If you play Frostpunk and get to the end-phase of a campaign, this song is truly haunting; you've built your city, stockpiled your resources, zoned everything as perfectly as you can, handed out edicts to help survival as much as possible. The final phase *has no gameplay*. You *sit there*, waiting for your city to either survive the ultimate cold front, or fade into silence. This song is all that plays during the sequence. The anxiety you feel is palpable; you're not sure if there was more you could have done, more you could have made, better ways to have played.
You can still do some things to ensure success during the storm, most of them related to coal management (specially if you didn't gather too much coal) deciding when to make the overdrive kick in, and choices in some scripted events that can give you a bit more time during a critical situation. Of course, once you master the game and learn how to properly prepare for the Storm in advance, the game becomes much easier, but the first time you reach this moment and The City Must Survive starts playing in loop mode... oh boy, I think that I never felt more helpless than that day. Amazing soundrack, the chills make you think that you are going to freeze as well.
@@Chocoboengorilado yeah you're right. On my first time, most people were still in the bunk house, the steam engine was only at level 3, food all ran out. I looked on the screen, it was ~500 people are freezing (about ~100 people died before that, and I didn't save enough people during scouting). That hurted me so much, it was like entire the city was waiting outside of the medical tent. Oh f*ck that I thought I gonna lose but it is magically my city survived.
This part of the game is literally just about holding out and surviving a massive storm. There is nothing you can do to fight it. Nothing you can do to lessen its effects. The sheer power of nature has come to unleash its wrath upon you and you must sit there, keeping your city alive at all costs, while the temperature drops to well below -100°C and your city begins to come apart at the seams. All you can do is hold on, and wait for it to end. This song is nature telling humanity to lay down and die, but humanity refuses.
That's what makes it so intense. What you've stockpiled is all you've got. And it's not enough for everything, so you have to manage, you have to make sacrifices, cut certain corners just so that the city can go on. At that point you can't change what you have, you can only watch it slowly dwindle and *pray* that whatever preparations you've made will be enough. Despite being a building sim, it's one of the most intense games I've ever played.
When Humanity is pushed to near extinction. That is when Humanity is at it's strongest. Our Stubborn defiance to live will make us fight even a god to survive.
"You need wood to build buildings Dont forget about the coal though! Oh no, your citizens need medical posts because they getting frostbitten. Dont forget about the coal though! You need food, so have some people to man hunters post and cookhouse Dont forget the coal though!. Steel, you need steel to build advanced buildings & research. Do we have enough steel? DONT FORGET ABOUT THE COAL THOUGH!!" ~bricky.😂😂
the most interesting thing is that coal is very good source of heat in extreme temperatures due to one of the highest ignition and burning temperatures (higher that gasoline or wood, lower that natural gas still). so, if i would have a choice wood, gasoline or coal at -150 i would prefer coal there.😅
@@namesname7315 At this temperature, the c02 produced by burning fuel would freeze into dry ice. That's why the fact that your city runs on coal is worrying.
@@lilygail5569 while furnace is running it's all ok because air is not perfect thermal conductor ;-) but if they would add mechanics preventing hypothermal ignition, it would render game unplayable 😀
Sir, it's a miracle! The man who went looking for his daughter is back. He brought her with him! He says that he found her soon after leaving the city, but then they got lost and had to wait for a lull in the blizzard to find their way back. They are both exhausted and frostbitten, but very happy.
Frostpunk is a city building simulator but still managed to be one of the most intense gaming experiences i've ever had. Amazing game with an incredible OST.
Supposedly, if you want everyone to survive in a no death run, you gotta build enough hospitals and robot doctors to house the entire city, in addition to enough food, coal, and a spare steam core.
Son: "Hi dad, I have a question. Why did mom name my sister Rose?" Dad: "Well son, a rose is your mother's favourite thing, so she named your sister Rose." Son: "Ah that makes sense, thanks dad!" Dad: "No problem... *Violin Section of the City Must Survive Song* "
@@Argentum_Rex ironically enough i just watched brickys vid on it as i didnt know it existed prior, and i shit you not this fucking joke is the reason im even here right now.
One of my favorite game soundtracks of all time, the immersion is insane, it's as if you were in the city and felt the impending doom of the storm and struggle for survival
I remember when I first got to this stage of the game, with that track on a loop. I had failed six times, and far too many set backs to be counted. I had managed to save up some coal, the health care infrastructure is absolutely overwhelmed, and dwindling food storage that already had little left, and the worst part was that it was just the beginning of the end. I saw that all I had to do, was get it past two weeks, just last two weeks. I understood in order for the city to survive I needed to triage the sick, so the strain on my medical infrastructure would at least lessen, and to make all the left food last as long as possible, I had to turn off heating in places where it was way to frozen and open up the cookhouses for the last time so they would cook up all the raw food that was left. At first it seemed as it was enough, but discontent kept growing, as the sick skyrocketed in numbers, I had to execute one of the people, it wasn’t the first time, but this made me question myself, if I had done this instead of that, I wouldn’t have needed to sacrifice this many people in the name of survival, but I was the only one who could have gotten them this far. I needed to fear monger for a little while longer until everything goes back to normal. The bells kept ringing as the death toll kept on getting bigger, a realisation came even if the city survives there will be to little amount of people to even enjoy it, but there was nothing I could do about it now, all I can do is wait. Then there was a riot in the city, asking of me either to build another infirmary, or to treat all of the sick, of course it was problem that I couldn’t ignore and it was a pretty sizeable group, but I couldn’t address it either, so I had to dispatch the guards, of course this wasn’t optimal, but I didn’t have the resources to build another infirmary, and the sick weren’t going to disappear no matter what, they had to go back to work and stop slacking of. As time passed I was losing hope that my city would survive, the already low supplies were getting lower, with coal being an exception, as it was falling visibly slower. I know I could have done better, I could have done everything better, but I definitely could have done worse like those other six times, but the question was: what exactly could have I done better? As I pondered about that, many people died, it made me feel guilty, I wanted to say that it wasn’t my fault, or that there wasn’t anything I could have done, but the fact is there was something I could’ve done, and in turn it meant that it was my fault, only if I knew better what I was doing, or had known what was going to come of it, or even what was going to happen. At the end I could have only blamed no one else, but myself. The end of the storm was near but death was nearer, with temperatures dropping to -150°C, starving, cold, and gravely sick people, pulling threw the coldest storms, surviving on shear will and spite, surviving against all odds and pushing threw the hardest times. I was honestly surprised how they managed to survive this long, with the frozen shut infirmaries, but the end was near, and we’re on humanities last hair, the last city on earth, just a little while longer, and we could see the end of the finish line, we were so close, and we survived, but not without a cost. Over a hundred and seventy people died, doesn’t seem that much but all of us were the last humans, in the last city, on the frozen wasteland called earth, with about 67 left, and in the end there was a question, was it worth it?
You can imagine the firemen screaming at the shovelers to keep shovelling coal while the engineers are trying to tease out every bit of warmth from the Generator without making it explode… And the stockpiles dwindle rapidly…
My interpretation of the falling violins that keep falling is that they're meant to represent the drop in temperature. Because when you think it couldn't drop anymore (See: when it's -120), it suddenly "goes up again" (aka it seems warm in comparison to what's to come) and THEN drops again. It just keeps dropping. and you don't know when it's going to stop
To me the violins bring to mind the pistons of the generator pumping as it works beyond its limits to create steam. To push out every ounce of heat it can into the city like it's beating heart
The klaxons blare their shrill alarm, steam whistles screaming defiantly through the still air of the city; then the people scream too. The Coal mines empty of workers as fast as the Foremen orders them to, the engineers set the Automatons to automatically feed the furnaces, greasing their gears and praying it’s enough. City Watchmen call out and guide the citizens into their homes, before retreating to their own while they can. No drunkard dare step outside nor riot fill the street; Not this Night. The orphaned children lay huddled in corners of the Boarding house, and sickly patients stacked from floor to ceiling in the hospital draw quiet save the occasional moan or cough, the Doctors quietly turning to Prayer over Medicine.. The last of the Airships are stowed in their hangars, as the Hunters make safe their Zeppelin Steeds, and the City Beacon; shining aloft to guide the final Scouting party home; is hastily lowered from the sky as the last hint of blue is swiftly engulfed by Black; They won’t be coming home.. Doors slam shut, windows are shuttered, and every lantern, wood stove and coal furnace is alight tonight. As the Streets go dark, the Frost descends into the City like a Wrathful Biblical Spirit, and no amount of lamb’s blood over the doors will keep the Specter of Death at bay. Glass shatters from the instant chill, walls and shutters buckle and shake, as cold gusts force through every gap in every wall, no matter how small, piercing like knives regardless of how many blankets or Furs you hide in. The Captain feels his sweat freeze to his brow, even as he carefully watches every gauge and pressure check of the City’s Steam Core, it’s Iron Bulkhead glowing red hot, and streaks of yellow as it threatens to blow. Entire streets are buried in drifts of snow, those trapped in their homes soon find themselves as frozen statues clinging to dying furnaces. The heated Greenhouses buckle under the wind, killing all the irreplaceable crops instantly. The last automaton slumps in the street, spilling its final load of coal uselessly in the street as its clockwork limbs seize up. The Cleric says one final prayer for his congregation, all their drawn desperate faces looking toward him, pale, eyes unblinking and flecked with ice, not one of them draws breath. One Engineer braves the cold and stumbles to the City Core, his legs unfazed by the cold, as he lost them to frostbite months ago, only to Find the Core bleeding steam and pressure valves bursting, the Captain still valiantly sitting at his post, frozen dead at the Core controls, a hasty barely legible note scrawled beside him. ‘I tried” A flash of White in the Deafening Black, the final Breath as The Last City of Man… Dies.
this song feels like an arduous march. where if you fall, you die and those with you WILL leave you behind, as they can't spare the strength to carry you, its as simple as that. haunting, truly.
This is boss music...for a storm. For the weather. Thats the kind of scenario it is, You can not kill it, you can not reduce it, all you can do...is survive. The City must Survive.
Some would call this boss fight music. But there is no fight. There is only a boss. And there is nothing you can do except batten down the hatches and keep your hand firmly frozen to the overdrive lever
As someone who grew up with winter storms that I loved listening to, those little moments of tension relief are like the lulls in the wind that you get to hear every ten or so minutes, the wind gives a brief lull and then starts howling again. Its like you listen to the storm breathing in the song.
I won’t ever forget my first city. All I could do was watch as my city slowly died out with this song playing. It was slow. But horrific to know I could have done better. I should have been more strict and pushed my people to survive.
Whats great about the Frostpunk OST in its whole is theres a few leitmotiffs that happen in various songs and all portray a different emotion, either by dread, somber, hopefullness, existentialism. Its a worth checking out in whole.
I'm in America, so I used the Fahrenheit option. Around -190 is when the storm lightened slightly. And then it dropped. And kept dropping. That was the most helpless I'd ever felt in a game, unable to stop a natural event from happening. It finally stopped at -234°F, but those 5 secodns felt like 5 hours. There was nothing I could do. The amount of futility the storm hits you with in the few hours of -150 C/-234 F is insane. Even with a fully stocked city, there's a thought that resurfaces constantly that screams, "You will die." In those 5 seconds the temperature drops, you have no idea how far down it will go. I've nevrr feared the cold before I heard The City Must Survive and suffered thrigh those few hours early morning.
i like to think of the violins as humanity, the bass as the cold, the bass.... the cold hammers down constantly, overtaking everything, but every single time the strings, humanity, is at the end, pushing through the storm
This entire track is genius. The string section is a variation of the opening theme of the game, when you start building your city. It's contemplative and filled with expectation: "What will you do?" Then, at the end, after you've had to make all sorts of horrible decisions to keep the city alive one more day, it returns saying "What have you done? Was it worth it?" And, like other commenters pointed out, this plays during the final crisis, where a humongous storm falls down on the city and you can do nothing but endure it and pray that all you did to prepare was enough. Even those tension releases you pointed out fit into this: it's your city faltering. It's those moments where you fall down to one knee and wonder "can't I just give up?", only for the tension to start building again as you clench your fist and keep walking. You can't give up, the city must survive.
This track comes at the final event for the city where a super cold storm threats to wipe your city and the last of humanity. The whole section its intense since you are on your last food reserves, coal and the power plant its on overload....your citizens are struggling and dying and may riot. Any wrong step and your city its doomed. Its a very fitting track for the whole situation. I loved it every second
I still vividly remember sitting and staring in slack-jawed panic as the storm approached its peak and I saw *even more* temperature drops upcoming. This music is part of what of what made that emotional crescendo in the game so impactful, and even now years later it never fails to give me goosbumps.
I think the best way to explain how the music goes is at the beginning. Feels like a warning that there is an impending doom coming that you cannot prepare yourself fully and then it dies down and then when it hits the top Mark again in a sense. That's when you the player start tries to fix all your your Cole buildings and your hot houses and then as the music goes on it just feels like so much dread has entered the room but there's just a gleaming bit of Hope that you could make it but you don't know cuz tension and panic is tinkering at every single interval. At least that's how I interpret it
Sad that nobody seems to look at Into the Storm as a companion piece, or really look at it at all. It's also a great song and is quite important as a general representation of the state of things.
Thank you for reacting to this song, absolutely the most memorable moment of that game was when the final countdown begun and that (what I can only assume was) violin solo came on that shit blew me away, I love this song.
But you must not cross the line, do everything you can to never cross that line and get that golden ending. How can people want to survive if they aren't free? How can people survive if they aren't given rules to follow, orders to do things that will end up helping everyone, or something to believe in that drives them forward? Its a balancing act, rules vs freedom, order vs liberty, but if you thread that needle and maintain the straight course the people will make it through, and the city _will_ survive. And of course, the father at the end, if you sent him out prepared to rescue his daughter, he returns, in weather so cold it should've frozen his skin right off his bones, holding his dear daughter, both alive and saved. What power Man has in our souls to persevere through any tribulations so long as we believe we can do it, what sheer force of will we can harness to do anything we put our minds to of our own free will. That part is so impactful since we've seen such levels of sheer will getting people to survive things that science tells us should've killed them without question, but yet they survived and eventually recovered to keep on living. Its a unique aspect of Mankind, we have that special something to defy nature and biology and tell it that its wrong, it says we should be dead, we tell it to just watch us and witness the strength of belief and our will!
Only on my actual playthrough of the game did I finally clock that the entire arrangement is supposed to be a take on Nature vs Industry. The string ensemble taking plenty of cues from Vivaldi's winter and representing the storm/wind, the deep and bassy brass being the counterpoint of this raw coal burning blot on the landscape trying it's very best to be heard through the strings. The intro is heavily string dominated with the brass growing into the piece before we get the excellent call-response around 2:49 and the polyphonic fight at 3:10. Eventually nature wins completely in the finale (final section of the game is impossible to heat your city, just waiting for the storm to pass over). Really incredible piece and I love when the story it tells is so clear as long as your ears are open!
Survival at any cost. That is the message I hear when listening to this. Piotr Musiał did a great job at putting what I feel like would be the emotions of every single person in your city as they try to wait out the freezing storm, not knowing their own fates and hoping they are prepared for a storm they stand no chance against alone. I don't know the terms for things like this but I like how it has low notes that sorta jab with each second to build tension with each second that passes. It fits the game. At this point when this song starts playing, you cannot do anything. All that could be done to prepare for the storm was already done and all that is left to do now is to watch as the final boss that is the Earth itself slowly rips away at everything you built. Will they survive? Will they die? Only time will tell, and I feel this song does a great job at focusing on the passing of time and building the tension as the strain on the city itself also builds. I cannot wait for Frostfall 2 to release to see what kind of masterpiece I hope it will be. Especially the music.
Even with the most upgraded stuff in the game... You still have to run the furnace on overdrive and risk blowing it up to keep the houses from freezing.
your butholl puckers when this song plays. all you work and preparation comes to this point. you work that you ha6ve enough coal to keep people from freezing. the number of people who get sick rises. the an in the peak people refuse to go to work through terror of the end
The City Must Survive is a song of desperation and struggle. When everything is falling apart under the weight of winter winds and the shadow of death blots out the sun. When sleet and hail rain from the sky and bone-shattering cold threatens to extinguish the last flame of humanity. The City. Must. Survive.
No one has done it, at least not done it well. Please cover this song with that guitar. I NEED to hear those descending strings and bass trombone through that guitar.
my favourite part of the song is that one violin (think it's a violin) that plays 2 notes repeatedly but in a way that sounds like a hospital's EKG (the machine that beeps in tune with the patient's heartrate) as to me it seems to invoke the feeling of it being the city's heartbeat
Really hope he does team fortress 2 one day because it genuinely has amazing big band spy jazz type stuff Mixed with like electric guitars, Enio Moricone and Theremins He could do “The calm” and “The Medic”
the city must survive! Otherwise, why did I work in the mine 24 hours a day, eat sawdust soup and obey the captain? [good analysis of the composition, thank you, I liked it]
This composition is a masterpiece When it kicks in you know shit is bad and its going to get a lot worse Legit gave thousands of people PTSD as it kicks in and the citizens screams in panic, then the temperature swivels down to an infernal -150C' and you can almost feel the hellish blizzard of the storm from the screen as mother nature proceeds to absolute devastate everything... except that crazy gigachad who went to save his daughter and miraculously came back in the middle of the inferno (at least in my game)
-150C is cold enough for the air to begin to break down into its constituent components, and the snow becomes dry ice rather than frozen water; in fact you're not far off from oxygen becoming liquid form at that temperature. Thermometers cease to be useful as the ethanol inside them freezes solid. To go outside unprotected even for the briefest moment would guarantee a painful death as your lungs would be destroyed by the cold air and the blood in your heart becomes cold enough to stop the organ functioning. Even a modern spacesuit would only make a short venture of a few minutes survivable, and no suit you could make with Victorian material science would be good enough to protect from temperatures like that. That's the level of cold that your citizens are subjected to in the last storm. That's the chill that the city must survive.
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![กี่หมื่นฟ้า | Your Sky Series EP.1 [1/4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vLGjxFL6U_I/mqdefault.jpg)
If you play Frostpunk and get to the end-phase of a campaign, this song is truly haunting; you've built your city, stockpiled your resources, zoned everything as perfectly as you can, handed out edicts to help survival as much as possible. The final phase *has no gameplay*. You *sit there*, waiting for your city to either survive the ultimate cold front, or fade into silence. This song is all that plays during the sequence. The anxiety you feel is palpable; you're not sure if there was more you could have done, more you could have made, better ways to have played.
You can still do some things to ensure success during the storm, most of them related to coal management (specially if you didn't gather too much coal) deciding when to make the overdrive kick in, and choices in some scripted events that can give you a bit more time during a critical situation. Of course, once you master the game and learn how to properly prepare for the Storm in advance, the game becomes much easier, but the first time you reach this moment and The City Must Survive starts playing in loop mode... oh boy, I think that I never felt more helpless than that day. Amazing soundrack, the chills make you think that you are going to freeze as well.
@@Chocoboengorilado I remember my first time: My stomach hurt each time the bell ring
@@arthurd.8766 It's like a Mike Oldfield's concert. A really depressing one.
@@Chocoboengorilado yeah you're right. On my first time, most people were still in the bunk house, the steam engine was only at level 3, food all ran out. I looked on the screen, it was ~500 people are freezing (about ~100 people died before that, and I didn't save enough people during scouting). That hurted me so much, it was like entire the city was waiting outside of the medical tent. Oh f*ck that I thought I gonna lose but it is magically my city survived.
Gameplay: sacrifice small children, or risk everyone? YOU MONSTER
This part of the game is literally just about holding out and surviving a massive storm. There is nothing you can do to fight it. Nothing you can do to lessen its effects. The sheer power of nature has come to unleash its wrath upon you and you must sit there, keeping your city alive at all costs, while the temperature drops to well below -100°C and your city begins to come apart at the seams. All you can do is hold on, and wait for it to end. This song is nature telling humanity to lay down and die, but humanity refuses.
Best comment of the video bro.
That's what makes it so intense. What you've stockpiled is all you've got. And it's not enough for everything, so you have to manage, you have to make sacrifices, cut certain corners just so that the city can go on. At that point you can't change what you have, you can only watch it slowly dwindle and *pray* that whatever preparations you've made will be enough. Despite being a building sim, it's one of the most intense games I've ever played.
"Panic spreads, work ceases"
When Humanity is pushed to near extinction.
That is when Humanity is at it's strongest.
Our Stubborn defiance to live will make us fight even a god to survive.
@@jaredjosephsongheng372and we may lose but we will fight until the bitter end.
When its -150° but your city runs on coal:
you just gave me a massive shock
"You need wood to build buildings
Dont forget about the coal though!
Oh no, your citizens need medical posts because they getting frostbitten.
Dont forget about the coal though!
You need food, so have some people to man hunters post and cookhouse
Dont forget the coal though!.
Steel, you need steel to build advanced buildings & research. Do we have enough steel?
DONT FORGET ABOUT THE COAL THOUGH!!"
~bricky.😂😂
the most interesting thing is that coal is very good source of heat in extreme temperatures due to one of the highest ignition and burning temperatures (higher that gasoline or wood, lower that natural gas still). so, if i would have a choice wood, gasoline or coal at -150 i would prefer coal there.😅
@@namesname7315 At this temperature, the c02 produced by burning fuel would freeze into dry ice. That's why the fact that your city runs on coal is worrying.
@@lilygail5569 while furnace is running it's all ok because air is not perfect thermal conductor ;-)
but if they would add mechanics preventing hypothermal ignition, it would render game unplayable 😀
Sir, it's a miracle! The man who went looking for his daughter is back. He brought her with him!
He says that he found her soon after leaving the city, but then they got lost and had to wait for a lull in the blizzard to find their way back. They are both exhausted and frostbitten, but very happy.
This part made me cry from joy
@@ghagen5552 Man is a legend!
events like this are rare in this cold world. i will never forget the child wich sacrificed its own life to safe my first city....
This game does to your emotions what those violinists do to the strings.
*HOPE RISES*
Frostpunk is a city building simulator but still managed to be one of the most intense gaming experiences i've ever had. Amazing game with an incredible OST.
Watching the Generator struggle right up to the end.
A machine with human qualities, without any human features. A veritable God in the Final Frost.
Probably the only city builder game in history pulled off a in-game playable cinematic moment, and this moment has earned it a bigger budget sequel
the cold reach -150. your generator upgraded to the max. tents upgraded to houses. and people still freezing to death
Supposedly, if you want everyone to survive in a no death run, you gotta build enough hospitals and robot doctors to house the entire city, in addition to enough food, coal, and a spare steam core.
and then they refuse to work despite their workplace being warmer than the houses :I
@@SamuelDehlin Fr why did they even leave TT
Remember to throw the corpses of the children to the generator if necessary , the city must survive at all cost
And the children themselves
Corpses? You wait for them to die?
@@insertsomethingfuni2617 Of course, are you wasteful to deny the children their labour?
@@metaparalysis3441 yes
Son: "Hi dad, I have a question. Why did mom name my sister Rose?"
Dad: "Well son, a rose is your mother's favourite thing, so she named your sister Rose."
Son: "Ah that makes sense, thanks dad!"
Dad: "No problem... *Violin Section of the City Must Survive Song* "
I see a fellow Brick enjoyer.
@@Argentum_Rex ironically enough i just watched brickys vid on it as i didnt know it existed prior, and i shit you not this fucking joke is the reason im even here right now.
Ah yes a fellow Bricky fan, welcome to the world of music my friend
The music honestly makes it feel like the opening to an HBO or Netflix original
Maybe "The Terror" tv show or "Snowpiercer"
Went into a 2 hour frost punk session, came out 16 hours later. thanks dramatic music with zero words to tell you how long its been.
You have faced the crucible. Congratulations .
One of my favorite game soundtracks of all time, the immersion is insane, it's as if you were in the city and felt the impending doom of the storm and struggle for survival
„THE CITY MUST SURVIVE!” I tell myslef as I see the -150°C storm approaching the city full of sick, starving and scared to death people.
I remember when I first got to this stage of the game, with that track on a loop.
I had failed six times, and far too many set backs to be counted. I had managed to save up some coal, the health care infrastructure is absolutely overwhelmed, and dwindling food storage that already had little left, and the worst part was that it was just the beginning of the end. I saw that all I had to do, was get it past two weeks, just last two weeks. I understood in order for the city to survive I needed to triage the sick, so the strain on my medical infrastructure would at least lessen, and to make all the left food last as long as possible, I had to turn off heating in places where it was way to frozen and open up the cookhouses for the last time so they would cook up all the raw food that was left. At first it seemed as it was enough, but discontent kept growing, as the sick skyrocketed in numbers, I had to execute one of the people, it wasn’t the first time, but this made me question myself, if I had done this instead of that, I wouldn’t have needed to sacrifice this many people in the name of survival, but I was the only one who could have gotten them this far. I needed to fear monger for a little while longer until everything goes back to normal. The bells kept ringing as the death toll kept on getting bigger, a realisation came even if the city survives there will be to little amount of people to even enjoy it, but there was nothing I could do about it now, all I can do is wait. Then there was a riot in the city, asking of me either to build another infirmary, or to treat all of the sick, of course it was problem that I couldn’t ignore and it was a pretty sizeable group, but I couldn’t address it either, so I had to dispatch the guards, of course this wasn’t optimal, but I didn’t have the resources to build another infirmary, and the sick weren’t going to disappear no matter what, they had to go back to work and stop slacking of. As time passed I was losing hope that my city would survive, the already low supplies were getting lower, with coal being an exception, as it was falling visibly slower. I know I could have done better, I could have done everything better, but I definitely could have done worse like those other six times, but the question was: what exactly could have I done better?
As I pondered about that, many people died, it made me feel guilty, I wanted to say that it wasn’t my fault, or that there wasn’t anything I could have done, but the fact is there was something I could’ve done, and in turn it meant that it was my fault, only if I knew better what I was doing, or had known what was going to come of it, or even what was going to happen. At the end I could have only blamed no one else, but myself. The end of the storm was near but death was nearer, with temperatures dropping to -150°C, starving, cold, and gravely sick people, pulling threw the coldest storms, surviving on shear will and spite, surviving against all odds and pushing threw the hardest times. I was honestly surprised how they managed to survive this long, with the frozen shut infirmaries, but the end was near, and we’re on humanities last hair, the last city on earth, just a little while longer, and we could see the end of the finish line, we were so close, and we survived, but not without a cost. Over a hundred and seventy people died, doesn’t seem that much but all of us were the last humans, in the last city, on the frozen wasteland called earth, with about 67 left, and in the end there was a question, was it worth it?
You can imagine the firemen screaming at the shovelers to keep shovelling coal while the engineers are trying to tease out every bit of warmth from the Generator without making it explode…
And the stockpiles dwindle rapidly…
My interpretation of the falling violins that keep falling is that they're meant to represent the drop in temperature. Because when you think it couldn't drop anymore (See: when it's -120), it suddenly "goes up again" (aka it seems warm in comparison to what's to come) and THEN drops again. It just keeps dropping. and you don't know when it's going to stop
Interesting proposition!
To me the violins bring to mind the pistons of the generator pumping as it works beyond its limits to create steam. To push out every ounce of heat it can into the city like it's beating heart
nah it represents me trying to keep the generator online for the longest i can
Frostpunk is a great city builder, but when this shows up? It fits perfectly.
this OST appear when the storm is here in new home scenario
It's basically Boss music...
Boss music
The klaxons blare their shrill alarm, steam whistles screaming defiantly through the still air of the city; then the people scream too.
The Coal mines empty of workers as fast as the Foremen orders them to, the engineers set the Automatons to automatically feed the furnaces, greasing their gears and praying it’s enough.
City Watchmen call out and guide the citizens into their homes, before retreating to their own while they can. No drunkard dare step outside nor riot fill the street; Not this Night.
The orphaned children lay huddled in corners of the Boarding house, and sickly patients stacked from floor to ceiling in the hospital draw quiet save the occasional moan or cough, the Doctors quietly turning to Prayer over Medicine..
The last of the Airships are stowed in their hangars, as the Hunters make safe their Zeppelin Steeds, and the City Beacon; shining aloft to guide the final Scouting party home; is hastily lowered from the sky as the last hint of blue is swiftly engulfed by Black; They won’t be coming home..
Doors slam shut, windows are shuttered, and every lantern, wood stove and coal furnace is alight tonight. As the Streets go dark, the Frost descends into the City like a Wrathful Biblical Spirit, and no amount of lamb’s blood over the doors will keep the Specter of Death at bay.
Glass shatters from the instant chill, walls and shutters buckle and shake, as cold gusts force through every gap in every wall, no matter how small, piercing like knives regardless of how many blankets or Furs you hide in.
The Captain feels his sweat freeze to his brow, even as he carefully watches every gauge and pressure check of the City’s Steam Core, it’s Iron Bulkhead glowing red hot, and streaks of yellow as it threatens to blow.
Entire streets are buried in drifts of snow, those trapped in their homes soon find themselves as frozen statues clinging to dying furnaces.
The heated Greenhouses buckle under the wind, killing all the irreplaceable crops instantly.
The last automaton slumps in the street, spilling its final load of coal uselessly in the street as its clockwork limbs seize up.
The Cleric says one final prayer for his congregation, all their drawn desperate faces looking toward him, pale, eyes unblinking and flecked with ice, not one of them draws breath.
One Engineer braves the cold and stumbles to the City Core, his legs unfazed by the cold, as he lost them to frostbite months ago, only to Find the Core bleeding steam and pressure valves bursting, the Captain still valiantly sitting at his post, frozen dead at the Core controls, a hasty barely legible note scrawled beside him.
‘I tried”
A flash of White in the Deafening Black, the final Breath as The Last City of Man…
Dies.
Damn this is written really good
Bravo my friend, i felt this on a spiritual level
This is amazing
He tried
i have been looking for this comment for 5 months. god this was so good
this song feels like an arduous march. where if you fall, you die and those with you WILL leave you behind, as they can't spare the strength to carry you, its as simple as that. haunting, truly.
This is boss music...for a storm. For the weather. Thats the kind of scenario it is, You can not kill it, you can not reduce it, all you can do...is survive. The City must Survive.
Some would call this boss fight music. But there is no fight. There is only a boss. And there is nothing you can do except batten down the hatches and keep your hand firmly frozen to the overdrive lever
As someone who grew up with winter storms that I loved listening to, those little moments of tension relief are like the lulls in the wind that you get to hear every ten or so minutes, the wind gives a brief lull and then starts howling again. Its like you listen to the storm breathing in the song.
I won’t ever forget my first city. All I could do was watch as my city slowly died out with this song playing. It was slow. But horrific to know I could have done better. I should have been more strict and pushed my people to survive.
Whats great about the Frostpunk OST in its whole is theres a few leitmotiffs that happen in various songs and all portray a different emotion, either by dread, somber, hopefullness, existentialism. Its a worth checking out in whole.
Anyone can react to the song but it will never be as impactful as the first time you hear it while playing the game.
Close all doors and windows!
Light up the last piles of coal!
Hold onto your loved ones and prevail!
THE CITY MUST SURVIVE!
I'm in America, so I used the Fahrenheit option. Around -190 is when the storm lightened slightly. And then it dropped. And kept dropping. That was the most helpless I'd ever felt in a game, unable to stop a natural event from happening. It finally stopped at -234°F, but those 5 secodns felt like 5 hours.
There was nothing I could do. The amount of futility the storm hits you with in the few hours of -150 C/-234 F is insane. Even with a fully stocked city, there's a thought that resurfaces constantly that screams, "You will die." In those 5 seconds the temperature drops, you have no idea how far down it will go. I've nevrr feared the cold before I heard The City Must Survive and suffered thrigh those few hours early morning.
i like to think of the violins as humanity, the bass as the cold, the bass.... the cold hammers down constantly, overtaking everything, but every single time the strings, humanity, is at the end, pushing through the storm
This entire track is genius. The string section is a variation of the opening theme of the game, when you start building your city. It's contemplative and filled with expectation: "What will you do?" Then, at the end, after you've had to make all sorts of horrible decisions to keep the city alive one more day, it returns saying "What have you done? Was it worth it?"
And, like other commenters pointed out, this plays during the final crisis, where a humongous storm falls down on the city and you can do nothing but endure it and pray that all you did to prepare was enough. Even those tension releases you pointed out fit into this: it's your city faltering. It's those moments where you fall down to one knee and wonder "can't I just give up?", only for the tension to start building again as you clench your fist and keep walking. You can't give up, the city must survive.
The music of the final exam
😆
This track comes at the final event for the city where a super cold storm threats to wipe your city and the last of humanity. The whole section its intense since you are on your last food reserves, coal and the power plant its on overload....your citizens are struggling and dying and may riot. Any wrong step and your city its doomed. Its a very fitting track for the whole situation. I loved it every second
Holy wow I was not expecting... that! Gonna need to check the composer for sure
really fits as "YOU MUST SURVIVE NO MATTER THE COST"
I didn't realize I needed an electric guitar cover of this song before I saw you do it.
Turn up the overdrive! The city must survive!
That accent that you keep pointing out? That's the Generator thumping away, keeping your citizens alive.
That guitar at the end. We need a full cover of that ASAP. The Captain demands it.
I still vividly remember sitting and staring in slack-jawed panic as the storm approached its peak and I saw *even more* temperature drops upcoming. This music is part of what of what made that emotional crescendo in the game so impactful, and even now years later it never fails to give me goosbumps.
I think the best way to explain how the music goes is at the beginning. Feels like a warning that there is an impending doom coming that you cannot prepare yourself fully and then it dies down and then when it hits the top Mark again in a sense. That's when you the player start tries to fix all your your Cole buildings and your hot houses and then as the music goes on it just feels like so much dread has entered the room but there's just a gleaming bit of Hope that you could make it but you don't know cuz tension and panic is tinkering at every single interval. At least that's how I interpret it
Sad that nobody seems to look at Into the Storm as a companion piece, or really look at it at all. It's also a great song and is quite important as a general representation of the state of things.
Thank you for reacting to this song, absolutely the most memorable moment of that game was when the final countdown begun and that (what I can only assume was) violin solo came on that shit blew me away, I love this song.
Such a damn good game. You can really see how easy it is to turn into a dictatorship or authoritarian regime
But you must not cross the line, do everything you can to never cross that line and get that golden ending. How can people want to survive if they aren't free? How can people survive if they aren't given rules to follow, orders to do things that will end up helping everyone, or something to believe in that drives them forward? Its a balancing act, rules vs freedom, order vs liberty, but if you thread that needle and maintain the straight course the people will make it through, and the city _will_ survive.
And of course, the father at the end, if you sent him out prepared to rescue his daughter, he returns, in weather so cold it should've frozen his skin right off his bones, holding his dear daughter, both alive and saved. What power Man has in our souls to persevere through any tribulations so long as we believe we can do it, what sheer force of will we can harness to do anything we put our minds to of our own free will. That part is so impactful since we've seen such levels of sheer will getting people to survive things that science tells us should've killed them without question, but yet they survived and eventually recovered to keep on living. Its a unique aspect of Mankind, we have that special something to defy nature and biology and tell it that its wrong, it says we should be dead, we tell it to just watch us and witness the strength of belief and our will!
Only on my actual playthrough of the game did I finally clock that the entire arrangement is supposed to be a take on Nature vs Industry. The string ensemble taking plenty of cues from Vivaldi's winter and representing the storm/wind, the deep and bassy brass being the counterpoint of this raw coal burning blot on the landscape trying it's very best to be heard through the strings.
The intro is heavily string dominated with the brass growing into the piece before we get the excellent call-response around 2:49 and the polyphonic fight at 3:10. Eventually nature wins completely in the finale (final section of the game is impossible to heat your city, just waiting for the storm to pass over).
Really incredible piece and I love when the story it tells is so clear as long as your ears are open!
Survival at any cost. That is the message I hear when listening to this. Piotr Musiał did a great job at putting what I feel like would be the emotions of every single person in your city as they try to wait out the freezing storm, not knowing their own fates and hoping they are prepared for a storm they stand no chance against alone. I don't know the terms for things like this but I like how it has low notes that sorta jab with each second to build tension with each second that passes. It fits the game. At this point when this song starts playing, you cannot do anything. All that could be done to prepare for the storm was already done and all that is left to do now is to watch as the final boss that is the Earth itself slowly rips away at everything you built. Will they survive? Will they die? Only time will tell, and I feel this song does a great job at focusing on the passing of time and building the tension as the strain on the city itself also builds. I cannot wait for Frostfall 2 to release to see what kind of masterpiece I hope it will be. Especially the music.
Even with the most upgraded stuff in the game...
You still have to run the furnace on overdrive and risk blowing it up to keep the houses from freezing.
Hands down the best music I have ever heard in my life
The Shepherd, the best song of frostpunk
I know this very much but I still laught this is litelary "When city builder got boss music" xD
Facts
This song give me goosebumps, holy shit!
I love how composers can translate stories into music.
I... didn't knew i need an electric guitar cover of THE CITY MUST SURVIVE... please more.
When the City Builder game has a Final Boss.
Solid reaction video to an amazing piece of music. Addutional respect for the Meshuggah album in the background ^^
Thank you 🙌
your butholl puckers when this song plays. all you work and preparation comes to this point. you work that you ha6ve enough coal to keep people from freezing. the number of people who get sick rises. the an in the peak people refuse to go to work through terror of the end
The City Must Survive is a song of desperation and struggle. When everything is falling apart under the weight of winter winds and the shadow of death blots out the sun. When sleet and hail rain from the sky and bone-shattering cold threatens to extinguish the last flame of humanity.
The City. Must. Survive.
No one has done it, at least not done it well. Please cover this song with that guitar. I NEED to hear those descending strings and bass trombone through that guitar.
I play this song every time I have to walk to the bus in bad weather-- to remind myself the weather could be worse
my favourite part of the song is that one violin (think it's a violin) that plays 2 notes repeatedly but in a way that sounds like a hospital's EKG (the machine that beeps in tune with the patient's heartrate) as to me it seems to invoke the feeling of it being the city's heartbeat
What I love about that song is how mechanical it feels.
Cool mention about accents, you helped me a lot to understand a music! Thanks a lot! And your gouitar ic cool too
I recommend “the end of war” from the hoi4 battle for the Bosphorus soundtrack
This is the boss music of Frostpunk
Really hope he does team fortress 2 one day because it genuinely has amazing big band spy jazz type stuff
Mixed with like electric guitars, Enio Moricone and Theremins
He could do “The calm” and “The Medic”
When you saw rain drop in blizzard and realised is CO2 not water !!
Cool Video
Oh ! That so cold .
This is a pretty accurate depiction of Britain when the price of insulation went up
the city must survive! Otherwise, why did I work in the mine 24 hours a day, eat sawdust soup and obey the captain?
[good analysis of the composition, thank you, I liked it]
after this one, Iron Harvest main theme (Overture For A New World) is necessary!
this makes you shit your pants while you're playing
Hopefully my underwear will remain unsoiled
i bought frostpunk after seeing markiplier play it, the intro of the main storyline gave me goosebumps and still does, that narrator has real skills
"Slowly...step by STEP..."
This composition is a masterpiece
When it kicks in you know shit is bad and its going to get a lot worse
Legit gave thousands of people PTSD as it kicks in and the citizens screams in panic, then the temperature swivels down to an infernal -150C' and you can almost feel the hellish blizzard of the storm from the screen as mother nature proceeds to absolute devastate everything... except that crazy gigachad who went to save his daughter and miraculously came back in the middle of the inferno (at least in my game)
2:16 yes, pretty cool. -150C to be exact
Wow the city must survive is A. Is there an S? Man, this song always gives me goosebumps everytime i hear it. I can't get used to it
Let's go to eat sawdust soup and mankind in moonshine 😋
Discontent falls Hope rises
Omg yes finally
Honestly I bought frostpunk for the soundtrack, but I stayed for the game.
Boss fight
In a city building game.
-150C is cold enough for the air to begin to break down into its constituent components, and the snow becomes dry ice rather than frozen water; in fact you're not far off from oxygen becoming liquid form at that temperature. Thermometers cease to be useful as the ethanol inside them freezes solid. To go outside unprotected even for the briefest moment would guarantee a painful death as your lungs would be destroyed by the cold air and the blood in your heart becomes cold enough to stop the organ functioning. Even a modern spacesuit would only make a short venture of a few minutes survivable, and no suit you could make with Victorian material science would be good enough to protect from temperatures like that. That's the level of cold that your citizens are subjected to in the last storm. That's the chill that the city must survive.
That violin is -150.
Chillin
Plz react to Reab's Lament (God of War Ragnarok ost)♡
man you speak like chatgpt
can u react tp lost ark sountracks? damw for arkesia and astalgia of phantasm
I quit Lost Ark like a month ago, I miss it
@@AtlasBenighted why u quit it?