For some reason, TH-cam wasn't playing audio on this video when I clicked on it, and I legitimately spent about 2 minutes wondering if Matt was doing a bit
Super Bunnyhop made a good video about Telltale’s downfall around the time it happened, but I wouldn’t mind Matt taking a crack at the company or specific projects too.
The best part about the Answered DLC was that the common sentiment I saw claimed that the story as laid out in Answered was FAR WORSE than the story people had interpreted from the original
Not only is the Answered story worse, but they obviously framed things to deceive players during their first playthrough. When a story asks you to engage and interpret what's happening, you can't show a scene of a cop talking to boy who just watched his mother die and then reveal that the audio is actually the child being berated by his cop father! Those are just shitty "gotcha" moments and actively insult the player for daring to have any level of involvement in the first place.
Something hilarious about this game that wasn't talked about as much as it should back when it was released was the bit about the graffiti. Because a lot of the enemies are Latino gang members, plenty of locations in the game have Spanish graffiti on them to represent that the place is part of that gang's territory. Problem is, while the graffiti are written in (mostly) grammatically correct Spanish, every single one of them is either a non sequitur (e.g. "ME DA GRIMA" which means something along the lines of "It creeps me out") or EXTREMELY outdated slang, like from the 60s or even earlier (e.g. "TE CONOZCO, BACALAO AUNQUE VAYAS DISFRASAO" which is a way of saying that you're onto someone else's intentions). Like, imagine a GTA San Andreas-like game set in present day where the different American gangs pepper the streets with graffiti that says things like "EEK! YUCKY!" or "I DIG THE WACKY TOBACKY!" Same energy.
It's wild how badly they dropped the ball on the game's basic premise. We don't need words to be able communicate and understand each other but you can't just cut out words and replace them with nothing. And they only did that to the player. The main character could understand so much more and they just cut the player out of that. Such an interesting idea and they didn't even handle it badly. They just didn't handle it at all.
The John Wayne The Quiet Man has one of the best cross-town fist fights ever. It ends in front of the pub, and they go inside to have a drink. Their fight is picked up again when they start arguing over who gets to pay the tab.
It's so weird to me how the game is clearly a personal concept near and dear to the creator's heart... and then he just farmed every aspect to different companies.
lol what else was he supposed to do? Develop the entire thing himself? Including shooting a film? Square wouldnt let him use one of their internal studios. He HAD to "farm" it out. The one thing I am interested about him getting someone else to do was the story. But it seems more like he was interested in the idea and concept, not necessarily the story. That wasnt the point. It was about telling a story in a unique way. Not that he had some grand story hed been cooking for years for that concept.
@@ComicCrossing Most square games are done externally including some of their best games like octopath traveler, bravely default and other. This isn't a good excuse
Something they could have tried was a sign language mode where it forced you to learn basic sign to parse out some form of direction. Like some minimalist prompts to direct the player. The concept was really strong and may work in a different project.
I'd like for him to rip apart that State of Play trailer, the part where it shows the player guy using the Gideon Coffin on Zenon's sword, which you _can't_ do in the actual game because that scene (which requires two QTEs BTW) was actually scripted. And I can tell you none of the bosses in the game have any mechanics where that scene could actually work.
Bayonetta 3 is also a potential wha happun. This has honestly been Platinum games darkest year in terms of quality whether it be everything in Babylons fall or the writing of Bayonetta 3.
@@neliaironwood7573 That Zenon qte aside the gameplay in the state of play was more of a traditional platinum game. Then E3 someone or they themselves scrapped everything from that trailer and made the gameplay worse in every way possible. Also throwing in FF 14 armor assets, because lazy.
I cannot stress hard enough how entertaining a movie The Quiet Man (1952) is. It holds up well and even occasionally has one of those 'classics' theater runs - as it did prior to St. Patrick's Day this year.
I just want to know how you can have the audacity to market a game on the fact it has a deaf protagonist, and then make it so that you need to be able to hear to understand the story.
@@genericname2747 theres lots of games with no dialogue or even predominant sound effects wich can deliever good narratives despite practicly being able to play them without hearing anything
Put it this way it’s better to have the cutscenes on mute and make up your own dialogue and story in a abridged series way. It’s more fun doing that way.
@@bearerofbadnews1375 The speedrunners agree. Every one of them likes the story they made up better than the actual story they experience on their 2nd run.
It's probably a hot take, but an adventure game where you play a deaf-mute person could actually be an interesting experience, if made and written well. A big problem with the game is that the story doesn't go well with the deaf-mute experience. It's too abstract and confusing, even with the audio on.
I'll not only agree, I'll go a step further and say that The Quiet Man is a brilliant consept. The execution however is not only bad, but downright insulting to the deaf and hard of hearing.
This is what frustrates me. Imagine a game where the portion of the screen behind the player character is faded out, to emulate not being able to track the environment when you can't see it. Imagine subtitles only appearing when the character is looking at who's speaking (maybe even during gameplay, so managing attention could be a gameplay component). So many interesting ways to communicate the experience.
The way that deaf-mute people communicate is interesting- a lot interface with an app these days that speaks for them. That… is a gameplay loop right there.
It's even more idiotic than that! The game has a number of references to Mobile Suit Gundam sprinkled throughout (for example the license plate on the car reads UC0079, the year that show takes place), and Lalah is potentially the most direct one. In The Quiet Man, Lalah is someone the main character seems interested in, both romantically and also because she looks like his departed mother. In MSG Lalah is both the lover of a man named Char, rival of the main character Amuro, whom she also has an intense relationship with. Lalah dies tragically during combat between the two, with Char infamously saying that Lalah "could've been a mother to me".
I feel like the Quiet mans idea could of worked if they worked more on how the game would work with a deaf protagonist rather than just muting the audio. Like, imagine the main character having the ablity to read lips which would form subtitles on the screen, but they could possibly be incorrect or a character talking to the player then suddenly looking away while talking, leaving the player to figure out the context later. Possibly leading to weird puzzles? Maybe have something relating to sign language as a game mechanic? Anything? There is definitely a lot more that you could play with here but the devs clearly bit off more than they could chew.
@@moister3727 at least FFVII and its remake are good... unlike that mobile trash and that EBT Fortnite they shoveled out like they did Banal Blunderworld and Babylon's Fall.
With a movie, you can passively watch something for two to three hours and go, "Well, that was weird." With a video game, even a short one, you have to actively participate in order to move things forward. When a lot of what a game has to offer the player to reward them for their pushing forward is *information* - and then that information, that clarification, that denouement- is actively denied, it's perfectly understandable that many players would start to resent it. Asking them to occupy the shoes of a character they were never offered enough to identify with, *twice* , on the *same journey* , how can that resentment not increase?
Well put. Pathologic is a game that I would never play and, outside of video essays breaking it down, but it at least GIVES you something to work with. It has combat that can be grasped, it has health bars, it has story, it has themes and characters. The Quiet Man, the way its made, denies all of that and expects you to clap.
Oh I’ve been WAITING for this one. Watching a couple of my favorite streamers making up their own dialogue and narrative while playing this game is one of the funniest experiences watching a game being played I’ve ever had
@@perrisavallon5170 Personally I really enjoyed TieTuesday's playthroughs of this game, he uploaded both VODs (original and Answered playthrough) to his youtube channel
Thank you for making that joke right off the bat. I swear my first reaction when reading about this game back in the day was "Why is Square making a movie based off of a classic John Wayne film?", then I read what the game was about.
Arc Rise Fantasia could be an episode all its own. From what I know, for some reason, the English dub was done in Japan, so all their talent were local English voice actors, or people outside the video game industry entirely (one of which did a damn good job, imho). This is just from me looking at the cast, but it makes a whole lot make so much more sense.
YESSS another Arc Rise fan!! Yeah I emailed the lead VA way back (Brett Coleman iirc?) and the dub was def recorded there. Probably saved money; I believe the cast were largely native English speakers so it must've been the direction.
The John Wayne romantic comedy from the 50's isn't that interesting by today's standards. The comedy revolves around obscure old Irish wedding traditions that my Irish friends don't even know about. It was fairly successful when it came out.
Do a video about the film *YOU COWARD* I don't know why I got mean there. Apologies it's been a rough day, but *DO A VIDEO ABOUT THE QUIET MAN MOVIE YOU COWARD* omg, I did it again, sorry. It's like a really bad sneeze. Unprofessional and antagonizing but really-- *DO A VIDEO ABOUT THE 1952 MOVIE STARRING JOHN WAYNE YOU COWARD* Holy crap, sorry again. Reasonably I should have stopped writing this comment a few sentences back. This is all on me, apologies again.
@@JeffersonRedeyes It's not the movie's story itself that people are interested in, it's seeing John Wayne show a softer side by starring in a lovey-dovey movie where he doesn't punch and shoot everything that moves until everything stops moving. 😂
You know, I have to agree with Joe Kelly and Matt on this, it *is* a shame to see a creative new attempt at a game fail. I love Fujinaga’s personal story about how games can connect people without words, because I feel that is something that is very true, and I sincerely hope he is able to make a game like that some day. Unfortunately it seems like “The Quiet Man” was far too ambitious of a project, and not the best representation for hard of hearing players if I recall reviews from its release. Maybe the next time he tries to take a crack at this idea he should work on something much smaller and with more contact with HOH developers from the start. Speaking of failed Square Enix ideas, I feel like “Babylon’s Fall” or “FFVII: The First SOLDIER” would be damn good contenders for future “What Happened” videos.
"Just because you're unique, doesn't mean you're useful". IMHO the problem was that it was a stupid idea from the start, a heavily narrative focused game where the player doesn't see the narrative, what could go wrong. At least give an internal monologue to leather jacket Bethoven, since it's not like deaf people don't have inner thoughts. If people really have such a hard-on for representation (god, I hate that term and hate how it's considered as always being a good thing) then incorporate the disability it some way as a mechanic (I don't count awkward cutscenes as mechanics). There's this one Indy horror game which name I don't remember, because I just saw a few mins of gameplay on a random yt video, but you played as a blind woman investigating a haunted mansion, the player didn't see anything, but could use the cane to basically send a sonar pulse to see the shapes around for few seconds (with the drawback that using it could alert the monster to your location), notes and labels on items like for example a bottle of pills had to be "read" by using the protagonist smartphone with a text to speech app, and stuff like that. Basically, the heroine being blind was not just a gimmick for the narrative but a core gameplay mechanic. And yes, I know blind people don't have a daredevil like sonar, but bending reality to make an interesting gameplay mechanic is nothing new and by the end of the day, a video game should be fun to play.
I feel like gameplay should never just be a complete afterthought. It doesn't have to be the most in depth thing ever if it's story driven, but it shouldn't be just a chore. If it is, I'd rather just watch a movie.
Northernlion's let's play of this game is one of my favorite of all time. His sardonic and observational sense of humor was perfect for this trainwreck.
I just watched his highlights on this game & it was genuinely one of the dullest things I've ever seen in my life. Not a single joke told, dude just laughs like a teenager the whole time. I'm speechless.
I’m glad your covering this one cause I’ve known about this game since Rerez played it on their just bad games series and I’ve been curious as to what happened with this game.
Between this game and Balan Wonderworld, it makes you wonder if someone inside SquareEnix isn't trying to implode the company from within... or if they're just cursed.
The basic problem of The Quiet Man is that rather than trying to create a story without audio, it created a story and then turned off the dialogue. The DLC just makes that even more obvious, claiming that the purpose of the bait and switch was to promote speculation and analysis doesn't work because the things that people use to analyze media, hypothesize about character intentions and so on are the things missing, while the sequence of events and ending, things which are usually speculated about, are shown. I also think that the game didn't really get how short, narrative-driven games work well. Games like Firewatch, Tacoma, What Remains of Edith Finch and so on all have few gameplay systems and put things like narrative over tests of skill, but the core gameplay system is one that is familiar to most gamers and provides constant interactivity, even if it is low-intensity. In Firewatch you walk around and talk to Delilah at the same time, with your attention slowly shifting between the two or in Gone Home you are given the story as you explore and find clues while you are always in control of your character. But in The Quiet Man the play pattern is you play a beat em up game where no story takes place then watch a cutscene where story happens but there is no interactivity.
The irony of this development having communication issues. I forgot that this game ever came out, but I guess that tracks with Square's ineptitude at marketing. Cough TWEWY Neo cough
I'm a huge fan of Joe Kelly's comic work, especially his Spider-Man and Superman stuff, so I'm surprised to hear he had such a big hand in this. Guess they can't all be bangers.
I never played the game, but I remember hearing about it. I think it was jaboody dubs did a play through of it with no subtitles, and they were SUPER confused as to what was going on. And I think that was the issue. If they included subtitles from the start (at least for the parts the main character could understand, with their lip reading and sign language skills), I think that would have gone a long way.
Oh the Quiet Man film, my dad loves that film (mostly because of John Wayne), and they have a museum there in Ireland where it was filmed and he went there in 2019.
The Quiet Man John Wayne movie isn't that bad. It's dated to hell, yes, but as someone who was made to sit through it I think it's my favorite Wayne film that's not a western. The fact that the sentence "here's a stick to beat the lovely lady" is said unironically in this film is something worthwhile.
I was honestly surprised by Man of Action's involvement in this game. Joe Kelly's usually a pretty good comic book writer, so it sucks that he got mixed up in all of this.
Still so sad about their ceo being a shithole. They had really cool stuff in line for indivisible that got cut as a result. Why do so many people in the games industry have to be sexist asshole man
I loved playing indivisible! Its a shame it didnt get to make it big like skullgirls eventually did, hopefully the series can be picked up by another studio for a potential sequel someday tho ^^;
@@auqustfire it’s more so the company behind skullgirls labzero that was bad mainly because of their ceo. I’d recommend looking into it if you’re interested
@@auqustfire Skullgirls is one of those good games with a complicated production history stories, mainly the gap between it’s last update to now with it’s re release, new season pass, and it’s honestly fun mobile game.
I clicked on this because I watch all your What Happened? but didn't really know what it was about. But once you started showing and describing the game I was like "OOHHHHH... THAT game..." which made this 10x more fun to watch! Definitely a great concept for a game but clearly it spiraled out of control.
I have a soft spot for games that try weird stuff. As you said this one just didn't come together properly, but kudos for trying anything around a major disability.
it's a real shame this game ended up like this, it sounds like a really cool concept. it should theoretically be possible to tell a story without dialogue by using the characters' body language and the environments to convey their emotions, but i think the story would have to be pretty simple to pull it off on a large scale making the game as if it were a movie was, uh, a choice though. it's a video game, not a film. games can still tell intricate, compelling stories while still having good gameplay
Just gonna add one more old-school Quiet Man trivia - the original story had the protagonist as a feisty runt that people kept underestimating - little danger of that with the Duke playing him live action. A lot of words come to mind with the late John Wayne - runt is not among them. That is all.
Speaking of Human HeadStudios you should check out their biggest travesty and betrayal that was Rune 2 aka Rune Ragnarok. Rune was an amazing classic and they hyped up a sequel that was not only a failure, but a lawsuit filled tragedy and betrayal to the fans. The studio shut down right after releasing Rune 2 leaving quite an outrage behind.
The Quiet Man's concept had a lot of potential, if the gameplay weren't so dull and the story hadn't shat the bed so hard it could have been a cult classic- easily.
Methinks that soon Square Enix will have enough Wha Happun? episodes to rival the amount Capcom games have gotten. There’s been a _lot_ of worthy candidates recently and the promise of more on the way.
As a movie and not a video game this would have been awesome, imagine people going crazy trying to read lips, sign lenguage, re watching to catch the little nuances in reactions...this should have been an indie film. And then 6 months later after the internet had done all they could to try and undertand the film,they release the sound version and fans would feel both rewarded for guessing right and dumb for missing out the obvious details. Sometimes you just need to pick the right medium for a story, and videogame wansn't it for this one.
Do you know how much money I would pay to be in the creative room when they decided that having the entire game be intentionally incomprehensible was a great idea?
Waiting patiently for South Park: The Stick of Truth, though with a new game from THQ Nordic in the works, I guess we should wait on that. In the meantime, there's still Thief 2014 and Homefront (both the original and The Revolution) that need a What Happened episode
As I watched the video, one question kept ringing in my head: why does this game need to have combat? From everything I could gather, it seems like The Quiet Man was intended as a narrative experience first and foremost, so why not make the game closer to an adventure game? It seems to me that one of the big issues with the development is that the team couldn't quite move past the idea that a game needs to have action to be interesting, and so seeing the deaf guy just zip forward almost Arkham Asylum style just looks jarring to me.
Having actually played it both without AND with sound… it’s that awful. The gameplay portion feels unfinished, the UI isn’t clear at all. The combat is dreadful, the progression is indeed linear but there are no enemy variety which break the immersion since they’re forced to reuse actor models which break the immersion. And oh my god, that story… Can we just be reminded that the main character falls for a woman who looks like his murdered mother? And all that story started because of a pair of shoes.
The problem as i see it is that with games that make use of environmental story telling usually have simplez abstract plots, whereas this game is structured like a typical Hollywood film. Take almost any plot-heavy movie and turn off the audio and captions and i guarantee you that you wouldn't be able to get even the gist of them.
It’s so funny cause Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice holds some small parallels to the Quiet Man. Unreliable narrator(s), mysterious story, zero HUD, etc. But the thing is that Hellblade just…did it better lol.
Wow, cool to see a direct response from Joe Kelly, his 1990s Deadpool run basically made the character what he is and is arguably the best characterization he's ever had in his history, especially prior to his early 2000s revival and "lolrandum chimichangawaffles and spatulas" nonsense kicked in, post-Udon Agent X storyline.
If there's one game that can be considered half assed in this video series, it'd be this game. Not only unfinished in terms of understanding how deaf people adapt, but unfinished in terms of the gameplay segments being much shorter than the cutscenes. I understand we don't need words all the time, but we need SOMETHING if you're going to make the protagonist able to understand the plot while making us unable to. It's the reverse of that Walking With Dinosaurs movie which adds unnecessary sound, while this adds unnecessary silence.
The idea around this game was unique and actually heartfelt.. too bad it turn into one of the worst exceptions. Not gonna lie, the game part of it looked actually good, then you look at it longer. I can't believe they thought the SECOND playthrough was the only way you could get the story with sound, they believed you would play it a second time!
What I remember most about this game was their absolutely bonkers Twitter wars they'd get into over this game's reception. I remember one tweet where they said you weren't allowed to have a negative opinion about the game until the DLC came out because you didn't understand the story. I replied that I had to restart twice because enemies spawned inside of walls and I was soft-locked. Somebody who I'm 90% sure was on the dev team told me that if I was too stupid to understand The Quiet Man's genius then I should go back to playing God of War 2018 and Spider-Man... which I did.
This game was a big deal when it came out, of course for all the wrong reasons :D I remember watching a few playthroughs of this as well where people would just make up their own story/commentary as they played it . Really damn funny memories of that.
WTF JOE KELLY???? He's the guy that popularized Deadpool! Yeah Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld were the creators of Deadpool, but it was Joe Kelly who wrote Deadpool's first solo series and gave him all the quirks that stuck with the character to this day. The black humor, the 4th wall-breaking, the silly mixed with the tragic were all Joe Kelly. Before Joe Kelly, Deadpool was just a C-list mercenary who made quips. Even the characters of Weasel and Blind Al from the movies were introduced in his run. This blew my mind.
That was great feedback on the project, I got it for $1.99 on the PlayStation store a while back and have yet to play it, In that regard I must ask my good sir, WHAT HAPPUN TO TIMESHIFT?!?!?!?!?!
"I'm gonna get you Quiet man! You can run, but you can't hear!"
"All you had to do was keep your mouth open and ears closed Quiet Man!"
Good nl reference
I watched this video twice, once with the sound off to get the full experience.
For some reason, TH-cam wasn't playing audio on this video when I clicked on it, and I legitimately spent about 2 minutes wondering if Matt was doing a bit
Such a missed opportunity lol
Telltale Games definitely deserves a What Happened episode tbh
Super Bunnyhop made a good video about Telltale’s downfall around the time it happened, but I wouldn’t mind Matt taking a crack at the company or specific projects too.
Telltale died and got reborn and because of that most of their games got delisted
Glad they got to finish The Walking Dead. I actually really enjoyed the final season.
I believe Joshscorcher said everything about the rise and fall of that company
What’s Tellltale
The best part about the Answered DLC was that the common sentiment I saw claimed that the story as laid out in Answered was FAR WORSE than the story people had interpreted from the original
It's so horrible.
It's like some sort of childish thriller written by aliens that barely grasp humanity, or at least how to write a story.
@@universalperson even worse is thay somehow it is written by Man of Action, the creators of shows with strong writing like Ben 10 and Generator Rex
@@nguyenquyetthang1326 how'd they even screw it up that badly, they're way too talented for this shit
@@Krozbot he mentioned that a lot of stuff got cut, so that's probably part of the reason.
Not only is the Answered story worse, but they obviously framed things to deceive players during their first playthrough. When a story asks you to engage and interpret what's happening, you can't show a scene of a cop talking to boy who just watched his mother die and then reveal that the audio is actually the child being berated by his cop father! Those are just shitty "gotcha" moments and actively insult the player for daring to have any level of involvement in the first place.
Something hilarious about this game that wasn't talked about as much as it should back when it was released was the bit about the graffiti. Because a lot of the enemies are Latino gang members, plenty of locations in the game have Spanish graffiti on them to represent that the place is part of that gang's territory.
Problem is, while the graffiti are written in (mostly) grammatically correct Spanish, every single one of them is either a non sequitur (e.g. "ME DA GRIMA" which means something along the lines of "It creeps me out") or EXTREMELY outdated slang, like from the 60s or even earlier (e.g. "TE CONOZCO, BACALAO AUNQUE VAYAS DISFRASAO" which is a way of saying that you're onto someone else's intentions).
Like, imagine a GTA San Andreas-like game set in present day where the different American gangs pepper the streets with graffiti that says things like "EEK! YUCKY!" or "I DIG THE WACKY TOBACKY!" Same energy.
I would probably enjoy a game of Grand Theft Engrish tbh. 😂
That actually sounds appealing, ngl
Me acuerdo que lo de te conozco bacalao de volvió un copypasta
interesting; thanks for this
all things considered, "eek yucky" and "i dig the wacky tobacky" sounds like stuff you'd see in Manhunt levels
It's wild how badly they dropped the ball on the game's basic premise. We don't need words to be able communicate and understand each other but you can't just cut out words and replace them with nothing. And they only did that to the player. The main character could understand so much more and they just cut the player out of that.
Such an interesting idea and they didn't even handle it badly. They just didn't handle it at all.
The John Wayne The Quiet Man has one of the best cross-town fist fights ever. It ends in front of the pub, and they go inside to have a drink. Their fight is picked up again when they start arguing over who gets to pay the tab.
So that’s where Family Guy got it from
"Sit down, that's what chairs are for!"
That movie was honestly pretty fun
Best fist fight in film history.
It's so weird to me how the game is clearly a personal concept near and dear to the creator's heart... and then he just farmed every aspect to different companies.
Budget problems, Im betting Square gave him barely shoestrings
I doubt Square alone gave him the resources to do much with it.
@@bransonallen2925 Or even care about it because it not Final Fantasy
lol what else was he supposed to do? Develop the entire thing himself? Including shooting a film? Square wouldnt let him use one of their internal studios. He HAD to "farm" it out. The one thing I am interested about him getting someone else to do was the story. But it seems more like he was interested in the idea and concept, not necessarily the story. That wasnt the point. It was about telling a story in a unique way. Not that he had some grand story hed been cooking for years for that concept.
@@ComicCrossing Most square games are done externally including some of their best games like octopath traveler, bravely default and other. This isn't a good excuse
Something they could have tried was a sign language mode where it forced you to learn basic sign to parse out some form of direction. Like some minimalist prompts to direct the player. The concept was really strong and may work in a different project.
They could make it for the xbox kinect
@@Guywithaclub it maaay be a little late for that
I’d play that. That sounds so interesting there’s a lot of potential there.
Just imagine… consulting actual deaf people on a game about a deaf person… Wild!
@@rexzs794 ikr lol
Babylon's Fall definitely seems worthy of a What Happened at this point.
I think it will come after the game finally shuts down in 2023.
Platinum games and probably squenix in general could go for a whole whappun too 😆
I'd like for him to rip apart that State of Play trailer, the part where it shows the player guy using the Gideon Coffin on Zenon's sword, which you _can't_ do in the actual game because that scene (which requires two QTEs BTW) was actually scripted. And I can tell you none of the bosses in the game have any mechanics where that scene could actually work.
Bayonetta 3 is also a potential wha happun. This has honestly been Platinum games darkest year in terms of quality whether it be everything in Babylons fall or the writing of Bayonetta 3.
@@neliaironwood7573 That Zenon qte aside the gameplay in the state of play was more of a traditional platinum game. Then E3 someone or they themselves scrapped everything from that trailer and made the gameplay worse in every way possible. Also throwing in FF 14 armor assets, because lazy.
I cannot stress hard enough how entertaining a movie The Quiet Man (1952) is. It holds up well and even occasionally has one of those 'classics' theater runs - as it did prior to St. Patrick's Day this year.
I just want to know how you can have the audacity to market a game on the fact it has a deaf protagonist, and then make it so that you need to be able to hear to understand the story.
I think that was the point, to make the player understand what it's like to be deaf
@@gothnerd887 Having to play the game with sound defeats that purpose
@@genericname2747 theres lots of games with no dialogue or even predominant sound effects wich can deliever good narratives despite practicly being able to play them without hearing anything
I genuinely wanted to know how this game was so comically bad
Put it this way it’s better to have the cutscenes on mute and make up your own dialogue and story in a abridged series way. It’s more fun doing that way.
@@bearerofbadnews1375 10 times better if it's with friends while drinking
@@bearerofbadnews1375 The speedrunners agree. Every one of them likes the story they made up better than the actual story they experience on their 2nd run.
same, it has to be a hell of a story.
Watch Rerez channel for its awful gameplay review. IT'S. JUST. BAD.
Quite the hard lesson here: just because you have a unique idea doesn't mean it is a good one and a good idea is nothing without good execution.
It's probably a hot take, but an adventure game where you play a deaf-mute person could actually be an interesting experience, if made and written well.
A big problem with the game is that the story doesn't go well with the deaf-mute experience. It's too abstract and confusing, even with the audio on.
I mean, I think that's what people wanted from this game. A fun story where you're deaf and mute.
I'll not only agree, I'll go a step further and say that The Quiet Man is a brilliant consept. The execution however is not only bad, but downright insulting to the deaf and hard of hearing.
Well, yeah. The main problem here is that being deaf is just a narrative gimmick and is in no way used as an actual gameplay mechanic.
This is what frustrates me. Imagine a game where the portion of the screen behind the player character is faded out, to emulate not being able to track the environment when you can't see it. Imagine subtitles only appearing when the character is looking at who's speaking (maybe even during gameplay, so managing attention could be a gameplay component).
So many interesting ways to communicate the experience.
The way that deaf-mute people communicate is interesting- a lot interface with an app these days that speaks for them. That… is a gameplay loop right there.
He was too quiet, so no one knew it came out.
Ah, he did a Cum&Go! What a fantastic stealth release...
He farted you know
I still can't get over the fact that they named the singing character "La La"
It's even more idiotic than that! The game has a number of references to Mobile Suit Gundam sprinkled throughout (for example the license plate on the car reads UC0079, the year that show takes place), and Lalah is potentially the most direct one.
In The Quiet Man, Lalah is someone the main character seems interested in, both romantically and also because she looks like his departed mother. In MSG Lalah is both the lover of a man named Char, rival of the main character Amuro, whom she also has an intense relationship with. Lalah dies tragically during combat between the two, with Char infamously saying that Lalah "could've been a mother to me".
@@Julfordi assume you are a big fan of gundan
I feel like the Quiet mans idea could of worked if they worked more on how the game would work with a deaf protagonist rather than just muting the audio. Like, imagine the main character having the ablity to read lips which would form subtitles on the screen, but they could possibly be incorrect or a character talking to the player then suddenly looking away while talking, leaving the player to figure out the context later. Possibly leading to weird puzzles? Maybe have something relating to sign language as a game mechanic? Anything?
There is definitely a lot more that you could play with here but the devs clearly bit off more than they could chew.
It was such a huge ask to say "Watch this 5min long scene of 2 people talking in a room without audio and be interested in what they might be saying"
We live in a timeline where this is a game you can buy and play but not the 3rd entry of Adam Jensen's Deus Ex nor Sleeping Dogs 2. Bravo squenix.
And Marvel's Avengers, lets not forget that pile of crap exists
And let’s not forget the recently announced nft bullshit
And how square is milking ff7 to death
@@moister3727 at least FFVII and its remake are good... unlike that mobile trash and that EBT Fortnite they shoveled out like they did Banal Blunderworld and Babylon's Fall.
Yeah, because they have the exact same scope, budget and team, right?
Favorite quote from Northernlion while playing this game "You can run, BUT YOU CAN'T HEAR" I died
Dude's Let's Play of this game was 100% trash.
With a movie, you can passively watch something for two to three hours and go, "Well, that was weird." With a video game, even a short one, you have to actively participate in order to move things forward. When a lot of what a game has to offer the player to reward them for their pushing forward is *information* - and then that information, that clarification, that denouement- is actively denied, it's perfectly understandable that many players would start to resent it. Asking them to occupy the shoes of a character they were never offered enough to identify with, *twice* , on the *same journey* , how can that resentment not increase?
Well put. Pathologic is a game that I would never play and, outside of video essays breaking it down, but it at least GIVES you something to work with. It has combat that can be grasped, it has health bars, it has story, it has themes and characters. The Quiet Man, the way its made, denies all of that and expects you to clap.
Oh I’ve been WAITING for this one. Watching a couple of my favorite streamers making up their own dialogue and narrative while playing this game is one of the funniest experiences watching a game being played I’ve ever had
Which streamers?
if you know people who play let them know there is a speedrun and it's not even a hard one to medal in.
@@perrisavallon5170 Personally I really enjoyed TieTuesday's playthroughs of this game, he uploaded both VODs (original and Answered playthrough) to his youtube channel
@@Julford matt and liam's own playthrough of this game (on liam's channel) is definitely worth a watch too
Thank you for making that joke right off the bat.
I swear my first reaction when reading about this game back in the day was "Why is Square making a movie based off of a classic John Wayne film?", then I read what the game was about.
There is also a real uncanny-valley-ness going on between the live-action filmed scenes with actors and the gameplay segments with in-game models
Arc Rise Fantasia could be an episode all its own.
From what I know, for some reason, the English dub was done in Japan, so all their talent were local English voice actors, or people outside the video game industry entirely (one of which did a damn good job, imho).
This is just from me looking at the cast, but it makes a whole lot make so much more sense.
YESSS another Arc Rise fan!!
Yeah I emailed the lead VA way back (Brett Coleman iirc?) and the dub was def recorded there. Probably saved money; I believe the cast were largely native English speakers so it must've been the direction.
Yep! The Wii was curiously lacking for JRPGs for some weird reason, despite having some stellar examples.
Am I the only one who now wants Matt to do a whole episode about the movie that shares this game's name?
The longer the bit went, the more excited I got ngl
The John Wayne romantic comedy from the 50's isn't that interesting by today's standards. The comedy revolves around obscure old Irish wedding traditions that my Irish friends don't even know about. It was fairly successful when it came out.
Fantastic movie, with an ending fight scene that is much more entertaining than anything found in this game.
Do a video about the film *YOU COWARD*
I don't know why I got mean there.
Apologies it's been a rough day, but *DO A VIDEO ABOUT THE QUIET MAN MOVIE YOU COWARD*
omg, I did it again, sorry. It's like a really bad sneeze. Unprofessional and antagonizing but really--
*DO A VIDEO ABOUT THE 1952 MOVIE STARRING JOHN WAYNE YOU COWARD*
Holy crap, sorry again.
Reasonably I should have stopped writing this comment a few sentences back. This is all on me, apologies again.
@@JeffersonRedeyes It's not the movie's story itself that people are interested in, it's seeing John Wayne show a softer side by starring in a lovey-dovey movie where he doesn't punch and shoot everything that moves until everything stops moving. 😂
This was certainly one of the more fascinating failures of the wha happun variety.
The Thief reboot apparently had a pretty rough time getting out the door, starting as a fully-third-person Assassin's Creed-like game.
It really seems like this idea should have just been made into a movie instead of mixed media.
Wouldnt the story work better if the game was about a mute man? The quiet man means he cant talk, but in the game is about a man that cant hear.
ah the quiet man, the reason why student art projects are sometimes not great ideas for games
You know, I have to agree with Joe Kelly and Matt on this, it *is* a shame to see a creative new attempt at a game fail. I love Fujinaga’s personal story about how games can connect people without words, because I feel that is something that is very true, and I sincerely hope he is able to make a game like that some day. Unfortunately it seems like “The Quiet Man” was far too ambitious of a project, and not the best representation for hard of hearing players if I recall reviews from its release. Maybe the next time he tries to take a crack at this idea he should work on something much smaller and with more contact with HOH developers from the start.
Speaking of failed Square Enix ideas, I feel like “Babylon’s Fall” or “FFVII: The First SOLDIER” would be damn good contenders for future “What Happened” videos.
"Just because you're unique, doesn't mean you're useful". IMHO the problem was that it was a stupid idea from the start, a heavily narrative focused game where the player doesn't see the narrative, what could go wrong. At least give an internal monologue to leather jacket Bethoven, since it's not like deaf people don't have inner thoughts. If people really have such a hard-on for representation (god, I hate that term and hate how it's considered as always being a good thing) then incorporate the disability it some way as a mechanic (I don't count awkward cutscenes as mechanics). There's this one Indy horror game which name I don't remember, because I just saw a few mins of gameplay on a random yt video, but you played as a blind woman investigating a haunted mansion, the player didn't see anything, but could use the cane to basically send a sonar pulse to see the shapes around for few seconds (with the drawback that using it could alert the monster to your location), notes and labels on items like for example a bottle of pills had to be "read" by using the protagonist smartphone with a text to speech app, and stuff like that. Basically, the heroine being blind was not just a gimmick for the narrative but a core gameplay mechanic. And yes, I know blind people don't have a daredevil like sonar, but bending reality to make an interesting gameplay mechanic is nothing new and by the end of the day, a video game should be fun to play.
Any time I hear about this game, I confuse it with the movie The Bye Bye Man
I think you mean The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man
@@xBIGFLATSx You FOOL. He's coming for you now
DON'T SAY IT
@@icarommartins DON'T THINK IT
@@iamarabicandiloveamericanp7137.......Pee Pee Poo Poo Man.
I feel like gameplay should never just be a complete afterthought. It doesn't have to be the most in depth thing ever if it's story driven, but it shouldn't be just a chore. If it is, I'd rather just watch a movie.
Northernlion's let's play of this game is one of my favorite of all time. His sardonic and observational sense of humor was perfect for this trainwreck.
I just watched his highlights on this game & it was genuinely one of the dullest things I've ever seen in my life. Not a single joke told, dude just laughs like a teenager the whole time. I'm speechless.
All the film footage looks great, real actors, pretty shots… I want to watch a play through.
I’m glad your covering this one cause I’ve known about this game since Rerez played it on their just bad games series and I’ve been curious as to what happened with this game.
It's a quiet game about a man who went quiet due to his critical reception
Ah, The Quiet Man. Truly one of the most ‘tone-deaf’ games of all time 😂
I tip my hat to that joke. Well played! 😂
Between this game and Balan Wonderworld, it makes you wonder if someone inside SquareEnix isn't trying to implode the company from within... or if they're just cursed.
why_not_both.jpg
The basic problem of The Quiet Man is that rather than trying to create a story without audio, it created a story and then turned off the dialogue. The DLC just makes that even more obvious, claiming that the purpose of the bait and switch was to promote speculation and analysis doesn't work because the things that people use to analyze media, hypothesize about character intentions and so on are the things missing, while the sequence of events and ending, things which are usually speculated about, are shown.
I also think that the game didn't really get how short, narrative-driven games work well. Games like Firewatch, Tacoma, What Remains of Edith Finch and so on all have few gameplay systems and put things like narrative over tests of skill, but the core gameplay system is one that is familiar to most gamers and provides constant interactivity, even if it is low-intensity. In Firewatch you walk around and talk to Delilah at the same time, with your attention slowly shifting between the two or in Gone Home you are given the story as you explore and find clues while you are always in control of your character. But in The Quiet Man the play pattern is you play a beat em up game where no story takes place then watch a cutscene where story happens but there is no interactivity.
Square Enix is pretty much doing a Konami but with NFTs instead of Pachinko.
The irony of this development having communication issues.
I forgot that this game ever came out, but I guess that tracks with Square's ineptitude at marketing. Cough TWEWY Neo cough
“YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN’T HEAR QUIET MAN!”- Ryan Northernlion
I'm a huge fan of Joe Kelly's comic work, especially his Spider-Man and Superman stuff, so I'm surprised to hear he had such a big hand in this. Guess they can't all be bangers.
I never played the game, but I remember hearing about it. I think it was jaboody dubs did a play through of it with no subtitles, and they were SUPER confused as to what was going on. And I think that was the issue. If they included subtitles from the start (at least for the parts the main character could understand, with their lip reading and sign language skills), I think that would have gone a long way.
I'm so glad you started off with a goof on the John Wayne movie, that's the first place my brain went.
Glad you were able to find info on this one, I thought for sure they'd keep quiet about it.
Oh the Quiet Man film, my dad loves that film (mostly because of John Wayne), and they have a museum there in Ireland where it was filmed and he went there in 2019.
The Quiet Man John Wayne movie isn't that bad. It's dated to hell, yes, but as someone who was made to sit through it I think it's my favorite Wayne film that's not a western. The fact that the sentence "here's a stick to beat the lovely lady" is said unironically in this film is something worthwhile.
I was honestly surprised by Man of Action's involvement in this game. Joe Kelly's usually a pretty good comic book writer, so it sucks that he got mixed up in all of this.
Love this show, thanks for being you my guy
I feel like LabZeroGames or at least a stand-alone on either Skullgirls or Indivisible would be prefect to see on the What Happened stage.
Still so sad about their ceo being a shithole. They had really cool stuff in line for indivisible that got cut as a result. Why do so many people in the games industry have to be sexist asshole man
I loved playing indivisible! Its a shame it didnt get to make it big like skullgirls eventually did, hopefully the series can be picked up by another studio for a potential sequel someday tho ^^;
I thought Skullgirls was pretty popular? At least, it was at first, idk now. It didn't have a lot of staying power, I guess.
@@auqustfire it’s more so the company behind skullgirls labzero that was bad mainly because of their ceo. I’d recommend looking into it if you’re interested
@@auqustfire Skullgirls is one of those good games with a complicated production history stories, mainly the gap between it’s last update to now with it’s re release, new season pass, and it’s honestly fun mobile game.
I clicked on this because I watch all your What Happened? but didn't really know what it was about. But once you started showing and describing the game I was like "OOHHHHH... THAT game..." which made this 10x more fun to watch! Definitely a great concept for a game but clearly it spiraled out of control.
So, I searched for The Quiet Man on TVTropes, and guess what? The first result is the John Wayne movie there as well.
I will never get tired of that clip of Yoko Taro rolling on the floor and shouting "Shit Square Enix!" in his mask.
I have a soft spot for games that try weird stuff. As you said this one just didn't come together properly, but kudos for trying anything around a major disability.
it's a real shame this game ended up like this, it sounds like a really cool concept. it should theoretically be possible to tell a story without dialogue by using the characters' body language and the environments to convey their emotions, but i think the story would have to be pretty simple to pull it off on a large scale
making the game as if it were a movie was, uh, a choice though. it's a video game, not a film. games can still tell intricate, compelling stories while still having good gameplay
They threw so many non-videogame-y things there, it's almost like they didn't wanted it to be a videogame in the first place
Honesty I get the impression of a Dev so obsessed with their unique idea that they never once actually implement it.
Oh I boy, I forgot about the Quiet Man.
Man, after Balan Wonderworld and then this I wonder if there’s anything else that’ll go wrong with Naka in his Square Enix era…
I LOVED THAT GAG! thank you for going so far
"Context Changes. It's Terrifying." is a wonderfully translated sentence.
Fingers crossed that Death by Degrees Tekken spin-off game will be on this show someday!
Just gonna add one more old-school Quiet Man trivia - the original story had the protagonist as a feisty runt that people kept underestimating - little danger of that with the Duke playing him live action. A lot of words come to mind with the late John Wayne - runt is not among them. That is all.
Speaking of Human HeadStudios you should check out their biggest travesty and betrayal that was Rune 2 aka Rune Ragnarok. Rune was an amazing classic and they hyped up a sequel that was not only a failure, but a lawsuit filled tragedy and betrayal to the fans. The studio shut down right after releasing Rune 2 leaving quite an outrage behind.
I hate to say it, but this might have been better as a David Cage style Experience. Not good, but better.
Watching on mute for the true Quiet Man experience
You need to watch the video twice. First muted, then with sound.
The Quiet Man's concept had a lot of potential, if the gameplay weren't so dull and the story hadn't shat the bed so hard it could have been a cult classic- easily.
Agreed, if every part of the game weren't so bad it would have been game of the year lol
Methinks that soon Square Enix will have enough Wha Happun? episodes to rival the amount Capcom games have gotten. There’s been a _lot_ of worthy candidates recently and the promise of more on the way.
OMG..i have waited for this one
As a movie and not a video game this would have been awesome, imagine people going crazy trying to read lips, sign lenguage, re watching to catch the little nuances in reactions...this should have been an indie film. And then 6 months later after the internet had done all they could to try and undertand the film,they release the sound version and fans would feel both rewarded for guessing right and dumb for missing out the obvious details.
Sometimes you just need to pick the right medium for a story, and videogame wansn't it for this one.
The 2:11 quiet wipe transition was hilarious!
Do you know how much money I would pay to be in the creative room when they decided that having the entire game be intentionally incomprehensible was a great idea?
This might be the only What Happened episode where the thumbnail answers the question the video's title asks.
Waiting patiently for South Park: The Stick of Truth, though with a new game from THQ Nordic in the works, I guess we should wait on that. In the meantime, there's still Thief 2014 and Homefront (both the original and The Revolution) that need a What Happened episode
As I watched the video, one question kept ringing in my head: why does this game need to have combat? From everything I could gather, it seems like The Quiet Man was intended as a narrative experience first and foremost, so why not make the game closer to an adventure game? It seems to me that one of the big issues with the development is that the team couldn't quite move past the idea that a game needs to have action to be interesting, and so seeing the deaf guy just zip forward almost Arkham Asylum style just looks jarring to me.
Having actually played it both without AND with sound… it’s that awful. The gameplay portion feels unfinished, the UI isn’t clear at all. The combat is dreadful, the progression is indeed linear but there are no enemy variety which break the immersion since they’re forced to reuse actor models which break the immersion.
And oh my god, that story… Can we just be reminded that the main character falls for a woman who looks like his murdered mother?
And all that story started because of a pair of shoes.
Thank you Matt for covering this game 🙏 (and for the continued listing of the music ♥)
The problem as i see it is that with games that make use of environmental story telling usually have simplez abstract plots, whereas this game is structured like a typical Hollywood film. Take almost any plot-heavy movie and turn off the audio and captions and i guarantee you that you wouldn't be able to get even the gist of them.
I accidentally muted the tab while watching and thought Matt was making quite the joke, laughing far too hard. Instead, I was just dumb...
I can already see Babylon's Fall being the next topic of What Happened
I've been waiting so long for you to cover this!
It’s so funny cause Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice holds some small parallels to the Quiet Man. Unreliable narrator(s), mysterious story, zero HUD, etc.
But the thing is that Hellblade just…did it better lol.
Are you telling me they made a game about a deaf man, and locked SUBTITLES behind dlc?? Yeah that tracks, Smdh.
Wow, cool to see a direct response from Joe Kelly, his 1990s Deadpool run basically made the character what he is and is arguably the best characterization he's ever had in his history, especially prior to his early 2000s revival and "lolrandum chimichangawaffles and spatulas" nonsense kicked in, post-Udon Agent X storyline.
If there's one game that can be considered half assed in this video series, it'd be this game. Not only unfinished in terms of understanding how deaf people adapt, but unfinished in terms of the gameplay segments being much shorter than the cutscenes. I understand we don't need words all the time, but we need SOMETHING if you're going to make the protagonist able to understand the plot while making us unable to. It's the reverse of that Walking With Dinosaurs movie which adds unnecessary sound, while this adds unnecessary silence.
The idea around this game was unique and actually heartfelt.. too bad it turn into one of the worst exceptions.
Not gonna lie, the game part of it looked actually good, then you look at it longer.
I can't believe they thought the SECOND playthrough was the only way you could get the story with sound, they believed you would play it a second time!
FINALLY Matt’s tackling the classic John Ford film starring John Wayne! I’m glad to see he’s such a cinephile.
First thing I thought of when I saw the title was the Giant Bomb crew losing it to this game yelling “Mom’s Dead Parkour” 😂
What I remember most about this game was their absolutely bonkers Twitter wars they'd get into over this game's reception. I remember one tweet where they said you weren't allowed to have a negative opinion about the game until the DLC came out because you didn't understand the story. I replied that I had to restart twice because enemies spawned inside of walls and I was soft-locked. Somebody who I'm 90% sure was on the dev team told me that if I was too stupid to understand The Quiet Man's genius then I should go back to playing God of War 2018 and Spider-Man... which I did.
This game was a big deal when it came out, of course for all the wrong reasons :D I remember watching a few playthroughs of this as well where people would just make up their own story/commentary as they played it . Really damn funny memories of that.
I requested this a while back, thanks for doing this!
Bro I never even heard of this game until you made this video.
I am once again asking for a Quest for Camelot episode.
WTF JOE KELLY???? He's the guy that popularized Deadpool! Yeah Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld were the creators of Deadpool, but it was Joe Kelly who wrote Deadpool's first solo series and gave him all the quirks that stuck with the character to this day. The black humor, the 4th wall-breaking, the silly mixed with the tragic were all Joe Kelly. Before Joe Kelly, Deadpool was just a C-list mercenary who made quips. Even the characters of Weasel and Blind Al from the movies were introduced in his run. This blew my mind.
That was great feedback on the project, I got it for $1.99 on the PlayStation store a while back and have yet to play it, In that regard I must ask my good sir, WHAT HAPPUN TO TIMESHIFT?!?!?!?!?!
I brought it on deal also and played it for 10 mins and deleted it.
Ahh, The Quiet Man-can you believe this was the last game by the same studio (Human Head) that was working on the original iteration of Prey 2?
Arc Rise Fantasia is a fun game when the volume is turned down.