Megalophobia in Games
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- Опубликовано: 12 фев 2024
- I played 20 hours of Subnautica in 4 days for this video.
Thank you all for 25k subs!
Partially inspired by: • Megalophobia In Gaming
And: • Megalophobia In Video ...
Media used: Amnesia: The Bunker, Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Five Night’s at Freddy’s one, Ailen Isolation, The Utility Room, Subnautica, No Man’s Sky, Doom Eternal, Ultrakill, Shadow of the Colossus, Half-Life 2, Half-Life Alyx.
Music used (In order): Bright Moon Cottage - Ambient A (Dream Emulator OST) Misremembered (SIGNALIS OST) Mattison’s Independance (Legend of Zelda TOTK OST) Bells of Laguna Bend (Cyberpunk 2077 OST) Island’s Beneath the Sea (Subnautica OST) Finding Life (Subnautica OST) Supermoon (No Man’s Sky OST) Prologue (Shadow of the Colossus OST) Unstoppable Force (Ultrakill OST) Silence (Shadow of the Colossus OST) Human Resources (Perfect Vermin OST) Commandment (Shadow of the Colossus OST)
Skip spoilers (if you care):
The Utility Room 2:08 - 7:08
DOOM Eternal 18:23 - 19:38
Ultrakill 19:38 - 20:17
SOTC 22:18 - 24:37
Have a great day 
Развлечения
I'm confused about the subnautica part. Isn't that exactly why people are scared? Being tiny in an ocean where you can't see the big monsters loom nearby is all part of the fear. Every time i saw someone talk about the game, they mention the big sea creatures.
I mean he also said that the size of the skull head was as big as a football field sooo…. 😭
Thats part of it, but I think peoples biggest fear when it comes to the ocean is A) the fact there is no help whatsoever and we are not primarily built to exist underwater, and B) that we don't know what's down in the depths, and without very specific technology we can never know.
as someone who was more scared by the open space than the creatures, i think it probably varies.
Yeah pretty much
thalassophobia😊
I played Subnautica in VR. Now THAT is true horror. Once you see everything in scale, the true mass of those seacreatures, and the depth of the ocean, become so much more horrific.
That not why it’s terrifying. It’s terrifying because it’s so bad
You can just look at the ratings, and see how wrong you are
@@Minos-gaming______dylanjam5737nice bait
@@Minos-gaming______dylanjam5737how is subnautica bad??
@@chrisi7127 dont engage with bait His goal is to make your day worse
In Little Nightmares your're surrounded by an environment bigger than you, creatures who overshadow your bare existence to the point you're actually powerless in comparison
I love Little Nightmares. it's a really great horror series
I read your comment with Little Big Planet instead of Little Nightmares and I thought "What the fuck is this guy talking about?"
@@jamiroquaii soon there'll be a third one! time to get excited :D
@sambrosi2289 I really hope they do good with it. I don't think the people who made 1 and 2 are making it
@@jamiroquaii oh i wasn't aware of that... kind of a bummer. Hope they can capture the vibe
Another quiet megalaphobic game is portal, as the aperture laboratories extend hugely, which I love.
Especially Portal 2. All those massive domes, stacked haphazardly on top of each other, so deep beneath the earth.
god, aperture is *HUGE*
I would love a game where it’s procedurally generated and your in like an aperture laboratory place, where there is like a ton of secrets
but also have that claustrophobic feeling, like your trapped in a little corner of this massive facility.
Especially "The Fall" chapter of Portal 2.
I'm glad that ULTRAKILL got mentioned. Corpse of King Minos is a great example, but the Earthmover on layer 7 really takes the huge boss cake imo
war without reason
benjamin
she war on my without til i reason
@@serhiiko7141she movin on my earth till i war
them: "giant corpse controlled by snakes smacking you"
me asf: "giant robot shooting lightning spears that you need to climb"
"Something impossibly huge and ominous lurches across the horizon. Pass a Luck (-1) check or its gaze, with eyes the size of planets, falls upon you, and you lose 2 Sanity."
what game is this from
@@memerreal-tk3mb The Arkham Horror board game! The first time I read that event when I was young, I got chills. This video brought it to mind, for obvious reasons.
I don't have Megalophobia, so I guess that's why for me, super large structures or giant creatures are target of fascination instead of target of fear. This is also why I'm more in awe when scientists found one of those giant-ass squid inside the ocean's deepest part. Same with space, I love space and It's always amazing to read what large natural structure scientists managed to find out there in the universe, whether it's supermassive planets, star formations, or blackholes.
Same here!
One thing I've really delved into is the Minecraft modding scene letting you really get a better look at the world through LoD mods, like the one based on Cubic Chunks, or Distant Horizons 1&2. It's so awesome seeing just... the *sheer scale* of things. I love it. It's just so much more to *explore*, to *see* from here to there, to *imagine.* It'd be even better if it works in VR. :D
No, every human being has innate megalophobia, stop the bullshit you aren't special lol
I get exactly what you mean. And that is why I love the idea of the size of The Boötes void
For me it’s like a mix of wonder and fear.
@@caldercockatoo2234 That's "awe" or "awesome" in the most traditional sense. Though awesome rarely gets used like that anymore.
You sound like matpat ai
That's hilarious
Oddly accurate, matpat Ai when he was first starting RUclips.
I don't have magalophobia BUT
In Warframe at the end of the New War Quest there's a scene that gave me chills
For a while before the Quest the game teases you with this "Man in the Wall" that's supposed to be some eldritch entity like a ghost whispering to you in the walls, but then by the end of the New War you get to see it immediately after the climax of the last fight, out of nowhere and literal Man in the Wall, like a skyscraper sized virtruvian man in a slab of concrete, flying at your face covering your whole screen and chanting a eldritch language
Seeing that slab of a man fly towards me actually gave me virtigo for a second
Warframe lore’s already trippy but that little scene made me forget what I was playing for a moment, wack.
fax, but i’d like to point out how the background scenery for things like the albericht laboratories, the hub for the zariman, and even lua gives me chills some times
Man, I cannot put into words how freaked out I was after exploring Albrecht's laboratory, heading to the chasm where the fight took place and the phone constantly rings...only to turn around, look up AND SEE THE MAN IN THE WALL THERE, FULL SCALE
Isn't Megalophobia actually just common sense?😅
Waframe mentioned !
recently armored core 6 made me realize megalophobia, since the game is built in the same engine as Elden Ring, and everything in that game is made in a realistic-ish scale, its not slow to put 1+1 and realize what im talking about. its a mech game.
you start the game crawling through cramped industrial tunnels and passageways, you see railways and some other paths, spaces for you to climb and fly. yet everything seems normal... in a way, made for you to fit in scale. just the right size?
but as you progress on the first level, it starts to open up a bit more, the train tracks now have waggons with possibly raw materials for the local industrial plant you seem to be inside, but you cant help but realize, how small that wagon is? you can probably lift it yourself in your mech suit. then you see hanging chains, massive dooways, that world tho, is wrong, its not a world made for humans, its a world where you in your machine, are in your natural habitat, it is massive, YOU in the machine, can fly, can easily jump across bridges and paths, find your way in a incoherent amount of connections junctions and elevations, platforms, entrances, gigantic doors. its a world made for mechs. a small climb for you, would be an impossible wall for a normal human, a small distance you acn travel boosting, would be a agonizingly long walk for a human, a normal door for you, would be the most frightening entrance door to anywhere a person would ever see, that, until the game opens up proper.
and it hits you. the impossible scale of everything, the outside of that "industrial plant" you seemed to be inside, is all across the surface of the planet, elevated far above ground by pillars, no matter where you look, the sky is made of metal, but light shines through, it almost looks like a forest of giant metallic trees. and in the horizon, between the sandy desert floor, and the metal sky, the sun shines through the gap between these two, the strangest sunset you'll ever see.
from there on you dont have no longer much time to soak in on these astonishingly huge architecture departures, how everything seem to have been made to fit super giant machinery, not human, not made for me, and for you, that is a world made for metal giants and for war. brute, sterile and metallic. no billboards, no visible windows, no noticeable homey aspects. future never looked so bleak. its almost as if nobody has the time for any of that, or that they dont need that, even in the more urban'ish parts of the game, like when we invade a local resistance's fortifications their cities are just tall buildings, no lights, no greenery, no billboards, everything is pale grey, or the Xylem, a colony space ship, is not far behind, with the added difference it seem to have the usual street signs we have, that give us directions in traffic. which seems funnily enough, outdated, but relatable? homes, buildings, cars, trucks... planes helicopters. yet so small you could confuse all of that for a miniature set of toys in a massive toy room.... a massive... toy room? a massive toy room for mechs.
just to end my case, the funniest part is when you find out, Rubicon-3 the planet where this game takes place, is a Dwarf Planet. its many times smaller than our earth... 20% the size of earth if im not mistaken. so i wonder how far more insane, massive and impossibly other corporation owned planets might have been altered? what kind of insane structures they might have, other insanely huge machinery, Rubicon-3 has a ring, but not a natural ring, it has rings, made out of man-made structures, probably a Dison-Sphere.
and mind you, Armored Core 6, is an Action Mecha Game. so fast you dont have time to think about any of this, but its sheer speed, chaos and action, are a result of you, simply becoming this monstrous machine, a machine that could probably kick the shit out of any cosmic deity, in any cosmic horror novel or book, before it could even think about what is happening to it. if humanity' unstoppable power of growth and being able to create these kind of things on their own, and at absurd quantities, is not at least frightening... i dont know what is.
ARMORED CORE 6 MENTIONED 🗣😤
I don’t think Rubicon-3 is 20% the size of Earth. The planet model as seen in the final boss arena of two of the endings is small enough to make the Vascular Plant stand out more.
damn bro its almost like the game where you pilot a robot is gonna have levels designed for robots
Yeah armored core 6 definitely gave me megalophobia feelings, once I realised how big the mechs actually are. Everything is beyond anything humanity can currently build. It's ridiculously huge. And despite being from the viewpoint of a giant mech, even if you imagined the mech is the size of a human, everything is STILL really huge anyway. But yeah it just gets so much bigger when you realise how big a human is by comparison. Like, early on there's just a simple warehouse room that in reality is as tall and wide as a skyscraper, and you're just flying about it shooting shit.
I wish I wasn't so shit at the game cos I wanna see more of it. But I've gotta practice, I guess.
Its not that deep.
Control is also a great game where the brutalist architecture is so vast and bigx towering over you while still being mosten realistic until you come in to contact with these vast canyons between certain parts of the map that extend infinetely. Gives some propper chills ngl
The run-ins with the Anchor and the Former are great megalophobia moments.
I never got that far because the game was too pretentious and crap for me to continue
I feel like Mass Effect 3's opening does a good job of this feeling as well. Watching as 2km tall machines land on the Earth, dwarfing absolutely everything and laying waste to the entire planet, and the only thing you're armed with is a pistol.
This, and the first meeting with Leviathan underwater. That really shook me to my bones
There's an ambitious Subnautica mod in the works called "The Return of the Ancients" which's reviving the Gargantuan Leviathan.
The only adult Gargantuan is found in the "dead zone", preying on the Ghost Leviathans that spawn there, lol. It looks like it can swallow the Cyclops submarine (the game's largest driveable vehicle) whole.
The juveniles aren't Leviathan-big but still scary and dangerous. If you find and hatch an egg, you'd have a pet baby Gargantuan. It can follow you around and takes care of tough predators for you incl. even (adult) Reapers. And it play-bites you, dealing damage. It's kinda like having a pet bear.
I heard about that mod while making this video, but I actually think just alluding to giant monsters in the form of a fossil brings way more questions then just having it in front of you. (especially since it's not natively apart of the game)
@Cresendex i humbly disagree
@@Cresendexwhen playing games fossils can end up feeling like a bore if the game doesnt already have a living ecosystem that could have supported those fossils. Having a giant creatures fossil doesnt make much sense when everything you see is small. And with me having played games for so long i easily see through the fossils and i just see a asset placed there to impress me. But if you have a equivalent in size creature that actually moves then its easier to imagine those fossils actually being living beings
@@Niiwastaken On the other hand, the human mind can conjure things more terrifying than reality _especially_ when an anxiety disorder like a phobia is involved. Speaking from experience. My own ADs make certain things scarier than they really are.
Heck, dinosaurs may not be as scary as we made them out to be. Paleo artists Conway and Koseman once tried drawing modern animals like we usually draw dinosaurs (relying mostly on bones, giving them little to no soft tissue like fat, etc.), and the results were horrifying, lol. You could find em online.
@Cresendex Trust me, seeing the full sized creature in the ecological deadzone is absolutely horrifying. It ticks that megalophobia box instantly. It dwarfs everything else in the game by a massive margin, and its impressive how the game its able to handle such massive models
"Magalohydrothalassophobia" as a word gives me megalophobia
Outer Wilds was a game that massively triggered my megalophobia. Giants Deep nearly made me sick on approach because its so difficult to judge its scale and distance when you can't see any landmass, and then immediately following that you get treated to thalasophobia once you make it through.
Then there's Dark Bramble...
how is it that you're the first one here to mention outer wilds??
the waves on giant's deep................................
FR that GIANT tornado on Giants Deep, that thing gives me massive megalophobia and some thalassophobia. Especially viewed from the inside out if u know what i mean
I have ptsd from The first time i went to dark bramble
The upcoming War of The Worlds survival game is, in my opinion, the single best use of megalophobia in any medium *ever* . I'm very hyped for it and I'm excited for people to get their hands on it.
Like the hg wells book?
Spoilers for No Man's Sky:
You forgot the most disquieting and gigantic thing about NMS's story. That the entire universe full of 18 quintillion planets, is all the creation of a computer simulation. Which means theres a reality that is orders of magnitude larger than NMS's explorable space outside of the player's reach. And it means at any moment, some rando event or entity from that reality could turn us all off.
And, spoilers, not only the sense of scale but also time. The reason why "16" shows up all the time in the game is because there are only 16 minutes left of the simulation. Yet no matter how many hours, days, hell, weeks you spend playing, there are still 16 minutes left
I love No Man's Sky. It went from being an underwhelming mess, to a game worthy of all praise it gets.
"Life is not a question. There does not need to be an answer." they managed to turn the impersonality of the incomprehensible number of computer-generated planets from a criticism into a personally significant experience. (man was it rough at release though)
Man that is really meta for a video game that *is* a computer simulation of a universe
It's more existential/cosmic horror I think
No Man's Sky presents a very unsettling premise: the universe is indeed a simulation. However, the computer that the simulation is running on is is dying, and only has 16 seconds left to live. But how long is 16 seconds to the machine that runs the simulation? And for us players inside the simulation, is there anything we can do to stop the universe's destruction, or is it already too late?
check out the Iterator structures from Rain World! giant supercomputers so large, they go above the cloud layer and have massive cities built on top of them
Some great places to see the scale are: The highest point (as artificer), Some of the rooms around the house of braids (as artificer) The top of the big tree (as gourmand), The top of the wall in the exterior, where stargazer plays (as any other than saint), and the top of the wall right before you get off the tall pole, right before stargazer plays (as any)
add to that iterator facilities as whole, giant foundations of selfrepairing concrete and steel so that infrastructure built on them wouldnt just sink down into terrain that is said to be mud mire everywhere due to constant downpours
I have a particular fear of one part of Portal 2. When we are exploring the old Aperture, we can see the huge structures that they used for testing, and i think that those are more terrifying than the "modern" ones, because we can see then fully, rather than just for a glimpse (Ex: The jumps between chambers on Wheetly part).
There's something unsusual about the testing spheres, the huge vault doors, gigantic pipes and machinary. They look old because of the rust, but still they imput such a fear in me...
i have to say, it's so rare to see people talk about megalophobia in the expecific way you show in these videos, i definetly don't have "megalophobia" as in fear of the big and vast, i would say i really love the feeling of it actually, it's the feeling of understanding that there is stuff much much bigger than you, and you might not even comprehend it, but you sure can gaze at it's greatness, i love the megalophobia more focused more into the fiction and celestial aspect, as it makes me feel these expecific emotions better, that's a reason of why i love astronomy so much, i used to open Space Engine and explore the universe for HOURS, some of those hours would be me just sitting in a random moon looking into a pretty gas giant in the horizon, it has the feeling of dread there sure, it's kinda burned into the mix, but with it comes the calmness too i think, if it's too big for you to comprehend, in the end it makes a good time for not thinking too much about what isn't important, and just let your mind free into it's wonders for a bit. Great video as allways, loved the first game shown specially, really wanna try it now xD
I think the emotion you are describing, is awe.
And yes,, its the same feeling astronauts get when they stare at earth from outside,and realise just how small our little blue planet is.
Really makes you feel fear and wonder at the same time.
Life truly has endless possibilities
It’s a little less philosophical, but you should definitely play Playdead’s INSIDE if you haven’t. There’s so much environmental storytelling in that game. Signs that things above you are going on, but it’s not super clear what. Rather than space and stuff, it’s more corporate experimentation and every other dystopian thing along those lines. A lot of “lack of control”. It’s a really cool game haha.
@@DEADEYESSS i LOVE INSIDE, as well as LIMBO, they are two amazing games, you have great taste!
One of my worst nightmares is being able to move so fast that I end up losing myself in space, forever looking for earth to return too
I used to have nightmares like this as a kid and often without any monsters just large buildings, I was horrified every time. Only other time I felt like this was Arrival, I really hope this genre gets explored
Story time
I had a dream where I was sleeping on our house then all of a sudden I had the urge to pee. I went to the bathroom but then, there was a huge quake that had happened. I looked outside and saw a huge mountain, right in front of our house. Then I went back inside but there was just that feeling inside me that really bugged me. That mountain made me feel uncomfortable so I looked out again. I was scared, that thing was crazy big in my dream. I turn my back, I look again and it’s Jupiter now. That made me even more scared. Then I woke up.
That’s when I knew I had a phobia of big things.
Here’s the 2nd one:
I was outside on the terrace just in my inflatable swimming pool. I stare at the blue sky, then I though to myself: “the sky seems endless, what it Jupiter were to be near us right now?” Then that picture in my head just unsettled me. I couldn’t stop looking back and forth at the sky because I was so unnerved.
Phobias are crazy things man.
This reminds me of a similar dream i had
I was just chilling in a room, then suddenly, like a videogame texture stretching glitch i saw saturn's rings fly past through the room, when i stepped outside i looked up and my vision zoomed out from me into a 3rd person view to show one quarter of earth exposed while saturn and Jupiter engulfed the rest
earth was basically the core, with a sliced quarter of saturn next to the earth quarter, and half of jupiter for the rest of the weird planet amalgam
my whole life i've had nightmares where im in a massive city and there's some kinda giant monster attacking it. its only me in the city, which has strangely tall buildings, and for some reason this creature is hunting me specifically. even if i escape the city and travel the world, it always finds me... the creatures are often godzilla like, and this nightmare was caused by me watching godzilla 1998 a lot as a kid. a lot of fans hate that movie, but it's one of my favorites and i consider it the scariest movie ive ever seen
i dont have megalophobia but i know what you mean
I had the same thing multiple time with the sky.
I think for the Ultrakill part, the earthmovers in the 7th layer are the better example of Megalophobia in the game. You see dozens around you. You spend a considerable time and effort just to kill ONE. In the lore we learn that these things were designed and succeeded in annihilating earth and making humanity extinct. These boss makes you realize that you may be a threat, you’re certainly a small one
a game that i think about when i think of megalophobia is playdead's INSIDE. throughout quite a lot of the game there are so many incredible landscapes and buildings. and despite it being a side scrolling game you can still see so much depth in the backgrounds. like literally some of the locations have me wondering "how far does this thing go?!". it's very good
god i love megalophobia, especially of the brutalist style
good video btw
surprised you covered ultrakill and didnt mention the earthmover. i was genuinely shocked when i first saw it and it’s the biggest boss you face
My first experience with megalophobia was as a child, playing Spore. The game starts you in an underwater bacterial section where you grow and evolve. There are tons of creatures larger than you, and some are so ginormous that beneath you, you can see distant reflections deeper in the water that can sometimes fill your entire screen with their size.
Later, on land, there are still "Epics"; ginormous versions of existing creatures that roar loudly and attack anything in sight.
My father told me that there was a section in Spore where if you swam too far, you would get a cutscene of a colossal creature leaping out of the water and eating you. He said that I ran upstairs screaming and crying because that scared me so bad. I won't ever forget Spore for being my first exposure to this concept.
As someone who played Spore as a kid, what your father said was true, and it was one of the few things that genuinely spooked me about the game.
My girlfriend with Megalophobia when i unzip my pants:
*completely fine*
😬
I grew up in the suburbs and rarely leave my local area, so when I went to Sydney for the first time recently the sheer scale of the buildings was terrifying and really unlocked this fear for me. I actually walked into a pole because I was so distracted by the scale of the whole place lmao. Another thing was my first time seeing a horse in person, they're obviously not exactly giant but horses feel much bigger in person. Super intimidating and majestic animal.
Suburbs as in... American suburbs or normal suburbs?
@@user-bv7zo6vd4m Australia lol
One of my favorite games NaissanceE has giant structures in the 2nd chapter.
You're placed in a gigantic city like structure, with no end in sight upwards, or downwards.
Almost everything you see in the game is unrecognizable, there's areas that look like a city, some are like airducts.
but you can never find a purpose in anything, all the moving parts, windows, and lights, the catwalks, the doors, the archways, it's all alien to you.
Megalophobia, the fear of Megalovania
😐
Grains of sands under the table
I cant speak for anyone else, but I feel the opposite about large, monumental things. The scale of such things is always so impressive to me. There is a calmness in watching something like a blue whale float by - seemingly unaware of your presence. A calmness in looking at a planet from orbit in games like Space Engineers or Elite Dangerous. It puts your worries and your woes into perspective - essentially meaningless in the face of the infinite. Nature is filled with grand, imposing things that don't even necessarily want to bring you harm - they simply exist, just like you, and that makes me serene.
Agree, it felt so annoying to see this guy talking about how scary these things are when i believe they are amazing
@@BROKEN-ENGLISHAnnoying? It's a normal, albeit irrational fear that many people have
I have a mix of dread and awe when seeing massive things, whether it’s a monument or living thing. It doesn’t make me feel insignificant: it makes me feel like I’m being used as a scale to gauge the things size. It’s kinda beautiful
dude the vocal fry
I'm super interested in this topic but that fry has defeated me in about 2 minutes
If "We have Jacob Geller at home." were a thing this would be it.
I'm liking the videos so far, but this channel definitely took some inspiration from another video essayist I enjoy.
To my knowledge, the video scripts aren't directly copied from Geller, but almost everything else is heavily inspired. It's almost just like remaking his videos, even down the the video game examples. I don't know if it counts as plagiarism, but I find that it's on the cusp.
@quntface1518 even the thumbnails look the same...
@@quntface1518 its just content milking. basically making the same exact points but said differently for content.
@@CaptainKyleVH Yeah, they are basically the same video just with the words changed.
Why was a CaseOh video recommended to me right after this one?
Algorithmic propaganda
I'm horrified of deep oceans. Specifically because my mind goes brrrrrr and imagines unfathomably giant creatures hiding in the endless blue
Thallasophobia?
Ive always loved the utility room. Thanks for this video!
holy vocal fry
Love to see your vids! Keep it up, this kinda obscure topics feels refreshing to hear about!
Fantastic video! Always looking for more video game essayists! I remember seeing a similar video but it was more about infinity in games. Gives a similar vibe.
You should definitely check manga “Blame”, the main character wandering for thousands of hours in an apocalyptic self-building structure which is not suited for tiny human
I've always wanted to express my emotions regarding massive things in video games and how much it scared me even when I was still a kid, until now it still disturbs me deeply and I have yet to use words to describe it. You have no clue how much this video means to me, I thank you
One example I remember feeling megalophobic was the underwater segments in The Sinking City. Barely being able to see those gigantic creatures swimming in the murky, briny deep above the drowned city made me feel small and helpless. I always found myself just staring at them as they passed me by.
There are also the undersea caves that are the destinations for these sea walks where you are greeted by bottomless and vast caverns where the noises of massive things lurking bellow, out of sight, in the abyssal darkness.
Of that entire game, all the detective work and running around the city for hours, it was those moments in the deep and the dark that stuck with me.
naissance is a really interesting example too, where you traverse vast megastructure. there are plenty of videos about it.
The corpse of king Minos is big, but the current end boss for Ultrakill is much larger and really sells that feeling.
Actually, size plays a big part in Ultrakill as a whole, not just this one boss. In the first layer (actually, layer 0), you find yourself navigating tiny hallways, sliding around the enemies, with the occasional big room filled with enemies. In layer 1, you find yourself in an artificial outdoors, with rooms having enough space to jump around, but not too much. In layer 2, the rooms start to open up, with one level being a giant bridge with only the start and end being large towers you have to spiral up. The majority of the level is spent outside on a thin bridge, but with the ability to jump off the bridge and land on a jump pad that sends you flying above your enemies. In the third layer, you are still indoors, but this time the levels are extremely spacious, and generally you want to be in the center of the room, unlike the other layers where you want to be on the edge of the room jumping off walls.
The 4th layer is the beginning of act 2, where you are finally fully outside, but you have to worry about the burning sand that damages you if you touch it, leaving you a large open space, but only small platforms you can stand on. The first boss of this layer is a gory corpse of what could only be described as a giant, using the first boss of the game, which many died to over and over... As a weapon. In the fifth layer, the scale actually takes a turn... You are back indoors, but this time you are underwater. You already talked enough about megalohydrothalassophobia, so I won't go into depth about this layer. Layer 6 is made up of giant cathedrals... Idk my writing creativity has left by this point cathedral big cathedral scary ahhh.
The 7th layer, the introduction to act 3 is currently where Ultrakill is at in development, since the game is still in early access. 7-1 seems almost refreshing, you are back in tight corridors, moving around at your own pace, and it's somewhat a puzzle navigating the corridors, rather than a battle. Once you start 7-2, it seems that this may be the entire layer, but you would be wrong. After a pretty easy mini-boss, you find yourself walking through a door into a world completely open to you. While there is a path to follow, you can go right to the middle of the level, but you are blocked by a door that requires a key, so you can't just entirely skip the level. (You actually can skip the level, but it's a tiny little hole off to the side that the devs just added so the speedrunners wouldn't riot lmfao). In the distance, you can see absolutely humongous robots, you can't even begin to gauge their size, but to many players, it just seems like a cool artistic touch...
In the final level of layer 7, you walk out the doors of the level start, to find yourself at the feet of one of these gargantuan "creatures", the Earthmovers. Suddenly, a bossbar appears. You grapple a large distance over to it's leg, and climb up to it's body. You parkour along small platforms jutting out of it's side, killing enemies along the way. You keep climbing and climbing for minutes, and finally you get to fight the earthmover. But a new bossbar appears. This is only it's defense system. After a relatively difficult boss, you move into it's chest. Waves of enemies try and stop you from felling this beast, but nothing stands in the way of the player. Eventually, you make it into a fortified room, containing this game's equivalent to shield generators, and the heart of the Earthmover. Once destroying this heart you have only so much time before it explodes in your face.
I feel that this boss, after all build up, perfectly captures size and megalophobia in a video game format. If you read all this... What it wrong with you??? (I'm the one that wrote it though so I can't hold it against you)
Hell yeah i expect a comment about benjamin
… it’s a 🧠.
correction, they didnt add the hole into the bomb cart for speedrunners, its so you can complete 7-2's challenge, "dont kill any enemies"
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Ain't reading
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Look at the full dark souls hydra size. shiz is freaky.
Hi
Ash Lake is horrifying. So is the arena for the Four Kings.
I always love these video essays about aspects of games most people never even bother thinking about. Asking the question of why something is the way it is in relation to games is always such an interesting point of discussion. Keep up making amazing videos like this, they're amazing!
in subnautica, the actual playable area is on a crater, and the feeling that there's an end down there, in the void, and the assumption of something big enough to live in such a vast space, is so goddamn terrifying
Is your entire channel just lifted directly from Jacob Geller? I haven’t seen one video from this channel that’s not overtly guilty of that
My attraction to vastness started when I was playing Serious Sam 2. Maybe I'm a bit weird but there are some HUGE things in that game too
Playing half life 2 and half life alyx in vr has been both the most breathtaking and horrifying experiences I've ever had, both games use megalophobia to their advantage, especially when showing you things that the combine have created. On a computer sure the citadel is impressive, but in vr it gives you such a sense of dread and horror, like "THAT'S where i have to go eventually?" It's incredible. I highly advise anyone who can, even if they arent a fan of the half life series, play HlAlyx please, it's an amazing game and the horror it captures is beautiful
When talking about megalophobia, the first thing I remember is the final boss of Intrusion 2. That was my first expirience with that type of fear. The boss is mostly just a big robot, but it *literally shakes the building with your character inside* as one of his attacks. He also crushes the walls of the building with his fingers and fires lasers from them. That's one of the best bosses in the videogame history I remember, btw.
Bros voice cracking mid video is too funny to take this video serious bruv 😭😭
About the part where you talk about how you have to get onto the colossi.
THAT'S LITERALLY THE ENTIRE 1000-THR EARTHMOVER BOSS.
Like a lot of it is spent climbing it while the real boss fight (which could be either defense system or the brain) while some of it is spent inside him with a bit of a final arena battle with some enemies.
Also, in the level he's fought in "...LIKE ANTENNAS TO HEAVEN" the entire boss fight is the level. While in ULTRAKILL there are levels made specifically for boss fights. For 1000-THR Earthmover, he IS the level.
AND, his death involves him exploding, with giving a new style point for enemies left behind to be killed by the gigantic explosion called "M.A.D" (not the one from Bloons TD 6). I just wanted to mention that :3
played subnautica for the first time this year, amazing and incredible game, one of the best I've ever played and it scared the absolute shit out of me, I remember fearing for my actual life in the lava zones where the size of that beast is even more apparent in the "small" space, fantastic game
This feels like watching the unofficial sequel of Jacob Geller's 'Fear of' series
Thanks for the spoiler warning!
I am hoping immensely there is a Benjamin reference given there is an Ultrakill bossfight in a video about Megalophobia and all I see is the corpse of king Minos.
yeah that was disappointing
Awesome video on something that doesn't get talked a lot about in gaming. I think your breakdown of subnautica's gargantuan leviathan is truly the feeling you get when you see the bones upon entering the biome.
I think something directly related to megalophobia is cosmic horror. It's not just the physical size of something, it's your realization of personal insignificance and you really touch on this at the end. You briefly mentioned Outer Wilds; the cosmic insignificance you feel during it (even moreso in the dlc) really makes it personally fit in query these games
I'd like to mention Rain World's Iterators as a great example of megalophobia in games. The Exterior is an entire mid-game region which encompasses the leg, the underside and the side of an Iterator, titanic supercomputers designed and built to accommodate every need of their creators. You spend several cycles climbing your way through the Leg, one of many pillar-like structures meant to hold the superstructure from the ground, then the Underhang, a horizontal stretch between the underside of the machine and the void below, and finally the Wall, a sheer, vertical climb that goes past the clouds. It's easy to forget (or maybe to not even know) when playing the game that basically a quarter of the map (vanilla map at least) is just one whole, distinct, giant machine, towering over every other region.
The cherry on top for me comes in the Gourmand campaign. After reaching the jungle outside the Iterator's perimeter, you're able to climb a tree. The view from the top reveals the superstructure, and it's so unbelievably massive that it barely fits the screen.
im struggling watching this
I have megalomania. I was gleeful this entire video!
I've been working on a world for a book where bugs became so big that they carry entire cities on their backs. I used blender and maps to visualize the some 20Km long rhino beetle and it was unphatomable. I loved it so much!
Control did a great job with this and its sense of scale. The game takes place in one building, yet some of the structures and spaces within it are unfathomably and impossibly large.
This video needs more likes!
I don't think i have megalophobia. Quite the opposite, actually. Seeing enormous structures in games and movies gives a strange feeling. The same feeling you get when you think about how small you are compared to the universe. It's humbling in a way. One of my favorite games, Destiny, does this. It definitely isn't a horror game. But it has extremely large structures. You can see where someone with megalophobia would get a little creeped out. Like, the Traveler for instance. It's practically a moon with how large it is. And it just looms over the city, never moving, never makes a sound. It's just, there. (This is, of course, referring to before Lightfall.)
If you have megalophobia, and you like to scare yourself a bit, i would suggest playing the Destiny games if you've never played them.
The Citadel and The Vault from Half-Life are very good examples of megalophobia in games.
thats a silly pfp
@@MidnightTheANTIPEDO it indeed is
I enjoyed this video, as a fan of feeling so small and insignificant compared to everything around you, but as an ultrakill fan there was just something missed here. I'm not quite sure when this video was being made, but in the violence layer, the Earthmover fills that comment you had about not being quite as "hands on".
Sure, the Corpse of Minos is fun (when you learn to parry), but god when you enter the last layer of violence and look up, to see something so large peer down at you, to consider and almost eliminating you for a moment before continuing to rage war with similar machines that have filled the backgrounds of levels. To finally see those giants that you have only seen carry their war in the distance up close finally. Similarly to the first game you discussed I do not think I can do justice how I felt playing that level for the first time. It was gorgeous.
Once you know that this was very likely V1's purpose, to fell such a large beast, a monument to humanity's mistakes, it evokes something I cannot describe, a theme with such grandeur being beheld before us in these games, when we are simply and only ourselves. This is the only way it should have ended.
although I do not share this fear with you, this video was extremely well written and had my attention the whole time even though I have seen and/ or played all of these games before. Your perspective on how you personally viewed the environments and entities within them was a really fresh take! Awesome vid man
There is a new Act in ULTRAKILL and it includes A 3 KILOMETER TALL WAR GIRAFFE CALLED AN EARTHMOVER. THERE ARE MULTIPLE IN THE DISTANCE. (his name is also called Benjamin :D)
Did you happen to have a cold during the recording? Your voice sounds a bit raspy, which distracts from the video content and makes it difficult for me to stay focused.
Yeah that was my main focus on this video too his fucking voice😂
For quite a while, I had this feeling deep in my chest whenever I saw a grayscale painting of a mountain, a screenshot of a game on top of a mountain towards the vast field, a picture of a giant boss in the distance. I hate the feeling because it makes me uncomfortable, makes me feel small, makes me feel _insignificant_ .
Today, I realized that feeling is called megalophobia.
"A speck in Infinity"
The right word, is the sublime.
NaissanceE uses this sense of scale, of size, of the huge extremely well. It's an ignored masterpiece of a game. Especially because of how inhuman the architecture is.
mmmm algoslop
I adore when Megalophobia is used via some gigantic, unknowable entity
the big brood mother in scorn is a great example of this, combined with the crazy body horror and alien aesthetic takes it to another level. great vid by the way you earned a sub 👍
Sensational video, and beautifully written. Subbed! A game which I feel would fit nicely into this video would be Militsioner - haven’t seen anyone talk about this yet - definitely worth checking out. Extremely megalophobic.
Funny bone man
Was happily nodding along until the Subnautica diatribe
i dont think i have megalophobia, but if were talking about things being big, I love those moments in games where they make you feel so tiny in comparison to the world around you, just like that moment you showed that huge, endless vista in The Utility Room, I really love those moments
HES SO ATTRACTIVE
who?
@@adumbmask me 😖👉👈
I am sort of torn, writing this, on one hand, I defenetly see jacob geller's "three specefic kinds of fear" essay in your video, your wording is similar, your opinions are as well, but from what I can see, you are only starting, I don't know your channel enough to acuse you of anything, I liked your video on meaningless infinity, but it too, is similar to jacob geller's "games that don't fake space". I will have to look at them again to make sure but the intros are very similar. If I were you, I'd be carefful with that as plagerism is pretty serious nowadays, but I know that video essays take a lot of effort to make and that copying is an easy way to start. If you want to make your own videos however, it is best to stick to yourself, there is plenty of ways to get feedback if you are insecure about your writting and plenty of ways to get better at it. Now I must say again that I do not know your channel well, but if only two out of your 15 videos are just copies of others, it's still not a good look. Even still, I believe you have the power to become a great writter of your own and I wish the best for your channel!
I have megahydrowhateverfobia and playing subnautica is so stressful. I get so anxious when getting near the Aurora, like seeing it in the distance is a little unnerving but standing next to it and seeing it's walls stretch into the sky gives me the chills.
you've certainly seen the solar sands - monumentality video but if you haven't it's incredibly good and shares a similar topic. Great video. Subbed
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Hey Cresendex, I love your content and I think you make great stuff, but I thought I'd say I feel your video ideas are... a little similar to Jacob Geller's. I doubt you intended that but I thought I'd let you know. I don't want you to get called out for plagiarism without a warning.
Theres a great, unexpected example in Destiny 2 that is kind of tough to even see anymore.
The now-removed Titan map plays host to an absolutely vast man-made complex called the New Pacific Arcology. You have a view of it from the outside which makes it seem pretty huge on its own. Then you go inside and realize that it’s at least twice the size of what you see from the outside… then you go deeper in and realize that it keeps going down further and further. You get a few fantastic moments of seeing the sheer scale of it up close throughout the old campaign.
One of the best views of this can still be seen on the Wormhaven Crucible map. If you look over the open edge on one side of the map, you can look down into an immense indoor canyon, as well as a minuscule settlement on the opposite side of it, far below where you’re standing.
I was JUST about to comment about half life 2!! The citadel is very scary and imposing, but I also felt that way about the combine airships. While they’re not the biggest thing ever, the idea of something so big aiming directly at you terrifies me
please lose the voice burn
Yeah it's annoying af
This is so pretentious
Lmfao 😂
I don’t really see the difference between this and any other video essay. Sounds like any other infotainment channel.
@@snotch9665 he picked some obscure topic and speaks about it with almost a religious level of reverence. Could you imagine some hipster making a video like this about his favorite beanie?
The final scene in Brighter Day is the earliest I remember getting megalophobia, you have to walk down a staircase from a giant mountain while giant eyeballs emerge from the horizon moving towards you, which are also the size of the mountain.
Another great Weirdly terrifying part is in portal 2 when you just finished the Cave Johnson part and open a vault trying to get back to Wheatly. You get this great view of below the main part of the laboratory, where its seems to just go on forever.
why does ur voice soudn like that
iirc there's some kind of bossfight in Dead Space 3 which is basically a giant drill-like machine. The fact that you see this emotionless machine bouncing and shaking over your head while you try to avoid it in a very small space always gives me chills
Even greater aspect on ULTRAKILL's megalophobia inspiring bosses, most recently with the Earthmover. The fact the whole boss fight takes place throughout the body of the war machine and that its an entire level in itself is amazing, plus that first opening shot when it sees V1 and charges up a shot just to be distracted by another Earthmover blast is just peak.
I still remember laying my hand on PainKiller: Black Edition for the first time and reaching the giant monster boss in the graveyard. That scared the Hell out of me. It still does, however only because it can reach me easily anywhere on the map.
Really Liked This Video! I personally don't think I have a "Fear" Of Big Things But More Like A Fascination. I haven't ever played any games on PC but I'm definitely going to play every game on this list when I get one
Another game I would like to mention is Halo's odd way of escaping scale of the human capability. Something they reinforce constantly throughout every installment. Each time you are met with an Architect structure, the first thing that really hits you is, "Someone made that?" For instance, the beginning of Halo 4, after you get to the surface of the ship, you are met with a view of a metal planet, ripe with detail yet impossibly big. It doesn't really have scale at first, but when you see tiny dots near the surface of it, you realize thos tiny dots are several mile long Covenant cruisers. Even their individual ships are vastly larger than anything humans or any other alien can accomplish. The massive way they communicate this is how no matter what, you don't matter. Even if you kill the worst being in existence, you realize that there is so many more. You realize that the humans fighting on the surface have no effect. You probably drop hundreds of thousands of bombs, glaze the surface, detonate bases, and yet, the planet functions fine. You have such a little impact that it can really offput the initial feeling of Halo. A subtle yet important message of Halo is that, although these wars are terrible, they will happen again, and they have happened before. There has been a Master Chief before Master Chief, and there will be afterwards. You fight with little reason, and these almost godlike beings barely notice these galaxy-wide conflicts. You continue through the games believing you are the savior of the universe, but the further you get into Halo 4, the more you realize that there has been previous versions of you. You walk through halls with statues of previous warriors, the Architects call you the "next" helper, as if you are just another on their list.
To put it into just a single sentence, The real message of a game like this, even the entire series, is that you may be such an important man for your time, you are nothing but another grain of sand in a beach of Time. You are meaningless.
As you showed SOTC. I’d like to add “The last guardian” as a megalophobic game.
Another ULTRAKILL boss that is definitely worth a mention is the final boss of the Violence layer, the 1000-THR Earthmover. Same as the Corpse Of King Minos, you see them throughout the Violence layer before fighting one of them in the fourth and final level of the layer. And the Earthmover itself is not the boss. It's the level! The lore behind it is also really interesting with how the destruction it caused levelled cities and the ash literally blocked out the sun. Not to mention the hints that these things were only built to counter the protagonist, V1.