Answering the Call of Juarez (A Series Retrospective)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ธ.ค. 2017
- This is a video critique and retrospective on Techland's Call of Juarez games. It looks at them through the lens of the movies and Western tropes that influenced them as well the mechanical elements that make their storytelling distinct from Hollywood westerns. Complete spoilers for all four games.
___TABLE OF CONTENTS___
Call of Juarez-- 0:28
Bound in Blood-- 25:20
The Cartel-- 49:52
Gunslinger-- 1:08:24
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The "Unreliable Narrator" is one of my favorite literary concepts and the way the games can uniquely approach the conceit mechanically is fascinating...
Plus it makes so much sense in a videogame. It's like the logical conclusion of branching storypaths, a what if.
Call of Juarez made a incredible action game out of a unique concept... too bad it took them so long to do it. : /
Fan of ASOIAF by any chance?
Have you read "The name of the wind"?
Agreed. I really loved that Gunslinger game.
It's too bad people didn't seem to buy it.
"Noah I know you're reading this out loud" made me laugh. I like to listen to all the names out of courtesy but it's ones like those that make it fun.
It's like staying for the credits of a movie. Is a symbolic salute to all the backers and Noah's work.
I came to the comments hoping someone else had caught this. :D
Markus Persson also shows up
It's the biggest proof of Noah's insane dedication, the kinda dedication that allowed him to rise to gaming journalism besides doing pretty much everything others told him was a bad idea.
The peg might be squared and the hole might be round, but damn it is he gonna jam that thing down there anyway.
this video showed up in the middle of the night in western europe as I cradled my slowly dying cat
I watched it and revisited your previous content from the year as well
they brought me great distraction from and comfort for my grief
he just passed half an hour ago, and
well I guess I wanted to say my thanks
Nobody cares
@@kieranhurst8543 It's 2 years later. Dario has probably moved on.
Time heals all wounds . Hope life is going better my man 🙏🏼
Kieran was incorrect. I cared deeply about this comment and your experiences. I hope you have managed to find another companion.
@@kieranhurst8543 damn.
You made a choice here.
How do you feel about it now, years later.
You're wrong by the way, lots of people care. I'm one of them.
I spend like 30% of Noah's videos trying to understand his keybindings. Enter to swap? Middle mouse to reload? Numpad 1 to pick up? What is happening?
Not sure if you're still interested but it is because Noah uses the right side of his keyboard mostly. I know he binds movement to his arrow keys so I assume he finds it easier to have everything near them: numpad/enter.
The middle mouse to reload actually isn't a bad key bind
Pretty sure I saw “backslash to jump” in there somewhere
@@Tabako-san thanks, that actually makes a lot of sense. Especially if he uses the left hand for mouse
Man if that’s the case, I’m proud of him! Left hand mouse, even for a lefty like me is hard.
Boy, the part on Call of Juarez: The Cartel hits REALLY hard coming out of 2020 and going into 2021.
Unfortunately hits just as hard now that were at the start of 2022
@@aname4508 shootings definitely suck and the filth that carry out the acts definitely shouldn’t have been born, but these are video games and pixels we’re talking about.
@@volpeisfox No, it's stories and narrative we're talking about. Stories where police officers brutalize or murder innocent people and face no punishment. Those stories hit differently after prolonged nationwide outrage over acts of police brutality lead to only the perpetrators of the best-known crimes facing significant punishment-and that's true whether the story is told with pixels, film, or ink on paper.
@@timothymclean and at the end of the day, they are just that. Stories. If we can’t make stories about things that are sensitive or considered taboo, there wouldn’t be any stories worth telling. That being said there are the stories that are constructed well and with thought, and then there are those that aren’t made with the same care. There is a line between the real world and the art we consume, but I’m not saying they don’t effect each other.
@@volpeisfox I mean, I'll agree that Call of Juarez: The Cartel isn't as bad as police brutality, but that's a hell of a thing to put on the back of the box, isn't it? It's a story, and it's a story which exists in the context of the world in which it was written, and it should be critiqued in the context of the world in which it was written too; saying that the game treats sensitive topics with a weird sense of nihilistic glee, saying that the world the game is set in is a weird funhouse mirror which reflects only the shittiest propaganda from the real world, isn't the same as saying you can't make stories about sensitive or taboo topics. It's saying that this story about taboo, sensitive topics doesn't do anything interesting with them, and that doesn't make for a good story
Holy shit, Gunslinger is a masterpiece!
GamerPony Ikr, I freaking loved that game it should've got more attention imo
I haven't finished the game yet but I don't know if I'd call it a masterpiece just really good. Overall it remains a shooting gallery game so if you don't mind those or if you want to try and find one you like then go right ahead and play it.
It just took them 3 games and a reduction in scope to finally make a legitimately great Western FPS.
Welcome to the world of creating stuff? You keep making games in the hope that someday with enough experience and luck you end up with something amazing. And I don't think Noah said the previous games were terrible anyway.
Not just good as a palette cleanser, but as the apotheosis of the Old West in its mythic mode. Not the bleak exploitative stories that carry after a bleak and exploitative reality, but the wild and uplifting stories that inspire people to be greater. Or at least to have some fun.
Cool video! Clarification: Eastwood's lines at least in the Leone westerns were originally spoken in English, not Italian (the actors spoke their native language on set, whether English, Spanish or Italian). The obvious dubbing is because the Italians in those days didn't record sound on set, so all the dialogue is dubbed regardless of which langauge you watch the movie in.
Just like old Hong Kong films.
@@jasonfenton8250 allow me to demonstrate the skills of shaolin
"Call of Juarez: Cartel but your actions have consequences" would be an interesting game
How many Americans have you killed today?
@@raultrashlord4404 Do you feel like a hero yet ?
(Spec Ops: The Line _tentatively raises its hand but puts it back down when the teacher doesn't seem to notice.)_
@@JustAndre92 call of Juarez the cartel with consequences *and less shitty and pretentious than spec ops the line
@@ravensflockmate showing you your actions isn’t pretentious dumbass lmao
Hate people throwing around that word like it means anything
I'm always impressed at how you manage to say interesting things for over an hour.
Try 7
My interpretation of High Plains Drifter was that Clint's character was a spirit of vengeance sent to punish the townspeople for doing nothing as their sheriff was murdered. That's why he vanishes into nothing at the end, he wasn't a living human. He seemed to possess memories of the murdered marshall.
That's why he was so cruel to everyone. Raping and forcing them to paint their town. They were being punished for cowardice.
A great way to start the year!Have a good one!
Honestly, as much as I like this review, I feel like the Dramatic Irony of Bound by Blood is entirely deliberate. The story is stronger for the fact that Ray and Thomas are doomed to live horrible lives. The very Spaghetti Westerns you mention often end in horrible fates for the protagonists like ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and Cheyenne.
Also, more than a few fans of HIGH NOON have pointed out that Marshal Kane is actually a coward and a fool who is angry that the Sheriff (him) is recruiting civilians to protect HIM from danger. A danger that he could easily avoid by leaving town and getting reinforcements. Only pride keeps him here and he is willing to endanger others to survive.
Spaggety westerns weren't filmed in Italy, they were film in Spain, but they had Italian directors.
They were also filmed in places like Sicily. Basically, anywhere the climate was halfway agreeable and production costs cheap.
They came to Almería to shoot, some of the atrezzo is still here and you can visit it and take photos
Ok, some were, sure. But many were shot in the U.S. as well, and several were shot in italy.
Your scathing and insightful section on The Cartel is one of the tightest pieces of writing I think I've heard in one of your videos. I enjoyed the whole thing but that part especially. Your love and knowledge of westerns helped with the context of what these games are, and how having them made by those outside America highlights certain tropes of the genre and perhaps not understand others. I hope you had a great holiday season Noah. I look forward to your next video.
Fantastic retrospective as always. Considering how much time you must put into these, I would suggest you do the current trilogy of Supergiant games: Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre. They’re relatively short but I would enjoy hearing your perspective on them.
M. G Oh yeah, what a great idea! I love SuperGiant but I think Pyre is their masterpiece.
Thank You from the bottom of my heart! (Polish co-writer of CoJ: Gunslinger) XD
Call of Juarez Gunslinger is one of my TOP3 FPS games of all time.. it has great and such a satisfying gameplay, fantastic artstyle, great music, great VA, great story and characters, funny moments, serious moments, many many great cool moments, great lenght for such a cheap game + I don't usually like arcade mods in games but CoJG has pretty much my favorite of all of them that I played
First Bunny now Noah, this year is ending on a high!
Metal Gear?!
warning old men!
I really like Game Maker's Toolkit (Mark Brown)
There's also Daniel Ibbertson with today's video on Ecco the Dolphin.
mandalore gaming! also GVmers, I love how he/they dig up unrealeased games and material surrounding it.
It's not that far removed from our, Polish sensibilities, we had Wild West in a form of our Frontier "Wild East" Centuries before Americans and those are too linked to days of glorious past, freedom loving heroic vagabonds, warriors honor and else. Look up Henryk Sienkiewicz.
Yes but in your wild east you got butchered by the Russians
Scotty Nguyen's 80s Mullet We did? Or are you trying to be edgy?
Dude I love that you said this. I'm really interested in other countries and their own "wild eras". As an American, we don't have as many close neighbors.
This sounds fascinating! Are there any other periods of your homeland's history which you'd imagine as being particularly interesting to Western minds?
James Hopkins There's plenty, but I think every other thing is too specific and grim to be easily romanticized. There Columbus Generation of the people in their 20s having to give up future to fight against murderous German occupiers. And many gave everything. There are I'm not sure to translate them, highly and rightlly controversial "Cursed Soldiers" who after fighting against Germany for five years were presented with regime change but regime was their own nation that they fought to save. They had to hide for years and often ended killing civilians out of paranoia.
Great video, but a small nitpick: Gunslinger and Borderlands use outlines with Borderlands also using textures with drawn in "ink lines" while Gunslinger uses regular textures with a high contrast and exaggerated saturation shader, none of the two games use cel shading which is a very specific form of shading that tries to mimic the "cels" used in old animations. For a game that uses cel shading see Wind Waker and games that uses cel shading with outlines XIII and Jet Set Radio (although notably both use it only for the characters and the environments are just painted to look cartoony without using any procedural form of toon shading).
Happy New Year. Well written, and quite honest look at a series that could have been much more than it was. Having said that, the final game Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is still one of my favorite shooters and ranks second on my list of favorite Western games ever made. (Behind Red Dead Redemption. Granted it's not exactly a crowded genre) This was totally worth the Hour and a half devoted to watching it. Thanks for that.
Can we have a version of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" where Noah dubs every line?
Happy new year Noah, may the next year be awesome for you.
Watching your videos since the Half life video and I am amazed how far you've come.
Greetings from Germany.
Casually name dropping NK Jemisin as a Patron is such a flex
Can't believe this guy isn't more popular
If he pared back the leftist diatribes more, maybe he would be. Alienating half your audience isn't good business.
How is he alienating his audience...?
@Strange Boy I see. Thanks for a civilized response.
@Strange Boy I think you just made that up. The part about the black/white gangsters. (Did you?) It's sounds grossly oversimplified, which isn't his style.
@@discojoe3 I literally watch him for his amazing critique and his occasional and that's a very occasional and not even left but liberal point that adds a lot to his personal interpretation of the media.
This got nothing to do with the video,, really, but did you see Logan, Noah? It very much tips its hat to the Western, and shows how similar the old genre is with the current Superhero era.
And its bloody good.
I absolutely love the style and effort you put to these video essays.
Thank yoy Noah!
Great video Noah. I always appreciate how socially and historically conscious your analysis is. The subtext of the "Cowboys and In'juns" level from Call of Juarez always made me uncomfortable. It's important to be critical of pernicious aspects of games, even ones you generally enjoy.
Ahhh just what i need at the end of new year eve. Warm food, cold drink, exhausted body and hour and a half video.
Perfect way to ring in the new year! Thanks Noah!
I just found this channel, and jesus you've got some analytical chops. I need more time to watch these
Great to see you making reviews again.
Don't think I've ever heard Noah so genuinely enraged by a game before...
Strange Boy If he’s a lefty soyboi, I will also chug soy milk cause Noah is amazing and I hope to be as intelligent as he is
@Strange Boy you say that like it's a bad thing.
@@Narokkurai it is?
@@reksie7816 it's not
@@Narokkurai why not? I don't think any man would appreciate being called a soyboy. Except maybe.... You
Playing through Gunslinger at the moment and was pleasantly surprised by the secrets in that game. They're little pieces of American frontier stories and they are actually pretty progressive. Like, they talk about the genocide the Americans waged against the native Americans, that the battle at wounded knee wasn't a battle but massacre of women and children and even put battle in quotations. Almost hard to consider that it's the same studios that made Cartel.
When I have nothing to do, I love watching your videos. You're so classy and well spoken.
I'm very sorry to nitpick, but at 1:05:47 you amalgamated Daniel Floyd and James Portnow.
Fantastic video though, like with Homefront before this I'm always excited to hear a nuanced take on what can be considered more marginal games in the higher end of the production spectrum, ones that are typically dismissed by mainstream critique for their mechanical failings but also overlooked for deeper and more subjective analysis for not particularly standing out in a markedly thematic or design based respect.
Thank you, I wanted to point that out, too. But you're right, great video.
You're right to point that out but at the same time in that video and several others Daniel freely switches between first and third person, likely because that's what the script written by James does as well which makes it very confusing when trying to figure out who's opinions and ideas are being voiced.
Absolutely fantastic video my dude. Keep up the good work!
This was awesome! Thank you for going over one of my fav series (except the 3rd game :P )
So cool to find such an insight into these games.
love your Retrospective vids !!!!
I'm gonna replay Gunslinger now. Awesome analysis as always, Noah!
Happy new year!
I think this is one of the best retrospectives by Noah.
Super bunnyhop and Noah on the same day? You spoil me.
Mac Braun same lol
Errant Signal too
Nice profile pic man
Your videos make me happy. Thank you
NEW NOAH LETS GOOOO. I havent even watched yet but thank you
Amazing conclusion to an amazing piece! Thank you sir and also thanks for kindling in me a now quite rooted love and respect for westerns new and old.
These videos have been my discovery of lockdown. Nice work mate.
Loved this video. I had to leave home to do stuff but I couldn't stop listening until the end.
I feel Gunslinger's art direction made its visuals age better than all the other games in the franchise. I played it last week and it didn't feel nearly as old as it is.
Wow. I always wanted to play these games when they first came out but never got around to it. You have convinced me to finally fulfill that want. Great video!! I’m definitely going to get these games now!
Excellent, I loved this.
You've got the most charming intros, man. Happy New Year!
I'm glad there's someone out there who dissects stories in video games with this level of depth.
Good shit my man, have a great year!
haven't started the video yet but happy new year man. Love your content and wish you all the best
16:40
The "Natives" use the term pretty frequently as well. People from all over the world, including other countries on the American continents, call U.S. citizens "Americans" without referring to Canadians or Mexicans in the same way.
Words are fickle, and intent is elusive.
A lot of marginalized people use words for themselves that non marginalized people should probably(definitely) not use for them.
Good luck in 2018 noah keep vids coming and enjoy your road trip across America that's ambition
Happy New Year, Noah! A wonderful gift to send out 2017.
I can't believe my eyes when i saw the date of the upload was on 2017. I was so sure the subjects presented in this vid is at least 2020 onward. That's kinda depressing.
Same.
It really is.
I waited for thirteen hours to watch this so Noah could be the first thing I listened to in 2018.
Gunslinger is a great little game. I'm really glad I bought it based on this video.
It works great as an apologia for the Western genre (and also game violence, kind of). The whole unreal and mostly consequence-free tall-tale atmosphere, combined with the "Nuggets of truth" (like the way these in-game cartoon badasses get shown in their real, dweeby-looking photo form, or the one that states outright that the Natives were probably the only ones who one could actually call the "heroes" of the West) have a clear message.
The tales of the West are mostly bullshit, but they are fun, awesome bullshit, and there is still value in telling them, so long as you remember what really happened and don't confuse reality and fiction.
The past week I kept thinking "will Noah give us a present and upload something?" I guess we've all been very good this year :D
Wow, this was a great video. You earned a sub.
I wasn't expecting genre knowledge or an earnest review of the Juarez series narrative and it's relation to the genre. I really enjoyed this. Thumbs up.
Another great vid!
After watching this, I want to see Noah's thoughts on Red Dead Redemption.
You probably won't be getting that, he's made it clear in previous videos that he's limiting himself to specifically discussing PC games and Red Dead was never ported to PCs.
Calinas the Necromancer how come he only sticks to pc games?
Consoles are expensive. So are PCs, but if you can't afford both, you can't afford both.
I'm sure Rockstar would be pleased to hear their "strong female character who doesn't do anything at all, & so isn't a threat to fragile men" archetype worked so well for you.
@@TheSoulHarvester what are you on about
I'm Polish, and I'm obviously speaking only for myself and not for Techland developers, but at the time Cartel released I did not see America in any big, negative light. There were some dark spots, but no place in the world is perfect.
Now unfortunately the last 2 years have changed that. It is now difficult to have a single week without something happening in America that makes me grab my head while my mouth just goes "What?" before my brain even manages to process the stupidity or tragedy of the situation. I keep telling myself that this is just a vocal minority that just so happens to be currently in power and that most people are not like that, but it's sometimes getting really hard to do.
It's always hard when you look at news too much, because "Nothing horrible happened today" isn't a news story, but I heard more terrifying news from America this past year then I did my whole life. Twitter existing might have something to do with it, cause believe me, no matter where you are in the world it's hard to escape American news if you understand English.
Meanwhile the party in power in my country is passing laws to get the judicial system to submit to them while the rest of the EU is yelling "WTF are you doing?", and things like Brexit and Spain happened, so I guess we're all equally getting fucked and the future looks bleak. I do not know where this leads, but future historians are going to have a doozy.
On a lighter note, I played the first Call of Juarez back around the time it came out and liked it quite a bit. I had no idea it had any DirectX 10 stuff since no one dared to touch Windows Vista with a 10 foot pole.
Look at the bright side, all the countries that the Europeans countries had colonise in the past, and like the U. S. had still some economic hold finally would be free when all the house of cards collapse into pieces, they wont be chess pieces no more, and they political and economic system be a power play of someone else.
@Poki#3 Ain't that the truth... you don't even have to understand English for some of the news to get through.
Also, you forgot to mention that the whole currently ruling party is controlled by one man with a cat, out nowhere. Regime is back in the menu, boys! Just as if the commies never went away...
I'll admit I never had a chance to talk about Polish politics with a fellow countryman in another language before. Strange feeling.
Wife and I just started playing this series about the same time you uploaded this, hahahaha. Great stuff. EDIT: I must admit, your opinion on The Cartel is what I expected, and morally, I can't argue against it. My wife and I are trying the co-op function and it actually implements some unique features. I thought I was lightyears ahead of my wife in terms of level, but it turned out she had blitzed past me while I wasn't aware! The competitive-cooperative interplay coupled with light stealth I thought was very interesting and hope perhaps it inspires a different franchise.
Happy new year!
Fantastic stuff as always Noah :) I absolutely adore Gunslinger. The way it weaves that story and changes levels with the way Cyrus tells the story. I only wish they made more of that, in the second half the way they stop with that fun little feature and it becomes more of a standard shooter. Still a bunch of fun but I feel like a huge missed opportunity.
Thank you, Noah. Happy new year! :)
Ah I’m so elated to see another franchise retroactive of yours.
Just to clarify (and this isn't a correction) but the Spaghetti Westerns also utilised Spain a lot in their productions as well, especially the "Dollars" trilogy.
It didn't hurt that Spain had (and still has) a lot of Wild West theme parks too, which was ideal for keeping production costs down when it came to sets.
You did it again Noah
Great as always! Man, I'd love for you to do one of these on Kane&Lynch.
the second part is the best,amazing adventure i really liked its one of my top fps!
Gunslinger is such a fantastic game and best of the series. Would love to see the series continue with that style.
One of the things Techland isn't given much appreciation for is that all of their tech is made in-house.
That is something that even the very big studios are not able to do.
Clint Eastwood supposedly received a letter from John Wayne after the release of High Plains Drifter - admonishing him for the film saying "That isn't what the West was all about. That isn't the American people who settled this country." What the fuck did he know? lol
John Wayne was a racist and a fool.
Great video man.
That introduction brought back so many memories watching classic like 50s 60s and 70s wild west shows when i was a kid in the 90s. 😍😍😍😍😍😍. Death valley was one of my favorites😍😍😍😍
I gotta be real with you, I didn't remember why I subscribed to you at first. After watching this video I definitely remember why. Happy new year buddy.
Happy new year, Noah
Happy new year Noah. I hope you have a great night with your family and loved ones (sorry for the bad english)
So, I've never played Bound in Blood, but is it possible that the Polish developer didn't know that "family farm" in this context would mean "plantation" and, by extension, slavery? Not defending it, just wondering if something got lost in translation.
This was fascinating to watch/listen to. I only played the last game of the series, but i absolutely loved it, especially the unreliable narrator parts!
Awesome video Noah. It really made me wish you would tackle Borderlands one day. I wondered, I get the impression that you have a strong preference doing Western Developers, because you probably feel more confident that you can read their intentions directly, even if they are Europeans rather than Americans. Because if you ever tackled some Asian games, it seems like the Yakuza series would be pretty perfect for your style.
It's because he is a PC gamer and on PC 90% of the production available in english is western, only recently japanese publishers started porting things to PC more regularly because digital distribution took out a lot of the risks connected to the print of phisical copies.
One of your most eloquent videos to date... you must really like Westerns ;)
Really interesting to contrast The Cartel and last year's Ghost Recon: Wildlands, which was a surprisingly grounded and cynical take on America's war on drugs, despite advertising itself as yet another spec ops power fantasy (which it definitely still is). The Ghosts kidnap, blackmail, and torture their way across Bolivia on behalf of the CIA. The good ending has the Bolivian government completely collapse, the rebel movement the player(s) have been helping the whole game dissolve into infighting militias, and the head of the cartel put into the witness protection program by the CIA. I was really shocked by how much a game where 4 special operatives effectively destroy an entire country stuck to the realities of the subject matter.
tuxandashotty so would you say it's a good game?
I've generally detested most of what I've seen come out of Techland as a developer, but Gunslinger honestly looks promising. Love the ending sentiment of this essay.
Do tell
Why? Techland is a great dev. Did they steal your wallet or something?
Outlaw by Lucas arts is the first western shooter I can think of, at least that I played. Back then it wasn’t a bad game but it came out around the same time as Quake and had the graphical fidelity of say, Duke Nukem 3D. So it definitely wasn’t a looker even back then, so I can’t imagine it having aged well. It just stands to remind me how ancient I am. But still my fondest western shoot outs come from that game.
Nearly every time I watch one of these, I end up buying or installing whatever Noah is talking about. Good thing 2 of these games are on sale in the Humble store at the moment.
Thanks for the video Noah. I think I will now go on, eat a can of beans and watch a western, maybe "My name is nobody" after I learned the story of Silas.
Happy New Year dude
Great review of the series! Thank you!! still have to play the games though.... ;)) at least 2-3 of those.... in Aug 2023....
NOAHHHH HAPPY NEW YEAR
Great video!
I would love to see a lengthy critique/review of you on the game Spec Ops: The Line
Ooh boy, grab the popcorn fam, there's gonna be some verbal ripping and tearing in this one.
Back when I was almost driven to stop playing my import copy of Call of Juarez in 2006 purely due to its longest-loading-times-I-ever-experiencedness, I would never have guessed that one day I would be watching a video retrospective on the series' overall brilliance. It really did get better with every new title ... well, O.K., I did not play Cartel, so that probably helps with that opinion.
Great video I remember hearing about the Cartel game and how horrible it was. On another note I’d love to see your opinion on the new Call of Duty WW2 campaign. I feel like although it has its fair share of problems it was a return to the focus on the average soldier and his comrades, and I remember from your COD video that that is what you enjoyed the most about early Call of Duty.
Another absolutely superb piece further cementing your position as one of the finest game critics around. I particularly enjoyed your examination of the American West. It's precisely this manner of knowledgeable wider contextualisation that helps set your work both apart from and above that of so many others. I often regret supporting people on Patreon; never for a moment have I felt less than proud to support you.
A stellar retrospective, as usual. Thank you!