' amazing hills along the peninsula, the beaches, the markets (how good is the Bush Inn night market?!)...you've made me realise that my visits have all been too rushed, too full of action and run by an itinerary. For the next, I really ought to just...stop, breathe, observe, and listen. The excitement of progress can never truly pave over what was there before. And this, perhaps, is why so many of us feel such power from the heritage sites dotted around Aotearoa, even if the only evidence of prior settlement is a convenient clearing. I'll be exploring these with new eyes, too. Thank you for making this. Seriously.
This video perfectly describes that feeling I had when first playing Metroid Prime and arriving in Tallon IV. It is a feeling I will never be able to describe with another word than intoxicating, alluring, creeping in slowly. When I am alone I feel safer and in peace. Is hard to get that feeling again in videogames these days or going anywhere in real life without going somewhere safe. What an amazing video!
This video is beautiful and amazing. Personally, abandoned places have always made me feel sad and terrified in an almost Lovecraftian way. The realization of how small and temporary we are, that living is essentially battling time itself, and that one day we will lose and die and be forgotten. The timing of this video was also very convenient for me since I'm currently writing a story about a once great city left mostly abandoned after war and it gave me a great deal to think about.
I'm always in love with post apocalyptic world. Bunch of abandoned buildings with plants growing on all side of each buildings, water flowing through cracks in the streets, car that is use by birds to make their nest. If I know how to write or make a game, I would totally make one. Hell I actually have a story in my mind, but sadly I'm too lazy to learn how to write
So how about that game, _Myst?_ You find journals telling of fascinating places, only to later arrive at said places finding them either abandoned or in ruin, and the game never completely exposits what transpired between then and now -- allowing YOU the player to piece the backstory of the place together by yourself. On a similar note, in Skyrim (of all games) I distinctly remember a moment when exploring the abandoned mansion in "Blood on the Ice" where, in an upstairs room you can examine a set of chairs near a bed to be only told that they are "stacked in an odd manner". However, I noticed they were directly underneath a ceiling joist and immediately inferred that maybe somebody hanged themself in that room.
Loved this. Abandoned places have always had a siren's call to my soul. And you perfectly explained that feeling from the earthquakes. It was a similar feeling no longer being in Christchurch during the mosque attacks, just sitting at my kitchen table, far away, alone, and watching the live updates, waiting to know the final outcome with a certain amount of dread and horror.
i can almost breathe the influence of gacob gheller in this video and as soon i heard his voice i could feel everything conecting inside mi mind, i F ing love this kind of videos sooooooo much, thank you for bringing this to me
This is a REAAALLY interesting thought piece. I have rarely had an experience like that, as I typically never travel to places alone. Maybe that should change at some point.
I just wish What Remains of Edith Finch did something similar to Return of the Obra Dinn where you have to pay attention and relieve the moments to piece together the past yourself instead of just having the diary be filled in for you. Having you participate in the unveiling of the story makes it even more meaningful.
Amazing piece of work Tim. I must say I'm draw to places that are abandoned and humanity seems to have forgotten. I remember exploring homes as a child that were no longer lived in and wondering what the story was of the place. Who was it that lived there and why did they leave it. Thank you for your continued amazing work. 👏
I agree with you on Annihilation is one of those stories and both the script and the book understand how we lose everything when an area we remember as a home is gone and how we move forward with those memories in life. With life we always walking forward, our head held high thought we are always destined to see the world fade around when we create something that breaks the home once knew. "What is a legacy? It something you'll never see." Alexander Hamilton. That is what we leave behind and how politics can also kill the life for selfish gain. What do you leave behind when you let war break everything that you love?
When my friend and I were seniors in high school, we found a hallway with lockers and a classroom behind a set of double doors we'd both assumed was a janitors' closet. Neither of us had any idea it was there despite having walked past the doors hundreds of times since 7th grade. My friend's dad was even a teacher at the school, so he'd practically grown up in the building. It was unnerving just to find something so unexpected in such a familiar place.
I was expecting this to be more centered on actual urbex and all that comes with it. Some of the feelings portrayed in this video I've definitely experienced while looking at abandoned buildings. But there's a lot more to feel from being in the middle of an abandoned building yourself. A calmness, serenity, peacefulness, but also alertness, uneasiness, caution. Knowing at any moment someone else could come around a corner, or that the roof could fall, or an animal could race through, you can never be truly at rest. It's very easy to get lost in the surrealness of it all but you must always keep in mind your own safety, and the safety of others.
Wow. I’m currently writing a short story set after the apocalypse and I was facing writers block. This video has really inspired me with new ideas. This is a wise piece of media
The thing about abandoned places that always amazed me was that they were there, that no matter how hard nature tries our footprints remain. No matter what disaster struck our works remain, our impact stays. Our great structures, the pyramids, our skyscrapers, our great dams that all remains, even without us.
I felt this at the Normandy SR1's wreck in Mass Effect 2. The objective is to collect the dog tags of the hands that were lost when it was destroyed, and finding them all requires you to take a tour of the past. The Mako that I drove while exploring planets and doing the main story is a still, half-buried wreck. The inner shell in the engineering bay where Tali was is now collapsed. The central holographic table where I selected my next destination is dead and lifeless. The bridge is in one piece and you can walk inside it, reminding me of the jogs I took up the spine of the ship to visit Joker or leave for a mission. And in the distance, the wings and thrusters that gave it an iconic silhouette are twisted and pointed upwards at an angle. The wreck of the Normandy made me want to go back to the first game and do it all again.
What Remains of Edith Finch made me cry. The game be mostly walking around an empty house but when you find those letters. Dang. At first I didn't get it, but man it hit me like a train once I understood. the quiet house still full of stuff is so unsettling. 👌 10/10 would never play again due to emotional damage
I really wonder where the hell I picked up the phrase "beauty is desolation" because hearing that line read say the phrase shocked me. I always used it to describe my morbid fascination with abandoned places or games based on desolated areas be it Edith Finch or Fallout but I had never heard anyone else say it. I must have picked it up somewhere then. But yeah I've always loved ruined areas. For a while when I lived in Pennsylvania in the US I spent time in two infamous abandoned areas, Centralia and the Pennhurst Mental Facility.
ONe of your best videos. Such a vague topic yet striked with such precision, probably due to your own experience as well. Thank you for making this video
Abandoned places like the ones shown here inspire a kind of wonder and reverence in me, granted the same could be said for nature on the whole, reclaimed places should be no different.
I live in Christchurch. I think I actually once saw you in person but decided to let you just eat your dinner. It was only while watching your video that I realised - I've never been back. In the decade or so since the Cathedral collapsed, I've lived here the whole time but I haven't stepped foot in the city square. I barely ever go into the city centre and I only started doing so a couple of years ago. And even then... not to the Cathedral. But watching your video made me feel like I should. And even the mosque. I drive past it all of the time but since the day after the shooting I've never just gone there to think about it (there's a massive park opposite it that everyone gathered in after the shooting - for anyone unfamiliar). It's just easier to not think about these places or things, ae. Who has the time?
Hey Tim, please if you haven't, play Outer Wilds. It's genuinely the best game I've ever played. It's a 20ish hour experience that completely embodies the abandoned place narrative you've outlined here, and I think everyone should experience it.
Between this video and the Cyberpunk one, I worry that the quarantine has been exceptionally hard on Tim. Perhaps that's where that half-heart of damage came from. Mental damage caused by isolation. Here's hoping that someday you'll make something cheery again.
Outstanding video. Though I was wondering every time you cut back to your walking shot, if you had to redo it at all because some random person walked in.
Many of you in these comments agree with him and In a weird way I understand it but...where most of you feel this deep connection to the space your in I almost feel the space as alive, it’s hard for me to truly feel alone, when he talked about the spaces so deeply and intimately I remember the days I used to come home before my parents and when the dogs were away... the house seemed to move and sway as it tried to swallow me as my mind ran wild in the space creating monsters and demons I had to face... without company the space engulfed me in its hollow feel and I slowly sank into a pit of paranoia... it’s a far cry from the desolate places he spoke of but... My mind goes back to the only walking game I know... rain, in this game your tasked with finding your way around in the rain but there with you are invisible monsters hunting you, they can’t see, but they can hear, your tasked with puzzles and challenges around these creatures and one wrong move could spell your end... I feel like this game captures perfectly how I feel in such spaces, careful, quiet, and small. These places don’t want me there... their not my stories... it’s not mine to experience... I wonder, do any of you feel that terror of being found?
Also, you should probably look into the Chernobyl cleanup projects. The goal is to not have the radiation last for 200,000 years across the entire area.
In everything we believe is "Unbreakable" or "immortal", that we will stand forever, will eventually crumble but all it will truly take is a mere bump of the cosmic table, a lit matchstick, or maybe, our own pride and greed that will be the true cause of our downfall
The feeling Nier Automata's landscapes give me is one of many different wills. The will of humans, of the androids, the robots, and nature. The other three seem somewhat directionless, then nature ties them all together without trying to damage them. What remains doesn't feel lonely, but the only individuals you can identify now are the buildings and scraps of artifacts. It feels like nature. It feels like destruction, but it doesn't feel abandoned, the structures have been reborn to mean something new, even as they decay. Humanity is long gone from here, after all, and we are the androids observing with a fresh perspective. Here, you see the world you come from is dead. In Engels's data, one of the many large robots you defeat, you can see a kill count. Even a highest combo score. It's somewhat reassuring to know a machine that killed thousands of humans now lays here to rest, contemplating existence for the short time he has left.
I turned this video on, there were no dislikes... I reloaded it two seconds later... There was 1 dislike... HOW?! WHAT?! That ONE person just HAD TO!! WHY??!!! :,( I just don't understand...
Hi, Mr. Dom! It fills me with joy that you're sufficiently friends with Miss Roses that you and her talk about each others' collabs/contributions to other RUclipsrs.
In Germany we have the word "Ruinenlust", the enjoyment of visiting ruins and abondend places and I feel it hard. To see and realice that everything that we deem eternal will sooner or later turn into dust and rubble, is as awe inspiring as it is terrifying. (Wow, thanks for the like ^^)
What I admire the most about abandoned/ruined places is that it allows readers to ask the question, "wow, I wonder what this looked like when it was up and running" Horizon zero dawn was great at this in my opinion.
Bioshock and Fallout had that same feel. I really like to explore those types of worlds to try to figure out what it was like before it all became abandoned/ruined
I kinda got that feeling from Slime Rancher, specifically from the ruins at the end of the glass desert. And from Outer Wilds, exploring a solar system that is full of buildings made by another died out civilization.
I get a similar feeling from Monster Hunters numerous ruins, from Castle Schrade's foreboding atmosphere, to the Twisted Summits role as a battleground for powerful creatures.
When I played Horizon, I was wandering around and came to a ruined wind farm. As I was looking around I thought “This is my world here.” Those are things I see regularly, and as I kept exploring I had a mixed feeling of Nature at last overthrowing man’s creations and man’s creations still existing despite all nature has done.
Your channel has a special kind of magic. I'll forget it exists for ages, and then one of your videos pops up and I spend an evening binging everything you made after the last time I watched.
I have had the exact same story I was here as a small child watching HTTYD content then as i have began to love writing and stringing worlds together i have found this great channel again
Empty/Abandoned places hold something almost special. For me, they can make me feel both safe and on edge. There's a mixture of feelings that comes from being in these places which just makes them all the more interesting. Great video!
I have a story in mind but I couldn't figure out where to have it set but your comment on feeling both safe and on edge (the feel I was going for for my story) helped me settle on a setting. Thank you, kind internet stranger. 😊
It shifts how we see and what we fear. In your daily life you fear things such as embarrassing yourself in front of colleagues or losing someone you love. But in the unknown the known cannot find you, and you are freed of those chains into the chance of what has not been charted by human hands.
I agree, they are both kind of peaceful (because you are alone in the building), which brings a certain safety, but also alarming (because you may think you are alone, but you can't be sure it is or will stay that way).
This video brings back memories of when I sifted through the ashes of my childhood home after a wildfire left nothing but a blackened chimney, a misshapen shower, a charred exercise bike, and a large, house-shaped silhouette of cinders.
I fourth that you should read House of Leaves, but with the caveat that I STRONGLY recommend reading it simultaneously with someone else, so that you have another person to discuss the text with, because it is very much a text that demands discussion. And to take your time with it. A close friend of mine and I read it as a two person book club over the course of two months recently, and I honestly wish that we had taken it a bit more slowly.
I love abandoned places in games, and I think Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild did this super well with it's Hyrule Castle town, as there are enemies haunting the land and guarding what is left. However, I also love turning an abandoned place into a populated place. This doesn't happen often, but side quests for Terry Town in BotW turned a small plateau into a nice little community, and it felt like you were restoring a small part of what was lost in the last 100 years of the game's story. It was really cathartic for me to see both sides in that game, which is why Terry Town is my favorite side quest ever.
There are several examples of storytelling through setting in that game from the scattered destroyed villages and how weapons and items are placed to where large numbers of fallen Guardians are (Akala Citadel, religiously significant places, ect). The game makes great use of this kind of desolation while still leaving room for hope and even joy in the moment. At the same time, the traveling NPCs share stories and goals that make it clear that the cities may be gone, but the people are not dead or nor the legacy truly forgotten yet.
The main quest of elder scrolls online has you populate a city in a demonic realm. Filling the empty houses with lifes until theres saved elfes singing on the street and a market full of brave smiths feels just so good. You take back land from the lord of violence himself and make it home.
Fallout does this quite well too; you go exploring and find all these small moments of the past, from journal entries on computers to small graves with toys on them. Its one of the things that make the game great, at least in my opinion.
I was thinking of BotW all through this too. I remember finding a house (or at least half of one) all alone out in a field in the middle of a thunder storm. It somehow looked so much more desolate than any other ruined house I had seen, so I went to examine it… and the only item inside was an arrow stuck in the wall. It was one of the most poignant moments I’ve ever experienced in a game, and like much of BotW, the fact that it was totally unscripted and unexpected made it all the more affecting.
Agreed! BoTW is amazing in using its environment to tell a story; whenever you explore the world you'll come across these abandoned, broken houses and villages and it’s a chilling reminder that the land used to be full of life. Fort Hateno especially, you can tell that something big happened there and when you finally watch the memory it all clicks.
"I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.'" -Percy Shelley.
In the woods behind my childhood house there was an old car by a mossy pond. Nothing ever seemed to move or change, not even the water. A few miles away there was a whole abandoned town from the early 1900s. I never was able to go inside but I could watch as we drove by and my imagination would just churn. I still think about those stories I imagined even after I learned the truth about them.
We have a 1950's car at the bottom of a cliff by the side of our gold-mining river, the bonnet flung across the other side, stuck at an angle in the ground. The car is covered with bullet-holes, and remains a mystery.
@@aldousboal4920 The area had a resource, people moved in to extract it, the town got built, the resource was exhausted, everyone left. I don't KNOW that's the case here, but I'm certain given how common this is.
A beautiful dissertation on an idea that is so close to everyone's heart! It feels very personal and relatable. For you in New Zealand it's earthquakes. For us in Australia bushfires are our event of desolation. For the world, that desolation may be Covid. These are reminders of the earth's ability to override our power; but also its ability to build us and make us feel more... Alive.
When I was moving to a new city to start a new life 10 years ago, I remember late one night, before closing the door to my old apartment, looking into the dark rooms one last time, and sensing a creature crawling on the walls in there, unresolved, unfullfilled, left behind, frozen in time. I missed my bus, started walking the streets at midnight, not a human or sound was there. A piece of grafitti said "like a hollow ghost, floating through the emptiness of the streets" No idea who wrote it, no hits on Google, but knew it was refering to me. I crossed a bridge, got into the taxi, and I was gone.
A near literal representation of the universe saying "Don't you think there's something left to do...?" My experience is to never ignore that shit unless you know where to go next. So good job making it 10 years!
It's really strange when you encounter your own memories becoming an abandoned place. I'm from christchurch, and during the quakes, my parents as we lived in Australia cried out as my grandparents phone signal cut due to the tremors. An auntie saw the CCTV building go down, and my childhood optometrist died while trying to recover something from his local church. The home my maternal grandparents started their nz life in was abandoned because they were red-zoned. Over 40 years of living there after immigrating, raising their children, seeing their grandchildren visit, and it was beyond chance of recovery in such a quick moment. Vandals and looters quickly trashed the place along with other homes nearby. Nothing stolen but a sacred space to us was tarnished. When I was able to visit after the quakes, I couldn't recognize the land where my old school was. The century old church was gone. The roads had changed, and now it was just green grass with native trees. Much as I miss everything, I can't help but feel a little bit comforted that nature took over instead
Shit, I decided to rewatch this and now realise I had missed this comment, he was my family's optometrist too. I never meet him as I didn't have any eyesight issues but most of my family had. The redzone is a peaceful, beautiful but also haunting area, deserves a lot more attention.
I personally think that when science-fiction marries horror, the child can be something great. And sci-fi is not just about robots and space; it's about ideas. It's about depth, profundity of thought, emotion and experience. A sense of wonder, the feeling of awe that we all long for, and desperately try to find, even if we don't think about it consciously. Desolation, emptyness of space, vacancy where it is not expected faces us with a particular sense of humility which is a characteristic of sci-fi and horror; it makes us realize one true fact about our circumstance: We are alone, and there's something magical about that. And that feeling, though tapped into much more easily when one is surrounded by desolation and emptyness, can also be felt when one is surrounded by people. One has to only look deeper, and pay more attention to the quality of one's immediate experience in the face of everything. These locations also have a certain religious, nay, spiritual aura to them, and that is precisely due to their unquestionable power in inducing an urge of self-reflection in us. They make us think and feel more deeply about everything, especially ourselves, and what this all means to us. Emptyness, vacancy, desolation can indeed be terrorizing and horrific, or beautiful and calming, but they are always, regardless of all else, magical. This video was absolutely brilliant and amazing. Certain parts were breath-taking; you have made something special. The writing, the narration, the editing, the music, everything was on point. This is quality youtube. Thank you :)
In talking about art, few RUclips essays become art themselves. This essay should be a model for any creators trying to make art in talking about art. Beautiful work.
Eh, I think there are lessons to be learned from it, but it also serves as an example of "too much of a good thing." There are probably a dozen different statements that are trying really hard to be fade-outs/mic-drops and it gets a little tiresome, for example. The ideas in the essay are really good, as is the creation of a real life walking stimulator to serve as background
The powerlessness of experiencing a story that already happened that you have no control over and are not responsible for is what i love about so many of these games specifically nieR:automata finding out how much you were wrong is just incredible
As another Christchurch local, I really enjoyed and appreciated this video. The very moment the shot of you with the cathedral in the background showed up, I was feeling it hard. The way parts of the city still remain rubble, damaged and abandoned buildings, while other parts of the city are new and revitalised often provokes some interesting trains of thought.
Kind of surprised you talked about this without talking about Myst, perhaps the first game set solely on exploring an abandoned land and figuring out what happened there. Desolation does have a powerful impact, even when you're in a place it doesn't really make sense for it to feel that way. I'm having to be in my parents' house during this time, a big house where for holidays, there's a good chance for my sister and brother to bring home their spouses and children then also have some family friends over. The days I'm in the place all alone though, it feels desolated. It's not meant to be a house for only one person, it's meant to house a family with kids wandering about, one of whom could inherit the house and raise their own family there if they wished. It feels like a place that ought to be a generational house, passing down through the family from generation to generation until the end of time. It's the only home I've really known, only slightly older than I am since my parents had it built then moved into it before I was even conceived, and yet, it feels like there's a weight to it, hoping to once again be the home of a growing family with mirth and joy within, fearful of being made smaller or being altered into a single bachelor pad or simply being abandoned without a chance to build the history it should have. It's, not the tragic desolation that you've gone through. It is a way I've experienced desolation though.
Last of us 2 really gave me a sense of yearning for these abandoned places and wishing I could live among the ruin. There is something so hauntingly beautiful about nature reclaiming it’s place over bricks, metal, buildings. It touches me and yet disturbs and vexes me all at once. I am completely in love with what is abandoned.
Also after watching the full video; you put a serious pit in my stomach towards the end about picking up and moving on. It’s something I struggle to do with my own past and I think you have given me a revelation I really needed to hear today. Thank you for that and of course I look forward to all your videos. This video in particular though, was an absolute masterpiece. Also got to learn something about New Zealand history that I didn’t know before. Thank you for sharing that personal and culturally significant story; it definitely honored the lives lost in every tragedy presented here.
Hollow knight did this so well to me. Especially in the city of tears. A beautiful metropolis in its heyday, bathed in never ending rain due to the lake above it, now an abandon city with only a murmur of what it was due to the animated dead still repeating their actions before their death in a never ending dream and the rain mimicking tears. As if the city cries for what it was before the infection...
I love the idea of finding an abandoned city with apartment buildings all overgrown and falling apart and then exploring those buildings. Love the video!
I moved into a college dorm this year. My roommate didn’t come in for another week. Coming into that empty unoccupied dorm was... off. Now it is lived in, decorated, etc. But it is still not my room My room is a state away, and it has been cleaned out and turned into a guest bedroom. When I return for thanksgiving break, I know not how my room will be desolated. This video, describing empty, abandoned places and desolation is very resonant for me right now. I appreciate this greatly. Thank you, Hello Future Me.
I felt the same way when I went to college, but my dorm rooms increasingly became “my” space, so much so that when I moved home temporarily after college, it felt like my personal home had been taken away from me. Family home will always be First Home, but I’ve enjoyed the homes I’ve made for myself after that very much. I even miss my own personal place when I am visiting family for a long time. There’s something about nesting into a place for a while and filling it with memories that makes it feel… right.
Beautiful music. I always feel intrigued by abandoned places. It makes me wonder what future historians and archeologists will say about us. "It was the fashion in those days it seems to be seen with fake nails, an entire industry having sprung up around this one aesthetic."
"One of the most intoxicating books I've ever read..." I never expected House of Leaves to catch me here, but it's been a book I've gone back to so many times, and it always puts me on edge in a way no other piece of media ever has. It grips me, as each element of the book feels almost actively hostile to the reader in a different way. One that makes the next change of pace feel almost inviting until your hand is bitten again. Johnny's unreliable narration. His taunting over his lies. The claustrophobic arrangements of the pages themselves. The overlapping narratives keeping you from ever really feeling comfort after that spare 1/4 inch is found. The hidden puzzles that lead only to more cryptic hints. The false citations to real articles. The strange vibrance. The way your eyes have to strain to read the red text referring to what you're not supposed to be reading anyways. The paradox of the final twists. The way you're forced to spin and tilt the book in ways that make you feel foolish reading it when you can be seen. Encouraging you to take it alone. To seclude yourself with the text. To delve deeper into the labyrinth... Intoxicating is a word. But it's next to impossible for me not to recommend it. My mind vividly relives my first reading of it any time a mention catches me off guard. Thank you, Tim!
tim, i just watched this over on nebula and i have to say. i’ve been watching for years, the old how to train your dragon videos drew me in. and your commitment to your vision and content has always weighed on me and to see you come this far and create a film this well crafted and powerful really truly is uplifting. you’ve managed to express yourself and that one particular feeling that i think everyone knows but just can’t quite place in a masterful piece of art and i’m just glad i was here for it. thank you tim, and please never quit.
Back when I was in college, we had a neighbor school that was mostly abandoned due to losing their accreditation over a decade prior. So a bunch of their buildings and even their football field were left to wear and tear over the years before I even became a student. Other students often wondered the old dorms and football field to see what it was like. I even helped a few of my friends shoot a horror flick there cause of the atmosphere of it. Abandoned places always have a weird mix of history and mystery to them that makes them intriguing to explore. It’s Morris Brown College in case anyone reading this is curious. Update for those who care: Morris Brown got their accreditation back recently. So the campus is no longer abandoned. They’re up and running again.
“…Every plant and rock and creature, has a life, has a spirit, has a name.” I love old and abandoned places as well. The stories they hide ignites the wonderer in me. Loved Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture. It, along with the musical score, touch me deeply.
Showing so much of Nier: Automata and not going into detail about that, nor about the original Nier: Gestalt? FOR SHAME! It holds the same sense of tragedy and loss as the other games described because, SPOILERS! Humanity has been dead for centuries by the time of Nier: Gestalt. By Automata, they've been dead for over ten thousand years. The androids who care for the world at the time, only believe they are still alive because of an elaborate lie crafted by someone that has yet to be named. And throughout both stories, you find humanity in the stories of both androids and replicants (Think clone husks), with their own tragedies. Damn, I love those games.
We can actually look at the Harry Potter world, and see that there are places like christ church cathedral in it. Harry's home in Godric's Hollow. They refused to rebuild it, they let it sit there. Rotting. Decaying. Much like how the residents themselves are rotten and decayed under the earth....With their son wishing he were there with them from time to time.....Leaving a place abandoned has its purpose I think. I think it's important to have the remembrance, leave it there for it to be seen, to be remembered. If you rebuild over that, it's like....an erasure of what was there. Like I've always had a problem with the One World Trade Center BEING CALLED One World Trade Center. They should've kept the original name-The Freedom Tower. It would've been a perfect example of how you don't HAVE to let go of a memory, but how it's also important to MOVE ON from that memory and live for the people who've been lost. Calling it One World Trade Center just....feels like they tried go to "okay here's another one for ya." And it doesn't sit right with me.
I am personally tired of 9/11 being treated as though it were a yearly funeral. If we keep falling to our knees for every drop of blood spilled, we will never live standing.
@@completelyferrouschemist6776 it’s not a funeral so much as a moment to remember. If we fail to show the past respect it will most assuredly come back to bite us. I respect you wanting to move on but i do not ever agree with letting the lives of first responders and innocents be forgotten
@@willmungas8964 But obsessing over the past isn't healthy either. And that's america's biggest problem now. It's OBSESSIVE over the past, and trying to right wrongs previous generations did. Like why do WE the millennials need to fix shit that the boomers fcked up? Doesn't seem fair, but that's how life is.
@@willmungas8964 It is ingrained so deeply into US history, even though it only happened 20 years prior. I was three at the time. It's all anybody talks about anymore. Rocket Racoon said it best: [mockingly] "Boo-hoo hoo, my wife and child are dead..." **Stunned and offended Groot** "I don't care if it's mean! We've all got dead people! It doesn't mean you can go gettin' everybody else killed along the way!"
I started thinking about not a specific place, but a kind of place. Many of the rural areas in the Midwest where I live are losing population. Towns that once held 15,000 now struggle to keep 3,000. Places that were the centers of commerce for areas are now little more than crossroads or, if they're lucky, truck stops. The changing economics or social pressures have lead many to leave for the cities or at least the places that managed to stay relevant. I've always felt it when I drive to see family. It's always present but more noticeable if I avoid the interstate freeways and take the small two-lane highways. You can drive for miles and see no other cars or even people. Homes, sometimes farmhouses sometimes just a single house, alone in a forest or field, isolated and separated from the world. Especially in the early morning or at dusk, when the shadows are so much bigger. It feels empty. Even with cities relatively close by, it feels like you've dropped out of the world.
That thumbnail reminds me of the title screen of The Last of Us That game phenomenally captured the serene beauty of abondanded locations with old toys, diaries, and books telling lore of those that once lived there Nature recaptures buildings, structures are rotting yet left in a state that shows the shock of the game
A fun fact…. We had a sort of role playing at school for Chernobyl (like the actual nuclear reactor Melt down) I wasn’t part of that session I was in another but once I saw this title I was like “you really are from the future”
I was genuinely thinking about how this felt like a really good Jacob Geller video, and then suddenly he showed up. I love this so much, great video Tim! ❤️
I had this video among others opened up in tabs last night, but it was getting late so I came back to watch things today. Got to this one, thought, "oh yeah, the new Jacob Gellar video," because I only looked at the image, and was startled when it started playing. "Wait, Jacob Gellar doesn't have that accent."
My manager showed this to me today and within the first few seconds I told him "This is exactly like something I'd watch" thinking about Jacob Geller xD
Very surprised to see Christchurch on here! I was there the day of the quake as well, my husband lost several friends in the CTV building. Kia kaha from Wellington.
![On Worldbuilding - Island Civilisations! [ GoT | Japan | Ghibli ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pTYpjsGcKgQ/mqdefault.jpg)
When did the desolation colonise you?
~ Tim
From the beginning.
Please read the rest of the Southern Reach trilogy. Annihilation is just the first book.
@@jasontankable I had no idea there was a coninuation!!! Definitely gonna look into it, thank you!
The red forrest is interesting, ther in the 12 monkey series, thats brilliant mystery time travel scifi drama that also fun exit one, especialy season 2-4 that is it gets so much , its also so good integrating the learning to move on, being trapped in the past valuing time we have, and the antagonists actually have a reason that is justified or reasonably as have the heroes tht are ight but still , but its good in 1 too, , i didnt thought there were a real red forrest.
And th twists are that good dont spoil yourself, thre are really good misleading and twists that are organic in the story.
There is a youtube docimentry of japan abroad about how japanese people dealt with the tsunami, and its, fitting. One person even preserve a building, others dis do new opportunities. Like the ffisher aking a service to call people in th morning to make pr for fishermen and women i guess after.
When I realized my dreams of being able to stand on my own feet would always be out of reach.
Cleaning up a relative's place after they died has a very similar effect. Everything from the left behind food in their fridge to how much toilet paper is left on the roll-- just mundane things gaining completely new value and meaning. Great video as always!
How morbid and sweet
!!! I haven't seen enough people talk about this. I'm going through my grandma's stuff and it's just. Tax returns from 1972. Things she clearly thought she'd use. Things that got set down in 1950 and never picked back up.
My aunt lived with my grandmother, her mother, her entire life. It used to be her, her brothers, my grandmother, and my great grandmother. Eventually my father and uncle moved out to make families of their own. She never did. It's not good or bad, maybe she just never found the need (or courage) to leave.
A house of 5, plus visitors, slowly became a house of 3 and when my great grandmother died when I was a baby it became a house of 2 and old memories. Dad and uncle and us kids always visited, but the cracks were there. Grandma started hoarding and it got worse when she got Alzheimers. The house was never cleaned, even after grandma had to be put in a home when taking care of her was too much for my aunt to handle.
Grandma recently died. I can't say I feel bad. I never really got to know her, and by the time she did she couldn't remember us either. Everything she left behind is still in that house though, never cleaned, never touched by my aunt who still lives there. Her old jewelry and magazines from Marshall Field's and church gloves simply covered up by piles of new things, things she would've never been able to imagine when she first moved in around my age some 60 years ago.
This place that was a fossil even when I was young, that I'd visit and be babysat in after school and later come to so I could babysit my grandmother... The whispers of abandoned places always echoed there even before I was old enough to recognize its voice. Eventually it will be my siblings', counsins', and I's job to clean it. And it's gonna be one hell job to do.
@@RoseEyed my grandma was a hoarder too..! Honestly you will need to rent a dump truck or some such eventually
I kinda feel this with my grandpa right now. We always lived together, but when he got older, he had terrible knee pain, so we decided on surgery. He got his knee replaced but he didn't like the surgery at all, so when his other knee started hurting, we decided he shouldn't repeat the experience. For this reason, his mobility was limited and he mostly stayed in the living room. Particularly in the bed. We lost him last sunday, and going into the living room is very strange now. I laid in his bed today, and it's reminding me of how I'd sleep with him when I was in kindergarten, but now it's different. Now it's just me. Well, my mom and my grandma are still there, but it's strange with just three ladies in a house like ours, you know? We always had some man around, wether that'd be my brother, my grandpa, my uncle or my dad. Now it's just us.
In abandoned places, we are all detectives; we are all archeologists.
I used to walk around my city and end up in the quiet corners. The places that you speed past in cars going from one place to another and never think about.
Those places have the same feeling. A kind of desolation, a means to an end, a space in between, vital but overlooked.
IDK... but I was colonized a very long time ago.
Beautiful video Tim
I now understand why I like post-apocalyptic stories so much now. It's the remains of life left behind that intrigues me! :)
This is a truly remarkable piece, Tim. Seeing our own backyard featuring in this incredible thought piece just rams it home so much harder. The stories I feel the most power from are the ones where the point is our impermanence; here you've explained exactly why.
I'm actually seriously considering moving to Christchurch at the moment; I see so much potential for the city to evolve into something truly awesome, making the best of a truly terrible situation. But my visits always have me caught up in the melee of traffic, shopping malls, those friggen' amazing hills along the peninsula, the beaches, the markets (how good is the Bush Inn night market?!)...you've made me realise that my visits have all been too rushed, too full of action and run by an itinerary. For the next, I really ought to just...stop, breathe, observe, and listen. The excitement of progress can never truly pave over what was there before.
And this, perhaps, is why so many of us feel such power from the heritage sites dotted around Aotearoa, even if the only evidence of prior settlement is a convenient clearing. I'll be exploring these with new eyes, too.
Thank you for making this. Seriously.
this makes me want to get up and go explore a moss-covered abandoned mall
This video perfectly describes that feeling I had when first playing Metroid Prime and arriving in Tallon IV. It is a feeling I will never be able to describe with another word than intoxicating, alluring, creeping in slowly. When I am alone I feel safer and in peace. Is hard to get that feeling again in videogames these days or going anywhere in real life without going somewhere safe.
What an amazing video!
This video is beautiful and amazing. Personally, abandoned places have always made me feel sad and terrified in an almost Lovecraftian way. The realization of how small and temporary we are, that living is essentially battling time itself, and that one day we will lose and die and be forgotten.
The timing of this video was also very convenient for me since I'm currently writing a story about a once great city left mostly abandoned after war and it gave me a great deal to think about.
I'm always in love with post apocalyptic world. Bunch of abandoned buildings with plants growing on all side of each buildings, water flowing through cracks in the streets, car that is use by birds to make their nest. If I know how to write or make a game, I would totally make one. Hell I actually have a story in my mind, but sadly I'm too lazy to learn how to write
So how about that game, _Myst?_ You find journals telling of fascinating places, only to later arrive at said places finding them either abandoned or in ruin, and the game never completely exposits what transpired between then and now -- allowing YOU the player to piece the backstory of the place together by yourself.
On a similar note, in Skyrim (of all games) I distinctly remember a moment when exploring the abandoned mansion in "Blood on the Ice" where, in an upstairs room you can examine a set of chairs near a bed to be only told that they are "stacked in an odd manner". However, I noticed they were directly underneath a ceiling joist and immediately inferred that maybe somebody hanged themself in that room.
Loved this. Abandoned places have always had a siren's call to my soul. And you perfectly explained that feeling from the earthquakes. It was a similar feeling no longer being in Christchurch during the mosque attacks, just sitting at my kitchen table, far away, alone, and watching the live updates, waiting to know the final outcome with a certain amount of dread and horror.
i can almost breathe the influence of gacob gheller in this video and as soon i heard his voice i could feel everything conecting inside mi mind, i F ing love this kind of videos sooooooo much, thank you for bringing this to me
This is a REAAALLY interesting thought piece.
I have rarely had an experience like that, as I typically never travel to places alone. Maybe that should change at some point.
I just wish What Remains of Edith Finch did something similar to Return of the Obra Dinn where you have to pay attention and relieve the moments to piece together the past yourself instead of just having the diary be filled in for you. Having you participate in the unveiling of the story makes it even more meaningful.
Amazing piece of work Tim. I must say I'm draw to places that are abandoned and humanity seems to have forgotten. I remember exploring homes as a child that were no longer lived in and wondering what the story was of the place. Who was it that lived there and why did they leave it. Thank you for your continued amazing work. 👏
I agree with you on Annihilation is one of those stories and both the script and the book understand how we lose everything when an area we remember as a home is gone and how we move forward with those memories in life. With life we always walking forward, our head held high thought we are always destined to see the world fade around when we create something that breaks the home once knew.
"What is a legacy? It something you'll never see." Alexander Hamilton. That is what we leave behind and how politics can also kill the life for selfish gain.
What do you leave behind when you let war break everything that you love?
When my friend and I were seniors in high school, we found a hallway with lockers and a classroom behind a set of double doors we'd both assumed was a janitors' closet. Neither of us had any idea it was there despite having walked past the doors hundreds of times since 7th grade. My friend's dad was even a teacher at the school, so he'd practically grown up in the building. It was unnerving just to find something so unexpected in such a familiar place.
I'm so glad you brought up Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, it's SUCH a good game, the highest tier of walking sims with the BEST soundtrack
Does anyone else remember the game 'Myst' from the early 90's? It had a feel a lot like that, as well.
I was expecting this to be more centered on actual urbex and all that comes with it. Some of the feelings portrayed in this video I've definitely experienced while looking at abandoned buildings. But there's a lot more to feel from being in the middle of an abandoned building yourself. A calmness, serenity, peacefulness, but also alertness, uneasiness, caution. Knowing at any moment someone else could come around a corner, or that the roof could fall, or an animal could race through, you can never be truly at rest. It's very easy to get lost in the surrealness of it all but you must always keep in mind your own safety, and the safety of others.
Wow. I’m currently writing a short story set after the apocalypse and I was facing writers block. This video has really inspired me with new ideas. This is a wise piece of media
This is a piece of art that made me more emotional then I thought it would.
I cannot believe this is free content. I’m in tears, thank you so much
The thing about abandoned places that always amazed me was that they were there, that no matter how hard nature tries our footprints remain. No matter what disaster struck our works remain, our impact stays. Our great structures, the pyramids, our skyscrapers, our great dams that all remains, even without us.
I felt this at the Normandy SR1's wreck in Mass Effect 2. The objective is to collect the dog tags of the hands that were lost when it was destroyed, and finding them all requires you to take a tour of the past. The Mako that I drove while exploring planets and doing the main story is a still, half-buried wreck. The inner shell in the engineering bay where Tali was is now collapsed. The central holographic table where I selected my next destination is dead and lifeless. The bridge is in one piece and you can walk inside it, reminding me of the jogs I took up the spine of the ship to visit Joker or leave for a mission. And in the distance, the wings and thrusters that gave it an iconic silhouette are twisted and pointed upwards at an angle.
The wreck of the Normandy made me want to go back to the first game and do it all again.
What Remains of Edith Finch made me cry. The game be mostly walking around an empty house but when you find those letters. Dang.
At first I didn't get it, but man it hit me like a train once I understood.
the quiet house still full of stuff is so unsettling. 👌
10/10 would never play again due to emotional damage
Ok, I was NOT prepared for that last part. That was... wow... I don't have any words...
I really wonder where the hell I picked up the phrase "beauty is desolation" because hearing that line read say the phrase shocked me. I always used it to describe my morbid fascination with abandoned places or games based on desolated areas be it Edith Finch or Fallout but I had never heard anyone else say it. I must have picked it up somewhere then. But yeah I've always loved ruined areas. For a while when I lived in Pennsylvania in the US I spent time in two infamous abandoned areas, Centralia and the Pennhurst Mental Facility.
ONe of your best videos. Such a vague topic yet striked with such precision, probably due to your own experience as well. Thank you for making this video
Abandoned places like the ones shown here inspire a kind of wonder and reverence in me, granted the same could be said for nature on the whole, reclaimed places should be no different.
I find Nevil Shute's On The Beach captures the sense of desolation well
Absolutely loved the music for this one, mate.
I live in Christchurch. I think I actually once saw you in person but decided to let you just eat your dinner.
It was only while watching your video that I realised - I've never been back.
In the decade or so since the Cathedral collapsed, I've lived here the whole time but I haven't stepped foot in the city square. I barely ever go into the city centre and I only started doing so a couple of years ago. And even then... not to the Cathedral.
But watching your video made me feel like I should. And even the mosque. I drive past it all of the time but since the day after the shooting I've never just gone there to think about it (there's a massive park opposite it that everyone gathered in after the shooting - for anyone unfamiliar).
It's just easier to not think about these places or things, ae. Who has the time?
Hey Tim, please if you haven't, play Outer Wilds. It's genuinely the best game I've ever played. It's a 20ish hour experience that completely embodies the abandoned place narrative you've outlined here, and I think everyone should experience it.
Very well done Tim.
Between this video and the Cyberpunk one, I worry that the quarantine has been exceptionally hard on Tim. Perhaps that's where that half-heart of damage came from. Mental damage caused by isolation.
Here's hoping that someday you'll make something cheery again.
PUSHINGUPROSES!! What an excellent thing to hear!!
Outstanding video.
Though I was wondering every time you cut back to your walking shot, if you had to redo it at all because some random person walked in.
Ok, I cried, thanks a lot for that video
Many of you in these comments agree with him and In a weird way I understand it but...where most of you feel this deep connection to the space your in I almost feel the space as alive, it’s hard for me to truly feel alone, when he talked about the spaces so deeply and intimately I remember the days I used to come home before my parents and when the dogs were away... the house seemed to move and sway as it tried to swallow me as my mind ran wild in the space creating monsters and demons I had to face... without company the space engulfed me in its hollow feel and I slowly sank into a pit of paranoia... it’s a far cry from the desolate places he spoke of but... My mind goes back to the only walking game I know... rain, in this game your tasked with finding your way around in the rain but there with you are invisible monsters hunting you, they can’t see, but they can hear, your tasked with puzzles and challenges around these creatures and one wrong move could spell your end... I feel like this game captures perfectly how I feel in such spaces, careful, quiet, and small. These places don’t want me there... their not my stories... it’s not mine to experience... I wonder,
do any of you feel that terror of being found?
Absolutely beautiful and absolutely true.
beautiful as always
I love your voice Tim.
I loved this video!! You can really tell its something special
-Current quest: experience this place alone.
The camera man: has an existential crisis.
Also, you should probably look into the Chernobyl cleanup projects. The goal is to not have the radiation last for 200,000 years across the entire area.
Tim the whole video: "Would you care for some.....intimacy with your desolation?"
In everything we believe is "Unbreakable" or "immortal", that we will stand forever, will eventually crumble
but all it will truly take is a mere bump of the cosmic table, a lit matchstick, or maybe, our own pride and greed that will be the true cause of our downfall
Haven't finished watching the video, but agreed.
The feeling Nier Automata's landscapes give me is one of many different wills. The will of humans, of the androids, the robots, and nature. The other three seem somewhat directionless, then nature ties them all together without trying to damage them.
What remains doesn't feel lonely, but the only individuals you can identify now are the buildings and scraps of artifacts. It feels like nature. It feels like destruction, but it doesn't feel abandoned, the structures have been reborn to mean something new, even as they decay.
Humanity is long gone from here, after all, and we are the androids observing with a fresh perspective.
Here, you see the world you come from is dead.
In Engels's data, one of the many large robots you defeat, you can see a kill count. Even a highest combo score. It's somewhat reassuring to know a machine that killed thousands of humans now lays here to rest, contemplating existence for the short time he has left.
every video you upload from now on I'll be suggesting you play Xenoblade Chronicles until you make an critique of that master piece of a game
This video feels so much like a Jacob Geller video! I mean that in the best way possible, was he a direct inspiration for you this time?
Jacob Geller type video? FECK YEAH BABY!
Happy 167th Birthday, Christchurch!
This has a slightly different meaning for us Magnus Archives fans
Lmao. He makes “The Desolation” sound so quietly and subtly painful in a way much more suited for The Lonely than TMA’s Lightless Flame.
I turned this video on, there were no dislikes...
I reloaded it two seconds later...
There was 1 dislike...
HOW?! WHAT?! That ONE person just HAD TO!! WHY??!!! :,(
I just don't understand...
Great video, by the way.
Beautiful video
Roses mentioned she did a recording for this but I completely forgot and did a big double-take when she started talking.
Hi, Mr. Dom! It fills me with joy that you're sufficiently friends with Miss Roses that you and her talk about each others' collabs/contributions to other RUclipsrs.
I love that I keep finding you on random videos by content creators I love.
This is an extraordinary piece of media, you should be very proud of what you’ve created.
Yes! It is great! I agree you should be proud!
And the music you chose only amplifies the feelings those locations give you when you hear of / see them both in games and otherwise
I'm taken aback; it's awesome 🤔.
In Germany we have the word "Ruinenlust", the enjoyment of visiting ruins and abondend places and I feel it hard. To see and realice that everything that we deem eternal will sooner or later turn into dust and rubble, is as awe inspiring as it is terrifying.
(Wow, thanks for the like ^^)
Oh hab das Wort noch nie zuvor gehört. Werde es definitiv brauchen!
@@theswissmiss69
Freut mich zu hören :D
Wow I love that!
Ruinenlust and kenopsia, my two new favourite words I have recently learnt about :)
@Nines
And the way German works, we can allways make more :D
What I admire the most about abandoned/ruined places is that it allows readers to ask the question, "wow, I wonder what this looked like when it was up and running" Horizon zero dawn was great at this in my opinion.
Bioshock and Fallout had that same feel. I really like to explore those types of worlds to try to figure out what it was like before it all became abandoned/ruined
Yeah, zero dawn really is a beautiful game lol
I kinda got that feeling from Slime Rancher, specifically from the ruins at the end of the glass desert. And from Outer Wilds, exploring a solar system that is full of buildings made by another died out civilization.
I get a similar feeling from Monster Hunters numerous ruins, from Castle Schrade's foreboding atmosphere, to the Twisted Summits role as a battleground for powerful creatures.
When I played Horizon, I was wandering around and came to a ruined wind farm. As I was looking around I thought “This is my world here.” Those are things I see regularly, and as I kept exploring I had a mixed feeling of Nature at last overthrowing man’s creations and man’s creations still existing despite all nature has done.
Your channel has a special kind of magic. I'll forget it exists for ages, and then one of your videos pops up and I spend an evening binging everything you made after the last time I watched.
this made me very happy to read :)
I have had the exact same story I was here as a small child watching HTTYD content then as i have began to love writing and stringing worlds together i have found this great channel again
@@HelloFutureMe Hi :)
Empty/Abandoned places hold something almost special. For me, they can make me feel both safe and on edge. There's a mixture of feelings that comes from being in these places which just makes them all the more interesting. Great video!
I have a story in mind but I couldn't figure out where to have it set but your comment on feeling both safe and on edge (the feel I was going for for my story) helped me settle on a setting. Thank you, kind internet stranger. 😊
It shifts how we see and what we fear. In your daily life you fear things such as embarrassing yourself in front of colleagues or losing someone you love. But in the unknown the known cannot find you, and you are freed of those chains into the chance of what has not been charted by human hands.
I love to watch videos on channels such as Shiey. Seeing all these places in the state they are in, is just awesome.
I agree, they are both kind of peaceful (because you are alone in the building), which brings a certain safety, but also alarming (because you may think you are alone, but you can't be sure it is or will stay that way).
This video brings back memories of when I sifted through the ashes of my childhood home after a wildfire left nothing but a blackened chimney, a misshapen shower, a charred exercise bike, and a large, house-shaped silhouette of cinders.
I know this is years later but I'm sorry that happened to you and your family. :(
Hello my friend
I’m sorry for your loss, I know it’s “just a house” but I am sorry it happened to yours
The script for this was stunning. Also... you're the second person to mention House Of Leaves to me this week.
Because you should read it ;)
~ Tim
Seconded, I've not read anything else quite like it and everyone should have a chance at that experience
thirded, it is an incredible book.
I fourth that you should read House of Leaves, but with the caveat that I STRONGLY recommend reading it simultaneously with someone else, so that you have another person to discuss the text with, because it is very much a text that demands discussion. And to take your time with it. A close friend of mine and I read it as a two person book club over the course of two months recently, and I honestly wish that we had taken it a bit more slowly.
I love abandoned places in games, and I think Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild did this super well with it's Hyrule Castle town, as there are enemies haunting the land and guarding what is left. However, I also love turning an abandoned place into a populated place. This doesn't happen often, but side quests for Terry Town in BotW turned a small plateau into a nice little community, and it felt like you were restoring a small part of what was lost in the last 100 years of the game's story. It was really cathartic for me to see both sides in that game, which is why Terry Town is my favorite side quest ever.
There are several examples of storytelling through setting in that game from the scattered destroyed villages and how weapons and items are placed to where large numbers of fallen Guardians are (Akala Citadel, religiously significant places, ect).
The game makes great use of this kind of desolation while still leaving room for hope and even joy in the moment. At the same time, the traveling NPCs share stories and goals that make it clear that the cities may be gone, but the people are not dead or nor the legacy truly forgotten yet.
The main quest of elder scrolls online has you populate a city in a demonic realm. Filling the empty houses with lifes until theres saved elfes singing on the street and a market full of brave smiths feels just so good. You take back land from the lord of violence himself and make it home.
Fallout does this quite well too; you go exploring and find all these small moments of the past, from journal entries on computers to small graves with toys on them. Its one of the things that make the game great, at least in my opinion.
I was thinking of BotW all through this too. I remember finding a house (or at least half of one) all alone out in a field in the middle of a thunder storm. It somehow looked so much more desolate than any other ruined house I had seen, so I went to examine it… and the only item inside was an arrow stuck in the wall. It was one of the most poignant moments I’ve ever experienced in a game, and like much of BotW, the fact that it was totally unscripted and unexpected made it all the more affecting.
Agreed! BoTW is amazing in using its environment to tell a story; whenever you explore the world you'll come across these abandoned, broken houses and villages and it’s a chilling reminder that the land used to be full of life. Fort Hateno especially, you can tell that something big happened there and when you finally watch the memory it all clicks.
"I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'"
-Percy Shelley.
I’ve always loved this poem
This poem is incredible and fits this video perfectly
One of the greatest tragedies is Percy Shelley's untimely death, a truly incredible writer who we lost far too soon
In the woods behind my childhood house there was an old car by a mossy pond. Nothing ever seemed to move or change, not even the water.
A few miles away there was a whole abandoned town from the early 1900s. I never was able to go inside but I could watch as we drove by and my imagination would just churn.
I still think about those stories I imagined even after I learned the truth about them.
What was the truth about that town if I may ask
We have a 1950's car at the bottom of a cliff by the side of our gold-mining river, the bonnet flung across the other side, stuck at an angle in the ground. The car is covered with bullet-holes, and remains a mystery.
@@aldousboal4920
The area had a resource, people moved in to extract it, the town got built, the resource was exhausted, everyone left.
I don't KNOW that's the case here, but I'm certain given how common this is.
@@aldousboal4920 eminant domain stuff, where property was "borrowed" and never given back
A beautiful dissertation on an idea that is so close to everyone's heart!
It feels very personal and relatable.
For you in New Zealand it's earthquakes.
For us in Australia bushfires are our event of desolation.
For the world, that desolation may be Covid.
These are reminders of the earth's ability to override our power; but also its ability to build us and make us feel more...
Alive.
When I was moving to a new city to start a new life 10 years ago, I remember late one night, before closing the door to my old apartment, looking into the dark rooms one last time, and sensing a creature crawling on the walls in there, unresolved, unfullfilled, left behind, frozen in time. I missed my bus, started walking the streets at midnight, not a human or sound was there. A piece of grafitti said "like a hollow ghost, floating through the emptiness of the streets" No idea who wrote it, no hits on Google, but knew it was refering to me. I crossed a bridge, got into the taxi, and I was gone.
A near literal representation of the universe saying "Don't you think there's something left to do...?"
My experience is to never ignore that shit unless you know where to go next. So good job making it 10 years!
This was like a short ghost/horrorstory
hope you're doing well these days
It's really strange when you encounter your own memories becoming an abandoned place. I'm from christchurch, and during the quakes, my parents as we lived in Australia cried out as my grandparents phone signal cut due to the tremors. An auntie saw the CCTV building go down, and my childhood optometrist died while trying to recover something from his local church. The home my maternal grandparents started their nz life in was abandoned because they were red-zoned. Over 40 years of living there after immigrating, raising their children, seeing their grandchildren visit, and it was beyond chance of recovery in such a quick moment. Vandals and looters quickly trashed the place along with other homes nearby. Nothing stolen but a sacred space to us was tarnished. When I was able to visit after the quakes, I couldn't recognize the land where my old school was. The century old church was gone. The roads had changed, and now it was just green grass with native trees. Much as I miss everything, I can't help but feel a little bit comforted that nature took over instead
Shit, I decided to rewatch this and now realise I had missed this comment, he was my family's optometrist too. I never meet him as I didn't have any eyesight issues but most of my family had. The redzone is a peaceful, beautiful but also haunting area, deserves a lot more attention.
I think dark souls uses this really well, although it's a mix of an abandoned and a dying world.
exploring a world during the final momments of its slow desolation
I personally think that when science-fiction marries horror, the child can be something great. And sci-fi is not just about robots and space; it's about ideas. It's about depth, profundity of thought, emotion and experience. A sense of wonder, the feeling of awe that we all long for, and desperately try to find, even if we don't think about it consciously.
Desolation, emptyness of space, vacancy where it is not expected faces us with a particular sense of humility which is a characteristic of sci-fi and horror; it makes us realize one true fact about our circumstance:
We are alone, and there's something magical about that.
And that feeling, though tapped into much more easily when one is surrounded by desolation and emptyness, can also be felt when one is surrounded by people. One has to only look deeper, and pay more attention to the quality of one's immediate experience in the face of everything.
These locations also have a certain religious, nay, spiritual aura to them, and that is precisely due to their unquestionable power in inducing an urge of self-reflection in us. They make us think and feel more deeply about everything, especially ourselves, and what this all means to us.
Emptyness, vacancy, desolation can indeed be terrorizing and horrific, or beautiful and calming, but they are always, regardless of all else, magical.
This video was absolutely brilliant and amazing. Certain parts were breath-taking; you have made something special. The writing, the narration, the editing, the music, everything was on point.
This is quality youtube. Thank you :)
Perfectly sums up how I feel about this ❤️❤️
@@jasperfurniss1073 :)
Tim, this is perhaps one of your best videos yet. Credit to you, seriously
In talking about art, few RUclips essays become art themselves. This essay should be a model for any creators trying to make art in talking about art. Beautiful work.
You should check out Jacob Geller if you haven't already
Eh, I think there are lessons to be learned from it, but it also serves as an example of "too much of a good thing." There are probably a dozen different statements that are trying really hard to be fade-outs/mic-drops and it gets a little tiresome, for example.
The ideas in the essay are really good, as is the creation of a real life walking stimulator to serve as background
This video is, literally, a work of art. You just earned yourself a patron, neighbour.
The powerlessness of experiencing a story that already happened that you have no control over and are not responsible for is what i love about so many of these games specifically nieR:automata finding out how much you were wrong is just incredible
As another Christchurch local, I really enjoyed and appreciated this video. The very moment the shot of you with the cathedral in the background showed up, I was feeling it hard. The way parts of the city still remain rubble, damaged and abandoned buildings, while other parts of the city are new and revitalised often provokes some interesting trains of thought.
Also, Christchurch at night is Creepy.
Kind of surprised you talked about this without talking about Myst, perhaps the first game set solely on exploring an abandoned land and figuring out what happened there.
Desolation does have a powerful impact, even when you're in a place it doesn't really make sense for it to feel that way. I'm having to be in my parents' house during this time, a big house where for holidays, there's a good chance for my sister and brother to bring home their spouses and children then also have some family friends over. The days I'm in the place all alone though, it feels desolated. It's not meant to be a house for only one person, it's meant to house a family with kids wandering about, one of whom could inherit the house and raise their own family there if they wished. It feels like a place that ought to be a generational house, passing down through the family from generation to generation until the end of time. It's the only home I've really known, only slightly older than I am since my parents had it built then moved into it before I was even conceived, and yet, it feels like there's a weight to it, hoping to once again be the home of a growing family with mirth and joy within, fearful of being made smaller or being altered into a single bachelor pad or simply being abandoned without a chance to build the history it should have.
It's, not the tragic desolation that you've gone through. It is a way I've experienced desolation though.
Last of us 2 really gave me a sense of yearning for these abandoned places and wishing I could live among the ruin. There is something so hauntingly beautiful about nature reclaiming it’s place over bricks, metal, buildings. It touches me and yet disturbs and vexes me all at once. I am completely in love with what is abandoned.
Also after watching the full video; you put a serious pit in my stomach towards the end about picking up and moving on. It’s something I struggle to do with my own past and I think you have given me a revelation I really needed to hear today. Thank you for that and of course I look forward to all your videos. This video in particular though, was an absolute masterpiece. Also got to learn something about New Zealand history that I didn’t know before. Thank you for sharing that personal and culturally significant story; it definitely honored the lives lost in every tragedy presented here.
Hollow knight did this so well to me. Especially in the city of tears.
A beautiful metropolis in its heyday, bathed in never ending rain due to the lake above it, now an abandon city with only a murmur of what it was due to the animated dead still repeating their actions before their death in a never ending dream and the rain mimicking tears. As if the city cries for what it was before the infection...
Yessss! And also Rain World. I don't know if you know this game, but it's beautiful
@spacenoodle8207 I do! and I was engulfed in the story. It took me way over 200 cycles to finish the game but I loved it
I love the idea of finding an abandoned city with apartment buildings all overgrown and falling apart and then exploring those buildings. Love the video!
I moved into a college dorm this year. My roommate didn’t come in for another week. Coming into that empty unoccupied dorm was... off. Now it is lived in, decorated, etc. But it is still not my room
My room is a state away, and it has been cleaned out and turned into a guest bedroom. When I return for thanksgiving break, I know not how my room will be desolated.
This video, describing empty, abandoned places and desolation is very resonant for me right now. I appreciate this greatly. Thank you, Hello Future Me.
I felt the same way when I went to college, but my dorm rooms increasingly became “my” space, so much so that when I moved home temporarily after college, it felt like my personal home had been taken away from me. Family home will always be First Home, but I’ve enjoyed the homes I’ve made for myself after that very much. I even miss my own personal place when I am visiting family for a long time. There’s something about nesting into a place for a while and filling it with memories that makes it feel… right.
"There Will Come Soft Rains" is actually recreated as location in "Fallout 3" game. There is still Mr Handy robot making them meal every day.
Really? Where?
@@TheSchultinator The McClellan Family Townhome in Georgetown
Beautiful music. I always feel intrigued by abandoned places. It makes me wonder what future historians and archeologists will say about us. "It was the fashion in those days it seems to be seen with fake nails, an entire industry having sprung up around this one aesthetic."
It sounds absurd when you put it that way, but now I just feel compelled to bring back powdered wigs.
The song is Phillip Ayers - Only human if you want to listen directly ruclips.net/video/H3SbtkX8Wr4/видео.html
yo what's the name of that opening and closing track
only human by phillip ayers
@@Blauuts thank you so much
"One of the most intoxicating books I've ever read..."
I never expected House of Leaves to catch me here, but it's been a book I've gone back to so many times, and it always puts me on edge in a way no other piece of media ever has.
It grips me, as each element of the book feels almost actively hostile to the reader in a different way. One that makes the next change of pace feel almost inviting until your hand is bitten again.
Johnny's unreliable narration. His taunting over his lies. The claustrophobic arrangements of the pages themselves. The overlapping narratives keeping you from ever really feeling comfort after that spare 1/4 inch is found. The hidden puzzles that lead only to more cryptic hints. The false citations to real articles. The strange vibrance. The way your eyes have to strain to read the red text referring to what you're not supposed to be reading anyways. The paradox of the final twists. The way you're forced to spin and tilt the book in ways that make you feel foolish reading it when you can be seen. Encouraging you to take it alone. To seclude yourself with the text. To delve deeper into the labyrinth...
Intoxicating is a word. But it's next to impossible for me not to recommend it. My mind vividly relives my first reading of it any time a mention catches me off guard.
Thank you, Tim!
tim, i just watched this over on nebula and i have to say. i’ve been watching for years, the old how to train your dragon videos drew me in. and your commitment to your vision and content has always weighed on me and to see you come this far and create a film this well crafted and powerful really truly is uplifting. you’ve managed to express yourself and that one particular feeling that i think everyone knows but just can’t quite place in a masterful piece of art and i’m just glad i was here for it. thank you tim, and please never quit.
Back when I was in college, we had a neighbor school that was mostly abandoned due to losing their accreditation over a decade prior. So a bunch of their buildings and even their football field were left to wear and tear over the years before I even became a student. Other students often wondered the old dorms and football field to see what it was like. I even helped a few of my friends shoot a horror flick there cause of the atmosphere of it. Abandoned places always have a weird mix of history and mystery to them that makes them intriguing to explore. It’s Morris Brown College in case anyone reading this is curious.
Update for those who care: Morris Brown got their accreditation back recently. So the campus is no longer abandoned. They’re up and running again.
“…Every plant and rock and creature, has a life, has a spirit, has a name.”
I love old and abandoned places as well. The stories they hide ignites the wonderer in me.
Loved Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture. It, along with the musical score, touch me deeply.
This is why I don’t watch TV anymore. I even teared up for a moment. This is incredible writing and presentation.
Showing so much of Nier: Automata and not going into detail about that, nor about the original Nier: Gestalt? FOR SHAME!
It holds the same sense of tragedy and loss as the other games described because,
SPOILERS!
Humanity has been dead for centuries by the time of Nier: Gestalt. By Automata, they've been dead for over ten thousand years. The androids who care for the world at the time, only believe they are still alive because of an elaborate lie crafted by someone that has yet to be named. And throughout both stories, you find humanity in the stories of both androids and replicants (Think clone husks), with their own tragedies.
Damn, I love those games.
We can actually look at the Harry Potter world, and see that there are places like christ church cathedral in it. Harry's home in Godric's Hollow.
They refused to rebuild it, they let it sit there. Rotting. Decaying. Much like how the residents themselves are rotten and decayed under the earth....With their son wishing he were there with them from time to time.....Leaving a place abandoned has its purpose I think. I think it's important to have the remembrance, leave it there for it to be seen, to be remembered. If you rebuild over that, it's like....an erasure of what was there. Like I've always had a problem with the One World Trade Center BEING CALLED One World Trade Center. They should've kept the original name-The Freedom Tower. It would've been a perfect example of how you don't HAVE to let go of a memory, but how it's also important to MOVE ON from that memory and live for the people who've been lost. Calling it One World Trade Center just....feels like they tried go to "okay here's another one for ya." And it doesn't sit right with me.
I think this sentiment is shared by a lot of Americans. I know it is shared by myself and my family.
I am personally tired of 9/11 being treated as though it were a yearly funeral. If we keep falling to our knees for every drop of blood spilled, we will never live standing.
@@completelyferrouschemist6776 it’s not a funeral so much as a moment to remember. If we fail to show the past respect it will most assuredly come back to bite us. I respect you wanting to move on but i do not ever agree with letting the lives of first responders and innocents be forgotten
@@willmungas8964 But obsessing over the past isn't healthy either. And that's america's biggest problem now. It's OBSESSIVE over the past, and trying to right wrongs previous generations did. Like why do WE the millennials need to fix shit that the boomers fcked up? Doesn't seem fair, but that's how life is.
@@willmungas8964 It is ingrained so deeply into US history, even though it only happened 20 years prior. I was three at the time. It's all anybody talks about anymore.
Rocket Racoon said it best:
[mockingly] "Boo-hoo hoo, my wife and child are dead..."
**Stunned and offended Groot**
"I don't care if it's mean! We've all got dead people! It doesn't mean you can go gettin' everybody else killed along the way!"
I started thinking about not a specific place, but a kind of place. Many of the rural areas in the Midwest where I live are losing population. Towns that once held 15,000 now struggle to keep 3,000. Places that were the centers of commerce for areas are now little more than crossroads or, if they're lucky, truck stops. The changing economics or social pressures have lead many to leave for the cities or at least the places that managed to stay relevant. I've always felt it when I drive to see family. It's always present but more noticeable if I avoid the interstate freeways and take the small two-lane highways. You can drive for miles and see no other cars or even people. Homes, sometimes farmhouses sometimes just a single house, alone in a forest or field, isolated and separated from the world. Especially in the early morning or at dusk, when the shadows are so much bigger. It feels empty. Even with cities relatively close by, it feels like you've dropped out of the world.
That thumbnail reminds me of the title screen of The Last of Us
That game phenomenally captured the serene beauty of abondanded locations with old toys, diaries, and books telling lore of those that once lived there
Nature recaptures buildings, structures are rotting yet left in a state that shows the shock of the game
An absolutely beautiful video. Perhaps this is even your Magnum opus. This will be a video I will think about and come back to for a long time.
A fun fact…. We had a sort of role playing at school for Chernobyl (like the actual nuclear reactor Melt down) I wasn’t part of that session I was in another but once I saw this title I was like “you really are from the future”
I was genuinely thinking about how this felt like a really good Jacob Geller video, and then suddenly he showed up.
I love this so much, great video Tim! ❤️
I had this video among others opened up in tabs last night, but it was getting late so I came back to watch things today. Got to this one, thought, "oh yeah, the new Jacob Gellar video," because I only looked at the image, and was startled when it started playing. "Wait, Jacob Gellar doesn't have that accent."
@@amrys_argent That's fantastic
My manager showed this to me today and within the first few seconds I told him "This is exactly like something I'd watch" thinking about Jacob Geller xD
Very surprised to see Christchurch on here! I was there the day of the quake as well, my husband lost several friends in the CTV building. Kia kaha from Wellington.