This channel feels like (unfortunately) one of the best kept secrets on this platform. It's almost criminal to think there's so many people missing out on this excellent content.
Compared to the output from bigger creators with entire teams writing, editing and shooting their stuff it's actually quietly incredible how high quality and well rounded Grim's videos are given that they come out so regularly.
@@benhillman8384 even by the standards of "medium size" video game youtubers, yeah 70k is kinda small. Our boy deserves way more. He's ATT LEASSTT as competent and entertaining as Mandalore gaming, or Josh Strife Haze to name only a couple. What makes him so special though is also probably a limiting factor, the way he wears his influences on his sleeve may be off-putting to non-goths or whatever, its hard to say since I myself am a longstanding goth with no perspective outside being one for the past 2 decades so....
I feel like it’s forcing him to try harder though. That might be why it’s so good. I like that he’s leaning into his own style harder and harder every year.
"Things have learned to walk that ought to crawl" is honestly one of the hardest lines I've read in a long time. It's a perfect way to describe a humanity that played god, too much and too long.
In case you didn't know, that's a line from HP Lovecraft's "The Festival." Signalis uses a lot of these references, as well as "The King in Yellow" which is a related work.
@@CassiusGreen It's a cool reference for a bad guy to make, and just a good line in general. But I'd have liked it more if there was more to the guy. Because from what we know, Ariane was only going to go to the Sierpinski Mines if she wasn't selected for the Penrose program. And since she's obviously in the program (and if I remember correctly no Elsters were ever sent there), what exactly is all that based on? Who is Adler and why are they in Ariane's mind/memory/dream/whenever? Why are they the avatar of whatever is stopping Elster (and Isa I guess) from doing what she's doing? Idk, it's hard to get really into the story when Falke and Adler are such sketchy, incomplete characters, but they're basically the primary antagonists. EDIT: Also love your username, Cash.
@@B-019 [Big spoilers below] If you go by one interpretation, S-23 Sierpinski, all the people in it, and the thing they dug up in the mine (the flesh) do exist and are amplifying Ariane's dying dream via her very strong bioresonance. It becomes sort of a feedback loop where the memories and minds of the Gestalts and Replicas in Sierpinski get broadcasted BACK to Ariane, melding with her own dreams and memories and trapping Adler and Falke within. The two aren't even really particularly evil, just a middle-manager trying to middle-manage and driven mad by the simultaneous loss of his 280cm-tall dommy-mommy gf and getting mind-trapped in a time loop of someone else's twisted memories.
@@JCBudro16 The problem I have is that so much of this is left up to interpretation. I wanted something more solid, less dependent on dream-logic and intuition. Like, yeah, that MIGHT be what's happening. And maybe the entire Pokemon animated series was a dream Ash had while dying from the Spearow attack in the first episode. Once you start getting into dreams, you can kind of get away with anything. And it doesn't help that bioresonance is so vague of a concept that even characters in-game say very little of it is understood, so you can justify a lot by introducing those two concepts into the story. Idk. Obviously that approach works for a lot of folks, but it keeps me at arm's length. I might legitimately be too autistic for this.
So, regarding the significance of the King In Yellow, I think it may be largely informed by the way that book and entity figure into the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, which is supposedly really big in Germany. There are a few different interpretations and characterizations, but Signalis in particular seemed to fit in with the "Hastur Mythos" version depicted in the works of Dennis Detwiller. Basically, Hastur as a Lovecraftian entity is a personification of entropy (think of what Adler said about reality breaking down). The King in Yellow as a being is either an avatar of Hastur, or a human who becomes a vector through which Hastur spreads. The King in Yellow spreads its influence through a play with the same name which Signalis references multiple times. "Along the shore the cloud waves break, the twin suns sink behind the lake..." Reading the text of the play "drives the reader mad", but that's typically interpreted as a sort of corruption or consumption. Depending on the interpretation, some depictions have those who read the play become aware of a secret reality which underpins our own, manifesting what seem to be delusions of grandeur about their own importance in the royal bloodline. Falke units are imprints of the Great Revolutionary -> Royal bloodline. Hastur is entropy -> Breakdown of reality The King In Yellow (being) serves as a vector for Hastur to spread -> Ariane's bioresonant powers are causing reality to fracture and break. Along the shores the cloud waves break, the shadows lengthen in Carcosa -> The shoreline visions Mysterious entity/the red eye -> Hastur (my opinion, though there's not a lot of backing to that) I haven't figured out all of the possible connections, but I think that Ariane is effectively acting as The King in Yellow (being). Also, holy shit, someone NEEDS to get Grimbo into a Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes campaign.
To add to this, Adler says a line from the play later in the game. "I wear no mask". A lot of what's happening seems to be tied to ariane's bioresonance, and she's effectively "sleeping" in the cryo pod while slowly experiencing radiation poisoning. Adler units are described as having a very strong sense of self, and Adler seems to have developed some awareness of the loop and the "dream". "I have no mask" in the king in yellow is stated by a character referred to as "the stranger", who either is an emissary or servant to the king in yellow, or is the king in yellow. However, in the "more light" story from the hastur cycle, he's explicitly the enemy of the king in yellow. Which is the role I think fits him best. Adler can be interpreted as becoming aware of his role in the dreamloop created by ariane, and seems to try and stop the player from achieving their goal of waking and killing Ariane. It's unclear how much is a dream and how much is reality, but alot of characters could be projections created by ariane partially or entirely. From Adler's perspective, he could see waking or killing Ariane as a complete end of his existence and of the reality hes occupying. In this case she would also literally be an eldritch god to him, an uncaring powerful entity to which his world and very being is merely a bad dream. Adler "wears no mask" in the sense that his strong sense of self makes him his own conscious actor, even if he only exists within the dream/loop While a lot of the story is open to interpretation ("why look for answers if it only leads to more questions?"), I do think the king in yellow plays a very significant role in the story given how prominently it's presented. And given the above I think Ariane being a parallel for The King in Yellow and Adler being a parallel for The Stranger fits pretty well
It’s also worth mentioning that Ariane’s aunt is named Kamilla and Adler directly references The King in Yellow when he says “I wear no mask.” Suffice it to say, I think this theory holds a ton of water.
The series of paintings that keeps appearing in visions is a real one, called "Isle of the Dead" by Arnold Böcklin. There are five variations of it, but all of them depict Charon, the ferryman of Greek myth, leading a dead soul to an isolated island somewhere in the River Styx. The painting you show at 38:12 is quite literally one of those paintings with the devs' own imagery put over the top for thematic purposes.
The "alien island" painting you mention is "The Isle of the Dead" by Arnold Boecklin. What makes this really interesting is that Rachmaninoff made a symphony by the same name based on the painting, but it wasn't actually based on the original form of the painting. What he saw was a black-and-white reproduction of the painting which, as far as he knew, was what the original looked like. Later on, he saw the full-color original and said: "If I had seen first the original, I, probably, would have not written my Isle of the Dead." This seems to strongly relate to the themes of the game with copies of copies and existential angst and so on.
I watched the entire spoiler section and I could recite everything that was said in that section and yet I feel I have learned absolutely nothing except for the fact that I definitely need to play this game. Thanks
This is one of those cases where yes, you can piece together the information to follow the story, but to really understand what the hell is going on you need to discuss it with other players to see the different possible interpretations and then assemble your own.
You can't trick me this time beard man - I already played this through in a heaving feverish single sitting coma on the day it came out. Great stuff as ever.
@@Gatorade69 15 hours there. It really depends if you're familiar with the genre and the way you play. I guess if you've mastered the old-school survival-horror genre back in the day you're good for under 10h. Or simply if you're good at optimising navigation and inventory.
I was hoping one of the "big cool youtube guys" would make a long form analysis of this game after it tore me to shreds mentally, but I'm much more happy that I found this video instead. You really did it justice, and I love your brand of humor. New sub for you, keep up the good work.
For those wondering about the relevance of the book "The king in yellow " in the game, I believe that is much more thematic than lore or wiki-wise. The book, just like the game, is a collection of stories that are as much about horror as they are about love. That dichotomy of love/horror engulfs both the game and the characters within. And the short story - an inhabitant of carcosa - that served as inspiration for some aspects of the book has basically the same plot structure as signalis
This guy is the embodiment of a certain vibe and as a result it draws like minded people to his channel. One of my favourite channels on TH-cam and it's more because of him than anything he even reviews. I loved watching his supernatural recaps even though I would never in a million years actually want to watch supernatural. Guy just has powerful charisma.
I strongly second every word. Makes me glad that we're lucky enough to be here to witness all his creations, but kinda sad that there's not more of us.
I watched this a few months ago (when I discovered the channel and blitzed through a bunch of your videos) and even though I've never been a Survival-Horror Gamer when you said you'd recommend it to "Survival-Horror enthusiasts or fans of Dark Sci-Fi" I decided that I like the latter well enough and I'd give this a shot. I played the whole game and it was absolutely one of my favorites. Thanks for broadening my horizons a bit, Gamer.
I just got done playing this game last week. Possibly the best SURVIVIAL horror game I've playing since REmake. It scratches the Silent Hill / Resident Evil itch like no other game I can think of.
Idk how TH-cam led me down a rabbit hole that ended up here, but damn do i love a quirky, well articulated, informative, and unique video essay. Earned yourself a subscriber
In my gameplay, I only used thermite flare for enemies that are close to the safe room or main corridor. Though the enemies might get up, I found it would take longer if you just walked around them (don't run, don't turn the flashlight on, and don't walk over the downed enemy)
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Your content is my favorite TH-cam channel, by a LONG shot. Great game choice, intelligent opinion and research, funny of beat, constructive criticism, high and low culture references... all around just great entertainment. You're awesome, Grim.
The story sounds like something I would really enjoy, but man... I'm not in the kind of headspace right now where I could devote hours to this sort of thing. Thanks for another great video
If you ever feel like it, know that it's relatively short, between 6h to 18h depending on your play style and familiarity with the genre. There are 4 different endings, thought, and only 2 can be cheesed from reloading instead of doing another run, from what has been tested atm.
I don’t blame you. I played this a whiiiile ago. And the biggest gripe I have with it is a bunch of backtracking, and backtracking with puzzles too. And if you want the good ending, you gotta replay it all over again. It won’t let you your first play through. Which sucks.
I patiently waited to watch this video upon finishing the game. Watching Mr. Beard’s synopsis of the story was an excitement all its own, until I reached the ending. I realized his ending was not the one I received, which compelled me to start another play through. This game is now easily in my top ten game stories of all time (especially in a time of unfinished and horribly monetized games). Also, yeah, grimbeard my man, I’ve bought your merch and two of your albums (and will continue to do so) to support the absolutely excellent and quality content you bring to all of us on two fronts. You’re awesome. Also please listen to his music because it rocks your entire face off.
this might be a silly comment to make, but it's getting close (ish) to a year now since signalis released, and i really wanted to drop a thank you somewhere here for introducing me to this game. it was (and still is!) an incredible experience and i don't know if i would have ever picked it up if it wasn't for this video.
Your conclusion about signalis being it's own thing was very apt. I found signalis through a steam curator that recommends games with lesbian couples in them, and that was my only frame of reference for this game, and I absolutely loved it. Never had touched og survival horror or anything if that type. Signalis stands on its own without the genre to hold it up, and for that, I think it's excellent
I sincerely hope Signalis gets more attention, because it deserves the success. I'm worried people will be put off by the anime cutscenes and miss the best attempt at a classic playstation survival horror we've seen in years. The endings I've got still haunt me, and I'm convinced the ones I'm yet to see will be just as gut wrenching.
The anime aesthetic was what got my attention frankly. And I rarely play survival horror stuff. Plus the style the devs used was more on the milder side on the anime/manga spectrum when it comes to simplifying/exaggerating physical features and such.
Honestly, without creators like Grim using those fantastically creepy thumbnails of a faceless Adler as opposed to that rubbersexdoll-esque cover art, I may have skipped on by at first glance. The images with standard issue BigTittie Anime Girl in Tiny Corset™ made it a bit difficult for me to take it's scare potential seriously. Perfect Blue really captured horror in so many fantastic ways but if Mima had been animated in the style of Bayonetta's goofy 'Leg Avenue-chic', the most tense part would have been hoping to god we weren't gonna get an exposé of her "cash n prizes" because her outfit got magic'd away whenever she performed Angel of Love. 🤣
I knew you'd get your hands on this one. My belief is that the whole game takes place inside the dying dreams of Ariane, that due to her bioresonance powers became more real than dreams usually are. Real enough for its denizens to be sentient people, at the same time remaining functions of the dream and personifications of people from the waking world. The red eye is Ariane's own, and as she lies in cryosleep, consumed by radiation sickness, the dream twists, perverts and becomes more and more nightmarish, time collapses, invasive memories and personalities creep in, and the malignant flesh consumes it. That's what Falke saw under the mines, and the knowledge infected her. Adler understood it, and it drew him insane. Ariane is an elder god of her own small world, she longs to wake, and when she does, the world-dream will end.
Ariane could also be a play on Ariadne from greek mythology, labyrinths and minotaurs etc. Would have to look up the origin of the name. Also all replika names are named after birds in the german language. Elster = magpie Eule = owl Star = common starling Adler = eagle Falke = falcon , hawk
@@nocomment3294 further, Kolibri - hummingbird, Mynah - (presumably) indian mynah bird, my dad's family and friends had some weird animals and one of them was an Indian mynah who would eerily perfectly mimic his late grandfather's wheezing laughter and the creaking of a specific door when opened gently.
Yep, I also think it's either takes place in the dying dreams of Ariene or some amalgamation of her dying dreams and dying Elster's corrupted and fragmented dying mind projected into Ariene dreams through bioresonance that Ariene's dying brain radiates (from some of the notes on Rot-front it is clear that she had some sort of unusually strong gift or power of bioresonance which seems like she concealed from everyone). That's why there is this strong motif of "the last promise" that should be fulfilled. It seems it's part of Elster's mind, her main focus and obsession, because of what she is (the history and quirks of her neurological imprint and her apparent deep connection to Ariene due to circumstances). Also it's interesting that the main antagonists in the story are Adler and Falke, who are the figures that represent the highest authority and power for Replicas (Falkes even described as God-like figures to all Replicas) and the ones that are supposed to keep everything working smoothly and orderly. It seems like they are also part of Elster's fragmented and corrupted personality, representing or symbolizing the parts of her mind that tried (and failed) to end both Ariene's foreign bioresonance presence and Elster's own corruption and now they keep trying unsuccessfully to stop what they consider further degradation and fragmentation of Elster's reality and stabilize what's left of her "normal" Elster mind. But of course since they are also part of this nightmarish reality they act accordingly.
What I find really interesting is after you have to "continue" the game from trying to open the ship and you are back in the ship if you turn on the radio and channel surf you can find emergency messages telling you the ship has crashed while this is before you even have.
This is a great review, but to you, viewer who didn't play Signalis and watched the whole thing, don't think that the game was spoiled for you. Grimbeard skipped a bunch and only showed one of several endings. Depending on your interpretations of the documents and events, there are many ways you could make sense of the story. You very much still have a shot at experiencing the game on your own and coming to new conclusions, so do it!
I thoroughly enjoyed the first 13 mins of your Signalis review. Stopped there due to your spoiler warning (thank you, btw.) Will return after completing the game. Subscribed!
You are the only channel I'd ever reccomend A House of many Doors. It doesn't look like much at first. But it goes deep. You seem like the type. And I will check out Signalis!
Thanks for making these vids. Thanks for letting me take a peek into these darker gaming experiences I'm not emotionally stable enough to experience first hand. That little quip about roomba with googly eyes falling over, I really felt that.
@@AC-hj9tv It's like the people that say that haven't even been outside. All I see is dirt and rocks. No grass to be found. Now, I can touch this marijuana I bought from the dispensary. Is that touching grass ?
Great video! I've been obsessing over Signalis lately. I loved the demo, but was content to wait for a sale until I saw 90% of it was made by two people. Then I couldn't pull my wallet out fast enough. Best $20 I've spent all year. I'm really glad I'm not the only one who had this game stuck in my brain. I beat it about a week ago, and can't stop thinking about it. There was just so much to process after the credits rolled. I got the same ending as you, but replayed the end and got another (better?) one after seeing some spoilers online. It was still brutally depressing, but maybe a little more satisfying. I was very surprised how a game with such little dialogue really made me feel. The cutscenes and music were amazing, and some of those damaged journal entries at the end just hit way too close to home. Honestly, I'd LOVE to see another game in this universe. The world building was excellent, and adding in a little cosmic horror with dark sci fi felt like this was made for me. I'm also a MASSIVE fan of the retro futuristic style. Why doesn't my computer sound like MU/TH/UR from Alien?! Why is my smart phone a touch screen and not a Pip-Boy?! The tech in our timeline isn't nearly as cool.
This chanel is one of the best gaming/(lets be honest, also comedy)/ chanels on the internet. I watched nearly every single one of them and every time the 1-2 hours pass by like a minute. I learn a lot from them, because your research is excellent, i laugh (the 9pm joke killed me xD) and i have this cosy nighty night, dark, isolation, endlessness feeling, when i watch them, like when i watch a good horror movie in space. Your voice also comforts this. The editing and writing of the script is on another level too. You sir, deserve waaaaay more recognition. Thanks for the continuously good work. Greets from goth austria!
So Guillermo Del Toro’s house just looks like that afaik. A local film critic did a series with the Denver Public Library involving weekly film discussions with filmmakers during the pandemic, including GDT and yeah, that’s what it looked like. Super fun series, it was wild to see where turbo famous folks live.
This was a FANTASTIC video, thank you so much for all the love and work that went into making it. I immediately finished watching a playthrough (I wish I had been able to play it, but alas, I am poor and lack the means) and hopped onto TH-cam and Reddit because I needed to dive deeper--and I'm SO happy this was the first video I stumbled onto. It helped me solidify my own thoughts while pointing out other nuances and wonderful things about it, and, hey! I got a few laughs along the way, too. Thank you again!!!
you're the first person where I absolutely will take your word on the spoiler warning and come back here when i finish it, whenever that may be. Thank you. Found you recently and been trying to recommend you to folks, you do awersome
Just wanted to add that the names of the replika all reference birds in the german language. Elster = magpie Eule = owl Star = common starling Adler = eagle Falke = falcon and so on
You have no idea how much I've been waiting on this review, specifically yours. the lack of the rat roundup was particularly disappointing though. Definitely looks like a winner We need ParaPug merch.
I think this is maybe the first time I'm skipping the spoiler section because I'm seriously intending to go and get this game. It looks amazing. Quality vid as always.
Loving the honesty of your feelings toward games and how it makes you feel. I also find it comforting when I find something new in a game that brings me back to my childhood. I'm not completely dead inside yet.
i waited until i finally played for myself to watch this. i really love how ambiguous it is, what the nature of these "loops" and memories are; maybe something genuinely eldritch is happening, something on this moon calling out with whatever psychic imprint Ariane's awful death left behind, luring in other LSTR units... or maybe it's all a guilty, dying dream of a promise broken, taking place entirely on the ship and in the pair's fragmenting memories as they die. or maybe it's both, somehow!
something I noticed is that falke and ariane look literally identical. if you compare the art right before you start the falke fight, and the art where ariane tells elster that she doesn't remember her, you can see that they are, down to the very pixel, identical. as if the ending wasn't bitter enough, elster is told that she can't dance with the love of her life anymore by someone who, in my opinion, might just *be* the love of her life, or rather a replika of her
Thanks for this Grim! I've been putting off signalis. I'll watch until the spoilers section and then go finish the game so I can watch the rest of the vid.
I must have said to myself, "I hope Grim does a video on this" or "Grim needs to do a video on this" like a dozen times each while going through this game.
In general, in no way whatsoever am I hesitant to proudly say that the masterpiece that is Signalis as well as System Shock Remake, Control, & MADiSON are without question some of the utterly absolute *BEST* games I’ve ever had the pleasure to have played, experienced, & completed in not only the last few years; but have unequivocally been amongst the greatest games throughout the entirety of my life- if Silent Hill, Resident Evil, or Dead Space are your favorites? Then you owe it to yourself to play Signalis as soon as humanly possible….. you must not make the mistake of missing out on this utterly phenomenal piece of artistic perfection. Skål!!!!!!!!!! Great video
Man this is so good, one of my favorites yet. I love hearing your analysis of esoteric vague stories like this, idk if you've ever played killer7 but I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on it because when I played it I saw a lot of Twin Peaks and that sort of dream logic. Great stuff man keep up the good work
Subbed in the first 12 minutes, it's a serious talent to be able to deliver such a well structured, articulate, and just plain deep hour and sixteen minute long video without it just turning into spaghetti. Sadly I have to return after I'm done with my playthrough, I'll give you a muted full video play tomorrow though.
The game is meant to make you empathize with someone having a slow terminal disease, like cancer, Alzheimer's, the cascade of complications after a bad stroke, or Arianne's radiation poisoning on the Penrose. (By the way, she ship name Penrose is likely a reference to the Penrose diagram, which is a notation for understanding a black hole. I bet you it's also in turn a reference to the movie Event Horizon.)
heh, so the Penrose is named so because it attracts all those afflicted beings - hell, maybe it attracts everything, as we gamers were brought to it as well! ahh, metanarratives!
excellent review. Loved Signalis and I very much appreciated the finer details they took the time to add to the game such as the sound effects when changing menus, and I also appreciated how you clearly appreciated those details too, enough to give them some focus in this review. Well done sir. subbed.
i really feel sad that i never managed to get even a clue on how to open that safe at the end of the game, but i was way too scared and saddened like to play it all over again.
The cards Adler refers to from his past life are likely the tarot cards we find later at Rotfront Colony. This "test" would be a tarot reading which may be the one we use to solve the final puzzle. If so, then the sequence of cards we find would be a metaphor for her life story. Ariane has a tendency to appear all over the place. This is likely either because she is bioresonant or because she is a kind of avatar for the Red Eye. (The later case would make her motive completely inscrutable, but it's interesting to consider that she might not actually be human.)
Subscribed to your channel a long time ago, but never bothered watching your videos. Played this game recently and noticed this video in my subscription box. Just like to say for the long format type videos that are popular these days, you do a very good job that sets you above the competition, good commentary combined with some pretty funny comedic timing. I wish your channel great success and I'm glad we both played this game.
Having played this game, I was happily surprised to see that you had reviewed it. Your analysis of this game resonated with me a lot since I came to a lot of the same conclusions as you when it came to plot and gameplay. This game's story isn't totally conclusive and maybe even frustratingly vague with some aspects, but the fact that I'm content with what the game showed me is indicative of just how amazing this game is. I really look forward to your next review. Keep up the good work!
I'm really glad to have found this channel. I find the humor and analysis to be in a great balance and I'm looking forward to watching all the videos and future ones as well! On the matter of Signalis itself, me not being the biggest fan of horror games (being a scaredy cat sometimes, while also running like a bull into danger and ruin the experience and atmosphere at times), I find Signalis kept me interested the whole way through. It's one of the few games that actually made me want to replay it not just to experience the other endings but also to try and understand the story better (it didn't, but fuck it, I love it all the same).
heh, your description of Signalis brought me, mind and body, soul and shell, gamer and gamerhands, back to Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, one of the only games that have truly perplexed me in terms of understanding what even happened in it, and more importantly, what all of it meant. if Signalis holds up that same “what even HAPPENED here?” energy… might have to check it out!
Just here to reiterate that Grim is low key the most underrated gaming TH-camr around. This review (like all his others) is impeccably edited, genuinely funny, incredibly perceptive and informative on all fronts. Not one for real life skits usually but here I am a Para Pug stan. He also just has such a great vibe and personality to his videos that is totally unique in the best way. Hope you know how much your work means to the #GothGamerNation and beyond 🤘
[Signalis works off of Silent Hill dreamlogic.] Often times that does seem like the case, but unlike Silent Hill there's actually an in game reason why Elster might not be so reactive to her surroundings as a consequence of her personality. James from Silent hill 2 is just some guy; there's no reason he wouldn't freak out at what he sees unless he was in a dreamstate where you just take things in your stride (until you don't and wake up in a cold sweat.) Elster is a replika who's neural pattern was cloned from an existing unit who'd already been in service, and who in turn had their neural pattern copied from a war veteran who was hand-pick for her resilience, mental stability, ability to work under stress, and overall survival skills. It stands to reason she would be able to compartmentalize the situation in such a way that she could keep moving. What's more important is that there are plenty of things she is not nonreactive to: she remarks on the gruesome state the other replikas are in and that a dead patient in an oxygen chamber is "hard to look at." With all that in mind, I think it's much more likely that Elster doesn't react to the piles of her own corpses seen throughout the game for effect i.e to improve their impact for the player by depriving them of any comment on the player character's part.
you’ve hit that last point on the head - I tried silent hill 2 and just couldn’t handle controlling an essentially mute protagonist and dealing with the horrors alone, but silent hill 3 had a main character that actually reacted to the crazy ass shit going on, and that certainly made the experience less terrifying!
man, that tip about playing the game when you are in a good state of mind... this game absolutely broke me at a very strange point of my life and god damn, i feel a permanent scar on my heart. One of the most beautifully melancholic and hopeless pieces of media that i have experienced.
There seems to be a corrupted world which runs parallel to the real world. This explains why the Penrose is simultaneously on Hoth and inside instrumentality from Evangelion as well as where "Nowhere" is.
There are 4 endings, 3 that are based on HOW you play the game and 4th that needs a guide (because there is no way you can figure out those secrets on your own).
Blame! Is pretty good but my favorite Tsutomu Nihei is probably Biomega, the bleak world he creates and the weight of the situation makes for a great story plus dude just makes amazing speedy visuals, everything's very dynamic in his illustration.
Finally finished this game, was following it for a year and noticed it dropped on my birthday! It was an amazing experience, and honestly I never thought a survival horror game like this could get so much emotion and all out of me. Great video as always Grim, I definitely love the analysis of the story and won't go further because spoilers. But I believe that the theories presented so far are really close to what the true story is. I'm excited definitely to see more videos come out that explain the lore behind it further, but such an atmospheric and amazing game. Only made by two people. Absolutely brilliant
"I'm like a little rat, a little gremlin. A ghouly guy with beaty eyes and tiny grabbies, a loner, a rebel, a real piece of shit." Finally got around to watching the spoilers section. I'm so happy you made this call back to my favorite line from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. review!
I have only found your channel in the last few days.. But I love your content, your style, the way you vibe! I've been bingeing the hell outta your videos! Keep up the great work
I really appreciate how soon into discussing the title you state that the game plays "in the key of other games" (absolutely amazing way to put that too) but is not a hollow facsimile of them. I think that's part of what makes the game so instantly recognizably amazing. It doesn't hide the fact that it's inspired, the fact that it's inspired means very blatantly that it's impassioned. It doesn't ruminate on the past, it just isn't afraid to be upfront on who taught it to dance. Also i'm happy to have stumbled across your channel through this. A new subscriber; I have become!
The quality of your videos are enough, but there are so many other reviewers that don’t have the output rate you do. It’s insane how you can pump out quality video after quality video on such a consistent basis.
Played through it a few nights ago, immediately thought Grim would be the best person to review it. Glad to see the game found its target audience. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I'm in that group? As much as I loved the game's style -- its music and aesthetics are 100% my jam, and it name-drops "The King in Yellow" ffs -- most of my thoughts ended up focusing on what DIDN'T work for me. In large part, it just didn't really scare me or give me that tense feeling I look for in these titles. I didn't feel scared or panicked when enemies would get back up; I'd just feel annoyed. "Fuck, this again." The controls being weirdly finicky and delayed on interactions didn't help -- glad Grim noted the same issue. These games don't have to be OOH SCARY BEEG SCREAM to get my attention, but I feel like the same succeeded more at its existential horror than it did its moment-to-moment tension and fear. Which, for a survival-horror game, is kind of a problem. But moreover, the story's vagueness and dream logic kept me at arm's length. It's hard to get invested in a character when I don't really even know what they are or how real anything is at a given moment. The background info about replikas and identity were cool and existentially terrifying in a way that I thought was interesting, but seriously -- why is everything the way it is? Why does Falke have the same portrait as Ariane? Who is she even and how does she connect with Elster? The answer seems to be just "dream" and "bioresonance" and "memories" and "HP Lovecraft is in there somewhere probably." The game gives you a bunch of pieces to put the puzzle together, but I'm getting the vibe that there is no "real answer" -- that it's all vague and left up to us to put together because there's no real, solid answer. "The answer is what makes sense to you!" And I just don't gel with that, personally. Dark Souls and Bloodborne have some similar "put the puzzle together" stories and lore, but it feels like they're more SOLID, if that makes sense. Idk, the second you start involving dreams, I just have a good chance of losing interest. And TBF, I did not lose interest in Signalis, so it's doing something right. But after my first playthrough, I deleted the game because I had no interest in playing it again. Which, in a world where most games don't hold my interest long enough to even make it through one playthrough, is still a good sign of quality. But I wish I had the same love for it a lot of its fans seem to have. And I'm glad Grim really liked it.
"It's hard to get invested in a character when I don't really even know what they are or how real anything is at a given moment." _Thank you._ This is exactly why I can never get into stories like this. Without a firm understanding of how things work, or cause and effect, there's nothing to ground what can happen. And if the audience has no way to tell what is and is not possible, then it's very difficult to have meaningful stakes, since at any time it could just shift and not matter. I mean for goodness sake, the moment your game ends up just being Jacob's Ladder and everything was the last few moments of a dying person stretched out, and no one and nothing that happened was even real.... then all that care and empathy that I might have felt didn't matter. Oh, Falke wasn't even real? No one actually suffered cause it's just some albino girl's dream? Ok, cool. Bleh.
@@Shenaldrac Like, I'm not saying there isn't some pathos buried in there -- Isa dying because she couldn't find her sister, only for you to realize they were both dead the entire time? Doesn't really make any sense, but when she's the only person you see and like consistently, you feel it. There's some emotion to be felt, convoluted though the path to get there may be. But there has to be SOME grounding to your characters and the world, or else it just ends up feeling like we're smashing two dolls together. And Signalis leans more that way than I would like. It also doesn't help that, TBH... Most of these anime girls kind of look alike? I'm not knocking the aesthetic, but we've got Star and Falke and Elster and Etcetera and they're all some variation of "cute anime girl with dark hair." And when a good number of gestalt characters are also cute anime girls with dark hair... I'm just saying that they could have at least dipped into some of the weird anime girl hair colors to further differentiate them and make it a little easier to track. ... Anime girl? I feel like I said that a lot just then.
@@B-019 Anime girl? Anime girl. And yeah, I'd agree that there's not nothing. But like, I guess what I mean is that it feels like it's mostly relying only on your base human empathy. And that's fine to an extent! Like, yes, okay, I do care about these people (and it probably helps that they're all attractive women) and it's horrible to see them suffering. It's horrible that Isa dies as she does, may never have even been real to begin with. But the amount of impact it has is limited due to the lack of context, to the lack of development or time spent with any of these characters. Of course I'll care if something bad happens to someone who, as far as I know, has done nothing to deserve it. That's just human empathy 101. But I won't feel any _more_ than that basic response, I won't feel the way I do when Galuf dies in Final Fantasy 5, you know? A character I've spent hours and hours with in the game, who's interacted with other characters and I feel like I know. And that just seems lacking in the extreme here. Mostly I'm just happy that someone else seems to feel even roughly similar to how I do.
I mean it technically IS possible that since the Replikas were modeled off the memories of real people that some of them could have played Silent Hill, which would make the blatant references canon.
This channel feels like (unfortunately) one of the best kept secrets on this platform. It's almost criminal to think there's so many people missing out on this excellent content.
yeah grim is busing fr fr
Is 70k subs really that small? Look at his patreon, that's a lot of people appreciating his content
Compared to the output from bigger creators with entire teams writing, editing and shooting their stuff it's actually quietly incredible how high quality and well rounded Grim's videos are given that they come out so regularly.
@@benhillman8384 even by the standards of "medium size" video game youtubers, yeah 70k is kinda small. Our boy deserves way more. He's ATT LEASSTT as competent and entertaining as Mandalore gaming, or Josh Strife Haze to name only a couple. What makes him so special though is also probably a limiting factor, the way he wears his influences on his sleeve may be off-putting to non-goths or whatever, its hard to say since I myself am a longstanding goth with no perspective outside being one for the past 2 decades so....
I feel like it’s forcing him to try harder though. That might be why it’s so good. I like that he’s leaning into his own style harder and harder every year.
"Things have learned to walk that ought to crawl" is honestly one of the hardest lines I've read in a long time. It's a perfect way to describe a humanity that played god, too much and too long.
In case you didn't know, that's a line from HP Lovecraft's "The Festival." Signalis uses a lot of these references, as well as "The King in Yellow" which is a related work.
@@B-019 I read Adler's "I wear no mask" line and giggled like a schoolgirl
@@CassiusGreen It's a cool reference for a bad guy to make, and just a good line in general. But I'd have liked it more if there was more to the guy.
Because from what we know, Ariane was only going to go to the Sierpinski Mines if she wasn't selected for the Penrose program. And since she's obviously in the program (and if I remember correctly no Elsters were ever sent there), what exactly is all that based on? Who is Adler and why are they in Ariane's mind/memory/dream/whenever? Why are they the avatar of whatever is stopping Elster (and Isa I guess) from doing what she's doing?
Idk, it's hard to get really into the story when Falke and Adler are such sketchy, incomplete characters, but they're basically the primary antagonists.
EDIT: Also love your username, Cash.
@@B-019 [Big spoilers below]
If you go by one interpretation, S-23 Sierpinski, all the people in it, and the thing they dug up in the mine (the flesh) do exist and are amplifying Ariane's dying dream via her very strong bioresonance. It becomes sort of a feedback loop where the memories and minds of the Gestalts and Replicas in Sierpinski get broadcasted BACK to Ariane, melding with her own dreams and memories and trapping Adler and Falke within. The two aren't even really particularly evil, just a middle-manager trying to middle-manage and driven mad by the simultaneous loss of his 280cm-tall dommy-mommy gf and getting mind-trapped in a time loop of someone else's twisted memories.
@@JCBudro16 The problem I have is that so much of this is left up to interpretation. I wanted something more solid, less dependent on dream-logic and intuition.
Like, yeah, that MIGHT be what's happening. And maybe the entire Pokemon animated series was a dream Ash had while dying from the Spearow attack in the first episode.
Once you start getting into dreams, you can kind of get away with anything. And it doesn't help that bioresonance is so vague of a concept that even characters in-game say very little of it is understood, so you can justify a lot by introducing those two concepts into the story.
Idk. Obviously that approach works for a lot of folks, but it keeps me at arm's length. I might legitimately be too autistic for this.
You consistently produce some of the highest quality video essays I've seen on YT. Thanks for all your hard work.
Finished this a couple days ago and throughout I was thinking "Goth Daddy needs to play this". And here we are. Thank you, Goth Daddy.
same to everything
YEAAAAH
Tha gothfather
HAAANK!
Don't refer to grimbeard as "goth daddy"!
HAAAAAAANK!
So, regarding the significance of the King In Yellow, I think it may be largely informed by the way that book and entity figure into the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, which is supposedly really big in Germany.
There are a few different interpretations and characterizations, but Signalis in particular seemed to fit in with the "Hastur Mythos" version depicted in the works of Dennis Detwiller.
Basically, Hastur as a Lovecraftian entity is a personification of entropy (think of what Adler said about reality breaking down). The King in Yellow as a being is either an avatar of Hastur, or a human who becomes a vector through which Hastur spreads. The King in Yellow spreads its influence through a play with the same name which Signalis references multiple times. "Along the shore the cloud waves break, the twin suns sink behind the lake..."
Reading the text of the play "drives the reader mad", but that's typically interpreted as a sort of corruption or consumption. Depending on the interpretation, some depictions have those who read the play become aware of a secret reality which underpins our own, manifesting what seem to be delusions of grandeur about their own importance in the royal bloodline.
Falke units are imprints of the Great Revolutionary -> Royal bloodline.
Hastur is entropy -> Breakdown of reality
The King In Yellow (being) serves as a vector for Hastur to spread -> Ariane's bioresonant powers are causing reality to fracture and break.
Along the shores the cloud waves break, the shadows lengthen in Carcosa -> The shoreline visions
Mysterious entity/the red eye -> Hastur (my opinion, though there's not a lot of backing to that)
I haven't figured out all of the possible connections, but I think that Ariane is effectively acting as The King in Yellow (being).
Also, holy shit, someone NEEDS to get Grimbo into a Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes campaign.
Impossible Landscapes is an absolute masterwork.
I mean, the planet is called Leng and that's like "OK lets fucking leave this place noooooowwwww"
To add to this, Adler says a line from the play later in the game. "I wear no mask". A lot of what's happening seems to be tied to ariane's bioresonance, and she's effectively "sleeping" in the cryo pod while slowly experiencing radiation poisoning. Adler units are described as having a very strong sense of self, and Adler seems to have developed some awareness of the loop and the "dream".
"I have no mask" in the king in yellow is stated by a character referred to as "the stranger", who either is an emissary or servant to the king in yellow, or is the king in yellow. However, in the "more light" story from the hastur cycle, he's explicitly the enemy of the king in yellow. Which is the role I think fits him best.
Adler can be interpreted as becoming aware of his role in the dreamloop created by ariane, and seems to try and stop the player from achieving their goal of waking and killing Ariane. It's unclear how much is a dream and how much is reality, but alot of characters could be projections created by ariane partially or entirely. From Adler's perspective, he could see waking or killing Ariane as a complete end of his existence and of the reality hes occupying. In this case she would also literally be an eldritch god to him, an uncaring powerful entity to which his world and very being is merely a bad dream. Adler "wears no mask" in the sense that his strong sense of self makes him his own conscious actor, even if he only exists within the dream/loop
While a lot of the story is open to interpretation ("why look for answers if it only leads to more questions?"), I do think the king in yellow plays a very significant role in the story given how prominently it's presented. And given the above I think Ariane being a parallel for The King in Yellow and Adler being a parallel for The Stranger fits pretty well
It’s also worth mentioning that Ariane’s aunt is named Kamilla and Adler directly references The King in Yellow when he says “I wear no mask.”
Suffice it to say, I think this theory holds a ton of water.
The series of paintings that keeps appearing in visions is a real one, called "Isle of the Dead" by Arnold Böcklin. There are five variations of it, but all of them depict Charon, the ferryman of Greek myth, leading a dead soul to an isolated island somewhere in the River Styx. The painting you show at 38:12 is quite literally one of those paintings with the devs' own imagery put over the top for thematic purposes.
Shiiiiit. Knowledge 😎
Tysm, I was looking for a comment abt this XD
Also worth noting that many painters, among whom H.R. Giger of Alien fame, made their own version.
The "alien island" painting you mention is "The Isle of the Dead" by Arnold Boecklin. What makes this really interesting is that Rachmaninoff made a symphony by the same name based on the painting, but it wasn't actually based on the original form of the painting. What he saw was a black-and-white reproduction of the painting which, as far as he knew, was what the original looked like. Later on, he saw the full-color original and said:
"If I had seen first the original, I, probably, would have not written my Isle of the Dead."
This seems to strongly relate to the themes of the game with copies of copies and existential angst and so on.
I watched the entire spoiler section and I could recite everything that was said in that section and yet I feel I have learned absolutely nothing except for the fact that I definitely need to play this game. Thanks
Same. Actually.
It's easier to get a grip on the story if you play the game yourself, on your pace.
This is one of those cases where yes, you can piece together the information to follow the story, but to really understand what the hell is going on you need to discuss it with other players to see the different possible interpretations and then assemble your own.
I owe you so much for introducing me to this game. It is beautiful in a way that I cannot concisely express. Thank you.
Seeing you months after this comment with a Signalis profile photo is really wholesome
You can't trick me this time beard man - I already played this through in a heaving feverish single sitting coma on the day it came out. Great stuff as ever.
How long did it take to finish ?
@@Gatorade69 About 8 hours - it's probably shorter if you know what you're doing though.
@@benhillman8384 considerably shorter if you know what you're doing, word of advice, the ending is tied to the way you play, among other things.
@@Gatorade69 took me 12 hrs but I'm slow so I'd say 9-10 hrs on average
@@Gatorade69 15 hours there. It really depends if you're familiar with the genre and the way you play. I guess if you've mastered the old-school survival-horror genre back in the day you're good for under 10h. Or simply if you're good at optimising navigation and inventory.
I was hoping one of the "big cool youtube guys" would make a long form analysis of this game after it tore me to shreds mentally, but I'm much more happy that I found this video instead. You really did it justice, and I love your brand of humor. New sub for you, keep up the good work.
For those wondering about the relevance of the book "The king in yellow " in the game, I believe that is much more thematic than lore or wiki-wise.
The book, just like the game, is a collection of stories that are as much about horror as they are about love.
That dichotomy of love/horror engulfs both the game and the characters within.
And the short story - an inhabitant of carcosa - that served as inspiration for some aspects of the book has basically the same plot structure as signalis
Fuck I love the yellow king, now I love this game even more.
This guy is the embodiment of a certain vibe and as a result it draws like minded people to his channel.
One of my favourite channels on TH-cam and it's more because of him than anything he even reviews.
I loved watching his supernatural recaps even though I would never in a million years actually want to watch supernatural.
Guy just has powerful charisma.
One finds oneself in agreement with this.
I strongly second every word. Makes me glad that we're lucky enough to be here to witness all his creations, but kinda sad that there's not more of us.
😈👹👺👽👾🤡🤖🎃☠️
Us fans are the coolest group
My patience has been rewarded
Hey Avalanche I hope you plan on making a video of the resident evil 2 remake classic mod! Would love to see it!
I watched this a few months ago (when I discovered the channel and blitzed through a bunch of your videos) and even though I've never been a Survival-Horror Gamer when you said you'd recommend it to "Survival-Horror enthusiasts or fans of Dark Sci-Fi" I decided that I like the latter well enough and I'd give this a shot. I played the whole game and it was absolutely one of my favorites. Thanks for broadening my horizons a bit, Gamer.
I just got done playing this game last week. Possibly the best SURVIVIAL horror game I've playing since REmake. It scratches the Silent Hill / Resident Evil itch like no other game I can think of.
Man. I am blown away by how fast you can pump these out and have them be at such a consistent quality (even your old ones).
Idk how TH-cam led me down a rabbit hole that ended up here, but damn do i love a quirky, well articulated, informative, and unique video essay. Earned yourself a subscriber
In my gameplay, I only used thermite flare for enemies that are close to the safe room or main corridor. Though the enemies might get up, I found it would take longer if you just walked around them (don't run, don't turn the flashlight on, and don't walk over the downed enemy)
Your content is my favorite TH-cam channel, by a LONG shot. Great game choice, intelligent opinion and research, funny of beat, constructive criticism, high and low culture references... all around just great entertainment. You're awesome, Grim.
Dude yes. Long live Grimbeard
The story sounds like something I would really enjoy, but man... I'm not in the kind of headspace right now where I could devote hours to this sort of thing. Thanks for another great video
If you ever feel like it, know that it's relatively short, between 6h to 18h depending on your play style and familiarity with the genre. There are 4 different endings, thought, and only 2 can be cheesed from reloading instead of doing another run, from what has been tested atm.
I don’t blame you. I played this a whiiiile ago. And the biggest gripe I have with it is a bunch of backtracking, and backtracking with puzzles too. And if you want the good ending, you gotta replay it all over again. It won’t let you your first play through. Which sucks.
I patiently waited to watch this video upon finishing the game. Watching Mr. Beard’s synopsis of the story was an excitement all its own, until I reached the ending. I realized his ending was not the one I received, which compelled me to start another play through. This game is now easily in my top ten game stories of all time (especially in a time of unfinished and horribly monetized games). Also, yeah, grimbeard my man, I’ve bought your merch and two of your albums (and will continue to do so) to support the absolutely excellent and quality content you bring to all of us on two fronts. You’re awesome. Also please listen to his music because it rocks your entire face off.
this might be a silly comment to make, but it's getting close (ish) to a year now since signalis released, and i really wanted to drop a thank you somewhere here for introducing me to this game. it was (and still is!) an incredible experience and i don't know if i would have ever picked it up if it wasn't for this video.
My feller I don't know how you did it, but I absolutely adore your content. Thankyou for continuing your work.
Thanks for drawing attention to that "Ulster/rebel" joke. I am far too American to have gotten it without assistance.
Your conclusion about signalis being it's own thing was very apt. I found signalis through a steam curator that recommends games with lesbian couples in them, and that was my only frame of reference for this game, and I absolutely loved it. Never had touched og survival horror or anything if that type. Signalis stands on its own without the genre to hold it up, and for that, I think it's excellent
I sincerely hope Signalis gets more attention, because it deserves the success. I'm worried people will be put off by the anime cutscenes and miss the best attempt at a classic playstation survival horror we've seen in years. The endings I've got still haunt me, and I'm convinced the ones I'm yet to see will be just as gut wrenching.
I doubt the anime artstyle choice will turn people away considering how well va-11hall-a did a few years ago with a similar style choice
The anime aesthetic was what got my attention frankly. And I rarely play survival horror stuff. Plus the style the devs used was more on the milder side on the anime/manga spectrum when it comes to simplifying/exaggerating physical features and such.
Honestly, without creators like Grim using those fantastically creepy thumbnails of a faceless Adler as opposed to that rubbersexdoll-esque cover art, I may have skipped on by at first glance. The images with standard issue BigTittie Anime Girl in Tiny Corset™ made it a bit difficult for me to take it's scare potential seriously. Perfect Blue really captured horror in so many fantastic ways but if Mima had been animated in the style of Bayonetta's goofy 'Leg Avenue-chic', the most tense part would have been hoping to god we weren't gonna get an exposé of her "cash n prizes" because her outfit got magic'd away whenever she performed Angel of Love. 🤣
@@DarlingMissDarling ???, What cover art?
@@lolagagginw812lol7 for Harry Potter. What key art do you think this thread is referring to?
I knew you'd get your hands on this one.
My belief is that the whole game takes place inside the dying dreams of Ariane, that due to her bioresonance powers became more real than dreams usually are. Real enough for its denizens to be sentient people, at the same time remaining functions of the dream and personifications of people from the waking world. The red eye is Ariane's own, and as she lies in cryosleep, consumed by radiation sickness, the dream twists, perverts and becomes more and more nightmarish, time collapses, invasive memories and personalities creep in, and the malignant flesh consumes it. That's what Falke saw under the mines, and the knowledge infected her. Adler understood it, and it drew him insane. Ariane is an elder god of her own small world, she longs to wake, and when she does, the world-dream will end.
Ariane could also be a play on Ariadne from greek mythology, labyrinths and minotaurs etc. Would have to look up the origin of the name.
Also all replika names are named after birds in the german language.
Elster = magpie
Eule = owl
Star = common starling
Adler = eagle
Falke = falcon , hawk
@@nocomment3294 further, Kolibri - hummingbird, Mynah - (presumably) indian mynah bird, my dad's family and friends had some weird animals and one of them was an Indian mynah who would eerily perfectly mimic his late grandfather's wheezing laughter and the creaking of a specific door when opened gently.
Yep, I also think it's either takes place in the dying dreams of Ariene or some amalgamation of her dying dreams and dying Elster's corrupted and fragmented dying mind projected into Ariene dreams through bioresonance that Ariene's dying brain radiates (from some of the notes on Rot-front it is clear that she had some sort of unusually strong gift or power of bioresonance which seems like she concealed from everyone). That's why there is this strong motif of "the last promise" that should be fulfilled. It seems it's part of Elster's mind, her main focus and obsession, because of what she is (the history and quirks of her neurological imprint and her apparent deep connection to Ariene due to circumstances). Also it's interesting that the main antagonists in the story are Adler and Falke, who are the figures that represent the highest authority and power for Replicas (Falkes even described as God-like figures to all Replicas) and the ones that are supposed to keep everything working smoothly and orderly. It seems like they are also part of Elster's fragmented and corrupted personality, representing or symbolizing the parts of her mind that tried (and failed) to end both Ariene's foreign bioresonance presence and Elster's own corruption and now they keep trying unsuccessfully to stop what they consider further degradation and fragmentation of Elster's reality and stabilize what's left of her "normal" Elster mind. But of course since they are also part of this nightmarish reality they act accordingly.
What I find really interesting is after you have to "continue" the game from trying to open the ship and you are back in the ship if you turn on the radio and channel surf you can find emergency messages telling you the ship has crashed while this is before you even have.
This is a great review, but to you, viewer who didn't play Signalis and watched the whole thing, don't think that the game was spoiled for you.
Grimbeard skipped a bunch and only showed one of several endings. Depending on your interpretations of the documents and events, there are many ways you could make sense of the story.
You very much still have a shot at experiencing the game on your own and coming to new conclusions, so do it!
The intro is honestly one of the best I’ve seen on the platform
I thoroughly enjoyed the first 13 mins of your Signalis review. Stopped there due to your spoiler warning (thank you, btw.) Will return after completing the game. Subscribed!
You are the only channel I'd ever reccomend A House of many Doors. It doesn't look like much at first.
But it goes deep.
You seem like the type.
And I will check out Signalis!
I think Grim could appreciate AHoMD for sure, if he could suffer through the gameplay.
@@qew_Nemo I did not expect to see another person here who knows it x3 Nice!
Thanks for making these vids. Thanks for letting me take a peek into these darker gaming experiences I'm not emotionally stable enough to experience first hand.
That little quip about roomba with googly eyes falling over, I really felt that.
THE AMOUNT OF EFFORT AND THE VIEWS HE GETS PER VIDEO IS INSANE. Like the effort to view ratio is fucked up. how does he not have 1 million views.
That odd screamo-synthwave hybrid at the end is a whole vibe I didn't know I needed in my life.
Art sir this channel is art. To call this “content” is criminal.
Well said.
A new grimbeard video published at the same time as a luner eclipse? This is feeling like a very Goth gamer evening.
There's a lunar eclipse ? I don't really go outside anymore so I didn't know the moon and sun were still a thing.
Hell yea
@@Gatorade69 same. Keep getting told to touch grass
@@AC-hj9tv It's like the people that say that haven't even been outside. All I see is dirt and rocks. No grass to be found. Now, I can touch this marijuana I bought from the dispensary. Is that touching grass ?
@@Gatorade69 hell yea dude. I would get high w you
Great video! I've been obsessing over Signalis lately. I loved the demo, but was content to wait for a sale until I saw 90% of it was made by two people. Then I couldn't pull my wallet out fast enough. Best $20 I've spent all year.
I'm really glad I'm not the only one who had this game stuck in my brain. I beat it about a week ago, and can't stop thinking about it. There was just so much to process after the credits rolled. I got the same ending as you, but replayed the end and got another (better?) one after seeing some spoilers online. It was still brutally depressing, but maybe a little more satisfying. I was very surprised how a game with such little dialogue really made me feel. The cutscenes and music were amazing, and some of those damaged journal entries at the end just hit way too close to home.
Honestly, I'd LOVE to see another game in this universe. The world building was excellent, and adding in a little cosmic horror with dark sci fi felt like this was made for me. I'm also a MASSIVE fan of the retro futuristic style. Why doesn't my computer sound like MU/TH/UR from Alien?! Why is my smart phone a touch screen and not a Pip-Boy?! The tech in our timeline isn't nearly as cool.
I also want to see more games in this setting. Not even survival-horror games, just anything that develops the setting and atmosphere.
Love your videos, you always put so much style into them and you bring to light lot of the the black-sheep we might never know about.
I tried watching other reviews and they didn't work for me. But you always come true. Keep it up man.
This chanel is one of the best gaming/(lets be honest, also comedy)/ chanels on the internet. I watched nearly every single one of them and every time the 1-2 hours pass by like a minute. I learn a lot from them, because your research is excellent, i laugh (the 9pm joke killed me xD) and i have this cosy nighty night, dark, isolation, endlessness feeling, when i watch them, like when i watch a good horror movie in space. Your voice also comforts this. The editing and writing of the script is on another level too. You sir, deserve waaaaay more recognition. Thanks for the continuously good work. Greets from goth austria!
So Guillermo Del Toro’s house just looks like that afaik. A local film critic did a series with the Denver Public Library involving weekly film discussions with filmmakers during the pandemic, including GDT and yeah, that’s what it looked like. Super fun series, it was wild to see where turbo famous folks live.
This was a FANTASTIC video, thank you so much for all the love and work that went into making it. I immediately finished watching a playthrough (I wish I had been able to play it, but alas, I am poor and lack the means) and hopped onto TH-cam and Reddit because I needed to dive deeper--and I'm SO happy this was the first video I stumbled onto. It helped me solidify my own thoughts while pointing out other nuances and wonderful things about it, and, hey! I got a few laughs along the way, too. Thank you again!!!
you're the first person where I absolutely will take your word on the spoiler warning and come back here when i finish it, whenever that may be. Thank you. Found you recently and been trying to recommend you to folks, you do awersome
Just wanted to add that the names of the replika all reference birds in the german language.
Elster = magpie
Eule = owl
Star = common starling
Adler = eagle
Falke = falcon
and so on
These vids really helped me through a tough time in life. Been a while since I was able to watch one. Glad to see you’re still going GB!
“A sports commentator communicating through a ouji board”. God DAMN that’s some writing right there.
You have no idea how much I've been waiting on this review, specifically yours. the lack of the rat roundup was particularly disappointing though. Definitely looks like a winner
We need ParaPug merch.
I think this is maybe the first time I'm skipping the spoiler section because I'm seriously intending to go and get this game. It looks amazing. Quality vid as always.
Loving the honesty of your feelings toward games and how it makes you feel. I also find it comforting when I find something new in a game that brings me back to my childhood. I'm not completely dead inside yet.
i waited until i finally played for myself to watch this.
i really love how ambiguous it is, what the nature of these "loops" and memories are; maybe something genuinely eldritch is happening, something on this moon calling out with whatever psychic imprint Ariane's awful death left behind, luring in other LSTR units...
or maybe it's all a guilty, dying dream of a promise broken, taking place entirely on the ship and in the pair's fragmenting memories as they die.
or maybe it's both, somehow!
something I noticed is that falke and ariane look literally identical. if you compare the art right before you start the falke fight, and the art where ariane tells elster that she doesn't remember her, you can see that they are, down to the very pixel, identical.
as if the ending wasn't bitter enough, elster is told that she can't dance with the love of her life anymore by someone who, in my opinion, might just *be* the love of her life, or rather a replika of her
Thanks for this Grim! I've been putting off signalis. I'll watch until the spoilers section and then go finish the game so I can watch the rest of the vid.
I must have said to myself, "I hope Grim does a video on this" or "Grim needs to do a video on this" like a dozen times each while going through this game.
In general, in no way whatsoever am I hesitant to proudly say that the masterpiece that is Signalis as well as System Shock Remake, Control, & MADiSON are without question some of the utterly absolute *BEST* games I’ve ever had the pleasure to have played, experienced, & completed in not only the last few years; but have unequivocally been amongst the greatest games throughout the entirety of my life- if Silent Hill, Resident Evil, or Dead Space are your favorites? Then you owe it to yourself to play Signalis as soon as humanly possible….. you must not make the mistake of missing out on this utterly phenomenal piece of artistic perfection. Skål!!!!!!!!!! Great video
Man this is so good, one of my favorites yet. I love hearing your analysis of esoteric vague stories like this, idk if you've ever played killer7 but I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on it because when I played it I saw a lot of Twin Peaks and that sort of dream logic. Great stuff man keep up the good work
Subbed in the first 12 minutes, it's a serious talent to be able to deliver such a well structured, articulate, and just plain deep hour and sixteen minute long video without it just turning into spaghetti. Sadly I have to return after I'm done with my playthrough, I'll give you a muted full video play tomorrow though.
"What? It has to spin, it's round. Spinning is so much cooler than not spinning. I'm the general, and i want it to spin! Now!"
The game is meant to make you empathize with someone having a slow terminal disease, like cancer, Alzheimer's, the cascade of complications after a bad stroke, or Arianne's radiation poisoning on the Penrose.
(By the way, she ship name Penrose is likely a reference to the Penrose diagram, which is a notation for understanding a black hole. I bet you it's also in turn a reference to the movie Event Horizon.)
heh, so the Penrose is named so because it attracts all those afflicted beings - hell, maybe it attracts everything, as we gamers were brought to it as well! ahh, metanarratives!
i know this 4 months late but seeing you not include resident evil 4 in your list is making my skin crawl, love your stuff tho ❤
LETS GO GRIMBO
I AM AWAKE AT AN UNUSUAL HOUR AND FUCKING MISERABLE
MUST BE TIME FOR ANOTHER ABSOLUTE RIPPER
excellent review. Loved Signalis and I very much appreciated the finer details they took the time to add to the game such as the sound effects when changing menus, and I also appreciated how you clearly appreciated those details too, enough to give them some focus in this review. Well done sir. subbed.
i really feel sad that i never managed to get even a clue on how to open that safe at the end of the game, but i was way too scared and saddened like to play it all over again.
do it!
It'll be worth it... kinda. Up to your interpretation
The cards Adler refers to from his past life are likely the tarot cards we find later at Rotfront Colony. This "test" would be a tarot reading which may be the one we use to solve the final puzzle. If so, then the sequence of cards we find would be a metaphor for her life story.
Ariane has a tendency to appear all over the place. This is likely either because she is bioresonant or because she is a kind of avatar for the Red Eye. (The later case would make her motive completely inscrutable, but it's interesting to consider that she might not actually be human.)
Subscribed to your channel a long time ago, but never bothered watching your videos. Played this game recently and noticed this video in my subscription box. Just like to say for the long format type videos that are popular these days, you do a very good job that sets you above the competition, good commentary combined with some pretty funny comedic timing. I wish your channel great success and I'm glad we both played this game.
Your reviews are so good that I never have to play any of the games! You do it for me! Thank you!
God damn. What’s wrong with me?
0:15 Dat Deus Ex Ton Hotel wav made me chuckle. Hope your neighbours are really not that noisy 😂
Having played this game, I was happily surprised to see that you had reviewed it. Your analysis of this game resonated with me a lot since I came to a lot of the same conclusions as you when it came to plot and gameplay. This game's story isn't totally conclusive and maybe even frustratingly vague with some aspects, but the fact that I'm content with what the game showed me is indicative of just how amazing this game is. I really look forward to your next review. Keep up the good work!
I'm really glad to have found this channel. I find the humor and analysis to be in a great balance and I'm looking forward to watching all the videos and future ones as well!
On the matter of Signalis itself, me not being the biggest fan of horror games (being a scaredy cat sometimes, while also running like a bull into danger and ruin the experience and atmosphere at times), I find Signalis kept me interested the whole way through. It's one of the few games that actually made me want to replay it not just to experience the other endings but also to try and understand the story better (it didn't, but fuck it, I love it all the same).
heh, your description of Signalis brought me, mind and body, soul and shell, gamer and gamerhands, back to Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, one of the only games that have truly perplexed me in terms of understanding what even happened in it, and more importantly, what all of it meant.
if Signalis holds up that same “what even HAPPENED here?” energy… might have to check it out!
I spit water at the “what about Barbara” part. Your editing just perfectly matches your tone man. Love it.
Thank you for introducing me to this phenomenal art piece!
Great use of a classic FreQuency track and the X-Files alien theme for 1-2 episodes. I don't know why those stuck out but I loved it!
the searing pain from “PROCESSING IMAGE OF A HAT” lol why does that bit get me so giddy
Just here to reiterate that Grim is low key the most underrated gaming TH-camr around. This review (like all his others) is impeccably edited, genuinely funny, incredibly perceptive and informative on all fronts. Not one for real life skits usually but here I am a Para Pug stan. He also just has such a great vibe and personality to his videos that is totally unique in the best way. Hope you know how much your work means to the #GothGamerNation and beyond 🤘
[Signalis works off of Silent Hill dreamlogic.]
Often times that does seem like the case, but unlike Silent Hill there's actually an in game reason why Elster might not be so reactive to her surroundings as a consequence of her personality. James from Silent hill 2 is just some guy; there's no reason he wouldn't freak out at what he sees unless he was in a dreamstate where you just take things in your stride (until you don't and wake up in a cold sweat.)
Elster is a replika who's neural pattern was cloned from an existing unit who'd already been in service, and who in turn had their neural pattern copied from a war veteran who was hand-pick for her resilience, mental stability, ability to work under stress, and overall survival skills.
It stands to reason she would be able to compartmentalize the situation in such a way that she could keep moving. What's more important is that there are plenty of things she is not nonreactive to: she remarks on the gruesome state the other replikas are in and that a dead patient in an oxygen chamber is "hard to look at."
With all that in mind, I think it's much more likely that Elster doesn't react to the piles of her own corpses seen throughout the game for effect i.e to improve their impact for the player by depriving them of any comment on the player character's part.
you’ve hit that last point on the head - I tried silent hill 2 and just couldn’t handle controlling an essentially mute protagonist and dealing with the horrors alone, but silent hill 3 had a main character that actually reacted to the crazy ass shit going on, and that certainly made the experience less terrifying!
man, that tip about playing the game when you are in a good state of mind... this game absolutely broke me at a very strange point of my life and god damn, i feel a permanent scar on my heart. One of the most beautifully melancholic and hopeless pieces of media that i have experienced.
"I wear no mask," is a sick reference but it also means, "I have my gestalt memories."
. . . I think.
There seems to be a corrupted world which runs parallel to the real world. This explains why the Penrose is simultaneously on Hoth and inside instrumentality from Evangelion as well as where "Nowhere" is.
hey, silent hill, Star Wars, evangelion and silent hill again! you know your references!
Loving the parapug sections. I would die for him
I liked the old one better. They messed him up with the new updates.
There are 4 endings, 3 that are based on HOW you play the game and 4th that needs a guide (because there is no way you can figure out those secrets on your own).
Blame! Is pretty good but my favorite Tsutomu Nihei is probably Biomega, the bleak world he creates and the weight of the situation makes for a great story plus dude just makes amazing speedy visuals, everything's very dynamic in his illustration.
Your videos are the only time i think to myself "here we go again" and do so completely and totally excited
Finally finished this game, was following it for a year and noticed it dropped on my birthday! It was an amazing experience, and honestly I never thought a survival horror game like this could get so much emotion and all out of me.
Great video as always Grim, I definitely love the analysis of the story and won't go further because spoilers. But I believe that the theories presented so far are really close to what the true story is. I'm excited definitely to see more videos come out that explain the lore behind it further, but such an atmospheric and amazing game. Only made by two people. Absolutely brilliant
"I'm like a little rat, a little gremlin. A ghouly guy with beaty eyes and tiny grabbies, a loner, a rebel, a real piece of shit."
Finally got around to watching the spoilers section. I'm so happy you made this call back to my favorite line from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. review!
I have only found your channel in the last few days.. But I love your content, your style, the way you vibe!
I've been bingeing the hell outta your videos!
Keep up the great work
Ive been on TH-cam since the beginning and Ive got to say, YOUR INTRO IS QUITE LITERALLY THE BEST INTRO ON TH-cam HANDS DOWN
I really appreciate how soon into discussing the title you state that the game plays "in the key of other games" (absolutely amazing way to put that too) but is not a hollow facsimile of them. I think that's part of what makes the game so instantly recognizably amazing. It doesn't hide the fact that it's inspired, the fact that it's inspired means very blatantly that it's impassioned. It doesn't ruminate on the past, it just isn't afraid to be upfront on who taught it to dance.
Also i'm happy to have stumbled across your channel through this. A new subscriber; I have become!
The quality of your videos are enough, but there are so many other reviewers that don’t have the output rate you do. It’s insane how you can pump out quality video after quality video on such a consistent basis.
Played through it a few nights ago, immediately thought Grim would be the best person to review it. Glad to see the game found its target audience.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure I'm in that group? As much as I loved the game's style -- its music and aesthetics are 100% my jam, and it name-drops "The King in Yellow" ffs -- most of my thoughts ended up focusing on what DIDN'T work for me.
In large part, it just didn't really scare me or give me that tense feeling I look for in these titles. I didn't feel scared or panicked when enemies would get back up; I'd just feel annoyed. "Fuck, this again." The controls being weirdly finicky and delayed on interactions didn't help -- glad Grim noted the same issue. These games don't have to be OOH SCARY BEEG SCREAM to get my attention, but I feel like the same succeeded more at its existential horror than it did its moment-to-moment tension and fear. Which, for a survival-horror game, is kind of a problem.
But moreover, the story's vagueness and dream logic kept me at arm's length. It's hard to get invested in a character when I don't really even know what they are or how real anything is at a given moment. The background info about replikas and identity were cool and existentially terrifying in a way that I thought was interesting, but seriously -- why is everything the way it is? Why does Falke have the same portrait as Ariane? Who is she even and how does she connect with Elster? The answer seems to be just "dream" and "bioresonance" and "memories" and "HP Lovecraft is in there somewhere probably."
The game gives you a bunch of pieces to put the puzzle together, but I'm getting the vibe that there is no "real answer" -- that it's all vague and left up to us to put together because there's no real, solid answer. "The answer is what makes sense to you!" And I just don't gel with that, personally. Dark Souls and Bloodborne have some similar "put the puzzle together" stories and lore, but it feels like they're more SOLID, if that makes sense. Idk, the second you start involving dreams, I just have a good chance of losing interest.
And TBF, I did not lose interest in Signalis, so it's doing something right. But after my first playthrough, I deleted the game because I had no interest in playing it again. Which, in a world where most games don't hold my interest long enough to even make it through one playthrough, is still a good sign of quality. But I wish I had the same love for it a lot of its fans seem to have. And I'm glad Grim really liked it.
"It's hard to get invested in a character when I don't really even know what they are or how real anything is at a given moment." _Thank you._ This is exactly why I can never get into stories like this. Without a firm understanding of how things work, or cause and effect, there's nothing to ground what can happen. And if the audience has no way to tell what is and is not possible, then it's very difficult to have meaningful stakes, since at any time it could just shift and not matter.
I mean for goodness sake, the moment your game ends up just being Jacob's Ladder and everything was the last few moments of a dying person stretched out, and no one and nothing that happened was even real.... then all that care and empathy that I might have felt didn't matter. Oh, Falke wasn't even real? No one actually suffered cause it's just some albino girl's dream? Ok, cool. Bleh.
@@Shenaldrac Like, I'm not saying there isn't some pathos buried in there -- Isa dying because she couldn't find her sister, only for you to realize they were both dead the entire time? Doesn't really make any sense, but when she's the only person you see and like consistently, you feel it. There's some emotion to be felt, convoluted though the path to get there may be.
But there has to be SOME grounding to your characters and the world, or else it just ends up feeling like we're smashing two dolls together. And Signalis leans more that way than I would like.
It also doesn't help that, TBH... Most of these anime girls kind of look alike? I'm not knocking the aesthetic, but we've got Star and Falke and Elster and Etcetera and they're all some variation of "cute anime girl with dark hair." And when a good number of gestalt characters are also cute anime girls with dark hair... I'm just saying that they could have at least dipped into some of the weird anime girl hair colors to further differentiate them and make it a little easier to track.
... Anime girl? I feel like I said that a lot just then.
@@B-019 Anime girl? Anime girl.
And yeah, I'd agree that there's not nothing. But like, I guess what I mean is that it feels like it's mostly relying only on your base human empathy. And that's fine to an extent! Like, yes, okay, I do care about these people (and it probably helps that they're all attractive women) and it's horrible to see them suffering. It's horrible that Isa dies as she does, may never have even been real to begin with.
But the amount of impact it has is limited due to the lack of context, to the lack of development or time spent with any of these characters. Of course I'll care if something bad happens to someone who, as far as I know, has done nothing to deserve it. That's just human empathy 101. But I won't feel any _more_ than that basic response, I won't feel the way I do when Galuf dies in Final Fantasy 5, you know? A character I've spent hours and hours with in the game, who's interacted with other characters and I feel like I know. And that just seems lacking in the extreme here.
Mostly I'm just happy that someone else seems to feel even roughly similar to how I do.
@@Shenaldrac We're in the same boat, bud. I agree completely.
...
...
...
... Anime girl?
@@B-019 Anime...
...boy?
Grim, you have no idea how much this particular video means to me. I didn't even watch it yet
Thank you Grim
All hail the SCRIB
just finished the game and seeing this pop up, this is exactly what I wanted right now lol
Grim you never miss my man, the best reviews.
Grim thank you for being what I watch while I wait in line to vote, more than generous timing
I'm glad I waited to mention Steve the pencil.
Loving the new outro! ❤️
After nearly two years, I finally got to play Signalis, and this was worth waiting to watch. One of my new all time favorite games.
I mean it technically IS possible that since the Replikas were modeled off the memories of real people that some of them could have played Silent Hill, which would make the blatant references canon.
heh. Ariana was just a lad that played silent hill 3 and thought that game was the shit!
Best foley work ever. Please never stop with the quality work dude.
NEVER
STOP
That's the best analysis I've seen
ead of the game. The moment I started playing I knew you're gonna do a video about this game. You're the best GB!