Gaming's Harshest Architecture: NaissanceE and Alienation
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- with the power of their lives while from the dim-lit halls of other places forms that could never be writhe for the impatience of the few who have never seen or been seen.
Follow me at / yacobg42
Patreon: / jacobgeller
Heterotopias: www.heterotopia...
Visual Media used: NaissanceE, Super Mario Odyssey, Blade Runner, Dead Space 2, Detention, Clustertruck, Proteus, Blame!, Why You Get Howls On Your Radio (1932, British Pathé), Power Pylons on Wappinger Creek (Milo Tsukroff)
Music: Interloper (Off-Peak, Cosmo D), Les Louves (Patricia Dallio), Lear (Pauline Oliveros), Prométhée (Thierry Zaboitzeff), Flight to LAPD (Blade Runner 2049, Hans Zimmer)
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This piece originally appeared as a written essay here: caneandrinse.c...
Check out Cane & Rinse for podcasts, written articles, and more caneandrinse.com/
I have pronounced Blame! wrong and thoroughly embarrassed myself.
It is with a heavy heart that I must officially inform you that you've been cancelled. My condolences to the loved ones you have left behind.
Woah I scrolled down here early on to mention that it reminds me of Blame! and saw this, better watch the rest of this vid i think
Update: vid is good and game is good i'm scared but i'm playing it
huh, I've played NaissanceE multiple times. I have never seen the 'grave room' and I'm usually someone who will sooner glitch out of the map than go to the exit before looking at everything.
Doesn't matter. Great review. Love Blame! Thank you
This architecture reminds me alot of this manga/movie called Blame!
EDIT: OH SHIT
those beautifull moments in life
Literally had the same reaction
same lmao
My reaction was about the same "what he knows Tutsomu Nihei!?"
I've been wondering if there is a Blame! game out there and I feel I have found it as close as it'll get. Gonna play this.
This and "Blame!" kind of remind me of "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" and Lovecraft's "Mountains of Madness"
At least in "Mountains of Madness", one can see its a "city" for things other than humans. But in NaissanceE it us just literally madness. Old traditions and biases mixed and poorly executed. Just a mass of things that serves no more purpose other than being there.
I can't help but disagree. "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is an incomprehensibly beyond us existential horror, yes, but it's also one featuring an aggressive entity. That entity exists only to destroy and can live no other way (as it was never built with that in mind), and it uses its complete control of the world to endlessly torture the few humans it kept, but that is something you can understand. Not agree with hopefully, but comprehend.
Naissance lacks an explanation. Naissance doesn't hold a particular grudge against you, nor does it want to feel the only kind of fulfillment it can, like AM did. Surviving is so hard because you just aren't meant to be there. You are an alien because the world was not made for you, it was made for reasons you will never really know because no one will ever tell you. You are not loved, you are not hated, you are not thought about at all. Not anymore, and maybe not ever.
Simular on paper, very different in essence.
It would be easy to look at how hard the game is and say "Well that's some obvious blatant aggression!" but that would be like saying the vacuum of space hates you because it would kill you instantly. The vacuum of space doesn't want to kill you, you were just never meant to be exposed to space.
@@hermitcrabguy29 he didnt say they were similar dude, he just said it reminded him
hahaha i just commented i had the same feeling
I had this same feeling about the design of portal 2. Both the modern testing facilities and the abandoned levels, it's so vast and empty most of the time I keep wondering how they get the resources to build these machines as so many of them get destroyed and rebuilt
By selling bathroom curtains.
Especially the very lowest levels of Aperture. Possibly my favorite environment in any game is when you emerge from somewhere below onto this field of rock, with massive car-suspension-type things supporting massive towers of test chambers. You can also find a map of that portion of the facility somewhere. It reveals that you're in a massive, multi-kilometer deep salt mine.
Oh yes I liked this athmosphere in Portal 2 a lot. It's like you see only a tiny portion of something that is unbelievable bigger.
I've only played a bit of the first game but I get the same feeling. It's all so unnervingly artificial and serves such a specific person that it set me on edge for a while, despite there being no present dangers.
@@erictheepic5019 Those are seismic springs. They are there to keep the facility stable during earthquakes. These are actually real too, facilities like the NORAD bunker use these to support their structures.
Also the multi-kilometer deep salt mines are also real. They exist both in Cleveland, where the first game claiemd Aperture was located and in Upper Michigan, where the second game retcons the location to.
I have to say, this video really resonated with me, and with one of my favourite manga/series.
Girls' Last Tour.
I think I understood after this video what it is that makes the world of Girls' Last Tour feel so alien, and yet so familiar all the while. Unnerving. It's the megastructure, it's the endless construction that is no longer meant for you.
And unlike these examples of NaissanceE and Blame, it's a structure that we can, to an extent, identify. It's like the inbetween of this alien and the natural of a populated city. It's stripped of its humanity, but its still not stripped of its familiarity.
I've been trying for a while to replicate it, through nature, and I think I understand why I've been failing.
Being dwarfed by nature is never the same as being dwarfed by architecture.
Shoujo Apocalypse Adventure is a fantastic manga, one that drove me back to level design purely so I could recreate it's worldsm even if I have, so far, failed.
Honestly, the cute girls angle is just the icing on the cake. The architecture, like Blame, is the true protagonist.
@@Otakumanu I Googled this "Shoujo Apocalypse Adventure" thinking that it was another manga or something that was similar to Girl's Last Tour, with a weirdly similar name. Turns out Google straight away shows it was the same thing lmao
@@Reydriel It's a more direct translation of the japanese title before "Girl's Last Tour" was made. I found out about the manga a t that time, so I still call t that :v
Your description of the world of Girls' Last Tour is so spot on. I think what you said helps explain why I was drawn to the world of that series: "It's stripped of its humanity, but its still not stripped of its familiarity." Like, the fact that the world is so familiar, but at the same time so perplexing and huge, there is just something about that that is so interesting to me. I want to explore it for some reason.
YEEESSS exactly i was reminded of girls last tour quite a few times while playing naissancee. the moments with the city-like structures extending into infinity below you while you're on the catwalks felt very girls last tour esque to me. if anyone is itching for more naissancee-like architecture they absolutely have to watch or read girls last tour. it's brutalism taken to the nonsensical extreme
I know I’m super late and I’ve come back to this video and this game many times. There are so many optional moments in this game, like the brutalist graves mentioned by Jacob.
The other two I found include:
A giant - and I mean GIANT, even for NaisanceE - room that holds one human sized doorway. You walk through and are met with the fact that the only wall/floor in this location was the 90 degree meet-up of where you just passed through. The only light is illuminating the doorway and nothing else. A white wall contrasted by an ever-stretching blackness just beyond where the lights could reach. When I experienced it, I walked into the dark... for minutes it was nothing... then... the same wall appeared despite me walking away from it and towards the dark. Confused, I figured I must’ve turned myself around and tried again, making sure not to change direction. I walk into the dark and find the same result, the same perpendicular wall with a singular human-sized doorway. I spent an hour or so walking into the dark only to be turned around to the same doorway, or perhaps lead to another perfect copy of the world. Maybe this was the center, maybe this was just another room.
Similar to the illusory giant room, this one also played tricks. As descent is a common theme of the game when I came across a standard staircase, albeit a bit tight, I figured it was par for the course. I descended and descended and descended. Getting bored I tried to optimize my descent, sprinting and breathing in time, cutting corners, jumping to increase speed or at least have fun within the monotony. I did this for way longer than I’m happy to admit before I realized... there is no end. As I slowed down, investigated the stairwell, and was promptly confused, I heard an occasional “ding” when passing by a certain area. Maybe I had to ascend? Surely not as I’ve already descended so far... as I stay there thinking, another “ding”, this one faster. I don’t move and more “dings” happen faster than the previous one until a door slides open and I’m left where I entered initially, making this whole section a tangential option.
I’ll refrain from including my thoughts about these optional places, but I truly think NaissanceE is a masterwork of applying meaning to things that don’t have them. Things happen because they happen, independent of your decisions. The point is how you react to them. How the player moves the mouse, how they slam the keyboard, how they play at all... or just watch a TH-cam video.
huh, I thought that staircase was a trap designed to waste your time until you eventually realise you're softlocked
I found that staircase and descended for several minutes too. Then I turned around and ran up for several hundred stories, looking at the doorway each time and never seeing it open. I'm pretty sure the door closes after you (or there's some warping shenanigans and the door is never recreated).
When I played NaissanceE, I was unable to forget that the game world was actually designed by a human so that players would be able to finish it. I thought of it in terms of some performance art piece with the designer doing something grander or harsher than the audience would expect. After I ran up and down the staircase for a while, I shrugged and thought, "You got me!" I reset the game and never waited long enough to hear the beep.
I often completely misinterpret unusual games like that. When I first played Dark Souls I looked at the expected route from Firelink Shrine towards Undead Burg and assumed that narrow stairway packed with soldiers and firebombers was not the intended first section of the game. I wandered down to New Londo and was killed by ghosts, then travelled pretty far into the Catacombs. Thankfully I saw a walkthrough video before giving up.
I never saw the graves but I did find the two things you said. The one I liked the most was the infinite black room, but the stairway was still really cool.
the staircase one is called "dumbchoice" in the save files, lmao. i didn't even have the audio up loud enough to hear the ding while i was in it, and escaped by complete chance because i'd tabbed out long enough for the door to have opened once i tabbed back in. i in general love the completely optional environments, many of which feel like they *should* be culminating in something, but ultimately never do, because naissancee defies even the familiarity of a typical narrative structure. every room, no matter how unique or grand you believe it to be, is just another room in this endless sprawling structure where each space holds no more importance than the last.
(and on a similar note, i love the moments where you finish this arduous, ridiculous, immense journey across a truly gargantuan part of the structure, something so infeasible that it seems totally unique in the world...and then after you emerge from the exit, you look back and see that it's symmetrical with another exit, implying that the massive space you viewed as one of a kind was nothing special in the grand scheme of the structure. such a fantastic way of adding a horrifying implied scale to the game)
I once landed on a planet in No man's sky that, from space, appeared to have land rendered onto it. When I reached the planet's surface, I became incredibly anxious. The planet was endless ocean. no matter which direction I flew, It was just water. There weren't even any islands to land on, just water in all directions. The fact that I was also playing in VR gave me a feeling I haven't felt since. It was incredibly eerie.
First i want to say, that i stoped watching the video after you showed the "not this way" room and went to download it my selfe, to play it just a little bit before progressing with this Video.
After going into the game unbiased i can absolutly agree with you, for some reason the game fills me with an unexplainable dread to a point where i can not play it for long streches of time. I have stoped playing the game about 10 minutes ago as i am writing this and i am still on edge, goosebumps and this tickeling sensation that you some times get when when you feel like you are in iminent danger. and all this while the game its selfe is not actively trying to kill you. at least so far every danger i faced was of a passive nature, falling to my death, getting stuck in a room with no Escape and things like that.
Anyways, pretty happy that i found this a few days ago on accident made me aware of a great game!
I did something similar. Heard that part and played through the ENTIRE game in one go, (today). It was one hell of a labor day experience, that's for sure.
Hi, just downloaded the game because of your comment.
I just don't know about the controls? I'm stuck in the menu, i can't select anything because my cursor doesn't appear. I'm playing in my laptop. Do i need a mouse?
Please help,
@@ThePress00 i used a controller so far and a mouse both of them work, i dont know about touchpad
@@ThePress00 Strange, I haven't experienced the mouse falling off/disappearing, though the full-screen option in graphics (or f11) could fix that. You can find controls within options if you don't figure it out with gameplay, and I think a mouse would help due to platforming and generally looking around.
@@ReinerEvans its fixed. I had a graphic tablet plugged in when I installed the game, so when I started it something must have gone wrong, because after I closed my laptop, I could use the keyboard and the cursor just fine.
Thank you guys!
(Got stuck like a minute into the game...)
Kenopsia _n._ the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that’s usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet-a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds-an emotional afterimage that makes it seem not just empty but hyper-empty, with a total population in the negative, who are so conspicuously absent they glow like neon signs.
The beauty of the alienation, of genuinly not understanding. I remember a scene from blame that just left me headache. It was just this particular moment kili and the girl had to go through an industrial build and took them more than a million of hours that just made me think about how much nothing there was to just skip it. Just like when kili turns off and the tiny voice wakes him up, he may have slept years or months until the other realized hey are you ok? how long was that?
thinking that those panels would flip time longer than many lives, how meaningless it was for the plot. Nothing changes, nothing. If anything it just gets larger somewhere but not change.
It is frigtening for some reason, maybe only for not being able to process it. Just like indian concept of complete infinity in any direction evenin one self.
Beautiful, alien.
I remember reading the manga, and feeling like... suns have come and gone in the time that killy has traversed this place, and for all of it, there was *nothing* to note. Just brutal in how mindbendingly massive it was. Like how killy came upon this area where he met a ai, or robot, of some kind, and it casually threw out the number of 400, 000, 000 kilometers for the size of it, and the next panel was months into the journey. The only thing that was notable of it, was that it was reality warpingly massive, that space itself ripped into itself. That manga is a total perspective vortex.
I have had this game sitting in my desktop for ages because I got stuck,you just convinced me to give it another go,thank you!
It can be very tricky to get through. Two tips to try and get through it yourself w/out looking up a walkthrough:
1)Check every freakin corner. Seriously, even when you know the path to take, checking alternate paths can be really cool and rewarding
2)If you get a hunch about a puzzle solution, follow it. The game does a good job of suggesting the solution passively/subconsciously
I'm in a part with a lot of dark spots and vertical climbing,so I have no idea what I'm even looking for.
Having seen your essay on Control and the Anatomy of the House, I feel this title deserves a place in that conversation about hostile environments!
Fruity Troll Roll YEP!!!
I played this game years ago, but I always come back to it every once in a while. I found this video on such an occassion, and it made me pleased to see that this game impacted more people than just myself. I realize that you're a small channel, but please, keep doing what you're doing. And I know the game may be less artistic than the ones you've analysed in the past, but I would love if you looked into a game called Tyranny, and gave your thoughts on its plot.
This is so kind, thank you Wromeo. I've heard really good things about Tyranny- always been intimidated by that kind of RPG, but my interest is piqued
This looks like it would be terrifying for me to play. Incredibly intriguing, but terrifying. But it also reminds of little game called Against the Wall, a bit. Mostly because of visuals, but still. There's also a big, impossible, man(?) made structure (yea, the WALL), which you're supposed to navigate. It's similarly very... eerie.
Either way - great video.
I've never played this game myself, but based on what I understand of it from this video, it has a similar atmosphere to one of my favorite point-and-click series, Submachine. A vast, enigmatic, seemingly long abandoned world, architecture with clearly purposeful design but no real function, massive and jarring shifts in environment and atmosphere... They both make you feel completely lost in places beyond your comprehension. Submachine has a lot more in terms of world-building, story and gameplay, though. It's nowhere near this level of abstraction.
I actually picked up this game because of the video, and after playing through it for a few hours, I'm getting *exactly* the same Submachine vibe. It's very *different* from Submachine's architectural and artistic style - Submachine's world is far more *human*, filled with out-of-place ancient architecture and buildings compared to NaissanceE's low-poly geometric megastructures - but you get a similar feel.
Yeah, NaissancE is what the Submachine might look like if it grew so big that all the trappings and ruins it had collected from human society were just utterly dwarfed into irrelevevance by sheer size alone.
A Submachine fan! It's not often I see someone on the internet who's familiar with the series. I thought of Submachine immediately when I watched this video.
I first saw this video probably 2 years ago, and played NaissanceE last year. For some reason, out of all the wonderful ideas presented in your videos, this one has stuck with me the most. There's just something about being completely dwarfed by the scale of the structure that's incredibly powerful to me, especially the final staircase. That room is so terrifyingly large that it feels like it could fit entire world, everything I have seen, everywhere I have been, my entire human perspective, it could hold all that and it wouldn't even make a dent.
I've recently subscribed to your channel and i find your ability to narrate and analyze games astounding! I admire the way you express this deep admiration and love for your subject matter in a way that can captivate an audience. I look forward to seeing more videos by you! I honestly can’t get enough!
Horror takes on many forms, but many cannot unravel the horror of feeling being lost in something so familiar as human-esq and yet so far removed. Reminds me a lot of SPC otherworlds, Endless yellow office or Ikea creepypastas. This game truly shows that just simple location, scale, and perception can be an outlet of horror if just tilted slightly off. Silence and questions is intrinsically much more terrifying then jump-scares and screams.
This is one of my absolute favorite games and it's almost impossible to articulate why.
Damn this channel is so well done. Should have more attention!
The idea of being in a graph with no other data points is so evocative to me…. unmoored from context that allows for analysis
So I remember adding NaissanceE to my steam library a few years ago and my little school laptop could barely handle it so I quit playing early on, but I had liked the idea. I've always liked the more abstract things. AAA doesn't always have the better imagination, in fact it usually seems to be the contrary... Anyway, so I ended up buying a gaming pc and had forgotten about the game when I came upon this video and was absolutely astounded that anyone would talk about an unknown title like that. I've been hooked on your essays ever since and this one along with your essays on Control/Anatomy and the Soul of a Library are my go to when I get writer's block. The current novel I'm working on has bits that are heavily influenced by the media you talk about and the insights you bring to light of them. Some of it I already knew and some you've introduced me to. You are appreciated for your open mind, and even if I never sell a single copy, I want you to know I'm thanking you. For some of us you are more than just a youtuber.
2 muxh ko- kane? Cell sum 2 da prezadent
The thing that always gets me about this game is how perfectly it resembles the places I wander through in my dreams. I was seeing spaces like this long before I ever knew this game existed, and then suddenly here they are, plucked directly out of my head and put on screen
love the use of the Blade Runner OST, I see you're a man of culture
I just watched your Universal Paperclips (amazing game!) video and this one. You have some amazing content that fits right into my niche. Keep up the great work!
Holy crap, this is a glorious video. Thank you, Jacob.
i wonder what it says about me that this is one of my favourite comfort videos. I always leave this video feeling quietly better than I arrived.
I'm so glad I stumbled upon this. I'd followed this for a while when it was in development, but lost touch with the project. I had no idea it had been released, much less for free. Thanks.
I think the earliest feeling I got similar to this was back when I was real young and I was playing Roblox’s version of Maze Runner (yeah, stupid I know). Once you knew the path out of the maze area you get greeted with the Outer Rim which weirdly fascinated me.
You’re finally out of the confusing and claustrophobic overgrown jungle and get put into an generously-open area only made up entirely of pure concrete with impossibly high walls and pillars. I think the best way I could describe how I felt back then was that it feels as though the maze itself was like an entity stretching itself from the center of the map, like it was losing power the more you got towards the outer walls of the maze.
When you talk about going back to school when it is empty, I too have shared that feeling in an old school of mine. I also get that that feeling in alley ways, it serves a purpose but not my purpose and overwhemingly I get that feeling when I walk into the alley way and imagine if the city the alley way inhabits was empty, how any of it would serve my purpose much like the alley way does and I feel like cities are horrors hidden in a convenience. Much like NaissanceE take the people away and any place but nature feels like it is truly scary.
The early parts of the video really reminded me of Blame! so it's cool there's that connection. This game looks extremely cool.
Coming back to this after your most recent video called back to it. This essay still slaps!
this is a concept that fascinates me as much as it disturbs me, and I relate to it a lot due to several dreams with settings like that throughout my life
NaissanseE is truly the most beautiful and life-changing game I've ever played. It's - in my interpretation - a place between the Death (beginning of the game) and Rebirth (NaissanseE without Re-). So many metaphoric there, so many personal experiences. And so many surprises. Is this world in the interim still inhabited? Have you stumbled upon that apartment amidst of the fake doors? A real, but concrete and colorless apartment with working room with PC, bathroom, and even a children's room incl. a Totoro-alike teddy on the loft bed?
Such encounters in the moments where you gave up to find any trance of human existence in this world make your heart jump. A game you can play again and again.
The tomb room is a reference to the cover of Art Zoyd's album Phase IV. The majority of NaissanceE's soundtrack was created by two members of Art Zoyd.
wow. that's really cool.
The world of NaissanceE strikes me as a world that was created FOR humans by something distinctly INhuman. It's the brutalist architecture version of AI generated art. It has so many recognizable features yet they obviously weren't created or imagined by somebody who ACTUALLY knew what they were for. There are apartments with beds made from the same souless, concrete-esque material as the rest of the world. Toilets and showers with no sign of actual plumbing. A concrete stove that was obviously never meant to heat up. There are stairs leading to nowhere. Buttresses that serve no purpose. Pipes that are obviously solid all the way through. Radio antennas that have never and could never pick up a signal. It's as if some incromprehensible alien AI examined modern architecture for twenty minutes and then went. "Okay humans, here's... a world, I guess."
At some point while playing the game, I came across this impossibly huge area I was supposed to climb down. On the way, I found a recess in the walls that led me to some sort of human-sized residential area. One of the rooms looked a lot like a bar: there was a little counter, some tables and some chairs lying around. I remember just sitting there for about 5 minutes, collecting my thoughts, my brain desperately trying to reattach itself to something familiar.
My friend and I recently broke our co-op multiplayer save of green hell in a really odd way. Whenever we re-loaded the game we landed outside the map of the in-game world and on the part of the map that was a left over from when the creators started desining it. It was so vast we had to walk along the outer line with it's endless white abyss beneath it for almost half an hour in real time. At a certain point there were let-me-try-out-this-tool-for-rasing-the-ground structures without working textures and low graphic flying background trees you could walk right though and at a certain point you randomly started swimming in the air. It took us so long to finally finde the actual part of the map that was the in-game area... And then we couldn't get in. Every part that was remotely enterable had a kill switch. While those were originally designed to keep players from swimming out of the map they now made it impossible to go back in and return to our almost finished game. Green hell is a survival game were you have to eat and sleep to stay sane and alive. Both our character were complete insane and slowly starved to death desperately trying to get back into their reality but we're condemned to those "no one will ever come here" leftovers of gods trying out their tools.
These documentaries of yours are brilliant and hauntingly beautiful.
My worst recurring nightmare when I was a kid was being trapped in cube barely large enough for me that was constructed with dense and heavy metals. This video gave the same fears I remembered from that terrifying nightmare.
What an awesome idea and premise. I love it
you know, this weirdly reminds me of a middle grade book i read a while back, "the lost girl" by anne ursu. tonally it's pretty much exactly the opposite of naissanceE or blame!, all about girl power and sibling love, but there was this one bit i vividly remember where the main character talks about her sister living in a world that's "not made for her". she was very creative and cared about everything around her to a fault, and i immediately read her character as neurodivergent, it just made sense to me to read her that way. i think existing in a world that's clearly manmade but without comprehension, has strict rules but without any hint as to what those may be, is a very neurodivergent feeling, i dunno how to explain it, great video man i love you
The game makes me feel like i am in the city of the Elder Things in the Lovecraft book, "At the Mountains of Madness". It sings to me of a vast world that cares not and knows not of me or my wants. It comforts me with the unending labyrinthine expanse that heeds no victory of mine as it ignores my many failures. the Anxiety of playing is the gentle soft ache that calls me back to it even now. This not the Abhorrent City of R'ilyeh Twisted and hiddious, but it may be its gentler cousin. Its vast non-euclidean networks, its uncaring vast sprawl, I love it, and it tolerates my passing.
This is how I feel about the world of Charn in The Magician's Nephew. Cold, dead, inhospitable, reason behind everything long since forgotten.
unohoo09 i read that book so long ago, but i remember that feeling
So, I have been thinking about writing a book and I have been looking for another contemporary sentiment or analysis like the one you just provided for this game. While the actual aesthetic of the game is completely different from what I am thinking of, the general feeling it gives you is almost exactly what I am looking for. Massive structure, effort, and purpose. All lost in the absence of its creators or subjects. Hopefully I am picking up what you're putting down. But, I am glad to see other people can at least get what I am attempting to go for. Very nice!
Hi! Great video. Can I show it to my students in class?
100% yes!
This game's a gem. I want more of this.
Have you seen the Shinya Tsukamoto film "Haze?" In fact, many of his films play with shots of architecture in a way I think you would appreciate.
Seeing footage from the game Detention proves to me once again that you are a man of good taste.
I don't know how many people know of it, but there's a series of flash games called The Submachine Series that kind of have the same themes as NaissanceE. It's a series of point and click puzzle games, but it does instill the same sense of dread and isolation as NaissanceE and Blame.
I, at least in theory, like making games for fun, though I rarely finish them, but for a long time I've wanted to make an endlessly generated castle that stretches on endlessly. I always liked the idea of walking barren, empty halls, and then eventually coming upon a staircase that lead you to one of the millions of towers that stretched on as far as the eye could see. needless to day this game looks like it'll scratch that itch with a lot less work from me.
You seem to literally be Coda from The Beginner’s Guide.
There is a fan-made sequel that the creator of NaissanceE himself recommends. It's called VoyageE by Moshe Linke.
The whole "world not being designed for you" thing gives me rain world flashbacks.
Just finished the game. It was a wild ride, but “hostile” is right.
I didn’t feel good after playing. Maybe it was one too many deaths, the sense of “what does the developer want me to DO?!” increasing with every respawn atop a rotating fan shaft randomly blowing me backwards into the blades.
Antichamber did this better and had actual puzzles, plus its use of the camera and negative space was masterful.
Superliminal did this better with a plot about dreaming and managed to fool me with its visuals multiple times. There is a perfect “running” sequence that convinces the player to move faster and panic through nothing but music and visual illusions.
But even though having the world tilt around me as I run from the “Host” was cool, it felt like the game was actively fighting me with its first-person controls. And with little to no story to engage with, I felt demoralized the further I went, the only thing keeping my hands on my mouse and keyboard obsessed curiosity.
If that’s the feeling the dev wanted, fine. But save for the interlude with the lightning echoing on the bridge, this game was _unfun_ to play, and that’s just not right.
I think the most unsetteling part of NaissanceE for me was that in the going down chapter, during the catwalk+corridor section, shortly before the wall slug section, you can find a completley normal apartment room and a bar. Its all greyscale like everything else, but its terrifying for its implication
I literally only found that room like a week ago and was like "what the absolute hell is this"
@@JacobGeller Exact same reaction! Great videos btw :D
I needed this to understand how I feel about this game. Thank you
the architecture and world of this game also reminds me of the anime movie Angel's Egg. The shots of huge, empty, gothic architecture in that movie give me the same lonely, but curious feeling.
Watching this makes me think of Manifold Garden, looks like a game that may be prime material for a new Jacob Geller video 👀
Played this game years ago (before it became free, got it in a bundle) and found it unique and fascinating, then like a couple years later I came across the anime adaptation of Blame! on netflix and thought it looked remarkably similar but never bothered to look into why. Now that I know that NaissanceE was inspired by Blame! it all makes sense.
Trust me, the manga is so much better. The anime changed to much to keep the same feeling of the artist who wrote the story
Thematically this reminds me of the "no one is in charge" speech from the movie Cube (1997). An oppressive industrial death trap that only exists to justify itself because the people building it didn't want to ask questions and risk losing their jobs.
My god, that shot of the power lines made me think of Paratopic, speaking of incredibly unsettling games.
Blame! is my favourite manga of all time and as soon as I saw footage of the game I recognised it. Will DEFINITELY give this a try. Thanks for the recommendation!
I want to say for finally giving me a bit of closure on this game. when i originally played it, i didn't get why i felt so unsettled, i was too young to really understand the ideas you mentioned. and thanks to you, not only can i go back and replay it, i can appreciate it for the work of art it is. Now that i'm older and have more experience. i can't wait. Also great work on the video. there really is not much i could say other than, maybe a little work on the thumbnails.
Kinda reminds me to Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou (Girls' Last Tour) in which the protagonists just wander around looking for resources to survive in a lifeless mega-structure finding a lot of artificial constructions they don't know what their purpose are, but they just don't even care because everything they see seems to be irrelevant at the end of the day.
NaissanceE reminds me of the progenitor structures in Subnautica.
This, Portal, Shadow of the Colossus, Monument Valley 1 and 2, Ozymandias, and so many more things all have created a certain image in my mind that I absolutely love. It's the idea that something or someone once built these vast works long ago, but their purpose is now irrelevant and incomprehensible. The people are gone. Their thoughts and memories are gone. Their dreams are gone.
All that remains are their monuments.
Could you tackle Girl's Last Tour? it's not so hauntingly lonely-- in fact, it makes the post apocalypse seem almost comforting, even though the characters always have to worry about food and gas and water. There are also ruins of stacked buildings, odd empty apartments that the girls play house in, great fish farming factories manned by only a single robot, and culturally significant places robbed of their culture. I'd be interested about what you have to say about it, especially the manga
NaissanceE is much like the way you view caves. The environment has no clear purpose, but is always just passable.
"The world is not built for you, but you must survive it all the same." This thesis about architectural alienation, and that sentence especially, really resounds with the experience of being disabled in an increasingly ableist world.
I'd actually be really curious to use this thesis for the sake of discussing and educating about ableist architecture - buildings that aren't made with disabled people in minds are telling us that we don't belong.
nice. I love your explanations
when I played this game I would start having small anxiety attacks when having to breathe in game. the breathing made me realize that I'm still human in this massive, empty world that I don't understand. I found myself lost in the size and architecture but at the same time worried about all the souls that are missing and what everything's purpose was. what did everything serve? what was their purpose? as you said, it's just there to be there, and that was one of the scariest parts...
I'm scared of space and endless places. I look up into the sky and feel worried. I will never even be able to know what is out there and what it is like.
the desert at the end brought a calm that was different from this though. I looked up and saw the limits of the sky. I knew it continued forever on a horizontal plane and I could always find out what was there if I needed to, but the sky relieved me. I knew that something was there, and i understood that I did not have to worry about something I could never know. that was one of my favorite parts of this game. you could wander and wonder forever, but it always is just there to be there, and once you understand that, everything in there makes sense.
I hope I explained this well... I have the thought process down, I just can't explain it well haha
It reminds me quite a bit of the buildings in Dr. Seuss's books that I used to just stare at growing up. All the little unnecessary twists and turns or corners and catwalks always had a strange effect that made me feel like no human would ever design like it. Really odd feeling.
I played this game after watching the video and ugh. Thank you Jacob, thank you for putting this game in my brain, I never would've found it otherwise, but this game is so beautiful I get lost in the landscapes and in the time of the world around the player.
1:27 we used to have these organized sleepover parties at my school growing up, specifically to recontextualize the place, i think
Amazing work
glad i was able to find your video about it.
There should totally be a vr version of NaissanceE.
I'd call this genre Architectural Lovecraftian
Nihei was originally wanting to be an architect, but you can imagine why his designs didn't pan out in real life.
I wanted to play this game before watching your video, and it was such a weird and interesting experience.
So many times it gave me the same feeling you get when running from the kitchen to your room, after turning off the lights
I was scared, terrified even, but of what? I had no idea..
So many times did it shock me, brutalize me and scare me, but I had to keep going forward..
I also noticed I had a different experience in some aspects, I never saw the part that said "not this way" maybe I didn't take the wrong turn?
I also didn't see the graveyard..
But I found a room that, after a few meters stretches into infinite darkness. Then I ran into it, and it didn't stop, and I turn back and the door I came through was just so far away, so I ran to it, absolutely terrified with the feeling that something was running behind me, without the power to turn back..
I also found a room with a plush of totoro, watching static on the TV, and it had a really relaxing music, and that too, unsettled and terrified me..
I also found some stairs that went both up and down, I decided do head down and did so for a few minutes, without any change, then I decided to run back up, I did for maybe 10 to 15 minutes, without ever finding the door I came through, so I reloaded my previous save, and went back to these stairs then I headed up, for maybe one or two floors, then went back, the door was gone.
The floor I could swear I came through was now exactly like every other one above, and below me
I felt like the game hated me, that I was not welcome, and it just felt... terrifying.
I also wrote a bit more in a steam review earlier today steamcommunity.com/id/Rainbow_Dark/recommended/265690/
Thanks for this cool video. I really liked Naissance (and Blame!) ^^
I really hoped for a sequel, to explore more of this strange world. Sadly, this never happened.
moshelinke.itch.io/voyagee
Between this, the anime adaptation, and a short-lived project by one Bac9, I wonder what inspired BLAME! in the first place. long before you mentioned it, I saw the inspiration in the aesthetic, the concept, the feel... It seems like a uniquely striking concept, a genuinely new idea that sticks with people like little else. How did that happen?
I can actually answer this one. First, you're probably somewhat aware that Nihei was somewhat studied in architecture so the drive behind Blame!'s art is clear. He studied at a art school in New York for almost a year, so the unbridled brutalism and stunning scope of his art can be seen as exaggerations of his experiences there.
While drawing Blame, he also worked part-time for an architectural firm, and before he went to New York he worked at a construction firm.
While I don't know if he was a huge scifi fan before writing Blame!, I can gather from interviews, especially these two: www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2016-08-26/knights-of-sidonia-mangaka-tsutomu-nihei/.105800
mangabrog.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/a-2016-interview-with-tsutomu-nihei/
that he was indeed aware of scifi as a genre and also was a fan of Gibson before writing Blame! In fact, he began writing Blame! right around the time when cyberpunk was fully becoming recognized as a distinct genre: the late 90s. Neuromancer, a seminal cyberpunk work, was written in 1984 for example.
That interview I linked I above also shows that Nihei actually knew of Naissancee, but wasn't aware that it was influenced by Blame! until the interviewer told him. I really recommend you read those interviews, Nihei actually does go into his motivations and reasons for writing Blame!
His rough and starkly contrasted artstyle with thick lines and dark shadows are very clearly influenced by Tsutomu Takahashi, who he was an assitant to for 5 months while Takahashi was working on Jiraishin, a grim crime drama manga. I reccomend you check it out, it's pretty good, and there are undeniable similarities to Killy in Jiraishin's main character.
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The lone wanderer trope has existed for ages as well so Killy's inspiration isn't all that surprising.
The idea of an artificial megastructure has also existed in scifi for quite some time, so any scifi fan worth their salt like Nihei undoubtedly was would have known of that concept.
But there's one more piece of the puzzle. Some guys on reddit managed to find two works- The CIty, a comic by James Herbert, and the novel Great Sky River by Gregory Benford. There is no confirmation as to whether Nihei is even aware of these two works. But both having remarkable similarities to Blame!
The thread goes into more detail on the similarities here: www.reddit.com/r/Netsphere/comments/a31cb0/james_herberts_the_city_and_blame/
**In summary**: Architectural student who likes scifi quits his job decides to draw manga instead. Lived in new york, which explains the brutalism, likes scifi which explains the scifi elements of Blame!
Blame! is probably not a completely new idea. It's elements, character archetypes, scifi tropes and technologies, even art style, have all been explored in various other scifi fiction to varying degrees. However, Blame! did remain popular enough as a cult classic to even get that Netflix movie, and it's clear that Nihei has a distinct appeal given the popularity of his later works
@@joshualin5476 thank you so much for all of this great info! I'm currently on a quest to find as much media that is similar to NaissanceE and Blame! (hence why i'm so far down in the comments lol) and this comment was really helpful! I'm definitely gonna read those interviews and check out those works mentioned from Reddit. Seriously, thanks so much for taking the time to write out such an in depth answer, I hope more people get to see this!
Thanks to this video I’m now halfway into “Blame”. And all I can say is that I ever never been so confused yet entertained. Thank you
That's the vibe! I totally could not tell you what it means, but I love it.
Kentucky Route 0 has a couple of buildings like this. They're bureaucratic in nature which is also fitting. You don't get to explore them though, but that unclear inside-outside dynamic is definitely there.
You must have the coolest steam library in history
there's an anime/manga that sorta shares this form of architecture called "Girls Last Tour"
you described very well what i felt in game !
obviously this is a Very Old video, but 10:57 is honestly this is the best point that highlights why i do not like cyberpunk AND why i love that deeply disturbing and yet touching feeling that empty and endless structures have going on.
cyberpunk aesthetics always seem to rely on the concept of "yellow peril" and the concept of east asian (specifically japanese) technology reigning as overlords to the entire (western) world. this aesthetic can capture the fear of the unfamiliar and alien to, idk, white people maybe but as an east asian the only element i get to experience is the racism because this "unfamiliar" is familiar. not only this, but what cyberpunk is REALLY getting at is that capitalism is what will really swallow us whole, not the structures themselves. it's only the use of the vaguely unfamiliar designs of something familiar to make us feel hopeless. i mean, even in the short amount of the blade runner clips shown in the video there's literally a geisha's face in more than half of them. unmistakably human, and yet used as a prop to show how unfamiliar and uncanny the world is. thats a real human face!! how can that really be used to show the inhumanity of what the world has become??
meanwhile, the designs of NaissanceE and Blame! are just empty. sure they can be traversed and occasionally, like the "grave site" place in the game, there are hints of human experience. but those hints are what makes you feel as if theres and even more monumental sense of loss (loss of humanity, loss of the familiar?). maybe the best thing is it doesn't depend on xenophobic presuppositions in order to establish a sense of heart-ache and emptiness.
I need this game... NOW
("Blame!" is one of my favorite mangas, i love it sooooo much)
It's free on Steam, so... go get it! ;-)
Reminded me of The Beginners Guide's last level.
Honestly both this and Blame! give me reallly similar vibes to the architecture of Rain World, though that game handles the philosophy behind its architecture and the way you navigate its world much differently. (I would really love to hear your thoughts on Rain World, by the way)
I played this game because of this video, and i loved every second of it up until the very end (Game physics are weird when the frame rate of your computer is inconsistent).
It reminds me of an game that you might find interesting, it's called Kairo. It has some similar vibes to NaissanceE and I think you would like it, Jacob Geller and/or person reading this
I have a theory the Builders in Blame might not have been insane at all
a nonliminal liminal world. A world that seems to have been built, but wholly uninhabitable by any *known* species. What you get is an experience that is familiar but all too... *alien*
This is my biggest fear, lack of civilization where it should be abundant. End of world survival games always end up being horror for me when you have to walk through a big city or a town. (last of us ended up being genuinely spooky for me and honestly I'm glad because it's my favorite game of time)
Shout-out to the NITW background, nice taste
for those who liked naissanceE I'd also recommend a game called Kairo. Not quite as visually polished but it gave me a similar sense of scale and emptiness.
Reminds me of The Beginners Guide's level The Tower.
ooooh that tower gives me chills
This reminds me of Minecraft infinite snapshot's warp dimensions, especially warp bridges, warp library, warp sponge, and warp tunnels
I hope there will be a VR version to the game.
I remember getting stuck on one of the game's puzzles like 7 hours in. Still haven't gone back. I love the mystical dread that inhabits that world, but at the same time it is uncomfortable to be in!