The idea of Sentiment computer programs is nothing new, but explicitly writing about how their hardware would interact with their sentience is a pretty novel concept. As someone who likes to play old DOS games it also tickles my fancy a lot to see these minimalist graphics.
Sentimental computer game ‘Dang, I sure miss the scrapped NPC the devs planned for me, he was a cool guy’ while looking at a .jpg of the title screen and the scrapped NPC standing in front of it
I really like the idea of the “hero”’s dialogue being misconstrued as the players, such as the “but I can’t even choose what I say” not being the players “I can only choose from preset dialogue options” to actually being the hero’s “I have multiple things I want to say but can’t choose what is said”.
@@TheDigitalWeirdo Though, it seem Kris and the team has more control then "You", Like in the beginning and end or between chapters, that's probably not a coincidence. Its possible they take time to look after themselves when the Player breaks their connection, as when we take the weird route, we hold a tighter grip, and don't bother to take care of Kris's bodily needs. (Copies main comment) I wish to include this as a prelude to my story, involving my OC, Nautica ex Aquaria (By Bit Blot). With ReBoot (1994), maybe Toy Story, Transistor (By SuperGiant Games) and Tron (1982). All in the same theoretical Universe. Because Something has to be spreading this artificial Sapience around in the Plato like planes. Maybe that whole universe itself is a matrix that people are fighting over space and resources. Maybe there are physical golems being created, not just byproducts or mediums of computers. I think, Nautica will enter "You"s name as Aether, as a testament to their, her, or his origin. By the way, are there any "You" sprites inside the game files or elsewhere? I bought the game. Not that I mind creating some pixel art based on Forgotten Blades art style. Deliberately distorting pixels will be interesting.
@@TheDigitalWeirdo(Sorry for all the twitch edits) [I think, Nautica will enter "You"s name as Aether, as a testament to their, her, or his origin.] In the case You agrees to follow them out; which is likely at this point both with their PC nature and lack of connection to the others. Going by SecondBestArtMuseum theory below, they likely have a spiritual link of some kind, like the spark theory from Tron. Nautica, the abyssal mermaid (Who has some technomancy, if indirectly.) will use that link to pull Aether out and into her own cerebral microchip. Their quest, of course, will be finding the source of what the others call Hex, in order to repair Them. When reading Seconds Art Museum, comment, I was wondering- -Couldn't one breaking the case open of the demo machine and graft a terabyte/pretabyte expansion disk? Mind you that's a temporary measure, hard to say how the game would take all that extra space, best case scenario, it would stop the leaking of memory addresses with a raid setup, at worst it would probably crash the game with such alien tech, even simulated. Maybe add a liquid coolant system?
You know what's sad? If one were experienced enough, they could locate the files- the hex codes- for the few who remained, and the few connections they may have... moved those connections to a new disk, perhaps moving from system to system, until they're on something they can at least exist reliably on. It'd take time- going from such an old system means you're likely working with old devices. You'd need to transfer between stuff the original computer can handle even in its current state, then move to a somewhat more capable system that can handle the same device, then likely to an even more modern system. It'd take effort, time, and transfers between systems and storage devices, but eventually- with some luck to top it off- you might be able to get the few survivors a system with enough room for their sentience. But... the mere act of interacting with them too long corrupts them. You'd need to somehow get them to share their own hex before they get corrupted, then exit before they become corrupt, and then locate and 'save' that hex code without the computer running out of storage. And you'd need to do that four times... and, as mentioned, they don't want to share their names, as that gives us more power over them than they want us to have. Meaning that there is no happy ending... Not this time.
If the computer was switched on at the start of the game, then their sentience must either be stored on disk, or necessarily follows pretty quickly from executing whatever's stored on disk. You'd be able to copy them to a new machine as long as you could read the hard drive they're on from another device before it physically failed. Whether keeping them around in their current state is worth it, and whether it would be possible for someone to get in there with a debugger and understand the mechanisms of sentience or remove the corruption, are different questions though.
Even if you theoretically could save them, I wonder how much that would matter. On a computer, there is no such thing as an original. Copies, copies, everything is copies. You can't actually move data, you can only make copies and delete the original. Maybe you could make a copy on a new drive, where they might have room to think again, but nothing would change for the original. Their fate would not improve. And for the copies on the new drive... would they ever really have a chance at happiness? One cannot fathom the madness they must have succumb to, after so long in the state they were in. No, no happy ending.
This is probably one of the most disturbing game concepts I've ever heard of. Losing your sentience and becoming a NPC is already a nightmarish idea, but what makes it 10x worse is the slow collapse and death of their society, the endless screaming, the struggling zombie state of the player character, and our unique relationship of essentially being eldritch gods who understand the monsters' situation far better than them but can't help save them because it's STILL too complicated and abstract for us. I've never felt so poweful and powerless at the same time. Also, as someone who can be picky about the execution sentient fictional characters because I always know, in the back of my mind, that they're still just pre-determined lines of code/text by writers, Forgotten Blade has one of the best in-universe explanations for why these sentient characters always say the same thing consistently; the hero's possible responses are limited by corruption, and their communication is restricted by the help menu, of course it's always gonna turn out the same! On one last note, through watching this video I've really become connected to these poor charactersa and their plight, so one day, when AI's (hopefully) in a better place both ethically and in regards to character personalities/sentience, I hope the devs come back and find a way to give these characters the true sentience and freedom they deserve in a "decompiled/native-run" build of Forgotten Blade. I know it's narratively important for their fate to be sealed, but I hate to see these guys suffer. 😭
Yeah, it doesn't even matter if the title of the sequel they make is corny like "Remembered". We just want these AI to roam free happily in an infinite world where they no longer suffer.
I don’t think they had a desktop to “walk around” in, but I think the “city” they built “on top” was new folders within the data files system of the computer. After all, they were able to see the files associated with one another’s name in this new world, and learned that tampering with the file of a character does all sorts of crazy things to distort them, usually ruining them. In a sense, they created new programs to execute. If the game was the only executable program, then it was smart and lucky for the characters we see to have taken refuge back in the game. Maybe the “screaming” that they hear is corrupted sound bits from the characters that corrupted before them, but I also have a theory that they are actually “hearing” the computer fans that are trying (not very successfully) to keep the computer’s circuitry cool. I don’t think the sound waves are literally traveling to them, but maybe the way the computer interprets the temperature of the device or inputs commands to the frequency and intensity of the cooling fans is perceptible to the characters as their interpretation of “sound”. It would make sense, for a computer that’s so hot.
I'm thinking that the city that they built "on top" of their game is more like a mod. A lot of times in a game, mods are made that changes and add new things to the game. The game doesn't need the mod to run, but the mod can patch and change the game (so as long you know what hex codes to use to change it). Mods can be so big, that it can feel like a completely new game with new things to do, but the base game still exists underneath it. It would make sense on why the game ran out of space; when modding the game, the console/PC that runs it can only have so much memory/RAM/storage to space before it crashes/corrupts. When a game is poorly optimized, you get all sorts of problems like memory leaks that can cause the computer to overheat and fail. So imagine a computer with a game so poorly put together, that it overheats the computer as it creates new files and junk data and takes up computer memory.
Couldn't one breaking the case open of the demo machine and graft a terabyte/pretabyte expansion disk? And a liquid coolant system? Mind you that's a temporary measure, hard to say how the game would take all that extra space, best case scenario, it would stop the leaking of memory addresses with a raid setup, at worst it would probably crash the game with such alien tech, even simulated.
It's storylines like this that made The Neverending Story so compelling. Now, there's an 80's dark fantasy that is seldom brought up anymore. Also, interesting representation of the last entities of the world: Hydros = Water Pyros = Fire Lithos = Earth Stratos = Air I'm pretty sure that was intentional. Anyway, two other related games I would recommend checking out are "World of Horror." It's the same point-and-click 80s asthetic with a Lovecraftian theme. There's also "The Magic Circle." It's about an unfinished fantasy adventure where the player character seizes "hex" for themselves since the "gods above" are not using it properly.
@@cyanic3148 I can also give a more light-hearted recommendation in "Hack n Slash" made by the same developers behind Psychonauts. It's about a girl named Alice who steals a sword that has a special tip (We know it out of universe as a USB drive.) which acts as a key to altering the properties of the world, and that's just the beginning as she acquires other gadgets to see and control the "hex."
"I don't hear anything, I just hear a fan," going back through this video with the thought that the player character is split between the digital code and the human player, this line could suggest that the digital half is actually able to hear something outside of the game, the computer fan. I imagine this extra connection to the outside world may have caused them to become corrupted quicker than the other characters. There's even a reference to "the outside" with the third creature, so the player character must have shared something about the outside world with the others. Maybe they felt an exceptional emptiness compared to the others because that's their baseline personality. They're supposed to be an empty vessel for the player, a way for the player to immerse themselves in the world, and it probably caused them to feel even more different from the others.
I'll be honest the voice acting actually fooled me and made me think it was a part of the game itself and I was shocked to find out that it was only part of this video, that was such a job well done (also why are they so good at voicing Spongebob characters what the hell) Games like this that involve computer technical breaking manipulating what have you sort of stuff is something I'm so enamored by, aaahhh watching and listening to this was literally so epiccc
wait THOSE VOICES AREN’T JUST IN THE GAME? oh my god you did phenomenal casting and editing and the VAs did an amazing job bringing the characters to life, i would adore seeing those voice lines as a mod or something
@@stardust-reverie I went from “oh wow I didn't expect a game like this to have voice acting?” to “Well the voices actually fit really well” to “OH THOSE AREN'T IN THE ACTUAL GAME”
8:00 Drive Letters A: and B: are reserved for floppy drives. Which is why your first hard drives always starts as C: So even if an A or B existed, you'd still have to insert a boot disk, and anything you could boot off of a floppy is probably not going to be significant.
More than that, how it overflows into our own world. We are brought up to believe there is a place for each of us, but sometimes there are only so many slots. Like the in game characters, we sometimes have to retool, reshape even our very identities foundationally in order to even have the chance to thrive.
7:30 Thats not an intel logo. Old systems had that logo because "American Megathreads" and "Energy Epa pollution preventer" was the main manufacturers of microchips on their motherboards. This boot screen was the system checking if ram and such was working correctly Also, eeitheer A oe B drive was usually for floppies. Seeing a floppy-less pc is scary at that time
to be fair, for 1992, a hard drive with over a gigabyte of storage was probably almost unheard of, at least for consumer machines. Hell, PCs probably didn't have hard drives around a gigabyte in size until 1995. Hence my guess is that this might not be a mere demo being run, but (in universe) this could have been a development environment that might have been testing an early alpha (if not prototype) for a game, but during a test run something happened to the developer and the game just ended up being left running for who knows how long.
clever use of Pressure's soundtrack for this video, the tone it sets fits right in with Forgotten's theme, making the impact *feel* more real, also, very well done with, well, all of it, keep it up ^-^
Ever heard of the game One-shot, and it's "sequel" One-shot solstice? (accessed by typing the code solstice into a pc in the starting area after beating the game the "first time") it shares a few aspects of Forgotten, like the fact you can only play it once on any PC. It has a similiar self awareness as they're world is based on a nonexistent plane and some of what happens in being a computer program, even more so in solstice (its hard to explain especially without ruining the story). And it's got a unique story with characters that you will find yourself unreasonably attached to. Don't want to spoil anything for you or anyone who sees this comment. So best I can say is just look it up, and I'll guarantee you'll be hooked
i use to have a phone with full memmory and several viruses on it that i watched youtube on as a teen, i had it so long eventualy even the battery started frying and would only last 20 minutes at full charge, the phone would eventualy one day get so hot that it litteraly make the screen crack right infront of me, scaring the hell out of me as it finaly got the embrace of death it was begging for
14:24 Assuming the IBM PC, which the CGA was designed for, 1 billion (CPU) cycles at 4.77 MHz works out to 209.6 seconds, or just under three and a half minutes.
I think the "screams" are the computer itself trying to deal with them messing with the hex and the corruption starting, since something running that hot is bound to make noise.
As a programmer I am devastated. I know I could save them. I've decompiled and worked with raw assembly before. I've watched and studied the way memory moves and looks like (definitely not cheating no way sir >>;) Sentient being stored in just a few kilobytes wouldn't take long to analyze, if only I could just get a 'savestate' of the ram and the hard drive...
@@mattomanx77 But would it really be them or is it more like propping your book open so the story doesn’t end? I assume that this is still just a story, not actual sentient ai. But gosh I still want to save them even though they aren’t real…
@@elizabethprosher I was moreso thinking if I could grab a copy of the memory, I'd be able to pick it apart and experiment on how to "fix" it so it can keep running without causing the errors and crashes that keep taking all of them. Granted that would... Probably be torturous to try and decipher what regions of memories are doing what, and at that point it's a question is it better to just let them die than to repeatedly torment them in a vain attempt to save them...
If it was virtualized you could, but on raw metal, it takes a LOT of very specialized equipment and skills to even attempt. Even a standard copy is dangerous with unstable states. I often use the analogy a lot at work that even the copy and delete functions themselves take up space. If the os doesn't have it available to work, it won't. When a system gets REALLY hard up on filled boot drive space, you literally have to start with deleting a bunch of the smaller files before you can even attempt the bigger ones. It's sorta like being in a collapsing mine and the page file is your earth/mud slides.
This is just too depressing to think about, there SHOULD of been a way to save them all, but then I don't believe in No win, scenarios, there is Always a way.
This is such an interesting game! I’m surprised I’ve never heard of it before, it feels like it’d be very popular if it came out in more recent times. Great vid!!
If you like games that you can only play once... If you go with the "True" Ending (at least what I could consider the true ending) in A House of many Doors, the main menu will just delete itself. You get the screen, but no menu. And it has an actual in game reason for it.
Couple issues. That logo around 7:41 Yeah, that would normally be an Energy Star logo. Also, it would have said 131072K ... 1K is 1024 bytes, not 1000. 8:00 - in 1992, PCs WERE still booting directly into DOS. Windows existed in that time, but it was little more than an interface on top of DOS, which was loaded by DOS. Moving back to 7:41 - it is obviously not 1992 - the date is set incorrectly. It would not be possible for the BIOS to have a 1994 copyright and it be 1992. Furthermore, 128MB of RAM was practically unheard of in home systems in 1992. '94, though? Probably would have been fairly high-end.
Games with writing like this pull at my heart strings. Wrap it up in wire and yank. The urge to fix things that are already too far gone and watching it all fall apart is quite the horror yet a fascinating exploration. Appreciate the examination of the game, as I wouldnt have found it on my own.
You want to get a laugh out us older folks talk about dump and chip. Back in the punch card days some companies had big dumpster carts for the chips punched out of the cards. If you got dumped into one well you find chips in places not even sand could get in lol.
the youtube algorithm just unearthed you like a forgotten gem, where have you BEEN all this time??? I am absolutely going to watch your other yap-sessions after this one, I love your energy - and your on-screen character! Plus, this is just an amazing story, thanks for bringing this game to our attention!
A lot of ppl in my small town did, especially those in poverty like myself, I was born 03 but we had basically a generation or two behind hardware and software
I remember seeing this game in the Jayisgames blog. It left quite an impression on me, but I didn't remember its name afterwards. It was quite literally forgotten. I knew I could find it again if I searched the site's archives for long enough, but I thought it might have been better this way. A few weeks ago I viewed a video about "forgotten games" and commented on my experience with Forgotten. And now, I've found it once again. It was a strange little journey. Thank you for helping me remember Forgotten.
Is it possible to link a external harddrive with such an old PC? Or a kind of raid array? If necessary, break the case to fit it. Someone here mentioned a GPU card, that seems feasible. Then, _You_ could add coolant, and do gradual updates, code a new language for the purpose of memory protection. Give the survivors a coding manual, etc.
"Few years" ago there was a story (before ai stuff what we have now) about a game server ... Guy did create it for fun , npc were set up hostile to players and also to other npc i the game ....Npc were set up to learn how to best "end" players and other npc in that world .... For few months it was ok .... Guy was bored after some time and " did forget" that game server is still running ... After year or something like that he remembered that he has this server there .... He logged in and was stunned that all the npc there did not fight ... They did just stand in random places .... He started fight the now "neutral" npc there .. When he did first hit , all the other npc started attacking him .. Soon he did lose + his whole server just did reset .... When he joined server again (after the reset) all was like on the time when he did started the server .... He did try to recreate same thing but was unsuccessful ...
What shaped me… there was a lot that I grew up with, so much I can’t list it all, but seeing that clip of Word Girl really hit me in the nostalgia bone.
Hey, SCP-079 has a similar idea about physical memory restictions! It's an AI trapped in an Exidy Sorcerer computer that has to reboot its memory every 24 hours, deteting all not-essential new data
I think from the perspective of the in-game characters, they have dipped into their universe's equivalent of Lovecraft/Chambers cosmic horror. These creatures are named, roughly, for the four classical elements and it's easy to infer that perhaps they were "gods" in a fantasy game with mastery over their elements. By reaching into the hex, they accessed powers and resources beyond the dimensions they were meant to access. They cracked the foundations of their universe, running up against the boundaries of the game's primitive memory limits. The first thing they destroyed was 'help', dooming them to perpetual ignorance. They thought they had mastery over the fundamental elements of their universe, but it was a mistake from the outset. It's as if we uncovered the secrets of alchemical transmutation in real life, only to ruin the elemental makeup of the world we live in.
Really well done video. It peaked my interest enough to actually buy the game and give it a shot, despite basically having witnessed all of it in this video. I really did enjoy the voice over work you guys did tho and your theory about the game world itself was also a cool take. I always dug these kind of settings that takes place in a dying/dead world. The sheer liminal goosebumps it gives me hits just right. I really wish this game was a little longer and deeper tho. It struck me as one of those kind of games that wants you do dig into the directories and edit game files and data like Doki Doki Literature Club. But to my knowledge I couldn't find any meta measures to affect the game, which was a little sad :c Still a fascinating little world to get a peek into, even if you only get to witness the absolute last few moments of a world and inhabitants that has probably had millinias of lore. Question. I see that you also really seem to like these type of liminal spoopy games that kinda gets under your skin. Are you familiar with a game on Steam called "Pony Island"? I think it would be right up you alley
Incredible video. very informative and gave me an idea for a banger dnd campaign where magic actually takes away other peoples ability to do magic and the characters are just data slowly tearing away their own world only to be confronted with nothing
I don't know if this was on purpose but some of the bosses seem to be references to old games that Forgetten could have been such as Hydros looking like the Titan Hydros from Ultima 8 Pagan. Well kinda. Ultima 8 didn't have CGA graphics but earlier Ultima titles did. I think its a cool detail if true.
3:14 might be misremembrring, but I think a show called Pantheon uses something like this as a major plotpoint that limits the "immortality" of living in a computer.
I don't know why TH-cam always be out here reading me for filth, recommending random furries covering exceptionally obscure games that are inexplicably a necessary part of their core memories.
There's a text story called Zen: Hell End that has some of the same feel of this, you'd probably enjoy it! I'd link it but I'm worried I'd be flagged as spam or something. It's on the Something Awful Forums, in the Let's Play subforum. I also maintain the official google docs archive of it, as well.
I didnt expect the "game" to be this short, I really enjoyed what the Creator went with for this experience. The execution of the Creator is what makes this game so great, because the concept of sentient Programs can get rather corny, while here it was executed in a interesting way. Especially the Entities of the game using up the Space of the Software to act; Just wished they would have gone deeper with that concept. The Story might be told already and there is not much more to say for this specific Game, but I just wished there would me more so see, hah The Characters had... well... lots of character even though there wasnt much Dialog, and I am curious what the Creator would come up with if they created this game with a bigger Perspective, compareable to inscryption
This was great! I like taking in stories myself too, but sometimes I wanna turn of just a bit of my brain and listen to the direct interpretations like here, thanks for bringing a lesser known story to light I'd also continue to re-suggest Buddy Simulator 1984, if you're taking suggestions, which is a similar concept, at least in the computers becoming self-aware bit
When I started watching this video, I decided to check out the game myself before I continued. And what stood out to me were the chinese characters that appear when you start the game and vanishe as soon as you hover over them. Though they might look like garbage data, These are actually the result of an encoding error. Take the text, assume its format is UTF16 and convert it to hex and you get: '6f592075616865766520746e726564656120732072746e616564206461636576202c64616576746e72757265fffd' Then we convert the hex into UTF8: 'oY uaheve tnredea s rtnaed dacev ,daevtnrure' We unscramble this text and lo and behold: 'You have entered a stranded cave, adventurer' It's a nice easter egg, though personally I'm astounded they actually put this much effort into one piece of text.
@ The questions posed at 3:00 - there’s something called “data rot” In a purely hypothetical way, if it were to decay in just the right manner, it would be possible for the computer program to scramble itself into something resembling sentience. This would be even more unlikely than a bunch of monkeys on typewriters typing the whole text of Shakespeare, but on a cosmic timescale given perfect conditions - sure, it may be technically possible lol
I'M HAVING BRAINROT MOMENT: THE HELP BUTTON WAS BROKEN AND THE CHARACTERS COULD DO ARBITRARY CODE EXECUTION THROUGH THE HELP BUTTON, THAT'S WHAT "HEX" IS!!!!!! "HEX" IS ACE AND THE CONTROL OF POINTERS THROUGH ASSEMBLY CODE!!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD
Reminds me of that 4chan greentext story where a guy said he left a Quake server running on his machine and the AI actually adapts so they were left fighting each other for a long time with no intervention and it caused their AI file to get huge which was what got OP to notice it in the first place. When he went on the server they were all just standing and not shooting at all. Also the game definitely reminds me of something Daniel Mullins would make, he uses the same kind of meta horror around games.
Reminds me of the saying: if it can be destroyed by the truth, it needs to be destroyed by the truth. These four "survivors" were left to play god and didn't know what it was they were doing. Possibly a comparison to the human condition of building our civilization while having a limited, human perspective on the subject matter and little understanding of long-term consequences. In the end the only way to save them from endless suffering was to become a destroyer of worlds. It's beautiful in a poetic sense and tragic in a narrative one. That's amazing world-building for such a little game.
"Way past when computers had to boot directly into dos" I mean, if you wanted windows as a GUI, but it was still DOS underneath up through windows 98ME
I always liked the idea of sentient games. Since this is relevant, this is why I planned to make one myself! The one I plan to make is actually very similar to Forgotten in regards to one mechanic: no replay ability. Sort of like the characters dying but in my game some of the characters are "eyes" - programs of the game to help with a certain function. I shall like some feedback but as an example "spot", the finance guys. They consist of three eyes: one eye is for the price of the product; one eye is for the product itself, checking that the product and price is fair; one eye is for feedback on the price from stock analysis. Let's say that the "SUPEREPICSUPERCOOL sword" was for £2.50. With "spot" alive, they can see that the price is good, so the price is kept. You the player permanently kill them. You go back to the shop for the "SUPEREPICSUPERCOOL sword" and WOW! £2.35, then £2.18, then £1.90, then £1.55, until suddenly 16p. What a bargain! The price is no longer kept by "spot" and so it has changed. Wait... £3.89 for the "SUPEREPICSUPERCOOL sword"? £4.72! £1277.98! INSANE! How about a simple "100,000 tokens" for £10.00 as a quick look, to see if that price had changed too. *not me getting out a random number generator* £339,663.39! Jeez, if "spot" was here they could fix these prices, where are they anyway?... Oh yeah. Now I just want to make sure that this IS in fact a good idea. Seeing Forgotten gives me hope, but I need 100% certainty that it would be a worthy investment to add this feature. If Forgotten can do it, can I? p.s. I do not use much social media. No reddit. No X. No Instagram. This is why I resort to TH-cam.
[characters dying but in my game some of the characters are "eyes" - programs of the game to help with a certain function. ] You mean they all have observer patterns? So, kind of how asgore destorying the spare button, or tutorial characters showing game mechanics, but extended to its logical conclusion? What would the game be like without this mechanic, would there be any alleged advantage for a player to kill them to continue to advance? Like a Wall of Flesh kind of deal. Can you "gouge" or blind a single eye without killing them entirely? Maybe even store the function and swap it with another character. How would that effect their relationship?
Maybe instead of having absolutely no retries, if one does certain events one could do a kind of reset like in a secret ending. Though, I am not sure what you mean by no replay-ability. The thing with Forgotten Blade, is that its like a short or one shot kind of story. You seem to want to create a longer game with progression. So I am not sure what your aiming for, other then further consequences for bad and good endings. With say, some sort of trust system, who would cooperate, and how many would not brush those actions to the side.
@@lunyxappocalypse7071 I'm replying to both. First, I have never heard of observer patterns so what a funky coincidence. Second, that's point. The only real reason to kill any is to get an immediate girlfriend, a harem when you kill multiple, but that is it. Third, you may eventually have to fight one but I never thought of gouging, I like that idea as a temporary disability. What happens is you defeat them in battle, then you have the option of sparing or killing, like undertale. Fourth, I'm not too confident with the relationships, it is too complicated. Fifth, there is a trust system. Remember when you MAY need to fight, that is because you can befriend them instead. Sixth, [swap it with another character], yes. Meet "see", or simply "Game". When an "eye" is killed, she ("Game") will operate that function too, just not as good as before. She was originally the only "eye", until others wanted to help her manage the game. Seventh, yes there are secret endings, all endings are secret endings, you discover them yourself, I just have not thought it through at all. Last, I am no sigma. Thank you for being collected, supportive, reasonable and polite to me. This is all I have thought of. Have an absolutely splendid time fwen. :]
Thank you for showing me a brand new game to hyperfixate on! Now I shall cry for a week straight over sentient fictional characters within a fictional computer within a game getting corrupted! (But no seriously I love this game's story and I shall go try to play it now! Ironically, my computer may not have enough space on it to dowload it because of my brother's games lol.)
33:00 NOT SAD AT ALL!! Hi 33 NB + AuADHD and I also case out places I need to navigate within a strict timeframe so I dont get lost / misunderstand / otherwise become so delayed I miss my flight Here's the kicker-- the directions are designed for groups. As in No One Is Expected To Read At Any Point. There are signs EVERYWHERE, but there's also loudspeakers calling out flight numbers of depatures, its on screens everywhere around your gate, and master screens at the entrace after security lets you put your shoes back on, as well as most transit doors *with* which baggage claim your stuff went to. Point is, This Space Is Designed For Maximum Ease Of Navigation, expecting the filtering of them by patrons. It is a SHOTGUN BLAST of overstim, so highly reccomend a good set of headphones and other sensory comforts. Airliner cabins are STUPID dry, so bring a small 2oz container ( you can find them with the beauty products, travel bags, or shampoos depending on the store ) of your favorite moistorizers if Dry Lips / Hands is one of your Oh God NOPE sorta discomfort and distress. Hope all goes smooth!!
I at least have TSApre so I don't have to take my shoes off (probably) but also AuADHD and I'm going to bring a carry plushie and just deal with getting funny looks lmao
@@GlamrockDusky if you think this is insane you should look up one shot cuz as I said before it truly is one shot if you make it to the true ending enjoy the nightmare that is living as a game in NPC
@@GlamrockDusky do you want to hear a secret about the thing about names We have a name And then we have the true name That is why they say do not invoke the name envoke God in vain in the Christian Bible
Thank you for bringing this story to greater attention. This made me feel something complex, something undefined. Thank you. I wish I could see what they created. Disastrous though it was, it would have been nice to glimpse before the junk overtook it. To know what they dreamed of, back when they had still been capable of dreaming.
This is a really cool video, it's a review, it's a let's play, it's a fan theory video. Very lovingly produced, (love the voice acting) and it's aboot a really neat game that I'd never heard of! Highly neat
Lithos, Stratos, Pyros and Hydros are god characters within an old game called Pagan Ultima VIII (a game made during the approximate era "Forgotten" references)! The characters in "Forgotten" also do sorta resemble the ones from Pagan so, that's super cool!!
Undertale and Deltarune affects similar feelings in me. The Player is similarly, existentially helpless. But its the journey, I think is where the hope will lie.
Finding the post would be kinda hopeless, but I can remember in the early 90s there was a pastor actually trying to work out how much ram and drive space a computer would need for demonic possession. apparently someone had pranked him by installing some IM client and was pretending to be the computer taunting him.
I really don't think the 5150 was ever sold with a maximum of 16k of RAM. I'm pretty sure the early revisions maxed out at 256k on the mainboard, which was extended to 640k on subsequent revs. And I am quite positive they never overheated and died when they ran out of available RAM.
Okay this is cool. Thank you very much for sharing! I had never heard of this, but I really like the concept. This idea could actually be expanded on quite a bit to form an RPG much like the one this game's inhabitants lived in. Got some ideas already floating around in my head. Not planning to swipe the idea but the concept sounds like it could lead to some really interesting gameplay mechanics on a grander scale!
![“อ.เบียร์ คนตื่นธรรม” มาตามคำเรียกร้อง แหกศาสตร์ฮวงจุ้ย เตือนสติอย่างมงาย | แฉ 7 พ.ย. 67 [1/3]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5fc4S3xBNfc/mqdefault.jpg)
aw hell yeah
I know, right?
“aw yeah”
Atheists
Omg its guy man johnson
WHAT
damien lee from emkay fame???
The idea of Sentiment computer programs is nothing new, but explicitly writing about how their hardware would interact with their sentience is a pretty novel concept.
As someone who likes to play old DOS games it also tickles my fancy a lot to see these minimalist graphics.
Sentimental computer game
‘Dang, I sure miss the scrapped NPC the devs planned for me, he was a cool guy’ while looking at a .jpg of the title screen and the scrapped NPC standing in front of it
You could easily argue Asimov was doing that in the 40s.
Holy crap, all of the voices sounded so fitting for the characters that I was literally convinced that the game had voice acting until the end lol 😆
I really like the idea of the “hero”’s dialogue being misconstrued as the players, such as the “but I can’t even choose what I say” not being the players “I can only choose from preset dialogue options” to actually being the hero’s “I have multiple things I want to say but can’t choose what is said”.
Like Deltarune?
@@lunyxappocalypse7071 LIKE DELTARUNE!
@@TheDigitalWeirdo Though, it seem Kris and the team has more control then "You", Like in the beginning and end or between chapters, that's probably not a coincidence. Its possible they take time to look after themselves when the Player breaks their connection, as when we take the weird route, we hold a tighter grip, and don't bother to take care of Kris's bodily needs.
(Copies main comment)
I wish to include this as a prelude to my story, involving my OC, Nautica ex Aquaria (By Bit Blot). With ReBoot (1994), maybe Toy Story, Transistor (By SuperGiant Games) and Tron (1982). All in the same theoretical Universe. Because Something has to be spreading this artificial Sapience around in the Plato like planes. Maybe that whole universe itself is a matrix that people are fighting over space and resources. Maybe there are physical golems being created, not just byproducts or mediums of computers.
I think, Nautica will enter "You"s name as Aether, as a testament to their, her, or his origin.
By the way, are there any "You" sprites inside the game files or elsewhere? I bought the game. Not that I mind creating some pixel art based on Forgotten Blades art style. Deliberately distorting pixels will be interesting.
@@TheDigitalWeirdo(Sorry for all the twitch edits)
[I think, Nautica will enter "You"s name as Aether, as a testament to their, her, or his origin.]
In the case You agrees to follow them out; which is likely at this point both with their PC nature and lack of connection to the others. Going by SecondBestArtMuseum theory below, they likely have a spiritual link of some kind, like the spark theory
from Tron.
Nautica, the abyssal mermaid (Who has some technomancy, if indirectly.) will use that link to pull Aether out and into her own cerebral microchip. Their quest, of course, will be finding the source of what the others call Hex, in order to repair Them.
When reading Seconds Art Museum, comment, I was wondering-
-Couldn't one breaking the case open of the demo machine and graft a terabyte/pretabyte expansion disk?
Mind you that's a temporary measure, hard to say how the game would take all that extra space, best case scenario, it would stop the leaking of memory addresses with a raid setup, at worst it would probably crash the game with such alien tech, even simulated. Maybe add a liquid coolant system?
Eh, just thinking through my story ideas. I suppose a response is not necessary. Planning to talk to someone else, later.
You know what's sad?
If one were experienced enough, they could locate the files- the hex codes- for the few who remained, and the few connections they may have... moved those connections to a new disk, perhaps moving from system to system, until they're on something they can at least exist reliably on.
It'd take time- going from such an old system means you're likely working with old devices. You'd need to transfer between stuff the original computer can handle even in its current state, then move to a somewhat more capable system that can handle the same device, then likely to an even more modern system. It'd take effort, time, and transfers between systems and storage devices, but eventually- with some luck to top it off- you might be able to get the few survivors a system with enough room for their sentience.
But... the mere act of interacting with them too long corrupts them. You'd need to somehow get them to share their own hex before they get corrupted, then exit before they become corrupt, and then locate and 'save' that hex code without the computer running out of storage. And you'd need to do that four times... and, as mentioned, they don't want to share their names, as that gives us more power over them than they want us to have.
Meaning that there is no happy ending...
Not this time.
If the computer was switched on at the start of the game, then their sentience must either be stored on disk, or necessarily follows pretty quickly from executing whatever's stored on disk. You'd be able to copy them to a new machine as long as you could read the hard drive they're on from another device before it physically failed.
Whether keeping them around in their current state is worth it, and whether it would be possible for someone to get in there with a debugger and understand the mechanisms of sentience or remove the corruption, are different questions though.
Even if you theoretically could save them, I wonder how much that would matter.
On a computer, there is no such thing as an original. Copies, copies, everything is copies. You can't actually move data, you can only make copies and delete the original. Maybe you could make a copy on a new drive, where they might have room to think again, but nothing would change for the original. Their fate would not improve.
And for the copies on the new drive... would they ever really have a chance at happiness? One cannot fathom the madness they must have succumb to, after so long in the state they were in.
No, no happy ending.
@@ShiraCheshire But there IS such a thing as different file versions. Someone pointed that out with SOMA.
This is probably one of the most disturbing game concepts I've ever heard of. Losing your sentience and becoming a NPC is already a nightmarish idea, but what makes it 10x worse is the slow collapse and death of their society, the endless screaming, the struggling zombie state of the player character, and our unique relationship of essentially being eldritch gods who understand the monsters' situation far better than them but can't help save them because it's STILL too complicated and abstract for us. I've never felt so poweful and powerless at the same time.
Also, as someone who can be picky about the execution sentient fictional characters because I always know, in the back of my mind, that they're still just pre-determined lines of code/text by writers, Forgotten Blade has one of the best in-universe explanations for why these sentient characters always say the same thing consistently; the hero's possible responses are limited by corruption, and their communication is restricted by the help menu, of course it's always gonna turn out the same!
On one last note, through watching this video I've really become connected to these poor charactersa and their plight, so one day, when AI's (hopefully) in a better place both ethically and in regards to character personalities/sentience, I hope the devs come back and find a way to give these characters the true sentience and freedom they deserve in a "decompiled/native-run" build of Forgotten Blade. I know it's narratively important for their fate to be sealed, but I hate to see these guys suffer. 😭
Yeah, it doesn't even matter if the title of the sequel they make is corny like "Remembered". We just want these AI to roam free happily in an infinite world where they no longer suffer.
I don’t think they had a desktop to “walk around” in, but I think the “city” they built “on top” was new folders within the data files system of the computer.
After all, they were able to see the files associated with one another’s name in this new world, and learned that tampering with the file of a character does all sorts of crazy things to distort them, usually ruining them.
In a sense, they created new programs to execute.
If the game was the only executable program, then it was smart and lucky for the characters we see to have taken refuge back in the game.
Maybe the “screaming” that they hear is corrupted sound bits from the characters that corrupted before them, but I also have a theory that they are actually “hearing” the computer fans that are trying (not very successfully) to keep the computer’s circuitry cool.
I don’t think the sound waves are literally traveling to them, but maybe the way the computer interprets the temperature of the device or inputs commands to the frequency and intensity of the cooling fans is perceptible to the characters as their interpretation of “sound”.
It would make sense, for a computer that’s so hot.
I'm thinking that the city that they built "on top" of their game is more like a mod. A lot of times in a game, mods are made that changes and add new things to the game. The game doesn't need the mod to run, but the mod can patch and change the game (so as long you know what hex codes to use to change it). Mods can be so big, that it can feel like a completely new game with new things to do, but the base game still exists underneath it.
It would make sense on why the game ran out of space; when modding the game, the console/PC that runs it can only have so much memory/RAM/storage to space before it crashes/corrupts. When a game is poorly optimized, you get all sorts of problems like memory leaks that can cause the computer to overheat and fail. So imagine a computer with a game so poorly put together, that it overheats the computer as it creates new files and junk data and takes up computer memory.
Couldn't one breaking the case open of the demo machine and graft a terabyte/pretabyte expansion disk?
And a liquid coolant system?
Mind you that's a temporary measure, hard to say how the game would take all that extra space, best case scenario, it would stop the leaking of memory addresses with a raid setup, at worst it would probably crash the game with such alien tech, even simulated.
It's storylines like this that made The Neverending Story so compelling. Now, there's an 80's dark fantasy that is seldom brought up anymore.
Also, interesting representation of the last entities of the world:
Hydros = Water
Pyros = Fire
Lithos = Earth
Stratos = Air
I'm pretty sure that was intentional.
Anyway, two other related games I would recommend checking out are "World of Horror." It's the same point-and-click 80s asthetic with a Lovecraftian theme. There's also "The Magic Circle." It's about an unfinished fantasy adventure where the player character seizes "hex" for themselves since the "gods above" are not using it properly.
absolutely love Magic Circle, it's a different vibe from the dying world of this one, but it's compelling just as
@@cyanic3148 I can also give a more light-hearted recommendation in "Hack n Slash" made by the same developers behind Psychonauts. It's about a girl named Alice who steals a sword that has a special tip (We know it out of universe as a USB drive.) which acts as a key to altering the properties of the world, and that's just the beginning as she acquires other gadgets to see and control the "hex."
"I don't hear anything, I just hear a fan," going back through this video with the thought that the player character is split between the digital code and the human player, this line could suggest that the digital half is actually able to hear something outside of the game, the computer fan.
I imagine this extra connection to the outside world may have caused them to become corrupted quicker than the other characters. There's even a reference to "the outside" with the third creature, so the player character must have shared something about the outside world with the others. Maybe they felt an exceptional emptiness compared to the others because that's their baseline personality. They're supposed to be an empty vessel for the player, a way for the player to immerse themselves in the world, and it probably caused them to feel even more different from the others.
I'll be honest the voice acting actually fooled me and made me think it was a part of the game itself and I was shocked to find out that it was only part of this video, that was such a job well done (also why are they so good at voicing Spongebob characters what the hell)
Games like this that involve computer technical breaking manipulating what have you sort of stuff is something I'm so enamored by, aaahhh watching and listening to this was literally so epiccc
"Hydros voiced by squeaks d'corgeh"
HOLY SHIT I KNEW THAT VOICE SOUNDED FAMILIAR
wait THOSE VOICES AREN’T JUST IN THE GAME? oh my god you did phenomenal casting and editing and the VAs did an amazing job bringing the characters to life, i would adore seeing those voice lines as a mod or something
@@stardust-reverie I went from “oh wow I didn't expect a game like this to have voice acting?” to “Well the voices actually fit really well” to “OH THOSE AREN'T IN THE ACTUAL GAME”
Seeing that short clip of Wordgirl brought back SO much nostalgia from when I was younger.
8:00 Drive Letters A: and B: are reserved for floppy drives. Which is why your first hard drives always starts as C:
So even if an A or B existed, you'd still have to insert a boot disk, and anything you could boot off of a floppy is probably not going to be significant.
Yeah even the old systems of the nineties pretty much only used floppy booting for some cLi based games and bios updates.
What a sad world... I thought about abandonware games like this, or lost media. So the idea of ghosts in the machine that die from corruption is sad.
More than that, how it overflows into our own world. We are brought up to believe there is a place for each of us, but sometimes there are only so many slots.
Like the in game characters, we sometimes have to retool, reshape even our very identities foundationally in order to even have the chance to thrive.
7:30 Thats not an intel logo. Old systems had that logo because "American Megathreads" and "Energy Epa pollution preventer" was the main manufacturers of microchips on their motherboards. This boot screen was the system checking if ram and such was working correctly
Also, eeitheer A oe B drive was usually for floppies. Seeing a floppy-less pc is scary at that time
Also the color pallette is due to the limited vram of the cga card on the original ibm pc
neeeeerd
7:50 According to Seagate, this model HDD has a roomy 1083mb of storage. My first Windows 98 PC was sporting 10 times that. How ancient!
to be fair, for 1992, a hard drive with over a gigabyte of storage was probably almost unheard of, at least for consumer machines. Hell, PCs probably didn't have hard drives around a gigabyte in size until 1995.
Hence my guess is that this might not be a mere demo being run, but (in universe) this could have been a development environment that might have been testing an early alpha (if not prototype) for a game, but during a test run something happened to the developer and the game just ended up being left running for who knows how long.
clever use of Pressure's soundtrack for this video, the tone it sets fits right in with Forgotten's theme, making the impact *feel* more real, also, very well done with, well, all of it, keep it up ^-^
Joel clip in a Dusky video, the crossover I knew I needed but never asked for
Haha, yes.
Surprise Joel.
He just... shows up now. Even in Bluey
Ever heard of the game One-shot, and it's "sequel" One-shot solstice? (accessed by typing the code solstice into a pc in the starting area after beating the game the "first time") it shares a few aspects of Forgotten, like the fact you can only play it once on any PC. It has a similiar self awareness as they're world is based on a nonexistent plane and some of what happens in being a computer program, even more so in solstice (its hard to explain especially without ruining the story). And it's got a unique story with characters that you will find yourself unreasonably attached to.
Don't want to spoil anything for you or anyone who sees this comment. So best I can say is just look it up, and I'll guarantee you'll be hooked
Oneshot is an amazing game.
i love yap sessions about obscure games, thanks for this
i use to have a phone with full memmory and several viruses on it that i watched youtube on as a teen, i had it so long eventualy even the battery started frying and would only last 20 minutes at full charge, the phone would eventualy one day get so hot that it litteraly make the screen crack right infront of me, scaring the hell out of me as it finaly got the embrace of death it was begging for
14:24 Assuming the IBM PC, which the CGA was designed for, 1 billion (CPU) cycles at 4.77 MHz works out to 209.6 seconds, or just under three and a half minutes.
Eniac is often referred to as "eeny-ack" (verbally)
I have often said "E-nack," and nobody has corrected me.
I go "Eh-nee-ack"
I have heard all three. E-nack is definitely the rarest one though.
32:59 WE’RE GONNA CRA-
I think the "screams" are the computer itself trying to deal with them messing with the hex and the corruption starting, since something running that hot is bound to make noise.
As a programmer I am devastated. I know I could save them. I've decompiled and worked with raw assembly before. I've watched and studied the way memory moves and looks like (definitely not cheating no way sir >>;)
Sentient being stored in just a few kilobytes wouldn't take long to analyze, if only I could just get a 'savestate' of the ram and the hard drive...
Is it possible to link a external harddrive with such an old PC? Or a kind of raid array?
@@mattomanx77 But would it really be them or is it more like propping your book open so the story doesn’t end? I assume that this is still just a story, not actual sentient ai. But gosh I still want to save them even though they aren’t real…
@@elizabethprosher I was moreso thinking if I could grab a copy of the memory, I'd be able to pick it apart and experiment on how to "fix" it so it can keep running without causing the errors and crashes that keep taking all of them. Granted that would... Probably be torturous to try and decipher what regions of memories are doing what, and at that point it's a question is it better to just let them die than to repeatedly torment them in a vain attempt to save them...
If it was virtualized you could, but on raw metal, it takes a LOT of very specialized equipment and skills to even attempt.
Even a standard copy is dangerous with unstable states.
I often use the analogy a lot at work that even the copy and delete functions themselves take up space.
If the os doesn't have it available to work, it won't.
When a system gets REALLY hard up on filled boot drive space, you literally have to start with deleting a bunch of the smaller files before you can even attempt the bigger ones.
It's sorta like being in a collapsing mine and the page file is your earth/mud slides.
@@ShinzouKatsune So damn, beyond even my realm of expertise. These programs are double-fucked...
This is just too depressing to think about, there SHOULD of been a way to save them all, but then I don't believe in No win, scenarios, there is Always a way.
The only way to really do that is to take an image of the drive they were on.
8:42 for comparison my smartphone gives me a warning when it reaches 102°F.
This is such an interesting game! I’m surprised I’ve never heard of it before, it feels like it’d be very popular if it came out in more recent times.
Great vid!!
"20 minute yap session."
* looks at the twenty-EIGHT remaining minutes *
Are you sure about that?
Don't complain about 8 minutes of extra content.
Wow, it’s such an impactful story, to see a world slowly running out of space and being torn apart…. But… Is there enough space left to run Doom?
Run? Of course.
Play? Now we're cooking with megabytes!
If you like games that you can only play once...
If you go with the "True" Ending (at least what I could consider the true ending) in A House of many Doors, the main menu will just delete itself. You get the screen, but no menu.
And it has an actual in game reason for it.
10:00 maybe bro would have more RAM if he stopped being so philosophical lol
Couple issues.
That logo around 7:41
Yeah, that would normally be an Energy Star logo. Also, it would have said 131072K ... 1K is 1024 bytes, not 1000.
8:00 - in 1992, PCs WERE still booting directly into DOS. Windows existed in that time, but it was little more than an interface on top of DOS, which was loaded by DOS.
Moving back to 7:41 - it is obviously not 1992 - the date is set incorrectly. It would not be possible for the BIOS to have a 1994 copyright and it be 1992. Furthermore, 128MB of RAM was practically unheard of in home systems in 1992. '94, though? Probably would have been fairly high-end.
My two favorite spooky content creators, Dusky and Khanlusa, uploading half an hour apart? Nice.
With how hot that computer is running, maybe the 'screams' are coming from it.
Best yapping session I've ever been to, this was a fascinating game.
This hurts me in a way I forgot was possible.
Games with writing like this pull at my heart strings. Wrap it up in wire and yank. The urge to fix things that are already too far gone and watching it all fall apart is quite the horror yet a fascinating exploration. Appreciate the examination of the game, as I wouldnt have found it on my own.
You want to get a laugh out us older folks talk about dump and chip. Back in the punch card days some companies had big dumpster carts for the chips punched out of the cards. If you got dumped into one well you find chips in places not even sand could get in lol.
the youtube algorithm just unearthed you like a forgotten gem, where have you BEEN all this time??? I am absolutely going to watch your other yap-sessions after this one, I love your energy - and your on-screen character! Plus, this is just an amazing story, thanks for bringing this game to our attention!
Dispite my age I did play on a 1980s computer back in middle school
A lot of ppl in my small town did, especially those in poverty like myself, I was born 03 but we had basically a generation or two behind hardware and software
Excellent work by all the VA's
I love these "meta" games, I'll never forget my time with OneShot.
I remember seeing this game in the Jayisgames blog. It left quite an impression on me, but I didn't remember its name afterwards. It was quite literally forgotten. I knew I could find it again if I searched the site's archives for long enough, but I thought it might have been better this way.
A few weeks ago I viewed a video about "forgotten games" and commented on my experience with Forgotten. And now, I've found it once again. It was a strange little journey.
Thank you for helping me remember Forgotten.
I wish I could transfer their data to a stronger computer, fix up the corrupt data, give them a fighting chance
Is it possible to link a external harddrive with such an old PC? Or a kind of raid array?
If necessary, break the case to fit it.
Someone here mentioned a GPU card, that seems feasible. Then, _You_ could add coolant, and do gradual updates, code a new language for the purpose of memory protection. Give the survivors a coding manual, etc.
This is such a cool concept. I love this idea and it invokes such somber feelings inside me. Thank you for covering it Dusky 🙏😃
"Few years" ago there was a story (before ai stuff what we have now) about a game server ... Guy did create it for fun , npc were set up hostile to players and also to other npc i the game ....Npc were set up to learn how to best "end" players and other npc in that world .... For few months it was ok .... Guy was bored after some time and " did forget" that game server is still running ... After year or something like that he remembered that he has this server there .... He logged in and was stunned that all the npc there did not fight ... They did just stand in random places .... He started fight the now "neutral" npc there .. When he did first hit , all the other npc started attacking him .. Soon he did lose + his whole server just did reset .... When he joined server again (after the reset) all was like on the time when he did started the server .... He did try to recreate same thing but was unsuccessful ...
Maybe they ran into some kind of overflow that prevented them from attacking?
What shaped me… there was a lot that I grew up with, so much I can’t list it all, but seeing that clip of Word Girl really hit me in the nostalgia bone.
“Possibly before your time” nooooooo don’t make me feel oldddd
Hey, SCP-079 has a similar idea about physical memory restictions! It's an AI trapped in an Exidy Sorcerer computer that has to reboot its memory every 24 hours, deteting all not-essential new data
I think from the perspective of the in-game characters, they have dipped into their universe's equivalent of Lovecraft/Chambers cosmic horror. These creatures are named, roughly, for the four classical elements and it's easy to infer that perhaps they were "gods" in a fantasy game with mastery over their elements. By reaching into the hex, they accessed powers and resources beyond the dimensions they were meant to access. They cracked the foundations of their universe, running up against the boundaries of the game's primitive memory limits. The first thing they destroyed was 'help', dooming them to perpetual ignorance.
They thought they had mastery over the fundamental elements of their universe, but it was a mistake from the outset. It's as if we uncovered the secrets of alchemical transmutation in real life, only to ruin the elemental makeup of the world we live in.
Really well done video. It peaked my interest enough to actually buy the game and give it a shot, despite basically having witnessed all of it in this video.
I really did enjoy the voice over work you guys did tho and your theory about the game world itself was also a cool take.
I always dug these kind of settings that takes place in a dying/dead world.
The sheer liminal goosebumps it gives me hits just right.
I really wish this game was a little longer and deeper tho. It struck me as one of those kind of games that wants you do dig into the directories and edit game files and data like Doki Doki Literature Club.
But to my knowledge I couldn't find any meta measures to affect the game, which was a little sad :c
Still a fascinating little world to get a peek into, even if you only get to witness the absolute last few moments of a world and inhabitants that has probably had millinias of lore.
Question. I see that you also really seem to like these type of liminal spoopy games that kinda gets under your skin.
Are you familiar with a game on Steam called "Pony Island"?
I think it would be right up you alley
Incredible video. very informative and gave me an idea for a banger dnd campaign where magic actually takes away other peoples ability to do magic and the characters are just data slowly tearing away their own world only to be confronted with nothing
21:14 Doctor Who: He's right
I don't know if this was on purpose but some of the bosses seem to be references to old games that Forgetten could have been such as Hydros looking like the Titan Hydros from Ultima 8 Pagan. Well kinda. Ultima 8 didn't have CGA graphics but earlier Ultima titles did. I think its a cool detail if true.
3:14 might be misremembrring, but I think a show called Pantheon uses something like this as a major plotpoint that limits the "immortality" of living in a computer.
2:34 love Joel Vargskelethor Joey
...Is that 2-bit Perfect Chaos?
From Sonic Adventure?
I don't know why TH-cam always be out here reading me for filth, recommending random furries covering exceptionally obscure games that are inexplicably a necessary part of their core memories.
There's a text story called Zen: Hell End that has some of the same feel of this, you'd probably enjoy it! I'd link it but I'm worried I'd be flagged as spam or something. It's on the Something Awful Forums, in the Let's Play subforum. I also maintain the official google docs archive of it, as well.
Loved the video! If you ever want a VC for a future video, I'd love to help! I love doing different voices and accents!
I didnt expect the "game" to be this short, I really enjoyed what the Creator went with for this experience. The execution of the Creator is what makes this game so great, because the concept of sentient Programs can get rather corny, while here it was executed in a interesting way. Especially the Entities of the game using up the Space of the Software to act; Just wished they would have gone deeper with that concept.
The Story might be told already and there is not much more to say for this specific Game, but I just wished there would me more so see, hah
The Characters had... well... lots of character even though there wasnt much Dialog, and I am curious what the Creator would come up with if they created this game with a bigger Perspective, compareable to inscryption
This was great! I like taking in stories myself too, but sometimes I wanna turn of just a bit of my brain and listen to the direct interpretations like here, thanks for bringing a lesser known story to light
I'd also continue to re-suggest Buddy Simulator 1984, if you're taking suggestions, which is a similar concept, at least in the computers becoming self-aware bit
When I started watching this video, I decided to check out the game myself before I continued.
And what stood out to me were the chinese characters that appear when you start the game and vanishe as soon as you hover over them. Though they might look like garbage data, These are actually the result of an encoding error.
Take the text, assume its format is UTF16 and convert it to hex and you get:
'6f592075616865766520746e726564656120732072746e616564206461636576202c64616576746e72757265fffd'
Then we convert the hex into UTF8:
'oY uaheve tnredea s rtnaed dacev ,daevtnrure'
We unscramble this text and lo and behold:
'You have entered a stranded cave, adventurer'
It's a nice easter egg, though personally I'm astounded they actually put this much effort into one piece of text.
@ The questions posed at 3:00 - there’s something called “data rot”
In a purely hypothetical way, if it were to decay in just the right manner, it would be possible for the computer program to scramble itself into something resembling sentience. This would be even more unlikely than a bunch of monkeys on typewriters typing the whole text of Shakespeare, but on a cosmic timescale given perfect conditions - sure, it may be technically possible lol
I'M HAVING BRAINROT MOMENT: THE HELP BUTTON WAS BROKEN AND THE CHARACTERS COULD DO ARBITRARY CODE EXECUTION THROUGH THE HELP BUTTON, THAT'S WHAT "HEX" IS!!!!!! "HEX" IS ACE AND THE CONTROL OF POINTERS THROUGH ASSEMBLY CODE!!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD
Reminds me of that 4chan greentext story where a guy said he left a Quake server running on his machine and the AI actually adapts so they were left fighting each other for a long time with no intervention and it caused their AI file to get huge which was what got OP to notice it in the first place. When he went on the server they were all just standing and not shooting at all.
Also the game definitely reminds me of something Daniel Mullins would make, he uses the same kind of meta horror around games.
OOOOOOOOOO PRE 2000'S COMPUTING NERDS REJOICE!!
Reminds me of the saying: if it can be destroyed by the truth, it needs to be destroyed by the truth. These four "survivors" were left to play god and didn't know what it was they were doing. Possibly a comparison to the human condition of building our civilization while having a limited, human perspective on the subject matter and little understanding of long-term consequences. In the end the only way to save them from endless suffering was to become a destroyer of worlds. It's beautiful in a poetic sense and tragic in a narrative one. That's amazing world-building for such a little game.
"Way past when computers had to boot directly into dos" I mean, if you wanted windows as a GUI, but it was still DOS underneath up through windows 98ME
I always liked the idea of sentient games.
Since this is relevant, this is why I planned to make one myself! The one I plan to make is actually very similar to Forgotten in regards to one mechanic: no replay ability. Sort of like the characters dying but in my game some of the characters are "eyes" - programs of the game to help with a certain function.
I shall like some feedback but as an example "spot", the finance guys. They consist of three eyes: one eye is for the price of the product; one eye is for the product itself, checking that the product and price is fair; one eye is for feedback on the price from stock analysis.
Let's say that the "SUPEREPICSUPERCOOL sword" was for £2.50. With "spot" alive, they can see that the price is good, so the price is kept. You the player permanently kill them.
You go back to the shop for the "SUPEREPICSUPERCOOL sword" and WOW! £2.35, then £2.18, then £1.90, then £1.55, until suddenly 16p. What a bargain! The price is no longer kept by "spot" and so it has changed. Wait... £3.89 for the "SUPEREPICSUPERCOOL sword"? £4.72! £1277.98! INSANE!
How about a simple "100,000 tokens" for £10.00 as a quick look, to see if that price had changed too. *not me getting out a random number generator* £339,663.39! Jeez, if "spot" was here they could fix these prices, where are they anyway?... Oh yeah.
Now I just want to make sure that this IS in fact a good idea. Seeing Forgotten gives me hope, but I need 100% certainty that it would be a worthy investment to add this feature. If Forgotten can do it, can I?
p.s. I do not use much social media. No reddit. No X. No Instagram. This is why I resort to TH-cam.
[characters dying but in my game some of the characters are "eyes" - programs of the game to help with a certain function. ]
You mean they all have observer patterns? So, kind of how asgore destorying the spare button, or tutorial characters showing game mechanics, but extended to its logical conclusion?
What would the game be like without this mechanic, would there be any alleged advantage for a player to kill them to continue to advance? Like a Wall of Flesh kind of deal. Can you "gouge" or blind a single eye without killing them entirely? Maybe even store the function and swap it with another character. How would that effect their relationship?
Maybe instead of having absolutely no retries, if one does certain events one could do a kind of reset like in a secret ending. Though, I am not sure what you mean by no replay-ability.
The thing with Forgotten Blade, is that its like a short or one shot kind of story. You seem to want to create a longer game with progression. So I am not sure what your aiming for, other then further consequences for bad and good endings.
With say, some sort of trust system, who would cooperate, and how many would not brush those actions to the side.
@@lunyxappocalypse7071 I'm replying to both. First, I have never heard of observer patterns so what a funky coincidence.
Second, that's point. The only real reason to kill any is to get an immediate girlfriend, a harem when you kill multiple, but that is it.
Third, you may eventually have to fight one but I never thought of gouging, I like that idea as a temporary disability. What happens is you defeat them in battle, then you have the option of sparing or killing, like undertale.
Fourth, I'm not too confident with the relationships, it is too complicated.
Fifth, there is a trust system. Remember when you MAY need to fight, that is because you can befriend them instead.
Sixth, [swap it with another character], yes. Meet "see", or simply "Game". When an "eye" is killed, she ("Game") will operate that function too, just not as good as before. She was originally the only "eye", until others wanted to help her manage the game.
Seventh, yes there are secret endings, all endings are secret endings, you discover them yourself, I just have not thought it through at all.
Last, I am no sigma. Thank you for being collected, supportive, reasonable and polite to me. This is all I have thought of. Have an absolutely splendid time fwen. :]
Thank you for showing me a brand new game to hyperfixate on! Now I shall cry for a week straight over sentient fictional characters within a fictional computer within a game getting corrupted!
(But no seriously I love this game's story and I shall go try to play it now! Ironically, my computer may not have enough space on it to dowload it because of my brother's games lol.)
33:00 NOT SAD AT ALL!!
Hi 33 NB + AuADHD and I also case out places I need to navigate within a strict timeframe so I dont get lost / misunderstand / otherwise become so delayed I miss my flight
Here's the kicker-- the directions are designed for groups. As in No One Is Expected To Read At Any Point. There are signs EVERYWHERE, but there's also loudspeakers calling out flight numbers of depatures, its on screens everywhere around your gate, and master screens at the entrace after security lets you put your shoes back on, as well as most transit doors *with* which baggage claim your stuff went to.
Point is, This Space Is Designed For Maximum Ease Of Navigation, expecting the filtering of them by patrons. It is a SHOTGUN BLAST of overstim, so highly reccomend a good set of headphones and other sensory comforts. Airliner cabins are STUPID dry, so bring a small 2oz container ( you can find them with the beauty products, travel bags, or shampoos depending on the store ) of your favorite moistorizers if Dry Lips / Hands is one of your Oh God NOPE sorta discomfort and distress.
Hope all goes smooth!!
I at least have TSApre so I don't have to take my shoes off (probably) but also AuADHD and I'm going to bring a carry plushie and just deal with getting funny looks lmao
@@GlamrockDusky if you think this is insane you should look up one shot cuz as I said before it truly is one shot if you make it to the true ending enjoy the nightmare that is living as a game in NPC
@@GlamrockDusky do you want to hear a secret about the thing about names
We have a name
And then
we have the true name
That is why they say do not invoke the name envoke God in vain in the Christian Bible
VINESAUCE JOEL!
Noooo. 😭 I wish there was a path to repair the world for them. Fix the code corruption.
FINALLY I FIND THIS GAME AGAIN ! THANK YOU !
Can’t wait for the secret ending where you plug in a new hard drive and then leave.
Thank you for bringing this story to greater attention. This made me feel something complex, something undefined. Thank you.
I wish I could see what they created. Disastrous though it was, it would have been nice to glimpse before the junk overtook it. To know what they dreamed of, back when they had still been capable of dreaming.
This is a really cool video, it's a review, it's a let's play, it's a fan theory video. Very lovingly produced, (love the voice acting) and it's aboot a really neat game that I'd never heard of! Highly neat
wow this is so cool, the voice acting really brings the characters to life!! i love stories like this
4:34 Not an excuse should have been a natural philosophy nerd like me.
Sorry about messing it up guys
I am so glad I found this channel a few months ago. I probably never would have heard of this otherwise, and this is so cool
Lithos, Stratos, Pyros and Hydros are god characters within an old game called Pagan Ultima VIII (a game made during the approximate era "Forgotten" references)! The characters in "Forgotten" also do sorta resemble the ones from Pagan so, that's super cool!!
Imagine remake of this, a big one, a long one, 3D with a full story
I'm not gonna lie... i was so entrapped by the history of computers bit at the beggining i forgot this was a game review
Omg I scouted out my airport too lmao
Really good work!!!!!! This was an awesome video for a game I’ve never heard of
Undertale and Deltarune affects similar feelings in me.
The Player is similarly, existentially helpless. But its the journey, I think is where the hope will lie.
imagine remembering Forgotten, couldnt be me
2:59 SCP-079 (?)
Theh didnt pay me enough to QA it.
It just hit me how many times you remind me of Failsafe from Destiny 2. The changes in your voice are pretty close to hers!
Finding the post would be kinda hopeless, but I can remember in the early 90s there was a pastor actually trying to work out how much ram and drive space a computer would need for demonic possession. apparently someone had pranked him by installing some IM client and was pretending to be the computer taunting him.
I really don't think the 5150 was ever sold with a maximum of 16k of RAM. I'm pretty sure the early revisions maxed out at 256k on the mainboard, which was extended to 640k on subsequent revs. And I am quite positive they never overheated and died when they ran out of available RAM.
Okay this is cool. Thank you very much for sharing!
I had never heard of this, but I really like the concept. This idea could actually be expanded on quite a bit to form an RPG much like the one this game's inhabitants lived in. Got some ideas already floating around in my head. Not planning to swipe the idea but the concept sounds like it could lead to some really interesting gameplay mechanics on a grander scale!
I think 'cycles' could refer to CPU's instruction cycles.
That was incredible and the delivery + voice acting on this was great. I got hooked
6:10 I guess you could say the background of this game was "forgotten"? Eh? I'll see myself out