Happy Monday everyone. I'm working on another unemployment survey video as well as plenty of other stuff, but in the meantime, how about some more unremarkable spaces? This is living proof that I don't just do Nintendo games. Thank you.
I always appreciate being early. Gotta say... your perspective is fresh, and it will quite literally influence how I produce for my channel moving forward. Talking more genuinely about what you feel instead of just reviewing makes so much more sense. Anyway, I was excited to see some Halo when it popped up!
Fun fact: On Silent Cartographer, if you go just below the surface of the ocean and zoom your pistol scope, you can see 2d micro organisms swimming in the water. That's right, I'm not making this up. A developer actually went out of his way to add that little detail in a game where most people would never notice it despite becoming one of the most iconic and popular games of all time.
This is exactly how I played Halo when I was younger. I didn't play many video games so I'd just wonder around these levels for hours. Also I'm sure you can get to that lower bridge. I have anyway.
Halo has always been a series where exploring the environments is very fun and rewarding. Halo 2 had a few glitches, like superbounces and sword-butterflying, which made it very easy to get outside of the intended areas. My friends and I spent lots of time doing just that, exploring out of bounds areas in the trilogy. That said, we could never land on the lower bridge as much as we tried to. We would skip down the mountain on Assault on the Control Room and play through the level without any more enemies. We would drive way out into the ocean on Silent Cartographer and jump off of the hunters to get on top of the plateau on Silent Cartographer.
@@MS-bx7ow that sounds sweet, you can def make the brige landing with the right timing, as well as get down the inside of the structure that is later on in the level silent cartographer too
To be honest, when I looked at the ship's cafeteria menu for the first time it made me feel really sad because the first thing I saw was "Turkey Dinner" and it clicked that the crew likely wouldn't spend any time with their families now or ever again, because they were on the ship. An unremarkable location, sure, but it definitely gave me a remarkably strong emotion from such a small detail.
@@olympian3 Yeah I think that's the saddest detail in Halo 1. With a very small number of exceptions every single marine you fought alongside with in the game canonically dies by the end. The boys you bravely helped take the Silent Cartographer with? Or the ones you helped get to rescue in Halo or AOTCR? Even the guys you guided through a dark swamp and defended from the flood? Even despite you're efforts they all died.
@@genericwhitekidthesecond4330 exactly, also because almost all the marines that fought in Installation 04 and weren’t either KIA by the Covenant or Sentinels or assimilated by the Flood, died anyways along with all other life forms on Halo, because of the Pillar of Autumn blast and destruction of the ring.
@Caleb OKAY The Autumn wasn't at Reach because it was stationed there and operated by Reach inhabitants, it was receiving upgrades in preparation for a mission to capture the Covenant leadership but got stuck in traffic, its presence there was merely coincidental. Most named humans in the game are actually from Earth, with Master Chief being the only one raised on Reach, although he was born on another planet.
It's like, the things that break immersion. Stopping when there's a high-energy moment that implies you are timed, but really the game just plays explosion noises and has NPCs run back and forth. Or examining a prop that wasn't really meant to be seen from close-up, and realizing it's really small and floating in space about 30 meters ahead of you. It's a weird reminder that the people around you aren't really people, and the danger you're saving them from isn't actually real. It's weird and uncomfortable, and bizarrely even a little bit nostalgic. Like you're playing with the leftovers the devs made, and you're doing something you're not "supposed" to do. You're absolutely right - Halo CE is propelled by implied timing and a sense of urgency. But unless an actual timer is involved (ie the last level), then it's all 100% atmospheric. As long as you don't get killed by enemies, you can do whatever you want - despite Cortana screaming at you that the last escape pod is about to launch, and you need to get in there RIGHT NOW!!!
It's like the opposite of "sonder." Instead of realizing that random people have lives as deep and complex as your own, you're realizing that a world you thought was deep and rich is actually fabricated and... empty, in a way. Like when the façade of a magician's trick is revealed. You're excited to have learned the truth, but there's a hollow emptiness as you realize you'll never be wowed by the magic trick the same way again. Like you said, nostalgic. Nostalgic for the time when you were a kid and never noticed all the cracks in the façade.
@@bugjams that is such a fantastic comparison. and i know exactly what you mean: its like youre suddenly able to see that the true depth of the world is an illusion and it isnt anywhere as intricate as it once appeared from the surface.
The first time I saw one of your videos on odd and unremarkable places, my mind went exactly to the underwater area of Silent Cartographer. This is it. It's your birthday, around 2002. You've thrown a arty with as many friends as you could muster, and the five of you are all sleeping in a room together. You wake up, and turn on Halo, with the sounds down so low that you can barely hear the loudest gunfire. Silently, you clear the level, then head down to the beach. It's serene. You turn the sound up. Nothing but the water and your footsteps are audible. Four mounds of sleeping friends lay all around you in haphazard clumps, lit solely by the television, bags of chips and snacks crumbled all over the floor. You spend the next hour just walking around the level, underwater, looking at the underside of the waves above. All is peaceful.
Did you notice if you walk underwater long enough, you can't find the island again? I think it de-loads after a while. I walked around underwater like an hour and couldn't make it back.
@@bluebonnet Good luck! I was a kid with a lot of time on my hands so I probably walked one direction for like 30 minutes, then turned around and walked straight back for another 30 or 40. Haha. No idea how long it takes to actually lose the land permanently.
i really love this series. it's cozy and nostalgic in a way, even if i've never played the game in question itself. reminds me of how i used to run around ordon village in twilight princess for hours because i was too scared to start the forest temple. but in doing so, it made me appreciate the small and weird details of the character models and environment. speaking of, if you could do a video like this for twilight princess or skyward sword, my life would genuinely be complete!
I did the exact same thing but in Wind Waker! I was too afraid to save Tetra so I just ran around Outset Island! The amount of appreciation and fun you can have as a kid is astounding, I loved running around this island doing who knows what and I had a blast
if i could go to any place in any video game, the second level of halo is like the top of my list, the sort of spacey-Pacific-Northwest vibes with alien architecture mixed with lush trees and grass nestled in white canyons really just speaks to my soul i bet the air there is like, really cold and tastes amazing
I feel like I’ve camped in places exactly as you’re describing. It’s definitely cold with a crisp and brisk feel to the air, and you can imagine the shadows changing shape as the sun goes down.
8:10 You can actually get to the lower bridge without dying. There's this weird glitch in Halo CE where if you spam the weapon switch button while falling, you get reduced fall damage.
I think if you jump down from the beggining of the upper bridge down to the lower one you should be able to survive the fall with 1 or 2 health bars left. If I remember correctly lmao
I literally can't thank you enough for doing this whole video with the classic graphics. I don't think there's a game out there that squeezed so much atmosphere out of so few polygons.
Halo CE's graphics hold their own shockingly well today considering it's 21 years old and came out just a few years after a game like Half-Life (which, despite being a beloved classic, REALLY shows its age today). A real testament to Bungie's designers at the time.
@@michaelrusso9809 Valve really stepped it up between HL and HL2 (which came out the same year as Halo 2 and looks considerably better). HL2 is another game with impeccable vibes (the whole source engine itself, even, is a vibe). But yeah, Halo CE really came together with graphics, art direction, level design, sound design, music, story to just give a feeling that's so otherworldly. I do love the rest of the series, but I feel Halo 2 began a transition into a more like, macho, militaristic vibe that wasn't as present in CE and can at times take away from what made it so good.
Millions of us had this exact realisation in Red Dead Redemption 2 upon a second playthrough. If I just stay in Act 1, nothing bad happens. If I move forward, the bad starts again. The more I move, the more bad it gets. So i'll just stay in Act 1 for a few dozen hours..
@@420munchieman420 Thats right. its been a while since i played. You get to the mission right before you go fish with Jack and then stop and spend 40 hours hunting all the legendary animals, doing all the gunslinger missions and the poker challenges and so on, then you wince and carry on
There's some really odd places you can go in Halo 2's campaign, some missions have entire sections of playable geometry outside the playspace that you can only access using grenade tricks or the flying skull, because the game had to be cut down so much that sometimes entire areas of the map were just abandoned by the devs, but they're still there for you to explore. Examples include the rooftops of Outskirts, the weird nooks and crannies in Sacred Icon and Quarantine Zone, and the entire cut Warthog run section of High Charity Even within the playable space, there are weird places to go. Like the core room of the Threshold Gas Mine, the eerily quiet ruins of Delta Halo and Regret, and the echoing halls and passageways on Uprising and The Great Journey. Not to mention how chill High Charity can be once you've cleared out all the enemies - Halo 2 is basically one giant odd location
Ever since I found out you can get up on those rooftops on Outskirts, I don’t think I’ve ever spent much time on the ground level when I play since. I hardly know the layout on the ground, but I’ve explored every little detail of those roofs and balconies.
Metropolis has so much to explore it's ridiculous, and I love how The Arbiter lets you get out anywhere while flying. Games nowadays are too restrictive to let you exit your vehicle let alone let you actually wander around the place.
i absolutely LOVE the vibes of Halo CE and the next two games, and i'd love it if you could talk about more stuff from it, skyboxes, more unremarkable places, anything at all really
Agreed, I'd love to see more content from Halo. I think it sits at a very interesting spot in being quite beautiful and detailed for a linear shooter. If Austin sees this: he should definitely check out the multiplayer maps in a similar way to this. The uncanny quietness and stillness on these maps made for mayhem is a really interesting feeling!
I used to do this exact thing, as a kid. Because we didn't have a lot of money, I would play the video games I had over and over. I would often just wander in one level for an hour or two looking for secrets. I did this in GTA San Andreas a lot, as well. My friends and I had all of these urban legends about the game we would share with each other at lunch time.
Same. I think people who did this have a unique outlook. thanks to our intimate familiarity with those ultimately bland and empty 3D spaces, we have overactive imaginations and oftentimes search for things that aren't there or meaning where there is none
Halo's surface feels almost like it's home. Like you can tell it's an important place the moment you look at it. It's one of those feelings that felt lost when 343 decided to double down on humans not being the Forerunners. It just made more sense that Halo was built for us by us 100,000 years ago.
Halo 4 threw out ANY Mystery the Forerunners had And Fuck the Didact like they pulled out a Forerunner villain out of nowhere with NO explanation and i find it fucking stupid how he tricked M
Oh man, this video takes me back. This is EXACTLY how I used to play Halo back in the day (on the shitty Gearbox PC port). I remember suiciding off the canyon ridge right at the start of the first sniper level (Truth and Reconcilliation), just to look at the skybox and ground level. By the way, the skyboxes in this game are magical. They look so fantastical and sci-fi, yet grounded and realistic at the same time. They definetely give off a liminal-space feeling. Another level I used to explore for hours was the Assault on the Control Room, in which you could hi-jack a banshee pretty early on and then just fly over the entire area. You could even land on some cliffs and outcroppings just to admire the view. Lastly, the jungle part of 343 Guilty Spark is also semi-open world and lets you take many different paths to the objective. I used to run around there and try to climb into the trees lol. The later Halo games definitely toned down on the 'open-ended' level design and became more linear, though you can still find odd places and interesting dead ends in both Halo 2 and 3. I also agree the CE Remake looked too "bloated" (too many different textures, overly designed Forerunner structures, etc.) that kind of take away the odd feeling the original gave off.
Halo did skyboxes better than any franchise (to my knowledge) until 343 took over. I had noticed at one point it's a huge part of what makes the environment feel so good in the Bungie games, and them not so good in the 343 games.
A ton of early 3D FPS games have this eerie, lonely and empty feeling due to how new the dimensions are and how limited the console's processing power is. A lot of the early Valve games have a similar empty feeling. It's like an entire generation of shooters that take place in /r/backrooms
I have such a strong emotional feeling when I explore the Halo rings like in the missions Halo and Silent Cartographer from Combat Evolved or Delta Halo and Uprising from Halo 2. No one I know who plays Halo shares that feeling and it makes me feel crazy. Perhaps Bungie designing Halo's environment after Washington's Snoqualmie pass, a place I camped at often as a child, has something to do with that emotion I feel. It is a mix of nostalgia, wonder, peace, and a bit of somberness, but even these words feel like an unsatisfactory way to describe it. What's odd to me is how powerful that emotion actually is, what is causing it, why. Something especially about Uprising from Halo 2 does something to me. The overcast sky, a slight drizzle, I can almost smell the damp earth. The vibes are unreal.
Yes! I live on the East Coast so I don't have quite the same connection, but to me I always felt like I was trespassing at a closed national park or scout camp when I played those levels. Like, it's a curated "natural" space but with all of this empty architecture that makes you feel like you should move through it carefully and leave it like you found it.
Jet Force Gemini on N64 would be perfect for a skybox appreciation video. So many levels with beautiful sunsets, detailed clouds, and other varied weather effects in addition to incredibly atmospheric music.
@@vizmuroi Cerulean is like the bizarro-world version of an Any Austin video. One huge unremarkable place in the middle, with all the interesting videogamey bits around the edges. Though I guess that makes it remarkable, and disqualifies it.
I always thought the ring in the first game gives off the sense of a perfect artificial environment, made specifically to be inhabited, it's wild but it's not nature, if you know what I mean. It adds to the feeling of it being a constructed space within the lore.
That lower “bridge” in the second mission when you were like “I wonder if you can jump down there…” Was like, “nope, tried that as a kid.” This channel is great for the early - mid 90s babies lol. Exploring halo and Zelda were what I spent so much of my time doing as a young kid.
I always liked going out of the boundaries in Twisted Metal 2's Los Angeles (Stage 1). You need a remote bomb & somebody fast enough to clip over the boundary. It's just endless. I've tried driving out into the distance for minutes & eventually I got lost. Intrigued me so much. You take me back to a nostalgic & yet paradoxically unfamiliar time.
Looks like cola, lemon/lime, root beer, orange, water, and iced tea to me. Then more water, lemonade, coffee, hot tea, hot chocolate, and chef’s suprise on the other side.
shadow of the colossus would be a fascinating candidate for this. definitely does a good job filling in a lot of random spaces, but there is so much unused space and it just feels so strange walking through some of it
this reminds me of how i used to play halo 3 before i had xbox live and i just explored the multiplayer maps; it's such a surreal and intensely lonely feeling. ive never felt more isolated in my life lol. it was also oddly serene like you put it, you nailed it with that description
Hey man, just wanted to say I've stumbled on you recently with odd/unremarkable and I love approaching games differently with you in these videos and have been on a bit of a binge lately. I even took the plunge and bought your odd and unremarkable t shirt, because its that perfect blend of supporting content and being perfectly designed. Side note, I feel like you would enjoy powerwash simulator. That may sound like a random recommendation but the whole game has that feeling of being too empty its been a great game for me to sort of head empty to lately. Anyways hope you have a good Tuesday mate
Man I absolutely love this series, it made me break out my gamecube and wander around sirena beach in mario sunshine. Such a nice experience, I'm definitely going to explore more in games and soak in the environment.
I think this series really captures well what I love about games as well. Taking stuff slow and letting the feelings wash over you. I know its a very hostile game, but I feel like Pathologic 1 & 2 both do a very good job at understanding how spaces shape the vibe of your existence and there is a lot of really interesting areas in those games. Maybe consider checking them out sometime.
I enjoyed that in the Master Chief collection they added a ton of collectables in levels that are pretty much in places you would never even think about exploring in a normal playthrough, sometimes they're even "out of bounds", it's really fun to look after them!
I actually like how every single collectible in Halo, especially in the mcc, serve a purpose. The skulls unlock gameplay modifiers Terminals/Data Pads explore lore that isn't otherwise found anywhere in game Dolls in H2A are specifically hidden outside the playable area, to show new players who look up guides to find them, how easy it is to get out of the map in every level of halo 2, and encourage them to try out stuff on their own Every single doll requires you to glitch (or just walk lol) out of bounds.
Hey. Really liked this video! In fact I feel a little bit less crazy because of it. I thought I was the only one that found roaming around a cleared out and empty battle area just before entering a checkpoint more rewarding than the actual linear story line half the time. Lol. So thanks for that. As always, amazing content.
@Any Austin In the Timesplitters games (2 and Future Perfect) you can turn off bots and roam around multiplayer maps freely. The levels Streets, Circus, and Site in TS2 are iconic! *Honorable mention for 007 Nightfire, Worms 3D, and all of the SSX games
I love these kinds of deep looks into older games. finding the areas that the developers put their hearts into designing even though the areas have no impact on the main part of the game. This is what sets games of that era apart from modern games. Video games used to be art and they don't seem like that anymore. Keep up these great videos and good luck with your Private Pilot license! also, why is there an audible heart beat from 4:05 - 6:10?
6:19 I've always loved the ability to wander around and explore and appreciate all the little details and work the devs put into the game. Frankly it's the only way to play, and I really can't comprehend how anyone would play a game like this and not check out every available corner.
Love these videos. I would be so down for an hour video or live stream of you just exploring these unremarkable places with some commentary over them. Minimal editing, just lowkey.. maybe even have sections with your music playing throughout? Could even go on a second channel?
I like this kind of content - I love Nintendo games, but would love to see more non-Nintendo content like this. Maybe Unremarkable/Odd places in the Kingdom Hearts 1&2?
"The beach. You have absolutely no reason to come down here." Oh sweet brother. You obviously have never experienced the glory that is warthog jumping.
I remember when I was roughly around 4 or 5, I went so far into the ocean I started driving into objects. I tried going back to the island and ended up having to just restart the whole mission.
@@any_austin Phantom 2040 for the SNES would be PERFECT for this. So many little background details in the levels, even the over world. Strange sound effects and design.
How about Megaman X3 on the SNES? That whole game has a strangely unfinished feeling to it, with lots of empty rooms. Super Metroid might be a good one too, though the atmosphere in that is intentional.
Going a little more into detail about the outdoor scene near the end of the video (ironically still super early into the game), it invokes a similar feeling to the first outdoor level in the original Unreal, though without the whole musical effect going on. There's something distinctly earthlike about your surroundings, but at the same time you can still clearly tell that the environment is alien. A lot of things would use the alien side of things to invoke fear and tension, but in situations like this it's actually more of a calm sensation, tickling your sense of mystery and intrigue. For starters, the sky, while blue, isn't thick enough to obscure your view of the stars. This gives it an almost dreamlike quality of being a sort of weird, satisfactory mix between day and night. This is complimented by the Halo ring itself in the sky, stretching all the way around. It really feels like you're exploring an environment that's similar to Earth but also simultaneously distinctly different. Secondly, the rocks are distinctly a white/light gray color, which although can exist on Earth isn't what one typically expects to see in such large quantities aside from in some very specific regions. This differs from the more brown or even orange color we typically expect rocky cliffs to be. It's definitely not at all alien in and of itself, but it still somehow contributes to the chill atmosphere the scene is giving off despite all the fighting meant to be going on. Finally, the grass and trees are distinctly bright green, very natural and normal to us to give us a sense of familiarity amongst the unusual. This is complemented by the waterfall and the moon up in the sky which is very much like our own moon, adding to the sense of normalcy as well as to the dreamlike quality of the scene. The whole thing feels like the kind of environment you'd find yourself walking around in before you have to wake up in the morning and get ready for work, and then you just keep dwelling on it all day as this really chill place you wish you could visit.
Really interesting Halo gives these vibes if you just stand still sometimes. Reminds me of the Myst series, just taking in all the amazing game scenery. That was a brilliant series for just observing stuff.
One of my favorite memories from this game is that in high school, we had a cracked pirated copy of the original windows version of Halo CE that we passed around in the computer lab (c. 2015). In that version of the game at least, the island from silent cartographer was a multiplayer map, and I viscerally remember that you could drive a Scorpion out onto the water, which was often the easiest way to deal with enemy banshees in an 8v8: you could draw them away from their cover so they couldn’t strafe you then hide behind the cliffs. but when you did this, you’d be out in the middle of the water in a place you were never intended to see. the vibe is similar to the place where you fight dark link in OOT. I figure what they did was that they didn’t want you to be able to hide underwater in multiplayer like you could if the collision was like it was in single player. so they just fixed the issue by giving the surface of the water collision
Comfy video as always, good stuff. Also, I wonder what you think about pre-rendered backgrounds (like in Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Ocarina of Time etc.) and if you'd be interested to make a video on those in the future. Cheers.
My fight or flight kicked in as you went deeper into the ocean at 5:22. I'm always fascinated by moments like these in games, often you can get a similar feeling with free cam hacks as well. But it just feels so uneasy at the same time. I'm glad I share that feeling with so many others.
Thank you for these. These videos are such a calm escape from everything in life. Hanging out with old friends on a warm Saturday afternoon kinda energy to these videos
I didnt play Halo as a kid, or even ever. But this video somehow felt so peaceful and nostalgic. I love videogames(especially 90s and early 2k ones) as an art form because they make you feel so much passion and nostalgia. Just living in the space. I used to roleplay in the old games I beat. Playing them over and over even without any objective just because I loved the atmosphere. IDK something about early web video games, it really brings the 90s kids together. It was kind of like a giant change on earth. Back then those graphics were fucking INSANE. almost felt so real. Its crazy what we see now in video games, and it always makes me wonder where video games will be in another 20 years. But I love old games its like surrealism that you can kind of walk around in, and explore. I LOVE THESE VIDEOS SO MUCH. I found your channel last week and im ngl im obsessed. We play video games very similarly and think about the outside of the stuff they showed us. I want to see MORE of the stuff we weren't supposed to see. I want to know more about the worlds the games take place in. Like I wish I could know what was beyond the places we could look at in Zelda or Banjo Tooie. ASHDKJSF LOL SORRY FOR RAMBLING OTL
Halo is great because the sheer scope and scale of all the architecture is actually insane. Every building is fucking gigantic and empty. It's so unique.
So much time spent in Halo just exploring, but for me my favourite place is Halo 2, first level, when you go outside the station and fight the jetpack elites in low gravity. You can just go anywhere on the station and its surreal
This right here is why Halo 3:ODST is one of my favorite games. They give you an entire city to just walk around in if you want, and I've spent hours doing that. Chock-full of odd and unremarkable places. Darkness, rain, distant jazz, and no humans anywhere. Unreal vibes.
Halo 1-3 had environments that were so expertly crafted, there was something about them that made you want to wander around aimlessly for way longer than they intended. Especially Halo 1. The coolest part of it was how you got see some places twice, before and after the flood start causing chaos. It was such a special feeling, the farther you progressed the more alone you were, even the covenant were getting wrecked by the flood... Halo 1 was such an experience.
You've gotta do one with Socom Fireteam Bravo 2. The multiplayer maps and even some spots in the campaign have a bunch of weird spaces that would be perfect for this series.
I appreciate all the interesting things I'm learning from you and I love these kinds of videos that focus on the slower, less in-your-face parts of games. Vibes are immaculate 👌
Halo has been my childhood franchise starting when I was 5. It's the game I started my streaming channel with on twitch. Very happy that the odd and rather remarkable places are being appreciated to this day. PS: Turok Rage Wars is another game filled with odd and unremarkable places. ;)
This was a high quality selection, thank you. I played most of the games you peruse as a kid, but the entire Halo series is one I only played as an adult. My partner had me play straight through Halo 1 - 3, so I never got the time to stop and explore. I always liked the "nature" levels that showed a bit of the planets and life around the Halo world.
i think the silent cartographer may be one of the most memorable video game maps ever made. I haven't played on it in well over a decade, but I can so vividly remember going up the internal rocky pathway in the deeper parts of the island and coming soon after to those two gigantic hunters in those old ruins and having a thrilling miniboss throwdown with them. It really is one of the best examples of a semi-open world, a compact non-linear area that packs in fun content but lets you decompress and approach objectives in several ways.
This is such an interesting exploration! There were so many places like this in Halo 2. There were holes in the invisible walls in many places that allowed people to really explore far outside the intended bounds of a given level. The way these spaces were discovered by most folks I think was the most interesting of all, in the early days of internet gaming you'd be paired up with random people who might be more interested in exploring the details of a level than fighting team vs team. Just weird accidental collaborations that would happen with strangers across space and time. The best days of Halo.
Combat evolved was my first fps game I played in my life I was in kindergarten at the time I’m 23 now I’ve had dreams of walking through halo maps and it felt so familiar and peaceful I’ll go back and play CE and older halos to reminds myself of good times and my childhood
I feel like a lot of the fascinating aesthetic dissonance of Halo comes fron the fact that it has the DNA of Ian M. Banks' Culture novels running all the way through it, not just in the basic idea of the ringworld but the attention to those beautiful vistas and views and cloudscapes and the pop of the blues and greens in the colour palette... But also it's made by a team who read the Culture novels and thought, "man, this would be a cracking setting for a special ops shooter." This dissonance is what I find so fascinating in all Bungie games really.
One of my favorite levels to vibe out in eerie silence was always Two Betrayals. In the deep canyon past the ziggurat, after all the enemies were reduced to bloodstains on snowbanks, I would just hang around the ledge in the middle as the snow continued to fall and listen to the wind howl, almost musically, through the dark, icy canyon walls. To know that you too appreciated spaces in video games like this is deeply comforting to my soul.
Dude i got to add you the breakdown in the beginning is hilarious and relatable. G mod and other weird linear 3d games the way they pause when u stop is always been something i love doing for the luls.
This is my favorite video series on all of TH-cam. I just thought I would let you know that. Your voice over and editing is perfect every time, and you find really nice liminal spaces in games we all loved
Can you do a Skybox appreciation on Snowboard Kids? That game fuckin is it’s own level of nostalgia for me, the sunset theme park level … the night cityscape level, the emotional music that just evokes painful nostalgia pangs at the same time as deeply pleasing your ears.
i used to just chill out in the ocean on silent cartographer when i was a kid. it gave me the exact feeling of when you go just sit on the floor of the deep end in a pool.
I would get this feeling back in the day as a kid playing Twisted Metal. there were areas of the map that just looked so mundane and had little details that stuck out the more you sat there. id be Mr Grimm when id want to go explore.
Super cool vid. I knew Halo was a good fit for this. It's definitely empty and serene and its environments are very iconic, the palette and layout are def special imo.
Happy Monday everyone. I'm working on another unemployment survey video as well as plenty of other stuff, but in the meantime, how about some more unremarkable spaces? This is living proof that I don't just do Nintendo games. Thank you.
I always appreciate being early. Gotta say... your perspective is fresh, and it will quite literally influence how I produce for my channel moving forward. Talking more genuinely about what you feel instead of just reviewing makes so much more sense. Anyway, I was excited to see some Halo when it popped up!
Hi Auston. My sister died 😢
Metroid prime video would be sick
@@thescotsmantechnologyrevie2138 Wait, for real? Rip
maybe Banjo-Kazooie has some, i remember feeling really odd in that carnival level in the 2nd one
Fun fact: On Silent Cartographer, if you go just below the surface of the ocean and zoom your pistol scope, you can see 2d micro organisms swimming in the water. That's right, I'm not making this up. A developer actually went out of his way to add that little detail in a game where most people would never notice it despite becoming one of the most iconic and popular games of all time.
Do you know of any videos that showcase this, or could you possibly upload one yourself? I can't seem to find anything related to this online. :c
- Micro organisms
- Mr.Clean parody account
Seems legit
@@chanze555 Nah he's legit. Makes a bunch of Halo maps.
@@Sanguivore I shall upload it tonight!
@@cleanserofnoobs4162 Heck yeah! Tag me in this comment when you do please.
This is exactly how I played Halo when I was younger. I didn't play many video games so I'd just wonder around these levels for hours. Also I'm sure you can get to that lower bridge. I have anyway.
I did the exact same thing, thats why i love this series so much, very nostalgic!
Yeah if you crouch at impact you survive
You can def make it yeah done it many a times
Halo has always been a series where exploring the environments is very fun and rewarding. Halo 2 had a few glitches, like superbounces and sword-butterflying, which made it very easy to get outside of the intended areas. My friends and I spent lots of time doing just that, exploring out of bounds areas in the trilogy.
That said, we could never land on the lower bridge as much as we tried to. We would skip down the mountain on Assault on the Control Room and play through the level without any more enemies. We would drive way out into the ocean on Silent Cartographer and jump off of the hunters to get on top of the plateau on Silent Cartographer.
@@MS-bx7ow that sounds sweet, you can def make the brige landing with the right timing, as well as get down the inside of the structure that is later on in the level silent cartographer too
To be honest, when I looked at the ship's cafeteria menu for the first time it made me feel really sad because the first thing I saw was "Turkey Dinner" and it clicked that the crew likely wouldn't spend any time with their families now or ever again, because they were on the ship. An unremarkable location, sure, but it definitely gave me a remarkably strong emotion from such a small detail.
especially on the maw, and by then you realize all of them are either dead or flood mutilated.. it made me feel somber for sure
@@olympian3 Yeah I think that's the saddest detail in Halo 1. With a very small number of exceptions every single marine you fought alongside with in the game canonically dies by the end. The boys you bravely helped take the Silent Cartographer with? Or the ones you helped get to rescue in Halo or AOTCR? Even the guys you guided through a dark swamp and defended from the flood? Even despite you're efforts they all died.
@@genericwhitekidthesecond4330 exactly, also because almost all the marines that fought in Installation 04 and weren’t either KIA by the Covenant or Sentinels or assimilated by the Flood, died anyways along with all other life forms on Halo, because of the Pillar of Autumn blast and destruction of the ring.
@Caleb OKAY The Autumn wasn't at Reach because it was stationed there and operated by Reach inhabitants, it was receiving upgrades in preparation for a mission to capture the Covenant leadership but got stuck in traffic, its presence there was merely coincidental. Most named humans in the game are actually from Earth, with Master Chief being the only one raised on Reach, although he was born on another planet.
They're probably dead it's fine arbiter alone killed a billion humans
It's like, the things that break immersion. Stopping when there's a high-energy moment that implies you are timed, but really the game just plays explosion noises and has NPCs run back and forth. Or examining a prop that wasn't really meant to be seen from close-up, and realizing it's really small and floating in space about 30 meters ahead of you. It's a weird reminder that the people around you aren't really people, and the danger you're saving them from isn't actually real. It's weird and uncomfortable, and bizarrely even a little bit nostalgic. Like you're playing with the leftovers the devs made, and you're doing something you're not "supposed" to do. You're absolutely right - Halo CE is propelled by implied timing and a sense of urgency. But unless an actual timer is involved (ie the last level), then it's all 100% atmospheric. As long as you don't get killed by enemies, you can do whatever you want - despite Cortana screaming at you that the last escape pod is about to launch, and you need to get in there RIGHT NOW!!!
It's like the opposite of "sonder." Instead of realizing that random people have lives as deep and complex as your own, you're realizing that a world you thought was deep and rich is actually fabricated and... empty, in a way. Like when the façade of a magician's trick is revealed. You're excited to have learned the truth, but there's a hollow emptiness as you realize you'll never be wowed by the magic trick the same way again. Like you said, nostalgic. Nostalgic for the time when you were a kid and never noticed all the cracks in the façade.
Truman Show
@@bugjams when you realize that other people don't taste hot chip like you do
@@bugjams that is such a fantastic comparison. and i know exactly what you mean: its like youre suddenly able to see that the true depth of the world is an illusion and it isnt anywhere as intricate as it once appeared from the surface.
It's why I really appreciate games that are not afraid to put timers on urgent missions.
Literally becoming my new favorite series on youtube, its fresh, thought provoking, nostalgic , and just a good time
One of the best series on youtube
The first time I saw one of your videos on odd and unremarkable places, my mind went exactly to the underwater area of Silent Cartographer. This is it.
It's your birthday, around 2002. You've thrown a arty with as many friends as you could muster, and the five of you are all sleeping in a room together. You wake up, and turn on Halo, with the sounds down so low that you can barely hear the loudest gunfire. Silently, you clear the level, then head down to the beach. It's serene. You turn the sound up. Nothing but the water and your footsteps are audible. Four mounds of sleeping friends lay all around you in haphazard clumps, lit solely by the television, bags of chips and snacks crumbled all over the floor. You spend the next hour just walking around the level, underwater, looking at the underside of the waves above. All is peaceful.
Did you notice if you walk underwater long enough, you can't find the island again? I think it de-loads after a while. I walked around underwater like an hour and couldn't make it back.
@@rickylonghaul682 I haven't seen that! I'll have to dig up the old Xbox and give it a go.
@@bluebonnet Good luck! I was a kid with a lot of time on my hands so I probably walked one direction for like 30 minutes, then turned around and walked straight back for another 30 or 40. Haha. No idea how long it takes to actually lose the land permanently.
@@bluebonnet Same thing happens with flying a plane out over the ocean for long enough in GTA San Andreas.
i really love this series. it's cozy and nostalgic in a way, even if i've never played the game in question itself. reminds me of how i used to run around ordon village in twilight princess for hours because i was too scared to start the forest temple. but in doing so, it made me appreciate the small and weird details of the character models and environment.
speaking of, if you could do a video like this for twilight princess or skyward sword, my life would genuinely be complete!
I did the exact same thing but in Wind Waker! I was too afraid to save Tetra so I just ran around Outset Island!
The amount of appreciation and fun you can have as a kid is astounding, I loved running around this island doing who knows what and I had a blast
if i could go to any place in any video game, the second level of halo is like the top of my list, the sort of spacey-Pacific-Northwest vibes with alien architecture mixed with lush trees and grass nestled in white canyons really just speaks to my soul
i bet the air there is like, really cold and tastes amazing
With the cicada noises in the back ground I always figured it was hot on the island but climate controlled in the map room areas
I feel like I’ve camped in places exactly as you’re describing. It’s definitely cold with a crisp and brisk feel to the air, and you can imagine the shadows changing shape as the sun goes down.
8:10 You can actually get to the lower bridge without dying. There's this weird glitch in Halo CE where if you spam the weapon switch button while falling, you get reduced fall damage.
You can do it pretty easily without.
I think if you jump down from the beggining of the upper bridge down to the lower one you should be able to survive the fall with 1 or 2 health bars left. If I remember correctly lmao
I literally can't thank you enough for doing this whole video with the classic graphics. I don't think there's a game out there that squeezed so much atmosphere out of so few polygons.
Halo CE's graphics hold their own shockingly well today considering it's 21 years old and came out just a few years after a game like Half-Life (which, despite being a beloved classic, REALLY shows its age today). A real testament to Bungie's designers at the time.
@@michaelrusso9809 Valve really stepped it up between HL and HL2 (which came out the same year as Halo 2 and looks considerably better). HL2 is another game with impeccable vibes (the whole source engine itself, even, is a vibe). But yeah, Halo CE really came together with graphics, art direction, level design, sound design, music, story to just give a feeling that's so otherworldly. I do love the rest of the series, but I feel Halo 2 began a transition into a more like, macho, militaristic vibe that wasn't as present in CE and can at times take away from what made it so good.
@@tdif3197 CE opens up with a badass speech from a sergeant to two lines of marines, after a landscape shot of the UNSC gearing up for battle...
@@michaelrusso9809 To be fair, Half-Life looked like shit on release, and games came a long way in only three years back then.
Thief: The Dark Project, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Carmageddon TDR 2000... plenty of games. Halo is up there, though.
You really need to check out CE's multiplayer maps.
Hi Eck! Love your videos
"If I stop, the bad stops."
This is incredibly anxiety inducing, and I'm not entirely sure why.
Millions of us had this exact realisation in Red Dead Redemption 2 upon a second playthrough. If I just stay in Act 1, nothing bad happens. If I move forward, the bad starts again. The more I move, the more bad it gets. So i'll just stay in Act 1 for a few dozen hours..
@Leeches- you mean act 2?
Act 1 is the snowy area, Colter. Once you're in horseshoe overlook, that's all chapter 2, aka fun times
@@420munchieman420 Thats right. its been a while since i played. You get to the mission right before you go fish with Jack and then stop and spend 40 hours hunting all the legendary animals, doing all the gunslinger missions and the poker challenges and so on, then you wince and carry on
There's some really odd places you can go in Halo 2's campaign, some missions have entire sections of playable geometry outside the playspace that you can only access using grenade tricks or the flying skull, because the game had to be cut down so much that sometimes entire areas of the map were just abandoned by the devs, but they're still there for you to explore. Examples include the rooftops of Outskirts, the weird nooks and crannies in Sacred Icon and Quarantine Zone, and the entire cut Warthog run section of High Charity
Even within the playable space, there are weird places to go. Like the core room of the Threshold Gas Mine, the eerily quiet ruins of Delta Halo and Regret, and the echoing halls and passageways on Uprising and The Great Journey. Not to mention how chill High Charity can be once you've cleared out all the enemies - Halo 2 is basically one giant odd location
Ever since I found out you can get up on those rooftops on Outskirts, I don’t think I’ve ever spent much time on the ground level when I play since. I hardly know the layout on the ground, but I’ve explored every little detail of those roofs and balconies.
Metropolis has so much to explore it's ridiculous, and I love how The Arbiter lets you get out anywhere while flying. Games nowadays are too restrictive to let you exit your vehicle let alone let you actually wander around the place.
Not to mention the multiplayer maps! Coupled with grenade/rocket jumping, superbouncing, or butterflying with a friend. so much to explore and vibe to
i absolutely LOVE the vibes of Halo CE and the next two games, and i'd love it if you could talk about more stuff from it, skyboxes, more unremarkable places, anything at all really
Agreed, I'd love to see more content from Halo. I think it sits at a very interesting spot in being quite beautiful and detailed for a linear shooter. If Austin sees this: he should definitely check out the multiplayer maps in a similar way to this. The uncanny quietness and stillness on these maps made for mayhem is a really interesting feeling!
I used to do this exact thing, as a kid. Because we didn't have a lot of money, I would play the video games I had over and over. I would often just wander in one level for an hour or two looking for secrets. I did this in GTA San Andreas a lot, as well. My friends and I had all of these urban legends about the game we would share with each other at lunch time.
Same. I think people who did this have a unique outlook. thanks to our intimate familiarity with those ultimately bland and empty 3D spaces, we have overactive imaginations and oftentimes search for things that aren't there or meaning where there is none
Halo's surface feels almost like it's home. Like you can tell it's an important place the moment you look at it. It's one of those feelings that felt lost when 343 decided to double down on humans not being the Forerunners. It just made more sense that Halo was built for us by us 100,000 years ago.
Halo 4 threw out ANY Mystery the Forerunners had And Fuck the Didact like they pulled out a Forerunner villain out of nowhere with NO explanation and i find it fucking stupid how he tricked M
@@nickm5419 Halo 3 was Chief's end for me.
343 halo doesnt count imo
Oh man, this video takes me back. This is EXACTLY how I used to play Halo back in the day (on the shitty Gearbox PC port). I remember suiciding off the canyon ridge right at the start of the first sniper level (Truth and Reconcilliation), just to look at the skybox and ground level. By the way, the skyboxes in this game are magical. They look so fantastical and sci-fi, yet grounded and realistic at the same time. They definetely give off a liminal-space feeling.
Another level I used to explore for hours was the Assault on the Control Room, in which you could hi-jack a banshee pretty early on and then just fly over the entire area. You could even land on some cliffs and outcroppings just to admire the view. Lastly, the jungle part of 343 Guilty Spark is also semi-open world and lets you take many different paths to the objective. I used to run around there and try to climb into the trees lol.
The later Halo games definitely toned down on the 'open-ended' level design and became more linear, though you can still find odd places and interesting dead ends in both Halo 2 and 3. I also agree the CE Remake looked too "bloated" (too many different textures, overly designed Forerunner structures, etc.) that kind of take away the odd feeling the original gave off.
Halo did skyboxes better than any franchise (to my knowledge) until 343 took over. I had noticed at one point it's a huge part of what makes the environment feel so good in the Bungie games, and them not so good in the 343 games.
A ton of early 3D FPS games have this eerie, lonely and empty feeling due to how new the dimensions are and how limited the console's processing power is. A lot of the early Valve games have a similar empty feeling. It's like an entire generation of shooters that take place in /r/backrooms
I have such a strong emotional feeling when I explore the Halo rings like in the missions Halo and Silent Cartographer from Combat Evolved or Delta Halo and Uprising from Halo 2. No one I know who plays Halo shares that feeling and it makes me feel crazy. Perhaps Bungie designing Halo's environment after Washington's Snoqualmie pass, a place I camped at often as a child, has something to do with that emotion I feel. It is a mix of nostalgia, wonder, peace, and a bit of somberness, but even these words feel like an unsatisfactory way to describe it. What's odd to me is how powerful that emotion actually is, what is causing it, why. Something especially about Uprising from Halo 2 does something to me. The overcast sky, a slight drizzle, I can almost smell the damp earth. The vibes are unreal.
Yes! I live on the East Coast so I don't have quite the same connection, but to me I always felt like I was trespassing at a closed national park or scout camp when I played those levels. Like, it's a curated "natural" space but with all of this empty architecture that makes you feel like you should move through it carefully and leave it like you found it.
Jet Force Gemini on N64 would be perfect for a skybox appreciation video. So many levels with beautiful sunsets, detailed clouds, and other varied weather effects in addition to incredibly atmospheric music.
And extremely unremarkable places.
@@vizmuroi Cerulean is like the bizarro-world version of an Any Austin video. One huge unremarkable place in the middle, with all the interesting videogamey bits around the edges.
Though I guess that makes it remarkable, and disqualifies it.
I always thought the ring in the first game gives off the sense of a perfect artificial environment, made specifically to be inhabited, it's wild but it's not nature, if you know what I mean. It adds to the feeling of it being a constructed space within the lore.
That lower “bridge” in the second mission when you were like “I wonder if you can jump down there…”
Was like, “nope, tried that as a kid.”
This channel is great for the early - mid 90s babies lol. Exploring halo and Zelda were what I spent so much of my time doing as a young kid.
You actually can survive the fall down to the 2nd bridge. You just have to land on a slope just right, ive done it before
You can. I've done it dozens of times.
I still do explore Halo and Zelda.
th-cam.com/video/ssL5UrTa5ac/w-d-xo.htmlsi=16dIpTZ_2gw6C5tl
In Pillar of Autumn, the halo ring outside the ship is so small that the Autumn's front antennae reach the center of it.
You've got somethin really unique going. Keep going my dude, you'll make it one day.
I used to run out far into the ocean, and then spin in circles and lose all sense of direction and struggle to get back to shore
I used to love exploring the maps in halo 2. So many different paths and cool things to find, especially on outskirts.
I love the nostalgic vibes of old graphics. Something about old textures just feels surreal. I can't quite put my finger on why though
I always liked going out of the boundaries in Twisted Metal 2's Los Angeles (Stage 1). You need a remote bomb & somebody fast enough to clip over the boundary. It's just endless. I've tried driving out into the distance for minutes & eventually I got lost. Intrigued me so much. You take me back to a nostalgic & yet paradoxically unfamiliar time.
Truly love going back and experiencing these locations with someone that has a keen eye such as yourself. Your poetic nature is appreciated as well!
3:38 aw yes. Water, My favorite space food. XD Great video
Looks like cola, lemon/lime, root beer, orange, water, and iced tea to me. Then more water, lemonade, coffee, hot tea, hot chocolate, and chef’s suprise on the other side.
shadow of the colossus would be a fascinating candidate for this. definitely does a good job filling in a lot of random spaces, but there is so much unused space and it just feels so strange walking through some of it
ohh man I'm so glad you did Halo. Would love to see more Halo stuff. It's all so weird and awesome with no enemies, so peaceful
this reminds me of how i used to play halo 3 before i had xbox live and i just explored the multiplayer maps; it's such a surreal and intensely lonely feeling. ive never felt more isolated in my life lol. it was also oddly serene like you put it, you nailed it with that description
Hey man, just wanted to say I've stumbled on you recently with odd/unremarkable and I love approaching games differently with you in these videos and have been on a bit of a binge lately. I even took the plunge and bought your odd and unremarkable t shirt, because its that perfect blend of supporting content and being perfectly designed.
Side note, I feel like you would enjoy powerwash simulator. That may sound like a random recommendation but the whole game has that feeling of being too empty its been a great game for me to sort of head empty to lately. Anyways hope you have a good Tuesday mate
Quite a few of the simulator games like that have those similar vibes
2:44 the grunt crying out as a race car zoom sound effect was a nice touch
Man I absolutely love this series, it made me break out my gamecube and wander around sirena beach in mario sunshine. Such a nice experience, I'm definitely going to explore more in games and soak in the environment.
I think this series really captures well what I love about games as well. Taking stuff slow and letting the feelings wash over you. I know its a very hostile game, but I feel like Pathologic 1 & 2 both do a very good job at understanding how spaces shape the vibe of your existence and there is a lot of really interesting areas in those games. Maybe consider checking them out sometime.
1:20 The halo ring model is the same ring used during the end credits of Halo Reach.
your voice/delivery reminds me of the commercials in interdimensional cable and I'm 100% here for it
I enjoyed that in the Master Chief collection they added a ton of collectables in levels that are pretty much in places you would never even think about exploring in a normal playthrough, sometimes they're even "out of bounds", it's really fun to look after them!
I actually like how every single collectible in Halo, especially in the mcc, serve a purpose.
The skulls unlock gameplay modifiers
Terminals/Data Pads explore lore that isn't otherwise found anywhere in game
Dolls in H2A are specifically hidden outside the playable area, to show new players who look up guides to find them, how easy it is to get out of the map in every level of halo 2, and encourage them to try out stuff on their own
Every single doll requires you to glitch (or just walk lol) out of bounds.
I was having a pretty bad day today and this video made my day a lot better! so thank you for all that you do!!
Hey. Really liked this video! In fact I feel a little bit less crazy because of it. I thought I was the only one that found roaming around a cleared out and empty battle area just before entering a checkpoint more rewarding than the actual linear story line half the time. Lol. So thanks for that. As always, amazing content.
@Any Austin In the Timesplitters games (2 and Future Perfect) you can turn off bots and roam around multiplayer maps freely.
The levels Streets, Circus, and Site in TS2 are iconic!
*Honorable mention for 007 Nightfire, Worms 3D, and all of the SSX games
yea the circus map without anyone else on the map is weird
I love these kinds of deep looks into older games. finding the areas that the developers put their hearts into designing even though the areas have no impact on the main part of the game. This is what sets games of that era apart from modern games. Video games used to be art and they don't seem like that anymore. Keep up these great videos and good luck with your Private Pilot license! also, why is there an audible heart beat from 4:05 - 6:10?
Not finished yet but I know you always ask. "I like this" Halo is probably my most explored game!
Halo is such a vibes type of game, I love its big open spaces and how quiet it gets sometimes
6:19 I've always loved the ability to wander around and explore and appreciate all the little details and work the devs put into the game. Frankly it's the only way to play, and I really can't comprehend how anyone would play a game like this and not check out every available corner.
Love these videos. I would be so down for an hour video or live stream of you just exploring these unremarkable places with some commentary over them. Minimal editing, just lowkey.. maybe even have sections with your music playing throughout? Could even go on a second channel?
The moment I can quit my job, I will, and I’ll do this
I like this kind of content - I love Nintendo games, but would love to see more non-Nintendo content like this. Maybe Unremarkable/Odd places in the Kingdom Hearts 1&2?
"The beach. You have absolutely no reason to come down here."
Oh sweet brother. You obviously have never experienced the glory that is warthog jumping.
I remember when I was roughly around 4 or 5, I went so far into the ocean I started driving into objects. I tried going back to the island and ended up having to just restart the whole mission.
Never clicked a notification faster.
Love your stuff, brother. Wonder if there's any 2D games that would be good content for this series.
I was thinking about that too. Pokémon for sure. It’s not quite 2D but I lowkey think the DS Zeldas would be fun
@@any_austin Phantom 2040 for the SNES would be PERFECT for this. So many little background details in the levels, even the over world. Strange sound effects and design.
How about Megaman X3 on the SNES? That whole game has a strangely unfinished feeling to it, with lots of empty rooms.
Super Metroid might be a good one too, though the atmosphere in that is intentional.
Going a little more into detail about the outdoor scene near the end of the video (ironically still super early into the game), it invokes a similar feeling to the first outdoor level in the original Unreal, though without the whole musical effect going on. There's something distinctly earthlike about your surroundings, but at the same time you can still clearly tell that the environment is alien. A lot of things would use the alien side of things to invoke fear and tension, but in situations like this it's actually more of a calm sensation, tickling your sense of mystery and intrigue.
For starters, the sky, while blue, isn't thick enough to obscure your view of the stars. This gives it an almost dreamlike quality of being a sort of weird, satisfactory mix between day and night. This is complimented by the Halo ring itself in the sky, stretching all the way around. It really feels like you're exploring an environment that's similar to Earth but also simultaneously distinctly different.
Secondly, the rocks are distinctly a white/light gray color, which although can exist on Earth isn't what one typically expects to see in such large quantities aside from in some very specific regions. This differs from the more brown or even orange color we typically expect rocky cliffs to be. It's definitely not at all alien in and of itself, but it still somehow contributes to the chill atmosphere the scene is giving off despite all the fighting meant to be going on.
Finally, the grass and trees are distinctly bright green, very natural and normal to us to give us a sense of familiarity amongst the unusual. This is complemented by the waterfall and the moon up in the sky which is very much like our own moon, adding to the sense of normalcy as well as to the dreamlike quality of the scene. The whole thing feels like the kind of environment you'd find yourself walking around in before you have to wake up in the morning and get ready for work, and then you just keep dwelling on it all day as this really chill place you wish you could visit.
Really interesting Halo gives these vibes if you just stand still sometimes. Reminds me of the Myst series, just taking in all the amazing game scenery. That was a brilliant series for just observing stuff.
One of my favorite memories from this game is that in high school, we had a cracked pirated copy of the original windows version of Halo CE that we passed around in the computer lab (c. 2015).
In that version of the game at least, the island from silent cartographer was a multiplayer map, and I viscerally remember that you could drive a Scorpion out onto the water, which was often the easiest way to deal with enemy banshees in an 8v8: you could draw them away from their cover so they couldn’t strafe you then hide behind the cliffs.
but when you did this, you’d be out in the middle of the water in a place you were never intended to see. the vibe is similar to the place where you fight dark link in OOT.
I figure what they did was that they didn’t want you to be able to hide underwater in multiplayer like you could if the collision was like it was in single player. so they just fixed the issue by giving the surface of the water collision
that is hilarious
You talking about death island bro?
Comfy video as always, good stuff. Also, I wonder what you think about pre-rendered backgrounds (like in Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Ocarina of Time etc.) and if you'd be interested to make a video on those in the future. Cheers.
My fight or flight kicked in as you went deeper into the ocean at 5:22. I'm always fascinated by moments like these in games, often you can get a similar feeling with free cam hacks as well. But it just feels so uneasy at the same time. I'm glad I share that feeling with so many others.
Every so often I go and explore CE just like this. Unparalleled feeling ngl
Thank you for these. These videos are such a calm escape from everything in life. Hanging out with old friends on a warm Saturday afternoon kinda energy to these videos
I loved doing this kind of exploring in WoW, especially just flying around Pandaria with no players to be seen just an old expansion
I didnt play Halo as a kid, or even ever. But this video somehow felt so peaceful and nostalgic. I love videogames(especially 90s and early 2k ones) as an art form because they make you feel so much passion and nostalgia. Just living in the space. I used to roleplay in the old games I beat. Playing them over and over even without any objective just because I loved the atmosphere. IDK something about early web video games, it really brings the 90s kids together. It was kind of like a giant change on earth. Back then those graphics were fucking INSANE. almost felt so real. Its crazy what we see now in video games, and it always makes me wonder where video games will be in another 20 years. But I love old games its like surrealism that you can kind of walk around in, and explore. I LOVE THESE VIDEOS SO MUCH. I found your channel last week and im ngl im obsessed. We play video games very similarly and think about the outside of the stuff they showed us. I want to see MORE of the stuff we weren't supposed to see. I want to know more about the worlds the games take place in. Like I wish I could know what was beyond the places we could look at in Zelda or Banjo Tooie. ASHDKJSF LOL SORRY FOR RAMBLING OTL
Halo is great because the sheer scope and scale of all the architecture is actually insane. Every building is fucking gigantic and empty. It's so unique.
So much time spent in Halo just exploring, but for me my favourite place is Halo 2, first level, when you go outside the station and fight the jetpack elites in low gravity. You can just go anywhere on the station and its surreal
Playing multiplayer maps by myself to enjoy the background and atmosphere is always a treat
The hair clips are multiplying
This right here is why Halo 3:ODST is one of my favorite games. They give you an entire city to just walk around in if you want, and I've spent hours doing that. Chock-full of odd and unremarkable places. Darkness, rain, distant jazz, and no humans anywhere. Unreal vibes.
I love that little room on the bridge,I always jump down there at the start of every run
Halo 1-3 had environments that were so expertly crafted, there was something about them that made you want to wander around aimlessly for way longer than they intended. Especially Halo 1. The coolest part of it was how you got see some places twice, before and after the flood start causing chaos. It was such a special feeling, the farther you progressed the more alone you were, even the covenant were getting wrecked by the flood... Halo 1 was such an experience.
You've gotta do one with Socom Fireteam Bravo 2. The multiplayer maps and even some spots in the campaign have a bunch of weird spaces that would be perfect for this series.
I appreciate all the interesting things I'm learning from you and I love these kinds of videos that focus on the slower, less in-your-face parts of games. Vibes are immaculate 👌
Halo has been my childhood franchise starting when I was 5.
It's the game I started my streaming channel with on twitch.
Very happy that the odd and rather remarkable places are being appreciated to this day.
PS: Turok Rage Wars is another game filled with odd and unremarkable places. ;)
This was a high quality selection, thank you. I played most of the games you peruse as a kid, but the entire Halo series is one I only played as an adult. My partner had me play straight through Halo 1 - 3, so I never got the time to stop and explore. I always liked the "nature" levels that showed a bit of the planets and life around the Halo world.
The Halo series has amazing environments! So fun to see you explore these unusual areas :)
I feel like Shadow of the Colossus would be perfect for this series.
i think the silent cartographer may be one of the most memorable video game maps ever made. I haven't played on it in well over a decade, but I can so vividly remember going up the internal rocky pathway in the deeper parts of the island and coming soon after to those two gigantic hunters in those old ruins and having a thrilling miniboss throwdown with them.
It really is one of the best examples of a semi-open world, a compact non-linear area that packs in fun content but lets you decompress and approach objectives in several ways.
5:53 is incredibly beautiful and surreal. Thank you for such a wonderful video. Soooo many feels.
"Hey I liked this video, you should make more videos like it!"
This is such an interesting exploration! There were so many places like this in Halo 2. There were holes in the invisible walls in many places that allowed people to really explore far outside the intended bounds of a given level. The way these spaces were discovered by most folks I think was the most interesting of all, in the early days of internet gaming you'd be paired up with random people who might be more interested in exploring the details of a level than fighting team vs team. Just weird accidental collaborations that would happen with strangers across space and time. The best days of Halo.
Combat evolved was my first fps game I played in my life I was in kindergarten at the time I’m 23 now I’ve had dreams of walking through halo maps and it felt so familiar and peaceful I’ll go back and play CE and older halos to reminds myself of good times and my childhood
I feel like a lot of the fascinating aesthetic dissonance of Halo comes fron the fact that it has the DNA of Ian M. Banks' Culture novels running all the way through it, not just in the basic idea of the ringworld but the attention to those beautiful vistas and views and cloudscapes and the pop of the blues and greens in the colour palette... But also it's made by a team who read the Culture novels and thought, "man, this would be a cracking setting for a special ops shooter." This dissonance is what I find so fascinating in all Bungie games really.
The first Halo really got the liminal space feel right. Empty, deserted and a little spooky but also somehow comforting.
One of my favorite levels to vibe out in eerie silence was always Two Betrayals. In the deep canyon past the ziggurat, after all the enemies were reduced to bloodstains on snowbanks, I would just hang around the ledge in the middle as the snow continued to fall and listen to the wind howl, almost musically, through the dark, icy canyon walls. To know that you too appreciated spaces in video games like this is deeply comforting to my soul.
0:48 I'd always hide down there and try to survive the Marines with the catch skull on... Ahhhh the memories
Dude i got to add you the breakdown in the beginning is hilarious and relatable. G mod and other weird linear 3d games the way they pause when u stop is always been something i love doing for the luls.
This is my favorite video series on all of TH-cam. I just thought I would let you know that. Your voice over and editing is perfect every time, and you find really nice liminal spaces in games we all loved
THIS IS THE ONE I WAS WAITING FOR, YESSSS
Tysm for covering my childhood exploration game!! I'd love to see you cover the other Halos too ^^
love doing this in games myself so it’s awesome to see someone else into it. Great video.
I totally get the vibe you're describing but I couldn't describe it honestly. Maybe it's a "growing up on Halo" thing.
Also, wanted to tell you I checked out some of your music and I've really been enjoying it. It's definitely a vibe. Keep up the great work man
Can you do a Skybox appreciation on Snowboard Kids?
That game fuckin is it’s own level of nostalgia for me, the sunset theme park level … the night cityscape level, the emotional music that just evokes painful nostalgia pangs at the same time as deeply pleasing your ears.
i used to just chill out in the ocean on silent cartographer when i was a kid. it gave me the exact feeling of when you go just sit on the floor of the deep end in a pool.
I would get this feeling back in the day as a kid playing Twisted Metal. there were areas of the map that just looked so mundane and had little details that stuck out the more you sat there. id be Mr Grimm when id want to go explore.
Found this channel due to this series. This might be my favorite so far, the vibes are just…weird. Keep ‘em coming!
I like the fact that when you stand atop that waterfall, you can see the river at the bottom go all the way out to the sea
Super cool vid. I knew Halo was a good fit for this. It's definitely empty and serene and its environments are very iconic, the palette and layout are def special imo.
that first place hit home lol
I never noticed how close the halo was though... neat
I find walking into the ocean on silent cartographer terrifying
The freeplay areas of MX Unleashed come to mind. They were so much fun to just explore