You know the funny thing is Davey is always judge Coda's personality/mental state through Coda's game and now when the game ended WE as a player now judge Davey through his game. Which really hit the point home for me ngl.
That's why it's so important to make it clear that Davey the narrator is not Davey the creator. Davey the narrator is a fictional character, but also one who very explicitly lays his inner mental states bare to us at the end of the game. If we can't talk about fictional characters like that anymore without accusing ourselves of projection, then we just straight up lose our ability to talk about games and what happens in them at all. If that really is the conclusion of The Beginner's Guide, then it took a wrong turn philosophically somewhere along the way.
I'm autistic and have a really hard time realizing when a narrator is unreliable because I tend to just take what they say at face value, so I didn't start feeling the dread that comes along with this game until Davey mentioned showing Coda's games to people. And even then it wasn't a full realization, just my personal anxiety of how I would feel if someone looked at my work without my permission. It was almost innocent to me, just an honest mistake a more extroverted person might make. It was an extremely slow realization for me and it didn't really hit me until I got to the notes directly addressing Davey from Coda. It's actually really hard for me to even hate Davey because I spent so long gleefully empathizing with him and even identifying with him that realizing the harm he's done feels too personal. I felt like I was grieving at the final realization that Davey destroyed Coda's life because in a way it felt like it was me who did it. I felt like I was the one who pried into Coda's personal life and me who ruined everything. "You have INFECTED my personal space" made ME feel physically ill. I even empathize with Davey's selfish panicking at the end, I can't help it. I felt his frantic need to fix it. My first thought was that I myself needed to fix it. I needed to apologize to Coda, to do anything to make it right. I grieved because I BELIEVED Davey. I believed him about the lampposts, and I believed that he was doing something good, something KIND... And the worst part is that as someone who has hurt people in the past and only realized later... I still feel bad for Davey even when he's being selfish. Even when I know he's being shitty and self centered I can't help but understand. I understand how utterly heartbreaking it feels to realize that you are not a good person (and how shitty it makes you feel to even feel sorry for yourself, knowing it's all your fault). I understand how it feels to reckon with that, and how it feels to not know where to go next. How do you move forward when you know you've hurt someone? How can you apologize to someone in a way that matters? None of this is to justify the actions of the character, I mostly just wanted to ramble. This game was painful for me. It's so direct. It says everything it needs to say so well. Massive Kudos to Davey (the real one) for making such a powerful game, the voice acting and story were genuinely moving and this is a game I will never forget.
I resonate with your experience so well. It felt just the same. But mostly, i saw myself in Davey. How i might have hurt people i truly care about just the same way. Blegh.
Huh, interesting. I have high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome, and my experience was almost exactly the opposite. I had an almost instinctive distrust of the narrator from very early on, a lot of what he said didn't quite seem to add up. Like the first level, he says something like Coda "starts from the simple aesthetic of a desert town" as if he had made that basic framework of a desert town himself - when actually no, the map is just an edited version of cs_dust (or assets taken from cs_dust) that Coda seems to have toyed with, like he's just experimenting and learning how to work with 3D objects and not "putting his signature on it" (which in retrospect is actually more like what "Davey" is doing, so he's already projecting even here). Then when he skipped the maze, I was like... I like mazes, why won't you jackass let me solve the maze? Coda must also like mazes, right? That's why he put it there for people to solve? That was just a harmless skip, maybe "Davey" simply has other preferences than me - but as a professional philosopher, I also immediately recognized the epistemological peculiarity of that justification: If he wants to shed light on Coda's motives, why is he forcing me to skip parts of the game based on his own clearly contradicting motives? Again, it was just a harmless skip, but these moments kind of kept piling on. And then the moment I really noticed what Davey was doing was at the house cleaning game, when he arbitrarily interrupts it, removes elements and forces me to move on. I was like... no way in hell is that Coda's creative decision. He made a cozy, comfy game about doing chores forever because it feels like home. He didn't arbitrarily interrupt the loop, because that makes no sense for what the game is clearly trying to do, and he didn't place a lamp post at the end, because that really doesn't fit the tone of the game. It's this jackass "Davey" doing the same thing he did with the maze again. Now of course, in retrospect, a lot of that can be said to be me projecting onto Coda as well - but it was my first playthrough, and that's kind of the initial conceit of the game, no? Trying to figure out what Coda was thinking when making these. Anyway, I learned a lot from playing through this game.
"I don't want you to share my work and I don't want to talk to you. Whenever you fix your problem, whatever it is, please just say nothing and walk away" "So here is the whole collection of his work shared publicly under my name, I am doing this to get into contact with you again and to tell you I am sorry a million times"
From the very beggining i thought: So Davey is profiting from sharing the private and personal struggles of someone without his consent? That is wrong in so many levels. Then at the end it all made sense
@@juansotomayor9076 it makes no sense to me, like why would he claim that his friend is mad at him for releasing his games, when that friend doesnt even exist? dev confirmed Coda doesnt exist, maybe theres some meaning im missing and im just being blinded by the fact, will play again the game tomorrow and perhaps see, i say this not to downplay the game, but perhaps to find an answer to my doubts
The Davey in game and Coda are BOTH fictional. The 'real' Davey made the story up and tried to make it believable to immerse the players deeper into his story and to get his point across.@LunarBulletDev
@@LunarBulletDev The story is made up. But invites for a suspension of disbelief that makes it very immersive. I remember actively refusing to investigate if the claims were true just so i could enjoy the story better. It's just great modern writing that resonates with us because geniuses like Coda DO exist, but most of us will never get to see their work
I think the final walk being mostly empty and contemplative is actually a great poetic piece of asymmetry symbolizing davey finally letting go. Instead of skipping you up the stairs, speeding up the prison or giving an ending to the house game, he's finally just letting you have that silent contemplation that seems important to Coda.
house level is my favorite as well. i remember playing through that level for the first time and feeling disappointed when davey forced me to continue onto the next one, and thinking to myself, "i wish i could play a version that never stops, and just loops, and i just keep cleaning forever". hearing how davey changed this particular level towards the end felt like such a sucker punch. absolutely incredible.
dude, this is the analysis that I think everyone was looking for for years. You knocked it out of the park. Your narration, your structure, your writing... Thanks for being the most thought-open part of me diving back into this game again. TH-cam really is doing you dirty here. Unbelievably great watch and listen
About once every three months, I'll TH-cam search various games such as The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide, What Remains of Edith Finch, Gone Home, or a selection of other ambiguous story driven games because there'll always be a new perspective, a new thought, or a new level of understanding that can be brought to the table. New videos don't pop up every day. So imagine my surprise when a two hour video on this beauty random pops up on my screen. Most analyses that I've watched or listened to AREN'T this long, or as deep or detailed, so I was overjoyed. Brilliant job, well done!
@@rustyfisher2081 At the time of release, it was pretty revolutionary for storytelling with gay themes. But in 2023, some may find it pretentious, and some may understandably find it boring.
Just finished the video, and I want to add on 2 things I've always found interesting: 1. Although we know that the lamp-post was something that Davey added to *some* games, that doesn't mean the lamp-post was *never* a part of *any* game. Very likely the reason that the lamp-post feels so incredibly out-of-place in the House game is simply that it's the only game we see that Davey added it to. However, it's not our job to determine *which* games the lamp-post was originally in. 2. I always found it interesting that the symbol used for the text pop-ups in the Notes game also uses three dots (albeit not the same 3-dot symbol). If you assume that the three dots are just the developer's "signature" (or his way of marking that he was there), these two ideas reflect each other. Fantastic video on this fantastic game. Definitely going to send this to some of my friends who I have discussions with regarding the game and its symbolism/meaning.
The way Coda phrases his accusation in the hall of accusations in "Tower" really makes it sound like Davey added lamp posts more than once though. I agree that there had to be an initial lamp post coming from Coda, but I don't think Davey only ever added one single lamp post. This is something he did often enough to get Coda to specifically add it to the hall of accusations. After all, Davey probably added a whole bunch of other stuff too, but Coda specifically mentions the lamp post.
Ik this is really late, but all of the evidence you’ve presented so wonderfully really helps me explain something I’d been struggling to understand. If there was any symbolism in the name of the creator being “coda”. Now, if you’re not a rehabilitating band kid like me, a coda is something in music where before you end to a piece, you go back to a part in the song, play through a part again, and then play a different ending, which is the coda. I wanted to share that there is 2 ways I’ve interpreted this after your video helped me further analyze the work as a whole. Either it’s just another representation of the door puzzle, a reminder to stop and think, or it’s what coda us begging narrator Davey to do, go back, re look, and stop. Find a way to end this obsessiveness. I like this even more when considering a common error you see beginner musicians make is ignoring the call to go back at all, or if they do, never finding the coda they need to get to. But fr, this video is put together amazingly, as someone dipping their toes into both writing and analyzing work, it’s really inspiring to see someone doing both so well-crafted. Thanks!
I am not a traumatized band kid but I am a classically trained violinist, so I am aware of how Coda's work. One of the things that I really don't like about this video is the fact that I missed the connection between Coda's name and the fact that the last thing you hear at the end of the game is a song called "Turn Back," which is just telling you to play the game again and reexamine everything from another angle. This game requires two play throughs at least to really understand, much like how a song with a written coda requires you to play portions of it twice. It kind of frustrates me that I completely forgot to talk about the symbolism of Coda's name itself. I think I wrote this script just before I really got into studying name symbolism, since I wrote this before I started reading Toni Morrison's work which is where I really got into name symbolism. Thank you for the kind words tho! And good luck on your further rehabilitation :)
@@WhaleMilk I think both of your interpretations about the name are pretty accurate because the song that plays during the floating infinite maze is "D.S. Al Coda", immediately followed by "Turn Back". So I think the song names being a sign to replay is a pretty accurate interpretation. As a side note listening to both of those songs back to back will never get old and this games soundtrack is equally as important to why this game in general is so impactful.
Yeah to me It's definitely him saying: Go back to what made you passionate about all this in the first place. The floating sequence was literally Coda's birth and his reason for making games from the start. Now, I want to respect all kinds of interpretations but as an unpublished artist, it's sooo obvious that Davey and Coda are personified feelings and motivations of the same person. Being popular, making coherent, playable, successful games, those were desires of a side of him that didn't have anything to do with his passion for making games. He didn't understand that, he thought he could let "davey" "put lampposts in his game" and that it would make him even happier. Instead he ended up making things he wasn't actually passionate about and having Davey's thoughts influence his work - it killed his drive, his machine. He had to silence Davey and go back to what made him passionate in the first place. For him it was that feeling he got from the floating bug in his very first level. That's why its also the ending. Going back/turning back to that sequence (Coda) and rekindling the passion. I think that's waht the author was trying to say. It's a lesson on what it means to stay true to yourself. That work of passion has no deadline, no solution, no goal and that you cannot force it, no matter how afraid you are about making it all work out ("all I want to know, am I going to be ok?"). Have trust in yourself, remind yourself of why you're doing this in the first place.
The funny thing is, the game being advertised as "from the creator of Stanley Parable" broke the deceit real fast for me. I know how Stanley Parable plays and Coda using the Source engine can't be the sole factor playing to this game handling and feeling exactly like Stanley Parable. It's quite obvious that this program is not some old games repackaged, it's one cohesive game that totally relies on its narrative. It's in good faith that the narrative is top-notch, it's one of the most emotional works I've ever seen. I watched Jacksepticeye shedding tears over it (for his own reasons, because as a creator he got his own thoughts about the narrative, I might add) and this game made great impacts to most people who played it. But yeah, I kinda glossed over the message because Coda didn't exist as a person to me from the start, which is sad. Your work on this narrative really brought it home for me, and I shall thank you for that.
one thing i really love about the beginner's guide It's clear that Davey has some obsession with Coda, including his production habits. He laments the gap in time between Coda's works, he feels there must be something wrong with Coda, that there must be an explanation for certain long gaps of time between games. As someone who does music as a hobby, I used to feel that way towards my own work, before I realized it was a natural cycle for me. I might be productive for a time, then set my hobby aside for a while, before coming back to it with fresh eyes. Someone on the outside who tries to look for reasoning behind everything may see this behavior and try to attribute it to depression, or stress, or something like that, when it could be a lot simpler than that. I set aside time, as a hobbyist, when the mood possesses me. Though my music is an aspect of who I am, it is not solely who I am, and the quality of my life can't be judged on the time I set aside for a hobby. Though I am projecting my own experiences onto the story, I think this is a general truth, that you can't fully understand someone or their feelings through their work. You can't skip the "messy socializing" when it comes to this.
I love this so much btw, I put this on expecting something to have going in the background, but the way you present information makes it really easy to pay attention to. Thank you for the video!!
You can’t make art with a mind that is messy and cluttered and not right for making art. Sometimes you just gotta set time aside to clean for as long as feels right.
I can’t tell you how much this analysis blew my mind, from the gameplays I’ve watched, and when I played, you could get the sense that Dave’s did something wrong to Coda, but the way you broke down everything, it makes so evident and damingly so- I didn’t realize how much Davey had tried to heavily push for all his thoughts and feelings about his idea of Coda in his head, without ever consoling and properly ever discussing and talking to Coda about it as a real person and friend- Thank you for this, The Beginners Guide has always had a special place in my heart and mind as a game, so incredibly unique and different, to understand it to it’s entirety, (as someone who isn’t not at all good at analyzing media), this just makes the game so much more special now, understanding everything behind the game now :)
I finished watching this on my tv so I went to see the stats of ur vid and HOLY SHIT YOU ARE SO FUCKING UNDERRATED. Like this ain’t even "oh that’s was lower than I expected but ok" no this is like criminal levels of underrated man. Your video has so much work put into it that I’m surprised the creator of the game hasn’t commented. Sorry for being a lil too crazy about this but just….. holy shit man you did so good
The Beginner's Guide has always been a game that I've felt the idea of so well, but couldn't put it into words. Emotionally many of the struggles that Coda and Davey went trough felt parallel to what I felt. Most of the video essays and analyses on it felt incomplete, but your video finally managed to really scratch that itch that's been there for me for years. Thanks a lot!
I whole-heartedly agree. Even know, a lot of the things that this game makes me feel I can't perfectly articulate. There are some things in this video I wish I worded better, but at the time I didn't, and still don't, have the understanding enough of what was going on mechanically to explain. It's an incredibly emotionally complex game that does what it does with some incredibly clever narrative tricks that I think should be studied way more often.
I’m very sad that this only has 2K views because holy moly! This was beautifully made and this game is literally one of my comfort games. How everything was put together was so well done, and I had never realized how many times Davy says “I, me, I think, how I felt.” In the whole thing and like a year or so ago I had the same thought process, and it doesn’t get you anywhere. Again, you’ve done an excellent job explaining each and every bit of The Beginners Guide, well done. 👏🏻
I have to say, I love this game and I loved your interpretation. I think the mistake that a lot of people make when interpreting this game is they focus so much on the fact that Davey was being a shitty art critic, that they forget that Davey was being a really shitty friend. It’s almost like some people think that’s inconsequential, but there’s a reason that David prime chose to tell the story through the lens of friendship. I think you nailed that reason pretty well.
Hm, I've had friends somewhat like Davey and I never considered them shitty friends. I appreciated how they were trying to help me, because I recognized that's really what they had in mind. I honestly think Davey more represents a side of myself. It's hard to deal with what I want from myself as an artist and what I actually want artistically. Those two things are conflicting, because artistically, I don't care about success or appealing to many people. But if possible, I would still want those things generally. We all want to be succesful, loved and be relatable. We all wonder "am I going to be ok?", "am I depressed?" when the process sometimes takes so long without any conclusion. Davey is literally in everyone of us, no matter how much you think of yourself as being just "Coda". So as for the bad friendship, I think what it refers to is really about being kind to yourself and accepting that you can only do so much.
I saw a post recently that said something like “there’s a difference between showing love and appreciation towards a story and its author, and trying to shake the magic word person so more words come out” And this is the video game version of that played out in the most unfortunate way possible.
4 months later, and this video is criminally underrated I was watching Trope Talk on Unreliable Narrators, and this game came to mind. It's such a good "the narrator is a flawed/tragic character" story. I wanted to watch an analysis of this game, just to remind me of how good it was. I saw the length of this video and I knew it would be comprehensive and well thought out. I don't know if more videos like this will be coming out in the future. Regardless, I'm sticking around for good. I'm glad I found this channel.
I don't know if there will be either! There are a couple of games I could talk about in a similar way, but I'm not sure if I'll follow through with them. Maybe one day I'll tackle Dear Esther
Yeah Im just going to second the a hundred other comments saying how awsome and underated this video is. For the depth you go into this game and how thorough you explain everything you should be getting at least 100s of thousands of views. You definitely helped me understand the the full meaning of this game right after I played it.
I relate do Davey in a very painful way. I am a creative person, but I have not always been skilled enough to finish my art on my own, so I subconsciously tried to leech off people who were. I tried to join already established projects, borrowed from ideas and conepts, ultimately creating something that isn't entirely my own. The game really got me to question how I look at creating art and to find the independence to make something original
I'm not gonna lie, I haven't really thought about this game in a long time. Like... since I found it through the Super Best Friends' random playthrough of it and that time years ago when I found an interest in it as well. I never even knew that Coda or "Game Davey" were fake. I didn't give it too much thought, mind you, so it wasn't like I firmly believed it was real. More like that it just felt too personal to be fake. Like at the very least, this was a dramatization of real events with names changed, etc. That was pretty much the vibe I had taken away from Beginner's Guide back then. So in part, I'm so glad you made this so I could learn otherwise. I think the lessons here are very important, and life-changing. Art takes it's own life, even if you are actively still creating it. I've learned that through roleplay of all things, and often times I will find a situation in a tabletop game where my character- a created being with their own values and thoughts and emotions- will do something that I personally know is stupid. It's just more fun that way though, because Game Davey is a similar character who has not gone through this kind of internal deconstruction before. He's just as stubborn to it and just as broken by it as we were when we first felt our own versions of it. And that's the second major thing to take away, more of what I'd feel the personal narrative Davey put into this work through his character. That you will stubbornly fuck up and not conceive of a reality outside of your own until that reality is shattered, completely and hopelessly shattered. I had a time where I had lost my last real friend, the only person I could reliably confide in and at that time I knew I had to break up with my SO and that act of breaking such a promise and losing everything broke me too. I couldn't conceive of a world where it was just me and nobody to feel comfy confiding in. There was a lot of change between then and now, and the point between deconstruction and reconstruction of the self is so important in informing you of who you really are. In that time, you are the architect of your self. We spend our childhoods having that construction mostly done for us, by people who only have the outline of a blueprint and put their best guesswork in it... but that just doesn't work anymore. It takes someone who knows the floors, the walls, the needs of the space to really fill it out. So even if he was real, I think Game Davey™ would turn out pretty damn alright. As such, even with a deeper knowledge of things, I can still conclude that it really doesn't matter to me whether it was real or not. The magic isn't gone because the art, the performance, is still there.
One of the things about the text in Deceit is that it’s part of the narrative Davey does not understand: the value of stopping. In the puzzle, stopping in the dark space is something Davey finds unthinkable, he finds the tedium of being stuck in the stairs game, the mazes, and being lost to be detrimental. The text in Deceit is about stopping, how when “she” stops, the future becomes clearer, and I think that’s worth mentioning that the text in Deceit can be read as part of that aspect of Coda’s games
I did what you said and played the game completely blind, i didnt even know this game existed before your video showed up in my feed and im so glad I played it for myself, not many games I play are able to emotionally pull me into it, but this one is different so thank you for showing me a game thats able to do something other games cant
Has to be one of the most eye-opening, beautifully written, meta analysis that I've fully watched. God, I wish I could experience this video for the first time again (The Beginners Guide too). Instead of the short takes that most video interpretations on The Beginners Guide use, you instead made something more time staking which in turn felt more connecting. A descriptive, deep-dive is something that a lot of people have waited for with this game and you blew away expectations. TH-cam recommendations did me so dirty by showing this to me 8 months late. Again, beautifully written and beautifully done. That subtle loop around back to the 3 dots in the video either by game clips or words was just chef's kiss. Bravo :-)
Incredibly insightful and eye-opening video, thank you very much for making it! The Beginner's Guide is a game that leaves you with tons of questions and your analysis cleared up a lot of things that I've been dwelling on over the past several months. I'd keep watching even if it was 3 or 4 hours long :)
I don't 100% agree on all the points you covered, but this is a really good Analysis and I enjoyed watching it a lot! One thing I want to mention, because it was very relatable to me personally and I never see anyone else interpret it this way too (not saying anyone has to): the game about talking to the animal photographer (for clarification I never interpreted either of the characters as being Davey, the director might be a stand in for Coda but not directly), I think Davey is just absolutely misinterpreting it. This game is all about an important moment where you have decisions to make that you feel will determine the future, that you can't walk back on. I think the bars closing off behind you as you go aren't the person retreating at all, it's the feeling that as time progresses and you walk towards the future, that moment becomes more and more inaccessible, and you can't go back. This is what's at stake, the director says that "just in that one moment" they were confident, but the actor keeps getting the lines wrong and embarrassing themself (according to the director), so the director tries to show them the consequence, the doors of opportunity being closed irreversibly and the regret of messing up that one moment that comes with it. Not sure if this is understandable, I struggle with describing things sometimes. EDIT: another side note but I do think interpreting the woman at the end of the game with the islands as the person guiding the player and interpreting her as Davey is a really interesting take! I never asssociated her with the voice accompanying us and most people seem to interpret her as standing for Coda instead (personally I think a trans interpretation is really intriguing, someone pointed out that especially the phone call game fits in that very well and I can totally see that). I love hearing alternate interpretations and this would be really interesting, because it implies that Coda was even at that point seeing how desperate Davey was and acknowledging it, even though Davey was hurting him. Also I 100% agree on the 3 Dots I think this interpretation is spot on!
god i've always loved this game- and this video just- it encapsulated me from start to finish- and actually left me in tears with that final quote. this was an experience for me that dare i say almost rivals the original game. amazing job, truly
I had never heard of this game before this video, but man, what a ride. I am big dumb brain when it comes into deep reading of a meaning that someone is going for so seeing how WELL you explained everything and showcased it all is absolutely amazing. Also the way you speak is top notch, idk what it is, but it's extremely engaging to hear your voice. I hope this video reaches the audience it deserves ❤
Thanks! This means so much since, after hearing myself say the same shit for dozens upon dozens of hours, it’s easy for me to think it’s boring or not coherent. And however much that is the case for regular length videos we make, the doubt grows exponentially with the length of the video lol.
I played through The Beginners Guide once, and completely didn't get it. I actually watched this video as a way to explain it to me, because playing the game went completely over my head T.T. Thank you for your analysis and explanation, it was very easy to follow and now I can see a bit of why people love this game!
My experience with this game was watching a let’s play of it (can’t remember exactly who) and being so immediately disgusted by the conceit that it was a man stealing someone else’s games and showing them off without that person’s consent that I couldn’t get through the rest of the videos on it the first time. I really felt like proceeding with the game was a violation of Coda and felt genuinely uncomfortable with it. (Of course at the time I don’t think I could articulate this and instead shook it off as “this game is weird let’s watch something else”) Which is another layer to The Beginner’s Guide: the very act of playing is making you complicit in Davey’s crime, and yet you keep playing. Just like Davey acknowledging that what he was doing to Coda was wrong and yet he still went ahead and made this game anyway. (Of course it’s all fictional, so it’s important to finish for the sake of the narrative, but if you don’t know that when you’re playing it’s certainly something to ponder on.) I eventually finished watching the playthrough but didn’t connect with the message until much later when I similarly broke out of the mindset that it’s cringey to be vulnerable and connect with art on a deeper level.
My only dissapointment is that this video appears to have come out shortly after i consumed everything on the internet talking about the beginners guide, and so I initially missed it. I'm glad I went back and looked again on a whim. It was, really, quite fantastic. Thank you very much for making this.
I think I get the epilogue. At the end of the game, that level was made by Davey. He wants so badly to speak about it, but he instead lets it speak for itself. He's not done with all his bad habits, but it's a beginning.
In The House, Coda gives Davey everything he wanted. A playable game with substance. That’s all he’s asked for. He’s modified games to get that. Then, when Coda provides it, Davey ruins it for his OWN interpretation because Coda’s wasn’t good enough or it wasn’t relatable enough. That’s why it’s the biggest red flag; the biggest perversion. Coda did what Davey wanted and Davey said “not good enough”. No idea if this is addressed later, I just put this here so I don’t forget my thoughts as I’m watching. That’s a long held belief I’ve had which is why I grew to loathe Davey just as Coda did. Thankful for this video. This is what people have been waiting for. Thank you
It IS sorta of addressed later! When Coda finally gives Davey what he wants, Davey talks over him. Very similar idea as Davey throwing away Coda’s meaning in The House!
I hate to sound like a critic, I’m really not, just more thoughts. When Coda said “you’re not my problem to solve” and “don’t say anything”, it was a clear statement of “don’t try to find me”. But what Davey is doing, again, is flying in the face of Coda’s desires that Davey so desperately wanted to know. Trying to say “I’m sorry” to Coda is an insult to Coda because Coda said “don’t say anything”. And Davey trying to find Coda so Coda can teach Davey how to be a better person again flies in the face of “you’re not my problem to solve”. The layers! It’s like an ogre!
I’ve always thought of Turn Back as a warning. Sort of saying “I know you want to, I know that you would, but it’s not worth it”. Sort of warning against going through the maze of emotions someone like Davey put himself through. That it’s not worth destroying something for yourself. “But I know you’re strong so turn back” is almost like saying “you don’t need to prove anything”. Coda never had to prove anything and neither did Davey have to prove anything to anyone. Coda chose not to go, Davey did.
Something I saw about this game, after watching a VOD of someone else streaming it and pointing it out. The moment you start the game, the controls appear on the screen, telling you that WASD is to move, and [LEFT CLICK] is to interact. Maybe I’m just making a conspiracy about nothing, but there is no mention of the fact that you can also press SPACE to jump. Either it’s just something left out by accident, or it’s a very subtle way of the game telling you that it’s already lying to you. I swear, every time I see this game, I see something else that could be interpreted. It’s amazing!
Well done with this. Beginner's Guide is also one of my fav games ever atm and I've been revisiting it a lot recently. Still such a great piece of art, and I'm glad to learn more about it and piece more interpretations of it to this day. I'm glad this video exists.
fantastic analysis of one of my favorite games ever. you touched on a bunch of things i didn't even know about, even after this many years, and your points were really interesting to consider -- especially when it came to the last part of the tower! great work!
This has been my favorite game forever!! Thank you so much for making such an in depth video I feel like so many more people should appreciate your analysis and the game itself! Well done
(i ramble quite a bit in this comment, sorry in advance lol i often find it difficult to condense things, i blame my autism haha) I played The Beginner's Guide in December of 2021 after being in a VC in the Crows Crows Crows Discord server with some people talking about how much they liked the game and them recommending it to me. It had always been on my to play list as I knew it was by the same guy who wrote The Stanley Parable and since I was bored from waiting for Ultra Deluxe to come out, I played it the very next day after that VC. Like you, I pretty much went into the game mostly blind and fell for the illusion that it was a real story and Davey was being truthful the entire time up and until near the end when I clocked that something wasn't right and started to question things... I'm never gonna forget how I felt when I first got hit with that letter Coda wrote, something about it hit completely different to me. Some context here... 2021 was the worst year of my life, one of the major reasons why this was is that I had a huge falling out with someone who ended up hurting me a lot and i just felt awful about it for months, and I myself knew that I wasn't all too innocent in all this stuff either, I wasn't proud of my behaviour from that time period and I had realised that by the time I had played this game.. I myself am an artist but I have tons and tons of drawings that I have never shared with anyone since they are very personal to me and I don't like the idea of random people invading my personal world since I'm a very introverted and quiet person. the idea of the people I trusted sharing that very personal work I made just for fun with other people I don't know absolutely mortifies me. these are drawings i dont even share with my own family for gods sake lol. So it was during the part where you start destroying Coda's work and the dialogue option of "Coda, I'll make sure you are known forever!" appearing combined with Davey's narration of him saying that he started showing Coda's work to others to get their thoughts was the VERY moment I realised things weren't right at all, since him saying that just frustrated to me to no end with the experiences I've had. The stuff he said about changing the games in the game after that only confirmed that Davey was an unreliable narrator, and getting hit with the brutally honest message Coda sent to him was just a HUGE gut punch, and then the sort of panic attack Davey had in the dark room as it shrank as he sorta broke down realising how shitty he was really being was an even larger gut punch. I remember crying at this on my first playthrough, and I still do kinda get choked up about it since it felt or so real. Then there was the epilogue, walking around slowly and just questioning what the hell I just experienced, I still wasn't even sure if that whole story was fictional or not as I had fallen for the game's trap of tricking me into thinking it was a true story. I was just so confused but... Gosh I don't even know where to begin? All I can really say is that, this game made me rethink a lot of things about myself and it was a VERY powerful experience. You know a twist is good when on repeat playthroughs it reframes things so had that it just makes you want to yell shut up at a character as it's so clear now that he was being bit of a pretentious ass when it came to his analysis on Coda's character. The Beginner's Guide was constantly on my mind for WEEKS after playing it, I had so much I wanted to say and I just kept watching other people play it to see their thoughts or find some essays on the game but none really ever satisfied all my needs I had for this game since well, I had way too many thoughts. I often considered writing my own essay with my thoughts and analysis on what this game means to me but I could never really find the time or words to do it. I guess I just wanna say, I think this video has been the essay I've been trying to find for at least a good year now since it actually gets into a lot of the thoughts I myself had the game and was the very thorough analysis I've been wanting for a goddamn while! This game impacted me in such a way that it did kinda reframe how I thought about things or how I see people who I look up to, and I am forever thankful for that. Seeing others who love this game as much as I do is such a delight to see. TLDR; Beginner's Guide is goated and I really enjoyed this video essay lol
That was an amazing video. It so perfectly encapsulated my first experience with the game. I remember being fully on board up until the house level. I think the sudden ending is what tipped the first domino for me. I was waiting for you to talk about it in the video, but I think this ended up being my personal take away from that level. In my eyes, I always saw the house as the only game made personally for Davey. If i remember correctly, he even says something along the lines of "this was the only game coda gave to me" I think it was supposed to be coda truly opening up and giving Davey EXACTLY what he wanted so badly, but the truth conflicted with his inner narrative. Coda wasn't able to reach him, and i think that's what he was referencing in the Tower by saying he lacked what Davey needed. Loved the video :)
Oh that's interesting, he felt like what Davey needed was some chill time without a fixed goal or point, but Davey couldn't accept that. But then tbf we already know from the story that you can't fix other people!
I think there is no better praise than: you did this game the justice it deserves. For years I genuinely thought the events in the beginners guide were real, and not only did you shatter that misconception, you presented ideas that I had never would thought of in such an intriguing manner. In doing so, I also have a much greater appreciation for Davey Wreden the creator: Bra-fucking-vo to his writing and narrative abilities for making it seem so real.
Genuinely fantastic video. This game is also one of my all-time favourites and I've watched almost every semi-large video on it, but this said so much more to me, this level of detail on a game I haven't played in admittedly quite a few years was something I personally really needed. You hit upon some things that I haven't heard anybody else talk about, and your enthusiasm for this game is dripping off your words and it is genuinely invigorating. Thank you so much for making this video.
My first interaction with the beginners guide was through Jacksepticeye's playthrough. I did not play games at that point in time and i was so absorbed with the narrative that i did not questions it. I completely believed that the intext davey was a real person. It wasnt until i started reading the comments under that letsplay afterwards that i realised how trusting i had become in the stories (extremely unreliable) narrator. This game openned my eyes to how i take in media as a whole. Its also a comfort watch that i come back to every few months/years and i always enjoy finding new analysis videos as it broardens my understanding of interacting with art.
This might be one of my new favorite videos. I've been researching this game recently because I absolutely fell in love with it after re-watching an old play-through. I think you really summed up (and expanded on) all of my thoughts and the way you talk about it is very nice and clear which I enjoy. Thank you for making this.
The end gave me chills. Thank you for this in-depth analysis. I see the similarities between your work and the vid you referenced in the beginning but after watching both they go into different topics and yours is a step by step analysis that i feel is very interesting and impactful. I've watched about every vid on this game that I could find and yours is one of the best. Great work!
Loved the video, incredibly well-written and presented! I felt compelled to comment after reaching the end hearing you say you wanted a three dots tattoo because that was my first tattoo I ever got! Even during this video I was looking down at it and remembering everything the game meant to me and why I chose to get that symbol on my body forever, thanks so much for everything you do
Something interesting I picked up on from watching this- within the "this is real" narrative, Coda knows Davey has been altering his games. In order to continue to assume this is real, one has to imagine an entire invisible layer of story happening that narrator Davey doesn't talk about to perserve the illusion that he is the good guy. Where one can assume someone in their "real life" must have told Coda that Davey was not only sharing but editing the games or that Davey slipped in a conversation with Coda and mentioned it himself (which is unlikely, because it seems like a revelation that Coda found out). Or perhaps Coda knowing is the one and only hint within the game that the story isn't real, which is kinda how I take it. Really great and engaging video! It completely changed my perspective on the game and illuminated a lot of social cues I missed. It was very much appreciated!
Great analysis :) Long story short, it wasn't until last year where I really started to think about this game differently, and this video solidified my change in thinking. The Beginner's Guide really resonates with me more now than when it came out nine years ago. Good work, you've got my sub. 👍
I wanted to say thank you for this incredibly in depth analysis, For the longest time i've been hoping someone would tackle this game in a long deep analysis video and you delivered it excellently. This game is my favorite and i always leave with something new everytime someone talks about it. You managed to explain a lot of my thoughts about this i couldnt even begin finding the words for even today. I was always bit apprehensive when people call this game anti intellectual or anti criticism but at the beginning i did think that the message was just that maybe he just likes making prisons and thinking otherwise was pointless. But the more people i watched discuss and play this game the more i realized it wasnt that at all it was far from it and you finally hit the nail in the coffin starting at 6:00 until the end of the video. Bravo !
you have no idea how hard it was to cut an entire like three page rant about anti-intellectualism and that whole "the curtains are blue" thing out of this video. I still have it in my drive somewhere lol
@@WhaleMilk oh man i get that! it's really a topic you can get into a long tangent about and honestly i wouldnt have mind listening to it since its an interesting discussion in general, but i do get why you had to cut it to keep the video on track 😅
this game makes more sense if you imagine coda as a manic pixie dream girl joking aside, this is genuinely the greatest beginner's guide video and puts my thoughts to words like nothing else can. thank you.
I played this game because Thor from Pirate Software recommended it on a TH-cam Short where someone was asking about where to find motivation to make games. After watching your video, I think I’m finally understanding why he suggested it.
One thing I do love about games that are art like this, is that they rarely just mean one thing, or that they are left open to greater interpretation from the player. As an ADHD artist, the prison and the steps always felt so relatable to me, like you have all these creative ideas but you struggle to reach them at times. The prison felt like how I would get into an artistic slump at times, the house leading into disjointed blocks and then into a prison where I can willfully get myself free until something in my own mind decides “ok, it’s time for us to get moving again”
I absolutely loved listening to this analysis. Amazing video! I remember playing this game a few months ago and getting to learn even more about it was very interesting. Love the video! ❤❤
So, I work retail. To keep myself from growing nuts i have an ever increasing playlist of videos to use as white noise. I add them after listening to them, and I have to say, this was a perfect analysis, IMO. I'd mark it as a 10/10 as not only did it lay out and explain thoughts i could not word, it added new perspectives for me to consider. Thank you. Also, i dont know if im hearing things, but shortly after the "like im an addict" line if you listen close you can hear a scratching noise. I came from a family of addicts and that stereotype where they are constantly itching themselves does happen, i wonder if that was intentional.
What an amazing game, what an amazing essay! I've loved this game since I first played it a few years back and the experience has stuck with me since then. It's a fascinating game to hear all the theories on, because people have different thoughts about what the three dots mean, or the overall message of the game. I can tell how much work you put into this, and it really added to the ideas that I already had. Thanks for a great video!
I have a tattoo on my chest dedicated to this game the 151617 which was the pass code to the unfinished Bridge in the tower game I love this game so much and great video!
Wow wow. Thank you Whale Milk! I’ve been binging your videos this week but skipped this one until I had a chance to play this game. I’d never heard of it before. Really happy I did, and this video is such a great companion piece. Can’t believe it has so few views, this is such a top notch video essay.
1:57:38 a part of this statement rings untrue to me, coming from an individual who makes stuff fairly regularly. just as Coda says in his letter, "low points are just a part of the process", (in this case, doubt being the catalyst of said low points.) whenever i start to feel like my art is draining me, i like to take a step back, to really consider what it does for me, what it's started doing. i find that it's hard to pinpoint whether or not i'm enjoying what i'm doing, (and enjoyment is my main goal,) so allowing myself to question my art and become a little insecure for a few moments helps me in the process. it opens another path for me in regards to making things, in which diving into my emotions with precision does not, because i literally can't. so, instead of saying "am i enjoying this?" i say "does this feel right and/or genuine (to me)?" of course this won't work for all artists. i also struggle with balancing this insecurity, even if it helps me, and it's obvious that with too much skepticism, it starts to get unhealthy. (even _worse_ if it's someone else that's pounding you with these questions of imbalance -- where in it also becomes a little obvious that i can't compare Coda and i, since our situations are different.) even so i'd still argue that moments of weakness and doubt could and does (sometimes) lead to navigating the path of making art, of finding what you _really_ wanna make.
This was an incredibly well done video, and has honestly probably solidified itself as my favorite TH-cam video, just yknow in general. It's that good, just super super impressive and well put together. One thing that I also thought was really neat was how on top of Davey talking over Coda's blocks of text, the lighting also often obscures parts of them, with shadows of girders, or the side of a text box being almost completely engulfed, which seemed like a really out of place decision to me until I watched this video
The tarot references are really fascinating, and not something I'd noticed before. I've got some experience with tarot and I can see a lot more from them in the game. The tower card is also about the collapse of false or harmful ideas and belief structures, and the devil/tower/star progression can be viewed as a process of transformation represented by that. So you could read the proceding games as representing the devil, with Davey himself being the antagonist in question, and the Tower being Coda finally tearing down any illusions that he and Davey are friends and in turn tearing down the false story he's been telling us. That would make the epilogue the star, the card of hope and direction towards something greater. Something I've seen mentioned by other video essayists is that we don't know Coda actually stopped making games, just that he stopped showing them to Davey. I always read the epilogue as the game Coda made after he cut Davey out of his life, and which he possibly never showed to anyone. It feels like it's going back to the goalless/solutionless approach Coda said he wanted. It's clear the devil/tower/star process was meaningful to Coda, so maybe using it as the code in the tower was a kind of test for Davey to see how well he actually knew him. Or maybe the knew Davey would cheat it and it was a subtle way to give him a message about what he was doing. Or he included them as a way to strengthen his intention for the piece in a ritual magic sort of way. It might even be that the three dots represent the devil/tower/star process, but that might be against the spirit of the game😆 Another thing that occurred to me is that we can see the lamp posts as a kind of false star, put in as a guide where none was needed, as Davey missed the guiding star (aka the point) of Coda's work that was already there
I just remembered you said the Tower is both the 16th card and the 16th game and now I want to dig out my deck to see if there's any correspondence with any of the other games 😆 I guess that would make Davey the Fool?
If I had to recommend the game I'd probably say "It's a really interesting project. You learn a lot of really fascinating things as you play through. It'll only make sense if you play it for yourself". I think that might be a way of avoiding spoiling the game when recommending it.
Nah man, don’t worry about the video length. A lot of people love long analysis, especially when there’s not a lot of fluff. You did a great job with this video and it kept me enthralled all the way through.
I have an interesting take about the S.S. Whisper. The original Whisper machine had you shut it off through self-sacrifice. So this game could relate to that. It might be Coda recognising that Davey needs to see himself in Coda, and calling on Davey to forego the act of fulfilling that need for the greater good (i.e. to remove the toxicity from their relationship). It's telling Davey that he's the one who needs to do something. Davey's image of Coda, represented by the door hurtling towards them, threatens to destroy their relationship unless Davey can find it within himself to acknowledge that his assumptions about Coda are just that: assumptions. But Coda realises that Davey is blind to this, which is why the game comes with the instruction to play it with your eyes closed, and why everyone else on the ship is blind. You can only see what's _really_ happening once you open your eyes to the truth. All taken together, it feels like it's saying "Please open your eyes to the fact that you're ruining our friendship. You have to stop projecting and be honest with yourself. If you don't want our relationship to crash and burn, you have to stop putting your own need for validation before my need for personal space." Perhaps not so literally, but that's the general sentiment I'm getting from it.
I'm not sure if you'll see this message but I just wanted to say thank you for this video. The beginner's guide has such a special place in my heart and this analysis has everything and more. I can see how passionate you are about this game and how much it also means to you. This video perfectly encapsulates the essence of the beginners guide and I found myself seeing the game from even more different perspectives. Thank you for this, this was perfection!!!
Beautiful analysis and helped me digest a lot of parts of the experience i struggled with, thank you for the insight, this feels like something that will stick with me
i adore this game with my entire heart and have kept coming back to it over the years. Awesome analysis, really glad to see that there is still so much love for this game.
Wow, really awesome video man, I always get really happy seeing people still care for The Beginners Guide as it is my 2nd favorite game, my absolute fav being outer wilds so I jiggled when you also mentioned it lol; I loved TBG because it teaches you that people are way more than what they say or do and you can't boil somenone down to just a couple of their actions, its a really human game/narrative that imo almost pushes you to try to be more empathic towards other people. Now, your video made me thougth about it from different perspectives that I hadn't seen before, even after all these years, and I always love that; thanks for the video, really great job!
Something I didn't realize about this game until I was deep into editing was how much it rewards a second playthrough. When gathering footage, I played the game twice back to back in the same setting: once with subtitles on and the other with subtitles off, and those back-to-back playthroughs really highlighted how much a second playthrough of the game completely shifts your perspective of everything from the beginning. At the start of the first playthrough you are under the illusion that Davey is just kinda Davey, the dude that makes games, much like to you, I am Whale Milk, the guy that makes videos online. But by the end of the game you have seen a vulnerable side of Davey, he has been painted in this light that makes him look like an ass, yes, but also makes him much more empathetic and human. On the second playthrough, you have this humanity to recontextualize everything, and that's where the depth of the game really comes from. I don't think I've ever seen a game have so much replay value in the storytelling alone. The first playthrough is a nice romp through a field with a dark revelation at the end, and the second is this deep chasm of symbolism and interpretation, and absolutely nothing changes about the game inbetween those two play throughs. It's almost like I said in the video: the game has two angles you can read it from, the literal and the meta, where the first playthrough pretty much everybody reads the game as literal, and the second playthrough you can't help but read it with the meta lens.
Wow. This video was so beautifully done. Well executed and thought out. I love this. This game has a special place in my heart. And to see it get a video that does it justice, makes the meaning of the game so much more satisfying and meaningful.❤
what an incredible video. i've been looking for something exactly like this ever since i played the game years and years ago, thank you so much. i can't wait to hear your analysis of other games.
Something interesting to me in the Notes section, is that when Davey talks about Coda's experience of making a game, he talks as if "making a game" is as linear as (Davey's idea of) playing a game. You don't make everything in a chronological order - for all we know, Coda makes the door puzzle *first*
I have a slight disagreement with your interpretation of Coda's letter. I didn't read it as dripping with venom. Frustration, absolutely, but more than that pity, resignation exhaustion, compassion, and a lingering hope for Davey to work out his issues. I don't think the "thank you for playing my games" at the beginning is a nicety, I think he chooses to begin the letter that way because he genuinely means it and because that act of playing is the genesis of everything that follows. Coda's character is, if nothing else, genuine. This is part of what breaks Davey - he's looking for the person behind the mask when there's no mask, no cipher, just someone making what they want to make.
My personal opinion is that Davey isn't.. Evil or antagonist. He's just messed up or traumatized, and it's not always easy to see that and he was projecting himself on Coda and his games. Yes, it's messed up, no doubt, but the Coda himself, was, well.. Enabling him? Kept sending him games, throwing jabs at the person, who is obviously oblivious to everything. He needed help as much, but he never received it, as he just haven't seen anything wrong with himself and the only person who he was "looking up to" instead of having a talk with him and telling him what's wrong directly, he just, well.. Made further games, enabling him further until The Tower. Also, i do want to add that we don't explicitly know that Coda stopped making games. He could've just.. Stopped showing them yo Davey. Stopped sharing them with people like himself. It's an amazing story and, god, there's so much sides you can talk about. Fiction is incredible. Yeah, 3 am ramblings, i might be wrong, so come at me(please, don't).
A minor thing but I always assumed the FIRST lamp post that we see, was actually really placed there by "Coda". I infer this because it is the only one that appears in a setting where it makes complete sense as a decorative background element. A street lamp in the streets basically.. Every other times, it sticks out like a sore thumb and clearly does not belong like in the typewriter room, or on stage (and yes there are some place where it kind of fits in, but it is always sort of to the side and mismatched, not center stage on a pedestal like the first one, it looks, tacked on).. But here, it was there, as a "detail that is just there", as said here in the video. When "Davey" says "For some reason Coda fixates on this lamp post" it is like he is projecting, HE really liked the lamp post as an "end of level" calling card thing, and he thought it should be in every game, subsequently adding it himself to have his idea of the "bigger picture" confirmed. I understood that as again a symbol for critics who home in on certain details that mean nothing, but fixate on them, really WANT them to have meaning, because it gives them the illusion to having understood the art piece. Even if they have to interpret the symbol into other works by the same author where it was never meant to be. What do you all think?
thank you so much for this analysis and you knocked it out of the park. i hope people that played this game 5 years ago find this over time and appreciate it just like i have. this game is extremely special to me and it makes my heart feel a type of joy i havent had in a long time to see someone else care about it so much too. i seriously encourage you, continue making projects that make you feel the same joy you described you had when making this video. people can see it and will want to connect with that til the end of time.
![[FULL] RETROSPECTIVE : Final Fantasy Tactics](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RUBmYqs1jZ0/mqdefault.jpg)
You know the funny thing is Davey is always judge Coda's personality/mental state through Coda's game and now when the game ended WE as a player now judge Davey through his game. Which really hit the point home for me ngl.
I've thought exactly the same thing. This video feels like a sequel to the game to me.
thats was the whole point /message of the game , imo
That's why it's so important to make it clear that Davey the narrator is not Davey the creator. Davey the narrator is a fictional character, but also one who very explicitly lays his inner mental states bare to us at the end of the game. If we can't talk about fictional characters like that anymore without accusing ourselves of projection, then we just straight up lose our ability to talk about games and what happens in them at all. If that really is the conclusion of The Beginner's Guide, then it took a wrong turn philosophically somewhere along the way.
I'm autistic and have a really hard time realizing when a narrator is unreliable because I tend to just take what they say at face value, so I didn't start feeling the dread that comes along with this game until Davey mentioned showing Coda's games to people. And even then it wasn't a full realization, just my personal anxiety of how I would feel if someone looked at my work without my permission. It was almost innocent to me, just an honest mistake a more extroverted person might make.
It was an extremely slow realization for me and it didn't really hit me until I got to the notes directly addressing Davey from Coda. It's actually really hard for me to even hate Davey because I spent so long gleefully empathizing with him and even identifying with him that realizing the harm he's done feels too personal. I felt like I was grieving at the final realization that Davey destroyed Coda's life because in a way it felt like it was me who did it. I felt like I was the one who pried into Coda's personal life and me who ruined everything. "You have INFECTED my personal space" made ME feel physically ill.
I even empathize with Davey's selfish panicking at the end, I can't help it. I felt his frantic need to fix it. My first thought was that I myself needed to fix it. I needed to apologize to Coda, to do anything to make it right. I grieved because I BELIEVED Davey. I believed him about the lampposts, and I believed that he was doing something good, something KIND...
And the worst part is that as someone who has hurt people in the past and only realized later... I still feel bad for Davey even when he's being selfish. Even when I know he's being shitty and self centered I can't help but understand. I understand how utterly heartbreaking it feels to realize that you are not a good person (and how shitty it makes you feel to even feel sorry for yourself, knowing it's all your fault). I understand how it feels to reckon with that, and how it feels to not know where to go next. How do you move forward when you know you've hurt someone? How can you apologize to someone in a way that matters?
None of this is to justify the actions of the character, I mostly just wanted to ramble. This game was painful for me. It's so direct. It says everything it needs to say so well. Massive Kudos to Davey (the real one) for making such a powerful game, the voice acting and story were genuinely moving and this is a game I will never forget.
I resonate with your experience so well. It felt just the same. But mostly, i saw myself in Davey. How i might have hurt people i truly care about just the same way. Blegh.
Wow.
Huh, interesting. I have high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome, and my experience was almost exactly the opposite. I had an almost instinctive distrust of the narrator from very early on, a lot of what he said didn't quite seem to add up. Like the first level, he says something like Coda "starts from the simple aesthetic of a desert town" as if he had made that basic framework of a desert town himself - when actually no, the map is just an edited version of cs_dust (or assets taken from cs_dust) that Coda seems to have toyed with, like he's just experimenting and learning how to work with 3D objects and not "putting his signature on it" (which in retrospect is actually more like what "Davey" is doing, so he's already projecting even here). Then when he skipped the maze, I was like... I like mazes, why won't you jackass let me solve the maze? Coda must also like mazes, right? That's why he put it there for people to solve? That was just a harmless skip, maybe "Davey" simply has other preferences than me - but as a professional philosopher, I also immediately recognized the epistemological peculiarity of that justification: If he wants to shed light on Coda's motives, why is he forcing me to skip parts of the game based on his own clearly contradicting motives? Again, it was just a harmless skip, but these moments kind of kept piling on. And then the moment I really noticed what Davey was doing was at the house cleaning game, when he arbitrarily interrupts it, removes elements and forces me to move on. I was like... no way in hell is that Coda's creative decision. He made a cozy, comfy game about doing chores forever because it feels like home. He didn't arbitrarily interrupt the loop, because that makes no sense for what the game is clearly trying to do, and he didn't place a lamp post at the end, because that really doesn't fit the tone of the game. It's this jackass "Davey" doing the same thing he did with the maze again.
Now of course, in retrospect, a lot of that can be said to be me projecting onto Coda as well - but it was my first playthrough, and that's kind of the initial conceit of the game, no? Trying to figure out what Coda was thinking when making these. Anyway, I learned a lot from playing through this game.
"I don't want you to share my work and I don't want to talk to you. Whenever you fix your problem, whatever it is, please just say nothing and walk away"
"So here is the whole collection of his work shared publicly under my name, I am doing this to get into contact with you again and to tell you I am sorry a million times"
From the very beggining i thought: So Davey is profiting from sharing the private and personal struggles of someone without his consent? That is wrong in so many levels.
Then at the end it all made sense
@@juansotomayor9076 it makes no sense to me, like why would he claim that his friend is mad at him for releasing his games, when that friend doesnt even exist? dev confirmed Coda doesnt exist, maybe theres some meaning im missing and im just being blinded by the fact, will play again the game tomorrow and perhaps see, i say this not to downplay the game, but perhaps to find an answer to my doubts
The Davey in game and Coda are BOTH fictional.
The 'real' Davey made the story up and tried to make it believable to immerse the players deeper into his story and to get his point across.@LunarBulletDev
@@LunarBulletDev The story is made up. But invites for a suspension of disbelief that makes it very immersive. I remember actively refusing to investigate if the claims were true just so i could enjoy the story better. It's just great modern writing that resonates with us because geniuses like Coda DO exist, but most of us will never get to see their work
@@LunarBulletDev I guess it's a metaphor for how he hates himself.
I think the final walk being mostly empty and contemplative is actually a great poetic piece of asymmetry symbolizing davey finally letting go. Instead of skipping you up the stairs, speeding up the prison or giving an ending to the house game, he's finally just letting you have that silent contemplation that seems important to Coda.
house level is my favorite as well. i remember playing through that level for the first time and feeling disappointed when davey forced me to continue onto the next one, and thinking to myself, "i wish i could play a version that never stops, and just loops, and i just keep cleaning forever". hearing how davey changed this particular level towards the end felt like such a sucker punch. absolutely incredible.
same
That's the point in the game where the full realization hit me that "Davey" is full of shit.
dude, this is the analysis that I think everyone was looking for for years. You knocked it out of the park. Your narration, your structure, your writing... Thanks for being the most thought-open part of me diving back into this game again. TH-cam really is doing you dirty here. Unbelievably great watch and listen
I’m glad you actually understood it. Well done
Yooooo, I love your channel zeemyth, you content is amazing!
Absolutely lovely examination of the game. And I appreciate a take that isn't "this game doesn't want me to interpret it".
About once every three months, I'll TH-cam search various games such as The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide, What Remains of Edith Finch, Gone Home, or a selection of other ambiguous story driven games because there'll always be a new perspective, a new thought, or a new level of understanding that can be brought to the table. New videos don't pop up every day.
So imagine my surprise when a two hour video on this beauty random pops up on my screen.
Most analyses that I've watched or listened to AREN'T this long, or as deep or detailed, so I was overjoyed.
Brilliant job, well done!
I haven't heard of Gone Home, how is that one?
@@rustyfisher2081 At the time of release, it was pretty revolutionary for storytelling with gay themes.
But in 2023, some may find it pretentious, and some may understandably find it boring.
@@DJTS1991 I'll take a peep...
Just finished the video, and I want to add on 2 things I've always found interesting:
1. Although we know that the lamp-post was something that Davey added to *some* games, that doesn't mean the lamp-post was *never* a part of *any* game. Very likely the reason that the lamp-post feels so incredibly out-of-place in the House game is simply that it's the only game we see that Davey added it to. However, it's not our job to determine *which* games the lamp-post was originally in.
2. I always found it interesting that the symbol used for the text pop-ups in the Notes game also uses three dots (albeit not the same 3-dot symbol). If you assume that the three dots are just the developer's "signature" (or his way of marking that he was there), these two ideas reflect each other.
Fantastic video on this fantastic game. Definitely going to send this to some of my friends who I have discussions with regarding the game and its symbolism/meaning.
The way Coda phrases his accusation in the hall of accusations in "Tower" really makes it sound like Davey added lamp posts more than once though. I agree that there had to be an initial lamp post coming from Coda, but I don't think Davey only ever added one single lamp post. This is something he did often enough to get Coda to specifically add it to the hall of accusations. After all, Davey probably added a whole bunch of other stuff too, but Coda specifically mentions the lamp post.
"Maybe he just likes making prisons" has been trapped in my brain for so long now. It will probably never leave.
You could say it's imprisoned there.
Ik this is really late, but all of the evidence you’ve presented so wonderfully really helps me explain something I’d been struggling to understand. If there was any symbolism in the name of the creator being “coda”. Now, if you’re not a rehabilitating band kid like me, a coda is something in music where before you end to a piece, you go back to a part in the song, play through a part again, and then play a different ending, which is the coda. I wanted to share that there is 2 ways I’ve interpreted this after your video helped me further analyze the work as a whole. Either it’s just another representation of the door puzzle, a reminder to stop and think, or it’s what coda us begging narrator Davey to do, go back, re look, and stop. Find a way to end this obsessiveness. I like this even more when considering a common error you see beginner musicians make is ignoring the call to go back at all, or if they do, never finding the coda they need to get to. But fr, this video is put together amazingly, as someone dipping their toes into both writing and analyzing work, it’s really inspiring to see someone doing both so well-crafted. Thanks!
I am not a traumatized band kid but I am a classically trained violinist, so I am aware of how Coda's work. One of the things that I really don't like about this video is the fact that I missed the connection between Coda's name and the fact that the last thing you hear at the end of the game is a song called "Turn Back," which is just telling you to play the game again and reexamine everything from another angle. This game requires two play throughs at least to really understand, much like how a song with a written coda requires you to play portions of it twice.
It kind of frustrates me that I completely forgot to talk about the symbolism of Coda's name itself. I think I wrote this script just before I really got into studying name symbolism, since I wrote this before I started reading Toni Morrison's work which is where I really got into name symbolism.
Thank you for the kind words tho! And good luck on your further rehabilitation :)
Or he's coda because he's a coder
@@WhaleMilk I think both of your interpretations about the name are pretty accurate because the song that plays during the floating infinite maze is "D.S. Al Coda", immediately followed by "Turn Back". So I think the song names being a sign to replay is a pretty accurate interpretation.
As a side note listening to both of those songs back to back will never get old and this games soundtrack is equally as important to why this game in general is so impactful.
Yeah to me It's definitely him saying: Go back to what made you passionate about all this in the first place. The floating sequence was literally Coda's birth and his reason for making games from the start. Now, I want to respect all kinds of interpretations but as an unpublished artist, it's sooo obvious that Davey and Coda are personified feelings and motivations of the same person. Being popular, making coherent, playable, successful games, those were desires of a side of him that didn't have anything to do with his passion for making games. He didn't understand that, he thought he could let "davey" "put lampposts in his game" and that it would make him even happier. Instead he ended up making things he wasn't actually passionate about and having Davey's thoughts influence his work - it killed his drive, his machine. He had to silence Davey and go back to what made him passionate in the first place. For him it was that feeling he got from the floating bug in his very first level. That's why its also the ending. Going back/turning back to that sequence (Coda) and rekindling the passion. I think that's waht the author was trying to say. It's a lesson on what it means to stay true to yourself. That work of passion has no deadline, no solution, no goal and that you cannot force it, no matter how afraid you are about making it all work out ("all I want to know, am I going to be ok?"). Have trust in yourself, remind yourself of why you're doing this in the first place.
The funny thing is, the game being advertised as "from the creator of Stanley Parable" broke the deceit real fast for me. I know how Stanley Parable plays and Coda using the Source engine can't be the sole factor playing to this game handling and feeling exactly like Stanley Parable. It's quite obvious that this program is not some old games repackaged, it's one cohesive game that totally relies on its narrative. It's in good faith that the narrative is top-notch, it's one of the most emotional works I've ever seen. I watched Jacksepticeye shedding tears over it (for his own reasons, because as a creator he got his own thoughts about the narrative, I might add) and this game made great impacts to most people who played it. But yeah, I kinda glossed over the message because Coda didn't exist as a person to me from the start, which is sad. Your work on this narrative really brought it home for me, and I shall thank you for that.
one thing i really love about the beginner's guide
It's clear that Davey has some obsession with Coda, including his production habits. He laments the gap in time between Coda's works, he feels there must be something wrong with Coda, that there must be an explanation for certain long gaps of time between games.
As someone who does music as a hobby, I used to feel that way towards my own work, before I realized it was a natural cycle for me. I might be productive for a time, then set my hobby aside for a while, before coming back to it with fresh eyes.
Someone on the outside who tries to look for reasoning behind everything may see this behavior and try to attribute it to depression, or stress, or something like that, when it could be a lot simpler than that. I set aside time, as a hobbyist, when the mood possesses me.
Though my music is an aspect of who I am, it is not solely who I am, and the quality of my life can't be judged on the time I set aside for a hobby. Though I am projecting my own experiences onto the story, I think this is a general truth, that you can't fully understand someone or their feelings through their work. You can't skip the "messy socializing" when it comes to this.
I love this so much btw, I put this on expecting something to have going in the background, but the way you present information makes it really easy to pay attention to. Thank you for the video!!
You can’t make art with a mind that is messy and cluttered and not right for making art. Sometimes you just gotta set time aside to clean for as long as feels right.
lion king narrator voice: “it’s the cycle of life” :)
I can’t tell you how much this analysis blew my mind, from the gameplays I’ve watched, and when I played, you could get the sense that Dave’s did something wrong to Coda, but the way you broke down everything, it makes so evident and damingly so- I didn’t realize how much Davey had tried to heavily push for all his thoughts and feelings about his idea of Coda in his head, without ever consoling and properly ever discussing and talking to Coda about it as a real person and friend-
Thank you for this, The Beginners Guide has always had a special place in my heart and mind as a game, so incredibly unique and different, to understand it to it’s entirety, (as someone who isn’t not at all good at analyzing media), this just makes the game so much more special now, understanding everything behind the game now :)
I think this story between Davey and Coda is one of the most tragic examples of the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".
I finished watching this on my tv so I went to see the stats of ur vid and HOLY SHIT YOU ARE SO FUCKING UNDERRATED. Like this ain’t even "oh that’s was lower than I expected but ok" no this is like criminal levels of underrated man. Your video has so much work put into it that I’m surprised the creator of the game hasn’t commented. Sorry for being a lil too crazy about this but just….. holy shit man you did so good
I would fucking combust if Davey Wreden commented on this vid lol
@@WhaleMilk Would he want you to do that
The Beginner's Guide has always been a game that I've felt the idea of so well, but couldn't put it into words. Emotionally many of the struggles that Coda and Davey went trough felt parallel to what I felt. Most of the video essays and analyses on it felt incomplete, but your video finally managed to really scratch that itch that's been there for me for years. Thanks a lot!
I whole-heartedly agree. Even know, a lot of the things that this game makes me feel I can't perfectly articulate. There are some things in this video I wish I worded better, but at the time I didn't, and still don't, have the understanding enough of what was going on mechanically to explain. It's an incredibly emotionally complex game that does what it does with some incredibly clever narrative tricks that I think should be studied way more often.
I’m very sad that this only has 2K views because holy moly! This was beautifully made and this game is literally one of my comfort games. How everything was put together was so well done, and I had never realized how many times Davy says “I, me, I think, how I felt.” In the whole thing and like a year or so ago I had the same thought process, and it doesn’t get you anywhere. Again, you’ve done an excellent job explaining each and every bit of The Beginners Guide, well done. 👏🏻
I have to say, I love this game and I loved your interpretation. I think the mistake that a lot of people make when interpreting this game is they focus so much on the fact that Davey was being a shitty art critic, that they forget that Davey was being a really shitty friend. It’s almost like some people think that’s inconsequential, but there’s a reason that David prime chose to tell the story through the lens of friendship. I think you nailed that reason pretty well.
Hm, I've had friends somewhat like Davey and I never considered them shitty friends. I appreciated how they were trying to help me, because I recognized that's really what they had in mind. I honestly think Davey more represents a side of myself. It's hard to deal with what I want from myself as an artist and what I actually want artistically. Those two things are conflicting, because artistically, I don't care about success or appealing to many people. But if possible, I would still want those things generally. We all want to be succesful, loved and be relatable. We all wonder "am I going to be ok?", "am I depressed?" when the process sometimes takes so long without any conclusion. Davey is literally in everyone of us, no matter how much you think of yourself as being just "Coda".
So as for the bad friendship, I think what it refers to is really about being kind to yourself and accepting that you can only do so much.
I actually cried to this man, this has been one of my favorite games for years and felt like it was never talked about. Thank you so much man.
I saw a post recently that said something like “there’s a difference between showing love and appreciation towards a story and its author, and trying to shake the magic word person so more words come out” And this is the video game version of that played out in the most unfortunate way possible.
4 months later, and this video is criminally underrated
I was watching Trope Talk on Unreliable Narrators, and this game came to mind. It's such a good "the narrator is a flawed/tragic character" story. I wanted to watch an analysis of this game, just to remind me of how good it was.
I saw the length of this video and I knew it would be comprehensive and well thought out.
I don't know if more videos like this will be coming out in the future. Regardless, I'm sticking around for good. I'm glad I found this channel.
I don't know if there will be either! There are a couple of games I could talk about in a similar way, but I'm not sure if I'll follow through with them. Maybe one day I'll tackle Dear Esther
Yeah Im just going to second the a hundred other comments saying how awsome and underated this video is. For the depth you go into this game and how thorough you explain everything you should be getting at least 100s of thousands of views. You definitely helped me understand the the full meaning of this game right after I played it.
I relate do Davey in a very painful way. I am a creative person, but I have not always been skilled enough to finish my art on my own, so I subconsciously tried to leech off people who were. I tried to join already established projects, borrowed from ideas and conepts, ultimately creating something that isn't entirely my own. The game really got me to question how I look at creating art and to find the independence to make something original
I'm not gonna lie, I haven't really thought about this game in a long time. Like... since I found it through the Super Best Friends' random playthrough of it and that time years ago when I found an interest in it as well.
I never even knew that Coda or "Game Davey" were fake. I didn't give it too much thought, mind you, so it wasn't like I firmly believed it was real. More like that it just felt too personal to be fake. Like at the very least, this was a dramatization of real events with names changed, etc. That was pretty much the vibe I had taken away from Beginner's Guide back then. So in part, I'm so glad you made this so I could learn otherwise.
I think the lessons here are very important, and life-changing. Art takes it's own life, even if you are actively still creating it. I've learned that through roleplay of all things, and often times I will find a situation in a tabletop game where my character- a created being with their own values and thoughts and emotions- will do something that I personally know is stupid. It's just more fun that way though, because Game Davey is a similar character who has not gone through this kind of internal deconstruction before. He's just as stubborn to it and just as broken by it as we were when we first felt our own versions of it.
And that's the second major thing to take away, more of what I'd feel the personal narrative Davey put into this work through his character. That you will stubbornly fuck up and not conceive of a reality outside of your own until that reality is shattered, completely and hopelessly shattered. I had a time where I had lost my last real friend, the only person I could reliably confide in and at that time I knew I had to break up with my SO and that act of breaking such a promise and losing everything broke me too. I couldn't conceive of a world where it was just me and nobody to feel comfy confiding in.
There was a lot of change between then and now, and the point between deconstruction and reconstruction of the self is so important in informing you of who you really are. In that time, you are the architect of your self. We spend our childhoods having that construction mostly done for us, by people who only have the outline of a blueprint and put their best guesswork in it... but that just doesn't work anymore. It takes someone who knows the floors, the walls, the needs of the space to really fill it out.
So even if he was real, I think Game Davey™ would turn out pretty damn alright. As such, even with a deeper knowledge of things, I can still conclude that it really doesn't matter to me whether it was real or not. The magic isn't gone because the art, the performance, is still there.
One of the things about the text in Deceit is that it’s part of the narrative Davey does not understand: the value of stopping. In the puzzle, stopping in the dark space is something Davey finds unthinkable, he finds the tedium of being stuck in the stairs game, the mazes, and being lost to be detrimental. The text in Deceit is about stopping, how when “she” stops, the future becomes clearer, and I think that’s worth mentioning that the text in Deceit can be read as part of that aspect of Coda’s games
I did what you said and played the game completely blind, i didnt even know this game existed before your video showed up in my feed and im so glad I played it for myself, not many games I play are able to emotionally pull me into it, but this one is different so thank you for showing me a game thats able to do something other games cant
Has to be one of the most eye-opening, beautifully written, meta analysis that I've fully watched. God, I wish I could experience this video for the first time again (The Beginners Guide too). Instead of the short takes that most video interpretations on The Beginners Guide use, you instead made something more time staking which in turn felt more connecting. A descriptive, deep-dive is something that a lot of people have waited for with this game and you blew away expectations. TH-cam recommendations did me so dirty by showing this to me 8 months late. Again, beautifully written and beautifully done. That subtle loop around back to the 3 dots in the video either by game clips or words was just chef's kiss. Bravo :-)
Incredibly insightful and eye-opening video, thank you very much for making it! The Beginner's Guide is a game that leaves you with tons of questions and your analysis cleared up a lot of things that I've been dwelling on over the past several months. I'd keep watching even if it was 3 or 4 hours long :)
I don't 100% agree on all the points you covered, but this is a really good Analysis and I enjoyed watching it a lot!
One thing I want to mention, because it was very relatable to me personally and I never see anyone else interpret it this way too (not saying anyone has to):
the game about talking to the animal photographer (for clarification I never interpreted either of the characters as being Davey, the director might be a stand in for Coda but not directly), I think Davey is just absolutely misinterpreting it.
This game is all about an important moment where you have decisions to make that you feel will determine the future, that you can't walk back on.
I think the bars closing off behind you as you go aren't the person retreating at all, it's the feeling that as time progresses and you walk towards the future, that moment becomes more and more inaccessible, and you can't go back.
This is what's at stake, the director says that "just in that one moment" they were confident, but the actor keeps getting the lines wrong and embarrassing themself (according to the director), so the director tries to show them the consequence, the doors of opportunity being closed irreversibly and the regret of messing up that one moment that comes with it.
Not sure if this is understandable, I struggle with describing things sometimes.
EDIT:
another side note but I do think interpreting the woman at the end of the game with the islands as the person guiding the player and interpreting her as Davey is a really interesting take! I never asssociated her with the voice accompanying us and most people seem to interpret her as standing for Coda instead (personally I think a trans interpretation is really intriguing, someone pointed out that especially the phone call game fits in that very well and I can totally see that).
I love hearing alternate interpretations and this would be really interesting, because it implies that Coda was even at that point seeing how desperate Davey was and acknowledging it, even though Davey was hurting him.
Also I 100% agree on the 3 Dots I think this interpretation is spot on!
god i've always loved this game- and this video just- it encapsulated me from start to finish- and actually left me in tears with that final quote. this was an experience for me that dare i say almost rivals the original game. amazing job, truly
I've been waiting my entire life for someone to drop a long video essay about The Beginner's Guide, thank you so much! Loved the video
I had never heard of this game before this video, but man, what a ride.
I am big dumb brain when it comes into deep reading of a meaning that someone is going for so seeing how WELL you explained everything and showcased it all is absolutely amazing.
Also the way you speak is top notch, idk what it is, but it's extremely engaging to hear your voice. I hope this video reaches the audience it deserves ❤
Thanks! This means so much since, after hearing myself say the same shit for dozens upon dozens of hours, it’s easy for me to think it’s boring or not coherent. And however much that is the case for regular length videos we make, the doubt grows exponentially with the length of the video lol.
I played through The Beginners Guide once, and completely didn't get it. I actually watched this video as a way to explain it to me, because playing the game went completely over my head T.T. Thank you for your analysis and explanation, it was very easy to follow and now I can see a bit of why people love this game!
There’s nothing better on youtube than an hours long love letter to the youtuber’s favorite game. Good job.
My experience with this game was watching a let’s play of it (can’t remember exactly who) and being so immediately disgusted by the conceit that it was a man stealing someone else’s games and showing them off without that person’s consent that I couldn’t get through the rest of the videos on it the first time. I really felt like proceeding with the game was a violation of Coda and felt genuinely uncomfortable with it. (Of course at the time I don’t think I could articulate this and instead shook it off as “this game is weird let’s watch something else”)
Which is another layer to The Beginner’s Guide: the very act of playing is making you complicit in Davey’s crime, and yet you keep playing. Just like Davey acknowledging that what he was doing to Coda was wrong and yet he still went ahead and made this game anyway.
(Of course it’s all fictional, so it’s important to finish for the sake of the narrative, but if you don’t know that when you’re playing it’s certainly something to ponder on.)
I eventually finished watching the playthrough but didn’t connect with the message until much later when I similarly broke out of the mindset that it’s cringey to be vulnerable and connect with art on a deeper level.
My only dissapointment is that this video appears to have come out shortly after i consumed everything on the internet talking about the beginners guide, and so I initially missed it. I'm glad I went back and looked again on a whim. It was, really, quite fantastic. Thank you very much for making this.
I think I get the epilogue. At the end of the game, that level was made by Davey. He wants so badly to speak about it, but he instead lets it speak for itself. He's not done with all his bad habits, but it's a beginning.
In The House, Coda gives Davey everything he wanted. A playable game with substance. That’s all he’s asked for. He’s modified games to get that. Then, when Coda provides it, Davey ruins it for his OWN interpretation because Coda’s wasn’t good enough or it wasn’t relatable enough. That’s why it’s the biggest red flag; the biggest perversion. Coda did what Davey wanted and Davey said “not good enough”.
No idea if this is addressed later, I just put this here so I don’t forget my thoughts as I’m watching. That’s a long held belief I’ve had which is why I grew to loathe Davey just as Coda did. Thankful for this video. This is what people have been waiting for. Thank you
It IS sorta of addressed later! When Coda finally gives Davey what he wants, Davey talks over him. Very similar idea as Davey throwing away Coda’s meaning in The House!
I hate to sound like a critic, I’m really not, just more thoughts. When Coda said “you’re not my problem to solve” and “don’t say anything”, it was a clear statement of “don’t try to find me”. But what Davey is doing, again, is flying in the face of Coda’s desires that Davey so desperately wanted to know. Trying to say “I’m sorry” to Coda is an insult to Coda because Coda said “don’t say anything”. And Davey trying to find Coda so Coda can teach Davey how to be a better person again flies in the face of “you’re not my problem to solve”. The layers! It’s like an ogre!
I’ve always thought of Turn Back as a warning. Sort of saying “I know you want to, I know that you would, but it’s not worth it”. Sort of warning against going through the maze of emotions someone like Davey put himself through. That it’s not worth destroying something for yourself. “But I know you’re strong so turn back” is almost like saying “you don’t need to prove anything”. Coda never had to prove anything and neither did Davey have to prove anything to anyone. Coda chose not to go, Davey did.
I feel attacked cause I relate so much to the fictional Davey. His narration was fun and he was a pretty nice guy. Just had a few flaws.
Something I saw about this game, after watching a VOD of someone else streaming it and pointing it out.
The moment you start the game, the controls appear on the screen, telling you that WASD is to move, and [LEFT CLICK] is to interact. Maybe I’m just making a conspiracy about nothing, but there is no mention of the fact that you can also press SPACE to jump. Either it’s just something left out by accident, or it’s a very subtle way of the game telling you that it’s already lying to you.
I swear, every time I see this game, I see something else that could be interpreted. It’s amazing!
Well done with this. Beginner's Guide is also one of my fav games ever atm and I've been revisiting it a lot recently. Still such a great piece of art, and I'm glad to learn more about it and piece more interpretations of it to this day. I'm glad this video exists.
fantastic analysis of one of my favorite games ever. you touched on a bunch of things i didn't even know about, even after this many years, and your points were really interesting to consider -- especially when it came to the last part of the tower! great work!
Came from Twitter, I absolutely love The Beginners Guide and I’m so exited to watch an analysis on it!!
This has been my favorite game forever!! Thank you so much for making such an in depth video I feel like so many more people should appreciate your analysis and the game itself! Well done
(i ramble quite a bit in this comment, sorry in advance lol i often find it difficult to condense things, i blame my autism haha)
I played The Beginner's Guide in December of 2021 after being in a VC in the Crows Crows Crows Discord server with some people talking about how much they liked the game and them recommending it to me. It had always been on my to play list as I knew it was by the same guy who wrote The Stanley Parable and since I was bored from waiting for Ultra Deluxe to come out, I played it the very next day after that VC. Like you, I pretty much went into the game mostly blind and fell for the illusion that it was a real story and Davey was being truthful the entire time up and until near the end when I clocked that something wasn't right and started to question things... I'm never gonna forget how I felt when I first got hit with that letter Coda wrote, something about it hit completely different to me.
Some context here... 2021 was the worst year of my life, one of the major reasons why this was is that I had a huge falling out with someone who ended up hurting me a lot and i just felt awful about it for months, and I myself knew that I wasn't all too innocent in all this stuff either, I wasn't proud of my behaviour from that time period and I had realised that by the time I had played this game.. I myself am an artist but I have tons and tons of drawings that I have never shared with anyone since they are very personal to me and I don't like the idea of random people invading my personal world since I'm a very introverted and quiet person. the idea of the people I trusted sharing that very personal work I made just for fun with other people I don't know absolutely mortifies me. these are drawings i dont even share with my own family for gods sake lol.
So it was during the part where you start destroying Coda's work and the dialogue option of "Coda, I'll make sure you are known forever!" appearing combined with Davey's narration of him saying that he started showing Coda's work to others to get their thoughts was the VERY moment I realised things weren't right at all, since him saying that just frustrated to me to no end with the experiences I've had.
The stuff he said about changing the games in the game after that only confirmed that Davey was an unreliable narrator, and getting hit with the brutally honest message Coda sent to him was just a HUGE gut punch, and then the sort of panic attack Davey had in the dark room as it shrank as he sorta broke down realising how shitty he was really being was an even larger gut punch. I remember crying at this on my first playthrough, and I still do kinda get choked up about it since it felt or so real. Then there was the epilogue, walking around slowly and just questioning what the hell I just experienced, I still wasn't even sure if that whole story was fictional or not as I had fallen for the game's trap of tricking me into thinking it was a true story. I was just so confused but... Gosh I don't even know where to begin? All I can really say is that, this game made me rethink a lot of things about myself and it was a VERY powerful experience. You know a twist is good when on repeat playthroughs it reframes things so had that it just makes you want to yell shut up at a character as it's so clear now that he was being bit of a pretentious ass when it came to his analysis on Coda's character.
The Beginner's Guide was constantly on my mind for WEEKS after playing it, I had so much I wanted to say and I just kept watching other people play it to see their thoughts or find some essays on the game but none really ever satisfied all my needs I had for this game since well, I had way too many thoughts. I often considered writing my own essay with my thoughts and analysis on what this game means to me but I could never really find the time or words to do it. I guess I just wanna say, I think this video has been the essay I've been trying to find for at least a good year now since it actually gets into a lot of the thoughts I myself had the game and was the very thorough analysis I've been wanting for a goddamn while! This game impacted me in such a way that it did kinda reframe how I thought about things or how I see people who I look up to, and I am forever thankful for that. Seeing others who love this game as much as I do is such a delight to see.
TLDR; Beginner's Guide is goated and I really enjoyed this video essay lol
That was an amazing video. It so perfectly encapsulated my first experience with the game. I remember being fully on board up until the house level. I think the sudden ending is what tipped the first domino for me. I was waiting for you to talk about it in the video, but I think this ended up being my personal take away from that level. In my eyes, I always saw the house as the only game made personally for Davey. If i remember correctly, he even says something along the lines of "this was the only game coda gave to me" I think it was supposed to be coda truly opening up and giving Davey EXACTLY what he wanted so badly, but the truth conflicted with his inner narrative. Coda wasn't able to reach him, and i think that's what he was referencing in the Tower by saying he lacked what Davey needed. Loved the video :)
Oh that's interesting, he felt like what Davey needed was some chill time without a fixed goal or point, but Davey couldn't accept that. But then tbf we already know from the story that you can't fix other people!
I think there is no better praise than: you did this game the justice it deserves. For years I genuinely thought the events in the beginners guide were real, and not only did you shatter that misconception, you presented ideas that I had never would thought of in such an intriguing manner. In doing so, I also have a much greater appreciation for Davey Wreden the creator: Bra-fucking-vo to his writing and narrative abilities for making it seem so real.
Genuinely fantastic video. This game is also one of my all-time favourites and I've watched almost every semi-large video on it, but this said so much more to me, this level of detail on a game I haven't played in admittedly quite a few years was something I personally really needed. You hit upon some things that I haven't heard anybody else talk about, and your enthusiasm for this game is dripping off your words and it is genuinely invigorating. Thank you so much for making this video.
My first interaction with the beginners guide was through Jacksepticeye's playthrough. I did not play games at that point in time and i was so absorbed with the narrative that i did not questions it.
I completely believed that the intext davey was a real person. It wasnt until i started reading the comments under that letsplay afterwards that i realised how trusting i had become in the stories (extremely unreliable) narrator.
This game openned my eyes to how i take in media as a whole. Its also a comfort watch that i come back to every few months/years and i always enjoy finding new analysis videos as it broardens my understanding of interacting with art.
Amazing analysis! And what a hidden gem your channel is
This might be one of my new favorite videos. I've been researching this game recently because I absolutely fell in love with it after re-watching an old play-through. I think you really summed up (and expanded on) all of my thoughts and the way you talk about it is very nice and clear which I enjoy. Thank you for making this.
The end gave me chills. Thank you for this in-depth analysis. I see the similarities between your work and the vid you referenced in the beginning but after watching both they go into different topics and yours is a step by step analysis that i feel is very interesting and impactful. I've watched about every vid on this game that I could find and yours is one of the best. Great work!
Loved the video, incredibly well-written and presented! I felt compelled to comment after reaching the end hearing you say you wanted a three dots tattoo because that was my first tattoo I ever got! Even during this video I was looking down at it and remembering everything the game meant to me and why I chose to get that symbol on my body forever, thanks so much for everything you do
I think maybe the very first lamppost mightve been already there and thats where Davey got the idea for the "ending" of a game
Something interesting I picked up on from watching this- within the "this is real" narrative, Coda knows Davey has been altering his games. In order to continue to assume this is real, one has to imagine an entire invisible layer of story happening that narrator Davey doesn't talk about to perserve the illusion that he is the good guy. Where one can assume someone in their "real life" must have told Coda that Davey was not only sharing but editing the games or that Davey slipped in a conversation with Coda and mentioned it himself (which is unlikely, because it seems like a revelation that Coda found out). Or perhaps Coda knowing is the one and only hint within the game that the story isn't real, which is kinda how I take it.
Really great and engaging video! It completely changed my perspective on the game and illuminated a lot of social cues I missed. It was very much appreciated!
Great analysis :)
Long story short, it wasn't until last year where I really started to think about this game differently, and this video solidified my change in thinking. The Beginner's Guide really resonates with me more now than when it came out nine years ago.
Good work, you've got my sub. 👍
Phenomenal video, thank you so much for making this, would love to go back to this video some times later
I wanted to say thank you for this incredibly in depth analysis, For the longest time i've been hoping someone would tackle this game in a long deep analysis video and you delivered it excellently. This game is my favorite and i always leave with something new everytime someone talks about it.
You managed to explain a lot of my thoughts about this i couldnt even begin finding the words for even today. I was always bit apprehensive when people call this game anti intellectual or anti criticism but at the beginning i did think that the message was just that maybe he just likes making prisons and thinking otherwise was pointless. But the more people i watched discuss and play this game the more i realized it wasnt that at all it was far from it and you finally hit the nail in the coffin starting at 6:00 until the end of the video. Bravo !
you have no idea how hard it was to cut an entire like three page rant about anti-intellectualism and that whole "the curtains are blue" thing out of this video. I still have it in my drive somewhere lol
@@WhaleMilk oh man i get that! it's really a topic you can get into a long tangent about and honestly i wouldnt have mind listening to it since its an interesting discussion in general, but i do get why you had to cut it to keep the video on track 😅
this game makes more sense if you imagine coda as a manic pixie dream girl
joking aside, this is genuinely the greatest beginner's guide video and puts my thoughts to words like nothing else can. thank you.
I’ve watched this so many times and it is easily my favorite video essay. Criminally underrated video!
Good video. Good analysis. Respect
this video gave me a whole new perspective on this game. bravo!
I played this game because Thor from Pirate Software recommended it on a TH-cam Short where someone was asking about where to find motivation to make games. After watching your video, I think I’m finally understanding why he suggested it.
this is a phenomenal analysis! thank you for taking the time to put it together. it really makes me wanna go back and play again lol
One thing I do love about games that are art like this, is that they rarely just mean one thing, or that they are left open to greater interpretation from the player. As an ADHD artist, the prison and the steps always felt so relatable to me, like you have all these creative ideas but you struggle to reach them at times. The prison felt like how I would get into an artistic slump at times, the house leading into disjointed blocks and then into a prison where I can willfully get myself free until something in my own mind decides “ok, it’s time for us to get moving again”
I'm impressed you've made an analysis that is apparently longer than the game itself, let's give it a go.
I absolutely loved listening to this analysis. Amazing video! I remember playing this game a few months ago and getting to learn even more about it was very interesting. Love the video! ❤❤
i rewatch this video a lot, I love seeing this much effort and love for this game
This is an awesome video and analysis. Thank you for making this.
So, I work retail. To keep myself from growing nuts i have an ever increasing playlist of videos to use as white noise. I add them after listening to them, and I have to say, this was a perfect analysis, IMO. I'd mark it as a 10/10 as not only did it lay out and explain thoughts i could not word, it added new perspectives for me to consider. Thank you.
Also, i dont know if im hearing things, but shortly after the "like im an addict" line if you listen close you can hear a scratching noise. I came from a family of addicts and that stereotype where they are constantly itching themselves does happen, i wonder if that was intentional.
What an amazing game, what an amazing essay! I've loved this game since I first played it a few years back and the experience has stuck with me since then. It's a fascinating game to hear all the theories on, because people have different thoughts about what the three dots mean, or the overall message of the game. I can tell how much work you put into this, and it really added to the ideas that I already had. Thanks for a great video!
I have a tattoo on my chest dedicated to this game the 151617 which was the pass code to the unfinished Bridge in the tower game
I love this game so much and great video!
It's nice to see you branch out keep going milk man
Amazing analysis!!!!
Wow wow. Thank you Whale Milk! I’ve been binging your videos this week but skipped this one until I had a chance to play this game. I’d never heard of it before. Really happy I did, and this video is such a great companion piece. Can’t believe it has so few views, this is such a top notch video essay.
1:57:38
a part of this statement rings untrue to me, coming from an individual who makes stuff fairly regularly. just as Coda says in his letter, "low points are just a part of the process", (in this case, doubt being the catalyst of said low points.) whenever i start to feel like my art is draining me, i like to take a step back, to really consider what it does for me, what it's started doing. i find that it's hard to pinpoint whether or not i'm enjoying what i'm doing, (and enjoyment is my main goal,) so allowing myself to question my art and become a little insecure for a few moments helps me in the process. it opens another path for me in regards to making things, in which diving into my emotions with precision does not, because i literally can't. so, instead of saying "am i enjoying this?" i say "does this feel right and/or genuine (to me)?"
of course this won't work for all artists. i also struggle with balancing this insecurity, even if it helps me, and it's obvious that with too much skepticism, it starts to get unhealthy. (even _worse_ if it's someone else that's pounding you with these questions of imbalance -- where in it also becomes a little obvious that i can't compare Coda and i, since our situations are different.)
even so i'd still argue that moments of weakness and doubt could and does (sometimes) lead to navigating the path of making art, of finding what you _really_ wanna make.
A lot of people say they love the house level. My favorite part is the phone call with his past self.
fantastic video! honestly it's perfect, you deserve so much more attention. keep up the good work man
This was an incredibly well done video, and has honestly probably solidified itself as my favorite TH-cam video, just yknow in general. It's that good, just super super impressive and well put together. One thing that I also thought was really neat was how on top of Davey talking over Coda's blocks of text, the lighting also often obscures parts of them, with shadows of girders, or the side of a text box being almost completely engulfed, which seemed like a really out of place decision to me until I watched this video
A truly excellent analysis!! Kudos all around, this is incredible.
The tarot references are really fascinating, and not something I'd noticed before. I've got some experience with tarot and I can see a lot more from them in the game. The tower card is also about the collapse of false or harmful ideas and belief structures, and the devil/tower/star progression can be viewed as a process of transformation represented by that. So you could read the proceding games as representing the devil, with Davey himself being the antagonist in question, and the Tower being Coda finally tearing down any illusions that he and Davey are friends and in turn tearing down the false story he's been telling us.
That would make the epilogue the star, the card of hope and direction towards something greater. Something I've seen mentioned by other video essayists is that we don't know Coda actually stopped making games, just that he stopped showing them to Davey. I always read the epilogue as the game Coda made after he cut Davey out of his life, and which he possibly never showed to anyone. It feels like it's going back to the goalless/solutionless approach Coda said he wanted.
It's clear the devil/tower/star process was meaningful to Coda, so maybe using it as the code in the tower was a kind of test for Davey to see how well he actually knew him. Or maybe the knew Davey would cheat it and it was a subtle way to give him a message about what he was doing. Or he included them as a way to strengthen his intention for the piece in a ritual magic sort of way. It might even be that the three dots represent the devil/tower/star process, but that might be against the spirit of the game😆
Another thing that occurred to me is that we can see the lamp posts as a kind of false star, put in as a guide where none was needed, as Davey missed the guiding star (aka the point) of Coda's work that was already there
I just remembered you said the Tower is both the 16th card and the 16th game and now I want to dig out my deck to see if there's any correspondence with any of the other games 😆 I guess that would make Davey the Fool?
incredible video
If I had to recommend the game I'd probably say "It's a really interesting project. You learn a lot of really fascinating things as you play through. It'll only make sense if you play it for yourself". I think that might be a way of avoiding spoiling the game when recommending it.
Nah man, don’t worry about the video length. A lot of people love long analysis, especially when there’s not a lot of fluff. You did a great job with this video and it kept me enthralled all the way through.
00:40 ok, wizard, keep your secrets.
I'll go away for now
❤
I have an interesting take about the S.S. Whisper. The original Whisper machine had you shut it off through self-sacrifice. So this game could relate to that. It might be Coda recognising that Davey needs to see himself in Coda, and calling on Davey to forego the act of fulfilling that need for the greater good (i.e. to remove the toxicity from their relationship). It's telling Davey that he's the one who needs to do something. Davey's image of Coda, represented by the door hurtling towards them, threatens to destroy their relationship unless Davey can find it within himself to acknowledge that his assumptions about Coda are just that: assumptions. But Coda realises that Davey is blind to this, which is why the game comes with the instruction to play it with your eyes closed, and why everyone else on the ship is blind. You can only see what's _really_ happening once you open your eyes to the truth.
All taken together, it feels like it's saying "Please open your eyes to the fact that you're ruining our friendship. You have to stop projecting and be honest with yourself. If you don't want our relationship to crash and burn, you have to stop putting your own need for validation before my need for personal space." Perhaps not so literally, but that's the general sentiment I'm getting from it.
I'm not sure if you'll see this message but I just wanted to say thank you for this video. The beginner's guide has such a special place in my heart and this analysis has everything and more. I can see how passionate you are about this game and how much it also means to you. This video perfectly encapsulates the essence of the beginners guide and I found myself seeing the game from even more different perspectives. Thank you for this, this was perfection!!!
Beautiful analysis and helped me digest a lot of parts of the experience i struggled with, thank you for the insight, this feels like something that will stick with me
i adore this game with my entire heart and have kept coming back to it over the years. Awesome analysis, really glad to see that there is still so much love for this game.
Thank you, thank you so much
Such an amazing retrospective for a similarly amazing masterpiece of a game. Always happy to see someone else talk about such an underrated gem. 👍
Wow, really awesome video man, I always get really happy seeing people still care for The Beginners Guide as it is my 2nd favorite game, my absolute fav being outer wilds so I jiggled when you also mentioned it lol; I loved TBG because it teaches you that people are way more than what they say or do and you can't boil somenone down to just a couple of their actions, its a really human game/narrative that imo almost pushes you to try to be more empathic towards other people. Now, your video made me thougth about it from different perspectives that I hadn't seen before, even after all these years, and I always love that; thanks for the video, really great job!
Something I didn't realize about this game until I was deep into editing was how much it rewards a second playthrough. When gathering footage, I played the game twice back to back in the same setting: once with subtitles on and the other with subtitles off, and those back-to-back playthroughs really highlighted how much a second playthrough of the game completely shifts your perspective of everything from the beginning. At the start of the first playthrough you are under the illusion that Davey is just kinda Davey, the dude that makes games, much like to you, I am Whale Milk, the guy that makes videos online. But by the end of the game you have seen a vulnerable side of Davey, he has been painted in this light that makes him look like an ass, yes, but also makes him much more empathetic and human. On the second playthrough, you have this humanity to recontextualize everything, and that's where the depth of the game really comes from.
I don't think I've ever seen a game have so much replay value in the storytelling alone. The first playthrough is a nice romp through a field with a dark revelation at the end, and the second is this deep chasm of symbolism and interpretation, and absolutely nothing changes about the game inbetween those two play throughs. It's almost like I said in the video: the game has two angles you can read it from, the literal and the meta, where the first playthrough pretty much everybody reads the game as literal, and the second playthrough you can't help but read it with the meta lens.
Wow. This video was so beautifully done. Well executed and thought out. I love this. This game has a special place in my heart. And to see it get a video that does it justice, makes the meaning of the game so much more satisfying and meaningful.❤
what an incredible video. i've been looking for something exactly like this ever since i played the game years and years ago, thank you so much. i can't wait to hear your analysis of other games.
This is my favorite video of all time, and I've only watched it once. Good job man, get into professional narration because your voice is angelic
Something interesting to me in the Notes section, is that when Davey talks about Coda's experience of making a game, he talks as if "making a game" is as linear as (Davey's idea of) playing a game. You don't make everything in a chronological order - for all we know, Coda makes the door puzzle *first*
I have a slight disagreement with your interpretation of Coda's letter. I didn't read it as dripping with venom. Frustration, absolutely, but more than that pity, resignation exhaustion, compassion, and a lingering hope for Davey to work out his issues. I don't think the "thank you for playing my games" at the beginning is a nicety, I think he chooses to begin the letter that way because he genuinely means it and because that act of playing is the genesis of everything that follows. Coda's character is, if nothing else, genuine. This is part of what breaks Davey - he's looking for the person behind the mask when there's no mask, no cipher, just someone making what they want to make.
My personal opinion is that Davey isn't.. Evil or antagonist. He's just messed up or traumatized, and it's not always easy to see that and he was projecting himself on Coda and his games.
Yes, it's messed up, no doubt, but the Coda himself, was, well.. Enabling him? Kept sending him games, throwing jabs at the person, who is obviously oblivious to everything. He needed help as much, but he never received it, as he just haven't seen anything wrong with himself and the only person who he was "looking up to" instead of having a talk with him and telling him what's wrong directly, he just, well.. Made further games, enabling him further until The Tower.
Also, i do want to add that we don't explicitly know that Coda stopped making games. He could've just.. Stopped showing them yo Davey. Stopped sharing them with people like himself.
It's an amazing story and, god, there's so much sides you can talk about. Fiction is incredible.
Yeah, 3 am ramblings, i might be wrong, so come at me(please, don't).
A minor thing but I always assumed the FIRST lamp post that we see, was actually really placed there by "Coda". I infer this because it is the only one that appears in a setting where it makes complete sense as a decorative background element. A street lamp in the streets basically.. Every other times, it sticks out like a sore thumb and clearly does not belong like in the typewriter room, or on stage (and yes there are some place where it kind of fits in, but it is always sort of to the side and mismatched, not center stage on a pedestal like the first one, it looks, tacked on).. But here, it was there, as a "detail that is just there", as said here in the video. When "Davey" says "For some reason Coda fixates on this lamp post" it is like he is projecting, HE really liked the lamp post as an "end of level" calling card thing, and he thought it should be in every game, subsequently adding it himself to have his idea of the "bigger picture" confirmed.
I understood that as again a symbol for critics who home in on certain details that mean nothing, but fixate on them, really WANT them to have meaning, because it gives them the illusion to having understood the art piece. Even if they have to interpret the symbol into other works by the same author where it was never meant to be.
What do you all think?
thank you so much for this analysis and you knocked it out of the park. i hope people that played this game 5 years ago find this over time and appreciate it just like i have. this game is extremely special to me and it makes my heart feel a type of joy i havent had in a long time to see someone else care about it so much too. i seriously encourage you, continue making projects that make you feel the same joy you described you had when making this video. people can see it and will want to connect with that til the end of time.